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THE INSIDE HISTORY OF THE ISRAEL LOBBY Former top CIA analysts Kathleen and Bill Christison give CounterPunchers the real scoop on the Israel lobby and precisely how powerful it is. Read how US presidents from Wilson, through FDR to Truman were manipulated by the Zionist lobby; how Israel bent LBJ, Reagan and Clinton to its purpose; how Bush's White House has been the West Wing of the Israeli government; how Washington's revolving doors send full-time Israel lobbyists from think-tanks to the National Security Council and the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. For all who want a true measure of the Lobby's power, the Christisons' 8-page dossier, exclusive to CounterPunch newsletter subscribers, is a MUST read. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! |
Today's Stories June 10 / 11,
2006 Robert Fisk June 9, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Paul Craig Roberts Gary Leupp Eric Ruder Evelyn Pringle Mickey Z. Michael J. Smith Patrick Cockburn Website of the
Day
June 8, 2006 Chris Floyd Michael Dickinson Ron Jacobs William S. Lind Joshua Frank Missy Comley Beattie Lloyd Williams Bill Christison Website of the Day
June 7, 2006 Dave Lindorff Sunsara Taylor John Walsh David MacMichael Mickey Z. Evelyn Pringle Myles Palmer Laura Ribeiro Website of the Day
June 6, 2006 Diane Christian Paul Craig Roberts Ralph Nader Norman Solomon Darmont / Genovali Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Subcomandante Marcos Patrick Cockburn Website of the Day
June 5, 2006 Bruce Jackson Chris Floyd Michael Neumann Heather Gray William Hughes David Swanson Alexander Cockburn Website of the Day
June 3 / 4, 2006 Robert Fisk James Petras Rosemary Radford Ruether Harry Clark Jeffrey St. Clair Ron Ridenour Ron Jacobs Fred Gardner Peter Montague John Walsh Greg Moses Sean Donahue Mike Whitney Dave Patten Ali Khan Robert Dotson,
MD Hammond Guthrie St. Clair / D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of the
Day
June 2, 2006 Kathy Kelly Alan Maass Mickey Z. Dave Lindorff Chris Kutalik Sunsara Taylor Sam Husseini Mike Ferner Website of the
Day
June 1, 2006 Brian Cloughley David Peterson Lee Ballinger Jonathan Cook Mike Whitney Paul Rockwell Clifton Ross Kevin Zeese Website of the
Day
May 31, 2006 Dave Lindorff Joshua Frank Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz P. Sainath Ramzy Baroud Seth Sandronsky Mickey Z. Ralph Nader Jeffrey St. Clair Website of the Day
May 30, 2006 Lee Ballinger Jonathan Cook Gary Leupp John Ross Robert Jensen Michael Dickinson Michael Carmichael Tim Wise Harry Browne Website of the
Day
May 27 / 29,
2006 Paul Craig Roberts Kathleen Christison Kathy Kelly Christopher
Reed Lawrence R. Velvel Tom Barry Gary Leupp Col. Dan Smith Ron Jacobs Don Fitz Fred Gardner Peter Montague Raymond Garcia John Farley Seth Sandronsky Tia Steele Lenni Brenner Dr. Susan Block Scott Michael Perey Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Recipe of the
Weekend Website of the Weekend
May 26, 2006 Col. Douglas
MacGregor Brian J. Foley Michael Dickinson Missy Comley Beattie Pierre Tristam Joe Allen Kona Lowell Roger Burbach Website of the
Day
May 25, 2006 Les AuCoin Jeff Halper Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Bob Wing Elise Gould Robert Bryce Website of the Day
May 24, 2006 Michael Donnelly Patrick Cockburn Lucinda Marshall Dave Lindorff Shmuel Rosner Moshe Adler Heather Gray Pratyush Chandra Paul Craig Roberts Floyd Rudmin Website of the Day
May 23, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Sharon Smith Sunsara Taylor Joel Whitney Alice Cherbonnier Ron Jacobs Kristen Ess Patrick Cockburn Website of the
Day
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Weekend
Edition Militarizing the BorderWhy Operation Jump Start Worries MeBy GREG MOSES The Guard operation at the border has an air of legal peculiarity about it. Obviously it has been initiated by federal powers, but care has been taken to leave troops under command of the Governors, sort of. If the legal finesse of Operation Jump Start offers a vulnerability de-militarization activists can exploit, it also presents features worth worrying about. Let's not forget that the memo was released at the very end of the work week during the first week of the summer season. In Texas, it was distributed by the Governor's office after five. And there has yet to be any public discussion of its wisdom. Doesn't this sound too familiar? A plain reading of the operation's structure suggests that the Pentagon has vastly strengthened its hand in the conduct of domestic affairs. And citizens of the USA often express well-founded concerns that we would not want our military doing what it does best in the neighborhoods where we live. Military professionals also have a right to be nervous about the situation this makes for them. On the level of pure formality, the Memorandum of Understanding indicates that Guard missions should be "requested by, coordinated with, and undertaken in support of the USCPB" (U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, Department of Homeland Security.) But the initiative for Operation Jump Start seems to come from forces well beyond the control of USCPB. For example, the missions are to be "pre-approved by the DoD (Department of Defense) and the Governor of the Supported State, and consistent with the implementing instructions communicated by the National Guard Bureau." It is then up to the Chief of the National Guard Bureau to "coordinate the provision of resources to the Supported States in furtherance of the border enforcement effort." In terms of policy direction, the paper trail of Operation Jump Start begins in an office of law enforcement, but it ends with "implementing instructions" mobilized by the Guard. In fact, before the DoD approves any "request", it will already have to be consistent with how the guard will implement it. Thus, any Operation Jump Start mission formally "requested" by USCPB will activate a Pentagon line of power that goes from mission approval to mission deployment, flipping the switch toward a conduit of border affairs that runs from the President, through the Secretary of Defense, to the National Guard. This raises serious legal issues about the militarization of domestic law enforcement, and suggests why such a show had to be made about the roles of various Governors. But clearly, this operation was commenced with little display of pride or initiative from the Governors (even if it might give them what they secretly want this election year.) Furthermore, in terms of formal bureau alignments, there is a mismatch beteen USCBP and DoD that further seems to weaken the actual power of the domestic bureau, because nowhere in the memo is the director of Homeland Security given the kind of formal power that falls into the hands of the Secretary of Defense. Of course, one could argue that the Director of Homeland Security, although invisible in the memo, retains formal chain of command control over USCBP, but it is not the DHS director who has been assigned to produce the mission requests. Simply comparing levels of power between the formal partners of the memo (the Border Patrol and the Pentagon) the simple lines of the memo seem to strengthen the Pentagon's muscle in border strategies. And why shouldn't this literal structure make us very nervous, given the obvious pattern of strategic muscle exercised by this particular Secretary of Defense? It is a question you may ask nearly anyone in the USA, since very few seem very nervous. That the federal administration of the USA also represents an apex of corporate types and tokens reminds us as well that a huge border contract is about to enter the awarding phase. The literal structure of the memo gives the DoD some power to push a nose or two into that process of neo-liberal privatization (for which readers of the Texas Civil Rights Review are so far predicting a contract for Northrup Grumman.) Thursday afternoon, the Texas Civil Rights Review filed records requests with the offices of Governor, Attorney General, and Texas National Guard in order to begin an archive of key documents pertaining to the militarization of the border, because the peculiar paper flow mandated by Operation Jump Start is well worth reading closely. Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights
Review and author of Revolution
of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of
Nonviolence. His chapter on civil rights under Clinton and
Bush appears in Dime's
Worth of Difference, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey
St. Clair. He can be reached at: gmosesx@prodigy.net.
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org. |