Condoleezza Rice's Neo-colonial Manifesto
by Patrick Seale
http://www.agenceglobal.com/article.asp?id=1610


In the teeth of much local and regional opposition, Washington is
pressuring Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to conclude
a "strategic alliance" with the United States, which would allow it
to keep substantial military forces in Iraq for the foreseeable
future.

Even at the cost of 4,100 of its soldiers killed, another 30,000 or
more seriously wounded, its reputation sorely tarnished, and a
trillion dollar hole in its public accounts, the United States has
clearly not yet learned the lesson that occupation breeds
insurrection.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 -- the smashing and near-dismemberment
of the country, the killing and displacement of millions of its
people -- must surely be judged one of the great crimes of our time.
To seek to stay on after this unmitigated catastrophe -- making
nonsense of Iraq's independence and sovereignty -- not only
perpetuates the crime, but is a grave strategic mistake for which
both the United States and its Iraqi vassals are likely to pay
dearly.

As had long been suspected, it looks as if the Bush administration
is seeking to tie its successor to its own failed policies, and make
it difficult, if not impossible, for a candidate like Barack Obama,
if he is elected President, to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, as he
has pledged.

The United States wants Iraq to sign a so-called Status of Forces
Agreement (SOFA) by 31 July, to replace the United Nations mandate,
which expires on 31 December, and which has so far provided the
legal cover for the presence of coalition forces in Iraq.

The obvious and far better alternative would be for the United
States to seek a new and brief UN mandate -- say of six months -- to
allow the next American President to assess the situation next year
and make his own decisions.

Although U.S.-Iraqi negotiations are being held in secret, the terms
of the proposed SOFA have been widely leaked to the British
newspaper, The Independent. They include the long-term U.S. use of
50 bases in Iraq; U.S. freedom to conduct military operations and
arrest anyone it wants in pursuit of the `war on terror', without
consulting the Baghdad government; immunity from Iraqi law for U.S.
troops and contractors; and control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000
feet. This is nothing less than a neo-colonial strait-jacket, which
has already mobilized strong political and religious opposition in
Iraq.

A striking example of the Bush administration's divorce from reality
may be seen in Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's 9,000 word
article in the current issue of the U.S. journal Foreign Affairs.

"The democratization of Iraq and the democratization of the Middle
East [are] linked," she writes. "As Iraq emerges from its
difficulties, the impact of this transformation is being felt in the
rest of the region… Our long-term partnership with Afghanistan and
Iraq, to which we must remain deeply committed, our new
relationships in Central Asia, and our long-standing partnerships in
the Persian Gulf provide a solid geostrategic foundation for the
generational work ahead in helping to bring about a better, more
democratic, and more prosperous Middle East."

It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry when one reads this
manifesto. The Iraqis don't want to be `democratized' by American
military power; the Afghans don't want a Western model of society
forced upon them; the impact of Iraq's `transformation' -- that is
to say its destruction -- has been highly destabilizing for the
whole region; some Gulf rulers may misguidedly feel the need for
U.S. military protection, but most of their subjects emphatically do
not. Arab prosperity, such as it is, owes nothing to the American
military presence and everything to oil and to Arab trading skills.

Ms. Rice appears to have no inkling of the long struggle of the
local people to rid themselves of foreign occupiers. The Iraqis
fought the British occupation in 1920, and were crushed. They tried
to expel British military bases in 1941, and were put down and the
generals involved were hanged. They rebelled against a treaty which
Britain tried to force on them in 1948; and they finally overthrew
the British-backed monarchy in a 1958 bloodbath. Disguised as a
woman, Britain's man in Iraq, Nuri al-Said, tried to flee Baghdad
but was recognized and lynched.

In Egypt, Gamal Abd al-Nasser became a hero -- whose name resonates
among Arab nationalists to this day -- because he managed to expel
British troops and nationalize the Suez Canal. The British and
French, in shameful collusion with Israel, then tried to overthrow
him and reverse the situation by their Suez expedition of 1956, but
they failed, thus putting an end to their colonial ambitions.

Lebanon's Prime Minister Riad el-Solh managed to wrest his country's
independence from the French in 1943, and expel French troops in
1946, winning a lasting reputation as the architect of his country's
sovereignty.

In our own time, Hizbullah won a region-wide reputation for
expelling Israeli troops from Lebanon in 2000, after a 22 year
occupation. Israel's Lebanese puppet, General Antoine Lahad, fled
with the remnants of his treacherous Israeli-backed South Lebanese
Army, and now runs a restaurant in Tel Aviv.

Someone should teach Ms. Rice some elementary history. Men like Nuri
al-Maliki in Iraq, Prime Minister Fuad Siniora in Lebanon, or Mahmud
Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, are not strengthened
by American or -- in the case of Abbas -- Israeli backing, but are,
on the contrary, greatly weakened. They are nervous and insecure
because robbed of the support of much of their own people.

By destroying Iraq, the United States overturned the balance in the
Gulf and made Iran a major regional power. This situation cannot
easily be reversed -- however much Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney,
Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the pro-Israeli neo-cons may
long to do so. Like it or not, the Islamic Republic is now an
unavoidable actor on the scene.

What does Tehran want? It wants to protect itself against a
U.S./Israel attack, the explicit threat of which it faces almost
daily. This, no doubt, explains its attempt to acquire a deterrent
capability. It has painful memories of the eight year Iran-Iraq war -
- when the whole Arab world (with the exception of Syria) backed
Iraq's aggression against it. It, therefore, wants to keep Iraq
under Shia governance and in close coordination with itself. It
wants a united Iraq, but not one so strong as again to threaten it
with war.

Iran wants to ensure that Iraq and the Gulf States will not allow
the United States to use their territory for an attack on it. In a
word, it wants U.S. troops to go home.

Instead of pursuing the will o' the wisp of Ms. Rice's "solid
geopolitical foundations," Washington would be far better advised to
withdraw from Iraq, engage diplomatically with Iran, and devote
itself -- with will, fairness and consistency -- to resolving the
Arab-Israeli conflict before that suppurating sore, which has
poisoned every relationship in the region, explodes in its face.


Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and
the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The
Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.

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Autopsy: No Arabs on Flight 77
Thomas R. Olmsted, M.D
http://www.physics911.net/olmsted


I am an ex Naval line officer and a
psychiatrist in private practice in New Orleans, a
Christian and home-school dad. It troubled me a great
deal that we rushed off to war on the flimsiest of
evidence. I considered various ways to provide a smoking
gun of who and why September 11th happened. Astute
observers noticed right away that there were no Arabic
sounding names on any of the flight manifests of the
planes that "crashed" on that day.

A list of names on a piece of paper is
not evidence, but an autopsy by a pathologist, is. I
undertook by Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request,
to obtain that autopsy list and you are invited to view
it below. Guess what? Still no Arabs on the list. In my
opinion the monsters who planned this crime made a
mistake by not including Arabic names on the original
list to make the ruse seem more believable.

When airline disasters occur, airlines will routinely
provide a manifest list for anxious families. You may
have noticed that even before Sep 11th, airlines are
pretty meticulous about getting an accurate headcount
before takeoff. It seems very unlikely to me, that five
Arabs sneaked onto a flight with weapons.

This is the list provided by American of the 56
passengers. On September 27th, the FBI published
photos of the "hijackers" of Flight 77.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Armed Forces Institute
of Pathology (AFIP), does a miraculous job and
identifies nearly all the bodies on November 16th 2001.

The AFIP suggest these numbers; 189 killed, 125 worked
at the Pentagon and 64 were "passengers" on the plane.
The American Airlines (AA) list only had 56 and the list
just obtained has 58. They did not explain how they were
able to tell "victims" bodies from "hijacker" bodies. In
fact, from the beginning NO explanation has been given
for the extra five suggested in news reports except that
the FBI showed us the pictures to make up the
difference, and that makes it so.

Now, being the trusting sort, I figured that the
government would want to quickly dispel any rumors so we
could get on with the chore of kicking Osama/ Sadaam's
butt (weren't these originally two different people?).
It seemed simple to me: produce the names of all the
bodies identified by the AFIP and compare it with the
publicized list of passengers. So, I sent a Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) request to the AFIP and asked for
an expedited response, because we were getting ready to
send our boys to war on the pretext that Osama/ Saddam
had done the deed. Fourteen months later, a few US
soldiers dead, many Iraqi civilians pushing up daisies,
and I finally get the list. Believe me that they weren't
a bit happy to give it up, and I really have no idea why
they choose now to release it.

No Arabs wound up on the morgue slab; however, three
ADDITIONAL people not listed by American Airlines
sneaked in. I have seen no explanation for these extras.
I did give American Airlines the opportunity to "revise"
their original list, but they have not responded. The
new names are: Robert Ploger, Zandra Ploger, and Sandra
Teague. The AFIP claims that the only "passenger" body
that they were not able to identify is the toddler, Dana
Falkenberg, whose parents and young sister are on the
list of those identified. The satanic masterminds behind
this caper may be feeling pretty smug about the perfect
crime, but they have left a raft of clues tying these
unfortunates together.

The Passengers

In the foregoing, I presented evidence
from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP),
that there were no Arabs on American Airlines Flight 77.
This doesn't really jibe with the official story, so
someone isn't telling the truth. This list itself is
suspect because there is a special group of "bone guys"
that are called in whenever the government needs an
"adjustment" to their story.

About "bone guys": No, we're not talking folks that hang
around secret Ivy League fraternities. On May 31, 2002,
the Washington Post had this to say about `bone guys':

"…When remains of the Waco dead or 9/11 Pentagon
victims or Desert Storm casualties — or most recently
Chandra Levy — need to be studied, the bone guys at the
Smithsonian are called in. The bone guys read skeletons
like intricate topological maps. Sometimes they can make
identification from a skull fragment the size of a
quarter. They can read race in the teeth and gender in
the brow. They can tell you who had an asymmetric nose.
They can tell you who may have been a factory worker,
because bones grow more pronounced to accommodate
certain muscles, and who may have been a weaver or a
tailor, based on grooves in the teeth where thread was
held…."

In other words, these were the fellows who helped tidy
up the government's story at Waco and are "studying" the
Sept 11th remains as well. By now you have probably
heard that many of the "hijackers" named by the FBI are
alive and well. The Information Times, an on-line
publication, reported that Saudi Arabia's Foreign
Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal told the Arabic Press
after meeting with President George W. Bush on Sept. 20:
"It was proved that five of the names included in the
FBI list had nothing to do with what happened."

According to The Orlando Sentinel, the Saudi Arabian
embassy confirmed that four of the five mentioned by
Al-Faisal - Saeed Alghamdi, Mohand Alshehri, Abdulaziz
Alomari and Salem Alhazmi - are not dead and had nothing
to do with the heinous terror attacks in New York and
Washington. (Source: Christopher J. Petherick - American Free Press)

From photos of all of those that perished on that
flight, it is clear that none are even "Arab looking."
This seems to rule out Arabs sneaking aboard under
assumed names. If you are familiar with `Operation
Northwoods' (see Body of Secrets by James Bamford..)
then you know that the National Security Agency (NSA)
has both the will and ability to orchestrate an
"operation" such as September 11th if they decided it
was for the "greater good." Not saying that they choose
to conduct September 11 attack, but they clearly have
the ability. According to Bamford, `Operation Northwoods'
was not planned by any "rogue element" but proposed by
General Lemnitzer, himself, and then thankfully spiked
by President Kennedy. Think also of FDR's foreknowledge
of Pearl Harbor as exposed by Robert Stinnett in his
book

Day of Deceit. Stinnett actually agrees with FDR's
decision to allow it to happen.

Brush up on the Lusitania hoax, the USS Liberty
cover-up, the Gulf of Tonkin fiction, and the Gulf War I
falsified satellite photos, etc. if you are not
convinced that government officials are capable of
stretching the truth (for our own good, of course). It
is very hard to keep a secret of this gravity. One
possible way to cut down chatter is to eliminate as many
witnesses as possible, preferably during the crime
itself.

Critics of "conspiracy theorists" have tried to nullify
talk of remote controlled planes as being the talk of
lunatics. Global Hawk (Raytheon) is a large military
aircraft that has flown 7000 miles without a pilot as
discussed in

this Air Force public affairs article, and is being
widely used in the current Iraq war.

They also make large commercial planes for FedEx that
fly by remote control as reported by the

Associated Press. The "success" of this operation
depended on the planes reaching their destination. Would
the planners (be they Arab or otherwise) trust poorly
trained "pilots" when this technology was at their
disposal?

Reported only in a Portuguese newspaper,

The Portugal News Weekend Edition (May 8, 2002) , a
group of US pilots deliberated nonstop for 72 hours in
an independent analysis of the 911 story. The inquiry
stated, "The so-called terrorist attack was in fact a
superbly executed military operation carried out against
the USA, requiring the utmost professional military
skill in command, communications, and control." Captain
Kent Hill USAF Ret, a friend of Chuck Burlingame (the
pilot of Flight 77), confirmed the ability of flying
aircraft from the ground. An ex Vietnam fighter pilot
said, "Those birds either had a crack fighter pilot in
the left seat, or they were being maneuvered by remote
control."

The following
list of passengers was gathered from many sources posted
on the Internet:

Dong Lee, Ruben Ornedo, and Chad Keller
all worked for Boeing. Lee also worked for the NSA.
Stanley Hall, "the dean of electronic warfare," (along
with Peter Gay, David Kolvacin, and Kenneth Waldie on
other flights), worked for Raytheon.

William Caswell was a particle physicist who worked for
the Navy. His job was so classified that his family had
no clue as to what he did and did not know why he was
flying to California.

Charles Droz, LCDR USN Ret, was a software developer for
EM solutions (manufacturer of Wide Area Networks).

Robert Penniger worked for BAE Systems, ("an industry
leader in flight control systems"), whose Board is
comprised of many from the intelligence community. BAE
has apparently removed their Board of Directors page,
but it list a "who's who" of high level connections to
the CIA, DARPA, and NSA. (See the appendix for a list
of outside directors of BAE Systems that were not on
Flight 77.)

Robert Ploger and his wife were added "late" to the

original CNN passenger list. He is the son of Major
General Robert R Ploger USA, Ret, another "flag" link.
The other "late" addition was Sandra Teague, a physical
therapist at Georgetown University Hospital.

John Sammartino and Leonard Taylor worked at Xontech
(missile defense), another company connected to the
intelligence community, also with ties to Boeing.

Vicki Yancey worked for Vreedenberg Corp, yet another
company connected to the intelligence community. Her
father describes her death as a "planned murder." Her
widower works for Northrup-Grumman.

Mary Jane Booth was in a position to know what was going
on at Dulles Airport as secretary for American Airlines
general manager.

John Yamnicky, 71, Capt USN Ret, was a defense
contractor for Veridian who had done a number of "black
ops," according to his son.

The physicians, lawyers, biotech representatives, and
"human interest" victims who were aboard, could also
provide important clues, but in the interest of space,
we will save them for future consideration.

Many readers recall a particular Fox Television TV show called
"The Lone Gunmen" which was aired on March 2, 2001 [Download
Episode]. In the show, the bad guys control a
passenger airplane by remote control with intentions of
flying it into the World Trade Center. The villains were
a Pentagon insider faction; the motive to inflame the
public and thereby legitimate new military budgets and
operations. Life indeed imitates art.

It has been reported that some people were warned not to
fly that day. One was reported to be Mayor Willie Brown
of San Francisco. Another was author Salman Rushdie. The
person on that flight MOST likely to be warned was
Robert Speisman. He was an executive at Lazare Kaplan, a
diamond merchant, and son in law of Maurice Templesman.
Templesman was Jackie Kennedy's long time lover and is
highly connected according to Time Magazine. Time also
reported about about his "special access" to the
National Security Council. He has also "stepped out"
with Madeleine Albright.

I attempted on three occasions to obtain a final
passenger list from American Airlines. They refuse to
give a list and in fact won't even verify that they gave
the first list to CNN. Since the list is in the public
domain, I find it curious that they would not take
ownership nor provide a current, "correct" list.

Would it even be necessary to "lure" all expendables
onto the designated death flights? Why not just grab
those you want to get rid of and then slip them into the
pile later? Have you seen an interview with the check-in
personnel for the flights who can tell us who actually
got on any of these flights? Not a chance. In fairness,
Washington, D.C. and it's suburbs draw a great number of
contractors for the military and intelligence
communities in their normal course of business. It may
be mere coincidence that these passengers were all on
the same flight; however; the government refuses to
release information which would relieve our concerns.


Appendix

List of outside diectors of BAE Systems
that were not on Flight 77:

Richard J. Kerr former Deputy Director of Central
Intelligence

Mr. Kerr served in the U.S. Intelligence community for
32 years - from September 1960 until March 1992. He
started as a country analyst in the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) and ended his career as the senior
professional intelligence officer in the U.S. government
serving as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence.

Dr. William Schneider, Jr. former Under Secretary State
for Security, Science and Technology

Prior to serving on the board, Dr. Schneider was
formerly Under Secretary of State for Security
Assistance, Science and Technology (1982-1986). He
served as Associate Director for National Security and
International Affairs at the Office of Management and
Budget (198l-2) prior to being nominated as Under
Secretary by the President.

Dr. Robert S. Cooper former Director, DARPA

Dr. Cooper is currently President, CEO, Director and
co-founder of Atlantic Aerospace Electronics
Corporation. From 1981 to 1985, Dr. Cooper was Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Research and Technology and
simultaneously held the position of Director for the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). As
Assistant Secretary, he was principal advisor to the
Secretary of Defense on the allocation of Department
resources to research, exploratory development and
advanced development projects.

General Anthony C. Zinni (Ret) former
Commander-in-Chief, CENTCOM

Gen. Zinni was formerly Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Central
Command. While in the Marine Corps he held numerous
command and staff assignments that include platoon,
company, battalion, regimental, Marine expeditionary
unit, and Marine expeditionary force command. His staff
assignments included service on battalion, regimental,
division, base, and service staffs in operations,
training, special operations, counterterrorism, and
manpower billets. Gen. Zinni most recently served as the
United States Special Envoy to the Middle East.

General Kenneth A. Minihan (Ret) former Director
National Security Agency; Central Security Service

Lt. Gen Minihan served more than thirty-three years of
active commissioned service to the nation before
retiring from the U.S. Air Force in 1999. On his final
tour of duty, he served as the 14th Director of the
National Security Agency/Central Security Service, a
combat support agency of the Department of Defense with
military and civilian personnel stationed worldwide. As
Director, he was the senior uniformed intelligence
officer in the Department of Defense. He also served as
the Director of The Defense Intelligence Agency.

Robert L. Prestel former Deputy Director, National
Security Agency

Mr. Prestel served as Deputy Director of the National
Security Agency (NSA) from 1990 - . He was the senior
civilian presiding over this Defense Agency whose
principal missions are the production of foreign Signals
Intelligence and the protection of official U.S.
Government communications and information systems.

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Fundamental Misconceptions About Israel, Iran
By Joachim Martillo
Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel
7/24/2008
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/07/participating-in-obsolete-
discourse.html


Friday, July 19 Trita Parsi and Roi Ben-Yehuda co-authored an
article entitled Essential things Israelis and Iranians should know
about each other<http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1003236.html>
that appeared in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (äàøõ). The article
represented a sophisticated attempt to create a somewhat
circumscribed space within Neocon-Zionist-dominated American
discourse to discuss Iranian-Israeli and Iranian-American issues
rationally.

Not only does the article's content feel somewhat quaint and
antiquated because Americans have begun to discuss much more openly
the pernicious effects of the Israel Lobby on American politics and
foreign policy, but its reflexive genuflection to demonstrably false
Zionist beliefs provides good evidence of the problems arising both

  *   from discussing Israel and Zionism without a good understanding
of Eastern European Jewish studies and also
  *   from collaboration with an Israeli American fairly thoroughly
indoctrinated in Zionist-American-Jewish mythology.

Here is an annotated version of the article. A blue sidebar adjoins
the original text.

Essential things Israelis and Iranians should know about each other
By Trita Parsi and Roi Ben-Yehuda
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1003236.html


The looming Iran-Israel confrontation has a seemingly deterministic
quality to it. Listening to the politicians, one gets a sense that
powers beyond our control are pulling us toward a 21st-century
disaster. Yet a great deal of the force propelling us into
confrontation is fueled by ignorance and dehumanization. Israel is
demonized as "Little Satan," while Iranians are portrayed as
irrational Muslim extremists.

Indeed, mutual ignorance of our respective societies plays into the
hands of the hard-line leaders who are calling for blood and
destruction. They manipulate and distort; above all, they do
everything to prevent us from recognizing that the enemy has a face.

"Hard-line leaders" can get away with distorting the issues because
far too few members of the public have a sufficiently thorough
understanding of the Eastern and Central European social political
cultures from which the State of Israel descends.

Not that either of us is naive enough to believe that mere knowledge
of one another will offer a miraculous solution. We do believe,
however, that mutual understanding will go a long way toward
allowing us to feel empathy and compassion for each other, and to
sound off at those calling for bloodshed and war.

Here are some essential things Iranians and Israelis should know
about each other:

1. Israel is a vibrant yet incomplete democracy

On his visit to the United States last fall, President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad famously stated that there are no homosexuals in Iran.
Well, in Israel there are plenty of homosexuals, and they are the
only ones in the Middle East who have an annual gay pride parade in
their capital city.

The authors' point is unclear.

Sexual identities represent social constructs. Western "gay-ness"
does not really exist in Middle Eastern cultures except within
Israel, which is really a transplanted mixed Central and Eastern
European Jewish society, which hosts sexual identities that were
already well-developed among German Jews and Eastern European ethnic
Ashkenazim by the early 20th century.

Both groups have been active proselytizers for regendering Western
society<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/02/jewish-zionist-war-against-
salvation.html> according to Yiddish models for at least the last 90
years.

As Columbia Professor Joseph Massad points out in Desiring Arabs,
non-Westernized (and many Westernized) Arabs that engage in
homoeroticism have no interest in the Yiddish regenderization
program and generally reject Western homosexual identity, which
Massad calls the Gay International.

Democracy in Israel means that every citizen and group (Jewish or
otherwise) has the right to express him/herself and assemble in
public. Also, that every citizen is equal under the law has voting
rights, religious freedom, access to education, health care,
opportunity.

To believe that non-Jewish citizens are equal in an officially
Jewish state is logically equivalent to believing that non-white
citizens would be equal in an officially white state.

The State of Israel is an Eastern European ethnic fundamentalist
vkisch racist formal democracy that has aspects of ethnocracy but is
really dominated by a political military economic oligarchy. Such
state organizations are common in modern Eastern European history
and only denial or lack of familiarity with modern Eastern European
political structures can explain the mischaracterization of the
Israeli state.  All sorts of official and unofficial bias are built
into the Zionist system. David Kretzmer goes through the legal
discrimination in detail in The Legal Status of the Arabs in
Israel<http://books.google.com/books?
id=lhBrAQAACAAJ&dq=The+Legal+Status+of+the+Arabs+in+Israel>.

Undoubtedly, Israel's democracy is still a work in progress. The
fusion of religion and state has limited people's rights and
freedoms (for example, Israelis of different faiths cannot legally
marry one another in the country), and the de facto secondary status
of Israeli Arabs is an affront to the country's democratic ideals.

Israel does not fuse religion and state in a Jewish counterpart of
Islamist ideas like al-Islam din wa-dawla.

Zionist ideology slices and dices Jewish religion in order to
support an ethnic fundamentalist political program in exactly the
same way other similar Eastern European political movements like
Greater Serbianism have used Christian religion.

While the second class status of Israeli Arabs (a Zionist
ideological term) may be an affront to American democratic ideals,
limiting the political voice of Israeli Palestinians (the term
preferred by most Israeli citizens descended from the native
Palestinian population<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/04/followup-ii-
origins-of-modern-jewry.html>) is a fundamental principal of Zionist
ideology.

Fortunately, many people in Israel are assiduously working to change
the system from within.

Not only is it hard to find Israeli Jews willing even to discuss
Zionist vkisch racism honestly, but Israeli Jews have no real
ability to reform the Israeli state because Zionist politics from
the earliest days of the Zionist settlement until today have been
completely dominated and controlled by the transnational
hyperwealthy Jewish political economic oligarchic elite that has
funded the Zionist movement and the Zionist settlement from the
beginning

2. Iran is a vibrant quasi-democracy

It is far from a full democracy, but neither is it a complete
dictatorship. Its severe limitations notwithstanding, Iran has a
lively civil society and possesses most of the building blocks for a
successful democracy down the road. Iranians' struggle for democracy
dates back to the 1906 Constitutional Revolution. Since then,
Iranians have learned two important lessons.

First, war and democratization don't mix. As tensions between Iran
and the outside world increase, the first to pay are Iran's pro-
democracy and human rights activists. For Iran to move toward a
democratic system, it needs peace and tranquility; bombs and
surgical strikes will achieve the opposite.

Second, when you carry out a revolution, you know against whom you
are revolting, but not necessarily for whom you are waging the
revolution. Iranians have little appetite for another revolution. As
unpopular as their current government is, they prefer gradual and
manageable change.

3. Streets are named for poets

Just like Iran, Israel puts great value on the written word. In
Israel, streets are named for poets - writers who have revived a
people and its ancient language.

The official Israeli national poet Chaim Nachman Bialik wrote in
1934 in The Present Hour:

"I too, like Hitler, believe in the power of the blood idea."


Figure 1 Rehov Bialik (Bialik Street) in Tel Aviv


The claims of national and linguistic revival are simply Zionist
propaganda.

The Truth about National Revival

Tel Aviv University Professor Shlomo
Sand<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/04/followup-ii-origins-of-modern-
jewry.html> has correctly pointed out that Judaism spread out from
Palestine [and Mesopotamia], but the ancient inhabitants of
Palestine never emigrated from their homeland. Modern ethnic
Ashkenazim and German Jews have no ancestral connection to Palestine.

During the 19th century ethnic Ashkenazim began to develop political
consciousness as a Yiddish ethnic group, which Zionist ideologists
reinterpreted as a pan-Judaic ethnonational
group<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-to-talk-about-zionism-
new-improved.html> in order to legitimize the theft of Palestine
from the native population.

The Truth about Linguistic Revival

Modern Israeli Hebrew (MIH) is fundamentally relexified Yiddish. The
vocabulary has some similarity to that of Arabic, but the grammar
and the meanings of words have much more affinity to Yiddish, German
and Slavic than to any Semitic language including Biblical or
Mishnaic Hebrew. (See Les origines des juifs
actuels<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/12/les-origines-des-juifs-
actuels.html>, The Origins of Modern
Jewry<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/10/origins-of-modern-
jewry.html> and Two-tiered Relexification in Yiddish, Jews, Sorbs,
Khazars, and the Kiev-Polessian Dialect, by Paul
Wexler<http://books.google.com/books?
id=JL7CY2MW63gC&printsec=frontcover>.)

Except for vocabulary Modern Israeli Hebrew has much more in common
with Esperanto than with Rabbinic, Mishnaic or Biblical Hebrew.

It is the pen and imagination, more than the sword and muscle, that
have been responsible for the creation of this nation.

The creation of the State of Israel was the result of the joint
efforts of

  *   Jewish economic political oligarchs in the UK and the USA (the
Cousinhood<http://members.aol.com/ThorsProvoni/JudoniaComplete/Judoni
aCompleteA.htm#_ftnref186> and Our
Crowd<http://members.aol.com/ThorsProvoni/JudoniaComplete/JudoniaComp
leteA.htm#_Toc%20%20199522948>),
  *   fanatic Russian Jewish
intelligentsia<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/04/followup-ii-origins-
of-modern-jewry.html> and
  *   the British military

in the context of a growing propensity on the part of  Eastern
European ethnic Ashkenazim to use assassination,
terrorism<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/06/whence-comes-jewish-
rage.html>, mass murder
<http://members.aol.com/ThorsProvoni/JudoniaComplete/JudoniaCompleteA
.htm#_Toc199522969>, ethnic cleansing, and
genocide<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/07/sarkozy-holocaust-1956-
versus-today.html> to achieve political goals.

Israel's historical roots are traced in a book; its people are
called the "People of the Book"; and its founding father, Theodor
Herzl, a playwright, liked to write books. It is no surprise then
that Israel leads the world in new book titles per capita per year.

The Bible develops the spiritual concept of Israel, but many
scholars doubt the historicity of ancient Israel, which in any case
has no connection with the modern vkisch nationalist concept of the
Jewish people. The phrase "People of the Book" originates with Islam
and served as the legal basis for tolerance of religious dissenters
within Islamic society at a time when similar space for freedom of
belief did not exist in the Christian world.

Central and Eastern European Jews developed a bookish orientation as
a persistent side effect of the role that Jewish trading
networks<http://members.aol.com/ThorsProvoni/JudoniaComplete/JudoniaC
ompleteA.htm#_Toc199522890> played in the international economy from
late antiquity and through the 1600s.

As in Iran, everyday conversations in Israel are as likely to be
peppered with literary references as with practical concerns.

4. Iranians are lonely and distrustful

Much like Israelis, Iranians feel painfully isolated in the Middle
East. They are surrounded by people with whom they share neither
language nor religion. Iran is majority Persian and Shi'ite; its
neighbors are majority Arab and Sunni.

Nor does Iran have many friends beyond the Middle East. If anything,
the international community has never treated them fairly, Iranians
believe. In the last century alo ne, Iranians have contended with
colonization and decades of foreign intervention, not to mention an
eight-year war against Saddam Hussein, in which the entire world
sided with Iraq.

The United Nations didn't consider Saddam's invasion a threat to
international peace and security; it took the Security Council more
than two years to call for a withdrawal. Another five years passed
before it addressed Saddam's use of chemical weapons. For the
Iranians, the lesson was clear: When in danger, Iran can rely on
neither the Geneva Conventions nor the UN Charter for protection.
Just like Israel, Iran has concluded that it can rely only on itself.

The above comment ignores a major difference between the Zionist and
the Iranian relationship with international law.

The Iranian government has suffered frequent disappointments when
the international comm unity has refused to apply international law
in conflicts that have involved Iran.  Despite such disappointments
the Iranian government has persistently reached out to governments
and peoples throughout the Arab world, Latin America, Eastern
Europe, the successor states of the Soviet Union, Asia and even to
the USA in an ongoing effort to improve Iran's international
relations.

In contrast, the Israeli government wants to thwart the application
of international legal principles to the conflict over Palestine so
that Zionists would be able to deal with the native Palestinian
population with violence, mass murder, expulsion or however Zionists
see fit without any external
interference<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/11/kovel-pulls-no-
punches.html>. To achieve this goal American Israel advocacy groups
have an ongoing project of poisoning all discourse of international
law and human rights<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/10/poisoning-
human-rights-discourse.html>.

5. Zionism is not a dirty word

In a show of disrespect, many leaders in Iran refer to Israel as
the "Zionist regime." While being called a "regime" may not be
flattering, for most Israelis, Zionism is not a dirty word.

From within, Zionism is a national liberation movement, whose aim it
is to create a safe haven for Jewish people, culture and national
identity. Zionism is the Jewish people's answer to the centuries-old
impulse to erase them from history. When Ahmadinejad and his ilk
speak of Zionism's imminent doom, they are in fact strengthening the
very movement they seek to eliminate.

Israelis joke that Israel is the only country in the world where the
words "dirty Jew" mean a Jew who has not taken a shower. In a way,
this joke encapsulates the essence of Zionism. Everything else is
commentary.

The comment is an attempt to control the discussion of Zionism and
the State of Israel by depicting normal political analysis as
equivalent to traditional anti-Jewish slurs.

Normal Political Analysis

While most non-Jews and many Jews that study Zionism fairly quickly
conclude that it represents an extremely repugnant form of racist
politics, the expression "Zionist regime" is no more disrespectful
than expressions like socialist regime, liberal regime, Labor
regime, conservative regime, royalist regime or Tory regime.

Zionists object to such usage because it separates the politics from
the government. There is a South African government today, and there
was a South African government before the end of Apartheid, but the
Apartheid regime has fallen. Because Zionism is an integralist
ideology, Zionists are unwilling to tolerate any suggestion that the
government of the State of Israel might one day have a non-Zionist
orientation.

By claiming that critics of Zionists are flinging slurs, Zionists
have been able to short-circuit any sort of rational comparative
political analysis of Zionist beliefs and practices, and Zionists
often manage to argue that Zionism is perfectly legitimate as a
national liberation movement even though by almost identical logic
German Nazis could have asserted the legitimacy of German Nazism as
a national liberation movement.

Not only do Zionists in general reserve to themselves the right to
make Hitler analogies while a significant fraction of them rail
against Islamofascism and accuse Palestinians of pogrom politics,
but the Zionist intellectual leadership has also worked hard to
render any comment about the obvious similarities of Zionism and
German Nazism as beyond the pale of acceptable political speech.

Zionists have also been running a long term social project to
indoctrinate the American public with the idea that only anti-Semite
would compare the Nakba<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/05/massad-
nakba-mankubin-holoexaleipsis.html>
(Holoexaleipsis<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/04/holoexaleipsis-
holocaust-holosphage-and.html>) to the
Holocaust<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/01/bringing-holocaust-
religion-to-arabs.html>

  *   even though conditions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
are generally worse than the situation in German Nazi occupied
Poland circa 1940 and

  *   even though Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazim were up to their
eyeballs in mass murder, ethnic cleansing and
genocide<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/02/pattern-of-ethnic-
ashkenazi.html> long before Hitler invaded the Soviet Union and the
WW2 mass murder of Jews began.


Anti-Jewish Slurs

The term dirty Jews may not in fact originate with anti-Jewish
gentiles. In Yiddish shmutsike yidn (equivalent to German schmutzige
Juden) constitute the lowest class of Jews after proste yidn
<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/01/money-jews-brain-jews-
politics.html>. Yiddish also provides a euphemism for this class in
àåøçé ôÌøçé (orkhe porkhe). If treated as loshn-koydesh, this phrase
means fleeting travelers, itinerants or hoboes, but porkhe is
probably the Polish word porch, which means a scabby, mangy, low-
class, mean, stingy, nasty or vulgar person. Porch (adjective
parszywy) overlaps in connotation to a large extent with shmutsik or
schmutzig.

Not only can the traditional Yiddish class terminology still be
heard in Israel albeit often in Modern Israeli Hebrew calques, but
far too many Israeli and non-Israeli Jews have no reluctance
whatsoever to slander Arabs as dirty, and the phrase arabushim
melukhlakhim is on the lips of far too many Hebrew-speaking Jews.

Here is an example of Zionist Jewish defamation of Arabs from
Theodor Herzl's book Alt-Neuland (Old New Land).

Kingscourt und Friedrich beeilten sich auch fortzukommen. Sie fuhren
auf der schlechten Eisenbahn nach Jerusalem. Auch auf diesem Wege
Bilder tiefster Verkommenheit. Das flache Land fast nur Sand und
Sumpf. Die mageren ker wie verbrannt. Schwzliche Dfer von Arabern.
Die Bewohner hatten ein rberhaftes Aussehen. Die Kinder spielten
nackt in Stranstaube.

Kingscourt and Friedrich hurried to get away. They traveled on the
miserable railroad to Jerusalem. Even on this route, scenes of the
deepest depravity. Flat land almost only sand and swamp. The spare
cultivated fields as if scorched. Colorless villages of Arabs. The
inhabitants looked like robbers. The children played naked in the
street dust.

6. Sympathy with Palestinians, but no desire for conflict with Israel

Ahmadinejad's venomous rhetoric notwithstanding, Iranians don't
spend much time thinking about Israel. They are far more concerned
about Iran's crippled economy and rampant corruption. While the
sympathies of most Iranians fall squarely with the Palestinians,
this is not an issue they feel their country must be a ctively
involved in.

Likewise, few populations or governments that considered Apartheid
South Africa or Nazi Germany repugnant were spoiling for a war with
either of these two states.

Yet as Jabotinskian Zionist political power wanes in the USA and
Zionist Jewish political economic oligarchs come under increasing
scrutiny, now may not be the time to enter into polite
discussion<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/04/zioshmooze-vs-plain-
english.html> with American Zionists.

As more and more gentile and Jewish Americans become critical or
even hostile to the State of Israel, proposing an American tilt from
Israel to Iran makes a lot of sense.

Such a political shift is hardly unprecedented in American history.
Under President Nixon, the United States recognized the PRC as the
legal government of China despite more than two decades of alliance
with the RoC.

Because of the damage that Jabotinksian Neocon Zionists have caused
the USA<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/07/one-economic-crisis-or-
two.html>, Americans might be willing to entertain an even more
radical shift in foreign policy.

Neocons and Zionist Americans have no problem with regime change,
invasion, and massive population dislocation in Arab and Muslim
countries. Not only is turnabout is fair play, but the Zionist
intelligentsia and its allies shamelessly argue for military
intervention in the Sudan ethough there is a far better argument for
regime change, invasion, and forced transfer of (Zionist interloper)
population in the case of Israel than there ever was in the case of
Iraq or is in the case of the Sudan. As a side effect of declaring
Israel a terrorist enemy state, the US government could force those
responsible for wrecking the US economy
<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/07/one-economic-crisis-or-two.html>
to pony up the cash and assets to fix it. At the very least, if the
USA treated Israel as an enemy state, Arabs and Muslims would no
longer consider American leaders hypocritical in claiming to support
democracy, human rights and anti-racism.

Iranians will fiercely defend their independence and territory, yet
they have no desire for conflict with Israel. Iranians remember
Alexander's sacking of Persia, the Arab conquest in the seventh
century C.E., the Mongol invasion, and the 1953 CIA coup against
Iran's democratically elected prime minister. But there is no
recollection of any conflict with the Jewish people because there
hasn't been one. Most Iranians would like to keep it that way.

Of course, Iranians have no historical memory of conflict with the
Jewish people. The Jewish people is a modern construct
<http://mondediplo.com/2008/05/18invented> less than 200 years old.
Conversely modern German and E. European Yiddish Jews have no
historical relationship with Persian-speakers even if some of the
ancestral pre-Ashkenazi populations

  *   that lived in the region of the Black sea and
  *   that were probably incorporated into the Judaizing Khazar
empire <http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/10/origins-of-modern-
jewry.html> may have had kinship connections to populations within
neighboring Iranian political entities.

Yet Zionists do have scriptural sources like the Book of Esther that
can be used to incite hostility against Iranians
<http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/04/followup-ii-origins-of-modern-
jewry.html>, and no Iranian political entity, whatever its
ideological or religious orientation, is likely to accept
permanently a status quo in which any Levantine entity has hegemony
over a region that Iranian states have historically considered their
natural geopolitical sphere of influence.

Roi Ben-Yehuda is an Israeli-American writer living in Spain. He is
a regular contributer to Jewcy and France 24. His blog can be read
at Roi's Word Weblog<http://roiword.wordpress.com/>

Dr. Trita Parsi is the author of "Treacherous Alliance - The Secret
Dealings of Israel, Iran and the US" Yale University Press, 2007), a
Silver Medal Recipient of the Council on Foreign Relations' Arthur
Ross Book Award, the most significant award for a book on foreign
affairs. www.tritaparsi.com<http://www.tritaparsi.com/>

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Savage Loses in Court - Help CAIR Fight Bigotryþ
From: The Staff at CAIR (info@...)
Fri 8/01/08


Dear CAIR Supporter,

Over the years, Muslim radio listeners nationwide have complained to
CAIR about talk show host Michael Savage's vicious attacks on Islam.
You asked us to take action, and we did. In retaliation, Savage sued
CAIR, but last week his lawsuit was thrown out of court. Today, CAIR
is asking you to help us continue our fight on your behalf. Hate
speech should not be accepted in our society, and Savage should not
succeed in silencing our voices.

We hope you will join us in celebrating what many are calling a huge
victory for freedom of speech.

Last year during a nationally-syndicated radio broadcast, host
Michael Savage screamed attacks on Muslims, Islam and the Quran.

Savage's anti-Muslim rant included: "I don't wanna hear anymore
about Islam. I don't wanna hear one more word about Islam. Take your
religion and shove it up your behind. I'm sick of you."

To listen to Savage's anti-Muslim rant, click here

http://www.cair.com/ArticleDetails.aspx?
mid1=763&&ArticleID=23609&&name=n&&currPage=2


As you know, CAIR's response to these attacks, coupled with the
efforts of other like-minded organizations, cost Savage advertisers
like Sears, Sam's Club and GEICO Insurance. He told reporters that
he lost more than $1 million in revenue.

In response to our anti-hate campaign, Savage sued CAIR. He claimed
that our replaying of his bigoted remarks infringed on
his "copyright." We simply believed people had a right to hear and
judge his hate-filled words for themselves.

THE GOOD NEWS: In a ruling issued on Friday, Federal Judge Susan
Illston dismissed Savage's lawsuit against CAIR.

In her ruling, Judge Illston wrote that the lawsuit Savage filed
was "a dispute about...the protections of the First Amendment,
protections upon which plaintiff (himself) relies for his livelihood
and the airing of his radio program." Judge Illston also implied
that the lawsuit may have been brought in an effort to "harass" CAIR.


See: District Court Spanks Michael Savage

http://www.citmedialaw.org/blog/2008/district-court-spanks-michael-
savage-suit-using-audio-clip-criticism-fair-use


We could not have won this case without the help we have received
from supporters like you. Despite this legal victory, our work
continues. Savage's attorney has been quoted in the media as saying
they plan to file another complaint against us.

Freedom is not free. Justice does not defend itself. Lawsuits are
costly. This case, part of defending the truth about muslims and
their faith , has channeled resources away from our normal civil
rights and advocacy work. Michael Savage's malicious words are not
only directed at Muslims. He has issued on-air insults against
immigrants, African-Americans, women, and most recently autistic
children, who he called "brats" and "morons."

See: In Wake of Protests, Advertisers Don't Want to Support 'Savage
Nation'

http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/Parenting/story?id=5457991&page=1

CAIR needs to continue shining a public spotlight on people like
Michael Savage who do not speak for the majority of Americans, and
who only serve to divide America along religious, ethnic and racial
lines.

Ahmed Rehab told the San Francisco Chronicle that CAIR will continue
to stand up to Savage's bigotry and will not be bogged down by his
knack for retaliatory fluff lawsuits.

Such lawsuits are often a strategy designed to deplete our much
needed funds and weaken our ability to defend the truth and fight
for justice. Savage has had his say. Now you can have yours. While
he tries to destroy your community organizations through frivolous
lawsuits, you can redouble your efforts to help build them through
your immediate action today. This is your fight.

Your financial support TODAY will help ensure that CAIR is able to
provide work on your behalf for many years to come.

To donate:

https://secure.cair.com/site/Donation2?
idb=993512394&df_id=1180&1180.donation=form1&JServSessionIdr010=c7ec2
a3rw2.app6a

Sincerely,

The Staff at CAIR


P.S. We attribute this legal triumph over hate both to the support
of people like you and other groups who believed in our work. We
were represented in court by the well-respected law firm of Davis
Wright Tremaine and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. We
coordinated media coverage of this issue with organizations such as
Hate Hurts America and Brave New Films.


Donations to CAIR are tax-deductible and zakat eligible

CAIR is a not-for-profit organization recognized as tax-exempt under
U.S. Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3).

Council on American-Islamic Relations
453 New Jersey Ave, S.E., Washington, D.C., 20003
Council on American-Islamic Relations

http://www.cair.com/AboutUs/VisionMissionCorePrinciples.aspx

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If Iran is Attacking It Might Really be Israel
by Philip Giraldi
July 24th, 2008
The American Conservative
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2008/07/24/if-iran-is-attacking-it-
might-really-be-israel/


The Benny Morris op-ed in the NYT last Friday should provide
convincing evidence that Israel really really really wants an attack
against Iran sooner rather than later.  Morris is close to the
Israeli government and his case that Iran must be bombed soon and
with maximum conventional weaponry to avoid using nukes later was
clearly intended to push the United States to do the attacking.  The
likelihood that Dick Cheney is almost certainly supportive of a US
pre-emptive strike and might well be pulling strings behind the
scenes, possibly without the knowledge of the Great Decider, makes
the next several months particularly significant if a war is to be
avoided.

Some intel types are beginning to express concerns that the Israelis
might do something completely crazy to get the US involved.  There
are a number of possible "false flag" scenarios in which the
Israelis could insert a commando team in the Persian Gulf or use
some of their people inside Iraq to stage an incident that they will
make to look Iranian, either by employing Iranian weapons or by
leaving a communications footprint that points to Tehran's
involvement.

Those who argue that Israel would never do such a thing should think
again.  Israel is willing to behave with complete ruthlessness
towards the US if they feel that the stakes are high enough, witness
the attack on the USS Liberty and the bombing of the US Consulate in
Alexandria in the 1950s.  If they now believe that Iran is a threat
that must be eliminated it is not implausible to assume that they
will stop at nothing to get the the United States to do it for them,
particularly as their air force is only able to damage the Iranian
nuclear program, not destroy it.

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Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News by Glenn Greenwald
is so interesting that I have to point this blog's readers to it,
and it really does have Jewish-Islamic element that connects it to
the theme of this blog.

According to Greenwald Bruce E. Ivins, the alleged anthrax letter
assassin, sent the following message in 2006 to the Maryland
Frederick News in apparent condemnation of interfaith dialogue.

Rabbi Morris Kosman is entirely correct in summarily rejecting the
demands of the Frederick Imam for a "dialogue."

By blood and faith, Jews are God's chosen, and have no need
for "dialogue" with any gentile. End of "dialogue."


Here is the whole article.

===

Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News
Glenn Greenwald
Friday Aug. 1, 2008
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/01/anthrax/


[NOTE: There are many hyper links in the above article. If you want
more information on this topic, go to the above website. -WVNS]


The FBI's lead suspect in the September, 2001 anthrax attacks --
Bruce E. Ivins -- died Tuesday night, apparently by suicide, just as
the Justice Department was about to charge him with responsibility
for the attacks. For the last 18 years, Ivins was a top anthrax
researcher at the U.S. Government's biological weapons research
laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, where he was one of the most
elite government anthrax scientists on the research team at the U.S.
Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID).

The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the
post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably
the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make
a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential. The
9/11 attacks were obviously traumatic for the country, but in the
absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been
perceived as a single, isolated event. It was really the anthrax
letters -- with the first one sent on September 18, just one week
after 9/11 -- that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created
the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several
years after. It was anthrax -- sent directly into the heart of the
country's elite political and media institutions, to then-Senate
Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt), NBC News
anchor Tom Brokaw, and other leading media outlets -- that created
the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by
Islamic radicalism.

If the now-deceased Ivins really was the culprit behind the attacks,
then that means that the anthrax came from a U.S. Government lab,
sent by a top U.S. Army scientist at Ft. Detrick. Without resort to
any speculation or inferences at all, it is hard to overstate the
significance of that fact. From the beginning, there was a clear
intent on the part of the anthrax attacker to create a link between
the anthrax attacks and both Islamic radicals and the 9/11 attacks.
This was the letter sent to Brokaw:


The letter sent to Leahy contained this message:

We have anthrax.

You die now.

Are you afraid?

Death to America.

Death to Israel.

Allah is great.

By design, those attacks put the American population into a state of
intense fear of Islamic terrorism, far more than the 9/11 attacks
alone could have accomplished.

Much more important than the general attempt to link the anthrax to
Islamic terrorists, there was a specific intent -- indispensably
aided by ABC News -- to link the anthrax attacks to Iraq and Saddam
Hussein. In my view, and I've written about this several times and
in great detail to no avail, the role played by ABC News in this
episode is the single greatest, unresolved media scandal of this
decade. News of Ivins' suicide, which means (presumably) that the
anthrax attacks originated from Ft. Detrick, adds critical new facts
and heightens how scandalous ABC News' conduct continues to be in
this matter.

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross,
continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that
government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft.
Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the
chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter
Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the
anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the
attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a
trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons
program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce
biological weapons."

ABC News' claim -- which they said came at first from "three well-
placed but separate sources," followed by "four well-placed and
separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There
never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News
acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my
badgering them about this issue). It's critical to note that it
isn't the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite
and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found
or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just
concocted from the start. It just never happened.

That means that ABC News' "four well-placed and separate sources"
fed them information that was completely false -- false information
that created a very significant link in the public mind between the
anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein. And look where -- according to
Brian Ross' report on October 28, 2001 -- these tests were conducted:

And despite continued White House denials, four well-placed and
separate sources have told ABC News that initial tests on the
anthrax by the US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland, have detected
trace amounts of the chemical additives bentonite and silica.
Two days earlier, Ross went on ABC News' World News Tonight with
Peter Jennings and, as the lead story, breathlessly reported:
The discovery of bentonite came in an urgent series of tests
conducted at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and elsewhere.
Clearly, Ross' allegedly four separate sources had to have some
specific knowledge of the tests conducted and, if they were
really "well-placed," one would presume that meant they had some
connection to the laboratory where the tests were conducted -- Ft.
Detrick. That means that the same Government lab where the anthrax
attacks themselves came from was the same place where the false
reports originated that blamed those attacks on Iraq.

It's extremely possible -- one could say highly likely -- that the
same people responsible for perpetrating the attacks were the ones
who fed the false reports to the public, through ABC News, that
Saddam was behind them. What we know for certain -- as a result of
the letters accompanying the anthrax -- is that whoever perpetrated
the attacks wanted the public to believe they were sent by foreign
Muslims. Feeding claims to ABC News designed to link Saddam to those
attacks would, for obvious reasons, promote the goal of the anthrax
attacker(s).

Seven years later, it's difficult for many people to recall, but, as
I've amply documented, those ABC News reports linking Saddam and
anthrax penetrated very deeply -- by design -- into our public
discourse and into the public consciousness. Those reports were
absolutely vital in creating the impression during that very
volatile time that Islamic terrorists generally, and Iraq and Saddam
Hussein specifically, were grave, existential threats to this
country. As but one example: after Ross' lead report on the October
26, 2001 edition of World News Tonight with Peter Jennings claiming
that the Government had found bentonite, this is what Jennings said
into the camera:

This news about bentonite as the additive being a trademark of the
Iraqi biological weapons program is very significant. Partly because
there's been a lot of pressure on the Bush administration inside and
out to go after Saddam Hussein. And some are going to be quick to
pick up on this as a smoking gun.
That's exactly what happened. The Weekly Standard published two
lengthy articles attacking the FBI for focusing on a domestic
culprit and -- relying almost exclusively on the ABC/Ross report --
insisted that Saddam was one of the most likely sources for those
attacks. In November, 2001, they published an article (via Lexis)
which began:
On the critical issue of who sent the anthrax, it's time to give
credit to the ABC website, ABCNews.com, for reporting rings around
most other news organizations. Here's a bit from a comprehensive
story filed late last week by Gary Matsumoto, lending further
credence to the commonsensical theory (resisted by the White House)
that al Qaeda or Iraq -- and not some domestic Ted Kaczynski type --
is behind the germ warfare.
The Weekly Standard published a much lengthier and more dogmatic
article in April, 2002 again pushing the ABC "bentonite" claims and
arguing: "There is purely circumstantial though highly suggestive
evidence that might seem to link Iraq with last fall's anthrax
terrorism." The American Enterprise Institute's Laurie Mylroie (who
had an AEI article linking Saddam to 9/11 ready for publication at
the AEI on September 13) expressly claimed in November, 2001
that "there is also tremendous evidence that subsequent anthrax
attacks are connected to Iraq" and based that accusation almost
exclusively on the report from ABC and Ross ("Mylroie: Evidence
Shows Saddam Is Behind Anthrax Attacks").

And then, when President Bush named Iraq as a member of the "Axis of
Evil" in his January, 2002 State of the Union speech -- just two
months after ABC's report, when the anthrax attacks were still very
vividly on the minds of Americans -- he specifically touted this
claim:

The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and
nuclear weapons for over a decade.
Bush's invocation of Iraq was the only reference in the State of the
Union address to the unsolved anthrax attacks. And the Iraq-anthrax
connection was explicitly made by the President at a time when, as
we now know, he was already eagerly planning an attack on Iraq.

There can't be any question that this extremely flamboyant though
totally false linkage between Iraq and the anthrax attacks --
accomplished primarily by the false bentonite reports from ABC News
and Brian Ross -- played a very significant role in how Americans
perceived of the Islamic threat generally and Iraq specifically. As
but one very illustrative example, The Washington Post's columnist,
Richard Cohen, supported the invasion of Iraq, came to regret that
support, and then explained what led him to do so, in a 2004 Post
column entitled "Our Forgotten Panic":

I'm not sure if panic is quite the right word, but it is close
enough. Anthrax played a role in my decision to support the Bush
administration's desire to take out Saddam Hussein. I linked him to
anthrax, which I linked to Sept. 11. I was not going to stand by and
simply wait for another attack -- more attacks. I was going to go to
the source, Hussein, and get him before he could get us. As time
went on, I became more and more questioning, but I had a hard time
backing down from my initial whoop and holler for war.
Cohen -- in a March 18, 2008 Slate article in which he explains why
he wrongfully supported the attack on Iraq -- disclosed this:
Anthrax. Remember anthrax? It seems no one does anymore -- at least
it's never mentioned. But right after the terrorist attacks of Sept.
11, 2001, letters laced with anthrax were received at the New York
Post and Tom Brokaw's office at NBC. . . . There was ample reason to
be afraid.

The attacks were not entirely unexpected. I had been told soon after
Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come
in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I
immediately acted on it. I was carrying Cipro way before most people
had ever heard of it.

For this and other reasons, the anthrax letters appeared linked to
the awful events of Sept. 11. It all seemed one and the same.
Already, my impulse had been to strike back, an overwhelming urge
that had, in fact, taken me by surprise on Sept. 11 itself when the
first of the Twin Towers had collapsed. . . .

In the following days, as the horror started to be airbrushed -- no
more bodies plummeting to the sidewalk -- the anthrax letters
started to come, some to people I knew. And I thought, No, I'm not
going to sit here passively and wait for it to happen. I wanted to
go to "them," whoever "they" were, grab them by the neck, and get
them before they could get us. One of "them" was Saddam Hussein. He
had messed around with anthrax . . . He was a nasty little fascist,
and he needed to be dealt with.

That, more or less, is how I made my decision to support the war in
Iraq.

Cohen's mental process that led him to link anthrax to Iraq and then
to support an attack on Iraq, warped as it is, was extremely common.
Having heard ABC News in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attack
flamboyantly and repeatedly link Saddam to the anthrax attacks,
followed by George Bush's making the same linkage (albeit more
subtly) in his January, 2002 State of the Union speech, much of the
public had implanted into their minds that Saddam Hussein was not
just evil, but a severe threat to the U.S., likely the primary
culprit behind the anthrax attacks. All along, though, the anthrax
came from a U.S. Government/Army research lab.

Critically, ABC News never retracted its story (they merely noted,
as they had done from the start, that the White House denied the
reports). And thus, the linkage between Saddam and the anthrax
attacks -- every bit as false as the linkage between Saddam and the
9/11 attacks -- persisted.

We now know -- we knew even before news of Ivins' suicide last
night, and know especially in light of it -- that the anthrax
attacks didn't come from Iraq or any foreign government at all. It
came from our own Government's scientist, from the top Army
bioweapons research laboratory. More significantly, the false
reports linking anthrax to Iraq also came from the U.S. Government --
  from people with some type of significant links to the same
facility responsible for the attacks themselves.

Surely the question of who generated those false Iraq-anthrax
reports is one of the most significant and explosive stories of the
last decade. The motive to fabricate reports of bentonite and a link
to Saddam is glaring. Those fabrications played some significant
role -- I'd argue a very major role -- in propagandizing the
American public to perceive of Saddam as a threat, and further,
propagandized the public to believe that our country was
sufficiently threatened by foreign elements that a whole series of
radical policies that the neoconservatives both within and outside
of the Bush administration wanted to pursue -- including an attack
an Iraq and a whole array of assaults on our basic constitutional
framework -- were justified and even necessary in order to survive.

ABC News already knows the answers to these questions. They know who
concocted the false bentonite story and who passed it on to them
with the specific intent of having them broadcast those false claims
to the world, in order to link Saddam to the anthrax attacks and --
as importantly -- to conceal the real culprit(s) (apparently within
the U.S. government) who were behind the attacks. And yet,
unbelievably, they are keeping the story to themselves, refusing to
disclose who did all of this. They're allegedly a news organization,
in possession of one of the most significant news stories of the
last decade, and they are concealing it from the public, even years
later.

They're not protecting "sources." The people who fed them the
bentonite story aren't "sources." They're fabricators and liars who
purposely used ABC News to disseminate to the American public an
extremely consequential and damaging falsehood. But by protecting
the wrongdoers, ABC News has made itself complicit in this fraud
perpetrated on the public, rather than a news organization
uncovering such frauds. That is why this is one of the most extreme
journalistic scandals that exists, and it deserves a lot more debate
and attention than it has received thus far.

UPDATE: One other fact to note here is how bizarrely inept the
effort by the Bush DOJ to find the real attacker has been. Extremely
suspicious behavior from Ivins -- including his having found and
completely cleaned anthrax traces on a co-worker's desk at the Ft.
Detrick lab without telling anyone that he did so and then offering
extremely strange explanations for why -- was publicly reported as
early as 2004 by The LA Times (Ivins "detected an apparent anthrax
leak in December 2001, at the height of the anthrax mailings
investigation, but did not report it. Ivins considered the problem
solved when he cleaned the affected office with bleach").

In October 2004, USA Today reported that Ivins was involved in
another similar incident, in April of 2002, when Ivins performed
unauthorized tests to detect the origins of more anthrax residue
found at Ft. Detrick. Yet rather than having that repeated, strange
behavior lead the FBI to discover that he was involved in the
attacks, there was a very public effort -- as Atrios notes here --
to blame the attacks on Iraq and then, ultimately, to blame Stephen
Hatfill. Amazingly, as Atrios notes here, very few people other
than "a few crazy bloggers are even interested" in finding out what
happened here and why -- at least to demand that ABC News report the
vital information that it already has that will shed very
significant light on much of this.

UPDATE II: Ivins' local paper, Frederick News in Maryland, has
printed several Letters to the Editor written by Ivins over the
years. Though the underlying ideology is a bit difficult to discern,
he seems clearly driven by a belief in the need for Christian
doctrine to govern our laws and political institutions, with a
particular interest in Catholic dogma. He wrote things like this:

Today we frequently admonish people who oppose abortion, euthanasia,
assisted suicide or capital punishment to keep their religious,
moral, and philosophical beliefs to themselves.

Before dispensing such admonishments in the future, perhaps we
should gratefully consider some of our country's most courageous,
historical figures who refused to do so.

And then there's this rather cryptic message, published in 2006:
Rabbi Morris Kosman is entirely correct in summarily rejecting the
demands of the Frederick Imam for a "dialogue."

By blood and faith, Jews are God's chosen, and have no need
for "dialogue" with any gentile. End of "dialogue."

It should be noted that the lawyer who had been representing Ivins
in connection with the anthrax investigation categorically maintains
Ivins' innocence and attributes his suicide to "the relentless
pressure of accusation and innuendo."

On a note related to the main topic of the post, macgupta in
comments notes the numerous prominent people in addition to those
mentioned here -- including The Wall St. Jorunal Editors and former
CIA Director James Woolsey -- who insisted rather emphatically from
the beginning of the anthrax attacks that Saddam was likely to
blame. Indeed, the WSJ Editorial Page -- along with others on the
Right such as Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report and Fox
News -- continued even into 2007 to insist that the FBI was erring
by focusing on domestic suspects rather than Middle Easterners.

The Nation's Michael Massing noted at the time (in November, 2001)
that as a direct result of the anthrax attacks, and the numerous
claims insinuating that Iraq was behind them, "the political and
journalistic establishment suddenly seems united in wanting to
attack Iraq." There has long been an intense desire on the
neoconservative Right to falsely link anthrax to Saddam specifically
and Muslims generally. ABC News was, and (as a result of its
inexcusable silence) continues to be, their best friend.

UPDATE III: See this important point from Atrios about Richard
Cohen's admission that he was told before the anthrax attacks
happened by a "high government official" to take cipro. Atrios
writes: "now that we know that the US gov't believes that anthrax
came from the inside, shouldn't Cohen be a wee bit curious about
what this warning was based on?"

That applies to much of the Beltway class, including many well-
connected journalists, who were quietly popping cipro back then
because, like Cohen, they heard from Government sources that they
should. Leave aside the ethical questions about the fact that these
journalists kept those warnings to themselves. Wouldn't the most
basic journalistic instincts lead them now -- in light of the claims
by our Government that the attacks came from a Government scientist -
- to wonder why and how their Government sources were warning about
an anthrax attack? Then again, the most basic journalistic instincts
would have led ABC News to reveal who concocted and fed them the
false "Saddam/anthrax" reports in the first place, and yet we still
are forced to guess at those questions because ABC News continues to
cover up the identity of the perpetrators.

UPDATE IV: John McCain, on the David Letterman Show, October 18,
2001 (days before ABC News first broadcast their bentonite report):

LETTERMAN: How are things going in Afghanistan now?

MCCAIN: I think we're doing fine . . . I think we'll do fine. The
second phase -- if I could just make one, very quickly -- the second
phase is Iraq. There is some indication, and I don't have the
conclusions, but some of this anthrax may -- and I emphasize may --
have come from Iraq.

LETTERMAN: Oh is that right?

MCCAIN: If that should be the case, that's when some tough decisions
are gonna have to be made.

ThinkProgress has the video. Someone ought to ask McCain
what "indication" he was referencing that the anthrax "may have come
from Iraq."

After all, three days later, McCain and Joe Lieberman went on Meet
the Press (on October 21, 2001) and both strongly suggested that we
would have to attack Iraq. Lieberman said that the anthrax was so
complex and potent that "there's either a significant amount of
money behind this, or this is state-sponsored, or this is stuff that
was stolen from the former Soviet program."

As I said, it is not possible to overstate the importance of anthrax
in putting the country into the state of fear that led to the attack
on Iraq and so many of the other abuses of the Bush era. There are
few news stories more significant, if there are any, than unveiling
who the culprits were behind this deliberate propaganda. The fact
that the current GOP presidential nominee claimed back then on
national television to have some "indication" linking Saddam to the
anthrax attacks makes it a bigger story still.

UPDATE V: I tried to be careful here to avoid accepting as True the
matter of Ivins' guilt. Very early on in the article, I framed the
analysis this way: "If the now-deceased Ivins really was the culprit
behind the attacks, then that means that the anthrax came from a
U.S. Government lab," and I then noted in Update II that Ivins'
lawyer vehemently maintains his innocence. My whole point here is
that the U.S. Government now claims the anthrax attacks came from a
Government scientist at a U.S. Army lab, and my conclusions follow
from that premise, accepted as true only for purposes of this
analysis.

It's worth underscoring that it is far from clear that Ivins had
anything to do with the anthrax attacks, and someone in comments
claiming (anonymously though credibly) that he knew Ivins personally
asserts that Ivins was innocent and makes the case as to why the
Government's accusations are suspect. As I see it, the more doubt
there is about who was responsible for the anthrax attacks, the
greater is the need for ABC News to reveal who fabricated their
reports linking the attacks to Iraq.

UPDATE VI: I'll be on Rachel Maddow's radio show tonight at 8:30
p.m. EST to discuss this story. Local listings and live audio feed
are here.

Numerous people have advised me in comments and via email that ABC
News is deleting any mention of my piece today in the comment
section to their article on the Ivins suicide (though many such
comments now seem to be posted there). Last year, ABC was in full
denial mode when responding to the stories I wrote about this issue.
The key here, I think, will be to try to devise the right strategy
to induce the right Congressional Committee to hold hearings on the
false ABC News stories and the anthrax issue generally. I hope to
have more details on that effort shortly.

-- Glenn Greenwald

Rabia al Basri - Saint of Islam
http://www.poetseers.org/spiritual_and_devotional_poets/sufi/rabia


Rabia al Basri  717-801


Not much is known about Rabia al Basri, except that she lived in
Basra in Iraq, in the second half of the 8th century AD.  She was
born into poverty. But many spiritual stories are associated with
her and what we can glean about her is reality merged with legend.
These traditions come from Farid ud din Attar a later sufi saint and
poet, who used earlier sources. Rabia herself though has not left
any written works.

After her father's death, there was a famine in Basra, and during
that she was parted from her family. It is not clear how she was
traveling in a caravan that was set upon by robbers. She was taken
by the robbers and sold into slavery.

Her master worked her very hard, but at night after finishing her
chores Rabia would turn to meditation and prayers and praising the
Lord. Foregoing rest and sleep she spent her nights in prayers and
she often fasted during the day.

There is a story that once, while in the market, she was pursued by
a vagabond and in running to save herself she fell and broke her
arm. She prayed to the Lord .


"I am a poor orphan and a slave,  Now my hand too is broken.  But I
do not mind these things if Thou be pleased with me. "



and felt a voice reply:

     "Never mind all these sufferings. On the Day of Judgement you
shall  be accorded a status that shall be the envy of the angels
even"

One day the master of the house spied her at her devotions. There
was a divine light enveloping her as she prayed. Shocked that he
kept such a pious soul as a slave, he set her free. Rabia went into
the desert to pray and became an ascetic. Unlike many sufi saints
she did not learn from a teacher or master but turned to God
himself.

Throughout her life, her Love of God. Poverty and self-denial were
unwavering and her constant companions. She did not possess much
other than a broken jug, a rush mat and a brick, which she used as a
pillow. She spent all night in prayer and contemplation chiding
herself if she slept for it took her away from her active Love of
God.

As her fame grew she had many disciples. She also had discussions
with many of the renowned religious people of her time. Though she
had many offers of marriage, and tradition has it one even from the
Amir of Basra, she refused them as she had no time in her life for
anything other than God.

More interesting than her absolute asceticism, however, is the
actual concept of Divine Love that Rabia introduced.  She was the
first to introduce the idea that God should be loved for God's own
sake, not out of fear--as earlier Sufis had done.

She taught that repentance was a gift from God because no one could
repent unless God had already accepted him and given him this gift
of repentance.  She taught that sinners must fear the punishment
they deserved for their sins, but she also offered such sinners far
more hope of Paradise than most other ascetics did.  For herself,
she held to a higher ideal, worshipping God neither from fear of
Hell nor from hope of Paradise, for she saw such self-interest as
unworthy of God's servants; emotions like fear and hope were like
veils -- i.e. hindrances to the vision of God Himself.

She prayed:

  "O Allah! If I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell,

and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise.

But if I worship You for Your Own sake,

grudge me not Your everlasting Beauty."



Rabia was in her early to mid eighties when she died, having
followed the mystic Way to the end.  By then, she was continually
united with her Beloved.  As she told her Sufi friends, "My Beloved
is always with me"



Taken from www.maryams.net




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To Provoke War, Cheney Considered Proposal To Dress Up Navy Seals As
Iranians And Shoot At Them
Think Progress
July 31, 2008


Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this
month, Seymour Hersh — a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The
New Yorker — revealed that Bush administration officials held a
meeting recently in the Vice President's office to discuss ways to
provoke a war with Iran.

In Hersh's most recent article, he reports that this meeting
occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of
Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian
speedboats. The "meeting took place in the Vice-President's
office. `The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran
and Washington,'" according to one of Hersh's sources.

During the journalism conference event, I asked Hersh specifically
about this meeting and if he could elaborate on what occurred. Hersh
explained that, during the meeting in Cheney's office, an idea was
considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake
Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to
provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected:


HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war.
The one that interested me the most was why don't we build — we in
our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT
boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one
of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.
Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can't have
Americans killing Americans. That's the kind of — that's the level
of stuff we're talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

Watch it:

Hersh argued that one of the things the Bush administration learned
during the encounter in the Strait of Hormuz was that, "if you get
the right incident, the American public will support" it.
"Look, is it high school? Yeah," Hersh said. "Are we playing high
school with you know 5,000 nuclear warheads in our arsenal? Yeah we
are. We're playing, you know, who's the first guy to run off the
highway with us and Iran."
Transcript:

HERSH: There was a meeting. Among the items considered and rejected —
  which is why the New Yorker did not publish it, on grounds that it
wasn't accepted — one of the items was why not…
There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The
one that interested me the most was why don't we build — we in our
shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats.
Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our
boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. Might cost
some lives.

And it was rejected because you can't have Americans killing
Americans. That's the kind of — that's the level of stuff we're
talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

So I can understand the argument for not writing something that was
rejected — uh maybe. My attitude always towards editors is they're
mice training to be rats.

But the point is jejune, if you know what that means. Silly? Maybe.
But potentially very lethal. Because one of the things they learned
in the incident was the American public, if you get the right
incident, the American public will support bang-bang-kiss-kiss. You
know, we're into it.

…What happened in the Gulf was, in the Straits, in early January,
the President was just about to go to the Middle East for a visit.
So that was one reason they wanted to gin it up. Get it going.
Look, is it high school? Yeah. Are we playing high school with you
know 5,000 nuclear warheads in our arsenal? Yeah we are. We're
playing, you know, who's the first guy to run off the highway with
us and Iran.

===

US lawyer seeks to sue US over Iran threat
By Chris Gelken, Press TV, Tehran
Tue Jul 22, 2008
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail.aspx?id=64435§ionid=3510302


An American lawyer has offered to represent Iran in an international
lawsuit against Israel and his own government in an effort to stop
Washington and Tel Aviv from initiating further sanctions against
Tehran.

Francis A. Boyle says following Washington's latest ultimatum to
Tehran to freeze uranium enrichment within two weeks or face further
isolation, Iran needs to act quickly.

At weekend talks in Geneva, the United States delivered what it
describes as a "clear and simple message" that Iran must choose
between cooperation or confrontation.

In an email interview with Press TV, Boyle urged Iran to begin
drafting lawsuits for presentation to the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) in The Hague before the two-week ultimatum expires.

Q. Precisely what would the charges against the US and Israel be?
What are you hoping to achieve?

A. About two years ago Iran contacted me about a proposal I had made
to sue the United States, Israel and the EU-3 (Britain, France and
Germany) at the International Court of Justice in The Hague for
their repeated and public threats to launch a military attack upon
Iran over its undoubted right under the Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT) to engage in nuclear reprocessing.

My proposal was that Iran should sue these states immediately,
convene an Emergency Hearing by the World Court, and ask the Court
to indicate provisional measures of protection on behalf of Iran
against the United States, Israel and the EU-3 -- basically a
temporary restraining order.

I felt that these lawsuits would be able to prevent a military attack
against Iran and also prevent the imposition of sanctions against
Iran by the United Nations Security Council. In addition, by Iran
submitting this entire matter to the World Court, it would make it
clear to the entire world who the real culprits are here.

The threat and use of military force clearly violates Article 2(4)
of the United Nations Charter. The Charter also mandates the
peaceful resolution of international disputes. By filing these
lawsuits Iran would prove to the entire world that it intends to
resolve this matter peacefully and in accordance with international
law.

I notice that just this week Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed
Ali Khamenei publicly stated that he would sue the United States if
it attacked Iran. I am proposing that we sue the United States
immediately in order to prevent any attack upon or blockade of Iran,
which would be an act of war.

Q. Why are you seeing to bring this action in an international
court, rather than a domestic US court?

A. This would be a total waste of time. Based upon my prior
experience, there is no way a United States court would rule against
the United States government on a matter like this.

Q. You are proposing to represent Iran in a court action against the
US and Israel - what are you seeking from Tehran - what mandate
would they need to give you. Basically, how would this work?

A. Of course if Iran wants me to represent Iran in these lawsuits I
would be happy to do so. But given the fact that I am a US national,
Iran might prefer to have its own lawyers file these lawsuits. Iran
already has a detailed Memorandum of Law from me on these lawsuits.
The Iranian lawyers can simply use my Memorandum as they see fit. I
would be happy to assist them in whatever way they desire.

Q. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been in the news
recently regarding a prosecution against Sudan's leader, Omar al-
Bashir. Explain the difference between the ICJ and the ICC.

A. The International Court of Justice deals with disputes between
states, which the nuclear reprocessing dispute is all about. The
International Criminal Court deals with the personal criminal
responsibility of individuals. It has no authority to rule upon or
settle disputes between states, which the ICJ can do.

Q. The US does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC - what is
its relationship with the ICJ?

A. The ICJ would have jurisdiction to hear lawsuits by Iran against
the United States, Israel and the EU-3 irrespective of the ICC.

Q. Israel regularly disregards international court verdicts and UN
resolutions (the Separation Wall, settlement expansion etc.) What
makes you believe there is value in another court action?

A. Israel has never been sued at the International Court of Justice -
- the Wall was only an Advisory Opinion. By suing the United States
and Israel together, Iran would make it very clear to the entire
world what is really going on here by putting them in cahoots
together. As of now the EU-3 are no longer threatening Iran with
military force, so I would hold off from suing them at this time.
But if they threaten Iran with military force, or support the United
States and Israel with their threats, then of course they should be
sued too.

Q. Assuming a mandate or commission is given by Tehran for you to
represent them, what sort of timeline are we looking at before this
goes before a judge, and then a verdict?

A. Based upon my prior experience at the World Court, it would take
a few days to put the papers together and file them. We could get an
Emergency Hearing by the Court within 2 weeks and an Order of
Provisional Measures of Protection on behalf of Iran -- a temporary
restraining order against the US and Israel -- within a week
thereafter.

I filed the World Court lawsuit for Bosnia against Serbia over
genocide on March 19, 1993, had the emergency hearing by the Court
on April 1-2, and won the Order for Bosnia on 8 April 1993.

Given the inconclusive results at weekend talks in Geneva and the
decision that Iran will be given another two weeks for its final
answer, I respectfully submit that Iran should start moving on this
process now. The Wall Street Journal has already reported moves for
more unilateral, multilateral, and Security Council sanctions
against Iran, including a blockade of Iran, which would be an act of
war.

At a minimum, Iran should draft the Court documents now, then see
what happens after Iran presents its "final offer" in two weeks.

Q. If you achieve positive verdict, how would you expect the verdict
to be worded? Are there any sanctions against a state that does not
abide by the ruling?

A. I would ask for Iran to be protected from a military attack by
the United States and Israel in the most comprehensive language
possible, including a blockade of Iran by the United States, a
termination of all threats and use of military force, and of all
measures of political, diplomatic and economic coercion against Iran.

The Order would go to the Security Council for enforcement.

If the US should exercise its veto, then we could try to take it to
the United Nations General Assembly under the Uniting for Peace
Resolution, where we would only need a two-thirds vote. In any
event, this World Court Order would make it clear to the entire
world who is right and who is wrong in this dispute.

Q. You have commented on the levels of rhetoric, what influence
could this have on any court action?

A. I fully stand for a peaceful resolution of this dispute by means
of diplomacy. But if the United States will not engage in good faith
negotiations with Iran, then their and Israel's escalating threat
and use of military force against Iran will only make it easier for
me to win an Order from the World Court protecting Iran from the
United States and Israel and, if necessary, the EU-3

Q. Another timeline question. Assuming this court action is aimed at
preventing armed conflict, how urgent is it to commence the
proceedings?

A. Apparently, according to CNN today, Iran has two weeks to prepare
its final answer. That would be enough time to prepare all these
documents. If the talks break down after Iran submits its "final
offer," then we could immediately file the lawsuits, ask for an
Emergency Hearing by the World Court, and request the Orders
protecting Iran.

Back in early 1992, President Bush Snr. had the Sixth Fleet on
military maneuvers off the coast of Libya planning for an attack and
had US jet fighters penetrating Libyan airspace to provoke an attack
over the Lockerbie matter.

We filed similar papers with the World Court on behalf of Libya
against the United States and the United Kingdom, asking for an
Emergency Hearing by the Court. President Bush Snr. then ordered the
Sixth Fleet to stand down. There was no military attack against
Libya then or later. Those World Court lawsuits eventually led to a
peaceful resolution of the Lockerbie dispute between Libya, the
United States and the United Kingdom, which now have normal
diplomatic relations. Hopefully the same can be done here by means of
these World Court lawsuits.

Q. During an appearance on Press TV's Middle East Today program in
April this year you requested backing from Tehran for a court action
against Israel on charges of genocide against Israel. Has there been
any movement, any response? What is the current status?

A. This proposal is currently pending in the Office of President
Ahmadinejad. The suffering of the Palestinians constitutes genocide.
I am still willing to file that lawsuit if the President so desires.
But given the urgency of the situation, and the threat of a terrible
war, it might be best to get these nuclear-related lawsuits against
the United States and Israel underway at this time, then act to
protect the Palestinians from Israel later. Of course all this is
for President Ahmadinejad to decide, not me.

Q. You successfully sued Serbia - but in the political atmosphere at
the time, Serbia was widely perceived as the "bad guy" and frankly,
the pro-Serbia lobby in the United States is insignificant. These
cases are rather different, given popular support for Israel in the
US. You will be representing what is widely regarded in the US as an
unpopular or even hostile government against your own country and
Washington's main ally in the Middle East.

How concerned are you regarding your professional reputation at home?
Potentially, how damaging could this be for you - even with a
successful outcome?

A. Back in 2004, the FBI/CIA put me on all the US government's so-
called "terrorist watch lists" because I refused to become an
informant for them on my Arab and Muslim clients, which would have
violated their rights under the US Constitution and my ethical
obligations as an attorney.

So I am sure there will be further repercussions. But under no
circumstance do I want to see a war between Iran and the United
States, which could readily degenerate into World War III.

With all due respect to Iran's leaders, they must not underestimate
the ruthlessness and cruelty of President Bush and Vice President
Cheney, and their Straussian Neo-Conservative advisors when it comes
to their willingness to use military force against Iran.

We must do everything in our power to prevent a war and obtain a
peaceful resolution of this dispute over nuclear reprocessing that
in my opinion can be resolved satisfactorily. These World Court
lawsuits will contribute towards a peaceful resolution of this
dispute between Iran and the United States, which will then order
Israel to stand down.

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Hamas remains firm on trade for Shalit
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=64244§ionid=351020202


Hamas leader Ismail Haniya says Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit will
not be released until Israel frees hundreds of Palestinian
prisoners.

Haniya said on Saturday that his movement demands that hundreds of
Palestinians in Israeli jails be released in exchange for Shalit.

"We as Palestinians and as a resistance movement in Hamas holding an
Israeli prisoner in our hands, we definitely are committed to the
release of our prisoners and those serving life sentences in Israeli
jails," Haniya said.

"We are committed to our demands, and there will be no concessions
on the issues regarding the prisoners," he added.

While Israel is trying to secure the release of Shalit, more that
11,500 Palestinians including women and children are suffering under
harsh conditions in Israeli detention facilities.

Recently, Israel exchanged five Lebanese prisoners and the bodies of
Lebanese and Palestinians fighters with the bodies of its two dead
soldiers.

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Settler Violence: Photos  Latest Events in Susya
Photos: Karin Notes: Ehud Krinis
http://villagesgroup.wordpress.com/


Testimony taken from Abu Jaber, eye-witness:

On Tuesday, July 15th, attorney Kamar of Rabbis or Human Rights came
to Susya, accompanied by representatives of the Civil
Administration. They spoke with several of the residents of the
Palestinian village Susya, among them Abu Jaber, and announced that
they are allowed access and use of the grazing areas recognized as
land belonging to the Halis family of Yatta, included in the
expanded security area of the Susya colony (i.e. settlement) [see:
http://www.taayush.org/topics/susia-update-13012007.html ].

On Thursday July 17th, several of the Susya villagers, accompanied
by some international volunteers, entered the Halis family land with
their herds. This area is located on the south side of the hill to
the west of the improvised colonist outpost created about two years
ago that includes, among other things, a dwelling shack. Shortly
after their arrival, some colonists suddenly emerged, among them a
young man by the name of Shlomi on horseback (photo 1947), Michael –
the Susya colony security guard (photo 1976), Dalia Har-Sinai and
her daughter, a shepherd from Dalia's ranch (located to the south-
west of the colony) and two other colonists, one of them driving a
Subaru station-wagon no. 35-076-03 (photos 1945, 1957). This latter
colonist now told the Palestinians he had taken part in the severe
assault against Khalil and Tamam Nuaj'ah's family earlier last month
(on this incident see
http://villagesgroup.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/palestinian-family-
from-susya-assaulted-by-settlers/

This band began to throw stones at the herd, while Shlomi on his
horse rode through it, trying to scatter and chase it away. When
soldiers arrived at the scene, they collected the Palestinians' IDs
and declared the area a 'closed military zone'.

In answer to the question why the colonists are not turned away from
an area declared as such, one of the soldiers said in English, "They
are our commanders".

When, after a while, some policemen arrived, colonist Shlomi
complained of having been attacked by Mahmoud Nwaj'ah. Mahmoud was
arrested and taken to the Hebron police station for interrogation
(he was released that evening).

On the next day, Friday July 18th, a civil administration officer by
the name of Timor came to Palestinian Susya and announced that
following the difficulties of entering the Halis family lands, they
are allowed to reach the Nwaj'ah family lands on the other,
northern, side of the "shack" outpost. On the morrow, Saturday July
19th, accompanied by international volunteers, the villagers came
there to graze their herd. The first colonist to arrive on the scene
this time was Dalia's shepherd, who took his shirt off and used it
to mask his face (photo 2098) as has become the habit in colonist
attacks lately. This colonist alerted Michael, the security guard,
who arrived with another ten colonists, including two who
participated in the previous assault. Among them was the one had
driven the Subaru and was now threatening the Palestinians:

"We'll do to you what we did to Tamam" (photos 2107, 2112). Another
bearded colonist (photo 2117) explained to the landowners of the
Nwaj'ah family that all of this land belongs to the Jews, and the
only way for the family to repossess it is to become Jews
themselves. The other colonists resorted to the familiar language of
stoning the shepherds and their flocks. After a while the regional
brigade commander arrived at the spot, a colonel, and declared the
place 'closed military zone'. When Abu Jaber's complained that once
more this edict was being forced on Palestinians alone and not on
their colonist assailants, the commander instructed his soldiers to
arrest him. They also arrested Nasser Nwaj'ah who was filming the
incident on behalf of 'B'tselem' organization.

In addition, the four international volunteers were detained. None
of the attacking colonists were detained, however. The commander's
claims that the violence was initiated by the Palestinian residents
who refused to obey the soldiers' demands have been refuted by the
filmed footage.

Later, when the detainees arrived at the Hebron police station, one
of the interrogating policemen told them: "The key mistake here was
made by Moshe Dayan, who did not expel all of you to Jordan
immediately following the 1967 Occupation."

Once again, the detainees were released that very evening.

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Blackwater's Private CIA
By Jeremy Scahill
The Nation
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/87200/?
page=entire&ses=1222abf473b35fcc655b3e89ec5c088f


The notorious mercenary company now offers spy "services" to Fortune
500 companies, for the right price.

  This past September, the secretive mercenary company Blackwater USA
found its name splashed across front pages throughout the world
after the company's shooters gunned down seventeen Iraqi civilians
in Baghdad's Nisour Square. But by early 2008, Blackwater had
largely receded from the headlines save for the occasional blip on
the media radar sparked by Congressman Henry Waxman's ongoing
investigations into its activities. Its forces remained deployed in
Iraq and Afghanistan, and business continued to pour in. In the two
weeks directly following Nisour Square, Blackwater signed more than
$144 million in contracts with the State Department for "protective
services" in Iraq and Afghanistan alone and, over the following
weeks and months, won millions more in contracts with other federal
entities like the Coast Guard, the Navy and the Federal Law
Enforcement Training Center.

Blackwater's Iraq contract was extended in April, but the company is
by no means betting the house on its long-term presence there. While
the firm is quietly maintaining its Iraq work, it is aggressively
pursuing other business opportunities. In September it was revealed
that Blackwater had been "tapped" by the Pentagon's Counter
Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office to compete for a share of a
five-year, $15 billion budget "to fight terrorists with drug-trade
ties." According to the Army Times, the contract "could include
antidrug technologies and equipment, special vehicles and aircraft,
communications, security training, pilot training, geographic
information systems and in-field support." A spokesperson for
another company bidding for the work said that "80 percent of the
work will be overseas." As Richard Douglas, a deputy assistant
secretary of defense, explained, "The fact is, we use Blackwater to
do a lot of our training of counternarcotics police in Afghanistan.
I have to say that Blackwater has done a very good job."

Such an arrangement could find Blackwater operating in an arena with
the godfathers of the war industry, such as Lockheed Martin,
Northrop Grumman and Raytheon. It could also see Blackwater
expanding into Latin America, joining other private security
companies well established in the region. The massive US security
company DynCorp is already deployed in Colombia, Bolivia and other
countries as part of the "war on drugs." In Colombia alone, US
military contractors are receiving nearly half the $630 million in
annual US military aid for the country. Just south of the US border,
the United States has launched Plan Mexico, a $1.5 billion
counternarcotics program. This and similar plans could provide
lucrative business opportunities for Blackwater and other
companies. "Blackwater USA's enlistment in the drug war," observed
journalist John Ross, would be "a direct challenge to its stiffest
competitor, DynCorp -- up until now, the Dallas-based corporation
has locked up 94 percent of all private drug war security
contracts." The New York Times reported that the contract could be
Blackwater's "biggest job ever."

As populist movements grow stronger in Latin America, threatening US
financial interests as well as the standing of right-wing US
political allies in the region, the "war on drugs" is becoming an
increasingly central part of US counterinsurgency efforts. It allows
for more training of foreign security forces through the private
sector -- away from Congressional oversight -- and a deployment of
personnel from US war corporations. With US forces stretched thin,
sending private security companies to Latin America offers
Washington a "small footprint" alternative to the politically and
militarily problematic deployment of active-duty US troops. In a
January report by the United Nations working group on mercenaries,
international investigators found that "an emerging trend in Latin
America but also in other regions of the world indicates situations
of private security companies protecting transnational extractive
corporations whose employees are often involved in suppressing the
legitimate social protest of communities and human rights and
environmental organizations of the areas where these corporations
operate."

If there is one quality that is evident from examining Blackwater's
business history, it is the company's ability to take advantage of
emerging war and conflict markets. Throughout the decade of
Blackwater's existence, its creator, Erik Prince, has aggressively
built his empire into a structure paralleling the US national
security apparatus. "Prince wants to vault Blackwater into the major
leagues of U.S. military contracting, taking advantage of the
movement to privatize all kinds of government security," reported
the Wall Street Journal shortly after Nisour Square. "The company
wants to be a one-stop shop for the U.S. government on missions to
which it won't commit American forces. This is a niche with few
established competitors."

In addition to providing armed forces for war and conflict zones and
a wide range of military and police training services, Blackwater
does a robust, multimillion-dollar business through its aviation
division. It also has a growing maritime division and other national
and international initiatives. Among these, Blackwater is in Japan,
where its forces protect the US ballistic missile defense system,
which, according to Stars and Stripes, "points high-powered radio
waves westward toward mainland Asia to hunt for enemy missiles
headed east toward America or its allies." Meanwhile, early this
year, Defense News reported, "Blackwater is training members of the
Taiwanese National Security Bureau's (NSB's) special protection
service, which guards the president. The NSB is responsible for the
overall security of the country and was once an instrument of
terrorism during the martial law period. Today, according to its Web
site, the NSB is responsible for 'national intelligence work,
special protective service and unified cryptography.'" Former
Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto reportedly tried to hire
Blackwater to protect her as she campaigned for the presidency in
2007. Conflicting reports indicated that either the US State
Department or the Pakistani government vetoed the plan. She was
assassinated in December.

What could prove to be one of Blackwater's most profitable and
enduring enterprises is one of the company's most secretive
initiatives -- a move into the world of privatized intelligence
services. In April 2006, Prince quietly began building Total
Intelligence Solutions, which boasts that it "brings CIA-style"
services to the open market for Fortune 500 companies. Among its
offerings are "surveillance and countersurveillance, deployed
intelligence collection, and rapid safeguarding of employees or
other key assets."

As the United States finds itself in the midst of the most radical
privatization agenda in its history, few areas have seen as dramatic
a transformation to privatized services as the world of
intelligence. "This is the magnet now. Everything is being attracted
to these private companies in terms of individuals and expertise and
functions that were normally done by the intelligence community,"
says former CIA division chief and senior analyst Melvin
Goodman. "My major concern is the lack of accountability, the lack
of responsibility. The entire industry is essentially out of
control. It's outrageous."

Last year R.J. Hillhouse, a blogger who investigates the clandestine
world of private contractors and US intelligence, obtained documents
from the office of the Directorate of National Intelligence (DNI)
showing that Washington spends some $42 billion annually on private
intelligence contractors, up from $17.5 billion in 2000. That means
70 percent of the US intelligence budget is going to private
companies. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that the head of DNI is
Mike McConnell, the former chair of the board of the Intelligence
and National Security Alliance, the private intelligence industry's
trade association.

Total Intelligence, which opened for business in February 2007, is a
fusion of three entities bought up by Prince: the Terrorism Research
Center, Technical Defense and The Black Group -- Blackwater vice
chair Cofer Black's consulting agency. The company's leadership
reads like a Who's Who of the CIA's "war on terror" operations after
9/11. In addition to the twenty-eight-year CIA veteran Black, who is
chair of Total Intelligence, the company's executives include CEO
Robert Richer, the former associate deputy director of the agency's
Directorate of Operations and the second-ranking official in charge
of clandestine operations. From 1999 to 2004, Richer was head of the
CIA's Near East and South Asia Division, where he ran clandestine
operations throughout the Middle East and South Asia. As part of his
duties, he was the CIA liaison with Jordan's King Abdullah, a key US
ally and Blackwater client, and briefed George W. Bush on the
burgeoning Iraqi resistance in its early stages.

Total Intelligence's chief operating officer is Enrique "Ric" Prado,
a twenty-four-year CIA veteran and former senior executive officer
in the Directorate of Operations. He spent more than a decade
working in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center and ten years with the
CIA's "paramilitary" Special Operations Group. Prado and Black
worked closely at the CIA. Prado also served in Latin America with
Jose Rodriguez, who gained infamy late last year after it was
revealed that as director of the National Clandestine Service at the
CIA he was allegedly responsible for destroying videotapes of
interrogations of prisoners, during which "enhanced interrogation
techniques," including waterboarding, were reportedly used. Richer
told the New York Times he recalled many conversations with
Rodriguez, about the tapes. "He would always say, 'I'm not going to
let my people get nailed for something they were ordered to do,'"
Richer said of his former boss. Before the scandal, there were
reports that Blackwater had been "aggressively recruiting"
Rodriguez. He has since retired from the CIA.

The leadership of Total Intelligence also includes Craig Johnson, a
twenty-seven-year CIA officer who specialized in Central and South
America, and Caleb "Cal" Temple, who joined the company straight out
of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he served from 2004 to '06
as chief of the Office of Intelligence Operations in the Joint
Intelligence Task Force -- Combating Terrorism. According to his
Total Intelligence bio, Temple directed the "DIA's 24/7 analytic
terrorism target development and other counterterrorism intelligence
activities in support of military operations worldwide. He also
oversaw 24/7 global counterterrorism indications and warning
analysis for the U.S. Defense Department." The company also boasts
officials drawn from the Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI.
Total Intelligence is run out of an office on the ninth floor of a
building in the Ballston area of Arlington, Virginia. Its "Global
Fusion Center," complete with large-screen TVs broadcasting
international news channels and computer stations staffed by
analysts surfing the web, "operates around the clock every day of
the year" and is modeled after the CIA's counterterrorist center,
once run by Black. The firm employs at least sixty-five full-time
staff -- some estimates say it's closer to 100. "Total Intel brings
the...skills traditionally honed by CIA operatives directly to the
board room," Black said when the company launched. "With a service
like this, CEOs and their security personnel will be able to respond
to threats quickly and confidently -- whether it's determining which
city is safest to open a new plant in or working to keep employees
out of harm's way after a terrorist attack."

Black insists, "This is a completely legal enterprise. We break no
laws. We don't go anywhere near breaking laws. We don't have to."

But what services Total Intelligence is providing, and to whom, is
shrouded in secrecy. It is clear, though, that the company is
leveraging the reputations and inside connections of its executives.

"Cofer can open doors," Richer told the Washington Post in 2007. "I
can open doors. We can generally get in to see who we need to see.
We don't help pay bribes. We do everything within the law, but we
can deal with the right minister or person."

Black told the paper he and Richer spend a lot of their time
traveling. "I am discreet in where I go and who I see. I spend most
of my time dealing with senior people in governments, making
connections."

But it is clear that the existing connections from the former
spooks' time at the agency have brought business to Total
Intelligence.

Take the case of Jordan. For years, Richer worked closely with King
Abdullah, as his CIA liaison. As journalist Ken Silverstein
reported, "The CIA has lavishly subsidized Jordan's intelligence
service, and has sent millions of dollars in recent years for
intelligence training. After Richer retired, sources say, he helped
Blackwater land a lucrative deal with the Jordanian government to
provide the same sort of training offered by the CIA. Millions of
dollars that the CIA 'invested' in Jordan walked out the door with
Richer -- if this were a movie, it would be a cross between Jerry
Maguire and Syriana. 'People [at the agency] are pissed off,' said
one source. 'Abdullah still speaks with Richer regularly, and he
thinks that's the same thing as talking to us. He thinks Richer is
still the man.' Except in this case it's Richer, not his client,
yelling 'show me the money.'"

In a 2007 interview on the cable business network CNBC, Black was
brought on as an analyst to discuss "investing in Jordan." At no
point in the interview was Black identified as working for the
Jordanian government. Total Intelligence was described as "a
corporate consulting firm that includes investment strategy,"
while "Ambassador Black" was introduced as "a twenty-eight-year
veteran of the CIA," the "top counterterror guy" and "a key planner
for the breathtakingly rapid victory of American forces that toppled
the Taliban in Afghanistan." Black heaped lavish praise on Jordan
and its monarchy.

"You have leadership, King Abdullah, His Majesty King Abdullah, who
is certainly kind towards investors, very protective," Black
said. "Jordan is, in our view, a very good investment. There are
some exceptional values there." He said Jordan is in a region where
there are "numerous commodities that are being produced and doing
well."

With no hint of the brutality behind the exodus, Black argued that
the flood of Iraqi refugees fleeing the violence of the US
occupation was good for potential investors in Jordan. "We get
something like 600 - 700,000 Iraqis that have moved from Iraq into
Jordan that require cement, furniture, housing and the like. So it
is a -- it is an island of growth and potential, certainly in that
immediate area. So it looks good," he said. "There are opportunities
for investment. It is not all bad. Sometimes Americans need to watch
a little less TV. ... But there is -- there is opportunity in
everything. That's why you need situation awareness, and that's one
of the things that our company does. It provides the kinds of
intelligence and insight to provide situational awareness so you can
make the best investments."

Black and other Total Intelligence executives have turned their CIA
careers, reputations, contacts and connections into business
opportunities. What they once did for the US government, they now do
for private interests. It is not difficult to imagine clients
feeling as though they are essentially hiring the US government to
serve their own interests. In 2007 Richer told the Post that now
that he is in the private sector, foreign military officials and
others are more willing to give him information than they were when
he was with the CIA. Richer recalled a conversation with a foreign
general during which he was surprised at the
potentially "classified" information the general revealed. When
Richer asked why the general was giving him the information, he said
the general responded, "If I tell it to an embassy official I've
created espionage. You're a business partner."

In May, Erik Prince gave a speech in front of his family and
supporters in his home state of Michigan. Security was extremely
tight, and Blackwater barred cameras and tape recorders from the
event. "The idea that we are a secretive facility, and nefarious, is
just ridiculous," Prince told the friendly crowd of 750 gathered at
the Amway Grand Plaza. In Iraq, Blackwater has banked on the idea
that it is a sort of American Express card for the occupation. But
for the future, Prince has a different corporate model, as he
indicated in his speech. "When you send something overseas, do you
use FedEx or the postal service?" he asked.

There are serious problems with this analogy. When you send
something by FedEx, you can track your package and account for its
whereabouts at all times. You can have your package insured against
loss or damage. That has not been the case with Blackwater. The
people who foot the sizable bill for its "services" almost never
know, until it is too late, what Blackwater is doing, and there are
apparently no consequences for Blackwater when things go lethally
wrong. "We are essentially a robust temp agency," Prince told his
fans in Michigan. He's right about that one. A temp agency serving
the most radical privatization agenda in history.

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"Is There Sovereignty for Iraq--or Isn't There?"


Amid Iraqi Fury, U.S. Offers Concessions on Military Bases
By PATRICK COCKBURN
http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick06122008.html


The reaction in Iraq to the US demands for the long-term use of
military bases and other rights has been so furious that Washington
is now offering limited concessions in the negotiations George Bush
is willing to modify some of the demands so the Iraqi government can
declare "a significant climbdown" by the American side allowing
Baghdad to sign the treaty by  July 31.

In practice, there is less to the American "concessions" than would
first appear. For example, the US is lowering the number of bases it
wants from 58 to "the low dozens" and says it is willing to
compromise on legal immunity for foreign contractors according to
information leaked to this reporter.

But the US currently only maintains about 30 large bases in Iraq,
some the size of small cities; the rest are "forward operating
bases".

The US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, denied my report that the
US wanted permanent bases in Iraq. But the reality of the US plan is
that Iraqi authority would be purely nominal with a few Iraqi
soldiers stationed outside the bases.

It will also be difficult for the US to concede that the tens of
thousands of foreign contractors in Iraq, who vary from heavily
armed security men to support staff, be liable to Iraqi law because
the US Army has become dependent on these forces and could scarcely
function without them.

The new deal between Iraq and the US is in theory a "status of
forces agreement", which the US already has with more than 80 other
countries, but, in practice, it is a manoeuver by the US
administration to avoid calling the agreement a treaty which, under
US law, would then have to be submitted to the Senate. With American
politicians wholly absorbed in the presidential election there
appears to be only limited interest by congressmen and senators in
demanding that the agreement, when signed, be submitted to them.
The fate of the new agreement may depend on the attitude of Iran,
which has denounced it fiercely, claiming it would permanently
enslave Iraq and turn it into an American client state. Senior Iraqi
politicians denouncing the deal include members of the main
government party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), such
as Jalal al-Din al-Saghir.

"Is there sovereignty for Iraq – or isn't there?" he was quoted as
saying. "If it is left to them [the US], they would ask for immunity
even for American dogs. Other Iraqi politicians have questioned the
continuation of the American occupation in any form.

Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, promised Iranian leaders
during his visit to Tehran last weekend that Iraqi territory would
not be used as an American platform for a military attack on Iran.
It is noticeable that the Iraqi politicians within ISCI most
vehement in opposing the deal are close to the Badr militia wing of
ISCI that has traditionally had close links to Iran.


Patrick Cockburn is the the author of "Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the
Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq"

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Supreme Court Checks and Balances in Boumediene
By MARJORIE COHN
www.marjoriecohn.com


After the Supreme Court handed down its long-awaited opinion,
upholding habeas corpus rights for the Guantánamo detainees, I was
invited to appear on The O'Reilly Factor with guest host Laura
Ingraham. Although she is a lawyer and former law clerk for Justice
Clarence Thomas, Ingraham has no use for our judicial branch of
government, noting that the justices are "unelected." Indeed, she
advocated that Bush break the law and disregard the Court's decision
in Boumediene v. Bush:

"Marjorie, I was trying to think to myself, look, if I were
President Bush, and I had heard that this case had come down, and
I'm out of office in a few months. My ratings, my popularity ratings
are pretty low, I would have said at this point, that's very
interesting that the court decided this, but I'm not going to
respect the decision of the court because my job is to keep this
country safe."

What did the Court decide that so incensed Ingraham (who has just
been rewarded for her "fair and balanced" views with her own show on
Fox News)? Will this decision really imperil our safety? And will
Boumediene become an issue in the presidential election?

The Supreme Court held in a 5-4 ruling that the Guantánamo detainees
have a constitutional right to habeas corpus, and that the scheme
for reviewing 'enemy combatant' designations under the Combatant
Status Review Tribunals is an inadequate substitute for habeas
corpus, a result I predicted in a December 3, 2007
article<http://marjoriecohn.com/2007/12/guantnamo-detainees-fate-at-
stake-in.html>.

Guantánamo detainees have constitutional right to habeas corpus

Article 1, Section 9, Clause 2 of the Constitution is known as the
Suspension Clause. It reads, "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas
Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or
Invasion the public Safety may require it." In section 7(a) of the
Military Commissions Act of 2006, Congress purported to strip habeas
rights from the Guantánamo detainees by amending the habeas corpus
statute (28 U.S.C.A. § 2241(e)). In Boumediene, the Court held that
section of the Act to be unconstitutional, declaring that the
detainees still retained the constitutional right to habeas corpus.

Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, reiterated the Court's
finding in Rasul v. Bush that although Cuba retains technical
sovereignty over Guantánamo, the United States exercises complete
jurisdiction and control over its naval base and thus the
Constitution protects the detainees there. Kennedy rejected "the
necessary implication" of Bush's position that the political
branches could "govern without legal restraint" by locating a U.S.
military base in a country that retained formal sovereignty over the
area. In his dissent, Chief Justice Roberts flippantly characterized
Guantánamo as a "jurisdictionally quirky outpost."

Kennedy worried that the political branches could "have the power to
switch the Constitution on or off at will" which "would lead to a
regime in which they, not this Court, say 'what the law is.'" "Even
when the United States acts outside its borders," Kennedy
wrote, "its powers are not 'absolute and unlimited' but are
subject 'to such restrictions as are expressed in the Constitution.'"

Thus, Kennedy observed, "the writ of habeas corpus is itself an
indispensable mechanism for monitoring the separation of powers."
Indeed, habeas corpus was one of the few individual rights the
Founding Fathers wrote it into the original Constitution, years
before they enacted the Bill of Rights.

"The test for determining the scope of [the habeas corpus]
provision," Kennedy wrote, "must not be subject to manipulation by
those whose power it is designed to restrain." It is such
manipulation that Laura Ingraham would perpetuate. It was a
Republican-controlled Congress, working hand-in-glove with Bush,
that tried to strip habeas corpus rights from the Guantánamo
detainees in the Military Commissions Act. The Supreme Court has
determined that effort to be unconstitutional. Fulfilling its
constitutional duty to check and balance the other two branches, the
Court has carried out its mandate to interpret the Constitution and
say "what the law is."

No adequate substitute for habeas corpus

Finding that the Guantánamo detainees retained the constitutional
right to habeas corpus, the Court turned to the issue of whether
there was an adequate substitute for habeas review. Bush established
Combatant Status Review Tribunals ("CSRTs") to determine whether a
detainee is an "enemy combatant." These kangaroo courts provide no
right to counsel, only a "personal representative," who owes no duty
of confidentiality to his client and often doesn't even advocate on
behalf of the detainee; one even argued the government's case. The
detainee doesn't have the right to see much of the evidence against
him and is very limited in the evidence he can present.

The CSRTs have been criticized by military participants in the
process. Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a veteran of U.S. intelligence,
said they often relied on "generic" evidence and were set up to
rubber-stamp the "enemy combatant" designation. When he sat as a
judge in one of the tribunals, Abraham and the other two judges - a
colonel and a major in the Air Force - "found the information
presented to lack substance" and noted that statements presented as
factual "lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively
credible evidence." After they determined there was "no factual
basis" to conclude the detainee was an enemy combatant, the
government pressured them to change their conclusion but they
refused. Abraham was never assigned to another CSRT panel. It is
widely believed that Abraham's affidavit about the shortcomings of
the CSRT's in Boumediene's companion case caused the Supreme Court
to reverse its denial of certiorari and agree to review Boumediene.
This was the first time in 60 years the Court had so reversed itself.

While the Court declined to decide whether the CSRTs satisfied due
process standards, it concluded that "even when all the parties
involved in this process act with diligence and in good faith, there
is considerable risk of error in the tribunal's findings of fact."
The Court then had to determine whether the procedure for judicial
review of the CSRTs' "enemy combatant" designations constituted an
adequate substitute for habeas corpus review.

"For the writ of habeas corpus, or its substitute, to function as an
effective and proper remedy in this context," Kennedy wrote, "the
court that conducts the habeas proceeding must have the means to
correct errors that occurred during the CSRT proceedings. This
includes some authority to assess the sufficiency of the
Government's evidence against the detainee. It also must have the
authority to admit and consider relevant exculpatory evidence that
was not introduced during the earlier proceeding."

But in the Detainee Treatment Act ("DTA"), Congress limited district
court review of the CSRT determinations to whether the CSRT complied
with its own procedures. The district court had no authority to hear
newly discovered evidence or make a finding that the detainee was
improperly designated as an enemy combatant.

The Supreme Court noted that "when the judicial power to issue
habeas corpus properly is invoked the judicial officer must have
adequate authority to make a determination in light of the relevant
law and facts and to formulate and issue appropriate orders for
relief, including, if necessary, an order directing the prisoner's
release." Since the DTA's scheme for reviewing determinations of the
CSRTs did not afford this authority, the Court held it was not an
adequate substitute for habeas corpus and thus section 7 of the
Military Commissions Act acted as "an unconstitutional suspension of
the writ."

Boumediene will not imperil the United States

In his dissent, Justice Scalia sounded the alarm that the Boumediene
decision "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."
Likewise, the Wall St. Journal editorialized, "We can say with
confident horror that more Americans are likely to die as a result."
Their predictions, however, are not based in fact.

Lakhdar Boumediene and five other Algerian detainees from Bosnia
were accused of threatening to blow up an embassy in Bosnia. The
Supreme Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina concluded there was no
evidence to continue to detain them and ordered them released. The
Bosnian officials turned them over to the United States and they
were transported to Guantánamo, where they have languished since
2002.

Many of the men and boys at Guantánamo were sold as bounty to the
U.S. military by the Northern Alliance or warlords for $5,000 a
head. Indeed, Maj. Gen. Jay Hood, the former commander at
Guantánamo, admitted to the Wall St. Journal, "Sometimes we just
didn't get the right folks," but innocent men remain detained there
because "[n]obody wants to be the one to sign the release
papers . . . there's no muscle in the system."

The Boumediene decision will not directly impact the criminal cases
against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the few others who will be tried
in the military commissions. It is the 211 men who have filed habeas
corpus petitions challenging their "enemy combatant" designations
who will benefit from this ruling. No one will be automatically
released. They will simply be afforded a fair hearing. Most
Americans would not object to a requirement that our government
fairly prove someone guilty before we imprison him indefinitely.

Even Justice Jackson, the chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, advocated
due process for the Nazi leaders. "The ultimate principle," he
said, "is that you must put no man on trial under the forms of
judicial proceedings if you are not willing to see him freed if not
proven guilty." Jackson understood the importance of the presumption
of innocence in our system of law.

Kennedy quoted Alexander Hamilton, who wrote in Federalist 84
that "arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite
and most formidable instruments of tyranny." Justice Souter cut to
the chase in his separate opinion, citing "the length of the
disputed imprisonments, some of the prisoners represented here today
having been locked up for six years." None of them has been charged
with a crime and none has been brought before a fair and impartial
judge.

"The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in
force, in extraordinary times." Kennedy wrote. "Liberty and security
can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the
framework of the law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a
right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part
of that law."

"Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom's first principles,"
according to Kennedy. "Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary
and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by
adherence to the separation of powers ... Within the Constitution's
separation-of-powers structure, few exercises of judicial power are
as legitimate or as necessary as the responsibility to hear
challenges to the authority of the Executive to imprison a person."

In responding to Laura Ingraham's false dichotomy between keeping us
safe and protecting habeas corpus, I cited Benjamin Franklin's
admonition: "They who would give up an essential liberty for
temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."

Attacking judges under guise of national security

The Boumediene decision split along political lines with the four so-
called liberal justices - Ginsburg, Stevens, Souter and Breyer - in
the majority, and the four conservative justices - Scalia, Thomas,
Roberts and Alito - in the dissent. Kennedy, the swing vote, broke
the tie. Curt Levy from the Committee for Justice, which seeks to
pack the courts with right-wing judges, blogged that Boumediene
has "teed up the Supreme Court issue nicely for the G.O.P."

Indeed, John McCain has already seized upon it as a campaign issue.
The day the opinion came out, McCain said, "It obviously concerns
me . . . but it is a decision the Supreme Court has made. Now we
need to move forward. As you know, I always favored closing of
Guantánamo Bay and I still think that we ought to do that." By the
next day, McCain had changed his tune. "The Supreme Court yesterday
rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions in
the history of this country," he declared. McCain, who hopes to
overcome the unpopularity of his positions on the war and the
economy, will make national security the centerpiece of his campaign.

Barack Obama, who links our national security with how other nations
view us, characterized the Boumediene decision as "an important step
toward re-establishing our credibility as a nation committed to the
rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism
and respecting habeas corpus."

It is very likely that the next president will make at least one
nomination, and probably two, to the Supreme Court. Boumediene is
the poster child for how delicately the Court is now balanced, and
the disastrous consequences to the doctrine of separation-of-powers
that await us if a President McCain makes good on his promise to
appoint judges in the mold of Roberts and Alito.


Marjorie Cohn is president of the National Lawyers Guild and a
professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. She is author of Cowboy
Republic

<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0977825337/counterpunchmaga>.

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Anthrax scientist Bruce Ivins stood to benefit from a panic
By David Willman
Los Angeles Times
August 2, 2008
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-anthrax2-
2008aug02,0,3650657.story


DOORSTEP: Police in Frederick, Md., talk with Bruce Ivins' widow,
Diane. A former colleague says that he suspects Ivins was the
anthrax culprit, but that he wouldn't have meant to kill anyone.

The suspect in deadly mailings, who killed himself this week as the
FBI closed in, could have collected patent royalties on an anthrax
vaccine.

Bruce E. Ivins, the government biodefense scientist linked to the
deadly anthrax mailings of 2001, stood to gain financially from
massive federal spending in the fear-filled aftermath of those
killings, the Los Angeles Times has learned.

Ivins is listed as a co-inventor on two patents for a genetically
engineered anthrax vaccine, federal records show. Separately, Ivins
also is listed as a co-inventor on an application to patent an
additive for various biodefense vaccines.

Ivins, 62, died Tuesday in an apparent suicide in Maryland. Federal
authorities had informed his lawyer that criminal charges related to
the mailings would be filed.

As a co-inventor of a new anthrax vaccine, Ivins was among those in
line to collect patent royalties if the product had come to market,
according to an executive familiar with the matter.

The product had languished on laboratory shelves until the Sept. 11
attacks and the anthrax mailings, after which federal officials
raced to stockpile vaccines and antidotes against potential
biological terrorism.

A San Francisco-area biotechnology company, VaxGen, won a federal
contract worth $877.5 million to provide batches of the new vaccine.
The contract was the first awarded under legislation promoted by
President Bush, called Project BioShield.

One executive who was familiar with the matter said that, as a
condition of its purchasing the vaccine from the Army, VaxGen had
agreed to share sales-related proceeds with the inventors.

"Some proportion would have been shared with the inventors," said
the executive, who spoke anonymously because of contractual
confidentiality. "Ivins would have stood to make tens of thousands
of dollars, but not millions."

Two years after the contract was awarded to VaxGen, the pact was
terminated when the company could not deliver its batches on
schedule. The termination meant that VaxGen was not paid, nor were
Ivins and his co-inventors.

Ivins also was listed as one of two inventors of another biodefense-
related product that has won federal sponsorship.

According to their still-pending application for a U.S. patent, the
inventors hoped the additive would bolster certain vaccines'
capacity to prevent infections "from bioterrorism agents."

From December 2002 to December 2003, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency committed $12 million for additional
testing of the experimental additive. That research money was
designated for Coley Pharmaceutical Group, which was developing the
additive. The company was acquired last fall by Pfizer Corp.

Samuel C. Miller, a Georgetown Law Center professor who is a patent-
law expert, said that the extent to which Ivins stood to gain from
the two issued patents or the one that remains pending hinges on the
terms of the related contracts.

"It will depend on the business arrangements that are in place,"
Miller said.

On Friday, colleagues and critics of Ivins pondered the mystery
within the mystery: If Ivins did it, why?

One former senior official with Ivins' employer, the U.S. Army
Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, whom the FBI
questioned at length about Ivins, said he believed his former
colleague wanted more attention -- and resources -- shifted to
biological defense.

"It had to have been a motive," said the former official, who
suspects that Ivins was the culprit. "I don't think he ever intended
to kill anybody. He just wanted to prove 'Look, this is possible.'
He probably had no clue that it would aerosolize through those
envelopes and kill those postal workers."

Of the five people killed by the mailings, two worked for the U.S.
Postal Service in the Washington, D.C., area; one was a photo editor
in Palm Beach County, Fla.; another was a hospital supply provider
in New York City; and the last known victim was a 94-year-old woman
in Connecticut.

Several letters were addressed to prominent people -- two U.S.
senators and NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw, for example.

For nearly 30 years, Ivins served far from the limelight, a PhD
microbiologist who drew a civil servant's pay while handling some of
the most deadly pathogens on Earth -- live spores of anthrax.


The deadly mailings of anthrax-tainted envelopes transported Ivins
from the backwater of government scientific research at Ft. Detrick,
Md., to the center of the nation's fledgling war on terrorism. It
also spurred multibillion-dollar national security initiatives.

Ivins was thrust into the federal investigation of the mailings as
well. He helped the FBI analyze anthrax recovered from a letter
addressed to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.).

He also played a lead role in helping a private company, BioPort,
win regulatory approval to continue making the vaccine required for
U.S. service personnel deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and other
regions.

From 2000 to early 2002, Ivins and two colleagues from USAMRIID
helped BioPort resolve problems related to the potency of the
vaccine. Because of those and other manufacturing difficulties,
production had been suspended. The efforts of Ivins and his
colleagues helped BioPort win FDA approval to resume production.

At a Pentagon ceremony on March 14, 2003, Ivins and two colleagues
from USAMRIID were bestowed the Decoration of Exceptional Civilian
Service, the highest honor given to nonmilitary employees of the
Defense Department.

"Awards are nice," Ivins said in accepting the honor. "But the real
satisfaction is knowing the vaccine is back on line."

The Times sought earlier this year to obtain annual financial
disclosure statements filed by Ivins with his employer. USAMRIID
spokeswoman Caree Vander Linden said last month that Ivins had filed
financial reports exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of
Information Act.

Ivins' apparent suicide and the Justice Department's decision to
bring criminal charges against him were first reported Thursday
night by The Times<http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-
na-anthrax1-2008aug01%2C0%2C2864223.story>. On Friday, Ivins'
lawyer, Paul F. Kemp, defended his client and said that Ivins had
cooperated fully with the FBI.

"We assert his innocence in these killings, and would have
established that at trial," Kemp said, implicitly confirming that
Ivins had been about to be formally charged. "The relentless
pressure of accusation and innuendo takes its toll in different ways
on different people. . . . In Dr. Ivins' case, it led to his
untimely death."

Kemp did not respond to telephone calls and e-mails for this article.


david.willman @ latimes.com

Times researcher Janet Lundblad contributed to this report.

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African tribal leaders warned that the ICC charges against Bashir
would worsen the situation in the war-wracked region.


Darfur Tribes Reject ICC Bashir Charges
By  Ismail Kamal Kushkush, IOL Correspondent
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?
c=Article_C&cid=1216208255519&pagename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout


KHARTOUM — Darfur's African tribes have criticized International
Criminal Court (ICC) charges against Sudanese President Omar al-
Bashir, warning the accusations would further worsen the agony of
the Darfuri people.

"We denounce his [Ocampo's] decision," Sultan Mansur Dousa, of the
Zaghawa tribe, told IslamOnline.net, referring to ICC chief
prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo.

"We don't want the ICC to interfere in Darfur."

Last month, Moreno-Ocampo charged Bashir of committing genocide and
war crimes in Darfur.

He said that Bashir has "masterminded" a plan to wipe out Darfur's
major African tribes, the Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit.

"We did not assign Ocampo to speak on behalf of the Masalit; this is
an internal issue," said Taha Taj al-Din of the Masalit tribe.

"People have more of a right to address their own affairs than
others."

Sultan Sa'd Bahr al-Din, who governors the Dar Masalit district in
West Darfur state, acknowledges that the African tribes were worse
affected by the Darfur conflict.

"But all tribes were hurt by the war, even Arab ones," he said.

The Darfur conflict broke out in 2003 when rebels took up arms
against the Khartoum regime accusing it of discrimination.

The UN estimates some 300,000 people have died in the conflict,
while Khartoum puts the death toll at 10,000.

Up to 2 million have been forced out of their homes in the region
the size of France, in one of the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

"I am a patriot like many Sudanese; an attack on the president is an
attack on all of Sudan," said Bahr al-Din.

The UN Security Council adopted Thursday a resolution raising
concerns about ICC moves to Bashir for genocide.

The resolution said that the council would be willing to discuss
freezing any ICC indictment of Bashir for genocide in the interest
of peace in Darfur.

Most Western powers accepted the resolution's wording but Washington
rejected the section on the ICC and abstained from voting.

Agony

African tribal leaders warned that the ICC charges against Bashir
would worsen the situation in the war-wracked region.

"I think that Ocampo's decision will make matters more complicated;
it does not help," said Mahmud Ishaq Ateem of the Fur tribe.

"It will inflame the Darfur issue."

Ateem, who is the mayor of Kabkabia in North Darfur State, believes
that the ICC indictment against Bashir would disrupt efforts to
bring about peace in Darfur.

"There are attempts to negotiate and make peace with the rebel
groups; this is not a good time for such an act."

Taj al-Din, of the Masalit tribe, believes that Sudanese courts can
try those committing crimes in Darfur.

"Trials against individuals who have committed crimes in Darfur have
taken place and some were even executed," he said.

Sultan Dousa, of the Zaghawa tribe, agrees.

"We have always had problems and issues and we've always had judges
and lawyers to solve these problems," he said.

`Umda Ateem of the Fur tribe said that Sudanese courts have created
several committees to investigate crimes committed in Darfur.

"Investigators told us that even if an egg was stolen from you we
want to know about it," Ateem said.

"But the process has been slow."

Sultan Bahr al-Din, the Dar Masalit governor, said achieving peace
in Darfur should be a priority for all parties.

"We in Darfur are in need of peace with the help of our Arab,
African and Muslim brethren; not foreign interference.

"If we all purify our intentions we can achieve so."

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Islam Speaks for Itself
Jennie Rothenberg Gritz
02 Jul 2008
http://aspenideas.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/07/islam-speaks-for-
itself.php


I went into the discussion "Who Speaks for Islam?" assuming that it
would be an informative but relatively tame chat between two like-
minded people. The speakers listed on the program--Irshad Manji and
Dalia Mogahed--were both women intellectuals raised and educated in
the West; based on their bios, it was hard to imagine either one of
them advocating anything but a modern, democratic approach to the
Muslim faith.

But as soon as I glanced at the stage, it was obvious that the
discussion was going to be edgier than I'd expected. Manji was
dressed in a funky orange top with butterfly sleeves, and she had
uncovered hair in the spiky shape of a sea anemone. Mogahed, on the
other hand, wore a beige blazer and long skirt, and her neck and
head were hidden beneath a champagne-colored hijab. What followed
was not a debate between an extremist and a liberal but a nuanced
discussion between a moderate and a reformer. And that's what made
it riveting.

After greeting the Muslims in the room with "Salam aleykum" and the
atheists with "How the hell are ya?", Manji launched into a spirited
defense of religious reform. The problem, she insisted, was that
ordinary Muslims were afraid to forge a personal relationship with
the texts. Instead of countering extremist interpretations with more
tolerant readings of the same verses, Muslims were quietly looking
to elite scholars and clerics to show them the way.

Mogahed responded, speaking more gently but no less articulately
than Mogahed. She described the Muslim approach to analyzing the
texts, a process known as ishtihad. Any man or woman has the
authority to offer legitimate interpretations, she explained, as
long as that person first puts in the requisite hours of work and
scholarship. "But when we open it to simply anyone," she
argued, "what we risk is the ishdihad of ignorance." In other words,
giving unlimited authority to the masses will allow more Osama Bin
Ladens to be born.

I found this argument oddly compelling, probably because I have a
passing acquaintance with Orthodox Judaism. Unlike evangelical
Christians who take the Bible at its word, Orthodox rabbis read
scripture through the long lens of scholarly tradition. I'm not an
observant Jew myself, and I'm baffled whenever I look at a page of
the Talmud, where a single Hebrew verse gives rise to a maze of
Aramaic interpretation. In a strange way, though, the Talmudic
method encourages rigorous questioning even more than liberal
Judaism does. It's hard to argue with an independent thinker who
announces, "Here's what I think this verse means." But when you're
poring over endless opinions on the semantics of a single word or
the legal implications of a one-line commandment, it's easy to get
into lively debates about what the Torah is actually trying to say.

While I empathized with Mogahed's position, it was hard to deny any
of Manji's arguments for Islamic reform. When Mogahed insisted that
Bin Laden's speeches were mere political rhetoric sandwiched between
praisings of God and the Prophet, Manji pointed out Muslim
extremists do justify their violence with actual verses from the
Koran. Her argument reminded me of Christopher Hitchens' point that
a spark of religion can ignite ordinary human intolerance--say,
bitter rivalries between football fans--into widespread catastrophe.

Unlike Hitchens, Manji feels that Muslims should continue to revere
the Koran. But because imams and mullahs aren't stepping forward to
loudly counter extremist interpretations, she believes that ordinary
Muslims need to take responsibility for their own scriptures.

Here are a couple of video segments that capture the essence of the
debate. (Thanks to David Gibson and Colorado Audio Visual for
filming this session.) In the first clip, Jeffrey Goldberg, who
expertly moderated the session, asks the panelists to explain the
power dynamic in Islam, and Manji presents her philosophy in a
nutshell.

In the second clip, Mogahed offers an analogy to explain why Islam
itself is not the root cause of extremist violence. I should add
here that Mogahed's assertions are based largely on her professional
experience: she's the executive director of the Gallup Center for
Muslim Studies, and the book she wrote with John Esposito--also
called Who Speaks for Islam?--is based on poll data from 50,000
Muslims in 35 nations.

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IDF vets train NY Jewish paramilitaries
By HAVIV RETTIG
Jul 25, 2008
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?
pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1215331093729


Yonatan Stern, the "Sgan Mefaked Hakita" (deputy squad commander) of
Kitat Konenut New York, insists his "paramilitary emergency armed
response team" is no "group of vigilantes or a JDL [Jewish Defense
League]."

Members of Kitat Konenut New York pose in a photo posted on the
group's Facebook page.
Photo: Courtesy


"The goal of the organization is to have a competent and
professional group of armed volunteers ready to respond to a threat
at a moment's notice in any area where Jews reside," explains the
Israeli combat veteran. "We do not carry out demonstrations or
political activity of any kind as we have no political agenda. Our
agenda is to protect Jews wherever and whenever necessary and by any
means needed."

On Friday, the third session of the group's training camp will begin
in the Catskills woodlands of upstate New York, on land belonging to
a Jewish supporter of the organization. With tuition at $400, the
group expects 15 participants and five instructors for the 10 days
of training. Participation has doubled since the group began three
years ago.

Kitat Konenut New York is modeled on the rapid response teams in the
West Bank settlements that are often the first to act when terrorist
attacks or other emergencies take place. The group bills itself as
religious-Zionist but nonpolitical.

American Jews have "felt a false sense of security in the United
States," Stern believes, "because historically there has been less
anti-Semitism than in other countries. But there have been
incidents - neo-Nazi terrorist attacks, Arab terrorist attacks. Jews
have to be vigilant."

"The threat is not from the American people or government," he adds,
but from "terrorist sleeper cells that want to target Jews. These
people are very dangerous and the FBI issues warnings against them
very often," he said, citing the FBI's warning, after the killing of
Hizbullah operations chief Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus in February,
that the Lebanese group might carry out terror attacks on Jewish
communities.

"The average American is friendly to Jews, but we're worried about
those individuals on the periphery of society," Stern says.

The group was founded in the summer of 2006 in response to the
shooting attack at the Jewish federation of Seattle premises by
local Muslim Naveed Haq.

"We realized there is a need for this kind of organization, and as
Israeli combat veterans living in the US, we have the skills and
ability to respond to this," Stern says.

The group's MySpace page details the camp's regimen, which includes
training in the IDF's Krav Maga martial art, use of non-lethal
weapons and identification of suspicious objects, but also
sharpshooter and assault rifle training, infantry exercises and
endurance marches. Explanatory literature lists a large number of
weapons with which participants can expect to train.

"We believe all Jews in the US must be legally armed and trained,"
Stern says, "and towards this goal we hold paramilitary training
camps to train and equip Jewish American youth."

The group's literature notes emphatically that all firearms used in
training "are 100% legal and in compliance with all federal, state
and local laws."

"We strongly believe in the constitutional right to bear arms and we
express this right to its fullest," it adds.

The group claims to be "well-connected with the New York police and
fire departments" and it invites "all members of the law enforcement
community to join in our life-saving activities."

Stern says, "We are all legally armed and carry radios and
cellphones" during all hours of the day, and even on Shabbat, "as we
need to be constantly ready to respond to any incident."

The camp literature also promises discussions on Torah and Halacha,
understanding and confronting terrorism, fighting anti-Semitism, the
history of the Zionist movement in the Land of Israel, and
encouraging participants to "know your rights and learn how every
American can and must be legally armed and how to express the Second
Amendment" - the right to bear arms.

Funded by tuition money and a handful of private donors, the group
does not exclude secular Jews, Stern says, but asks that they
respect the Orthodox nature of the camp by observing Shabbat in
public and refraining from bringing non-kosher food.

"We wouldn't have a problem with non-Jews coming either," says
Stern, "but no non-Jew has applied thus far."

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Prominent American Muslim imam associated with criminal terrorist
acts during CNN American morning segment
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0807/22/ltm.02.html


TRANSCRIPT FROM CNN AMERICAN MORNING - 07/22/2208


[ ... ] CHETRY: Well, it's not the message but the messenger that's
causingquite a debate over a new ad campaign that's set to go up
here in NewYork City's subways. The posters will try to fight
negative stereotypesabout Islam during the morning commute. But it's
the man behind the ideathat's raising some eyebrows. Mary Snow has
more on the plan to educate city commuters that could gooff the
rails -- Mary.

MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John and Kiran, a group promoting
Islam istrying something new. It's targeting New York's roughly five
milliondaily subway riders with ads. But it's the face promoting
those adsthat's prompting discussion that organizers are trying to
erase. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SNOW (voice-over): Q: Head scarf? Q: Islam? These subway ads are
designed to battle negative images of Islam. Theyaren't even put up
yet but they've already sparked this "New York Post"headline "Jihad
Train." "The Post" story focuses not so much on themessage as the
messenger, an imam who's now promoting the project tospread
awareness about Islam to millions of subway riders. (BEGIN VIDEO
CLIP)

IMAM SIRAJ WAHHAJ, AL-TAQWA MOSQUE: Imagine them seeing the word
Muhammad. Imagine them seeing the word Islam. Imagine them seeing
theword hijab. (END VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: Imam Siraj Wahhaj draws attention because he's among
170unindicted co-conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing
case.And he served as a character witness to the man convicted of
being themastermind of that bombing, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman (ph).

IMAM SIRAJ WAHHAJ, AL-TAQWA MOSQUE: The context of me being a
characterwitness for Sheikh Abdel-Rahman (ph) is what we knew about
him beforethe incident.

SNOW: A former U.S. prosecutor in the case says while Wahhaj was on
alist of unindicted co-conspirators, he was never charged.

ANDREW MCCARTHY, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR (ON THE PHONE): I think
thelist is probably an interesting footnote to people. I get asked
about it every couple of years when some story or another about
Wahhaj comes up. But I, you know, I think it's -- the list is a
tempest in a teapot.

SNOW: Wahhaj says while he may be a controversial figure, he was
alsothe first Muslim to lead a prayer before the session of the
House ofRepresentatives in 1991. But he admits there are things he
said heregrets, such as calling the FBI and CIA terrorists.

WAHHAJ: What I was saying is that no, not that all of the FBI
areterrorists or the CIA are terrorists. But there are some elements
inthere. So if you want to accuse some Muslims, OK. These Muslims
didthat. But don't undermine the entire faith. That's really the
message. (END VIDEOTAPE)

SNOW: The group behind the ads, the Islamic Circle of North
America,says it welcomes the imam's promotion of their campaign.
They say he isoften portrayed the same way Islam is portrayed. The
ads are slated togo up in 1,000 subway cars in September to coincide
with Ramadan -- Johnand Kiran.

CHETRY: All right. That was Mary Snow for us. And again, shesays
these ads are scheduled to go up in subway cars. The MTA looking to
make about $48,000 out of that ad campaign.

===

The NY Chapter of Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and it's
877-WHY-ISLAM project have put together an informational ad campaign
about Islam where 1,000 ads will be running in 1,000 New York City
Subway cars this upcoming Ramadan for 30 days.

The campaign has already generated serious media attention (see to
right). Alhumdulilah even before having one ad placed in the subway
millions of people have seen the ad and many have visited our
website or called our 877-WHY-ISLAM information hotline.

Imam Siraj Wahhaj has been maligned in the media simply for
supporting this effort. We should stand firmly by his side and
defend him and defend freedom of religion and speech.

SUPPORT: DONATE TODAYand share in the blessings.

https://icnany.org/Donation/Donation.php?a=subway

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Israeli Soldiers Shoot Female Farmer in Gaza
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/middleeast/news/article_141427
4.php/Israeli_soldiers_wound_female_farmer_in_Gaza__1st_Lead_


Gaza/Tel Aviv - Israeli soldiers stationed on the southern border of
the Gaza Strip shot and injured a female Palestinian farmer early
Tuesday, while Palestinian militants overnight launched another
rocket into southern Israel, further threatening a wobbly truce.

Palestinian medical officials said the woman was shot in the lower
limbs when she entered her land near the southern Gaza Strip border
with Israel, east of Khan Younis.

The border area shooting is the third such incident reported by
Palestinians, who have said a Palestinian farmer in his 70s was also
shot in the lower limbs Wednesday last week in the same area, near
southern Gaza's border with Israel. A third Palestinian farmer was
shot and wounded by Israeli soldiers stationed on Gaza's north-
western border with Israel on Monday last week.

An Israeli military spokesman said the army was checking the report
of the wounded woman. Of the other two cases, he could only confirm
the shooting of Wednesday last week, but he insisted that the
soldiers had fired only warning shots after they spotted three
Palestinians approaching the border fence. The soldiers did not 'in
any way' aim at the elderly man's body and fired only into the air.
They identified no hit, he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Israel has via Egypt informed the radical Islamic Hamas movement
ruling Gaza that it will fire warning shots at any Palestinian
entered a 'no-go' security zone near Gaza's border fence, security
officials confirmed to dpa.

The officials said the decision came after militants had
launched 'not one, not two,' but numerous attacks on soldiers
guarding the border.

Many Palestinian farmers, however, have land adjacent to the border,
which they need to cultivate, and enter the area regardless of the
warning.

Hamas has expressed objection to the Israeli decision to declare the
area immediately west of Gaza's security fence a 'no-go' security
strip and the move was expected to create tension.

The Israeli Ha'aretz daily reported Tuesday that Israel wants to
keep the 'no-go' security zones along Gaza's border because it fears
that militants will use the truce to plant explosives on the
Palestinian side of the fence, which would give them an edge if the
ceasefire collapses or when it expires. In the past, militants have
planted bombs aimed at Israeli military vehicles patrolling the
area.

According to Ha'aretz, Israel also fears that Hamas might build a
line of fortifications along the fence as a basis for further
attacks, as the Lebanese Hezbollah movement did between Israel's
unilateral withdrawal from a self-proclaimed 'security zone' in
southern Lebanon in May 2000 and the second Lebanon war in the
summer of 2006.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, meanwhile, ordered the military
to again shut Israel's key crossings with Gaza, allowing in no goods
until further notice, in retaliation for an overnight rocket attack
from the Strip.

The rocket launched late Monday caused neither injuries nor damage,
a military spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said, and was the fifth launched
since the truce went into effect at 0300 GMT on June 19.

Israel responded also to the previous launchings by temporarily
shutting the Gaza crossing points. They had just been reopened
Sunday after some four days of complete closure.

No organization claimed responsibility for Monday night's rocket
attack, after Hamas had threatened to take steps against other
militant factions in Gaza violating the truce.

The Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad movement had claimed credit for all
but one of the previous rockets fired since the truce.

It has said it wants Israel to expand the ceasefire to the West Bank
and fired the rockets after Israeli soldiers killed a senior Islamic
Jihad militant and his companion during an arrest raid in the
northern West Bank city of Nablus last week.

The ceasefire in Gaza, brokered by Egypt, took effect after months
of difficult indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas, and of
near-daily rocket attacks from the Strip and Israeli retaliatory
military incursions.

===

Israeli Soldiers Attack Child's Funeral
For a video of the funeral see

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84_ePTW6wEE

[from Friends of Freedom and Justice www.bilin-ffj.org



I recommend reading Kim's report below before watching the brief
video


The 2nd boy from Ni'lin (a teen ager) shot in the head is brain
dead, but is still in the hospital apparently on life-sustaining
equipment.

===

The Murder of Ahmed, Age 10
By Kim Bullimore – The West Bank
08/01/2008


Ahmad. (Photo: Kim Bullmore)


Another child has just been murdered.

On Tuesday, July 29, Ahmed Ussam Yusef Mousa, aged 10, was shot dead
with a single shot to the head by Israeli occupation forces.  Ahmed
was murdered, just before 6pm, when he and a group of youth from
Ni'lin village attempted to dismantle a section of barbwire fencing
erected on the village's land by the Israeli occupation forces.

Ahmed is now the twelfth person and seventh child to be killed by
the Israeli occupation forces in demonstrations against the
apartheid fence [1].  He is one of more than 840 Palestinian
children killed by the Israeli Zionist state since the beginning of
the Al Aqsa Intifada in September 2000 [2].

My IWPS team mate and myself  received the news of Ahmed's death
last night as we arrived in Ramallah. Within fifteen minutes we were
at the hospital.  As we arrived Ahmed's little body was being
brought into the hospital.  My teammate and myself were "lucky" in
that we did not see Ahmed but two of our friends and activists from
the ISM, who were at the hospital, did. Both experienced activists,
they spoke quietly and with disbelief of how tiny Ahmed was.

The initial shock, grief and tears we all felt were held at bay over
the next few hours as we worked in the ISM's media office, ringing
media persons, outlets, pulling together media releases. As we
emailed out the press releases to the media and our various networks
around the world, the emails poured in expressing shock, outrage and
heartache.

As the night wore on we sat with each other, listened and supported
each other, especially with those of use who had close ties with the
villagers of Ni'lin and who had witnessed the arrival of Ahmed's
body at the hospital. None of us could sleep, although we were all
exhausted and we sat in the garden as the early hours of the
mourning came upon us.  Finally at around 3am, we forced ourselves
to go to bed, but we all spent a sleepless night thinking about the
grief the family must be experiencing - their shock, horror and
disbelief - that their little boy was no longer with them.

In the morning, other members of the ISM and IWPS began to arrive in
Ramallah, so we could all go to the hospital at 10am to be part of
Ahmed's funeral procession and to accompany his family home with his
body. At 10.30am, Ahmed's family arrived, accompanied by many of the
villagers from Ni'lin who came to pay their respects. Soon Ahmed's
body was brought out and placed in the ambulance. As the ambulance
drove out of the hospital car park, we took our place in the funeral
procession made up of dozens of cars filled with villagers and
others had come to pay their respects. Over the next 45 minutes, as
we made our way through the streets of centre of Ramallah, we were
joined by more cars, trucks and taxis. Many of the cars displayed
Ahmed's shihad or martyr poster (in Palestine the word martyr refers
to anyone killed as a result of the Israeli occupation, not just
militants who participate in suicide bombings or who are part of the
armed resistance in the camps. Martyrs can be children and/or
adults, who have died at the hands of the Israeli military). Ahmed's
poster displayed a handsome little boy, who was small and slight of
build. Each time I looked at the poster, I wondered how anyone one
could think that this tiny child could be such a threat to the
security of their state?  What could posses any person to think that
the appropriate response to a small child was to fire live
ammunition, deliberately shooting to kill?

As I looked at his photograph trying to image why Ahmed had to die,
his funeral procession began to make its way out of Ramallah. As we
left the city and began to traverse the hills and pass through the
surrounding Palestinian villages, we sat in silence, very little to
say to each other. As the procession drove on the chants from the
Palestinian mourners continued, remembering Ahmed, God and opposing
the occupation and the apartheid wall.

As we weaved our way through one village after another, more cars
joined us and villagers came to stand on the streets to offer their
silent condolences and respect for Ahmed and his family. Along with
adults, young children also lined the streets of the villages we
passed through. My heart broke as I watch their little faces, many
of them too young to comprehend what the procession was about. But
as I watched these small children through the windows of our car, I
kept wondering if one day they too would share the same fate as
Ahmed. And the sadness and anger in me grew once again.

As we approached Bil'in village, a young father stood on the side of
the road, along with a group of young children, many no doubt his
own. They stood silent, bravely, in dignity with Palestinian flags
held high in remembrance of Ahmed. Suddenly, all the composure and
restraint I had imposed on myself since we first heard the news of
Ahmed's death left me and tears began to stream down my face.

When we reached Bil'in, many of the village residents who had been
active in the struggle to save the lands of their village were
waiting for the funeral procession. As the procession wound through
the village, many of them joined us, as we began to make the last
leg of the journey to Ni'lin.

As we neared the settler highway that we must traverse to get to
Ni'lin, we began to anxiously scan the hills and fields for the
Israeli occupation forces who would be waiting for the funeral
procession. As rounded the last bend before the highway, we caught
our first glimpse of them and wondered would they try and stop the
funeral procession? Would the use violence us? Would they attack the
funeral procession, as the Israeli military had done on so many
occasions before?

As we reached the highway, we could see the Israeli occupation
forces had blocked the road and stopped Israeli plated cars from
continuing towards the village's entrance. This sight was a relief.
Perhaps, we thought, they will let the funeral procession proceed
unhindered. However, as we got closer to the entrance of the village
and we and the rest of the Palestinians mourners and other
internationals poured out of the vehicles on to the highway, we
could see the Israeli occupation forces had set up another barricade
near the village entrance. While the barricade did not prevent entry
to the village, it was a clear sign that the military want to make
their presence known. By placing the barrier directly opposite the
entrance, rather then setting it up  50 or 100 or 200 metres or more
away as they could have easily have done, the Israeli military
seemed intent on provoking a confrontation with the mourners.

As Ahmed's tiny body, wrapped in his funeral shroud, was carried
above the crowd, the mourners chanted his martyrdom, against the
occupation and the wall and for the greatness of God. Soon, smaller
groups broke off from the procession to confront the soldiers,
yelling at them angrily, as the emotions, anger and grief
surrounding Ahmed's death spilled over.  In response the Israeli
occupation forces began to throw sound grenades and flash bombs.  As
myself and one of my IWPS teammates moved closer to the front line
to try and offer some sort of international presence, teargas began
to be fired by the Israeli military.  For the next few minutes, we
were caught between the military firing on us and the young
Palestinian men throwing stones in response to the occupation forces
attack on the funeral procession.

As people began to run, we were swept up in the chaos and at one
point people tried to crush past a park car, resulting in several
young boys being dragged down and trampled.   Suddenly, I saw a man
dragging the limp body of a young teenage boy and at first my heart
went to my mouth, as I thought another child had been shot. As the
young boy was dragged to safety, he began to gain consciousness and
my relief was palpable.

Tears streaming down my eyes from the teargas, I tried to locate my
teammate and the internationals amongst the mourners who began to
regroup. Soon, the funeral procession began to make its way once
again, with Ahmed's tiny body, towards the mosque. As Ahmed was
carried up the stairs into the mosque, prayers were called and we
waited in quite vigil for Ahmed and his family.

When the prayers finished, Ahmed was brought from the mosque and
taken once again by funeral procession to the village burial ground.
We walked quietly, as again the chants from the villagers and others
Palestinians spoke of Ahmed's martyrdom, God and the occupation.

As we approached the burial grounds, women stood atop the house near
where little Ahmed would be buried. As the funeral procession passed
by they ululated, performing the zachrohtah, the traditional sound
made to wish someone well. In performing this tradition, the women
sought to ensure Ahmed's journey to paradise would be happy and
joyful.

As the men accompanied Ahmed's body for burial, we decided to remain
outside. As we waited quietly, two young girls, both under the age
of ten, shyly came to say hello. As we conversed, they asked me my
name, where I lived and other innocent questions. As I responded, in
my badly pronounced Arabic, they also began to ask if I liked Noor,
the widely popular Turkish soap opera (which is dubbed in Arabic)
that is showing at the moment on Palestinian television. I asked
them if they liked Mohanad, the male lead, who all the Palestinian
girls and young women have fallen in love with and they told me yes.
As I practiced my Arabic with them and spoke of the things little
girls find interesting and joyful, I thought again of Ahmed who will
never have the chance to play games with his friends or his family
and of how he would never be able to speak of the television shows
he loved.  And again the sadness swept over me for Ahmed and for his
family, who would miss him so much.

*17 year old, Yousef Ahmad Younis Amera was shot in the head, twice,
with rubber coated steel bullets at close range by the Israeli
military, in Ni'lin village several hours after Ahmed was buried.
Yousef was declared brain dead several hours after he was shot by
the Israeli occupation forces.

  - Kim Bullimore is currently living the Occupied West Bank, where
she is a human rights volunteer with the International Women's Peace
Service (www.iwps.info). She has a blog
www.livefromoccupiedpalestine.blogspot.com and is a regular writer
on Palestine-Israel issues. She contributed this article to
PalestineChronicle.com.

Notes:

[1]International Solidarity Movement (29 July, 2008) Ten year old
shot In Ni'lin http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2008/07/29/10-year-
old-shot-dead-at-nilin/

[2] Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Statistics relation to the
Al Aqsa Intifada http://www.pchrgaza.org/alaqsaintifada.html

If you like this article, please consider making a contribution to
the Palestine Chronicle.

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FBI concedes Aafia Siddiqui in US custody: lawyer
By Anwar Iqbal
Dawn
August 4, 2008
http://www.dawn.com/2008/08/04/top7.htm


WASHINGTON, Aug 3: Five years after her mysterious disappearance in
Karachi, the FBI has finally conceded that an MIT-trained
Pakistani neuroscientist is alive and is in US custody in
Afghanistan.

Aafia Siddiqui, 36, disappeared with her three children while
visiting her parents' home in Karachi in March 2003, around the same
time the FBI announced that it wanted to question her over her
alleged links to Al Qaeda.

Her family's lawyer Elaine Whitfield Sharp said she believed recent
media reports about Mrs Siddiqui's incarceration increased
pressure on the US and Pakistani authorities to divulge more
information.

"I don't believe that they just found Aafia," she said. "I believe
that she was there all along."

The fate of her three young, American-born children is still unknown.

Before her disappearance, Mrs Siddiqui lived in a Boston suburb of
Roxbury and studied at Brandeis University as well as the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In a 2006 report, Amnesty International listed Mrs Siddiqui as among
a number of "disappeared" suspects in the war on terrorism. On
July 6, 2007, AI listed Mrs Siddiqui as a possible CIA "secret
detainee", although she was still on the FBI's Seeking Information -
Terrorism list. Late last week, Mrs Siddiqui's photo still appeared
on the FBI's list of people wanted for questioning.

Since no charges were ever filed against her, human rights groups
treated her case as that of "extrajudicial detention", although no
government ever claimed detaining her.

Even the FBI does not mention any charges in the notice seeking
information about her. "Although the FBI has no information
indicating this individual is connected to specific terrorist
activities, the FBI would like to locate and question this
individual," says the notice.

The "gray lady of Bagram": On July 7, a British journalist Yvonne
Ridley told a news conference in Islamabad that a Pakistani woman
had been held in solitary confinement for years at the Bagram US
base near Kabul. The identity of this prisoner remains unconfirmed.
She has been nicknamed the "gray lady of Bagram". Ms Ridley,
however, speculated that she was Aafia Siddiqui.

Moazzam Begg and several other former captives also have reported
that a female prisoner, prisoner 650, was held in Bagram. The
former captives claim that she has lost her sanity and cries all the
time.

Although it is still not clear if the "gray lady of Bagram" is Aafia
Siddiqui, her family's attorney told reporters on Friday that
the FBI had finally conceded that Mrs Siddiqui is in US custody.

"It has been confirmed by the FBI that Aafia Siddiqui is alive,"
said Ms Sharp, who said she spoke to an FBI official on Thursday.

"She is injured but alive, and she is in Afghanistan."

For five years, US and Pakistani authorities denied knowing her
whereabouts. But human rights groups and Mrs Siddiqui's relatives
had long suspected that she had been captured in Karachi and
secretly taken into custody.

On Thursday, an FBI official visited Mrs Siddiqui's brother in
Houston to deliver the news that she was alive and in custody, Ms
Sharp said.

FBI officials, however, would not say who was holding her or reveal
the fate of her children.

"If she's in US custody, they want to know where she is," Ms Sharp
said. "Who has got her? And does she need medical care?"

The FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment.

US military documents declassified in recent years suggest that Mrs
Siddiqui is suspected of having ties to several key terrorism
suspects being held at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre.

She is believed to have links to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged
mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and allegedly
arranged travel documents for another suspected terrorist.

Papers in Guantanamo Bay also indicate that she married Ali Abd Al
Aziz Ali, an alleged Al Qaeda facilitator who intended to blow up
petrol stations or poison water reservoirs in the United States.

The three men were among 14 high-value suspects brought to
Guantanamo Bay in 2006 after years of secret detention in CIA
prisons in Eastern Europe.

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Extremism is wrong for Islam, but also for U.S.
Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi: Faith and policy
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008808050305


  In a Pentagon strategy report last Thursday, Defense Secretary
Robert Gates pledged partnership with China and Russia, while he
suggested a long war against Islamic extremism. The promising point
in the secretary's statement was his emphasis on the need to prevent
Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social
development in vulnerable areas. So he admits it: the best way to
end militant extremism is to fight poverty, corruption and social
injustice!

The U.S. invasion of Iraq caused death, destruction, and the
relocation of many millions of Iraqis and thousands of American
soldiers -- to destroy a weapon that didn't exist. That was in
itself an act of extremism which created even more violent
extremism!

The Iraq war has cost $600 billion but the human cost is greater.
This year more than 22,000 traumatized veterans sought help from a
suicide prevention hot line.

Even more astonishing is the recent report on CNN that 41 percent of
the women at one veterans hospital in Los Angeles have said that
they were victims of sexual assault from other soldiers while
serving in the military. What does that say about the moral
casualties of this war?

What happened to the America of JFK and Martin Luther King? The
American rule of law and the U.S. Constitution disappeared at Abu
Ghraib, Guantanamo and in our foreign policy.

Extremism is against the pure teachings of Moses, Jesus and
Mohammad. The Dalai Lama said recently that "it's totally wrong,
unfair" to call Islam a violent religion.

Are the Armageddonites, who believe that all 5 billion non-
Christians on the planet must be killed and sent to hell, not
violent Christian extremists?

Are those Israel settlers, who illegally occupy Palestinian
property, not violent Jewish extremists?

Scapegoating Muslims leads to the loss of civil rights for all of
us. Not only do I get stopped for questioning every time I return
from a foreign trip, but even U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy and Rep.
John Lewis have been repeatedly stopped and searched at the airport
and made to fill out multiple forms. We aren't extremists! We love
our country. We always condemn terrorism, extremism and violence in
any form.

There is a need to rebuild mutual trust. Let's not waste our time
and resources for another 30 years fighting an enemy that doesn't
exist. Let's correct our mistakes, get out of isolation or what Phil
Gramm recently described it as "mental recession" and become a
source of inspiration and prosperity for our nation and the world.
Mr. Secretary! Let's dislike for ourselves what we dislike for
others!

Extremism is wrong for Islam but it's also wrong for America. A
recent survey indicated that 76 percent of Americans say the U.S.A.
is going in the wrong direction. Do those oil companies whose profit
passed $12 billion in three months care about people's opinions or
our new $500 billion budget deficit?

If we can dialogue with China and Russia despite their thousands of
nuclear bombs, how come we can't have a serious dialogue with Iran,
who isn't even making nuclear weapons, based on our own intelligence
agencies?


Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi heads the Islamic House of Wisdom in
Dearborn Heights. Send letters to The News at 615 W. Lafayette,
Detroit, MI 48226 or (313) 222-6417 or letters @ detnews.com.


NOTE: Make sure you zip a letter to the editor in support. Important.

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Anglo-American and Chinese interests clash over Zimbabwe's strategic
mineral wealth


Mugabe's Biggest Sin
By F. William Engdahl
July 30, 2008
www.globalresearch.ca


Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, presides over one of the
world's richest minerals treasures, the Great Dyke region, which
cuts a geological swath across the entire land from northeast to
southwest. The real background to the pious concerns of the Bush
Administration for human rights in Zimbabwe in the past several
years is not Mugabe's possible election fraud or his expropriation
of white settler farms. It is the fact that Mr. Mugabe has been
quietly doing business, a lot of it, with the one country which has
virtually unlimited need of strategic raw materials Zimbabwe can
provide—China. Mugabe's Zimbabwe is, along with Sudan, on the
central stage of the new war over control of strategic minerals of
Africa between Washington and Beijing, with Moscow playing a
supporting role in the drama. The stakes are huge.

Zimbabwe's President, Robert Mugabe is a very very bad man. This we
all know from reading the newspapers or hearing the pronouncements
of George W. Bush, earlier Britain's Tony Blair and more recently
Gordon Brown. In their eyes he has sinned badly. They charge that he
is a dictator; that he has expropriated, often with violence, the
farms of whites as part of land reform; they claim he rigged his re-
election by vote fraud and violence; that he has ruined the economy
of Zimbabwe.

Whether Robert Mugabe deserves to be in Washington's honor roll of
villains alongside Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, Milosevic,
Ahmadinejad, and Adolf Hitler, however, it is not the reason
Washington and London have made Zimbabwe regime change priority
number one for their Africa policy.

What his sin is seems to have more to do with his attempts to get
out from under Anglo-American neo-colonial serfdom dependency and to
pursue a national economic development independent of the
International Monetary Fund and World Bank. His real sin seems to be
the fact that he has turned to the one nation that offers his
government credits and soft loans for economic development with no
strings attached—The Peoples' Republic of China.

Western media accounts conveniently tend to omit the second major
party to what is a huge tug of war between Anglo-American interests
and China to get control of Zimbabwe's vast mineral wealth. We
should keep in mind that for Washington there are always "good
dictators" and "bad dictators." The difference is whether the given
dictator serves US national interests or not. Mugabe clearly is in
the latter category.

Cecil Rhodes' legacy

Zimbabwe is the name of what under the era of British Imperialism a
century ago was named Rhodesia. The name Rhodesia came from the
British imperial strategist and miner, Cecil Rhodes, founder of the
Rhodes scholarships to Oxford, and author of a plan for a vast
private African zone, to be chartered from the Queen of England,
from Egypt to South Africa. Cecil Rhodes created the British South
Africa Company, modeled on the East India Company, along with his
partner, L. Starr Jameson of Jameson Raid notoriety, to exploit the
mineral riches of Rhodesia. It controlled what was later named
Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Southern Rhodesia-Nyasaland. The
model was that the British Government would assume all risks to
militarily defend Rhodes' looting while Rhodes and his London
bankers, above all Lord Rothschild, who was a close associate, would
assume all the gains of the business.

Rhodes, a seasoned geologist, knew well that there was a remarkable
geological fault running from the mouth of the Nile at the Gulf of
Suez south through Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, down through today's
Zimbabwe on to South Africa. Rhodes had already instigated several
wars to gain control of the diamonds of Kimberly and the gold of
Witwatersrand in South Africa. This geological phenomenon he, as
well as enterprising German explorers, had discovered in the 1880's.
They named it the Great Rift Valley.

Rhodesia, like South Africa after the bloody Boer wars, was settled
by white settlers to secure future minerals gains for allied
interests of the City of London, mainly those of the powerful
Oppenheimer family and their gold and diamond enterprises in the
region.

In 1962 when Africa was undergoing the wave of national liberation
from colonial rule, a wave calculatedly supported by "non-colonial
power" Washington, Rhodesia was one of the last bastions, along with
former British colony South Africa, of white Apartheid rule. Whites
in Rhodesia constituted only 1-2% of the total population so their
methods of holding on to power were rather ruthless.

White supremacist Prime Minister, Ian Smith, declared Rhodesian
independence from Britain in 1965 rather than agree to the slightest
compromise on race or power sharing with black nationalists. Britain
got UN trade sanctions imposed to force Smith to buckle under.
Despite sanctions, there was considerable support from conservative
business interests in London. Britain's Tiny Rowland, head of the
Lonrho mining conglomerate, secured the bulk of his African profits
from Rhodesian copper mining and related ventures under the Smith
regime. The City of London knew very well what riches lay in
Rhodesia. The question was how to secure enduring control. Smith's
Rhodesian backers had little interest in giving it all to London.

Following a long and bloody struggle, in 1980 the leader of the
black African Popular Front coalition, Robert Mugabe, overwhelmingly
won election as the first Prime Minister of a new Zimbabwe. Twenty
eight years later, the same Robert Mugabe is under escalating attack
from the West, especially Zimbabwe's former colonial master,
England, including strong economic sanctions designed to bring the
country to the brink of collapse, to force him to open the economy
to foreign (read Anglo-American and allied) investment. Ironically,
the issue seems not all that different from the Ian Smith era:
London and US control of the resources of the rich land, and
Zimbabwean efforts to resist that control.

The Great Dyke

Within Zimbabwe, a portion of the rich Great Rift is called the
Great Dyke, an intrusive geological treasure zone running over 530
kilometers from the northeast to the southwest of the country, in
places up to 12 kilometers wide. A river runs along the fault and
the region is volcanically active. Here also lie vast deposits of
chromium, of copper, platinum and other metals.

The US State Department, as well as London, is aware of the vast
minerals and other riches of Zimbabwe. It states in a recent report
on Zimbabwe,

"Zimbabwe is endowed with rich mineral resources. Exports of gold,
asbestos, chrome, coal, platinum, nickel, and copper could lead to
an economic recovery one day...The country is richly endowed with
coal-bed methane gas that has yet to be exploited.

With international attractions such as Victoria Falls, the Great
Zimbabwe stone ruins, Lake Kariba, and extensive wildlife, tourism
historically has been a significant segment of the economy and
contributor of foreign exchange. The sector has contracted sharply
since 1999, however, due to the country's declining international
image.(sic).

Energy Resources

With considerable hydroelectric power potential and plentiful coal
deposits for thermal power station, Zimbabwe is less dependent on
oil as an energy source than most other comparably industrialized
countries, but it still imports 40% of its electric power needs from
surrounding countries--primaril y Mozambique. Only about 15% of
Zimbabwe's total energy consumption is accounted for by oil, all of
which is imported. Zimbabwe imports about 1.2 billion liters of oil
per year. Zimbabwe also has substantial coal reserves that are
utilized for power generation, and coal-bed methane deposits
recently discovered in Matabeleland province are greater than any
known natural gas field in Southern or Eastern Africa. In recent
years, poor economic management and low foreign currency reserves
have led to serious fuel shortages."

In short, chrome, copper, gold, platinum, huge hydroelectric power
potential and vast coal reserves are what is at stake for Washington
and London in Zimbabwe. The country also has unverified reserves of
uranium, something in big demand today for nuclear power generation.

It is clear of late that so long as the tenacious Mugabe is running
things, not the Anglo-Americans, but rather the Chinese, are
Zimbabwe's preferred business partners. This seems to be Mugabe's
greatest sin. He's not reading from the right program as George W.
Bush's friends see it. His real sin seems to be turning East not
West for economic and investment help.

The Chinese connection

During the Cold War China recognized and supported Robert Mugabe. In
recent years as China's search for secure raw materials escalated
its foreign diplomacy, relations have become stronger. According to
the Chinese media, China has invested more in Zimbabwe than any
other nation.

Already back in July 2005 as Tony Blair turned the sanctions screws
tighter on Zimbabwe, Mugabe flew to Beijing to meet with the top
Chinese leadership, where he reportedly sought an emergency loan of
US$1 billion and asked increased Chinese involvement in the economy.

It began to bear fruit. In June 2006 state--owned Zimbabwean
businesses signed a number of energy, mining and farming deals worth
billions of dollars with Chinese companies. The largest was with
China Machine-Building International Corporation, for a $1,3bn
contract to mine coal and build thermal-power generators in
Zimbabwe, to reduce Zimbabwe's electricity shortage. The Chinese
company had already built thermal-power stations in Nigeria and
Sudan, and had been involved in mining projects in Gabon.

In 2007 the Chinese government donated farm machinery worth $25
million to Zimbabwe, including 424 tractors and 50 trucks, as part
of a $58 million loan to the Zimbabwean government. The Mugabe
administration had previously seized white-owned farms and gave them
to blacks, damaging machinery in the process. In return for the
equipment and the loan the Zimbabwean government will ship 30
million kilograms of tobacco to the People's Republic of China.

Other Zimbabwe-China agreements included a deal between the Zimbabwe
Mining Development and China's Star Communications, forming a joint
venture to mine chrome, with funding from the China Development
Bank. Zimbabwe also agreed to import road-building, irrigation and
farming equipment from the China National Construction and
Agricultural Machinery Import and Export Corporation and China Poly
Group. Zimbabwe also relies on China for imports of
telecommunications equipment, military hardware and many other
critical items it can no longer import from the west because of the
British-led sanctions.

Relations have become so important that Zimbabwe's police have a
dedicated "China desk" to protect Chinese interests in the country.

In April 2007 the chairman of China's top political advisory body,
Jia Qinglin, head of the National Committee of the Chinese Peoples'
Political Consultative Conference, flew to Harare to meet with
Mugabe. It was a follow-up to the 2006 Beijing China-Africa
Cooperation Summit where the Chinese government invited the heads of
more than 40 African states to discuss relations. Africa has become
a diplomatic and economic priority for China and its economy.

At that time, Beijing got an open invitation to help develop dormant
mines in the country. The deputy speaker of Zimbabwe's parliament
called for more Chinese investment in the country's mining sector,
according to China's Xinhua news agency. Zimbabwe's mining laws were
changed to allow the government to reallocate mining claims that
were not being exploited.

Mining generates half of Zimbabwe's export revenue. It is the only
sector in the country that still has foreign investors after the
collapse of the main agricultural sector. Western companies with
mining claims in Zimbabwe were not exploiting them. "We would appeal
to the Chinese government to come in full force to exploit these
minerals," Zimbabwean Deputy Parliamentary Speaker, Kumbirai Kangai
said to the official Xinhua.

Kangai assured potential Chinese investors that they would not
expose themselves to legal action if they took over claims held by
Western companies.

A few months after, in December 2007, Chinese company, Sinosteel
Corporation, acquired 67 percent stake in Zimbabwe's leading
ferrochrome producer and exporter Zimasco Holdings. Zimasco Holdings
is the fifth largest high carbonated ferrochrome producer in the
world. It used to produce 210,000 tons of high-carbon ferrochrome
per year, nearly all of it along the mineral-rich Great Dyke,
accounting for 4 percent of global ferrochrome production.

Zimasco has also the world's second largest reserves of chrome,
after South Africa. It was formerly owned by Union Carbide
Corporation, now part of Dow Chemicals Corp.

Oh, oh! Alarm bells went ringing in London and in Washington at that
news.

China clearly views Africa as a central part of its strategic plan,
most notably for its oil reserves and vital raw materials such as
copper, chrome, nickel. The continent is also at the same time
becoming an important region for Chinese manufactured exports. But
the raw materials battle is at the heart, and the real reason by all
accounts, why Washington recently decided to form a separate Africa
Command in the Pentagon.

Controlling China's economic emergence is an un-stated strategic
priority of United States foreign and military policy and has been
since before September 11, 2001. The only delicate point in the
business is the fact that China, with well over $1.7 trillions of
foreign exchange reserves, most believed in form of US Treasury
securities, could trigger a complete dollar panic and further
collapse of the US economy should she decide for political reasons
it were too risky to continue holding its hundreds of billions of US
dollar debt. In effect, by buying US Government debt with its trade
surpluses, China has been indirectly financing US policies counter
to Chinese national interest such as the Iraq war, or even the $100
million or so annually that Condi Rice's State Department spends on
Tibet.

China is refusing to play by the rules of the Anglo-American neo-
colonial game. It does not seek IMF or World Bank approval before
dealing with African countries. It makes soft loans, regardless who
might be running the country. In this it does nothing different from
Washington or London. The Chinese see American influence in Africa
less entrenched than in the rest of the world, thus offering unique
opportunities for China to pursue its economic interests.

It may or may not be cynical. It may be Realpolitik. If it results
in the ability of certain African countries to use China as a
political counterweight to the one-sided Anglo-American domination
of the Continent, that itself could be a major benefit to Africans
depending on how they use it.

Clearly, it has been extremely positive for Chinese access to vital
economic minerals for its economy as well as oil from places such as
Darfur and southern Sudan, or Nigeria.

Mineral wealth has once more put Africa on center stage of a battle
for mineral riches between East and West. This time, unlike during
the Cold War era, however, Beijing is playing with far more assets,
and Washington with far less.


F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil
Politics and the New World Order (Pluto Press), and Seeds of
Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

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Filthy Iraqi drinking water raises cholera fears
By SELCAN HACAOGLU
Aug 2, 2008
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080802/D929UBH82.html


(AP) People fish in the polluted Tigris River, next to a sewage
pipe, in central Baghdad, Iraq,...


BAGHDAD (AP) - Just months after Americans repaired a sewage
treatment plant in southern Baghdad, insurgents attacked the
facility and killed the manager. Looters took care of the rest.

Nearly three years later, the plant remains an abandoned shell. Raw
sewage is still flowing freely through giant pipes into the Tigris
River, ending up in some of the capital's drinking water. And those
pipes are hardly the only source of contamination.

Many residents only have to sniff the tap water to know something is
not right.

"I fear giving it to my children directly unless I boil it," said
Enam Mohammed Ali, a 36-year-old mother of four in the New Baghdad
district in the eastern part of the city.

The water crisis began as a symptom of the problems that plagued
reconstruction efforts in the early years of the war. Extremists
attacked infrastructure projects, including electricity stations and
sewage plants, to undermine support for the U.S. and its Iraqi
allies. Law and order broke down, with looters stealing pipes, power
lines and other equipment.

But now, the recent decline in violence is raising hopes that the
government can focus on repairing critical public services crippled
by war and neglect. Perhaps the most complex: trying to control what
goes into waterways and what comes out of Baghdad taps.

Two-thirds of the raw sewage produced in the capital flows untreated
into rivers and waterways, Stuart Bowen, special inspector general
for Iraq reconstruction, said in his quarterly report released
Wednesday.

U.S. and Iraqi officials insist that the tap water in most of
Baghdad is of at least fairly good quality because it comes from
less polluted areas north of the city. In fact, more Iraqis
nationwide have access to potable water now than before the war - 20
million people compared with 12.9 million previously, according to
Bowen's report.

But some Baghdad neighborhoods, notably New Baghdad and Baladiyat,
are not so lucky.

There, the Tigris is so filthy with sewage and other pollutants that
the local treatment facility can only do so much. To make matters
worse, sewage then leaks into the potable water pipes. On Friday,
the U.S. military announced the opening of a water distribution site
to prevent the mixing of sewage and drinking water in New Baghdad
and Baladiyat.

It comes none too soon.

A cholera outbreak in northern Iraq last year killed 14 people. A
similar outbreak of the waterborne disease in Baghdad - home to
about 6 million people - could be far worse.

"Iraq is on the cusp of a serious water crisis that requires
immediate attention and resources," said Thomas Naff, a Middle East
water expert at the University of Pennsylvania.

The World Bank has estimated that it would take $14.4 billion to
rebuild the Iraqi public works and water system.

A U.S. Embassy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because
she was not authorized to talk to the media, said the actual need is
higher. The United States has allocated $2.7 billion for water
projects in Iraq, but the official said the money is running out.

Iraq has been slow in spending its billions in oil revenues on
public works projects - despite insistence from U.S. military
commanders who recommend quality-of-life improvements to undercut
militants and win over Sunni districts wary of the Shiite-led
government.

"Up to now we have seen nothing from the government," Sheik Ayad
Abdul-Jabbar al-Jubouri complained to a top American commander
during a July 12 meeting at a combat outpost in Radwaniyah, a Sunni
community just west of the capital. He said the central government
is sitting on U.S.-led projects to repair four small water treatment
plants and improve two irrigation canals in Radwaniyah.

"We'll fix it," Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond assured the sheik.

Mustafa Hamid, a spokesman for the Iraqi environment ministry, said
the water pipe network is more than 50 years old and suffers from
corrosion "which allows sewage water to infiltrate."

But Hamid downplayed the risk. "There is contamination but not a
serious one," he said, saying test results in most parts of the city
generally met "safe standards."

Many residents are unconvinced.

Hassan Khalid, 13, said he took antibiotics for typhoid four months
ago after drinking tap water. "I had fever, headaches and was
throwing up all the time," he said.

Although bottled of water is sold in Iraq - much of it from Saudi
Arabia - the majority of Baghdad residents use tap water. U.S.
troops, however, are warned that the water is only for bathing, not
drinking.

The U.S. Embassy official said she has seen black sewage water
gushing into the Tigris from a giant pipeline during an aerial tour.

Farmers in Baghdad's northern districts of Azamiyah and Istiqlal,
just a few miles from the Tigris, are forced to use sewage water to
irrigate crops, the U.S. military said.

The Tigris, which cuts through the heart of the capital and provides
most of its drinking water, runs brownish green in the summer. But
it still attracts bathers seeking to escape the scorching heat.

"The water smells like dead fish," Giya Nouri, a 40-year-old
construction worker, said as he swam with his two young sons. "When
I was a kid, it was blue and clean."

But Nouri shrugged his shoulders when asked about the potential
health risks. "We got used to it," he said.

So far there has been no outbreak of waterborne diseases in Baghdad.

Last year in Iraq, the World Health Organization confirmed more than
3,300 cases of cholera, a gastrointestinal disease typically spread
by contaminated water, and at least 14 deaths from the acute and
rapid dehydration it causes. The hardest hit areas were in northern
Iraq.

Dr. Nagesh Kumar, a water expert in India, said Iraq's current
drought "will make the water contamination situation worse" by
drying up wells and lowering river levels.

In the capital, the Tigris is at its lowest level since 2001. Reeds
stick up from the water on each bank.

===

Bill Presses Iraq To Recognize Israel
By Nathan Guttman
http://www.forward.com/articles/13571/


  Washington - To the many challenges facing the fledgling Iraqi government,
Congress may soon add this: Recognize the State of Israel and establish
diplomatic ties with Jerusalem, or else risk losing some of the billions in aid
that Baghdad receives from the United States.

A nonbinding resolution demanding Iraqi recognition of Israel was introduced
June 5 in the House of Representatives and has already gained the support of
more than 60 congressmen, including several leaders of the Foreign Relations
Committee.

The resolution puts Congress far out in front of the Israeli government and the
White House, both of which to date have refrained from raising the issue. An
Israeli source said that while Jerusalem expects every United Nations member
state to recognize Israel’s right to exist and would like to have full
diplomatic ties with all Arab states, the issue of Iraq “was not on the agenda”
at present.

Congressional involvement in establishing Iraqi-Israeli ties came about in large
part through serendipity. Rep. Alcee Hastings, a Florida Democrat and a strong
supporter of Israel, joined House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on a visit last month to
mark the country’s 60th anniversary. The congressional group left Israel for a
day trip to Iraq, at the end of which it returned to Tel Aviv from Baghdad.

“As we got on the C-130 taking us back, we were advised we’d need to land in
Amman, Jordan, touch down and then take off again to Israel,” Hastings told the
Forward after returning to Washington.

The reason for the brief landing was diplomatic: Iraq, like most other Arab
countries, does not allow direct flights to Israel.

“This offended me deeply,” Hastings said, adding that he had encountered a
similar problem in the past, when traveling to Libya from Israel.

Upon returning to the United States, the Florida congressman drafted a
resolution calling on Iraq to change its stance toward Israel, starting with
official recognition of the Jewish state.

“Although the United States has provided Iraq with almost $50 billion in
security and economic assistance to date, none of which has been repaid, the
government of Iraq refuses to recognize the existence of Israel, the most
reliable ally of the United States in the Middle East region,” the introduced
resolution states. The resolution also calls on the White House to “use its
influence to persuade Iraq and other countries with which the United States has
diplomatic relations to recognize the right of Israel to exist and to establish
diplomatic relations with Israel.”

While the current resolution is nonbinding, Hastings said he also would consider
“more substantive” measures if Iraq does not change its approach to Israel. Such
measures, he said, could include attaching the demand for recognition and
diplomatic ties to one of the major funding bills.

The Bush administration, according to congressional staff members, has not yet
provided lawmakers with its view on the proposed resolution. Historically, the
State Department and White House have tended to oppose congressional legislation
perceived as constraining the administration’s ability to determine foreign
policy.

An Israeli official said that Jerusalem had not requested Hastings’s
congressional resolution and had not raised the issue in talks with members of
Congress. According to a congressional staff member, pro-Israel lobbyists on
Capitol Hill were also not involved in the initiative.

A spokeswoman for the Iraqi Embassy in Washington did not comment on the
congressional resolution.

On June 10, Hastings began seeking co-sponsors for his proposed resolution. By
the end of the day, nearly five dozen lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans,
had signed on. Many of them, according to Hastings, were surprised to learn that
Iraq does not recognize Israel.

Critics of the resolution, for their part, argue that it would be
counterproductive and would only undermine efforts to strengthen the central
Iraqi government led by Nouri al-Maliki.

“From all the Arab countries who do not have ties with Israel, Iraq is the last
one we should be asking to do this,” said political scientist Shibley Telhami,
Anwar Sadat chair for peace and development at the University of Maryland. “Iraq
is the most vulnerable of all Arab states.”

But the situation in Baghdad notwithstanding, Hastings believes that the Iraqi
government should be called to task.

“Right is right and wrong is wrong,” the Florida congressman said. “And this is
just not right.”

===

Iraq toughens stance on U.S. troop withdrawal
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-07/10/content_8520414.htm


     BEIJING (Xinhua) -- Iraq's stance in negotiations with the U.S. over the
country's security has been getting tougher, a trend obviously seen when a Iraqi
security officer demanded a definite deadline of U.S. troops' withdrawal.

     Iraq will reject any security pact with the United States unless a specific
date for withdrawal of U.S.-led troops is set, Iraqi national security advisor
Muwafaq al-Rubaie said in Najaf on Tuesday.


Iraq's President Nuri al-Maliki speaks during a visit to Kerbala, 80 km
southwest of Baghdad, June 20, 2008. (Xinhua/Reuters File Photo)


"Our stance in the negotiations with the Americans will be strong. We will not
sign any memorandum of understanding without specifying a date for the
withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq," al-Rubaie told reporters in the Shi'ite
holy city.

     As security conditions in Iraq improve, the Iraqi government's stance in
negotiations with the U.S. have become tougher. al-Rubaie's remarks were the
toughest since the beginning of negotiations on a security pact between the two
countries in March, analysts say.

     Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki publicly announced Monday that his
country was seeking a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

     "The current trend is to reach either a memorandum of understanding for the
departure of the troops, or a memorandum of understanding for setting a
timetable for their withdrawal," al-Maliki said during a meeting with a group of
Arab ambassadors in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates,

     Baghdad and Washington are currently holding talks aimed at reaching a deal
on continued U.S. military presence in Iraq after a UN mandate expires in
December.


A U.S. soldier of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division looks at an Iraqi woman
waiting in front of a police station in Baghdad's Sadr City July 9, 2008. Iraq
will not accept any security agreement with the United States unless it includes
dates for the withdrawal of foreign forces, the government's national security
adviser said on Tuesday. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)


     The security pact, also known as Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), has to
be signed by the end of July according to a declaration of principles agreed
upon by U.S. President George W. Bush and al-Maliki last November.

     Some observers point out that the Iraqi government has hardened its position
in recent days because it thinks the Bush administration is eager to sign an
agreement before the November elections, which could give Iraq a chance to win a
better deal.

     The Bush administration has repeatedly rejected calls for any specific
withdrawal timetable.

     The White House responded to al-Maliki's comments Monday by saying the talks
were aimed at reaching an agreement on a framework for future U.S.-Iraqi
relations rather than a "hard date" for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

U.S. soldiers discuss their mission under the Cross Sabers monument at the
fortified Green Zone in Baghdad July 5, 2008. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

     The U.S. State Department also rejected Iraq's demand to set a timetable for
a pullout, emphasizing that the withdrawal of its troops will be based on ground
conditions.

     "The U.S. government and the government of Iraq are in agreement that we,
the U.S. government, we want to withdraw, we will withdraw. However, that
decision will be conditions-based," State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos
said.

     "We're looking at conditions, not calendars here," he said.

     Apart from the difference of opinion on a specific withdrawal timetable,
controversy in either country about the contents of a likely agreement has
further complicated the ongoing talks.

     Iraq's Deputy Parliament Speaker Khalid al-Attiya said any deal reached by
the Iraqi government must be approved by deputies and the document will probably
be rejected if American troops are immune from Iraqi law.

     According to the Iraqi constitution, any national agreement needs to be
approved by a two-thirds majority in parliament, he pointed out.

     However, it seems unacceptable to the U.S. to let its soldiers be subject to
Iraqi law, analysts say.

     Washington has SOFA pacts with many countries, which exempt U.S. troops from
trial or prison terms abroad.

     Meanwhile, control of military operations and airspace, as well as detention
of prisoners are all bones of contention between the two nations.


Editor: Mu Xuequan

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Amazon bans Hoffman's new bookþ
Tue 8/05/08
Michael Hoffman
RevisionistHistory.org


*** OPPOSITION TO HOFFMAN'S NEW BOOK GROWS

BANNED BY AMAZON

Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, August 5 -- Though the official publication
date for Michael Hoffman's new book, "Judaism Discovered: A Study of
the Anti-Biblical Religion of Racism, Self-Worship, Superstition and
Deceit" is August 10, it has already encountered an almost
unprecedented ban on it by "earth's largest bookstore," Amazon.com.

After Amazon pre-ordered eleven copies of the book, the author was
notified on August 3 by David Zapolsky, Vice President and Associate
General Counsel at Amazon.com, that Amazon "will not continue
distributing the book."

Though it may have been a coincidence, in roughly the same time
frame, Google Inc. e-mailed Hoffman to inform him that his "On the
Contrary" blog, hosted by Google since 2006, was set to be
permanently deleted.

Google accused Hoffman of running a "spam" blog, in spite of the
fact that he has written more than 500 original columns for the blog
over the course of the nearly two years that Google has hosted "On
the Contrary."

In 2006 Google Video banned two of Hoffman's videos, "World War II
Revisionists Charles Provan" and "Deborah Lipstadt, Amalek and David
Irving."

"While I did not anticipate the ban by Amazon," Hoffman said, "which
in the past has had a well-deserved reputation as a bastion of
freedom of the press, fierce opposition to 'Judaism Discovered' was
of course expected. Mr. Zapolsky's Aug. 3 communication was so
partisan it was akin to a hazmana from a Beit din. It seems that
when Judasm is radically challenged, there are no limits to the
tribal solidarity that coalesces to fight threats to its immunity, a
an immunity not enjoyed by Christianity or Islam. "

Hoffman has exhausted his appeals to the Amazon corporate hierarchy.
Mr. Zapolsky informed Hoffman that until rabbinic objections are
lifted, the book cannot be distributed by Amazon.

Hoffman added, "As I stated in my 'Desideratum' essay, the
only 'argument' 'Judaism Discovered' can't overcome is the silent
treatment. If the book is denied distribution, advertising and
publicity, the enemies of truth his will have carried the day in the
only way they can, through suppression and censorship." Meanwhile,
Independent History and Research, the book's publisher, has asked
for patience from customers who have ordered the book. Their tiny
shipping room staff of one-full time adult worker and one part time
teen worker has been overwhelmed by the hundreds of orders for the
book with which they are deluged, some of them for multiple copies
and cases quantities, and are working long hours in order to process
them in the order in which they are received.


Civil letters of protest may be addressed as follows (persons who
send abusive or threatening letters will be regarded, and exposed,
as agents of our adversaries):

JEFFREY P. BEZOSC.E.O.
Amazon.com Inc.
1200 12th Avenue, Suite 1200,
Seattle, WA 98144-2734


Michael Hoffman can be reached at hoffman AT revisionisthistory.org


NOTE: Amazon is heavily patrolled by Zionist activists like Allyson Taylor, who
works for the AJC, who routinely makes them cut off their business relationships
with authors, often through trickery, as well as policing the book reviews for
anti-Israel content. -WVNS

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Latest news on the Palestinian Fulbrighters


This is a personal message from one of the scholar's brothers. -WVNS



Only one of the three remaining students got his Israeli permit to
leave Gaza, but all three of them were issued visas to US on the
same day.

My brother Fidaa Abed is the one who was able to leave. He arrived
to Amman last week and the consulate booked his flight to US through
Frankfurt airport on August 1st. We all thought that the story has
reached a happy end. However Fidaa was returned in Washington DC
airport because a senior official in the state department has
canceled the visas of all three students, Fidaa had no prior
knowledge until he learned about that in the airport. He had to wait
in Frankfurt airport for 17 hours to catch a flight back to Amman.
The total trip time was almost 48 hours for Fidaa, and he has not
yet received his luggage.

Fidaa was requested to go back to Gaza and the consulate rep called
him today to let him know that his visa has been canceled and that
he can not apply for a new one until after a year.

Until this point there is no explanation why the visa was canceled
all what we know that a senior in the state department had enough
power to override their visas under bogus claims of threat to
international security.

Fidaa refused to go back to Gaza until he gets a convincing
explanation for what happened and he is now in the process of
contacting all the media outlets that he could reach. Please help in
moving this story to the front page of the American media. The media
pressure proved to be very effective in reversing the State
Department's decision of withdrawing the Palestinian students grants
couple of months ago.

There is certainly a Zionist hand involved in this, because the
Israeli authorities were finally okay with Fidaa leaving Gaza, they
couldn't find any proof that he is involved in the so
called "terrorist activities" and the American consulate in
Jerusalem was very supportive of Fidaa and his cohorts.


Nidal

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Would You Gas the Jews?
Counter Bias" <counterbias @ yahoo.com.au>


Would you gas the Jews, if this could half the price of petrol?
Remember, the oil price was quadrupled by the Jew "Yom Kippur"  War
(1973-4).   Likewise, the oil price was continuously -- and purely
artificially -- jacked up  by the Jew-imposed ban on the sale of the
oil exploration equipment to Iran -- and now shot up  like mad as a
direct and indirect consequence of the Jew-ordered invasion and
occupation of Iraq -- so says Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-
winning economist.

Would you gas the Jews, if this could undo both the "Islamic
terrorism" and the Jew "war on terror"?

Remember, both of these purely political phenomena were artificially
constructed by the Jewpsy Zion-gang  purely for the Jew purposes,
where 9/11  serves as a cherry on top of the kosher pie, while the
pie's foundation can only be discerned through apocryphal tales, as
any truthful depiction is absolutely forbidden or, at best, severely
censored.

("Islamic terrorism" was brought about by decades of the quite
deliberate Jewpsy  televisual badgering of the Arabs with the scenes
of the Palestinians, even little children, being shot like animals.
Instilling extreme frustration into their victims is a tried and
tested Jew bloodsucker tactics always deliberately intended to
provoke an extreme "terrorist" or "anti-Semitic" reaction, so that
the Jewpsy Zion-gang can cash in to the greatest possible extent
every time.  And  9/11 alone is worth to the Jews infinitely more
than any Israeli military victory: 9/11 was  the Jews' greatest ever
triumph -- comparable only to the Jew victory in WW2.) Would you gas
the Jews, if this could undo WW2, Korea and Vietnam ?

Remember, neither of these wars -- anti-communist Crusades, whether
fully or partly -- would have taken place, had it not been for the
Rothschild-financed 1917 Judo-communist take-over of Russia and the
predatory Treaty of Versailles -- made possible by the Jew-fixed
1916 US entry into WW1 -- the Jew pay-off  for the Balfour
Declaration  in a deal with the British Prime Minister Lloyd-George -
- which prolonged the war and destruction by two more years of
extreme misery and mayhem, but brought about the British victory, as
well as the subsequent mass killings of the British servicemen and
civilians in WW2 -- and the inevitable financial ruin of Britain
herself by the agency of the Rothschild puppets.

(E.g, the half-Jew Churchill, a prodigious liar and manipulator,
surrounded himself with some 200-odd Jews, communists and KGB
pederasts;  the part-Jew Roosevelt (Rosenfeld)  likewise;  the
prostitute Tony "Bliar"  was Churchill's most worthy successor in
office.)

Would you gas the Jews, if this could undo the Boer War, the Crimean
War and the Opium Wars?

Remember, the Rothschilds had their grasping hand in all of these
mass slaughters -- and along with other Jewpsy banksters (their
agents, as a rule), profited tremendously from pocketing most of the
South African gold, diamonds and other minerals, and from forcing
opium addiction upon millions of hapless Chinamen -- in the name of
the "free trade", of course!

And also remember, the very word concentration camp  is a coy
English euphemism  for those squalid prison camps in South Africa ,
where over 80,000 of the illegally detained Boer civilians were
slowly done to death, while many of their girls were raped by the
camp guards.   And no one seems to have counted the number of the
Negroes also driven to death in the Boer War concentration camps  by
the slave labour, disease and malnutrition -- towards the ever
greater Jewpsy banksters' profit.

Would those disappearing "gas chambers" have ever materialized, at
least as a "Holocaust hypothesis",  had the Rothschild-run Jewpsy
Zion-gang  and their Judo-communist  bedmates not brought about WW2,
in the first place?

Hitler invaded Poland , but it's the Jewpsy banksters  that created
absolutely all necessary social and political conditions that made
the National-Socialist ballot box revolution unavoidable, which --
surprise, surprise -- perfectly dove-tailed with their "Zionist
project" in Palestine .  And the ring-leaders of the Jewpsy Zion-
gang  got into bed with the Gestapo in no time at all!   In fact, it
was the Jewpsy bankster Gedalia Kareski, a Rothschild agent -- and a
generous Nazi Party donor -- who repeatedly urged the German
government to compel the small-time Jews to wear their yellow Jew
Stars -- so as to have them all indelibly branded as a private
property of the Jewpsy Zion-gang.

(This Jewish proposition wasn't generally adopted until after the
German invasion of the Jew-ridden Soviets.  Compared to the Jews,
Hitler was little more than a good little Catholic Boy Scout.)


NOTE: I don't usually post such essays but I love an op ed that asks
a question, and it is not only well written but makes a lot of very
sincere and on the nail points, however crudely worded. -WVNS

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The latest from Rafah is as follows:
recieved via email


The Egyptian Intelligence has told Khalil to go through the Kerem
Abu Salam (Kerem Shalom) crossing. Khalil then spoke with the
Egyptian Red Crescent, who offered their help in coordinating with
Israel, as Israel controls the Kerem crossing.

However, Khalil has decided that the offer to cross through Kerem is
not sufficient. The point is to break the siege, and by consenting
to cross through Kerem, Khalil feels he is acquiesing to Israel's
decision to allow supplies in when and if Israel wants.

Instead, Khalil will wait for later opportunities to cross via
Rafah, as originally intended.

Sunday will see a demonstration at the Rafah crossing, organized by
Lebanon's ex-PM, Selim El Hoss, and joined by Arab and EU MPs and
solidarity supporters. It is hoped that after this demonstration,
and after a Friday Aug 8 conference between other Arab and EU
officials, and with the sailing of the Free Gaza boats, as well as
with the great and building support from Scotland MPs and
government, that Israel will consent to opening the crossing.

Khalil will try to give a press conference in Cairo updating on the
situation up until this point, including the procedures followed,
measures taken, support shown, offers from the Eygptian authorities,
and plans/intentions for the future.

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Government announces plans to borrow $27 billion
Associated Press
Jul 30, 2008
http://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=2452


AP:WASHINGTON) The Bush administration gave details Wednesday on how
it plans to borrow the billions of dollars it will need to cope with
the soaring budget deficits.

Those plans include raising $27 billion by selling a new 10-year
note and a new 30-year bond at the regularly scheduled quarterly
auctions to be held next week. The government needs to borrow $171
billion during the current July-September quarter, the second
highest quarterly borrowing total on record.

The increased borrowing needs reflect the exploding federal budget
deficit which is projected to more than double in size this year and
to hit an all-time high of $482 billion in the 2009 budget year.

The administration released the new deficit forecasts on Monday. It
blamed the surge on the sagging economy and the effort to keep the
country from falling into a deep recession by mailing out 130
million economic stimulus payments.

Democratic critics charged that the soaring deficits showed the
total failure of the Bush administration to put the government's
fiscal house in order, however. They contended that whoever wins the
presidency in November will inherit a huge fiscal mess that will
severely restrain the next president's ability to fulfill his own
campaign promises.

The administration projected that the deficit for this budget year,
which ends on Sept. 30, will total $389 billion, more than double
the $161.5 billion deficit for 2007. For the 2009 budget year, which
will cover the first year of the new president, the administration
is forecasting a deficit that will surge to an all-time high in
dollar terms of $482 billion, far exceeding the old record of $413
billion set in 2004.

That deficit estimate could soar even higher. It does not include
the expected full cost of funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
or the costs associated with a massive housing rescue measure that
Congress passed last week and President Bush signed into law on
Wednesday.

As part of the housing measure, Congress voted to increase the
national debt limit by $800 billion from $9.815 trillion to a new
limit of $10.615 trillion.

The borrowing plans announced by the Treasury Department on
Wednesday include raising $17 billion by selling a new 10-year note
on Aug. 6 and raising $10 billion by selling a new 30-year bond on
Aug. 7.

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Pakistan suspects that the US forces on Pak-Afghan border share
precious information with Mehsud network to target Pakistani troops
in the region.


'US backing terror networks in Pakistan'
2008/08/06
http://www.mathaba.net/0_mail.shtml?x=600940


(Press TV) Pakistan has accused the US of backing militancy within
the country, saying this goes against the spirit of so-called war on
terror. Pakistani the News quoted official sources as saying on
Tuesday that strong evidence of American acquiescence to terrorism
inside Pakistan was outlined by President Pervez Musharraf, Chief of
Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and Director General Inter-
Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj in their separate
meetings with US Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael
Mullen and CIA Deputy Director Stephen R Kappes on July 12 in
Rawalpindi.

Pakistani officials with direct knowledge of the meetings said the
Americans were not interested in disrupting the Kabul-based
fountainhead of terrorism in Baluchistan nor do they want to
allocate the marvelous predator resource to neutralize the kingpin
of suicide bombings against the Pakistani military establishment now
hiding near the Pak-Afghan border.

The top US military commander were also asked why the CIA-run
predator did not swing into action when they were provided the exact
location of Baitullah Mehsud, the chief of militants and mastermind
of almost every suicide operation against the Army and the ISI since
June 2006. One such precise piece of information was made available
to the CIA on May 24 when Mehsud drove to a remote South Waziristan
mountain post to address the press and returned back to his safe
abode.

The United States military has the capacity to direct a missile to a
precise location at very short notice as it has done close to 20
times in the last few years to hit al-Qaeda targets inside Pakistan.

"We wanted to know when our American friends would get interested in
tracking down the terrorists responsible for hundreds of suicide
bombings in Pakistan and those playing havoc with our natural
resources in Baluchistan," an official described the Pakistani mood
during the meetings.

Pakistani official have long been intrigued by the presence of
highly encrypted communications gear with Mehsud. This communication
gear enables him to collect real-time information on Pakistani
troops' movement from an unidentified foreign source without being
intercepted by Pakistani intelligence, sources said.

Admiral Mullen and the CIA official were in Pakistan on an
unannounced visit to show what the US media claimed was evidence of
the ISI's ties to the Taliban militants and the alleged involvement
of Pakistani agents in the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul.

A former official with Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Khalid
Khawaja accused the US in an exclusive interview with the Press TV
that the Americans had planted the bomb in the Indian Embassy in
Kabul to widen the rift between Indians and Pakistanis.

The report comes a day after Musharraf's warning against the US
conspiracies toward Pakistan. Pakistani political analysts say that
the current "trust deficit" between the Pakistani and US security
establishment is serious enough to lead to a collapse.

===

US told not to back terrorism against Pakistan
By Kamran Khan
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=16421


KARACHI: Pakistan has complained to the United States military
leadership and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that
Washington's policy towards terrorism in Pakistan was inconsistent
with America's declared commitment to the war against terror.

Impeccable official sources have said that strong evidence and
circumstantial evidence of American acquiescence to terrorism inside
Pakistan was outlined by President Pervez Musharraf, Chief of Army
Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and Director General Inter
Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj in their separate
meetings with US Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael
Mullen and CIA Deputy Director Stephen R Kappes on July 12 in
Rawalpindi.

The visit by the senior US military official along with the CIA
deputy director — carrying what were seen as India-influenced
intelligence inputs — hardened the resolve of Pakistanís security
establishment to keep supreme Pakistan's national security interest
even if it meant straining ties with the US and Nato.

A senior official with direct knowledge of these meetings said that
Pakistan's military leadership and the president asked the American
visitors "not to distinguish between a terrorist for the United
States and Afghanistan and a terrorist for Pakistan".

For reasons best known to Langley, the CIA headquarters, as well as
the Pentagon, Pakistani officials say the Americans were not
interested in disrupting the Kabul-based fountainhead of terrorism
in Balochistan nor do they want to allocate the marvellous predator
resource to neutralise the kingpin of suicide bombings against the
Pakistani military establishment now hiding near the Pak-Afghan
border.

In the strongest evidence-based confrontation with the American
security establishment since the two countries established their
post-9/11 strategic alliance, Pakistani officials proved Brahamdagh
Bugti's presence in Afghan intelligence safe houses in Kabul, his
photographed visits to New Delhi and his orders for terrorism in
Balochistan.

The top US military commander and the CIA official were also asked
why the CIA-run predator and the US military did not swing into
action when they were provided the exact location of Baitullah
Mehsud, Pakistan's enemy number one and the mastermind of almost
every suicide operation against the Pakistan Army and the ISI since
June 2006.

One such precise piece of information was made available to the CIA
on May 24 when Baitullah Mehsud drove to a remote South Waziristan
mountain post in his Toyota Land Cruiser to address the press and
returned back to his safe abode. The United States military has the
capacity to direct a missile to a precise location at very short
notice as it has done close to 20 times in the last few years to hit
al-Qaeda targets inside Pakistan.

Pakistani official have long been intrigued by the presence of
highly encrypted communications gear with Baitullah Mehsud. This
communication gear enables him to collect real-time information on
Pakistani troop movement from an unidentified foreign source without
being intercepted by Pakistani intelligence.

Admiral Mullen and the CIA official were in Pakistan on an
unannounced visit on July 12 to show what the US media claimed was
evidence of the ISI's ties to†Taliban commander Maulana Sirajuddin
Haqqani and the alleged involvement of Pakistani agents in the
bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul.

Pakistani military leaders rubbished the American information and
evidence on the Kabul bombing but provided some rationale for
keeping a window open with Haqqani, just as the British government
had decided to open talks with some Taliban leaders in southern
Afghanistan last year.

Before opening new channels of communication with the Taliban in
Helmand province in March this year, the British and Nato forces
were talking to leading Taliban leaders through†Michael Semple, the
acting head of the European Union mission to Afghanistan, and Mervyn
Patterson, a senior UN official, before their unprecedented
expulsion from Afghanistan by the Karzai government†in January this
year.

The American visitors were also told that the government of Pakistan
had to seek the help of Taliban commanders such as Sirajuddin
Haqqani for the release of its kidnapped ambassador Tariquddin Aziz,
after the US-backed Karzai administration failed to secure Aziz's
release from his captors in Afghanistan.

Admiral Mullen and Kappes were both provided information about the
activities of the Indian consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad and
were asked how the CIA does not know that both Indian consulates are
manned by Indian Intelligence who plot against Pakistan round the
clock.

" We wanted to know when our American friends would get interested
in tracking down the terrorists responsible for hundreds of suicide
bombings in Pakistan and those playing havoc with our natural
resources in Balochistan while sitting in Kabul and Delhi,", an
official described the Pakistani mood during the July 12 meetings.

Throughout their meetings, the Americans were told that Pakistan
would like to continue as an active partner in the war against
terror and at no cost would it allow its land to be used by our
people to plot terror against Afghanistan or India . However,
Pakistan would naturally want the United States, India and
Afghanistan to refrain from supporting Pakistani terrorists.

Pakistani officials have said that the current "trust deficit"
between the Pakistani and US security establishment is not serious
enough to lead to a collapse , but the element of suspicion is very
high, more so because of† the CIA's decision to publicise the
confidential exchange of information with Pakistan and to use its
leverage with the new government to try to arm-twist the Army and
the ISI.

The Pakistani security establishment, officials said, want a fresh
round of strategic dialogue with their counterparts in the US,
essentially to prioritise the objectives and terrorist targets in
the war against terror, keeping in mind the serious national
security interests of the allies.

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Military jury convicts bin Laden's driver
By MIKE MELIA
Associated Press
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080806/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/guantanamo_bin_
laden_s_driver


GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - A jury of six military officers at
Guantanamo Bay reached a split verdict Wednesday in the war crimes
trial of a former driver for Osama bin Laden, clearing him of some
charges but convicting him of others that could send him to prison
for life.

The Pentagon-selected jury deliberated for about eight hours over
three days before convicting Salim Hamdan of supporting terrorism.
He was cleared of the conspiracy charge.

Hamdan, who faces a maximum life sentence, held his head in his
hands and wept at the defense table after a Navy captain presiding
over the jury read the sentence in a hilltop courtroom on this U.S.
Navy base.

The judge scheduled a sentencing hearing for later Wednesday.
Defense lawyers had feared a guilty verdict was inevitable, saying
the tribunal system's rules seemed designed to achieve convictions,
said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, Salim Hamdan's Pentagon-appointed
attorney.

"I don't know if the panel can render fair what has already
happened," Mizer told reporters as the jury deliberated.
Hamdan's attorneys said the judge allowed evidence that would not
have been admitted by any civilian or military U.S. court, and that
interrogations at the center of the government's case were tainted
by coercive tactics, including sleep deprivation and solitary
confinement.

Supporters of the tribunals said the Bush administration's system
provided extraordinary due process rights for defendants.
"This military judge is to be commended for providing a fair and
internationally legally sufficient trial for the accused and the
government — regardless of the ultimate verdict," said
Charles "Cully" Stimson, a former deputy assistant secretary of
defense for detainee affairs.

Hamdan was captured at a roadblock in southern Afghanistan in
November 2001 and taken to Guantanamo in May 2002.

The military accused him of transporting missiles for al-Qaida and
helping bin Laden escape U.S. retribution following the Sept. 11
attacks by driving him around Afghanistan. Defense attorneys said he
was merely a low-level bin Laden employee.

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