Rumsfeld flees France, fearing arrest
International News

IPS News, October 30, 2007 --Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fled France today fearing arrest over charges of "ordering and authorizing" torture of detainees at both the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the U.S. military's detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unconfirmed reports coming from Paris suggest.

U.S. embassy officials whisked Rumsfeld away yesterday from a breakfast meeting in Paris organized by the Foreign Policy magazine after human rights groups filed a criminal complaint against the man who spearheaded President George W. Bush's "war on terror" for six years.

Under international law, authorities in France are obliged to open an investigation when a complaint is made while the alleged torturer is on French soil.

According to activists in France, who greeted Rumsfeld, shouting "murderer" and "war criminal" at the breakfast meeting venue, U.S. embassy officials remained tight-lipped about the former defense secretary's whereabouts citing "security reasons".

Anti-torture protesters in France believe that the defense secretary fled over the open border to Germany, where a war crimes case against Rumsfeld was dismissed by a federal court. But activists point out that under the Schengen agreement that ended border checkpoints across a large part of the European Union, French law enforcement agents are allowed to cross the border into Germany in pursuit of a fleeing fugitive.

"Rumsfeld must be feeling how Saddam Hussein felt when U.S. forces were hunting him down," activist Tanguy Richard said. "He may never end up being hanged like his old friend, but he must learn that in the civilized world, war crime doesn't pay."

International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) along with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), and the French League for Human Rights (LDH) filed the complaint on Thursday after learning that Rumsfeld was scheduled to visit Paris.

UN opposes US blockade of Cuba

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 30 — The United Nations today, by 184 votes, expressed its opposition to the blockade maintained against Cuba for almost half a century by the United States.

A resolution calling for the end of that economic, commercial and financial blockade gained one more vote since last year (Nicaragua), and the only votes against the resolution came from the United States, Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands, plus one abstention. (PL)

Translated by Granma International

For the 16th consecutive occasion: International community rejects the economic war against Cuba

By Tomás A. Granados

UNITED NATIONS, October 30, (PL).—Cuba has won a resounding victory in its sustained resistance to the economic blockade imposed by the United States by receiving the virtually unanimous support of the world community to its demand to put an end to that measure.

International community rejects the economic war against Cuba

In the vote on a resolution at the end of the debate in the UN General Assembly on the issue of the U.S. blockade imposed on Cuba, 184 of the 192 member states of this international organization asked Washington to halt that practice.

For Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque this is a historic victory that has special value given that it took place just a few days after President George W. Bush called on the international community to support his blockade policy.

The resolution passed today for the 16th consecutive time highlights the "Necessity of Ending the Economic, Commercial and Financial Blockade Imposed by the United States on Cuba."

As was the case in last year’s debate, the U.S. vote against the resolution was accompanied by Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau, plus the abstention of Micronesia.

Last year, the resolution against that coercive measure imposed on Cuba by the U.S. government had 183 votes in favor, in itself a record compared to earlier years.

More than 20 countries and representatives of UN groups, including the Non-Aligned Movement, the G-77, CARICOM and MERCOSUR expressed their positions against the blockade during the debate.

Translated by Granma International

__________

Rory's Comments:

In its usual manner, the 'democratic' Press and mainstream media of the UK declared a near total news blackout on this story with only the Communist MORNING STAR newspaper reporting it.

In its Morning News, BBC News 24 commented upon it in passing, smugly stating that the UN vote "had no legal sanction."

The NEW YORK TIMES disposed of the story in 87 words.

How the capitalist media hates it when things don't go quite their way!

Bush, Putin and Iran: Who's isolating whom?



Link

Why Did We Invade Iraq Anyway?

Read it here

The US & UK Neocon's-Anti-Islamic Rhetoric and War Mongering Against Iran Will Only Bring About Further Global Polarisation and Instability

This week the old war mongering alliance of George Bush and Tony Blair hit the front pages with both stoking up the prospects of military confrontation with Iran.

In a press interview on Wednesday George Bush said: "I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (Iran) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." Although not stating that military action against Iran's nuclear facilities was imminent, Bush's statement was clearly aimed to build the justification for future action either by the US or its local proxy Israel.

Just a day later, as if synchronised, his old ally Tony Blair speaking at a charity event in New York accused Iran of fuelling a "deadly ideology" of Muslim extremism by supporting terrorist organisations. He said: "This ideology now has a state, Iran, that is prepared to back and finance terror in the pursuit of destabilising countries whose people wish to live in peace." Likening the rise of Islam to the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930's, Tony Blair echoed the sentiments of David Cameron who used a similar analogy by comparing the rise of political Islam with Nazi fascism. Cameron stated in 2005 "The driving force behind today's terrorist threat is Islamist fundamentalism. The struggle we are engaged in is, at root, ideological. During the last century a strain of Islamist thinking has developed which, like other totalitarianisms, such as Nazism and Communism, offers its followers a form of redemption through violence."

It is not surprising to hear such inflammatory statements from these politicians as each has described himself as a friend of Israel and espouses a Neocon, secular supremacist view towards Middle East politics and the Iraq occupation. This Neocon rhetoric from within the US & UK is vehemently anti-Islamic and in total denial of the popular momentum for the return of Islamic governance in the Muslim world. A recent poll conducted by academics at the University of Maryland indicated that support for the strict application of the Shariah and political unification under a Caliphate in six Muslim countries averaged at 70%. Support for resistance movements such as Hezbollah and Hamas, who are regarded as terrorist entities by the US & UK, is also widespread as the election of Hamas to government in occupied Palestine has shown. The view among Muslims globally towards the US & UK is that an overwhelming majority consider both countries as having foreign policies that are anti-Islam and pro-Israel. The appointment of Tony Blair as chairman of the Middle East quartet, with his track record of spilling Muslim blood, will only alienate the Muslim masses further and reinforce the view that the West has no intention of acting as an honest and impartial broker in the Middle East.

It is ironic that after the invasion and occupation of two Muslim countries since 2001 causing the mass killings of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the imposition of puppet regimes and un-Islamic constitutions based upon the principles of western democratic values, the Neocons of the US and UK refer to popular Islamic movements as either terrorists or Nazis. Rather, it is the inability of the Neocon mindset to recognise their own fascist credentials including their policy of demonising Islam and their support for torture and detention without trial, which is the true hallmark of 1930's European fascism.

It is imperative for Muslims and all genuine people of conscience to stand against the rise of this new tyranny of our age and to work to bring about it's demise. Through the application of sublime Islamic justice, the return of the Islamic Caliphate will herald a new age of global justice and stability and will bring an end to the Neocon fascism that has taken root in international affairs.

from Hizb ut-Tahrir

Pre-1947 Palestine

The old lie that palestine was dry desert waiting for a people is just that--a lie. This clip for all people to see the Beauty of the Palestinian People before they were ethnically cleansed and murdered and made into refugees by the State of Israel.

Music by Andrea Bocelli-ALl My Life



Link

The End of the World is Nigh

The End of the World is Nigh

Fareed Zakaria writes in Newsweek:

"At a meeting with reporters last week, President Bush said that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." These were not the barbs of some neoconservative crank or sidelined politician looking for publicity. This was the president of the United States, invoking the specter of World War III if Iran gained even the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon."

"The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism." For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence."

"Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?"

Read the rest here. If you're yet to be persuaded that the purpose of this increasingly hysterical rhetoric is to prepare the ground for a possible war, you may be interested in this interview in Esquire:

"Two former high-ranking policy experts from the Bush Administration say the U.S. has been gearing up for a war with Iran for years, despite claiming otherwise. It'll be Iraq all over again."

"In the years after 9/11, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann worked at the highest levels of the Bush administration as Middle East policy experts for the National Security Council. Mann conducted secret negotiations with Iran. Leverett traveled with Colin Powell and advised Condoleezza Rice. They each played crucial roles in formulating policy for the region leading up to the war in Iraq. But when they left the White House, they left with a growing sense of alarm -- not only was the Bush administration headed straight for war with Iran, it had been set on this course for years. That was what people didn't realize. It was just like Iraq, when the White House was so eager for war it couldn't wait for the UN inspectors to leave. The steps have been many and steady and all in the same direction. And now things are getting much worse. We are getting closer and closer to the tripline, they say."

Read the rest here. And see my earlier posts giving background on the Iran situation here, here, and my radio interview on the subject with Nadim Mahjoub here.

from The Democrat's Diary

Bush, Putin and WW III?
Aijaz Ahmad on the Russian-Iranian handshake (2 of 3)



Link

Bush heats up words with Iran and Russia



Link

Further evidence how Bush's threats of an attack on Iran are built-up on a series of falsehoods which are constantly repeated by a complicit mainstream media and his vassals in France and Britain.

Sanctions: a Prelude to War?



Link

Ziegler: Israel is the worst colonial regime

Read it here

More Warnings Of A US War On Iran
By Peter Symonds
http://www.countercurrents.org/symonds291007.htm

The Bush administration’s unprecedented decision last week to brand the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a weapons proliferator and its Quds Force as a “supporter of terrorism” has heightened tensions with Tehran and undermined European efforts at negotiations, setting the stage for a US attack on Iran


'War On Terror' Is Now War On Iran
By Pepe Escobar
http://www.countercurrents.org/escobar291007.htm

Scores of middle-aged, mild-mannered, bearded gentlemen - the technocrats of the Iranian military bourgeoisie - are now officially enjoying the status of "terrorists", at least from a Washington point of view


The Devil’s Playground
By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich
http://www.countercurrents.org/ulrich291007.htm

I make an effort to understand this President turned dictator and his reasons for planning genocide. Given Russia’s stark warning and Europe’s precarious stance in that 25% of it’s oil and 40% of its natural gas is supplied by Russia, a military confrontation with Iran would likely drag in other nations. What reason other than sheer madness would he have for doing this?

from Countercurrents

BBC: Big Brother Cooperation

It's a matter of alarm and concern that there are so many people out there who still believe that the BBC is a balanced and fair-minded source of news and current affairs. That belief was, at best ill-founded and at worst, typical of the hypocrisy of a British self-image of decency and fair-mindedness which, through that peculiarly British imperialist institution, the public school, gave succeeding generations the ideological veneer and justification for an unabashed and rapacious colonialism.

So successful were Britain's ruling classes in persuading themselves of their manifest destiny to rule --an ideology which gained serious promotion through Rudyard Kipling's obnoxious caricature of the ruled as being the White Man's burden-- that both Britain's rulers and their ruled came to believe in their own Victorian spin.

It was out of that national hypocrisy that the BBC was born in the twilight decades of Britain's decayed raj when, despite the harsh face of colonialism, a Scottish Presbyterian, Lord Reith, was canny enough to disguise the BBC's real purpose of control through the instilling of elitist values by giving it the motto, "Let Nation Speak Peace Unto Nation"!

Today, in the post-Blair vassal state of a United Kingdom itself in collapse, Reith's motto has become nothing more than an embarrassment for a corporation that is increasingly recognized as being little more than an exclusive conduit for state propaganda. The greater majority of BBC personnel may, as reports suggest, like to consider themselves to be liberal-minded nice guys but the message that Aunty puts out to the world is one of totalitarianism and brazen warmongering.

Its present, wholly one-sided, coverage of the war crime that was the invasion of Iraq and the imperialist occupation of that country and Afghanistan is just a case in point. Another is its calculated avoidance of any mention of the stolen US elections of 2000 and 2004 where the people of the United States were, in effect, hijacked by a group of robber politicians and a corrupt judiciary. Another is its continued promotion of the official Bush-instigated conspiracy theory of 911 and its silence over the extremely suspicious events surrounding that other probable conspiracy, the London bombings of 7 July 2005.

One could keep on with a long list of the BBC's embedded reportage of events emanating as straight spin from the state's sources, both in London and Washington. Keeping out any real, critical political analysis and barring its airwaves to anyone other than the apologists of the British state and its Washington boss, it stubbornly insists on promoting Neocon ideologues such as the unhinged John Bolton who is constantly given BBC airtime long after having been discredited and fired from office.


BBC's 'Bonkers' Bolton

All that is bad enough but the role that the BBC is playing is much worse and far more deceptive than that.

Using anodyne language, innuendo and subtle suggestion, the BBC inverts the reality of affairs by creating an alternative reality and reporting on that instead as the authentic world.

The British media are masters in the art of deceit, they don't distort reality so much as manufacture another version, casually dismissing the truth as an unrepresentative oddity.

Outright deception, delivered in a regular voice and pleasing prose, even and chirpy of tone, triumphs, as honesty is crowded out by the brilliant ruse that presents telling the truth not as the presence of honesty, but the absence of etiquette ..

Kola, Medialens, 28 October 2007

BBC News 24 is the corporation's flagship, satellite broadcaster of news and current affairs, hence given a razzle-dazzle imagery of up-to-date, global news reportage accompanied with the sound of an urgent, authoritative yet vibrant, drumming rhythm heard in every airport departure lounge and hometown settlement across the planet.

But, together with the rest of the corrupt BBC, News 24 is feeding you and me, twenty four seven three sixty-five, what is little more than a carefully packaged, unmitigated lie.

A case in point was News 24's recently broadcast programme in its Our World series, "Do they know who we are?" ostensibly a piece on the rapid growth of electronic surveillance technology but hidden beneath the packaging actually its promotion as something desirable that the majority of people want.

The attention span of the average viewer is no more than a few, brief seconds so the message has got to be put across in the first moments. It is then reinforced over and over with a few variations included such as an opposing view or argument which is then immediately demolished.

So this piece of surveillance promotion starts with a cheerfully upbeat version of the Harry Lime Theme from the Third Man, zither and all. This sets the mood for a positive reaction from the audience. If a negative reaction were required, the music would be appropriately anxious, even disturbing.

Almost immediately a message flashes across the screen: "75% want more security." After some impressive clips showing Silicon Valley scientists predicting the inevitability of increasingly hi-tech surveillance technology we are introduced to the 'product', in this case a Gameboy-like hand-held sensor which can detect the presence of terrorists hiding inside a building whose architecture is predictably Muslim. Even their breathing, we are told, can be sensed through walls by this wonder gadget.

Then, rather cleverly, the reporter takes us to a Muslim community in Forest Gate, London and we are reminded how the police had conducted a heavy-handed raid on "suspect terrorists" last year, leaving one man shot and wounded. If the police had been able to use these sensors, the reporter suggests, perhaps all that would have been avoidable. Makes you think doesn't it?

We are shown a group of Muslims being introduced to this technology by the reporter who, in an apparent concession to his audience, point out that there had been some immediate complaints about the imagery in the promotional video showing Muslim architecture. "But as soon as the audience were shown the technology being used in Iraq they accepted it," he claims.



He picks on a young member of the audience who says, "We don't need to worry. Anyone can watch us." And then another older man who agrees that this kind of sensor could be used for "legitimate intelligence." Thus, using recorded soundbites in a highly selective way, we see how a Muslim audience is persuaded that these highly intrusive sensors can be used in situations of war or surveillance, either against the enemy or an innocent public who should have nothing to worry about from 'legitimate intelligence'!

Strange, is it not, that a Muslim audience could be persuaded of its use in the Iraq war? You would have expected a massive, negative reaction. But no. Instead, capitalising on guilt feelings among Muslims, they are sold the product as justifiable under wartime conditions. Once this breakthrough is achieved, the audience has been softened-up enough to accept its use by police or 'legitimate intelligence' (whatever that may be!) against a public that should not worry if it has nothing to hide!

This last is regularly used by the promoters of increased surveillance technology and totalitarianization. If you've nothing to hide, why worry? Using an individual's anxiety (ie that he might have something to hide from 'the Law') and the principle of the Big Lie we are bullied into accepting further encroachments on our right to privacy.

The Big Lie is based upon the idea that most everyone tells little lies from time to time. Little lies and dishonesties are, therefore, understandable and acceptable. It's what we all do. But Big Lies, on the other hand, are neither comprehensible or acceptable. So, when subject to a Big Lie, part of us --the part which governs our 'little me', personal values-- shuts down, unable to deal with the enormity of it. But another part keeps running and is forced to come to terms with the unacceptable, to accept that as the message comes to us from a source of authority then it must, has to be, true.

This process is sometimes described by the mind manupilaters in blatant fashion as 'thinking the unthinkable', 'pushing the envelope', or put in another way which remains unsaid, of being coerced into accepting the unacceptable.

This process is called Cognitive Dissonance, the process used here to extract the appropriate soundbites from an audience made to feel guilty about the 'war on terrorism.' Well, that's ok then, we are led to think. If a Muslim audience can accept this new technology (for they do have a problem with terrorism, don't they?) then it should be perfectly acceptable to us. Again, the projection of our guilt (but we do have things in our life we prefer to keep hidden!) onto Muslims (who we know are susceptible to becoming terrorists).

The key-phrase to sum up this event was obtained from a man in his (responsible) 'thirties who agrees that such intrusive technology would be fine when used by "legitimate intelligence," meaning government authorities. Again, the phrase begs so many questions as to what is and isn't legitimate but we aren't given time to dwell on that.

Instead, we are taken to the final, reinforcing summation: there are already 4 million CCTV cameras in Britain so is our private life safe? We are then told (sources not revealed) that 75% want more surveillance and this 'fact' is borne out by an 'expert' from the US National Security Agency, a body with a suitably authoritative name (how many people would know that the NSC is a US government spy agency?)

The promotion is ended with the same upbeat introductory theme.

Neat one, eh? Being of a mischievous, cynical nature I was left wondering if the BBC got a nice little hidden backhander from some Silicon Valley manufacturer for having given airtime to this promotional piece? With government cutbacks on BBC revenue it is increasingly having to privatize and commercialize its operations. So, while doing what the government tells it to do, in this case to promote the totalitarianization of Britain, why not make a few dollars on the side?

And, I couldn't help keep thinking of those Muslims in Forest Gate, my febrile imagination hearing their repeated cries of indignation against the way so many of the audience had left that meeting, feeling that they had been utterly conned into unwittingly cooperating with a foxy Big Brother BBC.

No evidence Iran is making nukes: ElBaradei 29 Oct 2007 Chief UN atomic watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei said overnight he had no evidence Iran was building nuclear weapons and accused US leaders of adding "fuel to the fire" with recent bellicose rhetoric. "I have not received any information that there is a concrete active nuclear weapons program going on right now," the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told CNN.

Head of UN nuclear agency calls on Bush to ease Iran rhetoric 28 Oct 2007 Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, urged the Bush administration Sunday to soften its rhetoric against Tehran, even as a prominent Democratic senator said he feared that U.S. military action was drawing "precariously close." The comments by ElBaradei and Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, the senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee, came in response to the regime's recent tough talk, including President [sic] George W. Bush's warning of "World War III" if Tehran obtained nuclear arms, and Vice President [sic] Dick Cheney's caution of "serious consequences" for Iran.

from CLG Newsletter

Death to World Imperialism!

Things are getting worse!
By Dr. H. Salari

from LEFT RUSSIA

Is it possible to live in a world without wars, execution fields, torture chambers and dreadful prisons?

Is it possible to have a world free of exploitation of human by human, colonization, hunger and disease?

Is it possible to live in a world without superstition and corruption, lies and falsification, trickery and hypocrisy, drugs, gangs and sex-slavery networks?

Is it achievable to have a world empty of Weapons of Mass Destruction, atomic bomb intimidation, and artificially made profitable diseases and disasters?

Is it achievable to have a cleaner, less polluted planet with less severe more controllable natural disasters?

And finally, is it possible to live a prosperous and peaceful life, if we could work hard, be God-fearing, piously charitable and generous citizens of this planet?

As we will see not only the answers are negative, but things are getting worse under this dominant economic system called capitalism!

To get to the point let us have some examples: first we begin with the most vulnerable human-beings or the children.

On October 7, 2004, a report by UNICEF announced that, “about ten million children are dying each year in Africa due to preventable causes. The condition of children has worsened since ten years ago.” (News Agencies).

In a report by BBC news, we see that, “in every 27 seconds a child dies from malaria (which is preventable) in Africa and those who survive may have permanent brain damage.” (Oct. 15th, 2004). One year later ABC news reported that, every day about 2000, children are dying from malaria in the world. (Oct. 31st, 2005).

Again UNICEF reported that, “more than half of all children or more than one billion children in the world suffer from extreme deprivation: hunger, disease, lack of education, shelter,…and it is worsening continuously.” (News Agencies, Dec. 9th, 2004).

Nine months later, another report declares that, “nearly half of Asia’s 1.3 billion children are denied basic needs. … they are deprived of either food, safe drinking water, health care or shelter.” (BBC News, Aug. 22nd, 2005).

In Canada, which is a rich industrialized country, “one of every six children lives under the poverty line. Child poverty has increased in recent years.” (Report from Campaign 2000 Coalition, narrated by CBC News, Nov. 24th, 2004).

Secondly, referring to the whole population, it is worthy to mention that, “more than ten million people are dying from AIDS and starvation, right now in sub-Saharan Africa and it is worsening.” (News Agencies, Oct. 7th, 2005).

In the U.S. “in year 2000, there were 31.1 million people officially classified as poor. In 2004 the number of poor people was 37 million, up 12.7%, from four years ago.” (News Agencies, Aug. 30th, 2005).

A report by BBC news says, “50% of Republic of Georgia’s population live under the poverty line (June 29th, 2005). And in Russia one-fourth of the population are classified as poor. (CTV News, Oct. 30th, 2005).

In Poland unemployment rate is about 20%, and there is no hope to ease. (News Agencies, June 23rd, 2005). In the same country, coal-miners who were laid-off, jump over the running trains, filch coals and throw them on the surrounding fields, where their waiting companions collect and sell them later in the markets to feed their hungry families. More than half of the coal-miners were laid-off since the collapse of ex-socialist regime. (A Documentary by BBC News, Aug. 24th, 2005).

Thirdly, on the workers’ subject, it is interesting to know that the number of unionized workers (the workers whom to some extent can defend their rights through the collective agreements), has decreased continuously all around the world, leaving them totally unprotected against capitalist exploitation. For instance, according to the U.S. government statistics, 12.5% of all U.S. workers and 8% of private sector workers are union members. In the 1950s and 1960s about a third of all workers were unionized. (BBC News, July 25th, 2005).

While in the previous decades, workers struggled to increase their salaries and benefits, nowadays they fight to keep their jobs and prevent their salary and benefit cuts.

As BBC reports, U.S. Airways asked for labour cuts to prevent bankruptcy. (Dec 30th, 2004). And Bombardier a Montreal-Canada based, mostly aircraft-maker, announced that it must cut wages or lay-off 3000 workers. (CBC News, May 7th, 2003).

Recently on Monday October 17th, 2005, General Motors, the world’s biggest car-maker, signed an initial agreement with the United Auto Workers union to reduce its costly healthcare expenses. This agreement will affect about 750,000 retirees, current worker and their dependents in the U.S.. This move will be replicated by other car-maker companies like Ford, DaimlerChrysler and so on. (News Agencies). What an amazing solution! But a wise and pro-people solution is the nationalization of these companies. As a result, we will have a secure life for workers and their families, and if it follows by the creation of a universal public transport system, there will be at least less pollution, less monster hurricanes, less lung cancer, less osteoporosis etc, etc. In the case of costly healthcare, again a wise and humane solution is to implement a universal public healthcare; as a result none will fear an illness.

Fourthly, looking at the global situation, “a U.N. report has found that the world is more unequal today than it was ten years ago,… Liberalization of economy does not help the poor.” (BBC News. Aug. 25th, 2005).

A statement by U.N. Human Development Report 2005, says, “Many of the world’s poorest countries are doing worse in 2005, than they were fifteen years ago, the gap between rich and poor peoples in each individual country is widening, and inequalities are increasing.” (News Agencies. Sept. 7th, 2005).

But not all statistics are about the failure of capitalism. As ABC News broadcasted, “440 million sites of pornography are on the net.” (July 27th, 2005). And these sites are increasing in number by hours and minutes; suppose that if only one person works on each site, capitalism can claim, that it has finally “solved” the problem of unemployment.

In another report, we hear that a sex slavery network is discovered in the U.K. Each year at least 1400 women, mostly East Europeans are brought to this country to work in this growing industry. (News Agencies, Oct. 2nd, 2005). Another sign of booming capitalism!

Not irrelevant to the previous subject, we read that: in a court in France, it was revealed that children are sold to the rings of pedophiles for a small amount of money or even for only a cigarette. (BBC News. July 27th, 2005). These things are happening in the middle of Europe, in France, in the turn of the 21st century. In the middle of a newly forming imperialist power called E.U.

What more can we expect from this final stage of capitalism: imperialism?

Every human has only one chance to live, and this life turns miserable because of exploitation of man by man and through the plunder of natural resources of the planet which belong to everyone and their future generations.

To end this vicious cycle of catastrophes, people have to come together and organize. The first target of these new-type organizations must be the nationalization of big companies with the preference to those which are urgently vital for the well-being of the people.

This is only the first step towards building a humane society, and each step will have to be carried out by democratically elected bodies, as long as democratic means are possible!

British Injustice System
from SACC Website


Today [23 Oct 2007] I witnessed a serious crime. It was committed in broad daylight in front of fifty or so witnesses in the High Court in Edinburgh, Scotland. The perpetrator of this crime was the British State which, through a judge, Lord Carloway, sentenced Mohammed Atif Siddique, a young Muslim male, aged 21 years, to 8 years imprisonment. He was sentenced under the provisions of British anti-terror laws for the heinous act of browsing various Islamist websites and expressing his sympathies with Al Qaeda, the Iraqi Resistance, and the Palestinian Intifada to a few of his fellow students at the university at which he was studying.

Now Read on

The New McCarthyism
by LARRY COHLER-ESSES from the November 12, 2007 issue of The Nation

Meet Professor Nadia Abu El-Haj, a notorious Barnard College professor now up for tenure who:

§ claims the ancient Israelite kingdoms are a "pure political fabrication,"

§ denies the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE and instead blames its destruction on the Jews,

§ does not speak or read Hebrew yet had the temerity to publish a book on Israeli archaeology that demanded such expertise,

§ is so ignorant of her topic that she quotes one archaeologist on how a dig might have damaged the ancient palaces of Solomon--oblivious to the fact that those palaces, if they existed, were far from the site in question.

None of these charges are true. You could look it up. I did, in El-Haj's book Facts on the Ground, about which these charges are made. The statements for which a network of right-wing critics assail her book are not there.

I asked Paula Stern, the Barnard alum who has organized an online petition demanding that El-Haj be denied tenure, how she squared her petition's charges with El-Haj's book. "The petition takes pieces of criticisms from experts. It may not be quoted 100 percent accurate," she admitted. Still, more than 2,500 people, including many Barnard and Columbia alumni, have signed on to its claims. Tellingly, Stern, who now lives in the West Bank, voiced astonishment at being asked to justify her charges in terms of what El-Haj's book actually says. "I've spoken to many newspapers," she said. "No one has done what you've done."

I looked that up, too. In the key media venues, at least, Stern was right; and not just with regard to her target. In case after case, a network of right-wing activists has started an online furor based on a mélange of distorted or provably false charges against someone involved in Middle East studies. They supported these charges with quotes yanked out of context or entirely made up and wielded a broad brush of guilt by association. Right-wing media megaphoned the charges, stoking the furor. And mainstream media ultimately noticed and responded, often focusing their stories on the furor rather than the facts.

Under pressure from these assaults, some academic institutions buckle and a professor's career is derailed; in other cases it is permanently stained. More insidious, even when tenure puts an academic beyond the reach of his or her assailants, more vulnerable junior faculty and grad students take note. "There certainly is a sense among faculty and grad students that they're being watched, monitored," said Zachary Lockman, president of the Middle East Studies Association. "People are always looking over their shoulder, feeling that whatever they say--in accurate or, more likely, distorted form--can end up on a website. It definitely has a chilling effect."

This is the modus operandi of the New McCarthyism. It targets a new enemy for our era: Muslims, Arabs and others in the Middle East field who are identified as stepping over an unstated line in criticizing Israel, as radical Islamists, as just plain radical or as in some way sympathetic to terrorists. Its purveyors include Campus Watch, run by Arab studies scholar Daniel Pipes; the David Project, supported by the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation; and David Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine (in October Horowitz organized an "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" on campuses across the nation).

Their efforts often appear to be linked. As first noted by blogger Richard Silverstein, the earliest web attack on El-Haj's book was posted simultaneously by Campus Watch and FrontPage, in October 2005. Alexander Joffe, identified as a professor at SUNY, Purchase, published a harshly negative review of the book in The Journal of Near Eastern Studies that same month. The prestigious journal did not note--and was not informed--that he was then director of Campus Watch. Soon after, he became research director for the David Project. Less prominent researchers like Stern, the online PipeLine News and writers such as Beila Rabinowitz and William Mayer provide raw material to the more well-known portals, such as Pipes and Horowitz. Pipes's and Horowitz's material is, in turn, picked up by key conservative papers like the New York Post and New York Sun.

There is an undeniable security threat, but as in the 1950s the New McCarthyites use it as a base for demagogy. Their distinguishing feature is not concern about this threat but cynical indifference to the truth or decency of their charges. Take the case of Debbie Almontaser, the New York City public high school principal forced to resign in August as head of a new Arabic/English secondary school. The furor revolved around her attempt in an interview with the Post to explain the meaning of, rather than simply condemn, T-shirts bearing the words Intifada NYC. This provoked a firestorm. United Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten, a key supporter of Almontaser's school, condemned her in a letter to the Post. The next day Almontaser resigned--a move publicly welcomed by Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Almontaser has since stated she was told to resign or the school, which she founded, would be closed.

In its obscuring, anodyne postmortem on the affair, the New York Times vaguely described Almontaser as a victim of the city's "treacherous ethnic and ideological political currents" rather than of specific charges that were demonstrably false--like Pipes's widely publicized claim, based on a truncated quotation, that she denied Muslims or Arabs were involved in the 9/11 attacks. The Times report on El-Haj adopted a similar hands-off stance, simply quoting supporters and attackers. It did not once compare the activists' charges with what El-Haj actually said in her book.

As it happens, Almontaser's forced resignation was the city Education Department's second dive in the face of pressure from the New McCarthyites. Three years ago it dismissed Professor Rashid Khalidi, the esteemed director of Columbia's Middle East Institute, from lecturing teachers enrolled in professional development courses. The dismissal came in response to a Sun article claiming Khalidi had denounced Israel as "a 'racist' state with an 'apartheid system.'" Khalidi denied the quote fragments as they were used in the story. "I do not think Zionism is racist," he told the Forward. "When we talk about some of the contemporary laws, there are policies that I consider racist and discriminatory." Asked if the department had verified Khalidi's purported remarks before dismissing him, a department spokesman avoided answering Times columnist Joyce Purnick.

Khalidi still has his day job, as does--so far--a nontenured Columbia colleague, Joseph Massad, who according to a special school investigative committee was falsely accused several years ago of discriminating against Jewish and Israeli students. The same cannot be said for Norman Finkelstein, who was terminated at Chicago's DePaul University in September after the school's president--in a rare departure from standard procedure--rejected the overwhelming tenure approval Finkelstein had received at both the departmental and college levels. Finkelstein's scholarly work has accused Jewish groups of exploiting the Holocaust and Israel of egregious human rights violations. He had incurred the special wrath of Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, whose book defending Israel Finkelstein had devoted an entire book to savaging. Dershowitz, in turn, tried unsuccessfully to prevent the University of California Press from publishing Finkelstein's book, and sent Finkelstein's tenure committees a dossier that he said documented his "most egregious academic sins, and especially his outright lies, misquotations, and distortions." Clearly, the tenure committees were not impressed by Dershowitz's claims. DePaul president Dennis Holtschneider, for his part, denied that Dershowitz's intervention affected his decision.

Beshara Doumani, a University of California history professor, has mapped the systemic strategy of the New McCarthyism, highlighting that more than just its targets are new. First and foremost, private advocacy groups, not Congressional committees, are by and large today's means of pressuring academic administrations--at least, so far. These groups often retain important ties to government figures. But they are most focused on organizing alumni and students, with an eye toward generating public outrage and eventually government and donor pressure.

"I'm worried about untenured professors trying to get tenure," said Doumani, co-chair of the Middle East Studies Association's Committee on Academic Freedom. "I'm worried about entire departments saying, 'We need people in Middle East positions, but we're not going to hire certain kinds of people. It involves too much headache, too much risk.' How do you quantify that? You can't. But it's going around. I can tell you, it's a real issue."

'Many in the US Military Think Bush and Cheney Are Out of Control'

In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, the Amsterdam-based military historian Gabriel Kolko talks about the prospect of war with Iran and argues that many in the US military now view the White House as being 'out of control.'

Read it here

Russia condemns U.S. missile shield at NATO meeting

NOORDWIJK, Holland, October 25.—Russia affirmed in a NATO meeting here today that it is not happy about the United States wanting Moscow to accept the extension of the U.S. missile shield to Eastern Europe, the AFP reports.

"None of the proposals are acceptable to us. Our position remains the same," said Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, after meeting with his counterparts from the 26 member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The United States has been negotiating for 12 months to install 10 anti-missile systems in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic, prompting the firm opposition of Russia, which perceives a threat to its vital interests.

"In terms of relations between Russia and NATO, there are a number of questions on which we do not agree. These are primarily related to the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) and with the missile shield," Serdyukov emphasized.

Translated by Granma International •

Real News Debate: Why is the US threatening Iran?
What is behind President Bush's warning about WW III?



Link

Is the US call to isolate Iran motivated by opposition to an oil-power that contends for regional influence, or fear of an Iranian nuclear bomb?

Our first Real News Debate features Jonathan Kay and Leo Panich.

Jonathan Kay is a columnist and Comment Pages Editor of the National Post newspaper. Kay is a regular contributor to Commentary magazine and the New York Post. His articles have appeared in Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and various other publications.

Leo Panich is the Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and a Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto. Panich is also the author of Global Capitalism and American Empire.

UN expert reveals extent of Israel’s rights abuses

"Many of Israel's laws and practices violate the 1966 Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination," UN human rights envoy John Dugard said.


Some Israelis agree with Mr Dugard that
the occupation is fuelling Palestinian resistance

Amina Anderson
Aljazeera Magazine

It's highly unlikely to hear fierce criticism against Israel or the United States from somebody with a serious job title. But John Dugard, the special rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council for the Palestinian territories, proved otherwise.

Earlier this year, the retired South African law professor wrote a report for the UN General Assembly in which he compared Israel’s actions to those of apartheid South Africa.

According to the BBC, the word “apartheid" appeared 24 times in the 24-page report.

"It is difficult to resist the conclusion that many of Israel's laws and practices violate the 1966 Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination," the report said.

Although Dugard has been visiting the occupied West Bank and Gaza for the past seven years, his position as a UN human rights monitor doesn’t allow him to make any decisions on UN policy; only to offer recommendations and critical analysis.

But now it seems that Mr Dugard is fed up. He used to accuse Israel of collectively punishing the Palestinians, but now he also holds the international community, and the United Nations itself, responsible for the Palestinians’ suffering.

A few week ago, Mr Dugard was reported to have criticised the UN Secretary General for failing to stand up to Israel. In a recent interview with the BBC, he said that his catalogues of what he sees as Israeli human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories fall on "deaf ears" in the Secretary General's office.

He also said that he would urge the United Nations to withdraw from the "Quartet" of Middle East mediators -- which includes the U.S., Russia, EU and UN -- unless it properly addresses Palestinian human rights.

"In my most recent report to the General Assembly, which I will present later this month, I will suggest that the Secretary General withdraw the UN from the Quartet, if the Quartet fails to have regard to the human rights situation in the Palestinian Territories," he told the BBC.

Instead of overseeing the “peace process” between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the Quartet is hampering the Palestinian right to self-determination, Mr Dugard says.

His argument is not just that the Quartet is failing to heal the rift between the resistance group Hamas, which controls Gaza, and President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, but that the UN, through the Quartet, is siding with the president’s party.

“The weak response by the quartet is because it’s heavily influenced" by the U.S.,” he said. “The UN is not playing the role of an objective mediator that behoves it.”

Mr Dugard also warned that Palestinian leaders have high hopes about next month’s peace conference with the Israelis. He fears that a third intifada, or uprising, could be unleashed if the Palestinians’ expectations are not met.

According to the BBC, many Western diplomats and UN officials based in the Middle East agree with Mr Dugard’s political analysis, but most of them are not as outspoken as him.

Even inside Israel, many believe that the occupation has distorted and damaged Israel’s global image. Some Israelis also agree with Mr Dugard that the occupation is fuelling the Palestinian resistance.

Mr Dugard even compared the actions of Palestinian fighters to those of the French Resistance during World War II.

"History is replete with examples of populations that have resisted military occupation," he said. "I can't see why one shouldn't draw these analogies."

__________

The Israel Lobby targets Haaretz, read it here

Perestroika: James Fallows Says "Mainly... Jewish" Faction Pushes for Iran Showdown, read it here

Growing Western Totalitarianism: Australia's Shameful PM



Link

Of course, Australia is not alone in having been given the cue to totalitarianize its society in the interests of the New World Odour.

The draconian detention laws described in Australia are really not much different to those in Britain where toad-like judges, politicised by the Blair/Brown duo, bang-up brown-skinned Brits for thought crimes on the slightest excuse.

Prisoners of Mother England, indeed. We're all pommies now!

Carloway
Scottish student receives eight years for terror offences
By Rich Bowden, M&C Staff Writer Oct 23, 2007

(M&C) - A Scottish Muslim student has been jailed for eight years for providing instructions on bomb-making over the internet and possessing terror-related materials.

Mohammed Atif Siddique, 21, was sentenced by Judge Lord Carloway who said, "You told fellow college students that you intended to become a terrorist and one of your targets would be central Glasgow."

Siddique was detained with his uncle last year as he was about to travel to Pakistan. He denied he was a terrorist saying he had just obtained the material as research to try to find out "why young Muslim men like him act the way they do".

Siddique also shows videos of suicide bombings and beheadings to classmates at Glasgow Metropolitan College.

However he received support from the civil rights organisation Scotland Against Criminalising Communities who said in a statement the trial was a "travesty of justice" and added, "Even under our Kafka-esque laws it makes no sense to call this young man a terrorist, and it is to be hoped that the argument will be taken successfully to the appeal court."

Siddique is believed to be Scotland's first home-grown Islamic terrorist.

**********

Rory says:

"Home-grown terrorist," my ass.

This guy has been given 8 years for thought-crimes and because he is a brown-skinned Muslim of Pakistani or Bangladeshi descent.

Several white Brits, including the BNP bomb-makers, have been let off lightly for much worse offences.

This disgraceful abuse of the law by an intolerant member of Britain's ruling classes, Lord Carloway, a leftover of Victorian England, exposes British law to be racist and selective in its victims.

Fascist Britain is here for all to see.

**********

Press Release from Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC)
5.30pm Tuesday 23 Oct 2007

For immediate release

Sentencing of Mohammed Atif Siddique

At Edinburgh High Court today, Lord Carloway sentenced Mohammed Atif Siddique - convicted last month of "terrorism" offences - to a total of 8 years in jail. The sentence is to run from the time Mr Siddique was first taken into custody.

And in a surprise development, the judge criticised Mr Siddique's solicitor, Aamer Anwar, over a statement he released on the day of Mr Siddique's conviction. The judge is considering whether to initiate contempt proceedings against Aamer Anwar. Such a move would be unprecedented and would be sure to send shock waves through the legal profession.

Speaking alongside Aamer Aamer outside the court, Mr Asif Siddique (Atif Siddique's uncle) said that he rejected the judge's criticisms and had confidence in Aamer Anwar.Aamer Anwar said that Mohammed Atif Siddique will be making an appeal.

SACC is disappointed at the length of the sentence imposed on Mr Siddique. The activities for which he was convicted were no more than "thought crimes" and have harmed no one. Like may people, we had hoped that this would be reflected in a much lighter sentence.

In passing sentence, the judge said that the new offences created by the terrorism acts were "there to protect the public" and had been "designed by Parliament to stop or reduce the risk of terrorist outrages" before a terrorist plot reaches the stage where a common-law offence has been committed.

SACC has been concerned over Mr Siddique's case ever since the massive police raid on the Siddique family home in April last year. We don't believe that anyone should have to face criminal charges over the sort of activities that Mr Siddique was convicted for.

Speaking before the sentence was announced, Professor David Miller of Strathclyde University - an expert on terrorism, spin and propaganda - said:

"Even the BBC has classed this case as potentially a case of 'thought crime' There is an establishment witchhunt against any form of dissent on British foreign policy. It is important that democrats stand up for freedom of speech"

Referring to comments that Mr Siddique had been guilty of youthful folly, Massoud Shadjareh, Chair of Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), said earler this week:

"The stupidity of neither youth nor age and its reflection in reading material, particularly on-line should not be criminalised. The majority of us may reject certain sentiments but we must beware of utilising the tools of state and particularly the criminal justice system to deal with ideas we find unpalatable. This sets a dangerous precedent."

Richard Haley, Secretary of SACC, commented:

"Anyone who wants to know what is really going on in Iraq has to pick their way through the reports of independent journalists, anecdotes from people with family in Iraq and varied and sometimes problematic web postings from political groups and fighters in Iraq. There is no other way, since the mainstream media largely duck the real issues of the occupation. The Siddique case means that anyone doing this will have to live in fear of prosecution. Especially if they become upset by what they find, and especially if they are Muslim."

John McManus, of the Miscarriages Organisation (MOJO), Scotland, is also worried by the case. He says:

"Comparisons of the Irish situation in the 70s to the attack on the Muslim community today can't be avoided. What is even more worrying under this climate of fear, are the new laws that have been passed, where you can be convicted not for something you did, but for something you might do. By going down this road it allows those in authority to cherry pick who they deem a threat. Today it's the Muslim community, who knows who it will be tomorrow.

SACC is seriously concerned at the criticism directed at Mr Siddique's lawyer, Aamer Anwar, for issuing a statement that appeared to question the fairness of the trial. Speaking on behalf of Aamer Anwar, Donald Findlay QC said that the statement was in fact from Mohammed Atif Siddique and had been issue on his express instructions.

In SACC's view the statement issued by Aamer Anwar is no more than the plain truth.

Richard Haley said

"I, like many others who have followed the case, believe that the evidence relating to Mohammed Atif Siddique's possession of computer files and related materials shows only that he was guilty of doing what millions of young people do every day, looking for answers on the internet. The jury, unfortunately, took a different view. But it needs to be shouted from the rooftops that the view that Mohammed Atif Siddique took of the trial, as set out in the statement from his lawyer, is a reasonable one and raises issues of immense importance for our society."

The possibility that Aamer Anwar may have to face contempt proceedings is deeply worrying.

He has earned a reputation as perhaps the most visible and effective lawyer in Scotland for cases with a political flavour, especially when they touch on racism, civil liberties and the wars in the Middle East. He has represented asylum-seekers, victims of racist violence and "suspected terrorists." He helped protestors negotiate a way to the G8 Summit at Gleneagles, and he defended demonstrators arrested during police attempts to shut down the G8 protests.

Anyone who wants a better world - trade unionist, anti-war activist or anti-racism campaigner - knows that one day they might have to confront the security state across a courtroom, and that they will need a courageous lawyer. We should be very worried indeed if the effect of this case is that lawyers become too frightened to do this kind of work properly.

SACC, 22 Oct 2007

Notes for editors

Professor David Miller can be contacted for comment on 07786927551
IHRC can be contacted for comment on 02089044222
John McManus can be contacted for comment on 07977047794
Richard Haley can be contacted on 07936432519 or email richard@sacc.org.uk

Eurosocialist and Antifascist

My readers will have noticed by now that this blog is headed by the European flag under which is stated that Chimes of Freedom is both Eurosocialist and Antifascist.

Non-British readers may not be aware of the ongoing campaign by the extreme Right against Britain's membership of the European Union. These Europhobes --more kindly described as Eurosceptics-- are a motley group of Little Englanders, mainly of a xenophobic and reactionary right persuasion.

But, having lost an Empire and any sense of raison d'etre, it is not only the usual blimpish right that lays a claim to exercise British xenophobia. The malaise stretches right across the social and political spectrum to include a lot of lefties lost in a political wilderness and without an ideological home.

Whereas the concept of a united, European Left is both a popular and normal phenomenon in continental Europe, the British Left has retained its traditional aloofness and pukka attitudes by not joining that common European front. 'Europe' is referred to as 'somewhere over there' as if Britain is somehow separated from Europe.

Of course this is nonsense. Britain is and has always been indivisibly part of Europe in its geography, its culture, its religion, its politics and its language. Only in a strangely schizophrenic British attitude of mind will you find Britain to be a separate entity, where when fog obscures the Channel it is the Continent that is cut off, not this overcrowded little island.

And due, no doubt, to the dumbing-down of the British mainstream media (MSM) even the Continent is no longer referred to as such. It has become 'Europe', something which Britain is not part of. The traditionally conservative outlook of the Brit has become so insular it would rather cut off all contact with the non-English speaking world to live in an artificial bubble of unreality which it hopes will be forever England.

It is part of a serious social malaise that is now so advanced it is eating at the imperial foundations upon which the very United Kingdom itself was built. Britain is in post-imperial collapse and in denial, projecting instead its unhappiness with itself on 'Europe' and immigration.

This social malaise (or is psychosis a more appropriate description?) is now so widespread that Britain provides the Basil Fawlty-type xenophobic Right with a breeding ground for the narrow-minded, petty bourgeois attitudes that Mrs Thatcher implanted in the susceptible British psyche.

The so-called demand for what is referred to as a referendum on Europe perfectly describes the spell of reactionary-minded xenophobia the British (predominantly the English) have fallen under. Disguised by a blimpish indignation against having to use metric measurements instead of imperial ones and driving 'on the wrong side of the road' (it appears that most of the world has been driving on the wrong side) this xenophobia is currently expressing itself as (i) Europhobia, (ii) a general hostility towards immigration, and (iii) an Islamophobia fuelled by the Bush/Blair fake 'War on Terror'.

**********

As an ex-colonial Brit, I am able to gauge and understand the British mentality both from a peculiarly British view of things as well as to perceive it from an arm's-length-view of one who still has a colonial memory of being at the receiving end of British attitudes.

The world-famous Canadian author of The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje, is a fellow expatriate of mine. His father, Mervyn, a planter in the old colonial Ceylon of the 1930's, was a pal of my old man who was also a planter. The Ondaatjes used to visit my family from time to time and my elder sisters have a memory of Michael as a rather tubby, aloof little chap who used to love scoffing on a can of condensed milk.


Michael Ondaatje

In his book, Running in the Family, Michael Ondaatje writes of an occasion when Mervyn, who rather worse for drink, held up the Colombo to Kandy train by running along the top to the engine, getting the driver drunk on arrack, leaping off the hotplate to strip off his clothes and run naked into a tunnel from whence he refused to emerge, thereby playing havoc with the Ceylon Government Railways' wartime schedule.

But why did a Ceylon Army Light Infantry officer have to run along the top of the train?

Because, as a dusky Eurasian, he with every other non-white officer was forbidden to walk through the train's corridors where there were compartments occupied by pukka white officers of the stiff upper lip British raj. That kind of mixing simply wouldn't do. It just wasn't British.

Eurasians of my ilk grew up with a memory of the precious white attitudes of Brits who walked around Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) with a permanent, invisible wall of separateness that kept them in a constant state of undeclared apartheid from the rest of the dark-skinned rabble. Fortunately for me, any fake ideas of British or white superiority that might have been implanted within by colonial conditioning was soon knocked out in the nationalist upsurge of the 1950's when British colonialism was thrown unceremoniously out of the window.

That nationalist reaction to four hundred years of colonial rule, first by the Portuguese, then by the Dutch and finally by the English, was understandable. But sadly, like all extreme reactions, it too was destructive leading to the fifty-year civil war that Sri Lanka experiences to this day. But that's another story.

**********

Returning to the white, pukka attitudes of the British mentality: really, nothing has changed very much since it lost its Empire. The pukka attitudes simply submerged into a quite artificial, Basil Fawlty-type 'Britishness' and continued to emerge as a desperate distaste and even hostility towards 'coloureds', foreigners in general and now, together with the rest of Europe, as Islamophobia.

But none of these things can be admitted to. The British believe themselves to be far too tolerant and fair-minded for that. So they have to be thinly disguised by entirely nonsensical rationales such as a pretend 'Euroscepticism' which hides a fully-blown Europhobic, xenophobia.

A xenophobia which is a sign of an endemic mental weakness or malaise, exposing Britain as the perennial sick man of Europe. A sickness which right-wing politicians, 'neo-liberals', Atlanticists and Washington's Neocon, closet fascists fully use to their advantage to drive a wedge between Britain and the rest of the European Union.

It is highly significant that an anti-EU Referendum rally is to be held in London next week, preceded the day before by the blimpish racists of the No Sharia Here SIOE, led by the Fawlty-like Stephen Gash and masterminded by the ubiquitous political opportunist, the Danish Anders Gravers. You can be sure that a lot of the Islamophobes marching on October 26 will also be marching in the EU Referendum rally. The same petty-bourgeois closet-racists are behind both Islamophobia and Europhobia.


Stephen Gash out of Fawlty Towers

And these phobic types are being supported by media tyrants like Rupert Murdoch who, like the criminal Conrad Black, not only support the Bush fascists but would have Britain out of the EU and into the economic hegemony of the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA).

Ever since the end of WWII, Britain has been under the military hegemony of the US and its foreign policy. During the Thatcher years, Britain became 'Airstrip One', a forward base for US imperialism and potential nuclear attack in a European Theatre of War. But it remained, on the whole, within the economic hegemony of the European Community, later Union.

Thatcher never like that idea and cashed-in on the natural anti-European sentiments of Britain's Basil Fawlty mentality by keeping Britain out of the Euro and the Maastricht treaty.

Homegrown xenophobic, Europhobia also provided the Thatcherites and their successors, the Blair/Brownites, with the political clout to opt out of various areas of European legislation meant to protect the rights of trades unions and, through the Working Directive, to provide a maximum limit of 48 hours to the working week.

Using Newspeak and by turning reality on its head, this socially progressive legislation by the European Union was presented to a wholly prejudiced and tranced-out British audience as somehow a threat to British liberties! And this in a country which remains the historical cradle of trades unionism and the struggle for a 40-hour week which, when finally obtained, was done in by Thatcher and her peculiarly British form of fascism.

Thus, in today's dark ages, even a 48-hour week is presented by British capitalists as something that we progressive Brits would rather not have! And, together with having opted out of that social legislation, the closet-fascists and their Tory fellow-travellers in the Cameron party of Neocons would have us give away our human rights as well, the Human Rights Act of 1999 being presented by Britain's lying media as something which militates against and threatens our human rights!

A Human Rights Act, by the way, which it took 49 years for the complacent Brits to get around to legislate into its own laws, such was the reluctance of the British ruling classes to deal with anything that smacked of rights for the lower classes! And now the Brits are being conned into believing that 'Europe threatens its independence'! In the 51st State what independence does Britain have? The British bubble of unreality again!

Reich Fieldmarshall Hermann Goering was right in one thing at least when he predicted in 1940 that in twenty years time Britain would become an overcrowded little island living on the glories of its past.

Overcrowded, yes. But not by immigrants. By a breakdown of infrastructure and public transport and an overpopulation of private transport. Living on the glories of its past, yes. But where the Neocon fascists in Washington are calculatedly using British xenophobia, nostalgia and an entirely false belief in its independence to stir-up racism, religious hate and persecution and to persuade a generation of British working people, ignorant of their past struggles, to forsake all their hard-earned rights by turning its back on protective European social legislation.

The call for a Referendum is a fake, carefully packaged by the Right to sound as if it were something to do with free speech. The same free speech which the Right constantly abuse by using it to promote xenophobia, race hate and to attack the people's social and civil rights.

It is for these reasons that Chimes of Freedom remains solidly Eurosocialist, in defence of the people's rights, and Antifascist against the pukka white nonsense of xenophobia and imperialist racism.

A catalogue of abuse
Political leaders as much as military bosses need to face up to our brutal detention policy in Iraq

Phil Shiner
Friday October 19, 2007
The Guardian

What will it take for our government to face the awful facts of British detention policy in Iraq? Evidence now publicly available proves that UK forces had a systematic policy that led to the execution of scores of Iraqis in detention, and the torture of countless more. But most people remain blissfully unaware of the truth, while the government chooses to ignore it ...

Read on

Grossman said the study shows a pattern
practiced by hundreds and thousands.
Israelis Enjoy Torturing Palestinians

CAIRO — Israeli soldiers enjoy torturing Palestinians, both men and women, and many of them use it to discharge energy, according to a recent study by an Israeli psychologist.

Read it here

It’s the Oil
Jim Holt
London Review of Books

Iraq is ‘unwinnable’, a ‘quagmire’, a ‘fiasco’: so goes the received opinion. But there is good reason to think that, from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is none of these things. Indeed, the US may be ‘stuck’ precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no ‘exit strategy’.

Now read on

BENEDICT XVI’s EGYPTIAN ASSASSIN
By: KHALID JAN
ICCSA

(Download PDF version)

To advance reconciliation between Jews and Roman Catholics, Pope John Paul II promised to allow scholars to examine Vatican’s secret archives for its possible connection to the holocaust. One of the first scholars given permission to examine these archives is Prof. David I. Kertzer. His findings are published in his book “THE POPES AGAINST THE JEWS: VATICAN’S ROLE IN THE RISE OF MODERN ANTI-SEMITISM.” In one of the chapters, Prof. Kertzer conducts a detailed analysis of more than 36 anti-Judaism and anti-Jewish articles written by the Jesuits. These articles, in time, became the foundation of modern anti-Semitism, and a catalyst to the holocaust.

To keep alive the Papal tradition of hate for non-Roman Catholic religions, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, right after becoming Pope Benedict XVI, selected handful of elite Jesuits as his “special papal troops” to combat the rise of Islam in Europe.[1] The chief amongst them is one Egyptian Coptic Jesuit Father Samir Khalil Samir. His articles and interviews are spread all over Catholic-centric news portals. This paper briefly explores the history of Jesuits, their role as “papal shock troops,” and a critical analysis of Father Samir’s anti-Islam, anti-Muslim writings.

Continued here

Employees Expose Murdoch's FOX NEWS Distortions




Link

Now how about a similar exposé by the lying BBC's employees?

Palestinians’ Lives Invisible to Israelis
by Edward Mast
Common Dreams.org

On a visit to Tel Aviv last month, I asked some Israeli friends what people in Israel were saying about the Palestinian situation. Not much, they told me. Israelis are more concerned about the corruption charges against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, coming on the heels of corruption charges against previous governments. Palestinians and their issues, my friends told me, are becoming more and more invisible to the Israeli people.

Palestinian lives are kept invisible in David Brumer’s Oct. 10 guest column, “Despite concerns, Israel a vibrant country.” Also invisible are Israel’s military occupation and the ongoing takeover of Palestinian land. If Brumer had traveled to the other side of the wall, as I did, he could have witnessed the many ways that the Israeli occupation crushes people with poverty, violence and injustice.

__________

Israel shaken by Troops' Tales of Brutality against Palestinians

Iraq whistleblower Dr Kelly WAS murdered to silence him, says MP
Daily Mail

"Weapons expert Dr David Kelly was assassinated, an MP claims today.

Campaigning politician Norman Baker believes Dr Kelly, who exposed the Government's "sexed-up" Iraq dossier, was killed to stop him making further revelations about the lies that took Britain to war.

He says the murderers may have been anti-Saddam Iraqis, and suggests the crime was covered up by elements within the British establishment to prevent a diplomatic crisis."

Unusual this, coming from the newspaper that supported Hitler and the fascists in the 1930's.

Ah, but hold on. This article stinks of disinformation.

Why should anti-Saddam Iraqis want to murder a whistle-blower?

Pro bono? Oh no-no.

Cui Bono!

Editors of the fascist Mail, it was that well-known war criminal, Tony Blair, who had the strongest motivation to do Dr Kelly in.

If "anti-Saddam Iraqis" did the dirty work that's one thing. But why not go to the heart of the conspiracy?

If you dare?

UN Commission on Human Rights: Situation of Muslim and Arab Peoples in Various Parts of the World in the Aftermath of the Events of 11 September 2001.

A cautiously-worded UN Document which bears out the persecution of Muslims by the governments and media of the West in the aftermath of 911

Read PDF here

Summer Camp Teaches U.S. Teens To Fight Israeli Style

If you are a young Muslim American and head off to the Middle East for a spell in a fundamentalist "madrassa," or religious school, Homeland Security will probably greet you at the airport when you return. But if you are an American Jew and you join hundreds of teenagers from Europe and Mexico for an eight-week training course run by the Israel Defense Forces, you can post your picture wearing an Israeli army uniform and holding an automatic weapon on MySpace.

The Marva program, part summer camp part indoctrination, was launched in Israel in 1981. It allows participants, who must be Jewish and between the ages of 18 and 28, to fire weapons, live in military barracks in the Negev desert and saunter around in an Israeli military uniform saluting and taking long hikes with military packs. The Youth and Education Corps of the Israel Defense Forces run four 120-strong training sessions a year.

"Upon arrival, the participants experience an abrupt change into army life: wearing uniforms, accepting army discipline, and learning the programs and lessons integral to the program," the Let Israelis Show You Israel Web site reads. "The program includes military content such as: navigation, field training, weapons training, shooting ranges, marches and more, as well as educational content such as: Zionism, Jewish Identity, history and knowledge of the land of Israel. All of this is taught in Hebrew in an intensive eight weeks."

"The participants finish the program after completing a short, intensive, exhilarating military experience that allows them to taste Israel in a way that they never could before -- as part of the Israel Defense Forces," the site reads. "They leave the program with a feeling of belonging and a strong connection to Israel, and many return to Israel to continue the connection that was created in the framework of the Marva course."

There are, of course, gushing testimonials about the program.

"I spent the first few days of Marva doubting my decision, wondering why I had come, wondering if there was any way out. With all of the running, yelling orders, discipline and Hebrew, I felt horribly out of place, writes Canadian David Roth of his summer. It was a completely different world from the one I was used to. All that changed, though, by the end of the first week. We had our first 'Masa' (Hike). It was very hard, but at the end, we all knew, our M16s were waiting for us at the 'tekes' (Ceremony). We got through the 8 kilometers and had our 'tekes' and got our guns. It felt amazing, and from that point on Marva was incredible.

How have we reacted when we discovered that American Muslims were being taught in a foreign country to fire machine guns at paper figures and simulate military maneuvers? And what about the summer schools in Gaza organized by Islamic Jihad designed to train young Palestinians in the basics of military life? These Gaza camps, uncovered in 2001, were widely denounced by Israel as proof that the Palestinians were teaching their children to hate and kill.

The argument in favor of camps in Israel, as opposed to camps in Pakistan, is that these young men and women are not going to come back and use what they have learned to harm Americans. They are not terrorists. Muslims, however, have not cornered the market on terrorism and violence. Radical Jews have also been involved in terrorist attacks in Israel and the United States.

I discovered an American in Israel in 1989 named Robert Manning. A huge, burly man, Manning was living in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Kiyrat Arba. When I found him he was carrying a pistol, a large knife strapped to his leg and an M-16 assault rifle. He was part of a Jewish terrorist group called Committee for Protection and Safety of the Highways that set up ad hoc roadblocks and pulled Palestinians from cars to beat and often shoot them. He was a follower of Meir Kahane, the leader of the Jewish Defense League, who was implicated in terrorist attacks in the United States and Israel. Manning served as a reservist in the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank.

Manning was wanted in California for murder. He had been charged in a 1980 mail-bomb killing as part of his involvement in the Jewish Defense League. The bomb was intended for the owner of a local computer firm, but the package holding the device was opened by the firm's secretary, Patricia Wilkerson, who was killed instantly by the blast.

Manning, full of bluster and a bitter racism toward Arabs, used as his pseudonym the name of the FBI agent in charge of his case, a bit of humor that backfired on him by confirming my suspicion of his identify. I obtained the picture from his California driver's license and showed it to his neighbors at Kiyrat Arba. They identified him from the photo. I wrote an article affirming that Manning, heavily armed and an active member of the Israeli army, was living in a Jewish settlement. The Israeli government, until that moment, said it had no information about his location. He was extradited in 1993 and sentenced the next year to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for 30 years. He is in a maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo.

Those who go through the Marva summer program are indoctrinated as thoroughly as Muslims who go overseas and are told they are part of a greater jihad for Islam. The results, given Israel's close alliance with the United States, may not be negative for those in power in the United States, but it may be very negative for those Americans defined as the enemy, especially Muslims, should we suffer another 9/11. The program inculcates hatred and a belief in the efficacy of violence to solve the problems in the Middle East. It identifies Israel with militarism. It feeds the idea that a Jew born in Brooklyn has a birthright to settle in Israel that is denied to an American of Palestinian descent.

Jerusalem, aside from being one of the most beautiful cities in the world, is one of the most literate, creative and intellectual. Do these young men and women really know the best of Israel by spending eight weeks playing soldier and glorifying the military? Is the cause of Israel advanced by mirroring the twisted militarism of Islamic fundamentalists?

Terrorists arise in all cultures, all nations and all religions. We have produced more than our share. Ask the people of Vietnam or Iraq. The danger of a military program such as these is that it solidifies a mind-set of us and them. It romanticizes violence. It widens the divide that leads to conflict. It makes dialogue impossible. There are great Israeli institutions, from the newspaper Haaretz to the courageous Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem to Peace Now. A summer working for them, rather than wearing an army uniform, unleashing bursts of automatic fire in the desert and singing Israeli patriotic songs, might actually help.

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, was the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. He spent seven years in the Middle East and reported frequently from Iran. His latest book is American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.

http://www.alternet.org

Sarkozy an Ex-Mossad Agent!?
Iran Daily

TEHRAN, Oct. 17--A prestigious French daily reported that an email sent to 100 high-ranking police officials claims French President Nicholas Sarkozy is a former agent of the Israeli intelligence services, Mossad.

Le Figaro added that the letter was sent to French police officials late last winter and reiterated that Sarkozy was the fourth high-ranking spy of Israel.

The letter titled “Infiltration of Mossad in France’s ruling center-right UMP party“ insists that Sarkozy is a spy.

It also writes about widespread corruption in the UMP party.

The letter added that former Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, in 1978 ordered the head of his intelligence services to make former French Leader Charles De Gaulle one of Israel’s associates.

Armageddon: Bush returns to Cold War



Link

UK AND US WORLD'S WORST TERRORIST STATES

"Pariah nation": look who's talking!

There's no getting away from it: the MSM is the tyranny of the new aristocracy chattering to itself. Fed up of the endless state propaganda spouted daily by the BBC, the so-called Independent Television News and the "community centered" Channel 4 News, I turned to More 4 News in the hope of intelligent comment.

No such luck.

Yesterday, for example, More 4 News' newest dolly-bird, Kylie Morris, presented an envious piece concerning the diplomatic success of Iran in forming a non-aggression pact between Caspian countries. Iran's friendship with Russia was received with cynical comments about Russia's 'need to stay friends for Iran's oil'.

No mention of the fact that both Iran and Russia work through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization which unites the two countries' economic interests. No observation that a non-aggression pact is meant to preserve the peace and that the only aggression that both Iran and Russia faces today is likely to come from the war criminals hiding in the White House.

Any mention of that would ensure Ms Morris being fired immediately from her job. So instead we get nasty little comments such as Iran being a "pariah nation".

Pariah nation? Who says so, Ms Morris? Iran's Middle Eastern neighbours? No. The European Union? No.

Then who?

Oh, that rogue in the White House again! He who is eminently more describable as a pariah then any other person or nation on this planet.

And More 4 News, an ostensibly British enterprise, is obliged to act as the Number One pariah's conduit. Well, what more can you expect in a vassal state like Britain which, in the days of the Thatcher/Reagan Arms Race in the 'eighties earned itself the Orwellian label of being 'Airstrip One' for the USA?

So Bye, bye More 4, & Hello the Real News



Link

The War against Totalitarianism



Link

Pirateradiousa.com

8 Million Deaths & Media Holocaust Denial
from Media with Conscience

The 6th anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan is approaching. This horrendous war crime was committed ostensibly in response to the 9/11 atrocity in which 3,000 people died.

While the egregiously dishonest and violent Bush Administration asserts that this atrocity was committed by Muslim Men in Caves, nobody has been arraigned and tried and there is a large body of available evidence that the US or US surrogates (Israelis?) were complicit in this crime (e.g. see Scholars for 9/11 Truth: http://st911.org/ ). As a scientist for 4 decades I have great problems with the official version e.g. how did the completely undamaged top 20 floors of the South Tower (the tower last hit, with minimal fires and the first to fall) topple to 30 degrees and then suddenly, in about 10 seconds, all the squillions of tons of concrete and steel of these floors become transformed into fine powder? This is blatantly consistent with the hypothesis of US-complicit explosive demolition (see: here ).

While Mainstream media continue to trumpet the judicially-untested, and reason-, chemistry-and physics-defying “official 9/11 version” of the endlessly lying Bush Administration (aka the OCT, the Official Conspiracy Theory), they ignore the horrendous human consequences of the subsequent Bush II War on Terror – 6 million post-invasion excess deaths as adjudged from the data of world’s best practice, expert UN and American demographers and medical epidemiologists. Indeed the Bush Asian Wars – the continuing US-backed Israeli Occupations (Occupied Lebanon and Occupied Palestine excess deaths 0.4 million), (the Bush I Gulf War (0.2 million Iraqi violent deaths), the Bush I-Clinton I-Bush II Sanctions War (1.7 million excess deaths), the Bush II Iraq War (2.0 million excess deaths), the Bush II Afghan War (3.2 million excess deaths) and the post-2001 world opiate drug deaths due to US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed opium industry (0.5 million deaths) now yields a total of 8 million deaths in the Bush Family Asian Holocaust.

A bottom-line measure of the consequences of human actions is provided by excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that should not have happened, excess mortality, avoidable mortality). Excess deaths can be violent (from bombs and bullets) or non-violent (due to deprivation). Analysis of the carnage of the Bush Asian Wars is given below (for detailed and documented analyses of excess deaths from violence and deprivation in these conflicts see “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”: http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya/).

1. US-backed Apartheid Israeli occupation of Lebanon (much of the 1978-2006 period) [0.07 million] – 1978-2000 excess deaths in Lebanon totalled 60,000; about 10,000 violent killings by Israelis or Israeli surrogates occurred in the period 1978-2006.

2. US-backed Apartheid Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (1967-2007) [0.31 million] – 1957-2007 excess deaths in the Occupied Palestinian Territory totalled about 0.3 million; about 10,000 Palestinians were violently killed (5,000 in the 2000-2007 Second Intifada period alone).

3. US Gulf War (1990-1991) [0.2 million] – an estimated 0.2 million violent Iraqi deaths due to the Bush I Gulf War.

Carlos Latuff/ MWC NEWS

4. US Sanctions War (1990-2003) [1.7 million] – an estimated 1.7 million Iraqi excess deaths occurred in the period 1990-2003 under the Bush I-Clinton I-Bush II Sanctions; the number of under-5 infant deaths in this period totalled 1.2 million (roughly 90% of these deaths were avoidable).

5. US Afghanistan War (2001-2007) [3.2 million] - excess deaths from UN Population Division data total 2.5 million; however excess deaths determined from under-5 infant deaths and dividing by 0.7 total 3.2 million (see 'Layperson’s Guide to Counting Iraq Deaths' on MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5872/26/ ).

6. US Iraq War (2003-2007) [2.0 million] – 1.2 million post-invasion violent deaths (from the latest UK ORB survey) plus 0.8 million post-invasion non-violent excess deaths (from UNICEFunder-5 year old infant mortality data; see #5 above).

7. Global opiate drug-related deaths due to US actions [0.5 million] - 0.1 million people die each year around the world (0.6 million over 6 years) from opiate drug-related causes. Accordingly, about 0.5 million have died avoidably since 9/11 from opiate drug-related causes due to the UK-US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from about 5% of world market share in 2001 to a current 93% (see UN Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, 2007 World Drug Report).

We can thus assess the human cost of the Bush I and Bush II Asian Wars at 0.06 + 0.31 + 0.2 + 1.7 + 3.2 + 2.0 + 0.5 million = 7.97 million = 8 million.

A major contributor to the carnage in Occupied Palestine, Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan is the war criminal failure of the Occupiers to supply life-sustaining requisites as demanded unequivocally by the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Thus, according the World Health Organization (WHO), the “annual total per capita medical expenditure” permitted in Occupied Iraq by the US Coalition is $135 (2004) as compared to $19 (Occupied Afghanistan), $2,560 (UK), $3,123 (Australia) and $6,096 (the US).

The US Alliance Occupier countries are involved in both active genocide and passive genocide in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories - see the recently published “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (editor. Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney 2007; and especially “Australian Complicity in Iraq Mass Mortality” by Dr Gideon Polya) and “Body Count’ (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007).

The Bush Asian Holocaust death toll of 8 million exceeds that of the Jewish Holocaust, the WW2 Nazi German-inflicted Jewish Genocide (6 million deaths, 5 million murdered and 1 million dying from deprivation) and that of the largely un-reported, “forgotten”, man-made, British-inflicted Bengali Holocaust (Bengal Famine, Bengali Genocide) of World War 2 British India (4 million excess deaths).

History ignored yields history repeated. Currently Mainstream media - non- reportage of the Bush Asian Holocaust (8 million victims) coupled with their Zionist- and Racist Bush-ite-beholden, Islamophobic, “terror hysterical” war-mongering is acutely threatening Iran with comparable devastation. Remote, peaceful Iran has a population of over 70 million (three quarters of whom are Women and Children).

Stand up for Humanity - please inform everyone you can before it is too late.

__________

Dr Gideon Polya, MWC News Chief political editor, published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003), and is currently writing a book on global mortality ---

Other articles by this author

Uncovered: The whole Truth about the US War on Iraq



The War on Iraq: filmmaker Robert Greenwald chronicles the Bush Administration's determined quest to invade Iraq following the events of September 11, 2001.

The film deconstructs the administration's case for war through interviews with U.S intelligence and defense officials, foreign service experts, and U.N. weapons inspectors -- including a former CIA director, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and even President Bush's Secretary of the Army. Their analyses and conclusions are sobering, and often disturbing, regardless of one's political affiliations.

Visit www.IslamicVideos.net for more videos like this!

Wolfowitz 1991: "With the end of the Cold War, we can now use our military with impunity."

from Medialens

From Wesley Clark's memoirs:

"Seven countries in five years"

Wesley Clark's new memoir casts more light on the Bush administration's secret strategies for regime change in Iran and elsewhere.

By Joe Conason

Oct. 12, 2007 | While the Bush White House promotes the possibility of armed conflict with Iran, a tantalizing passage in Wesley Clark's new memoir suggests that another war is part of a long-planned Department of Defense strategy that anticipated "regime change" by force in no fewer than seven Mideast states. Critics of the war have often voiced suspicions of such imperial schemes, but this is the first time that a high-ranking former military officer has claimed to know that such plans existed.

The existence of that classified memo would certainly cast more dubious light not only on the original decision to invade Iraq because of Saddam Hussein's weapons and ambitions but on the current efforts to justify and even instigate military action against Iran.

In "A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country," published by Palgrave Macmillan last month, the former four-star general recalls two visits to the Pentagon following the terrorist attacks of September 2001. On the first visit, less than two weeks after Sept. 11, he writes, a "senior general" told him, "We're going to attack Iraq. The decision has basically been made."

.......... .......... ..........

Six weeks later, Clark returned to Washington to see the same general and inquired whether the plan to strike Iraq was still under consideration. The general's response was stunning:

"'Oh, it's worse than that,' he said, holding up a memo on his desk. 'Here's the paper from the Office of the Secretary of Defense [then Donald Rumsfeld] outlining the strategy. We're going to take out seven countries in five years.' And he named them, starting with Iraq and Syria and ending with Iran."

While Clark doesn't name the other four countries, he has mentioned in televised interviews that the hit list included Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan. Indeed, he has described this same conversation on a few occasions over the past year, including in a speech at the University of Alabama in October 2006, in an appearance on Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" broadcast last March, and most recently in an interview with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room." On "Democracy Now" he spoke about the meetings and the memo in slightly greater detail, saying that he had made the first Pentagon visit "on or about Sept. 20."

Clark says he didn't read the memo from Rumsfeld's office. When the general first held it up, he remembers asking, "Is it classified?" Receiving an affirmative answer, he said, "Well, don't show it to me." He also says that when he saw the same general last year and reminded him of their conversation, the officer said, "Sir, I didn't show you that memo! I didn't show it to you!"

During the Blitzer interview, Clark backed off slightly, conceding that the memo "wasn't [necessarily] a plan. Maybe it was a think piece. Maybe it was a sort of notional concept, but what it was, was the kind of indication of dialogue around this town in official circles ... that has poisoned the atmosphere and made it very difficult for this administration to achieve any success in the region."

Clark's book also describes a telling encounter nearly a decade earlier with neoconservative eminence Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense under Rumsfeld who resigned under a cloud of scandal from the World Bank last spring. In May 1991, according to Clark, he dropped in for a conversation with Wolfowitz, then the third-ranking civilian in the Pentagon, to congratulate him on the success of the Gulf War.

"We screwed up and left Saddam Hussein in power. The president [then George H.W. Bush] believes he'll be overthrown by his own people, but I rather doubt it," he quotes Wolfowitz lamenting. "But we did learn one thing that's very important. With the end of the Cold War, we can now use our military with impunity. The Soviets won't come in to block us. And we've got five, maybe 10, years to clean up these old Soviet surrogate regimes like Iraq and Syria before the next superpower emerges to challenge us ... We could have a little more time, but no one really knows."

More than a decade and a half later, the neoconservative obsession with regime change persists and flourishes in the upper reaches of the Bush administration, where Vice President Dick Cheney is reportedly pressing for action against Iran. (Of course, by overthrowing Saddam and putting the Shiites in control of Iraq, Cheney and President Bush have already done more to empower Tehran than the ruling mullahs could ever have imagined in their fondest fantasies.) The stated reasons range from Iran's suspected sponsorship of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq to its worrisome pursuit of nuclear power, but Clark's allegations strongly suggest American policymakers chose war years ago, no matter what Tehran ended up doing.

Perhaps it is time for the appropriate Senate and House committees to start asking harder questions about this administration's secret strategies for the Mideast. They might begin by interviewing Clark behind closed doors about that classified memo -- and to what extent such extreme ideas have promoted the "permanent war" policy that is fundamental to neoconservative ideology.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason.../wesley_clark/

Christine Louis-Quéré: Daniel Pipes is not a Zionist.

It is said that Daniel Pipes is a Zionist. I must emphatically negate any claim by this Neocon to the right to call himself a Zionist.

Typically and in character with holders of the most fascist and extreme right political views, Pipes is clearly working as the head of hidden organisations.

Those neo-nazis that attach themselves to him do so with the intention of spilling blood on a world scale, thereby allowing supremacists and US Neocons to divide and rule.

This network appears as a kind of underground organisation with cowardly little types such as the anonymous ‘Grouik-Grouik’ acting as intermediaries alongside other internet groups such as ajm.ch, SIOE (Stop Islamisation of Europe) etc. repeating the same sentiments and implicit conclusions. As soon as an article, characterised by manipulative language understood by his savants, appears on Daniel Pipes’ hate propaganda website you see all his grubby partisans spring into action with their destructive poison.

I am a Zionist and a Socialist.

David Ben-Gurion had on his work-desk a bust of our Comrade Lenin; he referred to Lenin as the Prophet of the original Revolution.

The enemies of the Land of Israel are my enemies; the enemy’s of Israeli pro-US Neocons are my friends.

That is clear enough. I would rather present Zionism as did the Jewish Communist, Herbert Pagani, in his song 'L'etoile d'Or' and commentary, 'Pleading for My Land'.

http://libertedepenser.info/articles7.php

http://www.factsofisrael.com/blog/archives/000215.html

Whatever Pipes may pretend to be one thing is sure: together with his colleagues, using intellectual terrorism, he is a purveyor of racism, anti-semitism and war.These people worm themselves into every available organisation, even authentic Zionist ones, in order to putrefy thought through using their grey propaganda.


Pipes

There exists an incredible underground relationship between holocaust deniers, revisionists, neocons, sectarian groups, evangelists and Trotskyists! Naturei Karta, Dieudonné, National Front, KKK, Tribu Ka, mnsf.info, are some of the groups working to destabilise European institutions.Who profits from this? Not you, not me, only a Capitalism which remains unchanged in character since it supported and financed Hitler in the ‘thirties. At this point it is necessary to point out that the present Iranian regime behaves like George Bush, using the same scare tactics to repress their own people and restrict their freedoms.

Despite our individual political or philosophical convictions, world peace requires mutual respect between nations and religions. A round table is thus called for.

Pipes’ politics does not work in that direction. He is Bush’s CIA-funded agent!

And we certainly don’t need any lessons from Bush in regard to his grandfather’s participation in the Holocaust.

http://libertedepenser.info/articles28.php

http://libertedepenser.info/affaires114.php

http://www.rense.com/general18/bushsgrandfather.htm

If Pipes is able to work with a family which has never apologized for the criminal acts of it forefathers he’s got a serious problem. For us it’s a question of decency.

The Goebbels Big Lie technique they use has been exposed, it’s just a case of time before they burn out and shut down.

As Bush himself said, “The game is over!”

We return the compliment.

Christine Louis-Quéré, 7th of October 2007

__________

And for our friends and comrades, here's an invitation to join and support the Progressive Front for Renewal


"Freedom is never offered but torn from the hand of the Oppressor"



Link

Front Progressiste du Renouveau

Link

http://libertedepenser.info/fpr.php

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/Socialist_Zionism.html

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-19129728.html

http://www.jewishmag.com/43mag/bengurion/bengurion.htm

http://www.angelfire.com/il2/borochov/poale.html

Hashomer Hatza'ir - Zionist socialist youth movement, founded in Europe in 1916, to prepare Jewish youth for kibbutz life in Israel. In addition to Zionism, its ideology meshes Jewish culture with universal culture and values and it retains strong ties with the left-wing kibbutz movement today.

American Tears

by Naomi Wolf
COMMON DREAMS

I wish people would stop breaking into tears when they talk to me these days.

I am traveling across the country at the moment — Colorado to California — speaking to groups of Americans from all walks of life about the assault on liberty and the 10 steps now underway in America to a violently closed society.

The good news is that Americans are already awake: I thought there would be resistance to or disbelief at this message of gathering darkness — but I am finding crowds of people who don’t need me to tell them to worry; they are already scared, already alert to the danger and entirely prepared to hear what the big picture might look like. To my great relief, Americans are smart and brave and they are unflinching in their readiness to hear the worst and take action. And they love their country.

But I can’t stand the stories I am hearing. I can’t stand to open my email these days. And wherever I go, it seems, at least once a day, someone very strong starts to cry while they are speaking.

In Boulder, two days ago, a rosy-cheeked thirtysomething mother of two small children, in soft yoga velours, started to tear up when she said to me: “I want to take action but I am so scared. I look at my kids and I am scared. How do you deal with fear? Is it safer for them if I act or stay quiet? I don’t want to get on a list.” In D.C., before that, a beefy, handsome civil servant, a government department head — probably a Republican — confides in a lowered voice that he is scared to sign the new ID requirement for all government employees, that exposes all his most personal information to the State — but he is scared not to sign it: “If I don’t, I lose my job, my house. It’s like the German National ID card,” he said quietly. This morning in Denver I talked for almost an hour to a brave, much-decorated high-level military man who is not only on the watch list for his criticism of the administration — his family is now on the list. His elderly mother is on the list. His teenage son is on the list. He has flown many dangerous combat missions over the course of his military career, but his voice cracks when he talks about the possibility that he is exposing his children to harassment.

Jim Spencer, a former columnist for the Denver Post who has been critical of the Bush administration, told me today that I could use his name: he is on the watch list. An attorney contacts me to say that she told her colleagues at the Justice Department not to torture a detainee; she says she then faced a criminal investigation, a professional referral, saw her emails deleted — and now she is on the watch list. I was told last night that a leader of Code Pink, the anti-war women’s action group, was refused entry to Canada. I hear from a tech guy who works for the airlines — again, probably a Republican — that once you are on the list you never get off. Someone else says that his friend opened his luggage to find a letter from the TSA saying that they did not appreciate his reading material. Before I go into the security lines, I find myself editing my possessions. In New York’s LaGuardia, I reluctantly found myself putting a hardcover copy of Tara McKelvey’s excellent Monstering, an expose of CIA interrogation practices, in a garbage can before I get in the security line; it is based on classified information. This morning at my hotel, before going to the airport, I threw away a very nice black T-shirt that said “We Will Not be Silenced” — with an Arabic translation — that someone had given me, along with a copy of poems written by detainees at Guantanamo.

In my America we are not scared to get in line at the airport. In my America, we will not be silenced.

More times than I can count, courageous and confident men who are telling me about speaking up, but who are risking what they see as the possible loss of job, home or the ability to pay for grown kids’ schooling, start to choke up. Yesterday a woman in one gathering started to cry simply while talking about the degradation of her beloved country.

And always the questions: what do we do?

It is clear from this inundation of personal stories of abuse and retribution against ordinary Americans that a network of criminal behavior and intention is catching up more and more mainstream citizens in its grasp. It is clear that this is not democracy as usual — or even the corruption of democracy as usual. It is clear that we will need more drastic action than emails to Congress.

The people I am hearing from are conservatives and independents as well as progressives. The cardinal rule of a closing or closed society is that your alignment with the regime offers no protection; in a true police state no one is safe.

I read the news in a state of something like walking shock: seven soldiers wrote op-eds critical of the war — in The New York Times; three are dead, one shot in the head. A female soldier who was about to become a whistleblower, possibly about abuses involving taxpayers’ money: shot in the head. Pat Tillman, who was contemplating coming forward in a critique of the war: shot in the head. Donald Vance, a contractor himself, who blew the whistle on irregularities involving arms sales in Iraq — taken hostage FROM the U.S. Embassy BY U.S. soldiers and kept without recourse to a lawyer in a U.S. held-prison, abused and terrified for weeks — and scared to talk once he got home. Another whistleblower in Iraq, as reported in Vanity Fair: held in a trailer all night by armed contractors before being ejected from the country.

Last week contractors, immune from the rule of law, butchered 17 Iraqi civilians in cold blood. Congress mildly objected — and contractors today butcher two more innocent civilian Iraqi ladies — in cold blood.

Is it clear yet that violent retribution, torture or maybe worse, seems to go right up this chain of command? Is it clear yet that these people are capable of anything? Is it obvious yet that criminals are at the helm of the nation and need to be not only ousted but held accountable for their crimes?

Is it treason yet?

This is an open invitation to honorable patriots on the Right and in the center to join this movement to restore the rule of law and confront this horror: this is not conservatism, it is a series of crimes against the nation and against the very essence of America. Join us, we need you.

This movement must transcend partisan lines. The power of individual conscience is profound when people start to wake up.

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey said No: he told colleague that they would be ashamed when the world learned about the Administration’s warrantless wiretapping. Comey said No: history will look at this torture and disgrace the torturers. A judge today ruled that the U.S. can’t just ship prisoners out of Guantanamo to be tortured at will — she said No. The Center for Constitutional Rights is about to file a civil lawsuit — against Blackwater: they are saying No.

In Germany, according to historian Richard Evans, in 1931-1932, if enough Germans of conscience had begun to say No — history would have had an entirely diferent outcome.

If we go any further down this road the tears will be those of conservatives as well as progressives. They will be American tears.

The time for weeping has to stop; the time for confronting must begin.

Naomi Wolf’s books include The Beauty Myth and Fire With Fire: The New Female Power and How It Will Change The 21st Century.

BBC Lies gets its Knickers in a Twist, yet Again

12 October 2007 Spinwatch The BBC is making a real hash of the Al Gore story. Today on Radio Four’s flagship lunch-time news programme, it invited Martin Livermore from the Scientific Alliance, to give an interview on Gore winning the Nobel Prize. As we have blogged on the site, the Scientific Alliance was set up by Scottish quarryman Robert Durward in 2001 to fight environmental regulations and take the sceptical line on climate change. It was one of the first “corporate front groups” to be set up in the UK. It has consistently tried to undermine climate science and networked with Exxon-funded groups in the US and UK. However rather than saying the Alliance undermines the debate on climate science, the BBC’s presenter Shaun Ley described the Alliance as “campaigning to improve the quality of debate about science”. Asked about the Nobel award to Gore, Martin Livermore the Alliance's ex-Dupont front man said that it was “not healthy” to give awards to “fashionable causes”. He also warned Gore’s award would “close down the scientific debate”. When asked about the recent legal case against Gore’s film in the UK, which had been objected to by “a parent”, Livermore said the Judge who had criticised Gore had made a “sensible decision” on a “political film” that represented “just one point of view”. What the BBC failed to do again is actually tell the listener what was going on here. To an uninformed listener it seems that the Scientific Alliance and legal action “by the parent” are completely separate. The problem is they are not. They are funded by the same person: Robert Durward, a Scottish Quarryman and chair of the New Party – which his political opponents have described as fascist. The so-called parent is Stewart Dimmock, who is a member of the New Party, a failed New Party councillor, and who has admitted being backed by the New Party in taking the legal action. So, unbeknown to the public, on the radio at lunch-time (and later on TV) the BBC interviewed an ex-chemical industry spokesman who works for a front group set up by a quarryman who was talking about a legal case that the quarryman has funded. But that’s obviously too complicated for the BBC or too insignificant a fact to tell their listeners Revealed: The Hidden Agenda Behind Al Gore Attack

Return to the Roots of Bush's "War against the Terrists"



Link

Waziristan: Killer Musharraf claiming more and more innocent victims



This is the horrific reality of the dictator, Musharraf's, widespread bombing of the people of Waziristan.

The BBC, true to style, is playing down this war crime by referring to "the deaths of 200 militants."

Look for yourself: do these dead children and old grandfathers look like militants?

As usual the BBC is toeing the Brown government line. A government which receives its instructions from the Bush cabal about what is not to be reported in Britain.

As far as the BBC is concerned Musharraf is not a dictator and whomever he murders is "a militant".

So much for the lying western Mainstream media ...

For more information on the Musharraf dictatorship and daily events of his atrocities, click here.

The Crusade to Protect Western Values by 'nice, decent' People like You and Me



Link

Former president Jimmy Carter isn't just suspicious that the US is using torture to extract intelligence from detainees -- he's absolutely convinced.

European race-hate SIOE-organized anti-'Islamisation' Demo in London, 26 October 2007

I must apologise to all my readers for having earlier on directed complaints to the Greater London Assembly.

Having now seen the route of the proposed SIOE-organized 26 October march it is clear that it will affect an area of London governed by the Tory-controlled Borough of Westminster which is an entirely separate entity.

I would therefore urge readers who, like me, are opposed to this march and would prefer it to be banned to address your complaints to The Leader of Westminster Council and email him via vhealy@westminster.gov.uk

You can also telephone his Press Office at +44 (0)207 641 6000

Why ban this march?

Because its organizers are using a pretence of the freedom of speech to promote a particularly nasty and dangerous form of bigotry and race hate.

The British organizer of this demonstration, Stephen Gash, is working very closely with his Danish assistant, Anders Gravers. Gravers was the organizer of the aborted 11 September demonstration outside the European Parliament in Brussels which was banned by Mayor Freddy Thielemans.


Gash

Gravers is part of a rapidly-burgeoning Islamophobia which has gripped Denmark and which is turning that country into a place of rank racism and intolerance. It is said that Gravers now intends to put up candidates for future elections in Denmark.


Gravers

Events in Denmark are also being mirrored in other countries such as Holland and Germany where, increasingly, both Islamophobes and overtly Nazi-worshipping groups of thugs are marching together in what very much appears to be a wave of racism, intolerance and Islamophobic violence about to hit continental Europe. The growth of fascism in Russia has been particularly virulent with hundreds of anti-Nazis murdered in revenge killings.

As this new fascism grows and takes a hold of continental Europe, it is inevitable that it will spill over into Britain. As the economics of world capitalism fall deeper and deeper into crisis and collapse the fascists will obtain greater support from a confused and disaffected public, making it easier for them not only to march but to use violence against Muslims, ethnic minorities and people of colour.

It is for this reason that a broad coalition of democrats, anti-fascists and socialists should unite without further delay with the various religions to present a solid wall of opposition and resistance against the growth of this new fascism. The longer it takes to establish such a broad front, the more harrowing it will be to deal with the many-headed hydra which has returned from the 'thirties.

Returning to the extremism of bigots like Gash and Gravers, these people are only at the very tip of a much larger iceberg, an underground network of bigots, racists, white supremacists and Hitler-worshippers. One of their gurus is Daniel Pipes who, of course, is a close pal of the rogue who currently occupies the White House. There is good reason to believe that Messrs Gash and Gravers are both on excellent working terms with Pipes who, it appears, is more often than not the instigator of various attacks against Islam. Currently one of these operations, actively supported by our little French piggy, the ubiquitous but, hélas, anonymous Grouik-Grouik (or Monsieur Cochon as I prefer to call him), is to attract the racists and bigots, like flies, to any European city where a mosque is planned or being built.


Pipes

So precious are the sentiments of our little pink-skinned Crusaders against Islam that the building of even one mosque is seen to be a threat against what they describe to be 'European Civilization'. Apart from not wishing to have any truck with what these nasties interpret to be civilisation it has to be asked, had they been alive seventy years ago, when the Jewish areas of certain European towns and cities brimmed with 40 and more synagogues in just a matter of square kilometres, would they have fought as energetically against the 'threat to Christian civilisation from Judaism'?

If they did they would have found themselves in some very unsavoury company indeed. For it was Hitler who demanded a right to free speech to bamboozle the 'nice decent' German middle-classes into putting him into power through the democratic ballot-box in 1933. Just as the 'nice decent' Messrs Gash, Gravers and Pipes who, today, insist on the freedom of speech to spread their toxic filth and to democratically infect the minds of Denmark's and contemporary Europe's 'nice decent' middle-classes in a new wave of anti-semitism, this time against Muslims, targeting them as the scape-goats for all the miseries they find in their own societies.

Scape-goats, just as the Jews were Hitler's scape-goats. But not just his. For the megalomaniac Hitler had plenty of supporters in Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France ... and, of course, Britain. Sadly, for all those Nazis, both overt and of the closet variety, Hitler came into collision with the Anglo-Saxon empires and soon found himself on a loser as did all the other European Nazis who were so eager to back him.

But times are changed now and the growth of the new fascism is taking place right in the very heart of a world still dominated by an Anglo-Saxon axis determined to maintain its imperialist hegemony right to the bitter end. Hence, it is no accident that we find such a renascence of fascism and racism in those very societies where 'nice decent' folk, having been brain-washed for so long, brought up to believe not only in their divine hegemony over all humankind but of their, god-given innate cultural superiority ueber alles, now fear that the building of a few mosques strikes at the heart of their so-called civilization!


Mosque Paranoia

It is in this context that we must see the activities of the likes of our unholy Gash-Gravers-Pipes troika. For it is that very 'Clash of Civilisations', first fabricated in the nasty mind of Samuel Huntington, the eminence grise of the western secret services and dedicated Muslim-hater, that this more junior trio are now attempting to bring about. And in this diabolic task they are ably assisted by countless other nasties including our M. Cochon.

It is, as I say, a wholly fabricated, invented war which, in the real light of day, simply does not exist other than in the minds of a motley assortment of paranoid bigots, white supremacists, anti-semites and misguided clerics (many themselves the stooges of the secret services) who are being calculatedly used to spread fear and loathing via the ever-obliging conduits of the capitalist Mainstream Media.

It is high time that the world woke up to recognize the truly murderous intentions of those who are behind the Big Lie that is bamboozling 'nice decent' folk in the West into accepting, without question, a new Holocaust.

The Reviews of Walt and Mearsheimer: Moving Past the 'Lobby' and Getting Stuck in the 'Middle'
by Jeremiah Haber
The Magnes Zionist

The reviews of Walt and Mearsheimer’s book-length version of the 'Israel Lobby' in the mainstream media have run from the mixed to the negative.

More accurately, they have been negative, with some crumbs thrown to the authors for having raised certain questions and broken certain taboos. The consensus of the reviews that I have seen is that the book is a one-sided indictment against Israel’s policies and supporters, a screed that needs to be balanced.

That certainly seems to have been the view of the Washington Post, which commissioned Samuel Freedman to review the Israel Lobby together with Abe Foxman’s 'refutation,' The Deadliest Lies. Freedman, who teaches journalism at Columbia University, and who wrote an interesting book called Jew vs. Jew a few years back, has a lot to say against both books.

To his credit, he takes Walt and Mearsheimer much more seriously than Abe Foxman, whose silly little book I leafed through in Barnes and Nobles. Freedman is an intelligent man and a first-rate journalist. But his implied conclusion that the truth lies somewhere in the middle reveals him in all his glory as a liberal Zionist – hardly the fairest reviewer for a book on the Israel Lobby. And yet, virtually all the reviews in the major media outlets have been by liberal Zionists, both Jewish and non-Jewish.

By 'liberal Zionism' I mean the view that supports the state of Israel as founded in 1948 by political Zionists like Ben-Gurion. While liberal Zionists are often critical of Israeli policies (especially those advocated by the Israeli right and their hawkish allies, e.g., the settlements), they assume that a) that there are two sides to the Israel-Palestine story, and b) a lot of justice is on the Israeli side.

So when they read works by such disparate authors as Walt and Mearsheimer, Jimmy Carter, Tony Judt and Norman Finkelstein, they cannot refrain from saying, “Yeah, but what about the responsibility of the Palestinian side for the mess?”

This is because they fundamentally accept the Zionist narrative of Jewish history that culminates in the State of Israel, and they reject the Palestinian narrative that a foreign settler movement displaced the natives who, as the majority population in Palestine, had every expectation of a belonging to an Arab Palestine with a Jewish minority.

Now, one can favor Israel over the Palestinians without accepting the justice of the Zionist narrative. One can argue that Israel is a state recognized by the United Nations and that there is a prima facie case for favoring a state over a non-state collective, a favored position that will evaporate when Palestine becomes a state. But this is not the position taken by the reviewers. To a man they appeal to the comfortable (and banal) adage that the truth lies between the two extremes. The difficulty, however, is that they locate the 'center' in the Zionist camp. Those who take a position that dissents from political Zionism, even if that position accepts de facto the state of Israel, are dogmatic and one-sided.

The triumph of Zionism in this country is not so much that nobody 'normal' today questions the wisdom, or the justice, of the establishment and continued existence of a Zionist state. Rather, it is that nobody questions the correctness of the Zionist narrative that justifies the Jewish claim to a state at the expense of the Palestinian claim. Because if they did, then the failure to establish a strong and vibrant Palestinian state sixty years after the UN supported such a state, a state that is at least the equal of the Jewish state, would not allow them to sleep at night.

I am not saying that reviewers should have been chosen who reject the Zionist narrative. But why not ask people who have no vested interest in either narrative to review the book? Or, if liberal Zionists, are being asked, why not liberal Palestinians, like Rashid Khalidi (who happens to be critical of the book’s thesis.)?

As long as the world does not impose a solution that levels the playing field between Israeli Jew and Palestinian, there is no point in talking about 'balance'. The situation there is incredibly skewed in favor of Israel, which has virtually all the cards, and against the Palestinians, which has virtually none.

Let me demonstrate Freedman’s fundamental acceptance of the liberal Zionist narrative with the following passage.

It is certainly the right of Mearsheimer and Walt to advance these arguments, and their analysis of Camp David in particular echoes that of Robert Malley, one of the American mediators there. There is no lack of Israeli culpability in the Middle East morass, most obviously for the settlement enterprise. Still, one can leave this book with only the faintest realization that the political majority in Israel had been prepared to withdraw from most of the occupied territories to conclude a peace agreement with a Palestinian state -- until the Al-Aksa intifada brought terrorism as deeply into sovereign, pre-1967 Israel as the Tel Aviv beachfront.

Having withdrawn from all of Gaza in 2005, Israel received a steady barrage of rocket attacks, which undermined public support for further disengagement from portions, at least, of the West Bank. The authors do not have to concur with the Israeli reaction to those events, but they prove their intellectual dishonesty in barely even mentioning them… Thus, while Mearsheimer and Walt endorse a two-state solution, they still lump into the nefarious Israel lobby some of the very diplomats -- Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross, to name two -- who tried to negotiate precisely such a peace agreement.

Here you have in a nutshell the faith of the liberal Zionist.

Israel is indeed responsible for much of the Middle East morass, “most obviously for the settlement enterprise,” as if everything pre-1967 was just hunky-dory and could be solved by a simple withdrawal to the 67 borders by ceding “much of the occupied territories,” with a “peace agreement.” It seems that according to Freedman, the Israel-Palestinian conflict could have been solved via Oslo, were it not for the al-Aksa intifada, “that brought terrorism as deeply into sovereign, pre-1967 Israel as the Tel Aviv beachfront.”

Aside from the fact that this factually incorrect -- Palestinians blew up Israeli civilians in Tel Aviv before, during, and after Oslo, it assumes that Israelis were once willing to conclude a peace agreement with the Palestinians that would create a strong, secure Palestinians state. As I have written before, this is pure balderdash. Nobody in Israel, except those on the extreme left, have ever supported the establishment of a Palestinian state -- rather, they support an emasculated demilitarized 'state' that survives because of its neocolonial relation to Israel, and that will not pose a threat to the security of the Jewish state.

Freedman, the liberal Zionist, seems to believe that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. That is also balderdash. Israel never 'withdrew' from Gaza; it redeployed its troops for the most part on the other side of the 'Green Line' and later imposed a crippling siege against Gaza, when the Palestinians elected Hamas. In short, the people who felt that Gaza could be most effectively controlled by the presence of settlers and IDF troops lost out to the people who felt that Gaza could be most effectively controlled by withdrawing the settlers and the IDF. But the control of Gaza was never once in doubt.

This is the classic Zionist debate – the sort of 'Jew vs. Jew' that Freedman should have written about: How does one control the maximum amount of territory with the minimum responsibility for the natives? Had Ariel Sharon been interested in giving peace a chance – and, to his credit, he never once even hinted in that direction – he would have negotiated a withdrawal with the PA, and, more importantly, he would have negotiated a final settlement.

But the Gaza withdrawal was never about peace – and Sharon had the guts to say that. In fact, the Gaza withdrawal was intended to humiliate the Palestinians by implying that negotiating with them made as much sense as negotiating with wild animals. (Remember the liberal Zionist Benny Morris’s solution for the Palestinians in his interview with Ari Shavit – put them in cages.) Only a liberal Zionist, who identifies troop-redeployments with peace overtures, can spin the Gaza withdrawal as an opportunity for peace.

Because Freedman is a liberal Zionist – and I don’t criticize him for that, only the editors for asking him to review the book without full disclosure -- he is shocked that Walt and Mearsheimer lump Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross in the Israeli lobby. How dare they throw these two liberal peacemakers into the same camp as Abe Foxman, AIPAC, Daniel Pipes, and Norman Podhoretz? I mean, how many times were Indyk and Ross called self-hating Jews by the rightwing? And how hard did they labor for peace?

But the truth is that virtually all Jews in the US, from the far right to the Peace-Now-Meretz left, are a part of the Israel Lobby, or if you don’t like that term (I don’t), they are strong supporters of Israel, each in their own way. Again, this is not a criticism – believe me, some of my best friends are liberal Zionists (full-disclosure: I am a card-carrying member of Meretz, although, in my defence, I joined the party just to vote for Yossi Beilin in the primaries) . To see how deeply Zionist Dennis Ross is, one needs only read a few pages of The Missing Peace. The fact that he doesn’t share the 'Islamofascist' neuroses of Podhoretz and Pipes doesn’t make him into a centrist on Israel-Palestine.

So, who is on really in the middle and not just in the 'middle'? Well, Walt and Mearsheimer, Carter, Chomsky, Khalidi, for a start. They are all willing to allow a strong Zionist state in Palestine -- more than I can say for most Israelis with respect to Palestine.

Because the Zionist narrative has been accepted by the mainstream liberal press in the US, (but not, necessarily, by Middle East experts), one doesn’t need an AIPAC or a Foxman or a Dershowitz to make the case for Israel. The latter will always serve as the 'bad cops' to 'good cops' like Tom Friedman, Richard Cohen, Dennis Ross, etc. The real question is – and Walt and Mearsheimer don’t raise it – why has Israel been so successful in getting the Zionist narrative accepted?

It is not just the alleged political clout or money of an Israel Lobby. There may be many factors -- liberal Christian guilt for Christian antisemitism, sympathy for the Jews after the Holocaust, the shared Judaeo-Christian heritage on the Bible (the secret weapon of the Zionist), the success story of Jews in the US, including the high intermarriage rates, which makes it more difficult for Christians to act against members of their family. The Palestinians have failed to make the same impact on the consciousness of American non-Jews as have the Jews. They haven't been around as much. And they are 'oriental' in the a way that ashkenazi Israelis are not.

And they are Arab, and, mostly, Muslim.

__________

also, I was lobbied by the 'Israel lobby'
Read it here

British Plods going Berserk on Govt-sponsored Terror Trip

The British plod (policeman) was never renowned for his intelligence.

The Plod is told what to do and he goes out and does it. His employer, the Government, knows how stupid the Plod is and deliberately manipulates him to its advantage.

The latest fashion in town remains the Plod's heroic War on Terror. As witness:

Boy in court on terror charges

This concerns a 17-year-old boy, a juvenile whose name cannot be mentioned, who has been charged on two counts of terrorism.

The first charge relates to the possession of material for terrorist purposes in October last year.

The second relates to the collection or possession of information useful in the preparation of an act of terrorism.

He stood in the dock wearing a baggy, blue hooded top and only spoke to confirm his name and date of birth.

After the 40-minute hearing, the teenager was released on bail under several conditions.

Regarding both charges, "It is alleged he had a copy of the "Anarchists' Cookbook", containing instructions on how to make home-made explosives."

Now, what a load of bollocks this is! Anyone, I repeat anyone, can download a copy of the Anarchists Cookbook by simply going to http://www.anarchist-cookbook.com/

So here, once more, we have brain-dead British plods pinning terrorist charges on any poor sod who's caught with a copy of a book freely available on the Internet.

First it was the wannabe terrorist, Dhiren Barot, with his clumsy, Mittyesque home movie showing upturned buildings. Then it was the hapless Mohammed Siddique who terrified the shit out of a bunch of Presbyterian Scots numpties calling themselves a jury. And now this poor lad.

Apart from being brain-dead, having smelly socks and jock straps, the sweaty British Plod is known for his authoritarian, bullying nature. And the persecution that is now going on in Britain of young folk whose only sin is that of wishful thinking and a fertile imagination is very much in the nature of the brainless, bullying Plod let off his leash by a cynical, cowardly bunch of respectable gangsters calling themselves 'the Government' headed by he-does-that-funny- thing-with-his-mouth-like-a-frog-swallowing-a-fly, Mr Brown.

Gordon, if only you could read the minds of those such as I who so thoroughly despise you and your miserable hangers-on, you'd have good reason to indict us and half the nation with your nonsensical terrorist charges! And the more you condone this kind of latter-day witch-hunt, the more hated you will become.

Better start checking under you bed everynight before saying your prayers, Gordy. You never know what you might find there just waiting for a chance to jump on you when the lights are off. It might be that Presbyterian conscience ... if you've still got it.

Oil, Israel, and America: The Root Cause of the Crisis
By Scott Ritter

The Big Lie: ‘Iran Is a Threat’
by Scott Ritter

M. Grouik-Grouik
Fascist Pigs are on the March

Now we have evidence that points to Mr Stephen Gash of the racist, Islamophobe, Stop the Islamisation of Europe (England) No Sharia Here blog as working closely with Mr Bush's Neocon shit-stirrer, Mr Daniel Pipes, to incite race hate against Muslims in Britain and continental Europe.

I cannot divulge that evidence at present but can assure my readers that not only does it exist but it bears out the allegations of my French comrade-in-arms, Christine Louis-Quéré, that the SIOE work closely in an underground network with others including the ubiquitous provocateur, Monsieur Grouik-Grouik, and other racist nasties.

The SIOE has been given permission by the Metropolitan Police to hold an anti-'Islamisation' demonstration in London next 26 October. To date there is absolutely no sign that the sleep-walkers in the Greater London Assembly, headed by London Mayor Ken Livingstone, are going to do anything to ban this march from taking place. Hence London is now at risk of earning the reputation for being a haven where the Right neo-nazis can march with no risk to themselves.

Christine Louis-Quéré is presently preparing a short article in order to denounce Pipes as working with the Bush cabal to destabilise western societies. The manner in which he works through the SIOE is just one isolated example of a much wider campaign on the Internet.

__________

Rory's 6pen'orth: On a slightly flippant note, the cartoon above was copied from a white supremacist forum, Seulement Blanc, illustrating the type of pig that frequents such trashy sites. It reminded me of the ubiquitous Grouik-Grouik who, alas, happens to be of the French bacon variety.

Really now, isn't someone going to write in and complain how I have given the pig, that most intelligent and affectionate creature, a bad press here?

Dear All

Kamal is very down these days ... tears in his eyes frequently and that is not Kamal at all ... Iraq crumbling in blood before our eyes and its humanity still being slaughtered in their thousands each month.

Four million refugees at least. 5-8 million injured or bereaved.

Well over a million dead and two and half million died because of the US sanctions.*

They say that when someone died they thought about them all the time.

Now when someone dies in the morning they are forgotten about by the evening in the daily struggle to stay alive! Their fear is overwhelming!

Their depression and massive sadness and stress disorders overwhelm them.

When you see a small child's shocked face hugging the mutilated corpse of it's warm mother, with her face unrecognisable but ... the child knows the remains of her Mum's body, her clothes and holds on tightly.

How many children, mother, fathers ... How many ... millions and millions!

This is not just the slaughter of that mother or the destruction of the child's mind

It is the mass slaughter of mankind perpetrated by Christian countries!

It is Christian terrorism on a massive scale ... for the world's resources.

This filthy illegal ghastly horrendous war on Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine has brought great shame on Christianity.

I will not be sending out Christmas Cards this year. God tells me it's prohibited until Christians obey his commands. Love God and love all humanity

After ALL WHO WOULD JESUS BOMB?

BUT YOU SAY IT'S ALRIGHT IN YOUR NAME?????

Carole Alubaid.

Rory's Note: Regarding the figure you give here*, actually, if we are to accept Dr Gideon Polya's latest figures the total dead is now EIGHT MILLION.

Yes, you read me right.

EIGHT MILLION!

Police State UK

UK in emergency U-Turn re banned march

Indymedia Ireland

BBC following up the rear

The UK government's attempt to ban a march in support of bringing troops home from Iraq is scuppered by strength of popular resistance.

Gordon Brown looked set to make an ass of himself protesting the suppression of democratic freedom of expression in Burma while at the same time banning a peaceful demonstration in Britain, under threat of police suppression. Under new legislation the British government would have been'legally' entitled to physically restrain protestors, thereby drawing a direct and relevant comparison between scenes in Burma and on the streets of London. But that embarrassment was neatly avoided. The first sign that a volte face had occured was when the BBC started to report that the protestors were 'claiming' that a ban had been imposed! Desperate stuff. See 'Lenin's Tomb' website for ongoing updates on the situation:

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2007/10/ban-broke-demo-report.html

Bear in mind folks, that the UK is a country that arrested a woman protesting in the vicinity of Downing Street for the crime of reading out a list of UK soldiers who had died in Iraq. She was regarded as a terrorist threat.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard branded "terrorists"



Link

Che

I make a halt in my daily struggle to bow my head in respect and gratitude to the exceptional combatant who fell on October 8th, forty years ago; for the example he passed on to us as leader of his Rebel Army Column, which crossed the swampy grounds of the former provinces of Oriente and Camagüey while being chased by enemy troops.

He was the liberator of the city of Santa Clara, and the creator of voluntary work; he accomplished honorable political missions abroad and served as a messenger of militant internationalism in eastern Congo and Bolivia; he built a new awareness in our America and the world.

I thank him for what he tried but was not able to do in his home country, because he was like a flower prematurely severed from its stem.

He left us his unmistakable style of writing — with elegance, brevity and veracity — every detail of whatever happened to cross his mind. He was a predestinate, but he didn’t know it. He still fights with us and for us.

Yesterday, we commemorated the 31st anniversary of the killing of the passengers and crew of a Cuban airliner that was blown up in mid-flight, and we are on the threshold of the tenth anniversary of the cruel and unjust imprisonment of the five Cuban anti-terrorist heroes. We likewise bow our heads to them all.

It was with great emotion that I watched and heard the commemoration ceremony on TV.

Fidel Castro Ruz

October 7, 2007

Thousands of people march to La Higuera to pay tribute

LA PAZ.— Thousands of people, most of them young people from different countries, began a 60-km march to the village of La Higuera in southeastern Bolivia to participate in a vigil in memory of the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, who was murdered there 40 years ago.

The march began in the town of Vallegrande, where more than 7,000 people gathered from all over the world. Most of whom had not even been born when Guevara led the guerrilla warfare campaign in Bolivia that lasted almost nine months. The young people filled the town with their multi-colored tents.

The vigil would be the preamble to the main program planned for Monday, which was to feature the participation of President Evo Morales, according to Osvaldo Peredo, one of the organizers of the 2nd International Conference on Che Guevara, which began on Friday with cultural activities, colloquiums, exhibits and musical performances, the AP reported.

The main activity planned for today, October 8, will take place on the Vallegrande landing strip, where Che’s body was secretly buried together with those of his fellow combatants, and where they remained until 1997, when they were repatriated to Cuba.

Translated by Granma International

Out with Britain's Number One Traitor!

Gordon Brown is rapidly heading towards becoming the most despised political clown in Britain after Tony Blair.

A clown certainly, albeit a very dangerous one

This solemn, rather bovine Presbyterian hypocrite is not only continuing Blair's mission to turn Britain into a police state but, by supporting the criminal Bush's intention to launch a nuclear attack on Iran, is likely to become an even greater war criminal than his erstwhile leader.

The cowardly traitor Brown must be removed from an office which he inherited and to which he was never elected.

Any means of removing this traitorous usurper of our rights would be justifiable.

"Brown's offered excuse for not holding the election until 2009 is that he wants the opportunity to lay out his 'vision for the future' before standing for election. So far, the vision includes massive international violence, domestic wage cuts, creeping privatisation, vindictive attacks on the young, more prisons, cuts to public services, national chauvinism, and three cheers for the British Empire."

Out with Britain's Number One Traitor!

Growing Western Totalitarianism: Police Ban London Anti-War March

WSWS.org

Growing Western Totalitarianism:
FBI Puts Antiwar Protesters on Criminal Database; Canada Uses It To Ban
Protesters From Entry

OpEdNews

Now the Proof: We are worse than the Nazis

"In 1945, ordinary Germans said that 'they didn’t know' that the Jewish Holocaust was happening. The same excuse cannot be used by the citizens of the US Alliance, notwithstanding the continuing lying by commission and omission of racist, holocaust-ignoring Mainstream media – the awful truth is only several mouse clicks away."

According to Dr Gideon Polya (article below), during the regimes of Bush I, Clinton and Bush II EIGHT MILLION West Asians (Arabs etc) have died. If this is correct then it means the US, Britain (and Israel) together have committed war crimes far in excess of anything the Nazis did.

It proves that the capitalist system is far more dangerous and destructive than even the gangster, Hitler. I am not blaming nations or cultures. I am blaming capitalism and the state. But as most people still gullibly believe in nations then, in their terms of understanding, the joint responsibility must remain with those nations and their peoples.

It will be difficult for people in the West to accept the reality about their governments but those of us who prefer honesty, however unpleasant, have no choice but to face these facts now.

"Respect for women and children is a fundamental norm of decent human societies. In the face of horrendous man-made mass mortality, decent people are obliged to INFORM EVERYONE and to ACT ETHICALLY in their investment, business and social dealings with complicit people and countries."

This genocide has been racist and anti-semitic.

1.5 -2.0 million Iraq excess deaths; 8 million Bush I & II Asian Holocaust deaths

Posted by Dr Gideon Polya on MEDIALENS, October 5, 2007.

Media Lens has very properly noted huge discrepancies between the 75,000-81,000 post-invasion, Media-reported Iraqi civilian VIOLENT DEATHS reported by Iraq Body Count and the 0.8-1.2 million VIOLENT deaths reported by World's top medical epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins and Columbia (US) and a top UK polling company ORB.

This matter is acutely serious because Mainstream media and politicians are MIS-using the "81,000" figure as an estimate of total post-invasion Iraqi excess deaths. Independent authoritative estimates put the total VIOLENT Iraqi excess deaths at 0.8-1.2 million and the total NON-VIOLENT Iraqi deaths (from war criminal Occupier non-provision of life-sustaining requisites ) at 0.7 - 0.8 million for a TOTAL of 1.5-2.0 million post-invasion Iraqi excess deaths. requisites).

The top UK market research company ORB has recently reported 1.2 million post-invasion VIOLENT DEATHS in Occupied Iraq, this being consonant with an estimate of 0.8 million VIOLENT DEATHS (as of October 2007) from top American medical epidemiologists from Johns Hopkins and Columbia, published in the top medical journal The Lancet and endorsed in a public letter by 27 top Australian medical experts.

However UN agency data also indicate 0.7-0.8 million NON-VIOLENT post-invasion Iraqi excess deaths yielding a total death toll of 1.5-2.0 million post-invasion excess deaths - vastly greater than the "Iraq Body Count" estimate (currently of circa 80,000 MEDIA REPORTED VIOLENT DEATHS) that is INCORRECTLY used by Mainstream media, Bush-ite politicians, and neo-Bush-ite politicians such as Australia’s extreme right wing Opposition Labor leader Kevin Rudd (aka Religious Right Rudd, R3 ) as a measure of Iraqi civilian deaths.

The bottom-line quantitative measure of the human cost of human actions is EXCESS MORTALITY (avoidable mortality, avoidable death, excess death, excess mortality, deaths that did not have to happen but DID as a result of human ACTION or indeed INACTION) (see “Global avoidable mortality”: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/ ). I have just published a huge, scholarly book on this subject: "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950", G.M. Polya. Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ and http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ ).

Post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq include VIOLENT DEATHS estimated to be 0.8 million (world’s top medical epidemiologists published in The Lancet) to 1.2 million (the recent estimate of the top UK ORB market analysis and polling organization).

The post-invasion NON-VIOLENT DEATHS total 0.7 million (as estimated from UN Population Division data) to 0.8 million (as estimated from UNICEF under-5 infant mortality data as per “Layperson’s Guide to Counting Iraq Deaths”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5872/26/ ). The TOTAL post-invasion excess deaths amount to 1.5 million to 2.0 million (see “Iraq: Genocide by all Definition. Bush’s Iraq war. 2 million excess deaths”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/17066/42/ ).

Use of the Iraq Body Count estimate of “81,000 deaths” for post-invasion Iraqi civilians deaths (e.g. by, of all people, Anti-war.com: http://antiwar.com/casualties/ ) is instantly discredited by a simple inspection of the UNICEF website (see: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html ) that indicates 122,000 under-5 year old Iraqi infant deaths ANNUALLY - 90% avoidable and due to Occupier war crimes, specifically the non-provision of life-sustaining requisites unequivocally demanded of Occupiers by the Geneva Convention.

The Iraq Body Count estimate of (currently) “81,000” Iraqi deaths (mis-used by Mainstream media and by extreme right-wing Bush-ite and neo-Bush-ite politicians AND by Anti-war.com) (a) IGNORES NON-VIOLENT DEATHS, (b) is about 7-10% of the independent estimates of the world’s top medical epidemiologists and a top UK polling company and (c) its reliance on media reports and releases is notoriously unreliable as testified by world’s experts on the matter e.g. Professors Burnham (Johns Hopkins) and Roberts (Columbia) (see: http://www.countercurrents.org/burnham230907.htm and http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1190468011.html ):
QUOTE: “News report tallies suggest some 75,000 Iraqis have died since the US-led invasion. A study of 13 war affected countries presented at a recent Harvard conference found over 80% of violent deaths in conflicts go unreported by the press and governments.”

IT GETS WORSE. The total death toll in the Bush I & II Asian Wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon) now totals 8 million (EIGHT MILLION as summarized below (for a detailed and documented breakdown see “United State Terrorism. 8 million Deaths & Media Holocaust Denial: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/17139/42/ ):

1. US-backed Apartheid Israeli occupation of Lebanon (much of the 1978-2006 period) [0.07 million] – 1978-2000 excess deaths in Lebanon totalled 60,000; about 10,000 violent killings by Israelis or Israeli surrogates occurred in the period 1978-2006.

2. US-backed Apartheid Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (1967-2007) [0.31 million] – 1957-2007 excess deaths in the Occupied Palestinian Territory totalled about 0.3 million; about 10,000 Palestinians were violently killed (5,000 in the 2000-2007 Second Intifada period alone).

3. US Gulf War (1990-1991) [0.2 million] – an estimated 0.2 million violent Iraqi deaths due to the Bush I Gulf War.

4. US Sanctions War (1990-2003) [1.7 million] – an estimated 1.7 million Iraqi excess deaths occurred in the period 1990-2003 under the Bush I-Clinton I-Bush II Sanctions; the number of under-5 infant deaths in this period totalled 1.2 million (roughly 90% of these deaths were avoidable).

5. US Afghanistan War (2001-2007) [3.2 million] - excess deaths from UN Population Division data total 2.5 million; however excess deaths determined from under-5 infant deaths and dividing by 0.7 total 3.2 million (see “Layperson’s Guide to Counting Iraq Deaths” on MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5872/26/ ).

6. US Iraq War (2003-2007) [2.0 million] – 1.2 million post-invasion violent deaths (from the latest UK ORB survey) plus 0.8 million post-invasion non-violent excess deaths (from UNICEFunder-5 year old infant mortality data; see #5 above).

7. Global opiate drug-related deaths due to US actions [0.5 million] - 0.1 million people die each year around the world (0.6 million over 6 years) from opiate drug-related causes. Accordingly, about 0.5 million have died avoidably since 9/11 from opiate drug-related causes due to the UK-US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from about 5% of world market share in 2001 to a current 93% (see UN Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, 2007 World Drug Report).

We can thus assess the human cost of the Bush I and Bush II Asian Wars at 0.06 + 0.31 + 0.2 + 1.7 + 3.2 + 2.0 + 0.5 million = 8 million.

A major contributor to the carnage in Occupied Palestine, Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan is the war criminal failure of the Occupiers to supply life-sustaining requisites as demanded unequivocally by the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Thus, according the World Health Organization (WHO), the “annual total per capita medical expenditure” permitted in Occupied Iraq by the US Coalition is $135 (2004) as compared to $19 (Occupied Afghanistan), $2,560 (UK), $3,123 (Australia) and $6,096 (the US).

The Bush I & II Asian Holocaust death toll of 8 MILLION EXCEEDS that of the Jewish Holocaust, the WW2 Nazi German-inflicted Jewish Genocide (6 million deaths, 5 million murdered and 1 million dying from deprivation) and that of the largely UN-REPORTED, “forgotten”, man-made, British-inflicted Bengali Holocaust (Bengal Famine, Bengali Genocide) of World War 2 British India (4 million excess deaths).

Quantitative or qualitative denial of the Jewish Holocaust (6 million deaths comprising 5 million murdered and 1 million deprivation-related deaths) is punished in Austria by 10 years in prison and in some other countries by lengthy custodial sentences.

The Iraqis, Lebanese and Palestinians are overwhelmingly SEMITES by ETHNICITY and the Afghans have a Semitic-origin, Islamic CULTURE. What we are seeing is racist, ANTI-SEMITIC, Islamophobic Holocaust Denial driven by lying, racist, Bush-ite Mainstream media.

A Reminder of British 'Democracy' in Action



Link

Britain, you were warned by one of your greatest modern historians, Edward Thompson, who in his book, Writing by Candlelight, gave you notice that the militarised police-state the British Government had created in Ulster would soon return to roost on the mainland of these Isles.

Britain, you were too complacent, too lost in your greedy consumer binge, too racist (in this case, against the Irish), too ignorant of reality to take notice of the rapidly-encroaching police state that British capitalism had been spawning in one of its last colonies.

Now you are obese, unhealthy and psychologically sick and the police state has turned your Island into an open prison camp.

So, as a timely reminder before events on the banned 8 October Anti-War march in London, I dedicate this video to help tweak your memory of what exactly it is that continues to rape, destroy and engorge itself on Albion's children.

Don't blame some bureaucrat in Brussels for your woes, look at yourself in the mirror and see where the blame truly lies! It is with your rulers and your cowardly inability to stand up against the tyrants to regain your liberty!

The Real MSM News



Link

The Elephant In The Room: We Are Change UK Carnival



Link

AIPAC, Israel, and the United States, oh my
by Mary MacElveen

War-criminal Brown's Last Stand against the People?

Despite the panic-stricken Gordon Brown's attempt to ban the 8 October Stop the War march the organisers have received legal advice from the civil rights group, Liberty, that the government has no legal basis on which to ban the march. However, Liberty has warned that that will not stop the fascistic Metropolitan Police from making arrests and treating protesters violently.

The veteran, 81-year-old peace campaigner, Tony Benn, the Stop the War President, has declared that he will lead the march which has received support from various well-known people including Shami Chakrabarti (Liberty), Walter Wolfgang (Labour Party NEC), Bob Wareing MP, musician Brian Eno, comedian Mark Thomas, author Iain Banks, poet Benjamin Zephaniah and playwright David Edgar.

It is hoped that thousands will defy the ban and march anyway and this writer not only endorses the march but encourages all who can make it to London on Monday, 8 October to do so and to march against the war criminal, Gordon Brown, and his associates.

"This is rather a ham-fisted attempt to prevent us from demonstrating," said comedian Mark Thomas. "What the government and police do is up to them. We will just ignore them and we have the moral and logical high-ground. I will be marching on Monday 8 October."

"The authority for this march derives from our ancient right to free speech and assembly enshrined in our history," wrote Tony Benn in a letter to the Minister of the Interior (Home Secretary). "It is only fair to tell you that the march will go ahead, in any case, and I will be among those marching."

"A protest demanding all the troops out now is of national significance. To try and stop that protest is a major interference with free speech. The march should go ahead whether it is formally permitted or not," says the octogenarian CND activist and member of Labour's National Executive, Walter Wolfgang.

"It is depressing that our democratic rights are being whittled away bit by bit," said poet, Benjamin Zephaniah. "We will look back and wonder how this happened. They wouldn't get away with this in one go. First an arrest for reading names (at the Cenotaph), then a ban on marches. What will be next?"

"If people aren't allowed to have their say on all our streets, what kind of Parliament are we meant to be defending?" asks theatre director, Michael Kustow.

Brown's sense of timing seems always to be fatally flawed. First the spin-op in Iraq that went wrong and which is pressuring him to call a November election and then a combined government/police decision to crack down on the civil rights of the British people no different to the one recently imposed by Burma's dictator generals. Past accusations made by Brown's Labour colleagues of his being a Stalinist control-freak have been proven exactly right.

What hasn't been made so public yet is his nature of being a devious bastard who is determined to go ahead with the Blairite implementation of a police state where anyone --Muslim or no-- may be arrested and banged-up on trumped-up, Kafkaseque charges of 'terrorism' and kept under lock and key for even longer periods of time.

With a few others, this writer has tried over and over again to warn Britain that that was exactly what the fake 'War on Terror' and persecution of Muslims was leading to.

Indeed, since the staging of that entirely criminal venture, 911, followed-up by its home-grown sequel, 7/7, this writer and others have been putting out a wake-up call to the sleep-walkers that not only were both these events black ops but that they were leading, like the Reichstag fire, to a totalitarian clamp-down on all our societies.

Now that clamp-down is happening before our very eyes!

And yet the lumpen masses appear to go about their business with their heads stuck up their backsides. Oh, it won't happen to me so long as I keep my head down and behave myself, they say to themselves like guilty little school-kids. That's what the lumpen masses always said to themselves before the dictators came and ground their faces into pulp. And if the lumpen masses are unable to learn from history then perhaps that is all that they deserve.

As for the honourable individuals who, like Tony Benn, insist on their historic right to march and to preserve the constitutional rights that courageous individuals like him in our past were able to wrest from feudal rulers, these people are somehow larger than life and are to be celebrated as contemporary freedom fighters and social leaders. They stand in their own light, shining over the grey mediocrity of the lumpen masses who are entirely responsible for dragging us ever deeper into the new dark age that is already upon us.

Some might call this analysis merciless and elitist. Well they might but, in this writer's consideration, it is time for the cowardly complacence of the herd not only to be identified for the mess that we're in but for a funeral wreath of collective responsibility to be put on its head.

When arrests and police violence break out next Monday, you can be sure that well-placed agents provocateurs will ensure that the violence is made to look as if it comes from the crowd and not MI5 spooks. Pre-positioned TV cameras will be ready to document the clashes and to send the message out to Britain and the world how 'violent anarchists' were behind the trouble that led to police retaliation and mass arrests.

The police might not use tear-gas and fire on the crowds. But they may well use tasers, leading to the deaths of victims with heart conditions. Will they be carrying sub-machine guns or will those be only restricted to those immediately surrounding the Houses of Parliament? Will the police manage to keep their self-control or are they deliberately planning a confrontation in order to justify the further draconian measures being presently legislated?

Whether or not they choose confrontation to justify putting Britain under permanent Emergency Law remains to be seen. What is unquestionable is that, confrontation or no, they are surreptitiously going ahead with that intention in mind. Anyone who doubts this should read the CACC statement below.

Is there any remaining doubt in the reader's mind that the State is now truly the Enemy of the People?

________________________

In an article to supplement this, I will develop this argument further and argue for the urgent need for a popular revolution in which the Nation State is banned and replaced on a global scale by bioregional, highly decentralised people's parliaments supplemented by a global, resource support network using a protected internet.

USA's Terrorism: Hiroshima Atomic Bomb


This video is a clip from a BBC Documentary called "BBC History of World War II: Hiroshima (2005)" released in 2005. It is available on DVD and can be purchased from Amazon.

" Why is it wrong for dictators and terrorists to kill innocent civilians but right or excusable for the United States to do exactly the same?"

John Pilger

Civilians are killed by the Americans in all wars (as you can see from this video the whole city was wiped out), so if Americans are entitled to kill civilians why do they expect that their civilians are not targeted and killed? Does it make sense to you?

USA has been sponsoring state terrorism by funding and harbouring terrorists and conducting terrorist operations according to international and even US definitions. Look at Cuba, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Chechnya; CIA Operations 40, Ajax, Cyclone, Gladio, etc.

This video shows only one of those terrorist acts.

Most Dangerous of Rogue Nations: Terror and Preventive War are "American" Values
by S. Brian Willson
April 2005

Systematic use of terror and preventive war are historic U.S. American values. Their roots are directly and inextricably interconnected to the defense mechanism we call racism. The defining and enabling experience of the Republic of the United States is the genocidal elimination of the human beings who originally lived on our lands.

Eurocentric racism and so-called divinely inspired ethnocentrism have been inherent characteristics facilitating the "development " of our civilization through a long history of brutal exploitation of land, labor, and natural resources. Once the Pacific Ocean was reached the attitude began to spread outward until it now stretches to every corner of the globe. These values did not originate with the United States but date to the first urban civilizations in the Fertile Crescent some 5500 years ago.

Nonetheless, most of us were raised to believe that the United States is an "exceptional" civilization, superior to all others in history. Americans have historically died and killed to maintain this belief. After my military experience, however, I was motivated to seriously study history for the first time.

Captain John Smith of the Virginia colony in the early 1600s referred to our original inhabitants as "subanimals" and "beasts" worthy only of "extermination." Puritan leader John Endicott of the Massachusetts Bay Colony regularly ordered "death" to the Pequot Indians. Our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, refers to our original inhabitants as "merciless savages" and George Washington termed them "beasts of prey" to be "destroyed." European settlers regularly called them "brutes" or "vermin" to be "eliminated." General William Tecumseh Sherman in the 1870s ordered "extermination" as the "final solution" to the "Indian problem." Hitler later took note.

During what we call the Spanish-American War, 1898-1902, U.S. forces fought against Filipino citizens, calling them "goo-goos," while murdering upwards of a half million of them under orders such as "burn and kill the natives" issued by General Jacob H. ("Hell-Raising") Smith to U.S. Marines.

Our Founding Father

The explicit origins of preventive/pre-emptive war through use of terror can be discerned in the behavior of our leading Founding Father. Continental Army Commanding General George Washington ordered Revolutionary War General John Sullivan in the summer of 1779 "to lay waste all the [Iroquois, especially Seneca] settlements around . . . that the country may not be merely overrun but destroyed. . . . But you will not by any means, listen to any overture of peace before the total ruin of their settlements is effected. . . . Our future security will be in their inability to injure us . . . and in the terror with which the severity of the chastisement they receive will inspire them" [italics added]. There it is -- preventive war using terror.

Sullivan's scouring of the countryside with axe and torch soon transformed that beautiful region from the character of a garden to sickening desolation. Sullivan's campaign was nothing other than a scorched-earth policy, bearing comparison with Sherman's Georgia march to the sea or the search-and-destroy missions of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. The Iroquois Confederacy was the most advanced Indian federation in the new World. It had made a territory that embraced the central portion of New York State into an area of flourishing farms, well-cultivated fields and orchards, and sturdy houses. In a little more than a month all of this had been wiped out.

But that simply prepared our civilization for the rest of the (his)story. Immediately after the Civil War, General Philip H. Sheridan described his mission to clear the west of Indigenous: "We took away their country and their means of support, broke up their mode of living, their habits of life, introduced disease and decay among them, and it was for this and against this that they made war." [SEE 200 Years: A Bicentennial Illustrated History of the United States, Vol. 2, U.S. News & World Report (1973).]

On hearing of the loss of Captain Fetterman's entire detachment in 1866 near Fort Phil Kearney, General William Tecumseh Sherman wrote Commanding General Ulysses S. Grant: "We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children. Nothing else will reach the root of this case."

Thirty-five years later on Sumar (Philippines), General Jacob H. ("Hell-Roaring") Smith issued Christmas Eve orders "to adopt a policy that will create in the minds of all the people a burning desire for the War to cease." "Burn and kill the natives" soldiers appreciatively called the campaign. General Smith, an old Indian fighter, adopted tactics that had worked against Geronimo's Apaches when they were captured, imprisoned, and finally herded into a reservation. He began by ordering all Filipino natives, under pain of death, out of the interior. Those who streamed down to the coast were immediately thrown into concentration camps.

Elihu Root, Secretary of War, under Presidents McKinley and T. R. Roosevelt, 1899-1904, justified the conduct of military operations in Samar by the "history and conditions of the warfare with the cruel and treacherous savages who inhabited the island," citing two sustaining "precedents of the highest authority": (1) General George Washington's orders to general John Sullivan in 1779 to destroy the Iroquois, and (2) the "severity" General William Tecumseh Sherman proposed against the Sioux after the 1866 Fort Phil Kearny massacre.

Root unwittingly revealed two important truths. The first was that the national past contained authorizations of terror. The second was that throughout our past, justifications of traditional forms of violence had remained relatively fixed.

Nothing has changed!

http://www.brianwillson.com/awolterroramvalue.html

The Iran War is on the Front Burner
Muriel Mirak-Weissbach
Global Research

"The war that Dick Cheney has been planning against Iran, has moved from the back burner to the front, and those who do not see this are either blind or complicit."

National Campaign against 'Anti-Terror' Powers:
Month of Action in Oct-Nov 2007

Why this national campaign?

The government is planning yet more 'anti-terrorism' measures, which will go to Parliament in a new bill in October. This ‘anti-terror’ bill reinforces a trend beginning with the Terrorism Act 2000, whose broad definition of terrorism criminalised normal political activities, potentially on the basis of suspected ‘association’. This law was followed by three more in 2001, 2005, 2006; these multiplied extra police powers (e.g. glorification of terrorism), punishment without trial and treatment of ‘suspects’ as guilty, thus bypassing due process.

Together these laws have normalised detention without trial under various guises, such as control orders and immigration rules, whereby the accused never see the evidence against them.

This national campaign is bringing together many organisations and individuals involved in defending civil society against the politics of fear and insecurity unleashed by 'anti-terror' laws. The campaign includes civil liberties activists, migrant groups, religious groups, lawyers, journalists, academics, trade unions and environmental campaigners amongst others. We invite you to join the campaign.

The campaign will oppose all current anti-terror laws as well as their extension. This broad approach will help to involve everyone affected by those powers, could deter their use, and will provide extra reasons to oppose their extension.

Who is supporting this campaign?

The campaign is supported by a coalition of 20 organisations:

Peace & Progress; Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC); Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC); Stop the War Coalition (STWC); Cageprisoners; Index on Censorship; Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (CARF); Institute for Policy Research and Development (IPRD); Kurdish Federation UK; London Guantanamo Campaign (LGC); The Muslim Parliament; Tamil Centre for Human Rights; Tamil Campaign for Truth and Justice; Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC); Peace and Justice in East London; Centre for the Study of Terrorism (CFSOT); Panjaab National History Society; South Asia Solidarity Group(SASG);Justice not Vengeance(JNV); Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers; Baluch Human Rights Group.

What can you do?

You can as an individual or as a part of organisation make a difference. Here are some suggestions

Put anti terror laws on the agenda of local organisations, such as anti-war groups, religious groups, civil society associations and trade unions.

Disseminate briefing papers, information leaflets to through emails.

Publicise the initiative in newsletters and display leaflets in libraries and places of worship.

Organise local public meetings and building local coalitions.

Hold high street stalls to raise awareness and gather signatures for petition.

Give out information outside community centres and places of worship.

Send letters to the mass media, local media plus articles in alternative media.

Collect signatures for a petition demanding that your MP should vote against any extension of ‘anti-terror’ powers.

Sign a Petition here

Lobby your MP within your constituency by fixing a time for the meeting and inviting others to join the lobby.

Join us at the lobby at the House of Commons, with a public meeting in Parliament in October/November

What is at stake?

The government’s proposals include the power to detain 'terror suspects' without charge for up to 56 days (double the current 28-day limit), post-charge questioning, and more severe sentences for any ‘terrorist-related’ crime.

In 2005 Parliament also authorised 28-day detention without charge, under the pretext that the police sometimes need the extra time to investigate terrorist threats. Yet the political logic is just the opposite: such powers encourage lengthy detention on the basis of scant evidence or disinformation, as in many recent cases. Holding a person in detention for 8 weeks is equivalent to 4 months custodial sentence. Of the 1228 arrested under anti-terror laws from 2001-2007, only a tiny number 41 have been convicted for involvement with or plans for violent activities; meanwhile personal reputation, jobs and family lives have been damaged for the rest.

Also proposed is a new criminal offence of seeking information that could be useful for terrorism, whether or not the seeker intends such a use. For mere suspicion of involvement in terrorism, anyone could face travel restrictions and be deprived of their passport.

Even worse, all these special powers relate to a broad definition of 'terrorism'. Under the Terrorism Act 2000, terrorism includes any activity which simply poses a threat of damage to property in pursuit of a political cause. Any suspicion of a political motive can trigger and justify special powers. They can and have been used against peaceful protest which posed no threat to anyone – for example, people standing outside the arms fair in Docklands or residents opposing the loss of their homes for a third runway at Heathrow airport.

A recent prosecution illustrates the vague crime of ‘terrorist’ association. Four university students and a schoolboy from Bradford were jailed for possessing DVDs of radical Imams – officially labelled as material ‘for terrorist purposes’ (The Guardian, 27.07.07). The defendants were charged under the Terrorism Act 2000, which was supposedly aimed at people who hoard detonators and combustible chemicals. Thus a court now considers DVDs to be as dangerous as Semtex; this says much about the way in which security laws are being used politically.

To justify detention without trial, in 2001 the government claimed that we faced a national emergency, as a basis to claim exemption from the European Convention on Human Rights. When the Law Lords declared those powers illegal in 2004, the government soon got Parliament to authorise 'control orders', a form of house arrest which turns homes into prisons. These have resulted in collective punishment of families including children with restrictions on visits by friends and denial of use of the Internet. The government is now proposing confiscating homes of convicted terrorist thereby punishing family members who usually have little knowledge of any actions planned by the convicted person.

All these ‘anti-terror’ powers amount to punishment without trial. They are well suited for harassing, punishing and criminalising protests of all kinds. The authorities can readily create more 'terror suspects' and treat them as guilty, while promoting a politics of fear. Now ongoing terrorist threats are supposed to justify more severe powers than during the violent conflict in Northern Ireland.

The government’s new proposals extend the injustice of measures already in force. Longer pre-charge detention periods, along with post-charge questioning, will further encourage arbitrary arrests and put psychological pressure on prisoners. Information 'which could be useful for terrorism' can mean nearly anything and would generally be linked with politics to justify prosecutions, as well as to harass activists. Restrictions could be imposed on travellers to international demonstrations.

Special 'anti-terror' powers needed only for political purposes, e.g. to stigmatise and persecute individuals as 'terror suspects'. Their aims are clearly demonstrated by special powers regarding mere suspicion or association with a vaguely defined ‘terrorism’. The use of such powers is inherently unjust – and unnecessary to protect the public from violent threats. The ordinary criminal law would be adequate for that purpose.

Using terrorist threats as a pretext, the government tries to establish a permanent state of emergency. This trend towards a police state can be stopped only by us collectively reclaiming the rights that have been taken away from us.

We must deter the use of 'anti-terror' powers and dissuade Parliament from voting for their extension.

For further information and updates please visit www.campacc.org.uk. or www.sacc.org.uk

Oppose yet more ‘anti-terror’ powers!
No to a permanent state of emergency!

Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC),
www.campacc.org.uk
email: estella24@tiscali.co.uk
Tel 020 7586 5892

Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC)
www.sacc.org.uk
email contact@sacc.org.uk
Tel 07936432519

Israel, Israel Army Radio, and Haaretz: Spinning the threat of a nuclear war in the Middle East
Les Politiques

Iraq will have to wait: Get ready for the War against Iran
by Scott Ritter
GLOBAL RESEARCH

Russia evacuates entire Bushehr Staff
Iranian news outlet claims nuclear experts packed their bags Friday, increasing speculation of imminent US/Israeli attack
Rense.com


US plan for air strikes on Iran 'backed by Brown'
The Independent

The Neo-Con Lie Machine Rolls On....

The Neo-Con Lie Machine Rolls On....

"The same network of think-tank analysts, media outlets, and government officials who brayed for war in Iraq have set their sights increasingly on Iran. Savvy as ever, they remain focused on consolidating public opinion and seem to be monitoring anti-Iran sentiment closely. Weekly Standard Deputy Online Editor Michael Goldfarb darkly warned in July that opponents of another Mideast war “shouldn’t be too surprised when [the] 60 percent [of Americans] opposing a war with Iran starts to dwindle—it has dropped five points in just the last six months.”

In late August, NYU professor and Afghanistan expert Barnett Rubin related that a Washington source had told him that the same neoconservative institutions that urged the country into Iraq were preparing to “roll out a campaign for war with Iran” after Labor Day. According to Rubin’s informant, “evidently they don’t think they’ll ever get majority support for this—they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is ‘plenty.’”

Writes Justin Logan in his must-read article in the new edition of the anti-war magazine The American Conservative.

Part of the neo-cons' campaign to get their "35-40 percent support" for an attack on Iran is to spread lies and misinformation about the country, aided and assisted by so-called 'left' blogs, highlighting alleged human rights abuses in the country.

And when it comes to smearing Iran, little thing like facts go out of the window. The picture above, in the words of the press release of Frontpagemag.com "shows a teenage girl buried before being stoned to death for alleged sexual offenses. The stoning took place in Iran.” The picture has been been appearing all over the internet as part of the neo-cons' campaign. How could we not think of bombing a country where such appalling scenes can be witnessed?

That is, of course, what the Shock and Awe brigade want you to think. But there's only one thing wrong with the picture. It's a fake. The stoning that it depicts, as the blogger sadlyno reveals, takes place not in Iran, but in a 1994 Dutch film called 'De Steen', directed by Mahnaz Tamizi. The 'teenager girl' is an actress called Smadar Mosinos.

In the weeks ahead we can prepare ourselves for a daily diet of lies and propaganda about Iran, as the warmongers try to get their "35-40 percent support". As I've said before on many occasions, it's easy to know when a neo-con is lying. He/she opens his or her mouth. And, I should also add, puts pen to paper or starts typing on a computer keyboard. Believe me, it really is that simple.

from Neil Clark

Daniel Pipes
Victims of Washington's Hate War?

Who are the big players behind the nebulous network of 'groupuscules' that form the racist, Islamophobe organisations and their internet blogs and websites?

The Number One suspect must be the virulently anti-Islamist American Zionist, Daniel Pipes*, who though keeping himself scrupulously free from the European bigots has his works freely advertised on many of their sites and is most certainly one of their fellow-travellers.

Pipes, whose father, Richard, played a leading role in extremist think tanks fabricating a 'Soviet threat' was responsible for pressuring the Reagan administration in the 'eighties to trigger a new Arms Race. It was that Arms Race that led to the basing of medium-range Cruise missiles in Britain and continental Europe and which led to the doctrinal strategy of a European Theatre of War and "pre-emptive" First Strike.

Pipes Jr would have been weaned on extremist, Strangelovian doctrines of the need to establish US world dominance by nuking the opposition first. Coming from a Jewish Zionist background, he grew up to be a sworn enemy of both Muslims and anyone who might oppose the Zionist takeover of US Foreign Policy. With that other madman, the self-declared 'Barry Goldwater Conservative', John Bolton, Pipes is part of a shadowy group of neo-fascist 'conservatives' who, through Cheney and with support from that other rogue, Bush, continue to dominate US Foreign Policy.

The more one examines the racist Islamophobes the more one is led to suspect that the hidden hand of various secret services whose interest it would be to infiltrate these groups must play a significant part. Now, we have it in a public statement made by the Danish-led SIOE/SIAD group that this is, indeed, the case. Washington is trying to unite the European anti-Islamic groups in a fabricated 'War of Civilisations' along the lines originally devised by the nasty Samuel Huntington, one of Humanity's major public enemies.

"... American foreign policy forces were interfering. Apart from wanting to stop the islamisation their first priority is still American foreign politics. Now they try to unite anti-islamic parties in EU, which apparently seems as a good idea, but remember, their efforts will still be on their terms."

from SIOE and SIAD

Danish Islamophobes, it appears, may hate Muslims but they are no great fans of US foreign policy either. Clearly, that paragraph must tell of a harrowing experience of infiltration by Yankee spooks which, given the nature of SIAD's anti-Islamist campaign, was entirely predictable. Any group that sets itself up against Islam, in the current atmosphere, must expect to be infiltrated by the Yanks, whatever manner it chooses to go about its inflammatory campaigns.

And not only by Yanks but others like MI6 and Mossad, all who have an interest in keeping alive a fake 'War of Terrorism' and cultures. The recent show trial of Mohammed Siddique in Scotland and the highly suspicious Glasgow 'bomb attack' has shown how Gordon Brown's administration are continuing with the insidious, Washington-led campaign to stigmatise and persecute Muslims and people of colour as terrorists and undesirables. It has exposed New Labour's leaders as closet racists, always willing to play the race card to their advantage. Groups like SIOE and its Danish sister-group SIAD fall right into the hands of these opportunists.

I hear from my fellow bloggers that there is far more to the SIOE-led 26 October march than meets the eye. Watch this blog with interest. Some of what I have mentioned above may, at the end of the day, prove to be much more than mere speculation, pointing clearly to the shadowy figures in Washington's mega-militarised planetary hate-war.

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* I have had a complaint that Daniel Pipes is not a Zionist at all but simply someone from the CIA working to destabilise the Middle East. I have asked the complainant to submit an article which denounces Pipes and establishes that he is not a Zionist.

The problem, it appears to me, is that the term Zionist has come to include a large group of people, not exclusively Jews but Christian fundamentalists as well. The term has, very likely, become corrupted in the same way that 'anti-semitic' is now considered to be solely Jewish, confusing a religion with ethnicity.

Perhaps mistakenly, I understand a Zionist to be one who promotes 'Eretz Israel' (Greater Israel), something which could never be obtained without territorial acquisition, violence and more war. If, as a Gentile, the assumptions being made about Zionists are incorrect then I look forward to their correction.

I am aware that there are many Jews, both in Israel and across the world, who would like to obtain a peaceful settlement with Palestinians, Arabs and other Middle Easterners and who do not support the right-wing extremists currently in power . I consider it most important that non-Jews should be giving that group of peace-makers all the help we can.

When we fail to do so it is neither religion or the state whose future lies at stake but the lives and well-being of innocent people on this Planet.