Philip Giraldi

Comrade Napoleon: Jerusalem platform omission a 'mistake' - No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all [human beings are chosen]. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be? ~ G. Orwell, Animal Farm

I really did not want to write about Israel again this week, but the outrageous manipulation of the Democratic Party platform, moves in California to make any criticism of Israel a hate crime, and news that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had dressed down the U.S. ambassador in the presence of a congressman before insisting that the United States has no moral right to judge Israel has made it unavoidable to go “once more into the breach, dear friends.”

There is a fundamental issue at stake here. That is, does the United States have a national interest in its dealings with the countries in the Middle East that is fundamentally distinct from the Israeli interests? It is a question for dummies, as the answer is clearly yes. Well, if the answer is yes, why are leading politicians and talking heads insisting that the answer is no? Why are so many prominent Americans prepared to ignore the U.S. national interest in support of a foreign nation that has been the source of numerous armed conflicts, that has spied relentlessly on the U.S., and that is a serious drain on the U.S. Treasury? One might add that Americans have become terrorist targets as a consequence while the sharp decline in the favorable views of the United States around the world is largely attributable to the ties to rogue state Israel, even if the Bushes and Obamas have no doubt done their bit through the policy of unrestricted preemptive warfare that has evolved over the past 11 years.

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Stephen Lendman

Bad as things are now, expect much worse ahead.

As expected, the Court caved. On September 12, headlines reported it. The Financial Times said "German politicians declared the road clear for the creation of the eurozone's (500 billion euro) rescue fund after the country's constitutional court rejected a petition to block it." At issue is: Does it matter? More on that below.

Two Eurozone rescue schemes exist. The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) is running out of funds. Germany's High Court approved the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). Originally it was scheduled to take effect July 1. Germany's parliament was still debating it. Constitutional Court approval is required. It could have linked passage to constitutional law change. Doing so would have required Germany's first post-war national referendum. It stopped short and approved what lacks legitimacy, and in the end won't work.

On the one hand, countries are running out of resources. On the other, the ECB has few bullets left. Everything it tried so far failed. Constitutional approval changes nothing. With it came conditions. The Financial Times said those imposed appear less onerous than feared. The Court ruled Germany's maximum 190 billion euro liability can't be increased without its ESM representative approving it. According to Court President Andreas Vosskuhle:

"(No) provision of this treaty may be interpreted in a way that establishes higher payment obligations for the Federal Republic of Germany without the agreement of the German representative."

It also insures Bundestag involvement. Under German law accompanying ESM approval, the parliament must approve its representative's positions. It's unclear if full parliamentary or budget committee voting is required.

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Wayne Madsen

The Central Intelligence Agency cobbled together the forerunner of the present Muslim jihadist terrorist network in the late 1970s to battle Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Throughout the next three decades, the CIA continued to maintain links with the jihadist groups, using them as allies for certain operations and attacking them when America’s «commitment» to the «war on terrorism» required an propaganda boost in the world’s media.

An example of the CIA ‘s flip-flopping between using its mujaheddin and jihadist allies and then declaring them «terrorists» and putting a price on their heads is the recent declaration by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the Haqqani network based in North Waziristan, Pakistan is a «foreign terrorist organization».

The Haqqani network, led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, was cobbled together by the CIA and the Pakistani Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the 1980s.

The Haqqani network is the latest former CIA ally to be branded a terrorist group. The Haqqanis are the latest in a long line of so-called terrorist groups that were organized and funded by the CIA only later to be thrown to the side of the road and branded «terrorists». Others include «Al Qaeda», led by CIA Afghan war veteran Osama bin Laden and Hezb-I Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatayar. With the designation of the Haqqani network as a terrorist organization, after the demise of Bin Laden and the designation of Hekmatayar as a terrorist, the CIA has run the table on its old mujaheddin allies. Only those «Al Qaeda» operatives who have allied themselves with the CIA in the Western-backed insurgencies in Libya and Syria.

Bin Laden and «Al Qaeda» were the convenient scapegoats for the CIA and its Mossad allies to provide a «logical» perpetrator for the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the 11th anniversary of which is now being observed across America. Hekmatayar’s falling out with the CIA appears to be over his attempt to cut into the opium smuggling in Afghanistan run by intelligence cut-outs for the CIA, as well as the family opium harvesting and smuggling business of the family of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

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