I don’t watch much television and don’t trust any TV news outlet on the subjects of war, peace, economic justice or the environment.  But I turned the TV on early this morning, to watch how the media dealt with Obama’s visit to Israel.

I grazed NBC, CBS and ABC early news.  I was annoyed by FOX News coverage, which continues to portray Obama as not nearly loyal enough to Israel to qualify as an American president.  I turned to CNN, where live reports were coming in to the American News Desk from their senior reporter and former key employee of the Israel America Public Affairs Committee, Wolf Blitzer, who is traveling with the presidential entourage.

I watched, during the joint press conference held by Obama and Netanyahu in Jerusalem (not the seat of the Israeli government recognized by the government of the USA), as Obama was asked about reported use by the Syrian government, or by the rebels, of chemical weapons, within the past few days.  Obama addressed the reports:

With respect to chemical weapons, we intend to investigate thoroughly exactly what happened.

So I’ve instructed my teams to work closely with all other countries in the region and international organizations and institutions to find out precisely whether this red line was crossed.

The broader point is that once we establish the facts, I have made clear that the use of chemical weapons is a game changer and I won’t make an announcement today about next steps because I think we have to gather the facts. But I do think that when you start seeing weapons that can cause potential devastation and mass causalities and you let that genie out of the bottle, then you are looking potentially at even more horrific scenes than we’ve already seen in Syria, and the international community has to act on that additional information.

I wanted to puke.  Especially as it was being despicably uttered on the tenth anniversary of the beginning of our huge war crime in Iraq – shoved down the throats of Americans by the post-9/11 GWOT cabal, so directly related to the Project for the New American Century and A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, and by a media and political establishment stock full of people who intensely believed our criminal Iraqi expedition would help Israel, no matter what it did to America, let alone Iraq.

Iraq is where we’ve been shown more horrific scenes than in Syria, time and time again, in spite of the firings, censorship and threats of retribution that have kept the media acquiescent, right up to the present.  Dahr Jamail, on Democracy Now this morning, described our use of what have to be regarded as “red-line”-crossing chemical weapons – depleted uranium and white phosphorus – in Iraq, particularly in the battles of Fallujah (emphasis added):

And going on to Fallujah, because I wrote about this a year ago, and then I returned to the city again this trip, we are seeing an absolute crisis of congenital malformations of newborn. There is one doctor, a pediatrician named Dr. Samira Alani, working on this crisis in the city. She’s the only person there registering cases. And she’s seeing horrific birth defects. I mean, these are extremely hard to look at. They’re extremely hard to bear witness to. But it’s something that we all need to pay attention to, because of the amount of depleted uranium used by the U.S. military during both of their brutal attacks on the city of 2004, as well as other toxic munitions like white phosphorus, among other things.

And so, what this has generated is, from 2004 up to this day, we are seeing a rate of congenital malformations in the city of Fallujah that has surpassed even that in the aftermath of—in the wake of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that were—that nuclear bombs were dropped on at the end of World War II. So, Dr. Samira Alani actually visited with doctors in Japan, comparing statistics, and found that the amount of congenital malformations in Fallujah is 14 times greater than the same rate measured in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in the aftermath of the nuclear bombings.

These types of birth defects, she said—there are types of congenital malformations that she said they don’t even have medical terms for, that some of the things they’re seeing, they’ve never seen before. They’re not in any of the books or any of the scientific literature that they have access to. She said it’s common now in Fallujah for newborns to come out with massive multiple systemic defects, immune problems, massive central nervous system problems, massive heart problems, skeletal disorders, baby’s being born with two heads, babies being born with half of their internal organs outside of their bodies, cyclops babies literally with one eye—really, really, really horrific nightmarish types of birth defects.

And it is ongoing.

It is ongoing.  14 times greater malformation rate than experienced by the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki!

Israel’s illegal use of chemical weapons against its neighbors is longstanding. Its recent use of coerced sterilizations against its own citizens who don’t look white enough – Ethiopian Jews – has finally been brought to light.

And the same scoundrels who prepped us to go into an insane and criminal war against Iraq, are going to force us into what will end up being a nuclear war against Iran.  In the same press conference Wednesday where Obama threatened some warlike response against Syria, he refused to confront Netanyahu about Iran’s nuclear intentions.  Instead, he asked to be brought to the nearest donkey that needed servicing.

Here’s Obama on the Syrian chemical weapon report:

Here’s Dahr Jamail on our use of  illegal chemical weapons in Iraq:

Personal note:  The combination of the second anniversary of the Fukushima reactor explosions and subsequent meltdowns, the tenth anniversary of the murder of Rachel Corrie and the tenth anniversary of the beginning of our Iraq War depressed me so much, I found it hard to write about politics, public affairs or the environment for almost a week.  Maybe I’ll bounce back.

The Damaged U.S.S. Porter (Photo: U.S. Naval Forces Central Command/U.S. Fifth Fleet / Flickr)

The U.S.S. Porter, DDG-78, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, on duty in the vicinity of the Straits of Hormuz, collided with a Japanese tanker last night:

The Bahrain-based U.S. Fifth Fleet said the Panamanian-flagged, Japanese-owned bulk oil tanker M/V Otowasan collided with the USS Porter, a guided-missile destroyer, in the early hours of Sunday.

The navy vessel remained able to operate under its own power after the collision, which was not combat-related, the statement added without elaborating on how the accident happened. An investigation was underway.

Photographs released by the U.S. Navy showed a large dent, several meters (yards) high, in the starboard side of the USS Porter just in front of the ship’s superstructure and above the waterline. Personnel hung over the side inspecting the damage.

As noted by blogger, NaCly Dog, at XBRADTC:

Did they have a copy of COLREGs on the bridge?
Ref for the non-OOD qualified: Section II (for vessels in sight of one another)

15. Crossing situations
When two power-driven vessels are crossing, the vessel which has the other on the starboard side must give way and avoid crossing ahead of her. The saying is “If to starboard red appear, ’tis your duty to keep clear”.

108,000 shaft horsepower, controllable pitch propellers, International traffic separation scheme, and CIC to back you up, and you let a tanker French-kiss your starboard side right in front of the bridge?

This is the most volatile shipping congestion point in the world.  Busy as it is, there is no excuse for a collision like this.  Ensuing confusion, combined with some random unknown involving Iranian naval units, might have launched an awful error.  Awful errors have happened before:

Iran Air Flight 655 was a civilian jet airliner shot down by U.S. missiles on 3 July 1988 as it flew over theStrait of Hormuz at the end of the Iran–Iraq War. The aircraft, an Airbus A300B2-203 operated by Iran Air, was flying from Bandar Abbas, Iran to Dubai, United Arab Emirates. While flying in Iranian airspace over Iran’s territorial waters in the Persian Gulf on its usual flight path, it was destroyed by the United States Navyguided missile cruiser USS Vincennes (CG-49). All 290 onboard including 66 children and 16 crew perished.  The incident is ranked ninth among the deadliest disasters in aviation history. It was the highest death toll of any aviation incident in the Indian Ocean and the highest death toll of any incident involving an Airbus A300 anywhere in the world.   The Vincennes had entered Iranian territorial waters after one of its helicopters drew warning fire from Iranian speedboats operating within Iranian territorial limits.

We need the highest level of competence in the Gulf and the Straits.

The last Olympics at which the republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics competed under that name was the XXIV Olympiad of 1988, in Seoul, South Korea.  That was also the last Olympics at which the East and West German teams competed separately.

In 1992, 12 of the 15 republics of what was by then the former USSR, competed as the Unified Team of the Commonwealth of Independent States.  The three Baltic Republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia did not join those unified states then, but competed by themselves.

Had the Soviet Union somehow held together until 2012, they would have been the dominant sports power in this competition.  Here is the final medal count for the top three countries, weighted toward favoring gold medals:

USA:    45 Gold – 29 Silver – 29 Bronze — 103 medals
PRC:    38 Gold – 27 Silver – 22 Bronze —   87 medals
UK:      29 Gold – 16 Silver – 19 Bronze —   64 medals

Former republics of the USSR:    47 Gold – 43 Silver – 73 Bronze — 163 medals

Those of us old enough to remember Olympiads back into the 1950s may also remember the intense rivalry between the USA and the USSR, and between East and West Germany, perhaps best exemplified by the hockey semi-final of the 1980 Winter Games, between the USA and USSR, sometimes called “The Miracle on Ice.”

That winter games was the first at which the Peoples Republic of China competed without prejudice in relationship to Taiwan, in terms of full recognition of the PRC as being the real China.

The 1980s saw an intensification of rivalry between the USA and USSR, as the Soviet-Afghan War and deployment of a new generation of medium range ballistic missiles in Europe brought Cold War confrontation to the fore.  The confrontations, especially the instability brought on by mobile IRBMs such as the Pershing II Missile, were very troubling, and nuclear war fears escalated to their highest since the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, 20 years earlier.

The Soviet-Afghan War spawned – with U.S. money and weapons - the Mujahideen.  This, in turn, supposedly led to Al Qaeda, and many current problems for the USA.

And now, 20 years after the Seoul Olympics, the most dangerous confrontation which could easily lead to war is the push by the Israelis to attack Iran, so as to keep the latter from obtaining a “nuclear weapon capability,” an ambiguous term at best.  Interesting that in the Olympiad that concludes today, The Islamic Republic of Iran had four Gold, five Silver and three Bronze medals; the Jewish State of Israel – for the first time since 1988, had no medals at all.  But there were Jewish athletes on the teams of many Western nations, including that of the USA.  And there were Muslim athletes on the teams of many Western nations.

Perhaps some day in the future we will see an Olympiad at which the Iranian national team contains Jewish athletes from their vibrant Jewish population, and the Israeli team contains many Palestinian Israelis, from their non-Jewish Christian and Muslim population.

Hopefully, we can avoid an insane war between Israel and Iran, just as in the 1980s we avoided an insane war between the USSR and the USA.

Andy Greenberg, editorializing at Forbes, sums it:

Since WikiLeaks first released its flood of classified State Department memos in December of 2010, the secret-spilling site’s critics have been searching for evidence that Julian Assange’s disregard for official secrecy would directly hurt some innocent bystander. On Wednesday, those critics seemed to have found their best evidence yet of that harm. Nevermind that the facts didn’t agree with them.

In a story Wednesday morning, The Daily Mail headlined a story“WikiLeaks cable ‘led Iran to hang kick-boxer it claims was Israeli spy who assassinated nuclear scientist,’” a story that was soon picked up by other sites in Israel and around the world, finally ending up on the Drudge Report with the headline “REPORT: ‘Mossad spy’ hanged by Iran was doomed by WIKILEAKS…” linking to a story at the Times of Israel.

Those stories point to the execution of Majid Jamali Fashi, a kick-boxer who was hanged in Iran Tuesday for allegedly assassinating Iranian nuclear scientist Masoud Ali-Mohammadi in January of 2010. The Daily Mail story cited a redacted cable released by Der Spiegel and WikiLeaks in December 2010 described a briefing between a State Department official in the Iranian town of Baku and an unnamed ‘licensed martial arts coach and trainer’ who opposed the Iranian government’s attempts to recruit local militiamen. Though the cable doesn’t mention Israel or any assassinations, Fashi, a martial artist who had been in the town of Baku days before the cable was released, was soon arrested.

But here’s where the Mail’s story falls apart: The unredacted State Department memo, released after WikiLeaks’ and the Guardian’s notorious snafu last summer that led to the accidental publication of its entire database, names that martial arts trainer and State Department informant. His name, though I won’t cite it here, is not Majid Jamali Fashi. And his branch of martial arts, which was also redacted in the initial release, is not kick boxing.

Listening to midweek coverage of the story of why Fashi was hanged, there has been a noticeable absence of denial from the Israeli government of any relationship to Fashi.  Take it for what it is worth.

The Drudge Report coverage of this inspired commenters at blogs hooked on Ziocane to go nuts.

One commenter at Weasel Zippers seems to want Manning’s and Assange’s flayed skins, uh, available to be crafted into something that has been made lampshade by others:

Would love to remove his skin with a pair of pliers, then let him bleed to death. The Mossad should take him out as an enemy of the people.

Another commenter was more detailed in his loathing:

I hope bridget Manning and Ass-flang both get put down for dirtnaps. Lil fag boy was pissed off he couldn’t be openly flaming, so he’ll have hundreds or thousands of other people killed, indirectly to soothe his ego. As I said before, most faggots are narcissists. Please, let’s put this chocolate cha cha dancer in general population in leavenworth. I’m trying to figure out how the guys in his unit didn’t deal with him “indirectly” before it got to this point. I know some of the stories I”ve been told by my brother of things that happened during his 2 tours in Iraq and 2 in Afghan, NCOs have been known to be creative in their NJP. Now, all that said.. Manning should have been room temperature a long time ago and the morons in his chain of command who enabled him and toleratd him sitting in prison.

Too bad they ddn’t leave him at the Marine disciplinary barracks. I knew 2 guys when I was in the military who were busted in Turkey. We didn’t have a Correcional Custody Facility and the one in Germany was too far away, so they were sent to the one in Spain… run by the Marines. They came back “changed men” in more ways than one.

As for Assange, I’m sure he’s one of Oblowhole’s secret campaign contributors. It’s the only reason he hasn’t been extraordinarly renditioned. Nothing would make me happier to see him in an orange jumpsuit on trial in Cuba.

The comments at the post lack charity, let alone common sense.  It is appalling how many consecutive remarks propose illegal responses to the premise that Assange or Manning might have had a role in how this has played out.

Lack of interest in the illegal war the United States and Israel are actually carrying out against Iran in news reports and blog posts on this from the Right isn’t surprising.  Nor is incuriosity by the legacy corporate media.

More progressive outlets need to beat back against the meme that Assange or Manning are responsible for the execution of Majid Jamali Fashi.

I. Günter Grass, Germany’s most honored living novelist, disseminated a new poem this week.  What Must Be Said has brought the 84-year-old antiwar icon into the crosshairs of militant Zionist expansionists and those seeking to vilify Iran.

The author wrote the poem in German.  There have been numerous translations into English and several other languages.  Here is what I consider to be the most resonant English language translation yet, by Heather Horn, for The Atlantic:

What Must Be Said

Why do I stay silent, conceal for too long
What clearly is and has been
Practiced in war games, at the end of which we as survivors
Are at best footnotes.

It is the alleged right to first strike
That could annihilate the Iranian people–
Enslaved by a loud-mouth
And guided to organized jubilation–
Because in their territory,
It is suspected, a bomb is being built.

Yet why do I forbid myself
To name that other country
In which, for years, even if secretly,
There has been a growing nuclear potential at hand
But beyond control, because no testing is available?

The universal concealment of these facts,
To which my silence subordinated itself,
I sense as incriminating lies
And force–the punishment is promised
As soon as it is ignored;
The verdict of “anti-Semitism” is familiar.

Now, though, because in my country
Which from time to time has sought and confronted
The very crime
That is without compare
In turn on a purely commercial basis, if also
With nimble lips calling it a reparation, declares
A further U-boat should be delivered to Israel,
Whose specialty consists of guiding all-destroying warheads to where the existence
Of a single atomic bomb is unproven,
But through fear of what may be conclusive,
I say what must be said.

Why though have I stayed silent until now?
Because I think my origin,
Which has never been affected by this obliterating flaw,
Forbids this fact to be expected as pronounced truth
Of the country of Israel, to which I am bound
And wish to stay bound.

Why do I say only now,
Aged and with my last ink,
That the nuclear power of Israel endangers
The already fragile world peace?
Because it must be said
What even tomorrow may be too late to say;
Also because we–as Germans burdened enough–
Could be the suppliers to a crime
That is foreseeable, wherefore our complicity
Could not be redeemed through any of the usual excuses.

And granted: I am silent no longer
Because I am tired of the hypocrisy
Of the West; in addition to which it is to be hoped
That this will free many from silence,
Prompt the perpetrator of the recognized danger
To renounce violence and
Likewise insist
That an unhindered and permanent control
Of the Israeli nuclear potential
And the Iranian nuclear sites
Be authorized through an international agency
Of the governments of both countries.

Only this way are all, the Israelis and Palestinians,
Even more, all people, that in this
Region occupied by mania
Live cheek by jowl among enemies,
In the end also to help us.

It is being quickly spread, along the lines of multi-lingual, global, 21st century Samidzat.  And, like a piece of 1960s Samidzat that went viral, the authorities, knowing it is impossible to stop the word, seek to either belittle the author or claim he is something of an anti-Semitic ex-Nazi.  Here’s the first approach:

There is a man-child who never grew up
Who wants to warn the world that it might blow up
He is known as The Tin Ear
And lives in fear
that the world will go kablooie
Or as George Bush would say, nukleer

He is old but was always somewhat confused
For many years the truth to tell he refused
He wrote a book that told a tale
Of a German war of massive scale
When the world went berzerk with war
Because the Nazis did assail

The fact he omitted as he lectured others
Is that he himself was one of the brothers….

and:

Unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently confided in him, [Grass'] opinion is vacuous. Grass criticizes the German government for selling Israel another submarine. This is a legitimate view on a matter that should be decided democratically by the German people.

But Grass’ comparison of Israel and Iran is unfair, because unlike Iran, Israel has never threatened to wipe another country off the map.

Grass is critical of Israeli governments, more than of the Israeli people, it seems to me.  His critics, in many articles, including that above, are more careless,  claiming “Iran,” rather than its very lame-duck President, wants to erase Israel from the map.

Several articles have claimed Grass’ acquiescence, through his three-month-long action at the age of 17, on the rapidly crumbling eastern borders of Germany in the last months of World War II, after being forcibly inducted from anti-aircraft defense into the Waffen SS, as having constituted his being a member of the Nazi Party or of his having been some sort of war criminal:

Grass, who revealed in 2006 that he had been a member of the Nazi Waffen SS, a group committed to eliminating European Jewry during World War II….

and:

Ultimately, Grass demonstrates in his poem that the meaning of the pledge “never again” is very different for the historic perpetrators and their victims: for the former Waffen SS recruit, the most important thing is to be never again seen as a perpetrator….

and, the inevitable label of anti-Semitism:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What do you think of Günter Grass’s poem, “What Must Be Said,” which was published in Germany’s center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper on Wednesday?

Wolffsohn: It would have fit well in the (German far-right weekly) National Zeitung – and I mean that with no ifs or buts. In the poem, Grass makes the victims into perpetrators, and otherwise it contains pretty much every other anti-Semitic stereotype that we know from the far-right scene. And, on top of that, the language is completely lacking in sophistication.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: In a statement on Wednesday, the Israeli Embassy in Berlin pointed out that the poem was published just before the feast of Passover.

Wolffsohn: I noticed that, too. In doing so, Grass is following an ignoble tradition. The time around Passover has always been the time of pogroms and a time when the blood-libel myth about Jews is disseminated.

One should read Grass’ own account of his wartime service, published in The New Yorker on June 4, 2007, titled How I Spent the War.

Author Grass has his many detractors.  What is more interesting in this 21st century climate of growing resistance to Israeli government bellicosity, are the views of his defenders.  His poem has been parsed more thoroughly than any in recent memory.  It has been paraphrased and mocked.  Perhaps the best line-by-line defense of the content of Grass’ unmetered verses has been that of Israeli blogger Yossi Gurvitz, at his niche at + 972, Wish You Orwell. Here’s Yossi:

So, basically everything said by Grass is plausible, at least within the frame of the psychological warfare waged by Israel. The truth is never anti-Semitic. There was no blood libel here, no anti-Semitism, no claim of children’s blood used for ritual purposes. Furthermore, criticism of Israel’s intended policy has nothing whatsoever to do with Judaism or Jews. The claim (often made by Israeli officials) that Israel represents world Jewry, and that hence any attack on it is an attack on them, is a claim that Jews everywhere owe allegiance to a country of which they are not citizens and to which they never made any formal vow of loyalty, and thus can credibly be considered to be itself anti-Semitic.

Had the Israeli Foreign Ministry any shame left, it would not use the phrases it did against Grass. But, unsurprisingly, it did. The good thing which may come out of this affair is that people may learn to discount screeches of anti-Semitism from Israel with a sigh of “there they go again.”

II. Indeed.  I’m coming up, on April 8th, the eighth anniversary of my “there they go again” moment.  Since then I’ve seen hundreds of good people and dozens of artists slandered with the anti-Semitism label.  This cynical use of the term has gone beyond “The boy who cried ‘Wolf!’” territory, though.

More importantly, artists, especially young ones – in spite of Grass’ octogenarian creds – are ratcheting up their creative work denouncing Zionist expansionism, and instead supporting Palestinian rights, self determination and cultural aspirations.  They are continuing to either denounce ties between Israeli cultural institutions and the illegal West Bank settlements, or passing up on performance opportunities in Israel.

For instance, just this past week the debate in the UK about whether or not the Israeli theater organization, Habima, should be able to participate in the upcoming Globe Theater Shakespeare Festival, with its production of The Merchant of Venice, is heating up.

At the heart of the issue for proponents of the ban is Habima’s support for settlement activities in the West Bank, through performances there.  This is direct support of illegal, apartheid policy, pure and simple.

Writers supporting Habima generally fail to mention this aspect of the theater company’s activities.  No articles supportive of Habima dare to quote their artistic director, Ilan Ronen:

As a national theater company, Habima will perform for all residents of Israel. Residents of Ariel are residents of Israel and Habima will stage shows for them.

Ariel is a very large illegal town, erected on Palestinian land in violation of international law.  To support Habima, especially in view of this recent statement, is to become complicit in a view that accepts violation of such laws as routine, even acceptable.

On top of that, Habima co-manager, Odelia Friedman, has declared, regarding the troupe:

We see culture as a propaganda tool of the first rank, and I do not differentiate between propaganda and culture.

Stalin would be proud.

Günter Grass, delving into the junction between propaganda and culture, is dismissed as a cranky old man, previously caught skulking from his secret, hideous past.  Yet Israeli cultural institutions and their apparatchiks and favored artists practice this lack of differentiation day in and day out.

Fortunately, those of us who write about this are growing in numbers and venues at which we express ourselves.

Every day.

Back in 1975, at the height of the White South African Apartheid regime’s period of hubris, they were getting a lot of help in their attempts to become a nuclear power:

Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state’s possession of nuclear weapons.

The “top secret” minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa’s defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel’s defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them “in three sizes”. The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that “the very existence of this agreement” was to remain secret.

It didn’t.  The news came out in 2010, which disturbed the Israelis:

The Israeli authorities tried to stop South Africa‘s post-apartheid government declassifying the documents at Polakow-Suransky’s request and the revelations will be an embarrassment, particularly as this week’s nuclear non-proliferation talks in New York focus on the Middle East.

They will also undermine Israel’s attempts to suggest that, if it has nuclear weapons, it is a “responsible” power that would not misuse them, whereas countries such as Iran cannot be trusted.

A spokeswoman for Peres today said the report was baseless and there were “never any negotiations” between the two countries. She did not comment on the authenticity of the documents.

South African documents show that the apartheid-era military wanted the missiles as a deterrent and for potential strikes against neighbouring states.

The documents show both sides met on 31 March 1975.

Earlier this month, American President Obama met with Israeli President Peres, the guy who wanted to sell Botha nukes for “potential strikes against neighbouring states”:

Israeli President Shimon Peres will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom this spring, President Obama announced at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington.

“Shimon once described the story of the Jewish people by saying it proved that, ‘slings, arrows and gas chambers can annihilate man, but cannot destroy human values, dignity and freedom,’” Obama said as he announced the award. “He has lived those values. He has taught us to ask more of ourselves and to empathize more with our fellow human beings.”

I’m sure that your average Iranian knows about the Peres-Botha link, and being the most likely future targets of Israeli “empathy,”  I’m sure they feel Peres deserves the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president of the U.S.

Perhaps Obama can fit in a mention of the failed South African deal in his adulatory remarks during the ceremony, when he highlights the “values” Peres has lived .

Hat Tip:  Grant Smith, whose article at Antwar.com that tipped me off about the Medal of Freedom, is really about another troubling story about Israeli duplicity and espionage:

FBI files detailing Israel’s stealth acquisition of U.S. nuclear triggers were declassified and released on Dec. 28, 2011. The FBI’s secret Portland and Los Angeles inter-office communications were originally scheduled for release in the year 2036. Their availability today reveals how Israel’s elite spy networks acquire U.S. nuclear technologies while evading criminal and diplomatic consequences. [emphasis added]

A kryton is a gas-filled tube used as a high-speed switch. U.S. State Department munitions licenses are needed to export krytons because they can be used as triggers for nuclear weapons. California-based MILCO International Inc. shipped 15 orders totaling 800 krytons through an intermediary to the Israeli Ministry of Defense between 1979 and 1983. MILCO obtained the krytons from EG&G Inc. After the U.S. government rejected several requests for kryton export licenses to Israel, Arnon Milchan’s Heli Trading Company brokered the transactions with MILCO. Milchan is an Israeli movie producer who became successful in Hollywood for such movies asBrazil, JFK, and Pretty Woman.

The FBI file reveals that after the illicit kryton exports were discovered, a U.S. attorney tried to flip MILCO President Richard Kelly Smyth to implicate Milchan during intense plea bargaining. The gambit failed, and in May 1984 Smyth was indicted on 30 counts of smuggling and making false statements. Smyth and his wife promptly fled to Israel and remained at large until captured in Malaga, Spain, in July 2001 after Richard Smyth applied for Social Security benefits. INTERPOL arrested Smyth and extradited him to the United States, where he pleaded guilty to violating the U.S. Arms Export Control Act. In November 2001, Smyth was sentenced to 40 years in prison and fined $20,000, though he was freed within four years because of his advancing age.

I. Don’t tell the GOP presidential primary candidates, but they’re missing an issue far more substantive than 99% of what they argue about in their debates and campaign ads:  The emerging Dolphin Gap in the Straits of Hormuz (hat tip to Harry Law):

The US:

“We’ve got dolphins,” said retired Adm. Tim Keating in a Wednesday interview with NPR. Keating commanded the U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain during the run-up to the Iraq war. He sounded uncomfortable with elaborating on the Navy’s use of the lovable mammals but said in a situation like the standoff in Hormuz, Navy-trained dolphins would come in handy:

KEATING: They are astounding in their ability to detect underwater objects.

NPR’s TOM BOWMAN: Dolphins were sent to the Persian Gulf as part of the American invasion force in Iraq.

KEATING: I’d rather not talk about whether we used them or not. They were present in theater.

BOWMAN: But you can’t say whether you used them or not.

KEATING: I’d rather not.

The Russians:

It sounds like the plot from a stupid B-movie, but it’s true: A marine mammal trainer and former Soviet militiaman just sold four “killer” dolphins and a white beluga whale to Iran.

According to a BBC report, the dolphins and whale were trained by the Soviet navy to attack “enemy frogmen with harpoons attached to their backs” and carry out “kamikaze strikes” against enemy ships. The animals learned to distinguish between Soviet and foreign submarines by the sounds of their propellers and were taught to carry mines to the hulls of enemy vessels to blow them (and themselves) up.

If the Iranians have four dolphins and Belugas, they might have plans for 400.  They may be less than two months from this, let alone two years, as has been said of their ability to create a nuclear weapon for at least the past 20 years.

When the GOP candidates get wind of this, they might challenge Obama about letting the “Dolphin Gap” get out of hand, as John F. Kennedy used the fictitious “Missile Gap” to close in on Richard M. Nixon in the 1960 White House contest.

To quickly close the gap before the election, the GOP could try to force Obama to immediately draft all the Cook Inlet Belugas in Alaska.  This would eliminate a thorn in the side of hyper developers who hope to soon extract very large amounts of coal, mined from pristine upper Inlet lands, out of the Inlet, and to the Orient.  Currently, Cook Inlet Belugas are listed by NOAA as endangered.  By drafting all of them for the cause, they would no longer be endangered.  At least in Cook Inlet, that is.

II. On a more serious note, this past week has seen many signs that a real shooting war between Iran and the United States Navy could start at any minute, perhaps by intent, perhaps by mistake.  I wrote a diary at MyFiredoglake on aspects of how dangerous this is on Friday. Since then, all indications are that both the Israelis and Americans are almost in free fall, as they appear to be frantically reassessing ramifications of what could only be best termed as a shaky alliance.

No statements issued by Israeli or American government officials regarding last week’s Tehran scientist assassination should be given any more credence than should have been given to Eisenhower’s May 5, 1960 statement, regarding a U-2 shot down over the USSR, that “there was absolutely no deliberate attempt to violate Soviet airspace and never has been.”

Today’s back-and-forth on who has cancelled or rescheduled the upcoming anti-missile defense exercises that would have allowed Israelis unprecedented access inside of US and NATO command structures is just one of many examples so far this year that there are perhaps major rebellions going on within both the American and Israeli military and defense establishments about how to chart these crazy waters.

Not just the Straits of Hormuz.

Sometimes I feel we’d be better off if the Dolphins and Belugas ran world affairs, rather than humans.

Anyone wondering what the Israelis will do next, after this week’s assassination of an Iranian scientist, to possibly provoke the Iranians into blindly swatting at an American naval vessel or American-flagged tanker, need look no further than Mark Perry’s post today at Foreign Policy:

Buried deep in the archives of America’s intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush’s administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives — what is commonly referred to as a “false flag” operation.

The memos, as described by the sources, one of whom has read them and another who is intimately familiar with the case, investigated and debunked reports from 2007 and 2008 accusing the CIA, at the direction of the White House, of covertly supporting Jundallah — a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization. Jundallah, according to the U.S. government and published reports, is responsible for assassinating Iranian government officials and killing Iranian women and children. [emphases added]

According to Perry’s article, when told of this, President Bush was troubled, even downright pissed:

It’s easy to understand why Bush was so angry,” a former intelligence officer said. “After all, it’s hard to engage with a foreign government if they’re convinced you’re killing their people. Once you start doing that, they feel they can do the same.”

Not only was Bush pissed, so were some of our intelligence operatives and State Department employees:

Israel’s relationship with Jundallah continued to roil the Bush administration until the day it left office, this same intelligence officer noted. Israel’s activities jeopardized the administration’s fragile relationship with Pakistan, which was coming under intense pressure from Iran to crack down on Jundallah. It also undermined U.S. claims that it would never fight terror with terror, and invited attacks in kind on U.S. personnel…

What has become crystal clear, however, is the level of anger among senior intelligence officials about Israel’s actions. “This was stupid and dangerous,” the intelligence official who first told me about the operation said. “Israel is supposed to be working with us, not against us. If they want to shed blood, it would help a lot if it was their blood and not ours. You know, they’re supposed to be a strategic asset. Well, guess what? There are a lot of people now, important people, who just don’t think that’s true.”

One commenter at the web post of Perry’s article noted:

Indeed, Perry’s timing may have something to do with his State Department and anti-terrorism connections.

Others are questioning whether or not the Israelis are not only capable or mounting some sort or another false flag operation that implicates the U.S. in violence against Iranians, but purposefully pushing the Iranians to attack and kill Americans.  The most recent Israeli assassination of an Iranian scientist this week prompted MSNBC‘s Chris Matthews to engage in a few mildly probing speculations:

Baer: It’s undoubtedly the Israelis, it couldn’t be anyone else. The Israelis as far as I can see are trying to provoke the Iranians into doing something.

Matthews: We are vulnerable over there. We have an American who has just been condemned to death for espionage.

Baer: What we’re seeing is an escalation, Chris, and it’s almost as if the intention is to get the Iranians to fire a missile at an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, which would cause a wider war.

Matthews: Why would that help us?

Baer: It wouldn’t help us, it would help them… because the Israelis would force us into hitting the Iranians, hit them back, and that’s exactly what they want.

Matthews (with virginal voice): Oh so it’s the Israelis forcing us into this….

Engel: Incredibly hard sanctions on Iran [have the country] backed into a corner. If you want to hit Iran and you need a pretext to do that…the way to do that is by forcing your adversary into making some kind of aggressive move and everyone will think you’re correct when you respond by force….

Matthews: This is moving toward creating a pretext for an eventual attack on nuclear facilities?

Matthews continues later:

Matthews: How can the U.S. not see this as adversarial by Israel to try and hook us into a war? If that’s seen to manipulate that into a war we don’t want to get into, how can we not see that as from an ally, hostile? … Bob, you’re saying that Israel is trying to provoke the Iranians into attacking.

I contend that not only may the Israelis be trying to provoke the Iranians into attacking us, they may be doing it in such a way as to get the Iranian population believe that an Israeli-connected attack was actually one done by the U.S.  I also contend that Israeli decision makers are nuts enough to – if the above fails to work – actually attack our forces in the Persian Gulf with their own missiles, perhaps taken ashore off of a submarine, to make us think the Iranians have attacked us.  Or – combine the two operations to happen within minutes of each other.

Israel is not our friend.  They are, instead, the most insidious enemy the United States has had in a long time.  I write this reluctantly, but feel it has to be said.

What a headline.  From the UK Telegraph:

Israel refuses to tell US its Iran intentions

 

Israel has refused to reassure President Barack Obama that it would warn him in advance of any pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear capabilities, raising fears that it may be planning a go-it-alone attack as early as next summer. The US leader was rebuffed last month when he demanded private guarantees that no strike would go ahead without White House notification, suggesting Israel no longer plans to “seek Washington’s permission”, sources said. The disclosure, made by insiders briefed on a top-secret meeting between America’s most senior defence chief and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s hawkish prime minister, comes amid concerns that Iran’s continuing progress towards nuclear weapons capability means the Jewish state has all but lost hope for a diplomatic solution.

Let me see if I can get this right.  It was a group of people inspired by a White Paper some of them created in the late 1990s for Netanyahu, then in his first term as Israeli Prime Minister, who then regrouped to form the Project for the New American Century, that kept on pushing for a war against Iraq, largely to help protect Israel.  They got what they wanted, much to our country’s detriment.

Now they’re pushing for war against Iran, even though such a conflict would not only seriously over-stretch our defense establishment, it would endanger our  military forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait and throughout the Persian Gulf area.

Tens of thousands of Americans.

A lone Israeli attack on Iran would probably result in attacks upon all our naval vessels within reach of Iranian missiles.  It  would result in Shia attacks on US forces in Iraq.  It would seriously endanger US forces in central and western Afghanistan.  It would certainly result in attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf, Straits of Hormuz and approaches to those areas.

Don’t get me started on the ramifications for several country’s economies, including our own.

We give these assholes billions a year for weapons.  Our president serially abases himself on their behalf.  If Israeli agents gave our congress and senate a bill to pass, saying “Benjamin Netanyahu is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life,” it would be passed by overwhelming majorities in both chambers, even if the line’s provenance was discovered during the rushes to co-sponsor and to be the first to vote.

If Alaskans look down upon some more than we do mooches, it is ingrates.  One Israeli government after another seems to want to outdo its predecessors in being both.

Allies?  My ass!

Israeli Jericho III Nuclear-warhead capable IRBM

From ABC News:

An Israeli official said Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to persuade his Cabinet to authorize a military strike against Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program — a discussion that comes as Israel successfully tests a missile believed capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to Iran.

From NPR:

[Netanyahu's] hawkish foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, was dismissive of the reports but added: “We are keeping all the options on the table.”

The government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing sensitive internal deliberations, told The Associated Press that the option is now being debated at the highest levels.

The official confirmed a report Wednesday in the Haaretz daily that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak both favor an attack, but do not yet have the support of a majority of Cabinet ministers. The official also said Israel’s top security chiefs, including the heads of the military and Mossad spy agency, oppose military action.

It is generally understood that such a momentous decision would require a Cabinet decision. Israel’s 1981 destruction of Iraq’s nuclear reactor was preceded by a Cabinet vote.

Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev refused to comment on the issue but did say there is a “decision-making process which has stood the test of time. … There have been precedents, and the process works.”

With most of its population concentrated in a narrow corridor of land along the Mediterranean, Israel’s homefront could be vulnerable to a counterattack.

Iran’s military chief, Gen. Hasan Firouzabadi, said his country takes Israeli threats seriously and vowed fierce retaliation.

“We are fully prepared to use our proper equipment to punish any mistake so that it will cause a shock,” he said in comments posted on the website of the Guard, Iran’s most powerful military force.

Reflecting the mood in Israel, military expert Reuven Pedatzur wrote in Haaretz that “if anyone can save Israel from catastrophe, it is the Israeli air force commander,” who might simply tell Netanyahu that an attack on Iran “cannot achieve its goals.”

A compilation of reports on attacking Iran, at Arutz Shiva, claims that the UK and USA are preparing to participate:

A report in the British Guardiannewspaper Wednesday said that the U.S. and the UK were gearing up for a possible attack on Iran. According to the report, the U.S. has become increasingly frustrated – and concerned – over Iran’s refusal to end its enrichment of uranium. Britain has agreed to help, despite some members of the British government being opposed to providing such assistance.

“In anticipation of a potential attack, British military planners are examining where best to deploy Royal Navy ships and submarines equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles over the coming months as part of what would be an air- and sea-launched campaign,” the article says.  Officials said that the U.S. would launch some missile attacks from British ships, if action was taken against Iran, as well as from the British protectorate of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean,

According to the Guardian, the decision to strike Iran came about as the result of the successful campaign that resulted in the dethroning of Muammar Qaddafi as dictator of Libya.

Discussion of the possibility of an upcoming Israeli attack on Iran, or of US/UK participation in this has so far mostly been confined to the foreign press.  Democracy Now reported on the meeting, and successful missile test together, in the same brief paragraph, this morning:

The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz is reporting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are trying to muster a majority in the cabinet in favor of military action against Iran. Netanyahu and Barak have reportedly persuaded Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to support such an attack. Earlier today, Israel reportedly test-fired a ballistic missile.

I’ve been scared into thinking that an attack on Iran was imminent in the past.  Is this different? We may know for sure by the end of the week.  This comes a day after it was announced that a poll commissioned by the European Commission shows deep concern about Israel’s path amongst Europeans:

Results of a new poll commissioned by the European Commission show that Israel is believed by Europeans in 15 countries to be the greatest threat to world peace, greater than North Korea, Iran or Afghanistan.

While the European Commission will release the full results of the poll on Monday, the International Herald Tribune reported that the 7,500 people polled living in the European Union (500 in each of the 15 E.U. member states) were presented with a list of 15 countries and asked if these countries present a threat to world peace.

Shockingly, Israel was rated first.

This might be shocking to the people at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who wrote the above report on the poll, but given today’s intentional leak from Netanyahu’s cabinet,  I’m not shocked.  Are you?

Here are the stats on the Jericho III, the missile tested yesterday:

The Jericho III is believed to have a three-stage solid propellant and a payload of 1,000 to 1,300 kg. It is possible for the missile to be equipped with a single 750 kg nuclear warhead or two or three low yield MIRV warheads. It has an estimated launch weight of 30,000 kg and a length of 15.5 m with a width of 1.56 m. It may be similar to an upgraded and re-designed Shavit space launch vehicle, produced by Israel Aerospace Industries. It probably has longer first and second-stage motors. It is estimated that it has a range of 4,800 to 11,500 km  (2,982 to 7,180 miles), and probably significantly greater with a smaller payload of 350 kg (the size of one smaller Israeli nuclear warhead). It is believed that the Jericho 3 is inertial guided with a radar guided warhead and silo-based with mobile vehicle and railcar capabilities.

According to an official report which was submitted to the American congress in 2004, it may be that with a payload of 1,000 kg the Jericho III gives Israel nuclear strike capabilities within the entire Middle East, Africa, Europe, Asia and almost all parts of North America, as well as within large parts of South America and North Oceania. MissileThreat.com reports: “The range of the Jericho 3 also provides an extremely high impact speed for nearby targets, enabling it to avoid any Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) defenses that may develop in the immediate region.”  On 17 January 2008 Israel test fired a multi-stage ballistic missile believed to be of the Jericho III type reportedly capable of carrying “conventional or non conventional warheads.”

Update: C Tuttle linked in the comments to Richard Silverstein’s prescient and very troubling article on this in Tikun Olam.  Well worth the read, this is the part that concerns me:

This is the first Israeli media confirmation that not only have Bibi and Barak have determined to attack Iran, but that they have attempted to dragoon the cabinet into supporting it as well.  This takes the plan one step closer to realization.  As soon as there is a cabinet majority, the attack could happen at any moment.  Don’t be terribly surprised if you wake up one morning and find pictures of Israeli missiles falling on Iran on CNN and the front page of your local paper.  It no longer seems much of a question of “if,” but rather “when.”

It’s very important that bloggers, journalists and others prepare for such an eventuality.  We should try to create open channels of communication among us and Israeli and Iranian bloggers who can tell us in real time what is happening, who’s saying what, and where the bombs are falling.  This will be a chilling, savage attack which I imagine will impact not just Iran, but Israel as well.  [emphasis added]