Increasingly, the issue is treated as a scientific controversy worthy of debate, rather than as a "conspiracy theory"
ignoring science and common sense.

This essay presents these media analyses in the form of 18 case studies.

Eight countries – Britain lang="EN-US">, Canada, lang="EN-US">Denmark, France lang="EN-US">, the Netherlands, lang="EN-US">New Zealand, Norway lang="EN-US"> and Russia – have
allowed their publicly-owned broadcasting stations to air the full spectrum of evidence challenging the truth of the official account of 9/11.

This more open approach taken in the international media – I could also have included the Japanese media –
might be a sign that worldwide public and corporate media organizations are positioning themselves, and preparing their audiences, for a possible revelation
of the truth of the claim that forces within the US government were complicit in the attacks – a revelation that would call into question the publicly
given rationale for the military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

The evidence now being explored in the international media may... ... pave the way for the US media to take an in-depth look
at the implications of what is now known about 9/11, and to re-examine the country's foreign and domestic policies in the light of this knowledge.

I.  Introduction

Until 2009, doubts about the official 9/11 story were briefly entertained by the mainstream media on each anniversary of
the event, allowing the independent research community only a fleeting moment once a year to publicly voice its findings.

But after crucial scientific evidence emerged in April 2009 to challenge the official story of how the towers fell, a spate
of European media reports followed.  The news coverage of this evidence seems to have opened the door to more serious reflection
on all aspects of the 9/11 issue in the major media.

The first paper in my series, "The Media Response to 9/11," dealt with the New Statesman's grudging recognition
of Dr. David Ray Griffin, the world's "top truther" (as it dubbed him), placing him number 41 among "The 50 People Who Matter Today."1 style>  Since this admission in September 2009, the issue has gathered increasing momentum.  

The collective content issuing from this new momentum is presented here in the hope that it will embolden other major media
to take up the pivotal controversy concerning 9/11, and pursuing the truth wherever it may lead.

Observations on the Analysis

While carrying out my analysis, I observed five new features in the media treatment of the 9/11 issue that developed as 2009
progressed.  They are listed here, so that readers might look for them in the case studies that follow below:

1. The 9/11 issue is increasingly framed not as conspiracy theories versus hard science, but as a legitimate controversy
resting on unanswered questions and a search for truth.

face="Times New Roman"> 

face="Times New Roman">2. News reports and television programs examining these controversies have become longer and more balanced.

face="Times New Roman"> 

face="Times New Roman">3. Major media outlets have begun to present the claims of the truth movement first, followed by counter-arguments
from defenders of the official story.

face="Times New Roman"> 

face="Times New Roman">4. Major media outlets have begun to include, and even to introduce, extensive evidence to support the claims
of the 9/11 truth community.

face="Times New Roman"> 

face="Times New Roman">5. The media treatments increasingly suggest the possibility of a re-investigation into the events of month="9" day="11" year="2001">September 11, 2001.

The first part of this essay deals with the crucial scientific evidence that emerged in early 2009, the significance of this
evidence in relation to the official story of 9/11, and the immediate news coverage it received.

II.  Scientific Paper Finds Nano-thermite Explosives in World Trade Center Dust, month="4" day="3" year="2009">April 3, 2009

A peer-reviewed paper published in the Open Chemical Physics Journal on lang="EN-US">April 3, 2009,2 reported that a little known high-tech explosive called nano-thermite was found throughout
the World Trade lang="EN-US"> Center dust. 

These physicists and chemists involved in this study discovered "distinctive red/gray chips in significant numbers"3
in four samples of dust collected from the area.  The presence of aluminum and iron oxide in the red material provided one of the
signs that it might be nano-thermite, which is a high explosive (whereas ordinary thermite is an incendiary.)

Another clue was provided when putting a flame to the chips produced an explosive reaction.

On the basis of these and other observations, the team concluded that "the red layer of the red/gray chips we have discovered
in the WTC dust is active, unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology, and is a highly energetic pyrotechnic or explosive material."4

The article's first-named author, Dr. Niels Harrit – a University lang="EN-US"> of Copenhagen chemistry professor who specializes
in nano-chemistry5 –explained on Danish TV2 News:

"Thermite itself dates back to 1893. It is a mixture of aluminum and rust-powder, which react to create intense heat.
The reaction produces iron, heated to 2500 degrees Centigrade. This can be used to do welding. It can also be used to melt other iron.

 

"So in nano-thermite, this powder from 1893 is reduced to tiny particles, perfectly mixed. When these react, the intense
heat develops much more quickly. Nano-thermite can be mixed with additives to give off intense heat, or serve as a very effective explosive. 
It contains more energy than dynamite, and can be used as rocket fuel.

 

"You cannot fudge this kind of science. We have found it: unreacted thermite."6 

What was the significance of this sophisticated material?

Reported Evidence that Nano-thermite is a Military Substance

In a German interview in May 2009, Dr. Harrit said: "There are no experts on nano-thermite without connections to the
military…. This stuff has only been prepared under military contracts in the USA lang="EN-US"> and probably in bigger allied countries. This is secret military research…It was not prepared in a cave in lang="EN-US">Afghanistan."7

Chemist Kevin Ryan, another co-author, had reported in an earlier article that explosive nano-thermite, which may be painted
onto surfaces, was developed by US government scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories.8

A United States Department of Defense special publication confirms that work on these "energetic materials" has
long been "performed in laboratories within all military services."9

According to a June 2009 statement by Britain's prestigious Institute of Nanotechnology,10 the Harrit study "provides
indisputable evidence that a highly engineered explosive called nano-thermite was found in the dust of all three buildings that came down on 9/11 2001
in New York city. [sic] This advanced explosive incorporating nanotechnology is only available to sophisticated military labs."11

It thus became known by mid-2009 that explosives of military origin, probably in the lang="EN-US">United States, had been involved in the lang="EN-US">World Trade lang="EN-US">Center collapses.

Early Coverage of the Nano-thermite Finding in the European Mainstream Press

Although the new scientific evidence against the official story of 9/11 was not reported in the mainstream British or North
American media, it did receive attention in continental Europe.

The day the article was published, a thorough essay in the Danish journal Videnskab (Science) examined both sides of the
controversy about controlled demolition.12

The same issue of Videnskab also carried an interview with Professor Harrit, who answered pointed questions about the peer-review
history of the article, and the military nature of nano-thermite.13 

The following day, Denmark's politiken.dk reported the scientific nano-thermite paper in an article called (in Danish) "Conspiracy
theories about 9/11 get new life."14

Then, the day after Professor Harrit's April 6 interview Danish TV2 News, he was featured on the popular talk show, "Good
Morning Denmark", on which he said:

"The material we found is super hi-tech frontline military research.  It's not a mixture of
random chemicals.  It's an advanced material which is difficult to get information on.  But some conference
papers and internal reports have been published…There has to be a normal forensic investigation of this attempt.  Our research
is high-level forensic work.  We have provided technical evidence that can be used in the future investigation."15

On April 13, an online Croatian political newspaper posted the Danish TV2 video interview with Harrit along with an article
titled "VIDEO: 9/11 No Longer Taboo Topic in Denmark".16

Russia also took notice. On July 9, Laura Emmett, the London correspondent for RT, interviewed Dr. Niels Harrit for over
10 minutes. (RT, previously known as Russia Today, is a globally broadcast English-language channel sponsored by the state-owned news agency RIA Novosti. style>  It reaches 1.5 million people monthly, including half a million Americans.)  Stating that "the evidence
for controlled demolition is overwhelming", Harrit reported that the nano-thermite reaction produced pools of molten iron beneath the rubble and inextinguishable
fires that lasted for months.17

I turn now to ways that the mainstream news coverage of the case against the official story has changed since the appearance
of the nano-thermite paper.

III.  The Changing Mainstream Media Treatment of 9/11 Evidence from early 2009 to early 2010: style>  18 Case Studies

Two February 2009 news items illustrate the wary mainstream attitude towards conspiracy theorists early in the year. style>  A New York Times article said about actor Daniel Sunjata:

The second episode of "Rescue Me's" fifth season, starting in April, may represent the first fictional presentation
of 9/11 conspiracy theories by a mainstream media company…Mr. Sunjata's character delivers a two-minute monologue…describing a "neoconservative
government effort" to control the world's oil, drastically increase military spending and "change the definition of pre-emptive attack."

 

Mr. Sunjata surprised some of the TV reporters when he said that he "absolutely, 100 percent" supports the assertion
that "9/11 was an inside job."18 

Fox News was somewhat less constrained, saying:

An upcoming episode of the drama "Rescue Me" is about 9/11 being an inside job. The actor who spews the theories
on camera, Daniel Sunjata, actually believes in it too.

 

Look, the fact is, actors who barf this crap are doing it for their own egos. It makes them feel smart, because for once
they're spouting something provocative instead of puerile. Never mind that it's an insidious insult to the victims of 9/11 – as it is to the rest
of us, who may or may not be guilty, according to Sunjata's theory.19

However, things started to change after the appearance of the nano-thermite paper on April 3, as may be seen from the following
case studies of media reports, each of which is identified as having corporate, public, or independent ownership.

The case studies reveal the evidence which has been introduced into public consciousness during the past year.

Case Study 1:  The Dutch TV Mock Trial of Osama bin Laden, April 25, 2009

On April 8, 2009, a popular TV program called "Devil's Advocate" held a mock trial of Osama bin Laden with lawyers
arguing before a politically balanced civil jury of five people.

The case against bin Laden was argued by two real-world opponents:  former American correspondent
Charles Groenhuijsen, and Dutch-American Glenn Schoen of a US security firm.  Real-world lawyer Gerald Spong acted as bin Laden's
defense attorney.20

Spong presented new evidence from a videotape of Professor Emeritus of Islamic Studies Gernot Rotter, saying that the American
translators who transcribed the bin Laden tapes of the November 9, 2001 "confession video" have "clearly added things in many places –
things that are not there even when listening multiple times."21

Spong won.  Although the jury found bin Laden to be a terrorist, it said there was no proof that
he had ordered the 9/11 attacks.

Through this method, this program on AVRO – the Dutch public broadcasting organization – presented evidence,
not previously seen in the major media, against the likelihood that bin Laden ordered the attacks.

On April 15, Fox News reported the Dutch jury findings in a long and unusually balanced article, in which former New York
mayor Rudy Giuliani was quoted six times, saying that bin Laden's exoneration sent a "disturbing message" to the world and fueled conspiracy
theories.  Giuliani variously called this message "bizarre," "dangerous," "aberrational," "irrational,"
and "unfortunate."22

However, referring to Spong as a "well-known yet controversial attorney," Fox mentioned him 10 times, and more
substantively, reporting his evidence that the bin Laden videos seemed inauthentic, as well as his point that the FBI has not indicted bin Laden for the
attacks.

Concluding Comment:  (AVRO is publicly owned, but Fox News is corporate.) Neither of these two mainstream
treatments of doubts about the official story was broadcast on the customary anniversary date, and both reached millions of people.

Case Study 2:  Architect Richard Gage in Canada's "Financial Post", 
April 25, 2009

One of Canada's top four English-language newspapers, the conservative National Post, publishes its business section as the
Financial Post.

Three weeks after the nano-thermite story broke, Jonathan Kay, a National Post columnist and editor with degrees in both
engineering and law, wrote an article about Richard Gage, the "lucid" San Francisco architect who heads up the 1,000-strong "Architects
and Engineers for 9/11 Truth."23

Kay, who himself endorses the official story of 9/11, described Gage as a "respectable-looking middle-aged" architect,
"complete with suit and tie, and receding hairline," and reported that Gage's organization "scored a booth at the upcoming American Institute
of Architects conference from April 30 to May 2."

In the midst of references to thermite reactions and iron-oxide-based explosives, Kay wrote of controlled demolitions:

"As radical as Gage's theory may sound to readers, it's surprisingly popular. The '9/11 Truth Movement'…has millions
of adherents across the world. Many believe that the World Trade Center was destroyed on Sept. 11 through controlled demolition set in motion by officials
within America's own government and military."

Gage's presentation was also described as "effective":

"In one particularly effective segment, he puts up shots of the localized fires that broke out in the lower floors of
WTC Building 7 hours before it collapsed. Seconds later, he shows footage of Beijing's Mandarin Oriental hotel – which suffered an epic top-to-bottom
conflagration in 2009...and remained standing."

Concluding Comment:  (Corporate). Besides reporting Gage's evidence without any attempted refutation,
this corporate-press writer remarked that "no major media outlet has done a truly comprehensive profile or investigation of the Truther movement."
He thereby seemed to be suggesting that it is now time to take the 9/11 truth movement seriously.

Case Study 3:  Norwegian State Radio's Public Debate on 9/11 Truth, May 21, 2009

Professor Harrit, who was lecturing in Norway in late May 2009, was interviewed by public radio program "Here and Now",24
on NRK (the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation).

Harrit presented the findings of the nano-thermite paper, which were then discussed by three Norwegian scientists who did
not support his conclusions.

Following the radio program, an extended email debate continued between Dr. Ola Nilsen, who teaches chemistry at the University
of Oslo, and Dr. Steven Jones, a co-author of the nano-thermite paper who formerly taught physics at Brigham Young University.  This
debate, during which Nilsen somewhat modified his original view, was posted to a Norwegian blogsite in English.25

Concluding Comment:  (Public). Although NRK in this April program challenged the findings of the
Harrit paper, this was to change by late summer, as we shall see below.

Case Study 4:  Architect Richard Gage on Fox News, May 28, 2009

The hosts of Fox News on KMPH in Fresno, California, began their 7-minute interview by saying, "He's an architect experienced
in steel structures.  Now Richard Gage is…here to show us why he's calling for a more thorough investigation into the collapse
of the World Trade Center buildings."26

These two anchors actively encouraged Gage's discussion of the ten key features of controlled demolition. 
He was allowed to explain the free-fall acceleration of WTC 7 (shown on his two video frames as dropping at the same rate as a second building felled
by controlled demolition) and the "uncanny" failure of 40,000 tons of structural steel columns that were designed to resist its collapse.

Although normal office fires were said to have caused the collapses, he explained, various firefighters had reported large
pools of molten iron at ground level.

"What produced all that molten iron?" he asked. 

The answer, he said, was found in the inches of dust covering lower Manhattan.  "The by-product
of thermite is molten iron and it's dispersed throughout all this dust…and there are small chips of unignited thermite as well. 
This is very high-tech thermite – nano-thermite.  It's not found in a cave in Afghanistan; it's produced in very sophisticated
defense department contracting laboratories…[its] particles are one-thousand times smaller than a human hair."

Asked whether bin Laden might have had access to the buildings, Gage said probably not – that someone else who had
access to nano-thermite, and to the buildings' security systems, would need to be investigated.  Someone who had access to the
elevator modernization, which was going on nine months earlier and was "immediately adjacent to the core columns and beams in the building."

Concluding Comment:  (Corporate). This Fox News show began by asking Gage about his credentials,
saying "We ask that for clarification so that as we get into this, we want people to make sure that you're not just someone with a wacky idea…you
come with some science to you." The program ended with a sincere thank-you to Gage for "opening up a lot to think about," and an announcement
that there is "a great deal of information" on the KMPH.com website.  In short, Gage was treated with the respect due
to any serious participant in an important and controversial issue.

The next major mainstream event was the Russia Today program of July 9, 2009, which was covered above, so we will move directly
to the anniversary period of September 2009, when further evidence of the impact of the nano-thermite discovery became apparent.

Case Study 5:  The National Geographic Documentary, "9/11: Science and Conspiracy",
August 31, 2009

In late August, 2009, the National Geographic Channel (NGC) aired a two-hour documentary, "9/11: Science and Conspiracy,"
which sought to answer several questions, "What caused the collapse of the Twin Towers? Was it from the fires, or were explosives placed inside the
buildings, causing them to implode? Did a missile, rather than a commercial airline jet, strike the Pentagon?"27

This "NatGeo" program purported to explore evidence about controlled demolition presented by the 9/11 truth movment. style>  It interviewed Dylan Avery (the maker of the "Loose Change" films), Richard Gage, David Ray Griffin, and Steven Jones. But
in reality this NatGeo program was entirely devoted to debunking their claims by using pseudo-scientific demonstrations to refute claims that none of these
men have made.

For example, in order to refute the claim that nano-thermite could have brought down the buildings, NatGeo used ordinary
thermite (with the narrator explaining that they had no access to nano-thermite). Moreover, instead of using the thermite to make shaped charges, which
can cut through steel, the NatGeo experimenter simply placed a bag of thermite next to a steel column and lit it. When the burning thermite (entirely predictably)
did not melt the column, the narrator concluded, triumphantly, that science had disproved the claim of the conspiracy theorists.

A review in Media Life Magazine, while not fully exposing the phoniness of the program's claim to represent "science,"
did point out some shortcomings, saying:

Some of the issues raised by the truthers, however, aren't addressed, or are addressed in brief asides. This leaves this
documentary open to charges of picking and choosing which points to cover.  "9/11: Science and Conspiracy" spends too
much time discussing the psychology behind conspiracy theories – which isn't really a hard science.28

A review in the New York Post quoted Sander Hicks, a journalist who is openly a member of the 9/11 truth community, as saying
that its representatives on the program "come off as careful and professional, unemotional, but compassionate about the truth," and that the
program, in spite of its faults, shows "that the topic is still relevant and that the case isn't closed."29

Concluding Comment: (Corporate). This program by National Geographic provides a good reminder of how the 9/11 truth issue
has generally been handled by the corporately-controlled media. But it also demonstrates the fact that the controversy is very much alive in the major
media.

Case Study 6:  Germany's Weekly TV Guide, "TV Hören und Sehen," August 31, 2009

"TV Hören und Sehen", with a paid circulation of nearly a million copies, is owned by the Bauer Media Group, which
publishes 308 magazines in 14 countries.  The TV magazine features interviews and articles by prominent German authors.30

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,677837,00.html"
>Spiegel" -- Hans Blix is the former head of the International
Atomic Energy Agency and also worked as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq. He talks to SPIEGEL about whether Iran really has the ability to enrich uranium
and if economic sanctions can ever be effective.

SPIEGEL: Tehran has announced that it has enriched
a "first batch" of uranium from 3.5 to 20 percent. Does this mean that we now face a new stage in the escalation of title="the conflict with Iran?" href="
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,677030,00.html"
>the conflict with Iran?

SPIEGEL: The West has been engaged in negotiations for years. How else can it accommodate
Iran?

Blix: Probably the best subject of negotiations is the location for exchanging low-enriched
and highly enriched uranium, and there is an evident choice for that: Turkey. Both sides trust Turkey.

SPIEGEL: How long will it take the Iranians to accumulate enough fuel for the research reactor?

Blix: That's completely unclear, and there are many people who even question whether they
have the technical capability to enrich the material to 20 percent.

SPIEGEL: So was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad just boasting in recent speeches when
he talked about Iran's ability to enrich uranium?

Blix: Much of that is bravado and a reaction to perceived humiliation. Anyone can see that
he's just trying to show off when he claims that the regime can build 10 enrichment plants. No one in the world has 10 of these plants. The United States
and France have one or two, and Argentina and the Netherlands have one each. It's absurd to talk about 10 plants.

SPIEGEL: But if Iran is successful with its enrichment efforts, will that make it a "virtual
nuclear power," whereby all it needs to do is press a button and it will quickly have a deployable weapon?

Blix: I don't join those who speak of a "virtual nuclear power," and I told that
to my successor Mohamed ElBaradei, who coined the term. Japan, for example, could activate masses of plutonium in an instant, as could, to a lesser extent,
Brazil. But even those who have embarked along this road can also go back at any time. Germany, for example, never completed its nuclear reprocessing plant
in Wackersdorf. (Editor's note: The planned nuclear reprocessing plant in Wackersdorf, Bavaria, was the focus of violent protests in the 1980s. The
project was abandoned in 1989.)

SPIEGEL: But what if Iran doesn't want to step back? What if, in fact, Iran title="wants the bomb" href="
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,673802,00.html"
>wants the bomb instead?

Blix: I don't rule out the possibility that Iran wants nuclear weapons, but I find the probability
higher that the political leadership is divided over the issue. Merely the ability to enrich uranium already serves as a deterrent, and for some in the
regime it might even be sufficient. If there is a desire to have the bomb, it certainly goes back to the 1980s and the threat coming from the Iraqi nuclear
program at the time. But Iraq collapsed in 1991 and again in 2003, and if there is anything that makes me optimistic today, it is the notion that Iran,
following the disarmament of Iraq, no longer has a security-related reason to acquire nuclear weapons.

SPIEGEL: Doesn't Iran feel surrounded by enemies?

Blix: I don't think the Iranians perceive Israel as a threat. The conflict between the two
countries over enrichment is relatively new. Afghanistan? No. Pakistan? No. And not Turkey or Russia, either.

SPIEGEL: And the United States?

Blix: Yes. Aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf are a different story. But this is precisely
where we see the best options for a solution. In the case of North Korea, the United States offered a non-aggression agreement and the establishment of
diplomatic relations. In the case of Iran, both options have not been discussed publicly to date. In other words, no one can claim that all the diplomatic
options have already been exhausted.

SPIEGEL: What other possibilities does the West have to stop the Iranian nuclear program?
What do you know about covert US operations in Iran?

Blix: I don't have any evidence to support that, but it wouldn't surprise me. The US Congress
has approved millions for these purposes -- not a very wise decision, by the way, because it just plays into the hands of the hardliners and harms the
opposition.

SPIEGEL: Now new sanctions against Tehran are being discussed. Do you think they make sense?

Blix: Sanctions have certainly been successful before -- just think of Libya. But it took
a long time, and they are a blunt weapon. They were devastating in Iraq, where they harmed the people but hardly even affected Saddam. Whether sanctions
can be effective against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard remains to be seen. In the case of North Korea, freezing certain bank accounts in Macau was obviously
effective. Economic sanctions could certainly be appropriate, but I'm against military sanctions, because the only thing there is to bomb at the moment
is intentions.

SPIEGEL: The Israelis have more or less openly threatened to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.

Blix: Hardliners who analyze the drawbacks of a diplomatic solution today should, with the
same scrutiny, analyze the drawbacks of a military solution. It's easy to let the bombs fall, and a military strike could set the nuclear program back
by a few years -- something that would be very welcome. But what would the long-term consequences be? Iran won't simply sit there quietly and accept an
attack.

SPIEGEL: Can air strikes even successfully destroy Iran's nuclear program? Most of the facilities
are buried deep underground.

Blix: Anyone who's worried that al-Qaida might be making dirty nuclear bombs in the caves
of the Hindu Kush ought to be much more concerned about the fact that such air strikes can't do much harm. Iran is a big, sophisticated country, and you
can't destroy or occupy everything.

SPIEGEL: So you think a military strike would be pointless?

Blix: I believe, at any rate, that it's impossible to eliminate Iran as a potential enemy.
Despite Ahmadinejad's inflammatory speeches, Iran hasn't been an aggressive, expansionist country in a long time. Besides, the glow that the mullahs' 1979
revolution kindled throughout the region has disappeared. After the discredited election, and after the corruption they have permitted, the mullahs can
no longer spark enthusiasm in anyone -- neither the Iranians themselves nor anyone else in the region.

Interview conducted by Bernhard Zand. Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2010 - All Rights Reserved

source URL = http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,677837,00.html ]]> Iran http://kwagga.com/blog/index.php?itemid=2137 Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:34:48 +0100 http://kwagga.com/blog/index.php?itemid=2135

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/135780"
>Alan Dershowitz on Judge Goldstone: “But now I see him as a traitor… It’s as if they would have
taken a Jew to edit the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He uses his Jewish last name to kosher his slander of the Jewish People.”

February 13, 2010 "http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/"
>Information Clearing House" - - For those who still cannot make their minds up about Jewish nationalism and the Zionist
violent abuse of Western academic culture (tolerance, academic freedom, pluralism etc) Rabbi Shmully Hecht of Yale’s University Jewish society, gives
an exemplary opportunity to see it all. Rabbi Hecht confronted Judge Goldstone last week while Goldstone was delivering an address at Yale University.
Rabbi Hecht and his supporters held up a sign at the back of the conference room equating the Goldstone report with the Protocols of the Elders of
Zion and the Dreyfus affair.

 

For a while, the Dreyfus affair and the Protocols were pretty effective Zionist propaganda tools,
they were used mainly to silence criticism of Jewish power, Jewish lobbying and Israel. However, it is about time to face the truth.

Drawing a parallel between the Dreyfus affair, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Goldstone
report can also produce an interesting insight, but not for the reasons Rabbi Hecht or Dershowitz suggest. It allows us to look at Zionism in an historical
perspective. We can review where Zionism started from and what it matured into.

The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s.
It involved the conviction for treason in 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Jewish descent. The Dreyfus affair had a
huge impact on Herzl, the father of Zionism, who was assigned by a Viennese paper to cover the trial. Soon afterward, Herzl wrote http://www.mideastweb.org/thejewishstate.htm"
>Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State, 1896) and founded the World Zionist Organization.

During the last century Zionists regarded the Dreyfus Affair as an exemplary case of anti Semitism
motivated by racial discrimination. In fact the Zionists were wrong. For a century they have been misleading themselves and others. French society at the
time was divided about Dreyfus. The Left and the intelligentsia rushed to support the young officer, which led eventually to a 2^nd trial. Dreyfus
was exonerated and reinstated as a Major in the French Army in 1906. However, the case of Goldstone is totally different. The images of the IDF’s
white phosphorus shells bursting over UN refugee shelters are engraved in our collective memory. As if this is not enough, initial Israeli denial of the
usage of white phosphorous is also stored in our minds. The perception that Israel committed a massacre in broad daylight is not going to be wiped out
either.

Unlike divided France that couldn’t make up its mind about Dreyfus, we are not divided about
Israel being a criminal state and the biggest threat to world peace. The repulsion towards Israel and its brutality is actually a growing unifying force
amongst humanists, peace lovers and the world at large. Israel will not be exonerated and considering the fact that it defines itself as the Jewish state,
its crimes reflect disastrously on Jews as a collective, something that not even a dozen Jewish anti Zionist activists around the world can change. From
an historical perspective it is rather clear that Israel has been very successful in exhausting the last drops of sympathy  garnered for the idea
of Jewish nationalism. As it happens, not a single humanist stands up against Goldstone or his balanced report.

But the truth must be said. As much as humanists are united behind the Goldstone report, our democratically
elected leaders are failing to confront Israel and its Jewish lobbies. They rush to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XmQRPJxG70"
>appease AIPAC, they pocket money given by Zionist lords and Israeli Lobbies. Interestingly enough, the political morbid conditions in which we live
was actually described by an unusual  fictional text that was published in 1903 namely, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The Protocols is widely considered a forgery. It is a manual for a prospective new member
of the "Elders", describing how they will run the world through control of the media and finance, replacing the traditional social order with
one based on mass manipulation. Though the book is considered  a hoax by most experts and regarded as a vile anti-Semitic text, it is impossible to
ignore its prophetic qualities and its capacity to describe both the century unfolding and the political reality in which we live I am referring here to: 
AIPAC, http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/credit-crunch-or-rather-zio-punch-by-gilad-atzmon.html"
>The Credit Crunch, Lehman Brothers, Neocon wars, http://eustonmanifesto.org/the-euston-manifesto/"
>interventionist ideology, a British Foreign Secretary http://www.infoisrael.net/authors.html"
>Listed as  Israeli Propaganda (Hasbara) author trying to amend http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/26593/war-crimes-will-government-ever-act"
>Britain’s ethical stand, a http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/israels-voice-on-britains-iraq-inquiry-accuses-critics-of-an.html"
>Zionist by admission put on an inquiry panel to investigate why Britain launched a Zionist war and so on. 

As it happens staunch Zionists such as http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jun/22/religion.guardiancolumnists"
>David Aaronovitch, http://nickcohen.net/2009/02/26/the-ideologies-of-group-hatred/"
>Nick Cohen and Alan Dershowitz use a very banal spin to divert the attention from the devastating prophetic reality depicted by the Protocols. A reality
in which they themselves promote interventionist wars in our midst. Again and again they stress the fact that the Protocols was a forgery. They insist
that we look at its anti Semitic origin while evading its content and meaning. However whether or not the Protocols is a fictional text or a forgery doesn’t
change the fact that it explores our disastrous contemporary reality. A reality in which we are killing en mass the enemies of Israel in the ‘name
of democracy’, a reality in which Dershowitz himself puts enormous effort into cleansing academia of any critical voices of Israel, Zionism and Jewish
power in America and the West.

This is exactly where Goldstone is coming into the picture. In the last century we have been witnessing
an evolving murderous Jewish nationalist movement. A movement that was born in part due to a calculated misinterpretation of the Dreyfus affair. For a
century, the Zionist movement has managed to silence its critics using different tactics that are all explored in that fictional text from 1903. Zionism
was very successful; it managed to mature into a state, at the expense of the Palestinian people. Only through violent expansionist methods including massacres
and racially orientated ethnic cleansing have the Zionists and Israel managed to fulfill what they define as the Jewish national aspiration. But as Goldstone
reveals, this aspiration matured into a criminal state that is terrorizing its indigenous population and threatening its neighbours

If we ever want to amend the reality we live in, we must curtail the Zionist operators in our midst,
in the government, in politics, in the media, in academia, in finance and in the legal system. I am not talking here about Jews but about Zionists, people
who are affiliated with a specific foreign tribal interest that counters universalism, ethics and humanism. Unless we do that we may soon have to face
another Goldstone report investigating a much greater Zionist crime against humanity.

If we want to help Israelis and Jewish nationalists recover from their nationalist racist fanatical
dream, we must persuade them that the Goldstone report is their new Bible, a recent catalogue of their departure from humanity.

Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel in 1963 and had his musical training at the Rubin Academy of Music,
Jerusalem (Composition and Jazz). As a multi-instrumentalist he plays Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Baritone Saxes, Clarinet and Flutes. His album Exile was
the BBC jazz album of the year in 2003. http://www.gilad.co.uk/"
>More
]]> Zionism http://kwagga.com/blog/index.php?itemid=2135 Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:08:52 +0100 http://kwagga.com/blog/index.php?itemid=2134 "Corporate Crime Reporter"
You walk into your local convenience store and head to the cold walk-in beer room in the back.

The choice is overwhelming.

Budweiser, Michelob, Bud Light, Busch Light, Stella Artois, Grolsch, Kirin,Tsingtao, Corona, Negra Modelo, Rolling Rock, Widmer, Miller and Coors.

In fact, all of these beers are controlled by two companies.

MillerCoors under the direction of South African Breweries (SAB) and AnheuserBusch In Bev.

Two multinational corporations controlling the beer choices of 300 million Americans.

And it's not just beer.

One single multinational corporation dominates the world supply of eyeglass stores.

One dominates the milk supply.

Barry Lynn goes down the list of industries.

And he finds a similar story across the board.

A handful of multinational corporations controlling each industry - or the supply chains of each industry.

Such dominant monopolies were illegal just thirty years ago.

But that all changed with Ronald Reagan and Robert Bork.

A corporatist oligarchy took hold.

President Obama has promised aggressive antitrust enforcement.

But Lynn says it's pie in the sky.

"It will take more than a lawsuit or two to overthrow America's corporatist oligarchy and restore a model of capitalism that protects our rights as property holders and citizens," Lynn argues in his new book - Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism... ... and the Economics of Destruction (Wiley, 2010).

Antitrust law was developed to protect the political economy from extreme concentrations of corporate power.

Then came Reagan and Bork.

In 1978, Bork said we should have a consumer welfare test.

If economic concentration is good for the consumer - think Wal-Mart - then let it be.

Never mind the citizen.

In 1981, William Baxter, head of Reagan's Antitrust Division, announced that he would be guided by "an efficiency test."

"When Baxter first talked to the press in 1981, he said - we are going to impose an efficiency test," Lynn told Corporate Crime Reporter last week. "Those were the words he used. It was only a little bit later that they framed it as a consumer welfare test. And Robert Bork came up with that. Bork's book - The Antitrust Paradox - came out in 1978 and he floated this idea of a consumer welfare test."

"It took Baxter a couple of years to get the messaging together. They locked into the consumer welfare test. And it helped to bring along so many folks in the consumer movement. And for some reason, after focusing on safety, which is a fantastic thing that Ralph Nader did, they began fixating on prices. And there is a whole political analysis as to why they began fixating on prices. What groups were they targeting with that fixation?"

"In 1981, that marked a revolutionary change in how we applied our anti-monopoly laws. No longer was the primary consideration political. The primary consideration was prices and consumer welfare."

Lynn says that Bork didn't understand why the consumer movement didn't come after him on the consumer welfare test.

"In 1993, Bork put out a second edition of the Antitrust Paradox," Lynn said. "And in the introduction, he says - I don't understand what happened here. I thought the socialists were doing to come out and fight us tooth and nail on this. And they never did. We didn't think we were going to get this through. And we did." Mention the word "socialist" in this context, and Lynn sees red.

"In this country, the group that tends to point its finger and calls the other people socialists most effectively tends to win," Lynn said.

"And when they win - they get to socialize their own risks."

"So, you have this elite in this country that for a generation has been raving about socialism."

"And what were they doing in the meantime? They were socializing all of their risks."

"As was laid bare to us in September 2008. Larry Summers put it best - what the bankers did, he said, was they privatized all of their profits and socialized all of their risks."

"You really have to target the other people and call them socialists."

"We have just seen the most massive era of socialization in this country that we've ever seen."

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. He is also founder of singlepayeraction.org.

© 2010 Corporate Crime Reporter

Source URL = http://corporatecrimereporter.com/barrylynn021310.htm ]]> United States http://kwagga.com/blog/index.php?itemid=2134 Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:03:18 +0100 http://kwagga.com/blog/index.php?itemid=2132

Originally published on February 14, 2010 " href="
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/"
>Information Clearing House" -- On Super Bowl Sunday, the reason that I wrote my new book: http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2010/01/order-info-for-myth-america-ii.html"
>Myth America: 20 Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and the Case for Revolution, literally hit home.

Since it was the Holy Day of Obligation for our national religion of Football, I headed for my health club because I have always
been a heretic. I arrived there a little before kick off, so the club was still occupied, but after kick-off it was deserted.

After my water workout and swim in
the pool that I had all to myself, I headed to the hot tub which was occupied by another spa patron—an older gentleman named Bill whom seems to come
to the club just to sit in the hot tub and chat. I get the feeling he is very lonely, and this following exchange may be why:

Bill: I think what you do disgraces
your son, his memory and what he died for.

Cindy: Oh really? Since he was killed
in an illegal and immoral war, I think this nation disgraced him.

Bill: But they attacked us... ... on 9-11.

Cindy: Who attacked us on 9-11?



Bill: Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

Cindy: Are you serious? If you believe
the official story, 16 Saudi Arabians attacked us.

Bill: But Saddam killed his own people.

Cindy: We have killed over one million
of Saddam’s “own people,” (at this point Cindy does “air quotes?).

Bill: But we didn’t mean to.

Cindy: (deep sigh), So what team are
you rooting for this afternoon?

At which point, Bill scrambled out
of the hot tub and headed for the showers.

My “friend” Bill has been
thoroughly propagandized from the right—there was no use sitting in the hot tub with the jets blasting and trying to reason with a man who thinks
that over one million people can be killed “accidentally.”

I didn’t write Myth w:st="on">America
for people like Bill who wouldn’t recognize a fact if it flew out of his TV box and hit him on his bulbous nose. I wrote the
book for our fellow citizens who have even a tiny inkling that what is our actual shared experience has very little to do with the Mythocracy that we live
in.

I also wrote Myth America for people
who knew that the wars of aggression were wrong when Bush was president, but magically transformed into born-again warniks when Obama took the oath of
office—these newby warniks had begun to see through the propaganda over the last eight years, but allowed one of the more insidious myths to take
over—the myth that there is a difference between an elected Democrat and an elected Republican. These are the same people who came to my talks after
The Obama came to power to proclaim that the U.S. needs to stay in w:st="on">Afghanistan to “protect the women.”

During my campaign against House Speaker,
Nancy Pelosi, in 2008, it became so clear to me that the only relevant division in this nation, indeed world, is a class division. I know I have been late
to this game and analysis, but remember less than six years ago my entire world was my family and this suburban intellectually challenged sinkhole.

During my campaign, I experienced
the myths that “Elections Matter” and that the U.S.
has a “Free Press” as I struggled in a fierce campaign to even achieve ballot status as an independent and garner a few
crumbs of media attention. Even the so-called “Liberal media” abandoned me and when I did get media attention—even from the papers that
endorsed me—the punch line always was, “but she has no chance.”

I struggled with the working class
to get labor to endorse me, but in each and every case, members of my own class endorsed the Queen of the Robber Class, Nancy Pelosi. w:st="on">Nancy
has done nothing for labor, except to operate her vineyards in wine country without unions, support most “free” trade
agreements and hire someone to iron her fabulously wealthy husbands’ shirts. So why did labor endorse Pelosi and not a hard working member of their
own class with a labor platform that was hailed from all over this planet? Because she’s a Democrat, that’s why. Labor cares more about access
to politicians than access to sane policies.

It was towards the end of my campaign
when the infamous “bankster bailout” happened. After the bill failed in the House, Pelosi came out all haggard to whine about having to bailout
the companies, but pushed the stuffing out of her caucus to ram it through the second time.

Democratic candidate and Senator from
Illinois, Barack Obama, called members of the House to browbeat them to change their votes and my neighboring Congresswoman, Barbara Lee of Oakland, did
a rare about-face and betrayed her principles and her poor constituents—that’s when I finally woke up to what Robber Warren Buffet said: “It’s
class warfare all right, and its my class, the rich class that’s making war, and we are winning.” Well, in our Mythocracy, Buffet’s class
is really the only class that knows we are at war. Most of the rest of us believe that we live in a “Democracy” where even the lowest of us
can attain Robber Class status.

Well, in this Mythocracy, if there’s
a Robber Class, then what’s the other class? The one that over 99 percent of us belong to? The Robbed Class—the class that must remain “Hope”notized
by those myths and divided amongst ourselves so we don’t even realize that just about everything we hold dear is being stolen from us, right out
from under our own noses with our apathetic acquiescence. It’s the age-old Robber Class strategy of "divide and conquer."

What is the revolution that I write
of?



First it’s the very revolutionary idea of recognizing that we do live in a http://www.sacredcowdung.com/archives/2005/06/what_is_mythocr.html"
>Mythocracy and the lower one is on the socio-economic ladder, the farther apart the
reality and myth of this country are.

Secondly, the myths must be exposed
and dispelled—my new PDF book is an addition to this conversation.

Thirdly, we must work together across
racial, political, religious, gender, and sexual preference lines to build community and strength in our class to resist the larcenies of the Robber Class.

Finally, I foresee this top heavy
Empire of cards toppling in the foreseeable future. My revolution will create the necessary umbrella to be able to deflect some of the more damaging rubble
that will come crashing down.

The Robber Class knows two things
that we need to learn quickly…

That they need us far more than we
need them and there are far more of us then there are of them.

This is a revolution that we can win.

Cindy Sheehan
is the mother of Casey Sheehan who was killed in Iraq on 04 April 2004.
She is the host of Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Radio Show and the author of five books, the latest is Myth America:
20 Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and the Case for Revolution. (In PDF format). Cindy’s favorite role is being Gigi to her two grandchildren:
Jonah and Jovie.

More info and ordering info for
Myth America can be found at href="
http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2010/01/order-info-for-myth-america-ii.html"
> Cindy’s blog:

But by the year 2000, everyone started talking about the United States as an empire and writing books
with titles like http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805077979?ie=UTF8tag=commondreams-20linkCode=xm2camp=1789creativeASIN=0805077979"
>Sorrows of Empire, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195309022?ie=UTF8tag=commondreams-20linkCode=xm2camp=1789creativeASIN=0195309022"
>Follies of Empire,  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/069113135X?ie=UTF8tag=commondreams-20linkCode=xm2camp=1789creativeASIN=069113135X"
>Twilight of Empire, or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568584377?ie=UTF8tag=commondreams-20linkCode=xm2camp=1789creativeASIN=1568584377"
>Empire of Illusions--- all referring to the United States when they spoke of empire. 

Even conservatives started using the word.  Amazing. One could hear right-wing pundits announcing
on U.S. television, "We're an empire, with all the  responsibilities and opportunities of empire and we better get used to it"; and "We
are the strongest nation in the world and have every right to act as such"---as if having the power gives U.S. leaders an inherent entitlement to
exercise it upon others as they might wish. 

"What is going on here?" I asked myself at the time. How is it that so many people feel
free to... ... talk about empire when they mean a United States empire?  The ideological orthodoxy had always been that, unlike other countries, the
USA did not indulge in colonization and conquest.  

The answer, I realized, is that the word has been divested of its full meaning. "Empire"
seems nowadays to mean simply dominion and control. Empire---for most of these late-coming critics--- is concerned almost exclusively with
power and prestige.  What is usually missing from the public discourse is the process of empire and its politico-economic content. 
In other words, while we hear a lot about empire, we hear very little about imperialism.  

Now that is strange, for imperialism is what empires are all about. Imperialism is what empires do.
And by imperialism I do not mean the process of extending power and dominion without regard to material and financial interests. Indeed "imperialism"
has been used by some authors in the same empty way that they use the word "empire," to simply denote dominion and control with little attention
given to political economic realities. 

But I define imperialism as follows: the process whereby the dominant investor interests in
one country bring to bear their economic and military power upon another nation or region in order to expropriate its land, labor, natural resources, capital,
and markets-in such a manner as to enrich the investor interests. In a word, empires do not just pursue "power for power's sake."  There
are real and enormous material interests at stake, fortunes to be made many times over.  

So for centuries the ruling interests of Western Europe and later on North America and Japan went
forth with their financiers---and when necessary their armies---to lay claim to most of planet Earth, including the labor of indigenous peoples, their
markets, their incomes (through colonial taxation or debt control or other means), and the abundant treasures of their lands: their gold, silver, diamonds,
copper, rum, molasses, hemp, flax, ebony, timber, sugar, tobacco, ivory, iron, tin, nickel, coal, cotton, corn, and more recently: uranium, manganese,
titanium, bauxite, oil, and--say it again--oil. (Hardly a complete listing.) 

Empires are enormously profitable for the dominant economic interests of the imperial nation but
enormously costly to the people of the colonized country.  In addition to suffering the pillage of their lands and natural resources, the people of
these targeted countries are frequently killed in large numbers by the intruders.  

This is another thing that empires do which too often goes unmentioned in the historical and political
literature of countries like the United States, Britain, and France. Empires impoverish whole populations and kill lots and lots of innocent people. As
I write this, President Obama and the national security state for which he works are waging two and a half wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, and northern Pakistan),
and leveling military threats against Yemen, Iran, and, on a slow day, North Korea. Instead of sending medical and rescue aid to Haiti, Our Bomber sent
in the Marines, the same Marines who engaged in years of mass murder in Haiti decades ago and supported more recent massacres by proxy forces. 

The purpose of all this killing is to prevent alternative, independent, self-defining nations from
emerging. So the empire uses its state power to gather private wealth for its investor class. And it uses its public wealth to shore up its state power
and prevent other nations from self-developing.  

Sooner or later this arrangement begins to wilt under the weight of its own contradictions. As the
empire grows more menacing and more murderous toward others, it grows sick and impoverished within itself. 

February 14,2010 "http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/13-0"
>Commondreams" -- When I wrote my book http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0872862984?ie=UTF8tag=commondreams-20linkCode=xm2camp=1789creativeASIN=0872862984"
>Against Empire in 1995, as might be expected, some of my U.S. compatriots thought it was wrong of me to call the United States an empire.
It was widely believed that U.S. rulers did not pursue empire; they intervened abroad only out of self-defense or for humanitarian rescue operations or
to overthrow tyranny, fight terrorism, and propagate democracy.   

But by the year 2000, everyone started talking about the United States as an empire and writing books
with titles like http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805077979?ie=UTF8tag=commondreams-20linkCode=xm2camp=1789creativeASIN=0805077979"
>Sorrows of Empire, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195309022?ie=UTF8tag=commondreams-20linkCode=xm2camp=1789creativeASIN=0195309022"
>Follies of Empire,  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/069113135X?ie=UTF8tag=commondreams-20linkCode=xm2camp=1789creativeASIN=069113135X"
>Twilight of Empire, or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568584377?ie=UTF8tag=commondreams-20linkCode=xm2camp=1789creativeASIN=1568584377"
>Empire of Illusions--- all referring to the United States when they spoke of empire. 

Even conservatives started using the word.  Amazing. One could hear right-wing pundits announcing
on U.S. television, "We're an empire, with all the  responsibilities and opportunities of empire and we better get used to it"; and "We
are the strongest nation in the world and have every right to act as such"---as if having the power gives U.S. leaders an inherent entitlement to
exercise it upon others as they might wish. 

"What is going on here?" I asked myself at the time. How is it that so many people feel
free to talk about empire when they mean a United States empire?  The ideological orthodoxy had always been that, unlike other countries, the
USA did not indulge in colonization and conquest.  

The answer, I realized, is that the word has been divested of its full meaning. "Empire"
seems nowadays to mean simply dominion and control. Empire---for most of these late-coming critics--- is concerned almost exclusively with
power and prestige.  What is usually missing from the public discourse is the process of empire and its politico-economic content. 
In other words, while we hear a lot about empire, we hear very little about imperialism.  

Now that is strange, for imperialism is what empires are all about. Imperialism is what empires do.
And by imperialism I do not mean the process of extending power and dominion without regard to material and financial interests. Indeed "imperialism"
has been used by some authors in the same empty way that they use the word "empire," to simply denote dominion and control with little attention
given to political economic realities. 

But I define imperialism as follows: the process whereby the dominant investor interests in
one country bring to bear their economic and military power upon another nation or region in order to expropriate its land, labor, natural resources, capital,
and markets-in such a manner as to enrich the investor interests. In a word, empires do not just pursue "power for power's sake."  There
are real and enormous material interests at stake, fortunes to be made many times over.  

So for centuries the ruling interests of Western Europe and later on North America and Japan went
forth with their financiers---and when necessary their armies---to lay claim to most of planet Earth, including the labor of indigenous peoples, their
markets, their incomes (through colonial taxation or debt control or other means), and the abundant treasures of their lands: their gold, silver, diamonds,
copper, rum, molasses, hemp, flax, ebony, timber, sugar, tobacco, ivory, iron, tin, nickel, coal, cotton, corn, and more recently: uranium, manganese,
titanium, bauxite, oil, and--say it again--oil. (Hardly a complete listing.) 

Empires are enormously profitable for the dominant economic interests of the imperial nation but
enormously costly to the people of the colonized country.  In addition to suffering the pillage of their lands and natural resources, the people of
these targeted countries are frequently killed in large numbers by the intruders.  

This is another thing that empires do which too often goes unmentioned in the historical and political
literature of countries like the United States, Britain, and France. Empires impoverish whole populations and kill lots and lots of innocent people. As
I write this, President Obama and the national security state for which he works are waging two and a half wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, and northern Pakistan),
and leveling military threats against Yemen, Iran, and, on a slow day, North Korea. Instead of sending medical and rescue aid to Haiti, Our Bomber sent
in the Marines, the same Marines who engaged in years of mass murder in Haiti decades ago and supported more recent massacres by proxy forces. 

The purpose of all this killing is to prevent alternative, independent, self-defining nations from
emerging. So the empire uses its state power to gather private wealth for its investor class. And it uses its public wealth to shore up its state power
and prevent other nations from self-developing.  

Sooner or later this arrangement begins to wilt under the weight of its own contradictions. As the
empire grows more menacing and more murderous toward others, it grows sick and impoverished within itself. 

In 1959 the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown. He had ruled with the approval
of Washington and the Mafia (who gave him a percentage on their casino operations). The dictator Castro took over and declared himself a communist, prompting
the U.S. government to attempt to overthrow him. The illegal attempt to invade the country — the Bay of Pigs fiasco — was a national embarrassment
for Washington, and the obvious revenge was to punish the country by the use of sanctions. Almost no contact with Cuba was allowed, and the effects have
been monstrous.

Earlier this year the Cato Institute recorded,

The embargo has been a failure by every measure. It has not changed the course or nature of the
Cuban government. It has not liberated a single Cuban citizen. In fact, the embargo has made the Cuban people a... ... bit more impoverished, without making them
one bit more free.

Dr. Michèle Barry points out in Annals of Internal Medicine,

Because economic sanctions result in shortages of food and medical supplies, their most severe
consequences are often felt by the persons who are least culpable and most vulnerable....

The U.S. embargo against Cuba, one of the few that includes both food and medicine, has been described as a war against public health
with high human costs....

“Most severe consequences” were experienced by the people of Iraq when Washington
succeeded in having UN sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. After the Iraqis were forced out of Kuwait, it was declared that
the sanctions were intended to make Iraq comply with UN Security Council Resolution 687, which demanded that Iraq eliminate its weapons of mass destruction
and that it recognize the nation-state of Kuwait, which, like America’s major Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, is ruled by an entirely nondemocratic regime.

The absurdity of UNSC 687 was that Rolf Ekeus, the UN representative responsible for identifying
and destroying Iraq’s weaponry, had already certified that 817 out of Iraq’s 819 Iraqi long-range missiles had been destroyed. In 1999 a panel
of the Security Council announced that all biological and chemical facilities “have been destroyed and rendered harmless.” But that did not
deter the sanctions proponents, who imagined that immense national suffering would somehow bring down the despot Saddam.

In 1998 Christian Aid stated,

The policy of sanctions has also been used to pursue political goals — for example, the
removal of the Iraqi regime — beyond the overt scope of Resolution 687, which contained no prescriptions regarding Iraq’s form of government
or the conduct of domestic policy. The Iraqi population’s economic and social rights have been seriously infringed by the impact of a prolonged embargo.
In an authoritarian state which continued to hold most of the levers of control, much of the burden caused by the embargo fell on the civilian population.

But innocent civilians did not matter to the rest of the world, much of which was duped by
the United States and Britain into concluding that Iraq presented a threat to global security, a ridiculous notion.

Killing innocents

In one of the most outrageously illegal acts of the many carried out by Washington and London,
it was decided that there should be “no-fly zones” in the north and south of Iraq — covering about half the country — in which
no Iraqi aircraft or radar was permitted to operate. (France at first joined in this travesty of legality but then withdrew after realizing that it was
absurd and that it had no UN endorsement.)

The purpose of the no-fly zones was ostensibly to protect the Shia population of the south and
the Kurds in the north, but in fact they were intended, most successfully, to destroy Iraq’s civilian and defense infrastructure.

The zones had no basis in international law and complemented sanctions in a particularly savage
manner. British and American fighter and bomber aircraft roamed the skies, attacking what they considered to be “legitimate targets.” But scores
of civilians died, as in January 1999, when six children were killed by a plane-fired missile.

But we know that foreign children don’t always matter to war planners and their supporters.
After all, when U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright was asked on television whether she considered the deaths of half a million children a reasonable
result of U.S. sanctions, she replied, “This is a very hard choice, but ... we think the price is worth it.”

This callous, pitiless, utterly heartless statement by a most senior official of the U.S. government
could have been made by any other U.S. government official. If anyone in an official position in America or Britain disagreed with the pronouncement that
the avoidable deaths of half a million children were justified, he kept very quiet about it. They all knew what the policy was. It is notable that during
Albright’s confirmation hearings preliminary to her becoming secretary of State, none of the senators questioned her on this point. The fact is that
they didn’t disagree with it, making them complicit in the horrible deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children.

U.S. attacks on Iraq in the no-fly zones were carefully planned, especially in the months immediately
before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion by the deluded “coalition” that Washington cobbled together by means of deceit and downright lies about “weapons
of mass destruction.” On September 5, 2002, for example, some 100 coalition aircraft bombed and rocketed a desert airstrip called H-3, deep in the
far west of Iraq. There was no threat from the airfield, but it was planned that it be a base for U.S. Special Forces inserted from Jordan before the war
began. It had to be neutralized. And this is but one example of cynical manipulation of an already illegal decree.

According to U.S. Lt. Gen. Michael Moseley, the coalition flew 21,736 sorties over southern
Iraq between June 2002 and the start of the war in April 2003 — more than 60 a day. Three hundred forty-nine targets were attacked and Moseley claimed
that U.S. and other aircraft were fired at 651 times. He had the grace to admit to the New York Times (which helped the Bush administration to convince
Americans that the war was justified),

We became a little more aggressive based on them shooting more at us, which allowed us to
respond more.... Then the question is whether they were shooting at us because we were up there more. So there is a chicken and egg thing here.

In fact Britain’s Ministry of Defense let the cat out of the bag by admitting that from
March to November 2002 there were 8 alleged violations by Iraqi forces of the No-Fly Zone and 143 instances of “recorded threats.” In response,
253,000 pounds of bombs were dropped on Iraq. The number of rockets fired was not stated.

Bombs and rockets

While illegal sanctions caused the premature but prolonged and usually agonizing death of countless
innocent Iraqis, the illegal bombings and rocketings played a major part in destroying a country that will take decades to recover, if it ever does. The
social consequences of attacks and sanctions have been truly terrible.

Electricity systems, wrecked beyond repair, were unable to supply power to hospitals and the
civil population in general. But Saddam and his henchmen were not affected: they had plenty of generators — which were one of the thousands of items
forbidden to be imported for ordinary people.

Christian Aid observed in 2000,

The immediate consequence of eight years of sanctions has been a dramatic fall in living standards,
the collapse of the infrastructure, and a serious decline in the availability of public services. The longer-term damage to the fabric of society has yet
to be assessed but economic disruption has already led to heightened levels of crime, corruption and violence. Competition for increasingly scarce resources
has allowed the Iraqi state to use clan and sectarian rivalries to maintain its control, further fragmenting Iraqi society.

And that was before intensification of bombing and the tightening of already harsh controls
on imports. These included six-month examinations of requests for importing such things as medical prescription drugs and substances required for water
purification. By the time of approval (if given), most drugs were useless and thus dangerous, which may have been the intention. (Such things as aspirin
and other pain-relievers were said to be ingredients for making chemical weapons.)

There were some principled people who went public about the appalling human crisis inflicted
on Iraq by the United States and its British ally. Dennis Halliday, who was head of the UN’s humanitarian program in Iraq, resigned in protest, as
did his successor, Hans von Sponeck. They wrote,

The death of some 5-6,000 children a month is mostly due to contaminated water, lack of medicines
and malnutrition. The US and UK governments’ delayed clearance of equipment and materials is responsible for this tragedy, not Baghdad.

Their statement was blunt, to the point, and accurate — and completely ignored by the
barbarians who considered the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children was “a price that was worth it.” The only honorable officials in
the entire squalid sanctions horror were Halliday and von Sponeck, but of course they were reviled by those who knew well what effect the cruel sanctions
would have and were having.

 

Oil for no food

Then there was the “Oil for Food” program, which was begun in 1996 and became one
of the biggest scams of modern times. According to the BBC, the Oil for Food program “was a $60bn (£32bn) scheme which was supposed to allow Iraq
to buy food, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies with the proceeds of regulated oil sales, without breaking the sanctions imposed on it after its
1990 invasion of Kuwait.” Actually, it was a license for fraud and embezzlement and proved most lucrative to all sorts of lowlifes who profited from
a government plan that purported to alleviate misery.

Instead of trying to alleviate starvation and disease, the sanctions administrators deliberately
stalled on approving Oil for Food arrangements. The UN found that it took an average of 66 days for agreement to be reached on contracts and a further
59 days for food to be delivered. The intention was clear: no matter the desperate plight of children in Iraq, the sanctions would continue to be imposed
with the utmost severity.

In spite of criminality and willful disruption of food and medical supplies, the child mortality
rate declined as a result of the Oil for Food program. This was no thanks to such agencies as Britain’s Department of Trade and Industry, which prevented
diphtheria and yellow-fever vaccines from being sent to Iraq, claiming that they could be used to make weapons of mass destruction.

In 1997, according to UNICEF, 25 percent of children under five were severely malnourished.
They were especially vulnerable to water-borne diseases, such as typhoid and cholera, that were unknown in Iraq before the Gulf War of 1991.

To end this sad tale of death and despair on Iraq, the words of the honorable Dennis Halliday
are appropriate. Sanctions, he said,

do not impact on governance effectively and instead [they damage] the innocent people of the
country…. For me what is tragic, in addition to the tragedy of Iraq itself, is the fact that the United Nations Security Council member states ...
are maintaining a program of economic sanctions deliberately, knowingly killing thousands of Iraqis each month. And that definition fits genocide.

Brian Cloughley is a commentator on political and military affairs and is a strategy analyst
for Jane’s Sentinel. He resides in France. Visit his website: http://www.beecluff.com"
>www.beecluff.com. Send him >email

This article originally appeared in the December 2009 edition of Freedom Daily. href="
http://www.fff.org/support/index.asp#print"
>Subscribe to the print or email version of Freedom Daily.

Source URL = http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0911f.asp ]]> IRAQ http://kwagga.com/blog/index.php?itemid=2127 Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:58:31 +0100 http://kwagga.com/blog/index.php?itemid=2125 - -Most Jews of the world (and probably many Gentiles) believe that Zionism is the return of Jews to the land promised to them by God. At the risk of offending some readers of all faiths for saying so, I must confess, and do so cheerfully, that I don’t buy this concept because the Gentile me does not believe in the God of organized, institutional religions. So, I say to myself, no God, no promise to Jews (or anybody else). In my perception of the scheme of things, God is the potential for good inside each and every one of us. God so defined is a prisoner within each of us and our prime task is to liberate this prisoner. But let’s put that to one side.

The Jews who “returned” in answer to Zionism’s call had no biological connection to the ancient Hebrews. They were converts to Judaism long after the end of the Hebrew conquest and short-lived domination of much of Canaan, the name as in the Bible by which Palestine was first known to the world. They therefore had no legitimate claim on the land.

The Jews who did have a legitimate claim,... ... probably not more than about 10,000 at the time of Zionism’s first dishonest mission statement in 1897, were the direct descendants of the Israelites who stayed in place on the land through time. They regarded themselves as Palestinians, and they were fiercely opposed to Zionism’s colonial enterprise because they feared it would make them as well as the incoming alien Jews enemies of the Palestinian Arabs.

Also true is that prior to the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust, most Jews of the world were not at all interested in Zionism’s colonial enterprise and many were opposed to it. The most informed and thoughtful of those who did express their opposition believed that Zionism was morally wrong. They also feared that Zionism’s colonial enterprise would lead to unending conflict. But most of all they feared that Zionism, if it was allowed by the major powers to have its way, would one day provoke anti-Semitism. Which is precisely what is happening today. (Hence the title of my book, ZIONISM: THE REAL ENEMY OF THE JEWS).

In reality it is how the Zionists created their state - a Zionist not a Jewish state - that best defines what Zionism actually is.

Israel was created, mainly, by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing - a pre-planned process that saw three-quarters of the indigenous Arab inhabitants of Palestine dispossessed of their homes, their land and their rights.

Zionism asserts that its state was given its birth certificate and thus legitimacy by the UN Partition Resolution of 29 November 1947. That is propaganda nonsense. The truth can be summarized as follows.

In the first place the UN without the consent of the majority of the people of Palestine did not have the right to decide to partition Palestine or assign any part of its territory to a minority of alien immigrants in order for them to establish a state of their own.

By the narrowest of margins, and only after a rigged vote, the UN General Assembly did pass a resolution to partition Palestine and create two states, one Arab, one Jewish, with Jerusalem not part of either. But the General Assembly resolution was only a recommendation - meaning that it could have no effect, would not become policy, unless approved by the Security Council.

The General Assembly’s recommendation never went to the Security Council for consideration because the U.S. knew that, if approved, it could only be implemented by force given the extent of Arab and other Muslim opposition to it; and President Truman was not prepared to use force to partition Palestine.

So the partition plan was vitiated (became invalid) and the question of what the hell to do about Palestine - after Britain had made a mess of it and walked away, effectively surrendering to Zionist terrorism - was taken back to the General Assembly for more discussion. The option favoured and proposed by the U.S. was temporary UN Trusteeship. It was while the General Assembly was debating what do that Israel unilaterally declared itself to be in existence - actually in defiance of the will of the organised international community, including the Truman administration.

The truth of the time was that the Zionist state had no right to exist and, more to the point, could have no right to exist UNLESS … Unless it was recognised and legitimized by those Zionism had dispossessed of their land and their rights. In international law only the Palestinians could give Israel the legitimacy it craved.

What is a Zionist today?

Short answer: One, not necessarily a Jew, who (to quote Balfour) supports the Zionist state of Israel “right or wrong” and who cannot or will not admit that a terrible wrong was done to the Palestinians by Zionism - a wrong that must be acknowledged and then corrected on terms acceptable to the Palestinians if there is ever to be peace and the countdown to catastrophe for all is to be stopped. The Arab word for the catastrophe of the original dispossession of the Palestinians is Nakba. In my view, Zionism’s Nakba denial is as obscene and as evil as denial of the Nazi holocaust.

One thing nobody can deny is the effectiveness of Zionism’s propaganda machine. Zionism’s spin doctors probably learned from the Nazis that the bigger the lies and the more frequently they are told, the more likely it is that they will be believed in the mainly Gentile, Judeo-Christian or Western world; and all the more so when the mainstream media is terrified of offending Zionism either too much or at all.

The biggest of all of Zionism’s propaganda lies is the one which asserts that Israel has lived in constant danger of annihilation, the “driving into the sea” of its Jews. As I document in detail in my book, Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab force. Not in 1948. Not in 1967. And not even in 1973. Zionism’s assertion to the contrary was the cover which allowed Israel to get away where it mattered most, in North America and Western Europe, with presenting its aggression (often state terrorism) as self-defense, and itself as the victim when actually it was, and is, the oppressor.

The companion propaganda lie is that Israel never had Arab partners for peace.

Zionism has two hallmarks.

One is self-righteousness of a most extraordinary kind. In 1986 this self-righteousness was described by Yehoshafat Harkabi, a former Director of Israeli Military Intelligence, as “the biggest real danger” to the Jewish state.

The other hallmark is a shocking and awesome arrogance of military and economic power and the influence the latter buys, most critically in the U.S. Congress where what passes for democracy is for sale to the highest bidders.

On the matter of truth as it relates to the making and sustaining of conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel, I hope the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) is right: “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” If that’s true, Zionism not only can be defeated but will be.

Footnote:

This article was written as one in a series with other authors under the title ZIONISM UNMASKED. ]]> Zionism http://kwagga.com/blog/index.php?itemid=2125 Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:51:25 +0100 http://kwagga.com/blog/index.php?itemid=2123 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/12/iran-revolution-31st-anniversary"
>The Guardian" -- Describing the events in Iran yesterday, CNN correspondent
Ivan Watson made a point of mentioning that http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xc75q7_iran-marks-anniversary_news"
>free food and drink were handed out in Azadi Square to those celebrating the 31st anniversary of the revolution – as if the treats were part
of a cunning ploy by the Ahmadinejad government.

Although some of my friends in Tehran who walked for miles to attend
the hours of festivities at Azadi Square told me regretfully that they were not offered free food or drink, I don't doubt that refreshments were indeed
distributed at the rally.

Last October I attended a memorial service in Tehran organised by the Revolutionary Guard to honour
hundreds of Iranian medical volunteers killed while caring for their comrades during the bloody eight-year war with Iraq.

At the entrance of the packed auditorium small trays of fruit, juice and water were handed out. I
tried to politely decline the offer from the man in camouflage, but was later happy that his insistence succeeded. I found the banana and pineapple flavoured
juice box quite refreshing as the service dragged on for a number of hours.

Anyone who has spent time in Iran and the Middle East knows about the hospitality of this... ... region.
It's extremely disrespectful for a host not to offer a guest food or drink. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/12/iran-protest-turnout-threat"
>To suggest that free food and drink were one of the motivating factors that brought hundreds of thousands out to Azadi Square yesterday is beyond absurd.
This assumption that in order to support Ahmadinejad one must be from a poor, rural or illiterate background highlights a larger bias in the western media
in their attempt to demonise the Islamic Republic and ignore its widespread support.

As CNN and others have attempted to give background into the modern history of Iran, the deposed
Shah http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/05/29/f-iran.html"
>has been described merely as "pro-western" with little mention of his utter lack of support from the Iranian masses and the brutal repression
by his regime to forcefully quell any voice of dissent.

Similarly, it is rare to learn about the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'état"
>US-led coup against the democratically elected government in 1953 that put the Shah in power for more than two-and-a-half decades. The Shah was not
merely "pro-western"; his absolute monarchy was a western creation and he remained what many consider a puppet of the US for his entire reign.

The Iranian overthrow of the Shah in 1979, and the subsequent referendum on the Islamic Republic,
were supported by the overwhelming majority of Iranians. For the first time in centuries they were choosing their own destiny. However, this destiny did
not necessarily comply with the interests of those governments who had long influenced Iranian affairs and reaped profits from the country's resources,
particularly Iran's immense oil reserves.

Since the revolution, the US and other western governments have been at odds with the Islamic Republic.
After the September 11 attacks in New York, the Bush administration carelessly lumped Iran (along with its historic enemy, Saddam Hussein) into its simplistic
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_evil"
>Axis of Evil" category. Most large media networks in the US followed suit and have not treated the Islamic Republic as anything less than evil
in their coverage.

By removing this blatant Bush-era bias a more accurate image of the events unfolding in Iran emerges.
Since soon after its inception, the Islamic Republic has faced protests from varying numbers among Iranian society. After last year's disputed presidential
elections, the opposition's numbers reached a peak.

The Iranian authorities have imprisoned, beaten and even killed many of those who have taken to
the streets in a condemnable display of force. But is this really the "http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/06/17/DI2009061702232.html"
>Twitter", "http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/a-green-revolution-for-iran/"
>Green" or just plain ol' "revolution" that much of the western media is making it out to be?

The pro-government masses that took to the streets in June after the elections to http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/2009616135112133473.html"
>celebrate Ahmadinejad's victory, and then again http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/01/three_days_in_iran.html"
>after the clashes during the Ashura holy day in December, and now to commemorate the anniversary of the revolution, should indicate that no, this is
not a revolution but rather a deepening internal divide.

To speculate whether the majority of Iranians support the government or the opposition is irrelevant.
First we need to understand that it's not free juice boxes and small bags of cookies bringing the Iranian masses – from either side of the political
divide – out on to the street. ]]> Iran http://kwagga.com/blog/index.php?itemid=2123 Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:48:11 +0100 http://kwagga.com/blog/index.php?itemid=2122
Factual Findings narrated by Ross Vachon

Factual and Legal findings narrated by Noam Chomsky

Live Testimonies relevant to the Goldstone Report's Findings



The video also contains live testimonies of Khalid, Kawthar and Samar Abd Rabbo before the UN Fact Finding Mission headed by Justice
Richard Goldstone. For more information on this video, please go to http://www.goldstonefacts.org"
>www.goldstonefacts.org  

 

Part 2

 

Part 3

 
]]> palestine http://kwagga.com/blog/index.php?itemid=2122 Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:40:38 +0100