Just Commentary September 2014

September 2014

Vol 14, No.09

THE ATLANTIC ALLIANCE’S “HOLY WAR” AGAINST THE ISLAMIC STATE (ISIS): NATO’S ROLE IN THE RECRUITMENT OF ISLAMIC TERRORISTS

By Michel Chossudovsky While NATO leaders in Newport Wales debate the Atlantic Alliance’s role “in containing a mounting militant threat in the Middle East”, it is worth recalling that in 2011 at the outset of the war in Syria, NATO became actively involved in the recruitment of Islamic fighters.

Reminiscent of the enlistment of the Mujahideen to wage the CIA’s jihad (holy war) in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war, NATO headquarters in Brussels in liaison with the Turkish High command, according to Israeli intelligence sources, was involved in the enlisting of thousands of terrorists: “Also discussed in Brussels and Ankara, our sources report, is a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish

army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria.

(Debkafile, August 31, 2011 emphasis added).

to rebel forces in southern Syria and Aleppo in the northwest. (Debkafile, June 18, 2013)

Confirmed by Israeli intelligence News, NATO played a key role in the delivery of weapons to Al Qaeda affiliated rebels in the Aleppo region bordering onto Turkey:

Ironically, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron (who is hosting the NATO Summit in Wales), have asserted that they “will not be cowed by barbaric killers”:

NATO and a number of European governments, most significantly the UK, have started airlifting heavy weapons to the Syrian rebels poised in Aleppo to fend off a major Syrian army offensive, according to debkafile’s exclusive military sources. They disclose that the first shipments were landed Monday night, June 17 [2013], and early Tuesday in Turkey and Jordan. They contained anti-air and tank missiles as well as recoilless 120 mm cannons mounted on jeeps. From there, they were transferred

“Terrorists R Us”

“We will not waver in our determination to confront the Islamic State … If terrorists think we will weaken in the face of their threats they could not be more wrong.”

(Barack Obama and David Cameron, Strengthening the NATO alliance, op ed published in the London Times, September 4, 2014, emphasis added) But these “Barbaric Killers” were created Turn to next page

STATEMENTS

BY CHANDRA MUZAFFAR......................P3

.THE TRUTH ABOUT IS

ARTICLES . MH-17 ‘INVESTIGATION’:SECRET AUGUST 8TH

AGREEMENT SEEPS OUT

BY ERIC ZUESSE...................................................P 4 .SIX MONTHS AFTER MH370, BOEING & INMARSAT NEED TO EXPLAIN THEMSELVES

BY NILE BOWIE.........................................................P 6

.EUROPE AWAKE

BY FRED DALLMYER............................................P10 . JEWISH SURVIVORS OF NAZI GENOCIDE CONDEMN THE MASSACRE OF PALESTINIANS IN GAZA

BY COUNTERCURRENTS...................................P 10 .WHAT’S NEXT FOR ISRAEL, HAMAS AND GAZA

BY NOAM CHOMSKY............................................P 15

. FERGUSON: NO JUSTICE IN THE AMERICAN POLICE S TATE

BY WILLIAM PFAFF................................................P8

BY PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS...................................P 19

.AMERICA STARTED THIS UKRAINE CRISIS

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by the Western military alliance. They are

serving the strategic interests of the U.S., Britain, not to mention Israel.

“They are Our Terrorists“. Without the terrorists, the “Global War on Terrorism” would fall flat.

The Obama-Cameron narrative borders on ridicule. It is not only absurd, it is criminal.

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agenda under NATO auspices. The evidence amply confirms that the US and Britain in liaison with the Atlantic Alliance have relentlessly supported both the creation as well as development of an Islamic Terror Network which now extends from the Middle East and North Africa into sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia.

And now Obama and Cameron, whose governments are the architects of the Islamic State, are calling upon the Atlantic Alliance as well all on the governments of the 28 NATO member states to endorse the bombing campaign on Iraq and Syria as part of a“counter-terrorism” operation.

The ISIS brigades are “intelligence assets” supported by US-NATO-Israel. They will not be the object of the bombings. Quite the opposite.

What they are proposing is an all encompassing NATO mandate to “Go after Terrorist Entities” which they themselves created as part of an insidious intelligence operation to destabilize and destroy both Syria and Iraq.

Israel has provided a safe haven to Al Qaeda affiliated rebels including ISIS and Al Nusrah rebels in the occupied Golan Heights.

Image: Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu Shakes Hand with a wounded Al Qaeda Terrorist in occupied Golan.

Netanyahu has met up with jihadist leaders in the Golan Heights. The IDF top brass acknowledges that there are “global jihad elements inside Syria” supported by Israel.

What is envisaged as part of the propaganda campaign is to use the “threat of the Islamic State” as a pretext and justification to intervene militarily under a “humanitarian” “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) mandate.

The civilian population will not be protected.

Under this diabolical military-intelligence operation, The Islamic State (ISIS) brigades with Western Special Forces within their ranks are slated to be “protected”.

The War on Syria

NATO’s CriminalAgenda What we are dealing with is a criminal

March 2011, member states of the Atlantic Alliance as well as Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have (covertly) supported the terrorists –including al Nusrah and the ISIS– with a view to destabilizing Syria as a nation state. These actions were implemented in liaison with NATO headquarters in Brussels.

The process of recruitment and training of mercenaries had been sub-contracted to private security companies operating out of the Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

Reports point to the creation of training camps in Qatar and the UnitedArab Emirates (UAE).

In Zayed Military City (UAE), “a secret army is in the making” was operated by Xe Services, formerly Blackwater. The UAE deal to establish a military camp for the training of mercenaries was signed in July 2010, nine months before the onslaught of the wars in Libya and Syria. (See Manlio Dinucci, A Secret Army of Mercenaries for the Middle East and North Africa, Il Manifesto. 18 May 2011) Moreover, confirmed by CNN, security companies on contract to NATO member states were involved in training Syrian “opposition” death squads in the use of chemical weapons:

British and French Special Forces have been actively training Syria opposition rebels from a base in Turkey.

Lest we forget, Al Qaeda was at the outset a creation of the CIA. Who is behind the ISIS terrorists? The mainstream media is mum on the subject, despite mountains of evidence that they are creations of the Western military alliance.

L E A D A R T I C L E

From the outset of the war on Syria in

“The United States and some European allies are using defense contractors to train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria, a senior U.S. official and several senior diplomats told CNN Sunday. ( CNN Report, December 9, 2012) NATO Supported the Terrorists in Libya From the outset of NATO’s 2011 “humanitarian war” on Libya, the Atlantic Alliance was working in close liaison with the “pro-Al Qaeda brigades” led by “former” Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) leader Abdul Hakim Belhhadj (Debka, Pro-Al Qaeda brigades control Qaddafi Tripoli strongholds seized by rebels, August 28, 2011 ) continued next page

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Opposition, Global Research, 3 April 2011)

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Abdul Hakim Belhhadj received his military training in a CIA sponsored guerrilla camp in Afghanistan. He constitutes a CIA “intelligence asset” operating in the Libyan war theater. A 2011 report suggested that he had some 1,000 men under his command. (Libyan rebels at pains to distance themselves from extremists – The Globe and Mail, March 12, 2011)

S T A T E M E N T

The US-NATO coalition is arming the Jihadists. Weapons are being channeled to the LIFG from Saudi Arabia, which historically, since the outset of the SovietAfghan war, has covertly supported Al Qaeda. The Saudis are now providing the rebels, in liaison with Washington and Brussels, with anti-tank rockets and ground-to-air missiles. (See Michel Chossudovsky “Our Man in Tripoli”: USNATO Sponsored Islamic Terrorists Integrate Libya’s Pro-Democracy

5 September 2014 Michel Chossudovsky is an awardwinning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal and Editor of the globalresearch.ca website.

Source: www.globalresearch.ca/

STATEMENTS THE TRUTH ABOUT IS

By Chandra Muzaffar The Islamic State (IS) has been roundly condemned by everyone. It deserves to be.

It deserves to be condemned because of its barbaric brutality and its harsh cruelty. It deserves to be condemned because of its collective massacres and its individual murders. It deserves to be condemned because of its oppression of Shias, of Christians, of Yazidis. It deserves to be condemned because of its degradation of women. It deserves to be condemned because of its distortion and perversion of Islamic law.

Nonetheless, many of those who have condemned IS do not want to know how this terrorist outfit came into being in the first instance. It is a direct consequence of theAnglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. In order to anchor itself in Iraqi society, the occupier zealously sought to eliminate the power base of deposed President Saddam Hussein by dismantling his security forces and emasculating related Baathist structures. At the same time, the Shias, the majority population, were strengthened in politics and the public services. This heightened resentment among the Sunnis and led to the formation of militias among them.

When democratic elections were held in 2005, Shia parties expectedly swept into power. Shia leaders reinforced their cordial ties with the Iranian Shia elite —— some of whom had been their mentors long before the 2003 invasion. Seeing the increasingly close bond between the Shias of Iraq and Iran, the US began to feel that its invasion of Iraq had enhanced Iranian influence in that country. Ironically, the US had strengthened the geopolitical hand of its adversary! More than the US, Israel which had also encouraged the invasion of Iraq in order to get rid of a staunch Israeli opponent in Baghdad was appalled that Iran, its other mortal foe, had now expanded its reach in the region. The Saudi elite and elites in a number of other Gulf monarchies and certain other Arab governments also viewed Iraq –Iran ties with much apprehension. To add to their apprehension, the Shia based Hezbollah in Lebanon was also emerging as a major actor in Lebanon following its steadfast defence of the nation against Israeli aggression in 2006. This is why a Sunni Arab leader warned his fellow Sunnis of the rise of a Shia arc in West Asia, centred in Tehran.

concerns about their dominance over West Asia, prompted these parties to try to stem what they perceived as Shia influence in Iraq by supporting Sunni militias with arms, intelligence and money. Sunni insurgencies like Al-Qaeda became stronger and created a lot of havoc in Iraq, directed mainly at the Shias. A more radical breakaway group fromAl-Qaeda calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Shams (Syria) (ISIS) established itself as a tough fighting force and moved into Syria with the same aim of ousting a Shia government, namely the government of Bashar Al-Assad.

In Syria, ISIS has outdone other armed rebel groups in its insatiable appetite for violence. ISIS fighters have massacred Christian communities and beheaded scores of Shias. With ruthless efficiency they have captured strategic routes and oil fields. It is alleged that apart from the spoils of war, this terrorist outfit is also financed and armed by some of the same groups that helped the Sunni insurgents in Iraq between 2003 and 2008. It has even been suggested that ISIS has deep links with Mossad. After all, Israel which has conducted at least six military strikes against the Syrian armed forces in the current conflict is determined

These Sunni fears, paralleling US- Israeli

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to oust Assad since he continues to oppose Israeli control over much of the strategic Golan Heights in Syria and insists on protecting his special relationship with Hezbollah and Iran as part of the resistance against US-Israeli hegemony over West Asia.

It is significant that ISIS brutalities in Syria — like those of the other armed groups — have only elicited whimpers from the US and the West. The reason is obvious. They support the larger aim of these groups which is the overthrow of Assad. The US and the West are (or were) on the side of ISIS in Syria. And yet in Iraq they are against ISIS which has now renamed itself as IS. What explains this seemingly glaring contradiction?

If the US has decided to fight IS in Iraq, it is because it threatens US and other Western oil companies in the Kurdistan region in the north. All the big Western oil players — Mobil, Chevron, Exxon and Total — are in the region. Kurdistan, according to Robert Fisk, “accounts for 43.7 billion barrels of Iraq’s 143 billion barrels of reserves, as well as 25.5 billion barrels of unproven reserves

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and three to six trillion cubic metres of gas.”

Preserving the West’s oil interests in Kurdistan is intimately connected to yet another factor. The US and Israel have always regarded Iraqi Kurdistan as a special ally. For decades its leadership has helped to further their agenda in West Asia. In the 2003 invasion of Iraq for instance the Kurds rendered much assistance to the US and Britain.

S T A T E M E N T armed groups in Syria, all of which have committed acts of terror at some point or other. The US’s European and West Asian allies should also desist from providing any form of military support to these groups.

Without such external support it is very likely that the violence and bloodshed in Syria will come to a halt. Syrians would then be in a better position to bring about whatever change they feel is necessary through peaceful means.

One should not be surprised therefore that the US has chosen to defend the Kurds against the IS menace. It is simply a matter of protecting its geo-economic and geopolitical interests. Similarly, if in Syria the US is against Assad, it is because of the pursuit of its hegemonic design over West Asia. Since the US will not be able to eliminate the IS threat to Kurdistan in Iraq without taking military action against the IS in Syria, it is now considering launching military strikes against the IS in certain parts of that country.

What is more important, the end of crass political violence in Syria will undoubtedly help to reduce IS generated terror in Iraq.

Terrorism in West Asia as a whole may witness a decline. If one is principled and not opportunistic or hypocritical in the fight against terrorism, it is not just IS in one corner of Iraq that will be one’s target. Terrorism, whether it is perpetrated by friend or foe, will be confronted and defeated with courage and integrity.

US military action against the IS in Syria should signal the beginning of the end of all direct and indirect assistance to the various

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

9 August 2014.

ARTICLES MH-17 ‘INVESTIGATION’: SECRET AUGUST 8TH AGREEMENT SEEPS OUT- PERPETRATOR OF THE DOWNING IN UKRAINE, OF THE MALAYSIAN AIRLINER, WILL STAY HIDDEN

By Eric Zuesse Regarding what caused the downing of the Malaysian airliner MH-17 in Ukraine on July 17th, the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, reported in a brief Russian-language news story on August 12th , that four days earlier (August 8th) a representative of that

nation’s Prosecutor General office, Yuri Boychenko, had said that (as autotranslated by google), “the results [of the investigation] will be announced upon completion of the investigation and with the consent of all the parties who signed the corresponding

agreement.” This UNIAN report said that, “As part of the four-party agreement signed on August 8 between Ukraine, the Netherlands, Belgium and Australia [all of which nations are allies of the United States and are cooperating with its new Cold War against Russia continued next page

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], information on the investigation into the disaster Malaysian ‘Boeing-777’ will not be disclosed.” In other words: the official ‘investigation’ is being carried out by four nations that, as U.S. allies, are hostile toward Russia.

One of those four nations, Ukraine, is not only a prime suspect in possibly having shot this airliner down , but is currently waging a hot war to ethnically-cleanse the pro-Russian population out of southeastern Ukraine ; and the initial ‘news’ reports in Western ‘news’ media regarding the downing of MH-17 had stenographically repeated the Ukrainian Government’s line that said that this airliner was probably downed by the local rebels there, who were trying to shoot down the Ukrainian Government’s bombers that are constantly bombing them . Some Western ‘news’ reports even speculated that perhaps Russia itself had shot this airliner down. If the UNIAN news-report is correct, then there is no way that the ‘investigation’ will be able to be released to the public if it indicates that the Ukrainian Government (which, according to that news-report has veto power over the making-public of the study’s findings) is blamed for having shot the airliner down.

On August 12th, another proUkrainian-Government ‘news’ site, gordonua.com , headlined, as autotranslated by google, “GPU: The results of the investigation [into the] crash [of] the Boeing 777 will be released with the consent of the parties,” and said, “Information about the accident MH17 in the Donetsk region will be published in obtaining the consent of all the parties that are involved in the investigation.” UNIAN was cited there as gordonua’s sole source. ‘News’ media didn’t probe the matter further.

Until 23 August 2014, that seems to have been the last of the matter, as far as news reports were concerned, and both of those two news reports were just tiny squibs in the Russian language, published only in Ukraine, by supporters of the Obama-installed Ukrainian Government. The news was ignored both inside and outside Ukraine.

Then, on 23 August 2014, Global Research News published the first English-language news-report on this matter; it was based on the second Russian-language news-report, the one that had appeared at gordonua.com on August 12th. Global Research concluded from it that, “The Causes of the MH17 Crash are ‘Classified’.”

Of course, this way of phrasing the

matter is a slight oversimplification, because, actually, the findings will remain ‘classified’ only if, and to the extent that, the Ukrainian Government is found to have caused the airliner’s downing. In other words: this ‘investigation’ will not be published unless the Ukrainian Government and the other three nations that are performing it agree unanimously to publish it.

So: imagine a murder-case in which 298 innocents are slaughtered, and in which there are only three suspects (here: Ukraine, the pro-Russian rebels, and Russia itself), and one of those three suspects has veto-power on the making-public of the ‘investigation’

S T A T E M E N T into that crime. Well: this is that murder-case, and the veto-holding ‘investigator’ and suspect is Ukraine.

Neither of the other two suspects holds any such veto-power over this ‘investigation.’

In a sense, whether the official investigation into the downing will ever be made public is insignificant, just as would be any ‘investigation’ that is carried out by, or with veto-power from, one of the prime suspects in the crime that is being investigated.

The international public would obviously need to be fools in order for them to trust such an ‘investigation’ as that. Case closed?

President Obama got the economicsanctions-increase against Russia, that he had wanted out of this shoot-down.

Who needs any ‘investigation’ to determine this mass-killing’s actual perpetrator? Certainly not Obama.

Ultimately, it is he who caused it, because he was the person behind this ethnic-cleansing campaign, without which ethnic-cleansing campaign the airliner itself wouldn’t have been downed.

The downing of this airliner goes straight back to the U.S. White House , which has already won what it wanted from it.

Those 298 corpses are just casualties of this U.S.-caused war, like the Ukrainians are casualties of it who live in the portions of Ukraine that had overwhelmingly elected in 2010 the Ukrainian President whom Obama ousted from office in 2014. Obama doesn’t want a President like that elected ever again in Ukraine; so, those voters are being gotten rid of, and ethnic cleansing is how it’s being done.

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continued from page 5 not being heard from in Western ‘news’ media, and nobody in the West is asking these victims what they think of the Ukrainian Government that Obama installed . Perhaps that’s because they are increasingly becoming a guerilla army to defeat the regime that Obama installed.

As to the specific operation that downed the plane, there is already a

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lot more information about that than the official ‘investigation,’ if that’s ever published, is likely to reveal, and it points clearly to the Ukrainian military as the perpetrator, in yet another of their ‘false flag’ operations. And unlike the Ukrainian Government’s charges that rebels shot it down by mistake, Ukraine shot it down with deadly purpose and knowing full well what they were doing.

A R T I C L E S 26 August, 2014

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs.

Republican Economic Records, 19102010 , and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity .

Source: Countercurrents.org

SIX MONTHS AFTER MH370, BOEING AND INMARSAT NEED EXPLAIN THEMSELVES

TO

By Nile Bowie Six months have passed since the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in March, which took off from Kuala Lumpur carrying 239 people en route to Beijing. The aircraft veered wildly off course while flying over the South China Sea before turning back over the Malaysian peninsula toward the Indian Ocean, where it is presumed to have crashed.

Despite the largest multinational search and rescue effort ever conducted, not a trace of debris from the aircraft has been found, nor has the cause of the aircraft’s erratic change of trajectory and disappearance been established.

The case of MH370 has proven to be the most baffling incident in commercial aviation history and one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.

Malaysia Airlines has suffered the two worst disasters in modern aviation less than five months apart, following the tragic demise of flight MH17 in July, forcing the company to slash its staff numbers by a third as part of a major restructuring effort. The state has announced plans to take full ownership of the national carrier following the collapse of its share price and its subsequent removal from the stock

market.

After a fruitless search in the southern Indian Ocean where the plane is believed to have terminated, investigators established a new search area that has been mapped by Chinese and Australian ships since June. The next stage of the investigation has been given a provisional 12-month duration, and a Dutch contractor, Fugro Survey, will conduct an underwater search beginning this month.

It is hoped that once the wreckage is discovered, the aircraft’s black boxes, cockpit voice recordings and flight data will help investigators explain the incident, as well as giving closure to the families of the victims. There is still little consensus among investigators and experts as to what actually happened onboard the doomed flight.

MH370’s transponders were shut off without a mayday call between Malaysian and Vietnamese airspace, followed by significant changes in altitude after ground control lost contact with the cockpit less than an hour into the flight. The aircraft flew erratically before fixing onto a consistent flight path, presumably on

autopilot, prior to terminating once the plane ran out of fuel.

The Malaysian government, as well as aviation experts, claim that the aircraft’s movements were consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane. The Australian-led search team believes that depressurisation and hypoxia rendered the crew unconscious because of the orderly path the aircraft took prior to ending its flight.

Investigators have cleared all passengers of any suspicious motives, while the flight’s pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a qualified pilot with over 30 years experience with Malaysia Airlines, has been the main suspect of the investigation by Malaysian authorities. Media reports speculated that Shah was undergoing difficult domestic circumstances, but his family members deny that he exhibited strange behavior.

Malaysia’s chief of police, Khalid Abu Bakar, said he believed that hijackers, saboteurs or someone with a personal vendetta or psychological problem had succeeded in diverting the plane. In the continued next page

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face of this exceedingly bizarre and unexplained incident, the aircraft’s manufacturer, the Boeing Company, has exhibited deafening silence.

Honeywell, one of Boeing’s avionics suppliers, filed patent number US7475851B2 in 2003 for a similar uninterrupted autopilot control device.

What has been established thus far indicates that human intervention contributed to aircraft’s radical change in trajectory. If MH370’s pilots were ultimately not responsible for this, then other possible scenarios need to be explored in explaining the flight’s demise.

Boeing and Honeywell have both developed technology for use in unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, with civilian and military applications for decades.

Boeing, the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial jetliners and military aircraft, was awarded a patent in 2006 for an ‘uninterruptible autopilot control system’ that could enable aircrafts to be remotely piloted from the ground using radio waves and global satellite positioning systems to counter hijacking attempts. The technology, developed following the 9/ 11 attacks, removes all control from pilots and redirects the airliner to a predetermined landing location.

“After it has been activated, the aircraft will be capable of remote digital control from the ground, enabling operators to fly it like a sophisticated model plane, manoeuvring it vertically and laterally…

Once triggered, no one on board will be able to deactivate the system,” claims a report from 2007 published in the London Evening Standard.

The automatic control system technology, filed under patent number US7142971B2, is independently powered by an alternative power source that is inaccessible to anyone on board the aircraft. Boeing officials quoted in the report give the clear impression that this system was developed for the purpose of being installed on Boeing airliners, stating that the uninterruptible autopilot system could be fitted into its planes by 2009.

In 2012, Boeing declared its intention to install new security mechanisms aboard several of its 777 series aircraft, including the models used by Malaysia Airlines, over concerns the aircrafts’ inflight entertainment system, which includes USB connections, could allow hackers to access a plane’s computer.

A report issued by the US Federal Register in 2013 raised concerns that Model 777-200, among others, was exposed to security vulnerabilities.

“This potential exploitation of security vulnerabilities may result in intentional or unintentional destruction, disruption, degradation, or exploitation of data and systems critical to the safety and maintenance of the airplane,” the document stated.

Though the Federal Register ’s statement explicitly mentions Model 777-200, it is also valid for Model 777200ER – the aircraft used for MH370 – because the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) places both models 777-200 and 777-200ER in the same category and does not make a distinction between the two variants.

This information confirms the existence of technology that would allow for an aircraft like MH370 to be externally controlled, and that Boeing and the FAA were aware of a potential vulnerability loophole that could have conceivably been exploited. Boeing declined to comment on this incident

A R T I C L E S and has made no attempt to explain this technology, even after former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad publically raised concerns over the possibility of such a scenario.

Inmarsat, the British satellite telecommunications company responsible for analyzing satellite data showing that MH370 flew south toward the Indian Ocean from its last known position, has also come under scrutiny from independent satellite experts and engineers that found glaring inconsistencies in their analysis.

The Atlantic magazine published a report in May based on the analysis of Michael Exner, founder of the American Mobile Satellite Corporation, Duncan Steel, a physicist and visiting scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, and satellite technology consultant Tim Farrar.

The team of analysts used flight and navigation software to deconstruct Inmarsat’s analysis, and determined that other known evidence contradicted their mathematical conclusions, such as in the instance where the graph data provided by the British company actually shows the plane and satellite moving away from each other at 50 miles per hour while the plane was stationary and had not even taxied to take off.

The analysts concluded the Inmarsat’s data contained irregular frequency shifts, and even when the values were corrected, Inmarsat’s example flight paths failed to match and proved to be erroneous. In another instance, the graph data marking the position of the satellite receiving the signal is shown to be traveling faster in northbound direction when the satellite itself was moving south. Inmarsat’s graph shows the satellite moving at 33 miles per hour when its overall speed was just 0.07 continued next page

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miles per hour at that time.

The authors of the report have attempted to reach Inmarsat and other relevant bodies, but they claim that the company did not reply to requests for comments on basic technical questions about their analysis, leading them to determine that “Inmarsat officials and search authorities seem to want it both ways: They release charts, graphics,

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and statements that give the appearance of being backed by math and science, while refusing to fully explain their methodologies.”

The investigation into the disappearance of MH370 has not yet produced any physical evidence of the wreckage. It needs to be determined if this can be attributed to a false mathematical analysis by Inmarsat. Boeing must also address concerns over the

A R T I C L E S uninterruptible autopilot system and produce the relevant technical specifics needed to determine the extent of flight MH370’s vulnerability to being externally overridden and controlled.

9 September 2014 Nile Bowie is a columnist with Russia Today, and a Research Associate with the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

AMERICA STARTED THIS UKARAINE CRISIS

By William Pfaff I find it very disquieting that so few among the West European and American commentators on the Ukraine crisis, private or public, seem concerned that the United States has started this affair, and that it is not inconceivable that it may end in a war.

Worse yet, Washington’s demonization of Vladimir Putin has been so successful in the American press and public, and its secrecy about the American role in Kiev, has left the public in the United States and in NATO Europe convinced that this has all been the result of a Russian strategy of aggressive expansion into Ukraine, and not a bungled and essentially American attempt to annex Ukraine to NATO and the European Union, and to undermine the domestic political position of President Putin — which all has gone badly and dangerously wrong.

The Ukrainian coup d’état in February was prepared by Washington. Why else were the State Department official in charge of Europe and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, together with officials of the European Union and a number of intelligence people present, in company with the “moderate” Ukrainians programmed to take over the government after the planned overthrow of the corrupt (but elected)

President Viktor Yanukovych? Even President Obama, in Mexico for a “summit”, was waiting to supply a video feed speeding the overthrown Mr. Yanukovych on his way, and congratulating the “democratic” victors.

But then, as the night wore on, things got out of hand. The riot police and the opposition forces went out of control.

In a video made at the time, the American candidate for prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, said desperately, “Ukraine is in a big mess.”

Even though the immediate mess was eventually sorted out, and Mr. Yatsenyuk (“Yats” to Secretary Nuland) was soon (briefly) the prime minister — and immediately was welcomed to Washington to dine at the White House with the American president — one

must ask what was accomplished by all this that did not discredit the United

States and the EU, and draw towards Ukraine and the American troops today deployed in Poland and the Baltics, and towards NATO itself, the storm-clouds of a useless war?

It is the latest (and probably last) step in a foolish American and European betrayal of the promise given to Mikhail Gorbachev by President George H.W. Bush, at the time of the unification of Germany, that if the Soviet Union agreed to a newly united Germany’s assuming the Federal Republic’s existing place as a member of NATO, no NATO troops would be stationed in what formerly had been the Communist German Democratic Republic.

The deal was done, and at the time was a cause for congratulations on all sides, since it removed the principal obstacle to Germany reunion, considered desirable (and inevitable) by the western countries, and as inevitable, given Germany’s history,

by Moscow as well.

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cadet NATO membership (the “Partnership for Peace”).

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suffered badly under the Communists, NATO membership obviously offered reassurance.

A R T I C L E S Russian cultural identity of the south and east of Ukraine.

Keeping Crimea Russian.

Agreement to actual NATO admission came as part of the European Union Maastricht treaty in 1991, and in 1999 Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia (soon to become two states) became NATO members, and in 2004 the Baltic States, Romania and Bulgaria.

Washington and the EU then turned their attention to the Caucasus and Ukraine. As early as 1987, the EU’s “Europe 2000” plan for expansion named Ukraine, Moldavia, and Belarus as eventual candidates for EU membership.

Georgia was the first to be invited to prepare for NATO membership, and took this as a sign that NATO and the U.S. would underwrite its military recovery of its “lost lands,” and launched an attack on South Ossetia.

Russia’s patience was exhausted. The Russian army promptly defeated the Georgians and took over the Ossetian statelet, and nearby Abkhazia as well.

Washington and the NATO allies voiced loud outrage. But it was Georgia that had started this little war of national revenge.

NATO was, and remains, an alliance effectively under complete American control. Its arrival on the frontier of the former Soviet Union was viewed by the new Russia of Vladimir Putin with disquiet. This was not supposed to have happened.

It would take a closer knowledge than I possess of the workings of American government to explain why it decided to take control of post-1990 Central and Eastern Europe, following Communism’s collapse. For Poland, the former Czechoslovakia, the Baltic states, Hungary and Romania, who

But for Georgia and other states in the Caucasus, and for Ukraine, NATO membership amounted to an annexation by NATO of nations formerly among the historical territories of Soviet or Czarist Russia. Why should the United States and the original states of the European Union — western, Roman Catholic or Protestant Christian, Atlantic-oriented states — decide to dismantle historical Russia by taking over nations once part of Russia itself (and in the Ukranian case had been the instrument of Russia’s conversion to Christianity), or had been colonies, some of them Muslim, of the Czars.

That, in any case, is where we are now, and Russia’s reaction is not simply that of an aggressive and authoritarian President Putin — as the West likes to make out — but the hostility of a significant part of the Russian population, which only now has recovered its national self-confidence and ambition.

What was the intent of all this? To create an east-west civil war in Ukraine? Why is that in the American interest? Russia’s intervention in such a futile war handed it back Crimea, but also apparent responsibility for some fool’s shooting down a passenger airliner.

Dmitri Trenin, Director of the Carnegie Center in Moscow, recently offered the following observations: Vladimir Putin’s essential requirements are:

Putin won’t yield. Any serious concession to the U.S. would cause him to fall from power, and produce disorder in Russia.

For the future, he considers the U.S. in decline. He does not look to alliance with a rising China but to Germany, which he sees as the coming leader of a powerful Europe.

What is Barack Obama’s interest in all this? What about the Washington hawks responsible for what is

happening? Why have they done this without an explanation to the American people?

There is only one possible solution now: negotiated truce on the Ukraine frontier, followed by Russo-American and EU agreement on the permanent existence of an independent and autonomous Ukraine. The alternative could be major war.

7 August 2014

NATO excluded from Ukraine.

William Pfaff is the author of The Irony of Manifest Destiny, published in June 2010 by Walker and Company (New York)

No U.S. troops on Russia’s borders.

Source:www.williampfaff.com

Protection and preservation of the

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EUROPE AWAKE!

By Fred Dallmayr, Co- Chairman, World Public Forum “Dialogue Of Civilizations” In this year, 2014, we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I, that ferocious war in which “Old Europe” – the Europe of the “Belle Epoque”, the Europe of traditional monarchies and dynasties – was destroyed. For the peoples of Europe it was an immense bloodletting, epitomized by trench warfare and the battle of Verdun. The war also laid the foundation for subsequent catastrophes. While dubbed “the war to end all wars”, the concluding treaties of Versailles and Trianon ushered in a “peace to end all peace.” The conditions imposed on the vanquished in these treaties were so harsh and ill-conceived that resentment was bound to flare up and, after barely two decades, erupted in an unprecedented paroxysm of mayhem and destruction on a global scale.

The commemoration of the great European war should not be the occasion for finger-pointing and posthumous recriminations – an exercise which, although dear to some historians, can only stir up nationalistic resentments. The much more fruitful and beneficial outcome of the commemoration is (or should be) the determination to keep

Europe in the future free from warfare on its soil. This is the basic purpose of the European Union and the Council of Europe and of the whole process of European integration during the past half century. This means that Europe should be a zone of peace.

Unfortunately, there are developments which threaten to undermine the role of Europe as a peace zone. The greatest danger is that Europe might become the victim of “great power” rivalry. There are ominous danger signals in the present crisis in the Ukraine. Although the solution of the crisis is patently simple and obvious – the “federalization” of the country (which has repeatedly been proposed) – there are forces at work seemingly opposed to a peaceful solution and bent on pushing the country into civil war, and even into an all-out war between West and East. Given the latter horizon, the crisis takes on the character of another “proxy war” between big powers – similar to the proxy war which has raged in Syria, but now much closer to the European heartland. In some political circles, one already talks about a possible war between America and Russia, even though this may result in nuclear war (a possibility that is now openly accepted in

the same quarters).

In this situation, one has to ask: who is going to be the most likely and most immediate victim? Given its location between America and Russia, Europe is bound to be the site of the most direct and immediate nuclear devastation. This means: it is time for Europe to wake up from its slumber and from its pliant submission to great power politics. As Juergen Habermas rightly pleaded some time ago: Europe has to develop its own foreign policy. The first step should be to bring pressure to bear on all sides to stop the proxy war in Ukraine.

Europe should do everything possible to induce contestants in the Ukraine to assemble around a table and to negotiate fair terms of peace. This would be the proper European way to commemorate 1914.

Endorsed by: Chandra Muzaffar, President, International Movement for a Just World (JUST), Malaysia Vladimir Kulikov, Executive Director, World Public Forum “Dialogue of Civilizations” Hans Kochler, President, International Progress Organisation (IPO)

JEWISH SURVIVORS OF NAZI GENOCIDE CONDEMN THE MASSACRE OF PALESTINIANS IN GAZA

By Countercurrents As Jewish survivors and descendants of survivors of the Nazi genocide we unequivocally condemn the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the ongoing occupation and colonization of historic Palestine. We further condemn the United States for providing Israel with the funding to carry out the attack, and Western states more generally for using their diplomatic muscle to protect Israel

from condemnation. Genocide begins with the silence of the world.

We are alarmed by the extreme, racist dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli society, which has reached a fever-pitch.

In Israel, politicians and pundits in The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post have called openly for genocide of Palestinians and right-wing Israelis are

adopting Neo-Nazi insignia.

Furthermore, we are disgusted and outraged by Elie Wiesel’s abuse of our history in these [NY Times] pages to promote blatant falsehoods used to justify the unjustifiable: Israel’s wholesale effort to destroy Gaza and the murder of nearly 2,000 Palestinians, including continued next page

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many hundreds of children. Nothing can justify bombing UN shelters, homes, hospitals and universities. Nothing can justify depriving people of electricity and water.

We must raise our collective voices and use our collective power to bring about an end to all forms of racism, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people. We call for an immediate end to the siege against and blockade of Gaza.

We call for the full economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel. “Never again� must mean NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE! Signed, Survivors * Hajo Meyer, survivor of Auschwitz, The Netherlands. ( has passed away since the signing of this document) * Henri Wajnblum, survivor and son of a victim of Auschwitz from Lodz, Poland.

Lives in Belgium. * Renate Bridenthal, child refugee from Hitler, granddaughter of Auschwitz victim, United States. * Marianka Ehrlich Ross, survivor of Nazi ethnic cleansing in Vienna, Austria. Now lives in United States. * Irena Klepfisz, child survivor from the Warsaw Ghetto, Poland. Now lives in United States. * Karen Pomer, granddaughter of member of Dutch resistance and survivor of Bergen Belsen. Now lives in the United States. * Hedy Epstein, her parents & other family members were deported to Camp de Gurs & subsequently all perished in Auschwitz. Now lives in United States. * Lillian Rosengarten, survivor of the Nazi Holocaust, United States. * Suzanne Weiss, survived in hiding in France, and daughter of a mother who was murdered in Auschwitz. Now lives in Canada. * H. Richard Leuchtag, survivor, United States. * Ervin Somogyi, survivor and son of

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survivors, United States. * Ilse Hadda, survivor on Kindertransport to England. Now lives in United States. * Jacques Glaser, survivor, France. * Norbert Hirschhorn, refugee of Nazi genocide and grandson of three grandparents who died in the Shoah, London. * Eva Naylor, surivor, New Zealand. * Suzanne Ross, child refugee from Nazi occupation in Belgium, two thirds of family perished in the Lodz Ghetto, in Auschwitz, and other Camps, United States. * Bernard Swierszcz, Polish survivor, lost relatives in Majdanek concentration camp. Now lives in the United States. * Joseph Klinkov, hidden child in Poland, still lives in Poland. * Nicole Milner, survivor from Belgium.

Now lives in United States. * Hedi Saraf, child survivor and daughter of survivor of Dachau, United States. * Michael Rice, child survivor and son and grandson of survivor, aunt died in Auschwitz and cousin in concentration camp, ALL 14 remaining Jewish children in my Dutch boarding school were murdered in concentration camps, United States. * Barbara Roose, survivor from Germany, half-sister killed in Auschwitz, United States. * Sonia Herzbrun, survivor of Nazi genocide, France. * Ivan Huber, survivor with my parents, but 3 of 4 grandparents murdered, United States. * Altman Janina, survivor of Janowski concentration camp, Lvov. Lives in Israel. * Leibu Strul Zalman, survivor from Vaslui Romania. Lives in Jerusalem, Palestine. * Miriam Almeleh, survivor, United States. * George Bartenieff, child survivor from Germany and son of survivors, United States. * Margarete Liebstaedter, survivor, hidden by Christian people in Holland.

Lives in Belgium.

A R T I C L E S * Edith Bell, survivor of Westerbork, Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and Kurzbach. Lives in United States. * Janine Euvrard, survivor, France. * Harry Halbreich, survivor, German. * Ruth Kupferschmidt, survivor, spent five years hiding, The Netherlands.

Children of survivors * Liliana Kaczerginski, daughter of Vilna ghetto resistance fighter and granddaughter of murdered in Ponary woods, Lithuania. Now lives in France. * Jean-Claude Meyer, son of Marcel, shot as a hostage by the Nazis, whose sister and parents died in Auschwitz. Now lives in France. * Chava Finkler, daughter of survivor of Starachovice labour camp, Poland. Now lives in Canada. * Micah Bazant, child of a survivor of the Nazi genocide, United States. * Sylvia Schwarz, daughter and granddaughter of survivors and granddaughter of victims of the Nazi genocide, United States. * Margot Goldstein, daughter and granddaughter of survivors of the Nazi genocide, United States. * Ellen Schwarz Wasfi, daughter of survivors from Vienna, Austria. Now lives in United States. * Lisa Kosowski, daughter of survivor and granddaughter of Auschwitz victims, United States. * Daniel Strum, son of a refugee from Vienna, who, with his parents were forced to flee in 1939, his maternal grand-parents were lost, United States. * Bruce Ballin, son of survivors, some relatives of parents died in camps, one relative beheaded for being in the Baum Resistance Group, United States. * Rachel Duell, daughter of survivors from Germany and Poland, United States. * Tom Mayer, son of survivor and grandson of victims, United States. * Alex Nissen, daughter of survivors who escaped but lost family in the Holocaust, United States. * Mark Aleshnick, son of survivor who continued next page

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lost most of her family in Nazi genocide, United States. * Prof. Haim Bresheeth, son of two survivors of Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen, London. * Todd Michael Edelman, son and grandson of survivors and greatgrandson of victims of the Nazi genocide in Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, United States. * Tim Naylor, son of survivor, New Zealand. * Victor Nepomnyashchy, son and grandson of survivors and grandson and relative of many victims, United States. * Tanya Ury, daughter of parents who fled Nazi Germany, granddaughter, great granddaugher and niece of survivors and those who died in concentration camps, Germany. * Rachel Giora, daughter of Polish Jews who fled Poland, Israel. * Jane Hirschmann, daughter of survivors, United States. * Jenny Heinz, daughter of survivor, United States. * Jaap Hamburger, son of survivors and grandchild of 4 grandparents murdered in Auschwitz, The Netherlands. * Elsa Auerbach, daughter of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, United States. * Julian Clegg, son and grandson of Austrian refugees, relative of Austrian and Hungarian concentration camp victims, Taiwan. * David Mizner, son of a survivor, relative of people who died in the Holocaust, United States. * Jeffrey J. Westcott, son and grandson of Holocaust survivors from Germany, United States. * Susan K. Jacoby, daughter of parents who were refugees from Nazi Germany, granddaughter of survivor of Buchenwald, United States. * Audrey Bomse, daughter of a survivor of Nazi ethnic cleansing in Vienna, lives in United States. * Daniel Gottschalk, son and grandson of refugees from the Holocaust, relative

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to various family members who died in the Holocaust, United States. * Barbara Grossman, daughter of survivors, granddaughter of Holocaust victims, United States. * Abraham Weizfeld PhD, son of survivorswho escaped Warsaw (Jewish Bundist) and Lublin ghettos, Canada. * David Rohrlich, son of refugees from Vienna, grandson of victim, United States. * Walter Ballin, son of holocaust survivors, United States. * Fritzi Ross, daughter of survivor, granddaughter of Dachau survivor Hugo Rosenbaum, great-granddaughter and great-niece of victims, United States. * Reuben Roth, son of survivors who fled from Poland in 1939, Canada. * Tony Iltis, father fled from Czechoslovakia and grandmother murdered in Auschwitz, Australia. * Anne Hudes, daughter and granddaughter of survivors from Vienna, Austria, great-granddaughter of victims who perished in Auschwitz, United States. * Mateo Nube, son of survivor from Berlin, Germany. Lives in United States. * John Mifsud, son of survivors from Malta, United States. * Mike Okrent, son of two holocaust / concentration camp survivors, United States. * Susan Bailey, daughter of survivor and niece of victims, UK. * Brenda Lewis, child of Kindertransport survivor, parent’s family died in Auschwitz and Terezin. Lives in Canada. * Patricia Rincon-Mautner, daughter of survivor and granddaughter of survivor, Colombia. * Barak Michèle, daughter and granddaughter of a survivor, many members of family were killed in Auschwitz or Bessarabia. Lives in Germany. * Jessica Blatt, daughter of child refugee survivor, both grandparents’ entire families killed in Poland. Lives in United States * Maia Ettinger, daughter & granddaughter of survivors, United

A R T I C L E S States. * Ammiel Alcalay, child of survivors from then Yugoslavia. Lives in United States. * Julie Deborah Kosowski, daughter of hidden child survivor, grandparents did not return from Auschwitz, United States. * Julia Shpirt, daughter of survivor, United States. * Ruben Rosenberg Colorni, grandson and son of survivors, The Netherlands. * Victor Ginsburgh, son of survivors, Belgium. * Arianne Sved, daughter of a survivor and granddaughter of victim, Spain. * Rolf Verleger, son of survivors, father survived Auschwitz, mother survived deportation from Berlin to Estonia, other family did not survive. Lives in Germany. * Euvrard Janine, daughter of survivors, France. * H. Fleishon, daughter of survivors, United States. * Barbara Meyer, daughter of survivor in Polish concentration camps. Lives in Italy. * Susan Heuman, child of survivors and granddaughter of two grandparents murdered in a forest in Minsk. Lives in United States. * Rami Heled, son of survivors, all grandparents and family killed by the Germans in Treblinka, Oswiecim and Russia. Lives in Israel. * Eitan Altman, son of survivor, France. * Jorge Sved, son of survivor and grandson of victim, United Kingdom * Maria Kruczkowska, daughter of Lea Horowicz who survived the holocaust in Poland. Lives in Poland. * Sarah Lanzman, daughter of survivor of Auschwitz, United States. * Cheryl W, daughter, granddaughter and nieces of survivors, grandfather was a member of the Dutch Underground (Eindhoven). Lives in Australia. * Chris Holmquist, son of survivor, UK. * Beverly Stuart, daughter and granddaughter of survivors from Romania and Poland. Lives in United States. * Peter Truskier, son and grandson of continued next page

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survivors, United States. * Karen Bermann, daughter of a child refugee from Vienna. Lives in United States. * Rebecca Weston, daughter and granddaughter of survivor, Spain. * Prof. Yosefa Loshitzky, daughter of Holocaust survivors, London, UK. * Marion Geller, daughter and granddaughter of those who escaped, great-granddaughter and relative of many who died in the camps, UK. * Susan Slyomovics, daughter and granddaughter of survivors of Auschwitz, Plaszow, Markleeberg and Ghetto Mateszalka, United States. * Helga Fischer Mankovitz, daughter, niece and cousin of refugees who fled from Austria, niece of victim who perished, Canada. * Steinberg, daughter of survivors and grand daughter of victim killed in Auschwitz as well as all his family of Poland, France. * Michael Wischnia, son of survivors and relative of many who perished, United States. * Arthur Graaff, son of decorated Dutch resistance member and nazi victim, The Netherlands. * Johanna Haan, daughter and granddaughter of victims in the Netherlands. Lives in the Netherlands. * Aron Ben Miriam, son of and nephew of survivors from Auschwitz, BergenBelsen, Salzwedel, Lodz ghetto. Lives in United States.

Grandchildren of survivors * Raphael Cohen, grandson of Jewish survivors of the Nazi genocide, United States. * Emma Rubin, granddaughter of a survivor of the Nazi genocide, United States. * Alex Safron, grandson of a survivor of the Nazi genocide, United States. * Danielle Feris, grandchild of a Polish grandmother whose whole family died in the Nazi Holocaust, United States. * Jesse Strauss, grandson of Polish survivors of the Nazi genocide, United

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States. * Anna Baltzer, granddaughter of survivors whose family members perished in Auschwitz (others were members of the Belgian Resistance), United States. * Abigail Harms, granddaughter of Holocaust survivor from Austria, Now lives in United States. * Tessa Strauss, granddaughter of Polish Jewish survivors of the Nazi genocide, United States. * Caroline Picker, granddaughter of survivors of the Nazi genocide, United States. * Amalle Dublon, grandchild and greatgrandchild of survivors of the Nazi holocaust, United States. * Antonie Kaufmann Churg, 3rd cousin of Ann Frank and grand-daughter of NON-survivors, United States. * Aliza Shvarts, granddaughter of survivors, United States. * Linda Mamoun, granddaughter of survivors, United States. * Abby Okrent, granddaughter of survivors of the Auschwitz, Dachau, Stuttgart, and the Lodz Ghetto, United States. * Ted Auerbach, grandson of survivor whose whole family died in the Holocaust, United States. * Beth Bruch, grandchild of German Jews who fled to US and great-grandchild of Nazi holocaust survivor, United States. * Bob Wilson, grandson of a survivor, United States. * Katharine Wallerstein, granddaughter of survivors and relative of many who perished, United States. * Sylvia Finzi, granddaughter and niece of Holocaust victims murdered in Auschwitz, London and Berlin. Now lives in London. * Esteban Schmelz, grandson of KZTheresienstadt victim, Mexico City. * Françoise Basch, grand daughter of Victor and Ilona Basch murdered by the Gestapo and the French Milice, France. * Gabriel Alkon, grandson of Holocaust survivors, Untied States.

A R T I C L E S * Nirit Ben-Ari, grandchild of Polish grandparents from both sides whose entire family was killed in the Nazi Holocaust, United States. * Heike Schotten, granddaughter of refugees from Nazi Germany who escaped the genocide, United States. * Ike af Carlstèn, grandson of survivor, Norway. * Elias Lazarus, grandson of Holocaust refugees from Dresden, United States and Australia. * Laura Mandelberg, granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, United States. * Josh Ruebner, grandson of Nazi Holocaust survivors, United States. * Shirley Feldman, granddaughter of survivors, United States. * Nuno Cesar Ferreira, grandson of survivor, Brazil. * Andrea Land, granddaugher of survivors who fled programs in Poland, all European relatives died in German and Polish concentration camps, United States. * Sarah Goldman, granddaughter of survivors of the Nazi genocide, United States. * Baruch Wolski, grandson of survivors, Austria. * Frank Amahran, grandson of survivor, United States. * Eve Spangler, granddaughter of Holocaust NON-survivor, United States. * Gil Medovoy, grandchild of Fela Hornstein who lost her enitre family in Poland during the Nazi genocide, United States. * Michael Hoffman, grandson of survivors, rest of family killed in Poland during Holocaust, live in El Salvador. * Sarah Hogarth, granddaughter of a survivor whose entire family was killed at Auschwitz, United States. * Tibby Brooks, granddaughter, niece, and cousin of victims of Nazis in Ukraine.

Lives in United States. * Dan Berger, grandson of survivor, United States. * Dani Baurer, granddaughter of Baruch Pollack, survivor of Auschwitz. Lives in continued next page

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United States. * Talia Baurer, granddaughter of a survivor, United States. * Evan Cofsky, grandson of survivor, UK. * Annie Sicherman, granddaughter of survivors, United States. * Anna Heyman, granddaughter of survivors, UK. * Maya Ober, granddaughter of survivor and relative of deceased in Teresienstadt and Auschwitz, Tel Aviv. * Anne Haan, granddaughter of Joseph Slagter, survivor of Auschwitz. Lives in The Netherlands. * Oliver Ginsberg, grandson of victim, Germany. * Alexia Zdral, granddaughter of Polish survivors, United States. * Mitchel Bollag, grandson of Stanislaus Eisner, who was living in Czechoslovakia before being sent to a concentration camp. United States. * Vivienne Porzsolt, granddaughter of victims of Nazi genocide, Australia. * Lisa Nessan, granddaughter of survivors, United States. * Kally Alexandrou, granddaughter of survivors, Australia. * Laura Ostrow, granddaughter of survivors, United States * Anette Jacobson, granddaughter of relatives killed, town of Kamen Kashirsk, Poland. Lives in United States. * Tamar Yaron (Teresa Werner), granddaughter and niece of victims of the Nazi genocide in Poland, Israel. * Antonio Roman-AlcalĂĄ, grandson of survivor, United States. * Jeremy Luban, grandson of survivor, United States. * Heather West, granddaughter of survivors and relative of other victims, United States. * Jeff Ethan Au Green, grandson of survivor who escaped from a Nazi work camp and hid in the Polish-Ukranian forest, United States. * Noa Shaindlinger, granddaughter of four holocaust survivors, Canada. * Merilyn Moos, granddaughter, cousin

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and niece murdered victims, UK. * Ruth Tenne, granddaughter and relative of those who perished in Warsaw Ghetto, London. * Craig Berman, grandson of Holocaust survivors, UK. * Nell Hirschmann-Levy, granddaughter of survivors from Germany. Lives in United States. * Osha Neumann, grandson of Gertrud Neumann who died in Theresienstadt.

Lives in United States. * Georg Frankl, Grandson of survivor Ernst-Immo Frankl who survived German work camp. Lives in Germany. * Julian Drix, grandson of two survivors from Poland, including survivor and escapee from liquidated Janowska concentration camp in Lwow, Poland.

Lives in United States. * Katrina Mayer, grandson and relative of victims, UK. * Avigail Abarbanel, granddaughter of survivors, Scotland. * Denni Turp, granddaughter of Michael Prooth, survivor, UK. * Fenya Fischler, granddaughter of survivors, UK. * Yakira Teitel, granddaughter of German Jewish refugees, great-granddaughter of survivor, United States. * Sarah, granddaughter of survivor, the Netherlands. * Susan Koppelman, granddaughter of survivor, United States * Hana Umeda, granddaughter of survivor, Warsaw. * Jordan Silverstein, grandson of two survivors, Canada. * Daniela Petuchowski, granddaughter of survivors, United States. * Aaron Lerner, grandson of survivors, United States. * Judith Bernstein, granddaughter of Holocaust victims in Auschwitz, Germany. * Samantha Wischnia, granddaughter and great niece of survivors from Poland, United States. * Elizabeth Wischnia, granddaughter and grand niece of three holocaust survivors, great aunt worked for Schindler, United

A R T I C L E S States. * Daniel Waterman, grandson of survivor, The Netherlands. * Elana Baurer, granddaughter of survivor, United States. * Pablo Roman-Alcala, grandson of participant in the kindertransport and survivor, Germany.

Great grandchildren of survivors * Natalie Rothman, great granddaughter of Holocaust victims in Warsaw. Now lives in Canada. * Yotam Amit, great-grandson of Polish Jew who fled Poland, United States. * Daniel Boyarin, great grandson of victims of the Nazi genocide, United States. * Maria Luban, great-granddaughter of survivors of the Holocaust, United States. * Mimi Erlich, great-granddaughter of Holocaust victim, United States. * Olivia Kraus, great-grandaughter of victims, granddaughter and daughter of family that fled Austria and Czechoslovakia. Lives in United States. * Emily (Chisefsky) Alma, great granddaughter and great grandniece of victims in Bialystok, Poland, United States. * Inbal Amin, great-granddaughter of a mother and son that escaped and related to plenty that didn’t, United States. * Matteo Luban, great-granddaughter of survivors, United States. * Saira Weiner, greatgranddaughter and niece of those murdered in the Holocaust, granddaughter of survivors, UK. * Andrea Isaak, great-granddaughter of survivor, Canada.

Other relatives of survivors * Terri Ginsberg, niece of a survivor of the Nazi genocide, United States. * Nathan Pollack, relative of Holocaust survivors and victims, United States. * Marcy Winograd, relative of victims, United States. * Rabbi Borukh Goldberg, relative of many victims, United States. * Martin Davidson, great-nephew of victims who lived in the Netherlands, continued next page

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Spain. * Miriam Pickens, relative of survivors, United States. * Dorothy Werner, spouse of survivor, United States. * Hyman and Hazel Rochman, relatives of Holocaust victims, United States. * Rich Siegel, cousin of victims who were rounded up and shot in town square of Czestochowa, Poland. Lives in United States. * Ignacio Israel Cruz-Lara, relative of survivor, Mexico. * Debra Stuckgold, relative of survivors, United States. * Joel Kovel, relatives killed at BabiYar, United States. * Carol Krauthamer Smith, niece of survivors of the Nazi genocide, United States. * Chandra Ahuva Hauptman, relatives from grandfather’s family died in Lodz ghetto, one survivor cousin and many deceased from Auschwitz, United States. * Shelly Weiss, relative of Holocaust victims, United States. * Carol Sanders, niece and cousin of victims of Holocaust in Poland, United States.

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* Sandra Rosen, great-niece and cousin of survivors, United States. * Raquel Hiller, relative of victims in Poland.

Now lives in Mexico. * Alex Kantrowitz, most of father’s family murdered Nesvizh, Belarus 1941. Lives in United States. * Michael Steven Smith, many relatives were killed in Hungary. Lives in United States. * Linda Moore, relative of survivors and victims, United States. * Juliet VanEenwyk, niece and cousin of Hungarian survivors, United States. * Anya Achtenberg, grand niece, niece, cousin of victims tortured and murdered in Ukraine. Lives in United States. * Betsy Wolf-Graves, great niece of uncle who shot himself as he was about to be arrested by Nazis, United States. * Abecassis Pierre, grand-uncle died in concentration camp, France. * Robert Rosenthal, great-nephew and cousin of survivors from Poland. Lives in United States. * Régine Bohar, relative of victims sent to Auschwitz, Canada. * Denise Rickles, relative of survivors and victims in Poland. Lives in United States.

WHAT’S NEXT

FOR ISRAEL,

A R T I C L E S * Louis Hirsch, relative of victims, United States. * Concepción Marcos, relative of victim, Spain. * George Sved, relative of victim, Spain. * Judith Berlowitz, relative of victims and survivors, United States. * Rebecca Sturgeon, descendant of Holocaust survivor from Amsterdam.

Lives in UK. * Justin Levy, relative of victims and survivors, Ireland. * Sam Semoff, relative of survivors and victims, UK. * Leah Brown Klein, daughter-in-law of survivors Miki and Etu Fixler Klein, United States * Karen Malpede, spouse of hidden child who then fled Germany. Lives in United States * Michel Euvrard, husband of survivor, France. * Walter Ebmeyer, grandnephew of three Auschwitz victims and one survivor now living in Jerusalem, United States. * Garrett Wright, relative of victims and survivors, United States.

26 August, 2014

HAMAS AND GAZA?

By Noam Chomsky On August 26th, Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) both accepted a ceasefire agreement after a 50-day Israeli assault on Gaza that left 2,100 Palestinians dead and vast landscapes of destruction behind. The agreement calls for an end to military action by both Israel and Hamas, as well as an easing of the Israeli siege that has strangled Gaza for many years.

This is, however, just the most recent of a series of ceasefire agreements reached after each of Israel’s periodic escalations of its unremitting assault on Gaza. Throughout this period, the terms of these agreements remain essentially the same. The regular pattern is for Israel, then, to disregard

whatever agreement is in place, while Hamas observes it — as Israel has officially recognized — until a sharp increase in Israeli violence elicits a Hamas response, followed by even fiercer brutality. These escalations, which amount to shooting fish in a pond, are called “mowing the lawn” in Israeli parlance. The most recent was more accurately described as “removing the topsoil” by a senior U.S. military officer, appalled by the practices of the selfdescribed “most moral army in the world.”

The first of this series was the Agreement on Movement and Access Between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in November 2005. It called for “a crossing between Gaza

and Egypt at Rafah for the export of goods and the transit of people, continuous operation of crossings between Israel and Gaza for the import/export of goods, and the transit of people, reduction of obstacles to movement within the West Bank, bus and truck convoys between the West Bank and Gaza, the building of a seaport in Gaza, [and the] re-opening of the airport in Gaza” that Israeli bombing had demolished.

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Minister Ariel Sharon, who was in charge of negotiating and implementing it. “The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process,” Weissglass informed the Israeli press. “And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders, and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a [U.S.] presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.”

True enough.

“The disengagement is actually formaldehyde,” Weissglass added. “It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.” Israeli hawks also recognized that instead of investing substantial resources in maintaining a few thousand settlers in illegal communities in devastated Gaza, it made more sense to transfer them to illegal subsidized communities in areas of the West Bank that Israel intended to keep.

The disengagement was depicted as a noble effort to pursue peace, but the reality was quite different. Israel never relinquished control of Gaza and is, accordingly, recognized as the occupying power by the United Nations, the U.S., and other states (Israel apart, of course). In their comprehensive history of Israeli settlement in the occupied territories, Israeli scholars Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar describe what actually happened when that country disengaged: the ruined territory was not released “for even a single day from Israel’s military grip or from the price of the occupation that the inhabitants pay every day.” After the disengagement, “Israel left behind scorched earth, devastated services, and people with neither a present nor a future. The settlements were destroyed in an ungenerous move by an unenlightened

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occupier, which in fact continues to control the territory and kill and harass its inhabitants by means of its formidable military might.”

Operations Cast Lead and Pillar of Defense Israel soon had a pretext for violating the November Agreement more severely. In January 2006, the Palestinians committed a serious crime. They voted “the wrong way” in carefully monitored free elections, placing the parliament in the hands of

Hamas. Israel and the United States immediately imposed harsh sanctions, telling the world very clearly what they mean by “democracy promotion.” Europe, to its shame, went along as well.

The U.S. and Israel soon began planning a military coup to overthrow the unacceptable elected government, a familiar procedure.

When Hamas pre-empted the coup in 2007, the siege of Gaza became far more severe, along with regular Israeli military attacks.

Voting the wrong way in a free election was bad enough, but preempting a U.S.-planned military coup proved to be an unpardonable offense.

A new ceasefire agreement was reached in June 2008. It again called for opening the border crossings to “allow the transfer of all goods that were banned and restricted to go into Gaza.” Israel formally agreed to this, but immediately announced that it would not abide by the agreement and open the borders until Hamas released Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held by Hamas.

Israel itself has a long history of kidnapping civilians in Lebanon and on the high seas

A R T I C L E S and holding them for lengthy periods without credible charge, sometimes as hostages. Of course, imprisoning civilians on dubious charges, or none, is a regular practice in the territories Israel controls. But the standard western distinction between people and “unpeople” (in Orwell’s useful phrase) renders all this insignificant.

Israel not only maintained the siege in violation of the June 2008 ceasefire agreement but did so with extreme rigor, even preventing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which cares for the huge number of official refugees in Gaza, from replenishing its stocks.

On November 4th, while the media were focused on the U.S. presidential election, Israeli troops entered Gaza and killed half a dozen Hamas militants. That elicited a Hamas missile response and an exchange of fire. (All the deaths were Palestinian.) In late December, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire. Israel considered the offer, but rejected it, preferring instead to launch Operation Cast Lead, a three-week incursion of the full power of the Israeli military into the Gaza strip, resulting in shocking atrocities well documented by international and Israeli human rights organizations.

On January 8, 2009, while Cast Lead was in full fury, the U.N. Security Council passed a unanimous resolution (with the U.S. abstaining) calling for “an immediate ceasefire leading to a full Israeli withdrawal, unimpeded provision through Gaza of food, fuel, and medical treatment, and intensified international arrangements to prevent arms and ammunition smuggling.”

A new ceasefire agreement was indeed reached, but the terms, similar to the previous ones, were again never observed and broke down completely with the next major mowing-the-lawn episode in November 2012, Operation Pillar of Defense. What happened in the interim can be illustrated by the casualty figures from continued next page

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January 2012 to the launching of that operation: one Israeli was killed by fire from Gaza while 78 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire.

The first act of Operation Pillar of Defense was the murder of Ahmed Jabari, a high official of the military wing of Hamas. Aluf Benn, editor-in-chief of Israel’s leading newspaper Haaretz, described Jabari as Israel’s “subcontractor” in Gaza, who enforced relative quiet there for more than five years. As always, there was a pretext for the assassination, but the likely reason was provided by Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin. He had been involved in direct negotiations with Jabari for years and reported that, hours before he was assassinated, Jabari “received the draft of a permanent truce agreement with Israel, which included mechanisms for maintaining the ceasefire in the case of a flare-up between Israel and the factions in the Gaza Strip.”

There is a long record of Israeli actions designed to deter the threat of a diplomatic settlement. After this exercise of mowing the lawn, a ceasefire agreement was reached yet again. Repeating the now-standard terms, it called for a cessation of military action by both sides and the effective ending of the siege of Gaza with Israel “opening the crossings and facilitating the movements of people and transfer of goods, and refraining from restricting residents’ free movements and targeting residents in border areas.”

What happened next was reviewed by Nathan Thrall, senior Middle East analyst of the International Crisis Group. Israeli intelligence recognized that Hamas was observing the terms of the ceasefire.

“Israel,” Thrall wrote, “therefore saw little incentive in upholding its end of the deal. In the three months following the ceasefire, its forces made regular incursions into Gaza, strafed Palestinian farmers and those collecting scrap and rubble across the border, and fired at boats, preventing

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fishermen from accessing the majority of Gaza’s waters.” In other words, the siege never ended. “Crossings were repeatedly shut. So-called buffer zones inside Gaza [from which Palestinians are barred, and which include a third or more of the strip’s limited arable land] were reinstated. Imports declined, exports were blocked, and fewer Gazans were given exit permits to Israel and the West Bank.”

Operation Protective Edge

A R T I C L E S There are good reasons why Israel opposes the unification of Palestinians. One is that the Hamas-Fatah conflict has provided a useful pretext for refusing to engage in serious negotiations. How can one negotiate with a divided entity? More significantly, for more than 20 years, Israel has been committed to separating Gaza from the West Bank in violation of the Oslo Accords it signed in 1993, which declare Gaza and the West Bank to be an inseparable territorial unity.

A look at a map explains the rationale.

Separated from Gaza, any West Bank enclaves left to Palestinians have no access to the outside world. They are contained by two hostile powers, Israel and Jordan, both close U.S. allies — and contrary to illusions, the U.S. is very far from a neutral “honest broker.”

So matters continued until April 2014, when an important event took place. The two major Palestinian groupings, Gaza-based Hamas and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank signed a unity agreement. Hamas made major concessions. The unity government contained none of its members or allies. In substantial measure, as Nathan Thrall observes, Hamas turned over governance of Gaza to the PA. Several thousand PA security forces were sent there and the PA placed its guards at borders and crossings, with no reciprocal positions for Hamas in the West Bank security apparatus. Finally, the unity government accepted the three conditions that Washington and the European Union had long demanded: nonviolence, adherence to past agreements, and the recognition of Israel.

Israel was infuriated. Its government declared at once that it would refuse to deal with the unity government and cancelled negotiations. Its fury mounted when the U.S., along with most of the world, signaled support for the unity government.

Furthermore, Israel has been systematically taking over the Jordan Valley, driving out Palestinians, establishing settlements, sinking wells, and otherwise ensuring that the region — about one-third of the West Bank, with much of its arable land — will ultimately be integrated into Israel along with the other regions that country is taking over. Hence remaining Palestinian cantons will be completely imprisoned. Unification with Gaza would interfere with these plans, which trace back to the early days of the occupation and have had steady support from the major political blocs, including figures usually portrayed as doves like former president Shimon Peres, who was one of the architects of settlement deep in the West Bank.

As usual, a pretext was needed to move on to the next escalation. Such an occasion arose when three Israeli boys from the settler community in the West Bank were brutally murdered. The Israeli government evidently quickly realized that they were dead, but pretended otherwise, which provided the opportunity to launch a “rescue operation” — actually a rampage primarily targeting continued next page

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Hamas. The Netanyahu government has claimed from the start that it knew Hamas was responsible, but has made no effort to present evidence.

One of Israel’s leading authorities on Hamas, Shlomi Eldar, reported almost at once that the killers very likely came from a dissident clan in Hebron that has long been a thorn in the side of the Hamas leadership. He added, “I’m sure they didn’t get any green light from the leadership of Hamas, they just thought it was the right time to act.”

The Israeli police have since been searching for and arresting members of the clan, still claiming, without evidence, that they are “Hamas terrorists.” On September 2nd, Haaretz reported that, after very intensive interrogations, the Israeli security services concluded the abduction of the teenagers “was carried out by an independent cell” with no known direct links to Hamas.

The 18-day rampage by the Israeli Defense Forces succeeded in undermining the feared unity government. According to Israeli military sources, its soldiers arrested 419 Palestinians, including 335 affiliated with Hamas, and killed six, while searching thousands of locations and confiscating $350,000. Israel also conducted dozens of attacks in Gaza, killing five Hamas members on July 7th.

Hamas finally reacted with its first rockets in 18 months, Israeli officials reported, providing Israel with the pretext to launch Operation Protective Edge on July 8th. The 50-day assault proved the most extreme exercise in mowing the lawn — so far.

Operation [Still to Be Named] Israel is in a fine position today to reverse its decades-old policy of separating Gaza from the West Bank in violation of its solemn agreements and to observe a major ceasefire agreement for the first time. At least temporarily, the threat of democracy in

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neighboring Egypt has been diminished, and the brutal Egyptian military dictatorship of General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi is a welcome ally for Israel in maintaining control over Gaza.

The Palestinian unity government, as noted earlier, is placing the U.S.-trained forces of the Palestinian Authority in control of Gaza’s borders, and governance may be shifting into the hands of the PA, which depends on Israel for its survival, as well as for its finances. Israel might feel that its takeover

of Palestinian territory in the West Bank has proceeded so far that there is little to fear from some limited form of autonomy for the enclaves that remain to Palestinians.

There is also some truth to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s observation: “Many elements in the region understand today that, in the struggle in which they are threatened, Israel is not an enemy but a partner.” Akiva Eldar, Israel’s leading diplomatic correspondent, adds, however, that “all those ‘many elements in the region’ also understand that there is no brave and comprehensive diplomatic move on the horizon without an agreement on the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders and a just, agreed-upon solution to the refugee problem.” That is not on Israel’s agenda, he points out, and is in fact in direct conflict with the 1999 electoral program of the governing Likud coalition, never rescinded, which “flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.”

Some knowledgeable Israeli commentators, notably columnist Danny Rubinstein, believe

A R T I C L E S that Israel is poised to reverse course and relax its stranglehold on Gaza.

We’ll see.

The record of these past years suggests otherwise and the first signs are not auspicious. As Operation Protective Edge ended, Israel announced its largest appropriation of West Bank land in 30 years, almost 1,000 acres. Israel Radio reported that the takeover was in response to the killing of the three Jewish teenagers by “Hamas militants.” A Palestinian boy was burned to death in retaliation for the murder, but no Israeli land was handed to Palestinians, nor was there any reaction when an Israeli soldier murdered 10-yearold Khalil Anati on a quiet street in a refugee camp near Hebron on August 10th, while the most moral army in the world was smashing Gaza to bits, and then drove away in his jeep as the child bled to death.

Anati was one the 23 Palestinians (including three children) killed by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank during the Gaza onslaught, according to U.N. statistics, along with more than 2,000 wounded, 38% by live fire. “None of those killed were endangering soldiers’ lives,” Israeli journalist Gideon Levy reported. To none of this is there any reaction, just as there was no reaction while Israel killed, on average, more than two Palestinian children a week for the past 14 years. Unpeople, after all.

It is commonly claimed on all sides that, if the two-state settlement is dead as a result of Israel’s takeover of Palestinian lands, then the outcome will be one state West of the Jordan. Some Palestinians welcome this outcome, anticipating that they can then conduct a civil rights struggle for equal rights on the model of South Africa under apartheid. Many Israeli commentators warn that the resulting “demographic problem” of more Arab than Jewish births and diminishing Jewish immigration will undermine their hope for a “democratic Jewish state.” continued next page

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But these widespread beliefs are dubious.

The realistic alternative to a two-state settlement is that Israel will continue to carry forward the plans it has been implementing for years, taking over whatever is of value to it in the West Bank, while avoiding Palestinian population concentrations and removing Palestinians from the areas it is integrating into Israel. That should avoid the dreaded “demographic problem.”

The areas being integrated into Israel include a vastly expanded Greater Jerusalem, the area within the illegal “Separation Wall,” corridors cutting through the regions to the East, and will probably also encompass the Jordan Valley. Gaza will likely remain under its usual harsh siege, separated from the West Bank. And the Syrian Golan Heights — like Jerusalem, annexed in violation of Security Council orders — will quietly become part of Greater Israel. In the meantime, West Bank Palestinians will be contained in unviable cantons, with special accommodation for elites in standard neocolonial style.

These basic policies have been underway

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since the 1967 conquest, following a principle enunciated by then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, one of the Israeli leaders most sympathetic to the Palestinians. He informed his cabinet colleagues that they should tell Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, “We have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads.”

The suggestion was natural within the overriding conception articulated in 1972 by future president Haim Herzog: “I do not deny the Palestinians a place or stand or opinion on every matter... But certainly I am not prepared to consider them as partners in any respect in a land that has been consecrated in the hands of our nation for thousands of years. For the Jews of this land there cannot be any partner.”

Dayan also called for Israel’s “permanent rule” (“memshelet keva”) over the occupied territories. When Netanyahu expresses the same stand today, he is not breaking new ground.

Like other states, Israel pleads “security” as justification for its aggressive and violent actions. But knowledgeable Israelis know better. Their recognition of reality was

A R T I C L E S articulated clearly in 1972 by Air Force Commander (and later president) Ezer Weizmann. He explained that there would be no security problem if Israel were to accept the international call to withdraw from the territories it conquered in 1967, but the country would not then be able to “exist according to the scale, spirit, and quality she now embodies.”

For a century, the Zionist colonization of Palestine has proceeded primarily on the pragmatic principle of the quiet establishment of facts on the ground, which the world was to ultimately come to accept.

It has been a highly successful policy. There is every reason to expect it to persist as long as the United States provides the necessary military, economic, diplomatic, and ideological support. For those concerned with the rights of the brutalized Palestinians, there can be no higher priority than working to change U.S. policies, not an idle dream by any means.

09 September, 2014 Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor emeritus in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Source: TomDispatch.com

FERGUSON: NO JUSTICE IN THE AMERICAN POLICE STATE

By Paul Craig Roberts There are reports that American police kill 500 or more Americans every year. Few of these murdered Americans posed a threat to police. https://www.dojmedia.com/u-spolice-have-killed-over-5000civilians-since-911/ Police murder Americans for totally implausible reasons. For example, a few days before Michael Brown was gunned down in Ferguson, John Crawford picked up a toy gun from a WalMart shelf in the toy department and was shot and killed on the spot by police goons. http://www.msnbc.com/ msnbc/family-man-killed-cops-

walmart-demands-surveillance-video Less than four miles from Ferguson, goon thugs murdered another black man on August 19. The police claims of “threat” are disproved by the video of the murder released by the police.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ 2014/08/20/kajieme-powellshooting_n_5696546.html Five hundred is more than one killing by police per day. Yet the reports of the shootings seldom get beyond the local news. Why then has the Ferguson, Missouri, police killing of Michael Brown gone international?

Probably the answer is the large multi-day protests of the black community in Ferguson that led to the state police being sent to continued next page

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continued from page19 Ferguson and now the National Guard. Also, domestic police in full military combat gear with armored personnel carriers and tanks pointing numerous rifles in the faces of unarmed civilians and arresting and threatening journalists make good video copy. The “land of the free” looks like a Gestapo Nazi state. To much of the world, which has grown to hate American bullying, the bullying of Americans by their own police is poetic justice.

For those who have long protested racial profiling and police brutality toward racial minorities, the police murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson is just another in a history of racists murders. http:// www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/20/ racial-repression-and-the-murder-ofmike-brown/print Rob Urie is correct that blacks receive disproportionate punishment from the white criminal justice (sic) system. See, for example: http:// www.lewrockwell.com/2014/08/ william-norman-grigg/mother-faces11-years-in-prison/ Myself, former US Representative Dennis Kucinich, and others see Michael Brown’s murder as reflective of the militarization of the police and police training that creates a hostile police attitude toward the public. The police are taught to view the public as threats against whom the use of violence is the safest course for the police officers.

This doesn’t mean that racism is not also involved. Polls show that a majority of white Americans are content with the police justification for the killing. Police apologists are flooding the Internet with arguments against those of the opposite persuasion. Only

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those who regard the police excuse as unconvincing are accused of jumping to conclusions before the jury’s verdict is in. Those who jump to conclusions favorable to the police are regarded as proper Americans.

What I address in this article is nonevidential considerations that determine a jury’s verdict and the incompetence of Ferguson’s government that caused the riots and looting.

Unless the US Department of Justice makes Michael Brown’s killing a federal case, the black community in Ferguson is powerless to prevent a cover-up.

What usually happens in these cases is that the police concoct a story protective of the police officer(s) and

the prosecutor does not bring an indictment. As Obama and his Attorney General, Eric Holder, are partially black (in skin color alone), the black majority community in Ferguson, Missouri, might have hopes from Holder’s visit. However, nothing could be more clear than the fact that Obama and Holder, along with the rest of “black leadership,” have been co-opted by the white power structure. How else would Obama and Holder be in office? Do you think that the white power structure puts in office people who want justice for minorities or for anyone other than the mega-rich?

The 1960s were a time of black

A R T I C L E S leadership, but that leadership was assassinated (Martin Luther King) or co-opted. Black leaders sold out for prestige appointments and corporate board memberships. Today black leadership is marginalized and exists only at local levels if at all.

If the cop who killed Brown is indicted and he is tried in Ferguson, the jury will contain whites who live in Ferguson. Unless there is a huge change in white sentiment about the killing, no white juror can vote to convict the white cop and continue to live in Ferguson. The hostility of the white community toward white jurors who took the side of a “black hoodlum who stole cigars” against the white police officer would make life for the jurors impossible in Ferguson.

The trouble with purely racial explanations of police using excessive force is that cops don’t limit their excesses to racial minorities. White people suffer them also. Remember the recent case of Cecily McMillan, an Occupy protester who was brutalized by a white good thug with a record of using excessive force. McMillan is a young white woman. Her breasts were seized from behind, and when she swung around her elbow reflexively and instinctively came up and hit the goon thug. She was arrested for assaulting a police officer and sentenced by a jury to a term in jail. The prosecutor and judge made certain that no evidence could be presented in her defense. Medical evidence of the bruises on her breast and the police officer’s record of police brutality were not allowed as evidence in her show trial, the purpose of which was to intimidate Occupy protesters.

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sheep who do whatever the prosecutor wants. As Cecily McMillan, a white woman, could not get justice, it is even less likely that the black family of Michael Brown will. Those who are awaiting a jury’s verdict to decide Michael Brown’s case are awaiting a cover-up and the complicity of the US criminal justice (sic) system in murder.

If there is a federal indictment of the police officer, and the trial is held in a distant jurisdiction, there is a better chance that a jury would consider the facts. But even these precautions would not eliminate the racist element in white jurors’ decisions.

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patrolled the streets in military vehicles conducting door-to-door searches forcing residents from their homes at gun point, while the police ransacked homes where it was totally obvious the brothers were not hiding.

Not a single family evicted from their residences at gunpoint said: “Thank God you are here. The bombers are hiding in our home.”

The excessive display of force and warrantless police home intrusions is the reason that aware and thoughtful Americans do not believe one word of the official account of the Boston Marathon Bombing. Thoughtful people wonder why every American does not see the bombing as an orchestrated state act of terror in order to accustom Americans to the lock-down of a city and police intrusion into their homes.

Logistically, it is impossible to assemble 10,000 armed troops so quickly. The obvious indication is that the readiness of the troops indicates pre-planning.

The situation in Ferguson was so badly handled it almost seems like the police state, in responding to the shooting, intended to provoke violence so that the American public could become accustomed to military force being applied to unarmed civilian protests.

In Ferguson all that was needed to prevent mass protests and looting was for the police chief, mayor or governor to immediately announce that there would be a full investigation by a civic committee independent of the police and that the black community should select the members it wished to serve on the investigative committee.

Ferguson brings to mind the Boston Marathon Bombing. Two brothers of foreign extraction allegedly set off a “pressure cooker bomb” left in a backback that killed and injured race participants or observers. The two brothers were deemed, without any evidence, to be so dangerous that the entirety of Boston and its suburbs were “locked down” while 10,000 heavily armed police and military

Instead, the name of the cop who killed Michael Brown was withheld for days, a video allegedly of Michael Brown taking cigars from a store was released as a justification for his murder by police. These responses and a variety of other stupid police and government responses convinced the black community, which already knew in its bones, that there would be a coverup.

A R T I C L E S It is entirely possible that the police chief, mayor, and governor lacked the intelligence and judgment to deal with the occasion. In other words, perhaps they are too stupid to be in public office. The incapacity of the American public to elect qualified representatives is world-renown. But it is also possible that Michael Brown’s killing provided another opportunity to accustom Americans to the need for military violence to be deployed against the civilian population in order to protect us from threats.

Occupy Wall Street was white, and these whites were overwhelmed by police violence.

This is why I conclude that more is involved in Ferguson than white racist attitudes toward blacks.

The founding fathers warned against allowing US military forces to be deployed against the American people, and the Posse Comitatus Act prevents the use of military forces against civilians. These restrictions designed to protect liberty have been subverted by the George W. Bush and Obama regimes.

Today Americans have no more protection against state violence than Germans had under National Socialism.

Far from being a “light unto the world,” America is descending into cold hard tyranny.

Who will liberate us?

21 August, 2014 Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.

Source: Countercurrents.org

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