David Swanson: Turkish Court Indicts Senior Israeli Military Officials in Murders on Gaza Flotilla

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military
David Swanson

Turkish Court Indicts Senior Israeli Military Officials in Murders on Gaza Flotilla

On the Second Anniversary of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, Turkish Court Indicts Senior Israeli Military Officials in Murders of Nine Passengers

By Ann Wright

Two years ago I was a passenger on the first Gaza Freedom Flotilla which was sailing to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. I watched from a small boat called the Challenger 1, as a much larger boat, the Mavi Marmara, with almost 600 passengers, was brutally attacked by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) commandos. 30 minutes later, our boat was attacked.

Using snipers from helicopters Israeli commandos shot many of the passengers on the exposed top deck of the ship. Other commandos in boats fired live ammunition, as well as percussion grenades, into all levels of the ship. As commandos repelled down from helicopters and boarded the ship, they executed at point blank range 5 passengers, including a 19 year old American citizen Furkan Dogan, whose body had five bullets including one to the back of his head. 9 persons, 8 Turkish citizens and one American citizen, were murdered and 50 others were wounded. One severely wounded Turkish man later died after being in a coma for many months.

Each of the six ships in the flotilla was attacked by IDF commandos. Passengers on the ships were shot with tasers and beaten by commandos. Potentially lethal paintballs were shot into the faces of passengers narrowly missing eyes and soft parts of the skull.

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Chuck Spinney: The Afghanistan Exit – Looting the Useful Idiots to the Bitter End

04 Inter-State Conflict, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Military
Chuck Spinney

When Alexander the Great decided to leave Afghanistan, his plan was to exit via the Khyber Pass and march though what is now Pakistan and thence into India. But the Khyber was blocked by a warring Pashtun tribe. Legend has it that Alex's exit strategy was to bribe another Pashtun tribe to open the door by attacking and driving off the first tribe. The gambit worked and he escaped with his forces largely intact, Alexander looked shrewd in the history books. But is that the whole story?

I have often wondered if old Alex was snookered by two tribes in cahoots in a scheme to extort money and divide the proceeds from an invader desperate to leave. Of course we will never know if this actually happened, but as the following report in yesterday's Sunday Times suggests, my speculation has a quintessential Pashtun flavor and is therefore not outside the realm of probability.

Chuck Spinney
Port Cogolin, France

Afghan Troops And Tailban In Pact To Loot NATO Convoys

Secret alliances threaten to undermine the West's strategy of handing more responsibility for security to local forces

By Miles Amoore and Christina Lamb, London Sunday Times, May 20, 2012

THE two men should be sworn enemies. One is a Taliban commander waging what he says is a holy war against foreign soldiers in Afghanistan. The other is an Afghan army officer trained and paid by Nato to fight the Taliban.

Yet rather than do battle, the two men have forged a secret alliance. In the area of Ghazni province where both are based, just an hour's drive south of Kabul, they collaborate to loot Nato supply convoys, dividing up the proceeds. They even share intelligence about military operations.

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Mini-Me: Veteran’s Today Warns of False Flag Terror in US End of May — Russians Exercising in US Around NORTHCOM with Mission to Take and Hold Denver Airport…G-8 Moved to Camp David

06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Corruption, DHS, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

U.S. False Flag Likely May 20-31, 2012

By Captain Eric H. May, Ghost Troop CO

The breaking news from Chicago, ‘NATO 3’ had targeted Obama campaign HQ, Rahm’s house, police stations, prosecutors say, concurs with the analysis below:

The United States is hosting the G8, NATO and the Bilderberg Group in a two-week span, during which elite Russian troops will be occupying key points near Northern Command (NORTHCOM), and it isn’t hard to imagine another 9/11 coming from such a sinister combination of brains and brawn.

Starting with the premise that a false flag attack by the end of May is more likely than not, I’ll present the odds for the top targets and most dangerous days, then evaluate the various entities and individuals likely to be involved.

The top U.S. targets are:

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Eagle: Excuse Me, But Israel Has No Right To Exist

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military
300 Million Talons...

Excuse Me, But Israel Has No Right To Exist

Grow a new vocabulary of possibilities – the new state will be the dawn of humanity's great reconciliation. Muslims, Christians and Jews living together in Palestine as they once did.

by Sharmine Narwani

Veterans Today, 17 May 2012

The phrase “right to exist” entered my consciousness in the 1990s just as the concept of the two-state solution became part of our collective lexicon. In any debate at university, when a Zionist was out of arguments, those three magic words were invoked to shut down the conversation with an outraged, “are you saying Israel doesn’t have the right to exist??”

Of course you couldn’t challenge Israel’s right to exist – that was like saying you were negating a fundamental Jewish right to have…rights, with all manner of Holocaust guilt thrown in for effect.

Except of course the Holocaust is not my fault – or that of Palestinians. The cold-blooded program of ethnically cleansing Europe of its Jewish population has been so callously and opportunistically utilized to justify the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian Arab nation, that it leaves me utterly unmoved. I have even caught myself – shock – rolling my eyes when I hear Holocaust and Israel in the same sentence.

What moves me instead in this post-two-state era, is the sheer audacity of Israel even existing.

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Penguin: US Government Gives Israel Too Much

08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Government, Military
Who, Me?

With respect to both Ignatius and Pincus lacking integrity, am inclined to give Pincus the benefit of the doubt. Here is one piece that certainly took integrity to develop and present.

Is U.S. going above and beyond for Israel?

Walter Pincus

Washington Post, 16 May 2012

Should the United States put solving Israel’s budget problems ahead of its own?

Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, will meet Thursday in Washington with Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta to finalize a deal in which the United States will provide an additional $680 million to Israel over three years. The money is meant to help pay for procuring three or four new batteries and interceptors for Israel’s Iron Dome short-range rocket defense program. The funds may also be used for the systems after their deployment, according to the report of the House Armed Services Committee on the fiscal 2013 Defense Authorization bill.

The Iron Dome funds, already in legislation before Congress, will be on top of the $3.1 billion in military aid grants being provided to Israel in 2013 and every year thereafter through 2017. That deal is part of a 10-year memorandum of understanding agreed to in 2007 during the George W. Bush presidency.

“Those funds are already committed to existing large-ticket purchases, such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, C-130J transport planes and other items,” according to George Little, spokesman for Panetta. He also said the Israelis had increased their own spending on Iron Dome this year and the U.S. funds are to “augment” their funding.

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