June 30, 2008 Issue

Looking Into the Lobby

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference is one of Washington’s most
important—and least reported—events.

by Philip Weiss

For three days in the capital in early June, suspense built over the question of how the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference would greet Barack Obama. There was a lot
of grousing about Obama in the hallways of the Washington Convention Center, and AIPAC
officials repeatedly warned the faithful to be respectful. “We are not a debate society or a
protest movement. … our goal is to have a friend in the White House,” executive director Howard
Kohr said in a strict tone. It wasn’t hard to imagine things going poorly: Obama gets booed on
national television. He feels insulted. Conservative Jewish donors and voters turn off to
Obama. He becomes president without their support. AIPAC has no friend in the Oval Office.

But of course, Obama complied. His speech became the annual example the conference provides of
a powerful man truckling. Two years ago, it was Vice President Cheney’s red-meat speech
attacking the Palestinians. Last year, it was Pastor John Hagee’s scary speech saying that
giving the Arabs any part of Jerusalem was the same as giving it to the Taliban. Obama took a
similar line. He suggested that he would use force to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons,
made no mention of Palestinian human rights, and said that Jerusalem “must remain undivided,” a
statement so disastrous to the peace process that his staff rescinded it the next day. Big
deal. The actual meeting had gone swimmingly.

This was my first AIPAC conference, and the first surprise was how blatant the business of
wielding influence is. The conference makes no bones about this function, the most savage
expression of which is the Tuesday dinner at which AIPAC performs its “roll call,” where the
names of all the politicians who have come to the conference are read off from the stage by
three barkers in near auctioneer fashion. The pols try to outdo one another in I-love-Israel
encomia. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi surely won the day when she teared up while dangling the
dogtags of three Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah and Hamas two years ago.

The second big surprise was that apart from coverage of the headline speakers, the AIPAC
conference is a media no man’s land. It would be hard to imagine a more naked exhibition of
political power: a convention of 7,000 mostly rich people, with more than half the Congress in
attendance, as well as all the major presidential candidates, the prime minister of Israel, the
minority leader, the majority leader, and the speaker of the House. Yet there is precious
little journalism about the spectacle in full. The reason seems obvious: the press would have
to write openly about a forbidden subject, Jewish influence. They would have to take on an
unpleasant informative task that they have instead left to two international relations scholars
in their 50s—Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, authors of last year’s book The Israel Lobby.

The press is missing a phantasmagorical event. Imagine a basement meeting in the Warsaw Ghetto
transplanted to the biggest hall in Vegas, and you have something of the feeling of the thing.
The staging is faultless. Little documentaries called “Zionist Stories” play on the Jumbotron,
complete with footage of Auschwitz, and then the subject of the documentary comes out on stage
to thundering applause. There is breakout session after breakout session on Middle East policy
and Jewish identity and anti-Semitism, with star turns by Natan Sharansky, Bill Kristol, and
Leon Wieseltier. The press was excluded from “Advanced Lobbying Techniques,” but still this is
a feast of the political condition. And posh. The roll call is described by AIPAC as the
largest seated dinner in Washington. The wine flows. I went about in a daze of awe and admiration.

My awe was for men like Haim Saban, a toymaker and giant donor to the Democratic Party. After
his Zionist story, Saban came out on stage wearing a platinum tie and white shirt and silver
gray suit. He has wonderful presence and something of an Arab look—black-haired, wide forehead.
He was surrounded by 200 college students, veterans of the Saban Leadership Seminars he
sponsors at AIPAC.

On Middle East policy, Saban is barely distinguishable from his Republican counterparts, who
are there in equal force. The main hall of the conference was filled with lavishly-produced
banners featuring AIPAC donors, not a few with trophy wives, alongside statements of their
mission. There was Donald Diamond, an Arizona real estate developer whom the New York Times
recently profiled on the front page after he raised $250,000 for John McCain. The Times said
nothing in its piece about Diamond’s Israel work. But that was all the banner was about. “The
U.S.-Israel relationship is the single most important determinant of democracy in the world,
and we must commit to securing it,” Diamond wrote. “It is so obvious to us that the Jewish
community is a family and that we have to take care of each other.”

I was writing that down when an AIPAC spokesman stopped to check my credentials. The audience
for this stuff isn’t the public, it’s people in the hall—other rich Jews who might put AIPAC in
their wills.

At most conventions, people gather out of self-interest. Therein lies my admiration: the
AIPAC’ers didn’t come for selfish reasons. They are devoutly concerned with the lives of people
they don’t know, very far away. Yes, people with whom they feel tribal kinship. When Israelis
came out on the dais to speak, they were almost invariably overwhelmed by the generosity, if
not the Vegas schmaltz. “There is a tremendous amount of love in this place,” Meir Nissensohn,
an Israeli executive of IBM, said in wonder. “If it was a beaker, it would explode.” Even a
sharp critic like myself of what AIPAC is doing to American policy in the Middle East was
frequently moved by the pure loving feeling that surrounds you at every moment.

Among the devout there is only one real issue: What is the latest AIPAC line? This is the
organization’s function. After consulting closely with the Israeli political leadership
(leaning toward the right wing), AIPAC regurgitates a simple version of Israeli policy to its
followers, who in turn regurgitate that line to American politicians. AIPAC’ers do this with
the conviction that Israel’s life is on the line. “It is we that are the guardians of that
relationship,” AIPAC president David Victor said. James Tisch, the Lowes executive and leader
in the Jewish community, warned the audience that it might be 1939 all over again were it not
for them.

AIPAC makes sure the Israeli line is America’s line by cultivating politicians before they
reach the national scene. Victor described this process when he warned the audience that 10
percent of Congress will be new next year because so many seats are open: “Do we know them? Do
they know us? Have they been to Israel? Do they understand the issues we care so deeply about?”
Finding Israel activists in the suburbs of Detroit is easy, Victor said. “But how about finding
the one right person to reach out to candidates for communities like Muscle Shoals, Alabama, or
Tacoma, Washington, or Council Bluffs, Iowa? Ladies and gentlemen, the success or failure of
the pro-Israel community rests on three words, our personal relationships.” And people accused
Walt and Mearsheimer of fostering a conspiracy theory.

AIPAC flashes its relationships the way kids trade baseball cards. Bill Kristol said that Hart
Hasten, a Holocaust survivor and successful Indianapolis businessman, had been crucial to
shaping Dan Quayle’s view of Israel, having “spent a lot of time” with Quayle when he was still
a congressman. (Quayle’s office later told me, “The statement Bill Kristol made was not exactly
accurate. Mr. Quayle said his broad knowledge of Israel came from many people and sources, not
specifically from Mr. Hasten.”) Dan Senor, an analyst on CNN and former AIPAC intern, boasted
that AIPAC won over Spencer Abraham when he was the head of the state Republican Party, years
before he became a Michigan senator. The party was $500,000 in debt, and an AIPAC leader helped
him pay that off. And of course, the famous story was told of George W. Bush going up in Ariel
Sharon’s helicopter in 1998, two years before he ran for president, and saying of Israel’s
ten-mile waist, “We have driveways in Texas longer than that.”

The anxiety about Obama is that he is so new to the scene that few people have had a chance to
get to him. The relationship guy is Lee Rosenberg of Chicago, who introduced Obama. “I can
personally attest that Senator Obama is a genuine friend of Israel,” he said. In 2006, Obama
“fulfilled a pledge he made to the Chicago Jewish community” and visited Israel. And the
topper: Obama “has gotten to know” Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister who is against
ever dividing Jerusalem. Rosenberg looked pale, drained—as queasily forceful as a mob boss
vouching for an unknown family’s bona fides.

The good news I can report is the new AIPAC line. In some ways the organization is belligerent:
speakers emphasized the need to attack Iran before it gets nukes and to invade Gaza to take on
Hamas. But peace is in the air, too, now that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government is
working overtime to cut a deal with the Palestinians on the West Bank and with the Syrians for
the return of the Golan Heights. AIPAC reflected this policy. I heard a few conference-goers
saying at microphones that the Bible gives Israel a right to the West Bank. But they received
only a smattering of applause, and in one instance the moderator said the questioner was using
inappropriate language.

The soul of the conference for me was Tal Becker, the highly personable Israeli negotiator. “I
see [Palestinian negotiator] Saeb Erekat a lot more than I see my wife and kids,” he said,
promising that if he and Palestinian moderates fail to reach an agreement, their goal is “to
keep talking and keep talking and keep talking.”

Yet before you get out your handkerchief, reflect that AIPAC has for more than 30 years
promoted the colonization process. In 1975, when President Ford wanted to reassess Mideast
policy over Israeli intransigence, he was cut off at the knees by an AIPAC letter signed by 76
senators. Then in 1989, when James Baker went before AIPAC and told them to give up their idea
of a Greater Israel including the West Bank, George H.W. Bush received a letter of anger signed
by 94 senators. In both instances, AIPAC was hewing to the Israeli government line and
nullifying American policymaking.

No, AIPAC’s change of heart cannot be ascribed to the good thinking of American Jews. They’re
not thinking at all. They have passed on their full powers of judgment to the Israeli
government. In that sense, the Zionists in that hall might best be compared to Communists of
the ’30s and ’40s, who also abandoned their judgment to a far off authority even as they argued
this and that subclause codicil in intense councils. On my train ride back to New York, a
little rich kid of about 14, traveling with his uncle in the seat behind me, called his parents
to complain that Obama’s views on Israel seemed “tailored” and “he’s never really stood up for
Israel.” Indoctrination, pure and simple.

The great sadness here is that American Jewry is the most educated, most affluent segment of
the public. Yet on this issue there is little independent thinking. The obvious question is
whether they don’t have dual loyalty. As a Jew, I feel uncomfortable using the phrase, given
its long history, but the facts are inarguable. Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic speaks of
everything “we” should do to make peace with the Palestinians, then corrects himself to say
what Israel should do. Speaker after speaker says that Israel is in our hearts. People who
emigrate to Israel are applauded, and when the national anthems are played, one cantor sings
the “Star Spangled Banner,” but the “Hatikvah” has two cantors belting it out, with the
audience roaring along. Maybe most revealing, I heard a right-wing Israeli politician sharply
criticizing Olmert’s policy in the West Bank. Think of the scandal it would cause if American
politicians went abroad and criticized the president’s foreign policy. It’s no scandal here
because AIPAC is a virtual extension of Israel.

Of course, AIPAC and its roll call of politicians would say that American and Israeli interests
are identical. I wonder how those politicians really feel. Their I-love-the-miracle-of-Israel
rhetoric is so endless that it creates an undercurrent of doth protest too much—an impression
that if there weren’t so much money at stake, they would run from Israel with winged heels.

AIPAC takes care to remind the pols of deeper reasons to help the Jews. The Holocaust imagery
never stops. And there is a related theme: that Jews are the golden goose of Western society.
The very last of the “Zionist Stories” AIPAC showed before Obama and Clinton spoke was of a
scientist, IBM’s Nissensohn. The piece emphasized Israel’s contribution to high-tech industry
from software to desalination, hinting at a traditional Jewish idea: for a society to flourish,
it must treat Jews well. Haim Saban’s story made the same point. Look what Egypt lost when it
forced the Saban family to flee.

The theme of the conference was “The U.S.-Israel Relationship: Built to Last.” But that seems
another case of protesting too much. AIPAC is beset on many sides.

It surely noticed how much attention Palestinians got this spring for commemorations of the
Nakba, their dispossession in 1948 and onwards. AIPAC fought back with its own dispossession
narrative. About 700,000 Jews, including Haim Saban, were forced out of Arab societies
following the formation of Israel. One of them was novelist Eli Amir, who grew up in privileged
Baghdad and was forced into a refugee camp in 1950. Amir appeared live by satellite and berated
AIPAC for not highlighting his story before this year.

Another problem for AIPAC is the growing alienation of younger Jews from Israel’s hardline
policies, especially as those Jews do well here and assimilate. “I worry a lot more about the
American Jewish community than I do about Israel—about which I have grave doubts,” Wieseltier said.

AIPAC is happy to work with non-Jewish Americans. At one dinner, I sat at the same table with
Mark and Carrie Burns, Christian evangelical radio hosts from Illinois. Carrie said that many
Christians she knows will vote on Jerusalem being in the hands of the Jews as a litmus issue.
Thus AIPAC may hope to replace dwindling elite influence with populist numbers. I wouldn’t hold
my breath. Carrie said that at a synagogue she addressed, the first question came from a
high-school girl who said, “But isn’t Israel an apartheid state?”

The Jews are quietly leaving the room. Saban described his horror at visiting his son’s
college, Wesleyan, and seeing a table on peace in the Middle East at which Israel was
demonized. Some of the kids at that table were surely Jews.

Especially now that an alternative lobby, J Street, has formed on its left, AIPAC seems to be
making gestures in a more peaceable direction. One was the testimony from Sderot, the Israeli
city bordering Gaza that American politicians must learn to pronounce or face political doom.
(I think it’s Stay-ROTE.) It was inevitable that someone from the region would take the stage,
and it’s impossible to imagine a more appealing spokesperson than Chen Abrahams, a pretty,
soft-spoken kibbutz-dweller of about 40. The audience was utterly quiet as she described the
terrible price her community has paid for the siege of Gaza. Nothing like the price the
Palestinians have paid, I’d note. Still, if this was schmaltz, it was real schmaltz. At the end
of her taped appearance, Abrahams said, “My biggest hope is for peace. I believe in talking to
them, I don’t believe in wiping them out.” I was stunned.

Then Abrahams came out on stage to a standing ovation, and it struck me that it might be
possible to take all the loving energy in this place now directed at helping other Jews and
redirect it to great effect. If the AIPAC legions were somehow convinced that Jews will only be
safe in the Middle East if the Arabs among them were also safe—without checkpoints, without a
siege, with the dignity and freedom that Jews have had in the West—all these arrayed powers
might then be directed to a larger idea of family and produce a miracle at last.
__________________________________________

Philip Weiss is at work on a book about Jewish issues. He blogs at www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/.

The American Conservative welcomes letters to the editor.
Send letters to: lett…@amconmag.com

http://amconmag.com/2008/2008_06_30/article3.html

Kabul.  You can see Ho Chi Minh City from there.

Somewhat less obliquely, has anyone else noted that the Taliban’s waging
war against Afghanistan on Afghani soil and ravaging Afghani towns and
villages from safe harbors in Pakistan exactly parallels the North
Vietnamese waging of war against South Vietnam on South Vietnamese soil
and ravaging South Vietnamese towns and villages from safe harbors in
Cambodia?

–

Io non giudico né giudicheròmai essere difetto
difendere alcuna opinione con le ragioni,
sanza volervi usare o l’autorità o la forza.

< Machiavelli

NY attorney general gets more ISPs to block alt.* newsgroups

By John Timmer
Published: July 11, 2008 – 02:28PM CT

Last month, the New York state Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, announced
that a sting operation had uncovered an indifference on the part of
Internet service providers regarding complaints about child porn
accessible through their networks.  Using a combination of legal threats
and public shaming, Cuomo was able to get three ISPs to drop access to the
entire alt.* hierarchy of Usenet, a move that encouraged California to
request similar measures.  Now, in a sign that these efforts against child
porn were becoming a movement, Cuomo has announced the launch of a web
site, nystopchildporn and agreements with two more ISPs.

AOL is the subject of one of the new agreements, which isn’t much of a
surprise, given that its corporate sibling, Time Warner Cable, had already
signed on with Cuomo.  It will apparently require no changes on its part,
as CNET reports that the company had already implemented a policy of
blocking child porn access.  AT&T is the other, and, given that it’s
apparently the US’ largest service provider, it represents a significant
accomplishment for the AG.  Apparently, AT&T’s efforts will be as
indiscriminate as those pursued by Verizon, in that they plan on blocking
access to the entire alt.binaries.* hierarchy.

Cuomo’s new web site signifies that he’s clearly not done yet.  It
includes contact information for 20 ISPs that presumably operate in New
York, and text of a letter to send to them to urge that they sign on to
the campaign . . . .

<more:>

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080711-ny-attorney-general-get…

Just in case anyone thought that Rudy Giuliani was the only Fascist in New
York.

Or that American Fascists are only found in New York . . . .

After all, why go after the child-porn posters when you can punish all
alt.* users?

I think they should go after e-mail next.

Cuomo looks and sounds like the kind of guy who’d get a woody over that.

And didn’t we go through this a few years ago, with the DMCA nonsense? all
this looks like a clear effort to make an end-run around the Supreme
Court’s ruling that Usenet was officially and even laudably "anarchic", by
threatening ISPs, wot of course the large corporations involved are always
willing to fuck their customers at the drop of any official blue-nose’s
hat.

I think I may be changing ISPs, ’cause Time-Warner bought out my Adelphia
cable TV and Internet account.

So there goes cable TV too.  Damn.

–
tinmimu…@hotmail.com

smeeter 11 or maybe 12

mp 10

mhm 29×13

And now the saints began their reign,
For which th’ had yearned so long in vain,
And felt such bowel-hankerings,
To see an empire, all of kings,
Delivered from th’ Egyptian awe
Of justice, government and law.

< _Hudibras_

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2007/04/04/th…

First they came for alt.binaries.*, and I said nothing.

Then they came for alt.*, and I said nothing.

Then . . . .

–
tinmimu…@hotmail.com

smeeter 11 or maybe 12

mp 10

mhm 29×13

What the fuck are you TALKING about flunker?

< Billy Big Balls

http://www.physorg.com/news122655117.html

New aluminum-rich alloy produces hydrogen on-demand for large-scale uses

Purdue University engineers have developed a new aluminum-rich alloy
that produces hydrogen by splitting water and is economically
competitive with conventional fuels for transportation and power
generation.

"We now have an economically viable process for producing hydrogen on-
demand for vehicles, electrical generating stations and other
applications," said Jerry Woodall, a distinguished professor of
electrical and computer engineering at Purdue who invented the process.

When immersed in water, the alloy splits water molecules into hydrogen
and oxygen, which immediately reacts with the aluminum to produce
aluminum oxide, also called alumina, which can be recycled back into
aluminum. Recycling aluminum from nearly pure alumina is less expensive
than mining the aluminum-containing ore bauxite, making the technology
more competitive with other forms of energy production, Woodall said.

"After recycling both the aluminum oxide back to aluminum and the inert
gallium-indium-tin alloy only 60 times, the cost of producing energy
both as hydrogen and heat using the technology would be reduced to 10
cents per kilowatt hour, making it competitive with other energy
technologies," Woodall said.

The researchers will present findings about the new alloy on Feb. 26
during the conference Materials Innovations in an Emerging Hydrogen
Economy, which runs Feb. 24-27 in Cocoa Beach, Fla..

A key to developing the alloy for large-scale technologies is
controlling the microscopic structure of the solid aluminum and the
gallium-indium-tin alloy mixture.

"This is because the mixture tends to resist forming entirely as a
homogeneous solid due to the different crystal structures of the
elements in the alloy and the low melting point of the gallium-indium-
tin alloy," Woodall said.

The alloy is said to have two phases because it contains abrupt changes
in composition from one constituent to another.

"I can form a one-phase melt of liquid aluminum and the gallium-indium-
tin alloy by heating it. But when I cool it down, most of the gallium-
indium-tin alloy is not homogeneously incorporated into the solid
aluminum, but remains a separate phase of liquid," Woodall said. "The
constituents separate into two phases just like ice and liquid water."

The two-phase composition seems to be critical for the technology to
work because it enables the aluminum alloy to react with water and
produce hydrogen.

The researchers had earlier discovered that slow-cooling and fast-
cooling the new 95/5 aluminum alloy produced drastically different
versions. The fast-cooled alloy contained aluminum and the gallium-
indium-tin alloy apparently as a single phase. In order for it to
produce hydrogen, it had to be in contact with a puddle of the liquid
gallium-indium-tin alloy.

"That was a very exciting finding because it showed that the alloy would
react with water at room temperature to produce hydrogen until all of
the aluminum was used up," Woodall said.

Israeli warplanes practice in Iraq

The Jerusalem Post
July 11, 2008

Israel Air Force (IAF) war planes are practicing in Iraqi airspace and
land on US airbases in the country as a preparation for a potential
strike on Iran, sources in the Iraqi Defense Ministry told a local
news network on Friday.

The report, which was also carried by Iranian news outlets, claimed
that recently massive IAF overnight presence was detected in several
American held airbases.

According to the sources, former military officers in the Anbar
province said IAF jets arrive during the night from Jordanian
airspace, enter Iraq’s airspace and land on a runway near the city of
Hadita. The sources estimated the jets were practicing for a raid on
Iran’s nuclear sites.

The sources also said the American bases in Iraq might serve as a
platform for the IAF from which to attack Iran. If Israeli warplanes
will take off from Iraq, they can reach Bushehr in five minutes – a
“record time,” the sources said.

http://www.infowars.com/?p=3267

Latest buzz: Shock bracelets for all airline passengers

‘Just when you thought you’ve heard it all’

http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=69116
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
     What Would the U.S.A.’s Founding Fathers Do?

  If the representatives of the people betray their constituents,
there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that
original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive
forms of government … The citizens must rush tumultuously to
arms, without concert, without system, without resource;
except in their courage and despair …

  The natural strength of the people in a large community, in
proportion to the artificial strength of the government, is greater
than in a small … the people, without exaggeration, may be said
to be entirely the masters of their own fate.
  — Alexander Hamilton

  We in America do not have government by the majority.
We have government by the majority who participate.
  — Thomas Jefferson

  All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good
conscience to remain silent.
  — Thomas Jefferson

  Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of
the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe
depositories.
  — Thomas Jefferson

  No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
  — Thomas Jefferson

  The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to
keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves
against tyranny in government.
  — Thomas Jefferson

  As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now
let us show them we can fight like men also.
  — Thomas Jefferson

  Don’t talk about what you have done or what you are going
to do.
  — Thomas Jefferson

  Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the
Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.
  — Thomas Jefferson

  Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will
delineate and define you.
  — Thomas Jefferson

  Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on
does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which
they draw their gains.
  — Thomas Jefferson

 I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied
corporations which dare already to challenge our government to
a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
  — Thomas Jefferson

  I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our
liberties than standing armies.
  — Thomas Jefferson

  Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government
those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations,
perverted it into tyranny.
  — Thomas Jefferson

Latest News-at-a-Glance  - Courtesy of  TvNewsLIES.org
http://tvnewslies.org/tvnl/index.php/latest-news-at-a-glance
___________________________________________________________________
Security flaw prompts major web alert
Wednesday, 09 July 2008 12:50

A major flaw in the way the internet works could lead to millions of
people being targeted by criminals and has prompted the "largest
security update" in web history, according to a leading security researcher.

The bug – described as "cache poisoning" – has led to some of the
technology industry’s largest companies scrambling to come up with a
solution before hackers discover how to exploit the flaw.

More…
  ___________________________________________________________________
Constitutional expert Turley on FISA bill: ‘The fix is in’
Wednesday, 09 July 2008 12:05

"It’s like all those stories where someone is assaulted on the street
and a hundred witnesses do nothing," continued Turley. "In this case,
the Fourth Amendment is going to be eviscerated tomorrow, and a hundred
people are going to watch it happen because it’s just not their problem.
… There’s not an ounce of principle, not an ounce of public interest
in this legislation."

More…
___________________________________________________________________
Kucinich to bring single article of impeachment for misleading US into war
Wednesday, 09 July 2008 12:02

Few in the House of Representatives have any intention of doing anything
with the last 35 articles of impeachment Kucinich set before them last
month, so the former presidential candidate appears to be lightening the
load. Kucinich sent a letter to colleagues Tuesday asking them to
support a single article of impeachment, to be introduced Thursday,
which accuses President Bush of leading the country to war based on lies.

More…
  ___________________________________________________________________
Judge to Bush admin.: Guantanamo is top priority
Wednesday, 09 July 2008 11:50

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge overseeing Guantanamo Bay lawsuits
ordered the Justice Department to put other cases aside and make it
clear throughout the Bush administration that, after nearly seven years
of detention, the detainees must have their day in court.

"The time has come to move these forward," Judge Thomas F. Hogan said
Tuesday during the first hearing over whether the detainees are being
held lawfully. "Set aside every other case that’s pending in the
division and address this case first."

More…
  ___________________________________________________________________
GM readies Volt unveiling to shift focus from crisis
Wednesday, 09 July 2008 11:43

General Motors Corp is rushing to finish the production version of its
Chevy Volt and plans to unveil a showroom-ready model of the heavily
touted electric car in September, people familiar with the project say.

  A GM spokesman declined to comment on the timeline for its next
announcements on the Volt, which will include naming a supplier for the
vehicle’s lithium-ion battery pack, the single most expensive element of
the vehicle and the component seen as critical to its success.

More…
Injured Iraq War Veterans Pay More for Health Care
Wednesday, 09 July 2008 11:35

Former U.S. soldiers who were disabled fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan
and live far from government hospitals and rehabilitation centers pay
more for health care than other veterans, a government report found.

More…
___________________________________________________________________
Rare Microorganism That Produces Hydrogen May Be Key To Tomorrow’s
Hydrogen Economy
Wednesday, 09 July 2008 11:31

An ancient organism from the pit of a collapsed volcano may hold the key
to tomorrow’s hydrogen economy. Scientists from across the world have
formed a team to unlock the process refined by a billions-year old
archaea. The U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute will
expedite the research by sequencing the hydrogen-producing organism for
comparative genomics.

More…
  ___________________________________________________________________
Bombs kill 10 in Iraq
Wednesday, 09 July 2008 11:26

BAGHDAD (AP) – A suicide car bomber on Wednesday targeted a military
convoy carrying a senior Iraqi commander, killing five civilians, the
Iraqi military said. In a separate attack, a bomb killed four policemen
and a civilian.

The violence came as Iraqi officials released data showing attacks have
dropped sharply over the past year. The development has been attributed
in part to the 2007 U.S. troop surge, a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida in
Iraq and government crackdowns against Sunni extremists and Shiite militias.

More…
TVNL Comment:  Reminder: The US pays half a million dollar a MONTH to
tribal leaders for not killing our troops.  Nice work if you can get it….
  ___________________________________________________________________
Army medic made famous in Iraq photo dies
Wednesday, 09 July 2008 08:57

A former Army medic made famous by a photograph that showed him carrying
an injured Iraqi boy during the first week of the war in March 2003 has
died of an apparent overdose, police said.

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July 17, 2003
The Guardian (UK)
The Spies Who Pushed for War
Shadow rightwing intelligence network set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA and deliver
a justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force

  by Julian Borger

     The agency, called the Office of Special Plans (OSP), was set up by the defence secretary,
Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information and operated under the patronage of hardline
conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, the Pentagon and at the White House,
including Vice-President Dick Cheney.

     The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the
official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail
in a struggle with the State Department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war. . . .

     The OSP was an open and largely unfiltered conduit to the White House not only for the
Iraqi opposition. It also forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside
Ariel Sharon’s office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush
administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam’s Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorise.

     FULL TEXT

     —
     Michael Lind, "Israel Lobby Distorts U.S. Foreign Policy," Prospect Magazine, April 2002

     "Whose War? Israel’s Say Jewish Writers," The Wisdom Fund, March 12, 2003

     [But the argument [installing a new regime in Iraq will foster the spread of democracy]
has been pushed hardest by a group of officials and advisors who have been the leading
proponents of going to war with Iraq. Prominent among them are Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy
defense secretary, and Richard Perle, –Greg Miller, "Democracy Domino Theory ‘Not Credible’,"
Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2003]

     [Woolsey, one of the most high-profile hawks in the war against Iraq and a key member of
the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, is a director of the Washington-based private equity firm
Paladin Capital. . . .

     An influential member of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, Perle is managing partner of
venture capital company Trireme, which invests in companies dealing in products of value to
homeland security.--Antony Barnett and Solomon Hughes, "Bush ally set to profit from the war on
terror," Guardian, May 11, 2003

     Bernard Weiner, "How We Got Into This Imperial Pickle: A PNAC Primer," Information
Clearing House, May 28, 2003

     Simon English, "Cheney had Iraq in sights two years ago," Telegraph (UK), July 22, 2003

     Jack Shafer, "The Times Scoops That Melted: Cataloging the wretched reporting of Judith
Miller," Slate, July 25, 2003

     Jerry Kroth, "Who Forged the Letters that Sucked Us into War? Israel, Yellowcake and the
Media," CounterPunch, August 2, 2003

     William Pierce, "Mossad and the Jewish Problem," National Alliance, August 2003

     [The Office of Special Plans (OSP), which worked alongside the Near East and South Asia
(NESA) bureau in Feith's domain, was originally created by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to review raw information collected by the official U.S.
intelligence agencies for connections between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

     Retired intelligence officials from the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency
(DIA), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have long charged that the two offices
exaggerated and manipulated intelligence about Iraq before passing it along to the White House.

     But key personnel who worked in both NESA and OSP were part of a broader network of
neo-conservative ideologues and activists who worked with other Bush political appointees
scattered around the national-security bureaucracy to move the country to war, according to
retired Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski, who was assigned to NESA from May 2002 through February
2003.--Jim Lobe, "Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network," Inter Press Service, August 7, 2003]

     [Most neocons share unwavering support for Israel, . . . The original neocons were a small
group of mostly Jewish liberal intellectuals . . .--"Neocon 101," Christian Science Monitor,
August 27, 2003]

     [IILG appears to be part of a carefully-constructed network aimed at channelling business
into Iraq.

     Interestingly, the firm's website is not registered in Salem Chalabi's (nephew of Ahmed
Chalabi) name but in the name of Marc Zell, whose address is given as Suite 716, 1800 K Street,
Washington. That is the address of the Washington office of Zell, Goldberg &Co, which claims to
be "one of Israel's fastest-growing business-oriented law firms", and the related FANDZ
International Law Group.

     The unusual name "FANDZ" was concocted from "F and Z", the Z being Marc Zell and the F
being Douglas Feith. The two men were law partners until 2001, when Feith took up his Pentagon
post as undersecretary of defence for policy.--Brian Whitaker, "Friends of the family,"
Guardian, September 24, 2003]

     Sidney Blumenthal, "Bush and Blair – the betrayal," Guardian, November 14, 2003

     "General: Israelis exaggerated Iraq threat," AP, December 4, 2003

     Julian Borger, "Israel trains US assassination squads in Iraq," Guardian (UK), December 9,
2003

     VIDEO: "The Lie Factory – How the Neocons & the Office of Special Plans Pushed
Disinformation and Bogus Intelligence on Iraq," Democracy Now, December 18, 2003

     Mark Thompson, "Paul Wolfowitz: The godfather of the Iraq war," Time, December 21, 2003

     [The liberation of Iraq, in the neocon scenario, would be followed by a democratic Iraq
that would quickly recognize Israel. This, in turn, would "snowball" - the analogy only works
in the Cedar Mountains of Lebanon - through the region, bringing democracy from Syria to Egypt
and to the sheikhdoms, emirates and monarchies of the Gulf.

     All these new democracies would then embrace Israel and hitch their backward economies to
the Jewish state's advanced technology.--Arnaud de Borchgrave, "Iraq and the Gulf of Tonkin,"
Washington Times, February 12, 2004]

     [In 1996, in a strategy paper crafted for Israel's Bibi Netanyahu, Richard Perle, Douglas
Feith and David Wurmser urged him to "focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power" as an
"Israeli strategic objective." Perle, Feith, Wurmser were all on Bush's foreign policy team on
9-11.

     - In 1998, eight members of Bush's future team, including Perle, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld,
wrote Clinton urging upon him a strategy that "should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam
Hussein."

     - On Jan. 1, 2001, nine months before 9-11, Wurmser called for U.S.-Israeli attacks "to
broaden the (Middle East) conflict to strike fatally ... the regimes of Damascus, Baghdad,
Tripoli, Teheran and Gaza ... to establish the recognition that fighting with either the United
States or Israel is suicidal."

     "Crises can be opportunities," added Wurmser.

     On Sept. 11, opportunity struck.

     On Sept. 15, according to author Bob Woodward, Paul Wolfowitz spoke up in the War Cabinet
to urge that Afghanistan be put on a back burner and an attack be mounted at once on Iraq,
though Iraq had had nothing to do with 9-11. Why Iraq? Said Wolfowitz, because it is "doable."

     On Sept. 20, 40 neoconservatives in an open letter demanded that Bush remove Saddam from
power, "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the (9-11) attack." Failure to do so,
they warned the president, "would constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war
on international terrorism."--Patrick J. Buchanan, "Have the Neocons Killed a Presidency?,"
Antiwar.com, February 16, 2004]

     "Pentagon offices face probe on Iraq claims," Reuters, February 19, 2004

     [The fact that so many of the authors of this war are Jewish is not important. That they
uncritically fit the alien shroud of Israeli far-right expansionist policy over American
security policy is. They supported Chalabi so recklessly because he promised to immediately
open relations between Iraq and Israel and begin piping oil to Israel.--Georgie Anne Geyer,
"THE TRUTH ALWAYS COMES OUT IN THE WASH," Universal Press Syndicate, February 20, 2004]

     [They wanted to put in a government friendly to the U.S., and they wanted permanent basing
in Iraq. . . .

     Almost a billion dollars has been spent - a billion dollars! - by David Kay's group to
search for these WMD, a total whitewash effort. They didn't find anything, they didn't expect
to find anything. . . .

     The last reason is the conversion, the switch Saddam Hussein made in the Food for Oil
program, from the dollar to the euro. He did this, by the way, long before 9/11, in November
2000 - selling his oil for euros.--Marc Cooper, "Soldier for the Truth: Exposing Bush's
talking-points war," L.A. Weekly, February 20 - 26, 2004]

     Stephen Green, "Serving Two Flags : Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Administration,"
CounterPunch, February 28, 2004

     [It has been important ever since Bush took office in January 2001 for the administration
to downplay any connection between Israel and the war against Iraq. Obfuscating the "Israeli
motive" of the war was almost certainly one of the reasons the administration so transparently
exaggerated first Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and, more recently,
Washington's desire for democracy in Iraq.--Bill Christison, "Faltering Neo-Cons Still
Dangerous," CounterPunch, March 5, 2004]

     Ed Blanche, "Neocons at work: Israel gets its 1st slice of Iraqi pie," The Daily Star,
March 17, 2004

     Emad Mekay, "9/11 Commission Director: Iraq War Launched to Protect Israel," Antiwar.com,
March 30, 2004

     [Powell felt Cheney and his allies – his chief aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith
and what Powell called Feith’s "Gestapo"
…

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