Israel-Palestine

Olmert government may tumble in Jerusalem: As if there wasn't enough bad news, it's election season again?!

HongPong — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:49:01 -0600

The latest news from Israel: the Shas party is bargaining with rightwinger-but-currently-centrist Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz to stave off new elections - if the new prime minister can't form a government.....

New Prime Minister?! Oy vey...

Mofaz parlays with Shas to avoid early elections - Haaretz - Israel News

By Mazal Mualem

Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz has been forging closer links with Shas to head off early elections and lay the groundwork for an alternative government headed by him in the current Knesset.

Mofaz has held several discussions with the Shas chairman - Industry Trade and Labor Minister Eli Yishai - and Communications Minister Ariel Atias. The two reportedly told him that they would support him if he promised to increase child allowances. Shas sources said party leaders have already reached agreements with Mofaz on this issue.

Mofaz believes he can prevent early elections and is acting to secure Shas' support before the Kadima leadership primary. This would give him a huge advantage over his main rival, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who is leading in the public opinion polls.

Mofaz believes that Kadima's Knesset faction and the party's central activists and mayors, who fear falling from power if new elections are held, would support him.

Mofaz sees himself as "naturally connected" to Shas due to his religious and right-wing background. In private conversations he has said he can also bring Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu back into the coalition.

He has said the last thing Labor chairman and Defense Minister Ehud Barak wants is early elections.

Mofaz will launch a campaign against a pullout from the Golan Heights today, to strengthen his support among right-wing voters in general. He intends to tour the Golan and meet residents there.

Yep, this pretty much sucks.

It turns out that Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of Israel took big ol' envelopes of cash from some skeezy American guy back in his headier days. Not a big surprise, but the problem is that the wobbly Israeli government is apparently about to crumble.

The choice thing about Israel's annoying government system is that the cabinet ministers are all from different parties, so you have a cross-partisan seige mentality at every cabinet meeting. In theory this could stabilize a diverse country, but in reality it has perpetually gridlocked every political development in Israel.

Every span of time required to actually execute a tough political maneuver and achieve better peace with the Arabs gets interrupted by some stupid, destabilizing party squabble, which amplifies and multiplies, ricocheting across the region. Plus, the parties (especially Shas) are notorious for treating "their" ministries as absurd, corrupt rackets.

Every time something is actually going in the right direction for Israel (the calmer periods such as the 1990s and after the peace treaty with Egypt), the internal tensions among Israeli political parties flare up. Generally this causes the Israeli government to back away from the Arabs generally, and swat around more, all in a futile effort to keep all the party hacks at the Israeli cabinet table happy.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration policy has simply let all these fault lines fester out of control.

Perhaps Olmert will be able to stick it out, but unfortunately kind of crisis is all too easily expected -- Olmert never had a sterling reputation in terms of corruption.

A few days ago from good ol' Haaretz:

Barak, too, comes in for harsh criticism - Haaretz - Israel News

By Shahar Ilan

Politicians from across the spectrum were quick to criticize Defense Minister Ehud Barak's speech yesterday, in which he called on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to leave his post.

Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai (Shas) said an "elections dynamic" is starting to develop in the Knesset, and "I do not see a chance to establish a new government from within the Knesset." According to Yishai, Shas is the only party which does not need to fear elections.

The head of the Likud faction, MK Gideon Saar, said "Barak's news conference was a copy of [Foreign Minister Tzipi] Livni's unimpressive news conference after the Winograd [Committee report]. It is impossible to reconcile the understanding that Olmert is not fit to be prime minister, and between [Barak's] remaining in the cabinet," said Saar.

The Meretz faction called Barka's words "lip service written on ice without any schedule or ultimatum with them."

MK Avshalom Vilan (Meretz) disputed that view, saying "Barak has moved in the right direction, but too little and too slowly, and without a schedule."

On the other side, MK Effie Eitam (National Union-National Religious Party) said that he very much hopes "that Barak understands that the public will not put up with another round of zigzags and doublespeak from him."

Likud filed a no-confidence motion yesterday, saying it is clear the government has reached its end, and called on the coalition partners to stop with political maneuvering and agree to a date for early elections.

The National Union-National Religious Party filed its own no-confidence motion based on Tuesday's testimony by Morris Talansky.

The head of the National Religious Party, Zevulun Orlev, accused Barak of making empty promises. "Instead of making a decisive political act that would bring about the end of Olmert's tenure and move up the elections, Barak has chosen to make an amorphous statement without any schedule."

Barak did have some support from within his own party, as MK Collette Avital (Labor) described his words as "sharp and clear." Avital said it was up to Kadima to choose its path as soon as possible.

Two Kadima MKs, Amira Dotan and Zeev Elkin, joined the calls for Olmert's resignation. Dotan wrote Olmert a letter saying there is crisis of faith in him, and he should find a way to allow Kadima to choose new leadership.

Iran, Israel, some exposed anti-Pentagon weapons espionage for antiwar purposes, preventing war escalation? Teh convoluted spy stuff

HongPong — Thu, 01 May 2008 01:12:00 -0600

Antiwar.com Blog · Did Israelis Leak New Spy Info to Thwart War?

Things in the Middle East are always too thoroughly linked together, backwards, forwards, each way through the hall of mirrors. And it's going to be the traditional 'summer fightin' months' all around the region soon enough.

Deadlock in Afghanistan, Negotiations in Pakistan | The Agonist

There's a certain preamble of mega-spin going on right now. Hillary makes these weird statements about obliterating Iran, and McCain is chuckling all the way to the Big Red Button.

As usual, the rationality of the Baby Boomer generation drifts towards paranoia, incoherence, rage and infinite debt. Whether or not the American people get it together and block the Middle East mega-war from blowing up out of control seems to be the big question.

Iran gets blamed for killing American soldiers occupying Iraq. Not surprisingly, the guys selling this line never acknowledge that the arms market is quite a free market over in Iraq, with many busy arms dealers working all directions. And people are buying weapons that come from Iran. Is that some kind of surprise? "FREE MARKET WEAPONS FOR IRAQ: ALWAYS PLENTY OF DEALS!" That's a motto which the Iranians should try... Then remind everyone which country is importing the most weapons into Iraq, handing them over to parties unknown...

British dealers supply arms to Iran: The Observer

As you may have noticed, there has been a lot of extra buzz about possible American conflict with Iran in the news (after cooling for a couple months prior).

Is War With Iran Imminent?- by Justin Raimondo

A couple weeks ago, the story from last fall about the mysterious Israeli bombing of a purported nuclear-or-something site in Syria came back strong into the news: exciting tidbits that the North Koreans were propagating some nuclear research at the Syrian location. Very exciting stuff for the news.

For example, Stratfor.com is all over this case and its exciting murkiness:

What is important to note is this information is not new. It is a confirmation of the story leaked by the administration shortly after the attack and also leaked by the Israelis a bit later. The explanation for the attack was that it was designed to take out a reactor in Syria that had been built with North Korean help. There are therefore three questions. First, why did the United States go to such lengths to reveal what it has been saying privately for months? Second, why did the administration do it now? Third, why is the United States explaining an Israeli raid using, at least in part, material provided by Israel? Why isn’t Israel making the revelation?

It has never been clear to us why the Israelis and Americans didn’t immediately announce that the Syrians were building a nuclear reactor. Given American hostility toward Syria over support for jihadists in Iraq, we would have thought that they would have announced it instantly. The explanation we thought most plausible at the time was that the intelligence came from the North Koreans in the course of discussions of their nuclear technology, and since the North Koreans were cooperating, the United States didn’t want to publicly embarrass them. It was the best we could come up with.

The announcement on Thursday seems to debunk that theory, at least to the extent that the primary material displayed was U.S. satellite information and the Israeli video, which was said to have been used to convince the United States of the existence of the reactor and of North Korean involvement. So why didn’t the administration condemn Syria and North Korea on Sept. 7? It still seems to us that part of the explanation is in the state of talks with North Korea over its own program. The North Koreans had said that they would provide technical information on their program — which they haven’t done. Either the United States lost its motivation to protect North Korean feelings because of this or the Bush administration felt that Thursday’s briefings would somehow bring pressure to bear on North Korea. Unless the United States is planning to use these revelations as justification for attacks on the North Koreans, we find it difficult to see how this increases pressure on them.

More interesting is the question of why the United States — and not Israel — is briefing on an Israeli raid. Israeli media reported April 23 that the Israelis had asked the Americans not to brief Congress. The reason given was that the Israelis did not want the United States to embarrass Syria at this point. As we noted on April 23, there appeared to have been some interesting diplomatic moves between Syria and Israel, and it made sense that revealing this information now might increase friction.

Meanwhile another more original story got lost in the sea of buzz: some old defense engineer, 84-year-old Ben-Ami Kadish, got caught by the FBI stealing secret documents from his top secret research lab during his career, and has admitted everything. Antiwar.com broke that to me:

Pollard's Ghost- by Justin Raimondo. Check this out for a well-linked background in the case, though I'm not totally sold on Raimondo's spin...

Kadish would smuggle out the papers, photograph them, send 'em over to his foreign spy handler, and bring them back to the lab, no one the wiser. A pretty classic scheme which should have gotten a bit of news bounce in the War on Terror, but of course it didn't. The engineer was passing secrets to Israel. Uff da...

This raises the question of how big the Israeli espionage thingy really gets. It's a big question especially since two AIPAC officers are supposed to go on trial this summer for circulating secrets between neo-con Pentagon staffer Lawrence "Larry" Franklin and the Mossad officers over at the Israeli embassy in Washington.

In the Fed's case for this "big" AIPAC scandal, everyone pretty much got caught red-handed, so the AIPAC defense strategy appears to be "graymailing" the Justice Department into disclosing all kinds of classified stuff. (The idea is that the feds' tummies turn sour and they give up because they don't want to cough up the docs. This is the traditional strategy DC lawyers for Oliver North / Elliot Abrams type guys use to get their guys off the hook in scandals like Iran-Contra.)

But let's go back to the beginning of the "big" AIPAC scandal. How did it start? The FBI was already spying on the AIPAC officers when Franklin wandered up to them at a DC restaurant. The Feds already wanted AIPAC on espionage. Why? The short speculative answer: the FBI has continuously been looking for a high-level spy/mole known by code name MEGA.

MEGA was the secret guy somewhere in the U.S. government in the 1980s who (among other things) provided extremely secret document numbers to the Israelis. In turn, the Israelis sent a more disposable spy, Jonathan Pollard, the low-level Pentagon staffer, as a gofer to get the documents. Pollard got caught; he's still in a U.S. jail. (There's a rumor Bush might pardon him, ugh). MEGA never got caught. So we could speculate that officially the FBI was looking to see if MEGA sends AIPAC messages, enter Franklin accidentally.

Ok ok... this is pretty baroque spy stuff. Why did this engineer get exposed? How did the FBI catch him? Well, they got a tip. A tip from somewhere in Israel.

Reportedly, someone in Ehud Olmert's government tipped off the FBI about the engineer spy because they wanted to prevent the expanding middle east war. In other words, an Israeli exposed an old engineer spy in order to damage the neocons / hawks' chances of ginning up the war with Iran.

Old school ex-CIA dude Phil Giraldi spilled it:

"Israeli sources are reporting that the FBI investigation of the Ben-Ami Kadish spy case resulted from a leak coming from inside the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The information on Kadish and on a number of other Americans who have spied for Israel was provided to the FBI anonymously, leading to the Bureau's opening of a full investigation. One source reports that the National Security Agency was provided with Yosef Yagur's current phone number and address and was able to obtain corroborating information on the case by tapping the phone."

It was interesting to read that, in a change-up, some Israeli military officials would not brief the U.S. Congress about the big bad Muslim threats because the Congress would now grill them over that just-exposed Israeli espionage.

Sounds like a good time to put out some fun stories about evil Syrians and bombing their weird shacks of shadiness.

Interesting stuff I suppose... If you're into that kind of thing. Beyond that, there is of course the Sibel Edmonds scandal, which involves a certain network of nuclear secrets traffickers, intersecting with heroin and Washington lobbyists, or something.

Someone speculated that MEGA was really Marc Grossman, a longterm DC hack who is certainly in well over his head on this scandal. Grossman also has been rumored to have tipped off the Turks and Pakistanis that Valerie Plame's front company, Brewster Jennings, was really a CIA front. But he got caught on an FBI wiretap which Sibel Edmonds probably had to listen to, while she worked there.

So there is that angle. Good luck figuring it out, kids! There's a good chance this stuff will get some sunlight during the summer. I'll drink to that!!

********

Some more awkward PR that had to get drowned out: Carter calls Gaza blockade a crime and atrocity | World | Reuters

Lukery: Sibel Edmonds and the Untellable story of AIPAC (America Israel Public Affairs Committee)

HongPong — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 19:46:47 -0700

Note from HongPong: I have talked with Lukery and he told me a while ago that I could repost material from his various nifty and methodical blogs about the Sibel Edmonds case, which remains stuck mostly in a dormant state. Sibel just announced she was willing to get slammed for the gag order if a national network will air her case. Tellingly, no one wants to bother so far. All of this was posted on Lukery's blog Let Sibel Edmonds Speak a while ago.
Source: http://letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com/2007/11/sibel-edmonds-case-unte...
Nice work Lukery. Also be sure to check out the ever-solid BradBlog.com for GOP voting machine hacking and other whistle-blower stuff.

Please look at my special basic collection of stuff about the case too.Though indeed that area of this site could be much better.
*******

Last week, former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, announced that she was willing to tell everything that she knows if any of the major networks are willing to give her airtime, without airbrushing the essence of her case. Bradblog will have an update on the progress, or lack of it, next week.

Of course, Sibel would prefer to testify under oath in congress, but apparently our Democratic Congresscritters (I'm looking at you, Waxman) don't care about the treason, bribery, and corruption that has hijacked US foreign policy.

Meanwhile, last week we learnt that the judge in the AIPAC case has allowed subpoenas to be issued to 15 current and former high-level officials. Many of us are excited about the prospect of the trial - but Sibel assures us that the case, as it stands, is just the tip of the iceberg.

'AIPAC' is at the core of Sibel's case, and Sibel’s story needs to be heard - either in Congress, or in the media.

****

Those of you who have been following Sibel's case will be familiar with the American Turkish Council (ATC) - the 'mini-AIPAC' that (ostensibly) exists to promote Turkey's military interests in the US.

As it happens, the ATC is a creation of AIPAC (and other Israeli lobbying interests) - and there is significant overlap in the membership, goals and activities of both AIPAC and the ATC. This is perhaps not surprising given the long-standing tri-lateral military (and military 'defense' spending) relationship between the three countries. In fact, Sibel refers to AIPAC and the ATC as 'sister organizations.'

Not only were the ATC and AIPAC 'sister organizations,' they also had something else in common: there have been 'sister investigations' into both organizations. And of course, both investigations uncovered serious criminality at the highest levels of the US administration - Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department.

Sibel described the overlap in this interview with Antiwar's Chris Deliso in 2005:

SE: Look, I think that that [the AIPAC investigation] ultimately involves more than just Israelis – I am talking about countries, not a single country here. Because despite however it may appear, this is not just a simple matter of state espionage. If (Patrick) Fitzgerald and his team keep pulling, really pulling, they are going to reel in much more than just a few guys spying for Israel.

CD: A monster, 600-pound catfish, huh? So the Turkish and Israeli investigations had some overlap?

SE: Essentially, there is only one investigation – a very big one, an all-inclusive one. Completely by chance, I, a lowly translator, stumbled over one piece of it.

But I can tell you there are a lot of people involved, a lot of ranking officials, and a lot of illegal activities that include multi-billion-dollar drug-smuggling operations, black-market nuclear sales to terrorists and unsavory regimes, you name it. And of course a lot of people from abroad are involved. It's massive. So to do this investigation, to really do it, they will have to look into everything.

CD: But you can start from anywhere –

SE: That's the beauty of it. You can start from the AIPAC angle. You can start from the Plame case. You can start from my case. They all end up going to the same place, and they revolve around the same nucleus of people. There may be a lot of them, but it is one group. And they are very dangerous for all of us.

In 2004, Knight Ridder's Warren Strobel and Jonathon Landay confirmed that the 'AIPAC case' was much more serious than anything that has seen the light of day so far:

"Several U.S. officials and law-enforcement sources said yesterday that the scope of the FBI probe of Pentagon intelligence activities appeared to go well beyond the Franklin matter.

FBI agents have briefed top White House, Pentagon and State Department officials on the probe. Based on those briefings, officials said, the bureau appears to be looking into other controversies that have roiled the Bush administration, some of which also touch Feith's office.

They include how the Iraqi National Congress, a former exile group backed by the Pentagon, allegedly received highly classified U.S. intelligence on Iran; the leaking of the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame to reporters; and the production of bogus documents suggesting that Iraq tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons from the African country of Niger. Bush repeated the Niger claim in making the case for war against Iraq.

"The whole ball of wax" was how one U.S. official privy to the briefings described the inquiry."

Keep in mind that the FBI operation against AIPAC et al goes back to at least 1999 - so they were watching all of the relevant characters throughout this period. In fact, you'll note that Strobel refers to "the FBI probe of Pentagon intelligence activities" - apparently the Pentagon, particularly Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans, was itself the 'target' of the investigation.

Investigations shut down.
What happened to that Pentagon investigation? Why aren't Doug Feith, Richard Perle and others in prison? I can only presume that this particular investigation was shut down, just like so many other investigations into these criminals.

In a recent interview Sibel described some cases that were shut down. The case referred to in this excerpt is apparently an Israeli counter-intelligence case:

"There are other cases we are not hearing about that I'm aware of that have to do with similar cases, maybe having to do with other countries. For example, again this is another relevant case, an outside case, the Larry Franklin case, with the espionage case that they pursued with AIPAC. And what the American public doesn’t know is the fact that there were other counter-intelligence operations within the FBI that obtained far more information not only limited to Mr. Franklin, that were similarly shut down in 2000 and 2001 because they ended up going to higher levels and involving maybe way too many people, US persons. I’m talking about individuals who are breaking the law, misusing the trust and abusing their power, and in some cases I would even say engaging in treason."

And here Sibel describes the same thing taking place within Turkish counter-intelligence:

Now the same thing was about to take place with Turkish counter-intelligence. In the main portion of the documented — wiretapped or paper — operations that I translated verbatim (not only for the Washington Field Office but also for the Chicago and New Jersey offices), they were obtained before 2001. If we were to put a date on it you’re looking at end of 1996 to 2001. Now, in 1998 and 1999, there were so many pieces of evidence of U.S. individuals’ involvement. We’re talking about people with official positions, whether they were in the State Department or the Pentagon or the U.S. Congress that forced the Justice Dept, and the good agents who did the right thing, they started a parallel investigation that targeted these individuals who were possibly committing acts of treason.

However, as I was told by first-source agents I was working with, this was put on hold in 1999 because President Clinton was then going through the Lewinsky scandal. After the current administration came into power and after I was working there, the agents were told to shut down.

Similar allegations
Sibel isn't the only person who claims that investigations like this have been shut down. For example, in Kill The Messenger, ex-CIA agent Phil Giraldi says:

All of these people (Richard Perle, Doug Feith) have been investigated by the FBI at one point or another for passing secret information to Israel. 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.

Similarly, Laura Rozen and Jason Vest reported in Prospect:

"Since the Pollard case, U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement sources have revealed to the Prospect that at least six sealed indictments have been issued against individuals for espionage on Israel's behalf. It's a testament to the unique relationship between the United States and Israel that those cases were never prosecuted; according to the same sources, both governments ultimately addressed them through diplomatic and intelligence channels rather than air the dirty laundry. A number of career Justice Department and intelligence officials who have worked on Israeli counterespionage told the Prospect of long-standing frustration among investigators and prosecutors who feel that cases that could have been made successfully against Israeli spies were never brought to trial, or that the investigations were shut down prematurely."

Sibel often makes the same point. The FBI agents in the field are doing a great job, however:

The people who made that decision (to shut down the investigation) were not the Justice Department or the FBI, and that’s what I try to emphasize all the time — they were pressured, they were forced by higher-up forces within the Pentagon and the State Department.

That is, the guilty parties at the Pentagon and State Dept have the power to stomp on investigations into their own illegal activities. And as Sibel says, these people were involved in criminal activity, not just simple state-based espionage.

As reported in Vanity Fair:

"In fact, much of what Edmonds reportedly heard seemed to concern not state espionage but criminal activity. There was talk, she told investigators, of laundering the profits of large-scale drug deals and of selling classified military technologies to the highest bidder."

Once we understand that simple fact, this report from Washington Post makes more sense:

"Reports on the investigation have baffled foreign policy analysts and U.S. officials because the Bush administration and the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon already cooperate on intelligence matters and share policy views. Despite some rocky moments, the relationship has been among the United States' closest in both policy and intelligence sharing since Israel was founded almost six decades ago."

Current AIPAC case
As I've demonstrated, the current 'AIPAC' case involving Keith Weissman and Steve Rosen receiving information from Larry Franklin barely scratches the surface of the underlying crimes that these investigations have yielded, and even this very limited case may never see the light of day. In an apparent greymail attempt, the defense has called 15 current and former government officials to testify - including Condi Rice, Douglas Feith, Stephen Hadley, Elliott Abrams and Richard Armitage. In fact, in Judge Ellis' opinion last week, he gave the admistration this ~~offer~~ ultimatum:

"The government's refusal to comply with a subpoena in these circumstances may result in dismissal or a lesser sanction"

Surely the administration won't refuse that ~~offer~~ ultimatum.

There was, however, one interesting piece of news in the judge's ruling last week. In footnote 8, page 7, Judge Ellis wrote

"The government does not object to the issuance of subpoenas to Franklin, Satterfield, Pollack, or Makovsky."

JTA, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, reported, without elaboration, that:

"The government did not raise objections to the four subpoenas for officials who were identified in the indictment."

If this is correct, then one of the mysteries of the case has apparently (nearly) been solved. In the original indictment, the unindicted co-conspirators were addressed using codewords. We now know that Ken Pollack was USGO-1, David Satterfield was USGO-2 but we didn't know the identities of two others: "DoD employee A" and "DoD employee B."

"DoD employee A" played the trivial, and quite possibly innocent, role of telling Rosen that Larry Franklin was an expert on Iran. On the other hand, "DoD employee B" was a willing participant in at least one espionage-related meeting with Rosen, Weissman and Franklin.

Michael Makovsky, one of Larry Franklin's co-workers at the OSP is apparently either "DoD employee A" or "DoD employee B." If he is "DoD employee B," why hasn't he been indicted?

One Remaining Mystery
Given all this history, the one remaining mystery is how on earth this current 'AIPAC' trial has come as far as it has. Laura Rozen and Jason Vest reported:

This history (of shutting down investigations) had led to informed speculation that the FBI -- fearing the Franklin probe was heading toward the same silent end -- leaked the story to CBS to keep it in the public eye and give it a fighting chance.

Three and a half years later, it appears that the fight is over. Larry Franklin has pled guilty, but even if the AIPAC case goes forward, most of the underlying crimes, and most of the criminal perpetrators, will go unpunished.

One Last Chance
Sibel has evidence of the underlying crimes. She knows who the criminals are. She wants to testify under oath in Congress but the spineless Democrats, particularly Henry Waxman, want her to keep quiet about these issues.

In an act of desperation, Sibel has bravely offered to tell all, at great personal (both legal and physical) risk, if one of the major networks will air her story. Given the history, Sibel's offer is the only chance we'll have to hear any of these remarkable allegations.

Waxman can be contacted in DC:(202)225-3976 and LA:323 651-1040. The toll free Capitol switchboard number is 800-828-0498. See if you can shame him into doing something.

The blog We Can Change The World has put together a list (with contact details) of journalists and media outlets that have (partially) covered Sibel's story in the past. If you contact those journalists, perhaps they'll be willing to at least write about Sibel's offer - which might put pressure on either Waxman or one of the networks to actually take up the offer.

******

cross-posted at Let Sibel Edmonds Speak

(Email me if you want to be added to my Sibel email list. Subject: 'Sibel email list')

What else is new?

HongPong — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 08:13:44 -0600

People are asking me if the war in Iran is going to start on the 15th of October. Well, I answer, in the 4th generation warfare sense, it already has started..... Seymour Hersh's latest missive must be read. Now it's 'counterterrorism' with the Republican Guard. Joe Lieberman practically tried to start the war last week. Fuckin A. The new war messaging. The whole bit... Goddamn... Goddamn...

Daily dimension of Minnesota conspiratoria: Jesse Ventura questions 9/11 and compares it to the JFK assassination:

Fourth dimension of power: your partisan bickering, removed: This Modern World. Obvious statements: Boondocks is teh awesome. Doonesbury too.

OpenCircuit, a new Twin Cities tech collective concept. Related: MinneDemo: DemoCamp Minnesota.

Yong Ho from the Macalester days has a sweet trilingual website.

AIR is a new Adobe app platform (Like Java). You can do your GoogleAnalytics through it. Didn't seem to have much advantage over the web way though.

OpenDNS is a nifty new DNS management service. Get rid of those "looking up website....." delays by getting better DNS! Bonus for businesses and fundies: it can filter porn too!

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. This is a great long summary, the major sectors of the book distilled so you can better understand the IMF/Pinochet/supercapitalist doom mode, seen everywhere from Katrina to Iraq. And how are people are building "shock absorbers" into their local societies in order to thrive once more. A powerful argument against the dying 'Washington consensus' of exploitative trade and debt slavery economics. Much more useful as an analytic frame than most things these days.

Alternatives to the conventional 'crazy talk': Icarus, community alternatives for mental illness.

Cool stuff: Free Speech TV and Keynote: Jeremy Scahill on his new "Blackwater" book, and something called Conspiracy Theory Rock.

Wall Street Journal fantasyland, convinced $100 barrels of oil wouldn't kill the economy. Dangerous groupthink from on high, and Mr. Murdoch's property working nicely: How Economy Could Survive $100 Oil.

Good for secrets and such: cryptogon.com.

Retired CIA analysts spell out the mideast gig: The Teflon Alliance with Israel. (Counterpunch rules)

A selection of interesting stuff from the Agonist, one of my favorite sites:

The Hope In Weakness (Morality II) | The Agonist

The Land of Cotton: Uzbekist@n, Not Dixie and East Germany on the Amu Darya: Ubzekist@n.

Blackwater Woes: More Elite than Our Military? and Blackwater, The Privatization of War And Public Enemy Number One.

Old Folks In the US Unhealthier Than Europeans. A LOT Unhealthier.

Morality | The Agonist

Air War: Target Iran! | The Agonist

That's all for now kiddos. Go read Hersh if you didn't already.

Weekend roundup: sweeping bitesized paranoia!

HongPong — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 22:53:27 -0600

Scooter Libby & Paris Hilton prove that important people are above the law. Classic pardon fallouts of the past. Keith Olbermann pounds away for impeachment - not bad!

Lead off with the weird news: S&P, Moody's Mask $200 Billion of Subprime Bond Risk:

Bloomberg - Standard & Poor's, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings are masking burgeoning losses in the market for subprime mortgage bonds by failing to cut the credit ratings on about $200 billion of securities backed by home loans.

The highest default rates on home loans in a decade have reduced prices of some bonds backed by mortgages to people with poor or limited credit by more than 50 cents on the dollar and forced New York-based Bear Stearns Cos. to offer $3.2 billion to bail out a money-losing hedge fund. Almost 65 percent of the bonds in indexes that track subprime mortgage debt don't meet the ratings criteria in place when they were sold, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

That may just be the beginning. Downgrades by S&P, Moody's and Fitch would force hundreds of investors to sell holdings, roiling the $800 billion market for securities backed by subprime mortgages and $1 trillion of collateralized debt obligations, the fastest growing part of the financial markets.

``You'll see massive losses from banks, insurance companies and pension managers,'' said Joshua Rosner, a managing director at investment research firm Graham Fisher & Co. in New York and co-author of a study last month that said S&P, Moody's and Fitch understate the risks of subprime mortgage bonds. ``The longer they wait, the worse it's going to be.''

So the big indexes are pretending these bad debts are better, because if they get downgraded all the index funds and everyone else will dump this shit, and its heavily leveraged value will accelerate the system's imminent (and immanent) ruptures. Another fine example of how the market can't self-regulate by downgrading batches of shitty securities. See also: London fund latest subprime victim.

I am putting together a grand index of Minnesota political blogs for the day job so I had the opportunity to cruise the vast rambling digital wasteland (for pay) while everyone else enjoys this nice weather. Here's a good aggregator for your convenience and also MN leftyblogs! Working with Drupal? Read this!

I also went on a wild-goose chase, as the State Department has been unable to get my dad his passport for a good 13-14 weeks. They sent it to a street address in Minneapolis, which I visited (and attempted to find the other three SW / NE / NW quadrant equivalents as well). No luck all around. I am going here in a week.

Catching up with Scott: The Grand Dean of academic conspiracy research is Peter Dale Scott, who has doggedly checked out the 'deep politics' of America, the secret stuff from JFK to Watergate and now 9/11 and Iraq-related matters. He comes from the same cadre as Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky and the other classic leftie critics. He's saying here that he is not really part of the left anymore, and how the ongoing political battles among nasty factions like the oil lobby are sort of invisible to the Chomsky-style 'structuralists' who apply outdated concepts of the Ruling Class vs. the Oppressed &etc. Here's an 8-minute clip about 9/11, 'left gatekeepers' and Scott's general approach to 9/11 after researching JFK and Iran-Contra for decades.

Scott is one of those guys who insists on looking at individual personalities and all that kind of thing, not just the dull economic structures that old lefties dwell on. Here's another 9 minute clip about Cheney and 9/11, how Cheney sort of seized control of the 'shadow government' on that day. He's connecting 9/11 actions with Oliver North's old weird schemes in the 1980s - FEMA, the National Programs Office, going into the Patriot Act, etc.

Global schemes to divide ethnicities: One interesting neoconservative angle is how you can combine "freedom for small ethnic groups" and "ethnic groups are pawns we play against each other." The dissolution of Yugoslavia & the application of Albanians & the KLA as an (al-Qaeda-linked) anti-Russian proxy force is a pretty good example. Some similar stuff happens around Africa near Rwanda and the Congo. Clearly Elliot "the original pardoned henchman" Abrams' efforts to get the Palestinians fighting amongst each other have gone forth, if somewhat backfired. Many around the mideast suspect that dividing up Iraq was the plan all along. Now the think-tank geniuses are floating plans to partition Iraq, and not surprisingly the Conspiracy Front sees a conspiracy. I accept most of the articles they cite as examples of this policy in Iraq though.

Global schemes to erase North American borders: On the flip side the same guys are crowing about an elite plan called the North American Union, basically an EU + NAFTA style plan including foreign-bank-owned super-tollways. Sounds like a bad idea but I haven't yet discovered where the I-35/Minnesota angle lies. There is also a bunch of paranoia about radical Mexicans trying to dissolve the United States. The mayor of Oklahoma City wants to make Interstate 35 into an instrument of the global scheme. See the video! Along similar lines, the EU inspires nervousness about sovereignty in the UK.

Govt eyes bullet trains for Russia. Trans-Siberian bullet train?

More about the Chinese quality control problem.

Everyone is supposed to dwell on the wisdom of former terrorists working on TV but that's kinda dumb. Yep.

4 4th of July links: from a Canuck, bob someone, Chinese flags, and some more.

Recent Brit terror plotters "known to police and MI5" aka domestic intelligence services. A typical but generally suppressed angle to many, many stories about "terrorists" in the West.

Google gets tied up in SiCKO - definitely a big story this week. More on this later.

iPhone cracked by DVDJon: some work accomplished on unlocking standard iPhone features. Google for more info on that, his blog is called 'so sue me'. Appropriate for the guy that originally came up with key parts of the DVD encryption crack, a great defeater of the DMCA worthy of top accolades.

In Iraq private contractors collect intelligence which of course will tend to create self-sustaining cash&doom loops. Faked evidence of Iranian munitions in Iraq?

The mutually fatal attraction between Israel & the United States. Hard to argue with this. More blather from the establishment. Here's how the Elliot Abrams plan fell apart - thanks McClatchy for "truth to power" (is that a new slogan?)

The WaPo Cheney article series is weird. Authoritarian rhetoric over Cheney.

2008 campaign notes: Peace activist / 2008 Prez candidate Dal Lamagna went to Jordan to talk with the insurgents. A dicey move, but i wonder why it's considered an 'evil' gesture to try to communicate? Paging Habermas... Ron Paul outdraws the regular candidates in Iowa and of course has more cash-on-hand than McCain now. Check out Paul on recapturing independence for the 4th.

Somalia intervention by the U.S. and Ethiopia has backfired - basically another hopeless disaster.

Norm Coleman Stonergate hits the internets all over the place. The Norm Weasel Meter at mnblue.com. More here. The Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics has a listing of how marijuana trouble can fuck up your life in different states. Minnesota's in the middle.

Jonathon Sharkey AKA the vampire just filed to run for Prez.

Corn is really a big deal, more than you'd think.

OverheardInMinneapolis.com . Simple eh?

Lifeblogging = people in your head: This Pittsburgh Mac user named Justine elected to basically wear a webcam all day & put her life online via video at tastyblogsnack.com and ijustine.com. Somehow thru this process she gets to fly around and visited Minneapolis for the iPhone release. I am not sure if it is a promotional gig or what. The whole thing is strange but very modern eh? Everyone stumbles into the panopticon - i.e. Little Brother.

How to make some money outta the Internets: This is some stuff I've been looking at for work. It's helpful to anyone though. Check out DoshDosh.com: 7 blogging strategies, 4 reasons to write sweet articles, lazy ways to get content, social proof optimization, direct ad sales, long-tail keywords and search traffic. Google Keyword tool, SEObook keywords, blog niches, Google Suggest, SEOdigger. This page about dealing with Drupal Views and home pages is pretty good stuff.

That's all for now, should provide some interesting material for next few days anywhoo...

Mideast Cracker Racism: Secret Elliot Abrams plan against HAMAS, promoting Civil War among Palestinians

HongPong — Mon, 21 May 2007 23:34:39 -0600

It's a grim truism that the Bush White House doesn't care too much about the problems of Palestinians. And, um, well, basically chief nasty enforcer Elliot "Honduran Death Squad Organizer" Abrams dominates American policy, continuously ordering Condi Rice to put a sock in it. Abrams, an Iran-Contra veteran and convicted (but pardoned) felon, is master of the White House Mideast portfolio today.

Here's the basic idea: First, the White House assumes Arabs are a bunch of fucking morons who ought to be set against each other with violence. (See similar racist material among MS Word documents from the old Coalition Provisional Authority. More on that later.) Abrams is now trying to pour cash through Fatah figurehead Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who then would disperse patronage in an effort to build his own political base. Then the U.S. and Israel provide a mountain of weapons to Fatah gunmen, who will blow Hamas away in a tidy little move.

The problem is that this plan is like most Mideast efforts nowadays: it's a malign effort to kick the can a few yards down the field and avoid putting Israel on the spot for negotiations. It's been the same song-and-dance since at least 1982, when Sharon invaded Lebanon to prevent negotiations with the PLO.

Here is the sinister Abrams plan via Asia Times. Yet again another dumb policy designed to enhance the military-industrial complex that strangles Israel, while facilitating more West Bank settlement construction. Just another day in the Mideast. Here's part one, wherein we learn how the Jordanians have censored this news. Ian Welsh over at the Agonist calls it "the essential insanity." Correct sir! Here's more on the Elliot Abrams plan of doom. Tony Karon aptly notes that Gazan Fatah chieftain Mohammad Dahlan is probably getting into fighting HAMAS because of foreign encouragement. This guy is gearing up to become the U.S./Israeli cats-paw or instrument of power, gendarme, whatever you want to call it.

Matt Yglesias bitterly observed the open anti-Palestinian racism of New Republic editor Martin Peretz. (Those guys are supposed to be liberal!) And then 2 3 4 he goes on and on without noting this whole thing was a consequence of American policy. Ygs:

Gone missing from this analysis is any recognition of the extent to which the current terrible situation is the result of stupid American policy choices. The dynamic on the US-Israeli side has become one of self-fulfilling prophesies, where the failure of ham-handed policy initiatives to produce the desired Palestinian quisling regime becomes the reason for more ham-handed initiatives whose failure then becomes yet another reason there can be no serious push for peace.

There's no end-game. Just wasting more time and blood.

More Sunday bits and pieces: Helvetica: the movie! THQ & the CIA, another Sibel Edmonds bit

HongPong — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 02:46:07 -0600

My ol buddy Tom from Macalester bails out of professional poker, he says on his blog. He's one of the low-key, calculating types of poker players, not a high-roller. And he made an impressive amount of cash in the process. I just don't know how anyone could put in that many hours. But hey, if it pays its easier than work, right? Best of luck all around. Tom wants to work on thebrewingnetwork project apparently. Best Luck, Aces high etc.

Brother Ali's album drops at midnight on Monday night. You can go to Fifth Element and pick it up along with bonus goodies. Oddly, today's Strib reported that Aaron Sorkin, the (pot enthusiast) guru who created and wrote most of the West Wing is working on a stage version of the Flaming Lips' album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Something about a rambling Martin Sheen and giant robots come to mind. Nice.

I just got a couple books from the writers behind CounterPunch in the mail: The new End Times: The Death of the Fourth Estate and Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press are both excellent. They were only about $30 together, not bad! Speaking of the CIA and the media, one major element of both books is the crass manipulation of domestic press for the purposes of intelligence agencies. Wikipedia's entry on Operation Mockingbird is just a starting point.

The Panopticon cracks in London! It turns out that filling up your whole society with cameras won't actually work that well at catching criminals: it just swamps law enforcement with too much information. This means that the system doesn't cover its intended purpose, unless the real purpose is to spread fear and paranoia! 4.2 million British cameras aren't doing much, apparently. See also Social Fear and the Commodification of Terrorism, and London: The PhoboCity.

Minnesota U.S. Attorney case gets ugly and weird: The Paulose USA here in MN looks pretty shady, and the Star Tribune (and columnist Nick Coleman) are getting into the mix. TalkingPointsMemo is interested (earlier) as is Senate Judiciary in DC. Corporate squares proclaim: move along, nothing to see here...

Helvetica: The Movie! Yes there is a documentary coming out about the venerable Swiss font! via the pretty sweet blog 3quarksdaily.

Minnesota House Republican leader Marty Seifert emits the memorable:

...the war in Iraq was the dominant issue [in the election] and the President’s approval rating was so low that it rivaled that of gonorrhea...

CIA/Pentagon team up with video game distributor THQ: Pentagon and CIA enlist video games: Simulations developed for training and recruitment: photo of THQ army game at right:

“Full Spectrum Warrior” was created through the Institute for Creative Technologies in Marina Del Ray, Calif., a $45 million endeavor formed by the Army five years ago to connect academics with local entertainment and video game industries. The institute subcontracted game development work to Los Angeles-based Pandemic Studios.

The institute’s other training program, “Full Spectrum Command,” was released for military use in February...... The game the Institute for Creative Technologies has been working on with the CIA for about a year — at a cost of several million dollars — will let agency analysts assume the role of terror cell leaders, cell members and operatives.

“Our analysts would be accustomed to looking at the world from the perspective of the terrorists we are chasing, and learn to expect the unexpected,” CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said.

RECRUITMENT TOOL: Training aside, video games are increasingly viewed by top brass as a way to get teenagers interested in enlisting.

Yikes.

Antiwar bits: Raimondo hits back against Wall Street Journal squares who try to frame the upcoming AIPAC trial as an antisemitic exercise. Former CIA dude Philip Giraldi sez Democrats Earn Their Stripes in the War Party. Also The Waste of War and Kudos to Pelosi for Visiting Syria. The Ravings of James Woolsey. James Petras: Bush AIPAC and Palestine: The Political Economy of a Disaster. Uri Avnery: Condi in the Middle East.

More bits: Ridiculous White House spin about Pelosi in Syria. You Make Peace With Your Enemies, The Sadness of American Foreign Policy.

The Council For National Policy: the Council on Foreign Relations for fundamentalist lunatics! Check it out on DailyKos, Wikipedia, and a really lengthy two-part and rather oddly conspiratorial view of what the hell they are up to. The Deep Politics of God: The CNP, Dominionism, and the Ted Haggard Scandal, part 1 and two. While there is a ton of conspiracy fluff here, I found interesting the parts about a kind of eschaton-immanentizing neo-Gnosticism that underpins Christian Dominionism's claims to initiate the Kingdom of Christ on earth through political action on the Temporal Plane is really anti-Christian and crazy.

At the Manchester United/Roma game, Police escalation sparks soccer riots, not rival fans! Is corn safe these days, or adulterated?

Protesters try to arrest Karl Rove at American University! Bravo. Wapo on it.

Internal Crisis strikes Israel / Some of those leftists say the Palestinians lost a lot of land. What are they talking about? Bet you never saw this map before...

Naah... Continuing the last post, A bit more about Oded Yinon's schemes to break up the Arab states into mini-statelets. Is the US implementing this? A bit last year on it in Counterpunch. Neocon David Frum rambles on about how awesome Jewish espionage is.

The Israeli ambassador to El Salvador was recently found bound and gagged wearing sex toys down in Central America! In other random news, Russian-Israeli mobster-billionaire Arcadi Gaydamak was indicted by the French for selling nearly $800 million in arms to Angola's president during the civil war there. However Gaydamak is also starting an Israeli political party, the Tzedek Hevrati (Social justice) party. A poll indicated the Gaydamak-led party would receive 14 Knesset seats, drawing the vote of Haredim after Gaydamak has spend a good bit of cash there. This would skim off Shas' Knesset share to 10 seats, according to the poll, and Kadima would only get 11, Labor 14, and worst of all, Likud 27. The extreme right in NRP gets 10, and Yisrael Beitenu 7. Looks horrible!

With many recent indictments and resignations around the top of the government (including a Presidential sex scandal and the Chief of Staff's foolish Lebanon misconduct), this article by Dror Wahrman asks if Israel is falling apart internally:

Do these events really presage the collapse of the Israeli system of governance and democracy? There certainly has never been such a deep crisis of leadership in the country that touts itself as the only democracy in the Middle East. The leader of the ruling parliamentary coalition, Avigdor Yitzhaki, said so publicly a few days ago. And the Minister of Education has suggested that all schools devote special classes to the “government crisis”, so that children can speak out about what might well seem to them like a total collapse of all systems that control their lives. Suddenly the Palestinians and the Hizbullah, and even Iranian nukes, have taken a back seat: Israel does indeed seem in danger of imploding from within, at least as a viable democracy.

......The infinite variety of devices through which Israel has condoned and often actively encouraged the breaking of the rules in its drive to expropriate Palestinian occupied land against both Israeli and international law has been documented not only by journalists, scholars and observers on the left: it was also the subject of a thick government judicial document, known as the “Sasson Report,” which created something of a furore when it was handed to prime minister Ariel Sharon in March 2005. Within months, however, the Sasson Report joined the mounting pile of legal and normative documents that have been effortlessly side-stepped by the settlers and their supporters in multiple branches of the government. It was only a matter of time, inevitably, before the lawlessness of the occupied territories – and their support networks throughout the Israeli state apparatus – began infecting Israel proper.

.......So if Sharon’s reign was the epitome of success for the activism of both 1948 and 1967, the reign of his successors has been the time of collapse and of reckoning. With Sharon’s departure Israel has been left with a weak cadre of second-rate politicians, who seem even more puny in the shadow of Sharon’s towering figure and tragic exit. The corrupt practices are all there, but no higher motives can be claimed for them, and no protection from public outrage can be afforded to their perpetrators. They are simply as petty and ugly as they look. Even when Dan Chaluz, the Army Chief of Staff, resigned for reasons ostensibly linked to the failed war in Lebanon, the one act of his that will be remembered with particular public disgust is that even as he ordered the bombing of Southern Lebanon on the 12th of July 2006, he paused to instruct his stock broker to sell his portfolio; a callous, greedy mistake Sharon would never have committed.

This article also places the shady Gaydamak's public image in context. Also: Benny Morris: From Israeli ‘New Historian’ to Hardline Rightist on the leftist Tikkun Olam blog. Many of these links come from the xymphora blog, which has a lot of stuff I don't agree with (including some generalizations I find offensive), but is still interesting with some good leads.

Bolvian resistance pays off, spreading discord and native unity in South America: Check out Oil, Water and Resistance in Bolivia: The Price of Fire!

Iraq Slog: The Under-reported story of millions of Iraqi refugees. How much can Syria and Jordan handle? More on McCain shadiness. From the Guardian: In Iraq, public anger is at last translating into unity:

The success of the occupation's divide-and-rule tactics and their insistence on basing the new political and military structures on sects, religions, and ethnicities is threatening the communal cohesion that was once the country's hallmark. This is a factor in the absence of a united movement, capable of leading the struggle to end the occupation. The occupation has sown divisions where there were none and transformed existing differences into open warfare.

And is it any wonder that the long-suffering Iraqi people find themselves at an impasse. Try catching your breath after decades of brutal dictatorship, 13 years of economic sanctions and four years of an obscene war.

But even in the absence of a unified anti-occupation front, the resistance of the Iraqi people has managed to thwart the world's greatest military empire. And there are signs of a mass rejection of these sectarian forces, and the possibility that public anger will translate into the very unity that is so desperately needed. Rage against corruption and the collapse of public services is sweeping the country, including Kurdistan. Similarly, the proposed corporate occupation of Iraq, disguised as a legal document to tie the country to the oil companies for decades to come, has reminded the population of one of the main reasons for the US-led invasion. It has also reminded them what a self-respecting, sovereign Iraq looked like in 1961, when the government nationalised Iraq's lands for future oil production.

Agent Provocateur accusations against U.S. in sparking sectarian conflict: There were a couple weird stories about random Iraqis getting set up as "suicide bombers" by the U.S. It's an odd tale but interesting from the odd and kind of inscrutable site Roads to Iraq. (I would be more impressed if they got rid of the Wordpress default theme!) Also: Robert Fisk in Egypt: The US and the West want to divide you, invade you and control your oil! How about that! Here is more accusing the U.S. of agent provocateur bombings in Iraq to incite sectarian conflict. Also "The Provocateur State: Is the CIA Behind the Iraqi "Insurgents"--and Global Terrorism?" by Frank Morales and this collection of articles.

Central/South America bits: Check out NarcoNews including stuff on Oaxaca, Low-intensity war in Chiapas, the Return of La Otra ("the other"). Fidel Castro rambles on about Ethanol.

Sibel Edmonds bit on FISA: NarcoSphere had info about the Sibel Edmonds case recently published and ignored by the media - check the comments:

Edmonds’ complaint included allegations of illegal activities by Turkish organizations and their agents in the United States, and the involvement of certain elected and appointed U.S. officials in the Department of State, Pentagon, and the U.S. Congress in these activities. In its September 2005 issue, Vanity Fair ran a comprehensive piece on Edmonds’ case by reporter David Rose, in which several former and current congressional and Justice Department officials identified former House Speaker Dennis Hastert as being involved in illegal activities with the Turkish organizations and personnel targeted in FBI investigations. In addition, Rose reported: “…much of what Edmonds reportedly heard seemed to concern not state espionage but criminal activity. There was talk, she told investigators, of laundering the profits of large-scale drug deals and of selling classified military technologies to the highest bidder.” In January 2005, DOJ-OIG released an unclassified summary of its investigation into Edmonds' termination. The report concluded that Edmonds was fired for reporting serious security breaches and misconduct in the agency's translation program, and that many of her allegations were supported by convincing evidence.

Another Former Veteran FBI Counterintelligence and Espionage Specialist at FBI Headquarters in Washington DC also filed similar reports with DOJ-OIG and several congressional offices regarding violations of FISA implementation and the covering up of several espionage cases involving FBI Language Specialists and public corruption cases by the Bureau. The cases reported by this whistleblower corroborate those reported by SA Graham and Sibel Edmonds. In an interview with NSWBC investigators the former FBI Specialist, who wished to remain anonymous, stated: “…you are looking at covering up massive public corruption and espionage cases; to top that off you have major violations of FISA by the FBI Washington Field Office and HQ targeting these cases. Everyone involved has motive to cover up these reports and prevent investigation and public disclosure. No wonder they invoked the state secrets privilege in Edmonds’ case.”

William Weaver, NSWBC Senior Advisor noted that: ”These abuses of power are precisely why we must pay attention to whistleblowers. Preservation of the balance of powers between the branches of government increasingly relies on information provided by whistleblowers, especially in the face of aggressive and expanding executive power. Through illegal surveillance members of Congress and other officials may be controlled by the executive branch, thereby dissolving the matrix of our democracy. The abuse of two powers of secrecy, FISA and the state secrets privilege, are working hand in hand to subvert the Constitution. In an abominably perverse arrangement, the abuse of FISA is being covered up by abuse of the state secrets privilege. Only whistleblowers and the congressional and judicial oversight their revelations spawn can bring our system back into balance.”

Jordanian prince discerns suppressed American/Israeli extremist plan to shatter Arab nationalism into statelets: Re-Ottomanization & Oded Yinon revisited

HongPong — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 23:22:45 -0600

"Hey now... I mean seriously WTF?" this photo seems to say...

A suppressed slice of news from the Mideast: a top member of Jordanian royalty discerns a plan to break up the Middle East into an array of new states with Israel up top. Here's a slice from Kurt Nimmo's Another Day in the Empire blog: Prince Hassan: Neocons and Israel Plan “New 100 Years of War” in the Middle East:

[Despite American media suppression] what does Bin Talal and millions of Arabs know?

“After a keynote speech at the European Policy Centre in Brussels on the ‘coexistence of civilizations’ Prince Hassan Bin Tallal, crown prince of Jordan in the final days of the late King Hussein, spoke to Today’s Zaman…. Prince Hassan made it clear that the idea of breaking Iraq into pieces, as is circulating in some US and Israeli circles, would be a fatal mistake. The Jordanian prince warned that a possible break-up would play into the hands of Israeli ‘extremists,’ making Israel the dominant minority in a region of minorities.”

Prince Hassan “is now one of the leading intellectuals and activists of the Islamic world,” and yet his comments go unreported in this country. “I want to cite the Clean Break paper of 1996 attributed to the conservatives in the US. It seems to me that the concept of pan-Arabism, pan-Islamism, supra-national identity was actually taken to pieces by this paper, arguing somehow that fragmentation was taking place in that part of the world, so let us take full advantage of this. Muslims and Arabs do not need enemies as they are doing an excellent job of destroying each other. Of course this plays into the hands of Israeli extremists that believe Israel should emerge as the dominating minority in a region of minorities or a mosaic of minorities.”

The idea of taking “to pieces” Arab nationalism is hardly revelatory. “This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking,” writes Khalil Nakhleh in the publisher’s note to Israel Shahak’s transation of Oded Yinon’s A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties. “Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme,” going back at least to the memoirs of Moshe Sharett, former prime minister of Israel, as documented by Livia Rokach (Israel’s Sacred Terrorism: A study based on Moshe Sharett’s Personal Diary). Of course, until the Israelis hit the jackpot with the neocons, who were able to infiltrate the Bush administration and drive U.S. foreign policy, they were unable to carry out their master plan on the scale envisioned.

“End of the Westphalian system, the end of the Middle Eastern community of states, the beginning of a Balkanization that could lead, in the words of the former Iraqi Defense Minister Ali Allawi, to a new 100 years of war,” Hassan continues.

In short, a plan perfect for the Israelis and their neocon helpers.

Of course, none of this matters—as we are essentially deaf, dumb, and blind here in America, a condition facilitated by the corporate media—and it appears quite plain we are headed for what Hassan characterizes as a “new 100 years of war,” not simply in the Middle East but across the board.

Who is Oded Yinon? One of those hardcore rightwing Zionists who wanted to see the chips fall where they may in the midst of chaos, leaving Israel as the ascendant regional hegemon. I'm not claiming this is the dominant strategic view in Israel, but it's still tempting as a perceived way for Israel to escape the grim wheels of fate. More sane Israeli analysts and strategists don't favor such madcap schemes, since the ensuing chaos would leave Israel far more vulnerable to nuclear attack, as nuclear proliferation would surely accelerate, probably leaving nukes in the hands of irrational actors.

So it's a chancy scheme. What kind of map are these guys after? Something kinda retrograde, like this:

More sweet maps here.

Check out The Zionist Plan for the Middle East by Oded Yinon, translated and edited by Israel Shahak, one of those old school kinds of theoretical schemes. Here is Shahak's introduction. Shahak is a leftist dissident Zionist and Israeli professor:

The Association of Arab-American University Graduates finds it compelling to inaugurate its new publication series, Special Documents, with Oded Yinon's article which appeared in Kivunim (Directions), the journal of the Department of Information of the World Zionist Organization. Oded Yinon is an Israeli journalist and was formerly attached to the Foreign Ministry of Israel. To our knowledge, this document is the most explicit, detailed and unambiguous statement to date of the Zionist strategy in the Middle East. Furthermore, it stands as an accurate representation of the "vision" for the entire Middle East of the presently ruling Zionist regime of Begin, Sharon and Eitan. Its importance, hence, lies not in its historical value but in the nightmare which it presents.

The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power, and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel's satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation.

This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme. This theme has been documented on a very modest scale in the AAUG publication, Israel's Sacred Terrorism (1980), by Livia Rokach. Based on the memoirs of Moshe Sharett, former Prime Minister of Israel, Rokach's study documents, in convincing detail, the Zionist plan as it applies to Lebanon and as it was prepared in the mid-fifties.

The first massive Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978 bore this plan out to the minutest detail. The second and more barbaric and encompassing Israeli invasion of Lebanon on June 6, 1982, aims to effect certain parts of this plan which hopes to see not only Lebanon, but Syria and Jordan as well, in fragments. This ought to make mockery of Israeli public claims regarding their desire for a strong and independent Lebanese central government. More accurately, they want a Lebanese central government that sanctions their regional imperialist designs by signing a peace treaty with them. They also seek acquiescence in their designs by the Syrian, Iraqi, Jordanian and other Arab governments as well as by the Palestinian people. What they want and what they are planning for is not an Arab world, but a world of Arab fragments that is ready to succumb to Israeli hegemony. Hence, Oded Yinon in his essay, "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980's," talks about "far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967" that are created by the "very stormy situation [that] surrounds Israel."

Israeli Green Leaf Party rules pot not kosher during Passover; Kosher the rest of the time!

HongPong — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 21:00:05 -0600

Israeli Pro-marijuana party tells supporters: Pot smoking forbidden on Passover By The Associated Press

In bad news for its religious Jewish supporters, an Israeli pro-marijuana party announced Tuesday that smoking pot is forbidden on Passover. Cannabis is among the substances Jews are forbidden to consume during the week-long festival, which begins Monday, said Michelle Levine, a spokeswoman for the Green Leaf party.

Biblical laws prohibit eating leavened foods during Passover, replacing bread with flat crackers called matza. Later injunctions by European rabbis extended those rules to forbid other foods like beans and corn, and more recent rulings have further expanded the ban to include hemp seeds, which today are found in some health oils - and in marijuana.

Green Leaf is a small political party that supports the legalization of marijuana. Although it is by no means a Jewish religious authority, the group decided to warn its observant supporters away from the drug on Passover. "You shouldn't smoke marijuana on the holiday, and if you have it in your house you should get rid of it," Levine said.

But not everyone needs to give up their habit for the duration of the festival. The rabbinic injunctions banning hemp were never adopted by Sephardic Jews, who come from countries in the Middle East and North Africa. That means there is no reason they can't keep smoking marijuana, Levine said, except that it remains illegal, despite her party's best efforts.

Green Leaf contested the last three national elections but never won a seat, despite gaining popularity as a protest vote. According to Levine, the party has a large number of religious supporters.

Oddly, the story posted on Haaretz drops the conclusion that apparently, it's kosher the rest of the year. That's what I read in the New York Times bulletin.

A couple other items from Haaretz: the interview with Prof Ron Robin from NYU:

Dear Prof. Robin, How do you see the influence of AIPAC and the rest of the Israeli lobby on the American policy in the Middle East?

Thank you, Jeffrey Hellm

Response: AIPAC is, indeed, a powerful lobby. However recent (poorly researched and politically slanted) publications have transformed this organization into something quite sinister. Personally, I do not share the underlying philosophy of AIPAC, in particular its unreflective support of hard-line, right wing policies in Israel. But this organization is merely playing by the rules governing the American political system. Contrary to popular opinion, AIPAC is by no means the most powerful lobby in Washington; it is however, more visible than most other lobbies. Its strenuous lobbying - for a variety of questionable causes - is nothing out of the ordinary. They are just a bit more skillful than a few of their immediate rivals.

This opinion bit about settling the conflict made some sense. Meanwhile West Bank settlers park themselves into a Hebron military base, "temporarily" for 16 years.

The Central Command has told Peace Now that the base was captured in 1983 "for security needs and not for settlement needs.... Nonetheless," the army said, "in 1991 the Justice Ministry handed down an opinion determining that the military commander can allow Israeli inhabitants, including civilians, to enter the territory, for temporary residence, if and to the extent that it is in line with military needs there."