5 mid-east

"Crude, garage-built Palestinian rockets are no match for modern precision missiles, helicopter gunships, bombers and drones. Fortunately for the Israelis, the rockets failed to reach any population centers 99 percent of the time. It was a mystery even to the Israelis why the unchallenged Israeli air force and ground artillery did not knock out the primitive Gaza launching sites, given its spies, informants and knowledge of every block in Gaza."
Ralph Nader
http://tinyurl.com/6sxwf3z

"Led by President William Jefferson Clinton, the United States pushed for the expansion of the military alliance NATO to include the newly independent Eastern European countries. This was partly a business deal to get these countries to buy United States fighter aircrafts from Lockheed Martin and partly a needless provocation of a transformed adversary trying to get back on its feet."
https://blog.nader.org/2014/03/21/obama-putin-say/

"Fortunately for the Israelis, the rockets failed to reach any population centers 99 percent of the time. It was a mystery even to the Israelis why the unchallenged Israeli air force and ground artillery did not knock out the primitive Gaza launching sites, given its spies, informants and knowledge of every block in Gaza." Ralph Nader  http://america-hijacked.com/2012/04/

full article from above link

The Crisis in Gaza  http://tinyurl.com/6sxwf3z
The World’s Largest Open-Air Gulag
by RALPH NADER
Have you heard much lately about the 1.5 million Palestinians illegally imprisoned by the Israeli government in the world’s largest open-air Gulag? Their dire living conditions, worsened by a selective Israeli siege limiting the importation of necessities of life – medical items, food, water, building materials, and fuel to list a few – has resulted in an 80 percent unemployment rate and widespread suffering from unlawful punishment, arbitrary arrests and imprisonment in Israeli jails.

The horrific conditions were a result of the Israeli invasion of Gaza in late 2008, ignited by Israel’s breaking of a truce with Gaza on November 4. Fourteen hundred people died, nearly three hundred of them children, and thousands were injured. The terror bombing of the Gazan population smashed into homes, hospitals, schools, ambulances, mosques, subsistence farms, UN facilities, and even the American International School. Israeli bombers destroyed over 30 members of one extended family in their home. That toll alone was three times the amount of Israeli fatalities, which included friendly fire.

The humanitarian crisis in crowded Gaza – about twice the size of the District of Columbia – “is now more dire than ever.” That is the judgment of Norwegian physician and professor of medicine, Dr. Mads Gilbert, who just finished a ten-day speaking tour in the U.S. Dr. Gilbert, returning from a recent visit to Gaza, was one of the only two foreign doctors inside Gaza during the massacre of December 2008 to January 2009.

He says: “During the Israeli attack, I saw the effects of new weapons including drones, phosphorous and also DIME [Dense Inert Metal Explosives], which leave no shrapnel, but I witnessed their capacity to cut a child in two; they also leave radioactive traces.”

Today, anemia and protein deficiency are widespread, reports Dr. Gilbert, especially among little children. UN and other relief supplies are inadequate, and UN humanitarian relief staff is often harassed by Israeli officials. Rebuilding pulverized Gaza is seriously obstructed by Israel blocking the imports of building materials.

Dr. Gilbert comments that he has “worked in other desperate situations in other places and Gaza is unique in a number of respects. It’s a captive population – usually if civilians are being attacked, there’s a safe place they can take refuge and then come back to their homes when the fighting has stopped. That doesn’t exist for the people in Gaza since they are effectively imprisoned by the Israeli siege.”

Writing in the prestigious British medical journal “The Lancet” in early 2009, Dr. Gilbert provided clinical details of the slaughter, including the destruction of ambulances and medical facilities that tend to the dying and the wounded.

He described a “shattered, attacked, and drained health-care system trying to help an overwhelming amount of casualties in a war between clearly unequal powers, where the attacker spares no civilian lives – be it man, woman, or child – not even the much-needed health workers of all professions.”

It is no wonder the Israelis banned all foreign reporters, including those from the U.S. – the very country that provided the weaponry – thereby preventing the world from seeing the carnage as it happened.

The media ban made it possible for George W. Bush and president-elect Barack Obama to get away with describing this aggressive war with the identical phrase “Israel has the right to defend itself.” But apparently, the Palestinians do not have any way to defend themselves against the second-most modern military arsenal in the world; and their pleas about who broke the truce and started the bloodshed are unheeded.

Crude, garage-built Palestinian rockets are no match for modern precision missiles, helicopter gunships, bombers and drones. Fortunately for the Israelis, the rockets failed to reach any population centers 99 percent of the time. It was a mystery even to the Israelis why the unchallenged Israeli air force and ground artillery did not knock out the primitive Gaza launching sites, given its spies, informants and knowledge of every block in Gaza.

Reporters would have dug out these stories were they allowed inside Gaza. Since 2009, the focus of both the Israeli and U.S. government toward Iran has taken Gaza, the thousands of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, and the swallowing up of more land in the Palestinian West Bank, off of the news screens in the West.

It is remarkable how successful the Israeli propagandists have been in controlling the news coverage. They have even sidelined prominent retired Israeli security, military and political leaders, who along with civic and peace advocates are seeking a two-state solution, an end to confiscation of Palestinian land and houses, and debunking war talk against Iran, designed for domestic political purposes in Israel and the U.S.

For example, Meir Dagan, director of the Mossad – Israel’s CIA – from 2002 until 2010, called bombing Iran “the stupidest thing I ever heard.” In agreement are many other Israelis in the know. But, as in the U.S. during the months before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, experienced voices of realism and sanity are not heard. Nor are sobering words of candor, as voiced by Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion, who said, of the dispossessed Palestinians years ago, “we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”

Isn’t bringing these prominent Israeli truthsayers, peace advocates and military refuseniks to the U.S. Congress for their first-ever public hearing way overdue? At stake is peace or more wars in the Middle East. Also at stake is the possibility of another U.S. “war of choice” against Iran and the likely uncontrollable consequences that such belligerency would provoke. Would members of Congress let the AIPAC lobby block Israelis from coming here to present such testimony?

Or are the Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs Committees, chaired respectively by Democratic Senator John Kerry and Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, satisfied with following their party lines?

http://www.juancole.com/2013/11/gasoline-fundamentalism-violence.html

http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/rawia-m-tawfik-amer/egypt-as-role-model-opportunity-lost


King Jehoshaphat  & King Ahab

http://www.bibliacatolica.com.br/en/christian-community-bible/1-kings/22/#.U_PdqMVdU2A

http://www.vtaide.com/gleanings/Kings-of-Israel/biography_Jehoshaphat.html

Yes, I had that thought last night re "inverted totalitarianism." We know conquerers of yore had delusions of grandeur. They over extended. What I was asking myself last night was what happens when instead of one personal force pumping up conquering armies, there's sort of a coterie of plutocratic neocon "warrior intellectuals"? A meritocracy is supposed to be too smart to over extend. National Security Staff (NSS) the Dept of State are supposed to weigh evidence, a lot of evidence. And they are supposed to have access to a multitude of expert opnions. But suppose the relevant parties allow themselves to become somewhat polluted by hawkish thinking of the warrior intellectuals, and in time begin to buy into their rationalizations of Realpolitik. Yes, suppose that rather than staying grounded in defensive modalities...they allow themselves to begin to think of the desirability of more economic satellites? Suppose they conspire to oust parties or rulers in nations not amenable to becoming the kind of trading partners they like (the kind this persuasive neocon interventionist contingent likes)? And then suppose their designs entail more heavy handedness abroad than they've let on to the populace at home. And then suppose further that the people influenced by this heavy handedness come to resent it greatly. If a so called "meritocracy" goes this far, then it must have gotten away from any kind of balanced forum weighing options. I'm tempted to say at that point you couldn't call it a meritocracy any longer. It does seem as if the neocon "gang" has come to act like one autocratic power tripping mind. There can't be enough smarts or wisdom in just one mind when it comes to things like this. If you're looking for wisdom...how bout looking "in the multitude of counselors." You may remember the story of King Ahab and King Jehoshaphat gathering 400 prophets for advice on whether or not to take back some land annexed by the kingdom of Aram (where Syria is today; I remembered it vaguely before searching). Micaiah, likely the lone dissenter if anyone would have been, Ahab himself summoned after all the Yea votes. They coaxed Micaiah's actual dissent/warning outta the dude, but still weren't persuaded to hold back (First Kings). This was sort of approaching meritocracy, but I think one of meritocracy's hallmarks is that the merit's supposed to be evidenced by performance, faith affliations precluded. War is a dangerous enterprise, and the "theory" of counsel bearing on it having merit...you'd think would be a bare minimum requirement. But this is probably a first in world history...a nation claiming meritocracy as it goes to war while the nature of the war fighting itself precludes said status. It might have applied to the French Revolution too though in a way, as the revolutionaires went a little berzerk at the end. Then more karma.



http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/egypt_on_the_brink_-_and_the_us_on_the_wrong_side

http://all4peacenow.com/brute-force-in-egypt-is-met-with-more-us-aid/

http://www.radioopensource.org/egypts-revolution-continues-the-talk-of-tahrir/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morsi





http://publicradioeast.org/post/disagreement-syria-speeds-cooling-us-saudi-relationship


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template%3ASyrian_civil_war_detailed_map

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectarianism_and_minorities_in_the_Syrian_civil_war


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_civil_war

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/08/27/the-one-map-that-shows-why-syria-is-so-complicated/

http://www.polgeonow.com/2013/08/syria-civil-war-map-august-2013-11.html

Kipling, Kim, great game https://www.google.com/search?q=images+maps+kim+kipling+asia+OR+asian&lr=&as_qdr=all&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjzrKyBy-3LAhXFthQKHbs6AGIQsAQINA&biw=1304&bih=697#imgrc=_

OT world (look up this one again, got messed up)

middle east history https://www.google.com/search?q=images+asia+mountain+ranges+%22old+maps%22&lr=&as_qdr=all&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjkp4rGwO3LAhUK2B4KHVN2DCQQsAQIHA&biw=1304&bih=697#tbm=isch&tbs=rimg%3ACdTrtnN_1mtytIjgbspfj99GTIMR4_1AuTesMTCeK9T4rMJ9dlWME2ayxp5trUUfK77pa8W0ZHw27BupCwRBBbZ69NZCoSCRuyl-P30ZMgEbPMvTpFRQ71KhIJxHj8C5N6wxMR0lIKrox3RwMqEgkJ4r1Piswn1xHBq66njb-xSCoSCWVYwTZrLGnmEQHIyuNLoDzzKhIJ2tRR8rvulrwRkNOjzWT6n9QqEglbRkfDbsG6kBGehUEAKmugTyoSCbBEEFtnr01kEacSYr4kA8Dq&q=images%20asia%20mountain%20ranges%20%22old%20maps%22&imgrc=BYQmMgFWkeeyBM%3A

disputed border https://www.google.com/search?q=images+%22mountain+ranges+of+asia%22&lr=&as_qdr=all&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj3i-PSxe3LAhXFRhQKHXQ7BuIQsAQIKw&biw=1304&bih=697#imgrc=h8TFpGNIZUhFYM%3A

disputed border came from this search https://www.google.com/search?q=images+%22mountain+ranges+of+asia%22&lr=&as_qdr=all&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj3i-PSxe3LAhXFRhQKHXQ7BuIQsAQIKw&biw=1304&bih=697