The war where I was killed and Gaza survived
Eman Mohammed writing from the occupied Gaza Strip
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10294.shtml


A boy walks on the rubble of a destroyed home in the Gaza Strip. (Eman Mohammed)


Since Israeli missile savagery first hit Gaza, everything started to become
blurry to me. My vision was totally unclear -- all the horrible events went in
slow motion as if I was watching a horror movie, but the most realistic one I've
ever seen.

My biggest fear was losing a loved one.

After 21 indescribable days, "the war was over," or so they said. But it wasn't
for me; enormous destruction covered the beautiful face of Gaza that I knew.
Thousands of houses and buildings were wiped off the earth. Three weeks were all
that Israeli warplanes and tanks needed to smash so many living creatures in
Gaza including babies -- even unborn ones -- women, children, men and the
elderly.

I wandered among the rubble of houses and the remains of lives for more than I
can remember. I couldn't find the words or photographs to convey how much pain
the people feel. Somehow they still manage to get up every morning. They search
for a new start, to begin their lives again, or they search for remnants of the
old life -- maybe a tattered family picture that was so precious to them.

Like the teddy bear with the ripped-off head which belonged to four-year-old
Samar Abed Rabu who was hit three times in her chest and went abroad for
treatment. Her father Khaled was clinging to it waiting for his baby girl to
come back and get it after he lost her other two sisters Suad, seven, and Amal,
two, in front of his eyes. Samar's broken teddy bear was the only thing that
managed to comfort him.

A similar tragic loss, but a different time and place, was Manal al-Samouni's
story. She was sitting near the remains of her destroyed house waiting for her
brother's four children to return from visiting their father's grave. They lost
him after he was injured while bravely rescuing his family. For four days he
bled to death. This is their memory of their heroic father, Manal said.

Muhammad Balousha, age two, waited constantly by the door listening carefully to
the sounds around him, hoping to recognize the sounds of his five sisters coming
home. He does not know that on that one night they said goodnight and went to
sleep, it was forever.

These were some of the stories I got emotionally involved with and maybe because
of that I broke the first rule of journalism which is supposedly to stay
professional, not to get involved. Whether I took photos, delivered a message,
or whatever I was supposed to be doing, I did it all while watching my soul slip
away, not being able to hold onto it or let it go, as if I were falling into a
coma. I did not see this war coming even in my worst nightmares and I can't feel
that it has gone because all that is left are lifeless bodies whether they are
under the ground or still breathing above it.

The silence in Gaza is too loud, too bare. Words don't seem to ease the pain or
heal the wounds. The shouts are gone without an echo, but Gaza's people still
managed to get up from under the rubble and the torn memories. My people proved
to me once again that they are stronger than these attacks and invasions. They
have vanquished death by rebuilding their lives time after time. Maybe that's
something I'll never be able to understand or do myself, since the day they
stabbed Gaza, my soul was stolen by an evil force. I believe it was a war on
Gaza, not in Gaza as they claim. Their attacks were barbarism, but Gaza managed
to survive, one way or another.


Eman Mohammed is a Jordanian-Palestinian freelance photojournalist and reporter
based in the Gaza Strip since 2005.

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Gaddafi blasts big powers in first ever U.N. speech
Wed Sep 23, 2009


UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in his first ever
address to the United Nations, on Wednesday accused the veto-wielding powers of
the Security Council of betraying the principles of the U.N. charter.

"The preamble (of the charter) says all nations are equal whether they are small
or big," Gaddafi said through an interpreter. He received a smattering of
applause.

Reading from a copy of the U.N. charter, Gaddafi said: "The veto is against the
charter, we do not accept it and we do not acknowledge it."

Clad in a copper-colored robe with an emblem of Africa pinned over his chest,
the Libyan leader dropped his paperback copy of the charter on the podium
several times before tossing it over his shoulder.

The United States, Britain, France, Russia and China are permanent veto wielding
members of the Security Council, the most powerful body within the United
Nations. Libya has a temporary council seat and will be on the 15-nation panel
until the end of 2010.

"Veto power should be annulled," Gaddafi said.

"The Security Council did not provide us with security but with terror and
sanctions," he told leaders gathered for the opening day of the 192-nation
General Assembly.

Gaddafi, who spoke just after U.S. President Barack Obama, said the fact that
"65 wars" have broken out since the U.N. was established more than 60 years ago 
proved its founding principles had been betrayed.

Gaddafi currently chairs the African Union.


(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Alan Elsner)

===

Welcome to America: Gadhafi at United Nations
By Brian E. Muhammad
Sep 23, 2009
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/frontpageFeaturedArticle/article_6444.sh\
tml


Farrakhan joins welcome efforts extended to Libyan leader, African Union
President on U.S. visit


(FinalCall.com) - A longtime revolutionary and statesman, Muammar Gadhafi,
leader of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Great Jamahiriya and chairman of
the African Union, enjoys a valid reputation as a progressive supporter of just,
but often unpopular causes in the eyes of the West. The Libyan leader and his
small, but oil-rich North African nation have a history of clashing with Western
powers—often over President Gadhafi's backing of movements that met with their
disapproval.

But his first ever visit to the United States, slated for September 23, to
address the United Nations marks a significant turn in history. It could herald
a new era for relations with the United States, and by extension the Western
world as well as a potentially major shift since the Libyan leader came to power
on September 1, 1969.


U.S. President Barack Obama (R) and Libyan Leader Muammar Gadhafi shake hands
during the Group of Eight (G8) summit in L'Aquila, central Italy, on July 9,
2009. Group of Eight leaders grappled at a summit in Italy with reining in
unprecedented government support for their economies as divergences emerged over
whether their economies were ready. Photo: MICHAEL GOTTSCHALK/AFP/Getty Images


Ahead of the visit, there were mixed feelings and controversy reported in the
media with support and opposition to his visit. Animosity was fueled by a
combination of negative propaganda about Mr. Gadhafi and the recent release of
the Libyan national convicted of the 1988 bombing of a passenger jet over
Lockerbie Scotland, killing 270 people. Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, 57, was
granted an early reprieve from a Scotland prison on compassionate grounds
because he has advanced prostate cancer.

The release added fodder for critics who wanted to block the visit. In
Englewood, N.J., there was loud opposition to having the head of state utilize a
compound there owned by the Libyan government as his place to stay. Opponents
said the release of Mr. Meghrahi, who Libyans have insisted is innocent, was an
insult and Mr. Gadhafi was unwelcome in New Jersey.

There were also debates about whether the Meghrahi release was made for
political reasons and tied to British business interests. Britain oversees
Scotland's international relations, but not its internal politics and decisions.
British officials and Scottish authorities denied that the release was tied to
any business deals or proposed deals. Not everyone, however, was convinced the
official accounts were true.


Minister Farrakhan meets with Muammar Gadhafi during his World Friendship Tour
in 1997. Photo: James G. Muhammad


In recent years, the British and American governments have been courting Libya
to take advantage of business opportunities lost during years of international
sanctions.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was placed in a difficult position, having
to explain the course of meetings between various members of his government and
Libyan officials—and talks between Libya and his predecessor Tony Blair. British
opposition leaders accused the government of "double dealing" out of desperation
for Libyan oil contracts.

On the other hand, a world AP report said Libyan-British relations are still
tense after cooperation was suspended by Libya with British police over an
unsolved killing of a policewoman outside the embassy in London. Tensions rose
after reports surfaced about a British-led plot to assassinate Mr. Gadhafi.
British officials, however, hope this can be reversed. Significant progress has
been made on relations between the two countries since Libya renounced terrorism
and abandoned its program to develop nuclear weapons.

The changes are not surprising, said Mark Fancher, an atttorney and member of
the All African People's Revolutionary Party.

"The fact that this has happened with Gadhafi is neither unique nor surprising,
it has depended entirely upon whether the West has perceived friendship with him
to be advantageous or a detriment which really determines their relationship
with him as head of state in Libya," said Mr. Fancher.

Though defined for years as a villain by American and British media and
political figures, Mr. Gadhafi enjoys a different reputation among liberation
movements and in much of Africa. Millions see Libya's leader as a powerful
defender of the weak and oppressed and see his visit as a victory for those who
fight for freedom, justice and equality.

Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi, right, salutes as he is greeted by Italian
Premier Silvio Berlusconi upon his arrival at Rome's Ciampino military airport,
June 10, 2009. Photo: AP/Wide World Photos
And on the international political stage where good men often die young, Mr.
Gadhafi has withstood the test of time, becoming a major powerbroker in Europe
and in Africa. In April 2009, Libya hosted the Tripoli Trade Fair that attracted
companies from 35 nations, including a large number of African Union firms that
were represented in three pavilions, according to the European Union Information
Center.

"A high presence of African countries in this fair is very important and we
worked hard to invite all the African countries to participate. We all know that
the strategic market for Libyan products is Africa," said the fair's director.

"Brother Gadhafi" as he is known throughout the world is in a small group of
leaders—which include Cuban leader Fidel Castro—who have the distinction of
outlasting Western enemies. Mr. Gadhafi was formerly persona-non-grata for every
U.S. administration from President Richard Nixon to President Bill Clinton—until
the current warming of U.S. relations at the end of the George W. Bush
administration.

When Mr. Gadhafi led the Al-Fateh revolution against King Idriss—a minion of
Western imperialists—his first order of business was to nationalize the economy
to benefit and develop the Libyan people. Then he evicted American and British
forces by shutting down the Wheelus military base in Tripoli. He condemned the
base as a remnant of European colonialism that had to be closed and its
facilities turned over to the Libyan people.

As a visionary he transformed the oil rich country into a popular people's
democracy, eradicating policies driven by the multinational corporations who
exploited Libya's resources.

It was once inconceivable that the man President Reagan characterized as the
"mad dog of the East" would be stepping off a plane on the soil of America. It
was unbelievable that a man who was the target of the most expensive
assassination attempt by the U.S. government, when U.S. planes bombed Benghazi
and Tripoli in 1986, would be addressing the United Nations where Libya has a
seat on the Security Council and chairs the General Assembly and be received by
supporters and friends who have benefited from his generosity and the fruits of
his struggle.

"Muammar Gadhafi is an example of how Western imperialism does not understand
the word `permanent' when it comes to friends and allies. They change their
friends and allies depending upon what is strategically advantageous to them
from both a foreign policy standpoint and whether U.S. based corporations will
have the ability and capacity to make profits," said Mr. Fancher


Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi (R) greets Chadian President Idriss Deby upon his
arrival for a meeting in Tripoli on August 8. Pres. Deby was on an official
visit to Libya. Photo: MAHMUD TURKIA/AFP/Getty Images


Though Libya was strained under 17 years of international sanctions and
isolation; it did not lose money during the current world economic downturn that
hurt its historical adversaries England and America.

During the sanction years, Libya still supported causes around the world,
including the Irish Republican Army, the anti-apartheid movement in South
Africa, and the Palestinian liberation struggle.

Libya has also been a friend to the Nation of Islam. Mr. Gadhafi loaned the Most
Honorable Elijah Muhammad $3 million in 1972 to purchase a Greek orthodox church
in Chicago. Mr. Muhammad converted the edifice into a mosque and the Honorable
Minister Louis Farrakhan repurchased the property and it remains the National
Headquarters for the Nation of Islam.

During the 1980s, Mr. Gadhafi gave a $5 million loan to aid an N.O.I. initiative
called P.O.W.E.R. (People Organized and Working for Economic Rebirth). At the
height of U.S. aggression toward Libya, Min. Farrakhan was a major voice and
force in a movement to demand the U.S. not attack Libya.

It was during the sanction years that Mr. Gadhafi turned more toward the rest of
Africa, jumpstarting the transition of the former Organization of African Unity
into the current African Union (AU). He financed, supported and helped give life
to the vision of a United States of Africa—an idea birthed in the Diaspora by
Pan African thinkers of the 19th and 20th century like Henry Sylvester Williams,
from Trinidad, who called the first Pan-African Congress in London and George
Charles, of the "African Emigration Association," who officially took the
concept before the U.S. Congress in 1886. Later the Honorable Marcus Garvey,
George Padmore and others took up the mantle of a United Africa, which inspired
Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana who was educated in the United
States.

The idea developed further through Africa's leaders and founding fathers of the
OAU—Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Julius Nyerere of
Tanzania, Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea, Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria and others. In
February 2009, Mr. Gadhafi assumed the chairmanship of the African Union.

After all of the sanctions and isolation; eight U.S. presidents; a U.S.
invasion; bogus propaganda and false accusations on terrorism, both Muammar
Gadhafi and the Libyan people are still standing—and the freedom fighter's
influence may be growing stronger.

===

The Nation of Islam Welcomes Muammar Gadhafi
By The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan
Sep 22, 2009
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/featuredFarrakhanArticle/article_6445.sh\
tml


IN THE NAME OF ALLAH, THE BENEFICENT, THE MERCIFUL.


It is a great honor and privilege for me, the Nation of Islam, and others to
welcome Brother Leader Muammar al-Gadhafi, Leader of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
and President of the African Union to his first visit to the United States of
America to address the 64th Opening Session of the United Nations.


The greatest of his efforts, in my humble opinion, has been to foster the idea
of Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah and Gamal Abdel Nasser to move
the independent states of Africa to form the United States of Africa, thus
bringing Africa fully and powerfully into the 21st century as a major
contributor on the World scene in all aspects of World Affairs.


You may ask why we feel honored and privileged to welcome him; it is because
ever since we have known him, he has been a friend of the struggle of Black
people all over the World for true liberation.

In Brother Gadhafi's Green Book, he mentions the rise of Black people to
positions of prominence, eminence and power in World Leadership. He has not only
written and said this, he has put the scholarship and oil wealth of Libya
behind, not only raising the standard of living of the 6 million Libyan people,
but also has used the scholarship and wealth of Libya to raise the condition of
the poor masses throughout the earth. By his charity and the guidance he has
given to so many, he has proved that what comes from his pen and his lips is
deeply rooted in his heart.

In 1971, he loaned the Nation of Islam under the Leadership of the Honorable
Elijah Muhammad $3 million. That money allowed us to purchase the beautiful
Greek Orthodox Church which became the National Headquarters of the Nation of
Islam in Chicago.

In my effort to rebuild the Nation of Islam in accord with the Teachings of the
Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Brother Gadhafi loaned the Nation of Islam $5 million
for our economic development then forgave the loan. Then through the Islamic
Call Society, the religious arm of Libya, sponsored one the largest Islamic
conferences in America bringing Islamic scholars from all over the world to
Chicago. The Islamic Call Society also sponsored two of our World Friendship
Tours, which allowed us to visit over 53 countries. Brother Gadhafi was and is a
true revolutionary who is still evolving towards the destiny that Allah (God)
has for him.

The greatest of his efforts, in my humble opinion, has been to foster the idea
of Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah and Gamal Abdel Nasser to move
the independent states of Africa to form the United States of Africa, thus
bringing Africa fully and powerfully into the 21st century as a major
contributor on the World scene in all aspects of World affairs.

As you may know, in 1986 the most expensive assassination attempt in the history
of the World was perpetrated against Muammar Gadhafi by the Government of the
United States of America under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan. In
that assassination attempt, he narrowly escaped, but his adopted daughter was
killed and forty-one Libyans and other foreign nationals died in the bombing
raids that took place in Tripoli and Benghazi.

There is no Nation that does not desire to have a friendly and meaningful
relationship with the United States of America. A promise was made that if
Brother Leader Gadhafi abandoned the idea of making Libya a nuclear power and
agreed to pay reparations for the unfortunate loss of life of 270 persons in the
Pan Am Flight 103 bombing that took place over Lockerbie, Scotland; the
sanctions placed on Libya by the United States and the United Nations would be
lifted. These negotiations took place under the administration of President
George W. Bush.

Many of us that followed these events thought that Libya was made the "fall guy"
for this unfortunate tragedy. America first said that the perpetrators of this
act were from Iran, then they said Syria and lastly they focused on Libya. Two
Libyan nationals were turned over to the World Court and were tried at the World
Court in The Hague under Scottish law. One of the Libyan nationals was set free
(Lamin Khalifah Fhimah) and, over the protest of many, Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi
was found guilty and spent the past eight years of his life in prison for a
crime that most Libyans never believed he was guilty of.

From what I have learned, there have never been any negotiations for business or
oil deals between Libya and England or Scotland that did not involve the
potential release of Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi.

A few years ago Bulgarian nurses were accused of injecting Libyan children with
the HIV/AIDS virus. Over four hundred Libyan children were injected. These
nurses were tried in a Libyan court, found guilty and sentenced to death. The
cry came up from the West: America, England and the European Union, petitioning
Muammar Gadhafi not to put these nurses to death. Then, a request was made and
pressure was applied to release them to serve time in a prison in their own
country.

Libya released these nurses and I understand that while the plane was carrying
them from Libya to Bulgaria, a new arrangement was made by Bulgarian authorities
and these nurses were received with a heroes' welcome in Bulgaria and were set
free not spending one single day in jail.

Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi's life imprisonment was commuted for medical reasons
by the Scottish Government and he was released and sent home to Libya to die. A
great hue and cry came up from America and other places condemning the release
of this Brother. The Obama administration joined in condemning the Scottish
government's action apparently forgetting America's request under the Bush
administration to release the Bulgarian nurses to their own country and release
them from the penalty of death.

Brother Leader Muammar Gadhafi has shown that Libya is ready to take its place
in the family of Nations as an equal and respected partner. The sanctions, to
the best of my knowledge, have been lifted and a new era in the American-Libyan
relationship is now emerging. There is much that America and Europe can offer to
Libya and Africa, and there is much that Libya and Africa can offer to America
and Europe in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

The emergence of Libya on the World stage is now a reality in that Libya is now
serving on the United Nations Security Council and a Libyan diplomat is
presiding over this year's General Assembly. Brother Gadhafi's insistence on
Africa's becoming one great Nation with Africans in the Diaspora assisting in
the development of Africa, is probably the greatest move that Brother Leader
Gadhafi has made in his forty years of Leadership of Libya.

Libya is building anew. Libya is investing tremendous resources in the
development of Africa and Libya is also seeking to invest in America. While
Brother Gadhafi's visit to America may attract protestors, which is the right of
any American to do, however, I hope it will also attract those of us who have
honored and respected Brother Gadhafi over the years for his tireless efforts in
Black liberation and the struggle of the masses.

On a personal note, years ago I told some revolutionary brothers in Africa that
I too am a revolutionary but the revolution that I am concerned with is not
fostered by the use of carnal weapons. The revolution that I was then involved
in and am involved in now is fostered by the Divine Light found in the Bible and
Holy Qur'an. There is no real revolution as long as we remain mentally enslaved
by our former colonial and slave masters. We must be made new and that can only
happen if the veil of ignorance is removed and replaced with that knowledge that
will bring up a new idea and vision. This kind of revolution will change Africa
and the World.

When Brother Gadhafi saw the work of the Nation of Islam in cooperation with
other Black Leaders and organizations that produced the historic Million Man
March, he offered to help our people with an infusion of capital to pursue those
things that would be meaningful in the building of our communities.

In the book of Isaiah (61:4), it is written that we will rebuild the wasted
cities. We the Blacks, the Hispanics, the Native Americans and the poor Whites
live in the wasted parts of the American cities. Among us however, is the
talent, energy, gifts, skills and will to rebuild the cities and make our
neighborhoods decent places for all of us to live.

We hope that in the gathering of our best and brightest minds producing a
workable and mutually agreeable plan that Libya will partner with us in
rebuilding the wasted cities. This would create job opportunities for our young
people and help us with international trade and commerce. This would allow us to
build in the West and share the richness of the wisdom we have gained from our
sojourn in America with our Brothers and Sisters on the African continent. Then,
from both sides of the Atlantic, we might find ourselves through our noble work
worthy to be respected among all the civilized societies on our planet.

Thank you for reading these words.

—The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan


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The Pentagon Is Bankrupting Us
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
http://www.fff.org/blog/index.asp


Consider this excerpt from The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms
Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman that appeared in yesterday's
Washington Post:

Gorbachev had concluded that the sprawling Soviet defense
establishment — the army, navy, air force, strategic rocket forces, air defense
forces, and all the institutes, design bureaus and factories that supported them
— was a monumental burden on the country. "Defense spending was bleeding the
other branches of the economy dry," he recalled. The extent of the bleeding was
concealed by such deep secrecy that even Gorbachev said he had trouble obtaining
accurate information.

Why can't the American people recognize that that's precisely what is
happening in the United States today? The U.S. military — euphemistically called
the "defense" establishment — or as President Eisenhower described it, the
"military-industrial complex" — is a monumental burden that is bankrupting our
country, especially in combination with the ever-increasing burden of the
domestic welfare state.

First, it takes tax dollars to support soldiers. That's a burden — a drain — on
the private sector. With the dismantling of the wartime military machine, the
taxes necessary to support the machine can be ended, leaving all that money in
the hands of the private sector. That means more savings, investment, and
consumption and increasing wage rates and profits.

The basic idea is more taxes mean more poverty. Lower taxes mean more
prosperity and higher standards of living. That's what Gorbechev was alluding to
when he referred to the enormous burden that the military-industrial complex was
placing on the Soviet Union.

Second, by being discharged the soldiers themselves cease being
non-productive members of society and become productive members of society. As
soldiers, they're not producing anything. They're a burden, a drain on the
private sector. It's only the private sector that is productive.

Thus, the dismantling of an enormous military-industrial complex would have the
doubly positive effect of ending an enormous tax burden on the citizenry and
adding productive people to the marketplace.

After every U.S. war, the custom had been to dismantle the military and
discharge the soldiers into the private sector, which would cause economic
prosperity to soar. After World War II, however, the U.S. military and
military-industrial complex convinced policymakers not to dismantle the wartime
machine. The Soviet communist threat, the militarists claimed, required the
permanent and ever-growing existence of the military and military-industrial
complex in American life.

Ironically, the new enemy that the U.S. militarists claimed justified this
enormous and ever-growing military burden was the U.S. government's very own
ally in World War II, an ally into whose control the U.S. had just delivered
East Germany and Eastern Europe, including Poland, a country to whom Great
Britain had promised freedom at the outset of the war.

What happened when the Soviet communist threat ended in 1989? The Pentagon went
desperately searching for a new mission to prevent the dismantling of its
permanent wartime machine. After poking hornet's nests in the Middle East
throughout the 1990s, it came up with a new enemy after 9/11 — a permanent one —
to justify its existence, an enemy that its very own poking had helped to
produce — terrorism.

Today, we've got the Pentagon telling President Obama that it needs an
increase of 40,000 troops in Afghanistan to succeed against "the terrorists" in
Afghanistan. But if 9 years of bombing and killing "terrorists" hasn't been
enough to achieve "success" by now, that's failure itself. The problem, of
course, is that the permanent bombing and killing have only served to generate a
perpetual terrorist-producing machine.

Why in the world do we need this enormous permanent military burden on
America? Why not bring all the troops home, from Iraq, Afghanistan, Europe,
Korea, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and everywhere else and
discharge them? Why not dismantle the military and military-industrial complex,
thereby relieving the private sector of this tremendous burden? Why not restore
a constitutional republic to our land, as the Founding Fathers intended? Why not
restore peace, prosperity, and harmony to the United States?


Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom
Foundation.

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The CIA uses the American consulate in Dubai as a recruiting ground for Iranian
spies, according to a new book, giving out visas only in exchange for inside
information on the country.


US embassy in Dubai 'is a recruiting ground for Iranian spies'
By Richard Spencer in Dubai
22 Sep 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/dubai/6218606/US-embassy-in\
-Dubai-is-a-recruiting-ground-for-Iranian-spies.html


Thousands of Iranians use the city, which has strong trading ties with the
Islamic Republic, to apply for visas every year since the United States has no
formal representation in Tehran.

But according to diplomats quoted in the book, Dubai: The Story of the World's
Fastest City, by Jim Krane, every applicant is first grilled for information.
The most valuable sources are actively recruited as informants, either on the
country itself or on its considerable expatriate population in the United Arab
Emirates.
The information gleaned is so valuable that the CIA allegedly vetoed an attempt
by the State Department to close down the consulate on costs grounds.

"The visa windows at the US Consulate and Embassy are lucrative intelligence
collection points," Mr Krane claimed. "So lucrative, in fact, that the Central
Intelligence Agency stepped in to save the Dubai consulate from closure."

Dubai's position just across the Gulf from Iran, and its several hundred
thousand-strong Iranian population, makes it a key interlocutor between the
country and the West.

Dubai's rulers, and the United Arab Emirates in general, are seen as strongly
pro-Western, and the city is home to one of the largest American naval presences
outside the US itself. As a result, a blind eye is turned to its voluminous
trade, legal and illegal, with Iran.
Mr Krane claimed that the US learned to turn that trade to its advantage. As
Iranians wanting to visit the US had to travel abroad following the closure of
the Tehran embassy after the 1979 revolution, the CIA installed Farsi-speaking
specialists in the consulate.

Those with "interesting backgrounds" are allegedly asked to return again and
again, being pumped for ever more information before their applications are
finally accepted for processing – even so, many are apparently rejected. Some
are said to be recruited as regular spies or informants.

Because of the sanctions regime against Iran, and its alleged nuclear weapons
programme, there are many potential lines of inquiry – those involved in all
forms of trade, banking and finance are quizzed particularly thoroughly, Mr
Krane says.

Those of interest do not have to live in Iran. The Iranian community of Dubai
itself, split between anti-government exiles, pro-government officials and
businessmen, often working for state-owned companies, and non-aligned
individuals who simply find it easier to do business from outside the country,
is also targeted.

The allegations will give strength to those officials in the Iranian regime who
believe that pro-western elements in the country are conspiring against it. No
one from the Iranian consulate in Dubai was available for comment.

A state department spokesman declined to confirm the allegations but said that
so far this year the consulate had processed 46,000 visa applications including
"a significant number of Iranian applications". The consulate was so
overstretched that a new home was under construction, she added.

Morteza Masoumzadeh, an Iranian who moved to Dubai in 1980 and runs a shipping
company, said many Iranians also travel to the United States to visit relatives,
and apply for their visas in Dubai. He himself last visited the US two years
ago.

But he added: "Speaking for myself frankly I have not come across such an issue.
I have never been directed to that channel."

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French police bulldoze Afghan immigrants' camp

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/fron\
t-page/french-police-bulldoze-afghan-immigrants-camp-499


CALAIS (France), Sept 23: French police razed a squalid camp used by illegal
immigrants in scrubland near the English Channel port of Calais, using backhoes
and buzz saws to clear away the precarious dwellings of a fragile population,
mostly Afghan minors, who were led away stunned and sometimes sobbing.

The destruction of the site — known as "the Jungle" — ends the migrants' dreams
of a new life across the Channel in Britain but signifies what France hopes will
be a new era in European immigration control. People who lived there tried night
after night to sneak across the Channel.

"The law of the jungle cannot last eternally," said Immigration Minister Eric
Besson, who ordered the destruction on Tuesday of what he called "a lawless zone
where smugglers rein."

He blamed a lack of coordination among European nations' immigration laws for
the problem and said he looks forward to tougher border controls "ideally" by
the end of the year.

Police scuffled with humanitarian volunteers who have long helped the
immigrants, but no injuries were reported.

Up to 800 illegal immigrants camped near the port and in smaller "jungles"
around Calais until months ago. However, hundreds began leaving as the expected
date to raze the encampment approached. Officials said 278 people — mainly from
Afghanistan and nearly half of them under 18 — were led out of the encampment of
homemade tents that was strewn with garbage piles and infested with maladies
like scabies.

Most nights, the illegal immigrants tried to dodge elaborate security —
including heat sensors, infrared cameras, dogs and border police patrols — to
hop onto or under trucks crossing the Channel to Britain via ferries or the
Eurotunnel, which takes freight and passenger traffic between France and
Britain.

British Home Secretary Alan Johnson said on Tuesday that authorities had halted
28,000 attempts to cross the English Channel illegally in the last year alone.
He said he welcomed the "swift and decisive" move by France to close the
camp.—AP

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How Low Will Israel Stoop to Win the Propaganda War?
by Stuart Littlewood
September 18th, 2009
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/09/how-low-will-israel-stoop-to-win-the-propagand\
a-war/


The Israel Project, a US media advocacy group, has produced a revised training
manual to help the worldwide Zionist movement win the propaganda war, keep their
ill-gotten territorial gains and persuade international audiences to accept that
their crimes are necessary and conform to "shared values" between Israel and the
civilised West.

It's a clever document

The manual teaches how to justify the slaughter, the ethnic cleansing, the
land-grabbing, the cruelty and the blatant disregard for international law and
UN resolutions, and make it all smell sweeter with a liberal squirt of the
aerosol of persuasive language. It is designed to hoodwink us ignorant and
gullible Americans and Europeans into believing that we actually share values
with the racist regime in Israel and that its abominable behaviour is therefore
deserving of our support.

Israel is hoping for a PR massacre. The other side — the Palestinian Authority
and the PLO — don't take communications seriously and have neglected to correct
Israeli distortion. They are happy, it seems, for Israel's one-sided definitions
to prevail, which of course makes the task for Israel so much easier. This
latest propaganda offensive is potentially the `coup de grace' to finish off the
tormented Palestinians.

And the manual will no doubt serve as a communications primer for the army of
cyber-scribblers that Israel's Ministry of Dirty Tricks is recruiting to spread
Zionism's poison across the internet.

This quote at the beginning sets the tone: "Remember, it's not what you say that
counts. It's what people hear."

Top priority: demonise Hamas

The manual's numerous messages are aimed at the mass of "persuadables",
primarily in America but also in the UK. The strategy from the start is to
isolate democratically-elected Hamas and to rob the resistance movement and the
Palestinian population of their human rights….

Clearly differentiate between the Palestinian people and Hamas. There is an
immediate and clear distinction between the empathy Americans feel for the
Palestinians and the scorn they direct at Palestinian leadership. Hamas is a
terrorist organization – Americans get that already. But if it sounds like you
are attacking the Palestinian people (even though they elected Hamas) rather
than their leadership, you will lose public support. Right now, many Americans
sympathize with the plight of the Palestinians, and that sympathy will increase
if you fail to differentiate the people from their leaders.

The plight of the Palestinians under Israel's heel was an international concern
long before Hamas appeared on the scene.

But this scorning of leaders is familiar ground. We scorned Bush and Blair and
had to differentiate between them and their respective peoples. We now have to
do the same with Barack Obama and Gordon Brown. We are tired of having to make
that same differentiation between the Israeli people and the dreadful leaders
they produce.

ISRAEL'S RIGHT TO DEFENSIBLE BORDERS: With more than three years of violent
history since Israel's agreement to withdraw from Gaza and portions of the West
Bank, Americans have had time to take stock of the situation and form opinions.
The big picture: they believe that Hamas' leadership of Gaza has made Israel and
the region less safe, while some are more receptive to what they perceive as a
moderate approach in the West Bank by Mahmoud Abbas. Based on these experiences,
they are willing to grant Israel more leeway in resisting calls to give more
land for more peace.

Here we clearly see the motive for demonising Hamas….Israel wants more leeway to
continue its land-grabs and other criminal activities.

If… If… If…Then.": Put the burden on Hamas to make the first move for peace by
using If's (and don't forget to finish with a hard then to show Israel is a
willing peace partner). "If Hamas reforms… If Hamas recognize our right to
exist… If Hamas renounces terrorism… If Hamas supports international peace
agreements… then we are willing to make peace today.

How daft can you get? Substitute Israel for Hamas.

Words that work

The manual sets out numerous examples of "words that work" — supposedly.

We know that the Palestinians deserve leaders who will care about the well being
of their people, and who do not simply take hundreds of millions of dollars in
assistance from America and Europe, put them in Swiss bank accounts, and use
them to support terror instead of peace.

No mention here of the billions of tax dollars Israel takes from the US and
spends on munitions to obliterate and vaporize its neighbours.

Peace can only be made with adversaries who want to make peace with you.
Terrorist organizations like Iran-backed Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad
are, by definition, opposed to peaceful co-existence, and determined to prevent
reconciliation. I ask you, how do you negotiate with those who want you dead?

Hamas and Hezbollah are only regarded as terrorists by the White House and Tel
Aviv and by US-Israeli stooges and flag-wavers at Westminster and elsewhere.

In Executive Order 13224 – BLOCKING PROPERTY AND PROHIBITING TRANSACTIONS WITH
PERSONS WHO COMMIT, THREATEN TO COMMIT, OR SUPPORT TERRORISM – Bush used this
definition: "The term "terrorism" means an activity that —

(i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or
infrastructure; and

(ii) appears to be intended —

(A) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

(B) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

(C) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination,
kidnapping, or hostage-taking."

It describes the antics of the US and Israel perfectly.

There is NEVER, EVER, any justification for the deliberate slaughter of innocent
women and children. NEVER…. there is one fundamental principle that all peoples
from all parts of the globe will agree on: civilized people do not target
innocent women and children for death.

Fine words, but where does that leave Israel, which recently killed 320 children
in Gaza and 773 civilians including 109 women? From the start of the second
Intifada (uprising against the Israeli occupation) in 2000 to the end of last
year Israel had slaughtered 4,936 Palestinians in their homeland, including 952
children, according to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem. In the
same period Palestinians killed 490 Israelis in Israel including only 84
children. So Israel's kill-rate is at least 10 to 1, and rising since the
blitzkrieg on Gaza.

Iran-backed or US-backed – take your pick

Use humility. `I know that in trying to defend its children and citizens from
terrorists that Israel has accidentally hurt innocent people. I know it, and I'm
sorry for it. But what can Israel do to defend itself? If America had given up
land for peace – and that land had been used for launching rockets at America,
what would America do? Israel was attacked with thousands of rockets from
Iran-backed Palestinian terrorists in Gaza. What should Israel have done to
protect her children?'

Palestinians too have a right to defend themselves. Hamas was the popular choice
of Palestinians at the last election and is entitled under international law to
take up arms against an illegal occupier and invader. If it is supported by
Iran, so what? Israel is extravagantly funded and supplied by the US. Here's
part of their begging-bowl "Military Aid Speech"….

Israel makes the request for military assistance out of self-defense. As a
democracy, they have the right and the responsibility to protect our borders. As
a democracy, they have the right and the responsibility to protect their
citizens.

Israel does not ask for U.S. troops to protect itself. It does not ask for a
single American soldier to protect its borders. It only asks for the funds for
them to protect themselves. They need the equipment so that their own troops can
ensure the safety of their civilian population through this gathering conflict
with the enemies of democracy.

They didn't ask to have our nation built in range of Iranian missiles. They
didn't ask that their nation be a focal point for religious extremists who have
declared war on the West and on democracy.

But they are, and they need your help.

And here's the rationale behind it….

Americans fundamentally believe that a democracy has a right to protect its
people and its borders. And while Americans don't want to increase foreign aid
in a time of significant budgetary deficits and painful spending cuts, there is
one and only one argument that will work for Israel (in four easy steps):

1) As a democracy, Israel has the right and the responsibility to defend its
borders and protect its people.

2) Terrorist groups, including Iran-backed Hezbollah and Hamas, continue to pose
a direct threat to Israeli security and have repeatedly taken innocent Israeli
lives.

3) Israel is America's one and only true ally in the region. In these
particularly unstable and dangerous times, Israel should not be forced to go it
alone.

4) With America's financial assistance, Israel can defend its borders, protect
its people, and provide invaluable assistance to the American effort against the
war against terrorism.

It's evident that Americans don't believe in democracy enough to allow
Palestinian democracy to flourish.

"When the terror ends, Israel will no longer need to have challenging
checkpoints to inspect goods and people. When the terror ends we will no longer
need a security fence."

There are no rockets coming out of the West Bank, so why is the security fence
still there – and still being built? Why are the occupation troops still there?
Why are hundreds of checkpoints still there? Why is Israel still stealing land,
demolishing Palestinian homes and building settlements there?

Remind people – again and again – that Israel wants peace.

Reason One: If Americans see no hope for peace—if they only see a continuation
of a 2,000-year-long episode of "Family Feud"—Americans will not want their
government to spend tax dollars or their President's clout on helping Israel.

Reason Two: The speaker that is perceived as being most for PEACE will win the

debate. Every time someone makes the plea for peace, the reaction is positive.
If you want to regain the public relations advantage, peace should be at the
core of whatever message you wish to convey.

Israel does NOT want peace. It has never met its peace agreement obligations.
Every action is directed at keeping the conflict going until the Israelis have
stolen enough land and established enough `facts on the ground' – Jews-only
settlements, highways, disconnected Palestinian Bantustans – to enable them to
redraw the map to suit their expansionist agenda and make the occupation
PERMANENT.

Gaza in a vice

Israel made painful sacrifices and took a risk to give peace a chance. They
voluntarily removed over 9,000 settlers from Gaza and parts of the West Bank,
abandoning homes, schools, businesses, and places of worship in the hopes of
renewing the peace process. Despite making an overture for peace by withdrawing
from Gaza, Israel continues to face terrorist attacks, including rocket attacks
and drive-by shootings of innocent Israelis. Israel knows that for a lasting
peace, they must be free from terrorism and live with defensible borders.

Israel never left. It still occupies Gazan airspace, coastal waters and
airwaves, and controls all borders except Rafah where it nevertheless exerts a
veto. Israel has Gaza in a vice, which is crushing the tiny enclave's economy,
starving its 1.5 million citizens and creating a huge humanitarian crisis in an
attempt to bring the elected government to its knees.

Draw direct parallels between Israel and America—including the need to defend
against terrorism…. The more you focus on the similarities between Israel and
America, the more likely you are to win the support of those who are neutral.
Indeed, Israel is an important American ally in the war against terrorism, and
faces many of the same challenges as America in protecting their citizens.

Note how Israel's strategy is almost totally dependent on the false idea that
they are victims of terror and western nations need to huddle together with
Israel for mutual protection. Fortunately, level-headed people are beginning to
realize who the terrorists really are.

It is surely obvious by now that allowing parallels to be drawn between Israel
and America only serves to increase the world's hatred of America. US citizens
need to wake up to this, and British citizens should avoid falling into the same
trap.

Inject with "core values" and repeat over and over again…

The language of Israel is the language of America: `democracy,' `freedom,'
'security,' and `peace.' These four words are at the core of the American
political, economic, social, and cultural systems, and they should be repeated
as often as possible because they resonate with virtually every American.

If so fluent in this language, why won't Israel acknowledge their neighbours'
rights to democracy, freedom, security and peace and end their military
oppression?

A simple rule of thumb is that once you get to the point of repeating the same
message over and over again so many times that you think you might get sick—that
is just about the time the public will wake up and say `Hey—this person just
might be saying something interesting to me!' But don't confuse messages with
facts….

Never let facts get in the way of a good message!

How can the current Palestinian leadership honestly say it will pursue peace
when previous leaders rejected an offer to create a Palestinian state just a few
short years ago and now refuse to live up to their responsibilities as outlined
in the Road Map?

This must be a reference to Barak's so-called "generous offer", another of the
myths Israelis love to peddle. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip, seized by
Israel in 1967 and occupied ever since, comprise just 22% of pre-partition
Palestine. When the Palestinians signed the Oslo Agreement in 1993 they agreed
to accept the 22% and recognise Israel within `Green Line' borders (i.e. the
1949 Armistice Line established after the Arab-Israeli War). Conceding 78% of
the land that was originally theirs was an astonishing compromise on the part of
the Palestinians.

But it wasn't enough for greedy Barak. His `generous offer' required the
inclusion of 69 Israeli settlements within the 22% remnant. It was plain to see
on the map that these settlement blocs created impossible borders and already
severely disrupted Palestinian life in the West Bank. Barak also demanded the
Palestinian territories be placed under "Temporary Israeli Control", meaning
Israeli military and administrative control indefinitely. The `generous offer'
also gave Israel control over all the border crossings of the new Palestinian
State. What nation in the world would accept that? The unacceptable reality of
Barak's offer, contained in the map, was hidden by propaganda spin.

Later, at Taba, Barak produced a revised map but withdrew it after his election
defeat. Don't take my word for it – the facts are well documented and explained
by organisations such as Gush Shalom.

Why is the world so silent about the written, vocal, stated aims of Hamas?

Why is the world so silent about the written, stated aims of the racist regime
and its political parties? Read their manifestos.

Successful communications is not about being able to recite every fact from the
long history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is about pointing out a few core
principles of shared values—such as democracy and freedom—and repeating them
over and over again…. You need to start with empathy for both sides, remind your
audience that Israel wants peace and then repeat the messages of democracy,
freedom, and peace over and over again…. we need to repeat the message, on
average, ten times to be effective.

Is democracy a shared value? Israel is an ethnocracy. Is freedom a shared value?
The world is still waiting for Israel to allow the Palestinians their freedom.

The situation in the Middle East may be complicated, but all parties should
adopt a simple approach: peace first, political boundaries second.

Renounce resistance while still under Israel's jackboot? The correct approach is
for the international community to first insist that Israel complies with
international law and the many UN resolutions it has contemptuously ignored. The
boundaries are already defined. Whatever issues remain to be decided,
Palestinians should not have to negotiate under occupation or duress.

Rockets, bombs and atrocities: the language of peace

Bottom line: What will happen if we fail to get the world to care about the fact
that Israeli parents in southern Israel need to literally dodge rockets when
they drive their children to kindergarten in the morning? What will happen if
the world allows Iran, the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, to get
nuclear weapons? What will Israel do if bad press causes American citizens to
ask [their] government to turn its back on Israel?

Why do I care so much about the success of your communications efforts? I care
because I never want our children to live through what my family and yours lived
through in the Holocaust.

Only one in 500 makeshift Qassam rockets causes a fatality, small beer compared
to the devastation and carnage resulting from Israel's state-of-the-art rocketry
targeted on Gaza. How does it look when Palestinians are forced to pay a heavy
price for the Holocaust in Europe? And how much does Israel care about the
Palestinian holocaust it has caused?

The manual then gives a long glossary of terms. Here's a sample….

"Deliberately firing rockets into civilian communities": Combine terrorist
motive with civilian visuals and you have the perfect illustration of what
Israel faced in Gaza and Lebanon. Especially with regard to rocket attacks but
useful for any kind of terrorist attack, deliberate is the right word to use to
call out the intent behind the attacks. This is far more powerful than
describing the attacks as "random."

Israelis know all about bombarding civilian targets. And they are careful not to
mention that Sderot, until recently the only Israeli township within range of
Gazan rockets, is built on the ruins of an ethnically cleansed Palestinian
village whose inhabitants were forced from their homes by Jewish terrorists.

"Economic Diplomacy": This is a much more embracing and popular term than the
current lexicon of "sanctions." It has appeal across the political spectrum: the
tough economic approach appeals to Republicans, and the diplomacy component
satisfies Democrats.

This is a game we can all play. Israel is now beginning to suffer "economic
diplomacy" in the form of worldwide boycotts.

"Economic Prosperity": Whenever Israel talks about the "economic prosperity" of
the Palestinians, it puts Israel in the most positive light possible. After all,
who can disagree?

What sort of prosperity is it when nothing can be imported or exported without
Israel's approval and fisherman can't even put to sea in their own waters
without having their boats shot up by the Israeli navy?

"Human to Human": "We know that the average Palestinian and the average Israeli
want to come together and make peace. They want to live in peace. Israeli
leaders have come together with Arab leaders to make peace in the past. But how
do you make peace with Hamas and Hezbollah?

Simple. You get off their land and stay off. There can be no peace under
occupation. You have to be very stupid not to understand that.

"Humanize Rockets": Paint a vivid picture of what life is like in Israeli
communities that are vulnerable to attack. Yes, cite the number of rocket
attacks that have occurred. But immediately follow that up with what it is like
to make the nightly trek to the bomb shelter.

Would Israel care to tell the world how many bombs, rockets and shells
(including the illegal and prohibited variety) its F-16s, tanks, armed drones
and navy gunboats have poured into the densely-packed humanity that is Gaza?

Still more advice….

"Living together, side by side". This is the best way to describe the ultimate
vision of a two-state solution without using the phrase.

Sounds cute but is worn out. Who would want to live alongside bigots and
extremists who have made your life a misery for 61 years?

When talking about a Palestinian partner, it is essential to distinguish between
Hamas and everyone else. Only the most anti-Israel, pro- Palestinian American
expects Israel to negotiate with Hamas, so you have to be clear that you are
seeking a `moderate Palestinian partner'.

Where are the moderate Israeli partners?

The fight is over IDEOLOGY – not land; terror, not territory. Thus, you must
avoid using Israel's religious claims to land as a reason why Israel should not
give up land. Such claims only make Israel look extremist to people who are not
religious Christians or Jews.

If the fight isn't about land, why did Israel steal it at gunpoint? And why
won't they give it back when told to by the UN?

Think PRO-PALESTINIAN. While I have spoken about Israeli casualties, I want to
recognize those Palestinians that have been killed or wounded, because they are
suffering as well. I particularly want to reach out to Palestinian mothers who
have lost their children. No parent should have to bury their child.

Israel won't even allow cement into Gaza to build the graves.

And so I say to my Palestinian colleagues … you can stop the bloodshed. You can
stop the suicide bombings and rocket attacks. If you really want to, you can put
an end to this cycle of violence. If you won't do it for our children, do it for
your children.

This is recommended to activists as "an effective Israeli sound bite".

I want to see a future where the Palestinians govern themselves. Israel does not
want to govern a single Palestinian. Not one. We want them to govern themselves.
We want them to have complete self-determination.

Israel is desperate to snuff out Palestine's fledgling democracy and destroy the
remnants of its government. For decades Israel has dismissed the Palestinians'
right to self-determination.

The big picture approach is this: You must isolate Hamas as:

– A critical cause of the delay in achieving a two-state solution
– The biggest source of harm to the Palestinian people, and
– The reason why Israel must defend its people from living in terror.

Read from the Hamas Charter. Now, here's how to attack Hamas: indict them with
their own indoctrination materials. Yes, people know Hamas is a terrorist
organization – but they don't know just how terrifying Hamas can be. The
absolute best way to heighten their awareness is to read from the Hamas Charter
itself. Don't just "quote" from it. Read it. Out loud. Again and again. Hand it
out to everyone.

At last Israel makes a good point. After 3 years of `government' Hamas must be
mad to persist with its ill-advised charter. They have been severely tested.
They have matured. They have earned credibility in many eyes. Israel's behaviour
makes Hamas look good. But all that will count for nothing if they don't
re-write their charter as a matter of urgency.

Regev's pearls of wisdom. But how safe is the region under the threat of
Israel's nukes?

It's not just Israel who refuses to speak to Hamas. It's the whole international
community… Most of the democratic world refuses to have a relationship with
Hamas because Hamas has refused to meet the most minimal benchmarks of
international behavior.

Isn't that a little cheeky, Mr Regev, coming from a regime widely condemned for
war crimes, piracy and mega-lawlessness.

It was the former U.N. secretary general Kofi Anan that put four benchmarks on
the table. And he said, speaking for the international community … That if Hamas
reforms itself … If Hamas recognizes my country's right to live in freedom … If
Hamas renounces terrorism against innocent civilians … If Hamas supports
international agreements that are being signed and agreed to concerning the
peace process … then the door is open. But unfortunately – tragically – Hamas
has failed to meet even one of those four benchmarks. And that's why today Hamas
is isolated internationally. Even the United Nations refuses to speak to Hamas.

Which of those benchmarks has Israel met, Mr Regev?

Israel is very concerned about the Iranian nuclear program. And for good reason.
Iran's President openly talks about wiping Israel off the map. We see them
racing ahead on nuclear enrichment so they can have enough fissile material to
build a bomb. We see them working on their ballistic missiles. We only saw, last
week, shooting a rocket to launch a so-called satellite into outer space and so
forth. The Iranian nuclear program is a threat, not just to my country, but to
the entire region. And it's incumbent upon us all to do what needs to be done to
keep from proliferating.

Why is Israel the only state in the region not to have signed the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, Mr Regev? Are we all supposed to believe that Israel's
200 (or is it 400?) nuclear warheads pose no threat? Would you also like to
comment on why Israel hasn't signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention,
and why it has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban
Treaty, similarly the Chemical Weapons Convention? What proof do you have of
Iran's nuclear weapons plans?

And why do you persist in misquoting Mr Ahmadjinadad?

The Holy City is not up for grabs

The toughest issue to communicate will be the final resolution of Jerusalem.
Americans overwhelmingly want Israel to be in charge of the religious holy sites
and are frankly afraid of the consequences should Israel turn over control to
the Palestinians. Consider:

• 71% of Americans trust Israel most to protect the holy sites in Jerusalem,
compared to 6.1% who trust the Palestinian authority most. 8.5% percent trust
neither.

• 54% of Americans believe that "Jerusalem must remain united under Israeli
sovereignty" while just 23.9% believe that `Jerusalem should be divided into
Israeli controlled and Palestinian controlled areas'.

Given the choice between the two, Americans of all political and demographic
stripes trust Israel to protect and have sovereignty over Jerusalem.

Israel is in control right now and prevents Muslims and Christians from outside
the City visiting the holy places. No way can Israel be trusted. The UN's
partition plan decreed that Jerusalem should become a `corpus separatum' under
international management. It is unlikely that the UN would wish to see its
resolutions torn up or international law re-written for Israel's sole benefit,
regardless of America's misinformed opinion.

Get the name-calling right

I'll close with the following extract….

Many on the left see an "Israel v. Palestinian" crisis where Israel is Goliath
and the Palestinians are David. It is critical that they understand that this is
an Arab-Israeli crisis and that the force undermining peace is Iran and their
proxies Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. You must not call Hamas just Hamas.
Call them what they are: Iran-backed Hamas. Indeed, when they know that Iran is
behind Hamas and Hezbollah, they are much more supportive of Israel.

By the same token we must call the racist regime what it is – US-backed Israel.

Iran's support for Hamas is difficult to quantify and probably less than we
think. It is likely that more funding has come from Sunni Arab countries such as
Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In any case it is peanuts compared to America's support
for Israel.

Hamas is an offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhhod and was founded in 1987
during the first Intifada. Hezbollah came into being in 1982 in response to
US-backed Israel's invasion of Lebanon. So the territorial ambitions of
US-backed Israel provoked the rise of both. Israel's problem is entirely
self-inflicted and shouldn't concern the rest of us.

It's no surprise that Hamas's election manifesto in 2006 called for maintaining
the armed struggle against US-backed Israel's illegal occupation of the
Palestinian Territories.

Our obligation to respect and promote human rights

The Israel Project describes itself as "devoted to educating the press and the
public about Israel while promoting security, freedom and peace". It provides
journalists, leaders and opinion-formers with "accurate information about
Israel".

However its propaganda manual, which runs to 116 pages, is an unpleasant piece
of work which recycles many of the discredited techniques used by the
advertising industry before standards of honesty, decency and truthfulness were
brought in to protect the public.

And it serves to undermine with clever words the inalienable rights pledged by
the UN and the world's civilized nations to all peoples, including the
Palestinians.

When you have to stoop this low you simply don't have a case.

Everyone should bear in mind the following, written nearly 61 years ago:

Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF
HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all
nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping
this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to
promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures,
national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition
and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the
peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

It would seem that Israel has not read or understood the principles enshrined in
the Universal Declaration, which all nations signed up to. There can be no
excuse. Attempts to wipe out the rights of people who happen to be in the way of
the bulldozing Zionist vision of a `Greater Israel' deserve no support whatever.

Meanwhile the Palestinian side needs to de-bunk this Zionist handbook and
re-frame the Holy Land situation in the language of truth. If the PA and the PLO
won't do it, who will?

Maybe it's a job for the churches and mosques.

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Media hypes terror plot, despite the fact
no one is charged with terror
By John Byrne
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
http://rawstory.com/2009/09/media-hypes-terror-plot-despite-the-fact-no-one-is-c\
harged-with-terror/


It has a familiar ring: "Investigators are looking for about a dozen more people
in connection with a wide-ranging terror investigation that has already netted
arrests in Colorado and New York City, a source familiar with the investigation
said Tuesday."

That's the lead sentence of a CNN "breaking news" report filed Tuesday about a
frantic search for alleged terrorism plotters within the United States. But a
closer inspection of the story — and that of others in the past week — reveals
that despite the hoopla, federal authorities have yet to charge the men they're
accusing of a terror-related crime.

In fact, they're only actually charged with lying to federal agents. But you
wouldn't know that from reading the headlines.

Problematic in this and other recent reports is the use of anonymous law
enforcement sources, who repeatedly hype alleged ties to al Qaeda, identify
"persons of interest," and detail dramatic but unspecified plots.

These sources, notes CBS News' Chief Legal Analyst and Legal Editor Andrew
Cohen, began "clicking off all of the elements of their perennial song-and-dance
number in terror-plot cases; this time from New York to Denver to Washington and
back. The prejudicial leaks from law enforcement; the prompt (and promptly
repeated) links to al Qaeda; the dramatic headlines, the identification of a
"person of interest;" the assurances that no particular target had been
specified; the intercession of an overwhelmed defense attorney; the denials, the
meetings, the breakdown in talks, and, finally, the arrest (late at night, but
with the tipped-off news cameras hovering above and about)."

"We've seen various iterations of the perp-walk parade hundreds of times before,
in cases that merited the attention or not, and certainly dozens of times since
Sept. 11, 2001," Cohen continues. "Often, way too often, the government has in
the end been able or willing to prove far less than the initial (and often
hysterical and hysterically received) allegations — distributed (typically
without challenge) via cable television and the Internet — suggested. For
example, off the top of my head, I give you: Zacarious Moussaoui, who was not
the `20th hijacker,' Jose Padilla, who was not the `dirty bomber' and John
Walker Lindh, who was not the `American Taliban.'"

Federal agents arrested three individuals over the weekend in connection with
what officials described as a plot to bomb targets in the United States. The
three men — who are from Afghanistan — are Najibullah Zazi, his father Mohammed
Wali Zazi and cleric Ahmad Wais Afzali.

They've been charged with lying to federal agents; a judge set their bail at
$50,000.

Cohen says the story has echoes of previous hyped terror cases where little
actually pans out.

"We see only the old, familiar story; a prosecution for the alleged cover-up but
not the alleged crime," the court reporter remarks. "But about the heart of the
matter we still know very little. Are the Zazis really dangerous? If so, how
dangerous are they? How strong is the evidence against them? What did they
allegedly lie about and what didn't they allegedly lie about? And how long is it
going to take for us to know the rest of the story."

"If, for example, the feds believe that Zazi, the younger, really did attend an
Al Qaeda terror training camp why is he only charged with "lying"? If the feds
really did find incriminating bomb-making plans on a laptop taken from Zazi's
rental car then why no "material support" or conspiracy charge? If his
fingerprints were on a "black scale" and batteries (two items which are legal to
possess) what other physical evidence suggests a crime?

"Maybe both sides were plotting to inform on each other and the feds decided
they could simply charge all of them with lying since neither version offered
could both be true? Maybe neither version is true… Of all the starts to all the
terror cases in all the world since 9/11 the start to this terror case cries out
more than most for a little more patience."

Cohen concludes: "As Churchill might have said, we are not remotely close to the
end of the beginning."

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New York police arrest Jewish gang trafficking
organs of Algerian children
08/09/2009
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpM\
O%2bi1s7Y%2bNXmhSDeSo895wjWE%2f212yGDZU%2fMHdX95V7%2bwvkR%2bWBGF%2fjg1vFeiIZJZsg\
XPdvwQZHISV20n0FVBMw5w%2fqre3cN0vXQJO0lnm%2bTlF484A%3d


ALGERIA, (PIC)-- An Algerian official revealed Sunday the New York city police
were able to catch a Jewish gang involved in the abduction of children from
Algeria and trafficking of their organs headed by Levy Rosenbaum.

Rosenbaum was directly involved in the recent case of trading human organs which
raised a storm of reactions in the US and Israel.
Dr. Mustafa Khayatti, the head of the Algerian national committee for the
development of health and research, said that the arrest of the gang came after
Interpol investigations showed that Algerian children were abducted from cities
in western Algeria and taken to Morocco in order to harvest their kidneys and
traffic them in Israel and the US for $20,000 and $100,000 dollars each.

"The arrest of Jewish organ trafficking gangs does not mean that the danger has
gone, top officials and specialists in this issue assert that there are other
Jewish gangs who remain active in several Arab countries," Dr. Khayatti noted.

US authorities had arrested 44 people including Rabbis and mayors in New Jersey
last July; they all were prosecuted for money laundering activities and sale of
human organs.

Last month, a report issued by Aftonbladet, a newspaper Swedish, accused Israeli
soldiers of kidnapping Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip to
kill them and steal their organs, indicating a possible link between these
crimes and the mafia of human organs detected in the US.

In another related context, the humanitarian relief committee affiliated with
the union of Egyptian doctors declared Monday its intention to organize an
international and Arab media campaign to expose the Israeli crimes of stealing
organs from Palestinians.

The committee called in a statement for opening an investigation into these
crimes, stressing that a number of Israeli surgeons are involved in harvesting
human organs of Palestinians.

Dr. Abdelkader Hegazy, the head of the committee, said that the union of
Egyptian doctors received a letter from the Jordanian union about the ways of
cooperation in prosecuting every Israeli involved in committing such crimes.

===

Swedish journalist: Israel stole the organs of more than a 1000 Palestinians
25/09/2009
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpM\
O%2bi1s7RUxsgc7EdPMAbP%2brx%2bBgpTaayltXU06JdnjkjWjO9qNPuFZ%2bqoAEwRsU9mkJtuKpiU\
DblPJTbwuVLvtGq2LTozeIXT0qPkwWWFPgxc4BVSc%3d


ALGIERS, (PIC)-- Swedish journalist, Donald Bostrom, said that Israel started
the illegal harvesting of organs from Palestinian victims as early as 1960, with
a marked increase in this practice during the first Palestinian intifada.

Bostrom was speaking at an event organised, on Wednesday, by the the National
Federation of Algerian Journalists in the capital Algiers.
He also said that the organ harvesting was not limited to Palestinian victims,
but included those of other nationalities who were killed in Palestine.

He pointed out that the investigative report he published in August in
Aftonbladet was based on testimonies of a UN group in Palestine about "the ugly
treatment meted to the corpses of Palestinians."

He confirmed that he received death threats by telephone and e-mail after his
article in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet about the IOF practice.

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Architect of Free Gaza Boat Movement to visit India
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
http://www.ummid.com/news/September/23.09.2009/Architect%20of%20FREE%20GAZA%20BO\
AT%20MOVEMENT%20to%20visit%20India.htm


Malegaon: The Palestinian lady who made the headlines after she traveled to Gaza
in July this year on a ship carrying tons of food grains, medicines and other
rehabilitation and reconstruction kits for
Palestinian families, will be visiting India in the next few days.

Huwaida Araf, the Palestinian lady and the architect of the Free Gaza Boat
Movement is arriving India on a week long visit, says president of Awami Bharat
and renowned activist Feroze Mithiborwala.

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Infowars reporters caught in bedlam relate unfolding chaos on Alex Jones Show


Military Attacks American Citizens With
Sound Weapons & Tear Gas At G20
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, September 24, 2009
http://www.prisonplanet.com/military-attacks-american-citizens-with-sound-weapon\
s-tear-gas-at-g20.html


[Read article at above website to view photos and videos. -WVNS]


National Guard, police, and other military units attacked American citizens with
tear gas and deployed sound cannons today in response to an "unpermitted
protest" as bedlam hit the streets on the first day of the G20 summit in
downtown Pittsburgh.

===

REUTERS UPDATE: Secret Service confirms that police are shooting #g20 protesters
with "bean bags." But check out what they look like. Via Keepshooting.com:


A 12 gauge round that direct fires a 26 gram or 40 gram bean bag projectile.
Designed for single target engagement allowing escalation of force from a close
distance prior to use of lethal means. It's $9.95 per round.

A Effect on target: Incapacitation caused by loss of breath, psychological
effect, and/or pain and extreme discomfort.
B. Time to Effect: Instantaneous
C. Duration of Effect: Seconds to Minutes based on power factor, distance and
location of strike.
D. Effective Range: 7 yards (heavily clothed subject) to 20 yards

G20 Pittsburgh LIVE Coverage:
http://reuters.scribblelive.com/Event/G20_Pittsburgh

LIVE: G-20 Protesters In Pittsburgh Streets:
http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/video/21105097/index.html

===

National Guard, police, and other military units attacked American citizens with
tear gas and deployed sound cannons today in response to an "unpermitted
protest" as bedlam hit the streets on the first day of the G20 summit in
downtown Pittsburgh.

The First Amendment is officially dead in the United States. If this isn't
martial law then we don't know what is. Associated Press photographs show
National Guard troops in full fatigues with active duty military running
checkpoints that make the roadblocks in Iraq positively friendly. Like Iraq,
America is now a conquered nation occupied by troops whose primary function is
to oppress anyone who tries to express the freedoms that they once enjoyed.

It all unfolded live on The Alex Jones Show as the Infowars crew called in to
the program as sound cannons were turned against protesters who police were
attempting to force out of the immediate area.

"According to news agency reports, officers made their announcement over a
loudspeaker telling people to leave or face arrest or "other police action,"
reports the London Times. These words were broadcast live on the Alex Jones Show
today along with police orders that the "unlawful assemblies should immediately
disperse".

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)



"Protesters at one flashpoint reported the use of tear gas to disperse the
crowds," reports the Press Association.

Citing Pittsburgh criminal code, police bellowed through loudspeakers that
unpermitted protests were a serious offense, an official death knell for the
First Amendment.

Corporate media reports will obsess about anarchists causing nuisance without
mentioning the fact that the You Tube video below clearly shows police
terrorizing neighborhoods with ear-splitting sound weapons that are clearly a
violation of all kinds of town ordinances related to public health and noise
pollution.



Infowars correspondents reported live how police were "kettling" protesters into
confined areas in an attempt to subdue them. Jason Bermas reported seeing mask
wearing anarchists, who have been caught before on numerous occasions provoking
violence as a pretext for the police to crackdown, throwing objects and tipping
over garbage cans.

As we have previously reported, 2,500 National Guardsmen along with Marines and
the Air Force are stationed in Pittsburgh to provide "security" for the G20
summit. Their primary training routine revolved around "crowd control" and
dealing with civil unrest. The sight of troops on the streets of America, even
for routine traffic control and "security" is now commonplace as the land of the
free sinks into a militarized police state.

Watch this space for more coverage from Pittsburgh over the next few days.
Images and videos appear below.

LRADS being used against protesters caught live on The Alex Jones Show.



Numerous videos of G20 protests and police actions can be viewed on You Tube as
they roll in here.


Demonstrators run from pepper gas released by police during a protest prior to
the start of the G20 Pittsburgh Summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania September 24,
2009.

A demonstrator sprays water over the face of another demonstrator after police
released pepper gas during a protest prior to the start of the G20 Pittsburgh
Summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania September 24, 2009.



A demonstrator kicks a pepper gas canister thrown by police during a protest
before the start of the G20 Pittsburgh Summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
September 24, 2009.



A police officer tries to block a street during a protest before the start of
the G20 Pittsburgh Summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania September 24, 2009.



National Guard troops man a checkpoint into downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
near the site of the G20 summit. World economic leaders arrive in the city later
today for 2 days of meetings. Thousands of police deployed behind steel barriers
here Thursday to protect a summit of 20 world leaders, as streets were closed
and shop windows boarded up in case of violent protests.



National Guard troops man a checkpoint into downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
near the site of the G20 summit. Thousands of police deployed behind steel
barriers here Thursday to protect a summit of 20 world leaders, as streets were
closed and shop windows boarded up in case of violent protests.



A car and driver are screened at a checkpoint by security personnel in downtown
Pittsburgh, Thursday Sept. 24, 2009. World leaders are expected in Pittsburgh
Thursday for the start of the two-day G20 summit.



An unidentified man holds an American flag upside, near a military checkpoint in
downtown Pittsburgh, Thursday Sept. 24, 2009. World leaders are expected to
begin a two-day G20 summit in Pittsburgh on Thursday.

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Sanctions, War and the Policy of Dual Containment
The United States and Iran
By SASAN FAYAZMANESH
http://atheonews.blogspot.com/2009/02/sanctions-war-and-policy-of-dual.html


It is now nearly three decades since the Unites States adopted the policy of
dual containment of Iran and Iraq. While much has been written about the
containment of Iraq, there has been very little in-depth analysis of this policy
when it comes to Iran. In a book that is going to be released on March 31, 2008,
entitled The United States and Iran: Sanctions, Wars and the Policy of Dual
Containment (Routledge), I attempt to address this shortcoming by investigating
when and why the US policy of containment of Iran came about, how it evolved,
and where it stands today.[1] To the extent that Israel has been involved in US
policy making, the study will also include the role that Israel has played in
the containment of Iran. Also, since the fate of Iran has been inextricably
linked to that of Iraq, occasionally the investigation will overlap with the
containment of Iraq.

The policy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq originated during the Carter
Administration, but it was not until the Clinton Administration that the
expression "dual containment" became popular. Despite its widespread use, the
meaning of the expression is not crystal clear; different individuals have had
different interpretations of "containment" of Iran and Iraq. For some, it has
meant keeping the two countries militarily, economically, and politically in
check. This was the case with Iraq between 1990-when Saddam Hussein invaded
Kuwait and United Nations sanctions were imposed on Iraq-and 2003-when the US
invaded Iraq for the second time and occupied the country. In the case of Iraq,
it was hoped initially that economic pressures through extensive United Nations
sanctions, as well as some limited military actions, would create discontent and
lead to "regime change." But since sanctions did not result in the overthrow of
Hussein, Iraq was not exactly contained. The 2003 US invasion and occupation of
Iraq showed that containment could go beyond sanctions and limited military
operations; it could involve outright invasion of a country to achieve the
desired goals.

To this day, the US military adventure in Iraq has not been successful, and the
future of Iraq and its government remains uncertain. In this sense, some may
argue that Iraq has not been contained. But a few might disagree with this
conclusion. For these individuals Iraq has already been contained, since the
country has been economically ruined, militarily shattered, and politically
disintegrated. For decades to come, Iraq will not be able to rise from the ashes
and challenge the US and Israel; and this, in the opinion of these individuals,
is a successful containment. Such a view might appear to be too cynical to be
held by anyone. But, as I have argued in my book, the attitude of many US and
Israeli officials toward the Iran-Iraq war indicates that this view did actually
exist.

Some American and Israeli officials wished to see Iran and Iraq destroy one
another in a costly and protracted war. They helped to prolong the war and make
sure that neither side had a decisive victory. The horrendous eight-year war,
which resulted in a massive loss of human life and severe economic losses, was
therefore viewed as a kind of containment. The same view of containment seems to
exist today among many so-called neoconservatives who, after pushing for the
Iraq invasion, show no remorse for the resulting carnage and advocate bombing
Iran.

Whatever the interpretation of the dual containment of Iran and Iraq, one aspect
of this policy has been to use war, or threats of war, to bring about the
desired change. Another has been to rely on sanctions. US unilateral sanctions
against Iran started shortly after the 1979 Revolution and continued throughout
the Iran-Iraq war. In this period many of the imposed sanctions were intended to
prevent Iran from winning the war against Hussein's Iraq. But it was also hoped
that sanctions would bring about popular dissatisfaction in Iran and result in
the overthrow of the new government. Such sanctions continued and became even
more intensified after the Iran-Iraq war, particularly in the 1990s. Yet, even
though these sanctions did harm the Iranian economy, they did not bring about
the intended "regime change." The failure was attributed to the unilateral
nature of these sanctions, and therefore multilateral sanctions, imposed through
the United Nations, were sought. So far three such sanctions have been passed
against Iran. Whether these sanctions will have the desired results and,
eventually, would do to Iran what has been done to Iraq is hard to predict. But
it is even harder to make any predictions about the future without knowing the
past. It was in the spirit of documenting the history, in order to better
understand the present and the future, that The United States and Iran
Sanctions, Wars and the Policy of Dual Containment was written. An outline of
the book is as follows.

The origin of the dual containment policy, as mentioned above, goes back to the
Carter Administration. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that individuals
within the Carter Administration, contrary to their denials, gave Hussein the
green light to invade Iran and assisted him after the invasion. It was hoped
that the war would not only lead to the resolution of the so-called hostage
crisis, but that it might lead to the overthrow of the Iranian government and
the restoration of the old order, where the Shah of Iran maintained a symbiotic
relationship with the US and Israel. However, assisting Hussein in his war
against Iran did not mean that the US was planning to establish a long-term
relationship with him. Befriending Hussein was temporary; and while the US was
helping the Iraqi government, the Israelis were selling arms to Iran with the
full knowledge of the US. Indeed, the Carter Administration itself was
considering the possibility of providing Iran with military spare parts as well.
This was the beginning of the policy of dual containment, when the US, playing
the role of a double agent, tried to make sure that neither side would achieve a
decisive victory in the Iran-Iraq war.

The dual containment policy continued in the 1980s under the Reagan and George
H. W. Bush Administrations. But while the US assisted Hussein covertly during
the Carter period, it did so overtly during the Reagan Administration, despite
the official US policy of remaining neutral in the war. The support also became
more vigorous. US officials tried to prevent Iran from winning the war against
Hussein by providing him with intelligence, weapons, and extension of credit.
They also established full diplomatic relations with Hussein's government,
lifted trade sanctions against Iraq, and imposed new economic sanctions against
Iran. In addition, the Reagan Administration closed its eyes to the use of
chemical weapons by Iraq in the war, and, indeed, supplied Saddam Hussein with
chemical compounds that had multiple uses, including making poison gas.

Subsequently, with the Iranian military victories, the US entered the war
against Iran directly to assure that Hussein was not defeated. With this direct
US intervention, in 1988 Iran was forced to accept a humiliating ceasefire,
especially after the USS Vincennes affair. In the end, the Reagan Administration
had managed by means of indirect and direct war to defeat Iran for all practical
purposes and contain it. Yet the policy of dual containment demanded that not
only Iran but also Iraq be emasculated as a potential challenger. Therefore,
while helping Hussein, the US also sold arms to Iran, mostly with the help of
the Israelis, in what came to be known as the "Iran-Contra scandal."
Furthermore, the US administration provided both Iran and Iraq with deliberately
distorted or inaccurate intelligence data on the other's capabilities. More
importantly, with the end of the Iran-Iraq war-and the emergence of Iraq
militarily stronger at the end of the war than at the beginning-the US turned
its attention toward containing Iraq. This was accomplished through manufactured
sensational news and incidents, as well as a sudden US interest in the "gross
violation of international law" by Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. The final
incident was Iraq's invasion of Kuwait after the US gave confusing messages to
Hussein. Following this invasion, the US tried to contain Iraq by means of a
war, UN economic sanctions, and limited military operations.

The US policy of the dual containment cannot be understood without understanding
the role that Israel has played in it. Following the 1979 Revolution in Iran,
which ended a cozy and symbiotic relation between the Jewish state and the Shah,
Israel started a campaign against the new Iranian government. However, once the
Iran-Iraq war started, Israel began to sell arms to Iran. This was not because
Israel was against the US policy of dual containment and the devastation of Iran
and Iraq in a costly and protracted war, but because Israel wished to see Iraq
contained before Iran. As a result, while the US was aiding Iraq, Israel was
selling arms to Iran, and, eventually, got the US to sell arms to Iran in the
infamous Iran-Contra scandal. When put in historical context the Iran-Contra
affair does not appear as an aberration or isolated incident. It was part of the
policy of helping to contain both countries. At the end of the Iran-Iraq war,
however, Israel, like the US, largely concentrated on containing Iraq. In so
doing, Israel contributed greatly to the propaganda campaign against Saddam
Hussein before Iraq was invaded by the US. After the imposition of UN sanctions
against Iraq in 1990 and the first US invasion of Iraq, Israel turned its
attention toward containing Iran. With the help of its lobby groups in the US,
particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel
concentrated on strengthening US economic sanctions against Iran. In this
pursuit, Martin Indyk, the head of the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, an AIPAC affiliate, became instrumental. The meteoric rise of Martin
Indyk to power in the Clinton Administration allowed him to carry on the policy
of dual containment-which he took credit for devising-primarily by means of
increasing sanctions against Iran. In this policy Iran was accused of three
misbehaviors: sponsoring terrorism worldwide; opposing Middle East peace
efforts; and developing weapons of mass destruction. Once formulated, these
alleged misbehaviors became the rationale for maintaining and strengthening US
sanctions against Iran. Indeed, during the Clinton Administration Israeli lobby
groups became the major underwriters of US foreign policy toward Iran.

Besides Martin Indyk there were other individuals in the Clinton Administration
who helped develop the Iran sanctions policy. One such individual was Secretary
of State Warren Christopher, who had a particular animosity toward Iran since
his hostage negotiation days. This animosity came in handy for Indyk and the
Israeli lobby groups in implementing their sanctions policy against Iran. But
this was not all; there was also a competition between a predominantly
Republican Congress and a Democratic Administration as to which was more hostile
to Iran and thus faithful to Israel. In this competition, the role of Senator
Alfonse D'Amato in trying to pass sanctions acts against Iran is examined in my
book. One major act, the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA)-which imposed secondary
sanctions on foreign companies that would make new investments of at least $40
million in Iran-becomes a focus of my study. With the passage of ILSA, however,
the US sanctions policy started to fall apart. Not only did many countries
around the world defy it, the US corporate lobbies, too, began to organize to
oppose various Israeli lobby groups. In this regard, I examine the role of some
heavyweights that the corporate lobby brought forth to oppose the sanctions-such
as two former national security advisors, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent
Scowcroft-the formation of an umbrella lobby organization called USA*ENGAGE,
various individuals or lobbyist groups working with the Iranian government who
started to organize, and a number of US Congressmen who were lobbied by the
corporations to oppose the passage of further unilateral sanctions against Iran.
All this, as well as the appointment of a new Secretary of State, Madeleine
Albright, who tilted more toward the corporate lobby, resulted in an incoherent
and inconsistent US policy toward Iran at the end of the Clinton era, a policy
that tried to reconcile the irreconcilable aims and interests of Israel and the
US corporations. It is worth noting that during the Clinton Administration the
Mujahedin-e-Khalq-e-Iran (MEK), an Iranian exile group, became a convenient tool
in the hands of strange bedfellows-namely Iraq, the US, and Israel-in a campaign
to overthrow the Iranian government. Even though in 1997, as a result of some
shifts in US foreign policy, the US State Department put MEK officially on the
list of terrorist organizations, the group operates relatively freely in the US
to this day.

The end of the Clinton era ushered in a new phase in the US policy of
containment of Iran. The 2000 US presidential election brought uncertainty
concerning the future policies of the Bush Administration toward the Middle East
in general and Iran in particular. The fact that the new administration was top
heavy with former oil executives added to this uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the
uncertainty, Israel correctly perceived that the policy would be made more by
the neoconservative forces within the new administration-such as Paul Wolfowitz
and Richard Perle-than anyone else, including those in the State Department.
Wolfowitz and Perle-who were on the Board of Advisors of the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy, an offshoot of AIPAC-had advocated, at least
since 1992, the use of military force against Iraq. But Israel was more
interested in containing Iran rather than Iraq and was hoping that the
neoconservative forces, particularly those within the administration, would
achieve that goal. The events of September 11, 2001 played a determining role in
both containments. The neoconservative forces got what they had wished for when
it came to invading Iraq. But as far as Iran was concerned, the initial reaction
of the US State Department after 9/11 was to start a courtship dance with Iran,
a dance that Israel, its lobby groups, and its neoconservative allies, in and
out of the administration, watched with a great deal of trepidation. A concerted
campaign was waged by Israeli officials, including Binyamin Netanyahu and Ariel
Sharon, to end the dance. The US was warned by these officials not to cozy up to
Iran. Such warnings, as well as the puzzling Karine-A affair, managed to end the
US State Department's attempt to approach Iran. The death of the rapprochement
was made official by President Bush in his "axis of evil" speech on January 29,
2002, a speech in which Iran was accused, along with Iraq and North Korea, of
aggressively pursuing weapons of mass destruction and exporting terror. In the
end, Israel, its various lobby groups, and its neoconservative allies changed
the direction of US policy toward Iran as conceived by the US State Department.
A case had to be made as to why Iran should be targeted. Israel put forward a
list of allegations against Iran that included everything from Iran's
involvement in the Karine-A affair to pursuing missiles capable of striking
Israel with chemical and biological weapons, dispatching its Revolutionary
Guards to foment anti-Israel activity in Lebanon, and being on schedule to
develop a nuclear bomb by 2005. Yet even though Israel had made its case for
targeting Iran, and wished to see Iran attacked before Iraq, it had to settle
for second-best: wait until after the invasion of Iraq to contain Iran. Thus, in
an interview with The Times (London) on November 5, 2002, Sharon stated that he
considered Iran to be the "centre of world terror," and "that as soon as an Iraq
conflict is concluded, he will push for Iran to be at the top of the 'to do'
list."

How was Iran pushed to the top of the US's "to do" list? As in the case of Iraq,
Iran's alleged development of weapons of mass destruction became the rallying
point for targeting the country. The first step in the process came in late
summer 2002, when, in a dramatic press conference, a representative of MEK
revealed the construction of a uranium enrichment facility and a heavy water
production plant in Iran, neither of which had been reported to the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The actual source of the revelation
appears to have been Israel, which passed the information to MEK. Once these
constructions were disclosed, the US and Israel started to build a case for
reporting Iran to the United Nations Security Council and for the imposition of
sanctions. How the case proceeded is narrated in my book. Before that, however,
the origin of Iran's nuclear program is discussed. It is argued that the US and
Israel had no problems with Iran's nuclear program when the Shah of Iran was in
power. Indeed, the US helped the Shah with nuclear technology and encouraged him
to build nuclear power plants.

Subsequently, the Shah signed an agreement to purchase two reactors from Germany
to be installed at Bushehr. The construction of these power plants began in
1975, but after the 1979 Iranian Revolution the Germans left the country without
completing the project. In 1995 Iran signed a formal agreement with Russia to
finish the Bushehr reactor. But Russia continuously postponed the completion of
the reactor and delivery of nuclear fuel. Given Russia's foot-dragging, as well
as the numerous US sanctions imposed on Iran, it appears that Iran had engaged
in a number of nuclear-related activities not reported to the IAEA, including
building the two structures that were disclosed by MEK. Even though, technically
speaking, the construction of these facilities did not violate the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)-to which Iran is a signatory-it provided the
perfect excuse to the US and Israel to argue that Iran was clandestinely
developing nuclear weapons. Such claims, however, were not new. They were heard
as early as 1984, when a neoconservative argued that Iran might be only two
years away from acquiring nuclear weapons. Following this claim there were
numerous others concerning the impending development of nuclear weapons by Iran.
Indeed, in the 1990s a number of sources associated with Israel claimed that
Iran had already purchased three or four nuclear warheads from the former Soviet
republic of Kazakhstan. That allegation and subsequent assertions concerning
Iran developing nuclear arsenals all proved to be false. But the guessing game
continued well into the late 1990s and early 2000s. With each day passing and no
nuclear weapons or even evidence of development of such weapons showing up, the
ever-changing prediction of doomsday appeared to attract little attention until
the revelation of the two unreported nuclear-related facilities in Iran. Once
this revelation was made, Israel could push for Iran to be at the top of the
US's "to do" list.

The road was being paved to report Iran to the Security Council. The 2003 IAEA
report mentioned certain failures by Iran to disclose information. It also
encouraged Iran to sign the "Additional Protocol" to the IAEA Safeguards
Agreements. But the report did not show any smoking gun and, therefore, was not
the report that the US and Israel needed to contain Iran. Nevertheless, the
report left a number of open questions that made the US and Israel hopeful about
taking Iran before the Security Council. For example, why was Iran developing a
facility to produce heavy water, building a uranium enrichment facility,
manufacturing uranium metal, hesitant to allow IAEA inspectors visit an electric
workshop and take environmental samples? The last question, in particular, made
the US and Israel contend that Iran was hiding something, and this could be an
indication of a nuclear weapons program. In the end, this allegation proved to
be incorrect. However, such allegations continued to be made until Iran was
reported to the Security Council. In addition to making false claims, the US and
Israel intensified their psychological warfare against Iran, threatening a
preemptive military strike on her nuclear facilities. Such threats made the
Europeans, particularly France, Britain, and Germany (EU 3), worry and start
negotiating with Iran in October of 2003 to sign the "Additional Protocol," stop
nuclear enrichment, and provide full disclosure of its nuclear program. The
Iranian government capitulated and signed an agreement in December 2003, even
though the Iranian parliament refused to ratify the "Additional Protocol." The
US and Israel, however, continued their pressure on Iran by making false claims
and portraying Iran as a threat to Israel and the world at large. Pressure
mounted in summer of 2004 to report Iran to the Security Council. The EU 3 made
a last-ditch effort to stop Iran's enrichment activities. The result was the
November 2004 Paris Agreement, which asked Iran to suspend all
enrichment-related and reprocessing activities voluntarily and temporarily in
exchange for some vague and, for all practical purposes, undeliverable economic
promises. The US gave this agreement guarded approval but made it clear that it
was a kind of "good-cop, bad-cop arrangement," where the Europeans and Americans
were working together but playing different roles.

The US and Israel intensified their threats of a preemptive strike against Iran
in 2005. By now the argument had changed from not allowing Iran to develop
nuclear weapons to not even tolerating Iran having knowledge of nuclear
enrichment. At the same time there were reports that the US might support EU
negotiations with Iran and accept the so-called carrot and stick approach. Even
though this was no more than the bad cop joining the good cop, Israel and its
lobby groups were opposed to any shift in US policy and waged a campaign against
it. In Iran, too, there was opposition to the Paris Agreement, especially after
the US gave the agreement its tacit blessing. The opposition became stronger
with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as President of Iran, a man who was
demonized by a massive US and Israeli disinformation campaign as soon as he took
office. After protesting that the Paris Agreement was turning a voluntary and
temporary halt in uranium enrichment activities into a permanent freeze and that
the EU had not kept its part of the bargain, Iran ended the agreement. The
campaign to report Iran to the Security Council by the IAEA gained momentum and
a resolution to this effect was passed; however, the question of the timing of
when the matter would be referred to the Security Council was left open. A
number of events speeded up the process of referral. One such event was
Ahmadinejad quoting Ayatollah Khomeini as saying that the occupying regime of
Jerusalem must disappear from the page of time.

The statement was translated in both Israel and the US as "wipe Israel off the
map," and was used in a massive campaign to portray Iran as Nazi Germany and
Ahmadinejad as another Hitler poised to commit a holocaust. Another was the
claim by American intelligence officials that they had discovered a stolen
laptop showing Iran's attempt to design a nuclear warhead. The contents of the
laptop were shown to IAEA inspectors, but, IAEA officials doubted the
authenticity of the material, and believed that much of the intelligence
provided by the US and other intelligence services had proved to be wrong.
Numerous assertions, even though false, made any compromise solution impossible.
In the end, a relentless effort by the US and Israel to bring Iran before the
Security Council and impose UN sanctions against her paid off in early 2006. The
IAEA was forced to issue an early update brief followed by a full report on
Iran's compliance with the earlier resolution. But even before the full report
was issued, the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany
reached an agreement, and soon afterwards the US obtained the necessary vote to
refer Iran to the Security Council. Iran, in turn, ended all voluntary
cooperation with the IAEA.

Accusations and threats by US and Israel continued against Iran even after
Iran's referral to the Security Council. As the US allocated more funds to
bringing "democracy" to Iran, AIPAC mounted another "largest ever policy
conference" aimed at bringing about the harshest possible sanctions against
Iran. Frantic efforts by those uneasy about imposing UN sanctions, including the
Director General of the IAEA, failed as most US policy makers followed the lead
of Israel and its allies in the US. The Security Council issued in late March
2006 a draft statement asking Iran to halt all enrichment activities, and
ordered the Director General of the IAEA to report in 30 days on Iran's
compliance. This was not exactly the harsh resolution that the US and Israel
were hoping for. The US pushed for the passage of a UN Chapter 7 resolution
against Iran that could result in the use of military force against her. In this
effort, parallels were continuously drawn between Iran and Nazi Germany and
Ahmadinejad and Hitler. Iran's alleged hidden nuclear programs were reported and
talks of pre-emptive military attacks by either the US, Israel, or both were
heard. In this atmosphere even the most outrageous tales would become credible
news. One such story was an alleged new law in Iran that would force the Iranian
Jewish population to wear yellow insignia. Even though the "news" proved to be a
complete fabrication, it for some time and enabled many political figures around
the world, particularly Americans, to condemn and demonize Iran. The US,
however, still had to get the reluctant Russians and Chinese on board to impose
sanctions against Iran. A new strategy was adopted: the US would join the EU 3
in negotiating with Iran if Iran halted all enrichment activities. The Bush
Administration knew full well that this offer would not be accepted by Iran and
was, indeed, worried about a possible positive response by Iran. The US gambit
paid off, and the "carrot and stick" package offered was ultimately rejected by
Iran. The US wielded more sticks, including financial sanctions to paralyze the
Iranian banking system. Security Council Resolution 1696 was passed in July
2006, demanding that Iran suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing
activities and that the Director General of the IAEA give a report by the end of
August 2006 on Iran's compliance. If Iran did not comply, according to
Resolution 1696, UN sanctions would be imposed. The stage was set for the
imposition of the first set of UN sanctions against Iran.

The August 2006 IAEA report indicated that Iran was not complying with UN
Resolution 1696. The report was followed by Iran's adversaries calling for
immediate imposition of sanctions. Any compromise offered, including a temporary
suspension of uranium enrichment by Iran, was ruled out by the US and Israel.
The US further tightened its financial sanctions against Iran, and Israel
raised, once again, the specter of Iran becoming another Nazi Germany determined
to commit another holocaust. The campaign to impose UN sanctions against Iran
was beginning to bear fruit. Draft resolutions for such sanctions began to
circulate in November 2006. War drums beat intensely and there was again talk of
a possible military strike by Israel against Iran's nuclear facilities. US
pressure mounted for adopting a sanction resolution. The push resulted in
Security Council Resolution 1737 in December of 2006, the first UN sanction
resolution against Iran. The resolution demanded that Iran halt all
enrichment-related and reprocessing activities and suspend work on all heavy
water-related projects. It asked all states to take the necessary measures to
prevent the supply, sale, or transfer of all items, materials, equipment, goods,
and technology which could contribute to Iran's enrichment related,
reprocessing, or heavy water-related activities, or to the development of
nuclear weapon delivery systems.

It also asked all states to exercise vigilance regarding the entry into or
transit through their territories of individuals engaged in Iran's
proliferation-sensitive nuclear activities or the development of nuclear weapon
delivery systems. In addition, the resolution provided a list of certain
Iranians and asked all states to freeze their funds, other financial assets, and
economic resources.
Moreover, the resolution established a sanctions committee to monitor Iran's
compliance with the resolution and collect information from countries about
their trade with Iran. Finally, the resolution asked the Director General of the
IAEA to provide a report in 60 days on Iran's compliance. Resolution 1737 was
the crown jewel of the US-Israeli policy of containment of Iran. More than a
quarter of a century of US unilateral sanctions against Iran, many underwritten
by forces close to Israel, had not contained Iran. Even though this resolution
was too weak to contain Iran, it was hoped that future resolutions would do the
job. Iran shrugged off the sanctions and reduced its cooperation with the IAEA.
The US levied more accusations against Iran and engaged in more provocative
acts. Israel continued to call Iran an existential threat. In early 2007 there
were fears that a war with Iran might become inevitable. In the end, however,
the threats of war were used to set the stage for the second round of UN
sanctions against Iran.

After an IAEA report indicating Iran's non-compliance with Resolution 1737, the
US and Israel pushed for another resolution. The result was Security Council
Resolution 1747 in March 2007, which extended previous sanctions. The resolution
called upon all states to exercise vigilance and restraint regarding the entry
into or transit through their territories of certain Iranians engaged in or
associated with Iran's proliferation-sensitive nuclear activities. In addition,
it provided another list of Iranian entities involved in nuclear or ballistic
missile activities and entities whose funds or assets shall be frozen. Among
these was one of the largest banks in Iran.

Resolution 1747 also stated that Iran shall not supply, sell, or transfer any
arms or related materiel. Furthermore, it called upon all states to exercise
vigilance and restraint in the supply, sale, or transfer of any battle tanks,
armored combat vehicles, large caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft,
attack helicopters, warships, missiles, or missile systems. Finally, the
resolution asked all states and international financial institutions not to
enter into new commitments for grants, financial assistance, and concessional
loans to the Iranian government. As in the previous case, the resolution asked
the Director General of the IAEA to prepare a report within 60 days as to
whether Iran had complied with the demands of Resolutions 1737 and 1747. Iranian
officials were defiant and shrugged off the effect of the resolutions. Yet
Resolutions 1737 and 1747 put great pressure on Iran economically and
politically, setting the stage for further, and harsher, resolutions to follow.

The next Security Council sanction resolution against Iran did not materialize
until nearly a year after Resolution 1747. On March 3, 2008, the Security
Council passed its third sanction resolution against Iran, Resolution 1803.[2]
The new resolution tightens two previously passed sanction acts by 1) asking
states to exercise "vigilance and restraint" against a new set of Iranian
nationals purportedly involved in "proliferation-sensitive nuclear activities or
the development of nuclear-weapon delivery systems"; 2) extending the freezing
of the financial assets of persons or entities allegedly "supporting" the above
mentioned activities; 3) calling upon states to "exercise vigilance over the
activities of financial institutions in their territories with all banks
domiciled in Iran, in particular with Bank Melli and Bank Saderat"; and 4)
continuing to block the import and export of allegedly "sensitive nuclear
material and equipment."

Resolution 1803 also added a new provision to the previous sanction acts: it
called upon states to "inspect cargo to and from Iran of aircraft and vessels
owned or operated by Iran Air Cargo and Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line,
provided 'reasonable grounds' existed to believe that the aircraft or vessel was
transporting prohibited goods." This new provision is one of the most dangerous
provisions in all the resolutions that have been passed so far by the Security
Council against Iran. The term "Reasonable grounds" is ambiguous. What is
reasonable or unreasonable is in the eye of the beholder. Thus, theoretically,
any adversary of Iran can now stop an Iranian aircraft or vessel to inspect it
because it is "believed" there is "reasonable grounds" for such an inspection.
If the Iranian vessel refuses inspection, all hell could break loose.

The new provision was probably one of the reasons why four non-permanent members
of the Security Council, Indonesia, Libya, South Africa and Vietnam, tried in
vain to stop, revise or at least slow down the passage of Resolution 1803. At
the end, however, under pressure from the US and its allies, three of the four
countries caved in and went along with the resolution. The fourth, Indonesia,
abstained. US and its allies, who wanted unanimous vote against Iran in the
Security Council, and wished for a much harsher resolution, declared victory
nevertheless. But this was not enough. A day after, US, France and Britain tried
to introduce another resolution against Iran at the meeting of the IAEA. This
time, however, Russia, China and a number of countries belonging to the
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) stopped the effort and argued that given the action
by the Security Council a day earlier, a new resolution against Iran would be
superfluous.

All this happened against the backdrop of two major reports undermining the
necessity of passing a third sanction resolution against Iran. The first was the
November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report, entitled "Iran:
Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities."[3] The "Key Judgments" portion of the
report that was made public stated:

We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear
weapons program; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at
a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons. We judge with
high confidence that the halt, and Tehran's announcement of its decision to
suspend its declared uranium enrichment program and sign an Additional Protocol
to its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement, was directed
primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure
resulting from exposure of Iran's previously undeclared nuclear work.

The report, of course, claimed that Iran had exerted "considerable effort from
at least the late 1980s to 2003 to develop such [nuclear] weapons." But the
assertion that such efforts had been halted in 2003 not only removed the
rationale for the US and Israel to wage a military campaign against Iran but it
apparently slowed down the attempt to pass a third sanction act through the
Security Council. Indeed, the resolution which passed recently was supposed to
have been passed in early summer of 2007. But almost immediately after the
conclusion of the NIE report became public the US government, as well as its
allies, belittled or even dismissed its value, and, in so doing, made the
passage of a new sanction resolution against Iran appear to be urgent.

The second report that undermined the urgency of the 3rd round of UN sanctions
was the IAEA report.[4] The summary of the report stated that

The Agency has been able to continue to verify the non-diversion of declared
nuclear material in Iran. Iran has provided the Agency with access to declared
nuclear material and has provided the required nuclear material accountancy
reports in connection with declared nuclear material and activities. Iran has
also responded to questions and provided clarifications and amplifications on
the issues raised in the context of the work plan, with the exception of the
alleged studies. Iran has provided access to individuals in response to the
Agency's requests. Although direct access has not been provided to individuals
said to be associated with the alleged studies, responses have been provided in
writing to some of the Agency's questions.

The summary also stated that the "Agency has been able to conclude that answers
provided by Iran, in accordance with the work plan, are consistent with its
findings." But, the summary also added, the "one major remaining issue relevant
to the nature of Iran's nuclear programme is the alleged studies on the green
salt project, high explosives testing and the missile re-entry vehicle."
According to the report, the documents related the allegations were only shown
to Iran in February, as late as just a few days before the IAEA report. Iran the
report states, "maintained that these allegations are baseless and that the data
have been fabricated." The Agency, the report stated, is examining the
allegations and the statements provided by Iran.

The allegations apparently refer to the content of the "stolen laptop" that the
US had in its possession and supposedly showed Iran's plans to build a nuclear
warhead.[5] The content of this mysterious laptop had resurfaced a number of
times before and its authenticity questioned by a number of sources, including
IAEA's own experts. For example, on February 22, 2007, the Guardian reported
that, according to "informed sources" at the IAEA, "most of the tip-offs about
supposed secret weapons sites provided by the CIA and other US intelligence
agencies have led to dead ends when investigated by IAEA inspectors." The report
quoted an IAEA "diplomat" as saying: "Most of it has turned out to be incorrect.
. . They gave us a paper with a list of sites. [The inspectors] did some
follow-up, they went to some military sites, but there was no sign of [banned
nuclear] activities." The report then referred to the mysterious "stolen laptop"
that the US had in its possession and supposedly showed Iran's "plans to build a
nuclear warhead." As the report pointed out, in "July 2005, US intelligence
officials showed printed versions of the material to IAEA officials, who judged
it to be sufficiently specific to confront Iran." But the report pointed out
that IAEA officials doubted the authenticity of the laptop. "First of all," the
Guardian quoted one such official as saying, "if you have a clandestine
programme, you don't put it on laptops which can walk away [Moreover, the] data
is all in English which may be reasonable for some of the technical matters, but
at some point you'd have thought there would be at least some notes in Farsi. So
there is some doubt over the provenance of the computer." A similar report
appeared on February 25, 2007, in the Los Angeles Times under the heading "U.N.
Calls U.S. Data on Iran's Nuclear Aims Unreliable." The report quoted a "senior
diplomat at the IAEA" as saying: "Since 2002, pretty much all the intelligence
that's come to us [by way of the CIA and other Western spy services] has proved
to be wrong." This report, too, pointed out that some IAEA officials doubted the
authenticity of the laptop story.

Had IAEA officials changed their minds? Was there more to this report than had
been divulged before? Or was the intense pressure exerted on the IAEA by the US
and its allies, including repeated calls by the US and Israel to remove the IAEA
Director, Dr. ElBaradei, resulted in the IAEA changing its position about the
authenticity of the allegations? Given the number of false claims made by the US
and its allies-which I have documented in my book-and given the intense pressure
that the IAEA has been under to produce results agreeable to Iran's adversaries,
one cannot help but to suspect that story of the mysterious laptop might be
another fabrication.

Whatever the nature of the US allegations, one thing is certain: even if the
threat of military attack against Iran by the US, Israel or both has subsided
for the time being, sanctioning of Iran has not. US unilateral sanctions, as
well UN multilateral sanctions, are being intensified. Iran is clearly feeling
the pain of numerous sanctions. It is, however, uncertain whether this pain is
sufficient for Iran to relinquish its "inalienable right" to "develop research,
production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without
discrimination," as guaranteed under Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty. The fact that after three rounds of UN sanctions Iran is still
cooperating with the IAEA shows that Iran is bending under the pressure. But
even if Iran does forfeit its right and capitulates, it is uncertain whether the
US and Israel would stop their attempts to contain Iran. If containment means
the destruction of any country that stands in the way of US and Israel, the fate
of Iran might be similar to that of Iraq; ultimately an excuse will be found to
do to Iran what was done to Iraq. The advocates of the dual containment policy,
particularly those who had argued that Iran should be contained before Iraq,
have been relentless. They will not stop until they achieve the ultimate
containment of Iran.


Notes
[1] This essay is based on the Introduction of my book:
http://www.routledgemiddleeaststudies.com/
[2] The text of Resolution 1803 is available at:
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2008/sc9268.doc.htm
[3] The text of the report is available at:
http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20071203_release.pdf
[4] The text of the report is available at:
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2008/gov2008-4.pdf
[5] For more details about the "laptop" see my book, The United States and Iran,
and a recent article by Gareth Porter, "Iran Nuke Laptop Data Came from Terror
Group," February 29, 2008: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41416.


Sasan Fayazmanesh is chair of the Department of Economics at California State
University, Fresno. He can be reached at: sasan.fayazmanesh@...

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Imam Ahmad Afzali released on bail


Queens imam accused of lying to FBI is freed
September 24, 2009
By DANIEL EDWARD ROSEN
Newsday
http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/queens-imam-accused-of-lying-to-fbi-is-free\
d-1.1472383


The Queens imam charged with lying to federal authorities investigating an
alleged terror conspiracy was released Thursday after his family posted a
$1.5-million bail.

Standing next to his wife, Fatimah, in front of their three-story brick house in
Flushing, Ahmad Wais Afzali, 37, said he was "grateful" to be home and he was
looking forward to a hot shower and a hot meal.

"I've been living in America for the past 30 years. I've been raised in the same
house that you see. This is my land, this is my country, and I love this place,"
Afzali told reporters who had gathered outside his home.

Afzali, a permanent legal resident from Afghanistan, is accused of lying to the
FBI about whether he tipped off terror suspect Najibullah Zazi, 24, of Aurora,
Colo., who has been the focus of an investigation in New York and Colorado into
a terrorist bomb plot. Zazi was charged Thursday with one count of conspiring
with others, who are not named, to use "one or more weapons of mass
destruction," court papers say, including bombs or other explosives. Zazi's
father, Mohammed Zazi, 53, also of Aurora, also was arrested and charged with
making false statements to federal authorities.

In New York, Afzali declined to answer reporters' questions regarding Zazi other
than to say Zazi used to visit the mosque.

"As an imam of the masjid where he worshipped, I knew him when he was 14 years
old.

That's it; that's about it," Afzali said Thursday. "Zazi, he used to come to the
mosque, then he would disappear from the mosque. And the last time I saw Zazi
was God knows how many years ago."

Afzali's attorney, Ron Kuby, said his client did not know anything about a
terror plot.

"Obviously, the government would not be consenting to bail if it thought he was
involved in a terrorism conspiracy," Kuby said.

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Obama pledges to defeat Al Qaeda By Masood Haider and Anwar Iqbal
Thursday, 24 Sep, 2009
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/fron\
t-page/obama-pledges-to-defeat-al-qaeda-499


UNITED NATIONS, Sept 23: US President Barack Obama pledged on Wednesday to
defeat Al Qaeda and said the United States would permit no safe havens for
terrorists to launch attacks from Afghanistan or any other country.

"The violent extremists who promote conflict by distorting faith have
discredited and isolated themselves," the US president told the 192-member UN
General Assembly.

"They (terrorists) offer nothing but hate and destruction," he said, adding that
the "United States will stand by its friends on the front lines" — in a
reference to Pakistan.

Without mentioning the summit level meeting of Friends of Democratic
Pakistan to be held here on Thursday, he said that the US and many nations would
"pledge support for the Pakistani people tomorrow".

"We will pursue positive engagements that build bridges among faiths and new
partnerships for opportunity."

President Obama asked the world leaders to step up and do their part in tackling
global challenges in promoting security and prosperity, rather than waiting for
America to do it alone.

"The people of the world want change," Mr Obama said. "They will not long
tolerate those who are on the wrong side of history."

About the war against extremism, he said: "We have set a clear and focused goal:
to work with all members of this body to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda
and its extremist allies — a network that has killed thousands of people of many
faiths and nations, and that plotted to blow up this very building."

He pointed out that "in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we — and many nations here —
are helping those governments develop the capacity to take the lead in this
effort, while working to advance opportunity and security for their people".

On the US decision to withdraw all forces from Iraq, Mr Obama said: "In Iraq, we
are responsibly ending a war. We have removed American combat brigades from
Iraqi cities, and set a deadline of next August to remove all of our combat
brigades from Iraqi territory. And I have made clear that we will help Iraqis
transition to full responsibility for their future, and keep our commitment to
remove all American troops by the end of 2011."

On the issue of nuclear non-proliferation issue on which he has called a special
UN Security Council meeting on the sidelines of the assembly debate, Mr Obama
said: "I have outlined a comprehensive agenda to seek the goal of a world
without nuclear weapons. In Moscow, the United States and Russia announced that
we would pursue substantial reductions in our strategic warheads and launchers.
At the conference on disarmament, we agreed on a work plan to negotiate an end
to the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons.

And this week, my Secretary of State will become the first senior American
representative to the annual Members Conference of the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty."

Obama pointed out that upon taking office, he had appointed a special envoy for
Middle East peace, and America had worked steadily and aggressively to advance
the cause of two states — Israel and Palestine — in which peace and security
take root, and the rights of both Israelis and the Palestinians are respected."

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The West must start negotiating with Afghanistan's Islamists, the former foreign
minister tells Kim Sengupta


'I told the US to talk to the Taliban. They jailed me'
Saturday, 12 September 2009
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/i-told-the-us-to-talk-to-the-taliba\
n-they-jailed-me-1786149.html


Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil has returned to Afghanistan and wants the Taliban to join
the political process


He was the man they called the mullah with a human face, the internet mullah, or
the Rudolph Hess of the Taliban. Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil was the Taliban's
foreign minister. It was he who in October 2001, a month after 9/11 and weeks
before the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, broke ranks with the hardline
clerical leadership and tried to broker a peace deal with Washington.

Eight years on, as the West struggles to form a coherent policy on Afghanistan
amid mounting domestic opposition to the war, Mullah Muttawakil has claimed that
the West has repeatedly squandered chances for peace.

"We have seen a lot of fighting since then, a lot of blood has been spilt, all
for what?" he asked. "They are saying now that they will talk to some of the
Taliban. That is what I said to them just after the war. I offered to put them
in touch with the relevant people. Their answer was to put me in jail."

The policy of talking to the Taliban, now adopted by the US and Britain as part
of their eventual exit strategy, ought to have been implemented eight years ago,
when the Taliban were at their lowest ebb, he said. Now, he warns that they have
tasted military success in the field against Western forces and will be harder
to defeat. They also know that Western forces' involvement in Afghanistan is
becoming unpopular in Europe and America.

"They ignored the Taliban who just got stronger in Pakistan. This was the result
of not negotiating but depending on military means," he says.

Mr Muttawakil, who rose to prominence as a close adviser of Mullah Omar, fled to
Pakistan along with the one-eyed leader after the US and opposition Northern
Alliance seized control of Kabul. He returned after assurances by Hamid Karzai,
he says, that he was not on any wanted list. But he was arrested by the
Americans and spent the next 18 months in custody, first at Kandahar and then at
the Bagram military base. The former foreign minister was eventually freed
without charge, and then asked by Mr Karzai to open dialogue with factions of
the Taliban. Ironically, when he ran in the election in 2005 (he lost), the
former minister was viewed as a force for moderation in the Pashtun south.

Recently he was among a group who travelled to Mecca to hold Saudi-sponsored
talks with representatives of the Taliban. "One of the main reasons I came back
to Afghanistan was to say to the new government, 'Look, we are all Afghans,
there are people in the Taliban who want to put the past behind them and join
the political process.' I tried to say the same to the Americans, but they were
not interested. All they wanted to know at the time was where Mullah Omar was,
where Osama bin Laden was. I did not know. Would they tell me, someone returning
to Afghanistan, where they were hiding? I still don't know where they are."

Mr Muttawakil says he was not physically mistreated, "but there was mental
abuse. I was not allowed to sleep, I was not given enough water, I was
threatened. But conditions improved and I was given books. After my release I
was encouraged to talk to some of the Taliban leaders. You can bring a few in
the Taliban over, but that is not going to stop the war. For that you need to
talk to the leadership.

"But Mr Karzai and Nato want them to declare they will no longer fight, and the
Taliban want all foreign troops to leave first. So there has to be compromise.
If you do not speak to the Taliban there will be no solution."

As a high-ranking member of the Taliban regime, Mullah Muttawakil espoused the
views of a medieval fundamentalist. "We want to live a life like the Prophet
lived 1,400 years ago," he once told an interviewer. Now he blames international
isolation for the lack of reform. "We really only had relations with Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia and a few other countries. Things could have been different if the
rest of the world was open to us."

Did isolation justify the brutal oppression of women, the general suppression of
human rights, and the destruction of the treasured Buddha shrine at Bamiyan? The
mullah looks uncomfortable."There were mistakes made, I think we have to accept
that," he said. "We were trying to relax some laws, but there was opposition
from some of our religious scholars on things like women's issues. I was against
what was done to the Buddha statue, and so was the minister of cullture. We were
for just scratching the face [of the statues] but that had already been done.
The matter went to the supreme court and they decided that the faces can be
destroyed. There was nothing I could about it."

There are new worries that reconciliation with Taliban figures will compromise
human rights gains. Mr Muttawakil insists that everything can be negotiated. "It
is up to the Afghan people to decide what they want. They should be able to do
that without interference from outsiders. And that includes al-Qa'ida. We must
make sure that al-Qa'ida does not become an obstacle to peace."

Taliban 2001: Where are they now?

Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, translator to Muttawakil in 2001, joined the Taliban
at age 16 and after its defeat moved to Quetta, Pakistan to finish his high
school education. Then in 2006, at the prompting of an American friend, he
applied to study at Yale University in the US and was accepted, provoking the
fury of some conservatives.

The career of Abdul Salaam Alizai exemplifies the way Afghan tribal leaders can
change their allegiances. After fighting the Soviets, this Pashtun leader of the
southern Alizai tribe, joined the Taliban and was said to be close to Mullah
Omar. But in 2006, he switched sides, abandoning the Taliban, who last year
killed several of his bodyguards in an attempt on his life.

After the 9/11 attacks, Abdul Salam Zaeef, the regime's ambassador to Pakistan,
was the Taliban's public face, but in 2002 he was sent to Guantanamo Bay. In a
book published in 2006 describing his ordeal he said the "confession" he signed
on his release ran: "I am a Talib, I remain a Talib. I have no connections with
al-Qa'ida."

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Israel eyes big arms sales in Africa
Sept. 14, 2009
http://www.upi.com/Security_Industry/2009/09/14/Israel-eyes-big-arms-sales-in-Af\
rica/UPI-46891252956171/


Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's recent five-country tour of Africa
was more about building up intelligence links and selling arms than diplomacy,
according to one Israeli intelligence specialist.

Lieberman didn't sign any arms deals during his swing through Ethiopia, Kenya,
Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda. But Israeli officials estimate there are African arms
contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars waiting to be grabbed by
Israel's export-hungry defense firms.

Yossi Melman, who writes extensively on Israel's intelligence establishment,
questioned whether Israel should be engaging in such activities instead of
sending in agricultural advisers and medical and educational experts to such
economically distressed countries.

He noted that the publicly announced objective of the tour was "Israel's
willingness to assist counties … to find solutions to their problems: hunger,
insufficient clean water, epidemics."

But he wrote in the liberal daily Haaretz that the main but "less publicized"
aspect of the tour was boosting "defense exports," such as the arms deals worth
$500 million that Israel has signed with Nigeria in recent years.

Melman observed that an "even more secretive" goal was "the hope of developing
intelligence ties and cooperation in the effort against international jihadist
elements, and especially countering the activities of Iran in some of these
African countries" where Israel has been engaged in some murky dealings over the
years.

Lieberman's entourage included representatives of many key Israeli defense
firms, both state-owned and private enterprises. These included Israel Military
Industries, Israel Aerospace Industries, Soltam, Silver Shadow Advanced Security
Systems, Israel Shipyards and Elbit Systems.

There was also a delegation from the Defense Ministry's foreign assistance and
military sales department, known as Sibat.

And finally there was a team from Israel's intelligence community, including a
senior official from the Mossad, the foreign intelligence service.

Israeli intelligence has operated in Africa for decades, and military teams have
been active in training Africa armies, often clandestinely, with weapons sold by
the Jewish state.

Melman observed: "Secret funding from the United States Central Intelligence
Agency was channeled by American trade unions to (Israel's) Histadrut labor
federation …to finance various activities.
"Among other things, the money was used to post an impressive array of Mossad
agents in the African states."

These activities, Melman noted, "gave Mossad agents and Israeli Defense Forces
officers an excuse to be involved in the internal affairs of African regimes."

Indeed, Israelis were reportedly involved in military coups in Uganda and
Zanzibar, or as Melman drily observed "at least had prior knowledge of them."

The African countries where the Israeli agents operated included those of
geostrategic interest to Israel on the periphery of the Arab world, such as
Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan.

These remain of some importance to Israel today because of their proximity to
Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Ethiopia and Sudan control the Red Sea shipping
lanes to Eilat, Israel's only southern port in the Gulf of Aqaba.

In July and August, amid growing tensions with Iran, Israel deployed one of
three German-built Dolphin-class submarines and two corvettes into the Red Sea
in a clear warning to Tehran.

In January and February, Israeli warplanes were reported to have destroyed at
least two convoys in the Sudanese desert that were carrying Iranian arms to
Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The Israelis have long had close intelligence links with Ethiopia, a
Christian-dominated Red Sea state ringed by Muslim countries. Addis Ababa is
currently propping up the Western-backed transitional government in neighboring
Somalia, where al-Qaida is reputed to be operating.

Melman lamented: "It is a sad truth that … almost all Israeli activity on the
African continent is related to weapons exports.
"The 'ugly Israeli' in the guise of the arms dealer (mostly former intelligence
and military officials), who promotes weapons sales on behalf of Israeli
military industries, with the backing of the defense establishment, has given
Israel a bad name worldwide.

"Israelis have been involved in civil wars (in Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone and
the Ivory Coast) and in aiding dictatorial regimes such as in Equatorial Guinea
and the two Congo republics."

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When Islamists Wield Power
Shadi Hamid
Democracy Arsenal
http://ikhwanweb.org/Article.asp?ID=19036&LevelID=3&SectionID=81


In response to a point Hitchens makes in a recent piece on Gaza, Andrew Sullivan
writes,

The truly good news of the last couple of years has been the decline in support
for al Qaeda and other Jihadist elements in Muslim public opinion. What we have
learned is that once Islamists actually wield  power, their popularity
collapses.

Thee first sentence is correct. The second sentence is not. It is not true that
once Islamists wield power, their popularity collapses. An important, but often
overlooked, distinction should be made here. Islamist parties that win power
through the democratic process, at either the local or national levels, tend to
actually be relatively popular. Islamists that come to power through
undemocratic or violent means - the National Islamic Front in Sudan, the Taliban
in Afghanistan, or the mullahs of Iran - tend to be unpopular. And they"re
unpopular not necessarily because they are Islamist, but because they are
authoritarian and brutal. (Similarly, the reason that the Egyptian and Jordanian
regimes are unpopular is not because they are secular, but because they are
authoritarian and, at times, brutal).

There have been numerous examples of democratically-elected Islamists governing
at the local and national level (Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Algeria, Jordan,
Turkey). Few, if any, of them were outright failures, most were at least as
successful as comparable secular parties, some were moderately successful, and
at least one - the AKP in Turkey - has proven very successful. In countries like
Egypt, Islamists have been allowed to "govern" non-governmental bodies, such as
the professional associations (i.e. the Engineering and Doctors' Unions). By
most accounts, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt enjoyed significant success in
managing the unions to the point where the regime took them over out of fear of
their growing popularity (see Geneive Abdo's work for more on this).

In short, there's little reason to think that the "Islamists can't govern"
thesis is correct. There is, of course, the example of Hamas. But Hamas is
something of an exceptional case: it doesn"t govern an actual state. In any
case, Hamas (as well as Hezbollah) should not be treated as representative of
political Islam, since it remains a violent group that hasn't yet renounced
terrorism. Nearly all other mainstream Islamist groups in the Middle East and
South Asia are both 1) nonviolent, and have 2) formally committed themselves to
respecting the rules of the democratic process.

So, Sullivan is right to say that "religious fanatics do not know how to run
countries." But most Islamists are not religious fanatics.

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An American Blogger ,Supporter of Palestinian Case , Stopped at Cairo Airport.
ANHRI.Net - Egypt
Saturday, September 5, 2009
http://ikhwanweb.org/Article.asp?ID=21186&SectionID=0


The Arabic Network for human Rights information, ANHRI, stated that stopping
bloggers at Cairo airport and seizing their belongings has grown to include the
American blogger Travis Randall , owner of the blog Travis' Place,
http://travisrandall.blogspot.com.

Travis was stopped upon his arrival at Cairo Airport on the evening of 1/9/2009.
The authorities informed him that he was banned from entering Egypt. He was
detained till 2/9/2009 in the morning, forced to buy a ticket and put on a plane
back to London.

The young American blogger who lived in Cairo for two years and took part in a
peaceful march supporting the Palestinian case during Gaza war early this year ,
arrived to Cairo to visit his friends but to his surprise the authorities
stopped him, seized his cell phone and laptop. He was detained at the airport,
until he bought a ticket and flied back home.

ANHRI, stated that, "Assuming that the authorities have the right to stop the
blogger from entering Egypt though he is accused of nothing, they have
absolutely no right to seize his laptop and prevent him from making phone calls.
This is an intolerable abuse."

ANHRI also wonders and resents dismissing a foreign citizen and not allowing him
to enter Egypt as a result of his solidarity with the Palestinian people in its
ordeal under the brutal Israeli occupation, a stance that contradicts the
Egyptian government claims of continued support of the Palestinian people.

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How long have we watered the Tree of Deceit with the blood of patriots?


The 9/11 Commission Rejects own Report as Based on Government Lies
Gordon Duff
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/september112009/911_truth_9-11-09.php


(CINCINNATI, Ohio) - In John Farmer�fs book: �gThe Ground Truth: The Story
Behind America�fs Defense on 9/11��, the author builds the inescapably
convincing case that the official version... is almost entirely untrue...

The 9/11 Commission now tells us that the official version of 9/11 was based on
false testimony and documents and is almost entirely untrue. The details of this
massive cover-up are carefully outlined in a book by John Farmer, who was the
Senior Counsel for the 9/11 Commission.

Farmer, Dean of Rutger Universities' School of Law and former Attorney General
of New Jersey, was responsible for drafting the original flawed 9/11 report.

Does Farmer have cooperation and agreement from other members of the Commission?
Yes. Did they say Bush ordered 9/11? No.. Do they say that the 9/11 Commission
was lied to by the FBI, CIA, Whitehouse and NORAD? Yes. Is there full
documentary proof of this? Yes.

Farmer states...�gat some level of the government, at some point in time�cthere
was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened... I was shocked at
how different the truth was from the way it was described �c. The [Norad air
defense] tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us
and the public for two years. This is not spin.�h

The 9/11 Commission head, Thomas Kean, was the Republican governor of New
Jersey. He had the following to say... �gWe to this day don�ft know why NORAD
[the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us, it was just so
far from the truth. . . " When Bush's own handpicked commission failed to go
along with the cover up and requested a criminal investigation, why was nothing
done?

9/11 Commission member and former US Senator, Bob Kerrey, says, "No one is more
qualified to write the definitive book about the tragedy of 9/11 than John
Farmer. Fortunately, he has done so. Even more fortunately the language is
clear, alive and instructive for anyone who wants to make certain this never
happens again."

With the only "official" 9/11 report now totally false, where do we go from
here? Who is hurt by these lies? The families of the victims of 9/11 have
fought, for years, to get to the truth. For years, our government has hidden
behind lies and secrecy to deny them closure.

In 2006, The Washington Post reported..."Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep
that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in
summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal
investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some
commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable
cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making
false statements to Congress and to the commission..."

What does Farmer's book tell us? Farmer offers no solutions, only a total and
full rejection of what was told and his own his own ideas concerning the total
failure of honesty on the part of the government, a government with something to
hide.

Farmer never tells us what. Nobody could keep a job in the public sector
speaking out more than Farmer has. What were Farmer's omissions? There are some.
Now that we know that intelligence given the 9/11 Commission wasn't just lies
from our own government but based on testimony coerced through torture from
informants forced to back up a cover story now proven false, a pattern emerges.

We know that, immediately after 9/11, many more potential suspects and
informants were flown directly to Saudi Arabia by Presidential order than were
ever detained and questioned. We will never know what they could have said.
Their testimony would have been vital to any real investigation were they not
put beyond the reach of even Congress and the FBI.

Putting aside all other questions of recent evidence of CIA involvement with bin
Laden prior to 9/11 or altered physical evidence involving the Pentagon attack,
any failure to call to account the systematic perjury committed by dozens of top
government officials, now exposed as a certainty is an offense to every
American.

What do we know? We know the conjecture about 9/11 still stands but for certain,
we know we were lied to, not in a minor way, but systematically as part of a
plot covering up government involvement at nearly every level, perhaps gross
negligence, perhaps something with darker intent.

Are we willing to live with another lie to go with the Warren Report, Iran
Contra and so many others? Has the sacrifice of thousands more Americans,
killed, wounded or irreparably damaged by a war knowingly built on the same lies
from the same liars who misled the 9/11 Commission pushed us beyond willingness
to confront the truth?

Have we yet found where the lies have begun and ended? There is no evidence of
this, only evidence to the contrary. The lies live on and the truth will never
be sought. The courage for that task has not been found.

Can anyone call themselves an American if they don't demand, even with the last
drop of their blood, that the truth be found?
How long have we watered the Tree of Deceit with the blood of patriots?

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India heading for worst drought, says report
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/fron\
t-page/india-heading-for-worst-drought%2C-says-report-499


NEW DELHI, Sept 23: India's monsoon was about 20 per cent below
strength just over a week before the official end of the rainy reason,
putting the country on course for its worst drought since 1972, weather data
showed on Wednesday.


"Until September 21, for the country as a whole, the rain deficiency
was 22 per cent," said B.K. Bandopadhyay, a spokesman for the weather
office.

"We expect the total rain deficiency will be roughly about 20 per cent (at the
end of the monsoon season). It depends on the rainfall, but it seems it will be
around this number," he added.

Low rainfall early in the monsoon period ravaged India's rice, cane
sugar and groundnut crops, and has disrupted the flow of water into the main
reservoirs that are vital for hydropower generation and winter irrigation.

The drought is expected to dampen India's economic growth this year and has sent
food prices rocketing, leading to huge hardship for India's poor masses.

Chicken prices, for instance, rose 16 per cent in the week to September 5 and
fruit and vegetables climbed eight per cent from the previous week, official
data shows.

In August, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh admitted that the country faced a
"severe drought" but he said that ample food grain stock would ensure no one
went hungry.

Bandopadhyay said that a rain deficit of 20 per cent would be worse than
previous droughts in 2002, 1987 and 1979 when the shortfall was about 19 per
cent.

In 1972, the deficit measured 23.9 per cent, he said.

The monsoon period in India runs from June to the end of September, though late
rains have been experienced in October.


India's weather service said recent reports showed that more than half
the country was affected by the drought and the key farming areas in
the north, northeast and some parts of western India were worst
affected.

Rains in the northwest were 34 per cent less than average, in central regions
they were down by 19 per cent, and the northeast had a 26 per cent shortfall.

Experts said the farming population faced tremendous pressure due to the severe
water shortage this year. Much of India's farmland lacks irrigation, meaning
farmers are dependent on the monsoon rains.

"This is a crisis for sure," Devender Sharma, a food policy analyst based in New
Delhi, told AFP.

Sharma said India had 50 million tonnes of wheat and rice as buffer stock, ample
to ensure steady food supplies.

"Food will have to be supplied to the worst affected areas efficiently
to prevent wastage," said Ravi Jalan, an agriculture scientist.

Jalan said India wasted more than 50 billion dollars of food grains
every year, mainly due to the lack of post-harvest infrastructure such
as appropriate storage facilities and transportation.

Officials at the weather service said they would collect all the rain
distribution data at the end of the monsoon season to assess the
drought situation.—AFP

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Addameer on the Arrest of Human Rights defender and activist
Mohammad Othman
Sumud
09/25/2009
http://sumoud.tao.ca/?q=node/view/1378


[Ramallah, 24 September 2009] Addameer expresses its concern at the arrest and
detention of human rights defender and activist, Mohammad
Othman, on 22 September 2009. Mohammad, 33, originally from Jayyus village, is a
human rights activist and a volunteer with the grassroots "Stop the Wall
Campaign".

At 8:00 am, on 22 September 2009, Mohammad arrived at the Allenby Bridge
Crossing. He was returning home, to the West Bank, via Jordan,
from his travels in Norway where he attended several speaking events and
advocacy meetings. At the Israeli border control, Mohammad's passport was taken
away, and he was asked to wait on the side. Mohammad waited until 10 pm at the
Allenby Bridge Border Crossing without any information for the reasons of his
detention. At 10:00 pm, he was arrested and transferred to Huwwara provisional
detention center, located on the outskirts of Nablus. Two days later, on 24
September, he received a visit from an ICRC delegate and was allowed to see a
lawyer. Since the moment of his arrest, he has not been either questioned or
interrogated once. Mohammad is due to appear before the military court on
Tuesday, 29 September 2009.

Addameer believes that Mohammad Othman's arrest is related to his human rights
activism. In the last few years, Mohammad has been extremely active in his
lobbying and advocacy efforts by briefing
activists and officials, locally and internationally, on Israel's illegal
construction of the Apartheid Wall, informing the media on daily developments
and monitoring human rights violations in wall-affected villages.

This is not the first time that the Israeli authorities have attempted to deter
Mohammad from his human rights work. On 18 February 2009, during a night
incursion and mass arrest of youth in Jayyus village, located in Qalqilya
governorate, the Israeli soldiers raided several houses, including that of
Mohammad. They confiscated documents and information related to his advocacy
against the Annexation Wall. In an interview given to "Stop the Wall" on 15 June
2009, Mohammad states: "in my house, they took all the information about the
Wall, information that had been collected from 2002-2009, CDs, boxes, pictures".

Addameer stresses that Mohammad's case is not isolated. In a
report (Repression allowed, Resistance denied) jointly published with "Stop the
Wall" last July, Addameer argues that arrests of demonstrators and human rights
defenders are a strategy designed to stifle activism and deter Palestinians from
participating and organizing weekly protests against the Apartheid Wall, as a
form of resistance to land confiscation. Collective punishment, including night
raids and curfews, as well as individual threats of detention are also often
applied. There is strong evidence that the Israeli Occupying Forces target the
more active youth for arrest, such as the members of youth committees, but also
members of Popular Committees, in order to break up protests and create
disunity.

Most recently, in a similar event, on 20 July 2009, Mohammad Srour, a member of
the Popular Committee Against the Wall in Ni'lin, another
village affected by the construction of the Annexation Wall, was detained by
Israeli border officials while crossing the Allenby Bridge from Jordan and taken
to Ofer prison for interrogation. He was released on bail three days later.
Although Srour was not charged, the courts said they were likely going to charge
him, but they did not say on what grounds he was to be charged, or when. No
court date has been set for his reappearance. In its final report submitted to
the Human Rights Council, the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict
expressed its concern that his detention "may have been a consequence of his
appearance before the Mission".

Indeed, on 6 July 2009, together with an Israeli activist, Srour testified
before the Mission in Geneva and described the fatal
shooting of two Ni'lin residents, by Israeli forces during a demonstration
against the conflict in Gaza in Ni'lin on 28 December 2008. This arrest, like
the arrest of Mohammad Othman, is an indication of the increasing oppression of
Palestinian communities engaging in ongoing protest against the Wall. Addameer
is alarmed at the growing number of arrests of human rights defenders and
protestors against the Apartheid Wall and stresses that such arrests are in
violation to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),
and infringe on everyone's "right to freedom of opinion and expression" and the
"right to freedom of assembly".

Addameer strongly condemns Mohammad Othman's arbitrary arrest and detention, and
calls for his release. At the same time, Addameer reiterates its call to
establish real mechanisms to protect the
popular resistance against the Annexation Wall and their right to freedom of
assembly.

For more information, please contact:

Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association
P. O. Box: 17338, Jerusalem,
Israel
Tel: +972 (0)2 296 0446 / 297 0136
Fax: +972 (0)2 296
0447
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Decent Muslims versus Evil Jews


International [Jewish Zionist Shyster] Law
by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@...)
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2009/02/decent-muslims-versus-evil-jews.html


Above website contains hyperlinks. -WVNS


On February 10 H.D.S. Greenway published an exceptionally dishonest op-ed column
entitled The rise of extremism in London - The Boston Globe. He wrote:

There has been a big spike in anti-Semitic incidents here in recent weeks, and
by no means all of it by Muslims. A senior official involved with community
relations told me that anti-Semitic events had increased five-fold since the
Gaza war began. Jonathan Freedland, columnist for The Guardian, wrote last week
that just as "progressive voices insisted that Muslims were not to be branded as
guilty by association, just because the killers of 9/11 and 7/7 had been
Muslims," so should it now be made clear that Jews in general should not be held
responsible for Israel's behavior in Gaza. "There has been no chorus of liberal
voices insisting that no matter how intense their fury, people must not take out
that anger on Britain's Jewish community," Freedland wrote.

The situations of Muslims after 9/11 or 7/11 and of Jews after the Zionist
rampage in Gaza are not comparable.

No statistic of Muslims anywhere showed significant Muslim support for either
attack. Yet the ADL published ADL Survey Shows American Jews Overwhelmingly
Supported Israel's Gaza Action on its website.

This article reports:



• Asked whether Israel's response to Hamas rockets was appropriate or excessive,
probably the major theme that has appeared in international critiques of Israel,
79% said it was appropriate, 17% excessive (graph). By denomination breakdown:
Orthodox - 88%, appropriate, Conservative - 80%, Reform - 80% and non-practicing
- 71%

• When asked about Israel's right to self-defense versus the need to win the
"hearts and minds" of the Arab world, 79% said that Israel's responsibility to
protect its citizens takes precedence (graph).


The American Jewish community is dominated by evil Jewish Nazis, who support the
slaughter of women and children.

The UK Jewish community is probably even more Nazi.

By the standards generally pushed by Jewish intellectuals since WW2, decent
people have a categorical imperative to hate Jews failing to reject the Jewish
community and refusing to condemn the State of Israel unequivocally.

Despite Zionist propaganda asserting Israel's general responsibility or
obligation to protect its citizens, international law confers no such duties and
even restricts the use of such assertions as disproof of allegations of
committing crimes against humanity.

[Note that Israel has never made efforts, whether lawful or not, to protect its
non-Jewish citizens.]

Under Nuremberg Law, which the USA helped create, Israel has no right of
self-defense in the face of resistance acts by the occupied or ethnically
cleansed Palestinian refugee population.

Jewish Zionists in academia and in the government have desperately been trying
to reinterpret post-Nuremberg International Law to render irreversible the
Zionist theft and ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinian population.

This sort of intended or practical shyster lawyering has characterized the
Zionist program since the first Zionist Conference at Basel.

Because Zionist manipulation of International Law would be far more obvious to
lay observers if Zionism were properly identified as ethnic Ashkenazi Nazism and
as the exact equivalent of German Nazism with the obvious ethnic substitutions,
Jewish Zionists invariably freak out at the correct conclusion that Israel is a
Nazi state and try to equate this patently obvious observation with the most
vicious sort of anti-Semitism.

In fact, not only is it dishonest to deny Israel's Nazi nature, but it is also
racist, for characterizing one ethnic group as incapable of developing its own
form of Nazism is simply a belief in that group's racial superiority in politics
and ethics.

It is almost needless to say that the vast majority of Jews do have such a
racist belief, and nowadays except for tiny groups of dissenters Judaism is no
longer a genuine religion dedicated to serving God but consists of a combination
of ethnic narcissism, Holocaust obsession, and worship of the State of Israel.

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Eisenhower's Holocaust: His Slaughter Of 1.7 Million Germans
Author Not Known
http://www.rense.com/general46/germ.htm


"God, I hate the Germans..."
Dwight David Eisenhower in a letter to his wife
in September, 1944


First, I want you to picture something in your mind. You are a German soldier
who survived through the battles of World II. You were not really politically
involved, and your parents were also indifferent to politics, but suddenly your
education was interrupted and you were drafted into the German army and told
where to fight. Now, in the Spring of 1945, you see that your country has been
demolished by the Allies, your cities lie in ruins, and half of your family has
been killed or is missing. Now, your unit is being surrounded, and it is finally
time to surrender. The fact is, there is no other choice.

It has been a long, cold winter. The German army rations have not been all that
good, but you managed to survive. Spring came late that year, with weeks of cold
rainy weather in demolished Europe. Your boots are tattered, your uniform is
falling apart, and the stress of surrender and the confusion that lies ahead for
you has your guts being torn out. Now, it is over, you must surrender or be
shot. This is war and the real world.

You are taken as a German Prisoner of War into American hands. The Americans had
200 such Prisoner of War camps scattered across Germany. You are marched to a
compound surrounded with barbed wire fences as far as the eye can see. Thousands
upon thousands of your fellow German soldiers are already in this make-shift
corral. You see no evidence of a latrine and after three hours of marching
through the mud of the spring rain, the comfort of a latrine is upper-most in
your mind. You are driven through the heavily guarded gate and find yourself
free to move about, and you begin the futile search for the latrine. Finally,
you ask for directions, and are informed that no such luxury exists.

No more time. You find a place and squat. First you were exhausted, then hungry,
then fearful, and now; dirty. Hundreds more German prisoners are behind you,
pushing you on, jamming you together and every one of them searching for the
latrine as soon as they could do so. Now, late in the day, there is no space to
even squat, much less sit down to rest your weary legs. None of the prisoners,
you quickly learn, have had any food that day, in fact there was no food while
in the American hands that any surviving prisoner can testify to. No one has
eaten any food for weeks, and they are slowly starving and dying. But, they
can't do this to us! There are the Geneva Convention rules for the treatment of
Prisoners of War. There must be some mistake! Hope continues through the night,
with no shelter from the cold, biting rain.

Your uniform is sopping wet, and formerly brave soldiers are weeping all around
you, as buddy after buddy dies from the lack of food, water, sleep and shelter
from the weather. After weeks of this, your own hope bleeds off into despair,
and finally you actually begin to envy those who, having surrendered first
manhood and then dignity, now also surrender life itself. More hopeless weeks go
by. Finally, the last thing you remember is falling, unable to get up, and lying
face down in the mud mixed with the excrement of those who have gone before.

Your body will be picked up long after it is cold, and taken to a special tent
where your clothing is stripped off. So that you will be quickly forgotten, and
never again identified, your dog-tag is snipped in half and your body along with
those of your fellow soldiers are covered with chemicals for rapid decomposition
and buried. You were not one of the exceptions, for more than one million seven
hundred thousand German Prisoners of War died from a deliberate policy of
extermination by starvation, exposure, and disease, under direct orders of the
General Dwight David Eisenhower.

One month before the end of World War 11, General Eisenhower issued special
orders concerning the treatment of German Prisoners and specific in the language
of those orders was this statement,

"Prison enclosures are to provide no shelter or other comforts."

Eisenhower biographer Stephen Ambrose, who was given access to the Eisenhower
personal letters, states that he proposed to exterminate the entire German
General Staff, thousands of people, after the war.

Eisenhower, in his personal letters, did not merely hate the Nazi Regime, and
the few who imposed its will down from the top, but that HE HATED THE GERMAN
PEOPLE AS A RACE. It was his personal intent to destroy as many of them as he
could, and one way was to wipe out as many prisoners of war as possible.

Of course, that was illegal under International law, so he issued an order on
March 10, 1945 and verified by his initials on a cable of that date, that German
Prisoners of War be predesignated as "Disarmed Enemy Forces" called in these
reports as DEF. He ordered that these Germans did not fall under the Geneva
Rules, and were not to be fed or given any water or medical attention. The Swiss
Red Cross was not to inspect the camps, for under the DEF classification, they
had no such authority or jurisdiction.

Months after the war was officially over, Eisenhower's special German DEF camps
were still in operation forcing the men into confinement, but denying that they
were prisoners. As soon as the war was over, General George Patton simply turned
his prisoners loose to fend for themselves and find their way home as best they
could. Eisenhower was furious, and issued a specific order to Patton, to turn
these men over to the DEF camps. Knowing Patton as we do from history, we know
that these orders were largely ignored, and it may well be that Patton's
untimely and curious death may have been a result of what he knew about these
wretched Eisenhower DEF camps.

The book, OTHER LOSSES, found its way into the hands of a Canadian news
reporter, Peter Worthington, of the OTTAWA SUN. He did his own research through
contacts he had in Canada, and reported in his column on September 12,1989 the
following, in part:

"...it is hard to escape the conclusion that Dwight Eisenhower was a war
criminal of epic proportions. His (DEF) policy killed more Germans in peace than
were killed in the European Theater."

"For years we have blamed the 1.7 million missing German POW's on the Russians.
Until now, no one dug too deeply ... Witnesses and survivors have been
interviewed by the author; one Allied officer compared the American camps to
Buchenwald."

It is known, that the Allies had sufficient stockpiles of food and medicine to
care for these German soldiers. This was deliberately and intentionally denied
them. Many men died of gangrene from frostbite due to deliberate exposure. Local
German people who offered these men food, were denied. General Patton's Third
Army was the only command in the European Theater to release significant numbers
of Germans.

Others, such as Omar Bradley and General J.C.H. Lee, Commander of Com Z, tried,
and ordered the release of prisoners within a week of the war's end. However, a
SHAEF Order, signed by Eisenhower, countermanded them on May 15th.

Does that make you angry? What will it take to get the average apathetic
American involved in saving his country from such traitors at the top? Thirty
years ago, amid the high popularity of Eisenhower, a book was written setting
out the political and moral philosophy; of Dwight David Eisenhower called, THE
POLITICIAN, by Robert Welch. This year is the 107th Anniversary of Eisenhower's
birth in Denison, Texas on October 14, 1890, the son of Jacob David Eisenhower
and his wife Ida. Everyone is all excited about the celebration of this landmark
in the history of "this American patriot." Senator Robert Dole, in honor of the
Commander of the American Death Camps, proposed that Washington's Dulles Airport
be renamed the Eisenhower Airport!

The UNITED STATES MINT in Philadelphia, PA is actually issuing a special
Eisenhower Centennial Silver Dollar for only $25 each. They will only mint 4
million of these collector's items, and veteran's magazines are promoting these
coins under the slogan, "Remember the Man...Remember the Times..." Pardon me if
I regurgitate!

There will be some veterans who will not be buying these coins. Two will be Col.
James Mason and Col. Charles Beasley who were in the U.S. Army Medical Corps who
published a paper on the Eisenhower Death Camps in 1950. They stated in part:

"Huddled close together for warmth, behind the barbed wire was a most awesome
sight; nearly 100,000 haggard, apathetic, dirty, gaunt, blank-staring men clad
in dirty gray uniforms, and standing ankle deep in mud ... water was a major
problem, yet only 200 yards away the River Rhine was running bank-full."

Another Veteran, who will not be buying any of the Eisenhower Silver Dollars is
Martin Brech of Mahopac, New York, a semi-retired professor of philosophy at
Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, NY. In 1945, Brech was an 18 year old Private
First Class in Company C of the 14th Infantry, assigned as a guard and
interpreter at the Eisenhower Death Camp at Andernach, along the Rhine River. He
stated for SPOTLIGHT, February 12, 1990:

"My protests (regarding treatment of the German DEF'S) were met with hostility
or indifference, and when I threw our ample rations to them over the barbed
wire. I was threatened, making it clear that it was our deliberate policy not to
adequately feed them."

"When they caught me throwing C- Rations over the fence, they threatened me with
imprisonment. One Captain told me that he would shoot me if he saw me again
tossing food to the Germans ... Some of the men were really only boys 13 years
of age...Some of the prisoners were old men drafted by Hitler in his last ditch
stand ... I understand that average weight of the prisoners at Andernach was 90
pounds...I have received threats ... Nevertheless, this...has liberated me, for
I may now be heard when I relate the horrible atrocity I witnessed as a prison
guard for one of 'Ike's death camps' along the Rhine." (Betty Lou Smith Hanson)

Note: Remember the photo of Ike's West Point yearbook picture when he was dubbed
"IKE, THE TERRIBLE SWEDISH JEW"? By the way, he was next, or nearly so, to the
last in his class. This article was first printed in 1990, but we thought it was
meaningful to reprint it now.

Note: During Cadet Eisenhower's time at West Point Academy, Eisenhower was
summoned to the office of the headmaster and was asked some pointed questions.
At the time, it was routine procedure to test a cadet's blood to insure White
racial integrity.

Apparently, there was a question of Eisenhower's racial lineage and this was
brought to Eisenhower's attention by the headmaster. When asked if he was part
Oriental, Eisenhower replied in the negative. After some discussion, Eisenhower
admitted having Jewish background. The headmaster then reportedly said, "That's
where you get your Oriental blood?" Although he was allowed to remain at the
academy, word got around since this was a time in history when non-Whites were
not allowed into the academy. Note - The issue of Eisenhower's little-known
Jewish background in academically essential in understanding his psychopathic
hatred of German men, women and children.

Later, in Eisenhower's West Point Military Academy graduating class yearbook,
published in 1915, Eisenhower is identified as a "terrible Swedish Jew."

Wherever Eisenhower went during his military career, Eisenhower's Jewish
background and secondary manifesting behavior was a concern to his fellow
officers. During World War II when Col. Eisenhower was working for Gen. Douglas
MacArthur in the South Pacific, MacArthur protested to his superiors in
Washington (DC) that Eisenhower was incompetent and that he did not want
Eisenhower on his staff.

In 1943, Washington not only transferred Col. Eisenhower to Europe but promoted
him over more than 30 more experienced senior officers to five star general and
placed him in charge of all the US forces in Europe.

Thus it comes as no surprise that General George Patton, a real Aryan warrior,
hated Eisenhower.

[Patton was keen to fight the Soviets, and reportedly kept some German units
ready to move against the Soviets...unsurprisingly he was killed; after the war,
in a 'car crash,' just like Lawrence of Arabia was conveniently bumped off, in a
similar manner, for his 'pro-fascist' views].


Related Story: Mass Starvation of Germans, 1945-1950
http://www.serendipity.li/hr.html#c&m


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DYING TO PROTECT THE DRUGS BARONS
Craig Murray
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=10215


This week the 64th British soldier to die in Afghanistan, Corporal Mike Gilyeat,
was buried. All the right things were said about this brave soldier, just as, on
current trends, they will be said about one or more of his colleagues who follow
him next week.

The alarming escalation of the casualty rate among British soldiers in
Afghanistan up to ten per cent led to discussion this week on whether it could
be fairly compared to casualty rates in the Second World War.

But the key question is this: what are our servicemen dying for? There are glib
answers to that: bringing democracy and development to Afghanistan, supporting
the government of President Hamid Karzai in its attempt to establish order in
the country, fighting the Taliban and preventing the further spread of radical
Islam into Pakistan.

But do these answers stand up to close analysis?

There has been too easy an acceptance of the lazy notion that the war in
Afghanistan is the 'good' war, while the war in Iraq is the 'bad' war, the
blunder. The origins of this view are not irrational. There was a logic to
attacking Afghanistan after 9/11.

Afghanistan was indeed the headquarters of Osama Bin Laden and his organisation,
who had been installed and financed there by the CIA to fight the Soviets from
1979 until 1989. By comparison, the attack on Iraq which was an enemy of Al
Qaeda and no threat to us was plainly irrational in terms of the official
justification.

So the attack on Afghanistan has enjoyed a much greater sense of public
legitimacy. But the operation to remove Bin Laden was one thing. Six years of
occupation are clearly another.

Few seem to turn a hair at the officially expressed view that our occupation of
Afghanistan may last for decades.

Lib Dem leader Menzies Campbell has declared, fatuously, that the Afghan war is
'winnable'.

Afghanistan was not militarily winnable by the British Empire at the height of
its supremacy. It was not winnable by Darius or Alexander, by Shah, Tsar or
Great Moghul. It could not be subdued by 240,000 Soviet troops. But what,
precisely, are we trying to win?

In six years, the occupation has wrought one massive transformation in
Afghanistan, a development so huge that it has increased Afghan GDP by 66 per
cent and constitutes 40 per cent of the entire economy. That is a startling
achievement, by any standards. Yet we are not trumpeting it. Why not?

The answer is this. The achievement is the highest harvests of opium the world
has ever seen.

The Taliban had reduced the opium crop to precisely nil. I would not advocate
their methods for doing this, which involved lopping bits, often vital bits, off
people. The Taliban were a bunch of mad and deeply unpleasant religious
fanatics. But one of the things they were vehemently against was opium.

That is an inconvenient truth that our spin has managed to obscure. Nobody has
denied the sincerity of the Taliban's crazy religious zeal, and they were as
unlikely to sell you heroin as a bottle of Johnnie Walker.

They stamped out the opium trade, and impoverished and drove out the drug
warlords whose warring and rapacity had ruined what was left of the country
after the Soviet war.

That is about the only good thing you can say about the Taliban; there are
plenty of very bad things to say about them. But their suppression of the opium
trade and the drug barons is undeniable fact.

Now we are occupying the country, that has changed. According to the United
Nations, 2006 was the biggest opium harvest in history, smashing the previous
record by 60 per cent. This year will be even bigger.

Our economic achievement in Afghanistan goes well beyond the simple production
of raw opium. In fact Afghanistan no longer exports much raw opium at all. It
has succeeded in what our international aid efforts urge every developing
country to do. Afghanistan has gone into manufacturing and 'value-added'
operations.

It now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an
industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the
chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The
tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads,
improved by American aid, with Nato troops.

How can this have happened, and on this scale? The answer is simple. The four
largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan
government the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect.

When we attacked Afghanistan, America bombed from the air while the CIA paid,
armed and equipped the dispirited warlord drug barons especially those grouped
in the Northern Alliance to do the ground occupation. We bombed the Taliban and
their allies into submission, while the warlords moved in to claim the spoils.
Then we made them ministers.

President Karzai is a good man. He has never had an opponent killed, which may
not sound like much but is highly unusual in this region and possibly unique in
an Afghan leader. But nobody really believes he is running the country. He asked
America to stop its recent bombing campaign in the south because it was leading
to an increase in support for the Taliban. The United States simply ignored him.
Above all, he has no control at all over the warlords among his ministers and
governors, each of whom runs his own kingdom and whose primary concern is
self-enrichment through heroin.

My knowledge of all this comes from my time as British Ambassador in
neighbouring Uzbekistan from 2002 until 2004. I stood at the Friendship Bridge
at Termez in 2003 and watched the Jeeps with blacked-out windows bringing the
heroin through from Afghanistan, en route to Europe.

I watched the tankers of chemicals roaring into Afghanistan.

Yet I could not persuade my country to do anything about it. Alexander
Litvinenko the former agent of the KGB, now the FSB, who died in London last
November after being poisoned with polonium 210 � had suffered the same
frustration over the same topic.

There are a number of theories as to why Litvinenko had to flee Russia. The most
popular blames his support for the theory that FSB agents planted bombs in
Russian apartment blocks to stir up anti-Chechen feeling.

But the truth is that his discoveries about the heroin trade were what put his
life in danger. Litvinenko was working for the KGB in St Petersburg in 2001 and
2002. He became concerned at the vast amounts of heroin coming from Afghanistan,
in particular from the fiefdom of the (now) Head of the Afghan armed forces,
General Abdul Rashid Dostum, in north and east Afghanistan.

Dostum is an Uzbek, and the heroin passes over the Friendship Bridge from
Afghanistan to Uzbekistan, where it is taken over by President Islam Karimov's
people. It is then shipped up the railway line, in bales of cotton, to St
Petersburg and Riga.

The heroin Jeeps run from General Dostum to President Karimov. The UK, United
States and Germany have all invested large sums in donating the most
sophisticated detection and screening equipment to the Uzbek customs centre at
Termez to stop the heroin coming through.

But the convoys of Jeeps running between Dostum and Karimov are simply waved
around the side of the facility.

Litvinenko uncovered the St Petersburg end and was stunned by the involvement of
the city authorities, local police and security services at the most senior
levels. He reported in detail to President Vladimir Putin. Putin is, of course,
from St Petersburg, and the people Litvinenko named were among Putin's closest
political allies. That is why Litvinenko, having miscalculated badly, had to
flee Russia.

I had as little luck as Litvinenko in trying to get official action against this
heroin trade. At the St Petersburg end he found those involved had the top
protection. In Afghanistan, General Dostum is vital to Karzai's coalition, and
to the West's pretence of a stable, democratic government.

Opium is produced all over Afghanistan, but especially in the north and
north-east Dostum's territory. Again, our Government's spin doctors have tried
hard to obscure this fact and make out that the bulk of the heroin is produced
in the tiny areas of the south under Taliban control. But these are the most
desolate, infertile rocky areas. It is a physical impossibility to produce the
bulk of the vast opium harvest there.

That General Dostum is head of the Afghan armed forces and Deputy Minister of
Defence is in itself a symbol of the bankruptcy of our policy. Dostum is known
for tying opponents to tank tracks and running them over. He crammed prisoners
into metal containers in the searing sun, causing scores to die of heat and
thirst.

Since we brought 'democracy' to Afghanistan, Dostum ordered an MP who annoyed
him to be pinned down while he attacked him. The sad thing is that Dostum is
probably not the worst of those comprising the Karzai government, or the biggest
drug smuggler among them.

Our Afghan policy is still victim to Tony Blair's simplistic world view and his
childish division of all conflicts into 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. The truth is
that there are seldom any good guys among those vying for power in a country
such as Afghanistan. To characterise the Karzai government as good guys is sheer
nonsense.

Why then do we continue to send our soldiers to die in Afghanistan? Our presence
in Afghanistan and Iraq is the greatest recruiting sergeant for Islamic
militants. As the great diplomat, soldier and adventurer Lieutenant-Colonel Sir
Alexander Burnes pointed out before his death in the First Afghan War in 1841,
there is no point in a military campaign in Afghanistan as every time you beat
them, you just swell their numbers. Our only real achievement to date is falling
street prices for heroin in London.

Remember this article next time you hear a politician calling for more troops to
go into Afghanistan. And when you hear of another brave British life wasted
there, remember you can add to the casualty figures all the young lives ruined,
made miserable or ended by heroin in the UK.

They, too, are casualties of our Afghan policy.

I think this is perhaps the most important thing I have published. It is also
worth noting that the Mail was the only mainstream paper which would carry at
the time my article exposing the fake maritime boundaries map. The Guardian and
Independent refused to stand against the "patriotic" flood of lying propaganda.
The Mail has since been totally vindicated. I think they deserve full credit for
continuing to take challenging material which contradicts the official story.
www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/07/afghanistan.html


Craig Murray was the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan. He was removed
from his post in October 2004, shortly after a leaked report in the Financial
Times quoted him as claiming that MI6 used intelligence provided by Uzbek
authorities through torture.

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Will US Drone Strikes Move From Rural Pakistan to Baloch Capital?


US Threatening to Attack Major Pakistani City of Quetta
by Jason Ditz
September 27, 2009
http://news.antiwar.com/2009/09/27/us-threatening-to-attack-major-pakistani-city\
-of-quetta/


A move that has long been debated by the Obama Administration could soon become
reality, as officials say the State Department delivered an ultimatum to
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari during his visit last week cautioning that
if he doesn't move against the Taliban forces in the city of Quetta the US will.

Such attacks would be a major escalation of the unpopular US drone strikes
against the nation, so far confined to the area in and around the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Quetta, a city of three quarters of a million
people, is the capital of Pakistan's largest province, Balochistan.

The Pakistani government has been reluctant to move against the city, which has
reportedly become a hiding point for much of the former Afghan government,
citing both the lack of threat posed to the Pakistani government and the lack of
intelligence provided by the US about exactly where to act.

In fact, the attack on Quetta may turn out to be even more than lobbing a few
missiles, as reportedly officials have discussed sending ground forces into the
town to "capture or kill" any Taliban they find.

Already struggling to keep the populace calm amid growing resentment of the US
role in the nation, if American missiles or worse, American ground forces start
pouring into a major Pakistani city to fight people who the government says
aren't posing a threat to Pakistan, all bets are likely off.

Vice President Joe Biden, among others, have been pressing for an escalation of
drone strikes as a way of "stabilizing" Pakistan. It seems, however, that there
are few things that would be more destabilizing than attacking Quetta.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8277018.stm

===

Philippine storm leaves 106 dead and missing
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jSvmEJ57ktsFxVCZq7aG_8T9rXpAD9\
AVKJ900


MANILA, Philippines — Philippine officials say the number of dead and missing
from Tropical Storm Ketsana has climbed to at least 106 people. The storm set
off the worst flooding in the Philippine capital and nearby provinces in more
than 42 years.

Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said Sunday that army troops, police and
civilian volunteers rescued more than 5,000 people — many of them nervously
clinging to each other on roofs and on top of passenger buses after the storm
struck the previous day.
The newly reported deaths included 12 villagers who died in a landslide in
northern Pampanga province and nine others in Bulacan province, most of whom
died by drowning. Also, an army soldier and four militiamen drowned while trying
to rescue villagers in southern Laguna province.


MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Rescuers plucked bodies from muddy floodwaters and
scrambled to save drenched survivors on rooftops Sunday after a tropical storm
tore through the northern Philippines and left 75 people dead or missing in the
region's worst flooding in more than four decades.

The government declared a "state of calamity" in metropolitan Manila and 25
storm-hit provinces, allowing officials to utilize emergency funds for relief
and rescue, Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said. Army troops, police and
civilian volunteers have rescued more than 5,100 people.

Tropical Storm Ketsana roared across the northern Philippines near Manila on
Saturday, dumping more than a month's worth of rain in just 12 hours. The
resulting landslides and flooding have left at least 52 people dead and 23
others missing, Teodoro said.

Military chief Gen. Victor Ibrado, accompanied by journalists, flew over several
suburban Manila towns Sunday on board air force helicopters to witness the
harrowing sight of drenched survivors still marooned on top of half-submerged
passenger buses and rooftops. Some dangerously clung on high-voltage power lines
while others plodded through waist-high flood waters, TV footage showed.

Authorites deployed rescue teams on boats to save survivors sighted during the
aerial check.

Nearly 300,000 people were affected by storm, including some 47,000 people who
were brought to about 100 schools, churches and other evacuation shelters,
officials said.

In the city of Marikina near Manila, a rescuer gingerly lifted the mud-covered
body of a child from a boat and carried away two other bodies found in a search
of a flooded neighborhood.

Many residents lost all their belongings in the storm, but were thankful they
were alive.

"We're back to zero," said Marikina resident Ronald Manlangit. Still he
expressed relief that he managed to move all his children to the second floor of
his house Saturday as floodwaters engulfed the ground floor.

Mud covered everything — cars, the road and vegetables in a public market near
Manlangit's house.

Governor Joselito Mendoza of Bulacan province north of the capital, said it was
tragic that "people drowned in their own houses" as the storm raged.

Distress calls and e-mails from thousands of residents in metropolitan Manila
and their worried relatives flooded TV and radio stations overnight. Ketsana
swamped entire towns, set off landslides and shut down Manila's airport for
several hours.

"My son is sick and alone. He has no food and he may be waiting on the roof of
his house. Please get somebody to save him," a weeping housewife, Mary Coloma,
told radio DZBB.

The sun shone briefly in Manila on Sunday and showed the extent of devastation
in many neighborhoods — destroyed houses, overturned vans and cars, and streets
and highways covered in debris and mud.

The 16.7 inches (42.4 centimeters) of rain that swamped metropolitan Manila in
just 12 hours on Saturday exceeded the 15.4-inch (39.2-centimeter) average for
all of September, chief government weather forecaster Nathaniel Cruz said,
adding that the rainfall broke the previous record of 13.2 inches (33.4
centimeters) in a 24-hour period in June 1967.

Garbage-choked drains and waterways, along with high tide, compounded the
problem, officials said.

Ketsana, which packed winds of 53 mph (85 kph) with gusts of up to 63 mph (100
kph), hit land early Saturday then roared across the main northern Luzon island
toward the South China Sea.


Associated Press writer Oliver Teves contributed to this report.

===

73 killed as rain wreaks havoc in Philippines
Monday, 28 Sep, 2009
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/fron\
t-page/73-killed-as-rain-wreaks-havoc-in-philippines-899


MANILA, Sept 27: At least 73 people were killed and more than 330,000 others
displaced after the heaviest rain in more than four decades plunged the
Philippine capital into chaos, officials said on Sunday.

The nine-hour deluge across Manila on Saturday submerged houses, washed away
shanties and turned roads into raging rivers, forcing terrified residents to
seek refuge on top of homes or cars where they waited for more than 24 hours.

"I am calling on our countrymen... to please stay calm," President Gloria Arroyo
said, as she set a deadline of nightfall on Sunday for the military and other
rescuers to save those who remained stranded.

The downpour from tropical storm Ketsana left some areas of Manila under 20 feet
of water, and the storm's ferocity shocked a country that is accustomed to
typhoons.

"This is the worst that I have seen," Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said of
the extensive flooding that also severely damaged other parts of the northern
Philippines.

Ms Arroyo said more rain had fallen on Manila and surrounding areas than on New
Orleans when Hurricane Katrina devastated the American city in 2005.

Ketsana's confirmed death toll was 73, with 23 others still missing, Mr Teodoro
said on Sunday evening.

He added that more than 337,000 people in Manila and five outlying provinces
were displaced, with nearly 60,000 people staying in evacuation centres.

And even though the rain eased on Sunday, rescuers said they feared the death
toll would rise because receding flood waters could expose more bodies.

The frantic rescue efforts saw military helicopters and rubber boats fan out
across the city of 12 million to pluck people off houses and car roofs.

The US military contributed a helicopter and six boats to the rescue
operation.—AFP

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Legalize DWI -- "Defending While Islamic" !
By Kevin Barrett
http://truthjihad.blogspot.com/2009/02/legalize-dwi-defending-while-islamic.html\
orhttp://atheonews.blogspot.com/2009/02/legalize-dwi-defending-while-islamic.htm\
l


Once upon a time, in the bad old days when there was still racism in
America--before Barack Obama was annointed to cleanse us of our sins--there was
a crime called Driving While Black (DWB). African-Americans used to get pulled
over all the time for DWB. Naturally, in our own enlightened era, this sort of
thing could never happen.

Today, the worst crime you can commit is DWI: (self-)Defending While Islamic.
This crime is better known as "terrorism." For some reason, when Jewish Zionist
coup d'etat plotters with such names as Larry Silverstein, Benjamin Netanyahu,
Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Philip Zelikow, and so on blew up
the World Trade Center, bombed the Pentagon, and ineptly attempted to frame
Osama Bin Laden, the U.S. decided to cozy up to the Zionists and attack their
enemies, the Muslims, rather than the other way around.

Today, any Muslim who dares to defend him- or herself, or his or her family and
community, is in danger of getting busted for DWI and shipped directly to one of
the dozens of secret prisons in the sex torture gulag that will remain open
under the new Obama-Emmanuel post-Guantanamo dispensation.

Today, anyone who openly supports Hamas and Hezbullah might as well be pinning a
"kick me" sign on the seat of their pants and bending over for the Homeland
Security jackboot.

Well, as far as I am concerned, Homeland Security can take that jackboot and
stick it where the sun don't shine. I like Hamas and Hezbullah, and I don't care
who knows it.

Hamas and Hezbullah are primarily charitable organizations. They do a terrific
job of providing basic necessities to the poor. And when the need arises, they
help organize armed community self-defense.

Today, the entire Middle East is desperately in need of armed community
self-defense. A gang of genocidal lunatics, otherwise known as Zionists, has
already invaded, occupied, and ethnic-cleansed Palestine, and they are intent on
extending their reign of terror to the whole Middle Eastern heartland.

Don't believe me? Take a look at the Israeli flag. See those two blue stripes,
one on each side of the star of David? One stripe is the Nile, the other the
Euphrates. The Zionist nutballs believe that a genocidal god named Yahwe
promised them this entire stretch of land. Sort of like David "Son of Sam"
Berserkowitz, these people are hearing hallucinatory voices telling them to
engage in mass murder.

What's worse, the Zionist psychos possess several hundred nuclear weapons and
delivery systems, in violation of all relevant international laws and treaties.
Unlike Iran, they have never signed, much less abided by, the International
Anti-Proliferation Treaty.

The Zionist entity, sometimes euphemistically called "Israel," is the biggest
international criminal syndicate on earth. It has violated more international
laws and U.N. resolutions than all the legitimate nations on earth combined. It
sanctions the murder of children by uniformed snipers, who pick off the kids one
by one, for the sheer joy of it, while the children are playing in schoolyards,
walking on sidewalks, or (occasionally) hurling rocks at their tormentors. A
study by the British Medical Journal found more than six hundred such cases of
Israeli snipers cold-bloodedly murdering children who posed "little or no
threat." If you have trouble believing this, read the article "Gaza Diary" by
journalist Chris Hedges, who left the New York Times at about the same time he
started telling the truth about what was going on in Palestine. In "Gaza Diary,"
Hedges describes watching Israeli soldiers luring children within range of their
guns, then shooting them for sport--a common occurrence in Occupied Palestine.

What would you do if genocidal nutballs from across the sea invaded and occupied
your country and started sport-shooting your kids? I know what I would do. I
would defend myself and my family and my community.

That's exactly what Hamas and Hezbullah are doing. These organizations are not
at war with America -- they are at war with Zionism. Under international law,
they have the right to engage in armed self-defense against occupation. They
deserve your support, and the support of all other sane, decent human beings.

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W.E.B.DuBois' Classic:"Souls of Black Folk" CENSORED?
By Imam Ghayth Nur Kashif


The works of Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois have been considered the most authoritative
sources of African American history, culture, and philosophy. In particular, his
book "Souls of Black Folk," holds the highest ranking among what is called the
"Negro Classics".

Thus, it is certain to come as a shock to lay students and
professional researchers that this eminent philosopher was placed under enormous
pressure to delete or alter certain passages in the 1953 revision of his book.

Although this issue has received little consideration in African
American academic circles, it was brought to their attention as early as 1970 in
a paper presented to the Association of Negro Life and History by Herbert
Aptheker, a Jewish historian.

Aptheker, whose paper was later published in the January issue of the Negro
History Bulletin (1971), noted that Du Bois alluded to such changes in his
introduction to the 1953 edition.

He wrote: "Only in a few cases have I made less than a half dozen alterations in
word or phrase, and then not to change my thought... but to avoid any possible
misunderstanding today of what I meant to say yesterday," Dubois acknowledged.
(Aptheker, pp. 15-17).

Aptheker said, however, that the major alterations dealt essentially with
references to Jews and that Du Bois initially resisted, but
later submitted, to demands for such changes in the text.

Some of the alterations cited by Aptheker include the following:

"The Jew is the heir of the slave-baron in Dougherty.... Wine companies, mills
and factories; nearly all failed, and the Jew fell heir," in the 1903 version
was altered to read "...immigrants are heirs ... most failed, and foreigners
fell heir," in the 1953 version.

"This plantation, owned now by a Russian Jew as part of the famous Bolton
estate,…" (1903) was changed to read, "This plantation, owned by a
foreigner...," in the 1953 revision "Poor whites and Jews have seized it [a
reference to local land owned by Blacks]" (1903). The 1953 version reads,
"...poor relations and foreign immigrants have seized it" (Aptheker, pp. 15-17).

"This land (for blacks) was ceased by poor whites and Jews.." was changed to
"poor relations and foreign immigrants have seized it" (revised edition.

"The enterprising Russian Jew sold it to him, pocketed the money and deed and
left the Black man landless, to labor on his own farm at thirty cents a day"
(1903).

Identical words are found in the 1953 revision except "the enterprising Russian
Jew" is replaced with "the enterprising American" i.e.: "… the enterprising
Russian Jew who sold it to him, pocketed the money and deed and left the black
man landless, to labor on his own farm at thirty cents a day," (1903)---In the
1952 version, all is identical except, "the enterprising Russian Jew" is
replaced with the enterprising American."

While many of the alterations cited appear to be insignificant, before and after
the alterations, those demanding changes from Du Bois were obviously clever
practitioners in the art of altering historical facts.

Given the innocuous phrases and clearly unbiased language of Du Bois' original
version, one would suspect that those demanding such changes were clever
practitioners in altering even minor historical facts for political reasons. In
an ironic allusion to such manipulation, Du Bois even suggested in his original
work that, "Political defense (for the Southern Black) is becoming less and less
available, and economic defense is still only partially effective----"But there
is a patent defense at hand - the defense of deception and flattery, of cajoling
and lying. It is the same defense which the Jews of the Middle Age used and
which left its stamp on their character for centuries." In the 1953 rendition,
the phrase "the Jews of the Middle Age," was changed to read, "the peasants of
the Middle Age" (Aptheker,
pp. 15-17).

Aptheker said that the pressure for Du Bois to make the alterations came
initially from a close confidant, Jacob Schiff, but later from Rabbi Stephen
Wise and Morris Schappes, an editor and historian tied closely to the publishing
industry.

Some sources indicate that Du Bois was politely threatened with the prospects of
being charged with anti-Semitism and boycotted by the publishing industry should
he not make the changes in his book.

Quite obviously, the unearthing of these blights upon the work of Du Bois
presents an uncomfortable dilemma for his admirers and biographers, but on the
positive side, the exposure of these contemptible attempts to rewrite history at
the expense of such a great historian should help to purge the African American
community of its naiveté and complacency when it comes to rendering and
preserving the historical truths and legacy of their people.

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Dead Chickens, Amends, and an Outcry
By JENNIFER LEE
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/nyregion/10chickens.html


Last week before Rosh Hashana, Rabbi Shea Hecht of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, said
he was bombarded with hundreds of e-mail messages, phone calls, faxes and
letters within a short time, one of them threatening.

Yoni Aranoff, 13, with Myron Robinson, his grandfather, doing the kaparot ritual
in Queens.

In general, the messages protested the tradition of kaparot — sometimes spelled
kapparot or kapparos — in which Orthodox Jews take live chickens, swing them
over their heads as a means of symbolically transferring sins to the chickens,
and then slaughter them on the eve of Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement.

"I got over a thousand e-mails in one hour," Rabbi Hecht said on Wednesday
before the start of Yom Kippur. He said that he showed the messages to the
police, but that no formal investigation was under way.

He immediately suspected People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which has
mounted a campaign against the practice over the past few years, even producing
a 10-minute video of the practice in Brooklyn (one of the scenes shows the
chickens being stuffed into orange traffic cones).

The tradition consumes tens of thousands of chickens each year in Brooklyn.

But Bruce G. Friedrich, vice president of PETA, denied that his organization was
behind the organized bombardment, though he was vocal about the chicken ritual
in an interview on Thursday. "Rabbi Hecht is supporting grotesque cruelty behind
thousands and thousands of animals," he said.

PETA has been documenting the rituals over the last few years, but Mr. Friedrich
said the group was not behind the anti-chicken-ritual spam.

"If anyone is really sending threatening or anti-Semitic e-mails, that is both
immoral and counterproductive," Mr. Friedrich said. "It's unfortunate when
someone hands an animal abuser cause for self-righteousness." PETA
representatives had met previously with Rabbi Hecht.

According to some rabbis, the kaparot custom may trace its origins to the
destruction of the Holy Temple, when the high priest chose one of two goats on
Yom Kippur through a lottery and designated it to absorb the sins of the people
of Israel. Now, chickens and roosters are commonly used.

Rabbi Hecht's father, J. J. Hecht, now deceased, played an instrumental role in
the early 1970s in reviving the tradition, which had slowly died out in
Brooklyn. "It was less and less observed because there were no kosher
slaughterhouses down the block anymore," Rabbi Hecht said, "so you didn't have
the ability of going to your local butcher."

Now the Brooklyn rabbis arrange for local slaughtering, which takes hours based
on the sheer volume of chickens. "We're still out there, still koshering the
chicken," Rabbi Hecht said early Wednesday.

Asked if multiple people could use the same chicken before it was killed, as a
strategy to reduce the volume of chicken carcasses, Rabbi Hecht said yes. but
then he explained, "In today's world, when a chicken doesn't cost that much
money, people are like, `I can afford my own chicken.' "

To make it easier, he said his congregation subsidized the chickens by buying
them in bulk. "We charge the people only $2," he said. But as part of a
fund-raiser on Tuesday night, the rabbi said he charged as much as $13 for the
chickens, with a discount for students.

(Can live chickens really cost as little as $2? Even with the rising cost of
food and the state of the economy, apparently so.)

Rabbi Hecht defended the practice: "What I do is 100 percent within the right of
my religious freedom within the country."

But the ritual has come under criticism even within the local Jewish population.
Few of the chickens are eaten, and one report from 2005 said that they were not
being slaughtered in a manner consistent with kosher standards. A number of
cases were reported in which proprietors left for Yom Kippur and the chickens
were abandoned and died en masse. And last year, rabbis met to discuss evidence
that chickens may have been mistreated in past years.

Some rabbis have strongly opposed kaparot, suggesting either that it is a pagan
ritual or that it violates Jewish teaching about the humane treatment of
animals. Some have suggested alternatives to chickens, such as fish, or a
charitable contribution.

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US to remove soldiers from Okinawa
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=85897§ionid=3510203


The Japanese have protested crimes perpetrated by US military personnel
stationed on Okinawa for years.

The US and Japan sign an accord ordering the relocation of 8,000 US soldiers
from the Japanese island of Okinawa to Guam by 2014.
Under the agreement, signed by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her
Japanese counterpart, Hirofumi Nakasone, the US has agreed to reduce the number
of its Marines stationed on the island.

"Our security alliance with Japan, 50 years old next year, has been, and must
remain, unshakable. In Tokyo, I will sign the Guam International Agreement,
which will position our security alliance to meet the challenges of this time by
moving 8,000 American troops from Okinawa to Guam," Clinton told the Asia
Society in New York on Friday.
Under the agreement, Japan will provide $6.09 billion of the estimated $10.3
billion cost for the transfer of US soldiers and for the building of housing and
other infrastructure on the Pacific island of Guam -- a US territory.

About 50,000 US troops are based in Japan under the 50-year-old security
agreement; 22,000 of them are stationed on the southern island of Okinawa,
giving rise to tension between troops and local residents.

The people of Japan have protested for years about crimes perpetrated by US
military personnel stationed on Japanese islands, including Okinawa.

Public anger has increased because of several incidents in recent years,
including the alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl by a US Marine on Okinawa.

Okinawa governor Hirokazu Nakaima had recently met Pentagon officials and
discussed changing the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the two
countries to ensure that all service members charged with crimes are immediately
turned over to the Japanese police.
Under the existing SOFA agreement, Japanese police keep members of the US
military in custody only if the individual is arrested off base.

In addition, the governors of 14 of Japan's 47 prefectures that host US Marines
recently asked the Japanese government to start the process of assessing the
SOFA, which was last revised in 1960.

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Pakistan On The Edge of The Precipice
Shahid R. Siddiqi
Axis of Logic
Monday, Sep 28, 2009
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_57043.shtml


"American interference in Pakistan's internal affairs reaches such an ominous
level that the country seems to be run by an American under secretary of state
or envoy, Richard Holbrook, rather than its elected representatives."

In recent years, American strategists have propagated the need to redraw
political boundaries of Islamic states along ethnic lines. Driven by paranoia
with resurgent Islam and their obsession to control this very important oil rich
region, they seek to legitimize their actions by labeling them as effort to
dispense justice for `oppressed Muslim minorities'.

The underlying belief is that smaller entities would be easier to micromanage
through puppet regimes, enabling them to contain militancy and squeeze into
extinction Jehadi outfits by choking their funding.

This `remapping' involves splintering the Muslim world and creating sovereign
states of Balochistan, Kurdistan and Arab Shia State by carving out and unifying
Pakistani and Iranian Baluchistan territories to create Free Balochistan;
unifying Iranian, Iraqi and Turkish Kurdistan to create Greater Kurdistan and
slicing off Eastern Saudi Arabia to unite it with Southern Iraq to create Shia
Arab State. It is no coincidence that these territories hold the bulk of the
world oil and host anti-imperialist movements.

"The global interests of the United States have routinely propelled it into
adversarial engagement with the Muslims, losing their hearts and minds."

Brilliant thinking! This promises them a picture-perfect Muslim world, tailored
to their needs. The difficulty, however, is that their undertaking is too
ambitious, out of sync with reality and unachievable. And this mindset is bound
to pitch Christianity and Judaism versus Islam, a horrifying scenario.

The global interests of the United States have routinely propelled it into
adversarial engagement with the Muslims, losing their hearts and minds. More
often than not, Israeli interests define U.S. foreign policy direction,
particularly where their interests are congruent. Both the US and Israel have
eyes on the oil reserves of Caspian Sea and Central Asia, they need an energy
pipeline project transiting through Afghanistan and Pakistan's Balochistan and
desperately want a wider security shield for Israel, which involves
denuclearizing Pakistan.

Israel's interest to de-fang Pakistan's nuclear ability dates back to
mid-eighties when it attempted to bomb Kahuta facility in collusion with the
Indians – a mission that was aborted when an alert Pakistan Air Force took to
the skies. Now in Afghanistan they have a perfect opportunity to collude with
the United States and India to take out Pakistan's nuclear assets.

Pakistan's denuclearization is important to India too. Pakistan must be trimmed
to size to enable India to achieve undisputed regional leadership. This is also
in the interest of the United States: as a dominant regional power - India,
could counter China which grows stronger by the day and will eventually
challenge American expansionism into Asia. Together with Russia, China has
already forged an alliance, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to squeeze
the U.S. military bases out of Central Asia. For the United States, an
independent Balochistan will also be very important. This could easily be used
to pressurize Iran and serve as energy corridor to Central Asia.

"President Obama's insistence to stay on in Afghanistan and proceed with a
massive military buildup is apparently not without a sister motive."

Pakistan is, therefore, up for reconfiguration in this chess game of
geo-strategic interests. The United States is no longer interested in Pakistan
as a unified entity. President Obama's insistence to stay on in Afghanistan and
proceed with a massive military buildup is apparently not without a sister
motive. Afghanistan not only provides a safe haven and logistical support for
espionage and subversion against Pakistan, its puppet government has also joined
the bandwagon by creating its own Research & Analysis Milli Afghanistan (RAMA)
with Indian help and tasked it to destabilize Pakistan.

In his 2006 treatise `Blood Borders', Col. Ralph Peters, a Pentagon advisor,
advocated the incorporation of NWFP into Afghanistan and creation of a sovereign
`Free Balochistan', carved out of Baloch areas of Pakistan and Iran. His
grounds: 'ethnic affinity'.

Pakistani Balochistan is estimated to hold 25.1 trillion cft. of gas and 6
trillion barrels of oil, in addition to gold and copper deposits. It borders
Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia and China and has a strategically located port
that can provide to Central Asian countries and China an opening to Arabian Sea.

In his article, Drawn and Quartered (NY Times) Selig Harrison of the Center of
International Policy, Washington, forecasts Pakistan's break up into three
sovereign entities along ethnic lines:
Pashtunistan (comprising Pashtuns of NWFP and Afghanistan), Free Baluchistan (a
federation comprising Sindh and Baluchistan) and Pakistan (comprising the
"nuclear armed Punjabi rump state"). He attributes Pakistan's balkanization to
rising nationalist sentiment in the Pashtun belt and growing disillusionment of
the Pashtuns, Balochis and Sindhis with Punjab and Pakistan.

Both Col. Peters and Harrison essentially sing the same tune and present a
doctrine that seems to broadly reflect America's long term objectives.

In his article The Destabilization of Pakistan, Michel Chossudovsky, Director of
Montreal-based, Center for Research on Globalization (author of America's "War
on Terrorism") warns: "Washington's foreign policy course is to actively promote
the political fragmentation and balkanization of Pakistan as a nation". He
states:

"The U.S. course consists of fomenting social, ethnic and factional divisions
and political fragmentation, including the territorial breakup of Pakistan. This
course of action is also dictated by U.S. war plans in relation to both Iran and
Afghanistan."

" ... a joint espionage network of CIA, Mossad, MI-6 and RAW operates in
Afghanistan to destabilize Pakistan and other regional countries.
This cannot be dismissed as conspiracy theory. There are pointers that
corroborate Chossudovsky's thesis. The Indo-US Strategic Partnership Deal "is in
place that aims at containing and curbing the rising military and economic power
of China and the increasing threat of Islamic extremism in the region". Reports
indicate that a joint espionage network of CIA, Mossad, MI-6 and RAW operates in
Afghanistan to destabilize Pakistan and other regional countries.

Evidence has emerged that dissidents from Pakistan are being trained at Sarobi
and Kandahar for missions inside NWFP, whereas bases at Lashkargah and Nawah are
being used to train dissidents from Balochistan for missions in support of
Balochistan Liberation Army.
With this backdrop, view other developments: Benazir returns after a deal with
the US and is eliminated. Musharraf is shown the door.

Zardari, a man of most dubious credentials, is catapulted into the presidency as
Benazir's replacement and assumes all powers. Economic downturn bankrupts the
country and creates social chaos. The federal and provincial governments are
completely immobilized. Corruption hits the sky. And the people begin to lose
faith in the federation.

Then as a sequence to Bombay fiasco the army is made to run from pole to post,
insurgencies erupt in the FATA, North and South Waziristan and Malakand Division
by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan - a rogue outfit aided and supported from
Afghanistan and which is a known protégé of the occupiers of Afghanistan, the
NWFP gets destabilized, the Army gets bogged down in quelling insurgencies and
maintaining internal security, Baloch separatists get energized and the people
of Pakistan are massacred and terrorized.

American interference in Pakistan's internal affairs reaches such an ominous
level that the country seems to be run by an American under secretary of state
or envoy, Richard Holbrook, rather than its elected representatives. The
parliament ceases to be of any consequence. Pakistan suddenly finds itself in
turmoil, the like of which it has not experienced before.

Even the man on the street fears that the US-Israeli-Indian nexus is out to
deprive Pakistan of its nuclear assets and dismember it in the process, if
necessary. The media is screaming that the NWFP and Balochistan are targets of
subversion. The consensus is that the American show of support and financial
assistance is hogwash and that the PPP government is a pawn in this game.

There is a pervasive fear that Pakistan has reached the edge of the precipice.

"The alternative is for all political parties to immediately come together ..."

Unfortunately Pakistan's political elite does not seem to take note of this. It
has historically lacked foresight and comprehension of the bigger picture. The
politicians ceaselessly pursue self-aggrandizement and their preoccupation is
the game of personal power politics, which makes them oblivious to the disaster
in waiting.

Their camp followers keep singing their praises and preach: `every thing will be
alright once we come to power'. To expect such political pygmies to turn the
tide would amount to committing suicide.

Can Pakistan be pulled back from the edge of the precipice? The answer is yes.
But to deal with these extraordinary circumstances Pakistan needs leadership
with extraordinary ability. Such leadership is just not there.

The alternative is for all political parties to immediately come together, shun
differences and find a way of jointly and sincerely managing the country - call
it a national government if you please.

Its first priority should be to avert the collapse that is otherwise imminent.
It must end foreign interference and pursue a national agenda instead of petty
personal agendas. The issues are critical and many and must be identified and
resolved with the collective wisdom of politicians, armed forces, technocrats
and the intelligentsia. Fundamental constitutional, political, economic and
social reforms are inevitable to give the country a fresh start. After a
pre-specified time frame of say five years, a political government could return
through fair elections.

This seems to be the solution of last resort. And if this opportunity is lost
those at the helm and those who watch silently will be considered ex-post-facto
accomplices in the dismemberment of Pakistan.


Shahid R. Siddiqi lives in Baltimore MD and in Pakistan. He served in the
Pakistan Air Force and later joined the corporate sector with which he has
remained associated until recently in Pakistan, the US and South Africa where he
has held senior positions. Simultaneously, he has worked as a journalist and a
broadcaster. He was the Bureau Chief of Pakistan & Gulf Economist, an English
weekly published from Karachi (Pakistan).

Siddiqi now writes on political and geopolitical subjects and his articles are
carried by the daily newspapers such as Dawn and The Nation (Pakistan) and
online publications such as Axis of Logic, Foreign Policy Journal, Middle East
Times and Globalia.

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