"I'm glad that those people were idiots," he told Time magazine. "They looted the museum shop. Thank God they thought that the museum shop was the museum."
Would-be looters broke into Cairo's famed Egyptian Museum, ripping the heads off two mummies and damaging about 10 small artifacts before being caught and detained by army soldiers, Egypt's antiquities chief said Saturday.Zahi Hawass said the vandals did not manage to steal any of the museum's antiquities, and that the prized collection was now safe and under military guard.
Few would argue that the imminent collapse of the Mubarak regime (and other Middle East dictatorships) derives from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Neither Egyptians nor Tunisians are risking and losing their lives for Palestinians. They are doing it for themselves. They want freedom. But the hatred for America that the revolutionaries feel stems in large part from our support for the occupation and the regional dictators who help enable it. And that support stems entirely from the lobby's power to intimidate policymakers.
often accused of harping on the lobby's baleful influence. I plead guilty.
But it's my obligation because (1) I know from personal experience -- 15 years on Capitol Hill and four at AIPAC -- how it operates, (2) I know how little it really cares about Israel, and (3) I am free to tell the truth about it. If I worked in the mainstream media or in the U.S. government, I wouldn't be.
Another area where the lobby has done so much damage is in our relations with Iran.
AIPAC is dedicated to "crippling" sanctions and eventually war with Iran if sanctions don't bring down the regime. Later this spring, AIPAC will host its annual conference which will, as has been the case for a decade, feature mind-numbing warnings about the danger posed by an Iranian nuclear bomb.
Unfortunately for the lobby (and happily for everyone else), there probably won't be an Iranian bomb anytime soon, thanks to the Stuxnet worm which, somehow, the Israelis devised to rip the guts out of Iran's centrifuges.
Israeli officials say that any Iran bomb will be delayed for years and maybe forever. One would think that the lobby would be ecstatic, but it barely mentions the Stuxnet triumph. Why is that? Because it was never really worried about an Iranian bomb (especially since Israel has 200 nuclear weapons) but worried that a nuclear-armed Iran would challenge Israel's regional hegemony. (It's the same reason the lobby despises Turkey.) So the lobby pretends as though Stuxnet didn't happen. We need more "crippling sanctions" and then possibly war, they maintain.
is angry that Stuxnet removed his pretense for war. And that means Congress, pushed by AIPAC, will keep passing sanctions bills that punish not the Iranian regime but the Iranian people. And Iranians will always remember it and hold it against us.
"Mr. Falk endorses the slurs of conspiracy theorists who allege that the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were perpetrated and then covered up by the U.S. government and media.
Mr. Falk’s comments are despicable and deeply offensive, and I condemn them in the strongest terms. I have registered a strong protest with the UN on behalf of the United States. The United States has in the past been critical of Mr. Falk’s one-sided and politicized approach to his work for the UN, including his failure to condemn deliberate human rights abuses by Hamas, but these blog comments are in another category altogether.
In my view, Mr. Falk’s latest commentary is so noxious that it should finally be plain to all that he should no longer continue in his position on behalf of the UN."
Richard Falk, a retired professor from Princeton University, wrote on his blog that there had been an "apparent cover up" by American authorities. He added that most media were "unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events" on 9/11, despite it containing "gaps and contradictions". And he described David Ray Griffin, a conspiracy theorist highly regarded in the so-called "9/11 truth" movement, as a "scholar of high integrity" whose book on the subject was "authoritative".Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary-General, described the comments as "preposterous" and "an affront to the memory of the more than 3,000 people who died in the attack." But Mr Ban said that it was not for him to decide whether Prof Falk, who serves the organisation as a special investigator into human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories, should be fired by the UN. Vijay Nambiar, Mr Ban's chief of staff, said this was up to the human rights council, a 47-nation body based in Geneva, Switzerland, that was created by the UN in 2006.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the comments by Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, as "an affront" to the victims of the 2001 Al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington.
We don’t require WikiLeaks to remind us not to trust governments, even our own, and others that seem in most respects to be democratic and law-abiding. And we also by now should know that governments (ab)use their authority to treat awkward knowledge as a matter of state secrets, and criminalize those who are brave enough to believe that the citizenry needs to know the crimes that their government is committing with their trust and their tax dollars.
The arguments swirling around the 9/11 attacks are emblematic of these issues. What fuels suspicions of conspiracy is the reluctance to address the sort of awkward gaps and contradictions in the official explanations that David Ray Griffin(and other devoted scholars of high integrity) have been documenting in book after book ever since his authoritative The New Pearl Harbor in 2004 (updated in 2008). What may be more distressing than the apparent cover up is the eerie silence of the mainstream media, unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an al Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials. Is this silence a manifestation of fear or cooption, or part of an equally disturbing filter of self-censorship? Whatever it is, the result is the withering away of a participatory citizenry and the erosion of legitimate constitutional government. The forms persist, but the content is missing.
This brings me to the Arizona shootings...
"Although Falk's perspective differs important ways from some of us at Tikkun on the nature of Jewish identity, particularly to the extent that it depends on Shlomo Sand's research which many of us question, some agree with him, and others, not being Jewish, don't have strong opinions on the topic but agree with his general critique of ethno-nationalism."
AMY GOODMAN: One of those who disappeared but lived to tell her story is Patricia Isasa. She was only 16 in 1976, when she was kidnapped by police and soldiers, tortured and held prisoner without trial for two-and-a-half years. One of Patricia’s torturers was Domingo Marcelini. He’s a graduate of the School of the Americas.
A documentary about Patricia’s ordeal and her subsequent investigation to bring her torturers to justice premiered on Argentine television last May. It’s called El Cerco, and it features interviews with some of her torturers, who are now in prison awaiting trial. In the film, Patricia Isasa revisits the sites where she was held, and she describes her torture. This is an excerpt.
PATRICIA ISASA: I arrived here for the first time when I was 16 years old, July 30th at noon. They forced me through this hallway. This place was empty. First, they slammed me against the wall. They dragged me across the floor. They beat me. Then they tied my feet to my hands, which were already handcuffed. I was kept like this for one week. Two men appeared, and one of them told me that I had to talk. He said that the other guy was crazy and that I should talk for my own good. This crazy guy was Eduardo Ramos.
EDUARDO RAMOS: I entered the police force in 1973. While I was working for the police as an analyst, the government was overthrown. My job was to monitor terrorist groups in universities. Some people call it "going undercover."
PATRICIA ISASA: After two days, they took the hood off me. They gave me water, a lemon, and they took me to the bathroom. Then Ramos and the other guy came back playing good cop and bad cop. I was told that Ramos was going to kill me and that I’d better talk.
EDUARDO RAMOS: I was not a typical policeman. I was more of a secret agent than a regular cop.
PATRICIA ISASA: I was thrown here. Ramos gave me a warning. He was insinuating that I would be raped. He said, "Tell me if anyone touches you, because we are the only ones that can touch you." I was 16 years old. I couldn’t believe it. Ramos was telling me, "You are my property. If I want, I can rape you."
Ramos was a spy at this law school. He turned in a lot of students here while pretending he was a law student.
My next step was to reconstruct my captivity at Police Station #4, where I learned what it was like to be tortured. This was a camp for torture and extermination run by Mario Jose Facino in 1976. Over here. This is it. It’s this place and this here. It’s both of these. These are the places where they tortured us. We’re looking at them from the outside, but I’m convinced, I’m telling you.
No, I can’t talk. Look, this is it. This is the place. They were over here. On this floor and at this window. This is where I spent the worst days of my life, simple as that. This was stuck, but I managed to open it. And through here, you could see, as you can now, the school. I could manage to see the school. These cracks—if you excuse me—this was stuck. You couldn’t open it. But to be able to see the school, I could suspect what street I was on and where I was being held. After talking with other detainees, we figured out that we were being held at Police Station #4.
I never thought that I would be standing in front of the bench that I was locked to. It’s incredible. 20, 25 years have passed. The bench that I was locked to when I was 16 is still here, same as ever. No one came to look at this place. There’s a case in Spain, a case in Argentina, and a case in Santa Fe fifteen blocks away from here, and no one was capable of coming over to look at this. I have to be the one to show it to you.
This is where I had to force myself not to use the bathroom. I was sent to an absolutely filthy room to pee. This was the only place where you could drink a little bit of water, and it’s all still here. Everything is still here, because no one has been held accountable.
And there, you could clearly see the cells. They were three feet by four feet. You couldn’t even lay down inside the cell. This was the central area where they tortured us. In 1976, the man responsible for the torture was Facino.
MARIO FACINO: I was not involved in any repressive group or anything like that. I was the supervisor of Police Station #4 in Santa Fe. I had an important job. My job was to detain people, who at that time were called subversives. Subversive delinquents.
PATRICIA ISASA: They put a hood on my head and tied my wrists to a rickety old bed. First, I remember feeling something cold on my stomach, and then I felt it. I felt the first electric shock. You feel this burning pain. It’s a horrible thing. They also humiliated me. They were laughing at me. They ejaculated onto me. They were enjoying themselves.
MARIO FACINO: She says they tortured her there. She says that they would lift off her hood and rape her. I doubt all of it.
PATRICIA ISASA: I recognize this place. This is it. I won’t ever forget it. I mean, this was the floor, I’m totally sure. And I was here three days. The worst three days of my life.
MARIO FACINO: A minor detained for subversive activities. No, no. It’s a lie. The woman, Patricia Isasa, says that the police detained her and she knows who detained her and where. Why she says it was at Police Station #4, I don’t know. I honestly don’t. But I can’t recall whether we detained her or not. But if we look at her records, it has to be recorded, where she was detained, when she was detained, and who detained her.
VICTOR BRUSA: I started working at the federal court as a student. When the government was overthrown, I was an employee of the court. I was 27, 28 years old. As a secretary for the judge, I would take statements in the office of the police station. The head of the police station had us take statements. Nothing more!
PATRICIA ISASA: They would hit you. They would torture you. They would hound you. Then they would pick you up and open this door for you. You would go through this door. And whom would you find on the other side? Brusa. This man was on the other side of the door. He would be writing, and he would take out a sheet of paper. You would be all beaten up, bleeding, naked. He’d throw you some clothes, and then he’d say, "Here, sign this." Brusa!
After failing a recently implemented mandatory Army-wide "Spiritual Fitness" test, soldiers are given the following message on their computer screens:
"Spiritual fitness is an area of possible difficulty for you. You may lack a sense of meaning and purpose in your life. At times, it is hard for you to make sense of what is happening to you and others around you. You may not feel connected to something larger than yourself. You may question your beliefs, principles, and values. Nevertheless, who you are and what you do matter. There are things to do to provide more meaning and purpose in your life. Improving your spiritual fitness should be an important goal. Change is possible, and the relevant self-development training modules will be helpful. If you need further help, please do not hesitate to seek out help from the people you care about and trust -- strong people always do. Be patient in your development as it will take time to improve in this area. Still, persistence is key and you will improve here if you make this area a priority."
This mandatory online test, called the Global Assessment Tool (GAT), is part of the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) program, a program that puts spiritual fitness on par with physical and mental fitness.
Upon flunking the "Spiritual Fitness" section of the GAT, and receiving the above message telling them that "Change is possible" and that "you will improve here if you make this area a priority," the spiritually deficient soldiers are directed to training modules to correct this problem with their "fitness."
Subject: I Am A "Spiritual Fitness Failure" ......Before I tell you, Mr. Weinstein and the MRFF of my total outrage at the U.S. Army for grading me as a "Spiritual Fitness failure", I will tell you a few things about myself. My name is (name withheld) and I am an enlisted soldier with the rank of (rank withheld) in the United States Army stationed at Ft. (military installation withheld). I am in my early-to-mid twenties. I have been deployed downrange into Iraq and Afghanistan 6 times. I will deploy again for my 7th time very soon; to Afghanistan and more combat. All of my deployments have been very heavy combat assignments. I have been wounded 4 times including traumatic brain injury. I have earned the Combat Action Badge, the Bronze Star and multiple Purple Hearts. I have fought in hand-to hand- combat and killed and wounded more than a few "enemy combatants." M religion? I was born a Methodist and guess I still am one. I'm not very religious but consider myself to be a Christian. I don't go to chapel services that often although I go every now and then. I can't stand the chaplains as most of them are trying to always get me and my friends to "commit to Christ" and be far more religious as well as they try to get more and more soldiers to get more and more soldiers to be the same type of "committed Christian". I cannot count the number of times that these chaplains and my own chain of command has described this war we fight as a religious one against the Muslims and their "false, evil and violent" religion. I am a Christian and therefore neither an agnostic nor an atheist though many of my fellow soldiers are such. Now to the point. I, and everyone else who is enlisted in my company, was ORDERED by my Battalion Commander to take the GAT's Spiritual Fitness Test not very long ago. Let me make this CLEAR, we were all ORDERD to take it. After we did, our unit's First Sgt. individually asked us all how we did on the test. There was NO "anonymity" at all. None of us were ever told that we did NOT have to take this Spiritual Fitness Test nor that we did NOT have to tell our FIrst Sgt. what our results were. A bunch of us "failed" the SFT and when we told that to our First Sgt., per his disclosure order, he further ordered us to make immediate appointments with the chaplains so that we would not "kill ourselves on his watch". None of us wanted to do it but we were scared. None of us wanted to get in the shits with our First Sgt. who can and will make life miserable for anyone who might have said no to him. They keep saying that this is all to stop us soldiers from killing ourselves but THIS degrading SFT "failure" only makes it worse. Two of my battle buddies who I KNOW are thinking of ending it all were a million times worse off after failing this SFT and being called a "spiritual failure" and then ordered to go see the chaplains. I felt like a total coward for not standing up to my First Sgt. but I did what he told me to do. I was scared to tell him no. So I went to see the chaplain. When this chaplain told me that I failed the SFT because it was "Jesus' way of personally knocking on my door as an invitation for me to come to Him as a born again 'REAL' Christian" so that I could be saved and not burn forever in Hell for rejecting him, I thought of 3 things. First, I thought of the fact that I was already born a Christian and did not need to be born again. Second, I thought of my battle buddy (name and rank withheld) who took a bullet for me in his face during the Battle of (name of Iraqi battle withheld) and that he was the same kind of Christian as me and this chaplain is telling me that my battle buddy (name and rank withheld) is burning in hell for all time.
The issue emerged again in August last year when a 62-year-old woman, Jabryieh Abu Ghanas, considered to be active in the field of ''witchcraft'' and the production of ''voodoo dolls'', was shot dead in a street in the centre of Gaza. This murder caused great alarm in the Palestinian human rights defence organisations al-Mezan and PCHR-Gaza (Palestinian Center for Human Rights).
The Rabbi at Gabrielle Gifford's synagogue was interiewed [sic] excluseively by Ron Kall of OpEdNews. She claims that the Loughner family did not attend her Synagogue as had been reported by some. That claim was disputed as non reliable by skeptics though, who claim that the Jewish 'holy book' the Talmud allows Jews to lie and deceive. Giffords herself served on the Regional Board board of the Anti Defamation League in Arizona while she was in the state legislature, a fact that has received surprisingly scant attention in the aftermath of the shootings.
I think that the record presented here will be a sober reminder of what is really at stake when the public supports warmongering anti-life politicians such as Gabrielle Giffords.
Rather often we hear from Jews on the left that their affinity to humanitarian issues is driven by their ‘Jewish humanist heritage’. More than once I myself have commented that this is an utter lie. There is no such a Jewish heritage. [sic] Driven by tribal precepts, both Judaism and 'Jewish ideology' are devoid of universal ethics. If there are some remote patches of humanism in Jewish culture, these are certainly far from being universal. (Milton Friedman’s ‘Capitalism and the Jews’ Revisited 1/3/11)
For years Israelis and Zionists have been pumping 'Shoah' into our veins by using every possible propaganda outlet: media, education, Hollywood, music, literature, billboards and so on... (A) real Shoah is taking place in front of our eyes in Palestine, where the Jewish state locks millions of Palestinians behind bars: it starves them, it stops medical supplies, food, cement, and educational materials from getting in. But it does not stop there -- when the Jewish state feels like it, it also kills Palestinians indiscriminately. ("Shoah Backfires" 1/10/11)
'Jewish ideology' is basically an amalgam of racially orientated exclusive arguments. It is fuelled by assumptions about 'ethno'-centric supremacy, and ideas such as ‘choseness’. Being a tribal setting then, Jewish ideology defies equality. It also opposes universalism. The followers of that ideology tend to believe that they are somewhat different and even better (chosen) than non Jews. And much Jewish political activity is a formulation, and expression of a tribal exclusive club that demands a ‘Jews only’ entry card. ("JEWS, JUDAISM & JEWISHNESS" 12/15/10)
Though it is certain that there is no ethnic or racial continuum between the Biblical Israelites and the Khazarians who lead the Jewish state and its army, the similarities between the murderous enthusiasm described in Deuteronomy and the current string of Israeli lethal actions cannot be denied. Israel is a murderous society not because of any biological or racial lineage with its imaginary ‘forefathers’. Israel is deadly because it is driven by a fanatical tribal Jewish ideology and fueled by a psychotic merciless Biblical poisonous enthusiasm. The Jewish State is beyond the law. It doesn’t follow any recognised universal value system either. ("JEWISH IDEOLOGY AND WORLD PEACE" 6/7/10)
Within the discourse of Jewish politics and history there is no room for causality. There is no such a thing as a former and a latter. Within the Jewish tribal discourse every narrative starts to evolve when Jewish pain establishes itself. This obviously explains why Israelis and some Jews around the world can only think as far as ‘two state solution’ within the framework of 1967 borders. It also explains why for most Jews the history of the holocaust starts in the gas chambers or with the rise of the Nazis. I have hardly seen any Israelis or Jews attempt to understand the circumstances that led to the clear resentment of Europeans towards their Jewish neighbors in the 1920’s-40’s. ("JEWISH IDEOLOGY AND WORLD PEACE" 6/7/10)
(T)o safely apply the ‘Jew’ category, you just have to make sure you say the right things. No one will ever cause you any trouble for mentioning Albert Einstein in reference to Jewish intelligence or even bringing up Anne Frank as an exemplary motif of Jewish innocence but you may get into some serious trouble once you mention the following list of real and fictional characters: Bernie Madoff, Fagin, Wolfowitz, Lord Levy, Shylock, Alan Greenspan, Netanyahu and Nathan Rothschild without even identifying them as Jews. ("SYMBOLIC IDENTIFIERS AND JEWISH STEREOTYPES" 4/18/10)
Fagin is the ultimate plunderer, a child exploiter and usurer. Shylock is the blood-thirsty merchant. With Fagin and Shylock in mind Israeli barbarism and organ trafficking seem to be just other events in an endless hellish continuum. However, it is also obvious why the HET [British Holocaust Education Trust] is so thrilled by Anne Frank. On the face of it, and for obvious reasons, Frank is there to convey an image of innocence. And indeed not a single moral system could ever justify the ordeal this young girl went through along with many others. Yet, Anne Frank wasn’t exactly a literary genius. Her diary is not a valuable piece of literature. She wasn’t an exceptionally clever either. [sic] ("SYMBOLIC IDENTIFIERS AND JEWISH STEREOTYPES" 4/18/10)
Removing Fagin, Shylock and TS Eliot won’t stop the word ‘Jew’ from being an adjective and a negative descriptive emblem. For that to change, or for Jews to be genuinely respected, self-reflection is of the essence. Instead of pointing out what is so wrong with the Goyim, Jews may want to consider looking in the mirror. I tried it once many years ago. I have never recovered. It transformed me into a profound self-hater. ("SYMBOLIC IDENTIFIERS AND JEWISH STEREOTYPES" 4/18/10)
I have spent the last ten years elaborating on Jewish national ideology and tribal politics. During my journey of grasping what Zionism and Israel stand for, I came to realize that it is actually the Jewish left -- and Jewish Marxists in particular -- that provide us with an adequate glimpse into contemporary Jewish identity, tribal supremacy, marginal politics and tribalism. ‘Jewish left’ is basically an oxymoron. It is a contradiction in terms, because ‘Jewishness’ is a tribal ideology, whilst ‘the left’ are traditionally understood as aspiring to universalism...
(T)he ‘Jewish left’ is, at least categorically, no different from Israel or Zionism: after all, it is an attempt to form yet another ‘Jews only political club’. And as far as the Palestinian solidarity movement is concerned, its role is subject to a growing debate -- For on the one hand, one can see the political benefit of pointing at a very few ‘good Jews’, and emphasizing that there are Jews who ‘oppose Zionism as Jews’. Yet on the other hand, however, accepting the legitimacy of such a racially orientated political affair, is in itself, an acceptance of yet another form, or manifestation of Zionism, for Zionism claims that Jews are primarily Jewish, and had better operate politically as Jews.
To a certain extent then, it is clear that Jewish anti Zionism, is, in itself, still just another form of Zionism. ("ZIONIST TOLERANCE FOR A CHANGE" 10/29/10)
Jewish politics is always a form of Zionism. ("Jews, Jazz and Socialism" 10/22/10)
(P)lease look into protection for your family. An attempt on you could bring the republic down.
Lyndon LaRouche said today that the version of the story about the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Arizona on Saturday presented thus far is not believable. On the one hand, it is clear that the perpetrator who was apprehended is a nutty kid. On the other hand, the targeting of Sarah Palin is a tip off that the story is a fake and that someone is using the kid who carried out the shooting.
There is a widespread effort on the part of the press to attempt to make a hero out of a woman, Rep. Giffords, who had the wrong policy on health care. An attempt is being made to use the case to attack Sarah Palin, who had targeted Giffords and 19 other Congressmen for defeat in the last election because of their vote for Obama's Nazi health bill.
LaRouche said that this is a tip off that something is phony in the story being put forward now by people who support the Obama T-4 policy. Giffords was on the wrong side morally. The kid who shot her and others is clearly a nut, a psychotic. But his action is now being used to attack Sarah Palin, who did nothing wrong in targeting supporters, including Giffords, of the Obama health bill for defeat in the last election.
LaRouche said that anyone who attacks Sarah Palin is implicitly pro-Hitler.
(T)he press build up of the attack on Sarah Palin is a tipoff that something is phony, that the attack is being used to promote something else.
The attack itself is a criminal atrocity. Then you have what the press is doing as an official line. LaRouche said that what the press is doing in attacking Sarah Palin is as bad a crime as the crime itself. It is criminal to try to put blame on people who are anti-genocide. The events in Arizona were not caused by people who attacked a pro-genocide policy. The actions of a nut case are being used to build up a witchhunt against people who correctly oppose the murderous, genocide policy epitomized by the Obama T-4 policy.
In effect there are two crimes. First the crime against the Congresswoman and second the crime against Sarah Palin.
LaRouche said it is a toss up as to which is a worse crime. Somebody is trying to use a crime as an after the fact justification for a pro-genocide line. The attack on Sarah Palin is the fraud. The Congresswoman's support for Obama's health policy was wrong.
With Israel backing both Gifford and financing those threatening her also, an avenue of possible investigation may need to be opened.
