MAY LOVE PREVAIL ON EARTH
October 31, 2006
Veracity Series #16: Halloween Schizophrenia
Hello everyone!
Why picking "Halloween Schizophrenia" as a title for this 100+ page long compilation? Because I feel split between hope and despair. I don't know if you are like me, but the accrued impact of all the info and news I've reviewed and passed on to you over the past several years is really starting to take its toll on my natural instinctual good feeling about life and our future. Much of what I've read in preparing this one, especially "The Horrors of Extraordinary Rendition" which really hits home as these torments were endured by a fellow Canadian, Maher Arar, but also the Machiavellian The Power of Israel in the United States', and the incontrovertible fact that unless something is done quickly to save the planet from ecosuicide as explained in Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger all add up to a whole lotta mess. While there are always bright spots to points to and great spiritual insights that sometime come to reiterate that we still have the power within us to make things right, with the assistance of our elder spiritual family in the invisible realms and in the space-faring flotillas who can and will do nearly miraculous things to help fix things here, the fact remains, as it has clearly been stated to me in meditation recently, that the universal law of non-interference is very clear that any assistance offered must be within the rigorous constraints of this very wise law designed to ensure that freewill decisions made - or NOT made - by embodied souls, based on their self-chosen tests and earthly circumstances, are fully honored so as to enable the karmically-driven learning experiences so necessary for our soul's spiritual advancement.
So in short, this whole mess is of our own design, and even if we despise the darkly inclined souls who have so much contributed to it, we should in fact be thankful for their unrelenting dedication to achieving their end of the karmic bargain. The question is: Will we uphold our own end of it?... Aid and assistance will be overtly provided only when we have already dealt ourselves with creating the right conditions for such assistance to manifest. There is no way around this one. The buck stops with us or the mess continues if we don't attend to it. But what is that "us"? Is it our megalomaniac ego always striving to be in control, or is it our soul persona, this aggregation of countless lifetimes of searing experiences and unimaginable wisdom that simply KNOWS? That is the crux of the lesson we are here to learn...
Are we an ego lost in a sea of ego-driven greed and madness, forever blind to the miraculous Force that thrives and throbs in us... or are we a soul extension of the Universal One behind, within and beyond All That is?
Shifting to that place in us and staying - deliberately, constantly, unerringly - centered there is the simplest and more bliss-filled of all choices.
A flip-second freewill decision is all it takes...
And from there all doors open, all changes become possible and an irresistible spiritual juggernaut will spring forth from our combined Love to heal all that needs healing...
Here and now...
Now THAT feels better...
Do you come along for the ride?
There NOTHING to do but to BE...
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com
P.S. Your feedbacks are as always welcomed and may be included in a coming compilation - unless you prefer they are not. Circulating this compilation (or any part of it) and personally inviting your correspondents to subscribe to this list would also help enlarge the circle of people who have access to this material. Please include the following note and the URL address for the archived copy below along with your forwards, so others may have the opportunity to explore the original copy, if they so choose.
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THE QUOTES...
"I have to echo the sentiments there regarding The Christ Letters at www.christsway.co.za. They are, I believe, the greatest gift to humanity at this time. I add my intention that everyone will eventually read them, work with the guidance daily and assist in raising consciousness to the level of Christ Consciousness globally. I have shared them with so many people and we are all benefiting immensely already. I have spoken via email with The Recorder who is still available to answer any questions via email. The Recorder would love for people to write about their personal experiences with The Letters and the other Messages from Christ on the website, in the blog. So please let's all share our experiences and create a wave of intention and enthusiasm for this wonderful gift we have been given from the horses mouth so to speak!!"
Craig Cumming tryhypnosis@yahoo.com>, 27 Oct 2006 - He also sent this comment in another email: "I would also like to take this opportunity to thank you for the Earth Rainbow Network, your hard work and dedication and for all the wonderful information you share with us all on a regular basis. Your emails are the ones I most look forward to each week. I am like you in that I also have a passion for sharing information and for the Truth. For people to wake up and see what is going on under their noses, to generate enough awareness and create a movement of people who create a collective wave of intention on a daily basis that will manifest the changes we all long for."
"No matter what the results of the upcoming election, the so-called "leadership" of either party cannot take us through the difficult passage that lies ahead -- shifting from a consumer-based, money-based system to an earth-based love-based one. Most of these people are so entrenched in the dominator-victim paradigm that they find it hard to imagine anything else. So we must help them by becoming the leaders we have been waiting for. And we must build that leadership on our founding document, and reaffirm the Declaration of Independence as the Supreme Law of the Land. Keeping in mind the Supreme Law of the Land, what do we do between now and the election on November 7th? With even the mainstream press lamenting the possibility of miscounted votes and votes that don't count, and with the possibility of a pre-election military strike on Iran still on the radar, how do we spend the next ten days? I reiterate what Mark Crispin Miller said just a few weeks ago. The best way to counteract vote fixing is to show up in record numbers and overwhelmingly give this regime a vote of no confidence. Although there was evidence that votes were fixed in Pennsylvania in 2004 (based on discrepancies between exit polls and vote tallies) John Kerry still won the state -- because the margin was too large to overcome by fakery."
- Steve Bhaerman info@wakeuplaughing.com>, taken from The Supreme Law of the Land, October 27 (Not archived anywhere)
"What's happening today in Iraq and Palestine is so outrageous and chaotic, Petras refers to a "House of Horrors" in both countries with the Zionist militarists at the Pentagon and their Israeli counterparts in charge of their respective "Horror Shows ... under the big tent of a 'Mid-East Democratic Reform Initiative.' " This is the modus operandi of empire building and colonization -- blast and tear a nation to shreds so it can never again exist as it once did. Then terrorize the people into submission and kill off all the ones who resist. It's a barbaric thumb in the eye to humanity, but this is the way rogue empires do things, especially when they're too powerful to challenge. The US-led killing machine is in full operation in Iraq, and so is the Israeli one in the OPT. Petras calls the one there "Israel's Final Solution" or the "Palestinian Holocaust," and it's focal point is in Gaza which even unoccupied is the world's largest open-air prison for its 1.45 million people in the most densely populated space of its size in the world. Today the Strip and the West Bank are Israeli-directed killing fields targeting Palestinian civilians helpless to stop it beyond their courageous acts of desperation with crude weapons and their bodies against tanks, F-16s, helicopter gunships, and illegal and immoral terror weapons like white phosphorus bombs and shells, cluster bombs that never stop killing and maiming, and experimental new weapons that don't have publicly-known names yet."
- Stephen Lendman - Taken from his outstanding review of James Petras' powerful new book entitled 'The Power of Israel in the United States' available at http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=70829 (see a large excerpt of this review below)
"We can't ignore them lest we pay the supreme price of the loss of our freedom (and maybe our lives) because we didn't know it was being taken from us until it was too late to act to save it."
- Stephen Lendman - Conclusion of his review mentioned above
"Like the proverbial frog in slowly boiling water, we have become inured to what goes on in the name of national security. Recent disclosures about increased government surveillance and illegal activities would be shocking, were it not for the prevailing outrage-fatigue brought on by a long train of abuses. But the heads of the civilian, democratically elected institutions that are supposed to be our bulwark against an encroaching police state, the ones who stand to lose their own power as well as their rights and the rights of all citizens, aren't interested in reining in the power of the intelligence establishment. To the contrary, Rep. Hoekstra and his counterpart in the Senate, Pat Roberts, R-Kan., are running the risk of whiplash as they pivot to look the other way. James Bamford, one of the best observers of the inner workings of U.S. intelligence, warned recently that Congress has lost control of the intelligence community. "You can't get any oversight or checks and balances," he said. "Congress is protecting the White House, and the White House can do whatever it wants."
- Ray McGovern, in "Bowing to the Police State"
"Data from physical oceanography, marine biology, meteorology, fisheries science, glaciology, and other disciplines reveal that the ocean, for which our planet should be named, is changing in every parameter, in all dimensions, in every way we know how to measure it. The 25 years I’ve spent at sea filming nature documentaries have provided a brief yet definitive window into these changes. Oceanic problems once encountered on a local scale have gone pandemic, and these pandemics now merge to birth new monsters. Tinkering with the atmosphere, we change the ocean’s chemistry radically enough to threaten life on earth as we know it. Making tens of thousands of chemical compounds each year, we poison marine creatures who sponge up plastics and PCBs, becoming toxic waste dumps in the process. Carrying everything from nuclear waste to running shoes across the world ocean, shipping fleets spew as much greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as the entire profligate United States. Protecting strawberry farmers and their pesticide methyl bromide, we guarantee that the ozone hole will persist at least until 2065, threatening the larval life of the sea. Fishing harder, faster, and more ruthlessly than ever before, we drive large predatory fish toward global extinction, even though fish is the primary source of protein for one in six people on earth. Filling, dredging, and polluting the coastal nurseries of the sea, we decimate coral reefs and kelp forests, while fostering dead zones.I’m alarmed by what I’m seeing. Although we carry the ocean within ourselves, in our blood and in our eyes, so that we essentially see through seawater, we appear blind to its fate. Many scientists speak only to each other and studiously avoid educating the press. The media seems unwilling to report environmental news, and caters to a public stalled by sloth, fear, or greed and generally confused by science. Overall, we seem unable to recognize that the proofs so many politicians demand already exist in the form of hindsight. Written into the long history of our planet, in one form or another, is the record of what is coming our way."
- Julia Whitty - taken from The Fate of the Ocean
CONTENTS
1. Israel's scandalous siege of Gaza
2. A Jewish Hitler? The rise of Avigdor Lieberman
3. The Power of Israel in the United States
4. Mystery of Israel's secret uranium bomb
5. PUBLIC UNAWARE OF DU THREAT OF CAMP FALCON EXPLOSIONS
6. Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
7. Gulag Ameripelago, Pt. 2 (Knock, Knock, Knock . . . )
8. The Horrors of Extraordinary Rendition
9. Soldiers in Revolt: 125 active-duty troops call to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq
10. Launching a new kind of warfare
11. Sinking the USS Enterprise - False Flag Pretext for War on Iran
12. The March to War: Naval build-up in the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean
13. AMERICA'S ACUPUNCTURE POINTS - PART 1: Striking the US where it hurts
14. Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger
15. Stern review offers counsel of hope & UK pushes for new climate change treaty
16. Bring What You Can Carry
WORTHY OF YOUR ATTENTION
Lord Arcturus on upcoming elections (Oct 26, 2006)
http://www.white-knights911.com/lauren/lauren_10_26_06.htm
(...) This election has the potential to sever the republican ties to the greater good and begin to allow the infiltration of light into the bodies of representing governance. Your citizenry is one that relies heavily upon the leaders of your countries to pave the way for the betterment of mankind. Therefore, the changes must be implemented from the top down, so to speak. I come before you this day to emphasize the importance of each and every voice. To assist you to understand that the beginning of your long awaited changes starts with impunity and finishes with global freedom. This is not to say that the freedom from governmental shackles will happen overnight, but to ensure that the stage is set with the voices of the people that cry out for change. The coming elections hold this potential and mark the beginning of your new embarkation to the incoming age of awakening.I and others hold the light of source for this very special time and are cascading down the space-time continuum to be at the fore of these very important times ahead. Your roles as wayshowers will be unbridled soon and each of you will begin to journey into total alignment of truth. As you take part in the changeover from despots to light bearers, each of you will come to the fore in your fields of expertise. These fields are vast and each of them must be implemented to procure the energy of change for the forces of light. Now more than ever your voices need to be heard and counted. Stand up and be the one who tells the truth for the others who have little knowledge. CLIP
Dr. David Ray Griffin Interview in Copenhagen and an Appeal to the European Community -- Excellent David Ray Griffin interview on 9/11 and US government criminal duplicity - 25 minutes (Oct. 28, 2006)
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/October2006/281006Griffin.htm
NOTE from Jean: This calm and very lucid man is an extraordinary hero. Instead of being interviewed in Europe, he should be interviewed at length and allowed to speak freely as he does in this video but in prime time on American TV with no fake elite-sponsored critic opposing him. The truth needs to come out now! And he has a very good way to express some very important truths.
Rockefeller Predicted "Event" To Trigger War Eleven Months Before 9/11 (Oct 28)
Hollywood director Russo recalls remarkable "forecast" of coming attack
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/october2006/281006rockefellerpredicted.htm
Hollywood director and documentary film maker Aaron Russo, currently receiving a wave of plaudits for his latest release, America: From Freedom to Fascism, told The Alex Jones Show that Nicholas Rockefeller had personally assured him there was going to be an "event" that would trigger the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq eleven months before 9/11 took place. Saying he had been approached many times by the Rockefellers and other members of the CFR elite in an attempt to recruit him, Russo recalled a conversation that would come home to roost on September 11, 2001."Here's what I do know first hand - I know that about eleven months to a year before 9/11 ever happened I was talking to my Rockefeller friend (Nicholas Rockefeller) and he said to me 'Aaron there's gonna be an event' and he never told me what the event was going to be - I'm not sure he knew what the event was going to be I don't know that he knew that," said Russo.Russo related how Rockefeller knew precisely what the event would lead to and which countries would be militarily targeted by the elite."He just said there's gonna be an event and out of that event we're gonna invade Afghanistan so we can run pipelines through the Caspian sea, we can go into Iraq to take the oil and establish bases in the middle east and to make the middle east part of the new world order and we're going to go after Venezuela - that's what's going to come out of this event.""Eleven months to a year later that's what happened....he certainly knew that something was going to happen.""In my relationships with some of these people I can tell you that it's as evil as it really gets - this is it - this is the game," stated Russo - also relating how members of the elite were routinely obsessed by creating a world identification society where people had to carry ID cards and prove who they were at all times. CLIP
Big Brothers' data bases (They have 20 millions records on US citizens!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vgg19J-1XE&mode=related&search=8:37
9/11 : WTC and Controlled Demolition - incontrovertible evidence!! Outstanding video (14 min 35 sec)
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoID=1163022752
Watch also Secret Evil of 9/11 -- Did the Bush administration plan 9/11 ? -- Mike Ruppert-September 11th and the Money Trail Part 1 through the links on the right.
South Tower Flight UA175 Dropped WRONG Engine In NYC Street
http://home.att.net/~south.tower/STengine1.htm
In a Nutshell alleged Flight UA175, a Boeing 767-200, with four napalm bombs attached struck World Trade Center work areas as shown in this photo with full force igniting one napalm bomb inside a work area, shooting another napalm bomb and an engine through such a work area and out the back wall. That napalm bomb exploded past the wall and the engine landed in a NYC street (...) In December, 2005, The Power Hour interviewed aircraft experts about the South Tower crash aircraft: Col. George Nelson USAF (ret.), who has 30 years of experience identifying aircraft and aircraft parts stated, “The plane that hit the south tower on 9/11 was not United Airlines (UA) flight 175”. After reviewing numerous video clips and photographs of the 9/11 attacks, he concluded, “That was not a commercial airliner. The planes were substituted.” Glen Standish, an airline pilot for over 20 years stated, “The plane seen in various video clips of the attack could not have been UA flight 175, due to the extra equipment that appears to be attached to the bottom of the fuselage”. Nila Sagadevin, a seasoned airline pilot of over 20 years, examined photos of the engine that was found at the Trade Center site. He stated, “The engine found at the Trade Center was a CFM-56, which is not utilized on a Boeing 767”, confirming that the south tower was not hit by flight 175, but by another plane that had taken its place. CLIP
The Secret of Attraction - Movie duration 1 hr 29 min http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3441262226663318004&hl=en
Sleek, well-designed promotional piece for "prosperity" mind-set. Links to many interesting other movies on the right section.
What Would Jesus Do - Animation created by a 15 year old teenage girl in Alabama (Ava Lowry - she is now 16) who is doing her part to end the war and return truth to government
http://peacetakescourage.cf.huffingtonpost.com/animations/wwjd.html
Make sure to watch also "No More Broken Promises" at http://peacetakescourage.cf.huffingtonpost.com/animations/brokenpromises.html
Other animations from her through http://peacetakescourage.cf.huffingtonpost.com/
and then DO visit her site and learn more about her at http://www.peacetakescourage.com/page-about.htm
She is a TRUE hero of our times! Check her latest Oct 10 production
Bring Them Home!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF7bqfZGcvY
Nearly impossible to keep one's eyes dry while watching this...
More outstanding powerful statements by Ava Lowry...
Viral Ad: Support our Troops
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPI_3shryxQ&mode=related&search=
Don't Shut Up - Stand Up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCiVdIZbLKM&NR
Imogen Heap - Headlock MOST excellent music and video
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2942723473529420877
HIDE AND SEEK http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1046446528694266840
Her website: http://www.imogenheap.com
Her amazing life story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imogen_Heap
Pom-Poms for Peace - Pom-Poms Not Bomb-Bombs put some cheer back in activism
http://www.catalystmagazine.net/issues/story.cfm?story=504
Their site is at http://www.pompomsnotbombbombs.org/main.html with pics.
Many such radical cheerleading groups are springing across the US right now! "Joy Rae Freeman" joyrae@joy2u.org> sent this below with great pics! "Pom Poms for Peace. These peace activists from the Lake Forest Park 4 Peace crew - have formed a cheerleading squad. They made their debut today where the larger activist group stands on a busy corner in LFP. Selma - the one in the white jacket - is 83, and is our cheer team leader. We have several chants and Selma has put great movements to go with. Examples:
WE WILL, WE WILL ROCK YOU - GO BACK TO CRAWFORD BUSH - SHAME -- Come and join us or form your own squad for local vigils and activist events. I'll send videos when available, may put up a site and would love to get some of your own when you get your PomPoms for Peace going."
Whales Revenge
http://www.whalesrevenge.com/
Target: International Whaling Commission - Current Signatures: 272,986 -- Whales Revenge is an ambitious campaign to gather 1 million signatures for a petition to stop whaling. Every year thousands of precious mammals are slaughtered in the name of so-called 'scientific research'. Add your voice by signing this campaign then forwarding it everyone you know. Please help us stop the killing. Recommended by "Nelly Lewin" nellwin108@free.fr>
Jewish rabbi appears on Fox News to say Israel should not exist
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1323449152
This rabbi tells it as he sees it and there is ample evidence below to support his view...
Whitney music box - var. 8 - chromatic - 88 organ pipes - ASTOUNDING!!!
http://www.coverpop.com/whitney/index.php?var=v8
TRY http://www.coverpop.com/whitney/index.php?var=v16 as well...
ALSO RECOMMENDED
US Warned of Ballot Box Chaos as Elections Near
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102706Z.shtml
Six years after the emergence of the now infamous "hanging chad" in the 2000 presidential elections, monitoring groups warn that technological glitches and hackers could throw next month's mid-term elections into chaos.
Can This Machine Be Trusted?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/103006M.shtml
The US's new voting systems are only as good as the people who program and use them. Which is why next week could be interesting. In one week, more than 80 million Americans will go to the polls, and a record number of them - 90% - will either cast their vote on a computer or have it tabulated that way. When that many people collide with that many high-tech devices, there are going to be problems.
Part II: Pull the Plug on E-Voting
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102706O.shtml
The degree of independent hand-auditing of paper ballot records sufficient to verify the corresponding computerized vote tallies is comparable to the effort required to more accurately count all the ballots by hand in the first place, dispensing with the machines.
Florida E-Voting Machines Already Flipping Votes
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/103006B.shtml
After a week of early voting, a handful of glitches with electronic voting machines have drawn the ire of voters, reassurances from elections supervisors - and a caution against the careless casting of ballots. Several South Florida voters say the choices they touched on the electronic screens were not the ones that appeared on the review screen - the final voting step.
Vote and Verify
http://globalartistvillage.blogspot.com/2006/10/vote-and-verify-by-cliff-durfee.html
NO MORE STOLEN ELECTIONS! We need something that creates as much confidence as making a cash deposit at a bank. Vote and Verify does that. Watch 90 sec. Flash Presentation: http://www.designaffect.com/vote/vvpres.html -- Vote and Verify website: http://voteandverify.com/ -- Vote and Verify is an unusual, unique and powerful breakthrough in exposing and/or preventing tampering or errors in the voting system using online verification techiniques.Vote and Verify proposed change to our voting system would make it so you never again have to wonder, "Did my vote get counted?" You would be able to go online and check it yourself. It takes advantage of technology and allows any person the incredible power to actually verify their votes within the official data base using the internet, and if it is incorrect, actually prove an error or tampering took place.This means that regardless of which machines and systems are used to collect the votes, they must ultimately achieve a standardized result-- a requirement to have the votes recorded properly within a data base that is transparent and available to a wide variety of checks and balances. This would include allowing the voter the ability to verify that his/her votes got recorded correctly and if not, the power to prove a discrepancy via the printed receipt.Other proposed systems mention a printed receipt, but Vote and Verify goes far beyond that by providing a voter online internet access to their recorded voting information (only for the receipt holder/voter however, no one else can view it). It also contains sufficient information on the receipt to be able to prove error if the online data differs. Recommended by John Tibayan john@tibayan.org>
What Is The Longhouse Coalition?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZHiM6C2jgs
Recommended by Daniel Stafford aqmstaffo@mailbag.com>
Too Little, Too Late? (Oct. 28, 2006)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15455544/site/newsweek/
President Bush made a big show this week of reevaluating his Iraq policy. It made a difference—but only with his base and only at the margins. The new NEWSWEEK poll finds likely voters still favoring the Democrats. - As the race for Congress enters the homestretch, the Republicans find themselves limping to the finish line, according to the new NEWSWEEK Poll. President Bush’s approval rating continues a slow but steady climb—from an all-time NEWSWEEK-poll low of 33 percent three weeks ago to 37 percent today. But it may be too little, too late: if the midterm elections were held today, 53 percent of those likely to go to the polls would vote for the Democratic candidate in their Congressional district versus just 39 percent who would vote for the Republican. (...) When all Americans were asked which they would rather see happen: the GOP retain control of Congress or the Democrats win enough seats to take over one or both houses, 50 percent of adults said they want a Democratic takeover while 35 percent said they wanted the Republicans to hold tight the reigns of power; in last week’s poll, 55 percent wanted the Democrats to take over and 32 wanted the Republicans to retain power.
Campaign ads get downright nasty - accessible through
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3032553/
Attacking Michael J Fox Backfires
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USiKpgVI4CA&NR
Rush Limbaugh Smears Michael J Fox
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14pGY1P97L8&mode=related&search=
Progress or Not (Oct 25, 2006)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15413680/site/newsweek/
Michael J. Fox's political ads supporting stem-cell research are not only in good taste, they are vital to the public discourse. "The ad was in extremely poor taste, said a spokesman for Michael Steele, Republican candidate for the Senate in Maryland, referring to a TV spot made for his opponent, Rep. Ben Cardin. That will be the line of Republicans under assault from what could become one of the most powerful political advertisements ever made. The new ad features an ailing Michael J. Fox talking about politicians who oppose embryonic stem-cell research. This is not just another celebrity ad, like those cut by the late Christopher Reeve. It's a celebrity shot to the solar plexus of the GOP. Whatever happens in the campaign, the ad is already a classic and will be mentioned in the same breath as LBJ's famous 1964 "Daisy" ad and other unforgettable political moments on television. Rush Limbaugh helped cement the ad's place in history with his astonishingly insensitive remark that Fox "was either off his medication or was acting." Limbaugh quickly apologized but the damage to his own reputation was already done.Fox, star of megahit TV shows and movies like Family Ties and Back to the Future, was for years one of the most popular actors in the United States. He still works, but is clearly debilitated by Parkinson. Throughout the ad, he sways back and forth, showing signs of advanced disease. CLIP
The Morality of Campaign Ads
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/103006A.shtml
William Fisher writes: "Lying in politics gives a green light to lying, period. And the more we tacitly buy into this Faustian bargain, the more it helps to destroy the character of our country and the culture of our society."
The Dixie Chicks Ad NBC Doesn’t Want You To See
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/27/dixie-chicks-advertisement-nbc
NBC is refusing to air an ad for the new Dixie Chicks documentary, “Shut Up & Sing.” Variety reports, “NBC’s commercial clearance department said in writing that it ‘cannot accept these spots as they are disparaging to President Bush.’” Harvey Weinstein, who is distributing the movie, issued the following statement: It’s a sad commentary about the level of fear in our society that a movie about a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted for exercising their right of free speech is now itself being blacklisted by corporate America. The idea that anyone should be penalized for criticizing the president is profoundly un-American. ThinkProgress has obtained the ad NBC doesn’t want you to see. Watch it at http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/27/dixie-chicks-advertisement-nbc/
More on Shut Up and Sing, including when it comes to your city, at http://www.myspace.com/shutupandsing.
Big Media Interlocks with Corporate America - By Peter Phillips
http://www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/big_media_interlocks.html
Mainstream media is the term often used to describe the collective group of big TV, radio and newspapers in the United States. Mainstream implies that the news being produced is for the benefit and enlightenment of the mainstream population—the majority of people living in the US. Mainstream media include a number of communication mediums that carry almost all the news and information on world affairs that most Americans receive. The word media is plural, implying a diversity of news sources. However, mainstream media no longer produce news for the mainstream population—nor should we consider the media as plural. Instead it is more accurate to speak of big media in the US today as the corporate media and to use the term in the singular tense—as it refers to the singular monolithic top-down power structure of self-interested news giants. A research team at Sonoma State University has recently finished conducting a network analysis of the boards of directors of the ten big media organizations in the US. The team determined that only 118 people comprise the membership on the boards of director of the ten big media giants. This is a small enough group to fit in a moderate size university classroom. These 118 individuals in turn sit on the corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations. In fact, eight out of ten big media giants share common memberships on boards of directors with each other. NBC and the Washington Post both have board members who sit on Coca Cola and J. P. Morgan, while the Tribune Company, The New York Times and Gannett all have members who share a seat on Pepsi. It is kind of like one big happy family of interlocks and shared interests. The following are but a few of the corporate board interlocks for the big ten media giants in the US: CLIP NOTE from Jean: The US media is the best brainwashing machine ever devised to hypnotize the gullible public into believing and buying anything that further increase the bottom line of American corporations as well as the political agenda of its elite... Seeing the whole US media for what it is - a huge, ongoing disinfomercial - and shutting them out of your life is a first step in regaining one's sovereign intelligence, discernment and critical ability to make decisions for the highest good of all...
Corporate Media Ignores US Hypocrisy on War Crimes
http://www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/corporatemedia.html
During the first week of December 03, US corporate media reported that American forensic teams are working to document some 41 mass graves in Iraq to support future war crime tribunals in that country. Broadly covered in the media, as well, was the conviction of General Stanislav Galic by a UN tribunal for war crimes committed by Bosnian Serb troops under his command during the siege of Sarajevo in 1992-94.These stories show how corporate media likes to give the impression that the US government is working diligently to root out evil doers around the world and to build democracy and freedom. This theme is part of a core ideological message in support of our recent wars on Panama, Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Governmental spin transmitted by a willing US media establishes simplistic mythologies of good vs. evil often leaving out historical context, special transnational corporate interests, and prior strategic relationships with the dreaded evil ones. (...) It seems that the US government's interest in addressing mass graves and war crimes extends only to our opponents and that we tolerate such inhuman behavior among those who support our political agendas. The corporate media's complicity in this hypocrisy is a glaring example of the need for widespread media reform in the US.
Bush "Upbeat" on Iraq?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/103006Z.shtml
While he was discussing the situation in Iraq and explaining the reasons the United States launched a pre-emptive strike against the country, Bush told the journalists that "I believe when you get attacked and somebody declares war on you, you fight back. And that's what we're doing." Jason Leopold argues that for President Bush to say publicly that the United States attacked Iraq because of 9/11 is an insult to the more than 2,809 men and women who have died in combat in Iraq and tens of thousands of other soldiers who were maimed, believing they were fighting a war predicated on finding weapons of mass destruction.
Where all the US defense money goes - Black Project excluded!
http://www.projectcensored.org/downloads/Global_Dominance_Group.pdf
Company Defense Contracts 2004 Total Revenue 2004 % from DOD
Lockheed Martin Corporation $20,690,912,117 $35,526,000,000 58%
General Dynamics Corporation $9,563,280,236 $19,178,000,000 50%
Raytheon Company $8,472,818,938 $20,245,000,000 42%
Northrop Grumman Corporation $11,894,090,277 $29,853,000,000 40%
Halliburton Company $7,996,793,706 $20,464,000,000 39%
Science Applications Intl $2,450,781,108 $7,187,000,000 34%
The Boeing Company $17,066,412,718 $52,457,000,000 33%
The Carlyle Group $1,442,680,446 N/A N/A
Bell Boeing Joint Program $1,539,815,440 N/A
Halliburton Motto - It's Cost Plus, Baby
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/103006G.shtml
Evelyn Pringle writes: "Since the minute Dick Cheney authorized the no-bid contracts for Halliburton, the granddaddy of war profiteering has been ripping off American tax payers left, right and center ... On September 18, 2006, Julie McBride, a former Halliburton employee with the company's Morale, Welfare & Recreation Department in Iraq, testified that the mantra at Halliburton camps goes, 'It's cost plus, baby.'"
President’s Inaction May Equal Pocket Veto
http://electbarnhill.com/2006/10/24/presidents-inaction-may-equal-pocket-veto/
Military Commission Act Not Lawfully Passed - President’s Inaction Equals ‘Pocket Veto’ - Talk show host Alex Jones’ brief interview last week with an unknown caller has sent constitutionalists and legal researchers scurrying for the law books. “The Military Commission Act is not law!” the man barked. “The ‘pocket veto’ clause of the constitution has already nullified it.”He then pointed out to the national radio audience exactly what the part about “pocket veto” in Article One, Section 7 of the U. S. Constitution means. Indeed, it appears that President Bush’s signing of the infamous “6166,” which in effect eliminates the 4th Amendment protection of citizens in their homes and a whole lot more, is moot. He was too late. Now Jones and many others are wondering, who in an official capacity is going to point this out and enforce it? Here is what the law says and what happens when a sitting president sticks a bill passed by congress into his pocket instead of signing it and sending it back: A Pocket Veto occurs when the President fails to sign a bill within the 10 days allowed by the Constitution. Congress must be in adjournment in order for a pocket veto to take effect. If Congress is in session and the president fails to sign the bill, it becomes law without his signature. Now to the current specifics. From the U.S. Constitution Article 1, Section 7: “…If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevents its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.” Since Congress cannot vote while in adjournment, a pocket veto cannot be overridden. A pocket veto is a legislative maneuver in American federal lawmaking. The U.S. Constitution requires the President to sign or veto any legislation placed on his desk within ten days (not including Sundays). If he does not, then it becomes law by default. The one exception to this rule is if Congress adjourns before the ten days are up. In such a case, the bill does not become law; it is effectively, if not actually, vetoed. Ignoring legislation, or “putting a bill in one’s pocket” until Congress adjourns is thus called a pocket veto. Congress passed 6166 on September 29th, presented it to the President on October 10th, and adjourned on October 13th. Bush signed it on October 17th, the week after Congress had adjourned, thereby rendering it “vetoed” by constitutional standards. CLIP
Report Says Iraq Contractor Is Hiding Data From US
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102806Z.shtml
A Halliburton subsidiary that has been subjected to numerous investigations for billions of dollars of contracts it has received for work in Iraq has systematically misused federal rules to withhold basic information on its practices from American officials, a federal oversight agency said yesterday. Although KBR has been subjected to a growing number of specific investigations and paid substantial fines, this marks the first time the federal government has weighed in and accused it of systematically engaging in a practice aimed at veiling its business practices in Iraq.
Military "Lost" Hundreds of Thousands of Weapons
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/103006N.shtml
The American military has not properly tracked hundreds of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces, and has failed to provide spare parts, maintenance personnel, or even repair manuals for most of the weapons given to the Iraqis.
Iran Sounds an Awful Lot Like Iraq
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102906X.shtml
Four weeks ago, Congress enacted and President Bush signed the Iran Freedom Support Act, a resolution that mandates sanctions against any country aiding Iran's nuclear programs, even those to which that country is legally entitled under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. If the confrontation over Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program ends in war - initiated by this administration or the next - you can bet this law will be cited as proof that Congress was onboard all along.
Target Iran - This is a must listen
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15434.htm
Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh. The Truth About the White House's Plans for Regime Change.
Scott Ritter: Weapons of Mass Delusion
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15436.htm
Ritter gives his analysis of the real reasons for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The Rise of the Global Dominance Group: 9/11 Pre-Warnings & Election Irregularities in Context -- By Peter Phillips, Bridget Thornton and Celeste Vogler
http://www.projectcensored.org/downloads/Global_Dominance_Group.pdf
The leadership class in the US is now dominated by a neo-conservative group of people with the shared goal of asserting US military power worldwide. This global dominance group, in cooperation with major military contractors, has become a powerful force in world military unilateralism and US political processes. This research study is an attempt to identify the general parameters of those who are the key actors supporting a global dominance agenda and how collectively this group has benefited from the events of September 11, 2001 and irregularities in the 2004 presidential election. This study examines how interlocking public private partnerships, including the corporate media, public relations firms, military contractors, policy elites, and government officials, jointly support a US military global domination agenda. We ask the traditional sociological questions regarding who wins, who decides, and who facilitates action inside the most powerful military-industrial complex in the world. A long thread of sociological research documents the existence of a dominant ruling class in the United States, which sets policy and determines national political priorities. The American ruling class is complex and inter-competitive, maintaining itself through interacting families of high social standing who have similar life styles, corporate affiliations and memberships in elite social clubs and private schools.1 (...) Should the 2006 election bring Democratic control to the House or Senate, we would likely see only a slight slowing of the GDG agenda, but certainly not a reversal. The events over the past couple of decades and especially the first five years of this century suggest that something some would call fascism has taken root in the US and there is little indication that a reversal is evident. Vice President Wallace wrote in The New York Times on April 9, 1944, “The really dangerous American fascist,... is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.” Wallace then added, “They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.” We are past the brink of totalitarian facist-corporatism. Challenging the Neo-cons and the GDG agenda is only the beginning of reversing the long-term conservative reactions to the gains of the 1960s. Re-addressing poverty, the UN Declaration of Human Rights and our own weapons of mass destruction is a long-term agenda for progressive scholars and citizen democrats. Recommended by "Jane Odin" ching@taosnet.com> who wrote: "There is a MUST READ article in the Nov/Dec issue of Nexus entitled The Rise of the Global Dominance Group. It's a comprehensive overview of the neo-con, new world order agenda and details the U.S.military-industrial complex since WW2."
Top Government Official Says US on Verge of Economic Disaster
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102906Z.shtml
There's a dirty little secret everyone in Washington knows, or at least should. The vast majority of economists and budget analysts agree: The ship of state is on a disastrous course, and will founder on the reefs of economic disaster if nothing is done to correct it.
The Dollar's Full-System Meltdown - By Mike Whitney
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15440.htm
Everyone in Washington already knew that doomsday was approaching. That's the way the system was designed from the very beginning. It's all part of the madcap scheme to "starve the beast" and transfer the nation's wealth to a handful of western plutocrats.
Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2006
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19381
The United States (53rd) has fallen nine places since last year.
U.S. hails airborne laser as weapons milestone
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061027/ts_nm/arms_usa_laser_dc
The so-called Airborne Laser has been developed at a cost so far of about $3.5 billion with the aim of destroying, at the speed of light, all classes of ballistic missiles shortly after their launch. If successful in flight testing and deployed, it would become part of an emerging U.S. anti-missile shield that also includes land- and sea-based interceptor missiles. NOTE: This could eventually alter the balance of the Mutually assured destruction situation.
U.S. Predator drone killed 80 In Pakistan Attack
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15443.htm
Despite earlier reports that the missiles had been launched by Pakistani military helicopters, Pakistani intelligence sources now tell ABC News that the missiles were fired from a U.S. Predator drone plane.
US Military in Paraguay Threatens Region
http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2007/index.htm#25
Five hundred U.S. troops arrived in Paraguay with planes, weapons, and ammunition in July 2005, shortly after the Paraguayan Senate granted U.S. troops immunity from national and International Criminal Court (ICC) jurisdiction. Neighboring countries and human rights organizations are concerned that the massive air base at Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay is potential real estate for the U.S. military.While U.S. and Paraguayan officials vehemently deny ambitions to establish a U.S. military base at Mariscal Estigarribia, the ICC immunity agreement and U.S. counterterrorism training exercises have increased suspicions that the U.S. is building a stronghold in a region that is strategic to resource and military interests.
Niger Delta Bears Brunt After 50 Years of Oil Spills
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/102706EA.shtml
It was revealed yesterday that up to 1.5 million tons of oil - 50 times the pollution unleashed in the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster - have been spilled in the ecologically precious Niger Delta over the past 50 years.
World oil production may have peaked-executive
http://tinyurl.com/yjz7g3
World production of crude oil may have already peaked, setting the stage for declining output that could lag demand, a top advocate of the "peak oil" theory said on Thursday.
Dishing Out Power With a Solar Engine
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/102706EC.shtml
The Infinia company is trying to prove that a 19th-century design known as the Stirling engine has a place in the emerging market for clean energy.
Omega-News Collection 28. October 2006
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/2862167/
1.
From http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15423.htm
Israel's scandalous siege of Gaza
By Patrick Seale
10/27/06 "IHT" -- -- Israel has killed 2,300 Gazans over the past six years, including 300 in the four months since an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, was captured in a cross-border raid by Palestinian fighters on June 25. The wounded can be counted in the tens of thousands. Most of the casualties are civilians, many of them children.
The killing continues on a daily basis - by tank and sniper fire, by air and sea bombardment, and by undercover teams in civilian clothes sent into Arab territory to ambush and murder, an Israeli specialty perfected over the past several decades.
How long will the "international community" allow the slaughter to continue? The cruel repression of the occupied territories, and of Gaza in particular, is one of the most scandalous in the world today. It is the blackest stain on Israel's patchy record as a would-be democratic state.
Some form of intervention is urgently required, perhaps in the form of an international force on the border between Israel and Gaza, to protect each side from the other, to allow some air into the moribund Gaza economy, and to bring relief to a humanitarian catastrophe.
Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain - verbally, at least, a staunch supporter of a two-state solution - must feel a certain sense of guilt at having failed to persuade President George W. Bush to advance the cause of Palestinian self-determination. By joining Bush in the invasion of Iraq, he may have imagined he could persuade the president to advance the Israeli- Palestinian peace process. He had counted without Washington's pro-Israeli neoconservatives, and their influence on Bush's Middle East policy.
Far from reining in the Israeli hawks, messianic settlers, Arab-killers and expansionists, Bush gave them a completely free hand - and continues to do so.
This may explain why Blair, addressing his last Labour Party conference a month ago, announced that he would make resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the priority of his remaining time in office. Alas, no action has followed these brave words, save for a suggestion that Britain would help the Palestinians to build institutions.
Institutions? What fantasy world does Blair inhabit? One and a half million Palestinians, two-thirds of them under the poverty line, suffering 45 percent unemployment, packed into a narrow strip of 360 square kilometers, are being besieged, starved, cut off from the world and bombed on a daily basis, and Blair talks about building Palestinian institutions! How about stopping the killing first? Does Britain's word count for nothing?
I have scoured British government Web sites and have found stirring speeches and statements by the Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett and other officials about Iraq, Africa, Afghanistan, climate change and so forth, but not a word about the ongoing criminal subjugation of Gaza.
It has been left to Jan Egeland, the UN humanitarian affairs coordinator, to describe Gaza as a "ticking bomb" and to warn of a social explosion. To end the shameful boycott of the democratically elected Hamas government, there are rumors that Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, may appoint Munib al-Masri, a rich businessman from Nablus, to head a government of independent technocrats. At the time of writing, however, Hamas had not agreed to stand aside.
The endurance of Gaza is legendary, but even the bravest man must falter when he can no longer feed his children and his home is reduced to rubble.
The situation is all the more urgent because, according to reports from Israel, something bigger and still more lethal is in prospect. Fresh from the indiscriminate slaughter they unleashed on Lebanon this summer - and no doubt eager to efface the memory of that fiasco - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, and the chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, are said to be about to mount a military offensive against Gaza, on a far larger scale than the bombardments and armored incursions of recent months.
Their declared aim is to put an end once and for all to the home-made Qassam rockets that defiant Palestinians still manage to fire from time to time into the Israeli Negev. These are highly irritating but largely ineffectual weapons. Five Israelis have been killed by these rockets in the past six years.
Another wider Israeli aim is to destroy Hamas and root out all armed Palestinian opposition to Israel in the Gaza Strip. General Halutz has been making lurid statements to the effect that Hamas and other Palestinian groups have smuggled millions of dollars worth of weapons into Gaza from Egypt - including antitank and antiaircraft weapons as well tons of explosives - and have built a whole underground city to store their arsenal. Gaza, he declares, cannot be allowed to become another Lebanon.
Israel has already partially reoccupied the so-called Philadelphi corridor on the Gaza-Egyptian border in an attempt to put an end to cross-border tunneling and smuggling.
In the West Bank, the situation is less violent but in its way just as desperate. According to UN officials on the spot, the territory has been fragmented by no fewer than 528 Israeli military checkpoints, a 40 percent rise since August, which severely restrict Palestinian freedom of movement.
Not only has the territory been chopped up into three regions, but even within these zones Palestinian communities are isolated from each other, making it very difficult for people to reach their land or gain access to basic services such as health and education. As the economy stagnates and the population suffers, Israel's separation wall continues to gobble up Palestinian land, while dozens of illegal settlements enjoy a building boom.
Even more disturbing than the silence from London at these developments, and the collusion of Washington, is the entry into the Israeli government of Avigdor Lieberman, as deputy prime minister.
Born in Moldova, Lieberman, a burly 48-year-old, came to Israel at the age of 20. He is the leader of the far-right Yisrael Beitenu ("Israel Our Home") a party composed mainly of Russian immigrants.
Best known for having recommended flooding Egypt by bombing the Aswan Dam, he is an ardent champion of the settlers and opposes any withdrawal from Palestinian territory. His solution is the "transfer" of Arabs out of Israel so as to create an ethnically pure country. He has advocated death for any Arab members of the Knesset who dare to meet members of Hezbollah or Hamas. In any truly democratic country he would be denounced and shunned as a dangerous fascist.
Instead, Lieberman is to be given the job of formulating Israeli policy regarding the "strategic threat" facing the country - a code word for Iran's nuclear activities. As Haaretz, the left-of- center Israeli daily, commented: "The choice of the most unrestrained and irresponsible man around for this job constitutes a strategic threat in its own right."
The fact that Lieberman will have access to Israel's atomic secrets - and will serve in fact as a sort of super-defense minister - must be a source of considerable anxiety, seeing that Israeli leaders and commentators have repeatedly hinted that if the United States fails to strike Iran, Israel may feel compelled to do so. With Lieberman's entry into the government, the Israeli- Iranian confrontation, one of the most dangerous in a volatile region, will be ratcheted up a notch or two.
The Labor Party leader, Amir Peretz - already a huge disappointment to the left for his bellicose policies in Lebanon and Gaza - seems quite happy to sit at the same cabinet table with a notorious racist.
With the world's attention focused on the unfolding disaster in Iraq, on the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and on how to how to moderate Iran's nuclear ambitions - three problems for which no credible solutions have yet been proposed - the Palestinians continue to bleed, starve and suffer unimaginable humiliations and hardships under Israel's pitiless rule.
Patrick Seale, a leading British writer on the Middle East, is the author of "The Struggle for Syria," "Assad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East" and "Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire." Distributed by Agence Global.
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See also:
Israel occupation forces kills three in West Bank attack
http://tinyurl.com/y25q5p
Two men were shot dead in al-Fara refugee camp, near the city of Jenin. Residents said the men were civilians and one had been throwing rocks at troops.
'Hamas doesn't want to destroy Israel'
http://tinyurl.com/y493xf
Hamas wants to "liberate the Palestinians," not to destroy Israel, Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
Israel draws up an assassination hit-list of Hamas ministers
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&Do=Print&ID=16528
If Hamas resumes attacks deep inside Israel, the Israeli army is preparing to assassinate several Hamas leaders, particularly Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, the official Israeli radio reported on Thursday.
Breaking the Silence
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/27/1341203
Fmr. Israeli Soldier Tours U.S. to Expose Abuse of Palestinians by Israeli Military. A leading Israeli human rights organization accused Israel on Thursday of breaking international humanitarian law by holding thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israel. According to B'Tselem, international law prohibits the transfer of civilians, including prisoners, from the occupied territories to Israel. On Thursday B'Tselem issued a 53-page report outlining how Israel's prison policies has made it nearly impossible for Palestinians to regularly visit relatives in jail. Meanwhile, a former Israeli soldier named Yehuda Shaul has just begun a tour of the United States to give an inside look at how the Israeli military treats Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Shaul is a co-founder of Breaking the Silence - a group of former Israeli soldiers committed to exposing human rights abuses by the Israeli military. Last year the group revealed that Israel soldiers had been ordered to open fire on unarmed Palestinians. The group has also gathered photographic evidence that proved Israeli soldiers have abused Palestinian corpses. (...) JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you about all of these thousands of Palestinian prisoners. From your perspective, as someone who's obviously had to participate in the capturing and imprisonment of some of these Palestinian civilians, what is this doing to Palestinian society, to have so many people locked up for such a long period of time under Israeli control? YEHUDA SHAUL: I have no idea. I’m not a Palestinian. Just, you know, looking from the outside, seems like breaking all the family structure. I don't know, just trying to think of, you know, all the people that we arrested, bumping in the middle of the night through the windows, through the doors, through the roofs, waking up the family, taking people. No one knows when they're going to get back, why they were taken. You know, this is -- just, you know, almost every night in the Occupied Territories, you do an arrest operation. Every night you come back with what we saw in the pictures before, or you see now, of handcuffed, blindfolded Palestinians, who are just, you know, were now arrested, waiting to be taken to interrogations at the secret services. CLIP
The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall
http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2007/index.htm#9
Despite the 2004 International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision that called for tearing down the Wall and compensating affected communities, construction of the Wall has accelerated. The route of the barrier runs deep into Palestinian territory, aiding the annexation of Israeli settlements and the breaking of Palestinian territorial continuity. The World Bank’s vision of “economic development,” however, evades any discussion of the Wall’s illegality. CLIP
Unmasking the Second Palestinian Intifada
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15441.htm
What is happening today in the Occupied Territories isn't politics. It is an overwhelming nightmare that plagues 3.8 million people every day.
2.
A VERY OMINOUS SIGN OF VERY DANGEROUS TIMES AHEAD - THINK WORLD WAR III FOR INSTANCE... JUST AS THE US HELPED "CREATE" THE TALIBANS, ANOTHER MONSTER HAS BEEN SPAWN BY THE US, THANKS IN NO SMALL PART TO THE PERVASIVE, POWERFUL JEWISH LOBBY IN THE US - ONLY THIS TIME THE INCREASINGLY FASCIST PEOPLE GOVERNING THIS ROGUE COUNTRY HAVE NUKES AND ALL KINDS OF VERY LETHAL WEAPONS AND APPARENTLY LITTLE MORAL CONSTRAINTS TO USE THEM.
Forwarded by "Mark Graffis" mgraffis@gmail.com> on Oct 27 (Lots of links are imbedded in this article. Go at the URL below to access them)
From: http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=9923
A Jewish Hitler? The rise of Avigdor Lieberman
by Justin Raimondo
With the entry of Avigdor Lieberman into the government as deputy minister for "strategic threats" – essentially in charge of preparing for war with Iran – Israel makes a qualitative step toward a regime that increasingly resembles, in all its essentials, a rogue state, and, I might add, potentially a very dangerous one.
Lieberman's views are notoriously racist, and his rhetoric is invariably violent. He called for the execution of Israeli Arab members of the Knesset who met with Hamas or didn't celebrate Israel's Independence Day. His party, Yisrael Beytenu ("Israel is our Home"), accuses Israeli Arabs of "dual loyalty" on account of their ethnicity, and advocates the complete separation of the Israeli and Arab populations in Palestine – in effect, forced transfer. Lieberman and his followers vehemently oppose the peace process, support the militant settlement movement, and are proud partisans of ethnic cleansing.
In 2002, Lieberman averred that he wouldn't flinch at ordering the IDF into the occupied territories on the West Bank for 48 hours, an operation designed to "Destroy the foundation of all the [Palestinian] authority's military infrastructure … not leave one stone on another. Destroy everything." Civilian targets included: that same year he also argued the Israeli air force should bomb all Palestinian commercial centers, including banks and even gas stations.
Lieberman's portfolio as minister in charge of strategic threats allowed the editors of Ha'aretz to quip "Lieberman is a strategic threat!" Here, after all, is a man who has threatened to bomb Tehran, the Aswan Dam, and Beirut. His entry into the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in coalition with Kadima and Labor, marks an ominous shift in the stance of the Jewish state. As Ha'aretz put it:
"The choice of the most unrestrained and irresponsible man around for this job constitutes a strategic threat in its own right. Lieberman's lack of restraint and his unbridled tongue, comparable only to those of Iran's president, are liable to bring disaster down upon the entire region."
Up until this point, the stance of the government has always been set forth in the context of the American plan for the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, the so-called road map, which includes a freeze on Israeli settlements and the return of some land claimed by the settlers to the Palestinians. No more. With the inclusion of Lieberman in the governing coalition – and in such a key post – the Israelis are signaling that they've had enough of being dictated to by the Americans. This also dramatizes a sea-change in Israeli politics: ideas that were generally considered out of the mainstream – and out of the question, as far as actual implementation – are now up for consideration.
Yet the line that separated Lieberman, the Jewish equivalent of David Duke, from the Israeli "mainstream" has been increasingly hard to discern for quite some time. As Arthur Neslen put it in the Guardian recently:
"The most worrying thing about Lieberman is not that his ideas exist on a plane outside Israel's political continuum but that, in many ways, they are close to its dead center. The proposal to transfer 'the triangle,' an area around Um al-Fahm where 250,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel currently live, was first brought into the press spotlight at the end of 2000 at Israel's most prestigious annual policy-making forum, the Herzliya conference.
"The then prime minister Ariel Sharon publicly floated the idea again in February 2004. Opposition from Washington to a de facto violation of international law reportedly took the plan out of the headlines, but it remained in the comment pages.
"In December 2005, Uzi Arad, a former Mossad director, government foreign policy adviser and current head of the Institute for Policy and Strategy, which organizes the Herzliya conference, resurrected the idea in an article for [The] New Republic."
I have covered the growing influence of Israeli extremism for years, and worried over the rise of what seems, at first, a hopeless oxymoron: Jewish fascism. That an ideology that has proved so harmful – indeed, near fatal – to the Jewish people should gain a foothold in the Jewish state seems too bizarre even for a post-9/11 reality that increasingly resembles Bizarro World. Yet here we are, confronted with the specter of Avigdor Lieberman, the would-be Hitler, currently the second most popular politician in the running for prime minister, right behind Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Jerusalem Post reports Lieberman originally pushed for the internal security post, but this was vetoed by Israel's Attorney General, who told Olmert that Lieberman must be kept entirely out of the realm of law enforcement. The Russian immigrant, a former bouncer in a bar, is being investigated for his ties to Russian underworld figures: money funneled into his political activities from abroad apparently came from some pretty dubious sources.
That a gangster of Lieberman's ilk is now a serious contender for the post of prime minister and his fascist party is rising in popularity are measures of how the Israeli settler colony, originally designed along left-wing Zionist-utopian lines, has hardened into a national socialist Sparta.
Lieberman's prominent position in the Israeli government raises some new considerations when contemplating the future of the long-standing "special relationship" between the U.S. and Israel – and at least one very disturbing possibility.
To begin with, if Lieberman's views now represent those of his government, at least when it comes to matters related to his portfolio, then it seems clear Tel Aviv is bent on war with Iran. The Europeans are already reacting with distaste to the prospect of having to deal with him: before meeting with him, Javier Solana, the EU negotiator, declared he disagreed with Lieberman about "everything." One presumes the U.S. State Department holds similar views, but others in the Bush administration might prove more tolerant of Lieberman and even sympathetic. In any case, the War Party in the U.S. is likely to find him very useful: Lieberman's fiery rhetoric is sure to set off sparks in a very volatile region of the world, one that is just waiting to explode.
Secondly, what does Lieberman's ascent tell us about the future of Lebanon and the prospects for another Israeli invasion? The minister in charge of strategic threats will not be restricted to just making threats, but will be at least partially empowered to carry them out. If I were a resident of Beirut, I would start packing.
Finally, it must be remembered that Israel is a member of the nuclear club, with at least 400 nukes and perhaps more at its disposal. The chilling question is this: do we really want to see Israel's nukes fall into the hands of a madman like Lieberman?
The image of the "mad mullahs" of Tehran brandishing a nuclear scimitar is routinely conjured to frighten Westerners into supporting military action against Iran, and there is some legitimacy to this fear, although not nearly as much as the War Party would have us believe. After all, Iran doesn't have nukes, yet: Israel, however, does have them, and we have to wonder what use Prime Minister Lieberman will make of them.
Not that I am predicting Lieberman will achieve that office – although I wouldn't rule it out, either. The point I'm making is that Israel is moving in a new and very disturbing direction, one that requires us to take a fresh look at U.S.-Israeli relations and reevaluate our level of financial and political support. If the Israeli government is going extremist, the moral and strategic implications of our continued assistance are grave: will we be complicit as Israel "transfers" hundreds of thousands of Arabs, many of them Israeli citizens? As hard-right ideologues embark on a campaign of aggression aimed at creating a "Greater Israel," will U.S. tax dollars continue to fuel the Israeli war machine?
The U.S. has made no comment on Lieberman's elevation. How long we can keep up our embarrassed silence is going to be the measure of the Israel lobby's strength. Their power, once without serious challenge, is waning. As the ongoing investigation into spying on behalf of Israel by AIPAC uncovers the shocking extent to which our "ally" has penetrated our security and probed our deepest secrets, the Israel lobby is facing a major crisis. They aren't just facing a legal challenge, but also an intellectual one from professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, of the University of Chicago and Harvard respectively, whose now famous study of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" is proving almost too much for them to handle. However, what's really undermining the formerly impregnable position of "the Lobby," as Mearsheimer and Walt call it, is the sudden outbreak of honesty, and a growing refusal on the part of many in the intellectual community to kowtow to threats and smears. This has caught the Lobby off guard, and now they are confronted with the horribly unattractive figure of Lieberman, who makes Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – often likened to Hitler by Western commentators – seem relatively reasonable. What a public relations headache!
Oh, but don't worry: they'll think of something. You can't prettify a man like that, so the strategy will be to downplay Lieberman's importance. Yet his entry into the government is quite significant, for Israel and for the world, in that it marks the end of the honeymoon era in relations between Israel and the West, particularly the United States. Israel and its Western amen corner have always insisted that the Jewish state is part of the West, yet the rise of Lieberman tells us something quite different.
Lieberman's appeal is directed at the large Russian immigrant population: these people are poor, resentful of their low status, and imbued with the same receptivity to authoritarianism that has long afflicted their Russian motherland. The rapid rise of Lieberman's political fortunes means that Israel is turning away from the West and asserting its Asiatic identity. It is no more a Western democracy than, say, Turkey or Lebanon – and, if Lieberman rises all the way to the top, considerably less so.
---
See also:
Christian Zionism: An Egregious Threat to U.S. - Middle East Understanding
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15421.htm
Christian Zionism, a belief that paradise for Christians can only be achieved once Jews are in control of the Holy Land, is gathering strength in the United States and forging alliances that are giving increasingly weird shape to American policy toward the Middle East.
The Armageddon Lobby: Dispensationalist Christian Zionism and the Shaping of US Policy Towards Israel-Palestine
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15422.htm
With nearly 10 per cent of US voters declaring themselves as Zionist or dispensationalist Christians, and another 35 per cent constituting mainstream Christianity, the Christian Zionist lobby has targeted both voting pools for its purpose of assembling a pro-Israel constituency among American voters through the promotion of biblical and dispensationalist doctrine. (...) One of the fundamental teachings of Scofield was the theology of the 'rapture'. The 'rapture' refers to the dispensationalist belief that prior to the coming of the Messiah, God will remove all of his true believers from earth, and this will take place either before, after, or during the reign of the anti-Christ. Dispensationalists believe that this will occur without warning, and all of God's true followers will vanish in an instant and their souls will ascend to heaven while all of those who are non-believers will be 'left behind'. Scofield was known to preach often about the 'rapture' in his sermons, and told his listeners that the present scenario was ripe for a 'rapturing' and that the followers of Christ should welcome this final catastrophe to the world because they would be taken to their father before the world's great suffering would begin (Brownfield 2002: 72). (...) The tragic irony of this alliance lies in the diametrically opposed sentiment of Christian Zionists and the remainder of the world. While much of the world shamefully watched as Palestinians suffered through the collective punishment of incursions and devastation, Christian Zionists benightedly supported Israeli military action and used their influence to extend it. It is apparent that through the influence of the Christian Zionist lobby, Israeli objectives can be achieved despite international law and outcry. Despite studies and reports that have shown that a majority of Israeli citizens would prefer disengaging from West Bank settlements in exchange for peace, Christian Zionists are among the most fanatical advocates for the proliferation of settlements in the West Bank and increased violence against Palestinians. However, Christian Zionism is deaf to the desires of the people which its influence impacts, and does not advocate measures of peace, but rather it seeks the justification of all Israeli action under any pretense and by any means necessary. The evidence presented in this article reveals that while the Christian Zionist lobby is thriving in its mission of advancing hawkish Israeli interests, it is, in actuality, counterproductive to Israel as it is detrimental to the prospect of peace. This policy of violence and suffocation towards Palestinians produces a dangerous byproduct, which will become evident years from now. It breeds a new generation of hate among Israelis and Palestinians because it exacerbates the already dire humanitarian conditions in the Occupied Territories, which result in the escalation of violence towards Israeli and Palestinian civilians. CLIP
3.
Forwarded by "Mark Graffis" mgraffis@gmail.com>
From: http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=70829
'The Power of Israel in the United States'
October 25, 2006
By Stephen Lendman lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.com>
VHeadline.com commentarist Stephen Lendman writes: James Petras is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. He's a noted academic figure on the US Left and a well-respected Latin American expert and longtime chronicler of the region's popular struggles. He's also an advisor to the landless workers in Brazil and the unemployed workers movement in Argentina.
Along the way, he managed to find time to write many hundreds of articles and 62 books published in 29 languages including his latest one in which he discusses another vital world region he has extensive knowledge of and has written frequently about -- the Middle East and specifically the state of Israel and its relations with its neighbors, the Palestinians and, most importantly and the subject of this book, the US.
Petras' powerful new book is titled 'The Power of Israel in the United States.'
It's a work of epic writing and essential reading documenting the enormous influence of the Jewish Lobby on US policy in the Middle East. It focuses like a laser to assure that policy conforms with Israel's long-term goal for regional hegemony. The Lobby's influence is broad and deep enough to include officials at the highest levels of government, the business community, academia, the clergy (especially the dominant Christian fundamentalists/Christian Zionists) and the mass media. Petras shows how together they're able to assure the full and unconditional US support for all elements of Israel's agenda going back decades even when that agenda harms our interests such as the unwinnable war in Iraq, any future one against Iran if it's undertaken, and the appalling and brutal subjugation and colonization of the Palestinian people that serves no US interest whatever. In spite of it, the Lobby is able to get the US to go along with Israel unconditionally with no serious opposition to it tolerated.
The book is divided into four parts. This review will cover each one in detail, and what's discussed will likely surprise any reader unfamiliar with the thoroughly documented account presented in it so compellingly. Petras sets the table in his introduction for what's to come in the later chapters. He notes what author JJ Goldberg reported in his book Jewish Power: Inside the Jewish Establishment. Goldberg wrote in the early 1990s that 45% of the Democrat Party's fundraising and 25% of that for the Republicans came from Jewish-funded Political Action Committees (PACS). Petras then updates the numbers using the ones Richard Cohen published in the Washington Post showing them now at 60% and 35% respectively, and that this funding relates to a single core issue -- unconditional US support for Israel's agenda including those parts of it human rights activists and observers of conscience judge most egregious and illegal. Petras stresses that no other single US lobby including Big Pharma, Big Oil, agribusiness, or any other one has this kind of dominant influence over the political process here. He refers to "Zioncon" ideologues and policymakers whose main goal is to make the Middle East into a "US-Israeli Co-Prosperity Sphere" under the fraudulent cover of promoting democracy in the region - but doing it through the barrel of a gun.
Petras explains the root of the Lobby's power lies in the high proportion of Jewish families who are among the wealthiest and most influential ones in the country. He cites Forbes magazine that reported 25-30% of the wealthiest families here are Jewish despite the small percentage of Jews in the population overall. They include billionaires with enormous influence, and along with all others comprising the Jewish Lobby, have created a "tyranny of Israel over the US" with consequences grave enough to threaten world peace and stability, the global economy, and the very future of democracy in this country.
That democracy and our constitutionally protected rights now hang by a thread after the recent passage of the Military Commissions Act (aka the "torture authorization act" or more accurately the "US Constitutional annulment act") that makes everyone everywhere an "enemy combatant" subject to arrest and detention out of sight anywhere in the world without regard for our (no longer) constitutionally guaranteed rights. The new law also applies to US citizens as the Jose Padilla case showed. We've effectively lost our habeas and due process rights even though technically we still have them.
Because of the Lobby's power, Petras reports, the US has unconditionally supported Israel's wars of aggression since 1967. It's influence also led to the US Gulf war in 1991 and the second Iraq war begun in 2003, now raging out of control and seen by some noted analysts as unwinnable and causing potential irreparable economic and political harm to the nation. Nonetheless, it persists with no plan agreed on to end it. The Lobby also guaranteed this country's unconditional support for Israel's illegal wars of aggression against Lebanon and Palestine with all the devastation they caused and the horrendous consequences from them unresolved. The Palestinian conflict still rages under the radar, and the status in Lebanon hangs by a hair trigger ready to erupt again any time Israel decides to resume hostilities. But inflaming the Middle East powder keg to a near boiling point is the strong possibility the US and/or Israel will attack Iran because Israel wants it and the Jewish Lobby put its powerful support behind it. More on this, Palestine and Lebanon below.
Today the situation in the Middle East is so dire, Petras reports a large majority of Europeans and a growing number of Americans believe Israel is the greatest of all threats to world peace and stability. Nonetheless, the Bush administration, in acquiescence to the Lobby, has "bludgeoned" its European partners to go along with its uncompromising support for the Jewish state despite all the obvious perils from it. In this country, open debate is stifled, public figures and academics daring to air one truthfully are pilloried, ridiculed, called anti-semitic and even threatened, and no serious dissent is ever tolerated in the corporate-run media or their funded and controlled so-called public radio or PBS parts of it.
No publication is more servile to, supportive of, or more influential than the nation's so-called "paper of record" publishing "All the News That's Fit to Print" - the New York Times. It's important because the stories it features prominently resonate around the country and the world. This dominant newspaper pledges unconditional support and fealty to the state of Israel whatever it does. The rest of the major media go along unquestioningly putting out regular one-sided pro-Israel uber alles propaganda with no opposition voices allowed to represent other points of view. We call that a free press -- but only for those who own one. The state of the corporate-controlled media in this country is now so pathetic that Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters without Borders -- for press freedom) just ranked the US 53rd in the world in press freedom behind countries like Benin, Namibia, Jamaica, France and Bolivia.
James Petras is a courageous independent voice who bucks this disturbing trend and refuses to go along. He proves it in his powerful and carefully documented new book that gives no quarter countering the mendacity, deceit and danger of the Lobby, its acolytes and hangers-on, and the corrupted major media. In his introduction, he calls for a "counter-hegemonic movement" to free us from our destructive "Israeli entanglements." It's needed to begin rebuilding our democracy and freedoms that are somewhere between life support and the crematorium. This book, he says, is his modest effort toward that goal. Because of the important information in it, it's considerably more than that. It needs widespread exposure so people will know about it. Hopefully this review will help arouse some of them to want to find out in more detail.
Part I - Zionist Power in America
Petras begins with a discussion of who fabricated the lies about Iraq's threat to our security and why. He mentions two competing channels of policy makers and advisors - the long-in-place formal structure of career military and civilian professionals in the Pentagon and State Department and a parallel one Bush administration neocons set up for this one purpose in the Pentagon, staffed by political appointees, and called the Office of Special Plans (OSP). It was the OSP's job to cook the books, come up with the idea of weapons of mass destruction while ignoring the clear evidence to the contrary and contrive a fraudulent case for war against Iraq. The people in it were those in Donald Rumsfeld's and Paul Wolfowitz's chain of command and were closely connected to a number of influential neoconservative and pro-Israel organizations.
They planned a war agenda based on lies because Israel wanted it for its security and hegemony in the region -- beginning with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein followed by regime change in Syria, Lebanon, Iran and even Saudi Arabia.
Petras points out, contrary to popular belief, this war happened largely due to the efforts of the Jewish Lobby representing the interests of Israel. Big Oil opposed the idea because it feared attacking Iraq would jeopardize its business prospects with other oil-producing states in the region. Still, Israel and the Jewish Lobby got their war, and aside from the gain from high oil prices, Big Oil may end up a longer-term loser from it. US oil interests always prefer stability and normal relationships with countries where they operate or wish to and were quite comfortable dealing with Saddam Hussein without wanting to risk a war that might upset an otherwise profitable arrangement. Their fears proved justified as the war they feared created such unresolved turbulence in Iraq, it's become too dangerous and unprofitable to undertake new ventures there except perhaps in parts of the Kurdish-controlled north. Big Oil also chafes at not being allowed to deal with the Iranians for contracts now let to its European and other competitors because US sanctions prevent them from doing business there. It's hard to imagine those interests would ever go along with US-Israeli belligerence in the Middle East, but they dare not oppose it publicly.
Petras observes there's never a public discussion allowed about that relationship in the mainstream nor will there ever be any, especially any hint the US attacked Iraq in service to Israel. There should be plenty of it though because the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have enraged hundreds of millions of Muslims and all people of conscience worldwide. They've caused the US to be seen as a pariah state and George Bush as a dangerous and morally depraved president of a failed administration. He and those closest to him like Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are reviled around the world and increasingly here at home as witnessed by the many thousands who took to the streets on October 5 in over 200 US cities on 'The World Can't Wait Day -- Drive Out the Bush Regime.' The cost of Bush's wars far exceed any possible future benefits from them, our security has been jeopardized, the nation's status has been compromised, and some analysts believe the total dollar cost of the Iraq adventure may eventually top $2 trillion - an amount extremely harmful to the nation's economy that's now worrying key business leaders and responsible people in government.
The only clear beneficiary of the Bush war agenda is Israel. It removed its main adversary in the region and cut off the political and economic support it gave the Palestinians. Petras points out that Iraq along with Iran and Syria comprised the core resistance to Israel's expansionist plans to crush the Palestinians (one down, two to go), ethnically cleanse them from their homeland and seize their land as one part of a long-term goal for a greater Israel and unchallengeable dominance in the region. Israel is the only country in the world with undeclared borders. It's kept that status to give itself maximum latitude to annex all the territory it can toward the goal of a greater "Eretz Israel" Zionists want that includes the ancient lands of "Judea" and "Summaria," the West Bank biblical parts of Israel Palestinians claim as their homeland.
With US help, Israel removed one threat to its plan for regional supremacy, but it still faces determined resistance from the Palestinians in spite of having crushed its democratically elected Hamas government. It also faces a resilient Hezbollah in Lebanon that humiliated the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in the summer war there as well as opposition from Iran and Syria. In addition, there's internal opposition within Israel over its war and colonization agenda because of its enormous cost plus the added insecurity it causes. It's resulted in a level of out-migration now exceeding new arrivals as well as an erosion of the nation's social programs because the state needs the resources for its aggression and annexation agenda. It's much like what's happening under the Bush administration where the people pay the price for imperial wars abroad and the moral decay and authoritarianism at home.
Obstacles and setbacks aside, Israel has pursued its goal to "democratize" the region through a belligerent policy of neutralizing its enemies in it by force. The plan they crafted is for a series of wars with its US ally taking the lead and the eventual goal of joint US-Israeli control over the entire region. Making it work depends on getting US administrations to go along, which so far hasn't been a problem and has never been easier with the Bush administration in power and the high-level pro-Zionist officials in it with long-standing ties to Israel. They have the most important policy-making positions in government or are closely associated with the ones who do. These officials have a history of dedication to Israel's interests even when they conflict with those here at home. They're in the administration, the Congress as well as in the most influential Jewish organizations and lobbying groups like the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the Anti-Defamation League and what some observers believe is the single most powerful lobby in Washington -- AIPAC.
Committed support for Israel also comes from the "Jewish Diaspora" that comprises thousands of dedicated activists here -- doctors, dentists, philanthropists, key individuals on Wall Street, the major banks and the Federal Reserve and other key segments of business, the major media, the clergy and academics and journalists given special prominence because of their willingness to corrupt their integrity in return for the handsome benefits they get for their unconditional public support and contrived rationalizations for the US -Israeli agenda. This kind of influence and support has made Israel by far the largest recipient in the world of US financial aid that amounts upfront to about $3 billion a year with more forthcoming any time as needed in added funding, weapons transfers and large low or no-interest loans that may never have to be repaid.
Israel also gets the unheard of advantage of receiving the latest and most advanced US arms and technology, unrestricted US market access for its products and services, free entry of its immigrants, unconditional support for its aggressive wars and colonization of the Palestinians and South Lebanese, and guaranteed US vetoes in the Security Council against all UN resolutions unfavorable to its interests. It's also able to get prominent Washington officials and the dominant corporate-run and funded media to label all criticism of Israel anti-semitic and freely uses this ruse whenever it serves its purpose. Israel is allowed to get away with its intelligence operations here as well including its covert penetration of military bases, the FBI, IRS, INS, EPA and many other government agencies. In addition, it's believed its agents knew in advance about the 9/11 attack but withheld the information knowing it would serve its interests to let it happen. There's also considerable evidence high US officials either knew about it themselves or were complicit in carrying it out because they also knew it would allow them the kind of reckless free reign at home and abroad they never could have gotten any other way.
This is a story that won't go away nor should it, and one day we may finally learn all the parts of it we can only speculate about now.
CLIP - Read the (long) missing part of this excellent review at http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=70829
(...)
Summation - Confronting Zionism and Reclaiming American Middle East Policy
Petras has written a powerful and important new book that needs broad exposure and resonance. But he'll never get its content past the corporate gatekeepers controlling the major media because of his courage to reveal what others fear to do -- confront Zionism, its agenda of aggressive wars and colonization, and the power of the Jewish Lobby to assure Israel gets the full and unconditional support of every US administration regardless of whether what it does serves the interests of this country. That Lobby power reached its apogee and full fruition with the ascent of the Bush administration neocons that effectively pledge their fealty to the rulers of the Israeli state and prove Ariel Sharon may have been right when he once arrogantly boasted about his relationship with George Bush saying: "We have the US under our control."
The result has been disastrous for this country and the sacred principles on which it was founded. In partnership with Israel, the US began tearing apart the Middle East and Central Asia by attacking and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan.
It now threatens to inflame the whole region enough to make it explode if we go ahead with plans to attack Iran, do it with nuclear weapons, and then move on to Syria and even Saudi Arabia while continuing to hold Lebanon hostage and under siege in a state of interregnum awaiting the next inevitable trigger igniting the whole ugly business there all over again.
• The Bush administration "long war" against Islam enraged 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide growing in unity against us.
It's also destroying our freedom and democracy at home in the process threatening everyone with the emerging power of a national security police state that spells tyranny with an out-of-control president usurping the dictatorial power of a "unitary executive" claiming the right to go around the law of the land and its international obligations to govern as he pleases.
Petras sounds the alarm and asks how did we get into this debacle, and who's responsible for it. He stresses the need for a full-scale Congressional investigation to find out, but laments it's not likely to happen as long as the Bush neocons have their way. The central thesis of his book is that the Jewish Lobby serves the interests of Zionism and acts as agents for the state of Israel. It co-opted the Bush administration, all others preceding it, and the key centers of power and influence in the country leading us to the disaster we now face because of our misguided Middle East adventurism. He equates our actions in league with Israel to the Nazi war crimes committed in WW II, saying "These are the highest crimes against humanity."
• Referring to the crime of aggression, the Nuremberg Tribunal called it the "supreme international crime," and those Nazis found guilty of it were hanged.
Petras explains that the "worst crimes are committed by those who claim to be a divinely chosen people, a people with 'righteous' claims of supreme victimhood."
He goes on to say: "Righteous victimology, linked to ethno-religious loyalties and directed by fanatical civilian militarists with advanced weaponry, is the greatest threat to world peace and humanity."
Petras makes an impassioned plea for progressives (really all people of conscience) to reject the imperial agenda of all nations, and in the case of Israel, to stand firm against inevitably being labeled anti-Semitic. Scurrilous name-calling is another refuge of scoundrels that shouldn't be tolerated or allowed to deter our committed assault against the forces of darkness that will destroy us unless we stand firmly against them. Petras tells us it won't be easy, and we can expect forceful ideological attacks against us premised on the notion that Israel is the embodiment of "democracy, liberty and justice" and those daring to criticize the Jewish state will be called supporters of "Arab dictatorships, repression, injustice and terrorism."
The stakes are much too high to let them get away with it using scurrilous name-calling in defense of it. In Petras' words: "Israel and its overseas network in the US....(threatens) not only the oppressed people of Palestine (and Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria and any other state Israel takes aim at) but the rights of people throughout the world." He stresses we have mass public opinion on our side nearly everywhere outside the US, and it's gaining resonance here as well.
• It sees Israel and our actions in support of the Jewish state as the greatest of all threats to world peace and stability.
Petras ends his book with one final impassioned call to arms: "Let's move ahead and de-colonize our country, our minds and politics as a first step in reconstituting a democratic republic, free of entangling colonial and neo-imperial alliances."
• Wise thoughts from a wise and courageous man.
We can't ignore them lest we pay the supreme price of the loss of our freedom (and maybe our lives) because we didn't know it was being taken from us until it was too late to act to save it.
---
See also:
Texas Versus Tel Aviv: US Policy in the Middle East - By James Petras
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15445.htm
Almost without exception, Israel's ideological soldiers have taken to the opinion columns of all the major newspapers, television and radio shows (as self-reputed Middle East experts) to promote the breaking up of Iraq into mini-states and to pursue the killing fields beyond the over 650,000 slaughtered Iraqi civilians and 3,000 dead US soldiers.
Rove: Military Must Be Flexible in Iraq (October 28, 2006)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6176466,00.html
WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) - Presidential advisor Karl Rove blasted Democrats on Friday for even suggesting the U.S. withdraw from Iraq, saying the U.S. can't leave one of the world's largest oil reserves in terrorist hands. However, Rove also said the military must be flexible in its tactics. He did not elaborate."More sacrifice is going to be required,'' Rove, President Bush's chief political strategist, told a ballroom full of Republicans at a fundraiser for Wisconsin candidates. "We will either create a world in which our children and our grandchildren have a hope of an optimistic future or we will leave to them a world with a hateful empire centered in the Middle East.'' CLIP ??? Isn't Israel already this 'hateful empire centered in the Middle East'???
Ruining America
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102806A.shtml
Joe Galloway writes:"If President George Bush's hasty news conference on Iraq this week was the Republican October Surprise - unveiling some sudden presidential flexibility after three and a half years of stubbornly staying a losing course - it didn't work. With the midterm elections now days away, it smacked more of a change in semantics than a serious change in the direction of a war that seems to be spiraling out of control."
Bush Under Growing Pressure to Engage Syria
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102806B.shtml
While never officially named to the "Axis of Evil," Syria has received the same "silent treatment" as Washington has given its two surviving members - Iran and North Korea - since the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005.
Will US Attack Iran?
http://www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/iran.htm
4.
Forwarded by "Nadia McLaren" nadia.mclaren@gmail.com>
From: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15432.htm
Mystery of Israel's secret uranium bomb
Alarm over radioactive legacy left by attack on Lebanon
By Robert Fisk
10/28/06 "The Independent" -- -- Did Israel use a secret new uranium-based weapon in southern Lebanon this summer in the 34-day assault that cost more than 1,300 Lebanese lives, most of them civilians?
We know that the Israelis used American "bunker-buster" bombs on Hizbollah's Beirut headquarters. We know that they drenched southern Lebanon with cluster bombs in the last 72 hours of the war, leaving tens of thousands of bomblets which are still killing Lebanese civilians every week. And we now know - after it first categorically denied using such munitions - that the Israeli army also used phosphorous bombs, weapons which are supposed to be restricted under the third protocol of the Geneva Conventions, which neither Israel nor the United States have signed.
But scientific evidence gathered from at least two bomb craters in Khiam and At-Tiri, the scene of fierce fighting between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israeli troops last July and August, suggests that uranium-based munitions may now also be included in Israel's weapons inventory - and were used against targets in Lebanon. According to Dr Chris Busby, the British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, two soil samples thrown up by Israeli heavy or guided bombs showed "elevated radiation signatures". Both have been forwarded for further examination to the Harwell laboratory in Oxfordshire for mass spectrometry - used by the Ministry of Defence - which has confirmed the concentration of uranium isotopes in the samples.
Dr Busby's initial report states that there are two possible reasons for the contamination. "The first is that the weapon was some novel small experimental nuclear fission device or other experimental weapon (eg, a thermobaric weapon) based on the high temperature of a uranium oxidation flash ... The second is that the weapon was a bunker-busting conventional uranium penetrator weapon employing enriched uranium rather than depleted uranium." A photograph of the explosion of the first bomb shows large clouds of black smoke that might result from burning uranium.
Enriched uranium is produced from natural uranium ore and is used as fuel for nuclear reactors. A waste productof the enrichment process is depleted uranium, it is an extremely hard metal used in anti-tank missiles for penetrating armour. Depleted uranium is less radioactive than natural uranium, which is less radioactive than enriched uranium.
Israel has a poor reputation for telling the truth about its use of weapons in Lebanon. In 1982, it denied using phosphorous munitions on civilian areas - until journalists discovered dying and dead civilians whose wounds caught fire when exposed to air.
I saw two dead babies who, when taken from a mortuary drawer in West Beirut during the Israeli siege of the city, suddenly burst back into flames. Israel officially denied using phosphorous again in Lebanon during the summer - except for "marking" targets - even after civilians were photographed in Lebanese hospitals with burn wounds consistent with phosphorous munitions.
Then on Sunday, Israel suddenly admitted that it had not been telling the truth. Jacob Edery, the Israeli minister in charge of government-parliament relations, confirmed that phosphorous shells were used in direct attacks against Hizbollah, adding that "according to international law, the use of phosphorous munitions is authorised and the (Israeli) army keeps to the rules of international norms".
Asked by The Independent if the Israeli army had been using uranium-based munitions in Lebanon this summer, Mark Regev, the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, said: "Israel does not use any weaponry which is not authorised by international law or international conventions." This, however, begs more questions than it answers. Much international law does not cover modern uranium weapons because they were not invented when humanitarian rules such as the Geneva Conventions were drawn up and because Western governments still refuse to believe that their use can cause long-term damage to the health of thousands of civilians living in the area of the explosions.
American and British forces used hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) shells in Iraq in 1991 - their hardened penetrator warheads manufactured from the waste products of the nuclear industry - and five years later, a plague of cancers emerged across the south of Iraq.
Initial US military assessments warned of grave consequences for public health if such weapons were used against armoured vehicles. But the US administration and the British government later went out of their way to belittle these claims. Yet the cancers continued to spread amid reports that civilians in Bosnia - where DU was also used by Nato aircraft - were suffering new forms of cancer. DU shells were again used in the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq but it is too early to register any health effects.
"When a uranium penetrator hits a hard target, the particles of the explosion are very long-lived in the environment," Dr Busby said yesterday. "They spread over long distances. They can be inhaled into the lungs. The military really seem to believe that this stuff is not as dangerous as it is." Yet why would Israel use such a weapon when its targets - in the case of Khiam, for example - were only two miles from the Israeli border? The dust ignited by DU munitions can be blown across international borders, just as the chlorine gas used in attacks by both sides in the First World War often blew back on its perpetrators.
Chris Bellamy, the professor of military science and doctrine at Cranfield University, who has reviewed the Busby report, said: "At worst it's some sort of experimental weapon with an enriched uranium component the purpose of which we don't yet know. At best - if you can say that - it shows a remarkably cavalier attitude to the use of nuclear waste products."
The soil sample from Khiam - site of a notorious torture prison when Israel occupied southern Lebanon between 1978 and 2000, and a frontline Hizbollah stronghold in the summer war - was a piece of impacted red earth from an explosion; the isotope ratio was 108, indicative of the presence of enriched uranium. "The health effects on local civilian populations following the use of large uranium penetrators and the large amounts of respirable uranium oxide particles in the atmosphere," the Busby report says, "are likely to be significant ... we recommend that the area is examined for further traces of these weapons with a view to clean up."
This summer's Lebanon war began after Hizbollah guerrillas crossed the Lebanese frontier into Israel, captured two Israeli soldiers and killed three others, prompting Israel to unleash a massive bombardment of Lebanon's villages, cities, bridges and civilian infrastructure. Human rights groups have said that Israel committed war crimes when it attacked civilians, but that Hizbollah was also guilty of such crimes because it fired missiles into Israel which were also filled with ball-bearings, turning their rockets into primitive one-time-only cluster bombs.
Many Lebanese, however, long ago concluded that the latest Lebanon war was a weapons testing ground for the Americans and Iranians, who respectively supply Israel and Hizbollah with munitions. Just as Israel used hitherto-unproven US missiles in its attacks, so the Iranians were able to test-fire a rocket which hit an Israeli corvette off the Lebanese coast, killing four Israeli sailors and almost sinking the vessel after it suffered a 15-hour on-board fire.
What the weapons manufacturers make of the latest scientific findings of potential uranium weapons use in southern Lebanon is not yet known. Nor is their effect on civilians.
5.
From: Romi Elnagar bluesapphire48@yahoo.com>
Date: 10/30/06
Subject: PUBLIC UNAWARE OF DU THREAT OF CAMP FALCON EXPLOSIONS
Dear friend,
Please help us to publicize this article by passing it on to anyone you think will be concerned.
Romi Elnagar
Depleted Uranium Study Team
---
PUBLIC UNAWARE OF DU THREAT OF CAMP FALCON EXPLOSIONS
The first live reports were aired live on US network TV:
We’re getting some amazing pictures, some very dramatic pictures coming out of Iraq to us from Baghdad. You can read the lower third there. "Explosions rock Camp Falcon just outside of Baghdad." It is 11:28 p.m. there right now.
MSNBC News bureau in Baghdad, the bureau chief said there have been a series of explosions near the Camp Falcon area located just outside of Baghdad, and CPIC is confirming that there was an explosion at an ammo dump, which would explain these amazing dramatic pictures in the night sky of Baghdad. It exploded at Camp Falcon. The U.S. military base is south of Baghdad. (MNSBC, 10 Oct, 2006)
Michel Chossudovsky
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20061022&articleId=3566
They were spectacular explosions because DU in storage all goes off at once. You can see the streamers of DU chunks burning through the cloud and the familiar mushroom cloud. It is not Willie Pete or White Phosphorus because they leave white smoke and wobble.
The public is still ignorant of the Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions threat and the Pentagon and media have been complicit in this blackout.
Perhaps a reminder of the mounting death toll from the highly toxic weapons component known as depleted uranium (DU), which was stored at Camp Falcon, is in order.
Allen L Roland
http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2006/10/30.html
From: http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/du_death_toll.html
DU Death Toll Tops 11,000
Nationwide Media Blackout Keeps U.S. Public Ignorant About This Important Story
By James P. Tucker Jr.
Updated 3/26/05
The death toll from the highly toxic weapons component known as depleted uranium (DU) has reached 11,000 soldiers and the growing scandal may be the reason behind Anthony Principi's departure as secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department.
This view was expressed by Arthur Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law in New York, writing in Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter.
"The real reason for Mr. Principi's departure was really never given," Bernklau said. "However, a special report published by eminent scientist Leuren Moret naming depleted uranium as the definitive cause of 'Gulf War Syndrome' has fed a growing scandal about the continued use of uranium munitions by the U.S. military."
The "malady [from DU] that thousands of our military have suffered and died from has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. . . . The terrible truth is now being revealed," Bernklau said.
Of the 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are now dead, he said. By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. More than a decade later, more than half (56 percent) who served in Gulf War I have permanent medical problems. The disability rate for veterans of the world wars of the last century was 5 percent, rising to 10 percent in Vietnam.
"The VA secretary was aware of this fact as far back as 2000," Bernklau said. "He and the Bush administration have been hiding these facts, but now, thanks to Moret's report, it is far too big to hide or to cover up."
Terry Johnson, public affairs specialist at the VA, recently reported that veterans of both Persian Gulf wars now on disability total 518,739, Bernklau said.
"The long-term effect of DU is a virtual death sentence," Bernklau said. "Marion Fulk, a nuclear chemist, who retired from the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab, and was also involved in the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in the soldiers [from the second war] as 'spectacular'˜and a matter of concern.' "
While this important story appeared in a Washington newspaper and the wire services, it did not receive national exposure˜a compelling sign that the American public is being kept in the dark about the terrible effects of this toxic weapon. (Veterans for Constitutional Law can be reached at (516) 474-4261)
Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website. He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on Conscious talk radio at http://www.conscioustalk.net/
Allen Roland's weblog: http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/
Website: http://www.allenroland.com/
ONLY THE TRUTH IS REVOLUTIONARY
6.
USUALLY I CONSIDER HAL TURNER AS A DUBIOUS SOURCE AT BEST BUT SOMEONE HAS COMPILED QUITE A BIT OF EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT HIS CLAIMS WHICH, TO ME, LOOKS FAIRLY PLAUSIBLE. THE IRAN/SYRIA WAR LOOKS SET TO EXPLODE AS SOON AS THE US MIDTERM ELECTIONS ARE STOLEN.
Recommended by "P. Dalton" pdalton@uneedspeed.net>
From: http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/104451
Sinking the USS Enterprise - False Flag Pretext for War on Iran
By: TerraHertz on: 03.10.2006
Trial Run - the USS Oriskany reaches for new depths. USS Enterprise not so rusty.
From: http://halturnershow.com/index.html
September 30, 2006
IRAN WAR PLAN EXPOSED!
PREPARE FOR THE SINKING OF A U.S. AIRCRAFT CARRIER
The USS Enterprise CVN-65!
The existence of a hideous plan to sacrifice a U.S. Aircraft Carrier as a pretext for war with Iran is presently being uncovered!
The Hal Turner Show has been told that within the next five (5) weeks, the United States will "suffer" a missile attack upon the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, presently on patrol near the Persian Gulf. This attack will appear to be from numerous "Silkworm" and/or "Sunburn" missiles which will sink the vessel and kill most of the 5,000 crew onboard.
The "attack" will be blamed on Iran and thus provide the Bush Administration with an excuse to go to war with that nation.
The Hal Turner Show has learned that the missiles used to attack the USS Enterprise will not be fired from or by Iran, but rather will be a "false flag operation" made to LOOK as though Iran carried out the attack!
The USS Enterprise is the worlds first nuclear powered aircraft carrier. It was Commissioned in 1961 and is due to be decommissioned in 2014 or 2015. The ship was selected to be the "victim" of this "attack" due to its age.
THOSE PLANNING THE ATTACK ARE INSIDE THE U.S. AND ISRAELI GOVERNMENTS and view the loss of the Enterprise crew as a necessary sacrifice to induce Americans to support war against Iran. Put bluntly, the ship and crew are to be cannon fodder.
Extract from Voice of the White House, September 29, 2006. http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a2525.htm
Now, they tell me, Cheney wants the entire National Guard activated and shipped over here along with every reservist or discharged GI with former combat service. They have the orders drawn up there and we have copies. Engineers have been putting up miles of new barracks and the supply services are tipped to expect ‘significant very large shipments’ of food, clothes, shoes, helmets and so on. A quarter of a million men are supposed to be reactivated and sent over here before Christmas. A general officer said, in my office, that they were just waiting until after the elections in November.
Rumour: The Michigan will be leaving drydock ahead of schedule with a newly developed surface to surface/air weapons system.
U.S. Navy ballistic missile submarine USS Michigan SSBN-727 (NUCLEAR-POWERED)
http://www.nvr.navy.mil/nvrships/details/SSBN727.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/agency/ssbn-727.htm
Extract: The Michigan is scheduled to enter Puget Sound Naval Shipyard sometime in late 2003 to begin a Refueling Complex Overhaul and to be converted to an SSGN.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/ssgn-726.htm
Extract: The Ohio class cruise missile submarine (SSGN) program entails the refueling and conversion of the four SSBNs to dedicated cruise missile launch submarines to support the Land- Attack/Strike mission. Each new Multiple All-Up-Round (AUR) Canister (MAC) launchers contain seven Tomahawk land-attack missiles (TLAMs) and fit within the existing Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM) vertical launch tubes. Each SSGN will accommodate up to 22 MACs, for a total of 154 TLAMs.
The SSGN will also support Special Operations Forces (SOF) missions. Two of the large vertical launch tubes will be converted to SOF lockout chambers and the ship will feature dedicated accommodations for SOF personnel and their equipment. The SSGN is capable of hosting the Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS) and Dry Deck Shelter on its upper deck. In the future, the extensive payload capacity of the SSGN may be used to support other offboard systems, including large unmanned and autonomous underwater vehicles, as well as alternate weapons systems.
The Navy plans to conduct operational evaluation (OPEVAL) of the SSGN’s Strike and SOF missions in FY07.
Trident SSGN also provides the CINCs and Battle Group commander a large SOF contingent (4 platoons or 66 SEALs) capable of carrying out a sustained and continuous level