Is Obama A Congenital Liar and Sadistic Torturer?

Is Obama A Congenital Liar & Sadistic Torturer?
by J. Speer-Williams April 30, 2010
http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m65554&hd=&size=1&l=e I could only be called semi-handsome ... in a dim light ... at 20 feet ... many years ago. Good looks may not be everything, but they can give one a head start in life. But, paraphrasing Mark Twain, "God must love plain looking (ugly) people as he made so many of us." And, I'd rather be loved by God than look like Rock Hudson used to look, or how Tom Cruise looks, today. Still, next life time, I'd like to have a six foot, four inch tall body, with muscular, well-shaped limbs, a fabulous throwing arm, jet-black hair (that later turns to a steel gray), piercing blue eyes, weighing in at a slim 235 pounds, all top off with a kill-her smile. I'm talkin' tall, dark, and devastating. No more Willie Nelson looks for me, unless I can sing and write music like he can. If God will give me such looks, I promise to try to win his love, in spite of my gorgeousness. Which reminds me of another good-looking chap, who needs to work over-time to win God's love: Barack Hussein Obama, once known as Barry Soetero. Why the name change Mr. Obama? Anybody know? Not long ago Obama, a relatively unknown Afro-American, was being sheep-dipped (gaining an identity, to build creditability) as a Constitutional Law professor (when he – by rights – should have been studying our Constitution) at the highly regarded University of Chicago School of Law, while he doubled as an Illinois state legislator. And even though flextime Professor Obama had produced no original scholarship papers on Constitutional Law, he was offered a tenured position at the lofty Chicago School of Law. But oddly enough, hard working Professor Obama refused tenure, as he must have known he was on a much faster greased track to something much bigger ... if ... he could only improve his poor teleprompter reading skills of what others wrote for him. And, Mr. Soetero ... er... Mr. Obama applied himself to his trade, which was not statesmanship, but neuro-linquistics. And in time, Obama's teleprompter reading coaches perfected with their student a slow rhythmic flow of spoken words, broken up with many "uhs," with the same measured cadence as the words appeared on his teleprompter screens. Then strangely, in an unprecedented move, the Democratic Party kingmakers gave lowly state Senator Obama a national stage, when allowing him to display his reading cadence at their presidential nominating convention of 2004. And even more amazingly, the following year, Barack became a United States senator. Then unbelievably, three years later, Mr. Obama became president and commander-in-chief of the most militarily equipped nation on Earth, without ever serving a day in any military. And, unless one is extremely naive, they know that some powerful interests, made Mr. Obama into Mr. President. The only power, we are conversant with, that has that much muscle is the private and foreign International Monetary/Banking Cartel. And true enough, it was those oligarchs that gave Obama about six times the presidential campaign funds as they did that other republican guy ... what's his name ... the one who wants to torture detainees indefinitely. This rise for President Obama "From Obscurity to Savior: In Three Years" has to be some kind of a record in American politics, and would make an excellent title for an expose. Obama, only in the US Senate for half a term, before he became president, was and is a blank slate upon which Barack's fans have projected their individual wishes, hopes, fantasies, broken souls, and anything else that fans fancy. But remember, the word "fan" is short for fanatic: one possessed by an excessive or irrational zeal, especially for an entertainment, religious or political personality ... or perhaps for a petty demagogue. What happens when Obama, with rock-star status, doesn't deliver on the "free lunch" some of his fan have been fanaticizing about? What if President Obama takes us into expanded wars, or a new war, and further destroys our dollar in the process? What if Obama's socialism is only for the super-rich? What if his policies bring on the greatest economic depression in our history? Will Obama's fans turn against him and his policies? Not likely. What if Obama doesn't deliver on all the promises he made while running for the presidency, like, "I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." Instead, Obama expanded the war in Afghanistan, and is waging a new one in Pakistan, and then wins a Nobel Peace Prize. Can someone please explain that to me? Is it because he has brought "peace"to so many dead people? Obama also promised no tax increases for families netting less than $250,000 a year, then vigorously pushed congress to pass his Healthcare Reform Bill, which promises us the largest tax increases in American history. "Lobbyists won't find a job in my White House," said candidate Obama; but within a month of taking office, President Obama had hired 12 lobbyists. By the same time a year later, Obama had hired 40 lobbyists, for senior positions, including three Cabinet secretaries, and the CIA director. "Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones for my presidency," promised candidate Obama. He even said government negotiations on the health care bill would be televised on C-SPAN. But instead, President Obama allowed no cameras during the secret negotiations he conducted at the White House reconciling the House and Senate versions of the health care bill, even turning down a request by the C-SPAN CEO to televise those negotiations. According to the 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner PolitiFact, President Obama has broken over 500 of his campaign promises. Was the man merely ignorant of what a president can actually accomplish, or is Obama simply a congenital liar? In any case, has any president, in our history, broken more promises in such a short period? The rudest awakening to the real Obama may be his continuance and advancement of the heinous torture policies of his demonic predecessor, George Bush – The Lesser. Obama's most egregious broken promise for open government was his exercise of Executive Privilege, with his refusal to investigate the torture crimes of the Bush administration, or to release a series of photographs depicting outrageous US tortures, by dismissing the most shameful chapter in American history with his, "We've moving on." Moving on where, Mr. Obama? Dick Cheney and Bush, Jr. have both since played out their allotted roles in deceiving the American people – as ordered to do – by pretending to complain about Obama's "softness" about US torture of detainees, a softness they both knew has never existed. This is the way propaganda in an Orwellian state works: Since Cheney and Bush attack Obama for not torturing US prisoners enough, you're supposed to think Obama is more humane about torturing American prisoners than they were, an utter piece of disinformation. We've also heard that torture can be humane. What's next, we have to torture to be humane? Yes, this piece of "double-think" is already at work with the presidential proclamations of, "We torture to save American lives." But the undeniable truth is since we torture prisoners, other nations, or groups, will now torture our nationals, who are held as prisoners, a barbaric quid pro quo. America is now spreading – with Obama's help – torture of human life, world-wide. It's obvious our military and intelligence officers need better interrogators, not more fiendish torturous psychopaths. When campaigning for the presidency, Obama promised us that if elected, he'd move America away from fascism, by ending the Bush policies of torture and fanatic militarism in two important ways: First, he'd terminate the practice of sending the so-called "enemy non-combatants" to over 170 foreign military bases for torture, and end the notorious military tribunals that deny detainees basic rights. It was change most of us believed in, but has never come. The Obama promises to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, and that he would respect the restrictions of the Geneva Convention, while he reviewed the American torture techniques have all come to nothing, other than more broken promises. Amy Goodman, on her "Democracy Now" internet show interviewed political investigator Jeremy Scahill, who reported that, "Obama is still continuing to use a notorious military police unit at Guatanmo, that regularly brutalizes prisoners, including gang-beating them, breaking their bones, gouging their eyes, and dousing them with chemicals." This out-law gang of thugs, officially known as the "Immediate Reaction Force," not only breaks bones, but urinates and smears feces of other detainees on the faces of prisoners, often guilty of nothing more than technically breaking petty rules, like perhaps having two Styroform cups in their cells instead of one. Information like what Mr. Scahill reports is very difficult to come by, as US torture of prisoners is kept tightly hidden from the American public. It was through an on-going Spanish investigation of the Bush torture camps that much of what Mr. Scahill's reports has come to light. Enough data, however, has leaked to the American press to prove the existence of US torture, in spite of its lock-down by the corporate media. In a little publicized report in the LA Times, we told of some of the tortures of the thousands of Iraqis that have been stuffed into the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Eye witnesses told of not only seeing such things as strangulation, but brutal beating, and the cramming of lit cigarettes into the ear openings of prisoners. Even Harper's magazine writer Scott Horton states he has obtained specific corroboration from a highly credible military officer with first hand knowledge of Iraqi men, women and children being raped and sodomized by US soldiers in Abu Ghraib. Keep in mind that the above tortures took place in front of witnesses; but, there seems to be a number of secret prisons where special torture techniques are carried out by the CIA, without any witnesses allowed, as reported in the Washington Post. And by Special Order of President Bush, and not repealed by President Obama, the CIA does not have to reveal to anyone who these prisoners are, or what happens to them behind the the impenetrable walls of about 170 US prisons around the world. Not satisfied with torturing detainees, US officials seem to also want to leave relatives and friends of the detainees in a constant state of worry and misery, wondering what happened to their loved ones. Abu Ghraib sections off men from their wives and children, and children from their mothers, except when children are being tortured in front of their parents. According to a Human Rights Watch report, the US Army, since March of 2003, has imprisoned about 2,400 children in Iraq, some as young as ten years old. Many of these children have been imprisoned for more than a year, without charges or trials, in violation of the Coalition Provisional Authority memorandum on criminal procedures. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and all other oversight agencies have been denied permission to see these children, or where they are imprisoned in Iraq. What is being done to these children, that you have to hide them, Mr. Obama? Give us some answers, Mr. Obama. Insist that your teleprompter writers print in large letter for you to read the answers to us. In an article entitled US and Allies Torture Children in Iraqi Prisons, Sherwood Ross writes, "Iraqi lawyer Sahar Yasiri, representing the Federation of Prisoners and Political Prisoners, said in a published interview there are more than 400,000 detainees in Iraq being held in 36 prisons and camps, and that 95 percent of the 10,000 women among them have been raped. Children, he said, "suffer from torture, [and] starvation," and do not know why they have been arrested. He added the children have been victims of "random arrests not based on any legal text." And now that we torture foreign prisoners, we'll soon be torturing our domestic prisoners, and then even torturing innocent American citizens, who are merely stopped for simple traffic infractions. Already almost 400 people have been tasered to death with 50,000 volts of electricity that painfully disrupt a person's electromuscular system with repeat shocks in rapid succession. The International Monetary/Banking Cartel, that controls our government, practices incrementalism, wherein each tyrannical step builds on the last, each step logical to those unable to think beyond what they've been told by authority and the Cartel's corporate media. In the English Isles live some of the most docile and pliable people on Earth, with most of them civilized to the point of being almost as domesticated as house pets. England is a perfect testing ground for the Cartel's incremental and draconian policies. If a new piece of tyranny won't fly in the UK, it certainly will not work anywhere else on Earth, except maybe in Canada. And as predicted, England's Scotland Yard has been accused of water-boarding English citizens, who are only suspected of criminality, but with no proof. But thus far, English citizens can only be tortured for 28 days. How long will it be before American citizens are incarcerated and then tortured indefinitely? Indefinitely? Tortured? America? Yes, Obama's new Prolonged Detention policy has gone well beyond the Cartel's incrementalism, which usually starts out in the UK, with his "no limits" on how long those suspected of committing future crimes can be imprisoned and tortured. Under Obama's latest un-Constitutional doctrines, the US will be officially imprisoning people, not for any crimes they have committed, but for "crimes" they may commit in the future. Huh? Yes, that's right. Obama announced we'll now be officially (not under-cover like Bush did) imprisoning and torturing people who cannot be found guilty of any crimes ... yet ... but who may commit a crime in the future. This is George Orwell's concept of Thought police taken to unfathomable heights, and only Obama could openly get away with it. The US corporate media is keeping this piece of Obama tyranny under wraps, so as to not overly shock Obamanoids, who have long been struck dumb with paralytic political naivete. But you may still be able to see and hear Obama, himself, "ah-uh-ing" all about it on YouTube (Search – Rachel Maddow: Indefinite detention? Shame on you, Mr. President). One civil liberties advocate told the New York Times,"We've known this [Prolonged Detention] was on the horizon for many years, but we were able to hold it off with George Bush. The idea that we might find ourselves fighting with the Obama administration over these powers is really stunning." Yes, "stunning" to those who have yet come to grips with a basic reality: The same dark forces who controlled George Bush, control Barack Obama. Caroline Fredickson, director of the Washington, DC Legislative Office of the American Civil Liberties union said, "Law enforcement should focus on action, not thought. We need to worry about the people who are committing crimes rather than those who harbor beliefs that the government may consider to be extreme." After condemning Bush for his illegal ad hoc legal strategy of making up rules as he went, and then trying to make them seem legal, Mr Obama had the gall to say he'd do the very same thing: "We'll develop an appropriate legal regime (outside the court system to make illegal detention legal) so our efforts are consistent with our values and Constitution." Consistent with our Constitution? Did you really teach Constitution Law, Mr. President? In any case, you certainly need better teleprompter writers, Mr. Ex-law professor turned Teleprompter-Reader-In-Chief. One doesn't have to teach, or even study, Constitutional Law to understand that you as a sitting president cannot legally make-up laws, whether they are consistent with the Constitution or defy it, as does your ad hoc Prolonged Detention scheme proposes. And how long is "Prolonged, "Mr. Obama? A 28 day imprisonment is the longest period of preventive detainment allowed, under law, in any civilized country in the world. How long is your preventive detention, Mr. President? Obama spoke of 10 years, but didn't limit his preventive detention to a mere decade. But does our president realize that 10 years of detention is over 130 times longer than that of other nation? If such tortured detainees do "confess" to crimes they have not committed, what then? Ten more years of detention until they confess to more crimes they are not guilty of committing? What's the ultimate solution? More detention? More torture? More what? Have you even thought that far ahead, Mr. President? Rachel Maddow said, "[Obama's prolonged detention] are one of the most radical proposals for defying the Constitution that we have ever heard made to the American people." Vincent Warren, the Black Executive Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights said, " I was really stunned when I heard those words [preventive detention] come out of his mouth. This has never been done before. It is completely outside the realm of what is constitutionally permissible. It is deeply shocking that he'd even go there, when George Bush didn't even go there. This is really something that was beyond the pale." Author Yvonne Ridley wrote, "This president [Obama] has gone from charming to harming and few have noticed." George Hunsinger, professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, in his book "Torture is a Moral Issue," tells us of the danger torture poses to the human soul, to civil liberty, and to the morale and safety of our soldiers, and marks a milestone in the disintegration of American democracy." Is there any wonder that in some months more US soldiers commit suicide than are killed in combat; and, many of those suicides have occurred with soldiers who have rotated out of the theaters of war. Apparently to some, death is preferred to living with the atrocities to which we are all guilty, which began with incrementalism. This incrementalism of US torture began as flat denials, during the Bush administration, that the US tortured anyone. But even former president, Jimmy Carter has confirmed that we have long tortured prisoners. "I don't think it, I know it," snapped Carter to CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "Our country for the first time in my life time has abandoned the basic principle of human rights, continued Carter. "We've said that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to those people in Guantanamo and the Abu Ghraib Prison, and we've said we can torture prisoners and deprive them of an accusation of a crime to which they have been accused." We have been told that the people we've interned are the worse terrorists of the worst, a lie on it's face, when one considers that we, also, imprison innocent children. In reality, the US military and intelligence agents callously gather up stray non-combatants, wandering around their US destroyed little farms, that border on battlefields, or we pay local warlords to provide us with women, children and men to torture. Why do we torture homeless people, even children, who have no intelligence data to give, when the infliction of severe pain is logically used as a means of punishment or coercion? Are we trying to punish Iraqi and Afghani peasants, because we hate their national leaders? Does not the torture of such poor tillers of the soil engender hate for America, and invite terrorist attacks on our homeland from Arabs around the world? So, what is the real reason for all this rush to torture human beings? The official reason, given by government authorities for our deplorable treatment of largely uneducated small farmers, is if we torture them long enough, they'll give us valuable information about the enemy; but, the CIA finances that enemy to keep our wars going, while blaming Iran for the financing and supplying of war materials. The CIA/Mossad nexus has more intelligence on al Qaeda than all the Arabs in the world combined. So, if we're not torturing Arab individuals and families for intelligence data, why are we torturing them? The US practice of torture has to come from the highest command source that we know of: the International Monetary/Banking Cartel. Why does the Cartel want to torture human beings? That's a question best left to metaphysicians; but perhaps it will suffice to say that President Obama, our titular commander-in-chief, is so far down the command structure he has little to say about our torturing of human beings other than, I don't want to offend the intelligence community. You see the International Monetary/Banking Cartel controls our government through the intelligence establishment, with blackmail, the threat of death, and actual assassinations. Is Mr. Obama ignorant of the Immediate Reaction Force, or of the wide spread US torture of human beings? No, but he is keeping our shameful, but open secret a secret from the world as best he can, and all reporters know better than to ask him about it. The Obama administration has gone so far as threatening to cut off intelligence sharing programs with Great Britain, if their High Court releases information to the press regarding US torture methods. And, Obama, with the help of the corporate media, has proven to be even more dangerous than Bush, with Barack's ability to portray himself as someone who is "reasonable" about torturing human beings, as if such an attitude were even possible or defensible, as anything short of an outright denunciation of torture is psychopathic. Torture was a crucial issue while Bush was president, but is now not something much discussed in polite company, lest one be called a racist by the Southern Poverty Law Center for criticizing a black president. So, we close off our minds to the thousands of constant screams of agony from around the world, as if we didn't know they existed, or take refuge in such nebulous terms as Enhanced Interrogations, Harsh Interrogations, Rough Interrogations, or an Alternate Set of Procedures. The Kafkaesque terror of the endless enhanced interrogations, practiced by US intelligence agents on defenseless human beings, cannot easily be imaged by most Americans, so many feel that savage and inhuman US torture practices do not exist. But please, declare your abhorrence of the US torture of human life, so as to not inherit the negative karma surely to befall those who authorize torture, commit it, or condone it, either explicitly or implicitly. The great 17th century philosopher John Locke, whose work was later reflected in our own Declaration of Independence, wrote, "As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil which they set out to destroy." In keeping with Locke's axiom, a nation guilty of the war crime of torture – even water-boarding – is, itself, a terrorist state. Our government hanged the Japanese military leaders who water-boarded our GIs during World War II. President Obama has proclaimed our inconsistency with that standard with his curt dismissal of Bush's war crimes with, "We're moving on;" which obviously means that since George Bush's crimes were not really crimes, Mr. Obama is free to continue the crimes our government denies are crimes. If some of our fat cat authorities were being tortured by our Immediate Reaction Force, perhaps they'd see torture in a different, more honest light; but, soulless men have no empathy for others, especially many ruthless psychologists. With a membership of about 150,000, the American Psychological Association (APA) condones the evil practice of psychologists tutoring CIA operatives with torture methods, that are used in secret sites around the world. APA president, Gerald Koocher is an enabler of torture insisting, "psychologists play a valuable and ethical role with the interrogation [torture] of US prisoners." Psychologists have long functioned as the CIA's torture teachers, as proven by articles in both magazines of Vanity Fair and Salon.com. The brilliant gad-fly and TV personality Max Kaiser reminds us that Hannibal Lecter was a psychologist, and anyone who'd take advice from a common garden variety psychologist might as well have a private dinner-date with Hannibal Lecter, at his home. State licensing boards that have the power to revoke or suspend a psychologist's license, should do so when psychologists become enablers of torture, if not instituting criminal proceedings against them for their crimes against humanity. But neither, at the state and federal levels, have any bureaucrats or politicians taken any effective actions to end our disgraceful and shameful official policy of torturing human life, least of all from our president. Being a Cartel puppet may prevent you from being able to end US torture practices, Mr. Obama; but outrageous indulgences do not become you or our nation. In good taste, you should probably reduce giving so many dinner parties, laden with Wagyu steaks (at $100.00 per serving), with the best wines and aperitifs, all on the heels of America's most expensive inaugural celebration in history. Sir, you have nothing decent to celebrate. In a time of unprecedented debt (you helped to create), a time when Americans continue to lose their homes, cars, jobs, and savings, you should be thinking about some food fasts, to clean your body and soul. And as the face of our nation, I would appreciate a few less smiles from your handsome countenance. Until, we discontinue killing and torturing human life, our entire nation should be in mourning. Little boy Bush effectively assaulted our moral and ethical values under right-wing cover; and now, Mr. Obama is doing the same thing, but with left-wing pretenses; and that is essentially the change President Obama has thus far brought to the White House. J. (Jack) Speer-Williams is a former Hollywood producer of live stage shows, that featured various movie and TV stars and a graduate of the University of Florida, where he studied economics. After serving honorably in the US Army, where Jack earned his paratrooper wings, he began to see the folly and crimes attendant to the unilateral wars of American aggression. He has been writing about these issues ever since.

http://www.irmep.org/ila/moneylaunder/

Israel’s Messianic Terrorists

by Patrick Seale

Apr 2010

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Barely a week goes by without news of some act of violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. By any definition, what settlers and other religious activists do to Palestinians is terrorism. But it goes unpunished.

Time and again, Muslim graves and mosques are desecrated, harvests torched, sheep rustled, cars stoned and damaged, homes and shops forcibly occupied. Palestinians are chased off their own land by gunfire. Just last week, settlers cut down 300 olive trees.

The settlers have a new and brutal policy. They have declared that, for every attempt by the authorities to rein them in, they will exact a price in violence against the Palestinians -- a “price tag,” they call it.

In the Arab world, Islamic extremists such as al-Qaida are pursued, jailed or killed. Two of Al-Qaida’s top leaders were killed in Iraq this week. In Israel, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has no wish or will to confront his home grown terrorists. Indeed, representatives of the religious settlers sit in his government.

In the Arab world, militants who fight to create an Islamic state are generally considered the enemy. In Israel, the armed underground movement which aims to create a Torah state is treated with kid gloves. The government dares not confront it -- or is secretly complicit with it.

Unless Israel’s fanatical settlers -- both religious-nationalist and ultra-orthodox -- are confronted, and their messianic ambitions tamed, there will be no peace in the Middle East. This means halting and reversing a powerful trend in Israeli society -- and in Israel’s armed forces, where the extremists are well-entrenched and, by all accounts, are steadily gaining ground. This is the essential precondition for any serious peace negotiations. But can it be done? Or is the region doomed to suffer more violence?

In a joint article in the Washington Post on 11 April, two prominent American political figures -- Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser and Stephen Solarz, a former U.S. congressman for New York -- urged Obama to go to the region himself on a “journey of peace” and, in a series of speeches in Jerusalem and Ramallah, urge Israelis and Palestinians to start serious negotiations. Such a dramatic move, they argued, could break the logjam.

But it will take more than speeches by Obama, however eloquent they might be, to persuade Israel’s fanatics to change course. Nothing short of real pressure would do the job -- such as an American threat to withdraw from Israel its diplomatic support, weapons supply and lavish funding. But such is Israeli influence in the U.S. Congress, in Washington think-tanks and the mainstream American press that nothing is less likely.

There has been much speculation in recent weeks that U.S. President Barack Obama, impatient with the current stalemate, may be about to launch his own peace plan. He has made clear that a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict is a vital American interest. The clear suggestion is that he will use American muscle to persuade both the Arabs and the Israelis to negotiate on the basis of his plan. Netanyahu has already publicly rejected any hint of an “imposed peace.” The question, therefore, is how much presidential muscle can Obama actually use. He has already been put on notice by the Israeli lobby, and by leading Jewish figures such as Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, not to put pressure on Israel.

A recent publication, Israel’s Religious Right and the Question of Settlements by the International Crisis Group (www.crisisgroup.org), outlines the extent of the danger which Israel’s messianic terrorists pose to the peace process. The picture is not encouraging.

The ICG reports that tens of thousands of religious Zionists inhabit illegal settlements east of the separation barrier on the West Bank. Thousands more “hilltop youth” occupy armed outposts deep in Palestinian territory. These settlements and outposts operate some 200 paramilitary squads, armed with automatic weapons (and “the best telescopic sights on the market”) and even armoured vehicles. They perpetrate violence against the Palestinians and are ready to defy any attempt by the state to stop them.

Observers predict that an even larger and better-armed force, prepared for group action, could emerge if the government dared to remove an outpost, or curtail the settlers’ thuggery in any way.

Ultra-orthodox and national-religious politicians hold over a fifth of Knesset seats, representing some forty per cent -- 26 out of 65 parliamentarians -- of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. They control the housing ministry and the Israel Land Administration, which manages state lands. These Greater Israel ideologues suffered a “messianic shock” when the then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dismantled the Gaza settlements in 2005. The move challenged their confidence in the state and reinforced their determination never to allow the evacuation of Jews to happen again. They are adamantly opposed to any further withdrawals and to negotiations with the Palestinians.

Some national-religious rabbis go so far as to endorse the rabbinical license for a Jew to kill any Jew who relinquishes the Land of Israel to non-Jews -- an interpretation which Yigal Amir used to justify his assassination of Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin in 1995.

The Israeli armed forces have been deeply penetrated by religious extremists. Army Torah colleges, in which conscripts mix military service with religious study over a five-year period, have mushroomed in Israel. Nearly half are on the West Bank, graduating thousands of soldiers. National-religious officers are estimated to account for up to 30 per cent of the Israeli officer corps, with a particularly high concentration in combat units. One source told the International Crisis Group that “in a few years, religious soldiers will make up the majority of brigade commanders in all areas -- from F-16 fighter jets to submarines.”

A senior officer, of national-religious beliefs, explained:

“An order to withdraw [from the West Bank] will destroy Israel. It will split the army and turn part of it against the state. I would rather give up Tel Aviv than Hebron. We are not just a state of Jews, or a Jewish majority, but a Jewish state defending the land that is promised to us by the Bible, by God. It is Jewish land. I will defend Jewish land by all legitimate means -- and if that isn’t enough -- by illegitimate means. It can be by force.”

What does the ICG recommend to check this dangerous descent into the abyss? Demarcating an agreed Israeli-Palestinian border, rather than focussing efforts on a settlement freeze; announcing a compensation package to persuade some settlers to leave the West Bank voluntarily; reaching out to religious parties, such as Shas and Agudat Israel, and including them in the diplomatic process; insisting that Israeli security agencies and courts investigate and prosecute cases of anti-Palestinian violence. None of this seems enough.

It is surely time for Israel’s secular majority to wake up to the danger or risk finding itself living in a state run by messianic terrorists, shunned by the whole world.

“PRIMORDIALISM” AND THE DECLINE OF HUMAN CULTURE

GORDON DUFF: “PRIMORDIALISM” AND THE DECLINE OF HUMAN CULTURE

April 17, 2010 posted by Gordon Duff ·

AMERICA, ISRAEL, AFGHANISTAN, ALL THE SAME

“TAPPING THE REPTILE BRAIN”

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER

Any discussion that challenges how people are conditioned by repeated lies and planned mythology is doomed to fail. The human mind has been debased to the point where it no longer learns as part of survival but takes in lies like a rat eating a corpse. Nearly every assumption we are expected to build on, from the phony heroics of Rudy Giuliani or the utterly discredited 9/11 investigation to the imaginary War on Terror was created in whole or part as a fiction, to entertain, amuse or to kill. The glue that holds Washington, Kabul, Tel Aviv, London, Zurich and Geneva together is war profits, drug money and oil speculation. What makes it all possible is the lies we call news, lies, staged terrorist “events” and wars where, if we didn’t supply the enemy ourselves, we would be using cluster bombs against spears. Building an enemy is far more important than defeating one.

Every word we are bombarded with separates us, American against American, Christian and Jew against Muslim. This is the plan, dehumanize everyone to everyone, then slaughter is little more than disposing of trash. Americans looked on Red China in the 50s and 60s as a society built on hate. Albania armed its entire population, buiding bunkers for each family, half of Russia had moved underground and East and West had maneuvered half the 3rd world into killing each other, all over the insane ideas that the East was Communist and the West Capitalist, when, in fact, both were thinly veiled military dictatorships playing at politics as little more than cover.

CHILDREN AS SOLDIERS

We have over 5000 years of history, a history where organized murder under the term “war” has become the norm. I always thought the Trojan Wars, fought over Helen’s promiscuity, as the dumbest war in history until the last Bush administration. Even if 9/11 were as stated, a conspiracy done by an Arab terrorist group, something no longer in evidence, a fact suppressed in most media, were true, the two wars we are stuck in are enigmatic.

• Bin Laden denied involvement in 9/11, accusing Israel for arranging the attack. All bin Laden admissions since have been debunked as coming from Israel itself
• No training camp has ever been located in Afghanistan nor has there ever been evidence that one had existed.
• There is no evidence of an Arab terrorist organization in Afghanistan or Pakistan prior to the US invasion after 9/11. In fact, there is no evidence Al Qaeda ever existed prior to 9/11.
• The Afghanistan war has had one purpose, to end the Taliban embargo on Heroin trafficking, the industry that has helped the US and Israel gain political control of every corrupt government in the region

What we have created, is a meat grinder, turning our own sons and daughters into soldiers, not to defend America from terrorism, but indoctrinated to fight a “holy war” against the brown people of the world and the religion of Islam. Calling this war and so many others anything but race war and ethnic cleansing is a lie. That so many of our troops are black and brown, Hispanic and even Muslim is ironic. We have now had several cases where our troops have massacred their own. Is it any wonder why?

WAR IS NEVER HUMAN, NO MATTER HOW WE PACKAGE IT

The infamous 2007 Apache helicopter video depicting the moral failure of our forces in Iraq was leaked with excellent timing. With Israel facing worldwide criticism for ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people, doing to them exactly what American did to its own native population, this video gave Israel some breathing room. I hope Israel thanks their Chinese friends for helping provide this cover.

When our own “Christian warriors” return from the Middle East, and the reality of being duped sets in, many simply can’t survive. This makes me think of the Israeli pilots sent to strafe the USS Liberty. These were decent men sent on a brutal and criminal mission. Americans died but those who took part in the murder died to. Nobody survives committing an atrocity, nobody but a sociopath. Sociopaths never make it into war, they stay in government where they belong. Those who can’t survive the rigors of government become pundits, lecturers or, worst of all, attempt to be journalists.

Odd as it may seem, the biggest victims of the siege of Gaza are the Israeli troops involved. I know dozens who have served in the IDF, good and decent people. Many are friends, close friends. You can only lie to yourself so much. How does blowing up a water treatment plant make Israel safe? Was Israel unsafe? How long can someone hate another because of race or religion and remain human?

Let’s look in our own backyard.

THE INTERNET AND “MOB MENTALITY”

In the early days of the internet, AOL, Usenet and CompuServe, internet communities sprung up overnight, discussing everything from history to genealogy. The phenomenon of the “internet troll” came about, people whose anti-social nature was sublimated by the “real world” became virtual lions, Hitleresque in nature, spewing venom and hate with every peck at the keyboard. Over the years, as internet using began to reach tens of millions in the US alone, behaviorists began to see value in exploiting this vast underbelly of psychopaths. Could they be organized and manipulated? Is the next Oswald out there?

The behaviorists, funded by “think tanks” always seek one thing, funding for research, always that magic moment when a porpoise can be trained to blow up a ship or what if a rat could carry a bomb? Where would we be without behaviors and “think tanks.” These groups recruit marginalized academics with personality disorders to produce opinions “on demand” as though they were omelets. Put a glossy enough name, like The American Enterprise Insitute, behind a few angry, confused and delusional types unable to survive in the real world, and you can begin selling any idea as long as their is a client willing to pay. The ideas almost always run to one direction, the criminal acts of the powerful against decent people must always be justified.

If a thief has looted your retirement fund or your job has been mysteriously eliminated, the “theory” justifying this came from a “think tank.”

Behaviorists and “think tanks” also advise on policy. Would people and organizations like this advise a government to stage terrorist attacks on its own people in order to pass draconian laws, create new, massive and useless agencies and start a generation of war? Could such organizations help restructure banking law to allow “pump and dump” groups to trade phony sub-prime mortgage instruments, inflating 5 dollars of real property into millions in collateral to cover billions in debt until everything exploded? Oh, you thought Acorn did this?

THE POWER OF THE PSYCHOPATHIC PERSONALITY

The biggest impact the internet has had has been to explore the depths of the human soul. More hate, more threats, more insanity is spewed on the internet in one hour than came out of Nazi Germany in 12 years. With the sick, the paranoid, the angry and the uneducated so easy to find, catalog and manipulate, manipulate using some of the best scientific minds glad to work to debase humanity for a paycheck, a subculture of minor “kooks” took on the power of a political movement.

Man’s most basic inhuman behavior is racism. Cultural differences and religious divides exacerbated by religion has brought us into the area of “primordialism,” tapping behaviors once thought to originate in the medulla. Thus, where Germany justified their war in 1914 as an attempt to spread what they thought was the world’s most advanced culture under the watchwords, “Gott Ist Mit Uns” (God is with us), we have expanded through a psyche bombarded by electronic media a descent into the primordial ooze. What we call “racism” or “hate” is, in actuality, the use by technologically advanced societies and their scientifically perfected propaganda skills, using control of every aspect of culture to dehumanize the “enemy” and barbarize their own population.

Thus, the societal norm is to look on any chosen group, be it political, racial, religious, ethnic or of alternative sexual orientation as, not only inhuman but as a threat.

“PRIMORDIALISM” GOES MAINSTREAM

In America, you could parade with a Nazi arm band or wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood, carrying a burning cross, espousing threats to the “white race” and espousing separatism and even violence. Such organizations fell into such disrepute that their behaviors became criminalized and they, themselves, were scorned. Today, groups advocating ideas far more violent, far more hate oriented than the Klan or Nazi party walk the streets with heads held high. Hiding behind such superficial concepts of “family values” and “Christian Zionism” (a cult with beliefs tied to nuclear destruction and forced conversion of Jews to Christianity) and allied with the “robber barons” of the 21st century, the military/financial/oil/drug cartels that control half the world’s governments, barbarism comparable to any era in human history, not only survives, but spreads in ways previously unimagined.

The “value added” by use of scientific methodologies in manipulating human populations through exploiting primordial fears such as sexual humiliationor loss of territory for “hunter gatherer clans,” has been to create an intellectual environment that devalues knowledge and science as “elitism” and find virtue in fear and brutality. Thus, any normal human advancement is suppressed. The result is a caricature of ourselves, as though we had been written into a Star Trek episode as an example of a race in decline generally blamed on some obscure environmental toxin or bombardment by an “evil” sub-atomic particle.

THE SIMPLIST BIOLOGICAL IMPERATIVES SET ASIDE

Humans are not supposed to eat their own young, but it is exactly what we are doing. While we mortgage the economic future of our children through worldwide empires built on corruption and debt, building a series of oligarchical societies quickly returning the world to feudalism, we similarly are raising a generation of our children to fight wars, narco-wars, oil wars, wars meant to exploit resources and maximize poverty, despair and breed another generation of extremism and fear.

Who would have thought that societies capable of unimagined technological achievements, even capable of mirroring the miracles of creation and the universe, would descend into a reptilian culture? Simply follow popular culture. Entertainment is a mixture of post-apocalyptic horrors, dramas based on examination of rotting human remains or adventure series exalting hatred and vengeance.

SYMPTOMS OF DECLINE, MY LAI OR BUCHENWALD?

Turn on your television. You will be told that in some far off land, the son of a poverty stricken shepherd is being taught to memorize the Koran. You have seen this message a thousand times. You are told this child is learning to hate and must be bombed out of existence by use of robotic drones controlled by American teenagers at a base outside Washington DC. When, day after day, we hear that a school or market has been attacked in Pakistan or that an American drone has mistaken a wedding party for a terrorist conclave are we repulsed and horrified or do we feel some hidden satisfaction than an animal, strange and threatening has been slaughtered? That feeling, the fleeting joy at the death of innocents is the reptilian brain taking charge.

In 1945, American soldiers liberated a labor camp in Germany. Hundreds of dead and thousands of dying were found, subjected in unimaginable inhumanity. General Eisenhower ordered the residents of the nearby town to be taken to the camp to view what had gone on near their homes, their town, their churches, the churches they attended without fail each Sunday. Anyone in Germany found defending those responsible, simply speaking out in public or private, is imprisoned.

In 1968, American soldiers murdered 566 Vietnamese civilians, many of them small children, even infants. One officer was said to have committed many of the murders personally, machine-gunning women with babes in arms. He was arrested. A massive outcry for his release spread across the land, the biggest single movement in American history, a request that he be freed, despite the fact that tens of millions of Americans had seen films of his crimes, seen the babies in the ditch.

Vietnam maintains a museum at My Lai, much like the one Germany keeps at Dachau. Israel, with American help, has amassed a huge nuclear arsenal and a defense industry that turns out some of the world’s most advanced weapons. American troops ride in Israeli vehicles, use Israeli UAV aircraft and Israeli military electronics. Israel, while arming to the teeth under the motto, “never again,” now stands accused of the same crimes committed against its own people decades before.

America also stands accused of these same crimes, murder, genocide, torture, just as Germany had so long ago, just as America had before, in 1968. When America chose to exalt a murderer, what door did we open?

Preach peace in Holy Week

By James Carroll,

NOW BEGINS the most sacred week of the Christian year — and the most dangerous. In Holy Week down through the centuries, mobs have poured out of churches in search of Jews to harass and kill. (In 1096, beginning on Good Friday, Christians killed something like 10,000 Rhineland Jews in a few short weeks — Europe’s first pogrom). And why? The Passion narratives that Christians hear proclaimed from pulpits between now and Friday explicitly blame the murder of Jesus on “the Jews.’’ Mobs were avenging the death of the Lord.

In recent decades, Christians have begun to dismantle this lethal legacy — most dramatically by the Catholic Church’s formal renunciation of the “Christ killer’’ slander at the Second Vatican Council in 1965. But the troubling texts remain. “Let his blood be upon us and on our children,’’ the Jewish crowd is reported by St. Matthew (27:25) to have cried at the reluctant Pontius Pilate, forcing the Romans to crucify Jesus.

Each of the four Gospels cast “the Jews’’ in the role of villain, and Christians will hear that story repeated verbatim this week. The vast majority will believe they are hearing a report of what actually happened. The most open-minded of them will adopt an attitude of forgiveness toward the Jewish people (“Father, forgive them. . .’’), but that compounds the problem.

Although based on events that actually occurred (the Romans crucified Jesus), the Gospels are not works of history. They were not written by eyewitnesses. They have a polemical intent that does not originate with Jesus.

Despite the fact that, over the past century, mainstream scripture scholars have unanimously concluded that the biblical accounts of Jesus’ passion and death are widely at variance with what actually occurred (far from the man of delicate conscience portrayed in the texts, Pilate was a brutal dictator who would have thought nothing of ordering the death of a Jewish troublemaker like Jesus), very few Christian lay people know that. Few preachers ever confront the Passion story as a slander against the Jews.

Such a confrontation would begin with the questions, Who wrote the Gospels? When? And in what context? A brief review of the chronology might help. Jesus was murdered in about the year 30. In subsequent years, those who loved him kept his memory alive (especially over meals of bread and wine) by relating stories about him, retelling his parables, recounting his sayings, understanding him in terms of their scriptures (which, of course, were Jewish scriptures, since they were all Jews). An oral tradition about Jesus developed. The Christian movement was still essentially a Jewish sect.

But then, in the year 70, a catastrophic trauma occurred. The Romans savagely destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem, generating a religious crisis of identity for all Jews — including the Christian Jews: What is it to be a Jew without the Temple? One group of Jews answered that now observance of the Law and study of Torah is key — the start of Rabbinic Judaism. The other group answered that now, Jesus is the New Temple — the start of the church. The two groups, in effect, were arguing over what it is to be a Jew. And that argument is reflected in the texts that only then began to be written down — the Gospels.

The earliest Gospel is Mark, and it dates to about 70. The latest is John, dating to about 100. In those three decades, the argument between Jesus-believing Jews (and their Gentile associates) and Jews who rejected claims for Jesus is reflected in the way the Gospels demonize “the Jews.’’

The point is that this polemic was written by people who were themselves Jewish, and for them the loaded phrase “the Jews’’ actually meant “those Jews who reject our understanding of Jesus.’’ When they define the Jews as the enemy of Jesus, they are writing about their own experience two generations after Jesus.

This week, Christian preachers must preach against these texts. Christians must hear these texts as if they are themselves Jewish, having foremost in mind that Jesus never stopped being a faithful Jew. If Christians had remembered that, and measured both their doctrines and their behavior against their Lord’s undying love of his own people, the history of the last 2,000 years would be very different....

Holes In Heaven: H.A.A.R.P. and Advances in Telsa Technology

Holes In Heaven: H.A.A.R.P. and Advances in Telsa Technology

Examines the controversial military program based on Tesla technology, its possible effects on weather and use in mind control.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=expanding-universe-slows-then-speeds

Are we making Holes in Heaven? HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) is a controversial high frequency radio transmitter, or "ioniospheric heater," which is believed to be descended from the works of Nikola Tesla and is operated by the U.S. Navy/Air Force and Phillip Laboratories in remote Gakona, Alaska.

Using HAARP, the military can focus a billion-watt pulsed radio beam into our upper atmosphere, ostensibly for ionospheric research. This procedure will form extremely low frequency waves and send them back to the Earth, enhancing communications with submarines and allowing us to "see" into the Earth, detecting anything from oil reserves to underground missile silos.

However, several researchers claim HAARP poses many dangers, including blowing thirty-mile holes in the Earth's upper atmosphere. They also warn of possible disruption of the subtle magnetic energies of our Earth and ourselves.

Holes in Heaven? is a prime example of grassroots filmmaking by producer Paula Randol-Smith and Emmy-winning director Wendy Robbins. Narrated by Martin Sheen, the film, investigates HAARP, its history and implications, and examines the dangers and benefits of high and low frequencies and of electromagnetic technology.

Among the many scientists interviewed are Dr. Bernard Eastlund, whose original patents are the reputed blueprints for HAARP, Project Director Dr. John Heckscher, and Dr. Nick Begich and Jeane Manning authors of Angels Don't Play This Haarp.

Holes in Heaven? strives to give a fair and accurate appraisal of HAARP, and brings before the public, vital information about a project which could have a dramatic effect upon our entire world.

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Low-Intensity Conflict and Modem Technology [PDF] - [HTML]

The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program - HAARP

Top 10 Low Pass Flyby's Of All Time (Video)

Number #1, #3 and #4 are awesome. #2 is insane.

The Great Middle East Peace Process Scam

The Great Middle East Peace Process Scam

When Ehud Olmert and George W. Bush met at the White House in June, they concluded that Hamas’s violent ousting of Fatah from Gaza – which brought down the Palestinian national unity government brokered by the Saudis in Mecca in March – had presented the world with a new ‘window of opportunity’. (Never has a failed peace process enjoyed so many windows of opportunity.) Hamas’s isolation in Gaza, Olmert and Bush agreed, would allow them to grant generous concessions to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, giving him the credibility he needed with the Palestinian people in order to prevail over Hamas.

Both Bush and Olmert have spoken endlessly of their commitment to a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, but it is their determination to bring down Hamas rather than to build up a Palestinian state that animates their new-found enthusiasm for making Abbas look good. That is why their expectation that Hamas will be defeated is illusory. Palestinian moderates will never prevail over those considered extremists, since what defines moderation for Olmert is Palestinian acquiescence in Israel’s dismemberment of Palestinian territory. In the end, what Olmert and his government are prepared to offer Palestinians will be rejected by Abbas no less than by Hamas, and will only confirm to Palestinians the futility of Abbas’s moderation and justify its rejection by Hamas. Equally illusory are Bush’s expectations of what will be achieved by the conference he recently announced would be held in the autumn (it has now been downgraded to a ‘meeting’). In his view, all previous peace initiatives have failed largely, if not exclusively, because Palestinians were not ready for a state of their own. The meeting will therefore focus narrowly on Palestinian institution-building and reform, under the tutelage of Tony Blair, the Quartet’s newly appointed envoy.

In fact, all previous peace initiatives have got nowhere for a reason that neither Bush nor the EU has had the political courage to acknowledge. That reason is the consensus reached long ago by Israel’s decision-making elites that Israel will never allow the emergence of a Palestinian state which denies it effective military and economic control of the West Bank. To be sure, Israel would allow – indeed, it would insist on – the creation of a number of isolated enclaves that Palestinians could call a state, but only in order to prevent the creation of a binational state in which Palestinians would be the majority.

The Middle East peace process may well be the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history. Since the failed Camp David summit of 2000, and actually well before it, Israel’s interest in a peace process – other than for the purpose of obtaining Palestinian and international acceptance of the status quo – has been a fiction that has served primarily to provide cover for its systematic confiscation of Palestinian land and an occupation whose goal, according to the former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon, is ‘to sear deep into the consciousness of Palestinians that they are a defeated people’. In his reluctant embrace of the Oslo Accords, and his distaste for the settlers, Yitzhak Rabin may have been the exception to this, but even he did not entertain a return of Palestinian territory beyond the so-called Allon Plan, which allowed Israel to retain the Jordan Valley and other parts of the West Bank.

Anyone familiar with Israel’s relentless confiscations of Palestinian territory – based on a plan devised, overseen and implemented by Ariel Sharon – knows that the objective of its settlement enterprise in the West Bank has been largely achieved. Gaza, the evacuation of whose settlements was so naively hailed by the international community as the heroic achievement of a man newly committed to an honourable peace with the Palestinians, was intended to serve as the first in a series of Palestinian bantustans. Gaza’s situation shows us what these bantustans will look like if their residents do not behave as Israel wants.

Israel’s disingenuous commitment to a peace process and a two-state solution is precisely what has made possible its open-ended occupation and dismemberment of Palestinian territory. And the Quartet – with the EU, the UN secretary general and Russia obediently following Washington’s lead – has collaborated with and provided cover for this deception by accepting Israel’s claim that it has been unable to find a deserving Palestinian peace partner.

Just one year after the 1967 war, Moshe Dayan, a former IDF chief of staff who at the time was minister of defence, described his plan for the future as ‘the current reality in the territories’. ‘The plan,’ he said, ‘is being implemented in actual fact. What exists today must remain as a permanent arrangement in the West Bank.’ Ten years later, at a conference in Tel Aviv, Dayan said: ‘The question is not “What is the solution?” but “How do we live without a solution?”’ Geoffrey Aronson, who has monitored the settlement enterprise from its beginnings, summarises the situation as follows:

Living without a solution, then as now, was understood by Israel as the key to maximising the benefits of conquest while minimising the burdens and dangers of retreat or formal annexation. This commitment to the status quo, however, disguised a programme of expansion that generations of Israeli leaders supported as enabling, through Israeli settlement, the dynamic transformation of the territories and the expansion of effective Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan River.

In an interview in Ha’aretz in 2004, Dov Weissglas, chef de cabinet to the then prime minister, Ariel Sharon, described the strategic goal of Sharon’s diplomacy as being to secure the support of the White House and Congress for Israeli measures that would place the peace process and Palestinian statehood in ‘formaldehyde’. It is a fiendishly appropriate metaphor: formaldehyde uniquely prevents the deterioration of dead bodies, and sometimes creates the illusion that they are still alive. Weissglas explains that the purpose of Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, and the dismantling of several isolated settlements in the West Bank, was to gain US acceptance of Israel’s unilateralism, not to set a precedent for an eventual withdrawal from the West Bank. The limited withdrawals were intended to provide Israel with the political room to deepen and widen its presence in the West Bank, and that is what they achieved. In a letter to Sharon, Bush wrote: ‘In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centres, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.’

In a recent interview in Ha’aretz, James Wolfensohn, who was the Quartet’s representative at the time of the Gaza disengagement, said that Israel and the US had systematically undermined the agreement he helped forge in 2005 between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and had instead turned Gaza into a vast prison. The official behind this, he told Ha’aretz, was Elliott Abrams, the deputy national security adviser. ‘Every aspect’ of the agreement Wolfensohn had brokered ‘was abrogated’.

Another recent interview in Ha’aretz, with Haggai Alon, who was a senior adviser to Amir Peretz at the Ministry of Defence, is even more revealing. Alon accuses the IDF (whose most senior officers increasingly are themselves settlers) of working clandestinely to further the settlers’ interests. The IDF, Alon says, ignores the Supreme Court’s instructions about the path the so-called security fence should follow, instead ‘setting a route that will not enable the establishment of a Palestinian state’. Alon told Ha’aretz that when in 2005 politicians signed an agreement with the Palestinians to ease restrictions on Palestinians travelling in the territories (part of the deal that Wolfensohn had worked on), the IDF eased them for settlers instead. For Palestinians, the number of checkpoints doubled. According to Alon, the IDF is ‘carrying out an apartheid policy’ that is emptying Hebron of Arabs and Judaising (his term) the Jordan Valley, while it co-operates openly with the settlers in an attempt to make a two-state solution impossible.

A new UN map of the West Bank, produced by the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, gives a comprehensive picture of the situation. Israeli civilian and military infrastructure has rendered 40 per cent of the territory off limits to Palestinians. The rest of the territory, including major population centres such as Nablus and Jericho, is split into enclaves; movement between them is restricted by 450 roadblocks and 70 manned checkpoints. The UN found that what remains is an area very similar to that set aside for the Palestinian population in Israeli security proposals in the aftermath of the 1967 war. It also found that changes now underway to the infrastructure of the territories – including a network of highways that bypass and isolate Palestinian towns – would serve to formalise the de facto cantonisation of the West Bank.

These are the realities on the ground that the uninformed and/or cynical blather in Jerusalem, Washington and Brussels – about waiting for Palestinians to reform their institutions, democratise their culture, dismantle the ‘infrastructures of terror’ and halt all violence and incitement before peace negotiations can begin – seeks to drown out. Given the vast power imbalance between Israel and the Palestinians – not to mention the vast preponderance of diplomatic support enjoyed by Israel from precisely those countries that one would have expected to compensate diplomatically for the military imbalance – nothing will change for the better without the US, the EU and other international actors finally facing up to what have long been the fundamental impediments to peace.

These impediments include the assumption, implicit in Israel’s occupation policy, that if no peace agreement is reached, the ‘default setting’ of UN Security Council Resolution 242 is the indefinite continuation of Israel’s occupation. If this reading were true, the resolution would actually be inviting an occupying power that wishes to retain its adversary’s territory to do so simply by means of avoiding peace talks – which is exactly what Israel has been doing. In fact, the introductory statement to Resolution 242 declares that territory cannot be acquired by war, implying that if the parties cannot reach agreement, the occupier must withdraw to the status quo ante: that, logically, is 242’s default setting. Had there been a sincere intention on Israel’s part to withdraw from the territories, surely forty years should have been more than enough time in which to reach an agreement.

Israel’s contention has long been that since no Palestinian state existed before the 1967 war, there is no recognised border to which Israel can withdraw, because the pre-1967 border was merely an armistice line. Moreover, since Resolution 242 calls for a ‘just and lasting peace’ that will allow ‘every state in the area [to] live in security’, Israel holds that it must be allowed to change the armistice line, either bilaterally or unilaterally, to make it secure before it ends the occupation. This is a specious argument for many reasons, but principally because UN General Assembly Partition Resolution 181 of 1947, which established the Jewish state’s international legitimacy, also recognised the remaining Palestinian territory outside the new state’s borders as the equally legitimate patrimony of Palestine’s Arab population on which they were entitled to establish their own state, and it mapped the borders of that territory with great precision. Resolution 181’s affirmation of the right of Palestine’s Arab population to national self-determination was based on normative law and the democratic principles that grant statehood to the majority population. (At the time, Arabs constituted two-thirds of the population in Palestine.) This right does not evaporate because of delays in its implementation.

In the course of a war launched by Arab countries that sought to prevent the implementation of the UN partition resolution, Israel enlarged its territory by 50 per cent. If it is illegal to acquire territory as a result of war, then the question now cannot conceivably be how much additional Palestinian territory Israel may confiscate, but rather how much of the territory it acquired in the course of the war of 1948 it is allowed to retain. At the very least, if ‘adjustments’ are to be made to the 1949 armistice line, these should be made on Israel’s side of that line, not the Palestinians’.

Clearly, the obstacle to resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict has not been a dearth of peace initiatives or peace envoys. Nor has it been the violence to which Palestinians have resorted in their struggle to rid themselves of Israel’s occupation, even when that violence has despicably targeted Israel’s civilian population. It is not to sanction the murder of civilians to observe that such violence occurs, sooner or later, in most situations in which a people’s drive for national self-determination is frustrated by an occupying power. Indeed, Israel’s own struggle for national independence was no exception. According to the historian Benny Morris, in this conflict it was the Irgun that first targeted civilians. In Righteous Victims, Morris writes that the upsurge of Arab terrorism in 1937 ‘triggered a wave of Irgun bombings against Arab crowds and buses, introducing a new dimension to the conflict.’ While in the past Arabs had ‘sniped at cars and pedestrians and occasionally lobbed a grenade, often killing or injuring a few bystanders or passengers’, now ‘for the first time, massive bombs were placed in crowded Arab centres, and dozens of people were indiscriminately murdered and maimed.’ Morris notes that ‘this “innovation” soon found Arab imitators.’

Underlying Israel’s efforts to retain the occupied territories is the fact that it has never really considered the West Bank as occupied territory, despite its pro forma acceptance of that designation. Israelis see the Palestinian areas as ‘contested’ territory to which they have claims no less compelling than the Palestinians, international law and UN resolutions notwithstanding. This is a view that was made explicit for the first time by Sharon in an op-ed essay published on the front page of the New York Times on 9 June 2002. The use of the biblical designations of Judea and Samaria to describe the territories, terms which were formerly employed only by the Likud but are now de rigueur for Labour Party stalwarts as well, is a reflection of a common Israeli view. That the former prime minister Ehud Barak (now Olmert’s defence minister) endlessly describes the territorial proposals he made at the Camp David summit as expressions of Israel’s ‘generosity’, and never as an acknowledgment of Palestinian rights, is another example of this mindset. Indeed, the term ‘Palestinian rights’ seems not to exist in Israel’s lexicon.

The problem is not, as Israelis often claim, that Palestinians do not know how to compromise. (Another former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, famously complained that ‘Palestinians take and take while Israel gives and gives.’) That is an indecent charge, since the Palestinians made much the most far-reaching compromise of all when the PLO formally accepted the legitimacy of Israel within the 1949 armistice border. With that concession, Palestinians ceded their claim to more than half the territory that the UN’s partition resolution had assigned to its Arab inhabitants. They have never received any credit for this wrenching concession, made years before Israel agreed that Palestinians had a right to statehood in any part of Palestine. The notion that further border adjustments should be made at the expense of the 22 per cent of the territory that remains to the Palestinians is deeply offensive to them, and understandably so.

Nonetheless, the Palestinians agreed at the Camp David summit to adjustments to the pre-1967 border that would allow large numbers of West Bank settlers – about 70 per cent – to remain within the Jewish state, provided they received comparable territory on Israel’s side of the border. Barak rejected this. To be sure, in the past the Palestinian demand of a right of return was a serious obstacle to a peace agreement. But the Arab League’s peace initiative of 2002 leaves no doubt that Arab countries will accept a nominal and symbolic return of refugees into Israel in numbers approved by Israel, with the overwhelming majority repatriated in the new Palestinian state, their countries of residence, or in other countries prepared to receive them.

It is the failure of the international community to reject (other than in empty rhetoric) Israel’s notion that the occupation and the creation of ‘facts on the ground’ can go on indefinitely, so long as there is no agreement that is acceptable to Israel, that has defeated all previous peace initiatives and the efforts of all peace envoys. Future efforts will meet the same fate if this fundamental issue is not addressed.

What is required for a breakthrough is the adoption by the Security Council of a resolution affirming the following: 1. Changes to the pre-1967 situation can be made only by agreement between the parties. Unilateral measures will not receive international recognition. 2. The default setting of Resolution 242, reiterated by Resolution 338, the 1973 ceasefire resolution, is a return by Israel’s occupying forces to the pre-1967 border. 3. If the parties do not reach agreement within 12 months (the implementation of agreements will obviously take longer), the default setting will be invoked by the Security Council. The Security Council will then adopt its own terms for an end to the conflict, and will arrange for an international force to enter the occupied territories to help establish the rule of law, assist Palestinians in building their institutions, assure Israel’s security by preventing cross-border violence, and monitor and oversee the implementation of terms for an end to the conflict.

If the US and its allies were to take a stand forceful enough to persuade Israel that it will not be allowed to make changes to the pre-1967 situation except by agreement with the Palestinians in permanent status negotiations, there would be no need for complicated peace formulas or celebrity mediators to get a peace process underway. The only thing that an envoy such as Blair can do to put the peace process back on track is to speak the truth about the real impediment to peace. This would also be a historic contribution to the Jewish state, since Israel’s only hope of real long-term security is to have a successful Palestinian state as its neighbour.

Henry Siegman, the director of the US/ Middle East Project, served as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations from 1994 to 2006, and was head of the American Jewish Congress from 1978 to 1994.

A "slightly fictional" account of Iran's takedown of CIA's Baluchi operative

February 26-28, 2010 -- A "slightly fictional" account of Iran's takedown of CIA's Baluchi operative

The CIA definitely has egg on its face over the Iranian VEVAK intelligence operation that nabbed Langley's top Iranian Baluchi guerrilla commander in Pakistan and his subsequent arrest in Iran. With all the sordid details being revealed about the CIA's proprietary Blackwater/Xe/Paravant "cowboy" operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, the following "slightly fictionalized" account of the capture by Iran of Baluchi operative Abdolmalek Rigi by WMR's Asian journalist colleague who has covered events in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India for a number of years could be the screenplay for a movie titled: "The Frigging of Rigi"

Jundallah, the CIA's Iranian Baluchi terrorist group, says its leader Abdolmalek Rigi was betrayed by the United States, United Kingdom, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Perhaps the CIA should teach its would-be guerrillas to watch not only their backs but also both sides. The CIA is reportedly flummoxed by the actions of Iran's VEVAK intelligence service, as well as Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) in the capture of their main man who launched terrorist attacks in eastern Iran to soften up the Persians before the deadly U.S. and Israeli body blow. Here is the "how-to-reshuffle-the-deck Persian-style."

So the Persians, via their intermediaries on the ground know Rigi's destination, the
schedule of his meeting with the American VIP in Bishkek, and the arrangements, and they nod their heads and prepare two receptions at Bandar Abbas . . . meanwhile . . .

Through the gates of Shamshi, a small convoy of Americans, military and "civilian", together with their Pakistani minders, accompany Rigi to Gwadar Airport for the cross-Gulf hop to Dubai Airport, where he is to transit with a fake Afghanistan passport and a bogus Pakistani travel document to Bishkek-Manas.

The Americans wave from the tarmac as a small charter jet takes Rigi with his Pakistani
escorts to Dubai. The Pakistanis are along for the ride to ensure that Rigi doesn't bolt in Dubai for a local girlie bar but gets on the flight to Bishkek, since "Mr. Big" is waiting for him specially at the U.S. airbase at Manas.

The flight flies low and switches off radio contact to evade potentially hostile radar. The Pakistani escorts then divvy up the work. One orders Rigi and his pal to stay in their
seats, the other goes to the cockpit with new destination. The pilot says "What?" The
Pakistani answers "Top Secret Mission, part of the U.S. plan. Our men are on the ground
in Bandar. Just a delivery, a small detour."

The small jet lands on the spacious strip. The Pakistanis push Rigi and pal out the door with a huge "whew" and "good riddance, you Baluch camel shit!"

The smiling Iranians greet Rigi: "Welcome to Iran. You are now a guest of the Revolutionary Guards. Everything will be taken care of."

While the air crew and the Pakistanis go for a cup of coffee, the happy Iranians put
on their masks for the photo op next to the small jet with their 'trophy." And then they
whisk Rigi and his accomplice to a small "hotel room" for a series of "chats."

Next, the Pakistanis and the air crew return to the plane to resume the flight to
Dubai. In the passenger seats are two men - ah, they took a piss, smoked a
cigarette and are back, "OK, let's go."

Under the radar, the small jet dashes across the Gulf to make up for lost time and then lands at Dubai International. The Pakistanis thank the charter jet captain, who decides to have some drinks and spend the night with a hooker across "the Creek." A job
well done deserves a reward.

The Pakistanis now take "Rigi and friend" to Departures. "Oh, I nearly forgot, I've been holding the passports. Here you go. Have fun, Iranian girls are oooh-la-la!"

The Pakistanis head to a local hotel to ogle the Lebanese hookers.

"Rigi Junior and Friend Junior" go through immigration, and then board Kyrgyzstan flight 454. "Too bad we're not going to Kyrgyzstan, I hear those Uzbek girls are oooh-la-la. Iranian girls make for a good wife, but I hear as girlfriends they've got expensive tastes."

"Ahmed, my young friend, after this performance you will be able to have two wives, one Punjabi and the second a Pashtun!"

"Oh, Jamal, that would be a real war. The Pastuni would have to be No.1. Their women are crazy and violent!"

"Ahmed, do you suppose they serve drinks aboard this flight?"

"You mean halal vodka?" Both laugh.

By now the plane is already descending - on schedule, if you happen to be an
impostor with the ISI.

While the plane's descending, Abbott asks, "Haven't we seen this place before? I thought they said we're going to Tehran. The pretty girls . . ." Costelllo replies, "Don't worry. All the Gulf islands look same, except for the Palm that sank the UAE.

Together they say, "Not Bandaid Abcess again!"

The other passengers are chattering. "Isn't that's an island in the Gulf?" "Engine problems, oh no!" "Do you think we're going to crash?"

Prayer beads are clicking, one woman is sobbing hysterically. "Calm down, my dear, probably just a minor mechanical problem," an older businessman from Bahrain reassures the hysterical woman from Kyrgyzstan.

Smooth landing and then the plane idles on tarmac. Several uniformed Iranians with small arms board the plane, looking intensely at the passengers and then spot "Abbott and Costello."

"If you gentlemen will accompany us."

"Oh, my Allah! Terrorists aboard our plane!" says the overweight babushka from Osh, Kyrgyzstan's second-largest city.

"You are in no danger, madam. Everything is under control. Have a nice flight to
Kyrgyzstan," replies the Iranian security officer.

Meanwhile, the Iranian security officer in the cockpit reminds the air crew: "This is a routine exercise. We're not supposed to discuss details over radio. Your supervisor in Manas is already informed of details. Thank you, gentleman. Have a good journey, Ins'Allah!"

At Manas, a U.S. Embassy staffer is reading Time magazine in a VIP Lounge. "Don't
worry, the ragheads are always running late. The only ones who every show up on
time are the Taliban."

His Grey Eminence is bored. This is the worst VIP Lounge I've ever seen. Built with USAID money, too. I know, corruption as usual, he muses to himself.

The plane reaches the gate. The reception team waits. "Is that all the passengers?
Can you check the manifest for a Mr. Rigi?"

"We're sorry, sir, the record indicates he boarded in Dubai. He must've slipped past you."

The Americans rush down to the baggage carousel. The passengers are all gone by now. "What the . . . your mobile. What's the country code for Afghanistan?"

Mr. CIA shouts over his mobile phone: "Hey, there, did the package get into the mail? Yes? Double check the postage? Yes? Well, it never arrived!"

Back at the lounge. "Sir, there's been some sort of mix up. We've got a guy checking with the air crew."

Incoming cell phone call from another "Mr. CIA" at the airport: "Dude, just checked with a pilot. They landed in Bandar Abbas. Two passengers were taken off the plane."

"Oh, shit. Excuse me, sir. Our contact can't make it. Sends his apologies. Maybe you should take an earlier flight to Tbilisi."

"Goddammit, can't you people get anything right? What the fuck are we going to do now? Don't let this get out or you're going to be running PR in Helmand. Get me on that flight NOW!"

The junior agent was flipping channels between BBC and Al-Jazeera in the VIP lounge, waiting for the bad news to arrive.

On the flight to Tbilisi, where Georgian President Mikhael Saakashvili would provide a little cover by announcing that he was sending 1000 of his "crack" presidential security troops to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, could only think of the dressing down he was going to get for Rigi being snatched by the infernal Iranians.

There would be the deep Hebrew-accented remonstration from Mossad chief Meir Dagan. But the worst would come from White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who would let loose a volley of four-letter epithets on Holbrooke: "Godammit Holbrooke! This delays our Iran military action and how will I explain this royal-ass fuckup to Bibi after his recent success in snuffing that Hamas asshole in Dubai?"

Holbrooke's evening in Tbilisi could be called "The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia."

For Abdolmalek Rigi, the refrain would be "Don't trust your soul to no Presidential Harvard lawyer. Cause the judge in Tehran's got bloodstains on his hand."

Meanwhile, hidden away somewhere deep inside a forest dwelling in the Serb Republic of Bosnia, wanted former Bosnian Serb Army Commander Ratko Mladic raises a shot glass of slivovka plum brandy at the news he's just received from his contacts about Holbrooke's embarrassment in Manas. Before pounding down the shot, he boasts: "Good, that bastard got what's coming to him!"

Governments do Carry Out False Flag Terror

http://studentsforthesupportofgentiles.blogspot.com/

Forget the claims and allegations that false flag terror - governments attacking people and then blaming others in order to create animosity towards those blamed - has been used throughout history.

This essay will solely discuss government admissions to the use of false flag terror.

For example:

• The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950's to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected president

• Israel admits that an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind "evidence" implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this)

• The well-respected former Indonesian president admits that the government probably had a role in the Bali bombings

• The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism. As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: "You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security" (and see this)(Italy joined NATO in 1949, years before the bombings occurred)
  

• As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in the 1960's, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings*

There are many other instances of false flag attacks used throughout history proven by the historical evidence. See this, this and this. The above are only some examples of governments admitting to using false flag terror.

You can't call it a conspiracy theory when the government itself admits it.

And this is not just ancient history:

• Jimmy Carter's former National Security Adviser - Zbigniew Brzezinski - told the Senate that a terrorist act might be carried out in the U.S. and falsely blamed on Iran to justify war against that nation
  

• A retired 27-year CIA analyst who prepared and presented Presidential Daily Briefs and served as a high-level analyst for several presidents, would not put it past the government to "play fast and loose" with terror alerts and warnings and even events themselves in order to rally people behind the flag

* Note: While the Joint Chiefs of Staff pushed for Operation Northwoods to be carried out, cooler heads prevailed; President Kennedy or his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara apparently vetoed the plan.

Shebaa Farms "real issue" is water

Shebaa Farms "real issue" is water


The politics of the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms, a rugged sliver of mountainside wedged between Lebanon, Israel and Syria, have long overshadowed what some Lebanese environmentalists call "the real issue" of the disputed area: its water resources.

Now activists are calling for hydro-diplomacy to take precedence over political maneuvering as the most effective solution to one of the key stumbling blocks to Middle East peace.

"Rising Temperatures Rising Tensions," a report published in June by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, considers water to be a major trigger for conflict in the Middle East, the world's most water-scarce region.

Lebanon and Syria say the Shebaa Farms, measuring just 22 square kilometers, is Lebanese territory, though the UN has ruled it part of the Syrian Golan Heights, which lie just to the east, across water-rich Mount Hermon.

Both the Golan and Shebaa were occupied by Israel during the 1967 War and the Israelis say disengagement from Shebaa can only come under a peace deal with Syria and withdrawal from the Golan.

However, Fadi Comair, director-general of Hydraulic and Electric Resources at the Lebanese Ministry of Energy and Water, argues there is more to Israel's occupation of Shebaa than military-strategic concerns: "Israel's occupation of the Shebaa Farms has to do with control of its water."

Hizballah, the Lebanese resistance group that fought Israel to a bloody stalemate in 2006, has the liberation of Shebaa as one of its strategic objectives.

Water scarcity

Meeting the water needs of their rapidly growing populations has long been an existential challenge for the governments of the arid Middle East. Climate change is making that challenge more urgent and acute.

Israel, Jordan and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) all fall well below the internationally accepted threshold of 1,000 cubic meters of water per person per year (cmwpy). According to the IISD, Israel has natural renewable water resources of 265 cmwpy, Jordan 169, and OPT just 90. Only Lebanon and Syria have water surpluses, with Lebanon having a potential of 1,220 cmwpy and Syria 1,541.

Yet supply is dwindling rapidly. By 2025 water use in Israel is estimated to fall to 310 cmwpy, while the country's own Environment Ministry has warned that water supply may fall by 60 percent of 2000 levels by 2100.

River Jordan

The IISD report goes even further, warning that the River Jordan, which is the key supplier of water to Israel, Jordan and OPT, could shrink as much as 80 percent by the end of the century.

Such drastic scarcity makes securing water supplies vital. The River Jordan rises in Mount Hermon, fed by tributaries in the Golan Heights and Shebaa Farms, and flows into the Sea of Galilee, also known as Lake Tiberius, before continuing south where it forms the boundary between Jordan, to the east, and the West Bank. After 320 kilometers it empties into the Dead Sea.

Major tributaries of the river include the Hasbani, which flows into Israel from Lebanon, and the Banias, which flows from Syria. The River Dan, which also supplies the River Jordan, is the only river originating in Israel.

Water wars

The absence of hydro-diplomacy reflects conflict in the region. In 1965, Syria and Lebanon began the construction of channels to divert the Banias and Hasbani, preventing the rivers flowing into Israel. Israel attacked the diversion works, the first in a series of moves that led to a regional war two years later.

In 2002, when the Lebanese constructed a pipeline on the River Wazzani intended to supply households in southern Lebanon with water, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared the action a causus belli. In the July War of 2006, Israeli warplanes targeted southern Lebanon's water network.

Bassam Jaber, a water expert at Lebanon's Ministry of Energy and Water, argues the Shebaa is critical to Israel's water needs, "especially because fresh water is critical when all sources within Israel are salty. The flows from the area help to regulate the saltiness of Lake Tiberius."

And it is not just the direct overland flow that the Shebaa provides Israel. According to the Lebanese Water Ministry's Comair, 30 to 40 percent of the River Dan's water flows into it through underground supplies originating in the Shebaa. "Israel is worried that if Lebanon gains control of the Shebaa, it can then control the flow to the Dan river," said Comair.

Hydro-diplomacy

As one of only eight states to have ratified the 1997 UN Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, Lebanon is calling on Israel to do the same.

"Israel is not a signatory to the relevant conventions on water, which is a big problem since they are at the center of the issue of equitable use of water and reasonable sharing," said Comair.

Israel has already shown that water can play a role in peacemaking. Its 1994 peace agreement with Jordan included a commitment to transfer 75 million cubic meters of water per year to Jordan in return for secure borders to the east.

Lebanon's Ministry of Energy and Water is now calling for a regional water basin authority for the River Jordan, which would include Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and the OPT. "How can you reach any agreements on the equitable sharing of international watercourses if there is no cooperation?" asked Comair.

Water solutions for all?

Not all are convinced Israel's occupation of Shebaa is primarily about securing water.

"Water is no doubt one aspect of the socio-political conflict, but it is not the main driver," said Mutasem el-Fadel, director of the Water Resources Center at the American University of Beirut.

He points to several projects currently being studied that could solve Israel's water needs, without requiring continued occupation of the Shebaa, such as the Red Sea-Dead Sea Canal Project, the Mini-Peace pipeline from Turkey, wastewater reclamation plans and desalination projects.

"All combined they can be the water solution for all five countries in the area," said el-Fadel.

But in the absence of hydro-diplomacy between Israel and Lebanon, the continued Israeli occupation of the Shebaa Farms will remain a key trigger to renewed conflict between the two countries.

"There will not be enough water for our generation or the next," said Comair. "We will see social, economic, political and military conflicts -- and in that order -- within the next 20 years."