Monday 28 February 2005

Was Hunter Thompson Suicided?

Nothing would suprise me, IF Hunter was on to something big then chances are that they killed him for it, like they have done so many times. At the end of the day, who knows, everytime someone controversial dies and it's a reported suicide there are people who say it was Them who dunnit. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. It doesn't change the fact that we will no longer revel in the words of a Master.

Sherman Skolnick has addressed this issue Monday, 2/21, on Jeff Rense's show,www.rense.com, & Tuesday, 2/22, on his own Cloak‡ show, www.cloakanddagger.ca, as well.

RIP Skolnick reports that Thompson was working on an expose of the homosexual pedophile underground which permeates the MSM, Washington, DC, & BOTH political parties, a la the Franklin Coverup scandal of the 80's & 90's.

The danger of the Jeff Gannon scandal becoming the next dot to connect the BusShes to Franklin is causing panic among the MSM & DC, according to Skolnick.

Skolnick claims that Gannon AKA Gluckert is really Johnny Gosch, who was kidnapped as a child in 1982 & pressed into a pedophile prostitution ring which was directly connected to Franklin. SS advises to google "Johnny Gosch" & be amazed at the results.

Hunter Thompson's "suicide" then might be an attempt by SOMEONE to delay the dot-connecting.

Male whore scandal hits White House.

Kingpin, Jeff Gannon, stayed upstairs with Bush. Reportedly, CBS White House boss John Roberts and Matt Drudge are implicated.

CBS official reportedly secret co-owner of male whore house tied to Bush has not paid taxes.
Escort Service used by U.S. House and Senate members and Federal Reserve Bank Board Directors.

Full story...

HUNTER S.THOMPSON SILENCED WITH 'SILENCER'...?

The Misunderstood Assassination of Israel's Yitzhak Rabin

by Trowbridge H. Ford

No democratic, developed country has more secretive, conspiratorial ways than the state of Israel, and they were never more in evidence than when its Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated on November 4, 1995 after attending a "Yes to Peace, No to Víolence" rally in Jerusalem by a young, 3rd-year-law student at Bar-Ilan University, Yigal Amir. While the media portrayed the killing as the result of a right-wing fanatic, opposed to any peace settlement with the Palestinians, it was actually caused by a covert operation gone wrong, reminiscent of John Hinckley's nearly successful assassination attempt nearly 15 years earlier on President Reagan rather than the mythic 'lone assassin' theory which people in the Western world have become accustomed to when such killings occur.

The real key to understanding the murder is appreciating the close connection that Israel established with the United States during its 40-year existence. Without Washington's increasing support, the Israeli state never would have made it, given the problems the Disapora and Holocaust had caused masses of Jewish people trying to resettle in Palestine. The Truman administration's prodding of the new Labour government in Britain to give up its Palestinian Mandate was followed by the May 1948 war in which Israeli forces triumphed against all the odds over those from the weak Arab states of Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt.

While Atlee's government attributed Truman's stance of pamdering to Jewish voters - and the President did acknowledge to a group of Mid-East ambassadors that he had no Arab constituents to contend with - he was genuinely committed to the Zionist cause. To enhance Democratic chances at the polls, Truman pressed for the admission of 100,000 Jewish refugees, and called for the partition of the country. When the Mandate expired on May 16, 1948, the USA, along with the USSR, immediately recognized the new state of Israel. Still, Truman's support of the Zionist cause did not play a significant role in his re-election in November.

During the War of Independence, Rabin, a native of Palestine, was in an ideal position to take military command of the situation as the British were forced by Jewish terrorists to withdraw. Since he had helped British forces to attack Vichy ones in Lebanon during WWII, he was ideally suited by 1944 to take over command of the Palmach commando unit of the Haganah - what would become the nucleus of the Israeli Defence Force - which took the lead in ousting Arabs from key territory around Tel Aviv, and on the road to Jerusalem. While the Palmach failed to secure the Old City after the British finally departed, Rabin was still seen as the leading hero of the struggle.

The most controversial incident of Rabin's activities during the struggle for independence occurred when he prevented on June 22, 1948 a ship-load of Jewish Freedom Fighters, and munitions on the Altelena from joining up with Menachem Begin's Irgun guerrillas, who had blown up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in July 1946, fearing that it would break the agreement for the cessation of hostilities. When the ship from France landed at Klar Vitin, Rabin's forces set about seizing the 1,000 men, and confiscating the cargo, ultimately resulting in fighting during which six of them were killed. The ship then sailed on the Tel Aviv, and before the whole confrontation was settled, another 10 died.

"Later," Ben Shapiro in the article, "Exploding the Myth about Rabin," wrote: "Rabin bragged how he had 'bumped them off on the deck of the burning ship and while they were trying to swim to safety.' "

During the Suez Crisis, Rabin, as commander of the Harel Brigade, was most eager to take advantage of its incursion on October 28, 1956 into the Sinai towards the Suez Canal, but the failure of Tel Aviv, Paris, and London to clear the whole operation with Washington resulted in it all going for naught. The invaders were confident that they could force Eisenhower's hand into backing the ouster of Egypt's uppity dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser, but the American President reacted with unprecedented opposition and speed, causing all those involved, especially Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, Defence Minister Shimon Peres, and IDF chief Moshe Dayan, never to forget the lesson.

In 1964, Rabin became the IDF's Chief-of-Staff, and he planned to pay back Washington and Cairo for the humiliation he and the IDF had experienced eights years earlier - what resulted in the devastating Six-Day War three years later. This time, Israel revealed its aggression to no one, counting on the fact that it could dictate Washington's response after the fact, thanks to tight security its military-intelligence establishment was noted for, and the political influence of Jewish Americans on the beleagued Johnson administration, bogged down in Vietnam, after the deed was done. There would be no babbling by the Israeli Prime Minister and her defence establishment to Washington about what was in the works this time, as had happened with Prime Minister Anthony Eden et. al. during the Suez Crisis.

The Israeli attacks on its neighbors, starting on June 4, 1967, were masterful deceptions, fooling everyone about who was attacking who with what - making Germany's deceptions before its soldiers marched into Poland in 1939, and the CIA's ones before Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 look like the most crude attempts. The only surprise in the whole operation was the unexpected appearance of the American spy ship, USS Liberty, off El Arish on Egypt's Mediterranean coast on June 8th during the height of the struggle.

As James Bamford has described in the greatest detail in Body of Secrets, the Israelis attacked the snooper with the greatest force from sea and air for fear that it was montoring the slaughter that Rabin's forces were carrying out on shore against Egypting prisoners: "...Israeli troops killed, in cold blood, as many as 1,000 Egyptian prisoners in the Sinai, including some 400 in the sand dunes of El Arish." (p. 202) In the attempt to prevent the war crimes from coming out, the IDF killed 34 servicemen on the ship, wounded 171 more, and nearly sank the ship itself. It was only after the Israelis had failed to eradicate the mission that they admitted the attacks were a mistake, and agreed to pay measly compensation for what they had done.

To contain the damage done by the assault, Rabin was sent to Washington as its new Ambassador, and he flouted diplomatic convention by going out of his way to make friends with members of the Nixon's new Republican administration. Rabin's close relationship with NSA Henry Kissinger and DNSA Alexander Haig also came in most handy with the Syrians and the Egyptians tried to pay back Israel for the 1967 war by springing the Yom Kippur War on it in October 1972. Thanks to information NSA supplied the Israelis, though, Ariel Sharon's forces were able to beat back the Egyptian forces behind the Suez Canal, and the Syrian threat to the Sea of Galilee was stymied. When the Soviets threatened to intervene in the war, Haig forced Breznev to back down by placing American forces around the world on the highest alert short of imminient war.

In reading the former Nixon Chief of Staff's book, Inner Circles: How America Changed the World, one gets a good glimpse of just how Haig manipulated Nixon while Rabin was manipulating Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in the defense of Jordan from Syrian attacks. Little wonder that when she retired shortly thereafter, Rabin triumphed over Peres in a bitter battle for the Labor Party leadership, and succeeded her as Prime Minister. Three years later, though, Rabin's coalition government fell apart over a financial scandal, and he went into the political wilderness.

During his absence, the governments in Tel Aviv and Washington worked continuously to break down Arab opposition to Israel's existence, while trying to get Israeli voters to agree to some kind of swap of land for security. By this time, Israel had more land than it needed, and the Palestinians were becoming increasingly isolated. The Camp David Accords that President Carter negotiated between Egypt's Anwar Sadat and Begin ended this country support of an armed Palestinian struggle, though Sadat was to soon lose his life at the hands of Muslim extremists. Sharon's IDF responded by driving Yasser Arafat's PLO out of Lebanon. In 1984, Rabin joined a government of national unity, and soon thereafter he, as Minister of Defence, was obliged to suppress the first Intifada.

The trouble with a bipartisan attempt in both Tel Aviv and Washington to solve the Palestinian problem was that it was done without consulting their leaders while Iran joined the countries willing to support their increasingly fragmented leadership. Israel had long been the Shah's closest friend in the area, and his overthrow, coupled with Sadat's assassination, left Begin's government nearly surrounded by enemies, and too few resources for dealing with them. Iran's SAVAK (the National Intelligence Organization) had long done much dirty work for the Mossad and CIA, its joint creators, and they had reciprocated in kind, but their joint operations were ultimately its undoing when the young mllahs it had recruited turned on the Shah.

As a result, Israel had to increasingly do its own dirty work - what it had only seriously done before in reaction to the killing at its Olympic athletes at the Munich Games in 1972 . The Mossad had Said Hammami, the PLO's London representative, shot dead by agents of Abu Nidal's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in January 1978 when it feared that he, an Arab moderate, was attempting to negotiate a peace deal with the Israelis for Arafat. "The conflict had made little prgoress ten years later," Tony Geraghty added in The Bullet Catchers, "when Afarfat's military commander, Abu Jihad (real name, Khalil al-Wariz) was assassination with military precision at his villa near Tunis, probably by agents of Israel's secret service, Mossad." (p. 376). During the interim, Nidal terrorist group had seen to the highjacking of the Italian liner Achille Lauro, the assassination of Jewish invalid Leon Klinghoffer, and the shooting up of the airports in Rome and Vienna during the terrorist countdown to the shooting of Sweden's statsminister Olof Palme in Stockholm on February 28, 1986 - what was intended to trigger a solution to all the problems the West and Israel faced with a non-nuclear conclusion to the Cold War with the USSR.

When Rabin proved unable to crush the Intifada, and the Soviet bloc and Union collapsed in a peaceful way, Rabin geared his election campaign in 1992 to achieving a mandate for a permanent peace with the Palestinians - what Washington outsider Bill Clinton, just elected President, was most eager to achieve. Upon becoming Premier, Rabin ordered Israel's General Security Service, Shin Bet, to focus its activities on the right-wingers opposed to any settlement, and appointed close associate, Karmi Gillon, its director general, instead of the veteran and more qualified Gideon Ezra, to carry out the mission which Gillon himself had pointed out the need of. Several senior Shin Bet people quit in protest over the new mission. "This policy change resulted in the most dangerous and bitter split ever in Israeli society," Uri Dan and Dennis Eisenberg wrote in "A slanderous tongue." Rabin thought it was necessary if there was to be any hope of making the dream of peace a reality.

Once the Olso Accords had been agreed to, and Rabin, Peres, and Arafat received the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, its prospects deteriorated as suicide bombers continued to kill Israelis, and Orthodox rabbis started a most threatening campaign against Rabin's leadership. They revived two obsolete halachic precepts - the din rodef (the duty to kill Jews who imperil other Jews), and the din moser (the duty to kill Jews who threaten to turn in other Jews to non-Jewish authorities). Of course, religious law student Yigal Amir soon became acquainted with these precepts while attending Bar-Ilan University. The precepts were soon being used against Rabin who had claimed during the 1992 election campaign that he would never negotiate with Arafat - what Yossi Beilin had met the PLO's Abu Mazen in secret in May to work out the details of. Because of Rabin's actions in the Altalena Affair, right-wingers were so clamoring that he was no hero at all since he had seen to the killing to his fellow Jews, and had left others to fall into the hands of foreign authorities.

To stem the anti-Rabin tide, Gillon, it seems, hired agent proocateurs, particularly Avishai Raviv. They created hostile groups like Eyal, composed of angry settlers and right-wingers, to denounce and protest his policies in an increasingly violent way. Reminiscent of the campaign against Olof Palme, they called Rabin a traitor, and a Nazi. The protesters cursed the Premier outside his apartment in Ramat Aviv, and Eyal teenagers produced a video, calling for a military coup. When an Arab was murdered in Halhoul by persons wearing IDF uniforms, Raviv claimed that member of Eyal had done it, though, it turned out after Rabin's assassination that Arab thieves had done it. Rabin's cabinet, especially Minister of Agricultuire Ya'acov Tzur, still believed the deception, complaining bitterly when there were no arrests for the killing.

On October 5, 1995, there was a mass protest by the right-wingers at Zion Square, attended by Rabin's assassin. During the demonostration, a poster was raised on which Rabin's faced was pasted over the figure of Heinrich Himmler - what had been made originally by Raviv and Amir at a Eyal summer camp on the Kinneret. Amir responded to the sight thus: "Because of this dog, this country is going to be destroyed." When Amir noted TV cameras recording the scene, he said: "Instead of fliming, will you come to the funeral? Will you come to the funeral tomorrow?" Then, Binyamin Netanyahu to the crowd being observed by guests including Sharon: "Rabin is a dog - In blook and fire we'll drive Rabin out - will bring the government down."

Then the group marched on the Knesset during which they attacked Rabin's empty limousine without any response by security people. Then it attacked Housing Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezar in his car, threatening to kill him. Once he escaped harm, he charged after Netanyahu, exclaiming: "The settlers have gone crazy, and someone will be murdered here, if not today, then in another week or another month."

It was 30 days later, on November 4th, that Rabin was assassinated by Amir with a single shot, as he went to his limousine after addressing the peace rally, while his bodyguards once again looked helplessly on. Thanks to Gillon's deceptive campaign, as the Shamgar Commission investigating the assassination duly recorded, but was prevented from releasing the damaging details of, it was a case of 'mirror-imaging' which had completely confused his security detail about the dire threat of. The most daming evidence about a double-agent operation having gone apparently horribly wrong was the admission that Raviv had urged Amir to kill Rabin to prove his manhood - what Amir achieved after the shooting when he told police: "Do your work. I've done mine."

The Crawford Deal

OF COURSE HE DID!!!! How stupid do you think we are anyway IoS?

All governments are lying cocksuckers, I hope you know that.


We know that arguments raged about the legality of the war right up to a crucial cabinet meeting on 17 March 2003, two days before the attack began. But now new evidence pieced together by the 'IoS' strongly backs the suspicion that the PM had already made the decision to strike a year earlier.

It was one of the most tense cabinet meetings Downing Street had seen in living memory. "We were on the brink of war," recalled Clare Short, who was there. The consequences would be dramatic, not only for those round the table, but for millions of Iraqis and hundreds of thousands of British and American troops.

The date was 17 March 2003, only two days before the war to oust Saddam Hussein was launched. "The atmosphere was very fraught by then," Ms Short, then International Development Secretary, said last week. Experts in international law were saying the impending conflict was illegal, her officials were concerned, and the military was demanding a clear statement of the legal position.

The issue of the war's legality has erupted back into the public arena in the past week with the publication of a book, Lawless World, by Philippe Sands QC, an international lawyer in Cherie Blair's Matrix Chambers. According to his account, the Attorney General, Lord Gold- smith, had delivered a 13-page opinion on 7 March 2003 which said that to be sure of legal authority for the war, a UN Security Council resolution specifically backing force was needed. Later, at a meeting at Downing Street, he said his views had become "clearer", and it was that clarification that was presented to Ms Short and her colleagues.

How that change came about has been the subject of intense speculation, reviving the pressure on the Government to publish the full text of the Attorney General's advice. But the lingering questions over the war do not end there. Mr Sands and others also raise doubts about another great mystery surrounding the conflict: when did Tony Blair first sign up to President George Bush's crusade to oust Saddam Hussein?

Last September, highly embarrassing leaked documents showed that as early as March 2002, the Prime Minister's foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, was assuring Condoleezza Rice of Mr Blair's unbudgeable support for "regime change". Days later, Sir Christopher Meyer, then British ambassador to the US, sent a dispatch to Downing Street detailing how he repeated the commitment to Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Defence Secretary. The ambassador added that Mr Blair would need a "cover" for any military action. "I then went through the need to wrongfoot Saddam on the inspectors and the UN Security Council resolutions."

Throughout this period, and into 2003, Mr Blair was insisting in public that war was not inevitable. In May 2002 he said Iraq would be "in a far better position" without Saddam, but added: "Does that mean that military action is imminent or about to happen? No. We've never said that." Introducing the notorious WMD dossier in the Commons on 24 September that year, he said: "Our case is simply this: not that we take military action come what may, but that the case for ensuring Iraqi disarmament, as the UN itself has stipulated, is overwhelming."

In the past week, however, it has not only emerged that Special Branch officers questioned opposition parties as part of an investigation into the leaks, but The Independent on Sunday has discovered further information indicating that when Mr Blair met Mr Bush at his Texas ranch on 7 and 8 April 2002, he committed Britain to an assault on Iraq. The clue, contained in an obscure row over the Government's refusal to answer an apparently straightforward parliamentary question, shows that both at the beginning and the end of the process which culminated in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the issue of legality was very much in the air.

As the Cabinet gathered on the eve of war, it was well known around Whitehall that the Foreign Office's legal advisers saw no authority for the conflict without a fresh UN resolution, and that Lord Goldsmith had apparently supported their view in his written opinion 10 days earlier. The scene should have been set for a ferocious debate, but that was not what happened, according to Ms Short.

Lord Goldsmith, who is not a cabinet member, came in and sat in the place previously occupied by Robin Cook, who had just resigned. If the Attorney General was aware of the symbolism, he gave no sign of it. A two-page document was circulated and Lord Goldsmith started to read it aloud, but was told there was no need.

Full story...

Friday 25 February 2005

There Was No Need For World War II

There is rarely a need for war, wars are a tool of the rich to get more richer. They manipulate us using ideas of "patriotism" and "terrorism" and all the while they rub their fat little fingers in glee at the thought of the profits they will make. They cover their brutality with expensive suits and expensive lawyers and expensive bodyguards. But if you strip away their wealth all that's left is a pile of shit.

There was no need for World War II. Adolf Hitler was doing everything he could to come to peace terms with Britain, but Winston Churchill would not have it. Churchill knew of the many peace offers coming from the German government. He knew that neither Hitler nor any other Nazi leaders wanted to fight Britain.

Winston Churchill wrote to Josef Stalin on January 24, 1944, to tell him that Britain was going to continue the fight to the complete destruction of Germany no matter what. He should have been more exact and said that Britain was going to stay in the war as long as the United States was willing to do most of the fighting and all of the financing. Churchill's letter read, in part:

We never thought of peace, not even in that year when we were completely isolated and could have made peace without serious detriment to the British empire, and extensively at your cost. Why should we think of it now when victory approaches for the three of us?1

What Churchill meant by "when we were completely isolated" was the time before Russia and the United States became involved. Churchill kept the war going for a purpose. Britain at this time was so weak that Germany could have smashed her within a few weeks. Had Hitler been the kind of man history says he was and had he captured the British army at Dunkirk, which he could easily have done and should have done, he could have written the peace ticket without invading Britain. Churchill's worried son Randolph asked Churchill a few days after he became the prime minister how could he expect to win this war. Churchill replied, "I shall drag the United States in."2

And so he did, and he knew he could. And how did he do it? He could not have dragged the United States in had Franklin Roosevelt not wanted to be dragged in, in the first place. He did it by not giving up-that is, by not accepting the peace terms Germany was offering. Roosevelt's great fear was that the war would be over before America could get in. FDR wanted to go down in history as a wartime president. Roosevelt and Churchill were in secret communication before Churchill became prime minister. This is the reason why Tyler Kent, who worked in the code room in the American Embassy in London beginning in 1939, was thrown in prison as soon as Churchill took office. Kent was sentenced not for anything criminal, but because of what he knew. Roosevelt would not rescue this American citizen from Churchill's clutches because Kent had proof that FDR was promising the British leader that he would eventually come into the war. Churchill records a conversation he and Harry Hopkins had on January 10, 1941:

The president is determined that we shall win the war together. Make no mistake about it. He has sent me here to tell you that at all costs and by all means he will carry you through, no matter what happens to him. There is nothing that he will not do, so far as he has human power.3

Churchill became prime minister on May 10, 1941. When the Germans captured Poland, they found in the Polish archives the evidence about the part FDR played in getting the fuse of World War II lit. These Polish records were transported to Berlin for safekeeping, and when Germany fell to the Allies, they were shipped to Washington, where they were kept under lock and key for about 20 years so that no one could see them.

Full story...

Lives more important than liberties says Blair

Based on secret evidence that we're never allowed to see. What a load of bollocks, Tony is a fascist in socialist clothes!

Tony Blair faced down a rebellion over new anti-terror laws today and said lives were more important than civil liberties.

The Prime Minister declared: "There is no greater civil liberty than to live free from terrorist attack. It would be the gravest dereliction of duty to wait until we suffered a terrorist outrage here, and only then act."

His defiant stance came after 32 Labour MPs took part in a Commons revolt against the plans for new powers, including a form of house arrest without trial.

In a passionate Commons debate, one Labour backbencher said his party should be "damned forever" if it went ahead with a Bill that critics claim would undermine eight centuries of peacetime justice. MPs voted 309 to 233 for the laws, cutting the Government's majority in half.

Labour rebels included former Cabinet member Clare Short and exministers Frank Field, Kate Hoey, Glenda Jackson, Peter Kilfoyle and Mark Smith.

Mr Blair immediately hit back with an article denying the laws amounted to a "fundamental attack on longstanding-civil liberties". "As the Bill makes clear, no one will be deprived of their liberty without this being approved within days - at most seven days - by a senior judge in the High Court," he wrote in the Daily Telegraph.

Full story...

Monday 21 February 2005

Hunter S. Thompson Dead At 67

It's always the good ones that go... Farewell, dear friends. Though I never knew you personally you touched my life and helped me make sense of the Universe.

RIP Hunter S. Thompson, author of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and "Hell's Angels," and an inspirational figure for writers and political activists, fatally shot himself Sunday night at his home near Aspen, Colo., according to media reports. He was 67.

"Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family," Juan Thompson, the author's son, said in a statement released to the Aspen Daily News.

The Associated Press reported that Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, a personal friend of Thompson, confirmed the death to the News. Juan Thompson found his father's body. Thompson's wife, Anita, was not home at the time, the AP said. It was not known late Sunday if the shooting was intentional.

In addition to the 1972 classic "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," he is credited with pioneering "gonzo journalism," a type of subjective reporting filled with the author's opinions and an exaggerated rhetorical style.

"Hunter was the most amazing writer I ever edited," said Larry Kramer, former Chairman and CEO of MarketWatch, now an executive for Dow Jones. "He was a true genius ... and a cult hero for a generation of writers, journalists and political activists."

Kramer recalled how, as executive editor at the San Francisco Examiner during the 1980s, he and Thompson, then a weekly columnist for the paper, would have "hour-long debates over the phone about a sentence or a paragraph ... mostly because he'd be constantly pushing to see if he was saying exactly what he wanted to say. We would fight him for every paragraph, hours after deadline, but when he would finally file, it was better than perfect."

Kramer said Thompson "had a better sense of politics and campaigns than anyone I've worked with. He could handicap 50 congressional races and be right on 49."

Kramer also said he remembered, vividly, several incidents working with Thompson.

"One time we got a call from a San Francisco hotel shortly after he had stayed there on a visit to see us," Kramer said. "They wanted us to pay $2,400 for his three nights. When we pressed for a detailed bill, there was a $2,000 item called 'miscellaneous damage' ... something to do with an ice machine that had been shot through with a gun."

The second, Kramer said, "involved a call from a hospital where he had been taken for an emergency appendectomy. They told us they couldn't perform the operation until they had spent a couple days giving him a full blood wash ... apparently his bloodstream was polluted with alcohol and several interesting drugs ... and they were afraid of side effects."

Thompson's other books include "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" and "The Proud Highway." His most recent effort was "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and The Downward Spiral of Dumbness."

Full story...

Tuesday 15 February 2005

Israel and/or America Implicated in Killing of Rafik Harriri

I've thought this since I heard the news, President Assad is not stupid, he knows that the Americans and Israelis would just LOVE to have a pretext on which to invade but they can't do it straight-up because then that will shatter the illusion that they are the "good" guys in all of this.

"This is the work of an intelligence service, not a small group," said Rime Allaf, Middle East analyst at London's Royal Institute of International Affairs.

by Sam Hamod


We must do as they do in other criminal cases, look at who had the most to gain from the assassination of Prime Minister Harriri. The Lebanese had a lot to lose, as did the Syrians (he was close to Bashir Al Assad, the leader of Syria), as did the other Arab countries in the region who saw him as a strong leader and a stabilizing force in Lebanese politics. On the other hand, Israel has wanted chaos in Lebanon, as has America, and both countries have been agitating to get Hezbollah outlawed and both America and Israel have wanted the Lebanese to oust Syria. In both cases, the Lebanese government has said, “NO,” that Hezbollah is a respected part of Lebanese life and that Syria is there to protect Lebanon from Israeli aggression.

No matter where else you look, no one else had anything to gain except Israel and the U.S. because this death could cause some possible upset in Lebanese politics and life.

Most Middle East experts in the Arab and Muslim worlds believe Israeli hands were at work in the killing of former Prime Minister of Lebanon, Rafik Harriri.

America quickly pointed the finger at Syria, as did Israel, which was tantamount to convicting themselves because they are the only two countries that would gain by creating unrest in Lebanon. President Lahoud and Hezbollah, who represent two of the important factions of the Lebanese government both condemned the bombing and their own experts said the blast had all the earmarks of the bombing that was carried out by Israel against former Palestinian leaders in Beirut in the past.

America and Israel want Syria out of Lebanon, but the majority of Lebanese realize the Syrian presence is an aid to their country that helps stop the Israelis from once invading Lebanon (as Israel did in the 1980s, then stayed on in the south to occupy part of Lebanon until the Hezbollah ousted them by military force). Also, by killing Harriri, the Israelis and American can both claim that the area is more unstable and needs more American style “democracy” and occupation. Harriri was a giant among progressive Arab and Muslim leaders, and though he made money in Saudi Arabia and was friendly to the government, his attitude in Lebanon was very progressive and he made sure the church and state were kept separate in Lebanese political decisions.

Harriri was a man beloved by all sides, even his former political foes. They saw him as a man who had helped to bring Lebanon back from the chaos that Israel had caused with their falangist allies in the invasion of the 1980s. One must also remember that the man who wanted Lebanon destroyed, and who led the attack that destroyed all of Beirut was none other than the present prime minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon. Sharon has set up a special group of dark ops in Israel who are allowed to kill anyone who may be a threat to Israel in any land in the world—clearly a violation of International Law. Of course, Sharon, like Bush, has decided that International Law does not govern Israel’s or America’s selfish ambitions in the world.

Harriri’s killing, like so many of those in Iraq, is the work of either the Israeli dark ops or American mercenaries who have been hired out to kill people who are progressive in the Arab and Muslim worlds. That is why in Lebanon today, people know that it was not some dissident “Islamist group” (that no one has heard of, nor does anyone believe actually exists) who allegedly took credit for the deed, and in Iraq, where the religious leaders among the Sunni and Shi’a are telling their people not to revenge themselves on one another, because they know the killings are professional jobs being done by people from outside Iraq, namely, Israel and America. The parallels are evident to experts, but these experts will not be allowed on American media. But, Professor Rime Allaf, of the Royal Institute in England is correct, this was the work of an intelligence agency—and we damn well know who the only two would be—because they are the only two to gain by this deed, Israel or America.

Remember, as I stated earlier, in criminal acts, one must always look to who has the most to gain—in this case, it was clearly the Bush team and Israel. And, as Rime Allaf said, this was the work of “an intelligence agency.”

It’s time these killings in Iraq, in Lebanon, and even the assassination of the Prime Minister of Georgia, a foe of American oil pipelines, be stopped, and that the world set up an investigation team to look into these matters because they create more chaos and misery for the world.

Full story...

Friday 11 February 2005

Britain Accused Over CIA's Secret Torture Flights

Thanks Tony, thanks for making me feel ashamed to be British. When are people going to wake up and smell the stench of rotting fascism in the air? But I forgot, most of the little domesticated primates are far too busy with the latest ring-tone or episode of Big Brother, all thanks to Tony's mates like Rupert who control the flow of information. Everything's really ok, the government aren't a bunch of nasty conniving dishonest fearmongering corrupt cocksuckers and there's no danger from them at all, but "LOOK AT THOSE NASTY TERRORISTS OVER THERE! We need to protect our society and our way of life, those nasty dark skinned people are out to get us!"

Am I the only one who thinks it's all just another system of control being used by tired old men who have no vision, no humanity and no LOVE left in their cold-dead hearts?


Britain's intelligence agencies have been accused of helping America in a secret operation that is sending terror suspects to Middle Eastern countries where prisoners are routinely tortured and abused.

Since 11 September 2001, the CIA has been systematically seizing suspects and sending them, without legal process, not only to Guantanamo Bay but to authorities in countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Human rights campaigners say the system, officially known as "extraordinary rendition" is a system of torture by proxy.

Britain maintains the main reason it will not deport prisoners being held without charge at Belmarsh prison is the fear they will be tortured or otherwise abused by their home country. But a series of cases has emerged which, critics say, exposes the Government's dishonesty by suggesting information provided by Britain about its citizens and residents has led to the capture and eventual torture of Islamic terrorist suspects.

Britain is also an operational base for two executive jets regularly used by the CIA to carry out so-called "renditions". One Gulfstream jet - used for taking prisoners to Egypt and Jordan from countries including Sweden and Indonesia - has called regularly at Luton, Glasgow, Prestwick and Northolt airports.

A Boeing 737 jet, used for the transfer of prisoners, passed through Glasgow airport on Monday morning on its way to Iraq. Both jets are white and unmarked, apart from their US civilian registration. Inquiries suggest they are owned by US companies that exist only on paper and which are almost certainly a front for the CIA.

Michael Ratner, the director of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which is representing several former prisoners who were "renditioned", said: "It is a secret process. No one really knows what happens in the rendition process or in the gulag of secret CIA hellholes [where some prisoners are sent]."

One notorious rendition occurred in Sweden in December 2001 when a team of masked US agents arrived to transfer two Egyptian dissidents, both accused of terrorist involvement, to Cairo. Both complained later of torture.

But there is evidence that intelligence originating in Britain may have been behind the CIA's involvement in the seizure of at least one of the Egyptians, an asylum-seeker named Mohamed al-Zery, who, after months of torture, was eventually cleared and freed.

Yassir al-Sirri, an Islamic activist living in London who is accused by Egypt and America of having al-Qa'ida connections, said that, in the weeks before his own arrest in London in October 2001, he had been in touch with Mr Zery, who wanted help with collecting information for his asylum claim.

Speaking to BBC Radio's File on Four, Mr Sirri said that when British anti-terrorist officers raided his home, they took his computer and his fax records and those were passed to the Americans.

"Later in Sweden this man, Mr Zehry, was arrested and this information could only have come from the British authorities. They are completely responsible. It's criminal," Mr Sirri said.

Full story...

Bush Is Leading America Into War and Disaster

Not just America, but if we're not careful those fundi "Christian" fukwits will lead us all into war and disaster. Just so they can realise how wrong they were - as they get vapourised with the rest of us! Super...

by Sam Hamod

Once again, America is threatening world peace in a myriad of ways. First, the Bush team is going after Dr. Mohammad Al Baradi, the respected head of the IAEA, trying to oust him as head of the UN Nuclear Inspection Program. Everyone in the world respects Dr. Al Baradi, his integrity, his forthright statements and his knowledge of the nuclear development field; everyone, that is, except for the Bush team. Of course, the Bush team disrespects anyone who questions them or disagrees with them. Dr. Al Baradi is a man of integrity, and he will not give an inch to political or financial pressure. This is something the Bush group dislikes, mightily.

This is the same strategy they used to bypass Dr. Hans Blix when he worked for the UN as a weapons and WMD inspector. Blix said they had worked very hard but found no WMDs in Iraq. Bush wanted a definitive answer immediately, When Blix said they would need another month to wrap up their search, Bush went to war, in order to obviate the truth that he didn’t want the world to know. As we know now, and many suspected before Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq, that was not sanctioned by the UN, there were no WMDs in Iraq until we invaded. There are now WMDs in Iraq, American WMDs, which include some new Depleted Uranium weapons and some new microwave killing devices that are most cruel and terrible in their killing ability.

Now, with Iran, though Dr. Al Baradi and the EU feel progress is being made in showing that there is no bomb making nuclear work in Iran, Bush wants to rid the UN of Al Baradi in order to put one of his stooges into that seat, then to have a stooge who will justify one his “pre-emptive attacks” on Iran.

While he is working at the UN to replace Al Baradi, at the same time, his Mistress of State, Conde Rice, is “warning Iran” to accede to American demands to quit its “nuclear bomb making”. Iran can’t stop doing that, because Iran is not making bombs –this from the IAEA and the EU inspectors! She is also trying to strong -arm European leaders into joining the Bush intimidation game against Iran. Aside from America, the only other countries in the world who believe this nonsense, and are helping to perpetrate these lies are Britain (with Tony Blair, the lapdog in Bush’s hand) and Israel, which wants to dominate the Middle East and wants Iran out of the way. The EU leadership has sent inspectors along with Dr. Al Baradi and they have all come back with the same report, “There is no work on nuclear weapons going on in Iran.”

The French Foreign Minister, H. E. Michel Barnier, at a joint news conference with Rice, said, in a clash with Rice’s ideas of pushing the UN into military action, that France and the other leaders in the EU prefer to use the ongoing diplomacy and not the threat or the act of military action to resolve any problems, In response to Rice and Bush’s threats,
Iranian leaders, both among the conservative Ayatollahs and the liberal leaning President Khatami, said they would unite for the sake of Iran and its sovereignty, and would not tolerate an American or Israeli attack on their country. This was echoed in street demonstrations in parts of Iran (something not reported by the American major media).

This Bush/Rice scenario and the lack of verifiable evidence has echoes of Iraq before the Bush invasion. He insisted there were WMDs in Iraq, everyone else said, “No, the sanctions have worked, no one has any proof.” Then Bush sent in his liars to the UN and elsewhere, with evidence they knew was made up of lies and exaggerations. Colin Powell destroyed his integrity to support Bush, lied and pushed the world to war with bogus statements of threats that didn’t exist. Then, before the stories could be checked out either by our Congress or the UN, Bush hurriedly went to war before anyone could stop him. Of course, we are now reaping what we have sown in Iraq.

All of us who know the Middle East know these things to be true. What is interesting is that Mistress of State, Conde Rice thinks that her smile and her show of friendship with Europe a few days ago, will stand up now that she has started to “scold” European leaders for not jumping on board the sinking Bush campaign in Iraq and in his newly desired campaign against Iran. She hopes that no one will have time to think about his failings in Iraq, Afghanistan or in saving the American economy (while he tries to destroy, not change, Social Security and other safety nets that Roosevelt and others helped set up for American citizens. I bring this up, because it is the same slight of hand Orwell talked about, “always create an external enemy so that you may take away rights from within, to take more control of your nation.”)

But chickenhawk, AWOL, GW Bush, is anxious to keep up his rhetoric of being a “war president”; he feels he will be able to get whatever he wants in “time of war.” I think it is time the Congress stood up before Bush goes any further. Of course, the American Congress has shown itself to be cowardly and weak in the knees. If the Congress doesn’t stand up now, they will be complicit in this new war that Bush wants to wage. Because of their stupidity the last time around with the Iraq situation, they are already complicit and guity of war crimes from that misadvernture.

Unfortunately, I don’t look for the Democrats to do much except squeal their assent with the Republocrat Joe Lieberman leading the charge, being assisted with Israel firster Tom Lantos, supported by King, Schumer and the rest of the pro-Israeli gang which supercedes being a Democrat or Republican. Their battle cry, like that of Wolfowitz, Feith, Cheney, Perle, Kristol and Rumsfeld is, “Israel first,” and “down the tubes with Iran.”

Full story...

Thursday 10 February 2005

China and the Final War for Resources

"What's coming will be more devastating to the U.S. economy than any nuclear strike..." - The Asia Times

Unrestricted War: China’s Master Plan to Destroy America is a treatise for world domination written in 1999 by People’s Liberation Army Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. In order for China to become a dominant global power over the United States, the PLA emphasizes “The Final War over Resources”, must be won.

The Colonels state that the aggressor nation “must adjust its own financial strategy, use currency revaluation or devaluation as primary weapons, and combine means such as getting the upper hand in public opinion and changing the rules sufficiently to make financial turbulence and economic crisis appear in the targeted country or area, weakening its overall power, including its military strength. Whether it be the intrusions of hackers, a major explosion at the World Trade Center, or a bombing attack by bin Laden, all of these greatly exceed the frequency bandwidths understood by the American military..."

Can you imagine if U.S. military leaders or politicians made such threatening comments? People would be up in arms and demanding resignations and Congressional inquiries!

However, in another case where truth is stranger than fiction – for the most part the U.S. media and government officials are keeping a lid on this volatile story. As you are about to read, the Chinese have already positioned themselves to inflict major damage to the U.S. economy. For those few brave souls in Washington and the media who are talking, their words are ominous.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Gal Luft, executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, said: "Without a comprehensive strategy designed to prevent China from becoming an oil consumer on par with the U.S., a superpower collision is in the cards." The New York Times has also weighed in stating that China’s actions threaten “the very stability of the global economy.”

The final war for the planet’s resources has already started. You name the commodity and China’s buying it and consuming it in HUGE quantities. Last year they consumed nearly half of the world’s cement, twice the world’s consumption of copper, and nearly a third of the world’s coal, 90% of the world’s steel plus nearly every other commodity you can think of has been in greater demand by China.

However in order to propel such furious economic growth, there is one key commodity you need above all the others. And if you can’t get enough of it, having all the other resources won’t matter. The most prized and sought after commodity which makes the world tick is oil. With out it, you have nothing. Your economy would be frozen and your military would be left inept.

As China’s Master Plan to Destroy America manifesto outlines, the multifaceted battle plan recommended by the Chinese military has taken shape..…

Full story...

Monday 7 February 2005

Terrorism, marmalade and MI5

How naive of me to think juries can deal with phone-tap evidence

by Roy Hattersley


Obey! If it is true that Charles Clarke enjoys trouble, the home secretary must be looking forward to a week of almost uninterrupted pleasure. Deporting infant refugees from sub-Saharan Africa may be an essential element in his new immigration plans. But announcing the intention to send the starvelings back to what is loosely called their home is not a task that everyone would relish.

No doubt Clarke will insist stoically that "someone has to do it". Perhaps. But must he also offend against the rule of law by introducing a new form of detention without trial? There is, or seems to be, a practical way of balancing protection against terrorism with the preservation of civil liberties. It was set out last week by Sir Ian Blair, who, being the Metropolitan police commissioner, can hardly be regarded as one of the fashionable libertarians about whom David Blunkett complained so loudly. People suspected of the sort of "offence" that now qualifies for indefinite imprisonment in Belmarsh should be tried in open court with the single innovation of phone-tap evidence against them being made admissible.

The solution seems so obvious that I asked a recent refugee from the Home Office why the government would not accept it. The reply came in two parts. The first was generally unconvincing, and the second highly disturbing. It was wise of Clarke to confine his rejection of the idea to two generalities. An explanation of the "technical" and "intelligence" difficulties of revealing the contents of "intercepted communication" would have confirmed civil libertarians' worst fears.

Remember, I was sternly told, the British system of justice is quite different from that which guides the courts in countries where phone-tap evidence is allowed. Our trials are adversarial. The barrister defending the terrorist suspect would demand to know how the intercepts had been obtained, who had obtained them and by whom they had been sent. The result, it was claimed, would be the exposure of dangerous details about the activities of MI5 and MI6. Foreign governments might be offended. Brave men's lives would be at risk.

I suggested that the act of parliament that made phone-tap evidence admissible might circumscribe its treatment in court. For instance, the judge could certify that it had been obtained under legal warrant and that it was a verbatim account of a conversation in which the accused had taken part. My suggestion was dismissed in tones that combined triumph with astonishment at my naivety. "What do you think a jury would make of a verbatim intercept?" That explanation can only mean that phone taps do not provide sufficient evidence to convict. Hardly surprisingly, criminals of every sort talk to each other in code. As an example, I was given a drug dealer who spoke to his confederates about consignments of marmalade. That man, it seems, was convicted because the police did not rely on intercept evidence alone.

Perhaps the security services should follow the same example. In any event, the rule of law requires the jury to decide if, when a young man recently returned from Afghanistan talks about his grocery order, he is really speaking of Semtex. Otherwise men are locked up in Belmarsh, and will soon be imprisoned in their own homes, on the say-so of the intelligence services - the men and women who interpret what the phone taps really mean.

Ministers, in their arrogance, will claim that the need for them to endorse the decision is a safeguard. But it is hard to imagine a secretary of state arguing with the interpretation put on a telephone call by MI5 - an institution to which politicians are unreasonably deferential. Even now, I can hear the director general asking: "But do you really want to take the risk?" The answer will always be "No" - not because there is much likelihood of a bomb being planted in Buckingham Palace but because the minister will not want to take the one in 10 million chance of going down in history as the man or woman whose negligence allowed the Queen's assassination.

Full story...

Friday 4 February 2005

Palestinian loss of land 1946 to 2000

This puts it into perspective, when you look at this map you realise why the Palestinians are so pissed off with Israel.



The death of Yasser Arafat is seen by many people of good will as a chance to revive the peace process. Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is hailed as a moderate leader. A leader who has openly opposed the armed Intifada. The Palestinians are bathing in the exciting energies of a democratic election campaign just like a prisoner bathing in a small pool of sun entering his cell through a tiny skylight. One of the reasons they have elected Abu Mazen was to appease Bush and Sharon, hoping that in return, the strangling Israeli grip on their lives will loosen a little. In Israel, too, many are fed up with fighting, and wish to lead a normal life - only they have their own ideas of what normality means. Optimism is desirable, filling our sails and motivating us for action, but we must remain sober, or else the same wind might drive our fragile boat against the hard rocks of reality...

The first sober realization is this: although Arafat was the man who many loved to hate, he is not the cause of the conflict that started long before he was born. The roots of the conflict are in the Zionist aspiration to “inherit the land”, ignoring the indigenous population, or at least upholding the colonialist idea that “...They (the Palestinians) will be grateful, as they see how we have developed land...”. as Herzl wrote in his book ‘Altneuland’. This aspiration opened the door to a century of bloodshed and suffering. The danger of this aspiration is now spilling over from the local arena into the global one and is fuelling the extremely dangerous concept of the “Clash of Civilizations”. This sees the conflict no longer between Israeli and Palestinian, but between ‘Jew’ and ‘Arab`, wherever they are.

As long as this long-term Israeli aspiration does not change, Abu Mazen’s politics, moderate or otherwise, will not bring about any radical change. True, many Israelis hope, as many Palestinians fear, that Sharon and Bush might succeed in forcing the moderate leader into accepting the American-Israeli diktat. In this scenario, Abu Mazen is expected to give up the minimum Palestinian demands, settle for a Bantustan Palestinian state inside the maze of the separation wall and call this peace. But Abu Mazen, just as Arafat before him, seems, at least for the time being, unwilling to abandon the minimum demands for the establishment of a free and viable Palestinian state: A Palestinian state demarcated by the Green Line with East Jerusalem as its capital, and a just solution for the problem of the refugees. These are the same demands Arafat made ever since 13 December 88, when he took the historic decision to recognize Israel on 78% of historic Palestine, and settle for a Palestinian state on the remaining 22%, with the Green Line as a border of peace between them.

In order to appreciate the magnitude of this concession, we need to remember that the Green Line itself took from the Palestinians a large part of the land designated to them by the UN. It was drawn arbitrarily in 1949 as the armistice line between Israel and Jordan. The Green Line separated Palestinians from their homes and split villages in two in the exact same way the Separation Wall is doing now, causing a traumatic rupture in the Palestinian society.

The secret hope of some in Israel is that the Palestinians today will adapt to the Separation Wall in the same way their parents adapted to the Green Line in 1949. Who knows? Given another generation of “negotiations” and “peace process”, perhaps my son and his Palestinian comrades in their shrunken enclaves, will struggle for the establishment of a free Palestinian state within the Separation Wall just as we are struggling for a free Palestinian state within the Green Line...
Let us remember that if any legal border exists between Israel and Palestine, it is along the lines of the 1947 partition plan. If there is any contended land, it is Palestinian land occupied by Israel during the 1948 war, and not only during the 1967 war. From this standpoint, the Palestinian position is a huge, almost unbearable, concession. Any further Israeli demand can only be based on “might is right”, and a Palestinian submission to such demands will lead to devastating results, because it is highly unlikely they will be able to establish a viable state behind the wall, on the remaining shreds of land.

So, what can bring about the realization of the Palestinian minimal demands? What will Abu Mazen be able to show as a concrete result of his moderate strategy? How can he answer the Palestinian militants who insist, not implausibly, that only the armed struggle will have brought about the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, that 4 years of blood achieved more results than decades of negotiations during which the colonies expanded ceaselessly?

Abu Mazen would be naïve to expect much from Israel as a return for his non violent approach. He already had a taste of the Israeli attitude when Israel released 400 prisoners to Hizbullah in February 2004, but refused to release Palestinian prisoners to help strengthen Abu Mazen, the new, moderate Palestinian prime minister. The Israeli attitude to him will probably be a mixture of disappointment and disregard: Disappointment with the “moderate” who turned “radical” overnight. For a mainstream Israeli, not accepting the settlements (which are internationally recognized as illegal), as a “fait accompli”, means being radical. This Israeli Hubris seems to be confusing moderation with submission. Several Israeli ministers have already conveyed their “disappointment” with Abu Mazen’s statement that his goal is a free Palestine in all the territories occupied in 1967. “We thought he was moderate” they say, meaning “We thought he understood that the settlement blocks are here to stay”.
The second component of the predictable Israeli response is disregard - after all, how important are the political positions of a Palestinian leader, for those who are backed by the world’s sole super-power?

This is the mentality that allows Israel to continue pursuing its long-term aspiration – to “inherit the land”. Sharon’s unilateral disengagement plan is entirely consistent with this goal. The idea is to appease the world in Gaza while tightening the Israeli grip on the parts of the West Bank designated to be annexed to Israel by the “separation” wall.

In the second phase Israel will continue the unilateral disengagement from parts of the West Bank that are densely populated by Palestinians, and therefore unfit for annexation. The west bank, just like Gaza before it, will turn into a series of ghettoes surrounded by walls and fences and totally controlled by Israel. The Palestinians may call this a state, if they wish.

This plan has wide support among the Israeli public even though it is brought to public discussion only in a fragmented form. There are two main reasons for this support:
1. It is consistent with the deepest Zionist view of an exclusive Jewish state serving as a Western outpost in the midst of Oriental Barbarism, a view held by a vast majority of Israelis.
2. A considerable shift in the Israeli political landscape.
The left, which took a sharp turn to the right during the current Palestinian uprising, is meeting a large part of the Israeli right that has given up on the hope of continuing the ethnic cleansing of 48. This political block realizes that such an act is no longer possible in the 21st century.

The result is a new large block that may be called moderate-right wing. This block represents a great majority of the Israeli public who believe strongly that Israel needs to separate itself from the Palestinians unilaterally, finally consolidating the conquests of the 1967 war and keeping as much land as possible, under the formula “maximum territory – minimum Palestinians”. This formula is the basis of the consensus, and is shared by left and right alike, from most of the leftist Meretz party to a large proportion of the right wing Likud party. There are approximately 20% who still maintain “all the territory – no Palestinians” and not even one Jewish MP who is willing to raise his voice for the Palestinians` rights. The Separation Wall is the concrete manifestation of this consensus.

Unfortunately, the US is a full, even if a sometimes silent partner to Israeli past and current politics, as well as to its vision of the future. Bush’s letter to Sharon dated April 2004, makes this abundantly clear:
“...In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949...”
both regimes share a brutal, darwinist view of the world. Both uphold the ethos of the pioneering settler inheriting the land given to them by the Lord, and it is the secret fantasy of many Israelis, that the fate of the Palestinians will be similar to that of the native Americans. Still, the US has many other interests in the region, and cannot appear to be completely one sided, or else its local puppet regimes may lose stability. Under these circumstances it is probable that the US will demand Israel start negotiations with the new, moderate Palestinian leader. This demand will probably be followed up with the same resolve Bush has shown after demanding, some 40 months ago, that Israel withdraw from the Gaza strip, or when he demanded the dismantlement of the ever growing Israeli “out-posts”...we are still waiting.
This will suit Israel just fine. Let us negotiate. Why not? Negotiations will help create the impression of progress and improve Israel’s image in the world. But most important, under the warm blanket of endless negotiations Sharon can continue expanding the colonies and tighten Israel’s grip on the West Bank, just as Israel did in the years 1993-2000, the seven “peaceful” years of the Oslo process, when the population of the colonies very nearly doubled, from 200,000 to 380,000.

A sober look at this reality must lead us to the conclusion that currently, Israel does not have the will, nor the political resolve, to end the occupation and allow the establishment of a sovereign, free and viable Palestinian state.
It is therefore clear that effective international pressure on Israel is needed in order to protect the Palestinians against the American-Israeli intention of confining them into a set of ghettoes behind the Separation Wall. It should be made perfectly clear that this pressure, be it economic, political, academic, cultural or other - is not aimed against Israel, but rather against her oppressive policies, and will persist only until such time as Israel decides to respect her obligations under International law, including the agreements and conventions she is a party to.
As an Israeli, I must admit to having failed, along with the Israeli peace camp as a whole, in our efforts to convince our fellow citizens of the necessity and value of a just peace.
In the light of this failure, and of the grim analysis presented earlier, I think that the Israeli peace camp needs to change its perspective. While maintaining our efforts in Israel and the occupied territories, I think that a major duty of Israeli activists is to lend our voice and moral weight, as Israelis and Jews, to a call for the application of effective pressure on Israel. I believe this is the greatest asset we can bring as our contribution to a popular and combined struggle, involving the international community, Palestinians and Israelis. Such a struggle, if conducted with dedication and resolve, might bring better results than we have achieved so far. I know that many readers will shake their heads in disbelief. I do not share their reservations.
On February 15 2003, twenty million people, all over the world, took to the streets in a demonstration that was larger by far than any held before. On that day, the people of the world raised a loud and clear voice against the war Bush intended to wage on Iraq. The demonstrations covered the entire globe – from Beijing to Antarctica, from Paris to Alaska.
Many argue that the demonstrations failed because several weeks later Bush still attacked Iraq. I do not think that they failed. The demonstrations branded the war with a deep and indelible mark of illegitimacy. The heavy price Bush had to pay in order to build his feeble coalition, the intensive and unsuccessful search for WMD, the tremendous public impact of the Abu Ghraib affair and many others, are all marks and results of this illegitimacy.
In a perfect world, we would have succeeded in stopping the war, but we are not in a perfect world, just on our way there...We, the people of the world, are gaining power daily. It is a power that we have not yet learned to harness effectively or even fully understand.
As the US under Bush is falling under an increasingly dark shadow, Europe must take its place as a sane, leading world power.
Europe, and especially the people of Europe who emerged sixty years ago from the debris of devastating destruction, probably appreciates more than most the value of a just peace. Europe, if she overcomes her fear and guilt, can make it very clear to Israel that oppression and denial of human and political rights are not tolerated practices any longer. It is well within her means to make that happen.

This is a quote from the late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat, addressing the UN general assembly in 1988.

“...The PLO will seek a comprehensive settlement among the parties concerned in the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the State of Palestine, Israel, and other neighbors, within the framework of the international conference for peace in the Middle East on the basis of resolutions 242 and 338 and so as to guarantee equality and the balance of interests, especially our people’s rights, in freedom, national independence, and respect the right to exist in peace and security for all .
If these principles are endorsed at the international conference, we will have come a long way toward a just settlement, and this will enable us to reach agreement on all security and peace arrangements...” Yasser Arafat addressing the UN general assembly – 13/12/88

16 years ago, long before the first suicide bomber blew himself up in an Israeli bus, the leader of the Palestinian people reached out for just peace. For what it is worth, the word ‘peace’ is mentioned 67 times in his speech.
What has the world done between 1988 and 2000 in order to make this a reality?
How can those who have done nothing for decades now accuse the victims of terrorism?
How deep is our commitment to the Palestinians and their new leader, Abu Mazen, now?

Full story...

Thursday 3 February 2005

CIA Faces Pressure to Divulge Ties to Ex-Nazis

I guess if they did it would prove that the Nazis really have taken over America and Bush really is constructing the 4th Reich!

A U.S. senator demanded on Wednesday that the CIA director release thousands of pages of documents detailing the agency's ties with former Nazis who aided in Cold War espionage against the Soviet Union, officials said.

Sen. Mike DeWine of Ohio, Republican co-author of a 1998 bill ordering the disclosure of government records on Nazi war criminals, wants CIA Director Porter Goss to say publicly why his agency has not agreed to divulge the records.

DeWine has asked Goss to appear this month at an open hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which the Ohio lawmaker sits, a Senate aide said. The CIA had no immediate comment on the invitation.

"Sen. DeWine wants an explanation from the CIA. Our hope would be to have (Goss) there and that's what we're working toward," said DeWine spokeswoman Amanda Flaig.

The CIA has already released an estimated 1.25 million pages of documents about Nazi war criminals. Most are records of the agency's wartime predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services.

The Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998 requires federal agencies to make public records of individuals alleged to have committed Nazi war crimes by turning them over to a special working group.

The working group, known formally as the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group, includes officials from the National Archives, the CIA, FBI, Pentagon and other agencies.

Goss co-sponsored the legislation during his tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he led the chamber's intelligence committee.

But the CIA has refused to disclose documents about its postwar dealings with former Nazis who have not been accused of war crimes but belonged to organizations like the German Nazi party and the SS, congressional officials said.

Some of the material is believed to deal with former Nazis who joined the allied Cold War effort against the Soviet Union in Europe, the officials said.

The CIA defines the 1998 law to require only the disclosure of documents on war criminals.

Full story...

Wednesday 2 February 2005

Government attacked for 'hypocritical' attitude to Freedom of Information Act

Go back to bed Britain, your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed Britain your government is in control again. Here, here's 250 channels of Reality TV watch this, shut up. Don't ask questions. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.

All Hail Blair the Protector!
All Hail Blair!
All Hail Blair!
All Hail Blair!


"I am become death, destroyer of worlds."


Obey! Ministers' promises to usher in a new age of freedom of information have failed to materialise, with scores of requests to open the Government to public scrutiny being rejected.

About 4,000 requests have been received across central government since the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act on 1 January. But MPs and journalists expressed frustration at the lack of positive responses to their requests ­ amid claims that the Government has breached its own legislation by failing to meet the Freedom of Information Act's statutory deadline.

Scores of requests have been refused and some departments have been using stock replies to deny access to information, issuing refusal letters to different people using identical wording.

Of the 70 inquiries made by The Independent only 10 have been successful. Almost half were turned down flat; the remainder are still awaiting reply.

In two of the replies the Government conceded that it had breached its own legislation by failing to meet the deadline of 20 working days that expired yesterday. Ministers also admitted they had no idea how many of the 362 requests made on the first day the legislation came into force had been answered. Yet, in 2000, Labour postponed the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act by four years to give government departments and 100,000 public bodies more time to prepare for the new right of access.

Conservative frontbenchers have submitted 130 requests for information under the FOI Act. So far they have received only three holding replies. Julian Lewis, the shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, said that, although the Ministry of Defence showed signs of genuine openness, he was discouraged by the amount of time being taken to respond to requests by other departments.

"They have gone right down to the wire, taking the full 20 days to reply. I hope the reason they are leaving it to the last minute to answer this question is because they are putting together a lot of information to give to us," he said. "I fear that the delay is just stalling for time before they give us little more than the casual evasive responses to written parliamentary questions."

Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, said the Government was guilty of hypocrisy over its application of the Act. "There is a real suspicion that the Government is using the FOI Act as a deft manoeuvre to imply openness while allowing the Sir Humphreys of this world arcane reasons for not answering questions," he said. "We have yet to see any evidence at all that the Act will make any positive difference as far as the Government is concerned."

That didn't stop Labour hailing the FOI Act a success, calling it the beginning of a new era of openness. Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the Lord Chancellor, said: "This is a new era in the relationship between the citizen and the state. After just one month, the Freedom of Information Act has already been seen to make a real impact ... We have sown the seeds of cultural change towards a government at all levels that is more open, transparent and accountable. But we must remember this is not a free-for-all. There will always be areas ­ such as national security ­ where it is necessary for information to be withheld to allow government to act effectively."

Full story...

Banning, house arrests - it all sounds eerily familiar

And there I was thinking that David Blunkett was a scary Home Secretary, this Clarke guy is even worse!!! Talk about a fascist in psuedo-socialist clothes!

Clarke's plans take me back to the days of the South African underground

There was a moment in June last year when an already irate Foreign Office minister, Chris Mullin, seemed about to erupt. It was when a member of our delegation of relatives and supporters protesting at the Guantánamo incarcerations said that what was being done by the Americans in Cuba was reminiscent of the actions of apartheid South Africa. Snorting with derision, Mullin ridiculed the idea.

Now the government he serves is proposing a set of orders that will bring to Britain the beginnings of the kind of legal travesty that the Labour party once so energetically campaigned against.

Since I started working on the issue of Guantánamo, the South African precedent has kept repeating on me. Interviewing fathers whose sons had been swallowed up by the black hole, first of Bagram air base and then Guantánamo, I was reminded of the succession of people who used to come to our Johannesburg home, asking my parents to find relatives who had been picked up by the South African police and then had disappeared.

Hearing of the way British resident Bisher al-Rawi was transported, by the Americans, from the Gambia, via Bagram, to Guantánamo where, three years later, he is still held, or of the way British citizen Moazzam Begg was snatched from Pakistan and taken to Guantánamo, I thought of the kidnapping by the South African security forces of anti-apartheid activists from Swaziland.

And listening to the debate on whether or not torture was being used in the American camp, I wondered why the seemingly indefinite incarceration without access to lawyers or contact with their relatives wasn't recognised for what it was when the South African regime had done likewise - psychological torture.

Hearing Mullin's scorn at the South African comparison, it intrigued me that he could live comfortably with the knowledge of Belmarsh and its deliberately different handling of people based, not on colour of skin, but on the accident of their place of birth.

There are differences. Apartheid involved the systematic exclusion of the majority from their country, the transformation of the black population into foreigners. In contrast, the incarcerations at Belmarsh were only for people who are already foreigners.

But there are also other, equally worrying, differences. In South Africa, at apartheid's height, people could only be detained for 180 days before their detention orders had to be renewed. In Guantánamo, and in England until the law lords judgment, the incarcerated faced the prospect of life-long detention.

This comparison should not be made frivolously. Mullin is right: Britain is not apartheid South Africa. That country disenfranchised its majority, and did not hesitate to use the might of the state, and the firepower of its police and army, to ensure the continuation of minority rule. There is one other crucial difference: apartheid was so systematically and thoroughly embedded in South African law, that resistance by the judiciary was impossible.

It wasn't always like that. The Nationalist government's attempt in 1956 to convict hundreds of activists in the treason trial ended, four years on, with the acquittal of all of the accused. The government's response was to ratchet up its laws until there was no room for manoeuvre within the judiciary. Inquests, trials and summary detentions: all passed by on the nod.

Not so in Britain. The laws lords' judgment has meant that Charles Clarke has had to propose alterative arrangements for the Belmarsh detainees. But now, in a bizarre twist, that judgment has been met by the home secretary's threat to introduce another apartheid stand-by: bannings and house arrests.

South Africans once knew all about these measures. Before South Africa's first democratic election, you could be banned from pursuing a particular profession, from talking to another banned person, or from being in the same room with more than two people. And you could be under house arrest: banned from leaving your house during the day or, in the most punishing cases, at any time.

This is what the home secretary seems to have in mind for Britain. His argument is based on the premise that monitoring the Belmarsh detainees (many of whom have been taken beyond the brink of nervous breakdown by their detention) can never be 100% reliable. Prevented by the law lords from keeping them in jail, he now proposes to indefinitely restrict them to their homes.

Clarke's soundbites remind be of my childhood days in South Africa, which were punctuated by midnight police raids. One unforgettable memory is of being rudely woken in the early hours of January 1, so that a couple of policemen could search under my bed. They were looking for visitors who might have come to celebrate the new year with the house-arrested and banned adults.

Full story...

Tuesday 1 February 2005

Are We Doomed? Insanity Now Mainstream

It is a point of supreme irony that those who profess to be the most devout Christians and Muslims are usually the ones who act in the LEAST Christian or Muslim way. I thought Christianity was about "love thy neighbour" not "watch gleefully as thine neighbour is smited because he hath chosen to believe in something different than thee". I tell you what, if there really is a God and all this talk of the "rapture" and the "second coming" is infact something other than the patent BULLSHIT I'm assuming it is, then I'm really sorry but God is a fucking asshole and doesn't deserve to be worshipped by me or anyone else!

There Is No Tomorrow

by Bill Moyers


One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.

Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony, he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible is literally true - one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index.

That's right - the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the 12 volumes of the "Left Behind" series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious-right warrior Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.

Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding): Once Israel has occupied the rest of its "biblical lands," legions of the antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon.

As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to Heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.

I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man." A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed - an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144 - just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of God will return, the righteous will enter Heaven and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.

So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist Glenn Scherer - "The Road to Environmental Apocalypse." Read it and you will see how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed - even hastened - as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

Full story...