Articles

BAHRAIN: Fascism in the Gulf
May 14, 2011
Bahrain
NOVANEWS By Prof Lawrence Davidson Part I – Welcome to Bahrain   If you want to see how an ostensive ...Read more
“We Minorities Should Stick Together”
May 14, 2011
USA
NOVANEWS   Congressional Candidate Dan Adler and His Racist Ad by Ralph Iver The title of recent news articles say ...Read more
Obama Seeks Reset in Arab World
May 14, 2011
USA
NOVANEWS     Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press Egyptian protesters watched President Obama speak in February. Aides said he is immersed in ...Read more
Bin Laden’s Death Won’t End His Toll on American Taxpayers, Poll Shows
May 14, 2011
Libya
NOVANEWS Bloomberg   Even in death, Osama bin Laden will be taking revenge on American taxpayers for years to come. The ...Read more
British Intel Officer–”Iraq dossier drawn up to make case for war”
May 13, 2011
United Kingdom
NOVANEWS   Richard Norton-Taylor A top military intelligence official has said the discredited dossier on Iraq’s weapons programme was drawn ...Read more
Gaddafi Arrest Warrant Expected By Italy
May 13, 2011
Libya
NOVANEWS   Associated Press ROME — Italy’s foreign minister says he expects the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest ...Read more
Libya war costs surpass US estimate’
May 13, 2011
Libya
NOVANEWS   US Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the aerial war on Libya has cost the United States about 750 ...Read more
A Time for Truth: Bin Laden’s Death Won’t End War on Terror Until Americans Understand the Threat was Always Us
May 13, 2011
USA
NOVANEWS   By Susan Lindauer, 9/11 Whistleblower and author of Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and ...Read more
Dorothy Online Newsletter
May 13, 2011
Middle East
NOVANEWS Dear Friends, As you can imagine, these are uneasy times.  On the one hand, the possibility of strikes against Iran ...Read more
Letter to U.S.A Congress
May 13, 2011
USA
Dear Members of Congress, Israel has established 150 settlements, populated by a half-million Jewish Israelis, in the occupied Palestinian West ...Read more
CyberDissidents: A heartwarming tale of a group of right-wing Zionists devoted to Arab and Iranian freedom…
May 13, 2011
ZIO-NAZI
NOVANEWS     Now remember, all you out there who said that the revolutions in the Middle East were going ...Read more
FBI: IsraHeLl Stole $2 Million from Elderly Victims in the United States
May 13, 2011
USA
NOVANEWS   PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced the guilty pleas of ...Read more

BAHRAIN: Fascism in the Gulf

NOVANEWS
By Prof Lawrence Davidson
Part I – Welcome to Bahrain

 

If you want to see how an ostensive religious regime can be corrupted into something close to fascism, just take a look at contemporary Bahrain. In February 2011 there were a series of non-violent demonstrations staged mostly by the small kingdom’s Shia majority (approximately 70% of the country’s Muslim citizens.) These were held to protest the discriminatory practices of the country’s Sunni monarchy. The protests were soon violently suppressed by the Bahraini army and police, with the help of troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. However, it was what followed the crushing of the demonstrations that smacks of fascism. Here is how a report, dated 6 May 2011, by Roy Gutman of the McClatchy Newspapers, puts it, “authorities have held secret trials where protesters have been sentenced to death, arrested prominent mainstream opposition politicians, jailed nurses and doctors who treated injured protesters, seized the health care system that had been run primarily by Shiites, fired 1,000 Shiite professionals and canceled their pensions, beat and arrested journalists, and forced the closure of the only opposition newspaper. Nothing, however, has struck harder at the fabric of this nation, where Shiites outnumber Sunnis nearly 4 to1, than the destruction of Shiite worship centers.”

As an important aside that can only shake your faith in the effectiveness of international law, it is to be noted that this repression is being carried out by a regime that, as Stephen Lendman tells us, “is a signatory to nearly every major international humanitarian and human rights law, including: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; and the Convention of the Rights of the Child, among others.” Signing such instruments is an easy act of hypocrisy for most dictatorships and, as we will see, the one in Bahrain treats them as a form of convenient deception.
Part II – Sunnis and Shiites
Today, Shiites make up approximately 20% of the world’s Muslim population and are particularly concentrated in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Bahrain. The tension between Sunnis and Shiites has its roots in a disagreement over the proper order of succession following the death of the prophet Mohammad. As a consequence the Sunni majority has always seen Shiites as not quite orthodox, and so has often treated them in a discriminatory fashion. This led to over a 1000 years of periodic struggle and competition, sometimes violent, between the two sects. Though none of this has been as horrid or prolonged as the wars of religion experienced by the Christian West, the potential for comparable blood letting is there.
I think that there is little doubt that the prophet Mohammad would strongly disapprove of this aspect of Muslim history. In hislast sermon to his followers, delivered during his final pilgrimage to Mecca in 632 CE, he said, “Oh ye men, listen to my words and take them to heart: every Muslim is a brother to every other Muslim and you are now one brotherhood.” Over the years this message has been disregarded all too often.
The Bahraini regime, which happens to be Sunni, has certainly forgotten this important message and treated their majority Shiite citizenry as anything but brothers. And, just as in every other case of prolonged discrimination, the result has been growing resentment. The popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt served as incentives for Bahrain’s Shiites to once more express their discontent in a non-violent way. That the regimeblames this all on Shia Iran is just an excuse. It is the Bahraini monarchy’s prejudicial policies that have brought about this situation–the truth is that King Hamad (the present ruler), his family and rest of the kingdom’s ruling clique, pursue bigoted policies and then call that government.
So when it comes to Bahrain, you can forget about the fact that this is suppose to be a Muslim government. Islam has nothing to do with its ruling policies. What you have is a minority regime which refuses to reform its indecent and inhumane ways. It is going to hold on to power by brute force and by doing so join the ranks of other regimes such as Pinochet’s Chile, the military dictatorship that once massacred its own people in Argentina, the death squad regimes of Central America, ad nauseam. The next time King Hamad appears on the balcony of his palace to address his supporters, the man standing next to him will no doubt be the regime’s “Lord High Executioner.” The probable candidate for this position is Hamad’s uncle, Salman al Khalifa, who is 75 years old and has been the country’s prime minister for forty years. As the Gutman piece tells us, that is “a current world record.” This is not a Muslim Bahrain. This is a Fascist Bahrain.
Part III – And What of the United States?
What is the American connection to all of this? The US Fifth Fleet, which patrols the Persian Gulf, isheadquartered at a small 100 acre naval base at Bahrain (the base is presently being enlarged). The US has also designated Bahrain a “major non-Nato ally” and has a “defense pact” with that country. Thus the United States is concerned about the fate of Bahrain. It is reported that, at the time of the Egyptian protests, President Obama told both the Bahraini and the Saudi regimes that they should carry out major political reforms so as to prevent similar unrest in their own countries. Both were aghast at this advice and furious that the Obama administration abandoned the Mubarak dictatorship. Obama has since been publically silent on the issue of Bahrain. This is what happens when you climb into bed with dictators. If you are not willing to walk away from them, you must turn a blind eye to their behavior. Historically, this has not been a problem for most American administrations. Abandoning Egypt’s Mubarak seems to be an exception to the rule.
Ever since the Egyptian protests ousted Mubarak, Washington’s rhetoric has been confusing. President Obama has often attempted tolay down what sounds like basic principles – ones reflecting “who we (Americans) are as a nation.” That is the kind of language he invoked to justify intervention in Libya. We were going to “protect civilians” because that is who we are and that is what people like us do. Well, if this is a basic principle, if we allegedly act in this humane way as a function of who we are, should we not be consistent in our behavior? What about the unfortunate Bahraini Shiites who are being trampled in a fascist manner by a dictatorship every bit as bad, if not worse, than the one in Libya? I could easily throw in a number of other friendly regimes which have equal fascist potential such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Syria and Iran don’t quite fit here because they are presently not our friends. Obama, with his principled rhetoric, has run into the inevitable problem of double standards. It is the kind of problem that makes you want to be an isolationist.
However, there is supposedly too much at stake to just walk away from a place like Bahrain. For one thing there is the issue of keeping Middle East oil in “friendly” hands. And just how big an issue is that? There is an old saying that has gone around Washington for decades and it is framed in the form of the question, “what are the Arab leaders who sit on a lot of oil going to do with it? Drink it?” In other words, oil is a commercial product. It does not matter if the Saudis or the Bahrainis or the Iraqis or the Iranians, etc. agree with you or not. Whoever ends up in charge is going to sell their oil. So why support dictatorial regimes? Why not back the protesters? We are all for democracy, or so we claim.
Alas, this is about more than oil. The dictators we now back are accepting of Israel and turn blind eyes to the destruction of the Palestinian people. The democracies that might replace them are not likely to feel the same way. We already have intonations of this in post Mubarak Egypt. This situation has actually made undeclared allies of Israel and bloody regimes such as that in Bahrain (King Hamad has admitted cooperating with Israel). Israel, in turn, has one of the strongest lobbies in Washington and, most of the time, shapes America’s Middle East foreign policy, particularly in Congress. Then there is our shared, if exaggerated, fear of Shia Iran. Israel and its allied lobbies drive this fear forward in the US and our dictator friends, like the Saudis and the Bahrainis, are also obsessed by it. Remember, the protestors in Bahrain are overwhelmingly Shiite. If they were successful, Bahrain would most likely be a place friendly toward Iran. That would never do.
Part IV – Conclusion
2011 is not the first time Bahrain’s Shiites have protested their plight. There were protests throughout the 1990s which ended with the proclamation of the National Action Charterpromising equality of opportunity for all. This statement of theory has obviously not been sufficiently translated into practice. It turned out to be a convenient deception–hence the 2011 troubles.
There is no reason to believe that the suppression of the 2011 protests marks the end of Bahrain’s problems. As noted, most of the kingdom’s protests have been non-violent. However, with the fascist tactics now adopted by the regime, non-violence is probably not going to be the popular response next time around. It is simply the case that, over time, the violence of the oppressed rises to the level of the violence of the oppressor. The next time there will likely be civil war in Bahrain.
If you want to see how an ostensive religious regime can be corrupted into something close to fascism, just take a look at contemporary Bahrain. In February 2011 there were a series of non-violent demonstrations staged mostly by the small kingdom’s Shia majority (approximately 70% of the country’s Muslim citizens.) These were held to protest the discriminatory practices of the country’s Sunni monarchy. The protests were soon violently suppressed by the Bahraini army and police, with the help of troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. However, it was what followed the crushing of the demonstrations that smacks of fascism. Here is how areport, dated 6 May 2011, by Roy Gutman of the McClatchy Newspapers, puts it, “authorities have held secret trials where protesters have been sentenced to death, arrested prominent mainstream opposition politicians, jailed nurses and doctors who treated injured protesters, seized the health care system that had been run primarily by Shiites, fired 1,000 Shiite professionals and canceled their pensions, beat and arrested journalists, and forced the closure of the only opposition newspaper. Nothing, however, has struck harder at the fabric of this nation, where Shiites outnumber Sunnis nearly 4 to1, than the destruction of Shiite worship centers.”
As an important aside that can only shake your faith in the effectiveness of international law, it is to be noted that this repression is being carried out by a regime that, as Stephen Lendman tells us, “is a signatory to nearly every major international humanitarian and human rights law, including: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; and the Convention of the Rights of the Child, among others.” Signing such instruments is an easy act of hypocrisy for most dictatorships and, as we will see, the one in Bahrain treats them as a form of convenient deception.

“We Minorities Should Stick Together”

NOVANEWS

 
Congressional Candidate Dan Adler
and His Racist Ad

by Ralph Iver

The title of recent news articles say Zionist congressional candidate, Dan Adler “targets Asians with bizarre ad“.  That title should instead read “Dan Adler Targets Asians with Racist Ad”.

It appears that he is stereotyping Asians and faces flack for his condescending approach to them.  Perhaps the thought should occur to people that much racial impropriety by people who appear “White” are actually done by people who are Zionist.

Adler states in his ad that “I definitely approve this message.”  What does he approve?  With this video ad, he approves that minorities “should stick together”–and the unspoken is against, who else,  but majority Whites; implying that White people should be excluded;  that he will represent minorities over Whites; that minorities should encourage thoughts and acts of racism toward Whites, at a minimum denying them adequate representation.  Dan Adler’s campaign presents a clear message of his intentions to disenfranchise a majority group of people based on their race:  people of European descent.

In the past week, mainstream media has released that in ten states, White children under age 18 are now the minority.   How does Adler’s ad, a thinly veiled statement of prejudice towards Whites, fit in with that reality?  Adler is a supporter of immigration reform and the DREAM act, which will hasten the demise of Westernization, Western values, and yes, White people as a race.   His intent clearly is to make a shrinking race of Whites utter strangers in their own land.  Indeed, for many of us, we already are.

Adding to the seriousness of all this is the fact that Whites are disallowed any claims to being victimized on account of their race–ever.  It is extremely difficult to win an argument that Whites are often victims on account of their race, let alone stop actual disenfranchisement, loss of equity, and violence.

Adler uses his Zionist (not his White skin color) to ally himself racially with local constituents, Asian people.  However, do Asians understand that the creator of the atom bomb that decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki was Jewish?  J. Robert Oppenheimer, a communist, stated of his part in this genocide of Asians, “I carry no weight on my conscience.”    Alder seems to carry no weight on his conscience in using Asians and other “minorities” to promote his racist agenda to exclude White people from representation by their government officials.  He carries no weight on his shoulder for his part for the coming loss of the United States as a Western nation.  He carries no weight on his shoulders for promoting minorities to “stick together” as a group, deepening the wedges in the American identity and hastening balkanization.

But we are not looking solely at a racial issue.  We have here an equally deep problem in the loss of Westernization.  People have differing worldviews along racial and regional lines.  In the grand scheme are the two major world views, the Occident and the Orient.  The Occident, Westernization, is shrinking fast due to the flood of non-European immigration into European homelands.  What will not be annihilated by the homicide of anti-White policies and laws will be completed with the suicide of socially-promoted “White Guilt”.   In their own countries, Koreans are the majority, Chinese are the majority, and Japanese are the majority–and proudly so; however, the United States, which had a 90% majority of Whites in 1960, has fallen so far since the 1965 immigration act that we will have no majority race in another 30 years.  This is unimaginable in places like China and Korea.  Floods of non-Asian immigration do not happen in Asian countries, yet, it is aggressively promoted in Western nations, even by law.  Asians have protected their racial integrity and guarded their right to their non-Western world views.  We are rapidly losing ours.

Pat Buchanan wrote in the introduction to his book, Death of the West,

“[N]o nation in history has gone through a demographic change of this magnitude in so short a time, and remained the same nation.  Mr. Clinton assured us that it will be a better America when we are all minorities and realize true ‘diversity’.  Well, those students are going to find out, for they will spend their golden years in a Third World America.  Uncontrolled immigration threatens to deconstruct the nation we grew up in and convert America into a conglomeration of peoples with almost nothing in common–not history, heroes, language, culture, faith, or ancestors.  Balkanization beckons.”

Who is Dan Adler, anyway?  He is a member of the American Jewish Committee’s National Board of Governors.  He is also on a board of directors at the Israeli Policy Forum, a diplomatic organization that supports a two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians, and has been accused of being pro-Palestinian.  Adler concurs with the two-state solution that might be in the interests of Palestinians.  However, he takes the expected hard-line that “America’s responsibility to Israel is an unshakable one“.  One of one side of his mouth he supports negotiations; on the other side negotiation is not possible, and America’s loyalty must be “unshakable”.   He also stands against Iran–one more war positioned to wipe thousands more innocents off the map.

From the news, we find he is a former executive of Disney.  Why is this important?  Walt Disney cleaned up fairytales for children and promoted wholesome values for families, at a time when the nation was a majority of devout Christians.  At the time of his production company, as a Christian he was a minority in a very Zionist Hollywood.  Disney, a hardened anti-communist, was inconclusively rumored to be an anti-Semite (in other words, there is not enough evidence to this, and we will never know for sure).   After his death, Disney productions was overtaken by the very people he purported held in contempt, and who have lead the company steadily away from Disney’s values of old fashion commitment to family and decency.

The following is an excerpt about the transfer of power to Zionist bosses after Walt Disney’s death, by William Pierce:

The real problem, of course, was that Walt Disney’s vision of the world, as reflected in the films he produced, was wholly different from that of the Zionist film producers around him. As long as Walt was making Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck cartoons, this problem could be overlooked. When he began animating feature-length fairy tales like Snow White and Cinderella, the Jews in Hollywood became increasingly nervous. The world of Snow White was an entirely White world, a European world.

It stirred racial memories in White Americans, and the aim of the Zionist media bosses then as now was to make White Americans forget their roots. They wanted to begin promoting multiculturalism as soon as the Second World War was over, and Walt was in their way. They couldn’t push racial mixing in their films and have someone as popular as Walt Disney refuse to go along: the contrast would be obvious to the public. Even Disney’s extremely popular Nature films were resented by the rest of Hollywood. Films which promoted a love for animals and the natural world were viewed with suspicion by men whose view of life was entirely economic and urban.

These may seem like subtle differences, and in fact most people outside of Hollywood were oblivious to the ideological and cultural conflict between Walt Disney and the other film producers. The closest that the conflict came to attracting public attention was during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Walt Disney’s total lack of sympathy for Communism and his refusal to let Communist propaganda be introduced into any of his productions set him apart from the rest of Hollywood. While Walt was alive, however, there wasn’t much that Hollywood could do about him. He was too popular with the American people.

After Walt died in 1966, however, the situation changed. His company had depended on his genius for its prosperity, and without him it had a difficult time keeping up with the competition. After Disney company profits had declined for several years, Jewish corporate raiders Saul Steinberg and Irwin Jacobs moved in for the kill. In 1984, after Steinberg had milked the company of $32 million, Disney family shareholders were too weak to resist a takeover by Michael Eisner, the Zionist boss of Paramount Pictures. Eisner in turn brought in as his second in command another Zionist, Jeffrey Katzenberg. The company that Walt Disney built — the company that gave us Snow White and Fantasia — has been in Zionist hands ever since.

During his first day as chairman of the Disney company — his first day, believe it or not — Eisner ordered the production of an R-rated film, about the kinky sexual misadventures of a typically neurotic Jewish family in the Los Angeles area. This was the first R-rated film ever produced by the Disney company — but certainly not the last.

Speaking of R-rated, Adler, backed by his former Disney colleague, Michael Eisner, produced two more video ads making use of R-rated language, having his 11-year old son use foul language for the cameras.  Disney would have rolled over in his grave over how his vision, which was also America’s vision in a more unified time, has been profoundly undermined.

Obama Seeks Reset in Arab World

NOVANEWS

 

 

Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press

Egyptian protesters watched President Obama speak in February. Aides said he is immersed in the Arab world’s uprisings.

By 

WASHINGTON — For President Obama, the killing of Osama bin Laden is more than a milestone in America’s decade-long battle against terrorism. It is a chance to recast his response to the upheaval in the Arab world after a frustrating stretch in which the stalemate in Libya, the murky power struggle in Yemen and the brutal crackdown in Syria have dimmed the glow of the Egyptian revolution.

Administration officials said the president was eager to use Bin Laden’s death as a way to articulate a unified theory about the popular uprisings from Tunisia to Bahrain — movements that have common threads but also disparate features, and have often drawn sharply different responses from the United States. 
The first sign of this “reset” could come as early as next week, when Mr. Obama plans to give a speech on the Middle East in which he will seek to put Bin Laden’s death in the context of the region’s broader political transformation. The message, said one of his deputy national security advisers, Benjamin J. Rhodes, will be that “Bin Laden is the past; what’s happening in the region is the future.”
“The spotlight is understandably always on whatever country things are going worst in,” Mr. Rhodes said. “What’s important is to step back and say, ‘The trajectory of change is in the right direction.’ ”
Still, although Bin Laden’s killing may provide a rare moment of clarity, it has less obvious implications for American strategic calculations in the region. Some administration officials argue that the heavy blow to Al Qaeda gives the United States the chance to be more forward-leaning on political change because it makes Egypt, Syria and other countries less likely to tip toward Islamic extremism.
But other senior officials note that the Middle East remains a complicated place: the death of Al Qaeda’s leader does not erase the terrorist threat in Yemen, while countries like Bahrain are convulsed by sectarian rivalries that never had much to do with Bin Laden’s radical message. The White House said it was still working through the policy implications country by country.
Even before the Bin Laden raid, officials said, Mr. Obama was casting about for ways to tie together events in the Middle East. White House officials had weighed a speech in which the president would link the upheaval to the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations — a process that seems, if anything, even more paralyzed after the recentagreement between the Palestinian Authority and the militant group Hamas.
Given that, officials said, the current plan is for the president to keep his focus on the broader changes in the Arab world, rather than to present a specific new plan for reviving the peace talks.
From the earliest days of protests in Tunisia, Mr. Obama has balanced his desire to paint an overarching Arab narrative with the need to evaluate each country on its own terms. He has juggled the same idealistic and realistic impulses that have marked his approach to domestic issues.
Interviews with several administration officials suggest that the tensions in his Middle East policy are less the product of a debate among advisers than of a tug of war within the president himself.
In Egypt, for example, Mr. Obama’s advisers say he decided to push for President Hosni Mubarak’s exit early on, against the advice of aides, after watching Mr. Mubarak’s defiant televised address on a screen in the White House Situation Room. Even then, they said, he feared that the dreams of young activists, like the Google executive Wael Ghonim, would be let down by the fitful transition to democracy.
One of his aides said that when he asked Mr. Obama to predict the outcome, the president said: “What I want is for the kids on the street to win and for the Google guy to become president. What I think is that this is going to be long and hard.”
That has proved even more true in Libya, where Mr. Obama reluctantly threw his support behind a NATO-led bombing campaign that has bogged down. Libya has become a major preoccupation for him, necessitating daily meetings, in which officials said he was being briefed on the targets for airstrikes and on diplomatic efforts to pry Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi from power.
Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, said Mr. Obama was as deeply immersed in all the Arab countries undergoing political upheaval. “The president, in each of these cases, has really been the central intellectual force in these decisions, in many cases, designing the approaches,” he said.

Bin Laden’s Death Won’t End His Toll on American Taxpayers, Poll Shows

NOVANEWS
Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda Terrorist Who Oversaw 9/11 Attac
Bloomberg
 

Even in death, Osama bin Laden will be taking revenge on American taxpayers for years to come.

The U.S. government spent $2 trillion combating Osama Bin Laden over the past decade, more than 20 percent of the nation’s $9.68 trillion public debt. That money paid for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as additional military, intelligence and homeland security spending above pre-Sept. 11 trends, according to a Bloomberg analysis. This year alone, taxpayers are spending more than $45 billion in interest on the money borrowed to battle al-Qaeda, the analysis shows. Megan Hughes reports. (Source: Bloomberg)

Even in death, Osama bin Laden will be taking revenge on American taxpayers for years to come.

The U.S. government spent $2 trillion combating bin Laden over the past decade, more than 20 percent of the nation’s $9.68 trillion public debt. That money paid for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as additional military, intelligence and homeland security spending above pre-Sept. 11 trends, according to a Bloomberg analysis.
This year alone, taxpayers are spending more than $45 billion in interest on the money borrowed to battle al-Qaeda, the analysis shows.
The financial bleeding won’t stop with bin Laden’s demise. One of every four dollars in red ink the U.S. expects to incur in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 will result from $285 billion in annual spending triggered by the terrorist scion of a wealthy Saudi family.
Without bin Laden, “we would have accumulated less debt, be spending less on interest and we would be on a lower spending path going forward,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a research organization in Washington.
Along with the dollars-and-cents toll, bin Laden has left behind a less quantifiable imprint on American life. Thousands of families have suffered grievous loss from the Sept. 11 attacks and the two wars. U.S. government buildings in Washington and around the world have grown to resemble fortified bunkers. And the line between government power and individual liberty was redrawn as agencies gained new powers to combat a novel threat.

Costs ‘Ad Infinitum’

The complete figure may be higher than the Bloomberg analysis. Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics Inc., said bin Laden cost the U.S. government and businesses $2.5 trillion, or $250 billion each year. “I think a prudent planner would anticipate these costs continuing ad infinitum into the future,” he said in an e-mail.
Indeed, the meter didn’t stop running May 2 when bin Laden’s corpse slipped into the Arabian Sea. Next year alone, the U.S. plans to spend an additional $118 billion on military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Additional fiscal 2012 spending that can be attributed to bin Laden includes an extra $14 billion for homeland security, about $125 billion for the Pentagon excluding the two wars, expanded intelligence spending and increased aid to Pakistan, according to the Bloomberg analysis.
“There are a lot of legacy costs,” said Jon Meacham, editor of “Beyond Bin Laden,” an instant book fromRandom House.

Pentagon Budget

As the U.S. celebrates the demise of the number-one figure on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” list, the future spending that can be attributed to bin Laden far exceeds direct war costs. Gordon Adams, who oversaw national security budgeting at the Office of Management and Budget during the Clinton administration, said roughly $125 billion of the Pentagon’s $553 billion fiscal 2012 budget request represents unnecessary spending justified by claims of war-time need.
“That’s a tax which would not have happened without Osama bin Laden,” Adams, a professor at American University’s School of International Service, said in a telephone interview.
The bin Laden tax has been levied every year for the past decade. Pentagon spending — excluding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — between fiscal 2002 and today was $742 billion higher than theCongressional Budget Office’s January 2001 baseline forecast.
Amid a wartime atmosphere, military spending requests faced less scrutiny both within the Pentagon and in Congress, Adams said. Programs launched with modest initial funding often live on, their costs ballooning with the years.

Nigeria Surveillance

A Pentagon counterterrorism training and equipment initiative known as the Section 1206 program, which has funneled aid to 53 countries, swelled from $100 million in fiscal 2006 to $500 million in the Obama administration’s request for fiscal year 2012, which starts Oct. 1.
Under the program, Nigeria got maritime surveillance gear to monitor traffic in the Gulf of Guinea and Lebanon obtained parts for UH-1H helicopters, which it used to quash an uprising in the Nahr al-Barid refugee camp. “It’s used for every purpose you can imagine,” Adams said.
The U.S. added 92,000 soldiers to its ground forces in the decade following the Sept. 11 attacks. Each 10,000 people added to the military’s ranks means an extra $1 billion in annual spending, according to Adams. So the ground force expansion inspired by bin Laden will impose an additional $9 billion annually, he said.

Intelligence Tripled

The military wasn’t alone in securing expanded financial resources because of bin Laden. The budget for U.S. intelligence agencies tripled over the past 12 years, representing an average annual increase of 9.6 percent.
While it is difficult to determine how much of the incremental increase in can be directly linked to bin Laden, the amount is undoubtedly sizable. In October 2010, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said the intelligence budget for fiscal 2009 was $80.1 billion, including $27 billion for military intelligence. Michael O’Hanlon, a Brookings Institution defense expert, estimated that $25 billion to $30 billion of annual intelligence spending can be laid at bin Laden’s feet.
“A large portion of that cost growth is from 9/11,” said O’Hanlon, a former national security analyst with the Congressional Budget Office.
Homeland Security
The government’s finances also will groan beneath the weight of the Department of Homeland Security, the 216,000- employee bureaucracy created to protect Americans from additional terrorist attacks. Over the past nine years, the department spent about $123 billion more than if the 22 component agencies’ pre-Sept. 11 spending trends had continued, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
That is an extra $14 billion annually U.S. taxpayers can attribute to bin Laden — or 24 percent of the $57 billion the department is seeking for the 2012 fiscal year.
Some enduring costs will amount to no more than inconvenience. Less than six months before the Sept. 11 attacks, a House committee held a hearing to consider reopening Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House. The street closure, instituted as a temporary measure after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was made permanent after al-Qaeda’s attacks, and Washington drivers have adjusted.

Airport Lines

Likewise, though travelers fume in airport security lines while stripping off shoes and belts and fumbling with three- ounce cosmetics containers, the economic consequences are negligible, according to Nariman Behravesh, chief economist of IHS Insight, an economic and financial analysis and forecasting company. “This is a huge, diversified economy which can absorb this stuff without too much pain,” he said.
Bin Laden’s imprint on American society, however, extends beyond finances. Through May 2, 11,191 members of the U.S. military have been wounded in the war in Afghanistan, including 35 percent so severely as to preclude their return to combat.
In coming years, those who saw loved ones injured or killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, or in the wars that followed, will still bear daily pain.
Public buildings, which before the rise of al-Qaeda were designed as artistic statements, will continue to resemble bunkers. And small erosions of personal liberty, conceded in the interests of security, may yet deepen.

Duct Tape

Not since the early days of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union threatened, has an enemy so bedeviled Americans and their leaders. Where once children prepared for nuclear war with “duck and cover” drills, Americans after Sept. 11 stockpiled duct tape and canned food.
The post-Sept. 11 drive for security changed the look of the U.S. capital, transforming it into a garrison city bristling with metal barriers, stone bollards and closed-circuit cameras. To enter even the most unimportant office building, people grew accustomed to handing over photo identification and signing their names.
If these requirements seemed longer on ritual than reward, they nonetheless spread. Likewise, the government expanded its powers in response to the threat conjured by bin Laden.
In 2010, federal officials filed 1,579 requests with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — or six requests each working day and 50 percent more than in 2001 — for electronic surveillance or physical searches. The 11-judge federal court, established to adjudicate surveillance requests regarding suspected foreign agents, approved every one of the government’s requests, according to an April 29 Justice Department report to Congress.

‘Pre-Emptive’ Surveillance

Julian Sanchez, a research analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian-oriented policy center in Washington, said the proliferation of wiretap requests represented a break with practices in place before the Sept. 11 attacks. “We’ve seen a shift from the traditional American model of surveillance of particular individuals on the basis of individualized suspicion to a broader pre-emptive model,” he said.
Separately, the FBI issued so-called national security letters, which require businesses to provide federal investigators with an individual’s records, including telecommunications and financial data.
Investigators last year sought the records of 14,212 Americans, more than in the previous two years combined. Civil liberties advocates see the national security letters, which don’t require a judge’s approval, as a dangerously broad power. “We would be in pretty serious trouble if there were 14,000 terrorists in the United States,” said Sanchez.
For all bin Laden’s financial and human impact, however, the al-Qaeda leader failed in his ultimate goal of humbling the world’s lone superpower. Today’s $15 trillion U.S. economy, for example, is 18 percent larger than in 2001, after adjusting for inflation.

Economy Survives

Indeed, said Meacham, the genius of the American experiment lies in the country’s ability to withstand sharp blows without fracturing. He noted that President Barack Obama, who as a candidate criticized the national security policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush, largely embraced them once he took office.
That development, akin to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s acceptance of the New Deal in the 1950s, has helped steady the country amid turbulent times.
“We’re on this new road that’s been created. We’ll veer a little left. We’ll veer a little right,” Meacham said. “But the road has been laid out.”

British Intel Officer–”Iraq dossier drawn up to make case for war”

NOVANEWS
 
Richard Norton-Taylor

A top military intelligence official has said the discredited dossier on Iraq’s weapons programme was drawn up “to make the case for war”, flatly contradicting persistent claims to the contrary by the Blair government, and in particular by Alastair Campbell, the former prime minister’s chief spin doctor.

In hitherto secret evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, Major General Michael Laurie said: “We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence the wording was developed with care.”

His evidence is devastating, as it is the first time such a senior intelligence officer has directly contradicted the then government’s claims about the dossier – and, perhaps more significantly, what Tony Blair and Campbell said when it was released seven months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Laurie, who was director general in the Defence Intelligence Staff, responsible for commanding and delivering raw and analysed intelligence, said: “I am writing to comment on the position taken by Alastair Campbell during his evidence to you … when he stated that the purpose of the dossier was not to make a case for war; I and those involved in its production saw it exactly as that, and that was the direction we were given.”

He continued: “Alastair Campbell said to the inquiry that the purpose of the dossier was not ‘to make a case for war’. I had no doubt at that time this was exactly its purpose and these very words were used.”

Laurie said he recalled that the chief of defence intelligence, Air Marshal Sir Joe French, was “frequently inquiring whether we were missing something” and was under pressure. “We could find no evidence of planes, missiles or equipment that related to WMD [weapons of mass destruction], generally concluding that they must have been dismantled, buried or taken abroad. There has probably never been a greater detailed scrutiny of every piece of ground in any country.”

The document is one of a number released by the Chilcot inquiry. They include top secret MI6 reports warning of the damage to British interests and the likelihood of terrorist attacks in the UK if it joined the US-led invasion of Iraq.

However, a newly declassified document reveals that Sir Kevin Tebbit, then a top official at the Ministry of Defence, warned the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, in January 2003 that the US would “feel betrayed by their partner of choice” if Britain did not go along with the invasion.

Despite its concerns, MI6 told ministers before the invasion that toppling Saddam Hussein “remains a prize because it could give new security to oil supplies”.

Laurie’s memo raises questions about the role of Sir John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, who later became head of MI6.

Gaddafi Arrest Warrant Expected By Italy

NOVANEWS
 
Associated Press


ROME — Italy’s foreign minister says he expects the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi at the end of the month.
Franco Frattini said Thursday that would be a “key moment” in the Libya crisis, suggesting that after the warrant is issued it would be impossible for Gadhafi to agree to an exile.
Frattini said “from that moment on an exit from power or from the country will no longer be imaginable” because “after the arrest warrant is issued all the international community would have legal obligations.”
Italy has long maintained the future of Libya cannot include Gadhafi or family members.
The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously on Feb. 26 to refer the Libyan crisis to the International Criminal Court.

 

Libya war costs surpass US estimate’

NOVANEWS
 

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the aerial war on Libya has cost the United States about 750 million dollars so far, despite the Pentagon’s initial assessment.

“It’s probably at this point somewhere in the ballpark of 750 million dollars,” AFP quoted Gates as saying on Thursday.

Pentagon officials previously anticipated that the operation would cost the US military 604 million dollars from the start of the US-backed military effort on March 19 to April 4.

Meanwhile, US officials failed to provide an explanation for the hike in the cost of the aerial operations.

The Pentagon had also predicted a 40-million-dollar price tag for the operation per month.

The US has backed up the NATO-led campaign in Libya through providing refueling tankers, surveillance aircraft and two unmanned Predator drones since the beginning of April.

The US and NATO have unleashed a punishing UN-mandated aerial offensives against the Gaddafi regime to force him to cede power, but the Libyan ruler has shown scant signs of a willingness to abandon his 41-year-old reign.

A Time for Truth: Bin Laden’s Death Won’t End War on Terror Until Americans Understand the Threat was Always Us

NOVANEWS
 

By Susan Lindauer, 9/11 Whistleblower and author of Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq

Some of our leaders think Americans don’t need the truth about 9/11 any more, because Osama’s dead and it’s over.

As somebody who got brutalized at “ground zero” of the 9/11 cover up for most of the past 10 years, I could not disagree more. I’m sick of asking for a proper Congressional investigation. Congress already knows the truth about 9/11. That’s why they’re not poking around. However, it’s a huge mistake for the rest of us who know the truth, or parts of it, to wait for permission to speak. America has trapped itself in a mythic nightmare about terrorism that exaggerates our enemies, while our leaders manipulate our sense of patriotism and effectively blind us to mistakes in national security policy. It’s not a successful policy if it weakens our country.

The United States has reached a tipping point when we have to consider the end of the “American Age.” In which case, an honest examination of 9/11 becomes imperative. Americans must understand 9/11, so that we can puncture the creepy bubble around the War on Terrorism, and sweep away the phony threat that’s got all of Washington plotting Wars in the Middle East, bankrupting our economy with runaway defense spending, and tearing down civil rights in the name of national security.

The lie itself is formidable. Valerie Plame recently tried to assure Bob Tuskin at the Intel Hub that the U.S. government could never keep such a huge and devastating secret as 9/11 for so long. Wanna bet? Myself, I got rewarded with 5 years of indictment as an “Iraqi Agent,” including one year in prison on Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, Texas—without a trial or hearing—after I requested to testify about Iraq and 9/11.

Thirty days after I spoke with top staffers for Senator Trent Lott and Senator John McCain, the FBI showed up with a warrant for my arrest.

My 5 year indictment on the Patriot Act nicknamed me “Symbol Susan.” It was not subtle. The viciousness I suffered was purposefully designed to scare off on anybody else who might consider talking. The cover ups of 9/11 and Iraq distinguished the Patriot Act as the premiere weapon to take down whistle blowers.

To those others I say, they cannot silence us if we refuse to give up our voice. I challenge Congress to put our country on the right track by holdings hearings on 9/11 to take our testimony. I will gladly swear to all of the following under oath:

THE TRUTH: A SUMMER OF ADVANCE WARNINGS

The truth is that our team, which triangulated the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, discussed the 9/11 attack in its exact scenario and time frame throughout the summer of 2001. We talked about it practically every week at our meetings. We also discussed it on the telephone, pointedly joking “Hello NSA! Pick up the phone—” knowing the National Security Agency had wire tapped my lines.

There’s no question that the story of the 9/11 conspiracy was planted months in advance to prep the intelligence community for the government’s reaction. And it unfolded exactly as they told us it would—with a little help from an orphan explosives team. That will be explained in a second article. The two are not contradictory.

Before we get to that, Americans must first accept the motivation for 9/11, and why the U.S. government allowed it to happen. This was a Pearl Harbor Day. And it achieved an agenda, which was already well defined.
From the first moment that I was told about 9/11 in April and May of 2001, I was informed that the United States planned to declare War on Iraq immediately when 9/11 happened. The two were already linked as cause and effect.

Threats of War Against Iraq

I can testify to that absolutely, because I was the Asset commanded to deliver those threats to Iraqi diplomats at the United Nations. I was instructed to say the “U.S. intended to declare War on Iraq if Baghdad failed to provide actionable intelligence to stop the conspiracy involving airplane hijackings and a strike on the World Trade Center. We would bomb Iraq more aggressively than ever before—back to the Stone Age.”

My CIA handler further demanded that I stress the threat of War “originated at the highest levels of government—above the CIA Director and the Secretary of State.” He considered the warnings to have more potency if Iraqi diplomats understood the muscle of those issuing the threats.

As the primary back channel to Baghdad from 1996 through 2003, I delivered that message with all precision from April and May right through August 4, 2001. I can pinpoint the day, because the conversation with my CIA handler took place on the day of the Senate confirmation hearings for Robert Mueller’s appointment to head the FBI.

My CIA handler, Dr. Richard Fuisz speculated aloud that the 9/11 attack might occur before Mueller was formally instated as FBI Director.
In the same conversation, Dr. Fuisz warned that I must not go back to New York, because the attack was “imminent” and the CIA expected “mass casualties” and a “possible miniature thermo nuclear device.” Over his objections, I insisted on returning to Iraq’s Embassy at the U.N. one last time to see if diplomats had received any reports from Baghdad. Then I promised I would not go back to New York until after the attack.

My meeting with Iraqi diplomats occurred two days later on Saturday, August 4. I did not return to New York until September 18.

Let me be clear: The threat was not vague or undefined. We fully expected airplane hijackings and some sort of aerial strike targeting the World Trade Center, specifically. No other target or location was ever discussed.

Details of the 9/11 conspiracy and the full history of Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence are disclosed in my book, “Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq.” It’s a real life spy thriller, and it goes into much greater depth, whereas this article can only scratch the surface.

“Extreme Prejudice” reveals a truth that’s very different from what America has been told. I challenge Congress to put me under oath and rip me with questions. Americans have the right to hear my direct testimony, which would disclose a complete chronology of our advance discussions about the conspiracy, in addition to our considerable efforts to stop the attack.

It’s nothing like what you expect. As a life-long anti-war activist, I was highly agitated about the threats of war that I was commanded to deliver to Iraqi diplomats. And I’m not a passive individual. Adding to the tension, by the summer of 2001 the international community had developed a deep loathing for U.N. sanctions that were destroying Iraq’s social fabric and community infrastructure. The days of U.N. sanctions on Iraq—which I reviled, too—were closing fast. The international community would have condemned any rogue military action against Iraq.

Unbeknownst to the public, from the opening days of the Bush administration in January 2001, our team had begun hammering out a comprehensive framework for achieving all U.S. objectives, including weapons inspections, so that the U.S could claim a major victory while ceding to pressure for the U.N. sanctions to end. Anti-terrorism was a central part of our peace framework. In fact, Iraq had agreed to invite an FBI Task Force to conduct terrorism investigations by February, 2001. The CIA had also won Iraq’s consent for major reconstruction contracts for U.S. corporations in telecommunications, hospitals and health care, transportation— and oil. Everything the U.S. wanted was ours for the taking. And the CIA wanted it all.

Our Team Efforts to Stop 9/11

When my CIA handler, Dr. Fuisz informed me on August 2 that the 9/11 attack was in play and considered “imminent,” he and I together resolved to take more aggressive action to prevent it.

I’m not telling you what somebody else did that I heard about later. I’m telling what actions I took myself in “real time” to try to stop the 9/11 attack.
On Monday, August 6, I reported to Dr. Fuisz after my trip to New York. I told him that Iraqi diplomats had thrown up their hands. They had nothing to give us. Yes, they assured me, Baghdad was fully aware that Iraq faced a threat of full scale war, if a 9/11 style of attack occurred. They understood that it would be in their greatest interest to provide us with any fragment of intelligence to help stop the attack. They understood that 9/11 would complicate our peace framework exactly at the moment when the international community was ready to throw off U.N. sanctions. Bottom line, they had nothing to give us.

I was an unusual party to this discussion, motivated by deep antipathy for sanctions and war. For those reasons, I informed Dr. Fuisz that I felt super motivated to do everything in my power to stop 9/11, both to protect the people of New York City and to prevent an unnecessary War—exactly at the moment when our team was completing this outstanding peace framework that achieved all U.S. objectives.

At the instructions of Dr. Fuisz on August 6, I personally placed phone calls to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s private staff at the Justice Department on August 7 or 8.  Identifying myself as the CIA Asset covering the Iraq and Libya Embassies at the United Nations, I personally requested that Ashcroft’s Office post “an emergency broadcast alert across all agencies, seeking any fragment of intelligence on airplane hijackings, with a known target of the World Trade Center.” I described the attack as “imminent,” with the potential for “mass casualties. I asked for maximum inter-agency cooperation and urged that any information be forwarded to the CIA immediately.

Hearing my request, staff in the inner sanctum of Attorney General John Ashcroft’s office gave me a phone number at the Office of Counter-Terrorism in the Justice Department, and urged me to repeat exactly what I had just told them. I did so without delay. I dialed the number. I spoke to the staff.

I wasn’t taking any chances. A few days later, I visited the home of my cousin, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card.  I waited in my car while his neighbors peeked out their windows, determined to warn him about our 9/11 scenario, and request cabinet level support to pre-empt the attack. Alas, Andy did not come home. When I drove away after two hours, I did so believing that I might be making the greatest mistake of my life.

There was still plenty of time for action to pre-empt the attack. Americans have a right to know how top leaders in government handled our warnings, and effectively thwarted those best efforts in August of 2001.

There was a lot of action that August—including a second set of events that I would learn about years later, involving an unidentified orphan team that would lay explosives in the Twin Towers. My next article will explain how those two conspiracies converged. Contrary to what the 9/11 Truth Community supposes, these two operations do not cancel out each other.

But first Americans must understand that 9/11 was a “stand down” operation, a true Pearl Harbor Day, meaning that U.S. and foreign intelligence understood what was coming. The leadership at the top of the U.S. government made an active decision to let the attack go ahead— because the decision was already made that 9/11 would provide a pretext for War in Iraq. With peace breaking out in the Middle East at that very moment, the War Party required a massive scale threat to overturn the peace process. Clearly they decided that nothing would be allowed to interfere with that objective.

Once that factor’s understood, 9/11 becomes comprehensible.

Some of my testimony would surprise America—like efforts by Saddam Hussein’s government to guarantee Iraq’s complete cooperation with global anti-terrorism efforts before and after 9/11. That will be addressed in another article.

Finally, my book, EXTREME PREJUDICE provides a full scope of the brutality by the Justice Department to silence me and other Assets, using the Patriot Act as a weapon to guarantee the success of its deception. (A hint:  Assets watched the cover ups of 9/11 and Iraq on prison television. And I wasn’t the only prisoner).

Oh it wasn’t all bad! My CIA handler got $13 million tax-free from emergency appropriations for the 9/11 investigation in November, 2001— He built himself a grand mansion a stone’s throw from CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia. Not a dollar or a dime got spent on 9/11. Mind you, the government’s not complaining. But shifting tax dollars away from Iraq’s cooperation with the 9/11 investigation took food off my table. I paid a terrible price for it.

Democracy Requires Accountability

All parts of the 9/11 warnings, the cover up— the arrests and pay offs— should disturb Democrats and Republicans alike who brag about their leadership support for Assets engaged in anti-terrorism. It makes a lie of their pledge of loyalty, for sure. And it denigrates their performance as stewards of national security, which ought to be a litmus test for the 2012 Campaigns. Those who don’t care for the people’s business don’t belong in government.

Simply put, democracy requires accountability to the people. Americans have a fundamental right to possess the truth about 9/11 and the decision to declare War on Iraq months before the attack—because national security does matter in this age. Americans require that knowledge, so as to assess the leadership performance and quality of policy making on our behalf.
Good leaders don’t have to be afraid. Bad leaders should be sent packing for the betterment of government.

Most alarmingly, 9/11′s legacy has proved detrimental to the security of our country. According to the National Journal, fighting this phantom demon of terrorism today involves 1,271 government agencies, producing 50,000 intelligence reports a year that for the most part nobody reads. http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_exclusive/20110506/pl_yblog_exclusive/the-cost-of-bin-laden-3-trillion-over-15-years Meanwhile, “black budgets” for intelligence operations have mushroomed to $75 billion a year, financing both domestic and international surveillance that monitors law-abiding citizens across the country. There’s no federal auditing authority or Congressional oversight over “black budgets.” It’s all tax free and unregulated. It’s a secret government gone wild.

Osama’s death has been a great victory for the CIA. But it will not bring U.S. soldiers home from Iraq and Afghanistan, where military operations have cost $1.6 trillion and counting. It won’t end the nonsense War against Libya, which has no justification at all.

Osama’s death will not quash the planning stages for future wars against Syria, and God help us, Iran.

Is it really patriotic to stay silent while the military industrial complex devours our economy for its own profits? Without producing benefits for U.S. soldiers? Admiral Mullen, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff doesn’t think so. He has described America’s national debt as “the greatest threat to our national security.”

Our country is teetering on the abyss. If we’re going to succeed in restoring the great traditions of liberty and moral authority, we’ve got to relearn the history of 9/11.

We must acknowledge the real threats to our quality of life are not “out there.”  They start right here. And those threats are perpetuated by the myths that are leaders invented that tragic morning.

There is no better time for truth than today. The success of our national security policy—and our ability to avoid future wars that are guaranteed to destroy this earth—very well depend on it.

—END—

Susan Lindauer is the author of Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq, which recounts her nightmarish ordeal as the second non-Arab American ever indicted on the Patriot Act, facing secret charges, secret evidence, secret grand jury testimony and threats of indefinite detention.

The next article in this series will show how the detonation theory fits hand in glove with the airplane hijackings and aerial strike on the World Trade Center. Americans will see why the two are not contradictory at all.

Dorothy Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

Dear Friends,

As you can imagine, these are uneasy times.  On the one hand, the possibility of strikes against Iran are again on our news, preparing us for the fate that our government or PM or his buddies have cut out for us; on the other hand our neighbors in Egypt and perhaps elsewhere are burning the Israeli flag in public.  Hard to know what the next days will bring, much less the next months, except that Sunday is the day that Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, we can expect more injuries by Israel’s ‘security forces’—hopefully not deaths.

Given the period, I have decided to focus today’s message on human rights issues in the oPt and on what is actually taking place in the oPt.  There are 4 items, but all are compilations apart from the first one, which reports news that I did not hear on our radio news, nor on the TV news of channel 1.  What I heard was that a soldier was lightly injured, that the Palestinians in East Jerusalem were rowdy (nothing about soldiers being rowdy, though one report did say that crowd-dispersal methods were being applied to ‘rowdy’ demonstrations).  The remaining 3 items all report on what is happening in the oPt—the 2nd item being the OCHA weekly report, the 3rd item being the PCHR weekly report on human rights in the Territories, and the last one being ‘Today in Palestine,’ which when I checked it had not yet posted today’s news, but perhaps by the time you read it it will have.

Let’s hope that we get through the next 3 days with no deaths or injuries either of Palestinians or of Israelis.

All the best,

Dorothy

————————-

1.Press Release

Friday, 13 May 2011

Teen Critically Injured as Israel Cracks Down on Nakba Demos
17 year-old was critically injured from live fire in East Jerusalem. An American protester suffered serious head injury after being hit by a tear-gas projectile shot directly at him from close range.

Israeli military and police forces responded heavy handedly to demonstrations commemorating 63 years to the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 today all over the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Morad Ayyash, a 17 year old from the Ras el-Amud neighborhood was shot in the stomach with live ammunition. He has reached the Muqassed hospital with no pulse and the doctors are now fighting for his life.

Tension also rose in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, where 19 protesters have been injured and 11 were arrested. During the evening hours, large police forces raided houses in Silwan and carried out additional arrests.

In the village of Ma’asara, south of Bethlehem, two protesters were arrested during a peaceful demonstration that was attacked with tear-gas for no apparent reason. One of those arrested is a member of the village’s popular committee. In Nabi Saleh – a regular target for military aggression recently – soldiers and Border Police officers injured no less than 25 protesters, including a Palestinian women in her 50s who was beaten up so badly that her wounds required her removal from the Salfeet Hospital to the bigger and more advanced Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus. A 25 year-old American demonstrator suffered a serious head injury and an Israeli activist was diagnosed with two open fractures in his hand. Both were injured by tear-gas projectiles shot directly at them from short range, in violation of the Israeli Army’s open fire regulations. Four protesters were arrested in Nabi Saleh, including two Palestinian women.

For more details: Jonathan Pollak +972-54-632-7736

Violence in Nabi Saleh started today after Israeli Border Police officers took over the village’s main junction and tried to disperse the demonstration while it was still well inside the village, The officers began charging the peaceful protesters with batons, shooting large amounts of tear-gas – partly shot directly at the demonstrators – and carrying out arrests.

The Israeli military and police’s violent and hysteric reaction to the Nakba day demonstrations today is an example to the fact that Israel cannot conceive handling Palestinian civil resistance to the Occupation in any means but military means. As September looms, it seems as if Israel chooses to tread not the path of democracy, but rather that of neighboring regimes like Egypt and Syria, and shoot at unarmed demonstrators.

Popular Struggle Coordination Committee | 12 Raffaele Ciriello St | Ramallah | OPT

===============================================

2.

 

Published: 2011-05-12
Protection of Civilians Weekly Report | 4 – 10 May 2011
Israeli forces injure 35 Palestinians in the West Bank; another three Palestinians injured by settlers. Demolitions resume after a three-week lull. In Gaza, this week was the calmest one since the beginning of the year, with no armed clashes, air strikes, rockets, or casualties. Gaza imports and limited exports continue. No aggregates entered Gaza for the third consecutive week. Rafah Crossing remains partially operational. A man executed in Gaza. 

English | Hebrew

http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_protection_of_civilians_weekly_report_2011_05_12_english.pdf
=========================================

3.  [PCHR_e] Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (05– 11 May  2011)

PCHR
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

www.pchrgaza.org

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Continue Systematic Attacks against Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)

  • · An activist of the Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades died of Wounds that he had sustained earlier in the Gaza Strip.

  • · IOF continued to fire at Palestinian civilians in border areas in the Gaza Strip

–IOF opened fire at a peaceful demonstration in the northern Gaza Strip, but no casualties were reported.

  • · IOF continued to target Palestinian fishermen in Gaza sea.

–IOF fired at Palestinian fishing boats, but no casualties were reported.

  • · IOF continued to use force against peaceful protests in the West Bank.

– Three demonstrators, including a child, a woman and an international human rights defender, were wounded in Nabi Saleh and Bil’ein peaceful protests in Ramallah.

– IOF arrested a child in Bil’ein’s weekly protest.

  • · IOF conducted 45 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank.

– IOF arrested 18 Palestinian civilians, including 5 children.

– The arrested Palestinians include four leaders of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in Jenin.

– IOF destroyed the furniture and the windows in 2 houses in Azzoun village, east of Qalqilya.

  • · IOF continued settlement activities and Israeli settlers continued their attacks in the West Bank.

– IOF bulldozed four brick and tin houses and 12 tents in Kherbet Um Nir, south of Hebron.

  • · Israel has continued to impose a total siege on the Gaza Strip and tightened the siege on the West Bank.

– IOF arrested at least 12 Palestinians at military checkpoints in the West Bank.

– IOF imposed total closure on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Summary

Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law in the OPT continued during the reporting period (05 – 11 May 2011):

Shooting:

During the reporting period, a Palestinian activist died of wounds that he had sustained earlier.  In addition, IOF wounded a Palestinian woman, a child and an international human rights defender in peaceful demonstrations against settlement activities and the construction of the annexation wall.

Late on Wednesday, 04 May 2011, medical sources at Naser Institute Hospital in Cairo announced the death of Shadi Mahmoud al-Zatma, 29, and activist of the Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades from Tal al-Sultan neighborhood in Rafah.  Al-Zatma sustained serious wounds when an Israeli drone fired two missiles at him as he was with another two activists of the Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades.  The three activists were near Kamal Odwan Boys’ Secondary School Tal al-Sultan neighborhood, west of Rafah.  The bombardment which took place at approximately 00:50 on 09 April 2011 resulted in the immediate deaths of the other two activists, while al-Zatma’s legs were amputated and he sustained shrapnel wounds throughout the body.

In the West Bank, IOF used excessive force to disperse peaceful demonstrations organized in protest to Israeli settlement activities and the construction of the annexation wall in the West Bank.  As a result, a Palestinian woman, a child and an international human rights defender were wounded.  The child was wounded on 06 May 2001 in Bil’ein’s peaceful protest, west of Ramallah, while the woman and the international human rights defender were wounded in Nabi Saleh’s protest, northwest of Ramallah, also on 06 May 2011.

In addition, dozens of Palestinian civilians and international human rights defenders participating in peaceful protests in the West Bank suffered from tear gas inhalation and bruises as they were beaten by IOF.  Further, on 07 May 2011, IOF intentioanllyattacked and severely beat activists from the Public Wall Against the Wall and Settlement in Beit Ummar town, north of Hebron.  Some of these activists sustained fractures as a result.

In the Gaza Strip, on 10 and 11 May 2011, IOF gunboats positioning at sea off al-Waha resort, wet of Beit Lahia in the north of the Gaza Strip, intensively fired shells and bullets at Palestinian fishing boats.  Palestinian fishermen fled the area in fear of being wounded or arrested.  No casualties or damages to fishing boats were reported.

On 10 May 2011, IOF positioning on observation towers near
Beit Hanoun “Erez” crossing in the north of Beit Hanountown in the northern Gaza Strip, opened intensive fire at a group of demonstrators and Palestinian and international solidarity activists who were near the landfill in the north of Beit Hanoun Agricultural School of al-Azhar University in Gaza in the north of Beit Hanoun town.  This demonstration was organized in protest against the imposition of the buffer zone in Palestinians’ lands.

The full report is available online at:

http://www.pchrgaza.org/portal/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7439:weekly-report-on-israeli-human-rights-violations-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territory-05-11-may-2011&catid=84:weekly-2009&Itemid=183

Public Document

**************************************

For more information please call PCHR office in Gaza, Gaza Strip, on +972 8 2824776 – 2825893

PCHR, 29 Omer El Mukhtar St., El Remal, PO Box 1328 Gaza, Gaza Strip. E-mail: pchr@pchrgaza.org, Webpage http://www.pchrgaza.org

———————————–

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4.  Today in Palestine

http://www.theheadlines

United Nations Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Mac House
P.O.Box 38712
Jerusalem
Tel:++ 972-2-5829962/5853
Fax:++972-2-5825841
email:ochaopt@un.org
www.ochaopt.org


Letter to U.S.A Congress

Dear Members of Congress,
Israel has established 150 settlements, populated by a half-million Jewish Israelis, in the occupied Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem in contravention of the 4th Geneva Convention, which prohibits the transfer of civilians to occupied territories. The State Department concluded in a 1978 legal memorandum that these settlements are “inconsistent with international law” and the Obama Administration has repeatedly called them “illegitimate.”
Non-profit organizations registered with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as 501(c)(3) organizations are supposed to be charitable and educational in nature. However, many 501(c)(3) organizations exist to support Israel’s illegal settlements and operate in ways counter to IRS regulations to finance their distinctly non-charitable purposes. Individuals donating to 501(c)(3) organizations are allowed by law to take a tax-deduction. Therefore, money going to these organizations deprives the U.S. Treasury of badly needed tax receipts.
Members of Congress have a responsibility to ensure that charitable organizations are not fraudulently taking advantage of the tax code to funnel money to non-charitable purposes that conflict with IRS regulations, U.S. law and policy, and international law.
Please take the necessary and immediate steps to correct these illegal practices.
Sincerely,
Concerned Citizens

CyberDissidents: A heartwarming tale of a group of right-wing Zionists devoted to Arab and Iranian freedom…

NOVANEWS

 


 

Now remember, all you out there who said that the revolutions in the Middle East were going to ‘bring freedom’ for the people there and who ridiculed those (such as yours truly) who said that in the end Zio-Nazi state would utilize these uprisings for her own political goals–one of the individuals helping to coordinate all the uprisings, one David Keys–worked for Natan Sharansky, one of Zio-Nazi’s most bigotted, racist, warmongers who dreams of an Zio-Nazi empire stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates and who couldn’t care less about “Arab democracy”.

FBI: IsraHeLl Stole $2 Million from Elderly Victims in the United States

NOVANEWS
 

PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced the guilty pleas of seven individuals, all residents of Israel, for their participation in a lottery telemarketing fraud scheme through which they stole approximately $2 million from elderly victims in the United States between 2007 and September 2008.

LIOR ORGAD, DAVID YAMIN, and MOR GALANTI pled guilty today before Magistrate Judge JAMES C. FRANCIS IV. GUY MAYO, ELAD MAYO, ASI ALMAKIAS, and YANIV KALBERS pled guilty before Magistrate Judge ANDREW J. PECK on March 15, 2011.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney PREET BHARARA stated: “These defendants bet that they would strike it rich by preying upon some of America’s most vulnerable citizens—the elderly—but they gambled and lost. We will continue working with all of our national and international law enforcement partners to protect Americans from fraudsters wherever they reside.”
According to indictments and an information previously filed in Manhattan federal court:
The defendants participated in a phoney “lottery prize” scheme that targeted hundreds of victims, mostly elderly, throughout the United States. The defendants identified victims by purchasing the names and contact information of U.S. residents who subscribed to sweepstakes lotteries from list brokers. They then contacted the victims and solicited information about their finances by falsely telling them that they had won a substantial cash prize and that they would receive it as soon as they paid the necessary fees and taxes. In reality, there was no lottery prize and the victims were collectively robbed of approximately $2 million.
All seven defendants were provisionally arrested in Israel in September 2008 based on the indictments. In November 2010, they were extradited from Israel into the United States. SHAI KADOSH, who is also charged in the scheme, is currently a fugitive.
GUY MAYO, ELAD MAYO, ASI ALMAKIAS, and LIOR ORGAD face a total maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, and YANIV KALBERS, DAVID YAMIN, and MOR GALANTI face a total maximum penalty of five years in prison. In connection with their guilty pleas, these defendants each agreed to forfeit a sum of money equal to approximately $1.9 million.
All seven defendants will be sentenced on June 27, 2011 at 2:00 p.m. by United States District Judge LEWIS A. KAPLAN.
The investigation into the lottery telemarketing fraud scheme was conducted in New York by the FBI, with assistance from the Israel National Police. Mr. BHARARA praised the investigative work of the FBI and the Tel Aviv Fraud Division of the Israel National Police. He also thanked the Office of International Affairs of the United States Department of Justice’s Criminal Division; the Department of International Affairs within the Office of the State Attorney in the Ministry of Justice for the State of Israel; and the Tel Aviv District Attorney’s Office, for their cooperation in the investigation.
This case is being prosecuted by the Office’s Organized Crime Unit. Assistant U.S. Attorneys AVI WEITZMAN and STEVE C. LEE are in charge of the prosecution. Assistant U.S. Attorney MICHAEL LOCKARD is in charge of the forfeiture aspects of the case.
http://www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-releases/2011/seven-defendants-charge…
http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com