of water fountains" (Rudy of course being that movie of the kid who wanted desperately to play football for the University of Notre Dame - excellent movie). 
[Editor's Note: In an earlier version of this posting, we accepted an unreliable Boston Herald report of December 10th, 2001, which we reproduced without having access to a retraction published by the newspaper on February 19th, 2002. Our attention has been drawn to factual inaccuracies concerning the ownership of assets by an international business figure from which certain inappropriate conclusions were drawn by the newspaper. We have, therefore, removed this short section of the original article out of concern for accuracy and we apologize for any unintended distress caused to the individual concerned.]
During the 1980s and early '90s, the CIA worked in partnership with BCCI in what was, at the time, the agency's largest covert operation ever, pumping an estimated $10 billion into funding the Afghan mujahedeen. Through this operation, Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network was formed. Bin Laden had accounts in BCCI and ran CIA/BCCI-funded camps.
[For more on that history of how key BCCI players kept operating after the bank was finally shut down, click here.]
In Modern Jihad:Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks, investigative reporter Loretta Napoleoni described the origins of the al Qaeda network:
"[During the Afghan-Soviet war,] potential Arab warriors traveled to Pakistan where they resided in guesthouses. These hostels did not keep any records and not a single organization listed the names of the fighters, where they had gone to fight and if they had been injured or killed. The lack of vital information caused distress among relatives.
"At that time bin Laden was in charge of several guesthouses and was embarrassed by the hundreds of calls requesting information. Hence, he decided to keep track of whoever stayed at the hostels and that record came to be known as the Record of al-Qaeda. This is how al-Qaeda, which means the base or the scroll, was born."
Throughout this time period, bin Laden's mentor was a man named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In Afghanistan 1979-1992: America's Jihad, William Blum reported some background information on Hekmatyar:
"His followers first gained attention by throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. CIA and State Department officials I have spoken with call him 'scary,' 'vicious,' 'a fascist,'… 'definite dictatorship material'….
"His name was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He was the head of the Islamic Party and he hated the United States almost as much as he hated the Russians. His followers screamed 'Death to America' along with 'Death to the Soviet Union'… some of them had kidnapped the American ambassador in the capital city of Kabul, leading to his death in the rescue attempt…
"These same people shot down civilian airliners and planted bombs at the airport… anti-American mobs had burned and ransacked the US embassy in Islamabad and American cultural centers in two other Pakistani cities… their brother Islamic fundamentalists in next-door Iran seized the US Embassy in Teheran… and held 55 Americans hostage for over a year."
Supporting acknowledged terrorists and enemies presented the U.S. government with a huge public relations problem. So the White House and CIA went to work on the propaganda front. The United Sates Information Agency (USIA) launched the "Afghan Media Project."
The project was run by Joachim Maitre, a man who also worked with Oliver North to make TV ads attacking government officials who were against giving aid to the Contras during the BCCI-financed Iran-Contra Affair.
Reporting in Covert Action: The Afghan Pipeline, Steve Galster revealed the hypocrisy of the U.S. propaganda campaign:
"Widespread corruption also exists among the [Afghan] rebel leaders but has gone practically unnoticed in the United States thanks to CIA propaganda. The same kinds of things that tarnished the Contras' image, such as killing civilians, drug smuggling and embezzlement are practiced by many Afghan rebels.
"Taking no prisoners, assassinating suspected government collaborators, destroying government-built schools and hospitals, killing 'unpious' civilians are just a few of the inhumane acts they have carried out. But the picture we receive of the rebels in the United States is of an uncorrupt, popular group of freedom-loving people who aspire toward a democratic society."
In Jihad International Inc., Eqbal Ahmad further exposed the propaganda effort:
"They also invested in this Jihad the legitimacy of their enormous power, and the luster of their media-made glory. On one especially memorable occasion when Afghanistan's hard-line Islamists visited the White House, President Ronald Reagan described them as the Muslim world's 'moral equivalent of our founding fathers.'
"Similarly, the American and European media played up the war in Afghanistan as the greatest story of the eighties. Foreign correspondents combed the Hindu Kush for stories of 'Mooj' heroism. Competition for Jihad narrative was so great that in one instance a major network, CBS, paid handsomely to film a staged battle between Islam and Communism.
"As the western media carries great importance and authority in the third world, its Afghanistan war coverage made an enormous impact, especially on Muslim youth."
As bin Laden himself would later say in his 1997 interview with CNN, "I have benefited so greatly from the Jihad in Afghanistan that it would have been impossible for me to gain such benefit from any other chance…"
Thanks to CIA funding and weapons, delivered through BCCI's "black network" with the help of Pakistan's intelligence service the ISI, bin Laden and al Qaeda were off and running.
In 1992, just after BCCI had been shut down in a global sweep, the Afghan-Soviet war finally came to an end. The war resulted in the death of 1.3 million Afghans, three million were disabled, and 5.5 million became refugees - in total, about half the population.
When BCCI was shut down, most of its major players were allowed to walk away without being held accountable, due to the fact that BCCI was deeply entwined within the upper echelons of U.S. intelligence. Elements of BCCI would then evolve into al Qaeda, as the Washington Post revealed in 2002:
"William F. Wechsler, who monitored bin Laden's finances at the National Security Council during the last two years of the Clinton administration, told Congress in September that bin Laden initially rose to prominence for building 'a financial architecture that supported the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan against the Russians.'
"'It's this financial architecture that continued with him when he turned to terrorism, and it's this financial architecture that is at the heart of how al Qaeda today gets its finances,' he said.
"Much of that architecture, according to French, Pakistani and American investigators, is modeled on the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI)…. In the 1980s it was used to launder drug money, harbor terrorist funds and buy illegal weapons. Its collapse in 1991 was a major global financial scandal.
"The CIA used BCCI to funnel millions of dollars to the fighters battling the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Bin Laden had accounts in the bank, U.S. officials said….
"A 70-page French intelligence report, prepared for Parliament in October and obtained by The Washington Post, outlined some details of this network.
"'The financial network of bin Laden, as well as his network of investments, is similar to the network put in place in the 1980s by BCCI for its fraudulent operations, often with the same people (former directors and cadres of the bank and its affiliates, arms merchants oil merchants, Saudi investors),' the report said. 'The dominant trait of bin Laden's operations is that of a terrorist network backed up by a vast financial structure.'
"A senior U.S. investigator said U.S. agencies were looking into these ties because 'they just make so much sense, and so few people from BCCI ever went to jail. BCCI was the mother and father of terrorist financing operations.'
"The report identifies dozens of companies and individuals who were involved with BCCI and were found to be dealing with bin Laden after the bank collapsed. Many went on to work in banks and charities identified by the United States and others as supporting al Qaeda."
BCCI's Chief Operations Officer and the man the US Senate Intelligence Committee considered to be "the most powerful banker in the Middle East," Khalid bin Mahfouz, was let off with a fine and would become a major al Qaeda funder.
As the Washington Post report continued:
"The French report highlighted the role of Saudi banker Khalid bin Mahfouz, a former director of BCCI, whose sister is married to bin Laden. In 1995 bin Mahfouz paid a $225 million fine in a settlement with U.S. prosecutors for his role in the BCCI scandal and went on to serve as director of the National Commercial Bank, one of Saudi Arabia's largest….
"Saudi officials, at the urging of the United States, audited his bank and found that millions of dollars were being funneled through the bank to charities controlled by bin Laden, U.S. officials and the French document said…. U.S. intelligence officials said Washington pushed for the audit of bin Mahfouz's bank but was never allowed to question him.
"Saudi officials 'weren't willing to let us talk to him,' said one U.S. source with direct knowledge of events, 'and we asked at a very senior level.'"
The New Silk Route
One of the world's richest oil fields is on the eastern shore of the Caspian sea, just northeast of Afghanistan. The Caspian oil reserves are of top strategic importance in the quest to control the earth's remaining oil supply.
The U.S. government developed a policy called "The Strategy of the Silk Route." The strategy was designed to lock out Russia, China, and Iran from the oil in this region. This called for U.S. corporations to construct an oil pipeline running through Afghanistan.
Since the mid 1990s, a consortium of U.S. oil companies led by Unocal, which was later bought by Chevron, have been pursuing this goal. The plan was to build a Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline from Turkmenistan's natural gas fields to Pakistan.
Unocal partnered with Saudi Delta Oil, which was owned by al Qaeda funder Khalid bin Mahfouz, and they formed Central Asia Gas Pipeline, Ltd. (CentGas).
A feasibility study for the Central Asian pipeline project was performed by Enron. This study concluded that as long as the country was split among fighting warlords the pipeline could not be built. Stability was necessary for the $4.5 billion project, and the U.S. believed that the Taliban would impose the necessary order.
U.S. intelligence and Pakistan's ISI then continued the close relationship that they established through BCCI and agreed to funnel arms and funding to the Taliban in their war for control of Afghanistan.
Until 1999, U.S. taxpayers paid the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official. The U.S., Saudi and Pakistani alliance established within BCCI reunited to facilitate the rise of the Taliban.
The American oil interests at the heart of this pipeline deal took control of the White House on Jan. 20, 2001, when George W. Bush became president.
As previously mentioned, Enron was heavily involved in this oil deal. Enron CEO Ken Lay was an old Bush family friend and was Bush Jr.'s biggest campaign contributor.
Donald Rumsfeld, who became Secretary of Defense, was a large stockholder in Enron. Thomas White, former vice-chairman of Enron, became the Secretary of the Army. Condoleezza Rice, a former Chevron board member, became National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State.
A major benefactor of the CentGas deal was going to be Halliburton. Dick Cheney, who became Vice President, was Halliburton's CEO. Richard Armitage, who worked as a key lobbyist for Unocal, became Under Secretary of State. Hamid Karzai, who would later become Afghanistan's Prime Minister, was a top Unocal adviser.
Shortly after taking office, the Bush Administration was quickly losing faith in the Taliban's ability to control Afghanistan and be a reliable partner in the pipeline deal. James Baker, who was also a key BCCI player, having served as Treasury Secretary, Bush Sr.'s Secretary of State and Chief of Staff during BCCI's reign, was a leading player in developing the "Strategy of the Silk Route."
In April 2001, Baker and the Council on Foreign Relations demanded immediate action and publicly released a Task Force Report entitled, "Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century," by the James A. Baker III Institute.
They stressed the urgency of the pipeline project and openly called for the Bush Administration to "quickly facilitate higher exports of oil from the Caspian Basin region."
They reiterated the basic premise of the "Strategy of the Silk Route," stating, "the exports from oil discoveries in the Caspian Basin could be hastened if a secure, economical export route could be identified swiftly." That "export route," as previously planned, would need to run through Afghanistan and into Pakistan.
The tangled web of conflicts of interests within the Bush Administration, oil industry, Taliban and al Qaeda were concisely summed up by investigative reporter Loretta Napoleoni:
"The CentGas deal never came to fruition. The Taliban's inability to commit to any agreement, coupled with public recognition of the exploitive nature of their regime, contributed to its failure.
"For years, the Taliban skillfully conducted simultaneous negotiations with two potential oil companies: Argentinean Bridas [later bought by BP] and Unocal/CentGas. Both companies showered the Taliban with gifts and money, flying their delegations to the U.S. to win them over.
"On one occasion, a group of Taliban met high-ranking executives of Unocal in Texas. Parties, dinners and trips to the local shopping malls were organized. At the same time, Zalmay Khalizad, who was working for Unocal, lobbied the Clinton administration to 'engage' with the Taliban.
"The press reported some of these 'informal' meetings between U.S. officials and rulers of Afghanistan: 'Senior Taliban leaders attended a conference in Washington in mid-1996 and U.S. diplomats regularly traveled to Taliban headquarters,' wrote the Guardian….
"'The United States wants good ties [with the Taliban] but can't openly seek them while women are oppressed,' reported CNN. None the less, negotiations carried on more or less openly until 1998, when bin Laden's associates bombed U.S. embassies in Africa.
"Clinton launched cruise missiles at bin Laden's supposed whereabouts in Afghanistan, an act that convinced the oil lobby that, for the moment, the pipeline deal could not go ahead….
"Corporate America continued to do business with people who supported Islamist insurgency. The oil industry, in particular, continues to be run by a very small group of American and Saudi families with close financial relations. Among them were the Bush family, the bin Laden family and Osama bin Laden's Saudi sponsors. The ties among these people go back a long way….
"Naturally, as soon as George W. Bush was elected president, Unocal and BP-Amoco, which had in the meantime bought Bridas, the Argentinean rival, started once again to lobby the administration, among whom were several of their former employees.
"Unocal knew that Bush was ready to back them and resumed the consortium negotiations. In January 2001, it began discussions with the Taliban, backed by members of the Bush administration among whom was Under Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who had previously worked as a lobbyist for Unocal.
"The Taliban, for their part, employed as their PR officer in the U.S. Laila Helms, niece of Richard Helms, former director of the CIA and former US ambassador to Iran [and a BCCI player]. In March 2001, Helms succeeded in bringing Rahmatullah Hashami, Mullah Omar's adviser, to Washington…. As late as August 2001, meetings were held in Pakistan to discuss the pipeline business….
"While negotiations were underway, the U.S. was secretly making plans to invade Afghanistan. The Bush Administration and its oil sponsors were losing patience with the Taliban; they wanted to get the Central Asian gas pipeline going as soon as possible. The 'Strategy of the Silk Route' had been resumed….
"Paradoxically, 11 September provided the Washington with a casus belli to invade Afghanistan and establish a pro American government in the country. When, a few weeks after the attack, the leaders of the two Pakistani Islamist parties negotiated with Mullah Omar and bin Laden for the latter's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for the 11 September attacks, the U.S. refused the offer.
"Back in 1996, the Sudanese Minister of Defence, Major General Elfaith Erwa, had also offered to extradite Osama bin Laden, then resident in Sudan, to the U.S.. American officials declined the offer at that time as well. 'Just don't let him go to Somalia,' they added…. When Erwa disclosed that he was going to Afghanistan, the American answer was 'let him go'….
"In November 2001… Hamid Karzai was elected [Afghanistan's] prime minister…. Yet very few people remember that during the 1990's Karzai was involved in negotiations with the Taliban regime for the construction of a Central Asian gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan.
"At that time he was a top adviser and lobbyist for Unocal… In the early 1990's, thanks to his [Karzai's] excellent contacts with the ISI, he moved to the U.S. where he cooperated with the CIA and the ISI in supporting the Taliban's political adventure.
"President Bush's special envoy to the newly formed Afghanistan state is a man named Zalmay Khalilzad, another former employee of Unocal. In 1997, he produced a detailed analysis of the risks involved in the construction of the Central Asian gas pipeline.
"Khalilzad also worked as a lobbyist for Unocal and therefore knows Karzai very well. In the 1980s… President Reagan named Khalilzad special adviser to the State Department; it was thanks to his influence that the U.S. accelerated the shipment of military aid to the Mujahedin."
Yet another interesting conflict of interest: the Chairman of the 9/11 Commission investigation was Thomas Kean, who was also a key player in this pipeline deal as a director of Hess Corp., which was in a joint venture called Delta Oil, with Khalid Bin Mahfouz.
It is also important to mention that James Baker, who had a lead role in developing the "Strategy of the Silk Route" and BCCI operations, was hired by these same BCCI/Saudi/al Qaeda oil interests to defend them against lawsuits brought by families of 9/11 victims.
George H.W. Bush's role in the BCCI Affair cannot be overstated. Even George Bush Jr. had oil companies that were funded by these same BCCI/Saudi/al Qaeda interests.
To make matters even worse, the same person who played a pivotal role in covering-up and derailing investigations into BCCI at the Justice Department, was the person who was put in charge of the FBI on Sept. 4, 2001, Robert Mueller - and he is still running the FBI under President Barack Obama.
In summation, the CentGas oil consortium that connected all of these interests with Bush Jr.'s administration are undeniably suspect, at best. All of these players and interests are so incestuous that the heated debate over whether or not 9/11 was an inside job is almost irrelevant when you understand the history behind it.
Whether it was an attack by al Qaeda or a false flag covert intelligence operation to win public support and trillions of taxpayer dollars for the never-ending "War on Terror" and control of Central Asian oil is essentially a non-issue.
The main point, which cannot be legitimately argued, is that 9/11 would never have happened if it wasn't for an out-of-control intelligence apparatus, and we now know the people who were operating that intelligence apparatus.
All of the players involved were part of the same banking intelligence network known as BCCI. Al Qaeda and 9/11 were a direct outgrowth and evolution of BCCI intelligence operations. It was the same people, continuing to do what they had been doing all along, except this time their target was on U.S. soil.
And this same out-of-control intelligence apparatus was the biggest beneficiary of 9/11, having had their funding budgets more than doubled since the attack. Knowing how uncontrollable the intelligence world was leading up to 9/11, let's look again at this report from the Washington Post:
"The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work….
"After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine…. The U.S. intelligence budget is vast, publicly announced last year as $75 billion, 2 1/2 times the size it was on Sept. 10, 2001. But the figure doesn't include many military activities or domestic counterterrorism programs."
Road to World War III
The war for a pipeline to extract oil from the Caspian Sea is far from over. China, a country U.S. oil interests were determined to block out of the region, has been making moves to take control and has clearly established the upper hand.
In a TomDispatch report entitled, "Pipelineistan's New Silk Road," Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar reports:
"Future historians may well agree that the twenty-first century Silk Road first opened for business on Dec. 14, 2009. That was the day a crucial stretch of pipeline officially went into operation linking the fabulously energy-rich state of Turkmenistan (via Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan) to Xinjiang Province in China's far west….
"The bottom line is that, by 2013, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong will be cruising to ever more dizzying economic heights courtesy of natural gas supplied by the 1,833-kilometer-long Central Asia Pipeline, then projected to be operating at full capacity….
"When the Bush administration's armchair generals launched their Global War on Terror, this was not exactly what they had in mind.
"Meanwhile, in the New Great Game in Eurasia, China had the good sense not to… get bogged down in an infinite quagmire in Afghanistan. Instead, the Chinese simply made a direct commercial deal with Turkmenistan and, profiting from that country's disagreements with Moscow, built itself a pipeline which will provide much of the natural gas it needs.
"No wonder the Obama administration's Eurasian energy czar Richard Morningstar was forced to admit at a congressional hearing that the U.S. simply cannot compete with China when it comes to Central Asia's energy wealth. If only he had delivered the same message to the Pentagon….
"If China has so far proven masterly in the way it has played its cards in its Pipelineistan 'war', the U.S. hand — bypass Russia, elbow out China, isolate Iran — may soon be called for what it is: a bluff."
If you have wondered why so many US/NATO/private military troops have been deployed to the Af-Pak region, just consider that China, which shares a border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, has also begun moving troops into the region (it is also important to note that Iran is surrounded by Afghanistan and Iraq).
As a New York Times report stated: "[Pakistan] is handing over de facto control of the strategic Gilgit-Baltistan region in the northwest corner of disputed Kashmir to China.
"The entire Pakistan-occupied western portion of Kashmir stretching from Gilgit in the north to Azad (Free) Kashmir in the south is closed to the world, in contrast to the media access that India permits in the eastern part, where it is combating a Pakistan-backed insurgency.
"But reports from a variety of foreign intelligence sources… reveal two important new developments in Gilgit-Baltistan: a simmering rebellion against Pakistani rule and the influx of an estimated 7,000 to 11,000 soldiers of the [Chinese] People's Liberation Army.
"China wants a grip on the region to assure unfettered road and rail access to the Gulf through Pakistan. It takes 16 to 25 days for Chinese oil tankers to reach the Gulf. When high-speed rail and road links through Gilgit and Baltistan are completed, China will be able to transport cargo from Eastern China to the new Chinese-built Pakistani naval bases at Gwadar, Pasni and Ormara, just east of the Gulf, within 48 hours."
As the war in Afghanistan continues to escalate over the border into Pakistan, you can be assured that China, Russia and Iran will become more militarily involved in defense of their region's resources. Pakistan is already becoming increasingly hostile to an escalation of U.S. drone and NATO strikes within its borders, and have even begun to openly aid the Taliban by cutting off key NATO supply lines.
Pakistan has also recently deployed anti-aircraft missiles on its border with Afghanistan. Current intelligence leads one to conclude that the war will continue to expand further into Pakistan, which will lead to China and Iran becoming more involved in what is essentially a proxy war against US/NATO/private military forces.
The bottom line is that we have entered a period of major wars over declining resources. The Af-Pak operations are only initial moves in an attempt to control the earth's remaining oil supply.
Any talks of troop withdrawals from the Af-Pak region and Iraq are psychological operations. US/NATO/private military contractors are still in the process of building the world's largest military bases in this region, they are not going to abandon these newly constructed mega-bases.
These bases are designed to be operational and, as oil continues to become scarcer, they will be used to militarily control the remaining supply throughout this region.
Chris Martenson, a former Vice President at intelligence company SAIC, recently wrote the following in an analysis entitled, "Future Chaos: There Is No 'Plan B':"
"The future is likely to be more chaotic than you probably think. This was the primary conclusion that I came to after attending the most recent Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO) in Washington, DC in October, 2010….
"The impact of Peak Oil on markets, lifestyles, and even national solvency deserves our very highest attention…. Rear Admiral Lawrence Rice… presented the findings of the 2010 Joint Operating Environment (a forward-looking document examining the trends, contexts, and implications for future joint force commanders in the US military), which spends 76 pages summarizing the key trends and threats of the world….
"Peak Oil dominates the discussion. Among the conclusions (on page 29), we find this: 'By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 MBD.'"
The Joint Operating Environment report goes on to reveal:
"To meet climbing global requirements, OPEC will have to increase its output from 30 MBD to at least 50 MBD. Significantly, no OPEC nation, except perhaps Saudi Arabia, is investing sufficient sums in new technologies and recovery methods to achieve such growth. Some, like Venezuela and Russia, are actually exhausting their fields to cash in on the bonanza created by rapidly rising oil prices….
"A severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity. While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and developed worlds…."
Increasing OPEC output up to 50 MBD from the current level of 30 MBD is simply not possible, in fact it's absurd to even consider that as a possibility. Once you disregard that, as the report states, "A severe energy crunch is inevitable."
To make matters even worse, we are much more likely to see a steady decline in output. So war with Pakistan, China, Russia and Iran, along with continued military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, is increasingly probable.
This strategy becomes all the more apparent when you consider the ramp up in military exercises and drills around China, which has included a series of massive 86,000-troop war games throughout the Korean Peninsula.
Add in the recent record-setting $123 billion in weapons sales to Gulf nations, with Saudi Arabia getting $67.8 billion in weapons, which was the largest U.S. arms deal ever. Israel also recently purchased 20 F-35 fighter jets for $2.5 billion, and has recently conducted their largest ever joint military exercises with the U.S. [See Moves Upon the Grand Chessboard for more information.]
Now that we have a basic understanding of how much effort has gone into controlling Middle East and Caspian oil, and as demand for oil increases as production decreases, we can easily see how this is going to become an increasingly dangerous and hostile situation.
If we stay on this present course, the "Strategy of the Silk Route" leads us straight down the road to World War III.
War Racket
One of the reactions a person may have after learning this information, is to believe that perhaps these wars to control the earth's remaining oil supply are beneficial to the U.S. population. It may even eventually be a clever propaganda strategy to paint these wars as preserving the American way of life and our standard of living by obtaining these vital resources.
Coming to this belief would be tremendously naïve.
As recent history has proved, U.S. oil interests and the bankers behind them are global in nature and they don't have any loyalty to the American people. As their actions have clearly demonstrated, they use the oil, and the obscene profits obtained from it, for their own short-sighted personal gain, at the brutal expense of the overwhelming majority of humanity and at the extraordinary expense of the earth's ecosystem.
Americans are shielded from the enormous inhumanity of millions of maimed and dead bodies as a result of their addiction to power. If these wars continue to escalate, they will inevitably lead to more attacks on American soil.
The profits from these wars are also a primary driving factor in having them in the first place, and is a major incentive to keep them going. Billions of taxpayer dollars are thrown around in the "fog of war," in what is called a "free-fraud zone."
The military companies and the bankers behind them reap huge profits in the process. So fighting these highly profitable wars, for highly profitable resources, is the ultimate win-win situation, and the deliberately chosen business model for the Global Banking Intelligence Complex.
A point that clearly demonstrates the parasitic nature and pure insanity of this: the world's #1 polluter and consumer of oil is the US/NATO/private military machine. So while they so desperately fight for oil, they are burning up significant amounts of it in the process.
The fact that the average American never gets the information presented in this report via mainstream media proves how tightly controlled the corporate media is. It also clearly demonstrates the blatant fact that the Global Banking Cartel doesn't want American citizens to have even a basic understanding of geo-strategic interests and how power really functions.
Above all, the American public must be kept in its place, as the cartel emphatically believes that they are the kings and we are the serfs, and it is none of our business how they conduct themselves.
If you are not already a multi-millionaire or billionaire, you have now been marked for either servitude or slow death. That is a very harsh truth, but in the new world of declining resources, looted economies and environmental upheaval, this is the unfortunate reality of the situation.
Until the American public can wake up to this new reality, turn off the television and fight back, our living standards will continue to decline at an increasing rate.
Source: Consortium News
Rebel Newsflash: A Perjurer on the US Supreme Court (plus 99 more items) |  |
| A Perjurer on the US Supreme Court Posted: 28 Oct 2010 01:31 AM PDT  In late 1998, when the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying under oath about a sexual affair, many on the Right insisted that the issue wasn't the sex but the perjury. They are now confronted with a parallel case in which U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas quite clearly perjured himself to get his seat on the bench. On Friday, former federal prosecutor Lillian McEwen, one of Thomas's girlfriends in the 1980s, broke a long silence and confirmed that Thomas did engage in sexual harassment of women at work and did discuss pornography in the way that Anita Hill and other women described to the Senate during Thomas's confirmation hearings in 1991.  |
| Mystery of American Political Madness Posted: 28 Oct 2010 01:31 AM PDT  Your recent e-mail, wondering "what the f--- is going on" these days, questioning whether we Americans have taken "more than your usual amount of stupid pills," is well deserving of a considered response. How is it possible, you ask, that the very rightwing party whose policies helped create the current mess may very well take control of the House of Representatives and conceivably the Senate as well, in the upcoming November elections? "Is the U.S.A. experiencing some kind of death wish? Are we in Europe witnessing the paroxysms of a failing democracy, and a failing empire? Will the flat-Earth Know Nothings really take over in America?"  |
| The Financial Puzzle Behind 9/11 Posted: 28 Oct 2010 01:31 AM PDT  During the 1980s and early '90s, the CIA worked in partnership with BCCI in what was, at the time, the agency's largest covert operation ever, pumping an estimated $10 billion into funding the Afghan mujahedeen. Through this operation, Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network was formed. Bin Laden had accounts in BCCI and ran CIA/BCCI-funded camps. [For more on that history of how key BCCI players kept operating after the bank was finally shut down, click here.] In Modern Jihad:Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks, investigative reporter Loretta Napoleoni described the origins of the al Qaeda network:  |
| Is Israel Poisoning the Peace Talks? Posted: 28 Oct 2010 01:31 AM PDT  Michael Oren is the Israeli ambassador to the United States. This means he stands in a line of foreign diplomats who are often quite out of the ordinary. For one thing they may well be ex-Americans. Oren (nee Bornstein) was born in upstate New York and grew up in West Orange, New Jersey. He switched countries in 1979.  |
| A Clash Over 'Lesser-Evil' Voting Posted: 28 Oct 2010 01:31 AM PDT It seems I upset a lot of people with my recent article looking at the four previous times in modern U.S. politics when many on the Left chose to punish the Democrats by casting ballots for third parties or not voting, a tactic under consideration again this year. My hope had been to break through the calcified debate over whether it's better to vote for "the lesser evil" Democrat or let the Republicans and their increasingly right-wing agenda prevail. Instead of engaging in that longstanding argument, I thought it might be helpful to see if the "teach-the-Dems-a-lesson" approach had worked in a practical sense.  |
| Tea Party Thuggery as Elections Near Posted: 28 Oct 2010 01:31 AM PDT  One of the most memorable moments in television coverage of American politics came during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. Out on the streets, anti-Vietnam war demonstrations were attacked viciously by law enforcement officials in what later was described in an official report as "a police riot." Inside the convention hall, tightly controlled by the political machine of the city's notorious Mayor Richard J. Daley, CBS correspondent Dan Rather was attempting to interview a delegate from Georgia who was being removed from the floor by men in suits without ID badges.  |
| Obama's Feckless Afghan Escalation Posted: 28 Oct 2010 01:31 AM PDT 
The talk in Washington of late has been Bob Woodward's book Obama's Wars. The books are piled in the front of every bookstore in town, and people are whispering in the usual "inside baseball" way, about who in the Washington security bureaucracies dissed whom to Woodward. If it weren't for the latest salacious bureau-gossip, the book would be rather boring — and tragic. Boring, not because the issues are uninteresting or because Woodward is a bad writer, but because the author records a dysfunctional White House internal decision-making process in which meeting after meeting features the same reasonable questions about the U.S. war in Afghanistan but in which nobody ever has very good answers to them.
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| California Voters Take on the Drug War Posted: 28 Oct 2010 01:31 AM PDT  The great divide between politicians and the people is showing itself in California where polls show the voters support Proposition 19 and where the mainstream politicians mostly oppose it. To many Americans, there are few policies more bankrupt than the prohibition on marijuana use, a recognition that a blue-ribbon panel reached four decades ago, urging an emphasis on drug education rather than incarceration.  |
| Meg Whitman Spends $163 million to Lose the California Election Posted: 28 Oct 2010 01:30 AM PDT  After defeating Steve Poizner in the Republican primary, it looked as though Meg Whitman would simply steamroll the Democrat candidate. Meg Whitman had been the CEO of e-Bay and became a billionaire in the process. The idea of a successful businesswoman running California had a strong appeal, but an over-managed campaign by inept advisers and Whitman's inability to take a stand on key issues of the greatest importance to California doomed her campaign to failure. The individual running against Meg Whitman is none other than aging hippie retread, Jerry Brown, the same bungler who allowed California state workers to unionize, which led to salary and pension deals, that are helping to drive California toward bankruptcy. You'd think Whitman might have mentioned that in a few commercials, but her dream team of "genius" political advisers either didn't think it was important or they were afraid of offending the union members.  |
| Posted: 27 Oct 2010 11:00 PM PDT  Some have expressed hopes that the tea partiers, many of whom grew out of the Ron Paul movement, will bring about a shift away from American imperialism through their demands for smaller, cheaper, less intrusive, and more accountable government. But it ain't necessarily so. The tea partiers generally fail to understand that the indispensable element in the explosive growth of big government over the past ten years has been Washington's failure to craft a foreign and security policy that is commensurate with the nation's resources and proportional to the actual level of threat that exists in the world. This results in the tea partiers overwhelmingly supporting an aggressive security policy even though they must know that leaving the Pentagon budget untouched and untouchable guarantees deficit spending and continued growth of the parts of government that are allegedly committed to "keeping us free."
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| As Israel fires on activists, BDS movement claims victories Posted: 27 Oct 2010 06:45 PM PDT  At least fifteen Palestinians were injured in the occupied West Bank village of Nabi Saleh on Friday, 22 October, when Israeli forces opened fire at a demonstration against the wall and ongoing land confiscation. Villagers "marched alongside Israeli and international supporters towards the village lands, where Israel is building the wall," the Palestinian News Network (PNN) reported. "Soldiers fired rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas at them, injuring 15 civilians, one critically. Troops also fired tear gas into homes, burning three houses. Soldiers took a fourth house and told the owner they would use it as a military post for 45 days" ("Fifteen injured, Three Homes Burned In Nabi Saleh Village," 22 October 2010).  |
| New Scandal Rocks Zionist Federation Posted: 27 Oct 2010 06:27 PM PDT  The latest scandal to hit a self-confessed pro-Israeli organization in South Africa, the SA Zionist Federation, [SAZF] is likely to invigorate the 'Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions' [BDS] campaign against Israel and its affiliates. This remarkable turn of events involves a Johannesburg-based bag manufacturing company, Saley's Travel Goods, who refused to supply the SAZF with goods on the grounds that it did not want to "aid and abet" organizations responsible for "crimes against humanity".  |
| Morbid Theater: Benjamin Netanyahu's Israel Posted: 27 Oct 2010 06:19 PM PDT  Admittedly, I am a relative newcomer to this discussion, which is not the same thing as saying that I am an ignorant one, as one Israeli correspondent has implied, saying that I have 'a huge anti-Israeli bias.' If by that he means that I question the honesty and aims of Israel's government in its reading of history and its dealings with its Palestinian neighbors and citizens, then I stand guilty as charged. I have followed this conflict and discussion about it for years. The difference between 'then' and 'now' is that I poke around and ask questions, such as: What compelled Netanyahu to quash the recent peace talks with the Palestinians? In spite of what Mr. Netanyahu says in photo ops, his intentions have been quite consistent from the beginning. His address to the United Nations in September 2009 illustrates my point, and illustrates it, as the saying goes, "in spades."  |
| How Do Fascists Creep into Power? Posted: 27 Oct 2010 06:19 PM PDT  Uri Avneri's always powerful observations raise the most profound question. How can it happen, the lure of Fascism that oozes into the fabric of societies with the promise of a better life? There are always those who are not vulnerable to the language of temptation, the racist rhetoric that tears a society apart. These heroes become freedom fighters. An example is Hans Lebrecht, my father's first cousin who was an active resistance fighter in World War 11, a noted Communist activist and supporter and writer for Gush Shalom. He was my mentor and beloved friend. Now in his 90's he resides at Kibbutz Beit-Oren. I cannot visit him for I am not allowed to return to Israel because I have dissented against their injustice to Palestinians. Here is a still timely quote from "JewishFriends of Palestine Gateway, by Hans. "I am sorry and upset that now, as an active member of the CP and the progressive peace camp in Israel, I still have to fight fascism. I am currently a member of the leading bureau of the International Federation of Resistance Fighters. The fight against neofascism in Europe and throughout the capitalist world continues. This includes against the fascist hoodlums in Israel who attempt to torpedo the peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians."  |
| Posted: 27 Oct 2010 05:54 PM PDT  It is hard to accept the statements of the Christian Socialist Party leader in Germany, Horst Seehofer, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, about the death of multiculturalism. As state leader Merkel added feebly that there is a place for Muslims in Germany, perhaps because from her office in the center of Berlin she sees countless Germans of Turkish origin, whose parents were labor migrants.  |
| Posted: 27 Oct 2010 05:54 PM PDT  Think of a town in Austria. Or perhaps France. A mountainous, ancient major district town, with a college situated in the middle of it, whose students include quite a few Jews. The town priest calls an "emergency meeting," funded by the government and held in the municipal cultural center, attended by 400 sympathetic citizens, including 18 priests from the area, calling for a ban on renting apartments to Jewish students.  |
| Israel and Europe are still racing toward racism Posted: 27 Oct 2010 05:54 PM PDT  It is hard to accept the statements of the Christian Socialist Party leader in Germany, Horst Seehofer, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, about the death of multiculturalism. As state leader Merkel added feebly that there is a place for Muslims in Germany, perhaps because from her office in the center of Berlin she sees countless Germans of Turkish origin, whose parents were labor migrants.  |
| Has Israel become a third-world country? Posted: 27 Oct 2010 05:54 PM PDT  Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi doesn't like questions. He doesn't like questions from the prime minister, the defense minister or state commissions of inquiry. Nor does he like them from the media. The outgoing Israel Defense Forces chief of staff doesn't like questions from any monitor, elected official or democratic entity. But in the weeks to come, both State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss and the Turkel Committee investigating the naval raid on the Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla will finally force Ashkenazi to answer a few questions. Some of those answers could even prove decisive.  |
| Posted: 27 Oct 2010 05:14 PM PDT  Despite the commendable efforts of the whistleblower website WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange to expose the truth about the Iraq war in a responsible manner - that not only would not endanger lives but aim ultimately to save millions of lives, in addition to seeking justice for the countless number of lives already lost - some media outlets are determined to mislead the public about the lessons to be learned from the war. A number of media outlets, which are entrusted to explain to the public the implications of the leaked raw data, seem to go out of their way to make the best of a bad situation (for Pentagon officials) and derail the essence of the message that comes out from these classified documents. They are desperate to downplay the scandalous actions perpetrated by the American forces with the green lights that go high up the chain of command, and try to divert the focus on the Iraqi side alone despite the following...  |
| Montreal activists launch campus boycott campaign Posted: 27 Oct 2010 04:47 PM PDT  As a boycott, divestment and sanctions conference was convened in Montreal last week, activists launched a boycott campaign at two city universities. A group of students, professors and staff from Concordia and McGill universities are calling on the schools cut ties with the Israeli Institute of Technology, more commonly referred to as Technion University. A report compiled by the group says that the links between Concordia, McGill and Technion universities "serve to normalize the Israeli state's policies of institutionalized oppression and should be of serious concern to students, faculty and all members of McGill and Concordia's campus community."  |
| Press TV's Kaneez Fatima talks to Chip Pitts on US War in Afghanistan Posted: 27 Oct 2010 04:19 PM PDT
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| OECD and Israel's "tourist" colonization of Syria's Golan Posted: 27 Oct 2010 03:31 PM PDT  On 20 and 21 October, the 86th session of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) tourism committee was held in Jerusalem. Leading up to the conference, there was conjecture on how the member countries in attendance would handle Israel's tourism policies regarding the occupied territories: the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights. The Palestine Liberation Organization called on countries to boycott the meeting, saying that it served to condone Israel's illegal annexation of Jerusalem. The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee also called on the OECD to relocate the conference.  |
| Debunking pro-Israeli arguments against boycott Posted: 27 Oct 2010 03:05 PM PDT  While the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against apartheid Israel continues to grow, its opponents continue to resort to the same old canards in trying to defend Israel. In a Jerusalem Post article published on 17 October 2010, columnist Hannah Brown gives us a good example of some of the Israeli talking points ("British director Mike Leigh cancels Israel visit". In her concluding paragraph she writes: "[The] irony is that Israel is virtually the only country in the world that is being boycotted by the filmmaking community. Iranian filmmakers are lauded the world over and no one accuses them of having any complicity with a government that shoots pro-democracy protesters. Nor do directors who disagree with the US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan see a need to skip the New York Film Festival, for example."  |
| Posted: 27 Oct 2010 12:36 PM PDT
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| Conway Coverup: Rand Paul Opponent Involved in Obstruction of Justice Posted: 27 Oct 2010 12:17 PM PDT  Forget the corporate media dust-up over a Rand Paul supporter attacking a MoveOn.org activist. That incident pales in comparison to a story about the brother of Paul's opponent in the race for Kentucky's Senate seat, Jack Conway. On Saturday, the Louisville Courier-Journal published a story about Conway's brother, Matthew, who resigned from the Jefferson County, Kentucky, attorney's office to enter private practice after he was tipped off by Louisville narcotics detectives twice in the past two years that he was under investigation for possible drug use or trafficking. Matthew C. Conway was an assistant commonwealth's attorney, a position he still holds, when detectives tipped him off on a second drug-related investigation.  |
| New Footage Implodes 9/11 Cover-up Posted: 27 Oct 2010 12:14 PM PDT  An intriguing video has appeared on You Tube that appears to show a FDNY film crew being interviewed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks by the the director of the FBI's New York office, who has suspicions that one of the World Trade Center towers took a "secondary hit" before collapsing. The video appears to be part of NIST's recent FOIA releases and therefore has not been seen before now.  |
| Gaza's ancient treasures threatened Posted: 27 Oct 2010 11:35 AM PDT
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| Aussie Trades Unionist Exposes 9/11 Cover-up Posted: 27 Oct 2010 11:14 AM PDT
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| Wednesday: 1 US Soldier, 12 Iraqis Killed; 33 Iraqis Wounded Posted: 27 Oct 2010 11:06 AM PDT  Tariq Aziz remained the focus of news as his death sentence, considered unfair by many, could further stall the process of government formation, the number two story in Iraq today. The two topics overshadowed a return of Tony Blair to the Chilcot inquiry and a possible delay in the national census. At least 12 Iraqis were killed in new violence. Another 33 were wounded. Also, a sniper wounded a U.S. soldier in Amara, and the Dept. of Defense announced the non-combat death of a U.S. soldier three days ago in Baghdad.  |
| Polish Prosecutor Will Investigate Torture Of Guantánamo Prisoner Posted: 27 Oct 2010 10:39 AM PDT  NEW YORK – The Polish prosecutor will investigate the detention and torture of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri at a black site in Poland after he was kidnapped and transported there by the CIA. This is the first time an extraordinary rendition victim's claims have been recognized in an official investigation in Poland. In response to the announcement, the American Civil Liberties Union called for accountability in the U.S. for top-level officials who may have known about and authorized torture, and for cooperation with the Polish prosecutor in securing documents and witnesses in the ongoing investigation.  |
| Domination by insects, the real 'New World Order' Posted: 27 Oct 2010 10:39 AM PDT  The age of openness and freedom we were promised is a lie, we live in darkness, censorship, we live under dictatorship as pure as any Orwell could have imagined. The slaves of slaves tell other slaves they aren't slaves. We have redefined freedom, we have redefined human endeavor by based on a model that even insects would reject, the instincts for survival of the hive overriding the drive toward mindless self destruction. The institutions developed during the Renaissance and Age of Reason, the great universities, the press, the dissent of science and the war on religious hypocrisy are now only a memory. Rabbi's call for enslavement of mankind under a Jewish "master race," preachers in America reach millions with messages of hate, fear and destruction and the ignorant and cynical of Islam's dregs, powered by petro-dollars spew hatred and dogma to deflect yearnings for freedom and progress.  |
| Wikileaks Confirm Western Culture of Torture & Lies Posted: 27 Oct 2010 10:18 AM PDT  Hosting by WikiLeaks on its website some 391,832 US military messages documenting actions and reports on Iraq over the period 2004-2009,can be divided in five heads: Reliance on private contractors aka mercenaries ; the so-called "surge" of 30,000 additional US troops; the deaths of Iraqi civilians - killed mostly by other Iraqis, but also by the US; a litany of prisoner abuse by Iraqis - which US officials ignored - even more lurid than the infamous photographs of torture from Abu Ghraib prison in 2004; and the so called "aggressive" intervention of Iran's military providing "weapons, training and sanctuary" to Shia combatants.  |
| Why 9-11 Truth Has Won – The Coming of the Flood Posted: 27 Oct 2010 10:15 AM PDT  I recently wrote in MWC News arguing the case for Why 9-11 Truth Has Won, due primarily to the weight of irrefutable scientific proof of the two key elements that evidence controlled demolition of the three WTC Towers – free fall collapse and the presence of thermite, explaining the total absence of structural resistance. For this and for other reasons the successful demand by the 9-11 Truth Movement and others for a new, wider, proper investigation is only a matter of time. The flood would come. The recent political squabble in Australia represents further breaching of the dam wall that will bring that flood.  |
| George Soros: Legalize Marijuana Posted: 27 Oct 2010 10:09 AM PDT  Gazillionaire hedge fund swami and globalist George Soros wants to legalize weed. He has bankrolled three initiatives to change drug laws in California and has endorsed the marijuana legalization initiative known as Proposition 19. Michael Vachon, a Soros worker bee, said the one-worlder "plans to make a significant contribution" to Prop 19 and possibly help make it so, according to the Los Angeles Times. Anybody with two remotely active brain cells to rub together knows that marijuana prohibition is absurd. George Soros, however, is not a Libertarian or an old hippie nostalgic for the Haight Ashbury days.  |
| Posted: 27 Oct 2010 10:04 AM PDT
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| The Geopolitical Agenda behind the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Posted: 27 Oct 2010 09:36 AM PDT  The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo was clearly no coincidence of events. Rather it must be understood in my view as a calculated part of a long-term strategy, not from a few members of the Norwegian Parliament, but from the leading elite circles of the world's hegemonic power, the United States, to break China's stride to become a sovereign and leading world economic factor. From their point of view, China must be "cut down to size." The Nobel Peace Prize's world media theater is a calculated part of this strategy - trying to make China "lose face" in the eyes of the rest of the world. That is all part of an orchestrated deeper game, using "human rights," and a web of NGOs and organizations that Washington controls directly or indirectly, as a weapon of Washington geopolitics.  |
| Israel's Racist Polices in Practice: News from the Other Front Posted: 27 Oct 2010 08:49 AM PDT  Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman pressured Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman. Yaakov Neeman pressured Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Binyamin Netanyhu pressured Defence Minister Ehud Barak. Ehud Barak pressured the handful of Knesset members from the Labour party. And all of this because of racist Liberman, the fascist! Really? Everything because of Liberman?  |
| Think Soros Leaks RINO Neocon Takeover Doc Posted: 27 Oct 2010 07:14 AM PDT  One faction of globalist tools outing another faction of globalist tools. That's how we play politics in America today. Think Progress — which should be called Think Soros because it is funded by George Soros — has released a private correspondence sent out by Charles Koch of Koch Industries. The memo has the itinerary of a private meeting to be held at an exclusive hotel in Aspen attached.  |
| Inside Story - Global corruption Posted: 27 Oct 2010 07:11 AM PDT
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| Posted: 27 Oct 2010 07:10 AM PDT  The way that the media dealt with this news item illustrates the skill involved in passing-off such a threatening piece of news in a way in which very little interest was stirred-up, even among the potential victims of US-Israeli strategic cooperation. In truth, the people of the Middle East and their leaders should now be able to see more clearly that the US can never be an honest broker on Middle East affairs in general, let alone the Israel-Palestine conflict; it will never be able to achieve a just and comprehensive peace as long as it offers such support to one side in the conflict, namely Israel. The latest "strategic planning" also goes some way towards explaining why the so-called peace process has failed over the past twenty years. Successive US administrations are held hostage by the strategic dialogue with the occupying power and pretend to be a broker for peace. Meanwhile, the reality is that the US sustains the state of Israel in every possible way as a strategic partner; militarily, politically and economically. In such a scenario, Palestinian lives and neighbouring countries face military occupation, war and insecurity in order to preserve Israel's military supremacy.  |
| Posted: 27 Oct 2010 06:20 AM PDT
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| New photographs reveal IDF's "purity of arms" claim to be a sick joke Posted: 27 Oct 2010 05:15 AM PDT  These images speak volumes about the prevalent culture in the Israeli army. It is quite obvious that the Israeli soldiers in the photographs do not appear to regard their Palestinian victims as human beings. They see nothing wrong with what they are doing to the Palestinians; their suffering is something to be savoured; just check the title of Abergil's Facebook page and the grinning faces of the soldiers. The Israelis have always claimed that their army is the most moral in the world; "Purity of arms" is a treasured part of Israeli Defence Forces culture. But the reality is far from that; the IDF is characterised by an attitude of sadistic racism. The Palestinians have been completely dehumanised and harming them is seen as a commendable act. Early in 2009, a similar event revealed the depths to which the soldiers of "the most moral army in the world" could plumb, although it attracted less media coverage. This was a set of T-shirts printed and worn by Israeli soldiers; one showed a pregnant Palestinian woman in the crosshairs of a gun-sight with the caption "One Shot, Two Kills". Others displayed the same murderous sentiment in more obscene ways, such as the T-shirt showing a Palestinian woman weeping at the grave of her dead son. Once again, the figure was in the crosshairs of a gun-sight and this time the caption read, "Better use Durex". It is difficult to think of any other society, except perhaps 1930s Nazi Germany, where opinions like this are condoned and spoken of openly.  |
| Tariq Aziz: villain or victim? Posted: 27 Oct 2010 03:02 AM PDT  So what really lies behind the decision by Iraq's high tribunal to pass a death sentence on Tariq Aziz, long serving Iraqi foreign minister and number two to Saddam Hussein? The decision has caused shock waves around the World, largely because the sentence has the feel of vengeance to it. The Iraqi High Tribunal took what must be a highly unusual step in effectively rescinding the earlier judgments against him. For Tariq Aziz's twenty seven year sentence has effectively been reduced to a matter of months by his death sentence. Aziz has now been found guilty of "the persecution of Islamic parties", whose leaders were assassinated, imprisoned or forced into exile. One of Saddam's main targets was – according to the high tribunal - the Islamic Dawa party of current Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite Muslim. Presumably there was enough proof to show that Tariq Aziz was involved with this persecution as well, and if so we can be fairly certain that retribution has indeed played a part in his death sentence. How ironic then that many Western Governments seemed so content for Saddam's regime to contain Islamic parties at the time. But don't hold your breath; it seems fairly unlikely that there will be calls for clemency from Washington and London.  |
| US Midterm Elections & Economy Posted: 27 Oct 2010 12:02 AM PDT
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| The Remaining Option for the Palestinians Posted: 26 Oct 2010 08:52 PM PDT  Over 70 years ago, agitating European Zionist leaders were offered by Britain, who then ruled Palestine, about 20 percent of the Arab country to establish a state there, a partition they accepted in principle but then demanded more land. This offer was made behind Palestinians backs. Ten years later, the United Nations approved the partition plan which gave Palestinian Jews 55 percent of the country, although they hardly owned five percent of the land, while the Palestinian Arabs would retain 45 percent. The Palestinians, backed by the Arab states, rejected the plan and resolved to win it back.
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| The Chosen Peoples – Book Review Posted: 26 Oct 2010 06:16 PM PDT  A work on studying chosen peoples needs to be approached with some kind of trepidation when one knows that they themselves are not chosen. If for nothing else, it is impossible to rationally argue against faith in biblical 'chosenness.' However, if one accepts the underlying premise that other people believe in their being chosen then the idea of chosenness can be worked with. This appears to be what the authors of this new book "The Chosen Peoples" attempt to examine.  |
| ADL's Top US Anti-Israeli Groups Posted: 26 Oct 2010 06:11 PM PDT  Founded by B'nai B'rith in 1913, its stated mission is "to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all," calling itself "the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency, (fighting) anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry...." In fact, Abraham Foxman, its national director, uses high-mindedness and unfounded anti-semitism hysteria as cover for backing Jewish supremacy and the right of Israelis over Arabs, including by occupation and belligerently enforced apartheid.  |
| Want to weaken Hamas? Open Gaza's gates Posted: 26 Oct 2010 06:10 PM PDT  Do you really want to weaken Hamas? Surprise it. Go back and open Gaza's gates - to ordinary human movement, not just to cherries, shavers and a handful of pious Muslims who manage to wend their way past the Egyptian bureaucracy. Open the Erez checkpoint. Then you'll see how Gazans yearn for life.  |
| Will Fatah choose reconciliation or collaboration? Posted: 26 Oct 2010 02:38 PM PDT 
In the wake of the first Palestinian intifada, there were confrontations between Hamas and Fatah supporters over the leadership of the intifada. Fatah refused to admit that a new Islamic movement was rising from within the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and taking part in leading the struggle, which Fatah had been leading for decades from neighboring countries. After Fatah was forced to leave Jordan and Lebanon, it recognized that the next stage of the Palestinian struggle would take place inside the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and therefore tried to diminish Hamas's influence in the area.  |
| Tuesday: 20 Iraqis Killed, 32 Wounded Posted: 26 Oct 2010 12:11 PM PDT At least 20 Iraqis were killed and 32 more were wounded in a series of attacks in the north. Among them was a jewelry heist in Kirkuk. Meanwhile, Tariq Aziz has been sentenced to death for his role in "persecuting Shi'ites" during the Saddam era. Iraq's former foreign minister and Saddam aide, Tariq Aziz, has been sentenced to death for "persecuting Shi'ites" and has 30 days to appeal the verdict. His lawyer accused the government of handing down the sentence to divert attention from Wikileaks revelations of prisoner abuse. Meanwhile, his family has been vocal about their fears for Aziz since he was transferred to Iraqi custody last summer and believe Aziz to be a victim of revenge. Because Aziz is a Christian, the Vatican has called for the execution to be halted for the sake of reconciliation and may try to intervene diplomatically.  |
| China's rise worries neighbours Posted: 26 Oct 2010 09:18 AM PDT  China's imperious behaviour in recent territorial spats with its edgy neighbours has touched a raw nerve. Anxiety about its intentions and the future outlook loom large asf leaders of the 16-nation East Asia Summit gather this weekend in Hanoi, Vietnam's capital, to discuss regional matters. As tensions up north between Beijing and Tokyo show few signs of abating, many are voicing fears that China's surpassing of Japan as the world's second largest economy has put into fast forward its ambitions about fulfilling its dream of unification through reclaiming lost territories.  |
| Online privacy: digitally exposed Posted: 26 Oct 2010 08:59 AM PDT  In January 2010, an Irish teenager named Phoebe Prince, whose family had recently settled in the United States, took her own life after months of relentless bullying, both online and off. Nine students were charged on various accounts for the harassment that lead to Prince's suicide, and as a result, the state of Massachusetts has enacted a new bill to deal with online and offline bullying.
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| Schopenhauer and the Perception of the Real or Surreal Postmodernity (Part I) Posted: 26 Oct 2010 07:06 AM PDT There is a danger in interpreting the text of some long gone author, let alone of some heavyweight philosopher, such as Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860). The interpreter tends to look at parts of the author's prose that may best suit his own conclusions, while avoiding parts that other critics may find more relevant, and which the interpreter may consider either incomprehensible or irrelevant. This is true for Schopenhauer in so far as he deals in his multilayered work with diverse subject matters, ranging from the theories of knowledge, to the role of women, sex, eugenics, religion, etc., while offering aphoristic formulas on how to live a more or less liveable life. Moreover, in his entire work Schopenhauer deals extensively with the perception of objective reality, our self-perception, and how our self-perception reflects itself in the perception of the Other, for instance in the mind of my political foe or friend. It's no wonder that when Schopenhauer is read along with some postmodern authors, his work can retrospectively yield some groundbreaking insights, of which even he was not aware. |
| 9/11: The Media Ignores Evidence of WTC Explosives Posted: 26 Oct 2010 06:44 AM PDT  Persuasive evidence exists (see Christopher Ketcham's "High-Fivers and Art Student Spies") that Israeli intelligence was aware of the 9/11 plot well in advance. Not only were Israeli agents found to be tracking alleged Muslim plotters, there was "intense political pressure apparently ... brought to bear" to release the five Israeli spies caught filming the event, without any acknowledgment of foreknowledge on their part. Congress never investigated the incident. Nor was there an investigation of the Israeli art students, trained in military intelligence, who allegedly "attempted to form friendships with [New York] federal employees, photograph their offices, tap their phone lines and infiltrate their databases" in 2001, as reported by Nathan Guttman of Ha'aretz.  |
| Torture Under Obama - Iraq War Logs Posted: 26 Oct 2010 06:33 AM PDT
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| Posted: 26 Oct 2010 06:23 AM PDT
Firstly, the past 6 White House administrations (i.e. George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama) have all been instrumental in the 9/11 cover-up. Although George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton occupied the White House prior to 2001, their actions before and after leaving the White House have been essential to the cover-up.  |
| Jewish Website In Israel Courageously Exposes Judaism! Posted: 26 Oct 2010 01:38 AM PDT  My recent video on Jewish extremism has garnered a lot of interest. The following is an article titled Gentiles in Halacha from the Daat Emet Website in Israel. Daat Emet is a secular site written by Jews who reject the Jewish Supremacism that forms the core of Judaism. In Daat Emet you will find validated almost all my assertions about Jewish supremacism that I have made in my articles on Davidduke.com, in my books, and in my many lectures around the world. For pointing out the extreme ethnic hate and supremacist nature of Judaism I am often incorrectly condemned and slandered as anti-Semitic. Yet, the extreme hatred and body of Jewish law against Gentiles (and also against Jewish women) is almost completely unknown to most Gentiles as the Jewish-dominated media keeps people in complete ignorance of Jewish extremism. Interestingly, the same press that suppresses awareness of Jewish extremism constantly tells the world about the dangers of Muslim extremism.  |
| WikiLeaks Paints Grim Picture of Iraqi Civilian Casualties Posted: 25 Oct 2010 11:00 PM PDT  Two revelations await the reader of the WikiLeaks section dealing with civilian deaths in the Iraq War: Iraqis are responsible for most of these deaths, and the number of total civilian casualties is substantially higher than has been previously reported. There were numerous gruesome but seemingly isolated events that caught the interest and attention of the press and the public. For example, on Aug. 31, 2005, more than 950 people were killed in a stampede on a bridge in Baghdad, after the crowd had been panicked by a number of earlier attacks. And on Aug. 14, 2007, in a rural area near the Syrian border, truck bombs murdered more than 500 Iraqis.  |
| Posted: 25 Oct 2010 11:00 PM PDT  The New York Times continues to serve as headquarters of the Pentagon's bull feather merchant marines. The headline of an Oct. 20 Times piece by Carlotta Gall on the Kandahar offensive read "Coalition Forces Routing Taliban in Key Afghan Region." Nothing in the text of the piece supported the conclusion that anything remotely like a "rout" is taking place.  |
| Leaked Report, New Iraqi Alignment Reveal US War Failure Posted: 25 Oct 2010 11:00 PM PDT  A newly released WikiLeaks document on Iraq and the new political alignment between Moqtada al-Sadr and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki both provide fresh evidence that Gen. David Petraeus's war against Shi'ite militias in 2007-2008 was a futile exercise. The WikiLeaks document is an intelligence report identifying the Shi'ite commander who Petraeus said was the Iranian-backed rogue militia leader behind the kidnapping and killing of five U.S. troops in Karbala in January 2007. In fact, according to the leaked document, it was a Mahdi Army commander.  |
| Posted: 25 Oct 2010 11:00 PM PDT  Mad Men, the dynamic American Movie Classics original series about the daily mash and machinations of Madison Avenue circa 1960, has lamentably finished its fourth season. But who needs TV when we have our own mass media manipulation – E Ring style – going on right here in 2010? While he might not have the suave and savvy of Donald Draper or the pluck and passion of Peggy Olsen, Gen. David Petraeus knows how to design and deliver one hell of an advertising campaign – remember, he sold not only the Surge in Iraq, but the so-called success of that Surge, to a public and a Congress largely disenchanted with the war to begin with. Now he is working his huckster charms once again – this time on spinning the progress and reconciliation narrative in Afghanistan.  |
| More Iraqi Prison Abuses Exposed on WikiLeaks Posted: 25 Oct 2010 11:00 PM PDT The publication of a mother lode of secret field reports from the Iraq War is shining a bright light on heretofore unknown or underreported suspicions about the power of private security contractors and the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by their fellow Iraqis, often with their U.S. military counterparts "turning a blind eye." The release of the 392,832 documents by WikiLeaks – the same Web site responsible for the recent release of 77,000 secret reports covering six years of the Afghanistan War – drew an immediate response from the Pentagon, as well as efforts by unfriendly nations to paint the U.S. military in the most gruesome possible light.  |
| Posted: 25 Oct 2010 10:56 PM PDT  Here we are—some years after Don't give up—just one more try  |
| Palestinians Have the Right to Resist Occupation Posted: 25 Oct 2010 06:45 PM PDT  As a Western supporter (non Muslim/Arab) of the Palestinian cause, I have always find it rather difficult to talk (let alone to advocate) about how best Palestinians can resist occupation, especially when this occupation is usually extremely violent and genocidal at times. Ramzy Baroud's self-restrained criticism of Western and some other willing peace teachers, has prompted me to introduce a different point of view, which probably is much more common amongst Westerners than the Palestinians themselves would believe, although the mainstream media, as it happens with many other issues, have successfully managed to keep under a lid.  |
| Israel's Chief Military Advocate General Not Telling the truth Posted: 25 Oct 2010 06:09 PM PDT  On 26 August the Turkel Committee took evidence from Israel's Chief Military Advocate General, General Mandelblit. The morning session was open although a number of documents that the participants referred to do not appear on the website. In the afternoon the Advocate General apparently spoke amongst other matters on the intended IDF policy towards future flotillas. The result of the morning session is 144 pages of transcript which is at times interesting and at other times seems to have lost the plot as the participants spoke of 'plausible commanders' and 'concrete ships' and other items of jargon. This is not helped by the fact that apparently the Advocate General is speaking Israeli-English, although perhaps the standard of the transcript is also flawed in parts. The result is that occasionally he and some of the committee members are like very intimate friends or family talking in their own code. This section for example on page 97 is still incomprehensible to this reviewer:  |
| Israel is relieved not to be the only war criminal Posted: 25 Oct 2010 05:35 PM PDT The voice of joy, the voice of rejoicing is heard in Israel: The Americans and British have also committed for war crimes, not only us. WikiLeaks' revelations have inflamed all our noisy propagandists: Where is Goldstone, they rejoiced, and what would he have said? They were relieved. If the Americans are allowed to do it, so are we.  |
| Midterms: money changes everything Posted: 25 Oct 2010 01:50 PM PDT  "I went to the crossroad, fell down upon my knees." This was the powerful first line of "Cross Road Blues" by 1930s blues legend Robert Johnson. It was later adapted into the song "Crossroads" by Eric Clapton's Cream and a movie of the same name, starring the serially pre-pubescent Ralph Macchio. The song and movie were infamously about going down to a crossroads in the Mississippi Delta, to sell your soul to the Devil. Today, meeting Mephistopheles is much simpler: You can simply turn over barrels of cash in unmarked bills to American Crossroads or Crossroads GPS, the two appropriately named groups formed by one of the most wretched, sebum-stained forces of evil at the current American political crossroads: Karl Rove.  |
| Monday: 1 Iraqi Killed, 17 Wounded Posted: 25 Oct 2010 10:54 AM PDT A second day of what appears to be underreporting of violence saw casualties in only two cities, Baghdad and Tal Afar. At least one Iraqi was killed and 17 others were wounded in those attacks. Also, Iraq has asked for international help in removing an estimated 20 million landmines left after decades of war.  |
| Posted: 25 Oct 2010 09:10 AM PDT  No sooner had Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, left Beirut last week, than Jeffrey Feltman, the US secretary of state for Near East affairs, arrived in the Lebanese capital. Washington wasted no time in seeking to counter what it views as Iran's growing influence across the Arab world and Ahmadinejad's message of resistance to Israel.  |
| Media war: WikiLeaks v the Pentagon Posted: 25 Oct 2010 09:07 AM PDT  It happened on a Friday, the anniversary of the first US casualties of the Vietnam War way back in 1957. It was also the anniversary, in 1964, of French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre's announcement that he was turning down the Nobel Prize. It was the day this year that the often shadowy WikiLeaks, chief nemesis of the Pentagon, maybe their worst nightmare - considered perhaps even more dangerous than the Taliban - surfaced again with the largest public drop of secret military documents in history. WikiLeaks is a public web site run by the Sunshine Press, a non-profit group.  |
| Posted: 25 Oct 2010 08:14 AM PDT
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| Israel is the most immediate threat to the future of the planet: Jeffrey Blankfort Posted: 25 Oct 2010 03:59 AM PDT  Jeffrey Blankfort is an American photojournalist, radio producer and Middle East analyst. He is a well-known pro-Palestinian activist whose articles and writings have appeared on Counter Punch, Voltairenet, Palestine Think Tank, Dissident Voice and many other publications. He currently hosts radio programs on KZYX in Mendocino, CA and KPOO in San Francisco. Blankfort was formerly the editor of the Middle East Labor Bulletin and co-founder of the Labor Committee of the Middle East. In February 2002, he won a lawsuit against the Zionist organization Anti-Defamation League (ADL) which was found to have been spying on the American citizens critical of Israel and its expansionistic policies.  |
| Report slams Pakistan drone strikes Posted: 25 Oct 2010 12:43 AM PDT  New information on the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) campaign of drone strikes in northwest Pakistan directly contradicts the image the Barack Obama administration and the CIA have sought to establish in the news media of a programme based on highly accurate targeting that is effective in disrupting al-Qaeda's terrorist plots against the United States. A new report on civilian casualties in the war in Pakistan has revealed direct evidence that a house was targeted for a drone attack merely because it had been visited by a group of Taliban fighters.  |
| Posted: 24 Oct 2010 11:00 PM PDT  You are not likely to learn this from the "mainstream media," but WikiLeaks and its leader Julian Assange have received the 2010 Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) award for their resourcefulness in making available secret U.S. military documents on the Iraq and Afghan wars. If the WikiLeaks documents get the attention they deserve, and if lessons can be learned from the courageous work of former CIA analyst Sam Adams – and from Daniel Ellsberg's timely leak of Adams's work in early 1968 – even the amateurs in the White House may be able to recognize the folly of widening the war from Afghanistan to adjacent countries. That leak played a key role in dissuading President Lyndon Johnson from approving Gen. William Westmoreland's request to send 206,000 more troops – not only into the Big Muddy, but also into countries neighboring Vietnam (further detail below in the description of SAAII).  |
| Another BBC stunt to polish Israel's image? Posted: 24 Oct 2010 07:30 PM PDT  Nevertheless, the BBC and other Western media outlets have ignored the release of the latest report by the UN's Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories. Prof. Richard Falk "called for the support of the international boycott and sanctions campaign against Israel because of its continued occupation of Palestinian land." The Lebanese newspaper Al-Nahar covered this story just a couple of days ago; the BBC was probably too busy with Clarkson's cronies and their boys' toys to care about yet another senior UN official condemning the "racial discrimination practiced" by the Israelis and the "dual standards that affect [Palestinians'] freedom of movement within the West Bank" and from Jerusalem to the West Bank". What Prof. Falk has to say is, though, of huge relevance to the BBC and its choice of location for this popular television series. The BBC has a responsibility to be impartial; filming an entertainment programme in territory occupied by Israel in which human rights are abused daily, is not impartiality, for it signals to Israel that it can do what it wants, the BBC will still treat the Zionist state as a member of the civilised world.  |
| Gadahn call to attack Americans comes from Israel Posted: 24 Oct 2010 06:24 PM PDT A call to arms, demanding Muslims in America and elsewhere begin a terror campaign, was spread around the world. The message, we are told, was found on a "secret website" by an Israeli company who put it in a press release. There is no evidence any American Muslim has ever been on the website referred to, no American intelligence agency could find it, not the CIA or the FBI or Homeland Security. There was only one way the 300,000 Muslims of Detroit could hear call to terrorism, from an Israeli company that passes on such messages for profit. Does it create them too? You be the judge.  |
| Otherwise occupied / Travels with an uncle Posted: 24 Oct 2010 04:55 PM PDT  On the plane on my way back from Istanbul, an acquaintance surprised me when he asked, in the midst of our chat, "And do you have a second passport?" The question, he explained, was the result of our shared fear of a deterioration in the political situation whose outcome is difficult to imagine. A few days earlier, a Jewish Turkish acquaintance had told me that Spain was offering descendants of the Jews who were expelled from that country in the 15th century to submit requests for citizenship. You too can do so, she explained. Just go to Sarajevo (where my mother was born ) and all you have to do is to bring a certificate from the Jewish community there confirming that your family was expelled after 1492. There are Jews in Turkey who have already begun the process, she said. They are afraid of a combination of growing Turkish nationalism, that often comes under the guise of religious fervor and that is supported by a sense of religious exclusiveness.  |
| Posted: 24 Oct 2010 02:48 PM PDT  The Wikileaks website, which had published 72 000 US Army documents relating to Afghanistan, has just put out 391 832 war logs reporting on incidents involving the US Army in Iraq, dating from January 2004 to December 2009 The documents were sent ten weeks ahead of publication to four Atlanticist outlets, The New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde and Der Spiegel, to be analyzed.  |
| Sunday: 6 Iraqis Killed, 21 Wounded Posted: 24 Oct 2010 12:05 PM PDT The Iraqi Supreme Court ordered parliament to reconvene despite the failure of party leaders to form the new government. Meanwhile, six Iraqis were killed and 21 more were wounded in and near Mosul. Oddly, no other reports surfaced. Adding a new twist to the selection of the next prime minister, Iraqiya politician Safia al-Suheil called for an investigation into Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's suggested ties to torture and deaths squads as found in Friday's dump of secret documents by the Wikileaks organization. Similar calls are being made in Britain and the United States over accusations that Britons and Americans also participated in war crimes or at least turned a blind eye to it.  |
| WikiLeaks and the CIA War Against Iran Posted: 24 Oct 2010 10:37 AM PDT The scene was strange. The CNN kept saying it couldn't validate the data published by WikiLeaks on the Iraq War. Yet, On October 23, 2010, this data kept being repeated and analyzed by the Cables News Network ad nauseum. In small letters at the bottom of the screen, viewers were constantly reminded nothing could be validated. The BBC also kept analyzing the event. The same was true for most mainstream media outlets. Mainstream media quoting a website and transforming it into a main player in the international arena - for months now - is good news, at least for websites like mine. But by now, I'm too old and scarred to buy this at face value.  |
| Islamic Jihad joining Hamas ceasefire with Israel? Posted: 24 Oct 2010 09:20 AM PDT  Islamic Jihad is taking strides to restrain its members in the Gaza Strip from unauthorized attacks, suggesting that the group has quietly joined Hamas in enforcing a nearly 2-year ceasefire with Israel. This became clear when, on Sunday morning, an Israeli drone killed two men widely believed to be current or former members of the Palestinian movement in northern Gaza; mysteriously, the group did not claim them as their own.  |
| When will the conspiracy of silence end? Posted: 24 Oct 2010 05:29 AM PDT
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| Was the U.S. involved in the 2008 Mumbai attacks? Posted: 24 Oct 2010 05:21 AM PDT  Associated Press agency said it had access to the minutes of Daood Gilani/David Headley's hearings, a US national of Pakistani origin who was convicted in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which left 168 people dead. Mr. Headley is imprisoned in the United States where he struck a plea deal with U.S. prosecutors that will spare him the death penalty and extradition. After painstaking efforts, Indian investigators were finally given the green light to interrogate him in June 2010.  |
| Wikileaks under doubt as "classified" documents substantiate bogus U.S. claims Posted: 24 Oct 2010 05:16 AM PDT  The war between Wikileaks and the Pentagon supposedly continued on Friday as the famous "whistleblower" website released 400,000 "classified" documents. The Pentagon has reportedly assigned 120 personnel to pore over the documents to determine the potential damage they could cause to U.S. security. However, like many news reports in this day and age, the real story may be buried under the hype surrounding the release of these supposedly "classified" documents and the "outrage" they are causing.  |
| Lebanon's Palestinian civil rights campagin moves into the Christian heartland Posted: 24 Oct 2010 05:15 AM PDT  The Palestine Civil Rights Campaign-Lebanon and the Washington DC-Beirut based Sabra Shatila Foundation have released a copy of the Open Letter that was delivered this morning in Rome to representatives of Pope Benedict XVI and Lebanon's Marionite Patriarch, Cardinal Nassrallah Sfeir on the occasion of the VATICANS 2010 SPECIAL SYNOD ON THE MIDDLE EAST Supporters of civil rights for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, from 105 countries have signed hard copy and online Petitions, totaling more than 430,000 signatures urging Lebanon's Parliament to support the immediate enactment of elementary civil rights, including the full right to work and to own at home, in Lebanon's Parliament. The personal appear to the Pope and Lebanon's Maronite Patriarch is part of the recently launched campaign to achieve civil rights for Lebanon's Palestinian refugees, the largest and oldest refugee population and the one depraved of the most basic civil rights in Lebanon.  |
| Jeffrey Feltman, is the U.S. ignoring Avigdor Lieberman? Posted: 24 Oct 2010 02:38 AM PDT  Jeffrey Feltman is the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. He has a long history in the Middle East, having served as ambassador to Lebanon, twice at the embassy in Tel Aviv, and a stint at the consulate in Jerusalem. Coming right off a trip to Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Morocco, Feltman was in Paris to help prepare a planned summit between Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Abbas Thursday - a meeting that did not take place.  |
| US and Israel: Blinded by the Right Posted: 24 Oct 2010 02:32 AM PDT  "I'm not a witch... I'm you." With these words, Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell attempted to convince voters that despite admitting to have dabbled in witchcraft and holding many extreme views, her values and views are closer to those of her state's voters than those of the "Washington elite," represented by her opponent, Chris Coons.  |
| Traitorous House Democrats Collude to Free Jewish Spy Posted: 23 Oct 2010 11:30 PM PDT
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| Hungary is a Failed State. Over. Extinct. Posted: 23 Oct 2010 07:05 PM PDT  Hungary's been abused for centuries and survived. Never before have the abusers gone after the most defenseless – the unborn and babies with hammer and tongs. Hungary is a failed state, pushed to extinction; the men's sperm killed off and the women's germ cells fried as the next generation, as yet unborn, is killed in the womb. They never even had a chance.  |
| Jewish Supremacism–The Worst of the Nasty Odors Stinking Up Our World Today Posted: 23 Oct 2010 06:27 PM PDT  It's never a small slice of heaven when someone (obviously handicapped viz-a-viz grasping the finer points of social etiquette) decides it's in his or her best interest to fumigate the area with an unannounced (and unwanted) digestive eruption. Worse still are those who somehow get their kicks from doing it, and who can't imagine a funnier, wittier way of telling a joke than to shit his or her pants and stink the place up and watch the subsequent reactions from the innocent victims around him.
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| Posted: 23 Oct 2010 05:57 PM PDT  Hebrew is a beautiful language. But it is also like a model whose golden days are behind her and must use pancake makeup to cover what age and strife have wrought. By way of example two terms that have become inseparable parts of the language, to the point that their real meanings has been forgotten: "price tag" and "neighbor procedure," which gave birth to "child procedure." On the face of it, what could be more innocent than retaliating to a past or future injustice? A settlers' synagogue was torched - even if it has not happened yet - a mosque will be torched. Settlers' olive trees are uprooted - or not - Palestinians' trees will be pulled up, and the same for the mutual puncturing of tires. After all, what else can they do? How can they defend themselves against the inherent evil of the Palestinians? Can they go to the police, the army? The settlers have learned from the Palestinians what happens when they complain to the police.  |
| In the eyes of the interpreter Posted: 23 Oct 2010 05:57 PM PDT A Military Police investigation into an air strike that killed 21 Palestinian civilians during Operation Cast Lead, according to a recent Haaretz report, indicates senior air force officers had approved the attack. The report, published on Friday by Amos Harel and Anshel Pfeffer ("IDF probes top officers on Gaza war strike that killed 21 family members" ), alleges senior officers authorized the bombing despite being warned by more junior officers that civilians were likely located at or nearby the target site.  |
| What led to IDF bombing house full of civilians during Gaza war? Posted: 23 Oct 2010 05:57 PM PDT  A Military Police investigation into an air strike that killed 21 Palestinian civilians during Operation Cast Lead, according to a recent Haaretz report, indicates senior air force officers had approved the attack. The report, published on Friday by Amos Harel and Anshel Pfeffer ("IDF probes top officers on Gaza war strike that killed 21 family members" ), alleges senior officers authorized the bombing despite being warned by more junior officers that civilians were likely located at or nearby the target site.  |
| Iran-Egypt Transport Agreement Irks US Posted: 23 Oct 2010 05:06 PM PDT  Turkey, China, South Korea, Venezuela and Brazil are not the only countries being scrutinized for their on-going trade relations with the Islamic Republic while ignoring the US-sponsored 'crippling sanctions' against the Islamic Republic. The US-Israel-EU axis have rebuked its most important Arab ally in the Middle East (Egypt) for signing the recent Transport Agreement, worth US$1.37 billion. Since 1978, when the former US President Jimmy Carter succeeded in blackmailing Egyptian dictator Anwar Sadat (1918-1981) to recognize the illegal Zionist entity in return for an annual USAID of $1.5 billion and a Nobel Prize (Israel receives USAID$6-14 billion per year) – Cairo along with Riyadh and Amman has been toeing US-Israel policies towards Islamic Iran, Lebanon and Palestinian Islamic Resistance, Hamas.  |
| Remember Palestine-Sabra & Shatila Massacre-22-10-2010-(Part1) Posted: 23 Oct 2010 11:13 AM PDT
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| Posted: 23 Oct 2010 10:59 AM PDT 
Two beggars are sitting on a park bench in Ireland. One is holding a cross and the other a Star of David. Both are holding hats to collect contributions. People walk by, lift their noses at the man with the Star of David and drop money into the hat of the man with the cross. Soon, the hat of the man with the cross is filled and the hat of the man with the Star of David is empty. A priest watches for a while and then approaches the men. He says to the man with the Star of David, "Don't you realize that this is a Catholic country? You'll never get any contributions holding a Star of David."  |
| SPLC: Profiteers of Hate, Emotional Terrorists Posted: 23 Oct 2010 09:59 AM PDT  During what must now be described as a protracted war between the major parties, these few remaining days before the 2010 elections have buried American voters beneath a mountain of epithets, smears, slander, and all around hatred; especially towards the pro-Constitutionalist right by the "open-minded", "peace-loving" Democrats. All stops have been pulled by the controlled mainstream media and the Democrats to divide and pit American citizens against one another. They incite and hide hate crimes against White people. There is no more negotiating when it is the "peacemakers" who commit acts of war. The favorite slander used by the Democrats for anyone they disagree with is "extremist"; yet there is hardly any people more politically extreme than the Southern Poverty Law Center, now part of Homeland Security. The SPLC was co-created by the apparent psychopath (look up the word), Morris Seligman Dees–a pedophile, adulterer, liar, and an emotionally blackmailing homoerotic wife beater. He is described as "a sexual psychopath and an emotional terrorist" and "an emotionally destroying monster". Perfect for carrying out the SPLC agenda. His use of epithets emerged in childhood in spite of his own father's principles against mistreating others. To this day, Dees and the rest of the SPLC not only use epithets and emotional blackmail against the people they hate, but profit from it. The following article is from the magazine, The Social Contract, and their entire Spring 2010 issue is dedicated to the exposition of the "smear-mongering agenda of the Southern Poverty Law Center."  |
| Saturday: 10 Iraqis Killed, 33 Wounded Posted: 23 Oct 2010 08:30 AM PDT At least 10 Iraqis were killed and 33 more were wounded in new violence. The worst attack occurred outside of Baghdad in the suburb of Abu Ghraib. Meanwhile, the Wikileaks Iraq logs could undermine the prime minister's attempt to retain his seat. Documentation of extensive torture of detainees in the newly released Wikileaks reports could support previous allegations that the Iraqi government has either turned a blind eye or itself directed torture and illegal executions during Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's term. While Maliki only claims to have been tough with terrorists, his rivals are using the documents to call for his removal from office. He has been at the helm of a caretaker government since March when his State of Law narrowly lost the national elections. These revelations are not expected to harm his chances of maintaining the premiership, but they could help lead to a previously suggested power sharing scheme with leading party Iraqiya, which has been unable to form a large enough coalition to knock Maliki completely out and seat their own premier.
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| Ho Hum, More Wikileaks "Chickenfeed" Posted: 23 Oct 2010 08:18 AM PDT
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| What's in WikiLeaks' Iraq war logs? Posted: 23 Oct 2010 07:32 AM PDT  Whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks on Friday released nearly 400,000 classified US military files chronicling the Iraq war from 2004 through 2009, the largest leak of its kind in US military history. The documents themselves are known at the Pentagon as 'SIGACTs,' raw field reports chronicling "Significant Action" in the conflict as seen by US forces on the ground in Iraq.  |
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Press TV's Kaneez Fatima talks to Chip Pitts on US War in Afghanistan
An explosion on April 20 aboard the Deepwater Horizon, a drilling rig working on a well for the oil company BP 1.6km below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, led to the largest oil spill in history. After a series of failed efforts to plug the leak, BP said on July 15 that it had capped what it had named the Macondo well, marking the first time in 86 days that oil was not gushing into the gulf. Nearly five million barrels of oil had gushed from BP's well, according to official estimates. Despite the capping, the impact of the spill continues. An investigation by an Al Jazeera online correspondent has found a growing number of toxic illnesses linked to BP oil dispersants along the Gulf coast. Dahr Jamail, author of the special report, told Al Jazeera why BP took such measures. For details of our online correspondent's findings, including interviews with the victims of the BP oil spill, go to: 
Few outside of Gaza would consider its history much beyond the decades of Israeli occupation. But Gaza is a historical treasure house. Many of those treasures are now in Israeli museums, and those that remain are becoming difficult to preserve due to the Israeli siege.
Listen to an overbearing gatekeeper, Jon Faine, attempt to rubbish the genuine concerns of an Australian trades unionist, Kevin Bracken, in an attempt to stifle any debate about the many anomalies in the official 9/11 story. Seldom have I heard anyone, who obviously wants the issue to go away, do more to attract attention to it. He did this during a phone-in on the publicly-owned Australian Broadcasting Commission's 774 ABC Melbourne radio station. A small amount of sound editing was necessary, but the integrity of the conversation was retained. The unedited sound file of the conversation can be found on this Internet page. 
Joshua Daniel Brollier is a campaigner who is based in Chicago. He challenges sanctions in many parts of the world, including Iraq, Palestine, Gaza, etc. People in Gaza are deprived of essentials and vital goods for life. Egypt is another side of the issue, which has closed its border to international aid. Joshua has carried millions of dollars of aid to Gaza, but the issue has not been without a fight with Egyptians. He draws a parallel between the Bush and Obama administration. People are not intimidated from sending more aid to Gaza, despite Israel's violent behavior. He has also studied the consequences of drone strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The robotic aircraft bombings have exponentially increased since Obama came to office. Joshua has paid a visit to the Swat valley to see things up close. People in Pakistan hold their government and the US responsible.
Is corruption a local issue or has it become a global disease? And can there be a global mechanism to fight it?
'I salute you', were the opening words of Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited the base of Israeli naval commandoes who killed 9 Turkish activists on a Gaza bound aid ship back in May. This praise has been viewed as a show of defiance against International criticism of the deadly raid. If defiance means shooting 308 live bullets on activists who were not armed with guns and were trying to bring basic aid because of an illegal siege, then what does that say about the International Community? In this edition of Press TV's News Analysis, Kaveh Taghvai asks his guests about their reaction to Netanyahu's praise of his commandoes. Let's watch and see what Kaveh's guests, Adie Mormech, Richard Millet and Mark Glenn, have to say.
Holding both big government and big business more accountable for the US faltering economy is uppermost in the minds of voters. This episode of Press TV's American Dream examines the economy, taxes, government spending, health care, home foreclosures and whether or not it is time for a third voice or third party.
Leading 9/11 untruther 
Seconds passed like an eternity for a heart beating for freedom, a soul which fought against occupation and its humiliation and a body shrinking into itself trying to avoid 21st century brutality in a prison cell without door or windows. The body is thin and delicate, the head is scarved and the eyes are blindfolded in absolute absence of human conscience; while the monsters of the Western age in the land of Jesus Christ dance around their victim. Are these monsters dancing in celebration of kidnapping an Arab girl whose only sin is that she has fought for her and her people's freedom? Or are they dancing in celebration of the death of world conscience which drawls human rights and freedom while turning its back on the most sacred cause of freedom in the 21st century – the freedom of the Palestinian people and its fight for salvation from Israeli terrorism perpetrated through Western support for over sixty years.
Let us suppose for a moment that an individual enjoying the full confidence and trust of the United States government was given access to the most secret information possessed by the US military, to include how it would react to an attack by an aggressor armed with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Let us further suppose that that individual violated his trust in the most egregious and vile fashion, offering to sell the information to anyone, but eventually settling on a nation ostensibly friendly to the US but not in any way a formal ally. The individual then proceeded to deliver defense secrets literally by the carload, not only information that might plausibly have been construed as relevant to the buyer's own security, but also strategic defense information that could conceivably have led to the deaths of millions of American citizens. That information was then bartered and re-sold to an enemy who was in a position to use it to devastate the United States, together with sources and methods information on intelligence operations that in short order led to the deaths of many American citizens and also foreigners who had been cooperating with the United States.
The Sabra and Shatila massacre took place in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon, between September 16 and September 18, 1982, during the Lebanese civil war. Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were massacred in the camps by the Israeli supporters Phalangist militia while the camp was surrounded by Israeli forces. In that period of time, Israel was at war with Lebanon. The Israeli forces occupied Beirut and dominated militarily the refugee camps of Palestinians and controlled the entrance to the city. Later, the Israeli forces were ruled to have been involved directly in massacres carried out in both camps. This episode of Press TV's Remember Palestine looks at what brought on the massacres and why they are not recognized to the same extent that other atrocities in history have been.
The new Wikileaks claims the US undereported by 15,000, the deaths of Iraqi "civilians." With the numbers listed by the military as little as 10% or less of the actual deaths, bumping up the numbers must be a joke. More leaks about torture and killings, Iraqi torture and the US "looking away?" More idiocy. With the US sending "suspects" around the world on rendition flights, sent to secret prisons and obvious to anyone with a brain, to shallow graves, this Wikileak is simply another sideshow, more "chickenfeed."