Iranian Assassination Plot, Cui Bono?
The alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Saudi Arabian ambassador Adel Al-Jubeir was described by FBI Chief Robert Mueller as something from the pages of a “Hollywood script.”
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USS Carrier Harry Truman Now Officially Just Off Iran, As Israel Allegedly Plotting An Imminent Tehran Raid
As we first reported last week, in an article that was met with much original skepticism, the Pentagon has now confirmed that a fleet of 12 warships has passed the Suez Canal, and is now likely awaiting orders to support the escalation in the Persian Gulf. The attached image from Stratfor shows the latest positioning of US aircraft carrier groups as of June 23: the USS Harry Truman (CVN-75) is now right next to USS Eisenhower (CVN 69), both of which are waiting patiently just off Iran.
Iran on war alert over “US and Israeli concentrations” in Azerbaijan
In a rare move, Iran has declared a state of war on its northwestern border, debkafile’s military and Iranian sources report. Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps men and equipment units are being massed in the Caspian Sea region against what Tehran claims are US and Israeli forces concentrated on army and air bases in Azerbaijan ready to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Saudi Arabia gives Israel clear skies to attack Iranian nuclear sites
Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal.
In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran.
To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defence systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defences will return to full alert.
Neoconservatives lead the charge against Turkey
“Doubts among Western countries about Turkey’s shifting foreign policy began in 2009 when Erdogan strongly criticised Israel for its deadly military campaign in Gaza.
Concerns over growing rapprochement between Turkey and its Middle Eastern neighbours and Iran grew following the Israeli raid on an aid expedition bound for Gaza on May 31 in which nine Turks were killed.
After recalling its ambassador from Tel Aviv, Turkish President Abdullah Gul said relations with Israel would “never be the same”.
Erdogan has stepped up the rhetoric against Israel as tens of thousands of Turks have taken to the streets of Istanbul each day to vent against Israel and praise Gaza’s Hamas rulers.”
What is the Constitution?
Hat tip: Tenth Amendment Center
by Rob Natelson
May 22, 2010
It is a document designed to protect our freedom by imposing law on those who wield political power. Without such law, Americans would be under the constant threat of tyranny.
The word “constitution” did not always refer to a particular document. The word is based on the Latin verb constituere, which means to arrange or decide. In its original English sense, a “constitution” was how a political system was set up. People spoke (and sometimes still speak) of the unwritten and evolving “constitutions” of Britain and of the ancient Roman republic.
As I explain in The Original Constitution, the American Founders acknowledged a huge debt to the British and Roman traditions, but they consciously rejected the British and Roman approach to constitutions. Specifically, they rejected the “evolutionary” and “unwritten” constitutional idea in favor of a written document that would lay out the rules in an clear and organized fashion.
There were only a few precedents for this approach: Sweden’s “Instrument of Government” was probably the first. Under Oliver Cromwell (1649-58), the English adopted a short-lived “Instrument of Government,” and then a short-lived “Humble Petition and Advice.” The name of the latter English constitution suggests how little those documents tempered Cromwell’s autocracy.
American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein
By Mamoon Alabbasi – London
hat tip: Palestine Chronicle
Professor Norman Finkelstein’s admirers are familiar with his views, which they share to one degree or another. His critics are unhappy with the ‘tone’ in which he criticises Israel. As for his foes, they charge ‘anti-Semitic’ and ‘self-hating Jew’ – but backed by little evidence.
However, the newly released documentary film American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein sheds much light on the true character of the man who is often found in the middle of controversies.
He is seen as controversial because of the issues he raises and the way he raises them. Finally; a documentary that tells us why.
From early on in his academic life, he challenged the faulty conventional wisdom regarding the Middle East conflict in the US, by showing Joan Peters’s widely praised best seller, “From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine”, to be not much more than a work of fiction.
After reading Finkelstein’s long and detailed review of Peters’s book, Professor Noam Chomsky told the then young Norman: “[This article] is very solid. It’s a very good topic to study. But if you go into it, do it with eyes open. You are not only going to undermine this book and show that it’s a fraud but you’re going to undermine the whole US intellectual community.”
A pretty controversial start from the outset, one would argue. But why the harsh tone when criticizing Israel?
The answer is in the fact that both of his parents were Holocaust survivors, whose family members were exterminated by the Nazis.
Read the rest of the article at the Palestine Chronicle.
“My fellow Americans, tonight I’m going to talk frankly about a pesky little nation called Israel … “
Hat tip: CounterPunch Diary
March 19 – 21, 2010
By Alexander Cockburn
Don’t get excited. It’ll never happen. Is there really a crisis in US-Israeli relations? Yes and No. Yes, because the world’s premier power doesn’t care to have its vice president publicly humiliated by a midget of a nation whose entire population is smaller than that of Los Angeles county. No, because the elected politicians nominally running the government of the world’s premier power live in mortal fear of the Israel lobby in the United States. This time, as always, No will carry the day. (You can find a detailed narrative by Jeffrey Blankfort on this site today, from which much of this Diary is drawn.)
Consider Biden’s reaction the day after Interior Minister Eli Yishai, probably with Netanyahu’s foreknowledge, announced the scheduled building of 1600 apartments – Jews only – in East Jerusalem, right at the moment Biden was trying to breathe life into the “peace process”
So here’s the vice president of the United States of America,standing with all the injured dignity of a man who has just had a bucket of sewage dumped over his head and who amid his discomfiture, actually did use the word “condemn” and “Israel” in the same paragraph. The next day Biden heads for Tel Aviv university and confides to the audience that he is a Zionist and that, “throughout my career, Israel has not only remained close to my heart but it has been the center of my work as a United States Senator and now as Vice President of the United States.” Get that: “the center of my work.” This mission statement is not quoted in the U.S. press.
Zionism Unmasked: The Dark Face Of Jewish Nationalism
What we need to stand up and say is not only did they attack the U.S.S. Liberty, they did 9/11. They did it. I have had long conversations over the past two weeks with contacts at the Army War College, at it’s headquarters, Marine Corps and I made it absolutely clear in both cases that it is 100 percent certain that 9/11 was a Mossad operation.
Period.
~Dr. Alan Sabrosky, March 14, 2010
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By Dr. Alan Sabrosky
11 March, 2010 Sabbah.biz
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu once remarked to a Likud gathering that “Israel is not like other countries.” Oddly enough for him, that time he was telling the truth, and nowhere is that more evident than with Jewish nationalism, whether or not one pins the “Zionist” label on it.
Nationalism in most countries and cultures can have both positive and negative aspects, unifying a people and sometimes leading them against their neighbors. Extremism can emerge, and often has, at least in part in almost every nationalist/independence movement I can recall (e.g., the French nationalist movement had The Terror, Kenya’s had the Mau Mau, etc.).
But whereas extremism in other nationalist movements is an aberration, extremism in Jewish nationalism is the norm, pitting Zionist Jews (secular or observant) against the goyim (everyone else), who are either possible predator or certain prey, if not both sequentially. This does not mean that all Jews or all Israelis feel and act this way, by any means. But it does mean that Israel today is what it cannot avoid being, and what it would be under any electable government (a point I’ll develop in another article).
On this day: Remembering Rachel Corrie
Who is Rachel Corrie?
Rachel Corrie (April 10, 1979 – March 16, 2003) was an American member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) who traveled to the Gaza Strip during the Second Intifada. She was killed by a Caterpillar D9R armored bulldozer operated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during a protest against the destruction of Palestinian homes by the IDF in the Gaza Strip on March 16th, 2003.
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