News Desk: The Emergency Committee for Israel Cries Wolf : The New Yorker

In the last few days, just before the highly-charged meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama, and, also, the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee meeting, where both Netanyahu and Obama were to address about fourteen thousand Israel supporters, the Emergency Committee for Israel moved into high gear. E.C.I., which aims to be the most pro-Israel of all pro-Israel groups—and is the brainchild of Bill Kristol, a leading neoconservative—has a Super PAC, and it has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on this most recent advocacy, in what is surely a kickoff for the coming campaign months. In a two-pronged maneuver, E.C.I. sought to intimidate critics of Netanyahu, and of Israel’s most powerful American backers, for the escalating drive to war with Iran, and to damage Obama.

First, in a full-page ad in the New York Times—featuring an image of a particularly malevolent-looking wolf, attired in a suit and tie, and holding a sheep mask—E.C.I. attacked two liberal advocacy organizations, the Center for American Progress (closely aligned with the White House) and Media Matters. It quoted the American Jewish Committee; the Anti-Defamation League; Alan Dershowitz, of Harvard Law School; and others, denouncing the groups’ work as anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic. Listing some of CAP’s and Media Matters’ donors, and their phone numbers, E.C.I. demanded, “Call these foundations and ask them: Why are you funding bigotry and anti-Israel extremism?” Second, E.C.I. launched an attack on Obama in a thirty-minute video, seemingly designed to ratchet up the pressure on him to support a preëmptive Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities or military action by the U.S.—and, in any event, to peel away Jewish voters from Obama in the election. (The apparent ratcheting tactic failed, judging by President Obama’s speech on Sunday to AIPAC.

He described the lengths to which he has gone to satisfy Israel’s needs and requests, as evidence of his unequivocal support, and also said that he would not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. But he insisted that he believes “an opportunity still remains for diplomacy,” and made plain that he wouldn’t be pressured into military action at this time, saying that “as part of my solemn obligation to the American people, I will only use force when the time and circumstances demand it.”)

A trailer for the E.C.I. video, entitled, “Daylight: The Story of Obama and Israel,” shows Obama and Netanyahu together, with a commentary that refers to a “public shaming,” and “slap in the face,” of Netanyahu; Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden in a convivial moment with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas; and Obama, declaring, “It’s time for these settlements to stop.” The trailer ends with a clip of President Obama at his town hall meeting with Turkish students in Istanbul in April 2009, saying, “I want to make sure that we end before the call to prayer.” That President Obama is biased against Israel and in favor of the Palestinians is the video’s explicit message; that he may, secretly, be Muslim himself is its insinuation. (Noah Pollak, E.C.I.’s executive director, has said that the idea that E.C.I. is questioning Obama’s religious affiliation is “ludicrous.”)...

Unfortunately there are a lot of traitors in DC who, because of their fundamentalist Christian faith, put the needs of Israel ahead of the needs of this country. That the public doesn't act to remove these zealots from power is telling. I am neither pro or anti Israel or Muslim or anyone else but enough is enough, especially now. A war with Iran would be an incredible mistake yet, as the children sleeping with sugar plums in their dreams on Christmas Eve, fundamentalists on both the right and left of the aisle see Second Comings and Armageddons. It's the 21st century and our foreign policy is being decided by 2000 year old myth. If that doesn't make you fearful for the future of this nation, I don't know what will.

Government for the super rich

Drones in Texas and Tanks in Tampa: Inside the Out-Of-Control Weaponized Homeland Security State | Occupy Wall Street | AlterNet

...

At the height of the Occupy Wall Street evictions, it seemed as though some diminutive version of “shock and awe” had stumbled from Baghdad, Iraq, to Oakland, California. American police forces had been “militarized,” many commentators worried, as though the firepower and callous tactics on display were anomalies, surprises bursting upon us from nowhere.

There should have been no surprise. Those flash grenades exploding in Oakland and the sound cannons on New York’s streets simply opened small windows onto a national policing landscape long in the process of militarization -- a bleak domestic no man’s land marked by tanks and drones, robot bomb detectors, grenade launchers, tasers, and most of all, interlinked video surveillance cameras and information databases growing quietly on unobtrusive server farms everywhere.

The ubiquitous fantasy of “homeland security,” pushed hard by the federal government in the wake of 9/11, has been widely embraced by the public. It has also excited intense weapons- and techno-envy among police departments and municipalities vying for the latest in armor and spy equipment.

In such a world, deadly gadgetry is just a grant request away, so why shouldn’t the 14,000 at-risk souls in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, have a closed-circuit-digital-camera-and-monitor system (cost: $180,000, courtesy of the Homeland Security Department) identical to the one up and running in New York’s Times Square?

So much money has gone into armoring and arming local law-enforcement since 9/11 that the federal government could have rebuilt post-Katrina New Orleans five times over and had enough money left in the kitty to provide job training and housing for every one of the record 41,000-plus homeless people in New York City. It could have added in the growing population of 15,000 homeless in Philadelphia, my hometown, and still have had money to spare. Add disintegrating Detroit, Newark, and Camden to the list. Throw in some crumbling bridges and roads, too.

But why drone on? We all know that addressing acute social and economic issues here in the homeland was the road not taken. Since 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security alone has doled out somewhere between $30 billion and $40 billion in direct grants to state and local law enforcement, as well as other first responders. At the same time, defense contractors have proven endlessly inventive in adapting sales pitches originally honed for the military on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan to the desires of police on the streets of San Francisco and lower Manhattan. Oakland may not be Basra but (as former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld liked to say) there are always the unknown unknowns: best be prepared...

Obama, Iran and preventive war - Salon.com

By Glenn Greenwald

President Obama yesterday joined virtually every U.S. political leader in both parties in making the obligatory, annual pilgrimage and oath-taking to AIPAC: a bizarre ritual if you think about it. During his speech, he repeatedly emphasized that he “has Israel’s back,” rightfully noting that his actions in office prove this (“At every crucial juncture – at every fork in the road – we have been there for Israel. Every single time”). One of his goals was commendable — to persuade the Israelis not to attack Iran right now – but in order to accomplish that, he definitively vowed, as McClatchy put it, that “he’d call for military action to prevent Iran from securing a nuclear weapon.” In other words, he categorically committed the U.S. to an offensive military attack on Iran in order to prevent that country from acquiring a nuclear weapon; as AP put it: “President Barack Obama said Sunday the United States will not hesitate to attack Iran with military force to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon.”

Is that not the classic case of a “preventive” war (as opposed to a “preemptive” war), once unanimously scorned by progressives as “radical” and immoral when the Bush administration and its leading supporters formally adopted it as official national security doctrine in 2002? Back in 2010, Newsweek‘s Michael Hirsh documented the stark, fundamental similarities between the war theories formally adopted by both administrations in their national security strategies, but here we have the Bush administration’s most controversial war theory explicitly embraced: that the U.S. has the right not only to attack another country in order to preempt an imminent attack (pre-emptive war), but even to prevent some future, speculative threat (preventive war). Indeed, this was precisely the formulation George Bush invoked for years when asked about Iran. This theory of preventive war continues to be viewed around the world as patently illegal — Brazil’s Foreign Affairs Minister last week said of the “all-options-on-the-table” formulation for Iran: some of those options “are contrary to international law” — and before 2009, the notion of “preventive war” was universally scorned by progressives.

Again, one can find justifications, even rational ones, for President Obama’s inflexible commitment of a military attack on Iran: particularly, that this vow is necessary to stop the Israelis from attacking now (though it certainly seems that the U.S. would have ample leverage to prevent an Israeli attack if it really wanted to without commiting itself to a future attack on Iran). And I’ve noted many times that I believe that the Obama administration — whether for political and/or strategic reasons — does seem genuinely to want to avoid a war with Iran, at least for now.

But what this really shows, as was true for the run-up to the Iraq War, is how suffocatingly narrow the permissive debate has become. The so-called “gulf” between Israel and the U.S. — the two viable sides of the debate — consists of these views: (1) Iran should be attacked when it develops the capacity to develop nuclear weapons (Israel) or (2) Iran should be attacked only once it decides to actually develop a nuclear weapon (the U.S.). Those are the two permissible options, both grounded in the right and even duty to attack Iran even if they’re threatening to attack nobody — i.e., a preventive war. That it’s unjustified to attack Iran in the absence of an actual or imminent threat of attack by Iran, or that international law (as expressed by the U.N. Charter) bars the use of threats of military attack, or that Iran could be contained even if it acquired a nuclear weapon, has been removed from the realm of mainstream debate (meaning: the debate shaped by the two political parties). Obama yesterday:

Iran’s leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I have made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.

Just as was true in 2002 and early 2003, everyone agrees that a preventive war would be justifiable and may be necessary, and the only permitted debate is whether it should happen now or a bit later (where should the “red lines” be?).

Whatever else is true, by having President Obama issue these clear and inflexible threats against Iran to which the nation is now bound, the once-controversial notion of “preventive war” just became much more normalized and bipartisan. Witness the virtually complete lack of objections to President Obama’s threats from either party to see how true that is.

* * * * *

Several other items of note:

(1) I have a contribution to the New York Times this morning on the question of whether the GOP faces its “last gasp”;

(2) Politico‘s Josh Gerstein has an excellent article on President Obama’s hideous record on transparency, including this quote from a long-time Washington lawyer: “Obama is the sixth administration that’s been in office since I’ve been doing Freedom of Information Act work. … It’s kind of shocking to me to say this, but of the six, this administration is the worst on FOIA issues. The worst. There’s just no question about it.” The obsequious “transparency groups” which gave Obama a transparency award in 2011 (one he revealingly accepted in secret) should feel about as proud of themselves as the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize committee;

(3) The National Iranian American Council has a full-page ad in today’s Washington Post urging Obama away from a military confrontation with Iran, and notably not only relies on quotes from numerous top military officials, but also includes a statement signed by multiple military leaders;

(4) Juan Cole has an excellent analysis of how the sanctions regime the U.S. is imposing on Iran in order to forestall an Israeli attack is harmful to U.S. national interests; and,

(5) Attorney General Eric Holder is scheduled today to deliver a speech in which he will reportedly “explain how the U.S. can legally kill U.S. citizens on foreign soil.” Apparently, he will also, in the very same speech, trumpet how the U.S. Government has “successfully used civilian courts to convict and sentence terrorists.” Perhaps he’ll try to reconcile those two thoughts. One also wonders if his speech will contain a justification for this. I’ll likely write about Holder’s assassination-justifying speech later today.

Re-burying the truth

In the last week, three important new articles have added to our understanding and raised new questions about the crimes of September 11, 2001. As of today, Friday morning, there is nary a peep about their contents in the U.S.mainstream media. The lack of apparent media attention may be in keeping with character, and predictable, but sad nonetheless. When are they going to wake up? Can we make a valid prediction market for that date?

Last Saturday, the London-based Daily Telegraph published an article by Anthony Summers, Neil Tweedie and Dan Christensen titled “London-based oil executive linked to 9/11 hijackers.” The same day, the independent Florida-based Broward Bulldog published a related article by Christensen and Summers, titled “FBI informant says Sarasota Saudi praised bin Laden; knew Broward County Qaeda suspect.” And then on the next Monday morning, the Broward Bulldog put out another article by Summers and Christensen, titled “Graham: FBI’s public statements are in conflict with still secret records of Sarasota 9/11 probe.”

The “Graham” in the third title is Senator Robert Graham of Florida. Graham served in the U.S. Senate for 18 years, where his tenure included ten years as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. That committee led the Senate’s contribution to the Congressional Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, published in late 2002, a report whose public contents were heavily redacted.

Summing up, some good journalists have unearthed new leads on one of the worst crimes in history, and a leading Senator is raising new questions about the integrity of the government’s investigation. But the U.S.media, outside of the dogged, independent Broward Bulldog, doesn’t see fit to report on it.

The Daily Telegraph story tells how the journalists tracked down Abdulaziz al-Hijji, living in London. This person left his home inFlorida rather hurriedly in late August, 2001. And law enforcement records based on information from the gated community where he lived indicate that several alleged 9/11 hijackers, including Mohamed Atta, visited his house in Sarasota, which was less than 20 miles away from an airport where they were taking flying lessons.

The house in which al-Hijji lived was owned by his father-in-law, Esam Ghazzawi, a person who the article reported had been placed on an FBI watch list soon before 9/11. (Some background on Ghazzawi can be had in this September 2011 article by Mark Levey, titled “Florida al-Qaeda fugitive Esam Ghazzawi linked to BCCI and two dead Saudi Princes.”)

In the Broward Bulldog story that came out the same day as the Daily Telegraph story, Senator Graham was cited for calling the news about the local law enforcement records as “the ‘most important’ development on the background to the 9/11 plot in years.” This story went on to note some tension between those records and past statements from the FBI on the case. And in the Monday, February 20 article follow-up, Christensen and Summers reported that Graham had seen documents from within the FBI itself that were at odds with their past public statements that there was no connection between the hijackers and Saudis then living in Sarasota, and quoted him directly as saying “There are significant inconsistencies between the public statements of the FBI in September and what I read in the classified documents.”

The February 20 Broward Bulldog article also reported the following, rather shocking, developments.

Last September, FBI spokesmen also disputed Graham’s assertion that Congress was never told about the Sarasota investigation.

That prompted Graham to ask the FBI for assistance in locating in the National Archives the Sarasota-related files that were allegedly turned over to Congress. Instead, after what Graham said were two months in which the FBI was “either unwilling or unable” to help find the records, the Bureau suddenly turned over two documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which Graham once headed and where he still has access. It is those documents that Graham has said are inconsistent with the FBI denials.

Graham shared this development with the Obama White House, which responded by setting up a meeting between Graham and FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce. Joyce told Graham he “didn’t want to talk” about the Sarasota episode. Graham was assured, however, that he would shortly be shown material that supported the FBI’s denials, and a further meeting was arranged with an FBI aide.

In December, Graham said, the scheduled meeting was abruptly canceled and he was told he would be allowed no further access to FBI information about Sarasota.

Speaking of the “Obama White House,” this chain of events brings to mind what happened after Kristen Breitweiser, a 9/11 widow, asked President Obama if he could make public the redacted material in the above-noted Congressional Joint Inquiry. Obama assured her he would work to that end, but Breitweiser, and we, the American people have yet to see it. And speaking of Anthony Summers, a co-author on all three of those articles that have come out in the past week, he reported on this and related matters in a good article in Vanity Fair last year, titled “The Kingdom and the Towers.”

And the mainstream media dutifully sleeps.

Gingrich Bets Big Oil Will 'Crater The Economy' To Defeat Obama | ThinkProgress

Appearing on CNN, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich bet that oil companies will ruin the economy, getting President Obama out of office. Asked by Candy Crowley why he is so confident of a Republican landslide in the November elections, Gingrich predicted that gasoline prices — already on a rapid rise to the massive benefit of the oil industry — will continue to skyrocket, leading to an economic collapse by August:

The price of gasoline is becoming a genuine crisis for many American families. If it continues to go higher, it will crater the economy by August. Because people will have no discretionary income and as a result, the president’s going to go into the fall with very expensive gasoline, a weakening economy, a disastrously bad policy in the Middle East and a trillion dollar deficit. I think that’s a pretty big burden while he’s waging war on the Catholic Church and apologizing to Islamic extremists. I think that’s a pretty heavy burden for the President of the United States to carry for re-election.

Gasoline prices are rising much faster than oil prices are, because of decisions made by oil companies to increase their profits even as US demand declines. Americans have been shifting to much more fuel-efficient cars from a resurgent American auto industry.

But the oil industry has been shutting down oil refineries, reducing production, and exporting gasoline, putting the squeeze on gasoline prices to ensure continued record profits. Further refinery shutdowns are planned, guaranteeing further gas price spikes in the future. Rampant speculator activity accelerates the flow of wealth from drivers’ pockets at the gas pump to the one percent.

When gas prices go up, Big Oil wins and everyone else loses — except, Newt Gingrich bets, the Republican Party. It would take a conspiracy theorist like Rick Santorum to believe that the oil and Wall Street executives would deliberately hurt the U.S. economy to help Republicans win. But there’s little evidence that given the choice between their own short-term profits and the welfare of the 99 percent, Big Oil would make any sacrifice.

Transcript:

CROWLEY: What brings you the kind of optimism that makes you predict a landslide victory for Republicans?

GINGRICH: Well, we lived through this in 1980 and in the end issues matter, and reality matters. The fact is that Ronald Reagan didn’t pull ahead of Jimmy Carter until September. When he did pull ahead of them he ultimately carried more states than Franklin Roosevelt carried against Hoover in 1932. And the reason is people take stock. The price of gasoline is becoming a genuine crisis for many American families. If it continues to go higher, it will crater the economy by August. Because people will have no discretionary income and as a result, the president’s going to go into the fall with very expensive gasoline, a weakening economy, a disastrously bad policy in the Middle East and a trillion dollar deficit. I think that’s a pretty big burden while he’s waging war on the Catholic Church and apologizing to Islamic extremists. I think that’s a pretty heavy burden for the President of the United States to carry for re-election.

The Department of Homeland Security Searches Your Facebook and Twitter for "Marijuana," Other Keywords | AlterNet

According to an internal DHS document released by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the department and/or a DHS subcontractor is searching social networks like Facebook and Twitter for all kinds of keywords, which are then made into reports about "items of interest" (IOI). The list of terms is HUGE, and according to the blog Animal New York, "the DHS can also add additional search terms circumstantially as deemed necessary." Here are some of the keywords; you can view the full list at Animal New York.

• Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
• Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
• Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
• Secret Service (USSS)
• Assassination
• Attack
• Domestic security
• Drill
• Exercise
• Cops
• Law enforcement
• Hazmat
• Nuclear
• Chemical Spill
• Airport
• AMTRAK
• Violence
• Gang
• Drug
• Narcotics
• Cocaine
• Marijuana

According to the blog post, the DHS does attempt to strip personally identifiable information (that gets its own acronym too, PII) -- unless you fall into one of the following rather broad categories:

1) U.S. and foreign individuals in extremis situations involving potential life or death circumstances; (this is no change)

2) Senior U.S. and foreign government officials who make public statements or provide public updates;

3) U.S. and foreign government spokespersons who make public statements or provide public updates;

4) U.S. and foreign private sector officials and spokespersons who make public statements or provide public updates;

5) Names of anchors, newscasters, or on-scene reporters who are known or identified as reporters in their post or article or who use traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed;

6) Current and former public officials who are victims of incidents or activities related to Homeland Security; and

7) Terrorists, drug cartel leaders or other persons known to have been involved in major crimes of Homeland Security interest, (e.g., mass shooters such as those at Virginia Tech or Ft. Hood) who are killed or found dead.

Also, the department's "Media Monitoring Capability team can transmit personal information to the DHS National Operations Center over the phone as deemed necessary." In other words, there are a lot of loopholes here. Remember that the next time you tweet about an airport, or link to an article about marijuana on Facebook.

By Lauren Kelley