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Former SAS soldier Ben Griffin blows apart Miliband denial of UK torture involvement.
Written by Stewart office Monday, 25 February 2008 ...The use of British Territory and airspace pales into insignificance in light of the fact that it has been British soldiers detaining the victims of Extraordinary Rendition in the first place.
Since the invasion of Afghanistan in the autumn of 2001 UKSF has operated within a joint US/UK Task Force.
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This Task Force has been responsible for the detention of hundreds if not thousands of individuals in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Individuals detained by British soldiers within this Task force have ended up in Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, Bagram Theatre Internment Facility, Balad Special Forces Base, Camp Nama BIAP and Abu Ghraib Prison.
...These secretive prisons are part of a global network in which individuals face torture and are held indefinately without charge.
All of this is in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions, International Law and the UN Convention Against Torture.
...Camp Nama at Baghdad International Airport during 2004... this facility was used to interrogate individuals captured by the joint US/UK Task Force.
In it are the details of numerous breaches of the Geneva Convention and accounts of torture.
These breaches were not the actions of rogue elements.
The abuse was systematic and sanctioned through the chain of command.
...Throughout my time in Iraq I was in no doubt that individuals detained by UKSF and handed over to our American colleagues would be tortured.
Complete Article |
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At another time, Jeff saw a British SAS officer beat a detainee:
[It] was a beating in a kind of a bunker behind the main facility. . . .
this British guy actually who wasn’t supposed to be interrogating anybody — a British soldier.
SAS. That’s all I know about him. I don’t know his name or anything.
But we went back there and he gave the guy a pretty good pounding.
Nothing really in the face.
A lot of stomach shots, and I would say two or three groin shots, very harsh.
A knee to the abdomen.
Thrown against the wall and so forth.
Human Rights Watch — Soldiers’ Accounts |
Torture Jet Revealed: MI5's role in torture flight hell |
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A woman reads the front page of Britain's 'News of the World' newspaper in London, February 12, which features video footage showing British troops abusing Iraqi children - young teenage boys who were wearing no shoes. |
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In another torture situation in Basra, Britain's first convicted war criminal:
The hotel worker and son of an Iraqi police colonel died on 16 September 2003 while in custody of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment at a detention centre near Basra.
The building had formerly been the secret service headquarters of Ali Majid (Chemical Ali).
Cpl Donald Payne, 36, became Britain's first convicted war criminal when he admitted inhumanely treating civilian detainees.
Six other soldiers were cleared by a military court in Bulford, Wiltshire, of abusing Mr Mousa and other detainees.
Camp Breadbasket
On 15 May 2003 the 1st Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers captured Iraqis looting an aid camp in Operation Ali-Baba.
They were detained for a brief period during which they were beaten, forced to simulate oral and anal sex and suspended from a forklift truck.
Later that month, Fusilier Gary Bartlam, 20, of Tamworth, Staffordshire, took a film to be developed containing 22 photographs of abuse taking place.
This triggered a lengthy court martial at a British Army barracks in Osnabruck, Germany. Bartlam pleaded guilty to three charges of ill treatment of Iraqi prisoners.
Cpl Daniel Kenyon, 33, from Newcastle, denied six charges of abuse.
He was convicted of three, cleared of two charges and the remaining charge was dropped.
L/Cpl Mark Cooley, 25, from Newcastle, denied two charges of abuse but was found guilty of both. L/Cpl Darren Larkin, 30, from Oldham, Greater Manchester, admitted to one charge of assault but denied another.
The second charge was dropped.
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Civilian Death Toll in Iraq May Top 1 Million
September 14, 2007 by the Los Angeles Times
A British survey offers the highest estimate to date.
The figure from ORB, a British polling agency that has conducted several surveys in Iraq, followed statements this week from the U.S. military defending itself against accusations it was trying to play down Iraqi deaths to make its strategy appear successful.
Click link below for complete article
Estimated between 426,369 to 793,663 killed in Iraq since US Occupation
October 11, 2006
Since the 2003 American invasion, the figure breaks down to about 15,000 violent deaths a month.
The second study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health uses samples of casualties from Iraqi households to extimate an overall figure of 601,027 Iraqis dead from violence between March 2003 and July 2006.
The new study is more representative, its researchers said, and the sampling is broader.
The study surveyed 1,849 Iraqi families in 47 different neighborhoods across Iraq with the selection of geographical areas in 18 regions across Iraq baseded on population size, not on the level of violence.
In the last week of September, the government barred the central morgue in Baghdad and the Health Ministry — the two main sources of information for civilian deaths — from releasing figures to the news media.
In October a note was issued from the government instructing officials not to release death totals to the UN.
The study uses a method similar to that employed in estimates of casualty figures in other conflict areas like Darfur and Congo. It sought to measure the number of deaths that occurred as a result of the war.
The figure is not exhaustive. A police official at Yarmouk Hospital in Baghdad who spoke on the condition of anonymity said he had seen nationwide counts provided to the hospital that indicated as many as 200 people a day were dying.
“We found deaths all over the country,” Gilbert Burnham, the principle author of the study said. Baghdad was an area of medium violence in the country, he said. The provinces of Diyala and Salahuddin, north of Baghdad, and Anbar to the west, all had higher death rates than the capital.
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The United States will stand with Israel now and forever.
Now and forever.
29 July 2007
Israel hails US military aid rise
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has confirmed that the United States is planning a significant increase in military and government aid to Israel.
The package would amount to more than US $30bn increase.
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Britain’s Gordon Brown becomes patron of Zionist agency
By Redress Information & Analysis
28 July 2007
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has agreed to become patron of the UK arm of the Jewish National Fund, whose funds have contributed to Israeli ethnic cleansing, the destruction of Palestinian villages and the expropriation of Palestinian land, and whose constitution requires it to promote and implement policies that discriminate against Israel’s Arab population.
Gordon Brown has crossed a new threshold on the path to becoming a fully-fledged Zionist.
According to a report in the Jewish Chronicle, Gordon Brown has agreed to become a patron of the British arm of the Jewish National Fund (JNF UK) “following an invitation from JNF UK President Gail Seal, who wrote conveying her good wishes the day after he took office”.
In a letter to Gail Seal, Gordon Brown said that he was “delighted to accept your offer to become a patron of JNF UK”.
A spokesman for Brown confirmed that the British prime minister had “agreed to become a patron of JNF UK”, and that he had done so “in order to encourage their work to promote charitable projects for everyone who lives in Israel”.
In fact, far from being “a charity” that benefits “everyone who lives in Israel”, the JNF is a principal tool of Israel's discriminatory system of land administration.
Founded in 1901 to help establish a Jews-only state in the Arab country of Palestine, the JNF’s constitution requires it to benefit Jews exclusively. It therefore promotes and implements policies that discriminate against the Arab population of Israel.
The JNF is also guilty of ethnic cleansing, the destruction of Palestinian villages and the expropriation of Palestinian land.
According to PalestineRemembered.com, in its operation in Israel, the JNF has:
Expropriated illegally most of the land of 372 Palestinian villages which had been ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces in 1948.
The owners of this land are over half the UN-registered Palestinian refugees.
The JNF had actively participated in the physical destruction of many villages, in evacuating these villages of their inhabitants and in military operations to conquer these villages.
Today, the JNF controls over 2500 sq. km of Palestinian land which it leases to Jews only.
It also planted 100 parks on Palestinian land.
In addition, the JNF has a long record of discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel as reported by the UN.
The JNF also extends its operations by proxy or directly to the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza.
All this is in clear violation of international law and particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids the confiscation of property and settling the occupiers' citizens in occupied territories.
Ethnic cleansing, expropriation of property and destruction of houses are war crimes. As well, use of tax-exempt donations in these activities violates the domestic law in many countries where JNF is domiciled.
Since becoming prime minister at the end of June 2007, Gordon Brown has appointed several Israel apologists to key positions in the British government.
He has also been at pain to stress his Christian Zionist credentials.
As patron of JNF UK, Gordon Brown will join a club that includes prominent British politicians and religious figures who, on the one hand, speak of the need for peace and justice in the Middle East while, on the other, promote and defend the racist Jews-only state of Israel.
They include Tony Blair, Conservative leader David Cameron and Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who is said to be a close friend of Brown.
Copyright © 2002-2007 Interestudio
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Revealed: MI5's role in torture flight hell
· British source tells of betrayal to CIA
· 'I was stripped and hauled to US base' David Rose Sunday July 29, 2007 An Iraqi who was a key source of intelligence for MI5 has given the first ever full insider's account of being seized by the CIA and bundled on to an illegal 'torture flight' under the programme known as extraordinary rendition. In a remarkable interview for The Observer, British resident Bisher al-Rawi has told how he was betrayed by the security service despite having helped keep track of Abu Qatada, the Muslim cleric accused of being Osama bin Laden's 'ambassador in Europe'. He was abducted and stripped naked by US agents, clad in nappies, a tracksuit and shackles, blindfolded and forced to wear ear mufflers, then strapped to a stretcher on board a plane bound for a CIA 'black site' jail near Kabul in Afghanistan.
He was taken on to the jail at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba before being released last March and returned to Britain after four years' detention without charge.
'All the way through that flight I was on the verge of screaming,' al-Rawi said.
'At last we landed, I thought, thank God it's over.
But it wasn't - it was just a refuelling stop in Cairo.
There were hours still to go ... My back was so painful, the handcuffs were so tight.
All the time they kept me on my back.
Once, I managed to wriggle a tiny bit, just shifted my weight to one side.
Then I felt someone hit my hand.
Even this was forbidden.'
He was thrown into the CIA's 'Dark Prison,' deprived of all light 24 hours a day in temperatures so low that ice formed on his food and water.
He was taken to Guantanamo in March 2003 and released after being cleared of any involvement in terrorism by a tribunal.
A report by Parliament's intelligence and security committee last week disclosed that, although the Americans warned MI5 it planned to render al-Rawi in advance, in breach of international law, the British did not intervene on the grounds he did not have a UK passport.
The government claimed he was the responsibility of Iraq, which he fled as a teenager when his father was tortured by Saddam Hussein's regime.
The report confirmed that al-Rawi, 39, was only held after MI5 sent the CIA a telegram, stating he was an 'Islamic extremist' who had a timer for an improvised bomb in his luggage.
In reality, before al-Rawi left London, police confirmed the device was a battery charger from Argos.
The committee accepted MI5's claim, given in secret testimony, that it had not wanted the Americans to arrest him, in November 2002, concluding the incident had damaged US-UK relations.
But al-Rawi alleged that the CIA told him they had been given the contents of his own MI5 file - information he had given his handlers freely when he was working as their source.
He said an MI5 lawyer had given him 'cast iron' assurances that anything he told them would be treated in the strictest confidence and, if he ever got into trouble, MI5 would do everything in its power to help him.
When al-Rawi was in Guantanamo, he asked the American authorities to find his former MI5 handlers so they would corroborate his story but, because he did not know their surnames, MI5 said it could not assist.
The committee report cited MI5 testimony claiming that when al-Rawi was transported in December 2002, it could not have known how harsh his treatment might be.
Yet eight months earlier, Amnesty International had published a lengthy report on US detention in Afghanistan, quoting several ex-prisoners who described conditions very similar to those experienced by al-Rawi.
He had conveyed messages between the preacher Abu Qatada and MI5 when Qatada was supposedly in hiding in 2002.
At MI5's behest, he came close to arranging a meeting between the two sides.
Al-Rawi has now spoken out in an effort to help his friend Jamil el-Banna, who remains in Guantanamo.
A Jordan-ian who also lived in London for years, where his wife and five children are British citizens, he too has been cleared by the Americans.
However, he has been unable to leave Guantanamo because Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, says she is reviewing his right of residence on national security grounds.
Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat MP for Brent East in London, where el-Banna lives, said his case revealed 'decrepitude at the heart of the government'.
The government had 'no regard for the welfare of his children'.
His lawyers have filed a statement from al-Rawi as part of a judicial review case.
In the action, they accuse MI5 of having a 'causative role' in both men's ordeals, stating it was 'complicit' in the illegal rendition and guilty of an 'abuse of power'.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007 |
| 140,000 cases of cancerClose to a million dead4 million plus people displaced |
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23 July, 2007
Iraqis blame U.S. depleted uranium for surge in cancer
CAIRO, July 23 (RIA Novosti) — Iraq's environment minister blamed Monday the use of depleted uranium weapons by U.S. forces during the 2003 Operation Shock and Awe for the current surge in cancer cases across the country.
As a result of "at least 350 sites in Iraq being contaminated during bombing" with depleted uranium (DU) weapons, Nermin Othman said, the nation is facing about 140,000 cases of cancer, with 7,000 to 8,000 new ones registered each year.
Speaking at a ministerial meeting of the Arab League, she also complained that many chemical plants and oil facilities had been destroyed during the two military campaigns since the 1990s, but the ecological consequences remain unclear.
"Our ministry is fledgling, and we need international support; notably, we need laboratories to better monitor air and water contamination," she said.
The first major UN research on the consequences of the use of DU on the battlefield was conducted in 2003 in the wake of NATO operations in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Montenegro.
The UN Environment Program (UNEP) said in its report after the research that DU poses little threat if spent munitions are cleared from the ground.
"Health risks primarily depend on the awareness of people coming into contact with DU," UNEP writes in its 2004 brochure "Depleted Uranium Awareness."
No major clean-up or public awareness campaigns have been reported in Iraq.
© 2007 RIA Novosti |
Depleted Uranium — its use in Afghanistan, Iraq, Balkans Photos of Iraq children being born deformed |
| www.counterpunch.org Lila Rajiva
British Troops Beat Up Barefoot Young Iraqi Teens
The Axis of Child Abusers
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HELEN THOMAS: Dispatches from Iraq said that yesterday we killed 70 people in Iraq, near Ramadi, including 18 children.
I want to know what the President thinks of that.
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, first of all, I think you need to talk to the military, because the military —
HELEN THOMAS: No, I’m talking here.
MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, and as I’m responding to you, the military has said otherwise at this point.
Now, the military has review mechanisms in place and when there are questions raised, they look into those matters, and so that’s something that, obviously, they will look into.
But, beyond that, you’d have to talk to the military about where that stands.
Now —
HELEN THOMAS: Eighteen children —
MR. McCLELLAN: In terms of our United States military, our military goes out of the way not to target —
HELEN THOMAS: Why were 18 children killed?
MR. McCLELLAN: Our military goes out of the way not to target innocent civilians.
HELEN THOMAS: I’m not saying they were targeted —
MR. McCLELLAN: Our military goes out of the way to target the enemy, and to —
HELEN THOMAS: Why did they say 18 children?
George Orwell 1984 White House Press October 19th 2005 |
Photo: Reconstruction based on witness testimony BBC Panorama |
An army whistleblower describes the investigation as "appalling" The full 29 minute Panarama segment While Google video still has it |
Sunday, April 01, 2007
McCain, Obama, and genocide
More than a half-million Iraqis have died because of the U.S. invasion in March, 2003; another million or so died in the decade before that thanks the U.S./U.K. ("U.N.") sanctions.
And in the light of all that, we can still, in this Alice-through the-looking-glass-world we live in, hear this from John McCain: "Failure is genocide."
And when asked by Wolf Blitzer to respond to that statement, here's the stone-racist response from Barack Obama:
BLITZER: What if he's right?
What if he's right, and what you're proposing and a lot of Democrats are proposing results in genocide in Iraq?
OBAMA: Well, look, what you have right now is chaos in Iraq.
After having spent hundreds of billions of dollars, after seeing close to 3,200 lives lost, what you now see is chaos.
That's what Barack Obama thinks has been lost in Iraq — hundreds of billions of dollars, and 3,200 lives.
The actual genocide that's taken place in the last 15 years?
Sorry, neither he nor McCain nor Wolf Blitzer even acknowledges that that has taken place.
The idea simply does not compute in their "the U.S. is a force for good in the world" brains. |
Photo: BBC Panorama |
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| New World Order Statistics of Human Misery of Soldiers and Military that fight for the 'Order' ('The West' and their lackey's Warfare) Excluding Somalia and various other secret engagements | |
| www.cnn.com Of the 1,666 coalition deaths in Afghanistan: 1.009 have been Americans 11 Australians One Belgian 272 Britons 140 Canadians Three Czech 29 Danes 21 Dutch Seven Estonian One Finn 40 French 31 Germans Two Hungarians 22 Italians Three Latvian One Lithuanian Five Norwegians 16 Poles Two Portuguese 12 Romanians One South Korean 28 Spaniards Four Swedes Two Turks Three NATO/ISAF | To March 10, 2010 These figures are 'Battle deaths' and do not include deaths that take place as early as two or three weeks outside the Afghanistan war zones when seriously injured troops are shipped to their home country, or in the situation with the US military to some hospital on a military base in another country. The list includes one U.S. War 'Defense' Department civilian employee. These figures do not include suicide of soldiers who have returned home, or the killing and injuring of loved ones and others outside the family, by soldiers with mental impairment who have returned home. At least 5,190 U.S. personnel have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon. In addition to the military deaths, one Jordanian and 11 U.S. intelligence operatives have died in Afghanistan. |
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U.S. & Coalition/Casualties in Afghanistan occupation | |
| Of the 4,703 coalition deaths in Iraq: 4,386 have been Americans Two Australians One Azerbaijani 179 Britons Thirteen Bulgarians One Czech Seven Danes Two Dutch Two Estonian One Fijian Five Georgian One Hungarian 33 Italians One Kazakh Three Latvian 22 Poles Three Romanian Five Salvadoran Four Slovaks One South Korean 11 Spaniards Two Thai Eighteen Ukrainians | To March 10, 2010 These figures are 'Battle deaths' and do not include deaths that take place outside Iraq war zones, as early as two or three weeks, after seriously injured troops are shipped to their home country, or in the situation with the US military to some hospital on a military base in another country. The list includes 13 U.S. War 'Defense' Department civilian employees. — other coalition deaths are estimated at up to 10,000 deaths including contract people brought into Iraq by coalition forces. These figures do not include suicide of soldiers who have returned home, or the killing and injuring of loved ones and others outside the family, by soldiers with mental impairment who have returned home. At least 31,716 U.S. troops have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon. |
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U.S. & Coalition/Casualties in Iraq occupation | |
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Shoe Thrower — the Story of My Shoe Mass death returns to Ishaqi THE SCIENCE OF EVIL
ITS USE FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES |
UK Torture and death Photo: BBC Panorama |
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Kifah Mutairi — UK Torture and death Photo: BBC Panorama |
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Friday, 17 February 2006
Tutu calls for Guantanamo closure
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has joined in the growing chorus of condemnation of America's Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
He said the detention camp was a stain on the character of the United States as a superpower and a democracy.
He also attacked Britain's 28-day detention period for terror suspects, calling it excessive and untenable.
His comments follow a UN report calling for the closure of the camp where some 500 "enemy combatants" have been held without trial for up to four years.
Speaking on the BBC's Today programme, Archbishop Tutu said he was alarmed that arguments used by the South African apartheid regime are now being used to justify anti-terror measures.
"It is disgraceful and one cannot find strong enough words to condemn what Britain and the United States and some of their allies have accepted," he said.
The respected clergyman said the rule of law had been "subverted horrendously" and he described the muted public outcry — particularly in America — as "saddening".
Archbishop Tutu also attacked Tony Blair's failed attempt to hold terrorist suspects in Britain for up to 90 days without charge.
"Ninety days for a South African is an awful deja-vu because we had in South Africa in the bad old days a 90-day detention law," he said.
Under apartheid, as at Guantanamo, people were held for "unconscionably long periods" and then released, he said.
"Are you able to restore to those people the time when their freedom was denied them? If you have evidence for goodness sake produce it in a court of law," he said.
"People with power have an incredible capacity for wanting to be able to retain that power and don't like scrutiny."
International pressure
Archbishop Tutu's comments add to the mounting international pressure on US President Bush to close the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay.
The UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, said on Thursday that America must close the camp "as soon as is possible".
His comments backed a UN report recommending that the US try the approximately 500 inmates, or free them "without further delay".
A senior British minister has also called for the camp to be closed.
Speaking on the BBC television Question Time programme on Thursday, Peter Hain said he would prefer to see Guantanamo Bay close.
He also indicated that the UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, agreed with him.
The US has dismissed most of the findings of the UN report which include allegations of torture.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan on Thursday rejected the call to close the camp, saying the military treated all detainees humanely.
"These are dangerous terrorists that we're talking about," he said.
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Baha Malki — UK Torture and death Photo: BBC Panorama |
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| US military attack, July 2007Al-Maamel, Iraq |
| Weeps for loved one killed in US military raid, July 2007Al-Maamel, Iraq |
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“Generally in wars, total casualties, which include wounded, crippled, and lost, are many times the number killed, often as high as ten times.
So while Americans, thirty years later, still weep at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington — a monument representing about sixty thousand deaths over ten years of war — they have inflicted on Iraq, in just three weeks, that same proportionate loss — all of them civilians.
With Iraq‘s population being less than ten percent that of the United States, such losses must be multiplied by ten to get some feel for their impact on the society.
Is this how a great power behaves in the early part of the 21st century?
Especially a power that enjoys reminding us at every opportunity — I suppose because it is so easy for the rest of the world, just watching its actions, to forget — that America stands for human rights and democratic principles?”
John Chuckman |
| US military attack, July 2007Al-Maamel, Iraq |
| Weep for loved one killed in US military raid, July 2007Al-Maamel, Iraq |
www.counterpunch.org Lila Rajiva
British Troops Beat Up Barefoot Young Iraqi Teens
The Axis of Child Abusers
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Baha Malki — UK Torture and death Photo: BBC Panorama |
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| “How will [Mr Bush] meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women? He has committed so many crimes.”
“I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people resist, does that mean they are terrorists?”
22-year-old Iraq Olympic football player Ahmed Manajid |
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One of the most effective ways I found was to follow the bulldozers and construction machinery.
I was in Iraq to research the so-called reconstruction.
And what struck me most was the absence of reconstruction machinery, of cranes and bulldozers, in downtown Baghdad.
I expected to see reconstruction all over the place.
I saw bulldozers in military bases.
I saw bulldozers in the Green Zone, where a huge amount of construction was going on, building up Bechtel’s headquarters and getting the new U.S. embassy ready.
There was also a ton of construction going on at all of the U.S. military bases.
But, on the streets of Baghdad, the former ministry buildings are absolutely untouched.
They hadn’t even cleared away the rubble, let alone started the reconstruction process.
The one crane I saw in the streets of Baghdad was hoisting an advertising billboard.
One of the surreal things about Baghdad is that the old city lies in ruins, yet there are these shiny new billboards advertising the glories of the global economy.
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UK Torture and death Photo: BBC Panorama |
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Friday, 27 January 2006
US plans to 'fight the net' revealed
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A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for "information operations" — from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks.
Bloggers beware.
As the world turns networked, the Pentagon is calculating the military opportunities that computer networks, wireless technologies and the modern media offer.
From influencing public opinion through new media to designing "computer network attack" weapons, the US military is learning to fight an electronic war.
The declassified document is called "Information Operations Roadmap".
It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act.
Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003.
The Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed it.
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The "roadmap" calls for a far-reaching overhaul of the military's ability to conduct information operations and electronic warfare.
And, in some detail, it makes recommendations for how the US armed forces should think about this new, virtual warfare.
The document says that information is "critical to military success".
Computer and telecommunications networks are of vital operational importance.
Propaganda
The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.
All these are engaged in information operations.
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Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.
"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads.
"Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.
The document's authors acknowledge that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda. "Specific boundaries should be established," they write.
But they don't seem to explain how.
"In this day and age it is impossible to prevent stories that are fed abroad as part of psychological operations propaganda from blowing back into the United States — even though they were directed abroad," says Kristin Adair of the National Security Archive.
Credibility problem
Public awareness of the US military's information operations is low, but it's growing — thanks to some operational clumsiness.
Late last year, it emerged that the Pentagon had paid a private company, the Lincoln Group, to plant hundreds of stories in Iraqi newspapers.
The stories — all supportive of US policy — were written by military personnel and then placed in Iraqi publications.
And websites that appeared to be information sites on the politics of Africa and the Balkans were found to be run by the Pentagon.
But the true extent of the Pentagon's information operations, how they work, who they're aimed at, and at what point they turn from informing the public to influencing populations, is far from clear.
The roadmap, however, gives a flavour of what the US military is up to — and the grand scale on which it's thinking.
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It reveals that Psyops personnel "support" the American government's international broadcasting.
It singles out TV Marti - a station which broadcasts to Cuba - as receiving such support.
It recommends that a global website be established that supports America's strategic objectives.
But no American diplomats here, thank you.
The website would use content from "third parties with greater credibility to foreign audiences than US officials".
It also recommends that Psyops personnel should consider a range of technologies to disseminate propaganda in enemy territory: unmanned aerial vehicles, "miniaturized, scatterable public address systems", wireless devices, cellular phones and the internet.
'Fight the net'
When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone.
It seems to see the internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons system.
"Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will 'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system," it reads.
The slogan "fight the net" appears several times throughout the roadmap.
The authors warn that US networks are very vulnerable to attack by hackers, enemies seeking to disable them, or spies looking for intelligence.
"Networks are growing faster than we can defend them... Attack sophistication is increasing... Number of events is increasing."
US digital ambition
And, in a grand finale, the document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum".
US forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum".
Consider that for a moment.
The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet.
Are these plans the pipe dreams of self-aggrandising bureaucrats? Or are they real?
The fact that the "Information Operations Roadmap" is approved by the Secretary of Defense suggests that these plans are taken very seriously indeed in the Pentagon.
And that the scale and grandeur of the digital revolution is matched only by the US military's ambitions for it.
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Thursday 5th May 2005
In the face of a full-scale civil war in Iraq, says a source close to the U.S. military, Bush intends to go it alone.
"Our policy is to make Iraq a colony," he says. "We won’t let go."
According to U.S. officials, the resistance attacks are being aided by an extensive network of informers.
Insurgents, apparently making use of engineers and former insiders, have been able to hit oil installations and power plants expertly, foiling U.S. efforts to sustain Iraqi oil exports and to provide electricity and water to Iraqi cities.
"They have tentacles that reach all through the new government and the new military," Lt. Gen. Walter Buchanan, who commands U.S. air forces in the Persian Gulf, admitted recently.
The new government is not only powerless to stop the attacks by insurgents, it is dominated by the same clique of warlords and exiles who lobbied the Pentagon to go to war in the first place, many of whom have close ties to the warring camps that control vast parts of the country.
"In the Arab world, Iraq is seen as a zone of chaos in a pre-civil-war situation, held together only by the U.S. occupation," says Chas Freeman, who served as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia under Bush’s father.
A brief survey of the three major forces in Iraq — Shiites in the south, Sunnis in the center and Kurds in the north — makes clear the sharp divisions that threaten to blow the country apart:
The Shiites: The Bush administration’s plan for reconstruction envisioned the Shiites — the majority population long oppressed by Saddam Hussein — as the chief power in a democratic Iraq.
The United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite party backed by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, won a majority in the new national assembly.
But a militant bloc of fundamentalist Shiites has been using its newfound strength — and its street thugs — to forcibly impose Islamic law throughout the southern half of Iraq.
Militias loyal to rival Shiite factions are blowing up liquor stores and movie theaters, forcing women to wear ultraconservative Islamic dress and assassinating secular officials and other opponents.
...The Mahdi, which battled U.S. forces during two major uprisings last year, is fiercely loyal to the charismatic and fanatical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the scion of a leading fundamentalist Shiite family.
Al-Sadr’s militia, hammered in last year’s clashes, is quickly rebuilding with new recruits armed with machine guns, rocket launchers and rocket-propelled grenades.
It now controls a big chunk of Basra, Iraq’s only port and second-largest city, along with Kut, Amarah, Nasariyah and the huge eastern district of Baghdad known as Sadr City.
In April, al-Sadr organized a rally of 300,000 people to demand that U.S. troops leave Iraq.
The Mahdi Army’s main rival for power among the Shiites is the Badr Brigade, which has an estimated 20,000 men under arms.
Badr is run by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which was founded by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and trained by his Revolutionary Guards.
SCIRI’s leaders still have close ties to Iran, even though many of its officials have been elected to the new Iraqi parliament.
The hard-line group is powerful in Iraq’s two holy cities, Najaf and Karbala, and controls another chunk of Basra.
Other Shiite forces include the Dawa Islamic Party, whose chieftain, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, is Iraq’s new prime minister. Dawa was an underground terrorist organization in Iraq from the 1960s through the 1980s, and militants linked to the group attacked the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait in 1983.
While the State Department says it has no evidence to connect al-Jaafari himself to any terrorist acts, those who study the group suspect that Dawa also gets support from Iran.
"They’ve been spreading money to everyone," says Juan Cole, an expert on Shiism at the University of Michigan.
The Sunnis: In central Iraq, millions of formerly dominant Sunnis opted out of the elections for the new government, which they see as being almost entirely in the hands of southern Shiites and northern Kurds.
There are now several dozen Sunni organizations fighting the U.S. occupation, broadly divided into two camps: mainstream, secular Arab nationalists who served as military officers and Baath Party leaders under Saddam, and Islamist fundamentalists, including extremists associated with Abu Musab Zarqawi.
Most of the attacks on American forces — the roadside IEDs, mortar strikes and full-scale assaults — have been conducted by the mainstream resistance, who are intent on driving out the U.S.
They have brought down helicopters, destroyed at least eighty of the Abrams tanks that are the mainstay of the U.S. occupation, and mounted large-scale actions involving scores of fighters, such as the April attacks on the Abu Ghraib prison and at Al Qaim near the Syrian border.
In one recent incident, car bombs exploded simultaneously in front of and behind a U.S. convoy, which then came under intense fire from automatic weapons wielded by snipers inside abandoned buildings along the route.
To make matters worse, the Kurds have set their sights on Kirkuk, a multi-ethnic city that sits atop Iraq’s vast northern oil fields.
Even though the city lies outside of Kurdistan, Talabani calls it "the Jerusalem of Kurdistan," and Barzani says, "We are ready to fight and to sacrifice our souls to preserve its identity."
The Kurds are already engaging in some brutal expulsions of Arabs from the city.
"They’re doing their own ethnic cleansing, and it’s dirty stuff," says Judith Yaphe, a former CIA analyst on Iraq.
A full-scale Kurdish takeover, however, would be resisted by Arabs and Turks in Kirkuk.
...Even Fallujah, a city of 300,000 that was virtually obliterated in a U.S. blitz last fall, is quietly re-emerging as a center of resistance.
Fallujah’s mayor, in the circumspect language of one U.S. official, is "doing some things not positive in nature."
Meanwhile, the city of Mosul has become the newest hotbed of the insurgency.
Last fall, during an attack by insurgents there, thousands of Iraqi police melted away at the first sign of violence.
"I went from 2,000 police to 50," a U.S. commander on the scene told reporters.
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www.counterpunch.org Lila Rajiva
British Troops Beat Up Barefoot Young Iraqi Teens |
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Published on Monday, July 4, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
by Sheldon Drobny Justice O'Connor's decision in Bush v. Gore led to the current Bush administration's execution of war crimes and atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places in the Middle East that are as egregious as those committed by the Third Reich and other evil governments in human history.
The lesson is clear.
Those people who may be honorable and distinguished in their chosen profession should always make decisions based upon good rather than evil no matter where their nominal allegiances may rest.
Justice O'Connor was quoted to have said something to the affect that she abhorred the thought of Bush losing the 2000 election to Gore.
She was known to have wanted to retire after the 2000 election for same reason she is now retiring.
She wanted to spend more time with her sick husband.
Unfortunately, she tarnished her distinguished career with the deciding vote in Bush v. Gore by going along with the partisan majority of the Court to interfere with a democratic election that she and the majority feared would be lost in an honest recount.
She dishonored herself and the Supreme Court by succumbing to party allegiances and not The Constitution to which she swore to uphold.
And the constitutional argument she and the majority used to justify their decision was the Equal Protection Clause.
The Equal Protection Clause was the ultimate basis for the decision, but the majority essentially admitted (what was obvious in any event) that it was not basing its conclusion on any general view of what equal protection requires.
The decision in Bush v Gore was not dictated by the law in any sense—either the law found through research, or the law as reflected in the kind of intuitive sense that comes from immersion in the legal culture.
The Equal Protection clause is generally used in matters concerning civil rights.
The majority ignored their basic conservative views supporting federalism and states' rights in order to justify their decision.
History will haunt these justices down for their utter lack of justice and the hypocrisy associated with this decision.
Sheldon Drobny is Co-founder of Air America Radio.
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Bush v. Gore Appointment of U.S. President by the U.S. Supreme Court — Raw political clout exercised by US Supreme Court |
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Militarism is promoted through the relentless manipulation of public opinion in all media
— Hollywood films aided by US department of war armament loans
TV, video games
Public relations US department of war
Newspapers, magazines
Parades
Many are directly employed by CIA, NASA, NSA, NED, USAID that work with our invasions and subversions
The rest of the US people:
All are in thrall — enslaved, held by economics or other means of bondage |
January 25, 2006 Military Contractor Philanthropy
By JOAN ROELOFS
Why Some Stay Silent The military-industrial complex is elephantine, yet it is rarely taken into account by political commentators. Connected to almost everything, it is one reason why the home front sustains our aggressive, illegal, military interventions and occupations throughout the world. Many good people are in thrall to the military-industrial complex, and consequently are silenced, unwilling to become active opponents. These include liberals, social justice advocates, and even professional soldiers who question our illegal interventions. There are, of course, some protesters in our nation, but not enough to make militarism the main issue in Congressional and Presidential elections, or to give the subject much visibility on a daily basis. Militarism Militarism is promoted through the relentless manipulation of public opinion in all media: Hollywood films (aided by DOD armament loans), TV, video games, the public relations army of the DOD, newspapers, magazines, parades, etc. For the intellectuals, there are articles in "liberal" magazines alleging that violence is genetically implanted in humans, and a generally positive force. This barrage normalizes violence and war. |
Actions widely accepted or ignored by liberals
Most people want to regard themselves as normal, and not fuzzy idealists or crackpots, so they increasingly view aggression as inevitable, and perhaps a good thing.
Bombing people into democracy (as in Yugoslavia) becomes a reasonable proposition; overthrowing governments (as in Haiti) just a routine world improvement activity.
Both these actions were widely accepted or ignored by liberals, among others.
Government harassment, discrimination, social penalties
Fear motivates human behavior; many people eschew protesting wars as they are afraid of being considered unpatriotic, and subjected to government harassment, discrimination in employment, social penalties, or beatings by local thugs.
Even those who suspect that war is not normal may be convinced that nothing they can do will change anything.
Yet the home front support is not based merely on psychological manipulation; there are interests served by the military-industrial complex. |
Kellogg, Brown & Root, Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Boeing
Many people are directly employed by the military and its auxiliaries, which include CIA, NASA, NSA, and agencies such as NED and USAID that are not alternatives to force, but work with our invasions and subversions.
Those in the reserves or retired remain influential serving in local, state, and national governments, with few active dissenters among them.
Of course, it is not news that military contractors help many politicians get their jobs via campaign contributions.
The military industries include the "big ten" (Kellogg, Brown & Root, Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, United Technologies, General Electric, Dyncorp) and countless others involved in base construction worldwide, in armaments, protective gear, disorienting drugs, supplying mercenaries for contract operations, etc.
Many civilian industries (e.g., computer software) have substantial contracts; others have ones that reliably pay the rent.
The military buys or leases every kind of thing, including buttons, philosophy, toilet paper, and real estate.
War industries are spread throughout the country (and also have overseas branches and subsidiaries).
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Military bases, Universities, Research
They are crucial in providing employment in the many declining areas of our economy: the rust belt of the Midwest, the shoe belt of New England, the cotton belt of the South.
The corporations and their employees are major consumers in their communities, purchasing real estate, furniture, clothing, food, medical services, entertainment, tap dancing lessons, etc.
All these businesses know where their bread is buttered-with guns.
A similar multiplier effect occurs surrounding military bases, which is one reason why our bases overseas are often quietly accepted.
In the US, the notorious Fort Benning, GA SOA-WHISC is a local mainstay.
"Special" military training is also performed by contracts with universities, such as Norwich University in Vermont, or University of Kentucky.
Research grants and ROTC embed many academic institutions.
The military academies likewise radiate power in their communities, encouraging silence on militarism.
Greed?
"Greed" is often indicted as the source of war.
This may describe stockholders or highly paid executives, but many ordinary people are simply dependent on the military-industrial complex.
Often, our economy doesn't provide attractive or practical alternatives for employment or community survival.
Whatever the personal opinions of war industry employees, service workers, retailers, volunteers, or municipal employees in contractor territory, few will become anti-war activists or attempt to unseat their Congressperson for supporting invasions, occupations, and overthrows.
In addition, the military is deeply involved with disaster relief, which brings many more good people into its orbit: Red Cross volunteers, state and local government officials and staff, Vista workers, etc.
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| FallujaUnknown if US taxpayer paid black budget special operations money involved |
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Long-term interests of rich
Yet another rampart is built from military contractor philanthropy.
Large corporations in every industry have established foundations that act like the large private foundations: Ford, Rockefeller, McArthur....
Traditional business charity has been used for public relations, community projects, and product-related benevolence, but today corporate philanthropy works with the general foundations to protect the long-term interests of capitalism and its access to resources, markets, and labor worldwide.
Essential dissidents distracted into discrete good works away from systemic challenges
In this process, it is essential that potential dissidents be distracted into discrete, yet important, good works, and away from systemic challenges.
Contractor philanthropy takes many forms and embraces a wide circle.
(Sources for the following discussion include Tax Form 990s accessed through the Foundation Center or Guidestar web sites, the database of the Capital Research Center, and the annual reports or web sites of the corporations.
Most grants mentioned were given in recent years; a few in the late 1990s.)
There are the unsurprising grants to policy-planning think tanks, such as Boeing-McDonnell Foundation's to the Hudson Institute, Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute.
Another conventional largesse is scholarship aid to aspiring engineers, who may then be predisposed to seek future employment with the benefactor.
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Benefits to poor, Grants, Education is a gifted field for militarism spending
Widely unremarked is the benevolence that touches many members of the general population: minorities, poor people, social justice activists, liberals, civic-minded volunteers, and those not in the elite or military minded.
In short, the good people, who, because of their own oppression, or their warm hearts, might have been likely recruits for an anti-war movement.
Education is a gifted field.
Of course, universities with large science and engineering faculties receive grants, but so does every kind of institution: liberal arts, Catholic colleges, public universities, community colleges, colleges with large minority enrollments.
For example, General Electric lists a grant (in 2002) to Barnard College, my alma mater.
Cooper Union, site of 1950s Pete Seeger hootenannies, benefits from Northrop Grumman.
Halliburton helps out the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
Northrop is very generous to career services offices in higher education.
Programs preparing disadvantaged students for college do well: GE has committed half a million to Brandeis University's College Bound, and $80,000 to CUNY's center (perhaps to forestall a repeat of the 1930s ruckus there).
Associations in minority higher education, such as American Indian college organizations, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, and the United Negro College Fund, are supported generously.
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| Response to US militarismIraq resistanceKirkukIraq |
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This week's cave-in on Capitol Hill — supplying a huge new jolt of funds for the horrific war effort in Iraq — is surprising only to those who haven't grasped our current circumstances.
Public opinion polls aren't the same as political leverage. The Vietnam War went on for years after polling showed that most Americans opposed the war and even saw it as immoral.
Slick phrases about the need to bring our troops home can easily become little more than platitudes on wallpaper in media echo chambers.
No matter how many Democrats are in Congress, they won't end this war unless an antiwar movement develops enough grassroots strength to compel them to do so.
Progressive visionaries: Reps. Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey, Maxine Waters
Unfortunately — and unnecessarily — for years now the Internet powerhouse MoveOn.org has often functioned as a virtual appendage of the national Democratic Party. That close relationship has largely squandered MoveOn's opportunities to help build strong deep independent activism for the long haul. And, on crucial issues of the Iraq war, MoveOn has failed to back the positions of such gutsy progressive visionaries as Reps. Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey and Maxine Waters.
A statement issued Thursday by the national Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) pointed out that "the approach of the Democratic leadership has utterly failed — as they now prepare to give President Bush $95 billion more war funding through a bill that no longer has any timelines for troop withdrawal."
Asking a key question — "How can you oppose a troop escalation while funding it in full?" — PDA reiterated its longstanding position that Democrats in Congress should be "using the power of the purse to cut off funds to Iraq, except those needed to safely withdraw our troops (and for humanitarian/reconstruction aid to the Iraqi people)." And legislators should be "using their investigative power to probe White House deceptions and distortions that propelled the Iraq invasion and occupation, and to impeach if necessary."
Memorial Day 2007 comes at a disastrous time. Political power brokers and media elites insist on opting for a mix-merge of tragedy and farce. A key reality is that we won't be able to change the militaristic direction of the country without effectively confronting the congressional Democrats who are fueling the engines of destruction.
'Self-evident wisdom'
When considering what to demand now, it's helpful to put the current moment in historical perspective. The same basic arguments for keeping U.S. forces in Iraq have long been presented by reigning politicians and key media outlets as self-evident wisdom.
A cover story in Time magazine laid down the prevailing line:
"Foreign policy luminaries from both parties say a precipitous U.S. withdrawal would cripple American credibility, doom reform in the Arab world and turn Iraq into a playground for terrorists and the armies of neighboring states like Iran and Syria."
That was in April— 2004.
Norman Solomon www.counterpunch.org March 24, 2007 |
Military Contractor Philanthropy
— Why Some Stay Silent
By JOAN ROELOFS
A n even broader base of gratitude has been created by contractor grants to all types of high and elementary schools (private, public, parochial), e.g. Northrop's to Emmanuel Christian Academy and Melvin J Berman Hebrew Academy.
Very young are not neglected by US Militarism
The very young are not neglected; the Long Beach Day Nursery Newsletter, Fall 2004, features a photo of a Boeing representative handing over a $7,500 check for its Ready to Read program.
Raytheon reaches into the public schools with a national project:
MathMovesU is a program designed specifically to reach students at a time where studies show performance declines in math and science — middle school, grades six through eight.
The MathMovesU program combines student interest in celebrities with grant money and awards to generate new interest and excitement in math.
Raytheon has partnered with skateboard legend Tony Hawk, soccer star Mia Hamm, basketball greats Bill Russell and Lisa Leslie, and BMX champ Dave Mirra to promote the MathMovesU program and demonstrate how math plays a role in "cool" careers.
No matter how small the grant, it may well be noted by the children, who are alert to brand names and corporate logos (sometimes incorporated into textbook exercises), and by teachers and parents, especially those active in PTAs and bake sales.
Gradually, they may come to accept that weapons of mass destruction are simply products like any others.
Community organizations
Support for community organizations is especially generous near contractor headquarters and facilities, which are widespread, yet the industries give grants everywhere, and to national organizations.
The NAACP has always had strong connections with major corporations.
The civil rights movement of the 1960s prompted new close links between activist organizations and business.
The Urban Coalition was formed, and thereafter, corporate philanthropy became more focused on defusing systemic threats.
Its goal was to challenge segregation and discrimination while discouraging the more radical suggestions of that era's activists.
(The same model was later applied to foundation intervention in South Africa, which aimed to end apartheid without furthering the ANC's socialist goals.)
Today, Lockheed, GE, and Boeing are important funders of the NAACP.
Minority organizations, religious groups, women's groups
Military contractors are attentive to every kind of minority organization: Asians Against Domestic Abuse and Vietnamese American Community (Halliburton); American Indian Science and Engineering Society and National Society of Black Engineers (Northrop Grumman); the Holocaust Museum and the Chinese Community Center (GE).
Boeing has funded the Congressional Black Caucus and the Urban League. Lockheed even contributes to the Sons of Norway, perhaps to deflect them from the socialistic policies of their homeland.
Religious groups of all kinds are grantees, not excluding the Benedictine Sisters and Zoroastrians.
Women's organizations are well endowed.
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Boeing and BAE Systems (a prominent contractor in New Hampshire) sponsor an AAUW program encouraging women to enter science and engineering.
GE gives to the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy; Boeing to the National Women's Political Caucus, Lockheed to the National Museum of Women.
Children's groups
Children are nurtured.
Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCAs, YWCAs, Little Leagues, UNICEF, Children's Defense Fund, etc., receive substantial grants, which aid many poor and minority children, and may impress them, their leaders, and their parents.
Lockheed Martin was a major sponsor of the Girl Scout 2005 National Council Convention, and supports a special program within the GSA organization: The Lockheed Martin Science Career Exploration Fund.
Organizations of ill and disadvantaged children are also beneficiaries: Child Abuse Network, Children's Brain Tumor Foundation, Make A Wish, Juvenile Diabetes, Special Olympics, Big Brothers Big Sisters, et al.
Those working in such heartbreaking fields, and the parents involved, rarely hesitate to take whatever help is offered from whatever source.
Private philanthropy may appear more desirable than the dreaded public taxation of many civilized nations.
Charities, Art institutions
Health and environmental organizations are not neglected: American Lung Association, Canine Companions, Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, American Cancer Society, AIDs services, Clean Air Campaign, Audubon Society, Nature Conservancy, Brooklyn Botanic Garden....
Most major charities are included, e.g., Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity....
Arts of all kinds are funded by US Militarism
Arts of all kinds are funded, from major institutions such as the JFK Center for the Performing Arts to the Chicago Jazz Orchestra (Boeing), the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Houston (Halliburton), the New York Public Library (GE) and Baltimore Shakespeare Festival (Lockheed Martin).
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Even organizations with pacifist connections receive contractor money: GE funds Peter Maurin House and the Hancock Shaker Village.
Civil liberties and human rights organizations also receive grants: Lockheed gives to the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, GE to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Beyond grants, there are other links.
AI? HRW? AARP? College teachers' retirement fund
Amnesty International USA has received hundreds of GE stock shares from individual donors.
Whether these have been sold or are being nurtured would require more sleuthing.
Human Rights Watch has 50 million invested in stocks and bonds; I know not where, except for $1.5 million in the Soros Quantum Fund.
Connections and revolving doors between contractors and citizen organization boards and top staff further cement bonds and promote a non-critical atmosphere.
In 2002, Chris Hansen, former chief lobbyist for Boeing, became the top lobbyist for the AARP.
John H. Biggs was a director of Boeing while he was Chairman, President and CEO of TIAA-CREF, the college teachers' retirement fund.
Around the world
What happens in the United States is also projected throughout the world: bases, military training, military contracts, military-civilian organization collaboration in disaster relief, and so too with philanthropy.
Boeing Employees Community Fund helps to support the Teenage Cancer Trust of London, England, and a Japanese residential center for mentally disabled children; GE gives grants in Hungary and to Peking University; BAE Systems funds programs in Australia and Saudi Arabia.
Reinforcing the corporate, general foundation, and government philanthropy abroad, NATO has its own considerable, and greatly understudied grant program.
This funds diverse organizations and projects, such as aid in environmental decision-making in Central Asia.
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Philanthropy (often a joint project of private, corporate, government, and intergovernmental institutions such as the European Union, World Bank, and NATO) has attempted to fill the void created by the overthrow of communist governments, which had previously provided for industrial employment, social services, culture, research, and education.
NATO now supports scientists in Eastern Europe and Central Asia studying the arctic, toxicity in leather tanning, pesticides, deforestation, sustainable human development indicators, mating systems in conifers, antioxidant activity of beverages, biotechnology, women's reproductive choices, superstrings, and cancer detection.
Whatever anyone is doing; NATO is happy to help (and welcomes those focusing on leather tanning as the major environmental hazard).
Plenty of money to go around
How to estimate the influence of all this philanthropy?
We can listen carefully for rejections of grants by organization leaders and members; or resignations because of acceptance; or anti-war protest activity by all but the rare bird belonging to or benefiting from these organizations.
Then we can investigate further, using teams of interviewers financed somehow the other side has plenty of finances to show their favored results.
Historical evidence indicates that people serving on boards or staffs of civic, social service, or reformist organizations would be prime recruits for radical activism, were the opportunity structure different.
As it is, thousands of these potential leaders are tucked away in innumerable non-governmental organizations, funded by military contractors and other corporations and foundations friendly to US imperial policies.
They are doing good works on a small scale, but the larger picture may cause more deaths than the rare diseases that get so much attention and funding.
Everywhere self-censor
My personal experience, and anecdotal evidence from activists with whom I have discussed my research on foundations, indicates that most people self-censor.
Even I do sometimes, and when I haven't, I have often paid a price.
For example, I was on the board of a local environmental organization, and was asked about the propriety of applying for a GE grant.
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I argued that the organization should not, because the military was the greatest threat to sustainability.
An important board member claimed that I was being silly, for it would never affect the decisions of the organization.
I argued that it gave legitimacy to GE, which would be acknowledged in the annual report, and it would soften members' attitudes towards GE and the military.
The organization decided not to apply for the grant, but my popularity in the local non-profit world did not soar.
In another case, I decided that I was finally ready to join a sorority after resisting for so many years.
The best local one was the AAUW, where friends and associates belong.
However, I won't join any organization that I know has ties to military contractors, and will lose out.
It is easy to understand why so many good people are silent in the face of murderous policies.
They are in thrall.
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www.counterpunch.org Lila Rajiva
British Troops Beat Up Barefoot Young Iraqi Teens |
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| www.democracynow.org Amy Goodman Headlines, Mon, Aug. 16, 2004
Harkin Calls for End to 'Backdoor Draft' In Iowa, Democratic Tom Harkin has called on President Bush to end what he calls the “backdoor draft.” Harkin's call came after a Des Moines police officer who had already completed his eight year comittment was called up to serve in Iraq under the military's “stop loss” exemption, which can extend duty in wartime. Sen. Harkin Calls On George Bush Mon, Aug. 16, 2004 U.S. Senator Tom Harkin gathered with Iowa cops and firefighters at the Des Moines police department, to call on President Bush to end the 'back-door-draft'. The 'back-door-draft' allows the Pentagon to call up soldiers who have already completed their service to the country. Des Moines is in the spotlight because the Pentagon invoked a “stop-loss” policy to call up a Des Moines police officer for involuntary service in Iraq even though he had already completed his eight years of National Guard duty. Last week Des Moines Police Chief Bill McCarthy responded by slamming the military, saying the military is lying and manipulating the troops. |
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www.counterpunch.org Lila Rajiva
British Troops Beat Up Barefoot Young Iraqi Teens The Axis of Child Abusers
Officials have deliberately withheld the name of the regiment to which the perps in the British video belong.
But maybe the public should demand it.
Here’s why.
In May 2004, when photos surfaced in the Daily Mirror (UK) of members of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment beating up and urinating on a hooded Iraqi detainee, General Sir Michael Jackson, Chief of the General Staff, rushed to claim that they only showed an isolated incident caused by the "ill discipline of a few soldiers."
But as The Independent pointed out immediately, by May 2004, the QLR ( as well as the Royal Fusiliers and Black Watch) was already involved in six cases of death or severe abuse that the Royal Military Police had not yet completed investigated and that dated back more than a year.
In May 2004, it was also eight months since the killing of 26-year-old Baha Mousa, a hotel receptionist beaten to death in September 2003 by members of the same QLR. (9)
The QLR was at the time also facing a charge of having murdered an Iraqi detainee.
But in May 2004, the editor of the Mirror, Piers Morgan, was actually forced to resign over the abuse photos published in his paper.
A government investigation — never actually documented publicly — found that they were hoaxed.
The Mirror’s owners, Trinity Mirror, and several prominent US corporations which held shares in Trinity, had opposed the Mirror’s anti-war stance long before the publication of the photos and it was their pressure that led to Morgan’s sacking on May 14.
Whatever the merits of the hoax allegation — and mind you, it could plausibly have been a piece of government disinformation intended to muddy the whole business — what it effectively accomplished was to take the spotlight off the QLR and other British troops in Basra and distance them from the Abu Ghraib torture scandal which was at the time just breaking in the world press.
The new video shows just how important it was for the spotlight to be shifted somewhere else.
Should it turn out that the QLR was also involved in child abuse in Iraq, some one just might want to go back and check out the real story behind those “hoaxed” pictures.
There just might be more to it than what the government supposedly found.
And Piers Morgan just might be due an apology.
(1) “British troops videoed 'beating Iraqis',” Jo Revill and Ned Temko, The Observer, February 12, 2006.
See also “Blair Promises Iraq Abuse Probe,” BBC, February 12, 2006.
The cameraman is caught on tape gloating, "Oh yes! Oh yes! You're gonna get it. Yes, naughty little boys! You little f***ers, you little f***ers. DIE! Ha, ha!"
(2) “Iraq’s Child Prisoners,” Neil Mackay, Sunday Herald, August 1, 2004. “Iraqi Children Among Abused Prisoners at Abu Ghraib,” The Scotsman, May 7, 2004.
(3) “US Silent on Torture of Children,” Lisa Ashkenaz Croke, New Standard, August 16, 2004. “Sy Hersh at ACLU Convention,” Linda Wymore, Mother Jones, July 16, 2004.
(4) “Sex Assault Cases in Iraq Often Stall,” Miles Moffeit, Denver Post, April 12, 2004.
(5) “Israel's shooting of young girl highlights international hypocrisy, say Palestinians,” Chris McGreal in Khan Yunis, The Guardian, January 30, 2006.
(6) “Israel Kills Palestinian Girl in Classroom: Doctors tried in vain to save fatally wounded Ghadeer,” Islam Online, October 13, 2004.
(7)“The Blood of Iman Al- Hams,” Amira Hass, Haaretz, February 9, 2005.
(8)“3 more die in Mideast, Israel takes arms ship,” Dispatch Online, May 8, 2001.
(9) “Seven Iraqis die in British custody.
How many soldiers are charged? None.
This is not the first incident to involve the Queen's Lancashire Regiment and allegations of brutality,” Andrew Johnson and Severin Carrell, The Independent, 2 May 2004
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Fire almost here We are now living in the interval, the few heartbeats left before the great flame ignites. The work has intensified to a fever pitch. |
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Fire almost here By Chris Floyd
Published: February 17, 2006 The kindling has been piled high, stuffed with tinder and doused with gasoline. The match has been lit. All it will take is the slightest flick of the wrist to set off the conflagration. We are now living in the interval, the few heartbeats left before the great flame ignites. The heap of kindling has been a long time building, but in recent weeks, the work has intensified to a fever pitch. With relentless urgency, the American people are being habituated to the prospect of several interrelated upheavals — new war, new terror attacks — and the predetermined result of these events: the final, open establishment of presidential tyranny, a militarized "commander state" where executive power is beyond the law, and endless war endlessly prolongs the "emergency measures" of the authoritarian regime. Making a virtue of necessity, the Bush administration has used the exposure of its illegal wiretap scheme to ratchet up the level of terrorist scaremongering, accelerate its drive toward a military attack on Iran and publicly proclaim its long-held covert doctrine of executive dictatorship.
Of course, "commander rule" is already the de facto state of the union, as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made clear to the Senate last week, when he refused to deny the notion that the president can contravene any law he chooses under his authority as commander-in-chief.
And we have often detailed here the tyrannical powers that President George W. Bush has already bestowed upon himself without objection from the U.S. political establishment, including the power to jail anyone without charges, hold them indefinitely and have them tortured — or simply murder them in an "extrajudicial killing."
The scope of Bush's claimed powers — arbitrary sway over the life and liberty of every person on earth — far surpasses that of the most megalomaniacal Roman emperor or totalitarian dictator.
But a militarist state must have war: to justify its draconian rule (and those $550 billion "defense" budgets), to find new fields for dominion and swag, and to seal with blood its illegitimate compact with the people, seeking to make them complicit in its crimes, which are committed in their name, for their "security."
Fortunately for the militarists, Bush has promised war in abundance.
Just this month, the Pentagon released its new strategy, heralding the newly dubbed "Long War" against terrorism, where U.S. forces will be deployed, openly and covertly, "in dozens of countries simultaneously" for decades to come.
The plan is designed to "ensure that no foreign power can dictate the terms of regional or global security" — except, of course, for the dictatorial foreign power emanating from the Potomac.
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This is the constitution of the new commander state: the eternal "emergency," fomenting endless bloodshed, strife, atrocity — and reprisals, the terrorist blowback that is the essential lubricant for the war machine.
And a new terror strike on the "homeland" is inevitable. The ground for this attack has been carefully prepared — whether wittingly or unwittingly is irrelevant now.
For whatever the Bush faction's intentions, their actual policies have demonstrably and indisputably stoked the fires of Islamic extremism to new heights of virulence.
Meanwhile, their manifest incompetence and callous disregard for the well-being of ordinary Americans — vividly displayed in the deadly bungling of the Katrina disaster and its corruption-riddled aftermath — have left American soil virtually undefended against any genuinely serious terrorist attack, i.e. one not carried out by half-wits telegraphing their punches over tapped phones.
For years, a vast infrastructure of authoritarian rule has been constructed behind the facade of ordinary political life — such as the series of "special authorities" signed by Bush and Pentagon warlord Donald Rumsfeld giving the military absolute power over the nation "in the event of a declared or perceived emergency," The Washington Post reports.
This dovetails with such open measures as the Patriot Act and the creation of Northcom, the first military command aimed at the "homeland," which last fall conducted the massive "Granite Shadow" exercise, practicing "domestic military operations" with "unique rules of engagement regarding the use of lethal force," the Post reports.
This infrastructure is part of the context, the granite shadow looming behind many recent events, such as last month's $385 million open-ended contract awarded to Halliburton to build large-scale "detention and deportation" centers around the country, as Reuters reports.
It looms behind the "excitement" expressed by weapons-makers over Bush's plans to build new atomic bombs on a production-line basis, the Oakland Tribune reports, including "low yield" nukes for use in attacks on non-nuclear nations.
It looms over Rumsfeld's frenzied push to build a new arsenal of "first-strike" intercontinental and space-based weapons to attack enemies — or perceived enemies — with "no warning," as the Pentagon declared this month, UPI reports.
You can even see it in the Air Force's decision last week to allow top brass to press their politicized pseudo-Christianity on young cadets without restraint, as Reuters reports — more of the sinister melding of militarism and religious extremism that characterizes the Bushist philosophy.
And of course, the granite shadow overhangs the entire campaign to foment war fever against Iran, a grim replay of the "Attack Iraq" propaganda, complete with exaggerated threats, manipulated intelligence supplied by dubious exiles, lies about "pursuing diplomacy" while finalizing battle plans, as The Sunday Telegraph reports — and a complete disregard of the murderous quagmire that will ensue, including the rapid proliferation of nuclear weapons worldwide as countries scramble to protect themselves from the "first-strike" triggermen of the Bush faction.
More war, more terror, more authoritarian rule: The fire next time is almost here.
Annotations
A 'long war' designed to perpetuate itself International Herald Tribune, Feb. 10, 2006 Ability to Wage 'Long War' Is Key To Pentagon Plan Washington Post, Feb. 4, 2006 Granite Shadow: Commandos in the Streets? Washington Post, Sept. 25, 2005 Oil and Water: Life in the Bush Imperium Empire Burlesque, Feb. 14, 2006 The Politics of Fear The Independent, Feb. 15, 2006 Can You Say Permanent Bases? TomDispatch.com, Feb. 14, 2006 Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps New American Media, Feb. 8, 2006 Lab officials excited by new H-bomb project Oakland Tribune, Feb. 6, 2006 The Armageddon Plan The Atlantic, March 2004 Military Role in Space Set to Expand Reuters, Feb. 8, 2006 Polls: Anti-Iran Propaganda Working Antiwar.com, Feb. 10, 2006 Terror Threat: The Great Deception The Independent, Feb. 15, 2006 Rumsfeld's First Strike Vsion UPI, Feb. 9, 2006 The Destruction of the Constitution Molly Ivins, Feb. 9, 2006 US prepares military blitz against Iran's nuclear sites Sunday Telegraph, Feb. 12, 2006 Air Force Eases Rules on Religion Washington Post, Feb. 9, 2006 Air Force sets revised rules for prayers by its chaplains Washington Times, Feb. 9, 2006 Masters of Deception Antiwar.com, Feb. 16, 2006 Abu Ghraib: School for terrorists International Herald Tribune, Feb. 14, 2006 America's Long War The Guardian, Feb. 15, 2006 Quick Rise for Purveyors of Propaganda in Iraq New York Times, Feb. 14, 2006 Katrina Report Spreads Blame Washington Post, Feb. 14, 2006 Audits Show Millions in Katrina Aid Wasted Associated Press, Feb. 14, 2004 Storm Warning: Levee Lies and the War on Reality Empire Burlesque, Feb. 10, 2006 Intelligence, Policy,and the War in Iraq Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006 Nuclear Iran Is Not a Threat International Herald Tribune, Jan. 31, 2006 The First Front in the War on Iran? Zmag, Nov. 7, 2005 Annexing Khuzhestan: Battle Plans for Iran Information Clearing House, Feb. 1, 2006 Abu Ghraib General Lambastes Bush Administration Truthout, Aug. 24, 2005 Seabees Buzz in to Build Bases Washington Times, Feb. 6, 2006 © Copyright 2006, The Moscow Times. All Rights Reserved. |
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SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, very simply...this is over the winter...the government made...I think the article is called “The Redirection.”
There was a major change of policy by the United States government, essentially, which was that we were going to...the American government would join with the Brits and other Western allies and with what we call the moderate Sunni governments — that is, the governments of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt — and join with them and with Israel to fight the Shia.
One of the major goals for America, of course, was the obsession the Bush White House has with Iran, and the other obsession they have is, of course...is in fear...is of Hezbollah.
Hezbollah the Shia Party of God that’s so dominant in southern Lebanon and whose leader Hassan Nasrallah wants to play a bigger political role and is doing quite a bit to get there and is in direct confrontation with Siniora.
Fouad Siniora, deputy or aide to Rafik Hariri, the slain leader of Lebanon
And so, you have a situation where the Sunni government, pretty much in control now, the American-supported Sunni government headed by Fouad Siniora, who was a deputy or an aide to Rafik Hariri, the slain leader of Lebanon, that government has....
We know, the 'International Crisis Group' reported a couple years ago that the son Saad Hariri, the son of Rafik Hariri, who’s now a major player in the parliament of Lebanon, he put up $40,000 bail to free four Sunni fundamentalists — Jihadist-Salafists who were tied directly to, you know, this word “al-Qaeda.”
It is sort of ridiculous, they were tied to jihadist groups, and God knows, al-Qaeda, in terms of Osama bin Laden.
Osama bin Laden doesn’t have much to do with what we’re talking about.
These are independently, more or less, you can call them, fanatical jihadists.
Given support covertly, the goal being they would be potential enemies of Hezbollah
So, the goal — part of the goal in Lebanon, part of the way this policy played out, was, with Saudi help, Prince Bandar.
We remember Prince Bandar, the Saudi prince, as a major player in Iran-Contra and also in the American effort two decades ago.
If you remember, we supported Osama bin Laden and other jihadists in Afghanistan against the Russians, and that didn’t work out so well.
Well, we run right back to the well again, and we began supporting some of these jihadist groups, and particularly — in the article, I did name Fatah al-Islam.
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The idea was to provide them with some arms and some money and some basic equipment.
These are small units, a couple hundred people.
There were three or four around the country given the same help covertly, the goal being they would be potential enemies of Hezbollah in case of warfare.
In case Nasrallah decided to do something physical, get kinetic, in Lebanon, the Sunni Siniora government would have some very tough guys on its side, period.
That’s the policy.
JUAN GONZALEZ:
Well, Sy Hersh, if that is true, then what has led to the current fighting now? If the Lebanese government had been backing the group, why is it now attacking it?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, first of all, the Lebanese army is very distinct.
Let me begin by saying nobody really knows anything right now.
I mean one of the things about crises is you learn that you really get to play much later.
But based on common sense and what I’m reading, the Lebanese army has maintained an amazing sort of neutrality, which is surprising.
The army has not been a pawn of the Siniora government.
As you know, the American government — the American position right now — there’s a stand-off politically.
You cannot discuss what’s going on without discussing the overall politics.
There’s a stand-off politically right now, a very serious one, in Lebanon.
The government is polarized.
The government in power really has no legal basis to make any changes in cabinet positions, etc., because it’s not a constitutional government, because Hezbollah, which had five members of the parliament — five members of the cabinet and a dozen or so members in the parliament, Hezbollah pulled out months ago.
And there were street protests, protests against Siniora.
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And right now, you have Hezbollah in league with a Christian leader named Aoun, a former chief of staff for the army.
Aoun and Nasrallah are in an amazing partnership against the Siniora government.
And where this breaks down and who’s going to win this stand-off — it’s been going on since last December — isn’t clear.
America clearly supports Siniora.
But there’s a big brutal fight going.
And the Lebanese army stayed out of it and was pretty much, very much, independent, in the sense that when there were street demonstrations, they did not beat up on the Nasrallah people.
They were very impartial.
Palestinians — you know, rational people don’t like being mistreated
So I think the story that we have is that there was a crime, and they were chasing people into one of the Palestinian camps, which are always hotbeds.
God knows the Palestinians are the end of the stick, not only for the West, but also for the Arab world.
Nobody pays much attention to them and those places.
I’ve been to Tripoli and been into the camps, and they are seething, as they should be.
You know, rational people don’t like being mistreated.
So what seems to me we have is just a series — the word you could use is “unintended consequences.”
I don’t think anybody in the Siniora government anticipated that the people they were covertly supporting to some degree — I got an email the other day, and I have not checked this out, from somebody who was in the community, in the intelligence community and still consults with the community, he says:
“Why don’t we ask more about the American arms that the fighters of Fatah al-Islam are brandishing?”
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I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I did get that email.
And so, that could be true.
Both Saudi money and American money, not directly, but indirectly, was fed into these groups.
The White House is putting it out hot and heavy as part of the anti-Syria campaign, but it’s not flying
And what is the laugh riot and the reason I’m actually talking to you guys about this — I usually don’t like to do interviews unless I have a story in The New Yorker — the reason I’m talking about it is because the American government keeps on putting out this story that Syria is behind the Fatah group, which is just beyond belief.
There’s no way — it may be possible, but the chances of it are very slight, simply because Syria is a very big supporter, obviously, of Nasrallah.
Bashar al-Assad has told me that he’s in awe of Nasrallah, that he worships at his feet and has great respect for him.
The idea that the Syrians would be sponsoring Sunni jihadist groups whose sole mission are to kill the apostates — that is, anybody who doesn’t support their view, the Wahhabi or Salafist view of Sunni religion — that includes the Shia — anybody who doesn’t believe — support these guys’ religions are apostates and are killable, that’s basically one of the crazy aspects of all this, and it’s just inconceivable.
Nothing can be ruled out, but that doesn’t make much case, and I noticed that in the papers today there’s fewer and fewer references to this.
The newspapers in America are beginning to wise up, that this can’t be — this isn’t very logical.
The White House is putting it out hot and heavy as part of the anti-Syria campaign, but it’s not flying, because it doesn’t make sense.
So there we are.
It’s another mess.
Look, clearly this president is deeply involved in this, too, but what I hear from my people, of course, the players — it’s always Cheney, Cheney.
You might think that one of the reasons — I think I wrote about this in The New Yorker — one of the things that the Saudi Bandar had promised us was that we can control the jihadists.
We can control them, he assured us.
Don’t worry about getting in bed with these bad guys, because, as we remember, the same kind of assurances were given to us in the late 1980s, when we supported, as I said, bin Laden and others in the war against Russia, the Mujahideen war, and that, of course, bit us on the ass.
And this is, too.
So there we are.
AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, what about the role of Vice President Dick Cheney, the Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, any time you have violent anti-Iran policy and anti-Shia policy, you have to start looking there.
Look, clearly this president is deeply involved in this, too, but what I hear from my people, of course, the players — it’s always Cheney, Cheney.
Cheney meets with Bush at least once a week.
They have a lunch.
They usually have a scheduled lunch.
And out of that comes a lot of big decisions.
We don’t know what’s ever said at that meeting.
And this is — talk about being opaque, this is a government that is so hidden from us.
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So I can tell you that the thing that’s amazing about this government, the thing that’s really spectacular, is even now how they can get their way mostly with a lot of the American press.
They made a decision that because of the totally dwindling support for the war in Iraq, we go back to the al-Qaeda card, and we start talking about al-Qaeda
For example, I do know — and, you know, you have to take it on face value — if you’ve been reading me for a long time, you know a lot of the things I write are true or come out to be more or less true — I do know that within the last month, maybe four, four-and-a-half weeks ago, they made a decision that because of the totally dwindling support for the war in Iraq, we go back to the al-Qaeda card, and we start talking about al-Qaeda.
And the next thing you know, right after that, Bush went to the Southern Command — this was a month ago — and talked, mentioned al-Qaeda twenty-seven times in his speech.
He did so just the other day — al-Qaeda this, al-Qaeda that
He did so just the other day this week — al-Qaeda this, al-Qaeda that.
All of a sudden, the poor Iraqi Sunnis, I mean, they can’t do anything without al-Qaeda.
It’s only al-Qaeda that’s dropping the bombs and causing mayhem.
It’s not the Sunni and Shia insurgents or militias.
And this policy just gets picked up, although there’s absolutely no empirical basis.
Most of the pros will tell you the foreign fighters are a couple percent, and then they’re sort of leaderless in the sense that there’s no overall direction of the various foreign fighters.
You could call them al-Qaeda.
You can also call them jihadists and Salafists that want to die fighting the Americans or the occupiers in Iraq and they come across the border.
Whether this is — there’s no attempt to suggest there’s any significant coordination of these groups by bin Laden or anybody else, and the press just goes gaga.
And so, they went gaga a little bit over the Syrian connection to the activities in Tripoli.
It’s just amazing to me, you guys. |
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California Man Revealed as al Qaeda Leader
July 07, 2006
For the first time, a former Orange County, Calif. teenage rock music fan has revealed his role as a top al Qaeda leader.
Adam Gadahn, who disappeared from California seven years ago, appeared unmasked on an al Qaeda tape made public on the internet today.
As previously reported by ABC News, the FBI had concluded that the masked man was Gadahn based on voice analysis of previous al Qaeda tapes. On today's tape, Gadahn is bearded, wearing a turban.
He denounces U.S. soldiers in Iraq and their alleged murder and rapes of Iraqi citizens.
"Who are the real terrorists?" Gadahn asks.
When referring to the alleged atrocities committed by U.S. Marines in Iraq, Gadahn also says, "It's hard to imagine that any compassionate person could see pictures... and not want to go on a shooting spree at the Marines' housing facilities at Camp Pendleton."
Camp Pendleton is located just south of where Gadahn grew up in California.
There was no immediate response from Gadahn's family, which still lives in California. They had previously denied he was the masked figure on al Qaeda tapes.
Copyright © 2005 ABCNEWS Internet Ventures. |
Mossad Agent Pearlman Releases Phony "Al-Qaeda Tape"
While President Bush authorizes the CIA to bankroll and arm the real Al-Qaeda in Iran
Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com Wednesday, May 30, 2007 Adam Pearlman, the Jewish Mossad agent who once wrote stinging essays condemning Muslims as "bloodthirsty terrorists", has once again popped up as an "Al-Qaeda spokesman" to frighten the dwindling number of Americans who still believe Al-Qaeda exists outside of U.S. intelligence circles.
"An American member of al-Qaida warned President Bush on Tuesday to end U.S. involvement in all Muslim lands or face an attack worse than the Sept. 11 suicide assault, according to a new videotape."
"Wearing a white robe and a turban, Adam Yehiye Gadahn, who also goes by the name Azzam al-Amriki, said al-Qaida would not negotiate on its demands," reports the Associated Press.
Who is the mysterious Adam Yehiye Gadahn?
The FBI lists Gadahn's aliases as Abu Suhayb Al-Amriki, Abu Suhayb, Yihya Majadin Adams, Adam Pearlman, and Yayah.
Adam Pearlman is his real name and his grandfather is none other than the late Carl K. Pearlman; a prominent Jewish urologist in Orange County.
Carl was also a member of the board of directors of the Anti-Defamation League, which was caught spying on Americans for Israel in 1993.
WhatReallyHappened.com
Mike Rivero has the scoop at WhatReallyHappened.com .
Israel's Mossad intelligence agency was caught in 2002 creating a phony Al-Qaeda group to justify attacks on Palestinians.
Pearlman has a knack of releasing his tapes at the most politically opportune time for Bush, having first burst onto the scene shortly before the 2004 presidential election and then again right after Katrina when the President's approval rating was tanking fast.
Even more mainstream publications, like the Los Angeles City Beat, have dismissed Pearlman before as nothing more than "cartoonish propaganda."
Pearlman had a hippy upbringing, a brief but intense flirtation with death metal and before a sudden transformation, once referred to Muslims as “bloodthirsty, barbaric terrorists.”
Pearlman was a hardcore Jewish Zionist and wrote essays and screeds bashing the Muslim faith.
He even got into fights at mosques and beat up Muslim worshippers.
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Pearlman's personal history and the highly suspicious nature in which he suddenly professed his conversion to Islam in a single Internet posting and later appeared on the scene as a spokesman for "Al-Qaeda" are all the ingredients needed to draw the conclusion that Pearlman is working as a double agent and most likely for Mossad.
The Pearlman tape was once again obtained by the IntelCenter group, a U.S. government contractor, and it's head Ben Venzke has given the tape credence in media interviews concerning the story.
In our previous groundbreaking expose, we unveiled the ties between Intelcenter, a group that regularly 'obtains' Al-Qaeda tapes and the Pentagon.
Intelcenter is an offshoot of IDEFENSE, which was staffed by a senior military psy-op intelligence officer Jim Melnick, who has worked directly for Donald Rumsfeld.
Intelcenter were behind the October 2006 release of the "laughing hijackers" tape that showed Mohammad Atta and Ziad Jarrah allegedly attending a 2000 Al-Qaeda meeting and reading their last will and testament.
Segments of the video that were interspersed with footage of the "laughing hijackers," Jarrah and Atta, showing Bin Laden giving a speech to an audience in Afghanistan on January 8 2000, were culled from what terror experts described as surveillance footage taken by a "security agency."
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News reports at the time contained the admission that the U.S. government had been in possession of the footage since 2002, while others said it was found when the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001.
Yet it was still bizarrely reported that the tape, bearing all the hallmarks of having been filmed and edited by undercover US intelligence and having admittedly been in US possession for five years, was released over the weekend of September 31/October 1 by Al-Qaeda.
The video also contained segments that were first broadcast in a British documentary called The Road to Guantanamo, which was originally aired in March 2006.
The context of the corresponding scene in the dramatized documentary featured U.S. interrogators attempting to coerce Gitmo detainees into confessing Al-Qaeda membership by showing them fake videos where their likeness had been computer generated to appear as if they were in attendance during Bin Laden's January 8 2000 speech.
Monster in the closet
The monster in the closet is once again being waved in front of the American people's faces in order to quell bubbling national resentment about the ongoing carnage in Iraq and the fact that May was the deadliest month in terms of our boys returning home in flag-draped caskets.
Meanwhile, President Bush has authorized the CIA to bankroll and arm Jundullah, a Sunni Al-Qaeda organization, to attack Iran in order to destabilize Ahmadinejad's government.
While Bush grandstands in his Rose Garden speech about how Al-Qaeda wants to kill our children and as Mossad agent Pearlman rants on a video tape about a new 9/11, the only real Al-Qaeda are being equipped, funded and trained by our own government to kill innocent civilians in the Middle East in order to pave the way for the next chapter of Neo-Con blood-letting.
Crude propaganda tapes foisted on us at home in an effort to hoodwink us into supporting it all.
PRISON PLANET.com Copyright © 2002-2006 Alex Jones All rights reserved. |
ESTIMATED NUCLEAR WARHEADS, STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL The United States has conducted 1,127 nuclear and thermonuclear tests — 217 in the atmosphere.
The Soviet Union/ Russia conducted 969 tests — 219 in the atmosphere.
France, 210 tests, 50 in the atmosphere.
The United Kingdom, 45 tests — 21 in the atmosphere.
China, 45 tests — 23 in the atmosphere.
India and Pakistan — 13 tests underground.
Israel — possible 1 test atmosphere South Africa 1979.
North Korea — 1 test underground, October 2006.
“The United states had drawn up a battle plan for the potential use of nuclear weapons in Iraq and the United States has been involved in planning potential nuclear use scenarios for Iran.”“The United States is now involved in a massive program to overhaul its nuclear arsenal. In fact they're working to replace every nuclear warhead and all of the existing delivery systems in the arsenal to ensure prompt precision global strike capabilities.”Jackie Cabasso — Western States Legal Foundation |
Western Elite militarismWestern Elite Terror StatesWestern Elite War Crimes
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'Oh! You don't believe the 9-11 official version,' they say.
'You mean where they want you to accept the buildings were not blown up from below.
'Plane fuel! Substance never burns higher then a gas stove! That it caused the inner core steel to melt!
'Steel melting!
'Concrete vaporizing!
'
'No! I don't believe that conspiracy theory.
'Cheney! Bush! Rudy Giuliani! HA! HA!
'Tower 7 that never had a plane hit — just came tumbling down!
'You believe that, eh!
'Ever think it had to be blown up because the plane scheduled to fly into it was off getting shot down.
'Thermite in Tower 7's walls, you see — incriminating evidence — impossible to get out without people watching!
Had to be blown up!
'Next you'll be saying Obama is not a Wall Street Illuminati banker stooge?
'Take your pick: The partner in a comedy team who feeds lines to the other comedians.
'Him who allows himself to be used.
'Oh! I can't really blame you, Television it turns minds to pulp.
'Turn off the television. It's the only way.'
'Turn off the television?'
'Get rid of it really. I mean what else is there to do!'
'Get rid of the television?'
'Don't forget all radio garbage is propaganda, even the songs.
'Then those five minute propaganda hits they send you every hour!
'The ones they refer to as News
'Get rid of all the propaganda from your brain, the only way to do it.'
'Stop being hooked on those Hollywood movies — even those that make you think they are making you think'
'All paid performers to make your brain dead.
'You turn the brainwashing off, you'll begin to become yourself.
'It really is the only way!'
'Oh!'
Kewe — TheWE.cc
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We are change 9/11 lies have sustained the ruling terrorism-threat paradigm The “why” is obvious: To justify an unjust war to serve corporate interests and greed |
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9.11 Truth New York City Decades long history of political disruption the US has been responsible for 9/11 is part of a long series of criminal, imperialist conquests Another major highlight was surprise appearance of Cynthia McKinney |
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Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth A solid convincing case which architects & engineers will readily see: that the 3 WTC high-rise buildings were destroyed by both classic and novel forms of controlled demolition These buildings were professionally demolished with explosives |
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Who Spent All That Money For What?
— Click here |
Danish scientist Niels Harrit on nano-thermite in the WTC dust
— Click Here
Niels Harrit and 8 other scientists found nano-thermite in the dust from the World Trade Center.
Niels Harrit, you and eight other researchers conclude in this article that it was nano-thermite that caused these buildings to collapse. |
ITALIAN SAYS 9-11 SOLVED
It’s common knowledge, he reveals
CIA — Mossad behind terror attacks By the Staff of American Free Press
Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga, who revealed the existence of Operation Gladio, has told Italy’s oldest and most widely read newspaper that the 9-11 terrorist attacks were run by the CIA and Mossad, and that this was common knowledge among global intelligence agencies.
In what translates awkwardly into English, Cossiga told the newspaper Corriere della Sera:
“All the [intelligence services] of America and Europe… know well that the disastrous attack has been planned and realized from the Mossad, with the aid of the Zionist world in order to put under accusation the Arabic countries and in order to induce the western powers to take part … in Iraq [and] Afghanistan.”
Cossiga was elected president of the Italian Senate in July 1983 before winning a landslide election to become president of the country in 1985, and he remained until 1992.
Cossiga’s tendency to be outspoken upset the Italian political establishment, and he was forced to resign after revealing the existence of, and his part in setting up, Operation Gladio.
This was a rogue intelligence network under NATO auspices that carried out bombings across Europe in the 1960s, 1970s and ’80s.
Gladio’s specialty was to carry out what they termed 'false flag' operations — terror attacks that were blamed on their domestic and geopolitical opposition.
In March 2001, Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra stated, in sworn testimony:
“You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game.
The reason was quite simple: to force … the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”
Cossiga first expressed his doubts about 9-11 in 2001, and is quoted by 9-11 researcher Webster Tarpley saying:
“The mastermind of the attack must have been a sophisticated mind, provided with ample means not only to recruit fanatic kamikazes, but also highly specialized personnel.
I add one thing: it could not be accomplished without infiltrations in the radar and flight security personnel.”
Coming from a widely respected former head of state, Cossiga’s assertion that the 9-11 attacks were an inside job and that this is common knowledge among global intelligence agencies is illuminating.
It is one more eye-opening confirmation that has not been mentioned by America’s propaganda machine in print or on TV.
Nevertheless, because of his experience and status in the world, Cossiga cannot be discounted as a crackpot.
Free to redistribute as long as credit given to American Free Press |
Photo: Bentham-Open.org |
Bentham-Open.org
Download pdf — 10mg document including images — Right click Save As |
The secret story of Mossad and the World Trade Center attack The Odigo Warning: Israeli employees get e-mail warnings of 9-11 SEC Secret Probe Of Stock Dealings Before 9/11 |
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Truth Action LA Branch We are in the midst of a mass awakening 9/11 is the foundational myth upon which the entire agenda has been triggered for our generation |
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Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice High Velocity Bursts of Debris From Point-Like Sources in the WTC Towers Why Did the World’s Most Advanced Electronics Warfare Plane Circle Over The White House on 9/11? |
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Your life, your children's lives — Will you live or die?Decided by small group of elite.Pure evil It doesn't get any clearer than this
Published on Friday, March 2, 2007 by the Los Angeles Times
US to Develop New Hydrogen Bomb
by Ralph Vartabedian
The Energy Department will announce today a contract to develop the nation's first new hydrogen bomb in two decades, involving a collaboration between three national weapons laboratories, The Times has learned.
The new bomb will include design features from all three labs, though Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Bay Area appears to have taken the lead position in the project. The Los Alamos and Sandia labs in New Mexico will also be part of the project.
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Hiroshima, Nagasaki — George Weller report |
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Why are the West's elites trying to start a nuclear war?
Because you pay for it |
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BBC — Thursday, 6 September 2007
UK jets 'chase Russian bombers'
The UK's Royal Air Force has launched fighter jets to intercept eight Russian military planes flying in airspace patrolled by Nato, UK officials say.
Four RAF F3 Tornado aircraft were scrambled in response to the Russian action, the UK's defence ministry said.
The Russian planes - said to be long-range bombers - had earlier been followed by Norwegian F16 jets.
Russia recently revived a Cold War-era practice of flying bombers on long-range patrols.
A Norwegian officer, Lt Col John Inge Oegland, told the BBC the Russian Tupolev Tu-95 Bear bombers flew in international airspace from the Barents Sea to the Atlantic, before turning back.
Two Norwegian F-16s shadowed them on Thursday morning and another two went up later, he said.
There have been several similar incidents in recent months, Lt-Col Oegland added.
"Norway is following the increased Russian activity in the far north with interest," he told the BBC News website.
He said the Russian flights were not causing alarm in Norway. "Our systems are adequate," he said, when asked whether Norway was bolstering its security in the area. |
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9/11
By all accounts, the unprecedented events of September 11th, 2001 changed the way our country functions, and in turn, the world.
It is therefore critical that conscientious Americans, as well as people around the globe, understand these events in detail.
Unfortunately the official reports, including The 9/11 Commission Report and the NIST WTC Report, written by those working under the direction of the Bush Administration, have been proven to be elaborate cover-ups.
Film: 9/11 Revisited
September 11th Revisited is perhaps the most riveting film ever made about the destruction of the World Trade Center.
This is a powerful documentary which features eyewitness accounts and archived news footage that was shot on September 11, 2001 but never replayed on television.
Featuring interviews with eyewitnesses & firefighters, along with expert analysis by Professor Steven E. Jones, Professor David Ray Griffin, MIT Engineer Jeffrey King, and Professor James H. Fetzer.
This film provides stunning evidence that explosives were used in the complete demolition of the WTC Twin Towers and WTC Building 7.
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For Film: 9/11 Revisited
— Click Here
Film: 9/11 Press for Truth
An excellent documentary about the families of the victims of 9/11 and their fight to uncover and expose the truth about what happened that day.
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For Film: 9/11 Press for Truth
— Click Here
Film: 9/11 Mysteries
90 minutes of pure demolition evidence and analysis, laced with staggering witness testimonials.
Moving from “the myth” through “the analysis” and into “the players,” careful deconstruction of the official story set right alongside clean, clear science.
The 9/11 picture is not one of politics or nationalism or loyalty, but one of strict and simple physics. How do you get a 10-second 110-story pancake collapse?
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Image: Natasha Mayers |
| It's kind of a fun gameYou see the aim of those inner forces who guide the Elite —
For them the real agenda is depopulation
To kill off you your children your grandchildren It is to have fun watching our stupidity as we allow the destruction of our planet — but most haven't figured this out yet! If we stop them with the nuclear and biological weapons then it's the 400+ MPH, KPH wind the increase in UVB, UVC, UVA rays due to loss of stratospheric ozone. It's the climate! It's the reduction and elimination of food coming from all levels of cunning World Elite — tools and servants of Lucifer |
Gustave Doré's illustration for Paradise Lost by John Milton |
The Dark Side Initiates — Click here Dark path initiates depend on the denial The five-percent manipulator class is composed of those on the dark path |
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Agent Orange Dioxin — Vietnam Cleft palate, Canoe footed, Clawed fingers continue in births I didn't know what it was then, but it was white |
UVC in the 10 to 290 nanometer band UVB, 290 to 320 nanometers UVA, 320 to 400 nanometers |
Soot's effect on ice melt and glaciers Washington State's Glaciers are Melting |
Remnants of knowledge would be retained with those on higher ground. A few people here, a few there. Translations of discussions with The WE |
Suicide Bombing is response to foreign occupation Will stop once troops withdraw |
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Unspeakable grief and horror
...and the circus of deception killing continues...
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Published on Monday, July 4, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
by Sheldon Drobny Justice O'Connor's decision in Bush v. Gore led to the current Bush administration's execution of war crimes and atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places in the Middle East that are as egregious as those committed by the Third Reich and other evil governments in human history.
The lesson is clear.
Those people who may be honorable and distinguished in their chosen profession should always make decisions based upon good rather than evil no matter where their nominal allegiances may rest.
Justice O'Connor was quoted to have said something to the affect that she abhorred the thought of Bush losing the 2000 election to Gore.
She was known to have wanted to retire after the 2000 election for same reason she is now retiring.
She wanted to spend more time with her sick husband.
Unfortunately, she tarnished her distinguished career with the deciding vote in Bush v. Gore by going along with the partisan majority of the Court to interfere with a democratic election that she and the majority feared would be lost in an honest recount.
She dishonored herself and the Supreme Court by succumbing to party allegiances and not The Constitution to which she swore to uphold.
And the constitutional argument she and the majority used to justify their decision was the Equal Protection Clause.
The Equal Protection Clause was the ultimate basis for the decision, but the majority essentially admitted (what was obvious in any event) that it was not basing its conclusion on any general view of what equal protection requires.
The decision in Bush v Gore was not dictated by the law in any sense—either the law found through research, or the law as reflected in the kind of intuitive sense that comes from immersion in the legal culture.
The Equal Protection clause is generally used in matters concerning civil rights.
The majority ignored their basic conservative views supporting federalism and states' rights in order to justify their decision.
History will haunt these justices down for their utter lack of justice and the hypocrisy associated with this decision.
Sheldon Drobny is Co-founder of Air America Radio.
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Bush v. Gore Appointment of U.S. President by the U.S. Supreme Court — Raw political clout exercised by US Supreme Court |
Nanci Pelosi — U.S. House Democratic leader — Congresswoman California, 8th District
Speaking at the AIPAC agenda May 26, 2005
There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This is absolute nonsense.
In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist.
The greatest threat to Israel's right to exist, with the prospect of devastating violence, now comes from Iran.
For too long, leaders of both political parties in the United States have not done nearly enough to confront the Russians and the Chinese, who have supplied Iran as it has plowed ahead with its nuclear and missile technology....
In the words of Isaiah, we will make ourselves to Israel 'as hiding places from the winds and shelters from the tempests; as rivers of water in dry places; as shadows of a great rock in a weary land.'
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The United States will stand with Israel now and forever.
Now and forever.
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Ahmed and Asma, story of two children dying — Lest we forget |
Atrocities committed by Israel — graphic pictures What CNN never shows you |
Israel, chemical weapons and phosphorous bombs New and unknown deadly weapons used by Israeli forces Undetectable poison-needle gun for 'clean' assassinations |
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When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone.
It seems to see the internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons system
