11 Ways That Amerika Is Becoming More Like North Korea

First published at "End of the American Dream" website. 

  Should we just get it over with and change the spelling of America to "Amerika"? Every single day, the United States of America is becoming more like North Korea. In North Korea, the citizens are told that everything that they do needs to be monitored, tracked, recorded and very tightly controlled so that everyone can be kept safe. No dissent is allowed at all. If government officials in North Korea even suspect that you are thinking the wrong thing, your entire extended family can be shipped off to a prison camp. And you know what? North Korea is a pretty safe place. There is not much terrorism in North Korea. But why in the world would anyone ever want to live like that? America is supposed to be a bastion of liberty and freedom, but now we are falling for the same totalitarian lies that so many other societies have fallen for throughout human history. We are witnessing the rise of the beast system - a system of control more pervasive than anything that the world has ever seen. 

We are constantly being told that the emerging "Big Brother" control grid is being put into place for "our safety", but someday we are going to wake up in a dystopian nightmare where government tyrants have absolutely unlimited control over our lives.

 Those that approve of the "Big Brother" police state control grids being constructed all over the world should really study North Korea. That country is what the end result looks like.
North Korea is a totalitarian police state hellhole. No rational human being would ever want to live there. You can see an absolutely amazing National Geographic documentary on what life is like inside North Korea on YouTube right here. If you have never seen that documentary before, it is definitely worth the time that it takes to watch it. If we stay on our current path, our country is going to become just like North Korea.

America does not have to go down this road. Right now nearly every nation on earth is implementing "Big Brother" security measures, but we could choose to be different if we wanted to.

Unfortunately, right now we seem to be leading the charge toward a world where liberty and freedom are absolutely dead.
The following are 11 ways that Amerika is becoming more like North Korea....

#1 It has been revealed that Predator drones are now being used inside of the United States to spy on American citizens. These Predator drones are equipped with the latest high-resolution cameras, very sophisticated heat sensors and incredibly advanced surveillance equipment.

Predator drones can sit up in the sky and watch you for 20 hours without stopping. If one was watching you right now you probably wouldn't even know it.

We are accustomed to Predator drones being used in the "war on terror", but now they are being used to watch American citizens. The following comes from a recent article in the Los Angeles Times....

The previously unreported use of its drones to assist local, state and federal law enforcement has occurred without any public acknowledgment or debate.
Congress first authorized Customs and Border Protection to buy unarmed Predators in 2005. Officials in charge of the fleet cite broad authority to work with police from budget requests to Congress that cite "interior law enforcement support" as part of their mission.
In an interview, Michael C. Kostelnik, a retired Air Force general who heads the office that supervises the drones, said Predators are flown "in many areas around the country, not only for federal operators, but also for state and local law enforcement and emergency responders in times of crisis."

You can see mainstream video news reports about how authorities are using Predator drones to spy on American citizens right here and right here.

#2 The Department of Homeland Security says that paying for your hotel room in cash is a sign that you could be a potential terrorist. If you do not believe this, just watch this shocking DHS video.

#3 As I have written about previously, authorities in Tennessee are going door to door conducting "assessments" of how "prepared" residents are. The following comes from a recent news article about this new program....

The Metro Public Health and the Tennessee Department of Health will be using a tool designed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to go door to door and check to see how disaster ready you are.
The door to door assessment will take place from 3:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Thursday and from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday. It will be in 30 neighborhoods in Davidson County that have been randomly selected to be the target of a door to door assessment.

#4 Today, government authorities track nearly everything that we do. For example, one woman in Washington D.C. has been fined $2000 for not properly recycling homemade cat litter made out of old newspapers and junk mail.

#5 Just like in the movie "Minority Report", face tracking technology is now being used in advertising billboards all over the nation. This type of technology is also increasingly being used for law enforcement purposes.

#6 Police are not just using tasers on hardened criminals anymore. Now tasers are even being used on young school girls. The following comes from a report about an incident that recently happened in Pennsylvania....

The mother of a 14-year-old Dieruff High School student has filed a federal lawsuit claiming an Allentown police officer used excessive force when he shot her daughter in the groin with a stun gun during class dismissal in September.
Victoria Geist says her daughter, Keshana Wilson, had her arms raised high to indicate she surrendered when officer Jason Ammary pointed a Taser at her on Sept. 29 outside the high school and fired, according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court by attorney Richard J. Orloski.
The suit claims Ammary fired the Taser directly at the teen's groin and he then filed retaliatory charges against the girl to justify using the Taser.

#7 A number of very elderly women have come forward with stories of being strip-searched by TSA agents at U.S. airports. Not even North Korea treats their elderly women like this.

#8 Americans are being watched in hundreds of different ways each day, and most of them have no idea what is happening. For example, in Washington D.C. the movements of every single car are tracked using automated license plate readers (ALPRs). The following comes from a recent Washington Post article....

More than 250 cameras in the District and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago.
With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.
Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile, the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will include all the approaches into the District.

#9 The FBI is now admittedly recording Internet talk radio programs all over the United States. The following comes from a recent article by Mark Weaver of WMAL.com....

If you call a radio talk show and get on the air, you might be recorded by the FBI.
The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet.
The FBI says it is not playing big brother by policing the airwaves, but rather seeking access to what airs as potential evidence.

#10 As I have mentioned previously, new high-tech street lights that are being funded by the federal government and that are being installed all over the nation can also be used as surveillance cameras, can be used by the DHS to make "security announcements" and can even be used to record personal conversations. The following is from a recent article by Paul Joseph Watson for Infowars.com....

Federally-funded high-tech street lights now being installed in American cities are not only set to aid the DHS in making “security announcements” and acting as talking surveillance cameras, they are also capable of “recording conversations,” bringing the potential privacy threat posed by ‘Intellistreets’ to a whole new level.

#11 Congress has been debating a new bill that would officially designate the United States as part of the "battleground" on the "war on terror" and would allow the U.S. military to arrest American citizens and hold them indefinitely without trial. According to U.S. Senator Carl Levin, it was actually Barack Obama that was pushing for the indefinite detention of American citizens to be included in the National Defense Authorization Act....

Senator Levin told Congress recently that under the original wording of the National Defense Authorization Act, American citizens were excluded from the provision that allowed for detention. Once Obama’s officials saw the text though, says Levin, “the administration asked us to remove the language which says that US citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section.”

The Obama administration has been attacking our civil liberties even more than the Bush administration did.
Unless something dramatic happens, at some point all of our liberties and all of our freedoms will be gone.

 Thankfully we can still share information like this on the Internet, but that will not last forever. Eventually, "hate crime laws" will be used to greatly restrict what we are able to say on the Internet.
If you don't that that is possible, guess again. Our northern neighbor, Canada, already has a very strict law against "hate speech" on the Internet.

So what is "hate speech"? Well, it turns out that the people almost always targeted for their speech are libertarians, true conservatives and Bible-believing Christians.

In the United States, not too many people are being put into prison for what they say or what they believe yet, but law enforcement authorities all over the nation are being instructed to be on the look out for certain kinds of bumper stickers and certain kinds of literature. If you do not believe that the government is specifically targeting libertarians, true conservatives and Bible-believing Christians just watch this video.

Amerika is not as bad as North Korea yet, but we are well on the way.

In a recent article for News with Views, author Paul McGuire described what the future could be like if we stay on our current path as a nation....

Low flying helicopters flew above us, aiming surveillance devices at us. Everywhere I looked, people stared vacantly like soulless zombies. Very few people could think, most just walked about in a trance. The drugs in the water supply, vaccinations and the endless bombardment of EMF waves, along with hypnotic suggestions through the media kept people in a trance-like state. I, like a few others, managed to retain my mind, by forcing myself to think critically. I discovered early on that you could choose not to enter the trance-like state. But, you had to always maintain that dead and vacant look in your eyes. If somebody thought you were thinking, they would report you and you would disappear.

Please wake up America.
Yes, the rest of the world is steamrolling toward a dystopian nightmare.
But America does not have to join them.
The last chapters of our history can be the most nightmarish or they can be the greatest.
It is all going to depend on the choices that we make.
Please share information like this with your family and friends while there is still time.

Reprinted, with Thanks, from End of the American Dream.

December 16, 2011

Copyright © 2011 End of the American Dream

Many of the most serious dangers facing Americans today stem from our "special relationship" with Israel

Our uniquely massive support for Israel has cost trillions of dollars and multitudes of lives. It has diminished our moral standing in the world, lessened our domestic freedoms, and exposed us to unnecessary and growing peril.

The majority of Americans – as well as our diplomatic and military experts – oppose this unique relationship. Yet, the lobby for Israel continues to foment policies that are disastrous for our nation and tragic for the region.

If we are to have Middle East policies that serve the national interest, that represent the highest values of our founders and our citizens, and that work to sustain a nation of honor, decency, security, and prosperity, then it is essential that all Americans become active and informed. Below are the facts:

American taxpayers give Israel over $8 million per day

(See report from Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress):
This to a nation, at its peak, of 7.4 million people – smaller than New Jersey. Israel has received more American money than any other nation on earth. It is more than we give to all the starving countries of Africa put together.
From 1950-53 Israel’s financial influx from the U.S. was one billion dollars; Israel at that time had 1.6 million inhabitants

In the past ten years, American taxpayers have given Israel approximately $200,000 per family of five.
This costs us even more:

US aid to Israel is given in a lump sum at the beginning of the fiscal year.

Since the US is operating at a deficit, this means that we borrow the money, give it to Israel, and then pay interest on it long after it is gone.

Israel, on the other hand, makes interest from it. Congress has mandated that Israel’s aid be immediately deposited to an interest bearing account with the Federal Reserve Bank.

Additional financial costs: $3 trillion

* About $1.5 billion to Egypt and $843 million to Jordan is dispensed annually under arrangements made to induce these countries’ friendly relations with Israel.
* Billions of dollars have been lost to U.S. manufacturers because of the Arab boycott engendered by Israeli actions.
* Enormous and continuing costs to U.S. consumers of petroleum, which surged to such heights that it set off a world-wide recession during the Arab oil boycott imposed in reaction to U.S. support of Israel in the 1973 war.
There are a multitude of such costs.

A report by an economist commissioned by the Army War College in 2003 to analyze the situation in full found that the total cost to Americans over Israel’s 60+ years has been $3 trillion.

Americans have a higher unemployment rate than Israel and 10 million families are reportedly sliding into foreclosure; yet Americans continue to give tax money to Israel.

On top of this are the costs of the Iraq war:  hundreds of thousands of lives & over $3 trillion

The costs of the the Iraq war, which was promoted by Israel partisans, are almost incalculable and are still growing.
The war added trillions of dollars to the federal debt, and this doesn't include future health care and disability payments for veterans.
Economists report that the global financial crisis was due, at least in part, to the Iraq war.
The same parties are pushing for a similar attack on Iran.

The Lobby for Israel overrules US experts

U.S. policies in the Middle East rarely reflect U.S. interests and values.
Instead, over the objections of a multitude of State Department and Pentagon analysts, they are largely driven by a variety of factors:

1. Special-interest lobbying.  Fortune Magazine rates one of the many lobby organizations working on behalf of Israel, AIPAC, as the second most powerful lobby in Washington. Many analysts consider the pro-Israel interest group the most powerful lobby in our nation.

By the late 1960s Senator William Fulbright found that U.S. aid to Israel was being secretly funneled back to lobbyists in the U.S., who would use it to lobby for still more U.S. money to Israel.

The U.S. justice department and other agencies have often attempted to enforce U.S. laws

2. Israel partisans in the U.S. government and media: The efforts of a growing number of individuals with close ties to Israel (some are neoconservatives, others are neoliberals) who often hold key positions in U.S. administrations, the State Department, Pentagon, and media.

The US Ambassador to Israel stated that all US Middle East policies are predicated on their effect on Israel. This is a highly inappropriate practice and one that is replicated in no other region. US policies should be based on American interests and priorities, not those of a foreign nation.

3. Campaigns by pro-Israel funders to engender Islamophobia: to create fear and hatred of Muslims, a highly diverse population of 1.5 billion people whose faith is one of the three Abrahamic religions and who worship the same God as Christians and Jews.

4. Israeli-centric news reporting by the U.S. media consistently misportrays the current situation and the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

5. Hollywood movies and television shows, which often play a significant role in shaping attitudes and beliefs. These shows, frequently produced by individuals with ties to Israel, depict Arabs and Muslims almost always negatively, Jews and Israelis almost never negatively, and Christians both positively and negatively.

[Interestingly, the oil and weapons industries are not responsible for our relationship with Israel. In fact, at times these industries have lobbied against U.S. support for Israel, which undermines their ability to do business in the region.]  

Israel promotes its own interests, which is the right of any nation. 

 

However, this is done at the expense of Americans who fund it.

There is considerable evidence that Israel is not the close ally many Americans believe it to be:
* The GAO has reported that Israel conducts the most intense spying operation against the U.S. of any of our presumed allies.
* Intelligence experts consider Jonathan Pollard the most damaging spy in US history. For years Israel denied any connection to Pollard; now it actively lobbies for his release.
* Israeli forces have killed and injured numerous Americans. Rarely, if ever, have there been significant consequences.
* Israel has stolen U.S. technology, and passed it on to other nations, some of them U.S. adversaries.

The Israeli attack on the USS Liberty

In 1967 Israeli forces attacked a U.S. Navy ship, the USS Liberty, killing or injuring over 200 American servicemen.
An independent commission in 2003 by extraordinarily high-ranking U.S. military officers and officials found that
Israel had commited an act of war against the United States,
the US President had recalled rescue aircraft, and that
the President had ordered a cover-up on the incident.
These statements, recorded in the Congressional Record, were not reported by U.S. news media.

Israeli ethnic expansionism has caused regional misery, instability, and continual conflict.

Israeli aggression (Israel initiated all of its wars except one) and its violations of international law, human rights conventions, and UN resolutions, have created enormous hostility against it throughout the world. The US, as Israel's number one funder, is increasingly imperiled by hostility created by Israeli actions.
Israel's possession of nuclear weapons poses considerable danger both to the region itself and far beyond.

it has refused to sign the nuclear proliferation treaty and the British American Security Information Council has found that in Israel "nuclear weapons are being assigned roles that go well beyond deterrence."
While US intelligence agencies have so far found no indication that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, Israel's possession of these weapons, combined with its history of aggression, create a compelling motivation for other nations in the region to acquire them for deterrence.
Israel frequently uses American weapons in violation of US laws, killing and maiming large numbers of civilians, women, and children.
Since this is funded by American tax payers, and shielded by the U.S. government, it is causing dangerous hostility toward the U.S.

Damage to civil liberties and the American way of life

This dangerous and unnecessary peril (diplomats note that before Israel the US had no enemies in the region) has caused Americans to tolerate dangerous infringements on our liberty and violations of our Constitution.
This is causing deep damage to our character as a nation.


Deeply intrusive and potentially carcinogenic airport scanners, offensive "pat-downs" of our women and children, abrogations of our nation's most fundamental legal principles are just a few of the direct and indirect results of our Israel policies.

A secure, prosperous, and honorable America

We would be far safer and our nation far healthier by heeding the wisdom of George Washington, the father of our nation:
"...nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave."
#
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Courtesy The Council For The National Interest

"Color Revolution Of The Week": Tarpley (very good)

How Zionism infiltrated the US

Sat Feb 5, 2011 6:41PM

Interview with Scholar and Journalist, Mark Bruzonsky.

Mark Bruzonsky, a Jewish, American Scholar and Journalist, has been a key member behind the scenes of the Israeli Palestinian peace initiative in the 1980s, meeting with Former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and with Palestinian officials.

In this exclusive interview with Press TV's Autograph, Mr. Bruzonsky talks about the challenges and missed opportunities he witnessed first-hand, and how Zionist groups infiltrated American politics, US institutions and organizations.

He goes further to explain the specific time and day Obama sold out to the AIPAC lobby, and how President Obama would never dare oppose the stronghold of the Zionist, Israeli Lobby in the US.

Press TV: In 1982, Mr. Bruzonsky, you authored the Paris Declaration- a breakthrough event that greatly contributed to political developments of the time. Please tell us about that.

Bruzonsky: In the 1980s, in a sense, a lot of us knew there was this political cancer; it was very bad, it was eating up the patient and needed to be dealt with and cured. I was in Paris sitting in a hotel room, a big event in my life, with four very important people - I was there to do the work and write the document.

These people were the former president of France - Pierre Mendis France; the founder of the World Zionist Organization and the World Jewish Congress - Nahem Goldman; his successor, who was the only Jewish leader in America who had ever been president of B'nai Brith and World Jewish Congress and Secretary of Commerce. The man who inspired it was the Palestinian Liberation Organization's (PLO) Isam Sartawi, the head of the PLO in Europe. They signed this document called the Paris Declaration, I wrote it and it was on the entire front page of Le Monde newspaper; Arafat responded and that was on the front page also.

But then we ran out of steam. The organizations that had founded were not willing to even entertain a discussion on what they had signed; they disassociated themselves from the people who founded their own organizations.

So then the Donahue show asked me to be on their show. The Donahue TV show was the only talk show in America at that time, there was no other competition and I went on it after no other Jewish leaders would accept to go on the program. The timing of the show was pre-intifada, pre-apartheid and there were very few Israeli settlements on Palestine occupied land at the time and the discussion was all about how to bring peace to the region. The two-state solution (with 'Solution' emphasized) was in fact a possible solution - it wasn't going to be totally fair, the Palestinians were going to get a small piece of territory compared to their homeland, but at least there was a lot of support from political people to make it happen. That world is gone. The two-state solution is now dead with the possible exception that you would have to roll back a tremendous number of things that have happened; that's not going to happen.

The reason that is not going to happen is not because President Obama is not a smart man, not because he doesn't know that cancer has gotten a lot worse; he knows all that. He also knows that politically he is totally blocked. There is no way in the world he can come up against the Israeli Jewish lobby and their great group of institutions, personalities and foundations - no way. He knows it.

So he continues to talk the language of two-state solution, but that's largely to keep Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) from being totally discredited.

Press TV: During his inaugural as US president reports were circulating that his administration was going to move away from the Bush doctrine of rejecting Hamas into talks. Where does Hamas stand in the equation? Can there even be talks with the Palestinians when Hamas is sidelined?

Bruzonsky: In my cable TV program that I ended in 2003 I interviewed Musa Abu Marsuk the No.2 leader in Hamas. He was in New York under arrest at the time. I think it was 1996 and the Israeli Jewish lobby got the congress to pass a law outlawing Hamas and so Abu Marsuk, who was living in America as a successful businessman, was imprisoned. I got permission to interview him and do three reality TV programs. I don't think the Obama people ever said anything positive about Hamas; I think they did say they were going to re-invigorate the peace process - but those are just words, slogans, the devil is in the detail and all that meant was that we (the US) are going to say they have to stop building settlements.

Well, Obama made a joke and a fool out of himself. Didn't anyone tell what was going to happen the moment he tried to get the Israelis to stop building settlements? There is a whole history that goes back to Camp David and US President Carter who also told the world that he had got the Israelis to agree to stop settlements and then the Israelis at that time made a fool out of that president by saying they had discussed freezing settlements, but only for 90 days. And then after that they escalated their program and we now live in the world we live in.

The story of how Obama became president, how he got support is important here. Obama is a different kind of president and we were all relieved. It was very embarrassing for eight years and more so for people throughout the world that suffered and were being killed by a US president who frankly (it's not said in Washington and it's not the kind of thing said at meetings, but many of us consider them as war criminals and we consider Chaney and Bush; they fit the definition of war criminals).

When Obama ran for president he stood for human rights, he was bright and principled, but then during the campaign certain things happened.

First of all the top financiers of the Democratic Party half of them are Jewish and almost all of those are quite Zionist and quite involved with the Israelis. At the time when Hilary Clinton and Obama were competing for support AIPAC had its annual convention. On that day Obama gave a speech and he gave more than what was expected. Lee Hamilton who was on Obama's advisory board said to me that he went too far - he shouldn't have said what he said about Jerusalem - we're going to be correcting it. After the speech, behind the scenes, he was taken to meet the Board of Directors of AIPAC. Rahm Israel Emanuel, former White House Chief of Staff escorted him upstairs to the hotel room.

This is very unusual, presidency candidates don't usually get interviewed by boards of directors like this, but AIPAC is different. The way the Israeli community signaled that they were going to support Obama, without actually announcing that they had even had a meeting with him, was to have Rahm endorse Obama. So a few hours later Rahm came out in public and did that, which was the signal to the rest of us that Obama had made his peace with this lobby and that he wasn't going to be able to do anything they weren't going to approve of.

Press TV: You mentioned that it was well-known to you that the Arab-Israeli conflict will be political cancer if it was not resolved, and at this point it has become the cancer that you mentioned. What has been the main obstacle of not reaching a solution?

Bruzonsky: America is the super power - American money; American arms; American UN vetos; American military support at critical times. The Israelis took a decision way back in the 1940s - and it goes back to the holocaust and back to Jewish impotence; there's lots of factors it's not black and white. It was a powerless community, I was part of it - born into a family that my mother and father would tell me we lost all of our relatives nobody knows where they are or they were all killed or maybe some escaped to what had become Israel.

The US has prevented a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict because the Israelis set up such powerful institutions, lobbies, publications, personalities and control in various ways of political parties and of the media making it impossible for American leaders to do what they knew they should do to solve this cancer; and it goes way back to General Marshall the secretary of state. When President Truman told Marshall that he was going to accept a Jewish state, Marshall was going to resign saying it's not in the interests of the US it is going to be war, which we won't be able to end; it's going to get worse; it's going to unleash forces we won't be able to control - he was exactly right.

At every critical moment since: Eisenhower tried to do things in the 1950s, carter tried to do things in the 1970s, but they were blocked. There are plenty of books and academic information about this.

The Israelis then realized since they had control of the US, and Sharon said it bluntly back in 2001, he and Peres had a little debate in a cabinet meeting and the word that leaked out from that meeting was that Peres said that we've got to be careful, the Americans aren't happy with what we're doing and Sharon said stop worrying about the Americans we control things in America, I'll take care of things there don't worry about it. - And he was right.

I've been watching all this. I did a lot of travelling for a lot of years through the Middle East while the US has been my home base; and it's been outrageous.

Bruzonsky: I was a kid journalist just out of school. The Egyptian Embassy in Washington read something I had written. It was a movie review about a film called, “Children of Rage.” And they called me and said it was very interesting and asked if I would like to be the first Jewish journalist that has ever been invited by our government. Of course I said yes. So I went for three weeks and I met everybody: the Foreign Minister, the Minister of State, and then they said to me that they knew the three weeks were up but they wanted me to stay longer because the President wanted to meet with me. And they were so surprised when I said I could stay one more day, but I really have other places I have to go. So I said to thank him so much and it was a great honor and so nice to meet all of them, and I took off.

I went to Oman and then I went to Israel. There was going to be a big peace conference and you will see the connections in just a minute. There was going to be this big peace conference. So I get to Israel and I go to the new outlet magazine, which was sponsoring the conference and George Ball, the most important under Secretary of State, the man who helped resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis was going to be the speaker. And they said to me Mark where have you been. And I said I've just been to Egypt. I said I'm here because they wanted me to stay and meet the President but I'm at your peace conference. And they said oh my god don't you know what has happened. And I didn't because I had been traveling and it wasn't like you could tune in to Al-Jazeera in those days. They said the President gave a speech and said he is willing to go anywhere and do anything to bring peace. They said you were supposed to have a meeting with him, and I said yes.

I was in Israel for about six hours. They gave me a whole bunch of cash and wrote a letter and said Mark go back to Cairo and meet the President and invite him to come to our peace conference. So later I'm sitting with the President of Egypt and am given him this invitation, and he was asking me about my three weeks in his country. So there I am and it's a little hard for me to believe that I'm sitting with the President of Egypt all alone. Maybe forty to fifty feet away there is someone from the Minister of the Interior or somebody to protect, but he can't even hear he was so far away. And I was so disappointed because at the end of the meeting which was very nice he said I'm very sorry but I will not be able to come to your peace conference. Then I suppose I was just looking sad. I don't remember saying anything. But he said I have decided I will send a telegram to this conference. And I already knew that leaders in the Arab world do not send telegrams to Israel. I had never heard of such a thing. There wasn't a procedure. I figured it was just his way of being polite to me. I literally had to leave on the first flight in the morning, and I went to a travel agent that was recommended to me, but at the moment I whispered Israel it was don't say anther word about Israel.

We can't talk about Israel and there is no way we can get you to Israel. He said first flight in the morning goes to Athens and that is all I can do. So I said okay and I'm on my flight to Athens. I'm dog tired and I'm half asleep. I traveled so much in those days the moment anybody asked me anything I would say orange juice and English. When I woke up on the plane, there was this newspaper in front of me, The Egyptian Gazette. And I wasn't sure if was hallucinating or dreaming because as my eyes cleared I said good god that's me. There is this big picture of me and Sadat on the front page at the top of the paper. But there was no story. It was just Journalist Mark Bruzonsky meets President Sadat. There was no story; no nothing. A day later I'm called aside by the Chairman of the conference. He said Mark in one hour there is a press conference and all the media will be here.

You have to come sit up front and you have to tell everybody about your meeting with the President. And I said what's going on, what's going on. He said you know the office is closed but we are all at the hotel. We sent somebody back to get some papers and under the door is this telegram. It wasn't just oh, hope you had a nice conference. It was a whole page of the importance of peace to the region and what this conflict has done. It was a very long statement which I learned later was written for him. And for 24 hours I was the guy who met the President! It was I that had arranged this telegram and then on Thursday morning came the unbelievable announcement. The President of Egypt arrives to Israel on Shabbat (Saturday) as soon as the sun goes down. And it's like something out of some dream, as people starting arriving within hours. A press center was set up in almost minutes. There were free phones. Anybody could pick up a phone and call anywhere. And on Saturday night he arrived and I went to the airport with the Egyptian press delegation. We all thought the world was going to change now.

The Israelis would feel accepted, the Palestinians would have their homeland, for at the time it was called a homeland and we weren't even talking about a state. Then unfortunately everything started to deteriorate, and three years later Sadat was assassinated and it has been downhill ever since.

Press TV: So the postphonement on the decision on settlements led to the fact that it termed from an occupation issue in the eyes of the international community, and everyone who was observing the settlement issues thought it was a contested issue. At that point the issue of settlement could be contested after Oslo. Before that it was an occupation and it wasn't even discussed.

Bruzonsky: Once the Israelis got the PA (Abbas was the man who actually signed the document) at the White House. Once that got them to sign this agreement and become their collaborating regime without having to agree to stop the settlements. That's symbolic. If the Israelis weren't going to stop enlarging the occupation, how could we possibly consider this a major step on the way to a peace settlement? So it was the symbolism of it. Not the actual settlement here or there. The Israelis never intended to stop the settlements.

Rabin in my judgment never attended for what he was signing to end up being a Palestinian state. For them it was autonomy we packaged under different names and they were hiring Arafat and his people to control the Palestinian people. That of course is the origin of the growth of Hamas because many non-religious people and many who had been supporters of Fatah and of more secular things decided we are going to support Hamas. At least they are honest and dignified. At least they have principals and are not corrupt. And Fatah has sold us out. That's the origins of how in 2006 Hamas was elected.

Press TV: I'm going to dare ask this question to wrap up. Is there light at the end of the tunnel?

Bruzonsky: It's a very long, dark tunnel now but hopefully saner, wiser policies will prevail down the road. And we can't afford this anymore. Our own empire is collapsing financially, morally, and spiritually in terms of the credibility of American institutions. We don't feel it so much in Washington, but around the country, the Tea Party and the other movements is representative of a feeling that our future is dissolving in our place in the world, and our standard of living and what we are providing for our children. There is big conflict here and we don't have the resources to continue these policies even if you want to argue the policies are right.

Press TV: Mark Bruzonsky, thank you very much for joining us on the Autograph.

Bruzonsky: Thank you Susan.

NM/PKH 

courtesy PRESS.TV

U.S. at the Crossroads of History?

Who do we need most if America’s own real interests are to be best protected – the Arabs or Israel?
 Alan Hart

If more and more Arabs breach the wall of fear that has prevented them for decades from demanding their rights, expressing their rage at the corruption and repression of their governments and at regime impotence in the face of Israel’s arrogance of power, there’s one question above all others America’s policy makers will have to ask themselves. Who do we need most if America’s own real interests are to be best protected – the Arabs or Israel? And that, of course, begs the mother and father of all questions for them: Is Israel our most valuable ally in the region or our biggest liability?

Eisenhower was the first and last president to contain Zionism’s territorial ambitions. Kennedy might have been the second if he had been allowed to live. But from Johnson to Obama, and whether they really believed it or not (I think most if not all of them didn’t), every American president has paid extravagant lip-service to the idea that Israel is the U.S.’s most valuable ally in the Middle East.

 
Obama’s relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government has not been good to say the least, but there are informed and influential Israelis who think the manifestation of people power in Egypt could provide both men with the opportunity to change the relationship for the better. Writing in Ha’aretz under the headline For Obama, Eygpt protests may garner a new friend – Israel, Aluf Benn wrote this (my emphasis added):

“If Netanyahu plays his cards right, he could leverage the fall of neighbouring regimes into a significant improvement in Israel’s relations with the United States.

“Obama wants to be popular among the citizens of Arab states at the expense of their leaders, as he tried to do in his Cairo speech some 18 months ago. He is betting that the new regimes will be grateful and will continue to rely on Washington for diplomatic and military support. But he is taking a risk: What if the revolution doesn’t stop at the moderate interim stage and keeps going till it reaches Muslim extremism? And what will the United States do in the interim phase, when the Middle East is sunk in uncertainty?

“When Obama and his advisers look at a map of the region, they see only one state they can count on: Israel. The regime is stable, and support for America is well-entrenched. Obama may dislike Netanyahu and his policy toward the Palestinians, but after losing his allies in Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt, and with the uneasiness gripping his friends in Jordan and the Gulf, Washington can’t afford to be choosy. It will have to move closer to Israel, and for another reason as well: An anxious Israel is an Israel that is prone to military adventures, and that’s the last thing Obama needs right now.

“Now is the time for Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to justify their claim that Israel is a ‘villa in the jungle’, the West’s outpost in the Middle East.”
Netanyahu’s own contribution to fear mongering was the statement that “Egypt could follow the path of Iran”.

In my view it is not difficult to imagine the line the Zionist lobby in America was taking with the Obama administration. It might well have quoted a sentence from the National Security Network’s press release of 27 January. “The Obama administration seeks to encourage political reforms without destabilizing the region.” Then something like the following. “Your policy is failing. Your encouragement of political reforms is destabilizing the region, but what is happening is far more menacing than destabilization in the general sense. What we are witnessing is the beginning of a regional Arab intifada. The tide is turning in favour of the forces of violent Islamic fundamentalism in all its forms. If the war against global terrorism is not to be lost, America now needs Israel more than ever.”

In reality there is no evidence to suggest that change brought about by people power in Arab states would lead inevitably to rule by, or even popular support for, extremist and violent forces which use and abuse Islam in much the same way as Zionists use and abuse Judaism. From Tunisia and Eygpt in particular there is a great deal of evidence to the contrary (but as I will indicate later, everything will ultimately depend on whether or not policy makers in Washington D.C. put America on the right side of history).

The evidence to the contrary is in the fact that the manifestations of Arab people power the world has witnessed to date were not instigated by Islamist extremist groups They were spontaneous protests with demands by citizens from almost all sections of civil society, and very few were (or so it seemed) ideologically driven.

Given that policy makers in Washington D.C. say they want to see democracy alive and well in the Arab world, why, really, are they so alarmed by what is happening?

The answer is in this fact. What almost all Arab peoples want is not only an end to corruption and repression and a better life in their own countries. They also want an end to the humiliation caused by Israel’s arrogance of power, American and other Western support for it and the impotence of Arab governments, most of which are seen by their masses as agents of America-and-Zionism.

The implications are profound.

If change brings Arab governments which must and do reflect the wishes of their peoples, those governments will be under great and perhaps irresistible pressure to use their leverage in a serious effort to oblige the U.S. to use its leverage to cause Israel to end its occupation of all Arab land grabbed in 1967.

If Arab push came to American shove, Arab leverage options include withdrawing ambassadors from America; stopping assistance for propping up America’s ailing economy; and a credible threat to use the oil weapon. (As I have written in the past, the Arabs would not have to turn off the oil taps. A credible, behind-closed-doors threat to do would be enough. As I have also written in the past, if the boot was on the other foot – if the Zionists were in the Arab position, they would have played the oil card long, long ago).

If, in response to the wishes of the people, a new Arab Order did signal an intention to use its leverage, it would be crunch time for America in the Middle East; and its policy makers would have to answer the who do we need most question.

How they answered it would determine what side of history in-the-making America was going to be on – the right side or the wrong side.

The right side would see America using its leverage to oblige Israel to end its occupation. This would open the door to a real peace process (actually the first ever) and create an environment in which there would be no place for Muslim extremism.

The wrong side would see America continuing with the policy of support for Israel right or wrong and being complicit in its defiance of international law and war crimes. This would open the door to the forces of violent Islamic fundamentalism and set in motion a confrontation that could go all the way to a clash of civilizations.

Which option will America choose if crunch time comes?

Footnote

As I watched the drama unfolding in Eygpt, I found myself wondering why, really, Mubarak was clinging on. I entertained the thought that it was because Obama was telling him to do so in the hope either that the “protesters” would run out of steam, or because he, Obama, needed time for his people to fix the succession. I was entertaining such a thought because I had just re-read an excellent piece by Philip Stephens published in the Financial Times last October. In it he wrote: “Five years ago Mr. Bush promised a democratic transformation in the Middle East. The ambition of his second inaugural address was abandoned almost as it was spoken. Offering a voice to the Arab street, it was soon agreed, risked empowering extremists such as Hamas. Better to slip back into the comfortable cold war posture of cuddling up to friendly tyrants.”

The coming days, perhaps hours, will tell us if this American policy preference is sustainable.

courtesy ALANHART.NET

The Tea Party’s Emerging Zionist Face

From sounding warnings about ‘terror babies’ to deploring human sympathy for ‘underdogs,’ the Tea Party lurches into Zionist ideology

By Richard Edmondson for Veterans Today

When the Tea Party appeared as a national phenomenon early in 2009, the chief preoccupation was with domestic matters, its disparate groups and members rallying around such traditionally conservative concerns as big government, “socialized medicine,” and the like. There was a strong populist streak (or at least that’s how the media portrayed it), and outrage was expressed over Obama’s multi-billion dollar stimulus package, along with genuinely-felt sentiments, put forth here and there, that Washington was “bailing out Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.” Concerns over foreign policy, the nation’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, seemed to take a backseat, and certainly there were few, if any, calls for a new war in Iran or solidifying relations with the state of Israel.
By mid 2010, however, this had changed dramatically.(...)

Conclusion to part 1

While Americans are justifiably upset at the current state of affairs in their country, a great deal of confusion reigns as to the exact nature of the problems, their causes, and potential solutions. This is not coincidental. Such pervasive confusion exists largely thanks to the mainstream media, whose role, as ever, is to keep the populace frightened and misinformed, this while setting up straw man villains and carefully concealing where the true centers of power lie. If the TP is to be viewed as a media creation, which for the most part it seems to be, the question would then occur as to what purpose. What was its intended function? At the outset, as people grew captivated by the hoopla, its main role seemed to be taking the anger in America—which at the moment is very deep, very palpable, and near pandemic proportions—along with the perennial desire for change, and channeling these vertiginous emotions into a relatively safe, sandbox-type outlet. At some point, however, the ends began to evolve and mutate…as ends often do in the presence of human creativity. Currently as the clock seemingly ticks towards 2 a.m.—as the rhetoric heats up and the storm clouds gather over the Persian Gulf yet again—the “party,” as it were, appears to have taken a more sinister direction, with an advocacy of war becoming one of its defining characteristics.
Richard Edmondson is the author of The Memoirs of Saint John: No Greater Love, available on Amazon. Visit his website at www.memoirsofsaintjohn.com. He also maintains a blog at www.leftwing-christian.net.

read the article at VETERANS TODAY

"SOLIDARITY" REVOLT - A PRACTICAL LESSON FOR "WE THE PEOPLE"?

courtesy THE UGLY TRUTH

I happen to be old enough to remember how difficult and dangerous it was to get some scraps of truth in the communist Poland. 

Even as late as the 70’s and 80’s you had to have good friends involved in underground publishing to get some independent, political material. Short wave radio was a window of sorts to the world; we listened to “Radio Free Europe” and “Voice of America” which gave some semblance of truth despite the fact that both were propaganda fronts for outfits like CIA. We knew it well but still, this was better than the Polish equivalents of “Pravda” newspaper. No Internet then…

The strikes of 1980 started in selected big factories and spread like tsunami to virtually all big factories in Poland.

Subsequently, the “SOLIDARITY” movement was born in the shipyards of Gdansk and Szczecin. Factory workers and the so called “working intelligentsia” were for the first time united under one banner of the anti-communist Freedom movement. Eventually full 10 million people became members of “Solidarity” out of some 37 million citizens.

“SOLIDARITY” was officially but truculently acknowledged by the communists as a trade union but became a political movement par excellence; it was a political party, a Freedom movement, a school of self-organizing, a great publisher of political literature and more. Least of all was it a trade union.
For one and a half year the communist rulers of Poland and their Soviet masters had to tolerate an abominable foreign body, an island of Freedom in the middle of the Warsaw Pact.
And it all happened despite, or because, we had no firearms. But when I think of it, it was not a bad thing, as explained below.

Revolution in Poland 1980

Those were extremely hot days with constant fear of Martial Law and of the Soviet intervention.
Paradoxically, our “SOLIDARITY” may be seen as a prototype of the “color revolutions” of the recent years.

Just as the “color revolutions”, prior to, and during the Revolution, we got some help from the American and other Western organizations, also from the CIA. Those small investments from the West gave a tremendous return. For a price of a few smuggled copy machines, some printing paper and ink as well as the help to coordinate our efforts via “Radio Free Europe” and “VoA” the Soviet Bloc was trembling on the verge of a major disaster.
Those few paltry xeroxes and printing paper (which were illegal to possess) fell on an extremely fertile and well-prepared ground and had incredibly strong impact. The Polish David was giving a black eye to the Soviet Goliath with an American xerox.
Nowadays, Soros and his ilk have been pumping millions or billions of dollars into Ukraine, Georgia and other former Soviet republics in order to stir phony “revolutions” and destabilize Russia, happily with only meager and temporary effect.

We were also emboldened by the very existence of powerful moral supporters in the "Free World" such as the “Polish” Pope John Paul II and the strongly anti-communist Ronald Reagan.

President Walesa 1990

Without this duo, we would probably not have had guts enough to go full speed ahead with “SOLIDARITY” and everything that followed.
The Pope was our blessing. The Revolution started just a year after his first visit to Poland in 1979 when he had drawn millions to open-air masses. It was then that the people became aware how many and how united they were against our phony leaders.

Eventually, 1½ years after the start of our Revolution everything got smashed by an incredibly effective imposition of Martial Law by the Polish People’s Army.

read the whole thing at The Ugly Truth 

PRISON GUARD TOWERS COMING TO WALMART NEAR YOU (WAKE THE HELL UP!!!)