Category: America

LIVE TALK WITH MR. OKTAR AND RABBI FROMAN

LIVE TALK WITH MR. ADNAN OKTAR AND RABBI MENACHEM FROMAN

(from the TV program on Kanal Urfa TV, Adıyaman TV and Kral Karadeniz TV, November 10th, 2009)

Rabbi Froman with his wife Hadasah

PRESENTER: Today we have very important guests. A very well known rabbi and his dear wife. Mrs. Hadassa and Mr. Froman are with us. First of all, wellcome. Wellcome to the studio.

RABBI FROMAN: Thank you.

ADNAN OKTAR: Masha’Allah. Yes Mr. Froman is such a person who is compassionate, loving the Turkish, seeking peace, seeking beauty between countries. A very precious person. Now you can translate what I said. Mrs. Hadassa is also very precious. They love each other so much insha’Allah. They’ve been married for years now. His wife is also Jewish. She is full of love for Turkey. And we love them so much. Untill the Last Day, both Israel and Turkey will live in friendship and brotherhood insha’Allah.
Look, it mentions the courage of Salahaddin Ayyubi, who is Kurdish you know, Salahaddin Ayyubi. Kurdish, Turkish, Circassians, Laz, we are all brothers. Jews are also our flesh and blood insha’Allah. Christians are also our brothers, our flesh and blood. Our Muslim nation is already our soul insha’Allah. Together we will have a brotherly, happy, carefree, troublefree, thornless, beautiful life until the Doomsday.
They are entrusted to us from the Prophet Moses (pbuh), the Prophet Abraham (pbuh). Insha’Allah we don’t let anybody touch even their single hair, by the leave of Allah. They will live so comfortably, in tranquility and security, insha’Allah. In Israel, they will also be in peace and calm. We will demolish those walls. Those protective walls in Israel. There will no more be anarchy and terror. They will live in such joy in the Turkish Islamic Union. Isha’Allah Rabbi Froman will come here, they will travel in composure, we do not accept any kind of danger for them. Our Palestinian brothers will also be at ease, Syria will also be at ease, Iraq will also be at ease, Armenia will also be at ease. Insha’Allah they will live peacefully in the compassion and mercy of the Turkish Islamic Union. There will be full freedom for worship, they will worship as they wish insha’Allah.

RABBI FROMAN: First of all we have to thank Allah. That’s the beginning of everything, Bismillah. I want to thank Allah that brought me here from Jerusalem to Istanbul this afternoon. And I have no words how to express my obligation to Allah that gave me such a great grace to come here.

ADNAN OKTAR: Masha’Allah, Masha’Allah.

RABBI FROMAN: Then after we thank the messengers, the messengers of God Who brought, Who brings His grace to us and now I want to thank Harun Yahya for bringing me from Jerusalem to Istanbul and hosted me in such, me and my wife, in such a generous and nice way and I have no else way of how to again thank him for such an expression of the grace, of course. I thank God that we met. I thank God that He decided to bring me here. And I am obliged to this world of grace to continue the channel of grace that Harun Yahya began.

ADNAN OKTAR: Masha’Allah.

RABBI FROMAN: This invitation is a proof, is against satan against iblis. Satan, iblis tries to convince everybody in the world that Islam is a religion of hatred that the more you are Muslim the more you hate Jews, Americans, Europeans. And we have to stone iblis, we have to stone satan, to throw stones against him. And this invitation, a kind invitation of Harun Yahya is a very concrete stone against satan.
Another lie of satan is that necessarily there is hatred between Jews and Palestinians in the Holy City. Harun Yahya have not invited only me, he invited with me a friend of mine, a dear friend of mine, and my family, my wife, Sheikh Bukhari who is going to come in a few minutes. Perhaps he is now in the airport I don’t know. And we are going to be here together as two men from Jerusalem, two men from the Holy Land. One Jew and the other is Palestinian. One is Rabbi, the other is a Sheikh, as good friends, and as together, by the grace of God Who sent us Harun Yahya. We want to, again, stone satan that lies that necessarily that there’s hatred between Jews and Palestinians in the Holy Land.

ADNAN OKTAR: By Allah’s leave, it will be like this until the Last Day, insha’Allah. In any case, we will never let anyone do any harm to the Children of the Prophet Abraham (pbuh), to the Children of the Prophet Moses (pbuh). One is the Children of the Prophet Jacob (pbuh) and the other is the Children of the Prophet Ishmael (pbuh). As you know Arabs, the Palestinians are the Children of the Prophet Ishmael (pbuh). And these beautiful beings are the Children of the Prophet Jacob (pbuh). Both are the Children of the Prophet Abraham (pbuh). By Allah’s leave, we will never let anyone touch even their single hair. No country can harm Palestine nor Israel, no one can harm Jerusalem. From now on, an age of peace will prevail. This century is the century when the Turkish Islamic Union will form. A century, which everyone will live in peace. For instance, Israel will be a national state, Iran will be a national state, Turkey will be a national state but the Turkish Islamic Union will be formed. This will be a union of hearts, love and affection. We will make peace prevail in the whole region, insha’Allah with the emergence of Hazrat Mahdi (pbuh). This will be consolidated by the emergence of the Messiah (pbuh).

RABBI FROMAN: I want to say something, personal, little personal. For years I thought that Turkiye has the historical task to bring peace to the region. I think that we have to, three years I thought, that we have to reestablish the Ottoman Empire not of course the Empire of army, of conquering but empire of love, empire of Islam, empire of salam. Because Islam is from salam, it is the same word. By inviting me and other Jews, other Rabbis Harun Yahya represents the whole Turkish nation. I remember after years of thinking that Turkiye is the fact of, is the state that can bring us peace. “Us”, I mean the Palestinians and the Israelis, the Jews and the Arabs. I was in the middle of one of my lectures I said. We’ve many students together and I forgot to lock my mobile and then in the middle of the lecture I have a call. I asked, “Who is speaking?,” “Seda Aral from Istanbul” and she invited me to come to Istanbul and to meet her teacher and to begin a period of peace. For me it is like a miracle. It is like a great grace of God that I was thinking. What I was thinking about the task of the Turkish Nation and God sent me the telephone from Istanbul in the middle of my lecture, in the middle of my speaking to my students and invited me to come and to begin a period of peace.

ADNAN OKTAR: Masha’Allah.

RABBI FROMAN: I want to add something more.

ADNAN OKTAR: Masha’Allah.

RABBI FROMAN: A few months ago I was invited by the special messenger of President Obama to Washington by George Mitchell. He invited me to meet him and to think together how to bring peace to the Holy Land. I came again with an Arab friend with a Palestinian friend – a Sheikh, Sheikh Manasra his name. Together we came to Washington and we sat with George Mitchell and his coop and we spoke about the ways of how to bring peace to the Holy Land. Half of the time of the long meeting that we had, we talked, I and my Palestine friend, about Turkiye. About the task of Turkiye.
We tried to explain to Mr. Mitchell, to Senator Mitchell that the power that can bring peace to the Holy Land is the Turkish-Union. And he was so moved. When he was departing he said that in the end of the conversation: “I am very moved from what you say, Rabbi Froman.” And I got a very clear impression that the result of the conversation will be a visit of President Obama in Ankara in Turkiye. There after I came here as the guest of Harun Yahya and I was interviewed by many Turkish journalists and I said, “Look here I see that very soon President Obama will come here.” They looked at me like, I don’t know, lunatic. It was in the quite in the beginning of the period of Obama. After 3 weeks I think or 4 weeks, I heard in the radio President Obama chose Turkiye as the first country in the Middle East that he is visiting. It was I think 3 months after he was elected. I think that the task of Turkiye to make peace in the whole region and especially in the Holy Land will be recognized very soon by the whole world. If the Turkish nation will work for this historical task, national task that they have, the whole world will honor the whole of Turkiye in the region in the whole world.

ADNAN OKTAR: Masha’Allah, Alhamdulillah.

RABBI FROMAN: I want to add something, perhaps for the end of the program. From history of this evening, in this evening after being hosted so kindly, so generously by your students, by your followers, I wanted to pray. We, the Jews pray to the direction of Jerusalem. So I asked Ali and Emre, I wanted to know what is the direction of Jerusalem in my apartment. One of them perhaps Ali, one of your students said, “You know that Istanbul is a place perhaps the only place in the world, the direction of Jerusalem and the direction of Mecca, the kiblah is the same direction, exactly the same direction. From Istanbul if you pray to God, you pray to God in Jerusalem, in the temple in Jerusalem, you pray to God in the mosque of Mecca.” So that gives this place Istanbul a very significant importance, very significant importance in the whole world. I hope that the Turkish nation led by Harun Yahya will fulfill this historical task.

ADNAN OKTAR: Masha’Allah, Masha’Allah. My leadership can be such that it only can be an intellectual leadership. It cannot be physical leadership. It does not mean a political leadership. It is an intellectual leadership, leadership of hearts. May Allah let me be a means in this task, insha’Allah.
Masha’Allah. Israel and Israelis as a whole, are entrusted to us by Allah. Children of Ishmael (pbuh) are entrusted to us by Allah, Children of Jacob (pbuh) are also entrusted to us by Allah. Turks will fulfill the task of leadership perfectly with their beautiful souls full of love, full of kindness and full of compassion. This is destiny insha’Allah. Allah created it as it is in the destiny, the whole world will see it. Turkish nation will bring ease, abundance, wealth and peace not only to a certain region but to the whole world, insha’Allah. Allah will make this nation a means to fulfill this task as a leader insha’Allah. Masha’Allah.

RABBI FROMAN: And in the end perhaps we should finish with the beginning of the program Kemal Ataturk. One of the lies of the satan is that you can oppose God. But Allahu Akbar, everything that is happening in the world, in the end helps, supports the word of God. I am not surprised from what you read from Kemal Ataturk. Every positive man, every positive party is the deed of God and for me if Kemal Ataturk is a positive figure, then he is supporting religion and not against religion. That’s what I mean what I say, when I say several times a day “Allahu Akbar”. Allahu Akbar means that even those factors that in our eyes, in the first time are seen to be against the power of Allah, in the end it is very clear that they support the word of Allah. With this perhaps we can be sure that the victory of Allah, Whose one of the nicest names is “Salam” is “peace.” You can be sure that “Allahu Akbar” means peace will win victory, peace will win victory. Allahu Akbar.

ADNAN OKTAR: Masha’Allah, Masha’Allah. Masha’Allah. Our Ataturk, our pride. If it wasn’t Ataturk, Allah forbid I can’t even imagine what could happen. He granted this holy, this beautiful country to us to completely protect it, isn’t it? We are free, democrat, republican, we have the freedom of thought, we speak as we like, we perform our prayers as we like. We live in a modern country. It is a great blessing for everyone to express his ideas. There is no bigotry, no fanaticism. Ataturk didn’t allow communism, he also didn’t allow fascism, of course. He said: “Gentlemen, not to forget, the biggest foe of the Turkish nation is communism. In every condition it should be crashed wherever it is seen.” he says. He never allowed. At his time they made so much pressure, yet he never allowed anyone. He never allowed the fascists, he never allowed the communists. In his ideal there was always the Turkish Islamic Union. One day the Turkic nations will unite, the Islamic world will unite. It will bring peace to the whole region. His wonderful ideal is about to be realized. There is too little left insha’Allah. Turkey is insha’Allah in duty as a nation to make the world live in peace, with love, friendship, brotherhood, modernity, republicanism, democracy, humanity and beauty; and to encourage and protect it. Our heroic army and our heroic nation has this excellent mission insha’Allah.
It should not be forgotten that in every condition communism should be crashed wherever it is. So he did not allow communism and fascism.
I will recite you a verse from the Qur’an. Surat az-Zumar, 41: “We have sent down to you the Book for mankind with truth. So whoever is guided is guided to his own good and whoever is misguided, it is to his detriment. You are not set over them as a guardian.”
There are very beautiful words in the Torah compatible with the Qur’an. Some of which are unchanged words, Allah knows the truth. For example from the Proverbs: “Listen, my son, and be wise, and keep your heart on the right path.”Look how beautiful, for example it says: “for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags.”
For example, it says: “Do not gaze at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it goes down smoothly! In the end it bites like a snake and poisons like a viper. Your eyes will see strange sights and your mind imagine confusing things. You will be like one sleeping on the high seas, lying on top of the rigging. “They hit me,” you will say, “but I’m not hurt! They beat me, but I don’t feel it! When will I wake up so I can find another drink?”
It says “Wisdom is too high for a fool”. (It says that the wisdom is unreachable for a fool. It says for example that “He who plots evil will be known as a schemer.” It says, “The schemes of folly are sin”, that is, scheming, the schemes of folly are sin. It says, “men detest a mocker”. Mocking is not a good thing. Everybody hates a mocker. Insha’Allah.

RABBI FROMAN: So your teacher read the Holy Qur’an and read the Wisdom of Solomon and this is no wonder that the words of Qur’an and the words of Solomon are going in the same direction. Because these Books are the words of God, those Books are the words of One God. So that’s exactly the direction that we have to go, in the direction of your teacher to find the word of God in Turkish, in Arabic, in English, in Hebrew, in every language in this Book, in this Book, in all the books of God, all the Books that God has given us in order to guide us to the right direction which is of course the way to Him, to Himself. His name again and again I remember, that in Arabic and in Hebrew the very name of God is Salam or Shalom. And he works for God, he works for Shalom.

ADNAN OKTAR: Of course Judaism and Islam are particularly very much alike. We believe in One Allah, we believe in all the Prophets, we believe in the angels, we believe in the Hereafter, our belief in the Hereafter is the same. There’s also daily prayer (salat) in Judaism, the Jews also take ablution and pray. There are video shootings about that. They fast as well. The adultery is forbidden, the theft, killing of innocent people are forbidden as well. Loving your neighbors, protecting them are also ordered (fardh) in the Torah.

Nov 11, 2009

Source: www.harunyahya.com, 11 November 2009

November 11, 2009
Seven shot dead at US army base

Seven people have been killed and at least 20 injured in a pair of shootings at the Fort Hood military base in Texas, the US Army has confirmed.

One person has been arrested and at least one more is on the run, reports say. The base has been locked down.

NBC News network said the two suspects were in military uniform and that the shooter-at-large was believed to have a high-powered sniper rifle.

Fort Hood, near the town of Killeen, is the largest US base in the world.

Home to about 40,000 US troops, the base lies between Austin and Waco, about 60 miles (97 km) from each city.

It is not yet clear whether those reported killed and injured are civilians or military personnel.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said President Barack Obama had been briefed on the incident.

Army spokesman Lt Col Nathan Banks at the Pentagon told the Associated Press news agency the shootings had begun at about 1330 (1930 GMT) on Thursday at a personnel and medical processing centre at Fort Hood.

He said two shooters had been involved.

The second incident took place at a theatre on the base, he said.

NBC reports that the suspect in custody is in his 20s.

At this point all those involved are believed to be military personnel, ABC reports. It says there are conflicting reports about whether there is a third shooter.

A soldier stationed at Fort Hood told the BBC: “We’re on lockdown. I heard the emergency announcement over the speakers outside and saw people rushing to get indoors.

“In our office we’re okay but we’re hearing about the deaths. It’s horrible and very shocking.”

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, talking on CNN, said she had spoken to one of the generals at Fort Hood minutes ago, and he had suggested 30 people were wounded.

Local congressman John Carter, speaking to NBC News, said gunfire had erupted during a graduation ceremony.

The BBC’s Adam Brookes in Washington says there are military police and Swat teams on the scene, and the FBI is on the way from Austin and Waco. Schools in the area have also been locked down.

The units at the base will be deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and some will have returned from there, our correspondent says.

The base is essentially like a small town, he adds. There is a centre there that deals with combat stress.

BBC

November 5, 2009
Ex-NY police chief Kerik guilty

Former New York City police chief Bernard Kerik has pleaded guilty to lying to the White House, tax evasion and corruption charges, in a plea deal.

Mr Kerik, who was police commissioner at the time of the 9/11 attacks, had been due to stand trial next week.

He had his bail revoked two weeks ago for passing on secret pre-trial documents and has been in prison since.

He made false statements to the White House in 2004 while being considered for a job as homeland security chief.

Mr Kerik made his eight guilty pleas at a court in White Plains, New York state.

The admissions are part of a plea bargain designed to resolve three pending criminal trials on 15 federal counts. Mr Kerik had previously denied all charges.

He faces sentencing in February next year.

National hero

In court, Judge Stephen Robinson warned Mr Kerik that he could face up to 61 years in prison for the offences to which he was pleading guilty.

Under the plea bargain, the prosecution has suggested the former police commissioner be sentenced to between 27 and 33 months in jail.

Mr Kerik told the court he had given up his right to appeal. He has also agreed to file amended tax returns and pay restitution.

As well as making false statements to the White House and other federal officials, Mr Kerik admitted accepting a $250,000 (£151,000) payback in the form of apartment renovations from a company to which he gave a city contract.

He also admitted tax crimes including failing to report more than $500,000 (£302,000) in taxable income between 1999 and 2004.

Mr Kerik had been hailed as a national hero following the 9/11 terror attacks and was nominated for the post of the head of the Department of Homeland Security under the Bush administration in 2004.

But he withdrew his name from consideration for the role after he was accused of failing to pay taxes, and of having extramarital affairs.

BBC

November 5, 2009
Milan: CIA chief given eight years for abduction

Rendition trial ends with Milan CIA chief given eight years

• Italian court convicts Robert Lady and 23 others in absentia
• First prosecution for US abduction of suspects to torture states

The former head of the CIA in Milan has been given an eight-year jail sentence for kidnapping at the end of the first trial anywhere in the world involving the agency’s “extraordinary rendition” programme.

Robert Lady was tried in his absence and convicted of helping to organise the seizure of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, from a Milan street in February 2003. His superior, Jeff Castelli, the head of the CIA in Italy at the time, was acquitted on the grounds that he was covered by diplomatic immunity. Most of the other 23 alleged CIA operatives on trial were given five-year jail sentences in their absence.

Extraordinary rendition involved the abduction of suspects and their forcible transfer for interrogation to third countries, often states in which torture was routinely employed.

The judge ruled that neither the former head of Italian military intelligence, Nicolo Pollari, nor his deputy could be convicted because the evidence against them was subject to official secrecy restrictions. Two other Italian intelligence officials were given three years’ jail.

Successive Italian administrations avoided applying to the US for the extradition of the 26 American defendants, who included a senior US air force officer. Their lawyers, appointed by the court, had no contact with their clients, who were regarded in Italian law as being on the run.

Eyewitnesses testified that Abu Omar was stopped, apparently by Italian police, and bundled into a van. The prosecution charged that he was driven to the US air base at Aviano near Venice, then transferred to another American military facility at Ramstein in Germany. He was allegedly flown from there to Egypt.

Four years later he was released without charge. He said he had been reduced to a “human wreck” by torture in a Cairo jail.

The prosecution alleged the Americans enjoyed co-operation from the Italian authorities. The head of the government when Abu Omar was kidnapped was Silvio Berlusconi, who returned to office as prime minister last year.

More than two years after the trial opened, the judge, Oscar Magi, heard final submissions from the prosecution and defence before retiring to consider his verdict. He told the court: “This was not an easy trial and the mere fact of its having been held is a significant event.”

The CIA has declined to comment on the case. Successive Italian governments have denied involvement in renditions.

To build their case, prosecutors ordered police to tap intelligence officers’ telephones and seize documents from intelligence service archives. Earlier this year Italy’s constitutional court dealt the prosecution a heavy blow when it ruled that much of the evidence gathered was protected by official secrecy and could not be used in court. Magi ruled that the trial should continue regardless.

In a reference to the two senior Italian intelligence officials, prosecutors told the court yesterday that the defendants included those who “by kidnapping Abu Omar compromised, rather than safeguarded, national security”.

Italian investigators had been tapping the cleric’s calls before he was abducted. Court documents leaked to the media showed he was suspected of recruiting young Muslims for the Iraqi insurgency.

The prosecution contended that his seizure not only violated Italian sovereignty but aborted an important anti-terrorist investigation.

The Guardian

November 4, 2009
How to win the Nobel Peace Prize
The Answer to the Burning Question du jour: Why was President Obama Gifted the Nobel Peace Prize?

Zahir Ebrahim

In complete realization of the ‘change’ mantra:

“We are gonna spread happiness,

we are gonna spread freeeeedom,

Obama’s gonna change it,

Obama’s gonna leeeeead em,

we’re gonna change it,

and re-arrange it,

we are gonna change the world!” ( The Obama Kids Song )

President Barack Obama has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The President is delighted and “Says He’s ‘Surprised’ and ‘Humbled’” according to the New York Times.

When I first penned “How to Win the Nobel Peace Prize” in great anguish in April 2003, in Chapter 2 of Prisoners of the Cave as the “shock and awe” of Iraq was under way, I hadn’t the full prescience of all the future players at the time for I grossly omitted the new name. My apologies to the harbingers of ‘change’. Their mantra, and the $2 billion spent creating it, has obviously been very effective. After the “peace maker” moniker, anointment as the “Messiah” really can’t be that far behind. This Machiavellian fabrication of a ‘savior’ was already examined in Mr. Obama – The Post Modern Coup in November 2008.

It is astonishing to me how simplistic the most lauded dissent-chiefs and most profound intellectuals are in the West. Even when they critique absurdities and war-mongering as per their good conscience, they tread remarkably gently. Look at historian Howard Zinn’s comment in the UK Guardian. He is once again simplistic in his vocal dissent piece – just as he has been all along on 911 – by deliberately not seeing the Orwellian propaganda agenda behind the Peace Prize:
No, No, NO! Never ‘superficial estimates’ and never ’empty gestures’. Rather, laying the seeds of masterful propaganda towards Orwellian social engineering.

Thus, Professor Zinn’s concluding prescription: “The Nobel peace committee should retire, and turn over its huge funds to some international peace organization which is not awed by stardom and rhetoric, and which has some understanding of history”, which, since he diagnosed the disease incorrectly, is a cure, I am sure, to the problem that he has posited in his own mind, but one that has no forensic bearing to the modernity plaguing mankind. Indeed, this “modernity” is itself “as old as mankind”. So while Howard Zinn does conscionably lament the bizarre awarding of peace prizes to murderous trigger pullers, he very carefully does not mention the prime-movers whom they work for:
Ever since hectoring hegemons have existed, ever since oligarchs have existed wielding power from behind the scenes through their ‘errand boys’, ever since they discovered social engineering, and especially ever since Edward Bernays discovered and employed Public Relations which coincided approximately with the time that Nobel peace prizes started to be awarded, these accolades from the high and mighty serve the oligarchic agendas as needed.

Since Professor Howard Zinn, as a profound historian who would like us to learn from history, is berating the Nobel Peace Committee on their lacking “some understanding of history”, watch the BBC documentary Century of Self to observe how Edward Bernays himself fabricated President Woodrow Wilson’s aura as the European ‘savior’ right after the “he kept us out of the war” devil had taken America to World War I at the behest of his handlers Bernard Baruch and Col. Edward Mandell House, both of whom represented the international bankers. House even penned the rationale for having ‘errand boys’ and controlling them in a fictional narrative based upon his own role during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency. Who is channeling President Obama’s energies such that despite all his election promises to the contrary, he is very predictably maintaining the same overarching policy axioms as his predecessor from his day one in office?

These prizes are anything but “empty gestures”. It is both a payoff to tickle the ego of the ‘errand boy’, and a propaganda seed. In the expert hands of the Mighty Wurlitzer, such a gift can convince the masses of the most ridiculous absurdities, like the War on Terror already has. The proof of these statements of fact is both empirical, and historical. Watch Barack Obama crafted into a fine new global ‘savior’ at the expense of the ‘untermenschen’. That’s why the United States President, ceremoniously presiding over the most militarized superpower in the world which has just devastated two civilizations to smithereens, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while he rapidly accelerates his war prosecution to bring “peace” in a one-world government.

Here is the excerpt from Chapter 2 of Prisoners of the Cave.

How to win the Nobel Peace Prize

President Jimmy Carter, known as the conscionable president, refused to bomb Tehran despite recommendations from his wife and advisors, as noted by a speaker recently, builds homes for Habitat for Humanity with his own bare hands, and is the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. His own National Security Advisor (ZB) took credit for handing the Soviets their Vietnam in Afghanistan, leading to the destruction of an entire civilization and loss of multiple of its generations to multiple civil wars and poverty, eventually leading to 911 – if one is to believe the facile version of 911 put forth by the American Government. Whether or not Bin Laden was involved in 911, the facts of history attest to the machinations of the United States of America in the exercise of its military and economic power since the end of World War II as forcefully articulated by George Kennan in 1948:
ZB’s own confessions to this end are highly instructive. The 1998 ZB interview to “Le Nouvel Observateur”, translated from the original French by author and historian Bill Blum, is reproduced below. The translator notes that: “*There are at least two editions of this magazine; with the perhaps sole exception of the Library of Congress, the version sent to the United States is shorter than the French version, and the Brzezinski interview was not included in the shorter version.”
Frighteningly amoral execution of George Kennan’s policy articulation from 1948 of “going to have to deal in straight power concepts”. Wouldn’t you say that all American Presidents have been doing exactly that?

I had also personally witnessed on television, President Carter in 1978 toasting to the health of the King of Persia, Raza Shah, with approximately the following words: ~“To your majesty, to the love that your people have for you.” This to a tyrant responsible for brutally suppressing his own people with American supplied weapons, and while Carter is toasting his host inside the Palace, outside the streets are filled with people protesting their king. When the revolution proceeds a few month later, instead of a mea culpa, a reign of vilification, long war, and sanctions is imposed on the people of Iran. And for what crime? For wanting their freedom from American-CIA imposed tyranny at the hands of one of their own elite? The Iran Hostage Crisis, covered on ABC Nightline daily, which I would occasionally catch while eating dinner in the late night cafeteria at MIT, as I recall was quite devoid of any significant history or accurate analysis of the past 26 years leading up to the crisis. I subsequently saw a shredded memo painstakingly put together and freely available in the streets of most countries in the region about some of the imperial work being done by the American staff in the US embassy in Teheran, whom the hostage takers were calling CIA spies. The taking of these hostages, many of them civilians, was probably the biggest blunder the Iranians made after their revolution, and were paid for in spades by America with the war imposed on them through Iraq. If Jimmy Carter had deserved any Peace Prize, it would have been to avert the crisis with Tehran and successfully bring back the hostages, made amends with Iran for its people finally exercising their will and set the stage for friendship between the two countries, leaving a legacy of peace and prosperity for the region and appreciated the world over. He did not do that.

What is the prize for?

You might say Camp David and Egypt-Israel peace accord over a desert that was militarily occupied in a war? When his own people call Anwar Sadaat a traitor for making his private and separate peace with Israel and breaking up the Arab stance on Palestine which is what Israel wanted all along; and he is also a despised dictator of his own people hated and killed by them for his oppressive policies only to be replaced by another brutish dictator who is also continually kept in power by being the second largest US aid recipient in the world after Israel – is that a peace at the barrel of a gun or an enduring peace with justice?

Brokering a “peace accord” that was only a new manifestation of an old “divide and conquer” plan that the peoples at least on one side of it did not want, and which only allowed Israel a freer hand to continue suppressing the Palestinians and incrementally continue to swallow up their lands without interference from its Arab neighbors, instead of one in which all could have lived in justice and peace with full rights of return for those displaced, is an imperial farce forced upon a beleaguered peoples. And the impact of precisely this “peace accord” for which Carter got the “peace” prize are visible to all and sundry in Palestine – an amazing case study in faits accomplis that become “irreversible” – a modern day genocidal resettlement of another’s land right before the very eyes of the silently bespectating world!

What about Menachem Begin? He certainly also had all the qualifications for the Nobel Peace Prize, having blown up the King David Hotel in 1948 as part of the terrorist Stern-Irgun gangs and was once the most wanted criminal in Britain.*9A

Let’s see who might be in line next? Ariel Sharon and George Bush Jr. and Sr., as well as Bin Laden and Zbigniew Brzezinski, because after all, they did defeat the Soviet Union and bring an end to the four decade long Cold War. They all appear to have the right pedigree of “blood-experience” for the Nobel Peace Prize!

So pardon me if I am not tripping all over myself congratulating the “peace prize” winners!

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By Zahir Ebrahim Link: http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-to-win-nobel-peace-prize.html | PDF | Read the rest of chapter 2 in full context here | Print | Announcement = Project Humanbeingsfirst Ebook 2009

Source: www.thepeoplesvoice.org, October 12th, 2009
November 3, 2009
Obama’s Inner Kissinger

Mickey Edwards

The Iconoclast

Mickey Edwards

The Iconoclast

For more than 200 years, America’s policy makers have wrestled with the complexities of dealing with the world. George Washington, for example, thought America’s best interests were served by keeping the rest of the world at arm’s length (a view later amended more than slightly by James Monroe, who reversed the emphasis by insisting that other countries butt out of our business, the definition of “our business” being extended both north and south to include the entirety of “our” hemisphere.

John Adams suffered from a foreign policy heartburn brought about by Thomas Jefferson’s stopping just short of declaring that we were all, in our hearts, French. Walter Isaacson, in his biography of Henry Kissinger, traced competing foreign policy perspectives to the idealistic Jefferson (“eternal hostility against any form of tyranny over the mind of man”) and a less sentimental Alexander Hamilton, who saw “safety from external danger” as the principal consideration in determining with whom we would engage and how.

And so it has gone through the years. John Kennedy, Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan all drew on John Winthrop and the Bible to declare that America was a “shining city on a hill” sending out its beams to the rest of the planet, Reagan playing the pivotal role in creating a National Endowment for Democracy. Reagan edited George Kennan’s long-standing “containment policy” toward the Soviet Union and replaced it with a “rollback” campaign, which mixed the Hamiltonian pursuit of security with Jefferson’s anti-tyranny crusade. Jimmy Carter pushed for greater international respect for human rights. Even George W. Bush, who was inexplicably cavalier toward civil liberties in the United States, insisted on expanding human rights and democracy in the rest of the world, though perhaps too willing to impose, rather than promote.

And so now Barack Obama occupies the place of primacy in deciding the shape of America’s international engagement. In a world full of danger, present or emerging, whose form has this new President taken? Henry Kissinger’s.

This is a bit of a surprise. One element of Obama’s electoral appeal was the clear sense that this was a man of high ideals. There is no question that those ideals existed, and strongly, and that they guided his approach to many of the nation’s most vexing problems. If he had not exactly repeated Robert Kennedy’s “I dream of things that never were and say, ‘why not’”, he had at least given a sense of commitment to the better angels.

The thing about the presidency, though, is that one invariably finds issues more complicated than they might have appeared from the campaign trail. Here, while one’s heart may echo Jefferson, one’s responsibilities make Washington’s sense of caution more appealing. Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State, is known as the most prominent modern proponent of a “realpolitik” approach toward foreign policy in which, in the end, the most important factor in deciding a national approach to other nations is quite simple: “What is in America’s interest”?

That alone is a difficult question. It was once thought to be in America’s “interest” to ally itself with some of the worst dictators on the planet: we not only allied ourselves with, but embraced, the Batistas, the Somozas, the Shahs, the Noriegas, and while those short-term alliances may have been of some use in dealing with Soviet expansionism (a real threat at the time), we have clearly paid a long-term price for such narrowness of purpose. But the world is not easy. One wishes for more democracy, more freedom, more protection from abuse in all the places where these rights are in short supply. But there are other considerations and they necessarily impinge on the decisionmaking process. In that intra-cranial showdown, it now appears that it is the “hard” side, the perceived necessity of setting aside one’s empathies, that has captured Barack Obama’s thinking.

Obama’s “Kissinger” revealed itself first when his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton went to China and declared that bringing up the unpleasantness of Chinese human rights violations would serve no useful purpose and detract from the importance of finding common ground with Beijing on various international concerns ranging from trade to climate change to North Korean nuclear weaponry (this from a woman who once went to China to protest its discriminatory policies toward women).

Our hearts may have wanted to protest the suppression of freedoms, say a word for Tibet, complain about the treatment of Uighurs, but the Administration decided it needed China for other things of more immediate concern to us. That has since been followed by a retreat from our previous confrontational approach toward Sudan where Obama now envisions a more positive policy of engagement with a government whose president has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for atrocities in Darfur.

There is no bottom-line conclusion here: in a presidency that is so young, one cannot know whether the soft line taken toward China, Sudan, Russia, and other violators of human liberties will in the end dominate Mr. Obama’s foreign policy decisions. But neither can the early signs be ignored. For the moment, it appears, Henry Kissinger is back.

(Photo: Getty Images/Hiroko Masuike)

Source: correspondents.theatlantic.com/mickey_edwards, Oct 23 2009

November 1, 2009