Monday 30 June 2003

Global War Looms?

Top U.S. Officials Discuss Expanding 'Terror War' to Iran, Beyond

A secret, quiet meeting in Kuwait between some of Washington’s top war hawks could signal that Iran is next on the chopping block.

Two weeks ago, a prince of the Kuwaiti Royal family received a phone call from an aide to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asking if the complex was available. The prince already suspected it was needed for one of those secret meetings, which Washington has taken to holding in the Gulf.

The next day a Hercules transport landed at Kuwait’s international airport. From it emerged a group of pale-faced, middle-aged men in drill shirts and chinos. They carried laptops and bulky briefcases.

To a casual observer they were just another delegation from Washington involved in post-war Iraq. But these men were the forward planners for the next war—the one against Iran.

Within an hour of installing themselves in their palatial surroundings—securely guarded by U.S. forces—they had unloaded their maps of Iran, downloaded their computer images of its terrain and set about planning “Target Iran.”

Secure communications lines had been established and tested with Washington. One was to the CIA, another to the Pentagon. Down those lines and on to their secure computers, the Kuwaiti task force would receive the latest intelligence from inside Iran.

Some of that intel would come from Israel—from Mossad deep cover agents in Tehran.

They will ensure that “Target Iran” being planned in that royal complex would lack nothing in information. The men based there are a Pentagon think tank for the next war.

They are some of the “neo-cons”—a new breed of “conservative” intellectuals who are determined to steer the Bush administration toward an even more aggressive, go-it-alone posture. They are headed in Washington by the hard-liner, John Bolton, the under-secretary of state for arms control.

The day the “neo-cons” landed in Kuwait, Bolton, a political mirror image of Rumsfeld, had issued a new warning about a supposed nuclear threat posed by Iran.

Bolton did so in a speech to the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington. His theme was the nuclear dangers “this administration intends to confront once the war with Iraq is over.”

He concluded: “In the aftermath of Saddam, dealing with the Iranian nuclear weapons program will be of equal importance to dealing with the threat that North Korea continues to pose.”

Full story...

BBC has fresh details to support its dossier claim

It appears that Auntie is determined to do her job, excellent news! I think the real measure of a news organisation is if it has any friends. If they do then you can be sure that they're probably not impartial. The BBC isn't perfect but it's about the best in the world at what it does. The fact that they piss a lot of people off is a good thing, even better if it's the government of the day.

The BBC will present fresh details about how the Iraqi weapons dossier was allegedly "sexed up'' by Downing Street and accuse Alastair Campbell of giving "inaccurate'' evidence to the official inquiry into the affair.

Publication of the claims, in the next 48 hours, will reignite the unprecedented row just as the Blair Government appears keen to damp it down. According to senior sources, the corporation has decided at the highest level not to give in to the relentless pressure from the Government.

Journalists and officials at the BBC have spent the weekend poring over the testimony given by Mr Campbell to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

According to the sources they have discovered "inaccuracies and inconsistencies'' in what the Prime Minister's communications chief told MPs. Andrew Gilligan, the BBC reporter who has been the focus of government attacks, will produce further information on how the intelligence services were supposedly pressured by Mr Campbell about the "45-minute threats'' posed by Saddam Hussein, which appeared in the first Downing Street dossier last September.

An investigation is under way, allegedly at the behest of Number 10, to hunt down Mr Gilligan's source.

Mr Gilligan, the defence and diplomatic correspondent of Radio 4's Today programme, has told Richard Sambrook, the head of news at the BBC, the identity of his informant. Greg Dyke, the director general, has been given details of the source but not his name.

Sources within the intelligence services have indicated that they will be "combative'' if the Government attempts to start a witch-hunt to find out those responsible for leaks to a number of journalists about the unhappiness within the services over how intelligence on Iraq was manipulated.

The hierarchy at the BBC is also ready for a prolonged confrontation with Downing Street over the affair. Both Mr Dyke and Gavyn Davies, the chairman of the board of governors, have links with New Labour. Taking on the Government at this stage is seen as a measure of their independence, according to BBC sources.

Full story...

Israeli Likens BBC Program to Nazi Press

Israel cuts off ties with BBC

Cheney, Forgery and the CIA

Not Business as Usual

It would appear from the fulsome praise heaped by mainstream reviewers on Bernard Lewis's most recent and well-timed book, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (Oxford University Press, 2002), that the demand for Orientalism has reached a new peak. America's search for new enemies that began soon after the end of the Cold War very quickly resurrected the ghost of an old, though now decrepit, enemy, Islam. Slowly but surely, this revived the sagging fort1unes of Orientalism, so that it speaks again with the treble voice of authority.

The mainstream reviewers describe Bernard Lewis as "the doyen of Middle Eastern studies," the "father" of Islamic studies, "[a]rguably the West's most distinguished scholar on the Middle East," and "[a] Sage for the Age." It would appear that Lewis is still the reigning monarch of Orientalism, as he was some twenty-five years back when Edward Said, in his Orientalism, dissected and exposed the intentions, modalities, deceptions, and imperialist connections of this ideological enterprise. This Orientalist tiger has not changed his stripes over the fifty-odd years that he has been honing his skills. Now at the end of his long career-only coincidentally, also the peak-he presents the summation, the quintessence of his scholarship and wisdom on Islam and the Middle East, gathered, compressed in the pages of this slim book that sets out to explain what went wrong with Islamic history, and that has so mesmerized reviewers on the right.

Full story...

Late night thoughts...

by ewar

I've come to realise that "history" is mostly a lie written by (or for) the corrupt a**holes who control this planet. Call me a "historical revisionist" if you like but when I realise that I've been lied to all my life then it kind of p*sses me off. As for history, consider this; "History is written by the victors", which is why Britain always comes out smelling of roses! Now that I've got your attention, here's a few thoughts late at night....

Guess what guys, that Noah dude built his Ark because a big-ass comet was about to hit the planet. He was warned by a civilisation much more advanced than his who understood the movements of the planets (like the people who built Stone-henge), they were able to observe and thus predict a cometary impact of devastating proportions. It's the same thing as a Rocket Scientist trying to explain how the world works to a bushman because he's about to leave the planet. Noah's Ark is reportedly in Armenia lying at the top of Mount Ararat - it was seen there in 1904 by climbers and again more recently. It's covered with snow and so is only visible at certain times when there is relatively little covering. Satellite pictures of the area show something man-made is definitely down there. There's no "conclusive" proof because, of course, the thing is in a virtually unreachable place that's covered in a big f**king pile of snow. I tell you what though; if you go there, brave the conditions and dig, you'll find it!

Did the world flood massively some time in the recent past? Yes! What caused it? The only thing that possibly could (providing of course you exclude pissed-off deities) - an extraterrestrial impact of HUGE proportions. Why do I believe this? Because a) The solar system is full of shit waiting to hit this planet; b) Sumerian civilisation (the accepted birthplace of ours) didn't just happen overnight after 105,000 prior years of human development, and; c) Nothing else about history makes sense to me unless you factor in some sort of globally catastophic event in living human memory! If I'm wrong then, why did the people who built Stonehenge just disappear without a trace, seemingly over-night? Same goes for all the "megalithic" people. Did you know that there are 40,000 henges in the UK, all of them following similar patterns of design and construction and all built with astrologically significant features - most notable alignment with the planet Venus. For those of you who don't know, using visual references of Venus is the most accurate way to measure time on planet earth. That says to me that our megalithic ancestors were a pretty advanced bunch, just because they hadn't figured out a million ways of exterminating themselves or abusing the planet with fossil fuels does NOT make them less advanced than us!

Look at some of the megalithic sites in South America, they contain masonry so precise that after thousands of years the structures are still standing without the use of any sort of concrete or steel, or even mortar in some cases! Every single current human society has at it's earliest origins stories of a pissed off "God" and a "great flood", even the most remote and far-flung of our human tribes! Assume for a minute that there was a cometary impact and that there were survivors, that impact would look to those people like a big flood because that's probably all they'd see - except maybe a big fiery thing in the sky that shouldn't be there - which would look remarkably like God Himself doing something nasty.

If there was a civilisation in existence before the impact which could predict what was going to happen it makes sense to me that they would have had the ability, and the will, to then set out and warn as many other humans as they could. To do otherwise would be to go against the very thing which makes us all human, despite what TV commercials may try and tell you! A cometary impact would explain both the biblical story of the flood and, more importantly somehow, it would also explain the story in the Book of Enoch discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls (the copper scroll to be precise), not to mention as the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh. How else would you explain unfossilised sea-shells on top of mountains in Scotland? For that matter, how would you explain the Great Salt Lake in the middle of the USA which is composed of SEA salt that has the same chemical makeup as the Ocean - not the elements in the surrounding soil! Evaporation and salinity measurements have proven that the lake is no more than +/- 10,000 years old. In geological time 10,000 years is a fraction of a nanosecond, so the origins of the lake remain a "mystery" to modern "science"! Add to that is the fact that there is geomagnetic data that points to cometary impacts of a huge scale on this planet about 9,000+ years ago and it all seems sown up (except of course you "don't believe in any of that fate crap").

Suddenly the whole picture starts to make sense, to me at least - maybe I am potty afterall but I think human civilisation, and life on earth, have been utterly destroyed and rebuilt at least once in the last 10,000 years! Enough was left over that we survived and have evolved again which is why civilisation seems to have sprung up out of no-where amidst stories of massive floods.

To me this answers one of the big questions I've always had; why are we so technologically evolved but still so primitive as a society? The answer is because we have no proper understanding of where we have come from other than some religious mumbo-jumbo bastardised in Nicea in 349 AD by a bunch of pre-catholic control-freaks who also burned the Library of Alexandria just to make a point. Our past has been stolen from us and stored in secret places like the Vatican library and the secret archives of government. All of it kept secret so that the "Powers that Be" can control us with fear and manipulate us with their lies!

Think about it people, we went from steam engines to jet engines in less than a hundred years, yet at the same time it took us 100,000 years to start living in cities and farming the land! Sorry if I missed the bus but doesn't that strike you as just a little strange?!? Our brains are the same size as humans who lived 50,000 years ago, our bodies are also the same. So why the hell did it take so long for our ancestors to do something so basic like stop hunting and gathering and stay in one place growing f**king veggies!?!?!?!?!

If someone can give me some logical answers to some of the points I've raised, I'm all ears. If anyone wants references and reading off me (I can't be arsed with a bibliography right now, but rest assured I have one) then also let me know.

At the end of the day, we have no real idea who we are because our history and past is hidden from us, both by the mists of time and by a bunch of rich bastards who know what the TRUTH is and would seek to use that knowledge to further their own greedy aims. Call me mad if you like but time will be my only real judge.

The moral of this story is trust your instincts, don't trust me or anyone else to tell you what is real and what is not real!

When the U.S. says jump, it wants Pakistan to jump

by Eric Margolis

Pakistan's military ruler, President Pervez Musharraf, was granted the honour last week of an audience at Camp David with the Great White Father. U.S. President George Bush, who three years ago couldn't even name Pakistan's leader, hailed Musharraf as a "statesman" and "friend of freedom."

Gen. Musharraf was offered a conditional $3 billion US aid package, provided: a) Congress, which hates Pakistan, approves; b) Musharraf continues to arrest Islamic militants and support the U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan; c) makes no trouble with India over Kashmir; d) doesn't supply nuclear technology to North Korea.

On the last item, the same Washington "experts" who assured us Iraq was bristling with deadly weapons that could annihilate the U.S. and U.K. "in 45 minutes" now claim Pakistan aided North Korea. Pakistan denies this questionable allegation.

In a startling public insult to a "friend and ally," Bush refused Musharraf's request to release F-16 fighters bought by Pakistan in 1989. Pro-Israel members of Congress blocked delivery of the aircraft to punish Pakistan for its nuclear program. Ironically, Pakistan's inability to acquire modern warplanes to counter India's state-of-the-art French Mirage 2000s and Russian MiG-29s and SU-30s compelled Islamabad to rely ever more heavily on its nuclear forces to deter hostile India, whose powerful military seriously outnumbers and outguns Pakistan.

I've felt a certain sympathy for Gen. Musharraf, who overthrew Pakistan's inept prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, in a 1999 coup. When I interviewed Musharraf in 2000, he was truly struggling to reform Pakistan's squalid, corrupt politics. Then came 9/11. The Bush administration put a gun to Musharraf's head, ordering him to ditch Pakistan's Afghan ally, the Taliban, open Pak bases to U.S. forces, arrest anti-American militants and fire the capable nationalist officers - and close friends - who put him into power, Generals Aziz and Mahmoud.

Obey, Washington warned Islamabad, or we will foreclose your loans, impose trade sanctions, cut off spare parts, and give India a green light to go after you. Tough Zia ul-Haq, Pakistan's last military ruler, would have stood up to American bullying. Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto would have cleverly managed to somehow finesse Washington's threats. But Musharraf, with a near-bankrupt nation, and faced with what he viewed as a Hobson's choice between obedience and ruin, caved in to Washington's demands and became, overnight, its compliant servitor.

Full story...

Friday 27 June 2003

Near Total Zionist Jewish Control Of The British Media

click for more... The Zionist Jews have an almost total grip on the media in Britain, systematically, constantly and intensely feeding their propaganda and example to almost everyone in Britain, which is nothing new. With this media, they are uniformly, deliberately, systematically, constantly and intensely promoting both the transformation and permanent destruction of Britain into a multiracial, "multicultural" state, and also the interests of the so-called "state of Israel", against the wishes and interests of the native British people. All of the following powerful controllers/owners are Jews:

BBC television under Alan Yentob broadcasts into almost every home all day, every day. Likewise ITV, which is controlled by Carlton Communications plc under Michael Green and by Granada plc under Steve Morrison, each of which broadcasts to regions of 26 million, half of the population, or more, all day, every day. Daytime television across the ITV network, which broadcasts to the whole of Britain, every day, is mainly provided by Anglia Television under Graham Creelman, while the rest of the time it is controlled by the regions controlled by Carlton Communications plc and Granadaplc. Likewise ITN, which provides the news for the ITV network every day, is controlled by Michael Green and its programmes are broadcast to the whole of Britain, while Carlton and Granada jointly own the London News Network. Further, BSkyB controlled by Rupert Murdoch broadcasts to over 10 million subscribers and their families every day.

Meanwhile, the main two production studios in Britain, and the largest in Europe, are controlled by Pinewood-Shepperton Limited, controlled by Michael Grade.

The situation is similar in radio, with all BBC radio stations controlled by Jenny Abramsky, alone accounting for 49% of all radio listening in Britain, every day. Further, in total, over 85 million copies of Jewish-controlled newspapers are sold in Britain every week, controlled by Richard Desmond, Rupert Murdoch, Guy Zitter, the openly Shabbat Goy and rabidly Zionist Conrad Black and Mrs Black (Barbara Amiel.)

We shall first consider their control of television and of radio, and then of the press; finally we shall give a summary of our findings. All data contained in the study are accurate as of May 2002.

Full story...

The Myth of Tiny, Little Israel

Just so we're clear, I am NOT an anti-semite or a racist just because I think that zionists are the most evil people on the planet (next to bankers and money lenders of course). So if you're someone that thinks I'm a racist just because I choose to criticise and condemn the utterly corrupt and evil regime of a morally bankrupt society, then please do me a favour and take your ignorance elsewhere because I'm just not interested in your whining.

Zionist Tentacles Everywhere

No decent human being in this world can see Sharon and his zionist minions killing women, children and elderly, destroying their homes, schools and hospitals and not feel a moral repugnance. There are many Jews as well as others who abhor this, in fact, these Jews are among the most heroic in fighting this brutality that is being used against the Palestinians and the espionage Mossad is perpetrating all over the world. This group includes such people as Nurit Peled (the winner of the Sakharov Prize for Peace in Israel), Anthony Lewis, Professor Naom Chomsky, Rabbi Michael Lerner and many other courageous and moral people. So let it be known that we must get past the myth of "tiny, little Israel" to see the truth about Israel and her supporters whose tentacles have spread throughout the world.

This article pertains to those who are zionists who support the brutal tactics of Sharon and his predecessors in Palestine and in the U.S.; it is this group that has infiltrated American politics, media and military policy ( and the policies of other nations as well) through secret agents, those who carry dual citizenship but are more loyal to Israel than to the US or other nations, through the Mossad agents that have been hired for security reasons in various nations who then branch out to recruit others who then become agents for Israel, and through the academics whose political connections and media connections that make them overnight “authorities” so as to be an asset to Israel (Daniel Pipes, Frank Gaffney, Richard Perle, Bernard Lewis to name but a few).

Too few people in the world realize that this “little nation” of Israel has its tentacles throughout the world, in terms of its political action committees, appointees and elected officials in governments and the hiring out of its active or retired Mossad agents. I write this article to awaken people to the reality of what is actually going on, so that they may wipe away the myths spread by the Israeli propaganda machine that has mainline access to American media (newspapers, TV, radio and film) and enormous influence on the politics and economies of many nations, among them, America, Britain, Venezuela, Germany and others.

Here are but a few examples:

1. Many airport checkers at the Frankfurt, Germany, airports are members of Mossad; this has been attested to by many Arab and Arab American travelers who have been harassed by them (many of the guards spoke Hebrew to one another during checking).

2. Many new hires in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the CIA and FBI, this according to people working in those agencies and even reported briefly in some newspapers are former, or on loan, Mossad agents;

3. Iraqis report Hebrew speaking troops with the American troops in Baghdad, even American papers have reported that Israel is “aiding America” in its search for WMD; the methods being used by American troops in Iraq are exactly like the Israeli methods used in Palestine—shooting heavy weaponry at a house, then breaking down the door and bursting in, even without evidence, and arresting young men and fathers in the house and taking them away to unknown locations, or simply destroying homes with tanks, mortars or missiles simply because of a “tip” that “terrorists” or “pro-Saddam” people are there

;4. It is common knowledge that Mossad trained the apartheid South African regimes police and military that terrorized Blacks and Browns in that country for years, Israel also sold the weaponry and technology to South Africa that was banned by the UN and the USA that helped hold the African natives of the region and nation in check; experts on Africa say there are others operating in Africa at this time in Nigeria and Kenya.

What is interesting also is how much Israel and its agents have infiltrated American intelligence and politics. It is a known fact that Wolfowitz, Fleischer, Perle, Lantos and some others have dual citizenships between Israel and America. Some of their behavior helps reinforce this loyalty to Israel; at times, Lantos asks for more funds for Israel than for the poor in America or even in California (his district and state). It is well known by every literate person in the world that Wolfowitz and Perle were two of the prime movers for an attack on Iraq and continue their pressuring for attacks on Iran, Syria and Lebanon (which are at the top of Israel’s hit list). AIPAC, the American Israel Political Action Committee uses millions of dollars of its funds to get billions in aid for Israel through donations and political pressure on American presidents, congress people and senators.

Full story...

Thursday 26 June 2003

Undermining Blix

Wolfowitz Had CIA Investigate Blix

Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, was so eager to see the United States launch a preemptive strike against Iraq in early 2002, that he ordered the CIA to investigate the past work of Hans Blix, the chief United Nations weapons inspector, who in February 2002, was asked to lead a team of U.N. weapons inspectors into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, in an attempt to undermine the scientist.

The unusual move by Wolfowitz underscores the steps the Bush administration was willing to take a year before the U.S. invaded Iraq to manipulate and or exaggerate intelligence information to support it's claims that Iraq posed an immediate threat to the United States and that the only solution to quell the problem was the use of military force.

U.S. military forces in Iraq have yet to find any evidence of WMD. Some U.S. lawmakers have accused the Bush administration of distorting intelligence information, which claimed Iraq possessed tons of chemical and biological agents, to justify the attack to overthrow Iraq's President Saddam Hussein. Although the Bush administration continues to deny the accusations, evidence, such as the secret report Wolfowitz asked the CIA in January 2002 to produce on Blix, prove that the administration had already decided that removing Saddam from power would require military force and it would do so regardless of the U.N..

Earlier this month, Blix accused the Bush administration of launching a smear campaign against him because he could not find evidence of WMD in Iraq and, he said, he refused to pump up his reports to the U.N. about Iraq's WMD programs, which would have given the U.S. the evidence it needed to get a majority of U.N. member countries to support a war against Iraq. Instead, Blix said the U.N. inspectors should be allowed more time to conduct searches in Iraq for WMD.

In a June 11 interview with the London Guardian newspaper, Blix said "U.S. officials pressured him to use more damning language when reporting on Iraq's alleged weapons programs."

"By and large my relations with the U.S. were good,'' Blix told the Guardian. "But toward the end the (Bush) administration leaned on us.'"

Tensions between Blix and the hawks in the Bush administration, such as Wolfowitz, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, go back at least two years, when President Bush, at the urging of Secretary of State Colin Powell, said he wanted the U.N. to resurrect U.N. arms inspections for Iraq.

The move angered some in the administration, such as Wolfowitz, who, according to an April 15 report in the Washington Post, wanted to see military action against Iraq sooner rather than later.

Full story...

Bring the British troops home

Resistance to the occupation of Iraq is a response to its tyranny

The long-awaited uprising in Iraq has begun - not to welcome the invaders as some imagined, but to demand their withdrawal. The spread of resistance to the south and the killing of British soldiers around Amara on Tuesday might have come as a surprise to the British public. But such developments have been anticipated within Iraq for several weeks.

The US administration is trying to convince us that it is the "remnants" of Saddam's regime that are resisting the occupation. We are invited to believe that Saddam's "fanatical" supporters, who were not prepared to die for him when he was in power, are engaged in astounding heroics after he has been deposed and the Iraqi state machine crushed. Much of the British media has been willing to go along with this deception, which helps to cover up the truth about the developing dirty war in Iraq.

It doesn't need much investigation to see that Saddam's tyrannical regime is being rapidly replaced by a tyranny of the occupation forces, who are killing Iraqi civilians and unleashing Vietnam-style "search and destroy" raids on Iraqi people's homes. Meanwhile, Iraqis are making it abundantly clear that what they want is freedom, independence and democracy: the same burning desires they had during Saddam's dictatorship. They have been marching in their millions since the downfall of the regime shouting "La Amreeka, La Saddam": No to America, No to Saddam. This call is now uniting most Iraqis - with the notable and I believe temporary exception of Iraqi Kurdistan.

The invasion of Iraq has developed into a colonial war, while popular sentiment is far outstripping the political programmes of the main Iraqi political organisations. That is evident in the way they have rejected the plans put forward by Paul Bremer, the head of the US occupation administration, for an appointed advisory council and called for a speedy transfer of power to Iraqis.

Contrary to the mythology propagated in the US and British media, popular sentiment in Iraq was always strongly against the invasion. With very few exceptions, at no time did Iraqis confuse their hatred of Saddam's brutal tyranny with their opposition to his White House sponsors. And popular opposition to the occupation and its terror tactics is the real force behind the rising tide of armed resistance.

Full story...

UK DNA Database Being Built By Stealth

Further evidence that this country is run by manipulative, evil, lying scum-bags. Do not trust Tony or any of the Cronies, don't even trust me! Trust only yourself and your own analytical skills, figure it our for yourself and you will understand the truth.

Obey! Civil liberties campaigners accused the Government last night of compiling a national DNA database "by stealth" as police prepared to enter the two millionth profile into the system.

The number held has doubled in two years and a further million are due to be added in the coming year.

Police powers to keep DNA samples have been strengthened considerably since 2001 when they were first allowed to keep the information indefinitely from suspects who were not convicted.

The new Criminal Justice Bill now before Parliament extends this rule to people who are arrested but never charged.

David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, said the importance of DNA profiling to criminal detection outweighed the civil liberties objections.

"The DNA and fingerprint databases have become vital weapons in law enforcement, making our communities safer by helping to put thousands of repeat criminals behind bars," he said ahead of a lecture in London on advances in police technology.

"Every week our national DNA database matches over 1,000 DNA profiles taken from crime scenes with names on the database. Around 42 per cent of those matches are turned into detections within an average of 14 days. That is a huge achievement."

In 1998-99 there were 21,329 DNA matches and 6,151 detections. In the year to last April, there were 49,913 matches leading to 21,098 detections. The Home Office said that although only a quarter of all crimes were detected, this rises to one third where DNA has been loaded to the database.

Gareth Crossman, a spokesman for Liberty, the civil rights group, said: "The Government is hell-bent on creating a national DNA database by stealth.

Full story...

UK babies may be genetically screened

Wednesday 25 June 2003

Harry Potter and the fascist bully-boys

by Rod Liddle

It was a hot day in June, the hottest of the summer so far, but my two children did not shirk from building the bonfire, nor flinch as the candy-orange and chimney-red flames leapt higher and higher. They poked and prodded furiously. It was a proud and emotional moment for me, their dad, to see political commitment and activism developing so early on in life.

They were engaged in burning all of their Harry Potter books, of course - and their Harry Potter videos and Harry Potter mugs, broomsticks, posters and T-shirts. I suspect, after having absorbed a Guardian treatise on the work of JK Rowling - and subsequent contributions to the letters page - your children were similarly occupied over the weekend. If not, come on, mum and dad, get with the programme - have a little word, huh?

"They don't celebrate Rosh Hashanah or Diwali at Hogwarts," Wilder, aged three, explained to an inquisitive neighbour who was leaning over the garden wall and quietly choking on the smoke. "And are you aware that in the entire Harry Potter canon there isn't a single disabled child?"

"Differently abled, I think you mean, Wilder," corrected Tyler, aged five. "But it's the blatantly racist depiction of the house elves which bothers us most. Rowling seems to be sanctioning both the brutal, exploitative system of slave labour and the iniquitous racial segregation which existed within the antebellum plantations in the deep south of America until the latter decades of the last century."

"It wouldn't surprise us much," added Wilder wryly, "if her next book was called Harry Potter and the Annexation of the Sudetenland. Come on," he screamed, turning back to the fire, "burn, you Nazi bastards."

Full story...

British Government Push To Fluoridate Drinking Water

Looks like I'll be investing in water purification facilities. I refuse to use normal toothpaste, Kingfisher do an organic natural one that has no chemical crap in it. It's a con to allow companies who produce fluoride as a waste product to dispose of it and get paid for it! There is no real medical evidence that it's beneficial as you will read below.

The government is poised to reignite one of the most vexed medical issues of the past 50 years. Early next month, parliament will debate clauses of the water bill which will give indemnity against legal action to water companies that add fluoride to their supplies, paving the way for the extension of fluoridation schemes throughout this country.

Fluoridation is the addition of silicofluorides (hexafluorosilicic acid or, less commonly, sodium hexafluorosilicate) at the level of one part per million to public water supplies. The adversaries could not be more starkly opposed. Proponents believe that fluoridation brings about a reduction of caries in children's teeth, and that this is especially beneficial for children in socially deprived areas.

They insist that there are no detrimental public health consequences, whether short- or long-term. Opponents argue that silicofluorides are a class 2 poison under the Poisons Act, have serious adverse health effects, and in any case do nothing to benefit children's teeth.

Fluoridation schemes were first introduced in the United States in 1946. Since the late 1960s, about 10% of the UK population has received fluoridated water supplies - primarily, those in areas served by the Severn Trent, Northumbrian and Anglian water companies. During the postwar decades, the benefits of fluoride were held to be incontestable as dental health rapidly improved.

However, with better diet and treatment, it was improving across the western world. As far back as 1986, Nature published an article showing that rates of tooth decay were coming down as quickly in unfluoridated communities as in fluoridated ones.

Full story...

Tuesday 24 June 2003

Herbicide-Resistant 'Superweeds' Signal Herbicide-Resistant

The dispute over genetically modified crops will intensify today with news of the evolution of "superweeds", which are resistant to the powerful weedkillers that GM crops were engineered to tolerate.

The development, which comes as the sacked former environment minister Michael Meacher puts himself at the head of the anti-GM campaign, will be seized on by opponents of the technology as undermining its rationale.

It means that bigger quantities of weedkillers - not less, as the biotechnology companies have claimed - will be needed in GM-crop fields, adding to the already intensive agriculture that has wiped out much of Britain's farmland wildlife in the past four decades. Monsanto, the GM market leader, confirmed to The Independent at the weekend that its solution for dealing with resistant weeds was to apply different weedkillers in new ways.

In yesterday's Independent on Sunday, Mr Meacher accused Tony Blair, a GM supporter, of seeking to bury health warnings about GM produce by "rushing to desired conclusions which cannot be scientifically supported".

The revelations about superweeds have been communicated to the Government by an American academic specialising in weed control, who has posted a paper on the website of the official GM science review, led by Professor David King, the Government's chief scientific adviser. This will report soon in advance of a long-delayed decision, due this autumn, on whether GM crops should be commercialised in Britain.

Full story...

Monday 23 June 2003

Mankind's Tormentors

A Brief History of the International Bankers

As mankind careens toward worldwide slavery, it has become important to understand the depth and scope of the forces which we're resisting. The plot, so evident to us today, has been creeping around behind events and figureheads for as long as the United States has existed. It seems the American Revolution, a detrimental blow to the British Empire, was the "starting gun" for the wealthy bankers to covet world control. By the 1800's, the Banks of England and France (controlled by the Rothschild family) effectively commanded the policies of these nations. Through consolidation with other banking/industrialist families and the undermining of worldwide monetary systems, these "elite" have implemented their plans for domination; we are now bearing witness to the fruition of more than two hundred years of coercion and parasitism.

In order for these potential rulers to take control of the world through subversive tactics, the dominating world powers had to be brought to their knees. The power of the Church had to be decimated as well as the French, British, and Germanic Empires. Once the control was taken from these forces, the bankers could slither into the driver's seat with their financial control. British, French, German, and Spanish imperialism pillaged the wealth of their colonies (most of the world) and placed control of this massive stock of wealth into the hands of bankers. Through political manipulation they've engineered most of what we refer to as "modern history" since the industrial revolution. With control established over the nations that dominated most of the world, the banker's next logical goal had to be the subjugation of the two largest nations which stood apart: the United States of America and Russia.

In the late 1830's, Andrew Jackson dealt a devastating blow to the international banker's ambitions for capturing control of U.S. finance by balancing the Federal budget and defeating a charter renewal for the Second Bank (in charge of printing U.S. dollars.) These ambitious bankers did not want a huge American Empire to grow out of their control. Logically, they would wish the U.S. to be split into states existing as individual nations, which could then be pitted against one another, causing wartime borrowing which increases the lender's wealth. The South, in their plans to secede from the Union, received the immediate support of the international bankers; these bankers always tend to support both sides in order to control any outcome. Britain and France, already in the hands of these bankers, surrounded the United States when the South seceded. Few believe the North could have maintained the Union if France and Britain entered the war. Lincoln, in dire need of aid, requested help from the Russian Tsar- a staunch opponent of the money powers. Russia immediately sent ships and troops to the United States which offset the French and British pressures. This scenario had the potential to erupt into the first "World War;" Britain and France backed down to avoid such a massive showdown and the United States was left to her own vices.

Decades past, and Marxism grew popular, as well as the teachings of Dean Ruskin: that an elite should rule over the common man. The wealthy grew wealthier as railroads expanded and petroleum began powering industry. Russia and the U.S.A. were still only remotely influenced by the banking powers that dominated the rest of the industrial nations. Not long into the 1900's, this would drastically change.

In 1913, ignoring the warnings of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Jackson (and many other noble persons) the U.S. committed virtual suicide by signing the fate of the nation over to the banking megalomaniacs. Without a sunset clause, or any control mechanisms except for presidential power to appoint a chairman, the Federal Reserve Bank was signed into existence by Woodrow Wilson and a skeleton Congress, many who had already taken their Christmas holiday. This granted supreme financial power to wealthy, power-crazed banking families. Woodrow Wilson, often "advised" by Colonel Edward House, would claim later in his life, "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world- no longer a government by free-opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." With America subdued, the bankers could now lend more attention to Russia. As these early globalists say, "Order from chaos." World War One would provide a large dose of chaos.

The First World War began in 1913, as the nations of Europe were entwined in treaties, and the international bankers began massive lending to both sides of the conflict… especially the Allies. As the war progressed, and Russian fatality totals began to amass, Russian morale dwindled. The Bolshevik Revolution was heavily financed by New York City bankers including J.P. Morgan and Rockefeller. William Boyce Thompson, one of the ten directors of the Federal Reserve Bank, both financed and advocated the Bolshevik Revolution. Why were the U.S. money powers behind the "workers revolution?" These wanna-be- tyrants wished to aid a system of slaves: socialism. What better system, from the perspective of the ruler, than a system of "equality" where every aspect of life is dictated? Furthermore, these international financiers and businessmen could operate more easily through a central government than dealings with individual persons and companies. Moreover, the Socialist Dictatorship ensured no private enterprise would arise to compete with the money powers already in place… after all, Russia had a huge supply of raw materials and great growth potential. Wilson, obviously entranced at that time by the globalists, personally granted the passport of Leon Trotsky, who held the fort in Russia until Lenin arrived in his sealed, private train.

The new socialist government in Russia declared the nation atheist and a wholesale slaughter of mostly Christians ensued. Why wipe out Christians? It's the same reason the F.B.I. has recently declared Christians as "possible terrorists." The prophesies of the Christian religion equate a world government with an anti-christ and apocalypse. We all know how religion can drive otherwise complacent men into action; if these international bankers are to assume control of the world, they know they'll have to obliterate all true Christians. The U.S. and Russia, at the start of the twentieth century, were the most powerful Christian nations not yet subdued by the international bankers.

After the World War, puppet-president Wilson, led Congress toward involvement in the League of Nations which was no more than a hired hand to protect the assets of the bankers. Back then, Congress was intelligent enough to keep us out of such detrimental associations such as this. Another round of "chaos" would be needed to lure isolationist Americans into the international trap- hence, the international bankers funded Hitler's war machine.

Prescott Bush's Union Bank was entwined with Hitler's financing, IBM provided an early "computer" system based on punch cards to help keep track of inmates in concentration camps, and Rockefeller's Standard Oil of New Jersey sold the Nazis oil. The same clique of internationalist bankers funded the next crisis- World War Two. This war provided enough of a jolt to herd the U.S. into an international institution- the United Nations. The first order of business- capture Jerusalem.

The desire to hold dominion over Jerusalem extends back to the time of the Crusades. The Knights Templar led most of the battles to gain control over Jerusalem for the Pope, who later betrayed them. The Masonic sects of the world- Freemasons, Scottish Rite Masons, Rosicrucians, the Illuminati- all claim heritage back to the Knights Templar. Because the Knights Templar's supreme mandate was to conquer Jerusalem, members of these modern sects must desire this same goal.

David Rockefeller donated the land in Manhattan for the United Nation's Headquarters, and the United Nations attempted to secure Israel as a "homeland for the Jews." Does this motive of charity and sympathy sound plausible? More likely, the wealthy globalists seized the opportunity and used the plight of the Jews as an excuse to accomplish this goal they desired for centuries. Thus the Jews have become mere pawns in this global strategy. Whenever anyone criticizes the actions of Israel, they are equated to Nazis and labeled "anti-semitic." The globalist forces are more than satisfied when the Jewish people are verbally attacked, thus they can claim racism. The Israeli Jews have unwittingly provided a shield for the internationalist bankers and their agendas. The rulers of this nation of Israel are not Jews- they are Satanists, as are the rest of these delusional megalomaniacs.

The Muslim world is now bearing the full brunt of American military might and, as each new nation is conquered, pipeline construction begins. This battling will not stop until a maze of pipelines is in place… many of these pipelines leading to Israel- free of charge! It's blatantly obvious that forces of the New World Order rule Israel. Ariel Sharon, speaking to Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, said, "Every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear, don't worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it." This scandalous statement surely inspired much resentment for Israeli Jews. However, this is just another example of the globalists hiding behind the Israeli Jews; what sort of power do the citizens of Israel really have over their government? What Sharon was truly saying was that the forces of World Government, concentrated in the government of Israel, are masters of the United States government. This has absolutely nothing to do with race or religion- is has to do solely with power and money. Any supporter of the globalist agenda who claims any religious ties is merely masking himself behind virtue… and the supposed "Jews" who rule Israel are no exception.

We must not be lured into the trap of racial division. This is mankind's problem we're facing- none of the religions of the world can condone the forces poised to rule the earth. The globalists desire that we bicker with one another over race and religion- but they don't see themselves as belonging to any race or religion: their race is their personal "supremacy," their religion is money-worship. This lightning fast trip through portions of history was meant to shatter some illusions of the past- of factions battling one another or of Communists versus Capitalists. This false opposition was perpetrated upon us to control us and force the governments to borrow huge sums of money to be paid back with interest. Opposition is often manufactured in order to pit sides against one another, to divide and conquer. Remember, history is nothing more than his-story; let us try to read between the lines. Roger Waters, co-founder of the band Pink Floyd, expressed history perfectly when he said, "It all makes perfect sense, expressed in dollars and cents, pounds schillings and pence."

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HIV/AIDS Made In America?

Graves Gets His Day In Court

This week in California a lawyer is suing the U.S. government, claiming that the HIV-AIDS virus is a man made virus developed and manufactured in the United States with the knowledge of the U.S. government. On June 27th. prominent lawyer and AIDS researcher, Dr. Boyd E Graves JD* will finally present his case, number 02 CV 02396**, before Judge Jeffrey T. Miller in a San Diego court, claiming that the HIV virus, the virus that causes AIDS, is a virus that was manufactured in American laboratories between 1962 and 1978. On November 27th. last year the Office of the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services granted Dr. Graves sixty days to file suit in the United States federal court against the U.S. government. Graves claims he has hundreds of government documents proving HIV-AIDS was designed as biological terrorism against African-Americans. His action was initially brought in the U.S. Supreme Court, Case No. 00-9587.***

Researchers have long suspected that HIV arose as a result of a viral "cross-species jump" from primates to humans. The theory is that, through contact with chimpanzee blood, possibly through hunting them and eating the meat, humans were exposed to Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) which mutated into Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Not everyone agrees with this theory, and recently it has been challenged by Dr. Graves, who believes he has discovered the most terrifying inference about HIV-AIDS. Graves claims it is becoming increasingly clear that this virus was not, as scientists at first thought, passed from chimpanzees to mankind, but was probably knowingly developed by doctors and scientists working for the United States government. Graves says that in April 1984, Dr. Robert Gallo filed a United States patent application for his invention, the HIV-AIDS Virus. The Patent number for the invention is 4647773, details of which can be found at the US Patent Office website.****

According to Graves, the scientific evidence is compelling. He says:

"The HIV-AIDS Virus was manufactured as a designer bi-product of the US Special Virus programme. The Special Virus programme was a federal virus development programme that persisted in the United States from 1962 until 1978. Dr. Robert Gallo's 1971 Special Virus paper reveals that the United States was seeking a "virus particle" that would negatively impact the defence mechanisms of the immune system. The programme sought to modify the genome of the virus particle in which to splice in an animal wasting disease called Visna." Graves says Dr. Gallo's 1971 Special Virus paper is identical to his 1984 announcement of AIDS, and in 2001 Dr. Gallo conceded his role as "Project Officer" for the federal virus development programme, the Special Virus.

Graves claims the US Special Virus was added as a "compliment" by vaccine manufacturer Merck to experimental hepatitis B vaccines given to gay men in New York City, Los Angeles and San Fransisco; and smallpox vaccines given to blacks in central Africa, during the late 1970's and early 1980's. Shortly thereafter the world was overwhelmed with mass infections of a human retrovirus that differed from any known human disease, it was highly contagious and it could kill. Boyd Graves now believes that HIV-AIDS is probably an evolutionary, laboratory development of the peculiar Visna Virus, first detected in Icelandic sheep. Graves himself is a graduate of Annapolis US Naval Academy and law school who, in 1992 tested positive for HIV.

"Today I am hailed as "the Man Who Solved AIDS", he says. "What many people do not understand is that HIV contains particles of an Icelandic sheep disease, VISNA. Visna is from nazi Germany. It too is man made. The Supreme Court case was brought from a lower court which dismissed the origin of AIDS as a frivolous issue. I do not believe anyone in the world considers the origin of AIDS frivolous."

He claims to have one piece of evidence he's convinced will force the judge to rule in his favour saying: "If that happens the government will be forced to release all sorts of previously-classified research which proves the real origins of HIV-AIDS. The United States must account to the American people and the people of the world for the U.S. Special Virus Program."

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Bush's Vietnam

by John Pilger

Once more, we hear that America is being "sucked into a quagmire". The rapacious adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan are going badly wrong. By John Pilger

America's two "great victories" since 11 September 2001 are unravelling. In Afghanistan, the regime of Hamid Karzai has virtually no authority and no money, and would collapse without American guns. Al-Qaeda has not been defeated, and the Taliban are re-emerging. Regardless of showcase improvements, the situation of women and children remains desperate. The token woman in Karzai's cabinet, the courageous physician Sima Samar, has been forced out of government and is now in constant fear of her life, with an armed guard outside her office door and another at her gate. Murder, rape and child abuse are committed with impunity by the private armies of America's "friends", the warlords whom Washington has bribed with millions of dollars, cash in hand, to give the pretence of stability.

"We are in a combat zone the moment we leave this base," an American colonel told me at Bagram airbase, near Kabul. "We are shot at every day, several times a day." When I said that surely he had come to liberate and protect the people, he belly-laughed.

American troops are rarely seen in Afghanistan's towns. They escort US officials at high speed in armoured vans with blackened windows and military vehicles, mounted with machine-guns, in front and behind. Even the vast Bagram base was considered too insecure for the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, during his recent, fleeting visit. So nervous are the Americans that a few weeks ago they "accidentally" shot dead four government soldiers in the centre of Kabul, igniting the second major street protest against their presence in a week.

On the day I left Kabul, a car bomb exploded on the road to the airport, killing four German soldiers, members of the international security force Isaf. The Germans' bus was lifted into the air; human flesh lay on the roadside. When British soldiers arrived to "seal off" the area, they were watched by a silent crowd, squinting into the heat and dust, across a divide as wide as that which separated British troops from Afghans in the 19th century, and the French from Algerians and Americans from Vietnamese.

In Iraq, scene of the second "great victory", there are two open secrets. The first is that the "terrorists" now besieging the American occupation force represent an armed resistance that is almost certainly supported by the majority of Iraqis who, contrary to pre-war propaganda, opposed their enforced "liberation" (see Jonathan Steele's investigation, 19 March 2003, www.guardian.co.uk). The second secret is that there is emerging evidence of the true scale of the Anglo-American killing, pointing to the bloodbath Bush and Blair have always denied.

Comparisons with Vietnam have been made so often over the years that I hesitate to draw another. However, the similarities are striking: for example, the return of expressions such as "sucked into a quagmire". This suggests, once again, that the Americans are victims, not invaders: the approved Hollywood version when a rapacious adventure goes wrong. Since Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled almost three months ago, more Americans have been killed than during the war. Ten have been killed and 25 wounded in classic guerrilla attacks on roadblocks and checkpoints which may number as many as a dozen a day.

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Terrorism and the origins of Israel

Now, whenever you hear a supporter of Israel talk about Palestinian "terrorists" could you possibly remind them about the Jewish "terrorists" who were instrumental in setting up the State of Israel (along with the Rothschild family of course). Now I'm not saying that Israel doesn't have a right to exist, in all honesty I don't care one way or another because I don't live there. What I am saying is that one has to understand the naked hypocrisy that pervades this whole issue. We are fed half-truths, lies and road-maps and nothing ever changes. Israelis still die and so do Palestinians, both have a right to live in peace but neither are given the chance becuase there are extremist, funadamentalist nutters on both sides who are intent on killing the other side. If you ask me those are lost people, they can see no other way to achieve their aims than violence. Shame on them! And shame on all of us for allowing ourselves to be lied to and manipulated!

Last month the National Archives, formerly known as the Public Record Office, released MI5 Security Service files showing that Zionist terror groups planned to set up cells in London and assassinate the post-war Labour government’s British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin.

“Present Trends in Palestine”, an MI5 briefing paper written in August 1946, reported on the activities of the Stern Gang. This was the terrorist group that had assassinated Lord Moyne, the British military governor in Egypt in 1944.

“In recent months it has been reported that they [the Stern Gang] have been training selected members for the purpose of proceeding overseas and assassinating a prominent British personality—special reference having been made several times to Mr. Bevin in this connection,” the paper noted.

One of the leading lights of the Stern Group, which had by this time renamed itself Lehi, was Yitzhak Shamir who became prime minister in 1983 and whose tenure in the highest office in Israel was second only to Ben Gurion.

Another paper, “Threatened Jewish Activity in the United Kingdom, Palestine and Elsewhere”, prepared for the Prime Minister Clement Attlee, focused on the activities of the Irgun.

It noted that the Irgun, led by Menachem Begin—later to become prime minister of Israel in 1977—who had a £2,000 price on his head, “was responsible in the past for the liquidation of members of the police and the military whose activities have been judged especially worthy of Jewish resentment in Palestine.”

The paper was written in the aftermath of a terrorist bombing by the Irgun that had in the previous month blown up the British headquarters in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people—Britons, Arabs and Jews—and injured many more.

It said, “Our Jerusalem representative has since received information that the Irgun and Stern Group have decided to send 5 ‘cells’ to London to work along IRA [Irish Republican Army] lines. To use their own words, the terrorists intend ‘to beat the dog in his own kennel’. If the 18 Sternists are executed [for their part in the King David bombing] the Irgun have agreed to co-operate with the Stern Group.”

The intelligence forces believed that if the executions were carried out, there would be at least 100 retaliatory terrorist outrages and “indiscriminate shooting of British officers and soldiers on the streets of Palestine must be expected”. The files showed that the sentences were in fact reduced to life imprisonment.

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Part 2

Iran's in the crosshairs of Bush's bombsight

by Eric Margolis

President George Bush, who assured Americans on March 17 there was "no doubt that the Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised," now warns Iran is working on nuclear weapons.

Bush seems determined to press his crusade against Muslim nations. But another important reason impels him on. He is running a political Ponzi scheme: diverting the public from the Enron and stock market swindles by invading Afghanistan, then covering that mess by invading Iraq, and now trying to cover up the growing Iraq disaster by fanning a new crisis with Iran.

Soon after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called for the U.S. Army to march on Tehran, his American neo-conservative supporters launched a get-Iran campaign, featuring the identical propaganda they used to fan war fever against Iraq: weapons of mass destruction; threats to the U.S.; terrorism and human rights violations. Some imaginative neo-cons even claim Saddam's unfindable weapons were moved to Iran.

The Bush administration, which openly seeks to overthrow the Tehran regime and funds anti-government groups, applauded last week's student protests in Iran. No mention, however, was made of students beaten and jailed in Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf states for protesting the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

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The New Thought Police

The campaign to criminalize criticism of Israel

Last week, after Israeli targeted Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi – and, instead, got a woman passer-by and a three year-old child, while 27 others were injured. – George W. Bush came out with some very mild criticism of Israel:

"I am troubled by the recent Israeli helicopter gunship attacks. I regret the loss of innocent life. I also don't believe that the attacks help Israeli security."

From the hysterical reaction, one might have thought that he had uttered a blood libel, or suddenly taken to wearing a kaffiyeh. Such a commotion! House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), reportedly strode into the Oval Office and threatened to push a resolution through Congress offering unconditional support to Sharon and implicitly rebuking the President.

God forbid the President of the United States should mourn the death of a three-year-old child whom the Israelis say was inadvertently killed. That this troubles him troubles DeLay – and that is more than a little troubling. I mean, what are we talking about here: aren't we supposed to be against the taking of innocent life? And why, pray tell, shouldn't an American President forbidden say out loud what he really thinks about the immoral and self-destructive behavior of a foreign government, albeit one that is ostensibly our faithful ally?

We hear constantly about the supposed rise of anti-Semitic sentiments in Europe: this is not neo-Nazi activity, or the "old" anti-Semitism of the Protocols, but the "new anti-Semitism," which boils down to criticism of Israel and its supporters.

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Friday 20 June 2003

The right to resist

Armed opposition to the occupation of Iraq will continue until the US and Britain withdraw

by Seumas Milne


It would have been hard to predict in advance that the US and British occupation of Iraq could go so spectacularly wrong so quickly. The words of the historian Tacitus about the Roman invasion of Scotland in the first century AD might just as well have been written about our latter-day Rome's latest imperial adventure: "They create a wasteland and they call it peace."

More than two months after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraq is sinking deeper into chaos and insecurity, as US forces lash out at the Iraqi resistance, which is now killing an average of one American soldier a day. Another was shot dead in Baghdad yesterday, while US troops killed more protesters - as they have repeatedly done since the massacres of demonstrators in Mosul and Falluja in April. The British minister in charge of reconstruction in occupied Iraq, Baroness Amos, had to admit yesterday that she is unable to visit the country because of the risk of guerilla attack, while the British commander, Major General Freddie Viggers, conceded that British troops may now be in Iraq for up to four years because of the growing insurgency.

In Britain, the unravelling of what US deputy secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz, called the "bureaucratic" pretext for war - the supposed threat from Iraqi chemical and biological weapons - has created the most serious political crisis for Tony Blair's government in six years and removed the last vestige of possible legality from the aggression. With no sign of any such weapons on the ground in Iraq, intelligence leaks and the withering accounts of former cabinet ministers Clare Short and Robin Cook have stripped bare the ultimate New Labour spin operation. Polls show most British people are now convinced the government deliberately exaggerated the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to bounce public and parliament into war. Not surprisingly, attitudes to the conflict itself are also beginning to turn.

In Iraq, the mounting social and human cost of the invasion and occupation has become ever clearer. The country's first Burger King may have opened at Baghdad airport and the Queen's birthday may once again be celebrated on the banks of the Tigris, but the impact of war and regime collapse on essential services and infrastructure, on top of the havoc wreaked by the first Gulf war and 13 years of grinding sanctions, has been devastating.

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Thursday 19 June 2003

America's Matrix

“Matrix” and its sequel. “Matrix Reloaded,” offer a useful analogy for anyone trying to make sense of the chasm that has opened between what’s real and what Americans perceive is real. Like the science-fiction world of the two movies, a false reality is being pulled daily over people’s eyes, often through what they see and

Some living in this “American Matrix” are like the everyday people in the movies, simply oblivious to what’s going on beneath the surface, either too busy or too bored to find out. Others appear to know better but behave like Cipher, the character in the original movie who chooses the fake pleasures of the Matrix over what Morpheus calls “the desert of the real.”

Many Americans so enjoyed the TV-driven nationalism of the Iraq War, for instance, that they didn’t want it spoiled by reality. During the conflict, they objected to news outlets showing mangled bodies or wounded children or U.S. POWs. Presenting the ugly face of war was seen as unpatriotic or somehow disloyal to “the troops.” Only positive images were welcome and dissent was deemed almost treasonous.

Now, even as U.S. forces in Iraq slide closer to the guerrilla-war quagmire that some skeptics predicted, Americans continue to say they trust George W. Bush to handle the situation. Some military analysts close to the Bush administration are beginning to feel differently, however. “We’re hanging on by our fingernails,” one told me recently.

But Americans still prefer to feel good about the war. They want to believe that the U.S. invasion was just, and that Saddam Hussein really was poised to use weapons of mass destruction. By large majorities, Americans either believe that these weapons have already been found or they don’t care that the Bush administration may have misled the world.

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Wednesday 18 June 2003

What Is Happening in America?

This article, one of the best short analyses of the Bush administration's policies, was published by "Vorwarts," Germany.

by Eliot Weinberger


In the Western democracies in the last fifty years, we have grown accustomed to governments whose policies on specific issues may be good or bad, but which essentially institute incremental changes to the status quo. The major exceptions have been Thatcher and Reagan, but even their programs of dismantling systems of social welfare seem, in retrospect, mild compared to what is happening in the United States under George Bush-- or more exactly, the ruling junta that tells Bush what to do and say.

It is unquestionably the most radical government in modern American history, one whose ideology and actions have become so pervasive, and are so unquestionably mirrored by the mass media here, that the population seems to have forgotten what "normal" is.

George Bush is the first unelected President of the United States, installed by a right-wing Supreme Court in a kind of judicial coup d'etat. He is the first to actively subvert one of the pillars of American democracy: the separation of church and state. There are now daily prayer meetings and Bible study groups in every branch of the government, and religious organizations are being given funds to take over educational and welfare programs that have always been the domain of the state.

Bush is the first president to invoke the specific "Jesus Christ" rather than an ecumenical "God," and he has surrounded himself with evangelical Christians, including his Attorney General, who attends a church where he talks in tongues.

It is the first administration to openly declare a policy of unilateral aggression, a "Pax Americana" where the presence of allies (whether England or Bulgaria) is agreeable but unimportant; where international treaties no longer apply to the United States; and where-- for the first time in history-- this country reserves the right to non-defensive, "pre-emptive" strikes against any nation on earth, for whatever reason it declares.

It is the first-- since the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II-- to enact special laws for a specific ethnic group. Non-citizen young Muslim men are now required to register and subject themselves to interrogation. Many hundreds have been arrested and held without trial or access to legal assistance-- a violation of another pillar of American democracy: habeas corpus. Many have been taken from their families and deported on minor technical immigration violations; the whereabouts of many others are still unknown. And, in Guantanamo Bay, where it is said that they are now preparing execution chambers, hundreds of foreign nationals -- including a 13-year-old and a man who claims to be 100-- have been kept for almost two years in a limbo that clearly contravenes the Geneva Convention.

Similar to the Reagan era, it is an administration openly devoted to helping the rich and ignoring the poor, one that has turned the surplus of the Clinton years into a massive deficit through its combination of enormous tax cuts for the wealthy (particularly those who earn more than a million dollars a year) and increases in defense spending. (And, although Republicans always campaign on "less government," it has created the largest new government bureaucracy in history: the Department of Homeland Security.) The Financial Times of England, hardly a hotbed of leftists, has categorized this economic policy as "the lunatics taking over the asylum."

But more than Reagan-- whose policies tended to benefit the rich in general-- most of Bush's legislation specifically enriches those in his lifelong inner circle from the oil, mining, logging, construction, and pharmaceutical industries. At the middle level of the bureaucracy, where laws may be issued without Congressional approval, hundreds of regulations have been changed to lower standards of pollution or safety in the workplace, to open up wilderness areas for exploitation, or to eliminate the testing of drugs.

Billions in government contracts have been awarded, without competition, to corporations formerly run by administration officials. In a country where the most significant social changes are enacted by court rulings, rather than by legislation, the Bush administration has been filling every level of the complex judicial system with ultra-right ideologues, especially those who have protected corporations from lawsuits by individuals or environmental groups, and those who are opposed to women's reproductive rights. It remains to be seen how far they can push their antipathy to contraception and abortion. They have already banned a rare form of late-term abortion that is only given when the health of the mother is endangered or the fetus is terribly deformed, and a large portion of Bush's heralded billions to Africa to fight AIDS will be devoted to so-called "abstinence" education.

Most of all, America doesn't feel like America any more. The climate of militarism and fear, similar to any totalitarian state, permeates everything. Bush is the first American president in memory to swagger around in a military uniform, though he himself-- like all of his most militant advisers-- evaded the Vietnam War. (Even Eisenhower, a general and a war hero, never wore his uniform while he was president).

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Children Of Death

by Uri Avnery

A week after the ship of peace was solemnly launched on its perilous voyage from Aqaba harbor, it was hit by a torpedo. It is not yet clear whether it is wrecked or can continue on its way in spite of the damage.

The story of its voyage so far: An Israeli helicopter gunship tried to kill Abd-al-Aziz al-Rantisi, one of the leaders of the political wing of Hamas. He miraculously survived. Immediately afterwards the gunships killed other Hamas leaders. Clearly, this was the beginning of a campaign to kill the leaders of all the wings of Hamas - military, political, social, educational and religious.

Such a campaign is, of course, the outcome of long preparations, which take weeks and months. It was evidently planned even before the Aqaba summit conference convened, but postponed by Sharon in order to afford President Bush his moments of photographic glory on the shore of the Red Sea . Immediately after the President and his entourage went home, radiant with success, the machinery of death went into action.

In establishing intent, all courts around the world act upon a simple principle: a person who carries out an action with predictable results is held to have intended that result. That is true for this campaign, too.

The killing of the Hamas leaders (together with their wives, children and casual bystanders) is intended to attain the following results: (a) acts of revenge by Hamas, i.e. suicide bombings, (b) the failure of the Palestinian Authorityís efforts to secure the agreement of Hamas to a cease-fire, (c) the destruction of Abu Mazen's political standing right from the start, (d) the demolition of the Road Map, (e) compensation for the settlers after the removal of some sham 'outposts.'

All five objectives have been achieved. Blood and fire cover the country, the media on both sides are busy with funerals and mutual incitement, the efforts to establish a hudnah (truce) have stopped, Sharon called Abu Mazen a chicken without feathers, the Road Map is tottering, Bush has mildly reproached Sharon while directing his wrath at Hamas.

The 'dismantling' of the phony settlement-outposts, a joke to start with, has been stopped. Construction activity in the settlements is in full swing, and so is the building of the ìfenceî that is establishing a new border deep inside the West Bank . (Both Bush and Blair have demanded that it be stopped, a boost to the campaign we started months ago). The closures and blockades have been tightened. The situation in the occupied Palestinian territories is back to what it was before, as if the entire performance in Aqaba had never taken place.

The decision to kill Rantisi was, therefore, a decisive point in the history of Israel . And the first question must be: Who was it that took this decision?

It is easy to say who did not take it.

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Exposed: Blair, Iraq and the great deception

I hate to say I told you so, but I did.

Tony Blair was charged with deliberately misleading the public over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction yesterday as two former cabinet ministers revealed that MI6 believed Saddam Hussein's arsenal posed no immediate threat.

In an extraordinary public hearing at Westminster, Clare Short and Robin Cook told MPs that intelligence chiefs had concluded that the risk of Saddam using chemical or biological weapons was not high.

Ms Short, the former secretary of state for international development, said Mr Blair was guilty of "honourable deception" and claimed he used "a series of half-truths, exaggerations, reassurances that were not the case to get us into conflict by the spring.

"I believe that the Prime Minister must have concluded that it was honourable and desirable to back the US in going for military action in Iraq and therefore it was honourable for him to persuade us through various ruses and ways to get us there - so for him I think it was an honourable deception," said Ms Short.

Mr Cook, the former foreign secretary, accused ministers of "not presenting the whole picture" and presenting selective evidence to back the case for war.

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Tuesday 17 June 2003

We can seize the day

The task is not to overthrow globalisation but to use it for a democratic revolution

by George Monbiot


George Monbiot Last week Jack Straw illuminated the depths of his political cowardice by shining upon them the full and feeble beam of his political courage. He proposed to alter the constitution of the UN security council. He would like to double its permanent membership, though without granting the new members the privileges accorded to the five existing ones. He must know that this scheme will be rejected by the proposed new entrants, yet he fears to tread more firmly upon the toes of the incumbents.

But Straw is desperate to save this undemocratic instrument of global governance. He wants to save it because it provides a semblance of legitimacy for a global system otherwise crudely governed by Britain's principal ally. By tearing down the security council to go to war with Iraq, George Bush has ripped the veil off his own intentions. The ambitions of his project now stand before us, naked and undeniable. Straw, like a frantic tailor, is seeking to restore his client's modesty. He knows that a naked emperor cannot govern unopposed for long.

Straw's scheme is a response to two colliding realities. The first is that the principal instruments of political globalisation are in trouble. The security council, the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, having already lost the support of the world's people, are now losing the support of their principal sponsor. Other nations are beginning to face a stark choice: they must either accept direct global rule from Washington, or bypass the superpower and design a new, multilateral system of global governance.

The second is that economic globalisation, driven by corporate and financial integration, sweeps all before it. It destroys, but it also creates. It is extending to the world's people unprecedented opportunities for mobilisation. It is establishing a single, planetary class interest, as the same forces and the same institutions threaten the welfare of the people of all nations. It is ripping down the cultural and linguistic barriers that divide us. By breaking the social bonds which sustained local communities, it destroys our geographical loyalties. It forces us to become a global political community, whether we like it or not.

Simultaneously, it has placed within our hands the weapons we need to attack the existing means of global governance. By forcing governments to operate in the interests of business, it has manufactured the disenchantment upon which all new politics must feed. By expanding its own empire through new communication and transport networks, it has granted the world's people the means by which they can gather and coordinate their challenge.

We may, in other words, be approaching a revolutionary moment. Economic globalisation has made us stronger than ever before, just as the existing instruments of global control have become weaker than ever before. But the global justice movement, vast and determined as it is, is in no position to seize it. The reason is simple: we do not possess a political programme. Without a programme, we can only oppose. Without a programme, we permit our opponents to select the field of battle.

We hesitate to develop one for two reasons. The first is that hundreds of disparate factions have buried their differences within this movement to fight their common enemies. Those differences will re-emerge as we seek to coalesce around a common set of solutions.

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BBC and Guardian cover up US role in Iraq looting

Looting of archaeological sites and regional museums is continuing in Iraq despite the responsibility under international law of the US as the occupying power to protect cultural sites.

The journal Archaeology is documenting the extent of looting. Journalist Roger Atwood, who specialises in the antiquities trade and is in Mosul, reports that 30 bronze panels that once hung on a gate leading into the Assyrian city of Balawat have been stolen from the museum there along with numerous cuneiform tablets and 20 valuable books. At Hatra, a first century B.C. world heritage site to the south of Mosul, looters have hacked out a carved face from the apex of a stone archway.

Meanwhile in Baghdad some of the artefacts stored offsite for safety have been recovered and some of the stolen items have been returned to the city museum. Among those returned is the famous Warka vase, a 5,000-year-old ceremonial vessel from the city of Ur. According to the British Museum, which has two members of staff working in the Baghdad Museum, at least 28 items from the exhibition halls remain missing along with numerous less spectacular objects that have an important research value.

The major pieces that have been recovered are some of the artefacts from the Assyrian city of Nimrud and some material from the royal burials at Ur, which were stored in the vaults of the Central Bank at the time of the first Gulf War. The presence of this material in the bank vaults is not a revelation. A visiting Unesco delegation was told about it in May, but it was inaccessible because the vaults were flooded. Moreover, the recovery of these artefacts does not minimise the damage that has been done and is still being done by organised looting.

Despite the devastating losses that have been suffered and the continued looting, however, certain journalists have made it their business to assert that the extent of the problem has been exaggerated and even to claim that Iraqi archaeologists are responsible for stealing whatever is missing. This campaign of denial and disinformation can only compound the damage already done to Iraq’s cultural heritage. Not only will it distract from the task of tracking down the artefacts that are flooding onto the antiquities market, but it is also being used to discredit Iraqi archaeologists and to take control of the country’s history out of their hands.

The BBC is leading the way in this scurrilous campaign. In a prime-time documentary screened June 9, art and architectural historian Dan Cruikshank made a number of unsubstantiated claims. He suggested that the Baghdad Museum was a legitimate military target, that the looting was “an inside job” and that the staff were unsuitable to be left in charge of Iraq’s cultural heritage because they had been members of the Ba’ath Party.

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Scramble for Africa

Fear of corruption and chaos in oil rush

Washington's determination to find an alternative energy source to the Middle East is leading to a new oil rush in sub-Saharan Africa which threatens to launch a fresh cycle of conflict, corruption and environmental degradation in the region, campaigners warn today.

The new scramble for Africa risks bringing more misery to the continent's impoverished citizens as western oil companies pour billions of dollars in secret payments into government coffers throughout the continent. Much of the money ends up in the hands of ruling elites or is squandered on grandiose projects and the military.

Tony Blair will today urge the oil industry to be more transparent in its dealings with Africa. Openness and accountability are essentials for stability and prosperity in the developing world, he will tell oil company executives and oil exporting countries at a meeting in Lancaster House in central London.

African countries own 8% of world oil reserves. An estimated $200bn (£125bn) in revenues will flow into African government treasuries over the next 10 years as new oilfields open up throughout the Gulf of Guinea. Oil will bring the largest influx of revenue in the continent's history, and more than 10 times the amount western donors give each year in aid.

But Ian Gary, author of a new report, Bottom of the Barrel, from the US aid agency Catholic Relief Services (CRS), warned yesterday: "Petro-dollars have not helped developing countries to reduce poverty; in many cases they have actually exacerbated it. In Nigeria, for example, which has received over $300bn in oil revenues over the last 25 years, per capita income is less than a $1 a day."

Despite the prime minister's backing for the extractive industries transparency initiative (EITI), aid agencies and MEPs say Britain has let oil companies off the hook by watering down plans to make publication of payments to third world governments mandatory.

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Turning the tanks on the reporters

Iraq will go down as the war when journalists seemed to become a target.

The Pentagon made it clear from the beginning of the Iraq war that there would be no censorship. What it failed to say was that war correspondents might well find themselves in a situation similar to that in Korea in 1950. This was described by one American correspondent as the military saying: 'You can write what you like - but if we don't like it we'll shoot you.' The figures in Iraq tell a terrible story. Fifteen media people dead, with two missing, presumed dead. If you consider how short the campaign was, Iraq will be notorious as the most dangerous war for journalists ever.

This is bad enough. But - and here we tread on delicate ground - it is a fact that the largest single group of them appear to have been killed by the US military.

Brigadier General Vince Brooks, deputy director of operations, has told us the Americans do not target journalists. But some war correspondents do not believe him, and Spanish journalists have demonstrated outside the US embassy in Madrid shouting 'murderers'. I believe that the traditional relationship between the military and the media - one of restrained hostility - has broken down, and the US administration has decided its attitude to war correspondents is the same as that set out by President Bush when declaring war on terrorists: 'You're either with us or against us.'

Journalists prepared to get on side - and that means 100 per cent on side - will become 'embeds' and get every assistance. Any who follow an objective, independent path, the so-called 'unilaterals', will be shunned. And those who report from the enemy side will risk being shot.

The media should have seen it coming. Last year the BBC sent one of its top reporters, Nik Gowing, to Washington to try to find out how it was that its correspondent, William Reeve, who had just re-opened the Corporation's studio in Kabul and was giving a live TV interview for BBC World, was blown out of his seat by an American smart missile. Four hours later, a few blocks away, the office and residential compound of the Arab TV network Al-Jazeera was hit by two more American missiles.

The BBC, Al-Jazeera, and the US Committee to Protect Journalists thought it prudent to find out from the Pentagon what steps they could take to protect their correspondents if war came to Iraq. Rear Admiral Craig Quigley was frank. He said the Pentagon was indifferent to media activity in territory controlled by the enemy, and that the Al-Jazeera compound in Kabul was considered a legitimate target because it had 'repeatedly been the location of significant al-Qaeda activity'. It turned out that this activity was interviews with Taliban officials, something Al-Jazeera had thought to be normal journalism.

All three organisations concluded that the Pentagon was determined to deter western correspondents from reporting any war from the 'enemy' side; would view such journalism in Iraq as activity of 'military significance', and might well bomb the area. This view was reinforced in the early days of the war in Iraq, when the Pentagon wrote officially to Al-Jazeera asking it to remove its correspondents from Baghdad. Downing Street made the same request to the BBC. In the US a Pentagon official called media bosses to a meeting in Washington to tell them how foolhardy and dangerous it was to have correspondents in the Iraqi capital. But no one realised it might also be dangerous to work outside the system the Pentagon had devised for allowing war correspondents to cover the war: embedding. In total, 600 correspondents, including about 150 from foreign media, and even one from the music network MTV, accepted the Pentagon's offer to be embedded with military units.

I found only one instance of an embedded correspondent who wrote a story highly critical of the behaviour of US troops and which went against the official account of what had occurred. On 31 March, American soldiers opened fire on a civilian van that had failed to stop at a checkpoint, killing seven Iraqi women and children. US officials said the driver of the car failed to stop after warning shots and that troops had fired at the passenger cabin as 'a last resort'.

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Friday 13 June 2003

WMD Will Be On Blair's Political Headstone

by John Pilger

Such a high crime does not, and will not, melt away; the facts cannot be changed. Tony Blair took Britain to war against Iraq illegally. He mounted an unprovoked attack on a country that offered no threat, and he helped cause the deaths of thousands of innocent people. The judges at the Nuremberg Tribunal following world war two, who inspired much of international law, called this "the gravest of all war crimes".

Blair had not the shred of a mandate from the British people to do what he did. On the contrary, on the eve of the attack, the majority of Britons clearly demanded he stop. His response was contemptuous of such an epic show of true democracy. He chose to listen only to the unelected leader of a foreign power, and to his court and his obsession.

With his courtiers in and out of the media telling him he was "courageous" and even "moral" when he scored his "historic victory" over a defenceless, stricken and traumatised nation, almost half of them children, his propaganda managers staged a series of unctuous public relations stunts.

The first stunt sought to elicit public sympathy with a story about him telling his children that he had "almost lost his job". The second stunt, which had the same objective, was a story about how his privileged childhood had really been "difficult" and "painful". The third and most outrageous stunt saw him in Basra, in southern Iraq last week, lifting an Iraqi child in his arms, in a school that had been renovated for his visit, in a city where education, like water and other basic services, are still a shambles following the British invasion and occupation.

When I saw this image of Blair holding a child in Basra, I happened to be in a hotel in Kabul in Afghanistan, the scene of an earlier "historic victory" of Bush and Blair in another stricken land. I found myself saying out loud the words, "ultimate obscenity". It was in Basra that I filmed hundreds of children ill and dying because they had been denied cancer treatment equipment and drugs under an embargo enforced with enthusiasm by Tony Blair.

It was the one story Blair's court would almost never tell, because it was true and damning.

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Fighting Terror With Terror

On June 6, four days after the Mideast peace summit in Jordan, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades launched an attack on the Israeli military in northern Gaza. The groups managed to kill four Israeli soldiers and wound four others. Their actions were in response to the June 5 assassinations of two Hamas militants by the Israeli military, along with the IDF's continued house demolitions of families of Palestinian militants. Despite the fact that in the June 6 attack the Palestinian militant groups focused their attacks on the Israeli military, rather than attacking civilians as they have in the past, Israel responded by launching what can only be defined as a "terrorist" attack. On June 10, Israel fired missiles into a crowded street in Gaza, missing their main target but killing and wounding innocent bystanders. The following day, a Palestinian suicide bomber responded with a "terrorist" attack against Israel, exploding on a bus in Jerusalem, killing 16 people and injuring more than a hundred more. Shortly after, the Israeli government was directing helicopter attacks in Gaza.

While it claims otherwise, Israel has been fighting "terror" with "terror." It is impossible to suggest that Israel is worried about Palestinian civilians when it launches raids like the one on June 10. Authorizing helicopter gunships to launch missiles into crowded Palestinian streets? Only a ruthless government would authorize such attacks. Furthermore, as many others have stated, the target of Israel's June 10 attack was not a suicide bomber packed with explosives on his way to blow up a bus or a café. No, that target was Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the well-known Hamas political leader who was merely driving down the street at the time; Rantisi barely survived the attack. It is a highly dubious assertion for Israel to claim that this extreme level of force was needed.
Such heavy-handed and careless attacks by Israel are making it harder and harder for the Jewish state to claim the moral high ground. In order to defend its occupation of what the U.N. has labeled Palestinian lands, the Israeli government is using similar tactics that its enemies use: not distinguishing between militants and civilians. The only difference between the opponents is that Palestinian militant groups admit they are uninterested in peace; the Israeli government, on the other hand, claims that it is interested in peace, while at the same time ordering massive military attacks meant to bring terror and death to the Palestinian populace.

It seems that the Israeli government, and the Israeli populace, still believe that they can break the will of the Palestinians. This explains why they continue their harsh repression of the Palestinian population, along with their massive retaliatory attacks anytime Palestinians defend themselves either justly or unjustly. But the past 55 years have shown that such actions merely further radicalize the Palestinian population, resulting in more terror and death for the Israeli people.

Palestinians from 1948 would be shocked at the current methods of Palestinian resistance. What used to be a civil disobedience movement has now been radicalized into one that largely approves of the use of suicide attacks on civilian populations. So, too, would Jews from the 1940s be shocked at what is now considered "self-defense": occupying a land whose population does not wish to be occupied, continuing to build illegal settlements on that land, following a policy of assassinations, and firing rockets and missiles into crowded streets or apartment buildings.

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