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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=tanstl@aol.com href="mailto:tanstl@aol.com">David Sladky</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=undisclosed-recipients:
href="mailto:undisclosed-recipients:">undisclosed-recipients:</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Monday, June 07, 2010 6:37 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Pariah Nation</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><FONT face=arial color=black size=2><FONT
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"></FONT><BR><BR>
<DIV style="CLEAR: both">
<DIV id=AOLMsgPart_2_b5db52fd-0573-4e32-b947-fde88e20a998><FONT face=arial
color=black size=2><FONT
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<DIV align=right>Weekend Edition<BR>June 4 - 6, 2010</DIV></FONT></FONT><I><FONT
size=4>
<H1>CounterPunch Diary</H1></I></FONT><FONT color=#800000 size=5><FONT
color=#800000 size=5>
<H1>Pariah Nation</H1></FONT></FONT><FONT size=4>
<DIV>By ALEXANDER COCKBURN </DIV></FONT><FONT size=2>
<DIV>As the tv networks here give unlimited airtime to its apologists, the
message rolls out that Israel is permitted every illegal act in the lexicon of
international law, from acts of violence against a civilian population (the
people of Gaza, starved under permanent blockade) to piracy on the high seas and
the lethal attacks by Israeli commandos on the relief flotilla. The guiding
purpose in this tsunami of drivel is that the viewers should be brainwashed into
thinking Israel somehow has the right and the duty to act at will as the mad-dog
of the planet. </DIV>
<DIV>Israel regrets… But no! Israel doesn’t regret. It preens and boasts and
demands approval – which it duly gets from its prime sponsor, the United States
government, and most of the press. As former US senator Jim Abourezk
</FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2>remarked</U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2> on this site last week "It's very
much like the bully who, after punching someone smaller in the jaw, requires the
victim to apologize for getting his face in the way of the bully's fist." </DIV>
<DIV>Two points need stressing. Some of the critical commentary suggests that
Israel’s murderous onslaught on the Mavi Marmara represents a qualitative
escalation in that nation’s brazen criminality. Scarcely. Brazen criminality
coincided with the establishment of the state in 1948. Only last week I
</FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2>reminded</U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2> CounterPunchers of the lethal
onslaught on the USS Liberty in 1967 which killed 34 and wounded 173.</DIV>
<DIV>The attack on the Mavi Marmara was carefully planned. As Max Blumenthal
reports on his website,</DIV></FONT>
<BLOCKQUOTE>Tel Aviv-Israel Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his
senior ministers have attempted to blame army commanders for "the bungled raid
on a Gaza-bound flotilla," according to the UK’s Daily Telegraph. …</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>But was the raid really bungled? Did the Israeli military command
and Netanyahu government have no clear strategy going in? Or was the violence
they meted out against the flotilla activists deliberate and methodically
planned?</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>Statements by senior Israeli military commanders made in the
Hebrew media days before the massacre revealed that the raid was planned over
a week in advance by the Israeli military and was personally approved by Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak. … Details of
the plan show that the use of deadly force was authorized and
calculated.</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>The massacre of activists should not have been
unexpected.</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>On May 28, three days before the raid, top Israeli military
officials revealed details of their strategy to Maariv, Israel’s most widely
circulated paper. The caption of the Maariv article reflected the military
command’s plan to use force: "On the way to violence; one of the boats is on
its way." </BLOCKQUOTE><FONT size=2>
<DIV>In the opinion of much of the world, Israel is descending to the status of
South Africa in the final years of apartheid (in which period, it has just
emerged, Israel was trying to sell South Africa nuclear weapons) – a pariah
nation. </DIV>
<DIV>In February the Tel Aviv–based Reut Institute presented a big report to the
Israeli cabinet, long in the making, called "The Delegitimization Challenge:
Creating a Political Firewall." It has sinister recommendations for a strategy
of "offense." Israel’s government is embarking on a methodical assault on human
rights groups and kindred NGOs seen as delegitimizers. It’s not paranoid to
expect COINTELPRO-type black-bag jobs sponsored by Israel on solidarity groups
here and around the world.</DIV>
<DIV>Israel is plunging into deeper darkness. As the Israeli journalist Gideon
Levy recently told one interviewer: "In the last year there have been real
cracks in the democratic system of Israel.… It’s systematic—it’s not here and
there. Things are becoming much harder." And Levy also wrote in <I>Ha’aretz</I>,
"When Israel closes its gates to anyone who doesn’t fall in line with our
official positions, we are quickly becoming similar to North Korea. When
right-wing parties increase their number of anti-democratic bills, and from all
sides there are calls to make certain groups illegal, we must worry, of course.
But when all this is engulfed in silence, and when even academia is increasingly
falling in line with dangerous and dark views…the situation is apparently far
beyond desperate."</DIV>
<DIV>Who’s In Charge Here? </DIV>
<DIV>Americans don’t care to have a wimp in the White House. They’ll take almost
any outlandish vulgarity from their commander in chief and give him a positive
job-rating. But wimpishness? No. Until Obama, the last president to earn wimp
ranking was Jimmy Carter whose chances of reelection thirty years ago expired
when he gave wimpish speeches about America’s "malaise" and was photographed
beating off a rabbit that swam up to his canoe and tried to board it. </DIV>
<DIV>Obama isn’t in that sort of trouble yet, but he’s drifting close. </DIV>
<DIV>The fates soon sniff out wimps and deal them bad cards. Obama was all set
to make a big speech in Chicago on Memorial Day. Not only was the speech rained
out but he started quavering to the crowd about the danger of lightening before
scuttling off with his Secret Service guards and getting bogged down in a
traffic jam. </DIV>
<DIV>One of America’s greatest heroes is Ben Franklin – featured on that symbol
of optimism, the hundred dollar bill -- who made a sporting effort to fry
himself, courting a lightening bolt with his kite.</DIV>
<DIV>Wimps can’t emote convincingly because they’re worried about going too
far.</DIV>
<DIV>The White House press corps – until recently without a presidential press
conference for ten months – quizzes Obama’s press secretary about Obama’s
evident inability to project anger about BP’s oil spill, now bidding to be the
greatest environmental disaster in the nation’s history. Obama’s flack claimed
his boss was "enraged" at BP. "Can you describe it?" asked Chip Reid of CBS.
"Does he yell and scream? What does he do?" The best Gibbs could offer was
evocation of Obama’s "clenched jaw". </DIV>
<DIV>At least half of any US president’s job is play-acting, pretending to be in
charge, on behalf of We the People. Most of what actually happens in America is
beyond any president’s ability or political inclination to control.</DIV>
<DIV>The banks run the finances. The oil companies and Israel vie for control of
US foreign policy. The arms companies arrange the wars. The insurance companies
figure out who should live or die. </DIV>
<DIV>Bill Clinton was so servile to big business that he took a phone call from
a Florida sugar baron, even though Monica Lewinsky was giving him a blow-job
when the call came in. He surely shocked the feisty intern with his obsequious
manner as the baron issued a crisp command to kill off Al Gore’s impertinent
talk about environmental clean-up of the Everglades. But Clinton could still
scream and throw his weight around in the manner expected of a president. </DIV>
<DIV>The all-time presidential champ at bullying was Lyndon Johnson who once
lifted up the Greek ambassador by his lapels and snarled at him, ""Fuck your
Parliament and your Constitution. America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea.
Greece is a flea. If those two fleas continue itching the elephant they may just
get whacked by the elephant’s trunk. Whacked good...." </DIV>
<DIV>But Johnson was as servile to the Texas oil kings – most notably the
Murchisons – as Clinton was to the sugar baron Alfonso Fanjul. LBJ would
delightedly unwrap the bundles of cash Murchison regularly sent up to him.
<BR>Obama isn’t into lifting anyone up by the lapels. It’s the other way round.
Week after week he’s being hoist off the floor of the Oval Office and thrown
against the wall, by everyone from Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan to Benjamin
Netanyahu. When Obama tries to bark, it comes out as a yip, like a Chihuahua
aping a pit bull. </DIV>
<DIV>A year ago Obama gave his famous speech in Cairo, addressing the Muslim
World in a constructive manner. He vowed "to seek a new beginning between the
United States and Muslims around the world", declaring, "Islam is a part of
America" and "is an important part of promoting peace."</DIV>
<DIV>It was a great act, but one utterly disconnected from the realities of
American politics. Wimps love to be crowd-pleasers. But a year later the crowd –
world opinion, in this instance – is remembering the speech as one betrayed
commitment after another. </DIV>
<DIV>It’s clear enough the White House knew of the impending Israeli attack on
the relief flotilla and contented itself with a private, purely <I>pro forma</I>
call for restraint. In other words, a green light. It may even encouraged the
lethal violence, as its own signal to Turkey that its initiative with Brazil to
defuse the Iran crisis had not found favor with the US government. </DIV>
<DIV>The public White House response to Israel’s international piracy was
comical in its wimpishness. "The United States deeply regrets the loss of life
and injuries sustained and is currently working to understand the circumstances
surrounding this tragedy," deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton
demurely declared in Chicago. </DIV>
<DIV>A friend of mine gave a good parody of the servile posture of the US
government and press: "I think," he wrote to me, "that matters are close to the
point where if Hillary Clinton and a group of senior American officials were
meeting the Israeli leaders for negotiations, and Netanyahu expressed his
displeasure at the American positions by pulling out a gun and shooting her
dead, then having the entire American delegation beaten to death by his security
guards, there would probably be a small item buried in the next days' American
newspapers that due to conflict with the Israelis, Obama had decided to nominate
a new Secretary of State."</DIV>
<DIV>There’s a political price to be paid for manifest wimpery. Obama is running
up a hefty bill.</DIV>
<DIV>A Deadly 9/11 Cover-Up </DIV>
<DIV>In our latest newsletter, hot off the press - What do the W.R. Grace
Company, the Trade Towers, Libby Montana and asbestos have in common? Andrea
Peacock weaves the fatal threads together in a brilliant investigation. The
terrible bottom line: </DIV></FONT>
<BLOCKQUOTE>"If asbestos-related diseases begin showing up in rescue workers
and others exposed at Ground Zero in the next few years, there’s little
doctors can do about it. There’s medication to ease the symptoms of asbestosis
– in which scar tissue caused by asbestos fibers gradually suffocates victims
– but no cure. Those with lung disease can forestall the inevitable decline by
taking care of themselves: quit smoking, get plenty of exercise to keep their
lung capacity as high as possible. It could take another 30 years for
mesothelioma cases to manifest – an asbestos-related lung cancer that kills
fast once it hits. The full legacy of that day, for which W.R. Grace now bears
some responsibility, will be unfolding for decades. "</BLOCKQUOTE><FONT size=2>
<DIV>Also in this powerful edition: After a mine disaster in western Siberia
Russian workers rise up. Boris Kagarlitsky describes the social explosion.
Jeffrey Blankfort reviews <I>Quicksand</I>, the book the Israel lobby doesn’t
want you to read. </DIV>
<DIV>I urge you to </FONT><B><U><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2>subscribe now!</DIV></U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2>
<DIV>Alexander Cockburn</B> can be reached at </FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><A
href="mailto:alexandercockburn@asis.com">alexandercockburn@asis.com</A></U></FONT></FONT><FONT
size=2>.</DIV></FONT>
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