10 Things You Don't Know About Terrorism

by Loretta Napoleoni

Two and a half years into the 'war on terror', the US is running a $500 billion budget deficit, its highest ever and the country is struggling to cover war costs. Terrorism seems to be a very costly business. So how can terrorists afford it? The answer is simple: terrorism is their business.

1. Terrorism has always been a business
During the Cold War terrorism was the trade of the superpowers. They fought wars by proxy across the world by funding local armed groups with legal or covert operations (for example the Contras in Central America). In the late 1970s-early 1980s, some of these groups managed to privatize terrorism. To raise money, they used a mixture of legal and illegal activities -- the IRA had the monopoly of private transport in Belfast; the PLO got a cut out of the Hashish trade from the Bekaa Valley; Carlos the Jackal and Aby Nidal became 'guns for hire' for Arab leaders such as Gaddafi.

2. Globalization boosted terrorism
In the 1990s, as international economic and financial barriers were lowered, terror groups expanded their businesses, which become transnational. Today, money is raised cross border, as proved by the joint business empires of Yousef Nada and Idris Nasreddin, two of bin Laden's associates. According to the UN, their portfolios, which range from real estate to fisheries, sprawl across Europe and Africa, and are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

3. Each time an American reads a newspaper or takes a sip at a soft drink, they contribute to Osama bin Laden's financial empire
Terror businesses could not stay out of the largest consumer market in the world, the US. In the mid 1990s, while residing in Sudan, Osama bin Laden acquired 70% of Gum Arabic Company Ltd, which produces about 80% of the world supply of gum arabic. Extracted from the sap of the acacia trees that grow in Sudan, gum arabic is used to make ink stick to newspapers, to prevent sediment forming in soft drinks and to create a protective shell around sweets and pills to keep them fresh. The US is the largest importer in the world. Bin Laden's investment proved to be a very sound one. In November 1997, when Clinton imposed economic sanctions on Sudan, a number of American importers including the Newspaper Association of America, and the National Soft Drinks Association of America, objected. Eventually, Gum Arabic was exempted.

4. The Terror Economy is Bigger than the GDP of the United Kingdom
Globalization also facilitated the merging of terror enterprises with criminal and illegal activities. This meant big business. Today their joint yearly turnover is a staggering $1.5 trillion dollars, higher than the GDP of the United Kingdom.

5. The terror economy props up western capitalism
The bulk of the $1.5 trillion flows into Western economies and gets money laundered in the US and Europe. This is a vital infusion of cash into these economies. If we were to cut it overnight, the West would be plunged into a recession.

6. The illegal/terror economy grows faster than the US economy
Up to now, terror business has been conducted in dollars, primarily in 100 dollars bills; so are arms and drugs smuggling and other criminal and illegal activity. Thus, a rough indication of the rate of growth of the terror economy is given by the yearly infusion of new stock of US dollars. In the year 2000, as much as two third of the US money supply, equivalent to $500 billion, was taken out of the US monetary system for good and is now held abroad. This figure refers to money taken abroad in suitcases or via offshore accounts. If these statistics are correct, then the rate of monetary growth of the terror/illegal economy is higher than that of the US economy.

7. 9/11 was one of the greatest insider-trading events in modern history
Terrorists are also very skilled speculators. During the week before 9/11, an unusually high volume of trading was reported in certain sectors, e.g. air transport, energy and insurance. Shares of American Airlines and United, the US airlines involved in the 9/11 attack, were targeted. A similar trend was reported in the insurance business, with leading companies becoming the object of exceptional and unexpected speculation on the futures market. The weekend following the attack, Ernst Welteke, president of the German Bundesbank, admitted that there had been insider trading by 'terrorists' and added that the commodities markets had also been targeted. Indeed, days before the attack, oil and gold experienced a sudden and inexplicable rise in price. This was followed by a surge in activity on the futures market. On 12 September, oil prices jumped by more than 13 per cent and gold prices went up by over 3 per cent. Prices continued to climb all week. Anybody who knew what was going to happen on 11 September could have predicted such a trend.

8. Profiteering on Terrorism
Terrorism is such a good business that even the US government tried to get a stake in it. Last summer, the Pentagon was forced to abandon a 20 months project, Future PAM, to launch an online futures market that allowed speculators to bet on assassinations, coups and acts of terrorism. The project was headed by a leading expert on state sponsored terrorism, retired vice admiral John Poindexter, formerly national security adviser under President Reagan. In the1990s, Poindexter was convicted on five felony counts, including lying to Congress, destroying documents and obstructing congressional inquiries into the Iran-Contra scandal. Several US senators strongly opposed the project on the ground that terrorists would be the biggest beneficiaries as they are the ones who carry out the attacks.

9. Terrorism is such a good business that nobody really wants to eradicate it
So far, international efforts to curb terror financing have failed. An insignificant $140 million of terror money have been frozen since 9/11, 70% coming from accounts held in the West. Business profits generated by Al Qaeda front companies and donations from the Muslim world are mostly untouched. For example, Haramain Charitable Foundation, a Saudi charity worth $30 million per year, is still active in several countries. Recently Haramain has opened a new Islamic school in Jakarta, a hot bed of Islamist terror in South East Asia. Twice the Saudis have agreed to shut this charity, which is headed by Sheikh Saleh bin Abdul Aziz al-Ashaikh, Saudi minister for Islamic affairs, but never did it. So far the Saudis have frozen $4.7 million of terror money, closed 6 of the 241 Saudi charities and prohibit the collection of coins at the entrance of shopping malls. Not a lot when compared with UN reports stating that prior to 9/11, as much as 20% of Saudi GDP went to fund Al Qaeda alone.

10. Twice the US passed on the opportunity to get hold of Osama bin Laden
Is terror such good business as to prevent the arrest of bin Laden? In 1996, the Sudanese Minister of Defence, Major General Elfatih Erwa, offered to extradite Osama bin Laden, then resident in Sudan, to the US. American officials declined the offer. Instead, they told General Erwa to ask bin Laden to leave the country. 'Just don't let him go to Somalia,' they added. In 1993, 18 US soldiers had been brutally killed in Somalia in street riots involving Al Qaeda supporters and the US feared that bin Laden's presence in the country would create further unrest. When Erwa disclosed that bin Laden was going to Afghanistan, the American answer was 'let him go'. A few weeks after 9/11 the leaders of the two Pakistani Islamist parties negotiated with Mullah Omar and bin Laden for the latter's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for 9/11. Once again the US refused the offer.

Two and a half years into the 'war on terror' it is apparent that the winners are the terrorists -- while Al Qaeda's finances are still intact the US is running the highest budget deficit in history. What can be done? Start by treating terrorism for what it is: a global business; force our Muslim allies to act immediately to curb terror funding and concentrate our efforts to hunt terror money in our countries, even if that implies putting under investigation the strongholds of Western capitalism: Wall Street, the City of London and the thousand offshore centres linked to them.

Loretta Napoleoni is an economist who has worked for banks and international organizations in Europe and the US. She has written novels and guide books in Italian and translated and edited books on terrorism. She is among the few people who interviewed the Red Brigades in the early 1990s. She developed the idea to research and write a book on the economics of terrorism while interviewing the leaders of the Red Brigades.

Napoleoni's latest book, published September 2003, is Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks

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Condoleeza's Nonsense About Democracy

by John Chuckman

Condoleezza Rice wants to bring democracy to the Middle East. Ms. Rice, an expert on what is now an obsolete subject, the Soviet Union, believes this can be done the way the United States brought democracy to Chile or Iran or Afghanistan - that is, by violently overthrowing governments.

Does democracy come from the full belly of a B-52 and the murderous aftermath of coups?

Apparently not. Virtually none of the countries that America's freedom-loving army of enlightenment has bombed and shot-up over the last sixty years is today a democracy.

One is reminded of the claims of Napoleonic France that it was spreading revolutionary principles by conquest. The conquest part was vigorously pursued, but the liberté, egalitié, et fraternité part left a little something to be desired.

Ms. Rice displays little understanding of the history of democracy or of the circumstances which make it possible. She is not alone in this. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's efforts on "democracy initiatives" displayed a similar lack of understanding, although it must be said in Ms. Albright's favor, she was less inclined than the ever-hysterical Ms. Rice to classify unprovoked attack by a great power as an initiative for democracy.

Democracy is simply a natural development of a healthy, growing society. Over the long term, it requires no revolution, no coup, and no sacred writ. It grows and blooms as automatically as flower seeds tossed in a good patch of earth, although it is a plant whose maturity is measured in human lifetimes rather than seasons.

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Lockerbie's dirty secret

Lockerbie is another of those dirty little secrets that are hiding out there, make sure you check out the two links at the end of this story for more information on this particular conspiracy "theory".

by Paul Foot

As he basks in the success of his controversial visit to Libya, the prime minister has to grapple at once with an awkward letter. It was delivered on Monday by UK Families Flight 103 representing most of the British families bereaved by the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. The letter starts by reminding Blair that the families supported his visit to Libya in the expectation that the talks with Colonel Muammar Gadafy would lead to more information about the bombing. Moreover, the letter says, their support for the visit was widely used by ministers to justify the visit to Libya. Yet the visit has not led to any more information about the bombing.

And recent letters to the secretary of the group, Pamela Dix - whose brother died at Lockerbie - from Baroness Symons, minister of state at the Foreign Office, and from the Crown Office in Edinburgh, have argued that any further questions to the Libyans about Lockerbie would not be helpful. In short, ministers took the credit of the families' support without asking a single question about Lockerbie to justify that support. In a sense of deep outrage, the families are asking the prime minister for a meeting to discuss Lockerbie as a matter of urgency.

More people died at Lockerbie than in Madrid, and you would have thought that the government, if only as proof of its horror at terrorism, would be keen to question its new friends in Tripoli about the bombing. Not so, apparently. So the only hard information the families have is that Abdul Basset al-Megrahi, a Libyan official, apparently working in intelligence, was convicted in January 2001 of bombing the airliner. How he accomplished this feat is still a mystery. The details of the crime did not emerge at the trial, which was held by Scottish judges sitting without a jury in Holland. It lasted 18 months and cost an estimated £50m.

Megrahi's co-accused was acquitted, so the prosecution's suggestion that the two men conspired to bomb the plane cannot be right. Indeed, the crucial evidence that the bomb was put on a feeder flight at Malta and was transferred twice, at Frankfurt and at Heathrow, was so thin it was derisory.

No one knows whether anyone else took part in this sophisticated crime of terror. One man has been convicted. The Libyan government has forked out many millions in compensation. And that, apparently, is the end of the matter. Many of the bereaved relatives, including Dix, are increasingly disturbed at the behaviour of ministers who talk business and politics to the Gadafy regime, but are not remotely interested in pressing anyone in it to tell the whole story about Lockerbie.

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"Cover-up of Convenience—the Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie"
Iraqi double agent named as Lockerbie bomber

US chose to ignore Rwandan genocide

Clinton was less savage than the current administration but he was still a tool of the globalists just like Bush and Blair. They are faithful little lapdogs bought long ago with promises of whatever they needed to secure their allegiance. Or they really thought they were in charge, in which case they are bigger fools than I imagined. Things will not change with Kerry, they may chnage tone but the essential trust of what is occuring is now unstoppable, probably always was. It will play itself out and we may or may not survive the experience, I guess it depends on whether there is any sanity left in the world of men.

Classified papers show Clinton was aware of 'final solution' to eliminate Tutsis

President Bill Clinton's administration knew Rwanda was being engulfed by genocide in April 1994 but buried the information to justify its inaction, according to classified documents made available for the first time.

Senior officials privately used the word genocide within 16 days of the start of the killings, but chose not to do so publicly because the president had already decided not to intervene.

Intelligence reports obtained using the US Freedom of Information Act show the cabinet and almost certainly the president had been told of a planned "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis" before the slaughter reached its peak.

It took Hutu death squads three months from April 6 to murder an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus and at each stage accurate, detailed reports were reaching Washington's top policymakers.

The documents undermine claims by Mr Clinton and his senior officials that they did not fully appreciate the scale and speed of the killings.

"It's powerful proof that they knew," said Alison des Forges, a Human Rights Watch researcher and authority on the genocide.

The National Security Archive, an independent non-governmental research institute based in Washington DC, went to court to obtain the material.

It discovered that the CIA's national intelligence daily, a secret briefing circulated to Mr Clinton, the then vice-president, Al Gore, and hundreds of senior officials, included almost daily reports on Rwanda. One, dated April 23, said rebels would continue fighting to "stop the genocide, which ... is spreading south".

Three days later the state department's intelligence briefing for former secretary of state Warren Christopher and other officials noted "genocide and partition" and reported declarations of a "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis".

However, the administration did not publicly use the word genocide until May 25 and even then diluted its impact by saying "acts of genocide".

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Secret tapes put heat on Sharon

Keep your fingers crossed...

Israeli prosecutors were persuaded to recommend charging Ariel Sharon with corruption in part by secret recordings of the prime minister rehashing one of the most famous army signals of the 1967 war.

According to the Haaretz newspaper, Mr Sharon, who was foreign minister in 1999, was captured on tape in a conversation with a businessman, David Appel, who has already been charged with paying him to pressure the Greek government to approve construction of a casino on an Aegean island.

In the tape recording, Mr Sharon is reportedly heard telling Mr Appel: "The island is in our hands" - a reworking of the signal renowned throughout Israel after troops stormed East Jerusalem, "the Temple Mount is in our hands".

Later in the recording, Mr Appel says: "Your son is going to earn a lot of money."

Haaretz reported that the two comments appearing in the same conversation were important in persuading prosecutors to recommend that Mr Sharon be indicted.

The comments also establish that Mr Sharon knew about Mr Appel's attempts to build the casino, undermining his attempts to say he was not involved in promoting the project. Miryam Rosenthal, a former senior attorney at the Israeli prosecution service, told army radio yesterday that Mr Sharon's remark was "almost equivalent to an admission of guilt".

According to the draft indictment, Mr Sharon is alleged to have received about £390,000 in bribes through a bank account for the family ranch in the Negev, and to his son, Gilad, in return for Mr Sharon's help.

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The Bush Administration and 9-11: Open Eyes Required

All governments are lying cocksuckers, I hope you know that. -= Bill Hicks

Face it, if you still believe the official line on 9/11 then you're not only a fool but a clear and present danger to the freedom and welfare of the rest of us. If you still believe the official line on 9/11 then you are helping the people who want to bring about a huge war that will make WW1 and WW2 look like car accidents. If you still believe the official line on 9/11 you seriously need to wake the fuck up!

by Stephen Crockett and Al Lawrence

The recent controversy swirling around the Bush White House, the 9-11 Commission and the Richard Clarke book, Against All Enemies has been very enlightening. Sensing that Bush has almost nothing else to run on in the 2004 elections, the Bush Republican attack machine and their fellow travelers in the Corporate Media have been vigorously trying to change the subject away from their competency in dealing with terrorism before and after the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

Instead of publicly dealing with the serious issues involved, the Bush Republicans have been attacking the character of anyone who raises any questions about their poor performance on national security issues. This has been the Karl Rove approach to anyone standing in the way of Bush obtaining and retaining political power. This tactic was key in defeating John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina Republican Primary Election.

The tactic was used in the 2002 Congressional Elections to give the Republicans control of Congress. The tactic backfired when used illegally by someone highly placed in the Bush Administration to out the CIA agent wife of Ambassador Wilson over the false "African uranium-nuclear weapons" claims that helped Bush sell his invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Most recently, the Republican attack machine went after former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil, when the book The Price of Loyalty was published. This book confirmed many of the charges made against the Bush White House in the Clarke book.

While Clarke did his job in our government under Reagan, Bush (the Senior), Clinton and the current Bush very well, the Bush Republicans are now blaming their failings on him.

As part of any White House team, any highly placed team member will publicly highlight the best-case scenario for the Administration's performance while downplaying their failures. Clarke did this while serving in the Bush Administration. The Bush White House and their allies in Congress are trying to make these comments into a serious contradiction with the Clarke book and public statements of today.

Clarke left the Bush team because they were failing to meet the threat posed by the Bin Laden terrorist network both before and after 9-11. The former FBI lead investigator of Islamic terrorism and Bin Laden, John O'Neill resigned just weeks before the 9-11 attacks because he claimed the Bush Administration was blocking his investigation of Saudi ties to Islamic terrorists attacking the United States.

This hero took the job as head of security for the World Trade Center and died in the 9-11 attack. Clarke to his credit tried to work within the system first. He was probably the only member of the Bush White House effectively doing their job in dealing with the Islamic fundamentalist terrorist threat.

Meanwhile, the Bush team along with Bush and Cheney were using the 9-11 attacks to launch an unrelated war with Iraq. Military and national security resources were diverted to this Oil War in Iraq just when America had a real chance of eliminating the Bin Laden organization in Afghanistan and the Taliban forces. Our enemies in Afghanistan have shown signs of renewed strength while the bulk of our military is tied down in another war in Iraq. The Iraq War has turned into both a terrorist training ground and a recruiting goldmine for our enemies.

Before the 9-11 attacks, the Bush Administration was simply asleep on the job. Instead of planning military actions against Afghanistan, they were negotiating with the Taliban for an oil pipeline designed to financially profit American oil companies.

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Massive British Counterterrorist Failure Responsible for Deadly Madrid Bombing

by Trowbridge H. Ford

When I left Stockholm for Barcelona on March 11th, right after the 13 canister-bomb attacks on four trains had occurred at three railway stations in Madrid, killing upwards of 200 people, and wounding at least another 1,800, it was with the greatest excitement, trepidation, and concern. The attacks had the potential of changing dramatically not only the Iberian peninsula but also the Western world if part of a clearly coordinated plot.

If they were the result of domestic terrorists, especially the Basque separatists ETA (Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna), it could have thrown Spain into a downward spiral of violence - reminiscent of how General Augusto Pinochet seized power from Chile's President Salvadore Allende back in 1973 - which could have been legally strenghtened by the upcoming Sunday, parliamentary elections. The Madrid government, a strong supporter of the risk-seeking Anglo-American Coalition despite the overwhelming opposition to its position by its people, could have seen its position legitimized at the polls.

If the attacks were the work of outside terrorists, especially Israel's Mossad or Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda, they could have handed the government of Popular Party's leader José Maria Aznar's successor such an increased majority that pre-emptive strikes against alleged rogue states, and terrorist organizations would have become a matter of course in the war on terrorism.

If this were the case, one could not rule out Coalition complicity in the conspiracy as Washington and London are becoming increasingly desperate over the chances of surviving the growing opposition in the Arab world, and across the West to their counter-productive policies. While allegedly committed to stamping out terrorism, they are only feeding it.

Then, one could not rule out right-wing supporters of General Franco being behind the plot, especially since they have been so upset about how politics have been developing in Spain's democracy, and are in a position, thanks to their prevalence in the intelligence and security services, especially in the Higher Defense Intelligence Center (CESID), to do something drastic about it. Counterterrorists are in an ideal position, as their American counterparts learned during the Iran Contra Affair, to engage, and expand terrorism if they are so inclined. Also, they could have been led astray by their Anglo-American counterparts.

In this case of terrorism, one must also consider the target, and how it was attacked, as one Spanish locale or city is not the same as another, given Spain's regional and cultural differences. Hitting Madrid hard, as opposed to Barcelona, for example, would make much more sense for some possible culprits rather than others. While the Mossad would be the prime suspect if Barcelona had been attacked - what could get the Catalans behind the war on terror - the Spanish capital, esepcially its citizens, would be the ideal target for Al-Qaeda. ETA would be prone to attack hard targets there.

After the attacks of 9/11, Spain was in the forefront of stopping terrorists. On November 18th, Spanish security police raided a house in Madrid, arresting eight men thought to be connected to Al-Qaeda, and planning to attack various high-profile targets in Western Europe, including NATO headqarters in Brussels, and the American Embassy in Paris. The leading suspect arrested was Syrian Abu Dahdah aka Edin Barakat Yarkas who took orders directly from Muhammed Atef, Al-Qaeda's military commander responsible for organizing the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

By the following April, CESID agents clinched their closure of the cell operating out of Majorca by arresting Ahmed Brahim, Al-Qaeda's financial wizard behind the bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which killed 220 people, in an apartment of the San Joan Despit secton of Barcelona. Brahim used his businesses on the Spanish island as the cover for such covert operations through stolen credit cards to pay for telephone communications, and false invoices to hide illegal money transfers for agents and equipment.

With the help of National Security Agency (NSA) intercepts, the Spanish police were able to connect Brahim to Mahdouh Mahud Salin, one of the founders of Al-Qaeda in Spain, and with that of German police, to leading hijacker Mohamed Atta a year before the attacks occurred. Salin was later tried, and convicted of conspiring to blow up the embassies. German police found an address book in a Hamburg apartment which connected Atta to Yarkas.

In the process, CESID learned how Spain, a "rear guard base", was able to propagate similar cells around Europe, and connect them in ways which would lead to more destructive terrorisim unless there was more effective counterterrorism by all countries concerned. The only downside of the whole operation was that the United States Air Force - so eager to redeem itself after the humiliations of 9/11 - used the NSA intercepts of calls between Atef and the Spanish base to take him out by an air attack during an Al-Qaeda meeting in Kabal on November 14th. In killing him, the Coalition lost a vital source of information.

The stupid killing to Atef was compounded by the unnecessary assault on Iraq - what threw the war on terrorism into the greatest disarray. Bathasar Garzon, Spain's most dedicated and successful investigative judge, put it this way: "The war against Iraq will not eradicate the threat of terror but perversely, it may bolster it." Unfortunately, he knew what he was talking about, and the deadly Madrid attacks are the best evidence of this being so.

During the build-up of the war with Saddam Hussein, Al-Qadea's recruiter in Britain, cleric Abu Qatada, was apparently recruited by the Security Service as a double agent to keep track of all the visitors, especially from Spain, joining its ranks. Before Christmas 2001, Qatada and his family went into hiding from their home in Acton, his critics claiming that he had fled the country, but operatives in Britain implying that he had switched sides, spilling the beans on all his formers colleagues for London's authorities. In October 2002, he was jailed as a terrorist, but this could just have been to keep up his cover as the war with Iraq came into focus. In January, he sought release from custody, but his appeal was rejected.

Whatever Qatada told MI5 about possible attacks in Britain (was he responsible for all the overkill in counterterrorism last year at Heathrow?), he obviously did not keep Spanish authorities informed of what his disciples did in London, and planned in Madrid, as The Australian reported just the other day in the article entitled, "Al-Qaeda Double Agent Duped MI5:" "Among the scores of young militants who visited him was the chief suspect in the Madrid train bombings." The suspect is, of all people, Abu Dahdah, who visited Qatada no less than 25 times, bringing money and recruits. Obviously, the visits were intended to throw everybody off, MI5 thinking that the targets were in Britain while they were actually in Spain. London must have assured Aznar's government that it had nothing to worry about with Abu Dahdah.

Little wonder that Madrid went berserk when the totally unexpected attacks occurred, blaming ETA, the only likely other source. In doing so, the PP government ruined what little chance it had with the already disbelieving electorate about the war on terror. When Britain realized how it too had played into the hands of Spain's Al-Qaeda network, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens, Britain's clean-up man when it comes to botched covert operations, understandably announced that similar attacks in the UK were just a matter of time, and now its forces are arresting all Qatada's visitors that they can lay their hands on. Unfortunately, like actions after the 9/11 attacks, they are simply grabbing at straws.

No Honest Americans

US Citizens Cheer Their Criminal Nation Savaging The Whole World

by John Kaminski

The presidential election, Bush vs. Kerry, what a joke! Two privileged plutocrats, two psychotic perverts from the same demonic college fraternity, neither ever had to hold a job, each advocating continuing crimes against humanity, even against their own people. And to make matters worse, they no longer count the votes honestly. The computer spits out a predetermined total, and the TV whores tell you to believe it. And just like in the election itself, you have no real choice.

Two spoiled children of privilege, born into incomprehensible wealth, constantly gathering more as they go on their immoral ways, devising ever more evil strategies by which to fleece the slaves of the world, preparing to divide America into armed camps, all the while taking their lead from the evil Israelis, who build walls against humanity and murder whomever they please. The few people who try to point out the injustice are either prohibited from speaking or thrown into jail without trial, or outright murdered. The new American way is the old Israeli way. But Americans embrace it, as they continue their sleepwalking march toward slavery and oblivion. Cheering with empty eyes as they go.

Does it not strike you as odd " assuming you are a thinking, feeling human being not yet too retarded by flouride, chemtrails, food additives, antidepressants and demonically engineered food that will eventually poison you to death " that there is not a single principled public figure in America who has pointed out that America's rape of Iraq violates every international law and moral precept that has ever been written by the great minds of the past? That the dispersal of uranium all over Central Asia will kill millions? That the clumsy coverup of the inside job of mass murder on 9/11 was the ultimate betrayal of all Americans?

What ARE Americans doing? Cowering in their undefendable homes and waiting for the end?

Does it not strike you as odd that no one speaks out about America's crimes against the world? Against poor people everywhere? Against its own citizens?

Now the real deal is on the table. A New Orleans judge has ruled that the cops can invade your own home without a warrant. That's the end of the Fourth Amendment, a citizen's protection against unreasonable search and seizure, the very basis of freedom in America. This is merely the expected verification of the Patriot Act, that Soviet-style law that allows the government to control every aspect of your life. Now, no one is safe from American tyranny. 1984 has finally arrived.

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War Launched to Protect Israel - Bush Adviser

Just in case you're thinking that it's different in the UK, it isn't. We are just as much slaves of Israel as our American counsins are.

Iraq under Saddam Hussein did not pose a threat to the United States but it did to Israel, which is one reason why Washington invaded the Arab country, according to a speech made by a member of a top-level White House intelligence group.

IPS uncovered the remarks by Philip Zelikow, who is now the executive director of the body set up to investigate the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001 -- the 9/11 commission -- in which he suggests a prime motive for the invasion just over one year ago was to eliminate a threat to Israel, a staunch U.S. ally in the Middle East.

Zelikow's casting of the attack on Iraq as one launched to protect Israel appears at odds with the public position of President George W. Bush and his administration, which has never overtly drawn the link between its war on the regime of former president Hussein and its concern for Israel's security.

The administration has instead insisted it launched the war to liberate the Iraqi people, destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to protect the United States.

Zelikow made his statements about ”the unstated threat” during his tenure on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the president.

He served on the board between 2001 and 2003.

”Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 -- it's the threat against Israel,” Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation.

”And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell,” said Zelikow.

The statements are the first to surface from a source closely linked to the Bush administration acknowledging that the war, which has so far cost the lives of nearly 600 U.S. troops and thousands of Iraqis, was motivated by Washington's desire to defend the Jewish state.

The administration, which is surrounded by staunch pro-Israel, neo-conservative hawks, is currently fighting an extensive campaign to ward off accusations that it derailed the ”war on terrorism” it launched after 9/11 by taking a detour to Iraq, which appears to have posed no direct threat to the United States.

Israel is Washington's biggest ally in the Middle East, receiving annual direct aid of three to four billion dollars.

Even though members of the 16-person PFIAB come from outside government, they enjoy the confidence of the president and have access to all information related to foreign intelligence that they need to play their vital advisory role.

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Occupiers spend millions on private army of security men

This article says it better than I ever could!

by Robert Fisk in and Severin Carrell

An army of thousands of mercenaries has appeared in Iraq's major cities, many of them former British and American soldiers hired by the occupying Anglo-American authorities and by dozens of companies who fear for the lives of their employees.

Many of the armed Britons are former SAS soldiers and heavily armed South Africans are also working for the occupation. "My people know how to use weapons and they're all SAS," said the British leader of one security team in southern Baghdad. "But there are people running around with guns now who are just cowboys. We always conceal our weapons, but these guys think they're in a Hollywood film."

There are serious doubts even within the occupying power about America's choice to send Chilean mercenaries, many trained during General Pinochet's vicious dictatorship, to guard Baghdad airport. Many South Africans are in Iraq illegally - they are breaking new laws, passed by the government in Pretoria, to control South Africa's booming export of mercenaries. Many have been arrested on their return home because they are do not have the licence now required by private soldiers.

Casualties among the mercenaries are not included in the regular body count put out by the occupation authorities, which may account for the persistent suspicion among Iraqis that the US is underestimating its figures of military dead and wounded. Some British experts claim that private policing is now the UK's biggest export to Iraq - a growth fueled by the surge in bomb attacks on coalition forces, aid agencies and UN buildings since the official end of the war in May last year.

Many companies operate from villas in middle-class areas of Baghdad with no name on the door. Some security men claim they can earn more than £80,000 a year; but short-term, high-risk mercenary work can bring much higher rewards. Security personnel working a seven-day contract in cities like Fallujah, can make $1,000 a day.

Although they wear no uniform, some security men carry personal identification on their flak jackets, along with their rifles and pistols. Others refuse to identify themselves even in hotels, drinking beer by the pool, their weapons at their feet. In several hotels, guests and staff have complained that security men have held drunken parties and one manager was forced to instruct mercenaries in his hotel that they must carry their guns in a bag when they leave the premises. His demand was ignored.

One British company director, David Claridge of the security firm Janusian, has estimated that British firms have earned up to £800m from their contracts in Iraq - barely a year after the invasion of Iraq. One British-run firm, Erinys, employs 14,000 Iraqis as watchmen and security guards to protect the country's oil fields and pipelines.

Full story...

British MP wants economic sanctions against Israel

A test of how effective this is going to be is easy to illustrate; I live in the UK, I'm a news junkie, and I got this off an American website linking to an Australian newspaper website. Now what does that tell you about the so-called "freedom" of the press and the independence (and vigour) of our journalists. Most of those useless cocksucking sycophantic idiots spend more time telling "conspiracy theorists" like me that we're making it all up or "barking mad" than they do actually coming up with good data to refute the BLEEDING OBVIOUS! The truth is so much stranger than fiction that even if they made a 100% accurate movie about it, you probably wouldn't believe it!

A British Member of Parliament from the ruling Labour party, Gerald Kaufman, has called for economic sanctions against Israel, including cutting off arms supplies, to force it back to the negotiating table with the Palestinians.

"It is not enough for the world community, including our own Government, to condemn the Israeli Government's brutal policies of repression," he said, addressing members of his Manchester constituency.

"Only widespread economic sanctions on Israel, together with cutting off arms supplies, can make any impact on this Government without a conscience".

Mr Kaufman, himself Jewish, said US President George W Bush's father, the former president Bush, had "understood the importance of forcing the Israelis to the conference table by imposing economic sanctions on a previous Likud Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir".

Mr Kaufman, once a frontbench Labour foreign affairs spokesman when the party was in opposition, criticised a decision by Mr Bush to receive Mr Sharon in Washington.

Full story...

Israel, A Malignant Tumor Onto The World

by Manuel Valenzuela - Axis of Logic Contributing Editor

"Anti-occupation, anti-apartheid and anti-dehumanization is not anti-Semitism nor anti-Israel. Pro-peace, pro-human rights and pro-freedom is not pro-Palestinian. The power of freedom is pointing out when it is being denied. The search for justice and equality comes not from hiding from fear of criticism but rather from taking the road less traveled up the mountain of truth." -Manuel Valenzuela

What were Sharon and the Israeli government thinking when they decided to decapitate Hamas through the assassination of its founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin? If the state sponsored murder of Yassin was not so recklessly self-defeating, one might be inclined to think that Sharon is on a mission to implode the state of Israel.

The evaporation of a wheelchair-laden Yassin through American Apache helicopter missiles underscores the vicious cycle the state of Israel has thrust upon itself for years on end. Its ceaseless terror-inducing actions on an occupied and resisting people continue to haunt it and its own citizens; its continued oppression, violence and dehumanization on the indigenous people of Palestine inevitably always boomerangs, yet Israel does not relent, nor understands, nor seems to care about the consequences of its actions.

As if addicted to perpetual death, fear and violence, the state of Israel continues to escalate a war it cannot win, an occupation it cannot escape and a state of siege it does not fully care to understand. Israel has through the years only increased its oppression of a population it cannot erase, no matter how hard it tries to cleanse the Holy Land of its native inhabitants. It continues to masochistically seek the principle of kill and be killed, of cause and effect and action and reaction, making one wonder if suffering and hardship are necessary ingredients for life in the Middle East. For decades Israel has tried everything to no avail, collective punishment, virtual imprisonment, economic genocide, killing, maiming, oppressing, occupying, cleansing and dehumanizing. Does it not see that her continued actions are leading not to the "promised land" but rather straight to hell on Earth and that life is only getting harder and much less safe?

The trouble in the Middle East stems from the fact that a European people with no continuity with the land arrived and colonized a native population that did. Today, this colonization has morphed into outright apartheid and dehumanization. The state of Israel, it must be understood, was born in sin. It was created in large part thanks to the ethnic cleansing and dispossession of a native people who today are trapped in large concentration camps of suffering and utter decay, living encaged in the last vestiges of their original land. Israel's birth coincided with the spawning of serious crimes against humanity that have through time only been exacerbated, continuing to this day with ever more barbaric levels of suppression, persecution and subjugation.

Israel was a dream of European Zionists who colonized the native Palestinian people (thanks to the British) who had contiguously occupied the land for millennia. These Zionists arrived and proceeded to open the floodgates of European Jewish immigration onto Palestine. Hundreds of thousands arrived while hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced out, oftentimes with a barrel of a gun pointed their way. Immigrants took possession of those lands and buildings left behind by the indigenous population.

Arab-Israeli wars that followed drove still more natives out of their lands and lives, pushing them further away from their historical homes. Large sections and populations of Jordan, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza are today but vast refugee camps for those who were ethnically cleansed from their livelihoods in order to appease the Zionist dream of a Jewish state in the so-called "promised land."

Those who would deny this reality should be categorized along with Holocaust non-believers and those revisionists of history who would have the world believe otherwise. The reality of the formation of Israel has been tried to be made to disappear into the dustbins of forgotten history, for the truth of how the "promised land" was acquired would no doubt send waves of disgust into those who today believe in the perceived nobility and blessings of the creation of Israel and the humanity and enlightenment of modern man. Indeed, to study the history of the formation of Israel is to undertake a study into colonization, occupation, oppression, apartheid and the worst in the human condition.

The latest act in the violent and horrendous tragedy that is the cycle of revenge and death in the Middle East will only assure that the Arab world, as well as the world at large, continues its exponentially-increasing animosity and resentment toward Israel and the Zionists who seem not to care about the growing tremors of negative energy seemingly emanating from all corners of the globe.

Full story...

Emperor Antony Has No Clothes

Everyone is allowed to blow off steam...

by Trowbridge H. Ford

Dear Bill,

Sorry not to have written for such a long time, but I have been having all kinds of problems with Mad Maggie. You must have thought that I was dead. She still thinks that she occupies the imperial throne, wears the purple robes, and carries the mighty scepter.

She wanted us to go to Washington to tell our good King George to swat some more of the unwashed colonials - the targets and weapons being of his own choice - but I persuaded her instead to visit Greater Gibraltar, planning to drop in on our vicegerent at Madrid, the jovial Prince José. Of course, by the time we got there, the whole plot to manufacture at the Basques's expense an election victory had proven a complete fiasco, with nearly 200 residents killed in the process.

Still, Spain got off easy when you consider what happened to the people in Afghanistan and Iraq after the 9/11 attacks. Prince José, according to Maggie, gave the ploy its best shot by telling everyone in no uncertain terms he could contact that ETA was behind the bombings of the commuter trains, but the Spaniards, unlike our Britons, are so unplugged into official propaganda that it backfired. Spain has apparently become a nation of gutless Catalans who are unable to think beyond what's on the table for supper.

Maggie said that José's efforts to deceive the Spanish public reminded her of her attempts to disorient the British public about what was going on in Northern Ireland with the Provisionals just before she got the sack from the throne. While she claimed that she was not for turning when it came to terrorism in the province - what was manifestly untrue - José was willing to let Al-Qaeda play the part of Euzhadi Ta Askatasuna just to top up the electoral vote for the Popular Party.

Its plight now is a far call from what is facing her successor, Emperor Tony, and his party. He has actually been stripped of all his clothing but none of the courtiers or scribblers are willing to say so. He and Empress Cherie, of course, attended the memorail service in Madrid for José's fall, sitting in the royal box with all the other dignitaries. They certainly looked happier in the third row than their former Spanish agent in the front one. In fact, the Emperor was so encouraged by his reception that he went on to Tripoli to shake hands with Libya's 'courageous' leader, Muammar Qaddafi. This must have been a slipup by one of his new spin doctors as no one has thought of the Libyan madman in this way before.

Of course, everyone knows that he has always been a fallguy for what London and Washington have been attempting when it came to the Soviet Union, the Provisionsals, terrorism, and the like, but now it is necessary to close ranks with the oil suppliers, as the discarded Michael Meacher has been crowing, to keep it flowing no matter what. The Emperor certainly looked more uncomforable, though, than he had in Madrid, shaking hands, and making the rounds for the photo opportunity with the most eccentric leader.

Things are simply bizarre back home now. Only retired diplomats and fallen courtiers are willing to say anything about how Emperor Tony has been handling affairs. Sir Christopher Meyer, obviously irked, as Chairman of the Press Complaints Coimmission, by the continuing spin operation that he is conducting from imperial headquarters, has talked about his days in Washington as his ambassador, discussing how King George wanted to squash their joint-agent, of all people in the Middle East, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Fortunately, the Emperor prevailed upon him to strike Afghanistan and the Taliban first, giving London and Washington time to 'sex' up the case for attacking the now useless Iraqi dictator.

George, it seems, is simply a nut case, making our predecessor by the same name, who helped instigate the colonies informally breaking off, look like a figure of stability and probity. Rumor has it that the Emperor physically had to restrain crazy George before he would settle for attacking Al-Qaeda and Afghanistan. Fortunately, George is not another Jacques Chirac when it comes to fisticuffs. Who knows who or what George will hit next with José's fate at the polls in November increasingly staring him in the face.

The Emperor's most difficult moments occurred when he waited anxiously to learn if Oxfordshire Coroner Nicholas Gardiner would resume the inquest into Dr. David Kelly's death. Fortunately, for His Majesty, the coroner declined to do so, claiming that it was better to have people squabbling about various conspiracy theories regarding his apparent murder rather than helping come up with the suspects who did it.

Gardiner simply accepted the conclusions of Professor Keith Hawton, the psychiatric expert in explaining suicides who had been hired by the Hutton Inquiry to end the controversy. In the process, Hawton overlooked the doubts and misgivings of the official forensic pathologists and others - the absence of enough blood at the alleged death site, and drugs in Kelly's body to account for suicide, how Kelly actually died, the physical injuries done to him while he was being killed, the movement of the body, etc.

In declining to resume the inquest in order to at least answer some of these questions, Gardiner was satisfied in doing so because of advice offered by the Lord Chancellor, one of Emperor Tony's best friends now on the Woolsack, and feelings for the deceased's family, especially since it is now most eager to get compensation for the killing from the MoD. Of course, if Gardiner had done otherwise, he risked opening a Pandora's box of evidence which could quite easily result in the Emperor and his entourage being seen as guilty of aiding and abetting murder by parties yet to be discovered. The press has been completely willing to go along with the whole fraudulent process, offering only the most feeble reasons - e. g., the body was moved at the site where it was found - for resuming the inquest.

Maggie has decided that things have become so crazy, especially because of the hopeless efforts by her followers, that she is thinking about making a comeback. She has decided that being certifiable for the loonie bin is now a leading qualification for office.

Yours in hope,
Denis

Israel 'fabricated' child-bomber story

This story brings to mind that line from the Sting song back in the Evil Eighties, "Do the Russians love their children too?"

Palestinian leaders have accused Israel of fabricating a story about a 14-year-old Palestinian boy who planned to blow himself up.

The Israeli army said he was caught wearing an explosive belt at an army roadblock in the northern West Bank.

The boy, identified as Husam Abdu from Nablus, was shown on TV screens around the world, with an explosive belt strapped to his waist.

The Israeli army said the boy told interrogators that his dispatchers promised that he would have sex with 72 virgins in heaven soon after his death.

"We know for sure this is a fabricated story from A to Z. Would you believe that a 13 or 14-year old would agree to blow up himself in return for a hundred shekels which he would receive after his death?

"It seems to me that the Israelis are bad liars as well," said Yaqub Shahin, a director-general of the Palestinian Authority ministry of information.

Full story...

New York Times Reporter A Government Informant

Imagine: an American journalist using his cover for the most prominent paper in the country to inform on and demonize select political critics of the government! The Godfather had his "newspaper friends" on the payroll, and the IRS has theirs: David Cay Johnston.

David Cay Johnston, a celebrated New York Times reporter, reveals in his recent book, Perfectly Legal, his history of acting as a government informant against political dissenters on behalf of his best government sources. Criticized by many for his lack of journalistic integrity, Johnston's revelations in his book still shock the conscience. Johnston's informing and propaganda at the behest of favored insiders induced audits, secret surveillance, and criminal prosecutions of select political targets...

Johnston details case after case where he used his cover as a New York Times reporter to elicit information from political dissenters, then disclosed that information to others. How many people would know this friendly reporter was really there as a federal agent? Johnston gathered information on the names of the people in protest movements, uncovered the locations of their meetings, elicited the intentions of movement leaders, and even tried to induce some of them to incriminate themselves. Johnston's informing has now allowed the agency to blacklist select political targets.

Johnston's disclosures dovetail with his role as a public relations agent of the government -- propagandizing from the front pages of the Times whenever the hardliners need publicity to prosecute disfavored political groups. (Not surprisingly, Johnston rose to fame during the Jayson Blair "see no evil, hear no evil" editorial leadership at the Times, when the Times licensed all kinds of licentious conduct.) Johnston goes even further in his book than the Times could allow -- invading the privacy of taxpayers and whispering confidential information about politically prominent critics in his book, especially those who raised questions about governmental fraud in the agency, even though this information is illegal for the government to disclose.

The second startling revelation comes from Johnston's open propagandizing. Johnston often cited mysterious "tax experts" in his past articles for legal criticisms of political dissenters. We now know who those mysterious "experts" are -- Johnston himself and the hardliners within the government. Sort of like citing a CIA employee as an "international law expert," without disclosing who he works for, to give an opinion on why it's okay for the government to assassinate foreign leaders.

Masquerading as a muckraking journalist, Johnston masks his true constituency: the hardliners within the tax police state who use him as their personal spokesperson, unbeknownst to his editors at the Times. Never known for his intellectual prowess, Johnston may be a cheap mouth piece, but a mouth piece with a big speakerphone.

Johnston, who rode his coverage of the truth in taxation movement to a Pulitzer Prize, never even mentions the millions of Americans questioning the suspect status of many tax laws and the deliberate shroud of obscurity covering those laws, the IRS banning the selling of books critical of the agency, the IRS prohibiting web sites critical of them, or the Silence Advocacy Project revealed in the recent prosecution of former whistleblower, Joe Banister.

Instead, Johnston offers only one solution to the corrupt, abusive tax police state -- more money and more power to that tax police state. Johnston dips even lower, suggesting those who believe in financial privacy are Al-Queda sympathizers with blood on their hands from 9/11. Those who challenge imprisoning people for tax debts under the 13th Amendment secretly support "white racist" organizations. Finally, anyone who questions the tax police state is likely an anarchist bent on attacking the "commonwealth" of society itself. Even McCarthy made more sense than Johnston.

Full story...

Bush's brand new enemy is the truth

Clarke's claims have shaken the White House to its foundations

One of the first official acts of the current Bush administration was to downgrade the office of national coordinator for counterterrorism on the National Security Council - a position held by Richard Clarke. Clarke had served in the Pentagon and State Department under presidents Reagan and Bush the elder, and was the first person to hold the counterterrorism job created by President Clinton. Under Clinton, he was elevated to cabinet rank, which gave him a seat at the principals' meeting, the highest decision-making group for national security.

By removing Clarke from the table, Bush put him in a box where he could speak only when spoken to. No longer would his memos go to the president; instead, they had to pass though a chain of command of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, who bounced each of them back.

Terrorism was a Clinton issue: "soft" and obscure, having something to do with "globalisation", and other trends ridiculed from the Republican party platform. "In January 2001 the new administration really thought Clinton's recommendation that eliminating al-Qaida be one of their highest priorities, well, rather odd, like so many of the Clinton administration's actions, from their perspective," Clarke writes in his new book, Against All Enemies. When Clarke first met Rice and immediately raised the question of dealing with al-Qaida, she "gave me the impression she had never heard the term before".

The controversy raging around Clarke's book and his testimony before the 9/11 commission that Bush ignored warnings about terrorism that might have prevented the attacks revolves around his singularly unimpeachable credibility. In response, Bush has launched an offensive against him, impugning his personal motives, saying he is a disappointed job-hunter, publicity-mad, a political partisan, ignorant, irrelevant - and a liar.

Clarke's reputation in the Clinton White House was that he could be brusque and passionate, but also calm and single-minded. He was a complete professional, who was a master of the bureaucracy. He didn't suffer fools gladly, stood up to superiors and didn't care who he alienated. His flaw was his indispensable virtue: he was direct and candid in telling the unvarnished truth.

But his account need not stand on his reputation alone. Clarke was not the only national security professional who spanned both the Clinton and Bush administrations. General Donald Kerrick served as deputy national security adviser under Clinton and remained on the NSC into the Bush administration. He wrote his replacement, Stephen Hadley, a two-page memo. "It was classified," Kerrick told me. "I said they needed to pay attention to al-Qaida and counterterrorism. I said we were going to be struck again. They never once asked me a question, nor did I see them having a serious discussion about it ... I agree with Dick that they saw those problems through an Iraqi prism. But the evidence, the intelligence, wasn't there."

Rice now claims about terrorism that "we were at battle stations". But Bush is quoted by Bob Woodward in Bush At War as saying that before September 11 "I was not on point ... I didn't feel that sense of urgency". Cheney alleges that Clarke was "out of the loop". But if he was, then the administration was either running a rogue operation or doing nothing, as Clarke testifies.

Full story...

The Still Missing Dots in the 9/11 Inquiry

by Trowbridge H. Ford

The best way to stop any constructive investigation of a serious disaster, and thereby prevent any possible punishment of those responsible, and remedies against it recurring is to throw a security net over what actually happened. This prevents everyone from knowing who screwed up, when and how, leaving only a trail of alarming rumors, missed opportunities, and convenient red-herrings. In the end, one is left with the bitter taste of accepting the flawed system as it is.

In no case is this better illustrated than in the current hearings that America's National Commission on Terrorist Attacks has been conducting in Washington. With an agreement that no secret operatives, actual operations or key terrorists in the attacks will be identified, the public is being presented with a most vague account of what actually occurred. Not only are there semantic differences over what constituted plans, operations, and options, there are all kinds of confusions about who may have been conducting them, and for what purpose.

The best illustration of the confusions is all the talk about dots, whatever they may be, and what they represent. They could be people, cruical intelligence, fatal misconceptions - you name it. Dots become euphenisms for all kinds of things. Then people in charge are talking about their institutions in most confusing personal and collective ways.

The best evidence of this was supplied by Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet when he testified: "We didn't steal the secret that told us what the plot was, we didn't recruit the right people or technically collect the data, notwithstanding ernormous effort to do so." The DCI did not describe the secrets that the Agency had stolen about the plot - apparently simple hijackings in return for dropping all demands on the Taliban for handing over Al-Qaeda's leader Osama bin Laden - the agents it had recruited to prevent it, and the anecdotal efforts it had made to put the vast data into some kind of perspective, though it attempts proved prodigious.

More incredibly, the Commission did not ask him to explain any of these sweeping statements, settling for querying him about the complete red-herring about why bin Laden had not been assassinated nearly three years earlier, everyone ultimately admitting that even if successful, it would not have prevented the 9/11 attacks.

For good measure, the DCI even added this about Agency efforts but still without any response by the Commissioners: "We didn't integetrate all the data we had properly, and probably we had a lot of data that we didn't know about that if everybody'd known about maybe we would have had a chance. I can't predict to you one way or another." As for who "we" was in this context - it apparently was not the Agency's two counterterrorist experts who almost resigned because of the benighted way things were going before the attacks - we have no clearer idea of who they were than his earlier references to them in explaining the vast CIA's failures.

Fortunately, for the FBI, its Director, Robert Mueller, was not put through this embarrassment as he had just taken over the Bureau when the attacks occurred, and the Commission did not have the courage of confronting the discredited former Director, Louis Freeh, with a more embarrassing ordeal about why it had not connected the dots it knew about before he departed.

Of course, all these questions could have been clarified by the Commission forcing the DCI to admit that the Agency had taken on an aggressive counterterrorist agenda after the Bureau's Robert Hanssen had been exposed as a Soviet spy - what it had suffered from for six years after the Agency's Aldrich "Rick" Ames had been outed for working for Moscow in 1994. The CIA wanted to teach the Bureau a law-enforcement lesson in the worst way, though it did not have the necessary legal authority to ensure success. CIA agents do not have the power of arrest, or to carry guns in the domestic United States.

Still, once Al-Qaeda's Khalid Sheikh Mohammed carried out an attack on the USS Cole in October 2000 while it was attempting to refuel in Aden - what the Agency had learned was in the offing during a meeting of his operatives at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia the previous January - CIA planned for rounding up all his agents after their leaders made their way to the United States, ultimately assembling them in Los Angeles. To ensure the plan's success, the Agency prevailed upon the State Department to cut the only knowledgeable counterterrorist agent in the Bureau, John O'Neill, out of the investigation of the attack on the Cole, leading to his resignation, and actual murder in the attacks.

Then the Agency, thinking that the coast was clear for a colossal coup, allowed Mohammed's chief operatives Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaq Al-Hamzi to enter the States so that they could activate all the sleeper cells already within the country for the roundup. To help guarantee success, the Agency placed four agents on the United plane which crashed into the WTC's North Tower, eight agents on the plane which was ultimately forced down in Pennsylania, and three agents and Mrs. Barabara Olson, wife of Solicitor General Ted Olson, and coordinator of the whole operation, on the plane which slammed into the Pentagaon.

Of course, the Agency refuses to allow mention of the hijackers, especially Al-Midhar and Al-Hamzi, for fear that it will be forced to release the complete passenger lists of the doomed flights - what could lead to the identification of its agents on the last three flights, and the the exposure of the whole hamfisted operation.

In sum, until the Commission starts talking about unmentionable operatives and agents, and starts questioning the Solictitor General about his wife's role and actions in it, one can be assured that it is getting nowhere.

Betrayed By An Oil Giant

Crony capitalism at work, this is the world Bush would see us living in; polluted and at the mercy of large corporations.

15 years After Exxon Valdez, The Coast Remains Polluted & Compensation Is Unpaid

Shortly after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, a senior Exxon representative visited the devastated fishing communities of southern Alaska and promised them the company would do everything in its power to restore their livelihoods and "make them whole".

"We're Exxon, we do it right," is the slogan that has stuck in the mind of Dune Lankard, a local Native American activist.

But 15 years to the day since a drunken sea captain drove his oil tanker on to a reef in Prince William Sound, covering one of the world's most pristine stretches of coastline with at least 11 million gallons of crude, the feeling among fishermen, environmentalist activists and the lawyers representing them is that Exxon has not only broken its original promise but has gone out of its way to betray them in pursuit of broader corporate interests.

Exxon, whose net income for 2003 is expected to top $21bn, has not paid out a penny of the $5bn (£2.7bn) in damages originally awarded to the fishing communities a decade ago, launching appeal after appeal and deluging the courts with paperwork. Despite intensive clean-up efforts, Prince William Sound remains polluted by large oil deposits that have destroyed its herring fisheries and wreaked havoc with the once-flourishing wildlife.

The town of Cordova, whose fishermen could once count on earning $100,000 a season, has become an outpost of despair, where debt and destitution have given rise to alcoholism, drug abuse, broken marriages and numerous suicides. About 1,000 of the original 32,000 plaintiffs in the class-action suit against Exxon have died, many of them succumbing to respiratory illnesses, brain tumours and cancers that a growing body of scientific evidence has linked to the spill and the subsequent clean-up.

Of the survivors, many hang on, ever more despondently, for the Exxon settlement money to arrive. Others have been forced to sell up and move away, returning in the summer months to fish what they can from the Snake river as the debt on their boats and their once highly valuable fishing permits continues to accumulate.

"Exxon has dodged its responsibility every step of the way," Mr Lankard said. "The company had every opportunity to go beyond the call of duty. Instead, they've understood that their hand gets stronger the longer they wait. And in the meantime, people are dying."

Yesterday, a large delegation of Cordovans and their supporters were in Washington to lobby the Bush administration to reopen the federal government's own suit against Exxon and force the company to pay out an extra $100m in environmental damages. That extra money was written into the original 1991 settlement for environmental damages - worth $900m - in the event that oil damage proved more extensive than foreseen.

The fear of environmental activists, however, is that both the Bush administration and Alaska's leading elected officials would prefer to defer to the oil industry and let Exxon off the hook. Alaska's attorney general, Craig Tillery, has said it may be "premature" to present a case for the extra $100m, which must be claimed by 2006.

Full story...

President George Bush and the Gilded Age

Is it simple greed, or is it part of a larger plan?

Yoshi Tsurumi (Professor of International Business, Baruch College, the City University of New York)

Something really strange has happened to the U.S. under the Bush Administration. With her ever bulging budget deficits and foreign debts, America's skewed income distribution is rapidly making the U.S. resemble Argentina or Mexico. The "Jobless Recovery" is not a political mirage, but a serious problem. America's GDP is increasing at an annual rate of about 4.0% this year. But, only those Wall Street "money gamers" and self-dealing "management aristocrats" of Corporate America are dizzy with their huge bonuses, padded salaries, and self-dealt stock options. The remaining hard working Americans cannot eat "GDP." The U.S. has widening income gap between a few "haves" and many "have-nots."

During the last economic recovery period of March 1991 to April 1993, a 10% increase in GDP increased manufacturing jobs and service jobs 3% and 5.9% respectively. However, for the present economic recovery since November 2001, a 10% increase in GDP is increasing manufacturing and service jobs only 0.7% and 0.9% respectively. Just to keep up with her population growth, the U.S. needs to create about 230,000 jobs a month. If the U.S. wants to employ the 3 million unemployed workers thrown out of work under the Bush Administration, the U.S. would have to create a lot more jobs monthly. Last month, however, the U.S. only created 115,000 jobs. President Bush has now abandoned his earlier declared promise of "creating 2.6 million jobs by the fall of 2004."

The unemployed rate of January this year was 5.6%, dipping only 0.1 percentage point. President Bush hailed it as the "unemployment declines for four months in a row." In reality, however, the U.S. has had four months of consecutive decline in the unemployment rate because so many formerly "unemployed" became too discouraged to keep seeking jobs and were eliminated from the unemployment statistics. The U.S. has over 5 million part-time job holders who want full time jobs but cannot find them. In addition, the U.S. has 8 million persons who have had to settle for full time jobs paying far less than their previous jobs. The "jobless recovery" and the widening income gaps are aggravated by massive migrations of good paying manufacturing and service jobs abroad. Such migrations have been accelerated by President Bush's misguided tax cuts.

Full story...

When I Met Kerry

This is a very interesting insight into the man who may be the next US President, to be honest George Bush is such a nightmare that Mickey Mouse would be a preferable choice... But I'm still not sure if I trust Kerry, as a member of Skull and Bones he is an insider, there is really very little difference between Kerry's policies and Bush's.

by Hal Cranmer

I would like to add my two cents about my John Kerry experience. During my career as an Air Force pilot, I spent two years flying a small twin engine prop plane around the Pacific from my base in Okinawa, Japan. On one trip we had to fly Senator Kerry, his congressional aide, and a Navy Captain (Vietnam, A-4 fighter pilot)who was also in Kerry's party to various locations in Vietnam and Cambodia as part of the MIA/POW talks. When I met him, he was wearing a shirt with a picture of his sailboat on it. I told him I had a small 27 sailboat in Okinawa, he remarked 'Oh I never sail on anything less than 135 feet'.

When we first flew him into Phnom Penh, he went to the back of the airplane and grabbed the pizza that was put aside for the crew and passed it around to his staff. He was never offered any pizza because they were supposed to have lunch with the Cambodian government once we landed. The pizza would have been our only meal that day. Then when we picked him up in Cambodia, he was an hour late getting to the airport. We could not start the engines and therefore the air conditioning until he arrived. Phnom Penh at that time was over 100 degrees with 95% humidity and we were basically sitting in a greenhouse behind the cockpit windows. When he finally did arrive, we were wringing out our clothes from the perspiration. He walks out of the air conditioned car, into the airplane and asks us 'Could you guys get the air conditioning running, I'm a little warm." The other pilot had to physically restrain me from going back there and picking a fight.

Then we took him into Noi Bai airfield in Hanoi. After we picked him up the next day (he stayed the night in Vietnam, we stayed in Bangkok)we taxied out, ran up the engines for takeoff, and noticed that our prop rpm was vibrating all over the place. We taxied off to the side to look at it, but there was a good possibility that there was an engine malfunction and the engine may fail if we took off with it. Well, Mr. Senator sticks his head up in the cockpit and says 'This plane WILL take - off, I have a press conference in Bangkok in three hours!"(Maybe this is an indication of how he will run the FAA). We ran the engines again, and did not have the problem, so we took off and made it back. During the flight, he told everyone how he had taken a Cessna (a small General aviation plane) up with a fighter pilot, and the fighter pilot remarked that Kerry was one of the best pilots he had ever seen. I don't know about other pilots out there, but it's hard to imagine a little, single-engine prop plane pilot being able to show the 'right stuff'. After Kerry left the plane, the Navy Captain came up to us, apologized and said basically that he knows Kerry is a jerk and that we should be glad we don't have to deal with him every day.

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Assassinating Sheikh Yassin

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." - from the Bhagavad-Gita, words also spoken by J. Robert Oppenheimer after the detontation of the first atomic bomb. We are not fucking playing games here people!

Sharon Edges Closer to World War

by Gilad Atzmon

Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was murdered at daybreak on Monday. Israel Air Force helicopters fired missiles at the car carrying the wheelchair-bound head of the Islamic group as he left a mosque near his house in Gaza City. It also appears Ariel Sharon was in direct command of the assassination operation, not entirely surprising considering his bloody history.

For those who fail to realise, today's barbaric Israeli act is an open call for a world war. It is the final wake up call for every Muslim around the world. It is violent proof that Israel isn't only against the Palestinians but rather against Islam. Israel killed a prime spiritual leader on his way out of the mosque. I have no doubt that this Israeli act won't be forgiven. I also have no doubt that many Israelis will pay with their life for Sharon's act. Moreover I am sure that sooner rather than later many innocent non-Israelis around the world will die just for being near by an Israeli embassy, Israeli consulate, a synagogue or even an American bank...This is the reality Sharon favours the most.

This is exactly what Israel wants: to turn the entire world into a victim of terror. This might help us to realise the main difference between the Israeli left and right. While both believe in the right of the Jews to live in Zion at the expense of the Palestinian people, the Israeli right wing rely on maintaining a bloody struggle, oppressing the Palestinian people (in particular) and humiliating Arabs (in general). While the Israeli left would attempt to come up with some unrealistic righteous suggestions to appease the Palestinian people and the world community (Oslo accord for instance), the right wing Israelis will suggest that the only method to guarantee Israeli security is to maintain the conflict with the Palestinian people and to let it escalate into an international battle.

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Spaniards Dump Right Wing Scumbag

The voxmeister at his vitriolic best!

by voxfux

Terrorist crusader wannabee scumbag (Spanish Prime Minister Jose Aznar) was thrown out of office for defying the will of 90% of his own people, sucking on the Neo-Con shaft, and signing up to kill innocent Iraqi women and children so that Bush and his filthy Neo Con terrorists can loot the oil of Iraq under the bogus rubric of a "Coalition of the Willing". What a piece of shit Aznar was. As is any low life scum "leader" who actually defies the will of 90% his own people and joins with Bushes oil looting spree. Good Riddens to this piece of shit who soiled the capital of Spain. And solidarity to the people of Spain who who are not as gullible and docile as Americans appear to be.

In what appears to be yet another CIA terrorist attack on the Madrid railway station (Nearly all major terrorist attacks are CIA - NOT AL QUEADA) the spooks once again miscalculated - fucked up as usual and their fuck-up had the exact opposite effect. The spooks thought that if they kill enough innocent people, surely the Spanish people would cower under the nearest right wing terrorist thug like the sheep here in America did. Maybe these dumb spooks thought that the spanish people would get caught up in convulsing jolts of thuggish hypernationalism and start waving flags in a frenzy of mindless jingoism like Americans did. But Europeans are not that stupid and gullible. They have some dignity and some brains still left in their heads.

It is clear that CIA sponsored terrorism only has the intended effects on populations whose minds are controlled by CIA produced "news" such as is the case in America where the American's minds are completely controlled by the CIA produced, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX. It's the one-two punch. The CIA orchestrates the attacks and then they orchestrate the angry jingoistic nationalistic impassioned response. Yet even under such a tight clampdown on all forms of truth and free thought here is America, there are signs that mass numbers of Americans are no longer buying the CIA controlled story about this boogyman called "Al Queada" (which in itself is a documented operational arm of the CIA.) People are turning away in droves from the Major TV media and turning to alternative forms of media to get the real story about what is really happening to their world.

And why are they doing that? Could it be because Americans are now currently on the receiving end of the biggest fucking ever handed down to Americans by the billionaires who own America? Could it be because never in the history of America have the billionaires been so greedy and immoral and terroristic? Could it possibly be because they have stolen all there is to steal from the American people and we are reaching a breaking point? Can it be because these dying billionaire geezers on on their last crusade and are just so full of their own impending death that in their typical satanic soleless self, they wish to take as many of us down with them as possible? Could it be that the Neo-Cons, with their Zionist patsies, and their Council of Foreign Relations reptiles are perhaps the dumbest idiots ever on the face of the earth who's every single plan fails?

The answer is: ALL OF THE ABOVE.

Name one terrorist act of the Council of Foreign Relations which ever worked?

THE CFR thought that by attacking the twin towers they could steal the oil of Iraq - WELL THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN.

Pipelines? - good Luck!

Conquest of Eurasia? - fat fucking chance!

The Council of Foreign Relations IS THE WORLDS LEADING TERRORIST ORGANIZATION AND MUST BE DESTROYED! Not only because they plan and execute the attacks but because EVERY SINGLE PLAN THEY PRODUCE FUCKS UP AND FAILS. THEY ARE THE WORLDS BIGGEST FAILURES IN THE HISTORY OF FAILURES.

We would have better luck with some two bit islamic militants than with the CFR - because with all their stuffed shirts and pocket protectors these idiots have miscalculated one right after another and are destroying the republic.

The people of the world are waking up and resisting the terror from the United States, the CIA, the CFR, the Neo-cons, the Billionaires, the Bushes. The question is will the American people finally wake up and resist the attacks by the CIA and the Neo Cons before it is too late and they end up ruining the this great republic or will this awakening be crushed by the lying media and the people of America be brought into a dark dark police state shithole.

VoxNYC

Puppet On A String: Hamas Dances To Israel’s Tune

A repost from 2002, good article by the webmaster of propagandamatrix.com.

Back in the heady days of the last century, the composition of government was a fine balance between decent individuals and outright criminals.

Of course, it has been known for decades that Mossad conduct so-called ‘pre-emptive’ assassinations of political enemies on foreign shores. The public admission itself is what makes the story, not the details, which were already largely known.

Israel’s supposed arch-enemy, the terrorist group Hamas, was founded and funded by Israel’s dominant Likud party and continues to be bankrolled to this day by political bodies pushing a one world government system. This is not my opinion and I am not breaking an exclusive story. It is a documented fact reported on by mainstream news outlets and admitted by respected individuals within the US and Israeli governments and intelligence agencies.

The objectives of Hamas dovetail with those of the Likud, no settlement at all costs. Whenever the prospect of a workable peace settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians arises, Hamas or one of their offshoots blows a bus, restaurant or a hotel to pieces. This gives Israel the justification needed to scupper any agreement and further entrench their occupation of disputed lands. All the outsider sees is carnage, death and a mainstream media that spins the issue so that these atrocities somehow represent the wishes of the Palestinian people.

The Globalists have no intention of settling the conflict and will likely use it several years down the line to initiate a near-apocalyptic third world war that will fully ensconce their wicked empire. The final phase is a stage-managed ‘clash of civilizations’ between the Arab world, possibly supported by China, and the west.

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Murdered At Daybreak

Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was murdered at daybreak on Monday.

Israel Air Force helicopters fired missiles at the car carrying the wheelchair-bound head of the Islamic group as he left a mosque near his house in Gaza City. It also appears Ariel Sharon was in direct command of the assassination operation, not entirely surprising considering his bloody history.

For those who fail to realise, today's barbaric Israeli act is an open call for a world war. It is the final wake up call for every Muslim around the world. It is violent proof that Israel isn't only against the Palestinians but rather against Islam. Israel killed a prime spiritual leader on his way out of the mosque. I have no doubt that this Israeli act won't be forgiven.

I also have no doubt that many Israelis will pay with their life for Sharon's act. Moreover I am sure that sooner rather than later many innocent non-Israelis around the world will die just for being near by an Israeli embassy, Israeli consulate, a synagogue or even an American bank... This is the reality Sharon favours the most.

This is exactly what Israel wants: to turn the entire world into a victim of terror. This might help us to realise the main difference between the Israeli left and right. While both believe in the right of the Jews to live in Zion on the expense of the Palestinian people, the Israeli right wing rely on maintaining a bloody struggle, oppressing the Palestinian people (in particular) and humiliating Arabs (in general). While the Israeli left would attempt to come up with some unrealistic righteous suggestions to appease the Palestinian people and the world community (Oslo accord for instance), the right wing Israelis will suggest that the only method to guarantee Israeli security is to maintain the conflict with the Palestinian people and to let it escalate into an international battle.

On the surface it seems bizarre considering Sharon was just recently pretending to suggest a plan of Israeli disengagement from the Gaza strip.

Today he gave us a real chance to peep into his mind. The 'disengagement plan' was just another of Sharon's tricks. In fact, Sharon and the Israeli right wing need the Palestinians, they need them oppressed and humiliated, they need their terror. Israeli right wing hegemony is fed by terror. And now there is a new need emerging. Israel is facing a demographic disaster.

Within five years there will be a Palestinian majority in the territories controlled by Israel (between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River). This is literally the end of the Zionist dream. Eventually Israel will have to give away its Jewish identity. While the Israeli left remains confused about this reality, the Israeli right wing is fully prepared. For years Israeli warmongers have openly discussed 'transfer': the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.

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Arms to Iran: Detente or treason?

So on the one hand Sharon is bleating on about how dangerous Iran is, and on the other Israel is selling them weapons. Capitalism is great isn't it?!?!

The fact that Israeli arms dealers could be suspected of selling weapons parts to Iran at first seems not only incredible but treasonous.

The fact that the pair being investigated has been investigated repeatedly in the past raises questions about the seeming two-faced character of the dubious world of arms trading, particularly when it comes to Iran.

Illicit Israeli military sales to the staunchly anti-Zionist Shi'ite state which is aggressively seeking nuclear weapons are hardly a new phenomenon.

"Life is complicated. Israel, like the US, has a complex policy vis- -vis Iran. There is a certain amount of flexibility," said Dr. Gerald Steinberg of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, and an expert on the arms industry, without referring specifically to Eli Cohen and Avihai Weinstein.

Clandestine contacts have served Israel's intelligence if not strategic interests for decades, said Aharon Kleiman, a Tel Aviv University professor of political science and author of Israel's Global Reach: Arms Sales as Diplomacy.

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The Unmentionable Source Of Terrorism

The killing of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin by the Israelis over the weekend just shows that Sharon isn't interested in peace, he wants to encourage terrorism.

by John Pilger

The current threat of attacks in countries whose governments have close alliances with Washington is the latest stage in a long struggle against the empires of the west, their rapacious crusades and domination. The motivation of those who plant bombs in railway carriages derives directly from this truth. What is different today is that the weak have learned how to attack the strong, and the western crusaders' most recent colonial terrorism (as many as 55,000 Iraqis killed) exposes "us" to retaliation.

The source of much of this danger is Israel. A creation, then guardian of the west's empire in the Middle East, the Zionist state remains the cause of more regional grievance and sheer terror than all the Muslim states combined. Read the melancholy Palestinian Monitor on the internet; it chronicles the equivalent of Madrid's horror week after week, month after month, in occupied Palestine. No front pages in the west acknowledge this enduring bloodbath, let alone mourn its victims. Moreover, the Israeli army, a terrorist organisation by any reasonable measure, is protected and rewarded in the west.

In its current human rights report, the Foreign Office criticises Israel for its "worrying disregard for human rights" and "the impact that the continuing Israeli occupation and the associated military occupations have had on the lives of ordinary Palestinians".

Yet the Blair government has secretly authorised the sale of vast quantities of arms and terror equipment to Israel. These include leg-irons, electric shock belts and chemical and biological agents. No matter that Israel has defied more United Nations resolutions than any other state since the founding of the world body. Last October, the UN General Assembly voted by 144 to four to condemn the wall that Israel has cut through the heart of the West Bank, annexing the best agricultural land, including the aquifer system that provides most of the Palestinians' water. Israel, as usual, ignored the world.

Israel is the guard dog of America's plans for the Middle East. The former CIA analysts Kathleen and Bill Christison have described how "two strains of Jewish and Christian fundamentalism have dovetailed into an agenda for a vast imperial project to restructure the Middle East, all further reinforced by the happy coincidence of great oil resources up for grabs and a president and vice-president heavily invested in oil".

The "neoconservatives" who run the Bush regime all have close ties with the Likud government in Tel Aviv and the Zionist lobby groups in Washington. In 1997, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa) declared: "Jinsa has been working closely with Iraqi National Council leader Dr Ahmad Chalabi to promote Saddam Hussein's removal from office..." Chalabi is the CIA-backed stooge and convicted embezzler at present organising the next "democratic" government in Baghdad.

Until recently, a group of Zionists ran their own intelligence service inside the Pentagon. This was known as the Office of Special Plans, and was overseen by Douglas Feith, an under-secretary of defence, extreme Zionist and opponent of any negotiated peace with the Palestinians. It was the Office of Special Plans that supplied Downing Street with much of its scuttlebutt about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction; more often than not, the original source was Israel.

Israel can also claim responsibility for the law passed by Congress that imposes sanctions on Syria and in effect threatens it with the same fate as Iraq unless it agrees to the demands of Tel Aviv. Israel is the guiding hand behind Bush's bellicose campaign against the "nuclear threat" posed by Iran. Today, in occupied Iraq, Israeli special forces are teaching the Americans how to "wall in" a hostile population, in the same way that Israel has walled in the Palestinians in pursuit of the Zionist dream of an apartheid state. The author David Hirst describes the "Israelisation of US foreign policy" as being "now operational as well as ideological".

In understanding Israel's enduring colonial role in the Middle East, it is too simple to see the outrages of Ariel Sharon as an aberrant version of a democracy that lost its way. The myths that abound in middle-class Jewish homes in Britain about Israel's heroic, noble birth have long been reinforced by a "liberal" or "left-wing" Zionism as virulent and essentially destructive as the Likud strain.

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