TRUTH

THE FEDS TAKE ON 9/11 TRUTH - AND FAIL MISERABLY

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
--Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788 - 1860)
The second stage of Truth has begun.

In the wake of growing skepticism, the U.S. government is taking the unusual step of responding to conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11, 2001, destruction of the World Trade Center.

Notice how the creeps at WorldNetDaily describe the government's response to challenges from its citizens as 'unusual', as if the government somehow exists in a vacuum, without the need to constantly legitimate itself before the eyes of its citizens. According to these bozos, those who don't believe the government's insane explanation for 9/11 don't deserve to be acknowledged with answers.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, headquartered in Gaithersberg, Md., investigated the causes of the collapse of the twin towers. Yesterday NIST announced it had posted a "fact sheet" addressing alternative theories about the World Trade Center fires and collapse.
The government's response comes in response to accusations and suspicions of increasing numbers of Americans that the official explanation of the events of Sept. 11, 2001 – that 19 Muslim terrorists hijacked four U.S. jetliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, with a fourth being downed in rural Pennsylvania – are wrong. In fact, a shocking new Scripps Howard poll shows a third of Americans believe the U.S. government was complicit in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

This is no joke, folks. That's an astounding figure for believing - not merely negligence on the part of the government - but COMPLICITY. The emergence of this government fact sheet is a sure sign that the government FEARS us. It's a last ditch effort to appease the masses. But, a miserable one at that.

You can go through the whole tedious morass of conclusory assertions on your own. I will highlight their answers to just two very important questions to demonstrate what a disingenuous load of crap it is.

13. Why did the NIST investigation not consider reports of molten steel in the wreckage from the WTC towers?
NIST investigators and experts from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEONY)—who inspected the WTC steel at the WTC site and the salvage yards—found no evidence that would support the melting of steel in a jet-fuel ignited fire in the towers prior to collapse.

That's because they weren't looking!

NIST considered the damage to the steel structure and its fireproofing caused by the aircraft impact and the subsequent fires when the buildings were still standing since that damage was responsible for initiating the collapse of the WTC towers.

Who wrote this nonsense?!! A fifth grader? What kind of crackerjack scientist begins by assuming that which he purports to conclude?

Under certain circumstances it is conceivable for some of the steel in the wreckage to have melted after the buildings collapsed. Any molten steel in the wreckage was more likely due to the high temperature resulting from long exposure to combustion within the pile than to short exposure to fires or explosions while the buildings were standing.

Combustion within the pile? With what oxygen??? What a joke.

But, wait it gets better. Listen to what they have to say about WTC7.

14. Why is the NIST investigation of the collapse of WTC 7 (the 47-story office building that collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001, hours after the towers) taking so long to complete? Is a controlled demolition hypothesis being considered to explain the collapse?

When NIST initiated the WTC investigation, it made a decision not to hire new staff to support the investigation. After the June 2004 progress report on the WTC investigation was issued, the NIST investigation team stopped working on WTC 7 and was assigned full-time through the fall of 2005 to complete the investigation of the WTC towers. With the release and dissemination of the report on the WTC towers in October 2005, the investigation of the WTC 7 collapse resumed. Considerable progress has been made since that time, including the review of nearly 80 boxes of new documents related to WTC 7, the development of detailed technical approaches for modeling and analyzing various collapse hypotheses, and the selection of a contractor to assist NIST staff in carrying out the analyses. It is anticipated that a draft report will be released by early 2007.

SIX YEARS to conduct an investigation of an event that has so far plunged US into two wars and consumed hundreds of thousands of lives???

Then they brag about reviewing 80 boxes of documents in one year? A team of 8 lawyers in New York can devour 80 boxes in ONE WEEK.

Americans can walk on the moon and conduct stem cell research but they can't timely investigate the crime scene of the single most devastating attack on domestic soil in the history of our nation because they "made a decision not to hire new staff to support the investigation"? Whose decision was that? A banker's?

Or was it the Chief Executive who 'decided' it was more important to execute a war on a nation he concedes had NOTHING to do with 9/11? And another nation that was harboring a person who the FBI concedes it has no evidence to link to 9/11? When will the madness end?

The current NIST working collapse hypothesis for WTC 7 is described in the June 2004 Progress Report on the Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster (Volume 1, page 17, as well as Appendix L), as follows:


• An initial local failure occurred at the lower floors (below floor 13) of the building due to fire and/or debris-induced structural damage of a critical column (the initiating event) which supported a large-span floor bay with an area of about 2,000 square feet;
  
• Vertical progression of the initial local failure occurred up to the east penthouse, and as the large floor bays became unable to redistribute the loads, it brought down the interior structure below the east penthouse; and
  
• Triggered by damage due to the vertical failure, horizontal progression of the failure across the lower floors (in the region of floors 5 and 7 that were much thicker and more heavily reinforced than the rest of the floors) resulted in a disproportionate collapse of the entire structure.
  This hypothesis may be supported or modified, or new hypotheses may be developed, through the course of the continuing investigation.

In other words, they're making sh*t up.

By now, our government is renowned for its world-class ineptitude. But, they really out-did themselves with this fact sheet.

The madness won't end until 'we the people' put a stop to it.

Prepare for the third stage of Truth. Unfortunately, getting there will be violent.

Posted by Me at 8/31/2006 02:07:00 pm | Permalink | Comments

RUMMY’S REVERIE: “THE MEDIA MADE ME LOSE THE WAR”
By Mike Whitney | Information Clearing House

Don Rumsfeld may be a lousy Secretary of Defense, but he’s the best buck-passer this country’s ever had. Nothing is ever his fault. Not Guantanamo, not Abu Ghraib, not Falluja, not Haditha, not de-Baathification, not the insurgency; nothing. Ever. Of course, ever since Saddam’s bronze torso hit the pavement in Fidros Square, the occupation has steadily unraveled and turned into a quagmire. But that’s not Rummy’s fault either. Like President Bush said, “He’s doin’ a heck-uva job”. Sec-Def Houdini put his excuse-making talents on full-display yesterday in a speech at Fallon Naval Air Station in Nevada. He accused terrorist groups of “manipulating the media” to erode support for the war on terror. “What bothers me the most,” he opined, “is the way they are actively manipulating the media in this country. They can lie with impunity…That’s the thing that keeps me up at night.” Some of us were hoping that Iraq was keeping Rummy “up at night”…or maybe that niggling issue of torture and abuse that keeps popping up in the newspapers. But, noooo; it’s the looming specter of Zarqawi at his keyboard e mailing his hypnotic prose to unwitting Americans who are seduced by his vile propaganda. Huh? What exactly is Rumsfeld talking about? Or are these just the early signs of delirium praecox? “The enemy is so much better at communicating,” he moaned. “I wish we were better at countering that because the constant drumbeat of the things they say—all of which are not true—

is harmful.” “Better at communicating”? Better than FOX News, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and the whole alphabet-soup of cable stations that pitch Rumsfeld’s flag-waving jingoism ad nauseum? Are Bin Laden’s scratchy video-tapes really that much of a threat? How can the press corps (some of America’s best and brightest) sit through this rubbish? Isn’t there anyone in the crowd who’s plucky enough to put a stop to Rumsfeld’s ruminations by saying, “No offense, Mr. Secretary, but you’re losing the goddamn war and you’re blaming it on some fictitious Islamic media which only exists in your fevered imagination.” Rumsfeld’s precipitous decline into senility is painful to watch. At one time the square-jawed Rumsfeld embodied the swaggering self-confidence and élan of the Bush administration. His friendly banter with the adoring Washington press corps made him a darling among conservatives and elevated him to rock star status. No one could lay a glove on old Rummy; he was too smart and too quick on his feet. And, now this; an embattled old man, trying to cover his failures with one absurd diversion after the other? Rumsfeld should be on the front porch shooing kids off the lawn not steering the world’s most powerful military towards an impending catastrophe. We need new leadership; pronto. Rumsfeld can swap his stories about Bin Laden Media with his fellows at the Senior Center, not from the podium at the Pentagon.

Posted by Me at 8/31/2006 12:36:00 pm | Permalink | Comments

IRANIAN PRESIDENT: US, BRITAIN ACT LIKE 'OWNERS OF THE WORLD'
By Julie Stahl | CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad challenged President Bush to an uncensored debate on world issues during a televised press conference on Tuesday. He remained defiant just two days before the United Nations deadline expires for Iran to halt its nuclear enrichment program. "I suggest holding a live TV debate with Mr. George W. Bush to talk about world affairs and the ways to solve those issues," he said. Ahmadinejad criticized the British and U.S. international role in the post-World War II era. "The political situation of World War II has been kept alive by the [super] powers. They have embarked on [an] arms race...in order to safeguard superiority over other nations," the Iranian news agency IRNA quoted him as saying. The Iranian president criticized the decision-making process of the U.N. Security Council and challenged the power of the five permanent Security Council members -- among them the U.S. and Britain. "The U.S. and Britain are using such a privilege as if they were the owners of the world. How many years should they enjoy this privilege?" he asked.

The U.S. is pushing for sanctions against Iran if Tehran refuses to submit to the Security Council's demand to suspend uranium enrichment by the August 31 deadline. Enriched uranium is essential for producing nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad inaugurated a heavy water production plant several days ago. He said then that his country would not give up what he considers his country's "right" to develop a nuclear program. He argued that did not pose a threat to "anyone, even the Zionist regime, which is the enemy." During his Tuesday press conference, Ahmadinejad said that the establishment of the State of Israel had been based on a "myth." He previously has called the Holocaust a "myth" and suggested that the State of Israel be moved to Europe. In a letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel last month, Ahmadinejad suggested the Allied powers had fabricated the story of the Holocaust to embarrass Germany. The contents of the letter were released this week as Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was visiting Germany. "Is it not a reasonable possibility that some countries that had won the war made up this excuse to constantly embarrass the defeated people...to bar their progress," he wrote.

copyright 1998-2006 Cybercast News Service.

Posted by Me at 8/30/2006 02:58:00 pm | Permalink | Comments

R.I.P., PRIVATE JASON CHELSEA - IF ONLY YOU HAD KNOWN.
By Felicity Arbuthnot


It is to be hoped, that somewhere, in the King's Lancaster Regiment, in the north of England, there are Commanders suffering Hadean nightmares of guilt. They have a duty of care to their young, often vulnerable and sometimes even, ill educated recruits. They are, in effect, in loco parentis. Lying them to death is not in the Ministry of Defence Manuals, it is still to be hoped.

On 10th August, Private Jason Chelsea, an Infantry man, just nineteen years old, who had joined the Regiment at sixteen, took sixty pills and slashed his wrists. According to the (London) Independent newspaper, his Commanders had instructed those set to go out to Iraq, that they could be orderd to fire on child suicide bombers and that: '.. children as young as two carry bombs ..' Dying, he told his mother, Kerry: 'I can't go out there and shoot at young children. I just can't go to Iraq. I don't care what side they are on. I can't do it.' The young man, from Wigan, Greater Manchester, barely older than a child himself was reportedly dyslexic, had been drinking hard for eighteen months (no one in loco parentis seems to have asked why) had been bullied and 'knew he had to be tough' (in the Army environment.) He was tougher than the lot of them. He killed himself, rather than kill Iraqi kids.

If only he had known : that broadly half the population of Iraq is under sixteen. If only he had known it was the 'Cradle of Civilisation'; the 'Paris of the Ninth Century'. If only he had known that all we call civilised came from Iraq and the region, from the 'land between two rivers' (the Biblical Tigris and Euphrates.) If only he had known that the letters and numbers he had problems with were invented there, before Christ and Mohammed walked the earth, before Westminster Cathederal and Britain's 'Mother of Parliaments' were built.

If only he had known how Iraqis love their kids. If only he had known how, through the grinding years of an embago (August 6th 1990 - Hiroshima Day - to illegal invasion - 9th April 2003) parents of sick children, denied even medicines by the US/UK driven embargo, pleaded with strangers, to take their children to where ever thay came from, take them in, make them well.

If only he had known that the first thing Iraqis say to a friend who has not visited for months or years (due to the complexities of the embargo years) after the hugs is: My daughter, son, neice, nephew, grandchild was top (or second) at school this term.

If only he had known, in the genocidal deprivation of the embargo years, the kids barely beyond toddling age, who were deprived of the proud education and went to sell on the streets, clean the headlights of the great buses that roll throughout the Middle East, to earn for their families. The love and care for by the people for these now little feral kids (with shame that it was happening) and how they were watched, cared for : a five year old being a 'grown up' and knowing none of the pitfalls under the vast wheels that rolled from Damascus, Amman and across the Middle East, into Baghdad's central bus station. If only he had known this was our genocidal legacy to Iraq.

If only he had known that half a million children, a silent holocaust, had died by May 1996, of ' embargo related causes' a figure agreed by the then US Ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright. If only he had known that the figure stuck there, but the children did not stop dying over the further seven embargo years. If only he had known that they now, under 'liberation' die in even greater numbers.

If only he had known the newborn, under fives, the older children with their dreams and aspirations, condemned to death by the US/UK/ UN that I carry in my heart. If only he had put a warm, dead, new born baby over his shoulder, convinced that he could somehow stroke him back to life, as I have. Died for lack of an oxygen cylinder (vetoed by the UN.)

If only he had known the families of the child shepherds, blown to bits with their sheep, in some apparently crazy 'game' during the entirely illegal 'patrolling' of Iraq by the US and UK (the two rogue states on the Security Council) during the embago years.

If only he had known that Iraq imported, broadly seventy percent of everything, yet when they attempted, because of the embargo, to become self sufficient in basics, US and UK planes, dropped incenduaries which set fire to harvested wheat and barley. If only he had known that during World War 11, Iraq gave free wheat and grain to the UK.

If only he had known, that prior to the invasion, Iraq had never known of a suicide bomber. If only he had known of the adoration Iraqis have for their kids. If only he had known the lies that had been told to him. If only he had studied painting, music, ceramics, instead of going in to the army.

If only he had known that now many Iraqi's now refer to the horror of the embargo years as ' a golden age', compared to the 'liberation'.

If only he had known that Iraqis will die for their kids - as he did. His note to his parents reads: ' Really sorry Mum and Dad. I'm just no good for you. I have got to finish it. I am just a waste.' He may be the first 'coalition' soldier, to die for not being prepared to kill the children of Iraq. R.I.P. Private Chelsea. In inestimable gratitude.

If only he had known how right his instincts were. If only he had known some of us who know Iraq. The aftermath of tragedy is always if and .. If only .. if only.

Posted by Me at 8/30/2006 02:45:00 pm | Permalink | Comments

THE CENTRAL GLOBAL THREAT OF VIOLENCE: THE AXIS OF AGGRESSION, THE UNITED STATES AND ISRAEL
TORTURE, DEATH AND DEVASTATION
by Edward S. Herman

With Israel engaged once again in a major war of aggression in Lebanon, and protected once again from any effective global response by U.S. power and veto, it becomes clearer than ever that the central global problem of organized violence and lawlessness in the early 21st century lies in the aims, collaboration and power of the U.S.-Israeli axis. These partners in aggression and state terrorism reinforce one another’s projections of power, the out-of-control superpower protecting its regional client’s ultra-ethnic cleansing, while the Israeli lobby within the United States supports the violent projection of power by the United States, which provides further cover for Israel’s escalating regional violence. What is most remarkable, however, is the feeble resistance to--and sometimes positive support of --the ATDD axis’s violence by the European countries and “international community” more broadly. Free to Aggress Consider that the United States has carried out three wars of aggression in violation of the UN Charter just over the last seven years (Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq), and that without having digested its Iraq aggression--now universally recognized as having been based on lies and a cynical abuse of UN processes, as well as being the “supreme crime”--it has actually begun a fourth aggression, against Iran, once again under the cynical cover of the UN (see Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, "The Fourth U.S. 'Supreme International Crime' in Seven Years Is Already Underway, With the Support of the Free Press and 'International Community',” Counterpunch, May 11, 2006). Furthermore, the United States was the main driver of the “sanctions of mass destruction” against Iraq throughout the 1990s which resulted in the deaths of perhaps a million Iraqi civilians, possibly the greatest genocide of the post-World War II era (with only the Congo and Rwanda serious rivals), a project also carried out by the cynical misuse of the UN. Instead of resisting these aggressions and genocidal operations, the G-8 and international community have appeased the aggressor and genocidist, never condemning its aggressions or imposing sanctions in response to its major crimes, but even collaborating with it, and in the case of Iraq giving it ex post approval and support for the deadly occupation. The UN, created specifically to prevent “the scourge of war,” has failed to pose any serious constraining force on the serial aggressions by the United States, or those of its Israeli client. This failure, and the global crisis that it reflects, has hardly been recognized in the Western media and intellectual circles, for the same reasons that underlie the appeasement and collaboration—the military power of the superpower, fear of the economic and political consequences of opposition to the United States’ and its client’s rampaging, some sense of solidarity and support for U.S. and Israeli objectives and policies on the part of global elites and media, and cowardice and lack of moral fortitude. Israel as well as the United States has been free over several decades to aggress, ignore any UN resolutions or rulings, ignore international law governing the behavior of an occupying power, and steadily “redeem the land” of Palestine by ethnically cleansing the Palestinians. It carried out a major invasion of Lebanon back in 1982, with no penalty for this aggression, no penalty for a lengthy illegal occupation, or for periodic Iron Fist bombing and ground attacks on Lebanon, or for its lengthy maintenance of a terrorist proxy army on Lebanese soil. Its fresh major aggression in Lebanon in July and August 2006 is also being carried out without any UN or other international penalty or sanctions, again as in 1982 with the protection of the U.S. veto and U.S. power, and Israel is currently threatening Iran and Syria without any apparent U.S. or international community constraint. Torture Centers In addition to preeminence in aggression, the U.S.-Israel axis has long been important in sponsoring and using torture. The U.S. use of water-boarding goes back to the war against Philippine “niggers” in 1900; its use of electronic methods of torture was extensive during the Vietnam war, along with “Tiger Cages;” and this country was the principal sponsor of regimes of torture in the 1960s and 1970s as U.S. leaders struggled against nationalist-populist upheavals in the Third World. Many premier torturers learned their lessons in the School of the Americas in those years. Abu Ghraib, Bagram and the rendition gulag are not a break from the past or contrary to “American values,” they are built on a solid tradition. (Chapter 2 of Chomsky and Herman, The Washington Connection, published back in 1979, was entitled “The Pentagon-CIA Archipeligo.”) Israel has used torture on a systematic basis against Palestinians for decades, the New York Times noting matter-of-factly in 1993 that Israel's torture victims were running to 400-500 per month, but that Israel was "rethinking" the merits of its "interrogation" practices (Joel Greenberg, "Israel Rethinks Interrogation of Arabs," Aug. 14, 1993). If this was being done to Jews on a systematic basis in some country, the outcry would be deafening, but here also an Israeli practice condemned everywhere as barbaric is treated in very low key and brings about no negative policy responses from the United States or international community. This has permitted Israel to thrive, to command massive international aid, and to be given regular accolades as a model democracy, despite its long record of being "the only state in the world to effectively legalize the use of methods which constitute torture or ill-treatment" (Amnesty International, "The Israeli government should implement the High Court decision making torture illegal," Sept. 6, 1999). (This statement was made prior to the coming into power of the “moral values” regime of George Bush, Dick Cheney and Albert Gonzales.) Killing Machines—The Killing Business is Good The United States and Israel are also major dispensers of death to peoples who stand in their way. Both are highly militarized, the United States now the dominant military power on earth, Israel toweringly superior in military strength to any of its neighbors. Both have increasingly displayed the arrogance of power and a readiness to use their superior arms in lieu of peaceable means of settling disputes. Both have gravitated to the use of high tech weaponry that has devastating effects on civilians, but which reduces the need for land troops and aggressor casualties. As noted, their violent proclivities are now mutually reinforcing. The U.S. use of atomic weapons against civilian populations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties in what was a demonstration and warning performance, stands alone in the annals of violence, and the United States has a long-standing tradition of brandishing and threatening to use these ever more lethal monstrosities. Israel also has a sizable nuclear weapons arsenal, and has long posed a threat of first use, reinforced by the absence of any nuclear retaliatory power by its nearby rivals. The Iran “threat” of acquiring nuclear weapons is the threat of potential self-defense, which would rob Israel of one important element that allows it regularly to use force against its neighbors. During the Vietnam War, in which the United States

deployed its ferocious weaponry lavishly against a resistant peasant society, it killed several million people. To this we may add hundreds of thousands killed in Cambodia and Laos. Many thousands have continued to die in Indochina from the millions of unexploded bombs that litter the soil and that the United States has made no effort to clean up or even provide supportive map guidance or technical aid. As one sign read over a U.S. military camp in Vietnam, “Killing is our business, and business is good.” Much of U.S. death-dealing has been via sponsorship. It sponsored and long had a special relationship with the Suharto dictatorship, aiding its initial genocidal burst in 1965-1966 with possibly a million or more civilian deaths by massacre, and supporting its invasion-occupation of East Timor and some 200,000 further deaths there. It sponsored the rise of National Security States in Latin America, with death squads flourishing and U.S.-trained counter-insurgency cadres establishing a state terrorism “infinitely worse than the terrorism they were combating” (an Argentine post-junta truth commission). The U.S.-sponsored wars in Central America in the 1970s and 1980s took a heavy civilian toll, with genocidal attacks on the Guatemalan Mayan Indians, among other large-scale state murder operations. The U.S.-sponsored killings in Latin America in those years run into the hundreds of thousands (the “disappeared” alone were estimated to be 90,000 back in 1981). The U.S. “constructive engagement” with apartheid South Africa and support of “freedom fighter” Savimbi in Angola contributed many hundreds of thousands of deaths in that area in the 1970s and 1980s. Israel’s killings have been on a smaller scale, but still notable in light of their claims of being victims of terrorism and merely retaliating to the actions of their weaker neighbors and the Palestinian resistance to their occupation and ethnic cleansing. Israel’s supposed “retaliation” to Palestinian “terrorism” featured a ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths of 20 or 25 to 1 until the second intifada, when the ratio fell to 3 or 4 to 1, though with a higher injury ratio (the figure of 25-1 is given by James Bennett in the New York Times, March 12, 2002). The killings at Sabra and Shatila, mainly of women, children and old people, has been estimated to run between 1,500 and 3,000, which is far greater than the Israeli police estimate of PLO killings of Israelis for the entire period 1968-1981 (282). The total of Israeli killings in Palestine are hard to estimate but run to tens of thousands. The Israeli killings of Lebanese in the 1982 invasion has been estimated at 17-20,000, and the numbers killed in Lebanon before and after that date surely run into many thousands. Devastation The United States has used its advanced weapons technology and wealth not only to kill large numbers in countries that stand in its way, but also to destroy their infrastructure and means of livelihood, thereby teaching them and others a lesson in the costs of opposition, setting back their capacity for development, and taking vengeance. Vietnam’s forests were bulldozed and destroyed by chemical warfare, its lands were widely ruined by chemicals and millions of bomb craters, a large fraction of its most competent and productive males were killed, mainly in bomb strikes, vast numbers were wounded and traumatized and hundreds of thousands of children suffered birth deformities by chemical poisoning. Vietnam could no longer pose a threat of a working alternative model. Neither could Nicaragua pose a “threat of a good example” after a decade of U.S.-sponsored terrorist and economic warfare that reduced incomes by half and played a key role in ousting the reformist Sandinista government. El Salvador, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Afghanistan, the Congo and Angola are other states that have not recovered from U.S. direct or sponsored attacks. Iraq was devastated in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991 and was then not permitted to recover, even to restore its badly damaged water and sanitary facilities, let alone to feed its people. The 2003-2006 invasion-occupation took a further heavy toll of Iraq’s already devastated infrastructure, and was also notable for the invader’s severe damage done or permitted to be done to Iraq’s libraries, museums, and other important historical monuments. Iraq is a shattered society, with serial blows administered by the United States and mainly Britain, with UN connivance. Israel ravaged Lebanon time and again from 1978 onward, with exceptionally heavy destruction of infrastructure in 1982 and now again in 2006. In 2002 Israel began a systematic destruction of the infrastructure of Palestine, destroying public buildings, records, medical facilities, libraries, among other facilities. In its recent 2006 assault on Gaza, nominally to help free a single captive Israeli soldier, its first target was the electric power station that serves 700,000 Palestinian civilians. Further targets included rooftop water tanks and mains, bridges, roads and medical facilities. At no time has Israel been penalized or punished by the EU, let alone its patron superpower, for these multiple open, blatant and illegal attacks on civilian facilities. Conclusion This is an age of escalating violence, led by a militarized superpower with an enormous capacity to kill, closely linked with an expansionist and militarized client that sees benefits to its “Greater Israel” and ethnic cleansing program in chaos and warfare. This is a continuation of long-standing policies of this Axis of ATDD, but rendered more dangerous by the death of the Soviet Union (and the ending of real “containment”) and the coming to power in the United States of an exceptionally irresponsible, stupid and weak administration. The weak, stupid and amoral frequently do stupid and horrendous things to compensate for their mistakes, and once again in the Middle East they have unleashed large-scale violence and the threat of an even wider war.. The Axis of ATDD is setting the tone across the globe. It preaches that those resisting it only understand force, but the world recognizes that this is straight out of Orwell and that in truth it is the axis duo that only responds to force or its threat. Thus the Axis leadership provokes a responsive militarization and violence across the globe, and the huge problems facing the peoples of the world (poverty, disease, environmental threats, inequality, racism, democratic deficits) are unaddressed and become steadily more serious. These problems are not going to be dealt with until the world’s publics become sufficiently aroused to throw out the rascally leaderships of the Axis and/or to force the non-Axis powers to resist Axis violence with actions that bite and cannot be ignored.

Posted by Me at 8/30/2006 02:30:00 pm | Permalink | Comments

HEZBOLLAH WARNS BLAIR: YOU'RE NOT WELCOME IN BEIRUT
By Richard Beeston in Beirut and Sam Coates | Times Online

TONY BLAIR’S peace mission to the Middle East appeared in jeopardy last night after Hezbollah declared that the Prime Minister would not be welcome in Lebanon because of his support for Israel during the war. A senior member of Hezbollah’s politburo has told The Times that Mr Blair should stay away from the country because he was “up to his ears in the blood of Lebanese women and children”. British officials are confident that Mr Blair would be welcomed by the government of Fouad Siniora, the Prime Minister. But Hezbollah, which has emerged as the real force in the country, has stepped up its attack on Britain in recent days and Mr Blair would risk an angry reception from its supporters if he visits the country. Dozens of foreign leaders, including the Emir of Qatar and the French Foreign Minister, have been welcomed to Lebanon since fighting began on July 12. But last month Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, was forced to return to Washington after she was told that she would not be welcome in Beirut because of the Bush Administration’s support for Israel. Mr Blair, who is expected to return from holiday in the next few days and is planning to spend the Bank Holiday weekend at Chequers preparing his Middle East mission, now faces a serious dilemma. He can travel to Lebanon and risk facing a hostile reception, or he can bypass Lebanon and restrict his visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories. He would then face the charge that his peace mission has avoided the very country at the centre of the conflict. Mr Blair has been keen to visit the region since the G8 summit in St Petersburg last month, when he offered to help American peace efforts in a conversation with Mr Bush, in the President was overheard to greet the Prime Minister with “Yo Blair”. When fighting broke out, Britain followed the US by refusing to call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. The policy infuriated many in the Arab world, particularly the Lebanese Shia Muslim community, which took the brunt of Israel’s bombardment. One diplomatic source admitted that Britain “got off on the wrong foot” by appearing to support Washington and tacitly allowing the Israeli offensive to run its course. Last week Britain tried to improve relations when Hilary Benn, the International Development Secretary, made a short visit to

Beirut and doubled British aid to £12.5 million. But any hope that Mr Blair might be able to repair the damage was thrown into doubt after Ghaleb Abu Zeynab, a member of Hezbollah’s politburo, told The Times that the people of Lebanon did not want Mr Blair’s help. Speaking in an interview at Hezbollah headquarters in the southern suburbs of Beirut, he said: “Blair is not welcome in Lebanon. I am not speaking on behalf of Hezbollah but all the Lebanese people. They do not want someone who cried crocodile tears to visit their country. “He is up to his ears in the blood of Lebanese women and children. He is not welcome here. He is a killer. He killed a whole nation, not just individuals,” he said. “What you see around you (the destruction of the southern suburbs) is the result of Blair’s policy. We do not want to see him.” Downing Street said yesterday that the Prime Minister still hoped to visit the region, but no date had yet been agreed. Officials refused to be drawn on which countries he hoped to visit. Mr Blair indicated before his holiday that he was keen to revive the “road map” for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. He said: “It is my intention to visit the region, in particular Israel and Palestine, over the coming period and to consult those there and of course members of the Quartet on the best way forward.” This is not the first time that Mr Blair has been told to take a back seat in the peace process. Mark Malloch Brown, Deputy Secretary-General of the UN, said to the US and Britain that as “the team that led on Iraq” they were poorly placed to take a leading role in diplomatic efforts in Lebanon.

Posted by Me at 8/24/2006 11:28:00 pm | Permalink | Comments

ISRAEL ITCHING TO FINISH THE JOB
By Linda S. Heard | Online Journal Contributing Writer

Unable to achieve its goals in Lebanon, the Israeli government has been left with egg on its face. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his neophyte minister of defense, Amir Peretz, are fighting for their political lives. Israeli newspapers demand their resignations as well as that of the bungling Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, who early in the conflict chose to bomb women and children instead of risking boots on the ground. Just about the only person in the world who is publicly patting these losers on the back is the American president, George W. Bush -- kudos to him for managing to keep a straight face. What he’s saying behind closed doors, though, isn’t hard to guess. Indeed, some Israelis have asked whether their country’s usefulness to the White House might now be severely eroded. There is a split within the top army echelon over the way the conflict was waged. Conscripts and reservists are complaining about poor training, a lack of weapons and having to drink from the troughs of farm animals or the canteens of fallen Hezbollah fighters. They say nobody told them Hezbollah possessed an arsenal of sophisticated weaponry. They say their commanders told them they would be fighting “primitives” and they had no idea they would be facing a highly disciplined force. They say they followed orders and drove their tanks through valleys where like sitting ducks they were ambushed from the mountain fastness by armor-penetrating missiles. Ordinary Israelis who from the outset believed this war was their noblest are now having doubts. The left is embarrassed at the high civilian death toll wrought by their bombers; the right is angry their army didn’t use every means at its disposal to wreak more death and destruction. The hawks are outraged that their government signed up to the terms of UN Resolution 1701, which cut short the ground war. Some complain the war was conducted at the behest of the Bush administration so as to tame Hezbollah as a prelude to a US pre-emptive strike on Iran; others say it was done to seal the warrior status of Olmert and Peretz, who unlike their predecessors aren’t career military men. A few maintain it was engineered to test out new strategies and “Made in the USA” weapons. Worse than mere disappointment over their military’s lackluster performance for the first time in decades, Israelis are aware of a serious existential threat. As long as their war machine was perceived as unbeatable the Israeli state was cloaked in an aura of impenetrable power. But this is no longer the case. It’s only logical that their enemies will have been emboldened by Israel’s defeat, they say, in which case the Israeli state is no longer as secure as it once was. So deep are the scars of doubt and insecurity in Israel’s collective psyche, that it is difficult to imagine the government will easily reconcile itself to the status quo. Whereas observers can view the conflict’s outcome dispassionately and feel some optimism that the cessation of hostilities will endure, this isn’t the case for Israel’s residents for whom winning means life over death. Whereas Israelis, although hesitant to crawl back into their bunkers, largely see the job as unfinished, Hezbollah is

basking in adulation from various spectrums of Lebanese society. This support has been reinforced since its social wing quickly mobilized to hand out wads of cash to those whose homes were damaged or destroyed without regard for the recipients’ religious beliefs. Since according to the world and its wife Hezbollah has come out on top, it’s hardly in its best interests to break the truce. It has much to gain politically from keeping a low military profile and helping to rebuild the southern suburbs of Beirut as well as the villages and towns of south Lebanon that were razed to the ground. As things stand, Hezbollah has political and military leverage both within and without. In this case, any continuation of the fight would not only constitute a gamble but would also try the tenacity of the group’s following which has already lost so many lives and treasure. The Israeli government, however, is desperate to save face and to re-establish what Israel calls its deterrent value. This desperation was seen two days before the cease-fire when thousands of troops were dispatched across the border without a clear objective. It was seen when Israeli commandos broke into a deserted hospital and triumphantly returned home with one Hassan Dib Hezbollah, a vegetable seller. And it was in evidence last week when Israeli transport planes offloaded jeeps and commandos camouflaged as Lebanese Army personnel near the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek, thus violating the cease-fire and incurring the ire of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. It’s apparent that Israel has no intention of leaving well alone. A senior IDF officer told the New York Times last weekend that Israel is committed to hunting down and killing Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader. Amir Peretz says Israel must prepare for the next round with Lebanon. And we shouldn’t forget that Lebanon is still under siege with Israeli warships ominously poised off its coastline and spy drones regularly crisscrossing its skies. The Lebanese government, on the other hand, is keen to play by the rules. It has sent the Lebanese Army to the south where it is in the process of setting up posts for the first time since 1975, and it welcomes a beefed up UNIFIL. On Sunday, the Lebanese defense minister warned all groups not to risk violation the cease-fire or else be considered “traitors." He also promised that the Lebanese Army would man the borders to prevent the import of non-sanctioned weapons. Superficially this statement appears to be a warning to Hezbollah but, in reality, it was meant for the consumption of Israel and the international community. Lebanon wants to give the message: “We are determined to stick to the truce and, therefore, any infringement will be Israel’s." In reality, Hezbollah has agreed to host the Lebanese Army. Many of its number are Shiites from the south, whose family members are Hezbollah fighters. In any event, the army isn’t equipped to take on Hezbollah even if it were so disposed. Israel is now in a cleft stick. Hezbollah isn’t giving them an excuse to renew hostilities. The Lebanese government is sticking to the letter of the Security Council resolution, and the UN is monitoring Israel’s every move. The question now is will Israel strike again before the arrival of a projected 15,000 armed internationals and risk international censure? Or will it decide to bite the bullet and give diplomacy a chance? The next few weeks will tell.

Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.
Copyright © 1998-2006 Online Journal

Posted by Me at 8/24/2006 09:28:00 pm | Permalink | Comments

HIZBOLLAH'S RECONSTRUCTION OF LEBANON IS WINNING THE LOYALTY OF DISAFFECTED SHIA
By Robert Fisk | The Independent

Hizbollah has trumped both the UN army and the Lebanese government by pouring hundreds of millions of dollars - most of it almost certainly from Iran - into the wreckage of southern Lebanon and Beirut's destroyed southern suburbs. Its massive new reconstruction effort - free of charge to all those Lebanese whose homes were destroyed or damaged in Israel's ferocious five-week assault on the country - has won the loyalty of even the most disaffected members of the Shia community in Lebanon. Hizbollah has made it clear that it has no intention of disarming under the UN Security Council's 1701 ceasefire resolution and yesterday afternoon, Major-General Alain Pellegrini, the commander of the UN Interim Force in southern Lebanon - which the Americans and British are relying upon to seize the guerrilla army's weapons - personally confirmed to me at his headquarters in Naqoura that "the Israelis can't ask us to disarm Hizbollah". Describing the ceasefire as "very fragile" and "very dangerous", he stated that disarming Hizbollah "is not written in the mandate". But for now - and in the total absence of the 8,000-strong foreign military force that is intended to join Unifil with a supposedly "robust" mandate - Hizbollah has already won the war for "hearts and minds". Most householders in the south have received - or are receiving - a minimum initial compensation payment of $12,000 (£6,300), either for new furniture or to cover their family's rent while Hizbollah construction gangs rebuild their homes. The money is being paid in cash - almost all in crisp new $100 bills - to up to 15,000 families across Lebanon whose property was blitzed by the Israelis, a bill of $180m which is going to rise far higher when reconstruction and other compensation is paid. In the 20sqkm of Beirut's southern suburbs which have been destroyed or badly damaged in 35 days of Israeli bombing, 500,000 residents - most of them Shia - lost their homes. But money is being poured in. For example, one Shia owning four floors of an apartment block, Hussein Selim, has already received $42,000 in cash for his possessions and lost furniture. And Hizbollah has pledged to rebuild the entire municipal area from its own - or perhaps Iran's - funds. A frightening side to this long-term promise for believers in the UN ceasefire is that Hizbollah has encouraged its Shia population to rent homes in Khalde, south of Beirut, since it intends to delay its entire city construction project for a year - because of its conviction that the ceasefire will break down and that another Israeli-Hizbollah war will only wreck newly built homes. Across the devastation of southern Lebanon, Hizbollah has now visited hundreds of thousands of Shia families for details of their losses. In some cases, Lebanese government officials - largely distrusted by the local population - have also made notes of compensation costs but all the authorities have done so far is to start the repair of water pipes and power lines. I found bulldozers working for Hizbollah's "Jihad al-Bena" company,

clearing rubble from streets and tearing down half-destroyed houses. "We are doing this for nothing at the moment, but we know we will get paid because we trust Sheikh Hassan," a construction team leader told me. Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, has promised to indemnify all survivors. Driving more than 100 miles across the south of the country yesterday, the sheer enormity of Hizbollah's task - and of the Lebanese government's failure - becomes evident. Looking across thegreen countryside of southern Lebanon, the villages appear undamaged as they bask in thesun. But the closer you get, the more you notice vast grey fields of rubble that were once homes. Some villages - Bint Jbeil, for example, and Zibqin - have been half-destroyed. In Zibqin itself, I found one especially poignant ruin: the bombed remains of a mosque well over 1,000 years old which the Lebanese believe contains the body of Zein Ali Yaqin, son of the Prophet Yacoub - Jacob in the Jewish faith - and grandson of the Prophet Ibrahim, or Abraham. Two of Abraham's sons - Yacoub and Ismail (Ishmael) - define the split between Islam and Judaism, the former believing God told Abraham to sacrifice Ismail and the latter contending it was Yacoub/Jacob who was to be sacrificed. Zein Ali Yaqin is thus of precious Jewish lineage - yet the casket containing his mortal remains actually moved on the floor of the shrine as Israeli bombs fell outside. The explosives have blasted down an old façade and tumbled hundreds of rocks from the original outside wall of the green-domed mosque on the slope below, cracking open the interior walls and cascading wreckage on to the floor beside the cloth-covered tomb. "The Israelis did all this to their own man," Hussein Barakat said as he hobbled down the road below. "Everyone here knows the origin of our little shrine, but look at it now." Mr Barakat is 69 and was the only villager to remain in Zibqin when the rest of the villagers fled the Israeli bombardment. He has a wound on one finger and has been left half deaf from the sound of explosions. Bodies of civilians and Hizbollah fighters were still being unearthed from the wreckage of southern Lebanon this week; four brothers, all members of Hizbollah it turned out, died together under Israeli fire in the eastern town of Khiam. Some civilian families searched in vain through the rubble for relatives. In Siddiqin, just east of Qana, I found one shopkeeper who had spent hours trying to discover the ruins of his two shops which had been turned to dust by aerial bombs. But he, too, believed that "Sheikh Hassan" would rebuild his home. A few miles away, I found a 65-year-old woman clambering like a cat over the pancaked roof of her home, looking for her family gold in clefts between the packed concrete. It is Hizbollah's army of workers which has been told to rebuild these villages. The guerrilla army's political and economic organisation will hire the tens of thousands of men to reconstruct a virtual city within Beirut and turn south Lebanon's wasteland back into the farming and tobacco-growing villages that existed two months ago.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

Posted by Me at 8/24/2006 06:35:00 pm | Permalink | Comments

DUBYA'S NEW HIT ALBUM

Posted by Me at 8/24/2006 06:25:00 pm | Permalink | Comments

THE SWINDLERS
By John Kaminski
"I've never seen a President — I don't care who he is — stand up to the Jews. They always get what they want. If the American people understood what a grip these people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms."
— Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chairman, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1970-74

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and thus clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
— Henry L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The whole world is coming together in a unanimous consensus opinion — Israel is menace to everyone, including itself. As consciousness of the 9/11 hoax spreads its growing shadow across an ever-increasing slice of the world's media spectrum, people are beginning to realize that these manipulative mass media which authenticate these so-called political leaders as genuine statesmen are really nothing but PR campaigns to legitimize the continuing robbery of the masses by the Jewish financial elite. The 9/11 hoax? People all over the world know about that one. That was when the American government killed 3,000 of its own people to prove to everyone else that it had to go to war on all the Arab peoples of the world. And everyone knows where that idea originated. After all, this policy comes highly recommended by the Talmud. We see it practiced daily in Gaza and Lebanon. The Iraq war and the continuing slaughter of other Arab people are clearly a case of the USA acting in Israel’s interests and sacrificing its own sons for Israel’s profit. Only scumbags could support this kind of activity. All Americans might want to check their eligibility for this designation. Who engineered all these false flag terror events — in Bali, Madrid, London, Istanbul and many other places — to defame the Muslim world and get its bully-for-hire U.S. government to kill millions of people? Could it be anybody else? Why would anybody else even contemplate such preposterously stupid and vicious acts, nevermind actually do this sort of thing? The Jewish network of financial manipulation and media spin has led the world through centuries of wars, all triggered at their inception by the operation of that peculiar process called usury, which inevitably results in plans to steal valuable resources from others. We have been led to believe that this is human nature when it is not. So who do you think wrote that story to deliberately lead us in the wrong direction? ******** There is no healthy explanation for why Israel does what it does to its neighbors, and what the Jewish confederation of historical pathologues has done to every country on Earth by their control of money and media across the vast span of all human time and space. Number one, by its very dogma, Jewish control of human society has changed the very nature of humanity from beings who thrive on happiness and contentment to predators who seek power and dominance over others in pursuit of only what their mad God has commanded them to do — namely, rape and plunder. Remember, Eustace Mullins pointed out that Julius Caesar was murdered by his own friends because he was a creature of the very Jews — then called Sabians and Flavians — who destroyed the Roman republic, and hundreds of years later the entire empire, but in between managed to write the Christian bible, therefore blinding

their opposition for the rest of time. So don't try to tell me Zionists are different from Jews. You're only telling me that you're either ignorant of the aberrant historical behavior of the Jewish crime machine that has been recorded for 25 centuries, or you're on somebody's payroll, mentally or otherwise. This mad God they wrote about, of course, is the legitimizing factor that makes their behavior OK in the sheepdip minds of the gullible public. It's almost as if Jehovah has seriously bad breath, in a mentating sort of way. Why are we supposed to kill these people? What is it really that we gain? Or is it all pretense? Those little Lebanese corpses murdered from above by the cowardly Israelis, you remember them, maybe. What kind of notations do they make in the bookkeeping programs of the Jewish bankers who control London about these dead children? Why, none at all, of course. This should make you realize that this is how they are treating you, only you just don't know it yet. Yes, those same bankers who control the American White House, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Chinese triad gangs. Well, you can figure out who they are? Just realize that the real Jewish names are harder to find than they used to be because Jews pretend to be blueblood Wasps and have expropriated many of the names used by Brits. I find the landscape names — Rivers, Hills, Fields, Stone, Brooks — are now predominantly Jewish, as are also Davis, Edwards and Miller. But the real game down through history has been to prevent you from figuring that out, although certainly you have long suspected that some mysterious behind-the-scenes force has been driving things all along. The fact is, you've been conned. Today, the phony democracy idea proffered by the Israel-Britain-U.S. bloodletting machine is nothing but a cover story for blatant exploitation, mass murder, and wholesale theft of whatever valuable commodities are available around the world. The only defense any country has against this economic juggernaut is to accept the bribe and knuckle under, and try to hide the fact of this perfidy from their nation's own gullible and victimized citizens. To a large extent, it has always been this way. But today, with the multiple-level programs to reduce population, we simply are facing the Holocaust that Jewish writers always hoped for — a massive die-off of gentiles so Jewish "culture" can further consolidate itself on all the world's population and intensify its sadistic tyranny. That is also written in the Talmud, which is why the Jewish powers that be work to poison us with bad medicine on more levels than you could dare to comprehend. The phony democracy insisted upon by Jewish media and consisting of a demented pervert named George W. Bush with his finger on the nuclear button represents the greatest threat to our collective future in the history of humankind. Let it roll over your tongue. Israel-U.S.-U.K. phony democracy chief threat to freedom in the world. Only then can you begin to respond to any of the world’s major problems. All discussion on any other level is simply a waste of time.

John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida who Internet essays have been seen on hundreds of websites around the world, although perhaps fewer since he started writing about Jewish issues, resulting in a substantial number of cowards shunning him in favor of their own financial security. These essays have been collected into three anthologies, including the 9/11 booklet The Day America Died, details of which can be found at www.johnkaminski.com/

Posted by Me at 8/24/2006 05:49:00 pm | Permalink | Comments

WAR CRIMES - THE CASE AGAINST ISRAEL

AMNESTY International has accused Israel of war crimes, saying it broke international law by deliberately destroying Lebanon's civilian infrastructure during its war with Hezbollah guerrillas.

The human rights organisation said the pattern and scope of the Israeli attacks, the high number of civilian casualties, widespread damage and statements by Israeli officials "indicate that such destruction was deliberate and part of a military strategy, rather than 'collateral damage'."

Amnesty, whose delegates monitored the fighting, said Israel violated international laws banning direct attacks on civilians and barring indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks.

"The scale of the destruction was just extraordinary," said Amnesty researcher Donatella Rovera, who visited Lebanon during the war and co-authored the report.

"There is clear evidence of disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks."

The group urged the United Nations to look into whether both combatants, Israel and Hezbollah, broke international law.

What's there to look into? Anyone with eyes can see that Israel is guilty of war crimes.

Even Dan Gillerman, Israel's Ambassador to the UN, admits that Israel used disproportionate force.

Is Hizbullah also guilty? Possibly, though I doubt it. The statement seems calculated more to deflect accusations of bias than to impart a suggestion of guilt.

And Amnesty is not alone.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey at Pravda outlines the case against Israel in detail:

The State of Israel is hereby accused of committing War Crimes in the conflict with Hezbollah IN Lebanon (July 12th to August 12th 2006). We present and document four counts where the Geneva Convention has been seriously breached.

Presenting an article of this type involves running a gauntlet of death threats and hacking attacks, which appear on cue normally two to three days after the document is published. However, this is not an opinion article, neither is it an unwarranted attack borne through hatred. It is objective and it is fact: The case against Israel.

THE LAW
IV, Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12th August 1949, Part I General Provisions, Article 3 states:

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: (a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

Article 10: The provisions of the present Convention constitute no obstacle to the humanitarian activities which the International Committee of the Red Cross or any other impartial humanitarian organization may, subject to the consent of the Parties to the conflict concerned, undertake for the protection of civilian persons and for their relief.

Part II. General Protection of Populations Against Certain Consequences of War

Article 18: Civilian hospitals organized to give care to the wounded and sick, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict.

Article 24: The Parties to the conflict shall take the necessary measures to ensure that children under fifteen, who are orphaned or are separated from their families as a result of the war, are not left to their own resources, and that their maintenance, the exercise of their religion and their education are facilitated in all circumstances. Their education shall, as far as possible, be entrusted to persons of a similar cultural tradition.

THE CASE
Count 1: Breach of Part I, Art. 3.1 (a)

In attacking civilians indiscriminately by deploying munitions against their homes, by strafing civilian vehicles and by deploying cluster bombs near hospitals, the Israeli Armed Forces did not provide humane treatment for persons not taking part in hostilities. The purposeful deployment of munitions against civilian structures, the most blatant of which was the attack on the Beirut power station, constituting an act of environmental terrorism, occasioned violence to life and person and acts of murder.

Count 2: Breach of Part I, Art. 10

Humanitarian agencies were not free to circulate because the IDF refused to respect humanitarian corridors, apart from which munitions were deployed against hospitals and even ambulances and funerals were fired on.

Count 3: Breach of Part II, Art. 18

Deploying cluster munitions against hospitals is in flagrant violation of this article

Count 4: Breach of Part II, Art. 24

Not only were no measures taken, the children in question were slaughtered in their homes.

*******************

As we all know, presenting legal cases in this day and age against certain states is an academic exercise because the execution of the law is made under the current New World Order by those who break it. (cf. Case of Slobodan Milosevic, illegally kidnapped and detained before his death under illegal custody after the proper provisions to guarantee his health were disregarded). In short, international law has been hijacked by a clique of criminal states who use and abuse international norms as they wish, the epitome of the unilateralist approach.

He convinced me. What do you think?

Posted by Me at 8/23/2006 02:12:00 pm | Permalink | Comments

AS AUGUST 22nd ENDS, DOOMSDAY NEOCONS SHAMED AGAIN
War lobbyist Neo-Fascist cheerleader's 'end times' prophecy unsurprisingly turns out to be total crud.

Paul Joseph Watson | Prison Planet.com
A wild-eyed crystal ball prophecy that Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would initiate world war three or the apocalypse on August 22nd, a proclamation trumpeted by Neo-Cons far and wide, has deflated - again leaving the war lobbyist cheerleaders red faced, egg-faced, and obliterating any shred of remaining credibility they had.

It's now August 23rd in Tehran, Jerusalem and by the time you read this Europe and in a few hours most of the US will see the sun set on August 22nd. There is no fire in the sky over Baghdad and no mushroom cloud over Israel. The return of the 19th Loch Ness Monster or whatever delirious entity the Neo-Cons were peddling to herald the apocalypse has not materialized.

After all the hype, even if Iran was planning to pull something off (not that they even could without nuclear weapons) why on earth would they play right into the hands of their so-called enemies by appeasing their self-fulfilling prophecy and launching something on August 22nd?

We need to use today's non-event as a means of beating what little credibility the Neo-Cons had left around the head with.

I said I would enjoy this and I am going to.

Nothing happened you stupid idiots - stop creating bullshit proclamations of impending doom and using them to stoke militarism, warmongering and justification to slit America's throat and send thousands more American troops to their deaths. Stop lobbying for world war three. You were wrong and I am calling you on the carpet to tell you that you are a lying bunch of hypocrites and your constant empty saber-rattling only makes people turn away from your bloodthirsty deceit in increasing numbers.


One of the primary culprits of this crackpot warmongering was Neo-Con Glenn Beck, who discussed the August 22nd date on several different broadcasts of his show, including the interview above with another Neo-Con sympathizer Robert Spencer - but Beck was not alone in parroting this belligerent propaganda.

“What is the significance of Aug. 22? […] This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world," ranted supposed "credible" middle east professor Bernard Lewis in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

“It’s an important symbolic day for jihadists. And I’m curious to see what happens on Tuesday. [Ahmadinejad] may just say no or he may do something a little more dramatic, launch a missile or something, to show that - Iranian defiance of what looks like an impotent West,” arch Neo-Fascist figurehead Bill Kristol told Fox News Sunday.

“Will [Ahmadinejad] attempt to make good on these threats this year on the anniversary of the Miraj [August 22], illuminating the night sky over Jerusalem?" barked Front Page Magazine, run by former Marxist turned Bush cheerleader David Horowitz.

Matt Drudge seemed to get very excited over the last two days about the imminent end of the word and decided to slap eye-catching red headlines at the top of his page speculating what Iran's response would be on August 22nd. During today's non-events in complete desperation he tried to insinuate the crash of a Russian passenger plane, which has already been dismissed as an accident, was somehow related to the doomsday prophecy by highlighting it too in red text to accompany the Iran news. The screen shot is below.


“We all hope and pray that August 22 is not the day Ahmadinejad has chosen to launch the apocalypse, but there is little doubt in the White House and at the CIA that the Iranian leader is feverishly trying to build, buy, or steal nuclear weapons, and that he will quite likely use them once he has them,” said Joel Rosenberg, who writes fictional Tom Clancy style books while trying to make real his own nightmare scenarios by peddling Ahmadinejad as the new Hitler (taking over from the last "new Hitler," Saddam Hussein).

It seems like an amazing coincidence that the "new Hitler" is always in command of the next scalp on the United States' and Israel's trophy list.

Last time I checked Iran hadn't invaded France and if they tried doing anything to Israel they would be crushed like a bug on a dance floor. Iran is at least nine years away from a nuke - Israel has at least 400 of them. If this was the comparable power of the Allied and Axis forces at the start of World War 2 then the Nazis wouldn't have made it to Warsaw.

Even if you believe the carefully massaged translation that Ahmadinejad wants to "wipe Israel off the map" - compare it with the rhetoric of Kim Jong-il - a mentally unstable despot who has nukes that have already hit Alaska in drills and threatens to destroy the world several times a year. The Rosenberg's of the world don't seem to be too concerned about that.

Despite the fact that the scare mongering doomsday proclamations of the Neo-Cons always come to pass without incident, have no doubt that when August 22nd rolls around next year, if they haven't already turned Iran into a car park by then, the Neo-Fascists won't hesitate to recycle this same old crap and a lot of duct tape buying idiots will swallow it once again.

Posted by Me at 8/23/2006 12:45:00 pm | Permalink | Comments

IT MUST BE FRIGHTENING TO BE AN ISRAELI NOW
Xymphora
It must be frightening to be an Israeli now. The class bully comes back from summer vacation and finds that all the little kids he used to beat up are now bigger than he is. Although we’ll never read it in the mainstream press, and in fact are seeing a small tsunami of articles on ‘making Aliyah’, I’m sure there is a big net emigration from Israel, as it suddenly has become apparent that he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword (the ‘demographic problem’ is about to become much worse). Instead of using the lessons learned in Lebanon to lead to an interest in negotiation, the Israeli right is using the defeat as a prod to push for more violence. Soon, Netanyahu will be back in power, and the almost hopeless situation will become completely hopeless.

By the way, the test of good faith in reading anything on this issue is whether an attempt is made to claim that the Israeli attack on Lebanese civilians was an act of self-defense. If you see even a hint of ‘self-defense’, the writer is incapable of understanding that it is not acceptable to slaughter civilians and destroy an entire country in retaliation for the capture of two soldiers, particularly when:

• The soldiers were almost certainly captured in Lebanon;
  
• There have recently been hundreds of incidents along the border, almost all instigated by Israel, and none of which led to military escalation;
  
• Hezbollah captured the soldiers in order to exchange them for Lebanese held illegally by Israel;
  
• the Israeli attack on Lebanon had been planned for at least a year before the Israeli soldiers were captured.

An inability to comprehend that the Israel-has-a-right-to-defend-itself defense has moral limits is the unique Israeli/Zionist form of psychopathy. It is based - and unfortunately this in now undeniable, and forms the basis for the right-left Israeli consensus that the problem with the attack was that not enough Lebanese were killed - in the unstated assumption that Jews are the only human beings that have moral worth. This also explains why prominent Jewish ‘human rights’ advocates seem to have no interest in the plight of the Palestinians. Only human beings have human rights, and the only full human beings are Jewish.

There is no obvious direct military threat to Israel’s existence. Hezbollah’s victory – and it was a clear victory, with the small number of Hezbollah military funerals leading to the conclusion that the death ratio was probably well over two-to-one in favor of Hezbollah – was completely defensive. Nevertheless, the entire equation of Israel’s existence has always been based on the idea that no Arab could defeat an IDF operation. That delusion has been shattered. The problem was both at the level of the highest military and political planners, and at the level of the IDF, and at the level of the Israeli soldiers.

The planners seemed to think that extensive intentional bombing of civilians would cause the Lebanese to blame Hezbollah for their problems, thus removing the civilian support for Hezbollah, thus leading to an easy Israeli military victory. Instead, as any fool could tell you would happen, Lebanese civilian opinion went entirely against the people dropping the bombs, and entirely towards the only group in the country with the ability to defend the Lebanese people. The Israelis based their analysis on the NATO success at bombing Serbian civilians, missing the point that Serbia had a functioning government in charge of the whole country which cared about the status of its civilian population. NATO blackmailed the central Serbian government into capitulating on the basis that it would keep slaughtering civilians until the government gave up. Since the central Lebanese government had no control over Hezbollah, the bombing plan was flawed from the outset, and just served to strengthen Hezbollah. Once again, the dream of military planners, that a war can be won from the air, has been proven to be wrong.

The Israelis are noticing that the IDF has become sloppy and ineffective, largely based on the fact that it has been exclusively employed as a police unit in charge of brutalizing Palestinian civilians. Israeli soldiers, used to showing force to groups of cowering Palestinian grandmothers, arrogantly stood around in Lebanese mountain passes, allowing Hezbollah to take them out in groups using anti-tank weapons. Even worse, the entire fighting ability of the IDF, both tactics and military hardware, has been formed around battling Palestinian small arms fire in urban settings on relatively flat ground. In the hills of Lebanon, facing well trained soldiers with anti-tank weapons, the Israelis were sitting ducks. A fighting unit geared around an ability to fire tank shells into groups of Palestinian schoolchildren was no match for Hezbollah. There is some karma in this: a history of brutalizing Palestinian civilians has made the IDF ineffective as a fighting force against real soldiers.

The final problem – and mentioning this is the ultimate taboo – is with the soldiers themselves. Israelis have always fought valiantly on the theory that the Jewish people had their backs against the wall and that the fight to preserve the Jewish people from anti-Semitic annihilation was just. Sending conscripts – many of them born in the Soviet Union and dragged by their phony-Jew parents to Israel as part of the ongoing Israeli scam to increase its non-Arab population, and with no interest in Israel or Jewish history or culture – who correctly understand that there is no real ‘existential threat’ to Israel, to risk their lives so the settlers can have swimming pools full of stolen water, isn’t quite the same thing. In fact, it was the Hezbollah soldiers who benefited from the fact that they knew their fight to defend their families and their country was just. We are now seeing the lies that form the basis of racist Israeli statehood finally coming home to roost.

Posted by Me at 8/22/2006 09:59:00 pm | Permalink | Comments

RESTARTING THE 34DAY WAR
By Mike Whitney


"I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war"
Cicero
Israel is in a state of post-war trauma. Its 34 day pounding of Lebanon achieved none of the stated goals and has left the public furious at the incompetence of the Olmert government. 118 soldiers were killed in the conflict and Israel’s celebrated "power of deterrents" has been smashed to smithereens. Nothing was gained. In the north, industry was brought to a complete standstill while the local people were shunted off to fallout shelters for weeks on end.

What for?

Hezbollah hasn’t been "disarmed" and the 2 captured Israeli soldiers haven’t been returned. The whole travesty was a dead loss.

The war ended as abruptly as it started. It was suddenly called off when Olmert couldn't bear the rising death-toll, a fact that was not lost on Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah said from the very beginning that the only way to beat Israel was by "killing soldiers and destroying weapons". Olmert’s retreat just proves that that Nasrallah was right.

Kenneth Besig summarized the feelings of many Israelis in his comments in the Jerusalem Post:

"Fewer than 5,000 poorly-armed Hezbollah terrorists stood off the mighty IDF for over a month. An Islamic terrorist gang with no tanks, no artillery, no fighter jets, no attack helicopters, and just a few RPG’s and rifles held to a standstill nearly 30,000 crack IDF troops with the finest tanks, the best artillery, the fastest and most advanced fighter-jets and attack helicopters in the world. And they can still empty our northern communities with their rockets whenever they want. If that is not a victory, then the word has no meaning."

Besig may be wrong when he calls Hezbollah "terrorists", but many Israelis agree with his overall analysis. Israel may have decimated Lebanon, but no one believes they won the war.

Since the ceasefire began, the recriminations and finger-pointing have only gotten worse. The daily gnashing-of-teeth in the media has reached a crescendo with every major newspaper calling for the resignations of Olmert, Defense Minister Peretz and "George Armstrong" Halutz. Disgruntled reservists are flocking to the streets in public protests calling for "heads-to-role" while hundreds of IDF regulars have signed petitions demanding an independent inquiry into the botched war plans.

"I’m telling Ehud Olmert and Emir Peretz to look me in the eye and tell me they are fit to hold their posts," said Sgt. Major Lior Vilnes one of the many protestors.

So what does this firestorm of public outrage auger for Lebanon and the prospects for peace in the region?

The probability of peace "breaking out" has never looked more dismal. Public opinion is thrusting Olmert towards another war. Already, government officials have begun talking about a "second round" of hostilities, a euphemism that is being reiterated with worrisome regularity in the press. The mood in Israel is ugly and many believe that it foreshadows greater violence ahead.

Olmert is surrounded by "hawks" from the Sharon era who brush aside any plan that doesn’t involve force. That makes military action all the more likely even though the objectives are as ambiguous as they were before.

Eli Yishai, Vice Prime Minister, sums up the current thinking in the Olmert administration:

"No army in the world is more moral than the IDF….We cannot be bleeding hearts while our citizens are being hurt. If Lebanese citizens pay the price, they will rise up against Hezbollah. I have proposed that we damage infrastructure and flatten villages because Hezbollah personnel must know they are not immune. We should make it clear to them that all residents in villages from which firepower is launched at IDF soldiers will be warned and required to leave their homes in 48 hours. And later these villages will be bombed from the air. That policy would have assured that Lebanese citizens would not permit Hezbollah to live next to them." (Haaretz)

Isn’t this the same flawed-logic that led to "shock and awe"? What gives people like Yishai and Olmert such confidence in violence when it hasn’t worked in 40 years of occupation?

The penchant among the Israeli high-command for resolving political issues with brute force doesn't bode well for Lebanon. Israel wants to settle accounts with Nasrallah and reestablish its dominance in the region, but that can only be accomplished by dealing a knockout blow to Hezbollah.

Olmert has no chance of defeating Hezbollah. Guerilla groups disappear in one place and pop up in another; crushing them is nearly impossible. The clueless Prime Minister is probably more interested in salvaging his own carreer than in protecting Israel’s national security. In truth, Olmert’s bruised vanity won’t allow him to be remembered as the "man who lost the war to Hezbollah". This will lead to a steady escalation of incitements (like yesterday’s commando raid on Balbak) which will eventually trigger an all-out war.

Restarting the conflict will only create greater threats to Israel’s security. It will strengthen the Lebanese resistance, weaken the already-feeble Siniora government, rouse more hatred for the United States, destabilize friendly Arab regimes, and further erode the perception of Israeli invincibility.

Israel has little to gain and everything to lose.

Never the less, Olmert seems to be disregarding the consequences and blundering ahead in the futile hope of silencing his critics while indulging his right-wing allies. Anything less than a full-blown assault on his Lebanese arch-rival would be tantamount to political seppuku.

Former Shin Bet chief and current Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter, made a reasonable proposal that could mitigate the tensions and extract Olmert from his current predicament. Dichter said, "We must not sit and wait for the next war. A peace agreement in exchange for giving back the Golan Heights would disconnect Syria from Iran and disarm Hezbollah."

Bingo.

Dichter's advice is dead-on. If Israel conceded the Golan to Syria, then Syria would cut-off supplies and weaponry to Hezbollah setting the stage for a comprehensive peace treaty between the 3 nations.

It’s a long-shot, but it could work and it reduces the liklihood of more fighting.

Unfortunately, Olmert quickly dismissed Dichter’s plan saying, "We are not going into any adventure when terror is on their side. When Syria stops support for terror, then we will be happy to negotiate with them."

Blah, blah, blah; terror, terror, terror; the same worn mantra we’ve heard from Bush for the last 5 years while the entire Middle East is doused in gasoline and ready to explode like a stick of dynamite.

Olmert has erected another road-block to peace and set the stage for a "second round" of destruction and bloodshed. His choice is bound to create more enemies for Israel while condemning thousands of Lebanese civilians to death.

That’s a strategy for failure, not success.

Posted by Me at 8/22/2006 09:43:00 pm | Permalink | Comments

AIPAC, THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT AND AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
By Rodrique Tremblay | The New American Empire

"Most citizens are unaware of the startling fact that for years our U.S. Middle East policy has not been crafted by seasoned experts who are committed to America's basic national interests."
Paul Findley, U.S. Republican Congressman, (1961-83)

"Thank God we have AIPAC, the greatest supporter and friend we have in the whole world,"

Ehud Olmert, Israel's Prime Minister

"Either I make policy on the Middle East or AIPAC makes policy on the Middle East."

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter Administration National Security Adviser

Nobody can understand what's going on politically in the United States without being aware that a political coalition of major pro-Likud groups, pro-Israel neoconservative intellectuals and Christian Zionists is exerting a tremendously powerful influence on the American government and its policies. Over time, this large pro-Israel Lobby, spearheaded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has extended its comprehensive grasp over large segments of the U.S. government, including the Vice President's office, the Pentagon and the State Department, besides controlling the legislative apparatus of Congress. It is being assisted in this task by powerful allies in the two main political parties, in major corporate media and by some richly financed so-called "think-tanks", such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, or the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

AIPAC is the centerpiece of this co-ordinated system. For example, it keeps voting statistics on each House representative and senator, which are then transmitted to political donors to act accordingly. AIPAC also organizes regular all-expense-paid trips to Israel and meetings with Israeli ministers and personalities for congressmen and their staffs, and for other state and local American politicians. Not receiving this imprimatur is a major handicap for any ambitious American politician, even if he can rely on a personal fortune. In Washington, in order to have a better access to decision makers, the Lobby even has developed the habit of recruiting personnel for Senators and House members' offices. And, when elections come, the Lobby makes sure that lukewarm, independent-minded or dissenting politicians are punished and defeated. It is a source of such political power, campaign financing and media propaganda that no U.S. politician can dare ignore its demands without fear of being destroyed. As veteran columnist Robert Novak recently pointed out, thanks to the influence of AIPAC and the Lobby, "Washington remains largely a bipartisan, criticism-free zone for Israel."

This is understandable. -AIPAC's techniques are so efficient that one can easily have the impression that it is a 'parallel government' in Washington D.C. -In the words of its president, Howard Friedman, consigned in a hubristic bulletin to supporters, it relies on two techniques in particular:

1. "AIPAC meets with every candidate running for Congress. These candidates receive in-depth briefings to help them completely understand the complexities of Israel's predicament and that of the Middle East as a whole. We even ask each candidate to author a 'position paper' on their views of the U.S.-Israel relationship, -so it's clear where they stand on the subject."
   
   
2. "Members of Congress, staffers and administration officials have come to rely on AIPACs memos. They are very busy people and they know that they can count on AIPAC for clear-eyed analysis. We present this information in concise form to elected officials. The information and analyses are impeccable, -after all our reputation is at stake. This results in policy and legislation that make up Israel's lifeline."

I doubt that there is any democratic country in the entire world where candidates have to pass an ideological litmus test, if they want to have a chance of being chosen candidate and being elected. -Thus, who could blame AIPAC from being convinced that it has the U.S. Congress on a very short leash? If AIPAC were a company, it could be subject to a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) federal antitrust and anti-cartel investigation for cornering the market.

Therefore, it should be no surprise that, on Capitol Hill, 'The Lobby' seems to be in charge, so much so that its near complete control of U.S. foreign policy and other policies, such as defense, has become the equivalent of a joke. We are not witnessing consensus here, but rather a situation tantamount to unanimity in the desire to align American policies to Israeli policies, each time Israel's interests in the Middle East are on the line. -A totalitarian country would not function differently. AIPAC has such a grip on Washington that sometimes one can be forgiven to confuse Tel Aviv and Washington D.C. A recent example: AIPAC penned a resolution of support for Israel in its savage and illegal bombings of Lebanon. On July 20, 2006, the resolution was voted unanimously by the 100-member Senate and the vote in the House was 410 to 8. -Case closed.

For many years, the influence of 'The Lobby' remained under the radar, being ignored or concealed by the media it controlled and by most commentators. On March 10, 2006, however, two respected American scholars, professors Stephen Walt from Harvard University and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago published a study in The London Review of Books, entitled 'The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy', about the disproportionate influence that this special interest Lobby has on American foreign policy. It said that AIPAC was "the most powerful and best known" organization in a pro-Israel lobby that systematically distorts American foreign policy. The study concluded that Israel played a major role in pushing the Bush administration toward a war with Iraq, and it argued that the pro-Israel lobby's influence on U.S. foreign policy was bad both for Israel and for the U.S. Thereafter, nobody could feign ignoring the corrosive influence of this powerful lobby on U.S. foreign policy.

Another example of the type of power 'The Lobby' carries these days in Washington D.C. is its success in establishing within the State Department, with taxpayers' money, a special interest agency, called the 'Office of global anti-Semitism'. In a move reminiscent of what happened during past centuries under totalitarian regimes, this new 'agency' is totally devoted to monitoring around the world instances, among other things, of criticism of Israel or of American pro-Israel policies. The creation of this new department of Inquisition was mandated by a law, [H.R. 4230], that President George W. Bush signed on October 16, 2004. Who says that reality is not stranger than fiction!

So-called Christian Zionists also have a significant influence on American foreign policy, especially as it relates to the Middle East. Their propaganda has been so successful that today, forty per cent of Americans believe that Israel was directly given to the Jewish people by 'God'. One third of Americans even believe that the creation of the state of Israel, in 1948, after a terrorist campaign against Great Britain, was a step towards the 'Second Coming of Jesus Christ' and the 'End of the world'. For the most fanatical ones among them, the 'war on terrorism', whatever it means, is a war of religion between Christianity and Islam. With such thinking, the world is thrown back four centuries, since the last war of religion was the 1618-1648 Thirty Years' War between European Protestants and Catholics.

These days, the American religious Right has its own special interest office within the State Department. It is called the 'Office of International Religious Freedom', whose principal mission is to meddle in the domestic affairs of other countries. Such a state agency would seem to run contrary to the "wall of separation" between church and state that President Thomas Jefferson thought he had erected with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Such governmental forays in religious matters are in addition to the state-financed 'Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives' that the Bush administration created soon after it took office. -Since the current occupant of the White House is a born-again Christian who harbors ideas which are close to those advanced by the American Christian Right it should not be too surprising if the Bush administration's policy in the Middle East has very strong religious overtones.

In any government, one has to look behind the curtains to see who is really pulling the strings and who is steering the policies. In the case of the Bush-Cheney administration, one has to know about 'The Lobby' and the 'religious Right'. Without that knowledge, one is in the dark when it comes to understanding the direction taken by certain policies.

Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@ yahoo.com.

He is the author of the book 'The New American Empire'.

Visit his blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.

Author's Website:www.thenewamericanempire.com/

Posted by Me at 8/22/2006 09:23:00 pm | Permalink | Comments