AMERICAN AID: THE FACTS

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. Although more spectacular in its choreographed histrionics, Barack Obama’s inauguration carried the same Orwellian message of inverted truth: of ruthlessness of criminal power, if not unending war. The continuity between the two administrations has been as seamless as the transfer of the odious Bono’s allegiance, symbolised by President Obama’s oath-taking on the steps of Congress – where, only days earlier, the House of Representatives, dominated by the new president’s party, the Democrats, voted 390-5 to back Israel’s massacres in Gaza. The supply of American weapons used in the massacres was authorised previously by such a margin. These included the Hellfire missile which sucks the air out of lungs, ruptures livers and amputates arms and legs without the necessity of shrapnel: a “major advance”, according to the specialist literature. As a senator, then president-elect, Obama raised no objection to these state-of-the-art [sic] weapons being rushed to Israel – worth $22 billion in 2008 – in time for the long-planned assault on Gaza’s fenced and helpless population. This is understandable; it is how the system works. On no other issue does Congress and the president, Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, give such absolute support. By comparison, the German Reichstag in the 1930s was a treasure of democratic and principled debate.

This is not to say presidents and members of Congress fail to recognise the Israel “lobbyists” in their midst as thugs and political blackmailers, though they never say in public, and indeed disport themselves at Zionist fund-raisers and on paid-for trips to the object of their ardour. But they fear them. As eyes welled on 20 January for the first African-American president, who remembered Cynthia McKinney, the courageous African-American Congresswoman, the first to be elected from Georgia, who spoke out for the Palestinians and was duly driven from office by a Zionist smear campaign? For their part, the Israelis’ current, phoney “unilateral ceasefire” in Gaza is designed not to embarrass, not yet, its new man in the White House, whose single acknowledgement of the “suffering” of the Palestinians has been long eclipsed by his loyalty oaths to Tel Aviv (even promising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which not even Bush did) and his appointment of probably the most pro-Zionist administration for a generation.

As deserving as Blair, Howard and Uribe are of the Bush Freedom Medal, others cry out for a place in their company. With the assault on Gaza a defining moment of truth and lies, principle and cowardice, peace and war, justice and injustice, I have two nominees. My first is the government and society of Israel. (I checked; the Freedom Medal can be awarded collectively). “Few of us,” wrote Arthur Miller, “can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. Th

Robert Fisk’s World:

When did we stop caring about civilian deaths during wartime?

The mere monitoring of bloody conflict assumes precedence over human suffering
Saturday, 31 January 2009

I'm not sure when the change came. Was it Israel's disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the Sabra and Chatila massacre by Israel's allies of 1,700 Palestinian civilians? (Gaza just missed that record.) Israel claimed (as usual) to be fighting "our" "war against terror" but the Israeli army is not what it's cracked up to be and massacres (Qana comes to mind in 1996 and the children of Marwahine in 2006) seem to come attached to it. And of course, there's the little matter of the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988 which we enthusiastically supported with weapons to both sides, and the Syrian slaughter of thousands of civilians at Hama and...

No, I rather think it was the 1991 Gulf War. Our television lads and lasses played it for all it was worth – it was the first war that had "theme" music to go with the pictures – and when US troops simply smothered alive thousands of Iraqi troops in their trenches, we learned about it later and didn't care much, and even when the Americans ignored Red Cross rules to mark mass graves, they got away with it. There were women in some of these graves – I saw British soldiers burying them. And I remember driving up to Mutla ridge to show a Red Cross delegate where I had seen a mass grave dug by the Americans, and he looked at the plastic poppy an American had presumably left there and said: "Something has happened."

He meant that something had happened to international law, to the rules of war. They had been flouted. Then came Kosovo – where our dear Lord Blair first exercised his talents for warmaking – and another ream of slaughter. Of course, Milosevic was the bad guy (even though most of the Kosovars were still in their homes when the war began – their return home after their brutal expulsion by the Serbs then became the war aim). But here again, we broke some extra rules and got away with it. Remember the passenger train we bombed on the Surdulica bridge – and the famous speeding up of the film by Jamie Shea to show that the bomber had no time to hold his fire? (Actually, the pilot came back for another bombing run on the train when it was already burning, but that was excluded from the film.) Then the attack on the Belgrade radio station. And the civilian roads. Then the attack on a large country hospital. "Military target," said Jamie. And he was right. There were soldiers hiding in the hospital along with the patients. The soldiers all survived. The patients all died.

We see such acts of personal cowardice every day. Recently we had the case of Jewish scholar and Israel critic Norman Finkelstein, whose tenure was blocked by the cowardly president of DePaul University, a man afraid to stand up for his own faculty against the Israel Lobby, which successfully imposed on a Catholic university the principle that no critic of Israel can gain academic tenure.
The same calculation of self-interest causes American journalists to serve as shills for Israeli and US government propaganda and the US Congress to endorse Israeli war crimes that the rest of the world condemns.
When US military officers saw that torture was a policy coming down from the top, they knew that doing the right thing would cost them their careers. They trimmed their sails. One who did not was Major General Antonio Taguba. Instead of covering up the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal, General Taguba wrote an honest report that terminated his career.
Despite legislation that protects whistleblowers, it is always the whistleblower, not the wrongdoer, who suffers.

In America, Speaking the Truth Is a Career-ending Event

By Paul Craig Roberts

By Paul Craig Roberts
January 26, 2009 "Information Clearinghouse"-- - “The evidence is sitting on the table. There is no avoiding the fact that this was torture.”

These are the words of Manfred Nowak, the UN official appointed by the Commission on Human Rights to examine cases of torture. Nowak has concluded that President Obama is legally obligated to prosecute former President George W. Bush and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

If President Obama’s bankster economic team finishes off what remains of the US economy, Obama, to deflect the public’s attention from his own failures and Americans’ growing hardships, might fulfill his responsibility to prosecute Bush and Rumsfeld. But for now the interesting question is why did the US military succumb to illegal orders?
In the December 2008 issue of CounterPunch, Alexander Cockburn, in his report on an inglorious chapter in the history of the Harvard Law School, provides the answer. Two brothers, Jonathan and David Lubell, both Harvard law students, were politically active against the Korean War. It was the McCarthy era, and the brothers were subpoenaed. They refused to cooperate on the grounds that the subpoena was a violation of the First Amendment.
Harvard Law School immediately began pressuring the students to cooperate with Congress. The other students ostracized them. Pressures from the Dean and faculty turned into threats. Although the Lubells graduated magna cum laude, they were kept off the Harvard Law Review. Their scholarships were terminated. A majority of the Harvard Law faculty voted for their expulsion (expulsion required a two-thirds vote).

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US aid to Israel violates US laws

US aid to Israel, and the way in which this aid is used, frequently violates US law, policy and interests.
Under US policy, financial aid to Israel should not be spent by Israel in the Occupied Territories. But Israel spends US aid with impunity.
The US has a number of laws regulating foreign military aid and weapons’ exports. The 1961 Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) states that “No assistance [ought to be given] to countries that violate human rights”. But Israel systematically violates human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The 1976 US Arms Export Control Act (AECA) states that “Weapons purchased from the US should only be used for legitimate self-defense”. But since September 2000 the Israeli military has killed more than 3,354 Palestinian civilians (as of 8 August 2007).

I am not aware of a single major American newspaper, radio station or TV channel whose coverage ofthe assault on Gaza questions this version of events. Criticism of Israel’s actions, if any (andthere has been none from the Bush administration), has focused instead on whether the IDF’scarnage is proportional to the threat it sought to counter, and whether it is taking adequatemeasures to prevent civilian casualties.

Meet Ni’lin - "This Is Normality"

Palestine Monitor
19 January 2009
Palestine Monitor’s Photographer spent three weeks in the little town of Ni’lin, South of Ramallah, sadly famous for its fate following the building of the Appartheid Wall.
For 8 months, the residents of Ni’lin have held weekly peaceful popular struggle against the building of a new section of the Wall that will confiscate land to their Palestinian owners, and seal the town in a matrix of concrete walls, sourrounded by Israeli settlements.

Villagers have been facing a harsh repression against the weekly peaceful demontrations. There, Israeli violence killed a least 3 teenagers and dozens were injured and imprisoned.

"This is normality", "This is daily life" residents of Ni’lin testified. "But only if you live here long enough to become used to it."

Exposing life under OccupationOnly at times of war and threat upon the U.S. does our Senate ever exhibit the strong bipartisanship support of America it regularly provides Israel. Despite our current crisis in airline security, Congressional political bickering continued for weeks between Republicans and Democrats placing American lives at risk while foreign aid to Israel was quick and automatic (about $6 Billion), even at a time the Congress is telling us of budget deficits and lack of money for the unemployed American workers. As an American I am outraged at the blind historical allegiance our Senators have provided Israel while they neglect many of our pressing domestic issues such as airline security, Social Security and Medicare Reform, Education Reform, Health Insurance for needy Americans, Money for Dilapidated Schools, and Prescription Coverage for our Elderly. Our Congress operates on the premise that most Americans are disinterested in foreign policy thus they have a vacuum to provide Israel with blank checks and our latest F-16 fighter jets that Israel uses to kill Palestinian civilians. They depend on our media to keep us uninformed and distracted with Sports, Harry Potter, and scandals.

On 16 March 2003 in Rafah, occupied Gaza, 23-year-old American peace activist Rachel Corrie from Olympia, Washington, was murdered by an Israeli bulldozer driver. Rachel was in Gaza opposing the bulldozing of a Palestinian home as a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement.

Rachel Corey [sic], 23 years old from the state of Washington, was killed while she was trying to prevent Israeli army bulldozers from destroying a Palestinian home. Other foreigners who were with her said the driver of the bulldozer was aware that Rachel was there, and continued to destroy the house. Initially he dropped sand and other heavy debris on her, then the bulldozer pushed her to the ground where it proceeded to drive over her, fracturing both of her arms, legs and skull. She was transferred to hospital, where she later died. Another foreigner was also injured in the attack and has been hospitalized - at this stage his nationality is unknown." (15 March 2003)

U.S. Moving Toward Czarism, Away From Democracy
By David Sirota
History's great American parables teach that if anything unified our founders, it was a deep antipathy to dictatorship. As bourgeois revolutionaries from Boston to Philadelphia courageously split with the British crown in 1776, they created three equal branches of government to prevent, in the words of James Madison, "a tyrannical concentration of all the powers" in a president's hand

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Last week, the military censor ordered local and foreign media in Israel to blur the faces of army commanders in photos and video footage of the Gaza war for fear they could be identified and arrested while traveling abroad.
Israeli media reports said the military had been advising its top brass to think twice about visiting Europe.
Speaking at the weekly cabinet meeting, Olmert said Israel's justice minister would consult with the country's top legal experts and find "answers to possible questions relating to the Israeli military's activities" during the 22-day war.

Thank God for the Internet but that have plans to restrict that too.

Israel is a Nuclear Power

Although never officially confirmed by either Israel or the US, it is widely known that Israel has developed nuclear weapons. In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu exposed Israel’s nuclear program.
(see below)
The number of Israeli nuclear bombs produced in the Dimona nuclear research centre in the Negev Desert is estimated at 200.
Israel has never signed the 1968 Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty.
Both the US and Israel have an unofficial policy of silence regarding Israel’s nuclear capacity.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert confirmed that Israel possesses nuclear weapons in a 12 December 2006 interview with the German TV channel Sat.1. He said that Iran aspires “to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel and Russia”.

US aid to Israel violates US laws

US aid to Israel, and the way in which this aid is used, frequently violates US law, policy and interests.
Under US policy, financial aid to Israel should not be spent by Israel in the Occupied Territories. But Israel spends US aid with impunity.
The US has a number of laws regulating foreign military aid and weapons’ exports. The 1961 Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) states that “No assistance [ought to be given] to countries that violate human rights”. But Israel systematically violates human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The 1976 US Arms Export Control Act (AECA) states that “Weapons purchased from the US should only be used for legitimate self-defense”. But since September 2000 the Israeli military has killed more than 3,354 Palestinian civilians (as of 8 August 2007).

Edward S. Walker, former president of the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank, says the fuel supply program is emblematic of U.S. military support for Israel. Walker, who has served as U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Israel, explains that the FMF money allows the Israelis to "do with it what they want. They can buy equipment or fuel. It's their choice, not the government's choice. It's the only program where we give someone a blank check and they can use it any way that they choose."

Given the recent spike in oil prices, which helped send the U.S. and the world economy into a tailspin, and Americans still smarting from paying $4 at the pump, says Walker, "Why are we supplying fuel to Israel when we are paying such high prices?"

Sharon to Peres: "We Control America"

Congressional Pandering to Israel proves him Right

by Mohamed Khodr

On October 3, 2001, I.A.P. News reported that according to Israel Radio (in Hebrew) Kol Yisrael an acrimonious argument erupted during the Israeli cabinet weekly session last week between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his foreign Minister Shimon Peres. Peres warned Sharon that refusing to heed incessant American requests for a cease-fire with the Palestinians would endanger Israeli interests and "turn the US against us. "Sharon reportedly yelled at Peres, saying "don't worry about American pressure, we the Jewish people control America."

"The Israelis control the policy in the congress and the senate."

-- Senator Fullbright, Chair of Senate Foreign Relations Committee: 10/07/1973 on CBS' "Face the Nation".

"I am aware how almost impossible it is in this country to carry out a foreign policy [in the Middle East] not approved by the Jews..... terrific control the Jews have over the news media and the barrage the Jews have built up on congressmen .... I am very much concerned over the fact that the Jewish influence here is completely dominating the scene and making it almost impossible to get congress to do anything they don't approve of. The Israeli embassy is practically dictating to the congress through influential Jewish people in the country"

-----Sec. of State John Foster Dulles quoted on p.99 of Fallen Pillars by Donald Neff

US aid to Israel violates US laws

US aid to Israel, and the way in which this aid is used, frequently violates US law, policy and interests.
Under US policy, financial aid to Israel should not be spent by Israel in the Occupied Territories. But Israel spends US aid with impunity.
The US has a number of laws regulating foreign military aid and weapons’ exports. The 1961 Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) states that “No assistance [ought to be given] to countries that violate human rights”. But Israel systematically violates human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The 1976 US Arms Export Control Act (AECA) states that “Weapons purchased from the US should only be used for legitimate self-defense”. But since September 2000 the Israeli military has killed more than 3,354 Palestinian civilians (as of 8 August 2007).