Peter King is bigoted and ineffective

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]

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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/

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

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