Iraq, Vietnam and the Philippines

A year ago, some commentators compared the Iraq War to the Filipino-American War of 1899-1902. There are many parallels between the two wars just as there are between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. What frightens me is that it may be the case that the Neocons who brought us the Iraq War may also see the parallels with the Filipino-American War. Why is that scary? Here is E. San Juan, Jr.:

A moment of reflection returns us to what Bernard Fall called "the first Vietnam," the Filipino-American War of 1899-1902, in which at least 1.4 million Filipinos died. The campaign to conquer the Philippines was designed in accordance with President McKinley's policy of "Benevolent Assimilation" of the uncivilized and unchristian natives, a "civilizing mission" that Mark Twain considered worthy of the Puritan settlers and the pioneers in the proverbial "virgin land." In Twain's classic prose: "Thirty thousand killed a million. It seems a pity that the historian let that get out; it is really a most embarrassing circumstance." This was a realization of the barbarism that Henry Adams feared before Admiral George Dewey entered Manila Bay on May 1, 1898:

"I turn green in bed at midnight if I think of the horror of a year's warfare in the Philippines where... we must slaughter a million or two of foolish Malays in order to give them the comforts of flannel petticoats and electric trailways."

In "Benevolent Assimilation": The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903 (1982), Stuart Creighton Miller recounts the U.S. military's "scorched earth" tactics in Samar and Batangas, atrocities from "search and destroy" missions reminiscent of Song My and My Lai in Vietnam. This episode in the glorious history of Empire is usually accorded a marginal footnote, or a token paragraph, in school textbooks. Miller only mentions in passing the U.S. attempt to subjugate the unhispanized Moros, the Muslim Filipinos in Mindanao and Sulu islands. On March 9, 1906, four years after President Theodore Roosevelt declared the war over, Major General Leonard Wood, commanding five hundred and forty soldiers, killed a beleaguered group of six hundred Muslim men, women and children in the battle of Mount Dajo. A less publicized but horrific battle occurred on June 13, 1913, when the Muslim sultanate of Sulu mobilized about 5,000 followers (men, women and children) against the American troops led by Capt. John Pershing. The battle of Mount Bagsak, 25 kilometers east of Jolo City, ended with the death of 340 Americans and of 2,000 (some say 3,000) Moro defenders. Pershing was true to form - earlier he had left a path of destruction in Lanao, Samal Island, and other towns where local residents fought his incursions. Anyone who resisted U.S. aggression was either a "brigand" or a seditious bandit. The carnage continued up to the "anti-brigandage" campaigns of the first three decades, which suppressed numerous peasant revolts and workers' strikes against the colonial state and its local agencies.

With the help of the U.S. sugar-beet lobby, the Philippine Commonwealth of 1935 was established, constituted with a compromise mix of laws and regulations then being tried in Puerto Rico, Cuba and Hawaii. Eventually the islands became a model of a pacified neocolony.

Why is the possibility that Rumsfeld, Cheney, et al., see the Iraq War as being like the Filipino-American War so frightening? Because in spite of the barbaric result of the American invasion of the Philippines, psychopathic imperialists think of it as a success. The Philippines have been firmly under control of the United States since then, what's not succesfsul about that?

George Galloway for Senate!

Stan Goff put it best:

Dear Democratic Elected Officials of the United States (with damn few exceptions),

I am writing this open letter to call your attention to the remarks made day before yesterday, May 17, 2005, to the United States Senate, by British MP George Galloway of the independent Respect Party. I do this because he serves as an example of why your party should be abandoned by the U.S. working class, by U.S. women, by oppressed nationalities in the United States, and by anyone who professes to be a progressive or a leftist.

George Galloway did that for which you have proven incapable; he spoke as an opposition. Since there seems to be a great dark space in the middle of your heads where the notion of opposition should be ­ a void filled by parliamentary molasses and the pusillanimous inabilty to tell simple truths ­ I suggest you all review the recordings of Galloway's confrontation with Republican Senator Norm "Twit" Coleman to see exactly how effortless it is to stand up to these cheap political bullies (watch the video). While you are at it, you can watch your colleague Carl Levin demonstrate exactly what I mean about most of you and your party, as he alternately hurls petulant cream-puff insults at Galloway and kisses Coleman's stunned, clueless ass to give that toothy dipshit some comfort in the wake of Galloway's verbal drubbing.

Galloway didn't have to walk up to the docket and slap the cowboy shit out of Coleman ­ though I admit I still struggle with my own secret urges to do just that with most of the air-brushed, combed-over, Stepford meat-puppets who now people the United States Congress. No, all Galloway had to do was tell the unvarnished truth, and it had exactly the same effect. If Democrats had half the spine that Galloway does if you would stop chasing your creepy little careers through the caviar and chicken-salad circuits of duck-and-cover American political double-speak, then not only would people like me not be calling for all to abandon the Democratic Party and take their fight to the streets like good Bolivians not only that, but you'd have won the last election.

...You don't deserve anyone's support, not even as a tactical matter any longer, because you end up doing ritual verbal combat then give the "cornpone Nazis" of the Republcan Party any goddamn thing they want. That's why Galloway rhetorically spanking that soap-opera-looking shitbird was the most satisfying thing many of us have seen in months.

That's exactly why some of us are saying go Bolivian on their asses. Tell the Democratic Leadership Council to eat shit and die. Stop working, stop obeying, block the streets and highways, shut down the capital, and watch them choke on their own sewage. If Americans weren't so bewildered by television, so addled and soft from junk food and cars and electronic appliances, and so addicted to their own cultural superficiality, they might begin organizing general strikes: women's strikes, workers strikes (without union bureaucrats to calm them down), Black people strikes, Brown people strikes, info-tech strikes, eco-strikes, all working our way up to One Big Strike.

They are throwing a match on the gasoline they poured

It is becoming increasingly hard to ignore the fact that the United States and Israel are doing their best to increase violence and hatred in Iraq, to make the war go worse, to make Iraq more of a mess. Many of the suicide bombings don’t make any sense unless you read them as having been ordered by the U.S. or Israel (can those two states be distinguished anymore? See Xymphora. According to Al Martin and John Kaminski even the Newsweek article on desecration of the Koran was orchestrated by the Bush forces in order to stoke Islamic rage against the “West” so as to justify Christian and Jewish hatred of Islam and support of World War III to destroy Arab nationalism, found “Greater Israel” as a Middle-Eastern superpower (once they get ahold of enough oil, watch out!), seize the oil for the Israel-U.S.-U.K. axis, to suppress domestic dissent and to replenish the armed forces of the United States (are they now the mercenary forces for Greater Israel?).

The release of the pictures of one of Saddam Hussein’s doubles in undewear was no accident either. That was intended to humiliate the Arab world. It’s pretty amazing what good physical shape this alcoholic, cancer-stricken imprisoned tyrant is. Probably because the real Saddam is either dead or receiving good medical care in a confortable retirement in Byelorussia (See Signs of the Times for evidence for this).

In the midst of all that George Bush risks the life of his wife to send her to to walk right into the heart of the conflict. This just weeks after Bush had the live grenade thrown at him in Georgia. Amazing! Of course it makes sense once you realize that the are TRYING to explode the whole world. “Creative destruction” and all that. Here’s Xymphora:

If someone had managed to shoot and kill Laura Bush while she walked around the Temple Mount with insufficient security and chaotic conditions, the Israelis would have pulled a Palestinian out of the crowd who would admit to being in Hamas or Hezbollah, and also admit to have been put up to it by Syria or Iran. American bombers would be dropping bombs within a week. See how easy it is to start a war? Perhaps some Secret Service agent accidentally got his head in the way of a clear shot (there is a first time for everything!). This would also leave Bush free to marry his true love immediately after his Presidency (after flying to Canada for the ceremony).

Now before dismissing all this as speculation, look at this report from Iraq quoted in Kaminski’s piece:

The first hint came in Imad Khadduri's "A warning to car drivers" written in Arabic and posted on www.albasrah.net on May 11. The dispatch was quickly picked up by two of the most realistic and reliable news sites on the Web, www.uruknet.info, which I try to read every day, and www.globalresearch.ca, which I try to read every week, since it offers less breaking and more analytical news. I consider these two sites essential to keeping up with the real news of the world, and highly recommend that you monitor them, too.

Khadduri recounted a scam that opens up a clear window to seeing who is perpetrating all this inexplicable violence in Iraq. Beyond the American attempt to pacify an outraged and abused nation through demonic destruction, and beyond the Iraqi attempt to resist this totalitarian takeover by a foreign conqueror, there are more than numerous acts of violence that simply can't be understood by straightforward explanations.

I mean, when a mosque blows up and Americans blame Islamic terrorists, whether Sunni or Shiite, it makes no sense. Muslims never blow up their own houses of worship. Or when reporters sympathetic to either the Iraqi cause of freedom, or even just general principles of international justice, are suddenly assassinated and the blame is placed on often imaginary Islamic extremists whose perspective is supported by these writers, how can anyone believe that Muslims did it, even thought this is what the Zionist American press and government continue to insist.

So who’s doing all these demented deeds? As if we didn’t know ....

Khadduri’s report went like this:

“A few days ago, an American manned check point confiscated the driver license of a driver and told him to report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for interrogation and in order to retrieve his license. The next day, the driver did visit the camp and he was allowed in the camp with his car. He was admitted to a room for an interrogation that lasted half an hour. At the end of the session, the American interrogator told him: ‘OK, there is nothing against you, but you do know that Iraq is now sovereign and is in charge of its own affairs. Hence, we have forwarded your
papers and license to al-Kadhimia police station for processing. Therefore, go there with this clearance to reclaim your license. At the police station, ask for Lt. Hussain Mohammed, who is waiting for you now. Go there now quickly, before he leaves his shift work”.

The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as if carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car and inspected it carefully. He found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors.

The only feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was indeed booby trapped by the Americans and intended for the al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad. The helicopter was monitoring his movement and witnessing the anticipated “hideous attack by foreign elements”.

The same scenario was repeated in Mosul, in the north of Iraq. A car was confiscated along with the driver’s license. He did follow up on the matter and finally reclaimed his car but was told to go to a police station to reclaim his license. Fortunately for him, the car broke down on the way to the police station. The inspecting car mechanic discovered that the spare tire was fully laden with explosives."

Deja Vu in the Big Muddy

I heard John Fogerty’s fine anti-Iraq War song on the radio again yesterday. This time I noticed the reference to Pete Seeger’s 1963 song “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.” Here are the lyrics to Fogerty’s song. They read well, but of course to get the full effect you have to listen to the song. Nothing reinforces the idea that Iraq is a monstrous replay of Vietnam than hearing the same voices that sang about Vietnam sing about Iraq. I also heard a recent live version of Bob Dylan’s “With God on Our Side,” and it was unexpectedly moving. It was never one of my favorite Dylan Songs—I thought it was a little sophomoric—but to hear it sung with a sixty-three year-old Dylan voice (today is his 63rd birthday!) it took on much more depth and meaning. Dylan sang it in a weary voice, expressing just in the sound that he’d seen it all before and that this is not going to end well, while, when he sang it in the sixties, it sounded like a clever young man who had read some history books. Here's Fogerty's song:

Deja Vu (All Over Again)

Did you hear 'em talkin' 'bout it on the radio?
Did you try to read the writing on the wall?
Did that voice inside you say I've heard it all before?
It's like Deja Vu all over again

Day by day I hear the voices rising
Started with a whisper like it did before
Day by day we count the dead and dying
Ship the bodies home while the networks all keep score

Did you hear 'em talkin' 'bout it on the radio?
Could your eyes believe the writing on the wall?
Did that voice inside you say I've heard it all before?
It's like Deja Vu all over again

One by one I see the old ghosts rising
Stumblin' 'cross Big Muddy
Where the light gets dim
Day after day another Momma's crying
She's lost her precious child
To a war that has no end

Did you hear 'em talkin' 'bout it on the radio?
Did you stop to read the writing at The Wall?
Did that voice inside you say
I've seen this all before?
It's like Deja Vu all over again
It's like Deja Vu all over again

John Fogerty
C2004 Cody River Music / ASCAP

Here are the lyrics to “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” by Pete Seeger referenced in Fogery’s song. Seeger sang it on TV in the Johnson administration and found himself blacklisted, unable to perform on TV for several years.

Waist Deep in the Big Muddy
Pete Seeger (1963)

It was back in 1942, I was part of a good platoon
We were on manoeuvres in Louisiana one night by the light of the moon
The Captain said, We got to ford the river, that's where it all began
We were knee deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fool kept yelling to push on

The Sergeant said, Sir, are you sure this is the way back to base
Sergeant, I once crossed this river not a mile above this place
It'll be a little soggy but we'll keep on slogging, we'll soon be on dry ground
We were waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fool kept yelling to push on

Captain, sir, with all this gear no man will be able to swim
Sergeant, don't be a nervous nellie, the Captain said to him
All we need is a little determination, follow me - I'll lead on
We were neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fool kept yelling to push on

All of a sudden the moon clouded over, all we heard was a gurgling cry
And a second later the Captain's helmet was all that floated by
The Sergeant said, Turn round, men, I'm in charge from now
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the Captain dead and gone

We stripped and dived and found his body stuck in the old quicksand
I guess he didn't know the water was deeper than the place where he'd once been
For another stream had joined the Muddy a half mile from where we'd gone
We were lucky to get out of the Big Muddy
When the damn fool kept yelling to push on

I don't want to draw conclusions, I'll leave that to yourself
Maybe you're still walking, maybe you're still talking
But every time I hear the news that old feeling comes back on
We're neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fools keep yelling to push on

Knee deep in the Big Muddy
And the fools keep yelling, Push on
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fools keep yelling, Push on
Waist deep, neck deep
We'll be drowning before too long
We're neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fools keep yelling to push on

Is the U.S. setting up the bombs in Iraq to start a civil war?

From the Bagdad Burning blog by the Iraqi, Riverbend quoted in Signs of the Times:

She stood in the crowded room as her drove of minions stood around her...?A huddling mass trying to draw closer to her aura of evil. The lights flashed against her fangs as her cruel lips curled into a grimace. It was meant to be a smile but it wouldn't reach her cold, lifeless eyes? It was a leer- the leer of the undead before a feeding...

The above was not a scene from Buffy the Vampire Slayer- it was just Condi Rice in Iraq a day ago. At home, we fondly refer to her as The Vampire. She's such a contrast to Bush- he simply looks stupid. She, on the other hand, looks utterly evil.

The last two weeks have been violent. The number of explosions in Baghdad alone is frightening. There have also been several assassinations- bodies being found here and there. It's somewhat disturbing to know that corpses are turning up in the most unexpected places. Many people will tell you it's not wise to eat river fish anymore because they have been nourished on the human remains being dumped into the river. That thought alone has given me more than one sleepless night. It is almost as if Baghdad has turned into a giant graveyard.

The latest corpses were those of some Sunni and Shia clerics- several of them well-known. People are being patient and there is a general consensus that these killings are being done to provoke civil war. Also worrisome is the fact that we are hearing of people being rounded up by security forces (Iraqi) and then being found dead days later- apparently when the new Iraqi government recently decided to reinstate the death penalty, they had something else in mind.

But back to the explosions. One of the larger blasts was in an area called Ma'moun, which is a middle class area located in west Baghdad. It?s a relatively calm residential area with shops that provide the basics and a bit more. It happened in the morning, as the shops were opening up for their daily business and it occurred right in front of a butchers shop. Immediately after, we heard that a man living in a house in front of the blast site was hauled off by the Americans because it was said that after the bomb went off, he sniped an Iraqi National Guardsman.

I didn't think much about the story- nothing about it stood out: an explosion and a sniper- hardly an anomaly. The interesting news started circulating a couple of days later. People from the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb. Rumor has it that he saw an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. He was promptly taken away.

The bombs are mysterious. Some of them explode in the midst of National Guard and near American troops or Iraqi Police and others explode near mosques, churches, and shops or in the middle of sougs. One thing that surprises us about the news reports of these bombs is that they are inevitably linked to suicide bombers. The reality is that some of these bombs are not suicide bombs- they are car bombs that are either being remotely detonated or maybe time bombs. All we know is that the techniques differ and apparently so do the intentions. Some will tell you they are resistance. Some say Chalabi and his thugs are responsible for a number of them. Others blame Iran and the SCIRI militia Badir.

In any case, they are terrifying. If you're close enough, the first sound is a that of an earsplitting blast and the sounds that follow are of a rain of glass, shrapnel and other sharp things. Then the wails begin- the shrill mechanical wails of an occasional ambulance combined with the wail of car alarms from neighboring vehicles? and finally the wail of people trying to sort out their dead and dying from the debris.

And Now for Some Real Heretics, Part 16

Continued from Part 15

“There’s a woman, on my block, who sits there, as the night grows still, saying, “Who’s going to take away their license to kill.” Bob Dylan, “License to Kill”

Before moving on, let’s sum up Inside the Men’s Club by “Hawthorne Abendsen.” Think of his three animals: the ram, the goat and the lamb. The ram represents the ritual killing, rulers who sacrifice, those who have decided to kill rather than be killed.. The goat is the lower-class counterpoint, representing lust and mechanically following one’s needs and desires. The lamb is the sacrificed (murdered) son/god or he who decided to be killed rather than kill. We have a semi-secret, multi-generational group which seems to have a thing for blood sacrifice, pedophilia and ritual homosexuality intent on placing its members in strategic positions of power. Abendsen calls it the Men’s Club, Bramley calls it “the Brotherhood of the Serpent” or just “the Brotherhood.” Laura Knight-Jadczyk has called it “the Consortium.”

We also see the imposition of a certain type of monotheism, Bramley calls it “custodial” and claims that it is designed to further the ends of another “race” besides the human race. The “covenant” of this monotheism is sealed by a ritual of painful bloodletting (circumcision) searing its imprint on male babies at the time of imprinting (see this from Laura Knight-Jadczyk). This particular form of monotheism posits linear history, happening once and culminating in the End of Time.

Abendsen:

COMMON PATRIARCHAL RELIGION

What is not commonly known is that originally both I-E [Indo-European] and Hebraic tribesworshipped identical Ram-Gods of Fire (fire from Heaven - lightning,thunder), Blood and War. (Even in Egypt in period the ram-headed Amonbecame the chief deity, with the death-god Set second most popular.) The
I-E invaders of India had their fire-god Agni, evoked in the sacrifice of a white ram. in he legend of Phrixos, Jason and the Argonauts' search for the Golden Fleece belonging to their ancestors, a ram-cult is indicated. For example, archeological studies (supported by Greek myth) demonstrate that the Argive mycenaeans revered the ram as a symbol of royalty, i.e., the warlord caste.

Among the Hebrews, the internal evidence of the OT itself indicates that the god El (or Elohim) originally was likened to a ram and was worshipped by the passing of a lamb through sacred fire and by the spilling of its blood. 'El" translates "high "I in the sense of high-leaping: 'Elhim" (cf. Elohim) has the literal meaning of ram, the high- leaping animal, strong in hi butting horns. There is the substitute-sacrifice of Abraham': firstborn in lamb form, and the ritual Passover lamb, celebrating the time when lamb's blood smeared on doorposts spared the Hebrews from the Angel of Death (God) during their revolt against thePharaoh. These conclusions are obvious.

Considering the fact that priests of this period were also astrologers, it is no coincidence that --at this precise period-the New Year's Sun (rising on the Spring Equinox) moved out of the constellation of the Bull and into that of the Ram.

However, the ram was not the only symbol used. The ram was, to be precise, only the Son of God, his general. ('Israel' can be translated "God's general' or 'God is the Army.") God the Father, the deity of the Sky in which his Son (lightning/storm) reigned, was universally represented as the Eagle or similar bird. The Hebrew "spirit of God' ruach in proto-Semitic means 'eagle," hence the Arabian Nights' mythic 'roc' bird. Father Sky Zeus had his eagle form just as the Vedic (I-E) Indra his "garudall thunder-bird. What is of particular relevance here is the eternally recurrent symbolism of the Eagle of Empire in the heraldic
symbolism of patriarchal nations in the West, whether Rome, Germany, or the United States.

There seem to be three periods of sharp disconinuity in pre-history and early history. Let’s say 8,000 BC, 3,000 BC and 1,500 BC. As for the Neolithic revolution (agriculture and domestication of animals) of ca. 8,000 BC recent research has turned traditional understandings upside-down. It is usually thought that agriculture preceded urbanism, in other words that villages preceded towns and cities. Lewis Mumford and V. Gordon Childe are good examples of this. A newer view, following on excavations of Catal Huyuk and Jericho, towns that existed 10,000 years ago, and the work of Jane Jacobs and Ian Hodder, holds that cities caused domestication of crops and animals and the formation of villages. These early cities were dismissed by earlier generations of ubanists and pre-historians because they lacked writing, centralized power under a king, and other symptoms of the State. They also did not seem patriarchal. Interestingly, they seemed to be based on an associative model, rather than a class-stratified, exploitative model.

This changed around 3,000 BC beginning in the city-states of Mesopotamia, notably Ur (where, interestingly, Abraham was from). The polity of these city-states has been called Ancient Despotism. There followed a 1,500 year period of development where there was a degree of balance between the dominator-patriarchal mode and remnants of the cooperative, matriarchal mode ending with the dominance of the patriarchal mode. The period circa 1,500 BC saw the overthrowing of the older despotims by the Indo-European war machine, characterized by an even stronger patriarchal ideology, one that would bring about a religious revolution in addition to the political revolutions. All this can be seen in the development of mythology and religion during that period.

The term “matriarchal” may be misleading, if we accept Riane Eisner’s Dominator verus Partnership model. In other words, the earlier partnership societies were not matriarchal in the sense of being RULED by women, they may not have been “ruled” in the sense we (in a patriarchal society) understand that term. Patriarchal societies, on the other hand, are certainly ruled by men or by the men’s club to use Abendsen’s term. Laura Knight-Jadczyk writes the following in "The Grail Quest and the Destiny of Man":

Ms. Eisler, an acclaimed scholar, has developed what she calls "Cultural Transformation Theory," which proposes that there are two basic models of society underlying the great diversity of human culture. The first is the "Dominator Model," that can be termed a patriarchy OR matriarchy. It consists of ranking one half of humanity over another, in the broadest terms, but essentially can be any situation where any group dominates and any other group is considered inferior.

The second model is what Ms. Eisler calls the "Partnership Model," which is based on the principle of "linking rather than ranking."

…Ms. Eisler proposes that the "original direction in the mainstream of our cultural evolution was toward partnership, but that, following a period of chaos and almost total cultural disruption, there occurred a fundamental social shift, and that this "cataclysmic turning point during the prehistory of Western civilization, when the direction of our cultural evolution was quite literally turned around" was brought about by invaders who "ushered in a very different form of social organization." These were people who "worshipped the lethal power of the blade - the power to take rather than give life" and that this became the ultimate power to establish and enforce domination.

As Ms. Eisler acutely points out:

If we stop and think about it, there are only two basic ways of structuring the relations between the female and male halves of humanity. All societies are patterened on either a dominator model - in which human hierarchies are ultimately backed up by force or the threat of force - or a partnership model, with variations in between.

If we look at the whole span of our cultural evolution from the perspective of cultural transformation theory, we see that the roots of our present global crises go back to the fundamental shift in our prehistory that brought enormous changes not only in social structure but also in technology. This was the shift in emphasis from technologies that sustain and enhance life to the technologies symbolized by the Blade: technologies designed to destroy and dominate. This has been the technological emphasis through most of recorded history. And it is this technological emphasis, rather than technology per se, that today threatens all life on our globe.[Eisler, 1987]

Gathering a vast array of scholarly evidence, Ms. Eisler provides the missing data that tells a story that began many thousands of years ago; a story of how the original "Partnership" direction of Western Culture, the "Chalice," was transformed into a "bloody five-thousand year dominator detour" of the "Blade."

And here we see again this figure: 5000 years ago. And it will come up again and again.

… Suddenly, at a certain point, 5000 years ago, serpents are associated with the goddess, where before, they were apparently not! What happened to bring about this association?

…By 4000 B.C., Goddess figures appeared at Ur and Uruk, both on the southern end of the Euphrates river, not far from the Persian Gulf. At about this same period, the Neolithic Badarian and Amaratian cultures of Egypt first appeared. It is at these sites that agriculture first emerged in Egypt; and once again, goddess figurines were discovered.

From that point on, with the invention of writing, history as we know it, emerged in both Sumer and Egypt - about 3000 B.C. (5000 years ago!) In every area of the Near and Middle East, the Goddess was known in historic times. It is pretty clear that many changes must have taken place in both the forms and modes of worship, but, in various ways, the worship of the Female Goddess survived into classical Greece and Rome. It was not totally suppressed until the time of the Christian emperors of Rome and Byzantium, who closed the last Goddess Temples about 500 A.D.

It appears that the Goddess ruled alone in the beginning. At some point she acquired a son or brother who was also her lover and consort. He is generally assumed to have been part of the female religion in much earlier times.

It was this youth who was symbolized by the male role in the annual sexual union with the Goddess. He was known in various languages as Damuzi, Tammuz, Attis, Adonis, Osiris or Baal. This consort died in his youth causing an annual period of grief and lamentation among those who paid homage to the Goddess. Wherever we find symbolism and rituals of the young god, we can recognize the presence of the religion of the Goddess.

The people of the early Neolithic cultures of the Near and Middle East may have come down from Europe, possibly the descendants of the Gravettian-Aurignacian cultures. Later, waves of more Northern people descended on both Europe and the Near East. There has been some conjecture that these were the descendants of the Mesolithic (15000 - 8000 B.C.) Maglemosian and Kunda cultures of Northern Europe. But, their arrival was NOT a gradual assimilation - it was wave after wave of aggressive invasion.

These northern invaders, generally known as Indo-Europeans, brought their own religion with them: the worship of a young warrior god and a supreme father god. Their arrival in the Near East is attested to by 2400 B.C., but there may have been several earlier invasions.
After these invasions, the worship of the Mother Goddess fluctuated from city to city. As the invaders gained more and more territory over the next two thousand years, the male began to appear as the dominant husband or even the murderer of the Goddess!

Up to this point in time, writing seems to have been primarily used for the business accounts of the temples. The arriving Northern groups adopted this writing and used it for their own purposes.

Professor Chiera comments: 'It is strange to notice that practically all the existing literature was put down in written form a century or two after 2000 B.C.' Whether this suggests that written language was never considered as a medium for myths and legends before that time or that existing tablets were destroyed and rewritten at that time remains an open question." [Stone, 1976] (emphasis, mine)

Over and over again in the studies of the ancient religions it is noted that, in place after place, the goddess was debased and replaced by a male deity after the coming of the Northern Peoples. The transition was accomplished by brutally violent massacres and territorial acquisition throughout the Near and Middle East.

The Northern Invaders left neither tablets nor temples to explain why or how they came to choose a male deity. These "Sons of the North Wind, Aeolus" - these Nordics - are referred to variously as Indo-Europeans, Indo-Iranians, Indo-Aryans, or simply Aryans. There seems to be a complete lack of evidence of their culture in the Northern areas of Russia and the Caucasus. It is thought that maybe they were just illiterate nomads - hunting and fishing groups or just shepherds. But, in the opinion of the present writer, this idea is not supported by their culture, which they imposed on so many conquered peoples, as we will see further on.

Nevertheless, their existence, once they burst upon the historical scene, is described as aggressive warriors riding two abreast in horse-drawn war chariots; or as big sailors who navigated the rivers and coastlines of Europe and the Near East. Jaquetta Hawkes writes:

On no subject have authorities differed so completely or with greater lack of objectivity than on the origins of these cultures. The reason for this partisanship lies in the one thing the authorities are agreed upon - that the BATTLE AXE cultures represent the roots of the Indo-European speaking peoples. ...What can be said with some certainty is that the battle axe people had a large ethnic, social and cultural inheritance from the hunter-fishers of the forest cultures such as the Maglemosian and Kunda. ...Though it may not always or everywhere have been so, this character came in time to be dominantly pastoral, patriarchal, warlike and expansive. [quoted by Stone, 1976]

These Maglemosian and Kunda people of Mesolithic times (15000 - 8000 B.C.) were generally located in the forest and coastal areas of northern Europe, especially in Denmark. Their sites were generally much further north than those of the earlier Gravettian-Aurignacian groups.

The invasions of the Aryans took place in waves over a period of up to three thousand years according to standard archaeology. The invasions of the historical period are attested to by literature and artifacts, and are agreed upon by scholars. Those of prehistoric times are suggested by speculative etymological connections.

What is most significant in the historic records is that these Northern invaders viewed themselves as a very superior people. They were aggressive and continually in conflict with not only the peoples they conquered, but among themselves as well. Their coming revolutionized the art of war. They introduced the horse-drawn chariot, and the charioteer became a new aristocracy.

Historical, mythological and archaeological evidence suggests that it was these northern people who brought with them the concepts of light as good and dark as evil and of a supreme male deity. The arrival of the Aryans, the presentation of their male deities as superior to female deities, and the subsequent interweaving of the two theologies are recorded mythologically in each culture. It is in these myths that we can discover the attitude that led to the destruction of the Goddess.

The Aryan male god, unlike the son-lover of the Goddess, was frequently depicted as a storm god, high on a mountain, blazing with the light of fire or lightning. (Haven't we heard this before?!) In many of these myths, the goddess is depicted as a serpent or dragon, associated with darkness and evil. Sometimes the dragon is neuter or even male, but in such cases, is closely associated with the goddess, usually as her son.

The Goddess religion seems to have assimilated the male deities into the older forms of worship, and survived as the popular religion of the people for thousands of years after the initial Aryan invasions. But her position had been greately lowered and continued to decline. It was the assaults of the Hebrews and eventually the Christians that finally suppressed the religion.

Strangely, it is in the accounts of the Aryans that we find the original religious ideas of the Hebrews. There is the mountain-top god who blazes with light; there is the duality between light and darkness symbolized as good and evil; there is the myth of the male deity defeating the serpent; and there is the supreme leadership of a ruling class: the priestly Levites. All of these are to be found in both the Indo-European and Hebrew religious concepts and politics! The Indo-European patterns were either adopted by the Hebrews, or the Hebrews were Indo-Europeans from the start. But, the end result was that the same ideas and attitudes were later adopted by Christianity.

To be continued...

I Guess the Zombies Won't Impeach Him

Subjective thinking has become so entrenched in the Unites States that if you try to present any objective analysis, you will get some of the blankest stares you have ever seen. The fact that the United States is losing an illegal war sold on the basis on lies, that we are headed for a preventable economic crash, that the treasury has been looted, that are lives are being taken over and our futures are being ruined by an alliance of corporate feudalists and religious fascists, none of this registers. It is seen as the inevitable outcome of the laws of nature, like the weather.

This past week saw the release of a secret memo, that should be the smoking gun leading to articles of impeachment against George Bush if it weren't for the complete impassiveness of the American people (and the pathetic nature of our media: the New York Times burined the story).

The Signs of the Times assembled several pieces on the memo.

Here's Juan Cole :

A top secret British memorandum dated 23 July 2002 was leaked in the run-up to yesterday's parliamentary elections in the UK (which Blair won, though his Labour Party was much weakened by public disgust with such shenanigans as the below). I mirror the memo below, from the Times Online site. It summarizes a report to Blair and others in the British government by Sir Richard Dearlove (This is the press release when he was appointed in 1999). The head of MI6, or the foreign intelligence service of the UK, is known as "C." Here is the smoking gun:

"C" [Dearlove] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a
perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

It is not surprising on the face of it that Bush had decided on the Iraq war by summer of 2002. It it is notable that Dearlove noticed a change in views on the subject from earlier visits. By summer of 2002, the Afghanistan war had wound down and al-Qaeda was on the run, so Bush no longer felt vulnerable and was ready to go forward with his long-cherished project of an Iraq War. What is notable is that all this was not what Bush was telling us.Bush was lying to the American people at the time and saying that no final decision had been made on the war.

That, my firends, is an impeachable offence.

Here's Ray McGovern:

Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would see those words in black and white—and beneath a SECRET stamp, no less. For three years now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been saying that the CIA and its British counterpart, MI-6, were ordered by their countries' leaders to "fix facts" to "justify" an unprovoked war on Iraq. More often than not, we have been greeted with stares of incredulity.

It has been a hard learning—that folks tend to believe what they want to believe. As long as our evidence, however abundant and persuasive, remained circumstantial, it could not compel belief. It simply is much easier on the psyche to assent to the White House spin machine blaming the Iraq fiasco on bad intelligence than to entertain the notion that we were sold a bill of goods.

Well, you can forget circumstantial. Thanks to an unauthorized disclosure by a courageous whistleblower, the evidence now leaps from official documents—this time authentic, not forged. Whether prompted by the open appeal of the international Truth-Telling Coalition or not, some brave soul has made the most explosive "patriotic leak" of the war by giving London's Sunday Times the official minutes of a briefing by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's CIA equivalent, MI-6. Fresh back in London from consultations in Washington, Dearlove briefed Prime Minister Blair and his top national security officials on July 23, 2002, on the Bush administration's plans to make war on Iraq.

Finally, here's Greg Palast:

Here it is. The smoking gun. The memo that has, "IMPEACH HIM" written all over it.

The top-level government memo marked "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL," dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WDM. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Read that again: "The intelligence and facts were being fixed...."

For years, after each damning report on BBC TV, "Isn't this grounds for impeachment?" Vote rigging, a blind eye to terror and the bin Ladens before 9-11, and so on. Evil, stupidity and self-dealing are shameful but not impeachable. What's needed is a "high crime or misdemeanor."

And if this ain't it, nothing is.

The memo, uncovered this week by the Times, goes on to describe an elaborate plan by George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to hoodwink the planet into supporting an attack on Iraq knowing full well the evidence for war was a phony.

For a deeper look at what we're up against, see this Signs of the Times editorial:

In an essay entitled "Eyes wide shut?" published in the April 30, 2005 issue of The New Scientist, Patricia Churchland tackles the ever-thorny problem of consciousness. In brief, she argues that neuroscience will provide the key to understanding consciousness as it elaborates four conditions:

1. We understand how macro events emerge from the properties and organisations of the micro events;
2. novel phenomena can be predicted;
3. the system can be manipulated;
4. and it is clear at what level of brain organisation the phenomenon resides.

In the coded language of neuroscience, the term "macro events" refers to consciousness, which, according to Churchland and many, many others, "emerges" from the "properties and organisations of the micro events, that is, the workings of the brain". In other words, consciousness emerges from evolution when the appropriate level of complexity is reached in the nervous system. It is neither the cause, the foundation, nor the prime mover of that evolution.

Churchland admits that "science is moving forward on the problem, but has not yet nailed down the answers - and no one really knows what the answers will look like." She admits, as well, that "neuroscience is a very young science, still in search of its own exoskeleton - the fundamental principles that explain how nervous systems work. Although an enormous amount is known about the structure and function of individual neurons, how macro effects emerge from populations of neurons remains poorly understood."

Fine so far. She sets out her ideas and her belief that consciousness will ultimately be explained through work on neuroscience: "a theory of consciousness will co-evolve with an understanding of the fundamentals of brain function."

But as she admits, we aren't there yet, so she cannot know this to be the case. It is, one might suggest, an intuition.

The trouble is that Ms Churchland spends a large portion of her essay criticising intuition in the domain of consciousness research, as long as these intuitions do not agree with her own. One in particular receives a severe dose of ridicule:

Among these intuitions is the idea that there could be a zombie like me in all respects - all, save that it lacks qualia. A lack of qualia means it doesn't have the "experience" of redness when it sees a London bus, but like me would say: "Look! There is a red London bus." Incredibly (I'm not making this up) zombie-me would have exactly the same conversations about conscious experience that I do. For example, we both say: "When I dream, I am aware of actions, such as flying, but not aware of how bizarre those actions are." The difference is that zombie-me has neither experiences nor qualia to talk about.

Could there be such a zombie? "Perhaps not," says the purveyor of zombies. "It is a thought-experiment-zombie." Fine. But so what? "Well, the mere imagining of such a thing entails that consciousness cannot be a property of the brain..." Good grief. As a colleague once muttered in despair, this argument is not even wrong.

Dennett is right about most of the philosophically pampered intuitions, especially those bravely predicting that "science can never, ever explain consciousness". These intuitions and the arguments they spawn have been repeatedly exposed as confusions, fallacies, circularities, failures of
imagination, arguments from ignorance and just plain bunk.

Ouch! Unfortunately, Ms Churchland's belief that the answers will come from neuroscience is as much an intuition as her zombie example. Moreover, there is an awful lot of evidence that supports the existence of such zombies. It has been gathered through observation, it is repeatable, and it allows one to make predictions. This evidence would also be dismissed without a thought by Ms Churchland because it is not "scientific" according to her unfortunately limited idea of what constitutes, or could constitute, science.

Could her limited view of science be related to the question of the existence of zombies?

First, let us do a thought experiment. Imagine a philosopher and neuroscientist who is herself a zombie. Her standards of what constitutes experience and an inner life would be limited to zombie experiences. When a non-zombie described his or her experiences to her, she would interpret them according to her own experiences. Those aspects that were foreign to her would either be reduced to fit her own experiences or would be rejected as impossible.

Isn't this what we see over and over again in the split between the materialists and the idealists in philosophy, in the split between science and mysticism, in the split between those who believe that there is nothing after death and those who have a deep conviction that there is? One would think that, if we really are all just 'one race', and after thousands of years of argument from both sides, the question would be resolved one way or another. Can we take the lack of resolution as evidence that the question goes to the heart of human experience?

Interestingly, many of those who would argue there is something more to consciousness than can be explained by neuroscience have the conviction that a scientific answer could be found if science was to open up its horizons, while those who hold the opposing view completely dismiss the need for science to incorporate lessons from other domains. This suggests to us that the experience or consciousness of the hard-science proponents is more restricted than that of those who are more open. The hard-science proponents' experience might be a subset of the experience of the others. This implies that while the "zombie" scientists could never understand the other group, the other group could understand the limits of the zombies.

The distinction between zombies and others is the distinction that we draw between 'organic portals' and 'potentially souled individuals'. What is missing from the scientific and philosophical debate in academia is the understanding that the difference in experience between the two types of people has to do with their ability to perceive what the esoteric Tradition calls the 'A' and 'B' influences, not their different experiences of the colour red. The zombies, or 'organic portals', are only equipped to perceive the 'A' influences. These are the trappings of the material world, the influences that are related to our basic desires for sex, food, and security. Grand and elaborate scientific and philosophical theories can be formulated based only upon those influences. These theories can be complex and accurately describe the world from the point of view of the 'A' influences, but they are missing a part of the world that the organic portal does not experience and therefore does not even recognise is missing. For them, these theories do take in all the available data because the rest of the data is not available to them because the data falls outside of their range of perceptions.

Unfortunately, as we have discussed elsewhere, the very capacities that form the basis for a belief in the afterlife or in the reality of there being "something more" to life can often be hindrances in getting ahead in our world. In this case, those who hold the reigns of power and decision-making, including within the sciences, would tend to be those of one persuasion, the 'zombie' or 'organic portal' persuasion. Their standards would be the standards of society, and therefore those who have a larger experience would be continually forced to reduce their knowledge to conform to the standards of those who set the rules, or who hand out the science grants.
And that is, in fact, what we see around us. Scientists who wish to investigate data that fall outside of the realm of experience of the zombie, or organic portal, are ridiculed, their grants are denied, and if they push hard enough, their careers can be ruined. The dominant scientific paradigm is as entrenched as the belief of Bush's supporters that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that he was involved in 9/11.

Churchland ends her essay with the following:

But the unglamorous truth is that science will come to understand the components of consciousness in pretty much the same way it has come to understand the nature of

911 News Flash!

(Note: It has been pointed out to me that Haaretz online edition puts today's date on archived articles and that the quoted article probably came out much earlier than "today")

Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, published an article today admitting what, up until now, was relegated to conspiracy theorists: that some Odigo employees in the World Trade Center received instant messages warning them in advance of the 911 attacks!

Odigo, the instant messaging service, says that two of its workers received messages two hours before the Twin Towers attack on September 11 predicting the attack would happen, and the company has been cooperating with Israeli and American law enforcement, including the FBI, in trying to find the original sender of the message predicting the attack.

Micha Macover, CEO of the company, said the two workers received the messages and immediately after the terror attack informed the company's management, which immediately contacted the Israeli security services, which brought in the FBI.

"I have no idea why the message was sent to these two workers, who don't know the sender. It may just have been someone who was joking and turned out they accidentally got it right. And I don't know if our information was useful in any of the arrests the FBI has made," said Macover. Odigo is a U.S.-based company whose headquarters are in New York, with offices in Herzliya.

As an instant messaging service, Odigo users are not limited to sending messages only to people on their "buddy" list, as is the case with ICQ, the other well-known Israeli instant messaging application.

Odigo usually zealously protects the privacy of its registered users, said Macover, but in this case the company took the initiative to provide the law enforcement services with the originating Internet Presence address of the message, so the FBI could track down the Internet Service Provider, and the actual sender of the original message.

I am willing to bet that the sender is never identified. Just like the people who purchased "put" options on American Airlines and United Airlines before 911 were never identified. Just like the perpetrators of the anthrax attacks were never identified.

If The War on Iran is Scheduled for June, When Will the False Flag Terrorist Attack Take Place?

How can the overstretched military of the United States, currently losing two wars, possibly have the resources to attack Iran? Many are saying what, before 911, would have been almost unthinkable: that Israel and their allies in the United States national security state may stage a false flag terrorist attack and blame it on Iran:

New information and threats, including this commercial video (available from the Iran Freedom Foundation home page) and other neoconservative rants regarding an "Iranian" nuclear threat have prompted an essential update to this piece regarding the extensive record of recently arrested Israeli, not Iranian operatives, often around nuclear facilities in America.

This campaign designed to prepare the American people to blame Iran for a possible upcoming nuclear terrorist attack fits the description of a Mossad false flag operation, especially because of Israel's numerous, even flagrant recent violations of American nuclear security.

Citizens can afford to waste no time informing the President, the Pentagon, Congress, State Officials, FBI Counter Intelligence and the press that we are aware of the intent of this propaganda campaign and are not fooled. Recent Israeli and US efforts to publicly distance themselves from war plans for Iran may be part of a campaign to appear peaceful, such that a terrorist attack falsely blamed on Iran with the full force of the international media will look all the more brutal and undeserved.

Today's Signs of the Times has assembled several articles detailing Israeli spying and false flag operations. We have already mentioned that many signs point to the fact that 911 may have been an Israeli false flag operation. The Signs page quotes this piece that argues (and they are not alone in this) that the Palestinian arch-terrorist, Abu Nidal, was working for the Israeli Mossad:

Author Patrick Seale wrote:

Abu Nidal was undoubtedly a Mossad agent. Practically every job he did benefited Israel.

Confirming Seale's theory are top Middle East terrorism experts, including intelligence officers in Arab countries, and even within Abu Nidal's own organization.
All the European and Mid-East terror experts agree that Nidal was Mossad.

He was a protégé of Menachem Begin's ... ran free for 30 yrs ...used to kill unwanted Palestinians

Seale pointed out the senseless and extremely brutal attacks only benefited Israel. Nidal had two thrusts .... He killed Palestinians that were a threat to Israel, and hijacked American and European jets. [...]

The 1972 Munich Olympic massacre

Abu's organization, Black September, invaded the Munich's Olympic village, and took the Israeli Olympics team hostage. There was a standoff, and the Germans agreed to let the Nidal's operatives escape. They go to an airport were they are ambushed, and some of the terrorists were killed as well as 11 Israelis .

Israel has the Mossad assassinate the 11 Arabs connected, but don't touch Abu Nidal.
The odd part --- Abu Nidal killed from 1972 till 2002, and the Mossad never retaliated and killed him?[...]

The Abu Nidal Organization had operated for over 30 years, and was responsible for over 900 deaths. Targets included hijackings, bombings, and assassination of troublesome Palestinian leaders.

Comment: Gosh, the great "Palestinian terrorist" was a Mossad agent all along!? Nidal was the man responsible for Black September, the massacre of Israel Olympic athletes in Munich. He was responsible for the hijacked plane that finished with a shoot-out at Entebbe. If there was an event that marked the Palestinians as "terrorists", these were surely near the top. For the next three decades, Israel's right-wing denounced Arafat as a "terrorist" and refused to deal with him. Black September certainly was key in justifying that stance.

Now that Larry Franklin was arrested for spying on the United States for Israel this week, WhatReallyHappened.com has published a list of Israeli spy operations against the United States that is worth quoting at length:

Once again, Israel has been caught with spies at the highest levels of the US
Government.

1947. Information collected by the ADL in its spy operations on US citizens is used by the House Select Committee on Unamerican Activities. Subcommittee Chair Clare Hoffman dismisses the ADL’s reports on suspected communists as “hearsay."

1950 John Davitt, former chief of the Justice Department's internal security section notes that the Israeli intelligence service is the second most active in the United States after the Soviets.

1954 A hidden microphone planted by the Israelis is discovered in the Office of the US Ambassador in Tel Aviv

1956 Telephone taps are found connected to two telephones in the residence of the US military attaché in Tel Aviv.

1954 "The Lavon Affair". Israeli agents recruit Egyptian citizens of Jewish descent to bomb Western targets in Egypt, and plant evidence to frame Arabs, in an apparent attempt to upset US-Egyptian relations. Israeli defense minister Pinchas Lavon is eventually removed from office, though many think real responsibility lay with David Ben-Gurion.

1965 Israel apparently illegally obtains enriched uranium from NUMEC Corporation. (Washington Post, 6/5/86, Charles R. Babcock, "US an Intelligence Target of the Israelis, Officials Say.")

1967 Israel attacks the USS Liberty, an intelligence gathering vessel flying a US flag, killing 34 crew members. See "Assault on the Liberty," by James M. Ennes, Jr. (Random House). In 2004, Captain Ward Boston, Senior Legal Counsel for the Navy’s Court of Inquiry into the attack swears under oath that President Lyndon Johnson ordered the investigation to conclude accident, even though the evidence indicates the attack was deliberate. Given the use by Israel of unmarked boats and planes, and the machine-gunning of USS Liberty’s lifeboats, the most likely explanation is that USS Liberty was to be sunk with all hands, with evidence left to frame Egypt for the sinking. This would have dragged the US into the war on Israel’s side.

1970 While working for Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Richard Perle is caught by the FBI giving classified information to Israel. Nothing is done.

1978, Stephen Bryen, then a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer, is overheard in a DC hotel offering confidential documents to top Israeli military officials. Bryen obtains a lawyer, Nathan Lewin, and the case heads for the grand jury, but is mysteriously dropped. Bryen later goes to work for Richard Perle.

1979 Shin Beth [the Israeli internal security agency] tries to penetrate the US Consulate General in Jerusalem through a “Honey Trap”, using a clerical employee who was having an affair with a Jerusalem girl.

1985 The New York Times reports the FBI is aware of at least a dozen incidents in which American officials transferred classified information to the Israelis, quoting [former Assistant Director of the F.B.I.] Mr. [Raymond] Wannal. The Justice Department does not prosecute.

1985 Richard Smyth, the owner of MILCO, is indicted on charges of smuggling nuclear timing devices to Israel (Washington Post, 10/31/86).

1987 April 24 Wall Street Journal headline: "Role of Israel in Iran-Contra Scandal Won't be Explored in Detail by Panels"

1992 The Wall Street Journal reports that Israeli agents apparently tried to steal Recon Optical Inc's top-secret airborne spy-camera system.

1992 Stephen Bryen, caught offering confidential documents to Israel in 1978, is serving on board of the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs while continuing as a paid consultant -- with security clearance -- on exports of sensitive US technology.

1992 "The Samson Option," by Seymour M. Hersh reports, “Illicitly obtained intelligence was flying so voluminously from LAKAM into Israeli intelligence that a special code name, JUMBO, was added to the security markings already on the documents. There were strict orders, Ari Ben-Menashe recalled: "Anything marked JUMBO was not supposed to be discussed with your American counterparts."

1993. The ADL is caught operating a massive spying operation on critics of Israel, Arab-Americans, the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU Local 10, Oakland Educational Association, NAACP, Irish Northern Aid, International Indian Treaty Council, the Asian Law Caucus and the San Francisco police. Data collected was sent to Israel and in some cases to South Africa. Pressure from Jewish organizations forces the city to drop the criminal case, but the ADL settles a civil lawsuit for an undisclosed sum of cash.

1995 The Defense Investigative Service circulates a memo warning US military contractors that "Israel aggressively collects [US] military and industrial technology." The report stated that Israel obtains information using "ethnic targeting, financial aggrandizement, and identification and exploitation of individual frailties" of US citizens.

1996 A General Accounting Office report "Defense Industrial Security: Weaknesses in US Security Arrangements With Foreign-Owned Defense Contractors" found that according to intelligence sources "Country A" (identified by intelligence sources as Israel, Washington Times, 2/22/96) "conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally." The Jerusalem Post (8/30/96) quoted the report, "Classified military information and sensitive military technologies are high-priority targets for the intelligence agencies of this country." The report described "An espionage operation run by the intelligence organization responsible for collecting scientific and technologic information for [Israel] paid a US government employee to obtain US classified military intelligence documents." The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (Shawn L. Twing, April 1996) noted that this was "a reference to the 1985 arrest of Jonathan Pollard, a civilian US naval intelligence analyst who provided Israel's LAKAM [Office of Special Tasks] espionage agency an estimated 800,000 pages of classified US intelligence information."

The GAO report also noted that "Several citizens of [Israel] were caught in the United States stealing sensitive technology used in manufacturing artillery gun tubes."

1996 An Office of Naval Intelligence document, "Worldwide Challenges to Naval Strike Warfare" reported that "US technology has been acquired [by China] through Israel in the form of the Lavi fighter and possibly SAM [surface-to-air] missile technology." Jane's Defense Weekly (2/28/96) noted that "until now, the intelligence community has not openly confirmed the transfer of US technology [via Israel] to China." The report noted that this "represents a dramatic step forward for Chinese military aviation." (Flight International, 3/13/96)

1997 An Army mechanical engineer, David A. Tenenbaum, "inadvertently" gives classified military information on missile systems and armored vehicles to Israeli officials (New York Times, 2/20/97).

1997 The Washington Post reports US intelligence has intercepted a conversation in which two Israeli officials had discussed the possibility of getting a confidential letter that then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher had written to Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. One of the Israelis, identified only as “Dov”, had commented that they may get the letter from "Mega”, the code name for Israel’s top agent inside the United States.

1997 US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, complains privately to the Israeli government about heavy-handed surveillance by Israeli intelligence agents.

1997 Israeli agents place a tap on Monica Lewinsky’s phone at the Watergate and record phone sex sessions between her and President Bill Clinton. The Ken Starr report confirms that Clinton warned Lewinsky their conversations were being taped and ended the affair. At the same time, the FBI’s hunt for “Mega” is called off.

2001 It is discovered that US drug agents’ communications have been penetrated. Suspicion falls on two companies, AMDOCS and Comverse Infosys, both owned by Israelis. AMDOCS generates billing data for most US phone companies and is able to provide detailed logs of who is talking to whom. Comverse Infosys builds the tapping equipment used by law enforcement to eavesdrop on all American telephone calls, but suspicion forms that Comverse, which gets half of its research and development budget from the Israeli government, has built a back door into the system that is being exploited by Israeli intelligence and that the information gleaned on US drug interdiction efforts is finding its way to drug smugglers. The investigation by the FBI leads to the exposure of the largest foreign spy ring ever uncovered inside the United States, operated by Israel. Half of the suspected spies have been arrested when 9-11 happens. On 9-11, 5 Israelis are arrested for dancing and cheering while the World Trade Towers collapse. Supposedly employed by Urban Moving Systems, the Israelis are caught with multiple passports and a lot of cash. Two of them are later revealed to be Mossad. As witness reports track the activity of the Israelis, it emerges that they were seen at Liberty Park at the time of the first impact, suggesting a foreknowledge of what was to come. The Israelis are interrogated, and then eventually sent back to Israel. The owner of the moving company used as a cover by the Mossad agents abandons his business and flees to Israel. The United States Government then classifies all of the evidence related to the Israeli agents and their connections to 9-11. All of this is reported to the public via a four part story on Fox News by Carl Cameron. Pressure from Jewish groups, primarily AIPAC, forces Fox News to remove the story from their website. Two hours prior to the 9-11 attacks, Odigo, an Israeli company with offices just a few blocks from the World Trade Towers, receives an advance warning via the internet. The manager of the New York Office provides the FBI with the IP address of the sender of the message, but the FBI does not follow up.

2001 The FBI is investigating 5 Israeli moving companies as possible fronts for Israeli intelligence.

2001 JDL’s Irv Rubin arrested for planning to bomb a US Congressman. He dies before he can be brought to trial.

2002 The DEA issues a report that Israeli spies, posing as art students, have been trying to penetrate US Government offices.

2002 police near the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in southern Washington State stop a suspicious truck and detain two Israelis, one of whom is illegally in the United States. The two men were driving at high speed in a Ryder rental truck, which they claimed had been used to "deliver furniture." The next day, police discovered traces of TNT and RDX military-grade plastic explosives inside the passenger cabin and on the steering wheel of the vehicle. The FBI then announces that the tests that showed explosives were “false positived” by cigarette smoke, a claim test experts say is ridiculous. Based on an alibi provided by a woman, the case is closed and the Israelis are handed over to INS to be sent back to Israel. One week later, the woman who provided the alibi vanishes.

2003 The Police Chief of Cloudcroft stops a truck speeding through a school zone. The drivers turn out to be Israelis with expired passports. Claiming to be movers, the truck contains junk furniture and several boxes. The Israelis are handed over to immigration. The contents of the boxers are not revealed to the public.

2003 Israel deploys assassination squads into other countries, including the United States. The US Government does not protest.

2004 Police near the Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Tennessee stop a truck after a three mile chase, during which the driver throws a bottle containing a strange liquid from the cab. The drivers turn out to be Israelis using fake Ids. The FBI refuses to investigate and the Israelis are released.

2004 Two Israelis try to enter Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, home to eight Trident submarines. The truck tests positive for explosives.
This brings us to the present scandal. Two years into an investigation of AIPAC’s possible role as a spy front for Israel, Larry Franklin, a mid-level Pentagon Analyst is observed by the FBI giving classified information to two officials of AIPAC suspected of being Israeli spies. AIPAC hires lawyer Nathan Lewin to handle their legal defense, the same lawyer who defended suspected Israeli spy Stephen Bryen in 1978.

Larry Franklin worked in the Pentagon Office of Special Plans, run by Richard Perle, at the time Perle (who was caught giving classified information to Israel back in 1970) was insisting that Iraq was crawling with weapons of mass destruction requiring the United States to invade and conquer Iraq. There were no WMDs, of course, and Perle has dumped the blame for the “bad intelligence” on George Tenet. But what is known is that the Pentagon Office of Special Plans was coordinating with a similar group in Israel, in Ariel Sharon’s office.

With two suspected Israeli spies (at least) inside the office from which the lies that launched the war in Iraq originated, it appears that the people of the United States are the victims of a deadly hoax, a hoax that started a war.

The leaking of the investigation of AIPAC to the media on August 28th, 2004 gave advance warning to other spies working with Franklin. The damage to the FBI’s investigation was completed when United States Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered the FBI to stop all arrests in the case. Like the Stephen Bryen case and the hunt for “Mega”, this latest spy scandal seems destined by officials who have their own secret allegiances to protect, barring a massive public outcry.

The organization at the heart of the latest spy investigation, AIPAC, wields tremendous influence over the US Congress. Through its members and affiliated PACs, AIPAC directs a huge flow of campaign cash in favor of, and occasionally against, Senators and Representatives solely on the basis of their willingness to support Israel. As an example, in 2002, U.S. Rep. Artur Davis, D-Birmingham received so much help from pro-Israeli pacs that 76% of his campaign budget came from OUTSIDE the state of Alabama, mostly from New York.

Let me repeat that. A Congressman AIPAC wanted elected received more money from pro-Israel groups outside his state than from his own constituents inside his state. Who is that Congressman going to be thinking of when he votes in Congress?
So here is the mother of all scandals.

For two years, the FBI has suspected AIPAC of spying for a foreign country, and for those two years (and for decades before) that group suspected of spying for Israel has been reshaping the US Congress for the benefit of a foreign government.
And THAT is the mother of all scandals.

Think about that as billions of your tax dollars flow to Israel while your roads and schools crumble and decay and services are cut.

Think about that as the coffins come home with your loved ones inside.

Think about that when you and a million of your fellow citizens march down the streets of America opposing wars built on lies and deceptions and wonder why the government just doesn’t want to listen to you any more.

The Breakup of Arab States and Revenge against the Roman Empire

From Signs of the Times quoting an article by Kristoffer Larsson:

[Israel] Shahak himself translated an article which appeared in hebrew in Kivunim, the journal of The World Zionist Organization, in February 1982, and has become known as the Kivunim-plan. The article, written by a Oded Yinon, had the title A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties and its idea for the Middle East was “based on the division of the whole area into small states, and the dissolution of all the existing Arab states,” as Shahak summarized it. Although he considered it way too optimistic, or in fact “pure fantasy,” Shahak added that

“The idea that all the Arab states should be broken down, by Israel, into small units, occurs again and again in Israeli strategic thinking. For example, Ze'ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha'aretz (and probably the most knowledgeable in Israel, on this topic) writes about the "best" that can happen for Israeli interests in Iraq: "The dissolution of Iraq into a Shi'ite state, a Sunni state and the separation of the Kurdish part" (Ha'aretz 6/2/1982). Actually, this aspect of the plan is very old.”[7]

As happens, in the New York Times in November 2003, an article appeared by former president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former editor of the Times, Leslie H. Gelb, with the headline The three-state solution. The idea presented was that the U.S. should consider dividing Iraq into three different states with “Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south.” Gelb writes that “This three-state solution has been unthinkable in Washington for decades... But times have changed.”[8] Thus, the plan conceived by Zionists is everything but dead.
While almost the whole world denounces Israel’s brutal treatment of the Palestinian people, the Zionists demonstrate their control over Washington. Not only do they finance a great deal of the presidential campaigns, they also have mainstream media in their control. “For the media is the nerve system of a modern state,” writes Shamir.

“Modern democracy in practice in a very complicated society can be compared to a sophisticated computer. Its machinery can function successfully on one condition: there is a free flow of information across the system. While every input is instinctively checked and sieved on one criterion, whether it is good for Jews, it is not odd that the machine produces such freak output as “revenge on Babylon for its destruction of Jerusalem in BC 586”. Indeed, in long-gone 1948 the first ruler of Israel, David Ben Gurion, promised: "We shall mete historic vengeance to Assyria, Aram and Egypt". Now it comes to pass, as Iraq, Syria and Egypt are targeted by Zog.”[9]

Three decades after the death of Ben Gurion, the Guardian reports that “troops from the US-led force in Iraq have caused widespread damage and severe contamination to the remains of the ancient city of Babylon.”[10] It took some time, but the prophecy has come true. But the late Ben Gurion did not just have dreams of meting revenge. He had dreams of creating a Greater Israel, too. In a speech in Knesset, on the third day of the Suez War, as then Prime Minister he recognized that the real purpose of fighting the war was “the restoration of the Kingdom of David and Salomon” to its biblical borders.[11] His successor Ariel Sharon has the same dream, and is fully prepared to fulfil it when given the opportunity. When the time is right, the mass slaughter and expulsion of the remaining Palestinians in the region will take place, no doubt.

The plan to break Arab states into small parts should be kept in mind when reading reports of violence between Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis in Iraq. Iran is by no means immune to this as well. It is well known that Mossad is very active in Iraq and have forged an alliance with the Kurds who are the one faction in Iraq that would like to see Iraq split in three.

One other thing occurs to me. Why would the Israelis stop at revenge against the Assyrian and the Babylonians? Why not revenge as well against the Roman Empire? Remember what Philip K. Dick always said: The Roman Empire never ended. The United States is clearly the successor both to the Roman Empire and, now, to the Babylonian empire, since the United States now holds Babylon. Could it be that Israel can, at one stroke, achieve Greater Israel (vastly expanded territory with oil resources enabling it to become the dominant superpower), a weakening of Arab enemies, and revenge against the Roman Empire for the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. (by causing the downfall of the American Empire through disastrous military overstretch)?

Tell Me Again Why I Should Support the Troops

One drawback of the Abu Ghraib trials is that the very fact that there is a trial indicates that that situation was so bad and was so extreme, which then can obscure the daily atrocities committed by the troops of the United States and the United Kingdom.

Every now and then, some light is shed on the crimes committed every day, see this for example from Bob Herbert in the New York Times:

From 'Gook' to 'Raghead'
By BOB HERBERT

I spent some time recently with Aidan Delgado, a 23-year-old religion major at New College of Florida, a small, highly selective school in Sarasota.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, before hearing anything about the terror attacks that would change the direction of American history, Mr. Delgado enlisted as a private in the Army Reserve. Suddenly, in ways he had never anticipated, the military took over his life. He was trained as a mechanic and assigned to the 320thMilitary Police Company in St. Petersburg. By the spring of 2003, he was in Iraq. Eventually he would be stationed at the prison compound in Abu Ghraib.

Mr. Delgado's background is unusual. He is an American citizen, but because his father was in the diplomatic corps, he grew up overseas. He spent eight years in Egypt, speaks Arabic and knows a great deal about the various cultures of the Middle East. He wasn't happy when, even before his unit left the states, a top officer made wisecracks about the soldiers heading off to Iraq to kill some ragheads and burn some turbans.

"He laughed," Mr. Delgado said, "and everybody in the unit laughed with him."

The officer's comment was a harbinger of the gratuitous violence that, according to
Mr. Delgado, is routinely inflicted by American soldiers on ordinary Iraqis. He said: "Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They'd keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people's heads."

He said he had confronted guys who were his friends about this practice. "I said to them: 'What the hell are you doing? Like, what does this accomplish?' And they responded just completely openly. They said: 'Look, I hate being in Iraq. I hate being stuck here. And I hate being surrounded by hajis.'"

"Haji" is the troops' term of choice for an Iraqi. It's used the way "gook" or "Charlie" was used in Vietnam.

Mr. Delgado said he had witnessed incidents in which an Army sergeant lashed a group of children with a steel Humvee antenna, and a Marine corporal planted a vicious kick in the chest of a kid about 6 years old. There were many occasions, he said, when soldiers or marines would yell and curse and point their guns at Iraqis who had done nothing wrong.

As Thomas Jefferson said, I tremble for this nation when I think that God is just.