|
Printer
Friendly Version
New
Page!
Translations from other sites
New
Travel Log! The
Quantum Future Group Goes to Rennes-le-Chateau
New
Article!
Fallen Stars
911 Eye-witnesses
P3nt4gon Str!ke Presentation by a QFS member
New
Publication! 'The Wave' finally in book form!
The
Wave: 4 Volume Set
Volume 2
by
Laura Knight-Jadczyk
With a new
introduction by the author and never before published, UNEDITED sessions
and extensive previously unpublished details, at long last, Laura Knight-Jadczyk's
vastly popular series The Wave is available as a Deluxe four
book set. Each of the four volumes include all of the original illustrations
and many NEW illustrations with each copy comprising approximately 300
pages.
The Wave
is an exquisitely written first-person account of Laura's initiation at
the hands of the Cassiopaeans and demonstrates the unique nature of the
Cassiopaean Experiment.
Order
Volumes 1 and 2 now!
Picture
of the Day
Poplars
in the fog
© 2004 Pierre-Paul
Feyte
WASHINGTON Dec 20, 2004 —
In a sobering assessment of the Iraq war, President Bush acknowledged
Monday that Americans' resolve has been shaken by grisly scenes
of death and destruction and he pointedly criticized the performance
of U.S.-trained Iraqi troops. "No question about it,"
he said. "The bombers are having an effect."
Bush declined to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin despite
concerns that he has strengthened authoritarian controls and backtracked
on post-Soviet democratic reforms. Bush said he has a good personal
relationship with Putin and "I intend to keep it that way."
The United States and Russia have disagreements, the president added,
but he said the relationship is good.
The president also offered a warm testimonial for Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld in the face of spreading expressions of no-confidence
by GOP senators. Rumsfeld appears "rough and gruff," Bush
said, but "he's a good, decent man. He's a caring fellow."
For 53 minutes, Bush fielded questions on international and domestic
affairs. It was his 17th formal news conference, held one day before
he flies to the presidential retreat at Camp David for a vacation
that will stretch into early next year and include a stay at his
Texas ranch.
Bush spoke a day after the deadliest attacks in Iraq since July
killing at least 54 people in Najaf and at least 13 in Karbala and
six weeks before Iraqis vote for a transitional assembly that will
choose a president and a government and draft a permanent constitution.
American newspapers showed chilling pictures of rebels in the heart
of Baghdad executing election workers in cold blood.
"And so the American people are taking a look at Iraq and
wondering whether the Iraqis are eventually going to be able to
fight off these bombers and killers," Bush said in perhaps
his clearest expression of frustration with Iraqi forces. Bush's
strategy calls for American troops to protect Iraq while local police
and soldiers are trained to do the job themselves, eventually allowing
the United States to withdraw.
"Now I would call the results mixed in terms of standing up
Iraqi units who are willing to fight," Bush said in a candid
assessment. "There have been some cases where, when the heat
got on, they left the battlefield. That's unacceptable. Iraq will
never secure itself if they have troops that, when the heat gets
on, they leave the battlefield." What is needed, he said, is
a better military command structure.
Polls show an erosion in Americans' confidence that a stable, democratic
government will be established in Iraq. "Polls change. Polls
go up, polls go down," Bush said.
He said he understands why Americans have doubts about Iraq's ability.
"They're looking on your TV screen and seeing indiscriminate
bombings, where thousands of innocent or hundreds of innocent Iraqis
are getting killed …" But Bush said those pictures do
not reflect that 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces are relatively stable
and that small businesses are starting up. "Life is better
now than it was under Saddam Hussein."
"But no question about it. The bombers are having an effect
… They're trying to shake the will of the Iraqi people and,
frankly, trying to shake the will of the American people."
Bush warned that insurgents would try to delay Iraq's elections,
scheduled for Jan. 30, and intimidate the people. "I certainly
don't expect the process to be trouble-free," the president
said. "Yet I am confident of the result. I'm confident that
terrorists will fail, the elections will go forward and Iraq will
be a democracy…." He said he could not predict when American
forces could come home.
He renewed his warning to Syria and Iran against "meddling"
in Iraq's political process. "I meant it. And hopefully those
governments heard what I said," Bush said, without threatening
any consequences.
The president expressed fresh hope for peace between Israel and
the Palestinians, saying "we've got a good chance to get it
done." He welcomed efforts by British Prime Minister Tony Blair
to go to the region this week and make plans for a conference to
help develop a Palestinian state.
Bush said he favored diplomatic approaches rather than regime changes
in Iran and North Korea, two nations that the United States have
troubling nuclear programs. He said diplomacy
"must be the first choice, always the first choice of an administration
trying to solve an issue of … nuclear armament."
|
WASHINGTON, 17 December 2004
— For the second time in four months, the US has accused Israel
of spying against Washington. This week, the FBI charged the Israeli
Defense Ministry of industrial espionage, and accused it’s
defense officials of trying to access US top secret technological
and intelligence data.
Washington allegedly is so furious over the spying allegations
that it has demanded the resignation of Amos Yaron, director general
of Israel’s Defense Ministry, according several news sources.
The report comes just days after the FBI raided the pro-Israel
lobbying group, AIPAC, in Washington and interrogated AIPAC officials,
resulting in four of AIPAC’s top officials being subpoenaed
by a federal grand jury. The US has accused
a Defense Department analyst, Lawrence Franklin, of passing classified
US information on Iran to Israel.
Additionally, FBI officials say that Israeli
officials who visited US military sites have tried to steal confidential
US technology information. FBI agents have interrogated a
number of Israeli officials over the past few months, including
IDF officers, diplomats, and military industry
officials.
Israel has called the US accusations that
Tel Aviv’s defense officials were engaged in industrial espionage
“a misunderstanding based on chutzpah and general nosiness,”
according to yesterday’s Jerusalem Post.
“High-ranking political sources in Israel reiterated that
all the tension is the result of cultural differences, such as the
Israeli practice of cutting corners or pressuring officials to give
up information. The Americans interpret these in a completely different
way, they said,” notes the Post.
Knesset Member Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Knesset’s
Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee denied Israel was involved
in industrial or any other kind of espionage in the United States.
“There is no Israeli espionage in the US. Period,”
he told Israel Army radio. “There is a lot of very good cooperation,
including military and security industrial cooperation. There is
also a mutual exchange of information. Both sides contribute information.
Perhaps it is this to which (the Americans) are referring.”
But a US defense expert disagrees. He told
Arab News yesterday the Israelis have been spying on US military
systems for years - this, he said is “well-known”
within the defense community. “They
took our Arrow, our Patriot missile system, and a knock-off of our
F-16, the Davi and made their versions of it,” said the source,
who insisted on anonymity.
“The irony is that they copy our weapons
and then turn around and sell them to countries where we don’t
want them to go.”
“In this case, Pakistan now has a spin-off of the F-16 and
is using US technology that came via Israel and China.”
“During Gulf War I, the US stationed their Patriot missiles
in Israel and their experts crawled all over it. They helped themselves
to whatever they could to make a similar weapon, and several of
our Patriots disappeared while there,” he said. |
On July 30, United Press International
intelligence correspondent
Richard Sale reported that Rafi Eitan, the Israeli spymaster who
recruited Jonathan Jay Pollard to spy against the United States,
"has reemerged on American soil and is being scrutinized by
the FBI.'' Sale elaborated, "According to federal law enforcsement
officials, Eitan has, for the last year or so, been traveling to
the United States on an Israeli passport, but using an alias.
These sources told UPI that Eitan lands at Columbus, Ohio, and then
moves about the Midwest, to cities such as Indianapolis. Eitan has
been seen and photographed in the company of `known dealers who
belong to a ring dealing in the drug ecstasy,' one federal law enforcement
official said.''
In a followup UPI story on Aug. 7, Sale wrote, "U.S. officials
said
Eitan, at first described by former Israeli officials as being
'sidelined' and 'in mothballs' as far as Israel is concerned, has,
in
fact, been brought back into government life by Sharon who is
employing him as a counter-terrorism adviser... 'We all thought
he he
was in disgrace,' a federal law enforcement official said. 'We were
wrong.''
Sale quoted from a June 1997 interview with
Eitan by the Israeli
newspaper Yediot Aharonot, in which the former chief of Mossad
operations in Europe said, "I failed
in the Pollard affair, just as I
failed in other intelligence operations
behind enemy lines. That is
the lot of the intelligence officer who runs complex operations.''
Note Eitan's reference to the United States as "behind enemy
lines.''
A New 9/11 Plot
EIR was the first publication to report on "Dirty Rafi's''
clandestine
trips to the United States, early this year--with one very crucial
additional detail: Eitan is making these high-risk journeys, U.S.
and
Israeli sources report, because he is directing plans for a major
terrorist attack on American soil--a new 9/11--to be blamed on either
Muslim or Latin American terrorists.
EIR's sources--both Israeli and American--have warned that Eitan
is
putting the finishing touches on such an operation, which coincides
with Vice President Cheney's agressive promotion of the idea that
the United States is facing an imminent new 9/11 attack. Cheney
launched this propaganda offensive at his July 24, 2003 speech at
the
American Enterprise Institute in Washington, and he has been stumping
the country, ever since, asserting an imminent terror attack.
As part of his current mission, sources report that Eitan has made
two
recent trips to Mexico, and on one occasion traveled to another
location in Latin America, possibly Uruguay or Cuba (Eitan led an
Israeli "business'' delegation to Cuba several years ago).
The Feb. 13, 2003 edition of EIR's twice-weekly EIR Executive Alert
Service, under the headline "The Real Story Behind the Heightened
Terror Alert?,'' reported:
"A well-placed Israeli source has warned EIR that the Sharon
gang in
Israel may be actively plotting a terrorist incident inside the
United
States, to be blamed on `Islamic' terrorists, to insure that the
U.S.
launches the war on Iraq before the beginning of March.
The report comes amidst heightened terror alerts in the U.S., and
a
new purported `Osama Bin Laden' message, played on Tuesday [Feb.
11] on Al Jazeera, calling on Iraqis to carry out suicide bombings
against American targets. As preposterous as it seems, today at
the White House, Ari Fleischer was touting the tape as new `proof'
of ties
between Saddam and Al Qaeda.
"The Israeli source reported, specifically,
that, last week, `Dirty'
Rafi Eytan, the Sharon henchman and one-time controller of convicted
spy Jonathan Pollard, snuck illegally into the United States, from
Canada, on a phony Canadian passport. There is a standing arrest
warrant in the U.S. for Eitan, dating back to the Pollard case.
According to the source, Eitan first landed in Las Vegas, and then
traveled, on Saturday, to a still-unknown location in Ohio, which
he
has used as a base of operations in previous trips to the U.S.
The source said that Eitan's mission is to set up an `Islamic'
terrorist incident, possibly involving the use of chemical or
biological agents, to drive the American population over the edge,
and
drive Bush into the arms of the war party for an immediate invasion
of
Iraq.
"Last year, the source had passed on information about a similar
illegal Eitan visit to the United States to EIR, and after several
months, law enforcement contacts confirmed that the Eitan travel
report was accurate.''
Bush, of course, did launch the Iraq war in March, and, sources
report, the Eitan operation was postponed, but not aborted. Now,
with Cheney, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon, all facing political revolts at home, over
the Iraq
fiasco and, in Sharon's case, over financial fraud charges, there
is
no question who would benefit from a major distraction like a new
9/11. |
BANGALORE - Israel's relationship
with its closest ally, the United States, seems to have hit a rough
patch, with Washington apparently upset with Israel's clandestine
dealings with China. The spat is not new, however. It has its roots
in a decade-old issue. Old suspicions have returned. It is an explosion
into the public domain of a row that has been going on for a few years.
The quarrel is over Israel's alleged concealing from Washington
of an upgrade of a major weapons system it sold to China more than
a decade ago. The United States claims that by upgrading the system,
Israel violated its commitment not to transfer US technology to
China without Washington's permission. Israel, however, insists
that the upgrade was really just routine maintenance of a system
that had originally been sold to China with US approval.
What appears to have propelled this simmering tension into the
open is a clash of personalities. According to reports in the media,
US Under Secretary of Defense Doug Feith believes that Israeli Defense
Ministry director general Amos Yaron misled him on the arms sale
to China. On Wednesday, Israeli media reported that Feith had demanded
Yaron's resignation (the Pentagon has subsequently denied this).
This clash of personalities is a minor matter and can be sorted
out. That is not the case with the underlying issue of concern to
the US - Sino-Israel military cooperation.
Israel is China's second-largest arms supplier (the first being
Russia). Although diplomatic relations between Israel and China
were established only in 1992, military ties go back to the early
1980s. Until formal diplomatic ties were established, the military
relationship was covert. Israel sold about US$4 billion worth of
arms to China during the covert courtship. In the 1990s, the Sino-Israel
military relationship grew rapidly. In fact, arms sales contributed
to the strengthening of diplomatic engagement.
The military relationship hit a trough in 2000, however, when Israel
came under pressure from the US to scrap a $250 million deal to
sell China the Phalcon, an airborne radar system equipped with advanced
Israeli-made aeronautics on board a Russian-made plane. Washington's
argument was that providing Beijing access to the technology would
upset the military balance between China and Taiwan and threaten
US interests in the region. When the US Congress threatened to cut
the $2.8 billion it gives Israel annually if the deal went ahead,
Israel buckled and scrapped it.
For years, the US government has expressed concerns over Israel
illegally transferring technology to China. During the Gulf War,
the US gave Israel Patriot missiles as protection against Iraqi
Scud missiles. In 1992, a US intelligence report revealed that soon
after the end of the Gulf War, Israel had sold Patriot anti-missile
data to China. Israel denied the intelligence report.
Washington has also alleged on several occasions that Israel violated
agreements by exporting restricted US technology it buys with yearly
US subsidies. This was the case with the largely US-funded Lavi
fighter-plane program. Israel, the Americans believe, passed on
technology to Beijing. China's F-10 fighter jet is believed to be
almost identical to the Lavi.
Washington has also expressed concern from time to time that Israel's
arms trade with China could result in its military technology falling
into the "wrong hands" - such as Iran's, for instance.
But this argument rings rather hollow considering that the US itself
supplies Pakistan with high-tech weaponry, despite Pakistan's "all-weather
friendship" with China and Islamabad's abysmal record on the
issue of nuclear and missile proliferation and its supply of military
technology and know-how to Washington's foes.
Israel's damaged reputation
Unlike previous occasions when suspicions were expressed more quietly,
with the Phalcon deal the issue erupted into the open. The cancellation
of the Phalcon deal damaged Israel's image and interests to a considerable
extent. It eroded Israel's credibility as a weapons supplier in
the international arms market and it laid bare to the world Israel's
susceptibility to US pressure.
The cancellation of the Phalcon deal not surprisingly led to a
chill in Sino-Israel relations. Israel subsequently forked out $350
million in compensation to China, and there were no known arms sales
through 2003. Back in 2002, a deal for Israeli communication satellites
was signed. Early this year, an Israeli delegation went to China
for talks on rebuilding military ties. Reports suggested that Israel
and China were even considering reopening the Phalcon deal.
The military relationship is important for both countries. China
is keen to have access to Israel's high-quality defense products
and services, and the relationship with Israel has enabled it to
acquire "dual-use technology" that the US and Europe have
been reluctant to provide.
Israel, which is among the world's top exporters of arms, is keen
on its military ties with China for several reasons. According to
Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at the Bar Ilan
University in Tel Aviv and consultant to the Israeli Ministry of
Foreign Affairs and National Security Council, since Israel does
not sell arms to the Arab countries or Iran, it has fewer potential
markets than other major players in the high-tech arms market. (However,
a look at Israel's arms market over the past several decades indicates
that the country has sold arms to regimes that other countries have
been reluctant to trade with.)
Unlike most other arms manufacturers, Israel exports 75% of the
total production of its military industries. Israel's military industry
is dependent on exports for its survival. And arms sales to China
are among its most lucrative businesses. Therefore, arms trade with
China is very important, providing contracts for jobs as well as
income to offset the high costs of maintaining Israel's technology
and industrial base. Military trade has also paved the way for broader
trade in other dual-use and high-tech goods. China's immense value
as a trade partner for Israel's military industry is evident from
Israel's engagement with China and Taiwan. In the early 1990s, Israel
passed up defense deals with Taiwan so as not to damage its fledging
relationship with China.
Eugene Kogan, a defense-industry analyst, writes in the Jamestown
Foundation's China Brief that while Israel has rebuffed Taiwan's
repeated attempts to revive relations with it, "when it comes
to contact with China, the Israeli Ministry of Defense (MOD) promotes
a clear-cut policy. China is an extremely important trade partner
for the Israeli defense industry. As a result, the MOD, which oversees
the arms trade with China, has ensured that Israel maintains a positive
relationship with the PRC [People's Republic of China], while avoiding
any contact with Taiwan which might disrupt this partnership."
The Israel-China military relationship also contributed to China
softening its anti-Israel stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
China's policy moved from its pro-Arab tilt to a more nuanced appreciation
of the Israeli position. (Chinese criticism of Israel increased
markedly after the cancellation of the Phalcon deal.)
What is interesting about China's military relationship with Israel
is that Beijing has been able to increase engagement with Israel
without alienating the Arabs. Even Iran hasn't protested Beijing's
close military ties to Israel.
Israel has much to lose by angering the Chinese. But it has more
to lose by angering the US. The cost of not complying with Washington's
demands could result in a cutback on the nearly $2 billion in foreign
military assistance that the US provides Israel annually. It could
result in political and diplomatic costs, too, for Israel. It will
have to do a fine balancing act if it wants to maintain its military
ties with China without provoking Washington's ire.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based
in Bangalore, India. |
During a family visit to his brother in Beer
Sheba prison, Rasmi Jihad Oda Al-Khatib, a resident of Fawar
refugee camp to the south of Al-Khalil, was
severely beaten by the Israeli occupation soldiers.
The brutal attack left bruises all over Rasmi’s body, according
to family members who accompanied him during a visit to his brother
Rami, sentenced to eight years in jail.
They added that Israeli soldiers attacked Rasmi, whose
left hand was paralyzed when they previously shot him in the neck.
Palestinian child injured by Israeli gunfire
Meanwhile, Israeli occupation soldiers
shot a 16- year old Palestinian child last night in Halhol
town to the north of Al-Khalil city.
Wisam Yasser Abdul Rahman Abu Rayyan was hit with a bullet in
his chest, medical sources in Al-Khalil government hospital said,
adding that the boy underwent an immediate surgery and was still
under treatment
According to local sources, Israeli forces advanced into the town
at 08.00 pm yesterday and fired live bullets
and teargas canisters at Palestinian civilians.
Meanwhile, Israeli troops imposed a curfew on Beitonia to the
west of Ramallah city this morning and opened
fire at schoolchildren and civil servants on their way to schools
and jobs.
Also last night, a ten-year-old girl was
wounded by Israeli gunfire in similar attacks at Palestinian
schools in the town. [...] |
Mairead Corrigan, a British Nobel Peace Prize
laureate has compared on Sunday Israel’s policy, including
nuclear armament, to Nazi bellicosity during World War II. She also
urged Israel to lift travel restrictions on nuclear whistle-blower
Mordechai Vanunu.
In 1976, Corrigan was awarded the Nobel Prize for her Northern
Ireland peace campaign, in which she compared Israeli nuclear activities
to Hitler’s gas chambers during world war II.
Corrigan was at the prison gates to welcome Vanunu when he was
released in April after he was jailed for 18 years for disclosing
information about Israel's nuclear capabilities.
During a joint press conference with Mordechai Vanunu in
West Jerusalem Sunday, Corrigan said that Israel's possession of
nuclear arms was as dangerous as Nazi Germany's gas chambers.
"When I think about nuclear weapons, I've been to Auschwitz
concentration camp," Maguire said.
"Nuclear weapons are only gas chambers perfected... and for
a people who know what gas chambers are, how can you even think
of building perfect gas chambers?"
Also during the press conference, Vanunu said that Israel persecuted
him just because he converted to Christianity.
"I, as a Christian, am demanding from Israel, let me go and
celebrate Christmas with my family and my friends around the world,"
he said. "They should give me my total freedom, I suffered
18 years in isolation in prison. They should not continue to persecute
me."
Two weeks ago, Israel arrested Vanunu after he spoke to a Western
news agency and described Israel’s nuclear arsenal as a real
danger to the region.
Following a policy of nuclear ambiguity, Israel, backed by the
U.S., neither confirms nor denies that it has nuclear arms. It has
always rejected to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and
continued to develop nuclear weapons.
Israeli foreign ministry officials couldn’t be reached for
immediate comment.
Previously, Israeli officials have expressed
contempt at comparisons between Israel and the Nazis, who
murdered 6 million Jews during World War II in an attempt to abolish
all the Jews of Europe.
Israel has barred Vanunu from traveling abroad or speaking to
foreigners since he was freed. |
Defence secretary
admits machine signed Iraq condolence letters
The pressure on the beleaguered US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld,
intensified yesterday and threatened to taint his main supporter
in Washington, George Bush.
David Hackworth, a retired US army colonel turned writer, reported
that Mr Rumsfeld had used a mechanical signature writer to sign
his name on letters of condolence to relatives of soldiers killed
in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Although the charge was initially denied
by the Pentagon, Mr Rumsfeld issued a statement on Thursday
acknowledging the practice and promising to halt it.
"While I have not individually signed each one, in the interest
of ensuring expeditious contact with grieving family members, I
have directed that in the future I sign each letter," Mr Rumsfeld
said in the statement.
Mr Hackworth also reported allegations by relatives of deceased
soldiers that letters they had received from the president had been
signed by a machine.
Ted Smith, whose son Eric was one of the first 100 US soldiers
to die in Iraq, told Mr Hackworth that the letter he received "from
the commander-in-chief was signed with a thick, green marking pen.
I thought it was stamped then and do even now. He
had time for golf and the ranch but not enough to sign a decent
signature with a pen for his beloved hero soldiers". [...] |
BUDAPEST, Dec. 20 (Xinhuanet) --
Hungary completed its withdrawal from Iraq as its last soldier left
the war-ravaged country on Monday, said the Defense Ministry.
Hungarian soldiers are now in a temporary US base in Kuwait and
will return home before Christmas, said the ministry in a statement.
Vehicles and other equipment will be transported back home nextyear,
it said.
Hungary sent 300 troops to Iraq at the request of the United States
in 2003 for transportation services. Their mandate expires at the
end of this December.
Parliament in November rejected Prime Minister Gyurcsany Ferenc's
request for an extension of the mission until March 2005 in view
of Iraq's Jan. 30 general elections.
A Hungarian soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq in June.
|
The Iraqi authorities arrested
50 suspects yesterday in connection with the suicide bombs that
killed 67 people and injured 175 in the holy cities of Najaf and
Karbala.
Claims by the police that some of those arrested had confessed
to having links with Iranian and Syrian intelligence agencies will
not sound convincing to Shia Iraqis who believe that the bombings
were the work of Sunni fundamentalists.
Iraqis are now beginning to ask if they are slipping towards conflict
between the country's Shia and Sunni communities. Walid al-Omar,
a businessman from Basra in the Shia-dominated south, said: "The
feelings of each community are becoming polarised. They have not
quite reached boiling point yet but they might do so in future."
The election on 30 January is deepening sectarian divisions because
the Shia, who make up 60 per cent of the population but were previously
denied any significant amount of power, will take part and most
Sunnis say they will not.
Shia leaders have appealed for their followers not to engage in
revenge attacks and, for the moment, they are being listened to
by the well-armed Shia militias.
In Najaf, where an explosion tore into a funeral procession close
to the shrine of Imam Ali, killing 54 people and wounding 142, the
police chief, Ghalib al-Jazaari, said that those arrested included
"elements" linked to Iranian and Syrian intelligence agencies.
But there is no reason why those who planned the attack should have
anyone in Najaf other than the suicide bomber who died in his own
explosion.
Iraqi security forces have had little success in detecting the
organisation behind the suicide bombers. Many Shia and Sunni Iraqis
believe these bombings were carried out by Salafi or Wahabi Sunni
militants who denounce all Shias as infidels. Sunni villages and
towns south of Baghdad in the Latifiyah area are notorious for their
sectarian bigotry.
The rubble-strewn streets of Najaf were almost empty yesterday
apart from the funeral processions of those who died in the bombings
on Sunday.
Iyad Allawi, the interim Prime Minister, distanced himself yesterday
from the claim by his Defence Minister, Hazim al-Shalaan, that Iran
and Syria were supporting the insurgents. Mr Shalaan said that they
were co-operating with the al-Qa'ida group in Iraq and their leader,
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Mr Allawi said: "The Defence Minister
was talking from his own perspective. It does nor represent the
government position."
Though the US and the interim government have frequently claimed
that foreign fighters were leading the battle in Fallujah and other
Sunni cities, there is no evidence that they are more than a marginal
element. Few of the prisoners taken in Fallujah were non-Iraqi.
The election of a 275-member National Assembly on 30 January which
is largely Shia and Kurdish may further alienate the Sunni Arabs
and lead to more violence. There is likely to be a boycott of the
polls in Sunni rural areas. In Baghdad, middle-class Sunnis may
vote but in mixed areas people may be too frightened.
Ghassan Atiyyah, a writer and academic, presenting the manifesto
of a non-sectarian group called the Iraqi Independence Bloc, said
there was no reason why the situation should improve after the election.
He said: "We have been told this many times before, such as
when the interim government was formed, but things always get worse."
|
Much that has been written about
the ‘division’ between the Sunni and Shia in Iraq is
not only a total distortion of the demographics of the Iraqi population,
it also feeds into the propaganda campaign of ‘divide and
rule’ tactics that even opponents of the war and occupation
can fall into the trap of accepting as true, including I might add,
myself, when I used a ‘statistic’ gleaned from the Independent
without first verifying it.
I was rapidly called to task over my (or should I say the Independent’s)
numbers by a reader:
"Your reference to "the minority Sunni Muslims"
and "16 million of Iraq's population of 25 million are Shias"
is [a] fallacy."
He went on to say:
"To date there is not and has not been any Iraqi official
record documenting the actual head count of the Sunnis and/or Shias
in Iraq. The reason is that in all the Iraqi government censuses
previously carried out till the fall of the last regime, there was
no requirement in the census forms to specify the Muslim sect [to
which a person belonged]. In fact there is no official document
issued by the Iraqi governments to date that mentions the Muslim
sect in it. Hence, the referenced term about the Sunni's being a
minority and Shias a majority is unfounded and incorrect. Not that
it matters anyway but it is worth mentioning there is a counter
argument that considers the Sunnis are the majority. I recently
received…research by an Iraqi scholar which proved this argument
with fairly reliable figures. Needless to say, both arguments do
not bear any significance whatsoever. This whole charade is also
part of what you so rightly referred to in your article as [a] "massive
disinformation campaign" waged by those who have ulterior political
motives behind this campaign."
The writer by the way is an Iraqi citizen currently residing in
the Arab Emirates. And to reinforce his point he draws attention
to the role of divide and rule in the War in Lebanon and role of
the so-called Christian/Moslem ‘divide’ in fomenting
discord and civil war in the country that only benefitted the Israeli
and US imperialists:
"[B]efore and during the Lebanese crisis (1975-1990) there
was a widespread belief, [that] to a certain extent became…common
knowledge, that the Christians were the majority in Lebanon. That
also was a politically motivated fallacy which served its political
purposes for years but was later discovered by the Lebanese themselves
to be untrue as it became well known, as a matter of fact, that
the Muslim population was and still is the majority."
You would think by now that the tactic of ‘divide and rule’
would have been ‘rumbled’ by most people, yet it continues
to cut a swathe of death and destruction across the planet wherever
the interests of Western imperialism are threatened, that ennumerating
them all would fill several paragraphs.
But of course, ethnic, racial and religious
differences that mean little during the ‘good times’
are easy to ignite when communities feel threatened, whether
the threat is real or invented.
And in any case, the ‘differences’ have been artificially
maintained by the state utilising a variety of tactics and strategies.
We need only look at the current Labour government’s use
of the ‘asylum seeker’ and ‘illegal immigrant’
to see the truth of the role of divide and rule, especially when
significant sections of the mass media are complicit in the process,
whether it’s the BBC in even talking about it as a ‘problem’
or the more rabid sections of the press intent on inflaming the
passions of the most vulnerable communities in this, the 4th richest
country on the planet!
And it’s the UK that is the ‘past master’ of
the use of this tactic that stretches back centuries to its colonisation
of Ireland, India, the slave plantations of the Caribbean, and its
colonial possessions in Africa and Asia. And such tactics are varied
and ingenious from the use of people from different ‘tribal’
backgrounds in the various sections of the colonial state in Nigeria
(Hausa in the army and Yoruba in the civil service, or perhaps it
was the other way around, or maybe it was the Ibo, it matters little)
through to the importation of Asians either as indentured labour
in countries as far apart as Trinidad and as merchants in Uganda
or Kenya.
Look, I needn’t go on, it’s
all there, in the history books, you don’t have to
be rocket scientist to figure it out nor what effect it has on the
development process and the autonomy of countries struggling to
establish themselves after centuries of colonial domination. It’s
the final fallback for imperialism in its struggle to maintain its
hegemonic control of the planet and its resources.
We forget that it’s only a century or so ago that Europe
too was a bunch of ‘statelets’ busy butchering each
other in this or that name, whilst its rulers squandered the wealth
of their empires and sacrificed the lives of their people in the
name of one deity, faction or another.
It’s also fashionable these days, even for some so-called
anti-colonialists to take up the cudgel of capitalism and blame
the victim, when I read about ‘dependency’ and corrupt
rule and ‘failed states’ etc, without looking to the
crucial role of imperialism in the process. It’s
the hypocrisy that pisses me off so, when I read the words of these
smug, self-satisfied bastards telling me ‘I told you so, you
can’t trust the natives. You need the civilised white man
to sort it all out’. And this is from the ‘civilisation’
that gave us Adolf Hitler, My Lai, lynchings and Hiroshima.
‘Mississipi Goddamn!’ as Nina Simone told it. |
COPENHAGEN, Denmark
-- Iraq is worse off now, after the U.S.-led invasion, than it was
under Saddam Hussein, Hans Blix told a Danish newspaper Tuesday.
"What's positive is that Saddam and his bloody regime is gone,
but when figuring out the score, the negatives weigh more,"
the former chief U.N. weapons inspector was quoted as saying in
the daily newspaper Jyllands Posten.
"That accounts for the many casualties during the war and the
many people who still die because of the terrorism the war has nourished,"
he said. "The war has liberated the Iraqis from Saddam, but
the costs have been too great."
Blix, whose inspection team didn't make any significant weapons
finds during months of searching Iraq before the war, has sharply
criticized the United States and Britain for their invasion of Iraq
to topple Saddam Hussein's regime.
The primary reason given for the invasion was to rid the country
of weapons of mass destruction. None were found during or after
the invasion.
The former Swedish foreign minister currently heads a newly created
Stockholm-based independent commission on weapons of mass destruction. |
The rise to power of the Amerikan Nazis, and
the subsequent dive into the cesspool of fascism the nation is now
experiencing, was assured with the ascension to the White House
of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in November 2000. Through the
well-conceived, methodical fraud committed against the American
people, the Amerikan Nazis were now free to unleash their devastation
upon the world. They were now free to release the demons of war
on humanity, destroying innocent human life, tearing flesh apart,
devastating environments, endangering freedoms and rights, eviscerating
democracy and decimating entire peoples and nations.
Stealing the election through the disenfranchisement, intimidation,
manipulation and blatant racism against tens of thousands of Florida
blacks, the Amerikan Nazis regained the seat of power and immediately
began preparations for their ideologically inspired, pre-ordained
world agenda of imperial hegemony, pre-emptive offensive wars, natural
resource control, geopolitical military allocation, proxy wars in
defense of foreign nations, corporate profit and pillage, American
treasure plunder and grip on absolute power.
With the inauguration of George W. Bush
in January 2001 an amalgam of corrupt, warmongering, greed-addicted,
delusional, unscrupulous and ideological criminals, fascists, religious
fundamentalists, profit over people capitalists and Zionist neocons
fused to create the most damaging cocktail of immoral human malfeasance
since similar vermin rose to power in 1930’s Europe. Thus
began the reign of the Amerikan Nazis, indiscriminately escalating
the momentum of Earth’s descent into the dark abyss of self-annihilation
and helping steer civilization closer towards nuclear midnight .
Conceived through fraud and deceit, developed through secrecy
and intimidation, secured in lies and delusions, and birthed by
the horrors of 9/11, thereafter cementing a national psychosis in
the American mind that has yet to dissipate, the Amerikan Nazis
have thrust upon the entirety of the planet a parallel universe
not seen in 70 years. Since usurping power, the Amerikan Nazis have
created nothing but negative energy, retarding the existing goodness
in humankind and exposing the worst in the human condition.
Misery, suffering, death, destruction, economic
frailty, violence, mass murder, war crimes, fear, hatred, racism,
ignorance, xenophobia, homophobia, division, perpetual war, corruption,
exploitation, the bankruptcy of the nation, the pillaging of our
treasure, greed, indifference and immorality have flourished since
the era of the Amerikan Nazi was birthed.
They have made millions of Americans carriers of hatred, fear
and racism, infecting in the American psyche a collective ignorance
based on the exploitation of fundamentalist theology. They have
attached lead chains on our rights, freedoms and on democracy herself.
They have succeeded in dividing the nation like never before, making
enemies of progressives and conservatives. They have expanded the
power of the corporate world, making us the serfs of yesterday and
the automatons of the future. They have turned
We the People into We the Sheeple, the land of the free and the
home of the brave into the land of greed and the home of the slave.
Has anything good occurred since November 2000? Has anything positive
manifested itself since the coup d’etat of late 2000? Of course
not. The last four years have been nothing but a steep decline into
a toxic canyon, with nothing seemingly able to stop our continued
fall. America is degenerating into an entity being pulled apart
by its appendages, imploding right in front of our eyes. The thing
to remember is that the sudden collapse has coincided with the rise
of the Amerikan Nazis.
At no other time since has the security of the planet been so
compromised. At no time has so much gone so wrong, from pre-emptive
wars to criminal and illegal wars of invasion to the scapegoating
of an entire Arab population to conflict between allies to the end
of multilateralism to the rise of imperial conquest to the chess
match between nations for natural resource and geopolitical possessions
to the cancerous unilateralism and arrogance of Empire to the dwindling
capacity of exploitative resources to the growing competition between
state powers to the malignant and ever-pervasive battle of religions
to the rise to power of fundamentalist extremists to the continued
dumbing down, ignorance and xenophobia of the people living inside
the belly of the Evil Empire to the searing world hatred and anger
brewing against the Great Satan to the rise of Amerikan fascism
to the ceaseless exploitation and subjugation of peoples and lands
spawned by the disease called capitalism and its virus market colonialism.
Into the vortex of incalculable consequences have we entered,
paralyzed and made blind to the powers of the Amerikan Nazis, captivated
by their hypnotizing propaganda, seeing only individual trees in
an enormous forest, ensnarled by the short-term and not wiling to
accept or see a most ominous long-term. The pieces of the malice
puzzle are falling into place, yet the world
remains mute to the returning sands of history that have reappeared
over the horizon. As if captured by fear, unable to sound
the trumpets of alarm, unable to gallop our horses through fog to
sound warning bells. Americans, it seems,
fatefully vegetate in indifference and stupor, fatalistically determined
to accept their destiny, seemingly waiting in vain for the worst
possible nightmare to become reality. Before
long, with continued complacency and conformism, reality will be
even worse than what our subconscious dreams are able to imagine.
Like a potent concoction of flammable chemicals, the amalgamation
of combustibles the planet is presently witnessing amassing throughout
the globe is mixing and fizzing, bubbling and gassing, its energy
growing in power, its potency becoming an uncontrollable manifestation
of the human condition. Slowly it is rising, ready to explode in
a massive eruption whose tremors will be felt by 6.4 billion humans.
The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are patiently being put together,
much like in the world of 70 years ago, by human wickedness resurrected,
by fascism reincarnated, by the rise of the Amerikan Nazis.
A Plague Upon the World
Like the German Nazis of old, who were
ignored until they had firmly cemented their campaign of terror,
their momentum as ferocious as it was unstoppable, the Amerikan
Nazis are likewise being disregarded both in the United States and
abroad. Their assault on the world, and the United States in particular,
as good people stand idle, doing nothing, has magnified their power,
their addiction to greed and their grandiose sense of self. They
validate their mission as blessed by a delusional destiny endeared
to all rising empires, believing all their frivolous lies, embarking
on a road guided by the Almighty itself, content that its powerful
yet invisible hand is assenting to the incredible levels of mass
murder, suffering, destruction, violence and human wickedness their
actions have spawned.
With each day that the people of the United
States and the world ignore the gathering storm, the Amerikan Nazis’
confidence grows, sure of their power, bolder in their actions,
steadfast in their belief that what they do is right. Their
corruption of power and of self shields them away from the realities
and truths of the world, the delusions of their narcissism and the
bubble of their perched existence. Arrogance runs through their
veins, replacing the cold-blood most were born with, allowing for
greater apathy and malice. They bully dissent and other sovereign
nations into submission or silent acquiescence, threatening regimes
and politicians with the vast array of financial, international,
military and political tools endowed to empires.
Callously they run amok, eviscerating global alliances as they
please, unilaterally dictating the future course of the planet,
triumphantly knowing they have the world by the collective balls.
Unchallenged and unrepentant, the Amerikan Nazis now possess, through
the hijacking of America , the cockpit of the most powerful nation
the world has ever been witness to, holding the seat of power from
where all their wickedness derives. They are using everything at
their disposal to push their ideological agenda of delusion and
empire building, succeeding, slowly but surely, in the destabilization
of the entire world order.
They seek to crush nation-state competitors such as China , Europe
and Russia , steaming ahead in a race for the ultimate prize in
the geopolitical chess match: the lands and resources of central
Asia . It is here where resource wars will be fought, it is here
where the world’s insatiable thirst for oil will see powerful
nation’s collide, for it is the next black reservoir to be
exploited and tapped by a species dependent on the devil’s
excrement, that black blood whose necessity curses the entire planet.
The Amerikan Nazis are preemptively moving
their pieces into geostrategic states, invading lands such as Iraq
and Afghanistan , using them as launching pads for further military
escalations, garrisons protecting newly conquered natural resources,
and as watchtowers surveying rivals. The
Pax Americana now has a foothold on the Middle East , a growing
presence in central Asia , and a sniper scope aimed at those nations
bordering Russia , such as the Ukraine , as well as those near China.
These lands are being molded to suit the Amerikan Nazi construct
of Empire. Supporting emerging dictators, financing puppets, destabilizing
nations, controlling pseudo-democracy and establishing crony capitalism
assures the Amerikan Nazis of domination and supremacy on the global
scale. Rivals are still years away from threatening the Pax Americana,
yet to ensure the continued flow of oil and gas from the Eurasian
land mass, for now and into the future, the Amerikan Nazis have
embarked on a campaign of imperial reincarnation, retrofitting nations
and peoples unlucky to live in lands infected by oil with a new
breed of colonization. For the Amerikan Nazis know that he who controls
the flow of energy controls the world, and to them, this is all
that matters, the ultimate prize in an ever more dangerous game.
Hence, Afghanistan was invaded for its geopolitical position and
its access to American controlled natural gas pipelines, thereby
leading the Pax Americana into the collection of Stans littering
the Caspian Sea basin. Iraq , on the other hand, was invaded for
its rich oil wealth, to make extinct a threat to Israel , to control
the larger Middle East and to establish offensive military bases
in Eurasia , forever planting a presence signaling to rivals the
seriousness of American intentions. Already
in the crosshairs is Iran , another oil rich nation of vital strategic
importance in Eurasia . War against it is already in the works,
and the Amerikan Nazis, foaming at the mouth at the thoughts of
an invaded and conquered Iran , compliant to America and Israel
, see this trophy as the bounty needed for absolute hegemony in
the region as well as the world.
Under the rubric of the war on terror the Amerikan Nazis have
invaded two nations seen as strategic and of utmost importance in
the escalating cold war between one superpower and various emerging
powers, all eyeing the vast wealth available in central Asia, as
well as the dwindling world supply of the one source of energy needed
for continued power and growth. With a third nation already in the
Amerikan Nazi crosshairs, the game of geopolitical chess will continue
to unfold, making our world a much more dangerous place, our future
less assured and the balance among states and peoples more polarized
than ever. Humanity is today crossing the threshold of danger, and
the Amerikan Nazis have made sure, through their harvesting of hatreds,
divisions, animosities, violence and exploitations, through their
invasions, conquests, mass murder and utter destruction of land
and man, of a world less secure thanks to the mutating evil residing
in the human condition that is getting ready to erupt.
And so, with reality beginning and ending with the Amerikan Nazis,
seeing themselves free to alter history, create fictions, orchestrate
our future and manipulate a most gullible public, the
seeds are being planted for a most ominous future, full of war (what
else in new?) and division and competition and violence and death
and suffering. Controlling the American sheeple, molding us like
easy to manipulate clay, using both the tools of government and
the corporate world, they are free to achieve their most sinister
policies, seeking Empire, glory and the addiction of power, failing
to learn from history, failing to understand the human condition.
Nothing, it seems, besides the valiant resistance movement in
Iraq , can stop their drive onwards, not even the will of the American
people, whose voice no longer exists, becoming as inconsequential
as the annoying buzzing of the occasional fly looking for fecal
matter to sit on. It is the passivity of those residing inside the
belly of the beast that sustains them, becoming the fresh and invigorating
air circulating inside their lungs. It is the silent acquiescence
of the masses that energizes them, becoming their lifeblood, that
cold plasma flowing through their body that grants them the mandate
needed to destroy democracy at home and export human wickedness
abroad.
For human evil to succeed all that is needed
is for good people to do nothing, and this is exactly what is happening,
with America’s voices ominously submissive and silent, with
Washington having become the hornet’s nest of Amerikan Nazi
enterprise and operation, and with the world passively waiting for
the next chess move made by warmonger leaders and delusional policymakers.
9/11, Birth of Despotism
Granted such a fortuitous commencement to their long-sought offensive
with the tragic events of 9/11, the Amerikan Nazis have since exploited
every single angle and opportunity of that horrific day. The new
Pearl Harbor burst open a collection of colorful fireworks inside
the minds of the Amerikan Nazis, now free of the populace’s
free-thought and reason. Bolts from the gods of war came crashing
down onto two mammoth towers, turning a once-questioning American
citizenry into a militarized behemoth marching to the tunes of war,
hatred and vengeance.
The land of plenty was filled with the red, white and blue, filling
every street corner, every business, every car, every single inch
the profiteering claws of Wal-Mart reached, transforming the United
States into a nation on the path to perpetual war.
To those not mesmerized by raging nationalism,
searing jingoism or blinded by the omnipresent envelopment of the
flag, America after 9/11 paralleled images of Nazi Germany, with
flags draping every building and every street, with rage searing
and fear captivating, with an entire population’s psychology
devastated, fragile, and ripe for the picking by those exploiters
and criminal entities for years seeking the monstrosity that now,
rather miraculous, presented itself.
The American Nazis finally had what they wanted,
a cataclysmic event that transformed an entire population. They
had the catalyst for war, for imperial conquest and corporate despotism.
They had a new Pearl Harbor , a rather convenient excuse to begin
their journey towards imperial hegemony, corporate domination, Israeli
security, an American police state and an emerging fascist Empire.
For if you stop and think about it, who
has benefited most from the horrific events of 9/11? Who
has profited the most, whose power has increased, whose agenda has
and continues to be fulfilled, whose success continues to grow,
who has exploited 9/11 to further long sought goals, now able to
control an entire population of nearly 300 million people, steering
it in the direction of Arab hatred and perpetual war? Who
profits from perpetual war, from feudal control of oil, from a schizophrenic
and fear controlled populace and from a militarized, police state
devoid of social programs, rights and freedoms? It certainly isn’t
Arab bogeymen, who, though as smart as they might be cannot in common
sense accomplish the supermen actions that are attributed to them.
The time has arrived to at the very least begin questioning the
official story of 9/11, as inconceivable as it now appears, with
lie built upon lie, fantasy built upon fantasy. Why do we know so
little, why has so much about that day been covered up, how did
19 so-called hijackers circumvent the greatest technology, infrastructure,
aerial defense and military in the history of the world, plowing
in two direct strikes into two towers without so much as a hiccup
from the government? Whether involved or not, whether knowing or
not, the Bush administration must begin answering questions, especially
when it continues to emerge that it was recklessly incompetent and
criminally negligent at best and horrifically complicit at worst.
What did it know, what had it been told by a cluster of foreign
intelligence services in the days before 9/11, did it purposefully
allow the tragedies of that day to come into fruition so that excuses
could be made for already planned wars against Afghanistan and Iraq
?
In the sacrifice of 3000 souls, whether known or not, the Amerikan
Nazis assured themselves of almost 300 million trance-like zombies
hypnotized by fear and rage, transformed into an obedient, drone-like
army of followers ready to obey the dictates of warmongers and greed
addicts. It only took 3000 deaths and the destruction of two towers
to mobilize the world’s most powerful nation towards war,
boots marching onward, weapons pointing straight, our thirst for
vengeance blinding rational thinking, our quest for Arab blood enslaving
our collective brain.
In months, America was ready to unleash the next Corporate Crusade.
The assembly lines manufacturing instruments of death were started,
the conveyor belts spitting out America ’s indigent were warmed
up, sending cannon fodder to their premature death and physical
and mental maiming. For profit, for greed, for the Almighty Dollar,
dropping bombs, dropping napalm, dropping depleted uranium, as usual
pitting poor versus poor and young versus young, all for the ever-expanding
pockets of the Establishment, all for the gluttonous appetite for
destruction of the military-industrial complex and all for the conquest
and usurpation of resources, land and labor by the psychopathic
corporate Leviathan.
With an entire nation searing and in control, the Amerikan Nazis
could do as they wished. They fed us a surplus of patriotism to
make us blind. They injected nationalism into our veins to make
us rabid. They created and marketed the image of a war president
out of putrid fecal matter. They provided dark-skinned enemies so
that we could hate and scapegoat, concocting story after story to
make our blood boil. They used the media to brainwash and condition
us, using government and journalist vermin to concoct lies and deceits.
Somewhere, the German Nazis of the past could
not be prouder.
In the months and now years after 9/11 they have exploited our
fears and insecurities, our emotions and passions, our need to feel
safe and protected. The tools at their disposal – corporate
media and its prostitute journalists – are used to control
us and our emotions, all done to better suit their particular needs,
all done to make acquiescent and obedient sheep of us. If war is
needed, fear is re-introduced, Arab bogeyman are said to be living
under our beds, ready to terrorize, color-coded alerts are raised
to breed mass schizophrenia. If excuses and reasons for war are
called for, lies and deceit are used, government agencies and officials
are paraded to the world with false information and bogus intelligence.
They have abused our ignorance, our blind trust in government and
leaders, our faith in the system.
In return, they have declared war on the American people, robbing
us of rights and liberties, freedoms and democracy, reputation and
morality, our treasure and our loved ones. They continue pilfering
America ’s treasure, gutting social programs, destroying education
and healthcare, devastating the economy, dumbing down our children,
leading us down the ominous path to a police state. Billions of
dollars are being stolen by their friends and cronies, their lobbyists
and contributors. The military-industrial complex and the corporate
Leviathan are profiting from death and destruction, suffering and
violence, contributing to the mass murder of 100,000 Iraqis, 10,000
Afghanis, more than 1,200 American soldiers and the maiming in body
and mind of countless more.
It has been the horrific events of 9/11, with the subsequent collective
paranoia, blind patriotism, raging jingoism, fear-induced ignorance
and easily-controlled thought processes of the masses that have
allowed the Amerikan Nazis unfettered control over the minds of
tens of millions of citizens. It was twin
towers collapsing and airliners crashing that assured the Amerikan
Nazis of absolute power to do as they please, without accountability
and transparency, without interference or dissent, without protest
or debate, without an American citizenry enraged at what is being
done in its name.
Today, on the road to despotism do we find ourselves in, unable
or unwilling to extricate ourselves, surrounded on all sides by
malevolent men and women who, with each day that passes, take possession
and control of more American minds, transforming the country into
a land riddled with a complicit army of mass murdering apologizers,
warmongers and torture legitimizers. Using Arab scapegoats, marketed
to be feared by the ignorant, alien in culture and religion, seen
as sub-human barbarians, this army of crazed purveyors of violence
and suffering is extricating long held inner demons of bigotry,
fear and boiling hatred. Moral values are given precedence at home,
scapegoating gays and progressives, while rapes of Iraqi women are
condoned, destruction is allowed, death of untold women and children
is sought and the devastation of an entire culture is welcomed.
Other Nazis of times past used the same techniques on other minorities
to unleash hell on Earth.
This easily-controlled and manipulated
army of ignorance and hypocrisy are the same millions who in a few
years will claim ignorance and outrage, much like the German population
at the end of World War II, for the human evil they allowed upon
the lands of planet Earth. This army of Arab haters loathe
simply because their government tells them to, simply because they
wish it so, simply because an enemy was concocted from which to
wage perpetual war against. They fear and hate because their false
prophets condone such sin, because the red, white and blue demands
it. Because they are ignorant they fear; because they are made to
fear they hate; because they hate 100,000 innocent human beings
lie dead, untold more lie maimed and psychologically destroyed,
and an entire nation lies in ruins. This is the army of the American
Nazis, this is the Army of Unenlightenment.
This is the danger of a dumbed-down population, of an education
system being gutted even as the defense budget surpasses those of
all industrialized nations, combined. This is what happens when
drones are created, unthinking and unenlightened, devoid of analytical
and logical thought, conditioned to believe anything and everything
told them by a government for years acting as The Evil Empire. This
is what happens to Empires whose people no longer are capable of
rational thought, whose brain lacks the precepts to think on their
own. This is what happens when a population fails to question authority,
seek accountability or hold leaders responsible. This is what happens
without protest, dissent and debate. This is what happens in the
absence of bravery and selflessness.
If November 2000 is a date that will live in infamy,
then 9/11 is the date the gates of human hell opened onto the world,
releasing the demons called the Amerikan Nazis to once more wreak
havoc over the lands and skies of the ever-tempestuous species called
humanity.
Shaking the Foundations
Is it so hard to imagine our government and our leaders as liars,
criminals and terrorists? Is it so hard to imagine that we are being
led into a moral abyss whose black hole is eroding the humanity
naturally endowed to us? Is it so hard to see past the lies, the
deceit, the propaganda, the exploitation of our psychology, the
obvious criminal elements running the government? Is it so hard
to question authority, to seek accountability, to return power to
the People? Is it so hard to escape the clouds of 9/11 and see,
if only for a second, the incredible amount of coincidences and
growing evidence pointing to complicit criminality within the Bush
Administration and the neocons in the death of 3000 humans?
Our failure to question the official ‘truth’
of 9/11 arises because of our fear of knowing the truth, our uncertainty
of what to do if what the government says is false. We
fear knowing that perhaps our government and leaders, our policy
makers and corporate elite were involved in the greatest terrorist
act to ever devastate American soil, and so we meander in purposeful
ignorance, unwilling to open the doors to a storm that would shake
our foundations to the ground. Our ego’s refusal to
believe in the criminality of the government, even if only negligent,
even if criminally complicit, is the ally of the Amerikan Nazis,
for it strengthens their grip on power and their confidence that
they can do with us as they please.
Our mind’s defense mechanism of not wanting to stir normalcy,
of refusing to ever know the truth, of never wanting to molest our
normal life with the devastation of knowing what, if anything, the
Bush administration, the corporate Establishment, the military-industrial
complex and the neocons had to do with 9/11 and its aftermath is
our own worst enemy, for to allow the Amerikan Nazis the freedom
to continue their rapacious ideology is to help seal our own fates.
Our refusal to let go of years of government brainwashing, implemented
in our educations and through years of ceaseless television watching,
that America can do no wrong, that its leaders are the epitome of
good, that our government is altruistic and honorable, that our
military is only in existence for defensive purposes, that the Almighty
always blesses us and no other, that our nation only helps the world,
that our history is full of noble intentions, has
conditioned in us an inability to ever question the legitimacy of
elected leaders or the foundation of government itself.
Like a tree bountiful in fruit we must shake the branches of our
existence, thinking beyond the box we have been trained never to
deviate away from. We must shake the foundations of what we have
been inculcated with, as well as the ego that refuses to open our
eyes to a most ignoble truth. We have to let go the belief that
those elected and anointed to take care of us could also be doing
us harm. Our constructs must be altered, we must question authority,
as well as the perceived reality implanted in our minds through
years of brainwashing. Perhaps 9/11 was as they tell us, perhaps
it was worse, perhaps its truth is too unbearable to pursue. Yet
we must open our eyes to all possibilities, because our future depends
on it. Our minds must be made clear, our voices made loud, our ears
made to hear, for somewhere out there the truth of it all exists,
waiting to be found by an American people ready to exorcise the
demons of what was done to us on 9/11.
This the Amerikan Nazis fight to prevent, which is why it is desperately
needed. Out there, somewhere, our foundations are waiting to be
shaken and rattled, waking us from the nightmare wrought by the
rise of the Amerikan Nazis. Out there the memories of 3000 innocent
people wait to be found, finally freed to roam the great expanse
of the universe, finally given the burial they have yet to fully
receive. Only the truth will set them, as well as millions more
living, free.
The clouds that have hovered over us since 9/11 are beginning
to dissipate. Our minds are once more seeing the plethora of colors
created with the birth of each new sunrise. We can see clearly once
again. It is time to shake the foundations of what is known, and
what is yet to be found.
Manuel Valenzuela is social critic and commentator, international
affairs analyst, Internet columnist and author of Echoes in the
Wind, a novel now published by Authorhouse.com.
A collection of essays, Beyond the Smoking Mirror: Reflections on
America and Humanity, will be published in early 2005. His articles
appear regularly in alternative news websites including informationclearinghouse.info.
His unique style and powerful writing is read internationally and
seeks to expose truths and realities confronting humanity today.
Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net.
A collection of his work can be found visiting his archives and
by searching the Internet. |
HUBER HEIGHTS | Madeline (her friends call
her Rose) Benoit has been receiving a holiday "goody box"
containing English chocolate bars and bakery confections from her
sister in St. John's, Newfoundland, since the 65-year-old left her
homeland more than 40 years ago.
Not this Christmas, thanks to the Food and Drug Administration's
scrutiny of food entering the country as
a result of the Bioterrorism Act of 2002, formulated in response
to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
New FDA rules, which began to be strictly enforced in November,
have caught holiday shoppers and shippers such as Benoit's sister,
Stella MacDonald, 68, with questions about the regulations, which
are meant to prevent contamination of the U.S. food supply by terrorists.
Benoit said MacDonald, who still lives on the island off the east
coast of Canada, recently made her annual trek across the street
from her home to the post office. The clerk, knowing the sisterly
ritual, asked, "You got candy bars in there? You can't mail
'em."
The clerk went on to say, "You
can mail home-baked items as long as you personally baked them in
your own personal kitchen and they're going to be sent as a personal
gift," Benoit recalled. "I thought they were joking."
Carol Heppe, FDA director, Cincinnati Division, said Benoit and
MacDonald are correct.
"Any food or animal-feed product coming
into the country has to have the permit number of the manufacturer,"
Heppe said. The FDA calls it "prior notice," and it requires
about a dozen questions to be answered electronically, including
"entry type and Customs and Border Protection identifier."
The notice must include the FDA product code, the lot or code
number, and the FDA country of production, among other things. [...]
"We have inspectors or investigators at the U.S. mail facilities
in Chicago, New York and other places. We have a lot of ways to
figure out what's in that package. Those customs people are really
good at knowing what's in there."
Regulations allowing homemade items to
be shipped without adherence to the new regulations have Benoit
stymied. She argues that those foodstuffs
are the ones that could be easily tampered with.
"I don't write the laws," Heppe said. "I just enforce
them."
"It's kind of ironic," Benoit said.
"When Sept. 11 happened, it's St. John's where they sent
all the planes to land. Many friendships were formed. Probably some
of those Newfoundlanders were sending their new-found friends goodies,
and now they can't get them. I find it hard to believe." |
(Sam Rosenfeld on today's press
conference)
The president got a tad petulant when fielding questions on
Social Security. His emphatic response to any and all queries
about his position on the subject was an indignant, righteous
refusal to answer: “You’re not going to get me to
negotiate with myself,” he repeatedly told the perplexed
reporters. “I know what you’re trying to get me to
do. You’re trying to get me to answer ‘Why this,’
‘why that,’ to take positions -- don’t bother
to ask me.” Rather than merely dodge the questions, Bush
seemed intent on staking out an explicit, principled position
in favor of dodging the question. There may have been a method
to this madness above and beyond Bush’s stated explanation
that “Congress writes legislation” and therefore he,
as the president, shouldn’t be setting specific guidelines
for a Social Security reform proposal. The president isn’t
usually a big separation-of-powers, checks-and-balances kind of
guy.
[Note to White House: Might be time to add a fifth stock answer.]
|
SOCIAL SECURITY AND ME....Matt
Yglesias makes an important
point about Social Security framing today:
I'm not sure the older liberals who run the show quite understand
how overwhelmingly important it is to keep the "there is
no crisis" message front and center in the Social Security
debate. Most of the young people I know -- including myself until
very recently -- have been taken in by a decades-long effort on
behalf of privatizers into believing that Social Security is in
"crisis," and that if we do nothing the system will
"go bankrupt" before we retire, meaning that the system
will somehow collapse and we won't get any benefits.
This is true, and I used to be one of these people too. As a well-informed
citizen, I knew that Social Security was unsustainable, that life
expectancies were increasing, that fewer workers would be supporting
more retirees in the future, and in general, that the program was
facing a demographic timebomb that would cause it to go bankrupt
within a couple of decades.
This was back in the mid-90s, and for some reason I took an interest
in finding out more. So I wrote off for a copy of the trustees report,
read up on tax policy and demographic projections, pored through
various analyses, and — to my surprise — learned that
the problem was either (a) fairly modest and quite solvable or (b)
not a problem at all.
Social Security is going to get more expensive over time, but it's
not going to keep getting more expensive forever. Starting in about
a decade costs will go up, but then, after about 20 years, they'll
flatten out. And the size of the increase, from about 4% of GDP
to 6% of GDP, just isn't a crisis. What's more, when you start to
study the trustees' projections, you realize that even their "intermediate"
projection is pretty conservative. It's quite possible that if we
leave the system completely alone it will be fine. And even if it's
not, there's plenty of time to make the small tweaks necessary to
keep it properly funded.
In other words, after actually studying the issue, I changed my
opinion almost 180 degrees. Nothing is going bankrupt, benefits
will continue to be paid forever, and future funding problems are
both modest in size and not that hard to deal with.
Unfortunately, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and now George Bush, each
for their own reasons, have found it politically convenient to use
Social Security as a useful bogeyman for scaring the public. The
difference is that, unlike me back in 1995, they all know better.
It's too bad they couldn't have figured out some real problems to
focus on instead. |
BERLIN, Dec. 20 (Xinhuanet) -- Russian
President Vladimir Putin arrived in the northern German city of Hamburg
Monday for informal meetings with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
The two leaders will witness signings of a series of major bilateral
agreements on education, space exploration, youth exchange and economic
cooperation while exchanging views on the political crisis in Ukraine,
local media reported.
Schroeder, as a good friend of Putin, would help bring forward
the relations between the European Union and Russia affected due
to the disagreement on the re-run of the Ukrainian presidential
election.
Putin's two-day visit had been scheduled for an earlier date but
was postponed in September due to a mass hostage taking at Beslan
school in southern Russia which cost some 344 lives. |
WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (Xinhuanet)
-- US President George W. Bush said Monday that he will keep "good
relationship" with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Addressing the end-of-year news confe rence, Bush defended his
close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that "The
relationship's an important relationship and I would call the relationship
a good relationship."
Bush said that he has talked with Putin about getting Russia admitted
to the World Trade Organization.
On Iraqi issues, Bush reiterated that Iraqi elections, scheduled
for Jan. 30, will be held as planned despite increasing deadly violence
like twin car bombings that killed at least 64 people over the weekend.
"The elections in January are the beginning of a process
and itis important for the American people to understand that,"
Bush said. |
Bukavu, Congo — About 100,000 civilians
in eastern Congo have fled a week of fighting between renegade soldiers
and army loyalists, hiding deep in the forest where humanitarian
workers cannot reach them, UN officials said Sunday.
Battles sparked again Sunday north of Kanyabayonga, where reinforcements
sent by the Kinshasa-based central government have been fighting
a force largely drawn from rebels backed by neighbouring Rwanda
during Congo's 1998-2002 war, said Eliane Nabaa, a UN spokeswoman.
Some 100,000 civilians are now believed to have fled the fighting
since Dec. 12 in Congo's eastern region on the Rwandan border, said
Rachel Leflaive, a spokeswoman for the United Nations' humanitarian
operations in Congo.
Ms. Leflaive said members of the UN's 11,000-strong peacekeeping
mission determined the tally of the displaced after finding all-but
abandoned towns and villages along a road near Kanyabayonga.
The displaced civilians are living rough in the surrounding forest
and cannot be reached by humanitarian workers, she said. Earlier
aid-agency estimates said only 35,000 had fled their homes.
Congo's war drew in six nations and left more than 3 million dead,
mostly from hunger and disease, according to aid-group estimates.
[...] |
AN earthquake measuring 4.4 on the Richter
scale rattled southern Hawke's Bay on New Zealand's east coast today,
the Geological and Nuclear Sciences centre reported.
The quake, at a depth of 25 kilometres was recorded at 10:55am
(AEDT).
No damage was reported.
It was the latest in a series of tremors to strike New Zealand
in recent weeks following a 7.3 earthquake on November 23.
|
CEDAR CITY, Utah (AP) - A small earthquake
rumbling in southwestern Utah caused minor damages, but no injuries.
The epicenter of the 3.6 magnitude earthquake Saturday was six
miles northwest of Cedar City, the University of Utah Seismograph
Station reported. [...] |
A moderate earthquake with a
preliminary magnitude of 5.1, struck Turkey’s Aegean coast
today, sending residents into the streets in panic and toppling
the minaret of a mosque.
At least three people were injured when the quake struck and was
centred in the small town of Ula, near the resort of Marmaris, the
Istanbul-based Kandilli Observatory said. Several aftershocks followed.
It was also felt in the nearby holiday resort of Bodrum and in
the Aegean port city of Izmir.
Three people were taken to hospital in Marmaris with broken legs
or minor injuries sustained while trying to escape their homes.
The minaret of a mosque in the village of Akyaka, near Marmaris,
crashed to the ground. The quake also caused small cracks in walls
while rocks fell onto to a highway, blocking it for several hours.
Quakes are frequent in Turkey, with much of the country above the
active North Anatolian fault.
Two devastating earthquakes killed about 18,000 people in north-western
Turkey in 1999. |
VLADIVOSTOK, - A powerful cyclone, originating
in the Yellow Sea, hit Russia’s Maritime region on Sunday
night. Heavy snowfalls were accompanied on
the coast by gale-force winds.
Streets of Vladivostok are covered with a 50-centimeter-thick
layer of snow, which has paralyzed transport in the regional center.
The cyclone has also grounded planes, and the airport is expected
to open no earlier than at 9 am, Moscow time.
Vladivostok authorities have cancelled classes at schools. Snowploughs
fail to cope with piles of snow. This has been the second strong
snowfall in Vladivostok this winter. Late in November, heavy snowfalls
paralyzed traffic in the city for almost ten days.
Specialists at the local meteorological service told Tass that
the snowfall in Vladivostok on Sunday night was
the strongest in the past 80 years. A double norm of snow
for December fell in the city overnight.
The cyclone continues influencing the weather in the Maritime
region. Snowfalls will continue in the eastern and northern parts
of the region for another 24 hours.
Meanwhile, the cyclone is now shifting towards Sakhalin, where
a storm warning has been issued. |
At least 34 people were killed and 43 others
wounded on Sunday in flash floods caused by heavy rains in southern
Iran, the Iranian Red Crescent Society said in a statement today.
The flood wrecked at least 380 houses in southern Bushehr province,
leaving 4,000 people without shelter, the statement said.
The organization, the Islamic equivalent of the Red Cross, set
up tents for those who lost their homes in the flood, and sent about
480 aid workers to the province to aide the victims. |
Lake Michigan and cold Canadian winds merged
into a two-headed monster Sunday, dropping temperatures in the Chicago
area to their lowest this season and blasting parts of Indiana and
Michigan with up to 22 inches of snow.
The lake-effect snowstorm hit LaPorte County, Ind., the hardest,
forcing officials to declare a state of emergency and state police
to close all lanes of Interstate Highway 94 around Michigan City,
60 miles east of Chicago, because the plows could not keep up with
the snowfall, police said. State workers and National Guardsmen
were deployed to help stranded highway travelers.
County officials pulled the plows off the roads because of whiteout
conditions Sunday afternoon. [...] |
Gale slams man into abandoned church
EDMONTON - A 46-year-old man was killed Sunday afternoon when
winds topping 100 kilometres an hour picked up his snow kiteboard
and slammed him into an abandoned church in Alberta Beach.
The accident happened just after noon on Lac St. Anne, a popular
spot for kiteboarding enthusiasts year-round.
Louie St. Laurent didn't see the accident, but he saw the wind
that precipitated it.
"I was actually out on the boat launch, overlooking a dark
sky," he said.
"All of a sudden, I looked out on
the lake, and could see kind of a rolling wall. It looked like water,
but it was actually the wind."
At first, St. Laurent saw the kiteboarder moving slowly across
the frozen lake, about 60 kilometres west of Edmonton.
"I thought, geez, I wonder if he'll be all right," he
said.
St. Laurent and his two children didn't see the accident. They
were forced inside for cover. From there, they watched signs, stray
shingles and other debris fly past the window.
"It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen," he said.
[...] |
INNSBRUCK, Austria -- Avalanches killed two
skiers and seriously injured another Monday, and experts warned
that recent storms have created unstable conditions ripe for more
snow slides in Austria's Alps.
A 41-year-old American and a 39-year-old German died in an avalanche
in Lech am Arlberg in the southwestern province of Vorarlberg that
also critically injured the American's wife, also 41, the Austria
Press Agency reported. [...] |
NEW DELHI: Dense fog wrought havoc among travellers
across parts of northern India with accidents claiming 17 lives
and putting air and rail travel schedules in disarray, officials
said on Sunday.
At least 14 people were killed and 25 injured when a bus travelling
from Nepal to the eastern Indian state of Bihar fell off a bridge
into a ditch due to fog overnight, a local police official said.
Poor visibility was hampering rescue work at the site, he said.
In the Indian capital New Delhi, many international and domestic
flights were delayed as dense fog enveloped the city and some other
parts of northern India, a weather office official said.
“The fog blanketed New Delhi just past midnight (Saturday),
affecting air and also train services,” the official said.
[...] |
LIMA, Peru (AP) - A passenger bus careered
off a mountain road into a river gorge, killing 26 people and injuring
15 others, police said Monday.
The accident occurred Sunday in the Andean jungle, 345 kilometres
northeast of the capital, said Officer Juan Siu Gomez via telephone
from Aguaytia, near the crash site. The cause of the accident was
under investigation, he said.
The Peruvian newspaper El Comercio reported that survivors told
authorities that the driver lost control of the bus in heavy rain
as he was crossing a bridge spanning the Yurac River.
Bus crashes are common in Peru, where drivers frequently speed
and pass vehicles along blind mountain curves. |
SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) - A head-on collision
between a passenger bus and a truck killed 19 people and injured
34 others in northeastern Brazil, police said Monday. It was the
second deadly bus crash in Brazil in two days.
The accident happened late Sunday night on a highway near the
city of Canguaretama, 2,300 kilometres northeast of Sao Paulo. "The
truck driver apparently lost control of his vehicle and swerved
into the wrong lane, smashing into the bus coming in the opposite
direction," Officer Assis Rogerio Maia of the Federal Highway
Police, said by phone.
The drivers of the bus and the truck were both killed, as was
the truck driver's 10-year-old son and 16 of the 50 passengers on
the bus. The remaining 34 bus were rushed to a nearby hospital.
The passengers were heading home to Natal, capital of Rio Grande
do Norte state, 2,450 kilometres northeast of Sao Paulo, from Caruaru
where they had spent several days shopping.
On Saturday, a passenger bus carrying a group of evangelical Christians
collided with a truck, killing nine people and injuring 36 others.
That accident occurred on a highway near the city of Macae, 180
kilometres east of Rio de Janeiro. |
MERCER, Pa. -- A tractor-trailer traveling
an estimated 55 mph in whiteout conditions jackknifed across Interstate
80 on Sunday, setting off a chain-reaction pileup that wrecked up
to 80 vehicles.
No deaths or critical injuries were reported, but the late-morning
crash blocked the westbound lanes in western Pennsylvania for more
than eight hours, state police said.
State police Trooper Ted Hunt said he was attending to disabled
vehicles on the side of the highway in blowing snow when he heard
a truck quickly pull into the passing lane and jackknife. He said
two other rigs skidded sideways, blocking both lanes, and oncoming
vehicles began crashing into them.
Hunt said the truck driver who started the crash was cited for
driving at an unsafe speed.
"I could hear the cars piling into each other for a good
10 minutes," Hunt, who ran into the woods to avoid the crashing
cars and trucks, told The Herald of Sharon for today's editions.
[...] |
Cassiopaea.org
Remember,
we need your help to collect information on what is going on in your part
of the world! We also need help to keep
the Signs of the Times online.
Send
your comments and article suggestions to us
Fair Use Policy Contact Webmaster at signs-of-the-times.org Cassiopaean materials Copyright ©1994-2014 Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk. All rights reserved. "Cassiopaea, Cassiopaean, Cassiopaeans," is a registered trademark of Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk. Letters addressed to Cassiopaea, Quantum Future School, Ark or Laura, become the property of Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk Republication and re-dissemination of our copyrighted material in any manner is expressly prohibited without prior written consent.
. |