Coming soon – The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict

http://mondoweiss.net

by Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz on December 1, 2010 ·

You’ve heard the controversy -
Now read the report for yourself

We are excited to announce the publication of our new book – The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict (Nation Books). We were very lucky to work with New York-based independent journalist Lizzy Ratner on the project, which explores the political, legal and social legacy of the Goldstone Report and the Israeli attack on Gaza in the winter of 2008-2009. The book includes an edited version of the report along with 13 essays from some of the leading commentators today on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict including: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Naomi Klein, Raji Sourani, Jules Lobel, Moshe Halbertal, Jerome Slater, Brian Baird, Rashid Khalidi, Henry Siegman, Ali Abunimah, Noam Sheizaf, Letty Cottin Pogrebin and Laila El-Haddad.

The book will be available on January 11, 2011, but you can pre-order it today to make sure you receive it as soon as possible. Also, be sure to stay tuned to Mondoweiss for excerpts from the book as well as other exciting news.

Pre-Order The Goldstone Report
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Classified Papers Prove German Warnings to Bush

http://www.sott.net

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 22:34 CST

Klaus Wiegrefe
Spiegel

© AP
Then-German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (left) and then-US President George W. Bush (right) during a meeting in Mainz, Germany, in 2005, almost two years after the invasion of Iraq. A number of German documents undermine a claim made by Bush in his recently published memoir that Schröder had pledged to support the Iraq war.

A classified document obtained by Spiegel shows notes from a meeting between a top German diplomat and Condoleezza Rice just weeks before the Iraq invasion. It indicates steps by the German government to prevent the war and undermines claims in George W. Bush’s memoir that Gerhard Schröder indicated he would support the president should the US go to war.

Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer made every effort they could. The German chancellor and foreign minister spared no effort with their appeals, whether in public or private, in small groups or with the eyes of the entire world upon them. In the end, though, it was all for naught. Then-United States President George W. Bush wouldn’t allow anyone to change his mind. He was dead set on launching a war against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and thereby bringing “freedom,” as he put it, to the Middle East. It was a freedom that Bush described as ” God’s gift to mankind.”

Over time, however, this would-be gift from God has grown to become the biggest foreign-policy disaster in US history since the Vietnam War. The war in Iraq and its subsequent occupation has cost more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians and over 4,000 American soldiers their lives. Washington’s credibility has been severely damaged, and Iraq will remain a trouble spot for the foreseeable future.

It is facts like these that have helped stoke the outrage since Bush recently published his memoirs, “Decision Points,” in which he claims that Schröder — the very man who won re-election in 2002 in large part based on his opposition to the war — assured him in January 2002 that Germany would support the United States if it decided to go to war against Iraq. For his part, Schröder was quick to deny Bush’s comments, claiming instead that “(t)he former American president is not telling the truth.”

Spiegel has now obtained a previously secret copy of notes taken from a conversation in February 2003 marked “Classified Information — For Internal Use Only.” At that time, in was just a matter of weeks before US soldiers invaded Iraq. Klaus Scharioth, a Berlin-based state secretary in the German Foreign Ministry, had flown to Washington in the hope of still having a chance of changing the minds of Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser at the time, and other high-ranking members on the National Security Council.

Costs of War ‘Higher than Political Returns’

According to the notes — all in German — the meeting amounted to 90 minutes of verbal blows, which primarily stemmed from Rice’s “relatively rigorous and uncompromising” defense of the US position. The same notes indicate that Scharioth didn’t budge an inch toward Washington, either. In retrospect, though, they document a high point in German diplomatic history, because the objections and predictions put forward by Berlin on that Tuesday have turned out to be legitimate and correct.

The crux of the German argument was that the political costs of a war in Iraq would be “higher than (the) political returns.” While Rice predicted that Iraq would take advantage of the “opportunities for reconstruction” like the ones Germany enjoyed after 1945, the delegation from Berlin countered that the rapid establishment of a democracy in Baghdad was “not (to be) expected.”

The Germans also predicted that the real beneficiary of a war in Iraq would actually be Iran, and that a US-led attack would further complicate efforts to reach a solution in the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Likewise, they prophesized that going to war would precipitate a “terrorist backlash.” Scharioth stressed that it was important “to win over the hearts and minds of the Muslim elite and youths,” according to the notes, and that this was “not to be achieved” by going to war. He also added that doing so would greatly increase the danger of prompting an “influx to Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism.”

Saddam Has ‘Always Misled, Hidden and Stalled’

This remarkable conversation was held just a few days after the now-infamous speech that then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered in New York before the UN Security Council. Powell had presented what he apparently considered to be proof that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. But Berlin sensed that the evidence in no way substantiated Powell’s claims.

With his speech, Powell wanted to convince the Security Council to give a green light to war. Less than three months earlier, the Security Council had passed Resolution 1441, which threatened Iraq with “serious consequences” if it was found to have committed any “material breach” of arms-control sanctions. Since the end of 2002, inspectors with the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had been conducting searches in Iraq for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons — though obviously without any success.

During this time, the Americans were growing impatient because they wanted to launch their attack before the onset of the heat and sandstorms accompanying the warmer months of the year. This, in turn, prompted Rice to push for action in a conversation with Scharioth. She argued that “everything had been tried”* over the last 12 years but Saddam Hussein has “always misled, hidden and stalled.”*

In response, Berlin called for the inspections regime to be intensified and for the inspectors to be given more time. Chancellor Schröder even teamed up with then-French President Jacques Chirac and then-Russian President Vladimir Putin, forging an alliance on the Security Council, of which Germany was a non-permanent member in 2003. Rice justifiably complained that the Germans were apparently pursuing the goal of “preventing the United States from going to war.”*

In the end, none of it helped. The United States went to war without any backing from the United Nations. On March 20, 2003, the bombing of Baghdad signaled the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. And, from there, destiny ran its course.

Haitians turn on UN peacekeepers they blame for cholera outbreak

http://www.guardian.co.uk

Rioters and troops clash amid claims from locals that Nepalese soldiers working for UN mission brought disease to country

• Share34
• 
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• Rory Carroll in Port-au-Prince
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 November 2010 20.25 GMT
• Article history
A UN soldier on patrol in an earthquake refugee camp in Cité Soleil, Haiti. Photograph: Andres Martinez Casares/EFEThey came in 2004 as saviours to a nation which thought things could not get any worse. History and geography had conspired against Haiti, piling misery upon misfortune, but then the blue helmets arrived, and with them hope.

The 12,000 UN peacekeepers, one of the biggest such missions in the world, lived up to their name: they kept peace. Rampaging criminal gangs melted away and anarchy gave way to stability.

But those days seemed a distant memory tonight after clashes between rioters and troops left two dead, dozens injured, foreigners in hiding and an awful question hanging in the tear-gassed air: did the UN mission, known as Minustah, bring cholera to Haiti?

The boys and men hurling rocks and bottles and shooting at foreign soldiers in the northern towns of Cap-Haitien and Hinche had no doubt. Nor did the residents of Port-au-Prince, who greeted UN convoys with sullen stares and insults.

“Minustah merde!” one man on Rue de Silence yelled at a passing pick-up with blue helmets. He made a slicing motion across his throat before being enveloped in a cloud of diesel and dust. Such is the confusion and loathing it was unclear if it was a threat or a comment on the UN’s possible role in the cholera outbreak.

The irony that Haiti’s putative saviours, in the aftermath of hurricanes and an apocalyptic earthquake, may have brought a water-borne bacterium called Vibrio cholerae has hit what were already fraught preparations for elections on 28 November. Foreign diplomats are holding their breath for the vote to go ahead on schedule.

The facts are thus: an exploding epidemic has killed more than 1,000, infected tens of thousands and spread anxiety through slums and tent cities. There had been no cholera here in living memory. The strain appears to be from south Asia. Soldiers from Nepal, which has cholera, moved into a base beside the Artibonite river in early October. The base has sanitation problems. A week later the river was contaminated and people in the area started vomiting and getting diarrhoea.

That does not add up to proof, and there are alternative explanations, but it seemed good enough yesterday for crowds in Hinche to assault Nepalese troops with bottles and rocks, wounding six. In Cap-Haitien, the country’s second city, a police sub-station was torched, roads were blocked and shots were fired at the UN.

“They’re targeting [and] fighting with Minustah and so if they see white people, they can rush to judge, and target them too,” Jonna Knappenberger, an aid worker in the city, wrote on the Haiti Rewired blog. “Minustah has definitely shot Haitians, at least two are dead, but of course we can’t confirm directly. Haitians are firing guns too, we keep hearing it. I personally would fear for my life on the street right now, especially at night.”

The UN dispatched Spanish soldiers to Cap-Haitien but today it remained cut off, with burning barricades across roads and metal barriers welded to the bridge leading to the airport.

A UN statement blamed the violence on political agitators and said troops fired in self-defence. “Minustah urges the population to remain vigilant and not to allow itself to be manipulated by the enemies of stability and democracy in the country.”

Officials have denied the Nepalese brought cholera and said they all tested negative. Appeals from Haitian leaders and foreign epidemiologists for an official investigation, however, have been ignored.

The controversy has shone a new light on what has been regarded internationally as a successful Brazilian-led mission. Despite extreme poverty and destruction Haiti remains relatively peaceful.

Many Haitians, however, have long criticised the outsiders as a cumbersome occupation force that squanders $500m better spent on building up ramshackle local police and courts.

“Speaking in a personal capacity, I don’t know why we have them,” said Prospery Raymond, country director of the UK-based NGO Christian Aid. “Yes, we have some gangs but we don’t have a war or insurgents.”

Most of the population believed the cholera came from the Nepalese and that the UN will do its best to hide it, he said. “If it is confirmed to be from them this will be damaging for the UN and their peacekeeping all over the world.”

In comparison US troops, who briefly led relief efforts after January’s earthquake, are popular and many people want them back. “Ameriken OK,” smiled Michel Ceant, a vegetable vendor in Port-au-Prince. Then he pointed to his mouth and made a retching sound. “Minustah – bleuh!

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The cost of telling the truth in the United States

http://dprogram.net

Posted by sakerfa on October 7th, 2010

(AmericaHijacked) – “Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company. We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well.” This frosty statement was the conclusion of Rick Sanchez’s 6-year-long career with the United States’ cable news network, CNN.

The award-winning Sanchez who had served in CNN’s Spanish service and covered the September 11 attacks for the network was fired on October 1 after granting an interview to the Sirius XM’s radio show “Stand Up With Pete Dominick” in which he implied that the Jews are dominating the mass media in the United States and just pretend to be a downtrodden, subjugated minority.

Sanchez criticized CNN’s Jewish “Daily Show” comedian Jon Stewart for directing offensive jokes at him in his nightly programs and called him a “bigot”. Answering a statement by Pete Dominick that Stewart belonged to a Jewish minority, Sanchez said: “Yeah, very powerless people. [laughs] He’s such a minority. I mean, you know, please. What—are you kidding? I’m telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart. And to imply that somehow they, the people in this country who are Jewish, are an oppressed minority?”

The skirmish between the two renowned media personalities became public when Stewart scoffed at Sanchez who had said in his “Rick’s List” show that he had received a Tweeter message from the House Republican leader John Boehner. Stewart called it a case of “send a twit a tweet”. Sanchez responded by telling Pete Dominick that Stewart couldn’t tolerate the media achievements of somebody who is of an ethnic minority: “He’s upset that someone of my ilk is almost at his level.”

Rick Sanchez explained that he grew up in a poor family whose members, including his father and mother, were subject to prejudice and oppression due to their Hispanic ethnicity. He complained that someone with a sumptuous background such as Jon Stewart can’t relate to what he has experienced during his life.

“I can’t see someone not getting a job these days because they’re Jewish,” he said.

And Sanchez is right. The most prominent media conglomerates of the United States are being run by influential Jews. Turner Broadcasting System’s chairman and CEO Philip I. Kent is a Jew, TimeWarner’s CEO Jeffrey Bewkes is a Jew, FOX NewsCorp’s CEO Peter Chernin is a Jew, Chairman of the Board of the National Amusements theater chain Sumner Redstone is a Jew, Paramount CEO’s Brad Grey is a Jew, Walt Disney/ABC’s CEO Robert Iger is a Jew, CBS’s CEO Leslie Moonves is Jew and NBC Universal’s CEO Jeff Zucker is a Jew.

By firing the Cuban-American news anchor and host, CNN demonstrated that those who assert that the United States is a “beacon of freedom” just make baseless and unfounded claims.

Although the circle of Zionist journalists began to applaud CNN for firing Sanchez immediately after the statement of his expulsion was released, the public opinion is well aware of the veracity of what Sanchez tried to imply. The mainstream media which are linked to the multinational corporations are being controlled by a troupe of well-off propagandists who advocate the interests of the state of Israel in the United States and raise funds to holdup AIPAC and other Zionist lobbies.

Over the past decades, pro-Israel billionaires and influential Jews made serious attempts to take over the media companies of the United States and promote their interests this way. In April 2007, a Chicago billionaire, Sam Zell bought the Tribune Company which is America’s third largest newspaper chain and includes the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and 23 TV stations. Zell is a major contributor to AIPAC.

There are several such instances which show that the media in the United States have simply lost their independence and succumbed to the Zionist lobbies. Whoever tries to cross the red line by touching on this issue will be silenced, even at the cost of switching off the beacon of freedom!

Rick Sanchez: Jews Run CNN & All Media

http://america-hijacked.com/2010/10/02/rick-sanchez-jews-run-cnn-all-media/

http://tinyurl.com/SanchezJewsruncnnandallmedia

Pro-Israel bias in the American media:

http://america-hijacked.com/2010/10/04/pro-israeli-bias-in-the-media/

Posted in Zionist Threat

Source: America Hijacked

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Globalist Mockingbird Media Attacks RT, Press TV as “Enemies”

http://dprogram.net

Posted by sakerfa on October 6th, 2010

(KurtNimmo) – Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of the globalist Aspen Institute, has declared Russia Today, Iran’s Press TV, and China’s CCTV as enemies.

In addition to heading up Aspen, an organization funded by the Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ford Foundation, Isaacson was appointed by Barry Obama to be chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the organization that directs establishment propaganda for foreign audiences.

RT, formerly Russia Today, is financed by the Russian state budget and is accused by Der Spiegel and Reporters Without Borders of disseminating pro-Kremlin propaganda. Press TV is owned by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. CCTV, short for China Central Television, reports directly to high-level officials in the Chinese Communist Party and its Central Propaganda Department.

In a speech before Radio Free Europe, Isaacson slammed these news outlets as “autocratic” and said the global elite cannot allow itself to be “out-communicated,” in other words it cannot allow contrary points of view, especially if those views are expressed by nations states ruled by autocrats.

Radio Free Europe is a CIA front organization. The CIA and its Mockingbird media engaged in a charade called Crusade for Freedom that successfully persuaded thousands of Americans to donate millions of dollars to Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty and in doing so consider the spook propaganda outfit sort of like National Public Radio (also owned by the government).

As a paid minion of the global elite, it makes perfect sense that Isaacson would characterize the state-run competition as a portentous enemy. CBS, NBC, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and dozens or other networks and newspapers fall under the sway of the bankster elite and their transnational corporations. The CIA was created by a group of Wall Street lawyers and their partners in the Pentagon. One of the first CIA operations was to corral the corporate media and turn it into a propaganda tool for the ruling elite. It has operated in that mode for over 60 years.

Of course, the real enemy of the ruling elite is the alternative media on the internet. Congress is now considering legislation to muzzle the alternative media. It is imperative that the globalists gain control over the non-corporate media and prevent alternative points of view from reaching people, even points of view from state media in Russia, China, and Iran that run counter to the propaganda of the ruling elite.

Source: Infowars

Mexico’s Troubled 200th Anniversary

Putting the squeeze on the pipeline of money and weapons that feed Mexico’s inferno would be the best Independence gift we could give Mexico.

September 18, 2010 |

For Mexico, 2010 is a deeply symbolic year. Mexicans celebrate 200 years of independence from Spain and the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. Their government will spend $300 million on the party, but no amount of fireworks or revolutionary nostalgia can overcome the inescapable sensation that Mexico is sinking into crisis.

Drug gang assassins recently massacred 72 Central and South American migrants. The two local and state investigators who first arrived at the crime scene disappeared and were found dead two weeks later. Gunmen killed three Mexican mayors in the past month.

In the first four years of President Felipe Calderon’s drug war, more than 28,000 people have been slain, according to the government’s own count. Yet there have been few prosecutions: less than 5 percent of these murders have been investigated. But even those who are inured to corruption and incompetence are sickened by news of a prison warden who let a death squad out at night over a period of months — driving official vehicles and armed with prison guard assault rifles — to massacre innocent people in a neighboring state.

Headlines from Mexico bleed with news of such brutal killings and government ineptitude. And even as the violence continues to build, a recession — spreading south from the United States — cuts to the economic bones of an already vulnerable Mexican population. Growing economic desperation and shocking violence have undermined Mexicans’ faith in the ability of their government to manage the economy, control the country’s streets, mete out justice, or even to remain neutral among the warring cartels seeking to control North America’s drug trade corridors.

It sounds bad and thus tempting to turn our gaze away from the news of mayhem and sadistic acts of violence coming out of Mexico. But we must not, and cannot afford to, turn away. The well-being of Mexico is vital to the well-being of the United States. We are neighbors and economic partners who share a continent and a common destiny. Any effective prescription to pull Mexico back from the abyss will require cooperation — as well as introspection and substantive policy changes — from the United States.

The U.S. should openly join the conversation on strategic and selective decriminalization of drugs like marijuana and impose strict controls on gun sales along the US side of our common border. Clearly, most of Mexico’s problems need to be solved in Mexico, by Mexicans, but these are two crucial steps we can take on the our side of the border to reduce the flow of money and guns fueling Mexico’s drug mafias. This one-two punch would deliver a damaging blow to the criminal organizations terrorizing Mexico.

A consensus is gelling on both sides of the border that it is time to move beyond the prohibitionist dogmas that have shaped — and doomed — the drug “war” since its declaration by Richard Nixon in the early 1970s. In Mexico a chorus of opinion leaders including former President Vicente Fox have forced open a long pent-up debate on drug legalization. Mexican President Calderon recently made news by endorsing debate on this topic, even as he reassured Washington of his own continued allegiance to the prohibition camp.

Americans are the prime customers for the narcotics produced in and shipped through Mexico. Despite 40 years and hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the drug war’s eradication and interdiction plans, prohibited drugs are easily available across the United States today. Their illegality assures the inflated profits that sustain criminal organizations.

This fall, Californians may pass a ballot measure to end marijuana prohibition. That would be an important step, but irrespective of California’s choice, it is our Federal drug and gun policies that must evolve to aid Mexicans fighting to preserve the soul of their country.

Mexicans often ask why the U.S. doesn’t ban the assault weapons that can still be legally purchased on our side of the border. The lamentable answer: powerful gun lobbyists successfully defend the legal sale of “single-shot” assault rifles even as they are routinely smuggled into Mexico where a simple tweak renders them fully automatic and ready to fire hundreds of rounds per minute in the hands of drug cartel assassins.

Eighty percent of the 75,000 guns Mexican authorities seized from criminals during the last three years came from the U.S. This fact underscores the need to reclassify control of gun sales along our frontier as a matter of national security.

Putting the squeeze on the pipeline of money and weapons that feed Mexico’s inferno would be the best Independence gift we could give Mexico. It would help more than any amount of guns, money, training, and electronic spy data we might provide to Mexico’s unreliable Army and police.

Ted Lewis directs the Mexico Program of Global Exchange. He has organized teams of election observers and human rights monitors there since 1994.

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Life in Devastated Haiti

http://www.uruknet.info

by Stephen Lendman

People walk in the Corail refugee camp, set up for people displaced by the Jan. earthquake, before a rainstorm on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday Sept. 8, 2010. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) September 18, 2010 Nine months after the January 12 earthquake, Haitians still have little relief. Over one and a half million left homeless continue struggling to survive, despite billions in aid raised or pledged. It’s for development, predatory NGOs, not them. That’s the problem, and they suffering as a result, little media attention paid to their plight. On September 15, Los Angeles Times writer Joe Mozingo headlined, “No plan in sight for Haiti’s homeless,” saying: Where to put them is contentious, reconstruction “hang(ing) on the potentially explosive issue” of who owns the land. For example, pre-quake, tenant farmers used to plant corn and sugar cane on a wealthy family’s 20-acre parcel “below the city’s main transmission lines of the Delmas 33 road.” “Now an estimated 25,000 people call it home,” living in one of many temporary camps, poorly protected against heavy rain, severe weather or hurricanes. When security men try to evict them, they’re chased off with “rocks, sticks and machetes.” “It’s not like we’re comfortable here,” says Katlyne Camean. “Last night when it rained, I filled three buckets of water from my house. But no one is telling us where they want us to go. I don’t want to go somewhere worse.” They’re pitted against an indifferent government, woefully little aid, and conditions unacceptable for anyone, including inadequate food, poor sanitation, little safe drinking water, weather-beaten makeshift shelters, too little of everything needed, no resolution of their homelessness, and the world community turning a blind eye to their plight. Rubble is everywhere, only 2% of it removed. On September 11, AP’s Tamara Lush reported that Port-au-Prince is strewn with “cracked slabs, busted-up cinder blocks, half-destroyed buildings,” demolished homes, and “pulverized concrete” on streets and sidewalks. “By some estimates, the quake left about 33 million cubic yards of debris in Port-au-Prince – more than seven times the amount of concrete” used for Hoover Dam. Overall, it’s little different from nine months ago, authorities offering excuses that don’t hold water, including little heavy equipment, problems navigating some roads, and few dump sites to put rubble collected. There’s no master plan, says Eric Overvest, the UN Development Program’s country director. Also, no one’s in charge, Haitian architect Leslie Voltaire saying: “Everybody is passing the blame on why things haven’t happened yet. There should be one person in charge. Resettlement has not even begun yet, and it can’t until the city has been cleared.” Allocating funding for other purposes and bureaucratic delays complicate things. Most of all, it’s Haiti, the hemisphere’s poorest country, exploited ruthlessly for centuries. If a comparable quake struck San Francisco, restoration would begin at once. It takes time, money and commitment, available to well-off White communities, not poor Black ones. Katrina-ravaged New Orleans residents understand, facing dire conditions five years later, those in Black communities on their own like millions of other poor Americans unaffected by natural disasters. In many respects, their lives are little different, given little aid during dire economic times. Refugee International (RI) on Haiti RI “advocates for lifesaving assistance and protection for displaced people and promotes solutions to displacement crises.” Its challenge is helping 41 million world refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs), living in limbo without citizenship rights. Emilie Parry and Melanie Teff just returned from Haiti after conducting RI’s second field assessment “of the humanitarian response and related protection issues…” Parry’s September 13 article titled, “Haiti: Emergency Paralysis” describes what she calls: Haitians “caught up in a protracted state of emergency. In the way that a spinal cord injury’s paralysis leads to bedsores, atrophy, and skin rot in the patient, the (poor) humanitarian response in Haiti feels paralyzed. The local community networks and linkages are atrophying, the spontaneous camps are developing bedsores, and the momentum, the window of opportunity within this emergency, may be turning to rot.” Why? Because of world indifference. Planned reconstruction is for profit, leaving poor Haitians on their own to survive, the world community indifferent to their plight. RI spent time in Haiti shortly after the quake, reporting on March 2 “From the Ground Up,” explaining the toll on survivors, their desperate need for everything, including “food, water, shelter and protection from abuse and exploitation.” They need an enormous amount of humanitarian aid. It’s pledged but not provided. RI recommended linking humanitarian efforts to Haiti’s civil society network, comprised of grassroots community-based organizations plus the well-established internal NGOs. Most, however, are more self-serving than for poor Haitians, a topic a previous article addressed. RI said few needs so far were addressed, including little or no “coordination and communication between Haitian civil society and UN and international NGOs….” Grassroots locals were mostly shut out to give corporate and well-connected NGOs free reign to profit from the vast human misery. Locals had “a hard time accessing meetings at the UN compound in Port-au-Prince” to be part of a coordinated response. RI also interviewed displaced Haitians “who expressed concern about security,” especially women and children vulnerable to rape other violence, and abuse. Then and now, they also lacked minimal amounts of everything, RI saying: “Most people who lost their homes sleep under makeshift dwellings of sheets and sticks providing little protection from rain,” and none from hurricanes. “The sanitation in the camps does not meet minimal international standards. The need for shelter poses immense logistical challenges… intrinsically linked to land ownership and property rights,” an issue the Preval government is doing nothing to resolve. Affected Haitians then and now need everything they’re not getting, receiving pathetically little of the pledged aid. “By all accounts, the leadership of the humanitarian country team is ineffectual. Following the earthquake, it took three weeks for the Humanitarian Coordinator to call a meeting with aid organizations.” Damage to affected and surrounding areas “have far-reaching implications that go beyond” reconstructing Port-au-Prince. The entire country needs help, mostly for its deeply impoverished, neglected and exploited people, the quake affected ones desperate for help, so far not forthcoming. In her September 13 article, Parry said: …in every part, semi-open space or crossroads in Port-au-Prince and the environs, we see a gathering of quake-displaced persons, make-shift lean-tos (few donated), tents… packed closely together, filling every space. There are no latrines, no showers, no (minimal) SPHERE standards observed, and no communications with international or local agencies responding to the emergency. Chaotic conditions have risen to “extreme heights.” Everything needed is in short supply or not provided. Security is lacking, forcing women to sleep in shifts to protect them and others from rape and abuse. The problem for thousands of unaccompanied children is enormous. Present day Haiti is like January’s, except for “the overwhelming stench of sewage and garbage,” and the toll on Haitians after months of neglect. “Children and adults have developed skin rashes and infections due to the poor water and sanitary conditions in the camps. The tents and lean-tos are tattered and torn; hundreds blew away in the recent storms, none remain dry (when it) rains, and it is the middle of hurricane season.” Across the city and surrounding areas, grassroots networks “are weakening,” without enough resources, support, or ability to work with established NGOs or world humanitarian organizations. Of the 1,000-1,300 camps, only six are policed by UNPOL/MINISTAH – there but doing little besides writing up incidences of rapes, other crimes, and botched “street abortions” for girls as young as 10. Camp Coordination and Management, under the leadership of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) “is a confused and contradictory mess, with an overwhelming number of cases where local camp groups have no idea” who’s in charge or what needs to be done to help. “The numbers in the camps have grown,” some displaced people having returned to Port-au-Prince from rural areas. Nothing is being done to help them. Little coordinated aid is provided, many camp residents saying “they feel they are being left to rot, left in the camps to die.” Scheduled November Elections On November 28, first round legislative and presidential elections will be held. Democracy, however, will be absent because the nation’s most popular party, Fanmi Lavalas, and 13 others are excluded, the system rigged to “elect” Washington friendly candidates. Lawyer Ira Kurzban, an immigration and employment law expert and former legal counsel to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, calls the process “unfair, unconstitutional and undemocratic.” Haitians know a charade is planned. Many will opt out, their choice in April 2009 for the sham process to fill 12 open Senate seats that saw an estimated 5-10% turnout. Why bother this time when virtually no one running gives a damn about ordinary Haitians. It makes a mockery of real elections – illegitimate, farcical, and little more than bad theater. Nonetheless, unless the fluid date is changed, it’ll be hailed as democracy in action. Millions of Haitians know better. A Final Comment Haiti remains in emergency. For growing numbers, aid is “too little, too late.” It presents an enormous challenge for those who care, to “do better, in order to support the possibility of hope, the possibility of recovery, and the opportunity to build back better.” So far, it’s planned only for the privileged, ordinary Haitians are on their own to survive. Other generations faced it earlier for centuries, helped only by the brief interregnum under Aristide, why millions in the country so badly want him back. His presence alone would make a world of difference, helping and providing many with what’s now fading – hope. Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. Contact him at: lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM-1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening.

:: Article nr. 69886 sent on 18-sep-2010 21:50 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=69886

:: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.

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Tony Blair’s Journey

from : http://www.truthdig.com

Posted on Sep 17, 2010

By Peter Stothard

This review originally appeared in The TLS, whose website is www.the-tls.co.uk, and is reposted with permission.

Tony Blair’s political memoir has been pulled apart this week as though it were the palace of a fallen dictator, not so much reviewed as ransacked. Reporters have raced through its 700 pages as though each were some hitherto shuttered room hiding unused ammunition, looted antiquities, piles of purposeless propaganda, racks of vintage wines and extravagant wardrobes. With no prior newspaper serialization deal, there was a stampede for stories that matched the frenzy for Saddam’s Picassos or Mrs Marcos’s shoes. The British may not like him much any more but the media remain fascinated by the man who led their government for a decade, led an unelectable party to three election victories, followed an unprecedentedly unpopular American President into even more unpopular wars and redefined the role of Prime Minister for an age in which the lines between the political and the personal were themselves being redefined.

The best prospects for looters seemed to lie in the pages indexed under the name of Blair’s sometime collaborator, rival and loathed successor, Gordon Brown. Early results here were good. Although it was hardly any longer a surprise for Blair to say that his Chancellor of the Exchequer was “maddening” and had “zero emotional intelligence”, the news that in March 2006 Brown had blackmailed Blair with the threat of a formal investigation into the selling of peerages unless plans for pension reform were abandoned was sharp. “I have considered at length whether to include this episode”, Blair writes of the day when Britain seems to have come closest to an outright coup by one politician against another.

Revelation of the “truly nasty side of politics” is not, however, what Blair wants his book to be remembered for. Much of the personal abuse that marked the relationship between the two founders of the New Labour project remains unrepeated, at least for now. The consequence, in the Brown zones of Blair’s ransacked palace, has been unexpected emphasis on the long-time policy differences between the two men. Disputes over the modernization of welfare and the State’s role in solving the financial crisis were revealed in detail that was fresher, feeding the simultaneous media battle over who should be the next Labour leader and whether the TB-GBs (as the two men’s hatred became known) would continue into future generations, Blairites vs Brownites like some second-rate curse on the House of Atreus.

A Journey: My Political Life

By Tony Blair

Knopf, 720 pages

The other area that seemed a ripe source of stories was the one marked Iraq, especially the shrines to the genius of George W. Bush that the book’s limited pre-publicity had promised. The result here was more of a disappointment to those seeking new facts. But there are no new heights of hagiography either: when Bush is described as having been both “very smart” and of “immense simplicity in how he saw the world”, it is of interest now only to collectors of narrative contradiction. Blair has always been empathetic to a fault (he has a voice for every room), and in these parts he is writing for American readers who like their leaders treated with a pale-toned respect. Describing Camp David as “a collection of log cabins, very much American-style and very well done” is perhaps a little too lame even for the lowering prose that is the dominant vocal style here.

One paragraph, however, stands out and in a way which becomes peculiarly characteristic of the whole. The description of the Blair family’s arrival at Bush’s Crawford Ranch in April 2002 begins as expected, a place “pretty much in the middle of nowhere, 1,600 acres with a house and guest house and various outbuildings”. And then:

“as usual I turned up mob-handed with Grandma [Cherie’s mother] and Leo [their baby son] in tow. It was all very odd. Cherie used to like the family to travel with me but, frankly, when I was working, I preferred to be on my own and undistracted, able to concentrate entirely on the matter in hand, not having to worry about Leo feeling bored, Grandma complaining or making sure that everyone got on together. ”

To see long excerpts from “A Journey: My Political Life” at Google Books, click here.

For some readers this enlivening of the political by the personal may be merely charming, a reminder of just how like the rest of us our Prime Minister once was. For others it may bring a mild alarm. Ten months later when the Iraq war was close and unstoppable, Blair faced hundreds of thousands of critics who were sceptical that he was still negotiating in good faith and that he had not long ago given his word to back the American removal of Saddam. The British ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, has said that at this Crawford Ranch meeting the Prime Minister had pledged his backing “in blood”. Blair has always denied this claim; but then perhaps he was worrying about Grandma when the blood-dipped pens were handed around the table. There are truly some details that one would rather not know.

The former Prime Minister spends little time in Britain now, preferring the popularity, the profit, and the opportunities to spread religious harmony which are open to him overseas. His single high-security signing session in London has been cancelled after bottles and shoes greeted his first publicity appearance in Dublin. There is a popular internet campaign for bookshop customers to move his oeuvre to the “True Crime” or “Dark Fantasy” shelves.

As long as he is abroad Blair sees a continuing future for himself as a professional guru and guide. The future has always been the time zone in which he feels most comfortable. “I’m not really a retrospective person”, he writes. He describes how he told his wife in Paris in 1994, before there was a vacancy as leader of the Labour Party, that the then occupant would die and he would take over the job: “I think this will happen, I just think it will”. As he told Peter Mandelson after the first part of this prediction had come true, “this is mine, I know it and I will take it”. He predicts confidently now about the prospects of China, seeking “to set out a view of the world both as it is and as it may become”.

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a look at : “Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa”

org. Dailymail Artikel :  here

What did YOUR dad do in the war Sarkozy ?

By Peter Allen
Last updated at 11:45 PM on 27th May 2009

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The reluctance of President Nicolas Sarkozy to issue an invitation to the Royal Family for the D-Day ceremonies might be seen by some as related to the less-than-glorious war records of his own family – and that of his wife, Carla Bruni.

Mr Sarkozy, 54, is the son of an 81-year-old Hungarian aristocrat who, a few months after D-Day in 1944, fled to Germany from the family home near Budapest as Russian troops advanced.

After years of appeasing Hitler, the Hungarian government had entered the war against the Western allies in 1941.

Pál Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa, left, father of the French President, lived for most of World War II in Hungary, which was occupied by the Germans

Red Army troops were approaching Hungary fast, intent on taking revenge on families who had lived surprisingly comfortably during years of Nazi collaboration and then occupation.

As members of the upper classes, Pál Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa and his family had been treated well by the German military, keeping their palatial home in the village of Alattyán, as well as their loyal servants.

Pál’s family fled to Germany because they believed they would be safer among friends in the crumbling remnants of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich rather than among the Communists.

But when Pál returned home in 1945 Hungary was also in ruins, and all of his family’s possessions had been seized.

He then feared being exiled by the Russians to a labour camp in Siberia and so returned to Germany, with his mother telling Hungary’s new Communist leaders that he had drowned in a lake.

Pál settled in Baden Baden, on the border with France, and joined the French Foreign Legion in which he served, without seeing action, for several years and left prematurely when told he would have to fight in Indochina.

Moving to France in 1948, Pál reduced his surname to Sarkozy. His son, the future president, and his two brothers did French National Service in the 1970s.

Nicolas spent most of his as an air force cleaner, and never saw active service.

He would clean an administrative block in the morning, earning the nickname ‘the gondolier of the shiny corridors’.

More…

• French D-Day surrender: Sarkozy makes U-turn and claims Queen IS welcome at 65th anniversary
• D-Day snub to Queen: Palace fury as Sarkozy refuses to invite royals to 65th Anniversary – and Brown won’t act
• Stephen Glover: A diminutive egomaniac, the stain of Nazi collaboration and why the French can’t forgive us for saving them in the War

As for his wife Carla Bruni, 41, she was raised by her stepfather, Alberto Bruni Tedeschi, whose family firm had close links with Benito Mussolini’s murderous regime during the Second World War.

Tedeschi, who died in 1996 aged 81, was a rich industrialist whose official biography makes no mention of military service, instead suggesting that he spent the war years composing classical music, and especially operas.

There was never any suggestion that his luxurious life in a villa near Turin was ever troubled by the Italian Fascists or, indeed, by Nazi allies and later occupiers.

Miss Bruni’s biological father was Maurizio Remmert, a Brazil-based businessman who had a six-year passionate affair with her mother, concert pianist Marisa Borini. Remmert was born after the war, in 1947.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1189067/So-did-YOUR-dad-war-Sarkozy.html#ixzz0zkvBgxwl

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allready published here /related :

Speech by Nicolas Sarkozy at the annual Ambassadors of France’ Conference (Voltairnet.org)

France must end stigmatization of Roma and Travellers

………………      just research there’s more on the Web  .

“my Logic of truth” is “Pro”  “respectfully roaming the earth” !

Wikipedia on Nomads :

a Wiki Peak :

Nomadic people (Greek: νομάδες, nomádes, “those who let pasture herds”), commonly known as itinerants in modern-day contexts, are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world.^[2] Many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but traditional nomadic behavior is increasingly rare in industrialized countries. Nomadic cultures are discussed in three categories according to economic specialization: hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads, and “peripatetic nomads”.

Nagy ….What ?

Mainstream Bullshit

from : http://www.sott.net

Archie Kennedy
MWC News
Thu, 16 Sep 2010 21:00 CDT

© MWC News

The media have a responsibility and that responsibility is to inform us of what’s going on. If a nuclear power plant is at risk of spreading nuclear death two miles from our town, it is the responsibility of the media to let us know that the danger exists and why it exists. To a certain extent, we put our trust in them. It is a social contract. They are there to inform us, to warn us, to let us know what’s going on. Who, what, where, when, and why; all the information we need regarding the forces that impact us in our daily lives is delivered on our doorsteps, it comes in through the cable. We sleep well knowing that no midnight asteroid is about to send us back to the Stone Age.

But can we? At this point, trusting mainstream media is not a rational or intelligent choice to make. You may have noticed. They are not always honest. They have lied by saying things that are not true, by not saying things that are true, and very often through spinning bullshit, which is slightly different than lying. Sometimes bullshit is worse than lies. It’s not that they have done so several times, or even often. It’s that they do it all the time and they do it consistently.

Economic Lies

Economists have been lying and continue to lie through a critical time as the world economy becomes increasingly volatile and we become vulnerable to financial devastation. At this point in time the media and countless so-called economists have lulled faithful believers with a pack of lies. They have done it in 2008 and 2009 and they continue with the same lies and backward analysis in 2010. The same economists, experts, and corporate shills that have led us to the doors of the economic slaughterhouse are portrayed as gurus that have the holy grail of economic wisdom and direction. They are the same shysters, criminals, and corporate shills that have orchestrated the biggest sell out in history.

When Wall Street falters, they get excited. When Main Street slides into the Third World, they barely notice. While America shivers over burning barrels, Obama fiddles in blissful ignorance; he seems a sort of ‘let them eat cake’ monarch. A reporter recently asked Obama about his efforts to curb poverty in America. Obama’s reply could have come from the mouth of any imbecile or stooge that just walked out of any neo-liberal seminar. Obama said, “The most important anti-poverty effort is growing the economy… It’s more important than any program we could set up. It’s more important than any transfer payment we could have.” Which is code for saying that the ruling class is the filter through which all spending must pass through? And it is implied, in all this that wealth emanates from the ruling class to the working classes and not the other way around. Will mainstream media even mention this or anything close? The short answer is ‘no’.

They are defining and will increasingly define poverty as ‘the New Normal’. And as America swirls down the toilet of depression, mainstream media bubbles along with cautious optimism that the stock market will continue to score enormous profits for the ruling class. Not once will they notice that what is good for Wall Street is bad for Main Street. To mention this class dichotomy is incorrect, politically.

War Lies

Even the most serious proponent of the substance and integrity of mainstream media would have to admit, when it comes to war, that the Pentagon, the President of the United States, and mainstream media make Orwell’s 1948 imagination seem prophetic. In 2010, doublespeak is expected and as you will read below, the infrastructure for constant surveillance is under construction. War is peace. What’s good is bad and what’s bad is good. The Iraq war ended but today, alternative media are reporting that American and Iraqi troops killed at least eight civilians in Fallujah, Iraq. American has no intention of leaving. It is just one more pack of lies. There is no end to the examples of doublespeak and outright lies that fill today’s media.

If you maintain a watch with war news stories collectors, like Anti War.com, you will see that atrocities happen in Afghanistan with sickening regularity. Civilians are killed by unmanned robots (drones) or NATO forces but mainstream media doesn’t report it or, if they do, they present it as just one more ‘whoops’ moment. American gangsters are running loose in uniform in Afghanistan and kill with impunity. A band of GI Joes has recently been found to have been cutting body parts off Afghan civilians they had killed for sport and had been keeping them for trophies. It was barely mentioned in mainstream media but you’d have to look for it. Imagine, for a moment, how the story would play if this was done by Cubans or Iranians. Do you think they’d notice?

The Americans have been bombing civilian populations in Pakistan with increasing regularity. In the past two days, according to Jason Ditz reporting for Anti-war.com, American drones have killed 37 people, one of which may belong to the Naquin Network, yet another group on that long list of enemies. The other victims are reported to be civilians or, people that have not conclusively been linked to the group.

In another very disturbing development, the American state is carrying out the extrajudicial execution of an American named Anwar al Awake who they allege is a terrorist. The individual case itself is alarming enough. The fact that it re-defines the scope of power of the American state however, is the real issue. Have mainstream media noticed? Currently, for mainstream media, the issue is about how to fight the legal battle against this bizarre development in American law. If they can kill their own citizens above the rule of law, we have entered a horrific new reality.

Then there is the sheer danger consequential to slaughtering, terrorizing and destroying whole nations. Media have the responsibility to let us know how badly the USA, the UK, Canada and all the other NATO participants have destroyed the cultures, livelihoods, and lives of the people they so routinely and mindlessly murder and maim. It is the same as the nuclear plant analogy. There will be consequences for us all. There will be future 9 11s and worse. And it will happen because of what we are doing now. If our tax dollars are in the service of whipping up hate around the world against us, we should know.

The media have been portraying the ongoing atrocities as an aberration; maybe it was rogue soldiers, maybe it was poor communication, maybe the victims were human shields. Victims are dismissed as ‘collateral damage’. What will not be discussed is the ugly and likely possibility that these victims are victims of collective punishment.

A dark and sinister reality had emerged within the American dream. Mainstream media isn’t reporting it; they are the maestros. The only objective views of this ‘new normal/World Order’ will be here in alternative media and if you indulge in reading or watching what you are reading at the moment (MWC News), chances are you have not swallowed the cool aid.

The State

Mainstream media is not just a simple money pig. It is much more than that. With the marriage of the corporation and the state fully consummated, it is natural for the corporate media to mouth the interests of both. Mainstream media has become a tool employed by those that want to tell you that the Western world needs to, more than anything else, shore up its security. In a similar vein to Hitler’s fire in the Reichstag, the billionaires that run the White House want us to be terrified.

They want a to funnel billions of tax dollars into their own pockets through the sale of weapons systems. As a result we have seen nine years of talking heads discussed, in very serious tones, the need for security. We are in a new age, we are told. Threatened by Muslim extremists. If you can remember the 60s, 70s or even well before then, you will know that terrorism or guerilla warfare has been around a long, long time and there is nothing new or more sinister today than there was in 1970. Terrorism is another word for guerilla warfare which is naturally adopted by those with little or no power.

This thrust is more threatening to freedom than we may notice at first. In a free society, the threat of danger is always present. It’s part of the social contract. Criminals run free until they have actually committed the crime; that’s the price of living in a free society.

Hyping ubiquitous threats has muted opposition to the construction of a massive, although unseen, state apparatus in the United States that would shame the USSR in its heyday. The Washington Post, to its credit, has recently reported vague parameters on the growing American state apparatus. In an article entitled “Top Secret America” Dana Priest and William Arkin report that the American government has created a massive underworld that “has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.”

Here is an excerpt from the article: “These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation’s other findings include:

• Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
• An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
• In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings – about 17 million square feet of space.” [Source]

Kudos to the Washington Post. Given the magnitude of the story however, it is almost hidden from view. Where are the talking heads? The hyped up concern about a Soviet style neighbour watching neighbour reality emerging in the USA?

The common narrative is not aimed to challenge this kind of ominous development. Instead, it is to continue to cry for the need for more security and less freedom. The story line shouts the need for an iron state apparatus.

Corporate media is becoming synonymous with state media, much like Pravda of the old USSR. Corporate media don’t just make money and parrot the wishes and plans of the ruling class. They also strive to indoctrinate and shape the rabble into a uniform and docile mass of petty chauvinism.

Ruling Class Media

The term, ‘ruling class’ has not been in common usage except for that band of serious Marxists selling papers at the university. However, there is no better description for the class that run government. They rule and they rule because they belong to those that are wealthy enough to tell politicians what to do. They are, properly, the ruling class.

They have their own specific interests and those interests happen to be against the interests of the rest of us. These interests include selling weapons, controlling resources, and dominating each and every corner of the world. Those munitions/oil billionaires that set the tone, the content, and the agenda for the media they also own and control. A small-town newspaper does not have the resources to hire investigative journalists and they pick up the main stories from the newswire. Those newswire stories are fed through the filters of the corporate media. Here, Noam Chomsky explains who sets the content and the agenda for the mainstream:

“The New York Times and CBS, for example. Well, first of all, they are major, very profitable, corporations. Furthermore, most of them are either linked to, or outright owned by, much bigger corporations, like General Electric, Westinghouse, and so on. They are way up at the top of the power structure of the private economy which is a very tyrannical structure. Corporations are basically tyrannies, hierarchic, controlled from above. If you don’t like what they are doing you get out. The major media are just part of that system.”

Chomsky also makes the point that the media has a specific motive and that motive is the audience itself. That is why news stories are very short and their patterns are quite simplistic. Short attention grabbing sound bites or pleasing optics are important. Content is also important but not in the way it should be. The main thrust of the business is not to inform, the business is about grabbing an audience and people are the product. Chomsky continues:

“Take the New York Times. It’s a corporation and sells a product. The product is audiences. They don’t make money when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper. But the audience is the product. The product is privileged people, just like the people who are writing the newspapers, you know, top-level decision-making people in society. You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations. In the case of the elite media, it’s big businesses.” (Lifted from)

But there is more to this than selling audiences. You will notice that the media will make certain issues relevant and important. They will spin them out in a seamless drum beat to the corporate party line and with each other, sometimes word for word. For example, in the 90s the ruling class wanted to cut social programs in the USA and in Canada. The deficit was the ‘terrorist threat’ of the time. Right wing think tanks and bond rating agencies like Moody’s of New York suddenly had a lot to say about how societies are governed and how tax money is spent. You may argue; but the deficit was a real problem at the time and it has returned. Notice however that when tax dollars are spent on weapons systems, the media does not make an issue of the deficit. It is rarely mentioned, if at all. That is because those that control the media are the same people that profit from building weapons systems.

According to Peter Phillips, “The eleven largest or most influential media corporations in the United States are General Electric Company (NBC), Viacom Inc. (cable), The Walt Disney Company (ABC), Time Warner Inc.(CNN), Westinghouse Electric Corporation (CBS), The News Corporation Ltd. (Fox), Gannett Co. Inc., Knight-Ridder Inc., New York Times Co., Washington Post Co., and the Times Mirror Co. These eleven major broadcast and print media corporations now represent a major portion of the news information systems in the United States. For many people their entire source of news and information comes from these eleven corporations.” (Source)

General Electric is in the business of making battlefield computer systems. Their director, former senator Sam Nunn (who also directs Chevron/Texaco) isn’t likely to promote journalists that research his connections or to report any stories that work against the interests of NBC. He is not likely to be happy about his reporters making anti war statements either.

Steve Mizrach points out, “Opinion in our society must be carefully shaped and moulded within certain careful boundaries: those who transgress those boundaries are libel to wind up “extremists,” “ideologues,” “fanatics,” or “agitators. Now that dissidents in the U.S. can no longer be labelled ‘fellow travellers’ of the Moscow-run Commie conspiracy, the task has become more urgent. And how is it that consent, that most valuable of social products is manufactured?” (Source)

Mizrach points out that the following tactics are employed by what we may regard, realistically, as the enemy; that is, mainstream media. They mould opinion particularly on Sunday talk shows by parading the opinions of sycophants that are the mouthpieces that have been schooled within the hallowed halls of the University of Corporate Indoctrination.

These are bolstered by spin doctors, or, PR devils. “PR managers, known as “spin doctors” when working in government, are able to carefully craft speeches and advertisements which evoke powerful images in the American psyche, frequently using “power words” such as freedom, fairness, liberty, justice, and peacekeeping for policies which dominate, discriminate, imprison, exploit, and terrorize much of the rest of the world.” (Mizrach)

Mizrach also points out the real purpose of public opinion polls is not so much to measure public opinion as it is to shape it. They also employ academics and think tanks to shape and mould public opinion.

Together, these tools are used against us. They are more threatening an enemy to the citizens of Western nations than an army of bin Laden. They are used not only to shape public opinion. They are used to lie to us and to indoctrinate the impressionable and the young.

Class War

Non Americans look upon our American brothers and sisters and what they have served up on a daily basis under a disguise called ‘news’. We watched in incredulity as the American health care debate raged. The word socialist, we discovered, is a dirty word in America. Ignorant to a fault, the politicians and the media spun lies and distortions with wide eyed enthusiasm as if the rest of the world wasn’t watching. It looked like a Jerry Springer show, a pitiful crowd of beaten down as angry victims proudly showing their own ignorance to the world, utterly oblivious. But that is not America, it is a fraction of America and we find the same backward and angry lumpen attitudes everywhere. The difference is, in the USA, it is cultivated.

It should be obvious by now that we are on the losing side of a very aggressive class war. The ruling elites have the clear advantage. They are waging war on the rest of us and we, as a collective, are only dimly aware that it’s happening. CNN, Fox, and CTV are not telling. A large part of that ignorance is a result of their slick packaging and their endless supply of Presidents, Prime Ministers, and sexy stories. They are very good at slick visuals and clever sound bites. Their whole focus is on the packaging, the face. They have their reputation and influence. They have paid reporters that are on the scene. They have very little in terms of substance. For that, you turn to us; to alternative media.

It is hard for us to actually recognize them as our enemy. They have such pretty smiles and they tell such human and touching stories. But don’t ever forget; these useful idiots are aiming to impoverish you, to strip away your rights. It’s happening. They callously disregard the suffering of ‘collaterals’. They tell you that they are ensuring that you are ‘secure’ by whipping up hate all over the planet. The stunned mouthpieces don’t even know they are doing it. Some of the worst war crimes in living memory are enabled by these treacherous talking heads. They are taking part in the ultimate economic betrayal of America and the rest of the post-industrial world. They protect the ruling class and work for the benefit of that class against you and me. They are certainly our enemy. What is vital is that you and I recognize this. We can’t fight back as long as we allow ourselves to be lulled by the likes of Jerry Springer and CNN.

For our part, we have MWC News, Counterpunch, Democracy Now, and a large choice of alternative media outlets to seek out pertinent news, honest opinions, and insightful analysis. The internet is a genie let out of a bottle. This fluid and democratic flow of information is the blessing of this uncontrolled machine that sits before you. The corporations do not own or control this. They certainly have an advantage but on this front, our fight has just begun. We need to expand, to develop better tools and a wider audience. We need to fight back. Together we stand on the front lines. Recognize it.

Avoid Genetically Modified Food: Doctors and Animals Alike Tell Us

from : http://www.sott.net

Jeffrey M. Smith
Wellnessuncovered.com
Thu, 16 Sep 2010 07:07 CDT

© Greenpeace

The farmer grinned as he told the visitor, “Watch this!” He called his pigs, which ran frantically towards him to be fed. But when he scooped out corn and threw it on the ground, the pigs sniffed it and then looked up at the farmer with confused expectation. The farmer then scooped corn from another bin and flung it near the pigs, which ran over and quickly devoured it.

The farmer said, “The first corn is genetically engineered. They won’t touch it.”

It’s not just pigs that swear off genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In South Africa, Strilli Oppenheimer’s chickens won’t eat genetically modified (GM) corn. Most buffalo in Haryana, India, refuse cottonseed cakes if made from GM cotton plants. Geese migrating through Illinois only munched sections of the soybean field that was non-GMO. When given a choice, elk, deer, raccoons, and rats all avoided GMOs. And even during the coldest days of Iowa winter, squirrels, which regularly devour natural corn, refused to touch the GM variety.

One skeptical farmer who read about the squirrels wanted to see for himself if it was true. He bought a bag full of GM corn ears, and another of non-GM, and left them in his garage till winter. But by the time he fetched the bags, mice had done the experiment for him. They broke into the natural corn bag and finished it; the GM cobs were untouched.

Doctors prescribe no GMOs

No one knows why the animals refuse GMOs, but according to a 2009 statement by the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM), when lab animals do eat GM feed, it’s not pretty. “Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food,” says the AAEM policy paper, which specifically cited infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system, among the impacts of eating GMOs. “There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects,” they wrote. “There is causation…”

Although we humans don’t have a natural sense to stay away from GM foods, AAEM’s position indicates that we should take a lesson from the animals. This renowned medical organization, which first recognized such dangers as food allergies, chemical sensitivity, and Gulf War Syndrome, called on all physicians to prescribe non-GMO diets to all patients.¹ They also called for a moratorium on GMOs, long-term independent studies, and labeling.

Former AAEM President Dr. Jennifer Armstrong says, “Physicians are probably seeing the effects in their patients, but need to know how to ask the right questions.” Renowned biologist Dr. Pushpa M. Bhargava and many others believe that GMOs may be a major contributor to the deteriorating health in America since GM foods were introduced in 1996.

GMOs on your plate

There are eight GM food crops: soy, corn, cotton, canola, sugar beets, Hawaiian papaya, and a little bit of zucchini and yellow squash. The two primary reasons why plants are engineered are to allow them to either drink poison, or produce poison.

Poison drinkers are called herbicide tolerant. Their DNA is outfitted with bacterial genes that allow them to survive otherwise deadly doses of toxic herbicide. The first five crops on the list above have herbicide tolerant varieties. The poison producers are called Bt crops. Inserted genes from the soil bacterium Bacillus Thuringiensis produce an insect-killing pesticide called Bt-toxin in every cell of the plant. That is found in corn and cotton. The papaya and squashes have virus genes inserted, to fight off a plant virus. All GM crops are linked to dangerous side effects.

Pregnant women and babies at great risk

GM foods are particularly dangerous for pregnant women and children. After GM soy was fed to female rats, most of their babies died – compared to a 10% deaths among controls fed natural soy.² GM-fed babies were smaller, and possibly infertile.³

Testicles of rats fed GM soy changed from the normal pink to dark blue.3 Mice fed GM soy had altered young sperm.4 Embryos of GM soy-fed parent mice had changed DNA.5 And mice fed GM corn had fewer, and smaller, babies.7

In Haryana, India, most of those buffalo that did consume GM cottonseed ended up with reproductive complications such as premature deliveries, abortions, and infertility; many calves died. About two dozen US farmers said thousands of pigs became sterile from certain GM corn varieties. Some had false pregnancies; others gave birth to bags of water. Cows and bulls also became infertile.

Eating poison in every bite

When insects take a bite out of the corn and cotton plants engineered to produce Bt-toxin, their stomach splits open and they die. Because that same toxin is used in its natural bacterial state as a spray by farmers for insect control, biotech companies claim that it has a history of safe use and can be incorporated directly into every plant cell.

The Bt-toxin produced in GM plants, however, is thousands of times more concentrated than natural Bt spray, is designed to be more toxic, has properties of an allergen, and cannot be washed off the plant.

Moreover, studies confirm that even the less toxic natural spray can be harmful. When dispersed by plane to kill gypsy moths in Washington and Vancouver, about 500 people reported allergy or flu-like symptoms.¹, ¹¹ The same symptoms are now reported by thousands of farm workers from handling Bt cotton throughout India.¹²

GMOs provoke immune reactions

GMO safety expert Dr. Arpad Pusztai says changes in immune status are “a consistent feature of all the [animal] studies.”¹³ From Monsanto’s own research to government funded trials, rodents fed Bt corn had significant immune reactions.¹, ¹

Soon after GM soy was introduced to the UK, soy allergies skyrocketed by 50%. Ohio allergist Dr. John Boyles says “I used to test for soy allergies all the time, but now that soy is genetically engineered, it is so dangerous that I tell people never to eat it.”

GM soy, corn, and papaya contain new proteins with allergenic properties.¹ In addition, GM soy has up to seven times more of a known soy allergen.¹ Perhaps the US epidemic of food allergies and asthma is a casualty of genetic manipulation.

Animals dying in large numbers

In India, animals graze on cotton plants after harvest. But when shepherds let sheep graze on Bt cotton plants, thousands died. Investigators said preliminary evidence “strongly suggests that the sheep mortality was due to a toxin…most probably Bt-toxin.”¹ In one small study, all sheep fed Bt cotton plants died; those fed natural plants remained healthy.

In an Andhra Pradesh village, buffalo grazed on cotton plants for eight years without incident. On January 3rd, 2008, 13 buffalo grazed on Bt cotton plants for the first time. All died within three days.¹ Bt corn is also implicated in the deaths of cows in Germany, and horses, water buffaloes, and chickens in The Philippines.²

In lab studies, twice the number of chickens fed Liberty Link corn died; 7 of 40 rats fed a GM tomato died within two weeks.²¹ Those rats had refused to eat the tomato and had to be force fed.

Worst finding of all – GMOs remain inside of us

The only published human feeding study revealed that even after we stop eating GMOs, harmful GM proteins may be produced continuously inside of us; genes inserted into GM soy transfer into bacteria inside our intestines and continue to function.²² If Bt genes also transfer, eating GM corn chips might transform our intestinal bacteria into living pesticide factories.

Warnings by government scientists ignored and denied

According to documents released from a lawsuit, in 1991 – 92 scientists at the FDA repeatedly warned that GM foods might create allergies, poisons, new diseases, and nutritional problems.²³ But the White House ordered the agency to promote biotechnology, and Michael Taylor, Monsanto’s former attorney, headed up the FDA’s GMO policy. That 1992 policy – still in effect today – declares that no safety studies on GMOs are required. Monsanto and other producers determine if their foods are safe. Taylor later became Monsanto’s vice president, and was reinstalled at the FDA in 2009 by the Obama administration as the US Food Safety Czar.

Opting out as guinea pigs

Biologist Dr. David Schubert of the Salk Institute says, “If there are problems [with GMOs], we will probably never know because the cause will not be traceable and many diseases take a very long time to develop.” In the 9 years after GM crops were introduced in 1996, Americans with three or more chronic diseases jumped from 7% to 13%.² Allergies doubled in less time. And the incidence of low birth weight babies, infertility, and infant mortality are all escalating. But without any human clinical trials or post marketing surveillance, we may never know if these or other disorders like autism, obesity, and diabetes, are triggered or made worse by GMOs.

We don’t need to wait for more research to learn our lesson from the animals and the doctors. Consult the Non-GMO Shopping Guide (www.NonGMOShoppingGuide.com) to learn how to avoid GMOs. Even a small percentage of people choosing non-GMO brands could force the food industry to remove all GM ingredients. By doing so, you are not only being careful about your own health, you are being compassionate to the environment and future generations – since GMOs wreak long-term havoc in our ecosystem as well.

—–

References:

1. www.aaemonline.org/gmopost.html
2. Irina Ermakova, “Genetically modified soy leads to the decrease of weight and high mortality of rat pups of the first generation. Preliminary studies,” Ecosinform 1 (2006): 4 – 9.
3. Irina Ermakova, “Experimental Evidence of GMO Hazards,” Presentation at Scientists for a GM Free Europe, EU Parliament, Brussels, June 12, 2007
4. Irina Ermakova, “Experimental Evidence of GMO Hazards,” Presentation at Scientists for a GM Free Europe, EU Parliament, Brussels, June 12, 2007
5. L. Vecchio et al, “Ultrastructural Analysis of Testes from Mice Fed on Genetically Modified Soybean,” European Journal of Histochemistry 48, no. 4 (Oct – Dec 2004):449 – 454.
6. Oliveri et al., “Temporary Depression of Transcription in Mouse Pre-implantion Embryos from Mice Fed on Genetically Modified Soybean,” 48th Symposium of the Society for Histochemistry, Lake Maggiore (Italy), September 7 – 10, 2006.
7. Alberta Velimirov and Claudia Binter, “Biological effects of transgenic maize NK603xMON810 fed in long term reproduction studies in mice,” Forschungsberichte der Sektion IV, Band 3/2008
8. Jerry Rosman, personal communication, 2006
9. See for example, A. Dutton, H. Klein, J. Romeis, and F. Bigler, “Uptake of Bt-toxin by herbivores feeding on transgenic maize and consequences for the predator Chrysoperia carnea,” Ecological Entomology 27 (2002): 441 – 7; and J. Romeis, A. Dutton, and F. Bigler, “Bacillus thuringiensis toxin (Cry1Ab) has no direct effect on larvae of the green lacewing Chrysoperla carnea (Stephens) (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae),” Journal of Insect Physiology 50, no. 2 – 3 (2004): 175 – 183.
10. Washington State Department of Health, “Report of health surveillance activities: Asian gypsy moth control program,” (Olympia, WA: Washington State Dept. of Health, 1993).
11. M. Green, et al., “Public health implications of the microbial pesticide Bacillus thuringiensis: An epidemiological study, Oregon, 1985 – 86,” Amer. J. Public Health 80, no. 7(1990): 848 – 852.
12. Ashish Gupta et. al., “Impact of Bt Cotton on Farmers’ Health (in Barwani and Dhar District of Madhya Pradesh),” Investigation Report, Oct – Dec 2005.
13. October 24, 2005 correspondence between Arpad Pusztai and Brian John
14. John M. Burns, “13-Week Dietary Subchronic Comparison Study with MON 863 Corn in Rats Preceded by a 1-Week Baseline Food Consumption Determination with PMI Certified Rodent Diet #5002,” December 17, 2002
    www.monsanto.com/monsanto/content/sci_tech/prod_safety/fullratstudy.pdf
15. Alberto Finamore, et al, “Intestinal and Peripheral Immune Response to MON810 Maize Ingestion in Weaning and Old Mice,” J. Agric. Food Chem., 2008, 56 (23), pp 11533 – 11539 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              11533 – 11539      end_of_the_skype_highlighting, November 14, 2008
16. See L Zolla, et al, “Proteomics as a complementary tool for identifying unintended side effects occurring in transgenic maize seeds as a result of genetic modifications,” J Proteome Res. 2008 May;7(5):1850 – 61; Hye-Yung Yum, Soo-Young Lee, Kyung-Eun Lee, Myung-Hyun Sohn, Kyu-Earn Kim, “Genetically Modified and Wild Soybeans: An immunologic comparison,” Allergy and Asthma Proceedings 26, no. 3 (May – June 2005): 210-216(7); and Gendel, “The use of amino acid sequence alignments to assess potential allergenicity of proteins used in genetically modified foods,” Advances in Food and Nutrition Research 42 (1998), 45 – 62.
17. A. Pusztai and S. Bardocz, “GMO in animal nutrition: potential benefits and risks,” Chapter 17, Biology of Nutrition in Growing Animals, R. Mosenthin, J. Zentek and T. Zebrowska (Eds.) Elsevier, October 2005
18. “Mortality in Sheep Flocks after Grazing on Bt Cotton Fields – Warangal District, Andhra Pradesh” Report of the Preliminary Assessment, April 2006, www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp
19. Personal communication and visit, January 2009.
20. Jeffrey M. Smith, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, Yes! Books, Fairfield, IA USA 2007
21. Arpad Pusztai, “Can Science Give Us the Tools for Recognizing Possible Health Risks for GM Food?” Nutrition and Health 16 (2002): 73 – 84.
22. Netherwood et al, “Assessing the survival of transgenic plant DNA in the human gastrointestinal tract,” Nature Biotechnology 22 (2004): 2.
23. See memos at www.biointegrity.org
24. Kathryn Anne Paez, et al, “Rising Out-Of-Pocket Spending For Chronic Conditions: A Ten-Year Trend,” Health Affairs, 28, no. 1 (2009): 15-25to be force fed
    Source: http://hippocratesinst.org/avoid-genetically-modified-food

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Kenneth O’Keefe: Veto power is an insult to the international community

from :  http://www.intifada-palestine.com

Kourosh Ziabari

Kenneth O’Keefe is a world citizen. As an anti-war activist and social entrepreneur, he renounced his U.S. citizenship on March 1, 2001 and burned his American passport on January 7, 2004 in protest to the United States’ Imperialism and called for the immediate withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. O’Keefe is a former U.S. Mariner who served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequently revealed the use of depleted uranium by the United States as a crime against humanity.

O’Keefe has taken part in a number of substantial anti-war movements and served as the director of Human Shield Action to Iraq. He founded a group of activists who traveled to Iraq to act as human shields to prevent the U.S.-led coalition troops from bombing certain locations during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In 2004 O’Keefe established an association known as the “P10K Force,” a group of 10,000 Westerners intended to act as international observers in the occupied Palestinian territories and help bring peace with Israel

In the fall of 2008, he served as a Captain and 1st Mate with the Free Gaza Movement, a direct action in which 46 people successfully challenged the Israeli siege of Gaza

O’Keefe was one of the international peace activists onboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla that was intended to end the Israeli siege of Gaza Strip.

Kenneth O’Keefe joined me in an in-depth interview to answer my questions on his anti-imperialistic viewpoints, the prospect of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the continued international controversy over Iran’s nuclear program, the chronic hostility between the United States and Iran and his experiences in the Freedom Flotilla mission.

Kourosh Ziabari: as an anti-imperialist activist, what’s in your view, the source of America’s enormous imperialistic power? America is a country with less than 400 years of history; however, it has successfully transformed the international order, dominated the less powerful countries around the world and revolutionized the global political equations. How is it possible for the United States to do so?

Kenneth O’Keefe: The world is full of illusions that are used by the rich and powerful to manipulate and control the people. The greatest illusion, and the one with the most devastating consequences, is that the American people and the Israeli, and the British, and numerous others, vote in their governments and hold them to account. Those who really control the governments are those powerful few who control the banking systems, the major multi-national corporations and, of course, the mass media. If you look beyond the faces of the presidents, prime ministers and politicians you will see that these governments’ policies remain virtually the same, no matter who is ‘leading’ these countries. These ‘leaders’ do not answer to the people they have pledged to serve; they answer to those who remain behind the scenes.

These powerful people and entities have key strategic needs in order to maintain power:

1) They must keep the people ignorant and disempowered.

2) They must keep the people divided. They conquer by dividing the people, never giving people the chance to unite; constantly fostering war by pitting the masses against each other

This system has been controlled by the same families for millennia, and people have been manipulated into a collective state of insanity throughout. Over the course of this tragic situation, empires have come and gone, each one giving way to the next. America is simply the latest in that repeating pattern, and it will fall like all empires do. However, the powers behind it, those controlling the banking, the governments and the propaganda, they will remain in place and prop up the next empire and the pattern will repeat.

We are constantly looking at the faces that these powers present to us, the puppets in effect. The powers themselves remain hidden, with many layers of separation between themselves and the people, and an intricate and complex legal system to protect and hide them. In the west this conspiracy has been called a theory, and everything is done to try and marginalize and ridicule the people who speak correctly about the way the world works. Until this system and those behind it are exposed, we will continue our cycle of self-destruction and continue marching towards a nuclear Armageddon. The most powerful weapon we have is the truth, and until we yield its full power, we will never have justice and peace in this world.

KZ: how is it possible to resist the American Imperialism while the absolute majority of powerful, wealthy states in the world are the stalwart allies of Washington and the other developing, underdeveloped countries are starving of insufficiency and poverty? Even the Non-Aligned Movement which consists of 118 countries isn’t capable of dictating its will to the United States and its European allies. One clear instance is Iran’s nuclear program which is favored and supported by the 118 members of NAM, but fails to prosper due to the objection of some 5, 6 European countries plus the United States. What do you think?

KO: I believe the process of destroying American imperialism is already in place. The truth is the most powerful weapon of all, and the rise in popularity of international news stations like Press TV, Al Jazeera English and RTTV is evidence that people are hungry for the truth they are denied. Despite a huge effort by the western/Zionist controlled media to keep people ignorant, and thus divided, they are losing ground to such important journalistic endeavors that disseminate a truthful version of world events.

The truth is on our side and it shall set us free. There are many creative ways to expose the truth, and we must use them to educate people about how they are being used to maintain the Zionist/Imperialist agenda that makes the rich richer, and the masses more impoverished. If we persevere, we can teach those in the west that the portrayal of Muslim peoples engaged in violent resistance as lunatics and fanatics is simply a means adopted by the Imperialist propaganda machine to divide and conquer. If people understand that the only beneficiaries of war are those who propagate it, we will break free from the tyranny of war, occupation and the monetary system that enslaves us all.

The people of the world, billions of us, can demand the transformation of the UN, or replace it with a genuine system that actually does the job the UN has failed to do since its inception. If we dedicate ourselves to the task, we can end the five permanent member state system that neutralizes any power this institution may wield.

The Non-Aligned Movement is important despite its inability thus far to effect the greater change required. The NAM is a solid foundation that we can build on.

The hypocrisy of Israel having undeclared nuclear weapons in the hundreds while an open nuclear program in Iran is grounds for war is beyond absurd. War can only take place if the propaganda machine is successful in keeping people ignorant. I believe that the pre-planned attack on Iran was scheduled to take place at least a year or two ago. The reason it has thus far not transpired is that those agents of the truth have worked tirelessly and effectively to expose the pending attack as the final confirmation of America’s monstrous imperialism and the use of Israel as its vicious attack dog. If America, Israel and Britain, the true ‘Axis of Evil’, attack, I believe the world will unite against them in a sufficient manner. Nonetheless, attacks on Iran, Lebanon and Gaza remain very possible; hence more and more investment in exposing the truth must be made.

Confronting the tyrants responsible for the blockade of Gaza is in my opinion a priority. That is why I am working with a brilliant team of people on organizing a massive flotilla, with large ships and thousands of passengers representing every nation on Planet Earth, to break the blockade.  As well as the Turkish people, I see the Iranian, South African, Irish, Venezuelan and colonized, aboriginal peoples playing a substantial role in that mission.

When all is said and done, we have a choice between surrendering to our enslavement or fighting for a just and peaceful world. I feel that the only way to honor myself, my children and the generations yet unborn is to fight, with the truth as our ultimate weapon, until justice prevails.

KZ: Iran and U.S. have been at loggerheads over the past 30 years hostilely. Do you know of any way to bring the two nations closer together, increase the mutual understanding and promote peace, friendship between the two adversaries?

KO: The primary means of fostering a mutual understanding and friendship between these two hostile nations is no secret. I repeat my conviction that the truth is the ultimate weapon, and anything we can do to propagate the truth is our only option. The American people are a hard-working, idealistic and honest people who have been gravely deceived, to their own detriment.  We must strive to educate them, not in a condescending, patronizing way, but with empathy, understanding that we too once believed the lies of those we trusted, and were misguided into actions that caused grave harm to others. Paying taxes is an example. We must teach them the true history of their nation, including its part in the formation of Israel. We must understand that arriving at and accepting the truth is a slow and often painful process, especially when the realization of the damage caused by our own actions dawns. Most importantly, we must be there to welcome those who have traversed the painful road to the truth, and embrace them as our brothers and sisters.

KZ: some analysts suggest that the reason behind the United States’ unconditional support for Israel lies in the fact that Washington wants to maintain its interests in the Middle East through a proxy representative. Some others believe that United States supports Israel on an ideological basis. What’s your viewpoint?

KO: This ties into my last answer. Israel is simply another face, or front, if you like, that the hidden powers that be present to the people. Israel’s primary function is to maintain perpetual conflict in the Middle East. Soon enough, Israel will be spreading this conflict on a global level. I have no doubt that the pending attack on Iran is intended to take us straight into World War III, with a regional nuclear war very likely. This is quite obviously a disaster to any sane human being.

However, to those who see their power threatened by the spreading of truth, 9-11, Zionism, the banking system, etc, this is a very necessary act to help them maintain their grip of control over peoples of the world. This ‘divide and conquer’ strategy has served them well for millennia. On the surface, war is catastrophic, and it seems incomprehensible that anyone could stand to benefit from war. In truth, however, the powers that be become even richer and more powerful as they gain a foothold in yet another peoples’ territory, and afford themselves access to their resources, just take Iraq as an example. The looming death and destruction serves to further divide people and divert them from the truth. What these powers fear more than anything is people coming together in the spirit of humanity. Thus, war is the ultimate tool to prevent the union of the people.

KZ: Israel’s lawlessness is troubling the international community seriously. Israel continues to possess nuclear weapons in violation of the UNSC resolution 487. It is also keeping up with its despotic policies in blockading the Gaza Strip and West Bank. How is it possible to hold Israel accountable for the crimes it commits while the United States is standing by Israel unreservedly?

KO: I believe that Palestine hits at the heart of all injustice, and that the issue of justice for Palestinians threatens to flagrantly expose the powers that have made this situation so. The Zionist project has been invested in heavily, and the powers that be will not relinquish it lightly.

As I stated earlier, there is an intricate and sophisticated legal system that protects the powers that be and enables them to continue their domination over the peoples of this earth. Two such institutions that are being used to enable and perpetuate Israel’s lawlessness are the UN and the International Criminal Court. I strongly advocate the abolition of the UN in its present form.

Giving five permanent member states veto powers over all other states in the world is an insult to the international community and an affront to the cause of justice. Universal Jurisdiction and full accountability for every nation can and will be achieved when we as a people make it so. Until such time, the United Nations is a cruel joke and the International Criminal Court is a sham. Both are fronts presented by the powers that be to convince the people that justice is being administered.

We as people must use our finite resources and come together if we are to effect meaningful change. We are too scattered, fighting each other on minor details and continually resisting and protesting. We must take a proactive approach to effecting justice, and do so in a focused, intelligent, disciplined and fearless way.

KZ: tell us about your experience on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. You were among tens of activists who were brutally beaten and tortured by Israel while trying to breaking the Gaza blockade. What happened first when they boarded on your ship? How did they treat you? What was your reaction? What will be the prospect of Freedom Flotilla?

KO: The Israeli attack began under cover of darkness at about 3.40 in the morning. Within the first five minutes of the attack, even before the commandos dropped down from the helicopter and boarded our vessel, we were taking casualties, and the first man was murdered with a gunshot to the head. Percussion grenades, tear gas, smoke bombs, paintball rounds and live ammunition were all being used.  It was like a combat situation, except that one side was not armed with combat weapons.

About one hour after the onset of the attack, I had seen at least five men murdered and dozens of bloody injuries.

Twice during the course of the attack, I was directly confronted by a commando. In both cases, myself and another defender disarmed them. During the first confrontation, I took possession of a 9mm pistol, the same weapon used to kill eight out of the nine men that morning.  During the second, the other defender took possession of the commando’s sub-machine gun. A third commando was also disarmed. These three completely disarmed commandos were taken below deck and treated for any injuries they might have sustained. Nevertheless, the bravado and audacity they exhibited while in possession of their lethal weapons vanished. While in our custody, they looked like frightened little children.

Soon after the commandos were captured and subdued a group of about 7 IHH members escorted the soldiers from the main cabin to the bow of the ship, released them and walked away.

The captain of the ship eventually announced via the PA system that the Israelis had taken control of the ship’s bridge. He then instructed us to stop all resistance which we did.

Over the next several hours, we surrendered to the Israelis one by one. Each one of us was searched for weapons and then handcuffed. Most of the men, including myself, were kicked or punched without provocation while restrained.

From this point forward we were treated like dogs. Elderly people were physically abused, women were sexually abused during bodily searches, we were all denied water and food, as well as access to a toilet, one elderly man consequently urinated on himself, and any communication with lawyers was not allowed. We were lied to incessantly, and had our personal possessions stolen, including cash, credit cards, laptop computers, cameras and footage. Of crucial importance, they stole all of the video and photographic footage that without doubt shows them murdering people in cold blood.

It was clear to all of us in Israeli custody that we were being held captive by a force that had completely lost the ability to see others as human beings. These people are thoroughly brainwashed to believe themselves God’s ‘chosen ones’, and thus they believe they have the right to treat all others as animals. Many of us were beaten while in their custody on land, after being beaten on the ship.

On our arrival in the Port of Ashdod, I handed them my Palestinian passport – I had previously hidden my Irish passport on the ship. Many of the Israeli soldiers knew of me from my previous activities, so this just incensed them. I refused to sign any deportation papers, or any statement that I would never attempt re-entry to Gaza or the Occupied Palestinian Territories. I demanded to appear before a judge in court. My internment was illegal, and I wanted to be repatriated to Gaza. Eventually I was deported from Israel, I was one of the very last to go.

Two days after my deportation the IDF spokesperson issued a press release identifying me as a “terror operative” who was traveling to Gaza to “train a commando unit for Hamas.”

These charges are beyond ridiculous, and it seems to me they were made to gloss over the IDF’s embarrassment at having one of the most elite forces in the world disarmed and humiliated.

It is the nature of the Zionist Israeli propaganda machine to levy such grave charges on those who resist their aggression. War crimes, mass-murder, piracy, lying, torture, organ theft, Apartheid, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity are justified at every turn, and the blame shifted to those who defend themselves.

It was a real honor to be aboard the Mavi Marmara with my Turkish brothers and sisters. The Turkish people have the kind of strength and courage required to face a force such as the Israelis and defend their mission as if they were defending their own children. Fearless resistance of proactive measures is what is needed to face the Israeli monster that is killing, maiming and destroying the lives of countless people, including over 800,000 children in Gaza. We must see those children as our children, and we must defend them as such.

I appreciate all efforts put forth to bring an end to the suffering of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis. However, I do not believe that the flotilla leaving this month or next has either the scale, or the courageous elements, namely active resistance by the participants, essential for success. I cannot see the blockade being broken unless we as people of conscience from around the world do everything in our power to neutralize the might of the Israeli military. I know this is possible, and soon a plan will be revealed for a flotilla in 2011 that has the potential to achieve the goal of breaking the blockade once and for all. This plan will require several large ships and most definitely a strong Turkish presence. A delegation representing this plan will soon be arriving in Iran as well as numerous other countries to put this plan to the people, and we shall see if the people of the world decide to make it a reality.

KZ: how do you assess the prospect of Israeli regime? Given its continued violation of the international law and its aggressive subjugation of the Palestinian nation, is Tel Aviv going to survive politically?

KO: No. The Zionist regime will not survive any more than the Nazi regime or the South African Apartheid regime. The Zionists will go the same way. God is God of all people, not one group, one way or the other the Zionists will learn this. The people of conscience will ensure that justice prevails. Gaza will rise from the ashes and be a thriving metropolis once more. Palestine will be united and reborn because the will of the people, and their cogent action, will have made it so. It is vital that we envision, and never cease working for, that day. Palestine hits at the heart of all injustice, and when we solve this problem we set the stage for a world worthy of handing down to our children. This is our ultimate worldly calling.

See Also:

Exclusive Intifada Interview with Ken O’Keefe: “Israel Executed People in International Waters”

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist and media correspondent. His articles and interviews have appeared on a number of media outlets and news websites including Tehran Times, Press TV, Global Research and Foreign Policy Journal.

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Our Menace Isn’t Insane Right-Wingers, It’s Unrivaled Corporate Power and the Decay of Our Democratic Institutions

from : http://www.alternet.org

Don’t fear Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. Fear the underlying corporate power structure

September 13, 2010 |

This article first appeared on TruthDig.

There are no longer any major institutions in American society, including the press, the educational system, the financial sector, labor unions, the arts, religious institutions and our dysfunctional political parties, which can be considered democratic. The intent, design and function of these institutions, controlled by corporate money, are to bolster the hierarchical and anti-democratic power of the corporate state. These institutions, often mouthing liberal values, abet and perpetuate mounting inequality. They operate increasingly in secrecy. They ignore suffering or sacrifice human lives for profit. They control and manipulate all levers of power and mass communication. They have muzzled the voices and concerns of citizens. They use entertainment, celebrity gossip and emotionally laden public-relations lies to seduce us into believing in a Disneyworld fantasy of democracy.

The menace we face does not come from the insane wing of the Republican Party, which may make huge inroads in the coming elections, but the institutions tasked with protecting democratic participation. Do not fear Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. Do not fear the tea party movement, the birthers, the legions of conspiracy theorists or the militias. Fear the underlying corporate power structure, which no one, from Barack Obama to the right-wing nut cases who pollute the airwaves, can alter. If the hegemony of the corporate state is not soon broken we will descend into a technologically enhanced age of barbarism.

Investing emotional and intellectual energy in electoral politics is a waste of time. Resistance means a radical break with the formal structures of American society. We must cut as many ties with consumer society and corporations as possible. We must build a new political and economic consciousness centered on the tangible issues of sustainable agriculture, self-sufficiency and radical environmental reform. The democratic system, and the liberal institutions that once made piecemeal reform possible, is dead. It exists only in name. It is no longer a viable mechanism for change. And the longer we play our scripted and absurd role in this charade the worse it will get. Do not pity Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. They will get what they deserve. They sold the citizens out for cash and power. They lied. They manipulated and deceived the public, from the bailouts to the abandonment of universal health care, to serve corporate interests. They refused to halt the wanton corporate destruction of the ecosystem on which all life depends. They betrayed the most basic ideals of democracy.  And they, as much as the Republicans, are the problem.

“It is like being in a pit,” Ralph Nader told me when we spoke on Saturday. “If you are four feet in the pit you have a chance to grab the top and hoist yourself up. If you are 30 feet in the pit you have to start on a different scale.”

All resistance will take place outside the arena of electoral politics. The more we expand community credit unions, community health clinics and food cooperatives and build alternative energy systems, the more empowered we will become.

“To the extent that these organizations expand and get into communities where they do not exist, we will weaken the multinational goliath, from the banks to the agribusinesses to the HMO giants and hospital chains,” Nader said.

The failure of liberals to defend the interests of working men and women as our manufacturing sector was dismantled, labor unions were destroyed and social services were slashed has proved to be a disastrous and fatal misjudgment. Liberals, who betrayed the working class, have no credibility. This is one of the principle reasons the anti-war movement cannot attract the families whose sons and daughters are fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. And liberal hypocrisy has opened the door for a virulent right wing. If we are to reconnect with the working class we will have to begin from zero. We will have to rebuild the ties with the poor and the working class which the liberal establishment severed. We will have to condemn the liberal class as vociferously as we condemn the right wing. And we will have to remain true to the moral imperative to foster the common good and the tangible needs of housing, health care, jobs, education and food.

We will, once again, be bombarded in this election cycle with messages of fear from the Democratic Party—designed, in the end, to serve corporate interests. “Better Barack Obama than Sarah Palin,” we will be told. Better the sane technocrats like Larry Summers than half-wits like John Bolton. But this time we must resist. If we express the legitimate rage of the dispossessed working class as our own, if we denounce and refuse to cooperate with the Democratic Party, we can begin to impede the march of the right-wing trolls who seem destined to inherit power. If we again prove compliant we will discredit the socialism we should be offering as an alternative to a perverted Christian and corporate fascism.

The tea party movement is, as Nader points out, “a conviction revolt.” Most of the participants in the tea party rallies are not poor. They are small-business people and professionals. They feel that something is wrong. They see that the two parties are equally responsible for the subsidies and bailouts, the wars and the deficits. They know these parties must be replaced. The corporate state, whose interests are being championed by tea party leaders such as Palin and Dick Armey, is working hard to make sure the anger of the movement is directed toward government rather than corporations and Wall Street. And if these corporate apologists succeed, a more overt form of corporate fascism will emerge without a socialist counterweight.

“Poor people do not organize,” Nader lamented. “They never have. It has always been people who have fairly good jobs. You don’t see Wal-Mart workers massing anywhere. The people who are the most militant are the people who had the best blue-collar jobs. Their expectation level was high. When they felt their jobs were being jeopardized they got really angry. But when you are at $7.25 an hour you want to hang on to $7.25 an hour. It is a strange thing.”

“People have institutionalized oppressive power in the form of surrender,” Nader said. “It is not that they like it. But what are you going to do about it? You make the best of it. The system of control is staggeringly dictatorial. It breaks new ground and innovates in ways no one in human history has ever innovated. You start in American history where these corporations have influence. Then they have lobbyists. Then they run candidates. Then they put their appointments in top government positions. Now, they are actually operating the government. Look at Halliburton and Blackwater. Yesterday someone in our office called the Office of Pipeline Safety apropos the San Bruno explosion in California. The press woman answered. The guy in our office saw on the screen that she had CTR next to her name. He said, ‘What is CTR?’ She said, ‘I am a contractor.’ He said, ‘This is the press office at the Department of Transportation. They contracted out the press office?’ ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but that’s OK, I come to work here every day.’ ”

“The corporate state is the ultimate maturation of American-type fascism,” Nader said. “They leave wide areas of personal freedom so that people can confuse personal freedom with civic freedom—the freedom to go where you want, eat where you want, associate with who you want, buy what you want, work where you want, sleep when you want, play when you want. If people have given up on any civic or political role for themselves there is a sufficient amount of elbow room to get through the day. They do not have the freedom to participate in the decisions about war, foreign policy, domestic health and safety issues, taxes or transportation. That is its genius. But one of its Achilles’ heels is that the price of the corporate state is a deteriorating political economy. They can’t stop their greed from getting the next morsel. The question is, at what point are enough people going to have a breaking point in terms of their own economic plight? At what point will they say enough is enough? When that happens, is a tea party type enough or [Sen. Robert M.] La Follette or Eugene Debs type of enough?”

It is anti-corporate movements as exemplified by the Scandinavian energy firm Kraft&Kultur that we must emulate. Kraft&Kultur sells electricity exclusively from solar and water power. It has begun to merge clean energy with cultural events, bookstores and a political consciousness that actively defies corporate hegemony.

The failure by the Obama administration to use the bailout and stimulus money to build public works such as schools, libraries, roads, clinics, highways, public transit and reclaiming dams, as well as create green jobs, has snuffed out any hope of serious economic, political or environmental reform coming from the centralized bureaucracy of the corporate state. And since the government did not hire enough auditors and examiners to monitor how the hundreds of billions in taxpayer funds funneled to Wall Street are being spent, we will soon see reports of widespread mismanagement and corruption. The rot and corruption at the top levels of our financial and political systems, coupled with the increasing deprivation felt by tens of millions of Americans, are volatile tinder for a horrific right-wing backlash in the absence of a committed socialist alternative.

“If you took a day off and did nothing but listen to Hannity, Beck and Limbaugh and realized that this goes on 260 days a year, you would see that it is overwhelming,” Nader said. “You have to almost have a genetic resistance in your mind and body not to be affected by it. These guys are very good. They are clever. They are funny. They are emotional. It beats me how Air America didn’t make it, except it went after [it criticized] corporations, and corporations advertise. These right-wingers go after government, and government doesn’t advertise. And that is the difference. It isn’t that their message appeals more. Air America starved because it could not get ads.”

We do not have much time left. And the longer we refuse to confront corporate power the more impotent we become as society breaks down. The game of electoral politics, which is given legitimacy by the right and the so-called left on the cable news shows, is just that—a game. It diverts us from what should be our daily task—dismantling, piece by piece, the iron grip that corporations hold over our lives. Hope is a word that is applicable only to those who grasp reality, however bleak, and do something meaningful to fight back—which does not include the farce of elections and involvement in mainstream political parties. Hope is about fighting against the real forces of destruction, not chanting “Yes We Can!” in rallies orchestrated by marketing experts, television crews, pollsters and propagandists or begging Obama to be Obama. Hope, in the hands of realists, spreads fear into the black heart of the corporate elite. But hope, real hope, remains thwarted by our collective self-delusion.

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, is a senior fellow at the Nation Institute. He writes a regular column for TruthDig every Monday. His latest book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

United by Hatred, Two Reverands With Same Plan Decide to Burn Qur’ans Together

Remember : A so called Christian Pastor of a nearly unknown 50 people community  started  this Nonsense  .

(with a little Help from the MasSMedia)

Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography

Written by the author of the legendary 1992 expose of Bush the elder, this book works from a New Deal point of view.
Obama is exposed as a foundation operative and agent of Wall Street finance capital, controlled by Zbigniew Brzezinski, George Soros, and Goldman Sachs. Obama’s mother was an official of the Ford Foundation, the World Bank, and US AID. By all indications, Obama was identified for future political use by Brzezinski at Columbia in 1981-1983, during Obama’s secret lost years. Obama has worked for the Gamaliel Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the Woods Fund, and the Annenberg Foundation as a community organizer – a poverty pimp, a cynical opportunist who uses suffering people as a political commodity. The foundation strategy is divide and conquer, pitting blacks against whites against Hispanics against Asians, to prevent any challenge to Wall Street. Racist provocateurs like Wright and Pfleger, along with Weatherman terrorist bombers Ayers and Dohrn, Obama’s best friends, are cast in this mold. Rezko, Auchi, and Al-Sammarae represent the cesspool of Chicago graft and corruption in which Obama cavorts. Schooled in Nietzsche and Fanon, Obama qualifies as a postmodern fascist. An Obama administration would strive for brutal economic sacrifice and austerity to finance Wall Street bailouts, and for imperialist confrontation with Russia and China. by Webster Tarpley

YEAR: 2008

DOWNLOAD Book (PDF)

Purchase Book

British troops in Afghanistan involved in heroin trafficking

Daily Mail
Sun, 12 Sep 2010 16:01 CDT

An Afghan farmer collects raw opium from poppies. Some drug bosses in the war-ravaged country have implicated soldiers in the trade

Military police are investigating claims that British soldiers may have been involved in heroin trafficking in Afghanistan.

Officials said they were aware of ‘unsubstantiated’ claims that troops were buying the illegal drug from dealers and using military aircraft to ship it out the country.

An inquiry has been launched focusing on British and Canadian service personnel at airports in Camp Bastion and Kandahar.

Meanwhile security has been tightened, with additional sniffer dogs being used as part of the crackdown at the bases.

Afghanistan is the source of 90 per cent of the world’s opium.

Some drug bosses in the war-ravaged country have implicated soldiers in the trade.

Last year the Sunday Times spoke to one dealer who said members of the military were the second largest buyers of heroin after foreign drug lords.

The newspaper was told: ‘The soldiers whose term of duty is about to finish, they give an order to our boss.’

The dealer, named only as Aziz, added: ‘They are carrying these drugs in the military airlines and they can’t be reached because they are military. They can take it to the USA or England.’

A team of detectives from the Ministry of Defence’s special investigations branch is believed to be heading the investigation into the claims.

An MoD spokeswoman said: ‘We are aware of these allegations. Although they are unsubstantiated, we take any such reports very seriously and we have already tightened our existing procedures both in Afghanistan and in the UK, including through increasing the use of trained sniffer dogs.

‘We regret any inconvenience this causes to our service personnel. Any of our people found to be engaged in trafficking of illegal narcotics will feel the full weight of the law.’

Comment: The Afghan opium crop was almost non-existent before the US and British invasion. By 2003, it was at record levels under US and British covert intelligence (CIA/MI6) direction. This was one of the major reasons for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Afghan farmers don’t care what crop they grow, as long as they are given a good price for it. So the argument that US and British troops cannot destroy the crop for fear of provoking the farmers is nonsense. The drug trade has always been one of the major ways in which the CIA and MI6 finance their ‘black operations’, which includes mounting phony ‘terrorist’ attacks. It’s a self-perpetuating mechanism:

Fake a ‘Muslim terror attack’ – use it to justify invading a Muslim country and stealing its resources – use those resources to finance further ‘Muslim terrorism’ – invade another Muslim country…..etc. etc.

The ‘Meaning’ of 9/11

from : http://original.antiwar.com

It’s not what you think

by Justin Raimondo, September 10, 2010

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One would think that after nine years at least some of the anger, the horror and shock of the 9/11 terrorist attacks would have dissipated: but no. A glimpse at the headlines, a few days before the somber anniversary, disabuses us of this hopeful notion: a crazed pastor out in the boonies somewhere is burning Korans, and the commander of our forces in Afghanistan feels compelled to respond, as does the President. The proposal to build a Muslim community center blocks from “ground zero” – modeled on Jewish community centers ubiquitous in New York – is met with furious opposition, and the “anti-Islamization” movement spearheaded by bigots takes off, with mosques all over the country under attack. Physical attacks on Muslims, or people perceived as Muslim, escalate: a New York City cabbie is assaulted by a crazed Islamophobe, and people who have lived in this country for the whole of their lives are afraid.

What’s going on? Andrew Sullivan, writing on his popular blog, writes he is “at a loss to understand why so many have reacted so ferociously to this project.” After all, Imam Feisel Rauf, the Muslim cleric who wants to build Cordoba House, is a moderate who has condemned Islamic extremism: Rauf was sent by the Bush administration overseas to act as an ambassador of good will to Muslim countries. So where is the ferocity coming from?

To find the answer to this question, we just have to follow the money, and thankfully Ken Vogel and Giovanni Russonello over at Politico have done just that. After detailing the money coming into the Cordoba House project from mainstream donors like the Rockefellers, they write:

“There’s also big money behind the mosque opposition, as highlighted by the relationship between [David] Horowitz’s Los Angeles-based nonprofit, Jihad Watch – the website run by Spencer “dedicated to bringing public attention to the role that jihad theology and ideology play in the modern world” – and Joyce Chernick, the wife of a wealthy California tech company founder.

“Though it was not listed on the public tax reports filed by Horowitz’s Freedom Center, Politico has confirmed that the lion’s share of the $920,000 it provided over the past three years to Jihad Watch came from Chernick, whose husband, Aubrey Chernick, has a net worth of $750 million, as a result of his 2004 sale to IBM of a software company he created, and a security consulting firm he now owns.

“A onetime trustee of the …Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Aubrey Chernick led the effort to pull together $3.5 million in venture capital to start Pajamas Media, a conservative blog network …

“The David Horowitz Freedom Center had a budget of $4.5 million last year, according to its tax filings, of which $290,000 came from the conservative Bradley Foundation, which also gave $75,000 to the Center for Security Policy last year. Horowitz has received an average of $461,000 a year in salary and benefits over the past three years, while Spencer has pulled in an average of $140,000, according to the center’s IRS filings.”

Laura Rozen follows up on her Politico blog, detailing the trail of donations from 2008 990 filings for Chernick’s charitable foundation, the Fairbrook Foundation, listing all the familiar suspects – CAMERA, Horowitz, MEMRI, Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, the Israeli nationalist “Stand With Us” campus project – and a few less familiar, such as the American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, dedicated to thwarting our stated policy of no more settlements where it counts: in East Jerusalem.

Millions pour into the coffers of these groups, all of which are dedicated to one overriding principle, one goal: advancing Israel’s national interests in the US. The serpentine convolutions of the Chernick connection, linking one front group to another, encircle the political and temperamental spectrum, ranging from the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles (over $900k) to the many hundreds of thousands given to hardline neoconservative outfits like the Hudson Institute, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, not to mention Pajamas Media ($7 million, in collusion with venture capitalist James “extensively experienced in multimillion-dollar technology transfer and license agreements “ Koshland) and a mass campaign to distribute DVDs of the virulently anti-Muslim film “Obsession.”

The aim of all this giving is to create and sustain an obsessive hatred of Muslims, all Muslims, and garner support for Israel. The fulminations of Newt Gingrich and the flaxwn-haired harpies of Fox News, who rail against the “ground zero mosque” seem, on the surface, to make no sense. Are they really saying that they want the US to declare war on the billion-plus Muslims who inhabit the planet earth? This, after all, is precisely what Osama bin Laden has repeatedly said: that all the world’s Muslims must unite under al-Qaeda’s bloody banner because the West, in alliance with Israel, is out to destroy Islam, and it is therefore the duty of the faithful to wage jihad against the US.

The Israelis, having long ago declared war on all the other nations of the region, want us in their camp, and that is precisely what occurred with stunning speed before the smoke cleared from the site where the World Trade Center once stood. “We’re all Israelis now!” exulted Martin “Palestinians are subhuman” Peretz, over at The New Republic. Benjamin Netanyahu, who is today the Prime Minister of Israel, told an audience at Bar Ilan University “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq,” according to the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv. The attack, he averred, “swung American public opinion in our favor” – and now that he and his fellow extremists are in power in Tel Aviv, they are making sure public opinion stays in their favor.

The craziness that ensued in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks had to be sustained if Israel was to take full advantage of the moment – a moment their intelligence operatives anticipated, according to Fox News, in a four-part series by their topnotch journalist Carl Cameron, which started out as follows:

“Since September 11, more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained, either under the new patriot anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations. A handful of active Israeli military were among those detained, according to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States.

“There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that they Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are “tie-ins.” But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying, ‘evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It’s classified information.’”

Fox News has never retracted a word of this story, although they did – after pressure from the Israel lobby – delete it from their web site. It was never mentioned again, at least in “respectable” quarters, and, to be sure, it was never forgotten, thanks to the Internet, where Carl Cameron will be exposing the Israeli connection to the 9/11 terrorist attacks unto eternity.

Cameron’s noting that “more than sixty” Israelis had been arrested immediately after 9/11, along with and under the same legal rubric as thousands of Arabs, had also been noted here in this space, before the Fox News broadcasts. Why, I asked in a column, was the US government rounding up Israelis, of all people – unless there was some kind of Israeli connection to the attacks? The answer came in Cameron’s reporting, and subsequent stories in the “mainstream” media: the Israelis, whose intelligence services had been very active on our soil in the months leading up to 9/11, had been following the hijackers, shadowing their every move, without telling us – almost as if they were protecting them rather than trying to stop them.

What happened on September 11, 2001, has changed the shape of history, and certainly determined the utterly disastrous course of US foreign policy since that day. We have launched a war of retribution against the entire Muslim world, a vast campaign of bombings, drone attacks, occupation, and terror unleashed on the peoples of the Middle East, from Iraq to Pakistan. This is precisely why the Israelis didn’t tell us what Mohammed Atta and his co-conspirators were up to, although – if we take Fox News seriously, and I realize there are plenty who don’t – there is no doubt that they had it in their power to stop the whole operation before the hijackers had a chance to strike. All they had to do was tell us – and they didn’t. This is the “intelligence failure” – not the lack of centralized information, not the competition between the CIA and the FBI – that made the 9/11 terrorist attacks possible: the perfidy of our Israeli “ally.”

The Israelis didn’t dive-bomb the World Trade Center and the Pentagon with commandeered airliners: Atta and his gang did. Yet they could have prevented it – but why should they have? After all, the attacks have swung public opinion in their favor, as Netanyahu boasted – surely a foreseeable development.

Today, nine years after the event, the Israel lobby is using the anniversary of the attacks to whip up anti-Muslim hysteria to a fever pitch, and they have plenty of bucks to do it. These people – who, as Juan Cole points out, represent a minuscule fraction of the pro-Israel population in the US, and stand out like a couple of sore thumbs from the overwhelmingly liberal Jewish community – mean business, and there’s only one way to fight them. It’s time to play hardball – just like they do.

I was warned, before raising the possibility of an Israeli connection to 9/11, that I was touching a live wire, that my career – such as it is – would be destroyed, and that I would be banished to the hinterlands, where various obsessives trade conspiracy theories and argue over whether it’s the Bilderbergers or the Illuminati who control the world.

It hasn’t happened, but I wouldn’t care if it did. As Ayn Rand once said: I’m not brave enough to be a coward – I see the consequences too clearly. We see the consequences of 9/11 all around us, in the hate-wrinkled face of the Koran-burning preacher, in the shrill shrieking of Pamela Geller whose anti-Muslim rallies in the vanished shadow of the Trade Towers are as ugly as she is: we see it in the faces of Pakistani refugees, huddled in disease-infested camps, as they flee the US invasion of death-dealing drones.

Think about it: the leadership of a nation that betrayed us, that watched, impassively – or, perhaps, gleefully – as Islamist terrorists wreaked deadly havoc on our two biggest cities, has a vast and well-funded propaganda network in this country dedicated to stoking hatred of Muslims. And they are certainly doing a very good job of it.

How do they get away with it?

So, you want to know the “meaning” of 9/11? It is, as Martin Luther King put it, this:

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

I’m taking my show on the road this autumn, to campuses around the country, talking about some of the ideas expressed in Wednesday’s column on “Anti-Interventionism: The Left-wing Tradition.” My talk is entitled “Why Has the Left Sold Out the Antiwar Movement?” – which is sure to provoke a controversy, or at least that’s the hope.

The libertarian student movement, organizing nationally under the leadership of Young Americans for Liberty, is the most exciting – and important – development since the birth of contemporary libertarianism itself. Murray Rothbard, who founded the modern libertarian movement in his living room (and, back then, believe me, it was just big enough to fit in his modest-sized living room), would be thrilled if he were alive today. That’s because they’re hard core, and hard workers, busy building a burgeoning organization dedicated to ending the Fed and ending the wars the Fed makes possible. Who would’ve thought?! That’s one reason I’m taking this tour, but another is to engage in dialogue with the left: to wake them up to the fact that a united antiwar movement, organized around the single issue of US military intervention overseas, is a moral imperative.

If you’re interested in booking me at your campus, write wendy@antiwar.com, or call the Antiwar.com office, at: 510-217-8665 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              510-217-8665      end_of_the_skype_highlighting.

.

Flying the Flag, Faking the News

by John Pilger, September 02, 2010

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Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, is said to have invented modern propaganda. During the first world war, he was one of a group of influential liberals who mounted a secret government campaign to persuade reluctant Americans to send an army to the bloodbath in Europe. In his book, Propaganda, published in 1928, Bernays wrote that the "intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses was an important element in democratic society" and that the manipulators "constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country." Instead of propaganda, he coined the euphemism "public relations."

The American tobacco industry hired Bernays to convince women they should smoke in public. By associating smoking with women’s liberation, he made cigarettes "torches of freedom." In 1954, he conjured a communist menace in Guatemala as an excuse for overthrowing the democratically-elected government, whose social reforms were threatening the United Fruit company’s monopoly of the banana trade. He called it a "liberation."

Bernays was no rabid right-winger. He was an elitist liberal who believed that "engineering public consent" was for the greater good. This was achieved by the creation of "false realities" which then became "news events." Here are examples of how it is done these days:

False reality: The last US combat troops have left Iraq "as promised, on schedule", according to President Barack Obama. TV screens have filled with cinematic images of the "last US soldiers" silhouetted against the dawn light, crossing the border into Kuwait.

Fact: They are still there. At least 50,000 troops will continue to operate from 94 bases. American air assaults are unchanged, as are special forces’ assassinations. The number of "military contractors" is currently 100,000 and rising. Most Iraqi oil is now under direct foreign control.

False reality: BBC presenters and reporters have described the departing US troops as a "sort of victorious army" that has achieved "a remarkable change in [Iraq’s] fortunes.” Their commander, General David Petraeus, is a “celebrity”, “charming”, “savvy” and “remarkable.”

Fact: There is no victory of any sort. There is a catastrophic disaster; and attempts to present it as otherwise are a model of Bernays’ campaign to “re-brand” the slaughter of the first world war as “necessary” and “noble.” In  1980, Ronald Reagan, running for president, re-branded the invasion of Vietnam, in which up to three million people died, as a “noble cause”, a theme taken up enthusiastically by Hollywood. Today’s Iraq war movies have a similar purging theme: the invader as both idealist and victim.

False reality: It is not known how many Iraqis have died. They are “countless” or maybe “in the tens of thousands.”

Fact: As a direct consequence of the Anglo-American led invasion, a million Iraqis have died. This figure from Opinion Research Business is based on peer-reviewed research led by Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC, whose methods were secretly affirmed as “best practice” and “robust” by the Blair government’s chief scientific adviser, as revealed in a Freedom of Information search. This figure is rarely reported or presented to “charming” and “savvy” American generals. Neither is the dispossession of four million Iraqis, the malnourishment of most Iraqi children, the epidemic of mental illness and the poisoning of the environment.

False reality: The British economy has a deficit of billions which must be reduced with cuts in public services and regressive taxation, in a spirit of “we’re all in this together.”

Fact: We are not in this together. What is remarkable about this public relations triumph is that only 18 months ago the diametric opposite filled TV screens and front pages. Then, in a state of shock, truth was unavoidable, if briefly. The Wall Street and City of London financiers’ trough was on full view for the first time, along with the venality of once celebrated snouts. Billions in public money went to inept and crooked organizations known as banks, which were spared debt liability by their Labor government sponsors.

Within a year, record profits and personal bonuses were posted, and state and media propaganda had recovered its equilibrium. Suddenly, the “black hole” was no longer the responsibility of the banks, whose debt is to be paid by those not in any way responsible: the public. The received media wisdom of this “necessity” is now a chorus, from the BBC to the Sun. A masterstroke, Bernays would surely say.

False reality: The former government minister Ed Miliband offers a “genuine alternative” as leader of the British Labor Party.

Fact: Miliband, like his brother David, the former foreign secretary, and almost all those standing for the Labor leadership, is immersed in the effluent of New Labor As a New Labor MP and minister, he did not refuse to serve under Blair or speak out against Labor’s persistent warmongering. He now calls the invasion of Iraq a “profound mistake.” Calling it a mistake insults the memory and the dead. It was a crime, of which the evidence is voluminous. He has nothing new to say about the other colonial wars, none of them mistakes. Neither has he demanded basic social justice: that those who caused the recession clear up the mess and that Britain’s fabulously rich corporate minority be seriously taxed, starting with Rupert Murdoch.

Of course, the good news is that false realities often fail when the public trusts its own critical intelligence, not the media. Two classified documents recently released by Wikileaks express the CIA’s concern that the populations of European countries, which oppose their governments’ war policies, are not succumbing to the usual propaganda spun through the media. For the rulers of the world, this is a conundrum, because their unaccountable power rests on the false reality that no popular resistance works. And it does.

Read more by John Pilger

• Why WikiLeaks Must Be Protected – August 18th, 2010
• Tony Blair Must Be Prosecuted – August 4th, 2010
• The New Warlord of Oz – July 21st, 2010
• The Charge of the Media Brigade – July 6th, 2010
• The Black Art of ‘Master Illusions’ – June 3rd, 2010

Interview with CIA Veteran Michael Scheuer ‘Only the Taliban Are Not Corrupt’

Marc Hujer, Spiegel

August 31, 2010 The CIA is alleged to have been paying an aide to Afghan President Hamid Karzai for information. Former CIA officer Michael Scheuer spoke to SPIEGEL about why fighting corruption in Afghanistan is all but impossible. SPIEGEL: The CIA is alleged to have paid Mohammed Zia Salehi, an aide to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, for information. Has the CIA damaged the Americans’ credibility? Michael Scheuer: That’s absolutely good recruitment. I think you recruit whoever gives you access to a target. It might be someone who is a terrorist or it might be someone who’s a corrupt official. I think any other intelligence agency would be delighted to have someone to give them information about what Karzai is thinking because he’s such a dishonest man. SPIEGEL: The US now has to face accusations that it is financing the very corruption it is promising to fight. Scheuer: Not really. President Obama knew about this. His intelligence advisors knew about this. If he’s smart I’m sure the president would want to have somebody close to Karzai to know what’s going on. The US government and other governments are lying when they say that they can clean up corruption and win the war. SPIEGEL: Is Washington being energetic enough in trying to fight corruption? Scheuer: We’re really not in a position to push these people. Who’s going to replace them? There isn’t anyone less corrupt. Probably the only incorrupt people in Afghanistan are the Taliban. If you want no corruption, give the government back to the Taliban. SPIEGEL: Salehi, a high-ranking member of Afghanistan’s National Security Council, has allegedly been on the CIA payroll for years. Do you think he will be put on trial? Scheuer: I would think that there’s not going to be a trial. Salehi knows so much about what goes on in that government and what’s been stolen and who’s doing the stealing, that if he got on a witness seat, it might as well be Karzai himself. Interview conducted by Marc Hujer

A trillion-dollar catastrophe. Yes, Iraq was a headline war

from :  http://www.guardian.co.uk

Mission accomplished? The Iraq war did more than anything to alienate the Atlantic powers from the rest of the world .

• 
• • Simon Jenkins
  • guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 31 August 2010 20.00 BST
  • Article history

today the Iraq war was declared over by Barack Obama. As his troops return home, Iraqis are marginally freer than in 2003, and considerably less secure. Two million remain abroad as refugees from seven years of anarchy, with another 2 million internally displaced. Ironically, almost all Iraqi Christians have had to flee. Under western rule, production of oil – Iraq’s staple product – is still below its pre-invasion level, and homes enjoy fewer hours of electricity. This is dreadful.

Some 100,000 civilians are estimated to have lost their lives from occupation-related violence. The country has no stable government, minimal reconstruction, and daily deaths and kidnappings. Endemic corruption is fuelled by unaudited aid. Increasing Islamist rule leaves most women less, not more, liberated. All this is the result of a mind-boggling $751bn of US expenditure, surely the worst value for money in the history of modern diplomacy.

Most failed “liberal” interventions since the second world war at least started with good intentions. Vietnam was to defend a non-communist nation against Chinese expansionism. Lebanon was to protect a pluralist country from a grasping neighbour. Somalia was to repair a failed state.

In Iraq the casus belli was a lie, perpetrated by George Bush and his meek amanuensis, Tony Blair. Saddam Hussein was accused of association with 9/11, and of plotting further attacks with long-range weapons of “mass destruction”. Since this was revealed as untrue, the fallback deployed by apologists for Bush and Blair is that Saddam was a bad man and so toppling him was good.

The proper way to assess any war is not some crude “before and after” statistic, but to conjecture the consequence of it not taking place. Anti-Iraq hysteria began in 1998 with Bill Clinton’s Operation Desert Fox, a three-day bombing of Iraq’s military and civilian infrastructure, to punish Saddam for inhibiting UN weapons inspectors. To most of the world, it was to deflect attention from Clinton’s Lewinsky affair.

Most independent analysis believed that Iraq had ceased any serious nuclear ambitions at the end of the first Iraq war in 1991, a view confirmed by investigators since 2003. Even so, Desert Fox was claimed to have “successfully degraded Iraq’s ability to manufacture and use weapons of mass destruction”. Whether or not this was true, there was no evidence that such an ability had recovered by 2003. Among other things, the Iraq affair was an intelligence debacle.

Meanwhile, the west’s sanctions made Iraq a siege economy, eradicating its middle class and elevating Saddam to sixth richest ruler in the world, though he faced regular plots against his person. Western hostility may have shored him up, but opposition would have eventually delivered a coup, from the army or Shia militants backed by Iran.

Even had that not happened soon, Iraq was a nasty but stable secular state that no longer posed a serious threat even to its neighbours. It was contained by a no-fly zone that had rendered the oppressed Kurds de facto autonomy. It was not appreciably worse than Assad’s Ba’athist Syria, and its oil production and energy supplies were improving, not deteriorating as now.

The Chilcot inquiry has been swamped with stories of the American-British occupation on a par with William the Conqueror’s “harrying of the north”. That any 21st-century bureaucracy could behave with such cruel and bloodthirsty incompetence beggars belief. The truth is it was blinded by a conviction in its neo-imperial omnipotence. However much we delude ourselves, the west is still run by leaders, especially generals, drenched in the glory of past triumphs: leaders who refuse to believe that other nations have a right to order their own affairs. The awfulness of Iraq in 2003 was not so grotesque as to be our business – even had we been able to build the pro-western, pro-Israeli, secular, capitalist utopia of neocon fantasy.

Germany, France, Russia and Japan did not go near this war. They did not believe the lies about Saddam’s armoury and did not see any duty to liberate the Iraqi people from oppression. In his other-worldly performance before Chilcot, Blair offered only a glazed belief that he was revelling as a latter-day Richard the Lionheart.

All wars wander from their plan, since all armies are good at landings but bad at breakouts, and dreadful at occupations – known to every military manual long before Iraq. The truth is that this was always to be a headline war, fuelled by a desire to see what Bush celebrated as “mission accomplished” just when a nervous Pentagon was murmuring: “We don’t do nation-building.” It was a political invasion, not to win a battle or occupy territory but to score a point against Islamist militancy. That it meant toppling one of Asia’s few secular regimes was another of its hypocrisies.

The overriding lesson of Iraq comes from that dejected goddess, humility. The dropping of thousands of bombs, the loss of 4,000 western troops and the spending of almost a trillion dollars still cannot overcome the AK-47, the roadside explosive device, the suicide bomber, and an aversion to occupation. Nations with different cultures cannot be ruled by seven years of soldiering. Bush and Blair thought otherwise.

The Iraq war will be seen by history as a catastrophe that did more than anything else to alienate Atlantic powers from the rest of the world and disqualify them as global policemen. It was a wild overreaction by a paranoid, overmilitarised American state to a single spectacular, but inconsequential, act of terrorism on 9/11. As such it illustrated how little international relations have advanced since the shooting of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Its exponents are still blinded by incident.

All the UN’s pomp cannot stop such incidents running amok. The UN is powerless in the face of glory-seeking statesmen, goaded by military-industrial interests of unprecedented potency. We might think that after history’s mightiest lesson book – the 20th century – the west would be proof against repeating such idiocy. Yet when challenged to show prudence and maturity in response to terror, it plays the terrorist’s game. It exploits the politics of fear.

The west is leaving Iraq in a pool of blood, dust and dollars. It remains wedded to Iraq’s twin sister in folly, Afghanistan.

Speech by Nicolas Sarkozy at the annual Ambassadors of France’ Conference (Voltairnet.org)

by Nicolas Sarkozy*

25 August 2010 From Paris (France) Tools Print Send All the versions of this article: français Español Countries France

Mr. Prime Minister, Mr. President of the Senate, Mr. President of the National Assembly, Mr. Minister of Foreign and European Affairs, Ministers, Parliamentarians, Ambassadors, There are moments in history when fate wavers between the best and the worst possible outcome. Moments when all that has been achieved could be lost or, conversely, lead to lasting progress. We are at one of these moments now. This is the case for the international community’s actions in the crescent of crisis that stretches from the borders of Pakistan to the far reaches of the Sahel, encompassing Iran and the Middle East. It is the case in Europe, where the Treaty of Lisbon and the decisions taken to deal with the financial crisis are opening up prospects still to be developed if we are to make the European Union a global player. It is also the case for the global economy, which has not yet resumed the path of solid and sustainable growth, while the G20 must prove that it has the determination to pursue the necessary reforms. At the big table where the decisions are made, new actors have joined the recognized powers. With good reason, they are calling for their rights to be recognized. But they also have to accept that with these rights come duties and responsibilities. They have to recognize that their amazing success means that they must go beyond the defense of their national interests and must make their contribution to solving the world’s problems. This momentum has begun and I welcome it. At this moment in history when fate hangs in the balance, we need determination and unity, in order to tip the scales in the right direction. If we are divided and hesitant, if the recognized powers and the major emerging countries don’t manage to come to an agreement on the goals to be achieved and the means to achieve them, if we are not able to act jointly to combat the challenges of terrorism and proliferation, economic imbalances and climate change, then we will have failed in our duty. At this moment in history when fate hangs in the balance, France must assert its vision, its determination. But it must just as equally try to find, for each of the major challenges that we must overcome, the path that combines progress and ambition. I expect each of you to speak on behalf of France, but also to listen to the expectations of the world. Ladies and Gentlemen, Ambassadors, The fight against terrorism remains a major priority. All analyses conclusively confirm that since 2001, as a result of the blows it has been dealt, al-Qaeda’s ability to launch devastating attacks on Western countries has been significantly reduced. On the other hand, al-Qaeda and those that claim to represent it have increased their hold and their level of deadly violence in certain States, from Pakistan to Mali. Each country is confronted with a specific situation requiring tailored responses from the governments in charge, with the support of the international community. There is no operational coordination between the groups that are operating from one end of this crescent of crisis to the other. But if the situation were to deteriorate, then we risk seeing the emergence of a continuous chain linking the terrorist bases of Quetta and southern Afghanistan with those of Yemen, Somalia and the Sahel. Analysts are now calling the trend in Afghanistan catastrophic. Every day, we are told that the Taliban are back, as if the die has been cast, as if we are going to abandon the Afghan people. The reality is that despite significant losses, the Taliban remain strong in the south and the east. On the other hand, there is no major violence in the rest of the country. The coalition and the Afghan government have been able to adapt their strategy and are continuing to do so. I believe that we will succeed if we continue our resolute action. All parties must fully assume their responsibilities, which were clearly established at the London and Kabul Conferences. The responsibilities of the allies, our responsibilities, consist of defending the Afghans in the regions where the Taliban are posing a threat; to train the Afghan security forces so that they can fight by themselves; and, lastly, to provide civilian aid to the population tailored to its real needs. That is what France is doing in its area of responsibility, Kapisa and Surobi. The human toll is heavy, and this week it grew even heavier. But imagine what it would be if we weren’t there. Let’s not forget what the Taliban did in the past or the thousands of Afghan they continue to kill. It is vital that the Afghan government improve the governance of the country, fight corruption and drug trafficking. It must also-and this is its key mission-offer reconciliation to those who renounce violence, cut off all ties with al-Qaeda, and respect Afghan institutions. Lastly, the Afghan government must take serious action to prepare itself to take over the security of the provinces and districts considered stable enough to be transferred to Afghan control. Our action in support of peace should not be subject to artificial timetables or the whims of the media. We have realistic political objectives, based on a gradual and ordered transition. We have a clear strategy; let’s carry it through to the end! France will remain involved in Afghanistan, with its allies, for as long as necessary and for as long as the Afghan people want. But no victory will be possible or lasting without the support of Pakistan. With help from the whole world, that country is courageously dealing with the impact of the unprecedented floods. It is facing enormous economic and social challenges. It must defeat terrorism at home. But it must also deal with the sanctuaries where Afghan terrorists are taking refuge. That’s what I told President Zardari on August 2. France will stand alongside Pakistan in this fight against all forms of terrorism. This battle must be fought without ambiguity; the less ambiguity there is, the more the international community will be convinced that it makes sense to help its government. With regard to Yemen, the stability of the entire Arabian Peninsula is at stake. A year ago, when an armed movement was spreading and threatening to spill over into neighboring Saudi Arabia, several countries, including France, assumed their responsibilities. A fragile truce replaced the violent clashes. But the problem remains. It can be solved only through dialogue and reforms. On the other side of the Golf of Aden, in Somalia, the stakes are clear. The deadly attacks in Kampala in July showed that Islamist al-Shabab militias now have the capacity to extend combat far beyond their borders. Their victory in Mogadishu would transform Somalia into a base for al-Qaeda. It would destabilize an entire region already made vulnerable by the conflict in Sudan. France contributes to regional stability through its military presence in Djibouti, Chad and the DRC. It will step up its effort in Somalia in response to requests from the African Union and its European partners. After training 500 soldiers in Djibouti, 2,000 Somali troops are currently being trained in Uganda, while the African AMISOM force, for which we have already trained 5,600 men, will be strengthened. Of course, there will be no purely military solution. The European Union, the leading aid donor, must continue its effort and together with all external supporting players, help the government expand its political base, a necessary precondition for rebuilding state structures. This is also the path that will make it possible to achieve an enduring solution to the problem of piracy. Lastly, in the Sahel, the barbarity of the Maghreb branch of al-Qaeda was demonstrated once again when it refused all offers of negotiation and murdered Michel Germaneau. These terrorists are trying to expand their influence in the vast desert regions where the States are struggling to assert their presence. For the first time, in July, the terrorists were dealt a severe blow thanks to an attack led by Mauritanian forces, with France’s support. Let me tell you: That day marked a major turning point. France lends full support to the governments that ask it to train, equip and advise the mobile forces that they need in order to destroy the groups that threaten to destabilize the entire Sahel region. At the same time, our civilian cooperation helps States to increase their support for local populations, and I hope that the European Union will do more in this area. France also stands alongside Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya. Their fight against terrorism is also our fight since their security cannot be separated from ours. * At the heart of this crescent of crisis lies Iran. The regime exerts its control through crackdowns and extensive use of executions, including the most appalling type of execution: stoning, with which Mrs. Mohammadi is now being threatened. It fuels violence and extremism in the region. But above all, it constitutes the main threat to international security in a key area: proliferation. I want you to understand: France supports the development, in strict compliance with international standards, of nuclear power-generated electricity. That’s why it welcomes the start-up of the Bushehr power plant, whose fuel will be exclusively supplied by Russia. The problem of course lies elsewhere. Nearly a year ago in Pittsburgh, together with Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, we revealed the existence of the secret nuclear facility that Iran was building for its proliferation activities. I said at the time that we needed to impose sanctions on Iran if it did not change its policy. We are at that point now. The Security Council, the United States, the European Union and others have taken strong measures, unprecedented measures for the Europeans. It was high time. Because everyone knows the grave consequences of a policy that would allow Iran to continue its nuclear arms race: It would lead to widespread proliferation in the region, or to military intervention; in any event, a major crisis. We will therefore resolutely implement these sanctions and I urge all countries to do the same. It is sometimes said that sanctions don’t work, or even that they lead to war. That’s wrong. They fail when they are too weak or don’t have a clear objective. Ours is simple-to make Iran understand that its choices come at an increasingly high cost, and that there is an alternative: the start of negotiations; but serious, concrete negotiations that go to the heart of the matter. Is Iran ready for that? We will see in September, when Mrs. Ashton and the Six meet the Iranian negotiators and dialogue begins in Vienna on the supply of uranium for the civilian reactor in Tehran. I hope that a suitable agreement can be reached in the coming months, that Iran complies with the law, and that the international concerns will be removed. The concerns of Iran’s neighbors must also be taken into consideration and they should be consulted on all agreements. But if a credible agreement cannot be achieved, Iran’s isolation will increase inexorably. If a threat were to emerge, we would also have to take steps to protect and defend those States that felt threatened. * Some people claim that the violence spanning this crescent of crisis has just one cause: the lack of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That’s clearly wrong. Those who kill in Baghdad or Kandahar want to destroy their enemies in Iran and Afghanistan. On the other hand, who doesn’t believe that a peace settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians would completely transform the political equation in the Middle East? There again, the outcome is not certain. There again, it’s a matter of commitment and determination. Let me tell you: A peace agreement, whose parameters are familiar to everyone, can be signed within a year. The revival of direct negotiations on September 2 is creating enormous expectations and enormous hopes. They must not be dashed. A viable, democratic Palestinian State established on the basis of the 1967 borders is both a right for the Palestinians and the best guarantee of Israel’s security and complete integration in the region in keeping with the Arab Peace Initiative. It is also the only path, in the two peoples’ interest, to reduce extremism and to restore faith in the future. The entire international community must support this renewed process. With this aim in mind, France is proposing to host the second Paris Conference in Support of the Palestinian People to develop the economy and structures of the future State. In addition to the financial commitments resulting from the conference, it would offer strong, concrete evidence of the international community’s determination to see the two-State solution succeed. In the same spirit, France, together with the Egyptian co-chair, would like the second Union for the Mediterranean Summit to be held in Barcelona at the end of November. This will provide an opportunity to adopt several major economic projects that will demonstrate the capacity of all participating countries to build a better future for all people of the Mediterranean. Peace between Syria and Israel is equally possible. France, which has renewed regular dialogue with Damascus that is helpful for the entire region, is involved, alongside Turkey, in seeking an agreement. I have tasked Ambassador Jean-Claude Cousseran with this goal; he has my full confidence. At a time when hope is returning to the region, it would be intolerable for Lebanon to lapse into violence once more. France welcomes the simultaneous visits by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and President Bashar al-Assad to Beirut. It lends its full support to Lebanon’s democratic institutions, to President Suleiman and to Prime Minister Hariri. France is deeply attached to this country and is a friend to all Lebanese. It is working to ensure the stability of a diverse Lebanon, in which all communities can live side by side in mutual tolerance and respect. This stability is the entire raison d’être of the international community’s efforts in Lebanon. And it is the whole aim of the UNIFIL mission to ensure Lebanon’s peace and sovereignty, which all its neighbors must respect. * * Ladies and Gentlemen, Ambassadors, In Europe too, fate wavers between the best and the worst possible outcomes. Last winter it was the worst possible outcome: For commentators and even the markets, the Greek debt crisis had suddenly become a crisis of the euro, whose credibility was being called into question. Allow me, now that the storm has passed, to remind you of a few simple truths. Firstly, there was considerably less damage to the public finances of the euro zone than those of the United States or Japan, both in terms of deficit and debt. Then, contrary to what is often said, the Europeans were able to react effectively, with a massive aid plan for Greece worth €110 billion and a €750 billion financial guarantee plan for the entire euro zone. The Greek government, for its part, has taken and is continuing to take the courageous measures that are necessary. Certainly, it would have been better to take swifter action. But we mustn’t forget that in Europe, the decision process involves 27 sovereign nations. What history will remember is that, as always, Europe overcame its difficulties by choosing solidarity and unity. History will remember that these problems represented an opportunity for the EU to make new progress since they led to the affirmation of its economic governance. What history will remember is that once again, Franco-German understanding allowed this European progress to take place, despite the initial differences in approach. At the crucial moment, Franco- German understanding was key. What I take away from this ordeal is that we must strengthen the effectiveness of European institutions. This has been initiated with the stable President of the European Council, the High Representative for External Action and the Service that reports to it. The next step is the economic government of the 27, with meetings between the 16 members of the euro zone taking place whenever necessary. Just a few months ago, the notion of a European economic government was practically taboo, except in France. Today, all of Europe is in agreement that a true European economic government is not just necessary but essential. Now it must be established in concrete terms. Work is underway: France and Germany have made ambitious proposals that Mr. Schauble and Mme Lagarde presented at the Council of Ministers meeting of July 21. In October, the European Commission will take the necessary decisions on the basis of proposals by its president, Herman Van Rompuy. But Europe cannot limit itself to economic issues, however important they may be. What history has taught us is that no area of prosperity has survived without being able to ensure its security and defend its interests. We have a long way to go in Europe. The crisis further increased the gap between the effort of our American allies and those, reduced and dispersed, of the Europeans. During the French EU presidency, we had defined responses together. We must implement them, because Europe can’t be defended with walls of procedures and battalions of paper. To defend against threats to our vital interests, we have nuclear deterrence, which is also a guarantee of our independence. But in the face of new challenges, the Europeans are lagging behind, although they should also be participating to ensure the security of the seas-essential to our trade-of space, and now cyberspace. France is prepared to undertake concrete projects enabling us to successfully carry out the most demanding combat missions. I heard our British ally’s statements on bilateral cooperation with France. We are prepared to discuss this without taboos. It is with this concern in mind that I will attend the NATO summit at the end of November in Lisbon, where we will adopt a new strategic concept. Our Alliance, both military and nuclear, is essential to our security. But it must be reformed, its structures must be streamlined and it must be adapted to the new international equation. It needs robust, projectable forces, and, as the Afghan experience has shown, better coordination between military and civilian actions. New threats call for a renewed, closer relationship between NATO and the European Union. Our shared interests with Russia must lead us to develop, if Moscow so wishes, an unprecedented partnership to guarantee the security of the entire European-Atlantic space. In the coming days, France will make specific proposals to Russia pertaining to its relations with the EU and NATO, and with a view to the OSCE summit to be held in Astana in early December. Ladies and Gentlemen, Ambassadors, With 500 million citizens and an economic clout equivalent to nearly 30 percent of the global GDP, more than 35 percent of the global total of direct investments abroad, and nearly 60 percent of all public development aid, the EU holds the necessary cards to assert itself as a global economic power. But it must have the will to play these cards cannily, as part of a coherent strategy aimed at concrete results and reciprocal benefits. Europe represents the world’s largest market and the largest importer; we must not hesitate to act toughly and firmly to open markets that are thus far too closed! We must not hesitate to impose compliance with the rules of fair trade! We must not hesitate to combat fiscal dumping, social dumping and environmental dumping! The special European Council meeting of September 16, which will be devoted to the EU’s relations with its major partners, must help us move forward on all these points. The European Union must also ensure that it has the means to remain in the top ranks of global competition. In that regard, it must fully implement the economic strategy that we adopted at the European Council in June. It must mobilize all our financial means in the service of stronger, more durable growth, betting on research, education and jobs, but also on agriculture, whose export volume, for Europe, exceeds that of its aeronautics industry. Europe, like the United States, must use its “green power.” * In a world undergoing profound changes, in a Europe that is moving forward, France remains well placed because, together with the Prime Minister and the Government, we have been engaged over the past three years in a major effort to modernize our economy. We have two simple objectives: to reduce competitiveness gaps with the most high-performing countries, and to improve our growth potential by casting off all the shackles that have accumulated over a period of decades. Thus, we freed up and eliminated taxes on overtime hours to overcome the obstacle of the 35-hour work week, and have opted not to replace one of every two civil servants taking their retirement, as part of a broad administrative reform. Thus we eliminated the professional tax, a tax that existed in our country alone and affected company investments. Thus we adopted a tax provision, the most attractive of all OECD countries, to support corporate research. Thus we granted our universities complete autonomy, allowing them, for example, to sign agreements with private companies or modify their curriculum. Thus we launched the Big Loan, making it possible to invest 35 billion euros in higher education, training, research and innovation. With private co-financing, our total investment in the technologies of the future will be some 60 billion euros. And thus we will reform our retirement system. This is a major reform that Parliament will adopt this fall. This reform is necessary and fair; it will strengthen France’s competitiveness. At the same time, like all its European partners, France will reduce its public deficit. It will fall from 8 percent of GDP today to 6 percent in 2011 and 3 percent in 2013. This represents a €40 billion reduction of our deficit by 2011 and a €100 billion reduction by 2013. These reforms are also necessary to bolster the world’s confidence in the French economy. And they are already paying off: In 2009, at the height of the crisis, foreign direct investment in France dropped only 4 percent, compared with 37 percent globally. France is the recipient of the most foreign direct investment in the world after the United States and China. Ladies and Gentlemen, Ambassadors, On November 12, France will assume the G20 presidency for one year, and on January 1, that of the G8. These are weighty responsibilities, coming at a time when questions are being asked about the vocation of both of these bodies. Created at France’s behest, the G20 represents 80 percent of the planet’s wealth. It enabled the main economic powers to successfully weather the most severe crisis since the 1930s. First, by supporting world growth in a coordinated manner. The results speak for themselves: In early 2009, the IMF announced that the recession would continue into 2010. Thanks to the G20’s efforts, the world experienced renewed growth earlier than expected. And that’s true for France as well: The IMF announced 0.3 percent; we will record at least 1.4 percent in 2010. But to save the global economy in the long term, we must also adopt new rules for the financial system. Reforms that not long ago would have been unthinkable have been decided and implemented: The activities of speculative funds are now regulated; ratings agencies must be registered; the payment of bonuses by banks is defined by strict rules; and “maluses” have been put in place in the event of losses or poor performance. Finally, tax havens are disappearing. Five hundred agreements to exchange tax information have been signed since the G20 in London; around the world, bank secrecy is on the wane; and sanctions have been implemented against tax havens that don’t adopt the new international rules. It was necessary, in fact, to engage in a dialogue to resolve, in the long term, the dangerous imbalances in the global economy: massive excesses here, unsustainable deficits there. That dialogue was launched with the establishment of a framework for strong, sustainable, balanced growth at the Pittsburgh Summit. In 2011, it must be deepened and enriched; coordination mechanisms must be consolidated; multilateral oversight must be strengthened; and the level of expectation must be raised with respect to the commitments that were taken, including concrete economic policy measures and a timetable to achieve them. All in all, the “crisis version” of the G20 has done a fantastic job. Unprecedented, even. Today, now that relative calm has returned, there is a temptation to limit the G20’s ambitions to the implementation of the decisions that were taken, supplementing them in 2011 by a few useful measures: expanding regulation in areas where it remains insufficient; verifying the implementation of agreements on the exchange of tax information signed since the London summit; adopting strong measures to fight corruption; strengthening the mandate of the Financial Stability Forum; and more broadly, reexamining the prudential framework of banking institutions to avoid a repetition of the crisis we just experienced. Specific proposals are on the table for all these subjects-first, to best prepare the Seoul Summit, then to expand results in 2011. Completing the work that is under way is important, of course! The G20’s credibility depends on it. But is it enough? Let me be clear: Sticking with this agenda would condemn the G20 to failure and the world to new crises. Paradoxically, it was easier to be bold when the world was on the brink of a precipice and we really had no choice. Today, we have the choice: to complete the projects under way, deal with unforeseen developments as they arise, and limit our ambition to that; or to add new projects, the ones that have remained at a standstill for far too long, and on which global prosperity and stability depend. France offers its partners the choice of ambition. With a single conviction: that only the G20 has the weight, legitimacy and decision-making power to give these projects of the future the impetus they need. What are they? France will consult its partners on this subject. For its part, it identifies three: The first is the reform of the international monetary system. Who can deny that the instability in currency exchange rates is a substantial threat to world growth? How can businesses plan for their production and exports when the euro suddenly shoots from, say, dollar-euro parity to $1.60, before tumbling back down a few weeks later to $1.27? Our postwar prosperity owed a lot to Bretton Woods, its rules and its institutions. Since the early ’70s, we have been living in an international monetary non-system. Of course, I’m not talking about returning to a fixed exchange-rate system. What is desirable and even necessary today is to create instruments to prevent excessive currency volatility, the accumulation of imbalances, and the search for an ever higher level of foreign exchange reserves for emerging countries facing the sudden, massive withdrawal of international capital. I am well aware of the fact that this is a sensitive subject. France is planning on suggesting that it be broached with its partners, without taboos but with the necessary caution. Why not begin by, say, holding a seminar bringing together the top specialists, perhaps in China? Basically, three tracks could be studied: 1-First we must strengthen our crisis management mechanisms. Since 1990, emerging countries have experienced 42 episodes of sudden international capital withdrawals, jeopardizing their stability and growth. We must rethink these international guarantee mechanisms and institute more effective, faster multilateral instruments to prevent and handle these crises. The IMF’s instruments are currently under study. The financial crisis, as well as the crisis of the euro, showed that to guarantee stability, the world must be capable of swiftly mobilizing very large sums to deal with irrational market speculation. I would also like us to discuss the international doctrine on capital movements. For years, we lived with the illusion that the opening of capital markets was always progress. Reality showed us that isn’t the case. It is legitimate for countries that are highly dependent on foreign capital to take measures to regulate it at times of crisis. The best guarantee against a rise in protectionist risks, in this area as in others, is the development of multilateral rules. 2-We must then consider the suitability of an international monetary system dominated by a single currency in a now-multipolar world. The fact is, the accumulation of foreign exchange reserves in certain countries corresponds to the deepening current account deficit in the United States. In London, the G20 countries decided on an exceptional allocation of 250 billion in Special Drawing Rights. This international asset is today a subject of growing interest. We are nowhere near establishing the global currency that Keynes proposed with the Bancor. But the availability of an international reserve asset that is not issued by an individual country would help strengthen the stability of the system as a whole. 3-Finally, we must find a way to better coordinate the economic and monetary policies of the major economic zones. With the G20 in Pittsburgh, we established the framework that must allow each of us to implement the appropriate economic policies to achieve high, stable growth while reducing international imbalances. But we must also go further, and define a new framework for consulting on foreign exchange developments. This forum is currently the G7 group of finance ministers and governors of central banks. But how can we talk about exchange rates without China? We must discuss the best response to this unavoidable question. There’s nothing sacrilegious about talking about these subjects. Discussing them calmly, within the most legitimate, most effective forum-the G20-is something to be desired. It’s even necessary. So why wait? And wait for what? The next crisis, with-yet again-incalculable consequences? The second project we must undertake is controlling volatility in the prices of raw materials, which we are currently seeing with the sudden rise of wheat prices. Who doesn’t remember the hunger riots in Haiti or Africa when the prices of certain foodstuffs suddenly skyrocketed in 2008? Who has forgotten the tragic consequences of sudden rises in the price of oil and gas, followed by equally sudden drops, for the global economy? Is there anyone who would dare say the subject is too difficult and it’s better to do nothing? France proposes that its G20 partners tackle this issue with ambition and pragmatism. Three subjects could be studied. First, we should consider the actual functioning of derivative markets in raw materials. Why regulate the financial derivatives market alone? Extending regulation to raw materials is possible and desirable. We will also limit speculation. Next, with regard to agricultural raw materials, several directions could be explored without preconditions: market transparency; storage policies; but also the creation, by international financial institutions, of tools enabling importing countries to protect themselves against exchange rate volatility. Finally, the energy costs included on the G20’s agenda since the Pittsburgh summit. France was given the mandate to propose measures for Seoul and for the 2011 summit to curb price volatility. We will propose transparency measures and a substantial dialogue between producers and consumers to limit exchange rate fluctuations. The third project proposed for the French G20 presidency is global governance reform, which I spoke to you about at length right here last year. The G20 decided it would be the “main global forum” for economic and financial issues. But it must still give itself the means to work more effectively. Shouldn’t we create a G20 Secretariat to continuously monitor the implementation of decisions and deal with issues in conjunction with all pertinent international organizations? Shouldn’t the G20 also be including new subjects, such as development, on its agenda? Shouldn’t we be adopting rules of good conduct and best practices for public aid within that forum? Shouldn’t we be debating innovative financing there, notably a possible tax on financial transactions? This financing is essential if we want to meet the Millennium Goals and the financing objectives of the Copenhagen climate change agreement. And while we’re at it, shouldn’t the G20 be discussing the financing of a climate agreement? At a time when the fight against climate change is at a standstill, after the disappointment of Copenhagen and the bogged-down legislative process in the United States, it is crucial for Europe and other developed countries to keep their commitments. Implementing the Copenhagen agreement is crucial, whether we’re talking about “fast start,” innovative financing or forest protection. Cancun will be important, but the November 2011 summit in South Africa will probably be the decisive time to seal an agreement. The G20 summit in France will be held just before that. I am planning on discussing this sequence, which could result in decisive progress, with President Zuma. France will also suggest a broader debate on world governance. The G20 gave a decisive impetus to World Bank reform; it should do the same, in the coming months, for the IMF. How can it ignore the specialized UN bodies dealing with the economy, jobs, trade…? They all need reform. They all must learn to work together better. How, in this context, can we not send a strong signal to the UN General Assembly on an interim reform of the Security Council? Without this decisive effort, that reform-debated at the UN for 20 years now-will remain deadlocked for a long time to come. I spoke to you at length about the G20. A word about the G8. Some have said it is condemned. Others believe it has a rosy future if it refocuses on security issues and its partnership with Africa. The future will decide, and France intends to prepare this summit carefully. It will allow leaders whose views are often very similar to discuss, as they did in Canada this past June, subjects of common interest and major political issues ranging from Iran to the Middle East peace process to Afghanistan. Preceded by a meeting of the Interior Ministers of the countries concerned, the summit will also provide an opportunity to discuss the destabilization of Caribbean nations, West Africa and the Sahel by drug trafficking between Latin America and Europe. Together, we must cut off this drug route, help transit nations, and protect Europeans from this scourge. No doubt, in this context, we will have to raise the issue of the fight against al-Qaeda in the Sahelian strip between Mauritania and Somalia. The summit’s other major theme will be the partnership with Africa, because the G8 alone represents 80 percent of international public aid. You won’t be surprised to hear that France, the world’s secondlargest public aid donor, attributes special importance to this partnership. The Nice summit and the 50th anniversary of independence from Colonial rule were opportunities to confirm both the strength of the ties inherited from history and the profound renewal in our relationship with the entire continent. I will emphasize this again on September 20 in New York, at the opening of the summit on the Millennium Goals, a key moment in our mobilization. During the G8 summit in Muskoka, we gave our African partners a report on the implementation of our commitments. At the summit being held under our presidency, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi will present a corresponding report on the use of that aid by the Africans. In light of these two reports, we are considering together the most effective means to help that continent spread its wings. Now more than ever, the G8 must stand side by side with Africa. Finally a word on the spirit that will motivate me throughout the year of our dual presidency. Tell the leaders of your countries, whether or not they belong to the G20, that France intends to act collectively, listening to them and consulting them as often as possible. That’s what I will do, for example, at the Francophonie summit in Montreux this October. Ladies and Gentlemen, Ambassadors, The topics on the agenda of the G20 and G8 summits will be the focus of your conference’s work. I welcome that, because beyond the technicality of the subjects, our nations must answer a simple, decisive question: Together can we build a more secure, more prosperous, more just world for all? Thank you. Share this // Nicolas Sarkozy President of France.

Why The Military Knows Israel Did 9/11 & U.S cameraman has proof 911 was a lie – you decide

Why The Military Knows Israel Did 9/11

U.S cameraman has proof 911 was a lie

The Arab world, sick man of the globe

Rami G. Khouri
uruknet.info
Sun, 29 Aug 2010 19:17 CDT

Looking around the Arab world this week, it is hard to know what are the region’s real priority challenges, because multiple issues stand out as problems, vulnerabilities, weaknesses or threats. Most of the problems in our region can be traced to local incompetence, or, in the worst cases, criminality and irresponsibility in the seats of power – though everywhere there is also an element of foreign involvement or manipulation that should not be ignored. The regional picture is not pretty.

The Somali capital Mogadishu is once again ripped apart by vicious street battles, the state-level equivalent of senseless drug wars among poor urban youth in other parts of the world. Somalia is the sad global laboratory of a society without a state, chaos masquerading as statehood.

Bahrain is once again plagued by street demonstrations and security crackdowns, reflecting a total inability of citizens and leaders to engage one another in a sensible political negotiation over the exercise and sharing of power. Bahrain should have been a leader in sustainable development and social equity in the region, given its small population and its early emphasis on educating men and women alike.

Iraq remains the most dangerous place in the region today, given its combination of internal stress, rekindled high levels of terror and political violence, the inability of the political class to achieve consensus, and the rampant interference of foreign countries. The destructive ripples that have radiated from Iraq outward to the region and the world in the form of foreign invasion and interference, terror groups, sectarian fighting and nation-state fragility are unprecedented in the modern era.

Lebanon remains trapped in its continuing dilemma of being both the vanguard of Arab liberalism, cultural creativity, intellectual production, tolerance, and multiculturalism, on the one hand, and a perpetual proxy battleground for regional and global powers who link up with fierce local fighters, on the other. The best of the Arab and universal human condition is on display in Lebanon every day, and every few weeks or months this is complemented by street fighting, assassinations, political stand-offs or large or small wars.

Yemen is caught in its own whirlwind of national fragility, polarization and low-intensity disintegration, having several times in its modern history split up and united, fought and reconciled, stabilized and plunged into warfare. Now it embodies a new destructive dimension in the form of militant Salafists linked with Al-Qaeda, making it another local breeding ground and battleground in the global terror industry.

Palestine becomes stronger and stronger as a national identity in the hearts and minds of its own citizens, but also more and more fragmented and disjointed politically on the ground. Several different Palestinian leaderships share legitimacy with some of their own people, but none has been able to achieve the more important international legitimacy or credibility and respect in the eyes of Israeli leaders and society.

Sudan chronically displays its own stresses and national deficiencies, including internal fighting on several fronts, the possibility of the south seceding after a referendum, and the ignominy of the president being indicted by the International Criminal Court.

Everywhere else, the Arab world is defined by top-heavy states where small groups of men surrounded by many soldiers make decisions without seriously consulting their fellow citizens. This legacy is firmly supported by major foreign powers who see “security and stability” as critical priorities in this region, by which they mean that Israel should remain dominant, Arab nationalists and Islamists should be fought and diminished, and security-minded Arab governing elites should rule forever.

This translates into a perpetual cycle of mostly disempowered and disenchanted Arab nationals who never get to experience the thrills of true and full citizenship – participation, accountability, opportunity, transparency. They share in transforming their states into shopping malls, their identities into categories of security clearances, and their humanity into unthinking automatons who wave the flag on command, cheer on cue, and otherwise restrict the exercise of their rational, emotional and creative human dimensions to subservience, acquiescence, and obedience in the political and social spheres.

Religion helps many such dehumanized Arabs cope with their constraints and discomforts. Emigration is a solution for some. Most people simply adjust to life in modern non-democratic states where the two most prevalent public manifestations of collective norms are in the domains of security and consumerism.

In “secure” Arab societies like Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia and others who do not suffer the chronic violence of Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, the ubiquitous symbols of Arab statehood and citizenship are guns in the hands of police and army personnel, and cell phones in the hands of all other nationals. This is another kind of unstable statehood, one whose vulnerabilities do not appear in the open as they do in those other Arab countries engulfed by fighting.

France must end stigmatization of Roma and Travellers

from : http://www.amnesty.org

27 August 2010

Amnesty International has called on the French government to end the stigmatization of Roma and Travellers (Gens du Voyages) in France, as the authorities continue to dismantle around 300 irregular camps and return hundreds of people to Romania and Bulgaria.

Around 280 Roma were returned to their country of origin on Thursday, in addition to the 216 returned on 19 and 20 August. According to the French Minister of Immigration Eric Besson, around 800 Roma are to be returned by the end of August.

The measures followed a special ministerial meeting in July to discuss “problems related to the behaviour of certain Roma and Travellers in France”.

During the meeting, French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly referred to irregular camps inhabited by Roma as “sources of criminality”, allegedly including child exploitation and prostitution.

“French officials should be working to fight discrimination, rather than making inflammatory statements that link entire communities to alleged criminality and may lead to even further discrimination against Roma and Travellers,” said David Diaz-Jogeix, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Europe and Central Asia programme.

“Under no circumstances should anyone be returned or expelled simply because they are Roma.”

In July, before the evictions started, around 20,000 Roma from Eastern and Central Europe were estimated to be residing in France, many of them in unauthorized camps.

Members of France’s Traveller communities, the majority of whom are French citizens, have also been targeted by the announcement to close 300 irregular camps.

Around 400,000 itinerant French Travellers are already subject to discriminatory requirements to report periodically to the police and to be registered with a municipality for three years before acquiring the right to vote.

Under French law, all municipalities with more than 5,000 inhabitants must establish authorized halting sites for Travellers.

In April 2009 only 25 per cent of the municipalities had done so, resulting in an increase in the number of Travellers living in unauthorized halting sites.

“Instead of scapegoating Roma and Travellers, France should focus on fully implementing its own legislation and provide adequate halting sites and protection of the housing rights of all,” said David Diaz-Jogeix.

Under international human rights law, the French authorities are obliged to guarantee the rights of all persons, including Roma and Travellers, to adequate housing. They cannot evict anyone from their home, even if it is in an irregular settlement, unless all other alternatives have been exhausted and they have consulted all affected residents.

Evictions can only be carried out when appropriate procedural protections are in place; adequate alternative accommodation provided; and relocated residents offered compensation for all losses.

Amnesty International has urged the French authorities to remove any provisions of French law which are discriminatory against Travellers, such as requiring them to carry travel permits and restricting their voting rights.