Barrett Tillman is the author of the new book, "LeMay," (access Palgrave Macmillan by clicking here) chronicling the life and career of the father of the firebombing of Tokyo in March of 1945 and the Strategic Air Command (SAC) after World War II. Tillman discussed the General and the new book released this February 7th, on Mark Dankof's America on the Republic Broadcasting Network (Feb 28th) in the show's 3rd and final hour. The show will be subsequently archived for later listeners. BATR's American Memory division has additional information on "LeMay" including its affordable cost which can be accessed by clicking here.

Barrett Tillman covered many LeMay-related topics in his Republic Broadcasting Network appearance, including the General's air campaigns against Germany and Japan; the Berlin Airlift; the SAC years; and LeMay's complex personality which was as decidedly non-charismatic as it was renowed for planning, efficiency, brilliance, candor, and humanitarianism--which seemed paradoxical when considered alongside the General's storied history as the chief advocate of Strategic Bombing.

Tillman also covered the LeMay side of the General's turbulent relationship with President Kennedy, and termed the portrayal of LeMay in Kevin Costner's movie, the pro-Kennedy Thirteen Days, as both false distortion and "cartoon caricature." Mr. Tillman also discussed candidly what was behind the General's ill-fated decision to join George Wallace on the AIP Presidential ticket in 1968.

Dr. Michael Schwartz joined Mark Dankof in the show's second hour, to discuss what the former sees as the disastrous character of the President's surge policy in Iraq. Access Dr. Schwartz's article on the subject online by clicking here. The Michael Schwartz biography for BATR browsers is as follows:

Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency as well as on American business and government dynamics. His books include Radical Protest and Social Structure, and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited with Clarence Lo). His work on Iraq has appeared on numerous Internet sites including Tomdispatch.com, Asia Times, Mother Jones.com, and ZNet; and in print in Contexts, Against the Current, and Z Magazine. His email address is Ms42@optonline.net.

New Yorker columnist Sy Hersh says the “single most explosive” element of his latest article involves an effort by the Bush administration to stem the growth of Shiite influence in the Middle East (specifically the Iranian government and Hezbollah in Lebanon) by funding violent Sunni groups.

Hersh says the U.S. has been “pumping money, a great deal of money, without congressional authority, without any congressional oversight” for covert operations in the Middle East where it wants to “stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence.” Hersh says these funds have ended up in the hands of “three Sunni jihadist groups” who are “connected to al Qaeda” but “want to take on Hezbollah.”

Hersh summed up his scoop in stark terms: “We are simply in a situation where this president is really taking his notion of executive privilege to the absolute limit here, running covert operations, using money that was not authorized by Congress, supporting groups indirectly that are involved with the same people that did 9/11.” Watch it:

Since the publication last November of Jimmy Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, his critics have pretty much held the floor. In fact, days before the book was available, its argument that Palestinians suffer “abominable oppression and persecution” at the hands of the Israelis was dismissed outright by Democratic Party leaders Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean, as though it might harm their party in the midterm elections. Their disavowals gave way to the kind of vituperative feeling in pro-Israel quarters that is usually saved for Holocaust deniers and Nazis: Carter will go down in history as “a Jew-hater,” according to The New Republic’s Martin Peretz; the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Goldberg called him un-Christian; and Commentary published a long attack on Carter as “the very worst ex-President,” a would be “prince of peace” who was in fact a busybody with a martyr-wish, embittered by his 1980 re-election defeat.

Vladimir Putin's harsh criticism of U.S. military and foreign policy on February 10 should have set off alarm bells in the West, but apparently did not.

In a startlingly blunt speech at a Munich security conference, Russia's president accused Washington of seeking world domination, undermining the UN and other international institutions, monopolizing world energy resources, destabilizing the Mideast by its bungled occupation of Iraq, and unleashing a new nuclear arms race by planning to deploy anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe.

Russia has long fumed over NATO's advance to its western borders, and Washington's attempts to replace Moscow's influence in Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.

This column has long maintained that while one sympathizes with the desire of Eastern European states to take shelter from old foe Russia by joining NATO, pushing the alliance to Russia's doorstep was dangerously provocative and militarily ill-advised.

"He who defends everything," said Frederick the Great, "defends nothing."

CAIRO, Egypt, Feb. 26 (UPI) -- The Arab League said three Arab Gulf countries have denied Israel use of their air space to strike Iran.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Mousa told reporters in Cairo the foreign ministers of Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates said there is no agreement allowing Israeli jets to use their air space to reach Iran.

His remarks came a day after Israel's Haaretz daily said Israel has received a green light from these three oil-rich states to pass through their air space to launch air strikes against Iran's Bushehr nuclear facility near the Arab Gulf region.

"These reports are either forged or fabricated," Mousa said, adding the foreign ministers of these countries have "officially authorized" him to relay this information.

Dr. Robert Sungenis, the head of Catholic Apologetics International, joined Mark Dankof's America on the Republic Broadcasting Network, Friday, February 23rd to discuss "Neo-Cons and the Jewish Connection." Sungenis is a wealth of information on the history of Zionism, the Jewish connection to Neo-Conservatism, the Babylonian Talmud, and Jewish control of major American media, corporate, and educational outlets.

Click here for Catholic Apologetics International. Click here for a book mentioned by Dr. Sungenis entitled, "The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State," authored by Benjamin Ginsberg and published by the University of Chicago Press. Dr. Sungenis also mentioned that the uncensored versions of the Babylonian Talmud which should be procured by interested parties are either the Steinsaltz or Soncino translations. It is these translations which provide the uncensored original version of the Babylonian Talmud's profanations and blasphemies uttered against Jesus Christ.

Click here for information on Steinsaltz.

Dr. Sherri Tenpenny discussed the health and political ramifications of mandatory vaccine policies with Mark Dankof on the latter's show for the Republic Broadcasting Network on February 22nd. Click here for Dr. Tenpenny's commentary for Elizabeth Wright's NewsWith Views; Click here for Dr. Tenpenny's main web page of contact information and product offerings.

Former Senior Editor and Contributor to the John Birch Society's The New American, William Norman Grigg, joined Mark Dankof on Monday, February 19th on the latter's show for the Republic Broadcasting Network. Access William Norman Grigg's work and activities by clicking here.

New York’s junior senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is expected to snare the lion’s share of the Jewish community’s substantial political donations in the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

Democratic activists and operatives said Clinton will pull in large quantities of cash among Jewish donors not only because of what they described as her strong positions on Israel and domestic matters of interest to Jews, but also because of longtime ties with these activists dating back to her husband’s administration.

The haul is important: Strategists say that serious candidates will need to raise at least $50 million — and probably more like $100 million — by the end of the year. They say that money from Jewish donors constitutes about half the donations given to national Democratic candidates (an extremely large pot of gelt long coveted by the GOP).

Clinton will get most of the Jewish community’s money, “first, because she’s going to receive the lion’s share of all [Democratic] political money, and second, because she and her husband are enormously popular with the Jewish community,” said Democratic strategist Steve Rabinowitz, a Clinton supporter.

ROME, Feb. 16 -- An Italian judge gave approval Friday for what will be the first overseas criminal trial of CIA officers involved in a covert counterterrorism operation, as a court in Milan indicted more than two dozen Americans on charges of kidnapping a radical Muslim cleric four years ago.

After a judicial hearing that lasted two months, the court handed down indictments against 25 CIA operatives, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and five Italian spies who are accused of grabbing an imam, Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, off the street and stuffing him into a white van as he walked to noonday prayers Feb. 17, 2003. Nasr was taken from Milan to his native Egypt, where he claims he was tortured in prison for more than three years.

India, China and Russia account for 40 per cent of the world’s population, a fifth of its economy and more than half of its nuclear warheads. Now they appear to be forming a partnership to challenge the US-dominated world order that has prevailed since the end of the Cold War.

Foreign ministers from the three emerging giants met in Delhi yesterday to discuss ways to build a more democratic “multipolar world”.

It was the second such meeting in the past two years and came after an unprecedented meeting between their respective leaders, Manmohan Singh, Hu Jintao and Vladimir Putin, during the G8 summit in St Petersburg in July.

It also came only four days after Mr Putin stunned Western officials by railing against American foreign policy at a security conference in Munich.

The foreign ministers, Pranab Mukherjee, Li Zhao Xing and Sergei Lavrov, emphasised that theirs was not an alliance against the United States. It was, “on the contrary, intended to promote international harmony and understanding”, a joint communiqué stated.

Their formal agenda covered issues ranging from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East and North Korea to energy security, nuclear non-proliferation and trade. The subtext, however, was clear: how to use their growing economic and political muscle to prevent Washington from tackling such issues alone.

“In the long term, they feel that the whole structure of international relations has to shift in their direction,” said Vinod C. Khanna, of the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. “What has happened is that quite independently they’ve reacted very similarly to recent international events.”

Mr Mukherjee said: “We agreed that cooperation rather than confrontation should govern approaches to regional and global affairs. We also agreed on the importance of the UN.”

Diplomats say that it is premature to talk of a strategic axis between the world’s largest and two most populous nations because they still have more in common with the West than with each other.

Delhi was close to Moscow in Soviet times, but has forged a new friendship with Washington. Chinese relations were soured by its border wars with India in 1962 and the Soviet Union in 1969, and by its arms sales to Pakistan. Russia appears keener than China or India to challenge American hegemony. But there has been a convergence of interests as each struggles to make the transition from a command economy to free markets. Since 2003 they have found further common ground in opposing the US-led invasion of Iraq.

One area of agreement is opposition to outside interference in separatist conflicts in Chechnya, the northeast of India and the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang.

Another is energy. India and China are desperate for Russian oil and gas, and Moscow is worried about its dependence on Western markets. But their most significant common ground is opposition to US military intervention in Iran. The joint statement did not mention Iran, but the three countries have taken a common stance in calling for a negotiated solution through the International Atomic Energy Agency. None of them wants a nuclear-armed Iran, but Russia sells Tehran nuclear technology and India and China need Iranian gas.

Labels: Balochistan, Baluchis, Iran, IRGC, Jondollah, Shiite, Sunni, Zahedan

Bush has long maintained that he was unaware of attacks by any member of his administration against [former ambassador Joseph] Wilson. The ex-envoy's stinging rebukes of the administration's use of pre-war Iraq intelligence led Libby and other White House officials to leak Wilson's wife's covert CIA status to reporters in July 2003 in an act of retaliation.

But Cheney's notes, which were introduced into evidence Tuesday during Libby's perjury and obstruction-of-justice trial, call into question the truthfulness of President Bush's vehement denials about his prior knowledge of the attacks against Wilson. The revelation that Bush may have known all along that there was an effort by members of his office to discredit the former ambassador raises the question: Was the president also aware that senior members of his administration compromised Valerie Plame's undercover role with the CIA?

Labels: Ahmadinejad, Assassination, Iran, Israel, Mossad

Mark Dankof also hosted Jeff Paterson of Oakland, California of Courage to Resist, who briefed show listeners on the implications of the Lt. Ehren Watada mistrial with reference to Mr. Paterson's post on the subject at LewRockwell.com.

Subject: Current Issues TV: Chris Toensing and Mark Dankof: Future of Middle East

From: TILLAWI@aol.com

Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 19:24:12 EST

To: TILLAWI@aol.com

Shirin Neshat of the Persian human rights organization Sarbazan; and Dr. Chalmers Johnson, author of the new book, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, joined Mark Dankof's America on the Republic Broadcasting Network on Friday, February 9th. The upshot is clear: Iran, the Middle East, Palestine, Bush and the Neo-Cons, and the Rumors of War point to crossroads events in the days ahead. Chalmers Johnson was a consultant to the Central Intelligence Agency's National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) process between 1968-72, an East Asian Scholar, and a professor of political science of 30 years standing at the University of California in both Berkeley and San Diego. Johnson indicated to Mark Dankof that defunding a dangerous war of imperialism and the initiation of impeachment proceedings was the only alternative to catastrophe. Ms. Neshat highlighted the upcoming memorial to the Unsung Heroes of the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces (IIAF) in Beverly Hills, California coming up on April 15th, 2007.

Ms. Shirin Neshat (President)

sarbazan.com and janbakhtegan.org
P.O. Box 16166
Beverly Hills, CA 90209

Phone: 310 863 8218
shneshat@aol.com