Once again Joe Vialls pulls a rabbit from the hat. His claims are utterly unsubstantiated and he makes some pretty wild ones. Who knows but like I've said before, this guy defines "under-reported" news.
Spooks use technology "proved" on one-million dead Africans
by Joe Vialls
During the late afternoon of 6 April 1994, a hail of cannon shells tore through the fuselage of a commercial airliner flying overhead central Rwanda. Several seconds later the blazing plane exploded on impact with the ground, killing President Habyarimana of Rwanda, President Ntaryamira of Burundi, and most of their senior government officials. In that fatal millisecond of time, the entire political command structure of central Africa was decapitated, leaving the way open for “Operation Crimson Mist”, the most obscene terminal mind control experiment ever mounted by the United States of America against a sovereign nation. That “Crimson Mist” has been used again recently on a smaller scale in Iraq, is now beyond doubt.
As Habyarimana and his colleagues made their death dive, a small group of American men and women lounged around in a large hut at the edge of a discreet gravel airstrip a few miles from the Rwandan capital Kigali, temporary home for their three unmarked C-130 Hercules transport planes. All crewmembers carried forged credentials showing them as “atmospheric researchers” employed by an authentic civilian American agency, but these were only for emergency identification if one of the aircraft was forced to make an unscheduled landing on unfriendly territory. For all practical security purposes, neither they nor their three large aircraft were even in Africa.
When news of the presidential crash came in over the VHF radio, one of the Hercules planes was swiftly prepared for take off. The flight engineer checked the attachment of the RATO [Rocket Assisted Takeoff] packs, while the scientists made final adjustments to a large microwave dish mounted on the rear loading ramp of the aircraft. It was this strange and esoteric piece of equipment alone that would directly contribute to the deaths of more than one million African civilians during the hundred days that followed. Though completely silent in operation, the single microwave dish had more killing potential than a whole squadron of AC-130 Spectre gunships armed with fifty Gatling cannons.
Though officially tagged an “experiment”, none of those present had any doubt that this was merely a cosmetic cover for the gruesome operational work ahead. Each member had been carefully vetted and then vetted again by US Intelligence to ensure they had the “right stuff”, and were philosophically committed to two objectives. First was the evolving need to control or eliminate political dissent by remote means in the run up to the 21st Century, and second was the need to stem or reverse massive population increases across the world, which threatened to overwhelm existing natural resources, especially water and food. Intrinsically this required a willingness to commit mass murder, and everyone present had passed this critical test with flying colors.
As the Hercules’ engines started with a roar, American agents in Kigali were working alongside local civil servants and members of the Rwandan security service, ramping up public suspicion about foul play in the presidential air crash. Urged on by corrupt officialdom, Hutu tribesmen started marching on Tutsi tribesmen and threw a few rocks at them. Innocent enough at the outset, although with a few nasty machete cuts here and there. But then the C-130 Hercules made a carefully-calculated pass directly over the advancing Hutu, and they suddenly went berserk. Eyes glazed, the mood of the Hutu crowd went from simple anger to uncontrollable rage, and within minutes, hundreds of assorted Tutsi body parts were flying through the air.
What the Hercules crew had just achieved has been an open secret since the late fifties, when researchers accidentally discovered that there is a precise “control” brain wave for literally everything we do, and for everything we feel. The problem back then was that each of these control brain waves [rage, fear, panic, lethargy, vomiting and so on] had to be transmitted with an accuracy taken out to three decimal places, or they simply did not work at all. But as the years rolled by, and with the advent of transistors and microprocessors, the operational application of precise control brain waves became practical reality.
It is important to note here that the lethal trick repeated hundreds of times by the C-130 Hercules in Rwanda during April – July 1994, was not “classic mind control” in the ultimate conspiratorial meaning of the term, i.e. where people claim to hear complicated messages inside their heads, or where it is feared that the NSA [or similar] intend to turn everyone into helpless Zombies by implanting electronic chips in their arms or necks. What the C-130 crew were actually engaged in was “electromagnetically augmenting” a preexisting state. Remember that the agents and security service personnel first had to point the Hutu tribesmen in the direction of the Tutsi, induce reasonable anger, and make sure they were appropriately armed. Only then could the C-130 go to work with the precise control brain wave of “rage”, augmenting and thus upgrading crowd behavior from that of angry demonstrators to uncontrollable genocidal maniacs. Although not “classic”, this was and is unquestionably mind control, for the simple reason that external means were being used to force an irresistible change in behavior.
For those who really want to know how governments or agencies change public behavior on a whim, the explanation is not too complicated, though obtaining details of the classified control brain frequencies is all but impossible. Various academics have actually demonstrated some of these effects quasi-publicly over the years, which provides hard reality for skeptics.
Full story...
Saturday 31 May 2003
Nazi Germany's War on Terrorism
Hitler used the 1933 burning of the Reichstag (Parliament) building by a deranged Dutchman to declare a “war on terrorism,” establish his legitimacy as a leader (even though he hadn’t won a majority in the previous election).
“You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history,” he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by national media. “This fire,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion, “is the beginning.” He used the occasion – “a sign from God,” he called it – to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their “evil” deeds in their religion.
Two weeks later, the first prison for terrorists was built in Oranianberg, holding the first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the nation’s flag was everywhere, even printed in newspapers suitable for display.
Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation’s now-popular leader had pushed through legislation, in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it, that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people’s homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.
To get his patriotic “Decree on the Protection of People and State” passed over the objections of concerned legislators and civil libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if the national emergency provoked by the terrorist attack on the Reichstag building was over by then, the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people, and the police agencies would be re-restrained.
Full story...
“You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history,” he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by national media. “This fire,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion, “is the beginning.” He used the occasion – “a sign from God,” he called it – to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their “evil” deeds in their religion.
Two weeks later, the first prison for terrorists was built in Oranianberg, holding the first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the nation’s flag was everywhere, even printed in newspapers suitable for display.
Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation’s now-popular leader had pushed through legislation, in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it, that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people’s homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.
To get his patriotic “Decree on the Protection of People and State” passed over the objections of concerned legislators and civil libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if the national emergency provoked by the terrorist attack on the Reichstag building was over by then, the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people, and the police agencies would be re-restrained.
Full story...
Friday 30 May 2003
Dubya's Phony War
Bush has ensured his place in the history books - as the first man to wage a war and then dream up the excuse for it once the fighting's over.
His administration has spent the weeks since the fall of Baghdad in a slow but deliberate retreat as the goalposts on why the US launched a pre-emptive strike on Iraq haven't just moved - they've positively revolved.
The President's presumption of mass destruction - that coalition forces would be tripping over weapons of mass destruction after defeating Saddam Hussein's troops - has proved wrong.
The justification for a pre-emptive strike was that Saddam had failed to co-operate with inspectors, therefore he was concealing these illegal weapons.
Now Bush aides are pushing a new line - confirmed by Donald Rumsfeld's astonishing declaration yesterday -that Saddam may have destroyed the WMD as demanded by the UN after all.
Instead of looking for banned materials, it is now pinning its hopes on finding documentary evidence.
Full story...
His administration has spent the weeks since the fall of Baghdad in a slow but deliberate retreat as the goalposts on why the US launched a pre-emptive strike on Iraq haven't just moved - they've positively revolved.
The President's presumption of mass destruction - that coalition forces would be tripping over weapons of mass destruction after defeating Saddam Hussein's troops - has proved wrong.
The justification for a pre-emptive strike was that Saddam had failed to co-operate with inspectors, therefore he was concealing these illegal weapons.
Now Bush aides are pushing a new line - confirmed by Donald Rumsfeld's astonishing declaration yesterday -that Saddam may have destroyed the WMD as demanded by the UN after all.
Instead of looking for banned materials, it is now pinning its hopes on finding documentary evidence.
Full story...
Did Blair lie to us?
The PM's warning that Iraq could strike in 45 minutes now looks bogus, and we may never trust him again.
by Polly Toynbee
Among the tragedies of the Iraq war this one might seem trivial - the end of Tony Blair as the great persuader. His phenomenal ability to convince people of almost anything is done for, dead in the filthy water of the Baghdad streets. That spillage is a sorry waste of irrecoverable political credibility that should have been saved for other things.
He squandered it on September 24 last year as he spoke to a mesmerised House of Commons, presenting his dossier of intelligence information on Saddam's weapons. It was a bravura performance, spellbinding in its quiet solemnity, reasoning the arguments one by one, blending conviction with eerie threats. Forty-five minutes! Good God! You could see the MPs' hairs standing up on end, calculating how far this holocaust might reach. That precise timing resonated with a generation that grew up discussing what to do in the four-minute nuclear warning - run a mile, boil an egg, have sex... In that speech he over-egged it and he must have known it. Whether Downing Street demanded the fateful "45 minutes" or not, he knew - and it is there in cold print - that the chilling words ran far beyond what anyone knew for sure.
Reading his introduction to the dossier, it is careful in its caveats, filled with "probably", "appears" and "almost certainly". "Intelligence is not always right" and "gathering intelligence inside Iraq is not easy" pepper the text. But between these come the deadly shockers - one-and-a-half tonnes of VX nerve agent, 26,000 litres of anthrax spores, 30,000 special munitions of delivery - and then that killer 45 minutes. "Our purpose is disarmament," he said. "The whole purpose" was "a proper process of disarmament".
But now Donald Rumsfeld shrugs that off as an irrelevance. Well, Saddam may have destroyed them all before the war began. We can only hope he is right since Robin Cook raises the alarm that they may yet emerge lethally: "The prospect of any chemical shells or biological toxins being left unguarded in such an unstable region is a nightmare." What if Qusay took them away with him in his trailers full of cash? What if the war to stop WMD falling into the hands of terrorists turns into the means by which terrorists finally get their hands on them? "A savage irony," says Cook.
Apart from that danger, it makes no difference now to the justification for the war if they are never found or accounted for. After all, Hans Blix always said they were there and we who opposed the war never doubted it. The only important question was how dangerous they were and whether Saddam would or could use them. Saddam's non-use of the weapons even in the death throes of his regime was conclusive proof that he had none he could use. Weapons inspections had done their work, forcing him to render them unusable. So far, the US says, Iraqi scientists have revealed nothing useful. Yesterday Blair promised some WMD would be found - but it changes little: they were not used. Why not? Reading Saddam's deranged mind was beyond the intelligence services, but pride and the habit of absolute power perhaps made him unable to bend to the UN, even if he had nothing much to hide. Tony Blair put his credibility into the hands of Saddam's caprice.
Full story...
by Polly Toynbee
Among the tragedies of the Iraq war this one might seem trivial - the end of Tony Blair as the great persuader. His phenomenal ability to convince people of almost anything is done for, dead in the filthy water of the Baghdad streets. That spillage is a sorry waste of irrecoverable political credibility that should have been saved for other things.
He squandered it on September 24 last year as he spoke to a mesmerised House of Commons, presenting his dossier of intelligence information on Saddam's weapons. It was a bravura performance, spellbinding in its quiet solemnity, reasoning the arguments one by one, blending conviction with eerie threats. Forty-five minutes! Good God! You could see the MPs' hairs standing up on end, calculating how far this holocaust might reach. That precise timing resonated with a generation that grew up discussing what to do in the four-minute nuclear warning - run a mile, boil an egg, have sex... In that speech he over-egged it and he must have known it. Whether Downing Street demanded the fateful "45 minutes" or not, he knew - and it is there in cold print - that the chilling words ran far beyond what anyone knew for sure.
Reading his introduction to the dossier, it is careful in its caveats, filled with "probably", "appears" and "almost certainly". "Intelligence is not always right" and "gathering intelligence inside Iraq is not easy" pepper the text. But between these come the deadly shockers - one-and-a-half tonnes of VX nerve agent, 26,000 litres of anthrax spores, 30,000 special munitions of delivery - and then that killer 45 minutes. "Our purpose is disarmament," he said. "The whole purpose" was "a proper process of disarmament".
But now Donald Rumsfeld shrugs that off as an irrelevance. Well, Saddam may have destroyed them all before the war began. We can only hope he is right since Robin Cook raises the alarm that they may yet emerge lethally: "The prospect of any chemical shells or biological toxins being left unguarded in such an unstable region is a nightmare." What if Qusay took them away with him in his trailers full of cash? What if the war to stop WMD falling into the hands of terrorists turns into the means by which terrorists finally get their hands on them? "A savage irony," says Cook.
Apart from that danger, it makes no difference now to the justification for the war if they are never found or accounted for. After all, Hans Blix always said they were there and we who opposed the war never doubted it. The only important question was how dangerous they were and whether Saddam would or could use them. Saddam's non-use of the weapons even in the death throes of his regime was conclusive proof that he had none he could use. Weapons inspections had done their work, forcing him to render them unusable. So far, the US says, Iraqi scientists have revealed nothing useful. Yesterday Blair promised some WMD would be found - but it changes little: they were not used. Why not? Reading Saddam's deranged mind was beyond the intelligence services, but pride and the habit of absolute power perhaps made him unable to bend to the UN, even if he had nothing much to hide. Tony Blair put his credibility into the hands of Saddam's caprice.
Full story...
Thursday 29 May 2003
Bell berates media giants for warmongering words
Martin Bell, the former BBC war correspondent and independent MP, yesterday condemned the hypocrisy of the media owners Conrad Black and Rupert Murdoch, whose news organisations had led the calls for war in Iraq.
He said the proprietors had never taken the sorts of risks they had urged on British service personnel in calling for the war.
Speaking during a debate at the festival on media coverage of the war in Iraq, Mr Bell, who was a commentator for Channel 5 during the conflict, also attacked Mr Murdoch's Sky News for the amount of speculation it indulged in and for "reporting rumours as fact".
Mr Bell said: "The thing that worries me most about the coverage was its feverishness. The networks became rumour bazaars. There was spin and manipulation. Our political and military leaders also have an obligation not to deceive."
Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor, told the thousand-strong audience that technological developments had enabled the immediate transmission of pictures and information.
They allowed the internet distribution of thousands of sources of information, including from the so-called Baghdad Blogger.
Another aspect of this war was the use of reporters who stayed with particular troops during the conflict, "embedded" in military units.
"It would be churlish to rubbish the concept of embedded reporters, having asked for it in previous conflicts," he said.
Full story...
He said the proprietors had never taken the sorts of risks they had urged on British service personnel in calling for the war.
Speaking during a debate at the festival on media coverage of the war in Iraq, Mr Bell, who was a commentator for Channel 5 during the conflict, also attacked Mr Murdoch's Sky News for the amount of speculation it indulged in and for "reporting rumours as fact".
Mr Bell said: "The thing that worries me most about the coverage was its feverishness. The networks became rumour bazaars. There was spin and manipulation. Our political and military leaders also have an obligation not to deceive."
Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor, told the thousand-strong audience that technological developments had enabled the immediate transmission of pictures and information.
They allowed the internet distribution of thousands of sources of information, including from the so-called Baghdad Blogger.
Another aspect of this war was the use of reporters who stayed with particular troops during the conflict, "embedded" in military units.
"It would be churlish to rubbish the concept of embedded reporters, having asked for it in previous conflicts," he said.
Full story...
Same Old Shellgame
What Sharon Wants, Sharon Gets
The Israeli cabinet's highly qualified acceptance on Sunday of the "roadmap" to peace between Israel and the Palestinians is likely to mean the final derailment of this latest in a line of misbegotten peace plans. Just a random sampling of the Sunday morning talk shows demonstrates why this perverse reality is so.
Reacting to the Israeli cabinet's twelve-seven vote (with four abstentions) in favor of the roadmap, but taking no note of the crippling preconditions imposed on Israel's adherence to the peace plan, Fox News Sunday host Tony Snow asked Senator Joseph Lieberman if he did not agree that the Bush administration should now ignore the other members of the Quartet altogether (the others being the European Union, the UN, and Russia) and go ahead with the roadmap in whatever way the administration saw fit; the U.S. should simply assert its prerogative as principal peace broker. "Well, yes," Lieberman responded, in a tone implying that the answer was so obvious the question need not have been asked. The Israelis mistrust the rest of the Quartet, Lieberman observed, and if we expect Israel to make peace we have to accommodate its concerns.
Period. Whatever Sharon wants Sharon gets.
Full story...
The Israeli cabinet's highly qualified acceptance on Sunday of the "roadmap" to peace between Israel and the Palestinians is likely to mean the final derailment of this latest in a line of misbegotten peace plans. Just a random sampling of the Sunday morning talk shows demonstrates why this perverse reality is so.
Reacting to the Israeli cabinet's twelve-seven vote (with four abstentions) in favor of the roadmap, but taking no note of the crippling preconditions imposed on Israel's adherence to the peace plan, Fox News Sunday host Tony Snow asked Senator Joseph Lieberman if he did not agree that the Bush administration should now ignore the other members of the Quartet altogether (the others being the European Union, the UN, and Russia) and go ahead with the roadmap in whatever way the administration saw fit; the U.S. should simply assert its prerogative as principal peace broker. "Well, yes," Lieberman responded, in a tone implying that the answer was so obvious the question need not have been asked. The Israelis mistrust the rest of the Quartet, Lieberman observed, and if we expect Israel to make peace we have to accommodate its concerns.
Period. Whatever Sharon wants Sharon gets.
Full story...
9/11: The American Connection
New scandal spotlights terror flight school's hidden ties
In the absence of the government “white paper” promised by Secretary of State Colin Powell in the wake of the 9/11 attack, it was left to British Prime Minister Tony Blair to release a “summary of evidence” making the case against Osama Bin Laden.
Blair said: “Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization with ties to a global network."
A controversy over the sudden closing of a flight school in Orlando in early March reveals a hidden connection between the bankruptcy in Orlando and the secretive organization which ran Huffman Aviation in Venice, the unacknowledged home base of Mohamed Atta and his Hamburg cadre during almost their entire time in the U.S.
The investigation into the disappearance of millions of dollars which students had been forced to pre-pay in tuition has led to 70-year old Wallace J. Hilliard of Naples, FL, the shadowy financier whose purchase of Huffman in partnership with Dutch national Rudi Dekkers, currently awaiting trial on felony fraud, set in motion a chain of events culminating in two former students piloting Boeing 767's into the World Trade Center Towers.
When 21-year-old Tiffany Traynor moved from Michigan to Central Florida last year to pursue her childhood dream of becoming an airline pilot at the Airline Training Academy (ATA) in Orlando, the last thing she expected was to lose $75,000 and have her career placed on hold when the school closed without warning and its owners dropped out of sight.
But that’s what happened to her, and 300 other fledgling pilots whose career dreams were dashed by the loss of millions they had pre-paid the school in tuition for training they will never receive.
In the blink of an eye, bright futures turned bleak, as 20-yr-old students were suddenly left with $100,000 student loans to pay off and nothing to show for it.
Individual losses were so large because the Airline Training Academy, owned and run by the family of retired Delta pilot Jim Williams, followed the unusual practice of forcing students to pre-pay, in full, for training.
It appears in hindsight that the Williams family was thinking ahead.
Full story...
In the absence of the government “white paper” promised by Secretary of State Colin Powell in the wake of the 9/11 attack, it was left to British Prime Minister Tony Blair to release a “summary of evidence” making the case against Osama Bin Laden.
Blair said: “Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization with ties to a global network."
A controversy over the sudden closing of a flight school in Orlando in early March reveals a hidden connection between the bankruptcy in Orlando and the secretive organization which ran Huffman Aviation in Venice, the unacknowledged home base of Mohamed Atta and his Hamburg cadre during almost their entire time in the U.S.
The investigation into the disappearance of millions of dollars which students had been forced to pre-pay in tuition has led to 70-year old Wallace J. Hilliard of Naples, FL, the shadowy financier whose purchase of Huffman in partnership with Dutch national Rudi Dekkers, currently awaiting trial on felony fraud, set in motion a chain of events culminating in two former students piloting Boeing 767's into the World Trade Center Towers.
When 21-year-old Tiffany Traynor moved from Michigan to Central Florida last year to pursue her childhood dream of becoming an airline pilot at the Airline Training Academy (ATA) in Orlando, the last thing she expected was to lose $75,000 and have her career placed on hold when the school closed without warning and its owners dropped out of sight.
But that’s what happened to her, and 300 other fledgling pilots whose career dreams were dashed by the loss of millions they had pre-paid the school in tuition for training they will never receive.
In the blink of an eye, bright futures turned bleak, as 20-yr-old students were suddenly left with $100,000 student loans to pay off and nothing to show for it.
Individual losses were so large because the Airline Training Academy, owned and run by the family of retired Delta pilot Jim Williams, followed the unusual practice of forcing students to pre-pay, in full, for training.
It appears in hindsight that the Williams family was thinking ahead.
Full story...
Former attorney general says Bush should be impeached
The U.S. invasion of Iraq was the most serious act of aggression in the country’s history and it was in clear violation of the most important provisions of international law, according to former Attorney General Ramsey Clark.
The "crimes" committed by President George W. Bush and others in his administration warrant the severest response from an alarmed citizenry: impeachment, Mr. Clark told a luncheon audience at the National Press Club May 12.
"I urge everyone who cares about the integrity of our Constitution to take back the Constitution by insisting that the House of Representatives, which has the sole power of impeachment, process impeachment proceedings now against President Bush for launching this war of aggression," Mr. Clark said.
"It’s time that we recognize that the Constitution of the United States, at length and more than with any other single issue, dealt with the problem of the imperial presidency, or crimes by officers of the United States executive," he continued.
The authors of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution provided the means, he continued, "by which ‘We the People’ could protect ourselves from an imperial presidency. There are six separate provisions in the Constitution for impeachment."
The first grounds for impeachment—or formal legal charges being brought against the President and others—is treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors. In order to be removed from office, federal officers must first be charged with certain violations by the U.S. House of Representatives—the impeachment—and then must be convicted after a trial before the U.S. Senate, with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding.
"It’s imperative that we face our duty to process impeachment," Mr. Clark said, citing his Internet website address—www.votetoimpeach.org—which has registered nearly 200,000 people who have signed on to impeach Mr. Bush since March 19 when the invasion of Iraq was formally launched.
Full story...
The "crimes" committed by President George W. Bush and others in his administration warrant the severest response from an alarmed citizenry: impeachment, Mr. Clark told a luncheon audience at the National Press Club May 12.
"I urge everyone who cares about the integrity of our Constitution to take back the Constitution by insisting that the House of Representatives, which has the sole power of impeachment, process impeachment proceedings now against President Bush for launching this war of aggression," Mr. Clark said.
"It’s time that we recognize that the Constitution of the United States, at length and more than with any other single issue, dealt with the problem of the imperial presidency, or crimes by officers of the United States executive," he continued.
The authors of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution provided the means, he continued, "by which ‘We the People’ could protect ourselves from an imperial presidency. There are six separate provisions in the Constitution for impeachment."
The first grounds for impeachment—or formal legal charges being brought against the President and others—is treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors. In order to be removed from office, federal officers must first be charged with certain violations by the U.S. House of Representatives—the impeachment—and then must be convicted after a trial before the U.S. Senate, with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding.
"It’s imperative that we face our duty to process impeachment," Mr. Clark said, citing his Internet website address—www.votetoimpeach.org—which has registered nearly 200,000 people who have signed on to impeach Mr. Bush since March 19 when the invasion of Iraq was formally launched.
Full story...
Wednesday 28 May 2003
Our national disgrace
Phony Tony better be careful or the London cabbies will start refering to "Tony Blairs" rather than "Pork Pies". Unless they already do of course!
Lies, damned lies and Europhobe papers
It has been too long since we heard a Labour cabinet minister strike back at the Europhobia currently spewing from the newspapers of Conrad Black, Rupert Murdoch and Lord Rothermere. Yesterday, that changed.
The Welsh secretary Peter Hain was the man who rose to the occasion. In a Financial Times interview, Mr Hain accused "embittered Eurosceptics" of a campaign of "hype, fantasy, scaremongering and downright lies" about the new European constitution drafted by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's constitutional convention. Each of Mr Hain's charges was spot on. The only disappointment is that Mr Hain should have been so restrained in his condemnation of a campaign which has been a disgrace to British journalism.
Take, as an example, the document that is at the centre of many of the latest wild charges in the Europhobic press. To read the Sun, the Mail and the rest, you might imagine that the EU charter of fundamental rights - which Mr Giscard said yesterday he wants to insert into the draft constitution - is a rough guide to repression, which would confer vast power on a handful of malicious bureaucrats to reduce our ancestral liberties to dust.
Anyone who is tempted to believe such a thing should simply take the trouble to read the 22-page charter itself. They will discover that the charter is a disarmingly admirable document. It spells out, in 54 articles, exactly the rights which most people in most modern societies would regard as both decent and basic. It sets out human dignities and freedoms which are the foundations of a liberal society. It enumerates principles of equality, solidarity and justice which would threaten only the bigot, the thief and the tyrant. Though it seeks to make these rights and principles synonymous with the enlarged European Union, it is respectful towards national sovereignty, local identity and individual liberty.
To say, as the Sun did yesterday, that it puts 2 million jobs at peril and means that Britain will be ruled from Brussels, is simply untrue. To claim, as the Scotsman did, that it is a blueprint for a European superstate, is a lie. To pretend, as the Mail did, that it will sweep almost 1,000 years of British history into the dustbin of history, is a total fantasy. How anyone can pretend, as the Daily Telegraph did, that the documents that Mr Giscard released this week are worse than expected, is beyond rational understanding.
No one who has read the accounts in the Europhobic press over the past two weeks, and who then reads the Giscard drafts themselves, could fail to be amazed by the contrast. Pompous? Sometimes. Platitudinous? Often. Plodding? Yes, more often than one would like. But the death knell of democracy, the end of our nationhood, the shattering of Tony Blair's credibility? Get real.
Full story...
Lies, damned lies and Europhobe papers
It has been too long since we heard a Labour cabinet minister strike back at the Europhobia currently spewing from the newspapers of Conrad Black, Rupert Murdoch and Lord Rothermere. Yesterday, that changed.
The Welsh secretary Peter Hain was the man who rose to the occasion. In a Financial Times interview, Mr Hain accused "embittered Eurosceptics" of a campaign of "hype, fantasy, scaremongering and downright lies" about the new European constitution drafted by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's constitutional convention. Each of Mr Hain's charges was spot on. The only disappointment is that Mr Hain should have been so restrained in his condemnation of a campaign which has been a disgrace to British journalism.
Take, as an example, the document that is at the centre of many of the latest wild charges in the Europhobic press. To read the Sun, the Mail and the rest, you might imagine that the EU charter of fundamental rights - which Mr Giscard said yesterday he wants to insert into the draft constitution - is a rough guide to repression, which would confer vast power on a handful of malicious bureaucrats to reduce our ancestral liberties to dust.
Anyone who is tempted to believe such a thing should simply take the trouble to read the 22-page charter itself. They will discover that the charter is a disarmingly admirable document. It spells out, in 54 articles, exactly the rights which most people in most modern societies would regard as both decent and basic. It sets out human dignities and freedoms which are the foundations of a liberal society. It enumerates principles of equality, solidarity and justice which would threaten only the bigot, the thief and the tyrant. Though it seeks to make these rights and principles synonymous with the enlarged European Union, it is respectful towards national sovereignty, local identity and individual liberty.
To say, as the Sun did yesterday, that it puts 2 million jobs at peril and means that Britain will be ruled from Brussels, is simply untrue. To claim, as the Scotsman did, that it is a blueprint for a European superstate, is a lie. To pretend, as the Mail did, that it will sweep almost 1,000 years of British history into the dustbin of history, is a total fantasy. How anyone can pretend, as the Daily Telegraph did, that the documents that Mr Giscard released this week are worse than expected, is beyond rational understanding.
No one who has read the accounts in the Europhobic press over the past two weeks, and who then reads the Giscard drafts themselves, could fail to be amazed by the contrast. Pompous? Sometimes. Platitudinous? Often. Plodding? Yes, more often than one would like. But the death knell of democracy, the end of our nationhood, the shattering of Tony Blair's credibility? Get real.
Full story...
Pretext for war exposed
CIA-backed exile was source for Times “scoops” on Iraqi arms program
A report in the Washington Post has cast devastating new light on claims by the New York Times correspondent Judith Miller that the US military had uncovered the “smoking gun” of Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD). Post media correspondent Howard Kurtz revealed May 26 the contents of an e-mail exchange between Miller and Times Baghdad chief John Burns in which the former acknowledges that long-time US government asset Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress “provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD” to the Times.
The failure of the US military to discover chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, the chief pretext for the “pre-emptive” invasion and overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, has been an ongoing political embarrassment for the Bush administration.
Various clumsy efforts have been made since the end of the war, most prominently by Miller, to provide proof, even the slimmest, of these weapons’ existence. In a series of lurid articles in late April and early May, picked up by other news sources and widely distributed, the Times’s reporter claimed essentially that American forces had discovered the much-looked-for evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
In an April 21 piece, for example, headlined, “Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, An Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert,” Miller claimed that an unnamed Iraqi scientist had been found who asserted that the Hussein regime had 1) destroyed its stocks of chemical weapons only days before the US invaded; 2) shared its weapons technology with Syria; and 3) collaborated with Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda. All three claims conveniently dovetailed with Bush administration positions. Miller’s article, however, provided nothing to substantiate these charges other than anonymous sources in the US military’s Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha (MET Alpha), the unit hunting for WMD.
Miller added this extraordinary disclaimer: “Under the terms of her accreditation to report on the activities of MET Alpha, this reporter was not permitted to interview the scientist or visit his home. Nor was she permitted to write about the discovery of the scientist for three days, and the copy was then submitted for a check by military officials.
“Those officials asked that details of what chemicals were uncovered be deleted. They said they feared that such information could jeopardize the scientist’s safety by identifying the part of the weapons program where he worked.”
Full story...
A report in the Washington Post has cast devastating new light on claims by the New York Times correspondent Judith Miller that the US military had uncovered the “smoking gun” of Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD). Post media correspondent Howard Kurtz revealed May 26 the contents of an e-mail exchange between Miller and Times Baghdad chief John Burns in which the former acknowledges that long-time US government asset Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress “provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD” to the Times.
The failure of the US military to discover chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, the chief pretext for the “pre-emptive” invasion and overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, has been an ongoing political embarrassment for the Bush administration.
Various clumsy efforts have been made since the end of the war, most prominently by Miller, to provide proof, even the slimmest, of these weapons’ existence. In a series of lurid articles in late April and early May, picked up by other news sources and widely distributed, the Times’s reporter claimed essentially that American forces had discovered the much-looked-for evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
In an April 21 piece, for example, headlined, “Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, An Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert,” Miller claimed that an unnamed Iraqi scientist had been found who asserted that the Hussein regime had 1) destroyed its stocks of chemical weapons only days before the US invaded; 2) shared its weapons technology with Syria; and 3) collaborated with Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda. All three claims conveniently dovetailed with Bush administration positions. Miller’s article, however, provided nothing to substantiate these charges other than anonymous sources in the US military’s Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha (MET Alpha), the unit hunting for WMD.
Miller added this extraordinary disclaimer: “Under the terms of her accreditation to report on the activities of MET Alpha, this reporter was not permitted to interview the scientist or visit his home. Nor was she permitted to write about the discovery of the scientist for three days, and the copy was then submitted for a check by military officials.
“Those officials asked that details of what chemicals were uncovered be deleted. They said they feared that such information could jeopardize the scientist’s safety by identifying the part of the weapons program where he worked.”
Full story...
Roadmap: Another Deception?
The Zionist-conceived, American-backed plan for “peace” in the Middle East, known as the roadmap, is unlikely to succeed where the defunct Oslo Accords failed. Indeed, a cursory examination of the roadmap shows that it is actually a mere corruption of the Oslo Agreement. The only difference is that it is vaguer, more deformed, and far more disingenuous.
Like the hapless Oslo Accords, the roadmap suffers from serious structural faults that render it utterly unfit as a reasonable base for a genuine and durable peace in Palestine.
The plan speaks in general terms of creating a viable Palestinian state, but says nothing about the borders of the contemplated state and whether that will necessitate a total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
Indeed, the plan leaves virtually all the fundamental aspects of the proposed state to be decided in bilateral talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
But anyone with minimal knowledge of the Israeli mentality could imagine the outcome of “negotiations” between an insolent Israel, enjoying unprecedented domination over American politics and policies, and a nearly decimated Palestinian Authority that has lost whatever semblance of authority it used to have prior to the Israeli reoccupation of the erstwhile autonomous enclaves.
In other words, such central issues as Israeli withdrawal of the territories occupied in 1967, Jewish settlements, Jerusalem, and the refugees, would be subject to tough bargaining and maneuvering following the oblique balance of power between the PA and Israel.
Full story...
Like the hapless Oslo Accords, the roadmap suffers from serious structural faults that render it utterly unfit as a reasonable base for a genuine and durable peace in Palestine.
The plan speaks in general terms of creating a viable Palestinian state, but says nothing about the borders of the contemplated state and whether that will necessitate a total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
Indeed, the plan leaves virtually all the fundamental aspects of the proposed state to be decided in bilateral talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
But anyone with minimal knowledge of the Israeli mentality could imagine the outcome of “negotiations” between an insolent Israel, enjoying unprecedented domination over American politics and policies, and a nearly decimated Palestinian Authority that has lost whatever semblance of authority it used to have prior to the Israeli reoccupation of the erstwhile autonomous enclaves.
In other words, such central issues as Israeli withdrawal of the territories occupied in 1967, Jewish settlements, Jerusalem, and the refugees, would be subject to tough bargaining and maneuvering following the oblique balance of power between the PA and Israel.
Full story...
Documents from the Phoenix Program
Do the words "truth is stranger than fiction" not bear a striking relevance to the modern world? I'm asked to believe the vomit spewing forth from the politicians when it's an historical fact that the USA and UK have rarely behaved honourably in their dealings with the rest of the world...
Created by the CIA in Saigon in 1967, Phoenix was a program aimed at "neutralizing"—through assassination, kidnapping, and systematic torture—the civilian infrastructure that supported the Viet Cong insurgency in South Vietnam. It was a terrifying "final solution" that violated the Geneva Conventions and traditional American ideas of human morality. (For a full introduction to Phoenix, see below.)
While researching the Phoenix Program for my book on the subject, I conducted over a hundred interviews and collected boxes full of documents from individuals, as well as from the State Department and Department of Defense. The most important documents provided by any one individual came from retired CIA officer Nelson Brickham, the man most responsibile for the creation of the Phoenix Program.
Luckily for history, Brickham kept copies of the documents he wrote while with the CIA; otherwise, there would be no documentary evidence of how Phoenix was actually created. During the evacuation of Saigon in April 1975, the CIA destroyed most of the documents it had about its assassination program, and none of what it kept at Langley headquarters can be obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. This is no accident, for Phoenix is the model for the equally terrifying US homeland security aparatus.
Full story...
Created by the CIA in Saigon in 1967, Phoenix was a program aimed at "neutralizing"—through assassination, kidnapping, and systematic torture—the civilian infrastructure that supported the Viet Cong insurgency in South Vietnam. It was a terrifying "final solution" that violated the Geneva Conventions and traditional American ideas of human morality. (For a full introduction to Phoenix, see below.)
While researching the Phoenix Program for my book on the subject, I conducted over a hundred interviews and collected boxes full of documents from individuals, as well as from the State Department and Department of Defense. The most important documents provided by any one individual came from retired CIA officer Nelson Brickham, the man most responsibile for the creation of the Phoenix Program.
Luckily for history, Brickham kept copies of the documents he wrote while with the CIA; otherwise, there would be no documentary evidence of how Phoenix was actually created. During the evacuation of Saigon in April 1975, the CIA destroyed most of the documents it had about its assassination program, and none of what it kept at Langley headquarters can be obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. This is no accident, for Phoenix is the model for the equally terrifying US homeland security aparatus.
Full story...
Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism
Does this sound familiar to anyone?
Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.
6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
From Liberty Forum
Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.
6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
From Liberty Forum
Tuesday 27 May 2003
A cage for Palestinians
A 1,000-kilometer fence preempts the road map
A humorous e-mail circulating on the Internet explains the "law of diminishing territorial returns" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The first attempt at partitioning the land between Jews and Arabs, undertaken by the United Nations in 1947, resulted in the Palestinian majority being offered 47 percent of its historic homeland, with the rest allocated to a new Jewish state. The Palestinians rejected the plan and the ensuing war established Israel.
The Palestinians had to wait 46 years for the next offer: Under the 1993 Oslo accords, the Palestinians were to receive 22 percent of their homeland - the territories of the West Bank and Gaza. They accepted the terms, but Israel never got around to returning most of the land. Then Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel decided to speed things up and negotiate a final agreement at Camp David in 2000, "generously" offering the Palestinians 80 percent of the 22 percent of the 100 percent of their original homeland. Yasser Arafat refused to sign and the second intifada began.
The e-mail's payoff line is that Barak's successor, Ariel Sharon, has devised an even more miserly take-it-or-leave-it deal: the Palestinians can have a state on 42 percent of the 80 percent of the 22 percent of 100 percent of their original homeland.
The funniest part is that it isn't a joke. Sharon is deadly serious. The proof is not to be found in the "road map," which is diverting attention from Sharon's real goal, which is to redraw the territorial contours of historic Palestine himself - in concrete and barbed wire.
The security wall Israel is hastily constructing around the West Bank - officially justified by the need to stop terror attacks - will cage in more than 2 million Palestinians. Another electrified fence is already imprisoning 1 million Palestinians in Gaza.
Little attention has focused on this wall, mainly because it is assumed it follows the Green Line, the internationally recognized border that existed between Israel and the West Bank until the war of 1967. But Sharon admitted in a recent interview with the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that the wall will be at least 1,000 kilometers long (625 miles), whereas the Green Line is only 360 kilometers long.
Why does it need to be so long? Because Sharon is less interested in preventing suicide bombers than in creating a tiny de facto Palestinian state before the road map forces a bigger one on him. For decades Sharon has maintained that the Palestinians should not be allowed a state that controls its own borders, airspace and water or one that comprises more than 40 percent of the land of the West Bank and Gaza.
Palestinian research based on land expropriation orders issued by the Israeli Army produces a map that shows the wall winding its way deep into the heart of the Palestinian state, twisting and turning in an elaborate route designed to keep a large number of the settlers on "Israel's side" of the wall and minimize the amount of territory left to the Palestinians.
Israel is also preparing a second, similarly tortuous wall near the eastern border of the West Bank, which it shares with Jordan, that will steal even more land from the Palestinians and offers no obvious security benefits.
After the wall is finished, at a cost of more than $2 billion, the Palestinians will live in two minuscule states behind concrete and electrified fencing, restricted to their main population centers. Thousands of rural Palestinians will live outside the West Bank cage in military controlled zones, denied rights as citizens of either Palestine or Israel. The rest will live inside the prison. Palestine will finally be born from 42 percent of 80 percent of 22 percent of the historic Palestinian homeland.
The writer is a free-lance journalist living in Israel. JERUSALEM A humorous e-mail circulating on the Internet explains the "law of diminishing territorial returns" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The first attempt at partitioning the land between Jews and Arabs, undertaken by the United Nations in 1947, resulted in the Palestinian majority being offered 47 percent of its historic homeland, with the rest allocated to a new Jewish state. The Palestinians rejected the plan and the ensuing war established Israel.
The Palestinians had to wait 46 years for the next offer: Under the 1993 Oslo accords, the Palestinians were to receive 22 percent of their homeland - the territories of the West Bank and Gaza. They accepted the terms, but Israel never got around to returning most of the land. Then Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel decided to speed things up and negotiate a final agreement at Camp David in 2000, "generously" offering the Palestinians 80 percent of the 22 percent of the 100 percent of their original homeland. Yasser Arafat refused to sign and the second intifada began.
The e-mail's payoff line is that Barak's successor, Ariel Sharon, has devised an even more miserly take-it-or-leave-it deal: the Palestinians can have a state on 42 percent of the 80 percent of the 22 percent of 100 percent of their original homeland.
The funniest part is that it isn't a joke. Sharon is deadly serious. The proof is not to be found in the "road map," which is diverting attention from Sharon's real goal, which is to redraw the territorial contours of historic Palestine himself - in concrete and barbed wire.
The security wall Israel is hastily constructing around the West Bank - officially justified by the need to stop terror attacks - will cage in more than 2 million Palestinians. Another electrified fence is already imprisoning 1 million Palestinians in Gaza.
Full story...
A humorous e-mail circulating on the Internet explains the "law of diminishing territorial returns" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The first attempt at partitioning the land between Jews and Arabs, undertaken by the United Nations in 1947, resulted in the Palestinian majority being offered 47 percent of its historic homeland, with the rest allocated to a new Jewish state. The Palestinians rejected the plan and the ensuing war established Israel.
The Palestinians had to wait 46 years for the next offer: Under the 1993 Oslo accords, the Palestinians were to receive 22 percent of their homeland - the territories of the West Bank and Gaza. They accepted the terms, but Israel never got around to returning most of the land. Then Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel decided to speed things up and negotiate a final agreement at Camp David in 2000, "generously" offering the Palestinians 80 percent of the 22 percent of the 100 percent of their original homeland. Yasser Arafat refused to sign and the second intifada began.
The e-mail's payoff line is that Barak's successor, Ariel Sharon, has devised an even more miserly take-it-or-leave-it deal: the Palestinians can have a state on 42 percent of the 80 percent of the 22 percent of 100 percent of their original homeland.
The funniest part is that it isn't a joke. Sharon is deadly serious. The proof is not to be found in the "road map," which is diverting attention from Sharon's real goal, which is to redraw the territorial contours of historic Palestine himself - in concrete and barbed wire.
The security wall Israel is hastily constructing around the West Bank - officially justified by the need to stop terror attacks - will cage in more than 2 million Palestinians. Another electrified fence is already imprisoning 1 million Palestinians in Gaza.
Little attention has focused on this wall, mainly because it is assumed it follows the Green Line, the internationally recognized border that existed between Israel and the West Bank until the war of 1967. But Sharon admitted in a recent interview with the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that the wall will be at least 1,000 kilometers long (625 miles), whereas the Green Line is only 360 kilometers long.
Why does it need to be so long? Because Sharon is less interested in preventing suicide bombers than in creating a tiny de facto Palestinian state before the road map forces a bigger one on him. For decades Sharon has maintained that the Palestinians should not be allowed a state that controls its own borders, airspace and water or one that comprises more than 40 percent of the land of the West Bank and Gaza.
Palestinian research based on land expropriation orders issued by the Israeli Army produces a map that shows the wall winding its way deep into the heart of the Palestinian state, twisting and turning in an elaborate route designed to keep a large number of the settlers on "Israel's side" of the wall and minimize the amount of territory left to the Palestinians.
Israel is also preparing a second, similarly tortuous wall near the eastern border of the West Bank, which it shares with Jordan, that will steal even more land from the Palestinians and offers no obvious security benefits.
After the wall is finished, at a cost of more than $2 billion, the Palestinians will live in two minuscule states behind concrete and electrified fencing, restricted to their main population centers. Thousands of rural Palestinians will live outside the West Bank cage in military controlled zones, denied rights as citizens of either Palestine or Israel. The rest will live inside the prison. Palestine will finally be born from 42 percent of 80 percent of 22 percent of the historic Palestinian homeland.
The writer is a free-lance journalist living in Israel. JERUSALEM A humorous e-mail circulating on the Internet explains the "law of diminishing territorial returns" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The first attempt at partitioning the land between Jews and Arabs, undertaken by the United Nations in 1947, resulted in the Palestinian majority being offered 47 percent of its historic homeland, with the rest allocated to a new Jewish state. The Palestinians rejected the plan and the ensuing war established Israel.
The Palestinians had to wait 46 years for the next offer: Under the 1993 Oslo accords, the Palestinians were to receive 22 percent of their homeland - the territories of the West Bank and Gaza. They accepted the terms, but Israel never got around to returning most of the land. Then Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel decided to speed things up and negotiate a final agreement at Camp David in 2000, "generously" offering the Palestinians 80 percent of the 22 percent of the 100 percent of their original homeland. Yasser Arafat refused to sign and the second intifada began.
The e-mail's payoff line is that Barak's successor, Ariel Sharon, has devised an even more miserly take-it-or-leave-it deal: the Palestinians can have a state on 42 percent of the 80 percent of the 22 percent of 100 percent of their original homeland.
The funniest part is that it isn't a joke. Sharon is deadly serious. The proof is not to be found in the "road map," which is diverting attention from Sharon's real goal, which is to redraw the territorial contours of historic Palestine himself - in concrete and barbed wire.
The security wall Israel is hastily constructing around the West Bank - officially justified by the need to stop terror attacks - will cage in more than 2 million Palestinians. Another electrified fence is already imprisoning 1 million Palestinians in Gaza.
Full story...
Bilderberg Puts Heat on 'Loose Cannon' Bush Over Mideast Policy
Never has a president of the United States been under such Bilderberg pressure as the current George Bush. All U.S. presidents since Richard Nixon have had membership in, or close ties to, the world shadow government.
President Bush is under heavy Bilderberg pressure to monetarily punish Israel unless the peace process progresses and to share the spoils of war on Iraq with Europe.
Bilderberg also hotly debated establishing a European Union army independent of NATO, whether to accept Turkey into the EU and punishing Belgium because of the rise of a “right wing” party (see related story on page 15).
Bilderberg had similarly punished Austria economically for holding a free election in which Jorge Haider’s nationalist party did well.
It is unprecedented for a U.S. president to come under such hostile Bilderberg fire. Not only have such secret meetings been traditionally congenial with participants celebrating their progress toward world government, but Bilderberg has had strong, direct influence over every president since Richard Nixon.
With Bush scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon May 20, immediately after the Bilderberg session, the messages from Versailles came frequently and urgently: tell Sharon he must accept the modest steps required in the “road map to peace” or the billions of dollars in U.S. aid will be turned off.
“That is language Israel will understand but Sharon doesn’t believe you will do it,” a European told the Americans. “You have opposed Israeli expansion and occupation of Palestinian lands with your mouth but not your money. Why are you so afraid of the Israeli lobby?”
The answer is obvious to people who follow U.S. politics. The late Sen. J. William Fulbright and congressmen Paul Findley of Illinois and Robert McCloskey of California, among others, all said they lost their seats because of questioning the amount of aid given Israel each year.
The May 20 trip was later postponed because of a suicide bombing incident.
Full story...
President Bush is under heavy Bilderberg pressure to monetarily punish Israel unless the peace process progresses and to share the spoils of war on Iraq with Europe.
Bilderberg also hotly debated establishing a European Union army independent of NATO, whether to accept Turkey into the EU and punishing Belgium because of the rise of a “right wing” party (see related story on page 15).
Bilderberg had similarly punished Austria economically for holding a free election in which Jorge Haider’s nationalist party did well.
It is unprecedented for a U.S. president to come under such hostile Bilderberg fire. Not only have such secret meetings been traditionally congenial with participants celebrating their progress toward world government, but Bilderberg has had strong, direct influence over every president since Richard Nixon.
With Bush scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon May 20, immediately after the Bilderberg session, the messages from Versailles came frequently and urgently: tell Sharon he must accept the modest steps required in the “road map to peace” or the billions of dollars in U.S. aid will be turned off.
“That is language Israel will understand but Sharon doesn’t believe you will do it,” a European told the Americans. “You have opposed Israeli expansion and occupation of Palestinian lands with your mouth but not your money. Why are you so afraid of the Israeli lobby?”
The answer is obvious to people who follow U.S. politics. The late Sen. J. William Fulbright and congressmen Paul Findley of Illinois and Robert McCloskey of California, among others, all said they lost their seats because of questioning the amount of aid given Israel each year.
The May 20 trip was later postponed because of a suicide bombing incident.
Full story...
Next stop Tehran?
With Iraq beaten, the US is now playing the same dangerous WMD game with Iran
by Simon Tisdall
Imagine for a moment that you are a senior official in Iran's foreign ministry. It's hot outside on the dusty, congested streets of Tehran. But inside the ministry, despite the air-conditioning, it's getting stickier all the time. You have a big problem, a problem that Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami, admits is "huge and serious". The problem is the Bush administration and, specifically, its insistence that Iran is running "an alarming clandestine nuclear weapons programme". You fear that this, coupled with daily US claims that Iran is aiding al-Qaida, is leading in only one direction. US news reports reaching your desk indicate that the Pentagon is now advocating "regime change" in Iran.
Reading dispatches from Geneva, you note that the US abruptly walked out of low-level talks there last week, the only bilateral forum for two countries lacking formal diplomatic relations. You worry that bridge-building by Iran's UN ambassador is getting nowhere. You understand that while Britain and the EU are telling Washington that engagement, not confrontation, is the way forward, the reality, as Iraq showed, is that if George Bush decides to do it his way, there is little the Europeans or indeed Russia can ultimately do to stop him.
What is certain is that at almost all points of the compass, the unmatchable US military machine besieges Iran's borders. The Pentagon is sponsoring the Iraq-based Mojahedin e-Khalq, a group long dedicated to insurrection in the Islamic republic that the state department describes as terrorists. And you are fully aware that Israel is warning Washington that unless something changes soon, Iran may acquire the bomb within two years. As the temperature in the office rises, as flies buzz around the desk like F-16s in a dogfight and as beads of sweat form on furrowed brow, it seems only one conclusion is possible. The question with which you endlessly pestered your foreign missions before and during the invasion of Iraq - "who's next?" - appears now to have but one answer. It's us.
So what would you do?
This imaginary official may be wrong, of course. Without some new terrorist enormity in the US "homeland", surely Bush is not so reckless as to start another all-out war as America's election year approaches? Washington's war of words could amount to nothing more than that. Maybe the US foolishly believes it is somehow helping reformist factions in the Majlis (parliament), the media and student bodies. Maybe destabilisation and intimidation is the name of the game and the al-Qaida claims are a pretext, as in Iraq. Perhaps the US does not itself know what it wants to do; a White House strategy meeting is due today. But who knows? Tehran's dilemma is real: Washington's intentions are dangerously uncertain.
Full story...
by Simon Tisdall
Imagine for a moment that you are a senior official in Iran's foreign ministry. It's hot outside on the dusty, congested streets of Tehran. But inside the ministry, despite the air-conditioning, it's getting stickier all the time. You have a big problem, a problem that Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami, admits is "huge and serious". The problem is the Bush administration and, specifically, its insistence that Iran is running "an alarming clandestine nuclear weapons programme". You fear that this, coupled with daily US claims that Iran is aiding al-Qaida, is leading in only one direction. US news reports reaching your desk indicate that the Pentagon is now advocating "regime change" in Iran.
Reading dispatches from Geneva, you note that the US abruptly walked out of low-level talks there last week, the only bilateral forum for two countries lacking formal diplomatic relations. You worry that bridge-building by Iran's UN ambassador is getting nowhere. You understand that while Britain and the EU are telling Washington that engagement, not confrontation, is the way forward, the reality, as Iraq showed, is that if George Bush decides to do it his way, there is little the Europeans or indeed Russia can ultimately do to stop him.
What is certain is that at almost all points of the compass, the unmatchable US military machine besieges Iran's borders. The Pentagon is sponsoring the Iraq-based Mojahedin e-Khalq, a group long dedicated to insurrection in the Islamic republic that the state department describes as terrorists. And you are fully aware that Israel is warning Washington that unless something changes soon, Iran may acquire the bomb within two years. As the temperature in the office rises, as flies buzz around the desk like F-16s in a dogfight and as beads of sweat form on furrowed brow, it seems only one conclusion is possible. The question with which you endlessly pestered your foreign missions before and during the invasion of Iraq - "who's next?" - appears now to have but one answer. It's us.
So what would you do?
This imaginary official may be wrong, of course. Without some new terrorist enormity in the US "homeland", surely Bush is not so reckless as to start another all-out war as America's election year approaches? Washington's war of words could amount to nothing more than that. Maybe the US foolishly believes it is somehow helping reformist factions in the Majlis (parliament), the media and student bodies. Maybe destabilisation and intimidation is the name of the game and the al-Qaida claims are a pretext, as in Iraq. Perhaps the US does not itself know what it wants to do; a White House strategy meeting is due today. But who knows? Tehran's dilemma is real: Washington's intentions are dangerously uncertain.
Full story...
Oh, what a tangled web Bush weaves
by Eric Margolis
U.S. President George Bush justified his invasion of Iraq by claiming Baghdad was behind 9/11 and threatened America with weapons of mass destruction.
To Washington's profound embarrassment, U.S. forces in Iraq have so far failed to find any unconventional weapons or any links between Iraq and al-Qaida. Most Americans don't seem to care their government launched a war of unprovoked aggression based on fabricated evidence and untruths, or that the president and secretary of state repeatedly misinformed and misled the nation.
But now Democrats are accusing Bush of trumping up a war against a nasty but unthreatening Iraq, while failing to combat terrorism, evidenced by last week's bloody terror attacks in Morocco and Saudi Arabia.
The White House is trying to deflect rising criticism of its Iraq policy by blaming the Central Intelligence Agency for supplying erroneous information, a ploy originated by former president John F. Kennedy after his Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba. But the CIA was not wrong. The agency repeatedly warned the Bush administration, both privately, through leaks and openly, that Iraq was not a threat, did not possess significant offensive weapons systems, and was unlikely to greet American and British invaders as "liberators."
Where the CIA went wrong was predicting heavy urban fighting in Iraq. In fact, most pre-war military estimates were mistaken. For example, this column predicted a U.S. victory within two weeks. However, the war lasted for three weeks due to unexpected Iraqi resistance that wrong-footed the U.S. offensive.
Most defence analysts, this writer included, foresaw heavy urban combat. But there was only limited city fighting. What happened to Iraq's Republican Guard divisions around Baghdad remains a mystery: they simply vanished or were blown to bits. Guard commanders may have been bought off or gave up when Saddam Hussein went into hiding or was allowed to flee the country - thanks, it is rumoured, to a Saudi-brokered deal.
But the CIA was correct in warning the White House and Pentagon that Iraq would turn into a tar-baby for the U.S. This is precisely what is now happening. Iraq is in chaos and near-anarchy. U.S. occupation forces have so far been unable to form even a puppet regime, as was done in Afghanistan.
The initial American-appointed ruler of Iraq, Jay Garner, a retired general who looked more like a building contractor than an imperial viceroy, has been relieved, along with a State Department lady who was bizarrely named mayor of Baghdad. A neo-conservative diplomat has been brought in to run Iraq.
Meanwhile, U.S. firms, led by Texas oil giant Halliburton, VP Dick Cheney's old firm, are fighting like hungry vultures to get a slice of Iraq's petro-wealth.
But America now risks a colonial morass in Iraq that may cost even more than the profits it may make from "liberating" Iraq's oil.
Full story...
U.S. President George Bush justified his invasion of Iraq by claiming Baghdad was behind 9/11 and threatened America with weapons of mass destruction.
To Washington's profound embarrassment, U.S. forces in Iraq have so far failed to find any unconventional weapons or any links between Iraq and al-Qaida. Most Americans don't seem to care their government launched a war of unprovoked aggression based on fabricated evidence and untruths, or that the president and secretary of state repeatedly misinformed and misled the nation.
But now Democrats are accusing Bush of trumping up a war against a nasty but unthreatening Iraq, while failing to combat terrorism, evidenced by last week's bloody terror attacks in Morocco and Saudi Arabia.
The White House is trying to deflect rising criticism of its Iraq policy by blaming the Central Intelligence Agency for supplying erroneous information, a ploy originated by former president John F. Kennedy after his Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba. But the CIA was not wrong. The agency repeatedly warned the Bush administration, both privately, through leaks and openly, that Iraq was not a threat, did not possess significant offensive weapons systems, and was unlikely to greet American and British invaders as "liberators."
Where the CIA went wrong was predicting heavy urban fighting in Iraq. In fact, most pre-war military estimates were mistaken. For example, this column predicted a U.S. victory within two weeks. However, the war lasted for three weeks due to unexpected Iraqi resistance that wrong-footed the U.S. offensive.
Most defence analysts, this writer included, foresaw heavy urban combat. But there was only limited city fighting. What happened to Iraq's Republican Guard divisions around Baghdad remains a mystery: they simply vanished or were blown to bits. Guard commanders may have been bought off or gave up when Saddam Hussein went into hiding or was allowed to flee the country - thanks, it is rumoured, to a Saudi-brokered deal.
But the CIA was correct in warning the White House and Pentagon that Iraq would turn into a tar-baby for the U.S. This is precisely what is now happening. Iraq is in chaos and near-anarchy. U.S. occupation forces have so far been unable to form even a puppet regime, as was done in Afghanistan.
The initial American-appointed ruler of Iraq, Jay Garner, a retired general who looked more like a building contractor than an imperial viceroy, has been relieved, along with a State Department lady who was bizarrely named mayor of Baghdad. A neo-conservative diplomat has been brought in to run Iraq.
Meanwhile, U.S. firms, led by Texas oil giant Halliburton, VP Dick Cheney's old firm, are fighting like hungry vultures to get a slice of Iraq's petro-wealth.
But America now risks a colonial morass in Iraq that may cost even more than the profits it may make from "liberating" Iraq's oil.
Full story...
Monday 26 May 2003
The "Hannibal" Procedure
Israel's Military Strategy Unveiled
by Uri Avnery
Hannibal crossed the Alps with his division of combat elephants and terrorized mighty Rome for years. He commanded the army of Carthage, originally a Canaanite Phoenician colony, spoke a kind of Hebrew and bore a Hebrew name ("God has been gracious"). In my youth, when we were searching for Hebrew and Semite heroes as role models, he figured high on our list.
It appears that the Israeli army, too, considers him a model. This week the legendary general was at the center of a controversial public disclosure.
The subject of the sensation was the "Hannibal Procedure" – an Israeli army practice instituted in the mid 80s, first in oral instructions and later as an official order bearing this name. Some time ago this order was officially amended, but many soldiers attest that the original version it is still in force. It has now been published by Haaretz. It can be summed up in eight words: Better a dead than a captured Israeli soldier...
When an Israeli soldier is taken prisoner, a huge public demand arises to bring him home, even at the cost of releasing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. In May 1985, Israel released 1150 Palestinians in return for three Israeli prisoners-of-war, in an exchange known as the "Jibril deal" (named after Ahmed Jibril, the chief of a Palestinian organization serving Syria and fighting Arafat.)
The Israeli army chiefs wanted to avoid such exchanges in the future at all costs, quite literally. They ordered soldiers to shoot at the car of the captors (guerillas generally use cars for such exploits), even if this would endanger the life of the captive soldier. Meaning: liberate the soldier by killing him.
The logic behind the order is not new. It has been part of Israeli thinking for decades. It says simply: Never give in to terrorists. Giving in will just encourage them to capture more of our people. Better to have your people killed together with their captors, so as to deter others.
This logic had terrible consequences in Munich, when the German police (with the encouragement of the Israeli government) opened fire on the captors of the Israeli athletes resulting in the deaths of both. Most of the hostages were presumably killed by the police, since the post mortem results were never published.
Full story...
by Uri Avnery
Hannibal crossed the Alps with his division of combat elephants and terrorized mighty Rome for years. He commanded the army of Carthage, originally a Canaanite Phoenician colony, spoke a kind of Hebrew and bore a Hebrew name ("God has been gracious"). In my youth, when we were searching for Hebrew and Semite heroes as role models, he figured high on our list.
It appears that the Israeli army, too, considers him a model. This week the legendary general was at the center of a controversial public disclosure.
The subject of the sensation was the "Hannibal Procedure" – an Israeli army practice instituted in the mid 80s, first in oral instructions and later as an official order bearing this name. Some time ago this order was officially amended, but many soldiers attest that the original version it is still in force. It has now been published by Haaretz. It can be summed up in eight words: Better a dead than a captured Israeli soldier...
When an Israeli soldier is taken prisoner, a huge public demand arises to bring him home, even at the cost of releasing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. In May 1985, Israel released 1150 Palestinians in return for three Israeli prisoners-of-war, in an exchange known as the "Jibril deal" (named after Ahmed Jibril, the chief of a Palestinian organization serving Syria and fighting Arafat.)
The Israeli army chiefs wanted to avoid such exchanges in the future at all costs, quite literally. They ordered soldiers to shoot at the car of the captors (guerillas generally use cars for such exploits), even if this would endanger the life of the captive soldier. Meaning: liberate the soldier by killing him.
The logic behind the order is not new. It has been part of Israeli thinking for decades. It says simply: Never give in to terrorists. Giving in will just encourage them to capture more of our people. Better to have your people killed together with their captors, so as to deter others.
This logic had terrible consequences in Munich, when the German police (with the encouragement of the Israeli government) opened fire on the captors of the Israeli athletes resulting in the deaths of both. Most of the hostages were presumably killed by the police, since the post mortem results were never published.
Full story...
Return of Mr Unspecified-Threat
I should be packing for Kenya - and an international conference on the challenges of freedom facing Africa - this week. But our old chum, Mr Unspecified-Threat, has put the lid on that. Flights and challenges duly cancelled. There's nothing to do but bunker down in London, where the selfsame Mr U-T has just had 300ft of concrete blocks strewn around those houses of freedom called parliament.
And will it end there? Of course not. Mr George Tenet, boss of the CIA, held a "summit" meeting last week with Ms Eliza Manningham-Buller, director of MI5. Her new concrete Commons - democracy with a Maginot Line - is only the beginning. Other "landmark buildings" around Britain - other "picture postcard sites" - are earmarked for the same treatment. That's £200m of extra spending, set in stone and barbed wire.
Meanwhile, police on the streets now have "shoot-to- kill" terrorist orders (according to the Times). And Manningham-Buller's finest are apparently hunting a couple of indigenous suicide bombers, who may be planning something (according to the Sunday Times) - though nobody has heard of them for a couple of years and "it is possible that they are no longer al-Qaida followers".
Stand by, next month, for the civil contingencies bill which - more scary leaks to the men of Murdoch portend - will give policemen powers to seize control of telephone companies, postal services and "even the BBC" if terrorists strike. Sir David Omand, the nearest thing Britain has to a director of homeland security, believes: "We have to move from the old idea of a secret state to the idea of the protective state. We have to be able to deal with low-probability, high-impact events."
Sorry ... what was that? A "senior Whitehall source" chimes in behind. "While there is no imminent threat we know of, the belief is that it is only a matter of time before something happens here." Welcome to the marriage of Mr Unspecified- Threat and Miss Low-Probability (not to mention their baby, little Not Imminent).
Time to take a long, deep breath. Nobody, after 9/11, would say there's not a problem. Nobody, after Riyadh, Casablanca and Mombasa, would say that it is going away. We have our cruise missiles and B52s. They have their suicide kits. There is some danger, of course there is (though probably more, on current form, if you're a Moroccan nightclub bouncer or Kenyan hotel gardener than if you're walking down Whitehall looking for postcards). But perspective, like intelligence, seems to have gone missing.
Full story...
And will it end there? Of course not. Mr George Tenet, boss of the CIA, held a "summit" meeting last week with Ms Eliza Manningham-Buller, director of MI5. Her new concrete Commons - democracy with a Maginot Line - is only the beginning. Other "landmark buildings" around Britain - other "picture postcard sites" - are earmarked for the same treatment. That's £200m of extra spending, set in stone and barbed wire.
Meanwhile, police on the streets now have "shoot-to- kill" terrorist orders (according to the Times). And Manningham-Buller's finest are apparently hunting a couple of indigenous suicide bombers, who may be planning something (according to the Sunday Times) - though nobody has heard of them for a couple of years and "it is possible that they are no longer al-Qaida followers".
Stand by, next month, for the civil contingencies bill which - more scary leaks to the men of Murdoch portend - will give policemen powers to seize control of telephone companies, postal services and "even the BBC" if terrorists strike. Sir David Omand, the nearest thing Britain has to a director of homeland security, believes: "We have to move from the old idea of a secret state to the idea of the protective state. We have to be able to deal with low-probability, high-impact events."
Sorry ... what was that? A "senior Whitehall source" chimes in behind. "While there is no imminent threat we know of, the belief is that it is only a matter of time before something happens here." Welcome to the marriage of Mr Unspecified- Threat and Miss Low-Probability (not to mention their baby, little Not Imminent).
Time to take a long, deep breath. Nobody, after 9/11, would say there's not a problem. Nobody, after Riyadh, Casablanca and Mombasa, would say that it is going away. We have our cruise missiles and B52s. They have their suicide kits. There is some danger, of course there is (though probably more, on current form, if you're a Moroccan nightclub bouncer or Kenyan hotel gardener than if you're walking down Whitehall looking for postcards). But perspective, like intelligence, seems to have gone missing.
Full story...
Bush makes poor pay for military might and tax cuts
Schools and health lose out as US public services endure worst crisis since 1930s
School was definitely over for Sally Kelly last week. The Oklahoma primary school teacher was trying to cram years of accumulated experience and memories into a few cardboard boxes and get them out of the door before the building was locked up for the holidays.
Thousands of teachers across the state and the US have been doing more or less the same thing in the past few months, squeezed out by a combination of recession, tax cuts and record military spending. Oklahoma is cutting 6,000 teaching jobs in the financial year just ending and the next, and the budgetary outlook is grim. But for Ms Kelly, there is more at stake than losing her vocation. Her breast cancer is in remission but still requires monitoring and medicines. Without the health insurance that came with her job, she can afford neither.
"For me, it's a life and death situation," she said, sitting in the deserted classroom, her head covered by a yellow turban to hide the effects of chemotherapy.
After surgery, a tube was inserted under the skin just below her collar bone to serve as a "port" for the chemotherapy, but she can no longer afford the drugs to keep it open, and she thinks she will probably have to get it removed. In a wealthier state in better times, some of her treatment might be covered by Medicaid, the national health insurance scheme for the poor. But the scheme is facing its own budget crisis, and the poverty threshold for eligibility is constantly rising. Ms Kelly is jobless but owns her home so may still not be poor enough.
Once her boxes are filled, all that remains is to remove the inspirational slogans with which she decorated her classroom. The last to come down says: "Attitudes are contagious. Is yours worth catching?"
She is determined to remain upbeat. This is a "detour not a roadblock" she says, but the truth is that her chances of finding a new teaching post soon are small.
Oklahoma's job cuts are part of a deep nationwide retrenchment eating away at the public sphere. According to some analysts, the states, which control most public services, are going through their worst crisis since the Depression. While the US is at the zenith of its global power, its health and education systems would be grounds for a scandal in poorer countries.
Full story...
School was definitely over for Sally Kelly last week. The Oklahoma primary school teacher was trying to cram years of accumulated experience and memories into a few cardboard boxes and get them out of the door before the building was locked up for the holidays.
Thousands of teachers across the state and the US have been doing more or less the same thing in the past few months, squeezed out by a combination of recession, tax cuts and record military spending. Oklahoma is cutting 6,000 teaching jobs in the financial year just ending and the next, and the budgetary outlook is grim. But for Ms Kelly, there is more at stake than losing her vocation. Her breast cancer is in remission but still requires monitoring and medicines. Without the health insurance that came with her job, she can afford neither.
"For me, it's a life and death situation," she said, sitting in the deserted classroom, her head covered by a yellow turban to hide the effects of chemotherapy.
After surgery, a tube was inserted under the skin just below her collar bone to serve as a "port" for the chemotherapy, but she can no longer afford the drugs to keep it open, and she thinks she will probably have to get it removed. In a wealthier state in better times, some of her treatment might be covered by Medicaid, the national health insurance scheme for the poor. But the scheme is facing its own budget crisis, and the poverty threshold for eligibility is constantly rising. Ms Kelly is jobless but owns her home so may still not be poor enough.
Once her boxes are filled, all that remains is to remove the inspirational slogans with which she decorated her classroom. The last to come down says: "Attitudes are contagious. Is yours worth catching?"
She is determined to remain upbeat. This is a "detour not a roadblock" she says, but the truth is that her chances of finding a new teaching post soon are small.
Oklahoma's job cuts are part of a deep nationwide retrenchment eating away at the public sphere. According to some analysts, the states, which control most public services, are going through their worst crisis since the Depression. While the US is at the zenith of its global power, its health and education systems would be grounds for a scandal in poorer countries.
Full story...
Bilderberg Black Out
To witness the annual Bilderberg conference is to realize how the “Lords of the New World Order”—the self-chosen elite of international finance, business, and politics—are allowed to assemble in secret and conspire with the connivance of the mainstream media.
Given the tumultuous events in the Middle East and the serious strains in U.S.-French relations, one would expect that an event near Paris, in which scores of key U.S. and European officials meet with the heads of international finance and business, would attract considerable media attention. However, while Bilderberg 2003 at the historic Trianon Palace at Versailles was an extraordinary gathering of the global elite, it passed with scarcely a word in the controlled press.
In the historic Trianon Palace Hotel, where the Versailles treaty was handed to the defeated Germans after World War I, the individuals who head the world’s largest oil companies and financial institutions convened during four days, in total seclusion, with selected political leaders and media owners.
Because of the near total blackout of Bilderberg in the mass media, knowledge of what was going on in the Trianon from May 15-18 was limited to those who read James Tucker’s articles in American Free Press.
The Trianon Palace is a luxury hotel immediately adjacent to the magnificent grounds of the palace of Versailles. The entry to the hotel sits near the Grille de la Reine, a gated entry to the royal park built by the 17th century French monarchs, King Louis XIII and his son Louis XIV.
Some of the well-to-do residents of the neighborhood of the Trianon, unaware of what was occurring in the hotel, were shocked to discover that their cars had been towed away early on Thursday, May 16, as Bilderberg security had demanded.
By mid-day the street leading to the hotel had been completely cleared and a security cordon set around the entire neighborhood. Local residents who lived within the security perimeter were obliged to identify themselves to Bilderberg security and armed national police at the checkpoint at the end of the Boulevard de la Reine.
Full story...
Given the tumultuous events in the Middle East and the serious strains in U.S.-French relations, one would expect that an event near Paris, in which scores of key U.S. and European officials meet with the heads of international finance and business, would attract considerable media attention. However, while Bilderberg 2003 at the historic Trianon Palace at Versailles was an extraordinary gathering of the global elite, it passed with scarcely a word in the controlled press.
In the historic Trianon Palace Hotel, where the Versailles treaty was handed to the defeated Germans after World War I, the individuals who head the world’s largest oil companies and financial institutions convened during four days, in total seclusion, with selected political leaders and media owners.
Because of the near total blackout of Bilderberg in the mass media, knowledge of what was going on in the Trianon from May 15-18 was limited to those who read James Tucker’s articles in American Free Press.
The Trianon Palace is a luxury hotel immediately adjacent to the magnificent grounds of the palace of Versailles. The entry to the hotel sits near the Grille de la Reine, a gated entry to the royal park built by the 17th century French monarchs, King Louis XIII and his son Louis XIV.
Some of the well-to-do residents of the neighborhood of the Trianon, unaware of what was occurring in the hotel, were shocked to discover that their cars had been towed away early on Thursday, May 16, as Bilderberg security had demanded.
By mid-day the street leading to the hotel had been completely cleared and a security cordon set around the entire neighborhood. Local residents who lived within the security perimeter were obliged to identify themselves to Bilderberg security and armed national police at the checkpoint at the end of the Boulevard de la Reine.
Full story...
Saturday 24 May 2003
Where's the inferno?
The reason given for the collapse of the twin towers is floor trusses at the aircraft impact level failed due to an inferno generated by aircraft fuel which turned the impacted floors into an 800ºC furnace capable of casting aluminum and glazing pottery.
Full story...
Sedition & Treason in the US Imperial State
by Al Martin
The most important story last week was -- The Department of Homeland Security Pursues Seditious Democrats. The 50+ “Fugitive Democrats” were the Texas state legislators who were hiding out at the Holiday Inn in Ardmore, Oklahoma. Governor Rick Perry of Texas, an Arch Bushonian Cabalist, in fact, issued arrest warrants for them under the seditious utterance and publication acts, insofar as they were obstructing the will of the State (not the state of Texas, but the Nation State. Note the capital S.) And what’s behind this fracas? It’s a redistricting bill that’s being sponsored and pushed by Congressman Tom Delay. The Democrats are asking, and rightfully so, why is the US Congressman from Texas involved in an issue which should be a state issue? This should be decided by the Texas state legislature, not by a United States Congressman – and furthermore not by an Arch-Right-Wing Nut like Delay.
If the redistricting bill is passed, it will eliminate between 5 and 7 Democratic seats in the State of Texas. Delay stated in an interview that the Democratic Texas delegation has consistently stood against the Leader. Those are his words. He means George Bush Junior. He looks at it as his God-given mission to eliminate the Democratic Party from Texas and in so doing make Texas the first Sedition-Free State in the union.
Although the media is trying to put a humorous spin on it, there is a more serious (and sinister) side to the situation. The Texas Republicans, particularly the Speaker of the House Tom Craddick, as well as Texas Governor Perry and Congressman Delay are using this incident to do what they say they intend to do – to eliminate the Democratic Party in the state of Texas.
They’ve even made playing cards with the Texas Democrats on them, implying that they are terrorists like the DoD playing cards with the Wanted Iraqis.
There was evidently a letter sent out by the Republican Committee caucus of the Texas state legislature urging loyal Texas Republicans to start taking down the names of their Democratic neighbors, whom they feel may be harboring seditious views.
And the 9-11 Presidential Commission Investigative Report has still not been released, although Democrats in Congress have tried to force its release. The report has long since been done. This is the report by the 911 Investigative Committee chaired by Henry Kissinger who resigned because he refused to disclose his Middle Eastern clients, particularly his Saudi clients. After Kissinger’s resignation, the committee was chaired by Paul Bremer, who is currently the defacto Overseer of US Occupied Iraq. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said he doesn’t care how much pressure there is; the report will not be released until all information that would embarrass the Saudi government has been removed. But the Democrats are beginning to push the concept of backing away from Saudi Arabia, a concept that scares the Bush Regime because of their deep financial interests there. They don’t care about strategic oil or political ties. It all comes down to money – the Bushonian Cabal’s personal financial interests in Saudi Arabia, including the personal interests of the Bush and Cheney Families.
But as I’ve said on radio shows before, these Democrats who are holed up in the Holiday Inn SHOULD have been arrested. Why? Because they were in clear violation of the relevant statutes of the sedition act as now revised and expanded, thanks to the USA Patriot Act.
To put this in some context, the president now has the absolute authority, under the expansion of the War Powers Act of 1947 therein contained in the USA Patriot Act. This expansion of these powers means, in this case, that once the president declares a State of National Emergency, which he did on September 14, 2001, three days after the 9-11 incident, that effectively authorizes the president to do a variety of things—postpone elections, cancel elections, impose a state of martial law, order the arrest of any legislative or judicial members of government, etc. Those powers had always existed. However the president couldn’t act without the consent of Congress. He couldn’t assume these imperial powers without a super-majority vote in Congress and without a majority opinion from the Supreme Court.
The USA Patriot Act, however, sidelines the legislative and judicial branches from their oversight role – legislative oversight or judicial review after the President declared a state of National Emergency. It gives the president the power to act by edict.
Full story...
The most important story last week was -- The Department of Homeland Security Pursues Seditious Democrats. The 50+ “Fugitive Democrats” were the Texas state legislators who were hiding out at the Holiday Inn in Ardmore, Oklahoma. Governor Rick Perry of Texas, an Arch Bushonian Cabalist, in fact, issued arrest warrants for them under the seditious utterance and publication acts, insofar as they were obstructing the will of the State (not the state of Texas, but the Nation State. Note the capital S.) And what’s behind this fracas? It’s a redistricting bill that’s being sponsored and pushed by Congressman Tom Delay. The Democrats are asking, and rightfully so, why is the US Congressman from Texas involved in an issue which should be a state issue? This should be decided by the Texas state legislature, not by a United States Congressman – and furthermore not by an Arch-Right-Wing Nut like Delay.
If the redistricting bill is passed, it will eliminate between 5 and 7 Democratic seats in the State of Texas. Delay stated in an interview that the Democratic Texas delegation has consistently stood against the Leader. Those are his words. He means George Bush Junior. He looks at it as his God-given mission to eliminate the Democratic Party from Texas and in so doing make Texas the first Sedition-Free State in the union.
Although the media is trying to put a humorous spin on it, there is a more serious (and sinister) side to the situation. The Texas Republicans, particularly the Speaker of the House Tom Craddick, as well as Texas Governor Perry and Congressman Delay are using this incident to do what they say they intend to do – to eliminate the Democratic Party in the state of Texas.
They’ve even made playing cards with the Texas Democrats on them, implying that they are terrorists like the DoD playing cards with the Wanted Iraqis.
There was evidently a letter sent out by the Republican Committee caucus of the Texas state legislature urging loyal Texas Republicans to start taking down the names of their Democratic neighbors, whom they feel may be harboring seditious views.
And the 9-11 Presidential Commission Investigative Report has still not been released, although Democrats in Congress have tried to force its release. The report has long since been done. This is the report by the 911 Investigative Committee chaired by Henry Kissinger who resigned because he refused to disclose his Middle Eastern clients, particularly his Saudi clients. After Kissinger’s resignation, the committee was chaired by Paul Bremer, who is currently the defacto Overseer of US Occupied Iraq. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said he doesn’t care how much pressure there is; the report will not be released until all information that would embarrass the Saudi government has been removed. But the Democrats are beginning to push the concept of backing away from Saudi Arabia, a concept that scares the Bush Regime because of their deep financial interests there. They don’t care about strategic oil or political ties. It all comes down to money – the Bushonian Cabal’s personal financial interests in Saudi Arabia, including the personal interests of the Bush and Cheney Families.
But as I’ve said on radio shows before, these Democrats who are holed up in the Holiday Inn SHOULD have been arrested. Why? Because they were in clear violation of the relevant statutes of the sedition act as now revised and expanded, thanks to the USA Patriot Act.
To put this in some context, the president now has the absolute authority, under the expansion of the War Powers Act of 1947 therein contained in the USA Patriot Act. This expansion of these powers means, in this case, that once the president declares a State of National Emergency, which he did on September 14, 2001, three days after the 9-11 incident, that effectively authorizes the president to do a variety of things—postpone elections, cancel elections, impose a state of martial law, order the arrest of any legislative or judicial members of government, etc. Those powers had always existed. However the president couldn’t act without the consent of Congress. He couldn’t assume these imperial powers without a super-majority vote in Congress and without a majority opinion from the Supreme Court.
The USA Patriot Act, however, sidelines the legislative and judicial branches from their oversight role – legislative oversight or judicial review after the President declared a state of National Emergency. It gives the president the power to act by edict.
Full story...
Friday 23 May 2003
Expert questions authenticity of al-Qaeda tape
A Danish terrorism expert on Thursday questioned the authenticity of a taped message attributed to al-Qaeda which threatened Norway, saying the speaker meant Denmark but made a mistake.
Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, on Wednesday called on Muslims to carry out more suicide attacks against Western targets, citing Norway alongside the United States, Britain and Australia, in a taped message attributed to him. Terrorism expert Lars Erslev Andersen said he believed the audiotape "was not authentic", saying the speaker meant to name Denmark, a staunch US ally in the war on Iraq along with Britain and Australia.
Andersen said Al-Zawahiri would never have confused the two Scandinavian countries, casting doubt on the identity of the speaker. "I think he (the speaker) must be thinking of Denmark or Poland, which participated in the war on Iraq, and not Norway, which did not take part," he said.
"I think it is a mistake," he said, adding: "Al-Zawahiri knows these two countries well. Confusing them this way can only indicate that it is the voice of someone else on the al-Qaeda tape."
Full story...
Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, on Wednesday called on Muslims to carry out more suicide attacks against Western targets, citing Norway alongside the United States, Britain and Australia, in a taped message attributed to him. Terrorism expert Lars Erslev Andersen said he believed the audiotape "was not authentic", saying the speaker meant to name Denmark, a staunch US ally in the war on Iraq along with Britain and Australia.
Andersen said Al-Zawahiri would never have confused the two Scandinavian countries, casting doubt on the identity of the speaker. "I think he (the speaker) must be thinking of Denmark or Poland, which participated in the war on Iraq, and not Norway, which did not take part," he said.
"I think it is a mistake," he said, adding: "Al-Zawahiri knows these two countries well. Confusing them this way can only indicate that it is the voice of someone else on the al-Qaeda tape."
Full story...
Jason Blair isn't the only deceiver
by Dave Zweifel
Reporter Jayson Blair's ability to deceive his editors at the New York Times is bad enough, but it pales in comparison to the U.S. military's apparent deception of the U.S. media last month.
If we are to believe an investigation by the British Broadcasting Corp., which as far as I know has no axes to grind in any of this, the entire "heroic" rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch was nothing more than outright military propaganda.
I personally started to wonder about the Lynch rescue shortly after we ran a Washington Post story on the front page of our April 3 editions that reported Lynch was fighting to the death when she and the rest of her unit were captured by the Iraqi military. The story, which was based on unnamed military sources, said that the West Virginia soldier "continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds" and that she was even stabbed when the Iraqis closed in.
It was a story that described uncommon heroism and I ordered it to appear on Page 1 as did dozens of other editors across the country. Stories that moved on the wire in ensuing days, however, appeared to contradict the Post's story. Doctors who examined Lynch after she got back to our hospitals reported that she was not shot or stabbed, but her injuries were incurred when the truck she was in overturned.
That, however, was only part of the strange and conflicting "facts" associated with the story. None of it, by the way, diminishes the trauma and military dedication on the part of Lynch. It now appears, though, that she may have been exploited by the Defense Department's public information folks.
Full story...
Reporter Jayson Blair's ability to deceive his editors at the New York Times is bad enough, but it pales in comparison to the U.S. military's apparent deception of the U.S. media last month.
If we are to believe an investigation by the British Broadcasting Corp., which as far as I know has no axes to grind in any of this, the entire "heroic" rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch was nothing more than outright military propaganda.
I personally started to wonder about the Lynch rescue shortly after we ran a Washington Post story on the front page of our April 3 editions that reported Lynch was fighting to the death when she and the rest of her unit were captured by the Iraqi military. The story, which was based on unnamed military sources, said that the West Virginia soldier "continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds" and that she was even stabbed when the Iraqis closed in.
It was a story that described uncommon heroism and I ordered it to appear on Page 1 as did dozens of other editors across the country. Stories that moved on the wire in ensuing days, however, appeared to contradict the Post's story. Doctors who examined Lynch after she got back to our hospitals reported that she was not shot or stabbed, but her injuries were incurred when the truck she was in overturned.
That, however, was only part of the strange and conflicting "facts" associated with the story. None of it, by the way, diminishes the trauma and military dedication on the part of Lynch. It now appears, though, that she may have been exploited by the Defense Department's public information folks.
Full story...
A partnership heading for a destructive separation
Some rare news regarding Bilderberg from the FT. This article makes for some scary reading. The picture is of David Rockefeller, click the picture to enlarge and see him taking a break from Bilderberg last weekend.
by Martin Wolf
The US is no longer a status quo power. Attendance at this year's Bilderberg meeting, in Versailles, made clear how big a challenge this poses to the health of the transatlantic alliance. I went to the meeting convinced that divorce between the US and Europe had become possible. I left thinking that it could easily become unstoppable.
Clyde Prestowitz, a former member of the Reagan administration, has expressed the worry in his provocatively entitled new book, Rogue Nation.* In this he makes two significant points. The first is that "the imperial project of the so-called neo-conservatives is not conservativism at all, but radicalism, egotism and adventurism articulated in the stirring rhetoric of traditional patriotism". The second is that this radicalism both frightens and enrages foreigners. What astonished me at the meeting is that these emotions are felt by pro-American businesspeople, politicians, academics and journalists. Americans believe that French and German opposition to the war in Iraq was a betrayal of decades of support. But many Europeans believe recent US behaviour was a betrayal of what the US has taught them. The ideological gulf is wide.
Americans and Europeans share many values. That is hardly an accident. The US devoted much blood and treasure to turning Europe into a stable continent of liberal democracies. But in many ways, Europe and the US have become very different. Most important, the US has now adopted old European theories of international relations, while the Europeans have embraced a newer American one.
The classic European system rested on the sovereign independence of states. In their relations, states recognised neither legal nor moral constraints. But states also agreed not to interfere in one another's internal affairs. Today's European states reject this view of the world, because it engendered catastrophe. Operating within an unstable balance of power, illiberal states fomented wars that brought the deaths of millions. European civilisation foundered.
The answer, Europeans decided, was to embrace the ideals proffered by the American president Woodrow Wilson: peace, free markets and democracy. Within Europe, under American auspices, they created a supra-national order that stood the classical system on its head. Instead of sovereign independence, Europe would have a supra-national authority and a shared commitment to democracy and human rights. Sensible Europeans are not naive enough to believe the world can operate without resort to force. They are also grateful to the US for its ability and willingness to apply that force. But they are Wilsonian, for an obvious reason: if Germany were to announce its adherence to the doctrines that now animate the US, stability in Europe would vanish.
Today's US is not Wilsonian. It is important, however, to define in what way it is not. In doing so, we must recognise the tension within the administration between nationalists and neo-conservatives. Where they agree is in their rejection of moral or legal constraints on the sovereign independence of the US. Where they disagree is on how far pursuit of those interests requires interference in the internal organisation of other states. Nationalists focus only on direct threats, principally state sponsorship of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Neo-conservatives desire to embed liberal democracy, as well, since its absence explains, in their view, why states generate these threats.
Nationalists then are anti-Wilsonian in both their means and their ends. Liberal imperialists are anti-Wilsonian in their means, but Wilsonian in their ends. Yet both groups unambiguously reject the secular religion of contemporary European elites, which is Wilsonian in means and ends. The new US doctrines are, from the general European point of view, poison. They invite them back to the world of Bismarck. For many Europeans the contemporary American ideology is made more bitter by the perception that it represents a betrayal of what they have learned from the US.
A transatlantic alliance cannot be sustained if the US remains dedicated to its current doctrines, except as a state of dependency on one side and mastery on the other. There are, instead, two alternatives. The first is a divorce, with abandonment of the institutions that bring the two sides of the Atlantic together. The second is a pragmatic partnership, in which the two sides work together in areas of common interest.
Full story...
by Martin Wolf
The US is no longer a status quo power. Attendance at this year's Bilderberg meeting, in Versailles, made clear how big a challenge this poses to the health of the transatlantic alliance. I went to the meeting convinced that divorce between the US and Europe had become possible. I left thinking that it could easily become unstoppable.
Clyde Prestowitz, a former member of the Reagan administration, has expressed the worry in his provocatively entitled new book, Rogue Nation.* In this he makes two significant points. The first is that "the imperial project of the so-called neo-conservatives is not conservativism at all, but radicalism, egotism and adventurism articulated in the stirring rhetoric of traditional patriotism". The second is that this radicalism both frightens and enrages foreigners. What astonished me at the meeting is that these emotions are felt by pro-American businesspeople, politicians, academics and journalists. Americans believe that French and German opposition to the war in Iraq was a betrayal of decades of support. But many Europeans believe recent US behaviour was a betrayal of what the US has taught them. The ideological gulf is wide.
Americans and Europeans share many values. That is hardly an accident. The US devoted much blood and treasure to turning Europe into a stable continent of liberal democracies. But in many ways, Europe and the US have become very different. Most important, the US has now adopted old European theories of international relations, while the Europeans have embraced a newer American one.
The classic European system rested on the sovereign independence of states. In their relations, states recognised neither legal nor moral constraints. But states also agreed not to interfere in one another's internal affairs. Today's European states reject this view of the world, because it engendered catastrophe. Operating within an unstable balance of power, illiberal states fomented wars that brought the deaths of millions. European civilisation foundered.
The answer, Europeans decided, was to embrace the ideals proffered by the American president Woodrow Wilson: peace, free markets and democracy. Within Europe, under American auspices, they created a supra-national order that stood the classical system on its head. Instead of sovereign independence, Europe would have a supra-national authority and a shared commitment to democracy and human rights. Sensible Europeans are not naive enough to believe the world can operate without resort to force. They are also grateful to the US for its ability and willingness to apply that force. But they are Wilsonian, for an obvious reason: if Germany were to announce its adherence to the doctrines that now animate the US, stability in Europe would vanish.
Today's US is not Wilsonian. It is important, however, to define in what way it is not. In doing so, we must recognise the tension within the administration between nationalists and neo-conservatives. Where they agree is in their rejection of moral or legal constraints on the sovereign independence of the US. Where they disagree is on how far pursuit of those interests requires interference in the internal organisation of other states. Nationalists focus only on direct threats, principally state sponsorship of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Neo-conservatives desire to embed liberal democracy, as well, since its absence explains, in their view, why states generate these threats.
Nationalists then are anti-Wilsonian in both their means and their ends. Liberal imperialists are anti-Wilsonian in their means, but Wilsonian in their ends. Yet both groups unambiguously reject the secular religion of contemporary European elites, which is Wilsonian in means and ends. The new US doctrines are, from the general European point of view, poison. They invite them back to the world of Bismarck. For many Europeans the contemporary American ideology is made more bitter by the perception that it represents a betrayal of what they have learned from the US.
A transatlantic alliance cannot be sustained if the US remains dedicated to its current doctrines, except as a state of dependency on one side and mastery on the other. There are, instead, two alternatives. The first is a divorce, with abandonment of the institutions that bring the two sides of the Atlantic together. The second is a pragmatic partnership, in which the two sides work together in areas of common interest.
Full story...
Of Blair, Hussein & Genocide
Britain's Prime Minister Blair has now claimed that the war in Iraq was justified by the discovery of mass graves. The ugly truth is that mass graves have become pretty common things since the beginning of the twentieth century, although many of the world's most savage and horrific acts left no such evidence, as in the case of America's napalming, carpet-bombing and throat-cutting millions in Vietnam.
No one can be genuinely surprised to learn that a dictator kills people, especially those who rebel against him, but no one should slip into shabby abuse of the word genocide as many reporters do and as politicians like Blair are happy to allow them to do. Genocide is the effort to destroy a whole class or kind of people, not the killing of a group of rebels or enemies.
Of course, we've not seen even a modest discovery of the weapons of mass destruction Mr. Blair went on and on about for months to justify the invasion of a country that was threatening no other country. Blair went through several iterations of producing what were called dossiers, although they proved utterly unconvincing, with no genuine evidence. There was what proved to be a cribbed graduate-student paper used on one of his supposedly top-secret intelligence efforts.
Once, Blair frantically asserted that Hussein could mount an attack with chemical or biological weapons within 48 hours. Although one must concede this in no way surpasses the grossness in lying of Colin Powell's solemn recitation about satellite photos of actual components for chemical and biological warfare.
There was that phony study by an institute in Britain, given great publicity by Blair's government, claiming Hussein could build an atomic bomb in a very short time. There was a phony biography of Hussein, done by another Englishman, making the same claim. There were the phony papers that surfaced in Italy about Iraqi transactions to buy uranium. And then there were the genuinely-qualified experts, the UN weapons inspectors, who were not allowed to do their jobs.
So I suppose after all that, plus a great many awkward lies stumbled over by President Bush, Blair would feel under some obligation to find a reason for a rash, unjustified war, even if it is on an ex post facto basis.
Full story...
No one can be genuinely surprised to learn that a dictator kills people, especially those who rebel against him, but no one should slip into shabby abuse of the word genocide as many reporters do and as politicians like Blair are happy to allow them to do. Genocide is the effort to destroy a whole class or kind of people, not the killing of a group of rebels or enemies.
Of course, we've not seen even a modest discovery of the weapons of mass destruction Mr. Blair went on and on about for months to justify the invasion of a country that was threatening no other country. Blair went through several iterations of producing what were called dossiers, although they proved utterly unconvincing, with no genuine evidence. There was what proved to be a cribbed graduate-student paper used on one of his supposedly top-secret intelligence efforts.
Once, Blair frantically asserted that Hussein could mount an attack with chemical or biological weapons within 48 hours. Although one must concede this in no way surpasses the grossness in lying of Colin Powell's solemn recitation about satellite photos of actual components for chemical and biological warfare.
There was that phony study by an institute in Britain, given great publicity by Blair's government, claiming Hussein could build an atomic bomb in a very short time. There was a phony biography of Hussein, done by another Englishman, making the same claim. There were the phony papers that surfaced in Italy about Iraqi transactions to buy uranium. And then there were the genuinely-qualified experts, the UN weapons inspectors, who were not allowed to do their jobs.
So I suppose after all that, plus a great many awkward lies stumbled over by President Bush, Blair would feel under some obligation to find a reason for a rash, unjustified war, even if it is on an ex post facto basis.
Full story...
Thursday 22 May 2003
UK Food Processors Caught Beefing Up Chicken
Talk about capitalism run amock... Plus, Blair wants more of it with his public-private partnership bollocks too! I don't know what makes me feel more ill, Blair or the damned adulterated chicken! I bet they didn't serve this shit to the Bilderburgers!
Food processors have been caught on video boasting that they have developed undetectable methods of adulterating the chicken that goes into British hospitals, schools and restaurants with cheap beef waste and water.
Tests by a television program have also shown that samples of an own-brand label of chicken nuggets sold by the British supermarket chain Sainsbury's contain bovine and pork DNA. The company says the bovine DNA comes from milk protein and the presence of pork DNA in one sample may be the result of contamination in the laboratory.
Secret filming for BBC TV's Panorama revealed that vast quantities of frozen chicken coming into Britain each week have been injected with beef proteins.
Working with The Guardian, the program went undercover to find the source of the beef proteins. BBC reporters were told by Dutch manufacturers that beef DNA can now be manipulated in such a way that the safety authorities' tests cannot detect it.
Adulterated chicken has been imported widely by British wholesalers. Brakes, a leading supplier to schools, hospitals and restaurants, has unwittingly imported chicken with beef DNA, laboratory tests for the BBC found.
Full story...
Food processors have been caught on video boasting that they have developed undetectable methods of adulterating the chicken that goes into British hospitals, schools and restaurants with cheap beef waste and water.
Tests by a television program have also shown that samples of an own-brand label of chicken nuggets sold by the British supermarket chain Sainsbury's contain bovine and pork DNA. The company says the bovine DNA comes from milk protein and the presence of pork DNA in one sample may be the result of contamination in the laboratory.
Secret filming for BBC TV's Panorama revealed that vast quantities of frozen chicken coming into Britain each week have been injected with beef proteins.
Working with The Guardian, the program went undercover to find the source of the beef proteins. BBC reporters were told by Dutch manufacturers that beef DNA can now be manipulated in such a way that the safety authorities' tests cannot detect it.
Adulterated chicken has been imported widely by British wholesalers. Brakes, a leading supplier to schools, hospitals and restaurants, has unwittingly imported chicken with beef DNA, laboratory tests for the BBC found.
Full story...
Private Lynch's comrades forced to keep mouth shut
Americans are being fed lies for breakfast, lunch and dinner. As are we, wake up smell the coffee people, the lies and deception going on here are just staggering. News is coming out of Hollywood and it makes the Matrix looks closer to reality that what you see on Fox.
Judiciously guarding our military's classified information makes excellent sense. Stamp it "SECRET," the system takes over and lives will be saved. What patriot would quibble with that?
But calling stuff "SECRET" to cover up Pentagon screw-ups that cost soldiers' lives or to protect war racketeers' pet scams violates what our country is about. Ditto the Pentagon-employed spinmeisters and the big bucks they waste annually hiding the truth from U.S. citizens unknowingly footing the bill for their deceptions.
The Pentagon's annual defense budget is about 500 times bigger than what our fleet-footed Public Enemies No. 1 and 2 – Saddam Hussein and his designated terror buddy Osama bin Laden – spent during the same period on things that go bang. My bet is that the military's annual propaganda and promotion budget alone exceeds what these running dogs spent last year trying to do American infidels in.
And then there's the army of flacks, stretching from top military spinner Victoria Clarke, her Pentagon office minions and the hundreds of other damage-control experts scattered at rifle-company strength around that five-sided building, to the thousands of flacks in the field working at virtually every small unit in our armed forces.
For years, I've tried to get the actual cost and number of bodies involved in running the Pentagon's con machine, only to be repeatedly stonewalled. The figures are buried in Pentagon double-speak that's too cryptic for even Ralph Nader. But we're talking enough folks – civilian and uniformed – to fill and fund at least an Army or Marine fighting division. No question they outnumber bin Laden's terrorists, and for sure they're as busy.
For example, as I write this, tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars are being spent on covering up what happened to Jessica Lynch and her mates during and after their unit was ambushed and they were captured.
Soldiers from Jessica's El Paso, Texas-based 507th Maintenance Company have been warned not to talk. A soldier in that unit said, "It's almost 'say a word and you'll be shot at dawn.'"
Full story...
Judiciously guarding our military's classified information makes excellent sense. Stamp it "SECRET," the system takes over and lives will be saved. What patriot would quibble with that?
But calling stuff "SECRET" to cover up Pentagon screw-ups that cost soldiers' lives or to protect war racketeers' pet scams violates what our country is about. Ditto the Pentagon-employed spinmeisters and the big bucks they waste annually hiding the truth from U.S. citizens unknowingly footing the bill for their deceptions.
The Pentagon's annual defense budget is about 500 times bigger than what our fleet-footed Public Enemies No. 1 and 2 – Saddam Hussein and his designated terror buddy Osama bin Laden – spent during the same period on things that go bang. My bet is that the military's annual propaganda and promotion budget alone exceeds what these running dogs spent last year trying to do American infidels in.
And then there's the army of flacks, stretching from top military spinner Victoria Clarke, her Pentagon office minions and the hundreds of other damage-control experts scattered at rifle-company strength around that five-sided building, to the thousands of flacks in the field working at virtually every small unit in our armed forces.
For years, I've tried to get the actual cost and number of bodies involved in running the Pentagon's con machine, only to be repeatedly stonewalled. The figures are buried in Pentagon double-speak that's too cryptic for even Ralph Nader. But we're talking enough folks – civilian and uniformed – to fill and fund at least an Army or Marine fighting division. No question they outnumber bin Laden's terrorists, and for sure they're as busy.
For example, as I write this, tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars are being spent on covering up what happened to Jessica Lynch and her mates during and after their unit was ambushed and they were captured.
Soldiers from Jessica's El Paso, Texas-based 507th Maintenance Company have been warned not to talk. A soldier in that unit said, "It's almost 'say a word and you'll be shot at dawn.'"
Full story...
The masters of the universe
It may be instructive to learn what US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle were doing last weekend. From May 15 to 18 they were guests at the Trianon Palace Hotel, close to the spectacular Versailles palace near Paris, for the annual meeting of the Bilderberg club.
Depending on the ideological prism applied, the Bilderberg club may be considered an ultra-VIP international lobby of the power elite of Europe and America, capable of steering international policy from behind closed doors; a harmless "discussion group" of politicians, academics and business tycoons; or a capitalist secret society operating entirely through self interest and plotting world domination.
The Bilderberg club is regarded by many financial and business elites as the high chamber of the high priests of capitalism. You can't apply for membership of such a club. Each year, a mysterious "steering committee" devises a selected invitation list with a maximum 100 names. The location of their annual meeting is not exactly secret: they even have a headquarters in Leiden, in the Netherlands. But the meetings are shrouded in the utmost secrecy. Participants and guests rarely reveal that they are attending. Their security is managed by military intelligence. But what is the secretive group really up to? Well, they talk. They lobby. They try to magnify their already immense political clout, on both sides of the Atlantic. And everybody pledges absolute secrecy on what has been discussed.
The Bilderberg mingles central bankers, defense experts, press barons, government ministers, prime ministers, royalty, international financiers and political leaders from Europe and America. Guests this year, along with Rumsfeld and Perle (US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is also a member) included banker David Rockefeller, as well as various members of the Rockefeller family, Henry Kissinger, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Sofia and King Juan Carlos of Spain, and high officials of assorted governments. The Bilderberg does not invite - or accept - Asians, Middle Easterners, Latin Americans or Africans.
Some of the Western world's leading financiers and foreign policy strategists attend Bilderberg, in their view, to polish and reinforce a virtual consensus, an illusion that globalization, defined under their terms - what's good for banking and big business is good for everybody else - is inevitable and for the greater good of mankind. If they have a hidden agenda, it is the fact that their fabulous concentration of wealth and power is completely dissociated from the explanation to their guests of how globalization benefits 6.2 billion people. Some of the club's earlier guests went on to become crucial players. Bill Clinton in 1991 and Tony Blair in 1993 were invited and duly "approved" by the Bilderberg before they took office.
There are innumerable shady, still unexplained connections between the early Bilderberg club and the Nazis, via Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, the father of Queen Beatrix, who founded the club in Bilderberg in 1954 (the name is taken from a Dutch hotel), aiming to "increase understanding between Europe and North America". Bernhard was a member of Adolf Hitler's SS. One of the founding members of the Bilderberg is Otto Wolff von Amerongen - who actively improved business links between Germany and the Soviet bloc and served on 26 boards of directors, including Deutsche Bank. Few people know him - and perhaps for some good reason: he has been linked to the Nazi's theft of Jewish holdings before and during World War II.
Rumsfeld is an active Bilderberger. So is General Peter Sutherland from Ireland, a former European Union commissioner and chairman of Goldman Sachs and BP. Rumsfeld and Sutherland served together in 2000 on the board of Swiss energy company ABB. And ABB happened to have sold two light-water nuclear reactors to North Korea. At the time, of course, North Korea was not an active member of the "axis of evil".
Full story...
Depending on the ideological prism applied, the Bilderberg club may be considered an ultra-VIP international lobby of the power elite of Europe and America, capable of steering international policy from behind closed doors; a harmless "discussion group" of politicians, academics and business tycoons; or a capitalist secret society operating entirely through self interest and plotting world domination.
The Bilderberg club is regarded by many financial and business elites as the high chamber of the high priests of capitalism. You can't apply for membership of such a club. Each year, a mysterious "steering committee" devises a selected invitation list with a maximum 100 names. The location of their annual meeting is not exactly secret: they even have a headquarters in Leiden, in the Netherlands. But the meetings are shrouded in the utmost secrecy. Participants and guests rarely reveal that they are attending. Their security is managed by military intelligence. But what is the secretive group really up to? Well, they talk. They lobby. They try to magnify their already immense political clout, on both sides of the Atlantic. And everybody pledges absolute secrecy on what has been discussed.
The Bilderberg mingles central bankers, defense experts, press barons, government ministers, prime ministers, royalty, international financiers and political leaders from Europe and America. Guests this year, along with Rumsfeld and Perle (US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is also a member) included banker David Rockefeller, as well as various members of the Rockefeller family, Henry Kissinger, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Sofia and King Juan Carlos of Spain, and high officials of assorted governments. The Bilderberg does not invite - or accept - Asians, Middle Easterners, Latin Americans or Africans.
Some of the Western world's leading financiers and foreign policy strategists attend Bilderberg, in their view, to polish and reinforce a virtual consensus, an illusion that globalization, defined under their terms - what's good for banking and big business is good for everybody else - is inevitable and for the greater good of mankind. If they have a hidden agenda, it is the fact that their fabulous concentration of wealth and power is completely dissociated from the explanation to their guests of how globalization benefits 6.2 billion people. Some of the club's earlier guests went on to become crucial players. Bill Clinton in 1991 and Tony Blair in 1993 were invited and duly "approved" by the Bilderberg before they took office.
There are innumerable shady, still unexplained connections between the early Bilderberg club and the Nazis, via Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, the father of Queen Beatrix, who founded the club in Bilderberg in 1954 (the name is taken from a Dutch hotel), aiming to "increase understanding between Europe and North America". Bernhard was a member of Adolf Hitler's SS. One of the founding members of the Bilderberg is Otto Wolff von Amerongen - who actively improved business links between Germany and the Soviet bloc and served on 26 boards of directors, including Deutsche Bank. Few people know him - and perhaps for some good reason: he has been linked to the Nazi's theft of Jewish holdings before and during World War II.
Rumsfeld is an active Bilderberger. So is General Peter Sutherland from Ireland, a former European Union commissioner and chairman of Goldman Sachs and BP. Rumsfeld and Sutherland served together in 2000 on the board of Swiss energy company ABB. And ABB happened to have sold two light-water nuclear reactors to North Korea. At the time, of course, North Korea was not an active member of the "axis of evil".
Full story...
Fog Of Lies, Deception Envelops The Putrid Swamp Of Bush's DC
Retired Gen. Jay Garner and several of his staff are relieved of their posts in Iraq but, of course, have done a splendid job. There is still chaos, looting and a lack of clean water and power, but reconstruction is proceeding with great progress. America is doing a worse job than Saddam Hussein in feeding the Iraqi people, but everyone is so happy to see the tyrant gone - though where he has gone, we don't know. Perhaps he's with Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. Not to worry, paradise is on the way.
As for al-Qaida, it has been decimated, crippled, rendered ineffective - except, of course, for those members who simultaneously blew up three foreign compounds and a business in Saudi Arabia.
Everything in Afghanistan is peachy-creamy - except, of course, that it looks remarkably as unstable and undeveloped as it did a year ago. The president has also committed himself to his "road map to peace," but never mind that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon refuses to accept it and again embarrasses Secretary of State Colin Powell by clamping down on Palestinians before the secretary has even shaken off the dust of Palestine from his shoes.
And, of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the American economy, except the absence of another round of tax cuts. The ability of this administration to live in a dream world, divorced from reality, is quite remarkable. Why, the falling value of the dollar is good for American exports. And the answer to the biggest string of record trade deficits in history is to have more free-trade agreements, never mind that they are the cause of the trade deficits in the first place.
Sometimes I think our whole country is on dope. How nice that Poland will administer a third of Iraq provided, naturally, that we foot the bill for the entire operation. But one has to appreciate faithful allies even if they are dead-broke and we have to pay through the nose for their support. I'm sure the Poles, with their vast experience in the Middle East, will be crackerjack administrators.
Full story...
As for al-Qaida, it has been decimated, crippled, rendered ineffective - except, of course, for those members who simultaneously blew up three foreign compounds and a business in Saudi Arabia.
Everything in Afghanistan is peachy-creamy - except, of course, that it looks remarkably as unstable and undeveloped as it did a year ago. The president has also committed himself to his "road map to peace," but never mind that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon refuses to accept it and again embarrasses Secretary of State Colin Powell by clamping down on Palestinians before the secretary has even shaken off the dust of Palestine from his shoes.
And, of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the American economy, except the absence of another round of tax cuts. The ability of this administration to live in a dream world, divorced from reality, is quite remarkable. Why, the falling value of the dollar is good for American exports. And the answer to the biggest string of record trade deficits in history is to have more free-trade agreements, never mind that they are the cause of the trade deficits in the first place.
Sometimes I think our whole country is on dope. How nice that Poland will administer a third of Iraq provided, naturally, that we foot the bill for the entire operation. But one has to appreciate faithful allies even if they are dead-broke and we have to pay through the nose for their support. I'm sure the Poles, with their vast experience in the Middle East, will be crackerjack administrators.
Full story...
Who Is Running al-Qaeda?
It is EIR's assessment, at this time, that the hideously destructive terrorist attacks which occurred over May 11-14, against both Chechnya and Saudi Arabia, were probably carried out—as Russian President Vladimir Putin has charged—by al-Qaeda. But the important question remains: Who is running al-Qaeda?
The widespread view in the Arab world is that this terrorist network is comprised of misguided adherents of Islam, who are simply choosing a counter-productive method to express their rage against the overwhelming injustices being carried out by the United States, in particular, or by Russia. That opinion would appear to be buttressed by the fact that an explosion of terrorism against the United States, had been widely anticipated, in the wake of the hated Iraq war.
But it would be a terrible mistake to chalk these actions up to simply another "sociological phenomenon."
Start by taking a look at the pattern of terrorist incidents, for example. Look at the way in which the Israeli-Palestinian situation, for one, has developed. At virtually every point that promising prospects for peace were on the agenda, with the extremists on both sides being put under control, a new terrorist incident would break out. How convenient for those who never wanted to proceed with the peace process to begin with!
In the Israeli-Palestinian case, EIR has undertaken considerable study of this "coincidence." Lo and behold, it became apparent that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whose entire career has been devoted to preventing a peaceful solution to the conflict, actually set up one of the most radical "Palestinian" terrorist groups, Hamas, in the 1980s. And whenever it was convenient for Sharon, the Hamas terrrorists would emerge to do their dirty work. This pattern continues to this very day.
A similar point of analysis has to be taken in the case of the biggest "terrorist" incident of the recent era, the Sept. 11, 2001 assaults on the United States. No one actually knows who carried out these assaults, although it can be said with surety that a network of Arabs headquartered abroad, could not have had the capability to carry out this sophisticated operation, without decisive help from forces inside the United States.
Full story...
The widespread view in the Arab world is that this terrorist network is comprised of misguided adherents of Islam, who are simply choosing a counter-productive method to express their rage against the overwhelming injustices being carried out by the United States, in particular, or by Russia. That opinion would appear to be buttressed by the fact that an explosion of terrorism against the United States, had been widely anticipated, in the wake of the hated Iraq war.
But it would be a terrible mistake to chalk these actions up to simply another "sociological phenomenon."
Start by taking a look at the pattern of terrorist incidents, for example. Look at the way in which the Israeli-Palestinian situation, for one, has developed. At virtually every point that promising prospects for peace were on the agenda, with the extremists on both sides being put under control, a new terrorist incident would break out. How convenient for those who never wanted to proceed with the peace process to begin with!
In the Israeli-Palestinian case, EIR has undertaken considerable study of this "coincidence." Lo and behold, it became apparent that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whose entire career has been devoted to preventing a peaceful solution to the conflict, actually set up one of the most radical "Palestinian" terrorist groups, Hamas, in the 1980s. And whenever it was convenient for Sharon, the Hamas terrrorists would emerge to do their dirty work. This pattern continues to this very day.
A similar point of analysis has to be taken in the case of the biggest "terrorist" incident of the recent era, the Sept. 11, 2001 assaults on the United States. No one actually knows who carried out these assaults, although it can be said with surety that a network of Arabs headquartered abroad, could not have had the capability to carry out this sophisticated operation, without decisive help from forces inside the United States.
Full story...
On rescuing Private Lynch and forgetting Rachel Corrie
The Israeli army got away with murder - and now all activists are at risk
by Naomi Klein
Jessica Lynch and Rachel Corrie could have passed for sisters. Two all-American blondes, two destinies for ever changed in a Middle East war zone. Private Jessica Lynch, the soldier, was born in Palestine, West Virginia. Rachel Corrie, the activist, died in Israeli-occupied Palestine.
Corrie was four years older than 19-year-old Lynch. Her body was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza seven days before Lynch was taken into Iraqi custody on March 23. Before she went to Iraq, Lynch organised a pen-pal programme with a local kindergarten. Before Corrie left for Gaza, she organised a pen-pal programme between kids in her hometown of Olympia, Washington, and children in Rafah.
Lynch went to Iraq as a soldier loyal to her government. Corrie went to Gaza to oppose the actions of her government. As a US citizen, she believed she had a special responsibility to defend Palestinians against US-built weapons, purchased with US aid to Israel. In letters home, she described how fresh water was being diverted from Gaza to Israeli settlements, how death was more normal than life. "This is what we pay for here," she wrote.
Unlike Lynch, Corrie did not go to Gaza to engage in combat: she went to try to thwart it. Along with her fellow members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), she believed that the Israeli military's incursions could be slowed by the presence of highly visible "internationals". The killing of Palestinian civilians may have become commonplace, the thinking went, but Israel doesn't want the diplomatic or media scandals that would come if it killed a US student.
In a way, Corrie was harnessing the very thing that she disliked most about her country: the belief that American lives are worth more than any others - and trying to use it to save a few Palestinian homes from demolition.
Believing her fluorescent orange jacket would serve as armour, Corrie stood in front of bulldozers, slept beside wells and escorted children to school. If suicide bombers turn their bodies into weapons of death, Corrie turned hers into the opposite - a weapon of life, a "human shield".
Full story...
by Naomi Klein
Jessica Lynch and Rachel Corrie could have passed for sisters. Two all-American blondes, two destinies for ever changed in a Middle East war zone. Private Jessica Lynch, the soldier, was born in Palestine, West Virginia. Rachel Corrie, the activist, died in Israeli-occupied Palestine.
Corrie was four years older than 19-year-old Lynch. Her body was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza seven days before Lynch was taken into Iraqi custody on March 23. Before she went to Iraq, Lynch organised a pen-pal programme with a local kindergarten. Before Corrie left for Gaza, she organised a pen-pal programme between kids in her hometown of Olympia, Washington, and children in Rafah.
Lynch went to Iraq as a soldier loyal to her government. Corrie went to Gaza to oppose the actions of her government. As a US citizen, she believed she had a special responsibility to defend Palestinians against US-built weapons, purchased with US aid to Israel. In letters home, she described how fresh water was being diverted from Gaza to Israeli settlements, how death was more normal than life. "This is what we pay for here," she wrote.
Unlike Lynch, Corrie did not go to Gaza to engage in combat: she went to try to thwart it. Along with her fellow members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), she believed that the Israeli military's incursions could be slowed by the presence of highly visible "internationals". The killing of Palestinian civilians may have become commonplace, the thinking went, but Israel doesn't want the diplomatic or media scandals that would come if it killed a US student.
In a way, Corrie was harnessing the very thing that she disliked most about her country: the belief that American lives are worth more than any others - and trying to use it to save a few Palestinian homes from demolition.
Believing her fluorescent orange jacket would serve as armour, Corrie stood in front of bulldozers, slept beside wells and escorted children to school. If suicide bombers turn their bodies into weapons of death, Corrie turned hers into the opposite - a weapon of life, a "human shield".
Full story...
Foreign Secretary was target for assassination by Zionist groups
Files reveal terrorist plot to help achieve Jewish state and tell of struggle to unmask spy who betrayed atomic secrets
Jewish extremists planned to set up "IRA-style" cells in London with instructions to assassinate politicians including the Foreign Secretary to help achieve a Jewish state, MI5 papers released today show.
The Security Service was so worried about the threat posed by two Jewish militant groups in 1946 that they told Clement Attlee, the Prime Minister, to expect "indiscriminate" shooting of troops in Palestine and terrorist attacks in Britain.
British agents in Jerusalem warned that the organisations - the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Group - were plotting to send teams to London to stage assassinations and bombings.
Documents released at the National Archives - formerly known as the Public Record Office - in Kew, west London, show that MI5 believed the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, was at the top of the target list in the turmoil of post-war Palestine.
In a memo to Sir David Petrie, the first director general of MI5, one official wrote: "They [Irgun and Stern] have been training selected members for the purpose of proceeding overseas and assassinating prominent British personalities. Special reference has been made several times to Mr Bevin in this connection."
The Labour politician was a target for Jewish resentment after he implemented a 1939 Act of Parliament making Jewish immigration into British-controlled Palestine illegal.
Full story...
Jewish extremists planned to set up "IRA-style" cells in London with instructions to assassinate politicians including the Foreign Secretary to help achieve a Jewish state, MI5 papers released today show.
The Security Service was so worried about the threat posed by two Jewish militant groups in 1946 that they told Clement Attlee, the Prime Minister, to expect "indiscriminate" shooting of troops in Palestine and terrorist attacks in Britain.
British agents in Jerusalem warned that the organisations - the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Group - were plotting to send teams to London to stage assassinations and bombings.
Documents released at the National Archives - formerly known as the Public Record Office - in Kew, west London, show that MI5 believed the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, was at the top of the target list in the turmoil of post-war Palestine.
In a memo to Sir David Petrie, the first director general of MI5, one official wrote: "They [Irgun and Stern] have been training selected members for the purpose of proceeding overseas and assassinating prominent British personalities. Special reference has been made several times to Mr Bevin in this connection."
The Labour politician was a target for Jewish resentment after he implemented a 1939 Act of Parliament making Jewish immigration into British-controlled Palestine illegal.
Full story...
Wednesday 21 May 2003
Press ganged
Blair's tragedy is that, in the end, it is Murdoch, Rothermere and Black who write British history, not he.
by Polly Toynbee
Who runs the country? The rightwing press is now overreaching itself beyond anything seen in recent times. Its preposterous presumption might be funny if it weren't so damaging. The raucous bullying of the rightwing press barons for a referendum on an as yet unformulated new EU constitution is a flagrant challenge to the democratic authority of the government.
Yesterday the Daily Mail, with grotesque portentousness, announced "in an exercise unprecedented in newspaper history", June 9 will be "the day the Daily Mail will be conducting its historic national referendum on the EU constitution, a device that will sweep away 1,000 years of history." This crude usurpation will create "thousands and thousands of polling stations," with votes "scrutinised over the following weekend," to stop the EU taking as yet unspecified, "sweeping powers over huge swaths of national life". The Electoral Reform Society, scrutineer for all authentic ballots, refused to have anything to do with it: "It's just petition gathering," it says. But so what? The demagogues will get whatever whopping majority they want, never mind scrutiny.
Over at the Telegraph, Conrad Black took to print himself to demand a referendum - almost unknown behaviour for a proprietor. The Telegraph recently made a hefty donation to the Conservative party - also a curiosity for a newspaper. The Murdoch press is shoulder to shoulder: the Sun runs a telephone poll to Save our Country against "the biggest betrayal in our history" while the Times obeys its owner with a little more finesse, liking to flirt with Blair, but "democracy is at stake" it warns. A plaintive Jack Straw bleated: "The British public deserves a higher level of debate than this." Indeed - but when did his government try to do anything about it? (Instead they are trying to appease Murdoch by giving him Channel 5 in the current broadcasting bill).
All this is still a non-issue with the public. Despite the bellowing press, yesterday's Guardian ICM poll showed that 81% of the people had never heard of the proposed new EU constitution. (Why have the BBC taken up the referendum issue when it is so far an entirely phony press story?) There is nothing to vote on as yet, nor are any other countries signed up to a referendum yet. In negotiations the prime minister is demanding most of what the enemy press wants anyway: no use of the word federal, no shared tax or social security systems, no charter of fundamental rights, national parliaments still able to veto EU proposals. But even if and probably when Tony Blair gets his way, that will make no difference. It doesn't matter what is in it. What the europhobic press wants is a referendum so it can fight for a "no" vote which could lead to Britain's eventual exit, as it always wanted: it may never happen, but now it sees a shimmer on the horizon.
The profoundly dysfunctional British press, over 75% controlled by three rightwing men, has the bit between its teeth, setting the agenda for the nation's political discourse. The nuanced, conditional support of Labour's critical friends - the Guardian, FT and Independent - is no counterweight, with the Mirror wildly erratic. Without a plausible party of their own (canny bullies never champion a loser like Duncan Smith) Tory proprietors have become a surrogate party. They cannot win an election, but they can demolish all trust and hope in Labour. They can lie, destroy and spread unrelenting mendacity, meaning fewer people vote and all mistrust politics.
Full story...
by Polly Toynbee
Who runs the country? The rightwing press is now overreaching itself beyond anything seen in recent times. Its preposterous presumption might be funny if it weren't so damaging. The raucous bullying of the rightwing press barons for a referendum on an as yet unformulated new EU constitution is a flagrant challenge to the democratic authority of the government.
Yesterday the Daily Mail, with grotesque portentousness, announced "in an exercise unprecedented in newspaper history", June 9 will be "the day the Daily Mail will be conducting its historic national referendum on the EU constitution, a device that will sweep away 1,000 years of history." This crude usurpation will create "thousands and thousands of polling stations," with votes "scrutinised over the following weekend," to stop the EU taking as yet unspecified, "sweeping powers over huge swaths of national life". The Electoral Reform Society, scrutineer for all authentic ballots, refused to have anything to do with it: "It's just petition gathering," it says. But so what? The demagogues will get whatever whopping majority they want, never mind scrutiny.
Over at the Telegraph, Conrad Black took to print himself to demand a referendum - almost unknown behaviour for a proprietor. The Telegraph recently made a hefty donation to the Conservative party - also a curiosity for a newspaper. The Murdoch press is shoulder to shoulder: the Sun runs a telephone poll to Save our Country against "the biggest betrayal in our history" while the Times obeys its owner with a little more finesse, liking to flirt with Blair, but "democracy is at stake" it warns. A plaintive Jack Straw bleated: "The British public deserves a higher level of debate than this." Indeed - but when did his government try to do anything about it? (Instead they are trying to appease Murdoch by giving him Channel 5 in the current broadcasting bill).
All this is still a non-issue with the public. Despite the bellowing press, yesterday's Guardian ICM poll showed that 81% of the people had never heard of the proposed new EU constitution. (Why have the BBC taken up the referendum issue when it is so far an entirely phony press story?) There is nothing to vote on as yet, nor are any other countries signed up to a referendum yet. In negotiations the prime minister is demanding most of what the enemy press wants anyway: no use of the word federal, no shared tax or social security systems, no charter of fundamental rights, national parliaments still able to veto EU proposals. But even if and probably when Tony Blair gets his way, that will make no difference. It doesn't matter what is in it. What the europhobic press wants is a referendum so it can fight for a "no" vote which could lead to Britain's eventual exit, as it always wanted: it may never happen, but now it sees a shimmer on the horizon.
The profoundly dysfunctional British press, over 75% controlled by three rightwing men, has the bit between its teeth, setting the agenda for the nation's political discourse. The nuanced, conditional support of Labour's critical friends - the Guardian, FT and Independent - is no counterweight, with the Mirror wildly erratic. Without a plausible party of their own (canny bullies never champion a loser like Duncan Smith) Tory proprietors have become a surrogate party. They cannot win an election, but they can demolish all trust and hope in Labour. They can lie, destroy and spread unrelenting mendacity, meaning fewer people vote and all mistrust politics.
Full story...
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