GettingTruth

Peter King is bigoted and ineffective

2011-06-19T18:53:00.002-04:00

Peter King's Islamic radicalization hearings against Muslims is meaningless and ineffective. He leaves out discussion of the United States long history of collaborating with Jihadis, propping up dictators and toppling democratic regimes (like in Iran in 1953). Robert Dreyfuss, author of Devils Game, discusses history of US and Middle East.

Dreyfuss' book is just the tip of the iceberg. How many people are aware that the United States spent millions of dollars on violent, extremist textbooks that were given to Afghan Children? See From U.S., the ABC's of Jihad in The Washington Post (Saturday, March 23, 2002; Page A01)
The United States funded and supported Islamic extremists during the Afghan-Russian War in order to give the Soviet Union its "Vietnam." The US could have supported pro-democracy Afghan groups, but instead chose the most brutal extremists from around the world to create death and destruction in Afghanistan.

While people accuses CAIR of supporting Hamas, people forget how Israel allowed Hamas to flourish as a rival to the secular Palestinian Nationalist movement. See "How Israel and the United States Helped to Bolster Hamas" from the Democracy Now program for more about this issue.

So basically, while the United States preaches human rights and democracy, it supports kings, dictators and extremists who do its bidding. And just so that we can live comfortably, Muslims are supposed to accept and be happy about being oppressed and killed by their leaders (that we armed and supported).

I'd like to see people put their money where their mouth is and demand USA stop accepting billions of dollars in investment money from the Saudis.

There are 9/11 victims families that are demanding a reopening of the 9/11 investigation. But Peter King is ignoring them http://rememberbuilding7.org/ King chooses to place all the blame on voiceless and powerless Muslims because it is the easy and cowardly thing to do.

Peter King thinks that it was OK to support Irish terrorists because the terrorist acts did not occur in the United States. How does that look to the world that our elected politicians have double standards. What does Britain, an ally on the war on terror, think of our government supporting people who commit terrorists in their country. Peter King should be made to step down as head of House Homeland Security Committee.

Beyond Treason: Depleted Uranium & Anthrax Vaccines [Full Film]

2011-06-19T18:38:00.001-04:00

Film discusses how United States government has betrayed our soldiers through the use of chemical weapons, but did not educate or provide protection to solders. In addition, millions of innocent Iraqis have suffered disease, deformities and death from the USA's use of chemical weapons. Film discusses how USA sold to Iraq many of the weapons, which the USA later used as an reason for invading Iraq. I doubt our "brave" Peter King, Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, will be investigating this.

9/11-Israeli connection

2011-06-19T18:33:00.000-04:00

This information has been on the internet since after 9/11. While people will bring up the cheering Palestinians on 9/11, people are in denial (even those on the political left) of the Israelis' action, in New Jersey, on 9/11

You won't be seeing our "brave" Peter King, Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, investigating this.

Here is a report from Fox News, a source you'd least expect to discuss this issue, on the 9/11-Israeli connection

Commission Chairman Thomas Kean: 9/11 Commission Was Set Up To Fail

2009-12-06T14:03:00.002-05:00

Gold9472 posted this video on youtube. He writes:

This is a very brief clip from a question and answer session Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton gave at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. on 9/11/2006. As representatives of the family members, and family members themselves called for a new investigation right across the hall.

On the video, Kean says

Lee and I write in our book [Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission] that we think Commission was set up to fail because we had not enough money, we didn’t have enough time, we had been appointed by the most partisan people in Washington: The leaders of the House and Senate

Mainstream media and politicians spends more time questioning White house party crashers, then 9/11 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/us/politics/04party.html

Here is website that provides a lot of information on worldwide 9/11 truth movement http://world911truth.org/

Sean Hannity and his Holocaust Denying Friend

2009-11-01T13:59:00.000-05:00

Talk radio host Sean Hannity always likes to describe Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a Holocaust denier, but it doesn’t seem to bother him that his good friend Pat Buchanan is a Holocaust denier. Sean has interviewed Pat several times on his show and this issue has not come up.
Here are some articles about Pat Buchanan’s views on the Holocaust:

Pat Buchanan and the Holocaust
http://www.holocaust-history.org/~jamie/buchanan/

Pat Buchanan, Antisemitism and the Holocaust
http://frank.mtsu.edu/~baustin/buchanan.html

Sean criticizes President Obama’s willingness to talk to Ahmadinejad, but he leaves out a discussion of U.S. past actions in Iran. Such as when in 1953 the US toppled the democratically elected government in Iran, for oil in and he also leaves out how the US had given false strategic advice and sold weapons to both sided of the Iran-Iraq War. (See review of the book All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/hrj/iss17/booknotes-All.shtml and the article Fueling the Iran-Iraq Slaughter By Larry Everest http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/11715 )

This is not to say that we shouldn’t be careful and question what the Iranian President says, but considering US past actions in Iran, the Iranian leadership has a lot of reason to be suspicious of US intentions, as well.

Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror

2009-04-04T15:10:00.002-04:00

Review of Mahmood Mamdani book by Howard French

from The New York Times, March 29. 2009
Source http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/books/30fren.html

Clearly, the African disaster most in view today is Sudan, or more specifically the dirty war that has raged since 2003 in that country’s western region,Darfur.

Rare among African conflicts, it exerts a strong claim on our conscience. By instructive contrast, more than five million people have died as a result of war in Congo since 1998, the rough equivalent at its height of a 2004 Asian tsunami striking every six months, without stirring our diplomats to urgency or generating much civic response.

More interestingly, the author maintains that much of what we see today as a racial divide in Sudan has its roots in colonial history, when Britain “broke up native society into different ethnicities, and ‘tribalized’ each ethnicity by bringing it under the absolute authority of one or more British-sanctioned ‘native authorities,’ ” balancing “the whole by playing one off against the others.”

Mr. Mamdani calls this British tactic of administratively reinforcing distinctions among colonial subjects “re-identify and rule” and says that it was copied by European powers across the continent, with deadly consequences — as in Rwanda, where Belgium’s intervention hardened distinctions between Hutu and Tutsi.

In Sudan the result was to create a durable sense of land rights rooted in tribal identity that favored the sedentary at the expense of the nomad, or, in the crude shorthand of today, African and Arab.

Other roots of the Darfur crisis lie in catastrophic desertification in the Sahel region, where the cold war left the area awash in cheap weapons at the very moment that pastoralists could no longer survive in their traditional homelands, obliging many to push southward into areas controlled by sedentary farmers.

He also blames regional strife, the violent legacy of proxy warfare by France, Libya and the United States and, most recently, the global extension of the war on terror.

This important book reveals much on all of these themes, yet still may be judged by some as not saying enough about recent violence in Darfur.

Mr. Mamdani’s constant refrain is that the virtuous indignation he thinks he detects in those who shout loudest about Darfur is no substitute for greater understanding, without which outsiders have little hope of achieving real good in Africa’s shattered lands.

Here's an article by Keith Harmon Snow with more information about Darfur that is not discussed in the mainstream media http://www.allthingspass.com/uploads/html-264THE%20WINTER%20OF%20BASHIRS%20DISCONTENT.htm

From the U.S., the ABC of Jihad

2008-07-07T03:50:00.001-04:00

It seems its okay to teach children hate and violence when it serves the United States interest.

From the U.S., the ABC of Jihad
By Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, March 23, 2002; Page A01
From http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5339-2002Mar22?language=printer

In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code.
As Afghan schools reopen today, the United States is back in the business of providing schoolbooks. But now it is wrestling with the unintended consequences of its successful strategy of stirring Islamic fervor to fight communism. What seemed like a good idea in the context of the Cold War is being criticized by humanitarian workers as a crude tool that steeped a generation in violence.
Last month, a U.S. foreign aid official said, workers launched a "scrubbing" operation in neighboring Pakistan to purge from the books all references to rifles and killing. Many of the 4 million texts being trucked into Afghanistan, and millions more on the way, still feature Koranic verses and teach Muslim tenets.

Look at this hilarious part of the article where it says,

A 1991 federal appeals court ruling against AID's former director established that taxpayers' funds may not pay for religious instruction overseas, said Herman Schwartz, a constitutional law expert at American University, who litigated the case for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Ayesha Khan, legal director of the nonprofit Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the White House has "not a legal leg to stand on" in distributing the books.
"Taxpayer dollars cannot be used to supply materials that are religious," she said.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State were concerned about money being spent on religious books but they were not too concerned about the millions of Afghans killed or disabled by a war that was instigated by the U.S. so that the Soviet Union would get its “Vietnam.” This is why the mainstream political left is no better than the political right. Neither is conscience enough to recognize the great suffering of others. The United States recruited and trained Muslim extremists to fight its proxy war against the Russians. (See http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html ) With the defeat of the Russians came the collapse of the Soviet Union, making the United States the number one superpower in the world, but the U.S. did nothing to help reconstruct Afghanistan

China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo

2008-07-07T03:39:00.001-04:00

By SCOTT SHANE
Published: July 2, 2008

WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

rest of article at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Africa’s gift to Latin America?

2008-05-27T19:47:00.004-04:00

This post title was inspired by Stephan Kinzer’s column titled “Iraq’s gift to Latin America” at
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/stephen_kinzer/2008/04/iraqs_gift_to_latin_america.html

He writes,

“With the United States so totally consumed by the Iraq conflict, it has no time, energy or political capital to crack down on challenges south of the Rio Grande. Sensing their historic chance, many Latin nations have embarked on experiments that the US would in past eras have instantly stepped in to crush.

The independence that many Latin American countries have shown in the last five years borders on outright defiance of US power. Yet to a degree unprecedented in modern history, Washington is allowing them to do as they please.”

While US involvement in Iraq appears in the mainstream media everyday, US involvement in Africa does not.

Here are articles about African countries that the United States is politically/militarily involved with. Using Kinzer’s way of thinking, these are gifts to Latin America

Congo

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_keith_ha_080207_the_gertler_steinmet.htm

Sudan

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=447&Itemid=1

Somolia

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m41085&hd=&size=1&l=e

Americans Tell It Like It Is to the Iraqis

2008-05-21T20:51:00.003-04:00

This cartoon is by Ward Sutton that appears in the May 12, 2008 issue of THE NATION

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080512/sutton

In the first panel, that "average Joe's" viewpoint is held by many highly educated people. There are Senators and Congresspersons (Republicans and Democrats) who have the same point of view.

Here is information about what the US is doing in Iraq that you won;t find in the mainstream media

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/20/iraqi_american_reflects_on_five_years

Here is an article about "Regime Change: How the CIA put Saddam's Party in Power"

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/217.html

Here is an article about how the United States sold weapons and gave false strategic advice to both sides of the Iran-Iraq war.

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/11715

Why doesn't President Bush ask the Canadians or Mexicans?

2008-05-16T18:05:00.002-04:00

Every once in a while a headline shows up where the U.S. President is asking the Saudis to increase oil production.
See this article
If the Saudis king says no, the press acts as if though the Arabs are controlling the United States. The United States imports just as much from Canada and Mexico (See See U.S. Energy Information Administration website, yet why doesn't the President ask these countries to increase oil production? If he does, how come the mainstream media doesn't report on it.

The Saudis invest trillions of dollars in the United States, but Canada and Mexico do not. Saudi Arabia buys billions of dollars worth of weapons from the United States, even though they do not have the qualified personnel to operate the weaponry. Saudi Arabia is just a storage place for weapons the United States uses in its military interventions in the Middle East and surrounding regions.

The Tragedy of Aid to the Third World

2008-04-27T00:15:00.005-04:00

From The Tragedy of Afghan Aid at http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/04/the-tragedy-of-afghan-aid/
by Andy Rowell

... in September 2002, the United States launched what would become an aggressive effort to build or refurbish as many as 1,000 schools and clinics by the end of 2004. However, Congressional figures showed that they managed to finish and hand back to the Afghan government only 40 schools by late 2005.

As Ben Jackson wrote in his book Poverty and the Planet published in 1990, “Aid is commonly thought of as handing over money to Third World governments for development. In fact, aid largely consists of funding from Western governments for services, machines, technical experts and consultants to be supplied by companies in rich countries, frequently their own.” The bottom line was that “most aid money is actually spent in the rich world.” Of the $20 billion the World Bank handed out in 1988, $15 billion went to its own contractors or consultants.

... there is a huge disparity between what America spends on war and what the international community spends on aid. The US military currently spends nearly $36 billion a year in the country, some $100 million a day; yet the average volume of aid spending by all donors since 2001 is just $7 million per day. Whilst the military budget is vast, 2.5 million Afghans face severe food insecurity, and one in five children still dies before five. Life expectancy is woefully low at 45 years. Thirdly, over half of all aid to Afghanistan is tied, by which donors often require procurement of services or resources from their own countries. Rather than go to help Afghanistan, the money just lines the pockets of Western contractors and companies. So of the aid actually spent, a staggering 40% has returned to donor countries in corporate profits and consultant salaries.

The report notes: “Vast sums of aid are lost in corporate profits of contractors and sub-contractors, which can be as high as 50% on a single contract … A vast amount of aid is absorbed by high salaries, with generous allowances, and other costs of expatriates working for consulting firms and contractors — each of whom costs $250,000-$500,000 a year.” In contrast, an Afghan civil servant is paid less than $1000 per year.

Thanks for Nothing Halliburton

2008-04-26T03:25:00.005-04:00

This video shows how Halliburton overcharges for everything, but the soldiers are living under poor conditions. If this is how they are treating Americans, image how they are treating the Iraqis. Is there any wonder why there are Iraqis still fighting the Americans?

This is from the film Iraq for Sale

Now You See It, Now You Don’t, Part 2

2008-04-26T03:15:00.005-04:00

In Part 1, I had pinged back to a post on mideastyouth.com about how "We are now blocked in Yemen." The ping appeared in the post and then it was removed. I didn’t get a chance to get an image of this, but when I went to technorati it appeared there, so I captured an image of the screen. Click the image below to see it larger and clearer.

Now You See It, Now You Don't

2008-04-25T14:16:00.005-04:00

My post below "Ray Hanania Can’t Take Constructive Criticism." had pinged back to mideastyouth.com .
I did a print screen of the website where the ping appeared. Click the image below to see it larger and clearer. Then look at the website and see how it no longer appears there.
http://www.mideastyouth.com/2008/04/05/criticism-and-then-there-is-criticism/#comment-133354

How ironic that one of the administrators of the mideatyouth.com website makes a post about how "We are now blocked in Yemen" yet certain people are blocking information from appearing on that website, and I don just mean Ray Hanania.

Ray Hanania Can’t Take Constructive Criticism.

2008-04-25T02:46:00.003-04:00

I am putting up this post because I was censored on a website in which Hanania posts his commentary..

It all started when I commented on this blog (comment #2 and 6) about a review, written by Sousan Hammad, of a comedy show that included Ray Hanania.
http://philistine.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/arabs-and-autophobia-ii/

You notice Ray Hanania was free to respond on the blog (see comment #s 3, 4, and 7)

On the website mideastyouth.com Ray responded to Sousam Hammad’s review and he chose to insert me into it, not making any good points, but just getting back at me.
http://www.mideastyouth.com/2008/04/05/criticism-and-then-there-is-criticism/
He writes “By the way, Randal Jones reared his ugly head on another board claiming that I ‘only’ criticize Muslims in my comedy, but off course, never once watched any of my online comedy performances.” He puts a link to video of one of his comedy performances, which only confirms what I have said.

Hanania had written “I am an outspoken critic of the Israeli occupation AND I am an outspoken critic of Hamas terrorism and a foe of suicide bombings.”

I put a comment, that was published, that the Israeli government had allowed Hamas to flourish as arrival to the secular Yasser Arafat.

Ray Hanania responded with this comment:

Hey Randall … I wrote the first analysis of how Israel’s LIKUD/HERUT party helped midwife the birth of Hamas … they didn’t found it, as Arabs argue falsely. But they did give Sheikh Yassin the support to raise money and set up a network called the Islamic Association in the 1970s in the Gaza Strip … that he later used during the outbreak of th efirst Intifada to launch Hamas … Sharon and Shamir did not expect that, but they did hope Yassin would become an Arafat rival.
Go to CounterPunch and look it up yourself … it’s there in detail …
And Tim, the Electronic Intifada argues there should only be one state, a secular state where Jews, Christians and Muslims can live in peace. They haven’t lived in peace in Palestine since before 1897 … the idea of one state is a great dream, but an unrealistic goal that only results in two things:
continued conflict; the perpetuation of the Palestinian refugees living in refugee camps.
The ONLY solution is Two States … and by the way, the founder of the Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimeh, spent his life opposing and criticizing and assaulting the Oslo Accords and the Two State plan, and now that it is dying, he dances on it by saying, “See, I told you it wouldn’t work. Now let’s live together as equals.”
I’d rather live under Israeli occupation than under Hamas and Palestinian fanatic occupation because as far as I am concerned, they are both bad but at least under the Israelis are under international scrutiny … the Islamicists and extremist secular nuts would be far worse and would quickly turn the “One State” into an Islamic State. That’s their goal. Not a Secular Islamic STate, but a fanatic religious state that bastardizes Islam and distoerts its meaning to give them the kind of power they enjoy in such sterling democracies as Yemen and in Al-Qaedi-stan.

I attempted to put this response several times, but it was not published on the website:

Who are the Arabs you are talking about where you write “…they[Israel] didn’t found it [Hamas], as Arabs argue falsely.” What’s the point of making this claim? This doesn’t mitigate the role of Israel in fueling the violence in Palestine, between Israelis and Palestinians, and also amongst the Palestinians.

Ray,you wrote “I’d rather live under Israeli occupation than under Hamas and Palestinian fanatic occupation because as far as I am concerned, they are both bad but at least under the Israelis are under international scrutiny … the Islamicists and extremist secular nuts would be far worse and would quickly turn the “One State” into an Islamic State.”

You just proved Sousan Hammad's and other critics' point; you want Palestinians to be occupied (but of course your not living under the occupation) because you believe Palestinians are incapable of developing a government. If a foreign power did to Israel what Israel is doing to Palestinians, I don't think you would want to be living under this situation. You are not living in occupied Palestine, so it is not for you to decide the type of government the Palestinians should have. The international scrutiny means nothing because Israel controls how the news comes out of that region. Israel has no interest in settling this conflict; its main concern is to perpetuate the violence to justify its occupation, while taking more of the Palestinians’ lands. Israel fuels the violence in Palestine by arming militants to oppose whoever gains popularity amongst the people.

You really got a lot of nerve to talk about “Al-Qaedi-stan,” the matter of fact is that the United States had recruited and trained Muslim extremists to destabilize the Afghan government, just so that the United States could give the Soviet Union its “Vietnam.” Millions of Afghans had been killed; the country's infrastructure had been destroyed. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. became the number one super power in the world, but did nothing to help reconstruct Afghanistan.

As for Yemen, there are Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and secular countries in the Third World that have similar kinds of problems,

At the beginning of the United States’ history there was persecution of religious and racial minorities, women were treated as property, and there was slavery. It eventually changed on its own, not by having some foreign power occupying it

My comment, that you only make Muslim jokes, is based on your radio interviews, which are a reflection of your shows. Anyway, I recently saw your performance on Google video at a dinner banquet honoring Osama Siblani and the Arab American News newspaper in Dearborn Michigan, November 2004. This also confirms what I said.

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

I suggested to Hanania some Christian related topics he could make jokes about:

Do you know Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of assassinating Rober F. Kennedy was a Palestinian Christian? Some people believe he did not act alone; if that’s true then Sirhan is the first Arab patsy in America’s war on terror.

How about the Pope expressing concern about violence by Muslims? Are you aware that the region with the most number of killings and rapes is in the Congo, more than 4 million dead, its Christians killing Christians, Christians raping Christians.

Did you know a Muslim, Wajeeh Nuseibeh, holds the key to Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, this is to keep the different sects of Christianity from fighting each other. There are Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Ethiopians and Copts. Its a good thing Wajeeh Nuseibeh doesn’t think like the U.S. governmnet, otherwise you would have a civil war that would make Iraq look like a picnic.

You’ve brought up being a Vietnam veteran. Are you proud of the 3 to 5 million Buddhists killed when the United States bombed Vietnam and Cambodia?

Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth

2008-03-28T16:58:00.011-04:00

*** Update: I've added three youtube videos to this post *** 4/8/2008

Some blogs and forums have made a comparison between how the media reports on the violence of the peoples in Tibet and Palestine. There is not only a difference in the media coverage of the violence, but also on the reporting of negative aspects of each society. Zionists will often report on the most negative historical and "cultural" aspects of Palestinian society, as if though this justifies the oppression and violence that Israel inflicts upon them. There is hardly, if any reporting about the negative historical and cultural aspects of Tibetan society. Here is an article by Michael Parenti that discusses Tibet before China. http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html

Here is an excerpt from the article:

Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they were bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated rape, beginning at age nine. 14 The monastic estates also conscripted children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.

In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. 15 The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care, They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord's land--or the monastery’s land--without pay, to repair the lord's houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand.16 Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. 17

As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.

One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished”; they “were just slaves without rights.”18 Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed.19

The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery.20

The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.

The Tibetan serfs were something more than superstitious victims, blind to their own oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others openly resisted, sometimes suffering dire consequences. In feudal Tibet, torture and mutilation--including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation--were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs. Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: “When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion.”21 Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then “left to God” in the freezing night to die. “The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking,” concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. 22

In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, breaking off hands, and hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling. The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master’s cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away.

Here is a video by Chris Nebe about the history of Buddhism in Tibet.

Here is a viewpoint about the Tibet riots that says both Western and Chinese media is not telling the complete truth. You be the Judge!

Here is the same guy giving an "Unbiased history of Tibet."

The US is arming competing militias in Iraq

2008-03-21T02:01:00.000-04:00

This is discussed in an interview with Iraqi-American Professor Ayad Al-Qazzaz, done by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now!

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Your thoughts, as we enter the sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq?

AYAD AL-QAZZAZ: I am very, very devastated about what is happening to Iraq. You see, I immigrated to this country in 1963, and I adopted this country as my own new country. But I feel very, very much torn about what’s happening in my country of origin, devastated, that country, on all levels—economic, educational, health. And the infrastructure has been destroyed. The families have been displaced. More than four-and-a-half million Iraqis have left the country, and on and on and on. So I feel terrible about what’s really going on.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And when you hear President Bush and other supporters of the administration’s policies talking about how the surge is working, how the US is now winning the war in Iraq, what is your response?

AYAD AL-QAZZAZ: You know, one of the most devastating things is to hear the President keep lying and lying about really what’s going on in Iraq. He lied about the causes of the war, he lied about what’s going on right now in Iraq, and he’s lying about the surge.
Let’s talk about the surge. The success is nothing but a camouflage, nothing but a mirage. Baghdad, for example, was a mixed city, where Shia Muslim, Sunni Muslim and Kurdish, they lived together. And I give you an example of that. My family, I come from a family, my mother was Kurdish, my ex-wife happened to be a Christian Catholic from Baghdad, my brother married to a Shia Muslim, my sister married to a Shia Muslim. And right now, the ethnic cleansing is completely—has been completed in Iraq as a result of the surge in this year. Today, if you go and visit Baghdad, you see a few Sunni communities surrounded by walls or concrete blocks or many, many checks. They try to protect themselves from the other communities in that city. Baghdad, before the invasion, was 65 percent Sunni Muslim. Today, they are 75 [percent] Muslim Shia in Baghdad.

The second point about the surge—I already told you about four-and-a-half million Iraqis have been displaced—two-and-a-half million left the country, and two [million] others are displaced within their own country. And the only reason why no more people are leaving the country, because both Syria and Jordan practically closed their border to the Iraqi refugees.

And the third thing is that the US established a Sunni militia in the Anbar area and other places, and the purpose of that militia is basically to protect the American Army from the resistance movement. So, in a sense, they are doing the dirty work for the Americans in that neighborhood. The US, when they invaded Iraq, they had many, many objectives to achieve, and one of that objective is to divide the country into semi- three independent states, and these three semi-independent states will fight with each other about resources, about territory, and then they will ask the Americans to establish bases in their own respective territories.

Read rest of interview here http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/20/iraqi_american_reflects_on_five_years

Spielberg Drops Out As Beijing Olympics Adviser Over Darfur

2008-02-15T23:42:00.005-05:00

DAVE SKRETTA | February 12, 2008 08:23 PM EST
Film director Steven Spielberg and actress Mia Farrow joined activists worldwide Tuesday in using the Olympics as a backdrop to address human rights concerns, urging Beijing to exert political leverage on Sudan's government to help end the crisis in Darfur
article continued at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/12/spielberg-drops-out-as-be_n_86338.html

.
The delusional righteousness of Steven Spielberg, Mia Farrow and all those other phony “Save Darfur” activists

It really is incredible the gall and extreme hypocrisy of people who cry crocodile tears for Darfur. If they are really concerned about stopping the violence in Darfur they would discuss all the factors contributing to it. As Americans, Steven Spielberg and Mia Farrow should be discussing the role of the Untied States in fueling the violence in Darfur. Learn more about it from these two articles.
One is written by Keith Harmon Snow

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=447&Itemid=1

the other is written by F William Engdahl

http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Oil_in_Africa/oil_in_africa.html

Why don’t the “Save Darfur” activists have anything to say about the United States’ role in the genocide in the Congo?
See
http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/congo.htm
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_keith_ha_080207_the_gertler_steinmet.htm

What about the genocide in Iraq?
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m40642&hd=&size=1&l=e
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/217.html
http://gettingtruth.blogspot.com/2007/05/can-whats-going-on-in-iraq-just-be.html

What about the genocide in Somalia?
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m41085&hd=&size=1&l=e

As long as people spend most of their time preaching to other countries and not to their own country, genocides will continue to occur.

ISRAEL AND THE ONGOING HOLOCAUST IN THE CONGO

2008-02-10T15:10:00.000-05:00

(part one)
By Keith Harmon Snow

Maurice Templesman is one of big funders of Barrack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. Templesman was the unofficial ambassador to the Congo (Zaire) for years, always working the CIA and Mobutu to instill terror and steal minerals, but a new Israeli-American tycoon has replaced him.
In the world of bling bling and bling bang, some things change, some stay the same. The CIA, MOSSAD, the big mining companies, the offshore accounts and weapons deals—all are hidden by Western media. The holocaust in Central Africa has claimed some six to ten million people in Congo since 1996, with 1500 people dying daily.But while Africans are victims of perpetual Holocaust, the persecutors hide behind history, complaining that they are the persecuted, or pretending they are the saviors. Who is responsible?
For Israeli-American Dan Gertler, business in blood drenched Congo is not merely business, it is a quest for the Holy Grail. Young Dan Gertler goes nowhere——does nothing——without the spiritual guidance of Brooklyn-born Rabbi Chaim Yaakov Leibovitch, a personal friend of Condoleeza Rice.

Article continued at
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_keith_ha_080207_the_gertler_steinmet.htm

Here is an article about Israel in Darfur
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=447&Itemid=1

Bombs Away Over Iraq

2008-01-30T21:14:00.000-05:00

Normalizing Air War from Guernica to Arab Jabour
by Tom Engelhardt

A January 21st Los Angeles Times Iraq piece by Ned Parker and Saif Rasheed led with an inter-tribal suicide bombing at a gathering in Fallujah in which members of the pro-American Anbar Awakening Council were killed. ("Asked why one member of his Albu Issa tribe would kill another, Aftan compared it to school shootings that happen in the United States.") Twenty-six paragraphs later, the story ended this way:

"The U.S. military also said in a statement that it had dropped 19,000 pounds of explosives on the farmland of Arab Jabour south of Baghdad. The strikes targeted buried bombs and weapons caches.
"In the last 10 days, the military has dropped nearly 100,000 pounds of explosives on the area, which has been a gateway for Sunni militants into Baghdad."

And here's paragraph 22 of a 34-paragraph January 22nd story by Stephen Farrell of the New York Times:

"The threat from buried bombs was well known before the [Arab Jabour] operation. To help clear the ground, the military had dropped nearly 100,000 pounds of bombs to destroy weapons caches and I.E.D.'s."

Farrell led his piece with news that an American soldier had died in Arab Jabour from an IED that blew up "an MRAP, the new Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected armored vehicle that the American military is counting on to reduce casualties from roadside bombs in Iraq."
Note that both pieces started with bombing news -- in one case a suicide bombing that killed several Iraqis; in another a roadside bombing that killed an American soldier and wounded others. But the major bombing story of these last days -- those 100,000 pounds of explosives that U.S. planes dropped in a small area south of Baghdad -- simply dangled unexplained off the far end of the Los Angeles Times piece; while, in the New York Times, it was buried inside a single sentence.

Neither paper has (as far as I know) returned to the subject, though this is undoubtedly the most extensive use of air power in Iraq since the Bush administration's invasion of 2003 and probably represents a genuine shifting of American military strategy in that country. Despite, a few humdrum wire service pieces, no place else in the mainstream has bothered to cover the story adequately either.
Continued at http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m40642&hd=&size=1&l=e

Note: the article mentions what happened in 1937 Guernica; here is an article that points out that Western countries were already bombing Arab and Muslim countries before 1937. See http://www.brushtail.com.au/july_04_on/bombing_arabs_history.html

America's Media Darling: Osama bin Laden

2008-01-27T04:01:00.000-05:00

By Jalal Ghazi, Posted September 13, 2007 at http://www.alternet.org/story/62416/

If I asked you which station devoted more attention to Osama bin Laden's latest videotape, your answer would most likely be Al Jazeera. Well, I have news for you. It was FOX News.

FOX dedicated one hour and seven minutes to continuous coverage of Bin Laden's video, only interrupted by commercials. News anchor Shepard Smith read a script of Bin Laden's speech and then interviewed analysts on air for 30 minutes. This was followed by the business news show Your World with host Neil Cavuto, who discussed the effects of Bin Laden's speech on the stock market. Cavuto interviewed analysts for another 30 minutes. Talk show host John Gibson extended the coverage of the Bin Laden story for an additional seven minutes before moving onto other news.
Brigitte Gabriel, author of "Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America" and one of the guests interviewed by Neil Cavuto, told FOX, "He (Bin Laden) knows that it is going to get great publicity right now in the Arabic world. As I'm speaking to you, Arabic television -- Egyptian, Syrian, and Lebanese -- are playing this live."

As I was listening to her, I glanced at the more than two dozen Arab television sets playing in my office. These included four Lebanese television stations (New TV, LBC, NBN and Future), one Egyptian (Al Masriya), the Syrian Arab Republic Television, as well as other Arab satellite channels from Jordan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya, and the United Arab Emirates. I was only able to find one 10-minute news segment about Bin Laden on Al Jazeera and another one, less than two minutes long, on Sudan Television.

Israel to get "smarter" U.S.-made bombs than Saudis

2008-01-14T12:36:00.000-05:00

Sun Jan 13, 2008 9:10am EST

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The United States has agreed in principle to provide Israel with better "smart bombs" than those it plans to sell Saudi Arabia under a regional defense package, senior Israeli security sources said on Sunday.

Keen to bolster Middle East allies against an ascendant Iran, the Bush administration last year proposed supplying Gulf Arab states with some $20 billion in new weapons, including Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bomb kits for the Saudis.

The plan has angered Israel's backers in Washington, who say the JDAMs, which give satellite guidance for bombs, may one day be used against the Jewish state or at least blunt its power to deter potential foes. Israel has had JDAMs since 1990 and has used them extensively in a 2006 offensive in Lebanon.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government dropped its objections to the proposed Saudi deal in July after securing U.S. military aid grants worth $30 billion over the next decade.

Rest of article at http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL1339881820080113

Human Rights Organizations ignore the elephant in the room

2008-01-10T18:55:00.000-05:00

Organizations like the ACLU (American Civil Liberty Union), Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and many activists on the political left spend all day and night talking about the human rights of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners and the need for fair trials. They constantly complain that President Bush and his administration lie and are detaining prisoners without any evidence of criminal activity. At the same time, when it comes to the 9/11 attack, these organizations and activists believe 100% what President Bush and his administration claim. So millions have been killed in the "war on terror," millions more have been displaced and these human rights activists have nothing to say about the event that triggered these human rights atrocities.
Ironically, the FBI’s webpage on Usama Ben Laden makes no mention of the 9/11 attack. See http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm
Why wouldn’t an attack which killed 3,000 people be specifically mentioned?
Journalist Ed Haas’ investigates this,

On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”

See complete article at http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html
Here is a film of a newsreport that asks the question why has Osams Ben Laden not been indicted for 9/11.

There is a growing grass roots movement questioning the official 9/11 “investigation.” Many of them are non-Muslims.
See http://www.911truth.org/
and http://911proof.com/

The role of the United States and other countries in fueling the violence in Darfur

2007-12-30T00:36:00.000-05:00

Keith Harmon Snow writes,

Conflict in Darfur escalated in 2003 after in parallel with negotiations “ending” the south Sudan war. The U.S.-backed insurgency by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the guerilla force that fought the northern Khartoum government for 20 years, shifted to Darfur, even as the G.W. Bush government allied with Khartoum in the U.S. led “war on terror.” The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA)—one of some 27 rebel factions mushrooming in Darfur—is allied with the SPLA and supported from Uganda. Andrew Natsios, former USAID chief and now US envoy to Sudan, said on October 6, 2007 that the atmosphere between the governments of north and south Sudan “had become poisonous.” This is no surprise given the magnitude of the resource war in Sudan and the involvement of international interests.

Israel reportedly provides military training to Darfur rebels from bases in Eritrea, and has strengthened ties with the regime in Chad, from which more weapons and troops penetrate Darfur. The refugee camps have become increasingly militarized. There are reports that Israeli military intelligence operates from within the camps, as does U.S intelligence. Eritrea is about to explode into yet another war with Ethiopia.

See complete article at http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=447&Itemid=1

Here are additional articles on Darfur

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7311

http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Oil_in_Africa/oil_in_africa.html

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=453&Itemid=1

Bush and Cheney are only fooling themselves

2007-12-24T17:09:00.001-05:00

But people are too apathetic to speak up or do anything about their lies, that includes our elected officials and the mainstream media.

Click cartoon to see larger image
cartoon from http://www.time.com/time/cartoonsoftheweek/0,29489,1692684_1500285,00.html

Michael Moore is a Fraud

2007-12-23T02:25:00.000-05:00

Here is an excellent analysis from Alex Jones that exposes how Michael Moore has left out so much important information from his film Fahrenheit 911. For some reason many on the political left aren’t concerned to criticize Moore’s poorly made film.

Ignoring Israelis' presence in Iraq

2007-11-23T18:32:00.000-05:00

The mainstream media claims Iran is fueling the violence in Iraq. On this politically left website (http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112207C.shtml) there is an op-ed peice from The New York Times about Saudi and Libyan fighters in Iraq. How come there isn't as much discussion of Israel's role in fueling the violence in Iraq?

Israel in Iraq: Evidence Mounts
by Jon Elmer
The NewStandard

Further evidence of the presence of Israeli operatives in Iraq arose this weekend when the general formerly in charge of the U.S.-run Iraqi prison system, herself considered partly responsible for torture at Abu Ghraib and other prisons under her command, told the BBC that she met an Israeli interrogator working in a U.S.-run "intelligence center" in Baghdad. Brigadier General Janet Karpinski told BBC Radio in an interview on Saturday that she met with a man who claimed to be Israeli and that he "did some of the interrogation" at the facility.
.
.
.
A top US military official quoted in the Washington Post on Sunday denied claims of Israeli presence in Iraq, calling the story an "urban legend."

Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom similarly dismissed Gen. Karpinski's claims as "completely baseless," telling Israel's Army Radio: "We are not involved in any way in Iraq. We are not involved in training or in interrogations, or in anything else. The whole claim is preposterous."

The Foreign Minister's assertion is contradicted by significant documentation of Israeli-American "strategic cooperation" with regard to intelligence sharing and training in Iraq.

A December article in the Guardian described how Israeli advisers are involved in training U.S. special operations troops in counter-insurgency tactics to be used in Iraq. The operations being trained are said to include the use of assassination against resistance leaders. Quoting US intelligence and military sources, Guardian writer Julian Borger reported that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) sent urban warfare specialists to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the home of U.S. Army Special Forces.

On that same day, the Associated Press ran a story under the headline "U.S. employs Israeli tactics in Iraq," in which American and Israeli officials publicly noted "high-level meetings" and "strategic cooperation" between the two countries on the subject of operations in Iraq.
from http://www.antiwar.com/orig/elmer.php?articleid=2959

Also see

Israel trains US assassination squads in Iraq

by Julian Borger (Tuesday December 9, 2003) at http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1102940,00.html

Here is a video of a news report about the Mossad in Iraq

What about a discussion of Americans and Brits who are fueling the violence in Iraq? See http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20051015&articleId=1089

Meaningless Resolution Regarding the Armenian Genocide

2007-10-20T05:04:00.000-04:00

Is there an example of more extreme, hypocritical arrogance than the U.S. Congress, and other politicians, as well as newspapers columnists and human rights activists attempting to have a resolution passed acknowledging the Armenian genocide by Turkey? http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/26/america/NA_GEN_US_Armenia_Genocide.php

How about asking the U.S. Congress to put an end to the genocide it is committing in Iraq? Most politicians only acknowledge the deaths of American soldiers, but have nothing to say about the deaths of the Iraqis. Even the political left pretend that what is going on in Iraq is just a civil war and the U.S. is an innocent, helpless bystander. This is no different from Turkey. “The Turkish government has said the toll [of 1.5 million]is wildly inflated and that Armenians were killed or displaced in civil unrest during the empire's collapse.”

It was the United States that helped Saddam Hussein into power and supported him strategically and financially, when he was committing his worst atrocities. The U.S. has bombed the infrastructure of Iraq during two invasions; no one really knows how many were killed during these bombings or due to the use of chemical weapons and depleted uranium. Thousands of Iraqis are put in jail without justification. Reconstruction projects are benefiting foreigners more than the Iraqis. American agent provocateurs are fueling the violence between the different religious and ethnic groups; but no one is investigating this.
Millions of Iraqis have fled their country in fear for their lives. The Iraqis are scapegoats for U.S. foreign policy.

For those who have no sympathy for the Muslims in Iraq (and Afghanistan), let’s look at what the United States did in Vietnam and Cambodia. Three to five million Buddhists were killed when the U.S, bombed and used chemical weapons on these countries. Where is U.S. acknowledgment of this genocide?

What about how the United States preaches human rights and democracy, yet it engages in regime change, supporting brutal dictators and kings who do its bidding?

The fact that the U.S. Congress wants to pass a resolution regarding the genocide that Turkey has committed, but has not said anything about the genocides the United States is responsible for, shows that passing these type of resolution is completely meaningless.

Why don't the United States and Europe set the example by acknowledging their genocides?

It wasn't only the Armenians that were killed in large numbers. Read here about what the Europeans (with Americas' help) were doing in their former colonies
See http://www.brushtail.com.au/july_04_on/bombing_arabs_history.html

I suspect there is much more history that has yet to be revealed about the atrocities Europeans committed against former colonies.

Arabic School Ex-Principal Fights to Get Job Back

2007-10-20T02:59:00.000-04:00

Those who do not live in New York Cit,y may not be aware of the new Khalil Gibran International Academy, a public school where the Arabic language and culture are included in the curriculum.. The principal was going to be Debbie Almontaser (women in photo, on the left), a Yemeni immigrant. At the start of the school year She was replaced by Danielle Salzberg, a Zionist who does not speak Arabic.

Almost from the time the Education Department announced plans for the school in February, it faced opposition from parents at public schools that were to share their space with the Arabic-culture school, as well as from conservative columnists, who said the school would promote radical Islam.

The controversy that ultimately lead to Ms. Almontaser’s resignation began in early August, when she faced questioning from The New York Post over the phrase “Intifada NYC,” which was printed on T-shirts sold by Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media, a Brooklyn-based organization. The shirts had no relation to the school. She said that the word “intifada,” — which is commonly used to refer to the Palestinian uprising against Israel — literally meant “shaking off” and did not only suggest violence.

Yesterday, Ms. Almontaser said that Education Department officials had forced her to speak to the reporter and then, not satisfied with her answer, demanded that she write an apology

. See complete story by Jennifer Medina in the New York Times (October 17, 2007) at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/education/17principal.html

While New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, and Teachers Union President Randi Weingarten condemned Ms. Almontaser for defending the phrase "Intfida New York," they had nothing to say about the article at the website of the newspaper of the NYC United Federation of Teachers ( http://www.uft.org/news/teacher/around/irish_duo/ ) were it refers to the terrorists of Hagannah as freedom fighters.

He later became a stakeholder for the Hagannah, a defense lawyer for Jewish gun-runners and had his brother, Mayor William O'Dwyer, call off a police detail from the docks so guns could be sent to Israel.
... [caption of photo] Manhattan attorney Brian O’Dwyer (left), who told a vignette about his father defending Israeli freedom fighters caught with guns in Manhattan; with Joel Shiller (center), chair of the UFT Jewish Heritage Committee, and Callaghan.

Here is some of what the Hagannah did to the Palestinians

http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2002-05/16/article23.shtml

Not only did they terrorize the Palestinians, they also terrorized Jews. There is a book by Naeim Giladi called Ben Gurion's Scandals: How the Haganah & the Mossad Eliminated Jews. Read about it here http://www.bintjbeil.com/E/occupation/ameu_iraqjews.htm

Update: Here is a blog that gives updates about Debbie Almontaser and the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA) http://kgia.wordpress.com

Mass Murder in the Horn of Africa

2007-10-20T01:51:00.000-04:00

By a US ally, of course …

Why is the U.S. subsidizing and supporting murder, rape, and systematic ethnic cleansing in the Horn of Africa? The reason: it's all part of our strategy for "victory" in the "war on terrorism."

The village of Kamuda – a remote outpost in the Ogaden region of eastern Ethiopia, where the majority are Muslims and ethnically Somali – had some unexpected visitors last June, when a platoon of Ethiopian soldiers showed up, announcing their arrival by shooting their rifles into the air – and demanding to know why the villagers had been providing food and safe haven to rebels from the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF). With no satisfactory answer forthcoming, the soldiers took action: they picked out seven young ladies, between the ages of 15 and 18, and dragged them off into the bush.

Three were later found hanging from trees, beaten to death. The rest simply disappeared.
(Complete article by Justin Raimondo at http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11778 )

U.S. college decides against hosting Desmond Tutu

2007-10-06T17:07:00.000-04:00

A private Roman Catholic college in Minnesota has shelved plans to invite Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu to speak, fearing that his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will offend the Jewish community, a school official said.

University of St. Thomas officials had initially considered having the South African bishop address students in April, but comments in which he compared Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to the plight of blacks under South Africa's apartheid regime were deemed too insulting by the local Jewish community, said Dough Hennes, vice president for university and government relations.

Tutu "has been critical of Israel and Israeli policy regarding the Palestinians, so we talked with people in the Jewish community and they said they believed it would be hurtful to the Jewish community, because of things he's said," Hennes said.

Hennes told local newspapers for stories Thursday story that the university does not believe Tutu is anti-Semitic. But he cited a 2002 speech in which he said Tutu criticized "the Jewish lobby." Hennes also said Jewish groups feel Tutu has compared the Israeli policy toward Palestinians to how Adolf Hitler treated Jews.

Complete article at http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/10/04/america/NA-GEN-US-Desmond-Tutu-University-Speech.php

Archbishop Desmond Tutu needs to remind Jewish groups about how Israel helped give apartheid era South Africa its nuclear capabilities. (see http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Global_Secrets_Lies/Israel_SAfrica.html )
He also needs to remind Israel about what it is doing in the Congo.

Over the past 50 years, top Israeli and Belgian diamond dealers have perpetrated conflict and injustice in Africa, fueled by and for diamonds. According to a report by the American Jewish Committee: after 1980 “Mossad agents, military emissaries, and a small group of private businessmen…replaced diplomats as Israel’s main interlocutors with African leaders and political (mainly opposition) groups.” The report cites rising involvement of private defense and security interests, especially in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Central Africa Republic, since 1992.

Retired Israeli Defense Forces Colonel Yiar Klein reportedly organized arms for diamonds networks in Sierra Leone and Liberia after President Charles Taylor was deposed. President in 1997, Taylor was imprisoned in Massachusetts in 1984 for embezzlement in Liberia, but escaped mysteriously. He was close with President Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso, which is Israel’s base of operations in Africa and a conduit for illegal stones. Yar Klein violated the UN embargo by trading arms for diamonds from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), the rebels who chopped people’s hands off. In 1999 Klein was arrested in Sierra Leone on charges of smuggling arms to the RUF; transactions went through Ibrahim Bah, a Senegalese soldier of fortune and purported Al Qaeda businessperson.

complete article at http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2007/snow.html

Update: St. Thomas president reverses earlier stance on Nobel prize winner
see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21247990/
I still think Desmond Tutu needs to speak to Israel about its relationship with apartheid era South Africa, as well as its current role in the genocide in the Congo. Actually, he needs to talk to America about these issues, as well.

From Iraq to Burma Hypocrisy Rules the West

2007-10-05T18:48:00.000-04:00

by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

October 1, 2007

Shame has vanished from Western “civilization.” Hypocrisy has taken its place.

On September 28, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown could be heard on National Public Radio decrying the use of violence against democratic protesters by the government in Burma. Brown declared the British people’s revulsion over the violence inflicted by the Burmese government on its people. But Brown said nothing about the violence the British government was inflicting on Iraqis and Afghans.

George W. Bush also struck the blameless pose when he declared: “The world is watching the people of Burma take to the streets to demand their freedom, and the American people stand in solidarity with these brave individuals.”

Bush and Brown do not have the same sympathy for the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan. Neither Bush nor Brown stand in solidarity with those who are demanding their freedom from foreign occupation by American and British troops. Indeed, Bush and Brown, as commanders in chief, are on a killing spree that makes the government in Burma look extremely restrained by comparison.
Complete article at http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m36826&hd=&size=1&l=e

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Singapore and Burma: Web of cash, power, and cronies

2007-09-29T20:36:00.000-04:00

Here is an article about how Singapore supports and funds the brutal military junta in Burma. It contains an interesting piece of information about Israel's involvement in the oppression in Burma.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/web-of-cash-power-and-cronies/2007/09/28/1190486569946.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Often writing as "William Ashton" in the authoritative Jane's Intelligence Review, Mr Selth has described in various articles how Singapore has sent the junta guns, rockets, armoured personnel carriers and grenade launchers, some of it trans-shipped from stocks seized by Israel from Palestinians in southern Lebanon.

Singaporean companies have provided computers and networking equipment for Burma's defence ministry and army, while upgrading the bunkered junta's ability to network with regional commanders — so crucial as protesting monks take to the streets of 20 Burmese cities, causing major logistical headaches for the Tatmadaw, the Burmese military.

article written by Eric Ellis, September 29, 2007

Iraq: a free and sovereign state?

2007-09-29T02:49:00.000-04:00

The Illusion of Dividing and Conquering in Iraq
by Ron Jacobs

If anyone still believes that Iraq is a free and sovereign state, a couple recent moves in Washington should put a rest to that thought forever. The first is the response to the most recent slaughter by the Blackwater mercenaries. The second is the vote on September 26, 2007 in the US Senate that calls for the division of Iraq into semi-autonomous regions that would be decided by the US client government inside Baghdad's Green Zone.

The response to the Blackwater murders from the Green Zone government was strong at first. The Minister of the Interior demanded the exit of the mercenaries from Iraq and possible prosecution of the murderers. Then the pressure from Washington began and the forceful language from the Green Zone Iraqis became considerably more conciliatory. As it stands at this writing, the Iraqi legislature is considering passing a law that would make the private mercenaries fighting Washington's war in Iraq the responsibility of the Pentagon. This would mean that they would answer to the men in uniform wearing lots of medals. It doesn't mean that their murderous actions would be punished, but it would mean that they would have to be sanctioned by the Pentagon. Given that there seems to be very few US military officers of high rank whose careers are not tied to Washington's version of success in Iraq, this change in the command chain seems like it will make very little difference in how the Blackwaters of the war operate.

See rest of article at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ron_jaco_070928_the_illusion_of_divi.htm

Seven CIA Veterans Challenge 9/11 Commission Report

2007-09-29T01:59:00.000-04:00

Raymond McGovern
William Christison
Melvin Goodman, PhD
Robert Baer
Robert David Steele
Lynne Larkin
David MacMichael, PhD

See article at http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070922_seven_cia_veterans_c.htm

South America embraces Bush's arch enemy (Iran)

2007-09-29T01:11:00.001-04:00

by Rory Carroll in Caracas
Saturday September 29, 2007
The Guardian

Red carpets, brass bands, bear hugs and a hero's welcome: there is at least one part of the Americas that loves Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

South America this week greeted the Iranian president as a brother and benefactor, defrosting him after his icy reception in New York. The leaders of Bolivia and Venezuela embraced Mr Ahmadinejad and blessed Iran's nuclear programme, underlining how much influence Washington has lost over a region it once considered its backyard.

The Iranian president signed a series of energy and trade deals during brief stopovers which extended Tehran's foothold in South America. In contrast to the insults heaped on him in New York, the visitor was feted as a strategic ally in the struggle against gringo imperialism. Cuba and Nicaragua echoed the rhetoric.

See complete article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2179722,00.html

There hasn't been any mentions in American media (even by the politcal left) of the past crimes of the United States against Iran.

The United States had toppled the democratically elected government of Mossadegh in 1953 and put in his place the puppet Shah. (See this book review of All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/hrj/iss17/booknotes-All.shtml )

During the Iran-Iraq war the United States sold weapons and gave false intelligence to both sides of the conflict. (see
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2292 ) Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger had said about the war, too bad both sides can't lose.

While the American media scolds Ahmadinejad for supposedly denying the Holocaust, you have Americans in denial of the genocide in Iraq.

The United States had helped Saddam Hussein into power (see http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/217.html ) and supported him, strategically and financially, when he was committing his worst atrocities.

Through two invasions, sanctions, and use of chemical weapons, millions of Iraqis have died and millions of Iraqis have fled their homes.

Where was Osama Ben Laden on Sept 11, 2001?

2007-09-22T17:29:00.000-04:00

The fact of the matter is that every single administration, since Jimmy Carter have supported and financed the "Islamic terror" network, created during the Carter administration at the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war. (See Michel Chossudovsky, Who is Osama bin Laden, 12 September 2001). al Qaeda is a instrument of US intelligence: a US sponsored intelligence asset.

Where was Osama on Septembers 11?

There is evidence that the whereabouts of Osama are known to the Bush Administration.

On September 10. 2001, "Enemy Number One" was in a Pakistani military hospital in Rawalpindi, courtesy of America's indefectible ally Pakistan, as confirmed by a report of Dan Rather, CBS News. (See our October 2003 article on this issue)

He could have been arrested at short notice which would have "saved us a lot of trouble", but then we would not have had an Osama Legend, which has fed the news chain as well as George W's speeches in the course of the last five years.

According to Dan Rather, CBS, Bin Laden was hospitalized in Rawalpindi. one day before the 9/11 attacks, on September 10, 2001.

"Pakistan. Pakistan's Military Intelligence (ISI) told CBS that bin Laden had received dialysis treatment in Rawalpindi, at Pak Army's headquarters.

DAN RATHER, CBS ANCHOR: As the United states and its allies in the war on terrorism press the hunt for Osama bin Laden, CBS News has exclusive information tonight about where bin Laden was and what he was doing in the last hours before his followers struck the United States September 11.

This is the result of hard-nosed investigative reporting by a team of CBS news journalists, and by one of the best foreign correspondents in the business, CBS`s Barry Petersen. Here is his report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BARRY PETERSEN, CBS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Everyone remembers what happened on September 11. Here`s the story of what may have happened the night before. It is a tale as twisted as the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

CBS News has been told that the night before the September 11 terrorist attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan.

Pakistan intelligence sources tell CBS News that bin Laden was spirited into this military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment. On that night, says this medical worker who wanted her identity protected, they moved out all the regular staff in the urology department and sent in a secret team to replace them. She says it was treatment for a very special person. The special team was obviously up to no good.

"The military had him surrounded," says this hospital employee who also wanted his identity masked, "and I saw the mysterious patient helped out of a car. Since that time," he says, "I have seen many pictures of the man. He is the man we know as Osama bin Laden. I also heard two army officers talking to each other. They were saying that Osama bin Laden had to be watched carefully and looked after." Those who know bin Laden say he suffers from numerous ailments, back and stomach problems. Ahmed Rashid, who has written extensively on the Taliban, says the military was often there to help before 9/11.

It should be noted, that the hospital is directly under the jurisdiction of the Pakistani Armed Forces, which has close links to the Pentagon. U.S. military advisers based in Rawalpindi. work closely with the Pakistani Armed Forces. Again, no attempt was made to arrest America's best known fugitive, but then maybe bin Laden was serving another "better purpose". Rumsfeld claimed at the time that he had no knowledge regarding Osama's health. (CBS News, 28 January 2002)...

The CBS report is a crucial piece of information in our understanding of 9/11.

It refutes the administration's claim that the whereabouts of bin Laden are unknown. It points to a Pakistan connection, it suggests a cover-up at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

Dan Rather and Barry Petersen fail to draw the implications of their January 2002 report. They suggest that the US had been deliberately misled by Pakistani intelligence officials. They fail to ask the question:

Why does the US administration state that they cannot find Osama?

(complete article at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20060909&articleId=3194)

Just one note: Remember in September 2004 when Dan Rather was made to leave CBS news after reporting on President G.W. Bush’s military record? He was accused of using forged documents. No one has said anything was forged or false in Rather's Spetemebr 2001 reporting on Osama Ben Laden.

Another important thing to point out is the website of the FBI does not mention 9/11 on its Osama Ben Laden webpage.
See http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm

Why wouldn’t an attack which killed 3,000 people be specifically mentioned?
Journalist Ed Haas’ investigates this,

On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”

See complete article at http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html

Here is a film of a newsreport that asks the question why has Osama Ben Laden not been indicted for 9/11.

Pope in 'freedom' blast at Islam

2007-09-22T16:17:00.000-04:00

A poll earlier this year of more than 1,000 young adult British Muslims found that 36 per cent believe those who convert to another faith should be punished by death.

Pope Benedict is particularly concerned about the persecution of Christians in Iraq since the invasion of 2003.

Before then, there were about 1.2million Christians in the country. But the number has dropped to below 600,000.

complete article at (Click here for the complete article)

Did it bother the Pope when the United States helped bring Saddam Hussein into power? The U.S. and other Western countries supported Saddam, strategically and financially when he was committing his worst atrocities?. Is he concerned about the millions of innocent women, men and children that were killed by bombings in two invasions, the use of chemical weapons by the United States and the sanctions that were placed against the people of Iraq? What about the millions of Iraqis that have fled their homes into the surrounding countries?

While tolerance of others must be addressed by Muslims, it would help if the Pope set the example by speaking up against how Western countries, while preaching human rights and democracy, go around engaging in regime change and supporting brutal kings and dictators who do their bidding? He won't be doing this anytime soon because these mass murders and violations of human rights are what gives him and those living in the West their comfortable lifestyles.

I don't expect he will be addressing the region in which the most killings and rapes are occurring, the predominantly Christian Congo. It is because the United States, Israel, and Europe benefit from the diamonds, other natural resources, and sale of weapons that deaths and suffering of the Congolese does not matter.

Crocodile tears for Darfur flood the civilized world

2007-09-16T21:32:00.000-04:00

More celebrities are joining the crocodile tears for Darfur band wagon. See http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/celebrity-women-speak-with-one-voice-on-darfur/2007/09/16/1189881341251.html

Organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Save Darfur Coalition are silent on the role of the United States and other democracies in fueling the violence in Sudan.

See http://allthingspass.com/journalism.php?jid=165
And http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Oil_in_Africa/oil_in_africa.html

For some strange reason these activists are not too concerned about the Congo were a larger number of killings and rapes have occurred. Can it be because the United States, Israel and Europe benefit from the diamonds, other natural resources, and sale of weapons, that the death of millions of black Africans in the Congo is not so tragic?
See http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/congo.htm

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9832

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2007/snow.html

Alan Greenspan: the Iraq war is largely about oil

2007-09-16T18:06:00.000-04:00

The US and Britain have always maintained that the war to oust Saddam Hussein was about weapons of mass destruction - not oil.

US President George Bush said Saddam was a threat to world security because he could sell the weapons on to terrorists.

But Mr Greenspan, a Republican who was boss of the US Federal Reserve for 18 years, said that was not the whole truth, according to a copy of the book seen by Associated Press.

"I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil," he is reported to have written.

from http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1284299,00.html

American confesses to Dutch axe murder over Iraq war

2007-09-16T15:33:00.000-04:00

This story hasn't got the same attention as the killing of the Dutch filmmaker by a Muslim.

The media outlets that reported it did not ask the obvious question: If the American man wanted to punish someone for the Iraq war, why didn't he punish himself, since it is the United States that led the invasion of Iraq and is responsible for most of the deaths and destruction?

Hartmann, a US citizen, first sought-out a Dutch soldier in the southern Dutch city of Roosendaal, but could not find one and turned his axe on a student waiting for a train on a platform at the city's station, said a Dutch news agency.

Local newspaper BN/De Stem said Hartmann was looking for a victim in order to punish the Netherlands for its support of the war in Iraq. The paper identified the slain student as Thijs Geers.
complete story at http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/13/2031665.htm?section=world

Iraq Union Leaders Speak Out Against Occupation

2007-09-03T01:12:00.000-04:00

By Ben Terrall
June 19th, 2007
Faleh Abood Umara, General Secretary of the Southern Oil Company Union (affiliated with the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions) worked for the Southern Oil Company in Basra for 28 years. Umara was detained by Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1998 for union activities. In the post-Saddam years he has worked on his union’s negotiating team with both the Oil Ministry and British occupation authorities, defending the rights of oil company workers.

His colleague Hashmeya Mushin Hussein, President of the Electrical Utility Workers Union, is the first woman to head a national union in Iraq. The Electrical Utility Workers are affiliated with the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW).

USLAW (U.S. Labor Against the War ) National Coordinator Michael Eisenscher introduced the speakers, pointing to the roots of Iraq labor unions in the country’s struggle against British imperialism, and the brave efforts of trade unionists under Saddam Hussein. Eisenscher noted that the June 2005 tour of Iraqi labor leaders USLAW coordinated (all three of the labor federations represented on that tour called for an end to the occupation in order to restore peace and end terrorism in Iraq) took place a month before a national meeting of the AFL-CIO, thereby helping achieve passage of a resolution by that U.S. labor body saying troops in Iraq “deserve a commitment from our country’s leaders to bring them home rapidly.” Eisenscher described this as the first time in its 50 year history that the federation took a position in opposition to a U.S. war while it was being waged, contrasting with unfortunate past history that earned it the label “AFL-CIA.” (The federation long served as an echo chamber for Washington’s cold war anti-communism, and helped facilitate brutal repression in Latin America and elsewhere.
.
.
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Since the U.S. high command has announced that it will arm “Sunni insurgents,” allegedly to fight al-Quaida, after years of equipping Shia militias, it doesn’t take much effort to see how Washington might be contributing to fragmentation in Iraq. And as Iraq specialists Antonia Juhasz and Raed Jarrar wrote about the oil law on CounterPunch: “Many Iraqi oil experts are already referring to the draft law as the “Split Iraq Fund,” arguing that it facilitates plans for splitting Iraq into three ethnic/religious regions. The experts believe the law undermines the central government and shifts important decision-making and responsibilities to the regional entities. This shift could serve as the foundation for establishing three new independent states, which is the goal of a number of separatists leaders.”
Meanwhile, the Iraq oil law’s granting dominance to multinational oil giants behind the Bush Administration continues to be largely overlooked by the U.S. media and politicians in Washington. Instead, the mostly unquestioned spin from Washington is that the U.S. is working to heal divisions: UPI energy correspondent Ben Lando, who has written extensively about the oil workers’s strike, this week described Lt. Gen Martin as “the latest U.S. government official to push a common but false claim that the controversial draft oil law will lead to a just division of the proceeds from oil sales and pave the way for reconciliation in the war-torn nation.”
In fact, under the Iraq oil law still being negotiated, foreign oil giants stand to be the primary beneficiaries of those proceeds.
As Antonia Juhasz wrote, “The foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy, partner with Iraqi companies, hire Iraqi workers or share new technologies. They could even ride out Iraq’s current “instability” by signing contracts now, while the Iraqi government is at its weakest, and then wait at least two years before even setting foot in the country. The vast majority of Iraq’s oil would then be left underground for at least two years rather than being used for the country’s economic development.
Complete article is at http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/06/iraq-union-leaders-speak-out-against-occupation/
Additional information at http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/06/1359232

Website of U.S. Labor Against the War is at http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/

Jimmy Carter: a liar or a puppet president?

2007-08-24T23:20:00.000-04:00

In this interview with former President Jimmy Carter, on amazon.com( Click here and scroll down to see interview ) about his book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, his answer to this question

Q: What has been the importance of your own faith in your continued interest in peace in the Middle East?

A: As a Christian, I worship the Prince of Peace. One of my preeminent commitments has been to bring peace to the people who live in the Holy Land. I made my best efforts as president and still have this as a high priority.

But here is an interview with (National Security Advisor to President Carter) Zbigniew Brzezinski at http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html (from Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998 )

Brzezinski says

According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

and

That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

In this article about the women of Afghanistan it says
from http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Women/RevolAfghanWomen.html

The USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and occupied the country throughout the 1980s. The CIA hired the Mujaheddin (soldiers of God) to expunge the Communists from Afghanistan. The Mujaheddin were trained by Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence Directorate, and funded and armed by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Egypt, France, Britain, Israel, Iran, Japan, and China. The U.S. spent $5 billion to support the rebels during the 1980s, and used Osama bin Laden, then an ally of the U. S ., to help recruit non-Afghan Muslims to the Mujaheddin.

RAWA has pointed out that there were several democratic-minded groups the U.S. and other countries could have supported if they had wanted to drive out the Communists and help restore independence to Afghanistan. Why did these countries instead back the fundamentalist Mujaheddin? RAWA member Sajeda told Said lt magazine in August that pro-democracy groups would have refused to act as "puppets" for other countries, and would have made it difficult for those countries to "maintain their economic and political interests in Afghanistan."

When the Soviet Union withdrew its army in 1989, the Mujaheddin, under the command of the despotic Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and still funded by the U.S., began shelling Afghanistan's cities, killing thousands of civilians. After the Soviet's puppet regime collapsed in 1992, the country was seized by civil war. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed in rocket attacks. The Mujaheddin stopped women from working and attending health courses sponsored by non-government organizations (NGOs). Amnesty International reported that armed groups beat, raped, and murdered women in their homes. Young women were kidnapped as wives for commanders or sold into prostitution. Some committed suicide to avoid this fate, like one young woman who threw herself off a balcony in her house when soldiers came to kidnap her. In March 1994, a 15-year-old girl was repeatedly raped after soldiers killed her father for allowing her to go to school. Many people were victimized for belonging to a certain religious or ethnic group.

Judith Miller and the Bloodbath in Iraq (Repeat)

2007-08-21T00:08:00.000-04:00

Here is a reminder of Judith Miller's contribution to journalism by Jospeh A. Palermo

On April 21, 2003, Judith Miller, now working as an embedded reporter with the U.S. military's MET Alpha, wrote the story, "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert." In this piece of propaganda, Miller claims without evidence or proof that the Iraqis destroyed or shipped to Syria their vast stockpiles of WMDs. Miller's anonymous source was a guy claiming to be an "Iraqi scientist," and she tells her readers that she "was permitted to see him from a distance at the sites where he said that material from the arms program was buried. Clad in nondescript clothes and a baseball cap, he pointed to several spots in the sand where he said chemical precursors and other weapons material were buried."

This "Iraqi scientist," who turned out to be bogus, allowed Miller to appear on PBS's Newshour with Jim Lehrer and have the following exchange:...

complete article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/judith-miller-and-the-blo_b_57023.html

US aid to Africa does more harm than good

2007-08-18T17:46:00.000-04:00

I first heard about this in a radio interview with Michael Maren, author of The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity published in 1977. To see a review of the book click here.
Here is more current information about this, where one charity organization is begining to see the light.

“...Care, one of the world's biggest charities, has announced that it will boycott the controversial policy of selling tons of heavily subsidised US produced food in African countries. Care wants the US government to send money to buy food locally, rather than unwanted US produced food.
The US arm of the charity says America is causing rather than reducing hunger with a decree that US food aid must be sold rather than directly distributed to those facing starvation. In America, the subsidies for corn in particular, help underpin the junk food industry, which uses corn extracts as a sweetener, creating a home-grown a health crisis.
The farm lobby meanwhile has a stranglehold on Congress, which has balked at making any changes that would interfere with a system that promotes overproduction of commodities.
Critics of the policy say it also undermines African farmers' ability to produce food, making the most vulnerable countries of the world even more dependent on aid to avert famine. ”

from http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2871490.ece

The US has Returned Fundamentalism to Afghanistan

2007-08-10T22:37:00.000-04:00

Here http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/12/468/ is a transcript of the speech given by Malalai Joya, member of the Afghan Parliament, at the University of Los Angeles on Tuesday April, 10th.

Here are two quotes from her speech.

Respected friends, over five years passed since the US-led attack on Afghanistan. Probably many of you are not well aware of the current conditions of my country and expect me to
list the positive outcomes of the past years since the US invasion. But I am sorry to tell you that Afghanistan is still chained in the fetters of the fundamentalist warlords and
is like an unconscious body taking its last breath.

The US government removed the ultra-reactionary and brutal regime of Taliban, but instead of relying on Afghan people, pushed us from the frying pan into the fire and selected its
friends from among the most dirty and infamous criminals of the “Northern Alliance”, which is made up of the sworn enemies of democracy and human rights, and are as dark-minded, evil, and cruel as the Taliban.

The Western media talks about democracy and the liberation
of Afghanistan, but the US and its allies are engaged in the warlordization, criminalization and drug-lordization of our
wounded land.

————————————————————————————–

The gang-rape of young girls and women by warlords belonging to the “Northern Alliance” still continues especially in the northern provinces of Afghanistan. People have staged mass protests a number of times but no one cares about their sorrow and tears. Only a few of the rape cases find their way into the media. One shocking case was that of 11 year old Sanobar, the only daughter of an unfortunate widow who was abducted, raped and then exchanged for a dog by a warlord. In a land where human dignity has no price, the vicious rapist of a poor girl still acts as district chief.

The only protests in Afghanistan the mainstream media reports on are the ones involving the abuse of the Quran or those Muhammed cartoons. Much of the mainstream media does not care to portray Muslims as human beings, who have the same concerns as everyone else. How much attention has Malalai Joya gotten in the mainstream media or from Western feminists? It is because she criticizes both U.S. military actions and the Taliban that she is not well known.

More sympathetic media coverage given to animals than the suffering people in the Congo

2007-07-30T21:06:00.000-04:00

http://www.startribune.com/722/story/1329443.html
How come the same amount of attention is not given to the people of the Congo as the gorillas of the Congo? Is it because Western countries benefit from the diamonds and natural resources; as well as the sale of weapons to the Central Africa region?
Here are some articles about it, in case you are not aware of it.
http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/congo.htm

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9832

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2007/snow.html

Iranian Holocaust Cartoon Contest

2007-07-26T11:39:00.000-04:00

I still see websites/blogs ( http://samsonblinded.org/blog/a-cartoon-for-a-cartoon.htm ) that claim the Iranian Holocaust Cartoon Contest was about making fun of the victims of the Holocaust. But as you can see here, it was about making fun of how the Holocaust is used to justify war crimes.

This is the cartoon of the first place winner, Morracon Derkaoui Abdellah. To see the other winners go to http://www.irancartoon.com/120/holocaust/index.htm

The Holocaust is not the only time a large number of people have died, 3 to 5 million died when the U.S. bombed Vietnam and Cambodia. Millions have died in the Congo and the surrounding countries. The Western media likes to portray it just as tribal and ethnic war fare and they leave out the role of the United States and Israel in fueling the war through political interventions and selling weapons to both sides of the conflicts. In the meanwhile, they exploit the diamonds, minerals and natural resources of the region. Will we ever find out the true number of Iraqis killed as a result of the two invasions and sanctions? The Iraqis are scapegoats for U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. helped Saddam Hussein into power and supported him, financially and strategically, when he was committing his worst atrocities.

Regarding the cartoon controversy, one of the commentators and the web administrator at http://samsonblinded.org/blog/a-cartoon-for-a-cartoon.htm discuss that to get back at Muslims they should make cartoons that show the prophet of Islam as a pedophile. I tried to post a comment that shows the cartoons of the winner of the Iranian contest and I also mentioned a book that discusses Jewish scriptures that makes it acceptable to perform sexual acts on three year olds and younger. But the administrator did not allow my comment to be posted. The name of the book is called Judaism’s Strange Gods by Michael Hoffman. I will quote part of it here. On page 51 it says

Sexual Intercourse with Little Girls is Permissible
Ketubot lIb: "If a grown-up man has intercourse with a little girl, it is nothing, for having intercourse with a girl less than three years old is like putting a finger in the eye."
Though the Talmud's permission for the heinous crime of child molestation is virtually unknown among the public and is never mentioned in the establishment media, among Talmud researchers it is notorious.
This portion of tractate Ketubot concerns Halakhic definitions of sexual intercourse. In this particular ruling it is stated that copulation with girls below the age of three cannot be considered sexual activity because, although penetration ruptures her hymen, such intercourse is merely "like putting a finger in the eye," since the hymen at this age will eventually regenerate (just as a finger stuck in an eye will cause the eye to water, yet the eye will heal and return to its former state, so the hymen of a girl under three will rupture during intercourse but will heal later).
Once her hymen grows back, the little girl is regarded as lawfully still a virgin. Hence the Talmud recognizes no sexual intercourse as having occurred and therefore exacts no penalty for coitus with a female child of less than three years of age.

Ellison, Bush, Hitler, the FBI, ben Laden and 9/11

2007-07-22T17:51:00.000-04:00

There was an uproar caused by some when the first Muslim congressman elected, Keith Ellison, compared Bush to Hitler.

"Addressing a gathering of atheists in his home state of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, a Democrat, compared the 9/11 atrocities to the destruction of the Reichstag, the German parliament, in 1933. This was probably burned down by the Nazis in order to justify Hitler's later seizure of emergency powers. "

"After his speech was reported, Mr Ellison said he accepted that Osama bin Laden was responsible for 9/11. But his demagogic comments threaten to plunge him in controversy. "
from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/14/wbush114.xml

Why should Mr. Ellison accept that Osama bin Laden was responsible for 9/11 when the FBI hasn't?

Look at the FBI’s webpage on Osama Ben Laden http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm

Why wouldn’t an attack which killed 3,000 people be specifically mentioned?
Journalist Ed Haas’ investigates this,

On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”

See complete article at http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html

Barack Obama is clueless

2007-07-22T17:35:00.000-04:00

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama : Don’t stay in Iraq over genocide http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OBAMA_AP_INTERVIEW?SITE=MIDTN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

He said, “the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.”

I don’t know if the military can solve the problems in Iraq, but the least Obama could do is acknowledge that the United States and its allies created the the chaos in Iraq. The U.S., Britain, and its allies
#1) bombed the country and destroyed its infrastructure
#2) rounds up thousands of Iraqis and jails them without justification
#3) makes decisions when elections are to take place and whether the results are valid
#4) benefit more from reconstruction projects than the Iraqis
#5)can break into jails to release prisoners against the Iraqi’s governments wishes. (Remember when two British men where caught disguised as Arabs carrying explosives and weapons in their car? Their fellow British soldiers broke into the jail they were in and helped them to escape) see http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20051015&articleId=1089

Lets look at the second ridiculous thing Obama said, “Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now - where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife - which we haven’t done.”
The guy doesn’t know what he is talking about. I suggest he read “Deadly Legacy:U.S. Arms to Africa and the Congo War” at http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/congo.htm
The findings of the report were

Due to the continuing legacies of its Cold War policies toward Africa, the U.S. bears some responsibility for the cycles of violence and economic problems plaguing the continent.
The ongoing civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) is a prime example of the devastating legacy of U.S. arms sales policy on Africa.
Although the Clinton administration has been quick to criticize the governments involved in the Congo War, decades of U.S. weapons transfers and continued military training to both sides of the conflict have helped fuel the fighting.
Despite the failure of U.S. polices in the region, the current administration continues to respond to Africa’s woes by helping to strengthen African militaries.
Even as it fuels military build-up, the U.S. continues cutting development assistance to Africa and remains unable (or unwilling) to promote alternative non-violent forms of engagement.

Here are articles that discuss how the United States and other countries exploit the natural resources of the Congo http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2006/snow0706.html

and http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2007/snow.html

Ancient mega-lake discovered in Darfur

2007-07-22T04:52:00.000-04:00

Pool of water estimated to have sprawled over nearly 12,000 square miles

Scientists using radar techniques have peeled away the sandy cloak blanketing Darfur’s parched landscape to reveal an ancient basin that once housed a mega-lake larger than Lake Erie.

“When you go into these deserts and you look at the land, it’s so dry and lifeless you think there has never been anything alive there. Then you look in the past, and you see there were rivers and lakes,” said study team member Farouk El-Baz, director of Boston University Center for Remote Sensing.

Dubbed the Northern Darfur Mega-lake, the large pool of water is estimated to have sprawled over nearly 12,000 square miles during its heyday, with 600 cubic miles of water when filled to the brim.

Hidden pool
El-Baz and his colleague Eman Ghoneim, also of the Center for Remote Sensing, discovered the lake by analyzing images from the satellite Radarsat, which used radar waves to penetrate the fine-grained sand in western Sudan, revealing the hidden contours of the lake basin and surrounding rivers.

complete article at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18059416/

Israel provoked Six-Day War, says former Dutch UN observer

2007-07-21T06:05:00.000-04:00

Jun 5, 2007, 8:51 GMT Amsterdam - A former Dutch UN observer has said Israel was not under siege by Arab countries preceding the Six-Day War, the 40th anniversary of which falls Tuesday, and that the Jewish state provoked most border incidents as part of its strategy to annex more land.
Speaking on a Dutch current affairs programme late Monday, Jan Muhren, who was stationed interchangeably at the Golan Heights and the West Bank in 1966-67, says neither Jordan nor Syria had any intention to start a war with Israel. from http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/news/article_1313492.php/Israel_provoked_Six-Day_War_says_former_Dutch_UN_observer

Actually as you will see in the video, that Jan Muhren is not that only one that says this “Moshe Dayan, the famous Israeli war hero has admitted long after the Six-Day war that the majority of incidents (80%) were provoked by Israel.”

The Deceptions of the Six-Day War - DutchTV with English Subtitles

While this information is becoming better know there is still much that needs to be investigated. This article
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51a/022.html says

Israel never was in military danger, the Israeli Army was always aware they could overpowered all the Arab armies.
The US CIA was greatly involved in providing Israel intelligence information that greatly helped them win the war in such a short time.
US military personnel, disguised as civilians and on secret missions to which they were sworn to secrecy, helped the Israelis with specific technical and intelligence-gathering operations.

"Freedom Next Time" Speech by John Pilger

2007-07-18T01:51:00.000-04:00

He gives a history of U.S. foreign policy and the role of the media.

John Pilger - Freedom Next Time Part 1
Most memorable line: “John Wayne their hero had lied so he wouldn’t have to fight in World War II. Yet the phony role model of Wayne [in the movie The Green Berets] sent thousands of young Americans to their deaths in Vietnam with the notable exception of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.”

John Pilger – Freedom Next Time Part 2
Most memorable lines : “In the last half century, United States administrations have overthrown 50 governments; many of them democracies. In the process 30 countries have been attacked and bombed with a loss of countless lives.”

Here is Pilger's website http://www.johnpilger.com

Cindy Sheehan will run against Congresswomen Nancy Pelosi in 2008 if she does not file articles of impeachment against Bush by July 23.

2007-07-18T01:27:00.001-04:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/09/AR2007070900221.html
Cindy Sheehan stepped down as an anti-war leader in May 2007 and wrote

I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.
The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a “tool” of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our “two-party” system?
However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the “left” started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of “right or left”, but “right and wrong.”

Complete article at http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/29/1495/

Here is cartoon that nicely sums up the relationship between the democrats and republicans and their attitude toward the anti-war movement

Click here for larger image
The cartoon is by Khalil Bendib who has recently released a book (Mission Accomplished Click Here to See it) which contains a collection of his cartoons

Women in Iran: Repression and resistance

2007-07-13T00:24:00.000-04:00

While Westerners often pretend to be concerned for human rights in Muslim countries, they hardly if ever give recognition to the struggles of the women who are fighting for their rights. Here is an article about Iranian women’s struggles.

"Iranians are the first to know how easy it is for a whole nation to be reduced to the rants of a senseless politician, or for images of a handful of shroud-wearing crazies burning the American flag in Tehran to reach the western media's front-pages. But how easy is it for thousands of Iranian teachers protesting outside the Iranian majlis (parliament) - as they did on Saturday 3 March 2007 - to merit any attention?"

See http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?itemid=12278

Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation

2007-07-13T00:08:00.000-04:00

For all the money Bill Gates (of Microsoft) gives to help the people of Africa, he makes much more money by investing in companies that do a lot of harm to the people and environment of Africa.

"The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total of France — the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe."

See article at http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,4205044,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines
article in Jan. 7, 2007 Los Angeles Times, written by Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon

Iroquois influenced the United States Constitution

2007-07-07T01:12:00.000-04:00

On June 11, 1776 while the question of independence was being debated, the visiting Iroquois chiefs were formally invited into the meeting hall of the Continental Congress. There a speech was delivered, in which they were addressed as "Brothers" and told of the delegates' wish that the "friendship" between them would "continue as long as the sun shall shine" and the "waters run." The speech also expressed the hope that the new Americans and the Iroquois act "as one people, and have but one heart." After this speech, an Onondaga chief requested permission to give Hancock an Indian name. The Congress graciously consented, and so the president was renamed "Karanduawn, or the Great Tree." With the Iroquois chiefs inside the halls of Congress on the eve of American Independence, the impact of Iroquois ideas on the founders is unmistakable. History is indebted to Charles Thomson, an adopted Delaware, whose knowledge of and respect for American Indians is reflected in the attention that he gave to this ceremony in the records of the Continental Congress. Artwork by John Kahionhes Fadden. Source http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/index.html
____________________________________________

According to the Iroquois constitution, states were first to solve disputes between them on their own. If resolution efforts failed then the national government would take authority, Hill said.

The Iroquois place the creation of their constitution, which was recorded on belts, at between 1000 and 1400 A.D., according to the Smithsonian magazine. The Great Law said the national government should have a commander-in-chief and that person should present a "state of the union" address to the nation, Hill said.

The Iroquois' also said that when a legislator was presenting an issue to the governing chamber, others should be quiet, a practice adopted by Congress that contrasts with protocol in the British parliament, Hill said.

[Benjamen] Franklin, then Pennsylvania's official printer, became familiar with the Iroquois political system by printing minutes of their meetings, according to the magazine.

"He recognized that the Iroquois constitution contained many features absent in other governments at the time," including the concept that "elected officials were never masters but remained servants of their constituencies," the magazine states.

However, the Iroquois constitution differed from the later U.S. document in one important way -- it specifically mentioned women, said Knapp. Many Indian nations were matriarchal with women nominating legislators, she added.
From http://usinfo.state.gov/scv/Archive/2005/May/17-246412.html

_______________________________________________

The early natives set some lasting examples for the America we all live in today. Benjamin Franklin ... became so impressed with the Pennsylvania Iroquois' tribal constitution, which he saw when he was hired as the tribe's printer, that the Pennsylvania colony named him to his first diplomatic job, its "Indian Commissioner."

In 1754 Franklin asked a gathering of American colonial delegates—white men—to use the constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy, adopted in a peaceful merger of six combative tribes, as a model for what would eventually, in 1781, be ratified as the U.S. Articles of Confederation. The Iroquois constitution banned the forced entry of private homes by a tribal government, protected freedom of political and religious expression, and imposed the impeachment of corrupt leaders.

Among the long list of other fascinating Indian unknowns, the fact that Articles I, VI and VII of our Constitution are modeled after the Iroquois charter, is a story not widely perceived. Not until 1987 did the U.S. Senate finally pass a resolution stating that the U.S. Constitution had been modeled on American Indian democracy.

From http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20041015indian_2.cfm

________________________________________________
Here is information about the Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/iroquois.html

Here is another article about Ben Franklin and the Constitution http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0107/gaz09.html

My prediction came true

2007-07-06T23:23:00.000-04:00

In my 6/10/2007 posting I had criticized the attempt by Britain's largest union of university and college teachers to boycott Israeli academics. See http://gettingtruth.blogspot.com/2007/06/this-is-not-going-to-help-palestinians.html where I wrote :

If the boycott is done and it spreads to other countries what will happen? Conveniently, a terrorist act wil take place (committed by agent provocateurs) and Israel will say "We told you so." These terrorist acts (whether it was the killing of the Isrealis at the 1972 Munich Olympics, or the hijacking of Air France Flight 139, where hostages were held at Entebbe Airport in Uganda, or the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro), benefit Israel more than it does the Palestinians

If these British teachers want things to improve for the Palestinians, why don't they set the example by having their government stop its participation in the occupation of Iraq?

This also goes to the Americans on the radical left who want to talk about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, but do not want to discuss the United States' war crimes around the world.

Here are two good articles about the events in London and Glasgow. One is by Pham Binh http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/07/glasglow-murderous-masterminds-or-hopeless-idiots/
the other is by Kurt Nimmo http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=915

When terrorist attacks and wargames coincide

2007-06-30T03:40:00.000-04:00

Here is a presentation by rspawn of YouTube
He writes, referring to his video compilation:

On more than one occasion there have been war games or military exercises regarding terrorist attacks that coincide in time, location and methods with actual terrorist attacks that have taken place.

1. General Meyers giving some details about the war games that took place on 9-11-2001.(C-SPAN footage)

2. mr Power describes the terror exercises his security company was involved in on 7-7-2005 in London.(from "Mind The Gap")

3. Three Russian secret agents arrested in connection to a thwarted bomb plot in Moscow in 1999, later claimed to have been an exercises. (from "Disbelief")

4. US undercover operatives involved in an attack on a barracks in Belgium, later claimed to have been a canceled exercises. Stolen weapons turned up at a militant communist group.

UK agents 'did have role in IRA bomb atrocities'

2007-06-29T22:39:00.000-04:00

Henry McDonald, Ireland editor
Sunday September 10, 2006
The Observer

The controversy over claims that Britain allowed two IRA informers to organise 'human bomb' attacks intensified this weekend.
A human rights watchdog has handed a report to the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which concludes that two British agents were central to the bombings of three army border installations in 1990.
.
.
.
The 'human bomb' tactic involved forcing civilians to drive vehicles laden with explosives into army checkpoints and included deadly sorties near Newry and Coshquin outside Derry. Six British soldiers and a civilian worker at an army base died in the simultaneous blasts on either side of Northern Ireland.
British Irish Rights Watch said: 'This month BIRW sent a confidential report to the Historical Enquiries Team on the three incidents that occurred on 24th October 1990... at least two security force agents were involved in these bombings, and allegations have been made that the "human bomb" strategy was the brainchild of British intelligence.

complete article at

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,1869019,00.html

Chas Freeman, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said “Israel started Hamas.”

2007-06-29T22:29:00.000-04:00

from article by Robert Dreyfuss

It’s important to note, as detailed in my book, Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam , that Israel has only itself to blame for the emergence of Hamas. After 1967, when Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank, the Israeli authorities encouraged the growth of Islamism as a counter to Palestinian nationalism and the PLO. In 1967, Israel freed Ahmed Yassin, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who founded Hamas in 1978-88, and they encouraged the Islamic right and the Brotherhood to take control of mosques and student groups. In 1977-78, the Israeli government of Menachem Begin’s Likud officially licensed Yassin’s Islamic movement and gave it official Israeli blessing. Throughout the 1980s, the Muslim Brotherhood fought pitched battles against the PLO. In an interview not long before he died, Arafat said: “Hamas is a creature of Israel,” and he quoted slain Israeli Prime Minister Rabin as having told him that Israeli support for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood was a “fatal error.” Several U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials told me about Israel’s support for Yassin and the Brotherhood, and Chas Freeman, the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told me bluntly: “Israel started Hamas.”

complete article at http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/01/27/end_of_the_road_map.php

Egyptian paper: Documents show Dahlan was working with AlQaeda with the idea of blaming trouble on Hamas

2007-06-24T00:24:00.000-04:00

June 23, 2007

Hamas has turned over to the Egyptian authorities substantial parts of the intelligence information that fell into its hands when it overran the headquarters of Fatah-controlled security headquarters in Gaza on Thursday, according to what sources told the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masriyoun. This is the first reported use of the information in question, which has been a topic of speculation.

The sources said the documents include information about the involvement of the group of Dahlan and Shabak in cooperating in an organized way with the Mukhabarat of Israel and America, including attempts to inundate Egypt with drugs smuggled from Israel via Gaza, and the distribution of hundreds of thousands of counterfeit dollars in tourist areas of Sinai, to damage tourism in the area.

The documents also refer to the role of Dahlan in inciting
Bedouins of Sinai to threaten to support Israeli policy, and to involve their people in smuggling members of "terrorist organizations" into Sinai to undertake operations against tourist installations there, both to hurt Egyptian tourism
for the benefit of Israeli tourism, and also to cause trouble between Egypt and Hamas on the assertion that these persons were followers of Hamas.

complete article at http://www.uruknet.info/?p=33957

Would you donate to a charity that is associated with the war criminal Henry Kissinger?

2007-06-21T23:58:00.000-04:00

What about a charity associated with Madeline Albright? She is the former U.S Secretary of State who when asked by Lesley Stahl about U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.

Henry Kissinger and Madeline Albright are listed in the International Rescue Committee’s website as “Overseers.” See http://www.theirc.org/about/ircboard.html
Look at what this article, concerning the Congo, says about the International Rescue Committee (IRC):

A UN Panel of Experts in a recent report challenged many airlines and companies for undertaking illicit flights (illegal, secret, unregistered, or falsely registered) into and out of the DRC. One of many notable companies apparently connected to Victor Bout’s arms trafficking networks is Simax, an Oregon-based company using an address in Sierra Leone. However, the UN Panel of Experts has once again ignored certain western agencies —with histories of illicit activities —whose flights remain equally surreptitious and unaccountable. At the
top of the list is the International Rescue Committee (IRC)—whose directors include Henry Kissinger and whose flights in and out of the Congo and internal flights to and from isolated airports in eastern DRC are completely unmonitored by MONUC arms embargo inspectors. In Bukavu, for example, all light aircraft are subject to MONUC arms embargo inspections, but IRC flights are not within the MONUC mandate.

Complete article at http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2006/snow0706.html

Founder of Doctors without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontiers) did not oppose Iraq War (in other words did not oppose genocide)

2007-06-21T21:00:00.000-04:00

"One of the most prominent roles went to a member of the Socialist Party. Bernard Kouchner, who is best-known for starting the humanitarian organization, Doctors Without Borders, or Medecins Sans Frontieres, is the new minister of foreign affairs. Like Mr. Sarkozy, he has taken a pro-American stance and was one of the few French politicians who did not oppose the war in Iraq."Source http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-05-18-voa12.cfm

Africa – Where the Next US Oil Wars Will Be

2007-06-20T01:41:00.000-04:00

by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon

On Feb. 7 George Bush announced the formation of AFRICOM, a new Pentagon command which will, under the pretext of the so-called "Global War On Terror", plan and execute its oil and resource wars on the African continent. What does this mean to African Americans? And to Africans? BAR consults Prexy Nesbitt, an architect of the anti-apartheid struggles of the 70s and 80s.

The Pentagon does not admit that a ring of permanent US military bases is operating or under construction throughout Africa. But nobody doubts the American military buildup on the African continent is well underway. From oil rich northern Angola up to Nigeria, from the Gulf of Guinea to Morocco and Algeria, from the Horn of Africa down to Kenya and Uganda, and over the pipeline routes from Chad to Cameroon in the west, and from Sudan to the Red Sea in the east, US admirals and generals have been landing and taking off, meeting with local officials. They've conducted feasibility studies, concluded secret agreements, and spent billions from their secret budgets.
Rest of article at http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=114&Itemid=37

Somalia: Victim of the "War on Terror"

2007-06-20T00:10:00.000-04:00

This is a Somali politician (Asha Hagi Elmi) giving her views on the U.S. and Ethiopian invasion of Somalia

What if everyone knew the early relationship between Iraq and the United States?

2007-06-19T23:55:00.000-04:00

Would there have been this approval (or is it nonchalance) towards the invasion of Iraq?

Here is an informative article “What Every American Should Know About Iraq” by David Michael Green.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17891.htm

I’ll just quote a few of his facts

Mesopotamia has long been a playground for great powers. The British invaded the area in 1917, causing a widespread revolt of the Iraqi people. Britain later ruled under a League of Nations mandate that produced the artificial creation of the country Iraq (and Kuwait), and continued to control oil production in the region. Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour said at the time, “I do not care under what system we keep this oil, but I am quite clear it is all-important for us that this oil should be available”.
Saddam Hussein started his career as a political thug, on the payroll of the CIA during the 1950s and 1960s, torturing and murdering Iraqi leftists whose names were provided by American intelligence, and participating in an armed coup against the Iraqi government.
In 1972, the United States conspired with Iran and Israel to support a revolt of the Kurdish people within Iraq against their government
In 1980, the United States provided encouragement, weapons, intelligence, satellite data and funding for Saddam’s Iraq to invade Iran, launching an eight year war - the longest and probably the bloodiest of the post-WWII era.

I would just like to point out that the Untied States also provided weapons to both sides of the Iran-Iraq war
“In his book Veil - The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987, Woodward sums up the results of this U.S. double-dealing: "Doling out tactical data to both sides put the agency in the position of engineering a stalemate. This was no mere abstraction. The war was a bloody one....almost a million had been killed, wounded or captured on both sides. This was not a game in an operations center. It was slaughter." (p. 507)

from http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2292

During this war, Ronald Reagan dispatched Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq to improve relations with Saddam. The United States then restored full diplomatic relations with Iraq, despite the administration’s clear awareness that Saddam was using chemical weapons at the time
During the presidential campaign of 2000, candidate Bush said very little about Iraq, and certainly never suggested the need for urgent action. Somehow, though, in just two years time - during which, if anything, Iraq actually got weaker, not stronger - Saddam and his country became a perilous and imminent threat that had to be addressed immediately.
Former members of his own cabinet have revealed that Bush planned to invade Iraq from the very beginning of his administration, well before 9/11. All discussions were about the how of doing it, never about the why, the justification, the costs or the wisdom.

Human Trafficking and Slavery Countries named by U.S.

2007-06-17T05:53:00.000-04:00

government officials admit politics plays part in decisions, who to name

Australian Muftis, Usama Ben Laden, and the FBI

2007-06-16T01:28:00.000-04:00

Last year there was uproar over an Australian Mufti’s comments. Sheik Taj el-Din al-Hilali compared women to uncovered meat, being temptation to a cat. It was portrayed as a clash of civilizations, as if though blaming a rape victim for the way she dressed was unheard of in Western countries. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6086374.stm

Ironically, while this indignant uproar was going on, a group of 12 young Australian men attacked a girl. They urinated on her, set her hair on fire and sexually assaulted her. The attack was filmed and put on the YouTube website. DVDs of the incident were sold for $5 in secondary schools. “...two parents of the two boys that made this laughed it off and said it was just a bit of fun.” http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/boys-sell-film-of-girls-humiliation/2006/10/24/1161455723952.html

After this incident “Victorian Education Minister Lynne Kosky ... cancelled a planned visit to a Werribee school at the centre of a community backlash over a DVD of a girl being sexually abused.”

What happened to speaking up when something goes wrong? That’s what the West preaches to the Muslim world. This visit was important for the sake of the girl that had been assaulted. It would have also helped the rest of the students as well as the staff because “...students in uniform had been spat on and abused and staff were dealing with harassing phone calls in the wake of the scandal” http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Vic-school-suffering-after-DVD-scandal/2006/10/27/1161749297998.html

Sheik Taj el-Din al-Hilali has been replaced by Sheik Fehmi Naji el-Imam. Controversy is surrounding him because he says he does not know if Osama Ben Laden is responsible for 9/11. See http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,21891258-5006009,00.html

Well, the FBI also is not sure if Osama Ben Laden is responsible for 9/11.
Look at the FBI’s webpage on Osama Ben Laden http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm
Under the word “Caution” it says
“Usama Bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. These attacks killed over 200 people. In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world.”

Why wouldn’t an attack which killed 3,000 people be specifically mentioned?
On Ed Haas’ website, he investigates this

On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.” See complete article at
http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html

Laila Lalami on Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji

2007-06-16T01:12:00.000-04:00

Here is an article writtten by a Muslim women that gives constructive criticism of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji . I was suprised this appeared in the Nation magazine because in general, the political right and left have similar attitudes about Muslim women.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060619/lalami

Here are just a few excerpts from the article

This lumping together of various Islams--the geographical region, the Abrahamic religion, the historical civilization and the many individual cultures--is symptomatic of the entire book, and makes it particularly difficult to engage with Hirsi Ali in a useful way. Her discussion of female genital mutilation (FGM) is a case in point. In at least six of the seventeen essays, she cites the horrendous practice of FGM, which involves excising, in whole or in part, young girls' inner or outer labia, and in severe cases even their clitorises. Hirsi Ali is aware that the practice predates Islam, but, she maintains, "these existing local practices were spread by Islam." According to the United Nations Population Fund, FGM is practiced in sub-Saharan Africa by Animists, Christians and Muslims alike, as well as by Ethiopian Jews, sometimes in collusion with individual representatives of the faiths. For instance, the US State Department report on FGM reveals that some Coptic Christian priests "refuse to baptize girls who have not undergone one of the procedures." And yet Hirsi Ali does not blame Animism, Christianity or Judaism for FGM, or accuse these belief systems of spreading it. With Islam, however, such accusations are acceptable. A few years ago, Hirsi Ali proposed a bill in the Dutch Parliament that would require young girls from immigrant communities to undergo a vaginal exam once a year as a way to insure that the parents do not practice FGM. The suggestion is all the more interesting when one considers that the vast majority of Muslim immigrants to the Netherlands are from Turkey and Morocco, where FGM is unheard of. But there is a personal reason for this passionate stance: When Hirsi Ali was 5 years old, her grandmother had the procedure performed on her, without her father's knowledge or approval. The experience marked Hirsi Ali profoundly, and the fervor and determination she brings to the fight against this horrifying practice are utterly laudable. By making inaccurate statements like the one quoted above, however, she muddies the issues and alienates the very people who would have the religious standing in the community to make this practice disappear.
.............................................................................
So now what? Where does this leave feminists of all stripes who genuinely care about the civil rights of their Muslim sisters? A good first step would be to stop treating Muslim women as a silent, helpless mass of undifferentiated beings who think alike and face identical problems, and instead to recognize that each country and each society has its own unique issues. A second would be to question and critically assess the well-intentioned but factually inaccurate books that often serve as the very basis for discussion. We need more dialogue and less polemic. A third would be to acknowledge that women--and men--in Muslim societies face problems of underdevelopment (chief among them illiteracy and poverty) and that tackling them would go a long way toward reducing inequities. As the colonial experience of the past century has proved, aligning with an agenda of war and domination will not result in the advancement of women's rights. On the contrary, such a top-down approach is bound to create a nationalist counterreaction that, as we have witnessed with Islamist parties, can be downright catastrophic. Rather, a bottom-up approach, where the many local, homegrown women's organizations are fully empowered stands a better chance in the long run. After all, isn't this how Western feminists made their own gains toward equality?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali vs Waris Dirie

2007-06-11T02:05:00.000-04:00

I wonder which name is more well known around the world? My guess is Ayaan Hirsi Ali is more well known. They are both Somali and have experienced FGM and both ran away from home when their fathers tried to arrange marriages for them to older men. They both are activists who want to stop the practice of FGM and improve women's rights.

How they differ is that Ali became a Dutch member of parliament, while Dirie became a fashion model. Dirie is a Muslim, while Ali is no longer a Muslim. They also differ in that while Dirie only talks about FGM and women's rights, Ali talks politics and often voices biased and misinformed arguments concerning the West and the Muslim world. In other words, when discussing politics, Ali says what Westerners want to hear, not an honest and balanced criticisms of boths sides of the issues.

Since Waris Dirie is not as popular, in the media as Ali, here is something about her life http://www.hcc.hawaii.edu/~pine/Phil110/waris-dirie.html

She was a UN goodwill ambassador in the fight against FGM. I don't know if she is still working with the UN, since I have not seen her in any media reports recently. She has a foundation that campaigns against FGM. see here http://www.waris-dirie-foundation.com/web/e_index.htm

This is not going to help the Palestinians.

2007-06-10T21:23:00.000-04:00

British teachers’ union weighs boycott of Israel
Britain’s largest union of university and college teachers voted to hold talks on an academic boycott of Israel, a spokesman said Thursday The University and College Union, which represents around 120,000 employees, voted Wednesday to
allow local branches to make a final decision on imposing a boycott on cooperation with Israeli academics. Union members voted on a motion asking them to note that “Israel’s 40-year occupation has seriously damaged the fabric of Palestinian society through annexation, illegal settlement, collective
punishment and restriction of movement.”

See complete article at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18963199/
Exactly what kind of conscience do these people have, if they only talk about what Israel is doing, but they don't talk about what Britain and the United States are doing in Iraq?

If the boycott is done and it spreads to other countries what will happen? Conveniently, a terrorist act wil take place (committed by agent provocateurs) and Israel will say "We told you so." These terrorist acts (whether it was the killing of the Isrealis at the 1972 Munich Olympics, or the hijacking of Air France Flight 139, where hostages were held at Entebbe Airport in Uganda, or the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro), benefit Israel more than it does the Palestinians

If these British teachers want things to improve for the Palestinians, why don't they set the example by having their government stop its participation in the occupation of Iraq?

This also goes to the Americans on the radical left who want to talk about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, but do not want to discuss the United States' war crimes around the world.

Israel's Nuclear Double Standards

2007-06-09T00:47:00.000-04:00

During the apartheid era of South Africa, Israel gave the country its nuclear capablities see http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Global_Secrets_Lies/Israel_SAfrica.html
(excerpted from the book Israeli Foreign Policy by Jane Hunter)

Now that Iran is developing nuclear power, Israel portrays it as the most dangerous country in the world.

United States oil imports and Saudi Arabia investments

2007-06-09T00:10:00.000-04:00

According to http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

in March 2007,
the top 5 countries that the U.S. imported crude oil from are
Canada 1,780,000 barrels per day
Mexico 1,621,000 barrels per day
Nigeria 1,290,000 barrels per day
Saudi Arabia 1,216,000 barrels per day
Venezuela 1,036,000 barrels per day

And the top 5 countries that the U.S. imported Petroleum from are
Canada 2,305,000 barrels per day
Mexico 1,749,000 barrels per day
Nigeria 1,346,000 barrels per day
Venezuela 1,285,000 barrels per day
Saudi Arabia 1,244,000 barrels per day

According to http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2089.htm
"Canada and the U.S. have one of the world’s largest investment relationships. The U.S. is Canada's largest foreign investor. Statistics Canada reports that at the end of 2005, the stock of U.S. foreign direct investment in Canada was $228 billion, or about 65% of total foreign direct investment in
Canada. U.S. investment is primarily in Canada's mining and smelting industries, petroleum, chemicals, the manufacture of machinery and transportation equipment, and finance. "

On the same government website it says about
Saudia Arabia at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3584.htm

During and after the Gulf War, the Government of Saudi Arabia provided water, food, shelter, and fuel for coalition forces in the region. There also were monetary payments to some coalition partners. Saudi Arabia's combined costs
in payments, foregone revenues, and donated supplies were $55 billion. More than $15 billion went toward reimbursing the United States alone.

It does not give figures about how much Saudi Arabia invests in the United States and vice versa.

Here (http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20060115-103622-3038r.htm ) is an article that says “...government sources estimate Saudi holdings in the United States at $400 billion to $800 billion.”
This particular article is warning us of the influence Saudi contributions to media outlets and Universities will have. The reality is whatever influence they have is negligible in these areas.

Another way the U.S. gets back its money from purchasing oil is by selling the Saudis sophisticated expensive weaponry. ( http://www.fas.org/asmp/profiles/saudi_arabia.htm ) The Saudis don’t have the qualified personnel to use the weaponry, which is why they and Kuwait had to look to the United States for help when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

Israeli agents 'helped Entebbe hijackers'

2007-06-04T00:09:00.000-04:00

Mr Colvin told his superiors that his source suggested that the attack was carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine with help from the Israeli Security Service, the Shin Bet.
It was designed to torpedo the rival Palestine Liberation Organisation's standing in France and to prevent what they saw as a growing rapprochement between the PLO and the Americans.
''My contact said that the PFLP had attracted all sorts of wild elements, some of whom had been planted by the Israelis,'' Mr Colvin added. The message was received without comment by the Foreign Office but later officials recorded that a journalist from the Liverpool Post, Leo Murray, had also told them that a splinter group of PFLP was planning a series of spectacular incidents to disrupt contacts between the PLO leader Yasser Arafat and the US.
complete article at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/01/nhijack01.xml

When did they have a chance to put the explosives in the WTC Towers?

2007-06-03T09:45:00.000-04:00

People may wonder when was there a chance to place explosives in the World Trade Center towers. Here is a brief video that helps to explain this. Starting in about a minute and a half into the video there is a discussion about peopple who worked in the World Trade Center Towers who said that prior to 9/11 there had been several unexplained evacuations and power downs in the towers.

9/11 Truth: Unusual Evacuations & Power-Downs in the WTC Prior To 9/11

Now that I think about it, there were many parts of the WTC that were vacant (not rented) before 9/11, this probably shortened the amount of time needed for the buildings to be evacuated. Here is an article (see second item called "Skyscaper Award") that talks about how before 9/11 the WTC 7 was mostly vacant and after 9/11, when it was rebuilt, it has become attractive as office space.
http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_211/undercover.html

Who is debunking whom? Why did the World Trade Center 7 building collapse?

2007-05-30T21:20:00.000-04:00

In the Metro Section of the May 30, 2007 New York Times, in Jim Dwyer’s column “A notion from 9/11 is kept alive”, he has deluded himself into thinking that he has debunked alternate theories regarding WTC 7. He writes in his column, “...a comprehensive study by Popular Mechanics magazine concluded that along the bottom 10 floors, a quarter of the south face was knocked away.”

If the south part of the building had “a quarter of the south face” of the building knocked out, then the building would topple over, not collapse straight down into its own base. (The website whatreallyhappened.com first pointed this out)

There is a website that is dedicated to debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories, and it does the same thing. In attempt to disprove those who say not much damage was done to the WTC 7 building, it unwittingly goes on to reveal a flaw in the “official” explanation of why the building collapsed. ( http://www.911myths.com/html/wtc7_damage.html ) The website repeatedly makes reference to the damage on the south side of the building. There is a quote from Battalion Chief John Norman (Special Operations Command - 22 years), “...at the edge of the south face you could see that it was very heavily damaged.”

Would a building that was heavily damaged on one side collapse straight down into its base or would it topple over?

Here is a compilation of video clips showing WTC 7 collapsing

Can what's going on in Iraq just be called a "civil war?"

2007-05-30T18:52:00.000-04:00

How can what is going on in Iraq be called a civil war, when it is foreign governments (mainly USA and Britain) that
#1) bombed the country and destroyed its infrastructure
#2) rounds up thousands of Iraqis and jails them without justification
#3) makes decisions when elections are to take place and whether the results are valid
#4) benefit more from reconstruction projects than the Iraqis
#5)can break into jails to release prisoners against the Iraqi's governments wishes. (Remember when two British men where caught disguised as Arabs carrying explosives and weapons in their car? Their fellow British soldiers broke into the jail they were in and helped them to escape) see http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20051015&articleId=1089

The U.S., Britain, Israel and Iran are contributing to the chaos with their agent provocateurs.

In honor of our veterans, we call for truth

2007-05-26T21:24:00.000-04:00

from an Ashland, Oregon newspaper
complete editorial at http://www.dailytidings.com/2006/1111/stories/1111_editorial.php

Anniversaries cause us to instinctively pause and reflect, just as our leg jolts forward after a well-positioned tap on the knee. In honor of our veterans — to whom we owe a debt we can never repay — the least we can do on this Veteran's
Day is look back at the decisions made that sent our troops into battle, and the roles we played in those decisions. Perhaps upon reflection, our reaction may
change.

The fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001 served as the reflex hammer touch to the knee of American conscience. As the country attended memorials and revisited painful memories of 9/11, the reflection also opened our collective mind once again to the many unanswered questions, legitimate concerns and
conflicting evidence in the official description of those events.

Forget the conspiracy theories for a minute and set aside the political gamesmanship. We are a country that spent five years and $100 million investigating President Clinton. We probed the depths of the Iran-Contra scandal — a debacle that would have never come fully into the public eye had a special investigator not been appointed.

This administration has spent far more energy and time seeking the leak of Valerie Plame's identity and Barry Bonds' use of steroids than it has in fully explaining how three skyscrapers crumbled in an instant and nearly 3,000 people were killed. While an independent investigation may never fully answer every question, it will help to heal the wounds of this nation and widespread distrust of our leaders this attack has caused.

If, however, the questions that remain serve to shed light on new information, that too serves the public. And it is the responsibility of this trusted media industry to dig, probe, investigate and uncover the truth behind government events and decisions that impact the public. On this Veterans Day, we can do no less on behalf of the brave men and women who have been sent to the Middle East based upon rationale that stems directly from the events of 9/11. While we pay homage to all veterans of the Armed Forces today, we are reminded of our duty to watch closely those leaders in the White House and Congress who make the decisions to send our troops to war.

We invite every single American daily newspaper to join us in our demand for an independent council to completely and thoroughly investigate the deaths of nearly 3,000 American citizens in the attacks of 9/11.

America will be better informed, and this is our job.

Green-Eyed Afghan and Sudanese

2007-05-06T18:45:00.000-04:00

The first image is the cover of a book about Sudan. The second image is of an Afghan girl from the cover of 1985 National Geographic magazine

I couldn't help noticing the similarity in their eyes and the simliarity in their situation. The photo of the Afghan girl was exploited commercially all over the world, but what good did it do to help the people of Afganistan?

She was one of the world's most famous faces, yet no one knew who she was. Her image appeared on the front of magazines and books, posters, lapel pins, and even rugs, but she didn't know it. Now, after searching for 17 years, National
Geographic has once again found the Afghan girl with the haunting green eyes. from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03/0311_020312_sharbat.html

Sure there are charities that "help" the Afghan people but nothing to stop the mass bombings and occupation of Afghanistan by the United States. No acknowledgement of the millions who died during the Afghan-Russian war.

The same is being done with Sudan. The picture of the Sudanese child is from the cover of a book called "Not On Our Watch" by Don Cheadle and John Prendergast. John Pendergast is on the Board of Directors of SaveDarfur.org

The two authors were recently interviewed on Democracy Now http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/03/1357220 .

Copy and paste the long url below (written in BOLD) in a new window for a scathing commentary by Keith Harmon Snow about the interview. He is angry about the fact that Amy Goodman did not bring up the past and current role of John Prendergast in Africa.

allthingspass.com/uploads/html-194THE%20FAILURE%20OF%20WBAI's%20DEMOCRACY%20NOW.htm

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Here are some additional articles by Keith Harmon Snow about the Sudan and other countries in Africa

http://allthingspass.com/journalism.php?jid=165

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20SN20070207&articleId=4717

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20SN20051016&articleId=1096

Here is an article by F. William Engdahl about "China and USA in New Cold War over Africa’s oil riches"

http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Oil_in_Africa/oil_in_africa.html

U.S. past and present relations with Iraq and Iran

2007-04-29T17:24:00.001-04:00

"Leave Us Alone," Iranian Reformers Say http://www.progressive.org/node/4253

Refugees create new 'Baghdad'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6575755.stm

Here is a little history of US. Intervention in Iran and Iraq
Regime Change: How the CIA put Saddam's Party in Power http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/217.html

Review of the Book All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/hrj/iss17/booknotes-All.shtml

Fueling the Iran-Iraq Slaughter
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2292

Israel and 9/11

2007-04-25T14:01:00.000-04:00

This is a video and transcript of a four part news report by Carl Cameron, that discusses possible connections between Israel and 9/11. This report appeared on FOX News. You won’t find it on their website anymore, but it is available on the Information Clearing House Website, along with transcripts. In the fourth part, Carl Cameron is introduced by Tony Snow. Tony Snow is the current White House Press Secretary.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7545.htm

In the Counterpunch newsletter, Volume 14, No. 3/4 there is a story about the cheering Isreali “art students” that got caught on 9/11.

http://www.muslimwakeup.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=57970&highlight=#57970

Videos questioning the official 9/11 investigation

2007-04-22T07:05:00.000-04:00

2007-04-22T06:59:00.000-04:00

Learn about genocide in Africa here http://allthingspass.com/index.html