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Editorial: Thank God For Non-Richochet Bullets
Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times
15/08/2006
Let me give you a little scenario to ponder:
An innocent man who offers no suggestion that he is a threat in any way, is murdered on a London train with 7 point blank shots to the head of the victim over a 30 second interval by an UK police officer with Scotland Yard's elite CO19 gun squad.
In a sane world, what should happen to this officer? Reprimand? Dismissal? Jail time?
Think again:
De Menezes Gun Cop To Train Sky Marshalls
ONE of the officers who shot Tube blunder man Jean Charles de Menezes is to train new British sky marshals.
The armed cop, in his 30s, has been picked because top brass say he has "proven ability to act swiftly and decisively" in emergencies.
"We need the best to counter the very real threat posed by international terrorism.
"Sky marshals have to act quickly and decisively in any situation.
"They have to be ruthless in bringing down potential terrorists before they can bring down an aircraft."
All UK police forces have been told to send firearms officers for the eight-week course because of the heightened terror alert.
Hang on...I feel a quote from Lobaczewski coming on:
In a pathocracy, all leadership positions, (down to village headman and community cooperative managers, not to mention the directors of police units, and special services police personnel, and activists in the pathocratic party) must be filled by individuals with corresponding psychological deviations, which are inherited as a rule. However, such people constitute a very small percentage of the population and this makes them more valuable to the pathocrats. Their intellectual level or professional skills cannot be taken into account, since people representing superior abilities are even harder to find.
After such a system has lasted several years, one hundred percent of all the cases of essential psychopathy are involved in pathocratic activity; they are considered the most loyal, even though some of them were formerly involved on the other side in some way. [...]
[T]o mitigate the threat to their power, the pathocrats must employ any and all methods of terror and exterminatory policies against individuals known for their patriotic feelings and military training; other, specific "indoctrination" activities such as those we have presented are also utilized. Individuals lacking the natural feeling of being linked to normal society become irreplaceable in either of these activities. Again, the foreground of this type of activity is occupied by cases of essential psychopathy, followed by those with similar anomalies, and finally by people alienated from the society in question as a result of racial or national differences.
The phenomenon of pathocracy matures during this period: an extensive and active indoctrination system is built, with a suitably refurbished ideology constituting the vehicle or Trojan horse for the purpose of pathologizing the thought processes of individuals and society.
The goal- forcing human minds to incorporate pathological experiential methods and thought-patterns, and consequently accepting such rule - is never openly admitted. This goal is conditioned by pathological egotism, and the possibility of accomplishing it strikes the pathocrats as not only indispensable, but feasible. Thousands of activists must therefore participate in this work.
I know what you are thinking, "this is very dangerous!" What if a guy like this (or one of his students) gets trigger happy when some passenger looks at him the wrong way and tries to unload 7 bullets into his head...might one of the bullets not puncture the cabin and threaten the lives of all passengers and crew?!
Put you mind at ease:
"Sky marshals will be issued with Sig Sauer 9mm pistols, with special bullets which do not ricochet and damage the aircraft's fuselage."
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: The Yugoslav Caldron: Jürgen Elsässer: "The CIA recruited and trained the jihadists"
By Silvia Cattori
In his latest book, How the Jihad Came to Europe, German journalist Jürgen Elsässer unravels the Jihadist thread. Muslim fighters recruited by the CIA to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan were used successively in Yugoslavia and Chechnya, still supported by the CIA, but perhaps sometimes out of its control. Basing himself on diverse sources, mainly Yugoslavian, Dutch, and German, he reconstructed the development of Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants at the side of NATO in Bosnia-Herzegovinia.
Silvia Cattori: Your investigation into the actions of the secret services makes a frightening report. We discover that since the 80's the United States has invested billions of dollars to finance criminal activities and that by means of the CIA they are directly implicated in the attacks attributed to the Moslems. What is the contribution of your book?
Jurgen Elsässer: It is the only work that establishes the tie between wars in the Balkan of the 90's and the attack of September 11, 2001. All the large attacks, in New York, in London, in Madrid, would never have taken place without the recruitment by the American and British secret services of these jihadists who have been blamed for the attacks. I bring a new light on the manipulations of the intelligence agencies. Other books than mine have noted the presence of Ossama Ben Laden in the Balkans. But their authors presented the Moslem fighters in the Balkan as enemies of the west. The information that I collected from multiple sources, demonstrate that these jihadists are puppets in the hands of the west and are not, as one pretends, enemies.
Silvia Cattori: In the case of the war in the Balkan, the manipulations of various States are clearly designated in your book. The United States supported Ben Laden whose work was to form the Mujahidines. How can anyone continue to ignore that these attempts that horrify public opinion would never have existed if these «terrorists» had not been driven and financed by the western intelligence services?
Jürgen Elsässer: Yes, indeed, it is the result of facts that one can observe. But one cannot say that the western intervention in ex - Yugoslavia had for objective to prepare attack of September 11. To be precise: these attacks are a consequence of western politics of the 90's because NATO put these jihadists in place in the Balkans and collaborated with them. The Moslem militants who have been designated the persons responsible for the attacks of September 11 were part of this network.
Silvia Cattori: According to you, what was the interest of the United States and Germany to set the people of the Balkans one against the other?
Jürgen Elsässer: The west had a common interest to destroy Yugoslavia, to dismember it, because, after the end of the soviet bloc, it would have been a model of the intelligent combination of capitalist and socialist elements. But the west wanted to impose the neoliberal model on all countries.
Silvia Cattori: Is not Europe itself imprudently committed to a war manipulated by the neoconservatives?
Jürgen Elsässer: It is difficult to say. I believe that in the 90's, the politics of the United States was inspired by their victory against Soviets in Afghanistan. It was the model that they wanted to apply in Balkans. If, during those years, the economy of the United States had not fallen into depression, maybe the more realistic politicians, such as Kissinger, could have kept control of American politics. I think that the coincidence between the economic depression and the aggressiveness of the neoconservative school determined what happened.
Silvia Cattori: Do you think that a leader like Blair, for example, once embarked in the neoconservative project, has become a hostage to a certain point?
Jürgen Elsässer: I don't know the position of Blair enough well. It is easier to see what goes on in the United States. One can see that Bush is the hostage of those around him. And, as he is not very intelligent, he is not able to take decisions and must follow ideas of his entourage. It is clear that his father was against the attack on Iraq in 2003.
Silvia Cattori: Wasn't the first Gulf war part of a plan aiming to trigger other wars thereafter?
Jürgen Elsässer: No, there was no tie with the war in Iraq in 1991. There were two phases. Until the end of the Clinton period, the politics of the United States were imperialistic, but at the same time, pragmatic. They chased the Soviets out of Afghanistan. They defeated Iraq in 1991. Their war stopped once Kuwait was free. Then they attacked Bosnia and Yugoslavia; but it occurred stage by stage. Everything went out of control after September 11.
Silvia Cattori: The neoconservatives don't count for anything?
Jürgen Elsässer: The neoconservatives, grouped around Pearl, had written a document one year before September 11, according to which America had need of a catalyzing event similar to the attack on Pearl Harbor. September 11 was this catalyzing event. I believe that people around Pearl wished for the attacks of September 11.
Silvia Cattori: What was the objective pursued by the United States in attacking Serbia? Was it merely about, as is indicated in your book, the US getting itself installed in a strategic region situated on a transit line for the oil and the gas of central Asia? Or did the alliance of the United States with the Moslem fighters directed by Izetbegovic have a second objective: to create a Moslem extremism at the doors of Europe in order to make use of it in the setting of terrorist manipulations? And, if yes, towards what goal?
Jürgen Elsässer: The United States wanted, as did Austria at the end of the 19th century in Bosnia, to create a "European" Islam to weaken the Islamic states in the Middle East, meaning, at that time, the Ottoman empire, and today, Iran and the Arab states. The neoconservatives had other plans again: to construct a clandestine network of "fundamentalist" puppets to do the dirty work against "old" Europe.
Silvia Cattori: The result, a terrifying civil war. How could Europe have participated in the destruction of Yugoslavia, which appeared as an example of the perfectly successful cohabitation between ethnic groups? By making the Serbians the guilty party, didn't Europe destroy a country that was one of the major constructions of the postwar era? On what legitimacy did Europe base its intervention?
Jürgen Elsässer: First, in the beginning of the 90's, Germany led the attack based upon the principles of the self-determination of ethnic groups: in other words, Hitler's old ruse against Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1938/39. Then, the United States took the relay and praised "human rights", an obvious swindle.
Silvia Cattori: In your investigation Israel is never mentioned. Have you not minimized the importance of pro-Israeli neoconservatives inside the Pentagon, who serve interests of Israel more that those of the United States?
Jürgen Elsässer: There are Israelis who collaborated with the neoconservatives; it is a fact. But I am not sure of the role played by Israel in this business. Sharon was against NATO support for the Albanians of Kosovo. And, in 1998, he expressed his worry over the idea that NATO support the setting up of pro-Islamic elements in the Balkan. I also believe that he was not favorable to this war the following year.
Silvia Cattori: Don't you see ties between the Israeli secret services and the attacks of September 11, 2001?
Jürgen Elsässer: There are ties, but I didn't analyze the character of these ties. For example, immediately after September 11, a certain number of Israeli agents were arrested in the United States. They were present in places where the attacks were prepared. There are analysts who say this is proof that Israel was directly implicated in these attacks. But it could also mean something else. It could be that these agents were watching what happened, that they were aware that the American secret services supported these "terrorists" in the preparation of these attacks, but that they kept their knowledge to use it at the appropriate moment, and to be able to use it as blackmail when the moment came: "If you don't increase your support for Israel, we are going to hand over this information to the media". There is even a third possibility: that these Israeli spies wanted to warn about the attacks but failed. At the moment, we only know that these types were there and that they were arrested. Supplementary investigations are necessary.
Silvia Cattori: Do these ties put in evidence that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were part of a plan conceived a long time before?
Jürgen Elsässer: I am not certain that a plan had been established for a long time. It could be that people such as Richard Perle improvise a lot and use criminal elements that they put in place but that they don't permanently control. As, at the time of Kennedy's murder, it is clear that the CIA was implicated, but one doesn't know if it had been planned at the top, at Langley [the headquarters of the CIA], or if it was conceived among the most violent Cuban exiles working for the CIA, the headquarters of the CIA limiting themselves to tolerating it.
Silvia Cattori: If tomorrow these characters grouped around Pearl were removed, would that stop the anti-Muslim war strategy of the United States and the manipulations that justify it?
Jürgen Elsässer: It stops when they lose a war.
Silvia Cattori: The war, didn't they lose it in Iraq?
Jürgen Elsässer: The war will only be lost when they leave the country, as in Vietnam.
Silvia Cattori: These Moslems who, like Mohammed Atta, were just ordinary citizens before being enlisted by the CIA, how could they be driven to such terrifying actions, without knowing that they were being manipulated by intelligence agents of the opposite camp?
Jürgen Elsässer: There are some youth that can be turned into fanatics and manipulated very easily by intelligence services. High-placed characters are not unaware of what happens and know by who they are hired.
Silvia Cattori: Ben Laden, for example, did he know that he served the interests of the United States?
Jürgen Elsässer: I didn't study his case. I studied the case of Al Zawahiri, Ben Laden's right arm, who was the chief of operations in the Balkans. In the beginning of the 90's, he traveled all through the United States with an agent of the US Special Command to collect money for the Jihad; this man knew that he participated in this collection of money as an activity that was supported by the United States.
Silvia Cattori: All of this is very troubling. You bring the proof that that attacks that have occurred since 1996 (attacks in the subway of Paris), would never have been possible if the war in the Balkan had not taken place. And you impute these attacks, that left thousands of victims, to western intelligence services. Has opinion in West therefore been deceived by governments that have embarked on terrorist actions?
Jürgen Elsässer: The terrorist network that the American and British secret services formed during the civil war in Bosnia and later in Kosovo provided a reservoir of militants that we find implicated later in the attacks in New York, Madrid, London.
Silvia Cattori: How did this happen concretely?
Jürgen Elsässer: Once the war was finished in Afghanistan, Osama Ben Laden recruited these jihadist militants. It was his work. It was he that trained them, partially with the support of the CIA, and put them in place in Bosnia. The Americans tolerated the connection between the President Izetbegovic and Ben Laden. Two years later, in 1994, the Americans began to send weapons, in a common clandestine operation with Iran. After the treaty of Dayton, in November 1995, the CIA and the Pentagon recruited best of the jihadists that had fought in Bosnia.
Silvia Cattori: How does it happen that these Moslems got into the hands of services that served ideological interests opposed to theirs?
Jürgen Elsässer: I analyzed testimonies given by some jihadists interrogated by the German judges. They said that after the treaty of Dayton, which stipulated that all foreign ex-fighters had to leave the country, they didn't have any more money and had nowhere to go. As for those that could remain in Bosnia, because they had been provided with Bosnian passports, they were without work and without money. The day when the recruiters came and rang at their doors and proposed to pay them 3000 dollars a month to serve in the Bosnian army, they didn't know that they were recruited and paid by emissaries of the CIA to serve the United States.
Silvia Cattori: After, when they were sent to prepare the attacks in London in July 2005, for example, did they not become aware that they were in the hands of western intelligence agents who manipulated them?
Jürgen Elsässer: It is not clear that it was really the young Moslems from the suburbs of London that committed the attacks, as the police claim. There are other indications according to which the bombs were fixed under the trains. It is possible the bombs were attached under the trains without these young men knowing about it. In that case it is not sure that the young Moslems, incriminated by the investigation, committed these attempts.
Silvia Cattori: It is hard to understand the goal that the western States pursue when they engage their services in criminal manipulations?
Jürgen Elsässer: This is not easy to say. Remember Kennedy's murder. Who did it? It is certain that it was people from the CIA that supported the second killer, it is certain that Oswald was murdered by a man who had been mandated by the CIA. What is not clear is if these men recruited by the CIA acted on order of Johnson or Dulles, or if they were link to the milieu of extremist Cuban exiles, which means affiliated to the mafia. I don't believe that Bush or Blairs are chiefs. I don't believe in the theory of the big conspiracy. I believe that the secret services hire men who are ordered to carry out the dirty business; these agents act as they want. Perhaps you know that on September 11, 2001, someone tried to kill Bush. What does it mean? It is difficult to explain.
Silvia Cattori: Do you mean that Bush is, for example, himself hostage of the people who, inside the Pentagon, form a State within the state, one that also escapes the command of the American army?
Jürgen Elsässer: Yes. Bush is stupid. He is only an instrument in other people's hands.
Silvia Cattori: Are you thinking about people that are under the direct influence of characters such as Pearl, Wolfowitz, Feith? Do you think that it is they who, after the war of the Balkan, would have been the real backers of these attacks and that these attacks are not separate from each other, that there is a link between Madrid and London? Does it mean that the Americans are ready to ally with the devil to sow chaos everywhere under the pretext of this anti-Muslim, anti - Arabic war waged under the banner of terrorism? A fabricated terrorism?
Jürgen Elsässer: Yes, there is a duplicate government that escapes Bush's control. It is the neoconservatives, such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Pearl, the people tied into the oil and the military industries,. The global chaos is in the interest of the military industry: when there is the chaos all over the world, one can sell weapons and oil for a bigger price.
Silvia Cattori: Youssef Asckar described this State within in the state very well, to which you give credit [1]. Isn't Israel the first country interested by this strategy of chaos, therefore by the manipulation of terrorist attacks? Doesn't the propaganda of the pro-Israeli lobby have the tendency to make us believe that Israel is threatened by Arabs fanatics?
Jürgen Elsässer: It is not certain that this strategy can serve the interests of Israel because, if things continue this way, the whole Middle East will be in flames, including Israel. They used the same process during the war in Bosnia. In order to demonize the Serbs, the western media invented stories of concentration camps and made photo montages that compared the Serbs to the Nazis. This propaganda aimed to win opinion over to the war against Serbia, but, with regard to the United States, it was not nourished necessarily by the Jewish lobby, but by the Christian and atheist strategists. These strategists play the "Jewish" card. That is my thesis. One sees it currently with the propaganda against Iran; strategists of the war play the "Jewish" card to impress people that have more morals than intelligence.
Silvia Cattori: The recent manipulations confirm, in part, your thesis: at the same moment where the United States wanted the Security Council to pass sanctions against Iran, a Canadian newspaper wrote that Iran wanted to force Iranian Jews to wear the equivalent of a yellow star [2]. But I refer to these openly pro-Israeli personalities that, in France for example, play an important role in the formation of opinion because they occupy some strategic positions in the media, and whose community allegiance psuyhes them to support the policies of Israel and the United States, even if it is criminal. Remember the active support brought to Izetbegovic in Bosnia by Bernard-Henri Lévy and Bernard Kouchner. As soon as Serbia was on the knees, they immediately turned their propaganda against Arabs and Moslems; this time it was to mobilize opinion in favor of the so-called "war of civilizations". When they spoke of "concentration camps" to associate the Serbs with Hitler, didn't they participate in manipulations of NATO?
Jürgen Elsässer: We watched the same phenomenon in Germany. The Jewish journalists that supported the war against Yugoslavia had access to the televised studios. But the journalists that were against, whether they were Jewish or not, were excluded from the debate. I think that the media and politicians use the Jewish voices for geostrategic stakes.
Silvia Cattori: So, as you see it, what happened in the Balkan was only the repetition of what had happened in Afghanistan, what followed was part of the same process. Do you think that our authorities know risks of the wars provoked by their intelligence agencies?
Jürgen Elsässer: My hope is that there is a reaction on behalf of the military in the United States. There are among them people who know very well that all these wars are not intelligent. They know that the United States is going to lose this war. In the American army, they are imperialistic but they are not crazy, they don't agree with what is happening. But the neoconservatives are crazy, they want to wage the Third World War against all Arabs and all Moslems, just like Hitler who wanted to kill all Jews and to attack all other countries; the German generals had warned Hitler of all that he risked.
Silvia Cattori: Is your hope that a change occurs unexpectedly?
Jürgen Elsässer: To stop this madness I see possibility of change only among those forces that remained rational. The high command of the American army wrote a letter to Bush to say that it doesn't want to participate in an attack against Iran with nuclear weapons. Maybe Bush will attack; but the consequences would be more serious than in the case of Iraq. The same thing happened with the Nazis: they attacked, they attacked, and one day there was Stalingrad and the beginning of the defeat. But this adventure cost the lives of 60 million human beings.
Silvia Cattori: Is that what motivated your effort while writing this book: to alert people's consciences in order to avoid new disasters and new suffering? Moreover, that after Iraq it would be Iran's turn?
Jürgen Elsässer: Yes. But characters like Bush don't care about all of that. I am not completely pessimistic on Iran: one could see a repetition of the Paris, Berlin, Moscow axis. Our chancellor, who is normally a puppet of the United States, offered strategic cooperation with Russia, because Germany depends entirely on Russian oil and gas. It is a strong argument. Germans are imperialists, but they are not crazy.
Silvia Cattori: In the Balkans, was it not Germany that opened the door to the war?
Jürgen Elsässer: Yes, it is true. But, today, you see that Joschka Fischer and Madeleine Albright have sent an open letter to Bush to tell him not to attack Iran. Mrs. Albright specified that one cannot attack all the people that one doesn't like. It is rational.
Silvia Cattori: Were you able to collect these elements that illustrate the actions of the intelligence agencies because, today, people, worried of the evolution of international politics, are beginning to speak?
Jürgen Elsässer: Yes. I depended a great deal on information from people that work in the belly of "the beast".
Silvia Cattori: Everywhere in the world?
Jürgen Elsässer: I can only tell you that it is people from Western Europe. It is people that haven't stopped using their heads.
Silvia Cattori: To obtain the proof of the manipulations surroundeding the "Gulf of Tonkin Incident", the incident that permitted the United States to unleash the war against the Vietnamese people, it was necessary to wait a long time. Have things therefore changed today, permitting a response in time?
Jürgen Elsässer: There is a big difference between the situation in the 60's and the one today. In the Federal Republic of Germany, they were, for example, at that time in favor of the war against Communists in Vietnam. The official version that said our republic was in danger of being attacked by Communists was shared by a big part of public opinion. What has changed is that, today, the majority of the population is against the war, without discussion.
Silvia Cattori: You rightly underline the extremist religious character of Bosnia-Herzegovina under Izetbegovic, but, whereas you doubt the support of Israel to this sort of draft of the emirate of the Talibans, don't you overvalue the role of Iran and Saudi Arabia? Richard Perle was the principal political advisor to Izetbegovic. Didn't the Iranians and the Saudis raise the ante on the question of Islam hoping to take the control of a Moslem regime that only took its orders from Tel Aviv and Washington? In fact, was Izetbegovic not an agent of Israel?
Jürgen Elsässer: The Mossad helped the Bosnian Serbians, they even provided them weapons. There is nothing that indicates that the Israeli government helped Izetbegovic. It was supported by Americans, and Clinton depended upon the Zionist lobby in the United States, but this lobby didn't have the support of the Israeli government during the war of Bosnia.
Silvia Cattori: With regard to some of your sources, can one grant credit to the assertions of Yossef Bodanski, director of the Working Group on Terrorism and Non-Conventional war close to the American Senate?
Jürgen Elsässer: I don't trust anybody. They claim that Bodansky has ties with sources in Mossad and it renders a number of his findings suspect. On the other hand, he brings to our knowledge a lot of interesting facts that contradict the official propaganda. In my book I show the contradictions within the dominant elites of the United States, and, in this respect, Bodansky, is very interesting.
Silvia Cattori: It says in your book: "Terrorism exists in Kosovo and Macedonia, but in its majority it is not controled by Ben Laden but by US intelligence". Do you doubt the existence of Al Qaeda?
Jürgen Elsässer: Yes, as I wrote it in my book, it is propaganda manufactured by the west.
Silvia Cattori: One has a bit the impression that, to go to the end of its logic, your investigation is not finished. Certainly, Yugoslavia was a laboratory for the manufacture of the Islamic networks, and your book shows well that these networks serve the interests of the United States. However, you seem to believe in the existence of international Islamic networks who would have a popular base in the Moslem world, whereas at the same time your research demonstrates that these networks are only mercenaries of the United States and that they have never done anything for the Moslems?
Jürgen Elsässer: Look at the example of Hamas: in the beginning of the 80's, it was fomented by Mossad to counter the influence of the PLO. But thereafter, Hamas developed its own popular base and, now, it is part of the resistance. But I bet that there are still foreign agents inside Hamas.
Silvia Cattori: You mentioned that the inspectors of the United Nations are infiltrated by spies from the United States. Could we have some precisions?
Jürgen Elsässer: Some blue helmets of the UNPROFOR in Bosnia transported weapons to destinations of the Mujahidines.
Silvia Cattori: When Peter Handke affirms that Serbs are not the only guilty party, that they are victims of the war of the Balkans, one banish it. Who is right in this business?
Jürgen Elsässer: On all sides - Serbs, Croatians, Moslems - the ordinary people have all lost. Moslems won the war in Bosnia with the help of Ben Laden and Clinton but, now, their country is occupied by NATO. They have less independence today than at the time of Yugoslavia.
Silvia Cattori: How does your research relate to that of Andreas Von Bülow and Thierry Meyssan?
Jurgen Elsässer: We share the same opinion on the events of September 11, 2001: we think that the official version is not true. All this combined research is very useful to be able to continue to deepen the reality of the facts. My specialty is to have made the link between wars of the Balkans and September 11, while Thierry Meyssan analyzed the attack on the Pentagon to demonstrate that it was due to a missile and not to a plane, and Von Bülow arrived at the conclusion that planes were guided by a beacon.
Silvia Cattori: To having put into question the official truth, Thierry Meyssan was discredited and blocked by the media. Are you going to escape that?
Jürgen Elsässer: There is also a blockage against my book. It is not possible for one author alone to break this blockage. However, it can't prevent our theses from making their path. The public is not in agreement with what the media says: in spite of their blockage 35 to 40% of people don't believe what media tells them. There is the example of Kennedy's assassination: today, 90% of people don't believe in the official version and think that Kennedy's murder was an action of the CIA.
Silvia Cattori: Isn't it dangerous to uncover the manipulations of States that use their intelligence services in criminal ways?
Jürgen Elsässer: I believe that the danger only comes when one sells more than 100 000 books. In Germany, in eleven months, my book has only sold 6 000 copies.
Silvia Cattori
Swiss Journalist.
Comment le Djihad est arrivé en Europe by Jürgen Elsässer, preface by Jean-Pierre Chevènement. Éditions Xenia (Suisse), 304 pages, 19 euros.
[1] Read "La 'guerre contre le terrorisme' est une guerre contre les peoples" by Youssef Aschkar, Voltaire, 16 mars 2006.
[2] "Iran : les gouvernements anglo-saxons fabriquent de fausses nouvelles », Voltaire, 24 mai 2006.
Original
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: Sham UN Resolution Guarantees No End To Israel's War of Illegal Aggression
by Stephen Lendman
14 August 2006
On August 11, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1701 jointly proposed by the US and France and with all provisions in it signed off on by Israel before it was put to a vote. Neither Lebanon nor Hezbollah was afforded that same right. In a UN dominated by the world's only superpower and having to operate within the constraints it sets, only US client states are allowed that privilege. It's victims never are. Resolution 1701 was a revised version of the one the US and France first proposed on August 6 which the French then backed down on because of strong Lebanese government and Arab League opposition. The new resolution only guarantees one thing - no end to the conflict and no justice for its Lebanese victims. It doesn't even address the concurrent hostilities ongoing against the Palestinians outrageously ignoring the fact that they're raging daily with no end in sight.
Resolution 1701 calls for a full cessation of hostilities on both sides but leaves in it a glaring loophole big enough apparently to get Israel to accept it. It calls on Hezbollah to cease "all attacks" immediately and implies, but doesn't explicitly state, Hezbollah must disarm. It won't because doing so would be to surrender. It only asks Israel to stop "all offensive military operations" without defining what that means or making a comparable disarmament demand on the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). It thus gives Israel the right to "respond" if, in its judgment, it faces what it believes is an imminent threat. In other words, Israel can attack Lebanon at will any time and claim, true or not, it's only responding to such a threat. It also proposes no fixed timetable for Israel to withdraw its troops from Lebanon and only "calls on the government of Israel" to do so once a UN mandated force is in place. It thus gives Israel what it wanted - more time for the IDF to continue its assault by air and to try on the ground to seize more territory so when both sides agree to halt hostilities, Israel will be in the strongest bargaining position. The resolution also authorizes the deployment of up to 15,000 UN (UNIFIL) troops in southern Lebanon from countries willing to supply them to assist an additional 15,000 Lebanese force.
The resolution is a litany of outrage ignoring why the conflict began and falsely accusing Hezbollah of starting it by launching "the attack on Israel on 12 July" which it did not. It mentions nothing about Israel's incursions into Lebanon by air and on the ground prior to the July 12 date when Hezbollah forces captured (not kidnapped) two IDF soldiers who it's believed illegally crossed the UN-monitored "blue line" into the country - something the IDF routinely has done almost daily since it withdrew from the country in May, 2000. It absolves Israel of any responsibility by failing to acknowledge it's been waging a war of illegal aggression against the country and thus, according to the Nuremberg Charter, is guilty of the "supreme international crime" for which convicted Nazis after WW II were hanged. It doesn't even mention the word "war" in its text or indicate in any way that Israel is guilty of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against the people of Lebanon.
This is a resolution only an aggressor would love. It will do nothing to deter further aggression any time Israel believes, on its say alone and with no evidence, an imminent threat exists. Resolution 1701 blatantly violates the UN Charter which permits a nation to use force only under two conditions: when authorized to do it by the Security Council or under Article 51 that allows the "right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member....until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security." In other words, necessary self-defense is allowed, which does not justify what the IDF initiated on June 25 and again on July 12. Israel's extreme response on both dates following the capture of its soldiers, known in both cases to have been planned well in advance awaiting only convenient pretexts to undertake them, are no acts of self-defense. They're acts of premeditated illegal aggression.
In sum, UN Resolution 1701 is little more than an outrageous and illegal expression of victor's justice. It allows Israel the right to resume hostilities any time it wishes and for any reason so long as the Israelis claim an imminent threat exists regardless of whether or not it's true. It gives no rights to the victims who remain vulnerable and are likely to come under further assaults just as they have almost daily since Israel first invaded Lebanon in 1978. And it does nothing to try to end the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Palestinians or address their long-standing grievances now ongoing for nearly 60 years. The resolution does guarantee one thing - no end to the conflict in either country or justice for the beleaguered people of them both.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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Editorial: Mexican Electoral Fraud Wins Round One - Round Two Now Begins
by Stephen Lendman
It was no surprise on Sunday that the Mexican Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) ruled its partial recount of about 9% of the ballots cast in the disputed presidential election held on July 2 showed ruling National Action Party (PAN) candidate still the winner. In doing so, the IFE ignored the clear evidence of election irregularities and blatant fraud uncovered by losing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The IFE ignored the need for a total ballot recount Obrador justifiably demanded and instead relied on the small partial one it chose in areas of known Calderon strength making it unlikely from the start it would find enough of a change in the final tally to change the election result. Lopez Obrador aides cited evidence of overwhelming fraud in at least one-third of the polling stations and that any failure to do a recount in all of them would show clear IFE bias toward its announced winner on July 6 and would not be accepted without a concerted fight. Let the battle begin.
The fraud uncovered so far showed the preliminary vote totals were manipulated to allow PAN candidate Felipe Calderon to be the winner. In addition, three million votes were never counted at first and only in hindsight were 2.5 million of them added to the totals. Further, 900,000 supposedly void, blank and annulled ballots were declared null, discarded and never included in the official totals; 700,000 additional votes disappeared from missing precincts; thousands of voters were denied their franchise in strong Obrador precincts; there was evidence of ballot stuffing; and in about one-third of the polling stations only winning party PAN observers were present allowing ample opportunity for vote manipulation as has happened routinely in a country known for its history of electoral unfairness and where political dirty tricks and hardball tactics may have been invented. It takes no stretch to know it was no different this time, and Lopez Obrador now demands this injustice be addressed and corrected.
Obrador promised he will not go gently "into that good night" and will fight on to be declared the winner of the election it clearly looks like he won but so far has been denied. He now plans to file new charges of widespread fraud found during the recount process. The discoveries include broken seals on some ballot boxes and evidence showing the number of ballots in ballot boxes differed from the number of blank ballots cast. Additional evidence will seek to annul the results from thousands of polling stations Felipe Calderon won by a margin great enough to indicate significant manipulation of the count was likely. Lawyers for Mr. Obrador now claim these irregularities alone warrant a full ballot recount, and Mexico City Mayor-elect Marcelo Ebrard said: "There is now so much evidence of fraud that the court will have to act."
Part of that evidence is the illegal campaigning ruling PAN President Vincinte Fox did for Mr. Calderon and the fact that Felipe Calderon exceeded his legally allowed campaign spending limits. He did it to run vicious negative advertising through the business-friendly Mexican corporate media calling Obrador an evil twin of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, falsely accusing him of accepting campaign funds from the Venezuelan President, claiming Obrador was guilty of corruption as mayor of Mexico City with no evidence to prove it, and of being a "danger" for Mexico.
It was also learned early on that Felipe Calderon's brother-in-law Diego Hildebrando Zavala wrote the vote-counting software, and it was hacked during the electoral process. This discovery of a close family member having control of the computer systems is evidence enough of grossly improper activity that could easily have resulted in vote count manipulation to give the electoral victory to the candidate he obviously favored. Again, it takes no stretch to imagine Mr. Zavala took full advantage of his ability to decide the outcome.
It should be duly noted and stressed that in Latin America no greater contrast can be drawn in how elections are run than to compare the scrupulously honest and democratic process under Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to the hopelessly corrupted one in Mexico. It wasn't always that way in Venezuela, but once Hugo Chavez was elected he established constitutionally by national referendum a system of real participatory democracy where the Venezuelan people actually have a say in how the government is run including being the ones to decide in fair, open and honest elections who will be elected including the President. In Mexico, it's long been just the opposite. There the interests of wealth and power control the process and see to it their chosen candidates run the country for their benefit.
Round Two Now Begins As Lopez Obrador Intends To Fight On
Lopez Obrador made it clear after the July 6 announced results that he intended to continue fighting for electoral justice and has asked his supporters to rally in the streets around the country to demand it. Already major demonstrations have been held in Mexico City's huge Zocalo plaza. At a recent one as many as a record near-two million turned out to show their support for their candidate. Lopez Obrador now promises this will continue, and in a speech Sunday to many thousands assembled in the Zocalo to hear him he said his campaign for an honest recount will continue indefinitely in the courts and in the streets. With the many millions of Mexicans fed up with politics as usual, it now remains to be seen if their mass-people power can overcome a Mexican tradition of entrenched wealth and power always having it their way and the people be damned. It will be an uphill battle, but don't count the people out yet.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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Editorial: Bush, the Religious Right and End Times
by Rodrigue Tremblay
August 14, 2006
The New American Empire
"I think that on balance the moral influence of religion has been awful.
With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil;
but for good people to do evil-that takes religion."
Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate, Physics
"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious."
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Since U.S. President George W. Bush says that 'God' tells him what policies to pursue, maybe the religious side of the Israel-United States Axis should be more formally investigated. The more so since Bush has refused to answer a direct question regarding his own views about his religious allies' theory that 'God' is assumed to have a plan to end the world soon. He could have answered that such ideas originate from religious zealots and should be dismissed as hallucinations. -But he did not. What does this mean?
When religious extremists use their tax-free access to TV to openly call for a nuclear confrontation between America and Iran, and when they try to demonize the European Union by calling it "the Antichrist", it is time to ask what's going on in the U.S. -Is this wind of collective madness subsiding or getting up steam? Are the Armageddonite fanatics calling for the end of the world and the Second Coming of Christ, in an Armageddon war supposed to kill two billion people, turning the U. S. into a madhouse, where the inmates seem to be in charge?
There are, indeed, as many as 30 million Armageddonite Americans-ten percent of the population-most of them members of the evangelical religious fundamentalist movement, to which GWB subscribes as an evangelical born-again Christian, and from which he borrows his religious language in defense of his policies. (In the 2004 elections, exit polls showed that more than three-quarters of white evangelical Christians voted for President Bush.) Many among the evangelicals are known to nurture the crazy idea that if their preachers' end-of-the-world scenario were to be accomplished, they would be 'raptured' and would enter into some 'Heaven', without going through a 'Judgment Day'. Since the leaders of this movement are frequently invited to the White House for off-the-record policy sessions, and since many congressmen attend their meetings, it might not be so foolish after all to look at what these delusional characters have in store for the world.
What is frightening is the seeming convergence of interests between the pro-Israel and pro-war neoconservatives in the U.S., the Republican Party and its war-related electoral fortunes, and the religious radicals who are openly calling for a confrontation with Iran as a necessary precondition for their Armageddon. When a religious fanatic held a large meeting in Washington D. C., on July 18, 2006, to launch a war movement of Christian Zionists in favor of Israel and against Iran, the "Christians United for Israel" movement, President George W. Bush did not denounce such mad obsession with the end of the world, but rather sent words of support. He told them "God... bless and stand by the people of Israel and . . . bless the United States."
Not only that, but the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman, himself was one of the speakers at the meeting. The leader of the group, Texan John Hagee, proposed that the United States join Israel in a preemptive military strike against Iran to fulfill "God's plan" for both Israel and the West. Republican politicians, such as Sen. Sam Brownback (R- Kansas), Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania) and Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), were attendees. Also among the guests were the Israeli Ambassador, Daniel Ayalon, and retired Israeli defense chief Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon. -Is it not true that reality beats fiction, when American religious radicals and foreign generals get together to team up for a religious war?
What is so disturbing is that George W. Bush and some leading Republicans seem to be listening to deranged religious people who, if they had their way, could precipitate a world war and a world economic depression, just to fulfill their religious fantasies. Considering that the policies of the Neocon-inspired Bush-Cheney administration are seen by many to be governed by an amalgam of "impulse and fantasy", shouldn't the world be worried? Indeed, the magazine Newsweek observed recently that President George W. Bush is a man who "still trusts his gut to tell him what's right", rather than relying on professional advice, logical analysis, factual evidence and experience to arrive at conclusions. Of course, in such an environment of constant improvisation, anything is possible.
In particular, one should not dismiss the influence that religious thinking and the political Religious Right movement have on Bush's decisions. Indeed, what has been the Religious Right's influence on the Bush-Cheney administration's foreign policy, especially as it relates to the Middle East? For example, could it be that Bush's religious beliefs were behind his announcement on January 30, 2001, at his first National Security Council meeting, that from then on the U.S. would tilt its policies sharply toward Israel? Also, could it be that the reason Bush II gave the Israeli government of Ehud Olmert such unconditional and uncritical support and a total blank check, both to repress the Palestinians in Gaza and for attacking and bombing Lebanon, be found in the religious Right's support for such policies? Is George W. Bush listening to televangelist Pat Robertson, when this wild-eyed fanatic encourages Israel to destroy Lebanon because "The Jews are God's chosen people. Israel is a special nation that has a special place in God's heart. He will defend this nation"?
In the past, some religious leaders, on the Far Right fringe, also argued for mixing a dangerous cocktail of religion and politics. A few among them did not hesitate in calling for the nuclear obliteration of the entire Soviet Union, because it was thought to be a godless communist empire. This demonstrates, if need be, that armaments without morality or without law equals anarchy and disasters. -In 1948, for example, a bellicose and delusionary evangelist preacher from New Jersey, the Rev. Carl McIntire, became famous when he proposed in a radio broadcast that the United States carry out a "pre-emptive" nuclear attack against the Soviet Union. A religious fundamentalist, founder of the Bible Presbyterian Church, McIntire was persuaded that a worldwide nuclear hecatomb was necessary to "purify" the world of communist countries. He believed that no country should have a system that differed from his own religious model, whatever the cost. At the time, such delirious persons were few and isolated.
Nowadays, McIntire's successors are the Falwells, Robertsons, Hagees, etc. of this world. They are much richer and more powerful than in the past, thanks to their tax-free religious status and thanks to the Reagan-era liberalization of the rules governing the use of the media as one-track propaganda tools. Because of that, they are assiduously courted by Far Right politicians and are welcomed to the White House, where they receive a sympathetic hearing.
After loosing its anticommunist struggle as a fund-raising technique, the new Christian Right seems to have found another way to raise fear, passions and money. Its new crusade is directed against the 'wrong god' Islamic world and is fanatically in favor of Israel, whatever it does, and against the Palestinians and the Middle East Muslim countries, whatever their sufferings. They talk of having a biblically prophesized "mission" to save Israel from the Muslims and propose a new vigorous "crusade" against them, not hesitating for that purpose to call for the unilateral unleashing of U.S. military power in the region. In the apocalyptic words of John Hagee, one of their more delusional leaders, "We are racing toward the end of time,...Israel is the only nation created by a sovereign act of God, and He has sworn by His holiness to defend Jerusalem, His Holy City. If God created and defends Israel, those nations that fight against it fight against God."
There are none more ferocious than those who kill with religious zeal.-That's where the world stands in the summer of 2006, a summer that may or may not duplicate the summer of 1914 or the summer of 1939.
In the 1930's, many people dismissed the German Nazis, later, to their bitter chagrin. They thought that the Nazis were somewhat extremist, but that they were also good Christians, good conservatives and good patriots. Just as the supporters of the Religious Right of today, Adolph Hitler professed that he regarded "Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life." In fact, the Far Right in Germany was composed of rabid pro-war militarists, and they were dangerous from day one. Tens of millions of people died because of them.
The amalgam of belligerent religiosity and simplistic politics creates a threat that many have not fully realized. Those who currently revel in Bush's political religiosity and his flirt with those who advance end-of-the-world scenarios should be more aware that sometimes, crazy ideas can lead to crazy policies. -People should brace themselves. There is nothing that says that inept, ignorant, incompetent and power-hungry politicians cannot also turn out to be crazy politicians.
Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@ yahoo.com. He is the author of the book 'The New American Empire'.
Visit his blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's Website:www.thenewamericanempire.com/
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Editorial: Open Letter to Stephen Hawking
by Alexander Popoff
July, 2006
Open Letter to Stephen Hawking, peers, and all individuals interested in origin and evolution of our Universe, life, and intelligence, the tough future of humankind, Fermi paradox, SETI, UFOs....and why dinosaurs couldn't land on Moon 65 million years ago.
by Alexander Popoff July, 2006
Hello,
In a CNN interview, June 2006, Prof. Hawking states that the encounter with alien intelligence would be more like the film "Independence Day" than "ET."
OK, a lot of people agree with this notion. There is every reason to believe in this warning. Humans should know more about the benefits and dangers result of extraterrestrial contact. But there is one more reason why researchers have to dwell on the problem with alien sentient life--the true resolution of the Fermi paradox could be a key to more correct understanding of the Universe, life, and intelligence which may be orchestrated by a vector: a genome-like structure and mechanism, inherited from many preceding universes back in time. Our genes made us. The vector made the Universe, life, and us.
The vector defines also the speed of evolution, the level of competition between the sentient species, the emerging and doom of life and intelligence...
Prof. Hawking, as a leading physicist of our time, interested also in SETI, survival of human race, the coming clash between AI and humans, is the person who could provide some right answers to these problems of tremendous importance for humankind in the near future.
But on his Internet web page (and also on the sites of others scientists) is written: "We have no facilities to deal with specific scientific enquiries, or theories....Please do not email us your scientific theories - although they may be valid." I hope this open letter will reach him and other thinking individuals capable to answer these burning questions of huge consequences for all humankind.
Continue...THE HIDDEN ALPHA
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Editorial: Pitch Black Void
Monday, August 14, 2006
Manuel Valenzuela
Freefall
The towers fell upon their own imprints, floor after floor cascading down upon the next in an avalanche of concrete, glass, steel and flesh, in the process pulverizing everything, and everybody, between them, over 200 combined stories of human ingenuity flattened in the span of seconds, their reign over gravity and the skies eviscerated, falling down to the land of mortals not with the chaos of randomness and malevolent physics but with the unexpected order and perfection of orchestration and wicked pre-planned intentions.
One building was followed by another in a near perfect duplication of the first, almost as if déjà vu had supplanted itself on Manhattan island, after morbidly disturbing airplane crashes had sent the collective conscious of the world on freefall, their fires blazing yet their inferno not scorching enough to melt the reinforced steel of towers designed to withstand airline crashes. Soon after the strikes black and gray smoke billowed out of the crash sites, proof that what had once burned was now dissipating, unable to breathe the oxygen it needed to burn or unable to chemically alter steel skeletons or cause the structural integrity of two separate skyscrapers to be compromised.
Yet less than one hour after each building was struck the monoliths of New York came crashing down, almost in perfect synchronization, more than half an hour apart, one after the other in a display of destruction too perfect to qualify as randomness, a form of controlled chaos never to befall a burning steel skyscraper in the histories of modern civilization or architecture. Strangely, not one hour passed before we were led to believe fire and heat compromised and melted reinforced steel, not for one but two separate buildings, as if lightning had struck twice in the same spot, as if the impossible had become normal, as if black smoke could bend, in the course of an hour, what usually would take multiple hours to achieve.
In America, however, where citizens have the attention spans of gnats, tuning out after ten-second sound bites, one minute news reports and having the patience only to accept rapid video flashes, even orchestrated, criminal mass murder must be accomplished on fast-forward time. And so the destruction by controlled demolition of the WTC, brilliantly executed, monstrously planned, hidden behind the charade of hijacked airliner crashes, yet so easily deciphered by open minds and through the magic of video and the passage of time, became a reality, in a few seconds of malevolent decimation killing close to 3,000 innocent human beings and plunging a nation of 300 million into the freefall of madness, shock, fear, hatred, rage and the collective blindness needed by criminals, warmongers and greed addicts to steer a nation down the precipice of human emotion and into the realm of total control and obedience.
While the nation, indeed the world entire, recovered its collective breath, paralyzed shock and ever-increasing fear at what we had just witnessed - and repeatedly seen over and over again thanks to the corporate media - a rather peculiar, and unexpected, event occurred that hundreds of millions were unable to see, either because of shock, fear or the blindness spawned by the psychological trauma we had just experienced. A few hours after the towers had fallen, entombing thousands and forever altering the course of history, another skyscraper came tumbling down, clandestinely falling almost inconspicuously to the ground below. This building, the fifty story WTC 7, seemingly untouched and unaffected by the destruction of her much larger brothers, with no fires or smoke apparent, with no structural damage noticeable, with no airplane smashing into her, decided to fall to earth in much the same way, falling exactly the way multiple buildings have fallen over the years thanks to controlled demolitions, seemingly imploding from within, her top falling down as if her structural skeleton had been turned to butter. It would later be said by authorities that WTC 7 fell due to structural and fire damage, yet video and eyewitness testimony, as well as the open eyes of any rational human being, beg to differ. If no rational reason can be found to explain how WTC 7 fell in such a "controlled" demolition sort of way, in the absence of damage, what, then, can be deduced? What, then, are we to make of the fate that befell the Twin Towers, in direct contradiction to the laws of physics and those of logic?
Make no mistake, 9/11 was, and continues to be, a war upon the American people, a psychological operation directed at our minds and hearts that was, from the very start, nothing but the catalyst needed to launch Project Empire by the delusional criminals and miscreants in power. The events of 9/11, with the destruction of the World Trade Center, as well as the hit on the Pentagon, were designed by the architects of mass murder as the oil needed to fine-tune and start the engine of the American war machine as well as those sparkplugs of blind and unthinking support, the American people. The targets were largely symbolic, landmarks entrenched into the American psyche, easily recognizable as pillars of American strength, the strikes upon their infrastructure calculated not only to inflict mass murder, but to deeply affect the collective psychology of hundreds of millions of Americans. In 9/11 the enablers of terror would have the birth pangs of their new American Century.
The Throne Determined
The individuals who planned and executed 9/11 knew that with the ascension of George W. Bush to the throne of the American presidency their plans and projects, long since created and written yet for years lacking the keys to power, would have the green-light to commence wars upon the American people as well as those long-planned against the Arab world. Indeed, well before Bush became president the decision had already been made, deep in the dark closets of clandestine meetings and arrangements, where deal making and power decisions are made, to attack and invade Iraq, along with other nations deemed "important," both for geopolitical and ideological reasons.
These wars and invasions, which were to be the centerpiece of the miscreants' master plans, creating the birth pangs of a New American Century, one based on unilateralism, resource domination, protection of Israel's vital interests and unequaled imperial hegemony, would, it was thought, catapult America into the realm of Empire, a kingdom untouched and unrivaled, in control of the world's energy resources, in full mastery of all potential rivals, possessed of vitally important lands and locations. All that was needed was a stolen election or two, a little luck and a new Pearl Harbor from which to spawn their dogma of controlled chaos upon the globe.
When seen in this light, the importance to the miscreants that George W. Bush become president after the 2000 election, by any means necessary, is more readily understood. To the corporatist and neoconservative cabal that has declared war on the American people, it was imperative that Bush be declared the winner versus Al Gore. Only with a Bush victory could their projects and sinister intentions be born and implemented, thereby creating the conditions needed to control the country and its citizens, and by extension the entire planet, for years and even decades into the future.
Indeed, they knew that to succeed, years and even decades would be needed to transform the world according to their ideology. The Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, full of corporatists and neoconservatives, could only commence their blueprint with the selection, no matter how devious it became or how unscrupulous the methods chosen, of George W. Bush to the White House, and not just for one term. Thus, the stolen election of 2000, especially in the state of Florida, was but one more strategic maneuver designed specifically to set in place the mechanisms by which their ideology could, after years of frustration, finally be allowed to blossom. The ascension of George W. Bush to the American throne thus became an inevitable conclusion well before the first vote was cast. It was the individuals that counted the votes, and not those that cast them, who would decide the 2000 election.
The election of 2000 was orchestrated to perfection by the corporatists and neoconservatives who clandestinely or openly supported the Republican ticket. Using the television and the unrivaled power of the corporate media, with its images, sound bites, editing magic and legions of journalist lackeys, they set out to tarnish the reputation and achievements of Bill Clinton and by consequence, those of his vice-president and most likely Democratic candidate, Al Gore. Knowing how easy the buttons of manipulation can be pressed upon an unsuspecting and dumbed down American populace, they created Clinton fatigue and dislike among millions of potential voters, knowing full well that by destroying the president's likeability they were at the same time decimating Al Gore's potential votes among moderates and independents. Using the television to their advantage, they thereby eliminated the president from the election picture, knowing that Clinton, if allowed to campaign for Gore, and ever the political charmer and genius, could have delivered the election to the Democrats, or at the least made Gore a more marketable personality to the electorate.
With Clinton out of the picture, the smearing of Gore and the adulation of Bush commenced, with the corporate media using all tools at its disposal to turn Gore into an unlikable candidate, using clever editing of sound and video, combined with the negative comments of embedded lackey journalists, to turn Gore, a much worthier candidate than Bush could ever become, into a mediocre politician with no personality or popularity. He became the unlikable candidate, the elitist Washingtonian whose candidacy was imputed to Bill Clinton fatigue. The corporate media did everything in its power to sway the unsure voter that Gore was not the right man to be president. In the era of corporatism, it is the corporations that decide who will run and who will win. We the People can only vote for those deemed acceptable by the corporate establishment, those that have shown loyalty not to the People, but to the interests of the corporate world.
Meanwhile, with the complete backing of big business, the military industrial energy complex and the neoconservatives in and out of the media, Bush was transformed from east coast elitist into average Joe six-pack, with the tools of television propelling and marketing Bush as an average middle class American, with a recently purchased Texas ranch to prove it. The creation of the Bush persona was carefully orchestrated, following the results of research, polls and focus groups, trying to recreate or imitate, at least in some psychological way, shape or form, the qualities inherent in or sought by those groups needed for Bush and his still clandestine cabal to garner the most votes in the general election. Meanwhile, the corporate media gave the dimwit Bush a pass at every turn, forgiving his penchant for idiocy and his quite apparent lack of knowledge. His shady past was ignored; his repeated failures as a businessman were glossed over. The corporatist world had its man and the will of the People would not stand in their way.
As such, Bush's persona is a fiction, in as much as he is made to represent the American middle-class, for deep inside, where genetics and environment and pathology meet on the superhighway of psychological fusion, Bush is a manifestation of the unthinking knuckle-dragger, a slight step above our primate cousins, incapable of deep thought, reasoned intelligence or logical decision making, preferring to dwell in the certainties of black and white thinking and the archaic beliefs of primitive theology. He remains a hollow poster child for elitist juniors, a pampered spoiled little boy given to temper tantrums when he does not get what he wants, a man who for too long nursed off the breast of superiority, apathy and greed, for decades living in a wealth-induced bubble devoid of discipline or suffering.
Deeply flawed mentally, never able to replicate the intelligence or the success of fathers and grandfathers, possessing a lack of empathy and a willingness to inflict suffering onto others, fully aware that everything he has achieved has been due to the laurels of his father and not the talents of his existence, Bush nonetheless exhibits many characteristics of a psychotic, with a penchant for incessant lying, for walking over anybody that gets in his way, for his appetite for destruction and murder, for his indifference for human life, in his ability to bully the world, in his love of greed and power, in his distaste for knowledge and intellectual stimulation, and in the unmistakable reality that whatever he has touched during his life has turned not to gold, but to pure, one-hundred percent fecal matter. This is the George W. Bush chosen by the cabal of corporatists and neoconservatives to help usher in a new era of American imperialism. With such a president at the helm of the most powerful state in the world, a man easily influenced and manipulated, lacking reason, logic and the wisdom of leaders, PNAC found itself the instrument of terror it so desperately needed.
Knowing for months the likely outcome of the 2000 election, after months of research, studies and historical analysis, and millions of dollars invested had shown them the direction, Bush's handlers focused on the one state they knew would decide the outcome. And so, with months to go before the 2000 election, the Republican machine set out, with help from George W. Bush's brother Jeb, to embed into the election system the mechanisms needed to steal Florida in favor of Bush, the Republicans, the neoconservatives and the corporatists.
They immediately set out to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters, most of them African-American, through a myriad of illegal yet methodical ways. Felons were purged from the voting records, as were thousands of law-abiding citizens whose names were erased from registration lists. Outdated voting machines, those most likely to tabulate wrong vote counts, were introduced into poor areas for the sole purpose of disenfranchising voters, most of whom would likely vote for Gore. The irregularities were many; the votes purged were in the hundreds of thousands. The corporatist/Republican voter disenfranchisement machine, so adept at Jim Crow, had come calling again.
This election, after all, was of paramount importance, both for the corporatists from the military industrial energy complex, who were depending on Bush for hundreds of billions of dollars in future oil and war profiteering profits, as well as a complete dismantling of burdensome corporate taxes, laws and environmental regulations, not to mention untold billions of dollars in stolen Iraqi money and American taxes, and the neoconservatives, whose main interests were ideological and strategic, through imperial domination of the Middle East and Central Asia, control of oil/gas resources and mechanisms, toward complete American hegemony and eventual Empire building through domination of potential rivals, not to mention the always present protection of Israel and her interests, assuring her regional domination in the Middle East through the elimination of her rivals. By any means necessary, the 2000 election would have to be won, irrespective of the will of the People.
After the Supreme Court selected their man as the new president of the United States, a decision that was a foregone conclusion, the wheels were set in motion, and soon the project for the New American Century would have its new and improved Pearl Harbor, a 21st century Reichstag fire whose usefulness would never subside and whose demons could always, at the whim of expediency, be resurrected. The dreaded Arab terrorist was about to be born, entering the grand stage of American produced enemies, becoming the bogeyman striking fear at the heart of a cowardly majority.
A new America was soon to be born from the smoke, dust and debris of falling monoliths and demolished lives. An obedient populace would soon surface, wide eyed in allegiance to fascism, ready to hate and fear and kill for the sake of the red, white and blue, proud to march lockstep with the drums of war, eager to unleash weapons of destruction upon the lands of the barbarians. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Iran were only months away from being gobbled up, and the Bush cabal, assured by its delusions and its arrogance, could only salivate at the thoughts of what would surely soon arrive.
Enter the Darkness
If we ponder over the horizon of the last five years and ask ourselves who has benefited the most from the tragic events of 9/11 then surely the arrow would point to the Bush administration, along with the clandestine and known neoconservatives and corporatists controlling the military industrial energy complex. As a result of 9/11, these groups, the Bush cabal for short, have seemingly grown in absolute power and wealth, declaring wars, occupying nations, killing hundreds of thousands of human beings, manipulating the American populace, fleecing America's treasury, making obscene profits from war and death, curtailing Americans' civil liberties and rights, further instituting corporatist control over government and society, engendering fear and hatred into the people and ignoring the rule of law along with the Constitution of the United States.
The Bush cabal has succeeded in reaching many of the goals it had set for itself before taking office in 2000. In this war against the American people, the cabal has utterly defeated us, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. We are quite impotent, it seems, to their manipulation of our fears and the conditioning of our hatreds. It has been 9/11, that catalyst to population control and manipulation, that has cemented the Bush cabal firmly in power, doing with the American people as they wish, leading us further down the road to corporatism. The cabal has systematically declawed us of our bravery, making us babies crying out for our mother. It has succeeded at manipulating us through the use of fear and terror, actually convincing us to throw away liberties and flush down freedoms for the sake of protection and security, even though the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
It was 9/11, a devastating conduit of brain wave alteration, more than anything else, that has completely and systematically transformed the American people into the sheeple and lemmings needed by authoritarian rulers everywhere to govern and impose their tyrannical policies. The 9/11 psychological war upon the citizenry, or, in the words of the PNAC, the "new Pearl Harbor," was designed to nurture perpetual fear and hatred in hundreds of millions of minds, in the process harvesting loyal and obedient citizen soldiers. The attack, taking place on a few city blocks of the largest metropolis in the country, devastated two giant buildings but left the rest of the country, besides the Pentagon, physically unscathed.
What September 11, 2001, did, however, more than anything else, was destroy not the physical infrastructure of America, but the mental energy of the nation and its citizens. It was both a mental manipulation dirty bomb and a weapon of mass deception rolled into one, a direct hit against the very foundation of America's citizenry, creating the most fragile, and by extension subservient, populace since Nazi Germany. September 11th's tragedy, its morbid violence, its sinister evils were played and replayed countless times, from every possible angle, sending shockwaves into our pores, fear running through our veins, with every replay our mind succumbing further inside our fragile psyches, searching for answers, and vengeance. The thirst for Arab blood was what the cabal wanted, and it was what it got.
A direct hit upon the American psyche did more damage to the nation than two hits on colossal skyscrapers ever could, yet slowly but methodically, our mind became the dominion of the cabal. We became, over the course of a few days, possessed by the demons of fear and hatred, like zombies sleep-walking through our daily lives, not knowing what to do, experiencing emotions we had never felt, remembering tragedy we had just recently seen, searching in darkness for light, needing to place blind trust in the nation's authorities, needing to trust our security and freedom and democracy upon the leaders of the country.
We became putty in the hands of the cabal, and they knew it. Everything they wanted we would gladly give them for we had become, in the span of a few days, corralled sheep and caged lemmings, robbed of free thought, our bravery supplanted by the fear hovering throughout the land, our reason destroyed by the hate in our hearts. We wanted security, safety and most of all, vengeance. We failed to think logically about the mess the cabal was immersing us in. We failed to understand the ramifications of entering a hornet's nest and murdering tens of thousands of people. We failed to comprehend the vicious cycle of violence our acquiescence would soon spawn, nor the disaster that was to unfold. Standing behind the flag and our patriotism blind we became to the view of reality. We wanted revenge for 9/11; we wanted to unleash carnage upon Arab lands, whether they were a threat or not. We fell right into the cabal's master plans.
The tragic events of 9/11 became an instant myth in our collective consciousness, its story firmly entrenched in our minds, its official narrative becoming both national tragedy and inspiration, its fable unable to be altered, its façade unbending, its reality hidden by blind rage and closed minds. We were conditioned never to question the official narrative, or the obvious 9/11 Commission white wash. To question and even seek truth was to delve in realities we could not bare or wish to understand. The implications would be unfathomable, and deeply disturbing. For if our protectors had committed mass murder in New York and Washington, if our leaders were responsible for 9/11, then who and what was running the nation? If they could kill 3,000 citizens, what was stopping them from murdering many more? It was better to be brainwashed with the official story than to question the uncomfortable. It was easier to never question than to seek the truth. In the end, it was easier to drink the Kool-Aid than enter the rabbit hole.
In the end, it was simple to believe that we had been attacked by what we did not know or understand, by entities that wished to destroy our freedom and our democracy, by brown-skinned bogey men lurking in every corner and underneath every bed, waiting to come out of closets, ready to murder and rape, pillage and devastate. We were made to fear, and with fear we lost reason. We were made to hate, and with hate born free thought died. The Arab and the Muslim had become our enemy; almost overnight more than a billion humans were condemned by a barrage of corporate media propaganda and government manipulation, seemingly too conveniently, too prepared and scripted, as if the enemy had been concocted months and years before, its fault carefully planned and orchestrated, marketed for all its faults and none of its virtues, transforming a group of people into the monsters of our imaginations and the madmen of our corporate media indoctrination.
The Bush cabal had succeeded in concocting an enemy from the same lands and region where it wanted to wage war and occupation. Geopolitics, geostrategy, oil, gas and pipelines, imperial hegemony and absolute power, how lucky for the cabal that America's new bogeymen hailed from the same nations scheduled for invasion. The cabal's actions, or inaction, depending on how one looks at 9/11, embedded the lust for vengeance, and thus for war, on the American population. The Bush cabal, fully aware that the American people would never consent or give approval to multiple wars of choice upon lands and peoples that had not done us harm, thus needed a catalyst, a new Pearl Harbor, a 9/11-like event from which to alter the minds of 300 million Americans, making warmongers out of pacifists, vengeance-seekers out of peaceful citizens. Without the trauma and the shock and the fear and the hatred and the blind rage spawned by 9/11, the Bush cabal would never have been able to embark on their warmongering and profiteering ways. The anger and hatred and blind trust engendered thanks to 9/11 made sure that the cabal could proceed with long-held plans and ideologies.
Thus we were fed the lies and the deceits and the manipulations that exist in the lands of authoritarianism, where the citizenry is too dumbed down and unable, or unwilling, to question its own government. We followed the fable and the bull manure, believing, still to this day, a government that has lied about every single issue to ever arise in five years since usurping power. In a world where war is peace, slavery is freedom and ignorance is knowledge, let it also be said that lies are truth in these new days of "new normals" and "birth pangs" and "bringing democracy to the Middle East." Let it be said we have entered the darkness, from which light dare not enter.
Terrorist Cabal
The cabal, it must be understood, is comprised of pure blooded authoritarians, corporatist (fascists) tyrants that care not one ounce for the well-being of the population. To them we are but mere peasants, nothing but peons and pawns and patsies relegated to playing the grand game of geopolitical and greed-mongering chess, doing our part to advance the neocon Machiavelli wet dream of imperial hegemony. The death of 3,000 citizens means nothing to these monsters, much like the murder of 250,000 Iraqis or the death of 2,600 American soldiers. The Bush cabal is made up of madmen and monsters, incapable of living in reality or of understanding truth, yet tyrannical enough to create a new Pearl Harbor through the controlled demolition of the Twin Towers (not to mention WTC 7 and a strike on the Pentagon). They dwell in an infallible bubble of make believe and of unrealistic theories, a land of Kool-Aid drinkers and dependents of delusional cocktails.
The Bush cabal has no morals or scruples, preferring lies to truth, secrecy to transparency, life in a pitch black void over that in translucent light. They have no trouble murdering their own citizens to pursue and achieve their goals and ideology. They are authoritarians, tyrants more comfortable living in a police state than in an open society, inside their pores hating every facet of true democracy, for to them the will of the people should never be heeded. Democracy is a hindrance of governance, an uncomfortable principle that works to destroy their vision, though now made a charade for the masses to believe the system is as it has always been. The death of democracy and of the Constitution would send tears of joy running down their cheeks.
In their view citizens are incapable of making the right decision and should therefore be told what to think, how to act and who to follow and obey. The majority needs to be conditioned as to what to do and how to do it. To them the corporate media is but a tool of control and manipulation, a way to make good sheep and lemmings out of the citizenry, a loudspeaker to proclaim that the state is the only entity capable of protecting the nation, a disseminator of lies and half truths, a gatekeeper telling the people only what the cabal wants us to know.
The Bush cabal cares only about absolute power, hegemony, greed and wealth. They care nothing for American soldiers, all of whom are considered cannon fodder for the military industrial energy complex. Wars are fought not for defending "freedom and democracy," which to them is nothing more than a catchy focus group catchphrase, rather to expand and defend the interests of American corporations, as well as to enrich the military industrial energy complex. After all, instability in the Middle East is great for energy corporations; the more instability the higher the price of a barrel of crude will be and the higher will thus be a gallon at the American pump. The cabal thinks in black and white, not in shades of grey; it makes policy based on ideology, not reality. It operates under the theory of controlled chaos, unleashing hell to get to an eventual heaven.
The cabal makes enormous profits at our expense, helping shrink our wallets while fattening theirs. The cabal supplies billions of dollars in military arms to the Middle East, and to the world, only to see nations declare war on each other, killing and murdering with our weapons. Human life and human rights, along with international law are but bumps in the road to total hegemony, to be sidestepped on the road to Empire. Civil rights and freedoms in America are contrary to the authoritarian dream; if it was up to them America would be under martial law and under severe police powers, our civil liberties curtailed severely, our freedoms eroded. In time they will inevitably get their wish; each year the threat to our liberties and freedoms is exacerbated, not by terrorists but by the Bush cabal.
For five years we have been told to look far and wide for so-called terrorists, across the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, given a magnifying glass into the Middle East. It is here, we are made to believe, where they hate us for our freedoms and our democracy, for our "grand" way of life, though certainly not for our occupations, undying support for Israel and brutal foreign policy. It is said they hate us for our democracy, yet we refuse to grant them the same freedoms. It is said they strike us for our open society, yet we exploit their lands, rape their women and subjugate their daily lives. For five years our minds have been distracted with the threats posed by Arabs and Muslims, most of which happen to live below the last remaining fields of oil. If the French or the Germans lived in the Middle East, they too would today be America's enemy, our terrorist barbarians.
For five long years we alone have been responsible for sacrificing our civil liberties and our freedoms, not to mention our democracy, which in essence is today nothing but a charade, a banana republic façade exported to a first world nation. Our fear and cowardice has resulted in the loss of liberty at home and in warmongering escapades abroad, creating in Iraq the worst strategic disaster in the history of the nation. Our almost absurd over-reactions to bull manure infested terror warnings, nothing but control mechanisms implemented to remind us who is protecting us and who deserves our loyalty and our vote, make us the laughing stock of the world. Terror warnings laced in lies and manipulation should be questioned, not religiously followed. They should be understood for what they are, not feared like the end of the world. Terror warnings about dark-skinned Arabs and Muslims are but a ploy to control your thoughts and your lives, designed for you to place allegiance to the cabal, to distract you from the erosion of liberties or the disasters in the Middle East. They are, like 9/11, a figment of our imaginations, nightmares of our conditioned minds, stories meant to frighten us into giving away more of our freedoms and liberties. Sadly, however, these mechanisms seem to be working brilliantly.
All this time we have been looking to the Middle East for the dreaded terrorist, yet since 9/11 we should have been looking for terrorists within our own shores. It is the Bush corporatist and neocon cabal that is the real terrorist organization. It is they, a bunch of miscreants of the highest order, criminal minds addicted to power, wealth and greed, arrogant and monstrous in behavior, that are the cause of terror worldwide. It is they that have made our nation less safe, not more. It is they who are guilty of committing mass murder upon our shores and it is they who will not hesitate to murder many more if it suits their needs.
It is because of them that the so-called war on terror paralyzes and controls us. It is they that spawned it and continue nurturing it, carefully rearing it like a mother does a child, ever so proud of what it has become, looking forward to the greatness it can one day turn into. The war on terror is their brainchild, a creation designed to replicate its malevolent energy over and over, growing and expanding through the vicious cycle of hatred born and murder committed, repeated until a clash of cultures, civilizations and religions sustains and engorges it, creating the controlled chaos needed to satisfy the delusion of the Project for the New American Century.
The so-called war of terror is a figment of their imagination, now lingering in ours, a creation that has become a self-fulfilling prophesy. It was a war started by the cabal, a result of our foreign policy and our destruction of both people and land abroad, a vicious cycle that feeds itself more and more with each new death inflicted by our corporate controlled military. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, for every death or maiming the thirst for vengeance grows; for every brutal occupation calls for hatred and revenge arise. With every American made missile launched, artillery exploded, bullet released the war on terror is assured of new recruits, new reactions of opposite and intended consequences. This is the war on terror's mantra, its slogan, the law created by the cabal so that it never ends, just as it never began. The war on terror is designed to last into perpetuity, for America always needs an enemy to quench its war culture thirst. It always needs war and enemies to cause fright among the populace, the easier to control millions. War means profit, wealth and the sustained viability of the economy. In America, war, and thus enemies, is good for business.
The war on terror is but an illusion, a concoction disseminated by the Bush cabal and its journalist hacks to control the population into submission, into forcing us to abandon the freedoms and democracy we once enjoyed. We are being frightened by the cabal of terrorists using the corporate media and government loudspeakers, our strength and courage evaporating with each new terror threat or warning, with each new sermon advocating still another war of choice. We are being used and abused, our lives transformed, slowly but surely, methodically creating a "new normal," an American police state, an authoritarian system full of followers, full of yes-men and women, full of sheep and lemmings, unable to comprehend how we allowed our nation to become the reality of our nightmares.
We must open our eyes to the reality of the Bush cabal. They are the real terrorist organization. They are the murderers and the criminals, the destroyers of life and the butchers of the Middle East. They are preparing us for perpetual war, for a future devoid of security or freedom or democracy. The war on terror will not end; our troops will be in Iraq for decades to come; wars against Iran and Syria have been planned. There will be many more 9/11's to come, some real and some concocted, yet the next one will undoubtedly open the doors to a perpetual police state, altering dramatically our way of life, making George Orwell roll in his grave. According to the cabal of terrorists, it is inevitable.
One more attack on our soil is all it will take for the bastion of democracy and freedom to turn into the cesspool of authoritarian rule. The cabal of terrorists is looking for an excuse, an opportunity. How many of us will die this time? How many of our children will be sent to the next war(s)? How many liberties will we have left? How many of our friends and neighbors will be made to disappear? Will we accept their rule, and continue fighting a charade, or will we finally put an end to this madness? Will we change our ways, or will we continue living like the sheep and lemmings we are being conditioned to become?
We must put a stop to the madness before the madness puts a stop to us. We must reclaim America from the claws of authoritarianism and corporatism. We must show we are not pawns or patsies in the games the neocons play. We must show we are brave and strong, not fearful and weak. They are few, we are many. Truth and fairness and justice are on our side; karma and malevolence on theirs. The time for indifference and passivity are over. Enough fear mongering and war making, enough terror threat manipulation. We must show that we do not hate, that we actually think for ourselves, that we seek peace and international harmony. Enough death and suffering has gone on in our name. America is being made the laughing stock of the world, hated like never before, stirring anger and boiling rage for all we allow to happen. Only this time, the peoples of the world no longer differentiate between the government and the people. We are all hated now. The time to take a stand is now, for if not now, when? We were once loved and admired, respected and an inspiration. Let not five years of disarray become a lifetime of disaster. We know who the real terrorists are. It is up to us to show them that their America is not our America. It is time we show them the door out of the country.
Their America is not our America, for we are the People of the World; they but the Scourge of Humanity. We are Peace and they are War, they are few and we are many, many more.
Original
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Editorial: 30,000 fill the streets around the White House
Answer
15/08/2006
[Editor's Note: Get your butts out there and support them]
More then 30,000 demonstrators filled the streets around the White House today chanting, “Stop the US-Israeli war against Lebanon and Palestine.”
The New York Times reported today that the demonstration's “diverse crowd included many Arab-Americans and Muslims, college students and families, as well as veterans of prior demonstrations against the war in Iraq.” The NY Times goes on, “thousands of people rallied near the White House on Saturday to protest what they described as Israeli aggression in Lebanon and the United States’ unwavering support for Israel …At the rally on Saturday, the prevailing sentiments were expressed in signs held aloft by marchers: “Occupation is a crime — Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine.” “Stop Israeli terrorism.” “No justice, no peace.’’
This was the largest demonstration in the US since the commencement of the Israeli bombing campaign of Lebanon and Gaza in mid-July.
The demonstration was initiated by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation and the National Council of Arab Americans. More then 150 buses brought demonstrators from, MI, IL, NY, MD, FL, VA, MA, NJ and 25 other states.
In San Francisco, 10,000 people marched in one of several other August 12 actions timed to coincide with the Emergency March on Washington. In Los Angeles 5,000 demonstrated. Smaller actions of about 600 people in Seattle and 300 people in Orlando Florida were also held.
August 12 a Global Day of Action
August 12 emerged as a day of coordinated worldwide protests. Street demonstrations were held in Mombasa and Nairobi, Kenya; Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, Canada;
San Francisco August 12
Madrid, Spain; Paraguay; Damascus, Syria; Santiago, Chile; Mumbai, India; Istanbul, Turkey; Mogadishu, Somalia; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Karachi, Pakistan; Jakarta, Indonesia; Sydney, Australia; Nablus, Palestine; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and many others.
Speakers at the Washington D.C. demonstration included, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark; Mahdi Bray the Executive Director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation; Mara Verheyden-Hilliard an attorney and co-founder of the Partnership for Civil Justice; Brian Becker the National Coordinator of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition; Dr. Mounzer Sleiman of the National Council of Arab Americans; Osama Siblani Publisher at Arab American News; Peta Lindsay Howard University student and Coordinator ANSWER Student and Youth; and Dr. Clovis Maksoud the Former ambassador from the Arab League to the U.N, Arab-American Anti Discrimination Committee (ADC), and others.
The U.S.-Israeli war against Lebanon and Palestine has created immense suffering for the people but it has also created widespread resistance. The Bush administration and the Israeli government believed that this massive bombing campaign would force all of Lebanon into a new U.S. sphere of influence. Just the opposite has happened. This same fantasy has backfired in Iraq as well.
Overwhelming military power has inflicted unimaginable human suffering but failed in achieving its political objectives of transforming the entire oil rich region into a virtual colony. The effort to achieve the “new” colonialism by brute force has and will inspire continued resistance by the Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi, Syrian and Iranian people and all the peoples of the area.
The August 12 Emergency Demonstrations were an important step in forging the kind of U.S. anti-war movement in the United States that embraces the just cause of the peoples’ in the Middle East who are rejecting domination by the new imperial Empire. Instead of having the people of the United States pitted against the Arab people our message is one of solidarity.
People in the United States must struggle for jobs, justice, education, and in opposition to racism at home rather than be dragged along by the war makers in Washington D.C. Their chauvinistic campaign against those in the Middle East who are seeking to freely determine their own destiny is a calculated propaganda effort by the Bush administration -- and all those Republicans and Democrats alike -- who support its program of endless war. It is not the people of the United States but the big transnational corporations and banks, and especially the largest oil monopolies, who are the real beneficiaries of the Bush program.
Help take the next steps and stay involved as an activist or supporter of the anti-war movement. Congratulations to all the thousands of volunteers and supporters who made the August 12 demonstrations such an important step in continuing to build this movement. Contact one of the A.N.S.W.E.R. offices listed below and come out to the next volunteers and organizers meeting. If there is not a close A.N.S.W.E.R. office to your area but want to stay involved, contact the national office below.
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Lebanon
Bush says Israel defeated Hezbollah
By DEB RIECHMANN
Associated Press
August 15, 2006
WASHINGTON - President Bush said Monday that Israel defeated Hezbollah's guerrillas in the monthlong Mideast war and that the Islamic militants were to blame for the deaths of hundreds of Lebanese civilians.
Bush admonished Iran and Syria for backing Hezbollah, which captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12 igniting the conflict. Both sides claimed victory Monday, hours after a U.N.-brokered cease-fire took effect, while Bush said Israel prevailed.
"Hezbollah attacked Israel. Hezbollah started the crisis, and Hezbollah suffered a defeat in this crisis," the president said at the State Department after a day of meetings with his top defense, diplomatic and national security advisers.
The United States backed Israel in the war, and Bush made clear he was determined to help the Israelis in the post-fighting struggle of words about who wound up on top.
The president portrayed the war, which killed about 790 Lebanese and 155 Israelis, as part of a broader struggle between freedom and terrorism. He said one can only imagine how much more dangerous such a conflict would be if Iran possessed nuclear weapons.
Bush said Hezbollah lost, though Israel didn't knock out the guerrillas.
Israel's prime minister and Bush said the offensive eliminated the "state within a state" run by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, however, declared that his guerrillas achieved a "strategic, historic victory" over Israel.
"Hezbollah, of course, has got a fantastic propaganda machine, and they're claiming victories," Bush said. "But how can you claim victory when, at one time, you were a state within a state, safe within southern Lebanon, and now you're going to be replaced by a Lebanese army and an international force?"
Bush said a United Nations-brokered cease-fire was an important step toward ending the violence, yet he acknowledged that the truce was fragile.
"We certainly hope the cease-fire holds because it is step one of making sure that Lebanon's democracy is strengthened," Bush said.
The U.N. plan calls for a joint Lebanese-international force to act as a buffer between Israel and Hezbollah militiamen. France and Italy, along with predominantly Muslim Turkey and Malaysia, have signaled willingness to contribute troops to the joint force, but consultations are needed on the force's makeup and mandate.
Bush spoke on the phone early Monday to Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, and Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said Italy's troops could be ready within two weeks.
"There's going to be a new power in the south of Lebanon, and that's going to be a Lebanese force with a robust international force to help them seize control of the country - that part of the country," Bush said.
On Bush's first day back from vacation, his motorcade traveled between the White House and State and Defense departments for meetings on transforming the U.S. military, on homeland security and on the warfare in Afghanistan and
Iraq.
Sectarian violence has surged in Iraq and created what some consider the greatest threat to stability there since
Saddam Hussein's government was toppled three years ago. Meanwhile, efforts to get North Korea and Iran to restrict their nuclear ambitions remained stalled.
"We live in troubled times, but I'm confident in our capacity to not only protect the homeland, but I'm confident in our capacity to leave behind a better world," Bush said at a meeting at the Pentagon where he sat between Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President
Dick Cheney.
His words sought to calm jitters about last week's arrests of more than two dozen people in England and Pakistan accused of plotting to blow up as many as 10 passenger planes flying between Britain and the United States.
The nation's safety looms large as an issue in the midterm elections. Both Republicans and Democrats are maneuvering for political advantage with control of Congress at stake.
Comment: Just to clarify a few things in Bush's speech: Israeli forces entered Lebanon, and two of their soldiers were captured. Israel then started bombing Lebanon. THAT is what started the war. How can Hezbollah be blamed for the death of Lebanese civilians when it was Israeli weapons - supplied by the Bush administration and previous US administrations - that were launched by Israel against Lebanese civilians?? Furthermore, when even mainstream US media outlets were reporting that Israel had killed almost no members of Hezbollah and countless civilians, how can Bush actually stand there and claim that Hezbollah has been defeated? Even Israel claims that Hezbollah has NOT been defeated, and that means the war is not yet over. So, it's rather curious that Curious George has so brazenly (and incorrectly) declared that Hezbollah has been beaten...
"Bush said Hezbollah lost, though Israel didn't knock out the guerrillas." I know, I know, it doesn't make any sense and sounds like Bush is saying Israel beat Hizb'allah but didn't beat Hizb'allah, but who says Bush every said anything that made sense? And anyway, yours is not to wonder why, yours is but to listen to Bush and shut the hell up. Ok?
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Israel's verdict: We lost the war
By Donald Macintyre in Metulla, Israel
The Independent
15 August 2006
Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, was obliged to admit "shortcomings" in the 34-day-old conflict in Lebanon yesterday as he launched what may prove a protracted fight for his own political survival.
Mr Olmert's admission in a stormy Knesset session came in the face of devastating poll figures showing a majority of the Israeli public believes none or only a very small part of the goals of the war had been achieved.
Adding insult to injury, the leader of Hizbollah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, crowed on television that his guerrillas had achieved a "strategic historic victory" over Israel.
The Prime Minister, who was repeatedly heckled by opposition MPs during his address, insisted the international commitments in Friday night's UN resolution would "change fundamentally" the balance of forces on the country's northern border.
But, facing his first major political crisis since winning the election five months ago, he acknowledged "the overall responsibility for this operation lies with me, the Prime Minister. I am not asking to share this with anyone." A number of Knesset members including the Israeli Arab Ahmed Tibi, a furious opponent of the war, were ejected from the chamber.
The opening of what is likely to prove a bitter post-mortem came as the two sides began an uneasy truce. The conflict is estimated to have cost well over 1,000 Lebanese lives as well as those of 156 Israelis - civilians and soldiers.
The fragility of the ceasefire was underlined by four incidents in which Israeli troops shot dead six Hizbollah fighters after the ceasefire began at 8am yesterday. The Israeli military insisted the incidents were within guidelines permitting troops to open fire when threatened and did not jeopardise the truce.
Promising that the government "will have to examine ourselves at all levels," Mr Olmert fought to pre-empt a probable campaign by the political right by declaring that Hizbollah had been dealt a "harsh blow". He added that the guerrilla group was no longer "a state within a state" or a "terrorist organisation that is allowed to act inside a state as an arm of the axis of evil", referring to Syria and Iran.
While refraining from a direct personal attack on Mr Olmert, Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right- wing Likud opposition, lost little time in declaring "there were many failures, failures in identifying the threat, failures in preparing to meet the threat, failures in the management of the war, failures in the management of the home front."
Critics from right and left were fortified by a Globes Smith poll showing, remarkably given the degree to which the army is embedded in Israeli society, that 52 per cent of electors believed the Israel Defence Forces had been unsuccessful in its Lebanon offensive as opposed to 44 per cent who believed it did well.
Mr Netanyahu also pointedly chose to attack unilateral withdrawals - the issue on which Mr Olmert fought his election in March. Mr Netanyahu said: "We left Lebanon to the last centimetre and they are firing. We left Gaza to the last centimetre and they are firing."
Meanwhile, the Hizbollah leader said he believes the Lebanese army and international troops are "incapable of protecting Lebanon". He also said it was the "wrong time" for a public discussion on disarming the guerrilla group.
At the eastern end of the northern border, heavy artillery barrages and repeated tank machine-gun fire continued yesterday up to the ceasefire deadline.
But as the artillery batteries fell silent and firing stopped, there was a final single explosion at about 8.05pm, sending a plume of grey smoke upwards before the uneasy calm began.
Amid a wave of angry civilian reactions in Israel after more than a month in which an estimated 3,500 rockets were fired into northern Israel, Sam Echahid, the manager of a local supermarket, was asked whether he thought the ceasefire would hold. He said: "I hope not. We haven't done anything yet."
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Both sides claim victory
Monday 14 August 2006, 21:45 Makka Time, 18:45 GMT
Israel and Hezbollah both claimed victory as a UN-brokered truce to end the month-old fighting took effect.
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, said his guerrillas had achieved a "strategic, historic victory" against Israel.
"We came out victorious in a war in which big Arab armies were defeated [before]," he said in a pre-recorded address on Al-Manar television on Monday.
Nasrallah also said that now was not the time to debate the disarmament of Hezbollah fighters, arguing that the issue should be done in secret sessions of the government to avoid serving Israeli interests.
"This is immoral, incorrect and inappropriate," he said. "It is wrong timing on the psychological and moral level particularly before the ceasefire.
"Who will defend Lebanon in case of a new Israeli offensive? The Lebanese army and international troops are incapable of protecting Lebanon."
Moments after his speech ended, celebratory gunfire erupted across Beirut.
Earlier, posters of Nasrallah were distributed in Beirut's Shia-dominant southern suburbs with the caption: "The divine victory."
Counter-claims
However, Israel maintained on Monday that it had won a diplomatic victory over Hezbollah because the UN resolution would put the group under international scrutiny.
"We have the diplomatic advantage as Hezbollah is now under the microscope of the international community," Yigal Palmor, a foreign ministry spokesman said.
Hezbollah and its chief, Hassan Nasrallah, "will have to respect resolution 1701", he said, which calls for an embargo on arms and training to fighters in Lebanon.
"This means that there will no longer be a state within a state along our northern border to keep provoking us," he said.
Palmor said: "Politically and militarily, Hezbollah can no longer do what it likes in Lebanon."
Shimon Peres, the deputy prime minister of Israel, said: "Hezbollah will not finish a huge hero, but with its tail between its legs."
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Ceasefire or Trojan Horse?
By Mike Whitney
Information Clearing House
08/14/06
"Israel's strategy is to establish positions as far north as possible to implement a fighting withdrawal, meaning they will try to take on as much of Hezbollah as they can as they work their way south. " Ha'aretz editorial 8-17-06
"As long as there is Israeli military movement, Israeli field aggression and Israeli soldiers occupying our land, it is our natural right to fight them and defend our lands, our homes, and ourselves." Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Lebanese armed resistance Hezbollah
Israel's sudden push to the Litani River is a blatant act of political desperation intended to conceal the humiliating defeat the IDF has suffered at the hands of Hezbollah. It comes in the wake of a UN ceasefire agreement worked out by friends of Israel in the Bush administration who were looking for a diplomatic way for Olmert to climb down from Israel's greatest debacle since the Yom Kippur war.
The so-called ceasefire is tailored to stop the victim of Israeli aggression from defending himself, but provides the IDF with the go-ahead to continue its rampage. Such is the Kafkaesque logic of the United Nations and their puppet-masters in Tel Aviv.
There is no longer any reasonable expectation that Israel will accomplish any of its stated objectives. The mighty IDF has been slapped around by a handful of tough-minded guerillas who kept Israel pinned-down to within a 5 mile radius of the northern border for a full month. It is, without question, one of the greatest triumphs in the history of asymmetrical warfare.
Hezbollah will not be "disarmed" as Ehud Olmert boasted just weeks ago. Instead, their fortunes look to be steadily improving as Israel continues to flail about dropping bombs indiscriminately on critical infrastructure and civilians with impunity. The conflict has simply reinforced widely-held suspicions that the Jewish State is a loose-cannon ready to go berserk at the slightest provocation.
Prime Minister Olmert, Defense Minister Peretz and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz have been the brunt of withering criticism in the Israeli press, and for good reason. They are, without question, the worst collection of bunglers in Israeli history; the political equivalent of the "3 Stooges". Sharon may have been a war criminal, but he was an astute strategist. Olmert and "wrongway" Halutz are completely clueless. As soon as it was decided that the war could not be won militarily, Halutz charged up to the Litani River backed by thousands ground-troops afraid that his chances for glory were quickly ebbing-away. In the process, another 31 soldiers were killed in a campaign that still has no clearly defined objectives. Meanwhile, Shaul Mofaz, the only Israeli general who could probably transform the current disaster into something resembling "a draw"; is left sitting on the sidelines.
What a fiasco.
Now that the ceasefire has been approved, the politicians and the generals are stumbling over themselves trying to cobble together the victory that has escaped them for the last 4 weeks. Olmert and co. know that as soon as the dust settles they will face an irate Israeli public looking for someone to hold accountable for the debacle. Ha'aretz op-ed writer Ari Shavit summed up the public mood this way:
"One thing should be clear: If Olmert runs away now from the war he initiated, he will not be able to remain prime minister for even one more day. Chutzpah has its limits. You cannot lead an entire nation to war promising victory, produce humiliating defeat and remain in power. You cannot bury 120 Israelis in cemeteries, keep a million Israelis in shelters for a month, wear down deterrent power, bring the next war very close, and then say, oooops, I made a mistake."
Columnist Moshe Arens added to Shavit's critique saying, "The task facing Israel now is to restore its deterrent posture and prepare for the attacks that are sure to come. But not with this leadership. They have exhausted whatever little credit they had when they were voted into office."
The anger that is growing in Israel is narcissistic and self-serving and has nothing to do with the vast devastation the IAF has visited on battered Lebanon.
Lebanon is in ruins. The country's main bridges, roads, industries, ports, canals, telecommunications, oil depots, water facilities and factories have been buried by a steady barrage of Israeli precision guided munitions. George Bush can be credited with a large part of the damage. He rushed an order of high-tech bombs to his friends in Tel Aviv to make sure that the slaughter would continue without interruption. He also blocked the ceasefire resolutions at the UN which allowed Israel to continue its withering bombardment of Lebanon.
The UN ceasefire agreement was clearly written in close collaboration with Israel. It allows the IDF to continue "defensive operations" while Hezbollah is required to stop fighting. Israel interprets this as a green light for aggressively pursuing Hezbollah.
According to Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz, "The army will stop its offensive as soon as it is ordered to do so by the political leadership and later it will begin to retrace its steps to uncover any pockets of resistance that may remain in the area." With troops presently located at the Litani River that could involve military operations throughout the entire south, which means that hostilities could continue for months.
Israel is at war with itself. It's trying to produce a victory where victory is impossible. With less than 24 hours until the ceasefire goes into effect, they've unleashed a massive aerial assault bombing more than 50 cities and towns north and south of the Litani River. The bombing campaign drew the immediate censure of Kofi Annan who said that the attack was not in keeping with the spirit of the ceasefire.
No matter. Israel will keep firing away; savaging what little is left of Lebanon's tattered infrastructure in the vain hope that they might patch together something that resembles success, but to what affect? Hezbollah may be badly damaged and its supply-lines ruptured, but they merely need to hang on to generate a reliable stream of new recruits and to win plaudits from around the world for standing up to the IDF.
Prime Minister Olmert is ambivalent about the sudden military escalation just prior to the ceasefire. Clearly, the war is controlling Olmert; Olmert does not control the war. The uproar in the media has left him vacillating and hesitant; searching for other solutions besides a quick withdrawal. He looks like a man gabbing at straws, hoping for a decisive event that will prove that Hezbollah is weakening. Meanwhile the IDF casualties continue to mount and the collective angst of the Israeli public becomes more palpable.
As for Sheik Nasrallah, he has resisted the usual inflammatory rhetoric and demonstrated Hezbollah's lethal proficiency on the battlefield where it counts. The guerillas have matched the IDF man-for-man and forced the world's 4th most powerful army into a stalemate.
In the early days of the war, Nasrallah described Hezbollah's abilities in modest terms:
"We are not a classic army extending form the sea to Mt Hermon. We are a popular and serious resistance movement that is present in many areas and axes. Our equation and principles are the following: When the Israelis enter, they must pay dearly in terms of their tanks, officers, and soldiers. That is what we pledge to do and we will honor our pledge, God willing".
Olmert should study this passage and commit it to memory. Nasrallah has laid out his very limited goals in the war in lucid but powerful language. These are realistic objectives and they are achievable, unlike Israel's. That's why he will probably prevail, if he perseveres. Nasrallah does not entertain the foolish idea that he will overwhelm the IDF or invade Israel. He simply plans to gnaw away day by day, hour by hour, at the occupying army forcing them eventually to retreat. He is a shrewd student of asymmetrical warfare and grasps how to exploit the vulnerabilities of a regular army as well as Israeli public opinion (which is already souring on the conflict)
Nasrallah has said that he will abide by the terms of the ceasefire, but will not disarm until the Lebanese Army and the UN forces are in place and the IDF has left Lebanese soil. In his mind, it is pointless to talk about disarmament now when Hezbollah is the only force capable of defending Lebanon from foreign invasion.
Will Hezbollah willingly disarm after Israel leaves?
That is what Israel wonders, but it is the wrong question. The real question is: What are the chances that the IDF will reinvade sometime in the future as they have 4 times before? And, who will provide the weaponry that will create a viable deterrent to Israeli aggression so that Lebanon can live in peace?
Nasrallah's promises to disarm mean nothing. His primary responsibility is to his own people, to protect their right to live free of Israel