President Lyndon B. Johnson is most remembered for the Vietnam quagmire, but much of the key legislation - including the Great Society efforts - was pushed through Congress under his administration's guidance.
This would include the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Equal Housing Act of 1968, the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Medicare and Medicaid enactments, and even federal law imposing fire retardant standards on clothing marketed in the U.S.
While much can be attributed to JFK, including the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, diligent civil rights enforcement, and the Apollo program, LBJ's list of legislative accomplishments were unparalleled in the 20th Century, except for FDR, and especially his New Deal programs.
The only state which has done so was South Africa. That scenario was motivated by the fact that the apartheid regime did not want a black-controlled government having A-bomb capabilities and reinforced by the fact the African National Congress signed international protocols previously pledging to renounce nuclear weapons deployment.
The organizing principle of the State of Israel since its inception was the acquisition and maintenance of a nuclear weapons program. This was spearheded by PM David Ben-Gurion and implemented via senior Defense Minstry official and current Israeli President Shimon Peres.
Peres dealt directly with Pres. Charles DeGaulle in the 1950s and 60s in initiating and maintaining a joint atomic research program between France and Israel. France understood that these efforts were to be used for peaceful purposes, but Western intelligence services eventually concluded by the 1960s that Israel was seeking this scientific expertise to establish a nuclear weapons program.
Israel has invested billions in generating an atomic weapons program via Argentine purchases of 80-100 tons of uranium oxide and 20 tons of British "heavy water", plus delivery systems including the Jericho ICBM, and also the Dolphin submarines from German industrial giant Thyssen-Krupp capable of firing sea-launched cruise missiles with nuclear warheads.
Shimon Peres has often said that the nuclear arsenal of Israel is to promote peace by deterring potential aggression - no offensive use is claimed. He is likely Israel's greatest living statesman, having won the Nobel Peace Prize for his involvement in negotiating the Oslo Accords.
Israel's only detonation of a nuclear device was probably the joint test with South Africa which was detected by the American oceanic hydrophone system as well as an orbiting Vela satellite when it picked-up the "double-flash" associated with a nuclear detonation in the Indian Ocean estimated at four kilotons (compare with 18 kilotons for the Trinity test at Alamogordo and 80 kilotons for the Hiroshima bomb). Israel has joined the major powers when it became - along with the U.S., Russia, France, Britain and China - in acquiring a hydrogen bomb capability, probably in the mid-1980s.
America and Britain were notoriously laggard in the early 1960s in following up on information gathered by Canadian intelligence both that Israel had intentions of constructing nuclear weaponry and was in the process of secretly purchasing "yellowcake" uranium from Argentina in 1963-64. U.S. authorities were given a runaround by Israeli officials in investigating information suggesting a sale and did nothing after the Argentine transaction was completed in 1964. This is despite U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara openly opposing Israeli acquisition of nuclear weapons capabilities during this timeframe.
Comparing the Israeli and Iranian programs and the respective responses by the international shows that sauce for gooose is not necessarily sauce for the gander.
Israel sees its survival in a viable atomic arsenal.
What is amazing is that this preliminary agreement when juxtaposed with the the international community's response to Israeli efforts build nuclear weaponry shows how the U.S. got it right this time to avoid a second Middle Eastern nation acquiring a nuclear capability.
Just in June of this year, the story of how Canadian intelligence services exposed the sale of 80-100 tons of uranium "yellowcake" to Israel from Argetina became public knowledge. See "Israel's Request for Yellowcake: The Secret Argentine-Israel Connection, 1963-66" at www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb432/
Israel has been generally leaning right since Shimon Peres was prime minister in the 1990s following Yitzhak Rabin's death.
The only two times a moderate took office after Peres' latest tenure as prime minister was when Kadima Party formed a goverment with Ehud Olmert as prime minister. Olmert, whose background was largely municipal governance, performed poorly and led to Netanyahu assuming the prime minister's seat - and the other time was when Ehud Barak was PM in the late 1990s and made the fateful decision to withdraw the IDF from South Lebanon.
The moderate elements in Israel at this time are politically fragmented, however Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak, and Yair Lapid have the potential to galvanize a viable moderate movement - and Lapid largely has with his new party.
It would not surprise me, however to see right-wing hardliners like Naftali Bennett or Avigdor Lieberman emerge as viable prime minister candidates and get elected.
47% of the U.S. national debt is owed to China and Japan - with the bulk of that percentage owed to China.
China has now the highest GNP of any world nation, recently supplanting the United States.
Antagonizing China would be like biting off one's nose to spite his face.
This deal also strengthens the political prestige of Iranian moderate elements that could become a potent future political force within Iran within the neaar future.
According to the NY Times #1 best-seller "By Way of Deception, Israeli intelligence had as an informant the auto mechanic for the Mercedes-Benz truck laden with explosives that struck the Marine Corps base in Beirut in 1983 but did not fully disclose information they had acquired from the informant to the U.S. that may have prevented the carnage. The reasoning was this information could have compromised the informant's identity.
Israel's occupation of much of Lebanon is what spawned the rise of Hezbollah and made it a popular political party within Lebanon to this day.
Israel's foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman Has openly toyed with the idea of a nuclear option against Gaza.
Israel:
(A) purchased 20 tons of heavy water from Britain in 1958 using a Norwegian front company "Noratom" with the proviso it would not be used for making weapons;
(B)secretly constructed the Dimona nuclear facility and hid it with palm groves - it was first detected by the U.S. during a U-2 overflight in 1958;
(C)secretly purchased bulk quantities of "yellowcake" uranium from Argentina in 1964;
(D)exploited purportedly peaceful atomic research with the French until Pres. DeGaulle terminated all such joint research in 1966 after concluding Israel had exploited the relationship to acquire nuclear weaponry;
(E)considered using A-bombs during the Yom Kippur War in 1973;
(F)per a 1997 declassified U.S. Air Force Intelligence report entitled "Holy of Holies", likely has around 400 fission and thermonuclear fusion bombs - this dual capability has been present since the mid-1980s;
(G)does not acknowledge the possession of nuclear weapons nor allows IAEA inspections of its atomic research facilities.
Can anyone explain why Israel has not faced international vilification and sanctions over its chronic deceit, non-cooperation, and hiding of a nuclear weapons program that is capable of wiping out tens of millions of civilians and contaminating the world's food chain?
I do not believe the Obama administration cared what the Netanyahu government felt about this deal with Iran.
Israel disregarded U.S. State Department efforts to stem the construction of new settlements in the West Bank and the involvement of Israel in good-faith final status negotiations in that region.
Netanyahu offered the Palestinian Authority nothing and America disregarded PM Netanyahu in return on the Iran deal.
Will Kerry and Rouhani be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize?
There were speeches transmitted by satellite phone by Free Syrian Army military leaders to the gathering describing the military situation within Syria as well as speeches given by the SSG leaders emphasizing that the war was being fought bravely by the FSA and that donations were being transformed into meals medical supplies and other forms of effective support. The war was going well for the FSA, they emphasized. Financial support was being received from a broad cross-section of Americans.
They also emphasized the huge public relations machine that the Syrian government has in the U.S. that receives millions in funding for lobbying and general public relations.
The Syrian government has spent millions of dollars in fees to US. and European public relations and lobbying firms to promote the Assads and their government.
One of the efforts that had been exposed was the promotion of Syrian First Lady Asma al-Assad by having Vogue magazine publish an article "Rose of the Desert" in 2011 that depicted her and her husband in a most positive light - showing them at home playing with their children, describing their relationship while Bashaar was in his medical residency in Britain and lauding Syrian security forces on their superior ability to maintain public order in a region where neighboring countries were in constant civil turmoil.
The article became a huge embarrassment to the magazine once it came out that the impetus of the article was a public relations firm hired by the Syrian government and the magazine later redacted large portions of the article on its online website.
The foreign fighters are largely linked to the al-Nusra Front and Islamic State of Iraq, but constitute the most violent and extremist elements of the rebel forces. They number about 10,000.
They have committed the lion's share of massacres and suicide bombings, although praised in some quarters for their battlefield prowess and assistance to FSA units in battle.
Even if the Free Syrian Army defeats Assad, a civil war may rage on between the FSA and its allies and these extremist elements, who hail largely from Iraq, bur also include Chechens and others.
The NSA spied on two British cabinet ministers in 1983.
They conducted intensive surveillance on Princess Diana up until the day she died; amassing 1,056 pages of material and including intercepting her phone calls that the NSA has declined to reveal due to the "grave damage" it can cause U.S. national security interests.
See Vernon Loeb's December 12, 1998 article in the Washington Post, "NSA Admits Spying on Princess Diana".
The Franjiehs are a politically influential Maronite clan which during the 1970s had Suleiman Franjieh as Lebanon's president.
One of the members of that family also was a GOP nominee for U.S. Congress from Metro Detroit about twenty years or so ago but lost in the general election.
"... Christians there (Lebanon) tend to support the Baath government of Bashar al-Assad."
This is partially accurate.
The Maronite Gemayel clan have been bitter enemies of the Assad regime. It was the Syrian intelligence organization that was credited by many with the September of 1982 bombing of the Phalangist Party HQ that killed President-elect Bashir Gemayel.
That said, the Maronite Franjieh family, who command a militia, are close allies with the Assads.
Representatives of the Gemayels and Assads met at the Gemayel family estate in Bikfaya earlier this year to agree on a goal to avoid Lebanese entanglemnt in the Syrian civil war.
The Alawites are an Islamic sect although - like many Muslim offshoots - their beliefs are considered so far removed from Islam, many Islamic scholars view their beliefs are too far removed from Shia beliefs to be considered a bona fide branch of Islam.
Dr. Geaga could be construed as far "right-wing" if you consider that as a member of the Lebanese Forces he was convicted of complicity in four political assassinations, including that of the Sunni Lebanese former prime minister Rashid Karami, and sentenced to life in prison - although he was released after serving 11 years after being granted amnesty from the Lebanese parliament.
Re#2:
The Shi'ite shrines in Syria have been a source of prestige for the approximately 200,000 "Twelver" Sh'ites residing in Syria. There have been many Shi'ites from Iraq who have made pilgrimages to visit these Syrian shrines; it is not unreasonable that given the atrocites committed by the al-Nusra Front that Iraqi Shi'ites would be motivated to defend these shrines within Syria.
Re#3:
Whether the Sidon combatants were Salafists or not is largely immaterial in the context argued given the fact that the Lebanese government forces have often conducted joint military operations against a common foe. Nasrallah's son was killed in the 1990s fighting alongside Lebanese Marines as a Hezbollah militiaman defending against an Israeli naval commando invasion.
I have seen several military and other authoritative sources suggest that Israel and the Palestinians must separate.
Around the time the Oslo Accords were announced the Council of Foreign Relations magazine Foreign Affairs conatined an article that the Palestinian Authority reliance upon Israel politically or economically gave the P.A. an appearance of being a quisling government acting at the behest of Israel.
The IDF's control of West Bank highways via checkpoints is a key element of harassment of Arabs. No meaningful peace can be achieved without the IDF withdrawing from the West Bank as it did in Gaza in 2005.
To this day in the West Bank, the real political power has resided with the IDF's Civil Administration, presided over by an Israeli brigadier general with IDF colonels acting as military district governors, who are despised by the Arab population; see http://www.kawther.info
The Palestinian Authority could, pursuant to its observer state status at the United Nations, go to initiate a process of bringing criminal proceedings in the ICC against Israeli leaders, but has chosen not to.
There were war crimes investigations against Israel after the Operation Cast Lead offensive and the Goldstone Commission Report laid blame against Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity victimizing Gazans. The U.N. used its veto power to stop any adverse action against Israel using its veto on the Security Council.
Israel actually imposed a "Gulf War" tax against Palestinians to compensate them for damage caused by Iraqi Scuds in 1991 as well as other ludicrous levies. Many West Bank Palestinians refused to file tax returns or pay taxes to Israel as they were imposed without representation. In the West Bank city of Sahoura, the IDF raided 350 homes and seized millions of dollars in property, then-Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin called the seizures necessary to show the Arabs they will obey Israeli tax laws - the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to condemn the Israeli seizures - except for a U.S. veto.
It was the oppressive Israeli tax levies and American inaction that helped fuel the First Intifada that had begun in 1987.
If you are a minority that lives in the City of Detroit, chances are you have experienced that phenomenon. There have been scads of lawsuits against the City of Detroit Police Department for initiating warrantless "investigatory arrests" against citizens without probable cause during homicide investigations and holding them without legal process until their families retained attorneys to obtain habeas corpus relief from a judge.
Re: ".......the denial of the right to vote in elections..."
In the City of Hamtramck(an enclave of Detroit), federal monitors were appointed after Yemeni-American complaints that they were inhibited from casting votes at polling places. The Yemeni-American Political Action Committee (YAPAC) had been successful in getting their nominated candidates elected to public office.
"Since Iran is three times as populous than Iraq and several times larger geographically, occupying it would certainly be the nail in the coffin for the U.S."
It will never happen.
During the Carter administration as the hostage crisis raged, 95% of Americans were opposed to military action against Iran. America was five years out of the Vietnam conflict and no one wanted to see another divisive controversy, especially with inflation rates then at an all time high.
America is now emerging from the Great Recession and Obama won his second term largely by refraining from embroiling the U.S. in another war. The Democrats will lose the support of the left-wing elements of the Democratic Party if a war is initiated in Iran - 2014 elections are on the horizon and they cannot afford to lose such public support.
The Samson Option is actually a variation of the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) theory advanced by Manhattan Project nuclear scientist John Von Neumann.
Israeli leadership, beginning with David Ben-Gurion sought a nuclear-armed Israel. Israel collaborated with Edward Teller in attempting to elevate its atomic program. Ben-Gurion liked the fact that many of the scientists of the Manhattan Project weere Jewish and felt they could hlp Israel.
Labelled by some as the "Jewish Hitler". He was formerly a card-carrying member of the Kach Party founded by Meir Kahane.
The Kach Party was outlawed and he joined Yisrael Beitenu. The latter party was notoriously known for nominating former IDF officer and MK Esterina Tartman as a cabinet minister. She openly called the prospective appointment of the first Arab muslim cabinet minister as a blow to the "tree trunk" of Israel as a Jewish state; it was also the party founded by Revaham Ben Ze'evi, a former general who advocated targeted extrajudicial killings of Palestinians.
Avigdor Lieberman has actually been praised by many Arabs for his forthright and open opinions about dealing with the Palestinians - rather than insincere ramblings that they feel most Israeli politicians produce for international consumption.
I have no doubt that the acquittal will be worn as a badge of honor symbolizing his victory over perceived political grandstanding by the prosecution.
He is hardly viewed at as a kook among Israelis or American Jewry - U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman once posed for a snapshot with him.
I feel that Lieberman may be Israel's next prime minister.
Kristallnacht is significant in that it was the one event that most discredited Nazism as a poitical movement in the international community prior to WWII.
The U.S. ambassador to Germany reported that even a majority of the German public reacted with revulsion to the violence - which was surprising to him in an authoritarian state.
Many non-Jewish Germans stared out of their windows crying as the violence occurred.
Compare the parallels between Kristallnacht and Operation Galilee in 1982:
Both involved the shooting of a diplomat as a pretext - in 1982 it was the attack on Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to London.
Both involved pretextual reprisal attacks on stateless persons who had nothing to do with the actual incident - in 1982 it was the Abu Nidal organization who shot Argov (and were planning the P.L.O. representative to Britain as the next target) and P.L.O-occupied areas of Lebanon were targeted in retaliation.
Both resulted in wanton expropriation and destruction directed an ethnic group - in September of 1982 over 1,000 Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Shatila were massacred with the complicity of Lebanese Christian militiamen.
The 1997 U.S Air Force intelligence report "Holy of Holies" studied the nuclear capabilities of Israel and determined the probable existence of 400 launch-able fission and thermonuclear fusion bombs.
The U.S. France, Britain, China and Russia all have confirmed hydrogen bomb capabilities. Pakistan and India have never detonated a thermonuclear device, but it is debatable whether they possess such a weapon.
"The Gatekeepers" and "Five Broken Cameras" were both nominated for Oscars. The Palestinian producer of Five Broken Cameras was unexpectedly detained at LAX until attorneys from the Academy Award organization intervened on his behalf so he could proceed to the ceremonies.
Regarding the Osirak reactor bombing in July of 1981 in Iraq, the Israelis conducted the raid on a Sunday so that Italian nuclear technicians administering the facility would be absent and not be harmed.
Israel was condemned by the United Nations General Assembly by a 44-7 vote. The NY Times #1 best-seller "By Way of Deception" described how Israel's intelligence agency had recruited an Iraqi nuclear scientist in France to divulge crucial data about the Osirak reactor so that the raid could take place; according to the book, the Iraqi scientist was duped into believing he was being recruited by the CIA.
In a largely unpublicized raid in 2007, Israeli jets destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor facility in "Operation Orchard". The bombing killed a number of North Korean nuclear technicians manning the facility.
Heavy water was initially supplied to Israel from Great Britain in 1958 using a Norwegian front company known as "Noratom", who received 2% commission. The purchase agreement contained a proviso that the heavy water was not to be used for making weapons. This deal was largely unknown to the public until 2005.
Current Israeli president Shimon Peres initiated negotiations that resulted in joint French-Israeli atomic research in the 1950s that gave Israel incidental access to nuclear weapons research that assisted in the construction of its first A-bombs in the late 1960s. French physicists and engineers were instrumental in the design of the Dimona nuclear research facility in Dimona. President Charles DeGaulle became suspicious of Israeli intentions for atomic research and all French technical assistance to the Israeli nuclear research program ended in 1966 after France performed all outstanding contractual obligations.
By the mid-1980s Israel reputedly had the technology to construct thermonuclear fusion bombs. It is believed that Israel's atomic arsenal now contains about 400 atomic bombs capable of killing not only millions of civilians but contaminating the world's food chain.
This nuclear arsenal was not only built outside the auspices of international nuclear regulatory bodies, but also without the apparent knowledge of Israel's own internal nuclear regulatory agency in the 1960s who expressed concerns about the intentions of Israeli political leaders and warned of international vilification occurring if the atomic scientific research were misused.
It was both France and Israel who were duped into unwittingly making Israel a major player in the nuclear arms race.
Israel committed fraud in three key ways in developing its nuclear bomb capability:
(A)in 1958 they purchased "heavy water" from the British government using a Norwegian front company called "Noratom" who received a 2% commission and the water was delivered directly to Israel - the specifics of this transaction were kept secret until 2005 when investigative reporters disclosed the event and the contract included promises by Israel that the water would not be used for manufacturing weapons;
(B)beginning in the 1950s, France and Israel were engaged in joint scientific research with respect to developing atomic power purportedly for peaceful purposes - this research gave Israeli physicists access to top secret French nuclear weapons detonation testing reports that were misused by Israel;
(C)Israel made a secret purchase of bulk quantities of "yellowcake" uranium from Argentina in the early 1960s.
The French began to suspect Israel's intent was to construct a nuclear bomb. French physicists and engineers were intimately involved in the design and construction
of the Israeli atomic research facility at Dimona. By 1963 President Charles DeGaulle concluded that Israel had improperly exploited the joint research arrangement and terminated the arrangement - even though performance of pre-existing contractual obligations required the French to render technical assistance to Israel up until 1966.
During the mid-1960s, members of Israel's own internal nuclear regulatory agency began to express suspicions that Israel's substantial atomic research was ultimately being intended to establish a nuclear war arsenal - and that such conduct would open up Israel to vilification within the world community.
Current Israeli President Shimon Peres, then a senior Israeli Defense Ministry official, had been instrumental in initiating and developing the joint atomic research relationship with the French which gave Israeli physicists incidental access to French scientific data on atomic weapons testing.
Israel tried to convince the international community of their commitment to legitimate constructive uses of atomic power when they joined Turkey in becoming the first signatories in 1957 to the Atoms For Peace program initiated by President Eisenhower. This was simply a ruse to lull world leaders into a false sense of security regarding Israeli intentions.
During a diplomatic visit to Canadian PM John Diefenbaker in 1961 was told by Israeli PM David Ben-Gurion that Israel was going to initiate plutonium separation from the fuel rods at the Dimona facility. Diefenbaker briefed Canadian intelligence officials who consulted British intelligence analysts that concluded that the only explanation for this was that Israel's intent was to acquire a nuclear bomb capability.
By 1967-69 it is likely that Israel acquired its first two A-bombs - reputedly "christened" by then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan with the motto "Never agaain" welded on the warhead in Hebrew and English. Dayan is said to have consulted on the possible deployment of atomic weaponry during the early days of the Yom Kippur War when it appeared that the Egyptian army had overrun the Bar-Lev defensive line in the Sinai Peninsula and would reach Israel.
The Defense Intelligence Agency in 1979 received data from a Vela monitoring earth-orbiting satellite that a large explosion consistent with a low-yield nuclear detonation occurred in the Indian Ocean. It is widely believed that this was a joint South African-Israeli atom bomb test.
It is believed Israel has up to 400 low-yield nuclear bombs that it could use during wartime. In the last few years Israel has spent around 1.5 billion euros to purchase Dolphin submarines from Thyssen-Krupp capable of firing sea-launched ballistic missiles each capable of delivering an atomic warhead. Reports of this came from Israel and German officals reported in Der Spiegel.
This nuclear arsenal of Israel was acquired under false pretenses of a peaceful intent and the existence of such atomic weaponry is not acknowledged to this day by Israeli officials. They are in no position to complain about Iran in such regards.
In February of 2004 a report surfaced that Iran had produced polonium-210 as part of their efforts to establish a nuclear program. Iran has supplied Hamas and Islamic Jihad with weaponry.
Syria also has a nuclear program. One underground reactor manned by North Korean personnel was destroyed by Israeli Air Force jets in 2007. Syria has maintained a close relationship with Russia, who may have given Syrian intelligence services radioactive materials that were eventually distributed to Hamas - whose leader Meshaal was headquartered in Damascus at that time.
PM Ariel Sharon had at one point in an Oval Office meeting with President George W. Bush indicated that the Israeli government may kill Arafat - to which Bush vigorously objected.
On the other hand, declassified Israel Foreign Ministry documents indicated that the foreign policy experts in Israel expressed anxiety when and if Arafat would die as this would leave a power vacuum among Palestinians in which more radical elements could assume authority.
One Israeli Jewish journalist who befriended Arafat called him one of the great Arab leaders in history and compared him with Saladin. Arafat was, in fact, revered by the Palestinian people despite many obvious shortcomings - nevertheless he will undoubtedly be identified as the "face" of the Palestinian people - much like Fidel Castro has been to Cuba.
The death of Arafat led to a lessening of Fatah influence in the Occupied Territories and the strengthening of the more miitant Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations.
The assassinations of Sheikh Yassine and Dr. Rantissi of Hamas led to the greater influence of the more militant leaders of the military wing of Hamas - this result was predicted by Israel's own anti-terrorism experts. Israel failed in numerous attempts to kill the Hamas military wing leader Muhammad Deif, who has remained the most influential leader of Hamas since the Yassine and Rantissi killings.
Re Khalid Meshaal: it was King Hussein who arrested two Mossad officers who poisoned the Hamas leader and warned the Israeli PM that they would be executed if an antidote was not timely supplied.
It was a U.S. citizen, Ralph Bunche, who negotiated the 1949 Arab-Israeli armistice agreement that created the "Green Line".
The U.S. was instrumental in helping negotiate cease-fire agreements in 1956, 1967, and 1973 and of course, the Camp David Accords several years later.
The European Union, as well as America, is likely to play a key role in any final peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians.
"Extremist political stances and the hardening of ideological positions have prevented any progress in the peace process. The frustration caused by this has led to the development of an increasingly radical stance among adults.
The censorship of the press has contributed to this hardening of attitudes by preventing the publication of facts which often may be useful in the search for peace.
At the same time, religious feelings have been exploited or manipulated with a view to fostering fanaticism. Fidelity to the homeland and all hope of peace are stifled in fratricidal struggles and extremism. We can only deplore this assault on what is most sacred and intimate to the individual, and to human society."
p.9, Pastoral Letter of HB Msgr. Michel Sabbagh, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, on the Feast of Pentecost, 1990.
Abbas and Olmert were reportedly incredibly close to a peace deal but a small disagreement caused the whole deal to fall through. There had been progress with Olmert.
The Oslo Accords were the product of the First Intifada. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was lauded as Israel's greatest hero in a poll largely to his efforts in seeking a lasting peace.
The Gaza disengagement was the product of the Second Intifada. PM Ariel Sharon received international praise for this effort.
Unless there is some exigency that PM Netanyahu faces, it is very doubtful that he shall seek peace. He will simply mollify the U.S. by holding peace negotiations but make offers he knows that the Palestinian Authority will deem unacceptable. He then perpetuates the status quo - which is his goal.
An economis basis for Israeli-Palestinian cooperation is not unprecedented.
The highly successful Oasis Casino in Jericho employed Arabs and was frequented primarily by Israeli Jews. It was a model of economic cooperation that benefitted both sides.
It was closed down during the Second Intifada and became the source of a corruption probe involving allegations of bribery - nevertheless the general concept was laudable and profitable.
The Central Intelligence Agency in 2002 attempted to kill former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmyatar, a former American ally in the CIA's Operation Cyclone, in a drone strike. Hekmyatar survived and shortly therafter announced his support of al-Qaeda. He remains at large despite an intensive effort of the U.S. to locate and arrest him.
I believe that the killing of Mehsud will likely have little effect on the ability of the Taliban to wage war and will probably galvanize moderate elements within Taliban to acquiesce in further violence and eschew future peace negotiations.
This phenomenon of a targeted extrajudicial killing of a "terrorist" as he approaches peace initiatives is nothing new.
In Israel in 2002, a group of writers filed suit against the Israeli government for killing a moderate Hamas diplomat as he travelled to engage in truce negotiations.
A few years later Sheikh Yassine, leader of the Hamas political wing was killed in a missile attack after he suggested that a negotiated two-state solution with Israel could be possible, despite Hamas' constitutional covenant calling for Israel's destruction.
Last November, acting Hamas military commander Ahmed Jebari was assassinated as a permanent truce agreement had been drafted and awaiting the signatures of Israeli and Hamas representatives. Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak resigned shortly after this in an apparent protest over the subversion of the peace process.
@4: "Washington does not want to intervene in Syria....."
In fact, hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised internationally to support various rebel factions in Syria and much of that total emanates from America.
One of the larger fund-raising entities is the Syrian Support Group (www.syriansupportgroup.org), a Washington D.C.-based entity, chaired by a Chicago attorney who is a former student of Juan Cole. That organization is licensed by the State Department to raise funds from the public for non-lethal aid to the Free Syrian Army. It has been the implementing NGO for millions of dollars in State Department funding for the Free Syrian Army and has acted as a key liaison between FSA leaders and the State Department. The SSG has raised hundreds of donations from a broad cross-section of Americans and its chairman appeared on National Public Radio with Senator John Mc Cain.
U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford issued a letter on State Dpartment letterhead this April applauding the SSG for their efforts .
John Conyers had a perfect pro-Arab voting record in Congress, according to a study published by the Arab-American Institute in the late 1980s.
Rosa Parks was a secretary in his office from the 1960s until her retirement after she fled Alabama due to threats she received folowing her civil rights activism.
His wife, Monica, a former Detroit City Councilperson, was recently released from federal prison following serving a sentence on a bribery conviction.
In India, the peasant class is the most likely to vote in elections as they see it as a means of promoting their interests. I America the reverse is true.
Look at the voter registration and voting rates among America's poorer areas - it is pathetic.
In Detroit, you will be lucky to see half of the voting age population actually vote in many precincts and very few citizens bother to register as precinct delegate candidates. Many precincts in Detroit the vote is over 90% Democratic and the nominated candidates heavily promoted by party machines.
The quality of elected representatives in Detroit is notoriously poor and FBI investigations of public corruption at the city and county levels is routine. Ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick several days ago received a 28-year sentence for corruption - exactly the sentence requested by the U.S. Attorney. Dozens of more were indicted during the Kilpatrick FBI probe.
In other more educated or affluent areas of Metro Detroit - such as Bloomfield Hills or Ann Arbor - voter registration rates and actual voting rates are high and, further, precinct delegate candidacies are rampant - I have seen eight electors file for four seats in a precinct.
Citizen apathy is positively correlated with poverty in America.
"......German Chancellor Angela Merkel's personal cell phone was monitored by the NSA...."
Cell phones emit radio waves that are not subject to protections under the United States Constitution's Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment. I am not sure how those protections are in Germany or how or where the NSA intercepted her cell phone communications.
Anyone who uses a cell phone is foolish to do so if they may reasonably expected to be targeted for surveillance for national security or law enforcement purposes. President Obama had to dispose of his beloved Blackberry on the advice of his security advisers.
In reality, there is very little accountability over any perceived ethical transgressions by the NSA in these regards. No one will go to jail or even be criminally prosecuted - it is unlikely any federal judge will find against the NSA in any monetary damage or injunction claim.
The only "sanction" is embarassment once the media discloses invasions of privacy of an ally in the international community.
Eliot Spitzer was only one lawyer who fought government misconduct and became a target.
Geoffrey Fieger raked in millions in legal fees suing for police misconduct and uncovering wrongful conduct among public officials. He was the 1998 Democratic nominee for governr in Michigan.
He was indicted for campaign violations in connection with fundraising in the 2008 John Edwards presidential campaign. There was court testimony that the FBI was questioning regarding his personal sex life. The presiding federal judge, Paul Borman, said he rarely seen a case where several dozen FBI agents were dispatched to execute a single search warrant. 80 to 100 FBI agents were briefed in a single powerpoint presentation at the federal building prior to the warrant's execution.
Gerry Spence defended the case and Fieger and his law partner were acquitted by a jury.
Recent events in the Middle East have seen the emergence of China rivalling the U.S. as the pre-eminent world power.
This is coupled with the fact that in recent years the Chinese GNP has surpassed that of America, making China the largest economic producer in the world, albeit it has four times the population of the U.S.
The per capita incomes of most Western European nations such as France, Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia and the Low Countries already have surpassed that of America.
Expect the Tea Party call to reduce federal spending and curtail defense expenditures lead to GOP gains in the 2014 Congressional elections. Americans are beginning to understand that their standrd of living has declined due to overtaxation that has stifled economic growth.
America has no overriding foreign policy considerations which would trump cogent and reasonable isolationist arguments to avoid entanglement in Syria - although Israel's concern over Hezbollah and the possibility of chemical weapons stockpiles endangering its citizens are clearly reasons that Israel has to see President Assad toppled from power.
The photos of dead Syrian children from a chemical weapons attack trying to evoke humanitarian concern and empathy to the cause of U.S. intervention is maudlin huckterism at its most extreme by those in the State Department.
When many more thousands of Kurds perished in Halabja in 1988 by the Saddam Hussein regime where were these same career diplomats at? The Halabja attack received very little outrage in the media or in any significant corner of America. Where was President Bush in 1990 when Kurds in the north of Iraq and Shi'ites in the south were being killed in severe reprisals over their uprisings?
Syria is in a profound and troubling humanitarian crisis in which 115,000 are already dead. An estimated up to 100 British and 60 Americans are believed to be fighting in the Syrian resistance. One young American mother from Flint, Michigan has already been killed in action and a second, Eric Harroun, has returned to the U.S. after fighting on behalf of the al-Nusra Front. There has been a shadowy presence of the U.S. intelligence community giving logistic and other support to the rebels.
The Free Syrian Army may be close to resolving its differnces with Assad pursuant to private negotiations and the extremist Islamic factions may be the holdouts.
In any event, America's role should be providing humanitarian relief to refugees and encouraging prompt initiation of formal peace talks. Military intervention must be ruled out.
Former FBI agent William Turner's book "The Fish is Red" recognized that federal, state and local law enforcement agencies had a general policy of non-enforcement when it came to addressing evidence of violations of criminal law uncovered during the CIA's Operation Mongoose (headquartered at the University of Miami medical school)covert actions against Cuba during the 1960s.
Clear proof of violations of the Neutrality Act as well as explosives and firearms statutes were ignored and prosecutions only in the clearest cases of blatant wrongdoing by non-employee operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency. Anti-Castro exile leader Orlando Bosch was given a ten-year sentence for firing a bazooka at a Polish freighter of the Florida coast in a rare display prosecutorial and judicial toughness toward the Cuban-American community - but even he eventually received a pardon by President Bush in 1989 after serving a fraction of his sentence.
The CIA even conceded that kidnapping laws may have been violated when Soviet KGB defector Yuri Nosenko was held by the Agency and tortured for years until it was concluded he was authentic and not a Soviet double agent.
What if the Cuban military had initiated a drone attack in Miami attempting to kill one of the militant anti-Castro exile group leaders that he believes were culpable in the 1976 Cubana Air bombing? What if that attack had killed innocent Americans?
The fact the person was killed by accident cannot justify the legitimacy of drone strikes in the first place. The system violates international law.
The concerns of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch should be heeded by U.S. leaders.
Palestinians have the right to vote in the Jerusalem mayoral election but there was an Arab boycott due to their not recogzizing Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem.
Additionally, the ultraorthodox opponent of the incumbent was strongly endorsed by right-wing extremist Avigdor Lieberman and the incumbent mayor aligned himself with religious nationalists - so Arabs had reason to dislike both candidates.
Theoretically, the Arabs could have been the "swing vote" and named the winner, given the fact the incumbent Barkat only received 51% of the vote.
Yes, Islam supplanted communism as the target of the military-industrial complex. This occurred following the end of the USSR and was augmented by 9/11.
Around the start of the 19th century the Dupont business empire began humbly as a snall gunpowder mill run by a French immigrant family. By WWI 40% of all explosives shot by the Allies were manufactured by Dupont. Dupont had the highest corporate profits in history during that war to that point and distributed 2/3rds to its shareholders via dividends.
In 1914, Pierre Dupont became chairman of General Motors and the Dupont company invested 25 million in purchasing its stock. Dupont eventually divested its GM holdings due to a Clayton anti-trust suit. GM eventually via a subsidiary assisted in the rearming of Germany beore WWII.
Dupont enjoyed vast revenues during the Korean and Vietnam Wars supplying the U.S. Armed Forces with not only explosives but also nylon for parachutes and other items assisting in warfare.
William Boeing, Leroy Grumman, Henry Crown, William P. Lear, Glenn Curtiss, Samuel Colt and others created vast business empires predicated on supplying America's war efforts.
The organizing principle of the United States government has historically been for war. The authority of the federal government over its citizenry resides in its constitutional executive power to initiate and continue armed conflict. 800,000 M-16 rifles were left behind in Vietnam that were manufactured by Colt Industries. Agent Orange was produced in bulk quantities by Dow Chemical to defoliate Indochinese jungles. The A-10 combat aircraft was built by Fairchild. The then-record federal budget deficits during the LBJ administration were fueled by defense spending in Vietnam.
War has been a facet of big business financed by Wall Street and made the U.S. the pre-eminentworld's "policeman" at a heavy financial cost that has created vast fortunes for a few.
The more egregious aspect of this type of conduct is that Israel Defense Forces commanders in the "Civil Administration" - the real political authority in the Occupied Territories have the power by virtue of law, upon "suspicion" that Palestinian realty is being or has been used for rebellious militant activity, may have any structure or anything growing thereon to be forfeited and demolished.
This legal authority has been used by the IDF to use bulldozers to demolish orchards in areas where rockets have been fired as, theoretically, the rockets can use the orchards for cover to launch missiles.
During the occupation of Gaza, the authority to demolish was the most potent form of intimidation for Palestinians. The Rafah Zoo was invaded by the IDF a all but a few animals were destroyed.
During Operation Cast Lead, in an event investigated and confirmed by the Goldstone Commission report, 32,000 hens at a chicken farm were run over by bulldozers and the farm - which provided 10% of egg production of Gaza - was demolished. The wealthiest clan in Gaza - who made their fortune in post-1948 Gaza in concrete business - had nine of their ten homes dynamited by the IDF during Operation Cast Lead.
The IDF is largely complicit in the ongoing targeting of various types of orchards run by Palestinians - be it apple, olive, or other product - either by conducting the destruction themselves or being unduly lax in apprehending settlers who engage in such activity. See http://www.kawther.info
"I don't understand treating them like the legit rulers of a country."
In addition to U.S. dependency on Saudi oil reserves and production ... Saudi Arabia has 10 trillion U.S. dollars invested in American real estate, banking interests, and Fortune 500 companies that the U.S. is heavily reliant upon.
The cessation of the Saudi royal family as dictatorial rulers of that nation could lead to instability of these economic and financial relationships that the U.S. does neither want or need.
Emmerson correctly identifies Gaza as a region where drone strikes have been in violation of international law.
The Israeli government has a protocol under which the Israeli Attorney General as a member of the executive branch can authorize the targeted killing of any Palestinian in Gaza.
Non-military members of Hamas' political wing have been assassinated by Israel. These killings have been criticized by anti-terrorism experts within Israel as giving more control to the leaders of Hamas' military arm, hence leading to more militancy and increased violence against Israel.
The Israeli targeted killings have killed and wounded large numbers of innocent civilians, including children. It has also caused Hamas to import anti-aircraft missiles, which were used for the first time last year against an IDF helicopter. These anti-aircraft missiles can endanger Israeli civilian airliners.
The common American justification for the incendiary raids over Japanese cities (as well as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bombs)was that the saved lives of American servicemen.
Many felt, on the other hand, that General Curtis LeMay - the youngest 4-star general in U.S. history at 44 years of age - was a war criminal due to his strategic bombing of Japan during that era.
Japan, unlike Vietnam, did attack the U.S. without provocation at Pearl Harbor and the Phillipines in December of 1941 - killing namy civilians in the process. Ho Chi Minh, on the other hand, was an American ally during WWII who ordered his Vietminh to rescue downed American pilots in Indochina.
Americans as a whole did not have any great aversion to the Vietnamese during the war and many saw them in the North and South as victims of a civil war. Japan on the other hand, terrorized not only Americans, but also Burmese, Filipino and Chinese citizens. 200,000 died during the Rape of Nanking alone and six million Chinese died in all during a genocidal Japanse occupation commencing in 1931.
Maryam Rajavi's MEK resistance organization in Iran has the support of pro-Israel interests and the U.S. intelligence community. They have been removed from the U.S. State Department list of terror organizations.
MEK operatives have in the U.S. received training in signals intelligence from the U.S. Army.
MEK has been suspected as carrying out the prior bomb attacks against Iranian nuclear physicists on behalf of Israel that have killed or wounded some. The pro-Israel community in the U.S. have arranged for prominent lobbyists such as Rudy Giuliani to support MEK as a respectable paramilitary resistance force.
MEK represents a blend of Islamic and Marxist ideologies and is viewed by critics as a cult. It's origins date back to the 1960s and were opponents of the Shah's regime.
There is little doubt that the CIA and Mossad have given aid to MEK - but how much is subject to debate. Mrs. Rajavi has been travelling the world meeting with various actual and potential sponsors.
".....[o]n the U.S. side, the Israel lobbies and Israel itself will accept nothing less than the mothballing of the whole Iranian enrichment program......."
Israel's largely untold blueprint for obtaining nuclear weapons technology outside international guidelines while misusing paeceful research ventures while deceiving and concealing its intent to construct atomic weapons seems to betray their high-horse pronouncements about the dangers ran could present to the Middle East if it proceeds with any nuclear enrichment program.
Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion often felt that acquisition of atom bomb technology was needed for the survival of Israel. He emphasized the accomplishments of Edward Teller and other Jewish-American physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project and felt that these scientists could help Israel acquire a nuclear weapon capability. Teller was consulted on Israeli nuclear development and maintained a cordial relationship with Israel's leaders.
Israel and Turkey in 1957 were the first signatories to the Atoms for Peace program inaugurated by President Eisenhower.
Israel and France conducted joint atomic research in the late 1950s which gave Israeli scientists incidental access to French reports of the detonation of atomic weapons. These were exploited by Israel to initiate a nuclear weapons program. President Charles DeGaulle eventually suspected Israel had an intent to biuld an A-Bomb and by 1966, all nuclear research relationships between France and Israel were halted on his orders.
Shimon Peres, Israel's current president, now 90 years old, had been instrumental in developing the French-Israeli joint atomic research relationship that was initiated in the 1950s.
In 1958, Great Britain sold to Israel substantial quantities of "heavy water" necessary to construct an atomic weapon. The purchase was made via an intermediary - the Norwegian company Noratom - acting as a front - who received a 2% commission from Israel; this transaction was hid from the world community until 2005 when the British government admitted that the transction occurred.
Prime Minister Ben-Gurion later advised Canadian PM John Diefenbaker in the early 1960s that Israel wanted plutonium separation technology. Diefenbaker disclosed this to British intelligence personnel who concluded from this that Israel clearly intended to create a nuclear weapons program.
Israel secretly acquired "yellowcake" uranium from Argentina in the early 1960s that was needed for an atomic bomb.
Later, plutonium separation was accomplished with the fuel rods at the Dimona plant to generate enough materal that could be used to manufactue a viable fission bomb. By 1969 it was believed that Israel constructed its first two nuclaer weapons at the Dimona facility.
To this day, Israel has never constructed a nuclear power plant to assist its utility energy needs but only for "research" - which has effectively been for the creation of a nuclear arsenal to menace its neighbors.
The U.N. General Assembly condemned Israel for the July of 1981 destruction of the Osirak atomic facility in Iraq. It has also menaced Iran with the spectre of a military strike.
Israel today is believed to have about 200 atomic weapons which can be delivered by air or by nuclear-tipped missiles that can be sea-launched via Israeli navy submarines purchased from the Thyssen-Krupp arms manufacturer in Germany at a cost of well over one billion dollars.
Israel has acquired an expensive nuclear option which it augmented over the years at cost of many billions of dollars via deceit and concealment. Israel's conduct in opposing Iranian nuclear research technologies is duplicitous and hypocritical.
It all depends on the political persuasion of the federal judge or judges hearing the case.
In Detroit in 2005, United States District Court Judge Anna Diggs-Taylor held that ECHELON program of the NSA violated the Warrant Clause of the United States Constitution.
Diggs-Taylor was a Carter appointee to the federal bench. She marched with MLK from Selma to Montgomery. Her former husband, Charles Diggs, was a long time U.S. Congressman from Detroit who was convicted by the Justice Department after an FBI investigation into a kickback scheme. She was no friend of law enforcement.
Her ruling was reversed by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals by a conservative panel.
In 1956, the Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Units was formed. In the 1970s, it was commented that its files are not subject to Freedom of Information Act inquiries and consequently are more secure than those of the CIA. Check out its website: http://www.leiu.org
There have been a proliferation of "fusion centers" that are intended to break down barriers between intelligence-gathering organizations within the U.S. Check out this link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_center
The fusion centers have come under ACLU scrutiny.
It is important to note that state police, county sheriffs, and local police departments often have their own intelligence units that collaborate with federal agencies with intelligence sharing. Many of their targets have been
political.
In the 1980s, Coleman Young, Detroit's first black mayor and a bitter critic of President Reagan - famously calling him "President Pruneface", had his townhouse residence subject to government electronic eavesdropping devices during a joint investigation of the Detroit Police Department intelligence unit and FBI into "public corruption". Young was never charged with a crime and the fallout from this investigation exacerbated race relations in Detroit.
The Detroit Police Department was sued in the 1960s by Jimmy Hoffa's defense attorney, William Bufalino, for bugging the phones of his law firm.
The FBI, NSA, and CIA were all involved in a federal court litigation filed in 1972 by the ACLU involving extensive surveillance of Detroit attorney Abdeen Jabara, who defended Sirhan Sirhan. The case was settled in the 1980s. Jabara was never charged with a crime.
"It's almost universally recognized that Israel is the problem......"
Everywhere except the United States, where Israel enjoys a 3-1 margin in support in public opinion polls over Palestinian interests.
I was at a lecture a few years back at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan where the Israel Lobby in the U.S. was described as "six times as large and one-hundred times as organized" than its pro-Palestinian counterpart.
Pro-Israel interests in the U.S. believe as long as they have such an incredible degree of support from the American public, there is no need for the Israeli government leaders to modify their position on the Palestinian question and the status quo will continue indefinitely. It has already been this way since 1967 in the West Bank.
Remember Eric Harroun, the Jabhat al-Nusra fighter and U.S. citizen who was indicted by the Department of Justice and whose father leaked to the press he was really a Central Intelligence Agency operative?
Last month, Harroun entered into a "secret plea agreement" with the prosecution that dropped all charges in exchange to a plea of illicit munitions transport with three years of probation and a $100.00 fine.
This favorable disposition, when compared to the harsh John Walker Lindh sentence, suggests that Harroun indeed likely had some intelligence relationship with the U.S. government pursuant to which he justified to the government for such a sweet plea deal.
It makes one wonder the extent the U.S. intelligence community has penetrated the Syrian rebel forces and control and monitor its movements. How many more apparent American operatives are operating in Syria like Harroun who may be acting on behalf of our government? Should Syrians be suspicious?
Thank you for your observations - which the mainstraem media never reports.
There were recent reports that even surprised Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that the Chinese navy was in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Syria during the recent poison gas controversy and the potential for U.S. military strike.
It appears that China is attempting to finally assert itself as a world power.
The Free Syrian Army was founded by former Syrian Army officers who refused to fire on demonstrators. It has a supreme council and has a hierarchy of leadership. There has been a recent polarization in Syria between certain Islamic-oriented armed resistance groups and the Syrian National Coalition - who has the allegiance of the Free Syrian Army. There are reputedly non-public peace negotiations between the Free Syrian Army and the Assad regime that may have resulted in a lessening of armed conflict betwen these two forces.
The Libyan anti-Gaddafi resistance was largely formed by civilian who later had significant numbers army officers and soldiers defect to their cause.
During the Libyan civil war, it was impossible for observers to pinpoint a "political center" of the Libyan resistance and many feared that it was being influenced by al-Qaeda sympathizers. These fears were largely unfounded.
It appears that the prime minister's abductors represent a disgruntled fringe element and the incident was quickly defused.
In Libya, if this article is correct, the protests against the government are largely economic-based rather than motivated by sectarian or ideological differences - although such differences surely exist and are contributing to the collective national unrest.
Given the general unrest in nations where the Arab Spring demonstrations uprooted the established governments in power - such unrest is to be expected and common.
Generally, Libya is doing satisfactorily in establishing a post-Gaddafi government. Don't expect perfection.
Luis Posada Carriles was acquitted of charges in Venezuela and escaped after being held for years in detention while the prosecution appealed. He had worked for Venezuelan intelligence services and acquired citizenship in that nation.
The U.S. Department of Justice collaborated with the Cuban government to try Carriles in El Paso on federal immigration violation charges. He was also acquitted by a U.S. District Court jury on those charges a few years ago.
Carriles is a former U.S. Army veteran and CIA officer that had involvement in the Bay of Pigs, Operation Mongoose, and the Contra War in Nicaragua. He currently resides in the Miami area where he is revered in the Cuban-American community as a leader in anti-Castro activism.
Many Cubans who served in the CIA's Operation Mongoose and related anti-Castro paramilitary activities have indicated they were trained, supplied, and otherwise supported by the U.S. government and should not be prosecuted for these activities - this was Carriles' attorneys' arguments at trial in El Paso in 2008 and apparently the jury agreed.
The Shas Party, which was founded by Iraqi-born ultra-orthodox leader Rabbi Ovadia Yousef, holds 11 of the 120 seats in the Knesset.
Rabbi Yousef died just recently at the age of 93 and he was credited with statements labeling Palestinians "snakes" and claiming that Gentiles are expected to be servants of Jews.
Shas and United Torah Judaism, another ultra-orthodox party, received political power over the last forty years in Israel far beyond their numbers due to the fact they often gave the Likud their narrow majority in the Knesset. As a result, these ultra-orthodox parties recived plum positions in the Israeli Cabinet and translated this into vast political clout that aroused the ire of other Israelis over special privileges - such as military service exemptions - that other Israeli Jews did not enjoy.
Yair Lapid was a journalist who drew upon this ire and campaigned against the disparate power exercised by these ultraorthodox parties;his party won unexpectedly large number of Knesset seats and suddenly Shas and United Torah Judaism found themselves out of the ruling coalition.
The era of relative ultra-orthodox political superiority within the Israeli government appears to be waning and Lair Lapid is championing that development.
The Independent article by Robert Fisk makes several interesting points:
(1)The Central Intelligence Agency's attempt to "vet" out rebel groups for receipt of arms shipments appears to be a dismal failure as some Free Syrian Army (FSA) units have already been defecting over to the Jabhat Al-Nusra Front-allied forces, presumably with their weapons that had been secured, at least partially, via CIA-brokered purchases;
(2)The FSA (led by former Syrian Army officers)appear to be intermingling freely in cities held by the government - leading one to reasonably conclude that some interim deal has already been reached between the FSA and the Baathist government;
(3)The UN chemical inspection teams are under the protection of rebel forces and there appears to be indications of evidence tampering/manipulation.
A key question to be raised is who is calling the shots in the secular "Syrian resistance"? The FSA leadership? The Syrian National Coalition? Something smells fishy if the FSA folds up and goes home while Assad remains in power with the unenforceable "promise" of free and democratic elections.
Palestine is yet another example of militant secularism.
The Fatah Party has had its militant elements - such as the Tanzim militia.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine carried out the killing of Rehavam Ben Ze'evi in 2002 and a limited number of terror attacks during the Second Intifada.
The "oddball" parties in Israel that have substantial electoral clout via Knesset seats and traditional ability to form ruling coalitions e.g. Shas, United Torah Judaism, have virtally no following in the U.S.
The Labor Party or Meretz are likely the two political parties in Israel whose liberal outlook most closely approximates mainstream Jewish-American socio-political views. These two parties have very little influence in Israel in the last decade, even though the Labor Party dominated electoral politics in Israel during the 1960s and early 70s.
Interestingly, only four American-born Israelis were ever elected to the Knesset. One was a feminist from New York elected in the early 1970s due to her pro-female views - and another was Meir Kahane, who renounced his U.S. citizenship and was elected to the Knesset where he sat until his death in 1992. Kahane today is an iconic figure among Israeli extremists - but whose views are broadly disliked among Jewish-Americans as racist.
Uri Avinery, a former Knesset member and journalist, is one of the most left-wing political commentators in Israel and a former friend and admirer of Yasser Arafat.
While the 90-year old Avinery has undoubtedly experienced much of Israel's history and is scholarly on the subject , including service in the Irgun, his viewpoints are cleary pro-Palestinian and far outside the mainsream of Israeli political thought.
Israel's desire to acquire nuclear weaponry began with David Ben-Gurion, its first prime minister, and was commenced with a purported good-faith desire to promote peaceful atomic energy production.
Israel and Turkey were in 1957 the first signatories to the Atoms For Peace program sponsored by President Eisenhower.
France and Israel entered into a number of co-operation agreements for the advancement of nuclear research and worked on a number of projects in the 1950s and 1960s in which Israeli scientists had unfettered access to the atomic bomb detonation internal reports generated by scientists of the French government.
France provided technical assistance in the design and construction of the famed Dimona facility. Charles DeGaulle was extremely concerned over the suspicions that the primary intent of Israel being to produce atomic weapons. He eventually terminated all technical support to Israel's atomic program in 1966.
Israel in 1958 purchased substantial quantities of "heavy water" needed for nuclear fission from Britain via a Norwegian front company called "Noratom" who charged a 2% commission and the water was delivered to Israel for use at Dimona. The specifics of this transaction were not made public until 2005 and illustrate both British and Israeli officials attempted to hide this sale from international scrutiny via the Noratom entity.
"Yellowcake" uranium in copious quantities shortly thereafter was purchased from Argentina in the early 1960s.
In 1961, the Israeli prime minister had told Canadian PM John Diefenbaker that Israel was going to transform the nuclear rods at the Dimona facility to create plutonium- grade products. Intelligence officials concluded that this intent could only be for purposes of creating a fission bomb.
Members of Israel's own board governing its internal nuclear development agency overseeing its program had its own suspicions about the intent of the Israeli prime minister and felt that Israel was opening itself up to international vilification if it was going to construct nuclear weaponry.
It is believed that in 1967-1969, Israel acquired its first A-bombs. Rumor has it that first bomb was "christened" by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and had the words "Never again" weled on the warhead in Hebrew and English.
The Vela Incident in 1979 was believed to be a joint Israeli-South African detonation of a low-yield nuclear device in the Indian Ocean; it would have been the first Israeli A-bomb test.
Israel's nuclear weapons progarm has been, in sum, created via deceit and subterfuge.
Israel has been raising the spectre of Iran primarily to deflect criticism over its own conduct with respect to atomic weaponry.
In 2006, the German industrial concern Thyssen-Krupp concluded a 1.3 billion euro contract to supply Israel with submarines that were capable of delivering nuclear payloads. An additional submarine was ordered in 2009.
On June 4, 2012, a Der Spiegel investigative report article was published quoting various German and Israeli sources indicating that Israel had deployed advanced submarines equipped with nuclear missile warheads. The proffered justification for this was the purported "danger" of Iran's
alleged nuclear weapons program.
In 2008, the Israel Defense Forces initiated its ICBM system that can deliver payloads over 11,000 kilometers.
Israel's "playing to the hilt" of the Iranian "danger" is good public relations to justify its own internal nuclear build-up that threatens the entire region.
The 1949 CIA-inspired coup d'etat against a popularly-elected Sunni president set into force a chain of events that led to Baathist control of the Syrian government since 1963. Hafez Assad was a young pilot who became commander of the Syrian Air Force following a 1963 Baathist coup.
Ironically it was the historically powerful al-Atassi family, Sunnis from Homs, that supported Assad's rise to power during the 1960s and it is Suheir al-Atassi, a vice-president in the Syrian National Coalition, that is being touted as a possible successor to Bashaar Assad should the Free Syrian Army prevail. Suheir al-Atassi, a feminist and attorney, was arrested in Homs in 2011 for anti-government agitation but later released.
Right now, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) is the recognized entity that is considered the government-in-exile by the Western nations. It contains many factions - some secular, some Islamic in orientation of various degrees of adherence to Islamic principles ranging from moderate to extremist. The SNC and Free Syrian Army are facing a "mutiny" of sorts from about 15 Islamic-oriented groups. To accurately try to label these groups as either "terrorist" or "non-terrorist" is close to impossible - and each groups membership and leaders often change over time along with their policies and viewpoints about adherence to norms of warfare of human rights of civilians.
Seems like America never had too much of a problem in allowing all the anti-Castro Cubans - whether or not involved in putative terrorist activities. The CIA loved 'em all and used their connections to pass legislation in U.S. Congress to get highly preferential treatment of Cuban immigrants that exists to this day.
Congress today should work with the SNC and Syrian-Americans to pass legislation to assist CIA-backed rebel groups from Syria and their supporters to enter into the U.S. legally without red tape.
By installing missiles in Cuba, the USSR had the bargaining leverage to get the IRBMs already in Turkey removed - thus the Soviets were essentially coming out ahead by placing missiles in Cuba in the first place.
It was a Cuban farmer - not U.S. satellite imagery - that first discovered the Soviet missile silos. He reported to his contact at Operation Mongoose. This was the CIA's greatest accomplishment in Cuba.
What is so ironic is that in March of 1949, Syria had a popularly-elected Sunni president that was overthrown by the Syrian military with the inspiration and assistance of CIA officers Miles Copeland and Stephen Meade.
The current Assad regime can be traced to the group that had been involved in that initial coup. Hafez Assad was with the Baathist officers who took power in a 1963 coup and he eventually rose from Air Force commander to defense minister, losing the Golan Heights in 1967 and routed by Jordan in siding with Black September militants in 1970.
Hafez Assad assumed the Syrian presidency in the early 1970s and ruled until his death in 2000 and was succeeded by Dr. Bashaar Assad, his son.
There have been substantial advances and positive occurrences for Western interests that this article ignores:
(A)France, Britain and the the U.S. have installed a viable democracy in Libya that ousted a major sponsor on international terrorism and perpetrator of internal repression;
(B)Obama and Morsi helped defuse the November of 2012 Gaza/Israel conflict;
(C)the U.S. has maintained its naval installation in Haifa, Israel;
(D)Obama and Iran's new leader have initiated positive communications;
(E)the U.S. has eradicated much of the al-Qaeda leadership since 2001 and degraded its terror capabilities;
(F)the fact that Syrian government chemical weapons stockpiles are now subject to intrnational controls and America is not deploying militarily to Syria is something most Americans can applaud;
(G)there are peace negotiations ongoing betweeen Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
(A)his father, Benzion, was secretary to Ze'ev Jabotinsky, a key theorist of Revisionist Zionism;
(B)his father believed that negotiations with Palestinians was impossible and that they must be "shown force";
(C)his brother, Yonatan, an Army officer, was killed during a raid against the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine at Entebbe Airport in Uganda.
It is clearly understandable the events and influences that shaped his perceptions of Palestinians. While he has publicly eschewed his father's views, he clearly acts consistent with the belief that he is not accountable to human rights obligations toward Arabs nor American freign policy goals advancing such interests in the Occupied Territories or Gaza.
Ehud Barak as well as Foreign Minister Tzipora Livni advised Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to stop the ongoing carnage in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, but Olmert balked.
Olmert's party was facing elections and Operation Cast Lead had a 94% approval rate among Israelis polled. The operation was commenced two days after Christmas so as not to interfere with Israel's tourism season. It was also begun when most Western governments were closed down for the holidays and during the waning days of the lame duck Bush administration. The Israelis withdrew two days prior to Obama's inauguration.
The operation cost Israel 1 billion dollars and none of its five stated objections were achieved - including the destruction of smuggling tunnels between Egypt and Gaza. The incursion killed many civilians and extensive property damage in Gaza.
Barak did claim that the incidence of incoming missiles from Gaza declined after the conclusion of Operation Cast Lead and the IDF's deterrent effect was re-established.
Many foreign countries, including Mauritania - an Arab-speaking nation - severed diplomatic relations with Israel over the invasion.
China will be the next "superpower" to supplant the former Soviet Union as America's primary military threat and a general threat to international peace.
This has already occurred in the recent Syria poison gas controversy where a Chinese warship was dispatched to the area of the Mediterranean Sea near Syria.
The Somalia mission's most remembered video was seeing the corpse of a U.S. Army Ranger killed in action being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by henchmen of the Somali warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid. Aidid was never apprehended by America.
The incident emotionally devastated U.S. Defense Secretary Les Aspin to such an extent that many blamed it on his early death.
President Assad in 2004 publicly asserted Syria's right to a chemical and biological weapon program in response to Israel's possession of nuclear weaponry.
We cannot fault these nations and European companies to any large extent when the world community was put on notice nine years ago that Assad was building up such a capability.
The mujaheddin did become the Northern Alliance or United Front.
It was the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) that created the Taliban, taking advantage of general political instability within Afghanistan to create a militia force that eventually ruled most of the nation.
It was the Taliban who assassinated Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud on September 9, 2011. The Northern Alliance, under General Dostum, a suspected human rights violator, later received military and intelligence assistance from the U.S. in driving the Taliban from power.
Afghanistan now produces 87% of the world's opium.
"....(a)rms, like money, are fungible, and cannot be kept within one group, particularly with Islamist fighters and Al-Qaeda affiliates in the mix."
Good point.
Arms are valuable commodities and the CIA-brokered purchases of weapons to the vetted "good guys" may be re-sold on the black market and wind up in the hands of al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters which may create a dangerous situation.
If anyone doubts this there is historical precedent in Afghanistan where the U.S. frantically attempted to recover Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and launchers from Islamic rebel forces, who saw the missiles as status symbols. One
CIA-supplied rebel leader, Gulbuddin Hekmyatar, became prime minister of Afghanistan in 1994 and his men attempted to shoot down the Afghan president's plane with a missile. Hekmyatar later was targeted for an unsuccessful drone attack in 2002 by the Bush administration; Hekmyatar shortly later announced his support for al-Qaeda and remains at large in Afghanistan.
Also, it is agreed that there is absolutely no U.S. strategic interest in Syria and U.S. involvement should be limited to much-needed humanitarian assistance. If al-Qaeda gains a foothold in any post-Assad government and Syria becomes a rogue state like Afghanistan did, then those who backed the CIA arming of the rebels may have egg on their collective faces.
Firstly, the Syrian National Council (the "Council") is Istanbul-based and led by George Sabra, a Christian Syrian and a member of the Central Committee of the Syrian Communist Party since 1985; their website is http://www.syriannationalcouncil.com
The Syrian National Council is a largely secular exile group founded in 2005. The Syrian National Coalition (the "Coalition") was chartered in Qatar in 2012 and about 35% of its seats are held by members of the Syrian National Council - most of the remaining seats are held by Syrian exiles who strongly identify as Muslims to varying degrees.
The Council and Coalition are two discrete organizations and it is the Coalition that had received the allegiance of the Free Syrian Army as well as diplomatic recognition by the majority of world community as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people and a government-in- exile.
It is the Coalition (currently led by Ahmad al-Jarba)that has deteriorating relations with the Free Syrian Army - not the Istabul-based Council.
Secondly, General Salim Idris is NOT the commander of the Free Syrian Army - only its administrative Chief of Staff. Idris was a brigadier general in the Syrian Army and had been the highest-ranking member to defect to the Free Syrian Army - but Idris has no battle experience and his role in the Free Syrian Army is merely administrative; Idris was assigned to the Corps of Engineers in the Syrian Army and manages the business aspect of the Free Syrian Army, including press relations. The commander-in-chief of the Free Syrian Army is Colonel Riad al-Asaad - who operates as the field commander of the Free Syrian Army.
Colonel al-Asaad is revered by many Syrians as a battlefield leader, while Idris is viewed as a bureaucrat. Al-Asaad's exclusion from the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the FSA - even though he fonded the FSA - is puzzling.
The British newspaper The Observer estimated that beginning in 1981 and throughout the Iran-Iraq War, Israel sold Iran an average of $500,000,000 per annum in weaponry, including sophisticated missiles and F-4 Phantom aircraft.
During Iran-Contra hearings the arms pipeline from Israel to Iran was publicly revealed.
Things have happened in the legal arena - but nothing connecting Iran to the incident.
Argentina had an Interpol arrest warrant out for the individual who had served as Iranian ambassador to Argentina in 1994. He was arrested in Britain but the case fell apart when the government could not even make out any prima facie case against him at a hearing.
What if Israel finds itself in a situation in which it feels justified that it should use its nuclear option and some neutral country is upwind of radioactive fallout?
South Africa reverted to a non-nuclear status without any adverse consequences. Israel should consider dismantling its atomic arsenal.
There are virtually no Israelis that want to give the Palestinians citizenship as that would necessarily confer voting rights that would result in Israel losing a great degree if not all of its character as a Jewish state.
Right now about 21% of the citizens of Israel are Arabic and that only gives them a small number of seats in the Knesset and little else politically. That number swells to well over 40% if citizenship is extended to Arabs in the Occupied Territories and a projected Arab majority within a few decades.
Earlier this year Fatah had rallies in Gaza that were attended by thousands and thousands of Gazans.
Hamas is actually more liberal than Palestinian Islamic Jihad and various Gazan militia groups, some of which have given their allegiance to al-Qaeda. Hamas leaders have been targeted for assassination by extremist Gazan elements.
Hamas popularity arose largely from their resistance to Israel. However, their repressive social agenda against their own people has harmed their political fortunes more than Israel could do through its blockade and history of military action.
During the Operation Cast Lead incursion, it was the extremist groups within Gaza that drew the heaviest proportion of casualties engaging the IDF. The Hamas leadership and militants largely avoided direct conflict with Israeli forces. Hamas nevertheless has maintained control of the government in Gaza since that time despite a recent spike in popularity of secular political movements within Gaza. Israel's lessening of its materials blockade may encourage Hamas to make peace with the P.L.O/Fatah leadership.
The first things that local police departemnts look to do when obtaining a search warrant in any criminal investigation is to seize computers and cell phones. They provide a wealth of information on a suspect. Text messages are invaluable.
I have seen several cases where the police had no strong case against a subject in an investigation, but a search warrant execution uncovered proof about completely unrelated illegal conduct, which resulted in criminal charges that were solid. Evidence of gambling, child pornography downloading, adultery, and illicit drug transactions are common examples of criminal (or highly embarrassing)conduct often serendipitously revealed by police access to computers or cell phones. With no search warrant, the law enforcement authorities have exponentially greater access to a citizen's personal life.
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Thank you for this information on the status of Vietnam and affected individuals.
So little is reported on the adverse consequences sustained by the Vietnamese people that continue to this day.
President Lyndon B. Johnson is most remembered for the Vietnam quagmire, but much of the key legislation - including the Great Society efforts - was pushed through Congress under his administration's guidance.
This would include the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Equal Housing Act of 1968, the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Medicare and Medicaid enactments, and even federal law imposing fire retardant standards on clothing marketed in the U.S.
While much can be attributed to JFK, including the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, diligent civil rights enforcement, and the Apollo program, LBJ's list of legislative accomplishments were unparalleled in the 20th Century, except for FDR, and especially his New Deal programs.
When I referred to Peres as likely the greatest living Israeli statesman, it was chiefly due to lack of competition.
Yes, but South Africa is the only one that apparently had an A-bomb and detonated a nuclear device as well.
Denuclearizing Israel? Will not happen.
The only state which has done so was South Africa. That scenario was motivated by the fact that the apartheid regime did not want a black-controlled government having A-bomb capabilities and reinforced by the fact the African National Congress signed international protocols previously pledging to renounce nuclear weapons deployment.
The organizing principle of the State of Israel since its inception was the acquisition and maintenance of a nuclear weapons program. This was spearheded by PM David Ben-Gurion and implemented via senior Defense Minstry official and current Israeli President Shimon Peres.
Peres dealt directly with Pres. Charles DeGaulle in the 1950s and 60s in initiating and maintaining a joint atomic research program between France and Israel. France understood that these efforts were to be used for peaceful purposes, but Western intelligence services eventually concluded by the 1960s that Israel was seeking this scientific expertise to establish a nuclear weapons program.
Israel has invested billions in generating an atomic weapons program via Argentine purchases of 80-100 tons of uranium oxide and 20 tons of British "heavy water", plus delivery systems including the Jericho ICBM, and also the Dolphin submarines from German industrial giant Thyssen-Krupp capable of firing sea-launched cruise missiles with nuclear warheads.
Shimon Peres has often said that the nuclear arsenal of Israel is to promote peace by deterring potential aggression - no offensive use is claimed. He is likely Israel's greatest living statesman, having won the Nobel Peace Prize for his involvement in negotiating the Oslo Accords.
Israel's only detonation of a nuclear device was probably the joint test with South Africa which was detected by the American oceanic hydrophone system as well as an orbiting Vela satellite when it picked-up the "double-flash" associated with a nuclear detonation in the Indian Ocean estimated at four kilotons (compare with 18 kilotons for the Trinity test at Alamogordo and 80 kilotons for the Hiroshima bomb). Israel has joined the major powers when it became - along with the U.S., Russia, France, Britain and China - in acquiring a hydrogen bomb capability, probably in the mid-1980s.
America and Britain were notoriously laggard in the early 1960s in following up on information gathered by Canadian intelligence both that Israel had intentions of constructing nuclear weaponry and was in the process of secretly purchasing "yellowcake" uranium from Argentina in 1963-64. U.S. authorities were given a runaround by Israeli officials in investigating information suggesting a sale and did nothing after the Argentine transaction was completed in 1964. This is despite U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara openly opposing Israeli acquisition of nuclear weapons capabilities during this timeframe.
Comparing the Israeli and Iranian programs and the respective responses by the international shows that sauce for gooose is not necessarily sauce for the gander.
Israel sees its survival in a viable atomic arsenal.
What is amazing is that this preliminary agreement when juxtaposed with the the international community's response to Israeli efforts build nuclear weaponry shows how the U.S. got it right this time to avoid a second Middle Eastern nation acquiring a nuclear capability.
Just in June of this year, the story of how Canadian intelligence services exposed the sale of 80-100 tons of uranium "yellowcake" to Israel from Argetina became public knowledge. See "Israel's Request for Yellowcake: The Secret Argentine-Israel Connection, 1963-66" at www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb432/
Israel has been generally leaning right since Shimon Peres was prime minister in the 1990s following Yitzhak Rabin's death.
The only two times a moderate took office after Peres' latest tenure as prime minister was when Kadima Party formed a goverment with Ehud Olmert as prime minister. Olmert, whose background was largely municipal governance, performed poorly and led to Netanyahu assuming the prime minister's seat - and the other time was when Ehud Barak was PM in the late 1990s and made the fateful decision to withdraw the IDF from South Lebanon.
The moderate elements in Israel at this time are politically fragmented, however Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak, and Yair Lapid have the potential to galvanize a viable moderate movement - and Lapid largely has with his new party.
It would not surprise me, however to see right-wing hardliners like Naftali Bennett or Avigdor Lieberman emerge as viable prime minister candidates and get elected.
47% of the U.S. national debt is owed to China and Japan - with the bulk of that percentage owed to China.
China has now the highest GNP of any world nation, recently supplanting the United States.
Antagonizing China would be like biting off one's nose to spite his face.
This deal also strengthens the political prestige of Iranian moderate elements that could become a potent future political force within Iran within the neaar future.
According to the NY Times #1 best-seller "By Way of Deception, Israeli intelligence had as an informant the auto mechanic for the Mercedes-Benz truck laden with explosives that struck the Marine Corps base in Beirut in 1983 but did not fully disclose information they had acquired from the informant to the U.S. that may have prevented the carnage. The reasoning was this information could have compromised the informant's identity.
Israel's occupation of much of Lebanon is what spawned the rise of Hezbollah and made it a popular political party within Lebanon to this day.
Israel's foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman Has openly toyed with the idea of a nuclear option against Gaza.
Israel:
(A) purchased 20 tons of heavy water from Britain in 1958 using a Norwegian front company "Noratom" with the proviso it would not be used for making weapons;
(B)secretly constructed the Dimona nuclear facility and hid it with palm groves - it was first detected by the U.S. during a U-2 overflight in 1958;
(C)secretly purchased bulk quantities of "yellowcake" uranium from Argentina in 1964;
(D)exploited purportedly peaceful atomic research with the French until Pres. DeGaulle terminated all such joint research in 1966 after concluding Israel had exploited the relationship to acquire nuclear weaponry;
(E)considered using A-bombs during the Yom Kippur War in 1973;
(F)per a 1997 declassified U.S. Air Force Intelligence report entitled "Holy of Holies", likely has around 400 fission and thermonuclear fusion bombs - this dual capability has been present since the mid-1980s;
(G)does not acknowledge the possession of nuclear weapons nor allows IAEA inspections of its atomic research facilities.
Can anyone explain why Israel has not faced international vilification and sanctions over its chronic deceit, non-cooperation, and hiding of a nuclear weapons program that is capable of wiping out tens of millions of civilians and contaminating the world's food chain?
I do not believe the Obama administration cared what the Netanyahu government felt about this deal with Iran.
Israel disregarded U.S. State Department efforts to stem the construction of new settlements in the West Bank and the involvement of Israel in good-faith final status negotiations in that region.
Netanyahu offered the Palestinian Authority nothing and America disregarded PM Netanyahu in return on the Iran deal.
Will Kerry and Rouhani be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize?
Last month the Syrian Support Group held a fund raising dinner in Bloomfield Hills, MI. http://www.syriansupportgroup.org
There were speeches transmitted by satellite phone by Free Syrian Army military leaders to the gathering describing the military situation within Syria as well as speeches given by the SSG leaders emphasizing that the war was being fought bravely by the FSA and that donations were being transformed into meals medical supplies and other forms of effective support. The war was going well for the FSA, they emphasized. Financial support was being received from a broad cross-section of Americans.
They also emphasized the huge public relations machine that the Syrian government has in the U.S. that receives millions in funding for lobbying and general public relations.
The Syrian government has spent millions of dollars in fees to US. and European public relations and lobbying firms to promote the Assads and their government.
One of the efforts that had been exposed was the promotion of Syrian First Lady Asma al-Assad by having Vogue magazine publish an article "Rose of the Desert" in 2011 that depicted her and her husband in a most positive light - showing them at home playing with their children, describing their relationship while Bashaar was in his medical residency in Britain and lauding Syrian security forces on their superior ability to maintain public order in a region where neighboring countries were in constant civil turmoil.
The article became a huge embarrassment to the magazine once it came out that the impetus of the article was a public relations firm hired by the Syrian government and the magazine later redacted large portions of the article on its online website.
The foreign fighters are largely linked to the al-Nusra Front and Islamic State of Iraq, but constitute the most violent and extremist elements of the rebel forces. They number about 10,000.
They have committed the lion's share of massacres and suicide bombings, although praised in some quarters for their battlefield prowess and assistance to FSA units in battle.
Even if the Free Syrian Army defeats Assad, a civil war may rage on between the FSA and its allies and these extremist elements, who hail largely from Iraq, bur also include Chechens and others.
Is this any surprise?
The NSA spied on two British cabinet ministers in 1983.
They conducted intensive surveillance on Princess Diana up until the day she died; amassing 1,056 pages of material and including intercepting her phone calls that the NSA has declined to reveal due to the "grave damage" it can cause U.S. national security interests.
See Vernon Loeb's December 12, 1998 article in the Washington Post, "NSA Admits Spying on Princess Diana".
Yes.
The Franjiehs are a politically influential Maronite clan which during the 1970s had Suleiman Franjieh as Lebanon's president.
One of the members of that family also was a GOP nominee for U.S. Congress from Metro Detroit about twenty years or so ago but lost in the general election.
Minor correction:
The last sentence should state: "Representatives of the Gemayels and Franjiehs....." NOT Assads.
"... Christians there (Lebanon) tend to support the Baath government of Bashar al-Assad."
This is partially accurate.
The Maronite Gemayel clan have been bitter enemies of the Assad regime. It was the Syrian intelligence organization that was credited by many with the September of 1982 bombing of the Phalangist Party HQ that killed President-elect Bashir Gemayel.
That said, the Maronite Franjieh family, who command a militia, are close allies with the Assads.
Representatives of the Gemayels and Assads met at the Gemayel family estate in Bikfaya earlier this year to agree on a goal to avoid Lebanese entanglemnt in the Syrian civil war.
The Alawites are an Islamic sect although - like many Muslim offshoots - their beliefs are considered so far removed from Islam, many Islamic scholars view their beliefs are too far removed from Shia beliefs to be considered a bona fide branch of Islam.
Re#1:
Dr. Geaga could be construed as far "right-wing" if you consider that as a member of the Lebanese Forces he was convicted of complicity in four political assassinations, including that of the Sunni Lebanese former prime minister Rashid Karami, and sentenced to life in prison - although he was released after serving 11 years after being granted amnesty from the Lebanese parliament.
Re#2:
The Shi'ite shrines in Syria have been a source of prestige for the approximately 200,000 "Twelver" Sh'ites residing in Syria. There have been many Shi'ites from Iraq who have made pilgrimages to visit these Syrian shrines; it is not unreasonable that given the atrocites committed by the al-Nusra Front that Iraqi Shi'ites would be motivated to defend these shrines within Syria.
Re#3:
Whether the Sidon combatants were Salafists or not is largely immaterial in the context argued given the fact that the Lebanese government forces have often conducted joint military operations against a common foe. Nasrallah's son was killed in the 1990s fighting alongside Lebanese Marines as a Hezbollah militiaman defending against an Israeli naval commando invasion.
I have seen several military and other authoritative sources suggest that Israel and the Palestinians must separate.
Around the time the Oslo Accords were announced the Council of Foreign Relations magazine Foreign Affairs conatined an article that the Palestinian Authority reliance upon Israel politically or economically gave the P.A. an appearance of being a quisling government acting at the behest of Israel.
The IDF's control of West Bank highways via checkpoints is a key element of harassment of Arabs. No meaningful peace can be achieved without the IDF withdrawing from the West Bank as it did in Gaza in 2005.
To this day in the West Bank, the real political power has resided with the IDF's Civil Administration, presided over by an Israeli brigadier general with IDF colonels acting as military district governors, who are despised by the Arab population; see http://www.kawther.info
The Palestinian Authority could, pursuant to its observer state status at the United Nations, go to initiate a process of bringing criminal proceedings in the ICC against Israeli leaders, but has chosen not to.
There were war crimes investigations against Israel after the Operation Cast Lead offensive and the Goldstone Commission Report laid blame against Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity victimizing Gazans. The U.N. used its veto power to stop any adverse action against Israel using its veto on the Security Council.
Israel actually imposed a "Gulf War" tax against Palestinians to compensate them for damage caused by Iraqi Scuds in 1991 as well as other ludicrous levies. Many West Bank Palestinians refused to file tax returns or pay taxes to Israel as they were imposed without representation. In the West Bank city of Sahoura, the IDF raided 350 homes and seized millions of dollars in property, then-Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin called the seizures necessary to show the Arabs they will obey Israeli tax laws - the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to condemn the Israeli seizures - except for a U.S. veto.
It was the oppressive Israeli tax levies and American inaction that helped fuel the First Intifada that had begun in 1987.
@Bill:
Re the "Midnight Knock at the Door":
If you are a minority that lives in the City of Detroit, chances are you have experienced that phenomenon. There have been scads of lawsuits against the City of Detroit Police Department for initiating warrantless "investigatory arrests" against citizens without probable cause during homicide investigations and holding them without legal process until their families retained attorneys to obtain habeas corpus relief from a judge.
Re: ".......the denial of the right to vote in elections..."
In the City of Hamtramck(an enclave of Detroit), federal monitors were appointed after Yemeni-American complaints that they were inhibited from casting votes at polling places. The Yemeni-American Political Action Committee (YAPAC) had been successful in getting their nominated candidates elected to public office.
Could this be the "Pentagon Papers" of our era?
This is correct.
Monitoring may be implemented simply because of a person's position or proximity to someone deemed a target - guilt by association.
Persons who simply attend meetings of certain groups or are on a membership list may be placed under varying degrees of surveillance.
"Since Iran is three times as populous than Iraq and several times larger geographically, occupying it would certainly be the nail in the coffin for the U.S."
It will never happen.
During the Carter administration as the hostage crisis raged, 95% of Americans were opposed to military action against Iran. America was five years out of the Vietnam conflict and no one wanted to see another divisive controversy, especially with inflation rates then at an all time high.
America is now emerging from the Great Recession and Obama won his second term largely by refraining from embroiling the U.S. in another war. The Democrats will lose the support of the left-wing elements of the Democratic Party if a war is initiated in Iran - 2014 elections are on the horizon and they cannot afford to lose such public support.
Tzipi Livin's father was a Knesset member who had served in the Irgun terror gang before joining the Israel Defense Forces.
He insisted on having the emblem of the Irgun on his gravestone as he was proud of his service with that organization.
The Samson Option is actually a variation of the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) theory advanced by Manhattan Project nuclear scientist John Von Neumann.
Israeli leadership, beginning with David Ben-Gurion sought a nuclear-armed Israel. Israel collaborated with Edward Teller in attempting to elevate its atomic program. Ben-Gurion liked the fact that many of the scientists of the Manhattan Project weere Jewish and felt they could hlp Israel.
Labelled by some as the "Jewish Hitler". He was formerly a card-carrying member of the Kach Party founded by Meir Kahane.
The Kach Party was outlawed and he joined Yisrael Beitenu. The latter party was notoriously known for nominating former IDF officer and MK Esterina Tartman as a cabinet minister. She openly called the prospective appointment of the first Arab muslim cabinet minister as a blow to the "tree trunk" of Israel as a Jewish state; it was also the party founded by Revaham Ben Ze'evi, a former general who advocated targeted extrajudicial killings of Palestinians.
Avigdor Lieberman has actually been praised by many Arabs for his forthright and open opinions about dealing with the Palestinians - rather than insincere ramblings that they feel most Israeli politicians produce for international consumption.
I have no doubt that the acquittal will be worn as a badge of honor symbolizing his victory over perceived political grandstanding by the prosecution.
He is hardly viewed at as a kook among Israelis or American Jewry - U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman once posed for a snapshot with him.
I feel that Lieberman may be Israel's next prime minister.
Kristallnacht is significant in that it was the one event that most discredited Nazism as a poitical movement in the international community prior to WWII.
The U.S. ambassador to Germany reported that even a majority of the German public reacted with revulsion to the violence - which was surprising to him in an authoritarian state.
Many non-Jewish Germans stared out of their windows crying as the violence occurred.
The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 marked the end of the Great War.
8.8 million combatants perished.
Compare the parallels between Kristallnacht and Operation Galilee in 1982:
Both involved the shooting of a diplomat as a pretext - in 1982 it was the attack on Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to London.
Both involved pretextual reprisal attacks on stateless persons who had nothing to do with the actual incident - in 1982 it was the Abu Nidal organization who shot Argov (and were planning the P.L.O. representative to Britain as the next target) and P.L.O-occupied areas of Lebanon were targeted in retaliation.
Both resulted in wanton expropriation and destruction directed an ethnic group - in September of 1982 over 1,000 Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Shatila were massacred with the complicity of Lebanese Christian militiamen.
@RBTL:
The 1997 U.S Air Force intelligence report "Holy of Holies" studied the nuclear capabilities of Israel and determined the probable existence of 400 launch-able fission and thermonuclear fusion bombs.
The U.S. France, Britain, China and Russia all have confirmed hydrogen bomb capabilities. Pakistan and India have never detonated a thermonuclear device, but it is debatable whether they possess such a weapon.
"The Gatekeepers" and "Five Broken Cameras" were both nominated for Oscars. The Palestinian producer of Five Broken Cameras was unexpectedly detained at LAX until attorneys from the Academy Award organization intervened on his behalf so he could proceed to the ceremonies.
Regarding the Osirak reactor bombing in July of 1981 in Iraq, the Israelis conducted the raid on a Sunday so that Italian nuclear technicians administering the facility would be absent and not be harmed.
Israel was condemned by the United Nations General Assembly by a 44-7 vote. The NY Times #1 best-seller "By Way of Deception" described how Israel's intelligence agency had recruited an Iraqi nuclear scientist in France to divulge crucial data about the Osirak reactor so that the raid could take place; according to the book, the Iraqi scientist was duped into believing he was being recruited by the CIA.
In a largely unpublicized raid in 2007, Israeli jets destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor facility in "Operation Orchard". The bombing killed a number of North Korean nuclear technicians manning the facility.
Heavy water was initially supplied to Israel from Great Britain in 1958 using a Norwegian front company known as "Noratom", who received 2% commission. The purchase agreement contained a proviso that the heavy water was not to be used for making weapons. This deal was largely unknown to the public until 2005.
Current Israeli president Shimon Peres initiated negotiations that resulted in joint French-Israeli atomic research in the 1950s that gave Israel incidental access to nuclear weapons research that assisted in the construction of its first A-bombs in the late 1960s. French physicists and engineers were instrumental in the design of the Dimona nuclear research facility in Dimona. President Charles DeGaulle became suspicious of Israeli intentions for atomic research and all French technical assistance to the Israeli nuclear research program ended in 1966 after France performed all outstanding contractual obligations.
By the mid-1980s Israel reputedly had the technology to construct thermonuclear fusion bombs. It is believed that Israel's atomic arsenal now contains about 400 atomic bombs capable of killing not only millions of civilians but contaminating the world's food chain.
This nuclear arsenal was not only built outside the auspices of international nuclear regulatory bodies, but also without the apparent knowledge of Israel's own internal nuclear regulatory agency in the 1960s who expressed concerns about the intentions of Israeli political leaders and warned of international vilification occurring if the atomic scientific research were misused.
It was both France and Israel who were duped into unwittingly making Israel a major player in the nuclear arms race.
Israel committed fraud in three key ways in developing its nuclear bomb capability:
(A)in 1958 they purchased "heavy water" from the British government using a Norwegian front company called "Noratom" who received a 2% commission and the water was delivered directly to Israel - the specifics of this transaction were kept secret until 2005 when investigative reporters disclosed the event and the contract included promises by Israel that the water would not be used for manufacturing weapons;
(B)beginning in the 1950s, France and Israel were engaged in joint scientific research with respect to developing atomic power purportedly for peaceful purposes - this research gave Israeli physicists access to top secret French nuclear weapons detonation testing reports that were misused by Israel;
(C)Israel made a secret purchase of bulk quantities of "yellowcake" uranium from Argentina in the early 1960s.
The French began to suspect Israel's intent was to construct a nuclear bomb. French physicists and engineers were intimately involved in the design and construction
of the Israeli atomic research facility at Dimona. By 1963 President Charles DeGaulle concluded that Israel had improperly exploited the joint research arrangement and terminated the arrangement - even though performance of pre-existing contractual obligations required the French to render technical assistance to Israel up until 1966.
During the mid-1960s, members of Israel's own internal nuclear regulatory agency began to express suspicions that Israel's substantial atomic research was ultimately being intended to establish a nuclear war arsenal - and that such conduct would open up Israel to vilification within the world community.
Current Israeli President Shimon Peres, then a senior Israeli Defense Ministry official, had been instrumental in initiating and developing the joint atomic research relationship with the French which gave Israeli physicists incidental access to French scientific data on atomic weapons testing.
Israel tried to convince the international community of their commitment to legitimate constructive uses of atomic power when they joined Turkey in becoming the first signatories in 1957 to the Atoms For Peace program initiated by President Eisenhower. This was simply a ruse to lull world leaders into a false sense of security regarding Israeli intentions.
During a diplomatic visit to Canadian PM John Diefenbaker in 1961 was told by Israeli PM David Ben-Gurion that Israel was going to initiate plutonium separation from the fuel rods at the Dimona facility. Diefenbaker briefed Canadian intelligence officials who consulted British intelligence analysts that concluded that the only explanation for this was that Israel's intent was to acquire a nuclear bomb capability.
By 1967-69 it is likely that Israel acquired its first two A-bombs - reputedly "christened" by then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan with the motto "Never agaain" welded on the warhead in Hebrew and English. Dayan is said to have consulted on the possible deployment of atomic weaponry during the early days of the Yom Kippur War when it appeared that the Egyptian army had overrun the Bar-Lev defensive line in the Sinai Peninsula and would reach Israel.
The Defense Intelligence Agency in 1979 received data from a Vela monitoring earth-orbiting satellite that a large explosion consistent with a low-yield nuclear detonation occurred in the Indian Ocean. It is widely believed that this was a joint South African-Israeli atom bomb test.
It is believed Israel has up to 400 low-yield nuclear bombs that it could use during wartime. In the last few years Israel has spent around 1.5 billion euros to purchase Dolphin submarines from Thyssen-Krupp capable of firing sea-launched ballistic missiles each capable of delivering an atomic warhead. Reports of this came from Israel and German officals reported in Der Spiegel.
This nuclear arsenal of Israel was acquired under false pretenses of a peaceful intent and the existence of such atomic weaponry is not acknowledged to this day by Israeli officials. They are in no position to complain about Iran in such regards.
@CallMeConrad:
Here is a link to Iran and Polonium-210:
link to edwardjayepstein.com
In February of 2004 a report surfaced that Iran had produced polonium-210 as part of their efforts to establish a nuclear program. Iran has supplied Hamas and Islamic Jihad with weaponry.
Syria also has a nuclear program. One underground reactor manned by North Korean personnel was destroyed by Israeli Air Force jets in 2007. Syria has maintained a close relationship with Russia, who may have given Syrian intelligence services radioactive materials that were eventually distributed to Hamas - whose leader Meshaal was headquartered in Damascus at that time.
PM Ariel Sharon had at one point in an Oval Office meeting with President George W. Bush indicated that the Israeli government may kill Arafat - to which Bush vigorously objected.
On the other hand, declassified Israel Foreign Ministry documents indicated that the foreign policy experts in Israel expressed anxiety when and if Arafat would die as this would leave a power vacuum among Palestinians in which more radical elements could assume authority.
One Israeli Jewish journalist who befriended Arafat called him one of the great Arab leaders in history and compared him with Saladin. Arafat was, in fact, revered by the Palestinian people despite many obvious shortcomings - nevertheless he will undoubtedly be identified as the "face" of the Palestinian people - much like Fidel Castro has been to Cuba.
The death of Arafat led to a lessening of Fatah influence in the Occupied Territories and the strengthening of the more miitant Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations.
The assassinations of Sheikh Yassine and Dr. Rantissi of Hamas led to the greater influence of the more militant leaders of the military wing of Hamas - this result was predicted by Israel's own anti-terrorism experts. Israel failed in numerous attempts to kill the Hamas military wing leader Muhammad Deif, who has remained the most influential leader of Hamas since the Yassine and Rantissi killings.
Re Khalid Meshaal: it was King Hussein who arrested two Mossad officers who poisoned the Hamas leader and warned the Israeli PM that they would be executed if an antidote was not timely supplied.
@Bill:
It was a U.S. citizen, Ralph Bunche, who negotiated the 1949 Arab-Israeli armistice agreement that created the "Green Line".
The U.S. was instrumental in helping negotiate cease-fire agreements in 1956, 1967, and 1973 and of course, the Camp David Accords several years later.
The European Union, as well as America, is likely to play a key role in any final peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians.
"Extremist political stances and the hardening of ideological positions have prevented any progress in the peace process. The frustration caused by this has led to the development of an increasingly radical stance among adults.
The censorship of the press has contributed to this hardening of attitudes by preventing the publication of facts which often may be useful in the search for peace.
At the same time, religious feelings have been exploited or manipulated with a view to fostering fanaticism. Fidelity to the homeland and all hope of peace are stifled in fratricidal struggles and extremism. We can only deplore this assault on what is most sacred and intimate to the individual, and to human society."
p.9, Pastoral Letter of HB Msgr. Michel Sabbagh, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, on the Feast of Pentecost, 1990.
Abbas and Olmert were reportedly incredibly close to a peace deal but a small disagreement caused the whole deal to fall through. There had been progress with Olmert.
The Oslo Accords were the product of the First Intifada. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was lauded as Israel's greatest hero in a poll largely to his efforts in seeking a lasting peace.
The Gaza disengagement was the product of the Second Intifada. PM Ariel Sharon received international praise for this effort.
Unless there is some exigency that PM Netanyahu faces, it is very doubtful that he shall seek peace. He will simply mollify the U.S. by holding peace negotiations but make offers he knows that the Palestinian Authority will deem unacceptable. He then perpetuates the status quo - which is his goal.
An economis basis for Israeli-Palestinian cooperation is not unprecedented.
The highly successful Oasis Casino in Jericho employed Arabs and was frequented primarily by Israeli Jews. It was a model of economic cooperation that benefitted both sides.
It was closed down during the Second Intifada and became the source of a corruption probe involving allegations of bribery - nevertheless the general concept was laudable and profitable.
The Central Intelligence Agency in 2002 attempted to kill former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmyatar, a former American ally in the CIA's Operation Cyclone, in a drone strike. Hekmyatar survived and shortly therafter announced his support of al-Qaeda. He remains at large despite an intensive effort of the U.S. to locate and arrest him.
I believe that the killing of Mehsud will likely have little effect on the ability of the Taliban to wage war and will probably galvanize moderate elements within Taliban to acquiesce in further violence and eschew future peace negotiations.
This phenomenon of a targeted extrajudicial killing of a "terrorist" as he approaches peace initiatives is nothing new.
In Israel in 2002, a group of writers filed suit against the Israeli government for killing a moderate Hamas diplomat as he travelled to engage in truce negotiations.
A few years later Sheikh Yassine, leader of the Hamas political wing was killed in a missile attack after he suggested that a negotiated two-state solution with Israel could be possible, despite Hamas' constitutional covenant calling for Israel's destruction.
Last November, acting Hamas military commander Ahmed Jebari was assassinated as a permanent truce agreement had been drafted and awaiting the signatures of Israeli and Hamas representatives. Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak resigned shortly after this in an apparent protest over the subversion of the peace process.
@4: "Washington does not want to intervene in Syria....."
In fact, hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised internationally to support various rebel factions in Syria and much of that total emanates from America.
One of the larger fund-raising entities is the Syrian Support Group (www.syriansupportgroup.org), a Washington D.C.-based entity, chaired by a Chicago attorney who is a former student of Juan Cole. That organization is licensed by the State Department to raise funds from the public for non-lethal aid to the Free Syrian Army. It has been the implementing NGO for millions of dollars in State Department funding for the Free Syrian Army and has acted as a key liaison between FSA leaders and the State Department. The SSG has raised hundreds of donations from a broad cross-section of Americans and its chairman appeared on National Public Radio with Senator John Mc Cain.
U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford issued a letter on State Dpartment letterhead this April applauding the SSG for their efforts .
John Conyers had a perfect pro-Arab voting record in Congress, according to a study published by the Arab-American Institute in the late 1980s.
Rosa Parks was a secretary in his office from the 1960s until her retirement after she fled Alabama due to threats she received folowing her civil rights activism.
His wife, Monica, a former Detroit City Councilperson, was recently released from federal prison following serving a sentence on a bribery conviction.
In India, the peasant class is the most likely to vote in elections as they see it as a means of promoting their interests. I America the reverse is true.
Look at the voter registration and voting rates among America's poorer areas - it is pathetic.
In Detroit, you will be lucky to see half of the voting age population actually vote in many precincts and very few citizens bother to register as precinct delegate candidates. Many precincts in Detroit the vote is over 90% Democratic and the nominated candidates heavily promoted by party machines.
The quality of elected representatives in Detroit is notoriously poor and FBI investigations of public corruption at the city and county levels is routine. Ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick several days ago received a 28-year sentence for corruption - exactly the sentence requested by the U.S. Attorney. Dozens of more were indicted during the Kilpatrick FBI probe.
In other more educated or affluent areas of Metro Detroit - such as Bloomfield Hills or Ann Arbor - voter registration rates and actual voting rates are high and, further, precinct delegate candidacies are rampant - I have seen eight electors file for four seats in a precinct.
Citizen apathy is positively correlated with poverty in America.
"......German Chancellor Angela Merkel's personal cell phone was monitored by the NSA...."
Cell phones emit radio waves that are not subject to protections under the United States Constitution's Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment. I am not sure how those protections are in Germany or how or where the NSA intercepted her cell phone communications.
Anyone who uses a cell phone is foolish to do so if they may reasonably expected to be targeted for surveillance for national security or law enforcement purposes. President Obama had to dispose of his beloved Blackberry on the advice of his security advisers.
In reality, there is very little accountability over any perceived ethical transgressions by the NSA in these regards. No one will go to jail or even be criminally prosecuted - it is unlikely any federal judge will find against the NSA in any monetary damage or injunction claim.
The only "sanction" is embarassment once the media discloses invasions of privacy of an ally in the international community.
@Bill:
7-11 surveillance cameras do not violate the Fourth Amendment. That's the difference.
That said, Spitzer's patronage of commerccalized vice is disapproved an inadvisable.
Eliot Spitzer was only one lawyer who fought government misconduct and became a target.
Geoffrey Fieger raked in millions in legal fees suing for police misconduct and uncovering wrongful conduct among public officials. He was the 1998 Democratic nominee for governr in Michigan.
He was indicted for campaign violations in connection with fundraising in the 2008 John Edwards presidential campaign. There was court testimony that the FBI was questioning regarding his personal sex life. The presiding federal judge, Paul Borman, said he rarely seen a case where several dozen FBI agents were dispatched to execute a single search warrant. 80 to 100 FBI agents were briefed in a single powerpoint presentation at the federal building prior to the warrant's execution.
Gerry Spence defended the case and Fieger and his law partner were acquitted by a jury.
Recent events in the Middle East have seen the emergence of China rivalling the U.S. as the pre-eminent world power.
This is coupled with the fact that in recent years the Chinese GNP has surpassed that of America, making China the largest economic producer in the world, albeit it has four times the population of the U.S.
The per capita incomes of most Western European nations such as France, Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia and the Low Countries already have surpassed that of America.
Expect the Tea Party call to reduce federal spending and curtail defense expenditures lead to GOP gains in the 2014 Congressional elections. Americans are beginning to understand that their standrd of living has declined due to overtaxation that has stifled economic growth.
America has no overriding foreign policy considerations which would trump cogent and reasonable isolationist arguments to avoid entanglement in Syria - although Israel's concern over Hezbollah and the possibility of chemical weapons stockpiles endangering its citizens are clearly reasons that Israel has to see President Assad toppled from power.
The photos of dead Syrian children from a chemical weapons attack trying to evoke humanitarian concern and empathy to the cause of U.S. intervention is maudlin huckterism at its most extreme by those in the State Department.
When many more thousands of Kurds perished in Halabja in 1988 by the Saddam Hussein regime where were these same career diplomats at? The Halabja attack received very little outrage in the media or in any significant corner of America. Where was President Bush in 1990 when Kurds in the north of Iraq and Shi'ites in the south were being killed in severe reprisals over their uprisings?
Syria is in a profound and troubling humanitarian crisis in which 115,000 are already dead. An estimated up to 100 British and 60 Americans are believed to be fighting in the Syrian resistance. One young American mother from Flint, Michigan has already been killed in action and a second, Eric Harroun, has returned to the U.S. after fighting on behalf of the al-Nusra Front. There has been a shadowy presence of the U.S. intelligence community giving logistic and other support to the rebels.
The Free Syrian Army may be close to resolving its differnces with Assad pursuant to private negotiations and the extremist Islamic factions may be the holdouts.
In any event, America's role should be providing humanitarian relief to refugees and encouraging prompt initiation of formal peace talks. Military intervention must be ruled out.
Former FBI agent William Turner's book "The Fish is Red" recognized that federal, state and local law enforcement agencies had a general policy of non-enforcement when it came to addressing evidence of violations of criminal law uncovered during the CIA's Operation Mongoose (headquartered at the University of Miami medical school)covert actions against Cuba during the 1960s.
Clear proof of violations of the Neutrality Act as well as explosives and firearms statutes were ignored and prosecutions only in the clearest cases of blatant wrongdoing by non-employee operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency. Anti-Castro exile leader Orlando Bosch was given a ten-year sentence for firing a bazooka at a Polish freighter of the Florida coast in a rare display prosecutorial and judicial toughness toward the Cuban-American community - but even he eventually received a pardon by President Bush in 1989 after serving a fraction of his sentence.
The CIA even conceded that kidnapping laws may have been violated when Soviet KGB defector Yuri Nosenko was held by the Agency and tortured for years until it was concluded he was authentic and not a Soviet double agent.
@Bill:
What if the Cuban military had initiated a drone attack in Miami attempting to kill one of the militant anti-Castro exile group leaders that he believes were culpable in the 1976 Cubana Air bombing? What if that attack had killed innocent Americans?
The fact the person was killed by accident cannot justify the legitimacy of drone strikes in the first place. The system violates international law.
The concerns of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch should be heeded by U.S. leaders.
Palestinians have the right to vote in the Jerusalem mayoral election but there was an Arab boycott due to their not recogzizing Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem.
Additionally, the ultraorthodox opponent of the incumbent was strongly endorsed by right-wing extremist Avigdor Lieberman and the incumbent mayor aligned himself with religious nationalists - so Arabs had reason to dislike both candidates.
Theoretically, the Arabs could have been the "swing vote" and named the winner, given the fact the incumbent Barkat only received 51% of the vote.
Yes, Islam supplanted communism as the target of the military-industrial complex. This occurred following the end of the USSR and was augmented by 9/11.
The Dupont family is the wealthiest is the U.S.
Around the start of the 19th century the Dupont business empire began humbly as a snall gunpowder mill run by a French immigrant family. By WWI 40% of all explosives shot by the Allies were manufactured by Dupont. Dupont had the highest corporate profits in history during that war to that point and distributed 2/3rds to its shareholders via dividends.
In 1914, Pierre Dupont became chairman of General Motors and the Dupont company invested 25 million in purchasing its stock. Dupont eventually divested its GM holdings due to a Clayton anti-trust suit. GM eventually via a subsidiary assisted in the rearming of Germany beore WWII.
Dupont enjoyed vast revenues during the Korean and Vietnam Wars supplying the U.S. Armed Forces with not only explosives but also nylon for parachutes and other items assisting in warfare.
William Boeing, Leroy Grumman, Henry Crown, William P. Lear, Glenn Curtiss, Samuel Colt and others created vast business empires predicated on supplying America's war efforts.
The organizing principle of the United States government has historically been for war. The authority of the federal government over its citizenry resides in its constitutional executive power to initiate and continue armed conflict. 800,000 M-16 rifles were left behind in Vietnam that were manufactured by Colt Industries. Agent Orange was produced in bulk quantities by Dow Chemical to defoliate Indochinese jungles. The A-10 combat aircraft was built by Fairchild. The then-record federal budget deficits during the LBJ administration were fueled by defense spending in Vietnam.
War has been a facet of big business financed by Wall Street and made the U.S. the pre-eminentworld's "policeman" at a heavy financial cost that has created vast fortunes for a few.
The more egregious aspect of this type of conduct is that Israel Defense Forces commanders in the "Civil Administration" - the real political authority in the Occupied Territories have the power by virtue of law, upon "suspicion" that Palestinian realty is being or has been used for rebellious militant activity, may have any structure or anything growing thereon to be forfeited and demolished.
This legal authority has been used by the IDF to use bulldozers to demolish orchards in areas where rockets have been fired as, theoretically, the rockets can use the orchards for cover to launch missiles.
During the occupation of Gaza, the authority to demolish was the most potent form of intimidation for Palestinians. The Rafah Zoo was invaded by the IDF a all but a few animals were destroyed.
During Operation Cast Lead, in an event investigated and confirmed by the Goldstone Commission report, 32,000 hens at a chicken farm were run over by bulldozers and the farm - which provided 10% of egg production of Gaza - was demolished. The wealthiest clan in Gaza - who made their fortune in post-1948 Gaza in concrete business - had nine of their ten homes dynamited by the IDF during Operation Cast Lead.
The IDF is largely complicit in the ongoing targeting of various types of orchards run by Palestinians - be it apple, olive, or other product - either by conducting the destruction themselves or being unduly lax in apprehending settlers who engage in such activity. See http://www.kawther.info
"I don't understand treating them like the legit rulers of a country."
In addition to U.S. dependency on Saudi oil reserves and production ... Saudi Arabia has 10 trillion U.S. dollars invested in American real estate, banking interests, and Fortune 500 companies that the U.S. is heavily reliant upon.
The cessation of the Saudi royal family as dictatorial rulers of that nation could lead to instability of these economic and financial relationships that the U.S. does neither want or need.
This seat had been impliedly reserved for an Arab nation.
If Saudi Arabia does not accept this seat, it will likely go to another Arab country whose views are somewhat consonant with Saudi Arabia.
Emmerson correctly identifies Gaza as a region where drone strikes have been in violation of international law.
The Israeli government has a protocol under which the Israeli Attorney General as a member of the executive branch can authorize the targeted killing of any Palestinian in Gaza.
Non-military members of Hamas' political wing have been assassinated by Israel. These killings have been criticized by anti-terrorism experts within Israel as giving more control to the leaders of Hamas' military arm, hence leading to more militancy and increased violence against Israel.
The Israeli targeted killings have killed and wounded large numbers of innocent civilians, including children. It has also caused Hamas to import anti-aircraft missiles, which were used for the first time last year against an IDF helicopter. These anti-aircraft missiles can endanger Israeli civilian airliners.
Cyanosis can be a cause of purple discoloration of fingers.
link to livestrong.com
The common American justification for the incendiary raids over Japanese cities (as well as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bombs)was that the saved lives of American servicemen.
Many felt, on the other hand, that General Curtis LeMay - the youngest 4-star general in U.S. history at 44 years of age - was a war criminal due to his strategic bombing of Japan during that era.
Japan, unlike Vietnam, did attack the U.S. without provocation at Pearl Harbor and the Phillipines in December of 1941 - killing namy civilians in the process. Ho Chi Minh, on the other hand, was an American ally during WWII who ordered his Vietminh to rescue downed American pilots in Indochina.
Americans as a whole did not have any great aversion to the Vietnamese during the war and many saw them in the North and South as victims of a civil war. Japan on the other hand, terrorized not only Americans, but also Burmese, Filipino and Chinese citizens. 200,000 died during the Rape of Nanking alone and six million Chinese died in all during a genocidal Japanse occupation commencing in 1931.
@Dennis and Bill:
Maryam Rajavi's MEK resistance organization in Iran has the support of pro-Israel interests and the U.S. intelligence community. They have been removed from the U.S. State Department list of terror organizations.
MEK operatives have in the U.S. received training in signals intelligence from the U.S. Army.
MEK has been suspected as carrying out the prior bomb attacks against Iranian nuclear physicists on behalf of Israel that have killed or wounded some. The pro-Israel community in the U.S. have arranged for prominent lobbyists such as Rudy Giuliani to support MEK as a respectable paramilitary resistance force.
MEK represents a blend of Islamic and Marxist ideologies and is viewed by critics as a cult. It's origins date back to the 1960s and were opponents of the Shah's regime.
There is little doubt that the CIA and Mossad have given aid to MEK - but how much is subject to debate. Mrs. Rajavi has been travelling the world meeting with various actual and potential sponsors.
".....[o]n the U.S. side, the Israel lobbies and Israel itself will accept nothing less than the mothballing of the whole Iranian enrichment program......."
Israel's largely untold blueprint for obtaining nuclear weapons technology outside international guidelines while misusing paeceful research ventures while deceiving and concealing its intent to construct atomic weapons seems to betray their high-horse pronouncements about the dangers ran could present to the Middle East if it proceeds with any nuclear enrichment program.
Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion often felt that acquisition of atom bomb technology was needed for the survival of Israel. He emphasized the accomplishments of Edward Teller and other Jewish-American physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project and felt that these scientists could help Israel acquire a nuclear weapon capability. Teller was consulted on Israeli nuclear development and maintained a cordial relationship with Israel's leaders.
Israel and Turkey in 1957 were the first signatories to the Atoms for Peace program inaugurated by President Eisenhower.
Israel and France conducted joint atomic research in the late 1950s which gave Israeli scientists incidental access to French reports of the detonation of atomic weapons. These were exploited by Israel to initiate a nuclear weapons program. President Charles DeGaulle eventually suspected Israel had an intent to biuld an A-Bomb and by 1966, all nuclear research relationships between France and Israel were halted on his orders.
Shimon Peres, Israel's current president, now 90 years old, had been instrumental in developing the French-Israeli joint atomic research relationship that was initiated in the 1950s.
In 1958, Great Britain sold to Israel substantial quantities of "heavy water" necessary to construct an atomic weapon. The purchase was made via an intermediary - the Norwegian company Noratom - acting as a front - who received a 2% commission from Israel; this transaction was hid from the world community until 2005 when the British government admitted that the transction occurred.
Prime Minister Ben-Gurion later advised Canadian PM John Diefenbaker in the early 1960s that Israel wanted plutonium separation technology. Diefenbaker disclosed this to British intelligence personnel who concluded from this that Israel clearly intended to create a nuclear weapons program.
Israel secretly acquired "yellowcake" uranium from Argentina in the early 1960s that was needed for an atomic bomb.
Later, plutonium separation was accomplished with the fuel rods at the Dimona plant to generate enough materal that could be used to manufactue a viable fission bomb. By 1969 it was believed that Israel constructed its first two nuclaer weapons at the Dimona facility.
To this day, Israel has never constructed a nuclear power plant to assist its utility energy needs but only for "research" - which has effectively been for the creation of a nuclear arsenal to menace its neighbors.
The U.N. General Assembly condemned Israel for the July of 1981 destruction of the Osirak atomic facility in Iraq. It has also menaced Iran with the spectre of a military strike.
Israel today is believed to have about 200 atomic weapons which can be delivered by air or by nuclear-tipped missiles that can be sea-launched via Israeli navy submarines purchased from the Thyssen-Krupp arms manufacturer in Germany at a cost of well over one billion dollars.
Israel has acquired an expensive nuclear option which it augmented over the years at cost of many billions of dollars via deceit and concealment. Israel's conduct in opposing Iranian nuclear research technologies is duplicitous and hypocritical.
It all depends on the political persuasion of the federal judge or judges hearing the case.
In Detroit in 2005, United States District Court Judge Anna Diggs-Taylor held that ECHELON program of the NSA violated the Warrant Clause of the United States Constitution.
Diggs-Taylor was a Carter appointee to the federal bench. She marched with MLK from Selma to Montgomery. Her former husband, Charles Diggs, was a long time U.S. Congressman from Detroit who was convicted by the Justice Department after an FBI investigation into a kickback scheme. She was no friend of law enforcement.
Her ruling was reversed by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals by a conservative panel.
Nice article.
In 1956, the Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Units was formed. In the 1970s, it was commented that its files are not subject to Freedom of Information Act inquiries and consequently are more secure than those of the CIA. Check out its website: http://www.leiu.org
There have been a proliferation of "fusion centers" that are intended to break down barriers between intelligence-gathering organizations within the U.S. Check out this link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_center
The fusion centers have come under ACLU scrutiny.
It is important to note that state police, county sheriffs, and local police departments often have their own intelligence units that collaborate with federal agencies with intelligence sharing. Many of their targets have been
political.
In the 1980s, Coleman Young, Detroit's first black mayor and a bitter critic of President Reagan - famously calling him "President Pruneface", had his townhouse residence subject to government electronic eavesdropping devices during a joint investigation of the Detroit Police Department intelligence unit and FBI into "public corruption". Young was never charged with a crime and the fallout from this investigation exacerbated race relations in Detroit.
The Detroit Police Department was sued in the 1960s by Jimmy Hoffa's defense attorney, William Bufalino, for bugging the phones of his law firm.
The FBI, NSA, and CIA were all involved in a federal court litigation filed in 1972 by the ACLU involving extensive surveillance of Detroit attorney Abdeen Jabara, who defended Sirhan Sirhan. The case was settled in the 1980s. Jabara was never charged with a crime.
"It's almost universally recognized that Israel is the problem......"
Everywhere except the United States, where Israel enjoys a 3-1 margin in support in public opinion polls over Palestinian interests.
I was at a lecture a few years back at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan where the Israel Lobby in the U.S. was described as "six times as large and one-hundred times as organized" than its pro-Palestinian counterpart.
Pro-Israel interests in the U.S. believe as long as they have such an incredible degree of support from the American public, there is no need for the Israeli government leaders to modify their position on the Palestinian question and the status quo will continue indefinitely. It has already been this way since 1967 in the West Bank.
Conspiracy theorists?
Remember Eric Harroun, the Jabhat al-Nusra fighter and U.S. citizen who was indicted by the Department of Justice and whose father leaked to the press he was really a Central Intelligence Agency operative?
Last month, Harroun entered into a "secret plea agreement" with the prosecution that dropped all charges in exchange to a plea of illicit munitions transport with three years of probation and a $100.00 fine.
This favorable disposition, when compared to the harsh John Walker Lindh sentence, suggests that Harroun indeed likely had some intelligence relationship with the U.S. government pursuant to which he justified to the government for such a sweet plea deal.
It makes one wonder the extent the U.S. intelligence community has penetrated the Syrian rebel forces and control and monitor its movements. How many more apparent American operatives are operating in Syria like Harroun who may be acting on behalf of our government? Should Syrians be suspicious?
Thank you for your observations - which the mainstraem media never reports.
There were recent reports that even surprised Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that the Chinese navy was in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Syria during the recent poison gas controversy and the potential for U.S. military strike.
It appears that China is attempting to finally assert itself as a world power.
The Free Syrian Army was founded by former Syrian Army officers who refused to fire on demonstrators. It has a supreme council and has a hierarchy of leadership. There has been a recent polarization in Syria between certain Islamic-oriented armed resistance groups and the Syrian National Coalition - who has the allegiance of the Free Syrian Army. There are reputedly non-public peace negotiations between the Free Syrian Army and the Assad regime that may have resulted in a lessening of armed conflict betwen these two forces.
The Libyan anti-Gaddafi resistance was largely formed by civilian who later had significant numbers army officers and soldiers defect to their cause.
During the Libyan civil war, it was impossible for observers to pinpoint a "political center" of the Libyan resistance and many feared that it was being influenced by al-Qaeda sympathizers. These fears were largely unfounded.
It appears that the prime minister's abductors represent a disgruntled fringe element and the incident was quickly defused.
In Libya, if this article is correct, the protests against the government are largely economic-based rather than motivated by sectarian or ideological differences - although such differences surely exist and are contributing to the collective national unrest.
Given the general unrest in nations where the Arab Spring demonstrations uprooted the established governments in power - such unrest is to be expected and common.
Generally, Libya is doing satisfactorily in establishing a post-Gaddafi government. Don't expect perfection.
Re:Cubana Airlines bombing
Luis Posada Carriles was acquitted of charges in Venezuela and escaped after being held for years in detention while the prosecution appealed. He had worked for Venezuelan intelligence services and acquired citizenship in that nation.
The U.S. Department of Justice collaborated with the Cuban government to try Carriles in El Paso on federal immigration violation charges. He was also acquitted by a U.S. District Court jury on those charges a few years ago.
Carriles is a former U.S. Army veteran and CIA officer that had involvement in the Bay of Pigs, Operation Mongoose, and the Contra War in Nicaragua. He currently resides in the Miami area where he is revered in the Cuban-American community as a leader in anti-Castro activism.
Many Cubans who served in the CIA's Operation Mongoose and related anti-Castro paramilitary activities have indicated they were trained, supplied, and otherwise supported by the U.S. government and should not be prosecuted for these activities - this was Carriles' attorneys' arguments at trial in El Paso in 2008 and apparently the jury agreed.
The Shas Party, which was founded by Iraqi-born ultra-orthodox leader Rabbi Ovadia Yousef, holds 11 of the 120 seats in the Knesset.
Rabbi Yousef died just recently at the age of 93 and he was credited with statements labeling Palestinians "snakes" and claiming that Gentiles are expected to be servants of Jews.
Shas and United Torah Judaism, another ultra-orthodox party, received political power over the last forty years in Israel far beyond their numbers due to the fact they often gave the Likud their narrow majority in the Knesset. As a result, these ultra-orthodox parties recived plum positions in the Israeli Cabinet and translated this into vast political clout that aroused the ire of other Israelis over special privileges - such as military service exemptions - that other Israeli Jews did not enjoy.
Yair Lapid was a journalist who drew upon this ire and campaigned against the disparate power exercised by these ultraorthodox parties;his party won unexpectedly large number of Knesset seats and suddenly Shas and United Torah Judaism found themselves out of the ruling coalition.
The era of relative ultra-orthodox political superiority within the Israeli government appears to be waning and Lair Lapid is championing that development.
The Independent article by Robert Fisk makes several interesting points:
(1)The Central Intelligence Agency's attempt to "vet" out rebel groups for receipt of arms shipments appears to be a dismal failure as some Free Syrian Army (FSA) units have already been defecting over to the Jabhat Al-Nusra Front-allied forces, presumably with their weapons that had been secured, at least partially, via CIA-brokered purchases;
(2)The FSA (led by former Syrian Army officers)appear to be intermingling freely in cities held by the government - leading one to reasonably conclude that some interim deal has already been reached between the FSA and the Baathist government;
(3)The UN chemical inspection teams are under the protection of rebel forces and there appears to be indications of evidence tampering/manipulation.
A key question to be raised is who is calling the shots in the secular "Syrian resistance"? The FSA leadership? The Syrian National Coalition? Something smells fishy if the FSA folds up and goes home while Assad remains in power with the unenforceable "promise" of free and democratic elections.
Palestine is yet another example of militant secularism.
The Fatah Party has had its militant elements - such as the Tanzim militia.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine carried out the killing of Rehavam Ben Ze'evi in 2002 and a limited number of terror attacks during the Second Intifada.
Absolutely.
Pastor John Hagee is one of the key proponents of this.
These fundamentalists often are of the opinion that Israel should NEVER be criticized.
The "oddball" parties in Israel that have substantial electoral clout via Knesset seats and traditional ability to form ruling coalitions e.g. Shas, United Torah Judaism, have virtally no following in the U.S.
The Labor Party or Meretz are likely the two political parties in Israel whose liberal outlook most closely approximates mainstream Jewish-American socio-political views. These two parties have very little influence in Israel in the last decade, even though the Labor Party dominated electoral politics in Israel during the 1960s and early 70s.
Interestingly, only four American-born Israelis were ever elected to the Knesset. One was a feminist from New York elected in the early 1970s due to her pro-female views - and another was Meir Kahane, who renounced his U.S. citizenship and was elected to the Knesset where he sat until his death in 1992. Kahane today is an iconic figure among Israeli extremists - but whose views are broadly disliked among Jewish-Americans as racist.
Uri Avinery, a former Knesset member and journalist, is one of the most left-wing political commentators in Israel and a former friend and admirer of Yasser Arafat.
While the 90-year old Avinery has undoubtedly experienced much of Israel's history and is scholarly on the subject , including service in the Irgun, his viewpoints are cleary pro-Palestinian and far outside the mainsream of Israeli political thought.
@Spyguy:
I think you have correctly emphasized that China is a real super-power to be reckoned with by the world commmunity.
It's military and economic capacity are tremendous.
Mao Tse-tung once reportedly told a U.S. Comuunist Party official that his country could afford to lose 200,000,000 of its citizens during a war.
There's no telling how imposing China could be if they could increase the range and sophistication of their "Long March" rocket.
Israel's desire to acquire nuclear weaponry began with David Ben-Gurion, its first prime minister, and was commenced with a purported good-faith desire to promote peaceful atomic energy production.
Israel and Turkey were in 1957 the first signatories to the Atoms For Peace program sponsored by President Eisenhower.
France and Israel entered into a number of co-operation agreements for the advancement of nuclear research and worked on a number of projects in the 1950s and 1960s in which Israeli scientists had unfettered access to the atomic bomb detonation internal reports generated by scientists of the French government.
France provided technical assistance in the design and construction of the famed Dimona facility. Charles DeGaulle was extremely concerned over the suspicions that the primary intent of Israel being to produce atomic weapons. He eventually terminated all technical support to Israel's atomic program in 1966.
Israel in 1958 purchased substantial quantities of "heavy water" needed for nuclear fission from Britain via a Norwegian front company called "Noratom" who charged a 2% commission and the water was delivered to Israel for use at Dimona. The specifics of this transaction were not made public until 2005 and illustrate both British and Israeli officials attempted to hide this sale from international scrutiny via the Noratom entity.
"Yellowcake" uranium in copious quantities shortly thereafter was purchased from Argentina in the early 1960s.
In 1961, the Israeli prime minister had told Canadian PM John Diefenbaker that Israel was going to transform the nuclear rods at the Dimona facility to create plutonium- grade products. Intelligence officials concluded that this intent could only be for purposes of creating a fission bomb.
Members of Israel's own board governing its internal nuclear development agency overseeing its program had its own suspicions about the intent of the Israeli prime minister and felt that Israel was opening itself up to international vilification if it was going to construct nuclear weaponry.
It is believed that in 1967-1969, Israel acquired its first A-bombs. Rumor has it that first bomb was "christened" by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and had the words "Never again" weled on the warhead in Hebrew and English.
The Vela Incident in 1979 was believed to be a joint Israeli-South African detonation of a low-yield nuclear device in the Indian Ocean; it would have been the first Israeli A-bomb test.
Israel's nuclear weapons progarm has been, in sum, created via deceit and subterfuge.
Israel has been raising the spectre of Iran primarily to deflect criticism over its own conduct with respect to atomic weaponry.
In 2006, the German industrial concern Thyssen-Krupp concluded a 1.3 billion euro contract to supply Israel with submarines that were capable of delivering nuclear payloads. An additional submarine was ordered in 2009.
On June 4, 2012, a Der Spiegel investigative report article was published quoting various German and Israeli sources indicating that Israel had deployed advanced submarines equipped with nuclear missile warheads. The proffered justification for this was the purported "danger" of Iran's
alleged nuclear weapons program.
In 2008, the Israel Defense Forces initiated its ICBM system that can deliver payloads over 11,000 kilometers.
Israel's "playing to the hilt" of the Iranian "danger" is good public relations to justify its own internal nuclear build-up that threatens the entire region.
The 1949 CIA-inspired coup d'etat against a popularly-elected Sunni president set into force a chain of events that led to Baathist control of the Syrian government since 1963. Hafez Assad was a young pilot who became commander of the Syrian Air Force following a 1963 Baathist coup.
Ironically it was the historically powerful al-Atassi family, Sunnis from Homs, that supported Assad's rise to power during the 1960s and it is Suheir al-Atassi, a vice-president in the Syrian National Coalition, that is being touted as a possible successor to Bashaar Assad should the Free Syrian Army prevail. Suheir al-Atassi, a feminist and attorney, was arrested in Homs in 2011 for anti-government agitation but later released.
Right now, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) is the recognized entity that is considered the government-in-exile by the Western nations. It contains many factions - some secular, some Islamic in orientation of various degrees of adherence to Islamic principles ranging from moderate to extremist. The SNC and Free Syrian Army are facing a "mutiny" of sorts from about 15 Islamic-oriented groups. To accurately try to label these groups as either "terrorist" or "non-terrorist" is close to impossible - and each groups membership and leaders often change over time along with their policies and viewpoints about adherence to norms of warfare of human rights of civilians.
Seems like America never had too much of a problem in allowing all the anti-Castro Cubans - whether or not involved in putative terrorist activities. The CIA loved 'em all and used their connections to pass legislation in U.S. Congress to get highly preferential treatment of Cuban immigrants that exists to this day.
Congress today should work with the SNC and Syrian-Americans to pass legislation to assist CIA-backed rebel groups from Syria and their supporters to enter into the U.S. legally without red tape.
By installing missiles in Cuba, the USSR had the bargaining leverage to get the IRBMs already in Turkey removed - thus the Soviets were essentially coming out ahead by placing missiles in Cuba in the first place.
It was a Cuban farmer - not U.S. satellite imagery - that first discovered the Soviet missile silos. He reported to his contact at Operation Mongoose. This was the CIA's greatest accomplishment in Cuba.
What is so ironic is that in March of 1949, Syria had a popularly-elected Sunni president that was overthrown by the Syrian military with the inspiration and assistance of CIA officers Miles Copeland and Stephen Meade.
The current Assad regime can be traced to the group that had been involved in that initial coup. Hafez Assad was with the Baathist officers who took power in a 1963 coup and he eventually rose from Air Force commander to defense minister, losing the Golan Heights in 1967 and routed by Jordan in siding with Black September militants in 1970.
Hafez Assad assumed the Syrian presidency in the early 1970s and ruled until his death in 2000 and was succeeded by Dr. Bashaar Assad, his son.
There have been substantial advances and positive occurrences for Western interests that this article ignores:
(A)France, Britain and the the U.S. have installed a viable democracy in Libya that ousted a major sponsor on international terrorism and perpetrator of internal repression;
(B)Obama and Morsi helped defuse the November of 2012 Gaza/Israel conflict;
(C)the U.S. has maintained its naval installation in Haifa, Israel;
(D)Obama and Iran's new leader have initiated positive communications;
(E)the U.S. has eradicated much of the al-Qaeda leadership since 2001 and degraded its terror capabilities;
(F)the fact that Syrian government chemical weapons stockpiles are now subject to intrnational controls and America is not deploying militarily to Syria is something most Americans can applaud;
(G)there are peace negotiations ongoing betweeen Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Look at PM Netanyahu's background:
(A)his father, Benzion, was secretary to Ze'ev Jabotinsky, a key theorist of Revisionist Zionism;
(B)his father believed that negotiations with Palestinians was impossible and that they must be "shown force";
(C)his brother, Yonatan, an Army officer, was killed during a raid against the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine at Entebbe Airport in Uganda.
It is clearly understandable the events and influences that shaped his perceptions of Palestinians. While he has publicly eschewed his father's views, he clearly acts consistent with the belief that he is not accountable to human rights obligations toward Arabs nor American freign policy goals advancing such interests in the Occupied Territories or Gaza.
Ehud Barak as well as Foreign Minister Tzipora Livni advised Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to stop the ongoing carnage in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, but Olmert balked.
Olmert's party was facing elections and Operation Cast Lead had a 94% approval rate among Israelis polled. The operation was commenced two days after Christmas so as not to interfere with Israel's tourism season. It was also begun when most Western governments were closed down for the holidays and during the waning days of the lame duck Bush administration. The Israelis withdrew two days prior to Obama's inauguration.
The operation cost Israel 1 billion dollars and none of its five stated objections were achieved - including the destruction of smuggling tunnels between Egypt and Gaza. The incursion killed many civilians and extensive property damage in Gaza.
Barak did claim that the incidence of incoming missiles from Gaza declined after the conclusion of Operation Cast Lead and the IDF's deterrent effect was re-established.
Many foreign countries, including Mauritania - an Arab-speaking nation - severed diplomatic relations with Israel over the invasion.
The "existential threat" will be from China.
China will be the next "superpower" to supplant the former Soviet Union as America's primary military threat and a general threat to international peace.
This has already occurred in the recent Syria poison gas controversy where a Chinese warship was dispatched to the area of the Mediterranean Sea near Syria.
The Somalia mission's most remembered video was seeing the corpse of a U.S. Army Ranger killed in action being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by henchmen of the Somali warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid. Aidid was never apprehended by America.
The incident emotionally devastated U.S. Defense Secretary Les Aspin to such an extent that many blamed it on his early death.
President Assad in 2004 publicly asserted Syria's right to a chemical and biological weapon program in response to Israel's possession of nuclear weaponry.
See: link to cfr.org
We cannot fault these nations and European companies to any large extent when the world community was put on notice nine years ago that Assad was building up such a capability.
The mujaheddin did become the Northern Alliance or United Front.
It was the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) that created the Taliban, taking advantage of general political instability within Afghanistan to create a militia force that eventually ruled most of the nation.
It was the Taliban who assassinated Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud on September 9, 2011. The Northern Alliance, under General Dostum, a suspected human rights violator, later received military and intelligence assistance from the U.S. in driving the Taliban from power.
Afghanistan now produces 87% of the world's opium.
Here's a link to an article on the formation of an Islamic alliance in Syria:
link to latimes.com
"....(a)rms, like money, are fungible, and cannot be kept within one group, particularly with Islamist fighters and Al-Qaeda affiliates in the mix."
Good point.
Arms are valuable commodities and the CIA-brokered purchases of weapons to the vetted "good guys" may be re-sold on the black market and wind up in the hands of al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters which may create a dangerous situation.
If anyone doubts this there is historical precedent in Afghanistan where the U.S. frantically attempted to recover Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and launchers from Islamic rebel forces, who saw the missiles as status symbols. One
CIA-supplied rebel leader, Gulbuddin Hekmyatar, became prime minister of Afghanistan in 1994 and his men attempted to shoot down the Afghan president's plane with a missile. Hekmyatar later was targeted for an unsuccessful drone attack in 2002 by the Bush administration; Hekmyatar shortly later announced his support for al-Qaeda and remains at large in Afghanistan.
Also, it is agreed that there is absolutely no U.S. strategic interest in Syria and U.S. involvement should be limited to much-needed humanitarian assistance. If al-Qaeda gains a foothold in any post-Assad government and Syria becomes a rogue state like Afghanistan did, then those who backed the CIA arming of the rebels may have egg on their collective faces.
Two points:
Firstly, the Syrian National Council (the "Council") is Istanbul-based and led by George Sabra, a Christian Syrian and a member of the Central Committee of the Syrian Communist Party since 1985; their website is http://www.syriannationalcouncil.com
The Syrian National Council is a largely secular exile group founded in 2005. The Syrian National Coalition (the "Coalition") was chartered in Qatar in 2012 and about 35% of its seats are held by members of the Syrian National Council - most of the remaining seats are held by Syrian exiles who strongly identify as Muslims to varying degrees.
The Council and Coalition are two discrete organizations and it is the Coalition that had received the allegiance of the Free Syrian Army as well as diplomatic recognition by the majority of world community as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people and a government-in- exile.
It is the Coalition (currently led by Ahmad al-Jarba)that has deteriorating relations with the Free Syrian Army - not the Istabul-based Council.
Secondly, General Salim Idris is NOT the commander of the Free Syrian Army - only its administrative Chief of Staff. Idris was a brigadier general in the Syrian Army and had been the highest-ranking member to defect to the Free Syrian Army - but Idris has no battle experience and his role in the Free Syrian Army is merely administrative; Idris was assigned to the Corps of Engineers in the Syrian Army and manages the business aspect of the Free Syrian Army, including press relations. The commander-in-chief of the Free Syrian Army is Colonel Riad al-Asaad - who operates as the field commander of the Free Syrian Army.
Colonel al-Asaad is revered by many Syrians as a battlefield leader, while Idris is viewed as a bureaucrat. Al-Asaad's exclusion from the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the FSA - even though he fonded the FSA - is puzzling.
The anti-Israel message is not consistent either.
The British newspaper The Observer estimated that beginning in 1981 and throughout the Iran-Iraq War, Israel sold Iran an average of $500,000,000 per annum in weaponry, including sophisticated missiles and F-4 Phantom aircraft.
During Iran-Contra hearings the arms pipeline from Israel to Iran was publicly revealed.
Things have happened in the legal arena - but nothing connecting Iran to the incident.
Argentina had an Interpol arrest warrant out for the individual who had served as Iranian ambassador to Argentina in 1994. He was arrested in Britain but the case fell apart when the government could not even make out any prima facie case against him at a hearing.
What about Israel's bomb-making capacity?
What if Israel finds itself in a situation in which it feels justified that it should use its nuclear option and some neutral country is upwind of radioactive fallout?
South Africa reverted to a non-nuclear status without any adverse consequences. Israel should consider dismantling its atomic arsenal.
There are virtually no Israelis that want to give the Palestinians citizenship as that would necessarily confer voting rights that would result in Israel losing a great degree if not all of its character as a Jewish state.
Right now about 21% of the citizens of Israel are Arabic and that only gives them a small number of seats in the Knesset and little else politically. That number swells to well over 40% if citizenship is extended to Arabs in the Occupied Territories and a projected Arab majority within a few decades.
Earlier this year Fatah had rallies in Gaza that were attended by thousands and thousands of Gazans.
Hamas is actually more liberal than Palestinian Islamic Jihad and various Gazan militia groups, some of which have given their allegiance to al-Qaeda. Hamas leaders have been targeted for assassination by extremist Gazan elements.
Hamas popularity arose largely from their resistance to Israel. However, their repressive social agenda against their own people has harmed their political fortunes more than Israel could do through its blockade and history of military action.
During the Operation Cast Lead incursion, it was the extremist groups within Gaza that drew the heaviest proportion of casualties engaging the IDF. The Hamas leadership and militants largely avoided direct conflict with Israeli forces. Hamas nevertheless has maintained control of the government in Gaza since that time despite a recent spike in popularity of secular political movements within Gaza. Israel's lessening of its materials blockade may encourage Hamas to make peace with the P.L.O/Fatah leadership.
The first things that local police departemnts look to do when obtaining a search warrant in any criminal investigation is to seize computers and cell phones. They provide a wealth of information on a suspect. Text messages are invaluable.
I have seen several cases where the police had no strong case against a subject in an investigation, but a search warrant execution uncovered proof about completely unrelated illegal conduct, which resulted in criminal charges that were solid. Evidence of gambling, child pornography downloading, adultery, and illicit drug transactions are common examples of criminal (or highly embarrassing)conduct often serendipitously revealed by police access to computers or cell phones. With no search warrant, the law enforcement authorities have exponentially greater access to a citizen's personal life.