From Cynthia McKinney "They're White Just Like Us . . . "

March 16, 2010

"They're white just like us and the people they're killing . . . are Arabs."

This bit of erudition came, with a shrug of the shoulders, at the end of the first session of the newly-formed Russell Tribunal on Palestine. It was not a part of the official record because it was stated in the anteroom, just off the auditorium of the elegantly-appointed Barcelona Lawyers Building where the Tribunal was held. The person making this comment was not an official expert witness--but he was a European who understood the mindset that made Europeans complicit, not only in Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people, but also in Israel's impunity.

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine is organized by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and has local organizing committees in each of the places where sessions will be held: Europe, United Kingdom, South Africa, and the United States. The Tribunal will next venture into London, then to South Africa to ponder the peculiar institution of Israeli apartheid. And finally to the U.S. where the mother of all complicity resides.

The Tribunal stresses its independence from the influence of special interests and each Local Organizing Committee conducts fundraising activities to make each Session a success. Barcelona can be chalked up as a success that serves the Tribunal organizers well for the upcoming London Session. More information on the Barcelona proceedings can be found at http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.net/.

The original Bertrand Russell Tribunal was seated in the mid-1960s and considered the case against the U.S. war against Vietnam. Its second seating was to deliberate on human rights abuses in Latin America. Consideration of the situation of the people of Palestine commands its third seating.

The organizers of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine scoured the globe to find people of conscience to serve as jurors who are noted for acting on their convictions. The jurors include a woman who served with Bertrand Russell on the original Tribunal and another woman whose work eventually was recognized with a Nobel Peace Prize. The Tribunal's mandate is to inform and urge action by a larger community of conscience and its urgency is the understanding that the Tribunal must act in the face of inaction by national and international authorities.

In addition, the "BRussells" Tribunal on Iraq (operating from Brussels, Belgium at http://brusselstribunal.org/index.htm) is the brainchild of Russell Tribunal veteran François Houtart. The BRussells Tribunal was conducted in 2004 and found the United States guilty of committing an act of aggression against Iraq.

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine, Barcelona Session, convened for three days, considered the evidence presented to it, and delivered its decision in response to a series of questions that could be summed up as: "Is the E.U. complicit in Israel's crimes against Palestinians, and if so, in what way? What is the E.U.'s legal responsibility to itself and to international law?"

During the proceedings, I did pose the "Why?" question several times. However, the unofficial respondent answered the question in a way that even I was totally unprepared for: from his gut.

"They're white just like us and the people they're killing . . . are Arabs."

This comment haunted me for the remainder of my European tour. And, it seemed that I could never escape it. In Brussels and then again in Paris; in London, I was consistently reminded of the color line and that I was traveling in places not usually broken by it: economic and political status in these places is as defined by skin color as it is in the United States, the Presidency of Barack Obama notwithstanding.

Combine my European experience with the fact of the illegal pillage of Africa by way of stoked "civil wars" and fake "rebel groups" created for the purpose of facilitating non-African Africa pillage--done since the first Berlin Conference that organized the so-called "Scramble for Africa" at the dawn of the 20th Century. Juxtapose that to the opening of the 19th Century where Africans in Haiti defeated Napoleon Bonaparte's Army. Not only was Africa robbed of its strongest human resources for centuries during slavery, it continues to be robbed of its human and natural resources even now. Africans' patrimony is being transferred, on the cheap, to Europe, the United States, and Israel.

Anyone who doubts these facts should consider the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), now suffering six million dead just since the Rwandan/Ugandan invasion in August of 1998 facilitated by the United States. The tragedy is told in the first United Nations Report on the pillage of DRC, written by Madame Ba-N-Dow, whose life was threatened by those named in the report, causing her to have to go into hiding because she told the truth. Additionally, numerous books and articles on the subject have been written by Camerounian-Parisian Charles Onana of Editions Duboiris, for those who read French, and by Wayne Madsen and Keith Harmon Snow, for those who don't.

As I looked into the faces of Europe's most recent immigrant Africans and Asians, the immigrant wars being fought today inside Europe, Israel, and the United States crystallized in the most dismal of contexts. With each glance into every face, I strained to make eye-to-eye contact to see beyond the face of the individual in order to understand the totality of the life I was encountering. Sadly, the realities all seemed the same: certain Europeans (including certain Americans and Israelis) had arrogated to themselves the right to go into any land, vilify the indigenous, denigrate their culture and dignity, steal the resources, overturn the local economy, destroy the local polities, and ignore the human rights of self-determination and resistance to occupation, and then dare the "others" to emigrate. For context today: Think the Muslim World in Africa and Asia. Think Latin America. Think Gaza.

Everywhere around Europe, as is also the case in Israel and the United States, immigration is an issue. It seems that Europeans--who have a quality of life that includes, among other things, mass transit and continental rapid rail that works, subsidized education, subsidized healthcare, and secure work and pensions--have reached their "immigrant tolerance level:" that is, more "others" are not welcome. And, as in the United States, the role of the special interest media cannot be discounted in the popularization of hate. This is especially sad when one realizes that the Europe of today exists as it does largely because of its past policies and current bondage with the United States that politically and economically wreck the countries of the "others."

For example, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Israel are all diamond trading capitals of the world, yet none of them is a major miner of diamonds. The diamonds mainly come from Africa, and the consequent diamond empire that links all of these capitals was built on slavery and theft. (Please see the film "Diamond Empire" by investigative journalist Janine Roberts, banned in the United States because of its inconvenient, name-naming content.)

Now, take a look at these diamond-producing capitals of Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo, and black South Africa--even post-apartheid--and one quickly grasps the level of theft and criminality that continues still today. Please think about this the next time you are tempted to buy a beautiful sparkling diamond in your local mall jewelry store.

And, for those who have never left America's shores, one need only look inside the United States at the genocide of America's indigenous people and the continued pillage of their land to understand how today's life of largess was made possible by years of mistreatment, lawlessness, and genocide committed generations ago.

In 1948, the cycle began again when Zionists eager to wield state power were placed in control of Palestine by Europeans, Britons, and Americans and created the State of Israel on the land where Palestinians lived.

I inquired of one Israeli testifying at the Tribunal what did Operation Cast Lead tell us about the nature of Zionism. And it was through this line of questioning that I again heard something that I have heard all over the world, but never in the media: "I am an anti-Zionist Jew."

In the United States, Zionists at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) purport to speak for all Jews and they would have non-Jews believe that criticism of them or of Israel is criticism of all Jews. For many that I encounter in the world whose only previous information came from the media, their most startling discovery is that this is a lie. And I have heard some of the most impassioned critiques of Israel's policies toward Palestinians from anti-Zionist Jews. I intend to write more on this later.

Yesterday, it was announced in the English news that blacks and Asians are stopped by the police alarmingly more than whites. The study that published these findings also suggested that if such disparities are allowed to persist, then the communities of color so targeted could become increasingly disenchanted and volatile. London, Paris, and Oakland, California have all burned in recent memory as a result of persistent disparities and loss of hope for change. If unchecked now in communities of color, repression of all will surely be next.

Given my experiences and reflections during this European tour that included the Russell Tribunal; a standing-room-only meeting of Congolese who came from all over Europe to Brussels; a standing-room-only crowd of young people in "the hood" of a Paris suburb attending an event organized by rapper Joe Dalton; and several events in London that included a standing-room-only 9/11 Truth - 7/7 Tube Truth event, I find the observation of the Russell Tribunal attendee both poignant and relevant: It is still possible for people battered by propaganda and lies, covert and false flag operations, and the meanest of media blackouts to see and hear those of us who dissent and act on conscience. Our message is being received. A growing global critical mass see the humanity that binds us together despite the lies and the screens of religion, race, ethnicity, language, gender, and sexual orientation--skillfully used in the past to divide us.

The real message from my Russell Tribunal respondent is clear: Resistance to lies, injustice, war, and indignity is necessary and more people seeing that, join with us in our principled struggle.

For more information on the Barcelona proceedings, please see:

Press TV:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRjG7XrpKZY

The Real news network: http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4882

--
http://dignity.ning.com/
http://www.enduswars.org
http://www.livestream.com/dignity
http://www.twitter.com/dignityaction
http://www.myspace.com/dignityaction
http://www.myspace.com/runcynthiarun
http://www.twitter.com/cynthiamckinney
http://www.facebook.com/CynthiaMcKinney

Silence is the deadliest weapon of mass destruction.

The Map: The Story of Palestinian Nationhood Thwarted After the League of Nations Recognized It

On March 10, I posted on the humiliation heaped on Vice President Joe Biden by the Israeli government of far-right Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu. Biden went to Israel intending to help kick off indirect negotiations between Netanyahu and Palestine Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. Biden had no sooner arrived than the Israelis announced that they would build 1600 new households on Palestinian territory that they had unilaterally annexed to Jerusalem. Since expanding Israeli colonization of Palestinian land had been the sticking point causing Abbas to refuse to engage in negotiations, and, indeed, to threaten to resign, this step was sure to scuttle the very talks Biden had come to inaugurate. And it did.

The tiff between the US and Israel is less important that the worrisome growth of tension between Palestinians and Israelis as the Israelis have claimed more and more sites sacred to the Palestinians as well. There is talk of a third Intifada or Palestinian uprising.

As part of my original posting, I mirrored a map of modern Palestinian history that has the virtue of showing graphically what has happened to the Palestinians politically and territorially in the past century.



Andrew Sullivan then mirrored the map from my site, which set off a lot of thunder and noise among anti-Palestinian writers like Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, but shed very little light.

The map is useful and accurate. It begins by showing the British Mandate of Palestine as of the mid-1920s. The British conquered the Ottoman districts that came to be the Mandate during World War I (the Ottoman sultan threw in with Austria and Germany against Britain, France and Russia, mainly out of fear of Russia).

But because of the rise of the League of Nations and the influence of President Woodrow Wilson's ideas about self-determination, Britain and France could not decently simply make their new, previously Ottoman territories into mere colonies. The League of Nations awarded them "Mandates." Britain got Palestine, France got Syria (which it made into Syria and Lebanon), Britain got Iraq.

The League of Nations Covenant spelled out what a Class A Mandate (i.e. territory that had been Ottoman) was:

"Article 22. Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognised subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory [i.e., a Western power] until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory."

That is, the purpose of the later British Mandate of Palestine, of the French Mandate of Syria, of the British Mandate of Iraq, was to 'render administrative advice and assistance" to these peoples in preparation for their becoming independent states, an achievement that they were recognized as not far from attaining. The Covenant was written before the actual Mandates were established, but Palestine was a Class A Mandate and so the language of the Covenant was applicable to it. The territory that formed the British Mandate of Iraq was the same territory that became independent Iraq, and the same could have been expected of the British Mandate of Palestine. (Even class B Mandates like Togo have become nation-states, but the poor Palestinians are just stateless prisoners in colonial cantons).

The first map thus shows what the League of Nations imagined would become the state of Palestine. The economist published an odd assertion that the Negev Desert was 'empty' and should not have been shown in the first map. But it wasn't and isn't empty; Palestinian Bedouin live there, and they and the desert were recognized by the League of Nations as belonging to the Mandate of Palestine, a state-in-training. The Mandate of Palestine also had a charge to allow for the establishment of a 'homeland' in Palestine for Jews (because of the 1917 Balfour Declaration), but nobody among League of Nations officialdom at that time imagined it would be a whole and competing territorial state. There was no prospect of more than a few tens of thousands of Jews settling in Palestine, as of the mid-1920s. (They are shown in white on the first map, refuting those who mysteriously complained that the maps alternated between showing sovereignty and showing population). As late as the 1939 British White Paper, British officials imagined that the Mandate would emerge as an independent Palestinian state within 10 years.

In 1851, there had been 327,000 Palestinians (yes, the word 'Filistin' was current then) and other non-Jews, and only 13,000 Jews. In 1925, after decades of determined Jewish immigration, there were a little over 100,000 Jews, and there were 765,000 mostly Palestinian non-Jews in the British Mandate of Palestine. For historical demography of this area, see Justin McCarthy's painstaking calculations; it is not true, as sometimes is claimed, that we cannot know anything about population figures in this region. See also his journal article, reprinted at this site. The Palestinian population grew because of rapid population growth, not in-migration, which was minor. The common allegation that Jerusalem had a Jewish majority at some point in the 19th century is meaningless. Jerusalem was a small town in 1851, and many pious or indigent elderly Jews from Eastern Europe and elsewhere retired there because of charities that would support them. In 1851, Jews were only about 4% of the population of the territory that became the British Mandate of Palestine some 70 years later. And, there had been few adherents of Judaism, just a few thousand, from the time most Jews in Palestine adopted Christianity and Islam in the first millennium CE all the way until the 20th century. In the British Mandate of Palestine, the district of Jerusalem was largely Palestinian.

The rise of the Nazis in the 1930s impelled massive Jewish emigration to Palestine, so by 1940 there were over 400,000 Jews there amid over a million Palestinians.

The second map shows the United Nations partition plan of 1947, which awarded Jews (who only then owned about 6% of Palestinian land) a substantial state alongside a much reduced Palestine. Although apologists for the Zionist movement say that the Zionists accepted this partition plan and the Arabs rejected it, that is not entirely true. Zionist leader David Ben Gurion noted in his diary when Israel was established that when the US had been formed, no document set out its territorial extent, implying that the same was true of Israel. We know that Ben Gurion was an Israeli expansionist who fully intended to annex more land to Israel, and by 1956 he attempted to add the Sinai and would have liked southern Lebanon. So the Zionist "acceptance" of the UN partition plan did not mean very much beyond a happiness that their initial starting point was much better than their actual land ownership had given them any right to expect.

The third map shows the status quo after the Israeli-Palestinian civil war of 1947-1948. It is not true that the entire Arab League attacked the Jewish community in Palestine or later Israel on behalf of the Palestinians. As Avi Shlaim has shown, Jordan had made an understanding with the Zionist leadership that it would grab the West Bank, and its troops did not mount a campaign in the territory awarded to Israel by the UN. Egypt grabbed Gaza and then tried to grab the Negev Desert, with a few thousand badly trained and equipped troops, but was defeated by the nascent Israeli army. Few other Arab states sent any significant number of troops. The total number of troops on the Arab side actually on the ground was about equal to those of the Zionist forces, and the Zionists had more esprit de corps and better weaponry.

The final map shows the situation today, which springs from the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967 and then the decision of the Israelis to colonize the West Bank intensively (a process that is illegal in the law of war concerning occupied populations).

There is nothing inaccurate about the maps at all, historically. Goldberg maintained that the Palestinians' 'original sin' was rejecting the 1947 UN partition plan. But since Ben Gurion and other expansionists went on to grab more territory later in history, it is not clear that the Palestinians could have avoided being occupied even if they had given away willingly so much of their country in 1947. The first original sin was the contradictory and feckless pledge by the British to sponsor Jewish immigration into their Mandate in Palestine, which they wickedly and fantastically promised would never inconvenience the Palestinians in any way. It was the same kind of original sin as the French policy of sponsoring a million colons in French Algeria, or the French attempt to create a Christian-dominated Lebanon where the Christians would be privileged by French policy. The second original sin was the refusal of the United States to allow Jews to immigrate in the 1930s and early 1940s, which forced them to go to Palestine to escape the monstrous, mass-murdering Nazis.

The map attracted so much ire and controversy not because it is inaccurate but because it clearly shows what has been done to the Palestinians, which the League of Nations had recognized as not far from achieving statehood in its Covenant. Their statehood and their territory has been taken from them, and they have been left stateless, without citizenship and therefore without basic civil and human rights. The map makes it easy to see this process. The map had to be stigmatized and made taboo. But even if that marginalization of an image could be accomplished, the squalid reality of Palestinian statelessness would remain, and the children of Gaza would still be being malnourished by the deliberate Israeli policy of blockading civilians. The map just points to a powerful reality; banishing the map does not change that reality.

Goldberg, according to Spencer Ackerman, says that he will stop replying to Andrew Sullivan, for which Ackerman is grateful, since, he implies, Goldberg is a propagandistic hack who loves to promote wars on flimsy pretenses. Matthew Yglesias also has some fun at Goldberg's expense.

People like Goldberg never tell us what they expect to happen to the Palestinians in the near and medium future. They don't seem to understand that the status quo is untenable. They are like militant ostriches, hiding their heads in the sand while lashing out with their hind talons at anyone who stares clear-eyed at the problem, characterizing us as bigots. As if that old calumny has any purchase for anyone who knows something serious about the actual views of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu or Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, more bigoted persons than whom would be difficult to find. Indeed, some of Israel's current problems with Brazil come out of Lieberman's visit there last summer; I was in Rio then and remember the distaste with which the multi-cultural, multi-racial Brazilians viewed Lieberman, whom some openly called a racist.

"They're white just like us and the people they're killing . . . are Arabs."

Message from Barcelona from Cynthia McKinney

From Cynthia McKinney
"They're White Just Like Us . . . "

March 16, 2010

"They're white just like us and the people they're killing . . . are Arabs."

This bit of erudition came, with a shrug of the shoulders, at the end of the first session of the newly-formed Russell Tribunal on Palestine. It was not a part of the official record because it was stated in the anteroom, just off the auditorium of the elegantly-appointed Barcelona Lawyers Building where the Tribunal was held. The person making this comment was not an official expert witness--but he was a European who understood the mindset that made Europeans complicit, not only in Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people, but also in Israel's impunity.

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine is organized by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and has local organizing committees in each of the places where sessions will be held: Europe, United Kingdom, South Africa, and the United States. The Tribunal will next venture into London, then to South Africa to ponder the peculiar institution of Israeli apartheid. And finally to the U.S. where the mother of all complicity resides.

The Tribunal stresses its independence from the influence of special interests and each Local Organizing Committee conducts fundraising activities to make each Session a success. Barcelona can be chalked up as a success that serves the Tribunal organizers well for the upcoming London Session. More information on the Barcelona proceedings can be found at http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.net/.

The original Bertrand Russell Tribunal was seated in the mid-1960s and considered the case against the U.S. war against Vietnam. Its second seating was to deliberate on human rights abuses in Latin America. Consideration of the situation of the people of Palestine commands its third seating.

The organizers of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine scoured the globe to find people of conscience to serve as jurors who are noted for acting on their convictions. The jurors include a woman who served with Bertrand Russell on the original Tribunal and another woman whose work eventually was recognized with a Nobel Peace Prize. The Tribunal's mandate is to inform and urge action by a larger community of conscience and its urgency is the understanding that the Tribunal must act in the face of inaction by national and international authorities.

In addition, the "BRussells" Tribunal on Iraq (operating from Brussels, Belgium at http://brusselstribunal.org/index.htm) is the brainchild of Russell Tribunal veteran François Houtart. The BRussells Tribunal was conducted in 2004 and found the United States guilty of committing an act of aggression against Iraq.

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine, Barcelona Session, convened for three days, considered the evidence presented to it, and delivered its decision in response to a series of questions that could be summed up as: "Is the E.U. complicit in Israel's crimes against Palestinians, and if so, in what way? What is the E.U.'s legal responsibility to itself and to international law?"

During the proceedings, I did pose the "Why?" question several times. However, the unofficial respondent answered the question in a way that even I was totally unprepared for: from his gut.

"They're white just like us and the people they're killing . . . are Arabs."

This comment haunted me for the remainder of my European tour. And, it seemed that I could never escape it. In Brussels and then again in Paris; in London, I was consistently reminded of the color line and that I was traveling in places not usually broken by it: economic and political status in these places is as defined by skin color as it is in the United States, the Presidency of Barack Obama notwithstanding.

Combine my European experience with the fact of the illegal pillage of Africa by way of stoked "civil wars" and fake "rebel groups" created for the purpose of facilitating non-African Africa pillage--done since the first Berlin Conference that organized the so-called "Scramble for Africa" at the dawn of the 20th Century. Juxtapose that to the opening of the 19th Century where Africans in Haiti defeated Napoleon Bonaparte's Army. Not only was Africa robbed of its strongest human resources for centuries during slavery, it continues to be robbed of its human and natural resources even now. Africans' patrimony is being transferred, on the cheap, to Europe, the United States, and Israel.

Anyone who doubts these facts should consider the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), now suffering six million dead just since the Rwandan/Ugandan invasion in August of 1998 facilitated by the United States. The tragedy is told in the first United Nations Report on the pillage of DRC, written by Madame Ba-N-Dow, whose life was threatened by those named in the report, causing her to have to go into hiding because she told the truth. Additionally, numerous books and articles on the subject have been written by Camerounian-Parisian Charles Onana of Editions Duboiris, for those who read French, and by Wayne Madsen and Keith Harmon Snow, for those who don't.

As I looked into the faces of Europe's most recent immigrant Africans and Asians, the immigrant wars being fought today inside Europe, Israel, and the United States crystallized in the most dismal of contexts. With each glance into every face, I strained to make eye-to-eye contact to see beyond the face of the individual in order to understand the totality of the life I was encountering. Sadly, the realities all seemed the same: certain Europeans (including certain Americans and Israelis) had arrogated to themselves the right to go into any land, vilify the indigenous, denigrate their culture and dignity, steal the resources, overturn the local economy, destroy the local polities, and ignore the human rights of self-determination and resistance to occupation, and then dare the "others" to emigrate. For context today: Think the Muslim World in Africa and Asia. Think Latin America. Think Gaza.

Everywhere around Europe, as is also the case in Israel and the United States, immigration is an issue. It seems that Europeans--who have a quality of life that includes, among other things, mass transit and continental rapid rail that works, subsidized education, subsidized healthcare, and secure work and pensions--have reached their "immigrant tolerance level:" that is, more "others" are not welcome. And, as in the United States, the role of the special interest media cannot be discounted in the popularization of hate. This is especially sad when one realizes that the Europe of today exists as it does largely because of its past policies and current bondage with the United States that politically and economically wreck the countries of the "others."

For example, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Israel are all diamond trading capitals of the world, yet none of them is a major miner of diamonds. The diamonds mainly come from Africa, and the consequent diamond empire that links all of these capitals was built on slavery and theft. (Please see the film "Diamond Empire" by investigative journalist Janine Roberts, banned in the United States because of its inconvenient, name-naming content.)

Now, take a look at these diamond-producing capitals of Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo, and black South Africa--even post-apartheid--and one quickly grasps the level of theft and criminality that continues still today. Please think about this the next time you are tempted to buy a beautiful sparkling diamond in your local mall jewelry store.

And, for those who have never left America's shores, one need only look inside the United States at the genocide of America's indigenous people and the continued pillage of their land to understand how today's life of largess was made possible by years of mistreatment, lawlessness, and genocide committed generations ago.

In 1948, the cycle began again when Zionists eager to wield state power were placed in control of Palestine by Europeans, Britons, and Americans and created the State of Israel on the land where Palestinians lived.

I inquired of one Israeli testifying at the Tribunal what did Operation Cast Lead tell us about the nature of Zionism. And it was through this line of questioning that I again heard something that I have heard all over the world, but never in the media: "I am an anti-Zionist Jew."

In the United States, Zionists at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) purport to speak for all Jews and they would have non-Jews believe that criticism of them or of Israel is criticism of all Jews. For many that I encounter in the world whose only previous information came from the media, their most startling discovery is that this is a lie. And I have heard some of the most impassioned critiques of Israel's policies toward Palestinians from anti-Zionist Jews. I intend to write more on this later.

Yesterday, it was announced in the English news that blacks and Asians are stopped by the police alarmingly more than whites. The study that published these findings also suggested that if such disparities are allowed to persist, then the communities of color so targeted could become increasingly disenchanted and volatile. London, Paris, and Oakland, California have all burned in recent memory as a result of persistent disparities and loss of hope for change. If unchecked now in communities of color, repression of all will surely be next.

Given my experiences and reflections during this European tour that included the Russell Tribunal; a standing-room-only meeting of Congolese who came from all over Europe to Brussels; a standing-room-only crowd of young people in "the hood" of a Paris suburb attending an event organized by rapper Joe Dalton; and several events in London that included a standing-room-only 9/11 Truth - 7/7 Tube Truth event, I find the observation of the Russell Tribunal attendee both poignant and relevant: It is still possible for people battered by propaganda and lies, covert and false flag operations, and the meanest of media blackouts to see and hear those of us who dissent and act on conscience. Our message is being received. A growing global critical mass see the humanity that binds us together despite the lies and the screens of religion, race, ethnicity, language, gender, and sexual orientation--skillfully used in the past to divide us.

The real message from my Russell Tribunal respondent is clear: Resistance to lies, injustice, war, and indignity is necessary and more people seeing that, join with us in our principled struggle.

Israel's message, a threat to Biden and Obama

WMR's government and intelligence sources are concerned about the threatening signals from the Israeli government that could impact on the security of President Obama.

The president clearly is facing a situation that pits those in his administration who oppose Israel's expansion of settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank and those who are providing support for the Netanyahu regime by stymying attempts to force Israel to the peace table with the Palestinians. The President's Special Envoy for the Middle East, George Mitchell, according to published news reports, recently expressed exasperation over the failure of the Obama administration to achieve a Middle East peace accord because of the State Department's bias in favor of Israel.

On March 11, former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy, in an interview with Israel Radio, stated that the White House had seen a "radical" change due to Obama's efforts to "rehabilitate" the image of Islam in United States and the Western world by removing the terrorism brand that has been affixed to it. Halevy cited the Obama policy change as the reason for the change in the White House's attitude toward Israel.

However, Halevy was careful to isolate the White House from the rest of the Obama administration. Halevy's ploy, coupled with Mitchell's revelations about the pro-Israel bias of Hillary Clinton's State Department, is an indication that the Netanyahu regime and its agents inside the Obama administration and Washington power circles are attempting a "divide and conquer" policy with regard to the Obama administration.

On March 11, the same day Halevy made his unusual comments about Obama to Israel Radio, the State Department issued its annual report on human rights. Michael Posner, the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, ensured that Israel got off the hook on the UN's Goldstone Report that concluded that Israel may have committed war crimes in its invasion of Gaza last year. Posner, a former attorney with the law firm Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal in Chicago and director of Human Rights First, a George Soros-funded organization, criticized the Goldstone Report, a criticism that was praised by the Zionist Organization of America, as well as other Israel Lobby organizations.

Posner, who had the final edit on the State Department human rights report, ensured the report's entry for "Israel and the Occupied Territories" [no mention is made of Palestine], reiterated the criticism of the Goldstone Report, which has been accepted by the European Union and human rights groups around the world: "On September 29, Justice Richard Goldstone, who headed the mission, presented the report (commonly known as the "Goldstone report") to the HRC [Human Rights Council] in Geneva. The Goldstone report investigated 36 incidents of alleged violations by the IDF in Gaza, as well as alleged violations by Palestinians. This reflected an effort by Goldstone to broaden the scope of his report beyond the original mandate, which was limited only to violations by Israel. Among its many conclusions, the report claimed that members of the IDF were responsible for deliberate targeting of civilians, for the destruction of critical infrastructure in Gaza, and for using weapons such as white phosphorous in highly populated areas, all of which it deemed to be violations of international humanitarian law."

The State Departmen's entry on Israel continues,"The Goldstone report was widely criticized for methodological failings, legal and factual errors, falsehoods, and for devoting insufficient attention to the asymmetrical nature of the conflict and the fact that Hamas and other Palestinian militants were deliberately operating in heavily populated urban areas of Gaza. The government of Israel also sharply rejected the charge that it had a policy of deliberately targeting civilians.IDF military advocate general Mandelblit was responsible for reviewing all allegations relating to Operation Cast Lead, including those contained in the Goldstone Report. At the end of the year, Mandelblit's investigations were ongoing."

The bolded section of the State Department report [above] is a reiteration of Israel's propaganda aimed at covering up its premeditated genocide in Gaza. Secretary of State Clinton proudly released the report with her full endorsement of its "findings." While the report criticized Goldstone, it had no problem citing what it felt was a more dire threat: "growing anti-Semitism worldwide." The State Department ridiculously claims that Israel's Cast Lead invasion of Gaza has resulted in "traditional and new forms of anti-Semitism" arising around the world. In essence, because it was the Jewish state that engaged in genocide in Gaza, any criticism of that action, according to Posner, Clinton, and the Israel cell in Foggy Bottom, is "anti-Semitic."

The most serious threat against Biden, and, by extension, Obama, came when Netanyahu presented Biden a glass-framed document on the planting of trees in Jerusalem honoring Biden's late mother, said to have been a strong supporter of Israel. Netanyahu is reported to have broken the glass "accidentally" before handing it to Biden. Netanyahu reportedly shattered the glass when he leaned on the plaque on a podium with his elbows. According to Reuters, Netanyahu told Biden, "I have one thing to offer you right now and it's broken glass." But then Netanyahu pulled out the document, with glass shards flying around, and used Biden's pen to sign a dedication to Biden's mother. What is not explained is why Netanyahu would have planned to sign a dedication with the document already in a glass frame.

The more likely explanation is that the incident was planned by Netanyahu as a warning to Biden and Obama. In Jewish tradition, including weddings, broken glass is a reminder of the destruction of the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem with the hope that it will be rebuilt in a united Jerusalem under Jewish rule. And for Israel, the "night of broken glass," or "Kristallnacht," is remembered as the beginning of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. In protocol- and symbolism-conscious Israel, the idea of handing the U.S. Vice President broken glass was obviously not an accident. Kristallnacht gets its name from the shattered glass that covered German streets in 1938, most of it from the broken windows of Jewish homes and businesses, as well as synagogues. Kristallnacht is still remembered on November 9 in ceremonies in Israel. They are ceremonies at which the ambassadors of Germany and Austria are expected to attend.

On November 9, 1989, when West and East Germany saw the Berlin Wall come down, Netanyahu's mentor, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, ensured that there were plenty of references to Kristallnacht in Israeli media reports on the planned German reunification. The reason was that Kristallnacht began on the evening of November 9, 1938. The editor of Ha'aretz declared: "It's very important that Germany stays divided."

But WMR's U.S. intelligence sources warn about a darker meaning. The sound of shattering glass is something that petrifies even the most seasoned intelligence agent. There is a saying among CIA old hands that once you hear the glass shatter, it's too late to save yourself from the snipers.

Dubai Investigation Exposes Israeli Ops in USA

By Michael Gillespie*

An ongoing investigation by the Dubai Police force into the assassination of a high-level Hamas official in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in January has drawn back the curtains of secrecy and deception to reveal yet again the contours of Israel's massive and ever-expanding espionage operations in the United States.

The murder of Mahmoud Al Mabhouh in his room at the Al Bustan Rotana, a 275-room five-star luxury hotel, in Dubai on January 19 has been widely perceived to be a Mossad operation involving, by the most recent count, 27 suspects traveling on fraudulently obtained and falsified European or Australian passports. In late February and early March, the plot thickened suddenly and significantly when major US media outlet reports connected the crime and many of those involved in it to the USA and to corporations based in the USA and Israel and revealed that some of the suspected assassins, apparently members of a Mossad kidon team, had entered the USA after leaving Dubai.

ABC News reported on February 24 that Dubai police had identified 15 new suspects as part of a ring that killed Al Mabhouh.

"Fourteen of the suspects purportedly used credit cards from META Bank, a regional American bank, to pay for hotel rooms and travel arrangements. … Dubai police linked META Bank to a New York-based company called Payoneer, which provided prepaid MasterCard credit cards issued by META Bank. According to its Web site, Payoneer has a research and development center in Tel Aviv," reported ABC.

The TV network report noted that some of the additional suspects played a central role in the crime while others were accused of "'providing prior logistical support and preparations to facilitate,' making a series of trips to Dubai in advance" of the assassination.

The New York Times reported on March 1 that, "At least two suspects in the killing of a Hamas official in a hotel here in January traveled to the United States afterward, according to a person familiar with the investigation."

"One suspect traveling on a British passport arrived in the United States on Feb. 14; the other used an Irish passport and arrived on Jan. 21, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case. He did not say where the men entered the country, and added that there was no known record of their leaving," wrote Robert F. Worth in a story filed from Dubai.

Worth's report noted that if the suspected assassins who entered the U.S. presented foreign passports, they would have been photographed and finger printed upon arrival.

The Wall Street Journal's Chip Cummins filed a similar report from Dubai on the same day attributing the information to "people familiar with the situation" and "records shared between international investigators." In many previous news reports from Dubai information about the investigation had been attributed to Dubai's Police Chief Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan Tamim.

Neither report explored the rather remarkable news that the suspect carrying a British passport in the name Roy Allan Cannon was confident enough to travel on the falsified document more than three weeks after the assassination and to present it upon arrival in the USA, where passport controls are generally assumed to be most stringent.

"At one time it was possible to produce false identity documents with little or no regard for what is referred to as backstopping as data bases at national points of entry were unsophisticated and were generally unlinked to any central sources of information. That has all changed in the past eight years. European and American passports in particular can all be verified from central data bases that include information that is also drawn from other public record sources," wrote former CIA officer Philip Giraldi in a February 25 column for Antiwar.com.

On March 3, Al Jazeera TV reported that Tamim, "said he would ask the Dubai prosecutor to issue arrest warrants for [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and the head of Mossad [Meir Degan]."

Tamim's investigation, which has been described by Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble as "thorough," has seriously inconvenienced and embarrassed the Israeli government and its espionage organization.

The Money Trail

The Independent Monitor contacted MetaBank's corporate headquarters in Storm Lake, IA to ask why an Iowa bank would provide credit cards to 14 suspected members of a death squad.

MetaBank's Lisa Binder, Vice President for Investor Relations and Corporate Communications responded via telephone and e-mail with a statement saying, in part, "The Meta cards in question were issued in conjunction with a Meta Payment Systems program, not at a retail bank location. Meta Payment Systems, which has issued more than 150 million prepaid cards, markets its payroll cards through various Program Managers─in this case, Payoneer─to offer reputable US companies network branded payroll cards with which American companies can pay expatriates, employees and contractors of their company who live in the US and in foreign countries. The cards in question were 'loaded' by the companies using direct deposit for payroll, disbursements, and other compensation."

The Independent Monitor attempted to contact Payoneer offices at 410 Park Avenue in New York City but found that the only phone answered at Payoneer headquarters was a customer support line for Payoneer's Birthright Israel customers.

Birthright Israel provides first time educational trips to Israel for Jewish young adults ages 18 to 26. The program sends "thousands of young Jewish adults from all over the world to Israel as a gift in order to diminish the growing division between Israel and Jewish communities around the world; to strengthen the sense of solidarity among world Jewry; and to strengthen participants' personal Jewish identity and connection to the Jewish people," according to the organization's website.

Funding for Birthright Israel is "provided by our partners: private philanthropists through The Birthright Israel Foundation; the people of Israel through the Government of Israel; and Jewish communities around the world (North American Jewish Federations, Keren Hayesod and the Jewish Agency for Israel). …

"Taglit-Birthright Israel requires that all participants pay their deposit through Payoneer. … If you lose your Payoneer card while in Israel, it can be immediately blocked and will be replaced with a new card within 24 hours. … You will not need to contact your bank back home or worry about making many calls. One call to our Customer Support center and you are all set," says the www.birthright.payoneer.com website.

Payoneer's Birthright customer support center declined to provide the Independent Monitor with contact information for Payoneer founder and CEO Yuval Tal or for Payoneer corporate communications/media relations personnel.

"Since the assassination, Tal has been shielded by a wall of public relations representatives and does not respond to media requests for comments. … Tal's public relations representatives in New York have refused to comment on his past and relations with Israel's intelligence agency Mossad," wrote Abbas Al Lawati, a staff reporter for Gulf News.com on March 3.

"Tal is referred to by his associates in Israel as 'an outspoken Israeli patriot' despite having lived in New York for over ten years. In a 2006 Fox News interview about Israel's summer war on Lebanon, Tal was presented as a 'special ops commando' on Fox and Friends, and stated that 'this is a war Israel cannot (afford to) lose,'" wrote Al Lawati.

Payoneer's website proclaims that the company is "a registered MasterCard Merchant Service Provider (MSP), and partner with MetaBank or Choice Bank Limited to deliver our services. Privately held, our funding partners include Greylock Partners, Carmel Ventures, and Crossbar Capital."

The Independent Monitor found that all three of Payoneer's funding partners are venture capital firms that have offices in or strong connections to Israel.

Charlie Federman, Managing Partner of Crossbar Capital, previously co-founded BRM Capital in 1999, headed its New York office, and served as a Managing Director of the Israel and New York based fund until 2007. BRM Group, headquartered in Herzliya was founded by Nir Barkat, mayor of occupied Jerusalem.

Carmel Ventures is also headquartered Herzliya. Greylock Partners, founded in 1965, "operates in a number of global centers of innovation, including Boston, China (Beijing), India (Bangalore), Israel (Herzliya) and Silicon Valley. … Current Greylock portfolio companies include Data Robotics, Digg, Facebook, Imperva, LinkedIn, Palo Alto Networks, Pandora, Picarro, Redfin, Workday and ZipCar," according to the firm's website. Greylock's investment activities in Israel were launched in 2002 by partner Moshe Mor, who "served six years in the Israeli Army as a Captain in the Military Intelligence branch."

Tal almost certainly possess information that could be of value to U.S. law enforcement and counter-intelligence investigators, but whether their political masters, many of whom have been effectively co-opted by Israel, will allow U.S. investigators to pursue any sort of meaningful investigation is an open question. Thus far there has been little to indicate that U.S. officials are seriously interested in investigating the funding of travel expenses and hotel accommodations of suspected Israeli assassins through U.S. corporations, despite the reported entry of at least two of the suspects into the U.S. on fraudulent, falsified passports.

When the Independent Monitor contacted the Department of State (DoS) for comment about the news reports, a DoS press officer declined to comment and referred questions to the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) press offices. A DoJ press officer also declined to comment and referred questions to a DHS press officer who has not responded to an e-mail message sent on March 5.

The Sayanim Network

Any substantive U.S. investigation of the suspected Dubai killers' connections to the USA would likely focus on members of the Mossad's worldwide network of sayanim, diaspora Jews who provide a wide variety of services to the Israeli intelligence and special operations agency. In his books, By Way of Deception (1990) and The Other Side of Deception (1994), former Mossad field officer or katsa Victor Ostrovsky described the sayanim network.

"Sayanim─assistants─must be 100 percent Jewish," wrote Ostrovsky in 1990.

The Mossad's helpers, chosen because they are well placed, willing, and able to provide valuable assistance to Israeli agents, are businessmen, doctors, lawyers, judges, prosecutors, police officers, intelligence officers, politicians, government bureaucrats, university professors and administrators, media professionals, information technology specialists, any occupation, profession, or position in which a sayan might prove useful in support of Israeli espionage operations.

Though they do not live in Israel, their first loyalty is to Israel. They do whatever Mossad officials, field officers, or assassins ask of them in behalf of Israel against the enemies of Israel or those who are seen as opposed to Israeli policies.

"Often the loyalty of sayanim is abused by katsas who take advantage of the available help for their own personal use. There is no way for the sayan to check this," wrote Ostrovsky.

"The one problem with the [sayanim] system is that the Mossad does not seem to care how devastating it could be to the status of the Jewish people in the diaspora if it was known. The answer you get if you ask is: 'So what's the worst that could happen to those Jews? They'd all come to Israel? Great,'" wrote Ostrovsky.

"A sayan will rent a car or pass money to a kidon with no questions asked," said Gordon Thomas, author of Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad (1999) in a report by Alun Palmer of the Mirror (UK) on February 18. Thomas, who has estimated that there are at least 20,000 sayanim in the US and Great Britain, writes that all Mossad assassinations are authorized by the office of the prime minister of Israel.

The illegal use of U.S. banks and credit card companies to fund the movements and other expenses of a Mossad death squad in the Middle East indicates an alarming expansion of Israeli espionage operations on US soil and reveals to an unprecedented extent the foreign intelligence agency's penetration of major U.S. financial institutions, developments that limn the breadth, depth, and success of the Mossad's desperate efforts to expand and consolidate Israel's malignant influence over the Washington foreign policy establishment and sway within a broad range of U.S. institutions, despite growing popular opposition to Israel's the brutal and patently illegal occupation of Palestine and the punishing siege of Gaza.

The Myth, Cult, and Culture of Redemptive Violence

The supposed clash of civilizations, the conflict between the putatively modern Western Judeo-Christian tradition and radical Islam, the Bush administration's Global War on Terrorism later rebranded by the Obama administration as Overseas Contingency Operations, and the suppurating wound that is Israel's long-running illegal occupation and systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine are evidence of a retrograde social and political dynamic that now threatens the continued progress and future of human civilization. That dynamic is epitomized by the myth, cult, and culture of redemptive violence.

"The myth of redemptive violence defends the belief that violence saves, that war brings peace. It is one of the oldest stories in the world. It misappropriates the language, symbols and scriptures of Christianity. Its God is the tribal God worshipped as an idol. Its offer is not forgiveness but victory. Its good news is not unconditional love of enemies but their elimination. Its salvation is not a new heart but a successful foreign policy. It is blasphemous. It is idolatrous. And it is immensely popular," writes Dr. Walter Wink, Professor Emeritus of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City.

Wink might have added that while Christian scripture is tainted by the myth of redemptive violence, the Hebrew Old Testament scriptures, attached at the spine of the Holy Bible to the New Testament, are Christianity's primary source of the pernicious mythology of redemptive violence. Only about 10 percent of the New Testament is devoted to Jesus' teachings about the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God, the kingdom of Heaven, the happiness of peacemakers, and forgiveness and mercy as moral and spiritual imperatives.

True religion opposes violence as a technique of social evolution, but many Christians have been and are today all too willing and ready to embrace Hebrew Old Testament teachings that glorify war and the wholesale slaughter of innocents and ascribe such acts to the commands of a wrathful God that is both vengeful and violent. The popularity of the myth of redemptive violence in the West and the attitudes and policies it engenders in political and economic spheres of activity severely undercuts the supposed moral superiority of Western modernity and culture in relation to other traditions and cultures.

U.S. leaders often attempt to justify their wars with self-serving declarations that they are fighting for peace.

"One day the Iraqi people will understand that we came in peace," averred Secretary of State Colin Powell in March 2003 as U.S. troops advanced on Baghdad after a devastating and enormously destructive "Shock and Awe" air assault on the city.

If the status of a civilization can be accurately gauged by the fairness of its courts and the integrity of its judges, resort by national leaders to extra-judicial killings conducted by intelligence agency death squads is emblematic of the West's glorification of war and ruinous reversion to militarism─autocratic, cruel, and savage. Rigidly ultranationalistic Israel, more an army and an espionage agency with a country than a country with an army and an espionage agency, clearly intends to be the West's model and instructor in this regard.

A feature article by Associated Press reporter Matti Friedman published in the Washington Post on March 4 quoted Jonna Mendez, who worked for the CIA for 27 years and became the agency's chief of disguise. Mendez "believes the Dubai perpetrators took the fallout into account, all of it: the TV footage, the blown aliases and the head shots. The agents, she said, clearly knew they were under surveillance─they had simply decided it was unavoidable and a price worth paying.

"'You can be sure they knew they were being surveilled. Likewise, they would assume that the documents they were using would be made available after the fact,' said Mendez. 'What does this mean? It means it didn't matter. The faces and the documents that were captured by the cameras will probably never be seen again.'

"The fact that the perpetrators had to take the identities of real people rather than simply invent false identities is a symptom of the new world facing modern-day spies, one of databases and traceable passport information, she said.

"The real agents likely don't resemble the faces in the photos, she said … And if they do, plastic surgery, dental implants and hair grafts can ensure they are unrecognizable afterward.

"'Steal the identity, disguise the participants, be ready on the other side with another set of identities and documents, and embrace and conceal the protagonists on their return,' she said.

"'With that goal in mind this may, in fact, be the operation of the future,'" wrote Friedman.

Thinking Americans have an increasingly clear choice.

They can join the cult of redemptive violence, kneel before a Zionist tribal God of vengeance, and watch their country and its culture revert to the law of nature as militarism runs amok and Israeli spies and assassins, protected by corrupt and co-opted political leaders, roam America at will.

Or they can embrace and actively support not the savagery of assassins but the rule of law. They can cultivate the wisdom, insight, and foresight that are indispensable to the endurance of nations. They can persevere in their efforts to elect honest, wise, and progressive leaders. And they can continue to strive to live up and into the noblest ideals of their religions.

* Michael Gillespie, in addition to his regular freelance work for Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, is also a contributing editor and the Des Moines, IA correspondent for The Independent Monitor, the national newspaper of Arab Americans, published by Sami Mashney in Anaheim, CA.

Uri Avnery: A Matter of Timing

SOME WEEKS the news is dominated by a single word. This week’s word was “timing”.

It’s all a matter of timing. The Government of Israel has insulted the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, one of the greatest “friends” of Israel (meaning: somebody totally subservient to AIPAC) and spat in the face of President Barack Obama. So what? It’s all a matter of timing.

If the government had announced the building of 1600 new housing units in East Jerusalem a day earlier, it would have been OK. If it had announced it three days later, it would have been wonderful. But doing it exactly when Joe Biden was about to have dinner with Bibi and Sarah’le – that was really bad timing.

The matter itself is not important. Another thousand housing units in East Jerusalem, or 10 thousand, or 100 thousand – what different does it make? The only thing that matters is the timing.

As the Frenchman said: It’s worse than criminal, it’s stupid.

THE WORD “stupid” also figured prominently this week, second only to “timing”.

Stupidity is an accepted phenomenon in politics. I would almost say: to succeed in politics, one needs a measure of stupidity. Voters don’t like politicians who are too intelligent. They make them feel inferior. A foolish politician, on the other hand, appears to be “one of the folks”.

History is full of acts of folly by politicians. Many books have been written about this. To my mind, the epitome of foolishness was achieved by the events that led to World War I, with its millions of victims, which broke out because of the accumulated stupidity of (in ascending order) Austrian, Russian, German, French and British politicians.

But even stupidity in politics has its limits. I have pondered this question for decades, and who knows, one day, when I grow up, I might write a doctoral thesis about it.

My thesis goes like this: In politics (as in other fields) foolish things happen regularly. But some of them are stopped in time, before they can lead to disaster, while others are not. It this accidental, or is there a rule?

My answer is: there certainly is a rule. It works like this: when somebody sets in motion an act of folly that runs counter to the spirit of the regime, it is stopped in its tracks. While it moves from one bureaucrat to another, somebody starts to wonder. Just a moment, this cannot be right! It is referred to higher authority, and soon enough somebody decides that it is a mistake.

On the other hand, when the act of folly is in line with the spirit of the regime, there are no brakes. When it moves from one bureaucrat to the next, it looks quite natural to both. No red light. No alarm bell. And so the folly rolls on to the bitter end.

I remember how this rule came to my mind the first time. In 1965, Habib Bourguiba, the president of Tunisia, took a bold step: he made a speech in the biggest refugee camp in Jericho, then under Jordanian rule, and called upon the Arabs to recognize Israel. This caused a huge scandal all over the Arab world.

Some time later, the correspondent of an Israeli paper reported that in a press conference at the UN headquarters, Bourguiba had called for the destruction of Israel. This sounded strange to me. I made inquiries, checked the protocol and found out that the opposite was true: the reporter had mistakenly turned a no into a yes.

How did this happen? If the journalist had erred in the opposite direction and reported, for example, that Gamal Abd-el-Nasser had called for the acceptance of Israel into the Arab League, the news would have been stopped at once. Every red light would have lit up. Someone would have called out: Hey, something strange here! Check again! But in the Bourguiba case nobody noticed the mistake, for what is more natural than an Arab leader calling for the destruction of Israel? No verification needed.

That’s what happened this week in Jerusalem. Every government official knows that the nationalist Prime Minister is pushing for the Judaization of East Jerusalem, that the extreme nationalist Minister of the Interior is even more eager, and that the super-nationalist Mayor of Jerusalem practically salivates when he imagines a Jewish quarter on the Temple Mount. So why should a bureaucrat postpone the confirmation of a new Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem? Just because of the visit of some American windbag?

Therefore, the timing is not important. It’s the matter itself that’s important.

DURING HIS last days in office, President Bill Clinton published a peace plan, in which he tried to make up for eight years of failure in this region and kowtowing to successive Israeli governments. The plan was comparatively reasonable, but included a ticking bomb.About East Jerusalem, Clinton proposed that what is Jewish should be joined to the State of Israel and what is Arab should be joined to the state of Palestine. He assumed (rightly, I believe) that Yasser Arafat was ready for such a compromise, which would have joined some new Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem to Israel. But Clinton was not wise enough to foresee the consequences of his proposal.

In practice, it was an open invitation to the Israeli government to speed up the establishment of new settlements in East Jerusalem, expecting them to become part of Israel. And indeed, since then successive Israeli governments have invested all available resources in this endeavor. Since money has no smell, every Jewish casino-owner in America and every Jewish brothel-keeper in Europe was invited to join the effort. The Biblical injunction – “Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the Lord thy God, for any vow; for even both these are abomination unto the Lord thy God” (Deuteronomy 23:18) – was suspended for this holy cause.

Now the pace is speeded up even more. Because there is no more effective means of obstructing peace than building new settlements in East Jerusalem. THAT IS clear to anyone who has dealings with this region. No peace without an independent Palestinian state, no Palestinian state without East Jerusalem. About this there is total unanimity among all Palestinians, from Fatah to Hamas, and between all Arabs, from Morocco to Iraq, and between all Muslims, from Nigeria to Iran.

There will be no peace without the Palestinian flag waving above the Haram al-Sharif, the holy shrines of Islam which we call the Temple Mount. That is an iron-clad rule. Arabs can compromise about the refugee problem, painful as it may be, and about the borders, also with much pain, and about security matters. But they cannot compromise about East Jerusalem becoming the capital of Palestine. All national and religious passions converge here.

Anyone who wants to wreck any chance for peace – it is here that he has to act. The settlers and their supporters, who know that any peace agreement would include the elimination of (at least) most settlements, have planned in the past (and probably are planning now) to blow up the mosques on the Temple Mount, hoping that this would cause a worldwide conflagration which would reduce to ashes the chances of peace once and for all.

Less extreme people dream about the creeping ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem by administrative chicanery, demolition of houses, denying means of livelihood and just making life in general miserable for Arabs. Moderate rightists just want to cover every empty square inch in East Jerusalem with Jewish neighborhoods. The aim is always the same.

THIS REALITY is, of course, well known to Obama and his advisors. In the beginning they believed, in their innocence, that they could sweet talk Netanyahu and Co. into stopping the building activity to facilitate the start of negotiations for the two-state solution. Very soon they learned that this was impossible without exerting massive pressure – and they were not prepared to do that.

After putting up a short and pitiful struggle, Obama gave in. He agreed to the deception of a “settlement freeze” in the West Bank. Now building is going on there with great enthusiasm, and the settlers are satisfied. They have completely stopped their demonstrations.

In Jerusalem there was not even a farcical attempt – Netanyahu just told Obama that he would go on building there (“as in Tel Aviv”), and Obama bowed his head. When Israeli officials announced a grandiose plan for building in “Ramat Shlomo” this week, they did not violate any undertaking. Only the matter of “timing” remained.

FOR JOE BIDEN, it was a matter of honor. For Mahmoud Abbas, it is a matter of survival.

Under intense pressure from the Americans and their agents, the rulers of the Arab countries, Abbas was obliged to agree to negotiations with the Netanyahu government – though only “proximity talks”, a euphemism for “distance talks”.

Clearly, nothing will come out of these talks except more humiliation for the Palestinians. Quite simply: anyone building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is announcing in advance that there is no chance for an agreement. After all, no sane Israeli would invest billions in a territory he intends to turn over to the Palestinian state. A person who is eating a pizza is not negotiating about it in good faith.

Even at this late stage, Abbas and his people still hope that something good will come out of all this: the US will acknowledge that they are right and exert, at long last, real pressure on Israel to implement the two-state solution.

But Biden and Obama did not give much cause for hope. They wiped the spit off their faces and smiled politely.

As the saying goes: when you spit in the face of a weakling, he pretends that it is raining. Does this apply to the president of the most powerful country in the world?

We don't need no stinking Emanuel health care

Hello Americans! Stand by for . . . news!

It was a typically cold winter day on February 3, 1968, in the Windy City area. Mr. and Mrs. Johnston of the suburban Chicago town of Northlake were alarmed when the pregnant Mrs. Johnston began experiencing the contractions that could only mean one thing. She was going into labor.

Phillip Johnston and his wife rushed in their car to Columbus Hospital, where their pediatrician was on staff. However, Mrs. Johnston's condition was growing more dire as she began to give birth. Phillip, realizing there was an emergency, stopped at a police station looking for help. A policeman, who was going off duty, said there was nothing he could do to help. Phillip, growing more frantic, flagged down a police car

Police officer Robert Carlson escorted the Johnstons to the closest hospital, Sheridan General. A doctor and nurse at Sheridan told the Johnstons that they would have to drive to Edgewater Hospital, a now-critical mile and a half away, because Sheridan lacked maternity facilities. Officer Carlson was appalled and he told UPI that the doctor at Sheridan "didn't examine the woman or anything . . . he just gave us directions to Edgewater Hospital." Sheridan's chairman of gynecology -- remember that Sheridan said it had no maternity facilities, but had a staff gynecologist -- defended the actions of the Sheridan staff on duty in sending away Mrs. Johnston who was then experiencing childbirth.

The Johnston's experienced their worst nightmare when their precious bundle of joy died at Edgewater Hospital after being born in the backseat of Mr. Johnston's car. The cause of death, according to their pediatrician at Columbus, was a "brain hemorrhage and brain damage because of a lack of oxygen."

But what could have been so important for the Johnston's pediatrician that he could not call Sheridan and demand that they render immediate assistance to his patient?

The Jerusalem-born pediatrician for the Johnstons was an Orthodox Jew who obviously felt that his duties on February 3, the Sabbath, outweighed those to his patient and her baby. And one could reasonably ask what the life of an infant girl on a cold Chicago day back in 1968 meant to a former terrorist for the Israeli Zionist terror gang Irgun Zvai Leumi who participated in the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, killing 91 innocent Britons, Arabs, and Jews and wounding 46 others.

Later, the Chicago pediatrician who barely lifted a finger to help the Johnstons save the life of their infant daughter, would gloat in the appointment of his son as the chief of staff to the most important office holder in the world, the president of the United States. Remarking on his son's total commitment to Israel, the retired pediatrician declared that his son would "influence the president to be pro-Israel," adding, "Why wouldn’t he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House."

Emulating his father's poor bedside manners, the son would refer to liberal Democrats as "fucking retarded" and Washington, DC as "fucknutsville." The Chicago pediatrician's other son would be pulled from a senior position at the National Institutes of Health to advise the White House on health care reform and push a system favorable to the insurance industry.

After his son became White House chief of staff, the Chicago pediatrician's entry would disappear from Wikipedia. Two of the pediatrician's sons would become key players in health care reform and push for the same type of aloof and detached medical care that the Johnstons experienced first hand from their primary pediatrician provider.

The pediatrician whose three sons became powerful in politics, medicine, and Hollywood is none other than Benjamin Emanuel, the father of President Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, White House health care adviser Ezekiel Emanuel, and Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel. Meanwhile, in an all-but-forgotten Chicago grave lies the infant daughter of the Johnstons.

And now you know . . . the rest of the story!

New York Times, 4 Feb. 1968:

Rove's reinvention of history.

George W. Bush's top political adviser Karl Rove is hitting the talk show circuit flogging his new book. Rove is also attempting to alter history. Rove's latest claim, made in an interview with NBC Toda's Matt Lauer, is that he never engaged in smear tactics against Senator John McCain in the 2000 GOP primary in South Carolina and that his reputation as a political dirty trickster in undeserved. Rove particularly bristles a the term "Rovian" to describe political smear campaigns.

The following is a November 1, 2002, article on Rove's long history of political dirty tricks.

CounterPunch

Exposing Karl Rove
by WAYNE MADSEN

He's America's Joseph Goebbels. As a 21-year old Young Republican in Texas, Karl Rove not only pimped for Richard Nixon's chief political dirty tricks strategist Donald Segretti but soon caught the eye of the incoming Republican National Committee Chairman, George H. W. Bush. Rove's dirty tricks on behalf of Nixon's 1972 campaign catapulted Rove onto the national stage. From his Eagle's Nest in the West Wing of the White House, Rove now directs a formidable political dirty tricks operation and disinformation mill.

Since his formative political years when he tried to paint World War II B-24 pilot and hero George McGovern as a left-wing peacenik through his mid-level career as a planter of disinformation in the media on behalf of Texas and national GOP candidates to his current role as Dubya's "Svengali," Rove has practiced the same style of slash and burn politics as did his Nixonian mentor Segretti. Many of us remember the Lincolnesque Senator Ed Muskie breaking down in tears during the 1972 campaign over Segretti-planted false stories in a New Hampshire newspaper that accused Mrs. Muskie of being a heavy smoker, drinker, and cusser and accused Muskie of uttering a slur in describing New Hampshire's French Canadian population. Rove's hero also forged letters on fake Muskie campaign letterhead, disrupted rallies and fundraising dinners, and spread false stories about the sex lives of candidates. Segretti's brush also smeared George McGovern, George Wallace, Shirley Chisholm, and McGovern's first vice presidential choice, Senator Tom Eagleton. Segretti of course did not go on to a high-level White House job -- he was sentenced to six months in federal prison for distributing illegal campaign material.

In many respects, however, the apprentice Rove has far exceeded the chicanery and evil-mindedness of his mentor Segretti. Rove is a tech-savvy puppet master for Bush. Take, for example, last June's discovery of a "lost" CD-ROM in Lafayette Park across from the White House. Contained on the CD was a PowerPoint presentation given by White House political director Ken Mehlman to Rove on the strategy for next Tuesday's off-year election. The slide show showed First Brother Jeb Bush being vulnerable in Florida. Jeb Bush later joked that the disc was part of a plot cooked up by him and his brother to make it appear that he was vulnerable in order to rally an otherwise complacent GOP base in the Sunshine State. Or was it a joke? Jeb Bush and his political minions like Katherine Harris have shown us that if anyone thinks what the GOP has done in Florida is funny they have an incredibly sick sense of humor.

Rove's own tendency to be sick-minded originates with his mentor Segretti. The 2000 GOP primary was a chance for Rove to hone his skills in dirty tricks. His target then was Senator John McCain who appeared to be within striking distance of Dubya in South Carolina after the then-GOP maverick's surprise upset victory in New Hampshire. Rove's operation proceeded to target McCain with false stories: McCain was a stoolie for his captors in the Hanoi Hilton (this from a lunatic self-promoting Vietnam "veteran"); McCain fathered a black daughter out of wedlock (a despicable reference to McCain's adopted Bangladeshi daughter); Cindy McCain's drug "abuse"; and even McCain's "homosexuality." In the spirit of Segretti, Rove engineered a victory for Dubya but at the cost of trashing an honorable man and his family. Muskie, McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Hart, Tsongas, Clinton, Biden, Dole, Perot, and others had all seen the Segretti/Rove slash and burn tactics before.

And Rove's penchant for fascistic demagoguery and outright lying continues to this very day. After Paul Wellstone's sons asked that Vice President Dick Cheney not attend the Minneapolis memorial service for their father, mother, and sister, the White House explained that the real reason wasn't the surviving Wellstone family's abhorrence for Cheney but the fact the family didn't want Cheney's Secret Service protection to interfere with public access to the service. Of course, the Rove and Ari Fleischer disinformation machine forgot to take into account that two attendees, Bill and Hillary Clinton, had their own Secret Service details. But such is the case with a White House that takes its lessons from Goebbels and the editorial staff of the old Soviet News Agency Tass.

Rove's dirty fingerprints could also be seen in the Iowa Senate race between Tom Harkin and GOP candidate Greg Ganske. A few months ago, a story was leaked that the Harkin campaign had employed a spy within the Ganske campaign. To put this in a Rove context, we must go back to the 1986 Texas gubernatorial race in which Rove's candidate Bill Clements was taking on Democratic Governor Mark White. Just before a debate between the two candidates, Rove spun the story that his office had been bugged. No proof. But the insinuation that White's people had carried out the bugging was reported by the media. In the election, Clements defeated White. Rove stashed away more political capital into his already heavy knapsack of ill-gotten IOUs.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, we were obviously treated to more Rove chicanery when the following Associated Press story hit the wires: "A woman who worked for a media company that produced ads for President George W. Bush's campaign was indicted for secretly mailing a videotape of Bush practicing for a debate to Vice President Al Gore's campaign." Yes, that videotape, along with a 120-page briefing book, just happened to turn up in Gore's headquarters as fast as the CD-ROM turned up in Lafayette Park. The sourcerer Segretti must be very proud of his apprentice. In 1980, no Republican bemoaned the fact that Jimmy Carter's debate briefing book was swiped and found its way into the hands of the Reagan-Bush campaign. In Rove's world, its only an affront when someone "steals" your own campaign secrets and not when your are on the receiving end of a heist.

"If you're not with me, you're against me." Bush's binary view of "good and evil" and "friend and enemy" sits well with the Rove strategy. Georgia's conservative but libertarian-minded Representative Bob Barr found out about this in last August's primary when his GOP primary opponent John Linder began spreading around stories that Barr was "soft on terrorism." Because Barr was skeptical about a number of aspects of the Bush-Ashcroft USA PATRIOT Act, he became a target for the Rove machine. However, it was likely that Barr became a target earlier on when he supported Steve Forbes against Bush in the 2000 primary. Bush apparently means to say, "If you've not always been with me, you're against me." It must have really been a dilemma for Bush and Rove to have to come to the support of John Sununu, Jr. in the New Hampshire Senate race. Although Daddy made George W. unceremoniously give the axe to Sununu's father as White House Chief of Staff during the Bush 41 administration, the man who the junior Sununu defeated in the primary, Bob Smith, was even more of a problem. He had the temerity to quit the Republican Party in 2000 and run against Dubya for President. So in Bushspeak, which is obviously borrowed from Forrest Gump's scripts, "if you're less with me than the other guy, you're more against me."

Undoubtedly, Rove was also behind the campaign to "get" Georgia Representative Cynthia McKinney who was the first nationally-known politician to question what Bush may have known beforehand about 9-11. She was defeated by a former Republican state judge who had supported the wacky Alan Keyes for President in 2000. Never mind, McKinney was "less with Bush" than Keyes, so it was more important to get McKinney who was "more against" Bush.

In all seriousness, rewarding the GOP on November 5 will only increase the appetite of Rove to amass more and more power into the White House. The advent of a Democratic-controlled Senate and House might even begin to spell the end of the road for Segretti's star pupil. German opposition figures in the mid-1930s often lamented the fact that they could have stopped the rise of the Nazis if only they had been more united in a common front when they had a chance. However, they fell prey to the media manipulation of Goebbels and fought among themselves more than they did against the menace from the far right. We Americans also have an early opportunity to stem an out-of-control and anti-constitutional regime with the Rasputin-like Rove at the after steerage helm of our ship of state. That opportunity presents itself next Tuesday--Election Day.

SPECIAL REPORT -- FIRST IN A SERIES -- Rahm: "Flaking away in 'Fucknutsville'"

President Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, as previously reported by WMR, has been engaged in a virtual "pogrom" against progressive Democrats in the White House, as well as in Congress. However, WMR has learned from multiple Capitol Hill sources that Emanuel's vendetta has taken on vicious racial overtones with the African-American leadership of House of Representatives committees being his top targets.

On March 7, The Guardian of the UK reported that the foul-mouthed Emanuel referred to Washington, DC as "fucknutsville." The latest epithet followed Emanuel's description of progressive Democrats upset over Obama's pro-business slant as "fucking retarded."

Although the long knives are out on Emanuel among many Democrats in Congress, Obama's chief of staff has been gaining the upper hand with pro-Obama "puff pieces" recently appearing in The Washington Post praising Emanuel as the top White House pragmatist at the expense of Obama's chief political strategist David Axelrod, adviser Valerie Jarrett, and even Obama himself.

Informed Democratic and Republican congressional sources report to WMR that Emanuel's latest gambit is to wrest control of key House committee chairmanships from African-Americans and have the gavels handed over to Jewish members, all of whom are close political allies of Emanuel. The ethics probe of House Ways and Means Committee chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) has forced him to "temporarily" hand over the chairmanship of the powerful committee to Sander Levin (D-MI) after ranking Democratic Representative Pete Stark of California, a critic of American wars in the Middle East and Israeli policies, was passed over in favor of Levin after the intervention of Emanuel with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Congressional sources do not believe that Rangel will see his chairmanship restored.

WMR has now learned that the next target for Emanuel is House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers, Jr., the long-serving Michigan Democrat who has been outspokenly critical of Obama's policies on health care and other key issues.

Last year, Conyers's wife Monica Conyers, the former President of the Detroit City Council, was indicted last year for accepting a $5000 bribe from Carlyle-Synagro Technologies of Texas and then reversed her vote on approving a $1.2 billion sludge disposal contract with the city of Detroit. Carlyle-Synagro is owned by the Carlyle Group, the firm that has close ties to the Bush family.

Mrs. Conyers is due to be sentenced on March 10 by US Judge Avern Cohn, who, as WMR previously reported, has been conspiring with Emanuel to delay sentencing Mrs. Conyers as a way to pressure House Judiciary Chairman Conyers to temper his criticisms of Obama. Federal prosecutors studiously avoided bringing charges against Carlyle-Synagro because of the firm's "cooperation" in the federal investigation of Monica Conyers and her former aide Sam Riddle. WMR has learned that the bribe of Mrs. Conyers was part of a conspiracy by Emanuel, US Attorney for Eastern Michigan Terrence Berg, and FBI agent in Detroit Andrew Arena to bring down Conyers as House Judiciary Chairman by going after his wife.

After Mrs. Conyers's sentencing on March 10, Emanuel, WMR is told, will arrange for a letter signed by Chairman Conyers and sent to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which advocated for the Romulus hazardous waste injection well contract for Environmental Geo-Technologies, Inc., a company owned by Dimitrios "Jim" Papas, to be awarded to the firm, to be released to the media. Papas reportedly offered Riddle to receive a $20,000 sub-contract while Mrs. Conyers, according to Riddle, would receive $10,000 of that money as a finder's fee.

After the letter is released after Mrs. Conyers's sentencing by Cohn, Emanuel's media friends will call for John Conyers, the second longest serving House member after John Dingell (D-MI), to repeat the actions of Rangel and "temporarily" hand over his gavel with concurrent calls for a House Ethics probe.

However, WMR has learned from House sources that John Conyers never signed the letter to the EPA, which was drafted by an EPA fellow working on Conyers's staff. Mustafa Santiago Ali. Ali, WMR has learned, did not want to write the letter but was forced into it by Conyers's chief of staff Cynthia Martin, who, WMR is told, is part of Emanuel's conspiracy against the Judiciary chairman. After Ali wrote the letter, his fellowship on Conyers's staff was terminated by Martin.

WMR, which hopes to obtain the letter, has learned that Conyers's signature was affixed by a staffer, that it has no salutation, and is undated. However, there is a possibility that what is arranged for release by Emanuel may include a date and a salutation and thus, falsely implicate Chairman Conyers in the Detroit bribery politics that sank his wife's political career.

WMR has also learned that Emanuel is pumping campaign cash into the coffers of potential primary opponents prior to the May 11 candidate filing deadline in Michigan. Conyers's congressional colleague from Detroit, Representative Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, whose son, former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was convicted of corruption, and Conyers, are being targeted for primary defeat by potential candidates hand-picked by Emanuel. The potential opponents, which include three identified as challengers to Conyers, are receiving money from the same Israel Lobby sources who helped defeat Representatives Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) and Earl Hilliard (D-AL) over their lack of support for pro-Israel resolutions.

WMR has learned from an African-American congressional source that Emanuel has made no secret of his dislike of African-Americans in Congress, particularly the chairmen of committees, including Conyers, Rangel, and Homeland Security committee chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS). Ironically, Emanuel, who is the chief of staff for the first African-American president of the United States, is known to use the term "shvartz" in describing the senior African-American congressmen. Shvartz is the Yiddish word that means the same thing as "nigger."

We have also learned from a former Democratic member of the House that Emanuel's job with the investment firm Wasserstein-Perella, where he earned $16.2 million for his prospective congressional race to succeed Rod Blagojevich as congressman from Illinois's 5th congressional district, was partly arranged by the media-shy rabid pro-Israeli owner of Slim Fast Foods, S. Daniel Abraham. It is the type of political quid pro quo that Emanuel is now using to hammer Rangel, Conyers, and the ousted chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee John Dingell, who was replaced by Emanuel ally Henry Waxman (D-CA).

Blagojevich has argued that transcripts of his wiretapped phone calls were only selectively released to the media. WMR has learned from a top GOP lobbyist that Blagojevich can be expected to beat the criminal charges against him when it is revealed in trial that Emanuel conspired with U.S. Attorney for northern Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald to indict the former Illinois governor by focusing on his attempt to "sell" Obama's vacant US Senate seat. In fact, Emanuel was adamantly opposed to Blagojevich naming any African-American, Representative Jesse Jackson III or Roland Burris to the seat. Although it has been reported that Emanuel favored Valerie Jarrett for the seat, WMR has learned that Emanuel actually was pushing for Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), an Emanuel ally, for the seat.

Knowing of Emanuel's personal dislike for African-Americans, Blagojevich responded to Emnanuel's pressure by naming Burris to the seat. Emanuel's allies in the Senate responded by greeting the junior Illinois senator with an ethics investigation. The Senate dropped its ethics investigation of Burris die to lack of evidence and merely issued a letter of admonishment on November 20, 2009. However, Burris's career was finished and he announced he would not seek re-election.

If Conyers is forced to step down or "temporarily" step aside as chairman, ranking Democrat Howard Berman (D-CA), another Emanuel ally, would step up as chairman. Such a move would see Representative Gary Ackerman, another Emanuel friend, step up to take Berman's place as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Emanuel also has Thompson, chairman of Homeland Security, as a target. Thompson has been under an ethics cloud for taking lobbyist-funded trips to Saipan, courtesy of jailed GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and to Saint Martin, courtesy of Citigroup lobbyists. Although Representative Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) is the ranking Democrat on the committee, Emanuel can be expected to pressure Pelosi to find another assignment for her so that the third-ranking Democrat, Representative Jane Harman (D-CA), another Emanuel ally, can step up to chair the committee. Harman has been under a cloud resulting from her close association with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Mossad agents in Washington, DC.

WMR was told by a top GOP lobbyist who is on good terms with Representative Conyers that number of House and Senate members and staffers view Emanuel as a "dangerous psychopath" capable of doing almost anything to advance his agenda. A former African-American member of the House told WMR that Emanuel's goal is to eliminate every African-American chairman from their leadership roles and pave the way for Emanuel's Jewish colleagues to take their chairmanships from them. The strategy has already been carried out with respect to Rangel, as well as with pro-union Dingell, who is white. The strategy is about to be played out against Conyers and, eventually, Thompson.

As this story was being prepared, freshman Representative Eric Massa (D-NY), who announced his resignation after being embroiled in a homosexual sexual harassment scandal involving a staffer, announced on a WKPQ-FM Saturday radio show that he was the victim of a conspiracy carried out by Emanuel and his House allies. Massa said he had a "profanity-filled conversation" conversation with Emanuel last year after voting against Obama's health care bill. Massa said he told Emanuel to resign for his use of profanity. Massa added, "Rahm Emanuel is son of the devil’s spawn . . . He is an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote. He would strap his children to the front end of a steam locomotive.”

NEXT: THE BACKMAIL INFORMATION THAT EMANUEL HAS ON PRESIDENT OBAMA.

Earthquakes: the drilling angle.

WMR has learned from a knowledgeable source who has studied the possible man-made aspects behind a number of destructive earthquakes that seismic tomography may be the cause of quakes in Haiti, Chile, and other locations.

Seismic tomography for oil and gas exploration has been largely covered up by the energy industry, which prefers to use the term "non-explosive" methods to describe the procedure. In some cases, the use of explosives to prospect for oil and natural gas have had some negative "back blast" consequences that the industry also felt compelled to cover up. Also, in the past, oil and natural gas explorers dropped depth charges to the seafloor to generate acoustic waves in order to detect oil and natural gas deposits.

WMR's source reports that that Halliburton with help from Bechtel has used Americium-242 -- a highly reactive isotope -- with tiny pellets of plutonium to conduct sub-seafloor blasts for seismic tomography aimed at analyzing rock for the oil and gas deposits.

We have also learned that Halliburton routinely loses its capsules of Russian-made Americium-241 in places like Nigeria, India, and, Boston.

The Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 (which took place off Aceh, Sumatra, the site of large Exxon Mobil operations), the Haiti quake and Chilean tsunami/quake have similar features of a vertical shock uplift, rather than a sideways tectonic movement, and radial patterns without any sign of a directional horizontal thrust in contrast to Kobe, Sichuan and Iwate. The recent three quakes off Sumatra and in Haiti and Chile could well be the result of borehole electromagnetic-triggered seismic activities, possibly linked to pressure releases from seabed gas domes.

How far do these boreholes go down? In each case the events were on fairly shallow shelves, accessible to submersible drilling vessels.