Yasser Arafat 'poisoned with Polonium'

Yasser Arafat may have been killed with a lethal dose of the highly radioactive substance Polonium, it has been claimed.
Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent
03 Jul 2012
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palestinianauthority/9374010/Yasser-Arafat-poisoned-with-Polonium.html

Tests performed by a laboratory in Switzerland found significant traces of Polonium-210 on the late Palestinian leader's clothes, adding a new twist to a case that has obsessed the Arab world for years.

Polonium-210 is the same substance used to poison the Russian dissident Alexader Litvinenko in London.

The claims are likely to renew long-held Palestinian suspicions that the Israeli spy agency Mossad assassinated Arafat, who died in a Paris hospital in November, 2004.

The Institute de Radiophysique in Lausanne found elevated levels of the element on Arafat's personal effects. A urine stain in his underwear registered a level of 180 millibecquerels of Polonium-210, more than 20 times the dose to kill an average human being.

"I can confirm to you that we measured an unexplained, elevated amount of unsupported Polonium-210 in the belongings of Mr Arafat that contained stains of biological fluids," Dr Francois Bochod, the director of the institute, told Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab television station.

Al Jazeera sent Arafat's clothes to the institute for testing after obtaining them from his widow as part of a nine-month investigation into the revolutionary's death.

Many theories have been advanced in the past for the cause of Arafat's death, and his case notes – which are alleged to show that he had suffered cirrhosis – have never been released.

A former speech writer for President George W Bush claimed he had contracted Aids from a homosexual relationship with one of his guards, while aides of Arafat have alleged that he was poisoned by Mossad with Thallium, another radioactive element.

British police and doctors initially believed that Litvinenko, a former KGB officer who defected to London, was killed with Thallium, a misdiagnosis because Polonium-210 is harder to detect with normal hospital equipment.

Some of Arafat's symptoms, including vomiting, cirrhosis and coma, are compatible with Polonium-210 poisoning, which results in a long and agonising death. But it is not thought that Arafat suffered hair loss, which is thought to happen in half of cases of significant exposure to the element.

The dose allegedly ingested by Arafat was much smaller than the amount that killed Litvinenko, making it even harder to detect.

British police dealing with the Litvinenko case have alleged that only a sophisticated, state-backed intelligence agency could source Polonium-210 in a form that could be used to poison someone.

Egypt

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zepezauer_Mark/Egypt_Boomerang.html

Egypt
excerpted from the book
Boomerang
How our covert wars have created enemies across the Middle East and brought terror to America.
by Mark Zepezauer
Common Courage Press, 2003

p67

In 1952, CIA officers in Cairo held a series of meetings with coup plotters in the Egyptian army, including Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser. The officers hoped to overthrow King Farouk, the corrupt and buffoonish puppet monarch backed by the British, while the U.S. hoped to replace Britain as the dominant foreign power in the region. These overlapping interests insured that the coup took place in July of that year. Nasser, only 34, remained behind the scenes initially, with a General Neguib as the titular head of the new government. The younger man became prime minister in 1954 and assumed the presidency of Egypt in 1956 following a referendum.

Nasser's first priority, which dovetailed nicely with Washington's interests, was to get British troops removed from the Suez Canal, where they had been stationed since 1882. As the canal no longer held much strategic value to Britain (after the loss of India), an agreement was reached in October 1954. For the first time in two and a half thousand years, Egypt was no longer under foreign occupation of any kind. This was a great catalyst for Nasser's growing reputation as a hero to Arab nationalists, fanned by his marathon radio broadcasts in colloquial Arabic.

Israel, however, viewed the presence of 80,000 British troops on the canal as a welcome buffer with Egypt. The Israeli secret service, the Mossad, sent agents to sabotage British installations and plant bombs in public buildings, hoping to scuttle the negotiations by blaming the terrorism on Egyptian nationalists. This scheme was derailed when the agents were caught and exposed. France was also upset when, shortly after the British departure from Egypt, Algerian nationalists launched a revolt against French colonial rule; Paris was convinced (with help from the Mossad) that Nasser had encouraged them. To counter Egyptian influence, France then began selling arms to Israel in defiance of a regional arms embargo. In February 1955 Israel, citing cross-border harassment by Palestinian refugees, attacked an Egyptian army outpost in Gaza, killing 40 soldiers and a number of civilians. Yet an Israeli historian has cited documentary evidence that Egypt was making a serious effort to keep the Gaza border calm.

In fact, Israel had been planning an invasion of the Sinai Peninsula since at least 1953, according to the diaries of Prime Minister Moshe Sharett. The Gaza attack precluded any hope of a peace agreement. At that point, as General Moshe Dayan put it, "one of these days a situation will be created which makes military action possible."

Egypt's relations with Washington had begun to sour as Nasser refused to be bribed. U.S. antagonism was further aroused when he balked at buying arms with strings attached, and so turned to East Bloc sources. This in turn led Nasser to rely further on Soviet financing, and so the fear of a pro-Russian tilt became a self-fulfilling prophecy-the 1950s version of "If you ain't with us you're against us."

In July 1956, Secretary of State Dulles reneged on a previous commitment to help Egypt build the Aswan Dam, and blocked international funding as well. In response, Nasser exercised his right to re-establish Egyptian sovereignty over the British-built Suez Canal-which was then closed to Israeli shipping. And in response to that, the British and the French made a secret deal with Israel to invade Egypt and seize back the canal. But this deal was made behind the backs of the Americans, and Israeli agents lied to their CIA counterparts about the impending invasion.

On October 29, 1956, the Israelis used their French-supplied arsenal to launch a surprise attack on Egypt, seizing the Sinai.

The plan was to falsely announce that Egypt had attacked Israel, after which Israeli troops would occupy the Sinai Peninsula all the way to the east bank of the Suez Canal. Then British and French troops would intervene to prevent a wider war, and hopefully, the whole thing would be so humiliating to Nasser that his people would rise up against him. Britain and France bombed Egyptian territory, and then sent troops to back up the Israelis.

The Eisenhower Administration was outraged, not only by Israeli duplicity, but also by the Europeans' attempt to reestablish their influence in a region where the U.S. now wished to call the shots. In order to counter that influence, the U.S. was even willing to cooperate briefly with the Soviets in condemning the Suez attacks in the UN. Stymied by a U.S. threat to withdraw aid, the Israelis reluctantly withdrew from the Sinai and Gaza, with UN monitors placed on the Egyptian border.

Egypt regained control of the canal, subject to international guarantees of Israeli shipping in the Gulf of Aqaba.

Nasser emerged an even bigger hero than before, and began to talk of uniting the Arab world into one big federation. This set off alarm bells in Washington. Nasser's pan-Arabian dreams were short-lived, and amounted only to a brief federation with Syria, (which lasted until the next coup in that country undid the deal). The U.S. countered this alarming spurt of Arab unity by encouraging Jordan and Iraq to band together against the new United Arab Republic, rather than joining it. And no less than eight separate assassination plots were soon launched against Nasser, involving, at various times, America, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. These involved at least one CIA assassination plot in 1957. According to the memoirs of former CIA officer Wilbur Crane Eveland, the story goes that Eisenhower had mused that he wished the "Nasser problem" could be "eliminated"- which the CIA chief, Allen Dulles, took as an order to kill. The plot never came to fruition, as Dulles ostensibly realized he had misinterpreted his boss. However, this account bears a marked similarity to other cover stories explaining away known CIA death plots, so it should perhaps not be taken at face value. Britain's secret service MI6 also plotted with the Mossad to kill Nasser on several occasions.

The Nasser problem continued, however, and in June 1967, 11 years after the Suez crisis, Israel tried the same trick again, this time successfully. The Israelis also had territorial designs on the West Bank and the Syrian territory of the Golan Heights, in order to secure control over the headwaters of the River Jordan and the aquifers of its basin. General Moshe Dayan later recounted how Israel had deliberately provoked firefights with Syrian forces. Israeli troops probed the Syrian frontier with tractors, then claimed that the inevitable Syrian reprisals constituted attacks on "peaceful farmers." This cat-and-mouse game intensified in the year leading up to the Six Day War.

As tensions increased, the Soviets informed the Syrians that Israel was "massing troops" on its border, though only a single tank division had been sent several months before, following an earlier skirmish. But for its part, the Israeli government had threatened to invade Damascus if the Syrians did not suppress Palestinian raids. Nasser also called on the Syrians to do so, aware that neither he nor they had the power to prosecute a war with Israel. But as the putative leader of Arab nationalists, he was being goaded by the Syrians, Jordanians and Palestinians to do something about Israeli provocations, and to stop "hiding behind" UN troops.

Eventually Nasser requested that UN forces depart from Gaza; instead the UN withdrew all its troops from the Sinai region.

Egypt then moved two token divisions into the Sinai, far from adequate for any offensive action. In solidarity with Syria, Nasser then announced a blockade of ships bringing weapons to Israel through the Gulf of Aqaba. This was the pretext the Israelis required. Though only 5% of their imports came through Aqaba, Israelis told the world that Egypt's "economic stranglehold" threatened their very existence.

Israel also announced at the time that the Arabs had struck first, though that claim too was later abandoned for the more credible formulation that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) had launched a "pre-emptive strike", with the ostensible motivation being a massing of Egyptian troops. But as Israeli Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin admitted a year later, "I don't believe Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent into Sinai May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel and we knew it." Or as one Israeli cabinet member put it, the "pre-emptive strike" story was "invented of whole cloth and exaggerated after the fact to justify the annexation of new Arab territories."

Most of the Egyptian air force was destroyed on the ground and Israel seized the Sinai and Gaza, as well as the West Bank from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria. The latter three territories are occupied to this day. Many in the Israeli government had interpreted certain U.S. statements as giving a "green light" to their invasion plans; at the very least, they found "an absence of any exhortation to us to stay our hand." But U.S. support for the Israeli invasions went further than that; U.S. warplanes, painted with Israeli markings, helped with reconnaissance photography of Arab targets. President Johnson also moved the Sixth Fleet into the eastern Mediterranean, and secretly authorized shipments of spare parts to the Israeli military, while publicly calling for a regional arms embargo. After the war, the U.S. also vetoed a UN resolution calling for Israel to return to its previous borders.

The Johnson Administration was so happy to see Israel strike a decisive blow at perceived "Soviet proxies" in the region that it was even willing to overlook an Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in the middle of the Six Day War. For years the attack on the U.S. ship, which killed 34 sailors, has been a mystery, the details covered up by both the U.S. and Israel. A recent book by author James Bamford posits that the American spy vessel had evidence that Israel had massacred Egyptian prisoners of war, and that the IDF destroyed the ship in order to cover up evidence of this war crime.

The Six Day War ended in a cease-fire, which Nasser abrogated the following year, beginning intermittent skirmishes with Israel over the Sinai. The war significantly escalated tensions in the Middle East, leading to an accelerated arms race. As Nasser put it, "The problem now is that while the United States' objective is to pressure us to minimize our dealings with the Soviet Union, it will drive us in the opposite direction altogether. The U.S. Ieaves us no choice." And indeed, though Israel had decisively defeated the Arabs, U.S. military assistance to Tel Aviv increased dramatically, as did East Bloc arms sales to Egypt. Nasser did show some interest in a land-for-peace swap-indeed, he had explored peace negotiations with Israel in the 1950s before the provocative attack in Gaza-but he died suddenly of a heart attack in September 1970.

He was succeeded by Anwar el-Sadat, who had been on ? the CIA payroll since 1960. Despite this, the Nixon J Administration was slow to work with Sadat, viewing Egypt through a Cold War prism. Sadat made a formal peace offer to Israel in February 1971, but Israel responded by expanding settlements in the occupied Sinai. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger preferred to keep Egyptian-Israeli relations in a stalemate, hoping that the Russians would pressure Sadat into further compromise. Even after Sadat purged pro-Soviet elements from the Egyptian government, Kissinger couldn't be bothered. Sadat's intention, later realized, was to convert Egypt to a U.S. client state. He sent Soviet advisors home and intervened to prevent a communist takeover of Sudan. But frustrated by Washington's indifference to his lost sovereignty over the Sinai, Sadat launched a new war on Israel in 1973 with Syrian support.

Both Jordan's King Hussein and Saudi King Fahd warned the Israelis in advance of the coming attack, but Tel Aviv refused to believe the Arab states were strong enough to pull it off. This easily preventable war led to serious losses on the Israeli side, as Egypt regained control of the Suez Canal. At this point the U.S. suddenly became amenable to a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Egyptian conflict, though Kissinger's ineffectual shuttle diplomacy produced few results for the remainder of his tenure. This eventually led to Sadat's famous trip to Jerusalem and the Camp David Accords, sponsored by the Carter Administration.

Egyptian peace with Israel was bought with billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer funds. Egypt became the second largest recipient of U.S. aid (after Israel), now totaling some $4 billion annually. Sadat bought peace by agreeing to vague promises that the Israelis would later negotiate peace with the Palestinians. In fact, the Israeli Knesset voted on "policy guidelines" stating that Israel had no intention of honoring these promises. The resolution stated that after a "transition period" agreed to at Camp David, Israel would "act to fulfill its rights to sovereignty over Judea, Samaria [their names for the West Bank] and the Gaza district." These "rights" were indeed fulfilled with increased repression and settlements in the West Bank. Israel also broke Camp David pledges regarding water rights, all of which engendered only weak protests from Sadat.

For its part, Israel bought peace by returning (almost) all of the Sinai and removing Jewish settlements from those lands.

Prime Minister Begin then exploited peace with Egypt (and later with Jordan) by using his freed-up forces to launch new strikes against Palestinian positions in Lebanon. And for its part, the U.S. used the Camp David talks to derail the international consensus in favor of a multilateral peace conference including Europe, the East Bloc and the Arab states. In this way, Washington alone remained in charge of any "peace process."

The Camp David Accords were deeply unpopular both in Egypt and throughout the Arab world. Sadat also alienated his citizens through his economic policies, privatizing many state holdings and cutting food subsidies and other services in accord with World Bank and IMF advice. A hero in the West, he was widely despised at home. There was little public mourning when he was assassinated in 1982, in contrast to the millions who thronged the streets for Nasser's funeral. Sadat was killed by Islamic militants within his own elite guard units while he reviewed a military parade. According to author Douglas Valentine, the guards had been trained by CIA agent William Buckley. Buckley himself sat in the stands during the assassination; also sitting nearby was Sadat's successor, Hosni Mubarak, who had the presence of mind to duck.

Mubarak has ruled with the proverbial iron fist ever since. Egypt had been a police state under Nasser and Sadat, but human rights abuses reached new heights during the Mubarak regime. Mindful of Sadat's fate, he has cracked down on Islamists, moderates as well as radicals. This, of course, has had the effect of making the Islamic movement in Egypt ever more militant, in marked contrast to states like Yemen and Jordan where they are allowed to compete for parliamentary seats. Many of Egypt's most radical Muslim fighters were trained by Western intelligence services for use in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. The Egyptian arm of the Islamic Jihad has forged ties with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida network, staging terror attacks against foreign tourists, as well as operating in the U.S.

Egypt under Mubarak uses its billions in U.S. military aid to detain, beat and torture dissenters, opposition politicians and journalists; many have died in custody. Thousands of political prisoners and pro-democracy activists are held in overcrowded, disease-ridden prisons, without charges or trials. Press restrictions, including newspaper shutdowns, are widespread. Arab nationalists view Egypt as a well-bribed client state of the U.S. and an obstacle to self-determination for its own people as well as its Palestinian neighbors. Nevertheless, the "Lion of Egypt" was re-elected to a fourth term in 1999 with just under 94 percent of the vote; his party holds 97 percent of the legislative seats. He has never named a vice president.

But however much the people of Egypt chafe under Mubarak's regime, their plight pales beside the 54-year occupation suffered by the residents of Palestine.
*
Boomerang!
Mark Zepezauer

Hardcover $29.95
Paperback $16.95

From the author of The CIA’s Greatest Hits comes a gripping read exposing U.S. terror that has finally come home to roost. From Afghanistan to Turkey, from the Caspian Sea to the Sudan, the U.S. has ripped through one country after another in the Middle East and elsewhere, manipulating and marauding for its own benefit. Zepezauer takes his title from Herbert Hoover's comment made right after Pearl Harbor: "You can't keep sticking needles in a rattlesnake and expect not to get bitten."

From the Publisher

Mark Zepezauer is an author and cartoonist based in Tucson, Arizona. He is the author of Take the Rich Off Welfare and The CIA's Greatest Hits as well as the cartoon panel US History Backwards. On his shoulder he carries a Siamese cat.

From the Author

For years, critics of US foreign policy had warned that we were endangering our own security by supporting repressive governments and terrorist forces abroad--that sooner or later it would come back to haunt us. When it finally happened, we were told that it was unpatriotic to ask why. I felt just the opposite--that it was unpatriotic to pretend that our foreign policies had nothing to do with it. I wanted to counter the "blame America last" crowd, who would bend over backwards to avoid finding any fault with our actions.

I wanted to write a book that would make it clear that the answer to "why do they hate us?" is "well, wouldn't you?" Not because I hate America, but because I love my country enough to want us to stop harming innocents and making needless enemies. If you know someone who has no idea of the history of our crimes in the Middle East and Central Asia, you can give them this book to help explain it. If you do know something about the topic, there may be some new information here that will open your eyes. But either way, we owe it to our children and grandchildren--and the children of Southwest Asia--to understand how we got to this point, before this cycle of violence spins out of control.

Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Common Courage Press (October 1, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1567512232
ISBN-13: 978-1567512236

Hardcover: http://www.amazon.com/Boomerang-Mark-Zepezauer/dp/1567512232/thekonformist
Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/Boomerang-Created-Enemies-Brought-America/dp/1567512224/thekonformist

Anti-Defamation League Demagoguery and Islamophobia

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/10/anti-defamation-league-demagoguery-and.html
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Anti-Defamation League Demagoguery and Islamophobia
Stephen Lendman

Founded by B'nai B'rith in 1913, its stated mission is "to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all," calling itself "the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency, (fighting) anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry...."

In fact, Abraham Foxman, its national director, uses high-mindedness and unfounded anti-semitism hysteria as cover for backing Jewish supremacy and the right of Israelis over Arabs, including by occupation and belligerently enforced apartheid.

One of the 52 listed Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organization (CPMAJO) Zionist organizations, ADL disseminates pro-Israeli propaganda and conducts smear campaigns against Israeli critics, under the guise of fighting anti-semitism and supporting human rights equitably. Overall, in fact, its long history is disturbing.

In the late 1930s and 40s, it spied on suspected communist sympathizers, working with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), later called the House Committee on Internal Security until abolished in 1975, its functions transferred to the House Judiciary Committee.

Later in the 1980s, it engaged in private spying, the San Francisco Chronicle reporting that, in April 1993, police raided its offices, revealing a political spy operation aided by a corrupt police officer, Tom Gerard. Working with Roy Bullock, a political informant, files about thousands of Arab Americans and hundreds left-of-center northern California organizations were pilfered.

Among them were the National Lawyers Guild, ACLU, NAACP, the Rainbow Coalition, Greenpeace, the Nation of Islam, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Bay Area anti-Apartheid Network, Asian Law Caucus, CISPES, and 20 Bay area labor unions, none supporting hate or revolutionary activities.

Later it was revealed that ADL conducted similar operations nationally through its LEARN program (Law Enforcement Agency Resource Network), infiltrating local law enforcement agencies, bribing police officers, and securing non-public information illegally.

Its penchant for spying is now exposed, if not acknowledged, yet so far it's escaped prosecution and harsh class action suit judgments by admitting no wrongdoing, and agreeing to remove improperly obtained documents from its files. Henceforth, it promised:

-- to refrain from seeking non-public information;

-- contribute $25,000 to a Hate Crimes Fund;

-- another $25,000 for a public school course; and

-- $25,000 more to a fund for improving relations among Jews, Blacks, and other minorities.

After Israel's "War of Independence," its publication, "The Facts," called supporters of Palestinian justice anti-semites, including Barnard College Dean Virginia Gildersleve, Kermit Roosevelt (grandson of Theodore Roosevelt), and former American University of Beirut President Bayard Dodge. Its May 1948 publication charged:

"Their espousal of the Arab League cause and opposition to Zionism has been marked by the increasingly hostile attitude toward the Jewish people themselves. While anti-Zionism and sympathy for the Arab cause are not necessarily indications of anti-Semitic prejudice, there are many whose pro-Arab utterances and activities have contained sufficiently expressed or implied anti-Semitism to give cause for genuine alarm."

Thereafter, ADL used the same "guilt by association" and "guilt by juxtaposition" smears against other Israeli critics and pro-Palestinian supporters.

For example, in 1983, its handbook titled, "Pro-Arab propaganda in America: Vehicles and Voices" listed university faculty and staff members, critical of Israel and Zionism, calling them anti-semites, extremists, and radicals seeking to abolish the state of Israel and incite prejudice against Jewish Americans. Charges were, in fact, smears based on lies, distortions, and half truths, censuring numerous anti-Israeli critics.

Along with AIPAC, the Zionist Organization of America, and other prominent CPMAJO-listed groups, the ADL exerts enormous influence in America. Working closely with Mossad, the FBI, CIA, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ADL fronts for Israel without registering as a foreign agent. Using pressure, cajoling, and smear threats, it also demands media compliance, assuring one-sided pro-Israeli coverage.

ADL's Top US Anti-Israeli Groups

In early October, ADL published its top 10 list, including one Jewish-led one, Abe Foxman announcing:

"While there are hundreds of groups that organize and participate in various anti-Israeli activities, we have identified the largest and most well-coordinated anti-Israeli groups. These groups are not promoting peace. They are spreading propaganda to assault Israel's legitimacy. We want Americans to know who (they) are and what it is they really stand for, which is to delegitimize the Jewish state."

"These groups demonize Israel through various public campaigns. Their messages are one-sided and fail to take the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into account. They unfairly attack israel while ignoring Palestinian terrorism and incitement. They apply a different standard to Israel than other countries, condemning it for implementing policies to protect its citizens."

The above statement reflects the last refuge of a scoundrel, blaming victims and their supporters, in this case, organizations for peace, equity and justice, unlike ADL and other pro-Israeli groups. Like all Jewish supremacists, they're for Israeli lawlessness, violence, aggressive wars, isolation, home demolitions, land theft, dispossessions, mass imprisonments, torture, targeted assassinations, and continued slow-motion genocide against millions of Palestinians, including besieged Gazans.

ADL's top 10 include:

(1) Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER)

Formed post-9/11, it's been activist against war, imperialism, bigotry, and represents other issues, including civil and human rights, and support for Palestinian equity and justice.

(2) Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition

It's "committed to comprehensive public education on the rights of all Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands of origin, and to full restitution of all their confiscated and destroyed property," according to international law.

(3) Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

In defending civil liberties, freedom of religion, diversity, tolerance, and democratic freedoms, it combats hate groups vilifying Islam and Muslims.

(4) Friends of Sabeel-North America (FOSNA)

It "promotes awareness and understanding" of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict "through educational programs for North American Christians....FOSNA seeks reconciliation between people of the Holy Land in a vision of peace based on principles of a just peace," including "the urgency of ending US support for Israel's illegal military occupation."

(5) If Americans Knew (IAK)

Its mission is "to inform and educate the American public on issues of major significance that are unreported, underreported, or misreported in the American media." It believes conflict resolution and justice depends on revealing truths, ones major US media sources suppress, supporting the worst of Israeli lawlessness.

(6) International Solidarity Movement (ISM)

A Palestinian-led initiative, it's committed to resisting Israel's occupation, oppression, domination, and apartheid through nonviolent, direct-action methods.

(7) Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)

It seeks equity, peace, security, and self-determination for Israelis and Palestinians alike, through "grassroots organizing, education, advocacy, and media." It's the only US Jewish organization providing a voice for Jews and their allies, who believe that Middle East peace is only possible "through justice and full equality" for Jews and Muslims alike.

(8) Muslim American Society (MAS)

As a religious, charitable, social, cultural, and educational group, its mission is to "move people to strive for God consciousness, liberty, and justice, and to convey Islam with utmost clarity."

(9) Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)

By "visualiz(ing) the Palestinian struggle," it opposes apartheid and occupation through protests, memorials, and other ways, highlighting their plight against Israeli aggression and occupation.

(10) US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (USCEIO)

It's a "diverse coalition working for freedom from occupation and equal rights for all by challenging US policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Based on human rights and international law, it seeks peace, justice, and conciliation by "chang(ing) the US role," the essential way to do it.

A Final Comment

The contrast between ADL and the above groups is stark and revealing. Claiming human rights credentials, ADL backs the worst of Israeli lawlessness. Organizations like its top 10 support the rule of law, self-determination, equity, nonviolence, conciliation, and the right of everyone in the region to co-exist peacefully - notions Israel and its acolytes won't tolerate, ADL prominent among them.

Asking Obama to take the lead in an October 19 Jerusalem Post interview, Foxman expressed disdain for Palestinian self-determination, saying:

"Now is the time to send a message to the Palestinians and Middle Eastern and European nations that the US will not tolerate and sanction" Palestinians' creating a state unilaterally. "It has to be made clear to the Palestinians that they have to give up this pipe dream that their Arab and European friends (which ones he didn't say) will give them a state without them having to make concessions or sacrifices."

From most people this comment would shock. From Foxman it reflects his advocacy for enforced apartheid, the harsher the better, demanding all, giving nothing, what he's supported throughout his entire professional life, masquerading as a human rights champion.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

Elvis bin Laden

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/2010/07/26/Commentary-Elvis-bin-Laden/UPI-65401280146819/

Elvis bin Laden
July 26, 2010
ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE, UPI Editor at Large

WASHINGTON -- The "Veterans Today" Network, a one-man show on the Internet created and run by Gordon Duff, a 100 percent disabled Marine Vietnam veteran, states flatly that 9/11 was a CIA/Mossad conspiracy and that Osama bin Laden wasn't involved and died in 2001.

This can easily be dismissed as yet another example of deliberately disseminated disinformation riddled with intentionally false or inaccurate data designed to confuse the adversary. But some key intelligence officials are taking bin Laden's reported demise seriously.

CIA Director Leon Panetta said in early July that the intelligence agency hadn't been able to positively confirm any specific information on the uber-terrorist since "late 2001." And all those audio and video tapes broadcast by the Qatar-based al-Jazeera global television network? Clever Israeli forgeries, says Duff.

Many other voices in cyberspace claim the bin Laden myth is kept "alive" to justify the Afghan war and the global war on terror.

Angelo Codevilla, who teaches international relations at Boston University, is a former U.S. intelligence officer who studied Soviet disinformation techniques during the Cold War. He says a close examination of all the alleged bin Laden tapes, including the videos, have convinced him that Elvis Presley is more alive than Osama bin Laden.

By all accounts from those who knew him prior to 9/11, bin Laden was a deeply religious man and his early tapes after 9/11 were sprinkled with references to God and the Prophet Muhammad. Not so the later ones, which were subsequently analyzed by some experts who said they were professional forgeries.

The last time credible intercepts of bin Laden's voice were made by overhead satellites in early December 2001 as he was escaping through the Tora Bora mountain range from Afghanistan to the sanctuary of Pakistan's tribal areas.

The late Ajmal Khattak, the head of the Khattak tribe, who had half a million followers in the region, advised this reporter and his Pakistani assistant Ammar Turabi, and our multilingual security, to rent horses and proceed to an exit from Tora Bora in the Tirah Valley. We got there Dec. 11. Local villagers told us bin Laden and some 50 fighters had emerged Dec. 9 and were met by a convoy of utility vehicles that sped off in the direction Peshawar.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton evidently had more recent intelligence on her last visit to Pakistan July 21. She said she believes "elements" of the Pakistani government know bin Laden's whereabouts. Those with the knowledge, she added, are in the "bowels" of the bureaucracy, not the "top levels of government." She was clearly referring to some members of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Former ISI chief Gen. Hamid Gull is a personal friend of both bin Laden and Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, and bin Laden's no. 2, the Egyptian doctor Adman al-Zawahiri. Gul is an advocate of Pakistan's politico-religious extremists and self-declared enemy of the United States.

There are "retired" ISI officers who still see bin Laden as a hero of the joint campaign against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Gul and his followers are also working to hasten an end to the U.S. presence in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

For the now growing number who believes bin Laden is dead, there is only one valid message from bin Laden. It was his open letter to the "Pakistani people," on al-Jazeera, dated Sept. 24, 2001, 13 days after 9/11, in which he said:

-- "I have already stated that I was not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States.

-- "Neither had I any knowledge of these attacks nor do I consider the killing of innocent women and children and other humans, as an appreciable act … Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent … people. Such a practice is forbidden even in the course of a battle.

-- "All that is going in Palestine … is sufficient to call the wrath of God upon the United States and Israel."

Those who believe Osama Bin Laden is alive, and guilty of killing almost 3,000, quote his 2004 talk in which he said he thought of attacking U.S. skyscrapers when he saw Israeli aircraft bombing tower blocks in Lebanon in 1982.

"God knows that it had not occurred to our mind to attack the twin towers," he said then, "but after our patience ran out and we saw the injustice and inflexibility of the American-Israeli alliance toward our people in Palestine and Lebanon, this came to my mind."

While Duff is mostly guff for those whose job is to keep tabs on all the twists and turns since 9/11, there is also the post 9/11 generation that doesn't read newspapers or weekly magazines and gets its news fix online. The conspiracy theory coupled with disinformation from all sides makes for more interesting reading. It also gives youngsters a leg up on their "naive" elders.

Bin Laden was suffering from a kidney ailment and some experts say he died Dec. 13, four days after his escape from Tora Bora. Videos since then, neutral experts say, show bin Laden writing with his right hand but he is well known as left-handed. They also detected differences in the shape of the nose, skin color and speech.

Duff does commentary on his conspiracy theories for radio and TV news programs; his provocative articles are carried the world over and his Web site gets 22 million page hits a month. Some of his recent "Top 10 Stories of the Week": "The CIA: Beyond Redemption and Should Be Terminated"; "Does Event Honoring Israeli Spy Suggest Another Israeli Operation?"; "Wikipedia Revisionism to Israeli Pressure Groups."

Duff's "Corporate Profile" says, "We are a full service Network of 63 Web sites that service the U.S. Military Veterans' Community," which claims "over 310,000 plus unique visitors per month" and recently grew 39 percent in one month.

On the World Wide Web, there are no red lines between information, misinformation and disinformation.

Is Israel assassinating Iran nuclear scientists?

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1064852.html

17/02/2009
Is Israel assassinating Iran nuclear scientists?
By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Iran, Nuclear, CIA

Israel is assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists as part of a covert war against the Islamic Republic's illicit weapons program, the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday quoted Western intelligence analysts as saying.

The British daily said Israel's Mossad espionage agency was rumored to be behind the death of Ardeshire Hassanpour, a top nuclear scientist at Iran's Isfahan uranium plant, who died in mysterious circumstances from reported "gas poisoning" in 2007.

Other recent deaths of important figures in the procurement and enrichment process in Iran and Europe have been the result of Israeli "hits", intended to deprive Tehran of key technical skills at the head of the program, according to the analysts.

The Telegraph also quoted United States intelligence sources as saying Israel is using sabotage, front companies and double agents to disrupt the regime's illicit weapons project as an alternative to direct military strikes.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that Israel has been carrying out similar covert activities for about a decade, ever since Iran was first suspected of seeking nuclear weapons. The U.S. journalist James Risen has written recently that the CIA and the Mossad have planned together a number of sabotage operations against the Iranian program, including damaging power lines to nuclear sites in order to cause harm to computer systems and equipment.

The Telegraph also quoted Israeli officials as privately acknowledging the new U.S. administration is unlikely to sanction an air attack on Iran's nuclear installations and that President Barack Obama's offer to extend a hand of peace to Tehran puts any direct military action beyond reach for now.

As such, the reported goal of Israel's covert campaign is to delay or interrupt the Iranian research program, without engaging in a direct confrontation that could lead to a wider war.

"Disruption is designed to slow progress on the program, done in such a way that they don't realize what's happening. You are never going to stop it," a former CIA officer on Iran was quoted as saying.

"The goal is delay, delay, delay until you can come up with some other solution or approach," he added. "We certainly don't want the current Iranian government to have those weapons. It's a good policy, short of taking them out militarily, which probably carries unacceptable risks."

Reva Bhalla, a senior analyst with Stratfor, the U.S. private intelligence company with strong government security connections, was quoted by the paper as saying the strategy was to take out key people.

"With co-operation from the United States, Israeli covert operations have focused both on eliminating key human assets involved in the nuclear programme and in sabotaging the Iranian nuclear supply chain," she was quoted as saying.

"As US-Israeli relations are bound to come under strain over the Obama administration's outreach to Iran, and as the political atmosphere grows in complexity, an intensification of Israeli covert activity against Iran is likely to result."

Hamas is a Creation of Mossad

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/ZER403A.html

Hamas is a Creation of Mossad
by Hassane Zerouky
Global Outlook, No 2, Summer 2002
www.globalresearch.ca
23 March 2004

Thanks to the Mossad, Israel's "Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks", the Hamas was allowed to reinforce its presence in the occupied territories. Meanwhile, Arafat's Fatah Movement for National Liberation as well as the Palestinian Left were subjected to the most brutal form of repression and intimidation

Let us not forget that it was Israel, which in fact created Hamas. According to Zeev Sternell, historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, "Israel thought that it was a smart ploy to push the Islamists against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO)".

Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of the Islamist movement in Palestine, returning from Cairo in the seventies, established an Islamic charity association. Prime Minister Golda Meir, saw this as a an opportunity to counterbalance the rise of Arafat’s Fatah movement. .According to the Israeli weekly Koteret Rashit (October 1987), "The Islamic associations as well as the university had been supported and encouraged by the Israeli military authority" in charge of the (civilian) administration of the West Bank and Gaza. "They [the Islamic associations and the university] were authorized to receive money payments from abroad."

The Islamists set up orphanages and health clinics, as well as a network of schools, workshops which created employment for women as well as system of financial aid to the poor. And in 1978, they created an "Islamic University" in Gaza. "The military authority was convinced that these activities would weaken both the PLO and the leftist organizations in Gaza." At the end of 1992, there were six hundred mosques in Gaza. Thanks to Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad (Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks) , the Islamists were allowed to reinforce their presence in the occupied territories. Meanwhile, the members of Fatah (Movement for the National Liberation of Palestine) and the Palestinian Left were subjected to the most brutal form of repression.

In 1984, Ahmed Yassin was arrested and condemned to twelve years in prison, after the discovery of a hidden arms cache. But one year later, he was set free and resumed his activities. And when the Intifada (‘uprising’) began, in October 1987, which took the Islamists by surprise, Sheik Yassin responded by creating the Hamas (The Islamic Resistance Movement): "God is our beginning, the prophet our model, the Koran our constitution", proclaims article 7 of the charter of the organization.

Ahmed Yassin was in prison when, the Oslo accords (Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government) were signed in September 1993. The Hamas had rejected Oslo outright. But at that time, 70% of Palestinians had condemned the attacks on Israeli civilians. Yassin did everything in his power to undermine the Oslo accords. Even prior to Prime Minister Rabin’s death, he had the support of the Israeli government. The latter was very reluctant to implement the peace agreement.

The Hamas then launched a carefully timed campaign of attacks against civilians, one day before the meeting between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators, regarding the formal recognition of Israel by the National Palestinian Council. These events were largely instrumental in the formation of a Right wing Israeli government following the May 1996 elections.

Quite unexpectedly, Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered Sheik Ahmed Yassin to be released from prison ("on humanitarian grounds") where he was serving a life sentence. Meanwhile, Netanyahu, together with President Bill Clinton, was putting pressure on Arafat to control the Hamas. In fact, Netanyahu knew that he could rely, once more, on the Islamists to sabotage the Oslo accords. Worse still: after having expelled Yassin to Jordan, Prime Minister Netanyahu allowed him to return to Gaza, where he was welcomed triumphantly as a hero in October 1997.

Arafat was helpless in the face of these events. Moreover, because he had supported Saddam Hussein during the1991 Gulf war, (while the Hamas had cautiously abstained from taking sides), the Gulf states decided to cut off their financing of the Palestinian Authority. Meanwhile, between February and April 1998, Sheik Ahmad Yassin was able to raise several hundred million dollars, from those same countries. The the budget of The Hamas was said to be greater than that of the Palestinian Authority. These new sources of funding enabled the Islamists to effectively pursue their various charitable activities. It is estimated that one Palestinian out of three is the recipient of financial aid from the Hamas. And in this regard, Israel has done nothing to curb the inflow of money into the occupied territories.

The Hamas had built its strength through its various acts of sabotage of the peace process, in a way which was compatible with the interests of the Israeli government. In turn, the latter sought in a number of ways, to prevent the application of the Oslo accords. In other words, Hamas was fulfilling the functions for which it was originally created: to prevent the creation of a Palestinian State. And in this regard, Hamas and Ariel Sharon, see eye to eye; they are exactly on the same wave length.
*
The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at www.globalresearch.ca grants permission to cross-post original Global Research (Canada) articles in their entirety, or any portions thereof, on community internet sites, as long as the text & title of the article are not modified. The source must be acknowledged as follows: Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at www.globalresearch.ca . For cross-postings, kindly use the active URL hyperlink address of the original CRG article. The author's copyright note must be displayed. (For articles from other news sources, check with the original copyright holder, where applicable.). For publication of Global Research (Canada) articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: editor@globalresearch.ca .

© Copyright H ZEROUKY 2004. For fair use only/ pour usage équitable seulement. This article originally appeared in French in L’Humanité. Translation by Global Outlook, 2002.

Sarkozy cooking up a lethal concoction

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2907.shtml

Would-be master chef Sarkozy appears to be cooking up a lethal concoction
By Eric Walberg
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Feb 1, 2008

There is no question that French President Nicolas Sarkozy is a master political manipulator. On the domestic front he trumped both left and right, bringing Socialists into his cabinet, setting them at each others’ throats. At the same time, showing his true colours, he moved quickly to confront the unions and students over early retirement, probationary work guarantees, university places for all who want them.

Note how his “reforms” are all about taking away rights, not giving people more. He also cleverly borrowed a soupçon of Le Pen’s anti-Arab jingoism for his broth.

In a recent debate between Marine Le Pen, vice president of the National Front of France and heir to her notorious father, and Tariq Ramadan, the Egyptian-Swiss intellectual, grandson of founder of the Muslim Brotherhood Hassan Al-Banna, dubbed the Muslim Martin Luther, both agreed that Sarkozy and his ilk pose the biggest threat to Europe’s social fabric. Le Pen grumbled that they steal arguments and votes from the NF; Ramadan complained that they make Le Pen’s ideas acceptable to the average voters.

Ex-Mossad agent Sarko is able to piggy-back on the Zionist stranglehold in European intellectual life to cow the likes of Le Pen into dropping their anti-Jewish rhetoric and focus their racist instincts on Muslims. At the same time, he is able to build on the Thatcherite legacy to undermine the welfare state. In less than a year in office, he has thrown together this poisonous stew and serves it up as his new programme to meet the demands of 21st century France.

Ramadan is one of the few media personalities who is given a chance to counter this slide towards a Euro-Reich, arguing that forcing Muslim immigrants to abandon their traditions, capitulating to the likes of Sarko, merely reinforces racism. “What we need is a new narrative, a new ‘we,’ a mutlicoloured, multicultural European identity. Europeans need to psychologically integrate that into their worldview.” This is light years from the subtle but inherently racist project that Sarko is busy trying to implement. By the way, he is not always subtle, as his hate-filled reference to Arabs as scum when minister of interior in Jacques Chirac’s cabinet revealed.

On the international scene, Sarko has been even busier, if that’s possible, despite the lack of any clear foreign policy programme in his election campaign. In addition to his reputation as a latter-day Tartuffe, Sarkozy is also being called a reincarnation of Pétain, the general who governed Nazi-occupied France from 1939-45, allowing the Germans (read: Americans) to carry out their imperial agenda without any French resistance. This rather startling parallel of current European politics with the 1930s has also surfaced, of all places, in the Czech Republic, where citizens are strongly against one of Sarko’s pet schemes -- to tear Kosovo away from Serbia, seeing it as a reenactment of the Munich agreement of 1938, when Britain served up Sudetenland to the Nazis, which was completely illegal not to mention immoral. Strikingly, Russia played and is now playing the role of the only major power to oppose such submission to the imperial bully du jour.

So far, opposition to the present world bully is weak. While France, Germany and, with some delay, Spain refused to tow the line on Iraq, the election of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and now Sarkozy has undone this feeble protest. However, Russia’s resistance to US world plans has begun to gain respect around the world, even in once hostile Eastern Europe, with Poland and Bulgaria being the latest to begin thawing their relations with Russia, responding to popular pressure, despite unremitting anti-Russia US/European media.

One startling development -- remember, Sarko’s been at the helm of state less than a year -- is either a pièce de résistance or a recipe for disaster, depending on your culinary tastes. During a visit 15 January to the UAE, he unveiled his plan to set up France’s first permanent naval base in the Gulf, just across from Iran. The base will be built in Abu Dhabi, and is intended to put France in the big league alongside the US in the Middle East. The agreement is a “sign to all that France is participating in the stability of this region of the world,” Sarko told reporters. “France responds to its friends. France and the Emirates signed a reciprocal defence accord in 1995. Our friends from the Emirates asked that a base with 400 personnel be opened.” Earlier accords were signed with the threat of Iraq under Saddam Hussein in mind; today it is Iran that is the bête-noire, awaiting invasion by the US and France, to be served up as Sarko’s latest cordon bleu monstrosity. Or so this megalomaniac imagines in his wild fantasies.

The closest French military base to the Gulf is in Djibouti, a former French colony on the Red Sea. That base will be scaled back as a result of the new one. “This is quite a revolution,” said an anonymous French government official. "We are no longer in our historic sphere of influence. Now we’re in a country we never colonised.” Out with the old imperialism, in with the new.

Does he need a reminder about the bloody wars for Algerian and Vietnamese independence? Dien Bien Phu, anyone? How clever -- arm Hussein to the teeth (good for the French arms industry), frighten his UAE neighbours into giving him bases, then use them to attack Iran. Is this really happening?

It is in this context that we must consider his supposedly enlightened offer to compliant Arab states to provide nuclear energy cooperation. The Emirates will soon start construction on a $6 billion nuclear reactor with the generous assistance of France’s EDF. Egypt has been offered a similar radioactive white elephant. Another brilliant coup -- bring coals to Newcastle and sell them for big bucks. In the land of the eternal sun, floating on a sea of oil, get your “friends” to pay you billions of euros to build radioactive furnaces which produce eternal waste. The quintessential snake-oil salesman. I rest my case.

Quelle affreux. There are a few cracks in his many dishes, however. His inimitable ex-wife Cecilia did her level best to stab him in the back, leaving him very publicly at a crucial moment in his political intrigues -- her stand-up of not one but two US presidents at Kennebunkport last autumn is the stuff of legend. She recently published tell-all memoirs revealing his 4 a.m. Karaoke and booze-laced shenanigans with ladies of the night while France was burning, the result of his stand-off with the unions. He has shown his inner Tartuffe more than once on his numerous frantic visits to Russia, America and Africa. He was forced to flip-flop on his plan to scuttle the 35-hour work week, one minute saying it was toast; the next, the bedrock of the state’s understanding with labour.

Despite a flurry of appointments and speeches about a new relationship with Africa, demanding less corruption and more democracy, etc., there is little likelihood that his southern neighbours will pay any attention to him. His diplomatic coup of saving Bulgarian nurses in Libya and of retrieving adoption agents kidnapping Chadian children left him with more egg on his face than on his platter. As a cook he is just too ambitious, introducing spices and turning up the flame in a seemingly chaotic manner as he tries to win approval.

And just as he is able to manipulate liberal left and chauvinist right to forge an unholy alliance and pursue his Petainesque neocon-neoliberalism, he is stirring up leftists, true French patriots and anti-neocon conservatives into a new French résistance.

Pétain or Tartuffe? Whatever he is, we are sure to be in for more indigestion. Let’s hope that’s all.

Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly. You can reach him at www.geocities.com/walberg2002.

Bhutto wanted ties with Israel

http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=14909

Friday, December 28, 2007 by Staff Writer
Bhutto wanted ties with Israel, sought Mossad protection

Israeli media reports on Friday revealed that slain Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto intended to establish official relations with the Jewish state if elected and was seeking Mossad protection in the interim.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert grieved over Bhutto's assassination following an election rally on Thursday, and said that upon her return to Pakistan in October after years of exile Bhutto conveyed to him via a mutual acquaintance that she wanted close ties between Israel and Pakistan.

The Hebrew daily newspaper Ma'ariv further revealed that Bhutto had asked Israel's Mossad spy agency, along with the CIA and Britain's Scotland Yard, to help protect her in the run-up to Pakistan's January 8 election. Bhutto complained that current Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was trying to make her an easy target for assassination by now allowing her to use adequate protective measures.

According to the report, Israel's Foreign Ministry was in favor of aiding Bhutto, though the government ultimately decided against it for fear of angering the Musharraf regime and upsetting relations with neighboring India, a close ally of Israel engaged in an ongoing bitter confrontation with Pakistan.

Israeli leaders lamented that Bhutto, a popular former prime minister who was twice deposed by authoritarian elements, could have served as a bridge between Israel and the Muslim world.

Intel Agencies Know 9/11 An Inside Job

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2007/120407_common_knowledge.htm

Ex-Italian President: Intel Agencies Know 9/11 An Inside Job
Man who set up Operation Gladio tells Italy's largest newspaper attacks were run by CIA, Mossad Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Former Italian President and the man who revealed the existence of Operation Gladio Francesco Cossiga has gone public on 9/11, telling Italy's most respected newspaper that the attacks were run by the CIA and Mossad and that this was common knowledge amongst global intelligence agencies.

Cossiga was elected President of the Italian Senate in July 1983 before winning a landslide 1985 election to become President of the country in 1985.

Cossiga gained respect from opposition parties as one of a rare breed - an honest politician - and led the country for seven years until April 1992.

Cossiga's tendency to be outspoken upset the Italian political establishment and he was forced to resign after revealing the existence of, and his part in setting up, Operation Gladio - a rogue intelligence network under NATO auspices that carried out bombings across Europe in the 60's, 70's and 80's. Gladio's specialty was to carry out what they coined "false flag operations," terror attacks that were blamed on their domestic and geopolitical opposition.

Cossiga's revelations contributed to an Italian parliamentary investigation of Gladio in 2000, during which evidence was unearthed that the attacks were being overseen by the U.S. intelligence apparatus.

In March 2001, Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra stated, in sworn testimony, "You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force ... the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security."

Cossiga's new revelations appeared last week in Italy's oldest and most widely read newspaper, Corriere della Sera. Below appears a rough translation.

"[Bin Laden supposedly confessed] to the Qaeda September [attack] to the two towers in New York [claiming to be] the author of the attack of the 11, while all the [intelligence services] of America and Europe ... now know well that the disastrous attack has been planned and realized from the CIA American and the Mossad with the aid of the Zionist world in order to put under accusation the Arabic Countries and in order to induce the western powers to take part ... in Iraq [and] Afghanistan."

Cossiga first expressed his doubts about 9/11 in 2001, and is quoted in Webster Tarpley's book as stating that "The mastermind of the attack must have been a “sophisticated mind, provided with ample means not only to recruit fanatic kamikazes, but also highly specialized personnel. I add one thing: it could not be accomplished without infiltrations in the radar and flight security personnel.”

Coming from a widely respected former head of state, Cossiga's assertion that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job and that this is common knowledge amongst global intelligence agencies is highly unlikely to be mentioned by any establishment media outlets, because like the hundreds of other sober ex-government, military, air force professionals, allied to hundreds more professors and intellectuals - he can't be sidelined as a crackpot conspiracy theorist.

Learn more about Operation Gladio and false flag terrorism by watching Alex Jones' Terror Storm in high quality.

Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11

http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2893860.ece

Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11
Robert Fisk, Independent
25 August 2007

Each time I lecture abroad on the Middle East, there is always someone in the audience – just one – whom I call the "raver". Apologies here to all the men and women who come to my talks with bright and pertinent questions – often quite humbling ones for me as a journalist – and which show that they understand the Middle East tragedy a lot better than the journalists who report it. But the "raver" is real. He has turned up in corporeal form in Stockholm and in Oxford, in Sao Paulo and in Yerevan, in Cairo, in Los Angeles and, in female form, in Barcelona. No matter the country, there will always be a "raver".

His – or her – question goes like this. Why, if you believe you're a free journalist, don't you report what you really know about 9/11? Why don't you tell the truth – that the Bush administration (or the CIA or Mossad, you name it) blew up the twin towers? Why don't you reveal the secrets behind 9/11? The assumption in each case is that Fisk knows – that Fisk has an absolute concrete, copper-bottomed fact-filled desk containing final proof of what "all the world knows" (that usually is the phrase) – who destroyed the twin towers. Sometimes the "raver" is clearly distressed. One man in Cork screamed his question at me, and then – the moment I suggested that his version of the plot was a bit odd – left the hall, shouting abuse and kicking over chairs.

Usually, I have tried to tell the "truth"; that while there are unanswered questions about 9/11, I am the Middle East correspondent of The Independent, not the conspiracy correspondent; that I have quite enough real plots on my hands in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran, the Gulf, etc, to worry about imaginary ones in Manhattan. My final argument – a clincher, in my view – is that the Bush administration has screwed up everything – militarily, politically diplomatically – it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001?

Well, I still hold to that view. Any military which can claim – as the Americans did two days ago – that al-Qa'ida is on the run is not capable of carrying out anything on the scale of 9/11. "We disrupted al-Qa'ida, causing them to run," Colonel David Sutherland said of the preposterously code-named "Operation Lightning Hammer" in Iraq's Diyala province. "Their fear of facing our forces proves the terrorists know there is no safe haven for them." And more of the same, all of it untrue.

Within hours, al-Qa'ida attacked Baquba in battalion strength and slaughtered all the local sheikhs who had thrown in their hand with the Americans. It reminds me of Vietnam, the war which George Bush watched from the skies over Texas – which may account for why he this week mixed up the end of the Vietnam war with the genocide in a different country called Cambodia, whose population was eventually rescued by the same Vietnamese whom Mr Bush's more courageous colleagues had been fighting all along.

But – here we go. I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. It's not just the obvious non sequiturs: where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon? Why have the officials involved in the United 93 flight (which crashed in Pennsylvania) been muzzled? Why did flight 93's debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field? Again, I'm not talking about the crazed "research" of David Icke's Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster – which should send any sane man back to reading the telephone directory.

I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers – whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C – would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.) What about the third tower – the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 (or the Salmon Brothers Building) – which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5.20pm on 11 September? Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it? The American National Institute of Standards and Technology was instructed to analyse the cause of the destruction of all three buildings. They have not yet reported on WTC 7. Two prominent American professors of mechanical engineering – very definitely not in the "raver" bracket – are now legally challenging the terms of reference of this final report on the grounds that it could be "fraudulent or deceptive".

Journalistically, there were many odd things about 9/11. Initial reports of reporters that they heard "explosions" in the towers – which could well have been the beams cracking – are easy to dismiss. Less so the report that the body of a female air crew member was found in a Manhattan street with her hands bound. OK, so let's claim that was just hearsay reporting at the time, just as the CIA's list of Arab suicide-hijackers, which included three men who were – and still are – very much alive and living in the Middle East, was an initial intelligence error.

But what about the weird letter allegedly written by Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian hijacker-murderer with the spooky face, whose "Islamic" advice to his gruesome comrades – released by the CIA – mystified every Muslim friend I know in the Middle East? Atta mentioned his family – which no Muslim, however ill-taught, would be likely to include in such a prayer. He reminds his comrades-in-murder to say the first Muslim prayer of the day and then goes on to quote from it. But no Muslim would need such a reminder – let alone expect the text of the "Fajr" prayer to be included in Atta's letter.

Let me repeat. I am not a conspiracy theorist. Spare me the ravers. Spare me the plots. But like everyone else, I would like to know the full story of 9/11, not least because it was the trigger for the whole lunatic, meretricious "war on terror" which has led us to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East. Bush's happily departed adviser Karl Rove once said that "we're an empire now – we create our own reality". True? At least tell us. It would stop people kicking over chairs.

Dead ‘Mossad spy’ was writing exposé

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article2009999.ece

From The Sunday Times
June 1, 2007

Dead ‘Mossad spy’ was writing exposé
After mysteriously falling from a London balcony, Ashraf Marwan was found to be halfway through an expose of his life
Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv

AN Egyptian millionaire who mysteriously fell to his death from the balcony of his London flat after being named as a Mossad spy was writing a book that threatened to expose the murky world of Arab-Israeli espionage.

Ashraf Marwan, the son-in-law of the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, was more than halfway through a book about the 1973 Yom Kippur war - in which he is alleged to have played a key intelligence role - when his body was discovered last week.

Marwan’s death, which police are treating as “unexplained”, has sent ripples across the Middle East and shocked some of Britain's wealthiest people.

The 62-year-old financier was a former shareholder of Chelsea football club and counted Ken Bates, its former chairman, Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi arms dealer, and Tiny Rowland, the late business tycoon, among his acquaintances.

But it was Marwan’s espionage activities that have surrounded his death with intrigue. Israeli intelligence sources claimed this weekend that he had been one of the greatest spies recruited by Mossad.

They said Marwan had supplied the Israeli secret service with a treasure trove of information, including the secret plans drawn up by Egypt’s leaders to cross the Suez Canal and attack Israel in 1973.

Ahron Bregman, an Israeli historian at King’s College London, however, believes Marwan was a double agent who misled the Israelis over Egypt’s plans for the war. This weekend Bregman said the Egyptian had left three messages on his answerphone last Tuesday, urgently asking him to make contact.

“I was out, but eventually spoke to him at around 4pm,” said Bregman. “He asked me about the recent libel case in Israel.”

The case involved two former Israeli intelligence officers, one of whom had accused the other of leaking Marwan’s name as a spy. Bregman said Marwan had described the court case as “a headache” and asked to meet him at King’s College the following day.

“It was very clear that we were going to meet, but there was no call on Wednesday and I heard later in the day that he had died,” said Bregman, who claimed in an Egyptian newspaper article in 2003 that Marwan had been a double agent. “He told me never to send anything to his address because it was watched. He was always very cautious and never referred to himself by name.”

Marwan fell four floors to his death from his flat at Carlton House Terrace overlooking St James’s Park. Police are exploring three possibilities: that he was murdered, that he jumped - although no suicide note has been found - or that he fell.

One possibility is that Marwan was taking medicinal drugs that made him faint. He had had three heart operations, according to a friend, Marwan, lived with his wife at the London flat where he died, was writing about the Yom Kippur war, in which he may have played a key intelligence role, and “had been very unwell”.

Other friends believe that he feared being assassinated after being “outed” as a Mossad spy.

The son of an Egyptian general, Marwan studied at Cairo university where he met Mona, Nasser’s daughter. He was 21 and she was 17. The couple married a year later and went on to have two sons, Gamal and Ahmed.

Marwan was soon leading a double life. In 1969, according to Israeli sources, he slipped into the Israeli embassy in London and - before being ejected - told a security guard: “Send my name to Tel Aviv. They’ll know who I am. I’ll be back in a week’s time.”

A week later one of Mossad’s most senior controllers - known by the initial D - flew to Britain and lavished five-star hospitality on Marwan. It was the start of a 30-year relationship that saw highly classified information, including the minutes of meetings between Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president, and other world leaders regularly passing into Mossad’s hands.

“It’s as if we were sleeping in the bedroom of the Egyptian presidential couple,” recalled an Israeli source.

Marwan, who worked in Sadat’s office, made only two conditions in return for his services: he was to be paid £50,000 for each significant meeting he had with his Israeli handlers and he insisted that D was to be his sole controller.

Before long Marwan’s raw intelligence became essential reading for Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister, and Moshe Dayan, her defence minister. “When information arrived from Marwan it was sent directly to the leaders,” said an insider. “It was better than any John le Carre espionage thriller.”

By 1972 Marwan was a millionaire and had revealed details to Mossad about secret arms deals between Egypt and the Soviet Union, according to Israeli sources.

But the best was yet to come. Marwan invited D to a meeting in London at which he handed his controller a suitcase full of documents outlining Egypt’s plans to cross Suez and attack Israel. Intelligence sources claim that overconfident Israeli military chiefs ignored the plans and they were left to sit in a safe in Tel Aviv.

In September 1973 King Hussein of Jordan tipped off Meir that Syria was also about to launch an attack. Meir sought Marwan’s advice.

But Marwan could not be reached. Finally, only 24 hours before the outbreak of war, a message was intercepted in the Mossad HQ in Tel Aviv: “Meet me tomorrow in London.”

Marwan managed to leave Sadat’s side by convincing the Egyptian president that he should travel to Libya to warn Colonel Gadaffi about the imminent conflict. From Tripoli, he flew to Malta and on to London.

Mossad stopped El-Al’s last flight to London as it prepared for take-off. The Boeing 707 waited on the tarmac for more than 30 minutes. Passengers saw a car speeding towards the aircraft and two fair-haired men climbed in. They were Zvi Zamir, the head of Mossad, and D, Marwan’s controller.

According to Israeli sources, Zamir rang Tel Aviv in the early hours of the morning and told colleagues: “Call Golda [Meir]. It’s today at 6pm, both Syria and Egypt.”

Marwan’s tardiness raised suspicions that he was a double agent but he was exonerated by Mossad. In Egypt Marwan remained a hero and was decorated by Sadat before moving to London, where he became active in the business world.

Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv, Marwan’s former controller, D, received the news of his death with sadness. With Marwan’s book unfinished, perhaps the motives for his secret life will never be fully explained.