Month: July 2014

Americans need to Answer: When Will Palestinians get their Fourth of July?

(Informed Comment) – The Palestinians do not have any of these rights, whether God wants them to or not. They were successively ethnically cleansed from their homeland of Palestine by militant Jewish settlers. (There were no Jews in Palestine to speak of as recently as 1800; Bonaparte found about 3,000 I think; Palestine was inhabited by Muslim and Christian Palestinians and as late as 1939 the British mandatory authorities envisaged a Palestinian state in 1949). Some 750,000 were expelled with no compensation and their land and property usurped in 1948. More tens of thousands were displaced in 1967. Their numbers have grown. Some 20 percent of Israel is remnants of the original Palestinian inhabitants, some 1.6 million persons. They are second class citizens in many ways.

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Palestinian refugee Shaher Alkhateeb, 73, who witnessed what the Palestinians call the "Nakba," or "catastrophe," poses for a picture in front of a wall painted with a mural depicting a prisoner jailed in Israel, in Kalandia refugee camp, between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)

But the some 4 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza, and the several hundred thousand living in Lebanese refugee camps [and Syria, Jordan], are living lives the opposite of the ones Jefferson declared natural. They are stateless. In the West Bank they live under Israeli military rule; there are a few civil institutions, but all of these can be over-ruled by the whim of the Israeli army. Palestinians do not control their land, water or air. In Gaza, the Israelis have put them under siege, including the children and non-combatants in general. They aren’t allowed to export virtually anything they produce. They have no port or airport (both bombed by Israel). They suffer from massive unemployment and even malnutrition. The Israelis have placed the Palestinians of Gaza in a huge open-air concentration camp. With American and European help.

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So the Palestinians do not have a right to life. They have no liberty at all as the US founding generation conceived it. And they certainly have no right to pursue happiness. Their lives are constrained and made difficult by deliberate actions of Israeli officials and officers and armed squatters on their land who torment them. The Declaration of Independence insists that people have a right to elect their government.

U.N. Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People

Today I received an email notice from Lisa Pease (@BooMan aka Real History Lisa) about her new article.

Continued below the fold …
Reading through her blog, Lisa Pease has also covered the likely assassination of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld. This reminds me once again that the intelligence community and covert operations are the leading factor how global affairs are dealt with. Not much has changed over the decades except what were covert assassinations are now openly advocated with impunity, by western powers and in the US protectorate Israel.

With the death of UN hero Dag Hammarskjöld, it’s a small step to D.R. Congo and the heinous crime by western powers, the murder of Patrice Lumumba on January 16, 1961, four days before the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. The sixties would become a decade renowned for high profile assassinations by the dark state. How much individuals try, peace has never been given a chance. The knee-jerk reaction has always been war.

Assassination of Patrice Lumumba, CIA involvement with Allan Dulles, NSC and President Eisenhower

At a meeting of the U.S. National Security Council, President Eisenhower told CIA Director Allen Dulles that Congolese Premier Patrice Lumumba needed to be “eliminated” in order to keep the Congo from becoming “another Cuba”. Robert Johnson, who took notes of the meeting, revealed the information at a Senate hearing years later.

When the Church Committee investigated CIA assassination plots in 1975, one of the plots it uncovered had as its target Patrice Lumumba, who in 1960 had emerged as the leader of the newly independent Congo. Lumumba was indeed murdered in early 1961, though the Committee absolved the CIA of the African leader’s death at the hands of his Congolese enemies. A 2001 report from the Belgian government found complicity on the part of that country in Lumumba’s death. As far as US involvement, the line between the CIA’s vigorous support of anti-Lumumba Congolese and involvement in Lumumba’s murder is not clearly drawn.

○ Patrice Lumumba: CIA Cable Traffic Leopoldville to Langley of August 1960
○ Dulles cable to Leopoldville 8/26/1960

Last letter written by Patrice Lumumba to his dear wife …

All during the length of my fight for the independence of my country, I have never doubted for a single instant the final triumph of the sacred cause to which my companions and myself have consecrated our lives.

But what we wish for our country, its right to an honorable life, to a spotless dignity, to an independence without restrictions, Belgian colonialism and its Western allies–who have found direct and indirect support, deliberate and not deliberate, among certain high officials of the United Nations, this organization in which we placed all our confidence when we called for their assistance–have not wished it.

They have corrupted certain of our fellow countrymen, they have contributed to distorting the truth and to besmirching our independence.  What else might I say? That dead, living, free, or in prison on the order of the colonialists, it is not I who counts. It is the Congo, it is our people for whom independence has been transformed into a cage where we are regarded from the outside sometimes with benevolent compassion, sometimes with joy and pleasure.

But my faith will stay unbreakable. I know and I feel to the depth of my being that sooner or later my people will get rid of all their interior and exterior enemies, that they will rise up like a single person to day no to a degrading and shameful colonialism and to reassume their dignity under a pure sun.

We are not alone. Africa, Asia, and free and liberated people from every corner of the world will always be found at the side of the Congolese. They will not abandon the fight until the day comes when there are no more colonizers and mercenaries in our country.

[Source: Lumumba’s blood on US hands]

Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders

The Church Committee investigated CIA plots to assassinate foreign leaders. This Interim Report, published in 1975, discusses alleged plots to kill:

• Patrice Lumumba (Congo)
• Fidel Castro (Cuba)
• Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic)
• Ngo Dinh Diem (Vietnam)
• Rene Schneider (Chile)

The Committee also examined the CIA’s development of a general “executive action” capability. The Committee found that the U.S. initiated plots to assassinate Fidel Castro and Patrice Lumumba. In the other cases, either U.S. involvement was indirect or evidence was too inconclusive to issue a finding. In Lumumba’s case,the Committee asserted that the U.S. was not involved in his death, despite earlier plotting. The Committee was unable to state with certainty whether any plots were authorized by U.S. Presidents.

Today’s reality in the conflict between Israel and the stateless people of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT):

Israel’s FM Avigdor Liberman declares Hamas leaders should be assassinated

(Jerusalem Post) – The Foreign Minister continued by stressing the need to go after the leaders of terrorism wherever they are saying, “We must lay hands on all those who perpetrated and encouraged the murder of the three teenagers, including [Hamas PM Ismail] Haniyeh and [Hamas leader Khaled] Mashaal.”

He added that the two should consider themselves “legitimate targets.”

The comments followed comments made by Liberman on Sunday where he said that only a full-scale return of Israeli control to Gaza would end the rocket fire.

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In Jerusalem, lynch mobs were roaming the streets shouting ‘Death to Arabs!” In statements by Israel’s leadership, a call for incitement set the tone this week. A typical callous comment by a blogger Ron Temis:

13 שייטת are the real Jews today not ghetto Jews like you כל הכבוד לצה׳ל

My Reply:
Assassins are the real Jews as in the old days. Flaunting International Law, war crimes and crimes against humanity. I wish you a long life to witness the havoc Likud’s policy has wrought on Israel.

As incalculably screwed-up as things seem to be in this country, the future should be okay because the young people get it. They’ve internalized the important things and rejected a lot of the bullshit. The main thing is that they believe in pluralism and representative democracy and they reject rampant inequality. In general, they are not haters, and in almost every area, they reject conservatism.

Of course, we see this in nationwide polls. There may remain pockets of the country where the kids grow up despising pluralism, skeptical of gay rights, and completely unconcerned with inequality. But, on the whole, the country is going to eventually tip in a progressive direction and the political playing field will reset on turf substantially to the left of where we stand today.

In other words, I am not sure when the tectonic plate of the left and the tectonic plate of the right will slip, but I know in which direction the energy will be released.

Happy Independence Day!!

Methinks the Lord who doth bless America has preparedeth something for us on this, our anniversary:

Richard Mellon Scaife, the Pittsburgh philanthropist and reclusive heir to the Mellon banking fortune, whose support for right-wing causes laid the foundations for America’s modern conservative movement and fueled the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton, died on Friday. He was 82.

Interpret how thee will.

Well, now I know how I am different from most other men.

People, and especially men, hate being alone with their thoughts so much that they’d rather be in pain. In a study published in Science Thursday on the ability of people to let their minds “wander” — that is, for them to sit and do nothing but think — researchers found that about a quarter of women and two-thirds of men chose electric shocks over their own company.

Granted that I read and write a lot, sometimes for as much as 18 hours a day. I guess reading isn’t really being alone in your head. Nonetheless, the only time I want to shock myself is when people won’t stop interrupting me while I’m trying to think.

I’d do really well in solitary confinement, especially if I knew exactly when someone would intrude and interrupt my thoughts by bringing me food or letting me shower or exercise. Most people would apparently go mad in short order.

If the Democrats choose Birmingham, Alabama to host the 2016 Democratic National Convention, I will eat my hat. My money is on Brooklyn, although personally I would advise them to pick Columbus.

Let’s stop and think for a minute about what it means that conservative Republicans are being quite open about the fact that they support the Hobby Lobby decision because it will make it harder for women to have “consequence free sex.” I think this really gets to the heart of the problem. In societies where women cannot have consequence free sex, their autonomy is usually restricted by their own families, who may have to bear the burden and responsibility for any children their daughter may produce. But in societies that have easy access to effective birth control, women can delay marriage, pursue careers, achieve financial independence, and forge their own course in life.

If you oppose consequence free sex, you basically oppose female autonomy and equality whether you quite realize this fully or not. And a political party cannot expect this to be popular with the ladies. This is especially true when the party is also opposed to equal pay for equal work, which undermines women’s opportunity to achieve financial independence, and opposes abortion services which help mitigate consequential sex where the consequence is unwanted. In fact, by opposing sex education and the availability of female contraception, the party is promoting unwanted pregnancies (consequential sex) across the board. And they’re doing it in the guise of being anti-abortion. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that increasing the rate of unwanted pregnancies will increase the pool of women seeking to end their pregnancies, which will result in more abortions, not fewer of them.

My main point here is that we need to look at this not from the perspective of whether or not the decision to have an abortion is moral or legal, but from the perspective that Republicans want women to get pregnant if they have sex because that will take away their autonomy and make them reliant on their families again. If they can’t risk pregnancy because of their economic insecurity, they will have to marry to have sexual relations. If they can’t get decent pay in the workplace, they can’t overcome their economic insecurity on their own.

This battle isn’t really over abortion. It’s over female equality. And the Republicans are going to lose.

If I encountered these losers in my local Exton, Pennsylvania Target store, I’d be inclined to shoot them all preemptively on the assumption that anyone that heavily armed is in the process of going on a killing spree.

Look at the dazed look in these men’s eyes and the way that “Hope for Bacon” clutches his blessed Oreo cookies. These men are not only heavily armed, they are heavily drugged.

Around these parts, real men don’t carry firearms, and certainly not the semi-automatic variety. Which is why I wouldn’t be able to shoot these men in my local Target. I wouldn’t be armed.

Now, I understand that Target has put up signs in some locations asking losers not to bring their long guns into the store, but it’s only a polite request in some of these crazy states because the law says that stores can’t do a damn thing about it. How do you tell the difference between the fools pictured above and an impending armed robbery or spree killing?

I have no fucking clue.

Sadly, I was not invited to listen in on Senator Thad Cochran’s awesome teleconference today. I assume his staff has learned their lesson about not having a mute button.

True the Vote, an organization founded to disenfranchise racial minorities, is filing suit against the election results. However, it appears that Mississippi’s government has never bothered to create a law to deal with recounts. I guess a judge could conceivably make up rules for that on the fly, but perhaps not.

Assuming the election isn’t overturned somehow, it will be interesting to see how responsive Cochran will be to the requests of the Congressional Black Caucus. Charles Pierce called me silly to expect anything from Cochran, but I still hold out hope.

That didn’t take long to prove the Obama administration failed in its foreign policy to reign in terror. Most likely the use of drones in lethal attacks around the globe caused the migration of jihadists to new regions to sow and seed terror. The world has not become a safer place, much to the contrary. And no one saw it coming …

President Obama admitted failure by his announcement earlier in the week, Europe has become a security threat for the U.S. Translating, the training camps in Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Syria have attracted young European teens and young men to join the jihad against Assad. The senior jihadists have fought in Libya, Chechnya, Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan and were trained in the camps run by Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. Remember the Al Qaeda training manual found by U.S, forces in Afghanistan in 2002, it involved bombmaking, explosives, IEDs and use of lethal gas or chemical warfare. The training continues for a whole new group of recruits having a home in Europe and in possession of a passport for travel to the US with a visa waiver.

From my diary in July 2005 – The ghost of Al Zarqawi has spread over Europe, expect more bomb attacks.

“Organizations with names similar to al-Qaida in Europe emerge only to sometimes disband a short time later. Al-Zarqawi is thought to have operated under a number of different names in Iraq, most recently using al-Qaida Between Two Rivers or al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI). One senior counterterrorism official said the name’s formula was akin to al-Qaida in Europe, a potential hint they may be linked.”

Airport Security Directives Likely Amid Syria Bomb Threat

WASHINGTON (ABC News) July 2, 2014 –  The Obama administration is planning to move forward with efforts to increase security at airports overseas amid deepening concerns that terrorists in war-ravaged Syria are trying to develop a new generation of bombs that could be smuggled onto commercial planes.

Specifically, the Department of Homeland Security is likely to issue a series of urgent directives in the next two weeks to airport authorities and airlines operating overseas, requiring them to expand passenger screening if they want to fly commercial planes into the United States, the sources said.

The proposed directives include requiring airport authorities overseas, particularly in Europe, to further scrutinize U.S.-bound passengers’ electronics and shoes, to set up more explosives detection machines, to increase random screenings of travelers and to take a series of secret actions the public would never see.

…
The Department of Homeland Security, FBI and other U.S. agencies have been quietly debating for months whether to ask overseas partners to boost their security posture and whether to take action here at home. The back-and-forth has been based on intelligence showing that a particularly extreme “subset” of terrorist groups in Syria was working alongside operatives from al Qaeda’s prolific offshoot in Yemen to produce “creative” new designs for bombs, as one source put it.

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Bolstered by more recent intelligence, U.S. analysts believe the “subset” of extreme terrorists in Syria could be looking to down a U.S.- or European-bound plane, with help from one of the thousands of Americans and other foreign fighters carrying U.S. and European passports who have joined Al Nusrah Front and other groups in the region.

This would not be the first time DHS has issued urgent directives to airlines overseas. In July 2006, TSA issued at least two “emergency amendments” to foreign carriers, detailing “enhanced security measures for all flights” to the United States. A month later, the U.S. and British governments disclosed that they had thwarted a plot to down several planes with liquid explosives hidden in carry-on luggage.

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More recently, Comey, the FBI director, said the U.S. government is spending “a tremendous amount of time and effort trying to identify” anyone who’s gone to Syria, but “the challenge” is not missing anyone.

Dutch AIVD intelligence agency admits it will be impossible to track returning jihadists from Syria

○ The US-Al Qaeda Alliance: Bosnia, Kosovo and Now Libya. Washington’s On-Going Collusion with Terrorists – 2011
○ Obama ‘Connived’ with Neocons for a Bashar Replacement
○ Syria War and Iran Backed Shiite Government of Maliki to Blame

My diary – Dream On Guys –  in reference to BooMan’s front page story – Declare the War on Terror Over.

Do you have any Fourth of July plans?