1. “No-Fault Espionage
It is interesting to note what happens to espionage cases in the United States. If you spy for China, or Cuba, or Iran you will be exposed, excoriated in the media, locked up and denied bail, convicted, and sentenced to many years in a federal prison. Spying is serious business and the harsh punishment most often fits the crime because when spies steal highly sensitive defense and policy information they are not only betraying their fellow citizens, they are also making all Americans less secure.
…
Spies are traitors in every sense of the word, unless, of course, if one is spying for Israel. Israel aggressively spies on the US both to influence policy and steal high technology, but getting caught only very rarely has any consequences. Leading neoconservatives like Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and Stephen Bryen have all been detected in flagrante providing classified information to Israel but the investigations were halted and their security clearances were godfathered so they could continue to hold high office. FBI counter intelligence officer John Cole has reported on the frustration of his colleagues over the many cases of Israeli espionage that are dropped under orders from the Justice Department. He provides a “conservative estimate” of 125 worthwhile investigations into Israeli espionage in the US involving both American citizens and Israelis stopped due to political pressure from above. Israeli citizens and diplomats who are caught in the act spying are routinely freed without criminal charges and allowed to return home.
If you are an American who spies for Israel, a separate and unequal criminal justice system kicks in and the media quickly excuses your actions and then makes the story go away just as fast as it can.
…
The point is that if Congress and the Justice Department think that when Americans are caught spying for Israel it is constitutionally protected activity, like free speech, perhaps they should say so publicly. A two-tier system relating to national security issues and rule of law is just not in the US national interest, no matter how one twists the facts. If you spy for Israel the consequences should be the same as if you spy for China or Cuba – arrest, conviction, and hard jail time. No exceptions, no excuses.”
http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2009/12/16/no-fault-espionage/
2. I wish they could be hacked to stop bombs dropping:
“Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones “
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126102247889095011.html?mod=yhoofront
3. Since all major terror attacks that get worldwide attention can be traced back to the CIA, then OF COURSE he was a US agent:
“India: Was Mumbai suspect a double agent for US?
The US has not allowed Indian authorities to interrogate Headley over the Mumbai attacks, much to India’s consternation.
According to he Hindustan Times, Indian Home Ministry officials raised questions about Headley’s involvement with the American intelligence agency.
India is investigating whether a Chicago man accused of helping plan the deadly 2008 Mumbai siege was a double agent working for the United States and a Pakistan-based militant group, an official said on Wednesday.”
4. “Which fool ever thought the Iraq War was about WMD?
The most surprising thing about Tony Blair’s ‘revelation’ that he would have deposed Saddam regardless was that so many found it shocking.
Blair said he would have been for the Iraq War even if he knew Saddam had no WMD, because he believed it was right. Some of us, on the other hand, would have opposed it even if we knew for sure that he did have them, because such interventions are anti-democratic and lead only to disaster.”
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/printable/7833/
5. “Lefties Call for Alliance with Paulies Against War
Citing Dr. Ron Paul’s clear and unambiguous “non-interventionist” platform which condemns US troop presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, anti-war speakers at a rally headlined “No You Can’t” called for an alliance between anti-war left and anti-war right on war and peace issues. “
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Lefties-Call-for-Alliance-by-Daily-kos-091216-35.html
6. Boy, that’s all we need:
“Raytheon turns iPhones into battlefield tools”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091217/tc_afp/usitinternetmilitaryapple
7. Good. Turn about is fair play:
“Palestinians destroy settler-made Dead Sea cosmetics”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091216/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictpalestinianeconomysettler
8. Sorry, no it’s not:
“‘Anti-Israel is the new anti-Semitism’
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1260930878910&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
9. Good:
” Gulf petro-powers to launch currency in latest threat to dollar hegemony
The Arab states of the Gulf region have agreed to launch a single currency modelled on the euro, hoping to blaze a trail towards a pan-Arab monetary union swelling to the ancient borders of the Ummayad Caliphate.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/6819136/Gulf-petro-powers-to-launch-currency-in-latest-threat-to-dollar-hegemony.html
10. “The person who has spent weeks depicting Afghanistan as a “special needs baby” is now lecturing us about the “corrosive mind-set” of “infantilizing” Muslims. And the person who is now inveighing against seeing ourselves as “subjects” and Muslims as “objects” was one of the most vocal cheerleaders for the attack on Iraq on the ground that our invasion would “put Iraq on a more progressive path and stimulate some real change in an Arab world.”
The “point” of Friedman’s column yesterday is to call for a “civil war” in the Muslim world. Calling for wars is what Tom Friedman does most frequently. Today’s not one of those days when I’m willing to wallow in the muck of his “argument,” but Daniel Larison’s superb response makes that unnecessary. Suffice to say: if I had to identify one fact that would illustrate for historians the rot and destructiveness of American political and media culture in this era, I would point to the fact that the trite, sociopathic, and grotesquely muddled mind of Tom Friemdan is widely considered by political and media elites to be deeply Serious, profound and oozing great wisdom.”
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
11. “The Baggage Of American Extremism
No Enemy, No Negotiations: Only The Dead Are Real
Eight years of bizarre “Christian Zionism,” a military run by religious fanatics and a government of drugstore cowboys and phony evangelists was unprepared to guide a superpower toward policies of responsible world leadership.
Now, President Obama is afraid to stop “driving over a cliff” simply because nobody wants to tell the American people the truth, how stupid and useless we have actually become, and how idiotic our policies have been. It is assumed that so many Americans are mentally defective, addicted to imaginary vaccine plots and secret UN invasions, that acting like a responsible and intelligent world leader would not seem “credible.”
…
War without purpose is what we have now. Our cover story, forcing a military solution on a nation that rejects, not only Karzai and his Kabul regime but all American involvement may sell in Washington and Tel Aviv but not in the real world.
Educating Americans about the realities of our own mistakes and the depth of the idiocy of others we have walked into blind and, oh yes, deaf too, is a start.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24210.htm
12. “War Crime Case Against Tony Blair Now Rock-solid
Tony Blair’s extraordinary admission on Sunday to the BBC’s Fern Britton – that he would have gone to war to topple Saddam Hussein regardless of the issue of Iraq’s alleged WMDs – is sure to give fresh impetus to moves to prosecute our former prime minister for war crimes.
The case against Blair, strong enough before this latest comment, now appears rock solid. Going to war to change another country’s regime is prohibited by international law, while the Nuremburg judgment of 1946 laid down that “to initiate a war of aggression”, as Blair and Bush clearly did against Iraq, “is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24207.htm
13. “How Banks Fleece the Unemployed”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24199.htm
