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Editorial: Time and Mr. Ahmadinejad
Henry See
19 September 2006
Signs of the Times
Time magazine went to Cuba and met with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And while they were willing to print the man's words, they made sure that Time correspondent Scott Macleod put them in "context". In the case of Ahmadinejad, that means painting him as a crafty war-mongerer. Never-mind that Iran is fully within its rights as a signer of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to develop its nuclear industry. Never-mind that the United States of Pathocratic Corruption has singled Iran out, alone, as the target of its ire, while Brazil and India have proceeded apace with their own development.
It is the US and Israel who are making an issue of Iranian nuclear development, not because Iran is a threat to anyone if it is left alone, but solely because the US and Israel have decided to enforce a "regime change" in Iran, and 1) they need a pretext, even one that is as flimsy or even less so than Saddam's WMDs, and 2), were Iran in fact to develop nuclear weapons, the true war-mongerers, the US and Israel, would be the potential targets because of their less than innocent interest in toppling the government and installing their own puppet regime there. Were the rest of the world to agree with Bush's argument of "preventative defence", then Iran would have every right, according to Bush himself, to attack Israel, because Israel doesn't even attempt to conceal its desire to get rid of the current government there.
Therefore, in order to ridicule Ahmadinejad, nothing is too little to go unremarked. Notice this first comment, describing Ahmadinejad as he enters the room and sits for the interview:
"For a moment, he seems irked by the chair, perhaps because it makes him seem even smaller than his 5 ft. 4 in., but soon he's smiling, prodding, leaning forward to make his points."
Did you notice that: "perhaps because it makes him seem even smaller than his 5 ft. 4 in."? Do you really think that this is what is going on in Ahmadinejad's mind? Are we meant to associate Ahmadinejad with Napoleon, well known for his short stature? Are we meant to think that his "craziness", always implied, comes from his preoccupation with his small height?
Another comment fills the reader in on how to read his words:
"Ahmadinejad is a skilled, if slippery, debater. In his press conferences, he has shown himself to be a natural politician, gifted in the art of spin and misdirection."
You'd think he was describing his ownh president or vice president.
When I read the interview, as well as other interviews with the man, I find him to be quite reasonable. His arguments are logical, and he is willing to call out the interviewer on his own biases. Notice this response on the question of Israel:
TIME: You have been quoted as saying Israel should be wiped off the map. Was that merely rhetoric, or do you mean it?
AHMADINEJAD: People in the world are free to think the way they wish. We do not insist they should change their views. Our position toward the Palestinian question is clear: we say that a nation has been displaced from its own land. Palestinian people are killed in their own lands, by those who are not original inhabitants, and they have come from far areas of the world and have occupied those homes. Our suggestion is that the 5 million Palestinian refugees come back to their homes, and then the entire people on those lands hold a referendum and choose their own system of government. This is a democratic and popular way. Do you have any other suggestions?
TIME: Do you believe the Jewish people have a right to their own state?
AHMADINEJAD: We do not oppose it. In any country in which the people are ready to vote for the Jews to come to power, it is up to them. In our country, the Jews are living and they are represented in our Parliament. But Zionists are different from Jews.
This response and approach is extremely reasonable. The Zionists, through the complicity of their pathocratic brothers in Britain and the United States, stole Palestine from its rightful inhabitants. They erected the United Nations to give this theft the semblance of legality. The theft has continued since the founding of the Zionist entity in 1949. The Palestinians are being extinguished, drop by blood by drop of blood, and their land stolen acre by acre ever since. Ahmadinejad is proposing nothing more than allowing the people who live in Palestine to elect their own government, but that is too democratic a solution for a people who call themselves the "chosen people" of Yahweh and who refuse to live by the laws of the goyim.
Moreover, Ahmadinejad never said that Israel should be wiped away. That was a misquote, and under the conditions of the threat of war, it was undoubtedly an intentional misquote, that is, a lie. In the speech that was so misquoted, the Iranian president made essentially the same comment, that the people who wished to live there should decide for themselves.
Of course, suggesting that the state of Israel should be changed, that it should give way to a state of all of the people of Palestine, is "anti-Semitism".
"His incendiary statements--he has declared the Holocaust a 'myth,' has said Israel should be 'wiped away' and has called the Jewish state 'a stain of disgrace'--have made him the most polarizing head of state in the Muslim world."
As for his statement that Israel is "a stain of disgrace", what other conclusion can we come to when we look at its history? When we look at the continual murder of Palestinians, when we look even no further than the recent war against Lebanon, with the million cluster bombs dropped on civilian territories in the last days of the fighting, when Israel knew a cease-fire was only days away. What else is such an act if it is not a "stain of disgrace" for people of conscience. The conscious, methodical, and cold-blooded targeting of civilians, of woman and children, is that not unconscionable?
In the final part of the interview, that most objectionable of subjects was raised: the Holocaust. According to Time:
"He waved a hand dismissively when I couldn't grasp his logic in questioning the Holocaust. Asked to defend his claim that the Holocaust was a myth, he went on a rambling rant, claiming that those who try to do 'independent research' on the Holocaust have been imprisoned. 'About historical events,' he says, 'there are different views.'"
The following is the so-called "rambling rant" that was Ahmadinejad's response to the question:
TIME: Have you considered that Iranian Jews are hurt by your comments denying that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust?
AHMADINEJAD: As to the Holocaust, I just raised a few questions. And I didn't receive any answers to my questions. I said that during World War II, around 60 million were killed. All were human beings and had their own dignities. Why only 6 million? And if it had happened, then it is a historical event. Then why do they not allow independent research?
TIME: But massive research has been done.
AHMADINEJAD: They put in prison those who try to do research. About historical events everybody should be free to conduct research. Let's assume that it has taken place. Where did it take place? So what is the fault of the Palestinian people? These questions are quite clear. We are waiting for answers.
If this response strikes you as a "rambling rant", then you're probably very happy with the direction Mr. Bush is taking the world, or you should be.
Why is it only the relationship of the Jews to the Second World War that is off-limits? If a researcher tries to answer the question of "How many Poles were killed?" or "How many gypsies were killed?", he can publish as he pleases. Yet to question the official statistics is to invite imprisonment in some countries. Sixty million or more died during that global holocaust, and they had, as Ahmadinejad says, "their own dignities". But the dignity of tens of millions of non-Jews means nothing compared to one dead worshipper of Yahweh for those who eat of the poisoned apple of the "Chosen People".
Perhaps in his next interview, Ahmadinejad should point out the abundant documentation showing Zionist collaboration with the Nazis prior to and during the war. It served Zionist interests that "Jews" be persecuted, for such persecution was the only argument they had in favour of stealing Palestine from its rightful inhabitants. And while the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis, Zionist terrorists were being armed in Palestine by the British under the guise of fighting fascism, when in reality, the arms were being used to terrorize the Palestinians and prepare for the war of colonization and ethnic cleansing that would lead to the establishment of the Zionist entity.
Since the false flag operation of 9/11, the US and Israel have unleashed a crusade against Arabs and Muslims. Afghanistan has been sacked. Iraq is being sacked and dismembered. Other false flag operations have killed innocents in Madrid and London. And, of course, while the world's attention was focused elsewhere, the genocide of the Palestinians has continued unabated. Through their deeds, the leaders of the US, Britain, and Israel have proved that they see war as the only way to implement their policies, backed by torture, the illegal detention of whomever they deem necessary, and the breaking of the laws of whatever country they are operating in.
And yet Time portrays the Iranian president as the one leading the world to war:
"Though pictures of the Iranian President often show him flashing a peace sign, his actions could well be leading the world closer to war."
What actions are those? Those of refusing to be cowed by the imperial designs set in Washington and Tel Aviv?
TIME: Why won't you agree to suspend enrichment of uranium as a confidence-building measure?
AHMADINEJAD: Whose confidence should be built?
TIME: The world's?
AHMADINEJAD: The world? The world? Who is the world? The United States? The U.S. Administration is not the entire world. Europe does not account for one-twentieth of the entire world. When I studied the provisions of the NPT [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty], nowhere did I see it written that in order to produce nuclear fuel, we need to win the support or the confidence of the United States and some European countries.
TIME: How far will Iran go in defying Western demands? Will you wait until you are attacked and your nuclear installations are destroyed?
AHMADINEJAD: Do you think the U.S. Administration would be so irrational?
TIME: You tell me.
AHMADINEJAD: I hope that is not the case. I said that we need logic. We do not need attacks.
Time spells it out: Iran must meet "Western demands", not those of the world. And when analysed, "Western demands" comes down to the demands of a very small group, the neocons in Washington, and the leaders of Israel.
The word "demands" is also interesting because it is in fact extortion. Iran is being told: "Stop your nuclear programme or we will wage war on your country". That sounds more like the local mafia don speaking than what would pass for statesmanship in a class on political science.
We live in a world where the "West" has become the "world", where "Zionism" has become the "West", where illegally attacking a sovereign state has become "preventative defence" and the kidnapping and torture of individuals has become "extraordinary rendition". The process of ponerization so well described by Andrew Lobaczewski in his book Political Ponerology is so entrenched that words have lost their original meaning. That Time can serve its readers such a loaded concoction under the label of objective reporting, and that it is taken down by its readers without a burp, illustrates the dire situation we face.
The distance between a Time report and objective reality is the distance we must cross if we are ever to live in a world free from lies.
Of course, we expect nothing different from Time magazine or anyone else in the mainstream media. We expect no different from the majority of what calls itself the "alternative media". We have all swum in this cesspool of lies our entire lies. We were raised to consider our assumptions as self-evident truths.
We are all infected with this evil.
The decision to align oneself with truth must be a conscious decision, and it demands a continual putting into question of everything one reads and hears. It demands a constant putting into question of one's own assumptions and beliefs. The sad fact is that it is work, a lot of work. It isn't easy, and it isn't comfortable. It is much easier to continue to be swept away by the many currents, mainstream or alternative, that prefer to go only so far, that prefer not to bring the ultimate struggle down to what is going on inside your own head, your own emotions, your own programming from your families and your schools.
The sacred cows of Time magazine are clear to see. Our own are much more difficult.
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Editorial: Ahmadinejad: Zionists different from Jews
Ynet News
19 September 2006
In an interview with Time Magazine, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proposed that the five million Palestinian refugees scattered around the world be allowed to return to historic Palestine to take part in a referendum, in which Jews would participate, to determine a system of government for both people.
"Our position toward the Palestinian question is clear: We say that a nation has been displaced from its own land. Palestinian people are killed in their own lands, by those who are not original inhabitants, and they have come from far areas of the world and have occupied those homes.
"Our suggestion is that the 5 million Palestinian refugees come back to their homes, and then the entire people on those lands hold a referendum and choose their own system of government. This is a democratic and popular way. Do you have any other suggestions?," he told Time.
Asked if he believes the Jews have the right to a sovereign state, he said, "We do not oppose it. In any country in which the people are ready to vote for the Jews to come to power, it is up to them. In our country, the Jews are living and they are represented in our Parliament. But Zionists are different from Jews."
He explained his comments about the historical veracity of the Holocaust by saying: "As to the Holocaust, I just raised a few questions. And I didn't receive any answers to my questions. I said that during World War II, around 60 million were killed. All were human beings and had their own dignities. Why only six million? And if it had happened, then it is a historical event. Then why do they not allow independent research?"
He told Time that studies about the Holocaust cannot be reliable when those who try to prove it didn't happen are prosecuted.
Irrational
"They put in prison those who try to do research. About historical events everybody should be free to conduct research. Let's assume that it has taken place. Where did it take place? So what is the fault of the Palestinian people? These questions are quite clear. We are waiting for answers," he told Time.
On Iran's nuclear program he said Tehran is opposed to nuclear weapons. "We are opposed to nuclear weapons. We think it has been developed just to kill human beings. It is not in the service of human beings. For that reason, last year in my address to the UN General Assembly, I suggested that a committee should be set up in order to disarm all the countries that possess nuclear weapons," he told Time.
Asked about his country reluctance to calm "the world's" concern over its nuclear ambitions, Ahmadinejad said: "The world? The world? Who is the world? The United States? The UN Administration is not the entire world. Europe does not account for one-twentieth of the entire world.
"When I studied the provisions of the NPT (Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty), nowhere did I see it written that in order to produce nuclear fuel, we need to win the support or the confidence of the United States and some European countries."
He said the United States will not "be so irrational" to launch preemptive strikes against Iran.
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Editorial: Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder - A Glimpse Into Israeli Collective Psychosis
by Gilad Atzmon
17.9.06
"It is hard to believe, but only 60 years after the Holocaust the Jewish people is once again in danger of being destroyed - at least in its own state, where 40 percent of the world's Jews are concentrated. Evidence of the severity of the danger can be found not only in the explicit threats by Iran's president, which are backed up by an arms program that would provide the means to carry them out. It can also be found in recent articles in the European press that discuss the possibility of Israel's 'disappearance' as a reasonable 'working assumption.' Additional evidence regarding the threat level exists in the fact that not only is Israel the only country in the world that is threatened with destruction, it is also the only state whose right to exist is the focus of international polls, with many respondents answering negatively. That is an honor that even Iran, North Korea and apartheid-era South Africa were never granted." (Yair Sheleg. Haaretz)
While many may find it heartening or amusing that even an Israeli right winger cannot see a ray of light at the end of the Zionist tunnel, it is rather disconcerting to read that Israelis are already seriously contemplating their next Shoah. I would argue here that it is exactly this form of deadly meditation that turns Israel, Israelis, global Zionists and Neocons into the gravest enemies of world peace.
Indeed, a growing number of people want to see an end to Israel, the 'Jew Only State'. Yet, no one around expresses any murderous or terminal plans against world Jewry or even against their Jewish State. No one in the political or the media spheres is calling for a homicidal act against the Jews or their Jewish State. Thus the well-established Judeocentric tendency to interpret almost any legitimate political and ideological criticism as a perpetration of an upcoming Judeocide should be comprehended as a severe form of paranoia verging on collective psychosis, which I define as Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Pre-TAD).
Within the condition of the Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the stress is the outcome of a phantasmic event, an imaginary episode set in the future; an event that has never taken place. Unlike the PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) in which stress comes as the direct reaction to an event that (may) have taken place in the past, within the state of Pre-TSD, the stress is the clearly the outcome of an imaginary potential event. Within the Pre-TSD, an illusion pre-empts reality and the condition in which the fantasy of terror is focussed is itself becoming grave reality. If it is taken to extremes, even an agenda of total war against the rest of the world is not an unthinkable reaction.
One may wonder at this stage whether Pre-TSD is just another name for paranoia. I would argue that the difference between the two is rather obvious. In the case of paranoia he who is subject to the disease makes us feel sorry for him. In the case of confrontation with a Pre-TSD case, we happen to feel sorry for ourselves.
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Editorial: Bush Demands Lebanese Commit Suicide
Kurt Nimmo
18/09/2006
Hassan Nasrallah understands what will happen to the people of Lebanon if Hezbollah disarms. In 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon, 20,000 Palestinians and Lebanese were slaughtered and 400,000 were made homeless. "The tonnages dropped on Beirut alone surpassed those of the atomic bomb which devastated Hiroshima. Schools and hospitals were particularly targeted," writes Ralph Schoenman, who experienced the carnage firsthand. "Virtually all rolling stock and heavy equipment from Lebanese factories were looted and taken to Israel... The citrus and olive production of Lebanon south of Beirut was destroyed. The Lebanese economy, whose exports had competed with Israel's, became moribund."
Chris Giannou, a Canadian surgeon working in Lebanon at the time of the Israeli invasion, testified before the U.S. Congress that he witnessed "the total devastation of residential areas and the blind, savage, indiscriminate destruction of refugee camps by simultaneous shelling and carpet bombing from aircraft, gunboats, tanks and artillery," leaving only "large blackened craters filled with rubble and debris, broken concrete slabs and twisted iron bars and corpses." A Norwegian doctor and social worker told the Guardian "the siege of Beirut seemed [like] gratuitous brutality.... The arsenal of weapons, unleashed in a way that has not been seen since the Vietnam War.... The use of cluster bombs and white phosphorus shells, a vicious weapon, was widespread.... All of West Beirut ... was living in wreckage and garbage and loss" (see John Rose, The Israeli invasion of Lebanon 1982).
If the residents of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp had weapons in September of 1982, as Hezbollah now has weapons, no doubt over 2,000 Palestinians would not have fallen victim to the brutality of Major Saad Haddad of the Christian (Phalangist, i.e., fascist) South Lebanon Army, a militia armed, supplied, and uniformed by the Israelis. As Noam Chomsky writes in The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians (pages 364-S), "Chief of Staff Eitan and Generals Drori and Yaron met with the Phalangist command. Eitan congratulated them on having carried out good work, offered them a bulldozer with IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] markers removed and authorized them to remain in the camps for another 12 hours. The killing continued. At 5 a.m. Saturday morning the murderers began to leave the camps and, after 36 hours, the slaughter ended." According to the Kahan Commission, a whitewash commission empanelled to investigate the ethnic cleansing of refugee camps in Beirut, Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, was found to be personally responsible for the massacre at Sabra and Shatila. Of course, such bloody details were of little concern to the Israeli people, as they elected him prime minister in March, 2001.
"We view Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, and I would hope that Hezbollah would prove that they're not, by laying down arms and not threatening peace," declared Bush last week, reports Agence France-Presse. "We are being asked to disarm so that Lebanon remains defenseless. Our force is protecting Lebanon," Nasrallah responded. "As long as Lebanon remains threatened, even if that lasts a million years, we will say to our children and to their descendants that their patriotic, human, moral and sacred religious duty is to defend their people and their fatherland." Nasrallah then threw the ball back in Bush's court by stating, "if you can convince me that there are other ways to protect Lebanon, I'm ready to listen." In other words, if Bush can contain Israeli aggression and guarantee the outlaw state will not invade again, he may entertain disarming. However, as Bigfoot will appear in a Broadway musical before Israel will stop killing Arabs in large numbers, Hezbollah will not disarm Hezbollah anytime soon.
Meanwhile, the demonization of Islam continues unabated. Last week Pope Benedict XVI cited a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of Islam's Prophet Muhammad as "evil and inhuman," a comment interpreted by some Muslims as a call by the Catholic church for another Crusade. Naturally, "al-Qaeda," specifically the Mujahedeen Shura Council in Iraq, a Pentagon black op claiming to be an "umbrella organization" representing the Iraqi resistance, responded to the dotterel in the Vatican by declaring it would "break up the cross, spill the liquor and impose head tax, then the only thing acceptable is a conversion (to Islam) or (killed by) the sword," the sort of gibberish neocon newspaper columnists and radio and television talk show hosts and anchors consume with orgiastic delight.
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Editorial: Pope Benedict and Western Christendom's jihad: "Better the Sultan's turban than the Cardinal's hat"
Colin Buchanan
September 17, 2006
Apart from the sinister decision to launch an attack on Islam at this moment in history when the supreme question of war or peace hangs in the balance, there is a rather bizarre aspect to this whole affair viz the curious decision to quote a Byzantine emperor's views on Islam.
Byzantium had experienced first hand the brutality of the western crusaders who, goaded on by Catholic priests in 1203 had sacked the city in one of the greatest atrocities in history, magnified several-fold by the immense cultural and intellectual loss in what was one of the great centres of world civilization. This shocking act of delinquency way surpassed the sacking of Rome by the Goths or the, relatively humane, subsequent sacking of Byzantium by the Turks. Here is how it was recorded by one Byzantine historian:
"No one was without a share in the grief. In the alleys, in the streets, in the temples, complaints, weeping, lamentations, grief, the groaning of men, the shrieks of women, wounds, rape, captivity, the separation of those most closely united. Nobles wandered about ignominiously, those of venerable age in tears, the rich in poverty. Thus it was in the streets, on the corners, in the temple, in the dens, for no place remained unassailed or defended the suppliants. All places everywhere were filled full of all kinds of crime. Oh, immortal God, how great the afflictions of the men, how great the distress!"
The Byzantine historian Nicetas Koniates wrote: "even the Muslims are human and well-disposed, reported to[compared to] those people who carry the cross of Christ on the shoulders"
Manual II Paleologos ( the emperor who Benedict quoted) had reason to fear the Muslims since Byzantium was perpetually on the verge of falling to them, as indeed it did in 1453. But even in the midst of that final siege one of the city's last great statesmen was heard to say "Better the Sultan's turban than the cardinal's hat"
In fact the destruction or a least fatal weakening of the Byzantine Empire was the main outcome of the crusades whose nominal goal was the reconquest of the Holy Land. It was rather as if todays war against Islam was really an oblique attempt to undermine Europe and Russia in accordance with the perennial goals of British foreign policy as outlined by Mackinder i.e. that Europe and Eurasia should forever be divided. (That may very well be the case.Arguably, the turn towards Iraq only came when the campaign to destabilise Serbia and then Russia reached an impasse and even the submissive Yeltsin threatened to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia.) Certainly, with regard to the deep animosity between Western Christendom and the Orthodox world, history has repeated itself and under NATO's occupation of Kosovo we have seen again the destruction of beautiful Byzantine churches by Tony and Bill's favourite terrorists, the KLA.
Thank you, Your Holiness, for reminding us, unconsciously, of things you would rather keep forgotten, Western Christendom's jihad against its religious foes culminating in the destruction of the beautiful city of Byzantium, echoed nearly a thousand years later in the destruction of Kosovo's churches.
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Next Stop: Iran
Time Magazine: This is how US will attack Iran
18/09/2006
It will take a few days, with thousands of sorties, satellite and laser-guided bombs will be aimed at targets - 1,500 already planned by Pentagon - and will try to infiltrate armed concrete, under which some of nuclear sites are hidden. Meanwhile, Washington launches diplomatic blitz in attempt to promote sanctions on Tehran
A senior source at the State Department declared over the weekend that Washington was interested in solving the crisis diplomatically, but admitted that his country had no clue what Iran was thinking.
According to the senior source, the government is convinced that Tehran has also failed to make a decision on the issue so far.
And while the US is exerting diplomatic pressure, the Pentagon is preparing for a possibility that US President George W. Bush will eventually instruct the army to attack Iran.
Time Magazine published details regarding a possible attack, based on talks with military sources.
According to the magazine, no one in Washington is talking about a ground invasion of Iran, as was carried out in Iraq or Afghanistan. According to the report, the American goal in case of an offensive will be to delay the Iranian nuclear plan, an operation which can be carried out from the air.
Goal: Delaying nuclear plan by 2 to 3 years
The attack, the Time says, will be limited to the nuclear facilities in Iran and will be aimed at 18 to 30 different facilities connected to the nuclear program. The sites are spread across the country, some of them exposed, some operating under the guise of regular plants, and others buried deep under the ground.
Sources in the Pentagon told the magazine that among the sites the Americans are familiar with are 1,500 targets for an attack. In other words, the military offensive requires activating nearly all types of planes in the army's possession: Warplanes and stealth vehicles, F-15 and F-16 aircrafts taking off from the land and an F-18 which takes off from an aircraft carrier.
Such an attack requires using satellite-guided weapons and laser-guided ammunition, as well as spy planes and unmanned aerial vehicles. Since many targets are hidden underground and are reinforced with armed concrete, they will have to be hit once and again in order to guarantee that they are destroyed, or at least severely damaged.
Submarines and American battleships will be able to launch cruise missiles, but the Time says that the warheads in this case are small and are not enough to cause damage to the concrete. Therefore, they will be used for other targets.
An American attack in Iran may take a few days, with hundreds and maybe thousands of sorties. According to the report, it will help in delaying the Iranian nuclear program by two to the three years.
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Military Orders Suggest Iran Attack
Newsmax
18/09/2006
Two recent orders by the American military have led some observers to conclude that the U.S. is preparing for an attack on Iran.
One order was a "Prepare to Deploy" command sent to a submarine, an Aegis-class cruiser, two minesweepers and two mine hunters, telling the ships' commanders to be ready to move by Oct. 1.
The other was a request from the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) for a fresh look at long-standing U.S. plans to blockade two Iranian oil ports on the Persian Gulf.
The orders created a buzz within the military because there are few places in the world where minesweepers could be significant - chief among them, the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, where about 40 percent of the world's oil passes each day.
"Coupled with the CNO's request for a blockade review, a deployment of minesweepers to the west coast of Iran would seem to suggest that a much discussed - but until now largely theoretical - prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran," according to a special report in Time magazine.
The U.S. military routinely makes plans for many different scenarios, and the vast majority of them will never be carried out.
"And yet from the State Department to the White House to the highest reaches of the military command, there is a growing sense that a showdown with Iran - over its suspected quest for nuclear weapons, its threats against Israel and its bid for dominance of the world's richest oil region - may be impossible to avoid," Time reports.
The magazine's reporters interviewed dozens of experts and government officials to find out what an attack on Iran would consist of - and what its repercussions might be.
First of all, most observers believe the attack would not involve ground forces and would instead be a massive air campaign against Iran's 18 to 30 nuclear-related facilities.
But many of the targets are hardened, and would have to be struck repeatedly to ensure that they were destroyed or severely damaged. Some sites are in populated areas, and civilian casualties would be a certainty, according to Time. And there would be no guarantee that the strikes would destroy all nuclear-related sites, because some sites could be undiscovered.
What's more, the attacks would spark retaliation from Iran that could include ordering a Hezbollah attack on Israel and stepping up the funneling of money and weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan and insurgents in Iraq.
The likelihood that Iran would also seek to close the Strait of Hormuz is high, and a disruption of the oil supplies flowing through the strait could send oil prices skyrocketing. That in turn could spur a stepped-up military effort by the U.S. that could even include the "worst case" use of ground forces in an effort to topple the Iranian regime, retired Marine General Anthony Zinni told Time.
For that reason, Zinni believes an attack on Iran is a "dumb idea."
And that is why the U.S. has sought to emphasize a possible diplomatic solution, Time concludes. One Bush administration official told the magazine:
"Nobody is considering a military option at this point. We're trying to prevent a situation in which the President finds himself having to decide between a nuclear-armed Iran or going to war. The best hope of avoiding that dilemma is hard-nosed diplomacy, one that has serious consequences."
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In a replay of Iraq, a battle is brewing over intelligence on Iran
By Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott
McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Fri, Sep. 15, 2006
WASHINGTON - In an echo of the intelligence wars that preceded the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a high-stakes struggle is brewing within the Bush administration and in Congress over Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program and involvement in terrorism.
U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials say Bush political appointees and hard-liners on Capitol Hill have tried recently to portray Iran's nuclear program as more advanced than it is and to exaggerate Tehran's role in Hezbollah's attack on Israel in mid-July.
The struggle's outcome could have profound implications for U.S. policy.
President Bush, who addresses the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, has said he prefers diplomacy to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, but he hasn't ruled out using military force.
Several former U.S. defense officials who maintain close ties to the Pentagon say they've been told that plans for airstrikes - if Bush deems them necessary - are being updated.
The leader of a Persian Gulf country who visited Washington recently came away without receiving assurances he sought that the military option was off the table, said a person with direct knowledge of the meetings.
"It seems like Iran is becoming the new Iraq," said one U.S. counterterrorism official.
This official and others spoke on condition of anonymity because the information involved is classified.
But one facet of the dispute broke into public view in recent days.
The International Atomic Energy Agency complained in an unusual letter made public on Thursday that a House intelligence committee report on Iran contains "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated information."
A top official of the IAEA, which conducts nuclear inspections in Iran and elsewhere, wrote that the report exaggerated advances Tehran has made in enriching uranium, which can be used to fuel nuclear arms if made pure enough. The official, Vilmos Cserveny, said the report also falsely claimed that IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei had removed an inspector from Iran for being too aggressive.
Cserveny's letter was addressed to intelligence committee chairman Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich.
Hoekstra spokesman Jamal Ware said that the reference to weapons-grade uranium in the report was in a photo caption, but that the report makes clear elsewhere that Iran has not yet achieved that capability.
Committee aides say the report was meant to provoke discussion about Iran and wasn't a call for exaggerated intelligence.
The dispute was a virtual rerun of the months before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, when ElBaradei and his agency questioned claims that Saddam Hussein was aggressively seeking nuclear weapons. Some top U.S. officials sought to discredit ElBaradei, although the IAEA's assessment proved correct.
The IAEA's written protest, dated Tuesday, was echoed privately by U.S. intelligence analysts, who saw the House report as an attempt to discredit the CIA and other agencies on Iran.
The situations with Iran now and Iraq four years ago, when Bush and his aides were making the case for war, aren't completely parallel.
Even officials and foreign countries that were skeptical about Iraq agree that Iran is probably seeking a nuclear weapon. And there is widespread consensus that Tehran is the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism in the world.
But there are sharp differences over Iran's capabilities and actions.
Some officials at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department said they're concerned that the offices of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney may be receiving a stream of questionable information that originates with Iranian exiles, including a discredited arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, who played a role in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal.
Officials at all three agencies said they suspect that the dubious information may include claims that Iran directed Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, to kidnap two Israeli soldiers in July; that Iran's nuclear program is moving faster than generally believed; and that the Iranian people are eager to join foreign efforts to overthrow their theocratic rulers.
The officials said there is no reliable intelligence to support any of those assertions and some that contradicts all three.
The officials said they fear a replay of the administration's mishandling of what turned out to be bogus information from Iraqi exiles in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, documented earlier this month in a Senate intelligence committee report.
But they said this time, intelligence analysts and others are more forcefully challenging claims they believe to be false or questionable.
"There's no question that people are less afraid to speak up after what happened in Iraq," said one intelligence official. "There's less of an inclination to let Cheney and Rumsfeld run free."
It is, said a second U.S. intelligence official, "a little more difficult to try to put forward a one-sided view." Analysts "are not willing to be rolled over," he said.
On Hezbollah, officials say they have fought to tone down administration public statements and internal briefing papers about Iran's complicity in the attack on Israel, which sparked a month-long war.
"They're just basically saying all kinds of wacky stuff," said the first counter-terrorism official. "Now Iran is (said to be) responsible for everything Hezbollah does."
Iran is widely believed to be arming, funding and helping train Hezbollah as its proxy among Lebanon's Shiite Muslims. But a majority of analysts believe Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah maintains quite a bit of independence.
"No one says that Hezbollah is completely independent," said a U.S. intelligence official. But, "I'm not sure anyone thinks Iran ordered the kidnapping of the Israelis."
Adding to the unease, Rumsfeld's office earlier this year set up a new Iranian directorate, reported to be under the leadership of neoconservatives who played a role in planning the Iraq war.
Current and former officials said the Pentagon's Iranian directorate has been headed by Abram Shulsky. Shulsky also was the head of the now-defunct Office of Special Plans, whose role in allegedly manipulating Iraq intelligence is under investigation by the Pentagon's inspector general.
Some officials say they fear the office, whose existence was first reported by the Los Angeles Times, is being used to funnel intelligence from Ghorbanifar, the arms dealer, and an Iranian exile group known as the Mujahedeen Khalq.
A Pentagon spokeswoman didn't return two phone calls seeking comment about the office.
Bill Murray, a retired CIA station chief in Paris who met with a Ghorbanifar associate and found his claims about Iran to be bogus, called the office's establishment "a big bell ringer."
"That is outright manipulation of information to suggest a predetermined policy," Murray said.
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Bush, Iran president to face off at U.N
Reuters
19/09/2006
President Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will face off at a distance over Middle East democracy and nuclear weapons when both address the United Nations on Tuesday.
Bush faces growing international skepticism over his policies for Iran and Iraq, with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warning that Iraq was in grave danger of descending into civil war and French President Jacques Chirac arguing against a rush to impose sanctions on Iran.
U.S. officials said that, undeterred by setbacks in Iraq war and the Palestinian territories, Bush would stress his so-called "Freedom Agenda" of aggressively promoting democracy, calling the Middle East "the central battlefield."
"The president ... will lay out his positive vision for the Middle East, the bright, democratic future that we see for the Middle East in contra-distinction to some who have almost a backward-looking vision for that region," a senior administration official told reporters.
Annan pointedly countered that optimism last week when he said after touring the Middle East that most leaders in the region thought the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein had been a "disaster."
The indirect clash between Bush and the hard-line Iranian leader comes at a sensitive moment in a stand-off over Iran's nuclear ambitions, as the European Union tries to coax Tehran into suspending uranium enrichment to allow for negotiations.
The United States and Iran have no relations and Washington has said it will enter talks with Iran only if the Islamic Republic halts sensitive nuclear work which the West suspects is aimed at developing an atom bomb.
SANCTIONS?
The Bush administration is calling for sanctions after Iran defied an August 31 U.N. deadline to halt enrichment, but European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said it would be wrong to push such a resolution when the EU was making "real progress" in talks with Tehran.
Solana told Spanish-speaking reporters he would meet with Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, in New York on the sidelines of this week's U.N. General Assembly session.
Asked in an interview with Time magazine why Iran would not suspend enrichment as a confidence-building measure, Ahmadinejad said: "Whose confidence should be built?"
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Report: Israel focuses on Iran's possible WMD threat
www.chinaview.cn 2006-09-19 16:48:53
JERUSALEM, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) -- Faced with an alleged unclear threat from Iran, Israeli military establishment has been concentrating on dealing with a possible confrontation with non-conventional weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Jerusalem Post reported Tuesday.
According to an exclusive report of the newspaper, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Home Front Command has shifted its focus since the Lebanon war ended and is now investing most of its efforts in confronting the threat of WMD.
A high-ranking IDF officer revealed to the Post that Israel's Home Front Command (HFC) is now developing new technological means to deal with chemical and biological threats, including mobile air-purification containers that can be brought to areas infected by chemical or biological weapons and purify the air.
HFC's focus was shifted partially because the defense establishment believed that following the war in Lebanon, Israel was facing a major threat from ballistic missiles.
During the war, there were some 4,000 missiles fired at northern Israel. It was estimated that missiles from Iran have a range of between 1,550 to 1,620 km and can carry a 500 to 650 kg warhead.
"As it was demonstrated during the war in Lebanon, the other side is investing all of its resources in missiles," a high-ranking IDF officer was quoted as saying on Monday.
"We therefore need to provide answers to deal with this threat offensively but also defensively, once the missiles are already launched," he added.
According to the IDF's assessment, facing a nuclear Iran, Israel will find itself in a "lose-lose situation."
"If Iran is attacked, long-range missiles will land in Israel," a senior defense official said. "If, on the other hand, nothing is done militarily, Israel will find itself under a constant nuclear threat from Iran."
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France Calls for Boosting of Ties with Iran
Fars News Agency
18/09/2006
TEHRAN - Despite the United States' frequent calls on the EU to increase pressures on Iran and limit ties with the Islamic Republic, Paris has called for the enhancement of all-out relations with Tehran and this has been the underlying cause for the recent visit to France by President's senior advisor, Iranian government spokesman said.
"French officials submitted a message to us which both showed their profound enthusiasm for developing all-out ties with Iran and asked for the dispatch of a special envoy to Paris to discuss the two sides' wide potentials for further cooperation in all various areas," Gholam Hossein Elham told reporters during his weekly press briefing here on Monday.
"Thus, President Ahmadinejad dispatched his senior advisor Hashemi Samareh to France," he continued, saying that during his talks with various French officials, including President Jacque Chirac, Samareh has exchanged views about enhancement of cooperation through optimum utilization of the two states' potentials.
Elham further described Samareh's negotiations with the French officials as positive and useful, asserting that the talks have paved a proper and convenient ground for the development of ties.
Elsewhere, he referred to Iran's nuclear issue and mentioned, "What we have presented as our response to the EU's package of proposals included this very main point that the two sides can resolve the issue through reasonable negotiations and in compliance with the international rules and laws."
The Spokesman viewed Iran-West talks as positive, saying that Tehran perceives a desirable prospect for the present trend of negotiations as there resides no restriction in the way of talks.
Describing time-bound suspension as a misunderstanding, he stressed once more that nuclear talks must be free from prerequisite.
Elham rejected reports that Iran could agree to the short-term suspension of its enrichment activities for the resumption of nuclear talks with the west, reiterating that such a notion was a result of a "misunderstanding."
He said, "Iran has made no decision whatsoever to suspend enrichment," but meantime stressed that all issues pertinent to Iran's nuclear case "can be raised in the negotiations."
Asked about the possibility of a meeting between the Iranian and American Presidents during the upcoming UN General Assembly meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York, the Government Spokesman reminded, "The issue at work is not negotiation or talks, rather there could be a debate between President Ahmadinejad and his American counterpart George W Bush, and when it comes to debating, where else could be a better place than the United Nations?"
In response to the recent insulting statements by Pope Benedict XVI against the religion of Islam, he reminded the rich and historical culture of Islam, and stressed that the remarks by the leader of the world's Catholic church result from ignorance and lack of comprehension and proper understanding of the Islamic culture.
Meantime, the official viewed Pope's remarks as worrisome, and reminded that international movement of Zionism, supported by the US, intends to undermine solidarity of religions through sowing seeds of discord among them.
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Chirac urges lifting UN sanctions threat on Iran
PARIS, Sept 18, 2006 (AFP)
French President Jacques Chirac on Monday urged more nuclear talks with Iran during which it would not be referred to the UN Security Council -- setting the scene for another possible clash with the United States, which is pushing for sanctions.
Chirac argued that more negotiations should take place with Iran, free of the threat of sanctions.
"During that negotiation, I propose that on the one hand the six refrain from referring the issue to the Security Council and that Iran renounce during the negotiation the enrichment of uranium," he told Europe 1 radio.
The six nations holding talks with Tehran are the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany.
It was the first time a European leader has clearly stated that the suspension of uranium enrichment was not a precondition for opening talks on the nuclear dossier.
Chirac indicated that the suspension should come during rather than before negotiations.
"We can find solutions via dialogue," said Chirac, who was later to head to New York for the UN's General Assembly due to start Tuesday.
There, he was to meet US President George W. Bush, who has been espousing a harder line against Iran, America's arch-enemy for the past three decades.
Both men were to address the assembly on Tuesday -- as was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Bush last week warned US allies not to get too caught up in talking with Tehran, which Washington suspects is trying to build a nuclear arsenal under cover of an energy production programme.
"My concern is that, you know, they'll stall; they'll try to wait us out," Bush said. "So part of my objective in New York is to remind people that stalling shouldn't be allowed."
The United States would like to see the Security Council threaten sanctions on Iran, including economic measures and travel bans.
But veto-wielding members China, Russia -- and now France -- are openly balking.
Chirac, in an interview with CNN, said: "There is a lot more potential to dialogue and I would like us to go the end of that particular road before we decide to go any further in any other direction.
"I very much hope that dialogue will get us out of this crisis and I believe it will."
The French president also touched on the UN Security Council row over the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, which poisoned relations between Paris and Washington and cast Chirac and Bush more as ideological opponents than allies.
He told CNN he was convinced that his objections to the US push for war on Iraq -- Iran's neighbour -- had been validated.
"I adopted a stance on Iraq and I have to say that the way things panned out, it certainly didn't go against the stance I took. What I said has been borne out and I remain very pessimistic about Iraq and its future."
Although Chirac and Bush were to be in New York at the same time as the Iranian president, both have said they had no plans to meet him.
Ahmadinejad, for his part, said on the weekend during a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Cuba that the United States was the real nuclear threat in the world.
"What is the UN Security Council waiting for to react to those threats?" he asked, urging other countries to help "counter attempts to prevent Iran from developing its peaceful nuclear activity."
In Vienna, at the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, UN nuclear chief Mohammed ElBaradei said he remained "hopeful" Iran and world powers would be able to hold negotiations over Tehran's atomic ambitions.
He noted, however, Iran's failure to meet an August 31 deadline imposed by the UN Security Council to suspend uranium enrichment activities.
That suspension had been a precondition to talks with six world powers on a package of trade and other benefits for Iran.
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On international stage, Chirac revives role as conciliator
PARIS, Sept 18, 2006 (AFP)
Ahead of what is almost certainly his last attendance at the UN General Assembly, French President Jacques Chirac on Monday issued a wide-ranging appeal for conciliation and dialogue in a world where "tensions and imbalances are sharpening."
In an interview on Europe 1 radio, the 73-year-old president made a major gesture towards Iran - urging that referral of Tehran's nuclear programme to the UN Security Council wait upon new negotiations and declaring himself sceptical about the use of sanctions.
In the wake of the row over Pope Benedict XVI's comments on Islam, Chirac urged the world to "avoid everything that increases tensions between peoples or religions".
While seeing the pope's remarks as "part of a dialogue about cultures and civilisations which I also advocate", he said: "We must avoid any confusion between Islam, which is of course a respected and respectable religion, and radical Islamism."
The president also urged the Sudanese government to accept UN troops to resolve the crisis in Darfur province, and said France would propose an international conference on Lebanon to help raise funds for the country's post-war reconstruction.
On US President George W. Bush, who he is to meet in New York Tuesday, Chirac said, "We have a relationship which is inevitably one of equals, which is certainly not one of submission" - and on the decision to oppose the 2003 war on Iraq he said: "When I look at the situation I do not think I made a mistake."
President Chirac appears to have been buoyed by the high profile given to France's role in international efforts to end the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah - as well as by opinion polls which show a sharp recovery in his domestic popularity over the summer.
In the latest survey published by a national newspaper Sunday the president enjoys the "good opinion" of 38 percent of the public - up 11 points from July.
"He has discovered a new sense of purpose. The French realise how much he is in control of international dossiers. Compared to Sarkozy and Royal, there's no contest," an unnamed Chirac adviser told le Parisien newspaper.
Chirac is widely expected to leave office next May after presidential elections in which the two front-runners are Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and the Socialist Ségolčne Royal.
While his record on domestic matters after nearly 12 years in office often fares badly in polls, on foreign affairs the president scores better - his favourite themes of a "multipolar" world and the need for dialogue between civilisations striking a clear chord with the public.
According to newspaper reports Monday, Chirac has expressed private anger at the overtly pro-American policies of his potential successor, Nicolas Sarkozy, who in a speech in Washington last week said that his friendship for the US had earned him criticism in France - "but I am proud of it. I lay claim to it."
Sarkozy also took clear aim at the way Chirac and the foreign minister Dominique de Villepin handled the run-up to the war in Iraq, saying: "I always prefer modest effectiveness to sterile grandiloquence. I want nothing of an arrogant France."
The left-wing Libération newspaper quoted Chirac as telling advisers that Sarkozy's speech had been "irresponsible" and "lamentable."
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Russia, China Bound to Support Sanctions Against Iran - U.S. Rice
Created: 19.09.2006 11:07 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 11:07 MSK
MosNews
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice believes Russia and China are going to vote for sanctions against Iran in the end, she told the WDAY radio station in Washington. "I believe China and Russia are going to end up voting for sanctions or at least allowing sanctions to go forward," Rice said when asked to comment on the two states' position in regard of Iran's continuing uranium enrichment activities.
"We had a deal, and the deal was the following, and Iran understood that: If Iran was prepared to suspend its uranium enrichment and negotiate we were prepared to go down that road. And the United States prepared to go to the table for the first time in more than two decades. If Iran did not, then the Security Council would have to act."
The U.S. is pressing for sanctions against Iran after Tehran ignored an August 31 UN Security Council deadline for suspending uranium enrichment. Both Russia and its Security Council ally China oppose sanctions, although they did vote for a resolution that held the prospect of sanctions should Iran not comply by the deadline.
"And I just want to say that we are in the process right now of working with the European-Three but also with the Russians and the Chinese on a resolution which we intend to vote, to send a very strong message to Iran that it can't simply ignore the will of the international community," Secretary of State added.
"Now there are talks going on. We think that's a good thing. If the Iranians come out of those talks with Javier Solana, the European Foreign Policy Chief, and decide that they wish to suspend, then we're ready to negotiate."
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Ahmadinejad: no reason to accelerate nuclear negotiations
www.chinaview.cn 2006-09-19 10:37:01
CARACAS, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday refused to consider accelerating negotiations at the United Nations over his country's nuclear program.
As talks were still going on, "I see no reason to speed them up," said Ahmadinejad, during his two-day visit to Venezuela.
Arguing that every nation had the equal right to nuclear energy, he said that if it was "something good," then "everyone should have it," but if otherwise, "nobody should have it."
Iran was "willing to negotiate with any country," which was the nation's constant commitment, Ahmadinejad added.
During talks with the visiting Iranian leader, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez reaffirmed his support for Iran's nuclear program.
"We are on your side, we will defend the rights of the Iranian people," said Chavez.
Iran delivered its official report on Aug. 22, refusing to suspend uranium enrichment by Aug. 31, the deadline laid out in UN Security Council Resolution 1696.
It was Iran's response to an incentive package offered by the six major powers -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States -- aimed at defusing the international nuclear crisis.
The Iranian president, who arrived here on Sunday, was scheduled to fly to New York later on Monday to attend the UN General Assembly.
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A Date With a Dangerous Mind
By SCOTT MACLEOD
09/18/06 "Time" - HAVANA
EXCLUSIVE: Face to face with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the man whose swaggeris stirring fears of warwith the U.S.
TIME: You have been quoted as saying Israel should be wiped off the map. Was that merely rhetoric, or do you mean it?
AHMADINEJAD: People in the world are free to think the way they wish. We do not insist they should change their views. Our position toward the Palestinian question is clear: we say that a nation has been displaced from its own land. Palestinian people are killed in their own lands, by those who are not original inhabitants, and they have come from far areas of the world and have occupied those homes. Our suggestion is that the 5 million Palestinian refugees come back to their homes, and then the entire people on those lands hold a referendum and choose their own system of government. This is a democratic and popular way. Do you have any other suggestions?
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad isn't one for ceremony. We are waiting in a villa outside Havana when Ahmadinejad strides in without notice, taking even his aides by surprise. He is wearing blue-gray trousers, black loafers and the trademark tan jacket that even he calls his "Ahmadinejad jacket." He mutters something to himself as he settles into an aging leather chair with bad springs. For a moment, he seems irked by the chair, perhaps because it makes him seem even smaller than his 5 ft. 4 in., but soon he's smiling, prodding, leaning forward to make his points. "We are living our own lives," he says, when asked about his differences with the Bush Administration. He jabs the back of my hand for emphasis. "The U.S. government should not interfere in our affairs. They should live their own lives."
When he made his first trip to the U.S. last year for a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, Ahmadinejad was still a curiosity--a diminutive, plainly dressed man who had come out of nowhere to win Iran's presidential election. But in New York City this week, he won't have trouble being recognized. His incendiary statements--he has declared the Holocaust a "myth," has said Israel should be "wiped away" and has called the Jewish state "a stain of disgrace"--have made him the most polarizing head of state in the Muslim world. Under Ahmadinejad, Iran has built up its influence in Lebanon and Iraq and made clear its intention to become the dominant power in the oil-rich Persian Gulf. He has also accelerated work on Iran's civilian nuclear program, which the U.S. believes is geared toward producing a nuclear bomb. Though pictures of the Iranian President often show him flashing a peace sign, his actions could well be leading the world closer to war.
For all his bluster, Ahmadinejad remains an enigma. His powers are limited by Iran's political structure, in which ultimate authority over matters of state rests with the country's Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. The regime has threatened to retaliate against American interests "in every part of the world" if the U.S. were ever to launch a military strike against Iran. But Ahmadinejad has also made rhetorical gestures of conciliation, sending an open letter to George W. Bush and inviting the U.S. President to a televised discussion about "the ways of solving the problems of the international community." (Bush ruled it out last week. "I'm not going to meet with him," he said at a White House news conference.)
Ahmadinejad is a skilled, if slippery, debater. In his press conferences, he has shown himself to be a natural politician, gifted in the art of spin and misdirection. Our meeting took place last Saturday in a villa on the outskirts of Havana, where he was attending the confab for leaders of nonaligned nations, a gathering that included other irritants to the West such as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.
Over the course of the 45-minute interview, he was serious, smiling and cocky--evidence of a self-assurance that borders on arrogance. His brown eyes locked onto mine when he made a point about Iran's nuclear program. His rhetoric was measured, but he was adamant on the issues that have made him so controversial. He dismissed U.N. demands that Iran suspend its uranium-enrichment program but said, "We are opposed to the development of nuclear weapons. We think it is of no use and that it is against the interests of nations." He waved a hand dismissively when I couldn't grasp his logic in questioning the Holocaust. Asked to defend his claim that the Holocaust was a myth, he went on a rambling rant, claiming that those who try to do "independent research" on the Holocaust have been imprisoned. "About historical events," he says, "there are different views."
He was more generous and accommodating when it came to discussing the U.S., saying his May letter to Bush was a genuine effort to reach out. He spoke highly of Americans, based on his trip to New York. "My general impression is that the people of the United States are good people ... The people of the United States are also seeking peace, love, friendship and justice."
Whether such talk will be enough to save the two nations from a confrontation remains to be seen. Nor is it clear that Ahmadinejad's own job is secure. Impatience with his failure to fix Iran's economy is growing, and there is some speculation that the Old Guard may try to push him out. But until then, he seems likely to keep challenging the West, stirring things up. He aspires to unite Muslim opinion and make Iran the dominant player in the Middle East, restoring the country to its ancient imperial glory.
Ahmadinejad's handlers said our interview would last only 30 minutes, but he let it go on despite their protests. At last we were passed a note: "The time is over and Mr. President has an important meeting with the Cuban President. Goodbye." Ahmadinejad bolted from the room, swapped his jacket for a suit coat and climbed into a Mercedes. As the car pulled away, he sat in the back with an aide, smiled one more time and threw us a final wave.
"WE DO NOT NEED ATTACKS"
On the eve of a visit to the U.S., Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks to TIME's Scott MacLeod about debating President Bush, pursuing nuclear energy and denying the Holocaust
TIME: What were your impressions of New York during your visit to the U.S. last year?
AHMADINEJAD: Unfortunately we didn't have any contact with the people of the United States. We were not in touch with the people. But my general impression is that the people of the United States are good people. Everywhere in the world, people are good.
TIME: Did you visit the site of the World Trade Center?
AHMADINEJAD: It was not necessary. It was widely covered in the media.
TIME: You recently invited President Bush to a televised debate. If he were sitting where I am sitting, what would you say, man to man?
AHMADINEJAD: The issues which are of interest to us are the international issues and how to manage them. I gave some recommendations to President Bush in my personal letter, and I hope that he will take note of them. I would ask him, Are rationalism, spirituality and humanitarianism and logic--are they bad things for human beings? Why more conflict? Why should we go for hostilities? Why should we develop weapons of mass destruction? Everybody can love one another.
TIME: Do you feel any connection with President Bush, since he is also a religious man, a strong Christian?
AHMADINEJAD: I've heard about that. But there are many things which take place and are inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus Christ in this world.
TIME: Why do your supporters chant "Death to America"?
AHMADINEJAD: When they chanted that slogan, it means they hate aggression, and they hate bullying tactics, and they hate violations of the rights of nations and discrimination. I recommended to President Bush that he can change his behavior, then everything will change.
TIME: How do you think the American people feel when they hear Iranians shouting "Death to America" and the President of Iran does not criticize this?
AHMADINEJAD: The nations do not have any problems. What is the role of the American people in what is happening in the world? The people of the United States are also seeking peace, love, friendship and justice.
TIME: But if Americans shouted "Death to Iran," Iranians would feel insulted.
AHMADINEJAD: If the government of Iran acted in such a way, then [the American people] have this right.
TIME: Are America and Iran fated to be in conflict?
AHMADINEJAD: No, this is not fate. And this can come to an end. I have said we can run the world through logic. We are living our own lives. The U.S. government should not interfere in our affairs. They should live their own lives. They should serve the interests of the U.S. people. They should not interfere in our affairs. Then there would be no problems with that.
TIME: Are you ready to open direct negotiations with the U.S.?
AHMADINEJAD: We have given them a letter, a lengthy letter. We say the U.S. Administration should change its behavior, and then everything will be solved. It was the U.S. which broke up relations with us. We didn't take that position. And then they should make up for it.
TIME: Does Iran have the right to nuclear weapons?
AHMADINEJAD: We are opposed to nuclear weapons. We think it has been developed just to kill human beings. It is not in the service of human beings. For that reason, last year in my address to the U.N. General Assembly, I suggested that a committee should be set up in order to disarm all the countries that possess nuclear weapons.
TIME: But you were attacked with weapons of mass destruction by Iraq. You say the U.S. threatens you, and you are surrounded by countries that have nuclear weapons.
AHMADINEJAD: Today nuclear weapons are a blunt instrument. We don't have any problems with Pakistan or India. Actually they are friends of Iran, and throughout history they have been friends. The Zionist regime is not capable of using nuclear weapons. Problems cannot be solved through bombs. Bombs are of little use today. We need logic.
TIME: Why won't you agree to suspend enrichment of uranium as a confidence-building measure?
AHMADINEJAD: Whose confidence should be built?
TIME: The world's?
AHMADINEJAD: The world? The world? Who is the world? The United States? The U.S. Administration is not the entire world. Europe does not account for one-twentieth of the entire world. When I studied the provisions of the NPT [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty], nowhere did I see it written that in order to produce nuclear fuel, we need to win the support or the confidence of the United States and some European countries.
TIME: How far will Iran go in defying Western demands? Will you wait until you are attacked and your nuclear installations are destroyed?
AHMADINEJAD: Do you think the U.S. Administration would be so irrational?
TIME: You tell me.
AHMADINEJAD: I hope that is not the case. I said that we need logic. We do not need attacks.
TIME: Are you worried about an attack?
AHMADINEJAD: No.
TIME: You have been quoted as saying Israel should be wiped off the map. Was that merely rhetoric, or do you mean it?
AHMADINEJAD: People in the world are free to think the way they wish. We do not insist they should change their views. Our position toward the Palestinian question is clear: we say that a nation has been displaced from its own land. Palestinian people are killed in their own lands, by those who are not original inhabitants, and they have come from far areas of the world and have occupied those homes. Our suggestion is that the 5 million Palestinian refugees come back to their homes, and then the entire people on those lands hold a referendum and choose their own system of government. This is a democratic and popular way. Do you have any other suggestions?
TIME: Do you believe the Jewish people have a right to their own state?
AHMADINEJAD: We do not oppose it. In any country in which the people are ready to vote for the Jews to come to power, it is up to them. In our country, the Jews are living and they are represented in our Parliament. But Zionists are different from Jews.
TIME: Have you considered that Iranian Jews are hurt by your comments denying that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust?
AHMADINEJAD: As to the Holocaust, I just raised a few questions. And I didn't receive any answers to my questions. I said that during World War II, around 60 million were killed. All were human beings and had their own dignities. Why only 6 million? And if it had happened, then it is a historical event. Then why do they not allow independent research?
TIME: But massive research has been done.
AHMADINEJAD: They put in prison those who try to do research. About historical events everybody should be free to conduct research. Let's assume that it has taken place. Where did it take place? So what is the fault of the Palestinian people? These questions are quite clear. We are waiting for answers.
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Zionism Nightmare
The Pope must die, says Muslim
thisislondon.co.uk
18.09.06
A notorious Muslim extremist told a demonstration in London yesterday that the Pope should face execution.
Anjem Choudary said those who insulted Islam would be "subject to capital punishment".
His remarks came during a protest outside Westminster Cathedral on a day that worldwide anger among Muslim hardliners towards Pope Benedict XVI appeared to deepen.
The pontiff yesterday apologised for causing offence during a lecture last week. Quoting a medieval emperor, his words were taken to mean that he called the prophet Mohammed "evil and inhuman".
He insisted he was "deeply sorry" but his humbling words did not go far enough to silence all his critics or quell the violence and anger he has triggered.
A nun was shot dead in Somalia by Islamic gunmen and churches came under attack in Palestine.
Choudary's appeal for the death of Pope Benedict was the second time he has been linked with apparent incitement to murder within a year.
The 39-year-old lawyer organised demonstrations against the publication of cartoons of Mohammed in February in Denmark. Protesters carried placards declaring "Behead Those Who Insult Islam".
Yesterday he said: "The Muslims take their religion very seriously and non-Muslims must appreciate that and that must also understand that there may be serious consequences if you insult Islam and the prophet.
"Whoever insults the message of Mohammed is going to be subject to capital punishment."
He added: "I am here have a peaceful demonstration. But there may be people in Italy or other parts of the world who would carry that out.
"I think that warning needs to be understood by all people who want to insult Islam and want to insult the prophet of Islam."
As well as placards attacking the Pope such as "Pope go to Hell", his followers outside the country's principal Roman Catholic church also waved slogans aimed at offending the sentiments of Christians such as "Jesus is the slave of Allah".
A Scotland Yard spokesman said of his comments: "We have had no complaints about this. There were around 100 people at the demonstration. It passed off peacefully and there were no arrests."
Larger Islamic groups in Britain said they accepted the Pope's apology. Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain said: "The Vatican has moved quickly to deal with the hurt and we accept that.
"It was something that should never have happened - words of that nature were always likely to cause dismay - and we believe some of the Pope's advisers may have been at fault over his speech."
Yesterday's sermon by the Pope was the first time a pontiff has publicly said sorry.
He said he regretted Muslim reaction to his speech and stressed that the quotation did not reflect his personal opinion. Anger and violence - including attacks on seven churches in the West Bank and Gaza - have characterised one of the biggest international crises involving the Vatican in decades.
The Pope appeared determined to move quickly to try to defuse the anger but the fury of many radicals was unabated last night and there were fears for his safety.
Iraqi jihadists issued a video of a scimitar slicing a cross in two, intercut with images of Benedict and the burning Twin Towers.
The website run in the name of the Mujahedeen Army, used by extremist groups who have claimed responsibility for attacks in Iraq, was addressed to "You dog of Rome" and threatened to "shake your thrones and break your crosses in your home".
In a reference to suicide bombing, it said: "We swear to God to send you people who adore death as much as you adore life."
The threat of violence against Catholics and Christians was emphasised by the murder of an Italian nun in Somalia. Sister Leonella, 66, was shot as she walked from the children's hospital where she worked to her house in Mogadishu, a city recently taken over by an Islamic government.
A Vatican spokesman said he feared her death was "the fruit of violence and irrationality arising from the current situation".
Father Frederico Lombardi said he hoped it was an isolated event. "We are worried about this wave of hatred and hope it doesn't have any grave consequences for the Church around the world," he said.
The murder suggested that extremists are determined to use the Pope's embarrassment as an excuse for violence.
In Turkey, state minister Mehmet Aydin said the Pope seemed to be saying he was sorry for the outrage but not necessarily for his remarks.
"You either have to say this, 'I'm sorry' in a proper way or not say it at all," he told reporters in Istanbul.
There were fierce denunciations of the pontiff from Iran. The English-language Tehran Times called his lecture in Bavaria last week "code words for a new crusade".
The powerful cleric Ahmad Khatami told theological students in the holy city of Qom: The "Pope should fall on his knees in front of a senior Muslim cleric and try to understand Islam."
But the Turkish government signalled it was content and that the Pope's visit to the country in November can go ahead.
In his sermon yesterday at the Papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo outside Rome, Benedict spoke amid strengthened security.
He said: "I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims.
"These in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought. I hope this serves to appease hearts and to clarify the true meaning of my address."
No other Pope is thought to have made such an apology.
Comment: Well, this is one way to start a much bigger war between Muslims and Christians. The question is: who benefits??
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Papal ignorance: AN EXCELLENT COMMENT
By Khalid Amayreh
Palestine-info
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Yes, we both have our misunderstandings and misgivings and peculiar beliefs and convictions, both as individuals and as religious and cultural communities. However, it would be unforgivable if we allowed these differences to marginalize let alone neutralize the fundamental common grounds between our religions, commonly called the Abrahamic religions.
There is always a huge reservoir of quotes, positive and negative, about religions and religious symbols. A Muslim or non-Muslim could easily amass a preponderance of quotes and texts from the Old Testament, for example, to prove that the Bible advocates murder.
In truth, the Prophet of Islam, Muahmmed (Peace be on him), never ever really called for spreading religion with the sword. The Quran states in Surat (chapter) al-Nahl, v. 134, "Invite to the path of thy Lord with wisdom and good advice, and argue with them kindly, for Thy Lord is well aware of those who go astray and He is aware of those who follow true guidance."
Indeed, the very next verse states that "if thou should punish (aggressors) punish only in proportion to the aggression inflicted upon you, but if ye be patient, it will be better for the patient."
Let us take Indonesia , the largest Muslim country in terms of population size, as an example. Historically, it is well known that no Muslim armies had ever set foot on the huge archipelago. Yet all these millions chose to embrace the religion endeared to them by Arabian merchants and sailors who had exemplified to the natives the Islamic ideals of honesty, purity and faithfulness.
A few days ago, a Jewish lady, who had lost 8 relatives in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, appeared on Aljazeera TV, explaining why she decided to revert to Islam only a few months after the landmark tragedy. She simply said that "I found truth in Islam." The same can be said about the estimated 20,000 Americans who have embraced Islam after 9/11.
Besides, what modicum of objectivity and honesty can there be in the words of an emperor who had lost his throne and empire because of Islam.? What else would we expect from the mouth of that loser?
Furthermore, the Pope should have realized that he lives in a glass house. I want to remind him of the history of the Catholic Church upon the helm of which he now sits. It was the Church that burned scientists alive, it was the Church that invented the Indulgences and Simony systems, it was the Catholic world that invented the Inquisitions, the pogroms, and all other abominations associated with its dark practices against critics and opponents, including Christians who didn't extend fealty to Rome .
And the Crusades? And the Holocaust? Must we re-open these dark chapters again? Do we have to remind his holiness that in the past century alone, over a hundred million Christians were killed by other Christians in numerous wars, including two world wars? May we remind his holiness that he himself sixty years ago was a member of the Hitler Youth? And then how about the spread of Catholicism in South America ? Was it done through the example of platonic love and self-abnegation?"
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Israel cluster bomb use in Lebanon "outrageous": U.N.
Reuters
19/09/2006
Israel dropped at least 350,000 cluster bomblets on south Lebanon in its war with Hizbollah guerrillas, mostly when the conflict was all but over, leaving a deadly legacy for civilians, a U.N. official said on Tuesday.
"The outrageous fact is that nearly all of these munitions were fired in the last three to four days of the war," David Shearer, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, told a news conference in Beirut.
"Outrageous because by that stage the conflict had been largely resolved in the form of (U.N. Security Council) Resolution 1701," he said.
The resolution adopted on August 11 halted 34 days of fighting three days later. A truce has largely held since then.
Israel denies using cluster bombs illegally.
Shearer said Israel had not explained why it fired so many cluster bombs across the south as the war drew to a close. Nor had it responded to a U.N. request for the map coordinates of the cluster bomb strikes to hasten clearance efforts.
U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland has called Israel "completely immoral" for using them in residential areas.
The United Nations has so far identified 516 cluster bomb strike locations and says 30 to 40 percent of the bomblets they scattered over the south failed to explode at the time.
Only about 17,000 bomblets have been defused so far and the United Nations says it could take up to 30 months to destroy most of the unexploded sub-munitions. The British-based Land mine Action group has said clearing the south could take a decade.
Shearer said cluster bombs had killed or wounded an average of three people a day since the war ended, with 15 killed, including a child, and 83 wounded, of whom 23 are children.
Clearance efforts have so far focused on villages, schools and playing areas, but will soon shift toward farmland, which provides 70 percent of household incomes in the south, he said.
Comment: Every one of them "made in the USA".
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Israeli Military Intelligence knew about Hezbollah kidnap plans
09/18/2006
Haaretz
Military Intelligence had clear information about an impending kidnap attempt by Hezbollah shortly before the Lebanese group carried out its cross-border raid on July 12, according to an internal inquiry conducted by the Israel Defense Forces.
The information - which could, if properly handled, have prevented the kidnapping of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser - was not analyzed and passed on to the troops in time, the report indicated.
Comment: Please note that it was the IDF that crossed into Lebanon, rather than Hizb'allah crossing into Israel as reported by most mainstream sources.
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Deadly harvest: The Lebanese fields sown with cluster bombs
By Patrick Cockburn in Nabatiyeh
Published: 18 September 2006
The war in Lebanon has not ended. Every day, some of the million bomblets which were fired by Israeli artillery during the last three days of the conflict kill four people in southern Lebanon and wound many more.
The casualty figures will rise sharply in the next month as villagers begin the harvest, picking olives from trees whose leaves and branches hide bombs that explode at the smallest movement. Lebanon's farmers are caught in a deadly dilemma: to risk the harvest, or to leave the produce on which they depend to rot in the fields.
In a coma in a hospital bed in Nabatiyeh lies Hussein Ali Ahmad, a 70-year-old man from the village of Yohmor. He was pruning an orange tree outside his house last week when he dislodged a bomblet; it exploded, sending pieces of shrapnel into his brain, lungs and kidneys. "I know he can hear me because he squeezes my hand when I talk to him," said his daughter, Suwad, as she sat beside her father's bed in the hospital.
At least 83 people have been killed by cluster munitions since the ceasefire, according to independent monitors.
Some Israeli officers are protesting at the use of cluster bombs, each containing 644 small but lethal bomblets, against civilian targets in Lebanon. A commander in the MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems) unit told the Israeli daily Haaretz that the army had fired 1,800 cluster rockets, spraying 1.2 million bomblets over houses and fields. "In Lebanon, we covered entire villages with cluster bombs," he said. "What we did there was crazy and monstrous." What makes the cluster bombs so dangerous is that 30 per cent of the bomblets do not detonate on impact. They can lie for years - often difficult to see because of their small size, on roofs, in gardens, in trees, beside roads or in rubbish - waiting to explode when disturbed.
In Nabatiyeh, the modern 100-bed government hospital has received 19 victims of cluster bombs since the end of the war. As we arrived, a new patient, Ahmad Sabah, a laboratory technician at the hospital, was being rushed into the emergency room. A burly man of 45, he was unconscious on a stretcher. Earlier in the morning, he had gone up to the flat roof of his house to check the water tank. While there, he must have touched a pile of logs he was keeping for winter fires. Unknown to him, a bomblet had fallen into the woodpile a month earlier. The logs shielded him from the full force of the blast, but when we saw him, doctors were still trying to find out the extent of his injuries.
"For us, the war is still going on, though there was a cease-fire on 14 August," said Dr Hassan Wazni, the director of the hospital. "If the cluster bombs had all exploded at the time they landed, it would not be so bad, but they are still killing and maiming people."
The bomblets may be small, but they explode with devastating force. On the morning of the ceasefire, Hadi Hatab, an 11-year old boy, was brought dying to the hospital. "He must have been holding the bomb close to him," Dr Wazni said. "It took off his hands and legs and the lower part of his body."We went to Yohmor to find where Hussein Ali Ahmad had received his terrible wounds while pruning his orange tree. The village is at the end of a broken road, six miles south of Nabatiyeh, and is overlooked by the ruins of Beaufort Castle, a crusader fortress on a ridge above the deep valley along which the Litani river runs.
Israeli bombs and shells have turned about a third of the houses in Yohmor into concrete sandwiches, one floor falling on top of another under the impact of explosions. Some families camp in the ruins. Villagers said that they were most worried by the cluster bombs still infesting their gardens, roofs and fruit trees. In the village street, were the white vehicles of the Manchester-based Mines Advisory Group (MAG), whose teams are trying to clear the bomblets.
It is not an easy job. Whenever members of one of the MAG teams finds and removes a bomblet, they put a stick, painted red on top and then yellow, in the ground. There are so many of these sticks that it looks as if some sinister plant had taken root and is flourishing in the village.
"The cluster bombs all landed in the last days of the war," said Nuhar Hejazi, a surprisingly cheerful 65-year-old woman. "There were 35 on the roof of our house and 200 in our garden so we can't visit our olive trees." People in Yohmor depend on their olive trees and the harvest should begin now before the rains, but the trees are still full of bomblets. "My husband and I make 20 cans of oil a year which we need to sell," Mrs Hejazi says. "Now we don't know what to do." The sheer number of the bomblets makes it almost impossible to remove them all.
Frederic Gras, a de-mining expert formerly in the French navy, who is leading the MAG teams in Yohmor, says: "In the area north of the Litani river, you have three or four people being killed every day by cluster bombs. The Israeli army knows that 30 per cent of them do not explode at the time they are fired so they become anti-personnel mines."
Why did the Israeli army do it? The number of cluster bombs fired must have been greater than 1.2 million because, in addition to those fired in rockets, many more were fired in 155mm artillery shells. One Israeli gunner said he had been told to "flood" the area at which they were firing but was given no specific targets. M. Gras, who personally defuses 160 to 180 bomblets a day, says this is the first time he seen cluster bombs used against heavily populated villages.
An editorial in Haaretz said that the mass use of this weapon by the Israeli Defence Forces was a desperate last-minute attempt to stop Hizbollah's rocket fire into northern Israel. Whatever the reason for the bombardment, the villagers in south Lebanon will suffer death and injury from cluster bombs as they pick their olives and oranges for years to come.
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Palestinian officials allege torture
18/09/2006
Christian Science Monitor
Three ministers claim Israel used a banned method of interrogation on them known as the shabah.
RAMALLAH, WEST BANK - A government minister in the Palestinian Authority, who was arrested and held by Israeli authorities for more than six weeks this summer, says that during his interrogation he was tied for hours in a painful position known as the shabah. The technique, which Israeli security officials had argued was an effective way to put pressure on a suspect, was banned by Israel's Supreme Court in 1999.
An East Jerusalem lawyer says that two other top-level officials in the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, who were arrested in the aftermath of the June 25 kidnapping by Hamas militants of an Israeli army corporal, have been subjected to the same treatment.
"For five, six, seven hours, they would take me and tie my hands behind my back like this, and with my feet up, in the shabah," says Minister of Labor Mohammed Barghouthi, recalling his interrogation in an interview in his office.
"To go from the minister's office to a shabah seat, it was quite a shock," says Barghouthi, who is not a Hamas member and says he was offered the ministry appointment primarily for his management experience: He founded a successful advertising firm and has been a school superintendent. "It caused a lot of pain in my neck and back, but the psychological pain is much worse."
The General Security Service (GSS), also known as the Shin Bet, responded by e-mail that "all the interrogations of the ISA (Israeli Security Agency) [including Barghouti's] are executed according to the laws of the Supreme Court of Israel."
In 1999, a nine-judge panel of the Supreme Court unanimously outlawed methods of physical force that were routinely used by Shin Bet. Techniques banned in the decision included holding and tying the prisoner in painful positions, violent shaking, sleep deprivation, covering the head with a sack, and playing loud music.
Senior officials in Israel's security establishment opposed the decision because, they said, it could weaken investigative powers by disallowing techniques that might be instrumental in getting suspects to confess. Exceptions may be made, the court decided, if someone is suspected of having information about an imminent terrorist attack.
"But none of these men is considered a ticking bomb," Eyal Hareuveni, spokesman for the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, says of the Palestinian cabinet members and members of parliament who were arrested. "The Supreme Court said that in cases of a 'ticking bomb,' investigators can use methods of interrogation that we interpret as torture. The number of complaints over the use of this decreased since 1999, but we still get dozens of complaints every year."
Jessica Montell, the executive director of Btselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, says the Supreme Court decision made a significant impact, but that it is clear the method is still used.
"Since 1999, the numbers of people subjected to physical force have gone way down, but there are enough cases to be worrying," she says. "Before 1999, it was just an assembly line of torture, some lighter, some more serious. Now the people who are being subjected to torture or to other physical abuse are people who have information that the GSS wants access to. It doesn't justify it, but it's much more focused."
It isn't clear what kind of information investigators expected to get from Barghouthi. "All the questions were about my role as a minister, how I became a minister," he says.
Barghouthi says he was never beaten, but on the day of his arrest he was shackled, blindfolded, and had his cellphone confiscated. He says that the incarceration included 35 days in a windowless, solitary cell in Jerusalem's Russian Compound. "Night and day, I never knew what time it was," he says. "I never saw my face. I never saw the sun. I had no change of clothes."
He says interrogators threatened to arrest his wife or his father if he didn't cooperate. By the time of his release, he says he had lost 26 pounds.
Barghouthi and Fadi Kawasmi, the lawyer, say two other officials were subjected to similar treatment in interrogation: Minister for Jerusalem Affairs Khaled Abu Arafe and Deputy Prime Minister Nasser ed-Din es-Shah. Mr. Kawasmi, who is Mr. Abu Arafe's attorney, says his client and Dr. Shah told him of the treatment during visits he made to them while incarcerated.
One of the arguments Kawasmi used to secure their release was that Israel had not acted until now as if being a member of Hamas's Change and Reform Party was illegal. Israel, he points out, allowed the Palestinian elections to take place in January and for the Hamas-affiliated candidates to run in East Jerusalem, which has officially been annexed to Israel.
"You let them participate," Kawasmi says. "You can't come and arrest them now and accuse them of being members of a parliament chosen by an election in which you allowed them to run."
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Cancer patients in the Gaza Strip unable to reach Israeli hospitals for treatment
Monday, 18 September 2006
PalestineNet.org
A report issued by the Palestinian Ministry of Health revealed that Israeli authorities deliberately prevent the transport of cancer patients from the Gaza Strip to Israeli hospitals for treatment. The Palestinians must cross the Erez Checkpoint in the northern Gaza Strip's Beit Hanoun.
The Department of Ambulances and Emergency for Gaza Strip hospitals reported that "occupation authorities refused to allow access of cancer patients from the Gaza Strip into Israeli hospitals to receive the necessary treatment."
A 50% decline has been seen in cancer patients allowed to pass for chemotherapy and other treatments unavailable in the Gaza Strip due to closures.
The Ministry of Health reported, "Twenty percent of the cancer patients in the Gaza Strip, including women and children, were receiving daily treatment in Israeli hospitals but but now only half of them are able to reach these hospitals.
The Erez Crossing has been closed since 25 June when an Israeli soldier was captured while invading the southern Gaza Strip.
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Muslim group cites bias incidents
AP
Mon Sep 18, 2006
WASHINGTON - Bias incidents against Muslims rose nearly one-third last year to a 12-year high, fueled by growing rhetoric against the group, a national Islamic civil rights group said Monday.
Civil rights complaints made by Muslims - which include harassment, violence and discrimination - increased 29.6 percent to 1,972, according to the study by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Hate crimes rose 8.6 percent to 153.
The group's legal director Arsalan Iftikhar, blamed the jump on "anti-Muslim feeling and the resulting acts of bias is the growth in Islamophobic rhetoric that has flooded the Internet and talk radio" in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Nationwide, nine states and Washington, D.C., accounted for nearly 79 percent of all bias incidents reported to the group for 2005.
California was first at 19 percent, followed by Illinois (13 percent), New York (9 percent), Texas (8 percent), Virginia (7 percent), Florida (6 percent), Washington, D.C. (5 percent), and New Jersey, Maryland and Ohio (4 percent each).
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"The European people should stand with the Palestinians"
Interview with Dr. Musa Abu Marzook, Deputy Chairman of Hamas Political Office
Tuesday, 29 August 2006
Question: Currently, there are talks between Hamas and Fatah in order to build a common government. Do you believe that it will be possible to build this government and what is its aim?
Dr. Marzook: Yes, we believe in the common government and this was our policy right from the beginning. One of our aims before the last elections was to share responsbilities with Fatah, and in general to have a shared government between all Palestinian groups. We have a lot of problems and we have to carry responsibility for them together with the others. After Abu Mazen assigned Mr. Haniyeh to be Prime Minister and to establish a new government, we opened discussions with all of the groups to form the Palestinian government. They refused because there is a lot of pressure coming from the US and others not to join the Hamas government. After a few months, they expected the government of Hamas to fail. This was the main reason to refuse being in an aligned government. But the Palestinian people stood with Hamas and supported its government. Now we opened again discussions with Fatah and the others. I guess that now we will reach an agreement between Hamas and Fatah to establish an aligned government. But we said yesterday officially that Abu Mazen should ask the Israelis to release the Members of Parliament and other Hamas members who were kidnapped from the Westbank before we start to discuss about the government. We have opened discussions with the other groups, but at the same time we have to put pressure on the Israeli government to release the Palestinian members of Parliament and government who have been arrested.
Question: Do you believe that the government will be formed?
Dr. Marzook: I think the government will be formed, but currently there are some difficulties. Eight ministers and 21 Members of Parliament are in prison. Yesterday, the deputy prime minister was arrested. Still, I hope that we will soon be able to form the government.
Question: Some people say that the price to form the government is to accept Israel as a state. Is this true?
Dr. Marzook: No, there is a full agreement between Hamas and Fatah and in this agreement we did not talk about this issue. To recognize Israel is not a condition to form this government and it is not on our Agenda as Hamas.
Question: It is obvious that Hamas has won the elections because it is the only political force that openly stated that it would carry on with the Intifada. In which form the resistance struggle could be carried on?
Dr. Marzook: It is unusual to have a government under conditions of occupation. The government carries all the responsibilites while the occupation has the entire authority. The government can never work without the permission of the occupying force. At the same time, in this situation we have to have resistance. Without resistance, the occupation will last for a long time or forever. When we took over the government, we said that at the same time we will continue resistance. This is our project, our agenda. Under any circumstances, we will not lift the resistance struggle against the occuption.
Question: The Israeli aggression against Lebanon failed this time. It turned out to be a victory for the Lebanese resistance, especially Hisbollah. Does this influence your resistance struggle?
Dr. Marzook: It is a victory for our resistance, because the victory that was gained by Hisbollah is a victory for all the resistance struggles in the area. It is a victory for Hamas resistance, for Iraqi resistance, for anyone who is against aggression, against the occupation and in favor of freedom. After the victory of Hisbollah, nobody thinks that Israel is still a big country in the Middle East. The US can't say anymore that there is a new Middle East whose head would be Israel. After the victory of Hisbollah, who are a small party, Israel can't claim anymore to be a super-power in the Middle East.
Question: Many people in Europe accuse Hamas to be against Jews and to plan to kick them out of Palestine. What is your position on Jewish people living in the historic territory of Palestine?
Dr. Marzook: We are not against Jews. In Islam, if I refuse to believe in the Jews' prophets, I am not a Muslim. Muslims have to recognize all Jewish prophets, while on the other hand, the Jews do not recognize our prophet. Secondly, the Jews lived with us hundreds of years without any problems. They lived in Yemen, Morocco, Tunisia, Iraq, Egypt and Syria without any problems. There were no massacres. But if you look to Europe's history, the situation changes. They were many massacres. Many of the Jews who used to live in Arab countries, had come there fleeing the massacres in Europe. We as Muslims cannot harm any other people who believe in other religions. Christians and Jews lived with us without many problems, also in Palestine and Jerusalem. The problems started with the massive Jewish immigration to Palestine, when Jews started kicking Palestinians out of their country. That is the reason why we fight Israel. We haven't any problems with Jews, we do have problems with those people who pushed Palestinians out of our country. We are looking for justice. If Christians or even Muslims did they same thing, we would fight them as well because we are looking for justice.
Question: In Europe, many people fear Hamas and other parties of political Islam because they believe that the model of society Hamas wants to implement is that of an Islamic state. Could you briefly explain to us what kind of society you are aiming at?
Dr. Marzook: First of all, Hamas is now striving to remove the occupation and to establish a Palestinian state that is governed by the Palestinians. We are in the government right now and we are following the Palestinian constitution. Anyway, there is a lot of propaganda against the Islamic state. Sometimes out of ideological standpoints, sometimes because of misinformation or misunderstandings. I believe that the Islamic state means more justice, more freedom and more democracy than in any Arab state right now. Many people think that an Islamic state would be like Iran, but this is not exactly the model. In any case, we are striving for an independent country, governed by the Palestinian people and they have the right to choose any constitution they wish after the liberation.
Question: What is your message to the European people?
Dr. Marzook: They should look at the Palestinian dilemma. There is a common language between us, the language of justice and freedom. We have the right to establish our country, to establish an independent state and we are asking the European people to correct the historical mistake they committed when they helped the Israelis without looking at the Palestinan rights. The European people should stand right now with the Palestinian people.
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Dutch company involved in construction of the Separation Wall
The Electronic Intifada
18 September 2006
Research undertaken by United Civilians for Peace, a Dutch NGO-platform dedicated to promoting justice and peace in Palestine and Israel, has revealed that Dutch company Lima Holding BV, in Spijkenisse, is involved in the construction of the illegal Wall that Israel is building in the occupied West Bank.
Lima Holding, which operates in Israel under the Riwal brand name, provides mobile cranes for putting into place the up to 9-metres high concrete elements that make up the Wall. The exact scope and nature of the company's involvement in the construction of the Wall is yet to be determined.
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| Riwal is the main sponsor of soccer club FC Dordrecht. |
The company's role in the construction of the Wall became known after a report by Dutch television's Netwerk, which showed one of Lima Holding's cranes building the Wall and carrying the Riwal logo. A Dutch journalist of RTV Rijnmond recognised the Riwal brand name as belonging to a company in Dordrecht, a city near Rotterdam. In Dordrecht, Riwal is the main sponsor of soccer club FC Dordrecht.
The journalist of RTV Rijnmond did an item about the issue, for which he approached the Dutch company. In a statement, the company admitted its involvement in the building of the Wall and argued that the related activities were accepted and executed purely as a "commercial order".
Following the item of RTV Rijnmond, Bert Koenders, foreign affairs spokesperson of the Dutch Labour party, asked Ben Bot, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, parliamentary questions. In one of his answers, Bot claimed that Lima Holding was in fact an Israeli company and that the Dutch Riwal company was not directly involved in the construction of the Wall. Remarkably, the Minister based this answer exclusively on information provided by the Dutch company.
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| Dick Schalekamp, Jaap Schalekamp en Doron Livnat, the owners of Riwal. |
To clarify the ownership of the company participating in the construction of the Wall, United Civilians for Peace approached research firm Profundo. With little effort, Profundo proved that Lima Holding is 100 per cent owned by two Dutch holding companies: D.Schalekamp Beheer BV and MDN Holding BV. Dick Schalekamp owns D.Schalekamp Beheer, while Doron Livnat, an Israeli businessman living in the Netherlands, owns MDN Holding.
Moreover, Schalekamp and Livnat are two of the three owners of Schalekamp Beheer BV, the holding company that runs the Riwal Group's activities in countries such as the Netherlands, Denmark and France.
On 16 September, the research by United Civilians for Peace was made public through an article in Het Financieele Dagblad (the Dutch version of The Financial Times). Bert Koenders announced he would seek further clarification from the Dutch government.
Martin Siepermann is the lobby & campaign coordinator of United Civilians for Peace.
Related Links
United Civilians for Peace
Dutch television's Netwerk
Rivals of Riwal suspected of threats, theft, burning company's cranes, Guy Leshem, Ha'aretz
Profundo Research on Riwal (PDF)
Nederlands bedrijf bouwt aan muur in Israël, Financieele Dagblad (16 September 2006)
Parliamentary Questions (PDF) Bert Koenders (18 September 2006)
Riwal
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One Nation, Under Bush
Was 9/11 an inside job?
Kim Bredesen
Le Monde diplomatique (Norway)
More and more people in the US are convinced that the American authorities are concealing their involvement in the 9/11 tragedy. Statements from witnesses, marked confidential for several years, now show that controlled demolition may have taken place. The US government had long anticipated such an incident - as the Republican document from 2000 Rebuilding America's defences indicates. The 9/11Truth organisation believes that the US probably orchestrated an incident of this type in order to justify the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the curtailing of civil liberties within the US through the introduction of the Patriot Act. It has now emerged that in 1962 the America's most senior military leader devised a plan for a premeditated attack on Americans, which would have involved shooting down a passenger plane, so that the blame could be cast on Cuba. So why should this be excluded today? Many also believe that Pakistani intelligence cooperated with the CIA and Al-Qaeda because it transferred significant sums of money to the hijacker Mohammed Atta in the days leading up to the 9/11. They even had Bin Laden under surveillance during the time of his treatment in a military hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan, in September 2001.
Most of us would think it strange if the impact of a passenger plane wasn't sufficient to cause a skyscraper to collapse. So there were few who doubted what it was that hit the Twin Towers on the 11 September 2001 or the identities of the perpetrators. However, in the intervening years, several individuals and groups, both in North America and in Europe, began to doubt whether this necessarily constitutes accuracy. For them, a set of contradictory circumstances surrounding the attacks do not correspond with the explanations of the American authorities and the Congress-appointed 9/11 Commission.[1]
A key reason for this doubt could be that there are witnesses of 9/11 who describe events that do not tally with events in the official story.[2] An example is provided by onlookers who heard and saw what they believed to be explosions around the Twin Towers before they were struck by the planes. Policemen thought it looked like "planned implosion".[3] Fireman Richard Banaciski reported that: "It seemed like on television when they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions." Assistant Fire Commissioner Stephen Gregory claimed: "I saw a flash flash flash [at] the lower level of the building. You know, like when they demolish a building."[4]
Another controversial witness statement came from maintenance worker, William Rodriguez who was working in the North Tower on 9/11. In an interview with New York Magazine,[5] he claimed that he first heard a huge explosion when he was in one of the sub-basements of the skyscraper and witnessed the appearance of victims, the skin burnt off their arms by fires in the lift shaft. After the explosion in the sub-basement he heard another one from above. It was a Boeing 767. Williams was the last survivor to be rescued from the World Trade Center's Ground Zero. He was hailed as a hero and invited to visit George Bush and the White House. Later, when he attempted to publicise his story about the sub-basement explosion, it was rejected by the American authorities. He has now filed a lawsuit against these same authorities under the RICO Statute, a legal ruling originally designed to prosecute Mafia families.
Besides witness statements describing a controlled demolition of the Twin Towers with explosives, critics of the Bush administration believe there are several sets of circumstances around 9/11 that give good reason to suspect the official story is incorrect. It is a fact that none of the four hijacked planes were intercepted by fighter planes. That this did not happen, combined with the fact that the majority of the air force was engaged in military exercises, has given weight to suspicion that the American air defence force gave the order to "stand down" so that the terrorist attacks could proceed unhindered. Ano
