19 September 2010 By Jeff Gates By Jeff Gates Many of America’s most
prominent political leaders were induced to comment on
“International Burn A Koran Day”—a high profile
provocation proposed by a Christian-Zionist preacher
with a small congregation in a small town in Florida. When U.S. General David
Petraeus spoke out against the proposal, the issue
immediately gained an international profile as did
Pastor Terry Jones who quickly became an international
celebrity. One need not dig deep to
identify who may have advised General Petraeus to
grant a global profile to a provocation consistent
with Israeli goals for the region. In March, as head of Central Command, Petraeus
offered testimony to the Senate Armed Services
Committee confirming facts that have long been obvious
but are seldom mentioned: our “special relationship”
with Israel and its oppressive occupation of Palestine
undermine U.S. interests in the Middle East and
endanger American personnel. Read it for yourself: “The enduring hostilities between Israel and some
of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our
ability to advance our interests… Israeli-Palestinian
tensions often flare into violence and large-scale
armed confrontations. The conflict foments
anti-American sentiment due to a perception of U.S.
favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian
question limits the strength and depth of U.S.
partnerships with governments and peoples in the
[region] and weakens the legitimacy of moderate
regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and
other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize
support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the
Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and
Hamas….” Petraeus is often spoken of as a potential
Republican presidential candidate. Thus the chagrin
among some in Washington when this high profile
military leader appeared to curry favor with Max Boot,
a former Wall Street Journal op-ed editor and
outspoken Zionist. In an apparent attempt to soften
the candor of his written testimony before the Senate,
he wrote to Boot: “Does it help if folks know that I hosted Elie
Wiesel and his wife at our quarters last Sun night?!
And that I will be the speaker at?the 65th anniversary
of the liberation of the concentration camps in
mid-Apr at the Capitol Dome…” Boot wrote back to assure him that those comments
were not necessary as Petraeus had not been described
as anti-Semitic. Boot then posted a pro-Petraeus piece
on the website for Commentary, a
neoconservative publication, assuring readers that the
general is not anti-Israel and dismissing his
anti-Israel comments as inserted by staff in his
statement—that Petraeus reviewed. The Supporting Cast After General Petraeus, now senior commander in
Afghanistan, created a high profile for the
Burn-A-Koran controversy, comments were offered by
Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama. With that,
the provocation went viral. These fuel-the-fire comments were followed by a
personal appeal to Pastor Jones in a phone call from
Defense Secretary Robert Gates that also went viral. As any game theorist could predict, even the
possibility of such a psy-ops (a Koran book
burning) was guaranteed to galvanize anti-American
sentiments and catalyze anti-American demonstrations.
As the book burning gained steadily more profile, this
provocation increased the probability of catalyzing
long-lasting anti-American sentiments. This stunt bears a remarkable resemblance to a
Newsweek story alleging that a U.S. soldier
flushed a Koran down the toilet. Though that May 2005
account by Michael Isikoff was later withdrawn in
substantial part, its publication provoked an earlier
well-timed response by setting off anti-American
demonstrations in Muslim countries worldwide. At first, the story gained only scant attention.
That muted response changed dramatically when
Pakistani cricket star Imran Khan gave Isikoff’s story
an international profile by announcing from Islamabad
that American military personnel had desecrated a holy
Islamic text. That’s when this Clash of Civilizations-catalyzing,
U.S.-discrediting account went viral. In practical
effect, Khan’s celebrity was appropriated to associate
the U.S. military with conduct similar in its psy-ops
effect to the profile given an American proposing to
burn a Koran. Newsweek was recently acquired by Sidney
Harman, the husband of California Congresswoman Jane
Harman, the Jewish Zionist chair of the Intelligence
Subcommittee of the House Committee on Homeland
Security. At the time of this provocation,
Newsweek was a magazine affiliate of The
Washington Post newspaper, an influential
opinion-shaping newspaper based in the nation’s
capital. In the annals of “field-based warfare,” the
Koran-flushing story will go down in history as a
classic psy-ops for its success in targeting the minds
of a built-in audience outside the U.S.—cricket
fans—as a vulnerable and receptive shared field of
consciousness. When the high-profile Imran Khan described the
alleged incident as factual, this operation
transcended the literacy barrier as it provoked
Muslims who did not even need to read in order to be
reached—and provoked. And because the story targeted cricket fans, its
impact was disastrous to Americans while also
remaining invisible to America where cricket is
neither a well known activity nor a widely played
sport. In what passes for mainstream American media, the
Isikoff story was called news. In national security
parlance, the well-timed launch of that provocative
storyline is called tactical psy-ops. So far, the
Koran-burning story is being attributed solely to the
whims of a southern preacher. Stay tuned. It may be only a coincidence that Jones
was a high school classmate of Rush Limbaugh,
America’s most provocative radio talk show host. Information Age Warfare If this sounds familiar, it should. You may recall
when the wartime role played by global media became
apparent in the Clash-catalyzing “cartoon
riots” that swept the world in February 2006. That
reaction followed the publication in France, Germany,
Italy and Spain of graphic images of the prophet
Muhammad that first appeared in a Danish newspaper in
September 2005. Citing free speech as the rationale, cultural
editor Flemming Rose published a compilation of
cartoons certain to be seen by Muslims as blasphemous,
including one featuring Muhammad with a bomb in place
of a turban. An Ashkenazi native of Ukraine, Rose worked as a
reporter for five years in Moscow during the
oligarchi-zation of Russia. As his contribution to
that nationwide fraud, he translated into Danish a
fawning 1990 autobiography (Against the Stream)
of presidential candidate Boris Yeltsin whose
administration enabled the wildly successful financial
pillaging of Russia. Six of the top seven Russian oligarchs were
Ashkenazim who qualified for Israeli citizenship. Rose’s career tracks the trajectory of a typical
media asset. After Russia, he relocated to Washington,
D.C. Again employed as a journalist, he traveled to
China with Bill Clinton before returning to Moscow to
work for Jyllands-Posten, a rightwing Danish
publication known for its anti-immigrant news fare. Before catalyzing the cartoon crisis, Rose
published a flattering interview with the
Islam-bashing Daniel Pipes who heads Campus Watch.
This organization monitors, disrupts and seeks to
intimidate pro-Palestinian speakers when they accept
invitations to speak at U.S. colleges. Pipes is the neoconservative, Jewish-Zionist son of
“Team B” leader Richard Pipes a Polish emigre. Team B
was a 1976 alternative intelligence assessment whose
success with phony intelligence during the presidency
of Gerald Ford (when G.H.W. Bush was C.I.A. Director)
informed those who fixed the intelligence that enabled
the U.S. to segue seamlessly from the Cold War to the
War on Terrorism during the presidency of G.W. Bush. After the promotion of Rose to cultural editor and
publication of the provocative cartoons, CNN anchor
Wolf Blitzer featured Pipes on The Situation Room.
By showcasing Pipes, Blitzer ensured the airwaves
would carry his anti-Islam interpretation of the
Rose-catalyzed, media-fueled crisis. Blitzer elected not to inform the viewers of CNN
(“the most trusted name in news”) that he (Blitzer)
served as an editor of Near East Report, the
Israel lobby’s in-house journal, or that he spent 17
years with The Jerusalem Post, or that he
published a sympathetic book on Israeli super-spy
Jonathan Pollard who did more than anyone in history
to damage U.S. national security. The ensuing crisis cost many lives while the
reaction to that provocation consumed the public’s
attention and polarized public opinion
internationally. Appearing on television, Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice used the crisis to criticize
Iran and Syria, adding American credibility and
military authority to stoke The Clash of
Civilizations as the post-Cold War narrative. Overall, the response heightened tensions and made
an attack on Iran appear more reasonable as scenes of
widespread outrage by Muslims fueled Islamo-phobia in
the West. To escape the media scrutiny, Rose fled to
the U.S. where he vacationed in Miami. Timing is Everything The usual suspects stepped into the fray in support
of Pastor Terry Jones’ First Amendment right to
further outrage an already outraged Muslim population
for whom the Koran is a sacred text. Supporting cast for the Jones stunt included New
York Mayor Michael Bloomberg who chose an annual Iftar
dinner at Gracie Mansion to cite the U.S. Constitution
in support of this provocation. Likewise for New
York Times columnist Charles Blow whose
prominently placed op-ed on September 11th
urged that “great American debates” should not be
“tempered for terrorists.” National security may (at long last) be catching on
to how those complicit in these psy-ops use
our guaranteed freedoms (of speech, press, religion,
etc.) to undermine our freedom. It’s no coincidence
that those most concerned about domestic eavesdropping
by national security are drawn from the same ranks as
those complicit in this ongoing manipulation of public
opinion. The high profile nature of this latest 911
anniversary ensured that agent provocateurs
would use the event to keep hate alive. The day prior,
President Obama urged that Israel extend its
“temporary partial freeze” on settlements for the sake
of sustaining the peace talks. Meanwhile Jewish Zionist Pamela Zeller sponsored a
speech at Ground Zero by Dutch politician Geert
Wilders who likens the Koran to Mein Kampf. A
staunch supporter of Israel, Wilders is known for his
incendiary speeches with a strong anti-Islam theme. Geller, a disciple of Russian philosopher Ayn Rand
(Alisa Rosenbaum), advocates measures to “Stop
Islamization of America.” She emphasizes the role of
Barack Obama in doing the bidding of “Islamic
overlords” in what she calls “The Obama
Administration’s War on America.” An outspoken Jewish Zionist, Geller urges that
Israel “give up nothing.” A regular commentator on
Zionist-dominated media outlets (CNN, Fox News,
The Washington Post, The New York Times),
she insists that Israel should “take back Gaza” and
“secure Judea and Samaria”—better known as the West
Bank, the key area of contention on expansion of the
settlements. Geller is also a driving force behind anti-Islam
hate groups working to scuttle plans for an Islamic
Cultural Center two blocks from the 911 site. Allied
with others in the hate campaign, she was among the
first in November 2009 to describe the shootings on
Fort Hood, Texas as a “Muslim terror attack.”
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