Sherwood Ross — The Rebel.org May 3, 2013

In a recent interview, Noam Chomsky said he never expected much of  President Obama, adding, ”The one thing that did surprise me is his attack on civil liberties. They go well beyond anything I would have anticipated, and they don’t seem easy to explain.”

Maybe the reasons for Obama’s transformation from a Chicago law professor into a world-class totalitarian thug is that he is a creature of the Central Intelligence Agency; that both his parents were CIA payrollers; that the CIA financed his college education and gave him his first job afterwards—-so that we may well have a president beholden to this international criminal organization, an agency that has left a trail of blood, turmoil, and assassinations around the globe.

According to the May 6th The New Yorker, when General James Cartwright, vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked at an Obama Situation Room meeting why the U.S. was building a second air force in the form of a CIA drone attack fleet, Obama told him, “The CIA gets what it wants.”

Continues …

Also see:

War with Iran: The Hidden Story the US Navy Does Not Want You to Know About

Over its storied history, the Washington Post has come to make a name for itself breaking earth-shattering news, like Watergate, and turning over stones to bear witness on the filth that crawls forth.

At it again, the Post and writer Jeff Stein recently published a piece in which a former United States Navy employee alleges government machinations and attempts to stir up heavy conflict with Iran. Gwenyth Todd, censured for her attempts to reveal the transgressions she witnessed, claims she acted to prevent an unnecessary war with Iran, instead ending up in a fight with her own government and in exile from her own country.

Simply put, Todd claims she was unfairly discharged from duty for blowing the whistle on a bloodthirsty superior intent on war and equally intent on keeping the State Department in the dark. But, as must be expected of a tale involving players high up in our country’s military, the web of intrigue cannot be put so simply.

From a family with a distinct and long line of public service, including her father the career diplomatic and her grandfather the assistant secretary of state in the Kennedy Administration, Gwenyth was probably destined for the path she took. First graduating Phi Beta Kappa in Near and Middle Eastern studies from the University of California at Berkeley, she went on to receive the Pentagon’s Civilian Service Award and eventually climbed her way up to working as a political adviser under contract to the United States Navy’s 5^th Fleet.

Also serving our country in the Navy at the time was Vice Adm. Kevin J. Cosgriff, a man of an even more impressive resume boasting three stars and the command of a cruiser and warship group. Whereas his predecessors had actively campaigned to avoid a stance that might induce war or the like – even instructing Todd to leak a story to Time in order to have a controversial and ostensibly war-seeking plan wiped – Cosgriff had no such scruples, according to Todd and a handful of Navy sources the Post couldn’t name.

In a series of staff meetings Cosgriff expressed his intention of sending two aircraft carriers, an amphibious helicopter assault carrier and five supporting warships through the Strait of Hormuz with no advance warning to Iran or even to U.S.’s allies in the region.

Retired Adm. David C. Nichols, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command at the time in discussion, noted in an interview last year that Costgriff’s superior, U.S. Central Command chief Adm. William J. Fallon, “wanted to do a freedom-of-navigation exercise in what Iran calls its territorial waters that we hadn’t done in a long time.”

Costgriff, though his plan eerily resembled the notorious Tonkin Gulf incident that precipitated bombing of Northern Vietnam and went on to leave 58,000 Americans dead, was not alone in his thinking. Even stronger evidence of the patently strong accord between Fallon and Costgriff was the general consensus that Post sources have espoused that Cosgriff would not have pursued such bold plans without his superior’s consent.

So when Cosgriff instructed Todd and her associates to withhold knowledge of the plan from the State Department, Cosgriff knew something was dreadfully amiss. She called a friend in the State Department. The resulting series of events concluded with a slap on Cosgriff’s wrist and his armada passing through the Strait peacefully after Cosgriff was forced to forewarn the U.S.’s allies in the region and after a critical conference with Iran had ended.

If you believe Todd and other Post sources, that was when her life began to resemble the plot of a Bourne movie.

First, Todd says the FBI showed up at her door to investigate her culpability in the crimes of the man who had fathered her child, Robert Cabelly. Todd says that when she began seeing Cabelly she was under the assumption that he had separated from his wife, a notion debunked around the same time she found out she was pregnant.

This child, their mutual interest, was likely the reason Cabelly later helped Todd land a job after she left her post at the White House, and also why he offered to give her $30,000 to cover the up-front cash guarantee Bahrain hospitals required of foreigners before emergency operations (her post was in Bahrain). For her past connection to Cabelly, Todd had her computers confiscated.

Next, Cosgriff sent Todd out on a dubious mission, one that was atypical for her position as well as based in contradictory evidence. She suspected the evidence the mission was predicated upon had been fabricated, but went along anyway.

Upon her return, Todd found herself locked out of the Navy facility, her swipe card malfunctioning. She talked her way past the guard and submitted a report on her mission. The next day, her access card still didn’t work, and an associate told her that “the front office” was very upset.

When she tried to call Cosgriff, an assistant told her that she needed to come in to explain herself. She was understandably terrified — she had merely performed a mission and submitted a report on it. Next, her computer access was discontinued, and her access cards were ordered to be returned. The clincher: she learned that her access cards had been shut down before she had embarked on the mission.

It might seem fairly easy to brush off Todd’s story as a conspiracy theory and not as the set-up job she would have you believe. That is, until she tells the part of the story where an FBI agent hunts her down in Australia, years after the fact, and attempts to deceive her of his identity in order to lure her into custody.

And, as the cherry on top, the part where the Navy justifies the severing of her contract based on “unreported foreign contacts” (she had none), “financial irresponsibility” (profligacy had never been an issue), and “the disclosure of classified information to unauthorized person” (she had detailed extensively to her superiors exactly what she knew of Cabelly’s illegal activities as well as everything she had let Cabelly in on).

A swirling head is the natural result of such an account. But the complexity of Todd’s story pales in comparison to the spider’s web of interests in the gulf as a whole. With Iran storming ahead with its nuclear program and Israel chomping at the bit to put a bomb-sized dent in Iran’s nuclear agenda, Obama must tread carefully.

Yet when the tempers of nuclear nations get hot and threaten to explode uncontrolled, it seems not altogether unreasonable to consider the same sort of plotting and deception occurring even under the watchful eye of a Nobel Peace Prize winner. It seems decidedly reasonable that U.S. forces would want to start an increasingly inevitable war on their own terms, and not at the whim of a cornered ally or an instable and unaccountable power.

With the election fast approaching and Romney breathing down Obama’s neck, the president might consider an attack on Iran beneficial not only to the national safety of both Israel and the U.S. but also as a boost to his chances of reelection. Cynical, yes, but this is politics, after all. If he were a half-decent politician, he’d be crossing his fingers that another Cosgriff is out there goading Iran into doing something stupid that could potentially justify an Israeli or American raid.

Source

Also see:

Why was a Navy adviser stripped of her career?

And essential viewing:

Untold Truths About the Planned War on Iran

President Barack Obama said on Thursday that he will not engage in any “chest beating” over Iran’s nuclear program, but plans to issue a “clear and direct” challenge to Tehran during his upcoming Middle East trip, according to sources familiar with his comments.

Obama said at a White House meeting with Jewish American leaders that he will still work toward a diplomatic resolution with Iran over its nuclear program, but repeated that no options are off the table, including military ones, one of the sources said.

The comments do not represent a change in the Obama administration’s thinking, but come as the president prepares to travel in two weeks to the region where he is expected to be pressed over Iran by the Israeli government.

Separately, Obama told the group that he will not unveil his own Mideast peace plan when in Israel, saying such a move would be “premature,” the sources said.

The sources said Obama told the participants that doesn’t mean the United States would not be in the middle of a “policy initiative” within the next year.

He told the group he was determined for a “just resolution” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but said he thought that the prospects were “bleak,” one participant told CNN.

While overseas, Obama will also visit the West Bank and Jordan, the White House said.

Obama was pressed at the meeting about why he didn’t use tougher rhetoric regarding Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes but the United States and other allies believe is intended for building a weapon.

Obama said he will work toward a diplomatic resolution and that he still intends to achieve one. He said he is not going to do something for “chest beating” just to show people he is tough, two sources said.

During the trip, Obama will issue what is called a “clear and direct” challenge to Iran and that he told the meeting “no options are off the table, including military options,” one participant told CNN.

Vice President Joe Biden earlier this week forcefully admonished any attempts by Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

“Big nations can’t bluff. And presidents of the United States cannot and do not bluff and President Barack Obama is not bluffing,” Biden told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington.

Obama reminded those at the White House meeting on Thursday that the Iranians are a proud people and to reach any agreement, the United States cannot humiliate them and needs to give them a way to back down.

He even quoted an old Chinese proverb about building a “golden bridge” for your opponent.

During the hour-long session, Obama said he had four aims for the trip: to underscore an iron clad commitment to Israel; to recognize that the bond is even more important with Mideast challenges becoming more prominent in Egypt, Syria and Iran; to directly challenge Iran on its nuclear ambitions and to work toward a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Obama indicated that he will criticize some of the past Palestinian moves on the peace process but also said he will challenge both sides not to undercut their opponents because there needs to be two strong players in order to reach a deal.

Separately, some of the two dozen people at the meeting had criticized the nomination of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel when it was made because of past comments and views on Israel. That issue was among those that defined Hagel’s politically charged Senate confirmation process. Hagel was not brought up at the session, the sources said.

The meeting, meant to preview the Mideast trip, was the first major session with such a large group of Jewish American leaders during Obama’s second term.

“The president reiterated America’s unshakeable support for Israel and thanked the leaders for (the) role they play in strengthening ties between the two nations. The president noted that the trip is not dedicated to resolving a specific policy issue, but is rather an opportunity to consult with the Israeli government about a broad range of issues — including Iran, Syria, the situation in the region, and the peace process,” a White House official told CNN.

Those in attendance included representatives of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, J Street and the National Jewish Democratic Council.

Also there were: Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, former congressmen Robert Wexler and Mel Levine, former ambassador Ron Lauder, Democratic strategist Steve Rabinowitz and Rabbi Marvin Heir, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, according to one of the sources.

Source

She was Washington’s 67th Secretary of State. She served from January 21, 2009 – February 1, 2013. She’s arguably America’s worst.

From 2001 – 2009, she was US Senator from New York. In 2008, she challenged Obama for the Democrat party’s presidential nomination.

Supporters urge her to run again in 2016. She’s noncommittal. When asked, she says “I am not thinking about anything like that right now.”

She also said she’ll “do everything (she) can to make sure that women compete at the highest levels, not only in the United States but around the world.”

Husband Bill urges her to run. Some suspect she already made her move.

With or without her support, a “Ready for Hillary” political action committee was formed. It’s raising money for 2016. Campaigning never ends. America’s electoral season is seamless.

Hillary for 2016 T-shirts are on sale. Friends of Hillary Facebook send regular messages. When launching her 2008 campaign, she said “I’m in to win.” Insiders say she hasn’t changed her mind. In 2016, she’ll be 69.

In December, she scored high in public approval. A Washington Post/ABC News poll showed 57% of Americans support her presidential ambitions. Over 80% of Democrats back her candidacy.

Two-thirds of US women do. Two-thirds of Americans give her high marks as America’s top diplomat. She scored higher than any previous Secretary of State in 20 years of polling.

In four years, she visited 112 countries. She traveled nearly a million miles. She self-promoted everywhere. She has larger than life ambitions.

She’s gone from State. She’s very much still involved. The New York Times profiled her. She’s “at the peak of her influence,” it said. She’s “an instant presidential front-runner.”

She’s got lots of time to pursue her goal. “We need a new architecture for this new world,” she says.

Obama exceeded the worst of George Bush. Clinton joined his war cabinet. She’s ideologically hardline. She was a Wellesley College Goldwater Girl. She was president of Wellesley’s Young Republicans.

She’s militantly pro-war. In the 1990s, she was very much part of husband Bill’s foreign policy team. As an aggressive first lady, she had lots of influence.

She was influential in getting Madeleine Albright appointed Secretary of State in 1997. They consulted with each other often.

In her memoirs, Albright described their relationship as an “unprecedented partnership.”

“I was once asked whether it was appropriate for the two of us to work together so closely,” she added. “I agreed that it was a departure from tradition.”

At Secretary of State, Clinton headed foreign policy. She’s complicit in crimes of war and against humanity. She represents the worst of imperial arrogance. She a reliable spear-carrier.

Her outbursts reflect bullying and bluster, not diplomacy. She’s contemptuous of rule of law principles. She scorns democracy. She’s committed to war, not peace.

She’s unabashedly hawkish. As first lady, she urged husband Bill to bomb Belgrade in 1999. She ignored international and constitutional law. She lied about Slobodan Milosevic.

“You cannot let this go on at the end of a century that has seen the major holocaust of our time,” she said. “What do we have NATO for if not to defend our way of life?”

For 78 days, NATO ravaged Yugoslavia. Nearly everything targeted was struck. Massive destruction and disruption followed. An estimated $100 billion in damage was inflicted. A humanitarian disaster resulted. Environmental contamination was extensive.

Large numbers were killed, injured or displaced. Two million people lost their livelihoods. Homes and communities were destroyed.

Nobel laureate Harold Pinter called NATO’s aggression “barbaric (and despicable), another blatant and brutal assertion of US power using NATO as its missile (to consolidate) American domination of Europe.”

Lawless aggression became humanitarian intervention. An avenue to Eurasia was opened. A permanent US military presence was established. American imperialism claimed another trophy.

Clinton’s unabashedly pro-war. She’s a war goddess. Straightaway post-9/11, she urged waging war on terror.

She said any nation lending Al Qaeda “aid and comfort will now face the wrath of our country. I’ll stand behind Bush for a long time to come.”

She supported annual defense (aka war) budgets. She voted for the Patriot Act and other police state legislation. She endorsed cluster bomb use in civilian areas and refugee camps.

She’s against banning land mines. She’s dismissive of human suffering. Wealth, power, privilege and dominance alone matter.

In 2005, she was one of only six Democrat senators opposed to blocking deployment of untested missile defense systems. They’re first-strike offensive weapons.

She supported restriction-free nuclear cooperation with Israel and other US allies violating NPT provisions. She endorsed nuclear weapons use in Afghanistan and Pakistan. She calls them deterrents that “keep the peace.”

She was one of the largest recipients of defense contractor cash. She backed war on Afghanistan and Iraq. She opposed a Democrat resolution. It would have required Bush to try diplomacy before launching war in 2003.

Her 2002 Senate speech supported war. She lied. She said “intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein rebuilt his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program.”

“He has given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members….It is clear that if left unchecked, (he’ll) continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”

“Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.”

“Now this much is undisputed.” What’s undisputed were her bald-faced lies. She repeated them ad nauseam as Secretary of State.

She supports the worst of Israeli lawlessness. At AIPAC’s 2008 convention, she said:

“The United States stands with Israel now and forever.”

We have shared interests….shared ideals….common values. I have a bedrock commitment to Israel’s security.”

(Against Islamic extremists), our two nations are fighting a shared threat.”

“I strongly support Israel’s right to self-defense (and) believe America should aid in that defense.”

“I am committed to making sure that Israel maintains a military edge to meet increasing threats.”

The only threats Israel faces are ones it invents.

“I am deeply concerned about the growing threat in Gaza (and) Hamas’ campaign of terror.”

She lied saying its charter “calls for the destruction of Israel.”

She lied again saying “Iran threatens to destroy Israel.”

She lied a third time, saying “I support calling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard what it is: a terrorist organization. It is imperative that we get both tough and smart about dealing with Iran before it is too late.”

She backs “massive retaliation” if Iran attacks Israel. In 2008, presidential aspirant Clinton said:

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m president, we will attack Iran. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

In other words, she threatened to murder 75 million people. Today it’s nearly 80 million. She’s extremist on all foreign policy issues. She favors police state harshness domestically.

She endorses outsized military budgets. She’s done nothing to contain nuclear proliferation. She supported Bush’s unilateral nuclear first-strike option, including against non-nuclear states.

She represents the worst of America’s dark side. She’s a war criminal multiple times over. She’s arguably America’s most shameless ever secretary of state.

She’s clearly the most brazen. Her language and attitude exceed the worst Cold War rhetoric.

Her take-no-prisoners thinking, character, and demagoguery tell all. She’s addicted to self-aggrandizement and diktat authority.

She relishes death, destruction, and war spoils.

She’s indifferent to human suffering. She’s a monument to wrong over right. She’s a disgrace and embarrassment to her country, position and humanity.

She may become America’s 45th president. Perhaps she won’t get a chance to try. Humanity may not survives its 44th. The fullness of time will tell.

Source

The first few hours of Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearing have been sickening. I thought he was named to be United States Secretary of Defense, not Israel’s defense. The most urgent questions were about Israel, and many came from liberal Democrats insisting that Hagel is pledged to going to war against Iran if it acquires a nuclear weapon.

Hagel was suitably craven. “I’ve said that I’m a strong supporter of Israel.. I’ve said that we have a special relationship with Israel… Ive never voted against Israel in my career… I’ve been to Israel many times,” he told Jack Reed of Rhode Island.

While Kirsten Gillibrand of New York made no bones about “the most urgent issues– Israel and Israel’s security issues… We are fundamentally tied to [Israel].” Then Gillibrand demanded that if there has to be a continuing resolution in the event of a budget crush, the Pentagon will take pains to keep money going to Israel for its Iron Dome missile defense.

Does she believe this or is this just now the religion of Washington?

Hagel repeatedly asserted that he regards Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Revolutionary Guard of Iran as terrorist organizations. He abandoned every bold stand he has taken on Israel. Roger Wicker of Mississippi said he was reversing himself for political expediency, and that a week after Hagel had told the Omaha World Herald that he opposed unilateral sanctions against Iran, he reversed that position in a letter to progressive Democrat Barbara Boxer.

But the most revealing part of the spectacle was watching Hagel stand up to John McCain when McCain said he had been wrong to oppose the Iraq surge in 2007 and the Afghanistan surge in 2009, and then watch Hagel fold pathetically when Lindsey Graham asked him to condemn Israeli settlements.

So: it was alright for Hagel to criticize the U.S. But not alright to criticize Israel.

Here’s Hagel’s spine with McCain 

“Do you stand by those comments?” McCain asked.

“I stand by them because I made them.”…

“I want to know if you were right or wrong.

“Im not giving you a yes or no answer. I think it’s far more complicated than that. I’ll defer that judgment to history.”

But when Graham the former military prosecutor badgered Hagel as though he were un-American when Hagel told Aaron David Miller that the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people on Capitol Hill and gets Congress to do “dumb” stuff, Hagel ate his words.

The critical moment in this exchange comes when Hagel refuses to say what dumb stuff the Congress did. In the Miller interview, he was surely referring to the license that the Congress gave to Israel to keep building settlements, savaging the two-state solution.

Graham: Name one person in your opinion who’s intimidated by the Jewish loby in the US Senate.

Hagel I don’t know…

Graham: I cant think of a more provocative thing to say about the relationship of the us and Israel… [Next, tell me one dumb thing Congress did because of the pressure.]

Hagel: I have already stated that I regret [the statement].

Graham: You can’t name one senator intimidated, give me one example of dumb things pressured to do… One thing!…

Hagel: Well I cant give you an example.

Graham: Do you agree with me that you shouldn’t have said that?

Hagel: Yes I agree with you.

But Hagel repeatedly criticized Israel for building settlements and wrecking the two state solution — back when. But not now. So, again, it is OK for Hagel to criticize the US troop increases in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he can’t say a word against settlements.

Graham drew more blood when he savaged Hagel for being one of four senators in 2001 to fail to sign a letter expressing solidarity with Israel during the Second Intifada and denouncing Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. .

“It was  a very big deal. At a very important time. The lack of signature from you sends chills up my spine. “ Graham said. `

Graham asked Hagel to reconsider the letter, to say whether he would tell the world at large and Israel that he had made a mistake in not signing. And Hagel said he would have a look at the letter.

Then Richard Blumenthal, the progressive Connecticut Senator, said he also wanted Hagel to reconsider that letter.

This hearing is a wonderful event because it demonstrates the power of the Israel lobby in our political life. But, you say, Lindsey Graham is a South Carolina senator; he is operating out of his nationalist understanding of imperial interest; the Israel lobby cannot also reach him? But I think it has. I think Zionism has so influenced the American discourse, via political money and thinktanks and columnists and editors, that it has folded Israel’s war against Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinians and Iran into our outlook on the Middle East. The conflation of American and Israeli interests has become an article of faith in the establishment. Graham is the latest example of a Scoop Jackson, the national security hawk/intellectual who has listened to neocons and merged the two nations’ futures. 

Now it’s the afternoon, and Hagel is walking away from his comment that Israel keeps Palestinians “caged up like animals.” He regrets that statement too. Pathetic.

Under fire from Republicans, Hagel ends marathon confirmation hearing

Tim Curry – NBC News Jan 31, 2013

Former Sen. Chuck Hagel, President Barack Obama’s choice to be secretary of defense, finished a day-long marathon confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday, enduring nearly eight hours of testy and skeptical questions from Republicans.

At the start of Thursday’s hearing, it seemed nearly certain that the Senate would vote to confirm Hagel. But the nominee labored at certain points during the day to clarify and explain his comments. Whether his occasional stumbles were serious enough to jeopardize his confirmation was not clear by the end of the testimony.

There are 55 senators in the Democratic caucus and 45 Senate Republicans, so if there’s no filibuster, Hagel would seem assured of confirmation. The last time the Senate rejected a Cabinet nominee was in 1989 when there was a Republican president and a Democratic-controlled Senate.

Republican senators confronted Hagel with quotations from statements he had made months or years ago – and sometimes he apologized for them or amended them.

Late in the day Sen. Mike Lee, R- Utah, asked Hagel whether he’d said in 2003 that Israel keeps Palestinians “caged up like animals” and whether he still believes that.

Continues …

The law that was used to prosecute Internet freedom activist and hacker Aaron Swartz could be amended in the near future — at least that’s what Democratic California Rep. Zoe Lofgren wants.

Lofgren posted on Reddit Tuesday evening a proposal to amend the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, under which Swartz was being charged.

“We should prevent what happened to Aaron from happening to other Internet users,” Lofgren wrote on her Reddit post.

Lofgren called her proposal “Aaron’s Law.” The core of Lofgren’s proposal is to make the violation of an online service’s user agreement (commonly referred to as “terms of service”) a non-criminal activity. She underscored the importance of reforming a law that dates back to 1986 and one that’s being harshly critiqued.

“The government was able to bring such disproportionate charges against Aaron because of the broad scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the wire fraud statute,” wrote Lofgren. “It looks like the government used the vague wording of those laws to claim that violating an online service’s user agreement or terms of service is a violation of the CFAA and the wire fraud statute.”

After Swartz’s death on Friday, his friends and supporters pointed fingers at what some consider his prosecutor’s overzealous behavior. Lawyer and prominent Internet thinker Lawrence Lessig likened the prosecution to “bullying.” Swartz was facing a maximum of 35 years in prison and up to $1 million in fines.

Marcia Hoffmann, a senior staff attorney for the digital rights advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, criticized the CFFA in a post published on Monday. The key to Swartz’s case, according to Hoffmann, was that the prosecution was accusing him of gaining unauthorized access to MIT’s network to download scholarly articles. The CFAA makes it a felony to access a computer network “without authorization” or in a manner that “exceeds authorized access.”

“Unfortunately, the law doesn’t clearly explain what a lack of ‘authorization’ actually means,” Hoffmann wrote in the post. “Creative prosecutors have taken advantage of this confusion to craft criminal charges that aren’t really about hacking a computer but instead target other behavior the prosecutors don’t like.”

But Lofgren’s proposal might not be enough to solve this issue. “It’s a great first step,” Hoffman told Forbes. “But if it’s trying to make sure what happened to Aaron can’t happen to someone else, it needs to do more.”

Tor Ekeland, a lawyer who has worked in the recent case of a hacker who published the email addresses of 114,000 iPad users, which AT&T left visible on a public website, agrees that an eventual reform to the CFAA needs to tackle this issue.

“Unauthorized access is nowhere defined in the [CFAA] and the case law is hopelessly confused on this point,” he wrote in Forbes. “The [CFAA] is a prosecutor’s wet dream and a defendant’s nightmare. Amending the definition of unauthorized access to exclude [terms of service] violations is just putting a band aid on a gaping, gushing wound.”

Lofgren’s draft hasn’t been introduced to the house yet — she posted it on Reddit to receive feedback and suggestions from the online community. So there’s a possibility that her actual proposal will address these issues. “Lofgren’s bill is a good start,” Lessig told TIME

Source

When Chuck Hagel was first considered for Secretary of Defense, a chorus of Zionist shills rose in protest.

These Neocons included Bill Kristol, in The Wall Street Journal, Jonathan S. Tobin and Alana Goodman of Commentary, Nathaniel Botwinick of National Review, etc.  

Senator Lindsey Graham and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell went on CNN and NBC to denounce Hagel. 

The Republican Jewish Coalition called Hagel’s nomination “a slap in the face for every American who is concerned about the safety of Israel.” 

Joseph Klein of  Front Page Magazine wrote an article entitled, “The Anti-War/Anti-Semitic Defense Chief.” Jonah Goldberg of the American Enterprise Institute denounced Hagel’s nomination as “a petty pick.”

Why? 

Continues …

Former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel’s chances of becoming the President Barack Obama’s defense secretary received a critical boost on Tuesday when two leading Senate Democrats said they had decided to vote to confirm him.

U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, and Senator Barbara Boxer, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Hagel had eased their concerns over Hagel’s positions on Israel, Iran and other issues.

“Based on several key assurances provided by Senator Hagel, I am currently prepared to vote for his confirmation,” Schumer said in an extensive statement. “I encourage my Senate colleagues who have shared my previous concerns to also support him.”

Critics including Republican legislators and conservative pro-Israel groups have sought to portray Hagel as anti-Israel and as someone who is not committed to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, accusations he strongly denies.

White House staffers arranged the 90-minute meeting between Schumer, a leading Jewish-American legislative voice, and Hagel, which took place at the White House and was kept secret until Schumer’s announcement.

Schumer was initially offered a telephone interview with Hagel, but Schumer said he would rather meet face-to-face. The New York Democrat called both Obama and Hagel on Tuesday morning to inform them that he was about to issue a statement announcing his support, a Democratic Senate aide said.

Boxer had held off announcing her support. On Tuesday, she said Hagel would have her vote – after they had a long conversation and he wrote her a letter spelling out his positions on Iran, Israel and the treatment of gays and women in the military.

“We spoke for quite a while last week and I was very pleased with that conversation,” Boxer told reporters on a conference call from California, her home state.

“I urge more of my colleagues to come out because from what I’ve seen is there seems to be a Republican push here to really go after Senator Hagel, which is really quite disturbing,” Boxer said.

A decorated Vietnam veteran who split from fellow Republicans by opposing the U.S.-led war against Iraq, Hagel was nominated by Obama on January 7 to replace outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

IRAN, ISRAEL, BUDGET

Republicans say that are concerned that Hagel opposes sanctions and is satisfied with containing Iran, as opposed to preventing it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. They also worry that Hagel would not prevent deep Pentagon budget cuts.

Some conservative senators have already declared their intention to vote against the former Nebraska senator.

Jim Inhofe, the top Republican on the new Senate Armed Services Committee, which will hold confirmation hearings, said he met with Hagel on Tuesday and opposes his nomination. He cited issues including Hagel’s refusing to sign a letter affirming solidarity with Israel in 2000, voting against extending sanctions on Iran in 2001 and support for nuclear disarmament.

“We are simply too philosophically opposed on the issues for me to support his nomination,” Inhofe said in a statement.

Schumer said Hagel rejected a strategy of containment for Iran. “Senator Hagel made a crystal-clear promise that he would do ‘whatever it takes’ to stop Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons, including the use of military force. He said his ‘top priority’ as Secretary of Defense would be the planning of military contingencies related to Iran.”

Hagel also promised to continue a program to deliver F-35 joint strike fighters to Israel, continue cooperation on Israel’s Iron Dome interceptor system and recommend that the United States refuse to join any NATO exercises if Turkey continues to insist that Israel be excluded from them.

The Armed Services committee will hold confirmation hearings at the end of the month or in early February, Senate aides said.

Republicans also criticized a 2006 reference by Hagel to the influence of the “Jewish lobby” in Washington. Hagel has acknowledged that he misspoke and his defenders say such concerns are overblown.

“He told me that if there’s one thing in his life that he’d like to take back, it’s that,” said Boxer, who served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with Hagel for 10 years and is Jewish.

Hagel has spent much of the past week calling and writing senators whose votes could be crucial for his confirmation.

Hagel met on Tuesday with newly elected Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, a new Democratic member of the Armed Services committee and close Obama ally. In a statement, Kaine said the discussion had been “positive and productive” and he looked forward to the next phase of the confirmation process.

Hagel is expected to garner votes from all 53 Senate Democrats and between 10 and 15 Republicans, according to one observer who has been counting votes.

(Additional reporting by Kim Dixon, Phil Stewart, Mark Hosenball and Tom Ferraro; editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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The moment when any colonial power begins to downsize its empire or pull back from foreign aggression generally brings with it the risk of great political instability at home.

Even so consummate statesman as French President Charles de Gaulle had to put down a military coup d’état by four rogue generals in Algiers in April 1961, including the threat that paratroopers loyal to colonialist fanatics would attempt to attack Paris.

This past Friday, President Obama announced that the US departure from Afghanistan would be faster and more complete than many had supposed. Fifty years after the Kennedy assassination, we must investigate the possible reaction of the enormous vested interests of the US military, defense contractors, and private military firms to the looming prospect of having the United States engaged in no major war for the first time since 2001.

Obama has also announced his candidates for three important posts: Senator John Kerry for Secretary of State, former Senator Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense, and John Brennan for head of the CIA. Press commentary has stressed that these three may all be considered confidants, loyalists, and retainers for Obama. Eric Holder, who will remain as Attorney General, fits the same description. Obama is trying to protect himself from hostile political forces, including Watergate-style attacks and subversion by the rogue network. On November 21, 2012, Obama sent a memorandum to executive departments and agencies calling for “effective insider threat programs within departments and agencies” to prevent “actions by employees who may represent a threat to national security.” “These threats encompass potential espionage, violent acts against the government or the nation, and unauthorized disclosure of classified information….” This could mean Wikileaks, or it could mean Seven Days in May.

Obama’s Drone Gang vs. the Neocon Big Battalions

The principal distinctions between Obama’s faction and the opposing group of more extreme warmongers would seem to be along the following lines: Obama represents a faction which wishes to avoid the large-scale commitment of US conventional military forces to foreign wars. This kind of costly conventional warfare is by contrast the stock in trade of the opposing forces who sometimes choose to speak through the neocons. Instead, the group above and behind Obama proposes the use of economic warfare and economic sanctions, color revolutions, coups, subversion, special forces raids, drone attacks, assassinations, and multilateral buck-passing or leading from behind – playing an ally or an enemy against an enemy in the hopes of destroying or weakening both, as with Obama’s current use of Turkey against Syria.

Brennan presides over Terror Tuesdays at the White House, when the drone death list for the week is compiled. John Kerry ran for president in 2004 promising not to end the Iraq war, but to fight it smarter – meaning along the lines now embraced by Obama in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan policy favored by Obama has been articulated by Joe Biden and also in the CIA’s Devine Plan – special forces, drones, occasional bombing, and espionage, with very few boots on the ground.

It is important not to nourish illusions in this regard. Chuck Hagel got elected to the Senate in Nebraska because his family had bought up the voting machines. Chuck Hagel voted for every appropriation benefiting Israel which came up during his career in the Senate. He feels that excessive groveling by US lawmakers at the feet of AIPAC is counterproductive for the Israelis themselves. Chuck Hagel dislikes unilateral sanctions because he regards any kind of unilateralism, so widely practiced during the Bush-Cheney years, as a recipe for failure. By contrast, Hagel is a strong supporter of multilateral sanctions against Iran, which he regards as far more effective. Only the most extreme right-wing Likudnik – of whom there are admittedly quite a few in Washington – could ever regard Hagel as anything but a friend of Israel.

Rogue Network Operations against Obama

Obama has received some brutal messages from the pro-war and pro-Wall Street Rogue Network or Invisible Government entrenched in the main executive agencies of the US federal government. Just after Obama had agreed to send 30,000 additional soldiers into Afghanistan as part of a last-chance surge demanded by neocons and Pentagon utopian strategists, the US intelligence community deliberately allowed Mutallab the underwear bomber to make his appearance in the skies over Detroit on Christmas morning, 2009. A few days later, the Obama administration signaled through MSNBC if they regarded this incident as an attempt to embarrass and box in the president – and then failed to follow up.

When Obama was running for a second term, the CIA high command and US Africom teamed up to orchestrate the murder of four US personnel, including one ambassador, in Benghazi, Libya. Here the intent was unquestionably an early October Surprise to get Mitt Romney, the candidate favored by neocons and warmongers, elected in Obama’s place.

Over the past few months, an unusually large number of military, political, and business careers have been abruptly terminated in the Washington corridors of power. Which of them were complicit in the pro-Romney putsch we do not know in many cases. The most famous victim of this process so far has been CIA Director and four-star general David Petraeus, who was ousted from Langley because of an alleged sex affair with his biographer, military intelligence colonel Paula Broadwell. Petraeus had long been known as George W. Bush’s favorite general, and had gone on to become the potential presidential candidate favored by many hard-core neocons, who saw in the general – the focus of a considerable personality cult among reactionaries — a vehicle for a return to power by the neocon faction.

Petraeus Helps the Kagans Penetrate the US Command in Afghanistan

On December 18, 2012, the Washington Post revealed that hard-core neocon warmongers Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute and Kimberly Kagan of the Institute for the Study of War (and not peace) had functioned as top level advisors to Petraeus in Afghanistan in 2010-2011, profoundly influencing strategy and at times worming their way into the military chain of command. The article depicted Petraeus as practically a part of the neocon faction, getting other advice from neocon Max Boot of the New York Council on Foreign Relations.

This article also shows how the Kagans had intrigued to become informal advisers to US General Stanley McChrystal in early 2010, even before Petraeus had taken over in Afghanistan. Obama later fired McChrystal when reports of scurrilous mockery and insults against the tenant of the White House and Vice President “Bite Me” Biden by McChrystal and his staff were published in Rolling Stone magazine on June 25, 2010. These were views most neocons shared. In retrospect, contempt for Obama must be considered endemic across the US military establishment.

Rupert Murdoch Wanted Petraeus in the White House

It has also been revealed that Petraeus was the presidential candidate most favored by the reactionary British Empire media baron Rupert Murdoch, whose propaganda channel Fox News is one of the loudest warmonger voices on the American scene. According to the London Daily Telegraph of December 4, 2012, Murdoch and his top US retainer Roger Ailes sent Petraeus a message in mid-2011 through Kathleen McFarland, a Fox correspondent.

Petraeus was told that the entire Murdoch media empire would be at his service for propaganda and fundraising if he chose to run for president. Interestingly, Murdoch and Ailes told Petraeus that, if he were offered the post of chairman of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, he should accept that post. But, Murdoch and Ailes recommended, if Petraeus were offered the post of CIA Director, he should turn it down. In the event, Petraeus was offered the job of CIA boss, and, contrary to this advice, he accepted it.

Obama’s 2011 Pick for Joint Chiefs Chair Stopped – by Murdoch and Petraeus?

Murdoch’s support of Petraeus to replace Bush 43 holdover Admiral Mike Mullen as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in mid-2011 throws new light on the massive intrigue surrounding that transition. Murdoch and the neocons wanted a ruthless warmonger, preferably Petraeus, to replace Mullen. According to the Washington Post of May 29, 2011, Obama’s preferred candidate was Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman James E. “Hoss” Cartwright of the Marines, a commander less fanatically devoted to escalation.

In previous months, a warmonger faction around Defense Secretary Robert Gates – a former Brzezinski protégé who had become an acolyte of the Bush CIA faction –, Mullen, and Petraeus had all been demanding a surge of 40,000 combat troops into Afghanistan. Cartwright had privately informed Obama that half as many additional troops would be sufficient. As a result, a campaign of malicious gossip and character assassination was unleashed against Cartwright inside the Pentagon. He was accused of a sexual relationship with a subordinate female officer, leading to the end of his marriage. Eternal warmonger John McCain was evidently active against Cartwright. The pusillanimous Cartwright twice declined to accept the promotion offered by Obama, and this made the more extreme warmongers stronger. In the end, Obama rejected Petraeus, whom he viewed as a dangerous rival for the White House in 2012, but had to accept Army General Martin E. Dempsey, who has apparently followed orders until now.

For and against A New Gulf of Tonkin Provocation

The threat of a new edition of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin crisis which helped start the escalation of the Vietnam War hangs heavily over Washington on the eve of the inauguration. On August 26, 2012 the Washington Post Magazine told the story of Gwyneth Todd, who had worked for Dick Cheney during the Bush 41 administration, in the Middle East Department of the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration, and who in spring 2007 found herself as a top political adviser to the United States Navy’s Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain.

Here warmonger Navy Vice Admiral Kevin J. Cosgriff, an ally of US Central command boss Admiral William J. “Fox” Fallon, another hawk, was in command. According to this account, Fallon and Cosgriff schemed to sabotage a US-Iran diplomatic meeting to be held in Baghdad, and perhaps to start a war in the process. Cosgriff wanted to send two aircraft carriers, an amphibious helicopter assault ship, and five other warships unannounced through the Straits of Hormuz in May 2007 – without informing the Pentagon, the State Department, or the National Security Council. The provocation in question may well be the one identified as “Operation Bite” by the present author in an article published on March 25, 2007. Gwyneth Todd says she helped defuse the crisis by warning a family friend at the State Department Iran desk, and the naval demonstration was ordered postponed. Cosgriff failed to derail the planned diplomatic meeting.

According to this account, Todd claims to have helped US naval commanders in the Gulf leak and block an earlier Bush Cheney plan for aggression, getting it published in Time Magazine. (This may have been related to the false flag provocation involving Iran about which Brzezinski warned the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 1, 2007.)

Dick Cheney has confessed in his memoirs that he was indeed campaigning for an attack against Syria in the spring of 2007, but says he did not find sufficient support in the Bush White House. This was soon followed by the rogue B-52 incident of August-September 2007, when a nuclear armed intercontinental bomber carrying six cruise missiles was essentially hijacked out of the control of the US Air Force by elements of the rogue network. The Air Force underwent a partial purge, but the real facts in the case have been assiduously covered up from public view. Fallon, for his part, claimed credit in Esquire Magazine in 2008 for preventing the Bush administration from starting a war with Iran. Fallon was then forced to retire from the service.

Other military leaders, politicians, and corporate executives whose careers have been suddenly terminated or blighted under various pretexts over recent months include: Marine General John R. Allen, who had been scheduled to take over as NATO commander in Brussels; General Carter Ham, commander of US Africom; Admiral James G. Stavridis, the current NATO commander; former US Africom commander General William E. “Kip” Ward; Lieutenant General Patrick J. O’Reilly, the director of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency; Rear Admiral Chuck Gaouette, commander of the USS Stennis carrier battle group; Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair, deputy commander of the 82nd Airborne Division; Commander Joseph E. Darlak, commanding officer of the frigate USS Vandegrifft plus three other officers, after a drunken orgy in the Russian port of Vladivostok; and Christopher E. Kubasik, president and Chief Operating Officer of Lockheed Martin Corp., usually the largest of all defense contractors.

To this list were added in late November two officers from the US Sixth Fleet, based in Naples-Gaeta; one is Navy Captain Ted Williams, commander of the USS Mount Whitney, an amphibious command ship. Foreign Policy magazine, citing a Navy press release, noted that Williams had been the executive officer (or number two in command) on the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower after his predecessor, Captain Robert Gamberg, was ousted on charges of an “improper relationship.” Also sacked was Commander Ray Hartman, skipper of the amphibious dock-landing ship USS Fort McHenry. How many were the crimes of Cupid, how many of Mammon, and how many of Mars?

The Fall of Tea Party Paymaster Jim Demint

On December 6, 2012, these victims of reversal of fortune were joined by the arch-reactionary Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, regarded in Washington as a political manager and disbursing agent for the right wing extremist Koch brothers. Using money from extremist donors, DeMint had tried to promote the election of tea party fanatics, but with little success.

It is common practice in Washington for a Senator or Congressman who causes problems for the System to be threatened with federal indictment as a means to force him out of politics. The indictment is almost always announced, even when it is not going to be carried out. Democratic Senator Robert Torricelli of New Jersey and Republican Congressman Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, both of whom talked too much about 9/11, are recent examples. Is this what happened behind the scenes to convince DeMint to quit the Senate for the Heritage Foundation? Had DeMint and his super-rich backers been implicated in the Benghazi or post-Benghazi attempt to install Romney?

The Gallup Poll, one of the oldest public opinion surveys, had diverged from the vast majority of other polls by consistently reporting Romney with a significant lead over Obama in the presidential contest. Now, the US federal government wants to impose heavy fines on Gallup for allegedly overcharging the government for certain public opinion polling Gallup had contracted to do for the feds. As the recent examples of Kiev, Ukraine in 2004 and Tiflis, Georgia a few years earlier suggest, a political faction which is planning to overturn an election either by vote fraud or by mob action needs very much to have a public opinion poll asserting that the insurgent candidate was really more popular. Had Gallup been in cahoots with Karl Rove and his ORCA operation against Obama?

The sagas of Petraeus, the Kagans, Paula Broadwell, Jill Kelley, Gwyneth Todd, and others should shock US public opinion because they show the outrageous cynicism, careerism, superficiality, greed, egotism, and corruption of the social process from which US strategic policy emerges. As was once rightly said of pre-war Britain’s pro-fascist Cliveden Set, after all their junkets, trysts, receptions, conferences, networking, publishing ventures, interviews, and intrigues, the result is always the same – the coffins of rural, Appalachian, and inner city poor – who often choose military service out of desperation – arriving at Dover Air Force Base. This corruption must end.

WT/HSN

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I would like the headline to be a statement but it has to be a question.

As I write it looks as though the Zionist lobby realises that it overplayed its hand in smearing Chuck Hagel in the hope of causing President Obama to back off nominating him for the post defense secretary. The implication is not that the lobby’s stooges in the Senate will refrain from giving Hagel a hard time at his confirmation hearing, but that they will not risk, at least for a while, further public exposure as Israel Firsters by causing the nomination to be rejected.

How much Obama himself is to be credited with outflanking the Zionist lobby on this occasion is a good question. There is certainly a case for saying that by authorising the leaking of Hagel’s name well in advance of the presidential nomination, Obama was deliberately provoking the Zionist lobby (and its neo-con associates) confident in the knowledge that there would be enough eminent and respected Americans, including some Jewish Americans, who would come forward to defend Hagel and rubbish the Zionist lobby’s smear campaign.

There were and Justin Raimondo put it this way. “When the ultra neo-cons of the Emergency Committee for Israel launched their propaganda offensive to cleanse the body politic of Hegelian revisionism, they took their campaign to ‘Criticize Hagel, Criticize Obama’ to such ridiculously vicious lengths that they inspired a vigorous pushback from the sort of people who had put up with their nonsense for too long: grizzled veterans of the diplomatic, political, and military corps who had sat in silence during the Bush years as the neo-cons played havoc with the country’s foreign policy.”

If as seems most likely Hagel is confirmed, it will be a defeat for the Zionist lobby, but how significant will that actually be? Will it be an indication that the lobby is beginning to lose its grip and, if it is, that we can look forward to a second-term Obama making best use of his greater freedom by doing whatever is necessary to get a real Middle East peace process going?

It all depends, I think, on why, really, Obama wanted the Republican Hagel as his top man in the Pentagon.

There are some who believe that Obama sees in Hagel a man who will assist him to put America’s own best interests first by ending the Zionist lobby’s control of policy for Israel-Palestine. In this way of interpreting Obama’s motivation, great attention is paid to one particular statement Hagel made when he was a senator and which, some like to believe, inspired the president to conclude that he, Hagel, was the best man for the job. This was Hagel’s statement:

“The political reality is that … the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here … I’ve always argued against some of the dumb things they do, because I don’t think it’s in the interest of Israel … I’m not an Israeli senator. I’m a United States senator. I support Israel, but my first interest is, I take an oath of office to the Constitution of the United States, not to a president, not to a party, not to Israel.”

But the prospect of having a much respected Republican ally for second-term effort to break free from the Zionist lobby’s controlling grip may not have been the main reason, or even a reason, for Obama’s decision to nominate Hagel. It could be that David Brooks hit the nail on the head in an op-ed analysis for the New York Times.

Under the headline Why Hagel Was Picked, Brooks opened up with this observation:

“Americans don’t particularly like government, but they do want government to subsidize their health care. They believe that health care spending improves their lives more than any other public good. In a Quinnipiac poll, typical of many others, Americans opposed any cuts to Medicare by a margin of 70 percent to 25 percent.”

Brooks then noted that the line tracing federal health care spending “looks like the slope of a jet taking off from LaGuardia,” and that Medicare spending “is set to nearly double over the next decade.” This, he added, is the crucial element driving all federal spending over the next few decades and pushing federal debt to about 250 percent of G.D.P. in 30 years. “There are no conceivable tax increases that can keep up with this spending rise.”

In my view what Brooks went on to say contains the key to real understanding of not only why Obama wanted Hagel, but also what we can and cannot expect from a second-term Obama presidency on policy for Israel-Palestine.

So far, Brooks noted, defense budgets have not been squeezed by the ever rising demand for expenditure on Medicare. (The military budget has more than doubled since 9/11). “But that is about to change.”

To set up his main argument Brooks drew off one advanced by Oswald Spengler, the German historian and philosopher (1880 – 1936) who wrote The Decline of the West. Spengler, Brooks said, “was certainly correct when he told European leaders that they could either be global military powers or pay for their welfare states, but they couldn’t do both.”

Brooks continued:

“Europeans, who are ahead of us in confronting that decision, have chosen welfare over global power. European nations can no longer perform many elemental tasks of moving troops and fighting. As late as the 1990s, Europeans were still spending 2.5 percent of G.D.P. on defense. Now that spending is closer to 1.5 percent, and, amid European malaise, it is bound to sink further.

“The United States will undergo a similar process. The current budget calls for a steep but possibly appropriate decline in defense spending, from 4.3 percent of G.D.P. to 3 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“As the federal government becomes a health care state, there will have to be a generation of defense cuts that overwhelm anything in recent history. Keep in mind how brutal the budget pressure is going to be. According to the Government Accountability Office, if we act on entitlements today, we will still have to cut federal spending by 32 percent and raise taxes by 46 percent over the next 75 years to meet current obligations. If we postpone action for another decade, then we have to cut all non-interest federal spending by 37 percent and raise all taxes by 54 percent.

“As this sort of crunch gradually tightens, Medicare will be the last to go. Spending on things like Head Start, scientific research and defense will go quicker. These spending cuts will transform America’s stature in the world, making us look a lot more like Europe today.

“Chuck Hagel has been nominated to supervise the beginning of this generation-long process of defense cutbacks. If a Democratic president is going to slash defense, he probably wants a Republican at the Pentagon to give him political cover, and he probably wants a decorated war hero to boot.”

For absolute clarity, “to boot” in the sentence above means “as well” or “also”. It does mean   that Hagel was selected for the prime purpose of assisting Obama to put the boot into the Zionist lobby!

The conclusion I think the Brooks analysis invites is this. Throughout of all his second term, Obama’s main focus will be on his legacy – “How will I be seen in history?” His priority will therefore be oversight management of America’s economy, to prevent it collapsing on his watch and possibly provoking at some point a revolution of rising discontent which could see America burning; and that is not going to allow Obama the time and the mind space to do what is necessary to cause (or try to cause) the Zionist state to be serious about peace on terms most Palestinians could just about accept.  I also think this is most likely to be the case even if in his head and his heart Obama would like to read the riot act to Israel.

My guess is that Obama will content himself with the thought that Israel is becoming more and more of a pariah state because of its own actions and that Zionism is on the road to self-destruction.

The alternative speculation, as outlined by Raimondo, is that it’s because of the Legacy Factor that Obama will make resolving the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel a top priority. Raimondo put it this way:

“The domestic economic situation is not going to improve much over the next four years, and I think the President knows that this will be an uphill battle. So where does that leave his legacy?

“Most Presidents move on the foreign policy front in their second terms, and this one will be no exception. And where this President is likely to make his move is where two of his Democratic predecessors tried, and failed, to make their respective marks, and that is in finally forging a lasting peace accord in the Middle East.”

It is, of course, true that if Obama became the peacemaker he would go down in history as not only a great president but, most probably, the greatest president in American history. But could that really be his legacy?

For the sake of discussion let’s assume that Obama can break the Zionist lobby’s iron grip on policy (an awesome assumption), and does become free to use the leverage any American president has to press Israel to be serious about peace on terms most Palestinians could just about accept, what then? Does it automatically follow that Zionism’s in-Israel leaders would say, “Okay, Mr. President, we’ll do what you want.”?

No! No! No!

In my view there is a very strong possibility, even a probability, that if a second-term President Obama did turn some real heat on Israel to back a demand that it end its defiance of international law and its occupation of the West Bank and its siege of the Gaza Strip, its leaders would say to him, “Go to hell!” There would also be a possibility that they would demonstrate their fury and teach him a lesson by creating some havoc in the region. What do I mean?

When President Carter worked with the Soviet Union to produce a joint superpower declaration of principles on the way to peace, all Arab governments and Arafat’s PLO agreed to co-operate, only Israel rejected this superpower initiative. Prime Minister Begin sent his foreign minister, General Moshe Dayan, to Washington for a conversation with Carter. Very shortly after it, the joint US-Soviet Declaration was torn up and replaced with a new memorandum of US-Israel understanding. What happened? Dayan said to Carter: “Mr. President, you must understand that my prime minister is mad. If you push him too far he could bomb the Arab oil wells.” (If Obama did put real pressure on Israel, it’s not impossible that Netanyahu would send his foreign minister to Washington to say to the president: “You must understand that my prime minister is crazy. If you push him too far he could bomb Iran.”)

Obama is not stupid. He knows that if he did seek to put real pressure on Israel, it could all go horribly wrong and leave him with a legacy that was not worth having.

For that reason I believe (I would love to be proved wrong by events) that there is almost no chance of a really serious and sustainable push for peace during Obama’s second term.

Back to my headline question. Hagel’s confirmation by the Senate will be a defeat for the Zionist lobby (and its non-Jewish neo-con associates), but whether or not it will be seen in the future as the beginning of a process that ended the lobby’s iron grip on policy for Israel-Palestine is a very big, open question.

There is, however, a sign, a very small one but still a sign, that such a process might (repeat might) be getting underway.

An important red line was crossed by those veterans of the diplomatic, political, and military establishments who dared to go public with their criticism and condemnation of the campaign by the Zionist lobby (and its neo-con associates) to demonize Hagel.

That crossing put the issue of America’s “special relationship” with Israel on the agenda for open debate. As Raimondo noted: “That has never happened before. The issue of Israel was always considered to be beyond debate, the most recent example of this uniformity of opinion being the last presidential debate between Obama and Romney in which the candidates spent a great deal of time competing with each other to see who could be more effusive in their undying support for the Jewish state.” (I do wish Raimondo and others would stop using the term “Jewish state”. How could it be that when one nearly one quarter of its citizens are Arab and mainly Muslim? Israel is a Zionist state).

In an op-ed for the New York Times, Roger Cohen was refreshingly honest about the need for debate. He wrote:

“President Obama’s decision to nominate Chuck Hagel, a maverick Republican with enough experience of war to loathe it, as his next secretary of defense is the right choice for many reasons, chief among them that it will provoke a serious debate on what constitutes real friendship toward Israel. That debate, which will unfold during Senate confirmation hearings, is much needed because Jewish leadership in the United States is often unrepresentative of the many American Jews who have moved on from the view that the only legitimate support of Israel is unquestioning support of Israel, and the only mark of friendship is uncritical embrace of a friend.”

If Jewish Americans in growing numbers end their silence on Israel’s behaviour (as a non-Jew I can say criminal behaviour) and participate in open debate, there will then be a real prospect of transforming the Zionist lobby’s temporary defeat into a permanent one.

Source

Israeli Finance Minister Dr. Yuval Steinitz parachuted into Washington Monday for two days of meetings focusing mainly on Iran. Steinitz’s main message to the Obama Administration: it’s time to give Iran an ultimatum.

“They need something in addition to the sanction and in addition to the statements” made thus far by President Obama, Steinitz told reporters over breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel. “They need a credible ultimate, a credible threat. They are waiting for something like this to happen.”

Steinitz’s visit comes the same day as Obama is expected to nominate former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to replace Leon Panetta at the Pentagon. Several conservative Jewish groups have come out against Hagel’s nomination over worries that Hagel, who opposed the war in Iraq, might be too dovish and could roll back Obama’s commitment to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Steinitz said the timing was purely coincidental – the meeting was a rain check from several months ago – and said “it is not our custom to interfere with democratic procedures of other countries.”

Still, he made it clear that Israel is impatient with the lack of progress on Iran, and that he would be pushing Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and other Administration officials to not only close certain loopholes in the sanctions against Iran but to take a stronger verbal stance on deadlines. “Of course, we would prefer… a diplomatic solution,” Steinitz said. “But sanctions with negotiation seems to be insufficient. Currently, they’re not in the mood of giving up their nuclear program. They’re exploiting the talks thus far in order to gain time to refine more uranium.”

Though Iran seems to have indicated an openness for bilateral talks with the U.S. and a renewal of the so-called P5+1 – the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany – process, little progress has been made since the U.S. elections as had been expected. A P5+1 meeting has been agreed to in January, though a date and venue have yet to be set. Meanwhile, only incremental headway was made in December negotiations between the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been seeking unfettered inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites, and Tehran.

When asked if the window for negotiations might be narrow given the approaching Iranian presidential elections in June, Steinitz scoffed. “It’s not like the Dalai Lama is running for president. The nuclear program was there long before [current Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad,” he said. “Whomever is president doesn’t matter, it is the determination and dedication of the religious leaders, of [Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali] Kamenei.”

Source

Iran’s Foreign Ministry says it is hopeful the appointment of former Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel to lead the Pentagon would improve relations between Tehran and the U.S.

Asked about Hagel’s nomination, ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Tuesday that Tehran was hopeful that there would be “practical changes” to U.S. foreign policy, and that nations would change their attitude towards the U.S. if it respected their rights.

Hagel was nominated Monday and faces tough confirmation hearings. Critics have said he is hostile toward Israel and soft on Iran.

Washington and Tehran have no diplomatic relations since 1979 when Iranian militants stormed the U.S embassy and took American diplomats hostages.

Tensions have spiked over America’s belief that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapon, a charge Iran denies.

Hagel’s nomination is causing jitters in Israel, on the other hand, where some view the former Nebraska senator as unsympathetic or even hostile.

Hagel’s positions on Israel’s two most pressing foreign policy issues — Iran’s nuclear program and relations with the Palestinians — appear to be at odds with the Israeli government, and critics here fear the appointment could increase pressure on the Jewish state to make unwanted concessions. The appointment could also signal further strains in what is already a cool relationship between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to win re-election later this month.

“Because of his statements in the past, and his stance toward Israel, we are worried,” Reuven Rivlin, the speaker of the Israeli parliament and a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, told The Associated Press. But, he added, the strategic partnership between the U.S. and Israel is strong and “one person doesn’t determine policy.”

Netanyahu’s office refused to comment on the appointment, as did officials in the Israeli foreign and defense ministries. But Rivlin’s comments reflected what has been a common sentiment among analysts and commentators here in recent days. In their evening news broadcasts, Israel’s three main TV stations on Monday all portrayed Hagel as cool toward Israel.

Known as a maverick in the Senate, Hagel has raised eyebrows in Israel with a series of comments and actions over the years that some here have deemed insufficiently supportive of the Jewish state.

Hagel once said “the Jewish lobby (in the United States) intimidates a lot of people here” and does some “dumb things” that aren’t “smart for Israel.” He also said that “I’m not an Israeli senator. I’m a United States senator.”

“I support Israel, but my first interest is I take an oath of office to the Constitution of the United States, not to a president, not to a party, not to Israel,” he said.

Six years ago, he refused to sign a letter pressing the European Union to declare the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla group a terrorist organization.

Hagel’s call in a bipartisan letter in 2009 for a `pragmatic’ approach toward Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that rules the Gaza Strip, has also drawn criticism. The letter called for engaging Hamas to moderate its behavior, though it said direct U.S. engagement “may not now be practical.” Critics, pointing to the letter, have accused Hagel of supporting dialogue with Hamas.

Source

President Barack Obama could announce former Republican senator Chuck Hagel as his pick for defense secretary as early as Monday, despite senior GOP figures raising questions over the seemingly imminent nomination.

Numerous media outlets cited unnamed White House and congressional aides as confirming that the former Nebraska senator would be named as the replacement for Leon Panetta, with a White House statement expected in the coming days. This would set up a confrontation with Hagel’s detractors in the Senate, many from his own party, who believe that he has only been lukewarm towards the US’s traditional ally in the Middle East, Israel. One senior Republican said on Sunday that it would be an “in-your-face” nomination by the president.

Hagel has also been criticised for comments he has made over the effectiveness of sanctions in dissuading Iran from pursuing its nuclear programme.

The appointment of Hagel would give Obama credibility regarding his expressed desire for a bipartisan cabinet. Many Republicans, however, are bracing for battle. On Sunday’s round of political talk shows, senior GOP figures went on the offensive.

“It is an incredibly controversial choice,” the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham told CNN’s State of the Union. “This is an in-your-face nomination by the president to all of us who are supportive of Israel.” Hagel has been.

The Senate’s top Republican, the minority leader Mitch McConnell, was more reserved in his comments. Speaking on ABC’s This Week, McConnell said Hagel “has certainly been outspoken” on foreign policy matters in the past. He added that if the nomination was made, he would want to see if the former Nebraska senator’s views “make sense for that particular job”.

The likely confirmation battle in the Senate comes after the Obama administration backed down from a similar fight over Susan Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations who had been Obama’s first pick to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Rice withdrew under a barrage of criticism from Republicans, regarding remarks she made in the aftermath of the assault on the US consulate in Benghazi in September that killed the ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens. The White House could face an equally tough battle over Hagel.

“The administration has a lot of work to do on Hagel. He is in a weaker position now than Rice ever was because Rice would have rallied Democrats behind her,” a Senate Democratic aide told Reuters. But Obama has already pressed the case.

“I’ve served with Chuck Hagel. I know him. He is a patriot. He is somebody who has done extraordinary work both in the United States Senate, somebody who served this country with valour in Vietnam,” the president told NBC’s Meet the Press last week.

Source

Last year president Barrack Hussien Obama appeared on the cover of New Yorker Magazine (wearing a yarmulke) as “The First Jewish President.”  This Reuters article reveals a very interesting piece of information regarding the organizer of this years White House Hanukkah celebration.  Chabad-Lubavitch is a sect within orthodox Judaism that is quite influential in Washinton D. C. to put it mildly.  For example, president Ronald Reagan in 1983 made the birthday of then Grand Rabbi of Chadad-Lubavitch (Menachen Mendel Schneerson) Education Day USA.   More recently, George W. Bush’s white house press secretary was Chabad-Lubavitch member Ari Fleischer. 

According to wikipedia (and many other sources) “Chabad Lubavitch Hasidim and many other Hasidic sects generally follow the rulings of Shneur Zalman of Liadi in the Shulchan Aruch HaRav.”   Here are just a few of Rabbi Zalman’s rulings as they appear in the Jewish magazine The New Republic May 4, 1992. 

“As for the goyim…Zalman’s attitude (was): ‘Gentile souls are of a completely different and inferior order. They are totally evil, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.’ 

“Consequently, references to gentiles in Rabbi Shneur Zalman’s teachings are invariably invidious. Their (non-Jews) material abundance derives from supernal refuse. Indeed, they themselves derive from refuse, which is why they are more numerous than the Jews, as the pieces of chaff outnumber the kernels…All Jews were innately good, all gentiles innately evil.

“…Moreover, this characterization of gentiles as being inherently evil, as being spiritually as well as biologically inferior to Jews, has not in any way been revised in later Habad writing.”

To be sure, only a minute percentage of people that call themselves jews fall into the category of Chabad-Lubavitch.  On the contrary, it shows the immense amount of power that a small sect within a sect can and does yield.  Michael Hoffman’s short but scholary video “The Chabad and The Empire” provides powerful truths about the “tail that wags the dog” in the United States of America. 

Hanukkah 2012: National Menorah Lighting Near White House Features US Navy Band

Reuters – Dec 9, 2012

The National Menorah was lit near the White House on Sunday for Hanukkah, in a celebration that features the U.S. Navy Band and is one of the most high-profile events in the country to mark the Jewish holiday.

The eight-day Hanukkah celebration, also known as the Festival of Lights, starts at sundown on Saturday.

The lighting of the National Menorah in Washington, on the Ellipse near the White House, dates back to 1979 when then-President Jimmy Carter participated in the ceremony at nearby Lafayette Park.

The event is organized by the Chabad-Lubavitch movement of Hasidic Judaism, and will include a performance by the U.S. Navy Band and servings of hot potato pancakes, or latkes, and doughnuts.

The lighting of the National Menorah will take place at 4 p.m. on Sunday.

President Barack Obama said on Friday in a statement that Hanukkah was “a time to celebrate the faith and customs of the Jewish people” but also “an opportunity for people of all faiths to recognize the common aspirations we share.”

Obama and his family presided over the lighting of the National Christmas Tree on Thursday near the White House.

Jewish communities across the United States are set to celebrate Hanukkah with a variety of public events.

In New York, the third night of the Festival of Lights will be the occasion for a unique party, in the form of a Hanukkah on Ice event on Monday at Trump Wollman Rink in Central Park, where participants will strap on their skates, eat free kosher food and listen to Jewish music.

In Los Angeles, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will participate in the lighting of a 15-foot menorah at an entertainment district in the city on Sunday evening.

Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the 2nd century BC victory of Judah Maccabee and his followers in a guerrilla revolt in ancient Judea against armies of the Seleucid Empire.

The Menorah is a key part of the festival, because according to Jewish tradition, the Maccabees found only enough ritually pure oil to light a ceremonial lamp in the temple in Jerusalem for one day, but the oil burned for eight days.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Greg McCune and Peter Cooney)

Source

]]> http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?feed=rss2&p=62066 3 http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=60819 http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=60819#comments Sun, 25 Nov 2012 10:46:19 +0000 wmw_admin http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=60819 Gordon Duff – Press TV Nov 25, 2012

Seventy hours ago, at this writing, while on Air Force One, President Barack Obama issued a press release that has been utterly ignored by the Western Press.

The president has openly announced a move against violent plotters inside the US government and espionage agents. He does not use the terms “AIPAC” or “the Israel lobby” but it is highly unlikely he could be referring to anything else.

In fact, we can think of no other group.

I was privately briefed on some of the reasons behind this document. On what is known, not “surmised,” I will explain:

There is, currently, within the US military, the Executive branch of government and among extremist “power brokers” in America an active plot to “alter” America’s form of government through “decapitation.”

Let me be clear. Where the memo, printed in full below, refers to “violent”, it means “assassination” of many top leaders in America including but not limited to the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense and others.

The plot makes use of the resources of major private defense contractors and their intelligence and special operations personnel. There has been active recruiting that has been noted and is why the memo was released and why many members of the military have been subjected to investigation.

The Benghazi attack was planned and financed by this group.

Many writers in the alternative media have noted much of what is going on but not all. Some have shown access to very knowledgeable sources.

Behind the plotters are drug cartels that have penetrated the US government, former lobbyists who were moved into government during the Bush (43) administration and now are suspected of being involved in a coup attempt.

There is no direct evidence tying any foreign government to this plot though most are “fanatically” aligned with the militant Likudists in Israel under Netanyahu’s regime.

The President’s text below, unedited:

The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
November 21, 2012

Presidential Memorandum — National Insider Threat Policy and Minimum Standards for Executive Branch Insider Threat Programs

Memorandum for the heads of executive departments and agencies

Subject: National Insider Threat Policy and Minimum Standards for Executive Branch Insider Threat Programs

This Presidential Memorandum transmits the National Insider Threat Policy and Minimum Standards for Executive Branch Insider Threat Programs (Minimum Standards) to provide direction and guidance to promote the development of effective insider threat programs within departments and agencies to deter, detect, and mitigate actions by employees who may represent a threat to national security. These threats encompass potential espionage, violent acts against the Government or the Nation, and unauthorized disclosure of classified information, including the vast amounts of classified data available on interconnected United States Government computer networks and systems.

The Minimum Standards provide departments and agencies with the minimum elements necessary to establish effective insider threat programs. These elements include the capability to gather, integrate, and centrally analyze and respond to key threat-related information; monitor employee use of classified networks; provide the workforce with insider threat awareness training; and protect the civil liberties and privacy of all personnel.

The resulting insider threat capabilities will strengthen the protection of classified information across the executive branch and reinforce our defenses against both adversaries and insiders who misuse their access and endanger our national security.

Barack Obama

A very real threat to world stability

To some, at a glance, this might actually sound like a response to leaks within the CIA and White House except for some extraordinary language. Please make very special note of the following:

“…to deter, detect and mitigate actions by employees who may present a threat to national security…These threats include…violent acts against the Government and the Nation…”

Please note that they refer to “violent acts” and speak of both the “government” and “nation.”

By “government,” they are indicting, with no “wiggle room,” assassination plots.

By “nation,” they may well be referring to false flag terrorism that may well include use of weapons of mass destruction.

Britain was subject to such a threat during the London Olympics, one that would never have been successfully overcome without the help of journalists who put themselves at great risk.

Espionage

The US government has had a twelve-year moratorium against arrest and prosecution of spies within our government and military other than those who can be tied to China.

The most famous Chinese “spy” was Wen Lee Ho, a nuclear scientist at Los Alamos Labs. He was arrested in 1999, held in solitary confinement for a year and then released.

In order to get an accurate picture I phoned two friends, one a senior FBI counter-intelligence operative and the other a very senior US Army intelligence officer.

The question I put before them, while eating breakfast, was:

“Please list the nations that represent the greatest threat of espionage against the United States and, which nations, in order, are believed to represent the “penetration threat” that President Obama is referring to.”

From the FBI, their appraisal not intended for the “pop culture” media:

“Our greatest direct threat is Israel and the Israel lobby. They have systematically penetrated every aspect of government and the military and, if they cannot get documents from those branches, friends in congress will give them access to anything that branch has available.

After that is India, with every research facility at risk from RAW (Indian Intelligence) penetration and then Cuba, Mexico and Turkey.

The primary end users of this intelligence, the “clients,” are Russia and China.”

From the US Army:

“I agree with Israel and the rest but we have not had Turkey on our radar. The obvious end users are, of course, Russia and China based on capability.

The issue I have is how a presidential press release, an extraordinary and almost “draconian” document has gone without an uproar from congress and wide press coverage. Who has the power to suppress reporting on something like this, though, I know that you will say it is Israel, I would want proof.

Though there has been no official notification of this, I am of the impression that we now consider any mention of Israeli spying to be highly classified. Only Russia and China are officially listed, entirely out of concern not to offend lobbyists whose feelings outweigh real issues of national security.”

Then I turn on my television, hour after hour of TV shows about espionage and terrorism. Both American and British TV are the same.

All spies are from Iran and Pakistan; nations that our actual intelligence agencies indicate represent no espionage threat to speak of.

In fact, in my two Saturday morning phone interviews, which can, of course, be confirmed by Homeland Security who has tapped my phones, I have reflected with great accuracy.

Thus, we ask you to read what President Obama really did not say “between the lines,” the message is quite clear.

We do not see a roundup of AIPAC spies, not like in the early days of the Bush administration although Attorney General John Ashcroft quashed that investigation.

What we are seeing is a hunt for traitors within the American government and military, some of which is working its way onto the news.

The question of the moment, however, is this:

How can a President of the United States announce that the government is infiltrated with terrorists and spies and no newspaper, television network or other form of media notices?

GD/JR/IS

Source

General Petraeus with his own Mata Hari. Click to enlarge

Sometimes, generals purge politicians. In 1648, during the English Civil War, Colonel Pride and his troops removed those members of the Long Parliament who opposed military domination; the puppets who remained were called the Rump Parliament.

This year, a cabal of generals evidently believed it could secure the White House for Mitt Romney by staging the Benghazi incident and using it as the signal for a cold coup under cover of elections — probably including computer-generated election fraud — to bring down Obama. They guessed wrong.

Politicians sometimes purge generals. When the French Secret Army Organization (OAS) staged a putsch in Algiers in April 1961 to prevent the independence of Algeria, President de Gaulle had to round up and jail a number of generals and other officers. The Obama administration and its establishment controllers appear to be ousting a number of intelligence and military officials who took part in illegal operations to replace Obama with Romney. These sackings are being presented to the public under the guise of soap opera sexual infractions or expense account padding, in the hope of hiding some real mechanisms of power from the popular gaze. The outgoing US military cabal favors the extension of colonial wars, like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as an attack on Iran. Good riddance.

General Petraeus: Neocon Who Sought War with Iran

The most spectacular example is the fall of General David Petraeus, the CIA director, and one of the leading US advocates of an early war with Iran. The heads of several other rogue figures are rolling. The result is one of those rare moments when parts of the rogue network or invisible government can be observed by those who have enough knowledge to understand what they are seeing. But the firings have only scratched the surface.

The Romney backers were made up of neocons, Bush holdovers, and members of the Mormon Mafia in the intelligence community — a relatively narrow base. The Obama supporters were the Brzezinski-Nye soft power group and military opposed to the Iran war. The neocons and reactionary Mormons wanted to restore aggressive war and wholesale bombing as the preferred option for US foreign policy. Although they love drones and assassinations, they want to keep significant US conventional forces in the Middle East.

The pro-Obama group wants to avoid large conventional commitments. They want to rely on cyber-warfare, drones, assassinations, bombing, raids by special forces, and economic warfare in the form of trade sanctions and technology embargoes. When they want to destroy a country like Syria, they do not favor direct US invasion or bombing, but rather seek to use proxies like Turkey and the al-Qaeda patsy network to get the double benefit of weakening both ally and enemy. Above all, they love color revolutions and soft-power subversion.

Benghazi, September 11: CIA assets kill US envoy while CIA team is ordered to stand down and other CIA assets fail to intervene.

The Benghazi consulate was prevalently a CIA post, with significant military capabilities. Ambassador Stevens had strong CIA connections and served as a liaison with the al-Qaeda-linked terrorists of the Benghazi-Derna-Tobruk corridor, whom the CIA is using for the attack on Syria. His last conversation with a Turkish diplomat was evidently a discussion on this topic.

Stevens and others thought they had nothing to fear because their relations with the Islamist fighters were so cordial. The attack that killed Stevens was carried out by forces under the control of Sufiyan Qumu (also Kumu or Gumu), who had been held in Guantanamo for several years and released as a CIA asset for the overthrow of Gaddafi. A significant group of CIA paramilitaries stationed nearby was ordered to stand down by the CIA command structure.

Another CIA asset, the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, which had in the summer of 2011 assassinated General Younes in order to help the CIA operative General Hifter to take control of the rebel army, had contracted to provide additional security, but also did not intervene. General Petraeus went to the movies that night. On September 14, Petraeus told the House Intelligence committee that the Benghazi incident had been spontaneous, a demonstration gone violent.

This is the line which Susan Rice mouthed on television in mid-September. (She should be fired for other reasons.) The Obama administration was in any case eager to hide the fact that it had turned Libya over to al-Qaeda. The goal of Benghazi was an early October surprise to Carterize Obama, and the CIA was commanded by Petraeus.

Petraeus arrived at the CIA on September 6, 2011. Within a month, a new provocation was launched against Iran in the form of absurd accusations that members of the Quds Force were plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, DC. Intelligence community conduit David Ignatius wrote at the time that a big reason the implausible plot story gained credibility was the “fact the CIA [meaning Petraeus] and other intelligence agencies gathered information corroborating the informants’ juicy allegations” implicating the Quds Force and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

In reality, the patsies involved came from the Drug Enforcement Administration and/or the Mujaheddin e-Khalq (MEK), an anti-Iranian terrorist force maintained by the US in Iraq. The MEK has now been rewarded by being removed from the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. (David Ignatius, “Those Keystone Iranians: Why Such a Crude at Assassination Plot?, Washington Post, October 12, 2011) The goal of the operation was to abort possible diplomatic solutions to tensions between NATO and Iran.

In Washington, the neocon Petraeus was always considered as General Betray-US, Bush’s warlord and the key front man for the Iraq surge. He was the darling of the civilian chickenhawk neocons, who saw in him a presidential vehicle to return to power after the debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq. Petraeus’ neocon sherpas were Frederick Kagan and Max Boot, who also helped him to refurbish his image concerning Israel. Obama was always afraid that Petraeus would run for president, and when Romney took the nomination, feared that Petraeus might be a candidate for vice president.

Like General George Marshall on the evening of December 6, 1941 — who stayed conveniently out of the loop under various pretexts because he wanted the Pearl Harbor attack to occur as a means of damaging President Roosevelt — Petraeus was at the movies during the Benghazi attack, attending a private screening at the Canadian Embassy of the movie Argo with Ben Afflek, which deals with a 1979 covert CIA operation in Tehran.

The Night of the Long Knives

The hatred of key members of the US officer corps for Obama was illustrated through the comments of Petraeus’ friend, the warmonger General Stanley McChrystal, who was ousted in June 2010. In addition to Petraeus, the following officers are also either sacked or the object of scandals or investigations:

Marine General John R. Allen is in trouble. Currently the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, Allen had been slated to take over from Admiral Stavridis as NATO Supreme Commander, but Obama has now put this nomination on hold. Allen is accused of having an improper relationship with the Tampa, Florida hostess and socialite Jill Kelley, originally of the Lebanese Khawam family. Mrs. Kelley had insinuated herself into the social circle of generals at McDill Air Force Base, the location of the US Central command. Allen and Petraeus both wrote letters to a judge supporting Kelley’s twin sister in a child custody fight. According to some accounts, Allen sent either 30,000 pages or 30,000 e-mails to Kelly over a few years. Allen denies wrongdoing, but the handwriting is on the wall.

General Carter Ham, commander of US Africom, whose area of responsibility includes Libya, manifestly failed to send forces to stop the attack on the Benghazi consulate and CIA post. Panetta announced on October 18 that Ham was being replaced. The official line is that Ham decided to retire of his own volition. There were many days of confusion in Washington about his leaving.

Admiral James G. Stavridis, the outgoing NATO Supreme Commander, has been officially reprimanded by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus for lavish spending on his personal lifestyle, including a junket to a wine dinner in France. He will soon leave his post.

General William E. “Kip” Ward, who commanded US Africom from October 2007 to March 2011, presided over the preparation and launching of the attack on Libya. On the surface, Ward is accused of spending several hundred thousand dollars of government money and resources on family members, luxury junkets, and flights. He had been under investigation for a year and a half, but it was announced on November 13 that he would be fined $82,000 and demoted from full general to lieutenant general, reducing his pension.

Lieutenant General Patrick J. O’Reilly, the Director of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, has also been reprimanded by the Defense Department’s Inspector General for intimidating and humiliating subordinates, thus creating a work environment characterized by one subordinate as “management by blowtorch and pliers.” (Washington Post, November 15, 2012) O’Reilly is being ousted from his post before the conclusion of the usual four year tenure, and demoted to major general. His departure was deplored on the floor of Congress by Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, a reactionary and racist Republican.

Rear Admiral Chuck Gaouette was the commander of the USS Stennis carrier battle group, currently stationed in the Arabian Sea, near Iran and other possible targets for aggression and/or Gulf of Tonkin provocations. Gaouette is currently being investigated for “inappropriate leadership judgment” while on station in the Middle East.

Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair, second in command of the 82nd Airborne Division stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and a key man for Afghanistan logistics, is accused of raping and having an adulterous affair with a female captain he had gotten transferred to his command. The prosecution has already sabotaged its own case, raising the chances that the case will be thrown out of court, while charges of pornography and alcoholism on duty may have been invented, pointing once again to a political motive. Press accounts feature Sinclair’s assertion, “I’m a general. I’ll do whatever the [expletive] I want.”

Commander Joseph E. Darlak, commanding officer of the frigate USS Vandegrifft and two other senior officers having been removed after a drunken orgy during a visit to the port of Vladivostok, Russia. Details are sketchy, but the goal of the escapade might well have been a provocation against the Putin government. According to one account, over 20 top naval officers have been fired during 2012.

Christopher E. Kubasik was fired as president and Chief Operating Officer of Lockheed Martin Corp., the top US defense contractor in 2008 and 2009. Lockheed Chairman Rob Stevens had allegedly requested an ethics investigation, which revealed a sexual affair with a subordinate. Lockheed’s electronic warfare and cyber warfare capabilities are formidable.

Naturally, it is impossible to know at this time how many of these cases are actually based on the reasons stated, and how many actually involve complicity with operations targeting the White House.

On the Thursday after the presidential vote, Defense Secretary Panetta ordered Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey, an ally of Obama, to conduct a wide-ranging review of misconduct by senior military officers. The general public is supposed to think that this review will be mainly concerned with wrongdoing such as adultery, sexual harassment, embezzlement, and the like. But the reality is most likely a purge of officers associated with the pro-Romney coup machinations of September-October 2012.

With all these figures removed, it is likely to be more difficult for Israel’s Netanyahu to launch his war against Iran in the way that had been planned. He has therefore fallen back on the option of starting a smaller war in Gaza as a means of stabilizing the US-UK-Israel war party while other options are sought. The rogue network, now a wounded beast, must be counted doubly dangerous.

The Mata Haris

Mata Hari’s method was to seduce French generals and send their secrets to Berlin. The cover story for Petraeus’ ouster involves his affair with Paula Broadwell, who fraternized extensively with the general in Afghanistan while she was preparing a fawning campaign biography of the general entitled All In: The Education of General David Petraeus — not to be confused with Flaubert’s L’Education sentimentale. Broadwell is a lieutenant colonel of military intelligence with a background at the Joint Special Operations Command and, according to some accounts, a knowledge of Arabic.

She says she has a top secret security clearance “and then some.” She has hobnobbed at the Obama White House and with Karl Rove. By all indications, and whether she knew it or not, she was deployed to embroil Petraeus with a view to bringing him down, and she succeeded. When the dalliance became known to the FBI and thence leaked to GOP Congressmen Reichert and Cantor, Petraeus was told he had to resign by intelligence czar James Clapper, a creature of Obama.

Jill Kelley and her twin sister Natalie Khawam are also redolent of the intelligence community. Their focus was evidently to lead both Petraeus and Allen onto the flypaper.

The Rogue Network Down but Not Out

The US rogue network has been exceptionally active since the attacks of September 11, 2001 in which the rogues were heavily implicated. In the spring of 2007, Vice President Dick Cheney argued unsuccessfully for an attack on Syria on behalf of the rogue network whose spokesman he was. In August-September 2007, a B-52 bomber loaded with six nuclear cruise missiles was in effect hijacked by the rogue network — taken out of legal US command — and flown from North Dakota to Louisiana, presumably on its way to a bombing mission in the Middle East. The B-52 was stopped at Barksdale AFB in Louisiana. Months later, Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne and Air Force Chief of Staff T. Michael Moseley for poor management of nuclear weapons. A special board under James R. Schlesinger studied nuclear safety, and doubtless also whom to fire. For knowledgeable observers, a window into the rogue network had been opened.

On Christmas Day, 2009, the Nigerian underwear bomber Mutallab attempted to blow up a passenger airliner in the skies over Detroit. During the first week of January, Richard Wolffe of MSNBC reported that the Obama White House had concluded that certain federal officials had acted to prevent Mutallab’s operation from being shut down because they wanted to damage the Obama administration. Still later, Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy told a House committee that the State Department had wanted to revoke Mutallab’s visa, but had been prevented from doing so by another (unnamed) federal agency, under the pretext that the Nigerian suicide bomber was being tailed. The Obama administration cravenly backed off further public investigation of this incident, allowing the rogue network to strike again in Benghazi. (All these events are described on Tarpley.net.)

ORCA: Why the Pro-Romney Vote Fraud Did Not Materialize

The purge of so many Romney supporters from the intelligence community and from the military may explain why the expected computer-generated Republican election fraud failed to materialize in the expected dimensions in so many states. Tagg Romney and his associates, many of them investors in Bain Capital, had notoriously bought control of voting machines in almost a score of states, including Ohio. What frustrated the design to steal the election? Perhaps this operation was disrupted and aborted by investigations conveniently timed and targeting some of the main pro-Romney intelligence and military figures in the rogue network.

The answer may also be related to the apparent failure of ORCA, Romney’s data-mining and data management operation, which was supposed to help GOP volunteers get out the vote, but which may have possessed additional and more sinister dimensions. But, as David Gewirtz of ZDNet wrote on November 13, ORCA “got harpooned. ORCA beached. It flopped. It died in the sun. It failed oh-so-bad.” And with it failed the hope of Romney’s backers that they could seize the White House.

The current scandals are extraordinary because they cast light on the rogue network or invisible government of the United States, a topic which is usually strictly taboo for the mass media. For this reason, David Ignatius of the Washington Post, considered close to the intelligence community, is already a warning that it is time to call a halt. Sunlight, Ignatius warns, can be “toxic under the wrong circumstances.”

“For a reminder of why it’s dangerous, take a look at The Crucible and the Lessons of History,” Ignatius concludes. (David Ignatius, “A Modern Witch Hunt,” Washington Post, November 18, 2012) In other words, time to stop the purges before they threaten to engulf the entire rogue network and thus the entire establishment. Patriotic citizens and those who want peace, by contrast, must hope that the revelations go on and on.

WT/HSN

Source

Something odd is happening in America’s defence and intelligence establishment. In the past few weeks several high-ranking figures have either resigned or been relieved of command.

One of the first was Rear Admiral Charles M. Gaouette, commander of a U.S. Navy Carrier Battle Group who was recalled to Washington from the Straits of Hormuz at the end of October and fired.

Although the Navy said this had nothing to do with his personal conduct, no rape or sexual misconduct, or any of the things that usually put an end to military careers, officials were adamant that Gaoutte was “unfit for command”.

More recently four star general David Petraeus resigned from his post as CIA Director, ostensibly because of an affair he had with his biographer, Paula Broadwell.

The latest senior U.S. commander to be called to account is five-star General William Ward, the former head of U.S. Africa command who has been demoted to a three-star general. The purported reason is his extravegance and “wasting taxpayers money”, something the Pentagon does a lot although it doesn’t usually result in disciplinary action.

We cannot help wondering if these events are linked. Is there indeed some sort of purge underway in the ranks of the U.S. military and intelligence of those whose loyalty to America has been compromised?

The extramarital affair may simply be a pretext for Petraeus’s resignation. He may have been given an ultimatum: step down or otherwise get fired.

Is Obama using this and other pretexts to eliminate those in U.S. military and intelligence command whose loyalty to Israel takes precedence over America?

For the past few years Israel has been pushing the U.S. to attack Iran but to no avail. Elements in the U.S. military and intelligence would have been critical to Israel’s efforts to persuade America to strike Iran, particularly if a false flag operation was to have been employed.

Now that he’s won the election has Obama decided to remove from the ranks those whose loyalty to America is in question?   

Was an affair just a pretext for Petraeus’ resignation as CIA chief?

DEBKAfile – Nov 10, 2012

The resignation of the acclaimed national American hero, four-star general David Petraeus, as CIA Director is being presented by his friends as an honorable act in the light of an extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, 39 – and nothing else.

The affair is said to have come out after the FBI placed his extramarital partner, author of his biography “All In,” under investigation for “improperly trying to access his email and possibly gaining access to classified information.”

Petraeus stepped down as Central Intelligence Director Thursday, Nov. 8, after serving less than a year. In his letter of resignation he wrote, “Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours.” The President accepted his resignation Friday.

The point is that during his 2010-2011 stint as commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Petraeus and his biographer Broadwell were often seen together and tongues already wagged then. Before that, he served as head of the US Central Command and commander of US forces in Iraq, where his “surge” doctrine brought the US war to a successful end.

For a public figure of his stature and heroic repute, an extramarital affair would not normally these days be considered reason enough to quit his job. Bill Clinton’s presidency survived his affair with Monica Lewinsky, although the US president, who officiates as Commander in Chief of US forces and responsible for the CIA, lied to Congress.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said the president should not have accepted his resignation. “A personal mistake should not have led to his departure.”

Informed sources in Washington told debkafile that they believed there was something more than an extramarital affair behind the Petraeus resignation and the FBI’s probe of Paula Broadwell.

Continues … 

Adding weight to suspicions that a purge may be underway in the ranks of the U.S. military… 

US Military Planned Mutiny To Topple Obama if He Were Re-Elected

Gordon Duff and Press TV – Veterans Today Oct 31, 2012

The Obama administration has had American military, both on domestic and foreign bases on high alert since October 1. However, there has been no known terrorist enemy threatening the US. The enemy is called “domestic” but its origins are far from American.

Today, Rear Admiral Charles M. Gaouette was “fired” from his command of one of the three carrier battle groups back to Bremerton, Washington to face an investigation.

It is impossible to adequately state how unusual this is and how serious.

The Navy was clear that the charges had nothing to do with his personal conduct, no rape or sexual misconduct, no stolen money, no drug use, the things that usually bring down careers in the Navy, that and crashing ships into each other.

Gaouette was sent back because the Secretary of Defense found him unfit for command, sent him across the world in the middle of one of the largest combat exercises in history, one both timed prior to an election and one at a critical location, near the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.

Gaouette commanded nearly one third of the Naval and air combat forces in the region.

The decision was made based on a conversation with the Secretary of Defense who, at the end of the talk, believed Gaouette was part of a group of military officers who have been under suspicion for planning a “Seven Days in May” type overthrow of the US government if President Obama is re-elected.

This is not conjecture, dozens of key officers face firing, hundreds are under investigation, all with direct ties to extremist elements in the Republican Party and the Israeli lobby.

Continues…

A US analyst says the key pro-Israeli neo-con elements who ran the former George Bush administration’s foreign and military policies and planned the 9/11 attacks are now running the campaign of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Rejecting US President Barack Obama administration’s official account that the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 terror incidents in 2001, Osama Ben Laden, was killed by American forces and then dumped in the ocean, Kevin Barrett said in a Press TV article, “Real perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks are still at large.”

“And what’s worse is that they control most of the United States Federal Court system and mainstream media, and are running the campaign of presidential candidate Mitt Romney,” he adds.

According to Barrett, Romney’s top foreign policy advisor Rabbi Dov Zakheim is “one of the leading suspected hands-on designers and controllers of the Israeli-instigated 9/11 false-flag operation.”

The analyst further added that Zakheim, who was appointed on May 4, 2001 as the Comptroller of the US Defense Department, was responsible for the loss of over USD 2.3 trillion in Pentagon funds – equivalent to five times its annual budget – which was announced by the then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on September 10, 2001, just a day before the 9/11 events.

The huge and mysterious loss of funds was actually estimated to be USD 9.1 trillion by CIA whistleblower Susan Lindauer, the article added.

“So what happened to the Pentagon’s missing 2.3 trillion dollars (or 9.1 trillion dollars if you believe Susan Lindauer)?” Barrett asked. “The one thing we know for sure is that it has never been found…at least not officially. Lindauer says insiders know it was embezzled by agents of Israel. Interestingly, the Comptroller of the Pentagon – the man who was running the Pentagon’s finances – was a known Israeli agent, Rabbi Dov Zakheim. (Yes, he really is a rabbi!)”

Quoting a recently-retired senior military affairs journalist at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, California, Barbara Honegger, Barrett said, “The 9/11 attack on the Pentagon targeted the accountants who were on the trail of the missing trillions” and were killed in a “surgical bombing” that was carried out under the cover of “a nonexistent hijacked 757 crash at the Pentagon.”

Zakheim, according to the article, is not the only “9/11 suspect” tied to Romney’s presidential campaign. “Another is Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas mafia kingpin, who gave 100 million dollars to Romney, thereby buying Romney’s eternal enslavement to the looney-tunes Likud faction in Israel.”

Adelson, the article added, “is reputedly linked to the same Likudnik crime mob that includes most of the key perpetrators of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, including ‘Lucky Larry’ Silverstein, Frank Lowy, and Lewis Eisenberg – the mobsters who stepped forward to take the money-hemorrhaging, asbestos-ridden Twin Towers off of New York City’s hands, and set up an extralegal demolition, ‘urban renewal by other means,’ to be blamed on Israel’s enemies.”

Furthermore, the US analysts added that “the Likud crime mob that orchestrated and carried out 9/11” does not merely run the Romney campaign and the US federal courts, but are also in control of vast majority of American and global media outlets as well. “It isn’t just that the people who own and run the media tend to be Jewish and pro-Zionist, as CNN’s Rick Sanchez observed shortly before he was fired.”

“The problem is that only six corporations control 90% of the media in America. And whether or not those six corporations are entirely owned by the Rothschilds, the founding family and true owners of Israel, they are obviously owned and controlled by the Zionists, as anyone who follows media coverage of the Middle East can see. By far the single most powerful force behind the 9/11 cover-up is the complicity of big media, which have taken every available opportunity to hide the true facts of 9/11, and trumpet the genocidal myth that Muslims were responsible.”

MFB/HMV

Source  

Also see:

Dov Zakheim and the 9/11 Conspiracy

In the July-August edition of his Revisionist History newsletter, Michael Hoffman lifts the veil on Mormonism once and for all.

Citing many reference books, he establishes that Mormonism is a break-away faction of Freemasonry which claimed to be “the true Masonry,” keeping both ritual and dogma, including the worship of Lucifer.

Far from being persecuted by non-Masons, the founding prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum Smith were lynched by fellow Masons in retaliation for establishing a competing “church” in violation of Masonic oaths never to reveal its secrets on pain of death.

They were assassinated in the Carthage jail in Carthage Ill on June 27, 1844.

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