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Jan 27, 2010

Was this box of corneas sent to Haiti like Elizabeth Cohen of CNN claims, or were they harvested there?

 

January 28, 2010

Dear friend,

OK. I was skeptical about Israelis harvesting organs from Haitians, even though possibly those very same doctors lionized in the American media have been murdering and cutting up Palestinians youths for their organs for years. (Incredibly, the Israeli government has admitted to murdering Palestinians for organs but say they have stopped.) And then a correspondent sends me this....

Was this box of corneas sent to Haiti like Elizabeth Cohen of CNN claims, or were they harvested there? No follow-up on this odd story.

http://www.asylum.com/2010/01/19/cnn-finds-box-of-corneas-in-haiti/


START:

There I find this

Jan 19th 2010 By Tommy Christopher


In the week since the devastating earthquake in Haiti, we've seen stories of tragedy (far too many), triumph (too few, but also amazing) and ugliness, but today, we caught the closest thing to a funny moment amid the human drama. In this report from a field hospital in Port au Prince, CNN's correspondent Elizabeth Cohen talks about the amazing things being done by surgeons under the most difficult of circumstances. Then, to illustrate the point that they need the right kind of supplies, she picks up a box of human corneas that she found "under a table next to a box of granola bars," and waves it around. See the video after the jump, and click here to find out how to help. (video from Mediaite TV)

... and I follow the link to medical-news hound Elizabeth Cohen:


And there Cohen is, waving around a box of corneas she found hidden under a table, next to a box of Granola.

Now, were the corneas harvested outside Haiti for deserving Haitians, or were they harvested from recently dead Haitians? It is a dirty little secret of relief aid that drug companies dump expired or useless products into aid shipments for the tax write-offs (like diet products or contact lens solution that were sent to famine victims in Sudan a few years ago). Naturally, no one in the news business cares to find out where these corneas came from and there will never be a followup news story.


Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com
New Release: Debating The Holocaust by Thomas Dalton


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Stealing Success Tel Aviv Style

 


Stealing Success Tel Aviv Style
Posted By Philip Giraldi On January 27, 2010 (11:00 pm) 

A curious op-ed "The Tel Aviv Cluster" by the reliably neoconnish David Brooks appeared in the New York Times on January 12th.  Brooks enthused over the prowess of Israel's high tech businesses, attributing their success in large part to Jewish exceptionalism and genius, which must have provided the ultimate feel good moment for Brooks, who is himself Jewish.  That Israel has a booming technology sector is undeniably true, but Brooks failed to mention other contributing factors such as the $101 billion dollars in US economic and military aid over the course of more than four decades, which does not include the additional $30 billion recently approved by President Barack Obama.  American assistance has financed and fueled Israel's business growth while the open access and even "preferential treatment" afforded to Israeli exporters through the Israel Free Trade Implementation Act of 1985 has provided Israelis with the enormous US market to sell their products and services.  By act of Congress, Israeli businesses can even bid on most...

URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2 010/01/27/stealing-success-tel-aviv-style/

Stealing Success Tel Aviv Style

by Philip Giraldi, January 28, 2010

A curious op-ed "The Tel Aviv Cluster" by the reliably neoconnish David Brooks appeared in the New York Times on January 12th.  Brooks enthused over the prowess of Israel's high tech businesses, attributing their success in large part to Jewish exceptionalism and genius, which must have provided the ultimate feel good moment for Brooks, who is himself Jewish.  That Israel has a booming technology sector is undeniably true, but Brooks failed to mention other contributing factors such as the $101 billion dollars in US economic and military aid over the course of more than four decades, which does not include the additional $30 billion recently approved by President Barack Obama.  American assistance has financed and fueled Israel's business growth while the open access and even "preferential treatment" afforded to Israeli exporters through the Israel Free Trade Implementation Act of 1985 has provided Israelis with the enormous US market to sell their products and services.  By act of Congress, Israeli businesses can even bid on most American Federal and State government contracts just as if they were US companies.

Brooks was characteristically undisturbed by the fact that American taxpayer subsidized development of Israeli enterprises combined with the free access to the US economy and government contracts eliminates jobs and damages competing companies on this side of the Atlantic. And there is another aspect of Israel's growing high tech sector that he understandably chose to ignore because it is extremely sleazy.  That is the significant advantage that Israel has gained by systematically stealing American technology with both military and civilian applications.  The US developed technology is then reverse engineered and used by the Israelis to support their own exports with considerably reduced research and development costs, giving them a huge advantage against American companies.  Sometimes, when the technology is military in nature and winds up in the hands of a US adversary, the consequences can be serious.  Israel has sold advanced weapons systems to China that are believed to incorporate technology developed by American companies, including the Python-3 air-to-air missile and the Delilah cruise missile.  There is evidence that Israel has also stolen Patriot missile avionics to incorporate into its own Arrow system and that it used US technology obtained in its Lavi fighter development program, which was funded by the US taxpayer to the tune of $1.5 billion, to help the Chinese develop their own J-10 fighter.


The reality of Israeli spying is indisputable.  Israel always features prominently in the annual FBI report called "Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage." The 2005 report states, "Israel has an active program to gather proprietary information within the United States. These collection activities are primarily directed at obtaining information on military systems and advanced computing applications that can be used in Israel's sizable armaments industry." It adds that Israel recruits spies, uses electronic methods, and carries out computer intrusion to gain the information. The 2005 report concluded that the thefts eroded US military advantage, enabling foreign powers to obtain expensive technologies that had taken years to develop.

A 1996 Defense Investigative Service report noted that Israel has great success stealing technology by exploiting the numerous co-production projects that it has with the Pentagon. "Placing Israeli nationals in key industries …is a technique utilized with great success." A General Accounting Office (GAO) examination of espionage directed against American defense and security industries described how Israeli citizens residing in the US had stolen sensitive technology to manufacture artillery gun tubes, obtained classified plans for a reconnaissance system, and passed sensitive aerospace designs to unauthorized users. An Israeli company was caught monitoring a Department of Defense telecommunications system to obtain classified information, while other Israeli entities targeted avionics, missile telemetry, aircraft communications, software systems, and advanced materials and coatings used in missile re-entry. The GAO concluded that Israel "conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally." In June 2006, a Pentagon administrative judge overruled an appeal by an Israeli who had been denied a security clearance, stating, "The Israeli government is actively engaged in military and industrial espionage in the United States. An Israeli citizen working in the US who has access to proprietary information is likely to be a target of such espionage."  More recently, FBI counter intelligence officer John Cole has reported how many cases of Israeli espionage are dropped under orders from the Justice Department.  He provides a "conservative estimate" of 125 worthwhile investigations into Israeli espionage involving both American citizens and Israelis that were stopped due to political pressure from above.

Two recent stories that have been reported in the Israeli media but are strangely absent from the news on this side of the Atlantic demonstrate exactly what is going on and what is at stake. The first story confirms that Israeli efforts to obtain US technology are ongoing.  Stewart David Nozette, a US government scientist who was arrested on October 19, 2009 in an FBI sting operation after offering to spy for Israel has been waiting in jail to go to trial on espionage charges.  New documents in the case were presented in the Federal court in Washington last week.  The documents confirm that Nozette was a paid consultant for Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) and it is believed that he passed to them classified material in return for an estimated $225,000 in consulting fees.  Examination of his computer by the FBI revealed that he was planning a "penetration of NASA" the US space agency and that he was also trying to crack into other scientists' computers to obtain additional classified material.  Other documents demonstrate that he was cooperating with two Israeli scientists who were administrators with IAI, Yossi Weiss and Yossi Fishman.  Nozette made several trips to Israel without reporting them, which he was required to do because of his high security clearance.  The FBI reportedly also has incriminating letters and other documents that were obtained from the computer.

The second story relates to the pending sale of twenty-five F-35 fighter planes to Israel.  The F-35 is one of the most advanced fighter planes in the world.  The $130 million planes would be purchased with US military assistance money, which means they would effectively be a gift from the US taxpayer.  But Israel is balking at the sale reportedly because it wants to install some of its own local content in the aircraft.  The Pentagon has already made some concessions but is disinclined to grant approval for all the changes because to do so would require giving the Israelis full access to the plane's advanced avionics and computer systems.  Israel also wants to independently maintain the aircraft, which would also require access to all systems.  It would be nice to think that the Pentagon wants to keep the maintenance in American hands to preserve jobs, but the Defense Department has never cared about US workers before when the issue is Israel, and the real reason for the standoff is that Lockheed-Martin and the Pentagon both know that Israel will steal whatever it can if it gains access.  It would then use the technology to market its own products at a price below that of US defense contractors. The result would be a triple whammy for Uncle Sam:  the expensive planes are given to Israel free, the technology is then stolen, and future sales vanish as our Israeli friends market their knock down versions of weapons systems reliant on the stolen technology.

So to David Brooks I would say that there is most definitely an economic surge taking place in high tech Israel, but it is less a miracle than the fruit of a long series of thefts and manipulations fueled by American tax money and the connivance of a Congress that is always willing to do favors for the country that it appears to love beyond all others.  I'm sure most Americans would wish the Israelis well and would applaud the prosperity that derives from their own industry and inventiveness but it is also time to put the brakes on business as usual and to take the Israeli hand out of our pocket.  I'm sure Brooks' job is pretty secure and well paid, but many Americans are out of work and suffering, so let's take some steps to protect our economy from the information thieves from Tel Aviv and keep our money and jobs over here.

Read more by Philip Giraldi



Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com
New Release: Debating The Holocaust by Thomas Dalton



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.

__,_._,___

Stealing Success Tel Aviv Style

 


Stealing Success Tel Aviv Style
Posted By Philip Giraldi On January 27, 2010 (11:00 pm) In Uncategorized

A curious op-ed "The Tel Aviv Cluster" by the reliably neoconnish David Brooks appeared in the New York Times on January 12th.  Brooks enthused over the prowess of Israel's high tech businesses, attributing their success in large part to Jewish exceptionalism and genius, which must have provided the ultimate feel good moment for Brooks, who is himself Jewish.  That Israel has a booming technology sector is undeniably true, but Brooks failed to mention other contributing factors such as the $101 billion dollars in US economic and military aid over the course of more than four decades, which does not include the additional $30 billion recently approved by President Barack Obama.  American assistance has financed and fueled Israel's business growth while the open access and even "preferential treatment" afforded to Israeli exporters through the Israel Free Trade Implementation Act of 1985 has provided Israelis with the enormous US market to sell their products and services.  By act of Congress, Israeli businesses can even bid on most...

Article taken from Antiwar.com Original - http://original.antiwar.com
URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2 010/01/27/stealing-success-tel-aviv-style/




Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com
New Release: Debating The Holocaust by Thomas Dalton

__._,_.___
.

__,_._,___

HE WILL BE MISSED--Howard Zinn dies at 87

 

January 27, 2010 
By Mark Feeney
Boston Globe


From the desk of Michael Santomauro:

I met Howard Zinn and we had many e-mail exchanges over the years. He was a member of the ReportersNotebook Yahoo group list. At first he balked at the thought of Holocaust revisionism, but overtime he became more intrigued. Recently, he was interested in a review copy of the revised third edition of Thomas Dalton's book, Debating The Holocaust, which was sent to him about a month ago

Unless he kept a diary for publication after his death, we will never know what his possible views would have been.

He will be missed. He was a great man. May he rest in peace. 


Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com
New Release: Debating The Holocaust by Thomas Dalton

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ISRAEL: PLEASE, NO MORE BIN LADEN TAPES, NOBODY IS BUYING IT!

 


About: Gordon Duff

http://www.veteranstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/userphoto/gordonduff.thumbnail.jpgGordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, grunt and 100% disabled vet. He has been a UN Diplomat, defense contractor and is a widely published expert on military and defense issues. He is active in the financial industry and is a specialist on global trade. Gordon Duff acts as political and economic advisor to a number of governments in Africa and the Middle East.

 


 

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when

 everything the American public believes is false."

 -- William Casey, CIA Director (first staff meeting, 1981)

 

ISRAEL: PLEASE, NO MORE BIN LADEN TAPES, NOBODY IS BUYING IT!

January 24, 2010 by Gordon Duff · 38 Comments 

Osama bin RobotCHRISTMAS BOMBING AUDIO TAPE LAMEST YET

YOU WERE CAUGHT, ADMIT IT AND MOVE ON WITH LIFE

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

The new audio tape from "Osama bin Laden" taking responsibility for the idiotic and childish incident in Detroit where moronic Nigerian armed with a useless "bomb" is simply too much.  Now using audio tapes because, supposedly, nobody in Al Qaeda got a flash drive video recorder for Christmas is even more of a joke.  Please, with the hundreds of millions our Saudi allies have given to terrorists, a video camera the size of an Ipod might have been a nice touch.   Even funnier was releasing the audio, using algorithm software probably illegally downloaded off the internet, and giving it to Al Jazeera.

Pundit Debbie Schussell, former Mark Siljander (VT staff writer) staffer, has bitterly complained about the strong ties between Fox News and Al Jazeera.  Fox owner, Rupert Murdoch, is the most powerful "influencer" of the ultra-rightists in Israel.  Attempts by the press to present Al Jazeera of today as the "pro-terrorist" media it seemed like many years ago is an epic misrepresentation. 

A further abuse, of course, is not only that we are no longer seeing the easily debunked bin Laden doubles whose video tapes were "mysteriously" released by SITE Intelligence, the Rita Katz/Israeli group that seems to find them in trash bins behind delicatessens.  The "new" audio tape itself contains statements claiming credit for 9/11 in direct contradiction to the real bin Laden videos, the only ones authenticated.  If you wondered why the FBI doesn't list Osama bin Laden as a suspect in 9/11, I think you have your answer.  If they think the bin Laden "admissions" aren't credibile, I wonder who the FBI is investigating or if they have simply been told to mind their own business.

The terrorist incident itself is the last thing Al Qaeda would ever take responsibilty for despite the claims by SITE Intelligence that they found an unnamed and unverified internet site that confirmed this.  Who in the name of all that is holy would want to take responsibility for an idiot who was led onto an American bound plane by passing around searches, customs and passport control in an airport run by an Israeli security company but who carried a "bomb" designed by a three year old. 

Who would be so stupid as to try to pass off this childish tape when reliable witnesses saw the terrorist being led onto the plane in Amsterdam in a manner that required full cooperation from security personnel, passport control and the airline itself.  We don't even have to go into the fact that the "terrorists" in Yemen that supposedly claimed responsibilty were released from Guantanamo under the personal signature of Vice President Cheney in 2007 or that before the incident, the government of Yemen tied these individuals to Israeli controllers thru captured computers.

I am only thankful that the duped terrorist, or as Lee Oswald had said, "patsy", was the moronic son of a long time Mossad business associate in Nigeria.  Mr. Mutallab, banker, but mostly head of Nigeria's defense industry, DICON, managed  almost entirely by Israelis, may have much more story to tell other than the one he told CIA Chief of Station on November 19, 2009.  Do we want to follow former Homeland Security director Chertoff, not only a Jewish activist but currently representing companies selling body scanners to airports and the mysterious ability for someone on worldwide terrorist watch lists to be escorted onto a US bound airliner without passport or search? 

Billions in profits were realized almost instantly after this incident.  Companies tied to Chertoff, Israel and India were on the receiving end.

The only reliable information the world has on Osama bin Laden is that he was killed by American troops on December 13, 2001 and buried outside Tora Bora by his following, 30 Mujahideen.  At least 6 of these witnesses were alive at last check.  Since his death, every "leaked" video or statement has been timed for convenient electoral "terrorist" scares, been childishly unprofessional and has only worked to discredit Islam. 

Every effort has been made by the MSM/corporate press to cover the facts behind the Christmas "bombing" and push the blame on everyone but the obvious culprits.  That effort was deemed so successful that now a brazen attempt to resurrect long dead Osama bin Laden to take responsibilty for trying to set off a bomb with a flame igniter that could only be exploded using a blasting cap, is being made.

Is this an attempt to make Al Qaeda look stupid?

"My name is Osama bin Laden.  I had a moron carry a defective bomb onto a plane full of Islamic families returning to Detroit, the most Muslim city in the west, as part of a terror campaign.  I chose a flight that connected from  the Middle East  so I could kill as many of the innocent faithful as possible.  Please excuse this and the dozen or other mistakes made but being dead has left me less sharp than I once was.  No, I do not work for the Mossad, they simply tape and distribute my interviews.  This is part of an agreement with my talent agent who is Jewish.  All talent agents are Jewish, ask anyone in Hollywood. What do you expect, miracles? 10% of nothing is nothing.

For my faithful followers, I expect to be a regular on Californication next season on Showtime.  I'll be the guy with the beard who seems dead."

The second possibility, one designed for the "spiritual" crowd is this:

"I am Osama, the ghost of Tora Bora.  Please give more money to Israel, vote to extend the Patriot Act and buy new airport scanners from the companies listed on my weekly newsletter distributed by SITE Intelligence.  Watch for more insane threats coming in the future and have a nice weekend.  Remember to stop eating pork."

Any group that could make 5 airliners outwit NORAD, the most advanced air defense system in the world, any group that could train terrorist pilots inside the United States itself with nobody catching on, and it gets worse.  Sources tell us that FBI Special Agent Stephen Butler may have "accidentally" been cashing checks for and paying rent for two of the 9/11 hijackers.  Can people who can get this kind of thing done put a moron on an aircraft at an airport secured by an Israeli company, "extremely closely" related to the same company that managed security at all of the airports used on 9/11?

When Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell and his wife witnessed the famous, "he has no passport, he is a Sudanese refugee, we do this all the time", incident in Amsterdam, only a phony bin Laden tape could make America forget, or so "they" hope.  Imagine our terrorist being  taken to meet the security head for the "airline" with his "Indian looking" handler, bomb strapped to his underwear.  Think of this exploding moron and his handler and who they would have had to know to get past, not only airline security and the Israeli company guarding the airport but Dutch passport control as well.

Anyone with the power to load the "crotch bomber" on a plane with no passport could have put a nuclear weapon in luggage easier.  Nukes are seldom on watch lists or have parents running to the CIA reporting them as "terrorists."  Next time we are being lied to, please, have more respect.  Not everyone is a dumb as a Fox News, CNN,  the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times.   

It is one thing claiming that poor, long dead Osama bin Laden runs terrorists in Yemen.  It is quite something else proving that he manages an airport in Europe or runs the Dutch government.   When US Senators can't get thru airport security without being detained, bin Laden's ability to get diplomatic VIP treatment for known terrorists makes him more than a threat, it makes him a magician.

We are thankful that nobody was seriously injured and that we can all laugh about this, maybe not all of us.  The people of Nigeria don't think it is funny.  Millions of Muslims aren't seeing the joke either.  Air travelers are having their bad moments also.  Some, however, have benefitted in a major way, politically, financially and militarily.  None of those people, however, are ever openly accused of terrorism.

 

About: Gordon Duff

http://www.veteranstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/userphoto/gordonduff.thumbnail.jpgGordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, grunt and 100% disabled vet. He has been a UN Diplomat, defense contractor and is a widely published expert on military and defense issues. He is active in the financial industry and is a specialist on global trade. Gordon Duff acts as political and economic advisor to a number of governments in Africa and the Middle East.

 

 

--

Creed Of Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com
New Release: Debating The Holocaust by Thomas Dalton

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How surrendering Palestinian rights became the language of "peace"

 


How surrendering Palestinian rights became the language of "peace"

Joseph Massad, The Electronic Intifada, 27 January 2010

One of the ways the prejudiced Oslo "process" has survived is through the creation of a Palestinian Authority upon which tens of thousands depend for their livelihood. (WissamNassar/MaanImages)


The 1993 Oslo agreement did not only usher in a new era of Palestinian-Israeli relations but has had a much more lasting effect in transforming the very language through which these relations have been governed internationally and the way the Palestinian leadership viewed them. Not only was the Palestinian vocabulary of liberation, end of colonialism, resistance, fighting racism, ending Israeli violence and theft of the land, independence, the right of return, justice and international law supplanted by new terms like negotiations, agreements, compromise, pragmatism, security assurances, moderation and recognition, all of which had been part of Israel's vocabulary before Oslo and remain so, but also Oslo instituted itself as the language of peace that ipso facto delegitimizes any attempt to resist it as one that supports war, and dismisses all opponents of its surrender of Palestinian rights as opponents of peace. Making the language of surrender of rights the language of peace has also been part of Israel's strategy before and after Oslo, and is also the language of US imperial power, in which Arabs and Muslims were instructed by US President Barack Obama in his speech in Cairo last June.

Thus the transformation that Oslo brought about was not only a transformation of language as such, but also of the Palestinian language and perspective through which the nature of Palestinian-Israeli relations were viewed by the Palestinian leadership, and that institutionalized instead the Israeli perspective and Israel's vocabulary as neutral and objective. What Oslo aimed to do, therefore, was change the very goal of Palestinian politics from national independence from Israeli colonialism and occupation to one where Palestinians become fully dependent for their political and national survival on Israel and its sponsors in the interest of peace and security for their occupiers.

The key transformative formula of the Oslo agreement enshrined in the Declaration of Principles of 13 September 1993 is "Land for Peace." This detrimental formula to internationally-recognized Palestinian rights remains the guiding and delimiting approach of all subsequent agreements -- and disagreements -- between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and successive Israeli governments. This formula alone prejudices the entire process by presupposing that Israel has "land" which it would be willing to give to the "Arabs," and that the "Arabs" -- seen as responsible for the state of war with Israel -- can grant Israel the peace for which it has longed for decades. Placing the responsibility of the Arab-Israeli wars on the "Arabs" is a standard view that is never questioned in the Western media or by Western governments. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) concession, however, has finally ensured that official Palestinians and other official Arabs, too, will not question it.

Despite its surface appearance as a political compromise, this formula is in fact a reflection of the racial views characterizing (European Jewish) Israelis and Palestinian and other Arabs. Whereas the Israelis are asked and are ostensibly (presented as) willing to negotiate about property, the recognized (Western) bourgeois right par excellence, Palestinians and other Arabs are asked to give up violence -- or more precisely "their" violent means -- as illegitimate and attributable only to uncivilized barbarians. The fact that Palestinians have already given up their rightful claim to 77 percent of Palestine and were negotiating about their future sovereignty over a mere 23 percent of their homeland did not qualify for a formula of "land for land" on which to base the "peace process." In fact, the objective formula for any negotiations would be a "land for peace" formula whereby it is Palestinians who are giving up their rights to their historic homeland in exchange for an end to Israeli oppression of -- and colonial violence against -- their people.

The PLO, Israel and the Western media hailed the Oslo agreement as "mutual recognition." This, however, contradicts the actual words uttered by both parties, and the projected actions based on these words. Whereas the PLO (which wrote the first letter) recognized "the right of the state of Israel to exist in peace and security," the Israeli government, "in response" to Yasser Arafat's letter, "has decided to recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and commence negotiations with the PLO within the Middle East peace process." But this is not mutual recognition, as the Israelis did not recognize the Palestinian people's right to exist in a state of their own in peace and security as the PLO had done vis-a-vis Israel. Had the PLO only recognized the Rabin government as the representative of the Israeli people, without necessarily granting any "right" to the Israeli state to exist in peace and security, then the PLO's recognition would have been on a par with Israel's. The actual agreement, therefore, did not amount to mutual recognition; rather, it amounted to the legitimation of the Jewish state by the very people against whom its racist colonial policies have been -- and continue to be -- practiced, with the Israelis committing to nothing substantively new. Granting the PLO recognition as the representative of the Palestinians (something the majority of the world -- except the US -- had recognized since the mid-1970s) committed Israel to no concessions to the Palestinian people. It committed Israel only to a scenario whereby since the Israeli government was inclined to speak to "representatives" of the Palestinians, it would talk to the PLO, as it now recognized that party as their representative, whereas before it did not. This is precisely why successive Israeli governments and leaders have vacillated on whether they would grant the Palestinians the right to establish an independent state and always refer back to Oslo and subsequent agreements in which they made no such pledge.

Having exacted a precious recognition of their legitimacy from their victims, the Israelis moved forward through the mechanism of the Oslo peace process to divide the Palestinians into different groupings, the majority of whom would be expelled outside the peace process. By transforming the PLO, which represented all Palestinians in the Diaspora and in Israel and the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, into the Palestinian Authority (PA) which could only hope to represent Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, constituting one third of the Palestinian people, the Oslo agreements engineered a major demographic reduction of the Palestinian people, dividing them by a factor of three while bringing about a major demographic expansion of the Jewish population of Israel, multiplying their number by a factor of three.

The insidious part of this process is how the PA, conscious of this transformation, continues to speak of the "Palestinian people," which had been reduced through the Oslo accords to those West Bank and Gaza Palestinians it now claims to represent. Diaspora Palestinians are simply referred to, in accordance with US and Israeli parlance, as "refugees," and Israeli Palestinians are referred to by Israeli diktat as "Israeli Arabs." In doing so, not only has the scope of the Palestinian leadership and its representative status of the whole Palestinian people been substantially reduced, but the Palestinian people themselves were diminished demographically by the PA's appropriation of the designation "Palestinian people" to refer to a mere third of Palestinians.

In the meantime, the Oslo process which produced phantom agreements like the Geneva accords, among others, has pushed forward the Israeli claim that Palestinians must recognize Israel's right to exist not only in peace and security but also as a Jewish state, meaning a state that is racist by law and discriminates by law and governance against non-Jewish citizens, and one that encompasses not only its Jewish citizens but Jews everywhere. This is something that has been pushed by the Clinton, Bush, and more recently the Obama administrations. Indeed Obama does not miss an opportunity to reiterate his administration's commitment to force the Palestinians to recognize Israel's right to be a "Jewish state."

While Israel has no legitimacy and is not recognized by any international body as a "representative" of Jews worldwide, but rather as the state of the Israeli people, who are citizens of it, the PLO and the PA are called upon to recognize Israel's jurisdiction over world Jewry. As such, the internationally recognized status of the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people has been reduced to one third of Palestinians since Oslo, while the representative status of the Israeli government has been expanded threefold as recognized by the PA's unofficial representatives in Geneva. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is insistent that no progress will take place in the so-called peace process unless the Palestinians officially recognize Israel's right to be a racist Jewish state. President Obama has also called on all Arabs to ratify this recognition officially. This has been done despite the fact that the majority of Jews living outside Israel are not Israeli citizens and that no bodies representing them ever endowed the Israeli state with representative powers on their behalf.

Dividing and reducing the Palestinian people demographically has gone hand in hand with the territorial reduction of Palestine, or the parts of it that Israel is willing to negotiate over after redeploying its colonial occupation army around. Aside from the removal of the illegally expanded, occupied and colonized East Jerusalem (now expanded to many times its original size at the expense of West Bank lands) from the territories over which Israel would negotiate its redeployment, the West Bank itself has been subdivided into cantons that exclude Jewish colonial settlements and Jewish-only highways connecting them, as well as imposed nature reserves, military bases and closed areas. But this is not all.

Israel also built the apartheid wall inside Palestinian land, effectively removing another 10 percent of the West Bank from the negotiating table and its army redeployment. Another of the more important measures that the Israeli and Palestinian architects of the Oslo agreement took in order to guarantee the structural survival of the Oslo "peace process" was the creation of structures, institutions and classes that would be directly connected to it, and that can survive the collapse of the Oslo agreement itself while preserving the "process" that the agreement generated. This guarantee was enshrined in law and upheld by international funding predicated on the continuation of the "Oslo process," as long as the latter continued to serve Israeli and US interests as well as the interests of the corrupt Palestinian elite that acquiesced in it.

The five main classes that the architects of Oslo created to ensure that the "process" survives are: a political class, divided between those elected to serve the Oslo process, whether to the Legislative Council or the executive branch (essentially the position of president of the PA), and those who are appointed to serve those who are elected, whether in the ministries, or in the presidential office; a policing class, numbering in the tens of thousands, whose function is to defend the Oslo process against all Palestinians who try to undermine it. It is divided into a number of security and intelligence bodies competing with one another, all vying to prove that they are most adept at neutralizing any threat to the Oslo process. Under Arafat's authority, members of this class inaugurated their services by shooting and killing 14 Palestinians they deemed enemies of the "process" in Gaza in 1994 -- an achievement that earned them the initial respect of the Americans and the Israelis who insisted that the policing class should use more repression to be most effective. Their performance last summer in Jenin of killing Hamas members and unaffiliated bystanders to impress President Obama who asked the Palestinian leadership to keep their security part of the deal is the most recent example of this function.

Also: a bureaucratic class attached to the political class and the policing class and that constitutes an administrative body of tens of thousands who execute the orders of those elected and appointed to serve the "process;" a nongovernmental organization (NGO) class: another bureaucratic and technical class whose finances fully depend on their serving the Oslo process and ensuring its success through planning and services; and, a business class composed of expatriate Palestinian businessmen as well as local businessmen -- including especially members of the political, policing and bureaucratic classes -- whose income is derived from financial investment in the Oslo process and from profit-making deals that the PA can make possible. While the NGO class mostly does not receive money from the PA, being the beneficiary of foreign governmental and nongovernmental financial largesse that is structurally connected to the Oslo process, the political policing, and bureaucratic classes receive all their legitimate and illegitimate income from the PA directly.

By linking the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to the Oslo process, the architects had given them a crucial stake in its survivability, even and especially if it failed to produce any political results. For the Palestinian elite that took charge of the PA, the main task all along was to ensure that the Oslo process continues and that the elite remain in control of all the institutions that guarantee the survival of the "process." What the elite did not anticipate was that they could lose control to Hamas, a public opponent of the Oslo process that in accordance with expectations had boycotted the 1994 gerrymandered and Fatah-controlled elections. The 2006 elections, which Fatah was confident it would win, constituted an earthquake that could destroy all these structural guarantees and with them the "process" they were designed to protect. Hence the panic of the Americans who engineered the coup with the aid of Israel and PA security under Muhammad Dahlan to topple the Hamas government, which included kidnapping its members of parliament, government ministers and politicians and holding them hostage in Israeli jails, and finally staging a violent takeover of Gaza that backfired. All attempts since the American failed coup in Gaza have focused on perpetuating the peace process through maintenance of its structures under PA control and away from the democratically-elected Hamas.

Indeed, the destruction of Palestinian democracy was a necessary price to pay, insisted Israel and the Americans, pushed forward by the military efforts of Lieutenant General Keith Dayton. This situation became possible because of the funding strategy of the US, Israel and Arab oil-producing states towards the Palestinian struggle. The story of the Palestinian national movement can only be told through the ways and means that different Arab and non-Arab governments have tried to control it. While the PLO was established and controlled principally by the regime of Gamal Abdel-Nasser, the 1967 defeat weakened that arrangement leading to the revolutionary guerrillas takeover of the organization in 1969. With Fatah and the leftist Palestinian guerrillas at the helm, the revolutionary potential of the PLO constituted such a threat that it precipitated an all-out war in Jordan in 1970, a situation that powerful and repressive Arab regimes did not want to see repeated. It is in this context that Arab oil money (from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Libya, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq) began to pour into the coffers of the PLO, primarily to ensure that it would not encourage revolutionary change in Arab countries and that insofar as it did not compromise Arab regime interests its weapons should only be directed towards Israel. The Lebanese civil war and the PLO role in it in the second half of the 1970s remained a problem but, as far as they were concerned, it was a problem that Arab regimes were able to contain.

With the onset of the 1980s and the military defeat of the PLO in 1982 in Beirut, Arab funding for the PLO was no longer conditioned on its not turning its weapons against them only, but that the organization would also no longer target Israel. The various attempts at agreements between the PLO and King Hussein in the mid-1980s were part of that plan. With continued Israeli and US refusal to deal with the PLO no matter how much its policy and ideology had changed, the situation remained frozen until the first Palestinian uprising in 1987 gave the PLO the bargaining opportunity to lay down its weapons against Israel. The formalization of this transformation took place in Algiers in 1988 and later at the Madrid peace conference in 1991.

As oil funding dried up after the Gulf War of 1990-91, the PLO needed new funders. Enter the United States and its allies whose terms did not only include the Oslo agreement but also that the newly created and Fatah-controlled PA be indeed armed but that its weapons should have a new target: the Palestinian people themselves. The PA obliged and continued to receive its funding until the second intifada when, contra their raison d'etre, some of its security forces did engage the Israelis in gunfire when the Israelis attacked Palestinians. Funding was intermittently stopped, Arafat was placed under house arrest and the Israelis reinvaded. A resumption of steady funding continued after Arafat's death conditional upon Mahmoud Abbas's "seriousness" in pointing Palestinian guns at the Palestinians themselves, which he and the PA's thuggish security apparatuses have done. However, they have not been as effective as the US and Israel had wished, which is why US General Keith Dayton is assuming full control of the military situation on the ground in order to "assist" the Palestinians to deliver their peace part of the bargain to Israel.

Note that throughout the last 16 years, Israeli leaders have consistently said, in line with the formula of land for peace, that they want and seek peace with the Palestinians, but not the establishment of a Palestinian state, nor in order to ensure the Palestinians' right to self-determination. Indeed, not only has Israel multiplied the number of settlements and more than doubled the Jewish colonial settler population of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, chipping away at more of the land that was said to be under negotiations, it has done so while consistently exacting more Palestinian concessions to ensure Israeli "security" in order for the Palestinians to give Israel the "peace" on which the formula of "land for peace" is based. The Americans and the Europeans have also insisted that the Palestinians must give Israel peace before it can decide which lands to give them back and under whichever arrangement it finds most ensuring of this "peace." Therefore, what land for peace -- despite or because of its definitional prejudice against the Palestinian people -- has brought about is a perpetual deferment of the return of land with insistent demands of advance payments on the peace the Palestinians must deliver. While the redeployment around Gaza and laying siege to its population, starving and bombarding them, is marketed as Israel's compromising by returning land, the reality remains that the Gaza Strip has been transformed from a prison policed by the Israelis into a concentration camp guarded and surrounded by them from the outside with infiltration inside as the need arises, as it did last winter.

Ultimately then, what the Oslo agreement and the process it generated have achieved is a foreclosure of any real or imagined future independence of the Palestinian leadership, or even national independence for one third of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who are, at any rate, the only Palestinians that the Oslo agreement claims to want to help achieve it. By mortgaging the Palestinian leadership to US and Israeli sponsorship, by creating and maintaining administrative, legal and financial structures that will ensure this dependence, Oslo has been what it was designed to be from the start: the mechanism of ending the Palestinian quest to end Israeli colonialism and occupation, and the legitimation of Israel's racist nature by the very people over whom it exercises its colonial and racist dominion. Anyone who questions these strictures can be fought with the ideological weapon of pragmatism.

Opposing Oslo makes one a utopian extremist and rejectionist, while participating in its structure makes one a pragmatist moderate person working for peace. The most effective ideological weapon that Oslo has deployed since 1993 is precisely that anyone who opposes its full surrender of Palestinian national rights is a proponent of war and an opponent of peace. In short, the goal of the Oslo process, which has been reached with much success, is not the establishment of Palestinian independence from Israel's illegal occupation, but rather to end Palestinian independence as a future goal and as a current reality. Seen from this angle, Oslo continues to be a resounding success.

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Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com
New Release: Debating The Holocaust by Thomas Dalton

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Polish bishop accuses Jews of exploiting Holocaust

 


AFP and Ynetnews

Published:  01.25.10, 18:14 / Israel News


Tadeusz Pieronek says, 'Holocaust as such is a Jewish invention used to obtain advantages that are often unjustified,' claims Israel treating Palestinians 'like animals' 

Start:

"While it is undeniable that most of those who died in the concentration camps were Jews, there were also gypsies, Poles, Italians and Catholics on the list," Tadeusz Pieronek wrote on the website pontifex.roma.it.

"So it is not permissible to appropriate this tragedy for propaganda," he said in the posting, two days ahead of the 65th International Holocaust Remembrance Day. 

"There were lots of Poles, but this truth is often ignored today," added Pieronek, 75. 

"The Holocaust as such is a Jewish invention," said the former spokesman of Poland's Bishops Conference. The Shoah is "used as a propaganda weapon and to obtain advantages that are often unjustified," he charged.

Pieronek, who was a friend of the late Polish pope John Paul II, added: "You could speak just as forcefully and establish a day of remembrance for the many victims of communism, persecuted Catholics and Christians and so on."

Accusing Jews of "intolerable arrogance," he said they "enjoy good press because they are supported by powerful financial means, enormous power and the unconditional backing of the United States."

Pieronek also criticized Israel for building a separation wall between its territory and the West Bank, which he called "a colossal injustice against the Palestinians, who are treated like animals and whose (basic) rights are violated, to say the least."

Calling for a day honoring the Palestinians, Pieronek lamented that "with the connivance of international lobbies, we don't talk about these things much."

January 27 marks the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in German-occupied Poland in 1945.

"Of course all this does not deny the shame of the concentration camps and the aberrations of Nazism," Pieronek said.

The European Jewish Congress said it was "shocked" by Bishop Pieronek's comments. 

"We find it unacceptable that an important religious figure in Poland, only a few days away from International Holocaust Remembrance Day, is capable of making such inflammatory and false remarks" stated EJC President Dr. Moshe Kantor. 

"The false accusations made by Bishop Pieronek once again show the underlying anti-Semitism that still lingers among some European clergymen in the Catholic Church – especially in regards to the Holocaust," he said.



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Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com
New Release: Debating The Holocaust by Thomas Dalton

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