Der Spiegel´s secret chief, a very good friend of the Mossad

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Erich Follath, "der Spiegel´s"secret chief and a very good friend of the Mossad

July 6, 2009 by Notsilvia Night

When you look at the situation in Iran, many people, even decent and compassionate people in the western world, would like to ally themselves with the Iranian opposition, since most western people feel far closer to their world-view, than to Islamic traditions of the current Iranian government and the majority of the Iranian population. The "birth of a new Iran", a secular Iran, is what westerners would like to see.

But we need to remind ourselves of what happened the last time the war-drums were beating in 2002 and 2003, and a new and better country was promised.

The WMD (weapons of mass destructions) myth wasn´t the only propaganda tool the war-planners had in their arsenal. They told us, that Iraqis would be far better off, if the western allies would "help" them to get rid of the dictator Saddam Hussein. German and French people, as well as other Europeans who were opposed to the Iraq invasion were told how heartless they were to support the bloody rule of Saddam by opposing the means necessary to "free" the Iraqi people.

I remember well, how Americans all of a sudden en masse started to invade German-language discussion forums accusing the anti-war members of being fascists and Saddam-lovers and torturer-friends.

Today, after over 1 million dead Iraqis, 4 million refugees, after Abu Ghraib and other torture dungeons of the allied "liberators" we should look a bit more clearly at those who want to sell us other "liberating" efforts against middle-Eastern nations.

One of the key-organs of anti-Islamic hate-mongering today is the German magazine "der Spiegel". This press-organ wasn´t always on the fore-front of the European based war-party. Before the Iraq-invasion "der Spiegel" was one of the few German news-outlets which was persistently against a German participation in the war.

"Der Spiegel" published a series of articles about American militarism and imperialism, suprisingly honest for a mainline media product. With the last article about the Northwood-files and the last sentences in the article which insinuated that military planners could be really fiendish, "der Spiegel" single-handedly started wide-spread scepticism springing forth and with it the beginning of the 9/11 truth-movement in Germany.

The Spiegel-author had suggested that, while Kennedy did not allow the plans of the joint chiefs of staff to be executed, (those generals had suggested to frame Cuba for a series of false flag attacks against the American people), one could never be sure,what would happen, if a less honorable president was at the helm.

But after the British-American invasion of Iraq, the German magazine did a 180° turn. It started to call the truth-movement a bunch of psychological deviants, started to publish one anti-Muslim article after the other and, from 2005 on, it started a witch-hunt against the Iranian president. The first article was headlined: "Ahmadinejad, the man the world fears."

One of the most active of those "Schreibtischtäter" (desk-top-assassins and -genociders) is Erich Follath.

Iran isn´t his only target, he would probably like to see other places bombed as well, places like Syria and (once again)Lebanon.

Who is Erich Follath?

In 2003 Erich Follath published a book called

»Himmelbett und Höllenangst. Dreizehn Hotels, die Geschichte machten« (Heavenly beds and a fear from hell. Thirteen hotels that made history)
It was a very special hotel-guide, about very special hotels. In one of those hotels, for instance,

the owner kept alligators in the swimming-pool, and it became headquarters for generals and secret agents.

That Erich Follath would know, where the headquarters of intelligence agencies are located is not surprising, since already in 1979 (published January 1, 1980) Follath had written another interesting book, published by the Goldmann publishing firm in Munich:
Das Auge Davids : Die geheimen Kommando-Unternehmen der Israelis.
(The Eye of David: The secret commando-raids by the Israelis)

The book is out of print nowadays.I didn´t find any review online, and in most book-selling sites you can´t even find a synopsis.

One of the rare exceptions is published at buchfreund.de :

"The author talked to Mossad agents and was allowed to look at secret documents. He describes authentically the sensational commando-raids of Israeli agents."


This was in 1979, before the Sabra and Shatilla massacre permitted even in Germany one or two Israel critical articles in the media.

Follath´s admiration for the Mossad, however, had not changed by the year 2000, when he wrote another book, a work of fiction this time, named: "Wer erschoss Jesus Christus." (Who shot Jesus Christ)

In the book the actor who played Jesus in the Oberammergau-passion-plays was shot on stage. An elderly journalist investigates the incidence independently from the police, but with the friendly help of a female Mossad agent.
In the book the Mossad is being portrayed as some kind of Israeli branch for interpol, investigating crimes with possible Jewish or Israeli involvement. The chase goes from the Jewish orthodox community in New York to a West-bank settlement close to Hebron, touches the Berlin neo-nazi scene and ends back in Oberammergau, where suprise, surprise, the murderer of Christ happens to be a catholic priest.

What we can find on biographical details on Erich Follath is very scarce.
One of his publishers "Fischer-Verlage" tells us that:

Erich Follath, was born 1949 in Esslingen, (a South-German town) studied in Tübingen and Munich germanistik and politology and he received his PHD with an essay on third world media. he became a correspondent from Hongkong and New York for the German magazine »stern«, until in 1994 he went to the »Spiegel«. Since 1997 Follath worked as author for that news-magazine, stationed in Hamburg, he writes cover-stories and reports from all over the world.

This was about the most extensive biographical account of Follath I could find online, except one more detail, telling us that Follath isn´t just a "Spiegel" author, but he is the head of the foreign news department.

And the competition news-magazine in Germany, "focus", calls Follath in an article about the ousting of "der Spiegel"s former actual chief editor, Stefan Aust, following a row with Follath, "der Spiegel´s" secret chief editor.

While there is very little written about the man Erich Follath, not even in what year exactly he started to write for the "stern"-magazine, and if he was fully employed by that magazine or a freelance writer, there has been more than enough written by him in the last few years.

For instance in 2005 Follath claimed that the UN had evidence that Syria was behind the assassination of Rafik Hairiri, the former Lebanese prime minister.

This claim helped to fraction Lebanon once again along sectarian lines. It preceded the American sponsored "cedar-revolution" in Lebanon, the withdrawal of the Syrian troops stationed in the country and the subsequent bombing campaign of Lebanon by the Israeli army, which killed over twelve hundred Lebanese people, destroyed large parts of the Lebanese infrastructure and left on it´s last day a million cluster bombs all over the south of the country.

However, after having been held for four years without charges, the four pro-Syrian generals thought to be involved in the crime were released and the case against them was dismissed by the Special Tribunal due to lack of evidence and recanted witness testimony.

Now in 2009 Erich Follath changed his tune slightly, and upped the ante at the same time. On May 29, shortly before the Lebanon elections he wrote a piece claiming he had personally seen documents evidencing that Hizbullah was behind the Hairiri assassination.

Of course Hizbullah denied the accusation. Rannie Amiri writes in the counterpunch article: Spies, Lies and Mr. Lebanon's Demise that,

Unlike his son Saad today, Rafiq Hariri had good personal relations with Nasrallah and Hezbollah generally – facts Follath conveniently overlooked – making their participation in his murder especially unlikely.

Like Hizbullah the Lebanese government and the special investigating tribunal denied any knowledge of such documents as well.

Follath had not presented a sliver of evidence of where his "information" came from, nor did he disclose the name or connection of his supposed sources.

But I´d say, I´d give it about one guess of who might be so "friendly" to show Erich Follath some "secret documents".

Rannie Amiri takes an educated guess of what might be the Mossad´s most urgent motive for another covert shot against the Lebanese people and Hizbullah:

The Lebanese government is currently holding 30 suspects and has already charged 21 with spying for Israel in an ever-widening investigation. Those detained include an army colonel, a retired general, a deputy mayor, a truck driver and a mobile phone salesman, which two managed to escape across the border into Israel before being caught. Confiscated high-tech equipment and electronics used to transmit information to the Mossad were put on display by Lebanese Internal Security afterward.

Because intelligence provided by certain agents may have led to increased destruction in the 2006 war (which killed 1,200 Lebanese, the vast majority civilians), Nasrallah demanded the death penalty be levied against those found to be complicit.


Now the friend of Mossad, Erich Follath, is not in danger of any penalty whatsoever, and he isn´t finished with war-mongering for the year 2009 either.

On June 22, 2009 after it became clear, that an overthrow of the newly elected government and an extended civil war in Iran wasn´t going to happen any time soon, Follath wrote the headline:

POTENTIAL FOR APOCALYPSE

Is War between Iran and Israel Inevitable?

(This time around none of the rest of the Spiegel staff wanted to sign with him under the article)
On the surface the article compares the attitude of both Netanjahu and Ahmadinejad, coming to the conclusion that both are equally driven by religious extremism.

To frame a dispute as a matter of religious fractions battling one another is a ploy which has been used more than once before. Let´s take the conflict in Northern Ireland. Here the media told us, it was about the catholics fighting the protestants, both factions were irrational crazy religious fanatics.

In this context the political aspects could be neglected, since religion, per modern western definition, is always irrational.

The real facts in the Northern Ireland conflict, of course, was the struggle of the former defeated and now still underprivileged Irish trying to gain independence from or at least equal rights to the privileged descendants of Oliver Cromwell´s English conquerers.

In real life the conflict, like most conflicts was politically motivated, it was about economic injustice, discrimination and, at least as far as the IRA people go had nothing to do with religion at all, most of them hadn´t seen a catholic church from the inside in many years.

But if you frame a conflict in the terms of "irrational religion", it becomes unsolvable and you don´t have to care about legitimate grievances, which could easily be tackled in a constructive manner. And so conveniently the conflict stays unsolved for a long time, which is in the interest of the privileged elite and their media servants.

In his portrayal of Ahmadinejad, Follath claims the Iranian president to be a disciple of a supposedly fanatical Shiite scholar who prays for the end of the world, and the the"return of the Mahdi".

Now it´s true, that Ahmadinejad is a true believing Shiite Muslim. And like we Christians believe in the eventual second coming of Christ, the return of the 12. Imam is part of his religious faith. However, there is not a single quote from the Iranian president, that shows he believes that this return must be preceded or even sped up by a Armageddon like catastrophic end-time scenario or a mass-genocide for non-Muslims.

This kind of scenario is one the Christian Zionists believe in, only they believe that all non-Christians (which in their opinion includes Catholics) will be burned in a cleansing fire, while they, the true believing Christians, will rapture straight up to heaven.

In reality, the future, which Ahmadinejad predicts in his speeches has nothing to do with the end-time scenario of some of the evangelical sects. His future is one of a more democratic world, one where "bullying" imperialism is over and all nations gain more sovereignty and equal rights on all levels. In his future different religions and nations will live with one another in tolerance, show one another respect and trade with one another in a mutualy beneficial way.
That Shiite theology, according to Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has a very different vision of the future than has evangelical theology, doesn´t hinder Erich Follath to create his own speculative vision of Armageddon to scare the hoods out of every German and everyone who reads "der Spiegel" in the English translation:

But he (the Mahdi) will only return when the world has undergone a catharsis, a whirling, gigantic, cleansing upheaval.

Could it take the form of a war between Muslims and heretics, perhaps? Possibly a nuclear war? And do some of the apocalyptically minded within the Haqqani school want to provoke this cataclysmic event to bring about the return of the Mahdi as soon as possible?


Now let´s see how Follath explains the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Once again it is supposedly his religion which makes Netanyahu so unreasonable.

But first we are informed, what might have driven Netanyahu into the camp of the religious unreasonables, besides the Holocaust, of course, there is something else.

And once again Erich Follath treats Germany with an account of a "brilliant Israeli commando mission":

Flashback: Jerusalem, the house of Netanyahu's father, mid-July 1976. The Netanyahu family has invited me, together with Israeli journalist Shabtai Tal, to their home. The mood is somber. The sense of mourning for Yonatan Netanyahu lies over everyone like a heavy veil. A few days earlier, an Israeli special forces unit, in what was probably the most spectacular rescue in the history of terrorism, had liberated more than 90 hostages on board an Air France jet at Entebbe Airport in Uganda that had been hijacked by Palestinians. The only Israeli casualty of the commando mission, presumably killed by a ricochet, was the unit's brilliant commander, Yonatan Netanyahu, nicknamed Yoni — Bibi's brother. He was only 30 when he died.

For many Israelis, Yonatan Netanyahu had with the Entebbe mission sent a Jewish message to the world, one that continues to shape the debate in today's discussion over the country's stance toward Iran. It was a symbol that challenged the notion that suffering must be passive, a symbol of taking control, even in a seemingly hopeless situation — a kind of continuation of the 1943 uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto.


So according to Folleth, Netanyahu might be a little bit religious crazy, but he is just continuing the uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto. (That Folleth actually dares to use the "Warsaw Ghetto" allegory now, after Israel´s wholesale slaughter of defenseless Palestinians in Gaza, seems to show that something isn´t quite right with Folleth either.)

But since Netanyahu himself doesn´t actually profess to be a religious Jew, Follath explains the possible beliefs of Netanyahu´s grandfather, who was an orthodox rabbi.

Since we can´t ask the grandfather, Follath assumes that he would teach the same doctrines as todays crazy rabbis.

No Jewish generation is permitted to forget the conflict with Amalek, because Amalek embodies the intrinsically evil and destructive. Fighting Amalek is the duty of every devout Jew, a "mitzvah aseh" or commandment of action. According to some interpretations of ancient scripture, this mitzvah is more far-reaching, namely a commandment to eliminate the original enemies of the Jews.

Rabbis like Bibi Netanyahu's grandfather taught, and continue to teach today, that Jews are forced to combat the Amalekites, who are constantly, as Goldberg puts it, "reappearing in new forms": the soldiers of Nebuchadnezzar and of the Spanish Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada, Adolf Hitler's thugs, and now the hardliners who are vowing to destroy Israel, together with their president, Ahmadinejad. Those who, like Netanyahu, see Iran's nuclear program as Amalek's arsenal of weapons, are not just entitled, but are in fact obligated, to take preventive measures to destroy it. According to Jewish apocalyptic constructs, a Jewish state would cease to exist after a possible Iranian nuclear first strike. In other words, it is better to attack first in the case of doubt.


Now, while Follath assumes that "Bibi" possibly thinks the same as his grandfather might have possibly thought, Follath still doesn´t think that Netanyahu is nearly as crazy as Follath thinks Ahmadinejad is. And he doesn´t want anybody else to think that either.

Despite living up to his reputation as a hardliner in the first few months of his new term, he demonstrated at least the willingness to compromise. In response to pressure from the Obama administration, in a keynote speech on foreign policy that he gave last week, Netanyahu spoke for the first time of a "Palestinian state."

But


Folleth states,

Netanyahu is almost certain to remain unbending on the question of Iranian nuclear bombs, steering Israel toward an attack.

And now comes Folleths, I mean the EU´s, I mean Obama´s, I mean the "moderate" Israelis' solution:

The solutions for monitoring the Iranian nuclear program are on the table. The West will have to be prepared to fundamentally grant the Iranians the right to uranium enrichment — under strict international supervision. The Iranians will have to agree to limit their arsenal to a few dozen centrifuges for scientific research, and to purchase the nuclear fuel for their civilian program from other countries. In return for Tehran's willingness to compromise, the West would agree to a "grand bargain" involving unrestricted trade, the transfer of scientific know-how and diplomatic recognition by Washington.


O.k. let´s have the notsilvianight solution on the table:

The Israelis will have to agree, to first dismantle their already existing nuclear bomb arsenal and return the nuclear-bomb-capable submarines back to Germany.

Then they will have to agree to limit their arsenal to a few dozen centrifuges for scientific research, and to purchase the nuclear fuel for their civilian program from other countries. In return for Tel Aviv's willingness to compromise, the Palestinians, the Arabic countries, the Iranians and the rest of the world would agree to a "grand bargain" involving unrestricted trade, the transfer of scientific know-how, the demand that Israel only withdraw to the pre-1967 borders (and gets to keep a Jewish majority state) and diplomatic recognition of the country within the green lines.


But Follath is somehow doubtful that his "solution" will be accepted:

But the signs are currently pointing to stormy weather ahead: to Haqqani versus Amalek, and to a showdown between the unlike twins.


notsilvia´s solution might not meet any calm waters either, I guess, and so she concludes:

But the signs are currently pointing to stormy weather ahead: to Zionismus versus "the Spirit of Humanity", and to a showdown between the two, who are no twins whatsoever.


Source http://atheonews.blogspot.com/2009/07/w ... ossad.html