"Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, pestilences and earthquakes in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake." (Matthew 24:8-9).
"Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done" (Mark 13:30).
AP - North Korean leader Kim Jong Il arrived in Russia on Saturday and will meet with President Dmitry Medvedev during his visit, the Kremlin said.
North Korea's state news agency did not specify a meeting with Medvedev but said that Kim's visit was at the invitation of the Russian president.
It is Kim's first trip to Russia since 2002 and is the latest sign that North Korea is trying to reach out in an effort to secure aid and restart stalled nuclear disarmament talks.
South Korean officials reported that Kim's train had arrived in the Russian border city of Khasan, but the first confirmation that Kim was in Russia came in statements issued simultaneously by the Kremlin and North Korea's official news agency.
Kim will visit the Far East region of Russia and travel west to Siberia, the Kremlin and North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said.
KCNA said in an English dispatch that "top leaders" of the two countries would meet. There were no details on how long Kim's trip would last or when a meeting would take place.
On his first trip to Russia in 2001, Kim made a 24-day train trek across the country. His trip the following year was limited to the Far East and lasted four days.
Russia and North Korea both announced Friday that Moscow was providing food assistance to the North. And North Korea said earlier this week that Medvedev sent a letter calling for greater energy cooperation among Russia and the two Koreas, saying it would enhance regional security.
Russia's foreign minister also said Moscow was in talks with Pyongyang and Seoul separately on putting gas pipes through the Korean peninsula.
Russia and North Korea maintain cordial ties, though they are not as close as they were in Soviet times, when Moscow provided significant aid and support to Pyongyang. Moscow is a member of six-party forum aimed at persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear programs in exchange for aid and security guarantees.
Last month, a senior North Korean diplomat visited New York to discuss ways to resume six-nation talks last held in December 2008. The discussions came after the nuclear envoys of the Koreas met in Indonesia for talks.
August 18, 2011
Southern Israel Erupts in Violence as United Nations' Decision on Palestinian Statehood Looms
As a United Nations decision on Palestinian statehood looms and another intifada is rumored, southern Israel has erupted in violence.
On Thursday, Israeli officials reported attacks along its border with Egypt following the ouster of its autocratic leader, Hosni Mubarak. Gunmen near the southern Israeli resort town of Eilat launched a coordinated attack Thursday against three civilian and military targets, killing at least five people and wounding 20 more, Israeli military officials told the Los Angeles Times.
A public bus carrying Israeli soldiers was fired on as it drove south from Beersheva to Eilat on a highway near the Israel-Egypt border, according to officials. Nine passengers were reported injured. Shortly after the bus was attacked, a car in the area was struck with an anti-tank missile, killing five. In a third attack, roadside bombs targeted IDF troops. Several soldiers were wounded.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel holds Egypt and the Palestinians responsible for the attacks.
“It reflects Egypt’s failing hold on Sinai and the rise of terror elements,” Barak said. “This terror attack originated from Gaza. We will exhaust all measures against the terrorists.”
Israel accuses Bedouin tribes on the Egypt-Israel border and “anti-Israel extremist groups” in the northern Sinai of smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip. Hamas, the elected government in Gaza, has evacuated facilities in anticipation of Israeli retaliatory strikes.
The Egyptian military has conducted raids in the northern Sinai and arrested suspects it claims belong to al-Qaeda.
On Tuesday, AhramOnline reported that Ramzy Moafy, said to be Osama Bin Laden’s physician, has reappeared in Egypt’s North Sinai. “Attia told CNN that Moafy is believed to have contacted several terrorist organizations in Sinai, including members of El-Takfeer wal-Hijra and the Palestinian Islamic Army,” AhramOnline is the web version of Al-Ahram, a newspaper owned by the Egyptian government.
DEBKAfile, an Israeli military intelligence propaganda operation, has run numerous stories claiming Egypt’s Sinai is now infested with al-Qaeda.
“For two years, debkafile’s counter-terror sources have been reporting on the burgeoning concentration of al Qaeda cells and affiliates in Sinai and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. The 2,200 Egyptian troops maintained there after Feb. 14 to maintain order and guard the Egyptian natural gas pipeline to Israel, Jordan and Syria were easily overpowered,” DEBKA reported on August 15.
On Wednesday, the Egyptians reported they have “exposed a large factory that produced explosives, rockets, and munitions in the city of Al-Arish in the northern Sinai Peninsula,” according to MEMRI, another propaganda outfit associated with Israeli intelligence and the neocons.
The attacks and accusations of al-Qaeda in northern Egypt arrive as a drive for Palestinian statehood intensifies. On Wednesday, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas met with the of the Kataeb (Phalange) and Lebanese Forces parties, both of whom confirmed support for an independent Palestinian state, a notable development.
Former CIA employee Ray McGovern talks about Israel and the Palestinians on the Alex Jones Show.
Abbas officially opened a Palestinian Embassy in Beirut by raising the Palestinian flag during a ceremony. There are an estimated 350,000 Palestinians in Lebanon’s 12 refugee camps.
"I'm trembling," my mother says, when I tell her I'm working on an article about how younger and older American Jews are reacting differently to the Palestinians' bid for statehood at the United Nations.
I understand the frustrations of the Palestinians dealing with ongoing settlements construction and sympathize with their decision to approach the U.N., but my mom supports President Obama's promise to wield the U.S. veto, sharing his view that a two-state solution can be achieved only through negotiations with Israel.
"This is so emotional," she says as we cautiously discuss our difference of opinion. "It makes me feel absolutely terrible when you stridently voice criticisms of Israel." (See photos inside the West Bank settlements.)
A lump of guilt and sadness rises in my throat. I've written harshly of Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 2006 and its assault on Gaza in 2009, and on civil rights issues in Israel. But speaking my mind on these topics - a very Jewish thing to do - has never been easy. During my childhood in the New York suburbs, support for Israel was as fundamental a family tradition as voting Democratic or lighting the Shabbos candles on Friday night.
My mom has a masters degree in Jewish history and is the program director of a large synagogue. Her youthful Israel experiences, volunteering on a kibbutz and meeting descendants of great-grandmother's siblings, were part of my own mythology. Raised within the Conservative movement, I learned at Hebrew school that Israel was the "land of milk and honey" where Holocaust survivors had irrigated the deserts and made flowers bloom.
What I didn't hear much about was the lives of Palestinians. It was only after I went to college, met Muslim friends, and enrolled in a Middle Eastern history and politics course that I was challenged to reconcile my liberal, humanist worldview with the fact that the Jewish state of which I was so proud was occupying the land of 4.4 million stateless Palestinians, many of them refugees displaced by Israel's creation. (See TIME's photoessay on growing up Arab in Israel.)
Like many young American Jews, during my senior year of college I took the free trip to Israel offered by the Taglit-Birthright program. The bliss I felt floating in the Dead Sea, sampling succulent fruits grown by Jewish farmers, and roaming the medieval city of Safed, historic center of Kabbalah mysticism, was tempered by other experiences: Watching the construction of the imposing "security fence," which not only tamped down on terrorist attacks, but also separated Palestinian villagers from their lands and water supplies. I spent hours in hushed conversation with a young Israeli soldier who was horrified by what he said was the routinely rough and contemptuous treatment of Palestinian civilians at Israeli military checkpoints.
That trip deepened my conviction that as an American Jew, I could no longer in good conscience offer Israel unquestioning support.I'm not alone. Polling of young American Jews shows that with the exception of the Orthodox, many of us feel less attached to Israel than do our Baby Boomer parents, who came of age during the era of the 1967 and 1973 wars, when Israel was less of an aggressor and more a victim.
A 2007 poll by Steven Cohen of Hebrew Union College and Ari Kelman of UC Davis found that although the majority of American Jews of all ages continue to identify as "Pro-Israel," those under 35 are less likely to identify as "Zionist." Over 40 percent of American Jews under 35 believe that "Israel occupies land belonging to someone else," and over 30 percent report sometimes feeling "ashamed" of Israel's actions.
Hanna King, an 18-year old sophomore at Swarthmore College, epitomizes the generational shift. Raised in Seattle as a Conservative Jew, last November King was part of a group of activists who heckled Netanyahu with slogans against the occupation at a New Orleans meeting of the Jewish Federations General Assembly.
"Netanyahu repeatedly claims himself as a representative of all Jews," King says. "The protest was an outlet for me to make a clear statement, and make it clear that those injustices don't occur in my name. It served as a vehicle for reclaiming my own Judaism." (Read more about the debate on a Palestinian state.)
A more moderate critique is expressed by J Street, the political action committee launched in 2008 as a "pro-Israel, pro-Peace" counterweight to the influence in Washington of the more hawkish American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Simone Zimmerman heads J-Street's campus affiliate at the University of California-Berkeley. A graduate of Jewish private schools, she lived in Tel Aviv as an exchange student during high school, but never heard the word occupation spoken in relation to Israel until she got to college.
During Zimmerman's freshman year, Berkeley became embroiled in a contentious debate over whether the university should divest from corporations that do business with the Israeli army. Although Zimmerman opposed divestment, she was profoundly affected by the stories she heard from Palestinian-American activists on campus.
"They were sharing their families' experiences of life under occupation and life during the war in Gaza," she remembers. "So much of what they were talking about related to things that I had always been taught to defend, like human rights and social justice, and the value of each individual's life." (Read the top 10 religion stories of 2010.)
Even young rabbis are, as a cohort, more likely to be critical of Israel than are older rabbis. Last week, Cohen, the Hebrew Union College researcher, released a survey of rabbinical students at New York's Jewish Theological Seminary, the premier institution for training Conservative rabbis. Though current students are just as likely as their elders to have studied and lived in Israel and to believe Israel is "very important" to their Judaism, about 70 percent of the young, prospective rabbis report feeling "disturbed" by Israel's treatment of Arab Israelis and Palestinians, compared to only about half of those ordained between 1980 and 1994.
Ben Resnick, 27, is one of the rabbinical students who took the survey. In July, he published an op-ed pointing out the ideological inconsistencies between Zionism, which upholds the principle of Israel as a Jewish state, and American liberal democracy, which emphasizes individual rights regardless of race, ethnicity, or religion.
"The tragedy," Resnick says, is that the two worldviews may be "irreconcilable."
Still, after living in Jerusalem for 10 months and then returning to New York, Resnick continues to consider himself a Zionist. He quotes the Torah in support of his view that American Jews should press Israel to end settlement expansion and help facilitate a Palestinian state:
"Love without rebuke," he says, "is not love."
August 11, 2011
Obama is Implementing Plans for War Throughout the Middle East
The U.S. has dramatically ratcheted up the pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad, slapping new sanctions on key companies Wednesday as White House press secretary Jay Carney said the leader is guilty of “heinous actions” and the country would be better off without him.
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President Barack Obama and other administration officials have already said publicly that Assad has “lost legitimacy” and must begin the push toward democracy in Syria or step down. A few weeks ago, after months of protests on the streets of Syria and little progress from Assad without explicit U.S. calls for his resignation, administration officials began to consider calling for Assad to step down, CNN said.
The new push from the White House, officials said, will make clear Assad is no longer a credible reformer and should give up his post.
A Nato plan for a post-Gaddaffi Libya – carving up the country, and giving the richest spoils to the UAE – has been leaked.
The U.S. is always trying to justify war against Iran (see this, for example) andLebanon.
What explains these widespread wars throughout the Middle East?
As American reporter Gareth Porter reported in 2008:
Three weeks after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in then-under secretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith’s recently published account of the Iraq war decisions. Feith’s account further indicates that this aggressive aim of remaking the map of the Middle East by military force and the threat of force was supported explicitly by the country’s top military leaders.
Feith’s book, War and Decision, released last month, provides excerpts of the paper Rumsfeld sent to President George W Bush on September 30, 2001, calling for the administration to focus not on taking down Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network but on the aim of establishing “new regimes” in a series of states…
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General Wesley Clark, who commanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign in the Kosovo war, recalls in his 2003 bookWinning Modern Wars being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that the list of states that Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Somalia [and Lebanon].
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When this writer asked Feith . . . which of the six regimes on the Clark list were included in the Rumsfeld paper, he replied, “All of them.”
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The Defense Department guidance document made it clear that US military aims in regard to those states would go well beyond any ties to terrorism. The document said the Defense Department would also seek to isolate and weaken those states and to “disrupt, damage or destroy” their military capacities – not necessarily limited to weapons of mass destruction (WMD)…
Rumsfeld’s paper was given to the White House only two weeks after Bush had approved a US military operation in Afghanistan directed against bin Laden and the Taliban regime. Despite that decision, Rumsfeld’s proposal called explicitly for postponing indefinitely US airstrikes and the use of ground forces in support of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in order to try to catch bin Laden.
Instead, the Rumsfeld paper argued that the US should target states that had supported anti-Israel forces such as Hezbollah and Hamas.
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A senior officer on the Joint Staff told State Department counter-terrorism director Sheehan he had heard terrorist strikes characterized more than once by colleagues as a “small price to pay for being a superpower”.
Obama is simply carrying out the Neocons’ war plans created right after 9/11 … if not before.
Postscript: The former director of the CIA’s counter-terrorism center says that American policy in the Middle East is failing because the U.S. doesn’t believe in democracy.
And security experts – conservative hawks and liberal doves alike – agree that waging war in the Middle East weakens national security and increasesterrorism. See this, this, this, this, this, this and this.
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