Hillary Clinton is repeating the methodology of the Iran/Contra affair, using “black” funds to finance the operation to ensure President Correa is not re-elected.
I had two excellent sources for the news that the US/UK strategy against Julian Assange was to ensure the defeat of President Correa in Presidential elections next spring, and then have him expelled from the Ecuadorean Embassy. One source was within the UK civil service and one in Washington. Both had direct, personal access to the information I described. Both told me in the knowledge I would publish it.
Of course Assange is not the only reason Clinton wants rid of Correa; but it adds spice and urgency.
We now have completely independent evidence from Chile that this CIA operation exists, from journalists who were investigating a smuggling operation involving 300 kg per month of cocaine, organised by the Chilean army and security services.
The links to US intelligence emerged after an anonymous source from the Agencia Nacional de Inteligencia (ANI) told Panoramas News that the smuggling of 300 kilos of cocaine was in fact a highly sensitive CIA/DEA operation that would help to raise money to topple the government of Ecuador. The operation is similar to the one carried out by the Agency in Central America during the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980’s, the source said.
A few days ago I published information I had received that Patricio Mery Bell, the director of the news programme which broke the story, had been lured to a meeting with a young lady “informant” who had worked with CIA-backed anti-Cuban groups in Miami. She had then accused him of sexual assault (does any of that scenario sound familiar?) He was arrested and his materials had been confiscated. However I took the article down after jst a few minutes because I had received the information in emails from sources I did not know previously, and was unsure it could stand up. It does now appear that this is indeed true.
My Washigton informant had told me, as I published, that the funds for the anti-Correa operation were not from the CIA budget but from secret funds controlled by the Pentagon. This could not be done by CIA funds because, perhaps surprisingly, for the CIA to operate in this way is a crime in the United States.
Whether my informant knew or suspected that the “secret Pentagon funds” were drug money I do not know. They did not mention narcotics.
WOW!!! What’s the catch, William?
http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/Europe/Gaza-invasion-would-cost-Israel-international-support/Article1-960987.aspx
“The prime minister (David Cameron) and I (Fourteen Pints) have both stressed to our Israeli counterparts that a ground invasion of Gaza would lose Israel a lot of the international support and sympathy that they have in this situation.
“It’s much more difficult to restrict and avoid civilian casualties during a ground invasion and a large ground operation would threaten to prolong the conflict.
Komodo
Okay. Here’s an Israeli speaking to some of the issues you’ve raised:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nES8nR1pZ8w
It seems the US is fast becoming like this too. Hard to see how we get out of this, and I mean WE, without having to go through something truly, boomingly cathartic.
Kissinger said to Nixon in the early 1970s that Israel was the most probable of the nuclear states to use them in first strike. Golda Meir has said that they would bring the whole house down should Israel itself be in existential danger. The US military and intelligence community is unanimous that Israel is a threat to US interests. Christians scream and dream of rapture.
Perhaps the explanation for the tolerance shown Israel in Western media and politics is simply fear of the big weird kid. He ain’t quite all there and looks at you funny. You don’t want him thinking you’re not his mate. Feasting with panthers, eh.
This is probably naive of me, but I find myself thinking from a perspective of emotions and history.
The British decision to establish the modern state of Israel was probably one of the biggest mistakes ever made by humans. After the persecution suffered by the Jews in World War II, it must have seemed to them like the fulfilment of their religious prophecy. The Jews who colonised the area felt victimised. They were right about that second part; they had been victimised.
But the land given by Britain to become “the Jewish state” was already occupied, and thus another group of victims was created.
Both “sides” had been wronged, though not each by the other. But victimhood causes the victim to feel in terms of “self” and “other”; it becomes difficult to discriminate divisions in the “other”. The victim strikes out (ie. strikes “back”), driven by their self-protective instincts. When striking “back” from a perspective of perceived injustice, victims can feel justified in almost any behaviour.
So now there are two sides; both justifiably feel wronged, both feel that they need to fight for justice, one to regain their recent homelands; the other to consolidate what must have felt like divine reward following their holocaust.
These emotions operate subconsciously and subliminally, established by stories of religion learned in childhood and highly emotive stories of suffering told by older generations. And now, layered on top of this, are all the vested interests that make money from conflict or benefit from instability in the lands that yield the hydrocarbons upon which all modern prosperity is predicated.
What a hideously intractable problem. I would give my life if I thought it would help, but that has been tried and has failed many times already.
Herbie – Nixon had good reason to believe that, given that Golda Meir threatened to do exactly that during the Yom Kippur war. Of course, she may have been bluffing, but the fact that Nixon immediately capitulated to her demands suggests otherwise.
@Technicolour
“Then all I can conclude is that you don’t have many (any?) Jewish friends! The idea that Jewish people generally think of non-Jewish people as the ‘other’ – goyim – is sheer nonsense, in my quite wide experience”
You’re wrong. And dangerously so. I don’t know why.
Has your wide experience with your Jewish friends ever included their mentioning to you the phrase ‘shanda fur die goyim’, what it means, and when it’s used?
Have you ever heard the term ‘yok’?
Have you ever heard the term ‘shiksa’?
And what about the term ‘schmutzig’ used by a frummer?
If you don’t answer ‘yes’ to these questions, then I’m afraid your experience may not be as strong a basis as you think.
Funny how Sky News and BBC News24 are repeatedly showing Israeli propaganda about not targeting civilians while at the same time reporting on the news ticker that the police station in Gaza city has been destroyed in a targeted attack. The police in Gaza are in fact, just like in most countries, civilians.
Technicolour – I’m glad we can discuss this in relative amity. First point: My experience of Jewish acquaintances (as an individual, I don’t really make friends; as you will readily admit, I don’t do empathy) is that there always comes a line which, when crossed, results in a cessation of discourse. I have on a couple of occasions been mistaken for a Jew by a Jew, and when the hideous truth was revealed (innocently) in the course of subsequent events, a promising acquaintanceship was abruptly dropped. There is a strand of exceptionalism in Judaism; it is inherent in its texts. In my experience, which is not negligible, for most Jews I am ultimately an outsider, to whom much cannot be said. (Strangely, this is much less true of Muslims, which I take as my control group.)
I do accept that most Israelis feel threatened, and many fearful. I hold no brief for the actions of Gazan militants per se. But if Israel has the right to “defend” itself by bombarding civilian areas, so does Gaza. “Who started it?” is a question whose answer is lost in history; the morality of each side is exactly equivalent in the present situation. The practicalities aren’t equal, though.
The Gazans don’t have shelters (cement is embargoed by Israel). Gazans don’t have massive military aid from the US, and Gazans don’t have state-of the art missile interceptors, tanks or even moderately effective missiles. They don’t have a recognised state, they don’t have enough food or medical supplies when their neighbour decides to “defend” itself, they can’t get out, they are under constant surveillance, and frequent intentional harassment. They can’t use a third of their meagre land area because it is sterile for Israel’s greater security. They occupy the most overcrowded conurbation on Earth. Whose limited public services are also targeted by its self “defending” neighbour. Their democratically elected government, such as it is, has been branded internationally as a terrorist organisation, at Israel’s behest, despite Israel’s having conceded that the elctions were legitimate.
Israel endures none of this. Its population is well-protected.
The Gazans have tried firing rockets into Israel, they’ve sincerely tried not firing rockets into Israel. They’ve tried talks. They’ve kept ceasefires until their crazier young men are intentionally provoked into breaking them. Their leaders are routinely assassinated.
Israel is not acting in good faith. Never mind its words – talk is cheap. Its actions clearly indicate its intention to create a Jewish state, in which all other faiths are second-class citizens, between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.(The less-publicised words suggest extension to the Euphrates – watch out, Jordan!)
And, with respect, I think you are trying to elide these facts in the hope of swinging the consensus towards Israel. No way.
“The idea that Jewish people generally think of non-Jewish people as the ‘other’ – goyim – is sheer nonsense, in my quite wide experience”
What a schmendrick.
@Giles. Agreed. In one of Henry Kissinger’s books in which he describes events at the end of the Nixon presidency, including details of what Nixon was doing hour by hour in the last day or two, whom he was meeting, what he was saying, etc., he describes one of the last meetings he himself had with Nixon before Nixon resigned. He says Nixon told him he had decided to reverse US policy towards Israel, such that the US would from then on support the Palestinian position against the Israeli position, and that he had ensured that this policy change would be irreversible.
I’m afraid I don’t have chapter and verse for this. I read it several years ago in a serialisation of one of Kissinger’s books, at a time when I was still reading newspapers.
Regardless of the truth or otherwise of Kissinger’s account – and doubtless he himself thought it was very amusing – I think he makes his point extremely clearly.
I’m not reading comments at present. I apologise for any offence caused by inaccuracy in what I’ve written. Problems like this do not condense into a few paragraphs.
Thanks, Herbie. Precisely. But I think that applies to national governments rather than the media.
And you have reminded me of Moshe Dayan’s famous “mad dog” remark:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/06/israels-mad-dog-diplomacy-doesn%E2%80%99t-make-it-more-secure/
It’s intentional.
Technicolour, I’m guessing here, but I suspect that your talent for bringing out the best in people in balanced, face-to-face conversation misleads you. The darker motives are buried beneath the surface in each of us, hidden away by evolutionarily more recent developments such as shame and guilt.
I’m afraid it’s true, Technicolour, of most, if not all, Jews.
Giles, the sexual proclivities of information carriers are worth their weight in gold to security service, hence the argument that sacking Patten and a few paedophile friendly bods at the BBC just will not change very much at all. The involvement of security services in large media organisations is crucial to their propaganda value, if they are on message, so to speak, all other factors in an information chain don’t matter much.
@ Herbie, thanks for that telling video, you could see a few in the background shuffling their feet uncomfortably, making out that they are not much surprised about what she said but looking around uncomfortably, worried to show too much emotion. I agree with your as well as Cryptonims assessment, we are facing a new fascist era, politicians who muse the mantle of minority politics and low election turn outs to justify their representative credentials and moral superiority.
Nothing that happens here threatens them, our information campaigns might enlighten a few like minded thinkers and those who have believe in the goodness of mankind, but, as Atilla said in a few whimpering one liners, it achieves precious little, unless we are prepared to foster and work towards alternatives.
Giving up is easy. lest face it, we cannot expect any change from any of the main parties, part politics is so unpopular dues to its antics lies and scandals, that people rather spoil their papers and forget to vote than bother to take part.
But, and this is the positive sign which shine into our eyes like a 1000candle torch, 11 of the 41 minority PCC’s are INDEPENDENTS, true or default Conservatives, we shall see, but it shows that the mood has flipped 180 degrees, people are getting worried and more clued up.
I’m urge all of you to start thinking along the lines of getting off your screens and indulge in some healthy footwork, never did Craig glow more than after canvassing/leafleting in Norwich North, dare I bring this up, but it is healthy and you meet loads of people of all ages and minds.
This May we will select County councillors, hugely important and the [playground of party politicians now, which is only a recent development, during the early 1970’s, although aligned to parties, they dare not stood on any other ticket than INDEPENDENT, for example, in 1972 there was not a single party politician on Norfolk County council.
I argued for us to stand a candidate in Corby, but one quick scan through this long list should make us aware that there are a lot of older MP’s looking to retire, meaning that party politics is in a generational change, as well as unpopular.
I’m no boffin, but this chance will not reoccur that often, so please lets have a debate about it, war or no war,. If you still believe in change, now is the time to hammer out a coalition of Independents.
fact, urban constituencies are easier to win for independents, they are more compact. fact, with so many retiring, parties will be unable to throw large manpower into every constituency, they will prioritise to marginals, work on their old guidelines.
Sorry for the long o/T call up, last fact, PCC elections have shown that Independent people can win!
Many years ago I used to support Israel because I didn’t really know any better. It was a Jewish friend who helped change my mind. He might read this blog for all I know.
Anyway he once spent a summer working in Israel as a volunteer (he is a medical doctor) because he wanted to find out for himself what the settler mentality was like. When he came back to the UK his first words were “Nuke the place now – These people (Zionists) will bring about the end of the world if they are not stopped”. You see they spoke to him as “one of them” and what he heard was madness…
The average UK Jew has no idea of the true mentality of the extremists who seem to forge Israeli policy. And yes many of these Israeli Zionists do see Christians as nothing better than animals.
NB: By “if not all”, I mean not all, as opposed to “if not then all”. Some of us aren’t too bad, I hope!
Thanks N_ for an interesting post.
http://www.channel4.com/news/israeli-assassins-thwarted-hopes-of-peace-deal
Saturday 17 November 2012
Israeli assassins ‘thwarted hopes of peace deal’
An Israeli peace activist claims the assassination of Hamas’s military leader took place as the Islamist group was considering a wider ceasefire.
Video
Gershon Baskin, founder of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, told Channel 4 News that negotiations were in progress and Ahmed al-Jaabari might have been persuaded to suspend rocket attacks on the Jewish state had he not been targeted for assassination.
Last year Mr Baskin helped to arrange the exchange of Israeli prisoner Gilad Shalit after he was kidnapped by Hamas in a raid widely thought to have been planned by Jaabari.
Mr Baskin said he was attempting to broker a three to six-month ceasefire between Hamas and Israel at the time of Jaabari’s death and had put the deal to Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak months before the Islamist’s death.
He told Channel 4 News: “I know that Jaabari was interested in a ceasefire. He has enforced ceasefires in the past months and he was prepared, we hoped, to engage in activities that would prevent attacks against Israel, thereby preventing a pre-emptive Israeli strike that kills people and causes people on the Gaza side of the border to throw rockets at Israel.
“Every time there was a round of rocket fire I would get phone calls from Hamas: ‘Please tell the Israelis we don’t want to escalate. We want a ceasefire.’ As it would escalate, I would get more and more phone calls with greater intensity.”
I don’t know if he was going to agree to it. I know that he wanted a ceasefire.
Gershon Baskin
Asked if Jaabari was on the point of signing a long-term ceasefire at the time of his death, Mr Baskin said: “I don’t know if he was going to agree to it. I know that he wanted a ceasefire. The indications were that there were enough people of pragmatism within the Hamas leadership who were willing to take a chance and go down this road.”
He said his plans for a truce were circulated among senior figures in Israel’s government, military and security services, to no avail.
“In the end the prevailing voice within the security establishment in Israel is that we don’t need agreement with Hamas, we need to create a deterrent, which is what we are doing now.
“Jaabari was selected as a target, if you ask me, not because of this potential agreement but because this was the kind of deterrent that Israel wanted.
“If Israel could kill Jaabari, the head of the military forces of Hamas, then every Hamas leader has to know that they could get every single one of them.”
Forgive my mistakes,. will read my next piece before sending it off, but I’m good with the captcha math….;)
I am deeply saddened by the racism on this thread. Those of you claiming the jews are jews are jews are buying into the hatred game. You are exactly the type of mugs who sustain the war machine.
I know many jews who do not identify in any way with jewishness. I have a jewish friend who spends any spare money going to gaza and west bank as a shield. Is he a good jew? The exception? What about Chomsky? Or the tel aviv protesters? Their courage, in face of real dangers, shames you cowardly bigots tapping hatred into your keyboards from your comfortable little england.
Most jews I have known are almost certainly not known as jewish to me. I have lost count of the number of times a good friend has been jewish without me knowing. For years. Some of them don’t even have big noses.
European racism against jews runs deep. It has a long history.
It’s war you say?
The real war is not arab vs jew, scots vs english, americans vs iranians, civilisation vs barbarians. That is what the war monger’s propaganda would have us believe. Such divisions are how people are manipulated. Such divisions are how the war machine is sustained. Your bigotry is playing the war monger’s game by the war mongers’ rules.
The real war is against the concentration of wealth and power, sustained by propaganda, resource grabs and murder. Those grabbing do not care about culture, religion, race or nationality except as a tool to fuck with your head. You need to stop feeding the war machine with more division.
Komodo: “And, with respect, I think you are trying to elide these facts in the hope of swinging the consensus towards Israel. No way”.
No way, exactly. The barbarity we are being forced to observe, unless we choose to live in a cave of our own is, as others have pointed out, like watching slow genocide. I think your paragraphs from ‘I do accept that’ onwards otherwise sum up the situation well. Watching ‘To Shoot an Elephant’, which should be mandatory viewing, and is available on youtube, adds the immediate, stark, horrific reality in images and speech.
However, I am sure you and others are aware of the fact that there is a vicious and violent streak of anti-Judaism in UK culture. It is a small streak – a nasty, smelly little stain – but its proponents range from members of the so-called aristocracy through the middle and lower middle classes (much less so in the working class, I’ve found – by which, although I detest the term ‘class’ I mean careworkers, cleaners, factory workers etc). I am sorry that you have had experiences of being dropped by people (in your opening you seem to suggest this is not limited to Jewish people!) but set against that are my own experiences, and the experiences of my friends, partners, colleagues and family, where entirely the reverse is true.
Set against that is also the logical fallacy that one can stereotype an entire group of people and expect that stereotype to go unchallenged. To start on an ‘othering’ of Jewish people – they ‘are’ this; ‘they’ are that, when all around you see a whole spectrum of responses and behaviour, including that of the Hadash, the Shminitsim, Chomsky and on and on, feeds into precisely the fear and loathing generated and propagated by the smellier elements of our society.
To attempt to react or respond to Jewish people on the basis of the actions of the current Israeli government is, I repeat, as unbalanced as treating each other with suspicion because of the actions of our own government; or ostracising the Burmese because of the Myanmar dictatorship. It makes no sense.
Does anyone have news of Harry Fea? The tower block that contained the journalists has been targeted and there is a story that one journalist has lost his legs in the explosion.
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/operation-pillar-of-cloud u/s/closed/no output
What wickedness. See the video within this. It is absolutely terrible and leaves the viewer with a feeling of great guilt as the gravely injured baby gurgles air bubbles.
Evil: Plain and Simple
by Kim Petersen / November 17th, 2012
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/11/evil-plain-and-simple/
The chilling old warmonger Shimon Peres has just been speaking on Sky News. You can imagine what he was saying. Now followed by Ms Leibovich from the IDF. Who next Sky?
Mary,
Harry Fear was live on RT about 60 seconds ago. He was also due to be interviews a couple of hours ago in a tv studio that had to be evacuated after the IDF said it was about to be hit.
Harry still doesn’t have access to his Facebook account except via SMS update. Apparently FB have told him his account being blocked was a “mistake” but haven’t re-enabled it yet.
Thanks Anon. I am glad he is OK. A good and brave young man. It must be absolutely horrendous there. Apart from anything else, it’s hot and humid there (26C) and there are thunderstorms. No electricity and little or no food I guess.
https://twitter.com/harryfear for latest Harry updates . Also https://www.facebook.com/harryfear although he only has limited access to that account via SMS “backdoor”.
Sky now have Alan Johnson on. He replaced Ms Lorna Fitzsimons as BICOM’s representative yet he is tagged as ‘Israel Analyst’!
http://www.bicom.org.uk/about/team/
They do have Mark MacDonald, Labour Friends of Palestine, for ‘balance’.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/11/2012111842933654975.html
As for the blatant racists and haters on this board – they know who they are, and they know they are just as happy to direct their bile at any other minority group – one has to remember that they are generally bitter, disempowered people whose only chance of making a mark – so they think – is in the gibbering mess which characterises the tiny percentage of society which actually aims for mutual loathing and violence. It often also has something to do with brain damage and/or the wrong drugs. As Phil points out, it also makes them the useful mugs in the ‘divide and rule’ game. I am assuming that the silence from the rest of the board is dissent, not tacit approval.
Oops
“A recent quote attributed to Noam Chomsky, on Israel’s current assault on Gaza, has been widely circulated over the past few days. Except that it is neither recent nor (entirely) by Chomsky.”
http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/it-misquoting-noam-chomsky-gaza/
Apologies. Perhaps Jon might track down my post from yesterday and append this to it as an update.
It seems salem-news may not be totally reliable.
What does Israel care about Gazan civilians or even children and babies or their schools or hospitals. The frightened conscripts bludgeon and smash for their masters cause. That cause is clearly squeezing the balls of the American administration.
We witnessed right after the US presidential elections that side-lined Senator Romney, Israel went into action.
First, the Israeli army spewed warning shots into Syria from the Golan Heights after a mortar round was fired into the area from Syria. The Golan Heights is Syrian territory and has been under Israeli occupation since the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel was ready to pull back from the Golan in exchange for a peace treaty with Syria.
Next came a bloody repeat of the onslaught and massacres in an Israeli prison camp Gaza.
This while Britain has raised its elevations towards Russia. We all know that the overall image of Britain and the US is not positive in the Middle East. Despite efforts by agent Cameron and President Obama, they have been unable to change this reality.
Russia has much more credit in the region, and Israel’s aggressive attitude is putting the US in a difficult position which pleases Putin in Moscow. If the US pursues its policy of working together with the new governments in the region, it may have to face additional acts of provocation by Israel, including a war with Iran. Israel is sending covert threats to the Obama administration that it will torpedo US efforts to cooperate with the Islamist regimes emerging throughout the region. Should agent Cameron and Obama decide to support Israel no matter what, they risk losing Egypt, the new Syrian opposition, the Palestinians, Lebanon, Jordan and even Turkey.
Even staunch supporters of Israel now realise they have a demanding, dangerous and troublesome deficient child called Israel to deal with whose regard for life is totally absent.
Some of the most prominent supporters of the Palestinians are Jewish. People such as Amy Goodman (Democracy Now) and Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) help bring the truth to especially American audiences. There are many many other examples.
RT now reporting that it was a miracle some of their staff were not killed by the airstrike as they had just left the building a few moments before to look for petrol.