By Brkić Sulejman
26/02/2006 Here we go again! Now it's Iran.
Bush, again mumbling something about Iran's being a threat to the world, the same crap as about Iraq. But this time, the west European countries (the "traditional" allies) are at it, too. Isn't it strange how all these countries, the USA, Israel, England, France, Germany…with all their weapons of mass destruction, feel so easily threatened? Why shouldn't Iran be a nuclear power? The U.S, England, France, Israel, Russia, China, Japan (yes! Japan, too), India and Pakistan are. These idiots are the cause of nuclear proliferation. If they are so concerned about the safety of the world they should lead by example and dismantle their nuclear weapons. When the U.S, Israel, England France and Germany talk about the safety of the world being their main reason to object to Iran's possessing nuclear technology, what world are they talking about? They are the only ones (as always) who feel threatened. I don't hear about Thailand, Bhutan, Bulgaria, Latvia, Vietnam, Zambia… feeling threatened. I mean, really, what world is in question? The world comprised of the U.S, England, Israel, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, and Japan? The world of GREED? The O.E.C.D world? The world made up of the G7 the E.U the IMF, World Bank, WTO, N.A.T.O, the UN Security Council, NAFTA, Wall Street, OIL interests, cheap OIL. Is this the world we hear so much about? Because, if this is the world the West is worried about, then it is a world of SHAME that is in question, a world of deceit, greed, wars, theft, colonialism, capitalism, imperialism... An opulent white world born out of mainly colored peoples slave work, sweat and blood and their natural resources. If this is the world that is in danger then it might as well be done away with! We hear again words of shame, words like "the UN Security Council", "UNSC resolutions", "International community"… I thought all this didn't exist anymore. I thought the UN was finally dead, the coup de grâce being the (another) illegal US-UK-led war against the Iraqi people in order to rob them of their OIL. But let's face it, the UN was never very much alive. Actually, there never was a UN. All there was was the(UN) Security Council, a band of criminals bent on tearing the natural resources of the world at any cost. Although I am far from being a fan of the ruling Mullahs in Teheran, I still remember the Shah, Reza Pahlavi, a friend of the West, which means "the International Community" and oppressor of the Iranian people, a vicious dictator who was propped up and kept in power by the West, robbed his people blind and made himself and the West even richer and who eventually gave birth to the Mullahs. So, I urge Iran not to put its fate into the hands of "the International Community". When you hear "International Community" on the news, what countries pop up in your mind? Albania, Burkina Faso, Burundi…? Of course not! The countries that pop up in our mind are usually the US and whoever follows (pretty much the same faithful dogs : Israel, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan…) or G7, EU, NATO, W.B., IMF, WTO… it's always the same gangsters anyway. This "International Community" that is so worried about the safety of the "world", that claims the higher moral ground, a higher sense of justice and is so vociferous in its proclamations of being the defender of democratic values, human rights and protector of the "civilized" world, this "International Community" is the same one that has betrayed millions of people around the real world in need of human rights, democracy, justice… Millions have been killed, tortured, oppressed, persecuted, exploited…as a result of the criminal policies of our angelic "International Community", because what mattered and still matters the most today is the economic interests of this "International Community" of SHAME! Here are just a few names, a few peoples that were let down by our "International Community", the savior of the "world": East Timor (200 000 killed), El Salvador (75000 killed), Chile (between 10000 and 30000 killed), these murders (in Chile) started on September 11, 1973 with a coup against the democratically elected president Salvador Allende, orchestrated by the U.S and welcome by "the International Community" and brought to power the fascist general Augusto Pinochet. Although this tragedy took place on a September 11, too, "the International Community" seems to have a very selective memory when it comes to remember the victims of its criminal policies. Vietnam (between 2 and 3 million killed), Laos, Cambodia, The Kurds, the Palestinians (robbed of their land and kept in huge prison camps by the only "democracy" in the middle East: Israel), Rwanda(close to 1 million) Zaire (the Congo), Sabra and Chatila (between 2 and 3 thousand Palestinians killed), San Su Kyi, Lumumba, Leila Zana, Nelson Mandela, the Tibetans, 1.6million Iraqis, including 600 000 Iraqi children, who were killed by US-imposed, West European-backed (read "International Community"), wrapped in the UN flag economic sanctions. For about 12 years, since the end of the Gulf War up to the current illegal war again against Iraq, the Iraqi people kept dying (600 000 children) like flies under the watchful eye of the humanists that comprise the " International Community". And many more millions of others. Now, just a few more words about N.Mandela. Mandela, a black South African man, had actually to fight in his own country for the liberation of his people against a white minority racist regime! : APARTHEID. He was labeled as a terrorist, arrested and thrown into jail and left to rot there right up to 1990! Meanwhile, our alrighteous "International Community" kept doing very profitable business with apartheid, that white minority racist regime that lasted until 1994. That was 12 years ago! Bravo the "International Community"! When Mandela, at last, was to be released from prison in 1990, guess who was opposed to his release? No less than the current vice president of the United States of America: Dick Cheney (although, I'm sure he was not the only one). Mandela himself in an interview with the U.S. Magazine, Newsweek revealed this fact, published on Wednesday, 11 September 2002. Excerpts of this interview can also be found on BBC news world edition, Wednesday, 11 September 2002. And let's not forget Srebrenica, a place located where I come from : Tito's Yugoslavia. Now that area is called Bosnia and Herzegovina. In July1995, between 7800 and8000 men and boys were executed, slaughtered by the Serb military and paramilitary forces during the 1992 – 1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in an area that was under the protection of the "United Nations. Srebrenica was even declared a "safe area" , a "haven". This massacre took place in the heart of Europe, it was the worst massacre since the end of World War2. It occurred right under the noses of the leaders of the three European countries that are these days so concerned about the safety of the "world", so much so that they are even considering supporting a military action, undertaken by the U.S.A and its proxy Israel against Iran to stop it from developing nuclear technology. The three European countries I have in mind are: France, England and Germany, all members of the UN "Security Council" of which two are permanent, France and England. These hypocrites want to protect the "world" when they couldn't even stop 7800 to 8000 men and boys from being killed in a small town (located on their doorstep) like Srebrenica. Maybe the people of Srebrenica should have applied for EU membership before the massacre in order to get better protection. When the "International Community" threatens Iran to force it to give up its nuclear program in order to make the world safer, I wonder if its thoughts of safety include the Chechens, the Palestinians, the Iraqis, the Sudanese in Darfur, the campesinos and the Indios being massacred in Colombia by death squads backed by the cheap – natural resources - hungry U.S. and its west European vassals and Japan (read: "International Community") …or the 30 000 daily deaths caused by hunger due to economic policies of the "International Community"…Will all these peoples and many other oppressed ones feel safer once they find out that Iran has agreed to get rid of its nuclear technology? Who or What will really be safer? The flow of cheap OIL to the West and Japan (the "International Community")? In light of this record of atrocities approved of by "the International Community", Iran should really speed up the development of its nuclear technology in order to defend itself against these vultures. Iran shouldn't either count too much on the anti-war "movements" in the West or here in Japan. I mean, take a look at Iraq. Close to 200 000 Iraqis killed for OIL so far! You see any outrage? But two bombs go off in London or two buildings go down in New York with some collateral damage, then and only then there is outrage! "The International Community" goes into uproar, it is the end of the (white) world (of privilege), (white) civilization is in danger, "democracy" and "peace" are under fire. Yeah, sure, the anti – war "movements" in the West and here in Japan, we'll do our usual thing, just like with Iraq, get in the streets, parade, shout slogans "No war! Peace now! Don't attack Iran!", we'll walk, dance, sing "Blowing in the wind", carry banners (some with very "aggressive" messages). It will be very colorful, joyful… hell, it might even be better than Le Cirque du Soleil, and all of these "protests" will of course be non-violent! Peaceful, superpeaceful, ultra-peaceful! And then, if our governments despite our strongest objections don't back off and submit to our will and attack Iran all the same, well, we'll just have to… go home, I guess, and wait for the next war, as usual. Therefore Iran should really hurry and develop whatever it needs to protect itself from us, I mean, "the International Community". |
UK Independent
By Robert Fisk 02/26/06 Everyone in the Middle East rewrites history, but never before have we had a US administration so wilfully, dishonestly and ruthlessly reinterpreting tragedy as success, defeat as victory, death as life - helped, I have to add, by the compliant American press. I'm reminded not so much of Vietnam as of the British and French commanders of the First World War who repeatedly lied about military victory over the Kaiser as they pushed hundreds of thousands of their men through the butchers' shops of the Somme, Verdun and Gallipoli. The only difference now is that we are pushing hundreds of thousands of Arabs though the butchers' shops - and don't even care.
Last week's visit to Beirut by one of the blindest of George Bush's bats - his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice - was indicative of the cruelty that now pervades Washington. She brazenly talked about the burgeoning "democracies" of the Middle East while utterly ignoring the bloodbaths in Iraq and the growing sectarian tensions of Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps the key to her indifference can be found in her evidence to the Senate Committee on International Affairs where she denounced Iran as "the greatest strategic challenge" facing the US in the region, because Iran uses policies that "contradict the nature of the kind of Middle East sought by the United States". As Bouthaina Shaaban, one of the brightest of Syria's not always very bright team of government ministers, noted: "What is the nature of the kind of Middle East sought by the United States? Should Middle East states adapt themselves to that nature, designed oceans away?" As Maureen Dowd, the best and only really worthwhile columnist on the boring New York Times, observed this month, Bush "believes in self-determination only if he's doing the determining ... The Bushies are more obsessed with snooping on Americans than fathoming how other cultures think and react." And conniving with rogue regimes, too, Dowd might have added. Take Donald Rumsfeld, the reprehensible man who helped to kick off the "shock and awe" mess that has now trapped more than 100,000 Americans in the wastes of Iraq. He's been taking a leisurely trip around North Africa to consult some of America's nastiest dictators, among them President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, the man with the largest secret service in the Arab world and whose policemen have perfected the best method of gleaning information from suspected "terrorists": to hold them down and stuff bleach-soaked rags into their mouths until they have almost drowned. The Tunisians learned this from the somewhat cruder methods of the Algerians next door whose government death squads slaughtered quite a few of the 150,000 victims of the recent war against the Islamists. The Algerian lads - and I've interviewed a few of them after their nightmares persuaded them to seek asylum in London - would strap their naked victims to a ladder and, if the "chiffon" torture didn't work, they'd push a tube down the victim's throat and turn on a water tap until the prisoner swelled up like a balloon. There was a special department (at the Chateauneuf police station, in case Donald Rumsfeld wants to know) for torturing women, who were inevitably raped before being dispatched by an execution squad. All this I mention because Rumsfeld's also been cosying up to the Algerians. On a visit to Algiers this month, he announced that "the United States and Algeria have a multifaceted relationship. It involves political and economic as well as military-to-military co-operation. And we very much value the co-operation we are receiving in counter-terrorism..." Yes, I imagine the "chiffon" technique is easy to learn, the abuse of prisoners, too - just like Abu Ghraib, for example, which now seems to have been the fault of journalists rather than America's thugs. Rumsfeld's latest pronouncements have included a defence of the Pentagon's system of buying favourable news stories in Iraq with bribes - "non-traditional means to provide accurate information" was his fantasy description of this latest attempt to obscure the collapse of the American regime in Baghdad - and an attack on our reporting of the Abu Ghraib tortures. "Consider for a moment the vast quantity of column inches and hours of television devoted to the detainee abuse [sic] at Abu Ghraib. Compare that to the volume of coverage and condemnation associated with, say, the discovery of Saddam Hussein's mass graves, which were filled with hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis." Let's expose this whopping lie. We were exposing Saddam's vile regime, especially his use of gas, as long ago as 1983. I was refused a visa to Iraq by Saddam's satraps for exposing their vile tortures at - Abu Ghraib. And what was Donald Rumsfeld doing? Visiting Baghdad, grovelling before Saddam, to whom he did not mention the murders and mass graves, which he knew about, and pleading with the Beast of Baghdad to reopen the US embassy in Iraq. With the usual press courtiers in tow, Rumsfeld has no problems, witness George Melloan's recent interview with the Beast of Washington in his Boeing 737: "He generously spares me time for a chat about defence strategy. Bright sunlight streams in and lights his face ... Sitting across from him at a desk high above the clouds, one wonders if the ability of this modern Jove to call down lightning on transgressors will be equal to the tasks ahead." And so myth-making and tragedy go hand in hand. Iraq's monumental catastrophe has become routine, shapeless, an incipient "civil war". Note how the American framework of disaster is now being portrayed as an Iraqi vs Iraqi war, as if the huge and brutal US occupation has nothing to do with the appalling violence in Iraq. They blow up each other's mosques? They just don't want to get on. We told them to have a non-sectarian government and they refused. That, I suspect, will be the get-out line when the next deluge overwhelms the Americans in Iraq. Winston Churchill, when the Iraqis staged their insurgency against British rule in 1920, called Iraq "an ungrateful volcano". But let's just sit back and enjoy the view. Democracy is coming to the Middle East. People are enjoying more liberties. History doesn't matter, only the future. And the future for the people of the Middle East is becoming darker and bloodier by the day. I guess it just depends whether "Jove" is up to his job when all that bright sunlight streams in and lights his face. |
By Andrew J. Bacevich
27/02/2006 Sending a general to do a sheriff's job
Small events sometimes reveal large truths. Last month's U.S. missile strike in the remote Bajaur district of Pakistan was such an event. Aimed at taking out Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's chief deputy, the strike missed its intended target and killed as many as 18 residents of the small village of Damadola. But the episode did not end there: outraged Pakistanis rose up in protest; days of highly publicized anti-American demonstrations followed. In effect, the United States had handed Muslims around the world another grievance to hold against Americans. In stark, unmistakable terms, the Damadola affair lays bare the defects of the Bush administration's response to 9/11. When President Bush in September 2001 launched the United States on a global war against terrorism, he scornfully abandoned the law-enforcement approach to which previous administrations had adhered. To all but the most militant true believers, it has become increasingly evident that in doing so Bush committed an error of the first order. Underlying Bush's declaration of war were two assumptions: first, that terrorism is subject to defeat; second, that military power, aggressively employed, offers the shortest road to victory. The Damadola incident only adds to the mountain of evidence calling both of those assumptions into question. As most Americans have come to understand, terrorism, as currently employed in Washington's political lexicon, is a code word. Seemingly referring to a tactic, it actually alludes to the violent Islamic radicals who perpetrated 9/11 and who if given the chance will attack us again. In dealing with the radicals themselves, the old adage applies: it's kill or be killed. On this point there can be little room for debate and none for compromise. But for the killing to be purposeful, it must occur selectively: to employ violence indiscriminately is to replenish the ranks of al-Qaeda and its spawn faster than we can deplete them. That way lies not security but bankruptcy and exhaustion. Although paying lip service to this principle, the Bush administration has violated it in practice, most egregiously in Iraq, where heavy-handed tactics fanned the flames of insurgency, but also in Afghanistan and now Pakistan. Using President Bush's conception of war as their mandate-and at times as a de facto grant of immunity-U.S. forces charged with bringing the guilty to book have too often ended up victimizing the innocent. The fault lies less with the soldiers who pull the triggers, aim the missiles, and drop the bombs than with the nature of war itself. Even in a high-tech age, it remains a blunt instrument. Precision weapons have not made war precise, a truth brought home yet again by the events at Damadola. It's hard to tell which more vividly testifies to this president's stupefying hubris: his self-proclaimed mission to democratize the Middle East or his claim that his administration is reinventing war. It's probably a toss-up. The truth is that war remains today what it has always been: fraught with risk, uncertainty, and chance. When the unexpected happens, bystanders with the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time are most likely to suffer the consequences. Granted, in some circumstances, the penalty for killing innocent civilians is nil. The Anglo-American "Transportation Plan" of World War II-the 1944 strategic bombing of Occupied Europe in preparation for the Normandy invasion-caused the deaths of some 12,000 citizens of France and Belgium. Whatever moral questions this bombing campaign might have raised, most of which remain largely unexamined, the bloodletting in no way impeded the Allied march to final victory. In the brutal calculus of that war, sacrificing some number of those whom the Allies were promising to liberate was "worth it." But outside of the bounds of total war, killing civilians-even unintentionally-becomes politically problematic. The attack at Damadola illustrates the consequences. For the United States to unleash a salvo of missiles at a Pakistani village thought to house an al-Qaeda chieftain is the equivalent of the Mexican government bombing a southern California condo complex suspected of harboring a drug kingpin. Even if, as the Pakistani government has subsequently claimed, the missiles killed a handful of unidentified "foreign militants," that minor success can in no way justify the use of force that takes the lives of women and children. Morally, the arithmetic doesn't work. Politically, it's even worse. For the United States government to shrug off those deaths with expressions of regret or offers of monetary compensation simply confirms the worst that others have come to believe: that Americans are callous and arrogant with little regard for the lives of Muslims. In depicting the attack on the World Trade Center as the opening volley of a global war-a reprise of Dec. 7, 1941-the Bush administration spun the awful events of that day in the wrong direction. The Islamists may nurse bizarre dreams of restoring the caliphate, but their existing claim to political legitimacy is marginal. Al-Qaeda is not the Wehrmacht or the Red Army; it is an international conspiracy, one that committed a singularly heinous crime. Osama bin Laden is not Hitler or Stalin -as a historical figure he comes nowhere near their baneful significance. He is a Mafioso. When gangs besiege a neighborhood, the authorities send in more cops. If the authorities are smart, they insist upon the cops playing by the rules. Winning back the streets means taking the thugs out of circulation while protecting those who obey the laws. Coercion wielded without restraint only makes matters worse. So too with the threat posed by radical Islam. Preventing a recurrence of 9/11 requires not war on a global scale, but the sustained, relentless enforcement of international norms. The task requires not an army but a posse. Rather than invasions and stand-off missile attacks, we need police and intelligence agencies, backed by special-operations forces, bringing the perpetrators of terror to justice, while taking care not to incite more Muslims to join the Islamist cause. On Sept. 11, 2001, the law-enforcement approach to dealing with the Islamist conspiracy did fail. Yet it failed not because such an approach is inherently defective but as a result of incompetence and ineptitude at the highest levels of the United States government, evident in both Democratic and Republican administrations. By the time this essay appears, the Bush administration will have moved on. As far as official Washington is concerned, the nameless, faceless dead of Damadola are already forgotten. Our warrior-president will continue to insist that we have no choice but to press on, seemingly blind to the moral havoc wreaked by his war and oblivious to the extent to which he is playing into the hands of our adversaries. But our own interests demand that we not forget those whom we have killed. At Damadola we have handed the Islamists a victory of considerable proportions, further enflaming antipathy toward the U.S. in Pakistan and among Muslims generally. And the lesson to be taken from this self-inflicted defeat is clear: four bloody years into President Bush's war, the time to think anew is at hand |
By James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya
02/24/06 "ICH" -- -- The center piece of the current explosive confrontation between Islamic and Arab protestors, political leaders and governments and the US and Western European regimes and publishers is rooted in Israeli efforts to polarize the world in its favor and to promote isolation, economic sanctions and/or a military attack on Iran. There are several key questions, which almost all commentators and analysts have failed to address. These include:
Why did the "cartoons" get published in Denmark? What is the political background of "Flemming Rose" the cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, who solicited, selected and published the cartoons? What larger issues coincide with the timing of the cartoons publication and reproduction? Who "benefits" from the publication of the cartoons and the ensuing confrontation between the Arabs/Islam and the West? What is the contemporary political context of the Arab/Islam protests? How is the Israeli secret service, Mossad, implicated in provoking the Western-Islamic/Arab conflict, and how do the consequences measure up to their expectations? A starting point for analyzing the cartoon controversy, which has been a focus for attacking Muslims and Muslim countries as intolerant of Western 'freedom of expression' is the long-standing role of Denmark as a major operation point for Mossad activity in Europe. Re-phrased: How could a tiny Scandinavian country of 5.4 citizens and residents (200,000 or less than 3% of whom are Muslim), renowned for fairy tales, ham and cheese, have become a target for the fury of millions of practicing Muslims from Afghanistan to Palestine, from Indonesia to Libya and into the streets of cities all over the world with significant Muslim populations? Why, after the bombing of Baghdad, the tortures of Abu Ghariab, the massacres in Fallujah and the utter destitution of the entire Iraqi and Afghan people…would Moslems turn their anger at symbols of Denmark from its tinned cookies to its Embassies and overseas business offices? The story, presented with straight faces, by television news-people, is of, Mr. 'Flemming Rose', a crusading cultural editor of a widely read Danish daily newspaper who wanted to counter the growing 'political correctness' of Europeans about criticizing Moslems and which he compared to the 'self-censorship' he had witnessed in his native Soviet Union. The oddly named Ukrainian-born editor of the culture page of the Jyllands-Posten commissioned Danish cartoonists to submit a series of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed as they (the Danish cartoonists) might imagine him. However four of the twelve cartoons selected for publication were illustrated by 'Rose's' own staff including the most controversial 'bomb in the turban' one. Braving Denmark's anti-blasphemy laws Mr. Rose published the cartoons on September 30, 2005 and the rest is history… A huge world wide attack on the West's "sacred right to free expression" erupted in the Moslem world with millions of shocked Europeans and North Americans rushing to defend their cherished freedoms in this 'clash of civilizations'. Syria and Iran were prominently blamed for the stirring up of furious believers in the streets of Damascus and Teheran, Beirut and in the slums of Gaza. According to US Secretary Rice, "Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes and the world ought to call them on it." The Pakistani and Libyan authorities allied to the US fired on demonstrators killing and wounding scores while numerous religious leaders were arrested. The Western governments urged their Arab and Moslem allies to prevent more attacks on Danish products and property and blamed those unable to quell the fury with complicity and instigation. All of this was over a series of cartoons, or so we are told. The cultural editor, 'Flemming Rose', who soon tired of being surrounded by a team of Danish police and security to protect him from assassination and missing his daily jogs through his tranquil Copenhagen neighborhood, chose to seek safe haven in Miami, Florida (rather than his native Ukraine) among the Cuban exiles, Israeli sayanim*(see footnote) and Mah Jong-playing retirees as the drama plays on. Denmark Center of Mossad Activity Why Denmark? Could this crudely manufactured controversy have been generated on the pages of any major London or New York paper? Who would wish to put Denmark at the center of this 'clash of civilization' – appearing as a script from some grade B Islamophobic thriller? An interesting chapter in former Israeli Mossad agent, Victor J. Ostrovsky's book, By Way of Deception (1990 St. Martin's Press), outlines the close relationship between the workings of the Danish intelligence services and the Israeli Mossad over decades: "The relationship between the Mossad and Danish intelligence is so intimate as to be indecent. But it is not the Mossad's virtue that is compromised by the arrangement; it's Denmark's. And that's because the Danish are under the mistaken impression that because they saved a lot of Jews in World War II, the Israelis are grateful and they can trust the Mossad." In return for their servility, the Danes get valuable 'training' from the Israelis: Once every three years, Danish intelligence officials go to Israel for a seminar conducted by the Mossad"… which generates useful contacts for the Mossad "while perpetuating the notion that no organization deals with terrorism better than they (Mossad) do." In the wake of the US debacle in Iraq and the world's resistance to a massive 'preemptive military attack' or economic and diplomatic embargo of Iran, which could send oil prices to over $100 a barrel, Israel needed to turn the war of ideas on its head. It would make sense that a campaign, aimed to further whip up justifications to attack countries like Iran and Syria (Israel's current enemy du jour), would emanate from one of the US strongest European ally in the invasion and destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan and whose national intelligence apparatus (so fondly known as 'fertsalach') would be eager to serve Israel's interest. Flemming ( or Flaming) Rose: Journalist with a cause Given Mossad's long-standing penetration of the Danish intelligence agencies, and their close working relations with the right wing media, it is not surprising that a Ukranian Jew, operating under the name of "Flemming Rose" with close working relations with the Israeli state (and in particular the far right Likud regime) should be the center of the controversy over the cartoons. "Rose's" ties to the Israeli state antedate his well-know promotional "interview" with Daniel Pipes (2004), the notorious Arab-hating Zionist ideologue. Prior to being placed as a cultural editor of a leading right-wing Danish daily, from 1990 to 1995 "Rose" was a Moscow-based reporter who translated into Danish a self-serving auto-biography by Boris Yeltsin, godchild of the pro-Israeli, post-communist Russian oligarchs, most of whom held dual citizenship and collaborated with the Mossad in laundering illicit billions. Between 1996-1999 "Rose", the journalist, worked the Washington circuit (traveling with Clinton to China) before returning to Moscow 1999-2004 as a reporter for Jyllands-Posten. In 2005 he became its cultural editor, despite few or any knowledge of the field and over the head of other Danish journalists on the staff. In his new position "Rose" found a powerful platform to incite and play on the growing hostility of conservative Danes to immigrants from the Middle East, particularly practicing Moslems. Using the format of an 'interview' he published Pipes' virulent anti-Islamic diatribe, probably to "test the waters" before proceeding to the next stage in the Mossad strategy to polarize a West-East confrontation. Political Context for Action There is a great body of evidence demonstrating that Iraq war was largely a result of a massive disinformation campaign by civilian militarists in the Pentagon and US Zionists in and out of high places in the Pentagon and civil society, in coordination with the Israeli state, which wanted Iraq to be destroyed as a viable nation. There is no evidence that the major US oil corporations pressured Congress or promoted the war in Iraq or the current confrontation with Iran. There is plenty of evidence that they are very uneasy about the losses that may result from an Israeli attack on Iran. The Zionist succeeded in their goals in Iraq: establishing a beachhead in the northern Kurdish enclave ('Kurdistan'), and securing assets in the new "Iraqi" regime via Chalabi and others. The major Jewish organizations mobilized to oppose any critics of the Zionist policymakers, predictably accusing them of 'anti-Semitism'. Nevertheless, over time, FBI investigations, CIA reports and judicial indictments have pointed to key Israeli operatives and their domestic collaborators as Israeli spies. While Israel benefited from the Bush-Blair invasion in Iraq, the same cannot be said for the United States. As thousands of casualties mounted, and war spending skyrocketed to hundreds of billions of dollars, opposition to the war escalated. Israeli strategic plans to extend US military operations to Iran and Syria faced major challenges, from within the US military and public and even sections of the mass media. Mossad assets in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and elsewhere had to settle for puff pieces on Iran's non-existent nuclear weapon threat, right after the same plot with regard to Iraq was exposed as a total fabrication. Another line of propaganda was needed to silence war critics and heighten animosities to the Islamists/Arabs in general and Iran in particular. This is where the "Flemming Rose"-Mossad operation came into the picture. The Islamic-hate cartoons were published in Denmark in September 2005 as Israeli and US Zionists escalated their war propaganda against Iran. The initial response from the Islamic countries however was limited. The story wasn't picked up in the International Herald Journal until late December 2005. By early January 2006, Mossad "Katsas" (Hebrew for case officers) activated sayanim (volunteer Jewish collaborators outside of Israel) throughout Western and Eastern European media to simultaneously reproduce the cartoons on Feb. 1 and 2, 1006. One such sayanim operation would have been the decision by France-Soir Senior Editor, Arnaud Levy and Editor in Chief Serge Faubert, to publish the cartoons. The paper's French Egyptian owner almost immediately fired the paper's Managing Editor, Jacques Lefranc, who, according to an interview with CNN, had initially opposed their publications, without touching Levy and Faubert. A strident campaign was launched in practically all the pro-Western mass media condemning the initial, relatively moderate Islamic protests, which had occurred between September to December 2005 and rapidly provoked the subsequent massive escalation, doubtlessly aided by covert Mossad operatives among Arab populations. Mossad's 'little farts', the Danish intelligence fanned the fires by advising Denmark's rightwing Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen not to give way by refusing to apologize as the pro-Western Arab regimes requested and even refusing a request for a meeting with a group of Denmark-based diplomats from Arab and Moslem countries to discuss the 'situation' "Flemming Rose"-Mossad tried one more gambit – to further heighten East-West tension. He publicly offered to publish any Iranian cartoons which would mock the Holocaust in 'his' paper'. The senior editor of Jyllands-Posten, apparently belatedly caught on to "Flemming Rose" hidden agenda and vetoed the 'offer' and asked Rose to take a leave of absence. Rose left for Miami, not Tel Aviv – where his residency might raise suspicions about his claim to be merely an opponent of "self-censorship". In Miami, he no doubt will have the protection of the locally based sayanin, armed and train for "self-defense" of threatened Zionists. Sayanim – Defenders of Western Civilization The sayanim, derived, according to Victor Ostrovsky, from the Hebrew word 'to help' are a huge world-wide network of Jews in strategic or useful places (real estate, mass media, finance, car dealerships etc…) who have been agreed to help in Israeli Mossad actitivies within their own countries. This has been ascribed to the supra-national loyalty sayanim offer to Israel, above and not always in the interest of their home country. According to Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, in their detailed biography, Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy (Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2002), the notorious media mogul, Robert Maxwell, was a super-sayanim, providing cover, offices, political connections, money-laundering services and planted stories in the service of Israel at the Mossad's beheast. Jonathan Pollard, the American Naval Researcher jailed for espionage, is another notorious sayanim. The activities of these 'helpers' really range from the spectacular to the more mundane and, according to Victor Ostrovsky, in his 1990 biography By Way of Deception, the sayanim represent a pool of thousands of active and inactive individuals who can provide services discretely out of loyalty to 'the cause of Israel' as defined by any current Mossad operation. The cynicism of this arrangement is clear: It makes little difference to the Mossad if an operation, such as 'Flemming Rose', jeopardizes the national and economic interests of the sayanim's own country and , if exposed, might harm the status of Jews in the diaspora. The standard response from the Mossad would be: "So what's the worst that could happen to those Jews? They'd all come to Israel? Great." This recklessness clearly has ramifications for Jews who have refused to be recruited as Mossad helpers in affected countries. Mossad War Propaganda and the "Cartoon Controversy" Israeli leaders expressed their opposition to the Bush Administration's diplomatic efforts to engage the European powers in the Iran negotiations. Automatically and without question all the major Zionist and Jewish organizations in the US (AIPAC, Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations, ADL and others) unleashed a sustained national campaign to mobilize congress and their "friends" in the executive branch to take immediate military action or to impose economic sanctions on Iran. The Bush Administration however while in agreement, lacked public support in the US and among his European allies and their national electorates. The Mossad policy was to create a pretext to polarize public opinion between the Middle East (and beyond) and the West in order to escalate tensions and demonize Islamic adversaries to its Middle East hegemonis pretensions. "Rose" cartoons served the Mossad perfectly. The issue could be presented as a free speech issue, a conflict of "values" not "interests", between the "democratic West" and the fundamentalist "totalitarian" (as characterized by Pipes-Rose) Islamists. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rose had solicited and selected the Islamic caricatures while his paper had rejected similar cartoons of Jesus Christ in an earlier context. The image of Rose as a "cultural iconoclast" - while working for a right wing daily whose daily fare was publishing anti-(Mid-East)immigrant "news stories" and favorable interviews with Zionists extremists - is prima facie not credible, although that image has been purveyed by all the major media outlets. While "Rose" initiated the international tensions, liberal and neo-con colleagues and his comrades in and out of the Mossad publicized his transgressions and provoked the ire of the Arab and Islamic world. The cartoons, the subsequent insults and calumnies attacking the Islamic protestors and their secular allies throughout Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Europe eventually provoked major peaceful and then violent protests by millions of people. Visual images of violent protests and demonstrations were featured by the Western mass media, successfully creating the intended fear and apprehension against Muslim countries and minorities in Europe. Islamophobia gained momentum. Zionist propagandists in Europe and the US linked the defense of "free speech" issue to Israeli "security" policies. While the West turned its fury against the Islamic protestors, Israel blockaded Gaza and the US and Europe cut off all funding to the Palestinians, threatening the population with mass starvation for exercising its democratic right to elect its own leaders! "Rose's" free speech charade revived the discredited ZionCon doctrine of "Clash of Civilizations". Playing on European Islamophobia and the increasing sensibility of practicing Moslems and Arab nationalists to Western abuses, it is likely that Israeli psych-war experts pinpointed the "free speech" issue as the ideal detonator for the conflict. The democratic electoral victory of Hamas – dubbed by Israel as a terrorist movement – accelerated Israeli efforts to convince Western governments to insist that regimes in Muslim countries repress the 'irrational Islamic masses' or face Western censure or elimination of aid. (The failure to crack down violently on demonstrators was presented by the media as official approval or instigation) The major US Zionist organizations were able to influence Secretary of State Rice into blaming Iran and Syria for fomenting the worldwide demonstrations, from Gaza to the Philippines. The Israeli strategy was to use European outrage to weaken opposition to a military attack or economic sanctions on Iran and Syria. Beyond Religious Blasphemy While most establishment analysts have narrowly focused on the cartoon as the source and target of the massive global demonstrations, in fact it is at best the immediate detonator of a whole series of ongoing events of much greater political significance. From the "shock and awe" carpet bombing of Iraq, to the mass torture and routine everyday humiliation in occupied countries, from the utter destruction of Fallujah (an American example as Guernica was for the Nazis), to Israeli devastation of Jenin and Palestine, from the everyday assassinations of Palestinians by the Israeli occupiers, to the smearing of the Koran with filth at Guantanamo, Israel, the US and Europe have attempted to demonstrate that no Moslems are safe anywhere- not in their schools, home, offices, fields, factories or mosques- and that nothing is sacred. The reasons that millions are demonstrating against a caricature of Mohammed published in an insignificant Scandinavian rightwing newspaper is that this is the last straw – the detonator – of a series of deliberate violations of fundamental social and political rights of Muslim, Arab and colonized peoples. While the Western media have focused exclusively on the religious content of the demonstrators, almost every country, where massive sustained demonstrations have taken place, has been subject to recent Western intervention, large-scale pillage of raw materials and/or experienced the destruction of their secular rights: countries invaded, homes, schools, hospital, systems of health and clean water demolished, agriculture and natural resources looted, museums, libraries and archeological sites pillaged and mosques desecrated. The present condition for material existence has been a Western inferno for all the people (both secular and observant) living in Arab or Islamic countries. Now their most profound, historic, spiritual reference point, the prophet Mohammed – the most cherished religious figure – has been repeatedly trampled with impunity by arrogant imperialists, their media servants, aided and abetted by the Israeli state and its overseas 'sayanin' operatives. It is cynical to suggest that practicing Moslems could desecrate the figure of Jesus Christ with impunity when that too is forbidden by the Koran. As the Israeli strategists well knew in advance, the vilification of Islam was not taking place in a political vacuum: The material conditions for an Islamic-Arab uprising were ripe: Hamas had swept the Palestinian elections, the US military were aware that they were losing the war in Iraq, Iran was refusing to capitulate, Bush was losing public support for ongoing and future Middle Eastern wars, AIPAC, Israel's main political instrument for influencing US policy was under criminal investigation…Israel's strategy of having the US fight its wars was boomeranging. There was a need to revive the political-military tensions which they had exploited after September 11, 2001 to Israel's advantage: hence the "Flemming Rose" provocation, hence the coordinated, wide promotion of the act, hence the free speech agitation among Western 'sayanin', liberals, conservatives and neocon ideologues, hence the predictable explosion of protest, hence the 'recreation' of Mid-East tension…and the advances of Israel's agenda. Clearly the burgeoning confrontation is more than a religious or free speech issue, more than the crude provocations of an errant cultural editor coddled by the 'little farts' of a penetrated Danish intelligence agency. What is at stake is the deliberate racist stereotyping of Arab, Islamic and Third World people in order to sustain and deepen their oppression, exploitation and subordination. The most pervasive, prolific and influential source of racist Arab stereotypes are Israel and its overseas (particularly US and European) academics, terror 'experts', psychologists at the most prestigious universities and think tanks, who have provided the "psychological profile" to torture, humiliate, provoke and repress the millions struggling for self-determination against colonial and imperial dominance. Once again Israel and especially its overseas operatives have placed the expansion and militarist interests of Israel above the interests of the people of the US and Europe. "Is it good for the Jews?": A criterion as defined by the Israeli state, has led to the blind alley of massive confrontations, deepening animosity between Arabic/Muslim peoples and Western regimes. What appeared so clever to the 'Roses' of the world and their Katsas and docile Sayanim, in provoking confrontation may once again boomerang: The uprisings may go beyond protesting symbols of vilification to attacking the substance of power, including the Arab and Moslem pro-consuls and collaborators of the Euro-American political and economic power. While the Mossad is very astute in infiltrating and provoking oppressed groups, it has been singularly inept in controlling and containing the resultant uprisings as the recent victory of Hamas demonstrates and the success of the Iraqi resistance illustrates. The next controversial cartoon may show Moses leading his people into the desert. Epilogue While the Mossad-provoked 'free speech versus blasphemy' controversy between the West and the Islamic peoples continues to deepen, Israel proceeds to impose a Nazi-like economic siege over 4 million Palestinians, intended to starve them into surrendering their democratic freedoms. Intended is the concise term, Gideon Levy, star reporter for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz (19/02/06) records Dov Weissglas, advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister, jokingly telling top officials "Its (the economic blockage – which may include electricity and water, as well as food) like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner but won't die." The Israeli officials "rolled with laughter". As Levy points out "more than half of all Palestinians are already living in poverty…last year 37% had difficulties obtaining food… 54% of the residents of Gaza cut back the amount of food they consume…child mortality rose by 15%…unemployment reached 28%." Planned pre-meditated mass starvation of a ghettoized population, jokingly discarded by its executioners as a 'visit to the dietician', is an exact replica of the internal policy discussion of the Nazi high command over the population in the Warsaw Ghetto. Israel's capacity to impose and implement a genocidal policy has been greatly facilitated by the symbolic sideshow, which the Mossad-'Rose' orchestrated in Western Europe. "Cultural" conflict at the service of genocide – is hardly a clever ruse or merely a violation of Islamic sensibilities, it is a crime against humanity. |
By Ali Akbar Dareini
ASSOCIATED PRESS February 26, 2006 BUSHEHR, Iran – Iran's nuclear chief said an agreement was reached with Moscow on Sunday to set up a joint uranium enrichment facility on Russian soil, a deal that could assuage global concerns that Tehran wants to build atomic bombs.
The plan proposed by Russia is backed by the United States and European Union. The agreement was announced after a meeting between Russian nuclear chief Sergei Kiriyenko and Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and the country's vice president. The two countries "reached a basic agreement on the creation of a joint venture (to enrich uranium)," Aghazadeh told a news conference. The International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board of governors is scheduled to meet March 6 to consider what to do about Iran's recent resumption of nuclear activity. The meeting could start a process leading to punishment by the U.N. Security Council, which has the authority to impose economic and political sanctions on Iran. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was quoted by Russian media as saying Moscow will continue its talks with Iran until the March 6 IAEA board meeting in an effort to resolve the crisis. Moscow has been struggling to persuade Tehran to reinstate a moratorium on uranium enrichment and agree to shift its enrichment program to Russian territory to ease world concerns it could divert enriched uranium to a weapons program. Enriched uranium can be used for both nuclear energy and weapons. Kiriyenko said Moscow would insist on resolving the Iranian nuclear dispute within the IAEA, Russia's RIA Novosti news agency reported. Russia is one of the five permanent Security Council members with veto power over any resolution. Russia has said its enrichment offer was contingent on Iran reinstating the moratorium on domestic enrichment, but Iran has rejected such a link and in the past insisted on its right to enrich uranium domestically. Kiriyenko was quoted by Russian media as saying the joint enrichment venture in Russia was just "one of the elements in the complex of issues related to the Iranian nuclear problem." After several days of talks with Iranian officials, Kiriyenko said "negotiations weren't going simply and easily." But he was quoted as saying that "there were practically no technical, organizational and financial problems left" in talks on the Russian proposal. Aghazadeh and Kiriyenko, who together visited a nuclear plant being built by Russia in the Persian Gulf city of Bushehr, said nuclear talks would continue in Moscow over the next few days. Also, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi confirmed than an IAEA team was in Tehran to discuss the country's nuclear program. Iran has denied seeking atomic weapons and more than three years of IAEA probing have not produced concrete evidence to the contrary. But the agency discovered suspicious activity, including plutonium experiments and long-secret efforts to develop enrich uranium. Asefi played down a secret nuclear project that U.S. intelligence has linked to warhead design, saying it would offer information on it to the IAEA. "We will discuss the issue, and the rumors surrounding it, with the agency. It is not very sensitive or ambiguous," Asefi told reporters at a news conference when asked about the secret "Green Salt Project." Public mention of the "Green Salt Project" first surfaced in an IAEA report drawn up earlier this month for a meeting of the agency's board of governors. The meeting ended with the board reporting Tehran to the Security Council over concerns it could be hiding a nuclear weapons program. Asefi reiterated that Iran would continue its nuclear fuel research activities and would not give in its rights under pressure and "bullying language." He said his country expects the next IAEA board session to be held on a "nonpolitical, independent and professional" basis. |
By Parinoosh Arami
Reuters February 27, 2006 TEHRAN - Two bombs exploded in the southern Iranian cities of Dezful and Abadan on Monday wounding at least six people, officials said.
The bombs were planted in the governor's office in both cities, which lie in the province of Khuzestan, the heartland of Iran's oil industry, that has seen tensions between Iranian authorities and the Arab minority over the last year. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombings, the latest in a string of attacks and violence this year in Khuzestan, which borders Iraq and contains most of Iran's Arabic-speaking minority. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking to reporters in Kuwait, said: "The presence of occupation (forces) in Iraq leads to the deterioration of the security situation in the region, but Iran is a strong country and we will make those who try and mess with us regret it." State television showed footage from a meeting at the Abadan governor's office which was in session when the bomb exploded. Disorientated officials picked their way through piles of debris and clouds of dust. One man was helped from the scene, his clothes spattered with blood. "There were no fatalities but at least four people were wounded in Dezful and two in Abadan," a local official told Reuters by telephone. Both blasts occurred far away from any oil facilities in the province, where small bombs damaged 15 pipelines and one oil well in September. "The oil refinery has not been damaged," said a spokeswoman for the Abadan oil refinery. "Hopefully, those behind the bombings will soon be found and punished," Hamid Ghanaati, governor-general of Dezful, told the official IRNA news agency. Officials said the two blasts were ten minutes apart. "The bombs were hidden in the washrooms of the two buildings," an unnamed provincial official told IRNA. "The buildings were heavily damaged and are closed." Another official blamed foreigners for the blasts. "Foreign elements aim to exploit the situation by fanning ethnic differences and separatist tendencies," Khuzestan's Deputy Governor General Hassan Farokhnejad told the semi-official Fars news agency. "They are always inciting domestic elements to commit incidents such as the recent bombings," Farokhnejad added without giving details. In recent months, officials have blamed violence on exiled separatist groups and have accused Britain of stirring unrest in Khuzestan. London denies the charge. Violence erupted in Khuzestan in April when at least five people were killed during several days of anti-government demonstrations. Seven people were killed in bombings in June and six died in a blast in October. Eight people were killed last month when bombs ripped through a bank and government building. About three percent of Iran's 69 million people are Arabs. Authorities are sensitive about protests and discontent in the southwestern Arab territories. Comment:
"Foreign elements aim to exploit the situation by fanning ethnic differences and separatist tendencies."Gee, to whom might the Iranians be referring?? |
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