February 19, 2008
Elaine Meinel Supkis
It was a very disgusting turn in our nation's history when we decided to act like Israelis. We now torture prisoners, invade countries on spurious excuses, we create refugees and act like moral monsters, demanding everyone cease ethnic cleansing except for us. We also send assassin drones all over the planet to kill our opponents. The US and our gang of former imperial powers recognize Kosovo but not Palestine. And on it goes! I am totally against splitting up nations along ethnic lines and this will come home to roost here in America eventually.
Unilateral Strike Called a Model For U.S. Operations in Pakistan
The missiles killed Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda commander and a man who had repeatedly eluded the CIA's dragnet. It was the first successful strike against al-Qaeda's core leadership in two years, and it involved, U.S. officials say, an unusual degree of autonomy by the CIA inside Pakistan.Having requested the Pakistani government's official permission for such strikes on previous occasions, only to be put off or turned down, this time the U.S. spy agency did not seek approval. The government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was notified only as the operation was underway, according to the officials, who insisted on anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.
Officials say the incident was a model of how Washington often scores its rare victories these days in the fight against al-Qaeda inside Pakistan's national borders: It acts with assistance from well-paid sympathizers inside the country, but without getting the government's formal permission beforehand.
The IDF in Israel has zero concept of sovereignty too. The US and Israel are both sliding down this terrible slope of increasing immorality and assassinations and sudden unilateral attacks. Increasingly, both the US and Israel are basically saying they have no need for treaties or laws. This is the definition of a rogue nation! If we can't get 'cooperation' it doesn't mean we can ignore things and do whatever we want, anyway. This is called 'chaos' as well as being a cause for war. Both the US and Israel use their nuclear arsenal to get away with these things. Instead of disarming, both nations are hyper-arming while at the same time, desperately trying to disarm everyone else. This contradictory movement is driving us all to WWIII.
The fact that the US asks the puppet who just lost the 'election' there for 'permission' and then, not getting it, go in anyway is such utter insanity, it leaves me aghast. So. Will Mr. Spielberg, a fine movie maker, boycott Israel and the US for these things? Will the world talk about the need to stop the destruction of Palestine? The displacement of millions of Iraqis? The Darfur matter gets lots of attention in Jewish media circles. But not things the Jews or the Americans are doing in Muslim lands. Suddenly, all grows dark. Being able to invade, kill, maim and destroy or threaten people with nuclear bombs: all OK with Spielberg and others of his ilk.
By the way, I notice more and more writers are misusing the word, 'ilk'. This is a negative connotation word used when one is condemning a group of people, it is not a neutral word for a collection of people.
The fact that the US is refusing to accept sovereign borders means that the 9/11 attackers were doing exactly what the US is doing. Like the US, they flew in illegally and assassinated people using airplanes. We use drones. What would happen if China and Russia began sending drones flying all over America, assassinating us? Of course, that would start WWIII. This is why it behooves the US to not do this to Pakistan which is increasingly a nuclear power.
Eventually, a ruler will arise in Pakistan who will be irritable about all this and do something drastic. The US has to stop. Just stop it. If we are mad about 'terrorists', going crazy and acting like assassins won't fix the problem. It expands the problem!
Opposition parties appeared ready this morning to form a new government, with greater strength than predicted – a development that could pose serious problems for the presidency of Pervez Musharraf.Despite exchanges of gunfire, a polling station hit by a rocket from militants, and the death of at least eight activists from the late Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party, millions turned out for what was being touted as the most important poll in Pakistan's history.
Now the disorders in other places we are trying to militarily occupy are spreading. The election in Pakistan had a very low turn out but everyone is so turned off by Musharraff, he lost totally. But this election isn't about the 'will of the people' or they would nuke us every time we send in killer drones to shoot missiles at them at home! And I expect this in the end. The disorders are not vanishing because of our stupid assassination program, it is expanding!
And I remember when we DENOUNCED assassinations! Look at the series of assassinations going on in poor Lebanon! Israel, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia all have a finger in the Assassin Pie. And it is spreading its wings across the region. Israel, in particular, is very addicted to assassinations. Including killing its own leaders. So this is only going to make things worse and worse and it is utterly immoral. Just like we didn't fight WWI or WWII with assassins! Indeed, throughout history, the Code of Honor talked about this. Assassins were bad guys and kings using them were pariahs. No one would admire a king if he used assassins! And this is why we must take the high road, not the pig sty road, and stop endorsing or doing assassinations. It is in the same category as torture: you lose too much moral ground to make it worthwhile.
Saudi Arabia Eager to Replace Iran
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin met with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal yesterday, February 14, 2008. In Riyadh, they are strongly concerned about the large-scale cooperation of Russia and Iran, particularly the nuclear one.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal stayed in Moscow only for a few hours yesterday, and the meeting with President Vladimir Putin took most of his visit. The prince delivered to Putin a personal letter of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, who initiated negotiations.The sources say the letter describes Riyadh’s evaluation of the Middle East situation. But Saud Al-Faisal evidently passed the most vital message by word of mouth. In Saudi Arabia, they are sure that Iran’s policy will shatter the region in future and the helping hand of Moscow is needed to prevent it.
Riyadh elaborated a plan to save the region from the so-called Iranian threat, where it is to play the key role in tandem with Moscow. So, the Saudi guest endeavored to persuade the Kremlin that stronger Iran would disbalance the Middle East. In return to winding up Russia’s-Iranian contracts, Riyadh promised to buy Russia’s weapons at large, replacing Iran as its partner in military and technical field.
I have seen some subterranean signs that Saudi Arabia is trying to triangulate with both Russia and China. They know that US and Israeli assassins will destroy them if they don't have strong allies and good friends who don't want to see the US and Israel stomp all over the Middle East. The Saudis are slowly buying up the US and British banking and financial systems but they know that this will be meaningless if the empires decide to seize all their funds and unilaterally attack Saudi Arabia. So they want the insurance of other powers who can nuke the US and England.
Russian ruble could be used in oil trade deals in Iran - envoy
The Russian ruble could be used as a payment instrument for deals on an Iranian oil exchange, the Islamic Republic's ambassador to Moscow said on Friday."Possibly in the future, we'll be able to use the ruble, Russia's national currency, in our operations," Gholamreza Ansari said, adding that the Islamic Republic was currently busy launching a new oil trade exchange.
The Iranians are playing an interesting game. I don't know if Russia wants the ruble to be the currency used in energy markets. There are so many considerations here, I don't think they want to jump into this with both feet. But Iran is trying to force everyone to use many different currencies because they can't be part of the banking system thanks to the assassins in nuclear Israel and nuclear US as well as nuclear France and nuclear England. This quartet of assassins who use nukes as blackmail are intent on seeing Iran not be equally powerful. Saudi Arabia is frightened about the possibility of nuclear war but they also can see that the tolerance shown to them is very thin and will soon vanish the minute the US imagines they can assassinate the entire royal family with a squadron of drones shooting missiles.
The recent business in Kosovo strengthens their hand. Russia and China are joined with a host of other nations in decrying the continuing shattering of the Balkans into ethnic enclaves. Israel is most anxious to promote the concept of religious/ethnic cleansing. The bloody wars of the last 100 years were all about ethnic cleansing events. Despite this, the desire to push for more is great since it moralizes the effort of the Jews to displace the natives in Palestine! So the US, England, Germany and France, the quartet of empires that caused or fought in WWI and WWII are all cheering on the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans! These nuclear powers that are addicted to assassinations and cross-border attacks arrogantly believe they get to redraw the maps of any nation they wish, hahaha.
Kosovo Is Recognized but Rebuked by Others
Kosovo won the recognition of the United States and its biggest Western European allies on Monday, while earning rebukes and rejections from Serbia, Russia and a disparate mix of states the world over who face their own separatist movements at home.One day after the tiny Balkan province declared its independence, the world had its chance to choose sides. While some countries had made their decisions months in advance, that did not diminish the drama of whether a newly birthed nation would be welcomed into the fold or rejected.
Major European powers, including France, Germany and Britain, along with the United States, officially recognized Kosovo, even as officials took pains to point out that it should not serve as an invitation or precedent for other groups hoping to declare independence. That is because one of the biggest unknowns remains whether Kosovo’s declaration could rekindle conflicts elsewhere, including in ethnically divided Bosnia.
As a result, the reverberations were felt from Russian-backed enclaves in Georgia to the Taiwan Strait. Spain, a member of the European Union and one of the countries with soldiers in the NATO force in Kosovo, refused its recognition. Yet Turkey, despite its history of conflict with Kurdish separatists, chose to support Kosovo’s independence.
It baffles me that England endorses this. One peek at the bloody history of Ireland shows us that the Crown and Parliament both love to seize nations and enslave them. No surprise that Spain is condemning this move by Kosovo. Indeed, all over Europe, there are breakaway moves going on. Scotland, for example. Belgium is breaking into at least two pieces. Italy is condemning this due to these sorts of movements to shatter that state continue unabated since the Middle Ages. India, Sri Lanka, China, there are more than one Asian nation, Indonesia, etc, who condemn this and are angry that the quartet of imperial powers of NATO are promoting this sort of thing.
The US breaks apart the entire world in order to dominate it. Failing that, we send in drones to assassinate anyone who defies us. Africa is poor and weak due to being chopped apart into smaller and smaller units. Eventually, it will be like Germany or Italy after 1600: a collection of tiny sub-states. The US is one big nation that had its nastiest wars with the biggest casualties during the Civil War when half of the nation wanted separation. So, here we are, our bloody history is all about military occupations enforcing 'unity', going around splitting nations apart gleefully. This might come back to bite us. Especially if people think they can do religious/ethnic cleansing here.
Turkey, by the way, is hoping to regain power in the Balkans with this. They want to see the Christians driven out and thus, have a hyper-alliance again. And they are happy that France and Germany are helping them in this. They want to be part of the European Union so they are in harmony with this move. So it is no mystery. They will still whack anyone daring to do the same in Turkey.
Israeli army 'crimes' unpunished
An Israeli human rights group says the overwhelming majority of Israeli troops suspected of criminal offences against Palestinians are never indicted.The small number of investigations and even fewer indictments showed Israel's army was ignoring its duty to protect Palestinian civilians, Yesh Din says.
It said soldiers felt they had immunity from investigation and prosecution, which inevitably led to more offences.
An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said no-one was above the law.
The ugly face of ethnic cleansing. No matter how hideous the behavior, just like the US and NATO troops in other Muslim lands, it is evidently OK to let the troops commit crimes. The behavior of the Jewish troops in Palestine seem to mirror the Wehrmacht in Europe during WWII. The point is to be as cruel, capricious and vicious as possible so the population at large either flees or dies. The Jews of all people, should be ashamed of themselves. I wait until my face turns blue for good old moralist, Mr. Spielberg, to denounce this and boycott Israel.
He won't. Mirrors make vampires shrivel up and die. So he can't use one.
Sarkozy defends Holocaust proposal amid uproar
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, facing a tide of criticism over his call for schoolchildren to "adopt" Jewish child victims of the Holocaust, hit back on Friday saying France had to raise children "with open eyes".In a speech praising faith that also drew fire from secularists, Sarkozy told France's Jewish community on Wednesday that every 10-year-old schoolchild should be "entrusted with the memory of a French child victim of the Holocaust".
The proposal unleashed a storm of protest from teachers, psychologists and his political foes who said it would unfairly burden children with the guilt of previous generations and some could be traumatized by identifying with a Holocaust victim.
I would suggest the French Jewish President have the children learn about both a Jewish child under the Nazis and a Palestinian child who is still alive and trying to survive under Jewish rule! Then they can see the obvious connection and this will force the Jews to stop acting like Nazis. But of course, he wants us to focus on Nazis and not Jewish imitators of Nazis. To him, it is OK to be an assassin, a thief or a liar so long as it gives his own ethnic group an advantage.
I will note the resistance here. Anyone disputing WWII history is put in prison in Europe because they have no free speech. People avoid talking about Jews so this does help Jewish ethnic cleansing in Palestine. But every once and a while it erupts. And in this case, the fury is a sign that this avoidance is about to end. If things go very badly in Europe due to global crashes, I expect the usual cycle to begin yet again. Only this time, the Jewish people will have no excuse about their own efforts to insure that we have a very vicious ethnic cleansing episode yet again!
Which is why I am so very annoyed by all this! Tolerance is a totally different beast from ethnic identity! The cure for Naziism isn't Jewish Naziism in the form of Zionism. It is to stop this sort of thing. Stop ethnic cleansing. Stop religious wars. Spreading democracy, unity and freedom of speech, that is the cure for Naziism! The victims ultimately of the Nazis are the Palestinian people. They had absolutely nothing to do with the crimes of WWII. Yet they pay the price. In spades.
Police feared 'airport stand-off'
An Israeli general wanted for alleged war crimes escaped arrest in the UK because British police feared an armed confrontation at Heathrow airport.Documents seen by BBC News reveal how Major General Doron Almog managed to fly back to Israel when police failed to board his plane in September 2005.
He stayed on board for two hours after a tip-off that he was facing detention.
Police were concerned about a potential clash with Israeli air marshals or armed personal security on the plane.
Yesterday, it was the cruel House of Saud that was in the news. Now we learn of a similar event with the Jews. Namely, they too, can get away with murder. They too, can defy the courts in England. They can break laws and then threaten England with violence and then fly off, laughing. An English writer, Irving, can be put in prison for disputing WWII data but the Jewish military overlords in the Middle East can commit crimes of murder and get off scot free.
But then, so do our leaders. Who are sending assassin drones around the planet at will, murdering people in their beds. What a lesson we learned from WWII! How well we learned the legal lessons of the Nüremberg Trials!
How crucial is the huge new US airbase in Kosovo in the speedy recognition by the USA?
Posted by: RG | February 19, 2008 at 06:16 PM
"It baffles me that England endorses this. One peek at the bloody history of Ireland shows us that the Crown and Parliament both love to seize nations and enslave them."
Elaine this is typical, sorry to say, it is just business as usual. They need all these little conflicts to feed the Military Industrial Complex while there is no World War. It pays the bills. It allows them to test new weapons technology, and clear out dissent, while making profit.
The best tool for creating war is religion. It is just another facet of the world elite, and they work hand in hand for the greater profit. They depend on the ignorance of humanity to ply their trade.
Posted by: Carli | February 19, 2008 at 07:10 PM
"It baffles me that England endorses this. One peek at the bloody history of Ireland shows us that the Crown and Parliament both love to seize nations and enslave them."
Elaine this is typical, sorry to say, it is just business as usual. They need all these little conflicts to feed the Military Industrial Complex while there is no World War. It pays the bills. It allows them to test new weapons technology, and clear out dissent, while making profit.
The best tool for creating war is religion. It is just another facet of the world elite, and they work hand in hand for the greater profit. They depend on the ignorance of humanity to ply their trade.
Posted by: Carli | February 19, 2008 at 07:12 PM
"It baffles me that England endorses this. One peek at the bloody history of Ireland shows us that the Crown and Parliament both love to seize nations and enslave them."
You have identified the motive of the dual car bomb attacks in London and Scotland last summer. Right about the time the Kosovo independence movement regained momentum (via Kisinger?) Just this fall a 'business' man from Kosovo visited my sister in-laws high school. He was there with a UN official crying about his homeland.
Posted by: Joe | February 19, 2008 at 10:17 PM
"[We] are sending assassin drones around the planet at will, murdering people in their beds."
al-Libi wasn't actually in bed... and he wasn't actually some poor innocent goatherd, either. The Predator UAV is an excellent tool for neutralizing those who may be beyond the reach of an arrest warrant; in 2002 we whacked a carload of guys in Yemen who thought they were safe, too. If these guys are a little nervous that something they can't see is watching them from 30K feet, and that thing has a couple of antitank missiles on board... great. You can run, but you can't hide!
"I remember when we DENOUNCED assassinations!"
You DO? When was that? You're not that much older than me, and assassination has been a tool in the US policy kit throughout both our lifetimes.
"Just like we didn't fight WWI or WWII with assassins!"
Once upon a time, we didn't have an intelligence service, either. In 1929, US Secretary of State Henry Stimson said, "Gentlemen do not open each other's mail," when he closed the State Department's cryptanalytic office. But Secretary Stimson was old school; luckily, we had scruple-free people like Dulles and Angleton to do the necessary.
Speaking of doing the necessary... any ideas on who planted the carbomb that got that Hezbollah fellow, Mughniyeh? One report noted that "He lived by the car bomb, and he died by the car bomb." It's almost like... poetical justice!
(In other good news... did you see that Castro quit?)
Posted by: JSmith | February 20, 2008 at 09:31 AM
"And this is why we must take the high road, not the pig sty road, and stop endorsing or doing assassinations."
Perhaps President Obama will invite fellows like al-Libi and Mughniyeh to the White House for dinner instead of whacking them un-forewarned.
Posted by: JSmith | February 20, 2008 at 09:36 AM
Actually Obama said six months ago that he would do exacty this type of attack against AQ operatives in Pakistan, even if it was without Pakistani approval.
Perversely, it may seem, he got roundly criticized by that warmonger McCain for that stance in the debates.
The US is digging itself a very deep hole, and it looks like future US leaders will increase the tempo of the digging.
Posted by: Chris | February 20, 2008 at 12:09 PM
"Actually Obama said six months ago that he would do exacty this type of attack against AQ operatives in Pakistan, even if it was without Pakistani approval."
Good on him!
Funny thing is... Democrats HAVE to say that and McCain can criticise him because everyone knows where McCain stands - and that he'd do it too.
"The US is digging itself a very deep hole..."
OK... maybe if we ask 'em nicely to stop, pretty please, then everything will be OK. We might have to pay some reparations or bribes or tributes or something, but what the hell... it's only money.
Posted by: JSmith | February 20, 2008 at 12:30 PM
I read about the car bomb assassination of the presumed terrorist. What stunned me was the glee in the voice of the writer and the fact that no mention was made of how many others were killed or injured by our assassination of this person in Syria.
When the same occurs here or elsewhere, we at least learn how many others died and that it was wrong to kill innocent people while targeting some general or politician.
When we kill enemy leaders, it does not matter how many others die. In fact, it is so irrelevant that we do not even ask if anyone else was injured. This is the mark of evil, and it is branded on our foreheads as well as theirs.
There is no cause to celebrate evil.
Posted by: DeVaul | February 20, 2008 at 05:55 PM
Elaine, you wrote:
"The fact that the US is refusing to accept sovereign borders means that the 9/11 attackers were doing exactly what the US is doing. Like the US, they flew in illegally and assassinated people using airplanes. We use drones. What would happen if China and Russia began sending drones flying all over America, assassinating us? Of course, that would start WWIII. This is why it behooves the US to not do this to Pakistan which is increasingly a nuclear power."
"Eventually, a ruler will arise in Pakistan who will be irritable about all this and do something drastic. The US has to stop. Just stop it. If we are mad about 'terrorists', going crazy and acting like assassins won't fix the problem. It expands the problem!"
Your last sentence says it all. Don't you see, that was what 9-11 was all about! We have to keep expanding the 'War on Terror'....it is a 'false flag' operation from the 'get go'. Justification to bring about the dreaded WWIII...and your worst nightmare...The [false]Apocalypse. End result: More money and power for those that have too much of each already....and a much lower world population!
[one hour later]
In the last post where I said 'War on Terror', I should have added; "just like the 'War on Drugs'. It is a false flag operation that diminishes our rights, lines the pockets of TPTB, corrupts foreign leaders and our legal system with rewards for kleptomania, gives justification of an expanded judicial/prison/police/military system and actually expands the distribution of the drugs because of the extreme profits which can be made on the 'retail' level. Neutralizes millions of young men and women in the prime of their youth. The parallels are strikingly similar if one cares to examine the MO.
I posted this last night but it did not show up. I hope you are not editing readers posts Elaine.
Posted by: leadfoot | February 21, 2008 at 01:03 AM
DeVaul: "I read about the car bomb assassination of the presumed terrorist. What stunned me was the glee in the voice of the writer and the fact that no mention was made of how many others were killed or injured by our assassination of this person in Syria. ... There is no cause to celebrate evil."
The Mughniyeh slaying seems to have been a damn professional operation: the only person killed was... Mughniyeh. Right under the noses of his security team. (Not even the Arab press is reporting otherwise.)
I doubt it was "our" op - apparently the Syrians have some suspects, reportedly Palestinian suspects. (Isn't THAT interesting?)
We're not celebrating "evil" here; we're actually celebrating its passing. He was a bit more than an "assumed" terrorist.
(Of course, the accepted postmodern position is that what you see as "evil" is an entirely personal position, and that calling something "evil" is pretty much the same as saying you don't like it.)
Posted by: JSmith | February 21, 2008 at 09:33 AM
Speaking of shooting things with missiles... the Navy killed that defunct satellite. from today's NYT:
"Completing a mission in which an interceptor designed for missile defense was used for the first time to attack a satellite, the Lake Erie, an Aegis-class cruiser, fired a single missile just before 10:30 p.m. Eastern time, and the missile hit the satellite as it traveled at more than 17,000 miles per hour, the Pentagon said in its official announcement.
'A network of land-, air-, sea- and spaced-based sensors confirms that the U.S. military intercepted a nonfunctioning National Reconnaissance Office satellite which was in its final orbits before entering the Earth’s atmosphere,' the statement said."
THAT's some damn fine shooting!
(Perhaps Elaine will have some notes on this later on...)
Posted by: JSmith | February 21, 2008 at 09:46 AM