Signs of the Times News for Wed, 31 Dec 2008

Signs of the Times News for Wed, 31 Dec 2008: "http://www.sott.net/articles/show/171874-Barack-Obama-on-Israel-s-Siege-of-Gaza-No-comment-"
Remember the Truth is always there and even if you dont admit it publicy (like knowing there were No WMDs in Iraq) the rest of the world knows it. Do you want respect or Ire from people of the world..... People should be chanting "We Want Change" at his Inauguration and not let him be sworn in until he promises to cut Israel loose from US politics.

And the winner is......

......for the most war crimes in one day (and yes, more than the US)

The Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Convention, both in regard to the obligations of an occupying power and in the requirements of the laws of war.

Those violations include:

Collective punishment - the entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.

Targeting civilians - the air strikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.

Disproportionate military response - the air strikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza's elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.

Earlier Israeli actions, specifically the complete sealing off of entry and exit to and from the Gaza Strip, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel (as well as food), resulting in the inability of ambulances to respond to the injured, the inability of hospitals to adequately provide medicine or necessary equipment for the injured, and the inability of Gaza's besieged doctors and other medical workers to sufficiently treat the victims.

Certainly the rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful. But that illegality does not give Israel any right, neither as the occupying power nor as a sovereign state, to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in its response. I note that Israel's escalating military assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; on the contrary, the one Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over a year.

Israel has also ignored recent Hamas' diplomatic initiatives to re-establish the truce or ceasefire since its expiry.

Richard Falk, United Nations Special Investigator

finally someone who got it right.

Just read this , Robert Fisk - The Independent- Mon, 29 Dec

We hear the usual Israeli line. General Yaakov Amidror, the former head of the Israeli army's "research and assessment division" announced that "no country in the world would allow its citizens to be made the target of rocket attacks without taking vigorous steps to defend them". Quite so. But when the IRA were firing mortars over the border into Northern Ireland, when their guerrillas were crossing from the Republic to attack police stations and Protestants, did Britain unleash the RAF on the Irish Republic? Did the RAF bomb churches and tankers and police stations and zap 300 civilians to teach the Irish a lesson? No, it did not. Because the world would have seen it as criminal behaviour. We didn't want to lower ourselves to the IRA's level.

Perfect!!

Its like i have been looking for this comparison for years

Christmas again - celebrate the birth of Jesus with airstrikes

AZA, Dec. 24 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian Christians living in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip will not celebrate Christmas this year and do the midnight Christmas mass.

"I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing." Those were the words, spoken on Al Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of Israel's latest massacres were broadcast around the world.


US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more. Many of these locations were police stations located, like police stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas. The US government was one of the first to offer its support for Israel's attacks, and others will follow.

Reports said that many of the dead were Palestinian police officers. Among those Israel labels "terrorists" were more than a dozen traffic police officers undergoing training. An as yet unknown number of civilians were killed and injured; Al Jazeera showed images of several dead children, and the Israeli attacks came at the time thousands of Palestinian children were in the streets on their way home from school.

Shmerling's joy has been echoed by Israelis and their supporters around the world; their violence is righteous violence. It is "self-defense" against "terrorists" and therefore justified. Israeli bombing -- like American and NATO bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan -- is bombing for freedom, peace and democracy.

The rationalization for Israel's massacres, already being faithfully transmitted by the English-language media, is that Israel is acting in "retaliation" for Palestinian rockets fired with increasing intensity ever since the six-month truce expired on 19 December (until today, no Israeli had been killed or injured by these recent rocket attacks).

But today's horrific attacks mark only a change in Israel's method of killing Palestinians recently. In recent months they died mostly silent deaths, the elderly and sick especially, deprived of food and necessary medicine by the two year-old Israeli blockade calculated and intended to cause suffering and deprivation to 1.5 million Palestinians, the vast majority refugees and children, caged into the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, Palestinians died silently, for want of basic medications: insulin, cancer treatment, products for dialysis prohibited from reaching them by Israel.

What the media never question is Israel's idea of a truce. It is very simple. Under an Israeli-style truce, Palestinians have the right to remain silent while Israel starves them, kills them and continues to violently colonize their land. Israel has not only banned food and medicine to sustain Palestinian bodies in Gaza but it is also intent on starving minds: due to the blockade, there is not even ink, paper and glue to print textbooks for schoolchildren.



That is an Israeli truce. Any response to Israeli attacks -- whether peaceful protests against the apartheid wall in Bilin and Nilin in the West Bank is met with bullets and bombs. There are no rockets launched at Israel from the West Bank, and yet Israel's attacks, killings, land theft, settler pogroms and kidnappings never ceased for one single day during the truce. The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah has acceded to all of Israel's demands, even assembling "security forces" to fight the resistance on Israel's behalf. None of that has spared a single Palestinian or her property or livelihood from Israel's relentless violent colonization.




Once again we are watching massacres in Gaza, as we did last March when 110 Palestinians, including dozens of children, were killed by Israel in just a few days. Once again people everywhere feel rage, anger and despair that this outlaw state carries out such crimes with impunity.

"Tel Aviv's bombardment of the Gaza Strip is yet another brazen example of Israel's terrorist mindset and its gross violation of human rights," it adds.

The statement condemns the barrage of Israeli attacks on civilian non-military targets as being in stark defiance of the Geneva Convention and UN resolutions.

Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that no protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed, hence collective punishment and all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.



Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, rejected the Israeli government's claims that the air raids were in self-defence.

"This is a bloodbath, the bloodiest bloodbath since 1967," he told Al Jazeera. "This is an attack on the civilian population of Gaza."

Hundreds of Palestinians were injured in Saturday's attacks [GALLO/GETTY]
"They try to claim that this was done as a response to missiles, but they are denying the fact that the whole year not a single Israeli was killed by missiles. The first Israeli killed was only because of the Israeli invasion, the Israeli attack."

Many of the dead in Saturday's attacks were police officers, including Tawfiq Jabber, the Gaza chief of police.

Hospitals, already suffering from shortages due to an 18-month blockade on the Gaza Strip, said they were struggling to cope with the number of injured, which included women and children.

One of the buildings hit on Sunday was reportedly a warehouse used to supply local pharmacies with medicines.

"This is going to make us unable to supply any of the local families that depend on us," Dr Hussam Abu Hashem, the owner, told local Hamas radio. "It's a war against human beings."

The Israel-Hamas ceasefire expired on December 19, with Hamas arguing that Israel had violated the truce by preventing vital supplies from entering the Strip.

Hamas won control of the Palestinian Legislative Council in elections in January 2005. The international community refused to accept a Hamas-led government, demanding that the faction recognise Israel and renounce violence. Economic sanctions by the EU and US followed.

Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 after bloody street battles against its rival, Fatah.

Bush Camp singing their own prases

All the talk this month and for another couple of weeks is about the Bush regime, patting themselves on the back for all the good work they have done over the past 8 years.
THIS MAKES ME SICK!!!
But a lot of people tend to believe the crap they spout, which makes me ever more sick....
Here is an example from the Guardian blog today that is very common.

Iraq and Afghanistan have been given the chance of a more liberal future. (Women in schools, democrats in office, etc etc)

Well if you watch our western news, then this would be true. But of course it ignores all the reported facts. i.e. Iraqs people are waiting for the US to go, so that it can have its own rules, not the Wests'. Afganistan has reported cases of Women having acid thrown over their face, for following the Wests' suggestions of changing their culture, the taliban will be back in charge within 12 months. Thats supposed to be positive ???

Al Queda have less of a safe haven for training in Afghanistan ("they ran the country and now they barely run a cave" - as Bush rightly said (I paraphrase slightly)).

Well i never... .Considering that most analysts put the Taliban in over 70% of control of the country, how does that make that less of a safe haven. In fact, i guess they can pretty much do what they want and with the capturing of NATO convoys, probably with better equipment than before.

Libya has been brought in from the terror camp.

Like that had anything to do with the US. The leader of the country found the right time to get away from the terrorist brand, and Europe jumped at the chance for some extra business. But when Libya was on the Security Council for the UN, back to refering them as a terrorist country, because they said the suffering in Gaza was wrong and wanted to condem Israel. Well we cant have that !!

Terrorists have been killed in the horn of Africa and their networks thereby made void.

Well apart from some US airstrickes on some villages, the Islamists look to regain there country again, once Ethiopia leaves. The only peace Somalia has seen in the last decade was when Islamists were running the country. But we cant have that !!

US and western bases have been established in an arc around the caucasus.

And that has made all those countries involved fearful of war.. Great Job again !! Well thanks to Bush for bringing up the fear of nuclear war again... we really appreciate that one !!

As a consequence of the above, Iran is hemmed in by western bases or western-leaning countries.

Well not exactly.... they have some US guys pretending to liberate Iraq and Afganistan, building bases next to the border of Iran and supplying some local rebels to attack the Iranian Police. Great Stuff... Something we can be proud of. What was the outcome of the stratergy of surrounding them. Oh yeah. They have spent millions beafing up their defence forces. Well thats not good if someone actually carries out their threat to attack Iran is it ??

Bush will be like Truman and Eisenhower - derided at the time, but later seen as the architects of a sensible policy in difficult circumstances - a policy that will last decades.

Simple answer to this one .... BULLSHIT!! Anyone with half a brain who does not learn history in the US or UK will learn of War Criminals that got away scott free and taught never believe anyone just because they smile when they say it.

Cheney and Rumsfeld took a lead role in much of this and I don't doubt they are proud.

Proud, Happy, Rich, Lucky they are not in Nurenburg for War Crimes.

Bush's success in Africa, where he has increased aid and thereby made a huge impact on reducing HIV and malnutrition, are more properly seen as his own triumph.

Trying to help with Aids, without helping with Water and Education has endangered anyone in Africa trying to help these people. Read the reports from people who are there and not the US PR group. The people there struggle with local beliefs and the lack of education. If the US spent less on War and carrying out War Crimes, we would likely have no Aids in the world today. But then we would also not be having a Global Meltdown, which is really going to screw the world.

So , thanks, but no thanks Bush Regime.... and here is my shoe to , to thow into the mix...

Merry Xmas, and have a happy new year. .... Millions wont !! :)

Ahoy! No Change Ahead.... Steady as she goes...

Of all the empires in history, the United States will go down as one of the most aggressive and least inspiring. After nearly 160 years of warfare and imperial conquest, US policy, and the war machine it marshalled, has left nothing in its tracks but death and destruction, with no lasting cultural value. Five years after the US invasion, Iraq lies in ruins. Divided, violent, depleted, unstable, rife with sectarian war, a hotbed of terrorism and with 20 per cent of its population killed, wounded, displaced or in asylum in neighbouring countries, Iraq bears no resemblance to its recent past. Meanwhile, allied regimes in the Arab Middle East, which the Bush administration vowed to democratise after invading Iraq, are now more entrenched, more autocratic than ever.

Some people may contest the fact that the US is an imperial power that dominates the world, or most of it. This is either due to self-effacing denial or the legendary American sense of self- righteousness. Drawing on the parallel historical examples of the 16th to 19th century age of colonialism, they will challenge any claimant to point out where American colonial dominion is, the colonised peoples or the colonial governments that rules over them. Little do they know about US neo-colonialism, sprawling American military bases spread around the globe, the 13 American naval armada canvassing the seas and oceans or the hundreds of billions of US dollars spent on them in the name of American security and spreading democracy. According to the US Department of Defense annual Base Structure Report for 2003, which lists foreign and domestic military bases, the US rents or owns 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries, in addition to 6,000 bases in the US and its territories. The report excludes huge US military, naval and air force bases in the Arabian Gulf, the Middle East and Afghanistan. The US Department of Defense deploys 253,288 uniformed personnel and an approximately equal number of civilian personnel, technicians and non-uniformed military and civilian contractors.

In April 2003, the Bush administration and its cohorts conveniently estimated that the Iraq conquest would cost $1.7 billion, part of which would be offset by the participating "coalition of the willing". Allies Britain, Germany, Canada, Norway and Japan would pay the costs of reconstruction, in addition to the expected Iraqi oil revenue. That was in 2003. But according to Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in economics and a respected former World Bank vice- president, the cost of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008 will reach $845 billion "for military operations, reconstruction, embassy costs, enhanced security at US bases and foreign aid programmes". In his most recent book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, Stiglitz states: "A trillion dollars could have built an additional eight million housing units; could have hired some 15 million additional public school teachers for one year; could have paid for 120 million children to attend a year of Head Start; insured 530 million children for healthcare for one year; or provided 43 million students with four-year scholarships at public universities."

How much the losing Iraq war is costing the US treasury, financially as well as politically, is increasingly a matter of public debate in the US, as much as the Vietnam War was a matter of public outrage 40 years ago. Except for the Vietnam War, the Iraq war -- now in its sixth year -- is the longest and most costly war in the post-independence history of the US. It has lasted longer than the American Civil War, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish- American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the first Gulf War, not to mention the series of brutal guerrilla wars incited by the Reagan administration in South America during the 1980s.

The five-year long Iraq war has led the world's most feared imperial power to infamy and bankruptcy. It has wreaked untold suffering and destruction on the ancient land of Iraq and its population, all to the benefit of US mega- corporations like Halliburton, Kellogg Brown & Root, and the Pentagon's paramilitary and civilian contractors. The US and its coalition, who defied the UN Security Council and invaded Iraq, owe the country and its people huge reparations for their wanton destruction.

As many polls have indicated, all the Iraqis want -- except their Maliki government -- is for the US to leave and let them lick their wounds, unite their families, mourn their dead, repatriate their refugees, mend sectarian differences and establish a new Iraqi order without American interference.

When Hitler trampled across Europe Occupying countries, we called it War Crimes, we pulled together and defeated him. When the US has spent years using various methods to occupy or control countries, we call it spreading democracy or defending human rights. What do you think the people in those countries call it ..... OCCUPATION ..... do you think they want the world to pull together and defeat the US ??
Will any US President change the way they intrude around the world ? of course not. But the day will come when they will be defeated!

Lest we forget during the media silence .....

Although the "surge" has failed as policy, it appears to be succeeding as propaganda. It seems to be the only thing that supporters of the war have to point to, and so they point, and they point, and they point. Allow me to point out that while there has been a reduction in violence in Iraq -- now down to a level that virtually any other society in the world would find horrible and intolerable, including Iraqi society before the US invasion and occupation -- we must keep in mind that thanks to this lovely little war more than half the population of Iraq is either dead, crippled, traumatized, confined in overflowing American and Iraqi prisons, internally displaced, or in foreign exile.

Thus, the number of people available for being killers or victims is markedly reduced. Moreover, extensive ethnic cleansing has taken place in the country (another good indication of progress, n'est-ce pas? nicht wahr?) -- Sunnis and Shiites are now living more in their own special enclaves than before, none of those stinking mixed communities with their unholy mixed marriages, so violence of the sectarian type has also gone down; and the powerful movement of Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr has had a cease-fire in effect for many months, unconnected to the surge.

On top of all this, US soldiers, in the face of numerous "improvised explosive devices" on the roads, have been venturing out a lot less (for fear of things like ... well, dying), so the violence against our noble lads is also down. Remember that insurgent attacks on American forces is how the Iraqi violence all began in the first place.

Just imagine -- If the entire Iraqi population over the age of 10 is killed, disabled, imprisoned or forced into exile there will probably be no violence at all. Now that would really be victory.

No American should be allowed to forget that Iraqi society has been destroyed. The people of that unhappy land have lost everything -- their homes, their schools, their neighbourhoods, their mosques, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their health care, their legal system, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their security, their past, their present, their future, their lives. But they do have their surge.

by William Blum , Global Research, October 2, 2008

Who made this quote

"The time for the atomic bomb has come to an end. If the atomic bomb could do any good, it would have kept the Soviet Union from collapsing," he said. "Those who stockpile or build the atomic bomb are backward thinking."


Was it Blair
Was it Brown
Was it Bush
Was it Cheney
Was it Putin
Was it Medvedev

Or none of the above ??

US - State Sponsor of Terror - Another President calls it as it is !

More and more countries are calling US foreign policy, what it is.... STATE SPONSORED TERROR.
Whether it is encouraging Georgia to provoke Russia, by using genocide against its own people, whilst conduction peace negotiations.
Whether it is supporting the MKO Terror groups Terror activities in Iran
Whether it is trying to upset the peace in Bolivia or Venezuela. I think Morales has said it best, towards the end of this article. It is clear that 'the US works to undermine nations that reject the capitalist model.'.


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Morales scolds US at UN meeting
Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:27:58 GMT


Bolivian President Evo Morales addresses the UN General Assembly in New York.

Bolivian President Evo Morales has accused the US of backing opponents trying to destabilize his government with “acts of terrorism.”

In an address to the United Nations assembly in New York on Tuesday, Bolivia's first indigenous president referred to what he called a permanent conspiracy among pro-autonomy, largely white groups in Bolivia's wealthy eastern areas.

"I would like to hear representatives of the U.S. government rejecting these acts of terrorism ... But you know, they are allies, of course they will never condemn this,” he said.

Earlier this month anti-Morales protesters from Bolivia's resource-rich "half-moon" states provoked clashes during which 18 people were killed.

Anti-Morales protesters have also caused disruption by setting up roadblocks, attacking police, abducting federal employees, seizing airports and taking over state-run television stations and community radio stations.

Anti-government elements have also targeted pipelines transporting natural gas to countries such as Brazil. One of Morales' key proposals is to nationalize windfall profits from Bolivia's natural gas industry.

Morales told the UN assembly that wealthier states oppose plans to redistribute wealth amongst the people of Latin America's poorest country.

Latin American nations and Europe have supported the Bolivian government, but Morales condemned the US for not responding to the situation.

Morales told the gathering of world leaders that he believed the US works to undermine nations that reject the capitalist model.

In response to growing unrest, Bolivia expelled the US ambassador to La Paz last month. President Morales revealed that US Ambassador Phillip Goldberg had held meetings with secessionist leaders and alleged that the US Embassy had asked Peace Corps volunteers and a Fulbright scholar to act as spies.

In past years, the US Congress-funded National Endowment for Democracy and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) organizations have supported right-wing movements in Bolivia.

Iran seeks report on powers' N-arms

This also came about during the UN's General Assembly 2008. Which i think is a good point, well made. The country that is the most open about its nuclear activities (Iran) calling for others to follow its example, if only a little bit. We could name a few, but both the US and Israel are developing the most WMD on the planet.
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Iran seeks report on powers' N-arms
Wed, 24 Sep 2008 02:00:19 GMT


President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has urged the UN's atomic watchdog agency to report on the nuclear weapons of the world powers.

Ahmadinejad also called for a nuclear disarmament of these powers by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Ahmadinejad, speaking at the 63rd session of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, slammed some world powers that are stockpiling weapons of mass destruction including atomic weapons and also threatening the world peace by installing new missile systems.

Ahmadinejad was indirectly referring to the US plan to deploy new missile shield in Eastern Europe.

He also voiced the Iranian nation's commitment to defend its nuclear rights, stressing that Tehran will not give up its rights under pressure from certain world powers.

“Despite the inalienable right of all nations to produce nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes and the fact that Iran's nuclear program has been transparent and Tehran has been cooperating with the IAEA inspectors and that the IAEA has confirmed peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program, some bullying powers try to hinder Iran's nuclear program,” Ahmadinejad insisted.

“These are the same countries that are producing new generation of nuclear arms and no international organization is monitoring their program. The catastrophe in Nagasaki and Hiroshima was perpetrated by one these powers,” Iran's president added.

Ahmadinejad stressed that such powers are not against a proliferation of nuclear weapons but they want to monopolize advanced technologies to use them as a tool to impose their own will on others.

“It is natural that the great Iranian nation will resist the bullying powers and will continue to defend their nuclear rights,” remarked the president.

Ahmadinejad suggested that it is time that the UN nuclear agency report to the international community on how it monitors the nuclear activities of major powers.

He also called for formation of a disarmament committee by independent states to monitor the disarmament of the nuclear powers.

UN General Assembly 2008 - Hah Hah

It was good to hear yesterday more and more countries asking for UN support or condemnation against the US for its policies of inciting violence and state sponsored terrorism.
Here is a report from Haaretz, which through gritted teeth, says how the President of Iran is managing to get his clear peaceful message across. This also makes clear the distinction of his message of peace, Vs, the US Presidents message of Terror. lol.


By Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz Correspondent - 24/09/2008



WASHINGTON - Just how weak the international front against Iran's nuclear program is became clear during Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to New York this week. Not only will he address the UN General Assembly just like any other world leader, but he has been sought after by the media, and tomorrow, he will even be hosted at a dinner by several Christian organizations that say they are seeking to promote peace.

On Tuesday, Ahmadinejad did his best to weaken the opposition still further, via an interview with America's prestigious National Public Radio: He insisted that he is not seeking a confrontation with the United States or anyone else, and that the entire problem is "the U.S. administration and its group of friends."

Asked by NPR about Iran's confrontation with the world over its nuclear program, he retorted: "Where is the world that you are speaking of? Again, 118 members of the Non-Aligned Movement are supporting us. Fifty-seven countries of the OIC [Organization of the Islamic Conference]. So the world that is concerned that you refer to, who is it? Which world? Is it really the U.S. administration and its group of friends?"
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He even said he would like to cooperate with the U.S. - but clarified that Iran has already done "whatever we could," so now, "it's time for the American government to act."

Asked about his threat to "wipe Israel off the map," he insisted that he was referring to the country's peaceful disappearance.

"Let me create an analogy here - where exactly is the Soviet Union today?" he said. "It did disappear - but exactly how? It was through the vote of its own people. So therefore in Palestine, too, we must allow the people, the Palestinians, to determine their own future.

"Let's ask ourselves, where exactly did the Zionist regime come from?" he continued. "Palestine has existed historically with people who live there for thousands of years. Then at gunpoint several million of the indigenous people there were forced out of their homes and became displaced. And it didn't stop there; others were brought from elsewhere in the world to replace them. How can you accept this regime?

"Is the problem of the U.S. government the Zionist regime?" he added. "I believe the extremity to which the U.S. government has gone to extend support to the Zionist regime has caused the U.S. government problems around the world."

The other side of the coin

While the west watches the demonising of Ahmadinejad when he visits NY for the UN General Assy. We here this refreshing news piece, obviously only found on foreign websites (PressTV).
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A group of American rabbis welcome Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to New York in a move aimed at countering an anti-Iran protest.

Iran promotes peace and respects Judaism, spokesman of Neturei Karta International (Jews United Against Zionism) Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss said in a statement issued on the eve of President Ahmadinejad's visit to New York.

This is while a pro-Israeli group called the Conference of Presidents of Major American Organizations has made efforts to organize a rally in front of the UN headquarters on Sunday to protest President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's arrival in the US.

Neturei Karta International, however, took quite a contrary position toward Ahmadinejad's visit and called for dialogue with the Iranian president.

"It is sad that so few have actually attempted to speak to the Iranian President or seek the true opinion of Iranian Jewry who live in peace and practice their faith throughout that nation. We have met this man who has demonstrated time and again that he is sincerely interested in the well being of Iran's Jewish community and has deep respect for world Jewry and their Torah faith. The Zionist attempt to socially isolate this man and his people is immoral and disastrous," said the statement.

"It has been our honor and privilege to meet with President Ahmadinejad ... we have found the Iranian President to be a deeply religious man, dedicated to a peaceful world, based on mutual respect, fairness and dialogue," Rabbi Weiss wrote.

"Out of great respect to the Iranian Nation and their leadership we proudly welcome the Honorable President Ahmadinejad to New York, WELCOME!" added the rabbi at the end of the statement.

Iran's President arrived at New York City's John F. Kennedy Airport on Sunday to address the 63rd annual session of the UN General Assembly on September 23.

Two Timing X 2 By Iconoclast

Found this amusing, and there is so little amusing regarding the capitalist model of making money for rich people only !!
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isn't it lovely - they found a way to make people pay for the same thing over and over again.

federal reserve creates money out of thin air for the government - citizen pays the interest.
citizen gets a loan for a home - pays again!
now the mortgage broker is broke and being bailed out by the government (=taxes) - time to pay again!

and in the end, the citizen will have payed multiple times for something that should be a human right (housing), but he won't own a home, he will be broke, unemployed and destroyed...

the masterplan is so incedibly fiendish, you have to somehow admire it. (even if it makes you vomit)

Why wont they say no

Why Won't They Say 'NO!'?
Butler Shaffer
LewRockwell.com
Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:56 EDT



While critics of the vicious and evil policies of the modern American state continue to ask what can be done to punish and/or remove its practitioners from office, I am far more interested in the question: why do the American people continue to support such destructive and tyrannical behavior, whether eagerly or by silent acquiescence? With almost weekly escalation of government power over their lives, and threats to the lives of innocent men, women, and children in foreign lands, why is there so little willingness to say "No! You have gone too far for decent people to any longer tolerate your actions!"?

America is in terrible straits. It is no exaggeration to suggest that it is well into an irreversible state of collapse. The national government is ruled by psychopaths, with wars being fabricated out of lies, forged "documents," and other deceptions. Two nations that have not posed any kind of threat to the United States have been singled out for unprovoked attacks. With the diminishing returns that have rendered the continued bullying of Iraqi and Afghan people boring to both advocates and opponents of these wars, Republican and Democratic officials now turn their attentions to another country that poses no threat to America: Iran.

Why is there no widespread moral revulsion by Americans against the murderous and destructive policies of its political system? If your son was out with his friends engaging in drive-by shootings, would you be as proud as the parents of those who do their killings on behalf of the state, and who emblazon their cars with bumper-stickers reading "proud parents of a Marine"?

Even if we don't wallow in such savagery, why are so many of us unwilling to openly condemn it? As the current police-state continues its growth, some may understandably fear the midnight knock on their front door that was implicit in the September, 2001 remark by White House Press Secretary, Ari Fleischer: people "need to watch what they say, watch what they do." The message gets through to many that, an administration that thumbs its nose at habeas corpus, embraces the use of torture, and openly regards the Constitution as nothing more than "a piece of paper," is a bully too dangerous to offend.

I suspect that many who secretly oppose what the state is doing believe that such "excesses" amount to little more than a temporary embarrassment; one that will pass upon the end of George W's final term; and that the election of a new president will bring things back to "normal." But it seems clear that what we are now experiencing in America is a new "norm"; that we are dealing not just with the idiosyncrasies and psychotic traits embedded in the present administration. The problem runs much deeper, I believe, as an expression of more sinister purposes of the political establishment that presumes ownership of the nation.

Is the American civilization likely to recover its bearings in time to reverse its moral and intellectual free-fall? In the absence of a fundamental transformation in thought and the nature of social systems, the answer is a firm "no." America - along with the rest of the West - will likely find itself suffering the fate of all previous civilizations. War-lusting empires collapse, but civilizations leave to the rest of mankind their creative and beneficial attributes. Thus were we bequeathed by the ancient Greeks the basic foundations for intelligent thought; the Romans their engineering skills; and the Persians their important work in the sciences and advanced forms of mathematics.

Western civilization built on these and other attributes to produce great works of literature, art, music, scientific discovery, and invention. But perhaps its greatest contribution to human well-being will prove to have been the confluence of such factors as individual liberty, the private ownership of property, and an understanding of the dynamics of the marketplace, to have produced the industrial revolution. In contrast with its present decline-and-fall, we should learn from history that civilizations are created and sustained by individuals; they are destroyed by collectives.

Recent civilizations have generally followed a westerly course: from Greece to Rome to Western Europe to Great Britain to America. Perhaps the beneficent qualities that once made America great - particularly respect for individuals pursuing their self-interests within free markets - will be embraced by Asian countries - perhaps China - as the creative energies that make for great civilizations continue their westward trek.

Perhaps centuries from now, historians - writing in different languages than English, and for intelligent minds of different cultures than ours - will ponder the question with which Gibbon and others left us after the fall of Rome: why? Having produced such free, prosperous, and humane social systems, why were the foundations of Western civilization so easily allowed to be torn away? As barbarians and looters began to ooze their way upwards through an expanding pool of muck, why were so many millions of people who had benefited from this civilization - and who stood to suffer the most from its collapse - so unwilling or unable to see what was at stake, and to say "No!"?
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I see the problem as simple as, if English media (all forms) do not tell the truth, then people are unaware of how bad the situation is. As long as we are provided a scapegoat i.e. Iran / Russia, then noone thinks our own government is to blame or even if it is blatent that they are, we cannot do anything about it, so they carry on watching the soaps and reality TV, thinking , this does not effect them and if it does then that is just part of life. Not many people believe we can shape the Earth the way it should be.
The truth can be reported Globally in various languages, but we will not know it. Also, if you watch any real news i.e. Al Jazeera, then people still scoff, that it has been labelled and classified as bad / unreliable news.
Lastly , as mentioned in the article above, if you do have your eyes open and you take a day out of your comfortable life to say what needs to be said, you are likely to be labelled and unforeseen things may happen to your comfortable life.

President Bush - Why don't you shut up?

In your statement on Monday regarding the legitimate actions of the Russian Federation in Georgia, you failed to mention once the war crimes perpetrated by Georgian military forces, which American advisors support, against Russian and Ossetian civilians. Kinda embarrassing, eh?

Your faithful ally, Mikhail Saakashvili, was announcing a ceasefire deal while his troops, with your advisors, were massing on Ossetia's border, which they crossed under cover of night and destroyed Tskhinvali, targeting civilian structures just like your forces did in Iraq. Kinda humanitarian, eh?

The military forces of your faithful ally, Georgia, supported by American advisors, while on a mission as peacekeepers in Ossetia, were ordered to open fire on Russian peacekeeping forces in the same team. Kinda noble, eh?

Your American transport aircraft gave a ride home to thousands of Georgian soldiers from Iraq directly into the combat zone. Did your boys wish them good luck as they stepped off the aircraft? I can almost hear it, "Give 'em Hell!" Kinda friendly, eh?

How do you account for the fact that among the Georgian soldiers fleeing the fighting yesterday you could clearly hear officers using American English giving orders to "Get back inside" and how do you account for the fact that there are reports of American soldiers among the Georgian casualties? Kinda odd, eh?

Do you really think anyone gives any importance whatsoever to your words after 8 years of your criminal and murderous regime and policies? Do you really believe you have any moral ground whatsoever and do you really imagine there is a single human being anywhere on this planet who does not stick up his middle finger every time you appear on a TV screen? Kinda makes ya'll think, eh?

Do you really believe you have the right to give any opinion or advice after Abu Ghraib? After Guantanamo? After the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens? After the torture by CIA operatives? Kinda difficult, eh?

Do you really believe you have any right to make a statement on any point of international law after your trumped-up charges against Iraq and the subsequent criminal invasion? Like spittin' into the wind, right?

Suppose Russia for instance declares that Georgia has weapons of mass destruction? And that Russia knows where these WMD are, namely in Tblisi and Poti and north, south, east and west of there? And that it must be true because there is "magnificent foreign intelligence" such as satellite photos of milk powder factories and baby cereals producing chemical weapons and which are currently being "driven around the country in vehicles"? Suppose Russia declares for instance that "Saakashvili stiffed the world" and it is "time for regime change"?

Nice and simple, isn't it, President Bush?

So, why don't you shut up? Oh and by the way, send some more of your military advisors to Georgia, they are doing a sterling job. And they look all funny down the night sight, all green. Hahaha!

Thank you, That would be all.

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Taken from Kevin Gosztola - opednews.com - Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17

US hampering Russian peace efforts – Getting involved in another far away war

we all know how democratic the US is, except when it involves oil interests. So here we go again, Georgia is supported in an attack against its own countries civilian population. The only problem was that the civilians do not want to be part of Georgia, which happened by default when the soviet republic broke up.
Watching live on Friday 8th August, we know that the only thing that kept these people safe was joint Russion and Georgian peace keepers. As in many countries a token number of troops, with limited weapons.
While Georgia authorities play with joining NATO and enjoying joint military exercises with the US and being the 3rd big contributor to the illegal war in IRAQ, Russia could see problems on the horizon. Especially when Georgia's budget for weapons has increased recently (from US , NATO and ISRAEL), i.e. tanks , anti aircraft systems and drones. So the act was not a surprise for anyone close to the situation, just the fact that it was done in such a in-humane way. Maybe they thought that it would go a little un-noticed, because they chose the Olympic games opening as a cover. The West along with Georgia have made up their own version of events. Discounting the Genocide committed at the beginning and all the witness accounts from the conflict zone. Saying we have stopped shooting , while people are still reporting it on the ground. None of the western media have made clear that the major deaths have been the result of Georgia shelling the capital of the area, that is largely now rubble.
While it was obvious that Russia would retaliate, I guess that Georgia and its allies thought that Russia would just hold the area and make peace, for it all to happen again in a few months time. I think Russia knows this and wants Georgia to get the message (and remove the capability) that this cannot happen again. But, I am also sure that Russia is a little surprised at the lack of support within the UN, in light of the War Crimes committed. But not surprised that the UK, EU and US , support these same crimes, even do not mention that they have even happened. Here is the ex-president putting it quite clearly....

(footnote - During the last 3 days, the US has moved yet another War Fleet into the Middle East Region along with NATO boats. This seemingly is part of the 'Blockade' resolution in the US senate, that normally would be a sign of war).


Russia Today - 11th August
In a stinging attack on the US, Putin told government ministers: "It's a pity that some of our partners, instead of helping, are trying to get in the way”.

He said the US was using “its military transport aircraft to relocate Georgia's military contingent from Iraq virtually into the conflict zone”.

He also voiced his frustration at the inability of Russia's western partners to adequately assess the situation in South Ossetia.

“I’m amazed by their skills at seeing black as white, of portraying aggressors as victims and of blamimg the real victims for the consequences of the conflict.

Putin also accused the West of double standards when it comes to judging war crimes.

“As we all know, Saddam Hussein was hanged for burning down several Shiite villages. But now suddenly the situation is different. The Georgian leaders who in a matter of hours wiped out ten Ossetian villages, who ran over children and the elderly with tanks, who burned civilians alive, those people have to be protected,” he said.


Meanwhile, American Joe Mestas, who witnessed days of shelling, has said U.S. and Georgian leaders are responsible for the violence that has killed 2,000 people in the region. He told RT that Washington will have to answer for the violence.

“I thought that since U.S. is supporting Georgia there would be some control over the situation in South Ossetia and that there would be a peaceful solution to the conflict. But what is happening there now it’s not just war, but war crimes. George Bush and [Georgian president] Mikhail Saakashvili should answer to the crimes that are being committed – the killing of innocent people, running over by tanks of children and women, throwing grenades into cellars where people are hiding,” Mestas said.

“The war is when military fight against military. But the Georgian army is killing innocent civilians. This is genocide,” he added

Siege or no Siege, that is the question

For more than two years, all border crossings to the Gaza Strip have been closed by the Israeli army. Since then, the 1.5 million inhabitants live in a state of siege, even more so since June, when the siege was tightened. As reasons for the siege Israel refers to Qassam rocket fire from the area and the alleged intention of the Hamas government to destroy Israel. At the same time, Israeli government officials emphasize that the occupation of the Gaza Strip has ended with the withdrawal of the Israeli settlements and army in September 2005 and that the Gaza Strip would now be considered foreign territory. But facts on the ground speak a different language.

The siege has a disastrous effect on the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip as it violates the human, economic and social rights of the population. More than 200 civilians have died because of the restrictions. In addition, the siege has severely impacted the flow of food, medical supplies and other necessities such as fuel, construction materials and raw materials for various economic sectors. Factories have been forced to close. The unemployment rate is the highest in the world, according to a recent UN report. About 60% of the Gazan households rely on donations, says UNWRA, and urges Israel to reopen the borders. The current bloody rivalries between Hamas and Fatah add to the overall problem.

Recently, the European Commission agreed on a direct aid of $ 6.3 million for the poorest, to be distributed until the end of the year. At the same time, Europe supports the suffocation of the civilian population and the boycott of the democratically elected government, causing damage far beyond $ 6.3 million. To relieve the distress, a few weeks ago, a Palestinian-Scottish couple took a truck from Scotland to deliver one and a half tons of medical supplies to the Gaza Strip. At the current moment, Khalil Al Niss and Linda Willis have been waiting for days on the Egyptian side of the partition wall in Rafah and they have not yet gotten a permission to cross the border. The Egyptians deny this.

So, is Gaza under occupation or not? What does the so-called withdrawal of the Israeli army really mean? To clarify this matter two boats are leaving Cyprus for Gaza on or about August 7. Forty members of the "Free Gaza Movement" are on their way now to meet in Cyprus and prepare the vessels. They are invited to Gaza by The Palestinian Medical Relief Society, The Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, The Palestinian Ministry of Youth and Sport, the local popular committee to break the Gaza siege, and diverse individuals in Gaza. Legally, Israel has nothing to do with this enterprise, because the ships will not enter Israeli waters or ports. They will sail directly from international waters into Gazan waters.

Some expect Israeli forces to stop the vessels in order to make a clear statement that the Gaza population are prisoners without any legal or human rights except the ones granted by Israel, and that Israel can thus newly demonstrate to the world how its legal conceptions rank higher than international and human rights laws. In the morning of July 20, for instance, Israeli war vessels opened fire on Palestinian fishing boats north and west of Gaza City, according to the news agency Maan. The usual justification for such action is the Israeli claim (or "fear", respectively) that arms are possibly smuggled into the area. Even the cease-fire, which Hamas and twelve other groups have been keeping since June 19, does not seem to make any difference to Israel - except for the fact that Israeli incursions are momentarily concentrated on Nablus and the West Bank. Legally, there are no grounds for any of these military measures.

Many international organizations and individuals support the Free Gaza project and acknowledge the importance of the mission, among them Noam Chomsky and Luisa Morgantini, Vice President of the European Parliament. Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu wrote: "Peace and security, we discovered in South Africa, do not come through the barrel of a gun ... I support the boat convoy in its attempt." Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire adds: "You carry with you the hopes and wishes of many people around the world." The list of endorsers on www.freegaza.org is updated daily now, as the date gets nearer and the world public turns its attention to the Free Gaza event.

The Free Gaza Movement is a humanitarian and a grass roots democratic project and not affiliated to any political party or agenda. Some public voices have tried to associate it with pro- or anti- group interests which the group vehemently rejects. In an email of one of the participants, Monir Deeb, the spirit of the unforgotten Count Folke Bernadotte is showing: "The Free Gaza group are investing their time, money, and safety to speak out against injustice. They are the same people who stood by the Jewish population of the world in the hard times of Nazi persecution." His Gazan father, says Deeb, actually met the Swedish diplomat and UN mediator Bernadotte during negotiations in the Sinai in 1948.


Post Note : Why do people in my country (A) not know about the dire situation in Gaza and (B) Dont Care !!! What is that all about ????

Bomb Eye-ran!

Although this is satire, it is also very sad, because this IS in fact how a lot of people think of Iran, which the Western media hypes constantly.

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Attempting to disarm Iran's nuclear enrichment program diplomatically has proven futile. Even with the noose tightening around its neck through sanctions, and joint American-Israeli military exercises combined with covert CIA operations being conducted close to its border, Iran still has the sheer audacity to tell America that it will defend itself in the case of an invasion. How dare this 3000-year-old civilization threaten the world's declining 60-year hegemonic superpower? How dare this country stand up for itself after watching America slaughter thousands in neighboring Iraq? It is time to bomb these people into oblivion so the West can once again overthrow its regime and replace it with one that will conform, abide by, and slave to its master. It's time these people got with the times. It is upon America and the rest of the "civilized world" to prevent another 9/11.

I say Bomb Eye-ran!

The inherently evil Ahmadinejad brought it upon himself by demanding oil compensation in euros. Oil has always been bought and sold in American currency. So what if the dollar is at rock-bottom due to America's colonial misadventures? So what if the Iranians want full compensation for a resource that they own? So what if the Iranians want to circumvent American restrictions on banks that engage in business with Iran? These greedy Iranians have to understand that only America can act in its best interest and everybody else has to act in the best interests of America. As long as Iran exists, so does the potential for another 9/11.

I say Bomb Eye-ran!

What are these Iranians thinking by enriching uranium? Everyone knows that only the U.S. and Israel can have weapons of mass destruction, because they have the God-given right to do so. Any other state that even attempts to acquire such technology, even for peaceful purposes, is doing so because it wants to destroy western civilization. Sure, Iran is constantly threatened by Israel, shares a border with nuclear Pakistan and is surrounded by two American client regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, but that does not matter. If Iran cooperated, did not nationalize its oil industry in 1953, and did not overthrow a brutal US-installed dictator in 1979, then it would not be where it is today. Iran does not have a right to meddle in its own affairs, only Britain, America, and Israel do. If this magnanimous, righteous, and noble trio does not take matters into their own hands, these evil-doers will unleash another attack like 9/11.

I say Bomb Eye-ran!

Ahmadinejad stated that he wanted to wipe Israel off the map so the only logical course of action is that the U.S. and Israel destroy Iran first. In reality he may have said he wanted to "wipe Zionism from the page of history," but those devious Iranians just like to mask their threats in colorful language. Iran's constant meddling in Iraq, support of terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, and combative rhetoric of self-defense is highly disconcerting. If Iran acquired nuclear weapons, they will invade neighboring states and try to spread their Shiite revolution across the Muslim world and into Europe. Maybe present-day Iran has not invaded a foreign state since the Greco-Persian wars before the birth of Christ, and perhaps the US and Israel have a more profound history of invasion and occupation. However, that is all irrelevant because the U.S. and Israel are believers in democracy and freedom. Those who committed the heinous acts of 9/11 despised democracy and freedom.

I say Bomb Eye-ran!

America and Israel can easily target Iran's nuclear reactors that are spread throughout the country. Iran will not see this as an act of aggression because the strikes will be "strategic" and this will minimize any "collateral damage" just like in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their threat to target American interests and to further destabilize the Middle East is hogwash. Their threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 30 per cent of the world's oil passes, is baseless and tantamount to political suicide. If Iran does become that desperate, oil may rise to $500 dollars a barrel and the people may suffer, but it will definitely make the American oligarchy much happier. In the end that is all that matters.

And most important of all, nobody will have the gall to execute another 9/11, because the concept of "blowback" does not really exist.

I say Bomb Eye-ran and let freedom ring.

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Thanks to Aurangzeb Qureshi from Antiwar.com for this piece

War Crimes and the President of Sudan

The question is who should be charged for Crimes against humanity. Personally i think Sudan should suggest that their president should only be tried after worse war criminals have been charged and sentenced. As this would never happen, it is safe to suggest such a thing.
This has been nicely summerised by a comment on the Gulf News website today. (see below).


The Arab League is being called to rescue one of its leaders, President of Sudan, Omar Al Bashir. Reports say he is being considered by the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a suspect in the ongoing conflict and massacres in Darfur. Al Bashir, being the president, holds a moral responsibility for the bloody conflict in the unfortunate region. He, nevertheless, tried to resolve the crisis long before the West got hold of the issue and made it an election banner in more than one country. But the real question is, why is he being singled out? There are many presidents and international figures, amongst us, who could also be tried for crimes against humanity.

Yes, we are thinking of Ariel Sharon (AKA: the Butcher of Lebanon) who should have been prosecuted years before Slobodan Milosevic was arrested, and George W. Bush, whose catastrophic foreign policies have resulted directly in the killings of thousands of innocent people in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Lest we forget, neither Israel nor the US even recognise the ICC's authority to try their citizens. Also, any of the major powers has the right to veto the prosecution of its own citizens. So depending on which country we're talking about, the concept of "justice" will vary.

International organisations were right when they sounded the alarm over what was taking place in Darfur. It was a real war, in which thousands of innocent women, men and children paid the price. But it was a war between two groups and it could have been addressed long time ago. But going after the Sudanese president and humiliating him will only complicate the conflict and undermine any progress made on Darfur in the past few months.

This is nothing more than an attempt to put together a political show trial and perhaps justify future "international action" in Sudan. Unfortunately with the ICC, which pursues cases selectively, it was seldom about justice or humanitarian considerations and more so about political motivations.

Iran War - One Scenario !

With former CIA officer Ray McGovern saying President Bush and his ally, Israel, will likely attack Iran in 'late summer or early fall'. I find this nice summary from David DeBatto, which gives us a fasinating scenario.

If the United States attacks Iran either this summer or this fall, the American people had better be prepared for a shock that may perhaps be even greater to the national psyche (and economy) than 9/11. First of all, there will be significant U.S. casualties in the initial invasion. American jets will be shot down and the American pilots who are not killed will be taken prisoner - including female pilots. Iranian Yakhonts 26, Sunburn 22 and Exocet missiles will seek out and strike U.S. naval battle groups bottled up in the narrow waters of the Persian Gulf with very deadly results. American sailors will be killed and U.S. ships will be badly damaged and perhaps sunk. We may even witness the first attack on an American Aircraft carrier since World War II.

That’s just the opening act.

Israel (who had thus far stayed out of the fray by letting the U.S. military do the heavy lifting) is attacked by Hezbollah in a coordinated and large scale effort. Widespread and grisly casualties effectively paralyze the nation, a notion once thought impossible. Iran’s newest ally in the region, Syria, then unleashes a barrage of over 200 Scud B, C and D missiles at Israel, each armed with VX gas. Since all of Israel is within range of these Russian built weapons, Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and virtually all major civilian centers and several military bases are struck, often with a result of massive casualties.

The Israeli Air Force orders all three squadrons of their F-16I Sufa fighter/bombers into the air with orders to bomb Tehran and as many military and nuclear bases as they can before they are either shot down or run out of fuel. It is a one way trip for some of these pilots. Their ancient homeland lies in ruins. Many have family that is already dead or dying. They do not wait for permission from Washington, DC or U.S. regional military commanders. The Israeli aircraft are carrying the majority of their country’s nuclear arsenal under their wings.

Just after the first waves of U.S. bombers cross into Iranian airspace, the Iranian Navy, using shore based missiles and small, fast attack craft sinks several oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, sealing off the Persian Gulf and all its oil from the rest of the world. They then mine the area, making it difficult and even deadly for American minesweepers to clear the straits. Whatever is left of the Iranian Navy and Air Force harasses our Navy as it attempts minesweeping operations. More U.S casualties.

The day after the invasion Wall Street (and to a lesser extent, Tokyo, London and Frankfurt) acts as it always does in an international crisis – irrational speculative and spot buying reaches fever pitch and sends the cost of oil skyrocketing. In the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iran, the price of oil goes to $200.00 - $300.00 dollars a barrel on the open market. If the war is not resolved in a few weeks, that price could rise even higher. This will send the price of gasoline at the pump in this country to $8.00-$10.00 per gallon immediately and subsequently to even higher unthinkable levels.

If that happens, this country shuts down. Most Americans are not be able to afford gas to go to work. Truckers pull their big rigs to the side of the road and simply walk away. Food, medicine and other critical products are not be brought to stores. Gas and electricity (what is left of the short supply) are too expensive for most people to afford. Children, the sick and elderly die from lack of air-conditioned homes and hospitals in the summer. Children, the sick and elderly die in the winter for lack of heat. There are food riots across the country. A barter system takes the place of currency and credit as the economy dissolves and banks close or limit withdrawals. Civil unrest builds.

The police are unable to contain the violence and are themselves victims of the same crisis as the rest of the population. Civilian rule dissolves and Martial Law is declared under provisions approved under the Patriot Act. Regular U.S. Army and Marine troops patrol the streets. The federal government apparatus is moved to an unknown but secure location. The United States descends into chaos and becomes a third world country. Its time as the lone superpower is over.

It doesn’t get any worse than this.

Then the first Israeli bomber might drop its nuclear payload on Tehran.


(quoted from David DeBatto, who is a former U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent and Iraqi war veteran)

Vanunu - The Truth Hurts

VANUNU MORDECHAI J C. - KIDNAPPED IN ROME SEP' 30 TH'-1986. - AFTER 18 YEARS IN ISRAEL PRISON. - Waiting In East Jerusalem.To Be Free,To Leave. Most famous for being the Israeli former nuclear technician who revealed details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986.


Nice to hear some frank statements from someone who knows ;
What follows is a compilation of email replies from Vanunu regarding Iran, democracy, etc. [with slight editing; punctuation, spelling, grammar].

Vanunu wrote:



They all have their own double standards.

No one should ignore the fact that Atomic weapons are in Israel and that it was France most especially who helped build the Dimona reactor in 1960.

No one should forget that France was the first state to start nuclear weapons proliferation in secret, not Iran.

The world's problem with Iran is the obligation to help the people of Iran to have freedom and democracy; free from a dictator regime.

The problem is not nuclear weapons in Iran but the need for freedom for all the people.

I am not at all supporting this Ayatollahs regime in Iran. This regime should be ended and replaced by freedom and democracy for all Iran people.

The same goes for Israel too, which is only a democracy if you are a Jew. The Israeli problem is the Jewish apartheid regime.

No nuclear weapons program is a true deterrent or safeguard mechanism for security because Atomic weapons can only bring destruction. Atomic weapons are a mechanism of self destruction.

How can Israel, the only country in the Middle East known to have a nuclear weapons program expects all others not to even have peaceful nuclear energy programs?

Since Israel has the Bombs, then they can not speak with credibility about stopping all the Middle East states from having at least Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Science and Technology.

Israel by all its nuclear secret activities opened the way for any state to do the same. My view is that Nuclear Science and technology must be part of any modern state and society, so all the world and every state should have it.

After almost 50 years of secret nuclear activities and productions of bombs, America, France and the entire world should also intervene and demand Israel sign the NPT, follow all of the IAEA orders, regulations and restrictions.

Instead, Israel puts on me distractions.

I fulfilled my sentence of 18 years in prison because I listened to my conscience and reported the truth that Israel was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. It is over four years now that Israel has held me captive in East Jerusalem; forbidding me to speak to any foreigners or to leave the state, which is all I want to do.

Seems simple, but why do our polititions not say the truth ????? I am baffled.

(Blog post mostly from Eileen Fleming : Senior Correspondent & Editor of http://www.wearewideawake.org)
Original Article

time is running out ...... or is it

It's been a year since Hamas asserted its rightful role as the democratically elected government in the Gaza Strip after corrupt Fatah forces there had unsuccessfully tried to usurp Hamas's governance of the Palestinian enclave. Hamas's victory in the January 2006 elections was not recognised by Israel or the US, the two nations on our planet that scream loudest about the necessity of democracy in the region. Instead, they ensured that the corrupt Fatah organisation under Abbas took control of Palestinian affairs, a move that, while successful in the West Bank, was unsuccessful in the Gaza.

Ever since Hamas took control of the Gaza, the Israelis have hounded the Gazan Palestinians, in many cases, literally to death through bombing and denial of basic health access. Hundreds of men, women and children have died through indiscriminate IDF helicopter gunship and strike fighter aircraft attacks on the densely populated Gaza Strip. Tens of thousands more are suffering through the lack fuel and other supplies. Scores have died through not being allowed to leave the Gaza for proper medical treatment. Homes have been demolished and much of what little productive land remains that is able to provide food has been bulldozed bare by the Israelis. All this has been in an effort to dislodge Hamas from their position of governance. In short, the Gazan people are being collectively punished for having had the temerity to exercise their democratic rights voting in a government that the Israel and the US do not accept.

In an effort to stem and deter the Israeli attacks on the Gazan people and their government, Palestinian fighters have launched crude and largely ineffective rockets against Israel, acts that Israel simply uses as an excuse for even more attacks against the Gazan people.

Iran is now the only nation left that is powerful enough to stand in the way of the Zionist's dream of a Greater Israel that includes the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, the Shebaa Farms and south Lebanon up to the Litani River. Without Iran to supply and support Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas the Israeli Zionists believe that their dream of a Greater Israel can be realised.

All they need is an excuse, a casus belli, to attack Iran but it is something that they cannot do alone; they need the US to do it for them.

It's just a matter of timing now - and time is running out ...... or is it.......

Less than 24 hours after he emerged as the presumed Democratic Party nominee for President, Barack Obama didn't help himself one iota, when he showed up on Wednesday at the AIPAC annual convention in Washington.


''Now here's a change we can believe in. A mere 12 hours after claiming the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama appeared before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee yesterday--and changed himself into an Israel hard-liner.''

''He promised $30 billion in military assistance for Israel. He declared that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force has 'rightly been labeled a terrorist organization.' He used terms such as 'false prophets of extremism' and 'corrupt' while discussing Palestinians. And he promised that 'Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.'

''Vowing to stop Tehran from getting a nuclear weapon, the newly minted nominee apparent added: 'I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally, Israel. Do not be confused.'

''How could they be confused? As a pandering performance. 'it was the full Monty by a candidate who, during the primary, had positioned himself to Hillary Clinton's left on matters such as Iran. Yesterday, Obama, who has generally declined to wear an American-flag lapel pin, wore a joint U.S.-Israeli pin, and even tried a Hebrew phrase on the crowd.''

To make matters even worse, ''Obama even outdid President Bush in his pro-Israel sentiments. On the very day that Obama vowed to protect Jerusalem as Israel's capital--drawing a furious denunciation from the Palestinian Authority--Bush announced that he was suspending a move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.''

So, it sounds to me like anything not finished by Bush during his remaining months, can be continued by our new lying leader of the US terrorists.

The West Is In Denial - Support Racial Purity Now !

On April 9, 1948, members of the underground Jewish terrorist group, the Irgun, or IZL, led by Menachem Begin, who was to become the Israeli prime minister in 1977, entered the peaceful Arab village of Deir Yassin, massacred 250 men, women, children and the elderly, and stuffed many of the bodies down wells. There were also reports of rapes and mutilations. The Irgun was joined by the Jewish terrorist group, the Stern Gang, led by Yitzhak Shamir, who subsequently succeeded Begin as prime minister of Israel in the early '80s, and also by the Haganah, the militia under the control of David Ben Gurian. The Irgun, the Stern Gang and the Haganah later joined to form the Israeli Defense Force. Their tactics have not changed.

The massacre at Deir Yassin was widely publicized by the terrorists and the numerous heaped corpses displayed to the media. In Jaffe, which was at the time 98 percent Arab, as well as in other Arab communities, speaker trucks drove through the streets warning the population to flee and threatening another Deir Yassin. Begin said at the time, "We created terror among the Arabs and all the villages around. In one blow, we changed the strategic situation."

From about 1938 on to the founding of Israel, Begin was the leader of the Irgun. That group regularly assassinated English soldiers in Palestine and frequently hung their booby-trapped bodies in public places. Under Begin, the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, killing 97 British civil servants. The Stern Gang, under Shamir, also assassinated the U.N. representative to Palestine, Count Bernadotte, in 1948.

But Deir Yassin was not the only massacre by the Israeli Defense Force. That army, under Moshe Dayan, took the unarmed and undefended village of al-Dawazyma, located in the Hebron hills, massacred 80 to 100 of its residents, and threw their bodies into pits. "The children were killed by breaking their heads with sticks ... The remaining Arabs were then sealed in houses, as the village was systematically razed ..." (Nur Masalha, The Historical Roots of the Palestinian Refugee Question).

Within the last 10 to 20 years, however, there has been an exponential increase in historical studies of the origins of the state of Israel which have coincided with the release by Israel of many, but not all, of the historical and military archives. Ben-Gurion University historian Benny Morris, as well as others, have systematically mined these documents and found numerous instances of massacres, and, by the way, not one shred of evidence for the frequently repeated official Israeli lie that the Palestinians fled Palestine because the surrounding Arab states told them to.

In fact, according to UN estimates, which some say are conservative, 750,000 Palestinians fled the site of the present Jewish state in 1948. Those refugees and their descendents now number about 4.5 million and constitute the largest and longest standing refugee population in the world. Many live in squalid refugee camps distributed in the surrounding Arab states or in the West Bank or Gaza, many retain the titles to their land, recognized by the British before 1948 or the Ottomans before that , and many retain the keys to their front doors of their former homes in what is now Israel, whether or not those doors still exists.

The '67 War generated a second wave of about 300,000 refugees from the West Bank and Gaza who were either expelled through direct or psychological methods or fled the Israel aerial attacks on the territories which included the extensive use of napalm.

Those who invoke the suicide bombings against mostly Israeli civilians to infer the righteousness of the Israeli cause live in a twilight of psychic denial of an otherwise unambiguous historical record: the state of Israel was founded on terrorism and ethnic cleansing.

The suicide bombings inside Israel, the first of which only occurred in 1994, after 25 years of occupation, is only a side show. That is a symptom and long way from the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

There will never be a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict until Israel takes responsibility, under U.N. Resolution 194, calling for reparation of the Palestinian refugees, and recognizes the immense suffering it caused at that time. We need also to recognize the US is giving unqualified moral support to a state that is based on racial purity and one that is intrinsically expansionist.

How would we feel if it happened to Us

The Jews who arrived in Palestine throughout the twentieth century did not come because they were cruel people who wanted to snuffle out Arabs to persecute. No: they came because they were running for their lives from a genocidal European anti-Semitism that was soon to slaughter six million of their sisters and their sons.

They convinced themselves that Palestine was "a land without people for a people without land". I desperately wish this dream had been true. You can see traces of what might have been in Tel Aviv, a city that really was built on empty sand dunes. But most of Palestine was not empty. It was already inhabited by people who loved the land, and saw it as theirs. They were completely innocent of the long, hellish crimes against the Jews.

When it became clear these Palestinians would not welcome becoming a minority in somebody else's country, darker plans were drawn up. Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, wrote in 1937: "The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war."

So, for when the moment arrived, he helped draw up Plan Dalit. It was - as Israeli historian Ilan Pappe puts it - "a detailed description of the methods to be used to forcibly evict the people: large-scale intimidation; and laying siege to and bombarding population centres". In 1948, before the Arab armies invaded, this began to be implemented: some 800,000 people were ethnically cleansed, and Israel was built on the ruins.

The people who ask angrily why the Palestinians keep longing for their old land should imagine an English version of this story. How would we react if the 30m stateless, persecuted Kurds in the world sent armies and settlers into this country to seize everything in England below Leeds, and swiftly established a free Kurdistan from which we were expelled? Wouldn't we long forever for our children to return to Cornwall and Devon and London? Would it take us only 40 years to compromise and offer to settle for just 22 per cent of what we had?
Would we like being Locked In, stripped of all powerful weapons so that every retaliation is from a civilion center with locally made poor excuses for weapons. Then get demomised by the UN for resisting. Branded Terrorists !! And being blown up by tanks for approaching the boarder of Deven or Dorset!

How would you feel if it happened to YOU !

It is 1939 all over again. We own the World

It is 1939 all over again. The world waits helplessly for the next act of naked aggression by rogue states. Only this time the rogue states are not the Third Reich and Fascist Italy. They are the United States and Israel.

The targeted victims are not Poland and France, but Iran, Syria, the remains of the Palestinian West Bank and southern Lebanon.

The American mass media is overjoyed. War coverage attracts viewers and sells advertising.

The neoconservatives are ecstatic. Hegemony uber alles is back on track.

The US Air Force can't wait "to show what it can do."

Defense contractors see no end of the profits.

Under cover of the mayhem and propaganda, Israel can grab the remains of the West Bank and have another go at grabbing the water resources of southern Lebanon.

Unlike the US and Israel, Iran is neither occupying any other country's territory nor threatening to invade another country. Nevertheless, propaganda against Iran is spouting from US and Israeli mouths at an increasing rate. Lie after lie rolls off the tongues of leaders of the "two great democracies."

On April 27 Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, blamed Iran for "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq. Has Admiral Mullen forgot that it is the US, not Iran, that is responsible for as many as one million dead Iraqis and four million displaced Iraqis, the "collateral damage" of a "cakewalk war" now into its sixth year?

On April 26 the Washington Post reported that "the Pentagon is planning for potential military courses of action" against Iran.

The Bush Regime's national security advisor says Iran is a threat in Iraq, an accusation echoed endlessly by secretary of defense Robert Gates, secretary of state Rice, vice president Cheney, and president Bush. The US, which has 150,000 troops in Iraq, is not a threat. The US troops are protecting Iraq from Iran, al Qaeda, and the Taliban. Just ask Fox "News."

Doing its part to egg on war with Iran, the US TV news program, "60 MInutes," gave air time to the commander of the Israeli Air Force, General Eliezer Shkedi, who declared in a special interview that Iranian president Ahmadinejad was the new Hitler and that we must not again make the mistake of disbelieving a Hitler.

There are better candidates for the role than Ahmadinejad.

Gen. Shkedi himself sounds like Hitler blaming Poland for the outbreak of the second world war. Ahmadinejad has attacked no country, whereas Israel repeatedly invades its neighbors and continues 40-year occupations of Syrian and Palestinian territory.

As Noam Chomsky has written, the US government thinks that it owns the world (Chomsky could have added that Israel thinks it owns the Middle East and America). Americans can wallow in indignation over China's occupation of Tibet, but be perfectly content with America's occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel can wax eloquently about "Palestinian terrorism" while its military and Zionist settlers terrorize Palestinians.

Americans see no hypocrisy in "their" government's damning of Russia for opposing the incorporation of former Russian satellites and constituent parts in a US military alliance.

Americans see manifest destiny, not US aggression, when "their" government drops bombs on Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Pakistan. Americans do not think it is aggression for them to develop war plans to attack Iran or China or N. Korea or whomever, or to maintain hundreds of military bases all over the globe. The same Americans work themselves into hysterical frenzies over "Iranian influence in Iraq" and "al Qaeda plans to bring the war to America."

As Chomsky says, we own the world. No one else counts.

Except Israel.

Israel counts so much that every presidential candidate has declared his and her willingness to expend whatever American blood and treasure are necessary "to protect Israel." There are no limits on the promise "to defend Israel," no matter what Israel does, no matter if Israel initiates (yet again) war with its neighbors, no matter if it continues to force Palestinians out of their homes and villages in order to "create living room" for Israelis.

With this sort of promise, why should Israel ever settle for anything less than "greater Israel"?

Just as the US government launched its illegal invasion of Iraq on the back of lies about weapons of mass destruction and mushroom clouds, the US government claims it must attack Iran or Iran will build a nuclear weapon. The Bush Regime has learned never to discard a lie as long as it works.

The lie works for the US Congress, the US media and much of the US public, but it is breaking down abroad. On April 27 the British newspaper, the Independent, responded to the recent US government claim that the Syrian facility attacked last September by Israel in an act of naked aggression was a nuclear reactor built by N. Korea:

"There is no independent way to verify any of this, especially since the installation has now been destroyed. We must rely on the integrity of the Israeli and US intelligence. That is where we hit a problem. The former US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented similar evidence to the United Nations Security Council in February 2003 showing what we were told was strong evidence of Iraqi storage of weapons of mass destruction. As we all know, that intelligence turned out to be bogus."

A needless war, a country destroyed, all for bogus intelligence. Why must we repeat our crime in Iran?

Why do we persist in our crime in Iraq? On April 27 McClatchy Newspapers reported that 50 Iraqi political leaders representing numerous political groups including Sunnis went to Sadr City to protest the siege by the US military. Why is al Sadr under seige? He called for a halt to bloodshed between Iraqis, for a "liberation of ourselves and our lands from the occupier," for "a real government and real sovereignty." However, for the Bush Regime, rhetoric about "freedom and democracy" is but a mask behind which to impose a US puppet government. Real Iraqi leaders like al Sadr are "terrorists" who must be eliminated.

Why do the American people and "their" representatives in Congress continue to tolerate a criminal Bush Regime that uses lies and propaganda to mask its acts of naked aggression, war crimes under the Nuremberg standard?

Why does the rest of the world continue to receive political representatives from a war criminal government?

What if the rest of the world told the US to close its bases, its embassies, its CIA operations and to go home?

Self-righteous Americans would regard such demands as effrontery! We own the world.

A superpower or a gang?

The Association of Muslims Scholars' Al Basaer Newspaper highlighted in an editorial titled "A superpower or a gang?" the United States and its relationship with the chaotic situation in Iraq.

The editorial said the failure of the U.S. occupation is a sign the term "superpower" doesn't apply to it anymore because the U.S. presence has turned out to be no more than a joke. It said the United States spent more than $600 billion to invade Iraq but the security, political and economic situation in Iraq is worse today than during the first years after the occupation.

Despite the death of U.S. troops and thousands of injuries, the United States can't control any city or even the Green Zone, the most "secure" area in Baghdad, the paper said.

"The U.S. uses 160,000 troops, 170,000 foreign mercenaries and 250,000 militia mercenaries who work for the Iraqi government of occupation," it said.

It said these large numbers are still incapable of making any real progress to save the lives of the innocent people of Iraq or in providing for their simple needs. The paper also said the United States as a "superpower" purposely pushed Iraqis to carry out elections to result in a Parliament that consists of members who sold themselves and their country to the "devil."

"The political process failed in presenting even one political bloc that gains any respect because they were well-known for being untrustworthy," the Sunni newspaper said.

It said after the militias within the Iraqi government fought each other -- a reference to the latest clashes in Basra -- the "superpower" couldn't find any solution except to beg Iran to interfere and end the clashes.

It said Gen. Kevin Bergner, special assistant to the president and senior director for Iraq, admitted in a briefing March 26 in Baghdad that Iran had a major influence in Basra and northeast cities of Iraq, and called upon Iran to intervene in order to end the violence among the Shiite Mahdi Army militia, Iraqi forces and other Shiite militias related to the Shiite Dawa and Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council parties.

The paper said five years after the occupation of Iraq and the loss of thousands of soldiers and millions of dollars, the United States is asking for the help of a neighboring country that is, according to the White House, an enemy or at least a threat to U.S. interests.

"A superpower is super if it can change the reality in a place, impose its experience on others or impose its will and not by begging others for interference," it said.

The reality of the situation is that the United States is no more than a state of gangs that plans and thinks and operate with a gang's mentality, it said. There is no difference between the U.S. administration and Congress or its journalists and experts who all talk loud when an incident is about to occur, but who become silent when it fails, it said.

"No matter how strong a gang is, it is impossible to consider it as a superpower," it said.

The Petraeus-Crocker dog and pony show - Another War Crime in the making

On April 5, the London Telegraph reported that "British officials gave warning yesterday that America's commander in Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the U.S.-backed Baghdad government. A strong statement from Gen. David Petraeus about Iran's intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a U.S. attack on Iranian military facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment."

Reporting from Tehran on April 4, Reuters quotes Mohsen Hakim, whose father, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leads the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, an ally of the Maliki U.S. puppet government in Iraq: "Tehran, by using its positive influence on the Iraqi nation, paved the way for the return of peace to Iraq and the new situation is the result of Iran's efforts."

Instead of thanking Iran and working with Iran diplomatically to restore stability to Iraq, the Bush regime intends to expand the nightmare with a military attack on Iran. Crocker was quick to dispute Hakim's report that Iran had used its influence to end the fighting in Basra. Crocker alleged that Iran had started the fighting. The absurdity of Crocker's claim is obvious, as even the neocon U.S. media reported that the fighting in Basra was started by the U.S. and Maliki in an effort to clear out the Shi'ite Sadr militias. Most experts saw the attack on Sadr for what it was: an effort to remove a potential threat to the U.S. supply line from Kuwait in the event of a U.S. attack on Iran.

Crocker alleges that the rockets dropping on the Green Zone during the Basra fighting were made in 2007 in Iran. As should be obvious even to disengaged Americans, if Iran were to arm the Iraqi insurgency, the insurgents would have modern weapons to counter U.S. helicopter gunships and heavy tanks. The insurgents have no such weapons. The neocon lie that Iran is the cause of the Iraqi insurgency is just another Bush regime lie like the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and connections to al-Qaeda and the lie that the Taliban in Afghanistan attacked the U.S.

The Bush regime will tell any lie and orchestrate any event in order to "finish the job" in the Middle East.

"Finishing the job" means to destroy the ability of Iraq, Iran, and Syria to provide support for the Palestinians and for Hezbollah in southern Lebanon against Israeli aggression. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Syria might simply give up and become another American client state. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Israel can steal the rest of the West Bank along with the water resources in southern Lebanon. That is what "the war on terror" is really about.

The entire world knows this. Consequently, the U.S. and Israel are essentially isolated. The U.S. can only count on the support that it can bribe and pay for.

At the NATO-Russian summit in Bucharest, Romania, on April 4, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, "No one can seriously think that Iran would dare attack the U.S. Instead of pushing Iran into a corner, it would be far more sensible to think together how to help Iran become more predictable and transparent."

Of course it would, but that is not what the warmonger Bush wants.

Your Turn is Next !

If only America had an independent media and an opposition party. If there were a shred of integrity left in American political life, perhaps a third act of naked aggression--a third war crime under the Nuremberg standard--by the Bush Regime could be prevented.

On March [27, 2007], the Russian News & Information Agency, Novosti, cited "a high-ranking security source: "The latest military intelligence data point to heightened US military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran."

According to Novosti, Russian Colonel General Leonid Ivashov said "that the Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran's military infrastructure in the near future."

The chief of Russia's general staff, Yuri Baluyevsky, said last November that Russia was beefing up its military in response to US aggression, but that the Russian military is not "obliged to defend the world from the evil Americans."

On March 29, OpEdNews cited a report by the Saudi Arabian newspaper Okaz, which was picked up by the German news service, DPA. The Saudi newspaper reported on March 22, the day following Cheney's visit with the kingdom's rulers, that the Saudi Shura Council is preparing "national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom following experts' warnings of possible attacks on Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactors."

And Admiral William "there will be no attack on Iran on my watch" Fallon has been removed as US chief of Central Command, thus clearing the way for Cheney's planned attack on Iran.

The Iranians don't seem to believe it, despite the dispatch of US nuclear submarines and another aircraft carrier attack group to the Persian Gulf. To counter any Iranian missiles launched in response to an attack, the US is deploying anti-missile defenses to protect US bases and Saudi oil fields.

Two massive failures by the American media, the Democratic Party, and the American people have paved the way for Cheney's long planned attack on Iran. One failure is the lack of skepticism about the US government's explanation of 9/11. The other failure is the Democrats' refusal to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush for lying to the Congress, the American people, and the world and launching an invasion of Iraq based on deception and fabricated evidence.

If an American president can start a war exactly as Adolf Hitler did with pure lies and not be held accountable, he can get away with anything. And Bush and his evil regime have.

Hitler launched World War II with his invasion of Poland after staging a "Polish attack" on a German radio station. On the night of August 31, 1939, a group of Nazis disguised in Polish uniforms seized a radio station in Germany. Hitler announced that "last night Polish troops crossed the frontier and attacked Germany," a claim no more true than the Bush Regime's claim that "Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction." Hitler's lie failed, because his invasion of Poland, which began the next day allegedly in reprisal for the Polish attack, had obviously been planned for many months.

Iran is a beautiful and developed country. It is an ancient civilization. It has attacked no one. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Iran is permitted by the treaty to have a nuclear energy program. The Bush Regime's case against Iran is based on the Bush Regime's desire to deny Iran its rights under the treaty.

The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have repeatedly reported that they have found no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Despite all the disinformation from US Gen. Petraeus and other Bush Regime military lackeys, Iran is not arming the Iraqis who are resisting the American occupation.

If Iran were arming insurgents, the insurgents would have two weapons that would neutralize the US advantage in the Iraqi conflict: missiles to knock down US helicopter gunships and rocket-propelled grenades that knock out American tanks. The insurgents do not have these weapons and must construct clumsy anti-tank weapons out of artillery shells. The insurgents are helpless against US air power and cannot mass forces to take on the American troops.

Indiscriminate American violence has reduced Iraq to rubble. In Afghanistan, death and destruction rains on even the smallest village from the air. America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are wars against the civilian populations.

Just as the world could not believe Hitler's next horror and thus was always unprepared.

It is important to emphasize that Iran is making no moves toward war.

But like Hitler's planned attack against Poland, Cheney's attack on Iran has long been in the works.

On March 29 the Associated Press reported that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi "poured contempt on fellow Arab leaders" at the Arab summit that day. Gadhafi told the Arab "leaders," many of whom are on the American payroll, that their American masters would turn on them all, just as America turned on Saddam Hussein after using him to fight a proxy war against Iran.

Saddam had once been an ally of Washington, Gadhafi reminded the Arabs, "but they sold him out." Gadhafi told the American puppets, "Your turn is next."

The Attack on Iran is coming...

Last Friday, Dick Cheney was in Saudi Arabia for high-level meetings with the Saudi king and his ministers. On Saturday, it was revealed that the Saudi Shura Council -- the elite group that implements the decisions of the autocratic inner circle -- is preparing "national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom following experts' warnings of possible attacks on Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactors," one of the kingdom's leading newspapers, Okaz, reports. The German-based dpa news service relayed the paper's story.



Twelve hours. One circuit of the sun from horizon to horizon, one course of the moon from dusk to dawn. What was once a natural measurement for the daily round of human life is now a doom-laden interval between the voicing of an autocrat's brutal whim and the infliction of mass annihilation halfway around the world.

Twelve hours is the maximum time necessary for American bombers to gear up and launch an unprovoked sneak attack – a Pearl Harbor in reverse – against Iran, the Washington Post reports….And when this attack comes – either as a stand-alone "knock-out blow" or else as the precursor to a full-scale, regime-changing invasion, like the earlier aggression in Iraq – there will be no warning, no declaration of war, no hearings, no public debate. The already issued orders governing the operation put the decision solely in the hands of the president: he picks up the phone, he says, "Go" – and in twelve hours' time, up to a million Iranians could be dead.

Another simulation by scientists, using Pentagon-devised software, was even more specific, measuring the aftermath of a "limited" nuclear attack on the main Iranian underground site in Esfahan, the magazine reports. This small expansion of the Pentagon franchise would result in stellar production figures: three million people killed by radiation in just two weeks, and 35 million people exposed to dangerous levels of cancer-causing radiation in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Bush has about 50 nuclear "earth-penetrating weapons" at his disposal, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Bush himself pointedly refused to take the nuclear option "off the table" this week. But what's more, Bush has made the use of nuclear weapons a centerpiece of his "National Security Strategy of the United States," issued last month, The Progressive notes. While reaffirming the criminal principle of "pre-emptive" attacks on perceived enemies which may or may not be threatening America with weapons they may or may not possess, Bush declared that "safe, credible and reliable nuclear forces continue to play a critical role" in the "offensive strike systems" that are now a key part of America's "deterrence."

Now this paranoid sect has at last seized the commanding heights of American power....

And they have found a most eager disciple in the peevish dullard strutting in the Oval Office. Under their sinister tutelage, Bush has eviscerated 40 years' worth of arms control treaties; officially "normalized" the use of nuclear weapons, even against non-nuclear states; rewarded outlaw proliferators like India, Israel and Pakistan; and is now destroying the last and most effective restraint on the spread of nuclear weapons: the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The treaty guarantees its signatories – such as Iran – the right to establish nuclear power programs in exchange for rigorous international inspections. But Bush has arbitrarily decided that Iran – whose nuclear program undergone perhaps the most extensive inspection process in history – must end its lawful activities. Why? Because the country is led by "madmen" in thrall to pure evil, impervious to reason, who one day may or may not threaten America with weapons they may or may not have.

So the NPT is dead. As with the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Constitution, it now means only what Bush says it means. Force of arms, not rule of law, is the new world order. The attack on Iran is coming….