[Previous entry: "GopBias.Org Blog record for March and April, 2008 plus May and June 2008, culminating with the July fourth two hundred and thirty second anniversary of our Declaration of Independence - This web blog holds the key to this coming November, 2008 Presidential Election, as the following two letters regarding John Sidney McCain III illustrate, and the resurrection of the "strategic framework agreement" by Admiral Mike Mullen."] [Next entry: "Mark Crispin Miller on Democracy Now - Archive"]

08/16/2008: "GopBias.Org Blog record and database for March and April, 2008, plus May and June 2008, culminating with the July fourth two hundred and thirty second anniversary of our Declaration of Independence and continuing on to November 4th and beyond to 2009 and 2010 - This web blog holds the key to the great November, 2008 Presidential Election, as the following letters and columns regarding John Sidney McCain III illustrate, and the resurrection of the "strategic framework agreement" by Admiral Mike Mullen (now Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), an agreement that will continue to be troublesome, along with the "Status of Forces"."

A REMINDER 1/27/10 - The world is being subjected to a bloody scam (and surely that includes Iraq), a conspiracy that took root in Israel on November fourth of 1995 with the assassination of soldier, statesman Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a murder carried out by an acolyte, Yigal Amir, of the present (and infamous) Prime Minister, Zionist Benjamin Netanyahu. A scurvy international band of activists from, primarily the United States (Richard Perle to Douglas Feith), but also Europe (Bernard-Henri Levy), assuming the benign pseudonym of "Neo-Cons", developed their strategy under the title "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (Israel)", the first step of which was the elimination of Saddam Hussein.

[[ The particulars of this abominable scheme were first outlined in James Bamford's groundbreaking 2004 publication A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies, and Michiko Kakutani's insightful 6/18/04 N Y Times book review. ]]

Horrifically, "A Clean Break" refers to the murder of Prime Minister Rabin, and, as he would have foreseen, reprises to multiple killings globally, of course including their ultimate targets, Palestinians and Iranians, but, along the way, Muslims of every caste; of course, the key element of this treachery, managed by AIPAC and its fellow conspirators, the blood and treasure of the United States and its innocent civilians, as in 9/11 and its aftermath.

When, if ever, has this monstrosity been debated in the Congress of these United States? And is this scene worthy of our ten years of blood and treasure? Or is it scurrilous propaganda for a nefarious regime!

True to form, as the Guardian 1/18-23/10 lays out the effort of the Brits to expose the fraud underlying their joining George W. Bush to provide Israel safer passage to controlling the Middle East, by eliminating Saddam Hussein, a Ros Atkins uses the 1/29/10 BBC program "WORLD HAVE YOUR SAY" to eliminate from the record twenty-seven year veteran of our CIA Ray McGovern's bombshell established on his 6/6/05 appearance with Margaret Warner on the Lehrer NewsHour. That revelation (within two weeks of 9/11) that Bush had ensnared Tony Blair in his plans to attack and occupy Iraq is the pesky fact which debunks the array; "The best laid schemes o' mice and men (Robert Burns 1759-96)...."; the conglomeration of books, articles, etc. which evade this betrayal of our age, as the authors distort the true heinous nature of, not 9/11, but of THE sinister conspiracy of our age which generated 9/11.



Thank God
For The Relentless Amy Goodman
- "Hamas Accuses Israel of Assassinating Top Hamas Official in Dubai -

A top operative from Hamas has been killed in Dubai. Mahmoud Mabhouh was found dead in his room in a hotel on January 20. Hamas officials accused Israel of assassinating Mabhouh and of 'moving the battlefield abroad.' His death occurred three days after an Israeli cabinet minister visited Abu Dhabi. Israel had accused Mabhouh of being involved in the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers and for delivering arms from Iran to Hamas." - DemocracyNow 2/1/10

"Human Rights Group Rejects Israeli 'Whitewash' of Gaza Attack -

In Israel and the Occupied Territories, the Israeli military has taken what it calls 'disciplinary' action against two soldiers for firing on the United Nations compound during last year’s attack on the Gaza Strip. The United Nations compound burned to the ground in the attack after Israel shelled it with white phosphorus. In its report, the Israeli military defended the white phosphorus shelling, saying the soldiers are only at fault for also firing artillery shells. It’s unclear what penalties, if any, the two soldiers face. The unspecified move is the first acknowledgment by Israel of the dozens of war crimes and international law violations during the three-week assault. But Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said Israel continues to reject the war crimes allegations documented in the inquiry led by Justice Richard Goldstone.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon: 'Israel does not need any admonition from the international community. We keep our high standards on morality, and the fact that we took disciplinary actions against very high and senior officers is just the proof. The Goldstone report still is a sham and very biased, very unprofessional, and it shouldn’t be at all discussed.'

Last week Israel issued a report disputing the Goldstone report as part of a campaign to prevent its adoption at the United Nations. Yael Stein of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said the Israeli military is covering up its actions.

Yael Stein: 'This morning it was revealed that two high-ranking officers were disciplined for firing white phosphorus at the UNRWA compound. This case shows the whitewash of the report that Israel submitted. The report itself does not specify the circumstances in which those officers were acted, and therefore just the revelations today just show how extreme the case is. We think that this case shows that the military system cannot investigate itself.'" - DemocracyNow 2/2/10

- "Report: Israeli Bomb Found in Ruins of Gaza Flour Plant -

The Guardian of London, meanwhile, says it’s found evidence undermining Israeli denials of targeting a flour mill in northern Gaza. Israel rejected allegations of nearly destroying the al-Badr plant in its report last week. But UN mine experts say the remains of an Israeli aircraft bomb were found in the ruins of the plant after the Gaza assault." - DemocracyNow 2/2/10

CAUSE FOR WORLD OUTRAGE
- While much of the world is focused, and rightly so, on the indescribable damage to Haiti and the immense struggle which its surviving citizens face, the indescribably egomaniacal Israeli government sees only another opportunity to flaunt and taunt the responsible world entities which are dedicated to ending the decades-long suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands of that illicit state of Israel.

With this action the rogue Netanyahu has seized from the Palestinian West Bank a virtual buffer zone North, East and South of Jerusalem, to double the land mass of that city which is sacred to Christians, Muslims and Jews, and will be used by the illegal state of Israel as a stepping stone to engulf Maale Adumin as well; these Netanyahu Jews are insatiable.

(Note also that "Bibi" intends to engulf Ariel, under which lies one of Palestine's largest aquifers). But they are not alone. In fact, with the crucial and determinative support of AIPAC (i.e. the United States Senate) the Israelis have no restraint on their illegal activities. Imagine. A society laden with nuclear weapons...and no restraint.

- "Netanyahu Says Some Settlements Will Always be Israel's

JERUSALEM -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said Sunday that several Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank would always remain part of Israel, a comment that upset the Palestinians even as the Obama administration’s Middle East envoy was trying to coax them back into peace talks.

Although Israel has long insisted on maintaining a permanent hold over certain groups of settlements, including those Mr. Netanyahu referred to Sunday, his remarks struck a jarring note on a day when the American envoy, George J. Mitchell, shuttled between Israeli and Palestinian leaders on a so-far unsuccessful mission to restart negotiations that have been stalled for over a year.

Mr. Netanyahu took the opportunity, as the photo records of the approaching holiday of Tu Bishvat, a Jewish arbor day, to reaffirm Israel’s claim to the Etzion bloc of settlements just south of Jerusalem. 'Our message is clear,' he said during a tree-planting ceremony there. 'We are planting here, we will stay here, we will build here. This place will be an inseparable part of the State of Israel for eternity.'" - Kershner Israeli Media NY Times 1/25/10

Article continues

- Trouble Here -

There would seem to be a wiring flaw at the very core of this administration, and its not the President of the United States. Time and again key tasks are not completed, whether they be positions filled, or candidates vetted. Schedules kept, or principals informed. In any event, these are responsibilities of the President's Chief of Staff. Significantly, while he is regularly mentioned by the press and ALWAYS focused by the cameras - these are the rare factors which substantiate that the man is in Washington, but leave untold whether or not he has been of service to this president and the American people. The smug Mr. Emanuel - he of the profane, expletive and obscenity-laden diatribe for all persons with whom he disagrees - he has benefited from the press this time by being supposedly subjected, on EVERY media outlet, to Sarah Palin's call for President Obama to fire Mr. Emanuel. Mr. Emanuel is so full of himself he has yet to realize that this President is faced with the most threatening political and policy issues encountered since Franklin Delano Roosevelt occupied the White House seventy five years ago, in the Great Depression, also brought about by self-serving Republicans. The self-serving Rahm Emanuel, he who served in the Israel "Defense(?)" Force, should re-chart his service to this country, the United States of America.

AN ADDITIONAL LAND GRAB
Palestinian women tried to avoid tear gas during clashes with members of the Israeli Security (?) Forces in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh on Jan. 22.


"Israel Confronts West Bank Protests Against SECURITY (?) Barrier

NILIN, West Bank -- For more than a year, this village has been a focus of weekly protests against the Israeli security barrier, which cuts through its lands. Now, the village appears to be at the center of an intensifying Israeli arrest campaign.

Apparently concerned that the protests could spread, the Israeli Army and security forces have recently begun clamping down, arresting scores of local organizers and activists here and conducting nighttime raids on the homes of others.

Muhammad Amira, a schoolteacher and a member of Nilin’s popular committee, the group that organizes the protests, said his home was raided by the army in the early hours of Jan. 10. The soldiers checked his identity papers, poked around the house and looked in on his sleeping children, Mr. Amira said.

He added, “They came to say, ‘We know who you are.’ ”

Each Friday for the last five years, Palestinians have demonstrated against the barrier, bolstered by Israeli sympathizers and foreign volunteers who document the ensuing clashes with video cameras, often posting the most dramatic footage on YouTube.

Israel says the barrier, under construction since 2002, is essential to prevent suicide bombers from reaching its cities; the Palestinians oppose it on grounds that much of it runs through the territory of the West Bank.

While the weekly protests are billed as nonviolent resistance, they usually end in violent confrontations between the Israeli security forces and masked, stone-throwing Palestinian youths. “These are not sit-ins with people singing ‘We Shall Overcome,’ ” said Maj. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli Army’s Central Command, which controls the West Bank. “These are violent, illegal, dangerous riots.”

ILLEGAL? THIS IS THE PALESTINIAN WEST BANK!

Other Palestinians are “jumping on the bandwagon,” he said, and the protests “could slip out of control.”

The protests first took hold in the nearby village of Bilin, which became a symbol of Palestinian defiance after winning a ruling in the Israeli Supreme Court stipulating that the barrier must be rerouted to take in less agricultural land. According to military officials, work to move the barrier WILL START NEXT MONTH. (REALLY?)



Like a creeping, part-time intifada, the Friday protests have been gaining ground. Nabi Saleh, another village near Ramallah, has become the newest focus of clashes, AFTER JEWISH SETTLERS TOOK OVER A NATURAL SPRING ON VILLAGE LAND.

One recent Friday, a group of older villagers marched toward the spring. They were met with tear gas and stun grenades, and scuffled with soldiers on the road. Other villagers spilled down the hillsides swinging slingshots and pelted the Israelis with stones.

“Israel recognizes the threat of the popular movement and its potential for expanding,” said Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli anarchist and spokesman of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, which is based in Ramallah. “I think the goal is to quash it before it gets out of hand.”" - Kershner Israeli Media N Y Times 1/29/10

CONTINUED

- Amy Goodman 1/26/10: "Israeli Cabinet Minister: Goldstone Report on Gaza Is Anti-Semitic

The Israeli news agency Ynet is reporting the Israeli government is preparing an all-out attack on Richard Goldstone’s United Nations report that accused Israel of committing war crimes during its assault on Gaza. Israeli Cabinet Minister Yuli Edelstein said, “The Goldstone Report...and similar reports, are simply a type of anti-Semitism.” Ynet reports Israel will launch the attack on the Goldstone Report tomorrow, the sixty-fifth anniversary of the 1945 liberation of Auschwitz. Last year the United Nations called on Israel to conduct an independent credible investigation into the war crimes allegations, but Israel has refused to establish a commission of inquiry." - DemocracyNow 1/26/10

We are all contending with an absolute and total blackout of analyses of the artifice-laden brazen schemes of the Jewish Diaspora to distract world opinion from the constant machinations and intrigues to dispossess Palestinians of a viable Palestine. Major offenders include NPR and PBS.

Message to Israelis: Palestinians, and that includes Hamas, did not send Jews to Auschwitz.

Copy Ellie Wiesel and Alan Dershowitz!


- Propaganda Intensifies -

With David Brooks, Mort Zuckerman (the owner of U. S. News and World Report making one of his rare public appearances since he feted Silvio Berlusconi's ADL reception at the Plaza on 9/23/03) and a David Faber (Anchor and Reporter at CNBC) playing the role of political analysts (Does that include Israel vs. Palestine?) it would seem that David Gregory takes his orders from the sequestered John Donald Imus Jr. This was the 1/30/10 Meet the Press, the same Sunday that Barbara Walters headed ABC's This Week, featuring Roger Ailes, in one of his also rare public appearances. In other words, Judaism ruled the day. Also, the year to come? Doubtless with the television camera-shy Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in charge.

This previously mentioned Admiral Mike Mullen, all over the tube - first with "Charlie" Rose, who considers himself the fourth Emanuel brother - and "Charlie" then followed with Stan McChrystal (whose early work was in Special Black Ops with the CIA in Iraq in the early days of "Shock & Awe") who also promoted the "surge" in Afghanistan, all of which had been preceded by the brilliant Tom Toles, addressing George W. Bush, who has been exonerated by our compromised Media/Press because he, the junior George Bush, had, eliminated Saddam, FOR ISRAEL!!!

Whether or not the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki (Is it now accepted publishing practice to describe Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu as "Radical", and what about United States Senator and divorced Orthodox Jew Joseph I. Lieberman?) whether the cleric was killed (he was not) in the recent (12/24/09) fighter jet - drone attacks in Yemen (directed by U.S. intelligence) - by 12/27/09 The Associated Press had acknowledged that this was a "secretive U. S. airstrike against suspected Al Qaeda sites in Yemen" headlined "U.S. expands war on terror to Yemen" (The N Y Times' Jack Healy and the usually reliable Scott Shane had described the action as a Yemeni operation) - the fact remains that the unrest in the Middle East is increasing, and The New York Times is an "iffy" broker, rather than a scrupulous mediator of available information.


- A CRISIS INTERJECTION 1/20/10 -

If you wondered why Israeli doctors and their emergency field hospital in Haiti were featured on Brian Williams and Katie Couric's reports from that earthquake ravaged country on the island of Hispaniola in the West Indies (thousands of miles from Israel), the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NBC Universal is Jeff Zucker, and CBS is run by Les Moonves. Further, note the Ethan Bronner piece in the 1/20/10 The New York Times. . .which follows Bill Moyers 1/15/10 Journal.

New Year
Roust Required
1/9-10/10 Edit
PLUS
Bill Moyers Journal
January 15, 2010
Fills the Breach


- EXHIBIT I

- "Courts Whittle Spending Limits In Election Law -

Even before A LANDMARK SUPREME COURT RULING ON CAMPAIGN FINANCE LAW expected within days, a series of other court decisions is reshaping the political battlefield by freeing corporations, unions and other interest groups from many of the restrictions on their advertising about issues and candidates.

Legal experts and political operatives say the cases roll back campaign spending rules to the years before Watergate. The end of decades-old restrictions could unleash a torrent of negative advertisements, help cash-poor Republicans in a pivotal year, and push President Obama to bring in more money for his party". - David Kirkpatrick N Y Times 1/9/10

"THE COURT'S BLOW TO DEMOCRACY
With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century. Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment, the court’s conservative majority has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding.

Congress must act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision, which strikes at the heart of democracy.

As a result of Thursday’s ruling, corporations have been unleashed from the longstanding ban against their spending directly on political campaigns and will be free to spend as much money as they want to elect and defeat candidates. If a member of Congress tries to stand up to a wealthy special interest, its lobbyists can credibly threaten: We’ll spend whatever it takes to defeat you.

The ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission radically reverses well-established law and erodes a wall that has stood for a century between corporations and electoral politics. (The ruling also frees up labor unions to spend, though they have far less money at their disposal.)

The founders of this nation warned about the dangers of corporate influence. The Constitution they wrote mentions many things and assigns them rights and protections -- the people, militias, the press, religions. But it does not mention corporations.

In 1907, as corporations reached new heights of wealth and power, Congress made its views of the relationship between corporations and campaigning clear: It banned them from contributing to candidates. At midcentury, it enacted the broader ban on spending that was repeatedly reaffirmed over the decades until it was struck down on Thursday.

This issue should never have been before the court. The justices overreached and seized on a case involving a narrower, technical question involving the broadcast of a movie that attacked Hillary Rodham Clinton during the 2008 campaign. The court elevated that case to a forum for striking down the entire ban on corporate spending and then rushed the process of hearing the case at breakneck speed. It gave lawyers a month to prepare briefs on an issue of enormous complexity, and it scheduled arguments during its vacation.

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., no doubt aware of how sharply these actions clash with his confirmation-time vow to be judicially modest and simply “call balls and strikes,” wrote a separate opinion trying to excuse the shameless judicial overreaching.

The majority is deeply wrong on the law. Most wrongheaded of all is its insistence that corporations are just like people and entitled to the same First Amendment rights. It is an odd claim since companies are creations of the state that exist to make money. They are given special privileges, including different tax rates, to do just that. It was a fundamental misreading of the Constitution to say that these artificial legal constructs have the same right to spend money on politics as ordinary Americans have to speak out in support of a candidate.

The majority also makes the nonsensical claim that, unlike campaign contributions, which are still prohibited, independent expenditures by corporations “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” If Wall Street bankers told members of Congress that they would spend millions of dollars to defeat anyone who opposed their bailout, and then did so, it would certainly look corrupt.

After the court heard the case, Senator John McCain told reporters that he was troubled by the “extreme naïveté” some of the justices showed about the role of special-interest money in Congressional lawmaking.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens warned that the ruling not only threatens democracy but “will, I fear, do damage to this institution.” History is, indeed, likely to look harshly not only on the decision but the court that delivered it. The Citizens United ruling is likely to be viewed as a shameful bookend to Bush v. Gore. With one 5-to-4 decision, the court’s conservative majority stopped valid votes from being counted to ensure the election of a conservative president. Now a similar conservative majority has distorted the political system to ensure that Republican candidates will be at an enormous advantage in future elections.

Congress and members of the public who care about fair elections and clean government need to mobilize right away, a cause President Obama has said he would join. Congress should repair the presidential public finance system and create another one for Congressional elections to help ordinary Americans contribute to campaigns. It should also enact a law requiring publicly traded corporations to get the approval of their shareholders before spending on political campaigns.

These would be important steps, but they would not be enough. The real solution lies in getting the court’s ruling overturned. The four dissenters made an eloquent case for why the decision was wrong on the law and dangerous. With one more vote, they could rescue democracy." - Editorial N Y Times 1/22/10

INSULT COMPOUNDED
- "At his confirmation hearings in 2005, Chief Justice Roberts, then an appeals court judge, said 'adherence to precedent promotes evenhandedness, promotes fairness, promotes stability and predictability. It is a jolt to the legal system when you overrule a precedent,' he said." - Adam Liptak N Y Times 1/23/10

It's All Connected
- "Rather’s Appeal Request Rejected by Court -

Dan Rather’s request for an appeal in his lawsuit against CBS was turned down on Tuesday, marking an apparent end to the breach-of-contract case. Mr. Rather, below, the former anchor of “CBS Evening News,” had appealed to the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, after the appellate division of the New York State Supreme Court ruled unanimously in September to dismiss the $70 million lawsuit he brought against the network in 2007. CBS executives say the legal proceedings are now over. In a statement Mr. Rather said he was “disappointed.” He had been seeking damages in a claim that his contract had been breached by CBS management and his reputation had been unfairly tarnished by the network’s handling of an investigation into his report on President George W. Bush’s National Guard record. - Stelter N Y Times 1/12-13/10

- "PBS Sets New Shows

PBS will broadcast a one-hour public affairs program called “Need to Know,” to be produced by New York’s WNET.org, on Friday nights beginning May 7, the organizations plan to announce on Wednesday. The new show, to originate from WNET’s soon-to-be-opened studio at Lincoln Center, will blend field reports, FEATURES and interviews on topics including the economy, the environment, health, security and CULTURE, and will make extensive use of CLOSELY SCREENED public input generated online. No anchor or reporters have been announced. “Need to Know” will REPLACE the public affairs programs “Bill Moyers Journal” and “Now,” which end in April. As part of the remake of PBS’s news and public affairs lineup, John Wilson, who oversees TV programming, said that PBS also planned to open a Web portal in May that would AGGREGATE all of its news and public affairs content, as well as journalism from local public stations." - Elizabeth Jensen N Y Times 1/12-13/10

- AGGREGATE (( 1 )) - AGGREGATE (( 2 )) - AGGREGATE (( 3 )) >> ( Just Below )

AGGREGATE = in this case a PBS synonym for "Focus features, stiff hard news!"

We Americans are witnessing the most complete, wholesale and devastating substitution of FEATURE programming on "Public" radio and "Public" television. .eliminating HARD NEWS. .in our lifetimes - and the exorbitant costs to the public were made clear in the senatorial election of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts, and the 5-4 decision of the John Roberts Supreme Court to place future elections in the hands of major corporations, whether or not foreign owned.



Did you know that the present Chief Justice of this Supreme Court travelled to Florida in the Fall of 2000 to counsel Ted Olson in his argument before the Rehnquist Court to steal the 2000 Presidential Election from Albert Gore for George W. Bush?

** Bill Moyers Journal - as in "JOURNALISM" - a lost art & science, a concept missing these last several decades...

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the JOURNAL.

There were hands in the air in Washington this week, but it wasn't a stickup. The new Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, appointed by Congress to find out how America got rolled, began hearings this week. These four are not the victims of one of the greatest bank heists in history - they're the perpetrators, bankers so sleek and crafty they got off with the loot in broad daylight, and then sweet talked the government into taxing us to pay it back.

Watching that scene on the opening day of the hearings, it was hard enough to believe that almost a year has passed since Barack Obama raised his hand, too -- taking the oath of office to become our 44th President. Even harder to remember what America looked like before Obama, because we've also been robbed of memory, assaulted by what the Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz described as a "fantastic proliferation of mass media." We live in a time "characterized by a refusal to remember." Inconvenient facts simply disappear down the memory hole, as in George Orwell's novel, "1984."

President Obama's made plenty of mistakes during his first year, and we've critiqued them frequently here on the JOURNAL, but hardly anyone talks any more about what happened in the years before. He inherited from George W. Bush the biggest financial debacle since the Great Depression, along with two unpopular and costly wars, and a dysfunctional and demoralized government.

It's important to remember those years, a time that has been characterized by the historian Thomas Frank, as "A Low, Dishonest Decade." He's here to talk about them with me. Thomas Frank is editor of the recently relaunched BAFFLER magazine, a literary journal; a contributing editor of HARPER'S; a weekly columnist for THE WALL STREET JOURNAL; and the author of ONE MARKET UNDER GOD, the bestselling WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS? and his latest bestseller, THE WRECKING CREW, now out in paperback. Good to have you back.

THOMAS FRANK: It's my pleasure, Bill.

BILL MOYERS: How is it that the people who are responsible for the mess that Obama inherited are getting away with demonizing him when he's only had less than a year to clean it up. Let me show you just a sample of commentators railing against the President.

RUSH LIMBAUGH: President Obama and the Democrats are destroying the US economy. They are purposefully doing it, I believe.

GLENN BECK: This is a well-thought out plan to collapse the economy as we know it.

JONATHAN HOENIG: The president has, I think if you listen to what he says, a hatred for capitalism. Where do jobs come from? They don't come from the government, they come from the profit seeking self-interest, from what I hear and see, the President never misses an opportunity to smear and [no audio] slap!

RUSH LIMBAUGH: This guy is a coward. He does not have the gonads or the spine to even stand up and accept what he's doing! All of this is his doing. He cannot even probably say, you should like this -- you may not like this, but I'm telling you it's the best thing for you, it's the best thing for me. No! He knows it's a disaster, he has to slough this off, on his previous-- or his predecessor, the previous administration.

SEAN HANNITY: It's his stimulus. It's his record deficit spending. He quadrupled the debt in a year. You know, how many more are the Democrats going to say, "Well, it's George Bush's fault"? This is Obama's economy now.

BILL MOYERS: What goes through your mind as a historian when you watch that?

THOMAS FRANK: Well, that is America for you. I mean, that is the, sort of the demented logic of our politics. Is that now-- Obama's been President for a year. And he will come before the public in the fall, you know, having to defend all of these terrible things. That's how our politics works in this country.

BILL MOYERS: But you called it demented. I mean, you know, demented means crazy, mad. Mad and crazy enough to cause us to forget the world before Obama?

THOMAS FRANK: I'll give you an example what I mean. So, I was on a radio show the other day with a tea party leader, you know, one of these protest leaders. And he seemed like a good guy. But what he did say that struck me was he said he was really against monopoly, you know? And we're laboring under all these monopolies, all these concentrated powers here in America. And what we need to do is get back to free markets. And then we can do away with that. And it was mind-blowing.

Because if you look back any further than the Obama Administration, since, I mean, 1980 in this country, we have been in the grip of, you know, of this pursuit of ever-purer free markets. That's what American politics has been about. That's what has delivered this, you know, the awful circumstances that we find ourselves in today. And to think that that's what's missing, that's what we need to get back to, is--

BILL MOYERS: That's more than nostalgia. What is that?

THOMAS FRANK: Well, that's the disease of our time. You know, that sort of instant forgetting.

BILL MOYERS: But what does it do to our politics when the very spokesmen for what some people have called a decade of conservative failure. I mean, remember before Obama, they turned a budget surplus into a deficit. They took us to war on fraudulent pretenses. They borrowed money to fight it. They presided over a stalemate in Afghanistan. They trashed the Constitution. They presided over the weakest economy in decades--

THOMAS FRANK: Not weak for everybody.

BILL MOYERS: No, no.

THOMAS FRANK: Some people did really well.

BILL MOYERS: Okay, they compiled the worst track record on jobs in decades. And they ended up with the worst stock market in decades. I mean, it was a decade of conservative failure. And yet, Obama's their villain?

THOMAS FRANK: Think of all the crises and the disasters that you've described. And I would add to them things like the, what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. And the Madoff scandal on Wall Street. And, you know, on and on and on. The Jack Abramoff scandal. The whole sordid career of Tom DeLay.

All of these things that we remember from the last decade. I mean, some of them that we're forgetting. Like who remembers all the scandals over earmarking, anymore? And who remembers all the scandals over Iraq reconstruction? All that, you know, disastrous, when we would hand it off to a private contractor to rebuild Iraq. And it would, you know, of course, it would fail.

Those things have all sort of been dwarfed by the economic disaster and the wreckage on Wall Street. But I would say to you that all of these things that we're describing here are of a piece. And that they all flow from the same ideas. And those ideas are the sort of conservative attitude towards government. And conservative attitudes towards governance. Okay?

BILL MOYERS: That government is a perversion?

THOMAS FRANK: Government is-- yeah, government is a perversion. And to believe that the federal government can be operated, you know, with all of its programs, can be operated well and do things that are good for the people, is, as you say, is a perversion.

And they look at someone like Barack Obama and it makes them seethe. Because that's, you know, that's what he's trying to do. What conservatism in this country is about is government failure. Conservatives talk about government failure all the time, constantly. And conservatives, when they're in power deliver government failure.

BILL MOYERS: Not merely from incompetence, you say, but from ideology, from philosophy, from a view of the world.

THOMAS FRANK: And sometimes from design.

BILL MOYERS: From design? What do you mean?

THOMAS FRANK: Not always from design, but often. The Department of Labor, for example, the conservatives when they in office, routinely stuff the Department of Labor full of ideological cranks. And people that don't believe in the mission.

And the result is that it doesn't-- they don't enforce anything. Towards the very end of the Bush-era, the Department of Labor had been whittled down. It was a shell of its former self. And at the very end of the Bush Administration, one of the government accountability programs did a study of the Department of Labor. And, I'm smiling, because it's kind of amusing. It was like an old spy magazine prank.

They made up these horrendous labor violations around the country and phoned them in as complaints to the Department of Labor to see what they would do, okay? They responded to one out of ten of these, you know, where they called in as like, "Well, we got, you know, kids working in a meat packing plant during school hours. You know, can you, you going to do anything about that?" "No." Or you look at something like the Securities and Exchange Commission. These guys are supposed to be regulating, you know, the investment banks, okay? Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, that sort of thing. These guys were so under-funded, and not just under-funded, but you had people in charge of it who didn't believe in regulating Wall Street.

BILL MOYERS: So, they made the Securities and Exchange Commission a laughing stock, if you will. They really did.

THOMAS FRANK: Right. Well, there's these horrible stories that came out. Once Bush was out, there was a study done of the SEC, as well. These people didn't even have like their own functioning photocopiers, okay? So, we're talking about the lawyers that are supposed to be protecting us from Wall Street. And they have to go stand in line at Kinko's to do their own photocopying. And they're going up against the best paid, you know, best educated lawyers on planet Earth, who represent the investment banks. And they're supposed to be defending us.

BILL MOYERS: The curious thing about this is that you and I and my audience knows that our ancestors believed that capitalism needed to be supervised. But when the conservatives came to power, they begin to muzzle the watchdog.

THOMAS FRANK: Yeah. Well, or you know, do away with it altogether, de-fund it. Look, the beginning in the 1980s, President Reagan came to office and came to power, and you remember the kind of rhetoric that he used to use in denouncing the Federal workforce. He hated the Federal workforce. And this is an article of faith among conservatives.

There's something called the pay gap that they used to talk about a lot in Washington, D.C. Which is, back in the '50s, '60s, and up into the 1970s, Federal workers were paid a comparable amount to what people in the private sector earned. Okay? So, if you're a lawyer working for the government, you got about as much as a lawyer working in the private sector.

Not as much, because government benefits are considered to be much better. Okay. Under Reagan, you had this huge gap open up between Federal workers and the private sector. I asked around. And I found out a government attorney makes $140,000 a year on retirement. After he's been there all his life. In the private sector law firm in Washington, you'd be making $160,000 starting salary. That's first year. Right out of law school.

BILL MOYERS: So what's the consequence of this pay gap you described? Or, do we get inferior government because of it?

THOMAS FRANK: Absolutely. It keeps the best and the brightest out of government service, unless you're really dedicated to a cause.

But let me go one step further with this, Bill. When I say this is done by design, I'm not exaggerating. And this is one of the more surprising things that I found when I was doing the research for "The Wrecking Crew," is that there's a whole conservative literature on why you want second-rate people in government, or third-rate.

I found an interview with the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce from 1928, where he said-- this quote, it's mind-boggling to me. But he really said this. "The best public servant is the worst one." Okay? You want bad people in government. You want to deliberately staff government with second-rate people. Because if you have good people in government, government will work. And then the public will learn to trust government. And then they'll hand over more power to it.

And you don't want that, of course. Your Chamber of Commerce. And I thought, when I first read this, "That's a crazy idea. I can't believe that sentiment." And then I found it repeated again and again and again. Throughout the long history of the conservative movement. This is something they believe very deeply.

BILL MOYERS: It comes out of a definitive way of seeing things, right?

THOMAS FRANK: Yes. And we can summarize that very briefly. That the market is the, you know, is the universal principle of human civilization. And that government is a kind of interloper, if not a, you know, criminal gang. And getting in the way.

BILL MOYERS: But we saw with this collapse and this bailout, we saw the failure of that.

THOMAS FRANK: Of course.

BILL MOYERS: And yet there's no sense of contrition. What's amazing to me, and you wrote this, that the very people who brought us this decade of conservative failures, the party of Palin, Beck, Hannity, Abramoff, Rove, DeLay, Kristol, O'Reilly, just might stage a comeback.

THOMAS FRANK: I think they might. I think there's a very strong chance of that.

BILL MOYERS: After only 11 months out of power, because of the record. I mean--

THOMAS FRANK: Look, well, the stuff--

BILL MOYERS: --it's crazy.

THOMAS FRANK: --the stuff we've been talking about here today. The stuff in "The Wrecking Crew," that's all forgotten. The financial crisis had that effect of-- that stuff is now off the-- down the memory hole

BILL MOYERS: Do you really think they believe that unfettered capitalism, unregulated markets, will deliver an ideal democracy and prosperity for everybody?

THOMAS FRANK: No, I don't. I think that they believe that, and to some degree, they're sincere in that belief. But the conservative movement in Washington, I'm not talking about grassroots voters in Kansas here. I'm talking about the conservative movement in Washington. And the whole constellation of think tanks and lobby shops and not-for-profits. And, you know, newspapers and fundraisers and all of this stuff.

They believe this is an industry, okay? This is an industry that churns out this product. And one of the things that, I mean, it's one of the things that they're doing now is they excommunicate George W. Bush, deeply unpopular, so therefore, not a true conservative, right? So, that way they get to start over fresh. The problem with George W. Bush, the reason we're in such a deep hole is that we never went far enough.

As Tom DeLay has said, in his newspaper column, and I'm paraphrasing here. The problem with conservatism isn't that it was tried and failed. It's that it never really got-- we never really tried it in the first place. So, what we have to do -- and I've heard, conservatives have said this. "What we have to do is go back and deregulate all the way. We have to, you know, slash government. We have to tear that thing down. That's what it's all about."

And the amazing thing about this. This allows them to represent themselves as dissidents against the sort of established order in Washington. Even though they ran the established order for years and years and years and years.

BILL MOYERS: Here's something else that's bizarre to me. And I wonder what you think about it, as a historian. I mean, right after the failed terrorist threat of Christmas, Obama's critics went to work scrubbing what happened when the Bush White House was out to lunch in the weeks and days leading up to 9/11.

I mean, you know, there were terrorists sneaking into the country. There were warnings from the intelligence community about something-- an attack on an American city coming. And that's all been flushed down the memory hole. Giuliani goes on the air and says, "We didn't have any terrorist attacks when Bush was President."

- An Aware Citizen -

To the Editor:

It seems appropriate to point out that President Obama’s first anniversary in office is Jan. 20. It took eight years for the Bush administration to get us into the terrible situation we are in now, but the pundits are only too pleased to blame President Obama for not turning the country around in a year!

You say many independent voters in Massachusetts were discouraged at the slow pace of change, and so a blue state turned red. We expect everything to happen overnight, and when it doesn’t, we have no staying power.

We now have a president who is smart, efficient and eminently capable; let’s give him a chance to do what must be done and not expect eight years of devastation to be overturned in a year. - Helen Gray Wash Depot Conn 1/20/10

CONTINUED

- "Issues Stand Before Israel in Joining Elite Group -

JERUSALEM -- Israel, which has catapulted in the past two decades from a minor state-dominated economy to a market-driven technology hothouse, is in the final stages of accession to the exclusive club of advanced countries, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. BUT ITS SECRETIVE WEAPONS TRADE, PATENT-BENDING DRUG INDUSTRY AND OCCUPATION OF ARAB LANDS ARE RAISING LAST-MINUTE QUESTIONS.

The secretary general of the O.E.C.D., Ángel Gurría, currently in Israel to discuss the issues with senior officials, said that he was confident they could be resolved and that Israel might miss the original target of May but would become a member this year.

But he acknowledged that Israel, unlike other small countries in the process of accession -- Chile, Slovenia and Estonia -- might face objections unrelated to the technical questions still to be answered.

“We have to keep the substantive issues on the straight and narrow,” Mr. Gurría, a former Mexican finance minister, said in an interview held after meetings at the BANK OF ISRAEL. “We should not allow technical issues to be used as masks for something that is in reality a political issue.”

That political issue is Israel’s declining international reputation because of its Gaza war a year ago and its continuing construction of Jewish housing in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Professional staff employees of the O.E.C.D., which is based in Paris, say all 30 member states must approve the accession of a country, and it remained unclear if any would object. But the three technical issues all still needed to be solved.

The first involved the organization’s convention to combat bribery of foreign officials, which it considers one of its more significant accomplishments. Some years ago, bribes were tax-deductible in several European countries. Now, all of the organization’s members are required to fight bribery through domestic legislation and regulation.

The arms trade is notoriously filled with palm-greasing across the world, and ISRAEL IS A LARGE ARMS TRADER. It has signed the antibribery convention as part of its accession process, but the way it handles the issue is causing difficulty, O.E.C.D. officials say.

The main concern is that Israel’s Defense Ministry has the power to censor the results of any investigation of bribes paid by Israeli companies to foreign officials on the grounds that the publicity could harm Israel’s national interests. The censor can ban publication and is under no obligation to tell the authorities about the investigations. The O.E.C.D. wants both practices changed.

The second concern, regarding intellectual property rights, involves the Israeli company Teva Pharmaceuticals, one of the world’s largest producers of generic drugs. MAJOR AMERICAN AND SWISS COMPANIES have long accused Israel of insufficient regulation of the way Teva markets its products in the face of patent regulations in other countries.

Finally, the O.E.C.D. is unhappy with Israel’s definition of its territory in collating economic data. Israel includes activities in East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, both of them won in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war; most of the world views those areas as occupied, BUT ISRAEL CONSIDERS THEM ITS OWN THROUGH ANNEXATION.

All three issues, Israeli Foreign Ministry officials say, are being addressed at the technical level and will be solved.

Israel’s candidacy got off to an unusual start. Mr. Gurría, the secretary general, said THAT FOUR YEARS AGO Israel’s widely admired central bank governor, Stanley Fischer, began attending O.E.C.D. functions with large studies of Israel’s economy aimed at demonstrating its readiness for membership.

“It’s the only country that’s ever done that,” Mr. Gurría said. “They were actually using O.E.C.D. regulations to modify their practices so as to qualify. In May 2007 Israel was invited to join because of its good economic management focused on knowledge, technology and education. The O.E.C.D. can gain from its membership, and so can Israel.”

The O.E.C.D.’s purposes are to bring together market-oriented democracies, promote good business and economic practices, and increase employment and international trade.

For Israel, membership would not only help it continue to modernize its economy but also fight efforts to delegitimize and ostracize it over its dispute with the Palestinians." - Bronner N Y Times 1/20/10


- BACKGROUND -

In 1983, thirty five years after the 1948 Jewish clandestine military Irgun attacked and invaded Palestine, Ronald Reagan, who had limited his military history to the back lots and sound stages of Hollywood, ordered a Marine contingent to Beirut Airport as a show of force to bolster the heavily-guarded United States Embassy in Lebanon. Results? A truck-bomb took the lives of two hundred and twenty Marines at the airport and another similar device destroyed the heavily-guarded United States Embassy, and wiped out the entire CIA station in Lebanon on, as they say, "seventeen April 1983".

In this mix University of Chicago scholar Robert A. Pape took note.

Approaching twenty seven years later Barack Obama, who should know better but is encumbered by his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and chief spokesman David Axelrod, President Obama failed in his 1/5/10 brief address to the Nation to note that the seven to ten personnel of the CIA station in Kabul, Afghanistan and their forward post in Khost Province, were killed by a Jordanian physician, Human Khalil Mohammed (i.e. Abu-Malal al-Balawi), who was so appalled by the 12/26/08 - 1/18/09 Israeli massacre of Palestinians penned up in Gaza (which killed some 1400 Gazans, mostly civilians) Doctor Mohammed feigned agreement with the Jordanian General Intelligence Directorate (long one of the CIA's closest and most useful allies in the Middle East); the Doctor agreeing to work for the CIA in Afghanistan, delivering Al Qaeda leaders, thereby gaining personal access to the key CIA people in Afghanistan...

As long as our government, "encumbered" as it is by AIPAC and the likes of "Independent" United States Senator Joseph Lieberman, gives billion$ each year (1st to Israel, 2nd to Egypt to support Israel against Egypt's own interests), even as they systematically starve the citizenry of Gaza, whose only offense is that they are Palestinians and have, now for almost sixty two years, survived a vicious, unscrupulous and mendacious band of predators known as the State of Israel, all funded by "the greatest Democracy on Earth"?! IT IS PAST TIME FOR AMERICANS TO RECOGNIZE THAT WE CAN NO LONGER SACRIFICE OUR BLOOD AND TREASURE ON THE ALTAR OF A ZIONIST ISRAEL! As we learn that these men, the Jordanian Dr. Human Khalil Abu-Malal al-Balawi and the Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab were not vicious by nature; but were simply deeply wounded by the barbarous treatment of Palestinians, by Israel, in its 12/26/08 - 1/18/09 Massacre in Gaza, as we understand their motivation we will more clearly recognize the megalomania of this Israeli cabal.

As the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu continues to flaunt his contempt for our President by expanding Jewish-only housing in Arab East Jerusalem and, now, building another Jewish-only highway in the West Bank and refusing to open passage of humanitarian goods into Gaza [ WE GIVE $3 PLUS BILLION$ ANNUALLY TO ISRAEL (and if you wondered why Egypt refused to open its border to Gaza for those peaceful international protesters who wanted to take part in the Gaza March, note who is second on the list of international recipients...of our shrinking largesse' !) ]


[[ 1/12/10 Edit - "Iranian Nuclear Physicist Assassinated in Tehran -

An Iranian nuclear physicist was assassinated today in a bomb blast outside his home in Tehran. Massoud Ali-Mohammadi was a nuclear scientist who taught at Tehran University and who might have had links to Iran’s disputed nuclear program. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Iran’s Foreign Ministry blamed Israeli and American agents. The killing comes one month after Iran accused the United States of kidnapping another Iranian nuclear scientist, Shahram Amiri, who has been missing since June when he traveled to Saudi Arabia on a religious pilgrimage." - DemocracyNow 1/12/10


- MITCHELL ISSUES LOAN GUARANTEE THREAT TO ISRAEL -

Amy Goodman: The news of the military equipment deal comes amid some tension between Israel and the Obama administration. Last week US envoy George Mitchell said Washington could penalize Israel financially to force it into making concessions to the Palestinians. Mitchell’s comments were widely criticized in Israel as well as by some of Israel’s staunchest supporters on Capitol Hill, including independent Senator Joseph Lieberman.

"Senator" Joseph I. Lieberman: “Any attempt to pressure Israel, to force Israel to the negotiating table by denying Israel support, will not pass the Congress of the United States. In fact, Congress will act to stop any attempt to do that. I don’t think we’re going to come to that point, because I think the President and his administration understand that."

Amy Goodman: In other news from the region, three Palestinians died Sunday by an Israeli tank in Gaza. Palestinians said the three men were militants who were in a field often used to launch rockets toward Israel. Meanwhile, Israel has announced plans to construct two walls along its southern border with Egypt in an attempt to prevent African refugees and asylum seekers from entering Israel. The two walls will cover a total of seventy miles. - DemocracyNow 1/11/10


- An informed and balanced voice, seldom heard in recent days, on this "SURGE" (see Toles ahead) in Afghanistan & Pakistan.

Analyst Discusses Threat To CIA

ABC National News

January 9, 2010 5:35 PM

REPORTER NICK SCHIFRIN, ABC NEWS, KABUL AFGHANISTAN: That collaboration between Al Qaeda and the Taliban on both sides of the border is what worries U.S. officials most. They are asking for help from the Pakistanis. And until they get that help, U.S. troops will be in greater danger. David.

David Muir: Nick, thank you. And so we turn to Robin Wright now, a foreign affairs analyst, who has reported extensively for the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. And, Robin, you heard the threat there, that this is revenge for the drone attack that killed their leader. We know of seven CIA drone attacks since the attack on that CIA outpost, one more today. These drone attacks will continue. So what do you make of that threat?

ROBIN WRIGHT, US INSTITUTE FOR PEACE: Well, clearly the United States is sending a strong message to the Taliban, getting a bit of its own revenge. But the reality is that the United States has to rely on these advanced predators against a force of ragtag militia that has no air force of its own, no armored corps, no advanced artillery and no satellite intelligence. And eight years after this conflict began, the United States is having difficulty holding its own.

David Muir: And, Robin, we know you were in Beirut (in 1983, under Reagan) the last time the CIA was attacked with this scope, the bombing of the embassy. You heard what the CIA Director Leon Panetta said today, defending his CIA workers on the front lines. Did you see, though, a breakdown? Or is this simply the risk that they face?

ROBIN WRIGHT: Well, clearly it's the risk they face. I think Leon Panetta is right to a certain extent. But the reality is, 27 years after the first attack wiped out almost an entire CIA station, the United States should have known better. This is a real counterintelligence failure.

David Muir: All right. Robin Wright, as always, we appreciate your analysis. Thank you. - Robin Wright 1/9/10

- Additional Historical Backup -

‘They Planted Hatred in Our Hearts’
By PATRICK COCKBURN

FOOTNOTES IN GAZA

Written and illustrated by Joe Sacco

418 pp. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company. $29.95
JOE SACCO’S GRIPPING, IMPORTANT BOOK ABOUT TWO LONG-FORGOTTEN MASS KILLINGS OF PALESTINIANS IN GAZA STANDS OUT AS ONE OF THE FEW CONTEMPORARY WORKS ON THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN STRUGGLE LIKELY TO OUTLIVE THE ERA IN WHICH THEY WERE WRITTEN.

Sacco will find readers for “Footnotes in Gaza” far into the future because of the unique format and style of his comic-book narrative. He stands alone as a reporter-cartoonist because his ability to tell a story through his art is combined with investigative reporting of the highest quality.

His subject in this case is two massacres that happened more than half a century ago, stirred up little international attention and were forgotten outside the immediate circle of the victims. The killings took place during the Suez crisis of 1956, when the Israeli Army swept into the Gaza Strip, the great majority of whose inhabitants were Palestinian refugees. According to figures from the United Nations, 275 Palestinians were killed in the town of Khan Younis at the southern end of the strip on Nov. 3, and 111 died in Rafah, a few miles away on the Egyptian border, during a Nov. 12 operation by Israeli troops. Israel insisted that the Palestinians were killed when Israeli forces were still facing armed resistance. The Palestinians said all resistance had ceased by then.

Sacco makes the excellent point that such episodes are among the true building blocks of history. In this case, accounts of what happened were slow to seep out and were overshadowed by fresh developments in the Suez crisis. Sacco, whose reputation as a reporter-cartoonist was established with “Palestine” and “Safe Area Gorazde,” has rescued them from obscurity because they are “like innumerable historical tragedies over the ages that barely rate footnote status in the broad sweep of history -- even though . . . they often contain the seeds of the grief and anger that shape present-day events (e.g. the 12/26/08 - 1/18/09 Israeli Massacre in Gaza).”

Governments and the news media alike forget that atrocities live on in the memory of those most immediately affected. Sacco records Abed El-Aziz El-Rantisi -- a leader of Hamas (later killed by an Israeli missile), who in 1956 was 9 and living in Khan Younis -- describing how his uncle was killed: “It left a wound in my heart that can never heal,” he says. “I’m telling you a story and I am almost crying. . . . They planted hatred in our hearts.”

The vividness and pace of Sacco’s drawings, combined with a highly informed and intelligent verbal narrative, work extremely well in telling the story. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how any other form of journalism could make these events so interesting. Many newspaper or television reporters understand that the roots of today’s crises lie in obscure, unpublicized events (Attack on the USS Liberty). But they also recognize that their news editors are most interested in what is new and are likely to dismiss diversions into history as journalistic self-indulgence liable to bore and confuse the audience.

In fact, “Footnotes in Gaza” springs from this editorial bias against history. In the spring of 2001, Sacco and Chris ­Hedges (formerly a foreign correspondent of The New York Times) were reporting for Harper’s Magazine about Palestinians in Khan Younis during the early months of the second Palestinian intifada. They believed the 1956 killings helped explain the violence almost 50 years later. PERHAPS PREDICTABLY, HOWEVER, THE PARAGRAPHS ABOUT THE OLD MASSACRE WERE CUT.

American editors weren’t the only people who found their delving into history beside the point. When Sacco returned to Gaza to search for witnesses and survivors in 2002 and 2003, with Israeli forces still occupying the area, young Palestinians could not understand his interest in past events when there was so much contemporary violence.

Sacco’s pursuit of Palestinian and Israeli eyewitnesses as well as Israeli and United Nations documentation is relentless and impressive. He details the lives of those who help him, notably his fixer Abed, and brings to life two eras of the Gaza Strip, its towns packed with refugees in the early 1950s as they are today.

It was an atmosphere filled with hate. Few Israeli leaders showed any empathy for the Palestinian tragedy. But early in 1956, the Israeli chief of staff Moshe Dayan made a famous speech at the funeral of an Israeli commander killed on the border with Gaza. What, Dayan wondered, explained the Palestinians’ “terrible hatred of us”? Then he answered his own question: “For eight years now they have sat in the refugee camps of Gaza, and have watched how, before their very eyes, we have turned their lands and villages, where they and their forefathers previously dwelled, into our home.” He added that Israelis needed to be “ready and armed, tough and harsh.”

What this meant in practice became clear as Israeli troops took over Gaza six months later. The killings in Khan Younis were relatively straightforward, according to eyewitnesses and a few survivors. The men of the town were told to line up in the main square and were then systematically shot so their bodies lay in a long row. Some who stayed in their homes were killed there.

The episode in Rafah was more complicated and took place over the course of a day, when people were summoned to a school so the Israelis could determine if they were guerrillas or soldiers. Here there were many more survivors than in Khan Younis; they describe how some were shot on their way to the school and others beaten to death with batons as they entered the school courtyard. The Israeli Army did order two officers to conduct an inquiry into the “Rafah incident,” as a top-secret communiqué called it. (The same communiqué said 40 to 60 people were killed and 20 injured.) Sacco’s researcher found no report in military archives.

Gaza has changed radically since Sacco did his research. In 2005, Israel unilaterally dismantled Jewish settlements and withdrew its military forces, although it remained in tight control of Gaza’s borders. In 2007, Hamas seized control, and in 2008-9 the enclave came under devastating Israeli attack. In this bewildering torrent of events, Sacco’s investigation into the 50-year-old killings is one of the surest guides to the hatred with which Palestinians and Israelis confront one another. - PATRICK COCKBURN & JOE SACCO N Y Times 12/27/09


While Mark Halperin (former political director of ABC News, after which he assumed a similar position with Time) while Halperin, Heilemann and our news Media/Press are salivating, along with Republicans, on destroying the Majority Leader of the United States Senate Harry Reid, the real story from "Game Change" is provided by Michiko Kakutani:

"Mr. Halperin and Mr. Heilemann write, for instance (1) that the strategist John Weaver suspected the rumor Cindy McCain had a “long-term boyfriend” in Arizona “was rooted in truth,” and that (2) the McCains “fought in front of others, during small meetings and before large events, to the amazement and discomfort of the staff.” (3) The authors say that Mrs. McCain accused the senator of ruining her life, that she never wanted him to run again for president, and that (4) “when it came time to film campaign videos of the couple, the camera crews had to roll for hours to capture a few minutes of warmth.” Page 4, 1/10/10 Arts N Y Times

Note: The appearance of Halperin & Heilemann, on Julie Chen's husband's (Leslie Moonves) 60 MINUTES with Anderson Cooper 1/10/10, also neglected these items that Ms. Kakutani noted... ]]


And here is Amy Goodman's 1/7/10 interview with George Galloway, the stalwart international citizen and famed British lawmaker - given more time he could also have covered the Israeli theft of Palestinian aquifers:

"A humanitarian aid convoy carrying food and medical supplies has arrived in Gaza nearly a month after it embarked from Britain. Members of the Viva Palestina convoy began passing through Egypt’s Rafah border crossing into Gaza on Wednesday. They’re expected to spend the next forty-eight hours distributing the aid supplies.

The convoy was delayed by more than a week following a dispute with the Egyptian government. Hours before the convoy’s entry into Gaza yesterday, an Egyptian soldier was shot dead during a clash with Palestinian protesters who had gathered along the border to protest the delay. At least thirty-five Palestinians were wounded. On Tuesday, Egyptian forces clashed with members of the Viva Palestina convoy, wounding more than fifty".

AMY GOODMAN: Egypt and Israel have been maintaining a strict blockade on Gaza since 2007, allowing only the most basic supplies to get through. Viva Palestina’s arrival in Gaza comes a year after the three-week Israeli assault that killed over 1,300 Palestinians.

British parliamentarian George Galloway led the Viva Palestina convoy. He joins us now on the phone right now from Gaza.

Welcome to Democracy Now!"

GEORGE GALLOWAY: Thank you. Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us what happened? We hear a number of people in your convoy were beaten up, were hurt, some hospitalized.

GEORGE GALLOWAY: Yes, fifty-five, in fact, were injured, some of them quite severely. Ten of them had to go to hospital. All of them entered Gaza with us, but we have a collection of broken heads and plaster casts and bloodied faces and clothes.

It’s quite a testimony to the role that the government of Egypt is playing in this siege that you have just admirably described. It was entirely unprovoked. It was an attack on unarmed civilian people. And it was very frightening and brutal. And, of course, it was of a piece with the way that the Gaza Freedom Marchers were treated in the center of Cairo in the middle of the tourist season just days before.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What kind of coverage did that attack receive in the Egyptian media? And did it have any impact on the government’s decision to then let the convoy pass?

GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, the good news is that nobody watches the Egyptian media in Egypt. All of them watch the pan-Arabic stations like Al Jazeera, satellite stations, which have broken the censorship walls of the dictatorships in the Arab world. And so, everybody in Egypt knows what happened in that little port of Al-Arish, and the vast majority of them, I’m sure, completely disapprove of it, indeed denounce it.

The Egyptian people are entirely behind the Palestinians under siege. Unfortunately, they are ill-served by a government that is playing a quite despicable role, actually, just few yards from where I am now. The Egyptians are building what we call the wall of shame, which is being done in conjunction with the United States military, to try and choke off the tunnels, which are the only other means of bringing life into Gaza, in which sheep and chickens and petrol and gas and the other means of staying alive, other than medicine--because if I may correct something you did say in the introduction, you said we were bringing food and medicine, but we were only bringing medicine, because food is actually not allowed to come through the Rafah gate from Egypt into Gaza. Food must pass through the Israeli lines, because, of course, they say they are concerned about the safety of the food. They don’t want to cause any food poisoning in Gaza, you understand (HORRIFIC!).

AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe the condition of Gaza? It’s been a year since the Israeli assault. You were there last year also trying to bring in aid.

GEORGE GALLOWAY: It’s desperate. If I give you a tiny example only to give you an example, I’m here in quite a nice hotel, except there is no food in the hotel. There’s no food for breakfast, there’s no food for lunch. Now I make that point only to illustrate that if there’s no food in the best hotel in Gaza, imagine what the people are suffering. I’ve watched with my own eyes Palestinian women and girls in the early morning mists on top of garbage heaps, combing through the garbage heaps looking for food. In an Arab Muslim country in 2009 and ’10, it’s a absolutely scandalous situation.

And, Amy, remember why and how it came about. It’s been imposed by men. It’s not a natural disaster. It’s been imposed by men to punish the people of Palestine for voting for a party (Hamas) in a free election that the big powers, including yours and mine and Israel, don’t like. Now, I myself would not have voted for them; I’m not a Hamas supporter. But the only people entitled to choose the leadership of the Palestinians are the Palestinians themselves.

AMY GOODMAN: Have you been meeting--as a British member of Parliament, did you meet with any Egyptian leaders? And is there an explanation of why the Gaza Freedom March was kept out--they allowed in about a hundred people, but many refused under those conditions--and why the Egyptian government is stopping these peace activists from entering Gaza?

GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, I’m glad to say that at every stage we insisted on all of our convoy entering Gaza, and we refused to leave Al-Arish without our prisoners, six people who were being held prisoner by the Egyptian government’s forces. And we refused to accept the exclusion from Egypt of some of our convoy members, all of whom were initially excluded, but all, in the end, were let in and are with me in Gaza. So, in terms of solidarity, I’m proud of what we have achieved.

No, there’s no explanation from the Egyptian regime at all. How could there be, in a way? How do you explain to anyone that Egypt, once the heart of the Arab world, is now playing a part in building an iron wall of shame around a suffering people who are being effectively starved, they hope, into surrender, but if not into surrender, then into death?

JUAN GONZALEZ: And George Galloway, your sense of how the Palestinian leadership is regarding the policies of the United States? Now we’re a year into the Obama administration. He’s, on the one hand, attempted to reach out to the Arab world in a way the Bush administration never did, but in terms of Palestine and the conflict with Israel, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of change.

GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, I must tell you, Juan, as someone who, myself, on my radio shows and TV shows and so on, campaigned for the election of Barack Obama, tried very hard to persuade people on the left that they were making a kind of utopian mistake in not supporting Obama, there is a tremendous bitter disappointment here in Palestine, and indeed wider than that, at the role that President Obama is currently playing, or rather not playing. His speech in Cairo was a wonderful piece of work. It was mesmerizing. It transfixed the Arab public opinion, that finally, after the Bush years, we had some hope. But in practice, his policy--and one assumes Hillary Clinton is carrying out his policy--is exactly the same as the policy of the Bushites towards the people here. And there’s bitter, bitter disappointment about that.

AMY GOODMAN: George Galloway, we want to thank you very much for being with us, a British MP leading the Viva Palestina aid convoy. Their whole convoy did get into Gaza through Egypt, though through a great deal of conflict, with a number of the delegation beaten up. - Amy Goodman 1/7/10

- KEY BACKGROUND -

Another George, the notable but less respectable George Mitchell, until 1/1/07 the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the giant Disney ABC Corporation, this George was interviewed by "Charlie" Rose 1/7/10 {repeated 1/8/10 on an OPB, Oregon "Public" Broadcasting ["Sponsored by the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Care ("Care" for the Schnitzers?) Foundation"]} in which Mr. Mitchell made it clear (to a comforted "Charlie" Rose) that by the time Mr. Mitchell (and the United States) puts any real pressure on the Israelis (like, for example, putting into play the $ 3+ Billion$ we give Israel EVERY YEAR) (1) every trace of Palestinian presence in Arab East Jerusalem will have been removed; (2) the Palestinian population in Gaza will have been starved to death; and (3) all of the Palestinian aquifers will have been acquired by Israel.

- More next edit. (Did the Schnitzers bring Netanyahu to Oregon a few years back?).

A year ago 12/26/08 - 1/18/09, the Israelis wrought their "Massacre on Gaza - Cast Lead". Having stifled exposure and coopted protests ( Norman Finkelstein, well-versed on the years-long Israeli exploitation of Gaza, conceived the original March on Gaza), a year later the Israelis would seem to be mounting a repeat, (1) quickening their demolishing of Arab citizens houses and buildings in Arab East Jerusalem, (2) gunning down (12/26/09) three Palestinians in Nablus of the West Bank, and, expanding the perimeter, (3) planting three bombs under a Hamas vehicle in Haret Hreik Beirut, that portion of Beirut allotted to Hezbollah in the power-sharing arrangement in Lebanon. Actions have consequences, and the 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab with an explosive device sewn into his underwear, who intended to bring down a trans-Atlantic flight to Detroit with three hundred aboard on Christmas Day 12/25/09, will not be the last Islamist to attempt to answer the extremist Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee who was in Yemen in August, along with General Petraeus, overseeing the introduction of U.S. Special Operations, Green Berets and intelligence, regarding which he reported to Chris Wallace's "Fox News Sunday" on 12/27/09.

In an effort to support and maintain the radical Netanyahu government in Israel, with their absolutist radical religious policies assaulting and affronting the Islamist Middle East, the United States present government can expect a continuum of deadly attacks by the growing number of Islamists radicalized by a, one must recognize, maniacal Israel. No quantity of pro-Israel pro-Jewish propaganda can alter our recent history since the assassination of Soldier Statesman Yitzhak Rabin in November of 1995, and this database of GOPBIAS.org has that history, perhaps more consolidated than any other location on the world wide web.

- An Addendum -

The Palestinians did not kill or torture any Jews in Europe in the years leading up to and including World War II, and no amount of Jewish propaganda can convince people that they did. In fact, such propaganda only demeans whatever legitimate cause the Israelis have.

What could not be more clear today, 12/28/09 -

Once again we're squandering our blood and treasure for the State of Israel, this time to answer the tumult created in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a condition which will not subside as long as the insidious Israelis refuse to recognize the God-given rights of the Palestinians to live peaceful lives IN PALESTINE!

- Here, the original -



Both Admiral Mullen and General McChrystal were heavily involved first, in the "surge" in Iraq, and have now moved on to Afghanistan, supposedly with the "success" in Iraq at their backs. However, 12/8/09: "Five car bombs in Iraq are detonated simultaneously, killing over one hundred and thirty Iraqis - and seriously wounding another FIVE HUNDRED"! And, in Iran, hordes of protesters shouting "Death to the Dictator"! Steven J. Rosen's work? And when was "Merry Christmas" outlawed, and replaced by a "Happy Holidays" mandate?

We know that Rahm Emanuel arranged for the exoneration of the above Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, and laid the groundwork for dismissing the case against the rapist of a thirteen-year-old, Roman Polanski; Has he also supported the sleazy thief, Conrad Black, former owner of The Jerusalem Post?

- 12/20/09 Edit - Happy Holidays!

- Bill Moyers Journal 12/18/09 with Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect and Matt Taibbi (his father reports for NBC) of Rolling Stone make the case against Chief of Staff Emanuel, but may be too harsh against the President. It has been a goal of a series of Democratic presidents for eighty years to provide universal national health care, but for the last forty years the GOP (Grand Old Party?) has prevented same. If President Obama is successful (his primary obstacle is our Media/Press) it will be a noteworthy achievement.

- Segments of the 12/18/09 Journal -

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the JOURNAL.

Something's not right here. One year after the great collapse of our financial system, Wall Street is back on top while our politicians dither. As for health care reform, you're about to be forced to buy insurance from companies whose stock is soaring, and that's just dandy with the White House.

Truth is, our capitol's being looted, republicans are acting like the town rowdies, the sheriff is firing blanks, and powerful Democrats in Congress are in cahoots with the gang that's pulling the heist. This is not capitalism at work. It's capital. Raw money, mounds of it, buying politicians and policy as if they were futures on the hog market.

Here to talk about all this are two journalists who don't pull their punches. Robert Kuttner is an economist who helped create and now co-edits the progressive magazine THE AMERICAN PROSPECT, and the author of the book OBAMA'S CHALLENGE, among others.

Also with me is Matt Taibbi, who covers politics for ROLLING STONE magazine where he is a contributing editor. He's made a name for himself writing in a no-holds-barred, often profane, but always informative and stimulating style that gets under the skin of the powerful. His most recent article is "Obama's Big Sellout," about the President's team of economic advisers and their Wall Street connections. It's been burning up the blogosphere. Welcome to both of you.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Rahm Emanuel, the President's Chief of Staff, was Bill Clinton's Political Director. And Rahm Emanuel's take away from Bill Clinton's failure to get health insurance passed was 'don't get on the wrong side of the insurance companies.' So their strategy was cut a deal with the insurance companies, the drug industry going in. And the deal was, we're not going to attack your customer base, we're going to subsidize a new customer base. And that script was pre-cooked so it's not surprising that this is what comes out the other side.

BILL MOYERS: So are you saying that this, what some call a sweetheart deal between the pharmaceutical industry and the White House, done many months ago before this fight really began, was because the drug company money in the Democratic Party?

ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, it's two things. Part of it was we need to do whatever it takes to get a bill. Never mind whether it's a really good bill, let's get a bill passed so we can claim that we solved health insurance. Secondly, let's get the drug industry and the insurance industry either supporting us or not actively opposing us. So that there was some skirmishing around the details, but the deal going in was that the administration, drug companies, insurance companies are on the same team. Now, that's one way to get legislation, it's not a way to transform the health system. Once the White House made this deal with the insurance companies, the public option was never going to be anything more than a fig leaf. And over the summer and the fall, it got whittled down, whittled down, whittled down to almost nothing and now it's really nothing.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, and this was Howard Dean's point this week was that this individual mandate that's going to force people to become customers of private health insurance companies, the Democrats are going to end up owning that policy and it's going to be extremely unpopular and it's going to be theirs for a generation. It's going to be an albatross around the neck of this party.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Look, there are two ways, if you're the President of the United States sizing up a situation like this that you can try and create reform. One is to say, well, the interest groups are so powerful that the only thing I can do is I can work with them and move the ball a few yards, get some incremental reform, hope it turns into something better. The other way you can do it is to try to rally the people against the special interests and play on the fact that the insurance industry, the drug industry, are not going to win any popularity contests with the American people. And you, as the president, be the champion of the people against the special interests. That's the course that Obama's chosen not to pursue.

MATT TAIBBI: The Democrats are in exactly the same position that the Republicans were in once the Iraq War turned bad. All the Republicans have to do now is sit back and watch the Democrats make a disaster out of this health care effort. And they're going to gain political capital whether they're in the right or not. And I think it's a very- it's a terrible thing for the party.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, my co-editor, Paul Starr in the editorial in the current issue of "The Prospect" takes exactly that position. Don't be too hard on Obama, he inherited a really difficult situation and we're making incremental progress. If we could've done better we would've. Paul and I disagree about that. I mean, I think one of the challenges of a president is to transform the reality rather than just work within its parameters. I think the other problem, frankly, is that those of us who consider ourselves progressives invested so much in this remarkable figure, Barack Obama. And we read our own hopes into him. We saw him as a potentially great president. We saw this as a potentially transformative moment, I certainly did, where he could've chosen to be the kind of president Roosevelt was. And it turns out that's not who he is characteralogically and that's not how he chose to play the moment.

ROBERT KUTTNER: We're going to have to do that anyway. In other words, these fights never end. We're going to have to go back and make a fight another day. And hopefully, that won't be 20 years from now. Hopefully, it will be six years from now. I think if this bill goes down it's going to be even harder to get the kind of legislation we want because the Republicans are really going to be on the march. So, the Democrats are really between a rock and a hard place here, because if it loses, there's one set of ways the Republicans gain. If it wins, there could be another set of ways that the Republicans gain. AND THIS IS ALL BECAUSE OF THE DEAL THAT OUR FRIEND, RAHM EMANUEL STRUCK BACK IN THE SPRING OF PASSING A BILL THAT'S A PRO-INDUSTRY BILL THAT DOESN'T REALLY GET AT THE STRUCTURAL PROBLEMS.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Corporate, yes, sorry. That's too kind. THEY'RE CORPORATE DEMOCRATS WHO WERE PUT ON THAT COMMITTEE BECAUSE RAHM EMANUEL FELT THAT THERE'S NO BETTER PLACE THAN THE HOUSE FINANCIAL SERVICES COMMITTEE IF YOU WANT TO SHAKE DOWN WALL STREET, TO PUT IT BLUNTLY. - BMJ 12/18/09

As the new year of 2010 approaches, in which unbelievably, the Media/Press informs us that the unscrupulous political party which brought this nation and, in fact, the Western financial world, to the brink of disaster - and now, that same band of scoundrels opposes any and all attempts to right this battered ship of state and the damaged rest of the world (EXCEPT ISRAEL); that this notorious Republican political party from Rush Limbaugh, through Alan Greenspan and Dick Armey to John Boehner and Mitch McConnell AND John Sidney McCain III -

Michael Sokolove had this piece in the 11/8/09 The New York Times Magazine on the "folksy" Dick Armey whose home is ninety acres just north of Dallas, Texas: "For most of the last half-dozen years, he has worked in the lobbying shop of the giant law firm DLA Piper while also serving as chairman of FreedomWorks, a nonprofit organization that in 2008 paid him $550,000.

When I asked Mark McKinnon, a political strategist and former consultant to George W. Bush, how he would explain Armey’s resurgence on the national stage, he replied: “Armey and FreedomWorks have been the invisible hand behind much of the recent conservative activism around the country. He taps into the innate fear most Americans have about government activism and overreach.”

Interestingly, this so-called FreedomWorks began with the billion$ of Sheldon G. Adelson

"He told the crowd that day in North Carolina, “Nearly every important office in Washington, D.C., today is occupied by someone with an AGGRESSIVE DISLIKE FOR OUR HERITAGE, OUR FREEDOM, OUR HISTORY AND OUR CONSTITUTION.”"

That this dishonorable and unprincipled band of thieves STANDS TO INCREASE THEIR NUMBER IN THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES! HORRENDOUS!

The Phenomenal Paul Krugman - Nobel Laureate 12/21/09

- A DANGEROUS DYSFUNCTION

" The Senate, the filibuster and paralyzed government.

Unless some legislator pulls off a last-minute double-cross, health care reform will pass the Senate this week. Count me among those who consider this an awesome achievement. It’s a seriously flawed bill, we’ll spend years if not decades fixing it, but it’s nonetheless a huge step forward.

It was, however, a close-run thing. And the fact that it was such a close thing shows that the Senate -- and, therefore, the U.S. government as a whole -- has become ominously dysfunctional.

After all, Democrats won big last year, running on a platform that put health reform front and center. In any other advanced democracy this would have given them the mandate and the ability to make major changes. But the need for 60 votes to cut off Senate debate and end a filibuster -- a requirement that appears nowhere in the Constitution, but is simply a self-imposed rule -- turned what should have been a straightforward piece of legislating into a nail-biter. And it gave a handful of wavering senators extraordinary power to shape the bill.

Now consider what lies ahead. We need fundamental financial reform. We need to deal with climate change. We need to deal with our long-run budget deficit. What are the chances that we can do all that -- or, I’m tempted to say, any of it -- if doing anything requires 60 votes in a deeply polarized Senate?

Some people will say that it has always been this way, and that we’ve managed so far. But it wasn’t always like this. Yes, there were filibusters in the past -- most notably by segregationists trying to block civil rights legislation. But the modern system, in which the minority party uses the threat of a filibuster to block every bill it doesn’t like, is a recent creation.

The political scientist Barbara Sinclair has done the math. In the 1960s, she finds, “extended-debate-related problems” -- threatened or actual filibusters -- affected only 8 percent of major legislation. By the 1980s, that had risen to 27 percent. But after Democrats retook control of Congress in 2006 and Republicans found themselves in the minority, it soared to 70 percent.

Some conservatives argue that the Senate’s rules didn’t stop former President George W. Bush from getting things done. But this is misleading, on two levels.

First, Bush-era Democrats weren’t nearly as determined to frustrate the majority party, at any cost, as Obama-era Republicans. Certainly, Democrats never did anything like what Republicans did last week: G.O.P. senators held up spending for the Defense Department -- which was on the verge of running out of money -- in an attempt to delay action on health care.

More important, however, Mr. Bush was a buy-now-pay-later president. He pushed through big tax cuts, but never tried to pass spending cuts to make up for the revenue loss. He rushed the nation into war, but never asked Congress to pay for it. He added an expensive drug benefit to Medicare, but left it completely unfunded. Yes, he had legislative victories; but he didn’t show that Congress can make hard choices and act responsibly, because he never asked it to.

So now that hard choices must be made, how can we reform the Senate to make such choices possible?

Back in the mid-1990s two senators -- Tom Harkin and, believe it or not, Joe Lieberman -- introduced a bill to reform Senate procedures. (MANAGEMENT WANTS ME TO MAKE IT CLEAR THAT IN MY LAST COLUMN I WASN’T ENDORSING INAPPROPRIATE THREATS AGAINST MR. LIEBERMAN.) Sixty votes would still be needed to end a filibuster at the beginning of debate, but if that vote failed, another vote could be held a couple of days later requiring only 57 senators, then another, and eventually a simple majority could end debate. Mr. Harkin says that he’s considering reintroducing that proposal, and he should.

But if such legislation is itself blocked by a filibuster -- which it almost surely would be -- reformers should turn to other options. Remember, the Constitution sets up the Senate as a body with majority -- not supermajority -- rule. So the rule of 60 can be changed. A Congressional Research Service report from 2005, when a Republican majority was threatening to abolish the filibuster so it could push through Bush judicial nominees, suggests several ways this could happen -- for example, through a majority vote changing Senate rules on the first day of a new session.

Nobody should meddle lightly with long-established parliamentary procedure. But our current situation is unprecedented: America is caught between severe problems that must be addressed and a minority party determined to block action on every front. DOING NOTHING IS NOT AN OPTION -- NOT UNLESS YOU WANT THE NATION TO SIT MOTIONLESS, WITH AN EFFECTIVELY PARALYZED GOVERNMENT, WAITING FOR FINANCIAL, ENVIRONMENTAL AND FISCAL CRISES TO STRIKE. - Paul Krugman 12/21/09


Again, were there a John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Edward R. Murrow, or an Eric Severeid in our midst, such a preposterous and devastating farce would be unthinkable!

And there is another facet to this scheme, by the GOP and their confederates in the media, a plot which seems destined to duplicate the conspiracy of a decade ago in which a cabal of Jewish Americans (Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Rosen and Weissman etc.) usurped the power of the United States to occupy Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein FOR ISRAEL! Today, ten years later, we've expanded our footprint into Southwest Asia, to quell those Muslim countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan, newly alarmed by the positions taken by that intensely malignant cancer in the Middle East, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu and Avignor Lieberman. Once again we're squandering our blood and treasure for the State of Israel, this time to answer the tumult created in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a condition which will not subside as long as the insidious Israelis refuse to recognize the God-given rights of the Palestinians to live peaceful lives IN PALESTINE!

[ NPR's Talk of the Nation 12/16/09 produced a classic example of "Public Radio Propaganda" as host Neal Conan, Ted Koppel ("NPR's Senior News Analyst") and David Sanger (whose latest book Koppel unabashedly promoted), Sanger, one of the most aggressive of The New York Times' reporters who, particularly on Iran, has that Persian nation threatening Israel with nuclear weapons; that's the Israel which is brimming with nuclear weaponry and refusing to sign the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The shared ethnicity of Messrs. Conan, Koppel and Sanger (who describe Israel as a "Democracy" even though its Palestinian Christian and Arab citizens are confronted on every side by "legal" apartheid restrictions), that shared ethnicity should disqualify this threesome.]

It was obvious what had forced Mr. Conan's 12/16/09 broadcast with Ted Koppel and David Sanger. His permitting, two days before (12/14/09), the notable Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Paul Nitze Professor of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and the National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter, when the NSA title meant something, allowing Mr. Brzezinki to appear on TOTN - FOR TWENTY MINUTES!

Here some segments...

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Well, basically, President Obama has recast the way America should approach the world. And I think in doing so, he has also helped enormously to improve America's standing in the world. He, in effect, has recommitted America to collective security and not to unilateral actions. He hasn't disowned the necessity of war sometimes, but he has made it very clear that America should avoid pursuing single, solitary wars without international support.

He has urged a process of reconciliation with the Islamic world. He has articulated the need for greater commitment to the achievement of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. He has committed the United States to an effort to find, if possible, a peaceful solution to the challenge posed by Iran. I could go on and on and on, but basically, all of that cumulatively meant that American foreign policy, was in some fashion, re-linked to the fundamental dynamics of the 21st century.

TALK SHOW CALLER: Hello and thank you. What a privilege. I wondered Dr. Brzezinski, now, as we know that China wants the oil that could come from Russia through a pipeline through Afghanistan, as we know that Iran wants to build nuclear energy generation sites, as we know that Afghanistan has a lot of opium poppies, what are the chances that we could work with China, with Russia, with Iran to provide electrification and modernization in western and southern Afghanistan? And what are the chances we can work with pharmaceutical companies around the planet to make a market for the opium in Afghanistan for palliative care among the developing - of the developed world where people are dying in pain? And I'm interested in your response to this possible answer, to issues of Afghanistan including modernization, electrification and an actual market for the opium and working with China, with Russia and with India. Thank you.

NEAL CONAN: Jeff, thanks very much. And let me ask you about - the one we've not focused on at all yet is Iran. And more evidence over the weekend, if more were needed, that Iran appears to be - its nuclear ambitions include nuclear weapons and that's the direction it seems to be going no matter what the international community says or does.

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Well, we don't know how true this so-called evidence is. As you know, there are a lot of parties (ISRAEL!) that are interested in the United States and Iran not reaching an agreement. So we have to be absolutely certain that this is not a repetition of the Iraq case when there was also a lot of parties (ISRAEL!) that wanted us to go to war with the Iraq and kept insisting that there is evidence that the Iraqis already have nuclear weapons.

I think the picture with Iran is more mixed. I think there are reasons to be suspicious, but we don't have enough reasons to be conclusively convinced that they're actually actively seeking nuclear weapons. The last comprehensive U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that currently, they are not. Secretary Gates recently said that he didn't think that Iran would have any effective nuclear arsenal before 2014.

The head of the Mossad in Israel echoed him so far as that date is concerned. And that leads me to the basic conclusion that if we wanted negotiations to succeed, we have to do two things: One, be patient and not to try to force the issue immediately, because if we do it's a prescription for failure. Secondly, to the extent possible we should be negotiating not just about the nuclear problem, which is a very serious and complex problem, but we should always be negotiating about regional security (And Israel Quiescent!) in which we'd have a common stake and maybe even about financial economic arrangements (We give Israel a minimum of $3.5 Billion$ every year!). If we do that, there's a greater chance of quid pro quos emerging from the different negotiating tables. And I think that's in our interest.


** BREAKING NEWS **
December 19, 2009

- FBI ACCUSED OF ABUSING POWER IN CLINTON INQUIRY

BY PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON -- A former DIRECTOR of the Secret Service said Friday that the F.B.I. had engaged in an “abuse of power” by trying to pressure him to “give us the president” during the investigation of President Bill Clinton’s interactions with Monica Lewinsky a decade ago.

The official, Lewis C. Merletti, who headed the former president’s protective detail and later became the agency’s director, said in an interview that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had grilled him just days before Mr. Clinton left office in a last-ditch effort to prove that his Secret Service agents had covered up and even facilitated extramarital flings.

Mr. Merletti said that the F.B.I. alleged that he and Mr. Clinton had concocted this deal: in exchange for Mr. Merletti’s stonewalling questions about Ms. Lewinsky, Mr. Clinton would not only appoint him director of the Secret Service but would also provide him women for sexual encounters.

“They said to me, ‘You’re the last person who can give us the president, and you’re going to give him to us,’ ” Mr. Merletti recalled. He called it “disgraceful” and said of the F.B.I., “They became involved in a political game, and in the end they tarnished themselves beyond belief.”

The new book, “The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr,” written by Ken Gormley, a law professor at Duquesne University, and published by Crown, re-examines the scandals and investigations that marked Mr. Clinton’s presidency and adds new details to the public understanding of them. Mr. Gormley secured unusual cooperation from nearly all of the main players, including Mr. Clinton, Mr. Starr and Ms. Lewinsky.

As first reported by Politico, the book quotes Ms. Lewinsky as saying that she believed Mr. Clinton did lie under oath to a grand jury and asserts that the former president, while he was Arkansas’s governor, did have a romantic affair with Susan McDougal, his onetime Whitewater partner who went to jail rather than testify against him. - Baker N Y Times 12/19/09

- THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS GROUNDBREAKING "THE DEATH OF AMERICAN VIRTUE: CLINTON VS STARR" AND THIS PETER BAKER ARTICLE IN THE 12/19/09 N Y TIMES IS THREE-FOLD - (1) NO MENTION ON THE TIMES' FRONT PAGE, (2) NO MENTION ON THE TIMES' PAGE 2 "INSIDE THE TIMES" INDEX, AND, MOST SIGNIFICANTLY (A DEAD GIVEAWAY!) (3) THE NAME OF THE FBI DIRECTOR AT THE TIME...IS MISSING...ONE WOULD HAVE TO NOTE THE ETHNICITY OF ONE LOUIS J. FREEH, LAST SEEN ON NATIONAL TELEVISION INTRODUCING THE PRESENT ATTORNEY GENERAL, ERIC HOLDER.


There are those who take issue with the earlier characterization of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a "con artist", that it's disrespectful of an Admiral who has risked his life for his country. Our Constitution makes clear that the President of these United States is the Commander in Chief. It is also clear that we have a military led by men who have conspired to force President Obama's hand regarding our policy in Afghanistan, and what this foreign policy manipulation foretells is indistinguishable from the prior eight years in which, perhaps, our worst president began this catastrophe by withdrawing from that very locale, from which 9/11 originated.

The reputable reporter David Martin spelled out on the 10/30/09 CBS Evening News the details of our military leaders publicly coercing this president to align himself with their plans for Afghanistan, not surprisingly identical to those of the man President Barack Obama defeated in 2008, John Sidney McCain III (do you recall how Five-Star General Douglass MacArthur was fired by President Harry Truman?).

David Martin: The White House is not happy with the way senior military leaders, beginning with Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen have handled the debate over Afghan strategy, boxing the president in with their public statements. Two days after the president held his first meeting on Afghanistan, Mullen was telling Congress he agreed with McChrystal.

David Martin: Even before that, General Petraeus, the overall commander for the region, gave an interview in which he strongly backed McChrystal's assessment. As for McChrystal, he publicly dismissed a much more limited strategy favored by Vice President Biden.

An Informed Public
On Afghanistan Conundrum
To the Editor:

Thomas L. Friedman argues that President Obama’s Afghanistan policy will succeed only if we are successful in nation-building (“May It All Come True,” column, Dec. 6). It’s worse than that. There is no nation to build.

Afghanistan is a loosely aligned collection of tribal constituencies. Its people are largely illiterate. The so-called central government does not control the countryside and is corrupt.

How are Americans in a relatively short period of time going to create from this raw material a state capable of ensuring its own security?

We are also fighting the wrong enemy. The Taliban, no matter how alien to our values, pose no threat to the United States. Al Qaeda has no significant current presence in Afghanistan.

In short, we are sending a lot of soldiers at enormous cost to fight an enemy that is somewhere else, with the de facto mission of propping up a narco-state. This makes no sense. - Boyd Hight Los Angeles 23/6/09

The writer was a deputy assistant secretary of state during the Carter administration.

To the Editor:

Re “Obama’s Logic Is No Match for Afghanistan,” by Frank Rich (column, Dec. 6):

To Mr. Rich’s cogent arguments I add two further considerations not evident in recent administration policy discussions. The first, voiced by numerous Afghanistan experts, is the danger that an American troop escalation will increase the appearance of an American occupation and drive ordinary Afghans into the hands of the Taliban.

The second is the related danger that a rise in the number of Muslims killed in Afghanistan will radicalize ever-larger numbers of formerly nonextremist Muslims in countries around the world.

Robert Wright (“Who Created Major Hasan?” Op-Ed, Nov. 22) gives this argument new focus and urgency, noting that the men who carried out the Fort Hood and Little Rock shootings both referred to the American military’s killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, including a large number of innocent civilians. He fears that we may see more such incidences of domestic terror, with no way to protect ourselves.

These dangers should be borne in mind by those who formulate and put into effect our nation’s policy. - Donna Wulff Providence RI 12/7/09

The writer is associate professor of South Asian religions, Brown University.


** ALERT **
- Wishing you a grand & glorious two hundred and thirty-third celebration of our Declaration of Independence - July 4th of 2009! - And the battle continues!

November 22, 2009 Edit
To Recognize the Forty-sixth anniversary
of the Assassination of President
John Fitzgerald Kennedy

- We'll continue in the mode of reverence for John Kennedy, who, had he survived, would have set a tone which would have precluded a Richard Nixon, a Ronald Reagan and both a George H. W. Bush and a George W. Bush, largely because President Kennedy would have chosen the diplomatic path to settle the Vietnam conundrum [which Eisenhower had rejected by canceling the 1954 all-Vietnam plebiscite - and LBJ had precluded by simulating the 1964 North Vietnamese Gulf of Tonkin attack (this was publicized by the Senator-Statesman Wayne Morse, which Michael Beschloss has yet to acknowledge)] all of which has altered our nation's history for the worst! - 12/7/09 Edit - The sixty-eighth anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, "A Day of Infamy!" - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. We continue with 12/11/09 Edit, to the 12/15/09 Edit.





Noting the comfort of those pictured above, contrasted today (10/28/09) with the bloody mayhem across the globe in Islamic Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan - and the loss of young American life and limb, blood and treasure, for those pictured above? - - - Yes - Although it began in 1948 with the attack by the Irgun, a militant underground Zionist group, on a co-mingled Palestine where Jews, Palestinian Muslims and Christians lived in harmony, side by side.. ..although it began in Palestine in 1948, a terrible turn occurred on November 4, 1995, when an acolyte of the Israeli madman Benjamin Netanyahu, Yigal Amir, when Yigal assassinated the Israeli soldier-statesman, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. That was the beginning of "The Plot Against America" (fully detailed ahead in this GOPBias.org) - a virtual title provided by the over-rated Jewish American novelist Philip Roth - the actual title provided by a conspiratorial collection of Jewish Americans, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, and Jewish Europeans, like Bernard-Henri Levy, all clandestine activists in - "A Clean Break: A New Strategy For Securing The Realm, Israel", the first step of which was the elimination of Saddam Hussein.

- An interjection to account for events almost fifteen years later, one of which was breathtaking both for what occurred, and its exclusion from the United States newspaper of record, The New York Times, with "All the News That's Fit to Print".

* On Sunday 11/8/09, sensing an opportunity, Benjamin Netanyahu, the sanity and character challenged (and uninvited) Prime Minister of Israel flew to Washington to ignite and fuel a political conflagration from the 11/5/09 Fort Hood shooting, and enhance his (Netanyahu) stature (recently damaged by his incendiary 9/14/09 address to the United Nations), hopefully to generate an inferno which would preclude a thoughtful and reasonable decision by the President regarding our continued policies in Southwest Asia and, not incidentally, in the Middle East. Remarkable and, as yet unreported, Mr. Netanyahu was stiffed by the White House - no photo op, no news conference, no Rose Garden - Netanyahu had to settle for a meeting with "Jewish" leaders. A Turning Point? But these will alarm Israel. *

- Israeli Army goes social networking -

"PR - A new unit uses sites like Facebook and Twitter" to recruit and train soldiers

By GWEN ACKERMAN, Bloomberg News

A new Israeli army unit formed to help fight the nation's public-relations war is recruiting and training soldiers for the virtual battlefields of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. - Ackerman Bloomberg 12/6/09

- In David Brooks' 11/10/09 column, analyzing the shooting at Fort Hood, and the narrative which it produced, this sentence will cause alarm:

"It ignored the fact that the war narrative of the 'struggle against Islam' is the central feature of American foreign policy". And Mr. Brooks could have added that that feature has been the Israeli-dominated American theme for six decades! Although Mr. Brooks intended the opposite, the fact is that more and independent thinking will see that our unquestionable support of Israel is the glaring weakness of our foreign policy.

Item: The President's Fort Hood Memorial words - "No faith justifies these murderous and craven acts".

Israel's 12/08 - 1/09 massacre in Gaza.

Item: The President's Fort Hood Memorial words - "No just and loving God looks upon them with favor."

Again, Israel's 12/08 - 1/09 massacre in Gaza.

There are several segments from a 12/9/09 Ethan Bronner article, datelined Jerusalem (in the N Y Times, of course), which contribute to understanding that seminal disregard for non-Jews in the Middle East, which sentiment the Israelis utilize to subdue and displace over time the Palestinians, the Iranians, the Iraqis, the Syrians - and, actually, the Americans who have provided the blood and treasure for this Israeli conquest of Palestine.

This piece has to do with one individual, the now-23-year-old Sergeant Gilad Shalit of the Israeli "Defense" Forces (the "shy, bookish Sergeant")! As the United States years ago changed our "War" Department to the "Defense" Department, the Israeli military, formed to conquer Palestine (and render adjoining nations defenseless and subservient) and, essentially, control the whole of the Middle East as their objective.

Ethan Bronner: "But sociologists, politicians and religious scholars say that rescuing captives has deep Jewish and Israeli roots, and that the mix of familial intimacy here, A RELENTLESS AND WELL CONCEIVED CAMPAIGN BY THE FAMILY AND A MEDIA CULTURE IN OVERDRIVE has placed Sergeant Shalit, a shy, bookish 23-year-old, at the heart of nearly every Israeli Jew (Does he carry a gun?)."

This does much to explain the 12/26/08 - 1/18/09 Israeli massacre in Gaza. To Israelis, those of us who are not Jewish, are not human. Incredible, but true.

- And another notable divorced Orthodox Jew, the famous gadabout Joseph I. Lieberman, as he celebrates Hanukkah -

To the Editor:

Re “Lieberman Says He Can’t Back Current Health Bill” (news article, Dec. 14): Senate Democrats should force Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and his Republican allies to filibuster the health care bill throughout the holiday season rather than letting them hold the American people hostage to their tactics.

Moreover, the filibusters should be shown live in public hospital emergency rooms throughout the United States, so that the uninsured people waiting for primary care can understand exactly who is preventing them from obtaining affordable health insurance. (Better yet, make the filibusters take place in emergency rooms, but the Capitol Police might object.) - Jonathan Ezor West Hempstead N Y 12/14/09

- More about the Senator -

WHAT MAY HAVE BEEN MISSED BY THE MEDIA/PRESS ON THAT FIRST OF THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES ON FRIDAY 9/26/08 WAS JOHN MCCAIN'S RETELLING OF HIS HOPED-FOR PAIRING WITH THE DIVORCED ORTHODOX JEW JOE LIEBERMAN. AN ANALYSIS OF 9/11, AN ANALYSIS THAT EXCLUDED THIS FACTOR - THE "NEO-CONSERVATIVES" (READ JEWISH AMERICAN/EUROPEAN) PRESSURE, WHICH HAD BEEN RESISTED BY THE CLINTON/GORE ADMINISTRATION, AN ANALYSIS WHICH EXCLUDED THE NEO-CONSERVATIVE PRESSURE ON GEORGE WALKER BUSH TO ATTACK, INVADE AND OCCUPY IRAQ TO REMOVE SADDAM HUSSEIN (WHO ISRAELIS SAW AS A THREAT TO THEIR DESIRED CONTROL OF THE LEVANT, AND THEN THE MIDDLE EAST), ANY ANALYSIS WHICH EXCLUDED THAT PRESSURE IS PURE PROPAGANDA.

HAVING LOST THE 2000 REPUBLICAN PRIMARY TO THE JUNIOR BUSH, JOHN MCCAIN COULD SEE THAT HIS ACQUISITION OF THE PRESIDENCY REQUIRED THE SUPPORT IN 2008 OF THE MOST EXTREME SEGMENT OF THE JEWISH LOBBY (AIPAC, ADL, ETC). HOW BETTER TO GAIN THEIR BEHIND-THE-SCENES BACKING THAN JOINING WITH JOE LIEBERMAN. HENCE, MCCAIN'S ATTEMPT TO SELECT LIEBERMAN AS HIS RUNNING MATE. THIS FACT ALONE SHOULD CAUSE AMERICANS TO QUESTION MCCAIN'S HONOR AND JUDGMENT.

OF ALL THE JEWISH AMERICANS IN THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS JOE LIEBERMAN IS PERHAPS THE LEAST HONORABLE. HE WAS KNOWINGLY USED BY RIGHT-WING REPUBLICAN WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR., TO DEFEAT THE HONORABLE DEMOCRAT LOWELL WEICKER, SIMPLY BECAUSE MR WEICKER HAD THRASHED BILL BUCKLEY EARLIER IN A NOTABLE DEBATE ON OUR WAR AGAINST VIETNAM. SELECTED BY ALBERT GORE AS HIS RUNNING MATE IN 2000, TO RECOGNIZE THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF JEWISH AMERICANS IN THE UNITED STATES AND BREAK THE EXISTING ETHNIC BARRIER THAT HAD PRECLUDED THEIR INCLUSION ON A NATIONAL PRESIDENTIAL TICKET, LIEBERMAN REPAID MR. GORE BY SABOTAGING THE GORE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN IN ITS CRITICAL FINAL WEEKS TO MAKE WAY FOR THE BUSH/CHENEY HIDDEN AGENDA TO OCCUPY IRAQ, AT THE BEHEST OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL. HAVING LOST IN THE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY IN CONNECTICUT, LIEBERMAN RAN AS AN "INDEPENDENT" TO RETAIN HIS SENATE SEAT, AND THEN JOINED GEORGE BUSH AND THE REPUBLICANS TO SUPPORT THE DISHONORABLE CAMPAIGN OF ISRAEL TO CONTROL ALL OF PALESTINE AND, ULTIMATELY, THE MIDDLE EAST.

- Amy tracks "Bibi"...

- Israel Revoking Record Number of Jerusalem Residency Permits for Palestinians -

"In Israel and the Occupied Territories, new figures show the Israeli government revoked more residency permits for Palestinians in Jerusalem last year than in any year on record. The Israeli human rights group HaMoked says more than 4,500 Palestinians were stripped of their residency in 2008. The average number of revoked residency permits had previously been around 200 per year." - Amy Goodman 12/3/09

One would think that the ubiquitous President of the famed Council on Foreign Relations (formerly controlled by Henry Kissinger) that the present president Richard Haass would have something to say about "Bibi" Netanyahu in that this particularly virulent Prime Minister is the predominant force of evil which generates this bloodshed.

Perhaps the forty-sixth anniversary reminder of November 22, 1963 will inspire our Media/Press, if not the Congressional leadership, the hangers-on and members of the Republican Party (the sordid lot of Mitch McConnell, Hailey Barbour, Dick Armey, Michael Steele!) who pollute the national dialogue on the principles of this great nation and the policies which we painstakingly develop to address the challenges of our time. Were John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Edward R. Murrow and the likes of Eric Sevareid among us they would be appalled by the blatant racism among us, AND the deference paid to the mad puppet-master of the Middle East AND the United States, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. How is it that his name never crosses the lips of, for example, Scott Simon, Dan Schorr or, for that matter, Sylvia Poggioli?

The designing of information on the corrupt State of Israel taints not only critical planning for a peaceful Middle East, but, also, the formulation of workable policies for the rest of the world. The degree of misinformation which distorts any and all efforts to resolve international challenges boggles the mind. From Iran's "nuclear weapons programs" (Israel has a 200+ nuclear arsenal, but has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty while Iran's focus is peaceful Nuclear Energy) to Israel's demand for compensation from Argentina for an attack years ago on a Synagogue and its Jewish neighborhood, the investigation of which by our own FBI concluded that it was the result of an Argentinian political squabble, the deference to present-day Israel is formidable. But it must be confronted.

Nothing is more illustrative of the twisted entity the Media has become than its presentation of the vicious attack on Mumbai, India November 26-29, 2008, in which ten gunmen killed more than one hundred and seventy. The N.Y. Times 11/19/09 has a television "Review" on page C-8 entitled "Using Tapes and a Timeline To Trace the Mumbai Massacre", a title that would seem to indicate an indepth analysis of "Terror in Mumbai", the HBO film which the Television Review writer Mike Hale records as "The first 360-degree view of terrorism" - "that's the promise the writer (and narrator) Fareed Zakaria makes at the beginning"... In fact, the program which Mr. Hale and The Times is reviewing and promoting does nothing of the sort. Mr. Hale continues, and gratuitously promotes another television program, Wednesday 11/25/09, same subject, on "Secrets of the Dead" the day before Thanksgiving, thereby, hopefully [for the funding mechanism and OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting)] assuring a large audience. What we have here is a major distortion of a significant event, and its meaning. Even the online from the NYTIMES.com/television archive omits the pertinent information.

It was a brutal attack, and it may have generated the vicious Israeli massacre against Gaza 12/26/08 - 1/18/09. But these broadcasts have excluded an accurate raison d'etre, if you will, why they occurred, which has been included in GOPBias.org since the event, as even Christopher Hitchens could determine!

The "Terror in Mumbai" was to be expected, even tho long delayed, a response to the 1948 Irgun attack on Palestine and the series of incremental dispossessions against the Palestinians, the methodical stripping of their lands and lives, i.e. the why of the "Terror in Mumbai", as well as the ongoing animosity between Muslim Pakistan and Hindu etc. India. The actual prime target of the Mumbai attack was the newly renovated five story headquarters ("Nariman House") of Chabad Lubivitch in India, again, one of the many "outreach" devices which Orthodox Jews maintain around the world to proselytize the uninitiated and Sabbatize the wayward. Think Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman and New York assemblyman Dove Hikind, who represents Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, and was in Arab East Jerusalem last week (11/18/09) laying a "cornerstone" for Jewish-only apartments in what the rest of the world legally classifies as "Occupied Palestinian Land". As Jewish interests continue to mount disinformation campaigns to conceal the truly corrupt nature of the State of Israel, particularly under Netanyahu and Lieberman, the United States policies toward the Middle East, Southwest Asia and, indeed, the rest of the world, will have the hollow ring of the artificial, not the solid, clarion call of our Liberty Bell.

Item - Don't bother with the grinning, unhinged and shallow Martin Sheen portrayal of John Kennedy in the PBS/OPB "Kennedy" presentation 11/21/09. If it were worthwhile it would not appear on today's PBS. For the, if you will, "Liberty Bell production" find the 1974 Viacom produced by ABC "Missiles of October" with William Devane as John Kennedy and Martin Sheen as Robert Kennedy. An accurate and superb film, largely because of John Kennedy the man, and his dedication to having the public process on record, for his constituents, the American people.


The brutality of the "Terror in Mumbai" has been exceeded many times over by that perpetrated against the Palestinian people now for over sixty years, and just a year ago, with the sickening brutality against Gaza (that "Terror in Mumbai" lasted only three days) with a three-week mechanized land, air, sea three-pronged Israeli military massacre against 1.3 million Palestinians penned in that narrow Strip; Decent populations around the world said "ENOUGH"! Thus the worldwide revulsion spawned "The Gaza Freedom March"! Now, even this principled protest has been compromised by the bloody hand of AIPAC, a grotesque outgrowth, now of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Norman Finkelstein Responds
Why I resigned from the Gaza Freedom March coalition:

The original consensus of the International Coalition to End the Illegal Siege of Gaza was that we would limit our statement to a pair of uncontroversial, basic and complementary principles that would have the broadest possible appeal: the march to break the siege would be nonviolent and anchored in international law. I agreed with this approach and consequent statement and decided to remove myself from the steering committee in order to invest my full energies in mobilizing for the march.

During the week beginning August 30, 2009 and in a matter of days an entirely new sectarian agenda dubbed "the political context" was foisted on those who originally signed on and worked tirelessly for three months. Because it drags in contentious issues that--however precious to different constituencies--are wholly extraneous to the narrow but critical goal of breaking the siege, this new agenda is gratuitously divisive and it is almost certain that it will drastically reduce the potential reach of our original appeal. It should perhaps be stressed that the point of dispute was not whether one personally supported a particular Palestinian right or strategy to end the occupation. It was whether inclusion in the coalition’s statement of a particular right or strategy was necessary if it was both unrelated to the immediate objective of breaking the siege and dimmed the prospect of a truly mass demonstration. In addition, the tactics by which this new agenda was imposed do not bode well for the future of the coalition’s work and will likely move the coalition in an increasingly sectarian direction.

I joined the coalition because I believed that an unprecedented opportunity now exists to mobilize a broad public whereby we could make a substantive and not just symbolic contribution towards breaking the illegal and immoral siege of Gaza and, accordingly, realize a genuine and not just token gesture of solidarity with the people of Gaza. In its present political configuration I no longer believe the coalition can achieve such a goal. Because I would loathe getting bogged down in a petty and squalid public brawl I will not comment further on this matter unless the sequence of events climaxing in my decision to resign are misrepresented by interested parties. However I would be remiss in my moral obligations were I not humbly to apologize to those who, either coaxed by me or encouraged by my participation, gave selflessly of themselves to make the march a historic event and now feel aggrieved at the abrupt turn of events. It can only be said in extenuation that I along with many others desperately fought to preserve the ecumenical vision that originally inspired the march, but the obstacles thrown in our path ultimately proved insurmountable. - Norman Finkelstein 11/20/09

- Norman Finkelstein establishes his credentials.

"Associated" with all the world's agony of the last ten years - George W. Bush!

Lehrer NewsHour's Judy Woodruff 11/26/09

JUDY WOODRUFF: In other news today: An ongoing inquiry into Britain's decision to go to war in Iraq revealed the U.S. focused on Iraq just hours after the 9/11 attacks. The former British Ambassador to the U.S. Sir Christopher Meyer, testified that he spoke with then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice about it on September 11.

SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER, former ambassador to the United States: She said, 'Well, there is no doubt it's -- this has been an al-Qaida operation.'

But, at the end of the conversation, it's: 'We're just looking to see whether there could possibly be any connection with Saddam Hussein.'

And that was the very first time, on the day itself, that I heard the name of the Iraqi leader mentioned in the context of -- of -- of 9/11.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Meyer also said that former Prime Minister Tony Blair failed to use his influence with then President Bush to stall the rush to invade Iraq. - NewsHour 11/26/09

RAY McGOVERN (27-year CIA analyst on 6/6/05 Lehrer NewsHour): "I would go back to an earlier conversation, and this happened on the 20th of September 2001, and this happened nine days after 9/11. This involved Tony Blair, who was in Washington having dinner with the President. How do we know about this? We know this because Christopher Meyer, the UK ambassador was there at that dinner. What does he say? The conversation went like this. President Bush: 'Uh, Tony. Uh, we're going into Afghanistan in a week or two, but that won't take long and we get out of there and we're going right into Iraq. Are you with me, Tony? Are you with me?' And Christopher Meyer says 'My goodness, it was really, and Tony was really sort of nonplussed, but he said 'Yes sir, I'm with you Mr. President.' (Margaret Warner tries to interrupt, but Mr. McGovern continues) So that goes back (a flustered Ms. Margaret Warner) "Mr. McGovern, speed up!" (Mr. McGovern) "so that goes back to 2001" (Ms. Warner) "We're almost out of time. Get to the next part!" (Mr. McGovern) "Okay, that's it." (Ms. Warner, almost shouting) "So, it's not about Iraq, it's about Afghanistan!" (Mr. McGovern) "Well, no. This has to do with Iraq. What the President said to Tony Blair, on the 20th of September (2001) according to the UK ambassador who was there, is 'We're going into Afghanistan in a couple of weeks. It won't take us long there, and we're going right into Iraq right after that. Are you with me?' And Tony Blair said 'Yes!'"

And This
We can begin by revisiting James Bamford's A Pretext for War, pp. 270-350, which details the elaborate Israeli-Jewish American hoax (Saddam with nuclear WMDs) used to justify the invasion and generate public support. From Michiko Kakutani's 6/18/04 review:

"What he does focus on is the role that Israel has played in shaping American policy. Mr. Bamford contends that 'the blueprint for the new Bush policy' on the Middle East 'had actually been drawn up five years earlier by three of his top national security advisors' (Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser) for the Israeli prime minister at the time, Benjamin Netanyahu (who rejected the plan), and that when they entered office in January 2001, all these hawks needed was 'a pretext' for war against Iraq. Citing a report from the British newspaper The Guardian, Mr. Bamford adds that the Office of Special Plans, a Pentagon unit set up by Mr. Feith, 'forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence unit within Ariel Sharon's office in Israel,' which 'was designed to go around the country's own intelligence organization, Mossad.'"


In brief, not only did the George W. Bush administration (including "Condi" Rice) virtually cancel, i.e. "Short-change", their effort in Afghanistan 'WHERE 9/11 ORIGINATED', but they also (Pgs. 2 & 21 11/29/04 N Y Times), in "Report on Bin Laden Escape - A new report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee says Osama bin Laden's escape from American forces in Afghanistan in 2001 laid "the foundation for today's protracted Afghan insurgency.". . .But they, the Bush & Cheney & McCain administration, in such a rush to remove Saddam for Israel, allowed Bin Laden to flee!

" Senate Report Explores Bin Laden's 2001 Escape"

By Scott Shane

WASHINGTON -

As President Obama vows to “finish the job” in Afghanistan by sending more troops, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has completed a detailed look back at a crucial failure early in the battle against Al Qaeda: the escape of Osama bin Laden from American forces in the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora in December 2001, but three months after 9/11.

“Removing the Al Qaeda leader from the battlefield eight years ago would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat,” the committee’s report concludes. “But the decisions that opened the door for his escape to Pakistan allowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure who continues to attract a steady flow of money and inspire fanatics worldwide.”

The report, based in part on a little-noticed 2007 history of the Tora Bora episode by the military’s Special Operations Command, asserts that the consequences of not sending American troops in 2001 to block Mr. bin Laden’s escape into Pakistan are still being felt.

The report blames the lapse for “laying the foundation for today’s protracted Afghan insurgency and inflaming the internal strife now endangering Pakistan.”

The committee report, prepared at the request of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the committee’s Democratic chairman, concludes unequivocally that in mid-December 2001, Mr. bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, were at the cave complex, where Mr. bin Laden had operated previously during the fight against Soviet forces.

THE NEW REPORT SUGGESTS THAT A LARGER TROOP COMMITMENT TO AFGHANISTAN MIGHT HAVE RESULTED IN THE DEMISE NOT ONLY OF MR. BIN LADEN AND HIS DEPUTY, BUT ALSO OF MULLAH MUHAMMAD OMAR, THE LEADER OF THE AFGHAN TALIBAN. MULLAH OMAR, WHO ALSO FLED TO PAKISTAN IN 2001, HAS OVERSEEN THE RESURGENCE OF THE TALIBAN. - Scott Shane 11/29/09


Note: (1*) The Prior History - (2*) "Since 1948... - (3*) "The June 8, 1967 attack on the USS Liberty... - (4*) The Ultimate in Israeli Propaganda, configured 9/26/09 by Mark Landler in Washington.


- Much more to come!


- This next step is framed by the 11/20/09 David Brancaccio and Maria Hinojosa NOW program on Traumatic Brain Injury survivors from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, men and women who require 24/7 around the clock care which neither our government nor the Veterans Affairs Administration are able to provide (what with the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and, now, Pakistan - all generated by the 1948 Jewish attack on Palestine) leaving those surviving American families the choice of abandoning their loved ones, or assuming the awesome responsibility for their round-the-clock medical and psychological care.


WHOA! What IS this?
Moyers Out? NewsHour Gutted?
Mark Shields? David Brooks?
Bank of America In Charge?
- The New York Times 11/30/09 - lower half page B-3 in Business? If ever there was a Times "All the News That's Fit to Print" article that belonged on the Front page, this is it. The American people have been subjected to a double-whammy! First this "HD Hoax" in television, whereby glossy ads take precedence over subject matter, particularly hard news, and now the further reduction of that precious hard-news category, whether it's by a gluttonous Comcast or an anemic PBS. Where's today's Orson Welles (1915-1985)?

In The Times' article, by one Elizabeth Jensen (the link to which appears below) [Incidentally, where is Elizabeth Brackett who, when the Republicans (Newt Gingrich? Rush Limbaugh?) stole Congress in '94, Ms. Brackett, on the NewsHour while Lehrer was enjoying the holidays, 'splained how Republican talk shows replaced the estimable Tom Foley with the irreparable Mr. Gingrich. We need her back in action!], they leave to the 15th paragraph - the key.

"...the show (i.e. NewsHour) has recently 'attracted several million$ of dollar$ more in corporate financing - including Bank of America underwriting to be announced Monday.'"

"BILL MOYERS IS ENDING HIS WEEKLY FRIDAY SHOW AT THE END OF APRIL, AND PBS CANCELED THE COMPANION 'NOW on PBS', WHICH WAS HAVING TROUBLE RAISING PRODUCTION FUNDS."

This is alarming. David Brancaccio & Maria Hinojosa with their 11/20/09 program on Traumatic Brain Injury have just given the American public one of the most significant programs on the most formidable controversy facing President Obama and our military EVER. And PBS has canceled them?

Another key segment from this alarming article:

"Beginning December 7th (The Appropriate Date For This announcement) Mr. Lehrer's name will not be on the program, for the first time since 1976. Instead it is being renamed 'PBS NEWSHOUR,' WHICH PROMPTED A NEW STREAMLINED LOGO AND GRAPHICS. MR. LEHRER WILL HAVE A REGULAR CO-ANCHOR; ON THE FIRST PROGRAM IT WILL BE MS. GWEN IFILL!"....This may call for a REVOLUTION!!

STRESSING THE WEB, 'NEWSHOUR' BEGINS AN OVERHAUL!

Here a sample of the Brancaccio & Hinojosa 11/20/09 program: "THE PENTAGON ESTIMATES THAT AS MANY AS ONE IN FIVE AMERICAN SOLDIERS ARE COMING HOME FROM WAR ZONES WITH TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURIES, MANY OF WHICH REQUIRE ROUND-THE-CLOCK ATTENTION."

An Alert editorial in the 11/23/09 N Y Times brings into focus this coming monumental decision by the President vis-a-vis the array of the military pressures from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral "Mike" Mullen, through future presidential candidate General Petraeus, to General McChrystal [who has "strategized" the clandestine (the White House has been the last to hear this one) Blackwater assault on Pakistan's sovereignty - refer to 11/24/09 DemocracyNow] and, finally to John Sidney McCain III who, in his over-the-top attack on Health Care Reform said: "Bernie Madoff went to prison for selling this turkey (last two words paraphrased)". In fact, it was "Country First" McCain who wanted to sacrifice our nation, putting Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the "Oval Office". "Country First"?

On Scott Simon's NPR Morning Edition 12/5/09 Mr. Judd Gregg and Mr. Simon enjoyed themselves as the New Hampshire Senator laughingly expanded the McCain characterization of Health Care Reform as a Madoff Ponzi scheme (a continuation of South Carolinian Senator James DeMint who began the Republican effort to end the Obama presidency by rejecting the desparately needed national Health Care Reform. And some say the media is not driven by a Pro-Republican virus?)


An Amy Goodman Intervention
Here a continuing example of legitimate "Country First" action, unlike the fraudulent John McCain (whose record of crashes should have washed him out of naval aviation, whose failure to wrap his arms around his body broke both arms on ejection, and whose circumstances of release by the North Vietnamese are classified by the United States Navy!) Ms. Goodman is 100% total patriot!

- Ms. Goodman 12/4/09 - The quantity and caliber of HardNews is diminished -

- Comcast Reaches Deal for Majority Stake in NBC Universal -

"The nation’s largest cable television company Comcast has struck a deal to buy a majority stake in the television and movie giant NBC Universal from General Electric. If approved, the merger would give Comcast control of the NBC network, the Spanish-language Telemundo, cable channels including MSNBC, dozens of local television stations and the Universal film studio. Media democracy advocates have widely criticized the merger.

Jeff Chester, head of the Center for Digital Democracy: “This is a real political litmus test for the Obama administration. Frankly, they should just have their FCC and their Department of Justice, or FTC, say no to this deal. There’s nothing in the Comcast-NBCU mega-deal that will benefit the public interest, consumers or competitors. The Obama administration has a chance now to put its foot down and say ‘no more media consolidation in the United States.’”" - Amy Goodman 12/4/09

As is often the case, the day after President Obama's monumental 12/1/09 speech regarding military policy vis-a-vis Afghanistan and Pakistan (and "monumental" is appropriate - not since John Fitzgerald Kennedy have we had a President whose intellect, vision and propitious wisdom can so carry the moment). But the task at hand is huge. And Ms. Goodman finds a way to address it.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re here in the new Printing Press studios and joining us in New York, along with Andrew Bacevich in Boston BU professor, here in New York is independent journalist and fellow at the New York University Center on Law and Security, Nir Rosen. He has covered Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003. His latest articles cover the current state of the U.S. occupations in both countries, Iraq and Afghanistan. They appear in the Boston Review. Nir Rosen, welcome to Democracy Now! Your thoughts after the West Point address of President Obama announcing the surge of 30,000 troops? Though that is not it, because his General Stanley McChrystal wanted 40,000, he is pushing for NATO to supply the rest and they are saying it will be in the range of 5000. Of course we do not know the military contractors that will accompany all of these soldiers.

NIR ROSEN: Well, it is really no surprise. Even if Obama hadn’t wanted to escalate the troops, he is under so much political pressure that he would of had to, but I would have at least liked to hear the words Kashmir and Palestine. If we are talking about Al Qaeda and the whole reason for why we are in Afghanistan allegedly is this threat from Al Qaeda which has been severely exaggerated, then at least understand their motives. Their chief motives are the Indian occupation of Kashmir, the Israeli and American backed occupation of Palestine. These are the motives. If your goal is to weaken Al Qaeda, understand their motives, address their grievances. This is not some James Bond villain the wants to attack the U.S. for no reason. These people who have grievances, the same grievances that have been troubling people around the world for decades. They were once explained using a secular Marxist nationalist discourse, today it has become a more religious discourse; but the grievances have remained the same. So why, if your goal is to weaken Al Qaeda, are you attacking the Taliban? The Taliban being a local movement with a very limited and unsophisticated ideology. Al Qaeda exists to much larger extent in Pakistan yet there are no American troops in Pakistan, so why do you need such a huge military footprint in Afghanistan were there is no Al Qaeda really if they are coming in from Pakistan? In Pakistan you do not have this American presence and yet you have been relatively successful. There been no attacks on America thanks to intelligence, interdiction, heightened security. Al Qaeda isn’t really a threat. You have a couple of hundred relatively unsophisticated guys. They used their A team on September 11 and it was tragic, but it wasn’t that significant and didn’t really affect the U.S. What affected the US was the American response internally and abroad. Al Qaeda isn’t really a big deal, but even if you think it’s a big deal, even if you think this is a huge threat that really deserves so much of our resources, understand their grievances and address them. If your remove Palestine and Kashmir, you’d have way less people in the world who support Al Qaeda, who want to join it. Instead, what we are doing is increasing the occupation of a Muslim country. Although Obama mentioned the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, he mentioned Al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan, what about the American occupation of Afghanistan? What about all the innocent people who being killed there today thanks to American counter-insurgency, counter terrorism operations only further increasing ethnic tensions? You are going to have a civil war in Afghanistan between Tajiks and Pashtuns at some point. It is going more and more in that direction.

AMY GOODMAN: Comment, Nir Rosen, on what you think, if you were standing at West Point last night, what you would have been saying?

NIR ROSEN: I would have mentioned Palestine and Kashmir and the history of American support for dictatorships in the Middle East and the Muslim world as the cause for this Al Qaeda phenomenon, for this resentment of the U.S. and I would have...

AMY GOODMAN:And the actions you announced?

NIR ROSEN: This is impossibly naïve and would require a revolution in the way America does business, but stop supporting dictatorships in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and elsewhere, stop supporting the Pakistani dictatorships or quasi-dictatorship, STOP SUPPORTING THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE. Be perceived as a fair player in the Middle East and the Muslim world. Stop killing Muslims and Muslims will not want to kill you. It is really very easy.

The Pentagon Reigns
For all the stars of ranking generals and admirals in Washington, it turns out there’s still a higher grade -- “senior mentor.” These are retired brass enjoying lucrative compensation as part-time Pentagon advisers, who, in most cases, also draw V.I.P. pay from companies seeking defense contracts. The mentor cohort has quietly grown in recent years from a handful to at least 158 ranking retired officers -- 80 percent of whom hire on at the same time with defense contractors.

There is nothing illegal about the double-dipping. But few people in Congress or elsewhere knew about it until now because there is no requirement to tell anyone, even the Pentagon. As Pentagon advisers, mentors are paid hundreds of dollars an hour for offering counsel to former colleagues on war games and other specialties. As defense contract consultants, they can make considerably more. It’s time to closely manage the retirees’ good deal, documented in a report by USA Today.

Defense specialists in the Senate are proposing that ethics rules be written at least to mandate financial disclosure to avoid conflicts of interest. More than that may be needed. The Air Force has just directed that financial statements be required from mentors who might “potentially influence procurement decisions.”

The military and its mentors insist that weapons hawking is unlikely under existing rules, and that the dual role represents a wise investment in expertise needed to burnish the officer corps and maintain national security. “The taxpayers are getting a steal,” declared a retired admiral while declining to disclose his clients.

A steal it may be. Transparency will only secure the mentors’ presumed virtue, not harm it.

Federal regulations require part-time employees paid at executive rates to file disclosure reports. But the senior mentors are not covered because they are hired as consultants, not employees. This may not qualify as Catch-22 in the world of Captain Yossarian, nor “the acquisition of unwarranted influence” that President-and-General Dwight Eisenhower foresaw in the military-industrial complex. But it’s time Congress and the Pentagon made sure and got a handle on retired brass who sell their advice to both parts of the complex. - Editorial N Y Times 11/23/09

Resulting Traumatic Brain Injuries
- Brancaccio & Hinojosa NOW 11/20/09 -

The Pentagon estimates that as many as one in five American soldiers are coming home from war zones with traumatic brain injuries, many of which require round-the-clock attention.

But lost in the reports of these returning soldiers are the stories of family members who often sacrifice everything to care for them.

This week, NOW reveals how little has been done to help these family caregivers, and reports on dedicated efforts to support them. - NOW 11/20/09


The worldwide chaos which the 1948 Irgun attack on a peaceful Palestine has metamorphed into a challenge of the age. This refusal to recognize and publicize the pernicious ruin which our capitulation to the madness of Israel has caused, has, in itself created a holocaust which must be confronted, and a factor sharing the source of this poison is the Republican Party.

- Frank Rich in the 11/22/09 N Y Times:

- Her fifteen minutes will not be over anytime soon.

After the Palin-McCain ticket lost, conservative pundits admonished her to start studying the issues. If “Going Rogue” and its promotional interviews are any indication, she has ignored their entreaties during her months at liberty. Last week, Greta Van Susteren chastised Oprah for not asking Palin “one policy question,” but when Barbara Walters did ask some, Palin either recycled Dick Cheney verbatim (Obama is “dithering”) or ran aground. Her argument for why “Jewish settlements” should be expanded on the West Bank was that “more and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead.” It was unclear what she was talking about -- unless it was the “rapture” theology that requires the mass return of Jews to settle the Holy Land as a precondition for the return of Christ.

The discredited neocon hacks who have latched on to Palin as a potential ticket back into power have their work cut out for them. But it’s better for Palin’s purposes to remain as blank a slate as possible anyway. Some of her most ardent supporters realize that she’ll drive still more independent voters away if she fills in too many details. And so Matthew Continetti, the author (himself of the Weekly Standard) of the just-published “Persecution of Sarah Palin” and her most persistent cheerleader after William Kristol (also Weekly Standard), wrote in The Wall Street Journal that her role model for 2012 should be Bob McDonnell, the new Republican governor-elect of Virginia, who won on “a bipartisan, center-right approach.”

Yet among Republicans she still ties Mitt Romney in the latest USA Today/Gallup survey, with 65 percent giving her serious presidential consideration, just behind the 71 for her evangelical rival, Mike Huckabee. The crowds lining up in the cold for her book tour are likely to be the most motivated to line up at the polls in G.O.P. primaries. They don’t speak the same language as Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Michael Steele, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner or, for that matter, McCain. They are more likely to heed Palin salesmen like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh than baffled Bush administration grandees like Peter Wehner, who last week called Palin “a cultural figure much more than a political one” on the Web site of the establishment conservative organ Commentary. - Frank Rich 11/22/09

Brian Stelter in 11/22/09 N. Y. Times

- "Pundit Stakes Out a More Activist Role in Politics"

A Sample -

"For the diffuse tea party movement that taps into anti-government sentiments, 'the media guys are the closest things we even have to a leader,' said Adam Brandon, the vice president for communications at FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy group." (Mr. Stelter might have warned us that FreedomWorks is funded by Israeli "Advocate" Sheldon G. Adelson - note next Planning the Disaster link just below)

- This man is an equal Media/Press threat to the nation as is Rush Limbaugh.

The Way Forward
- Health Care Reform -

To the Editor:

“The Drug Industry Cashes In” (editorial, Nov. 18) correctly points out that the drug industry’s price escalations threaten to make a mockery of its deal with the Senate Finance Committee and the Obama administration.

I remember well how President John F. Kennedy responded to the announcement made by Roger Blough, chairman of United States Steel, that the company had increased the price of steel, contrary to what President Kennedy thought was Mr. Blough’s promise not to do so.

His public condemnation of the steel industry and the businessmen who ran it was followed by swift action that resulted in a rollback of the price increases. It also sent a message to the nation as a whole: that this president was to be taken seriously.

What we need from President Obama is less rhetoric and tougher action. - John Viteritti N Y Times Southold N Y 11/18/09

** - From Jerusalem, the ever-reliable Israeli Isabel Kershner presents Netanyahu's next move, WITH OUR MONEY! "Israel Moves Ahead on Plans to Expand Settlement in Disputed Part of Jerusalem.

JERUSALEM -- Israel said Tuesday that it had advanced plans to expand a Jewish district of Jerusalem in territory that was captured in the 1967 war and that the Palestinians claim as part of their future state. The move is likely to further complicate the Obama administration’s faltering efforts to restart peace talks.

The news that the building plans had moved closer to approval drew a sharp response from the White House, which has declared reviving the talks to be a major goal. Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, issued a statement saying the administration was “dismayed” and asking both parties to avoid unilateral actions that could “pre-empt, or appear to pre-empt, negotiations.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently generated a furor among Palestinians and other Arabs by praising as “unprecedented” an offer by Israel to slow down, but not stop, construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Arab countries worried that the administration was backing off its previous insistence on a complete freeze, but Mrs. Clinton denied that, saying that she was offering “positive reinforcement” for policies that headed in that direction.

The move comes as the Palestinians have put forward a plan to seek the United Nations Security Council's recognition of a Palestinian state, without Israel’s agreement, in the lands Israel won in 1967. Palestinian officials said they were pursuing the idea in an attempt to break the impasse in peace talks.

That initiative suffered a setback on Tuesday, just days after it surfaced. The Palestinians have called for European backing, but Carl Bildt, the foreign minister of Sweden, which holds the European Union presidency, told reporters in Brussels that a bid for international recognition of a state not yet formed would be “somewhat premature.”

The United States and Israel have already signaled their disapproval of the Palestinian initiative. A State Department spokesman, Ian C. Kelly, said Monday that the United States supported “a Palestinian state that arises as a result of a process between the two parties.”

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has warned that a unilateral move by the Palestinians would “unravel” existing agreements and could lead Israel to respond with unilateral steps (Netanyahu INVENTED "UNILATERAL" moves against Palestine!).

But the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, told reporters in Cairo on Tuesday that the proposal had the backing of Arab countries and that the deadlock in the peace process left the Palestinian leadership with no option but to try a different course.

“We feel we are in a very difficult situation,” Mr. Abbas said. “What is the solution for us? To remain suspended like this, not in peace? That is why I took this step.” Aides have said that Mr. Abbas, who said recently that he did not wish to run again for the Palestinian leadership, is dispirited by the lack of movement in the peace process.

Disagreements over settlement building are in large part the reason that the negotiations, which have been stalled for months, have not resumed. The Palestinians demand a complete freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank and the parts of Jerusalem taken over by Israel in 1967; the Israelis have rejected that, but recently offered to restrain settlement growth.

The Obama administration at first insisted on a full Israeli settlement freeze, but later seemed to accept an Israeli offer to curb construction, a position that has put the Palestinian president in a difficult position.

Israel says it is willing to hold off new settlement projects for several months, but insists on allowing the completion of about 3,000 housing units already in various stages of planning and construction in the West Bank. IT REFUSES TO INCLUDE JERUSALEM IN ANY FREEZE.

The 900 housing units that Israel said on Tuesday had moved closer toward approval are in addition to those homes. They are in Gilo, an area in southern Jerusalem considered by Israel to be a neighborhood of the city and by the Palestinians and * MUCH OF THE WORLD * to be a settlement that violates international law. Israel claims sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, having annexed the parts it captured from Jordan in the 1967 war.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said the Palestinian Authority “strongly condemns” the decision to advance the construction in Gilo.

The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said he “deplores” the decision to expand Gilo, reiterating in a statement on Tuesday his position THAT SETTLEMENTS ARE ILLEGAL.

THE PLANS FOR GILO STILL REQUIRE FINAL AUTHORIZATION, ACCORDING TO A SPOKESMAN FOR JERUSALEM'S CITY HALL. - Kershner N Y Times 11/18/09

What will be President Barack Obama's response? **


In his Tuesday 11/10/09 introduction of General Electric's NBC Universal (soon to be combined with Comcast!) coverage describing those invited to the Memorial Service at Fort Hood, Texas, also the headquarters of "Three Corp", Brian Williams featured in his list of guests "including, but not limited to, John McCain...". Among the commentators were Jim Miklashevski and Medal of Honor recipient Jack Jacobs. One can recall that when John Donald Imus Jr. was at his propaganda peak Brian Williams, Jack Jacobs and John McCain were his featured guests and subjects, along with anyone and everyone who could steal votes away from Vice President Albert Gore! The highlight of the televised memorial was the President's poignant portrayal of the fallen.

The Fort Hood shooting will make it all the more difficult for the President to defy this military and pro-Israeli policy demand that thirty thousand more American troops will be sent to Afghanistan, a policy that literally began with the stolen presidential election by George W. Bush and company in 2000. Misplaced in the archives is an Imus-MSNBC program following 9/11 in which the host was concerned about an ongoing investigation into the validity of that 5-4 Republican Court decision, i.e. whether it could be challenged, and Imus was assured that 9/11 rendered, politically, that 12-12-00 Court vote moot.

- Dedicated Voices -

The New York Times, Front Page, Lead Article 11/12/09 -

"ENVOY EXPRESSES DOUBT ON FORCES FOR AFGHANISTAN

Ambassador's Stance Is at Odds With Top Commander's

WASHINGTON - The United States ambassador to Afghanistan, who once served as the top American military commander there, has expressed in writing his reservations about deploying additional troops to the country, three senior American officials said Wednesday.

The position of the ambassador, Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general, puts him in stark opposition to the current American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who has asked for 40,000 more troops." - Elisabeth Bumiller & Mark Landler 11/12/09

And a note: Ambassador Eikenberry's service to this nation has been exemplary, 2005 to 2007 the top military commander in Afghanistan and, earlier, 2002 to 2003 responsible for training Afghan security forces. Prior to his informing the public his aide Matthew Hoh had resigned and made a significant appearance on the NewsHour, the transcript of which is coming up.

* This controversy enveloping Afghanistan, and Pakistan, spreads throughout the Middle East. The plot thickens. Having been rebuffed by Washington, Israeli Prime Minister flew to Paris (reported by Steven Erlanger 11/12/09) to the open arms of Nicolas Sarkoz-e-e-e, who claims he has demanded Netanyahu freeze all settlement activity in East Jerusalem (Never happen UNTIL we freeze those billion$ to Israel!). The president of France left his wife to marry a model, is actually Jewish, and most unlikely to be an honest broker in any pact involving Israel.

And this may be significant. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, according to Elisabeth Bumiller, "unleashed a torrent" on Thursday 11/12/09 in response to Ambassador Eikenberry's voicing opposition to the additional war plans of General McChrystal (Gates should be known as the War Secretary - and had no problem with his military leaders advertising their calls for additional troops in Afghanistan), i.e. Mr. Gates stood silent as the McChrystal/McCain propaganda campaign for a virtual doubling of this bloody military escalation in Afghanistan, which reminds of General Douglas MacArthur who felt he knew more about our foreign policy than President Harry Truman. President Obama is the Commander in Chief! And all the while, Israel under Netanyahu and Lieberman are showing contempt for their Palestinian prisoners held hostage. *

The Informed Public Responds
To the Editor:

If President Obama decides to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan, it’s now his war. And our presidents, once it’s their war, have found it nearly impossible to let go.

We paid an awful price in Vietnam -- in our lives and their lives -- to try state-building in a quagmire. The lesson: It is almost impossible for an occupying power to build a nation.

Generals are trained to carry out missions. Statesmen must look outside the box to question the mission itself. Schools we can build, but not states or nations. - John Bohstedt Knoxville Tenn. 11/11/09

The writer is professor emeritus of history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

To the Editor:

My response to “3 Obama Advisers Lean Toward Plan for 30,000 More Troops for Afghanistan” (news article, Nov. 11) is this: “Don’t do it, Mr. President! You will lose my vote and stain your presidency if you send even 10,000 more troops to Afghanistan.”

No one has shown that this war or the one in Iraq is making America safer. In fact, evidence is to the contrary as American attacks help our enemies recruit more people to their cause.

President Hamid Karzai’s corruption is a good excuse to get out now. Let’s not spill more blood on this illegitimate and unwinnable war. - L. Michael Hager Washington 11/11/09

The writer is former director general of the International Development Law Organization in Rome.

Editorial Note: Mr. Hager is referring to the Veterans Day 11/11/09 Elisabeth Bumiller & David Sanger piece in which War Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen (note Admiral Mullen in the title paragraph of GOPBias.org) call for more troops in the ungovernable Karzai Afghanistan, the piece headlined "Obama Wants Afghans and Pakistanis to commit to War Plan, officials Say" subhead "Top Advisers Lean Toward More Troops". This is clearly an example, what with Bumiller & Sanger involved, of a N Y Times equivalent of a "Push-Poll", in which the articles purpose is not to inform, but to mold opinion. Sanger, particularly, is known for this equivalent to propaganda. Have either one of them EVER penned a piece on the struggles of Palestinians under Israeli occupation?!

Frank Rich Comes Home
- Afghanistan Unveiled -

In a week of horrific news, it was good to hear at the end of it that Obama is dissatisfied with the four Afghanistan options he has been weighing so far. The more time he deliberates, the more he is learning that he’s on a fool’s errand with no exit. After Karzai was spared a runoff last month and declared the winner of the fraud-infested August “election,” Obama demanded that he address his government’s corruption as a price for American support. Only days later the Afghan president mocked the American president by parading his most tainted cronies on camera and granting an interview to PBS’s “NewsHour” devoted to spewing his contempt for his American benefactors.

Matthew Hoh, a former Marine and, until recently, a State Department official in Afghanistan, could be found on MSNBC on Thursday once again asking the question no war advocate can answer, “Do you want Americans fighting and dying for the Karzai regime?” Hoh quit his post on principle in September despite the urging of colleagues, including our ambassador there, Karl W. Eikenberry, that he stay and fight over war policy from the inside. But Hoh had lost confidence in our strategy and would not retract his resignation. Now he has been implicitly seconded by Eikenberry himself. Last week we learned that the ambassador, a retired general who had been the top American military commander in Afghanistan as recently as 2007, had sent two cables to Obama urging caution about sending more troops.

We don’t know everything in those cables. What we do know is that American intelligence continues to say that fewer than 100 Qaeda operatives can still be found in Afghanistan. We also know that the Taliban, which are currently estimated to number in the tens of thousands, can’t be eliminated. As McChrystal put it to Filkins, there is no “finite number” of Taliban, so there’s no way to vanquish them. Hence his counterinsurgency alternative, which could take decades, costing untold billions and countless lives.

Perhaps those on the right are correct about Hasan, and he is just one cog in an apocalyptic jihadist plot that has infiltrated our armed forces. If so, then they have an obligation to explain how pouring more troops into Afghanistan would have stopped Hasan from plotting in Killeen. Don’t hold your breath. If we have learned anything concrete so far from the massacre at Fort Hood, it’s that our hawks, for all their certitude, are as utterly confused as the rest of us about who it is we’re fighting in Afghanistan and to what end. - Frank Rich 11/15/09

- Complete 11/15/09 N Y Times column -

Former President Jimmy Carter
To the Editor:

Re “Call White House, Ask for Barack,” by Thomas L. Friedman (column, Nov. 8):

Mr. Friedman is advocating what some Israelis want and no Palestinian wants: a perpetuation of the status quo, and for the United States to “just get out of the picture.” He claims that we Americans want peace more than the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Certainly that is not true of the Palestinians, who are suffering horribly in Gaza and are oppressed and deprived of freedom and human dignity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Most thinking Israelis -- including Ehud Olmert, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak, all conservatives -- have recognized that a continuation of the status quo will be a catastrophe for Israel, as a single nation continues to evolve between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. With a majority of Arab voters, Israel will soon cease to be a Jewish state, or else be forced to become a truly apartheid regime.

Instead of waiting for Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas to beg us, which won’t happen, America needs to put forward on our own initiative a plan for two states, perhaps based on the Arab initiative, which calls for diplomatic and economic recognition of Israel within its secure borders, side by side with Palestinians in a viable and contiguous state.

As President Obama and other world leaders know, a quiescent America will bring nothing but catastrophe. - President Jimmy Carter Atlanta 11/8/09


- - The respected Israeli historian Ilan Pappe' records the end of harmony.

That Israeli strategy, or cancer if you will, turned more ugly by the American presidential election of 2000 in which one of the finest Vice Presidents in American history, Al Gore, was defeated by a scurrilous 5-4 United States Supreme Court vote. As a result, with the full backing of our Media/Press, perhaps the worst president of this country since Warren Gamielal Harding was in the White House. Unfettered by the Bush/Cheney regime, the "A New Strategy" developed a blood-thirsty appetite at the end of Bush/Cheney, and from 12/26/08 to 1/18/09 wrought a mechanized hell (including burning white phosphorus munitions) upon the 1.3 million Palestinians penned up by Israel in Gaza. Fifteen hundred Gazans, mostly civilians, were killed, more were grievously wounded - thirteen Israelis died, including three civilians.

- - The respected University of Chicago historian Robert A. Pape answers Israeli-American complaints regarding suicide bombers, whether in vehicles or on foot, or planted Improvised Explosive Devices, IEDs.


Item: As if the prelude wasn't enough (two thoughtless wars, the first against Iraq, and, now, against Afghanistan) a California Congressman Howard Berman arranged (11/3/09) a United States House of Representatives' 334 to 36 vote AGAINST JUDGE RICHARD GOLDSTONE'S CLASSIC, YET BALANCED, REPORT ON THE 12/08-1/09 ISRAELI MASSACRE OF GAZANS IMPENNED, BY ISRAEL, IN THE GAZA STRIP. JUDGE GOLDSTONE IS ONE OF THIS WORLD'S MOST RESPECTED JURISTS, A JEW, AND A ZIONIST! In response to Congressman Berman's heretical statement that the judge's report was "irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy" - - -

It must surely occur to every loyal American citizen that this sixty year coddling of Israel has brought our country to the brink of disaster. Think about it. The 5-4 Supreme Court decision of 12/12/00, which knowingly put in office a presidency dedicated to the war against Iraq, installed a candidate for the worst presidency in our history!! GAVE FULL REIGN TO AN AM-RADIO DOMINATED PRO-REPUBLICAN MEDIA/PRESS!! AND NOW, HAS UNLEASHED ON THE WORLD THE MEGALOMANIACAL REGIME OF BENJAMIN NETANYAHU AND AVIGDOR LIEBERMAN - who have just called for the shredding of the international criminal code to legitimize the Israeli war crimes of 12/26/08 to 1/18/09 against the Palestinian population, which the Israelis have virtually imprisoned in the Gaza Strip.

- - - "Judge Goldstone issued a four-page open letter to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, listing 16 instances in which he said the House resolution had distorted the findings or wording of his report. While the House had every right to weigh his report, he wrote, the resolution included 'serious factual inaccuracies and instances where information and statements are taken grossly out of context.'" - Neil MacFarquhar N Y Times (P. A-15) 11/5/09

Item: On the tainted 11/5/09 Lehrer NewsHour which acknowledged the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas - the largest military base in the world - Jeffrey Brown, interviewing James Kitfield of the National Journal, heard, but quickly bypassed, one of the most significant statements made by a reporter in the last several years: "BUT, YOU KNOW, BECAUSE THE ARMY WAS NOT ANTICIPATED TO BE FIGHTING TWO WARS FOR THIS LONG PERIOD -- IN FACT, THE ALL-VOLUNTEER FORCE WAS NEVER ANTICIPATED TO BE SORT OF A WARTIME, YOU KNOW, FULL WARTIME, PROLONGED WAR FORCE. IT WAS GOING TO BE -- FROM ITS INCEPTION WAS DESIGNED TO SORT OF BE THE CORE AROUND WHICH YOU WOULD MOBILIZE AND THEN REINSTATE THE DRAFT."!! - James Kitfield NewsHour 11/5/09.

Were Mr. Brown not tainted by his affiliation, he would have immediately acknowledged and explored with Mr. Kitfield this stunning revelation and, perhaps, related this information both to the near political anarchy which the United States faces, AND THE ACTUAL ANARCHY THE WORLD FACES AS A DIRECT RESULT OF THE RECKLESS AND CONFISCATORY LAND AND DOMINION GRAB WHICH THE INSATIABLE ISRAELIS HAVE VISITED UPON THE MIDDLE EAST!

IS THAT WHY THOSE RABBIS AND BLOOMBERG ARE SO CONTENT? ASK THEM!

Because of the domination of the American media, with which the giant corporations mold the character (actually, the lack of same) of "News" and "Journalism", the public is unaware of the horrendous impact which the likes of Glen Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh have on politics and policy (see Paul Krugman, which follows after the great Max Cleland). The God-awful 11/5/09 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, THE LARGEST MILITARY BASE IN THE WORLD sends a three-part message - (1) We cannot escape the consequences of supporting, literally providing the life blood and treasure, for such as Netanyahu/Lieberman's Israel. (2) Our military, pursuing the dictates of couples like John McCain and Joe Lieberman, is broken. (3) And that military is ill-advised, as the following NewsHour interview 10/29/09 with former Marine captain and State Department official Matthew Hoh explains, ill-advised to involve itself in a 35-year-old civil war in Afghanistan.

The cost of lives, limbs (These are our precious veterans and their families!) and treasure todate is horrendous, all because of insatiable Israel, and an appalling waste. It reminds of the thoughtless Confederate South Carolina April 12, 1861 attack on the Union's Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, which started the Civil War. The carnage born by our dedicated young men and women! The former United States Senator Max Cleland, defeated by the draft dodger (so common among Republicans) Saxby Chambliss in 2002, has the voice that needs be heard -

The Forever War of the Mind
“EVERY day I was in Vietnam, I thought about home. And, every day I’ve been home, I’ve thought about Vietnam.” So said one of the millions of soldiers who fought there as I did. Change the name of the battlefield and it could have been said by one of the American servicemen coming home from Iraq or Afghanistan today. Wars are not over when the shooting stops. They live on in the lives of those who fight them. That is the curse of the soldier. He never forgets.

While the authorities say they cannot yet tell us why an Army psychiatrist would go on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood in Texas, we do know the sorts of stories he had been dealing with as he tried to help those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan readjust to life outside the war zone. A soldier’s mind can be just as dangerous to himself, and to those around him, as wars fought on traditional battlefields.

War is haunting. Death. Pain. Blood. Dismemberment. A buddy dying in your arms. Imagine trying to get over the memory of a bomb splitting a Humvee apart beneath your feet and taking your leg with it. The first time I saw the stilled bodies of American soldiers dead on the battlefield is as stark and brutal a memory as the one of the grenade that ripped off my right arm and both legs.

No, the soldier never forgets. But neither should the rest of us.

Veterans returning today represent the first real influx of combat-wounded soldiers in a generation. They are returning to a nation unprepared for what war does to the soul. Those new veterans will need all of our help. After America’s wars, the used-up fighters are too often left to fend for themselves. Many of the hoboes in the Depression were veterans of World War I. When they came home, they were labeled shell-shocked and discharged from the Army too broken to make it during the economic cataclysm.

So it is again, with too many stories about veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan ending up unemployed and homeless. Figures from the Department of Veterans Affairs show that 131,000 of the nation’s 24 million veterans are homeless each night, and about twice that many will spend part of this year homeless.

We know of the recent failures at Walter Reed Medical Center, where soldiers were stranded in substandard barracks infested with rats while awaiting treatment. I was in Walter Reed myself at that time seeking counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder, which, ignited by a barrage of Iraq headlines and the loss of my United States Senate seat, had simply consumed me.

I never saw it coming. Forty years after I had left the battlefield, my memories of death and wounding were suddenly as fresh and present as they had been in 1968. I thought I was past that. I learned that none of us are ever past it. Were it not for the surgeons and nurses at Walter Reed, I never would have survived those first months back from Vietnam. Were it not for the counselors there today, I do not think I would have survived what I’ve come to call my second Vietnam, the one that played out entirely in my mind.

When I was wounded, post-traumatic stress disorder did not officially exist. It was recognized as a legitimate illness only in 1978, during my tenure as head of the Veterans Administration under President Jimmy Carter. Today, it is not only recognized, but the Army and the V.A. know how to treat it. I can offer no better testament than my own recovery.

Weeks before the troubles at Walter Reed became public in 2007, my counselor put it to me simply. “We are drowning in war,” she said. The problems at Walter Reed had nothing to do with the dedicated doctors and nurses there. The problems had to do with the White House and Congress and the Department of Defense. The problems had to do with money.

When we are at war, America spends billions on missiles, tanks, attack helicopters and such. But the wounded warriors who will never fight again tend to be put on the back burner.

This is inexcusable, and it comes with frightening moral costs. There are estimates that 35 percent of the soldiers who fought in Iraq will suffer post-traumatic stress disorder. I’m sure the numbers for Afghanistan are similar. Researchers have found that nearly half of those returning with the disorder have suicidal thoughts. Suicide among active-duty soldiers is on pace to hit a record total this year. More than 1.7 million soldiers have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Imagine that some 600,000 of them will have crippling memories, trapped in a vivid and horrible past from which they can’t seem to escape.

We have a family Army today, unlike the Army seen in any generation before. We have fought these wars with the Reserves and the National Guard. Fathers, mothers, soccer coaches and teachers are the soldiers coming home. Whether they like it or not, they will bring their war experiences home to their families and communities.

IN HIS POEM “THE DEAD YOUNG SOLDIERS,” ARCHIBALD MACLEISH, WHOSE YOUNGER BROTHER DIED IN WORLD WAR I, HAS THE SOLDIERS IN THE POEM TELL US: “WE LEAVE YOU OUR DEATHS. GIVE THEM THEIR MEANING.” UNTIL WE HELP OUR RETURNING SOLDIERS GET THEIR LIVES BACK WHEN THEY COME HOME, THE PROMISE OF RESTORING THAT MEANING WILL GO UNFULFILLED. - Max Cleland N Y Times 11/7/09

Max Cleland, the secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission, was a Democratic senator from Georgia from 1997 to 2003. He is the author, with Ben Raines, of “Heart of a Patriot: How I Found the Courage to Survive Vietnam, Walter Reed and Karl Rove.”

- Another Voice... As Urgent -

Paranoia Strikes Deep
Last Thursday there was a rally outside the U.S. Capitol to protest pending health care legislation, featuring the kinds of things we’ve grown accustomed to, including large signs showing piles of bodies at Dachau with the caption “National Socialist Healthcare.” It was grotesque -- and it was also ominous. For what we may be seeing is America starting to be Californiafied.

The key thing to understand about that rally is that it wasn’t a fringe event. It was sponsored by the House Republican leadership -- in fact, it was officially billed as a G.O.P. press conference. Senior lawmakers were in attendance, and apparently had no problem with the tone of the proceedings.

True, Eric Cantor, the second-ranking House Republican, offered some mild criticism after the fact. But the operative word is “mild.” The signs were “inappropriate,” said his spokesman, and the use of Hitler comparisons by such people as Rush Limbaugh, said Mr. Cantor, “conjures up images that frankly are not, I think, very helpful.”

What all this shows is that the G.O.P. has been taken over by the people it used to exploit.

The state of mind visible at recent right-wing demonstrations is nothing new. Back in 1964 the historian Richard Hofstadter published an essay titled, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” which reads as if it were based on today’s headlines: Americans on the far right, he wrote, feel that “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion.” Sound familiar?

But while the paranoid style isn’t new, its role within the G.O.P. is.

When Hofstadter wrote, the right wing felt dispossessed because it was rejected by both major parties. That changed with the rise of Ronald Reagan: Republican politicians began to win elections in part by catering to the passions of the angry right.

Until recently, however, that catering mostly took the form of empty symbolism. Once elections were won, the issues that fired up the base almost always took a back seat to the economic concerns of the elite. Thus in 2004 George W. Bush ran on antiterrorism and “values,” only to announce, as soon as the election was behind him, that his first priority was changing Social Security (Tying it to the Dow).

But something snapped last year. Conservatives had long believed that history was on their side, so the G.O.P. establishment could, in effect, urge hard-right activists to wait just a little longer: once the party consolidated its hold on power, they’d get what they wanted. After the Democratic sweep, however, extremists could no longer be fobbed off with promises of future glory.

Furthermore, the loss of both Congress and the White House left a power vacuum in a party accustomed to top-down management. At this point Newt Gingrich is what passes for a sober, reasonable elder statesman of the G.O.P. And he has no authority: Republican voters ignored his call to support a relatively moderate, electable candidate in New York’s special Congressional election.

Real power in the party rests, instead, with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (who at this point is more a media figure than a conventional politician). Because these people aren’t interested in actually governing, they feed the base’s frenzy instead of trying to curb or channel it. So all the old restraints are gone.

In the short run, this may help Democrats, as it did in that New York race. But maybe not: elections aren’t necessarily won by the candidate with the most rational argument. They’re often determined, instead, by events and economic conditions.

In fact, the party of Limbaugh and Beck could well make major gains in the midterm elections. The Obama administration’s job-creation efforts have fallen short, so that unemployment is likely to stay disastrously high through next year and beyond. The banker-friendly bailout of Wall Street has angered voters, and might even let Republicans claim the mantle of economic populism. Conservatives may not have better ideas, but voters might support them out of sheer frustration.

And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing -- but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state’s fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.

THE POINT IS THAT THE TAKEOVER OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY BY THE IRRATIONAL RIGHT IS NO LAUGHING MATTER. SOMETHING UNPRECEDENTED IS HAPPENING HERE -- AND IT’S VERY BAD FOR AMERICA. - Paul Krugman 11/9/09

The world is outraged. Here a portion of Netanyahu's 9/14/09 brazenly and inconceivably mendacious response to the United Nations. What is not included is Netanyahu's demand for a change in the international criminal code, to accommodate the 12/08-1/09 Israeli massacre in Gaza. More on Netanyahu next edit.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU 9/14/09: A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot. By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth. What a perversion of justice... The same UN that cheered Israel as it left Gaza, the same UN that promised to back our right of self-defense now accuses us - my people, my country - of being war criminals? And for what? For acting responsibly in self-defense. For acting in a way that any country would act. With a restraint unmatched by many. What a travesty. Ladies and gentlemen, Israel justly defended itself against terror. This biased and unjust report provides a clear-cut test for all governments. Will you stand with Israel or will you stand with the terrorists?

- Talk about a "travesty"! Words fail us! Note the inimitable Norman Finkelstein, who lost both parents in the Holocaust, note Mr. Finkelstein ahead on Amy Goodman 9/16/09!

In that Bush/Cheney were in such a rush to leave Afghanistan for Iraq, to placate Israel [And included in that unholy placation the Bush/Cheney regime, so focused on Iraq as to dismiss the mounting evidence provided by numerous sources that Al Qaeda was planning an attack on the key New York City-Washington, D.C. hub (The Pentagon! The White House!), i.e. rendering the nerve centers of these United States defenseless! Hence, 9/11/01!], these United States are now faced with an implacable Islamic force which does not trust us having observed, first-hand, our refusal to challenge Israel under any circumstance!

An interjection of the bottom line on the United States versus Afghanistan and Pakistan. WHY ARE WE THERE?

The Informed Matthew Hoh!
JIM LEHRER: Next tonight, we continue our ongoing conversations on Afghanistan.

Tonight, it's with an official dissenter to U.S. policy.

Judy Woodruff is in charge.

JUDY WOODRUFF 10/29/09: After five months serving with the State Department in Afghanistan, Matthew Hoh became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest against American policies there.

In his September 10 letter of resignation, revealed this week in "The Washington Post," the former Marine captain said: "I fail to see the value or worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditure of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year-old civil war."

Hoh's resignation was greeted more in sorrow than in anger by the State Department. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke said -- quote -- "We took his letter very seriously because he was a good officer."

Mr. Hoh joins us now.

MATTHEW HOH: Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Thank you for being here.

So, is it your view that the U.S. should just get out?

MATTHEW HOH: Of course it's impossible to wave a magic wand and be gone from there. However, I do believe we are involved in a 35-year-old civil war.

I believe we are not the lead character in that war, that it's an internal conflict. I believe that 60,000 troops in Afghanistan do not serve to defeat al-Qaida and do not serve to stabilize the Pakistan government.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What is it that has given you the confidence to know this? What did you see in Afghanistan?

MATTHEW HOH: Sure.

Well, before I went, I studied quite a bit about it, I read a lot of its history, particularly the late '70s and in the Soviet-Afghan war. Additionally, I have many friends and colleagues who have served in Afghanistan.

I went there with some ideas that this didn't sit well with me about what we were doing there, but I wanted to contribute. When I got there, however, serving in the east and in the south, the similarities were the same.

What I found, we were fighting people who were fighting us only because we're occupying them or because we are supporting a central government that they view as occupying them.

Most importantly, I think I listened to as many Afghans as possible because my role as a political adviser was to work with the Afgha...(break in transcript)

- Inexplicably the balance of these phrases missing on NewsHour transcript.

- Bystanders in a civil war? -

JUDY WOODRUFF: You say, Matthew Hoh, that what you see is a civil war going on; the U.S. is a bystander. But what it looks like to many Americans, as they look, is that it's the Afghan government being attacked, the Afghan people being attacked by the Taliban, by elements of al-Qaida. How can we be sure which is right?

MATTHEW HOH: Sure.

First of all, al-Qaida does not exist in Afghanistan. I think there's plenty of evidence to that fact. And the way the country works, it's so localized there. It's what I refer to and other people refer to as valleyism. They're concerned with their...

JUDY WOODRUFF: Valleyism?

MATTHEW HOH: Valleyism, yes, so if you take the idea of nationalism, shrink it down to a much smaller level.

These are folks who live within communities of 100 to 500 people. And that's -- I don't want to say where their world ends, but that's what they're concerned with. And they have never had a central government there that has done any good, that has never -- that has delivered services to them. And they have never had a central government that has brought them anything. It's only taken.

And, so, to them, whether it was the Najibullah, the Rabbani, the Taliban, or the Karzai government, they're all one in the same. And particularly in the east, where they're fighting us and the south, where they're fighting us, those folks there don't make up the people who are the central government.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, the argument, though, by as you know, by General Stanley McChrystal, who's in charge over there for the military, by John McCain, who's very much in favor of the U.S. staying, is that, if the U.S. leaves, Taliban takes over, and al-Qaida's going to come back.

MATTHEW HOH: I don't believe al-Qaida will come back.

I believe that, since 2001, al-Qaida has evolved. They have turned into, as I like to say, an ideological cloud that exists on the Internet and recruits worldwide. They -- if you look at the attacks al-Qaida has been successful with over the last seven, eight years, including attacks on 9/11, they weren't conducted by Afghans or Pakistanis.

And a lot of the preparation and training, it took place in Western Europe or even here in the United States. So, I don't think al-Qaida has any interest in ever tying itself again to a geographical or political boundary. I think they're content to exist as they have evolved. And they are a threat, and they should be our priority. We need to defeat them.

But, again, 60,000 troops in Afghanistan does not defeat al-Qaida.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What about the Taliban?

MATTHEW HOH: The Taliban, we chased them out of power in 2001, like we rightfully should have.

However, what you have in Quetta now, I believe, is just the remnants of that. And while the Quetta Shura Taliban, as we refer to them, is a threat, and is a threat to the Karzai government, I don't believe they are a threat to the United States.

And, furthermore, I don't believe that they would be able to retake Kabul, particularly if we ensure that there was no Pakistani support for them if we left Afghanistan.

- The risks of more U.S. forces -

JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you think would happen, though, if President Obama did give General McChrystal the troops he wants or a significant increase in the number of troops?

MATTHEW HOH: I believe it's only going to fuel the insurgency. It's only going to reinforce claims by our enemies that we are an occupying power, because we are an occupying power.

And that will only fuel the insurgency. And that will only cause more people to fight us or those fighting us already to continue to fight us.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You don't think there's any argument the U.S. can make to the Afghan people that we're there to -- as we have been, to promote democracy, that could change their view of what you say is...

MATTHEW HOH: Sure.

JUDY WOODRUFF: ... is -- that we're an occupying force?

MATTHEW HOH: I was up in east of the country, up in Kunar and up in the Nuristan areas, just where we lost eight soldiers a couple weeks ago.

The brigade combat team that was there for a year, in one year's time, they dropped about a half-million pounds of ordnance off aircraft, and they shot about 50,000 rounds of indirect fire and artillery.

Now, on the other hand, they all spent probably about $160 million to $180 million in development money over the course of a year. This is in an area of 4.5 million people. If, after eight years of war, you have done these kinds of things, and people aren't coming around, I don't think they're ever going to come around.

I think we have to realize that, sometimes, people don't like us and don't want to be like us. And we have to accept that. And then we have to engage them politically and work with them that way.

- Corruption in Afghanistan -

JUDY WOODRUFF: One of the other points you make, Matthew Hoh, is about corruption in the Karzai government. You were very blunt in writing that Karzai is advised by drug lords. And you went into some detail about that.

The other argument, though, on that is that, well, that's just endemic in that culture, that the U.S. has to be prepared to accept a certain amount of corruption when you're dealing with these people.

MATTHEW HOH: I think that would be true if we weren't sacrificing our young men and women in support of that regime.

The idea that we're losing somebody's son or somebody's husband is dying to support a regime that's profiting off of our aid money is criminal. It's wrong. And, furthermore, you know, I know a lot of people speak about the Taliban receiving financing through opium and everything. There are a lot of us who believe that they receive just as much money through our own development money we're spending there.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Last thing I want to ask you is, some people have said it all sounds very good, but you were only there in Afghanistan for five months. You're relatively young, what, 37?

MATTHEW HOH: Thirty-six.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Thirty-six years old.

MATTHEW HOH: Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Who are you to say what the United States should be doing, when there are others who have been there longer, studied it for years, and so forth?

MATTHEW HOH: Sure. And I wish people would refute what I'm saying. I have seen that criticism, but I have not seen anyone tell me why it's not a civil war.

I have not seen anyone tell me how stabilizing the Afghan government will defeat al-Qaida. I have not heard anyone tell me how keeping 60,000 troops, or 80,000, or 100,000 troops in Afghanistan will stabilize Pakistan. So, I haven't heard the answers to those questions.

As for the criticisms about my age or that I was only there for five months, I was there for five months. I was in two parts of the country. I worked with as many local people as I could. And I listened as much as possible.

At that point, what I wrote -- first off, what I wrote in my resignation letter, there's not a novel or unique thought in that. Those are thoughts shared by military officers and State Department officers as well. My concern is not how are we fighting this war, but why are we fighting this war.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Matthew Hoh, thank you very much for coming in to talk with us. We appreciate it.

MATTHEW HOH: Thank you, Judy. - NewsHour 10/29/09

Mr. Hoh Is Not Alone
- Response to 10/18/09 The New York Times Magazine -

To the Editor:

Dexter Filkins' article ["His (McChrystal's) Long War"]

What is missing from Dexter Filkins’s article (and General McChrystal’s thinking) about Afghanistan is analysis of the ultimate question: What is the point? The answer is, I suppose, that we must deny Muslim terrorists a base from which to attack us. But America does not have the resources or the political will to go nation-building in every failed Muslim state in the world.

This is Vietnam all over again. Once again we are at war in a small, distant country whose people and customs we do not understand. Once again we are told by the experts that we must spend more blood and money to “win the war,” whatever winning means -- to define it would demonstrate its impossibility. Once again we are told that we can “win the war” if we just send enough young Americans to be maimed and killed and spend enough dollars in the faraway battlefield. It was all wrong then, and it is all wrong now. - Robert L. Dunn Corte Madera Calif. 11/1/09

The insufferable David Brooks, who makes his predecessor Bill Safire appear noble (reporter Safire concealed from the American people Ariel Sharon's plan to generate the Intifada by using armed Israelis to restrict Palestinians from their sacred Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem) David Brooks has written another obscene column questioning the "tenacity", "the conviction" of President Barack Obama with reference to "Lincoln and Churchill." Brooks is a man who backed draftdodgers George W. Bush and Richard Cheney! And he's questioning President Barack Obama? We refuse to present his 10/30/09 "The Tenacity Question". The man does not deserve the space.

- Here a reader's response.

To the Editor:

David Brooks’s column seems to presume that a military solution in Afghanistan is appropriate. This is also prevalent among those who wage war for a living -- whether fighting or building and selling armaments.

The military requests what it requires to achieve military objectives, whether those objectives resolve greater problems or not. That’s tactical -- and that’s the military’s job.

The president’s job is to carefully weigh our national interests and then order the tactics necessary to achieve them. It is refreshing to have a president actually invest time and intellectual effort, circumspectly formulating a plan of action and not just surrounding himself with “the smartest military experts” or “retired officers.”

If the solution truly is military, so be it. If not, we shouldn’t send our kids off to die for it. Tenacity is appropriate only when one is on a proper course -- not heading toward a cliff. - David L. Wolf Waterford Mich. 10/30/09

Our following edit - Who is the Commander in Chief? Surely not John McCain!!

(11/3/09 edit) CBS Evening News 10/30/09 -

KATIE COURIC: Now turning to the war in Afghanistan, President Obama held another strategy meeting today, this time with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A decision whether to send more troops is still days, perhaps weeks away, and the military now acknowledges that just getting more troops to Afghanistan would take a long time. From the Pentagon, here's David Martin.

DAVID MARTIN: General Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, has told the Pentagon it would take more than a year to get all the troops he's asking for on the ground and in the fight against the Taliban. The first brigade could not arrive until January or 2010. And after that, the need to build facilities to house more troops would limit him to just one additional brigade every three months. If the president were to grant McChrystal's full request of 40,000 troops, it would be 2011 before they all got there. That's bad news for the war since McChrystal has warned it could be lost in the next 12 months. But it also means the president has plenty of time to decide whether to give McChrystal all the troops he wants.

The White House is not happy with the way senior military leaders, beginning with Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen have handled the debate over Afghan strategy, boxing the president in with their public statements. Two days after the president held his first meeting on Afghanistan, Mullen was telling Congress he agreed with McChrystal.

MIKE MULLEN, JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: ... all having heard his views and having great confidence in his leadership, a properly resourced counter insurgency probably means more forces.

DAVID MARTIN: Even before that, General Patraeus, the overall commander for the region, gave an interview in which he strongly backed McChrystal's assessment. As for McChrystal, he publicly dismissed a much more limited strategy favored by Vice President Biden.

GENERAL STANLEY McCHRYSTAL: A strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a short-sided strategy.

DAVID MARTIN: That Afghan decision is the president's first moment of truth as Commander in Chief. It's also shaping up as a watershed in his relations with senior military leaders. David Martin, CBS News, the Pentagon. - 10/30/09


- Media/Press Analysis? -

There is a John Harwood who is all over the Media/Press, associated with Politico, did a column called THE CAUCUS in the 11/2/09 N Y Times, has been on Washington Week, and elsewhere. In other words he's been around long enough to know that our Media/Press is ALWAYS pro-Republican. Particularly now. Whatever the political story the networks ALWAYS focus the Republican opposition, to whatever the Obama administration is calling for. And then the press asks "How is it that Obama's poll numbers have fallen?" Mr. Harwood himself calls on a "Will Feltus, a Republican specialist...using data from (Joe?) Scarborough Research"! Mr. Harwood's piece is titled "If Fox Is Partisan, It Is Not Alone". We're not sure that Harwood intended this - but EVERY NETWORK PROVIDES A REPUBLICAN SLANT. No wonder these Rabbis are so comfortable!

Bottom Line on Health Care Reform
Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman
- "The Defining Moment" 10/30/09

O.K., folks, this is it. It’s the defining moment for health care reform.

Past efforts to give Americans what citizens of every other advanced nation already have -- guaranteed access to essential care -- have ended not with a bang, but with a whimper, usually dying in committee without ever making it to a vote.

But this time, broadly similar health-care bills have made it through multiple committees in both houses of Congress. And on Thursday, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, unveiled the legislation that she will send to the House floor, where it will almost surely pass. It’s not a perfect bill, by a long shot, but it’s a much stronger bill than almost anyone expected to emerge even a few weeks ago. And it would lead to near-universal coverage.

As a result, everyone in the political class -- by which I mean politicians, people in the news media, and so on, basically whoever is in a position to influence the final stage of this legislative marathon -- now has to make a choice. The seemingly impossible dream of fundamental health reform is just a few steps away from becoming reality, and each player has to decide whether he or she is going to help it across the finish line or stand in its way.

For conservatives, of course, it’s an easy decision: They don’t want Americans to have universal coverage, and they don’t want President Obama to succeed.

For progressives, it’s a slightly more difficult decision: They want universal care, and they want the president to succeed -- but the proposed legislation falls far short of their ideal. There are still some reform advocates who won’t accept anything short of a full transition to Medicare for all as opposed to a hybrid, compromise system that relies heavily on private insurers. And even those who have reconciled themselves to the political realities are disappointed that the bill doesn’t include a “strong” public option, with payment rates linked to those set by Medicare.

But the bill does include a “medium-strength” public option, in which the public plan would negotiate payment rates -- defying the predictions of pundits who have repeatedly declared any kind of public-option plan dead. It also includes more generous subsidies than expected, making it easier for lower-income families to afford coverage. And according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, almost everyone -- 96 percent of legal residents too young to receive Medicare -- would get health insurance.

So should progressives get behind this plan? Yes. And they probably will.

The people who really have to make up their minds, then, are those in between, the self-proclaimed centrists.

The odd thing about this group is that while its members are clearly uncomfortable with the idea of passing health care reform, they’re having a hard time explaining exactly what their problem is. Or to be more precise and less polite, they have been attacking proposed legislation for doing things it doesn’t and for not doing things it does.

THUS, SENATOR JOSEPH LIEBERMAN OF CONNECTICUT SAYS, “I WANT TO BE ABLE TO VOTE FOR A HEALTH BILL, BUT MY TOP CONCERN IS THE DEFICIT.” THAT WOULD BE A SERIOUS OBJECTION TO THE PROPOSALS CURRENTLY ON THE TABLE IF THEY WOULD, IN FACT, increase the deficit. But they wouldn’t, at least according to the Congressional Budget Office, which estimates that the House bill, in particular, would actually reduce the deficit by $100 billion over the next decade.

- The Required Lieberman Expose' -

Joseph Lieberman, who Al Gore wisely chose as his Vice Presidential candidate (to keep him in line for what Mr. Gore knew would be a severely challenged term of office), has a, to say the least, a checkered past (a divorced Orthodox Jew) and the strongest of ties to the right-wing Republican Bill Buckley, now deceased, has a newly discovered friend in Bob Schieffer, who's younger brother Tom, was named Ambassador to Japan, by George W. Bush! Mr. Schieffer has Mr. Lieberman, Joe not Avigdor (although there is little difference), on the 11/1/09 Face the Nation Leslie Moonves' CBS flagship Sunday Talk Show.

On AM Radio's The Ed Schultz Show 11/2/09 (Mr. Schultz also has a daily television program on MSNBC) Schultz also labeled Joe Lieberman, correctly, the "whore" on Health Care Reform. Sixty eight percent (68!!) of Connecticut's population favors Single-Payer Health Insurance, but Lieberman ignores that, preferring the bonus he receives from the Health Care Industry!

- A return to the great Paul Krugman -

Or consider the remarkable exchange that took place this week between Peter Orszag, the White House budget director, and Fred Hiatt, The Washington Post’s opinion editor. Mr. Hiatt had criticized Congress for not taking what he considers the necessary steps to control health-care costs -- namely, taxing high-cost insurance plans and establishing an independent Medicare commission. Writing on the budget office blog -- yes, there is one, and it’s essential reading -- Mr. Orszag pointed out, not too gently, that the Senate Finance Committee’s bill actually includes both of the allegedly missing measures.

I won’t try to psychoanalyze the “naysayers,” as Mr. Orszag describes them. I’d just urge them to take a good hard look in the mirror. If they really want to align themselves with the hard-line conservatives, if they just want to kill health reform, so be it. But they shouldn’t hide behind claims that they really, truly would support health care reform if only it were better designed.

For this is the moment of truth. The political environment is as favorable for reform as it’s likely to get. The legislation on the table isn’t perfect, but it’s as good as anyone could reasonably have expected. History is about to be made -- and everyone has to decide which side they’re on. - Paul Krugman 10/30/09


Editor's Note: PBS's Frontline finally broached the financial collapse, "The Warning" 10/20/09. GOPBias.org exposed same on 4/13/09 edit.


The Jewish Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
- October 23, 2009 -

- The Goldstone Report -

- Goldstone Challenges Obama to Explain Gaza Inquiry Objections -

As the US challenges Sri Lanka, the head of a UN inquiry into the US-backed assault on Gaza is challenging the Obama administration to explain why it’s worked to minimize the inquiry’s findings that Israel committed multiple war crimes. In an interview with Al Jazeera, Judge Richard Goldstone said the White House had raised “concerns” about the report but hasn’t explained them.

Judge Richard Goldstone: “It seems to be still developing. It’s been ambivalent, I think. The Obama administration joined our recommendation calling for full, good-faith investigations, both in Israel and in Gaza, but said that the report was flawed. But I have yet to hear from the Obama administration what the flaws in the report that they’ve identified are. I mean, I’d be happy to respond to them, if and when I know what they are.”

Last week the US voted against a UN Human Rights Council resolution endorsing the report’s recommendations that both sides of the Gaza conflict probe war crimes allegations or face international prosecution. The resolution has been forwarded to the Security Council, where it’s expected to face a US veto. - DemocracyNow 10/23/09


- Joint Israeli/United States War Games Against Iran? -

- US, Israel Stage Joint Air Drill -

The US, meanwhile, has launched a joint air force drill with the Israeli military. The drill has been described in Israel as a preparation for an attack on Iran. US Navy Rear Admiral John Richardson said the exercises would aid the Obama administration’s revamped missile defense program.

US Navy Rear Admiral John Richardson: “This exercise is not directly related to recent announcements about ballistic missile defense in Europe, but the lessons and the insights that we gain from this exercise will certainly relate to developing that capability.” - DemocracyNow 10/23/09

Is this the work of the "A New Direction For America" claimant (N Y Times 10/22/09 A-24) by Peter Baker, who lauds Rahm Emanuel with his article "Film Celebrates Emanuel as Democrats' Dynamo" crediting Mr. Emanuel with the 2006 Democratic takeover of Congress. Think about that. The United States had managed to survive perhaps the worst six years since the Civil War, and Baker and film director a Karen Price are crediting this one individual Rahm Emanuel, who we have heard from before. Yes, he may be a man who relishes "Push(ing) people to a level (to which) they've never been pushed", but, as Chief of Staff is he also responsible for these items above in Amy Goodman's 10/23/09 report? Does Mr. Emanuel view those of us who are not Jewish, but gentiles, as heathens? Does that include Palestinians? Is this why those Rabbis appear so self-satisfied? And is that why Bloomberg is smirking?


<<<<<>>>>>


In the next series of reports, led by the color photo of Bush - Cheney - in consultation with Rush Limbaugh - followed by explanatory paragraphs - i.e. connecting the dots - there is also the 10/1/09 Associated Press item, datelined Jerusalem, a destination of the link "Reference to Goldstone Report". This paragraph:

"Stung by a damning U.N. report alleging war crimes in Gaza, Israel is taking extraordinary steps to fend off potential international prosecution of its political and military leaders, hiring high-powered attorneys, lobbying Western governments and launching a public relations blitz."

It would seem that the above Associated Press color photo, in the N Y Times, of a breakfast 10/18/09 at the Borough Park, Brooklyn Jewish Council, peopled by a lineup of solipsistic characters, was not what Israel had in mind. But who knows?

Several days later The New York Times 10/20/09 had two articles of interest - on A-4 Ethan Bronner quoted Ari Shavit, a columnist for Haaretz - "As Israel gets stronger, its legitimacy is melting away". Mr. Bronner. It was to be expected. That was no war in Gaza; that was a massacre of Palestinian civilians, 1400 of them. Here's Avi Shlaim, noted and respected Israeli historian, 1/14/09:

AMY GOODMAN: Israel calls Hamas "terrorist." What is your definition of "terror"?

AVI SHLAIM: My definition of "terror" is the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. And by this definition, Hamas is a terrorist organization. But by the same token, Israel is practicing state terror, because it is using violence on a massive scale against Palestinian civilians for political purposes. I don't hold a brief for Hamas. Hamas is not a paragon of virtue. Its leaders are not angels. They harm civilians indiscriminately. Killing civilians is wrong, period. That applies to Hamas, and it applies equally to the state of Israel.

But there are two points I would like to make about Hamas, and that is--the first point is that it was elected in a fair and free election in January 2006. It was an impeccable election, monitored by a number of international observers, including President Jimmy Carter. So it is not just a terrorist organization. It is a democratically elected government of the Palestinian people and the representative of the Palestinian people in Gaza, as well as the West Bank.

And the second point that I would like to make is that since coming to power, Gaza has moderated its political program. Its charter is extreme. Its charter denies the legitimacy of a Jewish state. The charter calls for an Islamic state over the whole of historic Palestine. The charter has not been revived, but since coming to power, the leadership of Hamas has been much more pragmatic and stated that it is willing to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the state of Israel for twenty, thirty, forty, maybe even fifty years.

Thirdly, Hamas joined with Fatah, the rival group, the mainstream group, on the West Bank in a national unity government in the summer of 2007. That national unity government lasted only three months. Israel, with American support, helped to sabotage and to bring down that national unity government. Israel refused to deal with a Palestinian government which included Hamas within it. And shamefully, both the United States and the European Union joined in Israel in this refusal to recognize a Hamas-dominated government, and Israel withdrew tax revenues, and European Union withdrew foreign aid, in a shameful attempt to bring down a democratically elected government.

So, I do not defend Hamas, but I think that it hasn't received a fair hearing from the international community, and Israel has done everything to sabotage it all along.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Shlaim, you say it's done everything to sabotage it, except at the beginning, when you say it supported Hamas to weaken Fatah, which it now supports.

AVI SHLAIM: Indeed. Israel has always played the game of divide and rule. This is a very good tactic in times of war, to divide your enemies and pick them off one by one. No one can complain about that. But divide and rule isn't a good tactic in times of peace. If your aim is to achieve peace with the Arabs, then you should want unity among the Palestinians and unity in the Arab world. But Israel continued to play this game of divide and rule.

Hamas emerged in the course of the First Intifada in the late 1980s. It is the Islamic resistance movement. The mainstream movement, Fatah, was led by Yasser Arafat. And Israel gave tacit encouragement and support to the Islamic resistance in the hope of weakening the secular nationalists led by Yasser Arafat. It was a dangerous game to play, because the end result of this game was that Hamas emerged as the strongest Palestinian political party.

And Israel helped Hamas inadvertently in another way, because Fatah signed the Oslo Accord with Israel in 1993. It expected the Oslo Accord to lead to a two-state solution. And yet, Israel, after the election of Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, reneged on the Israeli side of the deal. So, the Oslo Accord, the Oslo peace process wasn't doomed to failure from the start. It failed because Israel, under the leadership of the Likud, reneged on its side of the deal. So that left the Palestinians with nothing but misery and poverty and frustration and ever-growing Israeli settlements on the land. And it was this context that led to the success of Hamas at the last elections. So Israel has a lot to explain in the rise to power of the Hamas movement.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Avi Shlaim, we only have a minute, but I want to ask you where you see the solution at this point. Barack Obama will be president on Tuesday in just a few days. Hillary Clinton will be Secretary of State.

AVI SHLAIM: The solution--this is a political conflict, and there is no military conflict to--there is no military solution to this conflict. The only solution lies in negotiations between Israel and Hamas about all the issues involved. President-elect Obama is a very impressive man and a very intelligent man and a very fair-minded man. He hasn't demonstrated any courage in the course of this crisis. He hasn't taken any position. He hasn't called for an immediate ceasefire. So the first step is an immediate ceasefire, and the next step would be negotiations between all the sides about restoring the ceasefire and then moving on to stage two, which is a political settlement to this tragic hundred-year-old conflict.

AMY GOODMAN: And Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, who said in her confirmation hearing yesterday she wouldn't negotiate with Hamas?

AVI SHLAIM: Yes, but there are other signs from the Obama campaign that they would be willing to consider low-level, indirect contacts with Hamas. And one has to be grateful for small mercies, so small, minor, low-level contacts with Hamas could lead to a proper dialog in due course. So I remain optimistic that sanity and rationality would take over in American foreign policy after the dreadful last eight years. - Amy Goodman with Avi Shlaim 1/14/09

Two pages later on A-6, still the 10/20/09 edition of N Y Times [A-5 was a full-page ad (nine of which appeared in the 28 page first section of the national edition)] David Sanger in a 16 paragraph piece was, again, trying to convince his readers that Iran is on the brink of producing a nuclear weapon! He left to the 15th paragraph the facts: "So far Iran is NOT known to have enriched fuel beyond five percent, the level needed for reactors. Enrichment at NINETY PERCENT OR MORE is needed for a sophisticated weapon."

Beyond all of this is the 10/19/09 David Chen piece "Giuliani Stokes Fears Of a Thompson Victory" with which our lead color photo of the haughty and insolent Brooklyn Rabbis is associated. They may well have learned of the Netanyahu & Lieberman Israeli Regime's 10/20/09 decision to "delegitimize" the United Nations Report on the 12/08-1/09 Israeli massacre of 1400 Palestinian citizens penned up by Israel in Gaza!

- World Briefing -

MIDDLE EAST - Israel: Panel to Fight U.N. Report

The prospect of Israeli officials facing war crimes trials abroad led the Israeli government to form a committee on Tuesday to deal with the international legal consequences of a United Nations report on the Gaza war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised a battle to “delegitimize” the report’s findings and instructed government officials to draft proposals for changing INTERNATIONAL LAWS of war to take into account “the expansion of terrorism in the world.” - REUTERS 10/21/09

Additionally, such charlatans as Alan Dershowitz and Ellie (that's his given first name) Wiesel have joined Robert L. Bernstein with his 10/20/09 N Y Times OP-ED distortion of the continual, certainly since June of 1967, murder and disposition of Palestinian life and property, WITH IMPUNITY!

- Crossfire: A Rights Group and Israel

To the Editor:

Few would disagree with Robert L. Bernstein’s contention that Israel offers a more free and open society to its citizens (both Jewish and Arab) than almost any country in the Arab world. Yet the situation in the West Bank and Gaza is starkly different.

Failing to make the distinction between Israel and the territories helps Mr. Bernstein’s argument, but is ultimately a disservice to the countless human rights organizations -- Human Rights Watch included -- that rightly condemn the unjust treatment of Palestinians living under unwanted and illegal Israeli control. - Scott Leo New York 10/20/09

To the Editor:

Re “Rights Watchdog, Lost in the Mideast” (Op-Ed, Oct. 20):

As present chairwoman and past chairman of the board of Human Rights Watch, we were saddened to see Robert L. Bernstein argue that Israel should be judged by a different human rights standard than the rest of the world.

Mr. Bernstein, as a founder of Human Rights Watch, has had ample access over the years to make his argument that we should not be reporting on Israeli conduct because Israel is a democracy. As recently as April, the full board of directors heard -- and rejected -- Mr. Bernstein’s proposal that Human Rights Watch should focus our research and reporting resources on closed societies.

After careful consideration, we and other members of our board stressed that democracies, too, commit serious abuses, with the United States’ “war on terrorism” and Israel’s conduct in Gaza just the latest examples. We reaffirmed our conviction that it is essential to hold Israel to the same international human rights standards as other countries. To do otherwise would be a violation of our core principle that human rights are universal.

As long as open societies commit human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch has a vital role to play in documenting those violations and advocating to bring them to an end. - Jane Olson Jonathan Fanton New York 10/20/09

To the Editor:

I disagree with Robert L. Bernstein on several counts. First, Human Rights Watch has issued dozens of reports and statements on human rights abuses in other countries in the region in the last two or three years, many more than on Israel. Second, the notion that democracies somehow get a free pass on human rights is absurd. Genocides have occurred in democratic societies, and lesser abuses are common; they are no less deplorable. The abuses of war and occupation are particularly troubling given the power imbalances and the lack of redress by the occupied.

Mr. Bernstein also repeats accusations about Iran as if this whitewashes Israeli conduct. Plainly, Israel has been abusive and should be held accountable, especially given its dependence on the United States. Crying that the “other guy” is worse is the ploy of a schoolyard bully. - John Tirman Cambridge Mass 10/20/09

The writer is executive director of the M.I.T. Center for International Studies and, obviously, close to Noam Chomsky.

To the Editor:

We wholeheartedly share the concerns expressed by Robert L. Bernstein, a founder of Human Rights Watch, about the direction that the organization -- which should be one of the world’s leading human rights groups -- has taken.

Human Rights Watch was founded more than 30 years ago with the admirable aim of protecting dissidents from oppressive regimes, but today its leaders have lost sight of its original ethos. Nowhere is this more so than in regard to the Middle East.

In a region dominated by regimes that violate human rights in horrendous ways, Human Rights Watch has instead chosen to single out Israel for condemnation, often using highly unreliable witnesses to do so.

Not only has it failed to allocate proper resources to monitoring the dictatorships that are rife throughout the region, but senior Human Rights Watch officials even recently went to Riyadh to raise funds from people associated with the Saudi regime, emphasizing the group’s work demonizing Israel while doing so.

In order that Human Rights Watch can once again fulfill the role for which it was created, we call upon its board members to institute a full independent review of the organization for which they are responsible. - Elie Wiesel Alan Dershowitz New York 10/20/09

The writers are, respectively, the Nobel Peace laureate and the law professor at Harvard University, and are members of the International Advisory Board of NGO Monitor, based in Jerusalem. This letter was signed by five other board members.

HARD TO CONTEMPLATE WIESEL IN THE COMPANY OF DERSHOWITZ. Again, obviously, they have joined with Netanyahu & Lieberman, both Joe and Avigdor.

The Obama Effect
Almost two years ago GOPBias.org posted this summation of the desperate circumstances created for the United States, and the world, by the usurpation of Washington power by Bush/Cheney/McCain (in color). A most pernicious aspect of that Republican coup (12/12/00 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court) was the Israeli assumption that they could rely on the power of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) to manipulate the force and treasure of the United States, to first remove Saddam Hussein, and then subdue a vibrant Iran, which the Israelis saw as obstacles to their control of The Levant - lands bordering the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea - Lebanon (fronting Syria and Syria fronting Iraq and Iran).

There are several factions at play in recent weeks leading up to a stunning report in the Friday 10/16/09 The New York Times by a Sharon Otterman [i.e. not Isabel Kershner, Steven Erlanger, David Sanger, or Mark Landler (Mr. Landler had even been with Ms. Clinton when she spoke - it appears below as referenced to a Portland, Oregon television newscast!), etc.] -

- "U.N. Official Endorses War Report About Gaza" -

"A Palestinian effort to formally endorse the findings of a United Nations report on war crimes committed during the Gaza war last winter received a strong statement of support on Thursday from the top United Nations human rights official, Navanethem Pillay.

Opening a two-day meeting in Geneva of the Human Rights Council, Ms. Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, told the 47-member council that she concurred with the report’s recommendations and its call for 'urgent action to counter impunity.'" - Sharon Otterman N Y Times 10/16/09

Complete Otterman 10/16/09 Article
Missing Is Reference to Goldstone Report
- Intermediate Background from Amy Goodman -

- UN Takes Up Gaza War Crimes Report -

Amy Goodman 10/15/09: The UN Human Rights Council is expected to open discussion today on the findings of a UN inquiry that accused Israel of a series of war crimes during its three-week assault on the Gaza Strip. The session occurs just days after widespread Palestinian outcry forced the Palestinian Authority to reverse its backing of US and Israeli demands for an indefinite delay to addressing the report at the United Nations. It also comes one day after the UN Security Council took up the report’s findings. On Wednesday, the Palestinian representative to the UN, Riyad Mansour, said the report’s reception heralded an end to Israeli impunity in attacking Palestinians.

Riyad Mansour: “The culture of impunity that Israel--allowed Israel to get away with murder for the last sixty years is no more. We are entering a new culture of accountability, and this process is not a short process. It’s a long process, but we are all determined to defend international law, international humanitarian law, and to bring the criminals to face justice.”

Around 1,300 Palestinians were killed in the assault, compared to thirteen Israelis, a ratio of 100-to-one.

- Israel Continues E. Jerusalem Home Demolitions -

Amy Goodman 10/15/09: In other Mideast news, Israel continues to demolish Palestinian homes in occupied East Jerusalem. On Monday, Israeli troops destroyed the home of Amjad, an East Jerusalem father of three children.

Amjad: “In the morning I sleep inside. The soldiers come and take me. They bring the dog. ‘What do you want?’ I tell him. ‘I have a problem in my heart.’ ’It’s not my problem,’ he tells me. ‘Go outside.’ But I don’t want to go. Five soldiers take me, they brought me out. They take my phone and my--[inaudible]. You know, she tells me, ‘No, we don’t want.’ And we see, after, they broke the house. Now I have two problems: I don’t have any place to sit, I have three children.”

Over 200 Palestinian homes have been demolished in East Jerusalem and the West Bank this year, displacing at least 520 Palestinians.

- Groups: 335 Palestinians Unlawfully Jailed -

Amy Goodman 10/15/09: Meanwhile in Israel, two human rights group have released a report documenting what they call the unlawful imprisonment of some 335 Palestinians in Israeli jails. The groups B’Tselem and HaMoked say Israel is violating international law by holding the prisoners without charge or trial for years on end. The 335 figure could be substantially conservative; there are an estimated 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails. - Amy Goodman DemocracyNow 10/15/09

** Note That Rupert Murdock's Wall Street Journal Poses A Threatening Iran! Recent Revelations Dispute Murdock's Provocative Report!

- Report: US Considers Rewriting Intel Report on Iranian Nuke Program -

The Wall Street Journal reports US spy agencies are considering rewriting a 2007 intelligence report that asserted Iran halted its efforts to build nuclear weapons in 2003. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate reflected the combined judgment of all sixteen American intelligence bodies. The report found with “high confidence” that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Since then, German, French and British intelligence agencies (And don't forget the Israelis!) have all disputed the conclusions of the 2007 NIE. The Journal reports the White House could use a new report to galvanize wider international support for sanctions against Iran, which maintains its nuclear program is for civilian purposes. - Amy Goodman 10/16/09 **

- UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Backs Goldstone Report -

Amy Goodman 10/16/09: The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to launch investigations of alleged war crimes in Gaza to help rebuild trust and support peace. Navi Pillay said she backed the findings in the Goldstone report that accused Israel of war crimes and deliberately targeting civilians in Gaza.

Navi Pillay: “Let me take this opportunity to reiterate my support for the recommendations of the fact-finding mission, including its call for urgent action to counter impunity. I encourage the Council and the broader international community to give full consideration to the fact-finding mission’s report. I also wish to underscore the necessity for all parties to carry out impartial, independent, prompt and effective investigations into reported violations of human rights and humanitarian law in compliance with international standards.”

The UN Human Rights Council will soon vote on whether to forward the Goldstone report to the UN Security Council. - DemocracyNow 10/16/09

- Reference to Goldstone Report

Leading up to the above we have General Electric NBCUniversal filling its role as spoiler, here in the person of Ann Curry { - For years the post was held by John Donald Imus Jr. and, in fact, he has returned to the airwaves on 10/5/09, maybe he's back as pillager in chief, ripping Democrats [no one was more responsible for that 5-4 Court decision, than Imus, who relentlessly savaged Albert Gore] Ms. Curry disparaging Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (Has she forgotten who was the last Secretary of State - Condoleezza Rice!)}

One on one: Hillary Clinton
NBC NIGHTLY NEWS
10/12/2009 17:53:00

NEWSCASTER ANN CURRY: Concerns about Iran's nuclear ambitions have Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Moscow tonight where she is to meet with Russia's president about what specific forms of pressure he would agree to if Iran doesn't prove its nuclear program is peaceful. Over the weekend, Secretary Clinton sat down with NBC News in Switzerland and offered a glimpse into the administration's current debate over the way forward in Afghanistan. And we asked her why, with U.S. troops dying there, a decision is still weeks away.

SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: Well, first of all, every one of those deaths and all of the injuries of any of our men and women in uniform weighs heavily on all of us who are sitting around the table in the situation room. And what is going on in this analysis is the kind of deep, stripped down investigation of assumptions. Because when we make this decision, and when we recommend to the president what we believe he should do, we're going to be all in and we're going to do everything we can to be successful.

** ANN CURRY (Directed by Don Imus?): At this very important moment in history, the Washington Post writes about you, quote: She is largely invisible on the big issues that dominate the foreign policy agenda, including Afghanistan and Iran. Why are you not more out in front on these very important issues of our time? **

CLINTON: Well, I, you know, honestly don't have any reaction to something like that which is so at variance with what I do every day.

CURRY: What do you say to the people (Curry! Name them!) who are concerned that you have been marginalized, having to fight against being marginalized?

CLINTON: I just, you know, Ann I find it absurd.

CURRY: So you're not?

CLINTON: I find it beyond any realistic assessment of what I'm doing every day. I believe in delegating power. You know, I'm not one of these people who feels like I have to have my face in the front of the newspaper or on the TV in every moment of the day. I would be irresponsible and negligent were I to say, oh no, everything must come to me. Now, maybe that is a woman's thing. Maybe I'm totally secure and feel absolutely no need to go running around in order for people to see what I'm doing. It's just the way I am.

CURRY: I can't help (Sure you can, Ann, except for the executives who control you, and hate President Obama!) but think nine months into this administration, having campaigned so fiercely to be president yourself, that there can't be moments for you where you wish you could make the decisions yourself.

CLINTON: I have to tell you it never crosses my mind.

CURRY: Never?

CLINTON: No, not at all. I am part of the team that makes the decisions.

CURRY: Will you ever run for president again? Yes or no?

CLINTON: [Laughs.] No.

CURRY: No?

CLINTON: No, no. I mean, this is a great job. It is a 24/7 job and I'm looking forward to retirement at some point.

CURRY: Until that point, her busy agenda includes a planned trip to Pakistan by the end of this year.


Over the next few days The Obama Effect made itself felt all over the globe (which the Nobel Committee had predicted) and on the West Coast an entity of Texas-based Belo Corporation, the Portland, Oregon television station KGWHD-TV included in its local newscast that Ms. Clinton on her first visit to Moscow under the Obama administration, in meetings with Russia's foreign minister and president said that "both sides agree Iran (as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) Iran is entitled to peaceful nuclear energy", a major announcement that somehow escaped the attention of the major news networks, and The New York Times (including Mark Landler).

More to come

The Last Word on
2009 Nobel Peace Prize Award
to President Barack Obama
" THE QUESTION WE HAVE TO ASK IS WHO HAS DONE THE MOST IN THE PREVIOUS YEAR TO ENHANCE PEACE IN THE WORLD. AND WHO HAS DONE MORE THAN BARACK OBAMA? " - THORBJOERN JAGLAND,chairman of the Nobel Committee. - Oslo Norway 10/9/09


- Two Wrongs Make Another Fiasco - Frank Rich 10/11/09

THOSE of us who love F. Scott Fitzgerald must acknowledge that he did get one big thing wrong. There are second acts in American lives. (Just ask Marion Barry, or William Shatner.) The real question is whether everyone deserves a second act. Perhaps the most surreal aspect of our great Afghanistan debate is the Beltway credence given to the ravings of the unrepentant blunderers who dug us into this hole in the first place.

Let’s be clear: Those who demanded that America divert its troops and treasure from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2002 and 2003 -- when there was no Qaeda presence in Iraq -- bear responsibility for the chaos in Afghanistan that ensued.

FRANK - THE NAMES!

To the reader - Please note the name Steven J. Rosen (partner of Kieth Weissman) in this link, exclusive to The Jerusalem Post. And an aside to Daniel Pipes. There is nothing "distinguished" about Rosen, Weissman, your Middle East Forum -- or the Hoover Institution.

- Back to Frank Rich -

Now they have the nerve to imperiously and tardily demand that America increase its 68,000-strong presence in Afghanistan to clean up their mess -- even though the number of Qaeda insurgents there has dwindled to fewer than 100, according to the president’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones.

But why let facts get in the way? Just as these hawks insisted that Iraq was “the central front in the war on terror” when the central front was Afghanistan, so they insist that Afghanistan is the central front now that it has migrated to Pakistan. When the day comes for them to anoint Pakistan as the central front, it will be proof positive that Al Qaeda has consolidated its hold on Somalia and Yemen.

To appreciate this crowd’s spotless record of failure, consider its noisiest standard-bearer, John McCain. He made every wrong judgment call that could be made after 9/11. It’s not just that he echoed the Bush administration’s constant innuendos that Iraq collaborated with Al Qaeda’s attack on America. Or that he hyped the faulty W.M.D. evidence to the hysterical extreme of fingering Iraq for the anthrax attacks in Washington. Or that he promised we would win the Iraq war “easily.” Or that he predicted that the Sunnis and the Shiites would “probably get along” in post-Saddam Iraq because there was “not a history of clashes” between them.

What’s more mortifying still is that McCain was just as wrong about Afghanistan and Pakistan. He routinely minimized or dismissed the growing threats in both countries over the past six years, lest they draw American resources away from his pet crusade in Iraq.

Two years after 9/11 he was claiming that we could “in the long term” somehow “muddle through” in Afghanistan. (He now has the chutzpah to accuse President Obama of wanting to “muddle through” there.) Even after the insurgency accelerated in Afghanistan in 2005, McCain was still bragging about the “remarkable success” of that prematurely abandoned war. In 2007, some 15 months after the Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf signed a phony “truce” ceding territory on the Afghanistan border to terrorists, McCain gave Musharraf a thumb’s up. As a presidential candidate in the summer of 2008, McCain cared so little about Afghanistan it didn’t even merit a mention among the national security planks on his campaign Web site.

He takes no responsibility for any of this. Asked by Katie Couric last week about our failures in Afghanistan, McCain spoke as if he were an innocent bystander: “I think the reason why we didn’t do a better job on Afghanistan is our attention -- either rightly or wrongly -- was on Iraq.” As Tonto says to the Lone Ranger, “What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?”

Along with his tribunes in Congress and the punditocracy, Wrong-Way McCain still presumes to give America its marching orders. With his Senate brethren in the Three Amigos, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, he took to The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page to assert that “we have no choice” but to go all-in on Afghanistan -- rightly or wrongly, presumably -- just as we had in Iraq. Why? “The U.S. walked away from Afghanistan once before, following the Soviet collapse,” they wrote. “The result was 9/11. We must not make that mistake again.”

This shameless argument assumes -- perhaps correctly -- that no one in this country remembers anything. So let me provide a reminder: We already did make that mistake again when we walked away from Afghanistan to invade Iraq in 2003 -- and we did so at the Three Amigos’ urging. Then, too, they promoted their strategy as a way of preventing another 9/11 -- even though no one culpable for 9/11 was in Iraq. Now we’re being asked to pay for their mistake by squandering stretched American resources in yet another country where Al Qaeda has largely vanished.

To make the case, the Amigos and their fellow travelers conflate the Taliban with Al Qaeda much as they long conflated Saddam’s regime with Al Qaeda. But as Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post reported on Thursday, American intelligence officials now say that “there are few, if any, links between Taliban commanders in Afghanistan today and senior Al Qaeda members” -- a far cry from the tight Taliban-bin Laden alliance of 2001.

The rhetorical sleights of hand in the hawks’ arguments don’t end there. If you listen carefully to McCain and his neocon echo chamber, you’ll notice certain tics. President Obama better make his decision by tomorrow, or Armageddon (if not mushroom clouds) will arrive. We must “win” in Afghanistan -- but victory is left vaguely defined. That’s because we will never build a functioning state in a country where there has never been one. Nor can we score a victory against the world’s dispersed, stateless terrorists by getting bogged down in a hellish landscape that contains few of them.

Most tellingly, perhaps, those clamoring for an escalation in Afghanistan avoid mentioning the name of the country’s president, Hamid Karzai, or the fraud-filled August election that conclusively delegitimized his government. To do so would require explaining why America should place its troops in alliance with a corrupt partner knee-deep in the narcotics trade. As long as Karzai and the election are airbrushed out of history, it can be disingenuously argued that nothing has changed on the ground since Obama’s inauguration and that he has no right to revise his earlier judgment that Afghanistan is a “war of necessity.”

Those demanding more combat troops for Afghanistan also avoid defining the real costs. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the war was running $2.6 billion a month in Pentagon expenses alone even before Obama added 20,000 troops this year. Surely fiscal conservatives like McCain and Graham who rant about deficits being “generational theft” have an obligation to explain what the added bill will be on an Afghanistan escalation and where the additional money will come from. But that would require them to use the dread words “sacrifice” and “higher taxes” when they want us to believe that this war, like Iraq, would be cost-free.

The real troop numbers are similarly elusive. Pre-emptively railing against the prospect of “half measures” by Obama, Lieberman asked MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell rhetorically last week whether it would be “real counterinsurgency” or “counterinsurgency light.” But the measure Lieberman endorses -- Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s reported recommendation of 40,000 additional troops -- is itself counterinsurgency light. In his definitive recent field manual on the subject, Gen. David Petraeus stipulates that real counterinsurgency requires 20 to 25 troops for each thousand residents. That comes out, conservatively, to 640,000 troops for Afghanistan (population, 32 million). Some 535,000 American troops couldn’t achieve a successful counterinsurgency in South Vietnam, which had half Afghanistan’s population and just over a quarter of its land area.

Lieberman suggested to Mitchell that we could train an enhanced, centralized Afghan army to fill any gaps. In how many decades? The existing Afghan “army” is small, illiterate, impoverished and as factionalized as the government. For his part, McCain likes to justify McChrystal’s number of 40,000 by imbuing it with the supposedly magical powers of the “surge” in Iraq. But it’s rewriting history to say that the “surge” brought “victory” to Iraq. What it did was stanch the catastrophic bleeding in an unnecessary war McCain had helped gin up. Lest anyone forget, we still don’t know who has “won” in Iraq.

Afghanistan is not Iraq. It is poorer, even larger and more populous, more fragmented and less historically susceptible to foreign intervention. Even if the countries were interchangeable, the wars are not. No one-size surge fits all. President Bush sent the additional troops to Iraq only after Sunni leaders in Anbar Province soured on Al Qaeda and reached out for American support. There is no equivalent “Anbar Awakening” in Afghanistan. Most Afghans “don’t feel threatened by the Taliban in their daily lives” and “aren’t asking for American protection,” reported Richard Engel of NBC News last week. After eight years of war, many see Americans as occupiers.

Americans, meanwhile, want to see the fine print after eight years of fiasco with little accounting. While McCain and company remain frozen where they were in 2001, many of their fellow citizens have learned from the Iraq tragedy. Polls persistently find that the country is skeptical about what should and can be accomplished in Afghanistan. They voted for Obama not least because they wanted a new post-9/11 vision of national security, and they will not again be so easily bullied by the blustering hawks’ doomsday scenarios. That gives our deliberating president both the time and the political space to get this long war’s second act right. - Frank Rich N Y Times 10/11/09

There is chaos in the Middle East, much of which dates to the 1948 beginning of the Jewish conquest of Palestine. That fact is well covered by GOPBias.org. A recent evolution of that forced creation of Israel occurred on September 11, 2001, with the attacks on New York, the Pentagon and, except for the bravery of passengers on United Airlines Flight 93, the White House. What has been buried in the Media/Press for years is the recognition that even our war against Iraq was a manipulation by the JewishAmerican dominated Congress of the United States. While GOPBias.org has pieced together much of the puzzle a segment of the 10/6/09 CBS Evening News with Katie Couric and Lara Logan articulated, perhaps for the first time on an instrument of our Media/Press, that one of the catastrophic policies of the Bush/Cheney administration was responsible.

Afghanistan: The Road Ahead
CBS National News
10/6/2009 18:39:00

NEWSCASTER: [Osama] Bin Laden is still in hiding somewhere in the mountains, either in Afghanistan or in Pakistan's tribal region. The locals won't give him up, not even with a $50 million bounty on his head. Tora Bora was a missed opportunity for the U.S., but it wasn't the last. From Kabul, here's Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Lara Logan.

LARA LOGAN: The fall of Kabul, Afghanistan in 2001 was greeted with jubilation, the momentum then with the U.S. But reluctant to commit its own troops, the U.S. allowed Osama Bin Laden to escape from the Tora Bora mountains. Then, what many here see as the gravest error of all.

Afghans were wary as the U.S. turned its attention to invading Iraq, and they were right. Everything from reconstruction and aid to the fight itself suffered as the U.S. shifted its resources and its focus away from Afghanistan and the commitment it had made to the Afghan people (And from those Afghan people, to the Bush/Cheney/Israeli war against Iraq.). Not surprisingly, Afghan support for the war began to fade.

LARA LOGAN TO ABDULLAH ABDULLAH, AFGHAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What was lost in Afghanistan with the U.S. focusing on Iraq?

ABDULLAH: THE GREATEST OPPORTUNITY, THE BEST OPPORTUNITY FOR THE STABILIZATION OF AFGHANISTAN!

LARA LOGAN: That lost opportunity has lead the U.S. into a fight that would have been unimaginable eight years ago when the Taliban collapsed in disarray. Back then, valleys like this in northeastern Afghanistan were peaceful.

The U.S., believing their enemy was defeated, put few military assets on the ground. Another grave mistake. Now even the most remote mountains are killing grounds for determined Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, no longer afraid to stand and fight whenever they choose. Year after year the U.S. blindly claimed success and failed to adjust its strategy or admit its enemy was getting stronger.

The fighters it faced became proficient in small unit tactics which they learned from studying U.S. troops. That can be seen in this Taliban propaganda video which shows how the Taliban execute an attack on a small U.S. combat outpost. Loaded with ammunition, Taliban fighters climb to the highest reaches of these mountains. They began their assault before first light using the type of overwhelming fire usually used against them by the U.S. Their commander is so certain of victory that he orders his fighters to open fire on the jets when U.S. air support is called in.

Taliban, stay in your places, he commands. If the jet comes down again, shoot the rotors.

With a huge fire raging, the Taliban wait for survivors to stumble out. Twelve Afghan soldiers captured, three U.S. Marines killed.

The U.S. counter attack, and three days later the abandoned post was recaptured. But forcing an American withdrawal was a victory for the Taliban, a sign of how far they've come since the U.S. thought they were defeated.

COL. JAMES KRAFT, CMDR., COMBINED JOINT SPECIAL OPERATIONS: Defeat is a very strong word. Will you ever defeat an insurgency in total?

LARA LOGAN: Will you?

KRAFT: Well, it's chall - I think you got to get it to a moderate level of chaos, a level that's accepted.

LARA LOGAN: An acceptable level of chaos may not be what the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan hoping to achieve, but it may be how success is measured, if it's enough to stop Al Qaeda from threatening the U.S. again. - Lara Logan, CBS News, Kabul 10/6/09


* On THIS day, October 9, 2009, in which United States President Barack Obama is awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, a selection lauded by past recipients of this worthy award, men like South Africa's Nelson Mandella and Bishop Desmond Tutu and American President Jimmy Carter, it is significant to note the position of the Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, THE spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -

MIDDLE EAST - Israel: Foreign Minister Scoffs at Prospects for Peace -

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Thursday that it was unrealistic to expect to reach a final peace agreement with the Palestinians soon. He made the remarks in an interview with Israel Radio hours before meeting with the Obama administration’s special representative to the region, George J. Mitchell. Challenging the American and Palestinian position that calls for talks on the core issues of the conflict, Mr. Lieberman said only “a long-term intermediate agreement” that “left the tough issues for a much later stage” was possible. Mr. Mitchell said the White House remained “deeply and firmly committed” to “an early re-launch of negotiations.” - Kershner N Y Times 10/9/09

Associated Issue
- Furor Sends Palestinians Into Shift on U.N. Report -

JERUSALEM -- Faced with a torrent of criticism at home and abroad, the Palestinian leadership abruptly reversed course on Wednesday by endorsing a Security Council debate on a United Nations report accusing Israel of possible war crimes in Gaza.

The report, produced by a panel of investigators led by an internationally respected jurist, Richard Goldstone, found extensive evidence that both Israel and Palestinian militant groups took actions amounting to war crimes during last winter’s Gaza war.

But after pushing for the United Nations Human Rights Council to endorse the report and forward it to the Security Council, the Palestinians relented to American pressure last week and agreed to drop the issue for six months. Both the United States and Israel had warned that pursuing the accusations would abort attempts to revive the peace process.

Now the Palestinians are grappling with a domestic and regional uproar, with angry street protests at home and condemnation pouring in from Doha to Damascus.

- And rightly so! -

“The level of public protest is unprecedented,” said Ghassan Khatib, director of the Palestinian Authority’s media center. “I do not remember any situation before when the leadership was so unpopular,” he said, speaking by telephone from Ramallah in the West Bank.

Mr. Khatib said there was a feeling among Palestinian leaders that “they have to reconsider” their approach. With the Human Rights Council out of the picture for the time being, he said, they are seeking other avenues to advance the Goldstone report.

Yasir Abed Rabbo, a close adviser of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, said Wednesday that the leadership had erred.

“We have the courage to admit there was a mistake,” Mr. Abed Rabbo, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, told the official Voice of Palestine radio. In an attempt at damage control, he added that the mistake could be “repaired.”

- The sooner, the better! -

Mr. Abed Rabbo was the first senior Palestinian official to speak out publicly against the deferral of the vote on the report. There was no immediate comment from Mr. Abbas, who was in Rome on Wednesday.

At the United Nations, the Palestinian Observer Mission immediately endorsed a move by the Libyan delegation to hold a Security Council discussion on the issue and the Palestinian foreign minister, Riyad al-Maliki, was due in New York late Wednesday to press the matter.

“Accountability is the first order of business for all of us, including the Americans,” said Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador, when asked about the Palestinian leaders’ reversal. “That is what is impeding the peace process.”

The Security Council agreed Wednesday to move up its monthly debate on the Middle East to Oct. 14 from Oct. 20, and the report will be the focus of that discussion although not officially listed on the agenda. Several Arab ambassadors said they recognized the futility of trying to pass any kind of resolution because the United States would veto it immediately.

- Nobel Peace Prize! Do your work! -

The Libyan ambassador, Abdurrahman Mohamed Shalgam, said that the judicial aspects of the report could start in Geneva, but that Libya, a current Security Council member, wanted an open debate to give the issue momentum. That could help spur peace, he said, because the decision to delay in Geneva had deepened the already acrid split between the main Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas.

“The atmosphere on the ground is not helpful,” Ambassador Shalgam said.

In Gaza, posters appeared on walls on Wednesday calling Mr. Abbas a traitor and saying he should be consigned to “the trash heap of history.” Gaza is controlled by Hamas, the militant Islamic group that is the Palestinian Authority’s main rival.

A Hamas official, Salah Bardawil, said in a statement that his group would join Egyptian-mediated reconciliation talks with Mr. Abbas’s Fatah movement, to take place in Cairo this month, only if Mr. Abbas apologized to the Palestinian people for the so-called debacle around the United Nations report.

Hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated in Ramallah on Tuesday against the leadership’s conduct and called on Mr. Abbas and other officials to resign.

Even Mr. Abbas’s own government has been critical. In a statement released by the Palestinian cabinet on Monday, the ministers reaffirmed their position of late September, which called for the Human Rights Council to adopt the Goldstone report, and said it was “unacceptable” for such efforts to be undermined.

Apparently distancing himself from the events at the Human Rights Council, Mr. Abbas ordered the establishment of a committee over the weekend to investigate how the deferral of the vote came about, but that failed to quell the storm.

Mr. Abbas finds himself squeezed on several fronts. The Obama administration is pressing the Israelis and the Palestinians to resume peace negotiations, but has not managed to persuade the Israelis to freeze settlement construction in the West Bank. The Abbas administration had made a building freeze a condition for renewed talks.

Last weekend, Hamas took credit for a release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons. Israel freed 20 female security prisoners in exchange for a videotape of an Israeli soldier who has been held captive since being seized in a raid by Hamas and other groups in June 2006.

In another sign of Palestinian restiveness, there has been simmering violence in the past few days in East Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority, Hamas and the Islamic Movement of Israel all accuse Israel of provocations at a site holy to both Jews and Muslims, and Israel is accusing the Palestinians of fanning the flames.

All this underlines the challenges facing George J. Mitchell, the Obama administration’s special Middle East envoy, who was expected to arrive in the region late Wednesday to continue efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. - Kershner & MacFarquhar N Y Times 10/8/09

- Sideline -

- Marking eight Years of the Afghan War -

To the Editor:

Re “Top U.S. Commander in Afghanistan Rejects Scaling Down Military Objectives” (news article, Oct. 2):

You report that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has again spoken out, this time in London, against the possible modification of our commitment in Afghanistan. In his request for 40,000 more troops, the general rejects any suggestion that our efforts be more targeted at Al Qaeda, as opposed to the larger goal of defeating the Taliban.

What’s going on here? Why is an American general, no matter how honorable and brilliant, allowed to advocate national policy outside the walls of the White House?

Yes, it’s a free country, but there’s only one commander in chief, and he should be able to keep his options open without undue pressure from generals in the field. - Alan Goldfarb Fremont, Calif. 10/2/09

An Act of Infamy
- Under US Pressure, Palestinian Authority Drops Demand for Vote on Gaza Report -

Amy Goodman 10/5/09: The Palestinian Authority is being denounced for agreeing to defer a vote in the UN Human Rights Council on the Goldstone report, which criticized Israeli troops for “targeting and terrorizing civilians” during the assault on Gaza. The Palestinian Authority made the decision after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to encourage him to withdraw support for the report. The vote would have forwarded the Goldstone report to the UN Security Council, which in turn could have referred Israel to the International Criminal Court. The Palestinian Authority has been widely criticized by many Palestinian leaders and the families of the victims of the Gaza assault. Palestinian economy minister Bassem Khuri resigned on Saturday to protest the Palestinian Authority’s decision.

Mustafa Barghouti, independent Palestinian lawmaker: “It is totally unjustified. It is frustrating and disappointing. There was a majority in the Council of Human Rights that would have approved this report. This report would have finally took away the feeling of impunity of Israel in front of international law and would have held the Israeli establishment accountable for the war crimes that took place in Gaza.”

- Bill Van Esveld of Human Rights Watch criticized the Obama administration’s actions. -

Bill Van Esveld: “Due to American pressure, strong pressure from Washington, the Palestinians have withdrawn their request that the UN act on the Goldstone report...What the US has effectively done is sent a strong signal that Israel doesn’t need to investigate itself, because that was the recommendation of the Goldstone report.”

- Israeli Official Cancels Trip to UK Fearing Arrest -

Amy Goodman 10/5/09: In other news, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports Israel’s Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon recently canceled a planned trip to Britain for fear of being arrested there. Ya’alon is the former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces. He is one of several current and former senior Israeli officers whom pro-Palestinian groups have sought to put on trial over the assassination of senior Hamas commander Salah Shehadeh in 2002. The attack also killed fourteen civilians.

- Abbas Faces Calls to Resign over Goldstone Report -

Sharif Abdel Kouddous 10/6/09: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is coming under intense criticism for supporting the postponement of a United Nations vote which could have led to the prosecution of Israel for war crimes during its assault on Gaza. On Monday, a senior member of Hamas called for Abbas’s resignation. Mahmoud al-Zahar told Al Jazeera that Abbas was guilty of “a very big crime against the Palestinian people” for supporting to defer endorsing the Goldstone report. Thirty-two Palestinian groups in Europe also called on Abbas to immediately step down from office. Al Jazeera reports the upcoming Fatah-Hamas talks in Egypt may also be in jeopardy. - DemocracyNow 10/5-6/09


- Immediate Background -

The Associated Press: Israel taking extraordinary steps to block prosecution of military, political leaders.

JERUSALEM (AP) -- 10/1/09

Stung by a damning U.N. report alleging war crimes in Gaza, Israel is taking extraordinary steps to fend off potential international prosecution of its political and military leaders, hiring high-powered attorneys, lobbying Western governments and launching a public relations blitz.

Israel has dismissed the U.N. investigation into its winter offensive in the Gaza strip as biased, but its latest moves show it is clearly concerned.

The U.N. report appears to have energized pro-Palestinian groups that have hoped for years to bring Israelis before courts in countries that recognize the concept of "universal jurisdiction" - trying people for crimes unrelated to their own territory or nationals.

Most recently, British activists attempted this week to have Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak arrested during a trip to Britain for war crimes connected to his role in the Gaza war. Barak was untouched - but only because the court that considered the request ruled that he enjoyed immunity as a Cabinet minister.

But the incident raised the prospect that Israelis might find it increasingly difficult to travel to European countries that recognize universal jurisdiction.

The U.N. report issued last month by Richard Goldstone, a Jewish judge from South Africa and experienced war crimes prosecutor, accused the Israelis of using excessive force and endangering civilians. - AP 10/1/09

A Prominent Covert Supporter
Of Israel
- The Ever-Slippery David Brooks -

To the Editor:

I was encouraged by David Brooks’s analysis of the current faint power of right-wing talk jocks.

I overlooked his deftly blaming what power they do have on “cynical Democrats,” “lazy pundits” and “slightly educated snobs.” How convenient to put responsibility for the poisoning of public discourse by conservative extremists on the Democrats.

But he lost me when he implied that Rush Limbaugh had never had any real influence, ignoring any role Mr. Limbaugh may have had in neutralizing the Clinton administration or in promoting the Bush election and re-election.

But his final judgment is right: the Republican Party is losing support. That’s because it chooses to be the voice of complaint rather than an agent of accomplishment. - William R. Nye N Y Times Brooklyn 10/2/09

ACTUALLY, AMONG PROMINENT UNIDENTIFIED JEWISH AMERICAN COVERT SUPPORTERS OF ISRAEL, THE MOST EFFECTIVE (BECAUSE OF THE FREQUENCY OF HIS APPEARANCE ON THE AIRWAVES) MAY BE THE HOST OF "TALK OF THE NATION", NEAL CONAN, I.E. ISRAEL'S CIP (CHIEF ISRAELI PROPAGANDIST IN THE UNITED STATES.)!

The Great Paul Krugman
- On Brooks' hero Ronald Reagan -

There was what President Obama likes to call a teachable moment last week, when the International Olympic Committee rejected Chicago’s bid to be host of the 2016 Summer Games.

“Cheers erupted” at the headquarters of the conservative Weekly Standard, according to a blog post by a member of the magazine’s staff, with the headline “Obama loses! Obama loses!” Rush Limbaugh declared himself “gleeful.” “World Rejects Obama,” gloated the Drudge Report. And so on.

So what did we learn from this moment? For one thing, we learned that the modern conservative movement, which dominates the modern Republican Party, has the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.

But more important, the episode illustrated an essential truth about the state of American politics: at this point, the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple. If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it -- whether or not it’s good for America.

To be sure, while celebrating America’s rebuff by the Olympic Committee was puerile, it didn’t do any real harm. But the same principle of spite has determined Republican positions on more serious matters, with potentially serious consequences -- in particular, in the debate over health care reform.

Now, it’s understandable that many Republicans oppose Democratic plans to extend insurance coverage -- just as most Democrats opposed President Bush’s attempt to convert Social Security into a sort of giant 401(k). The two parties do, after all, have different philosophies about the appropriate role of government.

But the tactics of the two parties have been different. In 2005, when Democrats campaigned against Social Security privatization, their arguments were consistent with their underlying ideology: they argued that replacing guaranteed benefits with private accounts would expose retirees to too much risk (imagine what would have happened to Social Security during the Bush/Cheney financial system collapse of the last two years).

The Republican campaign against health care reform, by contrast, has shown no such consistency. For the main G.O.P. line of attack is the claim -- based mainly on lies about death panels and so on -- that reform will undermine Medicare. And this line of attack is utterly at odds both with the party’s traditions and with what conservatives claim to believe.

* Think about just how bizarre it is for Republicans to position themselves as the defenders of unrestricted Medicare spending. First of all, the modern G.O.P. considers itself the party of Ronald Reagan -- and Reagan was a fierce opponent of Medicare’s creation, warning that it would destroy American freedom. (Honest.) In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich tried to force drastic cuts in Medicare financing. And in recent years, Republicans have repeatedly decried the growth in entitlement spending -- growth that is largely driven by rising health care costs. *

But the Obama administration’s plan to expand coverage relies in part on savings from Medicare. And since the G.O.P. opposes anything that might be good for Mr. Obama, it has become the passionate defender of ineffective medical procedures and overpayments to insurance companies.

How did one of our great political parties become so ruthless, so willing to embrace scorched-earth tactics even if so doing undermines the ability of any future administration to govern?

The key point is that ever since the Reagan years, the Republican Party has been dominated by radicals -- ideologues and/or apparatchiks who, at a fundamental level, do not accept anyone else’s right to govern.

Anyone surprised by the venomous, over-the-top opposition to Mr. Obama must have forgotten the Clinton years. Remember when Rush Limbaugh suggested that Hillary Clinton was a party to murder? When Newt Gingrich shut down the federal government in an attempt to bully Bill Clinton into accepting those Medicare cuts? And let’s not even talk about the impeachment saga.

- Scorched-earth tactics and America's future. -

The only difference now is that the G.O.P. is in a weaker position, having lost control not just of Congress but, to a large extent, of the terms of debate. The public no longer buys conservative ideology the way it used to; the old attacks on Big Government and paeans to the magic of the marketplace have lost their resonance. Yet conservatives retain their belief that they, and only they, should govern.

The result has been a cynical, ends-justify-the-means approach. Hastening the day when the rightful governing party returns to power is all that matters, so the G.O.P. will seize any club at hand with which to beat the current administration.

IT’S AN UGLY PICTURE. BUT IT’S THE TRUTH. AND IT’S A TRUTH ANYONE TRYING TO FIND SOLUTIONS TO AMERICA’S REAL PROBLEMS HAS TO UNDERSTAND. - PAUL KRUGMAN 10/5/09

PROGRESS?
- Italy: Berlusconi Is Found Liable -

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi shared responsibility for corruption by his company Fininvest in a 1990s battle to buy a publishing company, a judge said Monday in an explanation of a court ruling over the weekend. A Milan administrative court had ruled that Fininvest must pay $1.1 billion to a rival media company, CIR, for bribing a judge in a 1990s battle to buy Italy’s biggest publisher, Mondadori. “I am literally shocked,” Mr. Berlusconi said Monday. “This ruling is beyond belief. This is a huge judicial blunder.” - Reuters 10/6/09

- Israel: Official Cancels Trip to Britain -

Moshe Yaalon, a government minister and former army chief of staff, has canceled a trip to Britain, fearing he could be arrested on war crimes charges. Mr. Yaalon was scheduled to speak at a charity fund-raiser in London next month. His spokesman, Alon Ofek-Arnon, said Monday that Mr. Yaalon had avoided traveling to Britain for years because of attempts by activists to have him charged, under the principle of universal jurisdiction, in connection with the 2002 assassination of a Hamas leader in Gaza in which civilians also died. Mr. Yaalon “will not lend a hand to those trying to delegitimize Israel,” Mr. Ofek-Arnon said. Palestinian activists tried to have the defense minister, Ehud Barak, arrested when he was in Britain last week, but Mr. Barak was on an official visit and was granted immunity. - Kershner N Y Times 10/6/09

- Gaza: Harsh Words From Hamas -

Hamas leaders stepped up their verbal assault of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, saying they no longer considered him a Palestinian after he agreed to suspend efforts to pursue Israel for possible war crimes in Gaza. Syria abruptly postponed Mr. Abbas’s planned visit to Damascus, in what appeared to be the first diplomatic fallout from his decision to suspend a campaign to push for war crimes prosecutions in connection with last winter’s Gaza war. - AP 10/6/09

- The Media Versus Dan Rather - An Early Outrage!

Late development: "Rather's CBS suit dismissed"

What is unconscionable in this 9/30/09 Bill Carter N Y Times report? The name of the long-time principal adversary of Mr. Rather, one of the most principled and courageous reporters in the history of CBS, and during the period when CBS news set the standard for excellence in broadcast journalism. The name of Mr. Rather's antagonist is the B-grade actor Les Moonves, otherwise known as the husband of knockout Julie Chen, which, in turn, answers the question of why the pathetic B-grade "sitcom" Big Brother11 was given multiple placements weekly on CBS recently. It's Ms. Chen's show. Maybe these multiple placements were necessary to keep her at the megalomaniac Moonves' side.

In any event, the invective visited on Mr. Rather for his exposure of George W. Bush's non-performance in the Texas Air National Guard (a dereliction of duty likely caused by incapacitation due to cocaine - Mr. Bush had been placed at the head of the line of those seeking the Guard to avoid the draft) was ill-deserved. Mr. Rather's fortitude, along with that of his producer Mary Mapes, is an example (Mr. Rather was similarly undaunted during Watergate) of a Fourth Estate that disappeared during the eight years of Bush/Cheney and shows no signs of resurfacing. Today broadcast journalism is a mere extension of the Republican Party.

- The Mark of Dan Rather -

The Attempt To Mischaracterize
Israel Versus Iran
To the Editor:

Substitute the words “Al Qaeda” for “Iran,” and one understands very quickly why the Leveretts’ proposal to work with Iran is so wrong.

Iran and Al Qaeda are unapologetic sponsors of terror, responsible for the deaths of thousands around the world. They cannot possibly be compared to China during the Nixon era, as the Leveretts suggest, when China was largely a poor nation of peasants and was not training international death squads.

If we shudder at the idea of sitting down with Osama bin Laden, then negotiating with Iran should make us equally nauseated.

Iran, like Nazi Germany, is simply a bully. It senses weakness acutely, and when we beg the Iranians to negotiate, even after they have violated prior agreements, we simply encourage more aggression.

The United States’ only recourse is to lead a coalition of the willing (Britain, Australia, Poland and Israel come to mind) to impose a blockade or take military action. Nothing short of that has any chance of success. - Ari Weitzner New York 9/29/09

Were we to substitute "Israel" for Iran - "Israel, like Nazi Germany, is simply a bully. It senses weakness acutely, and when we beg the Israelis to negotiate, even after they have violated prior agreements, we simply encourage more aggression."

- It is so obvious! -

To the Editor:

The Op-Ed article by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett urging that the United States pursue a new relationship with Iran based on a comprehensive framework of security and economic cooperation was a welcome injection of sanity into the mix of ultimatums, threats and defiance that have so far marked the exchanges over Iran’s nuclear policy.

It is surprising, however, that although the Leveretts point out Iran’s understandable fear of American encirclement, they do not mention the Iranians’ much more justifiable fear of an Israeli attack.

If we expect the Iranians to refrain from developing a nuclear weapon, they must be assured of reciprocal restraint by Israel, which already has an arsenal of nuclear weapons.

A solution to the current standoff that is too seldom mentioned is a nuclear-free Middle East. A treaty based on such a solution would enhance the security of the entire region, including Iran and Israel. - Rachelle Marshall - Stanford Calif. 9/29/09

NPR, NATIONAL "PUBLIC" RADIO, HAS GONE TOO FAR! On Monday 9/28/09 "Talk of the Nation's" Neal Conan, in collusion with the Deputy Editor of the Washington Post editorial page, Jackson Diehl, fabricated the actual history of Israel versus the Palestinians!

- First, Conan & Diehl -

NEAL CONAN, host: Time now for the Opinion Page. Last December, when Israel invaded the Gaza Strip, Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl was among many who predicted that it would fail to either topple Hamas or eliminate its ability to fire missiles at Israeli cities. And worse, the inevitable bloodshed would subject Israel to another round of international outrage.

Last week, in an op-ed in the Post, Diehl concluded that he was mostly right, but that Israelis draw very different lessons from the conflict with important implications for a possible strike on Iran. And that piece was published amid reports of Iran's secret nuclear facility near Qum, and tests over the weekend of a ballistic missile with range to reach Israel.

Jackson Diehl is deputy editorial page editor, as well as a columnist, and joins us now from a studio at the Washington Post. Nice to have you with us today."

Mr. JACKSON DIEHL (Deputy Editorial Page Editor, Washington Post): My pleasure.

CONAN: And we have to note, to start, that the Hamas government remains in power in Gaza, as you predicted, and does indeed retain the capability to fire mortars and rockets into Israel whenever it wants (Note Israeli historian Avi Shlaim interview which follows.).

Mr. DIEHL: It does. But one thing has changed that's very important from the Israeli point of view, which is that Hamas is no longer firing missiles at Israel, and that seven or eight years before that invasion of Gaza took place, they fired 4,000 missiles and 4,000 mortar shells at towns in southern Israel. In the last four or five months, there've been maybe two dozen such firings. So from the Israeli point of view, there's been an enormous short-term change, even though all of the big strategic objectives weren't accomplished.

CONAN: And short-term change from the Israeli perspective is worth it?

Mr. DIEHL: Short-term change is, from the Israeli perspective, the most that can be accomplished in many of their conflicts with the states around them, in particular Iran. The Israeli point of view is that they can never come to terms with Iran, that Iran and its allies - which include, of course, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon - will never accept Israel's existence (Huh?).

So the most you can expect from the Israeli point of view is to achieve a kind of short-term peace with them, a short-term respite from conflict that you establish through deterrence. And so from their point of view, even a very costly conflict that buys you a few months of peace and quiet is worth it.

CONAN: And...

Mr. DIEHL: Because that's the most you can do.

CONAN: And that would seem to be the definition of the war with Lebanon earlier, as well.

Mr. DIEHL: That's right. In 2006, after a series of incidents along the border, Israel launched an invasion of Lebanon (which followed Israeli killings along that border). It was a very costly conflict. A lot of Israeli civilians were killed in rocket attacks by Lebanon against Israel, and, of course, many people were killed in Lebanon. But the result of that campaign was that there have been three years of quiet along the border. There have been very few incidents. And Israel's basically been at peace with Lebanon for three years.

Now, they don't expect that continue. Once again, Hezbollah has amassed another very large arsenal of rockets in southern Lebanon. And from the Israeli point of view, it's only a matter of time before there's another conflict. But again, they've bought that time (This is an appropriate positioning for placement of the history of suicide bombing!).

CONAN: This - another difference between the war in Lebanon and the one in Gaza, both occurred during the Bush administration, but the second one, well, U.S. officials were opposed to it.

Mr. DIEHL: Yeah. They thought it was a bad idea. Just as they thought the Israeli attack on the Syrian reactor in 2007 was a bad idea. The Bush administration didn't tell Israel not to do either of those things, but it both cases, they said, you know, we think that's a bad idea and you're going to regret it. And we're worried about what the consequences will be. Well, in both cases, from the Israeli point of view, they feel like they've been vindicated.

They got what they wanted in Gaza, which was an end to the rocket attacks. There were no larger diplomatic consequences. There was no larger war, and same with Syria in 2007. They bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor that had been supplied by North Korea. The fears that this would start some kind of war between Israel and Syria or some other larger conflict were unfounded, and they feel like, again, once again, they were vindicated in not listening to Washington.

CONAN: There is another side of the fallout from Gaza, though. That international condemnation just a couple of weeks ago, a U.N. commission headed by the South African jurist Richard Goldstone condemned, quote, "a deliberately disproportional attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population," and some harsh things to say about the Hamas side, too. But nevertheless, Israel is a state, and Hamas, not quite.

Mr. DIEHL: That's right. But from the Israeli point of view, that condemnation has really been not a major setback. They're used to being condemned by the United Nations. The United Nations Human Rights Council, which was what appointed this commission, has spent most of its time condemning Israel over the last two or three years. And the fact is that these reports and condemnations end up having very little impact because the commission itself has been discredited. The Bush - the Obama administration already has dismissed this Goldstone report.

* Here the DemocracyNow 9/30/09 report on the Goldstone analysis. *

- Judge Defends Gaza Inquiry Alleging Israeli War Crimes -

In Geneva, the UN Human Rights Council held a one-day debate Tuesday on a recent inquiry finding Israel committed a number of war crimes in its assault on the Gaza Strip. The head of the inquiry, Judge Richard Goldstone, said all but one of the individual Israeli attacks examined by investigators had no military purpose.

Judge Richard Goldstone: “We detail a number of specific incidents in which Israeli forces launched direct attacks against civilians with lethal consequences. These were, with only one exception, where the facts establish that there was no military objective or advantage that could justify the attacks.”

Around 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli attack, most of them civilians. Goldstone rejected Israel’s claim that it was targeting “terrorist infrastructure” in Gaza.

Judge Richard Goldstone: “If ‘infrastructure’ were to be understood in that way and become a justifiable military objective, it would completely subvert the whole purpose of international humanitarian law built up over the last hundred years and more. It would make civilians and civilian buildings justifiable targets. These attacks amounted to reprisals and collective punishment and constitute war crimes.”

Goldstone’s report also accuses Palestinian fighters of committing war crimes in firing rockets at nearby Israeli towns and urges both sides to conduct investigations or face prosecution by the International Criminal Court. Meanwhile, the Obama administration encouraged Israel to conduct a probe of the allegations but repeated its view that the report is “biased” against Israel.

Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner: “Although we disagree sharply with many of the report’s assessments and its recommendations and believe that it is deeply flawed, we recognize Justice Goldstone’s distinguished record of public service and his efforts to promote global justice.”

- Groups Urge UK Arrest Warrant for Israeli Defense Minister -

Meanwhile in Britain, a coalition of Palestinian groups is calling on a British court to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak. Barak is in London for talks with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The groups say Barak should be arrested for his role in directing the Israeli attack on Gaza. - DemocracyNow 9/30/09 *

Mr. Diehl (cont): And, you know, the Israelis would point out that in spite of all the international condemnation, they've suffered no real diplomatic consequences. Most Arab states are ready to upgrade relations with Israel at this point, once the peace process begins again. The Palestinian authority in the West Bank is about to renew peace negotiations with Israel, and, in fact, has gotten much stronger since the war than it was before.

So again, the international program and diplomatic consequences that a lot of people worried about at the beginning of this Gaza operation haven't come to pass, so far as Israelis are concerned.

CONAN: One of the places they were most concerned about - the Israeli government at the time - was Egypt, which, of course, has the other side of the border with Gaza.

Mr. DIEHL: Right. And Egypt has basically cooperated with Israel in a quiet way for several years in maintaining a blockade on the Gaza Strip and not allowing Hamas to import, have a regular commerce with the outside world while they pressure Hamas to make some political concessions. And after the war, Egypt came under a lot of pressure. There were public statements by Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, and others, demanding that Egypt open the border, that it change its relationship with Hamas. Well, Egypt held firm, and the situation today remains the same as it was before the war. There is a blockade on Gaza in which Egypt cooperates.

CONAN: We're talking with Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post about an op-ed he wrote which talked about the lessons Israelis draw from the Gaza invasion last December. There's a link to the op-ed piece at our Web site. Go to npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. And this is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

And, of course, the subtext of all of this is another thing, that there is a new administration in Washington, and the crisis this time is not with Gaza or with Lebanon or even with Syria, but the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran.

Mr. DIEHL: That's right. And again, the same kind of Israeli thinking can come into play there. From the Israeli point of view, there's no long-term victory. There is no accord to be made. There's only short-term successes. So a bombing campaign against Iranian nuclear sites is something that everyone agrees would, at best, be a short-term success. I think Secretary of Defense Gates said over the weekend they could maybe delay the program by one to two years.

For everyone but the Israelis, that's not a very big benefit. It would be much preferable to try and strike some kind of long-term deal with Iran, or in some way or other persuade Iran to abandon the program itself. But from the Israeli point of view, a one to two-year delay in the Iranian program (Note the Scott Ritter Report which follows!) might be seen as a benefit and, in fact, the best that you can hope for if you're looking at it from the Israeli government's point of view.

CONAN: But there is a great deal more at risk, it would seem, there. For one thing, the Iranians just test fire the missile that could reach Israel. For another thing, the United States would be deeply involved in this. The Iranians would certainly see the United States, if there was an Israeli attack, as complicit.

Mr. DIEHL: Yeah. The Israelis are going to have an awful lot to think about. They have the Iranian missiles that can reach Israel. There are the Hezbollah missiles in southern Lebanon, and the Hamas missiles in Gaza, which almost certainly would be brought into a play if there were an Israeli attack on Iran.

But I think most of all, what the Israelis will think about is their relationship with the United States. They knew that when they invaded Gaza, it was not going to put their relationship with the United States at risk. They knew when they attacked the Syrian reactor that even if the Bush administration disagreed with them, it was not going to put their relationship at risk. And they also know that if they launch an attack on Iran, it is expressly against the wishes of the American president. And that brings American troops and American interests in the Middle East into harm's play or draws them into a war, that will put their relationship with the United States at stake. So I think their calculations are going to be much more complicated in this case.

CONAN: And this would involve - presumably, they are talking to officials in the Obama administration, presumably to the president himself.

Mr. DIEHL: Well, yeah. Those conversations have been going on for years already, back and forth, about Iran. What is the best way to deal with Iran? Is a military attack possible? Can Israel carry out that military attack? It's been widely reported at the end of the Bush administration that the Israeli government asked to be sold material, certain kinds of bombs and other material it would need to carry out the attack on Iran. It was denied those requests by the Bush administration.

Conversations, no doubt, are continuing here in the Obama administration about just what the feasibility is and what the alternatives are. And by the way, it's worth noting that so far as it goes for now, Israel is saying both publicly, and so far as I know in private, that they would like to see sanctions tried against Iran. They are not advocating, for the moment, military action as a first recourse.

CONAN: And, indeed, there's a meeting scheduled for later this week, where the P5+1 - that's the permanent members of the Security Council, plus Germany - will be meeting with Iranian officials to discuss Iran's nuclear ambitions and what it plans to do about them. And indeed, the discovery of that facility at Qum, reported in the newspapers last week, that's going to bear heavily on a decision by those states to impose sanctions if they do.

Mr. DIEHL: That's right. And it's - of course, it's - revelation of that facility last week was very clearly an attempt by the United States and other countries to gain some kind of leverage over Iran by showing them that we are capable of discovering their secret facilities by bringing them under pressure from the international community and hopefully forcing them to make some concessions. And by the same token, these missile firings over the weekend are sort of Iran's answer to that and its own attempt to gain leverage over these negotiations by showing that they have real bargaining chips.

* Messrs. Conan & Diehl are surely familiar with the extensive annotated history of Israel/Palestine compiled by expert Norman Finkelstein, and they should reference it, key points of which are available on GOPBIAS.org.

CONAN: And so the game goes on. The decision, as far as I understand it, most American officials say Iran could be expected to get a nuclear weapon in one to three years - as soon as one, and no longer than three.

Mr. DIEHL: That's right. And, of course, this hidden facility, the scary thing about it is if it had not been discovered by American intelligence. It was due to go online early next year. It could have produced material for a bomb in a year. So, in theory, if there's another facility out there that we haven't found yet that was in a same stage of construction a year from now, Iran could have the material for a bomb without the world even being aware of it.

CONAN: Jackson Diehl, thanks very much for your time today.

Mr. DIEHL: My pleasure.

CONAN: Jackson Diehl, deputy editorial page editor and a columnist at the Washington Post. He joined us from a studio at the newspaper's office here in Washington, D.C. We have a link again to his op-ed. It's at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION.

And this is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.

- NOW, THE ACTUAL HISTORY -

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest right now, 1/14/09, is Oxford University Professor Avi Shlaim. He teaches international relations at Oxford University. He's speaking to us from Oxford right now, leading authority in the world on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

We've had a number of debates here on Democracy Now!, Professor Shlaim, over the past weeks about what's happening in Gaza and those who support the Israeli military continually say that in 2005, three years ago, Israel pulled out of Gaza entirely. You have a different picture of what happened under Ariel Sharon in August of 2005. Explain how you see the withdrawal of Israeli military at that time.

AVI SHLAIM: President Bush described Ariel Sharon as a man of peace. I've done a great deal of archival research on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and I can honestly tell you that I have never come across a single scintilla of evidence to support the view of Ariel Sharon as a man of peace. He was a man of war, a champion of violent solutions, a man who rejected totally any Palestinian right to self-determination. He was a proponent of Greater Israel, and it is in this context that I see his decision to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza in August of 2005.

The withdrawal was officially called the unilateral Israeli disengagement from Gaza. I would like to underline the word “unilateral.” Ariel Sharon was the unilateralist par excellence. The reason he decided to withdraw from Gaza was not out of any concern for the welfare of the people of Gaza or any sympathy for the Palestinians or their national aspirations, but because of the pressure exerted by Hamas, by the Islamic resistance, to the Israeli occupation of Gaza. In the end, Israel couldn't sustain the political, diplomatic and psychological costs of maintaining its occupation in Gaza.

And let me add in parentheses that Gaza was a classic example of exploitation, of colonial exploitation in the postcolonial era. Gaza is a tiny strip of land with about one-and-a-half million Arabs, most of them--half of them refugees. It's the most crowded piece of land on God's earth. There were 8,000 Israeli settlers in Gaza, yet the 8,000 settlers controlled 25 percent of the territory, 40 percent of the arable land, and the largest share of the desperately scarce water resources.

Ariel Sharon decided to withdraw from Gaza unilaterally, not as a contribution, as he claimed, to a two-state solution. The withdrawal from Gaza took place in the context of unilateral Israeli action in what was seen as Israeli national interest. There were no negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on an overall settlement. The withdrawal from Gaza was not a prelude to further withdrawals from the other occupied territories, but a prelude to further expansion, further consolidation of Israel's control over the West Bank. In the year after the withdrawal from Gaza, 12,000 new settlers went to live on the West Bank. So I see the withdrawal from Gaza in the summer of 2005 as part of a unilateral Israeli attempt to redraw the borders of Greater Israel and to shun any negotiations and compromise with the Palestinian Authority.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Avi Shlaim, Israel says the reason it has attacked Gaza is because of the rocket fire, the rockets that Hamas is firing into southern Israel.

AVI SHLAIM: This is Israeli propaganda, and it is a pack of lies. The important thing to remember is that there was a ceasefire brokered by Egypt in July of last year, and that ceasefire succeeded. So, if Israel wanted to protect its citizens--and it had every right to protect its citizens--the way to go about it was not by launching this vicious military offensive, but by observing the ceasefire.

Now, let me give you some figures, which I think are the most crucial figures in understanding this conflict. Before the ceasefire came into effect in July of 2008, the monthly number of rockets fired--Kassam rockets, homemade Kassam rockets, fired from the Gaza Strip on Israeli settlements and towns in southern Israel was 179. In the first four months of the ceasefire, the number dropped dramatically to three rockets a month, almost zero. I would like to repeat these figures for the benefit of your listeners. Pre-ceasefire, 179 rockets were fired on Israel; post-ceasefire, three rockets a month. This is point number one, and it's crucial.

And my figures are beyond dispute, because they come from the website of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. But after initiating this war, this particular table, neat table, which showed the success of the ceasefire, was withdrawn and replaced with another table of statistics, which is much more obscure and confusing. Israel--the Foreign Ministry withdrew these figures, because it didn't suit the new story.

The new story said that Hamas broke the ceasefire. This is a lie. Hamas observed the ceasefire as best as it could and enforced it very effectively. The ceasefire was a stunning success for the first four months. It was broken not by Hamas, but by the IDF. It was broken by the IDF on the 4th of November, when it launched a raid into Gaza and killed six Hamas men.

And there is one other point that I would like to make about the ceasefire. Ever since the election of Hamas in January--I'm sorry, ever since Hamas captured power in Gaza in the summer of 2007, Israel had imposed a blockade of the Strip. Israel stopped food, fuel and medical supplies from reaching the Gaza Strip. One of the terms of the ceasefire was that Israel would lift the blockade of Gaza, yet Israel failed to lift the blockade, and that is one issue that is also overlooked or ignored by official Israeli spokesmen. So Israel was doubly guilty of sabotaging the ceasefire, A, by launching a military attack, and B, by maintaining its very cruel siege of the people of Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Israel calls Hamas "terrorist." What is your definition of "terror"?

AVI SHLAIM: My definition of "terror" is the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. And by this definition, Hamas is a terrorist organization. But by the same token, Israel is practicing state terror, because it is using violence on a massive scale against Palestinian civilians for political purposes. I don't hold a brief for Hamas. Hamas is not a paragon of virtue. Its leaders are not angels. They harm civilians indiscriminately. Killing civilians is wrong, period. That applies to Hamas, and it applies equally to the state of Israel.

But there are two points I would like to make about Hamas, and that is--the first point is that it was elected in a fair and free election in January 2006. It was an impeccable election, monitored by a number of international observers, including President Jimmy Carter. So it is not just a terrorist organization. It is a democratically elected government of the Palestinian people and the representative of the Palestinian people in Gaza, as well as the West Bank.

And the second point that I would like to make is that since coming to power, Gaza has moderated its political program. Its charter is extreme. Its charter denies the legitimacy of a Jewish state. The charter calls for an Islamic state over the whole of historic Palestine. The charter has not been revived, but since coming to power, the leadership of Hamas has been much more pragmatic and stated that it is willing to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the state of Israel for twenty, thirty, forty, maybe even fifty years.

Thirdly, Hamas joined with Fatah, the rival group, the mainstream group, on the West Bank in a national unity government in the summer of 2007. That national unity government lasted only three months. Israel, with American support, helped to sabotage and to bring down that national unity government. Israel refused to deal with a Palestinian government which included Hamas within it. And shamefully, both the United States and the European Union joined in Israel in this refusal to recognize a Hamas-dominated government, and Israel withdrew tax revenues, and European Union withdrew foreign aid, in a shameful attempt to bring down a democratically elected government.

So, I do not defend Hamas, but I think that it hasn't received a fair hearing from the international community, and Israel has done everything to sabotage it all along.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Shlaim, you say it's done everything to sabotage it, except at the beginning, when you say it supported Hamas to weaken Fatah, which it now supports.

AVI SHLAIM: Indeed. Israel has always played the game of divide and rule. This is a very good tactic in times of war, to divide your enemies and pick them off one by one. No one can complain about that. But divide and rule isn't a good tactic in times of peace. If your aim is to achieve peace with the Arabs, then you should want unity among the Palestinians and unity in the Arab world. But Israel continued to play this game of divide and rule.

Hamas emerged in the course of the First Intifada in the late 1980s. It is the Islamic resistance movement. The mainstream movement, Fatah, was led by Yasser Arafat. And Israel gave tacit encouragement and support to the Islamic resistance in the hope of weakening the secular nationalists led by Yasser Arafat. It was a dangerous game to play, because the end result of this game was that Hamas emerged as the strongest Palestinian political party.

And Israel helped Hamas inadvertently in another way, because Fatah signed the Oslo Accord with Israel in 1993. It expected the Oslo Accord to lead to a two-state solution. And yet, Israel, after the election of Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, reneged on the Israeli side of the deal. So, the Oslo Accord, the Oslo peace process wasn't doomed to failure from the start. It failed because Israel, under the leadership of the Likud, reneged on its side of the deal. So that left the Palestinians with nothing but misery and poverty and frustration and ever-growing Israeli settlements on the land. And it was this context that led to the success of Hamas at the last elections. So Israel has a lot to explain in the rise to power of the Hamas movement.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Avi Shlaim, we only have a minute, but I want to ask you where you see the solution at this point. Barack Obama will be president on Tuesday in just a few days. Hillary Clinton will be Secretary of State.

AVI SHLAIM: The solution--this is a political conflict, and there is no military conflict to--there is no military solution to this conflict. The only solution lies in negotiations between Israel and Hamas about all the issues involved. President-elect Obama is a very impressive man and a very intelligent man and a very fair-minded man. He hasn't demonstrated any courage in the course of this crisis. He hasn't taken any position. He hasn't called for an immediate ceasefire. So the first step is an immediate ceasefire, and the next step would be negotiations between all the sides about restoring the ceasefire and then moving on to stage two, which is a political settlement to this tragic hundred-year-old conflict.

AMY GOODMAN: And Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, who said in her confirmation hearing yesterday she wouldn't negotiate with Hamas?

AVI SHLAIM: Yes, but there are other signs from the Obama campaign that they would be willing to consider low-level, indirect contacts with Hamas. And one has to be grateful for small mercies, so small, minor, low-level contacts with Hamas could lead to a proper dialog in due course. So I remain optimistic that sanity and rationality would take over in American foreign policy after the dreadful last eight years.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Avi Shlaim, thank you very much for being with us. Professor Avi Shlaim, professor of international relations at Oxford University, served in the Israeli military--among his books, Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace--known as one of the leading authorities in the world on the Israel-Palestine conflict and Arab-Israel conflict. Among his other books, The Iron Wall.

FOR THE RECORD 9/28/09 - To the Jewish/American-dominated Media/Press and their spineless sycophantic (i.e. fawning parasitic) surrogates: (1) Israel has a +200 nuclear weapon arsenal, but has refused to sign the required (by international law) Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. (2) Israel views Iran as an "existential" threat to its ultimate goal of controlling the Middle East, which might be compromised were Iran able to produce electricity by way of nuclear power. (3) The Iranians, since 1948, have observed and now understand the insatiable, ingrained avaricious nature of these Israelis. As such, is it surprising that Iran would secure its nuclear power development facility underground and protected from Israel's extensive spying and sabotage operation (the most sophisticated in the Middle East) protected by Iran's Revolutionary Guard and located under Iran's sacred city of Qum? (4) Our Media/Press needs finally, with this notorious Netanyahu/Lieberman regime empowered in Tel Aviv, to recognize Israel as the ultimate source of much of the bloody chaos on the planet today.

Note: (1*) The Prior History - (2*) "Since 1948... - (3*) "The June 8, 1967 attack on the USS Liberty... - (4*) The Ultimate in Israeli Propaganda, configured 9/26/09 by Mark Landler in Washington.

Note No. Two - on (4*).

- "FOR Michael B. Oren, the hardest thing about becoming Israel’s ambassador to the United States was giving up his American citizenship, a solemn ritual that involves signing an oath of renunciation. He said he got through it with the help of friends from the American Embassy in Tel Aviv who “stayed with me, and hugged me when it was over.”

- "Born in upstate New York, raised in suburban New Jersey and educated at Columbia and Princeton Universities, Mr. Oren considers himself genuinely American. But having lived most of his adult life in Israel -- serving multiple tours in the Israeli Army, once as a paratrooper during the 1982 Lebanon war -- he also considers himself genuinely Israeli."

Question - Did he serve with Rahm "three fingered" Emanuel?

- "FOR the past two decades, Mr. Oren has mixed scholarship with public service."

Declaration - It may be that servicing Israel is not public service.

Editor's Note: The prior Conan/Diehl exchange may be an example of the interview Amy Goodman had with Naomi Klein 9/14/09 -

Amy Goodman: Explain why the Toronto International Film Festival is celebrating Tel Aviv.

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, this is a very--this is a controversial question. Cameron Bailey, the co-director of the festival, says that it was entirely his decision, that there was no political interference, and we take him at his word. He’s very respected in the film community. But what we are saying is that, whether knowingly or not, this decision fits in with a campaign, a very aggressive campaign, that has been launched by Israel’s Foreign Ministry to use culture really as a weapon to distract attention from the occupation and from the allegations of war crimes in Gaza, but even before the Gaza attack.

And what’s interesting is that in--Toronto has been selected to test market something that is called “Brand Israel,” the rebranding of Israel. And this is because Toronto has really been a kind of a battleground. It has a very strong Palestinian community and solidarity community. It also has a very large and active Jewish community. And it’s been a battle zone. So, actually, Canada has more Israeli diplomats than any other country in the world, because this--including the United States--despite our relatively small population (Canada), because the Israeli government sees Canada as a very important battleground, as a very important testing ground. So Toronto has been selected to sort of test-drive this rebranding campaign for Israel.

And, you know, it’s not our imagination; it’s not a quiet conspiracy. We’ve read about this in the New York Times and Reuters reports. And I’ll just give you one example. A couple of months after the attack on Gaza, as we remember, this was really a turning point in terms of world opinion with regards to Israel. There were protests around the world. In London, there were an estimated 100,000 people in the streets condemning Israel’s actions. Opinion polls were showing a plummeting of support. And more and more people were starting to talk about using tactics like the tactics that were used against South Africa during the apartheid years, saying that there has to be strategies beyond just talk. And so, it was in this context that a top official in Israel’s Foreign Ministry said--and this was quoted in the New York Times--“We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater company exhibits. This way, you show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.”

And so, this has been playing out at a lot of cultural festivals, and you’ve covered this on the show before. The Paris Book Fair, which is an enormously important book festival, had a special spotlight on Israel for its sixtieth birthday a couple of years ago. The Turin Book Fair also did. But this--and there were protests- -but they were much quieter than what’s happened now in Toronto, and that’s because of Gaza, I would say. It’s because now, because of the year that we’re in, because of the continued impunity for Israeli war crimes, people are drawing a line and saying this is no time to celebrate.

Full text of Groundbreaking interview.

To the Editor:

Re “In Push to Get Mideast Talks, Obama Pivots” (front page, Sept. 23):

I’m quite sure that in the Middle East, President Obama’s decision to back away from his earlier demand for a freeze on Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank will be seen as something other than a graceful “pivot.”

Israelis and Arabs alike will see it as a cave-in, with the difference being that the Israelis will cheer while the Arabs will be outraged.

If President Obama cannot even get Israel to stop seizing land from Palestinians and building Jewish-only enclaves on it, it’s hard to see how his supposed new focus on such issues as “the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the borders of a future Palestinian state” can possibly get anywhere. And if he’s not willing to stick to his position on what ought to be a comparatively easy issue, it’s hard to believe that he’s really serious about these much more contentious ones.

Even if Americans choose to give him the benefit of the doubt, Arabs probably won’t. To them, this will seem just another reason not to trust American claims of impartiality in Middle Eastern affairs, providing them with another excuse not to offer concessions of their own. - Eric B. Lipps Staten Island 9/23/09

- Israel and the Gaza War -

To the Editor:

Re “The Gaza Report’s Wasted Opportunity,” by David Landau (Op-Ed, Sept. 20):

The only missed opportunity regarding the report by Richard Goldstone was Israel’s illogical refusal to meet with the United Nations commission headed by a respected South African jurist who also happens to be Jewish and a Zionist.

Irrespective of the intention and the Israeli motive, the report concludes that Israel committed “war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity.”

International humanitarian law is the only law binding the world community to some type of law about war. Palestinians will welcome any change to that law so long as it takes into consideration protection of a population that has lived under more than 40 years of a foreign military occupation. - Daoud Kuttab Ramallah, West Bank 9/20/09

The writer is a Palestinian journalist.


The key to today's 9/29/09 edit is the monstrous lie, that Iran is pursuing the deadly path of Israel, which has created a nuclear weaponed arsenal that threatens the entire Middle East and is a blight on the civilized world. In answer to this threat the Good Lord, once again, brings forth authoritative truth in the person of seasoned nuclear arms expert Scott Ritter, interviewed today by DemocracyNow.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Iran test-fired two long-range missiles Monday, just days before Iranian officials are due to meet with the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany to discuss a range of issues, including its nuclear program. Western powers condemned the Iranian test as “provocative” and “deeply destabilizing.” Iranian officials said the missiles were tested as part of an annual military drill and bore, quote, “no connection whatsoever with the nuclear program.”

Monday’s missile tests follow Iran’s disclosure last week of a second uranium enrichment plant. On Friday morning, President Obama, along with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, accused Iran of building a secret nuclear fuel plant.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Good morning. We are here to announce that yesterday in Vienna, the United States, the United Kingdom and France presented detailed evidence to the IAEA demonstrating that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qum for several years.


SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: French President Sarkozy warned that Europe and the United States would tighten sanctions against Iran unless it halted its nuclear program.

PRESIDENT NICOLAS SARKOZY: [translated] Everything must be put on the table now. We cannot let the Iranian leaders gain time while the motors are running. If, by December, there is not an in-depth change by the Iranian leaders, sanctions will have to be taken.


SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Iran, however, refuted Western fears and said its nuclear activities are purely peaceful. This is Iranian delegate Mansour Salsabili addressing the UN General Assembly Saturday.

MANSOUR SALSABILI: The delegation of the Islamic Republic of Iran would like to put on record that these allegations, fears and concerns are totally untrue and without any foundations. Iran’s nuclear activities are, and always have been, for peaceful purposes and therefore pose no threat, pose no threat whatsoever. The IAEA reports bear witness to the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear activities.


SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, my next guest was a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq in the 1990s. Scott Ritter is the author of Iraq Confidential and Target Iran. His forthcoming book is called Dangerous Ground: America’s Failed Arms Control Policy from FDR to Obama. His latest article appears in The Guardian newspaper in London; it’s titled “Keeping Iran Honest,” where he warns against, quote, “politically motivated hype.” Scott Ritter joins us right now from Albany, New York.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Scott.

SCOTT RITTER: Thank you very much.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Begin by explaining why do you call it “politically motivated hype”?

SCOTT RITTER: Well, I think the answer is quite obvious. Look, on Thursday, this coming Thursday, the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China are going to sit down with Iran, ostensibly to discuss, you know, how to break through this impasse that exists between the Western countries and Iran concerning its nuclear program. But the Obama administration has come to a, you know, preordained conclusion that there’s nothing that can be done about Iran’s nuclear program, that Iran either has to get rid of it all, or there’s nothing to discuss about. That’s not much of a--much of a discussion.

Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has a complete inspection regime conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency. It’s not been found to be in noncompliance. And yet, here we are condemning Iran for doing its job, declaring a facility, inviting inspectors in. And the conclusion it’s reached from this? That they’re producing nuclear weapons. This is politically motivated hype designed to create a situation this coming Thursday that will find the United States unable to reach any sort of agreement with Iran about its nuclear program.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: In his comments, President Obama said, “Iran is breaking the rules that all nations must follow.” You write that he’s technically and legally wrong. Why?

SCOTT RITTER: Well, again, Iran is bound by its agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency. These agreements are between Iran and the IAEA. You cannot compare Iran’s arrangement with the IAEA with any other nation, so it’s an absurd argument to begin with.

Second of all, Iran’s agreements with the IAEA are--you know, the current agreements go back to 2003 period, where Iran, in exchange for Europe and the United States recognizing the legitimacy of Iran’s nuclear aspirations--that means to enrich uranium for peaceful energy uses--Iran would voluntarily agree to what’s called the additional protocol of inspections, as well as what’s known as the Subsidiary Agreement. The Subsidiary Agreement requires Iran to declare any facility at the time that it intends to produce it, create it, to build it, as opposed to the old agreement, which said Iran must declare this facility 180 days prior to the insertion of nuclear material. Iran said, “We will abide by this additional protocol of inspections and the Subsidiary Agreement on a voluntary basis, until which time the Parliament of Iran ratifies these new agreements.” These have never been ratified, so this was a voluntary submission on the part of Iran.

In 2007, Iran withdrew from this voluntary arrangement, citing the noncompliance of its partners--Europe, the United States--in recognizing the legitimacy of Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s not in violation of anything. Iran is in compliance, and the IAEA has stated this. The IAEA has said that the fact that Iran was in compliance with the old Code 3.1, the Subsidiary Agreement, the old Safeguards Agreements, means that you can’t find them to be in noncompliance with this new set of arrangements.

The key here isn’t the technicality of the legal documents; it’s about the diversion of nuclear material. And the IAEA has a 100 percent accounting for the totality of Iran’s nuclear material. So, even if Iran produces this new facility, which, by the way, is not in operation and won’t be in operation for over a year, no nuclear material has been diverted, there still is a full material balance, and the IAEA is in complete control of the situation. Iran is not in violation.

This is not a reason to panic. This is much ado about nothing. But again, we come back to the original premise: this is about political hype, the United States hyping up a capability in Iran which doesn’t exist, and that is the capability to produce nuclear weapons.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And the issue of Israel reserving the right to launch a preemptive military strike against nuclear facilities in Iran, how does that play into the upcoming talks and how Iran is reacting right now?

SCOTT RITTER: Well, it’s not just the issue of Israel reserving the right, the issue of the United States reserving the right. Remember, President Obama said that the military option is not off the table. Now, if you’re the Iranians and you make a decision that you strategically require an additional source of energy, such as nuclear energy, to supplement your domestic energy usage so that you free up your oil production and gas production for exportation, so you can earn money, this is a big deal. This isn’t insignificant. And so, you’re building this capability. Israel and the United States say they want to bomb it. What do you do?

Well, the first thing you do is you build redundancy, and that’s what this new Qum facility represents. It’s redundancy. It’s a backup to the Natanz primary facility. Again, it’s been declared, no nuclear material has been diverted. But it’s there as a backup. The second thing you do is you fire off missiles in a warning that you have an inherent right and capability of self-defense.

Israel launched a massive air exercise last year, in which it demonstrated the ability to fly hundreds of aircraft, you know, the distance necessary to strike targets in Iran. The United States is carrying out exercises with Israel as we speak. You know, the bottom line is it’s the United States and Israel which are the more aggressive of the players here. Iran is not an aggressor. Iran has not attacked anybody. Iran is simply trying to do that which it is legally allowed to do: produce enriched uranium for the purposes of nuclear power. It’s Israel, which, by the way, is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, claims it will never be a signatory and has a massive nuclear weapons capability--it’s Israel and the United States which are creating a crisis out of nothing.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And what would you like to see happen right now, in terms of the talks coming up on Thursday? This is the first direct talks between the US and Iran in more than thirty years. What would you like to see happen? And what ultimately can come out of this?

SCOTT RITTER: Well, I’d like to see diplomacy succeed. The bottom line is, the more the United States and Iran talk with one another, the less likely it is that the two will engage in hostile actions against one another. But you can’t have diplomacy if it’s a one-way street. If the talks open up with the United States providing a whole list of demands that Iran must accede to or else the talks will fail, then the talks are doomed to fail.

The United States--you know, here we have a president who says he wants to get rid of nuclear weapons in the world today, and he recognizes that a key aspect of this is a viable, valid nuclear nonproliferation treaty. But for a treaty to be viable and valid, it must be applicable to all powers. That means that when Iran signs the treaty, Iran must not only abide by the treaty, but also to be able to operate fully within the context of the treaty. And Article IV of this treaty clearly allows Iran to have the right to enrich uranium for the use--for use in nuclear power. The United States, in citing the law, must be willing to abide by the law, not only in terms of its own actions, but also to allow Iran full obligations and rights under the law.

If this isn’t what’s going to happen, then these talks are doomed to fail. I want these talks to succeed. And I’m hopeful that the Obama administration right now is carrying out pre-game posturing but, once it comes time to sit down at the table, will actually let the tools of diplomacy work, which means it has to be a two-way street.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And Iran fired these two long-range missiles on Monday. Why do you think that it did that just days before these talks? It’s a sensitive situation.

SCOTT RITTER: Well, I think the answer is obvious. Iran is making it clear that it has its own deterrence capability, that at a time when the United States and Israel and France and Great Britain and others are calling the Qum facility evidence of a covert nuclear weapons facility, raising the specter of a nuclear weapons-armed Iran, creating an emergency-type environment where people are talking about the need and requirement for a preemptive strike, Iran is saying, “You do so at your own peril.” The bottom line is, if Iran is struck, Israeli cities will be struck in return with Iranian missiles, not equipped with nuclear weapons, but with conventional weapons. Iran is simply saying, “We are a sovereign state with our own inherent capabilities for self-defense. And if you attack us, you do so at your own risk.” Is this the ideal situation? No. But then again, it’s not Iran that started this game of saying, “We’re going to bomb you.” Iran is simply saying, “If you choose to attack us, we can and will defend ourselves.”

Again, this is an argument or discussion we shouldn’t be having. If the Obama administration was responsible here, they’d de-emphasize this hype, this politically motivated hype, and deal with the reality that there is no nuclear weapons program in Iran, that the newly declared Qum facility is not a threat to international peace and security, and that when Iran and the United States sits down this coming Thursday, that we will--you know, the United States hopes to find a way out of this morass, that we hope to find a way to peacefully coexist with Iran, an Iran that has a nuclear energy program fully monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Unfortunately, that’s not the premise going forward, and then you get both sides behaving in a precipitous and irresponsible manner. The Iranian missile launch is precipitous, it’s irresponsible, but it’s in keeping with the trend that all parties are participating in.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Scott Ritter, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Scott Ritter was a UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He’s the author of several books, Iraq Confidential, Target Iran. His forthcoming book is called Dangerous Ground: America’s Failed Arms Control Policy from FDR to Obama.


FOR THE RECORD 9/28/09 - To the Jewish/American-dominated Media/Press and their spineless sycophantic (i.e. fawning parasitic) surrogates: (1) Israel has a +200 nuclear weapon arsenal, but has refused to sign the required (by international law) Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. (2) Israel views Iran as an "existential" threat to its ultimate goal of controlling the Middle East, which might be compromised were Iran able to produce electricity by way of nuclear power. (3) The Iranians, since 1948, have observed and now understand the insatiable, ingrained avaricious nature of these Israelis. As such, is it surprising that Iran would secure its nuclear power development facility underground and protected from Israel's extensive spying and sabotage operation (the most sophisticated in the Middle East) protected by Iran's Revolutionary Guard and located under Iran's sacred city of Qum? (4) Our Media/Press needs finally, with this notorious Netanyahu/Lieberman regime empowered in Tel Aviv, to recognize Israel as the ultimate source of much of the bloody chaos on the planet today.

Note: (1*) The Prior History - (2*) "Since 1948... - (3*) "The June 8, 1967 attack on the USS Liberty... - (4*) The Ultimate in Israeli Propaganda, configured 9/26/09 by Mark Landler in Washington.

Note No. Two - on (4*).

- "FOR Michael B. Oren, the hardest thing about becoming Israel’s ambassador to the United States was giving up his American citizenship, a solemn ritual that involves signing an oath of renunciation. He said he got through it with the help of friends from the American Embassy in Tel Aviv who “stayed with me, and hugged me when it was over.”

- "Born in upstate New York, raised in suburban New Jersey and educated at Columbia and Princeton Universities, Mr. Oren considers himself genuinely American. But having lived most of his adult life in Israel -- serving multiple tours in the Israeli Army, once as a paratrooper during the 1982 Lebanon war -- he also considers himself genuinely Israeli."

Question - Did he serve with Rahm "three fingered" Emanuel?

- "FOR the past two decades, Mr. Oren has mixed scholarship with public service."

Declaration - It may be that servicing Israel is not public service.


Recent Background
The 9/25/09 pm edition -

Israeli Relentless Pursuit of Iran
Often With Surrogates
- Margaret Warner's Opening - Jim Lehrer's 9/24/09 NewsHour

JIM LEHRER: The U.N. Security Council held a rare summit today to work toward eliminating nuclear weapons. There were also new calls to confront Iran and North Korea over their nuclear programs.

Margaret Warner has our lead story report.

MARGARET WARNER: President Obama chaired today's meeting of the 15-member Security Council, a first for an American president. And 14 of the 15 council members were represented by heads of government, a rare occurrence.

The sole item on the agenda: passage of a resolution affirming the goals of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation and committing to work more aggressively to achieve them.

U.S. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Now, the draft resolution has been adopted unanimously...

MARGARET WARNER: The president laid out the stakes in stark terms.

BARACK OBAMA: Just one nuclear weapon exploded in a city -- be it New York or Moscow, Tokyo or Beijing, London or Paris -- could kill hundreds of thousands of people, and it would badly destabilize our security, our economies, and our very way of life.

Once more, the United Nations has a pivotal role to play in preventing this crisis. The historic resolution we just adopted enshrines our shared commitment to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons.

MARGARET WARNER: In turn, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev also warned of the risk of nuclear terror. He pointed to the ongoing negotiations between Russia and the U.S., holders of the world's largest nuclear stockpiles.

DMITRY MEDVEDEV, president , Russia (through translator): We've repeatedly stated and reiterated our readiness to move forward to reduce the number of delivery vehicles of strategic defensive arms more than threefold. Our proposals have been tabled in the negotiations we've been holding with the U.S.

MARGARET WARNER: Chinese President Hu Jintao reaffirmed China's policy of no first use of nuclear weapons, but he said the countries with the largest arsenals should take the lead.

The resolution adopted today did not mention Iran and North Korea by name. Even so, those two nations were central to the discussion.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Iran and North Korea have made a mockery of international efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons development.

NICOLAS SARKOZY, president, France (through translator): At this very moment, Iran, since 2005, has flouted five Security Council resolutions. I support the extended hand of the Americans, President Obama. We must bring these dialogue proposals.

But what has it brought the international community? Nothing at all. Just more enriched uranium, more centrifugal machines. And then we have North Korea, and here it's even better. North Korea has been acting in defiance of all Security Council decisions since 1993. They pay no attention whatsoever to what the international community has to say.

MARGARET WARNER: Sarkozy (Sarkozy himself is of Jewish heritage and not an honest broker!) and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the time is fast approaching when harsher sanctions should be imposed against Iran.

In response, Iran issued a statement that said it would take part in "serious and constructive" negotiations, but it said, "Futile and illegal demands of the past years that have proven to be of no avail should be abandoned."

In an interview in today's Washington Post, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his nation would allow its nuclear experts to meet with U.S. and other officials as a confidence-building measure. The U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany are due to meet Iranian negotiators for talks about Iran's nuclear program on October 1st.

As for what the future holds, President Obama acknowledged the difficulties of ridding the world of nuclear weapons.

BARACK OBAMA: Words alone will not get the job done.

MARGARET WARNER: He and many of the leaders around the table left for the Group of 20 economic summit in Pittsburgh this afternoon.

JIM LEHRER (And Mr. Lehrer, himself, is of Jewish heritage and also, therefore, not an honest broker!): Judy Woodruff spoke with Margaret at the U.N. earlier this afternoon.

- Common themes, big differences -

JUDY WOODRUFF: Margaret, hello. This was an historic meeting of the U.N. Security Council. What else can you tell us about the scene, about what took place?

MARGARET WARNER: Well, it was quite a scene, Judy. Before the world leaders actually arrived, it was like a gigantic networking scrum of diplomats and former diplomats, celebrities who have been involved in anti-nuclear weapons work, Ted Turner, Queen Noor, and most especially, four former cabinet secretaries and senators, Henry Kissinger, Bill Perry, Sam Nunn, and George Shultz, who famously, two-and-a-half years ago, wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal called "Towards a Nuclear-Weapons-Free World," and they have actually met with President Obama on this subject.

But then, once President Obama came in, he made a quick tour of the room, shook a lot of hands. And then just, I would say, about a minute-and-a-half or two before he was scheduled to start, President Sarkozy finally made his grand entrance, got halfway through the room and had to sit down.

But once they started, it was very business-like. President Obama gave a quick opening statement. He called for a vote on the resolution. And it was done -- clearly pre-cooked -- in -- I think it was four or five minutes.

But then after that, as the leaders all had their five minutes each to talk, that's when you saw that, despite common themes, there are significant differences.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Elaborate on those differences for us. What do you mean?

MARGARET WARNER: Well, the most -- they have different views about how to even work toward a nuclear-free world and who should take what steps first. But the most significant and immediate one was, of course, over Iran, and you could see it in some of the clips that we ran in my taped piece there.

I mean, Britain and France are very eager -- apparently in private as much as they are in public -- to move toughly against Iran if it doesn't respond soon to the offer that's on the table. China and Russia are still reluctant.

And so, tellingly, though the Americans had hoped that in this resolution, which is very, very broad, it would reference Iran and North Korea, that in fact, in the end, it does not.

- U.S. push for nuclear-free world -

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, since they're not specifically mentioned -- Iran and North Korea -- what exactly, Margaret, is the U.S. trying to accomplish with this?

MARGARET WARNER: Well, Judy, it's a very broad goal. I mean, one, President Obama has said he'd ultimately like to get to a nuclear-free world, but in the meantime, they really want, as you and I talked about last night a little bit, they want to strengthen the international community's ability to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and technology, arms, material.

And several of the leaders, you heard them say today, we really are at a turning point. Suddenly, this nuclear club is about to balloon and mushroom out of control, perhaps even to non-state actors, as Gordon Brown said.

So it's a complicated resolution, and it's many parts. It is mostly setting up the framework for a number of arms negotiations and meetings that are coming up next year on all these topics. I'd say the most important one is that they seem to agree that both the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, need to be strengthened. And they are going to re-open the so-called NPT next year.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So there may be more meat on the bones than it appears?

MARGARET WARNER: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I mean, this was not a, you know, decision-taking or action-taking meeting. But it was getting all of -- to say the Security Council is at a common point about the threat that's out there and broadly what needs to change.

As you can see, there are really sort of three legs of the stool. The nuclear weapons states agree to start cutting their arsenals more aggressively. Everyone agrees that there should be no new nuclear state.

And, finally -- and this is what you heard a lot from the president of Uganda and other non-permanent members -- they said, you know, the developing world needs nuclear energy technology. And the -- the nuclear powers agree that something has to be done to share that technology, that civilian energy use, much more broadly with the rest of the world, with international safeguards.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Margaret, looking back at this whole week, what would you say that the United States has achieved, has accomplished here?

MARGARET WARNER: I'd say in two areas. One was getting this resolution today. And the other was yesterday getting President Medvedev of Russia to say publicly that he would consider sanctions against Iran.

The U.S. came into this week wanting to come up with a united front, as it and Russia and China and Germany and France and Britain head into this crucial October 1 meeting with the Iranians. And so, apparently, President Medvedev came into the meeting. Somebody who was there said he came, you know, essentially ready to play. He was ready to talk about the whole Iran issue.

And he did express, as he has before to President Obama, that he sees a threat from both their weapons development and their missile development. And though Obama advisers insist there's no quid pro quo sought for President Obama's decision last week to change the whole missile defense system in Europe, President Medvedev did say -- and reporters hearing -- that that was certainly a rational decision.

And so -- and then apparently, at the end, interestingly, after they'd had this meeting, before they came to the press, Medvedev asked for a private one-on-one with President Obama, and literally everyone left the room for five minutes, and just they talked with the interpreters. I asked one person if he knew what was said, and he said, "Yes, but I won't tell you."

JUDY WOODRUFF: Margaret Warner, wrapping up the week for us at the United Nations. Thank you, Margaret.

MARGARET WARNER: Thanks, Judy.


- The Rahm Emanuel & Charlie Rose Backup (Speaking of non-honest brokers...) -

JIM LEHRER: And still to come on the NewsHour tonight: the Pittsburgh summit; and the success of "The Lost Symbol."

That follows analysis of the continuing confrontation over Iran's nuclear program. Last night, President Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, discussed with Charlie Rose on PBS the options Iran faces.

RAHM EMANUEL, White House Chief of Staff: Iran has a choice to make whether they want to be a responsible member of the international community and what are the enticements to be part of that or one that's more of a pariah.

CHARLIE ROSE: Does that choice have to be made and how will it be expressed before there is serious engagement between the United States and Iran?

RAHM EMANUEL: You work on both levels simultaneously. They know there are consequences -- there are opportunities to being a member of the international community, and there's consequences to acting as a state that doesn't take the responsibilities as a member of the international community.

CHARLIE ROSE: What is our message to the Israelis if they decide they want to take military action at some point?

RAHM EMANUEL: That I wouldn't do, even though I would like to do it, but that's that.

CHARLIE ROSE: What would you like to say?

RAHM EMANUEL: No way. That is -- that is not something I'm going to comment on here.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK. But the message to Iran: If, in fact, you show, which is a condition, if, in fact, you show that you want to be a part of the community of nations, we're prepared to engage you on all bilateral relationships that exist, whether it has to do with you stopping enriching nuclear fuel...

RAHM EMANUEL: A nuclearized Iran is a threat to the region and...

CHARLIE ROSE: Everybody knows that. Everybody knows that.

RAHM EMANUEL: But as the president was quite clear in both bilat meetings, as well as he's been in his communication to the Iranian government, they have a choice to make. They know the opportunities of those choices and the consequences of those choices.

And they will -- but what will not happen is, as the president said, merely talking for the sake of talking. They know, as Yogi Berra once said, when you get to a fork in the road, take it. They're coming upon that place where they have to take -- choose what type of country they're going to be.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK, now, how do they make that choice? I just want to stay with -- what's the choice they have to make?

RAHM EMANUEL: Well, Charlie, maybe -- Charlie, maybe you need to get them here to talk. That's not my responsibility, to represent the Iranian people, because...

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes, but it is to communicate what you think the choice that the government has to make in order to be engaged by the United States.

RAHM EMANUEL: Right. Well, it's not just -- it's not engagement for the sake of engagement.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

RAHM EMANUEL: It's they understand that, as it relates to a nuclear Iran, what are the consequences of that choice? Now, they know what they have to do. They know what the P5-plus-one is expecting.

CHARLIE ROSE: They know because we've told them?

RAHM EMANUEL: It's been...

CHARLIE ROSE: Been communicated to them?

RAHM EMANUEL: They are aware of the issues that are at play, but it's not just a issue. There's a series of issues that relate to what -- the opportunity of what engagement means and the opportunity of being a country that is not engaged and is acting...

CHARLIE ROSE: And it also has to do with Israeli-Palestinian issues?

RAHM EMANUEL: A whole host of issues that -- and there's a whole host of issues -- they understand them. They, as you know, communicated once a willingness with the United States to discuss the range of issues, both in the region and their role in that.

CHARLIE ROSE: Do you think they could be helpful on Afghanistan, the Iranians?

RAHM EMANUEL: Well, there's no -- yes, they can. They could be helpful. As you know, there's -- Secretary Holbrooke participated in an international conference earlier in the year in which they attended.

CHARLIE ROSE: And could they have...

RAHM EMANUEL: And they have interests there, as well, in a stable Afghanistan.

CHARLIE ROSE: Oh, they're very interested in that, and they are not a friend of the Taliban.

RAHM EMANUEL: You know the history as well as I do.

* It was notable on camera that Mr. Emanuel took the seat directly behind Mr. Obama, a seat reserved for our Secretary of State! This is not the first time that Rahm has insulted Ms. Clinton since the president appointed her and the United States Senate approved her appointment! *


- Bottom Line From David Kay -

JIM LEHRER: You can see all of Charlie's interview by going to a link to his Web site from ours, which, of course, is newshour.pbs.org.

Now, for more on the confronting and engaging of Iran, we go to Ray Takeyh. He advised the Obama administration on Iran policy earlier this year. He's a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His latest book is "The Guardians of the Revolution: Iran's Approach to the World."

And David Kay, he was the U.N.'s chief nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq in the 1990s. He led the search for weapons of mass destruction after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 for the Bush administration. He's now a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.

David Kay, so, you take those words from Rahm Emanuel and all the other words that were spoken at the U.N. and around the U.N. in the last few days, what's changed, if anything?

DAVID KAY: I'm not sure very much has changed. I mean, what you -- the most immediate change has been a new Iranian diplomatic initiative of trying, offering up their scientists, which has been a demand of the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, for years, to talk to the Iraqis -- the Iranian scientists directly, and they have refused.

JIM LEHRER: And that came in the interview with the Washington Post. Ahmadinejad said that, yes.

DAVID KAY: That's correct. And his second one was he would like to have the U.S. supply him uranium, enriched to 20 percent, for a reactor that is run at the University of Tehran. This is a reactor, incidentally, that the United States supplied under the Eisenhower Atoms for Peace program in the mid-1960s, and then it was fueled with high-enriched uranium.

These are, in my view, stratagems, stratagems of engagement, that will, in fact, over time make it very difficult if we -- it's going to be hard not to pick up the offer to talk to Iranian scientists. After all, at the depths of the Cold War, this was one of the things we did with the Soviet Union, and over time it bore fruit.

But to do that at the same time, you go ahead with new sanctions, I think is going to be very hard. That's the game the Iranians play. They understand seams.

JIM LEHRER: Seams?

DAVID KAY: Seams in our diplomacy.

- Diplomacy without concessions -

JIM LEHRER: Is that what you -- you see it the same way, Mr. Takeyh?

RAY TAKEYH, Council on Foreign Relations: Yes, I would agree with that, with one provision. I think the scientist meeting is a little less than meets the eye, because I think the scientists are supposed to meet to figure out how to get the enriched uranium and have a discussion -- sort of a track two discussion among the scientists, as opposed to answering about Iran's nuclear infractions and its past misdeeds...

JIM LEHRER: And it shouldn't be accused with an inspection.

RAY TAKEYH: Right. That's right.

JIM LEHRER: It's not going to be an inspection, the same kind of thing that David Kay did, yes.

RAY TAKEYH: It's a meeting of scientists, not the IAEA scientists...

DAVID KAY: That's correct.

RAY TAKEYH: ... but the different category of scientists. I think the Iranian strategy is becoming apparent, as David suggested, namely to offer tactical accommodations, such as the meeting of scientists and offer of engagements, which is broad-based and rather inconclusive, without making any sort of concessions on the basics of the nuclear program, its size, its scope, and its past activities.

And this actually could succeed, in the sense there's no possible way the United States is not going to engage Iran. We have said we're going to meet on October the 1st. And that process...

JIM LEHRER: That's already scheduled?

RAY TAKEYH: That's already scheduled. And the question is, can Iranians drag out that process in a rather inconclusive way by making slight modifications?

JIM LEHRER: So I'm going to ask you the impossible question. What in the world are they up to? I mean, what does this add up to? I know you don't know what they're up to. Nobody does. But what does it look like they're up to, just delaying things?

RAY TAKEYH: Yes, I think it's a tactic to advance the program and sort of create facts on the ground, and once you create facts on the ground, suggest those facts are irreversible. So if they can continue to advance the program while continuing to have these inconclusive talks, then you have certain situations come about which they will suggest, "We're not going to talk about what we have already, but we talk about future arrangements." Meantime, the program expands in size and sophistication.

JIM LEHRER: And, meantime, the program continues. And where do you think it is right now, David Kay? The question everybody wants to know is, where are they?

DAVID KAY: How long will it take them?

JIM LEHRER: How long will it take for them to have a bomb?

- Two years away from a bomb -

DAVID KAY: Well, I think one weapon, one device, which is not necessarily really a weapon, one device that would explode somewhere in a desert, they're probably two years away from being able to do it. But one device is not significant in terms of really anything in terms of a program. You've got to have a warhead that will work on a missile, that is small enough to work on a missile, and that is dependable.

As I've said several times, you can't Photoshop out a missile that doesn't go off that has a nuclear warhead headed for any place in the Middle East. I think they're 10 years away from having that sort of military program, so I think we have time. But I'm convinced that they're headed -- that's the direction they're going on. They want to gain time.

JIM LEHRER: Is there any question in your mind that that's where they're headed?

RAY TAKEYH: The nuclear weapons program?

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

RAY TAKEYH: No. I think the IAEA has suggested some of the experiments they have conducted, some of the missile technologies they have developed, the mysterious computer lab with sort of a data regarding nuclear weapons designs, and the fact that the country that is rich in oil and natural gas is spending an inordinate amount of money on nuclear programs, while it doesn't actually have an indigenous uranium capacity.

JIM LEHRER: Now, you say "they," of course, the Iranians.

RAY TAKEYH: That's right.

JIM LEHRER: Fit Ahmadinejad into this. What kind of power does he exercise after all of the stuff still going on, the protests over his election?

RAY TAKEYH: I think he's actually strong internally, in terms of the fact that the category of individuals who are in power in Iran has narrowed. The regime has gone through some degree of ideological purges, so more moderate elements and reformist elements have been excised from power, so he's actually in a more commanding situation.

He's probably, in my opinion, the second most important person in Iran, despite the fact that he came to power with electoral irregularities and deficiencies. His position is -- in terms of institutions of Iran, is rather strong.

JIM LEHRER: Second only to Khamenei, the...

RAY TAKEYH: That's right, the supreme leader, yes.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that, that when Ahmadinejad speaks, he speaks for Iran?

DAVID KAY: I think the evidence that we have available -- and we ought to be frank. There's a lot about Iran we don't know. There's no foreign service officer, no member of the intelligence community serving today who has ever served in Iran.

It's an order of magnitude different than, for example, the Soviet Union, where we had a large number of Americans who had served there. We know very little about a very opaque political process. But on the basis of the evidence we have, I think, yes, he's in a strong position.

- Sanctions 'rather irrelevant' -

JIM LEHRER: All right. Finally, when they talk about sanctions, and increasing sanctions, and maybe the Russians might go along, and maybe they won't, but President Obama is determined to increase the sanctions, what kind of sanctions would actually hurt Iran?

RAY TAKEYH: Well, the kind of sanctions that would hurt Iran are the kind of sanctions that would hurt the population of Iran, which has its own difficulties in terms of restricting the amount of petroleum that the country imports. I mean, what you're talking about is cutting people's heating oil in winter and other such impositions on its banking system, financial system.

JIM LEHRER: And that could be done by a multinational...

RAY TAKEYH: I don't see that happening. As a matter of fact, there was the French foreign minister that disparaged that particular sanction, perhaps unbeknownst to his own president.

Also, the sanctions issue is rather irrelevant, because this particular Iranian regime doesn't put premium on economic growth. They put premium on strategic gain. So even if you manage to successfully impose a sanctions regime on them that is coercive and painful, it is unlikely to change their fundamental nuclear objectives.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that, David?

DAVID KAY: I think that's right.

JIM LEHRER: OK.

DAVID KAY: And one difficulty of the fuel oil or gasoline sanction on them that very few people think of, but what happens when the Iranians turn to their next door neighbor, the Shia government in Iraq, and say, "We'd like to have some gasoline from you"? You know, perfectly possible move, because what it would embarrass and hurt the most is the U.S. relationship with the Iraqis.

So I think there are a lot of ways out. I think that's a non-starter. I actually think, if you look at Ahmadinejad's statements at the U.N., what he has really done is made it very difficult for the U.S. to get a coalition that includes the Chinese and the Russians and even the Germans, who have a very different policy than the French, to go along with really tough sanctions at the same time that on the table we have an offer to engage our scientists, we have an offer to, you know, come in and help us with a medical reactor, isotope reactor.

I think these are things that are going to be seen by states that don't want to endorse tough sanctions as an opening. Let's engage the process.

JIM LEHRER: So, gentlemen, are you saying they're winning this game?

RAY TAKEYH: Iranians have been winning this game since 2005. They have managed to advance their program with impunity. Everybody, since 2005, every nation has changed its red lines, including the United States. The one country that has not has been the Islamic Republic of Iran.

DAVID KAY: Jim, if you looked at the number of red lines in the desert that have been crossed since 2005, you'd have a pink desert line between us and the Iranians. We have drawn so many red lines that have been obliterated by a really smart, tactically smart Iranian foreign policy.

JIM LEHRER: So we continue to draw lines, they're going to continue to turn pinker, is that what you're saying?

DAVID KAY: I think that's where we are.

JIM LEHRER: OK. Gentlemen, thank you very much.


- WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS THIS RELENTLESS JEWISH EFFORT, NOW WORLD WIDE (SARKOZI IS JEWISH) TO CRIPPLE IRAN'S EFFORT TO ESTABLISH A NUCLEAR POWER SOURCE, WHICH, UNDER THE TERMS OF THE NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY IS PERMITTED - BUT OPPOSED BY ISRAEL, WHICH HAS A NUCLEAR WEAPON ARSENAL, BUT REFUSES TO SIGN THE NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY!


The 9/23/09 pm edition -

It Has Come To Pass
At this critical time there are several manifestations of media colluding with opposition forces within the government. The most noticeable of course, is the Republican Party repeat of savaging a newly elected Democratic President, the first instance Bill Clinton in 1993, their target now in 2009 Barack Obama. An expose' of the earlier Media/GOP sabotage used Mr. Clinton's goal of universal health care, in which, incredibly, a Rush Limbaugh, little known at that time, replaced the estimable Speaker of the House Tom Foley with the incorrigible Newt Gingrich. That outrage is fully detailed by the brilliant, fully annotated "The Clinton Wars", authored by Sidney Blumenthal. In September of 2009 the full record of the onslaught against Mr. Obama has yet to be analyzed and detailed, but the framework is evident and available.

The present media fiasco over President Obama's effort to provide a non industry-dominated health care is self evident. But several manifestations of media colluding with opposition forces within the government are less obvious, e.g. this case of the military (do you recall Democrat Harry Truman having to dismiss Republican five star General Douglas MacArthur, because MacArthur campaigned rather openly to cross the border into China in the Korean War, in direct contradiction to the order of the Commander in Chief, the President of the United States) the person of the top commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley A. McChrystal overseeing the leaking to the media his classified report of the thousands of additional troops needed in Afghanistan (McChrystal had also been part of the military leadership covering up that Pat Tillman had been killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, an incident for which the "decider", the draft dodger George W. Bush medaled the truly brave trooper Tillman).

Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a legitimate target for an investigation of the source of this CLASSIFIED assessment, Admiral Mullen provided the fodder, i.e. the focus of the 9/21/09 Margaret Warner Lehrer NewsHour "coverage" with which Ms. Warner badgered Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a pointed effort to pressure President Obama and his lead Foreign Policy principal, the President having been headlined by the 9/21/09 N Y Times - "Obama Cautious on Troops" with a subhead "President Obama expressed skepticism about sending more troops to Afghanistan...". In other words, Ms. Warner, who we have seen before, has, as an obvious purpose, the embarrassment of the President of the United States, and the resultant likely promotion of a constant campaign for John Sidney McCain III, and the turncoat Senator Lieberman, Joe, not Avigdor the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Israel, Joe was McCain's first choice for Vice President. Don't be confused. Albert Gore's primary reason for putting Joe on the ticket in 2000 was to break the religious barrier, but also to keep Lieberman under wraps. Gore did not trust him, and his suspicions proved correct. Just Tuesday, 9/22/09, Lieberman, the "independent" senator (independent of all but Israel) sponsored legislation to heighten the nation's terror alert from coast to coast. In tandem with John McCain's blistering of President Obama's sensible awareness of the likelihood of Afghanistan becoming worse than Iraq and Vietnam, Lieberman sees the possibility of a McCain-Lieberman GOP ticket in 2012. It is a truism. Joseph I. Lieberman's only allegiance is to Israel. Which brings us THE subject for our age. Certainly since 1948.

It has come to pass!
- Amy Goodman Notes Hamas Progress Toward Palestinian/Israeli Peace -

Amy Goodman: Obama’s comments come as Hamas has renewed its acceptance of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. In a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh writes, “We would never thwart efforts to create an independent Palestinian state with borders [from] June 4, 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital.” Israel has rejected a full withdrawal to the 1967 borders and is seeking to retain the large settlement blocs that carve up the West Bank. Meanwhile, on the West Bank Israeli troops shot dead an unarmed Palestinian motorist just hours before Tuesday’s talks. The Israeli military said the victim had failed to stop at a military checkpoint.

- Israeli Historian Details Israeli History -
Amy Goodman's partner ANJALI KAMAT: And President Obama yesterday, while speaking, spoke about the need for restraint on settlements. Previously, his language included a call for a complete freeze. Diana Buttu, I wanted to ask you, do you think it was right for Mahmoud Abbas to come here for talks? He’s been criticized by Hamas, by the various groups in the West Bank and Gaza, for coming to these talks.

DIANA BUTTU: He was criticized by everybody. It wasn’t just Hamas. He was criticized by his own party, as well, by all political parties within Palestine, because the view was that this was the first time ever that there was a real push on the part of the US administration, on the part of the Europeans, to make settlements the focus. And so, coming to a meeting without having guarantees that there is going to be a settlement freeze, and not just a freeze, a dismantlement of these settlements, then many feel that he erred and that he’s walked away with virtually nothing.

AMY GOODMAN: Why did he do it?

DIANA BUTTU: I think he was under a lot of pressure. This is a president who does not have the weight of years of lobbying and diplomacy in Washington, but instead is a president who rules over a very divided area. And so, I think with a lot of pressure brought to bear by the US administration, he caved.

AMY GOODMAN: Avi Shlaim in Boston, as you look at what happened in New York, the meeting of Obama, Abbas and Netanyahu, the significance of it, what do you think needs to happen right now?

AVI SHLAIM: The significance of the meeting is that it indicated personal commitment by the American president to pushing forward the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. We’ve had a peace process for decades, but it’s been a process rather than an actual outcome of peace. So, that is the significance of the meeting. It is an attempt by the American president to kick-start the peace process, which has been dormant for eight or nine years.

But it didn’t achieve anything, except the handshake between the Israeli and the Palestinian leaders. And they’ve already started blaming each other. I allocate the blame of the--for the failure fairly and squarely to Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israelis are saying that the Palestinians are stalling and delaying. This is completely and utterly preposterous. It is Israel, by its policy of settlement expansion, which is the main obstacle to any real progress.

And the Israelis have refused to agree to total settlement freeze, which is what President Obama has asked for. And therefore it is clear what he should do next, which is make American support, economic, military and diplomatic support for Israel, conditional on a complete settlement freeze.

ANJALI KAMAT: Avi Shlaim, you’ve been following Israeli-Palestinian relations for several years now. What hope do you hold out for the possibility of real US pressure on Israel, given the power of the pro-Israel lobby over Congress? Stephen Walt, the co-author of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, says in a recent Washington Post op-ed, “Obama and special envoy George Mitchell are negotiating with one hand tied behind their backs, and Netanyahu knows it.”

AVI SHLAIM: One thing is clear: the asymmetry of power between Israel and the Palestinians is such, it is so great that the two sides would never come to an agreement on final status between them. America has to address the balance between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Palestinians have made enough concessions. When they signed the Oslo Accord back in 1993, they agreed to give back their claim to 78 percent of mandatory Palestine, and they settled for a state on the remaining 22 percent of mandatory Palestine--that is, Gaza and West Bank. So the Palestinians cannot make any more concessions.

** If we are going to have a settlement of this hundred-year-old conflict, America has to push Israel into a settlement. That is what no American president has done in the past, partly, as you say, because of the power and influence of the Israel lobby. But the fact that no American president has exercised the full leverage that is available to him doesn’t mean that it cannot be done. It can be done.

America gives Israel money--to be precise, $3 billion a year. It gives Israel arms. And it gives Israel advice. Israel takes the money. It takes the arms. And it rejects the device. So what President Obama needs to do is to make American economic aid and military aid to Israel conditional on Israel taking note of American wishes for the settlement of this conflict. **

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Shlaim, what you’re saying is extremely significant, given who you are, leading scholar, renown in Israel and around the world, served in the Israeli military, now you teach at University of Oxford in Britain. Do you support the BDS movement, the Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement against Israel?

AVI SHLAIM: I do not support the academic boycott of Israel, because I reject it in principle. I’m a believer in free speech, including free speech for Israeli academics. So I’m, in principle, opposed to an academic boycott of Israeli academics and Israeli universities.

** On the other hand, I do support economic sanctions against Israel, because what it is doing is illegal. It is acting illegally. The settlements on the West Bank are illegal, all of them, without any exception, and therefore it is quite right and justified for the American community to--for the international community to put pressure on Israel, to apply pressure on Israel to end the occupation.

And America is, of course, the leading actor within the international community, but there is also European Union, the twenty-seven members of European Union. They also ought to apply economic sanctions against Israel, because Israel has a highly beneficial trade association agreement with EU. And the preamble to this agreement says that Israel must respect the human rights of the Palestinians within its territory, within--under Israeli occupation. Israel systematically violates the human rights of the Palestinians, and therefore EU would be fully justified in suspending this trade agreement until Israel abides by its obligations to respect human rights. **

ANJALI KAMAT: Well, on that note--

AVI SHLAIM: And we have--last week, we had an important report by the UN Human Rights Council, led by Judge Richard Goldstone, an inquiry into the Israeli war in Gaza last December. And it found that there was a pattern of Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, not one or two, but a systematic pattern of war crimes. And the conclusion is that Israeli commanders should face individual criminal responsibility.

It is perfectly reasonable for the American president to turn to Benjamin Netanyahu and say, “This report is very disturbing. It reveals unacceptable behavior on the part of Israel and on the part of Hamas. This is no way to behave, if your aim is peace. And we would like to see a definite change in the pattern of Israeli behavior towards the Palestinians.”

ANJALI KAMAT: Well, Diana Buttu, the US did respond to Judge Goldstone’s report that Professor Shlaim mentioned. The US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said the White House had serious concerns about the report’s focus, excessive focus, on Israel. Given this, can you respond to the US response to the UN report? And also, you’ve had long experience working with negotiations. Do you believe the US can be an honest broker?

DIANA BUTTU: At this point in time, I don’t think so. I think that the US has taken the role of being Israel’s lawyer, as some have put it in the past. But I think that that can be changed.

The question is, is whether the United States is going to focus on upholding human rights and international law, and as Professor Shlaim has mentioned, the two are intricately linked. The issue of Israeli settlements and the way that Israel has flied in the face of international law vis-à-vis the settlements, its treatment of the Palestinian is also a violation of law. And so, the question becomes whether the United States is going to step forward and use the tools that it has to actually effect pressure on Israel.

In the past, when Oslo was signed fifteen years ago, Israel was actually the primary beneficiary of the signing of these agreements. Thirty-four countries established diplomatic relations with Israel. It managed to get economic contracts and ties with countries all around the world, including in the Arab world. And so, Israel has always been a beneficiary of these so-called talks, but it’s never really felt the stick of actually violating international law. So, for me, given the past history of the United States in the way that it’s operated in the past, it has, in fact, been Israel’s lawyer, but I think there is something positive that can come. I think that--

AMY GOODMAN: We have ten seconds.

DIANA BUTTU: --if the Obama administration looks forward and starts to really use that stick, then I think we can move forward.

AMY GOODMAN: Diana Buttu, we want to thank you very much for being with us, and Professor Avi Shlaim. His new book, Israel and Palestine. - DemocracyNow 9/23/09


The 9/16/09 pm edition, which follows, describes Naomi Klein's report of the Toronto Film Festival extraordinary protest against its Spotlighting of Tel Aviv, Israel. Interestingly, that protest was followed in but two days by a 9/18/09 N Y Times article by Ethan Bronner and a Dina Kraft - a lengthy eighteen paragraph piece extolling the virtues of Tel Aviv, with "an undulating skyline of shimmering architecture", but without juxtapositioning their hoped-for "Barcelona of the Middle East" for its 1.5 million languishing Jewish population versus the 1.3 million Palestinians, being starved under Israeli occupation in Gaza, having been subjected to bombardments that have left only six percent of its ancient aquifer with potable water, BY THE DESIGN OF ITS ISRAELI OCCUPIERS! Mr. Bronner and Ms. Kraft are not familiar with Israeli historian Ilan Pappe - and, also by design, neither are the editors of The New York Times, the functionaries of the Anti-Defamation League, the "konspiratsia" of AIPAC, nor the Holocaust activist Ellie Wiesel. These Jewish pressure groups are powerful. For example, Mr. Wiesel is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Our question. When has Ellie EVER promoted peace?! "For as you sow, ye are like to reap."

Yes. It has come to pass...
- Amy Goodman Has A Message for Netanyahu's Israel -

Amy Goodman: Obama to Meet with Netanyahu and Abbas.

The White House has announced President Obama will hold a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in New York on Tuesday. The meeting was scheduled after US special envoy George Mitchell left Israel with no deal on a resumption of peace talks in the region. Talks have been stalled since Israel invaded the Gaza Strip last December. Abbas has repeatedly said that talks will not restart until Israel commits to a complete freeze of settlement building in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Amy Goodman: Israeli Troops Kill Two Palestinians

In Gaza, two Palestinians died after being shot by an Israeli tank Sunday. Israel claimed the men were planting explosives near the Israeli-Gaza border.

Amy Goodman: UN Body Urges Israel to Allow Nuclear Inspections

Overriding Western objections, a United Nations nuclear conference passed a resolution Friday directly criticizing Israel and its secret nuclear weapons arsenal. The UN body voted to urge Israel to accede to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and place all Israeli nuclear sites under UN inspections. The resolution cited “concern about the threat posed by the proliferation of nuclear weapons for the security and stability of the Middle East.” Israeli delegate David Danieli denounced the vote as “openly hostile to the state of Israel” and accused Iran and Syria of “creating a diplomatic smoke screen” to cover up their “pursuit of nuclear weapons.”

David Danieli: “The delegation of Israel deplores this resolution, which serves no purpose of the IAEA and its general conference. The state of Israel will not cooperate in any matter with this resolution, which is only aiming at reinforcing political hostilities and division lines in the Middle East region."

Iranian delegate Ali Asghar Soltanieh praised the UN vote.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh: “This is a very good news and a triumph of the oppressed nation of Palestine, that their voice was heard in the international community, in the IAEA, and action was made to let them know that they are not left alone, homeless, bombarded by Israelis, and being deprived from any basic rights.”

The UN meeting also adopted a resolution last week calling for a Mideast free of nuclear weapons in a near-consensus vote. Israel was the only nation to vote against the measure. - DemocracyNow 9/21/09

Post Script - Gaza Water Supply Nears Collapse

Meanwhile, in Gaza, the International Committee of the Red Cross is warning Palestinians could lose access to a safe water supply at any moment. The warning follows a UN report showing Gaza’s underground water system is on the verge of collapse. The system is Gaza’s only source of drinking water. Just five to ten percent of the aquifer is currently fit for human consumption. - Amy Goodman 9/18/09


An article by Bill Carter in the 9/19/09 N Y Times (Mr. Carter on 10/5/09 will have his mettle tested by the return, with all his baggage in tow, of John Donald Imus Jr. to the airwaves in the lead role of defending the Netanyahu & Lieberman regime, now in the crosshairs of the United Nations AND the rest of the civilized world, as reported by Amy Goodman in the above declaration). Ms. Goodman has the last word, but first Carter and The Times.

- Networks Deplore Fox Ad On Coverage of Protests -

The hostility between the Fox News Channel and its television news competitors, usually barely submerged, exploded into open recriminations Friday over a newspaper advertisement in which Fox accused its competitors of missing the story of the so-called antitax protests in Washington last Saturday.

One of Fox’s main prime-time commentators, Glenn Beck, had been vocal in supporting the event and had a two-hour special on the air Saturday during the event. But Fox News executives generally argue that Mr. Beck is what they label “programming” and not news, because his show is an opinion program.

The heated level of rhetoric was unusual in what is a frequent crossfire between CNN and Fox News. A senior CNN executive acknowledged that the network had never before confronted Fox so openly. Later Friday, CNN ran its own promotional ad on the air saying “Fox News: Distorting Not Reporting.”

Kris Coratti, a spokeswoman for The New York Post, said in an e-mail response that while the paper, a Murdoch rag along with The Wall Street Journal, had a policy of not accepting advertising based on false claims, it was the paper’s judgment that “Fox News was expressing its opinion on how its competitors covered the story in an ad to promote itself.”

- Accused of Promoting the antitax gathering, not just covering it. -

As for Fox News, no executive would respond to questions about the ad. A spokeswoman cited a statement from Michael Tammero, the vice president for marketing, as Fox’s only response. Mr. Tammero did not address the specifics of the coverage provided by the other networks, but seemed to try to expand the accusations to include a contention that Fox’s competitors had given insufficient attention to events of interest to conservative viewers. - Bill Carter 9/19/09

- Again, Amy Goodman and DemocracyNow: Fox News Producer Caught Rallying Anti-Obama Protesters

The website Huffington Post has revealed a producer for Fox News helped rally the crowd during last weekend’s anti-Obama protest in Washington. Video from the rally shows Fox News producer Heidi Noonan raising her arms to urge protesters to cheer louder. Fox News acknowledged Noonan had made a mistake and said she was disciplined. The protest had been heavily promoted by Fox News, especially by anchor Glenn Beck. - DemocracyNow 9/21/09

Another Princeton Economist
Skewers Max Baucus
- A 'Winner's? Curse' -

Uwe E. Reinhardt, a Princeton economist, has a gloomy forecast in assessing Senator Max Baucus's health care proposal. Mr. Reinhardt, writing Friday on the Economix blog says the Baucus plan gives insurance industry almost everything it could have wanted. But he describes a potential "winner's curse".

Because the Baucus plan does little to control runaway medical costs, Mr. Reinhardt says, insurers will still need to raise premiums year after year to keep up - fueling the rising fury of a public that, under Baucus rules, would be forced by a federal mandate to buy the increasingly expensive insurance. (Mr. Reinhardt dismisses the proposed insurance alternative, from new non-profit cooperatives, as "mice that roar.")

"So imagine, if you will, solid-middle-class Harry and Louise, sitting at their kitchen table and beholding the latest premium notice from their friendly private health insurer," Mr. Reinhardt writes. "The private health insurance industry will find itself to be the proverbial flak catcher, and the public's clamor for a public health plan can not be denied."

P.S. - President Obama will, finally, demonstrate to Congress their public responsibility, and that combination of President Obama and the Democratic Party will carry the day.

-- 9/16/09 pm edition. The presentation of real news in real time is complicated by the palpable bias in journalism today, for which this website is titled, bias which saturates the depiction of the most important stories of our time. As an example, the 9/9/09 President Barack Obama address to a Joint Session was one of the most remarkable, salient, forthright, direct and candid addresses to the Congress of the United States in eighty years. But to the US Media/Press it was business as usual. Mr. Obama was faced with, after eight years of Bush/Cheney, the collapse of the financial system and the worst recession since The Great Depression. As is recognized by all, with the exception of our journalists, he delivered one of the most remarkable, salient, forthright, direct and candid addresses to Congress in eighty years. For your referral - Obama in 2012! -

This September of 2009 is also remarkable for several unprecedented revelations about political issues, both here and abroad, normally concealed from public view. Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow on 9/14/09, interviews Ms. Naomi Klein concerning the 10-day 34th Toronto International Film Festival, one of the major worldwide presentations of film, the site this year of an extraordinary protest against Israel.

- No Celebration of Occupation: 1,500 Artists and Writers Sign Letter Protesting Toronto Film Festival Decision to Spotlight Tel Aviv -

A protest at the Toronto International Film Festival has taken center stage after a group of artists and writers signed a letter of protest against the festival’s decision to spotlight the city of Tel Aviv. Activists say the TIFF spotlight plays into Israel’s attempt to improve its global image in the wake of the assault on the Gaza Strip and the ongoing occupation of Palestinian land. Over 1,500 people have signed the letter, called “The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation,” including Jane Fonda, Viggo Mortensen, Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte. We speak with journalist and author Naomi Klein, who helped draft the letter.

Amy Goodman: Explain why the Toronto International Film Festival is celebrating Tel Aviv.

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, this is a very--this is a controversial question. Cameron Bailey, the co-director of the festival, says that it was entirely his decision, that there was no political interference, and we take him at his word. He’s very respected in the film community. But what we are saying is that, whether knowingly or not, this decision fits in with a campaign, a very aggressive campaign, that has been launched by Israel’s Foreign Ministry to use culture really as a weapon to distract attention from the occupation and from the allegations of war crimes in Gaza, but even before the Gaza attack.

And what’s interesting is that in--Toronto has been selected to test market something that is called “Brand Israel,” the rebranding of Israel. And this is because Toronto has really been a kind of a battleground. It has a very strong Palestinian community and solidarity community. It also has a very large and active Jewish community. And it’s been a battle zone. So, actually, Canada has more Israeli diplomats than any other country in the world, because this--including the United States--despite our relatively small population (Canada), because the Israeli government sees Canada as a very important battleground, as a very important testing ground. So Toronto has been selected to sort of test-drive this rebranding campaign for Israel.

And, you know, it’s not our imagination; it’s not a quiet conspiracy. We’ve read about this in the New York Times and Reuters reports. And I’ll just give you one example. A couple of months after the attack on Gaza, as we remember, this was really a turning point in terms of world opinion with regards to Israel. There were protests around the world. In London, there were an estimated 100,000 people in the streets condemning Israel’s actions. Opinion polls were showing a plummeting of support. And more and more people were starting to talk about using tactics like the tactics that were used against South Africa during the apartheid years, saying that there has to be strategies beyond just talk. And so, it was in this context that a top official in Israel’s Foreign Ministry said--and this was quoted in the New York Times--“We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater company exhibits. This way, you show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.”

And so, this has been playing out at a lot of cultural festivals, and you’ve covered this on the show before. The Paris Book Fair, which is an enormously important book festival, had a special spotlight on Israel for its sixtieth birthday a couple of years ago. The Turin Book Fair also did. But this--and there were protests- -but they were much quieter than what’s happened now in Toronto, and that’s because of Gaza, I would say. It’s because now, because of the year that we’re in, because of the continued impunity for Israeli war crimes, people are drawing a line and saying this is no time to celebrate.

Full text of Groundbreaking interview.

The Lehrer NewsHour and Gwen Ifill's 9/15/09 mockery of what we've just read, with the ready complicity of the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, whose affront to his American audience should create a groundswell demand for an immediate halt to the three to four billion$ we give EACH YEAR to the Netanyahu & Lieberman regime. Those monie$ are desperately needed by the American people NOW, as we face our most severe recession since the Great Depression. It is an outrage were we to continue funding such an unworthy "friend" as present day Israel.

- U.N. Finds Evidence of War Crimes in Gaza Fighting -

GWEN IFILL: Now, a strongly worded U.N. report on the Israeli campaign in Gaza. The report focuses on last December's 32-day air and ground campaign in Gaza. The Israeli military offensive followed years of rocket attacks launched into southern Israel by Hamas and other Palestinian militants. Different accounts place the number of Palestinian casualties at or around 1,400, including an undetermined number of civilians. The Israeli government reported 13 Israelis killed during the three weeks of fighting, 10 of them soldiers. The report concludes that Israel deliberately targeted civilians by launching military operations against homes, factories, schools and hospitals in a deliberate policy of disproportionate force. The 574-page report focuses primarily on what it calls grave breaches by Israeli forces, including willful killing, torture, or inhuman treatment, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and extensive destruction of property. The Israeli government did not cooperate with the investigation. The report also determined that Palestinian militant groups violated international law in part because they failed to distinguish between military targets and the civilian population. Israeli officials said today the final report is one-sided, a farce of a human rights fact-finding commission. Hamas also criticized the report, saying it was equating the victim and the aggressor. The report and its recommendations will be presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva later this month.

I spoke with Justice Richard Goldstone, who led the U.N. fact-finding mission, from the United Nations earlier this evening. Justice Goldstone, welcome. We saw what your report's conclusions were today, but what was the impetus for it?

- Impetus for the report -

RICHARD GOLDSTONE, U.N. Human Rights Council: Well, the impetus for it was really the resolution in January of the Human Rights Council which became seized of the issue and called for a fact-finding mission to be dispatched urgently to the region to investigate violations, alleged violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, the law of war. And that's where the origin is to be found.

There was then some debate about the terms of the mandate, and eventually I was given a mandate, together with three fellow members of the fact-finding mission, which we considered to be even-handed and which would allow us to look at all relevant facts and circumstances and allegations in the context of the military operations at the beginning of the year.

GWEN IFILL: The term "even-handed" is the problem that Israel has with the conclusions in the report. Your criticism of Israel seems so much harsher than that of the Palestinians. Why is that?

RICHARD GOLDSTONE: Well, you know, the allegations against the Palestinian armed groups relate to the firing of rockets and mortars, and there isn't much dispute -- there isn't any dispute that they fired those rockets and mortars.

What we looked into was the effect on the civilian population of southern Israel, who were at the receiving end of those rockets and mortars. That was the issue.

In respect to alleged war crimes committed by the Israel Defense Force, it was a lot more complicated. There were 36 incidents we had to look into, some of them disputed. Many cannot be disputed.

So, you know, I don't believe that one can sort of count words or count chapters and say, well, the report deals in X number of pages or X number of words with rockets and mortars in comparison into Y or Z number of pages or chapters dealing with Israeli violations.

GWEN IFILL: You say that you investigated 36 separate incidents. Without Israel's cooperation in getting to the bottom of this, how could you reach a fair conclusion?

RICHARD GOLDSTONE: Well, we had a lot of information to go on. Firstly, we were in Gaza for a number of days. We were able to see with our own eyes what physical damage was done. We were able to hear and see many of the victims who were affected by it, and I'm talking about a lot of women and children and men who lost loved ones, who were injured themselves.

They know what happened to them. And we were able to make an assessment of the credibility with which they spoke to us.

And we had a lot of information that came from Israel, both from the government -- there was a long 160-odd page report from the Israeli government giving their version. We took that fully into account in making our finding. And we had wonderful information, both written and, more important, oral. We had witnesses from important Israeli and Palestinian nongovernmental organizations.

So, really, we had a pretty full picture. Obviously, it would have been preferable to have been able to have as interlocutors members, senior members of the Israeli government and defense force, but obviously we had to do the best we could without that. And the ball's now in their court.

If we've got facts wrong, if they want to contradict them, well, that's absolutely their right. But I find disappointing a simple rejection of the report on grounds that don't begin to deal with the merits or the facts.

- The next step -

GWEN IFILL: Did your investigation lead you to conclude that there are individuals who should be held culpable either on the Israeli or the Palestinian side of this?

RICHARD GOLDSTONE: Well, that wasn't part of our mandate. We looked into the question as to whether violations, war crimes, violations of human rights law were committed. It would be up to a criminal investigator, a prosecutor, hopefully in Israel, hopefully in the Gaza, to look into the question of individual guilt. That wasn't part of our agenda.

GWEN IFILL: But you have recommended reparations be paid to people who suffered?

RICHARD GOLDSTONE: That's correct.

GWEN IFILL: Why is that? And who would pay it, if there's no one to point the finger at?

RICHARD GOLDSTONE: Well, it's a question of government responsibility and possibly the international community. But reparations for victims would be relevant even without establishing the guilt of any particular individual.

GWEN IFILL: So what happens with this now? It goes to the U.N. Security Council, it goes to a war crimes tribunal, and what if Israel chooses not to cooperate in the next step?

RICHARD GOLDSTONE: Well, you know, we've done our work. We've established to the best of our ability and, I would suggest, in an even-handed manner. We've established the facts or some of the facts that are relevant.

We didn't look into every incident, obviously. We had three short months to do our work. And we chose 36 incidents in Gaza to look into.

But the recommendation is that the Israeli authorities and the Gaza authorities should themselves have open public investigations, and there have been none today. The Israeli investigations have been by the military. There have been secret inquiries. That doesn't satisfy -- certainly doesn't satisfy any reasonable, objective observer.

So we've recommended that the Security Council should require domestic investigations, if they're not held in an appropriate manner, to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court.

GWEN IFILL: Justice Richard Goldstone of the U.N. fact-finding mission, thank you so much.

RICHARD GOLDSTONE: A pleasure.


** Israel's response to the report **

GWEN IFILL: We get the Israeli response now from Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the United States.

Welcome, Mr. Ambassador.

MICHAEL OREN, Israeli Ambassador to the United States: Gwen, hello.

GWEN IFILL: Just heard Justice Goldstone say the ball is in your court. What about this report is right, and what about it is wrong?

MICHAEL OREN: Well, let's begin by first expressing Israel's regret for all civilian casualties, whether on the Israeli side or on the Palestinian side. Israel does its utmost to avoid inflicting civilian casualties during military operations. This contrasts us very fundamentally, profoundly with Hamas and Gaza, which does its utmost to maximize civilian casualties on the Israeli side and exults in civilian casualties on its own side, declaring them as martyrs.

The operation in Gaza last winter followed years in which Israel was subjected to rocket fire, over 7,000 rockets fired into southern Israel. At one point, almost a million Israelis were under rocket fire, rockets that were deliberately targeted at our neighborhoods, at our nursery schools, at our hospitals (Evidence!).

And it followed the evacuation of Gaza, in which Israel evacuated 9,000 of its civilians, uprooted its settlements, pulled out its army bases in an attempt to create peaceful conditions along the Gaza border with Israel, and in return it just got this murderous rocket fire (A rewrite of Ariel Sharon's history!).

Ultimately, Israel had no choice but to summon its civilian army and to defend itself. We had appealed to the U.N. for relief. Israeli leaders begged Hamas to extend a cease-fire (And Hamas did. See Avi Shlaim!). All we got was aggression. We had no choice but to defend ourselves here, Gwen.

GWEN IFILL: Why didn't Israel participate, cooperate, tell its side of the story to this U.N. commission?

MICHAEL OREN: Well, first of all, the Human Rights Commission has condemned Israel more frequently than all other nations in the world combined, more than Libya, more than North Korea, more than Saudi Arabia. It's hardly an impartial body. This is the same Human Rights Commission that completely ignored Hamas rocket fire into Israel over the course of four years.

The mandate of the commission said that Israel was guilty of war crimes, said nothing about Hamas in the actual mandate. Even one of the judges involved in the commission had published a letter accusing Israel of unwarranted aggression.

And then, finally, the commission itself, the report, the investigation took place under the auspices of the Hamas-run government in Gaza. Hamas actually picked the witnesses for this commission. So Israel basically was the equivalent of being summoned to a court in which its guilt was already presumed, in which one of the jurors had already declared Israel guilty, and which the witnesses for the prosecution were, in fact, the murderers.

I can't think of any country in the world which would participate in such a farce of justice.

GWEN IFILL: There were also some Israelis, NGOs, nongovernmental organization representatives, the father of an Israeli soldier who's being held, who were flown to Geneva to testify before this committee. Do you not accept their testimony at all?

MICHAEL OREN: I don't know anything about their testimony. The report just came in this afternoon. It's 570 pages long. Israel is a democracy. Israelis have a right to speak out in any forums that they want to. This was an Israeli government decision not to participate, not to cooperate with an investigation which we thought was deeply, deeply biased against us from the very beginning.

- Israel's internal investigations -

GWEN IFILL: Even if you felt it was biased, now it's out there and it says things like you're guilty of war crimes, torture, a grave breach of the Geneva Convention, how do you wipe that slate clean?

MICHAEL OREN: I don't think we have to wipe the slate clean. I think you look at the mandate of this investigation. You saw the way it was conducted, under whose auspices it was conducted.

Israel has deeply investigated its conduct of this operation. We have an open judiciary, a free judiciary. We investigated numerable complaints of irregularities. The army was cleared of virtually all of them (Oh?). In the few cases where it wasn't cleared, they're being thoroughly investigated and even prosecuted.

GWEN IFILL: But Justice...

MICHAEL OREN: There is a clear record established by Israel of the way the campaign was conducted and the immense efforts that were taken to avoid civilian casualties, including leaf-letting civilian areas, making hundreds of thousands of phone calls, sending MSS messages to areas that were about to be attacked to civilians, sort of sacrificing the element of surprise, risking our own soldiers' lives in order to minimize those civilian casualties. All that is a matter of record.

GWEN IFILL: Pardon my earlier interruption. Justice Goldstone said that those internal investigations were not independent and therefore not reliable.

MICHAEL OREN: This is an independent judiciary of a democratic country. I think that, once you start establishing the precedent that democratic countries can't investigate themselves, I think you've got a problem.

I think this report creates a problem not just for Israel, but for all free democracies in the world. It's a victory for terror. It is a major setback for any country, democratic country that is having to face war against an un-uniformed terrorist organization in a densely populated civilian area. I don't think the United States would like to see a similar report mounted against its conduct of its operations in Afghanistan.

GWEN IFILL: Now, Hamas wasn't particularly excited about the contents of this report, either. They felt that it equated the aggressor with the victim. Is there any way that you feel that the two of you might at least agree on this point, that maybe this report is not worth the paper it's printed on? Or do you believe that this is a starting point for a deeper conversation and investigation about the conflict?

MICHAEL OREN: I don't think so. I think that there are discussions going on in Jerusalem tonight between President Obama's special envoy, Senator Mitchell, representatives of the Israeli government, to get peace talks back on track between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the same Palestinian Authority who was overthrown violently by Hamas (In an election supervised by the UN!) in Gaza. I think that is where the discussions should take place, not in a one-sided, biased report whose conclusions were foregone.

GWEN IFILL: Do you believe in any way this report could affect those talks?

MICHAEL OREN: I think it can only harm the ability of free democracies in the world to defend themselves.

GWEN IFILL: Ambassador Michael Oren from the state of Israel, thank you very much.

MICHAEL OREN: Thank you, Gwen.


Immediately Above: The Most Disingenuous
Collaboration of Interviewer & Interviewee
Perhaps Since Watergate!
Much as the above information is selectively redacted by our commercial media, and the so-called public Media, so it is also excised from the BBC. A pattern?

Once again, on 9/16/09, Amy Goodman's DemocracyNow fills the breach, this time with the inimitable Norman Finkelstein -

AMY GOODMAN: A United Nations fact-finding mission has found Israel, quote, “punished and terrorized” civilians in its three-week assault on Gaza earlier this year and cited strong evidence that Israeli forces committed “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions. More than 1,400 Palestinians, about a third of them women and children, were killed in the assault. Thirteen Israelis died.

The 575-page report came at the end of a six-month inquiry and was based on dozens of interviews and investigations. The inquiry was led by Judge Richard Goldstone, the former chief prosecutor of the international courts for Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Judge Goldstone said Israel deliberately attacked civilians and failed to take precautions to minimize loss of civilian life.

JUDGE RICHARD GOLDSTONE: We came to the conclusion, on the basis of the facts we found, that there is strong evidence to establish that numerous serious violations of international law, both humanitarian law and human rights law, were committed by Israel during the military operations in Gaza. The mission concluded that actions amounting to war crimes and possibly, in some respects, crimes against humanity were committed by the Israel Defense Force.


AMY GOODMAN: Judge Goldstone also said there was evidence that Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes by firing rockets into southern Israel.

JUDGE RICHARD GOLDSTONE: Turning to the Palestinian armed groups, there is no question that the firing of rockets and mortars was deliberate and calculated to cause loss of life and injury to civilians and damage to civilian structures. The mission found that these actions also amount to serious war crimes and also possibly crimes against humanity.


AMY GOODMAN: Judge Goldstone’s report will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council later this month. The investigators recommended that the UN Security Council should call on Israel and the Palestinian authorities to launch their own investigations into the conflict within three months. If either side failed to do that, the council should refer the matter to the International Criminal Court prosecutor in The Hague within six months.

Israel, which had refused to cooperate with the investigation, claimed Goldstone’s investigation was biased against Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held consultations with top government officials last night. A senior Israeli staffer told Ha’aretz newspaper, quote, “The goal is to avoid a slippery slope which would lead Israel to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.”

Well, Norman Finkelstein joins us here in our firehouse studio, the author of a number of books, including The Holocaust Industry, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and Beyond Chutzpah. His forthcoming book about Israel’s assault on Gaza is due out at the end of the year, on the first anniversary of the attack.

We welcome you to Democracy Now! Now, this report has just really come out hours ago. Perhaps you’re among the few people outside those who have written the report who have actually read the majority of its contents. Talk about the significance of this.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, the report is the last in a large number of reports that have been issued on the Gaza massacre. There were two significant reports issued by Amnesty International, five reports issued by Human Rights Watch, and a whole slew of Israeli-based human rights organizations have issued reports. But this was the most awaited report of all of them. It was commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council. And Richard Goldstone, as you mentioned in your own introductory remarks, is a significant international figure, legal figure.

So the report basically is consistent with the findings of the other human rights organizations, that Israel targeted civilians, Israel targeted civilians who were carrying white flags, Israel systematically targeted the Palestinian infrastructure. The findings were consistent with those of the other human rights organizations: Israel is guilty of a very significant number of war crimes. And also, the findings which were--other reports, the same conclusions, that the Palestinians were not using hospitals to hide Hamas officials. There’s no evidence that the ambulances Israel targeted were carrying Hamas militants or ammunition. And most significantly, in terms of the coverage during the Gaza massacre, the report found, as did Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, there’s no evidence whatsoever--and I would want to underline that--there’s no evidence whatsoever that Hamas was guilty of human shielding. But on the other hand, there is significant evidence, actually copious evidence, that Israel was guilty of human shielding.

AMY GOODMAN: But on other issues, of Palestinian militants committing crimes against humanity.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: The report found that the Palestinians were guilty of war crimes because of its indiscriminate and intentional firing on civilians in Israel. I’m not trying to make any apologies, but I want to get the facts right. The Goldstone report, like the Amnesty report and the others, you have to look carefully at the proportions. About nine-tenths--literally, about nine-tenths of the Goldstone report, like the Dugard report, like the Amnesty report, about nine-tenths was devoted to Israeli war crimes; about one-tenth was devoted to Palestinian war crimes. And you have to understand why, because you have to look at the comparable damage. The ratio of killings was about a hundred to one: about--exactly thirteen on the Israeli side, about fourteen hundred on the Palestinian side. If you look at the damage, the damage is actually quite astonishing. Israel just systematically blasted everything in sight and reduced it to rubble, whereas on the Israeli side they say that several houses were damaged and one was almost completely destroyed. So if you look at the facts, the facts on the ground, the proportions in the reports, including the Goldstone report, are correct. It’s about ten to one.

And that’s why yesterday’s--or today’s headline in the New York Times is so misleading. It’s like a Pravda headline. It says the Goldstone report finds both sides guilty of war crimes. Well, that’s technically true, but an accurate headline would have read, “Goldstone reports Israel guilty of massive war crimes and also faults Hamas.” That’s what a true headline would have read.

** The 9/16/09 Neil Conan Ken Rudin Talk of the "NATION" (EVERYTHING on TOTN is carefully screened) is as invalid as is Michael Oren on the Middle East. South Carolina's James DeMint is on tape - "if we can stop him on health care, we'll break him, this will be his Waterloo (paraphrased)"! Closing the time frame during the President's Health Care address to the Congress, the South Carolinian Joe Wilson (never heard from before) shouts "You Lie". Unprecedented! And yet, Conan, Rudin, NPR's Mara Liasson and some commentator from South Carolina, see THIS as "business as usual", not directly connected, and not particularly notable. Outrageous! **

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Israel refused to cooperate with the investigation and has claimed the UN Human Rights Council that ordered it was biased against Israel. This is some of what the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson, under the direction of the Bar Bouncer Avigdor Lieberman, Yigal Palmor had to say about the inquiry.

YIGAL PALMOR: This fact-finding mission was established in sin. This is why Israel was unable to cooperate with it. The resolution, in virtue of which the commission was established, was so extreme in its phrasing and in its prejudging of any conclusion that all European countries and other democratic countries did not support it. It was adopted with the support of human rights models such as Libya, Bangladesh, Cuba. This, of course, has no moral value whatsoever. So we didn’t feel that this was binding in any way.

In spite of everything I’ve just said, Israel is going to study this report and to examine it very carefully, as we have with all the national and international human rights reports. We are taking this seriously, and we are committed, as always, to abide by international law.


AMY GOODMAN: Israel’s response to the Goldstone report. Your response, Norman Finkelstein?

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, Richard Goldstone is a very respected jurist, and he also has a long record of being very supportive of Israel. If I’m not mistaken, he sits on the Hebrew University of Jerusalem board of directors.

Now, when the UN Human Rights Council asked Goldstone to chair the mission, originally his mandate was just to investigate Israeli crimes. He himself said he couldn’t fulfill that mandate, unless it was modified and included crimes on all sides. The Human Rights Council said, “Fine. We’ll modify the mandate, and we’ll accept your terms.” At that point, Richard Goldstone accepted to head the mission.

So you have to ask yourself the question: if what the gentleman said were true, why did Goldstone accept? If it were so biased, he always had the option of saying no. Why would a well-known supporter of Israel have accepted that mandate if it were biased against Israel?

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think, Norman Finkelstein, are the limitations of the report?

** NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: The main limitation of the report is it’s all cast in the language of violations of the laws of war. And the fundamental fact about what happened in Gaza is it wasn’t a war. There was no war in Gaza. That’s the main misunderstanding about what happened there. In fact, one of Israel’s leading strategic analysts, he said--after what happened in Gaza, he said the one mistake Israelis are making is that there was a war there. He said there was no war. There were no battles in Gaza.

The picture is fairly clear. Israel flew about 3,000 sorties over Gaza. Every plane came back. None was damaged. None was downed. There was no fighting in Gaza. If you read the reports that were issued by the--the testimonies of the Israeli soldiers, the one consistent theme in all of the testimonies was they never met any Hamas militants, they never engaged in any battles. Some of the Israeli soldiers expressed exasperation: “We came here to fight. We’re not fighting anyone.” There was no--there were no battles. There were no Hamas militants in the field. The basic fact was, as a couple of Israeli soldiers said--one of them said, “This was like PlayStation, a computer game.” Another Israeli soldier said, literally--I’m quoting exactly, almost word for word--he said, “It was like a child with a magnifying glass burning ants.” That’s what Gaza was like.

One soldier after another, literally--I wish listeners would just bring up the report. It’s called “Breaking the Silence.” And then, under--enter under the search mechanism, just enter the word “insane.” One soldier after another after another after another said Israel used insane amounts of firepower. Insane amounts of firepower. There were no soldiers, no battles, but they’re using insane amounts of firepower. One soldier said--two soldiers, actually, talked about how the ground was trembling because of all the bombing and all of the missiles and all of the rockets. Another said that “We were told--even though we were firing in the distance, we were told to evacuate the houses we were in, because the shaking from the distance was going to cause the house to collapse over our heads.”

It was a massacre in Gaza. And you don’t really see that, because they’re measuring everything against what they call the laws of war. But you’re applying laws of war to a massacre. There was no war there. **

AMY GOODMAN: Israel called the attack Operation Cast Lead. It’s interesting, Judge Goldstone’s daughter was interviewed on Israeli army radio. She spoke in Hebrew. And she responded about her father. She described him as a Zionist who loves Israel. She said that “My father took on this job, because he thought he’s doing the best thing for peace for everyone and also for Israel.” The significance of this report now? The UN Human Rights Council will meet the day after Yom Kippur--

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: --in about two weeks, to meet specifically in a special session on this report.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: And what does this mean for Israel? The quote of the Israeli official to Ha’aretz, saying, “We don’t want to be put into the International Criminal Court.”

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: I personally don’t think that’s yet going to go very far, because the US has effective power to block it.

What’s significant about the report, in my opinion, and what’s significant about what happened in Gaza, I think it marks a major turning point. It’s like the Sharpville massacre in South Africa. Now, Sharpville is not Soweto, but Sharpville was a turning point. Richard Goldstone is a liberal. Richard Goldstone is very supportive of Israel. And it’s now marking the breakup of liberal Jewish support for Israel. And as we both know and as all of your listeners know, Jews are overwhelmingly liberal in their sentiment. Seventy-nine percent of Jews in the last election voted for Obama. And what you’re seeing now is the breakup of Jewish support for Israel.

You saw during the Gaza massacre you had some of the old-timers like Alan Dershowitz, Michael Walzer, characters--Martin Peretz, characters like that, you know, kind of comical figures coming out supporting Israel. But if you looked at the younger Jewish--the younger Jewish constituency--bloggers like Matt Yglesias, Glenn Greenwald and so forth--they all opposed the Gaza massacre from almost like day one or day two. And then you had significant defections, like Andrew Sullivan, who--not Jewish, but still a significant figure, who also came out against the Gaza massacre.

So I think now what you’re seeing, especially with the Goldstone report, especially with his stature, especially because he’s Jewish, especially because he’s a liberal, what it’s signaling now, is the breakup of Jewish support and liberal support--and those are basically the same thing--the breakup of liberal Jewish support for Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Norman Finkelstein, I want to thank you for being with us, just recently back from Gaza, visited in June. Norman Finkelstein has written a number of books--among them, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and Beyond Chutzpah. His forthcoming book about Israel’s assault on Gaza is due out on the first anniversary of the attack, on December 27th.

-- 9/14/09 am edition. Find - "public option". Coming next: The Plot Against America. Philip Roth? Dexter Filkins (8/6/06)? James Bamford (2004 - A Pretext For War)?

No! This Brian Ross purported expose' of FBI Director Louis Freeh may be that evidence which establishes that the informed speculation over the last decade regarding September 11, 2001, has been verified - that the 9/11 attack was generally known, in advance, by key individuals in the Bush administration, i.e. Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz - who were pushing for the elimination of Saddam Hussein, and would somehow use a 9/11 as the motivation for an invasion of Iraq, but were caught off guard by the severity of the attack. In that the Ray McGovern/Margaret Warner exchange confirms, along with testimony by Bush's first Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill that the first meeting of Mr. Bush's Principals was dominated by Iraq, it becomes clear that there was no logical or foreign policy reason to take this country to war, EXCEPT a clandestine plot to use the resources of the United States to eliminate what Israel viewed as an obstacle to its plan to control the Levant, AND an oil resource for the Israelis to facilitate their development.

THE Crime
of the Last Half-Century
- ABC World News Tonight 9/10/09 -

NEWSCASTER: Tomorrow is the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. President Obama is going to observe a moment of silence marking the time that each attack occurred. Since that day, though, a nagging question has remained. Could the attacks have been prevented? A top FBI operative says he knows the answer and he's speaking out for the first time. Here's our Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross. Brian.

BRIAN ROSS: That's right. He's coming out of the shadows for the first time to tell ABC News the FBI had hijack ring leader Mohammed Atta in its sights in 2001, but shifted focus to an easier case.

"As a highly praised undercover operative for the FBI for the last 13 years, he was known as Mohammed. His real name is Elie Assaad, a 36-year-old native of Lebanon."

ELIE ASSAAD: I gave 13 years and maybe now is the time people to understand what I did.

BRIAN ROSS: Eight years after the 9/11 attacks, Assaad is now going public for his account of how he says he and the FBI missed a chance to stop the hijackers.

BRIAN ROSS TO ELIE ASSAAD: You could have stopped the attacks?

ELIE ASSAAD: Yes, I could - I'm not 100 percent. I'm 90 percent positive.

BRIAN ROSS: In early 2001 the FBI sent Assaad to infiltrate this small mosque outside Miami. There, he says, he spotted and even recorded conversations with the man later identified as 9/11 hijack leader Mohammed Atta, as well as several others in his group.

BRIAN ROSS TO ELIE ASSAAD: You saw them?

ELIE ASSAAD: Yes, and even I prayed in the mosque, the private mosque, and I went to certain private meetings.

BRIAN ROSS: But Assaad says over his objections, the FBI told him to leave Atta alone and instead to set up and sting two men that he calls wannabe terrorists. Assaad says while he was posing as a bomb maker - he's the one on the right [referring to file video being shown] - and producing weapons for the wannabes, the real terrorists were left alone.

RICHARD CLARKE, FMR. NATIONAL SECURITY OFFICIAL: This is yet another example of the way the system broke down prior to 9/11. And if the system had worked, we might have been able to identify these people before the attacks.

BRIAN ROSS: Shortly after the attacks, Assaad says he identified Atta as the man the FBI told him to leave alone.

ELIE ASSAAD: I was very angry. I was very upset.

BRIAN ROSS: You were that close.

ELIE ASSAAD: It confirmed that my suspicions - were correct. I was right. I was 100 percent right.

BRIAN ROSS: Assaad says the FBI agents have his reports and his tapes documenting what he saw, BUT NONE OF THAT EVER MADE ITS WAY INTO THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT. And tonight the FBI's only comment was to decline to comment.

NEWSCASTER: All right. Our Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross, thanks to you.


"The work goes on, the cause endures,
the hope still lives, and the
dream shall never die."
- EMK -
"Yes We Can!"
- President Barack Obama -
We've lost the last of a band of heroic political giants - Senator Edward Moore "Teddy" Kennedy - and one of them, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the equal of her brothers, and the September 12th spectacle on the Capitol Mall of thousands of decent Americans mislead by national AM radio, headed by such charlatans as Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and speakers such as former House of Representatives MAJORITY LEADER Republican Dick Armey (Does this not tell you about the Republican Party??) now in the employ of Sheldon G. Adelson and guest of Judy Woodruff on Lehrer!!. . .that "demonstration" makes mandatory our need for a new "Band of brothers and sisters" to continue the battle. A starting point could be the full-page ad in the 9/10/09 N Y Times for YesWeStillCan.org, page A-17.


The presidential address to the Congress of the United States - On this ninth day of the ninth month of the ninth year of the 21st Century President Barack Obama delivered an historic presentation to the people and their democratically elected representatives - establishing, finally, the one remaining missing pillar required "in order to form a more perfect Union" - Universal Health Care - opposed for decades by the same enemy of the state, think Republican congressman Joe Wilson, Republican Governor Mark Sanford, Republican Lindsey Graham's Republican Senate mate James DeMint, all from South Carolina (Senator Graham described the President's address as "A Disaster!", although at the time he may not have realized that the "Disaster" related to the Republican Party, not to the President of the United States!), in the tradition of Strom Thurmond! And true to form David Brooks joins the cacophony, emphasis on the "Phony" which David Brooks has evidenced before. This is surely the most artful column that the insidious David Brooks has written about President Barack Obama, save one, "Speech To the Delegates" that he wrote heralding Obama's 365 to 173 electoral victory over John McCain. This time Mr. Brooks associates the President of the United States with The Dime Standard. Mr. Brooks was devastated by McCain's overwhelming defeat. You see, John McCain is one of the best friends of Israel, aside from Joe Lieberman, who was McCain's first choice for VP, a firm supporter even as this Benjamin Netanyahu and Isador Lieberman regime rules!

Yes, we're at war with the same enemy of the United States, the state which fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12th of 1861; confronted this great nation at Ford's Theater in Washington on April 15th of 1865; in Dallas, Texas on November 22nd of 1963; in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4th of 1968; in Los Angeles on June 6th of 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel; in Washington on June 17th of 1972 at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate; in Washington on November 4th of 1980 after Bill Casey, Ronald Reagan's campaign manager and soon to be Director of the CIA, Casey had arranged for the Iranian hostages (under Eisenhower we had overthrown the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammed Mossadegh, thereby violating the principle of national sovereignty) the hostages to be held until Reagan was inaugurated, thus ensuring Jimmy Carter's defeat and humiliation; in Washington on November 8th of 1988 after George W. Bush pushed the scurrilous Lee Atwater Willie Horton ad which, along with the press suppression of George Herbert Walker Bush's longtime affair with his "aide" Jennifer Fitzgerald, buried the Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis.

And in 1994 we had the spectacle of the Rush Limbaugh campaign replacing the distinguished Speaker of the House of Representatives Tom Foley, with the insidious Newt Gingrich, and Republican congresspersons taking over the House, canceling any hope for Health Care Reform, peopling the leadership with such unfaithful marital hypocrites as Henry Hyde of Illinois and Bob Livingston of Louisiana, and setting the stage for the United States Supreme Court December 12th of 2000 Rhenquist, O'Connor, Kennedy, Scalia & Thomas' presidential coup, negating Vice President Albert Gore's presidency, and installing the Bush/Cheney regime in our White House, for the most resolutely destructive eight year period, financially, Constitutionally and politically - in our entire history.

What has been completely forgotten is that THE leading influence on media "Leaders" of NBC (Tim Russert was a classic example), CBS and ABC, i.e. John Donald Imus Jr., Mr. Imus catered to, for example, Ralph Nader and Bill Bradley, virtually dedicating his program in 2000 to the defeat of Albert Gore, and the election of George W. Bush! And now Imus is back, October 5th, thanks to the man who put Limbaugh on the national scene in the beginning, the creator of FOX, Roger Ailes. There are other media problems in place. In the Pacific Northwest there is Oregon Public Broadcasting, OPB, with a management determined to restrict national and international news, particularly that which details the remarkably monumental turnaround of a collapsing financial system inherited from Bush/Cheney, and the heroic step-by-step process to finally, after three decades, put in place health care reform, including the pivotal public option, which this most promising of nations deserves. OPB blocks evidence of both positive progress by the Obama administration, and the negative position of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. In that the regime of Netanyahu & Lieberman is totally anti Middle East, anti world peace, there is zero information of substance on Oregon Public Broadcasting.

A Big Day on the
Health Care Front
To the Editor:

The president clearly stated that waiting for health care reform was not an option. That includes waiting for a “public option.”

It is essential that President Obama stand firmly behind those elected representatives willing to take the health of their constituents to heart. The longer Republicans (and some Democrats) drag their feet and try to thwart true choice, the more Americans will suffer and, in some cases, die.

Acceding to the wishes of the health care industry is not “compromise”; it is an unconscionable abdication of our elected officials’ responsibility to serve the best interests and will of the American people.

We can no longer afford to limp along with half-measures. IF CONGRESSIONAL RECONCILIATION IS THE ONLY PATH TO EFFECTIVE REFORM, THEN CIRCUMSTANCE DEMANDS IT.

Future generations will thank the brave and principled legislators who rose to the occasion and did what was necessary to insure the health, well-being and security of the nation.

Harlan J. Brothers East Haven, Conn., 9/7/09


To the Editor:

Re “Obama to Speak Before Congress on Health Care” (front page, Sept. 3):

You quote an anonymous White House aide as saying that President Obama will do almost anything it takes to get a deal on health care. My response to Mr. Obama is this:

If you forgo meaningful health care reform by omitting a robust public option -- which was, by the way, a compromise in the first place for a single-payer system -- you will lose credibility with Democrats and Republicans alike.

No one will believe that you mean what you say as you will have flip-flopped egregiously on one of the most important issues facing us today. I am a Democrat who maxed out in financial support for you and who worked hard to get you elected. If you do this, if you protect the profits of private industry against the interests of the American people, I will not support you again.

I actually met you, spoke to you face to face and trusted you. I was filled with optimism at your election, as were millions of Americans who are now wondering how this could happen.

Katie Jacob Birmingham, Mich., 9/5/09


- Amy Goodman Weighs In On Health Care Reform -

“California’s Real Death Panels”--Data Reveals California’s Private Insurers Deny 21% of Claims...

AMY GOODMAN: President Obama begins his final drive for healthcare reform tonight with a prime-time, nationally televised address to a joint session of Congress.

Heavy negotiations are underway on Capitol Hill as lawmakers return from August recess. So far, legislation has been approved by three House committees and another in the Senate without any Republican support. Negotiations continue in the Senate Finance Committee, where Chairman Max Baucus of Montana is pressing for a bipartisan deal with his so-called “Gang of Six” senators.

Speculation remains over whether the President will insist on a “public option,” a government-backed insurance plan that would compete with the private sector. Obama met with Democratic congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid at the White House yesterday to discuss strategy on the legislation. Speaking to reporters afterwards, House Majority Leader Pelosi said, for now, a public option is a key component to legislation passing in the House.

REP. NANCY PELOSI: On the public option, I believe that a public option will be essential to our passing a bill in the House of Representatives, because, as the President has said--and I listened to him very carefully--he believes that the public option is the best way to keep the insurance companies honest and to increase competition in order to lower cost, improve quality, retain choice--if you like what you have, you can keep it--and expand coverage in a fiscally sound way, that it saves money. And that’s why--uh, he said, if you have a better idea, put it on the table. And so, if somebody has a better idea of how to do that, put it on the table. For the moment, however, as far as our House members are concerned, the overwhelming majority of them support a public option.

AMY GOODMAN: The insurance industry has spent millions of dollars lobbying against the public option, and it’s unclear if a bill that includes it could pass in the Senate. A possible compromise would be a provision that would “trigger” a public option only if private insurers are deemed to have not provided suitable care. Another proposal would leave the public option out altogether and replace it with a system of nonprofit cooperatives.

Many are looking to President Obama’s speech tonight for answers. His address comes after an August recess consumed by raucous town halls and talk of government-run “death panels.”

Well, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee has just released new data that reveals more than one of every five requests for medical claims for insured patients, even when recommended by a patient’s physician, are rejected by California’s largest private insurers. The group says this amounts to very real death panels in practice daily in the nation’s biggest state.

The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee represents 86,000 registered nurses in all fifty states. Chuck Idelson is the communications director for the group. He joins me here in San Francisco from the studios of Link TV.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Chuck.

CHARLES IDELSON: Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about this data that you’ve just released.

CHARLES IDELSON: Well, this is data that the insurance companies have always wanted to hide, and it’s just now become available. It documents that the insurance companies have denied, in California alone, 45 million claims since 2002, and in the first half of this year alone, their rates continue to skyrocket. Some of these rates ranged as high as 40 percent for UnitedHealthcare’s PacifiCare. And other large, giant insurers like Blue Cross, Health Net, CIGNA, Kaiser were all in the range of 30 percent. So it shows a clear pattern of very high denials by the very insurance companies that people depend upon to assure that they get care they need when they need it.


California Nurses Association
National Nurses Organizing Committee
- Or Rush Limbaugh!

- Insight regarding Media/Press vs Obama administration -

And the Threat Continues
Requiring Constant Vigilance!
- Two items from 9/4/09 -

* Jim Lehrer on 9/3/09 -

Lehrer: The Parliament of Iran has approved most of President Ahmadinejad's new hard-line cabinet. The voting included a defense minister whose choice drew international criticism. Ahmad Vahidi was allegedly behind the bombing of a Jewish center in Argentina in 1994. That attack killed 85 people. Lawmakers also endorsed a health minister who's the first female cabinet member since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

- A Michael Slackman in N Y Times 9/4/09

"Iran’s new government will include Ahmad Vahidi as defense minister. Mr. Vahidi is wanted by Interpol on charges that he helped organize the bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Argentina in 1994 -- charges that Iran says are part of a Zionist plot to undermine the government. The cabinet will also have its first female minister since the 1979 revolution, Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, who will oversee health."

Our own FBI under Louis Freeh thoroughly investigated this Jewish charge and refuted it, acknowledging that a squabble within the Argentine government organized the bombing to embarrass another political faction.

* New York Times front page 9/4/09 -

James McKinley Jr. and Sam Dillon with Houston byline -

"President Obama’s plan to deliver a speech to public school students on Tuesday has set off a revolt among conservative parents, who have accused the president of trying to indoctrinate their children with socialist ideas and are asking school officials to excuse the children from listening.

The uproar over the speech, in which Mr. Obama intends to urge students to work hard and stay in school, has been particularly acute in Texas, where several major school districts, under pressure from parents, have laid plans to let children opt out of lending the president an ear."

As if the above was not enough for an incoming Democratic administration, nationally there has never been such a dearth of legitimate substantive political news and, simultaneously, an unprecedented spike in pro-Israeli thrust propaganda, world wide in the Media/Press. In the United States it is so pronounced that NPR is now known as our National Platform for Republicans, and the associated PRI as well as the recent and current BBC, are recognized as Public Radio Israel, information sources which distort even the post-1948 June 1967 Israeli war in which Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and Syria's Golan Heights, to begin its conquest of the rest of Palestine. This culminated in the 12/26/08 - 1/16/09 merciless brutal land-air mechanized slaughter of the Palestinian people, 1.5 million penned in the virtual prison of Gaza (This website, gopbias.org, has innumerable references which expose the long-range Jewish fixation to occupy the entire Levant, surely the most threatening-to-world-peace obsession on the planet today. Alert!). A more brief and recent synopsis from President Jimmy Carter.

* As this item establishes, the worldwide structure of Jewish propaganda unprecedented since the British Mandate, and designed to produce total Israeli control of the Levant, is self evident. En Garde! Surprisingly, the current Rick Steves TV travelogue is filled with lush Israeli, seemingly tropical, scenes, with no questions as to the source of the aquifers required to transform Israeli desert into paradise. That's water from Occupied Palestine which Palestinians have used for centuries for their figs, their olive groves. One of the larger aquifers is known now as Ariel, as in Ariel Sharon.

All of this also brings to mind an extension of the issue. On Thursday, 9/3/09, Neil Conan devoted his first hour to our war against Afghanistan, which, in itself, is unusual. With the exception of one Ken Rudin, who is called the "Political Junkie" by Conan and monopolizes that first hour every Wednesday, subjects and guests are regularly given the first forty minutes, or the last twenty, of that first hour. The exception on 9/3/09 was Conan, Richard Haass, chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, formerly Henry Kissinger's neighborhood, and Ted Koppel, described by Neil as the "Senior News Analyst for NPR", a title which Scott Simon, who controls NPR's Saturday show Weekend Edition, has bestowed on the 94 year old Dan Shorr. Frankly, all these men have something in common that should cause our Media/Press to question their bona fides. And more specifically, what follows is an "incident" that would have AIPAC, the ADL, and Netanyahu-Lieberman (both the American and the Israeli), Richard Haass and Ted Koppel, SILENT! Rare, indeed! And what is their reaction to this item?

Anecdotally, this produces strange occurrences in the media, as we now move to "Teddy's" highest priority in his last years - meaningful health care reform. From the midst of the television programming celebrating Unites States Senator Edward M. Kennedy's life appeared a promo from the Lehrer NewsHour's Jeffrey Brown that for Monday 8/31/09 the program would feature "the architect for the (health care reform) public option!" Mr. Lehrer had been away, perhaps not approved the subject, so the 8/31 program instead featured a Trudy Lieberman from the Columbia Journalism Review, a Roger Sergel from ABC News (Disney) and a Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for "Excellence" in Journalism! - And these people talked for fifteen minutes, and the audience knew no more about the particulars of Health Care Reform being debated, than they knew at the beginning of the program! But God works in mysterious ways. The 9/1/09 Lehrer program featured Mr. Brown interviewing Yale's Jacob Hacker on the indispensable ingredient for successful Health Care Reform - the public option. The combination of Mr. Hacker and Doctor Howard Dean make clear that the public option is mandatory -

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, Jeffrey Brown has the latest of our conversations about health care reform.

JEFFREY BROWN: In our previous conversations, we have sought the views of a leading hospital CEO, the head of a major health insurer, a former-executive-turned-critic of the insurance industry, and a writer who studied the health systems of other countries.

Tonight - One of the earliest and leading proponents of the so-called public plan, which has become such a focal point in the contentious debate over health care reform -

Jacob Hacker is a professor of political science at Yale University and a fellow at the New America Foundation.

Let me ask you first to define the term. That -- that will help us get started. What exactly do you mean by a public plan?

JACOB HACKER: A public plan is pretty simple to understand.

It's a -- a plan that would be modeled after the Medicare program that Americans are familiar with and like. It would be available to those Americans who didn't have good coverage from their employer. It would also be available to workers who worked in the smallest firms. And it would be made available through some kind of new insurance-purchasing exchange, through which people could get access to both private health insurance plans and this new public plan.

JEFFREY BROWN: And why is it necessary? What -- what -- how does -- how does it do something that you see lacking in the system that we have now?

JACOB HACKER: I like to talk about the three B's of -- of the public plan, that it will be a backup for people who don't have secure coverage today and who want to have a broad choice of doctor, because a Medicare-like plan can provide a very broad choice of doctors and hospitals.

Second, it's going to be a benchmark for private insurance plans. You know, the private insurance market has gotten increasingly consolidated over the last two decades. And, in many parts of the country, 94 percent of local markets, according to the AMA, there really isn't effective competition for private insurers.

And, finally, it's going to be a cost-controlled backstop. That means that it's going to be able to be one of the levers for bringing down costs over time, both by creating a check on private insurers and by innovating in the delivery of and -- and payment for care.

- Public option could keep costs down -

JEFFREY BROWN: But what's the evidence, or is there evidence -- is there evidence that a government-run insurance plan could hold down costs any more than private insurers do now?

JACOB HACKER: Well, there's two sorts of evidence that are pretty telling in this regard.

First of all, over the last 15 years or so, the Medicare program, for all the complaints about it, has actually restrained the rate of increase of per capita costs, cost per person, better than have private insurance plans.

And, in fact, this is -- this is what we find, too, in other countries that have a larger role for the public sector. They have done a better job controlling costs. But the second piece of evidence is -- is a pretty clear one.

When the Congressional Budget Office first looked at a public health insurance plan, when it was estimating the cost of the competing proposals in the House, it estimated that the public health insurance plan could save on the order of $150 billion over 10 years, relative to not having that public health insurance plan in the mix.

JEFFREY BROWN: The -- the main criticism, of course, is that it will crowd out the private sector.

Now, how do you respond to that? Because, in part, what you're saying is that -- that that's in part is what it is intended to do, I guess, to undercut the private -- private insurers to some degree. So, how does it -- how does it do that without ending their role in our system?

JACOB HACKER: Well, I don't think this is going to -- to crowd out the private insurers in any significant way. It will create competition for the private insurers.

I mean, what we're contemplating right now and what our political leaders are contemplating right now is basically requiring that Americans get private health insurance. What people like me who want to have a public health insurance plan are saying is that those -- those private insurance plans, which, right now, have so much of the market, should have to fight for those new customers.

You know, I think that, if you have the public and the private plans competing with each other on a complete level playing field -- no special subsidies for the -- for the public insurance plan, no special subsidies for the private plans, you're going to have a situation in which both the public plan and the private plan -- plans are pressed to improve their operation and focus on value over time.

The Congressional Budget Office, which I mentioned earlier, says that about 10 to 12 million Americans would end up in the public health insurance plan, which is less than 5 percent of the U.S. population. At the same time, the Congressional Budget Office says that more people will have private insurance after reform than before it.

So, the -- the important point is that there be competition. And the worry about crowd-out, it seems to me, is more a defense of having private insurers be in charge of the situation, as they are now. But we know where that has gotten us, toward ever-escalating cost and declining coverage.

- Slow move towards public option -

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, you cited the CBO numbers of the people that might join a plan like this.

What -- what do you see? I mean, I have seen different estimates of how many people might join something like this. How large a percentage of the health care system do you think this government-run plan might become?

JACOB HACKER: Well, the first thing I would say is that -- that we need to move slowly, in terms of making the public health insurance plan available to larger employers.

So, it's, I think, smart to start out by saying that only people who don't have coverage now who are in the -- who are working for the smallest firms have access to this new public health insurance plan. Now, if it's working well, if the level playing field is working, if insurers are being pressed to improve their value, but the public health insurance plan is also providing better customer service and better -- and better services over time, then I think it should be something that should be available more broadly.

I don't have a good estimate of exactly how large the public health insurance plan will be or should be. I think the point is that people are going to vote with their feet.

But I do know that the public health insurance plan is not going to swamp private insurance plans. They are a very resourceful set of companies. I mean, they have over 170 million customers today. They have brand loyalty. They control many local markets.

I think we should be worried about whether or not the public health insurance plan is going to have the ability to come into those markets right away and be able to push for lower prices, for lower premiums, for better service, and for better treatment of customers immediately.

JEFFREY BROWN: But, at the same time, I mean, you know, of course, that there's a lot of people out there who see this as a kind of end-run toward a -- a single-payer plan, and that that's -- the way they look at it is that folks like yourself, that's where you want to get to anyway.

JACOB HACKER: Well, all I can say is that I think that, for most people who work for larger employers, the private health insurance system works pretty well, that we know that private health insurance doesn't work well for people who are in small and low-wage firms. And it clearly doesn't work well for people who don't have health insurance at all today.

So, the idea of creating this new exchange, which, I should say, WILL LET PEOPLE HAVE A CHOICE between public health insurance and a range of private plans, is to try to fix those parts of the employment-based market that just aren't working right now, to make sure that everyone in the United States has health security.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right. So, the big question now, as we sit here today, where there doesn't seem to be the votes for something like this, it's become the focal point for opposition, how central to reform is the public option?

You know now there's a debate about whether it might be delayed, whether there might be a kind of trigger mechanism to put it in later on. If it's dropped, does that end reform, in your view, or is that one way to go?

- Only option with guarantees -

JACOB HACKER: Well, I think we have seen many, many reports of the death of the public plan. And, each time, they have, to paraphrase Mark Twain, proved greatly exaggerated.

It's a bit like those silent movie classics, "Perils of Pauline," where the heroine gets strapped to the tracks, and, at the last minute, the protagonist shows up and saves her from the -- the onrushing train. So, I'm not sure whether the public plan is really on the ropes this time around.

* SINE QUA NON *
Every time we have a big debate about it, we keep coming back to the fact that it's the only option that will provide a guarantee of a backup, a benchmark on private plans, and a real cost-control backstop. And I worry that, if we don't embrace the public plan in some form, we're just going to come back to the table a few years from now, with skyrocketing costs making it impossible for us to fulfill the commitments that we have made in health reform.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, but let me try that one more time. Are we at the point close -- where we're close, or even at the point where it's a make-or-break for progressives, who want to see something done?

JACOB HACKER: Yes, progressives definitely see this as a decisive issue. There are a large number in -- in Congress who say they will not vote for reform if it does not contain a public plan.

And, at the same time, I think there's lots of people who -- in the country as a whole, who don't quite understand what -- why this is such a big issue. I mean, after all, this is a choice between public and private insurance. The majority of Americans in surveys say that, if it is a choice, it's something they support.

* SINE QUA NON *
And, really, we're -- there's a lot of people wondering, is this just about the insurance industry's opposition to this issue, or is there something else that's behind this sort of knee-jerk opposition to the idea of having real competition between a public plan and private plans for these people who don't have coverage today and -- and for workers in the smallest firms?

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Jacob Hacker of Yale University, thank you very much.

JACOB HACKER: Thanks so much for having me.

The Ever-Reliable
Paul Krugman
- Missing Richard Nixon 8/31/09 -

Many of the retrospectives on Ted Kennedy’s life mention his regret that he didn’t accept Richard Nixon’s offer of a bipartisan health care deal. The moral some commentators take from that regret is that today’s health care reformers should do what Mr. Kennedy balked at doing back then, and reach out to the other side.

But it’s a bad analogy, because today’s political scene is nothing like that of the early 1970s. In fact, surveying current politics, I find myself missing Richard Nixon.

No, I haven’t lost my mind. Nixon was surely the worst person other than Dick Cheney ever to control the executive branch.

But the Nixon era was a time in which leading figures in both parties were capable of speaking rationally about policy, and in which policy decisions weren’t as warped by corporate cash as they are now. America is a better country in many ways than it was 35 years ago, but our political system’s ability to deal with real problems has been degraded to such an extent that I sometimes wonder whether the country is still governable.

As many people have pointed out, Nixon’s proposal for health care reform looks a lot like Democratic proposals today. In fact, in some ways it was stronger. Right now, Republicans are balking at the idea of requiring that large employers offer health insurance to their workers; Nixon proposed requiring that all employers, not just large companies, offer insurance.

Nixon also embraced tighter regulation of insurers, calling on states to “approve specific plans, oversee rates, ensure adequate disclosure, require an annual audit and take other appropriate measures.” No illusions there about how the magic of the marketplace solves all problems.

So what happened to the days when a Republican president could sound so nonideological, and offer such a reasonable proposal?

Part of the answer is that the right-wing fringe, which has always been around -- as an article by the historian Rick Perlstein puts it, “crazy is a pre-existing condition” -- has now, in effect, taken over one of our two major parties. Moderate Republicans, the sort of people with whom one might have been able to negotiate a health care deal, have either been driven out of the party or intimidated into silence. Whom are Democrats supposed to reach out to, when Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who was supposed to be the linchpin of any deal, helped feed the “death panel” lies?

- On the degradation of our political system.

But there’s another reason health care reform is much harder now than it would have been under Nixon: the vast expansion of corporate influence.

We tend to think of the way things are now, with a huge army of lobbyists permanently camped in the corridors of power, with corporations prepared to unleash misleading ads and organize fake grass-roots protests against any legislation that threatens their bottom line, as the way it always was. But our corporate-cash-dominated system is a relatively recent creation, dating mainly from the late 1970s.

And now that this system exists, reform of any kind has become extremely difficult. That’s especially true for health care, where growing spending has made the vested interests far more powerful than they were in Nixon’s day. The health insurance industry, in particular, saw its premiums go from 1.5 percent of G.D.P. in 1970 to 5.5 percent in 2007, so that a once minor player has become a political behemoth, one that is currently spending $1.4 million a day lobbying Congress.

That spending fuels debates that otherwise seem incomprehensible. Why are “centrist” Democrats like Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota so opposed to letting a public plan, in which Americans can buy their insurance directly from the government, compete with private insurers? Never mind their often incoherent arguments; WHAT IT COMES DOWN TO IS THE MONEY.

Given the combination of G.O.P. extremism and corporate power, it’s now doubtful whether health reform, even if we get it -- which is by no means certain -- will be anywhere near as good as Nixon’s proposal, even though Democrats control the White House and have a large Congressional majority.

And what about other challenges? Every desperately needed reform I can think of, from controlling greenhouse gases to restoring fiscal balance, will have to run the same gantlet of lobbying and lies.

I’m not saying that reformers should give up. They do, however, have to realize what they’re up against. There was a lot of talk last year about how Barack Obama would be a “transformational” president -- but true transformation, it turns out, requires a lot more than electing one telegenic leader. Actually turning this country around is going to take years of siege warfare against deeply entrenched interests, defending a deeply dysfunctional political system. - Paul Krugman 8/31/09


- The Indomitable Katharine Q. Seelye Prevails -

A new survey finds that whether someone believes controversial statements about the health care overhaul depends on that person’s political affiliation.

The survey, conducted in mid-August for Indiana University, says that when looking at statements that the Obama administration says are myths, Republicans tend to believe the statements and Democrats tend to disbelieve them.

Independents, however, could go either way, believing some and not believing others, so their responses seem to be good indications of where the administration has succeeded and where it has failed.

Here are the statements that independents believed and disbelieved, with assessments of each statement provided in parentheses by Aaron Carroll, director of the university’s Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research, which helped design the survey with the university’s Center for Bioethics.

Clear majorities of independents believe these statements:

* the federal government will become directly involved in making personal health care decisions for the public (Myth) Medicare does not make such decisions now!
* health care will be rationed (Debatable?)
* taxpayers will be required to pay for abortions (Myth)
* waiting time for services like surgery will increase (Debatable?)
* small businesses will be hurt (Nothing to indicate this is so); In fact, the opposite is likely!
* a public option that competes with private insurance companies will be too expensive for the nation to afford (Myth; if anything, a public option will bring costs down);
* a public option will actually increase premiums for those with private insurance (No evidence to suggest this would happen). RIDICULOUS!

At the same time, majorities of independents do not believe these statements:

* the government will make the elderly decide how and when to die (Myth) ABSURD!
* millions of Americans will lose their current health insurance (Such change is prohibited);
* private insurance or employer-sponsored insurance will be eliminated (Myth);
* a public option will put private insurance companies out of business (Myth);
* illegal immigrants will be covered (Myth);
* the elderly will have to undergo euthanasia counseling every five years (Myth) HUH?
* the overhaul will cover more people by making cuts to Medicare (Debatable; there are no cuts in Medicare benefits but the administration proposes to squeeze “waste” from the program).

“The bottom line is that people who are for reform are losing the message war,” Dr. Carroll said. “Some of the things that people believe are factually untrue and some are debatable, but many people believe them to be true anyway.”

There was one item that majorities of both parties and independents agreed to be true -- that limiting the amount of money awarded in malpractice cases would decrease the cost of health care. This item, however, is not in any of the bills. Lawmakers have said it was too contentious to add to big legislative packages that already contained several contentious elements.

- And Ms. Seelye identifies the perpetrators - the "perps"! -

- Sheldon G. Adelson's FreedomWorks - Tea Party "Patriots" - "National Taxpayers Union" - The AYN RAND (Alisa Rosenbaum) CENTER, chaired by Alan G. Greenspan? - Katharine Seelye N Y Times 9/1-2/09

Yet, with less than eight months in office to grapple with the most serious threat to our democracy since the Great Depression - the last time a Republican administration truly menaced the very soul of the Founding Fathers vision - the Republicans led by such disparate figures as Rush Limbaugh and the media darling David Brooks -

- Brooks' 9/1/09 N Y Times column "The Obama Slide - No newly elected president has fallen this fast." Here paragraphs eight and nine -

"The public has soured on Obama’s policy proposals. Voters often have only a fuzzy sense of what each individual proposal actually does, but more and more have a growing conviction that if the president is proposing it, it must involve big spending, big government and a fundamental departure from the traditional American approach.

Driven by this general anxiety, and by specific concerns, public opposition to health care reform is now steady and stable. Independents once solidly supported reform. Now they have swung against it.

AS THE VETERAN POLLSTER BILL MCINTURFF HAS POINTED OUT, PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARD OBAMACARE EXACTLY MATCH PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARD CLINTONCARE WHEN THAT REFORM EFFORT COLLAPSED IN 1994." - David Brooks N Y Times 9/1/09

- We've heard from David Brooks before -

On the day following David Brooks' declaration that "public opposition to health care reform is now steady and stable", The New York Times published two letters dated August 30, 2009 indicating that Mr. Brooks may be (as is usually the case) out of step with the American people, which then poses this question: Why is he all over television, and in the Times? True, he's replacing Bill Safire (AKA Safir). But Safire had respect for his opposition as does the current N Y Times Editorial Page as evidenced by the letters to the editor. Brooks is, of course, Jewish. But so are Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof, and they did manage to fire Bill Kristol! As the letter states the Sunday Times recognizes that "it has become inescapably clear that Republicans are unlikely to vote for substantial reform this year."

- Looking to Save Health Care Reform -

To the Editor:

Re “Majority Rule on Health Care Reform” (editorial, Aug. 30):

You are certainly correct that “it has become inescapably clear that Republicans are unlikely to vote for substantial reform this year,” and you are also correct to warn against further delays and compromises with a party determined to use the health care debate as a partisan tool to destroy the Obama presidency, as Senator Jim DeMint was foolish enough to admit publicly.

But the reconciliation process may not be the best solution because of the procedural hurdles that the opponents of reform can be counted on to raise. A better solution would be for President Obama to try to get the necessary votes for cloture.

The president must exert strong leadership and make it clear to the Democratic caucus in general and the Blue Dog Democrats in particular that for the sake of their party, the country and the future of the Obama administration, they must vote for cloture so that a bill that will accomplish substantive reform can have an up-or-down vote on the floor.

If the Blue Dog Democrats then feel that they must vote against the final bill so that their campaign contributors in the health care industry will not be angry at them, then that is their choice. This plan would enable President Obama to present the country with a real and coherent reform that could be enacted with 51 votes and to avoid a reconciliation process fraught with difficulties and imponderables.

But it depends on the Democrats’ realizing what a catastrophe it would be for the country and for their party if there were no reform or a reform in name only that did not accomplish its purpose. - Michael Ossar Portland, Oregon, 8/30/09

To the Editor:

America should hope that all Democratic senators read and heed your editorial suggesting how their party can enact President Obama’s signature health care reform. Clearly, most aspects of it fit within the rubric of “budget reconciliation.”

Nearly every domestic issue facing the nation is affected by health care costs -- whether it is the fiscal well-being of struggling icons like General Motors; the competitive position of producers of goods and services that have to vie for orders with producers in countries whose governments relieve them of employee health care costs; the individual health insurance costs that are sucked from other consumer spending; or the uncontrollable cost of health care driven by transfer of unpaid medical care of the uninsured to the bills of the insured.

The editorial sagaciously warns that this is the moment. America must hope -- YES, DEMAND -- that pursuit of campaign contributions does not steal this historic opportunity. - Sharon Morrison Whitefish, Montana, 8/30/09

The writer is from Senator Max Baucus' home state!

Our Nation Is In Grave Danger -
From Within
The centerpiece of today's (8/26/09) edit is Russ Mitchell's 8/23/09 interview with Howard Dean, a medical doctor who, more clearly than most, can describe in detail, why the "Public Option" is the linch-pin, the requisite component, the sine qua non of health care reform to bring about a halt in the current rise in cost which could bankrupt our nation. We've just witnessed eight years of Republicanism writ large. Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman spells it out further on AND, obviously, Republicans, even in the guise of Olympia Snowe (up for reelection next year, 2010) are still determined to stack the deck with a so-called "trigger" which, with the GOP, always includes a permanent trigger lock designed to preclude the public option!

- The front page of The New York Times 8/24/09 is headlined "Obama Team Lacking MOST Of Top Players"! Familiarity with administrations of this modern era tells us that the major responsibility of the Chief of Staff of the president, is primarily, directly THAT TASK, seeing to it that those positions are filled in a timely fashion. Regardless of the difficulty THIS is what Rahm Emanuel was hired to do and his lack of performance is a disgrace! Couple this with his petty blocking of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's choice of a close aide in the person of Sidney Blumenthal, and we have a defect in an otherwise quality White House.

This affects everything in the Obama White House, and when it is joined with having miscreants ("depraved" - Random House Dictionary) like the benign appearing Dick Armey, former Republican Party House Majority Leader (Mr. Armey is completely exposed by a substantive Judy Woodruff NewsHour 8/13/09 interview ahead, the devastating effect of which Steve Inskeep tried to smooth over with a restoration interview with Armey on NPR 8/28/09) now in the employ of billionaire Sheldon G. Adelson whose purpose in life, like the current Republican Party including John McCain, is now that of the notorious South Carolina Senator and team mate of Lindsey Graham, James DeMint, who stated that were Republicans able to defeat President Obama on his health care reform it would be Obama's Waterloo - the destruction of his presidency - no matter that it would be a critical blow to Obama's efforts to resuscitate our financial system, brought to the brink of ruin by eight years of Bush/Cheney!

Further, the reliable Robert Pear had a recent lengthy piece on the failure of the Obama administration to even select a Medical Chief - so alarming that the strong West Virginia Democrat Jay Rockefeller stated: "It's a big problem. I can't explain it." - and is a direct commentary on Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel! What the hell has he been doing? Certainly not serving President Obama. AND THAT'S RAHM'S JOB! Who has he been serving? That is, besides himself, which has always been his number one client! And this issue relates directly to the difficulty of responsible Democrats to develop and back responsible Health Care Reform!!

And as you hear Republicans casually throw around statements of "trillions of dollars" regarding Obama's health care efforts, it is well to remember that when George W. Bush took office the public debt stood at $3.4 trillion. When President Obama was inaugurated in January that figure stood at $6.3 trillion, and that was BEFORE he saved the financial system from collapsing!



- THIS ENDS THE ARGUMENT ON HEALTH CARE REFORM! -

Stellar Russ Mitchell Analysis
With Medical Doctor Howard Dean
On Needed Health Care Reform
- CBS Evening News 8/23/09 -

NEWSCASTER RUSS MITCHELL: What will not go away while the president is on vacation is the health care debate. Howard Dean is the former Head of the Democratic Party, a former governor and a medical doctor. I spoke with him earlier today about his prescription for national health care reform.

"There has been a lot of piecemeal health care legislation passed over the years. But how optimistic are you, first of all, that we're going to see a comprehensive health care bill passed in this session of Congress?

HOWARD DEAN, FMR. CHAIRMAN, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL PARTY: I'm pretty optimistic. The president staked his administration on it. I think Congress really wants to do it. This bill's already passed four out of the five committees that it has to pass. So I'm pretty optimistic that we will have real health care reform by the time we're done.

NEWSCASTER: We're hearing the words public option a lot. For those Americans who still don't fully understand what that means, can you quickly give us a definition of public option?

DEAN: Sure. It's very simple. It's the ability of Americans to choose between a private, for-profit health insurer, or a government public health insurance option like Medicare. It's essentially allowing people under 65 to buy into Medicare if they prefer not to be in the private health insurance market. And Medicare can't be taken away from you if you get sick. And it moves wherever you do, and it stays with you if you have a job or if you don't have a job. So it's a lot to recommend it.

NEWSCASTER: The president has hinted that he may take the public option off the table if it means getting a bill passed or not. You are against that. Why?

DEAN: Well, I think if you want real health care reform, you have to have a public option for the people to choose from. It gives people employment - insurance even if they don't have employment. It cuts out a lot of the return on equity and the huge CEO salaries that you're paying for when you pay premiums to a private health insurer. But some people will prefer to stay in the insurance market, the private health insurance market, because they like their coverage. And that's fine, too. That's the nice thing about the president's bill. You get to choose.

NEWSCASTER: We've seen people across the country very angry at what they call a flawed government takeover of health care. They're concerned about the cost as well. In fact, if you look at the president's poll numbers, they have dropped as far as his handling of this health care issue has gone. What is your advice for the president?

DEAN: Stick to it. You know, people value strong leadership, and I still think Bill Clinton's got the best political mind in America. And he said a couple of times last weekend, you know, once the president signs this bill, his numbers will go right back up again. The president set out to reform health care. I think he intends to finish the job and I think he's just hoping that Republicans will help. But if they won't, we can do it ourselves.

NEWSCASTER: Governor Howard Dean, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it.

DEAN: Russ, thanks for having me on.


A Key Disruption
- Obama Team Lacking MOST Of Top Players -

WASHINGTON - As President Obama tries to turn around a summer of setbacks, he finds himself still without most of his own team. Seven months into his presidency, fewer than half of his top appointees are in place advancing his agenda.

Of more than 500 senior policymaking positions requiring Senate confirmation, just 43 percent have been filled -- a reflection of a White House that grew more cautious after several nominations blew up last spring, a Senate that is intensively investigating nominees and a legislative agenda that has consumed both.

While career employees or holdovers fill many posts on a temporary basis, Mr. Obama does not have his own people enacting programs central to his mission. He is trying to fix the financial markets but does not have an assistant treasury secretary for financial markets. He is spending more money on transportation than anyone since Dwight D. Eisenhower but does not have his own inspector general watching how the dollars are used. He is fighting two wars but does not have an Army secretary.

“There’s every reason to be concerned,” said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader. “The president deserves to have his full complement of staff in the different agencies.” - Peter Baker N Y Times 8/24/09

- Full 20 paragraph 8/24/09 article -

- The Addendum -

You may be puzzled by all the attention focused on Attorney General Eric Holder's selection of Special Federal Prosecutor John Durham. After all, everyone knew that the Bush White House criminally abused its captives (Jose Padilla is a prime example) whether or not they were connected to crimes against the United States. What the Bush/Cheney and Republican crowd fear most, as do men like Rahm Emanuel and Charlie Rose, is THE MAJOR CRIME OF THE CENTURY AGAINST THE UNITED STATES being exposed. That is the reason for all the Media/Press attention. Note link to answer below - Emanuel was a member of the I.D.F.

{ What Barack Obama's Attorney General Holder should be focusing is the British effort to uncover the undeniable evidence, the record of our going to war against Iraq, at the insistence of Israel [we hope to post the courageous speech of the singularly iconic United States Senator Edward Moore "Teddy" Kennedy (February 22, 1932 - Washington's birthday - August 25, 2009), Mr. Kennedy's speech opposing our war against Iraq], but using the blood and treasure of the United States and Great Britain. }

UNITED STATES SENATOR EDWARD "TEDDY" KENNEDY
This Is Not To Be Forgotten
- Amy Goodman DemocracyNow 8/28/09 -

- Carter - All Israeli Settlements Should Be Removed -

"Former President Jimmy Carter and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu visited the construction sites of the Israeli separation wall in the West Bank and criticized Israel’s settlements in the region. Carter and Tutu are both part of The Elders, an organization of former global leaders trying to pressure Israel and the Palestinians to relaunch peace talks."

Jimmy Carter: “Although it’s very important now to stop all the settlement building and expansion in all of Palestine, including East Jerusalem, that’s just a first step. The final step will have to be for all Israeli settlements to be removed from Palestine. And let there be an independent nation here on this land where we’re standing side by side in peace with Israel be the ultimate goal.”

- And three of the major websites involved

gazafreedommarch.org
AUPHR.org
West Coast - PDXJustice.org

- "Staff Chief Wields Power Freely" by Peter Baker and Jeff Zeleny N Y Times 8/16/09 -

WASHINGTON -As White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel was the one to bring the hammer down on Sidney Blumenthal.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wanted to hire Mr. Blumenthal, a loyal confidant who had HELPED HER PROMOTE "THE IDEA" (Are Baker & Zeleny trying to rewrite history? It was fact! Led by propagandist Rush Limbaugh, the Republican RightWing used a corrupt national radio spectrum to overthrow a legitimate Democratic House, that of William Jefferson Clinton and Spokane's Tom Foley. And when Jim Lehrer's Elizabeth Brackett revealed same on a later NewsHour, Lehrer dropped her from his program for several years. The world knows the actual truth, thanks to Sid Blumenthal's scrupulously documented eight hundred and twenty-two page true reality check - "The Clinton Wars". And it is remarkably predictive of today's challenge to the Obama presidency and to desperately needed health care reform! Note the preceding Russ Mitchell 8/23/09 exchange with former Chairman of the Democratic Party and Medical Doctor Howard Dean.)...of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” more than a decade ago. But President Obama’s campaign veterans still blamed him for spreading harsh attacks against their candidate in the primary showdown...with Mrs. Clinton last year (Rahm must have dictated this to Baker & Zeleny.).

So Mr. Emanuel talked with Mrs. Clinton, said Democrats (Joe Lieberman?) informed about the situation, and explained that bringing Mr. Blumenthal on board was a no-go. THE BAD BLOOD AMONG HIS COLLEAGUES (Nonsense! This is all about Mr. Emanuel!) was too deep, and the last thing the administration needed, he (Emanuel!) concluded, was dissension and drama in the ranks. In short, Mr. Blumenthal was out (H-m-m-m! Did you know Emanuel was a member of the I.D.F., the Israeli "Defense" Force?).

Perhaps nothing illustrates how far Mr. Emanuel has come than that conversation last month. Sixteen years ago, it was Mrs. Clinton, then first lady, who helped have Mr. Emanuel demoted as a senior official in Bill Clinton’s White House after he ruffled feathers with his aggressive style. Now all these years later, it is Mr. Emanuel telling Mrs. Clinton what she cannot do as a member of the cabinet.

* - Sidney Blumenthal's classic "The Clinton Wars" IS THE POLITICAL READ FOR THE BOTTOM LINE ON LIMBAUGH - GINGRICH - AND THE GOP! An absolute must for current and immediate past national politics! - *

Seven months after moving into his office in the West Wing, Mr. Emanuel is emerging as perhaps the most influential White House chief of staff in a generation. But with his prominence in almost everything important going on in Washington comes a high degree of risk.

As the principal author of Mr. Obama’s do-everything-at-once strategy, he stands to become a figure of consequence in his own right if the administration stabilizes the economy and financial markets, overhauls the health care system and winds down one war while successfully prosecuting another.

If things do not go well -- and right now Mr. Obama’s political popularity is declining, his health care legislation is under conservative assault, the budget deficit is at an eye-popping level and Afghanistan remains volatile -- it is Mr. Emanuel whose job will be on the line before Mr. Obama’s.

[ There is earlier evidence that Mr. Emanuel, not unlike Rush Limbaugh, is more about himself than about the country, these United States, that have given him and his brothers so much. ]

“He’s about to be tested; he’s spinning a lot of plates over there and he breaks a lot of china,” said Joel Johnson, a close friend and fellow veteran official of the Clinton White House. “They’ve had some good success early on, but they’ve got a number of major pieces of the agenda in the queue, and it’s going to be really difficult.”

The caricature of Mr. Emanuel as a profanity-spewing operative has given way to a more nuanced view: as a profanity-spewing operative with a keen understanding of HOW TO EMPLOY POWER ON BEHALF OF A NEW PRESIDENT [Again, nonsense! This is all about Mr. Emanuel who, if memory serves, will spend his vacation in Montana, lining up a retirement spread which will equal Tom Brokaw's, funded by big business interests (General Electric!) which he also served in his career!]...with relatively little experience in Washington.

"At times, it seems as if Mr. Emanuel is White House chief of staff, political director, legislative director and communications director all rolled into one. He has fingers in almost every decision, like who gets invited to social events at the White House and how to shape economic and foreign policy."

(And) Mr. Emanuel casts his net widely, from lawmakers and LOBBYISTS to journalists and CORPORATE EXECUTIVES (Might these include the network of pharmaceutical and health insurance factions which have funded opposition to the public option?). When he took over the chief of staff’s office -- an office that, he makes a point of telling visitors, is eight square feet larger than the vice president’s -- he brought a telephone list of 6,000 names that crashed White House software. - Baker & Zeleny 8/16/09

- Full 55 paragraph 8/16/09 N Y Times article -

Bob Herbert Skewers
Big Pharma & Predatory
Health Insurance
It’s never a contest when the interests of big business are pitted against the public interest. So if we manage to get health care “reform” this time around it will be the kind of reform that benefits the very people who have given us a failed system, and thus made reform so necessary.

Forget about a crackdown on price-gouging drug companies and predatory insurance firms. That’s not happening. With the public pretty well confused about what is going on, we’re headed -- at best -- toward changes that will result in a lot more people getting covered, but that will not control exploding health care costs and will leave industry leaders feeling like they’ve hit the jackpot.

The hope of a government-run insurance option is all but gone. So there will be no effective alternative for consumers in the market for health coverage, which means no competitive pressure for private insurers to rein in premiums and other charges. (Forget about the nonprofit cooperatives. That’s like sending peewee footballers up against the Super Bowl champs.)

Insurance companies are delighted with the way “reform” is unfolding. Think of it: The government is planning to require most uninsured Americans to buy health coverage. Millions of young and healthy individuals will be herded into the industry’s welcoming arms. This is the population the insurers drool over.

- Why the insurers and the drug industry are smiling. -

This additional business -- a gold mine -- will more than offset the cost of important new regulations that, among other things, will prevent insurers from denying coverage to applicants with pre-existing conditions or imposing lifetime limits on benefits. Poor people will either be funneled into Medicaid, which will have its eligibility ceiling raised, or will receive a government subsidy to help with the purchase of private insurance.

If the oldest and sickest are on Medicare, and the poorest are on Medicaid, and the young and the healthy are required to purchase private insurance without the option of a competing government-run plan -- well, that’s reform the insurance companies can believe in.

And then there are the drug companies. A couple of months ago the Obama administration made a secret and extremely troubling deal with the drug industry’s lobbying arm, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. The lobby agreed to contribute $80 billion in savings over 10 years and to sponsor a multimillion-dollar ad campaign in support of health care reform.

The White House, for its part, agreed not to seek additional savings from the drug companies over those 10 years. This resulted in big grins and high fives at the drug lobby. The White House was rolled. The deal meant that the government’s ability to use its enormous purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices was off the table.

The $80 billion in savings (in the form of discounts) would apply only to a certain category of Medicare recipients -- those who fall into a gap in their drug coverage known as the doughnut hole -- and only to brand-name drugs. (Drug industry lobbyists probably chuckled, knowing that some patients would switch from generic drugs to the more expensive brand names in order to get the industry-sponsored discounts.)

To get a sense of how sweet a deal this is for the drug industry, compare its offer of $8 billion in savings a year over 10 years with its annual profits of $300 billion a year. Robert Reich, who served as labor secretary in the Clinton administration, wrote that the deal struck by the Obama White House was very similar to the “deal George W. Bush struck in getting the Medicare drug benefit, and it’s proven a bonanza for the drug industry.”

The bonanza to come would be even larger, he said, “given all the Boomers who will be enrolling in Medicare over the next decade.”

While it is undoubtedly important to bring as many people as possible under the umbrella of health coverage, the way it is being done now does not address what President Obama and so many other advocates have said is a crucial component of reform -- bringing the ever-spiraling costs of health care under control. Those costs, we’re told, are hamstringing the U.S. economy, making us less competitive globally and driving up the budget deficit.

Giving consumers the choice of an efficient, nonprofit, government-run insurance plan would have moved us toward real cost control, but that option has gone a-glimmering. The public deserves better. The drug companies, the insurance industry and the rest of the corporate high-rollers have their tentacles all over this so-called reform effort, squeezing it for all it’s worth.

Meanwhile, the public -- struggling with the worst economic downturn since the 1930s -- is looking on with great anxiety and confusion. If the drug companies and the insurance industry are smiling, it can only mean that the public interest is being left behind. - Bob Herbert N Y Times 8/18/09

- And the public get's it! -

Prescriptions From Obama, and Others
To the Editor:
Re “ ‘Public Option’ in Health Plan May Be Dropped” (front page, Aug. 17):

Reports that the Obama administration is about to abandon a government-run option in reforming the American health care system are deeply discouraging to everyone except the troglodytic right.

It amounts to a near complete surrender to the forces that profit from the dysfunctional system we now have, forces that for decades have ridiculed or ignored the enormous evidence from other Western countries that a government-run alternative is essential. Where one does not exist, health care becomes, as here, selective, ruinously expensive and inefficient; ordinary human greed conquers all. Only when the profit motive is challenged by a deep sense of public ethics is there anything resembling affordable and universal health care.

For the Obama administration to abandon, under pressure from the Republican Party and the aptly named Blue Dogs, the only system that has ever been shown to deliver universal care of any kind at a bearable cost is more than a national tragedy. It adds to the evidence given us by our responses to the economy, global warming -- virtually every major issue involving money, prejudice, class and the character of our other institutions -- that the American political system has become so twisted, over time, that it is no longer capable of rational behavior, or the rational fitting of means to ends.

Daniel Knapp Mill Valley Calif. 8/16/09

To the Editor:
Supposed bipartisanship is a poor excuse for the Democratic Party, elected to reform, to be folding like a lawn chair on the “public option” proposed by President Obama. There are no Republicans who will vote for anything that benefits the average American at the expense of big business.

The Democratic Party seems not to notice that while it may not have the votes in the House or Senate, it has the votes of about 70 percent of the American people in favor of a public option. If this fails, there will be no significant change in health care, as we now pay dearly for it and will continue to do so.

David Walker North Dartmouth Mass. 8/17/09

To the Editor:
The argument that a public option would pose a threat to private insurers only serves to demonstrate the ultimate power of such an option to cut costs for both individuals and small businesses.

Joseph P. Cannavo Flushing, Queens 8/17/09

The writer is a doctor and is unit chief and medical director of the chemical dependency unit at Flushing Hospital Medical Center.

A Last-Minute Bonanza
To Answer Our Shoddy Media/Press
- Here's the fabled Judy Woodruff with the notorious fraud Dick Armey on Jim Lehrer's 8/13/09 Lehrer NewsHour, with Lehrer in attendance!

JUDY WOODRUFF: As the fight over reforming health care spreads from here in Washington, D.C., across the rest of the nation, we hear now from advocates on both sides of the issue.

Former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey is chair of FreedomWorks, a conservative group that has rallied protestors at health care town hall meetings (AGAINST HEALTH CARE REFORM!).

And Richard Kirsch is the national campaign manager of Health Care for America Now, a liberal group which has urged its supporters to turn out at the meetings.

Thank you both for being here. We thank you for being part of this discussion.

And, Dick Armey, I'm going to come straight to you on the basics. You believe that there should be some form of reform of health care, health insurance, but a more limited form than what the president favors.

DICK ARMEY, FreedomWorks (FUNDED BY THE DISREPUTABLE LAS VEGAS BILLIONAIRE SHELDON G. ADELSON!): Yes, I do. And we go back to things I've argued for, tort reform is -- estimates now as much as $100 billion of just sheer abject waste, which, by the way, is a hardship...

JUDY WOODRUFF: Tort reform, for those people who don't know the legal term, means...

DICK ARMEY: Well, lawyers suing doctors and that which causes doctors to order up extra procedures on behalf of patients that are not needed medically, but they need them in case they end up in a courtroom.

I watch this process. The thing that breaks your heart about that is, especially with older folks, to be subjected to extra procedures that are not medically necessary is a very difficult burden for them to carry when they're already oftentimes quite fragile and the procedures themselves can be quite a stressful experience for them.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So tort reform would be an important change for the system (with an assist from the clueless Woodruff, Armey changes the subject to tort reform!)?

DICK ARMEY: That would be a good place to start.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Would that be enough, Richard Kirsch?

RICHARD KIRSCH, Health Care for America Now: That's not the problem Americans face, Judy. Basically, what Americans face is a problem of they don't have a guarantee of good health care they can afford.

Three out of five of the personal bankruptcies in this country are because of medical costs, and most of those people have insurance, but the insurance isn't there when they need it, because if they get seriously ill, it stops paying.

Did you know that premiums in the last decade have gone up four times as fast as wages? People can't afford to get health coverage.

And so we have this tremendous sense of insecurity, and what people need is a guarantee of good, affordable coverage at work or, if they don't -- if they're not at work, to have that coverage there, too. And what we're talking about is basically saying to America: You have good coverage that you can afford.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And you're saying provide that how?

RICHARD KIRSCH: Provide that very simply. What the reforms that we're looking at do two things. First of all, they say, if you're at work, your employer is going to continue to provide coverage at work, or -- and the coverage is going to be good, because there are going to have to be a specified set of good benefits, and if you don't have coverage at work, you're going to go into a new health insurance marketplace where you're going to have a guaranteed choice of coverage that's affordable based on what you earn. It's very simple.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Why isn't that a system that would work?

DICK ARMEY: Well, the biggest problem that they have with this -- this sounds great. I mean, I have to tell you, you're warming my heart.

RICHARD KIRSCH: It is great.

DICK ARMEY: But the fact of the matter is there is a large and growing number of Americans who are actually reading the bills that have come through the House and they just don't believe that. They see this (with my help!) as a hostile government takeover of all health care, where they will be forced into a government-run program, and their health care lives will be managed by the government, just as today's the case in Medicare.

If you're over 65 years old in America today, you have no choice but to be in Medicare. Even if you want out of Medicare, you have to forfeit your Social Security to get out of it. Even if you're a Christian Scientist, you have to give up your Social Security. That's pretty heavy-handed, and people fear that (WHAT IS THIS MOUTHPIECE TALKING ABOUT?).

JUDY WOODRUFF: What about this charge?

RICHARD KIRSCH: Well, I mean, I think what Dick Armey just said is absolutely to the point. He doesn't think Medicare should exist. Basically, Medicare is the system that provides a guarantee of good coverage for seniors in this country.

It is, in fact, what is meant -- your old age means you don't have to worry about not getting the health care you need. That's the same thing we need to do for everybody in this country, but we need to do it in a system that provides choices between regulated private insurance or public insurance. And the point is, we need that guarantee for people to have affordable health coverage.

DICK ARMEY: Let me just be clear about something. I have no problem with Medicare. I was talking to my minister (WHAT?) just last night about it. If you want to voluntarily be a part of it, bless your heart, I'm proud for you. I want you to have it.

But I do have a problem is forcing people in it and be given very, very punitive government sanctions against anybody who would say, "I don't want to be in that program."

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, let's address...

DICK ARMEY: You should have a right to say no to the government and say, "I don't want to be a ward of the state."

JUDY WOODRUFF: What about this very point? He's saying that, under the plan or the plans that are moving through Congress, people would be forced into government health care, either Medicare or some other...

RICHARD KIRSCH: First of all, THAT'S TOTALLY UNTRUE. Under the plans that are being introduced and passed by so far three committees in the House and one in the Senate, people at work would keep their coverage at work, but the coverage would change in the following ways.

Your employer's coverage would have to meet certain minimum standards, so the benefits would have to be good, and the employer would have to pay for a decent amount of your coverage. So that's private insurance at work.

And if you then don't get private insurance at work, what you would do is go into a new health care marketplace where you would choose from multiple private insurance plans, not government plans, private insurance plans, and one new public insurance plan.

That's not a government takeover of anything. It is government regulation so we're sure that health insurance works for you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What's wrong with that...

DICK ARMEY: There's nothing wrong with his story as he tells it. But the fact of the matter is, even the Congressional Budget Office says 100,000 -- or 100 million Americans will lose their -- their...

RICHARD KIRSCH: That's not what they say.

DICK ARMEY: ... their employer-provided insurance. The Congressional Budget Office...

RICHARD KIRSCH: That's not what they say.

DICK ARMEY: This is not quarreling with me.

RICHARD KIRSCH: The Congressional Budget Office actually did an analysis of the House bill. And what it said is, under their bill, the number of people who will be -- not lose their private insurance. The number of people, mostly uninsured people now who will go into the public plan will be 9 million. That's the number in the analysis of the House bill.

DICK ARMEY: Well...

RICHARD KIRSCH: That's the facts. That's what it says.

DICK ARMEY: Well, so we have a difference of information here. But I have to tell you, if you take a look at the unrest that you see brewing in America today, it's precisely because the American citizenry at large does not believe what the government and agents of the government are telling them.

- A public option -

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, let me come back to Richard Kirsch. You -- I understand your point, a big part of your point is that you think insurance companies today have too much power, too much say over what kind of care people get, how much they pay. Explain that to us. What's the problem?

RICHARD KIRSCH: The analogy is pretty simple. You wouldn't be allowed to sell a car that would kill people or a toy that would choke a child. Why should you be allowed to sell an insurance policy that doesn't actually provide good care?

We want to have a system where, when you have health insurance, it means it covers the benefits you need, and you can afford it, and it doesn't stop paying when you have a serious illness.

And we also want to be sure that insurance companies can't continue to deny care, to delay payments, to increase their profits. You know, insurance company executives made $690 million in the last decade of the 10 top companies. That's just not right.

DICK ARMEY: There are 1,300 insurance companies in America today. I'm free to choose from among them, except that the government restricts me from buying across state lines. Remove that barrier and let people be free to purchase insurance wherever they find it in the state.

Can you imagine if we passed a law in Michigan that says you can't buy a car that's made in Alabama? That would be outrageous.

RICHARD KIRSCH: That's not what we're saying.

DICK ARMEY: But that's what we're doing now, so there's plenty of opportunity. And I can fire my insurance company; I can't fire the government. And when the federal government gets control of your health care and exercises the power of the state to punish you, should you try to get out of it and go some place else, you're in real difficulty.

And let me tell you. I can tell you that, because I'm over 65 years old. I know you don't believe that, but it's true. And I have no place to go (Dick! There's always Sheldon G. Adelson!). Either I go to Medicare or I go without.

JUDY WOODRUFF: There's also discussion -- very quickly, Congressman Armey -- about a so-called nonprofit insurance cooperative, which would not have as much power as the government option would. Would you be willing to accept something like that?

DICK ARMEY: Well, you know, it's really funny. I always kind of laugh at these folks, because we have talked about risk pooling and voluntary risk pooling operations on the private sector through private initiative and they've been blocked in Congress by the advocates of single-payer.

Now they say, if the government sponsors the risk pool, this would be akin to Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac. We call it Fanny Med.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So it wouldn't be -- it wouldn't be acceptable?

DICK ARMEY: No, it's a government-sponsored operation, and government-sponsored operations generally malfunction.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What about you and your group, Richard Kirsch?

RICHARD KIRSCH: Right. Medicare has lower inflation...

JUDY WOODRUFF: Would you be willing to go along with a nonprofit cooperative idea?

RICHARD KIRSCH: No, because that's not a public option, because it doesn't have the ability to lower costs and keep insurance companies honest. Co-ops are very nice, but we need...

JUDY WOODRUFF: So here's one thing both of you agree on, but for different reasons.

RICHARD KIRSCH: Neither of us want a co-op, but the difference is, I think we need a public option. People choose private insurance, but we need a plan that will keep private insurance companies honest and make them compete.

AMA data, American Medical Association data, found that 94 percent of the markets in this country are highly concentrated by Department of Justice standards. That means you don't have effective choice. Want to lower costs and keep those insurance companies honest? We need a public option.