Harry's Place

One might think that the UK arm of Amnesty International does not take kindly to anything to do with the CIA.

After all, Amnesty UK has participated in many events with Cage Prisoners, the Islamist agitation outfit of Moazzam Begg. Cage Prisoners supports al Qaeda preacher Anwar al Awlaki, calling him “inspirational”, but hey, there’s nothing worse than Guantanamo, right? So of course Cage Prisoners is an appropriate partner for human rights campaigners.

Still, some intelligence officers are better than others. Here’s an Amnesty UK event scheduled for next month:

Palestine in Pieces Graphic Perspectives on the Israeli Occupation
With Kathleen and Bill Christison – authors of Palestine in Pieces.
Tuesday, 10 November, 7.00pm – 9.30pm

At Amnesty International UK, The Human Rights Action Centre, 17-25 New Inn Yard, London EC2A 3EA
Discussion followed by Q&A and reception.

The event is free but please ensure you book to reserve your tickets.

Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. Kathleen Christison was a former CIA analyst and is the author of Perceptions of Palestine: Their influence on US Policy and The Wound of Dispossession: Telling the Palestinian Story.

The event will highlight their new book Palestine in Pieces that brings a personal and pictorial perspective to the Israeli occupation. The former CIA political analysts give a comprehensive description of the occupation and argue that Israel’s long-term intention is to so fragment the Occupied Palestinian Territories that any sustainable presence in the land by Palestinians as a nation will be negated.

The Christisons are Israel hating loons. You will find their work in the pages of Counterpunch, the blood libel publisher.

Here they dare to speak up about American Jews and “dual loyalty”, which is actually OK as a topic, just like “wry jokes about Congress being Israeli-occupied territory”, in part because a Jewish “friend” agrees with them:

We still tiptoe around putting a name to this phenomenon. We write articles about the neo-conservatives’ agenda on U.S.-Israeli relations and imply that in the neo-con universe there is little light between the two countries. We talk openly about the Israeli bias in the U.S. media. We make wry jokes about Congress being “Israeli-occupied territory.” Jason Vest in The Nation magazine reported forthrightly that some of the think tanks that hold sway over Bush administration thinking see no difference between U.S. and Israeli national security interests. But we never pronounce the particular words that best describe the real meaning of those observations and wry remarks. It’s time, however, that we say the words out loud and deal with what they really signify.

Dual loyalties. The issue we are dealing with in the Bush administration is dual loyalties — the double allegiance of those myriad officials at high and middle levels who cannot distinguish U.S. interests from Israeli interests, who baldly promote the supposed identity of interests between the United States and Israel, who spent their early careers giving policy advice to right-wing Israeli governments and now give the identical advice to a right-wing U.S. government, and who, one suspects, are so wrapped up in their concern for the fate of Israel that they honestly do not know whether their own passion about advancing the U.S. imperium is motivated primarily by America-first patriotism or is governed first and foremost by a desire to secure Israel’s safety and predominance in the Middle East through the advancement of the U.S. imperium.

“Dual loyalties” has always been one of those red flags posted around the subject of Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict, something that induces horrified gasps and rapid heartbeats because of its implication of Jewish disloyalty to the United States and the common assumption that anyone who would speak such a canard is ipso facto an anti-Semite. (We have a Jewish friend who is not bothered by the term in the least, who believes that U.S. and Israeli interests should be identical and sees it as perfectly natural for American Jews to feel as much loyalty to Israel as they do to the United States. But this is clearly not the usual reaction when the subject of dual loyalties arises.)

You see, ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is simple. Just denigrate Zionism as racism and get rid of that damned Jewish majority problem. Like, for peace, man.

Realities are very different today, and a recognition of Zionism’s racist bases, as well as an understanding of the racist policies being played out in the occupied territories are essential if there is to be any hope at all of achieving a peaceful, just, and stable resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The egg of Palestine has been permanently scrambled, and it is now increasingly the case that, as Zionism is recognized as the driving force in the occupied territories as well as inside Israel proper, pre-1967 Israel can no longer be considered in isolation. It can no longer be allowed simply to go its own way as a Jewish-majority state, a state in which the circumstances are “right” for ignoring Zionism’s fundamental racism.

By the way, hard as it may be to do so, best bin those Chomsky and Finkelstein screeds. It’s Israel, hijacker of the American government, that rules:

Most disturbing and harder to dismiss is the criticism of the study from the left, coming chiefly from Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, and abetted less cogently by Stephen Zunes of Foreign Policy in Focus and Joseph Massad of Columbia University. These critics on the left argue from a assumption that U.S. foreign policy has been monolithic since World War II, a coherent progression of decision-making directed unerringly at the advancement of U.S. imperial interests. All U.S. actions, these critics contend, are part of a clearly laid-out strategy that has rarely deviated no matter what the party in power. They believe that Israel has served throughout as a loyal agent of the U.S., carrying out the U.S. design faithfully and serving as a base from which the U.S. projects its power around the Middle East. Zunes says it most clearly, affirming that Israel “still is very much the junior partner in the relationship.” These critics do not dispute the existence of a lobby, but they minimize its importance, claiming that rather than leading the U.S. into policies and foreign adventures that stand against true U.S. national interests, as Mearsheimer and Walt assert, the U.S. is actually the controlling power in the relationship with Israel and carries out a consistent policy, using Israel as its agent where possible.
…
But these facts do not minimize the power the lobby has exerted in countless instances over the course of decades, and particularly in recent years, to lead the U.S. into situations that Israel initiated, that the U.S. did not plan, and that have done harm, both singly and cumulatively, to U.S. interests. One need only ask whether particular policies would have been adopted in the absence of pressure from some influential persons and organizations working on Israel’s behalf in order to see just how often Israel or its advocates in the U.S., rather than the United States or even U.S. corporations, have been the policy initiators. The answers give clear evidence that a lobby, as broadly defined by Mearsheimer and Walt, has played a critical and, as the decades have gone on, increasingly influential role in policymaking.
…
The tragedy of the present situation is that it has become impossible to separate Israeli from alleged U.S. interests ¬ that is, not what should be real U.S. national interests, but the selfish and self-defined “national interests” of the political-corporate-military complex that dominates the Bush administration, Congress, and both major political parties. The specific groups that now dominate the U.S. government are the globalized arms, energy, and financial industries, and the entire military establishments, of the U.S. and of Israel ¬ groups that have quite literally hijacked the government and stripped it of most vestiges of democracy.

How about some 9/11 troofery on Dissident Voice:

Let’s address the real issues here. Why is it important that we not let the so-called conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 be drowned out? After spending the better part of the last five years treating these theories with utmost skepticism, I have devoted serious time to actually studying them in recent months, and have also carefully watched several videos that are available on the subject. I have come to believe that significant parts of the 9/11 theories are true, and that therefore significant parts of the “official story” put out by the U.S. government and the 9/11 Commission are false. I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe. The items below highlight the major questions surrounding 9/11 but do not constitute a detailed recounting of the evidence available.

ONE: An airliner almost certainly did not hit The Pentagon. Hard physical evidence supports this conclusion; among other things, the hole in the Pentagon was considerably smaller than an airliner would create. The building was thus presumably hit by something smaller, possibly a missile, or a drone or, less possibly, a smaller manned aircraft. Absolutely no information is available on what happened to the original aircraft (American Airlines Flight 77), the crew, the “hijackers”, and the passengers. The “official story”, as it appeared in The 9/11 Commission Report simply says, “At 9:37:46, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, traveling at approximately 530 miles per hour. All on board, as well as many civilians and military personnel in the building, were killed.” This allows readers to assume that pieces of the aircraft and some bodies of passengers were found in the rubble of the crash, but information so far released by the government does not show that such evidence was in fact found. The story put out by the Pentagon is that the plane and its passengers were incinerated; yet video footage of offices in the Pentagon situated at the edge of the hole clearly shows office furniture undamaged. The size of the hole in the Pentagon wall still remains as valid evidence and so far seems irrefutable.

TWO: The North and South Towers of the World Trade Center almost certainly did not collapse and fall to earth because hijacked aircraft hit them. A plane did not hit Building 7 of the Center, which also collapsed. All three were most probably destroyed by controlled demolition charges placed in the buildings before 9/11. A substantial volume of evidence shows that typical residues and byproducts from such demolition charges were present in the three buildings after they collapsed. The quality of the research done on this subject is quite impressive.

Here’s one group (Google search link) which seems to have a taste for the Christisons’ work: the Holocaust deniers of the “Institute for Historical Review”. American racist David Duke is apparently another fan (Google search link).

If you would like to ask Amnesty International UK why they think hosting the Christisons in London is a good idea, here’s the contact page.