Afghanistan 5-9-2012

9, May 2012                                Afghanistan

There is little to cheer with the announcement that US troops are planning to stay in Afghanistan until 2024. This is bad for the troops who are yearning to return home from a mission that has been so ill-defined. This is sure to alienate the Afghan people who are war weary of our presence, night raids and drone attacks. Just this week, an Afghan mother and her five children were mistakenly killed and another 14 civilians were killed in another incident in Badghis. A 2011 poll taken by the International Council on Security and Development revealed over 80% opposed the NATO war efforts and viewed them to be detrimental to the Afghan people.  Contrary to President Obama’s assertions, the war is going very badly. See Colonel Davis’ unclassified report in Rolling Stone magazine, entitled “Dereliction of Duty II”, which draws a strong parallel to H.R. Masters’ classic report of Vietnam.

President Obama’s highly publicized visit to Afghanistan may win a few votes at home but will have little outcome on the war itself. We should not be subjecting the people of Afghanistan and US troops as pawns in the high stakes of the US presidential election. How much more blood will be shed on a war without purpose and without end?

Attempt to gag 60 Minutes 4-26-2012

26, April 2012            Attempt to gag 60 Minutes

Well the dirty secret is finally out. In a gross attempt to censor Bob Simon’s 60 Minutes report on Palestinian Christians, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren called the head of CBS news and made a clumsy attempt to quash the damning expose.

Simon’s report described the brutal displacement of Palestinian Christians and the colonization of their land by the Israeli military. Hitherto, the presence of Palestinians Christians has been carefully hidden from the American public.

We now learn that there are Palestinian Lutherans, Catholics and Episcopalians.

These followers of Christ are subjected to the same humiliating treatment as their Muslim brethren - akin to the treatment of apartheid South African blacks. For example, they have to seek travel permits and pass through numerous military check points for short 7 miles trips which often turn into an all-day ordeals.

60 Minutes showed the Separation Wall looming like a menacing Darth Vader over Palestinian hovels and shows the stark disparity between the living conditions and resources of Palestinians and Jewish settlers. Bethlehem, Jesus’s birthplace, has now been isolated by the wall. 18% of its inhabitants are Christian who complain bitterly that their city has been reduced to an “open-air prison.”

The West Bank now looks like a lump of Swiss cheese, with Israeli colonies grabbing the good land and water resources, and the stateless Palestinians pushed into the dark holes.

Why are our scarce tax dollars propping up this inhumane, apartheid system?

Massive Spying on Americans 4-23-2012

23, April 2012                        Massive Spying on Americans

The Department of Homeland Security is making Americans more and more insecure. Its tentacles reach far and wide into virtually all electronic communications. It is amassing huge amounts of data on Americans. It is extremely troubling that this this mammoth federal bureaucracy is able to conduct its business under the radar of Congressional oversight.

National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower William Binney revealed that, unbeknownst to most Americans, the NSA is building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah. He reported his findings to reporter, James Bamford, who submitted a featured article of the NSA in Wired Magazine. The Bluffdale database contains virtually all privacy information – emails, cell phone calls, and Internet searches – of all Americans. Nothing can be considered sacred anymore. Most troubling is the high handedness and intimidating tactics used by the NSA when confronting reporters at airport security centers demanding access to their laptops and cell phones.

Federal Regulators have now sanctioned the use of drones to cast an even wider net on domestic surveillance.

Such actions are a gross assault on free speech and privacy which should be fiercely protected by the US Constitution.  Unwarranted searches and seizures of cell phones and laptops are now becoming routine driving a huge stake into our cherished democracy. The potential for abuse is enormous. I urge concerned readers to write to their representatives in Congress and demand an end to these intrusions. Private communications should remain private.

Freedom Riders of Israel 4-17-2012

17, April 2012                        Freedom Riders of Israel

A Stanford ‘alum’ delivered a stirring speech at a recent conference held at Stanford University. Fadi Quran, and fellow Palestinian activists drew inspiration for their new protests from the historic Freedom Riders of the 1960s in the US Deep South in which black Americans boarded all white buses triggering mass arrests accelerating an end to racial segregation. U.S. Civil Rights lawyer Clarence Jones was present and thanked Quran for validating the Freedom Riders efforts and modeling his peaceful protests on their successful legacy. He acknowledged that it would take enormous courage and an unshakable commitment to non-violence to bring about a change of attitude to end the occupation and oppression of the Palestinians whose land is being forcibly annexed at an alarming pace. Quran was arrested for his non-violent activism which fueled an outcry for his release.

Brute force, aided and abetted with billions of US military and economic aid, may make any hope of a two-state solution a fading dream but Jones warned that such an outcome would result in Israel losing its very soul. Enlightened Jewish organizations, such as J Street, are extremely concerned of Israel’s current trajectory and are appealing for an end to the occupation and a return to the universal policies of justice on which Quran has founded his nonviolent movement.

Time magazine hailed Quran as the “the face of the new Middle East.”

US supporting terror group 4-15-2012

15, April 2012               US supporting terror group

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, reveals more of the dark side of our foreign policy in an article in the The New Yorker entitled "Our Men in Iran?"

Hersh reports that the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command has been actively engaged in training a shady group of political radicals, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, at a secret site in Nevada since 2005.  The MEK has been linked to violent crimes against Americans to the more recent wave of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and is designated a terrorist organization by the State Department.

Contrary to our public statements of being a beacon for freedom and democracy, we have perpetuated a cycle of internal chaos and mayhem inside Iran intensifying anger towards the US and Israel which according to Hersh is also supporting the MEK. He reiterates that, after exhaustive fact checking from US and Israeli intelligence, there is absolutely no evidence that Iran is engaged in making nuclear weapons.  There is little doubt that ordinary Iranians will rally around their leadership, which they may regard with utter revulsion - as a direct consequence to our economic sanctions and covert operations. How long are the American people going to tolerate and support these insane policies with their prolonged silence?

It is time we stopped violating the sanctity of other nations and interfering in their internal affairs and halted the constant threats and drumbeat of war.

Rice’s talks on faith 3-30-2012

30 March 2012                       Rice’s talks on faith 

It a pity that Condoleezza Rice’s strong Christian faith did not serve her well during the tumultuous years as President Bush’s Secretary of State. Her warnings of nuclear mushroom clouds descending on US cities, turned out to be carefully crafted hysteria to justify the pre-emptive war on Iraq. The hoodlums who perpetrated the 9-11 attack were Saudi citizens hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan and later in Pakistan – not Iraq.

Condoleezza Rice then used her considerable skills to support President Bush and his inner circle’s decision to attack Afghanistan – another appalling decision. Iraq’s infrastructure has been largely destroyed with the ‘shock and awe’ of our invasion. We have left a terrible legacy. Over a trillion of dollars of our tax money has been squandered. Tens of thousands of Iraqis, Afghanis and US servicemen have lost their lives and many others suffer from horrible injuries. It is hard to believe Jesus would have approved such actions.

It is extremely sad to see such an attractive and talented person fall victim to political pressures and participate in such an appalling war of aggression on Iraq that  was  no threat to the US - no

WMD’s, no 911 and no Al-Qaeda connections.

Her claim to possess an abiding faith should have served as a moral compass to resist such political pressures. The indelible stain of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars cannot be so easily erased and will shadow all of her other accomplishments.

(Los Altos Crier, March 28, 2012)

Dangerous Threat to Obama 3-27-2012

27, March 2012                         Dangerous Threat to Obama

The stunning and shocking silence of the US mainstream media over an incendiary column calling for the assassination of President Obama is difficult to comprehend. The Jewish publisher and editor of the Atlantic Times, Andrew Adler, displeased with Obama’s failure to pledge unconditional support to Israel’s hawkish policies towards Iran, called on the Mossad, Israel’s secret police, to launch a mafia style assassination attack on President Obama. Adler argued that the removal of Obama would be good for Israel because the more –pro-Israel, compliant, Vice-President Joseph Biden, would become president. Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League admitted that Adler’s views are also shared by extremist elements within the Jewish community.

The threat against Obama should be taken seriously given Israel’s penchant for such thuggish activities. Remember the Lavon Affair, a botched up attack on Egyptian, American and British owned businesses in an attempt to shift the blame on the Moslem Brotherhood and create instability in Egypt. In 2005, the surviving Mossad agents were officially honored with a certificate of appreciation by the then Israeli President. More recently, Iranian scientists have been gunned down to derail its nuclear program.

We should heed the advice of foreign policy experts such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, who argued recently on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS program, that US & Israeli interests are not aligned. “We should divorce our special relationship with Israel – this marriage benefits Israel to the detriment of US interests.”