Kurt Nimmo - November 6, 2008

It’s too bad more Americans didn’t listen to the neocon wunderkind, Bill Kristol, before going to the polling places and voting for Barack Obama. Back in June, Kristol told the audience at an AIPAC conference there is little difference between Obama and McCain when it comes to Iran and the potential for conflict. “Obama’s not for cutting the defense budget,” said Kristol. “Obama’s not for pulling troops back from our forward positions around the world, with the exception of Iraq. Obama and McCain don’t actually differ, at least on paper, even on Iran, where they’re arguing about whether they would talk to [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad or not — and I think that’s an important dispute. Still, at the end of the day, Obama doesn’t say he would rule out the use of force.”

Unfortunately, by the time election day rolled around, few people seemed to realize or care that Obama is essentially a neocon dedicated to the very same agenda as McCain, who was handled by a bevy of neocons. McCain wasn’t called McBush for nothing. Now that the election is over and Obama won handily, it will be safe for him to show his real colors, as he did less than 12 hours after cinching the nomination back in June. During the election, few seemed to remember this undying devotion to Israel, so pervasive was the Obama voodoo trance.

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Christopher Ketcham - September 26, 2008

How Israeli Backdoor Technology Penetrated the US Government’s Telecom System and Compromised National Security

Since the late 1990s, federal agents have reported systemic communications security breaches at the Department of Justice, FBI, DEA, the State Department, and the White House. Several of the alleged breaches, these agents say, can be traced to two hi-tech communications companies, Verint Inc. (formerly Comverse Infosys), and Amdocs Ltd., that respectively provide major wiretap and phone billing/record-keeping software contracts for the US government. Together, Verint and Amdocs form part of the backbone of the government’s domestic intelligence surveillance technology. Both companies are based in Israel – having arisen to prominence from that country’s cornering of the information technology market – and are heavily funded by the Israeli government, with connections to the Israeli military and Israeli intelligence (both companies have a long history of board memberships dominated by current and former Israeli military and intelligence officers). Verint is considered the world leader in “electronic interception” and hence an ideal private sector candidate for wiretap outsourcing. Amdocs is the world’s largest billing service for telecommunications, with some $2.8 billion in revenues in 2007, offices worldwide, and clients that include the top 25 phone companies in the United States that together handle 90 percent of all call traffic among US residents. The companies’ operations, sources suggest, have been infiltrated by freelance spies exploiting encrypted trapdoors in Verint/Amdocs technology and gathering data on Americans for transfer to Israeli intelligence and other willing customers (particularly organized crime). “The fact of the vulnerability of our telecom backbone is indisputable,” says a high level US intelligence officer who has monitored the fears among federal agents. “How it came to pass, why nothing has been done, who has done what – these are the incendiary questions.” If the allegations are true, the electronic communications gathered up by the NSA and other US intelligence agencies might be falling into the hands of a foreign government. Reviewing the available evidence, Robert David Steele, a former CIA case officer and today one of the foremost international proponents for “public intelligence in the public interest,” tells me that “Israeli penetration of the entire US telecommunications system means that NSA’s warrantless wiretapping actually means Israeli warrantless wiretapping.”

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Justin Raimondo - September 3, 2008

While the rest of the pundits opine about the meaning and implications of Sarah Palin’s ascension from small town mayor to prospective vice president – and whether or not her daughter’s private life is fair game for any media outlet other than the National Enquirer – those of us whose job it is to stand watch on the ramparts and report the real news are wondering when – not if – the War Party will pull a rabbit out of the proverbial hat. For months, I’ve been warning in this space that an American attack on Iran is imminent, and now I see that the Dutch have reason to agree with my assessment. Their intelligence service reportedly has pulled out of a covert operation inside Iran on the grounds that a U.S. strike is right around the corner – in “a matter of weeks,” according to De Telegraaf, a Dutch newspaper.

As the story goes, the Dutch had infiltrated the purported Iranian weapons project and were firmly ensconced when they got word that the Americans are about to launch a missile attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. They wisely decided to close down the operation and pull out.

Remember, the Israelis have been threatening to strike on their own for months: what’s changed is that now, apparently, the U.S. has caved in to what is a blatant case of blackmail and has agreed to do the job for them.

We haven’t heard much about Iran lately, at least compared to the scare headlines of a few months ago, when rumors of war were swirling fast and furious. The Russian “threat” seems to have replaced the Iranian “threat” as the War Party’s bogeyman of choice. What we didn’t know, however, is that the two focal points are intimately related.

According to this report by veteran Washington Times correspondent Arnaud de Borchgrave, the close cooperation of the Israelis with the Georgian military in the run-up to President Saakashvili’s blitz of South Ossetia was predicated on a Georgian promise to let the Israelis use Georgia’s airfields to mount a strike against Iran.

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