... His announcement comes just days after U.S. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, said he would advance the matching legislation through his committee...
The Obama administration is reportedly ready to move ahead with sanctions as soon as December -- either through the United Nations Security Council, or in coordination with Europe.
..."What an honor it is to be here today to address members of AIPAC. I want to thank those of you here today, and all the members of AIPAC around the country, for the incredible job you do keeping us informed about the threats facing Israel... And I learned young. In a way, my connection to the State of Israel starts with my father. Tom Dodd spent over a year as Executive Trial Counsel in one of the most remarkable court cases the world has ever seen...
Ma'an
"Rabbi Schneerson always supported Israeli wars and opposed any retreat. In 1974 he strongly opposed the Israeli withdrawal from the Suez area. He promised Israel divine favors if it persisted in occupying the land. After his death, thousands of his Israeli followers played an important role in the election victory of Binyamin Netanyahu. Among the religious settlers in the occupied territories, the Chabad Hassids constitute one of the most extreme groups. Baruch Goldstein, the mass murderer of Palestinians, was one of them. Full story
Kristol’s influence was at the heart of the conservative political revival.. In this era, rather than being the “stupid party,” Republicans became the party of ideas. Neoconservatism’s task was, Kristol said, to “convert the Republican Party and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy.”
....the triumphs of neoconservative thought had already altered the country’s political landscape...must be credited, along with his fellow neocon pioneer Norman Podhoretz, with creating a lively debate about ... the perils to Jewish interests and specifically to Israel ...
Neoconservatism continues to flourish in the formidable intellectual institutions that Irving Kristol helped build and the writers, thinkers and policy wonks deeply influenced by his thought and his example that labor in them... Full story
... circulated by the offices of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.).
...based on a draft by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee... Full story
The UK human rights charity War on Want has today called on the Israeli authorities to immediately release Mohammad Othman, a prominent Palestinian human rights activist arrested this week and currently being detained without charge.
Mr Othman [a prominent leader in the nonviolence movement] was arrested on 22 September on his return from Norway... He is currently being held in administrative detention, not being told of the charges against him... Full story
-- Earlier interview with Othman; Background on Jayyous - The Nation, David Bloom -
Based on evidence from numerous sources, the Report expressed a number of key concerns regarding the treatment of Palestinians, including children, held in Israeli detention:
IMEMC
A top White House official told Jewish organizational leaders in an off-the-record phone call Wednesday that the U.S. strategy was to "quickly" bring the report -- commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council and carried out by former South African Judge Richard Goldstone -- to its "natural conclusion" within the Human Rights Council and not to allow it to go further, Jewish participants in the call told JTA.... Full story
Background on Gaza - 2006 John Dugard
Other signatories include leaders of the Arab American Institute, Churches for Middle East Peace and the American Task Force for Palestine .... Full story
After hours of wrangled debate, Hans Hartenstein, director of the Reich Office of Currency Control, was about to call the meeting to an inconclusive close when a messenger from Deutsche Reichpost delivered a telegram from the German consul in Tel Aviv. The telegram advised Hartenstein that a coalition of official and commercial Zionist interests in Palestine was the best way to break the growing Jewish-led worldwide anti-Nazi boycott that was crippling the Hitler regime in its first months. A deal with the Zionists would be necessary........ The Transfer Agreement was created. Full story
Once it finished, the army without provocation shot 36 tear gas canisters in a very short time, using a multiple-shot machine carried in one of the jeeps. They kept shooting tear gas and rubber coated steel bullets for more than half an hour from less than a hundred meters distance from the houses, so many of them got teargas inside as well... Full story
In the Rimal shopping area, a growing number of Palestinians have resorted to begging. Among them are widows trying to provide for their children, and children themselves begging to contribute to family income.... Full story
Palestinians killed 9 Israelis during the operation: 3 civilians and one member of the security forces by rockets fired into southern Israel, and 5 soldiers in the Gaza Strip. Another 4 soldiers were killed by friendly fire.
B'Tselem’s figures, the result of months of meticulous investigation and cross-checks with numerous sources, sharply contradict those published by the Israeli military.
Speaking Sept. 10 at the National Jewish Leadership Advocacy Day on Iran in Washington, U.S. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) said that next month he will mark up the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act and "begin the process of tightening the screws on Tehran" if Iran "does not reverse course."
...Berman said the clock has "almost run out" on Iran.
...If anyone had any doubts about how important the Iran issue is to the leadership of the mainstream American Jewish community, the powerful lineup at the Sept. 10 panel discussion during advocacy day should have erased them.AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr, Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman, American Jewish Committee Executive Director David Harris and B'nai B'rith International Executive Director Dan Mariaschin were seated at the same table on the stage next to panel moderator Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
...Hoenlein as he moderated the panel blasted those in the Jewish community “who seek to get attention by sowing discord” on the Iran issue.
“We need to put aside our differences and stand together” against the threat of Iran, said the chief executive of the Presidents Conference -- the Jewish community's main umbrella organization on Middle East-related issues.
Hoenlein did not specify exactly to whom he was referring, and declined he to do so when asked by JTA. But he appeared to be reacting to a statement released the day before by Americans for Peace Now, a Presidents Conference member, opposing “crippling” sanctions "that target the Iranian people rather than their leaders" and backing "engagement" without "arbitrary deadlines."
The statement contradicted the message of advocacy day, during which leaders were calling for increased economic and diplomatic pressure on Iran and for the passage of the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act. The measure would punish companies that help Iran import or produce refined petroleum.
IMEMC
Huda Qandil had cancer case, her family has completed all needed documents to leave Gaza but the military refused, doctors reported.
Ma'an
The "outsiders" from PNAC were now powerful "insiders," placed in important positions from which they could exert maximum pressure on U.S. policy: Cheney is Vice President, Rumsfeld is Defense Secretary, Wolfowitz is Deputy Defense Secretary, I. Lewis Libby is Cheney's Chief of Staff, Elliot Abrams is in charge of Middle East policy at the National Security Council, Dov Zakheim is comptroller for the Defense Department, John Bolton is Undersecretary of State, Richard Perle is chair of the Defense Policy advisory board at the Pentagon, former CIA director James Woolsey is on that panel as well, etc. etc. (PNAC's chairman, Bill Kristol, is the editor of The Weekly Standard.) In short, PNAC had a lock on military policy-creation in the Bush Administration.
The passport was recovered by NYPD Detective Yuk H. Chin from a male passerby in a business suit, about 30 years old. The passerby left before being identified, while debris was falling from WTC 2. The tower collapsed shortly afterwards. The detective then gave the passport to the FBI on 9/11.
| Freeze Frame the U.S. Media – mid 2002 |
| CEOs and Directors of companies change as often as Boards of Directors vote. But if we could “freeze frame” the CEOs of the largest U.S. Media companies in mid 2002, we would find that ten Jewish American men ran the vast majority of U.S. television networks and other media companies including movies, radio, and publishing at that time. Not much has changed today. |
| CEO | Media Company | Ranking | TV Networks, Movie Companies & Publishers |
| Gerald Levin | AOL Time Warner | Largest media conglomerate in the U.S. | HBO, TNT, TBS, CNN, TCM, Warner Brothers, Time Inc. |
| Michael Eisner | Walt Disney Company | 2nd largest media conglomerate | ABC, ESPN, A&E, Lifetime, Miramax Films, Caravan Pictures, Touchstone Pictures |
| Summer Redstone | Viacom Inc. | 3rd largest media conglomerate | CBS, Paramount, MTV, Nickelodeon, Showtime, Country Music Television, Nashville Network Cable, Infinity Broadcasting (radio), Pocket Books, Free Press, Scribner, Simon & Schuster |
| Edgar Bronfman, Sr Edgar Bronfman, Jr. | Vivendi Universal | 4th largest media conglomerate | Universal Studios, USA Networks, Houghton Mifflin Publishers |
| Robert Murdoch | Murdoch’s News Corporation | 5th largest media conglomerate | Fox Television Network, 20th Century Fox Films, Fox 2000, New York Post, TV Guide |
| Robert Perelman | New World Entertainment | Premier independent TV program producer in the US | |
| David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg | DreamWorks SKG | | |
Looking Ahead
Today we are getting the same line on Iran, from the same type of people -- Obama himself tries to be more independent, but most of the key staff and national security people in his Administration do not differ greatly on Israel and the Middle East from those of his predecessor. And the Congress has shown itself to be even more of AIPAC's lap-dog than the preceding Congress, an exercise in self-serving cowardice that admittedly has taken some doing. This is not a simple anti-Jewish canard or mindless prejudice, both of which are juvenile and self-defeating sentiments. They are a factual depiction of specific people in specific positions advocating specific policies and stonewalling specific attempts to elicit specific information about specific lies, misrepresentations and deceit.
AIPAC and company are riding a tiger in America, and if they ever slip, the resulting convulsion will be catastrophic for them and for Israel. The open unfolding of the 9/11 tragedy and its ensuing wars that is now occurring can be that slip. The human cost to America to date is some 60,000 people, military and civilian, killed or wounded on 9/11 and in Iraq and Afghanistan together, with more to come once we go to war with Iran (or get dragged into it following an Israeli attack on Iran). Much of the deliberately misdirected rage that followed 9/11 has given way to endurance and grief, captured all too well in the following picture of a military funeral here:
But grief is a close cousin to rage, and an enraged America is not pretty, as anyone familiar with our history can appreciate. Americans are often deceptive without meaning to be. To much of the world, they often come across as naive, bumbling innocents in the world of global politics. And on a day-to-day basis, there is much truth to that.
But an enraged America is a very different character. You have only to look at what happened in WWII to German and Japanese cities, towns and villages, where America slaughtered literally millions of German and Japanese civilians -- most of them women and children -- knew it was doing it, and cared nothing at all. The goal was to crush, and restraint was not a word used much at all.
If these Americans and those like them ever fully understand just how much of their suffering -- and the suffering we have inflicted on others -- is properly laid on the doorsteps of Israel and its advocates in America, they will sweep aside those in politics, the press and the pulpits alike whose lies and disloyalty brought this about and concealed it from them. They may well leave Israel looking like Carthage after the Romans finished with it. It will be Israel’s own great fault.
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Alan Sabrosky (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is a writer and consultant specializing in national and international security affairs. In December 1988, he received the Superior Civilian Service Award after more than five years of service at the U.S. Army War College as Director of Studies, Strategic Studies Institute, and holder of the General of the Army Douglas MacArthur Chair of Research. He is listed in WHO'S WHO IN THE EAST (23rd ed.). A Marine Corps Vietnam veteran and a 1986 graduate of the U.S. Army War College, Dr. Sabrosky's teaching and research appointments have included the United States Military Academy, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Middlebury College and Catholic University; while in government service, he held concurrent adjunct professorships at Georgetown University and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Dr. Sabrosky has lectured widely on defense and foreign affairs in the United States and abroad. You can email Dr. Alan Sabrosky at: docbrosk@comcast.net
Personal background on Dr. Sabrosky can be found here.
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