Posts Tagged ‘Iran’
Mark Dankof for the Lutheran Ministerium and Synod–USA: The Chosen People of God: Who Are They?
Pastor Mark Dankof on the Chosen People of God. Who are They? I Peter 2: 9-10 is the Rosetta Stone.
[This transcript represents a greatly abbreviated version of the sermon delivered by Mark Dankof in Chetek, Wisconsin on June 23rd, 2013 at the closing worship service in Christ Lutheran Church for the National Convention of the Lutheran Ministerium and Synod--USA.]
The Logo of the LMS-USA and the Pillars of Luther’s Reformation: Christ Alone, Faith Alone, Grace Alone, Scripture Alone.
“But you are a Chosen People, a Royal Priesthood, a Holy Nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God: once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
I Peter 2: 9-10
It is good to see all of you again at this treasured annual gathering of a small segment of the remnant of the Chosen People of God in the closing days of the Church Age and the end of history itself as we approach the Second Advent of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
As I open our very brief time together at our Convention’s closing worship service on this blessed Fifth Sunday After Pentecost, I’m blissfully reminded of three (3) things. First, each time I come back here, my earliest memories of the American Midwest and those that would follow over many years keep flooding back. The Middle West is where my roots are, having been born to parents from Southwest Iowa, who grew up in the years of the Great Depression in the run up to World War II. At the same time, being the son of a United States Air Force officer, there were no roots for me at all. I would travel all over our country, as well as Europe, Southeast and Central Asia, the Middle East, the former Soviet Union, and South Africa. Of all of these sojourns that God would grant me for reasons known only to Him, many of you know that Iran would be the place where many of my fondest memories of traveling the globe would reside. When I returned from South Africa last December, I wrote a brief essay on this insight. It is entitled, “A Reminder of God’s Existence From Long Ago.”
Secondly, when I come to these Conventions, my mind inevitably drifts back to the salad days of the formation of the American Association of Lutheran Churches (AALC) in 1987. This is where I would first encounter Pastors Ralph Spears and John Erickson, who have remained among my best friends in life. Can it really be over a quarter of a century ago that our journey began?
Finally, it is June 23rd today. Every June 23rd, my mind goes back to June 23rd, 1967 when my family was transferred from Hawaii the first time, and transported back to the Mainland on the S. S. Lurline bound for San Francisco. Last year, I shared this experience of 46 years ago at our National Convention with many of you. Incredibly enough, that was exactly one year ago today, on June 23rd, 2012, when my message to the gathered was entitled, “The Famine, The Watchman, and The Remnant.” Given that fact that we are now a year closer to the return of our Lord Jesus Christ, I hope that presentation continues to encourage both you and me as the horizon of history continues to darken as storm clouds approach our position near Midnight.
Today’s message based on the classic text of I Peter 2: 9-10, familiar to so many of us who toiled as kids in the Lutheran Catechetical system a lifetime ago, has three applications to us today and to the entirety of the people of God throughout linear time. The text reads as follows:
“But you are a Chosen People, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God: once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
I Peter 2: 9-10
The first application Biblically is this: God chooses great people in history to minister to His saints in times of global oppression and evil. I was reminded of this only eight (8) days ago in Houston, Texas when privileged to see the Cyrus Cylinder at the Museum of Fine Art there, courtesy of a loan of the Cylinder to a series of America’s greatest museums courtesy of the British Museum.
What is the significance of Cyrus the Great, the first of the Achaemenid Kings of Ancient Persia, where the Old Testament is concerned? The Bible is absolutely explicit on this point. After the 70 year Captivity visited upon Ancient Judah courtesy of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, a Captivity which included the Temple Destruction of 586 B. C. [Tisha B'Av], God’s prophets underscore that this catastrophe brought upon Judah because of its own sin and rebellion against God (Jeremiah 25:1- 29:32) would be followed by a Deliverance and a Restoration. King Cyrus the Great would be the Chosen Instrument of God in this process, a prototype and forerunner of Jesus Christ, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah (2 Chronicles 22-23; Ezra, chapters 1, 3, 4, 5, 6; Isaiah, chapters 44 and 45; and Daniel, chapters 1, 6, 10).
The Cyrus Cylinder in Houston’s Museum of Fine Art on June 15th, 2013. Mark Dankof photo.
Particularly striking are the words of Isaiah, who foretold the coming Persian King’s arrival in history 150 years in advance of his appearance, courtesy of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God:
“. . . [The Lord] who says of Cyrus, ‘He is my Shepherd and will accomplish all that I please; he will say of Jerusalem, ‘Let it be rebuilt,’ and of the temple, ‘Let its foundations be laid. . . . I will raise up Cyrus in my righteousness: I will make all his ways straight. He will rebuild my city and set my exiles free, but not for a price or reward, says the Lord Almighty.”
And Ezra tells us in chapter one that:
“In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and to put it in writing. This is what Cyrus king of Persia says, ‘The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and He has appointed me to build a temple for Him at Jerusalem in Judah. Anyone of His people among you–may his God be with Him, and let Him go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the temple of the Lord, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem. . . .’”
Now fast forward to I Peter 2: 9-10. What is the connection of the Apostle and his text to the events of the Sixth Century B. C. and an ancient Persian King?
I will say it again: The first application Biblically is this: God chooses great people in history to minister to His saints in times of global oppression and evil.
Peter is writing his Epistle to a group of churches in the part of Asia Minor north of the Taurus Mountains. The context is the approaching outburst of persecution directed at Christians by Nero (A. D. 54-68) in A. D. 64. The martyrdom of the Apostle Paul is just beyond the horizon. Peter’s horrific upside down crucifixion at Nero’s direction before the latter’s death in A. D. 68 is but a handful of years away (John 21: 18-19). The storm clouds that approached Ancient Judah after the death of King Josiah in 609 B. C. and culminated in Nebuchadnezzar’s temple destruction in 586 B. C., are gathering again for the people of God living under the Roman Caesar’s reign in the First Century A. D. But God does not desert His faithful. As Cyrus the Great made his Sixth Century B. C. appearance at a time of the Lord’s providential designation, so Paul and Peter have been commissioned to minister to the faithful in the midst of the exponential increase in evil in human history embodied by the Ancient Roman Empire. And the message and witness of these Apostles is clear: the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s Son, is the center of the plan of salvation designed before the foundation of the world for those who believe (I Peter 1: 3-5). And those who believe in the midst of a national culture centered in the things of the Beast (Revelation 13), will endure persecution and oppression at the hands of a majority who have rejected the Messiah, both in a First Century Judah nearing God’s judgment for its role in the rejection of the proclamation of the Kingdom of God (Matthew 24: 1-2), and in a Roman Empire moving toward the Emperor Worship Cultus of Domitian (81-96 A. D.) at the time of the writing of the Apocalypse of John (Revelation 13).
John on Patmos: Exiled Because of Resistance to the Emperor Worship Cultus of Domitian
(A. D. 81-96).
The same principle applies to Christians in a 21st century America and Western World which have largely abandoned the faith “that was once for all entrusted to the Saints (Jude, verse 3).” Peter warns us as he warned his contemporaries in Asia Minor that we are to be fully ready for this. In I Peter 4:12 he emphatically tells believers “. . . do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when His glory is revealed.”
It is painful for many of us as lifelong denizens of an older American culture, especially in the Middle West and the Southern United States, to recognize how this nation has become a part of the same post-Christian culture of our European counterparts across the Atlantic Ocean. And how closely we are beginning to resemble the ethos of the Ancient Roman Empire. As the late Evangelical Francis Schaeffer observed in the aftermath of the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, we are increasingly a Culture of Death. Abortion-On-Demand; every form and brand of sexual perversion; rampant violence and crime; the collapse of the family; the embrace of a Hollywood culture enshrouded in moral sewage; a staggering level of budgetary and national debt; a thoroughly corrupt political and banking system centered in fiat money, usury, and confiscatory taxation; and the overextension of our military presence globally, are the symptoms. but the root cause is fundamentally a rejection of the Gospel and of God’s Word on an individual and collective basis. Those who refuse to take the Mark of the Beast (Revelation 13), either in the Rome of Nero and Domitian, or in the increasingly anti-Christian West of the 21st Century, may fully expect trial, tribulation, persecution, imprisonment, and ultimately martyrdom. As Peter has already told us, “. . . do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when His glory is revealed.” This is the bottom line.
The second application of I Peter 2: 9-10 Biblically is this: God chooses to deliver on His promises, both those made to members of His Son’s Kingdom and those made to individuals and societies outside of the Kingdom of God in Christ.
Any reasonable interpretation of this text and of the New Testament throughout, tells us that the Chosen People of God according to the teachings of our Lord and His apostles, include all who believe in Jesus as Crucified and Risen Savior. Paul assures us in Romans 10:9 that if “you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.” This too, is the bottom line.
The New Testament and I Peter 2: 9-10 as a part of that corpus, explicit reject the notion that the Chosen People of God and the Kingdom of God itself, are rooted in notions of racial supremacy, racial identification, nationalism, military power, political power, or economic supremacy. Jesus makes this clear in his debate with the Pharisees in John 8: 31-58. Modern Christian Zionism, based in these false assumptions and in the 19th century eschatological inventions of John Nelson Darby and the Scofield Reference Bible [see charts in "The Famine, The Watchman, and The Remnant" regarding an alleged parenthesis between the 69th and 70th weeks of Daniel, chapter 9], has resurrected the very false teachings surrounding the Kingdom, the Covenants, Obedience, and Racial Identification that permeated the thinking of the Pharisees in John 8 and those who called for the release of Barabbas on the night of the Savior’s betrayal (Matthew 27:25). This was the thinking of Paul prior to his conversion on the road to Damascus (Acts 9). It is an explicit denial of the core doctrine of Justification by Faith in Jesus Christ Alone known as the Material Principle of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century.
This is why Peter uses 2: 9-10 to reiterate what Paul says in Ephesians 1:4 when he states that “. . . He [God the Father] chose us in Him [God the Son, Jesus Christ] before the foundation of the world . . .” Peter now tells believers in Christ who are racial Gentiles who were “once not a people” that they are “now the people of God” (I Peter 2: 10). He assures his audience that, “Once you [Gentiles] had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
Peter now applies the terms and the concepts of Old Testament Judaism to Gentiles who believe in Jesus Christ (verse 9). They are now a “Chosen People.” They are now members of a Royal Priesthood [of all believers in Jesus Christ], and are a “Holy Nation” and a ”People Belonging to God.” The Apostle’s application of these terms and concepts to Gentile Christians is fraught with impending spiritual and political irony. After Peter’s death by crucifixion in A. D. 68 in Rome, it would only be two years before the Romans would visit Jerusalem in a fashion reminiscent of Nebuchadnezzar in the Sixth Century B. C., and would destroy yet another Jewish Temple on Tisha B’Av (August 9th) in the year A. D. 70. The notion of National and Racial Judah as the Chosen People of God in the New Testament Era had come to a catastrophic end, never to be resurrected again (Matthew 21: 19 and Mark 11: 14).
As for the true Chosen People of God, it is critical that those “chosen” are also a People “called.” We are called “out of darkness.” We are called “into His wonderful light.” God’s call is to his “elect” (I Peter 1:1). The elect have been “chosen according to the foreknowledge of God,” (I Peter 1:2) which involves both divine mystery and grace linked to the blood of Jesus Christ (I Peter 1:2).
The third and final application of Biblical principles using I Peter 2: 9-10 is as follows: You and I, as the Chosen People of God by his mysterious love and grace alone, have an inheritance (I Peter 1: 4) that is imperishable.
If we are living in the hour of history I sense we are, what are the implications of this for you and me? As we close this National Convention, what do you take from these last 3 days and from this sanctuary and the classrooms here at Christ Lutheran in Chetek? What do you return home with that will encourage you and empower you and your loved ones in trying times? Why do we continue in a faith that seems less appealing than ever in our dying culture, and in an America increasingly unrecognized by those of us of an earlier vintage?
In a nutshell, the answer is in a gift of God to you and me that involves mercy, rebirth, new beginnings, a new life, and an imperishable inheritance being kept in a Divine Repository for safe keeping until the right time. This is the final bottom line of which we speak on the Fifth Sunday After Pentecost in the year 2013. The Chosen People of God shall be the final winners at the end of history, and in the eternity to come, in a world without end.
I Peter 1: 3-5 serves as a marvelous companion to I Peter 2: 9-10 and our Chosen People theme for the 2013 National Convention of the Lutheran Ministerium and Synod–USA:
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade–kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.”
As that last time draws ever closer, so does your salvation and the arrival of your long awaited and promised inheritance. For every ending there is a New Beginning. The best is yet to come for you, and for me, as we await the re-entry of the Logos into the time and space of this present cosmos. And now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of God the Holy Spirit be with you now, and always. Amen.
Fort Sumter, False Flags, and The Empire’s Coming Crusade Against Iran
Mark Dankof in Washington, D. C. in November of 2011
It is no accident that Michael Gerson, a major schill of the Establishment Corporate Media’s (ECM) chorus for a Zionist-inspired war with Iran, has stepped forward in the Washington Post to broadside Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, and to concurrently publish a breathtaking synthesis of ignorance and duplicity regarding the American War Between the States in the 19th century. Gerson is joined in his transparent machinations for the Israeli Lobby against the Presidential campaign of the Texas Republican Congressman by fellow agents Wolf Blitzer and Dana Bash of CNN, who pulled the plug on U. S. Army Corporal Jesse Thorsen during an on-air interview with the Corporal on the night of the January 3rd Iowa Caucus. It seems the young man’s comments on why the United States didn’t need to be a surrogate military force in the Middle East for the Jewish State were too much on target to be placed before the American people for honest examination and consideration. George Orwell lives. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA), which has ruthlessly exposed the backgrounds of Blitzer and Bash, has the video of the latest version of the Hasbara Project online. Check out the following synopsis from WRMEA:
Blitzer is a former employee of AIPAC, Israel’s behemoth Washington, DC lobby (see former Sen. James Abourezk’s “Wolf Blitzer, AIPAC, and the Saudi Peace Initiative” in the July 2007 Washington Report, p. 16, also posted on our Web site). The CNN anchor also is the author of Territory of Lies: The Exclusive Story of Jonathan Jay Pollard: The American Who Spied on His Country for Israel and How He Was Betrayed (the title seeming to imply that it was Pollard, rather than his native country, who was betrayed).
Senior congressional correspondent Bash joined CNN as Dana Schwartz, her maiden name. Her father, Stu Schwartz, is a senior broadcast producer at ABC News and her mother, Frances Weinman Schwartz, is, according to Wikipedia, “an educator in Jewish studies and author of the book, Passage to Pesach, and co-author with Rabbi Eugene Borowitz of two books, Jewish Moral Virtues and A Touch of the Sacred.” In 1998 the CNN correspondent married her first husband, Jeremy Bash, chief of staff to Leon Panetta in his capacities as both defense secretary and former CIA chief. The son of the chief rabbi of the Arlington Fairfax (VA) Jewish Congregation, Bash was chief minority council to the House Intelligence Committee when the pro-Israel Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) was its top Democrat prior to the 2006 elections. The Bashes divorced in 2007. The following year Dana Bash married fellow CNN congressional correspondent John King, who converted to Judaism prior to their marriage.
But we are not to worry. There was no conspiracy to silence Corporal Thorsen on international television on January 3rd. And there is nothing to the allegation that Jews disproportionately control major American and world media outlets. . . .
We return to Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo, the author of The Real Lincoln. He dissects Michael Gerson this week in print, exposing the latter for the historical ignoramus he truly is. Di Lorenzo’s post is essential reading, as is my review of his magnum opus on Lincoln penned during the beginning of King George’s War on Terror which commenced a decade ago and continues to unfold as a tragedy with eschatological dimensions under King Barack.
The essential point clinched by DiLorenzo is this: The pattern of Presidential duplicity, criminality, and mythologically-wrapped spin which legitimized unnecessary state-sponsored violence and war, was foundationally established by the 16th President of the United States, a pattern which was expanded in relentless application by Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the typological 20th century Presidents of the American Empire. Wilson and Roosevelt, in turn, have strengthened the hand of either the 44th or 45th President of the United States in the 21st century in launching the genesis of World War III, at the behest of Benjamin Netanyahu and the cabal of central bankers and Zionist agents utilizing the American government as their personal instrument in the achievement of global conquest and the solidification of the New World Order.
The pattern of Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Bush, and Obama has essential components and ingredients. Chief among these are: 1) The understanding of each of these Presidents that their continuance as a Chief Executive of the United States necessitated the furtherance of the power agenda of a central banking cabal; 2) This furtherance would require the involvement of their nation in a war; 3) Hostilities would commence courtesy of a false flag incident, used to disguise the identity of the real perpetrators and their agenda; 4) The war would of necessity involve the employment of mass media in legitimizing the rationale for the conflict among the masses with a barrage of viscerally powerful images and metaphors soaked in notions of moral crusade, absolutism, the sanction of Divine Providence, blind nationalism, and religious visions containing distorted notions of Manifest Destiny, messianic fervor, and millennial fanaticism; 4) Legitimate dissent from the Crusade, rooted in sounder notions of Constitutional restraint, diplomacy, and what Jesus Christ actually teaches about the Kingdom of God, would be met with demonization, economic impoverishment, persecution, imprisonment, and death. What worked for Lincoln in this final regard, is being arranged nicely for Obama in the form of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), as demonstrated recently by Jonathan Turley in The Guardian (UK). Building on the foundations of the two Patriot Acts, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the jettisoning of Posse Comitatus laws, the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretap program, and the circumventing of the Federal Court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the NDAA has formally codified George W. Bush’s observation that the Constitution of the United States is nothing but a “Goddamned piece of paper.” Presumably the lives and liberties of American citizens, not to mention The Empire’s victims abroad, fall into the identically condemned status and subsequently fateful demise.
Thomas DiLorenzo (“The Lincoln Myth“) and Frank Conner, author of The South Under Siege 1830-2000: A History of Relations Between the North and the South, largely agree on the fundamental causes of the War Between the States and the agenda of Abraham Lincoln and the banking/mercantilist cadre which instigated its ignition. Conner’s contribution is especially valuable in outlining the path of America’s 16th President in arranging for the “First Shots” at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, an installation on an island in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. As for DiLorenzo, he reminds his readers of what they are not likely to have ever been told in an American grade school, or by Michael Gerson and Wolf Blitzer, about Lincoln as the prototype for Bush and Obama and their ongoing war with Persia. The Loyola College professor debunks the six (6) most prominent myths about the most mythologized Chief Executive in American history as follows:
Myth #1: Lincoln invaded the South to free the slaves. Ending slavery and racial injustice is not why the North invaded. As Lincoln wrote to Horace Greeley on August 22, 1862: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it . . .”
Congress announced to the world on July 22, 1861, that the purpose of the war was not “interfering with the rights or established institutions of those states” (i.e., slavery), but to preserve the Union “with the rights of the several states unimpaired.” At the time of Fort Sumter (April 12, 1861) only the seven states of the deep South had seceded. There were more slaves in the Union than out of it, and Lincoln had no plans to free any of them.
The North invaded to regain lost federal tax revenue by keeping the Union intact by force of arms. In his First Inaugural Lincoln promised to invade any state that failed to collect “the duties and imposts” and he kept his promise. On April 19, 1861, the reason Lincoln gave for his naval blockade of the Southern ports was that “the collection of the revenue cannot be effectually executed” in the states that had seceded.
Myth #2: Lincoln’s war “saved the Union.” The war may have saved the Union geographically but it destroyed it philosophically by destroying its voluntary nature. In the Articles of Confederation, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, the states described themselves as “free and independent.” They delegated certain powers to the federal government they had created as their agent but retained sovereignty for themselves. This was widely understood in the North as well as the South in 1861. As the Brooklyn Daily Eagle editorialized on Nov. 13, 1860, the Union “depends for its continuance on the free consent and will of the sovereign people of each state, and when that consent and will is withdrawn on either part, their Union is gone. The New York Journal of Commerce concurred, writing on Jan. 12, 1861, that a coerced Union changes the nature of government from “a voluntary one, in which the people are sovereigns, to a despotism where one part of the people are slaves.” The majority of Northern newspapers agreed.
Myth #3: Lincoln championed equality and natural rights.. His words and, more importantly, his actions, repudiate this myth. “I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races,” he announced in his Aug. 21, 1858 debate with Stephen Douglas. “I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.” And, “Free them [slaves] and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this. . . . We cannot, then, make them equals.”
In Springfield, Illinois on July17, 1858 Lincoln said, “What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races.” On Sept. 18, 1858 in Charleston, Illinois he said: “I will to the very last stand by the law of this state, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes.”
Lincoln supported the Illinois Constitution, which prohibited the emigration of black people into the state, and he also supported the Illinois Black Codes which deprived the small number of free blacks in the state any semblance of citizenship. He strongly supported the Fugitive Slave Act, which compelled Northern states to capture runaway slaves and return them to their owners. In his First Inaugural he pledged his support of a proposed constitutional amendment that had just passed the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives that would have prohibited the federal government from ever having the power “to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.” In his First Inaugural Lincoln advocated making this amendment “express and irrevocable.”
Lincoln was also a lifelong advocate of “colonization” or shipping all black people to Africa, Central America, Haiti – anywhere but here. “I cannot make it better known than it already is, “he stated in a Dec. 1, 1862 Message to Congress, “that I strongly favor colonization.” To Lincoln blacks could be “equal,” but not in the U.S.
Myth #4: Lincoln was a defender of the Constitution. Quite the contrary: Generations of historians have labeled Lincoln a “dictator.” “Dictatorship played a decisive role in the North’s successful effort to maintain the Union by force of arms,” wrote Clinton Rossiter in Constitutional Dictatorship. And, “Lincoln’s amazing disregard for the Constitution was considered by nobody as legal.”
James G. Randall documented Lincoln’s assault on the Constitution in Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln. Lincoln unconstitutionally suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus and had the military arrest tens of thousands of Northern political opponents, including dozens of newspaper editors and owners. Some 300 newspapers were shut down and all telegraph communication was censored. Northern elections were rigged; Democratic voters were intimidated by federal soldiers; hundreds of New York City draft protesters were gunned down by federal troops; West Virginia was unconstitutionally carved out of Virginia; and the most outspoken member of the Democratic Party opposition, Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio, was deported. Duly elected members of the Maryland legislature were imprisoned, as was the mayor of Baltimore and Congressman Henry May. The border states were systematically disarmed in violation of the Second Amendment and private property was confiscated. Lincoln’s apologists say he had “to destroy the Constitution in order to save it.”
Myth #5: Lincoln was a “great humanitarian” who had “ malice toward none.” This is inconsistent with the fact that Lincoln micromanaged the waging of war on civilians, including the burning of entire towns populated only by civilians; massive looting and plundering; rape; and the execution of civilians (See Mark Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War). Pro-Lincoln historian Lee Kennett wrote in Marching through Georgia that, had the Confederates somehow won, they would have been justified in “stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command” as war criminals.
Myth #6: War was necessary to end slavery. During the 19th century dozens of countries, including the British and Spanish empires, ended slavery peacefully through compensated emancipation. Among such countries were Argentina, Colombia, Chile, all of Central America, Mexico, Bolivia, Uruguay, the French and Danish Colonies, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. (Lincoln did propose compensated emancipation for the border states, but coupled his proposal with deportation of any freed slaves. He failed to see it through, however). Only in America was war associated with emancipation.
In sum, the power of the state ultimately rests upon a series of myths about the alleged munificence of our rulers. Nothing serves this purpose better than the Lincoln myth. This should be kept in mind by all who visit the new Lincoln statue in Richmond.
The essential connection of the dots provided by DiLorenzo with contemporary events is this: Just as Lincoln’s war of aggression against the South had nothing to do with the moral issue of slavery, but the agenda of the Northern banking cabal, the ideology of British economic mercantilism, Henry Clay’s “American System,” and the preservation of Lincoln’s personal power, the coming war with Iran has nothing to do with any credible military threat against the United States. It has everything to do with preserving Israel’s regional supremacy in the Middle East; forcing Iran at gunpoint to fully integrate its banking system into that of the Globalist Cabal’s; protecting the status of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency; and purloining oil and natural gas deposits and pipelines for energy consortiums. It is inextricably linked with the money trail which bankrolls American Presidential and Congressional elections, and Establishment Corporate Media (ECM).
Discerning readers worldwide have already concluded that the American-Israeli conflict with Iran is based on the overt aggression of the former, and being perpetrated for publicly stated reasons that are palpable falsehoods soaked in mythology and the American commitment to “democracy,” the ”rule of law,” ”human rights,” and the ”security of the international community.” These convenient canards are belied by the employment of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), the Kurdish PJAK, and the Jundallah terrorist organizations for bomb detonations and assassinations of Iranian citizens within their borders, acts of criminality etched with the fingerprints of the Israeli Mossad. Covert incitement of ethnic/tribal tensions by Western intelligence in Iranian Azerbaijan, Khuzestan, and Balochistan Provinces is a supplement to this strategy. Violation of Iranian airspace with American drones will continue. As Ron Paul has underscored, the economic sanctions aimed at the Iranian banking and oil sectors are additional overt acts of war. It is also crystal clear that the American Fifth Fleet in Bahrain is being publicly touted as the ace in the hole of the War Party in an escalating war of words that may well make the Strait of Hormuz a 21st century Fort Sumter.
And for what? To remove the “threat” of an Iranian weaponized nuclear program, an accusation unsupported by the last American National Intelligence Estimate on this issue and the ambiguity of recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports? Even as Israel, a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), sports a nuclear monopoly in the region with supplemental chemical and biological stockpiles and the area’s premier conventional military? The smell of the putrid stench of Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), and their “substantiation” of Saddam Hussein’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction” is in the air.
And for Americans who dissent from their government’s policies in the Middle East, especially in the last decade, Lincoln’s 19th century Crusade against the Constitution of the United States stands as a warning. Chapter Six (6) of The Real Lincoln warns us that America’s 16th President launched an invasion of the South without consulting Congress, as required by the Constitution; declared martial law; blockaded Southern ports; suspended habeas corpus for the duration of his administration; imprisoned without trial thousands of Northern citizens; arrested and imprisoned newspaper editors critical of him; censored all telegraph communication; nationalized railroads; created several new States without the consent of the citizens of those States; ordered Federal troops to interfere with elections in the North by intimidating Democratic voters; deported United States Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio for criticizing the administration’s income tax proposal at a Democratic Party rally; confiscated private property; confiscated firearms in violation of the 2nd Amendment; and eviscerated the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution.
DiLorenzo puts a 19th century historical perspective on the current vulnerability of those Americans who oppose the codification of the suspension of habeas corpus by Barack Obama and a complicit American Congress in the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA):
“Secretary of State William Seward established a secret police force that made thousands of arrests on mere suspicion of ‘disloyalty,’ broadly defined as disagreement with Lincoln’s war policies. Prisoners were not told why they were being arrested, no investigations of their alleged ‘crimes’ were carried out, and no trials were held. There was no legal process at all, and many Northern citizens were imprisoned for such alleged infractions as ‘being a noisy secessionist,’ selling Confederate trinkets, or ‘hurrahing for Jeff Davis.’ An Episcopal minister in Alexandria, Virginia was arrested for omitting a prayer for the President of the United States in his church services as required by the Lincoln Administration. A New Orleans man was executed by General Benjamin Butler for merely taking down a U. S. flag. [The Real Lincoln, page 138]“
And as the Loyola College professor ominously reminds us, Fort Lafayette in New York Harbor came to be known as the ‘American Bastille’ [read Guantanamo] because it housed so many political prisoners during the Lincoln Administration [more than 13,000 is the consensus among historians].
I will say again on this day of the New Hampshire Republican Primary: World War III is coming; it will be accompanied by a catastrophic destruction of American citizens domestically whose lives and Constitution will be eradicated forever by its ignition in an unjustifiable attack on Iran; and the not-so-hidden Hand behind it all is the government of Israel and the domestic Zionist lobby in the United States which owns the American Presidency, the Congress, the Judiciary, and the Establishment Corporate Media [ECM].
Ron Paul: Will you finally connect the dots and step up to home plate on this in your remaining time in this Presidential campaign, or will your equivocation and obfuscation continue? The clock is ticking toward midnight.
The clock is also ticking toward the ultimate irony and tragedy in human history, if the 44th President of the United States, from The Land of Lincoln and mythologically “emancipated” by the 16th President, proves to be the ultimate consummation in history of the utilization of capricious and usurped powers that destroy the Constitutional freedoms of his countrymen, even as the planet itself is engulfed in mass murder and death. We may live to see the fateful lifting of the Seventh Seal.
Mark Dankof’s Final Word on Michael Collins Piper’s Final Judgment on Israel and the Assassination of JFK
Mark Dankof on Press TV: Piper is correct in his Final Judgment on Israel and the JFK Assassination
I told an international television audience on Press TV/Iran this past Friday that Michael Collins Piper’s book, Final Judgment, on the Israeli Mossad links to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is absolutely compelling, not simply in terms of unraveling the truth about what happened to America’s 35th President, but seeing the bigger picture surrounding false flags, governmental and media corruption, and how a linear line of development may be clearly drawn from the USS Maine and Lusitania incidents, Pearl Harbor, and the Kennedy killing in Dallas in 1963, to the events a decade ago in New York City propagandized ad nauseam yesterday on the 10th anniversary of 9-11 by everyone from the American Legion to the National Football League.
And as noted some years ago, Israeli nuclear dissident Mordechai Vanunu agrees with Piper’s thesis, and has said so publicly. Vanunu’s endorsement of the thesis may go a long way toward explaining his continued detention in Israel, perhaps more so than the revelations provided to the Sunday Times of London years ago about the Zionist State’s nuclear weaponry and operations at Dimona.
Three official endorsements of Final Judgment will suffice here as an indication of the quality of Michael Collins Piper’s research, his analysis, and the inexorable conclusions drawn from both.
Endorsement One (Dr. Herbert L. Calhoun, Ph. D., who retired as deputy division chief of the Policy, Plans, and Analysis Office of the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, and who formerly served as a senior foreign affairs specialist for the U. S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He was the American representative to the 1996 and 1998 United Nations Group of Governmental Experts on Small Arms and Light Weapons. Dated March 10, 2003):
“As one who has read over 200 books on the JFK assassination, and engaged in research both as an individual and as part of various teams, I can say without fear of contradiction that Piper’s book is now the definitive work on the JFK assassination. Final Judgment is the most thorough, most honest, most penetrating, most factual, and most analytically complete and systematic of all that I have read so far.”
The view of the Grassy Knoll Gunman on November 22, 1963. Did the Mossad and a Renegade Element in the French OAS Provide the Rifle Team? Mark Dankof photo in Dallas, September 1st, 2010.
Endorsement Two: (Colonel Donn De Grand Pre, who served as Deputy Chief of the International Division/Office of the Chief of Research and Development at the Pentagon. In 1967, Grand Pre was named as Director for Ground Weapons Systems in the newly-created office of International Logistics Negotiations, responsible for negotiating sales contracts with heads of foreign nations for military weapons systems. On September 30, 1979, The Washington Post Magazine wrote about Grand Pre, citing his expertise: “If you had been a Middle Eastern ruler in the 1970s in search of American weapons systems, you would have called Donn de Grand Pre, Pentagon arms peddler.”):
“Piper’s Final Judgment is brilliant. . . . Several high-level military officers believed that the killing of JFK was in fact a coup d’etat carried out by elements of the CIA working with the Israeli Mossad. Kennedy was attempting to halt the development of nuclear weapons by the Israelis, while simultaneously planning to disband the CIA and disengage our military troops from the Indo-China area. Read Final Judgment by Michael Collins Piper for more details. [Citing Final Judgment in Grand Pre's own book, Barbarians Inside the Gates]“
Mark Dankof in November of 1963: Age 8, Montgomery, Alabama.
Endorsement Three (Mark Dankof, ex-Republican Party activist, year 2000 Constitution Party candidate for the U. S. Senate in Delaware, and investigative print and broadcast journalist):
“Having read all of the major Kennedy Assassination literature from Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment and Josiah Thompson’s Six Seconds in Dallas to Anthony Summers’s Conspiracy, Jim Marrs’ Crossfire, and Gerald Posner’s Case Closed, I can say definitively that Michael Collins Piper’s Final Judgment is the Final Word on what happened to America’s 35th President.
“Piper’s magnum opus accomplishes many things at many levels. First, he studiously avoids tiresome repristination of ancient arguments about ballistics and the lone gunman controversy already covered in dozens of works on the Kennedy tragedy. Second, he demonstrates conclusively that David Ben Gurion and his agents in the American Jewish Lobby were in serious subterranean warfare with JFK over Dimona, the burgeoning Israeli militarization of their nuclear program, and the President’s insistence that the Zionist State submit to international inspection of both. In this regard Mr. Piper acquaints the reader with the copious research on this long-suppressed subject undertaken by Stephen Green in Taking Sides, Andrew and Leslie Cockburn in Dangerous Liaison, and Seymour Hersh in The Samson Option.
“Perhaps most critically, Piper takes the outstanding research of Anthony Summers in Conspiracy on the elements of the CIA, organized crime, and the anti-Castro Cuban exile movement demonstrably involved in the events of November of 1963 in Dealey Plaza, and proceeds to show how all of these groups, individuals, activities, and associations were in fact, involved, but under the direction of Israeli intelligence; Meyer Lansky, Jewish organized crime chieftain with a direct line to Ben Gurion and Israeli intelligence; PERMINDEX; and James Jesus Angleton, the longtime director of counterintelligence for the CIA who simultaneously served as CIA liaison chief to the Mossad. The incredible details of Final Judgment even include the Israeli Haganah gun running links of Oswald assassin Jack Ruby and Frank Sturgis, anti-Castro CIA operative with links to Watergate in the 1970, and the role of Jewish mobster Mickey Cohen in introducing Jack Kennedy to Marilyn Monroe–at the direction of Meyer Lansky and Menachem Begin. . . .
“Final Judgment even indicates what is behind much of the disinformation on the assassination disseminated in film and books, including the ominous implications of Mossad agent and Israel arms merchant, Arnon Milchan, being the financial angel of Oliver Stone’s movie, JFK.
“After reading Final Judgment, no American will ever look at the American-Israeli relationship in the same way again, or fail to see the implications of the events in Dallas almost 50 years ago for the present tragedy of the Israeli-driven American military involvements in the Middle East; Israeli infiltration of the American media, Congress, and National Security State; or the insanity of the Zionist State’s attempts to involve the United States in an unjustifiable war with Iran.
“It begs yet another question: What was Israel’s real involvement in 9-11?”
The clock is ticking. Decent Americans, Iranians and all indigenous peoples of the Middle East and Central Asia, and people everywhere who oppose the New World Order must unite while we still can.
And action presupposes the assimilation of the correct information and the will to act upon it. That process begins with acquiring and reading Michael Collins Piper’s Final Judgment. That is my Final Word today.
Mark Dankof on Robert Stark’s show on the Voice of Reason Radio Network
Mark Dankof on New Year's Eve, 2010 in San Antonio
Mark Dankof’ s biography for the Robert Stark Show on the Voice of Reason Broadcast Network:
Mark Dankof joins Mark Glenn as a radio voice for “The Ugly Truth.” Mr. Dankof’s most recent broadcast for that network dealt with the alleged Israeli connection to the Coptic church bombing on New Year’s in Alexandria, Egypt. His most recent op-ed is entitled, “Joseph Lieberman, MEK Murder in Iran, and the Mythology of a Righteous, Almighty America.”
Mark Dankof is occasionally seen on Press TV in Iran. He is the former 36th Legislative District Chairman of the Republican Party in King County, Seattle, and the U. S. Senate candidate in 2000 in Delaware for the Constitution Party. His web sites include Mark Dankof’s America at WordPress and Mark Dankof’s America.
Access Robert Stark’s one hour conversation with Mark Dankof on the Voice of Reason radio network here.
Topics include:
- Mark’s history of political activism in the conservative and patriot movements and his former talk show on RBN;
- The economic and foreign policy co-option of these movements;
- The Israeli Lobby & the push for war with Iran, and possible outcomes;
- The terrorist attack against Coptic Christians in Egypt;
- Mark’s experiences while living in Iran.
Mark Dankof on The Ugly Truth: November 19th
Mark Dankof in San Antonio. Summer 2010.
Mark Dankof joins Mark Glenn and Bob Tuskin on The Ugly Truth to discuss Gordon Duff’s latest article, The Plot to Destroy the United States.
Click here to listen.
JHate: Yes, Hate, but Also Cowardice
Mark Dankof in San Antonio. Summer 2010.
“You must be on your guard. You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them. And the gospel must first be preached to all nations. Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.”
Jesus Christ in the Olivet Discourse, The Gospel of Mark, Chapter 13, Verses 9-11.
There is now a new site on Word Press, entitled JHate.
The site is aptly named. It is surely about Hate.
But the site’s correct description of itself is incomplete. It is also about Cowardice.
Hate and Cowardice have capital letters in this case, for justifiable reasons.
Browsers need to know that the individual (s) behind this site post anonymously. They also refuse to post fair and thoughtful comments by those who have been subjected to libelous characterizations and ad hominem attacks. The most recent victims have been Press TV of Iran, Dr. Paul Sheldon Foote of Cal State Fullerton University, and yours truly. We have all been tagged with the false, predictable, and shopworn charge of “anti-Semitism.”
Three succinct observations are in order. The first comes courtesy of Mark Weber of the Institute of Historical Review. He aptly notes in a letter to Dr. Foote that, “Being attacked by an outfit like this is a badge of honor. You’re on the right side of history and humanity.”
The second observation was made to me by Dr. Foote himself, regarding these odious and demonic attacks. The good professor notes that the character of these baseless assaults clearly indicates that the presence of mainstream American conservative critics of Zionism and Israel on Press TV is having a positive effect for truth around the world generally, and in the United States specifically. The Hasbara Project crowd at Mossad headquarters predictably doesn’t like it. The folks who brought you the Sabra and Shatila massacres, the utilization of white phosphorus and depleted uranium shells against civilian populations in the Middle East, the murder of unarmed human rights activists on the Mavi Marmara Freedom Flotilla, and recent terror bombings in Iranian Azerbaijan and Sistan-Balochistan provinces, are now blind siding the critics of these policies on the World Wide Net.
The third observation is my own. JHate didn’t publish my letter of response to them. I would like decent people around the world, including international viewers of Press TV, to see it. The complete text is as follows:
Mark Dankof to JHate
It’s nice to know that I am considered to be in the same company as Dr. Paul Sheldon Foote, whose education, professional and military credentials, and basic human decency are beyond dispute.
As for the predictable charge of “anti-Semitism,” the methodology of demonizing honest critics of Israel’s criminal policies isn’t going to wash this time. Too many people around the world, thanks to Internet technology, are now aware of Deir Yassin; the bombing of the King David Hotel by Mr. Begin and Company; the Lavon Affair; Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty in June of 1967; and the myriad number of Israeli espionage operations against the United States, including the theft of American nuclear raw materials at Pennsylvania’s NUMEC plant, the PROMIS affair, and the Jonathan Pollard and AIPAC spy scandals.
As Americans find out what our $10 billion a year “ally” has been up to since 1947, new dawning awareness of the implications of Israel’s policies in Palestine and Gaza is also beginning to invade the American consciousness. Tolerance of atrocities like the Rachel Corrie murder and the slaughter of innocents on the Mavi Marmara Freedom Flotilla will end. And as American manpower and money continue to go down the proverbial drain, courtesy of the United States’ assumption of its role as both the chief enforcer of Zionist policies in the Middle East and the developing New World Order globally, patience will also evaporate with the role of the Israeli Lobby in the American domestic political scene.
As Daniel said to Belshazzar of Babylon, “. . . God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end (Daniel 5: 26).” The perverse and racist ideology of modern Zionism will also come to an end in the Biblical God’s good time.
What may we predict of Israel’s actions as its moral bankruptcy and political unsustainability become progressively more obvious?
This is an absolute cinch: Hasbara Project attacks against decent writers, thinkers, and human rights activists on the Internet, coupled with a false flag incident designed to provoke a war with Iran that is totally unjustified, preventable, and in the interest of no one, save the psychotics in the Netanyahu regime.
And Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp will lead the corporate media consortium charge to sell this tragic travesty to the American public. By way of comparison, I will join Paul Sheldon Foote, Paul Craig Roberts, and George Galloway in appearing on Press TV anytime.
Let’s face it. You folks are running scared.
I conclude in reiteration: “. . . God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end. (Daniel 5: 26)”
In Christ Jesus,
Mark Dankof
The Ugly Truth: Dankof, Glenn, Tourney, and al-Tayr on Israel’s Criminal Attack on the Freedom Flotilla
Ex-Republican and Constitution Party activist Mark Dankof joins Mark Glenn, USS Liberty survivor Phil Tourney, and Mantiq al-Tayr to discuss last night’s attack by Israel on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters. The panelists will also discuss Israel’s coming criminal attack on Iran and how to mobilize opposition to it.
Click here to listen.
Mark Dankof’s latest op-ed, entitled “Lindsey Graham and Jack Kemp: Has the Tribe Protected Them?” is now on Al Jazeerah.info at
http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20Editorials/2010/May/31%20o/Lindsey%20Graham%20and%20Jack%20Kemp,%20Has%20the%20Tribe%20Protected%20them%20By%20Mark%20Dankof.htm
Mantiq al-Tayr’s coverage of the attack may be accessed at
http://mantiqaltayr.wordpress.com/
Mantiq al-Tayr’s review of “What I Saw That Day,” the new book on Israel’s deliberate attack on the USS Liberty, by Phil Tourney and Mark Glenn, may be accessed at
http://mantiqaltayr.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/a-ship-too-far/
(Sunday Times of London: Israel stations nuclear subs off Iran)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7140282.ece
(Times of London: latest on Israeli attack on Freedom Flotilla)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7141258.ece
Lindsey Graham and Jack Kemp: Has the Tribe Protected Them?
Senator Lindsey Graham (R.-S. C.) is demonstrably a warmonger when it comes to Zionist interests. His sickening sycophancy in March at the American Israeli Political Action Committee dinner, chronicled by David Corn of Mother Jones, tells the tale of the all-too-familiar tape when it comes to what is routinely purchased from American politicians by the Israeli lobby. It has something to do with the world’s oldest profession, if you know what I mean. Want to know what Graham’s hourly fees are for such speeches? Hugh Galford of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs can quote you the specific numbers.
Graham’s AIPAC schtick was as predictable as it was outlandish. Stating that Israel is “our best friend in the world,” the South Carolina pol conveniently forgot to mention the Lavon Affair, the Kennedy assassination, the attack on the USS Liberty, the Pollard spy case, and the Israeli-Communist China pilfering of American nuclear secrets at Los Alamos in the PROMIS catastrophe, among many others. In regard to this last episode, one can only guess at what the late John Tower (R.-TX) and John Heinz (R.-PA) may have known. If only they hadn’t died in aviation accidents in separate parts of the country, only 24 hours apart. What a tragic coincidence.
What Graham did mention was his wholehearted support of the mass murder of Iranians by preemptive military strike. Apparently for him, and sidekick John McCain, constant impingement on Iranian air space; black operations in Azerbaijan, Khuzestan, and Balochistan provinces; and covert American support for the Jundallah–MEK sponsored acts of terrorism and subversion within Iranian borders is not enough. Now we need to be carrying out a massive, overt military strike on that country, despite what our own National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) says about the nuclear weapons program they don’t have. And with an “ally” that is a non-signatory to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and the leading nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons power in the entire region. Got it? Philip Giraldi can brief us. A simple Google search on his name and Iran will tell you more than you may really want to know.
Here’s something else you may not really want to know. According to William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), a past guest on my radio show, Graham is not only a pro-Zionist warmonger but a homosexual. Arianna Huffington and good friend, Victor Thorn of the American Free Press, have provided us this week with the blow-by-blow account, if you will.
For purposes of this discussion, Graham’s alleged queer orientation is less significant than the possible implications of why the ugly rumors of his personal life have remained subterranean in Washington for as long as they have. Could it have something to do with who owns the major American media consortiums, and the militantly pro-Zionist agenda they universally support? Why have we not put Senator Graham under Rupert Murdoch’s microscope at Fox News?
Simply read Giraldi’s “Shaping the Story on Iran“ and his recently published “Timetable for War.” Then go ahead and connect the subsequent dots when it comes to the Senator from South Carolina. Does a good AIPAC speech to the bloodthirsty Talmudic faithful really do as well as the old fashioned protection money racket?
The Lindsey Graham saga is more than eerily reminiscent of the life and career of the late Jack Kemp (R.-N.Y.). To this day no one is talking about the Penthouse magazine expose on Kemp’s personal life and alleged bi-sexuality that sank the Buffalo congressman’s place on George Herbert Walker Bush’s Presidential ticket in the fall of 1988. In that sordid piece, the long suppressed rumors about Mr. Kemp found their way into print with attachment to specific names and places. Most ominously, queer Jewish lawyer for Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, alleged in Penthouse that Kemp was introduced to the clandestine homosexual network operating in Ronald Reagan’s gubernatorial mansion in California in the 1960s, by Mr. Cohn himself.
That story, and the rest of Penthouse’s allegations on Jack Kemp, were suppressed by the mainstream media’s gentleman’s agreement in 1996, that bought Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, and Kemp absolute protection from media discussion of their personal lives and sexual peccadilloes. The Washington Post admitted their own complicity in this media consortium agreement, on page one—the day after the 1996 Presidential election on the first Tuesday in November.
And back to Roy Cohn. If he indeed introduced Jack Kemp into a sordid, clandestine sexual underworld of the American Right, did he also serve as a conduit for the ex-Buffalo Bills star’s introduction into the Jewish infiltration of that movement, chronicled by Dr. E. Michael Jones of Culture Wars in an expose of the Zionist infiltration and financing of William F. Buckley’s National Review?
We may never know. Kemp’s obituary at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) does make for interesting reading and reflection.
But four things are for sure.
Israel will get its war with Iran.
William Gheen of ALIPAC will find out first-hand what the Israeli Lobby can dish out on folks who dare to touch their assets.
Israeli-Firsters and Neo-Conservatives in this country will find out how tough and resilent the Iranian people are when attacked.
And John Hagee of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio will have to confine his political hand-holding with Lindsey Graham to private moments.
Mark Dankof joins Mark Glenn’s Friday “The Ugly Truth” podcast
Mark Dankof adds to his radio gigs by becoming a regular on Mark Glenn’s Friday edition of The Ugly Truth Podcast available online. See the show description below:
http://theuglytruth.podbean.com/2010/03
The Mujahedin-e-Khalq: The Peril of Paradox in American Middle East Policy
The Mujahedin-e-Khalq: The Peril of Paradox in American Middle East Policy
by Mark Dankof
One thing is abundantly clear about American policy in the Middle East–it is based on a series of paradoxical, internally contradictory goals and alliances which typically end in tragic results for friend and foe alike.
Nowhere is this conundrum clearer than in the present U. S. quandary over the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), or People’s Holy Warriors, as chronicled by Ed Blanche, Beirut correspondent for The Middle East, in that publication’s June 2009 issue.
As Blanche capably summarizes what is known of the MEK, the organization was formed in Iran in 1965 by leftist students, subsequently adopting a “bizarre ideology that embraced both Islam and Marxism.” The ideology soon became linked to urban revolutionary guerrilla violence. In the final years of Pahlavi Iran, the MEK conducted a series of attacks and assassinations on American military and diplomatic personnel, as it sought the overthrow of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
The MEK joined forces with Khomeini’s revolutionaries in this ultimately successful effort, only to be expelled by the IRI regime itself in Tehran once its usefulness had expired after the Shah’s departure. The MEK began to conduct guerrilla operations against the Mullahs as they had against the monarchy previously, with considerable success. But the Mullahs applied a level of retaliatory force the “Islamic-Marxists” could not endure. They fled to France, and later joined forces with Saddam Hussein against Iran in the 1980-1988 war between the Gulf rivals.
The shifting paradoxes would continue, as the MEK established a headquarters at Camp Ashraf in Iraq, largely under American and Israeli protection. The one-time adversaries of both Persian monarchy and its American military and intelligence allies, had now become a tool of the United States and the Europeans against the Islamic theocratic regime they helped to usher in 3 decades ago.
And the ultimate paradoxes are these: First, Mr. Bush’s Operation Iraqi Freedom has resulted in the installation of a central government in Baghdad largely sympathetic to the IRI regime in Tehran, and with identical animosity to the MEK’s presence within its borders. Second, while Ed Blanche notes that it “was the MEK that disclosed the existence of Iran’s nuclear program in August 2002, stunning the U. S. intelligence and military establishments,” he fails to note credible information provided by Barry O’Connell and IPS’s Gareth Porter that the MEK’s role in “disclosing the existence of Iran’s nuclear program,” has been to serve as a clandestine conduit of information on the subject supplied by the Israeli intelligence community. Hello, Mossad, meet your new allies in the “Islamic-Marxist” network worldwide.
There you have it. The Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), or People’s Holy Warriors, is an “Islamic-Marxist” terror organization, which assisted in implementing the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979; was subsequently involved in guerrilla warfare operations against the very Iranian Mullahs they helped to bring to power; fought on the side of Saddam Hussein for 8 years in the Iran-Iraq war between 1980-1988; and now, according to Barry O’Connell and Gareth Porter, is working with Jewish neo-conservatives and Israeli intelligence in planting false “intelligence” on Iran’s nuclear program with the American National Security State and Western news media, itching for a confrontation between Tehran and Tel Aviv—even as it now possesses an adversarial role with the very regime in Baghdad installed by Mr. Bush’s War. Confused?
You should be. The global international establishment can’t figure out what its position on the MEK is supposed to be, either. Hence, according to Blanche, Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Directorate is trying to find the organization a new place to live; the U. S. State Department continues to maintain a place for the MEK on its terrorism blacklist, as does the European Union; American and Jewish neo-conservatives in the defense and intelligence communities of the United States advocate an alliance with the MEK against Tehran; even as Britain’s Court of Appeal ruled in May of 2008 that the MEK “should not be deemed a terrorist organization.”
Oh, yes. One other thing. Even as Israeli intelligence and the Pentagon pursue an anti-Tehran alliance with the MEK, Tehran, according to Blanche, offered the United States in December of 2003 several senior Al Qaeda operatives in exchange for MEK commanders under U. S. control at Camp Ashraf. The U. S. could have had Saif Al Adel and Mahfouz Ould Walid (Abu Hafs the Mauritanian), even as it avenged the deaths of murdered American personnel from the days of Pahlavi Iran in the 1970s.
Why was there no deal?
Better ask the Mossad, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Kenneth R. Timmerman, and the Project for the New American Century crowd.
Isn’t paradox wonderful?
