Kenya: Frank Lowry - Owner of the Westgate Mall

"All Our Heroes are Watching in Heaven While Larry Silverstein Pulls Building 7"

Larry Silverstein from Spike1138 on Vimeo.

"So, we took the decision to pull... and we watched the Building [WTC 7] collapse...."

Mirrored from from:

http://www.truthology.org.au/index.php/posts/413-the-real-frank-lowy

Fifty days before 9/11, Larry Silverstein's Silverstein Properties and Frank Lowy's Westfield Americas ecured a 99-year lease on World Trade Center Buildings One, Two, Four and Five. Silverstein already owned Building Seven. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey handed over control of the World Trade Center to Silverstein and Lowy on July 24, 2001. Lowy leased the shopping concourse area called the Mall at the World Trade Center, made up of approximately 427,000 square feet of retail floor space.

Silverstein and Westfield America insured the complex for $3.55 billion, but after the attacks of September 11 lodged a claim for $7.1 billion on the premise that each plane collision constituted a separate act of terrorism, doubling the payout. Most people know about "Lucky"Larry Silverstein's part in 9/11 and his dubious connections to Binyamin Netanyahu et al, but not much has been reported on Lowy, so let's have a look.

Frank Lowy is a Hungarian Jew who arrived in Palestine in 1945 to fight with the Haganah in the Israeli "War of Independence", later joining Israel'sGolani Brigade which was created in February 1948. In 1952 he moved to Sydney, Australia, where he started building shopping centers, before going on to work in investment banking in London, New York and Los Angeles. He co-founded the Westfield Group, which he still chairs.

According to Wikipedia, "Westfield currently has interests in total assets worth A$41 billion, representing 121 shopping centres in four countries with over 10 million square meters of retail space. It is the world's largest retail property group by equity market capitalization". In California alone, he has overseen Westfield's regional growth from 6 shopping centers to at least 59. At $3.8 billion, he'sranked #2 in Forbes.Com's list of Australia and NZ's richest individuals - one of three men, all Jewish, who make up Australia's wealthiest elites - and by the same standard is the 174th richest man in the world.

Lowy's fondness for banking is not limited to the U.S.

He's a board member of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Australia's central bank, which is the Australian version of the American Federal Reservesystem and issuer of Australian banknotes. Lowy served a ten year term as director of the RBA.

Frank the Zionist is not at all disinterested in world politics. In 2001 he was the Associate International Chairman of the Israel Democracy Institute, and in 2003 he set up the Lowy Institute for International Policy, an international policy think tank devoted to foreign affairs, an endeavor which won him the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship in 2005 (funnily enough, it was Wilson who signed the Federal Reserve Act). That same year, the Institute moved into its permanent home in Sydney’s CBD which was formally opened by Australia’s Prime Minister and Lowy's good mate, John Howard. He even joined Howard and Bill Clinton on an "evening Sydney Harbour cruise" when Clinton visited Australia in 1996 (source).

Other good friends of his include Israeli prime ministerEhud Olmert and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who has his own connections to 9/11 and who avidly supports the extremist Likud Party of Israel and the post-9/11 "war on terror". Israel has no better friend in the media than Murdoch and his empire. Like Silverstein, Lowy maintains close relationships with former Israeli prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak, and other high profile Zionists like Avinoam Brog, Barak's brother. Brog told the Sydney Morning Herald that Lowy's "influence is such that if he wanted to talk to any politician in Israel, then he could. And they will listen."

Frank Lowy spends three months of the year at his home in Israel and has been described by the Sydney Morning Herald as "a self-made man with a strong interest in the Holocaust and Israeli politics." He funded and launched the Israeli Institute for National Strategy and Policy, which will "operate within the framework of Tel Aviv University" in Israel.

Here's a look at what he's got going on in Tel Aviv:

"Australian Entrepreneur Frank Lowy will be Chairman of the planned TAU Institute for National Strategy and Policy. Former US Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk will act as Vice-Chairman."

Here's the Australian Jewish News report: 

'Frank Lowy establishes Israeli institute'

And from the Sydney Morning Herald (September 2008):

As its chairman, Lowy has gathered some of the most influential policymakers in Israel and wealthiest international benefactors to sit on its boards.

Much like the Lowy Institute in Sydney, it is a respected independent academic institute that studies key issues relating to national security and foreign affairs, but with a special focus on the Middle East.

Its vice-chairman is Dan Meridor, a prominent lawyer and former politician in the centre-right Likud party. Meridor served as justice minister and finance minister in the 1990s, and is contemplating a return to politics with the Likud.

Also on the board are the Israeli building contractor Alfred Akirov, the president of Tel Aviv University and former Israeli ambassador to the US, Itamar Rabinovich, and the Australian-born Martin Indyk, twice the US ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration.

Among those on the board of trustees are Lord David Alliance, an Iranian-born Jewish-British businessman and Liberal Democrat politician, and Sir Ronald Cohen, an Egyptian-born Jewish-British businessman known as "the father of British venture capital" and the man who bankrolled the leadership bid of the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

Other trustees are the Chicago real estate mogul Lester Crown and the US property tycoon Mortimer Zuckerman, who owns New York's Daily News and is editor-in-chief of the influential US News & World Report.

Furthermore, Lowy is a founding member of the International Advisory Council of the pro-IsraelBrookings Institution in Washington. According toWikipedia, "Brookings is generally considered one of the three most influential policy institutes in the U.S." The aforementioned Martin Indyk, former vice chairman of Lowy's Institute for National Strategy and Policy and former U.S. ambassador to Israel, is also aDirector at Brookings. You can read about Indyk here. Some consider Indyk to be the prime suspect in the FBI's hunt for the Israeli spy known as Mega.

But Lowy's penchant for meddling in world affairs doesn't stop there. Lowy was vice president of a publication called the Australia/Israel Review (AIR), whose parent body is the Australia Israel Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), the Australian equivalent of its U.S. counterpart, AIPAC. The AIR is a right-wing Zionist publication whose editor, Michael Kapel, was forced to quit in '98 after the magazine published stolen membership lists of the One Nation party, an Australian nationalist political group.

When Palestinian political activist and politician Hanan Ashrawi was awarded the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize, Frank Lowy was one of the most vociferous among the chorus of Zionist protesters and Jewish lobbyists thatdecried the result and tried to dissuade NSW premier Bob Carr and the Sydney Peace Foundation from giving the award to Ashrawi. Lowy, among others, claimed that Ashrawi 'supported suicide bombings' and had a "long history of terrorist apologias and anti-Israel incitement".

Sydney-based Jewish-Australian journalistAntony Loewenstein shows how fraudulent these claims are in the opening chapter of his book My Israel Question, arguing that Lowy and co's real problem with Ashrawi is her support for the Palestinian cause and anti-Zionist disposition.

So, like Silverstein, Lowy is without question a filthy rich corporate Israel cheerleader. But there's also evidence that he's probably a crook, too. For instance, it appears that Lowy nearly got involved in the British government's Cash for Peerages scandal with Lord Levy, one of Tony Blair's closest aides, back in 2002. From a 2002 Sunday Times article:

Lord Levy, one of Tony Blair's closest and most trusted aides, was paid at least £250,000 by an Australian property group headed by one of the world's richest men. The payments, which the company has attempted to keep private, are far higher than previously thought and began in 1999, the year Levy was appointed Blair's envoy to the Middle East, reporting directly to the prime minister.

They were authorised by Frank Lowy, the head of the Westfield Corporation, who has business and political interests in Israel and whose company is seeking planning permission to develop shopping centres across Britain. Lowy is a veteran campaigner on Jewish causes. He fought as a terrorist in Palestine during the 1948 Israeli war of independence and served with the Golani Brigade, which is currently serving in the occupied territories.

The disclosure has raised questions of "cash for foreign policy". MPs expressed concern at Levy's potentially conflicting roles as a consultant for a powerful multinational company and supposedly impartial and unpaid envoy. Levy said he paid privately for trips he made on behalf of Blair. In a letter to Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, said:

"I am concerned the Foreign Office's diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East should apparently be so closely tied to the aims of one of the world's richest men."

Baker said Levy appeared to be "simultaneously a quasi-minister, Labour fundraiser and consultant to a company seeking to influence government policy.

Looks like Lowy thought he could swing things Israel's way with his shekels. Lord Levy is himself a committed Zionist, a member of the UK parliament's Labour Friends of Israel, has a private residence and a business in the Jewish State, and is a personal friend of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. His son, Daniel, used to work for Barak, and also for former Israeli justice minister Yossi Beilin.

The Times article also offers this information about Lowy:

Lowy has donated about £200,000 to build a memorial museum in Israel for his former brigade and has toured old battle sites with former comrades. His personal wealth was recently estimated by Forbes magazine at £1.5 billion and he is well known in Australia as a philanthropist supporting Jewish causes. Through the Westfield Foundation he has given to the United Israel Appeal, an organisation for resettling Jewish immigrants in Israel. His family was last year preparing to invest more than £30m in property and media interests in Israel.

Look what Lowy got himself into in 2006:

Lowy implicated in Israel bank scandal

PM - Wednesday, 25 October , 2006

One of Australia's richest businessmen has been embroiled in a high-level corruption scandal involving the Prime Minister of Israel.

Israeli press reports claim that the billionaire owner of the Westfield Group, Frank Lowy, was involved in the scandal with the Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last year.

They allege that Mr Olmert had a conflict of interest because he advanced Mr Lowy's interests in the privatisation of a major Israeli bank, Bank Leumi.

The Justice Ministry is investigating suspicions that Mr Olmert interfered with the tender to benefit Mr Lowy and another bidder, Daniel Abraham.

There are also allegations of a conflict of interest by the Prime Minister through a law firm that dealt with Mr Lowy's affairs in Israel.

The head of that firm is Ehud Olmert's father-in-law Professor Yossi Gross.

A spokesman for Frank Lowy is rejecting the claims tonight.

Emma Alberici reports

EMMA ALBERICI: Overnight Israel Attorney General confirmed he was investigating claims that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accepted bribes from two international businessmen.

The bribes have allegedly been paid to help advance their interests during the 2005 privatisation of Israel's Bank Leumi, the country's second biggest bank.

The two businessmen referred to in reports are said to bethe Prime Minister's personal friends, one of which was named on the Hebrew language website, News First Class, as Frank Lowy, the Australian billionaire owner of the Westfield group.

Various reports during the tender process last year said the Australian real estate tycoon was in partnership on the Bank Leumi bid with American media and property mogul Mortimer Zuckerman.

The website News First Class, first published the claims two weeks ago, which also say Ehud Olmert never declared a conflict of interest he had during the tender process.

His father-in-law, Yossi Gross heads the law firm, which allegedly deals with Frank Lowy's affairs in Israel.

Frank Lowy is a Holocaust[™]survivor who immigrated to Israel to fight in the Jewish underground before joining the rest of his family in Australia in 1951.

55 years on, he's the country's second richest businessman, worth $5.5 billion. His $74 million super yacht Ilona is often seen at the (inaudible) docks in Israel.

In March of this year, the Lowy family's LGF Holdings poached two investment bankers at UBS in Tel-Aviv to start a funds management business they called ION Asset Management.

Media reports over the past few years variously link the Lowy family name to the sales of three banks in Israel.

Israel's Attorney General has ordered the probe into claims that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accepted the bribes while he was Acting Finance Minister.

Lowy's business partners in the bid for Bank Leumi were mega-Zionist billionaires Mortimer Zuckerman, former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organisations, and AIPAC Board Member Daniel Abraham. So at the very least, he'sheavily involved in Jewish affairs and Zionist lobby groups, he's extremely cozy with criminal Zionist elites, and he's a rabid Zionist himself. So are his three sons: Peter Lowy sits on the board of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and was chairman of the board of the University of Judaism, which has now been renamed the American Jewish University after its merger with the Brandeis-Bardin Institute. 

Last Thursday night, at a banquet at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, the [University of Judaism] celebrated its 60th anniversary by honoring [Peter] Lowy. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was there, and President Bill Clinton and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sent their best by video.

David Lowy is manager of the Tel Aviv-based Ion Asset Management and CEO of the family's LFG Holdings which has millions of dollars of investments in Israel, and Steven Lowy is chairman of the United Israel Appeal.

Frank Lowy's financial contributions to both sides of the Australian political pseudo-divide also deserve a mention. From this article:

Westfield shopping mall developer Frank Lowy topped the list of Jewish donations with $624,200 - $311,900 to the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and $312,300 to the Liberals.

The right wing Liberal party got $400 more than their Labor counterparts; maybe Frank penalised the latter for being such stick-in-the-muds over Iraq.

We know the attacks of September 11 were carried out to further the political agenda of the Zionist elite. Is it just a coincidence that two of them took out the lease of the World Trade Center complex just weeks beforehand? Doesn't look like it.

“I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire*, and I control the British money supply.”

Nathan Mayer Rothschild

Shoah vs. The Holocaust (1978 TV-Mini) - The Power of Public Myth

Shoah vs. The Holocaust (1978 TV-Mini) - Ahmadinejad on The Power of Public Myth from Spike1138 on Vimeo.

“Prof. Zelikow’s area of academic expertise is the creation and maintenance of, in his words, ‘public myths’ or ‘public presumptions’ which he defines as ‘beliefs

(1) thought to be true (although not necessarily known with certainty) and
(2) shared in common within the relevant political community.’
In his academic work and elsewhere he has taken a special interest in what he has called ‘searing’ or ‘molding’ events (that) take on 'transcendent’ importance and therefore retain their power even as the experiencing generation passes from the scene. . . .

He has noted that ‘a history’s narrative power is typically linked to how readers relate to the actions of individuals in the history; if readers cannot make the connection to their own lives, then a history may fail to engage them at all.”

(“Thinking about Political History”, Miller Center Report, Winter 1999, pp. 5-7)

"Readers should imagine the possibilities for themselves, because the most serious constraint on current policy [nonaggression] is lack of imagination. An act of catastrophic terrorism that killed thousands or tens of thousands of people and/or disrupted the necessities of life for hundreds of thousands, or even millions, would be a watershed event in America's history.

It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented for peacetime and undermine Americans' fundamental sense of security within their own borders in a manner akin to the 1949 Soviet atomic bomb test, or perhaps even worse.

Constitutional liberties would be challenged as the United States sought to protect itself from further attacks by pressing against allowable limits in surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects, and the use of deadly force. More violence would follow, either as other terrorists seek to imitate this great "success" or as the United States strikes out at those considered responsible.

Like Pearl Harbor, such an event would divide our past and future into a "before" and "after."

The effort and resources we devote to averting or containing this threat now, in the "before" period, will seem woeful, even pathetic, when compared to what will happen "after."

Our leaders will be judged negligent for not addressing catastrophic terrorism more urgently."

- Philip Zelikow, "Catastrophic Terrorism", 1998

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077025/

Piers Morgan: 

"It is insdiputable that over 6,000,000 Jews were ahillated by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis"

(Notice, it's now no longer 6,000,000, it's now OVER 6,000,000)

Yes, but it isn't indisputable because of the documentary record, or due to counting - it's indisputable because you're not allowed to dispute the method of accounting.

Even Israeli historians will tell you that the Nazi invasion of the East under Operation Barabarossa unleashed a license to general program in, around and beyond the zone of conflict - several hundred thousand Jews were liquidated by Stalin for partisan activity or failing to answer the call of Mother Russia, or being sent to Punishment Units or Gulags; it was worst in the Baltic States of Lithuania, Lativa and Estonia, where the local population gleefully set about liquidating their own Jewish populations with relish, without having to be told.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on The Holocaust (1978 TV-Mini) vs. Shoah from Spike1138 on Vimeo.
"I have said before that I am not a historian, and when it comes to speaking of the dimensions of the Holocaust, it is the historians that should reflect.

But in general, I can tell you that any crime that happens in history against humanity, including the crimes the Nazis created towards the Jews as well as non-Jews is reprehensible and condemnable. Whatever criminality they committed against the Jews, we condemn."

He basically says exactly the same thing as Amadinijaad did, but uses more tactful language.

He's saying "The 6 million thing is bullshit", without directly referring the 6 million.

Ahmadinejad was notorious for going around saying "the Holocaust is a myth and they lie about it".

But the siege of Troy is a myth; the Kennedy Assassination is a myth; 9/11 is a myth; al-Qaeda is a myth.

Saying something is a myth is not the same as saying its not true or it didn't happen - there are countless real things and real events that are consciously mythologised to drive public policy.

Philip Zelikow wrote that paper on The Power of Public Myth - in reference to Pearl Harbour, and put it into practice by co-authoring Thirteen Days, which was his version of the Cuban Missile Crisis repurposed for propaganda purposes.

And then he wrote the 9/11 Commission Report, before the commissioners began hearing testimony.

And the Holocaust (as distinct from Shoah), IS a myth, we know it is - codified in the 1978 TV Miniseries, that's what the Holocaust *is*; the foundational myth of the apartheid State of Israel.

Holocaust, of course, means "burnt offering", a sacrifice demanded by YAWH of the Israelites; Shoah, I seem to recall, means something closer to "the sadness", which is accurate to the experience of European Jewry during these years; "Holocaust", isn't - Hitler wasn't sacrificing Jews in the Reich, but it IS an accurate turn of phrase from the point of view of the Zionist movement who leverage the deportations and refugee crisis to push their Jewish insurgency in Palestine and further their armed struggle to achieve an ethnically pure Jewish state. And close all the mixed swimming baths in Jerusalem.

Rouhani and Ahmadinejad are BOTH right, and their positions are in no way incompatible, although Ahmadinejad, for his rabble-rousing, was far more pissed off an militant about it the way he expressed himself, playing to the crowd.



https://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/baudrillard-simulacra_and_simulation.pdf




Mae Brussell - The Holocaust (1978 TV-Mini) - April 23,1978 from Spike1138 on Vimeo.
Disregard the stuff about the ADL in the first 10 mins - Mae cleans house.

The Power of Nightmares - Baby It's Cold Outside from Spike1138 on Vimeo.

In The Power of Nightmares, documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis opines that :

"[Leo] Strauss believed it was for politicians to assert powerful and inspiring myths that everyone could believe in.

They might not be true, but they were necessary illusions.

One of these was religion; the other was the myth of the nation."


Strauss noted that thinkers of the first rank, going back to Plato, had raised the problem of whether good and effective politicians could be completely truthful and still achieve the necessary ends of their society.

By implication, Strauss asks his readers to consider whether it is true that noble lies have no role at all to play in uniting and guiding the polis.

Are myths needed to give people meaning and purpose and to ensure a stable society? Or can men dedicated to relentlessly examining, in Nietzsche's language, those "deadly truths," flourish freely?

Thus, is there a limit to the political, and what can be known absolutely?

In The City and Man, Strauss discusses the myths outlined in Plato's Republic that are required for all governments. These include a belief that the state's land belongs to it even though it was likely acquired illegitimately and that citizenship is rooted in something more than the accidents of birth.


Seymour Hersh also claims that Strauss endorsed noble lies: myths used by political leaders seeking to maintain a cohesive society.

The Look on a Conservative C-SPAN Contributor's Face Seconds Before Denying the Shutdown is Racially Motivated

"That... That's just a ridiculous comment..."

The Panama Deception - The Neocolonial Injustice of "Operation Just Cause"

The Panama Deception from Spike1138 on Vimeo.

The U.S. Invasion of Panama 1989: 

The Injustice of "Operation Just Cause"

On December 20, 1989, over 27,000 U.S. troops invaded the small Central American country of Panama. The world’s most powerful military overwhelmed the Panama Defense Force (PDF) and its 3,000 soldiers.

AH-64 Apache helicopter raked the country, both military bases and working class communities. After the PDF crumbled, fighting by irregular Panamanian militia lasted a few days.

The invaders called this "Operation Just Cause."

What were the reasons given for this invasion? They are all too familiar:

The U.S. President, then George Bush, Sr., said he was removing an evil dictator, General Manuel Noriega, who was brutalizing his own people. Noreiega was portrayed on TV as a madman waving a machete. After a concocted incident provoked by U.S. troops, Bush claimed that an invasion was needed to "protect American lives."

Meanwhile, this same Noriega was actually on the CIA payroll (right up to invasion), and the main reason for the invasion was to make sure that the Panama Canal remained under U.S. imperialist control.

Saving Panama’s People from Brutality?

The U.S. has never had qualms about brutalizing the Panamanian people--not during this invasion and not during the previous 83 years of U.S. domination.

In the 1989 invasion, heavy U.S. firepower was turned on civilian communities. The poor working class neighborhood of El Chorillo was burnt to the ground and quickly got a new nickname--"Little Hiroshima." 

Panamanians estimate that between 2,000 and 6,000 people were killed in this invasion. Many of them were dumped into mass graves. Witnesses reported that U.S. troops used flame-throwers on the dead, the bodies shriveling up as they burned.

This invasion was obviously NOT done to protect Panama’s people!

Protecting American Lives?

A U.S soldier was killed by PDF troops. Bush said this meant all 35,000 Americans stationed in Panama were in danger.

In reality, the U.S. government had been working hard to provoke such an incident for months--by running military "exercises" through the streets of Panama City. A schoolteacher was killed by U.S. troops in one exercise. In this artificially charged climate, U.S. soldiers ran a Panamanian checkpoint near a sensitive military installation--and one of them got shot.

And what, after all, were all these 35,000 Americans doing in Panama? They served the U.S. economic, military, and political domination of Panama. And what did it mean to "protect" their safety? It could only mean tightening that domination.

Freeing a Country from a Thug?

General Noriega was a military officer handpicked and trained by U.S. to run Panama. He became a paid CIA operative in 1967 and attended the U.S. Army’s notorious School of the Americas (also known as the School of Assassins). When the previous Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos fell out of U.S. favor (and then fell out of the sky in a 1981 plane crash), Manuel Noriega was hoisted into power with U.S. backing.

Noriega certainly was a corrupt and vicious thug. This was (in part) why Noriega was seen as a valuable "asset," as a ruthless man whose loyalty could be bought, who would do whatever was needed to serve U.S. interests (including suppress the Panamanian people).

Under Noriega, U.S. military operations expanded in Panama. Bush, Sr. personally met with Noriega in 1967 (when he was head of the CIA) and in 1983 (when he was vice president). In the early ‘80s, Noriega helped set up the CIA’s "drugs-for-guns" trade that used cocaine trafficking to finance their secret Contra war against Nicaragua. All during the Reagan ‘80s, Noriega got personal CIA and Pentagon payments of nearly $200,000 a year.

So it was complete hypocrisy for the U.S. government to claim that they were liberating the Panamanian people. The U.S. government (and Bush Sr. personally) had after all imposed this brutal agent on Panama for many years.

When Noriega stole the 1984 Panamanian election, Reagan’s Secretary of State praised the farce for "initiating the process of democracy." But then (with more hypocrisy) the Bush administration suddenly started claiming by 1989 that their invasion was now needed to overthrow Noriega and "restore democracy."

And so what did the invading U.S. force replace Noreiga with in 1989? More handpicked puppets!

Elite U.S. forces seized Noriega and flew him to the U.S. to stand trial--and to take care that he was never allowed to spill all the secrets he knew about the CIA and George Bush 1.

Meanwhile, Guillermo Endara--the U.S. government’s hand-picked choice--was sworn in as president of Panama on a U.S. base in the U.S.-controlled Canal Zone. The new Panamanian president and others in his government were tied to Panamanian banks deep into drug trade and money laundering. And none of them, of course, came to power to serve the Panamanian people.

Elections were held later--under conditions that guaranteed results that would closely serve what the U.S. wanted and needed in Panama. And the main "guarantee" of those results was, of course, the soldiers, guns, and planes of the U.S. military packed all around Panama--forces who had just proven, in case anyone had doubts, that they could be merciless in enforcing U.S. interests.

So What was the Invasion Really About?

The U.S. interest in Panama has always focused on one main thing: the strategic importance of the Panama Canal. The Canal was crucial to U.S. global operations--its capitalist penetration of Latin America and Asia, and its ability to shift its military forces aggressively around the world.

The U.S. stole Panama from Colombia in 1903. They colonized the Canal Zone and packed it with U.S. bases--so that no one (including Panama’s people) could challenge U.S. control. And after World War 2, it became the headquarters of SOUTHCOM--the U.S. military command center for gathering intelligence, carrying out intrigues, and suppressing insurgencies throughout Latin America.

In the 1970s, faced with defeat in Vietnam and growing challenges from its Soviet rivals, the U.S. ruling class decided to change how they exercised control over the Panama Canal Zone--from direct U.S. colonial control, to control through the Panamanian neocolonial government.

As that changeover approached, Noriega looked less and less like the man-for-the-job. Just ten days before much of the administration of the Canal was scheduled to go over to Panama (on January 1, 1990) the U.S. invaded to get rid of Noriega.

Thousands of Panamanians were killed so that Washington could be confident it would keep control of the Canal--and so a new set of corrupt rulers could imposed.

It represented a tightening of the U.S. grip on Panama and all of Latin America. It was one of the first new global moves (after the collapse of the Soviet Union) to push forward the U.S. as the world’s "only superpower"--soon to be followed by the first Gulf War in 1990 (against that other, estranged U.S. ally Saddam Hussein!).

This invasion of Panama was a U.S. war of lies and shame.

This series is available online at revcom.org/history.htm

This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolution Online
http://revcom.us

Israel and WMD

Israel's Nuclear Submarine Fleet from Spike1138 on Vimeo.

"We are not allowed to talk about our operations, because this is the secret to our success. If I tell you what we are planning to do in the next war, The Enemy would be waiting for us, and we don't want to give him a competitative edge - I'll be the one waiting for him!" - Israeli Seaman

Israel operates three Dolphin-class submarines on constant patrol - each Dolphin is capable of carrying, as well as torpedoes, a payload of four intermediate range ballistic missiles with a range of up to 1500 miles, currently understood to be targeted on strategic sites within Iran.

They are also capable of carrying and firing the custom modified Popeye-class anti-ship missiles alleged to have been fired (by Wayne Madsen of the Madsen Report) in the False Flag attack on the USS Cole in Aden on the Third Day of the Second Intifada in October 2000, shortly before the US Presidential Election.

The Clinon Administration were never able to clarify who the culprits were - the incoming Bush Administration belatedly determined that "al-Qaeda did it" but failed to follow up on this, and Lead Investigator and FBI Special Agent in Charge John O'Neill was declared dead as a victim of the World Trade Centre Attacks on 9/11 - however, his deputy, Ali Souffan reports several alarming and strange occurrences for the FBI in Yemen, including a missile lock on the FBI's helicopter by the Yemeni Air Defence Network and several other possible or probable assassination attempts prior to O'Neill's recall due to lobbying by US Ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine (one of Madeline Albright's favourites - Albright has been similarly less than helpful to Bill Clinton and US interests over Iraq, the Kosovo War, the African Embassy Bombings and the Israeli Palestinian Peace Process over the previous 4 years...)

"Netanyahu stuck to his old script at the White House. "Iran's conciliatory words have to be matched by real actions – transparent, verifiable, meaningful actions. Iran is committed to Israel's destruction," he said. He reiterated his previous demands: "Iran must fully dismantle its military nuclear programme. If Iran continues to advance its military programme during negotiations, the sanctions should be strengthened."

Corona KH-4 photograph of Israel’s nuclear research center at Dimona 

(Kirya Le’Mechkar Gariini) (KAMAG), 

10 December 1965 (Courtesy of Global Security).

Israel is NOT a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), does not acknowledge or comment upon the existence or non-existence of its military nuclear programme or nuclear status and has refused every request for an international inspection of its nuclear facilities since 1962 (when they lied to President Kennedy's inspectors, bricked up walls and lift shafts to the lower 5 sub-levels of the facility and hid what they really had.)

Iran HAS signed the NPT, allows inspections by the IAEA and is in full compliance with the Treaty.

But occasionally says "ridiculous things" about Israel.

Madeleine Albright on the Iranian Nuclear Program from Spike1138 on Vimeo.
"They say the most ridiculous things about Israel"

Israel is in an enormous number of respects, a ridiculous country, that does absurd things.

But he appeared to realise that Obama's revived emphasis on diplomatic solutions both in Iran and in Palestine – framed within Iran's apparently more moderate posture – had left him with little alternative, for now at least, but to go along with the US administration and to wait, perhaps, for the inevitable collapse that sooner or later usually attends such well-intentioned initiatives.

While it was an achievement of sorts that a repeat of their 2011 Oval Office row, and any hint of open disagreement, were avoided, it was not a good day for Netanyahu. While reassuring his visitor that he would insist on substantive concessions before relaxing the pressure on Tehran, Obama avoided any mention of a timetable or "red lines", or of any specific steps that Iran must take.

....

Netanyahu's energetic attempts over the past three years to convince the great powers that Iran is the world's number one security threat, akin to but more dangerous than North Korea, thus seems to have run into the sand. Nor do previous veiled threats of Israeli military action against Iran's nuclear sites now appear to have any substance, as US opposition to any such action has stiffened with Obama's re-election and the technical and practical difficulties for Israel of mounting unilateral strikes have become clearer.

Most Israelis – 78%, according to a recent poll – appear to share their prime minister's scepticism about Iran's change of heart, as do numerous American and Israeli commentators. Yet, ironically, the hawkish Netanyahu, a favourite target for American and European liberals, now finds himself under attack from Israel's political right for allegedly failing to stand up to Obama.

Current and former members from far right and nationalist side of the Knesset have been voluble in their concern about Netanyahu's handling of both the Iranian and Palestinian issues. As the Jerusalem Post reported: 

"Likud MK Moshe Feiglin said Netanyahu's conception that the world will take action to prevent a nuclear Iran has collapsed. He said it was now clear to all that Iran will proceed toward a military nuclear capability and the US will not take action to stop it … What Netanyahu needs to ask himself is not what Obama will do, but whether under his own watch, an extremist Muslim country that wants to destroy Israel like Iran will join the nuclear club … That's what history will judge him on. It is wrong to shift our security to the US. It shows we haven't learned anything."

The former Knesset member Aryeh Eldad said Netanyahu and Obama were both "good actors," but the reality facing Israel was starkly clear. 

"Bibi [Netanyahu] gave up the Israel option for military action on Iran, and he is now relying on the US, which says we need to give up on the Palestinian issue in return," Eldad said. "He understands the fight is lost. He sacrificed the land of Israel."

Hunter S. Thompson, 1998: "The Democratic Party are not trying to save Clinton; they are trying to save themselves."

Honourably discharged from the air force in 1958, Thompson began freelance writing, working as the Caribbean correspondent in San Juan, Puerto Rico for the New York Herald Tribune, also reporting from South America in 1962 for the National Observer. During this period, an argument with the National Observer editors over an effusive review of Tom Wolfe's The Kandy-kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamlined Baby left him out of work. Thompson used his enforced leisure time to write a novel, The Rum Diary – the story set in San Juan and narrated by a semi-autobiographical character called Paul Kemp. Thompson spent much of the 60's writing and rewriting the novel, based upon his experiences as a freelance journalist in Puerto Rico during the late 1950's. The Rum Diary, heavily influenced by Thompson's literary heroes Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald and Faulkner, remained unpublished until 1998. 

It was this novel, finally released as a motion picture later this year starring Johnny Depp and directed by Bruce 'Withnail & I' Robinson, that I was meant to be discussing with Thompson on 17th October 1998. There was also the Proud Highway, his recently published first collection of letters spanning 1955 to 1967, and Terry Gilliam's film of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas to discuss.

However, Thompson had completely forgotten that he was supposed to be conducting an interview at the appointed time. He had much more important matters to consider. 

Thompson was frantically trying to complete a very long profile of the disgraced President Bill Clinton for the magazine that had made his name, Rolling Stone. The huge Starr Report, an exhaustive investigation by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr into the affairs of Bill Clinton, had recently been published in September 1998. 

At first conceived as an enquiry into a disastrous land deal, which was termed Whitewater, instigated by the 1993 suicide of deputy White House Council Vince Foster, Starr's enquiry also raked over Clinton's alleged misuse of FBI files, abuse of White House travel agents and the president's performance during a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by a former Arkansas government employee Paula Jones.

During the case, Starr's team were given a tape by Linda Tripp of phone conversations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky talking about having oral sex with Bill Clinton. With the Lewinsky tape, attempts were made in the Paula Jones lawsuit to portray Clinton as a serial adulterer, but Clinton denied having "sexual relations" with Lewinsky. 

Starr, armed with the tapes and a dress of Lewinsky's, provided by Tripp, splattered with Clinton's semen, and surmised that Clinton had perjured himself. Clinton's defence at the Starr Grand Jury rested upon the definition of the term "sexual relations". 

The Starr enquiry would ultimately lead to Clinton's impeachment in December 1998 but despite this the president was acquitted in his trial before the United States Senate. Regardless of the fact that the Republicans then dominated the Senate, they were unable to raise the two-thirds majority in order to convict Clinton. Yet on 17th October 1998 it looked like The Comeback Kid was finally down for the count.

The Clinton/Starr case had also obviously stirred Thompson's memories on 17th October 1998 of his own major trial on 22nd May, 1990, in Pitkin, Aspen, when the author was charged with the following: "Misdemeanour, sexual assault and felony charges of possession of illegal drugs and dynamite." 

Thompson's major problems began on 21st February 1990, when 35-year old Gail Palmer-Slater '"self-employed writer" and producer of hit porn pictures such as Erotic Adventures of Candy, visited Owl Farm, high in the Colorado mountains. Palmer-Slater claimed Thompson punched her and grabbed her left breast when she declined to interview the author in his jacuzzi. 

Thompson counter claimed that Palmer-Slater was seeking publicity for her sex aid business venture.

On 26th February 1990, a team from the office of Milton Bradley, the district attorney in Colorado's Ninth Judicial District, arrived at Owl Farm with a search warrant. Thompson had been warned of their impending arrival, but during a 11 hour search of the ranch the team found various vials, containers, a "round green canister" containing a "a white powdery substance", a 22. Calibre machine gun, a 12-gauge shotgun, explosive blasting caps, "unknown pills", a bronze hookah, a "possible" amount of hashish and a "baggie containing a small quality of a green substance." 

Thompson claimed that the drugs discovered were probably years old as "every freak in the world" had been through his home in the past 24 years. Thompson even tendered his own headline to the press: 

"LIFESTYLE POLICE RAID HOME OF 'CRAZED' GONZO JOURNALIST. 11-HOUR SEARCH BY SIX TRAINED INVESTIGATORS YIELDS NOTHING BUT CRUMBS."

By 30th May 1990, Thompson stood victorious on the steps of Pitkin County Courthouse on Main Street, Aspen. All charges of sexual assault, possession of drugs and dynamite had been dropped by District Judge Charles Buss, who denounced the DA for negligence, malfeasance and criminal abuse of police power. Thompson told the assembled crowd of photographers, reporters and his supporters that his victory was a triumph for all Americans, for the constitutional right to privacy in one's own home and not to be subjected to unwarranted search and seizure. But from that point on, Thompson would become much more wary of intruders into his private domain.

As I anxiously waited for the Owl Farm telephone to answer, I recall fervently hoping that I could actually understand Thompson's curious fast mumbling manner of speaking, which Johnny Depp so successfully mimicked when he portrayed the writer's Raoul Duke alter ego in Gilliam's Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. If Thompson ever picked up the damn phone to begin our interview. Luckily, Thompson did and he was aware of the transatlantic comprehension problem.

Hunter S. Thompson: "Ah!"

Doctor Thompson?

HST: Yeah, I just heard something. Holy Christ, I forgot about that. What is it?

I'm ringing to do the interview for the magazine.

HST: Well, well, well… let's just see how we can take these things over the fly, over the shoulder. I'd actually forgotten about this I'm sorry. It is 2 o'clock on Friday night isn't it?

It's nine o'clock in the morning here.

HST: You're right on schedule. What's your name?

Ian Johnston.

HST: Ian Johnston. Well OK. Let's see. Trying to think, ah. If we do this we have to think about infliction. Having to do a thirty-minute interview and you having any fucking idea of what I've said. Let me give you another line and I'll plug you into the speakerphone. In two minutes.

[Two minutes later]

HST: [pretending to be an answerphone message] Today the market tip is …. Sell Clinton. The stock will not go any higher. Repeat; sell Clinton.

Hello sir.

HST: I had no idea. This had slipped my mind and my assistant had killed herself. It's been bloody rough. This is very fortuitous that you should call out of nowhere. Yeah, I'm spacing out, as they say in some cultures.

You obviously lead a nocturnal existence. Do you find it better to write at night?

HST: Oh yeah, it's too busy during the day. There are too many plumbers and salesmen driving around. It's like writing in a crowd, in the street.

Has it always been like that for you?

HST: As a matter of function, yeah. I wasn't born a vampire bat. As a matter of, take a look around you. I can't handle it. There's no way I can work as a writer during the day. There's just too much happening.

Your farm is quite a communications neve centre, isn't? You've got just about every communication device known to man. How many televisions do you have?

HST: I try, yes. Oh, four, five around the room. It's great to have them side-by-side for various time zones. You have a sense of being on top of the world. A big target. You're at sea level, right?

Yes.

HST: Well. I'm a mile and a half high.

That must be a secure feeling.

HST: [Laughs] Not really, no. They're still after me.

They tried in 1990, didn't they?

HST: Once, they've tried many times. They've made several serious moves on me, but that was a big time bust. That was like having Kenneth Starr after you. That was a controlled, organized war, attack, on me. I don't want to seem melodramatic here, it's a matter of fact, and it's been documented. It was the Fed's, and the local people, the DA. Just like Starr is doing to Clinton.

Because they saw you as a subversive element?

HST: Yeah, I think that's exactly it. What I stand for, what I seem to, is becoming increasing difficult ground to hold.

Just to get on with your own life, in your own way?

HST: Well, that's basic but I am also involved in politics. I'm writing a piece right now, that's why we're a little amok here. I'm writing a terminal judgement on Clinton for Rolling Stone.

Do you think he's had it?

HST: Yeah, yeah, I think so. I see this as one of the people who is going to have to pick-up the pieces, when that crazy, low-rent bastard is gone. I care about that, it doesn't matter what he does. I don't like the man, and he doesn't like me."

Clinton is from a generation that might have read Fear and Loathing…

HST: Oh, he did, yeah. He worked for McGovern. If you don't care about what's going to happen in this country, it's easy to dismiss Clinton and Starr as just a bunch of Nazis. Which is true, in a way. I've already said this in that book Better Than Sex that I wrote. 

There are some very harsh judgements on Clinton in there. I've been through the attack on me and my response was to fight like a wolverine. I'm a professional writer and journalist, and without friends and constitutional lawyers and people like that who came to my aid, I would have gone down the tubes with that. It was a big time assault on me, but I had the added leverage that I knew that I was right. I knew they were going to come after me, just as Clinton knows they are coming after him. 

It was a monumental struggle but it was good, good for everybody. It cost me about a hundred and thirty thousand dollars, but it was worth it. But Clinton isn't really fighting.

See, I was innocent. Not innocent as the driven snow but… I know how Clinton's got himself into this goddamn mess. He's been doing it his whole life. But he's not fighting back, he's just weaselling around. That's going to make him a weak president. That's why I say he's finished.

Do you think if Clinton is impeached and Al Gore steps in that the Democrats will be re-elected?

HST: Well, we're getting into the technical aspects here. I think Gore will be president, one way or another. It's a matter of timing. Gore is really the guy's who's on the hot seat here. He's going to have to pay for Clinton's low-rent foulness. It's like some slime, primeval slime.

It's a surreal situation when the most powerful man on earth has to argue about whether oral sex constitutes a sexual act…

HST: His position is, according to the law as he saw it at that time, and according to his Baptist upbringing, and according to his mother, he was not having sex. 

Sex is for procreation, right. This kind of stuff is an abomination to the Lord, but not a sin. 

He didn't have sex with her, but she had sex with him. 

That's really nuts. He was a good politician, now he's a bad politician.

In that people of Middle America have seen behind the image?

HST: Yeah. Clinton's failure drags down the whole party, everybody who voted for him and everyone who cares about politics. Call yourself a Democrat, a liberal, a radical, whatever; he's wet them with tar. 

The Democratic Party are not trying to save Clinton; they are trying to save themselves. 

I'd just like to add, the election is in the year 2000. There will be no year 2000, just remember I told you that. There will be no point in even voting.

I ain't so disturbed by what he did, but he let the mask slip. Just like your Royal Family over there. I mean, I can identify with oral sex with a telephone, I can identify with a lot of weird shit, a lot better stuff than what he's talking about.

But you've never lied under oath have you?

HST: Exactly. I'm not discussing it every day on TV for nine straight months. It's a shit rain, that's what it is, a shit rain. I think we should get rid of him, but he can't leave before January 20th, or he will cheat Gore out of being a two-term president, ho, ho. Clinton's one of those people who stinks on the street, people run away from him. I have no sympathy for him, and I know that Starr is a Nazi.

Whatever happened to all the evidence about Whitewater?

HST: He didn't need it, that's what happened to it. It's buried in that other thousand pages. It's an ugly thing…. I believe in England you've had some wonderful scandals... Christine Keeler, Christ that was high style scandal. The difference is that those were better people, from Christine Keeler to Profumo. They were all better people than Clinton. My editor has been banging on my shoulder here, saying that we just got a copy of my novel The Rum Diary.

Yes, the novel. Why has it taken so long to present it to the public? Why now?

HST: Err, I was offered six hundred thousand dollars.

Hadn't you been offered that kind of money before?

HST: Oh well, no, err, not that much, no. I've got a lot of stuff I never sold. Every real writer has, not just a desk full, but rooms full of the stuff that wasn't sold.

Are there any more novels then?

HST: Not complete, I don't think. This one just happens to be complete. This was my Holy Grail. I was a novelist when I wrote this. This was hard work, confronting myself, what, 40 years ago? Having to edit it without changing the points of view was very strange. It's before the 60s, that's the eerie thing about it. It's before Kennedy, the end of the 50s. 

Before drugs really hit - in my life, anyway. Before Kennedy, before Castro, before Cuba, before the moon walks, before, you know, missiles. It was like discovering a weird Sanskrit book from another time. I hadn't looked at it in twenty years.

I believe it was the Proud Highway, the letters book, that caused a lot of people to demand it. And suddenly I was offered money for it. I was not eager to do it, I wasn't thinking, 'Hot damn, man, finally I'll get this novel out.' But now I'm looking at it, right here in front of me, the first time I've seen it. Christ, I'm looking around me at all this stuff about Clinton and all the rest that's happening, and this novel is a very pure piece of work.

Is the Paul Kemp character your only alter ego in The Rum Diary or do some of the characters reflect…

HST: They all do, really. See when I wrote it, I was right in the middle of it, it was my reality. I made sure not to have the same Romans-a-clef kind of figures. There is nobody here who is purely anybody. But I can see parts of myself in Kemp and Yeamon. It's a really good piece of journalism, if you look at it. If you look at it as journalism, it's a classic.

The novel captures the tension that builds in a tropical climate "where men sweat twenty four hours a day", to quote The Rum Diary.

HST: Hot damn! What else do you remember, right off the top of your head, any scene that comes to mind? And thank you for that.

The beating by the police. Did that happen to you down there?

HST: Yeah, yeah, oh yes. That's why I say, if you look at it from a different angle, this could be very good journalism. You can't expect people to look at it that way, and they shouldn't, so it becomes a story. But I could call everything in this book journalism and it would probably pass.

The newspaper's editor and proprietor is a remarkable character, isn't me?

HST: Lotterman, oh yeah. We were thinking of having Jack Nicholson play Lotterman in the movie.

So a film is coming?

HST: Oh yeah, that's rolling. Nicholson would be perfect. Nobody laughs in this movie at any jokes. That's why Nicholson would be perfect. And Johnny Depp probably as Kemp. We are having fun with it. I never thought I'd get to this point, sitting around here deciding whether or not Jack Nicholson would be right for this part. 

[To his editor] Ok, I'll get off. 

[Back on line] I have to come to some sort of conclusion about Clinton, and I reckon he should go. It's weird; I'm living really two lives. I have in front of me here my book Better Than Sex, a very, very political book. One of the most accurate political books ever written. It's scary to read. It might have been written last week. 

But I also have in front of me The Rum Diary, which is a completely different world. Very weird. I see different pictures of myself on the covers. One is a bald, Freak Power person; the other is this handsome youth drinking a beer on a beach. It's kind of funny. And I still have to deal with the president.

It's been a very long, strange journey, hasn't it?

HST: Very good, yeah [laughs].

Do you still see Johnny Depp socially?

HST: Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. He's going... Well we are talking about this film, but he's been over in Paris for a long time. In fact, this is a tip for you, this is horrible, but he's going to be in London in the next few months. He's making a film with Tim Burton.

What happened with the Fear And Loathing movie when director Alex Cox came round to your place?

HST: Funny you should ask about that, we have a movie of it. Yeah, well, it's a tasty subject. Made by this famous underground filmmaker Wayne Ewing, who is right here now, helping me on this Clinton story. We were just talking about it this afternoon. It's a really heinous piece of work. Yeah, it's a documentary. It should be used in film study school to show how bad things can go when you don't approach a subject correctly.

Does it have a title? [It was eventually released as Breakfast with Hunter in 2003].

HST: Not yet, but it's the ultimate documentary. It's a piece of work and a total accident. But it's involved in various litigations, so we've kept it under wraps.

Did you like Terry Gilliam's film of Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas?

HST: Err, yeah. I like it. It's very hard to look at films in which you are literally a participant, or… and it's impossible to make any sort of judgements. Yeah, I liked it but it's not my show, but I appreciated it. Depp did a hell of a job.

You got on better with Terry Gilliam than you did with Alex Cox?

HST: Yeah, yeah, you could say that [laughs]. I had my flares with Gilliam. I hold no… Alex Cox is fine, he just happened to be at one point in time. It was a crystallised situation. I got an education in film, that's what I got on the movie. It was definitely in the small direction. Johnny is really good to work with, yeah, he's fun.

His performance was perfect for the style of the film, isn't it?

HST: Yeah, definitely. His narration is what really held the film together, I think. If you hadn't had that it would have just been a series of wild scenes. It was hard to do a movie that was as faithful as possible to the book. 

There is a melancholy humour in the book that was missing from the film, but in fact it's a story about two professionals who were taking a break on the road. I was a political journalist and Oscar Acosta [Dr. Gonzo] was a very prominent lawyer. 

This wasn't a bunch of bums wandering into Vegas, but that was unexplainable, so yeah, I liked it. Maybe I should eat some acid watching it. People who have read the book will watch the movie, and people who have watched the movie will read the book. Yeah. It's very hard to compare books to movies, and I don't pretend to have any of the wisdom or skill of the director. For instance, The Rum Diary is a lot easier to deal with.