Dissident Veteran For Peace

The diagram below was created circa 2002 and is the product of someone decrying the alleged efforts of "Establishment Left's alternative media gatekeepers / censors" to silence 9/11 conspiracy theorists/analysts.


I have looked at the evidence put forth to support the claim that the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled demolition. My conclusion is that this theory is unsupported by the evidence. That is, I think the evidence supports the claim that the Twin Towers (and WTC 7) collapsed as a result of the fires caused by airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers.  Frankly, I often wonder if the controlled demolition claims weren't concocted as a form of, what was later termed by Cass Sunstein, "cognitive infiltration" to discredit more reasonable scrutiny of the official 9/11 conspiracy narrative.

There is much in the story of 9/11 that has been hidden or distorted. At the most basic level, Americans have been fed a misleading narrative that the 9/11 perpetrators were driven by a blind Islamic-inspired hatred of America and its freedoms. In my view, it is more accurate to see the perpetrators' particularized interpretation of Islam, Salafi jihadism, as an organizing ideology used to help mobilize people to fight in response to grievances over US wars and other actions in support of the repressive Jewish state and repressive Arab regimes. Moreover, I find it interesting that, apparently, no US official was ever held accountable for the glaring intelligence and defense failures leading up to and on 9/11.

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the "Gatekeepers" diagram but I can vouch for the curious, overzealous "conspiracy theory" bashing that prevails in certain Left circles. Noam Chomsky would be a good example of this. It is, for instance, accurately asserted that he "uses an institutional analysis as opposed to conspiracy theory to reach his conclusions."

Arguably, "institutional analysis" and "conspiracy analysis" are far from mutually exclusive and the existence of proven conspiracies concocted by high US government officials, e.g. Watergate, Iran-Contra, COINTELPRO, Operation Northwoods, etc., is well-established. Readers interested in this subject are advised to read Lance deHaven-Smith's Conspiracy Theory in America (Austin: Univ. of Texas Pr., 2013).

Another thing I can vouch for is the linkage in the diagram between uber-activist and self-described "socialist" Leslie Cagan and the CIA. The CIA was/is closely tied to the Ford Foundation (FF) and has long maintained a coterie of well-connected elite movers and shakers in its leadership. For example, its current president, Darren Walker, among other things, "was vice president at the Rockefeller Foundation" and "had a decade-long career in international law and finance at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and UBS" and "is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations."

The Rockefeller Foundation and the CFR are both enmeshed in the Deep State (see also here). Walker's old law firm had its own ties to the intelligence community with one of its attorneys serving as General Counsel for the Security Affairs Support Association. The firm was disciplined in 2007 for misconduct in a major Congolese corruption case. UBS is a notorious Swiss bank and these institutions have long had a reputation for serving "as sanctuaries for the wealth of dictators and despots, mobsters and arms dealers, corrupt officials and tax cheats of all kinds".

The FF was a major donor to Astraea during the period when Cagan claimed to be on the Astraea board of directors (I have not been able to verify her Astraea board service). For example, Astraea's 2007 annual report touts a $3.5 million grant "over 3 years from the Ford Foundation". Leslie Cagan did serve on the board of Pacifica, which received its "first major foundation grant" in 1951 from the Ford Foundation. In sum, there is enough evidence in support of the relationships alleged in the diagram to give it careful consideration.

As an aside, in a 2003 fluff piece on Cagan in the NY Times Chris Hedges wrote:

LESLIE CAGAN is willing to count many things. She will count the billions the United States will spend if it goes to war in Iraq. She will count the dead. She will count the oil companies that line up for the spoils. She will count the nations that turn their backs on this country in anger. And she will, on Feb. 15, count the demonstrators who are to gather in Manhattan and three dozen cities around the globe to rally to stop the war. She will count all this. She is counting now.

Two things Cagan (and Hedges) apparently weren't counting were the number of highly placed Zionist neo-conservatives pushing for the war and the number of Zionist shills (such as Cagan) in the peace movement pushing the bogus "war for oil" narrative and ensuring little attention was drawn to the primary driver—support for Israel.

Labels: 9/11, Cagan, Chris Hedges, conspiracy, critical thinking, Ford Foundation, Iraq, Islam, Israel, media, Neoconservatives, Zionism

I've been listening to National Public Radio's coverage this week on the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and the reporting has generally been abysmal. In other words, it has been par for the course.

At least four things have stood out to me in the NPR  coverage I have heard. First, the NPR reporting on the withdrawn (but possibly soon-to-be resumed) Swedish sexual assault investigation has consistently failed to fully report Assange's position. As Wired noted nearly two years ago: "Assange has always maintained that extradition to Sweden was a thin ruse intended to make him vulnerable to further extradition to the United States, where it's widely believed that a secret grand jury for years was investigating him for WikiLeaks-related crimes." (I offer no judgment on the veracity of Assange's protestations that he was innocent of the Swedish allegations.)

Second, the range of guests NPR has hosted on the Assange segments has generally run the gamut from "I don't like Assange much" to "I really dislike the treacherous Assange". For instance, on the day Assange was arrested NPR interviewed Leon Panetta, secretary of defense and CIA director during Obama administration.

(NPR thought it not worth mentioning that Panetta was also Bill Clinton's OMB director and, later, chief of staff or that Panetta endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016. Less than three months before the election, Panetta also went to bat for her regarding alleged Clinton Foundation improprieties during her tenure as Secretary of State. In 2017, Clinton blamed Wikileaks, in part, for her 2016 loss to Donald Trump. And why mention that less than a year ago the DNC filed a lawsuit against Wikileaks?)

Predictably, Panetta is in favor of the extradition and prosecution of Assange: "So I think ... as a result of the impact of releasing this classified information that he ought to be subject to the laws of the United States and face our system of justice." He also raised the Clinton defeat: "Well, there's no question that there was a huge amount of attention, particularly to WikiLeaks and the impact of WikiLeaks on the 2016 election. There's no question that as a result of the information that he was able to release, it had a huge impact in terms of our politics ..." In response to a question about a recent Tweet by Edward Snowden on Assange's arrest, Panetta avoided commenting on the substance of Snowden's position and launched an ad hominem attack.

Third, NPR on-air personalities and guests have repeatedly made (or declined to challenge the accuracy or relevance of) the claim that Assange/Wikileaks are not covered by the 1st Amendment because they allegedly released classified material without redactions of sensitive material.

Just today, NPR hosted former CIA deputy director John McLaughlin, who asserted Assange is not a "legitimate journalist", in part, because Assange allegedly declined to redact material that "mainstream journalists" wanted him to remove and, further, that Assange wouldn't even listen "to that case [for redactions]". McLaughlin makes this claim twice in the segment and it is never challenged.

I am unaware of any "not enough redactions" exception to the freedom of the press. Moreover, in October 2010, CNN reported:

With the posting of 400,000 classified documents from the Iraq war, WikiLeaks has shown a much heavier hand redacting compared to its previous publication of documents.

After the leak in July of more than 70,000 Afghanistan War documents, the website was heavily criticized by the U.S. government, the military and human rights groups for failing to redact names of civilians in the documents, putting them at risk of retaliation by the Taliban.

Assange's role in the alleged failure to redact names in the July leak is not discussed in the CNN article, which does go on to say concerning later releases: "An initial comparison of a few documents redacted by WikiLeaks to the same documents released by the Department of Defense shows that WikiLeaks removed more information from the documents than the Pentagon" (emphasis added). Yep, Wikileaks apparently withheld more information than the US military but you're not likely to learn that on NPR.

In the same piece CNN also reported: "Even with redaction, the Pentagon is critical of the documents' release, saying the site had no right to publish and is not equipped to understand what information is harmful." This seems to suggest that Wikileaks failure to redact what the military wanted redacted was due to incompetence or negligence, not malice. In any case, where does the 1st Amendment require journalists to keep secret what the government wants kept secret?

Finally, it is striking that NPR's coverage has featured very little discussion of the substance of the actual charges against Assange' let alone the substance of the material Chelsea Manning provided for Wikileaks to publish (see e.g. the video below). The unsealed federal grand jury indictment is only seven pages long and pretty straightforward but NPR has instead covered ancillary issues, such as Assange's cat, with the seeming goal of smearing and convicting Assange in the court of public opinion.

Assange's purported crime appears to be agreeing to help Manning crack a government password (Indictment, para. 7). However, the indictment also indicates that Assange's assistance did not extend to him actively accessing a restricted government computer system. Thus, paragraph 9 of the indictment speaks of "the portion of the password Manning gave to Assange". At first glance this seems analogous to asking Assange, from afar, for help opening a physical combination safe. It's akin to Assange saying "try this combination" while not turning the dial himself or even being in the same room.

If it's illegal for a journalist to help someone from afar break the password of a computer file or crack a safe then would it also be illegal to open/unseal a stolen envelope clearly marked "Top Secret" and containing classified material or turn the pages of a stolen document clearly marked "Top Secret"? What about helping to decipher an encrypted text? If not, why not? What's the substantive difference between these acts?

To be clear, if Assange sat at a keyboard and unlawfully attempted to access classified files while they were still stored on a government system then that would seem to be an overt, illegal act. However, that's not what Assange is accused of doing.

He is accused of conspiring to help Chelsea Manning do that and, under the particular circumstances, that seems a little fuzzier, especially when something as important as the 1st Amendment is in play. But as Glenn Greenwald puts it:

Neither the most authoritarian factions of the Trump administration behind this prosecution, nor their bizarre and equally tyrannical allies in the Democratic Party, care the slightest about press freedoms. They only care about one thing: putting Julian Assange behind bars, because (in the case of Trump officials) he revealed U.S. war crimes and because (in the case of Democrats) he revealed corruption at the highest levels of the DNC that forced the resignation of the top 5 officials of the Democratic Party and harmed the Democrats’ political reputation.

Download the US indictment of Assange here (PDF): https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/press-release/file/1153481/download

Here, in no particular order, are some alternative views on the Assange arrest that you're not likely to hear represented on NPR:

• "7 Years of Lies About Assange Won't Stop Now" Consortium News
• "Julian Assange's Arrest Should Worry Anyone Who Cares About Freedom of the Press" The Nation
• "EFF Statement on Assange Indictment and Arrest" The Electronic Frontier Foundation
• "Espionage? Computer Crimes? The DOJ's Cast Against Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange" MintPress News
• "10 Reasons Assange Should Walk Free" Foreign Policy Journal
• "Yes, You Should Fear the Arrest of Julian Assange" The American Conservative
• "How You Can Be Certain That The US Charge Against Assange Is Fraudulent" Caitlin Johnstone
• "The Washington Establishment Seems Pretty Happy About Julian Assange's Arrest" Reason
• "Julian Assange's life is in danger" World Socialist Web Site

Labels: civil liberties, Clintons, Iraq, Julian Assange, media, National Public Radio, Trump, video, Wikileaks

Fair Game is about the bogus intelligence used to justify the US' 2003 invasion of Iraq and, more specifically, the exposure of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Unfortunately, the film soft pedals the crucial role of the Israel-firsters in the drive to illegally invade Iraq. In any case, this film still tells an important story.


In late 2018, Fair Game director Liman released a director's cut of the film. This coincided with President Trump's decision earlier in the year to pardon I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff and a protege of Paul Wolfowitz. Libby is a key figure in the film. He was convicted in 2007 of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements in the Plame Affair.

See also (in chronological order):

• "Playing skittles with Saddam" in The Guardian
• "The Scooter Libby-Marc Rich Connection" on The Unz Review
• "The 'JINSA Crowd' and the Iraq War" on the Dissident Veteran for Peace blog
• "Scooter Libby Love Letters: Washington elite petition judge on behalf of convicted Cheney aide" on The Smoking Gun
• Fair Game reviewed by Roger Ebert
• Fair Game reviewed in The Guardian
• "Scooter Libby & Paul Wolfowitz to Teach Iraq 'Decision-Making' " in The American Conservative
• "Why Ariel Sharon Thanked Scooter Libby" in Mosaic
• "The Pardon of Marc Rich" in CounterPunch  
• "When Trump Makes Your Largely Forgotten Movie Urgent Again" in The Atlantic
• "Former CIA Spy Valerie Plame: Trump Is 'Dangerous For Our National Security' " on The Daily Beast
• "Director Doug Liman Believes 'Fair Game' is More Relevant Than Ever" on FilmSchoolRejects

Labels: Bush, film & television, Iraq, Israel Lobby, Neoconservatives, Trump, Valerie Plame, video

Shock and Awe is way, way overdue and suffers a bit from a lack of focus and poor pacing. Nevertheless it is an important film and well worth watching. It's also a timely reminder of three important points: 1) For the most part, the mainstream media has been peddling fake news for a long time; 2) The Democrats and Republicans are the two wings of the one War Party; and 3) Israel's partisans exert a malign and dominant influence on US politics and America's Near East policy.


See also:

• Archive of Knight-Ridder's (McClatchy) Iraq war reporting
• "Going It Alone" from the American Journalism Review (AJR)
• "White Knights" from the AJR
• "Buying the War" on Bill Moyer's Journal
• "The Reporting Team That Got Iraq Right" from HuffPost
• Review of Shock and Awe on RogerEbert.com 

Labels: film & television, Iraq, Israel, Israel Lobby, media, Neoconservatives, video, War

The Fund for Peace's 2017 Fragile States Index Map

shithole
noun
vulgar slang
     An extremely dirty, shabby, or otherwise unpleasant place.

Sen. Cory Booker is the among latest grandstanding asses to pontificate over Trump's alleged remarks reportedly disparaging Haiti, El Salvador, and unspecified African countries. The fact is that some of these countries are, indeed, "shitholes" of crime, corruption, human rights abuses, violence, disease, unemployment, poverty, etc. Of course, the polite and likely more informative terms are failed or fragile states but the main observation, however it is articulated, is not false.

In the context of a discussion of immigration policy Trump's alleged remarks—like much that emanates from his mouth or Twitter feed—were inflammatory, unproductive, and evinced ignorance. However, they could have served as an opening for a rational and illuminating discussion. That is, if anyone in politics or the mainstream media were interested in principled discourse instead of political point-scoring.

Instead, political and media pontificators, such as Booker, generally showed themselves to be the mirror image of Trump (also an ass) by stooping to renew ill-founded allegations of racism, White supremacism, etc.¹ Such is the shithole of American politics.

If Booker et al. were seriously interested in the truth and what's best for this country and for would-be immigrants they should have started out by conceding that, yes, some countries are failed states or in American vernacular, shitholes. That is one of the main reasons why so many people are eager or desperate to leave them for a better life in the US, Norway, and elsewhere. From a humanitarian perspective one might argue this is exactly why immigration from these countries should be permitted.

The abysmal situation in the countries at issue is thus a driver of immigration, legal and otherwise, and any comprehensive immigration policy would at least acknowledge that if not invoke it as a rationale to (re-)consider the implications of US foreign policy, including aid and military intervention.² In many cases, US foreign policy under Trump's predecessors—with the complicity of the mainstream media and politicians of all stripes—has contributed directly to the appalling state of affairs in places like Haiti and El Salvador as is well-documented.³

It also bears mentioning in any reasoned discussion on the subject that just because someone lives in or comes from a "shithole country" does not render them unworthy of life or regard. Nor does it make them unable to adjust or contribute to humanity or American society. In the 1800s when some of my ancestors fled Ireland that country was a shithole suffering under centuries of British colonial oppression. Yet, most Americans would probably agree the United States has benefited significantly from 19th century Irish immigration.

Notes
1. Trump may in fact be a racist but my point is that nothing he has uttered so far points definitively to that conclusion. Trump's remarks are more plausibly understood as a manifestation of recklessness and/or ignorance of or well-deserved contempt for the Liberal canons of acceptable thought/expression. The latter clearly resonates with his political base, whom many in the chattering classes have unjustly written off as irredeemably racist.
2. To be clear, US foreign aid has, by design, all too often been a tool to deliberately prop up corrupt, repressive regimes and keep the masses people of countries such as Haiti and El Salvador in subjugation and dependency. Of course, that need not be the case but it has been.
3. Two cases in point of media collusion are the selling of the transparently false stories of Iraqi WMDs and cooperation with al-Qaeda to justify the 2003 invasion of that country. Further back, there is the shameless betrayal and abandonment of Raymond Bonner after he broke the story of the 1981 El Mozote massacre in El Salvador by elite US-backed military forces. Thanks, in no small part, to US media collusion the US funded civil war there would continue another decade after the massacre was revealed.

See also: "On Propriety, Power, and Social Protest"

Labels: immigration, Iraq, Ireland, politics, race, Trump, United States

Ignorance of French national character was for Scharnhorst the major reason for the Allied defeat [in the War of the First Coalition]. He found it inconceivable that the princes accepted without any verification the false reports of French opinion by the Émigrés ... "It seems at first sight incredible that such a great and important enterprise could be launched on the basis of such partisan witnesses as were the Émigrés."

Source: Charles E. White, The Enlightened Soldier: Scharnhorst and the Militarische Gesellschaft in Berlin, 1801-1805 (New York: Praeger, 1989), p. 61.

One wonders if Scharnhorst ever considered the possibility that "the princes" knew the reports of the Émigrés were bogus, it seems so. The case of Ahmed Chalabi and his sham Iraqi National Congress come to mind. Chalabi has been characterized as "the powerful source who ... succeeded in persuading the Pentagon that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that the Shiites would welcome the American forces with flowers and rice, and that in a twinkling the Iraqis would manage their country without Saddam and would free the U.S. armed forces from their commitment."

However, I think it would be far more accurate to characterize Chalabi as a willing partner in the deliberately trumped-up 2003 war for Israel. The neoconservatives leading the Pentagon in the Bush administration were not deceived by Chalabi and they needed no persuasion to invade Iraq, they needed plausible cover and that was what he provided.


The belief that in war forces must be kept together, that it is a principle of the art of war not to disperse, is therefore false. On the contrary, it is a general rule—but only to the skillful—to disperse with caution and to force the enemy to do likewise, and then to fall concentrated on a single part.

Source: Gerhard Johann David von Scharnhorst, "Ueber die Schlacht bei Marnego," Proceedings, 1:54-55 as quoted in White, op. cit., p. 71.

See also: "Wrong Tzu"

Labels: Europe, history, Iraq, military, Neoconservatives, quotations, Scharnhorst, War

Jürgen Todenhöfer is the only known Western journalist to openly enter ISIS-controlled territory and return alive. His views are largely unheard in the US media; I learned about him via the BBC. Below are a few excerpts from him or articles about his visit to ISIS/ISIL territory.

"During the last 200 years an Arabic country has never attacked the West. We must explain why we fought wars in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in Libya. And if we are looking for a reason why this horrible organisation ISIL exists, we must have a look at its history. ISIL was founded some weeks after the US-led invasion of Iraq. The organisation is the baby of George W. Bush. And the violence, that we face now is the fallout or boomerang effect of our own wars."

-Euronews. "ISIL is the baby of George W Bush."January 16, 2015.

Once within Isis territory, Todenhöfer said his strongest impression was "that Isis is much stronger than we think here". He said it now has "dimensions larger than the UK", and is supported by "an almost ecstatic enthusiasm that I have never encountered in any other warzone".

"Each day, hundreds of willing fighters arrive from all over the world," he told tz. "For me it is incomprehensible."

...

Todenhöfer says that this ultimately means Isis cannot be beaten by Western intervention or air strikes – despite US claims last week that they have proven effective. "With every bomb that is dropped and hits a civilian, the number of terrorists increases," he said.

Speaking in a TV interview with RTL's Nachtjournal programme two days after his return to Germany last week, Todenhöfer said Isis has worked hard to establish itself as a functioning state. He said it has "social welfare", a "school system", and that he was even surprised to see it has plans to provide education to girls.

-Adam Withnall. The Independent. "Inside Isis: The first Western journalist ever to be given access to the 'Islamic State' has just returned – and this is what he discovered." December 21, 2014.

See also Jürgen Todenhöfer's website.

Labels: Bush, Iraq, Islam, Syria, terrorism, video, war tax resistance

So why did we invade Iraq? I believe it was the triumph of the so-called neoconservative ideology, as well as Bush administration arrogance and incompetence that took America into this war of choice. This ideology presented a myopic vision of a democratic Middle East that would inject a large permanent American force presence in the region to act as the guarantor of a regional realignment. They believed that by taking the relatively easy step of toppling Saddam, they could begin to realize this vision through the use of America's unequaled military power, thereby establishing America's preeminence in the Middle East and bolstering the defense of Israel.

Source: Chuck Hagel. America: Our Next Chapter. (New York: HarperCollins, 2008) p. 50. At the time the book was published Hagel, a Republican, was the senior US Senator from Nebraska. He is the current US Secretary of Defense. Even though it was widely known at the time that the neocons were leading the US into another war for Israel, Hagel still voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002.

See also:

• "The Men From JINSA and CSP" in The Nation
• "Clean Break or Dirty War? Israel's Foreign Policy Directive to the United States", an IRmep Policy Brief. 
• "The 'JINSA Crowd' and the Iraq War"
• "The Israel Lobby and the US War Against Iraq"

Labels: Chuck Hagel, Iraq, Israel Lobby, Neoconservatives, quotations, War, Zionism

Was Rome dispensing "God's divine Justice" when it forbade Pater and Paul from preaching public? Were Peter and Paul "justly reprimanded for their sins" by being imprisoned and executed? Was Jesus being justly punished for his sin when the Sanhedrin sent him to be executed by [Pilate]? Was Germany dispensing divine wrath to Israel, Poland, etc., when they plotted to take over the world and exterminate all non-Aryans? ... I am trying to say that the State does not have a license to do anything it wants ... and when we are ordered by the State to violate God's law, we must not bow to Baal. Civil disobedience is just as mandatory as civil subservience. It all must past through the filter of conscience, not to mention Christ's mandate that we recognize that the Kingdom has already come. We are now its citizens. ... we are under no obligation to abdicate conscience on behalf of the State. [pp. 64-65].

Every day I talk with the enemy. But I do not see an embodiment of "he who opposes goodness." If we approach the war on terrorism with the fervor of a Christian jihad against Islam, our battle is already lost, for we have become what we opposed and we are now the fundamentalists. Our battle is not one of flesh and blood, but against the spiritual powers and principalities which rule this present darkness. We cannot allow ourselves to be caught up in "war mode" against a fleshly enemy, or the true enemy is already within us, and we have failed to believe in the power of a redemption which (we say) we believe has saved us. ... My comfort and liberty must not be won by the sacrifices of a new and foreign poor now paying the price for our moral failings of diplomacy. economy and statesmanship, turning our Republic into an Empire. [pp. 71-72].

Joining the army is not a sacrament, it's a pagan allegiance. [p. 91].

We must at least allow the pain inflicted upon us by our enemies to be a megaphone to our own deafness to the world, waking us up to the needs of others, to the violence inflicted upon them. [p. 92].

I don't complain about "the military" because of inconvenience or discomfort ... I complain about how perilous it feels to attempt an authentic Christianity in the midst of "exploiting persons of their intelligence value," and then listening to the news, hearing of the bombing campaign just undertaken in the town that I just wrote an intelligence report on only days previous. Those bombs are given coordinates by my reports. Mine ...

Since the day I walked onto Academy grounds at West Point, I have been in an ongoing and quite conscious battle with my military service. Whether it was my first decision in college to turn away from military service altogether, or my post-September 11th decision to return to service, I have been attempting to mitigate conscience and duty for the past seven years. In the absence of a clear and articulate objection to service, I have defaulted to evolving forms of duty as my guiding principle. ... Conscientious objection is now the only way dutifully to fulfill my obligations both to faith and to nation, and to my own internal commitments to personal courage. [From the conscientious objector application of Joshua Casteel, pp. 115-116].

Source: Joshua Casteel. Letters from Abu Ghraib. (Essay Pr., 2008). Casteel was an interrogator with the US Army's 202nd Military Intelligence Battalion. He based in the Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 and 2005.

Labels: Christianity, Iraq, military, quotations, War

A local Puget Sound NPR affiliate, KPLU, has aired a fluff piece on the "Hope for Heroism" program. Check it out at " 'Hope for Heroism' Project - Israeli Soldiers Help US Vets."

Labels: Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Israel Lobby, National Public Radio

In his latest update, John Lee, Director of the Washington State Department of Veterans Affairs, reports: "Several months ago I was contacted by Rabbi Chaim Levine, President of an organization known as Hope for Heroism." He continues: "This year Hope for Heroism will bring a group of injured Israeli Soldiers to the Seattle area to participate in a series of events with disabled U.S. Soldiers from the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. A picnic is being held on May 11 where the two groups will participate in several activities ..."

Late last month, Seattle journalist Larry Johnson and the Seattle PostGlobe both published an open letter from Veterans for Peace, Greater Seattle, Chapter 92 to wounded Israeli veterans participating in Hope for Heroism's planned visit to Seattle this month. Seattle Veterans for Peace were alerted to the program by a January 20, 2010, blog post on the Seattle PI web site. The post is entitled "Wounded Soldiers Helping Wounded Soldiers" and starts out: "Peace. Bravery. Hope."

It reports Hope for Heroism is "a non-profit organization created and run by wounded soldiers from Israel's elite Duvdevan Unit (Special Forces) to help other wounded soldiers." The post touts the success of Hope for Heroism's peer mentoring program: "When each soldier is assigned a mentor to guide them through their recovery, the recently wounded see that their steps through recovery can lead to a positive future - as many of the mentors have and will continue to go on to be diplomats and entrepreneurs that Israel needs." The obvious goal of "Hope for Heroism" is to make sure these wounded soldiers don't ever seriously question what they have done and the price they have paid. The goal is that they keep the faith with the violent ideology of Zionism, i.e. Jewish supremacism in Palestine.

Just how peaceful and brave can these wounded Israeli soldiers be? Are they heroes? Do heroes kill Lebanese, Palestinian, and other civilians in droves "for the safety of the Jewish people." What hope is there for wounded veterans in a program that justifies crimes done in the name of a racist, apartheid state? According to, "Targeting to Kill: Israel's Undercover Units," a 1992 report by the Palestine Human Rights information Center, Duvdevan was one of two undercover units formed in 1988 by then-Prime Minister and current Labor Party chief and Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Barak "to infiltrate and disable or eliminate Palestinian activists in the West Bank and Gaza" during the First Intifada. Some of these killings were also documented in Al-Haq's 2001 briefing "Wilful Killing: The Assassination of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories by the Israeli Security Forces." And, indeed, evidence suggests that Duvdevan troops are, among other things, assassins, volunteers in Israeli "death squads". They also participated in the 2002 arrest of Palestinian parliamentarian Marwan Barghouti in Ramallah.

The video below shows just one example of some of these "brave" soldiers in action. Released by the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, it details the 2006 killing of 'Itaf Zalat by Duvdevan soldiers in her West Bank home.


The above mentioned Chaim Levine is the Executive Director of Living Judaism, a local branch of Aish haTorah. He grew up in the US but exercised his 'birth right' to move to occupied Palestine (Israel). Levine's wife, Techiya Levine is the Co-Executive Director. She also grew up in the US but moved to occupied Palestine. They're both also personally affiliated with Aish haTorah, which is a militantly Zionist religious organization that, among other things, co-sponsors Hasbara fellowships with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Aish haTorah is also linked with the infamous "Obsession" video and possibly indirectly with the torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison. In "The Jewish Extremists Behind 'Obsession' " the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, no raging anti-Zionist, described Aish haTorah as "just about the most fundamentalist movement in Judaism today."

So, one wonders why the director of the Washington State VA is working with "Jewish extremists" to "help" rehabilitate wounded Israeli troops and link them up with wounded American vets. Isn't already bad enough that the American vets were wounded in US wars fought in no small part for Israel?

See also:

• "IRAQ: A WAR FOR ISRAEL?" by the Somerville Divestment Project
• "Charles Freeman & Israel" on the Dissident Veteran for Peace blog

Labels: Iraq, Israel, Israel Lobby, Palestine, Veterans for Peace, video

It's been almost three years since I posted a new cartoon by Carlos Latuff to this blog. So, to make up for lost time below are five cartoons that he's produced since then.

Labels: Afghanistan, art and literature, Carlos Latuff, Iraq, Obama, Pakistan, United States

My first response this morning to the news of Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was disbelief. My next response was to recall part of a story on I heard on NPR yesterday, entitled "Capture Or Kill? Lawyers Eye Options For Terrorists." Below is a relevant excerpt:

Given the difficulty of detaining high-value terrorists in the United States, Cuba, Afghanistan, black sites or foreign countries, another possibility exists.

"To be perfectly blunt, I don't think that they'll pick them up at all," says Ken Anderson of the Hoover Institution and American University's Washington College of Law, who has written about these issues. "I think that we've actually allowed the courts to arrange the incentives to kill rather than capture."

Many national security experts interviewed for this story agree that it has become so hard for the U.S. to detain people that in many instances, the U.S. government is killing them instead.

Last month, American forces staged a raid on a car in Somalia. The man inside the car was a suspected terrorist on the FBI's most wanted list. American troops did not seize him. Instead, helicopters fired on the car, and commandos retrieved his body.

The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama has been widely described as "aspirational." It may be, however, that delusional is a more apt description in light of Obama's campaign promises and track record as president. Consider the following partial list:

• Candidate Obama pledged to expand the combat forces of the Marines and Army
• Candidate Obama pledged to escalate the war in Afghanistan
• President Obama authorized killer drone attacks in Pakistan in his very first week in office
• President Obama has not ended the US occupation of Iraq
• President Obama has not closed the Guantanamo prison
• President Obama has not ended the little discussed but deadly American military intervention in Somalia
• President Obama has been utterly unable to go beyond tepid, hollow rhetoric concerning murderous US-backed Israel
• President Obama has left "all options on the table" when it comes to US arm-twisting vis-a-vis Iran

With Nobel Peace Prize laureates like Obama who needs war mongers?

See also: "Professor Hakimi's Solution to Gitmo"

Labels: Afghanistan, drones, Empire, Iran, Iraq, Israel, militarism, Obama, Somalia, United States, War

Nothing gives the lie to the notion of "Iraqi democracy" like the fact that Muntadhar al-Zaidi-- wielder of two size 10 'weapons of mass humiliation'--is still in police custody in Iraq. He is charged with "attacking a head of state" and faces up to two to fifteen years in prison. Zaidi's employer, Iraqi television station Al-Baghdadia, demanded Zaidi's release "in line with the democracy and freedom of expression that the American authorities promised the Iraqi people." Meanwhile, on Thursday, the U.S. diplomats in Cairo asked the Egyptian minister of culture to close the Egyptian offices of Al-Baghdadia.

In lighter news, my high score after two three games of Sock and Awe was a pathetic five nine hits.

Labels: Bush, freedom, Iraq, resistance

Labels: Iraq, Khalil Bendib, media, resistance, United States

This is the "Dueling Puppets" video from Brasscheck TV. If it's legit then it's pretty amazing.

Labels: critical thinking, Iraq, video, War

Check this out:



The video speaks for itself.

Translation of the background song, Ah Ya Arab (Oh, Arabs) by Kathim Al-Sahir:
My Arab brother
I am bewildered
What changed the revolutionaries' sword into a cane?
What changed the Arabic tongue into a wooden tongue?
Oh, my people
Oh, Iraq
We didn't sell out Arabs even during the worst of calamities
Hello brothers
Hello friends
The truth is the antidote for crying
We have no bread or medicine
We're hungry and wounded
But we carry our wound with the patience of prophets
Praise be to God
Who honored us with a test of patience in these times of hypocrisy
Thank God always
Inform the United Nations, they might hear me
Convey the voice of love
The voice of my father as he prays
The blood of Iraq's children is in Al-Amriyah Grave
Sleep my dear ones, may your sleep be peaceful

Labels: Iraq, Khawla, resistance

You have better chances of getting justice if you're a dog in America than if you're a human being in Iraq.

US Marine Acquited of all Charges in Haditha Killings

"Lieutenant Andrew Grayson, 27, was declared "not guilty on all charges" by a jury"

"Grayson was the first Marine to stand trial in connection with the killings of 24 men, women and children in Haditha, the most serious war crime allegations leveled at US forces since the 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein."

"In a three-hour shooting spree, they say, the soldiers shot five passengers of an approaching taxi and killed 10 women and children at point blank range, among others."

On the other hand, the more important victims:

Animal Abuse Charges Filed

"Faribault County animal control officer Todd Heenan ... adds reports of animal abuse are taken seriously when they are received."We will prosecute. It's something that has to be dealt with. We don't take it lightly," says Heenan."

"The neglect of an animal resulting in death charge carries a maximum sentence of two years and a $5,000 fine. The other charges each has a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a $3,000 fine.In March, Richard Niebuhr of Wells was sentenced after video showed a dog on Larsen's property being shot at and injured. The dog recovered from the injuries. Niebuhr was sentenced to a year in jail, but only had to serve 30 days. He also was fined $1,000."

Labels: crime, Iraq, Khawla

How much courage does it take to provide translation and psychological services to Arab immigrants? "Courage" in light of two Arab countries' occupations, I imagine, would involve politically organizing Arabs to express their outrage and end the occupations. This Florence Nightingale-type work of dispensing social services is called "generous" or "sweet" or "socially dedicated" not "courageous".

Today "Arab-American courage" means having the bravery to check "Arab" on the census, buying hummus using a credit card and hanging an Arab flag from your rearview mirror.

That's what happens when you reduce our cause, our pain and our struggle to a cultural circus. I went to a Kathim Al-Sahir concert in 2006 and saw dozens of Iraqi flags in the audience. I was like, why didn't I see you people and your flags protesting when over a million of our people were massacred, when soldiers defiled our humanity in Abu Ghraib, when the world's only superpower demolished our children's dreams, when the uncivilized terrorized the cradle of civilization. At best, Arab-Americans were watching aljazeera and at worst they were holding wedding-like celebrations in the streets. That's what Arab-Americans were doing while the Arab world was mourning the occupation of Baghdad on April 9, 2003 and flattened Falluja in April and November 2004 and ... you know the rest of the list.

Labels: Iraq, Khawla

For at least the second time, former Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu spells it out:

The Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv on Wednesday [4/16/08] reported that Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu told an audience at Bar Ilan university that the September 11, 2001 terror attacks had been beneficial for Israel.

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq," Ma'ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events "swung American public opinion in our favor."

Netanyahu reportedly made the comments during a conference at Bar-Ilan University on the division of Jerusalem as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians.

On 9/12/01, the New York Times reported:

Asked tonight what the attack meant for relations between the United States and Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, replied, "It's very good." Then he edited himself: "Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy." He predicted that the attack would "strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we've experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.''

on 9/20/01, Netanyahu told a US House Committee:

We have received a wake up call from hell. Now the question is simple: Do we rally to defeat this evil, while there is still time, or do we press a collective snooze button and go back to business as usual?

The time for action is now.

And he was already starting to wag the American dog to attack Iraq and Iran:

... Nor can we completely dismiss the possibility that a militant regime, like its terrorist proxies, will commit collective suicide for the sake of its fanatical ideology.

In this case, we might face not thousands of dead, but hundreds of thousands and possibly millions. This is why the US must do everything in its power to prevent regimes like Iran and Iraq from developing nuclear weapons, and disarm them of their weapons of mass destruction.

Of course, war on Iraq and Iran was on Netanyahu's wish list long before 9/11.

Labels: Iran, Iraq, Israel, Neoconservatives, Zionism