Excellent video from Representative Press, whose YouTube channel I recommend you follow.  In this short 2 1/2 minutes, a former Israeli minister candidly tells a radio interviewer (who also webcasts video) that calling people “anti-Semitic” for attacking the policies of Israel is “an old trick: we use it all the time.”  Watch:

by Eric Margolis

Iran’s political crisis continues to blaze. It’s still impossible to say which leaders or factions will emerge victorious, but one thing is certain: the earthquake in the Islamic Republic is shaking the Mideast and deeply confusing everyone, including the US government.

Highlighting the complexity of this crisis, Meir Dagan, the head of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, reportedly voiced his hope that Iran’s embattled president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, would remain in office. On the surface, that sounds absurd, since Ahmadinejad is Israel’s Great Satan.

But, according to Dagan, if Ahmadinejad’s supposedly “moderate” rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, came to power, it would be harder for Israel to keep up its propaganda war against Iran over Tehran’s nuclear program.

Besides, added the Mossad chief, the devil you know is better.

Meanwhile, we have been watching an intensifying western propaganda campaign against Iran, mounted by the US and British governments. What we hear is commentary and analysis that comes from bitterly anti-regime Iranian exiles, “experts” with an ax to grind, and US pro-Israel neocons yearning for war with Iran.

In viewing the Muslim world, Westerners keep listening to those who tell them what they want to hear, rather than the facts. We are at it again in Iran.

President Barack Obama’s properly stated he would refrain from being seen to “meddle” in Iran’s internal affairs in spite of calls by hard-line Republicans for American action – whatever that might be. Obama did the right thing by apologizing for the US/British coup that overthrew Iran’s democratic Mossadegh government in 1953.

But that was not the whole story. Washington has been attempting to overthrow Iran’s Islamic government since the 1979 revolution and continues to do so in spite of pledges of neutrality in the current crisis.

The US has laid economic siege to Iran for 30 years, blocking desperately needed foreign investment, preventing technology transfers, and disrupting Iranian trade. In recent years, the US Congress voted $120 million for anti-regime media broadcasts into Iran, and $60-75 million funding opposition parties, violent underground Marxists like the Mujahidin-i-Khalq, and restive ethnic groups like Azeris, Kurds, and Arabs under the so-called “Iran Democracy Program.”

The arm of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, remains withered from a bomb planted by the US-backed Mujahidin-i-Khalq, who were once on the US terrorist list.

Pakistani intelligence sources put CIA’s recent spending on “black operations” to subvert Iran’s government at $400 million.

According to an ABC News investigation, President George Bush signed a “finding” that authorized an accelerated campaign of subversion against the Islamic Republic. Washington’s goal was “regime change” in Tehran and installation of a pro-US regime of former Iranian royalist exiles.

While the majority of protests we see in Tehran are genuine and spontaneous, Western intelligence agencies and media are playing a key role in sustaining the uprising and providing communications, including the newest electronic method, via Twitter. These are covert techniques developed by the US during recent revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia that brought pro-US governments to power.

The Tehran government made things worse by limiting foreign news reports and arresting prominent politicians. Its leadership is increasingly – and dangerously – split over how to handle the protests.

We also hear lot of hypocrisy from Western capitals. Washington, Ottawa, London and Paris piously accused Iran of improper electoral procedures while utterly ignoring the total lack of democracy in their authoritarian Mideast allies such as Egypt, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia, that never hold elections and throw political opponents into prison and torture them. Compared to them, Iran, for all its faults, is almost a model of democratic governance.

The US, France and Saudi Arabia just cooperated to rig Lebanon’s recent elections, dishing out millions in bribe money to ensure victory of the pro-US faction. France’s President Nicholas Sarkozy had the chutzpah to rebuke Iran for improper election procedures after returning from the funeral of Gabon’s dictator, Omar Bongo, who had ruled for 41 years and supplied France with cheap oil.

When Hamas won a fair and square democratic election in Gaza, the US and Israel swiftly moved to mount a coup against the new Palestinian government.

US senators, led by John McCain, blasted Iran for not respecting human rights. That’s pretty rich after they just voted to bar the public release of ghastly torture photos from US prisons in Iraq, want secret US prisons kept open, and champion torture.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the dimmest bulbs in the weak-wattage Republican ranks, called for US intervention in Iran. Graham was an architect of the Iraq fiasco. Let’s air assault the warlike senator into downtown Tehran.

Über-moral Canada, which backed Pakistan’s military dictatorship under Gen. Pervez Musharraf, accused Tehran of unfair elections.

There are many questions about Iran’s vote, of which incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won by 60%.

Voter turnout was an amazing 84%, putting to shame the US and Europe, where less than half of voters exercise their right.

Pre-election polls that showed Ahmadinejad headed for a big win were right. All those foreigners praying for his defeat and the collapse of the Islamic government may be deeply disappointed.

But it also appears there were significant – though as far as we know now – not decisive irregularities. Iran’s government has admitted that some ballot boxes were stuffed, and the speaker of the Majils (parliament), the capable Ali Larijani, rebuked certain unnamed clerics for trying to rig results. This was extremely stupid, as Ahmadinejad was way ahead in pre-election polls anyway, and very popular.

This leaves Washington in a quandary. President Obama sincerely wants to enter into talks with Iran over its nuclear program and try to convince Tehran to give up enrichment. But hardliners in his cabinet and Congress are urging Obama to seize the opportunity to further destabilize Iran.

Bad idea. A stable Iran is essential to a stable Mideast. Mossad chief Dagan knows what he’s talking about. US and British efforts to subvert Iran’s government could yet blow up in our faces. And do we really need another monster crisis after Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Palestine?

Meanwhile, other Mideast nations allied to the US will look at Iran and conclude that giving any democratic rights can be downright dangerous and must be avoided at all costs.

by Kurt Nimmo

A press release buried on the FEMA website, dated June 30, 2009, announces a meeting between FEMA administrator Craig Fugate and Maj. Gen. Yair Golan of the Israeli Defense Forces Home Front Command. “I look forward to working with my Israeli counterpart as co-chair of an emergency management work group to improve emergency management practices in both countries,” said Fugate. “These partnerships are critical in ensuring that we are incorporating best practices and also working towards greater public preparedness.”

	TOPOFF exercises concentrate on terrorist attack scenarios.

The Israeli National Emergency Management Authority and FEMA partnership was established under “an emergency management work stream workgroup established under a 2007 Memorandum of Understanding with DHS,” according to the press release. FEMA representatives attended the national preparedness exercise Turning Point 3 in Israel on June 1, 2009, and Israel sent observers to the TOPOFF 4 national exercise in the United States, as well as personnel to participate in FEMA emergency management training.

TOPOFF, or Top Officials, is billed as “the nation’s premier terrorism preparedness exercise” by the Department of Homeland Security. “Thousands of federal, state, territorial, and local officials engage in various activities as part of a robust, full-scale simulated response to a multi-faceted threat,” the DHS websiteexplains.

Later this month, FEMA will hold National Level Exercise 2009 (NLE 09). “NLE 09 will be the first major exercise conducted by the United States government that will focus exclusively on terrorism prevention and protection, as opposed to incident response and recovery,” according to the FEMA site.

Turning Point 3 is a “war simulation” conducted by Israel’s IDF and Home Front Command. “The five-day drill, to be coordinated by the Defense Ministry together with the Home Front Command, is intended to test Israel’s preparedness at all levels, from the government down to the citizen in the street. It is also meant to check the coordination between local authorities and the various military and other organizations involved,” Arutz Sheva notes.

As we noted in April in regard to NLE 09, these coordinated exercises are inappropriate, considering the fact there has not been a terrorist attack on the United States since September 11, 2001.

The DHS and FBI have shifted from so-called Islamic terrorism — well documented as a manufactured threat — to “homegrown” terrorism. In recent months, the DHS has characterized patriot groups, pro-life and anti-illegal immigration activists as “rightwing extremists” threatening the homeland. In the wake of several violent incidents attributed to “white supremacists,” the corporate media has stepped up its mantra that patriot groups and extremist “lone wolves” are a threat.

Although not specifically mentioned in the FEMA factsheet, NLE 09 will also include exercises designed to round-up and intern suspected terrorists. Under REX 84 and other operations, FEMA, in association with 34 other federal civil departments and agencies, trained to detain large numbers of American citizens.

Israel has plenty of “best practices” experience in rounding-up “terrorists” in the Occupied Territories of Palestine. As noted by human rights groups, Palestinian detainees are held, often for indefinite periods, on secret charges at locations that are rarely disclosed to their families. Most of the Palestinian detainees have never been charged, never been tried, and never have seen a lawyer, according to Mitchell Kaidy, writing for WRMEA. In the 1980s, the Israeli Landau Commission discovered that Israeli security police tortured prisoners not only to extract information but to extract confessions.

Israel is now sharing this experience with their American partners under the guise of “emergency management.”

In addition to “exercising” mass detainments, NLE 09 will concentrate on preparing various governmental bodies and organizations for a “Code Red” alert, in other words full martial law. In 2003, then DHS secretary Tom Ridge told CBS News: “If we simply go to red… it basically shuts down the country,” meaning that civilian government bodies would be closed down and taken over by an Emergency Administration. The Israeli Defense Forces Home Front Command is designed for the same purpose.

“In turn, code red alert would trigger the ‘civilian’ Homeland Emergency response system, including the DHS’ Ready.Gov instructions, the Big Brother Citizen Corps, not to mention the USAonWatch and the Department of Justice Neighborhood Watch Program which have a new post 9/11 mandate to ‘identify and report suspicious activity in neighborhoods’ across America,” Michel Chossudovsky wrote in 2005.

Since 2005 and the election of Barack Obama, the government has made strides in creating a Big Brother Citizen Corps. In addition to passing the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education (GIVE) Act — the foundation for Obama’s “civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded” as the U.S. military — Democrats are pushing H.R. 675, a bill that would amend title 10 of the United States Code and extend to civilian employees of the Department of Defense the authority to execute warrants, make arrests, and carry firearms.

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by Kirt Nimmo, Infowars.com

In January, without any recognizable corporate media coverage, Rep. Bob Filner, a California Democrat, introduced H.R. 675. The bill would amend title 10 of the United States Code and extend to civilian employees of the Department of Defense the authority to execute warrants, make arrests, and carry firearms. The bill was referred to the Armed Services Committee on January 26, 2009.

Rep. Bob Filner

Filner’s bill would amend the United States code with the following: “Sec. 1585b. Law enforcement officers of the Department of Defense: authority to execute warrants, make arrests, and carry firearms… for any offense against the United States.” (Emphasis added.)

The Posse Comitatus Act, passed on June 18, 1878 after the end of Reconstruction, limits the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement. The Act prohibits members of the federal uniformed services from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain “law and order” on non-federal property within the United States.

H.R. 675 sidesteps Posse Comitatus by defining “law enforcement officer of the Department of Defense” as “a civilian employee of the Department of Defense,” including federal police officers, detectives, criminal investigators, special agents, and game law enforcement officers classified by the Office of Personnel Management Occupational Series 0083 (the United States Office of Personnel Management is described as an “independent agency” of the U.S. government that manages the civil service of the federal government).

In 2005, the Office of Personnel Management partnered with the Department of Homeland Security to create a “21st century human resources management system that fully supports the Department’s vital mission,” according to then Office of Personnel Management Associate Director for Strategic Human Resources Policy Ron Sanders.

At approximately the same time, the DoD issued a Defense Directive 1404.10 (read PDF) that establishes a “DoD Civilian Expeditionary Workforce” and rescinds a prior Clinton era directive dealing with the emergency use of civilian personnel. The Obama administration describes the Civilian Expeditionary Workforce as follows:

Members of the DoD Civilian Expeditionary Workforce shall be organized, trained, cleared, equipped, and ready to deploy in support of combat operations by the military; contingencies; emergency operations; humanitarian missions; disaster relief; restoration of order; drug interdiction; and stability operations of the Department of Defense in accordance with DoDD 3000.05

“This new directive is odd, coming as it does after campaign promises by Obama to establish a paramilitary ‘civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded’ as our military,” writes Doug Ross.

According to Sec. Def. Robert Gates, defeating terrorism will require the use of more “soft power,” with civilians contributing more in communication, economic assistance, political development and other non-military areas. “Gates called for the creation of new government organizations, including a permanent group of civilian experts with a wide range of expertise who could be sent abroad on short notice as a supplement to U.S. military efforts. And he urged more involvement by university and other private experts,” the Associated Press reported in late 2007.

It should be noted that the original Civilian Expeditionary Workforce directive mentions the term “overseas” no fewer than 33 times, while the Obama revision does not mention “overseas” at all. In other words, the revised directive is designed for “emergency operations” in the United States.

Both H.R. 675 and the DoD Civilian Expeditionary Workforce directive will establish civilian “soft power” under the direction of the Pentagon. Obama is now actively working to create a paramilitary “civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the military. In order to skirt Posse Comitatus, Obama’s paramilitary brownshirts will be organized and run out of the Office of Personnel Management with orders coming from the Pentagon.

In the recent past, the Pentagon sent operatives to snoop on anti-war and patriot demonstrations — for instance, Alex Jones’ protest at the Federal Reserve was monitored by the Pentagon . In the not too distant future they will likely send “civilians” with firearms and the power to arrest “rightwing extremists” who represent, according to the Department of Homeland Security and numerous federalized police agencies, “offense against the United States.”