Nader Writes Letter to Bush on Gaza Crisis

Cong. Barney Frank said recently that Barack Obama’s declaration that “there is only one president at a time” over-estimated the number. He was referring to the economic crisis. But where are you on the Gaza crisis where the civilian population of Gaza, its civil servants and public facilities are being massacred and destroyed respectively by U.S built F-16s and U.S. built helicopter gunships.

The deliberate suspension of your power to stop this terrorizing of 1.5 million people, mostly refugees, blockaded for months by air, sea and land in their tiny slice of land, is in cowardly contrast to the position taken by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1956. That year he single handedly stopped the British, French and Israeli aircraft attack against Egypt during the Suez Canal dispute.

Fatalities in Gaza are already over 400 and injuries close to 2000 so far as is known. Total Palestinian civilian casualties are 400 times greater then the casualties incurred by Israelis. But why should anyone be surprised at your blanket support for Israel’s attack given what you have done to a far greater number of civilians in Iraq and now in Afghanistan?

Confirmed visual reports show that Israeli warplanes and warships have destroyed or severely damaged police stations, homes, hospitals, pharmacies, mosques, fishing boats, and a range of public facilities providing electricity and other necessities.

Why should this trouble you at all? It violates international law, including the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter. You too have repeatedly violated international law and committed serious constitutional transgressions.

Then there is the matter of the Israeli government blocking imports of critical medicines, equipment such as dialysis machines, fuel, food, water, spare parts and electricity at varying intensities for almost two years. The depleted UN aid mission there has called this illegal blockade a humanitarian crisis especially devastating to children, the aged and the infirm. Chronic malnutrition among children is rising rapidly. UN rations support eighty percent of this impoverished population.

How do these incontrovertible facts affect you? Do you have any empathy or what you have called Christian charity?

What would a vastly shrunken Texas turned in an encircled Gulag do up against the 4th most powerful military in the world? Would these embattled Texans be spending their time chopping wood?

Gideon Levy, the veteran Israeli columnist for Ha’aretz, called the Israeli attack a “brutal and violent operation” far beyond what was needed for protecting the people in its south. He added: “The diplomatic efforts were just in the beginning, and I believe we could have got to a new truce without this bloodshed…..to send dozens of jets to bomb a total helpless civilian society with hundreds of bombs—just today, they were burying five sisters. I mean, this is unheard of. This cannot go on like this. And this has nothing to do with self-defense or with retaliation even. It went out of proportion, exactly like two-and-a-half years ago in Lebanon.”

Apparently, thousands of Israelis, including some army reservists, who have demonstrated against this destruction of Gaza agree with Mr. Levy. However, their courageous stands have not reached the mass media in the U.S. whose own reporters cannot even get into Gaza due to Israeli prohibitions on the international press.

Your spokespeople are making much ado about the breaking of the six month truce. Who is the occupier? Who is the most powerful military force? Who controls and blocks the necessities of life? Who has sent raiding missions across the border most often? Who has sent artillery shells and missiles at close range into populated areas? Who has refused the repeated comprehensive peace offerings of the Arab countries issued in 2002 if Israel would agree to return to the 1967 borders and agree to the creation of a small independent Palestinian state possessing just twenty two percent of the original Palestine?

The “wildly inaccurate rockets”, as reporters describe them, coming from Hamas and other groups cannot compare with the modern precision armaments and human damage generated from the Israeli side.

There are no rockets coming from the West Bank into Israel. Yet the Israeli government is still sending raiders into that essentially occupied territory, still further entrenching its colonial outposts, still taking water and land and increasing the checkpoints This is going on despite a most amenable West Bank leader, Mahmoud Abbas, whom you have met with at the White House and praised repeatedly. Is it all vague words and no real initiatives with you and your emissary Condoleezza Rice?

Peace was possible, but you provided no leadership, preferring instead to comply with all wishes and demands by the Israeli government—even resupplying it with the still active cluster bombs in south Lebanon during the invasion of that country in 2006.

The arguments about who started the latest hostilities go on and on with Israel always blaming the Palestinians to justify all kinds of violence and harsh treatment against innocent civilians.

From the Palestinian standpoint, you would do well to remember the origins of this conflict which was the dispossession of their lands. To afford you some empathy, recall the oft-quoted comment by the founder of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, who told the Zionist leader, Nahum Goldmann:

“There has been anti-Semitism the Nazis Hitler Auschwitz but was that their [the Palestinians] fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”
Alfred North Whitehead once said: “Duty arises out of the power to alter the course of events.” By that standard, you have shirked mightily your duty over the past eight years to bring peace to both Palestinians and Israelis and more security to a good part of the world.

The least you can do in your remaining days at the White House is adopt a modest profile in courage, and vigorously demand and secure a ceasefire and a solidly based truce. Then your successor, President-elect Obama can inherit something more than the usual self-censoring Washington puppet show that eschews a proper focus on the national interests of the United States.

Ralph Nader

Council Of Foreign Relations Has Top Three Contenders

There has been much "buzz" about the Council on Foreign Relations and its importance in American politics. As it stands our Current President George Bush, and all top three contenders Hillary, Barrack and McCain are also CFR members. Virtually every President in the last 50 years was a member, or has had involvement with the CFR.

With this given, it therefore becomes important to know what exactly is the CFR and what do they stand for? According to wikipedia: "The Council's mission is promoting understanding of foreign policy and America’s role in the world. Meetings are convened at which government officials, global leaders and prominent members debate major foreign-policy issues. It has a think tank that employs prominent scholars in international affairs and it commissions subsequent books and reports. A central aim of the Council, it states, is to "find and nurture the next generation of foreign policy leaders." It established "Independent Task Forces" in 1995, which encourage policy debate. Comprising experts with diverse backgrounds and expertise, these task forces seek consensus in making policy recommendations on critical issues; to date, the Council has convened more than fifty times.

The internal think tank is the The David Rockefeller Studies Program, which grants fellowships and whose programs are described as being integral to the goal of contributing to the ongoing debate on foreign policy; fellows in this program research and write on the most important challenges facing the United States and the world.

At the outset of the organization, founding member Elihu Root said the group's mission, epitomized in its journal Foreign Affairs, should be to "guide" American public opinion. In the early 1970s, the CFR changed the mission, saying that it wished instead to "inform" public opinion."

Many people who have knowledge of the CFR have said that they "guide" and "inform" us through manipulation and control of the media. One of the biggest critics of this media control has been Phil Donahue who has argued the Pentagon has hijacked our media and delivered us military news. It is also important to know that Donahue was cancelled from MSNBC because his post 9/11 view did not cater to the "Climate of Fear" that Peter Arnette (Also Fired) spoke about.

The underlying criticism of the CFR is that it shapes and promotes the opinion of these "study programs" and breeds American leaders whose foreign policy objectives become mere media trite and opinion by pre-selected pro-war groups of corporate controlled media outlets. This has been occurring at the expense of true and accurate reporting of which is based on the climate of the country and not the ambitions and needs of the military and its global objectives.

Fortunately many Americans are increasingly realizing that there is more opinion out there than actual news, and this is eroding the credibility of the mainstream media. We are increasingly seeing this through the financial hardship and growing competition from alternate news sources that are reporting facts instead of opinion. This problem is currently being dealt with through a legislative quest to regulate the prime source of contradictory views on media war reporting and opinion... the internet. Should the current plans become fully implemented it may become entirely possible that you will need a permit to launch a website and its content will have to comply with stricter laws and regulations or sites will be remotely cancelled.

The video below is from Phil Donahue, he brings up some very interesting points about media control and his view on the future of America and its war agenda.



Trailer Body Of War. www.bodyofwar.com



CFR In The News:

America's Antiwar Reporters Dismissed and Deceased

Recently I have been learning that America's top antiwar reporters have been under fire for criticizing the pro-war policies of the Bush administration. There are four reporters that I have questions about and each will be explained below.

The first target of the corporate controlled media empire is Dan Rather. Dan Rather is a veteran reporter who has been on the television since I was a young Kid. His voice and opinion has been heard around the world, and Dan has made himself a household name with many baby boomers who have come to know him.Sadly Dan Rather was dismissed from CBS when he discovered the Bush administration forged documents in the Kilian story. The issue would not go away, but Dan Rather was eventually dismissed and the Killian case is now the subject of a 70 Million Dollar Lawsuit between CBS and Dan Rather. Dan still does do reporting but he has been moved into virtual obscurity and away from the main stream media.

The next media giant now silenced and gagged is Phil Donahue. Phil had his very popular television show on MSNBC that was cancelled. According to wikipedia "MSNBC cancelled the show, citing low viewership. Despite the reasons given by MSNBC, AllYourTV.com reported it had received a copy of an internal NBC memo that mentioned that Donahue had to be fired because he would be a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war"

The third media giant to be eviscerated from the airways is Peter Jennings. According to Wikipedia, "his coverage was not without controversy though. After conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh blasted Jennings for supposedly denigrating President George W. Bush on-air during September 11." Rush later apologized and retracted his remarks, but the fact remains that Peter Jennings died at the age of 67 from lung cancer. Many of his closest supporters believe that his death was suspicious in lieu of his anti Bush comments. However, no connection or proof has ever been presented that any foul play occurred.

One last person to add to this list is Gulf war 1 correspondent Peter Arnett who was also fired in lieu of his war stance and allegations of using untrue anti-war reporting information that did not jive with the "climate of fear" that many reporters at big news agencies feared. According to wikipedia "when Arnett's remarks sparked a "firestorm of protest", NBC initially defended him, saying he had given the interview as a professional courtesy and that his remarks were "analytical in nature". A day later, though, NBC, MSNBC and National Geographic all severed their relationships with Arnett."

This post today is intended to get your attention as to a possible pattern, and I respectfully ask all of the readers of this post to empower yourself and embed these reporters faces and stories into your lives regardless of opinion. Should there ever be any question of free speech in America these brave reporters are the front line casualties of the "information war."