New reports out of Burma have placed deaths caused by the cyclone that recently hit the country at upwards of 10,000 people, far greater than figures initially released. Some 24 million people live in the five regions of the country that were hit. There have also been reports that that 80% of Laputta has been completely destroyed.

If this doesn’t make you throw up in your mouth, nothing will. It is utterly fucking sick.

A piece by Chomsky from February of this year entitled The Most Wanted List that’s definitely worth a look.

Bill Fletcher Jr. weighs in on the recent demonizing of former President Jimmy Carter in a piece entitled Get Carter!: The Attack on Jimmy Carter’s Middle East Peace Efforts by Bush & Olmert.

Intrigue is afoot in Bolivia where the resource rich region of Santa Cruz has recently voted in an unofficial referendum for more autonomous rights. Those that opposed the vote boycotted it, leaving supporters of the region’s elite in the majority. Bolivian President Evo Moralez has claimed the vote illegal. Of course, all of this comes down to wealth, as is always the case when it comes to Latin American societies. Those that have it want to ensure that they retain their control over those industries that afford it, those that don’t want a greater distribution of national wealth. Being that Bolivia is the poorest nation in Latin America, the latter might have a point.

The quote of the day comes from Chomsky’s “The Most Wanted List”, which is linked above…

Andrew Cockburn comments on a new US covert initiative that is truly frightening in its scope…

“Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, “unprecedented in its scope.”

Bush’s secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials. This widened scope clears the way, for example, for full support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, the cultish Iranian opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department’s list of terrorist groups.

Similarly, covert funds can now flow without restriction to Jundullah, or “army of god,” the militant Sunni group in Iranian Baluchistan – just across the Afghan border — whose leader was featured not long ago on Dan Rather Reports cutting his brother in law’s throat.

Other elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include Iranian Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi arabs of south west Iran. Further afield, operations against Iran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon will be stepped up, along with efforts to destabilize the Syrian regime.

All this costs money, which in turn must be authorized by Congress, or at least a by few witting members of the intelligence committees. That has not proved a problem. An initial outlay of $300 million to finance implementation of the finding has been swiftly approved with bipartisan support, apparently regardless of the unpopularity of the current war and the perilous condition of the U.S. economy.

Until recently, the administration faced a serious obstacle to action against Iran in the form of Centcom commander Admiral William Fallon, who made no secret of his contempt for official determination to take us to war. In a widely publicized incident last January, Iranian patrol boats approached a U.S. ship in what the Pentagon described as a “taunting” manner. According to Centcom staff officers, the American commander on the spot was about to open fire. At that point, the U.S. was close to war. He desisted only when Fallon personally and explicitly ordered him not to shoot. The White House, according to the staff officers, was “absolutely furious” with Fallon for defusing the incident.

Fallon has since departed. His abrupt resignation in early March followed the publication of his unvarnished views on our policy of confrontation with Iran, something that is unlikely to happen to his replacement, George Bush’s favorite general, David Petraeus.

Though Petraeus is not due to take formal command at Centcom until late summer, there are abundant signs that something may happen before then. A Marine amphibious force, originally due to leave San Diego for the Persian Gulf in mid June, has had its sailing date abruptly moved up to May 4. A scheduled meeting in Europe between French diplomats acting as intermediaries for the U.S. and Iranian representatives has been abruptly cancelled in the last two weeks. Petraeus is said to be at work on a master briefing for congress to demonstrate conclusively that the Iranians are the source of our current troubles in Iraq, thanks to their support for the Shia militia currently under attack by U.S. forces in Baghdad.

Interestingly, despite the bellicose complaints, Petraeus has made little effort to seal the Iran-Iraq border, and in any case two thirds of U.S. casualties still come from Sunni insurgents. “The Shia account for less than one third,” a recently returned member of the command staff in Baghdad familiar with the relevant intelligence told me, “but if you want a war you have to sell it.”

Even without the covert initiatives described above, the huge and growing armada currently on station in the Gulf is an impressive symbol of American power.”

Since the advent of the nuclear age, only two nuclear weapons have ever been employed, both in August of 1945 on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

While many will argue that their use was required to avoid directly invading the Japanese islands, an effort that the government and military at the time claimed would cost the lives of upwards of a million US soldiers, the reality was that most of Japan has been decimated by conventional fire bombing, that the government of Japan had been attempting to negotiate a surrender all that summer, and that the people of Japan, despite news reels shown in US movie houses, were not on the streets in force training to repel US forces. They were, in truth, in the grips of near total economic and civic collapse.

The bombs were, in all honesty, dropped for post-war geopolitical reasons. The Soviets, who had coveted most of Eastern Europe in their advance towards Berlin, were viewed as a threat to Western post-war interests. Thus, individuals such as Dean Acheson urged the use of the bombs to demonstrate US military might, a position that was completely abhorrent to the likes of then General Dwight Eisenhower and the majority of the scientists that had worked on the Manhattan Project. They were dropped nonetheless, ushering in a new age of permanent global nuclear proliferation.

From the second that Little Boy detonated above Hiroshima unleashing the equivalent of 16 kilotons of TNT, decimating everything in a 1.6 kilometer radius, evaporating every living thing within the bomb’s primary blast radius, and killing some 140,000 people (during, and by way of radioactive fallout), deterrence immediately became the primary purpose for possessing a nuclear capability. That reality has not changed in the 63 years since.

The Manhattan Project placed the United States at the forefront of the nuclear arms race, but their position as the planet’s lone nuclear power would end when the Soviet Union successfully tested First Lightning, referred to as Joe 1 by US intelligence, on August 29th, 1949. The rest, as they say, is history.

Reason And Emotion

That’s not to say that the world hasn’t flirted with the possibility since. Fortunately, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, cooler heads prevailed. Then again, it should be noted why they prevailed.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, both Washington and Moscow had their fair share of Hawks pressing for a confrontation. Thankfully, a handful of individuals on both sides possessed the emotional fortitude to examine the realities of what would become of the world in the aftermath of posturing that had but one outcome. The United States would ultimately view it as a victory, but the reality is that it was nothing more than a victory over political arrogance. Of course, little mention is ever given the role played by then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, a veteran World War Two Commander who witnessed first hand the horrors of Stalingrad. Khrushchev was no stranger to the realities of war, and in his first transmission to President Kennedy during the crisis made that point very clear – that both he and Kennedy knew full well the ramifications, betraying an emotional state that was extremely uncommon for as Soviet leader.

Emotionality is something that many view as extremely dangerous when it comes to the nuclear equation, but it is perhaps the one thing that perseveres when it comes to facing the realities of mutually assured destruction. Reasonable men can find excuse enough to destroy the world on any given day. It is not until emotionality enters into the equation that the reality of nuclear war becomes abundantly apparent.

The Inescapable Outcome

There is no winning a nuclear contest – that is, not a contest between two or more nations that possess nuclear weapons. The reality is that the modern destructive power of a single nuclear weapon is such that the devastation wrought is not something that can be justified with regards to proportional or superior responses. The loss of hundreds of thousands of lives simply cannot be viewed as acceptable compared to the loss of a million or more lives in response. No citizen of any nation on earth would think that acceptable given the lasting affects of even a single nuclear weapon on a specific city or location.

In the case of Iran, were the Iranians to possess a weapon and use it, or even three, against Israel, they would be facing a nation with approximately one hundred times their nuclear capability. In short, while the Iranians would be able to, for example, strike Tel Aviv, killing multitudes, the Israelis could eradicate every major city in Iran, not to mention a list of other targets.

There is also the political question of approximation to consider. Were Iran to target Israel, the conventional response against groups in Palestine and Gaza would most likely be as immediate as possible, decisive, and unrelenting. Under the circumstances, collateral damage, including the death of civilians in large numbers, would most likely occur. Given the state of mind that the IDF would be in, were such a thing to occur, I do not think that that is at all a stretch.

All of that, of course, is without involving the United States and what their nuclear response would be were Iran to strike Israel. Compared to Israel, the United States possesses vastly more advanced delivery capabilities, the most lethal being the use of Ohio Class Submarines that have the ability to strike multiple targets within minutes if their proximity to those targets is within a certain radius. As it stands now, given that two US battle groups are in the Gulf, there are certainly nuclear boats with them, making their proximity to Iranian targets minimal. A single such boat carries a compliment that could completely wipe out the population of Tehran.

Given the magnitude of both Israeli and American capabilities, even the most crazed lunatic in Iran would be faced with the reality that their nation would be utterly devastated in response to any attack made against Israel. Their family, the families of their friends and counterparts, all would be killed. The government of Iran, along with its entire military, civic, and religious infrastructures would cease to exist. The majority of Persia, as we know it, would basically be gone.

It’s one thing to believe that a group can exist that believes self-sacrifice is required for some greater, albeit fanatical, purpose. It’s entirely another to believe that the government of a nation would sacrifice the majority of its population for the sake of ideological fanaticism and nothing more, with no endgame or stratagem involved. To believe the Iranian government stupid enough to employ nuclear weapons as a first strike option requires the inclusion of the belief that they have no goal other than to ensure their own destruction, that they not only have no regard for the lives of the Iranian people, but their own as well. Even were they to gift a weapon to a terrorist group, the ramifications would be the same, because they would be held responsible. In fact, were Israel attacked with a nuclear weapon, no matter where that attack originated from, Iran would still be the victim of nuclear reprisals, and it is rather unintelligent, in my opinion anyway, to think that the government of Iran isn’t aware of that fact.

In essence, the current position of the United States, Israel, and others, is that the Iranians are seeking to obtain an offensive nuclear capability. Such a position all but promotes the fundamental tenets of the Bush Doctrine, the cornerstone of which is the use of preemptive, unilateral force to deal with those deemed a threat to US national security, its interests, or allies. Mind you, the US is not alone when it comes to such policies. The Israelis also partake in such practices when it suits their purposes, such as violating Lebanese airspace and conducting over-flights over Beirut, which they recently did.

I have said it before, and will exhaustively say it again now – what constitutes a ‘safe’ nuclear power? One that discloses its nuclear practices? The Iranians have been repeatedly accused of hiding their program by nations that have never allowed the IAEA to inspect theirs. Israel, as I have pointed out in the past countless times, has an estimated 300 nuclear weapons, though denies to this day that it even has a weapons program at all and refuses to allow its facilities to be inspected by the United Nations.

So what exactly makes Israel a ‘safe’ nuclear power? They continue to diversify their delivery systems, such as through the acquisition of submarines, and have even been caught stealing nuclear secrets from the United States – something that has, to this very day, never really been addressed by the highest levels of the US government. And yet the world is supposed to believe that the Iranian government is bent on not only acquiring a nuclear capability, but also actually being ignorant enough to employ it knowing full well that the consequences of such actions would result in their destruction?

Why? Because the current Iranian regime refuses to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist? I’ll not disagree that that’s a ridiculous position, but it is by no means provides justification for initiating a nuclear exchange that would be tantamount to suicide.

Given the realities of modern nuclear age, are we to believe that the Iranian government, or even a radical faction within its military, is so consumed by madness that it would use nuclear weapons against those that possess the ability to retaliate in an overwhelming fashion? And if we are, then how are we to view the last 63 years since their first employment and the overwhelming proliferation that followed? As nothing more than a game played by sane men using the most insane weapon ever conceived to play an elaborate game of global chess? And if we are, then what exactly does that make us?

Pawns or Kings?

If you’re labouring under the misconception that the Bush Administration is going to leave office without first confronting the Iranians, it’s time to start paying serious attention.

The propaganda machine is in full swing, led by a new report by the State Department that labels Iran the most active sponsor of terrorism. If you can believe it, the Sudanese government actually ranked lower despite the fact that it has been complicit in supporting the Janjiweed who have been responsible for a genocidal campaign in Darfur.

Falling conveniently in line with the State Department’s release, the United States has deployed a second US carrier group to the Gulf with the specific purpose of “developing new options for attacking Iran” - a directive issued directly by The Pentagon. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is justifying the move as a response to what the United States now believes is official Iranian policy – “killing American servicemen and -women inside Iraq”. Michael Hayden, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, recently asserted at a lecture at Kansas State University…

“It is my opinion, it is the policy of the Iranian government, approved to highest level of that government, to facilitate the killing of Americans in Iraq.”

It would seem that it is more than Mr. Hayden’s opinion, and a very crucial question has to be asked – why is the director of the CIA making such claims during a lecture? This is the same man whose agency provides the White House with a daily brief, which means that Hayden’s position has not only been presented the President, but also obviously adopted. If it hadn’t been, the White House would have condemned his assertion during that lecture, which it hasn’t, meaning that Hayden’s mentioning of it is being used as a tool with regards to circulating policy in the press without it coming directly from the President’s mouth.

Added to all of this, rather conveniently, is also another Pentagon assertion that the Iranians are directly aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan, a claim that was originally made last year and denounced by both the Iranians and the Afghan government. It should also be noted that it was made around the same time as US allegations that the Iranians were also supporting Sunni extremists in Iraq, which were quickly attacked by various analysts as being utterly preposterous given the massive, and historic, ideological differences between the two. Not surprisingly, the promotion of that information was tracked back to the office of the Vice President.

On the nuclear front, the Israelis are playing their part, with Israeli Transportation Minister, Shaul Mofaz, claiming yesterday that Iran will likely possess the ability to produce a nuclear weapon before the end of 2008. His source? Israeli intelligence, of course. Ironically, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert refused to comment on Mofaz’s claim, which is interesting being that his office is in direct control of the Israeli intelligence apparatus and has far more insight than that of the office of the Transportation Minister.

So what does all of this add up to? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Fishermen call it baiting a hook; the intelligence community refers to it as Psy-Ops. And if you think it’s the Iranians that are the target with regards to psychological initiatives employing the media as their primary conduit, think again. It is, in fact, the American people being targeted.

The question is, have the people of the United States learned their lesson?

Iraq was invaded because they supposedly possessed weapons of mass destruction, or, at the very least, were in the process of obtaining them.

After that justification fell through, the toppling of the regime of Saddam Hussein took its place, and human rights, liberty, and democracy became the bugle call.

After Hussein’s capture, and the continued occupation of the country to combat the insurgency, al-Qaeda was used as the primary justification despite the fact that their numbers in Iraq, which didn’t exist prior to the occupation, constituted less than 5% of the insurgency itself.

And so here we find ourselves, five years after the fact, with the Iranians having become the new justification. Like Hussein’s regime prior to the invasion, the Iranians are being accused of attempting to secure a nuclear weapon. Their intended target? Israel. The consensus, of course, is that were they to acquire one they would use it, that it would not be seen as the acquisition of a deterrent, but rather an offensive weapon.

In my next entry, although I have covered the subject before, I will delve into the reality of why that line of thought is based on nothing more than the desire to militarily confront Iran, not the Iranian regime’s desire to actually engage in a nuclear exchange.

Jeff Cohen’s piece published on The Huffington Post yesterday is of import…

“In the fall of 2002, week after week, I argued vigorously against invading Iraq in debates televised on MSNBC. I used every possible argument that might sway mainstream viewers — no real threat, cost, instability. But as the war neared, my debates were terminated.

In my 2006 book Cable News Confidential, I explained why I lost my airtime:

“There was no room for me after MSNBC launched Countdown: Iraq — a daily one-hour show that seemed more keen on glamorizing a potential war than scrutinizing or debating it. Countdown: Iraq featured retired colonels and generals, sometimes resembling boys with war toys as they used props, maps and glitzy graphics to spin invasion scenarios. They reminded me of pumped-up ex-football players doing pre-game analysis and diagramming plays. It was excruciating to be sidelined at MSNBC, watching so many non-debates in which myth and misinformation were served up unchallenged.”

It was bad enough to be silenced. Much worse to see that these ex-generals — many working for military corporations — were never in debates, nor asked a tough question by an anchor. (I wasn’t allowed on MSNBC unless balanced by at least one truculent right-winger.)

Except for the brazenness and scope of the Pentagon spin program, I wasn’t shocked by the recent New York Times report exposing how the Pentagon junketed and coached the retired military brass into being “message-force multipliers” and “surrogates” for Donald Rumsfeld’s lethal propaganda.

The biggest villain here is not Rumsfeld or the Pentagon. It’s the TV networks. In the land of the First Amendment, it was their choice to shut down debate and journalism.

No government agency forced MSNBC to repeatedly feature the hawkish generals unopposed. Or fire Phil Donahue. Or smear weapons expert Scott Ritter. Or blacklist former attorney general Ramsey Clark. It was top NBC/MSNBC execs, not the Feds, who imposed a quota system on the Donahue staff requiring two pro-war guests if we booked one anti-war advocate — affirmative action for hawks.

I’m all for a Congressional investigation into the Pentagon’s Iraq propaganda operation — which included an active-duty general exhorting ex-military-turned-paid-pundits that “the strategic target remains our population.”

But I’m also for keeping the focus and onus on CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS, even NPR - who were partners in the Pentagon’s mission of “information dominance.” And for us to see that American TV news remains so corrupt today that it has hardly mentioned the Times story on the Pentagon’s pundits, which was based on 8,000 pages of internal Pentagon documents acquired by a successful Times lawsuit.”

One has to ask the question – what would be the reaction of the Canadian people were they to discover that the United States was fed classified Canadian military information by a mole within our military establishment?

Would Canadians be outraged? Would it consume national headlines? Would it lead to a significant policy shift with regards to the United States? Or, after the grumblings of a few, would it simply be forgotten?

One would hope, were it to occur, that public outrage would be so palpable that one could feel it in streets, that it would not simply be dismissed, watered down, or disregarded, no matter our long standing ties with the United States. Because, in the end, espionage is espionage, and by definition is not undertaken in ‘good faith’.

That said; how should the people of the United States view the fact that US military secrets were obtained by the Israelis through entirely premeditated and covert means? Further, how can that reality not be viewed as a massive breach of national security and thus be addressed just as seriously as any other threat?

The sad reality is that even though the Israelis are guilty of it, the United States will protect the Israeli government, and its intelligence apparatus, despite the fact that classified military information was illegally obtained. True, a few sacrificial lambs will be thrown in prison, but the Israelis will not be made to answer for their covert actions in any way that might endanger US-Israeli relations.

Of course, how that doesn’t constitute a massive contradiction with regards to US national security is quite beyond me.

Context from CQ Politics…

“The elderly New Jersey man arrested last week on charges of spying for Israel years ago was probably still working for the Jewish state’s espionage service in tandem with another, as yet unidentified spy, former American intelligence officials say.

Ben-Ami Kadish, now 84, was employed as a mechanical engineer at a U.S. Army weapons center in New Jersey when he allegedly supplied his Israeli handler with classified military documents, according to charges filed last week.

The handler was named only as “CC-1,” or co-conspirator 1, in the criminal complaint. But its description of him as the same man who was handling the notorious Israeli mole Jonathan Pollard all but identified him as Yosef Yagur, formerly the consul for scientific affairs at the Israeli consulate in New York.

Pollard, who gave Yagur thousands of highly classified documents while working as a navy intelligence analyst in the 1980s, is in the 21st year of a life sentence for espionage.

Kadish, who worked at the U.S. Army’s Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, N.J., from 1963 to 1990, could also spend the waning years of his life in jail if he is convicted.

A former senior CIA counterintelligence operative believes the case “will never go to trial, because of all the ugly stuff that would come out” about Israeli activities in the United States.

Indeed, Justice Department attorneys have fought to keep “ugly stuff” from emerging in the trial of two officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, charged with accepting classified documents from Pentagon official Larry Franklin.

But the federal judge in the case has indicated he might not go along with their strategy. Last month Judge Thomas Ellis III indefinitely postponed the trial of AIPAC officials Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, which was scheduled to open next week.

Neither the United States nor Israel, strategic allies struggling with Middle East terrorism, the war in Iraq and the rising threat of Iran, can afford a breech in relations triggered by either case.

The Justice Department said Kadish brought home briefcases full of classified documents, which “CC-1” photographed in his basement. Among the documents was “restricted data” on nuclear weapons, classified information on a modified F-15 fighter that was sold to an unnamed foreign country (most likely Saudi Arabia), and a document relating to the Patriot anti-missile system, which the United States deployed to Israel during the first Gulf War in 1990.

Yagur fled New York in 1985 as U.S. counterintelligence agents closed in on Pollard. He has not been back since, U.S. officials believe.

They thought that was the end of his espionage operations here.

But Yagur evidently kept in touch with Kadish, exchanging e-mails and telephone calls with him long after he returned to Israel. Kadish went to Israel in 2004 and met with his former spy master, authorities said.”

What should be of extreme import is the fact that classified information regarding nuclear weapons was passed on to Israeli intelligence, who, of course, serve a government that not only claims not to possess a nuclear arsenal, but one that attacks others with regards to suspicions of their use of covert means to obtain nuclear data.

Recently it was discovered that the Pentagon worked to place various retired military commanders at the disposal of various news networks as ‘analysts’. Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to such individuals as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates”, their role being to reinforce administration policy. It should also noted that the majority of them represent in excess of 150 military contractors as either lobbyists, consultants, board members, or senior executives.

In a free society, the willful usurpation of the integrity of the fourth estate by the military establishment is – what? What term would you use to describe the premeditated infiltration of the fourth estate by the military establishment for the purpose of promoting a military agenda? And, given that reality, how must we then seriously examine the redefinition of freedom itself?

The truth is that such practices are authoritarian. Ironically, while the spirit of the First Amendment is being tarnished, the practice can’t be condoned as illegal being that the media allows such individuals to appear, aiding in what David Barstow of the New York Times recently referred to as - “a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks”. In layman’s terms, it’s reverse embedding.

The issue is not whether it constitutes a crime, rather that the practice constitutes a concerted effort on the part of the current administration and the military establishment to control how information is presented. There is no questioning the fact that, since 9/11, the American media has largely entered into a very dangerous game in which it has been willing to sell itself out for access to whatever table scraps the administration is willing to offer them. Cast in an economic light, journalistic impartiality and objectivity has become a secondary notion compared to revenues, which makes it all the easier of a format to exploit. Thus, it becomes less about the quality of information and more about quantity. To achieve the latter, access is required to those in a position to provide information, no matter its basis. Add to that advertisers that are looking to be associated with media outlets that do not take chances, that sidestep the complexities of issues, and ensure that they are able to appeal to a wide demographic to ensure their survival, and you have the production of a pseudo-informational stream that is easily infiltrated and corrupted.

That, like it or not, is how the roots of authoritarianism can take hold in a society that believes its liberties sacrosanct.

The Israeli fuel blockade of Gaza is forcing the United Nations to suspend humanitarian relief efforts. That said; why should we care that 80% of those living in Gaza rely on humanitarian assistance? They are, after all, terrorists, or at the very least terrorists in training (even in their cribs, correct?). Because as we’re all aware, when you’re born and raised in the world’s foremost ghetto the enticement of striking back against those you perceive to be oppressing you isn’t a predominant factor. If only they would put down their weapons, or stop strapping bombs to themselves and killing innocents, the region would be at peace.

Easy, right?

We’re all aware that this is a one sided affair. Disregard the fact that it takes two to tango; you can’t impugn the Israelis without being labeled an anti-Semite. After all, the Nazi’s systematically murdered six million innocent Jews, which is absolutely undeniable and one of the most grotesque undertakings in modern human history. You’ll never, in a million lifetimes, get an argument out of me regarding that. Then again, how long will that tragedy be used as a promotional vehicle for Israeli justifications, especially in the West?

Of course, kids on the Strip that hurl stones as IDF tanks and troops had nothing to do with the Holocaust, and if those that hold sway in their lives claim that it didn’t occur, indoctrinating them with lies, then there is simply no defending such utter ignorance. I suppose the same thing can be said of those Americans that were brought up to believe that African Americans are inferior and non-human, that they were merely children caught up in a cycle of hatred that led to their indoctrination. In truth, it’s a phenomenon that is prevalent the world over, and it is also one that exists in Israeli as well.

The world is not a place of absolutes. There is no condemning an entire nation, an entire people, nor an entire religion based on the actions of a few, or even more than a few. Unfortunately, we live in world in which absolutes have infected popular thought, and the victim of that phenomenon is not only reason, but also compassion.

Turning to the geopolitical, today’s Washington Post has brought something to light that may be of interest…

“A letter that President Bush personally delivered to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon four years ago has emerged as a significant obstacle to the president’s efforts to forge a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians during his last year in office.

Ehud Olmert, the current Israeli prime minister, said this week that Bush’s letter gave the Jewish state permission to expand the West Bank settlements that it hopes to retain in a final peace deal, even though Bush’s peace plan officially calls for a freeze of Israeli settlements across Palestinian territories on the West Bank. In an interview this week, Sharon’s chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed this understanding in a secret agreement reached between Israel and the United States in the spring of 2005, just before Israel withdrew from Gaza.

U.S. officials say no such agreement exists, and in recent months Rice has publicly criticized even settlement expansion on the outskirts of Jerusalem, which Israel does not officially count as settlements. But as peace negotiations have stepped up in recent months, so has the pace of settlement construction, infuriating Palestinian officials, and Washington has taken no punitive action against Israel for its settlement efforts.

Israeli officials say they have clear guidance from Bush administration officials to continue building settlements, as long as it meets carefully negotiated criteria, even though those understandings appear to contradict U.S. policy.

Many experts say new settlement construction undermines the political standing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas — who is to meet with Bush today at the White House — and adds to Palestinian cynicism about the peace process. Palestinians view the settlements as an Israeli effort to claim Palestinian lands, and in a meeting yesterday with Rice, Abbas said settlement construction was “one of the greatest obstacles” to a peace deal.”

And whom, in all of it, do the Palestinians have to point to with regards to justifying their actions? They remain a people placed into convenient categories – terrorists, extremists, and so forth. That is how we ultimately view them. They have no past abomination to embolden their struggle, to secure the world’s never ending sympathy. They remain, no matter their singular beliefs, a people largely viewed by the West as the root of a problem, as obstacles of peace. That isn’t to say that there aren’t those amongst them that fit that description. Then again, the same thing can be said of countless others elsewhere. Even right here at home.

Senator Obama lost Pennsylvania by 9.2 points. Of course, he still leads Clinton by 135 Delegate votes and has significantly more financial resources at his disposal. Clinton, on the other hand, has 33 more Super Delegate votes than Obama but is financially struggling.

While there is no arguing that the political process should be allowed to run its full course, the damage being caused the Democratic Party because of this race should not be discounted. It will, the longer it lasts, and it looks as if that’s going to be right up until the Convention in June, only embolden the campaign of Senator McCain. Thus, if the primary goal of the Democratic Party is to ensure that a Republican does not remain in the White House, and that the damage done by the current administration can begin to be addressed, then they are currently doing themselves a disservice. Because the longer it lasts, and the more heated it becomes, the more disenfranchised voters will become.

There is also something else to take into account – the fact that many Republicans that are on the fence right now view Clinton as a viable alternative, and that is, as far as I am concerned, not a positive. While it might, in the end, help weaken McCain’s base, it will not lead to the sort of real change that I believe is truly necessary. Not only that, a Clinton victory would be somewhat oligarchic. Were she to win, the United States will enter a period in which two families have governed it for over two decades.

Yesterday’s Congressional testimony by FBI Director Robert Mueller was one of the most blatant examples of doubletalk that you will ever come across. During his testimony, Mueller verified that numerous FBI agents had complained about the conduct of CIA interrogators and their use of harsh techniques. Given that, according to Mueller’s testimony, when questioned by Rep. Robert Wexler…

Interestingly, when asked by Rep. Stephen Cohen about informing others about the conduct witnessed by FBI agents, Mueller had this to say…

“But if you find out that other agencies may engage in torture, that you believe is illegal — does your protocol include informing those agencies that you believe their actions are illegal?”

“Yes,” Mueller answered.

“Who did you inform?” Cohen asked.

“At points in time, we have reached out to DoD, DoJ, in terms of activity that we were concerned might not be appropriate, let me put it that way,” Mueller said.”

Now, going back to Mueller’s responses to Wexler on the exact same subject…

You’ll notice that Mueller did not mention that the FBI had reached out to the Department of Defense regarding the matter, as he did in response to the same question by Cohen, only that he repeatedly stated that the FBI had not violated its protocols.

In essence, the FBI, having been confronted by the reality that the CIA was using illegal interrogation techniques, did what any agency would do within the landscape of the US federal system – they made sure to cover their own ass while not pissing in the CIA or the Department of Defense’s Cornflakes. Of course, given who was the head of the Justice Department at the time, it’s not a stretch to believe that if the FBI had approached the Department of Justice regarding the matter that they may have been told to simply mind their own business, which would, of course, lead them to actively ensure that they were protected were any of it to be revealed. And that, it seems, is precisely what has occurred.

I also want to make a quick point regarding the Central Intelligence Agency. For those of you that are unaware, the CIA’s mandate forbids domestic operations, which means that all domestic operations, including anti-terrorism initiatives, fall under the jurisdiction of the FBI within the United States. Obviously, the occurrences being discussed occurred outside of the United States, which would make them the province of the CIA as well as any other agency attached to the matter. The FBI’s involvement in such matters has primarily to do with two things: the discovery of current threats within the United States and the discovery of information directly related to 9/11.

After the initial invasion of Afghanistan, numerous individuals were detained by the FBI in correlation to what was, at the time, a domestic investigation into the September 11th attacks. Interestingly, if you do some research into the period shortly following the invasion, you will discover that the CIA all but showed up and took over the handling of detainees. Numerous individuals, some since retired, have since commented on the timing of the CIA’s intervention at that stage, and how the FBI was summarily cut out of the loop. That is not to say that the FBI has not since been present at various locations, such as jails in Ethiopia, where off the books detainees have been held and interrogated, something that contradicts Mueller’s testimony yesterday.

Rep. Wexler’s questioning of Mueller can be viewed below…