Saturday, January 03, 2009
THE BIGGEST "NEWS STORY" OF THE CENTURY!
The video "The Biggest Game in Town" was uploaded on 12/25/08 to Google video, CAFR1 then did a NATIONAL POST of the release, and when I looked at the stats on Google's stat view pages it was apparent to me that Google by human intervention was fudging the number of views after and as they were being logged on to their automated view tracking system. The video stats after original release were blocked for several days by what appeared to be human intervention, so I made a slight change where the video would re-enter into the auto stat mode on the Google system and the stats started logging again. Then human intervention came to play again.
Well, Google just slipped and "I GOT EM"
This morning, January 2nd 2009 before human intervention could catch it, the automated system showed the "true stats" 540,000 views and as can be seen in the charts and numbers, the effect of "stripping the stats from their system". Before the true stats could be taken down from view on the Google account stat pages this morning, I took screen snap shots of the stat pages as evidence..
The "Biggest Game in Town" since release on 12/25/08 over the next several days was in the top viewed on Google Video "World Wide" in the English speaking countries. The snap shots are below "locked in as evidence" and make sure to read my note at the end of the Snap Shots copied below.
The psychology behind the controllers fudging the stats is to make the "individual" who comprehends the information think they are the minority when in fact they may be the majority. If the controllers can make the majority think "they are the only ones who know and have learned something" as if they were in a small minority. Psychologically they make you timid and shaky to discuss what you know with others and the blackout from the Networks validates you thinking you are in a very small minority when actually you are in the majority. Very effective manipulation by them folks and let me tell you: The world is not flat and Government took it all over by investment years ago and are consolidating for absolute control internationally at this time! Pay attention here folks, your futures and ownership of this country are at stake.
Walter Burien - http://CAFR1.com
The following are for downloads of the video:
540,000 VIEWS!!!
90,000 Views in California!
See Snap Shot Below - Dark Green on the color coded map = 90,000 Views!
GOT EM!!!!! The above shows what actually happened with the stat views when Google's stat monitoring was not fudged and the effect of human intervention to block the stats from showing. The following snap shot below is what stats Google showed after what appears to be fudging the numbers.
Here in the snap shots above and then below is a clear showing of intent to keep the video "The Biggest Game in Town" from showing as the #1 video viewed on Google video out of millions of other videos there to be viewed.
By Google fudging their automated stats and blocking the video from appearing at the top of their search engine it kept the video from appearing on their "Front Page" of "Movers and Shakers" or "Most Popular" or "Most Downloaded" where if automatically allowed to happen, the views from those seeing it in the "Headliners" out of curiosity to view what they were not aware of would have jumped the view stats to 5 million views breaking Google's all time records for a video in views of this length (2 hours - 16 Minutes) over a few days time period!!!
The Cat is out of the bag for Google and Google's #1 stock holder (Controller); the Government wealth base of investment funds coming from the thousands of local and federal accounts!!!
Thanks Google for the slip today from your accurate automated system in giving the true stat proof for the "Biggest News Story" of the century!
The People are seeing and learning the "Biggest Game in Town!" The Remedy you ask?
ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN you guys have an iron grip and don't slip up to often, you better brief Google on controlling their slip ups! And PS: What a Good job you guys did on blacking out Ron Paul before the election to create your own staged outcome of: "The only two candidates to vote on"
(or that are seen that is)
WJB
Rafah - report from the ground
http://therealnews.com/t/in...
Fida Qishta of Rafah, Gaza describes the past few days as Israeli bombing kills hundreds
Fida Qishta of Rafah, Gaza describes the past few days as Israeli bombing kills hundreds
Study: Diamonds link comet to mammal extinction
(CNN) -- Tiny diamonds found in the soil are "strong evidence" a comet exploded on or above North America nearly 13,000 years ago, leading to the extinction of dozens of mammal species, according to a study.
The scientific report also suggests the cataclysm also reduced the population of the earliest people to inhabit the region and triggered a 1,300-year-long cold spell that stretched around the world.
The heat generated by the extraterrestrial impact likely melted much of a glacier that once covered the Great Lakes region, sending a massive flood down the Mississippi River, the study said.
According to the report, the cold waves of glacial runoff into the Gulf of Mexico shifted Atlantic Ocean currents, changing climate patterns throughout the world in a cooling period known as the Younger Dryas.
"A rare swarm" of comets rained over North America about 12,900 years ago, sparking fires that produced choking, leading "to the extinction of a large range of animals, including mammoths, across North America," the report said.
The study was conducted by a group of eight archaeologists and geologists from the universities of Oregon and California, Northern Arizona University, Oklahoma University and DePaul University. Their findings were published Friday in the journal Nature. iReport.com: Have you ever seen a comet? Show us
The prehistoric humans known to have inhabited the continent at the time of the event -- hunters and gatherers dubbed the Clovis culture -- suffered a major decline in population in the aftermath, the scientists said.
The scientists studied layers of sediment dated to 12,900 years ago at six North American locations, including one directly on top of a Clovis site in Murray Springs, Arizona. Each layer was rich in nanodiamonds, which are produced under high-temperature, high-pressure conditions created by cosmic impacts, the report said.
"The nanodiamonds that we found at all six locations exist only in sediments associated with the Younger Dryas Boundary layers, not above it or below it," said University of Oregon archaeologist Douglas Kennett. "These discoveries provide strong evidence for a cosmic impact event at approximately 12,900 years ago that would have had enormous environmental consequences for plants, animals and humans across North America."
The other sites studied were in Bull Creek, Oklahoma; Gainey, Michigan and Topper, South Carolina, as well as Lake Hind, Manitoba; and Chobot, in the Canadian province of Alberta
Diamonds found in North American soil suggest a comet led to the extinction of dozens of mammal species.
The heat generated by the extraterrestrial impact likely melted much of a glacier that once covered the Great Lakes region, sending a massive flood down the Mississippi River, the study said.
According to the report, the cold waves of glacial runoff into the Gulf of Mexico shifted Atlantic Ocean currents, changing climate patterns throughout the world in a cooling period known as the Younger Dryas.
"A rare swarm" of comets rained over North America about 12,900 years ago, sparking fires that produced choking, leading "to the extinction of a large range of animals, including mammoths, across North America," the report said.
The study was conducted by a group of eight archaeologists and geologists from the universities of Oregon and California, Northern Arizona University, Oklahoma University and DePaul University. Their findings were published Friday in the journal Nature. iReport.com: Have you ever seen a comet? Show us
The prehistoric humans known to have inhabited the continent at the time of the event -- hunters and gatherers dubbed the Clovis culture -- suffered a major decline in population in the aftermath, the scientists said.
The scientists studied layers of sediment dated to 12,900 years ago at six North American locations, including one directly on top of a Clovis site in Murray Springs, Arizona. Each layer was rich in nanodiamonds, which are produced under high-temperature, high-pressure conditions created by cosmic impacts, the report said.
"The nanodiamonds that we found at all six locations exist only in sediments associated with the Younger Dryas Boundary layers, not above it or below it," said University of Oregon archaeologist Douglas Kennett. "These discoveries provide strong evidence for a cosmic impact event at approximately 12,900 years ago that would have had enormous environmental consequences for plants, animals and humans across North America."
The other sites studied were in Bull Creek, Oklahoma; Gainey, Michigan and Topper, South Carolina, as well as Lake Hind, Manitoba; and Chobot, in the Canadian province of Alberta
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Would They Be Planning to Use Troops Against Americans If They WEREN’T Stealing Our Money?
George Washington’s Blog
Wednesday, Dec 31, 2008
Political science professor at the University of Texas at El Paso Charles Boehmer points out that “The military was not called out during the Great Depression….”Wednesday, Dec 31, 2008
So why is the military planning on how to crush civil protest in regards to the current economic crisis (see this, this, this, this, this and this)?
Is it because the theft - via “bailouts” and other hanky-panky by Treasury, the Fed and others - of hard-earned taxpayer wealth is
The other potential explanation is that the military has been told that this financial crisis could be much, much worse than the Great Depression.
So which is it? The obviousness of the theft or the severity of the crisis?
My guess . . . both.
Obama Seeks Bipartisanship; Republican National Committee Declares War (Brent Budowsky)
"Barack Obama will probably be tested by the Russians, but he is definitely being tested right now by the Republicans. While Obama seeks a bipartisan stimulus and decides whether to investigate issues such as torture and domestic spying, the Republican National Committee (RNC) discusses a sick and demented CD about "Barack the Magic Negro" and prepares to formally attack Bush, Republican leaders in Congress, Democratic leaders and Obama as socialists and oppose any economic aid to companies and seek to dramatically cut back any economic recovery program for the nation."
Will the RNC attack everyone in a radical, extreme and irresponsible effort to kill any significant economic program, attack everyone as socialists and intimidate Republican leaders in Congress into joining their ill-fated mission of economic destruction?"
My view is that torture fundamentally violates historic American notions of law and clear rules of international law and that what was done violates cardinal American principles that were honored from George Washington through Bill Clinton and accepted by every president and Congress until George W. Bush. The same is true for eavesdropping on a massive scale, in clear violation of the FISA law, without even any proof that our security was enhanced. "
Will the RNC attack everyone in a radical, extreme and irresponsible effort to kill any significant economic program, attack everyone as socialists and intimidate Republican leaders in Congress into joining their ill-fated mission of economic destruction?"
My view is that torture fundamentally violates historic American notions of law and clear rules of international law and that what was done violates cardinal American principles that were honored from George Washington through Bill Clinton and accepted by every president and Congress until George W. Bush. The same is true for eavesdropping on a massive scale, in clear violation of the FISA law, without even any proof that our security was enhanced. "
The Crisis of Common Sense: Is It So Difficult To Understand The Financial Crisis?
by Matthias Chang | |
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Global Research, January 1, 2009 | |
Thinking & Common Sense God gave us a brain to think, to think naturally and in simple terms, and not in a complicated way. When we think naturally and use common sense to address problems we will be able to arrive at simple solutions. But our education system tortures us mentally and forces us to think in complicated ways. Our teachers, economists, politicians and so-called experts in God and religion make mountains out of mole-hills, turning simple truths to complex arguments and “scientific theories and equations”. These experts need to make things look difficult to survive and to make sure that we have to rely upon them for solutions. It is often said that, “in the land of the blind, the man with one eye is the King”. Thinking used to be a pleasure and so very invigorating. But now experts have ensured that thinking is difficult and tiring, so burdensome, that we don’t think at all. The result is that common sense is thrown out of the window, and we have been conditioned to rely on our mental crutch, the so-called experts to think for us. How sad. It Is So Difficult To Understand The Financial Crisis Many have expressed to me that they are overwhelmed by the complexity of the global financial tsunami and are absolutely confused as to how to prepare and survive the crisis. When I explained in simple terms, they refused to accept the explanations as to them “it was too simple. It must be more complicated as otherwise how can the crisis become a global fiasco? Consider the following and my simple explanation: 1. financial engineering: new ways of gambling 2. Investors: gamblers 3. Stock & Futures Markets: casinos 4. Financial Analysts: casinos’ salesmen / women 5. Bonds: I.O.Us. 6. Banks: Dishonest Money-lenders (actual money-lenders licensed not as banks, but as money-lenders, cannot create “money out of thin air”. They have to use their own capital – 100% to lend) 7. Currencies / fiat money toilet papers 8. Derivative markets: ponzi scheme So many people have difficulty accepting my explanations as the simple reality. This is even after the recent exposé of the US$50 Billion fraud by Bernard Madoff, the former chairman of NASDAQ. He declared to the FBI, that his scheme was essentially a Ponzi scheme (i.e. using one set of “investors’ money” to pay off an earlier set of “investors”). Banks worldwide have collapsed! Why? Two reasons – (i) they gambled at the casino and lost trillions and (ii) almost all their borrowers that borrowed huge sums (leveraging 30 times or more i.e. if a borrower has $1 million capital, he can borrower $30 million) have defaulted. Common sense tells us that if our income is only $X and we borrow 30 times in excess of $X, there is no way that we can repay the debt, unless our gambling bets pay out in excess of 30 times the original amount of $X. Common sense tells us that if our total family monthly income is e.g. RM3,500, we cannot afford a lifestyle that requires a monthly expenditure of RM10,000 financed by credit-cards with only 5% monthly payment on the outstanding. When interests start piling up on the accumulated monthly outstanding, a point will be reached whereby the cardholder cannot even keep up with the payment of the interests. The cardholder defaults and he gets sued by the lawyers acting for the credit-card companies and or banks. Common sense tells us that if you are conned into buying something allegedly worth US$500,000 when its actual value is US$5,000 and you borrowed to buy the inflated “asset”, there is no way that you will continue paying the installments and the interests on such an acquisition. The bank on the other hand is stuck with an “asset” supposedly worth US$500,000 but its actual worth is only US$5,000 or less. Common sense tells us that the banks and the governments (fearing a systemic banking collapse) will lie and cover up the con-game until it cannot cover up anymore as too many banks are having the same problems and more importantly, the con-game cannot be covered-up anymore because borrowers are walking away and saying to the banks and governments – “You conned us, you take the blame.” Common sense tells us that these so-called assets which “investors” have invested cannot be real assets, but mere papers masquerading as assets (such as CDOs, synthetic CDOs and CDO Squared – toilet papers). Therefore, so-called sophisticated “investors” were borrowing toilet papers to “invest” in toilet paper assets! Common sense tells us, and thinking naturally and in simple terms will enable us to conclude, that only greedy people can be lured by such con-games and that when gambling at such casinos, these so-called sophisticated investors were not using common sense. Common sense tells us that we, the remaining hardworking people should not allow any government to use our tax revenue to bailout such reckless and greedy b@#st@#ds. Common sense tells us that when gamblers lose millions at the Las Vegas, Macau or Genting Highlands casinos, no government can justify and or dare to bailout such stupid and greedy gamblers. We would vote them out of office. Common sense tells us that since all these “clever people” by their reckless, irresponsible and fraudulent conduct have destroyed the economy, they should be prosecuted and sent to jail and the keys thrown away! Common sense tells us that a system that allows such frauds and gambling should be banned and made illegal. Common sense tells us that when common thieves rob a jewelry shop or a bank, they are sentenced to long terms of imprisonment and whipped as well, these sophisticated thieves should be likewise be whipped and sent to prison for life imprisonment, as their destruction is a million times more devastating than the common thieves! Common sense tells us that when times are hard, we should be prudent and thrifty to overcome and survive the hardships, so why are we encouraged to borrow more and more and to spend, spend and spend? Common sense tells us that when a shop is offering a discount, a reduction in the price of a product, the shop-keeper is encouraging us to spend and buy the goods. Common sense tells us therefore, interest charges and penalty interests are the cost of a debt / borrowings from the perspective of the borrower and revenues and profits, when the debt is fully paid, from the point of view of the lender. Common sense tells us that it is not out of kindness that banks lower interest charges. Like the shop-keeper, it is to encourage more borrowings. More borrowings mean more debts and ultimately more profits for the bankers. Common sense tells us that we should not get into debts unnecessarily and not to borrow to purchase things that are not within our income and our ability to repay. Common sense tells us that we should not commit fraud and or be a party to a fraud. Common sense tells us more importantly, not to be greedy and lust for material wealth. Common sense tells us that we should be angry, very angry with the so-called “sophisticated and up-right people” who commit fraud and the regulatory authorities and political leaders who cover-up their crimes. Finally, common sense tells us that we should take action to put a stop to these crimes and scandals. Please use common sense and do something before it is too late! Matthias Chang is a prominent barrister and author based in Malaysia. His website is www.FutureFastForward.com | |
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Print this articleJewry’s Silence On Gaza
By Brother Nathanael Kapner, Copyright 2008
Articles May Be Reproduced Only With Authorship of Br Nathanael Kapner
Along with the Israelis, the US Military/Zionist complex is also a clear winner in the slaughter of the Gazan civilians. The Israeli air strikes against the Palestinians comes from General Dynamic’s/Lockheed Martin’s F-16 Fighting Falcons & Hughes’/McDonald Douglas’ AH-64 Apache Helicopters.
And the shared US/Israeli frightening technology of “unmanned drones,” which Israel has developed to a perfection, continues to terrorize the Palestinian civilian population with “delayed bombs and grenades” deployed throughout Gaza. The Israeli drone is known throughout military circles as the “hi tech killing machine.” This Israeli killing machine is in huge demand throughout the world.
America’s continuation as a viable power is now dependent on a military economy. With the loss of a broad manufacturing base since the 1960’s owing to Jewish Wall Street bankers investing almost exclusively beyond America’s borders, defense contractors provide the last vestiges of US manufactures.
A system of military-economic fascism is now embedded in America’s political process. The corruption of the US political system has been advanced to perfection by the most powerful force the world has ever known: Jewry’s Israel Lobby. And the “silence” over Jewish terrorism will grow ever more deafening in the days & months to come…
For More See: The Zionist ‘Beast’ Attacks Gaza Click Here And: Gaza & Zionist Jewish Bankers Click Here
And: The Israelization Of US Foreign Policy Click Here
And: Kill Civilians? - The Jewish Talmud Tells Me So Click Here
And: Why Israel Should Not Exist Click Here
And: Obama To Lead Fourth Reich Click Here
The Massacre in Palestine and the Threat of a Wider War
by Shamus Cooke | |
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Global Research, January 1, 2009 | |
Yet another Israeli led and U.S. backed massacre is taking place as the world watches in horror. The western media, is desperately trying to peddle the puny rockets of Hamas as bullying, does journalistic back flips in avoiding the utter carnage brought down by the much more powerful –U.S. made and paid for—Israeli missiles. In an effort to target Hamas, the Israeli military has massively bombed over 300 sites and counting, including a five story building that was demolished at a university campus. As of this writing, 391 Palestinians have been officially counted as dead with nearly 2000 wounded. The number of dead is certainly undercounted, as bodies still lie under mountains of rubble (the number of dead Israelis is five). To say that only “Hamas militants” are being targeted is a most shameful lie. The truth is, if one is to target Hamas specifically, the Gaza population in general must be attacked, since they offer Hamas not only wide support, but attend Hamas-financed schools, mosques, health clinics, and soup kitchens. This fact led to the above mentioned bombing at the university. Hamas is not simply an Islamic parliamentary body but a nationalist political organization with a large social service apparatus with close ties to the majority of people in the region. On November 4, while much of the world watched Barack Obama’s victory celebration, Israel used this distraction to break the ceasefire between itself and Hamas by bombing the Gaza strip. Israel claimed this violation of the ceasefire was to prevent Hamas from digging tunnels into Israeli territory. The very next day, Israel launched a terrorizing siege of Gaza, cutting off food, fuel, medical supplies and other necessities in an attempt to “subdue” the Palestinians while at the same time engaging in armed incursions. In response, Hamas and others in Gaza again resorted to firing crude, homemade, and mainly inaccurate rockets into Israel. During the past seven years, these rockets have been responsible for the deaths of 17 Israelis. Over the same time span, Israeli Blitzkrieg assaults have killed thousands of Palestinians, drawing worldwide protest but falling on deaf ears at the UN Hamas’ recourse to rockets represents acts of desperation, which unfortunately— due to their arbitrary character— help Israeli citizens cling to their right-wing Zionist government for protection. The outrage produced by the occupation and now destruction of the Palestinian society, combined with the continued savagery of the Israeli government, make the Middle East an especially combustible area. . The U.S. puppet dictator in Egypt, Mubarak, is making his already-shaky regime less popular by his role in the conflict, by manning the tightly sealed Israeli border with machine gunners to force back terrified Palestinians. The king of Jordan, Abdullah, yet another U.S. financed tyrant, resides over a population deeply sympathetic to the Palestinians, but did all that his bosses in Washington would allow him to do— nothing. The whole Middle East is brewing with resentment in hatred with this action, putting pressure on strained U.S. puppet dictators across the region, such as the recently formed one in Iraq. Not only are the Middle East client states in danger of disintegration, but Israel is capable of expanding the conflict, as the western corporate media openly talks about Hamas’ “enablers” in Lebanon and Iran. Much attention is being focused on not only Hezbollah’s open support of the Palestinians, but on Iranian religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who “decreed” that all Muslims have an obligation to defend the Palestinians. Now, accusations are being made that Iran, Hezbollah, and even China have supplied Hamas with more “sophisticated” missiles. The undeniable logic here is that Israel would be justified in attacking these countries if they were found — or suspected of — supplying Hamas with weapons or other support useful in a war setting. It must also be noted that the current Israeli military operation was not a spontaneous act, but the result of months of planning, since the level of targets being fired upon requires substantial intelligence gathering. The planning involved was revealed by Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, who called the bombing campaign the “first of several stages” in operation “Cast Iron”. A rejected ceasefire and the continuing swell of ground troops ready to invade on the border could intensify the slaughter. It is undeniable that Israel’s allies, most importantly the U.S., were fully aware of the invasion beforehand, but also of the destabilizing effects it would have on the entire region at a time when the Middle East — thanks to the U.S. and Israeli — needs only a spark to ignite. It is possible that the current conflict will provide Israel with the pretext it has needed to finally attack Iran, since government officials have not been shy in discussing the idea before operation Cast Iron began. The very real possibility of a wider Middle East war — itself capable of drawing in the world — receives no comment from Barack Obama, who also must have known about Israel’s plans beforehand. Other leading Democrats simply cheer-leaded the Israeli advance while sternly lecturing the Palestinians. This reaction of the Democrats comes not from some underground Zionist conspiracy, but the very profitable service Israel provides to U.S. corporations, by providing “stability” to the region — through state terror — so that U.S. businesses can continue to dominate the region. In exchange, the Israeli ruling class receives not only huge subsidies from the U.S. — in the form of weapons of mass destruction and cash — but is enabled to use the constant threat of war to terrorize its native working class into submission. This grossly irrational-appearing relationship between the U.S. and Israel has a solid, logical core: that of the profit motive inherent in a capitalist economy and the oil needed to lubricate it. So that U.S. corporations may dominate the Middle East, competing corporations elsewhere need to be scared away, while native populations need to be terrorized into obedience. The basis on which to end this war requires mass protests, demanding that billions of dollars of U.S. aid to Israel cease, combined with a deeper understanding of the causes of imperialism and war. Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscook@yahoo.com | |
Shamus Cooke is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Shamus Cooke | |
Hamas warns Israel against ground raid
The Islamic Hamas movement says Israeli forces would be welcomed with 'surprises' should they launch a ground incursion into the Gaza Strip.
"Israel will embark on a veritable adventure if it decides to invade Gaza," Hamas official Mushir al-Masri said on Thursday.
"We have prepared surprises for them", he said adding that his movement would fight "until the last breath" in case of a ground invasion.
Meanwhile, in a defiant televised speech, Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza Ismail Haniya promised that the movement will win the fight against Israel.
"We tell the Palestinian people in Gaza and everywhere that you will win, inevitably. Victory is near, God willing, and it is closer than people think," he said.
The Hams warnings come as Israeli tanks and troops have massed along the besieged Palestinian territory preparing for a possible ground operation.
This is while media reports say Hamas has extended the reach of its rocket attacks on the Israeli towns.
On Thursday, Hamas fighters fired a rocket deep into Israeli air base in Negev desert. The movement said the attack was the first of its kind.
Hamas's armed wing the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement that they had fired a Grad-type rocket at the Hatzerim air force base west of the city Beersheva, some 40 km (24 miles) from the Gaza border.
MSH/MMN
"Israel will embark on a veritable adventure if it decides to invade Gaza," Hamas official Mushir al-Masri said on Thursday.
"We have prepared surprises for them", he said adding that his movement would fight "until the last breath" in case of a ground invasion.
Meanwhile, in a defiant televised speech, Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza Ismail Haniya promised that the movement will win the fight against Israel.
"We tell the Palestinian people in Gaza and everywhere that you will win, inevitably. Victory is near, God willing, and it is closer than people think," he said.
The Hams warnings come as Israeli tanks and troops have massed along the besieged Palestinian territory preparing for a possible ground operation.
This is while media reports say Hamas has extended the reach of its rocket attacks on the Israeli towns.
On Thursday, Hamas fighters fired a rocket deep into Israeli air base in Negev desert. The movement said the attack was the first of its kind.
Hamas's armed wing the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement that they had fired a Grad-type rocket at the Hatzerim air force base west of the city Beersheva, some 40 km (24 miles) from the Gaza border.
MSH/MMN
How Hypocrisy on 'Terrorism' Kills
Since the classic definition of 'terrorism' is the use of violence against civilians to achieve a political goal, Israel would seem to be inviting an objective analysis that it has chosen its own terrorist path, says Robert Parry.
Israel, a nation that was born out of Zionist terrorism, has launched massive airstrikes against targets in Gaza using high-tech weapons produced by the United States, a country that often has aided and abetted terrorism by its client military forces, such as Chile’s Operation Condor and the Nicaraguan contras, and even today harbors right-wing Cuban terrorists implicated in blowing up a civilian airliner.
Yet, with that moral ambiguity excluded from the debate, the justification for the Israeli attacks, which have killed at least 364 people, is the righteous fight against “terrorism,” since Gaza is ruled by the militant Palestinian group, Hamas.
Hamas rose to power in January 2006 through Palestinian elections, which ironically the Bush administration had demanded. However, after Hamas won a parliamentary majority, Israel and the United States denounced the outcome because they deem Hamas a “terrorist organization.”
Hamas then wrested control of Gaza from Fatah, a rival group that once was considered “terrorist” but is now viewed as a US-Israeli partner, so it has been cleansed of the “terrorist” label.
Unwilling to negotiate seriously with Hamas because of its acts of terrorism – which have included firing indiscriminate short-range missiles into southern Israel – the United States and Israel sat back as the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza worsened, with 1.5 million impoverished Palestinians packed into what amounts to a giant open-air prison.
When Hamas ended a temporary cease-fire on Dec. 19 because of a lack of progress in those negotiations and began lobbing its little missiles into Israel once more, the Israeli government reacted on Saturday with its lethal “shock and awe” firepower – even though no Israelis had been killed by the post-cease-fire missiles launched from Gaza. [Since Saturday, four Israelis have died in more intensive Hamas missile attacks.]
Israel claimed that its smart bombs targeted sites related to the Hamas security forces, including a school for police cadets and even regular policemen walking down the street. But it soon became clear that Israel was taking an expansive view of what was part of the Hamas military infrastructure, with Israeli bombs taking out a television station and a university building as well as killing a significant number of civilians.
As the slaughter continued on Monday, Israeli officials confided to Western journalists that the war plan was to destroy the vast support network of social and other programs that undergird Hamas’s political clout.
“There are many aspects of Hamas, and we are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel,” a senior Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Washington Post.
“Hamas’s civilian infrastructure is a very, very sensitive target,” added Matti Steinberg, a former top adviser to Israel’s domestic security service. “If you want to put pressure on them, this is how.” [Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2008]
Since the classic definition of “terrorism” is the use of violence against civilians to achieve a political goal, Israel would seem to be inviting an objective analysis that it has chosen its own terrorist path. But it is clearly counting on the US news media to continue wearing the blinders that effectively limit condemnations about terrorism to people and groups that are regarded as Washington’s enemies.
Whose Terrorism?
As a Washington-based reporter for the Associated Press in the 1980s, I once questioned the seeming bias that the US-based wire service applied to its use of the word “terrorist” when covering Middle East issues. A senior AP executive responded to my concerns with a quip. “Terrorist is the word that follows Arab,” he said.
Though meant as a lighthearted riposte, the comment clearly had a great deal of truth to it. It was easy to attach “terrorist” to any Arab attack – even against a military target such as the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 after the Reagan administration had joined hostilities against Muslim forces by having US warships lob shells into Lebanese villages.
But it was understood that different rules on the use of the word "terrorism" applied when the terrorism was coming from “our side.” Then, no American reporter with any sense of career survival would think of injecting the word “terrorist” whatever the justification.
Even historical references to acts of terrorism – such as the brutal practice by American revolutionaries in the 1770s of “tar and feathering” civilians considered sympathetic to the British Crown or the extermination of American Indian tribes – were seen as somehow diluting the moral righteousness against today’s Islamic terrorists and in favor of George W. Bush's "war on terror."
Gone, too, from the historical narrative was the fact that militant Zionists employed terrorism as part of their campaign to establish Israel as a Jewish state. The terrorism included killings of British officials who were administering Palestine under an international mandate as well as Palestinians who were driven violently from their land so it could be claimed by Jewish settlers.
One of the most famous of those terrorist attacks was the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem where British officials were staying. The attack, which killed 91 people including local residents, was carried out by the Irgun, a terrorist group run by Menachem Begin who later founded the Likud Party and rose to be Israel’s prime minister.
Another veteran of the campaign of Zionist terrorism was Yitzhak Shamir, who also became a Likud leader and eventually prime minister.
In the early 1990s, as I was waiting to interview Shamir at his Tel Aviv office, I was approached by one of his young female assistants who was dressed in a gray and blue smock with a head covering in the traditional Hebrew style.
As we were chatting, she smiled and said in a lilting voice, “Prime Minister Shamir, he was a terrorist, you know.” I responded with a chuckle, “yes, I’m aware of the prime minister’s biography.”
Blind Spot
To maintain one’s moral purity in denouncing acts of terror by US enemies, one also needs a large blind spot for recent US history, which implicates US leaders repeatedly in tolerance or acts of terrorism.
For instance, in 1973, after a bloody US-backed coup overthrew the leftist Chilean government, the new regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet joined with other South American dictatorships to sponsor an international terrorist organization called Operation Condor which assassinated political dissidents around the world.
Operation Condor mounted one of its most audacious actions on the streets of Washington in 1976, when Pinochet’s regime recruited Cuban-American terrorists to detonate a car bomb that killed Chile’s former foreign minister Orlando Letelier and an American co-worker, Ronni Moffitt. The Chilean government's role immediately was covered up by the CIA, then headed by George H.W. Bush. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]
Only weeks later, a Venezuela-based team of right-wing Cubans – under the direction of Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles – blew a Cubana Airliner out of the sky, killing 73 people. Bosch and Posada, a former CIA operative, were co-founders of CORU, which was described by the FBI as “an anti-Castro terrorist umbrella organization.”
Though the US government soon learned of the role of Bosch and Posada in the Cubana airline attack – and the two men spent some time in a Venezuelan jail – both Bosch and Posada since have enjoyed the protection of the US government and particularly the Bush Family.
Rebuffing international demands that Bosch and Posada be held accountable for their crimes, the Bushes – George H.W., George W. and Jeb – have all had a hand in making sure these unrepentant terrorists get to live out their golden years in the safety and comfort of the United States.
In the 1980s, Posada even crossed over into another US-backed terrorist organization, the Nicaraguan contras. After escaping from Venezuela, he was put to work in 1985 by Oliver North’s contra-support operation run out of Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council.
The Nicaraguan contras were, in effect, a narco-terrorist organization that partially funded its operations with proceeds from cocaine trafficking, a secret that the Reagan administration worked hard to conceal along with the contras’ record of murder, torture, rape and other crimes in Nicaragua. [See Parry’s Lost History.]
President Reagan joined, too, in fierce PR campaigns to discredit human rights investigators who documented massive atrocities by US allies in Central America in the 1980s – not only the contras, but also the state terrorism of the Salvadoran and Guatemalan security forces, which engaged in wholesale slaughters in villages considered sympathetic to leftist insurgents.
Generally, the major US news outlets treaded very carefully when allegations arose about terrorism by “our side.”
When some brave journalists, like New York Times correspondent Raymond Bonner, wrote about politically motivated killings of civilians in Central America, they faced organized retaliation by right-wing advocacy groups which often succeeded in damaging or destroying the reporters’ careers.
Double Standards
Eventually, the American press corps developed an engrained sense of the double standards. Moral outrage could be expressed when acts of terrorism were committed by US enemies, while studied silence – or nuanced concern – would be in order when the crimes were by US allies.
So, while the US news media had no doubt that the 9/11 terrorist attacks justified invading Afghanistan, there was very little US media criticism when President Bush inflicted his “shock and awe” assault on Iraq, a war that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths.
Though many Muslims and others around the world have denounced Bush’s Iraq invasion as “state terrorism,” such a charge would be considered far outside the mainstream in the United States. Instead, Iraqi insurgents are often labeled “terrorists” when they attack US troops inside Iraq. The word “terrorist” has become, in effect, a geopolitical curse word.
Despite the long and bloody history of US-Israeli participation in terrorism, the US news media continues its paradigm of pitting the US-Israeli “good guys” against the Islamic “bad guys.” One side has the moral high ground and the other is in the moral gutter. [For more on the US media’s one-sided approach, see the analysis by Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher.]
Any attempt to cite the larger, more ambiguous and more troubling picture draws accusations from defenders of US-Israeli actions, especially the neoconservatives, of what they call “moral equivalence” or “anti-Semitism.”
Yet it is now clear that acquiescence to a double standard on terrorism is not just a violation of journalistic ethics or an act of political cowardice; it is complicity in mass murder. Without the double standard, it is hard to envision how the bloodbaths – in Iraq (since 2003), in Lebanon (in 2006) and in Gaza (today) – would be possible.
Hypocrisy over the word “terrorism” is not an innocent dispute over semantics; it kills.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush , can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.
Israel, a nation that was born out of Zionist terrorism, has launched massive airstrikes against targets in Gaza using high-tech weapons produced by the United States, a country that often has aided and abetted terrorism by its client military forces, such as Chile’s Operation Condor and the Nicaraguan contras, and even today harbors right-wing Cuban terrorists implicated in blowing up a civilian airliner.
Yet, with that moral ambiguity excluded from the debate, the justification for the Israeli attacks, which have killed at least 364 people, is the righteous fight against “terrorism,” since Gaza is ruled by the militant Palestinian group, Hamas.
Hamas rose to power in January 2006 through Palestinian elections, which ironically the Bush administration had demanded. However, after Hamas won a parliamentary majority, Israel and the United States denounced the outcome because they deem Hamas a “terrorist organization.”
Hamas then wrested control of Gaza from Fatah, a rival group that once was considered “terrorist” but is now viewed as a US-Israeli partner, so it has been cleansed of the “terrorist” label.
Unwilling to negotiate seriously with Hamas because of its acts of terrorism – which have included firing indiscriminate short-range missiles into southern Israel – the United States and Israel sat back as the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza worsened, with 1.5 million impoverished Palestinians packed into what amounts to a giant open-air prison.
When Hamas ended a temporary cease-fire on Dec. 19 because of a lack of progress in those negotiations and began lobbing its little missiles into Israel once more, the Israeli government reacted on Saturday with its lethal “shock and awe” firepower – even though no Israelis had been killed by the post-cease-fire missiles launched from Gaza. [Since Saturday, four Israelis have died in more intensive Hamas missile attacks.]
Israel claimed that its smart bombs targeted sites related to the Hamas security forces, including a school for police cadets and even regular policemen walking down the street. But it soon became clear that Israel was taking an expansive view of what was part of the Hamas military infrastructure, with Israeli bombs taking out a television station and a university building as well as killing a significant number of civilians.
As the slaughter continued on Monday, Israeli officials confided to Western journalists that the war plan was to destroy the vast support network of social and other programs that undergird Hamas’s political clout.
“There are many aspects of Hamas, and we are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel,” a senior Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Washington Post.
“Hamas’s civilian infrastructure is a very, very sensitive target,” added Matti Steinberg, a former top adviser to Israel’s domestic security service. “If you want to put pressure on them, this is how.” [Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2008]
Since the classic definition of “terrorism” is the use of violence against civilians to achieve a political goal, Israel would seem to be inviting an objective analysis that it has chosen its own terrorist path. But it is clearly counting on the US news media to continue wearing the blinders that effectively limit condemnations about terrorism to people and groups that are regarded as Washington’s enemies.
Whose Terrorism?
As a Washington-based reporter for the Associated Press in the 1980s, I once questioned the seeming bias that the US-based wire service applied to its use of the word “terrorist” when covering Middle East issues. A senior AP executive responded to my concerns with a quip. “Terrorist is the word that follows Arab,” he said.
Though meant as a lighthearted riposte, the comment clearly had a great deal of truth to it. It was easy to attach “terrorist” to any Arab attack – even against a military target such as the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 after the Reagan administration had joined hostilities against Muslim forces by having US warships lob shells into Lebanese villages.
But it was understood that different rules on the use of the word "terrorism" applied when the terrorism was coming from “our side.” Then, no American reporter with any sense of career survival would think of injecting the word “terrorist” whatever the justification.
Even historical references to acts of terrorism – such as the brutal practice by American revolutionaries in the 1770s of “tar and feathering” civilians considered sympathetic to the British Crown or the extermination of American Indian tribes – were seen as somehow diluting the moral righteousness against today’s Islamic terrorists and in favor of George W. Bush's "war on terror."
Gone, too, from the historical narrative was the fact that militant Zionists employed terrorism as part of their campaign to establish Israel as a Jewish state. The terrorism included killings of British officials who were administering Palestine under an international mandate as well as Palestinians who were driven violently from their land so it could be claimed by Jewish settlers.
One of the most famous of those terrorist attacks was the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem where British officials were staying. The attack, which killed 91 people including local residents, was carried out by the Irgun, a terrorist group run by Menachem Begin who later founded the Likud Party and rose to be Israel’s prime minister.
Another veteran of the campaign of Zionist terrorism was Yitzhak Shamir, who also became a Likud leader and eventually prime minister.
In the early 1990s, as I was waiting to interview Shamir at his Tel Aviv office, I was approached by one of his young female assistants who was dressed in a gray and blue smock with a head covering in the traditional Hebrew style.
As we were chatting, she smiled and said in a lilting voice, “Prime Minister Shamir, he was a terrorist, you know.” I responded with a chuckle, “yes, I’m aware of the prime minister’s biography.”
Blind Spot
To maintain one’s moral purity in denouncing acts of terror by US enemies, one also needs a large blind spot for recent US history, which implicates US leaders repeatedly in tolerance or acts of terrorism.
For instance, in 1973, after a bloody US-backed coup overthrew the leftist Chilean government, the new regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet joined with other South American dictatorships to sponsor an international terrorist organization called Operation Condor which assassinated political dissidents around the world.
Operation Condor mounted one of its most audacious actions on the streets of Washington in 1976, when Pinochet’s regime recruited Cuban-American terrorists to detonate a car bomb that killed Chile’s former foreign minister Orlando Letelier and an American co-worker, Ronni Moffitt. The Chilean government's role immediately was covered up by the CIA, then headed by George H.W. Bush. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]
Only weeks later, a Venezuela-based team of right-wing Cubans – under the direction of Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles – blew a Cubana Airliner out of the sky, killing 73 people. Bosch and Posada, a former CIA operative, were co-founders of CORU, which was described by the FBI as “an anti-Castro terrorist umbrella organization.”
Though the US government soon learned of the role of Bosch and Posada in the Cubana airline attack – and the two men spent some time in a Venezuelan jail – both Bosch and Posada since have enjoyed the protection of the US government and particularly the Bush Family.
Rebuffing international demands that Bosch and Posada be held accountable for their crimes, the Bushes – George H.W., George W. and Jeb – have all had a hand in making sure these unrepentant terrorists get to live out their golden years in the safety and comfort of the United States.
In the 1980s, Posada even crossed over into another US-backed terrorist organization, the Nicaraguan contras. After escaping from Venezuela, he was put to work in 1985 by Oliver North’s contra-support operation run out of Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council.
The Nicaraguan contras were, in effect, a narco-terrorist organization that partially funded its operations with proceeds from cocaine trafficking, a secret that the Reagan administration worked hard to conceal along with the contras’ record of murder, torture, rape and other crimes in Nicaragua. [See Parry’s Lost History.]
President Reagan joined, too, in fierce PR campaigns to discredit human rights investigators who documented massive atrocities by US allies in Central America in the 1980s – not only the contras, but also the state terrorism of the Salvadoran and Guatemalan security forces, which engaged in wholesale slaughters in villages considered sympathetic to leftist insurgents.
Generally, the major US news outlets treaded very carefully when allegations arose about terrorism by “our side.”
When some brave journalists, like New York Times correspondent Raymond Bonner, wrote about politically motivated killings of civilians in Central America, they faced organized retaliation by right-wing advocacy groups which often succeeded in damaging or destroying the reporters’ careers.
Double Standards
Eventually, the American press corps developed an engrained sense of the double standards. Moral outrage could be expressed when acts of terrorism were committed by US enemies, while studied silence – or nuanced concern – would be in order when the crimes were by US allies.
So, while the US news media had no doubt that the 9/11 terrorist attacks justified invading Afghanistan, there was very little US media criticism when President Bush inflicted his “shock and awe” assault on Iraq, a war that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths.
Though many Muslims and others around the world have denounced Bush’s Iraq invasion as “state terrorism,” such a charge would be considered far outside the mainstream in the United States. Instead, Iraqi insurgents are often labeled “terrorists” when they attack US troops inside Iraq. The word “terrorist” has become, in effect, a geopolitical curse word.
Despite the long and bloody history of US-Israeli participation in terrorism, the US news media continues its paradigm of pitting the US-Israeli “good guys” against the Islamic “bad guys.” One side has the moral high ground and the other is in the moral gutter. [For more on the US media’s one-sided approach, see the analysis by Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher.]
Any attempt to cite the larger, more ambiguous and more troubling picture draws accusations from defenders of US-Israeli actions, especially the neoconservatives, of what they call “moral equivalence” or “anti-Semitism.”
Yet it is now clear that acquiescence to a double standard on terrorism is not just a violation of journalistic ethics or an act of political cowardice; it is complicity in mass murder. Without the double standard, it is hard to envision how the bloodbaths – in Iraq (since 2003), in Lebanon (in 2006) and in Gaza (today) – would be possible.
Hypocrisy over the word “terrorism” is not an innocent dispute over semantics; it kills.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush , can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.
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