On Time & On the Dime

The Guardian newspaper reports a former British SAS soldier has been served with a gag order preventing him from discussing the role of British forces in the US extraordinary rendition program. Last week, Ben Griffin told a news conference that individuals detained by British forces have ended up at Guantanamo, Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and other secretive US-run prisons.

Ben Griffin: “The use of British territory and airspace pales into insignificance in light of the fact that it has been often British soldiers detaining the victims of extraordinary rendition in the first place. Since the invasion of Afghanistan in the autumn of 2001, United Kingdom Special Forces have operated within a joint US-UK task force. This task force has been responsible for the detention of hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Griffin said he had no doubt that noncombatants he had personally detained in Iraq had been handed over to the United States to be tortured.

It is truly pathetic how passive and worthless the press is. Why wasn't this "discovered" seven years ago? I know more in my bones than these clowns have in their brains.


©WCG, 2008

Psychosis, Policy and Purim

The image of Israel is that of a big body-built bouncer holding a five year old by the scruff of its neck, smashing its teeth out, bloodying its nose, and kneeing it in the stomach as “deterrence” for being kicked in the shin.

In researching the previous post on Israel's threatened holocaust, I logged onto Ha’artez in order to find the exact quote from an israeli source. After doing so, I perused the discussion blog, which -- no surprise at this point -- was nothing more that a long roll of murderous, hate-filled self pity.

“ The trouble with Israel is that they keep pussy-footing around and bombing empty buildings. For every rocket attack on Israel their should be a 2-3 day rocket barrage in return, right over the Gazan`s heads.”

“ Ring Gaza with artillery and bombard from a stand-off distance as a direct answer to rockets. Time this for maximum embarrassment of Condi"

“ The past two years have been devoted to this still born process, called the peace process. ... . We were told that we had to be patient, that Sderot had to be valiant, and her children had to suffer in silence ... People have the impudence to tell Israelis that they have to suffer in silence because otherwise the Palestinians will stop cooperating in this non-existent peace process. The world always liked its Jews quiet and pliant. The world, the "civilized" one, would like nothing better than to see the end to this troublesome country of the Jews. They just dare not say it in public. That would be bad form."

There was a smaller percentage of posts that decried the “holocaust” remarks as a tactical public relations error. I counted only one or two Jewish/Israeli comments that pointed out the moral contradiction and hypocrisy of Israeli policy.

These few examples are illustrative of the mass psychosis that has taken hold of Israel. This is a phenomenon that has been noted and decried by high-ranking Israelis themselves. As far back as 2001, Ami Alayon, the head of the Israeli secret service (Shin Bet) until 2000, told Le Monde that “In Israel, nobody is dealing with reality anymore.” He debunked the self-deluding propaganda that Arafat had maliciously turned down a magnanimous offer. “This is ridiculous”. (Le Monde 12/22/01) At the other end of the political spectrum Uri Avneri, Class of ‘48 and leftist journalist, has repeatedly decried Israel’s “self-brainwashing, paranoia and suspicion. In between, there are anonymous people like “Esther” who lamented on the discussion board that Ha’aretz had deleted her posts mentioning the three Hamas truce offers that the Israeli government rejected before launching its mini (not so bad) holocaust.

The manner of speaking that has been emitting from Israel and zionist quarters around the world has been cribbed from the book of ThugSpeak -- a language of cultivated hardness and brutality. Victor Kemperer, a German Jewish professor who survived Nazi genocide wrote a book about how deeds conform to the mental attitudes carved out by habits of speech Anyone who has truly informed himself about the nazi period can only be shocked by the kind of language coming from jewish lips.

But the truly troubling psychosis is revealed in the comment that the whole rest of the civilized world “would like nothing better than to see the end to this troublesome country of the Jews.” They all hate us!!! Therefore we have to destroy the Palestinians.

This is simply insane; it bears no relation to objective reality. Israel has the United States, the world’s strongest military, firmly in its corner. Pro-Israeli Jews work at the highest levels in all branches of the U.S. government. Laws in France and Germany make it a criminal offence to denigrate or even to question the jewish version of “The Holocaust”. Most western powers have embargoed Iran demanding that it give up nuclear power, while Israel is allowed to maintain a nuclear arsenal. What kind of derangement translates this into “people have the impudence to tell Israelis that they have to suffer in silence” ?

The Israeli author and musician Gilad Atzmon, answered it this way:

“ I tend to believe that the recorded sudden change in the Israeli collective mental mood is nothing but the outcome of the Israeli natural tendency to resolve the schizophrenic mode inherently entangled within Zionism. It is the outcome of the outburst of the conflict between the tribal and the universal that matures into a state of a colossal and complete phobia. The more Israelis want to secure themselves by clinging to isolation, the more death they happen to spread around themselves” [link]

Zionism certainly, but perhaps more. One of the commentators on the Ha’aretz blog wrote:

“ Our Purim Lesson is that Israel needs to do to Hamas what Hamas has promised to do to Israel. Haman hung on the gallows he had built for Mordechai.”

Well, what did Haman do? Haman faithfully carried out the orders of his king Ahasuerus, who ruled, it is said, from Ethiopia to India. On instructions from Mordechai, the Jewish inhabitants refused to bow to the king or to obey his laws . Haman asked the king what he should and the king gave him power to prosecute the offenders.

On orders from Mordechai, Esther concealed her jewishness, worked her way into the king’s affection and by the usual arts turned the king against his own loyal servant. Mordechai moved into the drivers seat had Haman and his sons hanged and then went about merrily slaughtering 75,000 of the kings own non-Jewish subjects..

"Thus the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and slaughter, and destruction, and did what they would unto those that hated them.” (Esther 9:5 )

Perhaps it could be said that Haman got it in the neck during a palace coup. But what of these 75,000? Nothing in the story gives grounds for believing that they were other than just non-Jewish subjects obeying their king’s laws. The account provides no explanation or evidence that these slaughtered innocents “hated” anyone, at least no more than the assertion that “the whole civilized world” just hates us because we are Jews.

To this day Purim is a Jewish holiday. And the actions in Gaza will provide the Israelis with another occasion for holiday that they can call Purim II.

©WCG, 2008


Post Script. The Guidelines for the Ha’artez discussion board prohibit

“2. Statements terming Israelis or Palestinians and their leaders Nazis, or accusing them of genocide or ethnic cleansing."

Uh.... that makes it kinda difficult to discuss the topic, doesn't it?

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It's not a Holocaust even when We say It is.

It was the shock that reverberated around the world. An Israeli defense minister threatened Gaza with a holocaust.

It defied belief that a people who have expended so much talent and effort in educating the world as to the horrors of genocide should turn around and threaten others with what they themselves suffered.

This wretched denouement will come as no surprise to those who recognize in Zionism the same fatal ethnic idolatry that agitated Nazism. The difference between legitimate ethnic pride and pathological ethnic narcissism is always a question of degree. But when self-worthiness passes into self-worship it inevitably ends up worshiping at the expense of others

The reaction among most Israelis and their supporters around the globe fell into two categories: (1) denial that anything so outrageous had been said and (2) an attempt to shift the blame onto the victims.

The back-pedaling of the first would be comic were it not so hypocritical. It was said that the word “shoah” (or holocaust) didn’t always mean holocaust, but was used colloquially to refer to the mess in the kitchen, messed up accounts, and any kind of routine fiasco. Ergo, the Gazans weren’t really be threatened with anything like genocide. Not to worry.

This hasbara (“forensic defense of Israel”) is just an outright lie. Just last year, AIPAC and Jewish Groups in the United State fought tooth and nail to prevent an official commemoration of the “Armenian Holocaust.” Over and over again Jewish spokesmen declaimed that the word “holocaust” had a specific meaning limited to Jewish suffering and the “extent of the horror” would be cheapened by being applied to any else.... except of course as we now learn, the mess in the kitchen, the fiasco at the picnic and other such disasters which afflict ordinary people in daily life.

Just this January, the Jewish Council of Germany was aghast and offended that some Munich carnival goers had been granted a permit to parade on what the they unilaterally decreed was “Holocaust Day.” In short, the efforts of Jews around the world to turn their experience in the second world war into a sacred and taboo event is obvious to anyone who hasn’t had his head buried in the sand. To come now and claim that “holocaust” really didn’t mean that when it was uttered is just bald faced hypocrisy that counts on the world being stupidly suckered.

As for blame shifting; this has become the Standard Performance of Israeli policy. Thus, after protesting that, “in context,” shoah really only meant a doozy paloozy, Israelis followed up with “and they deserved it anyways”. Inevitably the coda to this refrain was that “Israel” was being terrorized by a “rain” of rockets and had to defend itself against, unprovoked attacks and a looming Holocaust™ at the hands of jew-hating Arabs.

mini-shoah in Gaza

The only way Israel can disequilibriate the sheer disporportionality of its conduct is to shuffle and switch the things compared. “Israel” is not under attack in any real sense. Sderot, a small township, near the Gaza border is being harrased by jumbo firecrackers that in a period of four years have killed two, perhaps now three or four people. By way of a true comparison all of Gaza is under siege and daily attack by the Israeli military and In the same period, hundreds verging on a thousand Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli collateral actions. The false equation foisted is revolting.

When all is said and done, no one “deserves” a “holocaust” -- mini or otherwise. The whole point of international law in this area is to put limits on how wars are fought. Those limits mean that whatever else “the enemy” may deserve it deserves not to have its children blasted to bits or to be starved and diseased into submission.

What Israel is doing in Gaza is evil, and has been condemned by the UN, the Secretary General, the World Court and numerous human rights organizations. For years the Israel government has subjected Gaza (and the West Bank) to restrictions that clearly qualified as “genocide” under the definitions studiously worked out by Rafael Lemkin who coined the word.

During the past year, what the sycophant western press labeled as energy cut offs was in fact a program of starvation, as reported here and elsewhere. Earlier this year (2008), it was reported that as a result of Israeli bombings the sewage mains had broken in Gaza. What this means is that the Gazans are being placed in imminent danger of typhus outbreaks.

So? So what the vast heap of “The Holocaust®” documentaries invariably omit to tell, is that the piles of bodies so horrorificly being bulldozed into mass graves were not “gassed” but were people who had died of typhus. Epidemics of typhus had broken out in most camps. For this reason one of the key elements of the judgement at Nuremberg was that the Nazis had done “little or nothing” to prevent the outbreak of typhus. -- and this calculated “negligence” qualified as an intentional war crime.

And now that the sewage mains have broken in Gaza, what does the Israeli government says? It threatens a “fiasco”.

©WCG, 2008
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Olmert Tries to Wake up Sleeping Morons at the Times

Other than morons and the U.S. mudia.... was there anybody in the world who fell for the Annapolis Farce last November, when the Administration made a Big Push and lots of noise promising peace in Palestine before Bush left his throne? No. In fact the farce was so obvious, so boring and so irrelevant to reality, that it hardly got covered.

But in case anyone was too terminally stupid not to have figured out the sham, now comes Ehud Olmert who announced today to an audience of fanatically faithfull Jewish-American leaders that the goal of peace talks with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, was to reach an understanding on "basic principles" for a Palestinian state by the end of 2008, rather than a fully-fledged agreement.

In other words ...no deal in Bush's term. Got that Condi? No agreements on "specifics". In fact no agreement at all, except endless Israeli evasion under cover of crap for the stupid. Crap no doubt dished out in gob-fulls by the editors and word hacks at the Spew York Times.

Olmert also said on Sunday that the Israeli army had a "free hand" to target anyone in the Gaza Strip, particularly ruling Hamas members, to stop cross-border rocket fire.

Got that? "Anyone" To target "anyone" includes women and children, particularly if they are engaged in a "shopping spree" for food.

©WCG, 2008

Look at Yourself - America

Photo by Tim Heatherington (published in Vanity Fair)

Look at yourself America. This is you and this is your son. This is what Cheney-Bush-Rove, what Jingoid Republicans, Smirking Billy Kristol and his ZioCons, what Morally Bankrupt Demorats, Avaricious Corporations, a Whore Press and a Feckless False-Issue Left have done to you. Look.

Needless to say, Tim Heatherington's photograph got little play in the Murkan Mudia. It is posted here with acknowledgement to help, in a small way, give it the dissemination it deserves.
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The Sweinstein Stench and the Schumer Shuffle

In November 2007, senawhores Feinstein and Schumer bolted ranks and voted to confirm fellow think-alike Mukasey as Attorney General. Nothing partisan here.

Explaining yet another one of her DemoPublican switcheroos Feinstein wrote in the LA Times (32 Nov 07) “Judge Mukasey is not Alberto R. Gonzales.” The Justice Department was demoralized and needed “a new dynamic of independence from the White House”

Feinstein acknowledged that “serious questions”had been raised about Mukasey’s “views on torture” but that he had assured her in a personal letter that he knew that water-boarding was “illegal” under US Military Law and the Geneva Conventions.

“Congress,” Feinstein wrote, “should go further and explicitly ban waterboarding and other so-called enhanced interrogation techniques for all parts of the government” presumably including the Post Office, the Department of Education and perhaps even the CIA.

Until then, however, “the bottom line” was that she “hope[d]” Judge Mukasey would “direct the Justice Department where the facts and the law lead, not where the White House dictates.”

Of course the real bottom line is that both Mukasey and Feinstein were hiding under The Rock of Technicalities -- waterboarding whether it was fun or folly was not yet “illegal” for the CIA.

Schumer was no less two-faced. In an article penned for the Spew York Times (06 Nov 07) he explained that he was voting for Mukasey because the Justice Deparment was in “desperate need of a strong leader, committed to depoliticizing the agency’s operations.” “Most important,” Schumer wrote, “Judge Mukasey has demonstrated his fidelity to the rule of law”

Ah... but then came the fine print on the encyclopedia installment purchase plan.... While Mukasey’s refusal to state that waterboarding was “illegal” was deeply unsatisfactory to Schumer --- deeply --- “ Congress is now considering — and I hope we will soon pass — a law that would explicitly ban the use of waterboarding and other abusive interrogation techniques. And I am confident that Judge Mukasey would enforce that law.”

Ah... the Schumer Shuffle... praise Mukasey for fidelity to legality, excoriate him not stating that waterboarding was “illegal” when it wasn’t and then express a pious hope that Congress might one day pass and Mukasey might one day enforce a law illegalizing waterboarding.

Actually, most people didn’t give a rats ass about Chuck's legalities. What most people found offensive was Mukasey’s helpless moral quandary as to whether dunking was torture or not, as a matter of painful fact.

The Schumer Shuffle concluded by stating that “if we block Judge Mukasey’s nomination and then learn in six months that waterboarding has continued unabated, that victory [for Law] will seem much less valuable. No one questions that Judge Mukasey would do much to remove the stench of politics from the Justice Department. I believe we should give him that chance.”

Ah... but the Stench from the Hill...

Today, Dan Eggen of the Washington Post reported

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said this morning that waterboarding was deemed legal by the Justice Department at the time it was used by the CIA on three al-Qaeda captives, and as a result the Justice Department "cannot possibly" investigate whether a crime occurred. . . .

Mukasey's remarks were a direct rebuff to demands from many leading Democrats this week that the Justice Department open a criminal probe into the CIA's use of waterboarding, . . .

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Wednesday that President Bush could approve the use of the tactic again and that such a decision would "depend on the circumstances," ...

Mukasey, is scheduled to appear before the Judiciary Committee again, where no doubt he will be grilled with mock mercilessness by Schumer and Feinstein, who will demand that he follow a law Congress has not passed.

And the stench rolls on.

©WCG, 2008
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Blendables

The News: CIA Chief, Mike McConnell, told Congress yesterday that Al Qaeda had improved its ability to recruit, train and position operatives capable of carrying out attacks inside the United States, producing militants, including new Western recruits, capable of blending into American society and attacking domestic targets.

The Quiz: What is the key word in this news? (a) ability (b) attacks (c) blending (d) domestic?

Most people, including most congressoids, will doubtless choose a, b and c: ability, attack, us. "Omygod... we need more security and fast!!

The true key word, of course, is “blending”. For six years now the US Government has been nabbing and deep-storing a whole bunch of them terrorist rag-heads -- brownish people that worship that heathen allah-fellow -- not good Jews and Gentiles, like us.

It really made no difference that that Mohammad fellow may have been an English citizen, or that what’s-his-name Ali Ah-whatever was a Canadian or that Padilla was a US subject . We all saw through that. All that was just a matter of probably falsely obtained passports. The guts of the matter is that they are “them” or at least “those”.

Some of us may have worried that these them types were being tortured or denied the basic protections of minimal due process; but, when all was said and done, our concern was basically a sort of legal-charity. Certainly, nothing we had to worry about that cut too close to our own bones.

Now comes Intelligence Chief McConnel to tell us that the big Al “Q” has produced blendable western attack agents. In other words, people that look just like you and me. And not just look, but have names like Smith, Scalia and Schmidt. Why, maybe even names like Sachs, Sulzberger and Schumer. Blendables.

What this means is that the proverbial “potential terrorist” includes people just like you and me. Which mean that in the eyes of our All Seeing All Beneficent State Guardian, people just like you and me are indistinguishable from “potential terrorists”.

Got it?

Welcome to Baghdad folks.

©WCG, 2008

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