Daily Archives: July 31, 2013

07/31/13

Morally Repugnant

Arlene from Israel

That Netanyahu agreed to release 104 Palestinian Arab prisoners was widely broadcast publicly — starting with a letter to the Israeli public by the prime minister himself. Heartache and fury, but no secret here.

However, release of the prisoners was only one of the three major demands of Mahmoud Abbas — the others being agreement to begin negotiations on the basis of the ’67 lines, and freezing of building beyond the ’67 line, i.e., in eastern Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. And we have pretty solid information that building will be slowed, if not terminated all together. Actually, already has been slowed.

But what about beginning negotiations based on the ’67 line? This is a question — of more than a little significance — that has consumed me and many others. Although definitive answers are next to impossible to come by.

Yesterday I spoke with several persons connected with relevant government agencies and drew a “no comment” about the basis for negotiations. Someone from the Foreign Ministry told me candidly, “We’ve put a fog out over everything.” Indeed. He “explained” that “this increases the chances of success.” I didn’t tell him that I thought what this really does is increase the government’s ability to prevent the electorate from finding out something that it doesn’t want us to know. As well as stimulate the rumor mill.

So there is enormous anxiety and unease. A terrible thing when trust in the government has been destroyed, but that’s where we are.

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There are PA sources insisting that Kerry “promised” them that negotiations would use the ’67 line as its starting point. And there are people here so mistrustful of our own government that they are prepared to believe them. I am not. That is, the Palestinian Arabs say many things that are not true and just because Netanyahu has proven himself untrustworthy does not mean that every negative thing they say about him is necessarily true.

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Based on what I do know, and factoring in my own (possibly faulty) intuition, this is what I believe is going on:

Kerry — who would do us a favor if he took a slow boat to China and didn’t come back — is playing both ends against the middle. He has, I am certain, made assurances to the PA about how he will make his very best effort to see to it that when negotiations begin it will be on the basis of the ’67 line. I have information from a solid source on this. The PA then parlayed these assurances into “he promised.”

From the Israeli side, Kerry has secured deliberate ambiguity. Netanyahu is not saying that he knows what assurances Kerry has made to the PA and that he is on board with this. My bet is that he’s not on board with this. But he’s allowing it to be said without direct and vociferous refutation — thereby giving the impression that he is. And apparently thus appeasing both Kerry and the PA.

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An article from Haaretz out just hours ago seems to confirm what I have been seeing: It says that, according to a senior Israeli official, yesterday the US gave Israel and the PA letters “which outlined the US position vis-a-vis the peace talks, their conduct and their goals,” in order to facilitate the talks. While the article states that the contents of the letters are classified, it seems fairly clear that there was good information acquired. It says that the letters “likely” address the issues of borders and refugees.

But this is not startling. We know the US position on the ’67 lines. What it apparently does not say is that “the parties have agreed, and this is to confirm that negotiations will be based on the ’67 lines.” In pushing the US position on this, Kerry would be honoring what I understood to be his promise to the PA. And there is no reason for us to assume, based on this information, that Netanyahu did agree to those lines.

What struck me was one sentence: “the letter to Israel apparently included an American declaration stating Israel is a Jewish state…”

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.538858

The letter to Israel? There were different letters to the two parties? He gave each party what it needed to hear in order to be reassured, while leaving out at least some of what was said to the other party?

Extreme duplicity, if so. And, I suspect, very much part of Kerry’s MO.

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But it gets much worse:

In today’s news there were two items that I must mention.

Kerry, in announcing the resumption of talks, said that in the coming days and weeks the Israeli government will take a number of steps to improve conditions on the ground…for Palestinians.

http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Kerry-Sides-will-meet-again-to-continue-talks-within-two-weeks-321546

This is likely to mean something horrendous such as taking down checkpoints, which puts Jewish life at risk. And please note that the statement was made definitively. It didn’t say, “We hope Israel will consider…”

In the same article, there is talk about the PA refraining from its unilateral campaign at the UN and from pursuing Israel at the International Criminal Court, and, it was explained that “this had not been explicitly stated.” (Emphasis added)

A senior White House official who was quoted said there were “no guarantees of anything,” but that “so long as this process is moving forward, I think the risks of that sort of thing are reduced, if not entirely eliminated.”

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Well, my friends, I tell you frankly that rage rose up in my throat like bile when I read that. And you will forgive me, one and all, if I step just slightly beyond my normal professionalism to observe that Obama, Kerry and company are kissing a certain part of Abbas’s anatomy.

The question is, why? Why is it that we get pushed and leaned on without end. Not enough to agree to release a thousand murderers who should not be let go, we have to agree to “improve conditions” for the Palestinian Arabs in a variety of additional ways.

And yet the US, which is promoting a $4 billion economic plan for the PA, and takes the PA’s part with regard to the ’67 lines, doesn’t say to Abbas, “Listen here. You want all of this, you agree to stay away from unilateral actions and procedures against Israel.” “Listen here. Shape up or we’ll let you hang out to dry.”

Just that simple elementary demand. It’s as if Abbas can call the shots, and the US is afraid of him. As if he holds the key to the salvation of the world, if only he will sit at the table with Israel.

Maybe what he holds is the key to some sense of diplomatic victory for a failed Obama administration — and so is to be courted in unconscionable ways.

Morally repugnant. Unbearable. Obscene.

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Oh, and let me not forget this: Yesterday Abbas said that no Israeli could remain in a Palestinian state: “In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli — civilian or soldier — on our lands.”

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=11021

He was declaring ethnic cleansing up front — a judenrein state. Yet, I picked up not a word from Kerry about this being a regrettable statement as negotiations begin.

Abbas also said this, reflecting the arrogance he surely feels (emphasis added):

“We’ve already made all the necessary concessions.

“East Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Palestine … if there were and must be some kind of small exchange (of land) equal in size and value, we are ready to discuss this — no more, no less.”

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So, by playing reprehensible games, Kerry has pushed the two sides to the table. He has announced that the parties will meet in about two weeks, somewhere in this region, and that meetings will be sustained over a period of nine months, with a goal of achieving a final resolution. All issues are said to be on the table.

But he has done nothing to genuinely bring those sides one iota closer on the issues, and one must wonder what his end game is.

I have not encountered a single analyst/commentator who sees these talks as viable and offering a possibility for resolution.

Tzipi Livni — whom I consider a quintessentially incompetent diplomat — seems beside herself with the pleasure of having gotten this far, and talks about “hope.” Ugh. Hope for what?

People sometimes say that it can’t hurt to try, even if chances are slim. But I beg to differ. If we make concessions we shouldn’t be making and weaken our position and our deterrence, it hurts.

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In closing, I want to backtrack to take a closer look at a statement made by Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar in defense of voting to release the Palestinian Arab prisoners. I find it alarming:

He said the vote to release the prisoners was made to prevent a serious diplomatic crisis with the US and other Western allies:

“A nay vote means…Negotiations won’t begin and Israel will be blamed, even by its best friends, for failing to renew the negotiations.”

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.538392

This is terrible thinking that suggests that we buy into the US notion that pressure should be put on us, and Abbas should be given what he wants (he said he wouldn’t come to the table unless the prisoners were released).

It further suggests that we are so fearful of anger from our allies that we subvert our own best interests to avoid this. In my opinion, this is yet another sign of galut mentality. And I have no doubt but that this is a reflection of what Netanyahu thought.

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But there was a way around this, the way a sovereign state with courageous leaders might have handled the matter.

The Cabinet should have voted it down, and Netanyahu should have called a major press conference declaring Israeli intentions to pursue peace, but explaining that it is not possible to release the prisoners because 1) Israel is a nation of law and the release would subvert justice, and 2) because the government’s first obligation is to protect the safety of its citizens and freeing terrorists puts them at risk.

It is much to be regretted, our prime minister might have said, that Mahmoud Abbas placed this stumbling block before us, demanding what is not reasonable and refusing to relinquish that demand for the sake of peace.

Netanyahu and his government could have and should have said no.

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Sa’ar said something else, as well:

That “the alternative to releasing prisoners was negotiations based on the 1967 borders or a construction freeze in the settlements, so the prisoner option was the least of all evils.”

I’ve heard this elsewhere, too. And it suggests that we had to “give” something that Abbas demanded. Disturbing not only from the point of view of Israeli strength as a nation, but with regard to what was discussed above: the US assumption that Israel has an obligation to “give” to get the ball rolling, even though the PA is not into “giving.”

07/31/13

Impeachment: All you need to know (and you do need to know it).

By: Publius Huldah

1. It is NOT necessary that the President, other officers in the executive branch, or federal judges commit a crime before they may be impeached & removed from office.

Federalist Paper No. 66 (2nd para) & Federalist No. 77 (last para) show that the President may be impeached & removed for encroachments, i.e., usurpations of power.

Federal judges may also be impeached & removed for usurpations of power (Federalist No. 81, 8th para).

Throughout The Federalist Papers, it is stated that impeachment is for “political offenses”.

2. The House has the SOLE power of impeachment (Art. I, Sec. 2, last clause). The Senate has the SOLE power to try all impeachments (Art. I, Sec. 3, next to last clause). The decision to convict is not reviewable by any other body – and common sense tells us what that means! The House may impeach, and the Senate may convict, for any reason whatsoever; and their decision cannot be overturned.

3. The meaning of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” at Art. II, Sec. 4, is far broader than one might at first glance think. Somewhere I saw a scholarly paper showing that the “high” refers to the status of the official – it does not refer to the severity of the offense.

Now, note well! Misdemeanor” has a broader meaning than “a lesser category of criminal offense”. Webster’s 1828 Dictionary shows the primary meaning is: “Ill behavior; evil conduct; fault; mismanagement.”

This shows that a President, Vice-president, and all civil Officers and Judges of the United States may be impeached, tried, convicted, and removed from office for “mismanagement”.

4. Errant members of Congress are never impeached – they are expelled (Art. I, Sec. 5, cl. 2).

5. Military personnel are never impeached – they are court-martialed (see UCMJ – Uniform Code of Military Justice), and may be kicked out of the military.

6. It is not feasible to criminally prosecute, under federal law, a sitting President: his prosecutors, the Attorney General and the U.S. Attorneys, all serve at the President’s pleasure. He can fire anyone who dares to criminally prosecute him. That is why sitting Presidents who have committed federal crimes must first be removed from office via impeachment, then be criminally prosecuted. (Federalist No. 69, 4th para).

But do not forget: A President may – and should – be impeached & removed for usurpations of power, mismanagement, incompetence, or for any other reason deemed sufficient by Congress.

The lawful methods of getting rid of a sitting President [whether eligible or not to hold the office], in addition to impeachment, are set forth in the 25th Amendment: Natural death, resignation, or inability to do the job.

The 22nd Amendment permits Congress to make laws providing for succession where >u>a President elect has not qualified.

Do not spin your wheels in fruitless insistence that a person (who may still be an Indonesian national) who occupies the office of President can’t be impeached because he is ineligible to hold that office. The FACT is that he holds the office. Impeachment is a lawful & constitutional method to rid ourselves of this blight. PH

07/31/13

ADVISORY: FORMER CIA DIRECTOR WOOLSEY WARNS OF EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO AMERICA

Center for Security Policy

FORMER CIA DIRECTOR WOOLSEY WARNS OF EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO AMERICA

Washington, D.C.: On July 29th, President Bill Clinton’s former Director of Central Intelligence, R. James Woolsey, led a panel discussion on the growing – and perhaps imminent – threat of a natural or nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) to the U.S. electric grid and other critical infrastructures that sustain modern civilization and the lives of millions of Americans. The event was sponsored by the newly established EMP Coalition, of which Mr. Woolsey is the Honorary Co-Chair along with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich

Other participants were Ambassador Henry Cooper and Dr. Peter Vincent Pry. Ambassador Cooper led strategic arms control negotiations with the USSR under President Reagan and served as the Director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization under President George H.W. Bush. His is currently the Chairman of High Frontier, an organization dedicated to protecting the United States from nuclear attack. Dr. Pry served on the Congressional EMP Threat Commission, as a professional staff member on the House Armed Services Committee and as an analyst in the CIA. He is now the Executive Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, a congressional advisory board dedicated to national resiliency in the face of EMP and other threats.

Highlights of the program included the following:

Mr. Woolsey warned that the sun can inflict localized EMP disasters, like the 1989 Hydro-Quebec geomagnetic storm that blacked out eastern Canada, causing billions of dollars in economic losses. He noted that a recent study by insurance industry leader Lloyds of London estimated that if the 1989 geo-storm struck the east coast of the United States, 20-40 million Americans might be blacked out for as long as two years. A rare geomagnetic super-storm, like the 1859 Carrington Event, would collapse electric grids and life-sustaining critical infrastructures everywhere on Earth, putting at risk the lives of billions.

Scientists estimate that the world is overdue for another Carrington Event, and the Sun has already entered its solar maximum that shall last through 2013, when a catastrophic geo-storm is more likely to occur, Woolsey said.

  • Mr. Woolsey warned that an EMP catastrophe may also be imminent from terrorists and/or rogue states armed with nuclear weapons. North Korea already has nuclear missiles, Iran nearly so, and these two are actively collaborating. A single nuclear weapon detonated at high-altitude over this country would collapse the electric grid and other critical infrastructures and endanger the lives of millions.
  • Woolsey emphasized that the hundreds of electric utilities in the United States have thus far not acted to protect themselves from EMP, and cannot be expected to do so voluntarily as national defense and homeland security is a U.S. government responsibility. Woolsey urged that government regulation, by passage of the Secure High-voltage Infrastructure for Electricity from Lethal Damage (SHIELD) Act now before Congress, is necessary to protect the national electric grid.
  • Ambassador Cooper noted that the world escaped an EMP catastrophe just two weeks ago, when a huge Carrington-class coronal mass ejection crossed the path of the Earth’s orbit, but narrowly missed our planet.
  • Amb. Cooper warned that, given our nation’s current state of unpreparedness, if a natural or nuclear EMP catastrophe struck today, blacking out the electrical grid and other critical infrastructures for a year, as many as ninety percent of the American people could perish from starvation, disease and societal collapse. This assessment is from the Congressional EMP Commission that examined the EMP threat for nearly a decade, including performing numerous scientific experiments and producing what is widely regarded as the definitive study of critical infrastructure vulnerabilities and solutions.
  • Amb. Cooper warned that North Korea may already have the capability to make a catastrophic EMP attack on the United States. On December 2012, Cooper said, North Korea used its so-called Space Launch Vehicle like a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System – a secret weapon invented by the Russians during the Cold War to deliver a stealthy nuclear attack on the United States by orbiting a nuclear weapon over the south polar region, bypassing U.S. Ballistic Missile Early Warning radars (BMEWs) and missile defenses. Cooper noted that the U.S. has no BMEWs radars or missile interceptors facing south. North Korea apparently orbited a satellite over the south polar region on a trajectory and altitude consistent with making a surprise nuclear EMP attack against the United States.
  • Amb. Cooper said the needed solution would be to utilize the sensors and weapons aboard AEGIS anti-missile ships and such missiles ashore to protect the U.S. southern flank and east coast from nuclear EMP attack and to harden the electric grid by passage of the SHIELD Act.
  • Dr. Pry warned that a disturbing confluence of events suggests an EMP attack might be imminent. Pry noted that thousands of cyber attacks using computer viruses and hacking are probing the defenses of U.S. critical infrastructures, searching for weaknesses.
  • Dr. Pry observed that the foreign military doctrines of potential adversaries such as Iran, North Korea, China and Russia, all include acts of sabotage and kinetic attacks – including nuclear EMP attack – as part of their planning for an all-out Information Warfare or Cyber Warfare Operation. Pry noted that recently, in April, a sabotage attempt was made against electric grid transformers near San Jose, CA, that damaged five transformers with fire from AK-47 assault rifles.
  • Moreover, according to Dr. Pry, the North Korean freighter Chong Chon Gang recently intercepted and undergoing inspection in Panama under suspicion of drug smuggling, was discovered to have in its hold two nuclear-capable SA-2 missiles. The missiles were without nuclear warheads, Pry said, but the incident is disturbingly like the EMP Commission’s nightmare scenario of a nuclear EMP attack launched from a freighter off the U.S. coast, to conceal the identity of the attacker and escape retaliation. Pry said “connecting the dots” between cyber attacks, sabotage by AK-47s, a North Korean freighter carrying nuclear capable missiles in the Caribbean may warrant a crash program to protect the nation’s electric grid.

All panelists endorsed the SHIELD Act, urged that the Department of Homeland Security develop a new National Planning Scenario focused on EMP, and encouraged other states to follow the example of Maine, not wait for Washington, but pass state initiatives to protect their electric grids from EMP now.

Video of the event and additional information about the EMP Coalition, its partners and their efforts to secure our grid from all hazards can be obtained at www.StopEMP.org.

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Massive solar flare narrowly misses Earth, EMP disaster barely avoided

07/31/13

Inspector General Says Army Doing Business With Enemy

By: Bob McCarty
The Clapper Memo

Though Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was acquitted of charges that he aided the enemy when he released hundreds of thousands of classified documents to Wikileaks, U.S. Army officials continue to do business with 43 individuals and companies — most of whom are Afghans — despite evidence of their ties to supporters of the insurgency (i.e., the Taliban, the Haqqani network, and al-Qaeda) in Afghanistan.

In his July 30 report to Congress, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko raised concerns about the Army’s refusal to act on his recommendations that would prevent supporters of the insurgency in Afghanistan from receiving lucrative government contracts. Incredibly, they were the same concerns he had raised three months earlier in his April 30 report to Congress.

Why have no ties been cut between the Army and the suspect 43 individuals and companies during the past three months? Officials at the Army Suspension and Debarment Office say, according to Sopko, appear to believe suspension or debarment of these individuals and companies would be a violation of their due-process rights.

Was I surprised to learn of this difficult-to-fathom news? Hardly. I ran into similarly-dangerous thinking during the four-year investigation that led to the release of my second nonfiction book, THE CLAPPER MEMO.

U.S. Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets decried DoD’s decision to remove from their tool kits an investigative tool they described as being the best available.

Defense Intelligence Agency interrogators in Baghdad and at Guantanamo Bay did the same and later expressed to anyone who would listen their disgust with DoD’s decision to remove the tool from their investigative arsenal.

Try as they might, DoD officials have so far been unable to prevent more than 1,800 law enforcement agencies across the United States from using the investigative tool now banned by DoD.

  • What is this tool?
  • How does it work?
  • Why did top government officials ban its use within DoD?

Answers to all of those questions and more can be found in my latest nonfiction book, THE CLAPPER MEMO.

Available in paperback and ebook versions, it comes highly recommended.

Bob McCarty is the author of Three Days In August and THE CLAPPER MEMO. To learn more about either book or to place an order, click on the graphic above.