August Week 3, 2006

"We should prepare to go on the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai."
-- David Ben-Gurion, May 1948

I have been stunned by many things on the US political scene since I was jerked violently awake on Nov. 22, 1963. However, one thing that simply flew under the cuckoo's nest of my awareness was the total influence on our Congress; the control of our media, our courts, our universities, our entire society -- even our religion -- by the state of Israel. I had no idea.

I've learned a lot about both Israel and the United States in the last five years -- most of which I fervently wish I didn't know. I learned very quickly in the wake of 9-11 that the neoconservatives in the US claim an ideological right -- the Zionists in Israel a theological right -- to do whatever they want to whomever they want whenever they want, and those who question their increasingly bloody aggression are labeled "anti-American" or "anti-Semitic." Those who protest are ostracized from both religious and patriotic society (not to be confused with "civilized" society) and are immediately bombarded with ridicule and vicious ad hominems. Some receive death threats. Some receive death.

I learned that there is a vast difference between Jews, or people of Israel, and the warmongering Zionists who control the state of Israel, just as there is between most American citizens and the cowardly neo-fascist chickenhawks who control the United States. The people of both regimes cry out against the barbaric genocide and ethnic cleansing perpetrated in their name -- they shriek, they march in protest, but the world media pushed the "mute" button long ago, and no sound emerges from the weeping masses.

As these two "democracies" force their way across the Middle East, it's as if Charles Manson is stalking the innocent with a mad dog on a leash. Neither can be reasoned with, and no living creature in their path is safe. But it is easy to tell where they've been, because the landscape is littered with rotting corpses of innocent men, women and children, with mass graves and displaced millions fleeing for their lives.

From the Frying Pan...

The current conflict raging in the Middle East has less to do with self-defense or protecting the homeland than with zionist politics, Christo-fascist talking points and corporate media spin. It is a war of extermination -- a carefully planned crusade for world dominion, and it has been simmering on US and Israeli back burners for decades.

Every writer addressing this subject since George Bush was fraudently installed in the White House has pleaded with Americans to pay attention to the plan, "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century" penned by Dick Cheney while he was defense secretary, by Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby, Paul Wolfowitz and Jeb Bush, which calls for seizing the world's resources and establishing permanent military bases throughout the Middle East. That plan was immediately put in place and is being relentlessly carried out.

Ninety pages too formidable? Okay, try the September 2002 "National Security Strategy of the United States of America," whose 35 pages puts in place a barbaric pre-emptive war policy that destroys 230 years of honor, dignity, decency -- and democracy. This manifesto was also written by Cheney and Wolfowitz, and is a direct result of behind-the-scenes input from then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell.

In his article, "Dick Cheney's Song of America," David Armstrong writes, "In early 1992, as Powell and Cheney campaigned to win congressional support for their augmented Base Force plan, a new logic entered into their appeals. The United States, Powell told members of the House Armed Services Committee, required "sufficient power" to "deter any challenger from ever dreaming of challenging us on the world stage." To emphasize the point, he (Powell) cast the United States in the role of street thug. "I want to be the bully on the block," he said, implanting in the mind of potential opponents that "there is no future in trying to challenge the armed forces of the United States."

Armstrong's article is 11 easy-to-read, eye-opening pages and was entered into the Congressional Record by Rep. John Larson (D-CT) in Oct. 10, 2002 -- one month after Cheney's National Security Strategy was released.

If you're wondering what these homework assignments have to do with what's going on in Lebanon, Israel and Gaza today, take a look at "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," a document written in 1996 by neoconservatives Douglas Feith, Richard Perle and David Wurmser, among others, for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. No more Mr. Good Guy when dealing with the Palestinians, "A Clean Break" calls for a hot pursuit policy -- in effect, a familiar smoke 'em out, get 'em on the run and chase 'em clean out of the realm. Those who choose to stay and fight for their land will die. It's their choice.

"Clean Break," although the Likudnik game plan, was written by American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) power-mad neocons, who fantasized that Israel could seize the "strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon," and suggested that after these wars, which would all be successful, of course -- Israel could reshape "the strategic balance in the Middle East" by attacking Saudi Arabia and Egypt. "Clean Break" is a mere six pages, and is a Zionist's wet dream...

Into The Fire...

They can't stop now. They wouldn't, even if they could. The neo-cons' thirst for blood has reached unquenchable proportions. No one has worked more feverishly for total Middle East war than the Weekly Standard's ghoulishly grinning editor, Bill Kristol, who wrote in his July 24 "It's Our War" that Hezbollah is intent on wiping Israel off the map for Iran, and now is the time to strike Iran's nuclear facilities.

"Why wait?" Kristol asked. "Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions—and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement."

Then there's Dick Cheney, the madman who pulls the levers, who is chillingly indifferent to suffering and -- being bloodless himself -- doesn't see what all the fuss is about. Cheney's plans go beyond just controlling the world's resources; he knows he won't be here much longer, so he's desperate to seize all the riches, if you will, and take them with him. In this administration, Cheney is the "go to" guy for arrogant, barbaric murder.

According to journalist Seymour Hersh, whose article, "Watching Lebanon," will be published in the Aug. 21 issue of the New Yorker, Israeli officials came to Washington earlier this summer “to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear.”

Hersh writes that “Israel began with Cheney. It wanted to be sure that it had his support and the support of his office and the Middle East desk of the National Security Council.” After getting Cheney's blessing, Hersh said he was told, “persuading Bush was never a problem, and Condi Rice was on board.”

And evangelical Zionists, such as Pat Robertson, who are lusting for Armeggedan, at last see an opportunity to rid the Holy Land of the Palestinians. Only after a crusade wherein the entire Middle East explodes in a tsunami of blood --only then will Robertson be swept up in glory, leaving the rest of us below to choke to death on depleted uranium dust and to drown in the blood of the innocent.

Those of you who don't know Robertson are, well, damn lucky. Robertson makes Charles Manson look like a pussy. As far back as 1985, Robertson told his brain-dead followers that God wants all Palestinians exterminated. "God told the Israelites to kill them all -- men, women and children -- to destroy them," Robertson said.

What are we to think of that? Robertson, God's most vocal confidant, says Palestinians are an abomination -- a contagion for which there is no cure and whose only function is to "cause trouble for the Israelites, and pull the Israelites away from God, and prevent the truth of God from reaching the Earth." He explained it was "more merciful" to kill Palestinians sooner rather than later because if they continue to reproduce, Israel will be burdened with having more to kill in the future. According to Robertson, the only way to look at such mass extinction is, "God, in love, took away a small number so that He might not have to take away a large number."

Last, but not least, we have Israel's militant leaders -- and America's Decider, George Bush. The Zionists are very good at what they do, whether blowing things apart with US bombs and missiles or crushing everything in their path with US bulldozers. But don't take my word for it. In his book, "You Gentiles," Maurice Samuels (p.155) wrote, "We Jews, we are the destroyers and will remain the destroyers. Nothing you can do will meet our demands and needs. We will forever destroy because we want a world of our own."

One has only to stumble through the ruins of Sabra, Shatilla, Jenin, Gaza and Qana -- to recall the torture, assassinations, collective punishment of civilians, destruction of infrastructure, denying sustenance to those dying of thirst and hunger -- to realize that Israel is the "cod piece" of the Middle East. The Zionists who control it make Charles Manson's mad dog look like a pussy.

And, what of George Bush -- what part is he playing in all of this? It is incomprehensible to believe he is in charge of, even aware of, anything. In recent weeks, I have watched Bush, the man at the helm of the most powerful nation on earth, run and hide, blather and bumble his way thorugh fund-raising speeches, make an ass of himself at the G8 Summit gathering in Russia, crudely grope another world leader, and refuse to discuss anything more serious than "slicing the pig."

Two weeks into the Lebanon crisis, wherein "Condi," as Bush crudely calls this nation's Secretary of State, lurched around the Middle East and was sent home empty-handed -- twice -- he was finally backed into a corner and asked about the bombs dropping on Lebanon and the Hezbollah rockets raining down on Israel. Bush responded inanely that Israel was merely exercising its right to defend itself," before launching into his familiar, Texas-style "Remember the 9-11 Alamo..."

Are We Done Yet?

These widely different factions have divergent goals but they need each other to achieve them, and their eyes are riveted on a single prize -- Iran. This oil-rich nation must be brought to its knees before the neo-cons can have their New World Order, before Cheney can control the world's resources, before Israel can have its final solution in the Holy Land, before Bush can spread freedom and democracy and death and rid the world of yet another safe haven for plotters and planners and evil terrorists.... Iran is all that is standing between true believers and their ascension into Heaven. The same people who lied us into the Iraq war are telling the same lies about Iran -- the WMDs are now nuclear bombs, and no UN resolution, no US Congress, no US media will stop the madness.

They will have their war, knowing full well that an assault on a nation fully capable of retaliation will sign the death warrants of millions of innocents as well as of every US service member on the ground in the Middle East. Unfortunately, such losses carry little weight with all but a handful of the members of the US Congress and the majority of the American people who blindly support Zionist Israel and who advocate ethnic cleansing as a final solution to the problems of the Middle East.

Edward Said, the late Palestinian-American theorist, wrote one month before the Iraq invasion, "We cannot in any way lend our silence to a policy of war that the White House has openly announced will include three to five hundred cruise missiles a day (800 of them during the first 48 hours of the war) raining down on the civilian population of Baghdad in order to produce "Shock and Awe", or even a human cataclysm that will produce ... a Hiroshima-style effect on the Iraqi people... What sort of God would want this to be a formulated and announced policy for His people? And what sort of God would claim that this was going to bring democracy and freedom to the people not only of Iraq but to the rest of the Middle East?"

Said pleaded with the American people to speak out before it's too late. "Who knows what more evil will be done in the name of Good?" Said asked. "Every one of us must raise our voices, and march in protest, now and again and again. We need creative thinking and bold action to stave off the nightmares planned by a docile, professionalised staff in places like Washington and Tel Aviv and Baghdad. For if what they have in mind is what they call "greater security" then words have no meaning at all in the ordinary sense...The question is, how long can they keep getting away with it?"

How long, indeed. Look around. They have come for the others. Only we the people remain, and most of us are blind to our shame, our national disgrace. If we do not raise our voices now and again and again, we will be done. Then, God help us, we will realize -- too late -- that we are all Charles Mansons now.

© 2006 Sheila Samples

Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at: rsamples@sirinet.net.

Schrödinger's cat, self-fulfilling prophecies, and modern American journalism

If you took physics in high school or college, you probably learned about the "observer effect," often illustrated with the thought experiment of Schrödinger's Cat, in which something terrible either does or does not happen to little Tabby as she waits in her box with a canister of poison gas (science is ruthless, you know). To the outside world, Tabby exists in a state neither dead nor alive until the box is opened and she is observed, at which point, she takes on one state or the other, depending on whether it's her lucky day. The principle Schrödinger was illustrating is that -- in quantum mechanics, at least -- the act of observation itself inevitably affects the thing being observed.

We were reminded of the potential effect of Schrödinger's principle this week. The nature of journalism is such that by casting their gaze upon an event, the news media almost inevitably influence how that event proceeds. By telling us what public opinion is, they influence how we think about our own beliefs and the place they hold among our fellow citizens.

And by telling us what is going to happen, they often make the very course of events they are predicting more likely. While reporters may not be comfortable with the idea, the truth is that self-fulfilling prophecies occur constantly in the news media. For instance, when reporters decide one candidate is the "front-runner," he gets the lion's share of attention, which makes his victory seem likely, which better enables fundraising, which allows him to hire more staff and air more ads, and so on until that victory actually comes about. The candidate reporters choose to ignore as having little chance of winning will -- precisely because the press ignores him -- have little chance of winning.

The events of last week, in which British authorities foiled what they said was a plot to blow up airplanes with liquid explosives, seemed again ripe for the observer effect to come into play. The media immediately began to lay the groundwork by which their own patterns of interpretation would serve to create yet another self-fulfilling prophecy. Within hours of the arrests, the media proceeded with Pavlovian predictability to raise the question of whether the thwarting of the alleged plot would provide a boost for President Bush in the polls. Some went so far as to simply assert that it would.

Media Matters for America wrote:

Since authorities in Britain recently arrested several suspects accused of plotting to attack U.S.-bound flights using liquid explosives, numerous media outlets have posed the question of whether news of the thwarted terror plot will benefit President Bush -- and in some cases, simply made the assertion that it does.

In doing so, they repeated at least two familiar patterns: filtering virtually all major events through their "good for Bush?" lens and parroting the Republicans' dominant message -- a theme that may have secured Bush's re-election -- that the president is keeping you safe. Karl Rove himself could not have dictated a better response -- or rather, this is precisely the response that he presented when, earlier this year, he laid out the GOP's plan for holding onto Congress in November. The problems with the media's assumption that it's their role to ask this question seem beyond obvious, but since we have never shied away from stating the obvious, and since the media, by contrast, too often run from it, here they are:

Problem 1: The prediction/assertion can be self-fulfilling

It's simple. When the media assert that a particular event -- in this case, the U.K. arrests -- will drive up Bush's poll numbers on the question of national security, they do several things: They suggest to the public that Bush played a significant role in thwarting the terror plot; they tell the public that his purported role is another example of his strength on terror; and they contribute invaluably to Rove's plan to make this election year about the war on terror rather than about any number of other issues -- including the Iraq war -- that Rove has decided, probably correctly, poll even worse for Republicans. If, in fact, Bush's poll numbers were to go up, in no small part because Americans are being told that Bush is strong on terror, that he played a vital role in averting the most heinous terror attack since 9-11, and that he is protecting them, the media would almost certainly tell themselves that they were right. The next time a national security-related event occurred, the media could have looked to this experience and said that "terror helps Bush." And, assuming this pattern held, they would be right again.

Arianna Huffington explained the cycle in an August 13 post to the Huffington Post weblog, lighting into an August 11 New York Times article by reporter Adam Nagourney with the headline "Arrests Bolster G.O.P. Bid To Claim Security as Issue." Huffington wrote:

Really? Do they? How do we know they do?

When you read the story you find out that the reason we know they do is because, yes, the G.O.P. told us so. Nagourney writes: "The developments played neatly into the White House-led effort, after Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, lost on Tuesday to an antiwar primary challenger, to remind voters of the threats facing the nation and to cast Democrats as timid on national defense."

No, it's not "the developments" that played neatly into "the White House-led effort," it's Adam Nagourney who did.

The White House fabricated a connection and a neat fit between the "developments" and the "Democrats." But isn't it up to the mainstream media to expose fraudulent connections instead of endorsing them as fact?

The truth, which, sadly, you won't find in the New York Times story, is that in no way do the arrests in Britain bolster the GOP's claims to be the party to best defend America. And the only way they will is if the media swallow Ken Mehlman's talking points and turn them into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We said it was obvious -- the assertion that a national security-related event will raise Bush's poll numbers can help bring about a boost in Bush's poll numbers. Obvious, yes, but apparently not to some of our most prominent journalists and pundits.

Problem 2: The prediction/assertion is made possible by bad or no reporting

If there's a flaw in our analogy to the "observer effect," it is that it presumes that observation -- or, in this case, reporting -- is actually occurring. But in order to assert, or even suggest, that the U.K. arrests would give Bush a boost, the media necessarily eschewed reporting, because reporting -- learning facts, getting different points of view, analyzing the findings -- would have obliterated their premise. In suggesting or asserting that the U.K. arrests are helping or will help Bush, the media are not reporting; they are repeating. That Bush is strong on terror. That Bush played an important role in thwarting the attacks. That Bush's policies have made us safer. That, to paraphrase Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), the Republicans make our country safer.

We are not saying that any of those statements is false. We are merely saying that in simply asserting that the public will view Bush more favorably as a result of the U.K. arrests, the media must withhold from viewers and readers -- and presumably themselves -- contrary evidence and contrary viewpoints.

They must not remind their audience that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has acknowledged that "we do not have evidence ... that the plotting [for the attack] was done in the United States" and that "we did not see any U.S. internal activity in this plot." In other words, the impact of U.S. domestic investigative activities on thwarting the U.K. plot was not significant. That doesn't mean that the United States did not play a role; but given how little information has been actually reported about the United States' role in the matter, it seems that it should be relevant in the media's conclusions about how the thwarted attack should affect public opinion of the president.

In suggesting that the public will view Bush more favorably, the media must also ignore or disparage a report by NBC that the Bush administration rushed the Brits into making the arrests before they were ready. For their audience to be adequately frightened by the imminence of the threat and appropriately grateful that it was thwarted, the media must also ignore the same NBC report that none of the suspected terrorists had bought plane tickets, and that several lacked passports.

To suggest that the thwarted plot should remind people of Bush's strength on terror, the media must ignore the catastrophe that is Iraq. They must internalize and echo the Republicans' argument that the U.K. arrests and the war in Iraq are all part of the same heroic effort. They must ignore the Democratic argument that the Iraq war has diverted badly needed resources from the real war on terror.

To suggest that Bush has made us safer, they must ignore the Democrats' argument that we are less safe because the GOP has failed to implement the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission. To suggest that Bush has made us safer, they must ignore the ample evidence that both the Bush administration and congressional Republicans have failed to sufficiently protect against terrorist attacks, despite repeated warnings from terrorism experts, Democrats, and the 9-11 Commission.

Problem 3: The prediction/assertion is apparently wrong

If professional pride isn't enough to dissuade the media from repeating Republican spin on an issue as serious and consequential as national security, perhaps this will be: The media's predictions are wrong. Polling conducted after the U.K. arrests doesn't bear out the claims of a Bush bounce. As Media Matters wrote:

An August 12 Newsweek poll found that while approval of Bush's handling of terrorism and homeland security went up from 44 percent in May to 55 percent, Bush's overall job-approval rating went up only 3 points -- from 35 percent in May to 38 percent, within the poll's margin of error. An August 14 CBS poll found that approval of Bush's handling of terrorism and Bush's overall approval rating remained unchanged from July. An August 15 Gallup poll found that Bush's approval dropped three points from July -- 40 percent to 37 percent, within the margin of error -- and did not ask about his handling of terrorism. The August 16 Zogby poll put Bush's approval rating at 34 percent -- a 2-point drop from the previous poll, and within the margin of error. The August 17 Pew poll put Bush's handling of "terrorist threats" at 50 percent -- up 3 points from June, within the 4-point margin of error. -- while his general approval rating rose 1 point over July's figure to 37 percent.

Pollsters John Zogby and Andrew Kohut had an explanation for the numbers, which should come as no surprise, except maybe to the media who predicted otherwise: As Media Matters pointed out, they both argued that the U.K. terror arrests had a negligible impact on public opinion because the Iraq war weighs far more heavily on the public consciousness. It remains to be seen whether the media will consider the public's concern with the disastrous situation in Iraq in making predictions in the future, or whether they will disregard the ample evidence of that preoccupation, as they continue to disregard much of significance on the question of our national security.

All of which is to say that every prophecy need not be self-fulfilling, and though it may not occur in physics, in politics sometimes the thing being observed -- the public, in this case -- is smart enough not to go along with what it is being told it will do.

SO OSAMA WALKS INTO TO THIS BAR, SEE?