Jeff Wells -- PROPHET???

[Jeff]

Jeff, I think that one reason that you and so many other otherwise wide-awake people have a blind spot with regards to Israel, is that you've fallen for the big con, that Israel "represents" the Jewish people, or even that it is synonymous with the Jewish people.

No, I don't think I do that. In fact I'd say those who believe Israel to be the root issue are more likely to conflate the interests of Israel and of the Jewish people, as though the nuances of deep politics suddenly fly out the window. "National interest" is as much a fiction with respect to Israel as it is for any other power.

[Occult Means Hidden]

The PTB behind the neo cons are the corporations that we all continue to support with our hard earned money. The middle east and parts of south and central America are the last regions on earth that have rejected global corporatism. The ultimate agenda behind 9-11, the resulting wars and the coming wars is to open new markets for walmart, the cell phone companies, the computer makers, the software distrubuters, the burger kings and mcdonalds, the starbucks, et al. The corporate beast will not stop until every child on earth is sitting in front of a new flat screen tv, wearing nike shoes, playing video games, listening to their ipod and stuffing their faces with ding dongs, twinkies and hot pockets.

As long as we continue to feed this beast his hunger and his thirst for expansion will increase.

do you think they'd rather sell us stuff or control us? I'd say latter through the former to the point where they'd prefer to sell us nothing.

Chomsky has an interesting phrase in regards to the hierarchies, that "access is not the same as control".

[marmot]

In the introduction I'm writing to the book, I say if there's one thing you take away from this, let it be that I'm an authority on nothing.

Jeff, this reminds me of what Michel de Certeau wrote regarding the issue of authority at the beginning of The Practice of Everyday Life. He writes: Ultimately, the more authority the Expert [claims for himself], the less competence he has... the (general?) paradox of authority: a knowledge is ascribed to it and this knowledge is precisely what it lacks where it is exercised. Authority is indissociable from an “abuse of knowledge”. I recommend the writings of Michel de Certeau to the RI group; and for this reason I've pasted the context of the above quotes below.



[On] the Expert and the Philosopher. Both have the task of mediating between society and a body of knowledge, the first insofar as he introduces his specialty into the wider and more complex arena of socio-political decisions, the second insofar as he re-establishes the relevance of general questions to a particular technique (mathematics, logic, psychiatry, history, etc). In the Expert, competence is transmuted into social authority; in the Philosopher, ordinary questions become a skeptical principle in a technical field. The Philosopher’s ambiguous relation to the Expert (sometimes one of fascination, sometimes one of rejection) often seems to subtend his procedures: sometimes philosophical enterprises aim enviously at the Expert’s realization of their ancient utopia (to maintain access to general problems in the name of a specific kind of scientific knowledge); sometimes, defeated by history but still rebellious, these enterprises turn their backs on what has been taken away from them by science in order to accompany the Subject, the king of yesteryear, today driven out of a technocratic society into its exile (O memories! O symbolic transgressions! O unconscious kingdoms!).

It is true that the Expert is growing more common in this society, to the point of becoming its generalized figure, distended between the exigency of a growing specialization and that of a communication that has become all the more necessary. He blots out (and in a certain way replaces) the Philosopher, formerly the specialist of the universal. But his success is not so terribly spectacular. In him, the productivist law that requires a specific assignment (the condition of efficiency) and the social law that requires circulation (the form of exchange) enter into contradiction. To be sure, a specialist is more and more often driven to also be an Expert, that is, an interpreter and translator of his competence for other fields. That is obvious even within the laboratories themselves: as soon as decisions regarding objectives, promotions, or financing are to be made, the Experts intervene “in the name of”–-but outside of—their particular experience. How do they succeed in moving from their technique—a language they have mastered and which regulates their discourse—to the more common language of another situation? They do it through a curious operation which “converts” competence into authority. Competence is exchanged for authority. Ultimately, the more authority the Expert has, the less competence he has, up to the point where his fund of competence is exhausted, like the energy necessary to put a mobile into movement. During the process of conversion, he is not without some competence (he either has to have some or make people think he has), but he abandons the competence he possesses as his authority is extended further and further, drawn out of its orbit by social demands and/or political responsibilities. That is the (general?) paradox of authority: a knowledge is ascribed to it and this knowledge is precisely what it lacks where it is exercised. Authority is indissociable from an “abuse of knowledge”—and in this fact we ought perhaps to recognize the effect of the social law that divests the individual of his competence in order to establish (or re-establish) the capital of a collective competence, that is, of a common verisimilitude.

Since he cannot limit himself to talking about what he knows, the Expert pronounces on the basis of the place that his specialty has won for him. In that way he inscribes himself and is inscribed in a common order where specialization, as the rule and hierarchically ordering practice of the productivist economy, has the value of initiation. Because he has successfully submitted himself to this initiatory practice, he can, on questions foreign to his technical competence but not the power he has acquired through it, pronounce with authority a discourse which is no longer a function of knowledge, but rather a function of the socio-economic order. He speaks as an ordinary man, who can receive authority in exchange for knowledge just as one receives a paycheck in exchange for work. He inscribes himself in the common language of practices, where an overproduction of authority leads to the devaluation of authority, since one always gets more in exchange for an equal or inferior amount of competence. But when he continues to believe, or make others believe, that he is acting as a scientist, he confuses social place with technical discourse. He takes one for the other: it is a simple case of mistaken identity. He misunderstands the order which he represents. He no longer knows what he is saying. A few individuals, after having long considered themselves experts speaking a scientific language, have finally awoken from their slumbers and suddenly realized that for the last few moments they have been walking on air, like Felix the Cat in the old cartoons, far from the scientific ground. Though legitimized by scientific knowledge, their discourse is seen to have been no more than the ordinary language of tactical games between economic powers and symbolic authorities.

from The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel de Certeau; pp6-8

[slimmouse]

What we are trying to biopsy here is the why. I've always felt that Jeff was right about poking the blood & semen and...well, creepy interdimensionality...of something that likes to intertwine with human history. It goes FAR beyond a generation or two, or a religious or 'ethnic' bogeyman or two.

Cheers,
GH

About as good a summary as Ive heard in a while, with perhaps one exception. I wonder how much youre average Joe allows this to happen, without understanding his own capabilities, and unable to recognise that collectively we can stop these monsters.

I guess we just have to collectively want it badly enough.

[elpuma]

"Israel" is and has been since its inception, a cover for a global criminal organization that includes enormous drug transfers, human trafficking, money laundering, and other criminal enterprises, protected by a network of international spies, weapons merchants and moles, all hiding in plain sight, as "supporters of Israel".

Thanks for that AliceTheKurious. I never looked at Israel in that way, but that's exactly what it has been, right from it's inception. Hiding in plain site.....indeed!

For more on Alvin Malnik, check out http://www.southbeach-usa.com/features/features1/forge/shareef-main1.htm

[Jeff]

this reminds me of what Michel de Certeau wrote regarding the issue of authority at the beginning of The Practice of Everyday Life. He writes: Ultimately, the more authority the Expert [claims for himself], the less competence he has... the (general?) paradox of authority: a knowledge is ascribed to it and this knowledge is precisely what it lacks where it is exercised. Authority is indissociable from an “abuse of knowledge”.

Thanks marmot, that's very good. I've seen too many examples of people who cry "Question Authority!" reacting poorly when their own authority is challenged. I don't think it's a concession to the bad guys to admit degrees of uncertainly about some of this material. In fact I think it's essential in order to circumvent confirmation bias.

[AlicetheKurious]

Jeff said:

In fact I'd say those who believe Israel to be the root issue are more likely to conflate the interests of Israel and of the Jewish people, as though the nuances of deep politics suddenly fly out the window. "National interest" is as much a fiction with respect to Israel as it is for any other power.

If you mean that I think Israel is "the root issue", then you've misunderstood me. The "root issue" is the way ordinary people are manipulated and intimidated, not only into turning a blind eye towards the human monsters who exploit, kill and steal with impunity, but even staunchly defending them against anyone who would expose them and the atrocities they commit.

Israel is not, therefore, "the root issue": Israel is their handiwork and their masterpiece, and, as with any other complex artifact, examining Israel objectively yields important information about the identity and nature of its makers.

World War II is the crucible out of which emerged the United States as a global superpower with a permanent military-industrial complex, a sophisticated international espionage network, and a global matrix of organized crime. It is these three elements which came together to produce the state of Israel.

Desperate Jewish refugees from Europe were cynically used to populate this new "state", their horrible victimization by the Nazis exploited as a screen to hide the nature of the zionist state and the criminals who made and control it to this very day. Jews from other countries were lured to the zionist state by a variety of means, including false-flag terrorism on some occasions.

Having established its credentials as a "refuge for the Jews" and cloaking itself in the sanctity of The Holocaust, Israel as a cover for international organized crime has been incredibly successful, to a great extent because of what it is (ruthless and not subject to any law), and because of the power of the three elements I mentioned earlier.

Also, the zionist state was sold differently in different markets, by an unrelenting, decades-long multi-media campaign. To the communists and socialists, it was trumpeted as an ideal socialist society; to the old empires, it was described as a colonial outpost in the Middle East; to the capitalists, it was a wonderful place to make business investments; to the Jews, it was touted as a refuge from anti-semitism; to the Christians, it was a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy; to the Americans, it was a bastion of democracy and freedom; it was religious if you're religious, and secular if you're secular; whatever you want, that's what Israel is. The only ones who saw the true face of Israel were the Palestinians. Like the abused wife of an upstanding citizen, who everyone thinks is such a wonderful guy. Who will listen to her? People are more likely to feel sorry for the victimizer, for being saddled with such a crazy, ungrateful wife.

The end result is that the Israel project has enjoyed an immunity from public scrutiny in the centers of power, that is both widely recognized and earnestly denied at the same time. Orwell coined a word for this:

crimestop - Orwell's definition: "The faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. In short....protective stupidity."

http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns-dict.html

The true nature and purpose of the global criminal enterprise known as "Israel" is neither hidden nor ambiguous. The evidence is out in the open, not only that Israel "commits" crimes, but that Israel is itself an ongoing crime, and has been one since its inception. To say, "well, gee, Alice, politics is a dirty business," is not good enough, because even aside from the ongoing genocide against the Palestinians, Israel's deep and longstanding implication in criminal activity through networks in South America, Southeast Asia, the US, Europe and elsewhere are unprecedented for any one "state", not to mention its apparent status as "untouchable".

I am not as good a researcher as you are, Jeff. There is no evidence I can provide that you haven't likely seen before. Yet, even though you're looking right at it, you don't see it, because you've been conditioned not to see it.

Brilliant. Scary as hell, but brilliant.

CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The company is Comverse Infosys, a subsidiary of an Israeli-run private telecommunications firm, with offices throughout the U.S. It provides wiretapping equipment for law enforcement. Here's how wiretapping works in the U.S.

Every time you make a call, it passes through the nation's elaborate network of switchers and routers run by the phone companies. Custom computers and software, made by companies like Comverse, are tied into that network to intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls, and at the same time transmit them to investigators.

The manufacturers have continuing access to the computers so they can service them and keep them free of glitches. This process was authorized by the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. Senior government officials have now told Fox News that while CALEA made wiretapping easier, it has led to a system that is seriously vulnerable to compromise, and may have undermined the whole wiretapping system.

Indeed, Fox News has learned that Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were both warned Oct. 18 in a hand-delivered letter from 15 local, state and federal law enforcement officials, who complained that "law enforcement's current electronic surveillance capabilities are less effective today than they were at the time CALEA was enacted."

Congress insists the equipment it installs is secure. But the complaint about this system is that the wiretap computer programs made by Comverse have, in effect, a back door through which wiretaps themselves can be intercepted by unauthorized parties.

Adding to the suspicions is the fact that in Israel, Comverse works closely with the Israeli government, and under special programs, gets reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research and development costs by the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade. But investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying through Comverse is considered career suicide.

And sources say that while various F.B.I. inquiries into Comverse have been conducted over the years, they've been halted before the actual equipment has ever been thoroughly tested for leaks. A 1999 F.C.C. document indicates several government agencies expressed deep concerns that too many unauthorized non-law enforcement personnel can access the wiretap system. And the FBI's own nondescript office in Chantilly, Virginia that actually oversees the CALEA wiretapping program, is among the most agitated about the threat.

But there is a bitter turf war internally at F.B.I. It is the FBI's office in Quantico, Virginia, that has jurisdiction over awarding contracts and buying intercept equipment. And for years, they've thrown much of the business to Comverse. A handful of former U.S. law enforcement officials involved in awarding Comverse government contracts over the years now work for the company.

Numerous sources say some of those individuals were asked to leave government service under what knowledgeable sources call "troublesome circumstances" that remain under administrative review within the Justice Department.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

And what troubles investigators most, particularly in New York, in the counter terrorism investigation of the World Trade Center attack, is that on a number of cases, suspects that they had sought to wiretap and survey immediately changed their telecommunications processes. They started acting much differently as soon as those supposedly secret wiretaps went into place.

HUME: Carl, is there any reason to suspect in this instance that the Israeli government is involved?

CAMERON: No, there's not. But there are growing instincts in an awful lot of law enforcement officials in a variety of agencies who suspect that it had begun compiling evidence, and a highly classified investigation into that possibility.

http://www.rense.com/general18/WIRE.HTM

Considering the volatility of the issue, it is not surprising that almost no one in officialdom wants to go on the record for a story like the art students. "In government circles," as Insight's Rodriguez put it, "anything that has to do with Israel is always a hot topic, a third rail -- deadly. No one wants to touch it." Fox News' Cameron quoted intelligence officers saying that to publicly air suspicions of Israeli wrongdoing was tantamount to "career suicide." And the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in one of its bloodiest and most polarizing phases, has only exacerbated sensitivities.

Some of the same pressures that keep government officials from criticizing Israel may also explain why the media has failed to pursue the art student enigma. Media outlets that run stories even mildly critical of Israel often find themselves targeted by organized campaigns, including form-letter e-mails, the cancellation of subscriptions, and denunciations of the organization and its reporters and editors as anti-Semites. Cameron, for example, was excoriated by various pro-Israel lobbying groups for his exposé. Representatives of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) argued that the Fox report cited only unnamed sources, provided no direct evidence, and moreover had been publicly denied by spokesmen for the FBI and others (the last, of course, is not really an argument).

In a December interview with Salon, CAMERA's associate director, Alex Safian, said that several "Jewish/Israeli groups" were having "conversations" with representatives of Fox News regarding Cameron's piece. Safian said he questioned Cameron's motives in running the story. "I think Fox has always been fair to Israel in its reporting," said Safian. "I think it's just Cameron who has something, personally, about Israel. He was brought up in the Middle East. Maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe he's very sympathetic to the Arab side. One could ask." The implicit suggestion was that Cameron is a bigot; in conversation, Safian would later make the same allegation about the entire editorial helm at Le Monde, which he called an anti-Semitic newspaper.

Told of Safian's comments, Cameron said, "I'm speechless. I spent several years in Iran growing up because my father was an archaeologist there. That makes me anti-Israel?" The chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, Cameron had never before been attacked for biased coverage of Israel or Israeli-related affairs -- or for biased coverage of Arabs, for that matter. Cameron defends his December reporting, saying he had never received any heat whatsoever from his superiors, nor had he ever been contacted by any dissenting voices in government.

Oddly, four days after the Cameron investigation ran, all traces of his report -- transcripts, Web links, headlines -- disappeared from the Foxnews.com archives. (Normally, Fox leaves a story up for two to three weeks before consigning it to the pay archive.) When Le Monde contacted Fox in March for a copy of the original tapes, Fox News spokesmen said the request posed a problem but would not elaborate. (Fox News now says Le Monde never called.) Asked why the Cameron piece disappeared, spokesman Robert Zimmerman said it was "up there on our Web site for about two or three weeks and then it was taken down because we had to replace it with more breaking news. As you know, in a Web site you've got x amount of bandwidth -- you know, x amount of stuff you can put stuff up on [sic]. So it was replaced. Normal course of business, my friend." (In fact, a text-based story on a Web site takes up a negligible amount of bandwidth.)

When informed that Cameron's story was gone from the archives, not simply from the headline pages (when you entered the old URL, a Fox screen appeared with the message "This story no longer exists"), Zimmerman replied, "I don't know where it is."

The extreme sensitivity of the Israeli art student story in government circles was made clear to this reporter when, in the midst of my inquiries at DEA and elsewhere, I was told by a source that some unknown party had checked my records and background. He proved it by mentioning a job I had briefly held many years ago that virtually no one outside my family knew about. Shortly after this, I received a call from an individual who identified himself only by the code name Stability. Stability said he was referred to me from "someone in Washington." That someone turned out to be a veteran D.C. correspondent who has close sources in the CIA and the FBI and who verified that Stability was a high-level intelligence agent who had been following the art student matter from the inside.

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature ... .html?pn=4

The mind-boggling amounts of money pouring into the country from the U.S., from the international drug trade and other illegal activities, the embedded spies, and control over a fanatically loyal following, have served to protect Israel from accountability for its many crimes. Other evidence exists, that Israel may also dispose of other weapons for keeping recalcitrant "allies" in line; IOW, what is it with Israeli diplomats and pedophile porn?



Brazilian Police Stake Out Diplomat Accused of Running Kiddie-Porn Ring

JERUSALEM (July 6) - Brazilian police continued to surround the Israeli consulate in Rio de Janeiro in the belief that Israeli vice-consul in Rio Aryeh Scher, wanted on suspicion of running a child pornography ring, had taken refuge there. However Foreign Ministry officials said Scher has been en route to Israel for the past two days.

Scher, who was at one point consul-general in Rio, was declared a fugitive by Brazilian authorities after a search of his apartment on Tuesday yielded what police officials described as evidence it was used for the manufacture of pornographic material, some of them involving underage girls.

...

Brazilian authorities notified the Israeli embassy of plans to revoke Scher's diplomatic immunity on Tuesday, prior to the search. By the time police were able to obtain a warrant to search Scher's penthouse, the vice-consul was already on his way back to Israel, where he will face a Foreign Ministry inquiry. A ministry spokesman said that Scher had been recalled when the first evidence of possible misconduct surfaced, and that he had left the country via "legal diplomatic channels."...

http://www.theawarenesscenter.org/schteinberg.html


Wednesday, 5 July, 2000, 23:28 GMT 00:28 UK

Wanted Israeli diplomat flees Brazil

Police in Rio de Janeiro say an Israeli diplomat suspected of belonging to an international child pornography ring has fled Brazil and returned to Israel.

The Israeli diplomatic mission confirmed that its vice-consul, Arie Scher, had flown home at the request of the Israeli government, which it said had ordered an investigation into the allegations.

Police want to question him in connection with pornographic pictures and videotapes of young children found in the home of a Hebrew language teacher arrested on Tuesday.

The children were pictured and filmed at the diplomat's house.

Police said the pictures had been published on the internet with the apparent aim of attracting foreign paedophiles to Rio de Janeiro.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/americas/821308.stm




Sex scandal past haunts new envoy

By Ed O'Loughlin in Jerusalem, Jonathan Pearlman and Cynthia Banham

February 12, 2005

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has rejected as "terribly exaggerated" an Israeli newspaper article claiming the newly appointed consul in Canberra, Arie Scher, had to leave Brazil five years ago after being implicated in a sex scandal.

Mr Scher has been flagged as the replacement for Amir Laty, the former Israeli consul to Australia who was expelled amid extreme secrecy from Australia about a month ago.

The Federal Government has refused to explain why Mr Laty, who was only 18 months into his posting, was asked to leave under the threat of deportation.

Claims have emerged that Mr Laty's expulsion was related to espionage, as well as personal "indiscretions". But an Israeli Foreign Ministry investigation has reportedly cleared him of inappropriate behaviour.

Mr Scher's choice as Mr Laty's replacement is certain to spark controversy. According to a report in the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv, Mr Scher abandoned his posting in Brazil five years ago after being implicated in a sex scandal and before police were able to question him.

Israel and Brazil do not have an extradition treaty but the Brazilian Government asked the Israeli Government to take proceedings against Mr Scher.

Brazil's Ministry of Foreign Relations delivered a formal request to Israel's Foreign Ministry stating that Rio de Janeiro's 31st criminal precinct had a criminal case pending against Mr Scher. It is understood the case is still open.

The request was sent to Brazil's embassy in Tel Aviv on October 2001 and later forwarded to the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Ma'ariv reported that Israel's Civil Service Commission had investigated the allegations upon his return and found that Mr Scher had behaved inappropriately for a diplomat but was not guilty of criminal behaviour. It banned him from foreign diplomatic missions for five years.

A spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, Mark Regev, confirmed the disciplinary hearing upon Mr Scher's return from Brazil five years ago but "all this stuff in the article is simply untrue".

"He was a young and single man at the time. Now he is married and he's six years older and there is no reason why he shouldn't make an excellent diplomatic appointment in Australia," Mr Regev said.

Israeli sources said that because of the public nature of the allegations, the inquiry into Mr Scher's behaviour in Brazil was not internal to the foreign ministry but was held at the higher level of the country's Civil Service Commission.

The commission found that while some of his behaviour was unbecoming of a diplomat serving overseas "there was nothing criminal or close to criminal", a source said.

"We stand behind him," Mr Regev said.

"This is a good man. He's a serious diplomat. He made a mistake when he was younger but there is no reason why he should not go on to have a very strong career as a diplomat."

The Israeli Foreign Ministry confirmed that Mr Scher's appointment was "pending" and he had not left for Australia.

"The decision to send him to Australia stands but because of concerns that were raised, the case is being looked at at the highest levels of the ministry," Mr Regev said.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/02/ ... 72542.html



Israeli diplomat arrested on suspicion of pedophilia

Following undercover investigation, Israeli who works for Consulate in Atlanta arrested and charged with computer offences and exploitation of children

Yitzhak Benhorin
Published: 08.31.06, 21:14 / Israel News

WASHINGTON– An Israeli diplomat, Yosef Sagiv, was arrested Friday in the American city of Atlanta on suspicion of computer related offences linked to pornography and the sexual exploitation of children.

Captain Steve Morris, of the Columbia District Police in Georgia, told Ynet that the arrestee was a worker in the Israeli Consulate. He was arrested upon leaving his home and transferred into custody at a distance from Atlanta.

Daniel Craig, the District Attorney of Augusta, in the state of Georgia, announced that Sagiv used the internet and email in order to
persuade a child to carry out illegal acts such as sodomy and severe sexual abuse.

The investigation has been going on for a considerable time by the Sherriff's Department of the Columbia district in Georgia, as well as other government agencies such as the FBI. With that, the suspect was arrested only on Thursday after an indictment was approved. According to the decree, a search of the suspect's home was also carried out.

The Foreign Ministry said in response that they were aware of the episode and were looking into details. It was also said that the suspect holds a diplomatic license but is not an employee of the Foreign Ministry.

This is not the first time that the Foreign Ministry has had to deal with embarrassing episodes: Three years ago the Israeli Consul in Sao Paolo, Aryeh Sher, was arrested due to suspicions that his computer held pornographic material.

Link


And, whaddya know...readers get a bonk on the head if they're surprised, or if they think he'll end up serving time:

Last update - 08:43 07/09/2006
U.S. court released Israeli consulate guard charged with pedophilia

By Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service

An Atlanta court on Thursday released on bail a security officer at the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, Georgia, charged last week with pedophila, Israel Radio reported.

Police detained the guard, Yosef Sagiv Ofri, after finding pornographic pictures of children and crude sexual letters on his computer.

The Israeli Embassy in Washington confirmed that Ofri had been charged but refused to release more information on the case.

Ofri was accused of using emails and online messages to seduce a child from a suburb of Atlanta for "illegal acts relating to sodomy, aggravated sodomy, child molestation and aggravated child molestation."

Officials from the consulate on Thursday visited Ofri, who carries a diplomatic passport, at the county's detention center. The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem said that it had been informed of the matter and was looking into the details.

Augusta Judicial Circuit district, attorney Daniel J. Craig, said "Because you're dealing with a citizen of another country here, it was necessary to coordinate our efforts with the State Department and in accordance with the Vienna Convention."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/760020.html


Israel's intimate relationship with global organized crime is also partially obscured by the euphemistic "Russian Mafia" label:


February 17, 2005

Do Americans Even Care?
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions

By ALISON WEIR

As is often the case with AP's coverage of news having to do with Israel, there's a serious omission in its reporting on the Russia-Israel connection even when it involves oil and the United States.

The day after the State of the Union Address, two Interpol fugitives attended the "National Prayer Breakfast" held in Washington DC. The day before that, these fugitives from the law were the guests of honor at an hour-long meeting of the International Relations Committee on Capitol Hill, invited by ranking Democrat Tom Lantos (Calif.)

You would think it would be hot news when wanted men being hunted by European police suddenly pop up in the US particularly on Capitol Hill and at events attended by the US president.

Yet, there was not a single AP story in the US on any of this. [1] Not a single national network television or radio news program even mentioned these facts. In fact, Google and LexisNexis searches four days after these events took place turned up only three newspaper articles on them anywhere in the entire country. [2]

Who are these fugitives from the law, wanted by Interpol, who are meeting at the highest levels of the US government? And why didn't we learn of them?

Therein lies the story. These two men, it turns out, are just the tips of a colossal iceberg. And this iceberg doesn't just have 90 percent of its mass hidden under water; this iceberg is almost entirely submerged.

They are Mikhail Brudno and Vladimir Dubov, Israeli-Russian partners in the giant Russian oil company Yukos. They, along with a number of their cronies, are wanted by Interpol for allegedly bilking Russian citizens out of billions of dollars. To elude Russian prosecution, these men have taken up residence in Israel. [3]

As the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz explains: "In recent years Russian authorities began investigating [Yukos], its managers and major stockholders, many of whom are of Jewish origin. The probes caused several of the managers to flee to Israel, and resulted in Khodorkovski's [Yukos CEO] arrest and a Kremlin attack on Yukos."

The fact is that Israel is an important factor in the ongoing, nation-shaking power struggle now going on in Russia. Yet AP virtually never reports this connection. For example, a few months ago in a typical AP story on this power struggle, "Report: Russia again charges Berezovsky," [4] Moscow AP Bureau Chief Judith Ingram makes no mention anywhere that Berezovsky is an Israeli citizen, or of his many connections to Israel.

Such omissions by AP and large swaths of the American media leave Americans seriously disadvantaged in deciphering what is going on in Russia, and its profound significance for the world.

In order to make sense of this Russian power struggle, and to understand its importance to the rest of us, it is necessary to understand the usually omitted Israeli subtext. When this is understood, the friendship of such pro-Israel Congressional leaders as Rep. Lantos to fugitive Russian oil tycoons begins to make sense.

To explore this background it is often useful to turn to the Israeli press. In July a major Israeli publication, the Jerusalem Post, carried an article headlined: "Boris Berezovsky: Putin's Russia dangerous for Israel." Before describing what this contained, let us first go into a little of the background.

The Oligarchs

Boris Berezovsky is one of seven "oligarchs," as they are known both inside and outside Russia: massively rich, powerful manipulators who through violence, theft and corruption acquired a mammoth percentage (reports range from 70 to 85 percent) of Russia's resources, from its oil to the auto industry to mass media outlets.

At the same time, the group steadily gained control over much of the country's political apparatus. Using extraordinary financial resources and insider dealing, the oligarchs handpicked prime ministers and governmental leaders and barely even bothered to do this behind the scenes.

In 1997 Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one of the group and Russia's sometimes richest man (several of the oligarchs trade the top spot back and forth) told an interviewer before he was arrested and imprisoned by Putin last year:

"If we rank all the fields of man's activity by profitability, politics will be the most lucrative business. When we see a critical situation in the government, we draw lots in order to pick out a person from our milieu for work in power." [5]

Almost all of these oligarchs, it turns out, have significant ties to Israel. In fact, Berezovsky himself has Israeli citizenship a fact that caused a scandal of Watergate proportions in Russia in 1996 when it was exposed by a Russian newspaper. [6]

Do Berezovsky's dual loyalties really matter? Yes. In the realm of global dominance, Israel's interests and Russia's are considerably divergent. It is in Israel's interests to bring to power a regime in Russia friendly to Israel, rather than the current one under Putin, which Israeli leaders feel is supportive of its enemies. Not long ago, for example, Putin met with Syrian leaders an action highly disturbing to Israel.

Having an Israeli citizen at the highest levels of the Russian government is ideal, from Israel's point of view. In Berezovsky they had such a man. The Jerusalem Post article mentioned above is revealing. It describes Berezovsky as "the Godfather of the Oligarchs' and Kingmaker of Russia's Politics'" and reports Berezovsky's statement that "Putin's Russia is dangerous for Israel." Berezovsky goes on to assert that Putin "supports terror" in the Middle East through Russia's previous relations with Iraq and current relations with Iran. [7]

While Israelis may have been delighted at Berezovsky's position in Russia, It is not surprising that Russian citizens were somewhat less so. Finding that a powerful leader and member of the Russian Security Council was an Israeli citizen was disconcerting, at best.

As a result of the media uproar over Berezovsky's Israeli citizenship and other events, the Oligarchs' connections to Israel are widely known in Russia and elsewhere. In Israel they are covered frequently, often with adulation, including a recent hit Israeli TV series called "The Oligarchs."

"Some of its episodes," according to Israeli writer Uri Avnery, "are simply unbelievable or would have been, if they had not come straight from the horses' mouths: the heroes of the story, who gleefully boast about their despicable exploits. The series was produced by Israeli immigrants from Russia."

Avnery writes that the oligarchs used "cheating, bribery and murder," as they "exploited the disintegration of the Soviet system to loot the treasures of the state and to amass plunder amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. In order to safeguard the perpetuation of their business, they took control of the state. Six out of the seven are Jews." [8]

According to a Washington Post story by David Hoffman, the group bought and controlled Russian governmental officials at the highest levels. After financing Yeltsin's election in 1996, Hoffman writes: "The tycoons met and decided to insert one of their own into government. They debated who and chose [Vladimir] Potanin, who became deputy prime minister. One reason they chose Potanin was that he is not Jewish, and most of the rest of them are, and feared a backlash against the Jewish bankers." [9]

In Russia, the oligarchs are deeply loathed, considered villains who worked to bleed the country dry; during their reign many Russian citizens saw their life savings disappear overnight. A new term was coined for their dominance, "semibankirshchina" (the rule of the seven bankers), and they were widely known to have wielded small, murderous armies. There are rumors that Berezovsky, subject of the respectful AP article, was even responsible for the gunning down of an American journalist, Forbes Moscow editor Paul Klebnikov.

While no one has been charged with the murder of Klebnikov, who had written a book on Berezovsky, many suspect a Berezovsky connection. As a friend of Klebnikov wrote: "Experienced expatriates in Russia shared an essential rule: Don't cross these brutal billionaires, ever, or you're likely to go home in a box." [10]

The Chechnya Connection

There is evidence that Berezovsky's responsibility for death and tragedy may be vastly greater.

"Berezovsky boasts that he caused the war in Chechnya," Avnery reports, "in which tens of thousands have been killed and a whole country devastated. He was interested in the mineral resources and a prospective pipeline there. In order to achieve this he put an end to the peace agreement that gave the country some kind of independence. The oligarchs dismissed and destroyed Alexander Lebed, the popular general who engineered the agreement, and the war has been going on since then.

"In the end," Avnery writes, "there was a reaction: Vladimir Putin, the taciturn and tough ex-KGB operative, assumed power, took control of the media, put one of the oligarchs (Mikhail Khodorkovsky) in prison, caused the others to flee (Berezovsky is in England, Vladimir Gusinsky is in Israel, another, Mikhail Chernoy, is assumed to be hiding here.)"

Yet, apart from the Washington Post, American media report on almost none of this. Instead, US coverage largely portrays Berezovsky and his crowd as American-style entrepreneurs who are being hounded by a Russian government whose actions are, to repeat the media's commonly used phrase, "politically motivated."

US news stories, even when they occasionally do hint at questionable practices, tend to use such phrases as "brash young capitalists" to describe the oligarchs. [11] For example, a long series co-produced by FRONTLINE and the New York Times referred to these men as "shrewd businessmen," and asked "what it's like to be young, Russian and newly affluent?" [12] Massive violence, dual loyalties, and control of resources are rarely, if ever, part of the picture.

When AP Moscow bureau chief Ingram was asked for this article about Berezovsky's Israeli citizenship, she claimed to know nothing about it, a curious contention for someone who has been an AP news editor in Moscow since 1999. When Ingram was queried further, she hung up the phone.

An examination of Ingram's reporting on the Berezovsky story cited above raises serious questions. Though she is located in Moscow, Ingram interviewed only two people for her news story: Berezovsky, who is in London, and Berezovsky associate Alex Goldfarb, in New York. One wonders why she interviewed none of the Russians residing around her.

Similarly, one wonders why not a single AP story has identified Berezovsky's considerable connection to Israel.

Further, nowhere does Ingram's article convey the ruthlessness of the oligarchs' actions, or the significance of their holdings, including control of its media. Unnoted in Ingram's report is the fact that her subject and fellow oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky have been two of Russia's most powerful media tycoons.

Before Putin's crackdown, according to the Washington Post, oligarchs had succeeded in seizing "the reins of Russia's print and broadcast media, vital to the evolution of the country's fledgling democracy and growth of its nascent civil society." Berezovsky crony Gusinsky, who is close friends with Rupert Murdoch and was about the launch a satellite network, fled to Israel when it appeared he would be arrested." [13]

Somehow, AP's bureau chief seems to have missed all this.

Does this matter to Americans?

AP is the major news source for the thousands of news outlets around the country who cannot afford to have their own foreign correspondents. When AP chooses not to cover something, its omission is felt throughout the nation. When national news networks and others leave out the same facts, the cover-up is almost total.

Russia, despite its current turmoil, contains enormous power. Its natural resources are gargantuan: it possesses the world's largest natural gas reserves, the second largest coal reserves, and the eighth largest oil reserves. It is the world's largest exporter of natural gas, the second largest oil exporter, and the third largest energy consumer.[14] Russia's significance on the world stage now, as in the past, is immense.

Similarly, the United States is currently the most powerful nation on earth. It is therefore essential that its citizens be accurately informed on issues of significance. Israeli citizens, Russian citizens, and citizens of nations throughout the world know the information detailed above. It is critical that American citizens be no less well informed.

For years, the neocons' push for war against Iraq was largely uncovered by the US media. For even longer, the neocons' close connections to Israel have gone largely unmentioned in mainstream American news reports. As a result, very few Americans know to what degree many of those responsible for the tragic US invasion and occupation of Iraq have been motivated by Israeli concerns.

The omission in coverage of Iraq has been profoundly disastrous, both for the Middle East and for Americans. In fact, it is quite likely that only history will show the true extent of this disaster. It is deeply troubling to see the same kind of omission occurring on Russia.

http://www.counterpunch.org/weir02172005.html

[Wombaticus Rex]

^^So you're saying that the Zionists are the root of all evil?

That's an impressive resume of evidence, but the notion that Zionists in Israel are somehow the only group running drugs, utilizing false flag terrorism, paying for media thought control, and doing espionage in the US is just beyond absurd. There's a lot of people on this chessboard, Alice.

Perhaps that's just my protective stupidity kicking in, though.

[AlicetheKurious]

Aw, Wombat, didn't your mother ever tell you it's rude to put words in somebody else's mouth?

I WAS saying that Israel is a regular state, the way the Mansons were a regular family.

[Wombaticus Rex]

^^Sometimes putting words in someone's mouth is a good way to get a succinct answer. (At least according to my mom.)

And lo and behold, it worked.

[soulsurvivor]

So, can you NAME those responsible? Have you taken this far enough to be able to specifically name the controllers?

That's what I'm after. It's why I follow Jeff's blog because I perceive that's what he's after too.

[AlicetheKurious]

soulsurvivor, I don't think it's that simple. We're talking about a global criminal structure that comprises not only the elements we can easily see, and those who by necessity are front-men, but also many elements that are highly secretive.

These can often be discerned using the "dog that didn't bark" method; in other words, when something goes completely counter to reason, or somebody behaves in a way that appears to be contrary to even their own interest, it rings my alarm that something's up. That's when the questions start, and eventually, even with a few pieces, a picture starts to emerge.

I do agree with Jeff that this thing, whatever it is, this machinery, is bigger than Israel, bigger than the neocons, and certainly bigger than any individual or individuals, sort of like a multinational corporation (maybe even a holding company).

I think that the Israel project is the most exposed, not because it's being set up as a patsie, but because it has been coated with the teflon of the Holocaust cult, and its fanatical loyalists are primed and ready to attack any criticism or opposition, no matter how bad the provocation, using the enormous resources that are made available for this purpose. Burned babies? "Israel has the right to defend itself." Enriched uranium weapons used against civilians? "Israel has the right to defend itself." Israeli pedophile networks? "Anti-semitism!" Israeli domination of the Ecstacy trade? "Anti-semitism!" Zionist domination of the media? "Anti-semitism!" Zionist domination of US decision-making on the Middle East? "Anti-semitism!" Israel spying on the U.S., providing bogus "intelligence" to justify military aggression? "Israel is America's best friend in the world". And so on, and so on, ad nauseum.

For others (Jews and non-Jews), who are not True Believers, fear of retaliation or "career suicide" is supplemented by the unrelenting positive propaganda about Israel and negative propaganda about Israel's enemies (victims). How many times has information about terrible crimes been suppressed or ignored by people who consider themselves moral and conscientious, because "it hurt Israel's image"?

But for those of us who are willing to look past the fog of hot air emanating from Israel's shock troops, those of us who are not really vulnerable to blackmail, bribery or intimidation, the truth is rather shockingly laid out for just anybody to see.

Here on the Rigorous Intuition blog and board, there has been so much speculation about hidden Nazis pulling the strings behind the scenes. Yet I would argue that there are indeed "Nazis" in very powerful positions, but that they are not at all hidden, indeed, they are quite famous and even celebrated. The concentration camps are being built as you read this; the structures of a totalitarian society are being systematically put in place, even as your media brays about "freedom" and "democracy"; wars of aggression and terrorism are being waged against helpless populations in order to take away their resources; and that's not all:

Published on Wednesday, September 10, 2003 by CommonDreams.org

The Genetically Modified Bomb

by Thom Hartmann


Imagine a bomb that only kills Caucasians with red hair. Or short people. Or Arabs. Or Chinese.

Now imagine that this new bomb could be set off anywhere in the world, and that within a matter of days, weeks, or months it would kill every person on the planet who fits the bomb's profile, although the rest of us would be left standing. And the bomb could go off silently, without anybody realizing it had been released - or even where it was released - until its victims started dying in mass numbers.

Who would imagine such a thing?

Paul Wolfowitz, for one. William Kristol for another.

And, history shows, when the men who define U.S. military policy from the shadows set their sights on something, it's worthy of our attention.

I have brown hair and eyes, both determined by specific genes, and there are probably other markers deep within my DNA that would show a geneticist that most of my ancestors are Norwegian, Welsh, and English. While there's no one gene for race, there are numerous genes for the various components of what we call race - hair color and texture, skin and eye color, eye and nose shape, predispositions or immunities to disease like Sickle Cell Anemia or Tay-Sachs, and the like.

When creating a genetic bomb to target specific groups, such genetic profiles are actually far subtler and more accurate than the coarse pseudo-category we call race. Among men named Cohen all over the world, for example, researchers have found a specific genetic profile tying them all back to a common ancestor. Another group with a common genetic profile are people with ADHD ("The Edison Gene"), who uniquely share common inherited variations in their dopamine-regulating genes regardless of their ostensible race, geography, or ethnicity.

Thus, anybody who's part of a group with a shared genetic profile may be at risk in the future, suggest the authors of The Project for a New American Century's (PNAC) report titled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century." (links in original article - Alice).

The report notes that, "Much has been written in recent years about the need to transform the conventional armed forces of the United States to take advantage of the 'revolution in military affairs....'" They point out that our military requires a dramatic transformation, lest we lose our ability to fight future, unconventional wars. Some may be fought in cyberspace, others underwater or in outer space. And some even within our own bodies.

Consider what would happen if there was a virus or bacteria that only infected a particular type of person, killing, disabling, or sterilizing only those of a particular genetic profile. Consider the political leverage a nation would have if they could credibly threaten the extinction of all people worldwide with almond-shaped eyes, or the sterilization of everybody with a gene that tracks them back to a common ancestor or region.

Three years ago, Wolfowitz, Kristol, and their colleagues suggested this is something the Pentagon should be thinking about. Not just germ warfare, but gene warfare.

And it's not limited just to warfare: Imagine how genetic terraforming could replace diplomacy, could even render the United Nations irrelevant if entire ethnic groups were wiped out or could be controlled by the threat of extinction. Or how it could change the face of politics if an organism got loose that killed off all the people of a particular minority who tend to vote for a particular political party.

Genetically targeted weapons could change world politics forever, according to PNAC.

"And," their report notes, "advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool."

Given that Kristol, Wolfowitz, and their conservative PNAC associates like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Eliot Abrams, Jeb Bush, and John Bolton have already brought us two of their early 1998 recommendations - the seizure of Iraq and a huge increase in defense spending - it's tempting to wonder if this is another of their other politically useful ideas being explored by the Pentagon.

Or maybe we'd rather not know. At least not those of us with politically problematic relatives.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is the award-winning, best-selling author of over a dozen books, and the host of a syndicated daily talk show that runs opposite Rush Limbaugh in cities from coast to coast. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent book (September 2003) is "The Edison Gene." This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached and the title is unchanged.

[AlicetheKurious]

On edit: sorry, double post.

[darkbeforedawn]

Great post Alice!!!
BTW do you notice that whenever you have a particulary disturbing or challenging item to post--it just keeps going to the "page is not available" thing?
Or else I am told to put in my password (which I had already done) and the post I was going to put up is erased?
Strange huh?

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Great post Alice!!!
BTW do you notice that whenever you have a particulary disturbing or challenging item to post--it just keeps going to the "page is not available" thing?
Or else I am told to put in my password (which I had already done) and the post I was going to put up is erased?
Strange huh?

I frequently get the "exceeded bandwith" notice when I post. I have to wait five or ten minutes to get access again to see if my post went through. You can always backpage to your post and copy it just in case it didn't get through once access is available again.

But this really slows things up and would discourage the less committed participant.

I get automatically logged out, too. Might just be a timing thing. If you take a while to write a long post, you might've gotten logged out in the meantime so if you get a password request you will have lost your post unless you copied it for safety.