Kissinger: global upheaval presents 'great opportunity' -- Obama primed to create 'New World Order'
"The president-elect is coming into office at a moment when there is upheaval in many parts of the world simultaneously," Kissinger responded. "You have India, Pakistan; you have the jihadist movement. So he can't really say there is one problem, that it's the most important one. But he can give new impetus to American foreign policy partly because the reception of him is so extraordinary around the world. His task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period when, really, a new world order can be created. It's a great opportunity, it isn't just a crisis." Kissinger added that Obama's cabinet is an "extraordinarily able group of people."...
Kissinger previously spoke at some length about this "new world order" during an interview with Charlie Rose. "I think that when the new administration assess the position in which it finds itself it will see a huge crisis and terrible problems, but I can see that it could see a glimmer in which it could construct an international system out of it," Kissinger told Rose in a Dec. 2008 conversation. ..."The jihadist crisis is bringing home to everybody, that international affairs cannot be conducted entirely by drawing borders and defining international politics by who crosses what borders with organized military force," he said. "This has now been reinforced by the financial crisis, which... has spread around the world. It limits the resources each country has for a foreign policy geared to an assertion of its own interests."
The following video was aired on CNBC on Jan. 5, 2009. http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Henry_Kissinger_Obama_should_act_to_0106.h...
Kissinger reply to question re: international crises facing Obama administration,. interview with CNBC "Squawk on the Street" hosts Mark Haines and Erin Burnett at the New York Stock Exchange,
South Asia: Robert Kaplan of the Center for a New American Security [CNAS] writes that as a result of the Mumbai attacks we will no longer be able to regard South Asia as a region distinct from the Middle East. Now, he says, there is only one long continuum stretching from the Mediterranean to the jungles of Burma.
Op-Ed Contributor
Trouble in the Other Middle East
By Robert D. Kaplan
Robert D. Kaplan is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
THE divisions we split the world into during the cold war have at long last crumbled thanks to the Mumbai terrorist attacks. No longer will we view South Asia as a region distinct from the Middle East. Now there is only one long continuum stretching from the Mediterranean to the jungles of Burma, with every crisis from the Israeli-Palestinian dispute in the west to the Hindu-Muslim dispute in the east interlocked with the one next door.... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/opinion/08kaplan.html?th&emc=th
PAKISTAN
US demands Pakistan reinstatement of security advisor
ISLAMABAD, Jan 8 (KUNA) The United States has urged Islamabad to reinstate the national security advisor, Mehmoud Ali Durrani, sacked on Wednesday, to assist in confirming the Pakistani identity of the Mumbai attacker. The confirmation of Ajmal Kasabs identity by Durrani, who served as an ambassador to Washington during Musharraf regime, created astir in the country while the President was paying a high-level official visit to Afghanistan. His untimely confirmation also attracted widespread criticism and the newspapers Thursday published articles, questioning lack of coordination between the government figures. The US ambassador, Anne Patterson, Thursday night held a lengthy meeting with Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani, who sacked Durrani immediately Wednesday night after the news made headlines. According to a press release, the two sides discussed the forthcoming visit of US Vice , President-elect, Joe Biden, and other areas of vital interest. Citing official sources local news channel, reported that the US ambassador in the meeting demanded the reinstatement of Durrani. It may be mentioned here that only minutes after Durranis statement, Federal Information Minister, Sherry Rehman, in a text message to Associated Press (AP) also confirmed the Pakistani nationality of Ajmal Kasab. The President on Thursday restricted all the ministers to not further comment on the issue. (end) amn.ajs KUNA 082018 Jan 09NNNN
http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticlePrintPage.aspx?id=1...
IRAQ
imperialist sovereignty...as "u.s. withdraws from Iraq"
IRAQ: U.S. Embassy dedicated
LATimes
The United States formally dedicated its new $592-million embassy in Iraq on Monday, the largest and most expensive American embassy in the world. Its scale, according to the dedication ceremony program, "reflects the importance of the U.S.-Iraqi bilateral relationship." The embassy took three years to build and will house more than 1,200 American staffers from 14 different agencies. Invited guests filtered through extra tight security, walked down yards and yards of red carpet, and watched as white-gloved Marines raised a giant American flag up a massive flagpole that stretched higher than the buildings in the Embassy compound. There was even a gigantic sheet cake decorated like an American flag as big as the table it sat on... Iraqi president Jalal Talabani called the new embassy a "landmark edifice," made possible only by the "courage decision by President Bush to liberate Iraq." http://www.uruknet.de/?p=50438
1.3 million Iraqis "liberated" from life by U.S. Invasion and Occupation of Iraq
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html
U.S. Defense Secretary Gates estimates Pentagon needs $70 bn. more for Iraq and Afghanistan wars this year, on top of $65.9 bn. approved by Congress.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090106/ts_nm/us_usa_budget_pentagon_1
"Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy"
Henry Kissinger http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Military
and fuck 'jane doe' too
(Reuters) - The U.S. Army apologized on Wednesday for sending 7,000 letters addressed to "Dear John Doe" to the relatives of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN FACES EVER MORE DEADLY U.S. 'LIBERATION'
puppet squawks to his master's tune
US-led coalition and Afghan forces killed at least 50 "Taliban" militants in separate attacks and operations in Afghanistan, while 17 civilians including eight women and children were killed in a Taliban rocket attack in southern region, officials said ... Civilian casualties at the hands of international forces have become a sensitive issue for the government of Western-backed President Hamid Karzai. Karzai has repeatedly warned that increasing civilian deaths would erode public support for his government and would provoke anti- foreigner sentiments in Afghanistan. At least 1,500 civilians were among the 4,000 killed in the first eight months of last year, according to United Nations officials in Afghanistan.... Karzai also condemned the insurgents for deliberately using civilians as "human shields." http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=1155311
no 'sovereignty' squawks here
U.S. Army building eight major operating bases in southern Afghanistan, an expansion that underscores a new, larger troop commitment
http://www.military-world.net/Afghanistan/958.txt
commentary: the digest unequivocally supports all anti-imperialist-zionist resistance and revolution, and opposes all forms of religious obscurantism, while supporting the anti-imperialist-zionist armed organizational resistance of some fundamentalist groups. The digest exists to help raise political awareness and activism, giving voice to various and opposing positions, it believes marxist-lenist led internationalist socialist revolution is necessary to fully unleash the vast, suppressed, human potential that will rupture the political-economic-military-ideological chains binding humanity to capitalism, with its relentless drive to maximize profit and power that drives us to destruction.
USRAELI GOAL: DESTROYING THE PALESTINIAN NATION BY ALL MEANS AVAILABLE
Palestine & all oppressed nations' revolutionary nationalist struggle against imperialist-zionist domination, is an unbeatable obstacle to US global hegemony
Excerpts from Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah's (Almanar)
The Hezbollah chief addressed the real US scheme reflected by former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton.... the real aim of the US and Israel is to end the Palestinian issue by concretizing the state of Israel, giving Gaza to Egypt and giving the rest to Jordan. His eminence added that this necessitates a renewal to our call for all Palestinian factions to unite because the aim is to liquidate their cause, all of their cause, not just Hamas or Fatah.
Sayyed Nasrallah stressed the Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006 and what is currently happening in Gaza and the steadfastness there, should put an end to any dispute on the question of a defensive strategy. This mighty army stands helpless and incapable of fulfilling its goals in front of a resistance with modest capabilities yet with a great will and this confirms that the choice of armed resistance based on faith and determination is the best and most effective way to confront the most tyrannical armies in this world.
http://www.onepalestine.org
New 111th. US Congress with strong Dem. majorities in both houses, and dem. controlled WH, expected to sponsor resolution backing Operation Cast Lead
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShow...
US Senate Supports Israel's Gaza Attacks
By Reuters
"When we pass this resolution, the United States Senate will strengthen our historic bond with the state of Israel, by reaffirming Israel's inalienable right to defend against attacks from Gaza, as well as our support for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said before the vote.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21686.htm
excerpts from liberal-imperialist zionist apologist Professor Zunes' article reveals democrats' super-zionist support of israeli "actions'
Democrats have silenced dissent and offered unflinching support for Israeli actions, including gross violations of international law.
By Stephen Zunes
Democrats Goad Israel Into War
...In June, 38 of 49 Democratic senators -- including Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton of New York -- wrote a letter (PDF) to President Bush that Americans for Peace Now, a moderate Zionist group, warned would build "a defense, in advance, for a large Israeli military offensive in Gaza." The letter also urged the Bush administration to block any U.N. Security Council resolution critical of Israel, claiming that United Nations opposition to Israeli attacks against crowded urban areas constituted a refusal to "acknowledge Israel's right to self-defense." An almost identical letter in the House, drafted by House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., received the signatures of 150 of the body's 230 Democrats... to convince their constituents that it was the Palestinians, not the Israelis who were attacking them, who were responsible for civilian casualties and who would likewise be responsible for the far greater number of civilian casualties that would inevitably result from the Israeli bombardment and invasion which was to commence later that year. The resolution also gave unqualified support for the Israeli attacks against the Gaza Strip ... Not a single one of the 230 Democrats in the House of Representatives voted against the resolution. (There were four abstentions, and 12 did not vote.) This sent a clear signal that there would be no opposition in Congress -- which provides over $4 billion annually in unconditional military and economic aid to the Israeli government -- for an even larger military assault against the Palestinian enclave.
Democratic support for an Israeli war against the Gaza Strip went beyond such nonbinding resolutions. In apparent anticipation of the long-planned Israeli invasion of Gaza -- which was to begin just three months later -- the Democratic-controlled Congress voted in September to send 1,000 of the highly sophisticated GBU-39 missiles to Israel, which have been used on a large scale in the Israeli assault.
On Nov. 5, Israel launched a brief but significant military incursion into Gaza. Though the raid was a clear violation of the cease-fire that had been in place at the time, no criticism was heard in Washington. There had been a series of minor violations by both sides, but the magnitude of this raid appeared designed to provoke Hamas into letting the cease-fire lapse. Israel then tightened its siege of the Gaza Strip, prompting Human Rights Watch to note that "Israel's severe limitations on the movement of nonmilitary goods and people into and out of Gaza, including fuel and medical supplies, constitutes collective punishment, also in violation of the laws of war." Despite this, President-elect Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders continued to defend the sanctions.
Hamas appeared willing to renew its cease-fire in return for Israel lifting the blockade on humanitarian and other aid and ending its periodic raids into Gaza and assassinations of Hamas officials. However, Israel -- again, supported by Obama and Democratic congressional leaders -- refused. Now, however, despite these leading Democrats' opposition to nonmilitary means, which could have salvaged the cease-fire and prevented the rocket attacks into Israel, they are now claiming that Israel had "no choice" but to launch its massive assault on Gaza Strip in retaliation.
In a Dec. 28 interview, Obama's chief adviser David Axelrod appeared to align the president-elect with the Bush administration in its support for Israel's war on the Gaza Strip, citing an Obama statement from the summer, in which he said, "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing." [digest note: at the Palestinian Student protest on the UW campus, zionist provocateurs waved an enormous flag with Obama's smiling face and this quote supporting zionist israel --- contrary to dem. pretense he'd been 'silent' on the issue] ...
As reports of widespread Palestinian civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip from the Israeli attacks continued to pour in, Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., insisted that "When Israel is attacked, the United States must continue to stand strongly with its friend and democratic ally." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., stated ,"I strongly support Israel's right to defend its citizens against rocket and mortar attacks from Hamas-controlled Gaza." House Majority Leader Hoyer claimed, "Israel is acting in clear self-defense in response to heinous rocket attacks from Hamas-controlled Gaza" and that Israel has "an unequivocal right" to engage in its military operations. Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., whom the Democrats recently named to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee, declared "Israel has a right, indeed a duty, to defend itself in response to the hundreds of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza over the past week."... Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., insisted "This use of Gaza as a base from which to attack Israel left Israel with no choice except self defense."... some Democrats have gone as far as to simply deny that attacks against civilian targets are taking place at all. For example, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and its Middle East subcommittee, has insisted that (PDF), contrary to reports of reputable human rights groups, international journalists and other eyewitnesses, "The Israeli response has been a series of targeted strikes against Hamas militants, aimed directly at those who are launching the attacks on Israeli civilian population centers" and that "the Israeli military is taking extreme caution to limit civilian casualties."...
President-elect Obama, who has expressed willingness to meet with leaders of Iran and other hard-line regimes, spoke out in early 2008 against any negotiations with the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, which received the majority of seats in the most recent Palestinian parliamentary elections. Indeed, the Democrats -- led by Vice President-elect Joe Biden -- have criticized the Bush administration for allowing the Palestinian Authority to go ahead with free elections in the first place....
for a number of years, the Israelis have been regularly negotiating indirectly with Hamas through Egyptian intermediaries and Palestinian prisoners. Back when Hamas was in charge of local governments in some West Bank towns several years ago, there were direct talks on a number of logistical issues. The Democratic Party, however, insisted that such talks not take place -- apparently because the prospect of negotiations would get in the way of Israel's massive military offensive against the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip.
The Democratic Party's leadership has long argued that no talks should take place until Hamas formally recognizes Israel's right to statehood, yet many of these same Democrats have had no problems with meeting, and even providing support for, Israeli parties and political groups that insist that the Palestinians do not have the right to statehood, such as the Likud Bloc, which is favored to win the upcoming Israeli elections. In addition, a sizable majority of Democrats in Congress have gone on record insisting that an explicit Hamas recognition of Israel as a Jewish state be a precondition for ending sanctions and inclusion in the peace process, which is not only an unnecessary prerequisite for negotiating a long-term cease-fire, but is something which even the Israeli government has not demanded....
Silencing Democratic Critics
Democratic Party leaders have made it clear that any dissent from within the party to their right-wing position rejecting any contact with Hamas will not be tolerated. For example, Robert Malley, who served as a National Security Council member and special assistant for Arab-Israeli Affairs under the Clinton administration, was already under fire for having the temerity to object to the Bush administration's effort to organize a coup against Hamas, noting how, "Almost every decision the United States has made to interfere with Palestinian politics has boomeranged." He had been serving as an informal adviser to Obama during the presidential race, but was forced to sever his ties with the campaign when it was revealed that, as part of his efforts to promote a cease-fire in his role with the International Crisis Group, he had met with Hamas officials. For the Obama campaign, such peace-making efforts simply could not be tolerated.
THE RULE OF WHAT LAW? CANADA’S OBSCENE ROLE IN GAZA ATROCITIES...
...Gaza is occupied Palestinian territory. The Israelis and Americans toppled the democratically elected Hamas government because it couldn’t control them. The war is being waged on civilians who have no arms nor anywhere to hide. How noble is it for heavily armed Israelis to shoot fish in a rain barrel? The Palestinians have a right to live. They can only lob their homemade rockets into Israel. The Israelis attack them with illegal weapons....
The United Nations is looking more like a bogus organization that serves the interests of a handful of war mongers who are trying to profit by setting up a New World Order. This is where the bankers and war mongers are the bosses and we are supposed to be their slaves. We fear the UN is setting up an “international department of Indian affairs” to control all indigenous peoples and resources worldwide.
Obviously the U.S. cannot broker the peace agreement when they are supporting Israel’s attack and supplying the weapons. We Indigenous went through the same plot. To stop the invading Europeans from killing us all off, we were forced to give up our possessions and territories. We resisted. 115 million of our people died in the biggest holocaust in all humanity. The survivors had to live in concentration camps called “reserves”. Today the Israelis and their backers are carrying out the same sequence of events in the Middle East. The UN, US, Canada and Europe are part of this. ... We know how hard it is to unify. The colonists constantly work at dividing us. We too were starved and abused so they could grab our territories and wreak environmental havoc. ...
The Palestinians are struggling to survive. Those who follow this natural instinct are labeled “terrorist”. In fact we are defenders of our people, land, nation, very existence and Mother Earth.... True peace requires work. These war mongers have to be dealt with. The people have to stop listening to their propaganda. These greedy war mongers don’t have borders and no loyalty to anybody but their bank accounts and their lust for the power of life and death over us. This 3% of the population are multi national corporations, their governments, their military and their agents. They own the banks and try to control everything. They fix the economy to hold us hostage.
The Palestinians will not die quietly in the Gaza ghetto from starvation, thirst, bombs or anonymity.
Iakoha’ko:wa, Eagle Watch near Sharbot Lake of Haudenosaunee Territory, MNN Mohawk Nation News www.mohawknationnews.com; iakohakowa@yahoo.ca; katenies20@yahoo.com
Holocaust Denied
The lying silence of those who know
By John Pilger
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21680.htm
Today's holocaust-in-the-making, which began with Ben-Gurion's Plan D, is in its final stages. The difference today is that it is a joint US-Israeli project. The F-16 jet fighters, the 250-pound "smart" GBU-39 bombs supplied on the eve of the attack on Gaza, having been approved by a Congress dominated by the Democratic Party, plus the annual $2.4 billion in war-making "aid," give Washington de facto control. It beggars belief that President-elect Obama was not informed. Outspoken on Russia's war in Georgia and the terrorism in Mumbai, Obama's silence on Palestine marks his approval, which is to be expected, given his obsequiousness to the Tel Aviv regime and its lobbyists during the presidential campaign and his appointment of Zionists as his secretary of state, chief of staff and principal Middle East advisers....
The asymmetry of conquest and terror is clear. Plan D is now "Operation Cast Lead," which is the unfinished "Operation Justified Vengeance." The latter was launched by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 when, with Bush's approval, he used F-16s against Palestinian towns and villages for the first time. In the same year, the authoritative Jane's Foreign Report disclosed that the Blair government had given Israel the "green light" to attack the West Bank after it was shown Israel's secret designs for a bloodbath. It was typical of New Labor Party's enduring, cringing complicity in Palestine's agony. However, the 2001 Israeli plan, reported Jane's, needed the "trigger" of a suicide bombing which would cause "numerous deaths and injuries [because] the 'revenge' factor is crucial." This would "motivate Israeli soldiers to demolish the Palestinians." What alarmed Sharon and the author of the plan, General Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Chief of Staff, was a secret agreement between Yasser Arafat and Hamas to ban suicide attacks. On 23 November, 2001, Israeli agents assassinated the Hamas leader, Mahmud Abu Hunud, and got their "trigger"; the suicide attacks resumed in response to his killing.
Something uncannily similar happened on 5 November last, when Israeli special forces attacked Gaza, killing six people. Once again, they got their propaganda "trigger." A ceasefire initiated and sustained by the Hamas government – which had imprisoned its violators – was shattered by the Israeli attack and homemade rockets were fired into what used to be Palestine before its Arab occupants were "cleansed." The On 23 December, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire, but Israel's charade was such that its all-out assault on Gaza had been planned six months earlier, according to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz.
Behind this sordid game is the "Dagan Plan," named after General Meir Dagan, who served with Sharon in his bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Now head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organization, Dagan is the author of a "solution" that has seen the imprisonment of Palestinians behind a ghetto wall snaking across the West Bank and in Gaza, effectively a concentration camp. The establishment of a quisling government in Ramallah under Mohammed Abbas is Dagan's achievement, together with a hasbara (propaganda) campaign relayed through a mostly supine, if intimidated western media, notably in America, that says Hamas is a terrorist organization devoted to Israel's destruction and to "blame" for the massacres and siege of its own people over two generations, long before its creation. "We have never had it so good," said the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir in 2006. "The hasbara effort is a well-oiled machine." In fact, Hamas's real threat is its example as the Arab world's only democratically elected government, drawing its popularity from its resistance to the Palestinians' oppressor and tormentor. This was demonstrated when Hamas foiled a CIA coup in 2007, an event ordained in the western media as "Hamas's seizure of power." ...
When the monstrosity is done and the people of Gaza are even more stricken, the Dagan Plan foresees what Sharon called a "1948-style solution" – the destruction of all Palestinian leadership and authority followed by mass expulsions into smaller and smaller "cantonments" and perhaps finally into Jordan. This demolition of institutional and educational life in Gaza is designed to produce, wrote Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian exile in Britain, "a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed … Look to the Iraq of today: that is what [Sharon] had in store for us, and he has nearly achieved it."
Dr. Dahlia Wasfi is an American writer on Palestine. She has a Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father. "Holocaust denial is anti-Semitic," she wrote on 31 December. "But I'm not talking about World War Two, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad (the president of Iran) or Ashkenazi Jews. What I'm referring to is the holocaust we are all witnessing and responsible for in Gaza today and in Palestine over the past 60 years … Since Arabs are Semites, US-Israeli policy doesn't get more anti-Semitic than this."...
In the dark year of 1939, the Third Writers' Congress was held at Carnegie Hall in New York and the likes of Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein sent messages and spoke up to ensure the lie of silence was broken. By one account, 3,500 jammed the auditorium and a thousand were turned away. Today, this mighty voice of realism and morality is said to be obsolete; the literary review pages affect an ironic hauteur of irrelevance; false symbolism is all. As for the readers, their moral and political imagination is to be pacified, not primed. The anti-Muslim Martin Amis expressed this well in Visiting Mrs. Nabokov: "The dominance of the self is not a flaw, it is an evolutionary characteristic; it is just how things are." If that is how things are, we are diminished as a civilized society. For what happens in Gaza is the defining moment of our time, which either grants the impunity of war criminals the immunity of our silence, while we contort our own intellect and morality, or gives us the power to speak out....
US Troops 'Monitoring Rafah Crossing'
By Press TV
US troops are helping Egypt prevent "arms smuggling" from tunnels in the Rafah border-crossing, as Israel continues its attacks on Gaza according to report by NBC anchorwoman and chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell. The US and Israel say the tunnels are used for smuggling arms into the Gaza Strip. Israeli warplanes have bombing the Rafah border to destroy the tunnels. Tunnels between the two sides of the Rafah border crossing have been almost the only way for Gazans to obtain food and medicine after Israel besieged the costal strip in mid-2007, after Hamas took control of the region....
israeli analysis:
The Unspoken Goal of Bringing Down Hamas in Gaza
By Amir Oren
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1053123.html
Hamas must agree to a coexistence in Gaza - of the Hamas government, stripped of its rockets; the forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas along the Philadelphi Route ?(the two battalions trained in Jordan by the United States?); and perhaps also an inter-Arab or international force at the border crossings.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21651.htm
TRUTH CHECK: IDENTIFY THE REAL TERRORISTS
Tzipi Livni said Sunday her government is resisting a diplomatic solution to Gaza to keep the war going as long as possible, and that one impediment is "the pictures coming out of Gaza"--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/effarania/sets/72157611728688123/show/with/... http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/9928
Obama, Palestinian Children And Israel’s Terror
By Ghali Hassan
07 January, 2009
(excerpts)
...During his visit to Israel on July 2008, President-elect Barack Obama told the media: “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters [Malia, 10 and Sasha, 7] sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.” However, on the slaughter of Palestinian children by Israeli forces, Obama has failed to condemn Israel ...The U.S. gives Israel $3 billion in U.S. taxpayer money each year. The F-16 bombers, Apache attack helicopters and bombs Israel is using on Gaza’s children were paid for by the Americans....Obama insisted that, he would not comment on Israel’s aggression in Gaza because “there is only one president at a time”. However, Obama's silence contrasted with his willingness to comment on [digest: Georgia/Russia], the economy and the Mumbai attacks last November.... Obama, every U.S. Congressman and Congresswoman, every Western journalist and pundit know Israel is deliberately targeting Palestinian children... Commenting on Obama’s concern for Israeli Children, the Palestinian-American commentator, Ali Abunimah writes: “Obama has identified his daughters repeatedly with Israeli children, while never having uttered a word about the thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese children killed and permanently maimed by Israeli attacks just since 2006....
With the full complicity of the U.S. and the Europeans, the Israeli army is having a field day attacking 1.5 million defenceless Palestinian refugees. With foreign journalists banned from entering Gaza - despite court order to let them –, the U.S. wants the slaughter to continue and the Europeans are sending their ‘Quartet’ envoy, the war criminal Tony Blair, on a PR mission designed to appease Israeli leaders and manipulate public opinion in support of Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinian....The situation in Gaza before the Israeli aggression was not dissimilar that of Iraq before the 2003 illegal aggression which preceded by 13-year-long genocidal sanctions. After the genocide came the violent aggression and Occupation....
While Israel’s long occupation of Palestinian land and Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinian people have been rightly described as the moral equivalent of the Nazi war crimes in Europe, Israel is unconditionally supported - military, financially and politically – by the U.S. and major Western powers. Nazi war crimes have become the West’s moral compass to justify Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. ..It is preposterous to compare Israel’s terror and genocidal policies with Palestinian armed resistance...in addition to its Nazi-like propaganda system, Israel is protected by a global propaganda campaign led by the like of the BBC, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, Fox News, the Murdoch Press (just of a few of the most pro-Israel propaganda organs), and many other Western media outlets[...] http://www.countercurrents.org/hassan070109.htm
LONG LIVE PALESTINE - DOWN WITH STATE TERRORISM
IDF soldiers battle Palestinian gunmen throughout Gaza
By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent and The Associated Press
Last update - 13:40 07/01/2009
Israeli ground forces battled Palestinian gunmen throughout Gaza early Wednesday. The IDF used infantry, tanks, combat engineers, artillery, and intelligence units on the twelfth day of Operation Cast Lead.
it's impossible to positively detect factual tactical info. from disinfo., the best gauge is its resonance with what we do know: USRAELI strategic agendas
ANALYSIS / Israel is on its way to reoccupying all of the Gaza Strip
By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent
...The message yesterday from Jerusalem was that it is impossible to end Operation Cast Lead without an achievement, and if in the next two days there is no satisfactory diplomatic solution, Israel will have to broaden the operation. "Broadening the operation" could mean moving from house to house as in Operating Defensive Shield in 2002 in the West Bank, aiming to kill or capture as many Hamas fighters as possible. Or it could mean surrounding Gaza City, similar to the way the Egyptian Third Army was cut off in 1973, or like the siege of Beirut in 1982, until Hamas' leaders emerge from their hideouts with their hands up. This could take several weeks. Political sources are denying reports of a disagreement at the top over the future of the operation, and insist that Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni are united in their understanding that under the current circumstances Israel should continue until there are diplomatic gains. Other sources say there are problems. Barak believes that rejecting the French offer for a cease-fire last week was a mistake that made Israel miss a good opportunity to end the operation; now he wants to go on. Olmert, according to some reports, is pushing for a broadening of the offensive. Livni is worried that any international developments may grant Hamas legitimacy. [...] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1053122.html
GOEBBELS REDUX
Obama advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski said in a recent interview that the last eight years proves that resolving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is critical to US interests in the region.... that the recent fighting shows that the two parties cannot achieve peace without US involvement
"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly...it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."
Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister
“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”
Joseph Goebbels
U.S. PROPAGANDA MEDIA, STILL DEFENDING ISRAEL, WITH UNIVERSAL OUTRAGE & ITS MASTERS' PLAN FOR USRAELI -CONTROLLED "PEACE" NOW REPORTS SMATTERING OF THE HOLOCAUST
Stop Censoring International News in America!
By Timothy V. Gatto
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21669.htm
January 07, 2009 "Information Clearinghouse" --- I was preparing for my radio show after watching CBS News with Katie Couric. I already knew that my show was to be about Gaza and the hostilities there. As I read the different stories I became increasingly angry. Why is half of the story always left out of the American Mainstream Media? If I were only getting my news from the MSM, I would believe that Hamas started everything by raining down missiles on hapless Israeli citizens. Is that what some of you reading this believe?
Let me set the record straight. The UN fact finding mission to Gaza has a different story. The people of Gaza (and not just Hamas) have been enduring a blockade on three sides and a navel blockade on their Mediterranean coast. This is a violation of International Law and a blockade is considered to be an act of war by International standards. This means that Israel has been effectively waging war against the Gaza Strip since last September when they were supposedly adhering to a six-month ceasefire. People in Gaza ran short of medical supplies, food and fuel. This was uncalled for and Israel was the prime aggressor. Every time the Security Council tried to deal with this problem the United States cast a veto on any sanctions against Israel.
Americans must realize that our media is not telling the entire truth, not only about Israel and Gaza, but just about every international event. The media actually twists the truth to correlate with the State Department on foreign affairs. This gives the illusion that America is always on God’s side, and supports the “good fight”. Nothing could be further from the truth. The United States supports any country that can further their mindless wars against Islam and Arabs. When will this stop?
This situation will only correct itself when Americans are offered the truth when it comes to international events. We must demand that the networks and newspapers stop spreading government propaganda and start reporting the truth. Meanwhile if you really want the truth, start reading your news from the internet. This is the last bastion of truth that the people of America have. In every year that passes, our mainstream media becomes more and more like “The Ministry of Truth” in 1984. Those that get their news from the internet realize this and are not happy about it. It is so easily observed in conversations with those that get their news from the mainstream media. The difference in opinion between those that know the full story and those that prefer to “trust” the commercial media is like the difference between night and day. How long did it take to learn that Russia did not attack Georgia first, but that Georgia attacked Russian peacekeepers first with a rocket barrage? There are some Americans out there that STILL think the Russians started that little confrontation. This was a perfect example where the truth was abandoned for political gain. The President-elect and the Vice President-elect both warned about “Russian aggression” at the Democratic National Convention.
Norwegian doctor: Israel intentionally targeting civilians
Doctor estimates 2,000 - 2,500 civilian casualties
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Norwegian_doctor_in_Gaza_Israel_targeting_...
Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor working in Gaza, told Sky News on Monday that
he believes Israel is deliberately attacking the Palestinian population, not
just targeting Hamas as Israeli authorities have said numerous times.
"Just a little bit more than an hour ago, the Israelis bombed the central food
market in Gaza City and we had a mass influx of about 50 injured and between
10 and 15 killed," said Gilbert, on the phone with Sky News.
"At the same time they bombed an apartment house with children playing on the
roof and we had a lot of children also. This is really like from Dante's
Inferno. It's like hell here now and it's been bombing all night. Up till now,
close to 500 people have been killed and the number of casualties is getting
to 2, 2 and a half thousand, which 50 percent are children and women."
"This is an all out war against the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza
and we can prove that with the numbers and you have to remember that the
average age of the Gaza inhabitant is 17-years. It's a very young population
and 80 percent are living below the poverty limit of the U.N.
"So, this is a poor and very young people and they are able to escape
absolutely nowhere because they can not flee like other populations can in
wartime. Because they are fenced in and they are in a cage. So, they are
bombing one and a half million people in a cage.
Video is from CBS News, broadcast Jan. 5, 2008.
Israeli shells kill 42 at UN school
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE5053R720090106?feedType=RS...
...Tuesday Israeli forces pushed into the southern town of Khan Younis and battled Hamas militants on the outskirts of the city of Gaza....
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip, at least 631 Palestinians have been killed and more than 2,700 wounded since Israel began
its offensive... The Israeli military said it killed 130 militants since it began the ground assault, a figure that suggested the total Palestinian death toll might be close to 750, that bodies could still be on the battlefield....Most of the deaths reported by Gaza hospitals in recent days have been civilians. Many of the Gaza Strip's 1.5 million people lack food, water or power....
[Eleven days of violence]... prompted U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to break his silence on the offensive, to say the loss of life among civilians was "a source of deep concern" for him. As momentum gathered behind a European truce plan that could starve Hamas of arms, the outgoing Bush administration said it wanted an "immediate ceasefire." GENOCIDE AS PRELUDE TO PEACE FOR IMPERIALIST-ZIONISM
International efforts already under way to end the fighting have focused on
securing a deal that would meet Israel's demand that Hamas, an Islamist group
elected in 2006 and now in sole charge of the Gaza Strip, could not rearm once
hostilities end."If there is an end to terror, an end to the smuggling of ammunition from
Sinai to Gaza, the Israeli fighting will stop," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said...
Talks were focusing, the official said, on the size of an "international presence" along the Gaza-Egypt border.
Tony Blair, the Middle East envoy of major powers sponsoring
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, said Sarkozy, the European Union and the
United States were all in agreement that new anti-smuggling measures would be
needed to clinch a ceasefire.
Hamas has rebuffed Western demands to recognize Israel, end violenceand accept existing interim peace deals, has demanded a lifting of the blockade of the Gaza Strip in any future ceasefire. It seized the territory in 2007, 18 months after it won a Palestinian parliamentary election.
U.N. official: Gaza school clearly marked with UN flag and its location reported to Israeli authorities
Tuesday, January 6 06:06 pm
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20090106/tpl-uk-palestinians-israel-school-u...
Four of six IDF soldiers killed in Gaza were victims of friendly fire
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1053402.html
Four Israel Defense Forces soldiers, who were killed in two separate incidents in the Gaza Strip on Monday, appear to have been killed by friendly fire, according to initial military investigations. In contrast to the usual treatment of officers involved in friendly fire incidents, the IDF does not apparently intend to take any steps against the commanders involved in these incidents. Data from Israel's wars show that about a quarter of IDF soldiers killed in wartime were hit by Israeli fire.
Using aggressive tactics in Gaza to save soldiers' lives
Analysis by Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff
7/1/9
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=1...
The incident in which some 40 Palestinian civilians were killed when Israel Defense Forces mortar shells hit an UNRWA school in the Jabalya refugee camp Tuesday surprised no one who has been following events in Gaza in recent days. Senior officers admit that the IDF has been using enormous firepower. "For us, being cautious means being aggressive," explained one. "From the minute we entered, we've acted like we're at war. That creates enormous damage on the ground ... I just hope those who have fled the area of Gaza City in which we are operating will describe the shock. What the officer did not say explicitly was that this is deliberate policy. Following the trauma of the war in Lebanon in 2006, the army realized that heavy IDF casualties would erode public (and especially political) support for the war and limit its ability to achieve its goals. Therefore, it is using aggressive tactics to save soldiers' lives. ... Nor is it likely that Tuesday's incident, with its large number of civilian deaths, will result in an immediate cease-fire. Civilian deaths increase international pressure for a cease-fire and so the incident will probably bring the end of the war closer. Nevertheless, the Second Lebanon War continued for weeks following a similar incident at Kana. Moreover, the situation in Gaza is slightly different than it was in Lebanon.
First, until Tuesday's incident, the world appeared relatively indifferent to Palestinian civilian casualties. On Monday, 31 members of the Samouny family were killed when a shell hit their house in Gaza City; that same day, 13 members of the Al-Daiya family where killed by another Israeli bomb. Yet international media coverage of these incidents was comparatively restrained.
Second, none of the major international players want to strengthen Hamas. France and Egypt are currently leading the cease-fire efforts, yet their proposals are far closer to Israel's demands than to those of Hamas. Therefore, unless Hamas gives in and accepts these proposals, the fighting is likely to continue....
Israel is holding intensive talks with the United States in an effort to reach a deal that would be acceptable to Egypt. The proposals include sending in the U.S. Army's engineering corps to systematically destroy the entire Philadelphi Road, where the smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border are located.
SANITIZING USRAELI AGENDA TO KILL THE PALESTINIAN STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION...AS OBAMA IS ALREADY PARTY TO
The Mideast's Ground Zero
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Barack Obama's goal has to be a settlement in Gaza that eliminates the threat of Hamas rockets and opens Gaza economically to the world, under credible international supervision.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/opinion/07friedman.html?th&emc=th
USRAELI DEMOCRATIC INFORMATION WARFARE: Approved Propaganda only, there and here
Israel deliberately killed and attacked Palestinian journalists
GENEVA (AFP) Israel deliberately targeted Hamas-run media installations in its bombing campaign on Gaza and is practising media censorship, a journalist rights group said... The installations include Al-Aqsa television, Al-Resalah newspaper and Sawt Al-Aqsa radio, which the Israeli army bombed on December 28 and over the weekend respectively, the Geneva-based Press Emblem Campaign said citing a Palestinian media non-governmental group which fights for better protection of journalists in conflict zones, also condemned the recent deaths of two journalists as a result of Israeli attacks..."The current attacks against Palestinian journalists remind the media of the attacks committed by Israel against Lebanese media in the July-August war 2006," the press group said, referring to the conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah militia.
It called for Israel to allow non-Palestinian media access to Gaza and denounced the military censorship it said journalists were subjected to in Israel
The Associated Press and some other news organizations have Palestinian reporters, photographers and cameramen based in Gaza
EREZ CROSSING, Israel (AP) Israel scrapped arrangements Monday to allow the first foreign reporters into the Gaza Strip since the military launched its offensive against Palestinian militants, adding to mounting media frustration at being locked out of the war zone. The ban on foreign media, which has been appealed to the Israeli Supreme
Court, drew criticism from journalists that Israel is trying to manage the story.
Reporters who cannot enter Gaza devote much of their time reporting on rocket attacks by Palestinian militants and filming the damage caused on the Israeli side, or filming Gaza from distant vantage points inside Israel.... Daniel Seaman, director of Israel's Government Press Office, said... the absence of foreign journalists was good for Israel because the Hamas militants who rule Gaza fabricate coverage to make Israel look bad. "And they get away with it because of the unprofessional cooperation of the foreign press, which takes questionable reports at face value without checking"...
Reginald Dale, director of the Transatlantic Media Network and a senior fellow with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Israel's decision to keep out foreign journalists was both practical and ideological. Military commanders in democracies such as Israel and the U.S. know they are accountable to the press, but they also know the risk of negative public opinion, he said. "They have to establish some sort of balance and it's not easy."
FOR FACTUAL 'ON THE GROUND' INFORMATION SEE "GAZA TODAY", THE UNTOLD STORY DAY BY DAY
Sameh A. Habeeb's reports:a young journalist from Gaza blogs on "Gaza Today" http://www.gazatoday.blogspot.com/.
GAZA: letter to P.I. editors
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/394965_ltrs7.html
Shameful coverage
Your coverage of the current conflict in Gaza is a testament to failure of professional, honest journalism and of simple human conscience.
You chose to focus on rockets of a legitimate resistance to an illegitimate occupation and breaches of "truce," ignoring the continual blockade of a besieged population and a nonstop humanitarian crisis. You parrot that "Hamas has broken the truce" line and ignore the documented 160-plus times Israel has breached such truce through the blockade and through targeted and blanket killings. You ignore the numerous international resolutions condemning the occupation, the expansions, the killings, and the many multiples more that are stonewalled by the blind support of the current and previous U.S. governments that went even beyond the dreams of the bloodiest leader of the Israeli Likud. You print letters supporting the only point of view they know about, the only view you give them, in a sad cycle of ignorance aided and abetted by your coverage and parroted "opinions" and "editorials."
It is shameful to see Jews, even Israeli Jews, who cannot afford supporting such atrocities on their conscience express this loudly and forcefully, while the U.S. media and the U.S. public are sedated. It is shameful that I have to advise my friends who want to learn about the issue to go somewhere else...anywhere else but U.S. news sources.
Ahmed Ayad
"It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true."
Henry Kissinger
"To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason."
Fredrick Douglass
"The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions.”
Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law.
MIA: deviously avoiding the whole truth
Below is an excerpt from Countercurrent [CC] editor Binu Matthews introduction to 1/6 issue at http://www.countercurrents.org/
"...Yesterday, Liz Burbank, who runs the hard hitting news digest http://www.burbankdigest.com/ wrote to me pointing out one of the areas that CC failed in its coverage on Gaza, namely the US collaboration in the atrocities. Thanks to Max Kantar today we have insightful article on this issue...."
background: 1/5/9 digest message to CC said: " missing from CC is what's most crucial for people to know in this country and what the rest of the world knows well but u.s. "news" covers up: role of the u.s. behind this and all its proxy enforcer's crimes ... see digest issue coming soon. muddying the political water with the effects of USRAELI state terror, without analysis of root cause disables critical thinking and conscious action, serving the enemy."
digest response: first clue: calling it "us collaboration" reflects the very problem criticized. Why didn't CC, if sincere about correcting the 'failure', just include some 'hard hitting' digest info.? Instead we get more of the same in Kantar's 'insightful' backdoor u.s. apologetics. USRAELI correctly reflects fact that Imperialism & zionism are inseparable. U.S. 'progressive' whitewashing propaganda targets only 'enforcer' israel -- which would not exist without u.s. support, aiding and abetting the imperialist agenda --- and thus its proxy's -- intentionally or not.
oppressors' genocide is digging their own graves deeper strategically
In Fatah-Governed West Bank, Solidarity With Hamas
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/world/middleeast/06westbank.html?_r=1&...
Fatah leaders are growing deeply worried over popular reaction and support for its rival, Hamas, to the point of crushing recent demonstrations...
In a series of interviews, people here said they were enraged by the photographs and television images of the Palestinian dead in Hamas-controlled Gaza, which they consider part of themselves. They said ...they were intimidated by the Palestinian security forces of Mr. Abbas and his appointed prime minister, Salam Fayyad — forces subsidized by the United States and trained by Jordan — which have cracked down on a series of demonstrations and banned the showing of the Hamas flag. With American support, Mr. Fayyad, an economist, is trying to create stability, security and a working model of productive life in the region that can provide an alternative to the vision of Hamas. But the same newly organized police forces that are providing better security on the streets of Nablus, Jenin and Hebron in the West Bank are trying to repress popular anger over Gaza. That is a balancing act they may not be delicate enough to pull off.
On Monday afternoon, for example, a march of several hundred students from Birzeit University outside Ramallah toward the nearby Atarot checkpoint was broken up by Palestinian security forces wielding clubs. The students wanted to confront Israeli soldiers at Atarot, and the security forces wanted to prevent the confrontation.
Last Friday, security forces broke up larger demonstrations in Hebron and Ramallah, arresting Hamas supporters, confiscating Hamas flags and ripping up placards with pro-Hamas slogans. For the first time in memory, the Palestinian police used tear gas against their own people.
“The Palestinian Authority is preventing people from going to the streets,” said an angry Hassan Hassan, 50, a lawyer. “They only want their point of view to pertain, and they share the view of Israel and the United States that Hamas should be crushed. They only want Fatah here, they don’t want anyone else, despite the fact that 80 percent of the people are in total solidarity with Gaza and against the repression of the Palestinian Authority.”
Mahmoud Hanaisheh, 69, a weather-beaten farmer, went to the demonstration to show solidarity. “It was important for me to be here,” he said. “I have to raise my voice, even if no one listens.” ...He said Mr. Abbas was complicit with Israel in the attacks on Hamas.... “The only right thing is resistance,” Mr. Hanaisheh said. “If there is no resistance against the occupation, there is no Palestinian cause. But if you resist now, everyone says you’re Hamas, and it’s wrong!”
are you silently complicit in this USRAELI genocide? over 600 Palestinians murdered, about 3 thousand injured
Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, said troops had not finished their operation despite mounting Palestinian casualties and growing international calls for a ceasefire.
"Hamas has so far sustained a very heavy blow from us, but we have yet to achieve our objective and therefore the operation continues" ...
Israeli troops are now deployed in and around the major urban areas of Gaza, particularly in the north, including Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and Jabaliya. They have used leaflets, telephone calls and radio to order residents in many areas to leave their homes, forcing at least 15,000 Palestinians to flee to safety elsewhere. At least 5,000 are staying in 11 different UN schools and shelters.... 3 of which israel target bombed today, killing at least 42 and wounding countless more....
As Israeli troops and tanks pressed deeper into Gaza, the toll of civilian casualties rose rapidly. The UN said at least 94 Palestinians had been killed since the ground offensive began on Saturday night.... a house in Zeitoun, south-east of Gaza City, was hit by tank shells killing at least nine people, including at least four children. In the Shamali district, north of the city, an Israeli bomb destroyed a three-storey house killing a family of seven, including four children.
On the Israeli side eight people, including five soldiers, have died and about 60, mostly soldiers, have been hurt.
support the resistance ... and friendly zionist fire Late last night three Israeli soldiers were killed and 24 were wounded, four seriously, when they were accidentally hit by an Israeli tank shell....a fourth soldier was killed in northern Gaza by Israeli fire, according to early reports....
John Holmes, UN emergency relief co-ordinator, said Gaza is an "increasingly alarming" humanitarian crisis... low on clean water, power, food, medicine and other supplies
since Israel began its offensive. Israeli leaders claim there is no humanitarian crisis.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/gaza-israel-palestinians
Video: Greek Cops Caught on Video Posing as Anarchists
LiveLeak
http://www.inteldaily.com/news/138/ARTICLE/9192/2009-01-07.html
A Greek television show reveals how Greek police posed as anarchists and destroyed property, incited violence and blamed it on legitimate activists -- a favorite tactic of the state in order to crack down on protest and dismiss genuine grievances.
if you missed this in http://www.burbankdigest.com/node/157
A Military Dictatorship Coming To America?
By Pakistan Daily
THE WORSENING CRISIS has prompted the US Army War College to issue a report urging use of military troops to contain possible civil unrest throughout America. Entitled, "Strategic Shocks in Defense Strategy Development" 11- 4- 08 [ http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?PubID=890] the report argues the US military must prepare for a “violent domestic dislocation provoked by an economic collapse.” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21674.htm
US Air Forces puts bloggers in their sights
http://www.inquisitr.com/14468/us-air-forces-puts-bloggers-in-their-sigh...
US Air Force as a part of its emerging technologies division of the public affairs department provided a 12 point flow chart to follow when dealing with bloggers [picture].
Pentagon's Promised War on the Net Growing
http://www.inteldaily.com/news/178/ARTICLE/9184/2009-01-07.html
"Direct Action within Social Media (blogging, counter-blogging, posting products to YouTube, etc.); Monitoring and Analysis of the Social Media landscape (relating to Air Force and Airmen); and policy and education (educating all Public Affairs practitioners and the bigger Air Force on Social Media)."... "counter-blogging" Capt. Faggard says is when "Airmen counter the people out there in the blogosphere who have negative opinions about the US government and the air force."
"We obviously have many more concerns regarding cyberspace than a typical Social Media user," Capt. Faggard says. "I am concerned with how insurgents or potential enemies can use Social Media to their advantage. It's our role to provide a clear and accurate, completely truthful and transparent picture for any audience."...
It's not just the Air Force...As a result of a focus on social media, SSgt Mulero says that his team has greatly increased positive exposure of the Marine Corps across the Northeastern U.S....
