U.S. Pays for Zionist-oriented Policies

Perry is the perfect choice for the neocons because, as Rogin notes, he has stated that his “faith requires me to support Israel.” He believes that the Obama administration is “out of tune with America” on the question of Israel. In 2009, Perry received the “Defender of Jerusalem Award.” Rick Perry, despite his flaccid Tea Party and secessionist rhetoric, is the ideal candidate for the neocons and their global elite taskmasters. If nominated – and this is a distinct possibility – and elected as chief teleprompter reader, he will bring back neocon chest-pounding to the establishment political scene. As Obama has demonstrated, the agenda does not change. Only the rhetoric is slightly modified every four or eight years as the establishment shuffles the deck and the game of musical chairs continues uninterrupted. - Kurt Nimmo, Rick Perry is the Neocon Warmonger Choice for President, Infowars.com, August 12, 2011

U.S. Pays for Zionist-oriented Policies

By Sajjad Shaukat, News Center PK
July 29, 2011

Renowned political thinker, Morgenthau and others agree that a number of internal factors like population, system of government, geographical location, economic out etc. play a key role in formulating the foreign policy of a country. But this thesis is quite opposite to the United States where the Zionist Jews shape the internal policies of the country, while moulding American external policy in accordance with their own interests.

Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney pointed outs,

“It is long been clear that the pro-Israel, ultra-Zionist network of think tanks, public policy organizations, media outlets, and lobbying organizations which have absolute control over the United States Congress, executive branch and foreign policy, actually run the US government…politicians who do not submit to the Zionist agenda are not elected or appointed to serve the government. We know that no government can serve two masters, and as a result, we have seen Israeli priorities placed above those of the American people.”

McKinney explains,

“The idea that our leaders are intent on pursuing America’s vital national interests abroad–is a myth. What is up is the Israelis have a singularly powerful lobby in the US, which wields such political clout that no politician can afford to cross them. We are living in a country where the chief executive must worry that Congress will support the position of a foreign leader over the President of the United States…the pro-Israel movement in the US, a well-organized political machine that operates as the Israeli government’s agent in America…a fifth column in league with a foreign government–so powerful that it has become the decisive factor in determining US policy.”

In fact, Jews are owners of the many big cartels of the US in particular and the world in general. Based in the US, by running the major multinational corporations, arms factories, five star hotels, oil companies, liquor business, banks, film industry, print and electronic media on international level—having influence on the financial institutes like World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Jews have direct and indirect hold on the global economy. Thus by dominating the American internal policies, Zionist Jews mould country’s foreign policy for their own interests.

It is due to the dominance of Zionists over America that the September 11 tragedy was fully manipulated by Israel and Jews who had joined the Bush’s war against terrorism so as to target Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Iran in particular and other Muslim countries in general. For this purpose, Jews also got the services of some Hindus to continue their anti-Muslim campaign. In this regard, by availing the international phenomena of terrorism, Jewish-Hindu lobbies are collectively working in America and other European countries to exploit the double standards of the US-led west regarding terrorism and human rights vis-à-vis Pakistan, Iran and China including Syria, Libya, Yemen, Egypt etc. in wake of the violent uprising in these Middle East states.

Particularly Israel and India are equating the ‘war of independence’ in Kashmir and Palestine with terrorism. And New Delhi considers Pakistan as its enemy number one, while Tel Aviv takes Iran in the same sense owing to its nuclear programme. Israel is also against Pakistan as it is the only nuclear Islamic country.

Notably, Israeli Mossad which is well-penetrated in the American CIA is in collusion with Indian RAW. These secret agencies have introduced dangerous socio-religious elements in American and other western societies by equating the “war on terror” with “war on Islam” and Al Qaeda’s acts with all the Muslims—contributed to re-shape the global politics on cultural and religious lines with the negative projection of Islam.

As the US has been compelled to follow the Zionist policies, therefore, in a prolonged war of more than ten years, despite torturing the Muslims in Guantanamo Bay, Abu Graid, and other similar camps, despite the arrests of several Muslims abroad and inside America, despite heavy aerial bombardment and ground shelling in Iraq, Afghanistan and now in Pakistan through intermittent drone attacks, US-led forces have badly failed in obtaining their objectives. These tactics have killed more innocent civilians—created massive resentment against Washington, and have only been expanding the radicalism among the young men, turning them into suicide bombers, not only giving a greater setback to the security of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also endangering the US itself.

In the aftermath of 9/11, suicide attacks in various Islamic countries including Spain and Britain, and an unending wave of the same in Iraq and Afghanistan have already shown that the Muslim revolutionaries are creating economic instability in the world, which is not conducive to American interests. Meanwhile, US-sponsored different war has proved that big powers have failed in crushing the power of the Islamic militants through armed forces and sophisticated weaponry. Such a state terrorism, especially by the solesuperpower has resulted into more terrorism from Nigeria to Afghanistan and from Somalia to Iraq, while jeopardizing American regional and global interests, besides destabilising the US economy which is dominated by the Jews.

It is of particular attention that despite a prolonged war against terrorism, defeatism in Iraq and Afghanistan, heavy cost of war, acute financial crisis inside America and debt crisis, like the previous American presidents, even President Barrack Obama has become helpless before the influence of Zionist Jews. In this context, in line with the Jewish-Indo lobbies, now, US intends to convert particularly Pakistan into a “failed state” by causing political and economic instability as a perennial wave of subversive acts, sponsored by CIA, RAW and Mossad coupled with the US threat of high-value targets inside the country indicate. Besides, Washington is going to act upon exit strategy from Afghanistan, so it has started shifting Afghan war to Pakistan.

On the other side, Obama has totally failed in convincing Tel Aviv to abandon “settlements,” and to end the continued humiliations of the Palestinians—starving people through Gaza blockade. However, Obama has also failed in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In the words of Senator Fulbright,

“Israel’s control over Washington has grown tremendously like a malignant cancer…making the US as a puppet nation of Israel.”

As a matter of fact, if Obama does not act upon the Jewish demands, he will face the most powerful lobby in the US as The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) with the help of its powerful ties to Jewish wealth and power can easily defeat him by sending millions to his opponents and projecting them in the media.

Earlier Obama had also said that if elected, he would resolve the Kashmir problem to reduce nuclear dangers between Pakistan and India. But considering Indo-Israeli collective interests and anti-China strategy, he has become silence over this thorny issue.

Besides, during the useless war against terrorism, American military personnel have been sent to Iraq, Afghanistan, Philippines etc. for losing their lives for the Jewish agenda, while the foreign troops already stationed on American bases are further exceeding the US expenditures. In other words, this failed military policy in the era of modern world trends like peaceful settlement of disputes, and economic development is enslaving Americans. In essence, US tax payers are funding the Zionist-Jewish secret strategy.

Jews who are about 2 percent of the US population and only about 4 percent of the electorate nationwide, mould the internal and external policies of America by setting aside the majority opinion of the non-Jewish American nationals. In other words, this odd phenomenon makes the American democracy a farce and rendered the nation’s claim of a free world, adhering to the liberal policies, asserting champion of human rights obsolete.

In this respect, with reference to war on terror, in an article on September 25, 2011, titled,

“It Is Official: the US Is A Police State,” Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Treasury Secretary of the Reagan regime, wrote, “The methods used for the suppression of foreigners by military force and violence abroad are eventually mirrored in the homeland…America becomes ever more the police state at home.”

Arrests and detentions of the innocent Americans by the FBI, use of torture, without court approval, show violent extremism inside the US whose destiny is in the hands of Jews.

Like other Christians, I am agianst antisemitism, and strongly condemn the genocide of the Jews by the Hitler in the concentration camps, popuparly called the Holocaust. But question arises as to why Muslims and the non-Jewish American nationals, especially Christians must pay for the Zionist-shaped policies? And is there another holocaust in the making for these non-Jewish people?

No doubt, at present, US pays for the Zionist-oriented policies, but in future, it will further pay as multiple crises in the country indicate. Either America’s status will be reduced to the level of a developing country or could result into its downfall.

Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations

Email: sajjad_logic@yahoo.com

War With Iran Has Not Been Taken Off the Table

Pentagon Warning Order: ‘Prepare for War’ (By September?)

By Mac Slavo, SHTFplan.com
July 19, 2011

The world is just one misstep away from a complete financial, economic and geo-political meltdown.

Though the mainstream voices have calmed their reports of middle east conflict amid the debt ceiling and negative economic development in the US and Europe, military intervention in Iran has not been taken off the table.

The Daily Crux reports via the Economic Policy Journal and Zero Hedge:

Robert Baer has had a storied career, including a stint in Iraq in the 1990s where he organised opposition to Saddam Hussein. (He was recalled after being accused of trying to organise Saddam’s assassination.) Upon his retirement, he received a top decoration for meritorious service.

Baer is no ordinary CIA operative. George Clooney won an Oscar for playing a character based on Baer in the film Syriana (Baer also wrote the book).

He obviously won’t name many of his sources in Israel, the United States, and elsewhere, but the few he has named are all Israeli security figures who have publically warned that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are hell-bent on war.

…

[Baer] appeared on KPFK Los Angeles, warning that Israeli PM Netanyahu is “likely to ignite a war with Iran in the very near future.” It gets worse: “Masters asked Baer why the US military is not mobilising to stop this war from happening. Baer responded that the military is opposed, as is former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who used his influence to thwart an Israeli attack during the Bush and Obama administrations. But he’s gone now and “there is a warning order inside the Pentagon” to prepare for war.” The punchline: “There is almost “near certainty” that Netanyahu is “planning an attack [on Iran] … and it will probably be in September before the vote on a Palestinian state. And he’s also hoping to draw the United States into the conflict“, Baer explained.”

While President Obama has not exactly been fully supportive of Israel (at least overtly), an attack on Iran by the Israelis would no doubt be considered by Iran as having been supported by the United States. That being the case, Iran would respond militarily against all US forces in the region, especially those in Iraq, at the first sign of any trouble. Subsequently, the U.S. would return fire en masse, perhaps even utilizing the nuclear option to incapacitate any possibility of an Iranian nuclear response.

What China would do is the unknown variable, but it is clear that the US and China are engaged in a covert war economically, financially and in cyberspace. The recent UN actions in Libya may have been sold to the world public as a peacekeeping mission, but one side issue that has remained in the background is China’s removal of some 30,000 workers from state sponsored oil facilities in the country as a result of the conflict. This leaves one to wonder whether the UN action was a veiled attempt at controlling the oil interests in North Africa. How long before the Chinese decide that their interests have been violated and they get involved militarily? Could an attack on Iran be the catalyst that brings China into the mix?

It is our opinion that what we have seen in the middle east since 2002, including the destabilization of governments in the region over the last 12 months, is a precursor to a war that will eventually encompass the entire world.

Whether this goes critical in September, or at some time in the future, is of no matter. War is coming to the world, as it always does when the economies of empires collapse and national interests over resources collide.

Iran’s First Nuclear Power Plant Now Online

The Blaze/AP
September 4, 2011

Iranian state radio says the country’s first nuclear power plant has been connected to the national power grid for a test run, making it the first Middle Eastern country to produce commercial electricity from atomic reactors.

The Sunday report quotes Mohammad Ahmadian, Iran’s deputy nuclear chief, as saying the plant began to generate 60 megawatts of electricity about midnight.

Ahmadian says a ceremony marking the connection to the power grid will be held Monday. He expressed hope the plant would feed the grid at full capacity in coming months.

The power plant in the southern Iranian port of Bushehr has a capacity of 1,000 megawatt power generations, or about 2.5 percent of the country’s energy consumption. Iran built the plant with Russian help.

The plant was supposed to go online over the past years but it was repeatedly postponed.

According to Reuters, experts say bringing the plant online will not bring Iran closer to building a nuclear bomb, because Russia will supply the enriched uranium for the reactor and will take back spent fuel that could be reprocessed into weapons-grade plutonium.

Iran said it will only be enriching uranium to lower levels necessary for power, medical or agricultural purposes.

Still, those declarations have done little to allay fears about the the country’s nuclear weapons intentions: Just last week, an International Atomic Energy Agency report said Iran was continuing to defy U.N. resolutions aimed at curbing its nuclear program, and cited increasing concerns it may be developing nuclear weapons.

In August, Iran finally allowed a U.N. inspector to view the site where it is developing advanced centrifuges that can be used to make nuclear fuel and to arm warheads. The move was considered a significant one after years of the country stonewalling IAEA requests for greater access.

China: Hey, How About an Invasion of Somalia?

Facing the Threat of Piracy, China Starts to Talk Like a Superpower

By Ishaan Tharoor, TIME
May 21, 2011

On a visit to the U.S. this week, China's top military commander Chen Bingde suggested that the international coalition patrolling the Gulf of Aden and the waters off the coast of Somalia ought to take decisive action against pirate dens on land. So far, the counter-piracy strategy has focused on the pirate "mother-ships," usually retrofitted trawlers that tow little skiffs out into the deep sea. Yet the pirate problem emanating from lawless Somalia cost the global economy over $8.3 billion in 2010. And China has a huge stake in securing its ever-increasing economic interests in the region.

Chen, the chief of the general staff of the People's Liberation Army, told reporters:

For counter-piracy campaigns to be effective, we should probably move beyond the ocean and crash their bases on the land... It is important that we target not only the operators, those on the small ships or crafts conducting the hijacking activities, but also the figureheads.

It's probably one of the first instances a high-ranking Beijing official publicly advocated what is tantamount to a ground war in a foreign country.

China, of course, is notoriously prickly about principles of sovereignty and "non-interference" and has invoked them for decades at the U.N. and in other forums of the international community, sometimes when seeking to thwart tough action on dictatorships and murderous regimes that happen to be close to Beijing. In the imagination of the developing world, military interventions like the U.S.-European swoop into Libya are still coded with the memory of an earlier, unjust imperial moment.

But, as China's military grows leaps and bounds and Chinese enterprises take root across the globe, it's getting more and more difficult to play the anti-imperialist card. China is the new empire on the block. And so the Chinese have increasingly tried to sugar coat their rise in positive, peaceful terms — a p.r. gambit that hasn't always worked, especially given the opacity of the PLA and a steady drumbeat of aggressive Chinese maneuvers that have furrowed brows in a host of neighboring countries.

Which is why Chen's remarks at the Pentagon are worthy of note: not only do they signal a willingness to engage in the sort of military adventures once shunned and derided by members of the old Non-Aligned Movement, but they were communicated in a larger discussion of improving trust between the U.S. and Chinese military, especially in situations like that off the Horn of Africa where both countries have a shared interest. Still, a more confident, assertive China, ready to throw its muscle around when it needs to, is only going to add to the wariness of many other capitals in Asia and stoke the coals of an intensifying regional arms race.

Blackwater to Teach Somalis True Meaning of Democracy

Reason Magazine
January 21, 2011

Last we met our intrepid Somali legislators, they were trying to tame Somalia's anarchic wireless telecom market. The story was a little odd considering that the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) only controls a few blocks of territory with the al-Shabaab insurgency closing in fast, but yesterday we learned from The New York Times why they're so confident: Blackwater's coming to town!

Well, not quite Blackwater—Erik Prince, the infamous mercenary firm's founder, has cobbled together a sinister-sounding coalition of apartheid-era South African mercenaries and two-bit Ugandan potentates under the name Saracen International, and they're gunning for contracts with Africa's most hapless governing body. Previously the firm had been involved with anti-piracy efforts funded by the United Arab Emirates and the unrecognized Somali state of Puntland, but they are now poised to make landfall in Mogadishu. The mercenaries will apparently be paid by the TFG, but the deal was brokered by former U.S. officials:

The officials, Pierre-Richard Prosper, a former United States ambassador at large for war crimes [Ed.—you can't make this shit up], and Michael Shanklin, a former Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Mogadishu, are both serving as advisers to the Somali government, according to people involved in the project. Both Mr. Prosper and Mr. Shanklin are apparently being paid by the United Arab Emirates.

Despite the backlash that the TFG has faced since their contracts with Saracen came to light, the mercenary firm is wasting no time. They've already begun renovating a military hospital, and given the TFG's sudden ambitions, it looks like they're gearing up for yet another battle of Mogadishu (you know what they say—tenth time's a charm!).

Learning from the disastrous direct intervention in the early '90s and the American-funded Ethiopian invasion in 2006, the U.S. has perfected the art of meddling-by-proxy: Even The New York Times didn't note that the mercenaries' Krugerrands, despite being routed through the nominally-independent TFG, are coming mostly courtesy of the American taxpayer. At least Bill Clinton had the balls to own up to his invasion—President George W. Bush and Barack Obama's interventions have been more circuitous, but no less harmful.

'Black Water Wants to Go into Somalia'

Press TV
December 19, 2010

As tension in Somalia continues to escalate, the US banking institutions and corporations seem to reap the benefits by destroying any stability and sovereignty through creating conflicts.



Press TV interviews Thomas Mountain regarding the US support of conflicts in Africa and how the US is funding the Ethiopian President to invade Somalia. (Full Length Video of Interview)

Press TV: Welcome to On the Edge coming from sunny downtown Tehran, Iran. Let's talk with Thomas C. Mountain. Thomas is an independent journalist living in Eretria and writes often on the Horn of Africa. Thomas, welcome to the Edge.

Mountain: Thanks Max, it's nice to be back.

Keiser: Thomas C. Mountain, you are an expert on the Horn of Africa. So what are your thoughts on the recent WikiLeaks cable gate revelations that the US essentially hired Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi to invade Somalia in 2006.

Mountain: Well, I haven't really had a chance to review all 1300 some documents. But it's pretty much common knowledge that Meles was sent in. And I don't think he was too happy about it because in history no Ethiopian regime has ever picked a fight with the Somalis. There was a war between Somalia and Ethiopia in 1977, but that was started by the Somalis so I don't think any Ethiopian President in his right mind would volunteer to start a war with Somalia. I think he was pretty much pressured by his masters who pay his salary and military budget in the United States.

Press TV: Right, well this is what we are seeing with these WikiLeaks revelations is the US just basically interfering all over the world extra legally with no due process, no consideration for the law, and no consideration for human rights or civil rights, and they are just making a mess wherever they go. The cables also show Black Water pitching in to get involved in Somalia. What's the empire's interest in Somalia? Do they have any oil?

Mountain: Well, yes there is suppose to be a lot of oil and gas. But I think it's more of a… just in general Americans' foreign policy particularly in regards to Africa, is what we call “crisis management.” They want to instigate a crisis and then manage the crisis. Thus they can basically prevent in strong nationalist government from coming to power that would protect the people's interest and force the Western governments to pay a fair share in their natural resources. Basically they just want to be able to come in and pay off some war lords and rape and loot the resources of a country whenever possible. I think that is pretty much US policy in Somalia. They know that if a genuine nationalist government comes to power in Somalia, they are going to be pretty hostile to Western interests and especially the United States, because the US has committed a long list of very nasty crimes in Somalia. So they just want to see the war lords in power and when the Union of Islamic Courts came to power, it brought peace to Mogadishu for the first time and in 2006 Americans sent the Ethiopian gendarmes in to destroy that peace. So I don't think the US has any good intentions toward Somalia at all.

Press TV: Tell me something about Somalia. You can help me pick through this whether it's non-sense or not. I heard in Somalia Coca-Cola has these huge tankers parked outside that are filled with coke syrup. It's the largest distribution point for coke syrup and effectively coke syrup is the currency of Somalia. Is that crazy or somewhere near accurate?

Mountain: That's the first time I've heard of that. The Somali pirates have of coursed collected about 500 million dollars or more hijacking ships. There has been a lot of talk about them trying to defend their fishing rights and other things. But the bottom line is you have a lot of ships presently hijacked in Somalia, and the pirates there are basically working for the war lords. When the pirates capture a ship they have to pay off the local war lord, and they have to pay off the district war lord. They have to pay off the presidential war lord. They have to pay off the Ethiopian military and of course they have to pay off Meles Zenawi in Addis Ababa. In exchange for that they get protection. The Ethiopian regime is the US policeman. They pretty much told the United States and all the Western countries to lay off the Somalia pirates because they are paying protection money and that explains why there hasn't been a single cruise missile come whistling to the doors of any of these pirates' lairs after they have collected their loot. That is something nobody in the Western media wants to talk about. How come there has been zero retaliation against these pirates. The Americans have bombed…

Press TV: How much did you say? 500mn you say?

Mountain: Over 500mn yes.

Press TV: So essentially the American pirates, the Wall Street Banks are somehow involved in taking a cut of that and it's easy money for them. And of course you would never go in and disrupt easy money. There is stock exchange that has sprung up around the piracy that's going on. Real estate prices are exploding. So it's like the Hamptons. You've got the crooks and the pirates on Wall Street and the real estate market in the Hamptons goes up. Here in Somalia you have pirates out there 500mn or so looting and the real estate market around that area goes up. You've got the same crooks, the same financial terrorists, the overlords: J.P Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Warren Buffett etc.. in their taking a cut. Now what is the mechanism for them to take the cut? I mean it's not the IMF. They are not the intermediary disruptive terrorist force. It's not the World Bank. What is the intermediary force that holds the bag; the bag man for the Wall Street Banks in Somalia?

Mountain: Well, the American foreign policy is based on using a local policeman. Most of the money ends up in Meles Zenawi's pocket. He has his warlords in Puntland where most of the pirates come from. Puntland is located right on the very tip of the horn of Africa. So there is a payoff that starts out with some desperados going off in small boats by snatching these ships and collecting cash. They land on the beach and often they head right for the nearest Ethiopian military base. They make their payoff and make sure that no one comes in and bombs them in their homes. So in any case Meles Zenawi is the bag man.

Press TV: Who is the banking facility here? Is it the Swiss Banks? I heard that have a huge money laundering operation in Tel Aviv now picking up the slack from Switzerland. Where is the main money laundering going on for this particular global scam?

Mountain: You know Ethiopia is in the center of a major aid-to-arms diversion scandal. It's something like 6 billion dollars a year according to the latest reports I've seen is funneled to the Meles Zenawi regime to keep him in power there and enforce the interest of the IMF and the World Bank in that part of the world. So I think it's pretty much they pay off Meles Zenawi, and then he does what they want him to like invade Somalia. Right now Meles Zenawi is carrying out genocide in the Ogaden and its escalating into a full blown genocide where he is rounding up tens of thousands of ethnic Somalis in Ethiopian Ogaden and putting them into basically starvation camps. The expression is if you can't catch the fish (meaning the Ogaden rebels) you drain the lake. That is what he's doing. He is accelerating the Ogaden genocide and the purpose of all that is to just basically keep Meles Zenawi in power. So he can protect imperial American interests in the Horn of Africa, which is one of the most strategic areas in the world. All the trade between Asia and Europe passes through the Horn of Africa every day. So the Americans have gotten Meles Zenawi there protecting the banks' interests, and protecting the financial terrorists, and he's the guy that has the huge bank accounts in London with hundreds of millions of dollars. This has been going on for decades now.

Press TV: So, Meles Zenawi is going through London not Switzerland and Tel Aviv. Six billion dollars a year in arms deals, as off course arms dealing are America's huge money laundering operation globally. That is a trillion dollars of tax money collected from those poor smocks in America every year that goes to the IRS and ends up in the Pentagon, and goes for buying guns for terrorists around the world like this fellow Meles Zenawi who is using billions of dollars in arms deals to launder the money he is stealing via the Somali pirates. I tell you he should just go public on the New York Stock Exchange and would get a better evaluation. He could be like the Google of piracy. He could be worth 200bn than just 20bn dollars. Anyway let's move on. Black Water now known as Z, let's talk about their involvement a little bit more. Are they visible? Do they wear big branded uniforms like Black Water Z mercenaries for hire or are they more underground?

Mountain: Well, I don't think even Black Water wants to go into Somalia. They have been using Ugandan proxies and other proxies in Mogadishu to try and pop up this puppet regime that they claim is the government of Somalia. What they have been doing, these that got the blessing of the United Nations under the African Union, is every time the gorilla fighters attack them successfully in frustration they fire artillery rounds into the surrounding civilian neighborhoods. Most people don't realize when you hear of death reports in Mogadishu almost all of that is caused by mortar and artillery rounds fired by the United Nation blessed African Union troops. So there's probably been tens of thousands of Somalia's killed by the United Nations and African Union troops in Somalia who they have the gall to call peace keepers.

Press TV: Alright, Thomas Mountain you live in Africa where missionaries and charities have operated for centuries as the unarmed wing of the empire. Tell us about the Human Rights mob. Who are they? What do they call themselves a mob?

Mountain: Well, I have labeled them the Human Rights mob because George Soros is the financial hit man. He has just given 1bn dollars over the next ten years in a matching grant to Human Rights Watch. Now this is a matching grant meaning through other foundations and trusts, which George Soros has laundered donations through the likes of human rights watch and Amnesty International for years now. He will give them another billion dollars. So Human Rights Watch is about to collect 2bn dollars in the next ten years from George the hit man Soros. Now what's Human Rights Watch going to do with this? George Soros got on national public radio in the United States and said we are going to expand Human Rights watch into the developing world. We are going to have offices of Human Rights Watch basically gathering intelligence and influencing American government policy in the developing world as much as possible towards policies that favor George Soros. Now why do we call George Soros the hit man?

Well, a good example was the Rose Revolution in Georgia when George Soros put over 42mn dollars in through his NGO funds into supporting the Saakashvili regime. Now 42mn dollars is almost ten dollars per person in Georgia. That would be like if in the United States George Soros spent 3bn dollars on the American election putting Barack Obama into power. And what did he do? As soon as Saakashvili came to power, he started arresting the opposition, starting torturing opposition members, and opposition members starting disappearing and on top of that Saakashvili had his military attack the South Ossetians who he claims are his own people opening artillery fire on civilian communities. What can of massacre would have happened if the Russians hadn't counter attacked and driven him out? All this was paid for by George Soros putting Saakashvili in power. This is blood money now. These NGOS that put Saakashvili into power with 42mn dollars have got blood stains on their hands. The Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International kept their mouths shut when all this happened. They are quick to jump out and condemn Eretria for alleged human rights abuses, which are pretty much non-existent. Yet they are very quiet when it comes to a program that George Soros is funding.

So I call them the Human Rights Mob. They are taken the hit man's money, and they are attacking countries like Eretria which are doing a lot of things to promote human rights like provide clean drinking water for the people, make sure everybody is fed and they have a roof over their head, and people have decent medical care. These are really the basic human rights. Not freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and freedom of elections, which is what Human Rights Watch and Amnesty claim so loudly about. You know the fact is the Human Rights movement has been bought off by a financial terrorist like George Soros to the tune of 2bn dollars. It's an incredible amount of money in ten years. What are they going to do with it? We know what they are going to do with it. They are going to go and be a front for Soros in the 3rd world and developing world.

Press TV: Thomas Mountain, did you read the alchemy of finance, George Soros' masterpiece where he explains reflexivity, which basically says if you manipulate the price of a market enough it will become the new normal, and then you can cash in on your manipulation, and so oh it was the market and not me.

Mountain: I'll have to read that Max. Thanks for the tip.

Press TV: Yes, it's a how to guide on how to manipulate markets. Just to be clear, the Human Rights Mob is a label you have given these groups. You are saying they are basically taking the money from Soros who has vested interest in manipulating these markets, and claiming to be somehow a man interested in furthering human rights when in fact he is only interested in furthering his network. He is not really doing well on either side as a hedge fund manager or as a human rights philanthropist….

Anyway, let's move on to another one of these global, globe-trotting good-doers that seems to do bad more than good such as Bill Gates, multi-billionaire, founder of Microsoft. You write, “Bill Gates, 10bn dollar vaccine scam.” I take it you don't find his charitable work in Africa very charitable Thomas Mountain.

Mountain: I'll give you an example. I live in Eritrea, which has reduced malaria mortality in the last eight years by almost 85%. Malaria is the number one killer in Africa and this has been the biggest breakthrough in history in fighting malaria mortality. And it's not a medicine-based program, it's a public health-based program providing insect treated mosquito nets and making sure they get retreated, making sure that their clinics are within a couple of hours walk from all the villages in the malaria belt, and through this basic public health Eritrea has made the biggest breakthrough in malaria treatment in history.

Now, Bill Gates has turned around and donated, well it's actually a tax-write off; my sources say over a billion dollars to develop a “vaccine for malaria.” People that know malaria know that it's a very resistant, very quickly developed resistance to drugs and that in five years after the latest vaccine comes out it won't work anymore, but by then its patent will have expired and Africa will have to buy a new vaccine. And every five years, a new vaccine and tens of billions of dollars of African blood money will get sucked out of Africa to pay for these latest vaccines and the fact is that Bill gates has got tens of billions of dollars invested in the major pharmaceutical companies. So this donation, which is actually a tax-write off, is going to end up bring back tens of billions of dollars, if Bill Gates has his way, back into the pockets of the major international pharmaceutical companies and it will pay off ten times or more on what Bill Gates has donated to this fight.

Now, the World Health Organization (WHO), which recently has been exposed for being a front for the major pharmaceuticals when it raised a big hysteria about the swine flu. For example, France had to destroy 350 million Euros of vaccine, which the WHO said they had to buy and what they've done basically is come in and suppress news about this big breakthrough in malaria mortality in Eritrea because it's public health based, not pharmaceutical-based.

So tens of millions of lives could be saved if the rest of Africa and the rest of the world will emulate and copy and use Eritrea's role model to prevent malaria deaths, instead they're suppressing knowledge of this.

Press TV: Well, Bill Gates is a twice convicted predatory monopolist in the area of intellectual property so it makes sense that his solution to a problem would be to increase and expand more intellectual property that comes under the rubric of those laws that is a known economic fallacy and drainer of economies not a value added to economies.

Let's move on to 'land grab' that is going on in many nations such as Saudi Arabia and China and many hedge funds including George Soros is buying lands in Africa - I take it this is just more of the same?

Mountain: Well there is some international companies and governments coming into Ethiopia and buying up some of the prime agricultural land. Of course, tens of millions of people in Ethiopia are literally starving or on the verge of starvation and yet some of the prime agricultural land is being sold or leased for 99 years to countries like Saudi Arabia, which exported something like 10,000 tons of rice from Ethiopia last year while millions of Ethiopians are literally starving to death.

Of course, several million of dollars of everyone of these deals gets put into Mili Sonali's London bank accounts, but that's a pretty good example of how when you get a gangster like Mili Sonali in power, he doesn't care what happened to his own people.

Press TV: Let's talk about China, is it a positive or a negative, their influence going on there?

Mountain: I think China overall has been quite positive. I'll give you an example in Sudan - Sudan is the largest and potentially richest country in Africa and the west, the US in particular, wants to see Sudan divided because law in Sudan is under the leadership of Bashir (President Omar al-Bashir) who they claim is a genocidal killer when the facts on the ground is that Darfur relief effort is one of the largest best run relief efforts in history and that without the support and leadership of Bashir, it would not have been successful. So actually there never was genocide in Sudan.

Press TV: There was never genocide in Sudan? Explain that to me a little more, this could be news to George Clooney and some celebrities in LA - What do you mean by that?

Mountain: I was one of the first westerners to write about the problems in Sudan in 2003. The problems in Darfur were mainly a civil war that took place in 2004 and some part of 2005 and maybe 30,000 people died. Now that 's a big tragedy, but the relief effort started then and international forces along with Sudan security forces came in and pretty much stopped all the violence by 2006; so maybe 30,000 people died in Sudan - that was way back in 2004/2005. And since then, the people of Darfur, the victims of this violence have been the recipients of one of the largest best run relief efforts in history. The UN people, the Aid people on the ground in Sudan will tell you that this very successful relief effort would not have been possible without the cooperation and support of president Bashir and his government. So there hasn't been genocide in Sudan, instead the genocide, which you Max were the first international news program to cover is the genocide in the Ogaden, which by the way Max puts you on the edge because the real genocide is being funded by the west in the Ogaden in Ethiopia. It never happened in Sudan that was all a big scam to brainwash everybody and say hey, we need to send troops in to protect the genocide victims, so the west can come in and take over the largest and potentially wealthiest country in Africa.

Press TV: Following up on this note that we broke the story on The Edge - Is there one thing that the mainstream media is not covering right now that we can break for our global audience today?

Mountain: Well I was just talking about this breakthrough in malaria and malaria mortality prevention in Eritrea - that's a big story, but the Ogaden genocide is starting to accelerate. When you broke the story earlier this year it was a low level genocide. Now it's accelerating with the development where they're starting to put together these starvation camps - rounding up the Ogaden people into these camps. They've kicked all the western aid agencies out of the Ogaden; Mili Sonali has, including Doctors without Borders and the Red Cross. And now they're rounding the people up and they're basically going to starve them to death in these camps and we're talking about 10, 12, 15 million potential victims and this is all being paid for by western tax dollars.

So I think this Ogden genocide is probably the biggest news story that's starting to accelerate and that the west is not talking about and it was first broken here on your program, Max.

US, NATO Allies Prepare New Invasion Of Somalia, Global Research, July 30, 2010

Somalia PM Asks Obama to Invade His Country

While the U.S. spends $4.4 trillion on its global war on terror, people are starving to death in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda. According to the organization Netaid, with just $13 billion a year the basic health and food needs of the world's poorest people could be met. One person dies every ten seconds from water-borne illness, according to Water.org. Even more heartbreaking is that of the nearly 9,000 daily death rate for water-borne diseases, most are small children.

The reason Somalia is being condemned, even while the breakup of the Sudan is applauded, is because Ethiopia, Uganda, Egypt, and even the DRC, share land borders with the Sudan and Darfur, which has one of the world's larger oil deposits. Somalia is not a territory without any government. Even though the federal government is barely there, the nation has simply broken up into pre-colonial sub-national level governments. Other than the Somalian governments that exist today, there is the constant presence of a foreign government -- the US government, and the Ethiopian government which invaded Somalia on its request -- looming over the internal affairs of Somalia, as is evidenced by the drone strikes, and the manipulation of neighboring Ethiopia by the U.S. Government's Jendayi Frazer, for instance (read: US behind Ethiopia invasion in Somalia - Wiki leaks dispatch.) - ThomHartmann.com, July 12, 2011

Ever since the West launched military intervention in Libya, some scholars have said the powers were engaging in imperial interference to secure resources on the African continent. Professor Horace Campbell and Professor Molefi Asante are two who’ve said this isn’t just about Libyan oil but is about African oil interests and resources throughout the continent. - Libya, AFRICOM, And US Scramble For Africa, Somalia Observer, April 9, 2011

U.S. Drones Strike Somalia, or As We Can Now Call It, “War Number Five”

OutsideTheBeltway.com
June 30, 2011

Today’s Washington Post reports that American drones have made strikes against “militants” in Somalia:

A U.S. drone aircraft fired on two leaders of a militant Somali organization tied to al-Qaeda, apparently wounding them, a senior U.S. military official familiar with the operation said Wednesday.

The strike last week against senior members of al-Shabab comes amid growing concern within the U.S. government that some leaders of the Islamist group are collaborating more closely with al-Qaeda to strike targets beyond Somalia, the military official said.

The airstrike makes Somalia at least the sixth country where the United States is using drone aircraft to conduct lethal attacks, joining Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq and Yemen. And it comes as the CIA is expected to begin flying armed drones over Yemen in its hunt for al-Qaeda operatives.

Al-Shabab has battled Somalia’s tenuous government for several years. In recent months, U.S. officials have picked up intelligence that senior members of the group have expanded their ambitions beyond attacks in Somalia.

“They have become somewhat emboldened of late, and, as a result, we have become more focused on inhibiting their activities,” the official said.”They were planning operations outside of Somalia.”

Both of the al-Shabab leaders targeted in the attack had “direct ties” to American-born cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi, the military official said. Aulaqi escaped a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in May.

The White House declined Wednesday night to respond to questions about the attack.

But Obama administration officials have made repeated references to al-Shabab in recent weeks, indicating that the group has expanded its aims and its operations. In a speech Wednesday unveiling the administration’s new counterterrorism strategy, senior White House aide John O. Brennan included Somalia among the countries where the administration has placed a new focus on al-Qaeda affiliates.

“As the al-Qaeda core has weakened under our unyielding pressure, it has looked increasingly to these other groups and individuals to take up its cause, including its goal of striking the United States,” said Brennan, Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser. “From the territory it controls in Somalia,” he said, “al-Shabab continues to call for strikes against the United States.”

All of this is perfectly legal, of course, thanks to the broad, open-ended, unlimited in scope, time, or place Authorization For The Use Of Military Force that Congress passed in October 2001. While it’s certainly advisable that the President have discretion in going after al-Qaeda and its associates, one does wonder if it isn’t about time for Congress to review that AUMF and examine whether some limits need to be placed on it. At this point, it can be used to justify virtually any action anywhere in the world as long as the President says he’s going after al-Qaeda. That just doesn’t seem right to me.

WikiLeaks Reveals U.S. Twisted Ethiopia’s Arm to Invade Somalia

Foreign Policy in Focus
December 14, 2010

By mid-2007, the 50,000 Ethiopian troops that invaded Somalia in late 2006 found themselves increasingly bogged down, facing much fiercer resistance than they had bargained for as Somalis of all stripes temporarily put aside their differences to stand together against the outside invader.

As the military incursion turned increasingly sour, then-U.S. Undersecretary of State for Africa Jendayi Frazer, who taught at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies in the 1990s, insisted that, prior to the invasion, the United States had counseled caution and that Washington had warned Ethiopia not to use military force against Somalia. Frazer was a close collaborator with former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for whom there also is a strong University of Denver connection. Frazer certainly tried to distance the United States from responsibility for the Ethiopian invasion in a number of interviews she gave to the media at the time.

But one of the released WikiLeaks cables suggests a different picture, one that implicates Frazer in pressing Ethiopia’s President Meles Zenawi to invade his neighbor. The content of the cable is being widely discussed in the African media. It exposes a secret deal cut between the United States and Ethiopia to invade Somalia.

If accurate – and there is no reason to believe the contrary – the cable suggests that Ethiopia had no intention of invading Somalia in 2006 but was encouraged/pressured to do so by the United States, which pushed Ethiopia behind the scenes. Already bogged down in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the time, the Bush administration pushed Ethiopia to invade Somalia with an eye on crushing the Union of Islamic Courts, which was gaining strength in Somalia at the time.

At the time of the invasion there was little doubt that the Ethiopian military incursion was “made in Washington.” Like so many other WikiLeaks cables, this one merely puts a dot on the “i” or crosses the “t” on what was generally known, although it does give specific information about Jendayi Frazer’s deep involvement in the affair.

According to the cable, as the main U.S. State Department representative in Africa, Frazer played a key role, spearheading what amounted to a U.S.-led proxy war in conjunction with the Pentagon. At the same time that she was pushing the Ethiopians to attack, Frazer was laying the groundwork both for the attack in the U.S. media and for a cover-up by claiming that although the United States did not support Ethiopian military action, she could understand “the Somali threat” and why Ethiopia might find it necessary to go to war.

Frazer spread rumors of a possible jihadist takeover in Somalia that would threaten Ethiopian security. Turns out that media performance was little more than a smokescreen. The U.S. military had been preparing Ethiopia for the invasion, providing military aid and training Ethiopian troops. Then on Dec. 4, 2006, CENTCOM Commander Gen. John Abizaid was in Addis Ababa on what was described as “a courtesy call.” Instead, the plans for the invasion were finalized.

At the time of the Somali invasion, Zenawi found himself in trouble. He was facing growing criticism for the wave of repression he had unleashed against domestic Ethiopian critics of his rule that had included mass arrests, the massacres of hundreds of protesters, and the jailing of virtually all the country’s opposition leaders. By the spring of 2006 there was a bill before the U.S. Congress to cut off aid to Zenawi unless Ethiopia’s human rights record improved. (His human rights record, by the way, has not improved since. Given how the United States and NATO view Ethiopia’s strategic role in the “war on terrorism” and the scramble for African mineral and energy resources, Western support for Zenawi has only increased in recent years.)

In 2006, dependent on U.S. support to maintain power in face of a shrinking political base at home – a situation many U.S. allies in the Third World find themselves in – and against his better judgment, Zenawi apparently caved to Frazer’s pressure. Nor was this the first time that Frazer had tried to instigate a U.S. proxy war in Africa. Earlier as U.S. ambassador to South Africa, she had tried to put together a “coalition of the willing” to overthrow Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe, an initiative that did not sit well with South Africa’s post-apartheid government and went nowhere.

The 2006 war in Somalia did not go well either for the United States or Ethiopia. Recently, a State Department spokesperson, Donald Yamamoto, admitted that the whole idea was “a big mistake,” obliquely admitting U.S. responsibility for the invasion. It resulted in 20,000 deaths and according to some reports, left up to 2 million Somalis homeless. The 50,000 Ethiopian invasion force, which had expected a cakewalk, instead ran into a buzz saw of Somali resistance, got bogged down, and soon withdrew with its tail between its legs. The political result of the invasion was predictable: the generally more moderate Union of Islamic Courts was weakened, but it was soon replaced in Somalia by far more radical and militant Islamic groups with a more openly anti-American agenda.

As the situation deteriorated, in an attempt to cover both the U.S. and her own role, Frazer then turned on Zenawi, trying to distance herself from the fiasco using an old and tried diplomatic trick: outright lying. Now that the invasion had turned sour, she changed her tune, arguing in the media that both she and the State Department had tried to hold back the Ethiopians, discouraging them from invading rather than pushing them to attack. The WikiLeaks cable tells quite a different story. In 2009, the Ethiopian forces withdrew, leaving Somalia in a bigger mess and more unstable than when their troops went in three years prior. Seems to be a pattern here?

The bombing of Somalia: U.S. grabs for power in Horn of Africa, April 2007

General Assembly of the United Nations to Meet in September 2011 to Discuss Palestinian State

UN May Declare Palestine Its Own Sovereign State, Whose Territory Includes All of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem

The Raw Story
April 4, 2011

The United Nations may declare Palestine a sovereign state whose territory includes all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem during its annual General Assembly meeting in September.

According to the New York Times, support for a UN resolution to recognize an independent Palestinian state has steadily been growing.

The declaration of Palestine state would put Israel in a bind. If the UN were to pass such a resolution, Israel would be occupying land belonging to a fellow UN member. Israel has been building settlements in the West Bank and Gaza for decades.

Israeli-Palestinian negotiations broke off months ago after Israel refused to halt the construction of further settlements.

"We want to generate pressure on Israel to make it feel isolated and help it understand that there can be no talks without a stop to settlements," Nabil Shaath, leader of the foreign affairs department of Fatah, the main party of the Palestinian Authority, said. "Without that, our goal is membership in the United Nations General Assembly in September."

White House Middle East advisor Dennis Ross said Monday that the United States was opposed to the Palestinian Authority seeking a UN statehood declaration.

"We have consistently made it clear that the way to produce a Palestinian state is through negotiations, not through unilateral declarations, not through going to the UN," Dennis Ross told the Anti-Defamation League’s annual leadership conference. "Our position on that has been consistent in opposition."

Israel’s UN Ambassador Tells U.S. Jews: Prepare for September Vote on Palestinian State

Ron Prosor urges leaders at closed session of the Conference of Presidents of major Jewish American Organizations to use connections to stop upcoming UN vote.

Shlomo Shamir
June 20, 2011

Israel’s new ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor urged Jewish American leaders on Monday to form a clear and operational plan ahead of the United Nations vote in September regarding unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state.

During a closed meeting of the Conference of Presidents of major Jewish American Organizations in New York, Prosor said that talk was not enough at such a crucial time, and that the U.S. Jewish community must prepare a clear operational plan.

In an unconventional appeal for unity, the new ambassador, who started serving as Israel’s UN envoy less than a week ago, urged the Jewish leaders to work together despite their differences ahead of the September vote.

Prosor stressed before the Jewish leaders that they must take advantage of the Jewish community’s connections with decision makers in order to get results.

Prosor also said that regardless of the outcome of the UN vote, a Palestinian state will not be created; he added that the UN is not authorized to dictate borders between countries. He stressed that a unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state will bring about another cycle of violence that will only lead to a dead end.

Least week Prosor said that the September vote was at the center of the Israeli delegation’s life.

“The mission regarding the unilateral declaration is one heck of a challenge, but I believe the chances of the declaration to succeed are actually very small. It will only bring things back and take nothing forward; I say that as the director general of the Foreign Ministry during the disengagement from Gaza. Unilateral moves are not constructive,” Prosor said after his first day on the job, emphasizing that there was still time to act before the vote.

In Israel, Time for Peace Offer May Run Out (Excerpt)

The New York Times
April 2, 2011

The Palestinian focus on September stems not only from the fact that the General Assembly holds its annual meeting then. It is also because Prime Minister Salam Fayyad announced in September 2009 that his government would be ready for independent statehood in two years and that Mr. Obama said last September that he expected the framework for an independent Palestinian state to be declared in a year.

Mr. Obama did not indicate what the borders of that state would be, assuming they would be determined through direct negotiations. But with Israeli-Palestinian talks broken off months ago and the Middle East in the process of profound change, many argue that outside pressure is needed.

Germany, France and Britain say negotiations should be based on the 1967 lines with equivalent land swaps, exactly what the Netanyahu government rejects because it says it predetermines the outcome.

“Does the world think it is going to force Israel to declare the 1967 lines and giving up Jerusalem as a basis for negotiation?” asked a top Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “That will never happen.”

While the Obama administration has referred in the past to the 1967 lines as a basis for talks, it has not decided whether to back the European Union, the United Nations and Russia — the other members of the so-called quartet — in declaring them the starting point, diplomats said. The quartet meets on April 15 in Berlin.

Israel, which has settled hundreds of thousands of Jews inside the West Bank and East Jerusalem, acknowledges that it will have to withdraw from much of the land it now occupies there. But it hopes to hold onto the largest settlement blocs and much of East Jerusalem as well as the border to the east with Jordan and does not want to enter into talks with the other side’s position as the starting point.

That was true even before its closest ally in the Arab world, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, was driven from power, helping fuel protest movements that now roil other countries, including Jordan, which has its own peace agreement with Israel.

“Whatever we put forward has to be grounded in security arrangements because of what is going on regionally,” said Zalman Shoval, one of a handful of Netanyahu aides drawing up the Israeli proposal that may be delivered as a speech to the United States Congress in May. “We are facing the rebirth of the eastern front as Iran grows strong. We have to secure the Jordan Valley. And no Israeli government is going to move tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes quickly.”

Those Israelis live in West Bank settlements, the source of much of the disagreement not only with the Palestinians but with the world. Not a single government supports Israel’s settlements. The Palestinians say the settlements are proof that the Israelis do not really want a Palestinian state to arise since they are built on land that should go to that state.

General Assembly of the United Nations

Meetings of the 66th Session:

• 13 September 2011, 3 p.m.: Opening of the 66th regular session of the General Assembly, UN Headquarters, in New York
• 19-20 September: High-level Meeting on the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases
• 20 September: High-level meeting on the theme “Addressing desertification, land degradation and drought in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication”
• 21-23 and 26-30 September: General Debate
• 22 September: High-level meeting of the General Assembly to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action

Agenda of the 66th Session:

• Annotated preliminary list of items to be included in the provisional agenda [A/66/100]
  • Annexes
• Preliminary list of items to be included in the provisional agenda [A/65/50]
  Proposed items to be included in the agenda, some of which may be deleted or deferred to a later date.
• Provisional agenda [A/66/150]
• List of supplementary items proposed for inclusion in the agenda [A/66/200]

The following document relating to the Agenda of the 66th session of the General Assembly will be published as follows:

• Memorandum by the Secretary-General to the General Committee (13 September 2011)

For the official programme of meetings of the General Assembly and other meetings held at headquarters, please refer to the Journal of the United Nations.

A Palestinian State in the United Nations by September?

One hundred nations support recognizing Palestine as a nation unilaterally, meaning without Israel's approval. This is the top agenda in the UN at this time. We know through Scripture it will not happen that way but the push to make Palestine a nation is the biggest sign we are at the end with the exception of Israel becoming a nation. Let me show you why... - Tim Hammond, What Palestine in 2011 Means!, January 16, 2011

'PA Will Get Majority UN-recognition for Palestinian State'

The Jerusalem Connection
April 21, 2011

Senior Fatah Central Committee member Nabil Shaath on Tuesday estimated that the Palestinian Authority will be able to gain recognition for a Palestinian state from two-thirds of United Nations member states before September 2011.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas was expected to travel to France on Wednesday to meet with French President Nicolas Sarkozy to discuss recognition of an independent Palestinian state.

According to the A-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Abbas will attempt to convince France to endorse a Palestinian state before the PA approaches the UN in September. Furthermore, Abbas will reportedly try to convince German Chancellor Angela Merkel to recognize Palestinian statehood in a meeting scheduled for May.

The Palestinian goal is to garner as many “European recognitions” of a Palestinian state as possible before September, A-Sharq Al-Awsat reported.

Earlier Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Middle East Quartet may try to reignite the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians by officially supporting, for the first time, the establishment of a Palestinian state along 1967 lines. According to the report, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been facing growing pressure to present a new strategy to resume peace talks and solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

US and European diplomats warned that if Netanyahu does not present a new initiative, the US, Russa, the European Union and the United Nations will potentially endorse the creation of a Palestinian state along 1967 borders, with east Jerusalem as the capital.

Netanyahu acknowledged for the first time on Thursday that he will deliver a speech to a joint session of the US Congress at the end of May in which he will lay out the principles of his government’s diplomatic and security policies.

“Next month I will have the opportunity to present the principles of our diplomatic and security polices during my visit to the US,” Netanyahu said at a pre-Pessah Likud gathering in Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu is scheduled to go to Washington on May 22, and is expected to address Congress two days later.

On Wednesday, major donor nations in Brussels agreed that the Palestinian Authority is ready for statehood but urged it to achieve this goal through a negotiated solution with Israel rather than unilateral action.

“The PA is above the threshold for a functioning state in key sectors” based on assessments by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations, the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee said in a statement it released after a meeting it held to assess the economic and institutional capacity of the PA.

The committee reaffirmed its “support for negotiations to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in full compliance with road map obligations.”

Last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said US President Barack Obama will lay out US policy towards the Middle East and North Africa in the coming weeks.

Obama will be speaking in detail about new plans, including “renewed pursuit of comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace,” Clinton told Arab and US policy makers in her speech at the US-Islamic World Forum last week, a gathering sponsored by Qatar and the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

“The status quo between Palestinians and Israelis is no more sustainable than the political systems that have crumbled in recent months,” she said, saying the only way to meet both people’s aspirations was through a two-state solution.

“And while it is a truism that only the parties themselves can make the hard choices for peace, there is no substitute for continued, active American leadership — and the president and I are committed to that,” she added.

A Palestinian State in the United Nations by September?

Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace
March 30, 2011

While the eyes of the world are focused on Libya, Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas have been moving ahead with plans to discuss reconciliation, with the expectation that the United Nations will create a Palestinian state in September.

The so-called Mideast peace process has been dead as a doornail for some time, and many people in the international community blame Israel’s policies of permitting the construction of new settlements in East Jerusalem.

The Palestinians were doing nothing until the “Arab Revolution” reached Gaza and the West Bank, in the form of young Palestinians demanding that the two warring Palestinian factions reconcile. (See “21-Mar-11 News — March 15 reconciliation movement triggers Hamas attacks on Israel.”)

Hamas, which has been governing the Gaza strip since the 2007 war with Fatah, has previously been completely opposed to any reconciliation, but the March !5 protests have divided Hamas leaders, and forced some of them to consider the possibility.

The result is that Hamas leader Mahmud Zahar traveled to Cairo to meet with the Arab League, and the Arab League will host reconciliation talks between Hamas and Fatah in Cairo some time in April, according to AFP.

The idea of reconciliation, which wasn’t even being considered until recently, is now highly significant in view of a statement issued on September 21, 2010, by the Middle East Quartet (United Nations, Russian Federation, United States, European Union). This statement called for recognition of a Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders by September of this, with reconciliation being one of the conditions.

The statement has been specifically endorsed by President Barack Obama. Here are some excerpts:

“The Quartet expressed its strong support for the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, which can resolve all final status issues within one year. The Quartet reaffirmed its full commitment to its previous statements, which provide that negotiations should lead to an agreement that ends the occupation that began in 1967 and results in the emergence of an independent, democratic, contiguous and viable Palestinian State living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbours. …

Recalling that change on the ground is integral to peace, the Quartet reaffirmed its support for the Palestinian Authority’s August 2009 plan for building the institutions of a Palestinian State within two years. The Quartet commended the significant progress towards that goal as reported by international institutions to the 21 September 2010 meeting of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee. The Quartet took particular note of the statement in the Economic Monitoring Report of the World Bank that: “If the Palestinian Authority maintains its current performance in institution-building and delivery of public services, it is well-positioned for the establishment of a State at any point in the near future.” …

The Quartet reiterated its support for efforts to restore Palestinian unity based on the commitments of the Palestine Liberation Organization.”

In view of this statement, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is studying what steps have to be taken to meet its obligations by September, according to the Palestine News Network, with the expectation that a Palestinian state will become a member nation of the United Nations by a vote in September.

A reconciliation between the Palestinian factions is one of the steps. Another step, already ordered by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, is to draw up the constitution for a future Palestinian state, according to the Arab News.

However, talk of a reconciliation has drawn a sharp reaction from Israel, according to AFP. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the following in a speech on Monday evening:

“We hear in recent days that the Palestinian Authority is thinking of uniting with Hamas.

It’s thinking of effecting peace, not with Israel, but with Hamas. Well, I say to them something very simple: you can’t have peace with Israel and Hamas. It’s one or the other, but not both.

Choose peace with Israel. Abandon unity with Hamas because Hamas is the antithesis of peace.”

This highlights one of the difficulties with “unity,” because the nature of the unity is a factor. The Quartet statement, excerpted above, calls for “efforts to restore Palestinian unity based on the commitments of the Palestine Liberation Organization.” One of these commitments, for example, is recognition of Israel and its right to exist, something that Hamas has refused to do.

Thus, Netanyahu has threatened to take unspecified unilateral actions, if the UN creates a Palestinian state in September, governed by a unified government, especially if it doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Furthermore, the PA is willing to give up hundreds of millions of dollars of US aid, if that’s the cost of reconciliation, according to the Jerusalem Post. This decision was necessary because the U.S. has in the past indicated that it would not provide aid to a unity government that included Hamas.

So, in summary, the plan being pursued by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas appears to be the following: Pursue a unity government with Hamas, despite opposition from Israel and potentially from the U.S., and then go the United Nations in September and demand that they fulfill their commitment to create a Palestinian state on pre-1967 borders, and make it a member of the United Nations.

It sounds like a straightforward plan, but from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the Mideast is headed for a new war between Arabs and Jews, re-fighting the genocidal war that followed the 1948 partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel.

With the entire Mideast in turmoil with “Arab Revolutions,” any plan that stretches out to September is sure to have to deal with many unexpected complications. As the old saying goes, planning is what you do when life happens.

(Note: For simplicity, this report did not attempt to make any distinction between the following organizations: Fatah, the Palestinian Authority, the PA, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO.)

U.N. Vote on Palestinian State Could Force Israel's Hand

New York Times
April 2, 2011

With revolutionary fervor sweeping the Middle East, Israel is under mounting pressure to make a far-reaching offer to the Palestinians or face a United Nations vote welcoming the State of Palestine as a member whose territory includes all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Authority has been steadily building support for such a resolution in September, a move that could place Israel into a diplomatic vise. Israel would be occupying land belonging to a fellow United Nations member, land it has controlled and settled for more than four decades and some of which it expects to keep in any two-state solution.

“We are facing a diplomatic-political tsunami that the majority of the public is unaware of and that will peak in September,” said Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, at a conference in Tel Aviv last month. “It is a very dangerous situation, one that requires action.” He added, “Paralysis, rhetoric, inaction will deepen the isolation of Israel.”

With aides to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thrashing out proposals to the Palestinians, President Shimon Peres is due at the White House on Tuesday to meet with President Obama and explore ways out of the bind. The United States is still uncertain how to move the process forward, according to diplomats here.

Israel’s offer is expected to include transfer of some West Bank territory outside its settlements to Palestinian control and may suggest a regional component — an international conference to serve as a response to the Arab League peace initiatives.

But Palestinian leaders, emboldened by support for their statehood bid, dismiss the expected offer as insufficient and continue to demand an end to settlement building before talks can begin.

“We want to generate pressure on Israel to make it feel isolated and help it understand that there can be no talks without a stop to settlements,” said Nabil Shaath, who leads the foreign affairs department of Fatah, the main party of the Palestinian Authority. “Without that, our goal is membership in the United Nations General Assembly in September.”

Israeli, Palestinian and Western officials interviewed on the current impasse, most of them requesting anonymity, expressed an unusual degree of pessimism about a peaceful resolution. All agreed that the turmoil across the Middle East had prompted opposing responses from Israel and much of the world.

Israel, seeing the prospect of even more hostile governments as its neighbors, is insisting on caution and time before taking any significant steps. It also wants to build in extensive long-term security guarantees in any two-state solution, but those inevitably infringe the sovereignty of a Palestinian state.

The international community tends to draw the opposite conclusion. Foreign Secretary William Hague of Britain, for example, said last week that one of the most important lessons to be learned from the Arab Spring was that “legitimate aspirations cannot be ignored and must be addressed.” He added, referring to Israeli-Palestinian talks, “It cannot be in anyone’s interests if the new order of the region is determined at a time of minimum hope in the peace process.”

The Palestinian focus on September stems not only from the fact that the General Assembly holds its annual meeting then. It is also because Prime Minister Salam Fayyad announced in September 2009 that his government would be ready for independent statehood in two years and that Mr. Obama said last September that he expected the framework for an independent Palestinian state to be declared in a year.

Mr. Obama did not indicate what the borders of that state would be, assuming they would be determined through direct negotiations. But with Israeli-Palestinian talks broken off months ago and the Middle East in the process of profound change, many argue that outside pressure is needed.

Germany, France and Britain say negotiations should be based on the 1967 lines with equivalent land swaps, exactly what the Netanyahu government rejects because it says it predetermines the outcome.

“Does the world think it is going to force Israel to declare the 1967 lines and giving up Jerusalem as a basis for negotiation?” asked a top Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “That will never happen.”

While the Obama administration has referred in the past to the 1967 lines as a basis for talks, it has not decided whether to back the European Union, the United Nations and Russia — the other members of the so-called quartet — in declaring them the starting point, diplomats said. The quartet meets on April 15 in Berlin.

Israel, which has settled hundreds of thousands of Jews inside the West Bank and East Jerusalem, acknowledges that it will have to withdraw from much of the land it now occupies there. But it hopes to hold onto the largest settlement blocs and much of East Jerusalem as well as the border to the east with Jordan and does not want to enter into talks with the other side’s position as the starting point.

That was true even before its closest ally in the Arab world, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, was driven from power, helping fuel protest movements that now roil other countries, including Jordan, which has its own peace agreement with Israel.

“Whatever we put forward has to be grounded in security arrangements because of what is going on regionally,” said Zalman Shoval, one of a handful of Netanyahu aides drawing up the Israeli proposal that may be delivered as a speech to the United States Congress in May. “We are facing the rebirth of the eastern front as Iran grows strong. We have to secure the Jordan Valley. And no Israeli government is going to move tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes quickly.”

Those Israelis live in West Bank settlements, the source of much of the disagreement not only with the Palestinians but with the world. Not a single government supports Israel’s settlements. The Palestinians say the settlements are proof that the Israelis do not really want a Palestinian state to arise since they are built on land that should go to that state.

“All these years, the main obstacle to peace has been the settlements,” Nimer Hammad, a political adviser to President Abbas, said. “They always say, ‘but you never made it a condition of negotiations before.’ And we say, ‘that was a mistake.’ ”

The Israelis counter that the real problem is Palestinian refusal to accept openly a Jewish state here and ongoing anti-Israeli incitement and praise of violence on Palestinian airwaves.

Another central obstacle to the establishment of a State of Palestine has been the division between the West Bank and Gaza, the first run by the Palestinian Authority and the second by Hamas. Lately, President Abbas has sought to bridge the gap, asking to go to Gaza to seek reconciliation through an agreed interim government that would set up parliamentary and presidential elections.

But Hamas, worried it would lose such elections and hopeful that the regional turmoil could work in its favor — that Egypt, for example, might be taken over by its ally, the Muslim Brotherhood — has reacted coolly.

Efforts are still under way to restart peace talks but if, as expected, negotiations do not resume, come September the Palestinian Authority seems set to go ahead with plans to ask the General Assembly to accept it as a member. Diplomats involved in the issue say most countries — more than 100 — are expected to vote yes, meaning it will pass.

What happens then?

Some Palestinian leaders say relations with Israel would change.

“We will re-examine our commitments toward Israel, especially our security commitments,” suggested Hanna Amireh, who is on the 18-member ruling board of the Palestine Liberation Organization, referring to cooperation between Palestinian and Israeli troops. “The main sense about Israel is that we are fed up.”

Mr. Shaath said Israel would then be in daily violation of the rights of a fellow member state and diplomatic and legal consequences could follow, all of which would be painful for Israel.

In the Haaretz newspaper on Thursday, Ari Shavit, who is a political centrist, drew a comparison between 2011 and the biggest military setback Israel ever faced, the 1973 war.

He wrote that “2011 is going to be a diplomatic 1973,” because a Palestinian state will be recognized internationally.

“Every military base in the West Bank will be contravening the sovereignty of an independent U.N. member state.” He added, “A diplomatic siege from without and a civil uprising from within will grip Israel in a stranglehold.”

New UN Report Assesses Progress on Palestinian State-building Efforts

UN News Centre
April 12, 2011

A new United Nations report highlights progress made by the Palestinian Authority in building institutions necessary for a functioning State, while stressing the need for Israel to roll back “measures of occupation” and for an urgent resumption of negotiations between the two sides.

“In the limited territory under its control and within the constraints on the ground imposed by unresolved political issues, the PA has accelerated progress in improving its governmental functions,” states the report, entitled “Palestinian State-building: A Decisive Period.”

Prepared by the office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO), the report notes that in the six areas where the UN is most engaged, governmental functions are now sufficient for a functioning government of a State.

These are governance, rule of law and human rights; livelihoods and productive sectors; education and culture; health; social protection; and infrastructure and water. In each sector, the report provides a detailed assessment of progress to date in light of strong Palestinian reform efforts and donor engagement. It notes Israeli measures to facilitate movement and access which have also supported economic activity.

The report was prepared for tomorrow’s meeting in Brussels of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, the 12-member body that serves as the principal policy-level coordination mechanism for development assistance to the Palestinian people.

The meeting is the last expected gathering of the committee before the September 2011 target date for completion of institutional readiness for statehood set by the Palestinian Authority and supported by the diplomatic grouping known as the Quartet – which comprises the UN, European Union, Russia and the United States.

UN Special Coordinator Robert Serry commended the progress achieved by President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

“This is a decisive period, as we approach the September 2011 target for the PA’s institutions to be ready for statehood. It is also the target set by the parties to reach a negotiated permanent status agreement to create a Palestinian State at peace with Israel,” he said.

While the Palestinian Authority is clearly “on track,” said Mr. Serry, “the institutional achievements of the State-building agenda are approaching their limits within the political and physical space currently available, precisely at the time when it is approaching its target date for completion.

“No one should underestimate what is at stake now. What we urgently need are further steps on the ground that can enable a broadening of this progress,” he added.

“I believe Israel needs to roll back measures of occupation to match the PA’s achievements. I also stress the urgent need for Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations on a two-State solution to resume, if the State-building and political tracks are to come together by September.”

Senior UN officials have been calling for months now for an end to the impasse in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, which have been stalled since late September following Israel’s refusal to extend a 10-month freeze on settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territory.

That decision prompted Mr. Abbas to withdraw from direct talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which had only resumed a few weeks earlier after a two-year hiatus.

The report also cites the need to more fully address the socio-economic situation in Gaza, including as Mr. Serry stated, the need for further approval of UN projects, a streamlining of coordination procedures, and the liberalization of the import of construction materials.

“The people of Gaza need this, and it would send an important signal,” he stated.

The report also voices concern about the lack of the presence of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza – which was taken over by Hamas in June 2007 – resulting in a “disconnect” between Gazans and many Palestinian institutions.

• PALESTINIAN STATE-BUILDING: A DECISIVE PERIOD; United Nations Ad Hoc Liaison Committee Meeting, Brussels, 13 April 2011
• Opening Address of Ad Hoc Liaison Committee Meeting, Brussels, 13 April 2011
• United Nations Latin American and Caribbean Meeting in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace Concludes in Montevideo, Uruguay, March 31, 2011