Pro-Israel Group Slams Rice Meeting With Syrian FM
By Julie Stahl
CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief
May 03, 2007
Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - In a move criticized by a pro-Israel U.S. organization, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with her Syrian counterpart on Thursday, possibly signaling a shift in Bush administration policy towards a country designated by the State Department as a sponsor of terror.
Rice met with Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on the sidelines of a two-day conference in Egypt intended to discuss the future of Iraq. It's the first meeting between such senior American and Syrian officials in several years.
The U.S. has maintained a policy of economic and political isolation toward Syria since it withdrew its ambassador from Damascus in February 2005 following reports alleging Syrian involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who opposed Syrian domination of his country.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) recently challenged that policy when she met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus. Other U.S. lawmakers have traveled to Syria in recent times, but Pelosi was the most senior to do so.
President Bush last December rejected a recommendation by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group - co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former U.S. Congressman Lee Hamilton - to engage Syria and Iran as part of the plan to bring calm to Iraq.
Experts said at the time that Syria and Iran would extract a price from the U.S. for their cooperation in Iraq, with some predicting that Syria would demand that the international community back off in its pursuit of the Hariri assassins. An international investigation has implicated senior Syrian officials in the killing.
Analysts also said the U.S. would likely push Israel to return the strategic Golan Heights, captured from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War - another Baker-Hamilton recommendation.
"We think this is a serious mistake," Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, said of the U.S.-Syria meeting.
"When the U.S. meets with an official of a state on the U.S. list of terrorist countries, we simply legitimize their terrorist actions and send the message that we are not holding them strongly accountable for their actions," Klein told Cybercast News Service by telephone.
Until the Syrians close down the 10 terrorist groups with offices in Damascus and stop facilitating the transfer of weapons from Iran to Hizballah, the U.S. should be "isolating them and not embracing them," said Klein.
Among the groups hosted by Syria are the Palestinian factions Hamas and Islamic Jihad, responsible for the deaths and injuries of hundreds of Israelis - and some Americans - in suicide bombings and terrorist attacks since 1994.
In 2003, Syrian President Bashar Assad flatly refused a U.S. request to shut down the headquarters of Palestinian terrorist organizations in Damascus. Assad said they were merely public relations offices.
Klein called the meeting between Rice and Muallem "especially troubling" in light of the fact that the Bush administration sharply condemned the Pelosi-Assad meeting last month. "It makes a mockery of the criticism," he said.
Klein said the meeting made no sense, but he speculated that Washington may be hoping to deflect anti-American criticism in the Muslim world by meeting with a senior Syrian official.
Klein said he worried that the meeting may signal the beginning of a new U.S. push on Israel to surrender the Golan Heights.
The Republican Jewish Coalition, which was highly critical of Pelosi's visit to Damascus and launched an ad campaign against it, said Thursday it would not comment on the Rice-Muallem meeting.
The pro-Israel lobby AIPAC also had no immediate comment on the meeting.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said ahead of the meeting that it would focus "exclusively on issues related to Iraq." The U.S. accuses Syria of allowing insurgents to cross its border into Iraq to fight allied troops.
An Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was no "direct correlation" between the Rice-Muallem meeting and Israel.
"This has nothing to do with us," she said. "The Americans have a serious problem in Iraq. They have to find a policy that works in Iraq."
Rice also spoke with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, although McCormack played down the encounter: "They said hello, that's about it."
The meeting on Iraq opened Thursday in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, with a plea from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for countries to forgive his country's debt to facilitate its reconstruction program.
Iraqi foreign debts are estimated at some $50 billion, according to reports. The Paris Club of lender nations has already written off another $100 billion.
Earlier al-Maliki was quoted as telling Rice that "a rapprochement" needed to take place between the U.S. and regional players, especially Syria and Iran, in order to solve the issue of Iraq.
"All of us here today are bound to the future of Iraq. What happens in Iraq has profound consequences which will affect each and every one of us," Rice said in a speech at the conference.
Showing posts with label AIPAC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AIPAC. Show all posts
Friday, May 4, 2007
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Durbin's Casual Admission: Of Course the War is a Fraud
Sunday April 29th 2007, 9:33 am
Corporate Media Ignores Durbin’s Admission Iraq Invasion was Predicated on Lies
Corporate Media Ignores Durbin’s Admission Iraq Invasion was Predicated on Lies
Sworn to secrecy and responsible for the murder of nearly a million Iraqis and three thousand, possibly ten thousand U.S. soldiers, thus making not only Mr. Durbin a war criminal but the whole of Congress. Senators John D. Rockefeller IV and Carl Levin, members of the same intelligence committee as Durbin, are at the head of the war criminal list, right after Bush, Cheney and the neocons, because these “two Democrats said publicly before the war that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was intent on pursuing nuclear weapons,” that it to say they had the same information as Durbin.
In a somewhat more equitable and just world, the lot of them would be doing the perp walk in orange jumpsuits. Unfortunately, we live in a world nowhere near equitable and just, a world where men of Durbin’s caliber make statements indicating he knew, and obviously a lot of other Congress critters knew, the neocon invasion of Iraq was predicated on “intelligence failures,” i.e., absolute and calculated lies, and yet Durbin did not try to stop the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis because he was “sworn to secrecy.”
Beyond the Washington Times, this news is apparently not worth the light of day, as a Google News search produces a mere handful of results, most notably Fox News, which gave it a predictable spin, namely that Congress digested and embraced the engineered neocon lies about Saddam and his illusory weapons of mass destruction and the fairy tale that Saddam held tea and biscuit parties for “al-Qaeda” in Baghdad. All of this was plainly obvious at the time, but the corporate media eagerly disseminated neocon fabrications to a mostly indifferent and distracted American public, a can’t be bothered public almost as complicit in war crimes as Durbin.
Meanwhile, a “left-leaning, activist crowd,” according to the Boston Herald, enthusiastically welcomed war criminal Hillary and would-be war criminal Obama in California. “Obama, who has made his early opposition to the Iraq conflict a central theme of his campaign, told delegates he was proud to have bucked popular opinion at the time. It was a subtle but direct jab at Clinton, who voted in 2002 to grant Bush authority to invade Iraq.”
Plan Obama, however, does not set a withdrawal date and in fact would keep troops in Iraq for “counter-terrorism,” that is to say they would continue killing Iraqis opposed to the occupation of their country. Of course, Iraq is not Iran or Pakistan, two countries Obama affirms may need to be on the receiving end of “surgical missile strikes,” even though such would “further strain relations between the U.S. and the Arab world,” as the Chicago Tribune reported back in September, 2004. Apparently, this is not a big deal for the “left-leaning, activist crowd,” so long as it is a Democrat doing the killing and not a Bush neocon.
But then, of course, Democrats, even “left-leaning” Democrats, are not opposed to mass murder campaigns, as they supported Bill Clinton’s criminal bombing of Yugoslavia. “Democrats prefer Clinton wars and Republicans prefer Bush wars. But in the end, they almost unanimously come together to support all wars. The differences concern the choice of official rationale,” writes Diana Johnstone.
And, in regard to Iran, this “official rationale” differs little from that of the neocons. Speaking before AIPAC last month, Obama “said global leaders must do whatever it takes to stop Iran from enriching uranium and acquiring nuclear weapons,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times, and never mind there is no evidence of this dreaded acquirement. “Our job is to renew the United States’ efforts to help Israel achieve peace with its neighbors while remaining vigilant against those who do share this vision,” Obama told AIPAC.
In addition, Obama the “antiwar candidate” told AIPAC the “consequence of the Administration’s failed strategy in Iraq has been to strengthen Iran’s strategic position; reduce U.S. credibility and influence in the region; and place Israel and other nations friendly to the United States in greater peril.” In order to right this perceived wrong—that is, a wrong perceived by AIPAC, not the American people—Obama issued a “gloves-are-off memo” stating the United States, if he is selected as ruler, “wouldn’t rule out force” because job one of the neolib elite is “to never forget that the threat of violence is real.”
Indeed, the “threat of violence is real,” and it will continue to be so long as Democrats and Republicans lord over the political process, as they will come 2008.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Peeling the Onion
Saturday, April 28, 2007
What Heart of Darkness festers in the center of the Bush/Republican Onion?
We know and read about the small stuff. Of course, it really isn't small stuff; it's just small stuff "relative to" the big stuff -- you know, the treasonous stuff, the planet killing stuff, the 3rd millennia crusade against Islam stuff.
For openers, it's now common knowledge now that 9/11 could have been prevented. Dear God, they had a blizzard of warnings -- all ignored. But how many layers into the onion is the answer to WHY
these warnings were systematically ignored? What "payoff" did Bush & Cheney, etc. get by ignoring these warnings?
Most of us suspect that the answer is that 9/11 was ignored for treasonous political reasons. They knew that a terrorist attack would help Bush's political capital. Simple as that. Plus, there's also the possibility that 9/11 was (how shall we put it?) more than allowed . . .
Now that, my friends, is big BIG stuff!
The question is will the committees (especially the post 2008 committees) be able to shine legal/constitutional light on these all too realistic possibilities? Will they be able to prove once and for all that the fanatical neocons criminally betrayed America just to drag president pinhead out the political toilet he was in before 9/11?
And speaking of neocons, how far down into the onion are the deep roots of the neocon cabal? To what lunatic fringe of what country is the neocon lobby answering to? They certainly don't represent the well being and national security of the United States of America, as their track of record of failure, genocide, and bankruptcy of the American economy abundantly demonstrates. So are we ever going to find out who has "really" been pulling the strings of American foreign policy? And still is.
Of course, much of the core stuff we already know, even though we've spent most of our country's history being in denial about it. The last seven years have rubbed our patriotic faces in the infinitely ugly truth that our country is now (and always has been) a Dictatorship of the Rich. Said differently, this still is the Middle Ages and the one or two percent are still treating all the rest of us like cattle. We pay the taxes, we fight the wars (see any Bush's in Iraq?), and we clean their commodes. Here's just one of thousands of examples: in the last few years, Texas energy company profits of gone up SEVERAL HUNDRED percent. How are you doing at the pumps these days?
So, deep in the onion is a Class War, and boy are the middle and lower Classes getting slaughtered!
Lastly, where in the onion is hard evidence that things like global warming, expanding ozone holes, stifled medical research, etc., etc., are directly related to policies engineered by nutcase religious fanatics who actually WANT the Earth to die? Let's face it, George's Armageddon death wish is right there in that army of brain less religious fanatics who anticipate being "lifted up" any day now. Yeah, right. The point is, the rapturettes have made their choice, and it's ain't the Earth. The Earth is precisely what they can't wait to be "saved" from. Mother Nature for these people is not a mythological goddess, she's a whore to be used and abused.
And speaking of which, isn't it interesting that this whole complex of pug fundamentalists have so much contempt for anything feminine, e.g., "Mother" Nature. No, they like that 'ol time (male) religion that has always subjugated and exploited women.
Here's a final thought. What do you bet that somewhere in this filthy onion is organized crime? We shouldn't forget that the more constitutional governments disintegrate (like now!), the more organized crime has a feeding frenzy. Plus, the pugs are sure plugged into Florida . . .
**********************************************************************
W. Christopher Epler (Bill)
Posted by W. Christopher Epler at 2:57 PM
What Heart of Darkness festers in the center of the Bush/Republican Onion?
We know and read about the small stuff. Of course, it really isn't small stuff; it's just small stuff "relative to" the big stuff -- you know, the treasonous stuff, the planet killing stuff, the 3rd millennia crusade against Islam stuff.
For openers, it's now common knowledge now that 9/11 could have been prevented. Dear God, they had a blizzard of warnings -- all ignored. But how many layers into the onion is the answer to WHY
these warnings were systematically ignored? What "payoff" did Bush & Cheney, etc. get by ignoring these warnings?
Most of us suspect that the answer is that 9/11 was ignored for treasonous political reasons. They knew that a terrorist attack would help Bush's political capital. Simple as that. Plus, there's also the possibility that 9/11 was (how shall we put it?) more than allowed . . .
Now that, my friends, is big BIG stuff!
The question is will the committees (especially the post 2008 committees) be able to shine legal/constitutional light on these all too realistic possibilities? Will they be able to prove once and for all that the fanatical neocons criminally betrayed America just to drag president pinhead out the political toilet he was in before 9/11?
And speaking of neocons, how far down into the onion are the deep roots of the neocon cabal? To what lunatic fringe of what country is the neocon lobby answering to? They certainly don't represent the well being and national security of the United States of America, as their track of record of failure, genocide, and bankruptcy of the American economy abundantly demonstrates. So are we ever going to find out who has "really" been pulling the strings of American foreign policy? And still is.
Of course, much of the core stuff we already know, even though we've spent most of our country's history being in denial about it. The last seven years have rubbed our patriotic faces in the infinitely ugly truth that our country is now (and always has been) a Dictatorship of the Rich. Said differently, this still is the Middle Ages and the one or two percent are still treating all the rest of us like cattle. We pay the taxes, we fight the wars (see any Bush's in Iraq?), and we clean their commodes. Here's just one of thousands of examples: in the last few years, Texas energy company profits of gone up SEVERAL HUNDRED percent. How are you doing at the pumps these days?
So, deep in the onion is a Class War, and boy are the middle and lower Classes getting slaughtered!
Lastly, where in the onion is hard evidence that things like global warming, expanding ozone holes, stifled medical research, etc., etc., are directly related to policies engineered by nutcase religious fanatics who actually WANT the Earth to die? Let's face it, George's Armageddon death wish is right there in that army of brain less religious fanatics who anticipate being "lifted up" any day now. Yeah, right. The point is, the rapturettes have made their choice, and it's ain't the Earth. The Earth is precisely what they can't wait to be "saved" from. Mother Nature for these people is not a mythological goddess, she's a whore to be used and abused.
And speaking of which, isn't it interesting that this whole complex of pug fundamentalists have so much contempt for anything feminine, e.g., "Mother" Nature. No, they like that 'ol time (male) religion that has always subjugated and exploited women.
Here's a final thought. What do you bet that somewhere in this filthy onion is organized crime? We shouldn't forget that the more constitutional governments disintegrate (like now!), the more organized crime has a feeding frenzy. Plus, the pugs are sure plugged into Florida . . .
**********************************************************************
W. Christopher Epler (Bill)
Posted by W. Christopher Epler at 2:57 PM
Monday, April 23, 2007
Levin gives Cheney reason to smirk
BY RAY McGOVERN
Never before have I felt such irk from a Cheney smirk -- the one with which he confidently assured CBS's Bob Schieffer on Sunday's "Face the Nation" that the Democrats will continue to vote to fund the war without including serious restrictions.
Cheney referred approvingly to the fact that "Carl Levin, who's chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has indicated that they definitely do want to pass funding for the troops."
Cheney expressed confidence that the Democrats will "not leave America's fighting forces in harm's way without the resources they need to defend themselves." And yes, the vice president went on to reassure viewers, against all evidence to the contrary: "We are making progress."
The administration's main objective could hardly be clearer, even to mainstream pundits allergic to spelling it out. By waving the flag of patriotism, the White House is confident it can continue to intimidate enough Democrats to get the only thing it really wants: enough money to stave off defeat in Iraq until President George W. Bush and Cheney are safely out of office. That, of course, also explains the foredoomed "surge" in troop strength.
But how is it that Cheney can enlist the likes of Carl Levin in a policy built on the backs of American troops? Based on recent casualty rates, some 1,500 American troops already "in harm's way" will die, and several times that number will be wounded before Cheney and Bush leave office -- not to mention the ever mounting casualties among Iraqis.
Is Cheney exaggerating the support he sees in Levin? Apparently not. The senior senator from Michigan seems ready to provide additional funding for the war, no matter what. On April 8, right after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced he would cosponsor legislation cutting off all funding for combat troops after March 31, 2008, Levin undercut him by telling ABC's "This Week": "We're not going to vote to cut the funding, period. ... We're not going to cut off funding for the troops. We shouldn't cut off funding for the troops. ... We're going to vote for a bill that funds the troops, period. We're going to fund the troops. We always have."
Got that?
What would prompt Levin to undermine his own majority leader? Levin was challenged on that point last Sunday at the University of Michigan. He replied that cutting funding for the war is what Rush Limbaugh wants and would play into Bush's hands. The Democrats would probably lose a battle over funding and end up looking "really bad," added Levin.
Not very persuasive, senator -- not when more and more are getting killed in Iraq every day.
Levin may be concerned about things other than looking bad. Those taking part in last month's meeting of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington heard stern warnings from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni that America not show "weakness" on Iraq -- warnings that a U.S. troop withdrawal would make the neighborhood far more dangerous for Israel.
Federal Election Commission records show that Levin has received more money from pro-Israel political action committees than any other senator. But, given his distinguished record, it would seem appropriate to give him the benefit of the doubt. It seems less likely that he is influenced by the money than by his penchant to see little or no daylight between what he perceives to be Israel's interests and those of the United States.
This appears to be the kind of "passionate attachment" against which George Washington warned so strongly in his farewell address more than 200 years ago.
RAY McGOVERN was a CIA analyst for 27 years and is now on the steering group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Write to him in care of the Free Press Editorial Page, 600 W. Fort St., Detroit 48226 or oped@freepress.com.
Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.
Is Mainstream Corporate Media subverting the AIPAC Spy Trial?
4/21/2007 Opinion Essay
Graymail and Freedom of the Press
by Grant F. Smith
The Associated Press reported a major victory for defendants in the AIPAC espionage trial on April 17th, 2007. "Prosecutors suffered a setback yesterday in their case against two former pro-Israel lobbyists accused of violating the 1917 Espionage Act when a federal judge rejected the government's proposal for conducting much of the trial in secret." The presiding judge, T. S. Ellis III underscored the gravity of the situation. "If the prosecution decline[s] to submit any substitutions [for classified evidence] that you would ever make public, then maybe ... I have to decide whether to dismiss the indictment, if that's the case."
Graymail and Freedom of the Press
by Grant F. Smith
The Associated Press reported a major victory for defendants in the AIPAC espionage trial on April 17th, 2007. "Prosecutors suffered a setback yesterday in their case against two former pro-Israel lobbyists accused of violating the 1917 Espionage Act when a federal judge rejected the government's proposal for conducting much of the trial in secret." The presiding judge, T. S. Ellis III underscored the gravity of the situation. "If the prosecution decline[s] to submit any substitutions [for classified evidence] that you would ever make public, then maybe ... I have to decide whether to dismiss the indictment, if that's the case."
As various elements of the Israel lobby trumpet the ruling as a victory for free speech, it is useful to review not only the involvement of mainstream corporate media in trafficking classified information in the AIPAC espionage case, but also their past record on secret evidence in other high profile criminal cases.
Mainstream media's formal legal foray into the AIPAC case was triggered by a government motion. On February 16, 2007 federal prosecutors filed a "Classified Intelligence Procedures Act" (CIPA) motion with the contents sealed from public view. CIPA is an established process under which courts operate when classified information is expected to be used at trial. In response, defendants Rosen and Weissman filed a sealed motion to strike the CIPA requests and the government's motion to close the trial.
On March 13, 2007 attorney Jay Ward Brown filed a motion to intervene (PDF) and argue against the DOJ prosecutors' proposal to "limit public access to classified portions of the trial proceedings." Brown filed the motion on behalf of elite media clients including the Newspaper Guild, Communications Workers of America, Radio-Television News Directors Association, Reuters America LLC, Society of Professional Journalists, Time, Inc., The Washington Post, Hearst Corp., Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, ABC, Inc., American Society of Newspaper Editors, The Associated Press, Dow Jones & Company, Inc., and the Newspaper Association of America, Inc. The collective pressure and threat brought to bear on Judge T.S. Ellis was implicit in the motion: Any attempt to introduce classified evidence or protect sources and methods with closed proceedings would be widely reported on as Soviet era secrecy in a kangaroo court.
Titled an "Emergency Motion for Leave to Intervene", the filing sought to keep the trial completely open, ostensibly in the interest of press coverage. The motion also subtly expresses mainstream media preconceptions about the trial, stating in the filing the case is worth coverage because of the "unusual factual circumstances that gave rise to their (Rosen and Weissman) indictment" and that the case involves an "unprecedented application of the Espionage Act". The court docket (PDF) reveals this is only the latest skirmish in a legal battle that has been raging for well over a year and a half, though the trial is scheduled to begin on June 4, 2007.
On the surface this seems to be a triumph of a free press over government secrecy. However, the involvement of the elite media in the AIPAC espionage trial goes far beyond the motion or what they routinely report. A few of the same corporate news outlets filing the motion were willingly used by Weissman and Rosen to disseminate classified information to further AIPAC's policy objectives. On July 21, 2004, Weissman and Rosen called Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler to pass information that they said was from "an American intelligence source". That source is now known to be Col. Lawrence Franklin, a DoD employee sentenced to 12 years in prison. The Israel lobbyists were hoping to influence US policy on Iran. In 2003 Rosen relayed classified information to Reuters correspondent Carol Giacomo and Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs about the contents of confidential drafts of a US presidential directive advocating a more aggressive US posture toward Iran. Dobbs included the classified information in a story two weeks later.
Another AIPAC motion to intervene filer, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, clarified the mainstream corporate media's collective desire to continue serving as a willing conduit for selectively released classified information, According to Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, "Journalists who cover national security and defense receive classified information all the time, It's virtually routine. If that were the standard for bringing an espionage case, we'd be locking up a lot of people in this town and there would be fewer sources of information."
Notwithstanding the press's apparent willingness to be used to further AIPAC or any other lobbies' policy objectives by selective disclosure of classified information, secrecy in trials raises questions. Does the elite media's own reporting record reveal a consistent industrywide commitment calling for disclosure of secret evidence in all high profile criminal trials? It does not.
The New York Times chided the Iran Contra trial defense of Oliver North in an article titled "North's Lawyers Trying to Derail Prosecutor's Plan" published in 1989. Reporter Michael Wines reported, "The Federal judge in the Iran-contra case today rejected the bulk of Oliver L. North's demand to use 30,000 pages of secret documents as evidence in his defense, accusing Mr. North of making the request in a calculated effort to 'frustrate the prosecution.''' Another AIPAC espionage motion filer, Time Inc., also had a different take on classified evidence in an earlier era. Time reporter George J. Church wrote in a piece called Top-Secret Strategy that the North defense appeals for public access to classified information was despicable "graymail". Church elaborated that, "North's strategy, it seems, is to threaten to disclose embarrassing secrets if the Government will not drop the trial. In the bitter words of Robin Ross, chief aide to Attorney General Thornburgh, 'This great American hero is graymailing the Government. This is the guy who stood up in his Marine Corps uniform and all his medals, and now he is sticking it to the Government with an advantage (knowledge of secrets) he got through service to his country.'"
What about spies for foreign countries like Russia? According to the case docket of FBI spy for Russia Robert Hanssen, the mainstream corporate press did not at any time file urgent briefs, even though the bulk of the evidence trafficked by Hanssen to be used against him in court would have been highly classified.
In the rarified world of elite mainstream corporate media, if a defendant like Oliver North attempts to introduce classified information as evidence, it is "graymail." If defendants Weissman and Rosen attempt to similarly force the revelation of classified information, possibly "outing" sources and methods used to protect the US against Israeli espionage, well that's simply freedom of the press. This double standard is unfortunate.
The stakes in the AIPAC espionage case could not be higher. The AIPAC espionage case, if it comes to trial, could redefine the role of lobbies, the mainstream press and think tanks operating in Washington, DC. It is not yet clear whether average Americans approve of Washington's hidden world of selective third party disclosure and trafficking in classified information. It is also not known whether selectively disclosed and leveraged classified information fed to the "free press" has played a wider, unknown role in promoting misguided war, wasteful military spending, and perpetuating the influence of the Israel lobby. The Washington Post's own Walter Pincus, who has been rather sloppy in bringing facts about the case to his readership, now gloats that the prosecution now has only two weeks to find effective substitutes for reams of classified transcripts. We must ask whether, thanks to the legal intervention of the elite mainstream corporate media, we will ever obtain the answers to dire and burning questions of public interest.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
ANALYSIS: Court Rules That AIPAC Trial Must Be Open
Court Rules That AIPAC Trial Must Be Open
A federal court this week rejected a government proposal to restrict public access to evidence in the forthcoming trial of two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who are charged under the Espionage Act with unauthorized receipt and transmission of classified information.
Using a procedure called the Silent Witness Rule, the prosecution had proposed to present classified evidence to the jury but to withhold it from the public and from open deliberation during trial.
"I think it is fair to say that the government's proposal is novel," said Judge T.S. Ellis, III on April 16.
But he said that because the evidence could not be openly addressed in court, the proposed procedure "would render virtually impossible an effective line of cross-examination that might be vital to the defense."
Therefore, the judge ruled, "you can't do it. It closes the trial. It's unconstitutional. It's unfair to the defendants."
Explaining what is at stake, Judge Ellis elaborated:
"A public trial requires witnesses' testimony to be public, so it deters perjury. It requires a judge's rulings to be made in public, as today, so it deters partiality and bias. And by requiring prosecutors to present their charges and evidence publicly, it deters vindictiveness and abuse of power."
Another "novel and distinctive" feature of the government proposal noted by Judge Ellis is that prosecutors were prepared to share classified evidence with jurors who do not hold security clearances. ("Interestingly, there is some authority for that," he observed.)
More dubiously, the judge said, "the government's proposed procedure treats even certain selected public domain documents, including news reports, as if they were classified documents."
At any rate, while the government may suggest unclassified substitutions for classified evidence (as provided by the Classified Information Procedures Act), the proposal to withhold evidence from the public altogether was decisively rejected.
At the conclusion of the April 16 hearing it was unclear how the government would proceed, and even whether the trial itself could go forward.
If the prosecution "decline[s] to submit any substitutions [for classified evidence] that you would ever make public," Judge Ellis warned, "then maybe ... I have decide whether to dismiss the indictment, if that's the case."
The transcript of the April 16 hearing provided substantive discussion of the issues involved in handling classified evidence and the importance of open trials, along with some intense legal maneuvering and occasional flashes of humor. A copy was obtained by Secrecy News.
A follow-up hearing was scheduled this afternoon (April 20) to identify the prosecution's next step.
US-Israel ties bad for peace: Soros
George Soros, the billionaire investor, has added his voice to the debate over the role of Israel's lobby in shaping US foreign policy.
In the current issue of the New York Review of Books, Soros takes issue with "the pervasive influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC]" in Washington and says the Bush administration's close ties with Israel are obstacles to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
Soros, who is Jewish but not often engaged in Israeli affairs, echoed arguments that have fuelled debate in academia, foreign policy think tanks and parts of the US Jewish community.
"The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism," wrote Soros. Politicians challenge it at their peril and dissenters risk personal vilification, he said.
AIPAC has consistently declined comment on such charges, but many of its supporters have been vocal in dismissing them.
Historian Michael Oren, speaking at AIPAC's 2007 conference in March, said the group was not merely a lobby for Israel. "It is the embodiment of a conviction as old as this (American) nation itself that belief in the Jewish state is tantamount to belief in these United States," he said in a keynote speech.
The long-simmering debate bubbled to the surface a year ago, when two prominent academics, Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, published a 12,500-word essay entitled "The Israel Lobby" and featuring the fiercest criticism of AIPAC since it was founded in 1953.
AIPAC now has more than 100,000 members and is rated one of the most influential special interest groups in the United States, its political clout comparable with such lobbies as the National Rifle Association.
The AIPAC members are all US citizens and the group receives no funding from the Israeli government.
Its annual conference in Washington attracts a Who's Who of American politics, both Republicans and Democrats.
Unwavering support
Mearsheimer and Walt said the lobby had persuaded successive administrations to align themselves too closely with Israel.
"The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism"
George Soros, the billionaire investor
"The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but much of the rest of the world," they wrote.
No other lobby group has managed to divert US foreign policy so far from the US national interest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of Israel are essentially identical, they wrote.
The two academics said that pressure from Israel and its lobby in Washington played an important role in President George Bush's decision to attack Iraq, an arch-enemy of Israel, in 2003.
Mearsheimer and Walt found no takers for their essay in the US publishing world. When it was eventually published in the London Review of Books, they noted it would be hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet in the United States publishing such a piece.
It has been drawing criticism that ranged from shoddy scholarship to anti-Semitism, chiefly from conservative fellow academics and political supporters of the present relationship between Washington and Israel.
In his contribution to the debate, Soros said: "A much-needed self-examination of American policy in the Middle East has started in this country; but it can't make much headway as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the Democratic and Republican parties."
That influence is reflected by the fact that Israel is the largest recipient of US aid in the world.
Going mainstream
Mearsheimer and Walt are now working on expanding their article into a book - to be published in September by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The company has not commented on online reports that it paid the two authors a $750,000 advance and plans to print one million copies.
Another mainstream publisher, Simon and Schuster, already discovered that not only is it possible to publish criticism of Israel but it can also be good for the bottom line.
Former president Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" shot up the bestseller lists after its publication last November; stayed there for more than three months and is still selling well.
It had an initial print run of 300,000 copies and there are now 485,000 copies in print, said Victoria Meyer, a spokeswoman for Simon and Schuster.
Carter's book and its reference to apartheid provoked angry reactions - more in the United States than in Israel, where leftists opposed to the occupation of the West Bank have been accusing the government of apartheid practices for years and where the word has lost its shock value.
In response to charges of bias and anti-Semitism, Carter said he wanted to provoke a discussion of issues debated routinely and freely in Israel but rarely in the United States.
"This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices," he wrote in the Los Angeles Times during a tour to promote his book. "It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine."
According to Oren, the pro-AIPAC historian, the Carter book and the Mearsheimer-Walt paper had the same "insidious thesis" and suffered from the same flaw - ignoring oil as a driving element in US policies on the Middle East.
In the current issue of the New York Review of Books, Soros takes issue with "the pervasive influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC]" in Washington and says the Bush administration's close ties with Israel are obstacles to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
Soros, who is Jewish but not often engaged in Israeli affairs, echoed arguments that have fuelled debate in academia, foreign policy think tanks and parts of the US Jewish community.
"The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism," wrote Soros. Politicians challenge it at their peril and dissenters risk personal vilification, he said.
AIPAC has consistently declined comment on such charges, but many of its supporters have been vocal in dismissing them.
Historian Michael Oren, speaking at AIPAC's 2007 conference in March, said the group was not merely a lobby for Israel. "It is the embodiment of a conviction as old as this (American) nation itself that belief in the Jewish state is tantamount to belief in these United States," he said in a keynote speech.
The long-simmering debate bubbled to the surface a year ago, when two prominent academics, Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, published a 12,500-word essay entitled "The Israel Lobby" and featuring the fiercest criticism of AIPAC since it was founded in 1953.
AIPAC now has more than 100,000 members and is rated one of the most influential special interest groups in the United States, its political clout comparable with such lobbies as the National Rifle Association.
The AIPAC members are all US citizens and the group receives no funding from the Israeli government.
Its annual conference in Washington attracts a Who's Who of American politics, both Republicans and Democrats.
Unwavering support
Mearsheimer and Walt said the lobby had persuaded successive administrations to align themselves too closely with Israel.
"The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism"
George Soros, the billionaire investor
"The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but much of the rest of the world," they wrote.
No other lobby group has managed to divert US foreign policy so far from the US national interest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of Israel are essentially identical, they wrote.
The two academics said that pressure from Israel and its lobby in Washington played an important role in President George Bush's decision to attack Iraq, an arch-enemy of Israel, in 2003.
Mearsheimer and Walt found no takers for their essay in the US publishing world. When it was eventually published in the London Review of Books, they noted it would be hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet in the United States publishing such a piece.
It has been drawing criticism that ranged from shoddy scholarship to anti-Semitism, chiefly from conservative fellow academics and political supporters of the present relationship between Washington and Israel.
In his contribution to the debate, Soros said: "A much-needed self-examination of American policy in the Middle East has started in this country; but it can't make much headway as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the Democratic and Republican parties."
That influence is reflected by the fact that Israel is the largest recipient of US aid in the world.
Going mainstream
Mearsheimer and Walt are now working on expanding their article into a book - to be published in September by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The company has not commented on online reports that it paid the two authors a $750,000 advance and plans to print one million copies.
Another mainstream publisher, Simon and Schuster, already discovered that not only is it possible to publish criticism of Israel but it can also be good for the bottom line.
Former president Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" shot up the bestseller lists after its publication last November; stayed there for more than three months and is still selling well.
It had an initial print run of 300,000 copies and there are now 485,000 copies in print, said Victoria Meyer, a spokeswoman for Simon and Schuster.
Carter's book and its reference to apartheid provoked angry reactions - more in the United States than in Israel, where leftists opposed to the occupation of the West Bank have been accusing the government of apartheid practices for years and where the word has lost its shock value.
In response to charges of bias and anti-Semitism, Carter said he wanted to provoke a discussion of issues debated routinely and freely in Israel but rarely in the United States.
"This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices," he wrote in the Los Angeles Times during a tour to promote his book. "It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine."
According to Oren, the pro-AIPAC historian, the Carter book and the Mearsheimer-Walt paper had the same "insidious thesis" and suffered from the same flaw - ignoring oil as a driving element in US policies on the Middle East.
New Phil Giraldi article about Sibel Edmonds, Waxman
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Former CIA officer Phil Giraldi has a new piece out in the April 23, 2007 print edition of the American Conservative about Sibel Edmonds and our call to have Henry Waxman hold hearings into her case.
Giraldi is an expert in Sibel's case and features prominently in the new film about Sibel, Kill The Messenger.
I've electronically liberated the article in full, all errors are mine etc.
California Congressman Henry Waxman's Oversight & Government Reform Committee has been investigating allegations that the Bush administration might be concealing something about the Niger document forgeries, that it maliciously outed CIA operative Valerie Plame, and that it has looked the other way over massive fraudulent contracting in Iraq. These investigations are admirable and very much in the public interest. He has been less interested in pursuing another matter, however. FBI whistle blower Sibel Edmonds and her numerous supporters both inside and outside of government have been urging Waxman to hold open hearings on her claims regarding malfeasance and corruption among high-level government officials.
Edmonds is subject to a State Secrets Privilege gag order initiated at the request of the Pentagon and State Department, but she has recently elaborated on her allegations, stating that investigations already carried out by the FBI would demonstrate that three former senior officials were involved in illegal weapons sales and other activities that would justify charges of espionage and possibly even treason against them. The three are leading Pentagon neoconservatives Douglas Feith and Richard Perle, as well as former State Department number three Marc Grossman. Edmonds is no crackpot and is considered to be a credible witness, most of whose charges were substantiated both by former FBI officials in 2002 and by the Department of Justice in 2005. Waxman appears to be uninterested in pursuing the matter, however, possibly because Israeli officials and the country's defense industry are believed to have been involved in the weapons diversion activity.
Congressman Waxman is regarded as close to Israel's principal lobby, AIPAC, and even promised Jewish voters back in November 2006 that there would be no Democratic congressional committee chairmen involved with Middle Eastern policy who were not completely supportive of Israel.
As Giraldi says in Kill The Messenger:
All of these people (Perle, Feith) have been investigated by the FBI at one point or another for passing secret information to Israel.I'm not yet ready to write-off the possibility that Waxman will hold hearings into Sibel's case. He has previously promised to do so, and we haven't yet heard from his office that he won't hold hearings. Congress has been in recess for the past two weeks and we'll be attempting to get him on the record one way or other this week. I've been told that a number of prominent-ish people tried to get Waxman to go on the record on Monday (yesterday) in response to Giraldi's new article to no avail - but surely he can't maintain that position, so in the meantime, no news is good news.
In no cases were any of them convicted. The prosecutions were dropped… in my opinion because of political pressure not to get into this kind of case that involves
'Israel' and 'Espionage'.
Oh - and for those of you who are saying 'Huh? AIPAC? Israel? I thought Sibel's case was about Turkey and the American Turkish Council (ATC)!' Sibel says that both AIPAC and the ATC both essentially operate as fronts for the same criminal organization. Or as Giraldi put it in his earlier article about Sibel's case:
On one level, (Sibel's) story appears straightforward: several Turkish lobbying groups allegedly bribed congressmen to support policies favourable to Ankara. But beyond that, the Edmonds revelations become more serpentine and appear to involve AIPAC, Israel and a number of leading neoconservatives who have profited from the Turkish connection.I'll keep you updated, of course. Stay tuned, and thanks for your help & support, again.
Peace Movement Must Take on AIPAC
AIPAC (the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) is the driving force behind America's uber-aggressive foreign policy. Unless the pro-peace movement takes them and their rhetoric -- not to mention their outright disloyalty on -- then we will not get anywhere in our efforts to stop future wars against Iran, Syria, and the rest of the Middle East.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Behind George Soros' Fight With AIPAC
April 16, 2007 (LPAC)--The April 12, 2007 issue of the New York Review of Books contains a lengthy article by mega-speculator and Democratic Party moneybags George Soros, attacking the Bush Administration, the neoconservatives, and AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) for sabotaging opportunities for a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict and the broader Middle East peace accord. Soros blames AIPAC for the U.S. government's refusal to recognize the new Palestinian Authority national unity government, and for blocking a Congressional demand that the President come to Congress before launching any attack on Iran.
Soros' carefully worded article focused on the urgent need to settle the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: "I believe that a much-neeeded self-examination of American policy in the Middle East has started in this country; but it can't make much headway as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Some leaders of the Democratic Party have promised to bring about a change of direction but they cannot deliver on that promise until they are able to resist the dictates of AIPAC. Palestine is a place of critical importance," Soros continued, "where positive change is still possible. Iraq is largely beyond our control; but if we succeeded in settling the Palestinian problem we would be in a much better position to engage in negotiations with Iran and extricate ourselves from Iraq. The need for a peace settlement in Palestine is greater than ever. Both for the sake of Israel and the United States, it is highly desirable that the Saudi peace initiative should succeed; but AIPAC stands in the way. It continues to oppose dealing with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas."
Soros concludes with a fervent pitch for a debate within the American Jewish community on the future of the Middle East. "Whether the Democratic Party can liberate itself from AIPAC's influence is highly doubtful," he wrote. "Any politician who dares to expose AIPAC's influence would incur its wrath; so very few can be expected to do so. It is up to the American Jewish community itself to rein in the organization that claims to represent it. But this is not possible without first disposing of the most insidious argument put forward by the defenders of the current policies; that the critics of Israel's policies of occupation, control, and repression on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and Gaza engender anti-Semitism. The opposite is the case.... A debate within the Jewish community, instead of fomenting anti-Semitism, would only help diminish it."
Sources familiar with the Soros-AIPAC controversy report that AIPAC has been involved in a smear campaign against Soros because, among other reasons, Soros' Open Society Fund has bankrolled the revival of Jewish communities in many areas of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, whereas AIPAC's backers believe that all of world Jewry should be living in Israel. Soros' views, expressed in the New York Review of Books piece, are also shared by a significant segment of the Israeli political establishment, and reflect a debate that is raging behind the scenes in the European Jewish community, according to the sources.
Soros' carefully worded article focused on the urgent need to settle the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: "I believe that a much-neeeded self-examination of American policy in the Middle East has started in this country; but it can't make much headway as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Some leaders of the Democratic Party have promised to bring about a change of direction but they cannot deliver on that promise until they are able to resist the dictates of AIPAC. Palestine is a place of critical importance," Soros continued, "where positive change is still possible. Iraq is largely beyond our control; but if we succeeded in settling the Palestinian problem we would be in a much better position to engage in negotiations with Iran and extricate ourselves from Iraq. The need for a peace settlement in Palestine is greater than ever. Both for the sake of Israel and the United States, it is highly desirable that the Saudi peace initiative should succeed; but AIPAC stands in the way. It continues to oppose dealing with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas."
Soros concludes with a fervent pitch for a debate within the American Jewish community on the future of the Middle East. "Whether the Democratic Party can liberate itself from AIPAC's influence is highly doubtful," he wrote. "Any politician who dares to expose AIPAC's influence would incur its wrath; so very few can be expected to do so. It is up to the American Jewish community itself to rein in the organization that claims to represent it. But this is not possible without first disposing of the most insidious argument put forward by the defenders of the current policies; that the critics of Israel's policies of occupation, control, and repression on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and Gaza engender anti-Semitism. The opposite is the case.... A debate within the Jewish community, instead of fomenting anti-Semitism, would only help diminish it."
Sources familiar with the Soros-AIPAC controversy report that AIPAC has been involved in a smear campaign against Soros because, among other reasons, Soros' Open Society Fund has bankrolled the revival of Jewish communities in many areas of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, whereas AIPAC's backers believe that all of world Jewry should be living in Israel. Soros' views, expressed in the New York Review of Books piece, are also shared by a significant segment of the Israeli political establishment, and reflect a debate that is raging behind the scenes in the European Jewish community, according to the sources.
Dems divided over Webb’s proposal requiring approval for attacking Iran
By Elana Schor
April 18, 2007
Supporters of requiring President Bush to secure congressional approval for any preemptive strike on Iran are regrouping for a new push, presaging a difficult vote for Democratic leaders and presidential hopefuls alike.
Democrats hailed the Iraq withdrawal language attached to the emergency supplemental as a signal of a newly assertive Congress, even though the House removed a mandate for authorization of attacks on Iran from early drafts of the bill. The reversal quieted some Democrats’ concerns that reining in Bush on Iran could endanger Israel’s security in the Middle East.
Iran is likely to reappear on the agenda this spring, however, as Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) considers adding his language on the issue to the defense authorization bill and House Democrats hold their leadership to a promise for a roll-call vote.
“There is no hand-tying here. We’re not taking options off the table,” Webb spokeswoman Jessica Smith said. “He offered this piece of legislation to restore the proper balance between the executive and legislative branch. This is a bill to empower Congress.”
For many Democratic base voters, Webb’s Iran language is also a litmus test for presidential candidates. White House assertions that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is tied to Iraqi insurgent groups makes opposition to a possible war with Iran as crucial as opposition to the Iraq war for Democrats running in 2008.
Tom Andrews, the former Democratic lawmaker now leading the anti-war group Win Without War, said the party’s White House hopefuls should see Webb’s plan as a no-brainer.
“The idea that you could not support prohibiting a military strike, given the conditions that are on [Webb’s measure] … certainly raises serious questions in our community,” Andrews said.
Former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) and Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) are the only 2008 Democrats on record as backing Webb’s effort. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) took the Bush administration to task on Iran in a Feb. 14 floor speech, supporting the spirit of Webb’s effort, if not his specific language.
“It would be a mistake of historical proportion if the administration thought that the 2002 resolution authorizing force against Iraq was a blank check for the use of force against Iran without further congressional authorization,” Clinton said.
When asked whether Clinton would vote for Webb’s language, a spokesman for the New Yorker took a wait-and-see approach, saying it depends on the format in which it reaches the floor.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has also kept mum on Webb’s language, which includes multiple exceptions in case of an attack on Iran or Iranian hostility in Iraq. But Obama took an interest in Webb’s push during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last month with Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns.
Obama asked whether Bush believes he has presumptive authority to attack Iran, to which Burns responded: “It’s the position of our government that the president obviously has the constitutional duty to protect the American people … and as commander in chief has to be able to exercise that authority as he sees fit.”
“I think you meant, ‘it’s the position of our administration’ as opposed to ‘our government,’” Obama replied.
Iran’s recent saber-rattling detention of a British naval crew, which ended in the soldiers’ safe release, appears to have sparked less escalation than expected between Bush and Ahmadinejad. But pro-Israel stalwarts such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) see any curb on U.S. action against Iran as a potential handcuff in Iraq.
“What if the president decides, at the request of General Petraeus, that we have to take action to take out [an Iranian] base?” Lieberman said yesterday. “I wouldn’t want to have to go through a month-long debate in Congress before you could do that.”
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Washington’s most influential pro-Israel lobbying group, held its capital policy conference just after the House removed Iran authorization language from its version of the supplemental. AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr told members there that any legislative attempt to limit U.S. options in Iran would be harmful and signal weakness.
In addition to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) support, Webb has the public backing of Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). In the House, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) said through a spokesman that he would hold Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to her vow for a recorded vote on Iran authorization language.
“I think it will pass because there isn’t a thinking person in the world that believes the President when he says won’t launch a military strike against Iran,” McDermott said. “Even conservative Republicans are worried about the president’s lack of credibility.”
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) echoed McDermott’s intentions.
“The Bush administration has already misled our nation into one unnecessary preemptive war under false pretenses, and Congress needs to make it perfectly clear that he does not have the authority to take us down the same road with Iran,” Lee said in an e-mail.
The multilateralist group Just Foreign Policy marshaled supporters of the Webb amendment during the supplemental debate last month. Antiwar groups including Peace Action and United for Peace and Justice joined in by organizing grassroots call-ins to Senate offices urging a vote on the Webb language.
“The Senate is going to feel the pressure to pass this provision soon,” Robert Naiman, national coordinator of Just Foreign Policy, wrote on the group’s website. Among its board members are Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP, and Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future.
April 18, 2007
Supporters of requiring President Bush to secure congressional approval for any preemptive strike on Iran are regrouping for a new push, presaging a difficult vote for Democratic leaders and presidential hopefuls alike.
Democrats hailed the Iraq withdrawal language attached to the emergency supplemental as a signal of a newly assertive Congress, even though the House removed a mandate for authorization of attacks on Iran from early drafts of the bill. The reversal quieted some Democrats’ concerns that reining in Bush on Iran could endanger Israel’s security in the Middle East.
Iran is likely to reappear on the agenda this spring, however, as Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) considers adding his language on the issue to the defense authorization bill and House Democrats hold their leadership to a promise for a roll-call vote.
“There is no hand-tying here. We’re not taking options off the table,” Webb spokeswoman Jessica Smith said. “He offered this piece of legislation to restore the proper balance between the executive and legislative branch. This is a bill to empower Congress.”
For many Democratic base voters, Webb’s Iran language is also a litmus test for presidential candidates. White House assertions that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is tied to Iraqi insurgent groups makes opposition to a possible war with Iran as crucial as opposition to the Iraq war for Democrats running in 2008.
Tom Andrews, the former Democratic lawmaker now leading the anti-war group Win Without War, said the party’s White House hopefuls should see Webb’s plan as a no-brainer.
“The idea that you could not support prohibiting a military strike, given the conditions that are on [Webb’s measure] … certainly raises serious questions in our community,” Andrews said.
Former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) and Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) are the only 2008 Democrats on record as backing Webb’s effort. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) took the Bush administration to task on Iran in a Feb. 14 floor speech, supporting the spirit of Webb’s effort, if not his specific language.
“It would be a mistake of historical proportion if the administration thought that the 2002 resolution authorizing force against Iraq was a blank check for the use of force against Iran without further congressional authorization,” Clinton said.
When asked whether Clinton would vote for Webb’s language, a spokesman for the New Yorker took a wait-and-see approach, saying it depends on the format in which it reaches the floor.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has also kept mum on Webb’s language, which includes multiple exceptions in case of an attack on Iran or Iranian hostility in Iraq. But Obama took an interest in Webb’s push during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last month with Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns.
Obama asked whether Bush believes he has presumptive authority to attack Iran, to which Burns responded: “It’s the position of our government that the president obviously has the constitutional duty to protect the American people … and as commander in chief has to be able to exercise that authority as he sees fit.”
“I think you meant, ‘it’s the position of our administration’ as opposed to ‘our government,’” Obama replied.
Iran’s recent saber-rattling detention of a British naval crew, which ended in the soldiers’ safe release, appears to have sparked less escalation than expected between Bush and Ahmadinejad. But pro-Israel stalwarts such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) see any curb on U.S. action against Iran as a potential handcuff in Iraq.
“What if the president decides, at the request of General Petraeus, that we have to take action to take out [an Iranian] base?” Lieberman said yesterday. “I wouldn’t want to have to go through a month-long debate in Congress before you could do that.”
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Washington’s most influential pro-Israel lobbying group, held its capital policy conference just after the House removed Iran authorization language from its version of the supplemental. AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr told members there that any legislative attempt to limit U.S. options in Iran would be harmful and signal weakness.
In addition to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) support, Webb has the public backing of Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). In the House, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) said through a spokesman that he would hold Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to her vow for a recorded vote on Iran authorization language.
“I think it will pass because there isn’t a thinking person in the world that believes the President when he says won’t launch a military strike against Iran,” McDermott said. “Even conservative Republicans are worried about the president’s lack of credibility.”
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) echoed McDermott’s intentions.
“The Bush administration has already misled our nation into one unnecessary preemptive war under false pretenses, and Congress needs to make it perfectly clear that he does not have the authority to take us down the same road with Iran,” Lee said in an e-mail.
The multilateralist group Just Foreign Policy marshaled supporters of the Webb amendment during the supplemental debate last month. Antiwar groups including Peace Action and United for Peace and Justice joined in by organizing grassroots call-ins to Senate offices urging a vote on the Webb language.
“The Senate is going to feel the pressure to pass this provision soon,” Robert Naiman, national coordinator of Just Foreign Policy, wrote on the group’s website. Among its board members are Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP, and Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Jazz and Jihad
April 16, 2007
By Gilad Atzmon
By Gilad Atzmon
Speech given at University of Denver, 13 April 2007
Ladies and Gentlemen,
For many years I considered America as my promised land. As a young Jazz musician I was pretty convinced that sooner or later I would end up living in NYC. My Jerusalem was Downtown Manhattan and of course my holy scriptures were the old Blue Note vinyls. My Rabbis were named Coltrane, Bird, Miles, Duke, Dizzy, Bill Evans and naturally, there were many others. I was convinced of this reality for a while, and in fact, it took time before I realised that Jazz was far more than mere music. It took a while before I gathered that Jazz was something else, that it was actually a form of resistance. Nowadays I realise that Jazz is no different from Jihad, accordingly, playing Jazz is my personal Jihad. I do grasp that some people in this room may already find my ideas nostalgic, some may even be convinced that I am either totally deluded or just out of my mind. I can live with it. I do realise that ‘things have changed’, they’ve changed for you as much as they’ve changed for me. I do realise that Jazz is not exactly a form of resistance anymore. May I mention that America isn’t my promised land either. In fact, at the time of writing this talk, I wasn’t even sure whether I would be allowed entry into your country. As much as Jazz, the classical music of America, has been a call for freedom, America is not a free place anymore. I often argue that before liberating others, it is the American people who should first liberate themselves. I am pretty sure that sooner or later they will.
Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine
I have been participating in some public debates lately concerning the common denominator between Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m glad to mention that it is rather noticeable that more and more people are now happy to admit what some of us realised years ago. The Palestinians, the Iraqis and the Afghanis are paying a very dear price for the Ziocentric shift within the Anglo-American decision-makers circuit. Seemingly, Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine are just the aperitif for an endless feast. The Ziocons have some big appetite to satisfy. The same lobbies that led America towards this disastrous invasion in Iraq and Afghanistan are now doing whatever they can to push America towards intervention in Iran and Syria. For those few who still fail to realise it, America has been operating officially as an Israeli mission force. It currently fights the last sovereign pockets of Muslim resistance.
Often enough, the true aim of the Zionist lobbies is concealed. Instead the Zionist lobbies promote some righteous phoney humanitarian alternatives. The American Jewish Committee (AJC), for instance, is aggressively lobbying against human rights abuse in Iran and Darfur. Since human rights issues are really close to my heart, I find myself wondering whether the Jewish organisation shouldn’t rather be concentrating on the colossal war crimes that are daily repeated by Israel in Palestine. Rather occasionally we read about AIPAC equating Iran and Syria with Nazi Germany. Again, someone should remind the Zionist lobbyists that actually it is Israel, the “Jews Only State”, that happens to be the one and only ideological remnant of racist nationalism.
Three weeks ago the Palestine Chronicle made an on-line poll. It asked the following question: ‘Does the Israel Lobby control US policy on the Middle East?’
Needless to mention, no one would even have dared raising such a question five years ago. Now this question is asked repeatedly and as it seems, people aren’t shying off from telling what they really think. 80% said yes, 15% said no, and 4% were not sure. Looking at these results points to the reality many want us to deny. The vast majority of English-speaking Palestinians, Palestinian solidarity campaigners and anti-war activists are now ready to admit that the Israel Lobby controls US policy in the Middle East. We are ready to accept the fact that America operates as an Israeli mission force. America straightens the line with Israeli interests and sacrifices its sons and daughters maintaining Israeli regional hegemony.
But here is an interesting twist. I do not intend to talk to you about Zionised America. I want to believe that the majority of Palestinian supporters and anti-war activists in this room know far more about it than me. I would like to try taking the discussion further. I would like to elaborate on the notion of solidarity and empathy.
Those who are familiar with my writings know that I am not exactly a political scientist. I am not interested in politics and I am even far less interested in politicians who, generally speaking, evoke nothing but a strong sense of repulsion in me.
Rather than politics per se, it is humanity and the notion of humanism that I am interested in. Often I find myself wondering what being in the world may entail. And I better admit it; I am puzzled by the fact that as a society, as a collective bunch of individuals, we have managed to continuously fail to act for the people of Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan. I think that this very collective failure is in itself an alarming message. Thus, rather than looking into the crimes committed by Blair, Bush and the Ziocons, I am becoming gradually interested in the general Western apathy. To be more precise, I would argue that the common denominator between Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine is our collective indifference to a crime that is committed on our behalf and in our names.
As some of us may remember, in the days leading to the doomed illegal invasion of Iraq, the anti-war movement was extremely successful in mobilizing millions of people into protest. We saw them in every capital. They were calling Blair and Bush to withdraw their military plans. Millions of people questioned the sickening Anglo-American intelligence hoax. We could all see through the lies, we could all foresee the emerging crime, we were outraged, and we were convinced that we were doing the right thing. Yet, strangely enough, just four years later, with hundreds of thousands dead, with millions of casualties, with many millions of displaced people, when it is clear that everything went as wrong as it possibly could, when it is openly established that “the danger of Iraq’s WMDs” was nothing but a lie, not very many care about it all anymore. Now when the grim prophecy turns into reality of genocide with no end, we are collectively sinking into apathy. What are the logos behind this collective indifference, why did we lose interest? Why don’t we fight? Why aren’t we a mass movement?
I am not so sure whether I have the exact answers at my disposal, yet, I may be able to throw some light on the issue.
Cultural Clash
I am inclined to admit that the notion of Cultural Clash has indeed some deep meanings especially when it comes to the discourse of solidarity. Naturally, we tend to expect the subject of our solidarity to endorse our views while dumping his own. As much as Blair and Bush insist upon democratising the Muslim world, we, the so-called left humanists have our own various agendas for the region and its people. In Europe some archaic Marxists are convinced that ‘working class politics’ is the only viable outlook of the conflict and its solution. Some other deluded socialists and egalitarians are talking about liberating the Muslims of their religious traits. The cosmopolitans within the solidarity movement would suggest to Palestinians that nationalism and national identity belongs to the past. Noticeably, many of us love Muslim and Arabs as long as they act as white, post-enlightenment Europeans. In other words, we love Muslims as long as they stop being Muslims.
For those who fail to realise, I may as well mentioned that ‘working class politics’ has nothing to do with Palestine, Iraq or Afghanistan. For those who fail to see the obvious truth, I may as well mention that the industrial revolution has never made it to Gaza. Furthermore, the landslide victory of the Hamas proves beyond doubt that Palestinians are not exactly on the verge of dropping Islam. The million Shias that protested in Najaf last Monday were not exactly secular Arabs either. It is crucial to mention that the Palestinian struggle is a national struggle. The million Iraqi Shias who followed their Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr last Monday were overtly burning American flags while raising their own Iraqi ones as high as they could. In other words, we have good reason to believe that they may hold a consistent and genuine nationalist vision of their conflict and its resolution. Again, to expect Palestinians or Iraqis to become secular, cosmopolitan and working class ideologists is to expect Arabs and Muslims to act as European Marxists. It has noting to do with solidarity; it is actually nothing but projection. We project our solipsistic worldviews on others.
Self-centred Activism
In Lacanian terminology, love means loving oneself through the other. At large, our notion of solidarity is not much different: we run a constant risk of performing solidarity with ourselves through the suffering of Palestinians and Iraqis. We are at risk of using Palestinians and Iraqis as an approval of our greatness. Alternatively I would suggest that to support the other means to accept otherness, to accept that which you may never grasp. To accept otherness is to let in the unknown and the unfamiliar. To support Palestine is to back the Hamas and to support Iraq is to back the Iraqi resistance and liberation struggle. Simply speaking, to show solidarity is to support and accept other people and their will.
But somehow, instead of doing just that, in most cases we happen to transform our subject of solidarity into a fetish. We self indulge with peace ideologies at the expense of other people’s pain. We instrumentally use the cry of the other as a reassurance of our own goodness. This may explain why so many of us have lost interest in Iraq and Palestine. If all we are interested in is just making love to ourselves, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iran and Syria are more than replaceable. As it happens, once in a while we may show up in mass demonstrations and then just fade away into apathy for a decade or so.
We Get Away with It
Why do we fade away? Because we get away with it. Legally speaking, America and Britain are responsible for the colossal carnage in Iraq. Bearing in mind the fact that America and Britain are democracies and adding the embarrassing fact that the people of these two ‘great democracies’ have re-elected war criminals, leaves no other option but admitting a collective guilt. To a certain extent, every American and British citizen is liable for the crimes in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Yet this state of criminality means very little to most of us. Americans and Brits at least for the time being simply get away with it.
America has lost 3,000 of its sons and daughters in the Iraqi war. As much as I feel sorry for those who lost their beloved, for a superpower the size of America, such a scale of loss is nothing but a negligible casualty rate. In comparison, on D-Day, America lost more or less the same number of combatants in a few hours. In modern warfare, superpowers are mainly engaged in killing innocent people from afar. America doesn’t risk its soldiers. It doesn’t provide occupied Iraq and Afghanistan with even elementary security. Seemingly, the American Generals realise that this would cost lives of their troops. How come the Americans fail to provide security? They simply get away with it. Why are we sinking into apathy? More or less because of the same reason, we get away with it.
A Bridge too Far
As I am getting to the end of my talk, I may conclude that supporting Muslims and Jihad is probably a bridge too far for most Westerners. The typical Westerner doesn’t know how to bridge the gap between ‘materialism’ and ‘Jihad’ or between ‘self-loving’ and ‘martyrdom’. We happen to regard our lives as a precious gift with an immense value. We submitted to the post-enlightenment notion of individuality and individualism. Succumbing to the school of orthodox rationalism we believe in the ultimate power of reason. We adore science and admire technology. We are libidinally aroused by electronic gadgets.
Seemingly, spirit and beauty means very little to us unless attached to a commodity. In our Americanised reality, existence means market value. Yet, spirit of resistance and beauty are invaluable. I may suggest that we will never be able to fully understand what the Palestinian and Iraqi struggle means to its people unless we liberate ourselves from our narrow material vision of reality. We can never grasp people who sacrifice the ultimate unless we acknowledge that there is far more to life than just life. We can never understand Iraqi insurgency and the Palestinian liberation struggle unless we try to understand what soil may mean to people who refuse to get drunk on Coca-Cola.
The search for the meaning of solidarity is a personal issue. I believe that the meaning of solidarity is probably a very dynamic notion. I am starting to realise that within the current structure of affairs, the left who was pretty effective in mobilizing anti-imperial campaigns for years, may not provide anything for Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq. The left, being a rational, post-enlightenment outlook, has its problem to solve with Islam and religious devotion. I hope that I am wrong here. I can see some isolated islands of left dialectic thinkers are ready to acknowledge that Muslim resistance may as well convey an alternative vision of reality and resistance.
I can speak for myself. For me, Jihad and Jazz are very similar forms of commitment. For me, the generations of Black Americans who sacrificed everything for the sake of beauty and resistance were actually engaged in a holy war. For me it was Bird, Max Roach, Dizzy, Coltrane and others who went far beyond the American dream of materialism and market value. Jazz was their voice of freedom. Jazz was their call for a change. Jazz was an ideology, a spirit, and a way of living as well as dying. To be a Jazz musician is to fight for beauty, to create and recreate, to construct and deconstruct, to question while knowing that answers may not be available for a while. To play Jazz is to get lost deliberately. To play Jazz is to leave the self behind.
Gilad Atzmon is an internationally acclaimed jazz musician whose CD Exile was selected by the BBC in 2003 as Album of the Year. He was born in Israel and served in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), and is now living in self-exile in the UK. Visit his web site at: www.gilad.co.uk. He can be reached at: gilad@gilad.co.uk
AMCHA files to join AIPAC case
This group and the defense are attempting blackmail. Under the pretense of free speech, the effort is to get the courtroom open so the defense can threaten to divulge state secrets, thereby hamstringing the prosecutors.
Another angle this slimy group is pursuing is the State is being anti-semetic. Putrid and disgusting, but typical of the Israel Lobby.
Related
Amcha: Secrecy May Turn Aipac Case Into Modern-Day Dreyfus Affair
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JTA
Another angle this slimy group is pursuing is the State is being anti-semetic. Putrid and disgusting, but typical of the Israel Lobby.
Related
Amcha: Secrecy May Turn Aipac Case Into Modern-Day Dreyfus Affair
---
JTA
A Jewish organization has for the first time formally joined in a motion friendly to the defense of two former AIPAC staffers facing classified information leak charges.
A Jewish organization has for the first time formally joined in a motion friendly to the defense of two former AIPAC staffers facing classified information leak charges. AMCHA, headed by activist Rabbi Avi Weiss, filed a motion Wednesday to join a friend of the court brief by a number of large media groups seeking to keep the prosecution from concealing from the public evidence presented to the jury. Much of the evidence in the case against Steve Rosen, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's former foreign policy chief, and Keith Weissman, its former Iran analyst, has been gathered through eavesdropping; the two-year delay in the trial, set now to begin June 4, is due in large part to sorting through which evidence may be declassified as evidence. Judge T.S. Ellis III's tendency to favor the defense in some instances has led the prosecution to ask for evidence to be obscured from the public, if not the jury. A number of major media outlets, including ABC, the Associated Press and the Washington Post, and First Amendment defense groups have joined the defense in challenging the prosecution's request. "The American Jewish community has a special and compelling interest in ensuring that all of the evidence presented in the trial against Messrs. Rosen and Weissman be available to the public for review and scrutiny," says the AMCHA filing. Ellis will hear arguments Monday. |
Soros Slams AIPAC
Sunday, April 15, 2007 9:19 p.m. EDT
The billionaire investor George Soros has added his voice to a heated but little-noticed debate over the role of Israel's powerful lobby in shaping Washington policy in a way critics say hurts U.S. national interests and stifles debate.
In the current issue of the New York Review of Books, Soros takes issue with "the pervasive influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)" in Washington and says the Bush administration's close ties with Israel are obstacles to a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.
Soros, who is Jewish but not often engaged in Israel affairs, echoed arguments that have fueled a passionate debate conducted largely in the rarefied world of academia, foreign policy think tanks and parts of the U.S. Jewish community.
"The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism," wrote Soros. Politicians challenge it at their peril and dissenters risk personal vilification, he said.
AIPAC has consistently declined comment on such charges, but many of its supporters have been vocal in dismissing them. Historian Michael Oren, speaking at AIPAC's 2007 conference in March, said the group was not merely a lobby for Israel. "It is the embodiment of a conviction as old as this (American) nation itself that belief in the Jewish state is tantamount to belief in these United States," he said in a keynote speech.
The long-simmering debate bubbled to the surface a year ago, when two prominent academics, Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, published a 12,500-word essay entitled "The Israel Lobby" and featuring the fiercest criticism of AIPAC since it was founded in 1953.
AIPAC now has more than 100,000 members and is rated one of the most influential special interest groups in the United States, its political clout comparable with such lobbies as the National Rifle Association.
Its annual conference in Washington attracts a Who's Who of American politics, both Republicans and Democrats.
UNWAVERING SUPPORT
Mearsheimer and Walt said the lobby had persuaded successive administrations to align themselves too closely with Israel.
"The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized not only U.S. security but much of the rest of the world," they wrote.
No other lobby group has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy so far from the U.S. national interest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. interests and those of Israel are essentially identical, they wrote.
Once considered an honest broker in the Middle East, the United States is now seen in much of the Arab world as an unquestioning backer of Israel, according to international opinion polls.
Peace moves have been at a near-standstill since the failure of Israeli-Palestinian talks in 2000 at the end of Bill Clinton's presidency. The Bush administration, accused by the Arab world of relative neglect, has said it hopes to promote peace in its final two years despite the political weakness of Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
The two academics said that pressure from Israel and its lobby in Washington played an important role in President George W. Bush's decision to attack Iraq, an arch-enemy of Israel, in 2003.
Mearsheimer and Walt found no takers for their essay in the U.S. publishing world. When it was eventually published in the London Review of Books, they noted it would be hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet in the United States publishing such a piece.
It has been drawing criticism that ranged from shoddy scholarship to anti-Semitism, chiefly from conservative fellow academics and political supporters of the present relationship between Washington and Israel.
In his contribution to the debate, Soros said: "A much-needed self-examination of American policy in the Middle East has started in this country; but it can't make much headway as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the Democratic and Republican parties."
That influence is reflected by the fact that Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world.
GOING MAINSTREAM
Mearsheimer and Walt are now working on expanding their article into a book -- to be published in September by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The company has not commented on online reports that it paid the two authors a $750,000 advance and plans to print one million copies.
Another mainstream publisher, Simon and Schuster, already discovered that it not only is it possible to publish criticism of Israel but it can also be good for the bottom line.
Former President Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" shot up the bestseller lists after its publication last November, stayed there for more than three months and is still selling well.
It had an initial print run of 300,000 copies and there are now 485,000 copies in print, said Victoria Meyer, a spokeswoman for Simon and Schuster.
Carter's book and its reference to apartheid provoked angry reactions -- more in the United States than in Israel, where leftists opposed to the occupation of the West Bank have been accusing the government of apartheid practices for years and where the word has lost its shock value.
In response to charges of bias and anti-Semitism, Carter said he wanted to provoke a discussion of issues debated routinely and freely in Israel but rarely in the United States.
"This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices," he wrote in the Los Angeles Times during a tour to promote his book. "It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine."
According to Oren, the pro-AIPAC historian, the Carter book and the Mearsheimer-Walt paper had the same "insidious thesis" and suffered from the same flaw -- ignoring oil as a driving element in U.S. policies on the Middle East.
© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
The Lobby and American Campaigns
April 13, 2007
Peggy McCormack
My name is Peggy McCormack, and I have worked inside Congress and the California Legislature off and on for 30 years. I am currently teaching at a small college.Almost everyone who talks about "the lobby", are woefully ignorant of the inner workings of Congress. Congress may be the last place that any form of representation of "the people" takes place. As it gets more and more controlled by monied interests, Congress becomes more and more homogeneous. However, with regard to foreign policy, there are always the few brave members who routinely challenge American Imperialist policy. This was certainly true with regard to Latin America, Vietnam and other US imperialist debacles.
It is not true of Israel. Have you questioned how this came about? When it came about? I worked in many Congressional Campaigns and with many Political Campaign firms. Most of the really good campaign firms are controlled by Zionists (read Tom Hayden's article in Counterpunch). They function as money laundries, provide expensive services for practically nothing, demand loyalty to Israel, walk out in the middle of campaigns if candidates do not swear loyalty to Israel, and as private consultants have great impact on reapportionment processes in major states. I am familiar with California because the Campaign Firm that routinely tried to take my former boss out of Congress either by running primary candidates against him, or reapportioning him out, has run the reapportionment in California for the Democrats since 1970. There are other Zionist entities, such as the Congressional Committee for and Effective Congress that "helped" Democrats throughout the US with their reapportionment and made sure that some anti-Israel candidates had districts drawn in order to make picking them off in a primary easy.
Congressional candidates are frightened of the lobby. They certainly don't want putting up with the hassles of having the "lobby" come after them, but worse, they fear being targeted. Ask Jim Moran, Congressman from Virginia's 8th District who refused to vote for every anti-Palestinian resolution that came before Congress, and spoke out against the nasty occupation of Palestinians. He endured day to day torment, outrageous surveillance, electronic eavesdropping bugs, photos by Zionist paparazzi's who followed him, and on and on.
Part of the problem of uncovering the details of how the Lobby works in effectively controlling the campaign technology and expertise is the need for research. My ex-Communist party friends here in California are as ignorant of how the behind the scenes political campaign work is done, as the average citizen. A quick example I often use: I was once hired by a campaign to literally keep volunteers busy and away from the major activity of the campaign. Donations, of course, and endorsements (In the Democratic Party labor), are the milk of American politics. Since the bulk of donations to the Democrats come from Israeli support groups, and Labor, ( Zionists control Labor PAC committees) the power of the Israeli "lobby" becomes clearer and clearer. Tie that to the overpowering control by campaign firms themselves, and yes, Ariel Sharon is right "We own the Congress".
If I could interview Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucus members "off the record" I would uncover recent and current campaign practices that my former boss endured, and sadly, that I watched intimately when I worked in campaigns myself – loans (that quickly come due if the member steps out of line, as my boss did), "loyalty oaths" prepared speeches, imbedded campaign workers, imbedded Congressional staff, partially paid by various lobbies (this could not happen if AIPAC and their dozens of clones had to register as foreign lobbyists).
Oh, and all those campaign firms that do the extremely expensive work of polling, paid voter registration, and precinct analysis (remember campaign firms do not have to report any of this work) – who pays for that? Blessed candidates get the benefits, but at what cost? It is interesting to note that the power of the lobby grew as campaigning became more and more computerized, and the need for more and more "experts" entered the game.
If I had the time and money, I would investigate this phenomenon, I don't, but someone needs to look at the "way it works".
The Final Act of Submission: Scott Ritter
"... if we are to continue to permit AIPAC to operate as an undeclared agent of a foreign nation, and to influence American foreign and national security policymaking at the expense of our Constitution, then we should acknowledge our true status as nothing more than a colony of Israel, pull down the Stars and Stripes and raise the Star of David over our nation’s capitol. While representing the final act of submission, it would also be the first truly honest act that occurred in Washington, D.C. in many years."
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Posted on Apr 13, 2007
By Scott Ritter
In the months leading up to President Bush’s ill-fated invasion of Iraq, I traveled around the world speaking to various international groups, including many parliamentary assemblies. I spoke about democracy and the need of any nation or group of nations espousing democracy as a standard to embrace the ideals and values of justice and due process in accordance with the rule of law. I spoke of international law, especially as it was manifested in the charter of the United Nations (a document signed and adopted by all of the countries I visited).
Invariably, my presentation focused on the nation in question, whether it was Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan or Great Britain, and the status of its relationship with the United States. As an American, I said, I appreciated each nation’s embrace of the United States as a friend and ally. However, as a strong believer in the rule of law, I deplored the trend among America’s so-called friends to facilitate a needless confrontation which would severely harm the U.S. in the long run. These nations were hesitant to stand up to the United States even though they knew the course of action planned for Iraq was wrong.
Such permissive submission was deplorable, and invariably led to a comment from me about the status of genuine sovereignty in the face of American imperial power. If a nation was incapable of defending its sovereign values and interests, then it should simply acknowledge its status as a colony of the United States, pull down its disgraced national flag and raise the Stars and Stripes.
Now the tables have turned. Americans, through the will of the people as expressed in the November 2006 election, voiced their dissatisfaction with the conduct of the American war in Iraq, and empowered a new Democratic-controlled Congress to reassert itself as a separate but equal branch of government—especially when it came to matters pertaining to war and the threat of war.
This new Democratic leadership has failed egregiously. Not only has the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, been unable to orchestrate any meaningful legislation to bring the war in Iraq to an end, but in mid-March she carelessly greased the tracks for a whole new conflict. By excising language from a defense appropriations bill which would have required President Bush to seek the approval of Congress prior to initiating any military attack on Iran, Pelosi terminated any hope of slowing down the Bush administration’s mad rush to war.
Despite the fact that Congress was only stating through this language a simple reflection of constitutional mandate, Speaker Pelosi and others felt that the inclusion of such verbiage put the security of the state of Israel at risk by eliminating important “policy options” for the president of the United States. In short, Israeli national security interests trumped the Constitution of the United States.
I consider myself to be a friend of Israel, a status which has been demonstrated repeatedly through words and deeds from January-February 1991, when I was involved in the effort to stop Iraq Scud missiles from striking Israel during the 1991 Gulf War, to the period between October 1994 and June 1998 when I served as the lead liaison between the United Nations weapons inspectors and Israeli intelligence, working to find a final accounting of Iraq’s proscribed weapons of mass destruction. I know only too well the precarious reality of Israel’s security situation, and am sympathetic to its need to proactively deal with threats before they manifest themselves in a manner which threatens Israel’s ability to survive as a nation-state.
However, as an American who served on active duty in time of war as an officer of Marines, I also remember the oath I took to “uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” As such, I am troubled by the recent actions of Speaker Pelosi and other members of Congress who have not only abrogated their collective responsibility to uphold and defend the Constitution but have taken actions which, under normal circumstances and involving any other nation, would border on treasonous. Our collective duty as Americans must center on defending the very document, the Constitution, which defines who we are and what we are as a people and a nation. To have our elected representatives flagrantly push aside their constitutional responsibilities in the name of the security interests of another nation is unthinkable. And yet it has just happened, apparently without consequence.
Sadly, the new Democratic Congress has cemented its status as yet another iteration of a system which long ago sold its soul to special interests. Democrats can cackle about Republican scandals, including the Jack Abramoff affair, which brought down Rep. Tom DeLay among others. But history will show that the Pelosi-led sellout to Israeli special interests endangered the viability and security of America as a sovereign state governed by the rule of law more than Jack Abramoff ever could.
In this time of constitutional crisis, the American people need to wake up and demand that the basic tenets of the Constitution be adhered to. Congress is solely empowered by the Constitution to declare war. Demanding that the president of the United States adhere to this prerequisite is a logical and patriotic stance. Allowing any non-American interest, even one possessing such highly charged political and emotional sensitivities as Israel, to dictate otherwise represents nothing more than a capitulation of sovereignty. We the people need to rally around this defense of sovereignty. We must demand not only that Congress reassert its constitutional responsibilities and authority by demanding the president obey the letter of the law when it comes to war, whether against Iran or any other nation, but also to place in check the anti-American activities of one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, D.C., the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee.
For decades AIPAC has operated in the shadows of American foreign policy decision-making, exerting its influence on elected officials away from the public scrutiny of the very constituents who elected those officials to begin with. It is impossible to hold someone accountable for actions that are kept secret, and as such AIPAC’s ability to secretly influence American foreign and national security policies represents a flagrant insult and threat to the very essence of American democracy. I am not advocating the dissolution of AIPAC. However, I am demanding that AIPAC be treated as any other representative of a foreign nation is treated. It should have to register as an agent of a foreign power so that the totality of its interactions with American officials can become a part of the public record. We require this of all other nations, including our good friends the British.
To state that AIPAC, and by extension Israel, is above the law in this regard is to acknowledge the reality that American national sovereignty no longer matters when it comes to the state of Israel. So be it. But then we are, collectively, no better than those nations I mocked prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 as “colonies” of the United States. So if we are to continue to permit AIPAC to operate as an undeclared agent of a foreign nation, and to influence American foreign and national security policymaking at the expense of our Constitution, then we should acknowledge our true status as nothing more than a colony of Israel, pull down the Stars and Stripes and raise the Star of David over our nation’s capitol. While representing the final act of submission, it would also be the first truly honest act that occurred in Washington, D.C., in many years.
---
Posted on Apr 13, 2007
By Scott Ritter
In the months leading up to President Bush’s ill-fated invasion of Iraq, I traveled around the world speaking to various international groups, including many parliamentary assemblies. I spoke about democracy and the need of any nation or group of nations espousing democracy as a standard to embrace the ideals and values of justice and due process in accordance with the rule of law. I spoke of international law, especially as it was manifested in the charter of the United Nations (a document signed and adopted by all of the countries I visited).
Invariably, my presentation focused on the nation in question, whether it was Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan or Great Britain, and the status of its relationship with the United States. As an American, I said, I appreciated each nation’s embrace of the United States as a friend and ally. However, as a strong believer in the rule of law, I deplored the trend among America’s so-called friends to facilitate a needless confrontation which would severely harm the U.S. in the long run. These nations were hesitant to stand up to the United States even though they knew the course of action planned for Iraq was wrong.
Such permissive submission was deplorable, and invariably led to a comment from me about the status of genuine sovereignty in the face of American imperial power. If a nation was incapable of defending its sovereign values and interests, then it should simply acknowledge its status as a colony of the United States, pull down its disgraced national flag and raise the Stars and Stripes.
Now the tables have turned. Americans, through the will of the people as expressed in the November 2006 election, voiced their dissatisfaction with the conduct of the American war in Iraq, and empowered a new Democratic-controlled Congress to reassert itself as a separate but equal branch of government—especially when it came to matters pertaining to war and the threat of war.
This new Democratic leadership has failed egregiously. Not only has the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, been unable to orchestrate any meaningful legislation to bring the war in Iraq to an end, but in mid-March she carelessly greased the tracks for a whole new conflict. By excising language from a defense appropriations bill which would have required President Bush to seek the approval of Congress prior to initiating any military attack on Iran, Pelosi terminated any hope of slowing down the Bush administration’s mad rush to war.
Despite the fact that Congress was only stating through this language a simple reflection of constitutional mandate, Speaker Pelosi and others felt that the inclusion of such verbiage put the security of the state of Israel at risk by eliminating important “policy options” for the president of the United States. In short, Israeli national security interests trumped the Constitution of the United States.
I consider myself to be a friend of Israel, a status which has been demonstrated repeatedly through words and deeds from January-February 1991, when I was involved in the effort to stop Iraq Scud missiles from striking Israel during the 1991 Gulf War, to the period between October 1994 and June 1998 when I served as the lead liaison between the United Nations weapons inspectors and Israeli intelligence, working to find a final accounting of Iraq’s proscribed weapons of mass destruction. I know only too well the precarious reality of Israel’s security situation, and am sympathetic to its need to proactively deal with threats before they manifest themselves in a manner which threatens Israel’s ability to survive as a nation-state.
However, as an American who served on active duty in time of war as an officer of Marines, I also remember the oath I took to “uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” As such, I am troubled by the recent actions of Speaker Pelosi and other members of Congress who have not only abrogated their collective responsibility to uphold and defend the Constitution but have taken actions which, under normal circumstances and involving any other nation, would border on treasonous. Our collective duty as Americans must center on defending the very document, the Constitution, which defines who we are and what we are as a people and a nation. To have our elected representatives flagrantly push aside their constitutional responsibilities in the name of the security interests of another nation is unthinkable. And yet it has just happened, apparently without consequence.
Sadly, the new Democratic Congress has cemented its status as yet another iteration of a system which long ago sold its soul to special interests. Democrats can cackle about Republican scandals, including the Jack Abramoff affair, which brought down Rep. Tom DeLay among others. But history will show that the Pelosi-led sellout to Israeli special interests endangered the viability and security of America as a sovereign state governed by the rule of law more than Jack Abramoff ever could.
In this time of constitutional crisis, the American people need to wake up and demand that the basic tenets of the Constitution be adhered to. Congress is solely empowered by the Constitution to declare war. Demanding that the president of the United States adhere to this prerequisite is a logical and patriotic stance. Allowing any non-American interest, even one possessing such highly charged political and emotional sensitivities as Israel, to dictate otherwise represents nothing more than a capitulation of sovereignty. We the people need to rally around this defense of sovereignty. We must demand not only that Congress reassert its constitutional responsibilities and authority by demanding the president obey the letter of the law when it comes to war, whether against Iran or any other nation, but also to place in check the anti-American activities of one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, D.C., the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee.
For decades AIPAC has operated in the shadows of American foreign policy decision-making, exerting its influence on elected officials away from the public scrutiny of the very constituents who elected those officials to begin with. It is impossible to hold someone accountable for actions that are kept secret, and as such AIPAC’s ability to secretly influence American foreign and national security policies represents a flagrant insult and threat to the very essence of American democracy. I am not advocating the dissolution of AIPAC. However, I am demanding that AIPAC be treated as any other representative of a foreign nation is treated. It should have to register as an agent of a foreign power so that the totality of its interactions with American officials can become a part of the public record. We require this of all other nations, including our good friends the British.
To state that AIPAC, and by extension Israel, is above the law in this regard is to acknowledge the reality that American national sovereignty no longer matters when it comes to the state of Israel. So be it. But then we are, collectively, no better than those nations I mocked prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 as “colonies” of the United States. So if we are to continue to permit AIPAC to operate as an undeclared agent of a foreign nation, and to influence American foreign and national security policymaking at the expense of our Constitution, then we should acknowledge our true status as nothing more than a colony of Israel, pull down the Stars and Stripes and raise the Star of David over our nation’s capitol. While representing the final act of submission, it would also be the first truly honest act that occurred in Washington, D.C., in many years.
Americans for Peace Now opposes new legislation toughening Iran sanctions
Related
:: Americans for Peace Now ::
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:: Americans for Peace Now ::
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Americans for Peace Now opposes new legislation toughening
"APN supports the imposition of targeted
Recently proposed legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate "would
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee strongly backs both packages, and urged its activists this week to lobby their lawmakers to push through the sanctions. The international community is isolating
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