Carter’s Inconvenient Truths by *Paul Craig Roberts

Jimmy Carter, probably the most decent man to occupy the White House, received a lot of grief during his term in office, most of it undeserved. His latest book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid has brought him even more grief, none of it deserved.

My own appreciation of Jimmy Carter is new found. It began with his previous book, Our Endangered Values, in which Carter criticized the direction in which George W. Bush was taking America with his assaults on the Constitution and international law. His latest book, currently a best seller, shows that Carter has the courage to match his decency and commitment to peace in the Middle East.

A case can be made that while other US presidents focused on the Soviet or communist threat, Carter perceived that the greater threat to world peace and US interests was in the Middle East. With America’s backing Israel was a rising military power whose policies and existence were viewed as a threat by Arab countries. After Israel’s military successes and Carter’s success in arranging peace between Egypt and Israel, new Arab-Israeli tensions arose from Israel’s refusal to leave occupied Palestine and return to its own borders.

Over time the occupied lands have been appropriated by Israeli settlements and now by a massive wall and special roads on which no Palestinian can travel. Palestinian villages have been cut off from water, from their fields and groves, from schools and hospitals, and from one another. Essentially, what was once Palestine has become isolated ghettos in which the Palestinian inhabitants cannot enter or depart without Israeli permission.

Israel’s policy is to turn Palestinians into refugees and to incorporate the West Bank into Israel. Slowly over time the policy has been implemented in the name of fighting terrorism and protecting Israel. Had Israel tried to achieve this all at once, opposition would have been great and the crime too large for the world to accept. Today Israel’s gradual destruction of Palestine has become part of the fabric of everyday affairs.

Many people, including intelligent Israelis, believe that peace in the Middle East cannot be achieved through military coercion and that peace requires Israel to abandon its policy of stealing Palestine from Palestinians. Jimmy Carter, whose long involvement with the issue makes him very knowledgeable and credible, is one of these people.

The reason that Israel has been able to appropriate Palestine unto itself with American aid and support is that Israel controls the explanation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At least 90% of Americans, if they know anything at all of the issue, know only the Israeli propaganda line. Israel has been able to control the explanation, because the powerful Israel Lobby brands every critic of Israeli policy as an anti-semite who favors a second holocaust of the Jews.

In Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, Jimmy Carter takes the risk of speaking truth to propaganda. Predictably, the Israel Lobby and its shills ranging from the "conservative" National Review to "liberal" media and commentators have attempted to banish Carter by labeling him an "anti-semite."

We must not let the Israel Lobby get away with demonizing an American president who dares to stand up to their lies.

Carter’s book is a readable and factual history of the Israeli-Palestinian issue and its various turnings. The most powerful chapter is the penultimate, "The Wall as a Prison."

Carter makes clear that the wall has little to do with Israeli security and a lot to do with dispossession of the Palestinians. Carter writes:

"It is obvious that the Palestinians will be left with no territory in which to establish a viable state, but completely enclosed within the barrier and the occupied Jordan River valley. The Palestinians will have a future impossible for them or any responsible portion of the international community to accept, and Israel’s permanent status will be increasingly troubled and uncertain as deprived people fight oppression and the relative number of Jewish citizens decreases demographically (compared to Arabs) both within Israel and in Palestine. This prospect is clear to most Israelis, who also view it as a distortion of their values. Recent events involving Gaza and Lebanon demonstrate the inevitable escalation in tension and violence within Palestine and stronger resentment and animosity from the world community against both Israel and America."

Most Zionists and American neoconservatives could care less about what the world community thinks. They are concerned only with Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. They realize that this goal can only be obtained with military coercion and have discarded any reliance on negotiation and compromise. Bush, for example, has refused the unanimous recommendation of the Iraq Study Group to talk with Iran and Syria. The US and Israeli electorates have proven to be powerless, while a handful of neoconservatives and Zionist settlers drive Middle East policy.

Carter is well aware that the "Roadmap for Peace" has been turned into a propaganda device. Carter writes that Israel uses the roadmap "as a delaying tactic with an endless series of preconditions that can never be met while proceeding with plans to implement its unilateral goals," and that the US uses it "to give the impression of positive engagement in a ‘peace process,’ which President Bush has announced will not be fulfilled during his time in office."

The Israel Lobby and its bought-and-paid-for minions tried to demonize Carter for using the word "apartheid" to describe the Palestinian ghettos that Israel has created. The word calls to mind the former South African government’s policy of racial separation, which was mild compared to the restrictions and dispossessions Israel has imposed on Palestinians. A number of commentators have come to Carter’s defense, including Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein (CounterPunch, Dec. 28, 2006) and former Israeli Minister of Education Shulamit Aloni (Yediot Acharonot, Israel’s largest circulating newspaper). They point out that within Israel itself Israel’s policy is commonly called apartheid.

If Americans could read the frank discussion in the Israeli press about Israel’s inhuman treatment of Palestinians they would wonder how they, as Americans with a "free press," became so totally brainwashed.

In an act of honest statesmanship that is rarely witnessed, Carter concludes his book:

"The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of a majority of its own citizens–and honor its own previous commitments–by accepting its legal borders. All Arab neighbors must pledge to honor Israel’s right to live in peace under these conditions. The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories. It will be a tragedy–for the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the world–if peace is rejected and a system of oppression, apartheid and sustained violence is permitted to prevail."

One can add to Carter’s bottom line that the Bush administration, American neoconservatives, and the Olmert Israeli government believe that the solution lies in the use of military force to smash Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah and to inflict cultural genocide on Muslims by deracinating Islam. This is the path on which Bush with deceit and treachery is leading America.

Jan, 11, 2007

*PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. 

Dick Cheney Said:"Avoiding a New Pharaohs"

Former Vice President Dick Cheney praised embattled Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak Saturday night, but his support was measured and conditional.

Cheney, whose opinions carry great weight within the Republican foreign policy world, declined to guess whether Mubarak could hold onto power until the presidential election now scheduled for September.

“There comes a time for everybody to hang it up and move on,” he told a group of conservative activists gathered here to celebrate Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday. “You get to the point where years add up, the burdens become tougher to deal with. … That’s a decision that only the Egyptians can make.”

Cheney recalled how, during a meeting the first weekend after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Mubarak granted flyover rights for U.S. aircraft and access to the Suez Canal. Eventually, Egypt sent two army divisions to fight alongside American troops.

“So he’s been a good man and a good friend and ally of the United States, and we need to remember that,” said Cheney, who lead the Pentagon during the first Persian Gulf war. “You’re looking for balance here, but I do hope that there is a channel of communication.”

Without criticizing President Barack Obama explicitly, he stressed that the United States must maintain an open and private channel of communications with Mubarak.

“It is very hard for some foreign leader to act on U.S. advice in a visible way,” Cheney said. “You tell me as president of the United States that I’ve got to do X, and publicly then if I do X, my people think I’m not my own man. … There’s a reason why a lot of diplomacy is conducted in secret.”

At the dinner, sponsored by the conservative Young America’s Foundation, someone in the audience asked how much George W. Bush’s push for democracy promotion doctrine influenced the instability in Egypt.

“We think it’s the best system devised by man, and our hearts are gladdened when somebody else operates in similar fashion, but there are also other issues that are important at the same time,” he said.

Cheney sat in a chair for an hour-long, interview-style discussion with Republican power broker Frank Donatelli.

He started by reading from a brief opening statement lauding Reagan, candidly acknowledging that he initially did battle with him as Gerald Ford’s chief of staff during the internecine 1976 GOP primaries and agreeing that he was skeptical of Reagan’s negotiations with Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s.

For the second time in the last three weeks, Cheney showed only glimmers of the attack-dog persona that was so prominent through 2009 and early 2010. When it came to the Obama administration, Cheney offered measured comments at several points when he could easily have thrown redder meat to a crowd that would have lapped it up.

Cheney, who has struggled with heart problems over the last six months, appeared healthy Saturday night. Thinner than his vice presidential days, he said he’d just come from a quail hunting trip to Texas with his old buddy James Baker, the former Secretary of State.

He told the crowd that, “with luck,” his memoir will come out this fall.

“I’ve got a deadline creeping up on me,” he said. “Right now, I’m deep into my years as vice president. And let’s just say that I’m not having writer’s block.”

More than 30 anti-war protesters gathered outside of the Reagan Ranch Center, a testament to how polarizing and controversial Cheney remains even two years out of office.

Cheney expressed pleasure that Obama has not pursued as liberal a national security agenda as he expected and that the administration has given up on most of its efforts to undo the counterterrorism apparatus created during George W. Bush’s presidency.

“The good news is I sense that they’ve backed off on some of their more outrageous propositions,” he said. “I notice Guantanamo’s still open.”

“I’m hopeful that what we’ll see is a solid, steady hand at the tiller, that we will not have the kind of decisions about counterterrorism policy that were talked about during the last campaign or that the administration or the president said they were going to pursue when they first got into office,” he added.

Cheney warned against the administration’s timeline for withdrawal in Afghanistan, but he did so in less dire terms than he has in the past, and he effusively praised Gen. David Petraeus and the general’s Afghanistan plan.

“This is not a place we can just wash our hands of and say, ‘There, it’s over with. It’s done,’” he said. “We don’t have that option.”

He received loud cheers when Donatelli credited the policies Cheney pushed as vice president for preventing another attack on American soil after Sept. 11, 2001.

Cheney’s speech capped an afternoon with two panels that discussed Reagan’s lasting accomplishments.

The Young America’s Foundation, which manages the ranch Reagan owned during his presidency, primarily focuses on inculcating young people with conservative ideals. After Cheney’s speech, the group screened a new movie for the assembled donors called, “Still Point in a Turning World: Ronald Reagan and His Ranch.”

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin spoke the night before in the same cozy dining room. While Palin did not eat dinner with the larger group, Cheney did and seemed to enjoy himself. Palin attracted a hoard of national reporters and TV crews, but Cheney’s speech attracted much less national attention and only a handful of photographers.

One of the questioners expressed frustration that the Bush administration added to the deficit and created the costly Medicare prescription drug benefit. Cheney sidestepped in his response, blaming the deficit spending on the September 11th attacks.

“I think we could have done a better job on spending,” he said. “There was a lot of stuff we had to do, a lot of stuff we had to do fast, and it was expensive.”

Politico, June 2, 2011

What Defense Cuts? by * Benjamin Friedman&Caitlin Talmadge

Much deficit deal analysis has focused on why it could lead to big defense cuts — anywhere from $350 billion to $1 trillion over the next decade. Hawkish members of Congress and Pentagon officials, including new Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, are warning about the dangers of a hollow military force. Contractors, meanwhile, are already lobbying heavily to protect their programs.

Yet the Senate Appropriations Committee last week unveiled its spending caps for fiscal year 2013 — without a big defense cut. The appropriators proposed nonwar defense spending (“base” spending) just $2.9 billion below 2011. That cut, less than 1 percent, comes entirely from the military construction and family housing budget — not exactly the pointy end of the spear.

The House is unlikely to cut more, making a larger defense cut this year virtually impossible.

In fact, the deficit deal is unlikely to deliver bigger reductions in defense spending in coming years either. Here’s why.

Compared with 2011 spending, the deal requires only a minor trim in security budgets: $4.5 billion in 2012 and $2.5 billion in 2013. And that reduction — pocket change in a $529 billion annual defense budget — need not even come from the Pentagon.

The legislation defines “security” spending as Defense, Homeland Security, Veterans, State and the National Nuclear Security Administration, a part of the Energy Department.

To get under the 2012 cap, Senate appropriators took $3.5 billion from State and around a half-billion from Homeland Security. Veterans and NNSA got small increases. Defense dodged the bullet — save for that military construction trim.

Second, the widely reported claim that the security cap would cut $350 billion from defense over 10 years is likely a White House claim. The Office of Management and Budget asserts that the Budget Control Act puts us “on track” for those savings. It is comparing what we are due to spend under the BCA not to what we spend now, but rather to the Congressional Budget Office’s most recent projection of spending growth.

Then, even though the security cap expires after two years, they pretend that defense spending will stay at that level plus inflation.

But after 2013, the law caps only total discretionary spending — meaning all programs other than entitlements. Nothing in the BCA then compels the president and Congress to hold down defense spending rather than save elsewhere. After the 2012 elections — the leaders who cut those deals might not be those that agreed to the BCA last month.

The deficit deal guarantees larger defense cuts only if its spawn, the congressional supercommittee, fails to cut debt by $1.2 trillion — either because it cannot reach an agreement or because Congress won’t pass its recommendations on an up or down vote. That would trigger “sequestration,” what Panetta now calls the “doomsday mechanism.” This would require automatic Pentagon budget cuts of more than $500 billion over 10 years. But there are several reasons why the doomsday scenario is unlikely.

For starters, the supercommittee might recommend taxes and nondefense cuts that lower debt enough to avoid sequestration, sparing defense. That is the White House’s preference.

The committee also might save some portion of the $1.2 trillion, limiting the amount sequestered from the Pentagon. Or, if the committee finds itself short, it might claim savings from ending the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — counting as savings money that was never going to be spent anyway.

Even if the committee stalemates, the president and Congress still might avoid sequestration by rewriting the law with higher budget caps. By January 2013, the first time sequestration can occur, deficit worries may have mellowed. Congress dodged sequestration in the late 1980s this way.

The wars offer another escape. Because the bill doesn’t cap war spending, Congress may evade caps by shifting base spending to that account. The past decade has given appropriators ample experience in loading war bills with base spending. Already, Senate appropriators seem to have slipped more than $6 billion of expenses previously in the base budget into the 2012 war request.

Still, let’s say the Pentagon’s worst fears materialize: Defense absorbs all the cuts required by the security caps, full sequestration occurs and wars are not used as a loophole. Even then, Pentagon spending would then drop by only about 15 percent — far less than drawdowns after World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam and the Cold War. The “doomsday” scenario would only return America to its 2007-level of defense spending.

The wisdom of large defense cuts is an important argument for Americans to have. But we cannot properly debate decisions that we pretend already to have made.

Benjamin Friedman is a research fellow in defense and homeland security studies at the Cato Institute. Caitlin Talmadge is an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at The George Washington University.

Carlyle Group's Social Networking with Gaddafi by *PEU Report

Carlyle co-founder David Rubenstein courted Libyan oil money after Colonel Gadhafi established the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), a sovereign wealth fund currently valued at $60bn-$80bn.  Chronicle Herald reported:


The investment authority was established in 2006, just as Libya, and Gadhafi in particular, were making a concerted attempt to rejoin the community of nations. 


What role did Rubenstein play in legitimizing Gadhafi's efforts in the global financial community?  FT reported:

Carlyle was one of the first to receive money from the fund, in part due to the efforts of its chief, David Rubenstein, who first travelled to Tripoli in 2006.


A year later Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the Libyan leader, flew to the US to meet prominent financial executives. Frank Carlucci, former defence secretary and retired chairman of Carlyle, hosted a dinner for him in a private room at the City Club.

FT makes this dinner sound like it occurred in 2007, the same year Frances Townsend had a bizarre visit to Gadhafi's Tripoli compound on behalf of the White House.  Carlyle hosted a 2008 event at The Washington Club, with diplomats and Carlyle big wigs in attendance.   In 2009 David Rubenstein and fellow PEU Stephen Schwarzman flew to Tripoli for the wedding of LIA's Deputy Chief Executive.


The record of social contact and business deals is clear.  Yet, NPR missed the FT source.   Did they not consider FT credible, as it is 3% owned by the LIA?  NPR pushed Carlyle's obfuscation:

Officials of the politically connected private equity firm The Carlyle Group have had meetings with Libyan officials, including one of Gadhafi's sons. It's not clear whether they ultimately did business. Carlyle's managing director, David Rubenstein, said this week that Moammar Gadhafi himself was not an investor.

Will anyone tweet Rubenstein's line?   Why did he not speak to LIA's stake in Carlyle investments?

Christopher W. Ullman of Carlyle said that the company did not comment on the identity of its investors.

Rubenstein continued his social networking on financial reform.  Carlyle and the PEU trade group spun Congress.  The Doddo Bill hardly touched private equity and completely missed sovereign wealth funds. 

The White House celebrated the bill with Rubenstein.  It was a fairly standard pep rally.  There's little chance the club will use social media.  Code talk works better face to face.


Update 3-13-11:  During his time as President of the African Union 2009-2010, Gadhafi pushed for it to become an economic union, like the European Union or the Gulf Cooperation Council.   FT reported Carlyle will launch a $750 million Africa fund.  This came after a $500 million capital injection from Mubadala Development Authority, a UAE sovereign wealth fund that partners with Carlyle on the Middle East and North Africa.  Oddly, Larry Fink of BlackRock recently noted, "Markets like totalitarian governments."   How will these forces interact? 

*PEU Report, Private Equity Underwriter

Waiting for the Endgame in Libya by * Franklin Lamb

The Libyan government, which is keeping statistics on NATO-caused civilian deaths, may not even be able to present its facts to the UN meeting next month. The reason is because Secretary of State Clinton has refused to grant Libya’s UN ambassador a visa.

Since this observer is not privy to any secrets around here and would not share them if he were, it’s fair enough to engage in frank discussions with former colleagues in Congress and new cyber acquaintances who work on the Hill.

I got an ear full this week from sources familiar with John Kerry’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee activities about President Obama’s semi-private views on what is happening in Libya and the President's  doubts about NATO’s role in bombing this unlucky country.

Contrary to some Washington speculation that Obama’s new Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta (some Congressional staffers who know  him well good naturedly refer to his as  “Leon the Lite”)  is in charge of overseeing NATO while Obama faces a slew of political and economic problems, the reality is different.  President Obama said to be “hands on” and is closely following NATO’s use of “all necessary measures to protect civilians.” NATO bombing here, including this morning’s 5 a.m. seven bomb drop near my hotel, has become a cruel hoax for the people of Libya and all whom reject  the claimed right of NATO to” destroy as a necessity to save & protect.”

Unlike his two predecessors in the Oval office and also “VP Joe,” Obama disapproves of officials using colorful language that might offend voters. But he did reportedly tell his friend who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently that “We have stepped into a pot of s— and we need to get out of it!”
Part of Obama’s growing concern is said to be about his prospects for re-election. The Democratic National Committee sent Senator Kerry and the White House a “for your eyes only” memo on the President’s re-election prospects amid approval ratings which continue to slide amidst economic uncertainties and doubts about the Obama stewardship generally.

According to Congressional sources working on the Libya crisis, some Obama advisors see Libya as becoming another Iraq if NATO continues forbidding its rebels from negotiating with the Gaddafi government or if “the leader” is killed.

Assassinating Gaddafi  is widely believed here to be the only reason NATO continues to re-bomb, some as many as five times,   the so-called “command  and  control  center“ sites that these days could be just about anywhere in Tripoli.

Yesterday, at precisely noon, this observer was meeting with two officials at the Foreign Ministry. One is in charge of the American Bureau, and we were discussing a range of subjects.  Suddenly within a five minute period four NATO bombs exploded very loudly and close to the Foreign Ministry. I eyed the massively thick conference table we were sitting at and even considered scrambling under it—just in case — as my interlocutors quickly exited the room —without even saying ‘goodbye.’  They seemed surprised, maybe amused also, when they returned to continue the meeting and I was still sitting at the table reading my notes. “Have we all become NATO targets?” one asked, “private homes, our universities, hospitals all are legitimate targets now according to NATO?”

Obama and some of his advisors like Senator John Kerry are said to be wondering the same thing that some Libyan officials are.  One staffer volunteered to me this week:

“Both the CIA and Pentagon told  our committee that green lighting NATO to bomb Libya would be really quick and not even very dirty.  Now it’s become a potentially endless nightmare.”

NATO insiders have advised Congressional staffers recently that the apparent eternal US armed “coalition of the willing” cannot afford another humiliation from its point of view, given Iraq and Afghanistan, so NATO has no plans to stop the bombing until one of three events occur.  Those three in order of NATO preference are: Gaddafi is killed, Gaddafi “surrenders” or Gaddafi flees Libya.

President Obama is being advised by some members of the Foreign Relations Committee among others to “just pull NATO’s god-damned plug and get this mess behind us!”

The much disparaged NATO weekly “Carman and Roland show” live from Brussels and Naples, billed as “NATO’s Media Conferences to inform the public” adds to the concerns of some in Washington. In a long overdue turnaround from last February, when the main stream media here parroted those who for years had been working on toppling Gaddafi about his alleged killing Libyans, CNN just this morning aired a downright balanced report about how NATO’s claims that it is protecting Libyan civilians are dubious and in fact the main cause of  civilians being slaughtered here in NATO sorties, now nearly 20,000 with more than 8,000 bombing sites.

It appears from talking with many people here, including the media, that virtually no one but the script writers for the “Carman & Roland show” believe NATO bombings have anything to do with fulfilling the original objectives of UN Security Council resolutions 1970 and 1973.

Carmen told reporters following her and Roland’s 8/16/11 briefing show that NATO expects no problem with an expected un extension next month when NATO’s June renewal expires. She may know what she is talking about because NATO has reportedly been intensively lobbying the White House to bar Gaddafi’s government from the coming UN debate.  The Libyan government, which is keeping statistics on NATO-caused civilian deaths, may not even be able to present its facts to the UN meeting next month.  The reason is because Secretary of State Clinton has refused to grant Libya’s UN ambassador a visa.  Clinton, according to committee staffers mentioned above, plans to arrange at the last minute for the National Transitional Council to represent the views of those being bombed by NATO.

Kerry’s committee staff is fairly confident that the rebels will not oppose an extension of NATO bombing of their country.  Indeed their political and financial futures depend on NATO doing just that.

Yet, the White House has been advised by Committee staffers that NATO has become the main danger to civilians in Libya and that a political solution can be reached if Obama orders a ceasefire.

The President is said to be thinking about doing just that.

Tripoli

*Franklin Lamb, suddenly all over the place.

US Learns No Lesson by *Sajjad Shaukat

Faced with a prolonged war against terrorism on global level, its defeat in Afghanistan, showing determination to withdraw forces from that country in wake of financial crisis and other related problems, the United States seeks to fight covert wars in some Islamic countries, which will especially include Pakistan.

Recently, after a long debate, the US debt crisis to avoid the default has been resolved. The solution included $ 2.4 trillion cuts over the next decade and the rise of the $14.3 trillion debt limit. Now, the default seems further away on temporary basis. Financial experts opine that the US would miss payments on its bonds and default, which will result in dire consequences, particularly for America including other countries. US has also ignored the interests of creditors. Besides other most developed countries, the US could be in serious trouble, if China does not extend more loans by buying US treasury securities. America currently owes 800 billion dollars to China.

Meanwhile, on August 4, the US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned of dire consequences, if the Pentagon is forced to make cuts to its defence budget. Notably, defense spending represents about half of the federal government’s discretionary spending, while the military’s budget has increased by more than 70 percent since 2001.

Russian Prime Minister Putin stated on August 2, that the US and its people “are living beyond their means like a parasite.”

In fact, America has suffered due to an endless war against terrorism. Since 9/11, the total cost of global war against terrorism is more than 7 trillion dollars.

On July 7, 2011, a writer, David DeGraw wrote, “When Obama launched his re-election propaganda campaign to trick the public…that he intends to end the Af-Pak War, he disclosed that the war on terror has cost $1 trillion over the past decade.” But a recent study by the Eisenhower Research Project revealed that the cost of the war on terror is greater than Obama has claimed.” US was spending $12 billion a month in Iraq and is spending over $10 billion per month in Afghanistan. However, the total cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may exceed $6 trillion—apart from other related expenditures at home and abroad. In this regard, the war on terror is a war against the American people. As President Eisenhower had remarked, “Every dollar spent on war is a dollar not spent on education, food, health care etc.”

It is mentionable that the Muslim militant organisations, fighting against the US-led imperialist powers through ambush rocket attacks and suicide bombers have broken the myth of old model of power. In this respect, most of the western defence analysts have admitted that new brand of Islamic radicalism cannot be eliminated by military forces, equipped with sophisticated weaponry which has badly failed. Since 9/11, various suicide attacks in various countries show that the Muslim activists are giving a greater setback to world economy which protects the interests of the US-led western countries.

On the other side, despite various steps taken by the US in connection with the Islamic militants since 9/11 such as heavy aerial bombardment, ground shelling, arrests and detentions—technical intelligence, US intelligence agencies, especially CIA failed in destroying Al Qaeda’s terrorist network in the Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Uzbekistan, Nigeria etc. because American enemy is invisible. It proves that Al Qadea has franchised as a perennial different war in the concerned countries indicates.

Notably, on July 22 this year, Al Qaeda-type, the twin terror-attacks in Oslo which killed 92 persons were arranged by a Norwegian right-wing fundamentalist Christian who called for a Christian war to defend Europe against the threat of Muslim domination. In this respect, Western media pointed out the existence of Christian extremists.

It is surprisingly mentionable that while learning no lesson from the flawed policies of the ex-President Bush, President Obama has been acting upon the similar strategy so as to eliminate the Muslim radicals. Setting aside the US defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Obama administration which already continues with its agenda of secret war in Pakistan through bomb blasts, suicide attacks, targeted killings etc. as arranged by the CIA, Indian RAW, and Israeli Mossad collectively, it has planned a covert war against Pakistan which will include Karachi, Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where these secret agencies are assisting the insurgents and their agents with money and weapons. The course of drone attacks will further be extended to other regions beyond Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Unveiled on June 29, President Obama’s counterterrorism strategy is focused on what poses the “most direct and significant threat to the US–Al-Qaeda and its affiliates…America’s best offense would not always be deploying large armies abroad, but delivering targeted surgical pressure against these groups.” In this context, a report had confirmed on July 16 that the coming CIA chief Gen. David Petraeus will implement the covert war in Pakistan. Besides similar threats and pressure of the US other high officials, on August 1, Admiral Mike Mullen stated, “Unless they (Pakistan) move against terrorists like the Haqqani network, it could affect relations between Washington and Islamabad.”

As regards the Haqqani network, Pakistan has already made it clear that army is engaged in other tribal areas, so it cannot attack the militants of North Waziristan.

The contradictory statements of the US high officials which still continue, shows American duplicity with Islamabad. In this connection, a deliberate campaign regarding the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear assets, location of terrorists’ safe-havens in the country, blame game against Pak Army and its intelligence agency, ISI, cross-border terrorism in Afghanistan keeps on going. While, in the recent past, aerial and ground shelling by the US-supported NATO forces inside Pakistan’s border, cross-border attacks by heavily- armed militants who entered Pakistan from Afghanistan and targetted the infrastructure of our country’s various regions have continued intermittently.

Under the pretext of Talibanisation of Pakistan and unrest in the country, which has collevtively been created by the CIA, RAW and Mossad, US India and Israel have been destabilising Pakistan to ‘denculearise’ the latter. For this purpose, the US seeks to shift Afghan war to Pakistan after the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan.

On August 6, NBC TV channel disclosed that the “US has a contingency plan to seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons…if it fears they are about to fall into the wrong hands.”

Knowing the US real intentions, Pakistan’s civil and military leadership has flatly refused to act upon American undue demands. And Islamabad sent home 120 US military trainers. In response, on July 10, America withheld $800 million in military assistance to Pakistan. Islamabad has rejected American pressure to do more against the militancy without bothering for public backlash in wake of the strained relations with Washington.

If US continues its covert war in Pakistan and in some other Islamic countries, both Iran and Pakistan might stand together to thwart the US strategic designs. In that worse scenario, a vast region from Pakistan to Somalia and Nigeria to Iraq will further be radicalised, bringing about more terrorism, directed against the Americans. In such adverse circumstances, American worldwide interests are likely to be jeopardised in these countries including whole of the Middle East where the US has already failed in coping with the Islamic militants directly or indirectly—and where anti-American resentment is running high in wake of the violent protests against the pro-American rulers. Besides, instability in Pakistan will also envelop India by which the United States wants to counterbalance a peace-loving country like China.

These negative developments will further reduce the US bargaining leverage on hostile small countries like Iran, North Korea, Venezuela etc.

Although at present, other NATO allies supported America for attack on Libya, yet in case of targeting Pakistan, most of the US allies could leave the US war against terrorism, and a greater rift will be created between the US and other NATO members in wake of the competing debt crises, while people of other European states held the US responsible for the global financial crisis.

Nonetheless, if after fighting the different war for ten years, America has leant no lesson, its internal problems will give a greater blow to the US economy vis-à-vis other most developed countries, besides making it vulnerable to other external setbacks, ultimately reducing the US role as sole superpower.

Defeating Zionism! by *Alan Hart

That was the headline over a recent post by David Hearst for The Guardian’s Comment Is Free space. It began: “There is an Arabic word you come across a lot when Palestinians talk about their future. Sumud means steadfastness, and it has turned into a strategy: when the imbalance of power is so pronounced, the most important thing to do is to stay put. Staying put against overwhelming odds is regarded as a victory.”

Hearst didn’t offer any substantial explanation of why Palestinian steadfastness is a victory, so I will.

When the Palestine file was closed by Israel’s victory on the battlefield in 1948, it was not supposed to have been re-opened. There was not supposed to have been a regeneration of Palestinian nationalism. The Palestinians were supposed to accept their lot as the sacrificial lamb on the altar of political expediency.

And the whole truth includes this fact. Behind closed doors, and despite their rhetoric to the contrary, the Arab regimes shared the same hope as Zionism and the major powers – that the Palestine file would never be re-opened. They knew that if it was, there would one day have to be a confrontation with Israel and its big power supporters, the U.S. in particular, and they didn’t want that.

They, the Arab regimes, also feared that a Palestinian state, if it was ever established, would be more or less democratic and provide a model of government which all Arabs would want. Palestinian nationalism was therefore perceived by Arab autocrats as a potentially subversive force. (It’s because my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews tells these and related truths that it can’t be published in the Arab world. The regimes of an impotent, corrupt and repressive Arab Order order were and still are every bit as determined as Zionism to suppress the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became the Zionist not Jewish state of Israel).

For their part Israel’s leaders were aware that if they failed to keep the Palestine file closed, a regeneration of Palestinian nationalism would cause the legitimacy of Zionism’s colonial-like enterprise (not to mention its crimes only starting with the first ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians) to be called into question.

After its occupation in 1967 of the West Bank including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, Israel’s leaders became more and more aware that Palestinian Sumud is a very powerful weapon. (Actually it’s the only weapon the Palestinians had and have). In essence Israel’s strategy for dealing with it was, and still is, humiliating the occupied Palestinians and making life hell for them, in the hope that they will give up their struggle for an acceptable amount of justice and accept crumbs from Zionism’s table or, better still, abandon their homeland and seek a new life elsewhere.

To date Palestinian Sumud has proved to be stronger than Zionism’s ability to destroy it but… Does it necessarily follow that at some point in the future it will defeat Zionism? It depends on the answer to another question. How will the demographic time-bomb created by Israeli occupation be defused?
In theory are three possibilities.

1. Israel ends its occupation completely (subject to minor and mutually agreed border modifications) to make the space for a viable Palestinian state with Jerusalem an open, undivided city and the capital of two states. In this scenario provision would have to be made for appropriate compensation to be paid to those Palestinian refugees wishing to return but for whom there was no the space in the Palestinian mini state. In reality this won’t happen because Zionism was and remains a project for taking for keeps the maximum amount of land with the minimum number of Arabs on it. Also true is that Zionist colonization of the West Bank has gone much too far to be reversed without a Jewish civil war; and as Shimon Peres  once said to me (quoted in my book), no Israeli prime minister is going down in history as the one who triggered it.

2. As the Zionist state becomes more and more isolated in the world, enough Israelis come to their senses and demand that their government goes for the One State solution in order to best protect their own interests. One of my Jewish friends said it could be called Palestein! If it happened this would be the end of Zionism and complete victory for Palestinian steadfastness. (My own take on the One State solution is well known but bears repeating. The Jews, generally speaking, are the intellectual elite of the Western world. The Palestinians are by far the intellectual elite of the Arab world. Together in peace and partnership in One State with equal human and political rights for all, they could play the leading role in changing the region for the better and by doing so give new hope and inspiration to the whole world).

3. Zionism’s in-Israel leaders create a pretext (possibly involving Mossad agents dressed as Arabs planting bombs) to go for a final round of ethnic cleansing – to drive the Palestinians off the West Bank and into Jordan or wherever.

It’s because I believe a Zionist Final Solution (as in 3 above) is a real possibility in a foreseeable future that I think a way should be found for the major powers, led by America, to put Israel on public notice that if it did resort to a final round of ethnic cleansing, it would be universally condemned as a criminal state and subjected to sanctions of every kind, universally applied.

*Alan Hart, a researcher and author