From the U.S., the ABC of Jihad

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

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?

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

*** 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

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

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

(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

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

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

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

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/