More Evidence Of Cheney Hand Behind Black Ops Against Syria

OCT. 28, 2008 (LPAC)--Evidence continues to mount that the illegal U.S. raid on a Syrian village near the Iraq border on Sunday was a White House operation, cooked up by Vice President Cheney, Elliot Abrams, and others intent on blowing up the situation in Southwest Asia. Lyndon LaRouche denounced the raid in no uncertain terms today, emphasizing that Syria “was always the fallback target for the British, if they did not succeed in getting the U.S. or Israel to attack Iran.” LaRouche warned that “all Hell is going to break loose” right after the Nov. 4 U.S. elections.

Pentagon sources report that the helicopter raid on the Syrian border town, in which at least seven people were killed, was conducted by a “black operations” unit, most likely Task Force 88. Task Force 88 is a joint Anglo-American special operations team, comprised of U.S. Delta Force, U.S. Navy SEAL Team 6, British SAS, and CIA intelligence officers, whose main task is to eliminate top leadership of Al Qaeda, in Iraq and Afghanistan. The unit, earlier known as Task Force 20 and Task Force 145, was setup by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, right after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, to specifically circumvent the normal military chain of command--the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the regional CINCs. It is, according to one military source, headquartered in Iraq out of Camp Balad, a large Iraqi base north of Baghdad. Task Force 88 and its predecessor units were deployed into Somalia in the early years of the Bush Administration, also targeting Al Qaeda networks on the continent.

Reported here.

Syrian villagers shout anti-U.S. slogans as they gather near the coffins of relatives who died a day before when U.S. military helicopters launched an extremely rare attack inside the Syrian border, on Monday, Oct. 27, 2008

Why now...the guessing game as to just exactly who ordered or approved Sunday's cross-border raid....Some journalists and experts have speculated that the raid was a Bush administration attempt to deliver an "October Surprise" – a late game-changing development favoring one candidate – for Republican candidate Sen. John McCain just over a week before the presidential election in which he badly trails Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama in most polls. Read further Analysts Question Timing of Syria Raid

The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush

In December 2000, at the time the U.S. Supreme Court was intervening in the disputed vote count in Florida to name Republican George W. Bush president over Democrat Al Gore, the stock market began to crash. The “dot.com” bubble, based largely on foreign investment in internet companies and technology stocks, deflated. By the time Bush was inaugurated in January 2001, signs of a recession were appearing.

This did not prevent the Bush administration from initiating a $450 billion tax cut for the upper income brackets that Congress approved in March 2001. A similar cut was subsequently enacted in May 2003.

On September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York City were attacked by airplanes flying into them, followed that morning by an air attack on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

Terrorists from Al Qaeda, an organization of Islamic extremists associated with the Afghan mujaheddin, and a Saudi figure, Osama bin Laden, alleged to be their leader, were blamed. The wealthy bin Laden family had close ties to the U.S. and the Bush family.

Within a few weeks, the Bush administration pulled a battle plan from the shelves of the Pentagon and invaded Afghanistan. The object was to wrest control of that nation from the Taliban, supposedly Al Qaeda collaborators. A new U.S. Asian land war had begun.

In March 2003, the Bush administration added to the Afghan action the second invasion of Iraq in the past thirteen years, following the “Shock and Awe” aerial attack. The assaults on Afghanistan and Iraq, with torture of prisoners, use of depleted uranium weapons, and killing of civilians, was methodical and brutal.

Americans who had opposed the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s were appalled at how history was repeating itself. The public was subjected to a relentless barrage of pro-war propaganda by square-jawed military talking heads

Behind the scenes were the international financial and oil interests who stood to benefit from the removal of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein as an independent actor in the Middle East. Financiers like David Rockefeller, who had founded the Trilateral Commission and was one of the “internationalist” leaders of what had come to be called the “New World Order,” tended to remain in the shadows, but their presence was palpable.

Rockefeller had reportedly expressed his world view in a statement at a 1991 meeting of the Bilderberg Group:

“The supra-national sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”

With respect to most of the U.S. military actions after World War II, especially the ones after Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, an argument could be made that the internationalists were using the U.S. military as their personal global police force.

Even so, the Neocons—“new conservatives”—who had rushed to the forefront after September 11, 2001, working chiefly through Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice-President Richard Cheney, seemed to be a more radical element than the officials who had been in charge during the Clinton years, when the U.S. and NATO went to war against Serbia. Many of the Neocons were Jewish, with strong ties to Israel.

In 1997 the Neocons had created the Project for a New American Century, which advocated a new invasion of Iraq, and published a statement that positive change might result from a “catalyzing event—a new Pearl Harbor.” Later this was interpreted as possibly having foreshadowed the 9/11 attacks.

President George W. Bush justified the Iraq invasion by claiming that the regime of Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Later this claim proved to be a lie.

To many the attack was a simple act of aggression. Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the U.N. said of the invasion on September 16, 2004, “I have indicated it was not in conformity with the U.N. charter. From our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal.” The U.S. paid no attention to Annan’s misgivings.

The U.S. attack on Iraq was not without controversy, even among the international elite. According to Daniel Estulin, writing in his breakthrough book, The Bildergerg Group, the Europeans at the 2001 Bilderberg Conference summoned Donald Rumsfeld and blasted him for prematurely planning an attack on Iraq that year. But by 2003, says Estulin, they were prepared to endorse it. Still, the U.S. had far less active support from other nations than with the 1991 invasion of Iraq under George W. Bush’s father.

Text taken from the article War or Peace?: The World After the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election by Richard C. Cook.

End the Siege on Gaza

October 27, 2008

Mr. Ehud Barak
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense
Ministry of Defense
Fax: +972 3 691 6940

Dear Minister Barak,

Today marks the beginning of the international conference 'Siege and Mental Health...Walls vs. Bridges', organized by the Gaza Community Mental Health Program and the World Health Organization. This conference represents an opportunity for academic discussion among health professionals concerning the impact of the Gaza siege as well as an open exchange of ideas between Palestinian and international experts for the development of appropriate mental health and social services.

I am writing to express my outrage at the decision of the Israeli Defense Ministry to deny entry to Gaza to the over 120 international participants just two weeks prior to a conference that has been in the works for more than a year. Denying entry to international experts is to deny academic freedom, cultural dialogue and understanding. It is to deny support for solutions to alleviate the suffering of the people of Gaza, and in particular, the most vulnerable members of their community. And the conference certainly represents no threat to the security of Israel.

I applaud the efforts of the organizers and international participants in their determination to go ahead with the conference in Ramallah. The work of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program provides a source of hope, reconciliation, and in the long run, a mutually beneficial relationship between Israelis and Palestinians.

I am also writing to call for an immediate end to the siege, which has effectively imprisoned one and a half million people, including half a million children, without proper food or medical care since June 2007. The siege has significantly increased malnutrition, poverty and unemployment and led to a decline in education and health services. Without sufficient fuel and electricity, water treatment plants are shut down and hospitals are unable to provide medical care. Restrictions on movement and access in and out of Gaza further deny residents the opportunity to seek employment or health care elsewhere.

Not only are targeting civilians and collective punishment both prohibited by international law, but they also represent an immoral act in violation of basic human rights that is utterly indefensible.

Israel, which has demonstrated its complete control over Gaza, has both a legal and moral responsibility to guarantee residents access to food, clean water and medical care. Furthermore, the people of Gaza are also rightfully entitled to live a dignified life, free of despair.

I join people all over the world in calling on Israel to end this suffering. A call to end the siege is an appeal for justice, a message of peace.


Sincerely,

Sohif Mat
Malaysian
-------------------

Your support in writing to Mr Ehud Barak is arranged by at the link below.
End the Siege on Gaza Fax Blast!

In support of the global day of mobilization to ‘End the Siege of Gaza,' we're taking our protest to the internet. With one simple click, you can send a fax from our web site to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, calling for an end to the siege, which has for over a year now effectively imprisoned more than 1.5 million people and denied basic human rights in violation of international law.

Adding insult to injury, the Israeli Defense Ministry has also denied access to Gaza to over 120 health professionals from around the world who had been invited to the international conference ‘Siege and Mental Health…Walls vs. Bridges', organized by the Gaza Community Mental Health Program and the World Health Organization and long-scheduled to be held October 27-28.

Let's flood Minister Barak's offices with our condemnation of this unjust obstruction of free access for those working to find solutions to alleviate the suffering, as well as our calls for an immediate end to the siege.

If you like to be involved please follow this link.

Blackmailing Iraq

U.S. threatens to halt services to Iraq without troop accord
By Roy Gutman and Leila Fadel | McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD _ The U.S. military has warned Iraq that it will shut down military operations and other vital services throughout the country on Jan. 1 if the Iraqi government doesn't agree to a new agreement on the status of U.S. forces or a renewed United Nations mandate for the American mission in Iraq.

Many Iraqi politicians view the move as akin to political blackmail, a top Iraqi official told McClatchy Sunday.

In addition to halting all military actions, U.S. forces would cease activities that support Iraq’s economy, educational sector and other areas _ "everything" _ said Tariq al Hashimi, the country’s Sunni Muslim vice president. "I didn’t know the Americans are rendering such wide-scale services."

Hashimi said that Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, listed “tens” of areas of potential cutoffs in a three-page letter, and he said the implied threat caught Iraqi leaders by surprise.

"It was really shocking for us," he said. "Many people are looking to this attitude as a matter of blackmailing."

Reported here.

Gareth Porter: Bush admin is desperate for troop agreement as end date of UN authorization nears. Watch the clip

Israel's Not-So-Future Perfect

In a marriage made in hell, the post-9/11 era created conditions that enabled the ideologues and planners of the U.S. hegemon to wed those Israelis whose vision assumed that only a Middle East dominated by American power would secure the survival of a militarized Jewish ghetto. Hence the notion of "the whole world is against us" ended up resonating among the neoconservatives and Christian Zionists who hijacked U.S. foreign policy in the aftermath of 9/11 and plunged the Middle East into war in Iraq. But while Americans are bound to leave Iraq one day, Israelis will probably be stuck in the territories "liberated" in 1967 for many years to come. And the dream of a normal state could be buried forever.

Read further this article by Leon Hadar here.

America's Secret War with Iran

Watch the clip.

Al-Maliki Will Not Sign Security Agreement

McClatchy reports that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has reneged on the security agreement that his office negotiated with the Bush administration, and now says he will not sign it and will not submit it to parliament. Instead, it is likely that Iraq will go back to the United Nations Security Council for a further mandate of six months to a year for the multi-national forces.


Aljazeera English reports on the security pact.

The Iraq Quagmire: The Price of Imperial Arrogance

This book makes a bold statement about US failures in Iraq. The authors take the view that apart from deposing and killing Saddam Hussein, there is absolutely no way the Iraq War can be considered a success.

While holding the Bush administration and its British ally responsible for the present quagmire, the book is also very critical of the Democratic leadership in congress - accusing it of half-baked opposition to the war.

In a simple, yet captivating analysis, the authors explore American Imperialism, questioning whether the country can survive the resource wars. This is a must read for people on both sides of the Iraq War debate; a fresh perspective on the hottest issue of the day.

Mr. Kingpin

Do you want a guy for president who would take multi-trillion dollar "throw of the dice" gambles with the economy? Do you want a guy who always lies about his corporate backing? Do you want a guy who would send the remaining good American jobs overseas? Do you want a guy who would create the worst economic collapse, ever, in American history? Do you want a guy who would get us into a new war with Iran? Do you want a guy who would — at a minimum — start a new Cold War with Russia? Do you want a guy — a guy who can't control his temper — who thinks nuclear wars are winnable? Do you want a guy who isn't happy unless he's in the middle of a crisis? Do you want a guy who thinks the world is secretly run by a group called the "Illuminati" and who's mad that he's never been asked to join? Do you want a guy who embraces evil to achieve power? No. Nobody does. And if we're lucky we won't get that guy. (One of the above I just made up.)

Posted by George Kenney on October 4, 2008 here.

The Fantasy of Washington in Aghanistan

Butcher and Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan

David Loyn is a foreign correspondent with extensive experience in Afghanistan. His first book, Frontline was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2006. Butcher and Bolt is a history of foreign engagement in Afghanistan beginning with the first British mission 200 years ago.

Butcher and Bolt challenges such rigidity of thinking. Loyn rubbishes the Americans' supernatural belief in technology above all things, and points out that the Taliban have one and a half million recruits in Pakistan's madrasas, just over the border. It is a bleak conclusion to a book that should be a must-read for every politician who sends our squaddies into Afghanistan - but one based fairly and squarely on the weight of history.

The Afghan narrative is almost absurdly unchanging. Any foreign military adventure in Afghanistan is doomed to fail: the land is unforgiving and the people are hostile, secure in their Islamic faith - which ratchets up to a fresh level of purist absolutism with every bomb that falls. They may lose battle after battle, but still they fight.

Loyn writes well of the Soviet invasion, of how the Soviet generals bombed, tortured and shot civilians willy-nilly, and yet still they lost and had to leave Afghanistan in defeat. He quotes the great Italian journalist Tiziano Terzani:

"War is not a profession for Bin Laden and his people. It's a mission. Its roots lie in the faith they acquired in the close-minded Quranic schools, and above all in their deep feelings of defeat and impotence, in the humiliation of a civilisation, Islam, which was once great and feared but which now finds itself increasingly marginalised and offended by the overwhelming power and arrogance of the west."

Is there a solution? Probably not. Absolutist Islam lacks the means but not the will to defeat the west. The west has the means but not the will to defeat absolutist Islam, least of all inside Afghanistan. However, it might help if we dumped well-intentioned fantasy. Loyn makes the point, again and again, that first British, then Soviet, and now US policy on Afghanistan has been formed by tellers of fairy tales in London, Moscow and Washington and not by the complicated and difficult reality on the ground. It is clear that he admires much about Afghans. He is one of very few reporters who have spent time with the Taliban - and found the men who protected him personally honourable, respected by their communities and very much in control on the ground. He is not mindless of the dark side in Afghanistan: of how, in the chaos after the Russians left, a tank battle took place between two commanders as they both wanted sex with the same boy; how the Taliban murders schoolteachers who seek to give girls an education; how the Taliban's logic acts like a kind of "anti-matter", a black hole that engulfs the western mind.

Loyn is clear that much of the "mud" attached to the Taliban can more accurately be applied to the entire Afghan mindset, especially that of the Pashtun heartland: deeply conservative, contemptuous of externally imposed "democracy", unbothered about liberal rights or the education of women. He writes that "the simple narrative of heroes and demons - 'mujahedin good, Taliban bad' - imposed on Afghanistan was another externally drawn picture: an Afghanistan of the western mind".

Read more The Killing Field by John Sweeney.

A Solutions?

By Paul Craigs

Readers have been pressing for a solution to the financial crisis. But first it is necessary to understand the problem. Here is the problem as I see it. If my diagnosis is correct, the solution below might be appropriate.

Let's begin with the fact that the financial crisis is more or less worldwide. The mechanism that spread the American-made financial crisis abroad was the massive US trade deficit. Every year the countries with which the US has trade deficits end up in the aggregate with hundreds of billions of dollars.

Read more the article here.

The History Channel

Blood On Their Hands

"Blood on Their Hands" examines IOF killings of children in the Gaza Strip from June 2007 through June 2008. During this period, IOF killed 68 children in the Gaza Strip. (For the purpose of this reports, PCHR defines a child as a boy or girl younger than the age of 18 who is not taking part in hostilities.) The report provides data, analysis and testimonies on the killings of these children, including detailed testimonies from eye-witnesses and bereaved families, which highlight the horrific nature of these IOF child killings. The report also examines the psychological impact of child deaths on other children in the Gaza Strip, especially those children who have witnessed IOF killings. Although it focuses on the Gaza Strip, the report also refers to child killings by IOF in the West Bank, where 12 children were killed by IOF during the reporting period.

The violent deaths of all 80 children are the direct result of IOF policy of targeting unarmed civilians in the OPT, and especially the Gaza Strip, as a form of collective punishment against Palestinian civilians. The report investigates the context of child killings in the Gaza Strip, providing detailed investigations into IOF use of disproportionate and excessive lethal force in order to deliberately target children. The report also exposes IOF methods of killing children, and the consistent failure of the State of Israel to investigate IOF killings of Palestinian children in the OPT, or to bring the perpetrators to justice.

"Blood on Their Hands exposes" the extent of IOF child killings, and makes urgent recommendations for the IOF to respect the human rights of all Palestinian children in the OPT, as well as demanding that the international community intervene immediately and effectively in order to ensure that children's human rights are respected and upheld.

Report: 68 Gaza children killed in one year, PCHR, 22 October 2008

Download full report (pdf file) here.

See the evil, hear the evil, speak the evil - of the Occupiers

The three wise monkeys (Japanese: 三猿, san'en or sanzaru, or 三匹の猿, sanbiki no saru, literally "three monkeys") Together they embody the proverbial principle to "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil".


But for the occupiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, we need to have the opposite proverb.

Gaza: The Killing Zone

Watch the video.

International disaster: An Illegal and Immoral War of Aggression

At the center of this fiasco, is the fact that the Bush-Cheney administration and its neocon cohort rushed to exploit the 9/11 terrorist attacks and used this as a pretext to implement a preconceived pro-Israel and pro-oil plan in the Middle East. This led them to adopt a simplistic response to Islamist terrorism, barging into complex Middle East societies on elephant feet. But in the process, they have only succeeded in making matters worse and in encouraging more hatred against the U.S. and more terrorism.

Indeed, George W. Bush will be remembered above all as the man who launched an illegal and immoral war of aggression against another sovereign nation, on false pretenses and forged documents, destroying in so doing the entire country of Iraq, and damaging perhaps irreparably the U.S. reputation in the world. As Scott McClellan, Bush's former Press Secretary during seven long years, stated, Bush and his advisers [in launching the Iraq War] "confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candour and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war".

Bush's deception and lies about Iraq in order to initiate a war of aggression, an aggression that is a war crime under the Nuremberg standard established by the U.S., are well documented. Thus, historians will have no difficulty in establishing the fact that the United States, under Bush, acted as a lawless international aggressor.

In initiating a war of aggression, Bush did violate the United Nations Charter, which "prohibits the use of military force" against any nation without the specific approval of the United Nations Security Council. The Security Council never approved the American-led military invasion of Iraq. Therefore, Bush and his crew had no international legal basis to invade Iraq. And they cannot pretend that Congress gave them such an authorization, since it is well known in law that no domestic law can override a signed international treaty in good standing.

In a domestic parallel, George W. Bush and his administration have set up what is probably the most widespread war profiteering system in modern history, through which billions and billions of dollars were misappropriated and wasted. At the same time as they were adopting a permanent war posture abroad, they were irresponsibly calling at home for a 674 billion dollar tax cut for their rich supporters and pushing up the deficits, of which a large proportion was financed by borrowing abroad.

Read further The Failed Presidency of George W. Bush: A Dismal Legacy by Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay

Pardon me, But I’m Jewish

By Miko Peled / October 18th, 2008

The racist discourse in America is alarming and often people don’t even notice when it takes place. When the lady at the town hall meeting asked John McCain if Barak Obama was an Arab he replied: “No, no he is a decent family man.” Where is the contradiction here? Does Arab mean he is not a decent family man? Well, pardon me but I am Jewish and I am over sensitive and easily offended by these things.

To the claim that Obama is an Arab, the appropriate response is: “So what.” To the question is Barak Obama a Moslem the reply ought to be: “I don’t know but who cares.” contrary to what many people say, the holocaust was not the worst thing that happened to Jewish people, and it is not the recurrence of the holocaust that we need to fear the most. The holocaust was the inevitable outcome of centuries of European Christian indoctrination that Jewish people are less than human. What took place in the holocaust was the natural outcome of centuries where Christians taught hate. It is the recurrence of that trend we need to prevent so that another holocaust will never take place.

Read further here.

Do You Approve This Message?

The Flag reads "There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people"

U.S. to Choose - continued occupation or creating a new economy.

Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz predicts the Iraq war will cost the United States $3 trillion. Nouriel Roubini, the economist who predicted today’s financial crisis in 2006, predicts the U.S. will suffer its worst recession in 40 years, lasting up to two years with 9% unemployment and another 15% drop in housing prices. He predicts we are seeing only the first round of government injection of funds into the finance system.

Throughout the Iraq war and occupation peace activists have pointed to the cost of war as one reason why the occupation must end. The “cost of war” clock is almost universal on anti-war sites. But now, with reports that the $1.8 trillion spent on bailing out the U.S. finance system is not enough to save the U.S. economy, the cost of war and the military budget must be reconsidered. The U.S. will need to choose – continued occupation or creating a new economy.

Unlike the depression which ended in part because of World War II, this time military spending is contributing to economic demise. Military spending takes money from the rest of the economy and prevents a federal budget that invests in re-tooling the economy. Spending hundreds of billions on the Iraq and Afghanistan war, and hundreds of billions more annually on military spending is one reason why the U.S. economy is faltering. The DoD is expected to put forward an even bigger budget request before the next president takes office. This will force the next president to quickly confront whether the military continues to dominate U.S. foreign policy and the U.S. budget.

Read further in Now the Cost of War Really Matters by Kevin Zeese.

Photo essay: Colonialism in the West Bank

Scott Weinstein, The Electronic Intifada, 17 October 2008

The following photo essay from 2003 is by Montreal photographer and community worker Scott Weinstein, who traveled to Palestine to work with the Palestine Red Crescent Society as a registered nurse. His photographs document the contemporary realities of Israeli colonialism and occupation in the West Bank, specifically focusing on settler violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank city of Hebron. As documented by numerous human rights organizations, Israeli settlers have beaten Palestinian civilians and forced many Palestinians to leave the historic city center in Hebron, traditionally an important and vibrant Palestinian center of commerce in the West Bank.

Israel's wall next to Har Homa settlement in the West Bank.


A street in the West Bank city of Hebron, where most Palestinians have been forced out by Israeli settlers. Israeli symbols are painted by settlers as signs of victory. In the background is a new Israeli settler building.


Hebron is continuously being ethnically cleansed of its Palestinian population. Israeli settlers, some seen in the building in the background, are protected by the Israeli military and bolstered by outside donors.


The Palestinian market in Hebron have been taken over by Israeli settlers, who drop trash and rocks on Palestinians below. The Palestinian market in the Old City of Hebron, once a node of the Palestinian economy in the West Bank, is now almost completely shut down.


A Palestinian woman looks out from her window in Hebron onto a street that has been almost completely cleansed of Palestinians. A Star of David has been painted on the wall by the Israeli settlers.

Scott Weinstein has worked in Palestine with the Palestine Red Crescent Society as a registered nurse. Currently, Weinstein is working with Independent Jewish Voices, associated with the Canada-wide Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians, a network of progressive Jewish people in Canada opposed to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Pinnochet Case and Its Implications for the US Government.

The arrest warrant served on the Chilean head of state in 1998 changed history and has implications for the US government now.

On October 16 1998, a magistrate signed a warrant for the arrest of Senator Augusto Pinochet and changed the course of history. The former Chilean head of state was arrested a few hours later, at the request of a Spanish prosecutor who charged him with a raft of international crimes, some dating back to the early 1970s. The five law lords who issued the ruling decided, on a majority verdict of 3-2, that his status as a former head of state did not entitle him to claim sovereign immunity. The law lords are members of the House of Lords, Britain's upper house of Parliament.

Nevertheless, it seems that Pinochet's case caused concerns at the highest levels of the Bush administration, as described in a revealing account by a former lawyer in the Bush administration, Jack Goldsmith. He describes how, during 2002, Henry Kissinger found himself on the sharp end of the Pinochet case. Reportedly livid, a rattled Kissinger complained to his old chum Donald Rumsfeld, who was already worrying about "lawfare" (the use of law to achieve operational objectives). Rumsfeld instructed the chief lawyer at the Pentagon, Jim Haynes, to address the problems posed by this "judicialisation of international politics". Haynes passed the assignment on to Goldsmith, whose memo reached the National Security Council, which also worried about the threat of foreign judges. According to Goldsmith, the NSC couldn't work out what to do about the problem.

We know that Rumsfeld and Haynes and others at the Pentagon were secretly circumventing international laws like the Geneva conventions and the torture convention and removing international constraints on the interrogation of detainees at Guantánamo and in Iraq. Torture and other international crimes followed. So did the Abu Ghraib photos. Amid the welter of legal opinions received by the administration none, it seems, bothered to examine the consequences of the House of Lords judgment for senior US officials.

The legacy of the arrest warrant signed in Hampstead 10 years today, is the Pinochet principle, that no one is above the law. It may one day come to haunt the very people who sought to set it aside. If, that is, they ever dare to set foot outside the United States.

Read more 10 Years of the Pinochet Principle by Philippe Sands, The Guardian/UK

Donald Trump: Bush Lied

Property mogul and diehard Republican Donald Trump told CNN on Wednesday that President George W. Bush misled the US into the Iraq War and should have been impeached when the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006.

"I was surprised that she didn't do more in terms of Bush and going after Bush," Trump said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, referring to Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"It ... just seemed like she was going to really look to impeach Bush and get him out of office, which personally I think would have been a wonderful thing."

Trump, 62, said Bush misled the United States into waging war on Iraq, a much worse offense than a dalliance with a White House intern his predecessor Bill Clinton was impeached for in 1999.

"He lied. He got us into the war with lies," Trump said about Bush. "And I mean -- look at the trouble Bill Clinton got into with something that was totally unimportant. And they tried to impeach him, which was nonsense.

"And yet Bush got us into this horrible war with lies, by lying, by saying they had weapons of mass destruction, by saying all sorts of things that turned out not to be true," he added.

Reported in Yahoo News.

Propaganda Crimes

Most jurisdictions have yet to recognize propaganda for war as a crime. However several journalists have recently been convicted of incitement to genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Because there is stiff resistance, especially from the United States, the effort to criminalize war propaganda faces an uphill battle.

However in legal terms it seems relatively straightforward: if incitement to genocide is a crime, then incitement to aggression, another Nuremberg crime, could and should be as well.

After all, aggression – starting an unprovoked war – is “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole,” in the words of the judgment at Nuremberg.

Criminal or not, much of the world now sees incitement to war as morally indefensible.

Read further in US Journalists & War-Crime Guilt.

Muslim Charity to Get Its Day in Court

In what appears to be another stunning legal rebuke to President George W. Bush's policies in the "global war on terrorism," a federal judge has blocked the government from blacklisting a Muslim-oriented charity to give the group a chance to defend itself after its assets were frozen almost three years ago.

In response to a request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Ohio, and several civil rights lawyers on behalf of KindHearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development, Inc., Judge James G. Carr this week blocked the government from branding the organization as a "specially designated global terrorist" "without first affording KindHearts with constitutionally adequate process," including notice and a meaningful opportunity to contest the basis for such a designation.

The judge ruled that the government's proposed action prior to a judicial review will cause KindHearts to "suffer serious and irreparable injury in the form of loss of reputation and goodwill."

Hina Shamsi, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, said, "We are gratified that the judge recognized the importance of independent judicial review of the government's actions toward KindHearts. His decision also serves the public's interest in ensuring that government action, including in the name of national security, is subject to the constitutional requirements of due process."

Read further the article by William Fisher here.

Free Markets are Dead?

Three of the most important functions of free markets are: price discovery, the provision of liquidity, and capital allocation. Honest and transparent dealings between willing buyers and sellers are thought to result in liquid and efficient marketplaces. Prices are determined, second by second, in a process of public negotiation, taking old and emergent information about risks and returns into account. Capital is allocated to the highest bidder, who, presumably, can make the most profit on it. And every seller finds a buyer and vice versa.

The current global crisis is not only about the failure of a few investment banks (in the USA) and retail banks (in Europe). The very concept of free markets seems to have gone bankrupt. This was implicitly acknowledged by governments as they rushed to nationalize banks and entire financial systems.

In the last 14 months, markets repeatedly failed to price assets correctly. From commodities to stocks, from derivatives to houses, and from currencies to art prices gyrate erratically and irrationally all over the charts. The markets are helpless and profoundly dysfunctional: no one seems to know what is the "correct" price for oil, shares, housing, gold, or anything else for that matter. Disagreements between buyers and sellers regarding the "right" prices are so unbridgeable and so frequent that price volatility (as measured, for instance, by the VIX index) has increased to an all time high. Speculators have benefited from unprecedented opportunities for arbitrage. Mathematical-economic models of risk, diversification, portfolio management and insurance have proven to be useless.

Inevitably, liquidity has dried up. Entire markets vanished literally overnight: collateralized debt obligations and swaps (CDOs and CDSs), munis (municipal bonds), commercial paper, mortgage derivatives, interbank lending. Attempts by central banks to inject liquidity into a moribund system have largely floundered and proved futile.

Finally, markets have consistently failed to allocate capital efficiently and to put it to the most-profitable use. In the last decade or so, business firms (mainly in the USA) have destroyed more economic value than they have created. This net destruction of assets, both tangible and intangible, retarded wealth formation. In some respects, the West - and especially the United States - are poorer now than they were in 1988. This monumental waste of capital was a result of the policies of free and easy money adopted by the world's central banks since 2001. Easy come, easy go, I guess.

Article taken from here.

Read further AMERICA'S FORGOTTEN WAR AGAINST THE CENTRAL BANKS

Top 25 Censored Stories for 2008.

Media Accountability Day, October 1, is the annual release of the news stories that were not covered by the corporate-mainstream media in the US. The list, just announced by Project Censored at Sonoma State University in California, includes the twenty-five most important uncovered news stories of the year selected by over 200 academics.

Stories about the Iraq occupation lead the list. Unreported in the US corporate media is how over one million Iraqis have met violent deaths resulting from the 2003 US led invasion. According to a study conducted by the British polling group Opinion Research Business the human toll exceeded 900,000 as of August 2007. In addition, a United Nations Refugee Agency study found that five million Iraqis had been displaced by violence in their country.

Also ignored by mainstream media was the report of how three hundred Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans came forward in March of 2008 to recount the brutal impact of the ongoing occupations. The Winter Soldier hearings in Silver Spring, Maryland, organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, presented multiple testimonies by veterans who witnessed or participated in atrocities against Iraqis or Afghans.

Independent media reported that the United States Federal Reserve shipped $12 billion in US currency to Iraq at the beginning of the war of which at least $9 billion went missing, but this story never saw the light of day in the US mainstream.

Additionally, many anti-war activists will be surprised to learn that President Bush has signed two executive orders that would allow the US Treasury Department to seize the property of any person perceived to, directly or indirectly, pose a threat to US operations in the Middle East.

Also not reported in the US news is how the leaders of Canada, the US, and Mexico have been secretly meeting to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to form a militarized tri-national Homeland Security force and how more than 23,000 representatives of US private industry are working with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to collect information on fellow Americans.

Coverage of how massive new US-backed military funding threatens peace and democracy in Latin America and that NATO officials are considering a first strike nuclear option was also missing from the corporate press.

Unreported news also includes the stories that the Justice Department believes it is legal for the president to secretly ignore previous executive orders anytime he wants, and the FDA is complicit in allowing drug companies to make false, unsubstantiated, and misleading advertising claims.

Censored news stories also included why the No Child Left Behind program is a huge success for corporate profits, but have had little positive impact on public education. Children in juvenile detention centers in the US face conditions that involve sexual and physical abuse, and even death. And radioactive materials from nuclear weapons production sites are being dumped into public landfills, and being used as recycled metals.

Untold news includes CARE announcing last year that it was turning down $45 million in food aid from the United States government because the procedures the US demands for handling the food actually increases starvation instead of relieving it.

Rounding out the Project Censored list is the news that the guest worker program in the United States victimizes immigrant workers and creates a new form of indentured servitude and that twenty-seven million slaves exist in the world today.

Censorship is a harsh term, but the shocking fact is that the corporate-mainstream media in the US was so busy entertaining us that these and many other important news stories became lost in a news system run amuck.

click here to go to Top 25 Censored Stories for 2008
It includes:

1. No Habeas Corpus for “Any Person”
   
2. Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
   
3. AFRICOM: US Military Control of Africa’s Resources
   
4. Frenzy of Increasingly Destructive Trade Agreements
   
5. Human Traffic Builds US Embassy in Iraq
   
6. Operation FALCON Raids
   
7. Behind Blackwater Inc.
   
8. KIA: The US Neoliberal Invasion of India
   
9. Privatization of America’s Infrastructure
   
10. Vulture Funds Threaten Poor Nations’ Debt Relief
    
11. The Scam of “Reconstruction” in Afghanistan
    
12. Another Massacre in Haiti by UN Troops
    
13. Immigrant Roundups to Gain Cheap Labor for US Corporate Giants
    
14. Impunity for US War Criminals
    
15. Toxic Exposure Can Be Transmitted to Future Generations on a “Second Genetic Code”
    
16. No Hard Evidence Connecting Bin Laden to 9/11
    
17. Drinking Water Contaminated by Military and Corporations
    
18. Mexico’s Stolen Election
    
19. People’s Movement Challenges Neoliberal Agenda
    
20. Terror Act Against Animal Activists
    
21. US Seeks WTO Immunity for Illegal Farm Payments
    
22. North Invades Mexico
    
23. Feinstein’s Conflict of Interest in Iraq
    
24. Media Misquotes Threat From Iran’s President
    
25. Who Will Profit from Native Energy?
    

The Prosecution Never Rests

Charles Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi has already put away over 100 criminals. Now he has his sights set on his biggest target yet: George W. Bush

Fabled attorney Vincent Bugliosi, who successfully prosecuted 105 of 106 felony jury trials, is most famous for his prosecution of Charles Manson and “family,” which led Bugliosi to write about the Tate/ La Bianca murders in his book Helter Skelter. The book, which has sold over 7 million copies, is the best selling true-crime book in publishing history. Two of his other books, And the Sea Will Tell and Outrage, about the O.J. Simpson trial, also reached No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. This year, he published perhaps his most controversial book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, in which he lays out his case as to why the 43rd president of the United States should be brought to justice.

VCR: Can you give us the summary of the case that you make against the president in your new book?

Vincent Bugliosi: I present evidence that proves, certainly, my opinion and an opinion of many, beyond all reasonable doubt, that Bush took the nation to war in Iraq on a lie under false pretenses and therefore under the law. He’s guilty of murder for the deaths of over 4,000 young American soldiers [who] have died so far fighting his war in Iraq. I always point out that it’s his war, not your war, my war, America’s war, but George Bush’s war. We should not forget about the over 100,000 — that’s a very conservative estimate, some estimates are well estimated over a million now — innocent Iraqi men, women, children, and babies who have died horrible, violent deaths, because of George Bush’s war, although I was unable to establish jurisdiction here in America to prosecute him for these murders of the innocent Iraqis over there. But I was able to establish jurisdiction to prosecute him here in America for the deaths of the 4,000 American soldiers.

I’ve established jurisdiction to do that.

Read further the interview by David Comden 10/09/2008 here.

Watch the video : Hearing on Limits of Executive Power: Vincent Bugliosi

International Jewish network condemns Israel and Zionism

Release, IJAN, 10 October 2008

As Jews around the world observe the Jewish New Year, a new Jewish group honors the holiday by denouncing Israel and Zionism. The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) launches this week, with a month of actions and events in over eight countries and the release of its founding charter.

This growing network of Jews, with local network affiliates in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Israel, India, Morocco, Mexico and Argentina, was formed to join the struggle for justice in Palestine and the Middle East and challenge the Zionist censorship of Palestinian and other resistance to Zionism. IJAN seeks to rekindle a long Jewish tradition of participation in struggles for liberation and against exploitation and oppression.

"We intend to contribute to a growing international voice that challenges Zionism and its claim to speak on behalf of Jews worldwide; Israel and the Zionist ideology upon which it was built does not speak for us, nor does it reflect our vision of a just and safe world," says IJAN organizer Sara Kershnar. "The movement against Zionist apartheid must be as uncompromising as was the movement against South African apartheid. Anti-Zionism is part not only of the movement against racism but also the movement against war. We are convinced that we speak to a great unexpressed, in fact censored sentiment of support for this perspective, including among Jewish people."

IJAN distinguishes itself from Jewish and other peace groups that do not reject Zionism or the continuation of an exclusionary Jewish State. IJAN's charter states,

"We commit ourselves wholeheartedly to the liberation of Palestine. We commit our hearts, minds and political energy to supporting the varied and vibrant resistance movement of the Palestinian people, the solidarity of individuals and organizations in every country and to confront the injustices for which the countries we live in are responsible. We unequivocally support the Palestinian right of return. We respond wholeheartedly to the call from Palestine for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel."

The International Jewish anti-Zionist Network is an independent organization that supports the indigenous Palestinian struggle and leadership. The IJAN Charter states, "The justice we work for must be built by those throughout Palestine, including Israel, and those in Palestinian refugee camps, whose struggle for self-determination can lead to equity and freedom for all who live there and in the surrounding lands."

Note also that (taken here):

1. The terms Jews and Judaism refer respectively to a religious not racial entity, the ideology known as Zionism consists of:

• an attempt to transform this religious entity known as the Jewish people into a racial entity of people bound together only by shared national characteristics such as language common history etc. irregardless of belief in the Creator and observance of His commandments,
• Judaism, for all believing Jews denotes the system of beliefs, laws and teachings, etc. which we believe were given to our forefathers by the Creator (may His name be blessed) through Moses our teacher and other Prophets, this meaning of the word is transformed by the Zionists from a Divine revelation to a mere set of common traditions shared by a specific racial group. The above however, according to the Torah* could not be further from the truth, since according to the Torah the value of a person has no relationship with race rather with actions, example any Jew who denounces belief in the One Creator or in divine revelation through the Prophets or any of the other fundamentals of Judaism is no longer considered part of the Jewish people and loses his share in the afterlife, whereas on the contrary a non-Jew who because of belief in the Creator and his Prophets accepts upon himself to observe the basic laws which were commanded to all mankind such as the prohibitions of idol worship, stealing, murder etc. is considered from the righteous people of the world. In fact to be a faithful Jew and be faithful to ones country be it the US, Iran or any other country is no contradiction whatsoever.

2. Considering the above and the fact that the founders of Zionism were self proclaimed atheists the Zionist ideology considers the hope of the Jewish people in racial terms i.e.,, to have a state, army etc. Orthodox Jews, however, do not believe that we were exiled from our land app 2000 years ago because of military weakness rather as a result of sins which we committed while dwelling in the land, in fact we are instructed by the Creator through his Prophets not to try to remedy this exile ourselves through human means (see Talmud tractate Kesubos 111a), rather we must remain loyal citizens to the governments of the nations wherever in which we dwell. The hope of Orthodox Jews therefore is not for any such man-made redemption such as a state or army, rather our hope is for the spiritual redemption promised to us by the Creator through our Prophets and Sages which will on the contrary be a time of peace when all mankind with one heart, will come together to serve the One Creator, and in that time we will be able to serve the Creator his Holy Land. (Although throughout history, even after our exile, there have always been Jews living in the Holy Land this is no contradiction to the above since they have always lived peacefully subordinate to the ruling nation without making any attempt to create a state or army as the Zionists have done, in fact even now there are many thousands of Jews living in the Holy Land who oppose the Zionist state and even refuse to accept monetary aid from the government or participate in their elections, Rabbi Moshe Hirsch of Jerusalem regularly meets with PLO leaders to publicize that it is the will of Orthodox Jews in the Holy Land to live under Palestinian not Zionist rule).

3. Unfortunately however, through money, propaganda and therefore media control the Zionists continue to portray themselves to the world as representatives of the Jewish people. In their propaganda they also continue to use the various groups of so-called 'religious' Zionists to fool the world into believing that their occupation of the Holy Land and their injustices against the Palestinian people have a foundation in Judaism. The murders and injustices which they commit and have committed against the Palestinians therefore hurt us doubly since by carrying such things out in the name of the Jewish people through misuse of Judaism they are profaning the name of the Creator and dirtying our faith.

It is for these reasons that we see it as our duty to proclaim to the world that the true Jewish people, i.e., those true to the Creator and his Torah, the world over, oppose the Zionists and the injustices they commit falsely in the name of our people. On the contrary we oppose the Zionists and their 'state' vigorously and we are deeply disturbed by these injustices and share in the grief of those stricken, and we continue our prayers for the dismantlement of the Zionist 'state' and peace to the world.

U.S. Army prepares to invade U.S.

YOU MUST OBEY. Watch the video.

Blood For OIL

Watch this... the light side. George Bush is a GENIUS...ha.ha..

The Iraq war hits Wall Street

The Global Casino

Driving all of this is the global casino known as the derivatives markets, a market which dwarfs the world's mortgage, bond and the stock markets, combined. While mortgages, stocks and bonds are measured in the trillions of dollars, the derivatives market is measured in quadrillions, or thousands of trillions of dollars. Putting a number to the size of the derivatives market is virtually impossible, but putting a number to the value of the derivatives market is easy--zero!

Derivatives were the great financial innovation of the Greenspan era, in which casino-style bets on the price movements of currencies, bonds and stocks replaced the ownership of those items as a way to make money. The bets thus placed soon far outstripped the levels of the markets upon which they were nominally based, as derivatives became the prime source of "profit" for the financial markets. That these "profits" were entirely fictitious, a fancy form of casino-floor betting chips, was considered irrelevant as long as the market was growing and the funny money was pouring in. Last summer, however, the financial system died, sealing the doom of the derivatives game.

Today, the collapse of the derivatives market is crushing the international financial system, as the speculators fight to save the fictitious "profits" through the largest bailout attempt in history. We stress attempt, because the bailout is not working, and can not work--there isn't enough money in the world to cover all these funny-money bets, and the efforts by the central banks to print that money, is fuelling a hyperinflationary bomb which will wipe out not only the remnants of financial system, but also the governments, national economies and the means of existence for most of the world's population. Hyperinflation will destroy the value of the dollar itself, wiping out pensions, savings, bank accounts, stock portfolios, and all other monetary values, bankrupting households, businesses and governments, leaving the nation destroyed, and, effectively, no longer a nation. We have barely scratched the surface of the horrors that will come, if we continue down this path.

Text taken from Derivatives or Civilization, Take Your Pick

Economic Collapse: The Financial Death of the US Empire

The US stock market has dropped 2500 points in 9 days. Trillions of dollars in wealth disappeared as the Dow lost six years worth of growth. The Bush administration and Congress have tossed ever increasing amounts of money at failing firms, hoping to appease the economic gods, rather as the ancient Canaanites sacrificed children to Baal. But the markets refuse to be appeased, and financial contagion has circled the globe. Twelve more days like that and it hits zero.

Even before the economic crisis spiraled out of control, the US government was effectively broke. The national debt currently stands at $9.8 trillion, up $4 trillion (about 72 percent) since George W. Bush took office. With the pre-bail-out federal deficit in 2009 expected to hit a half trillion dollars, earlier this year Congress upped the debt ceiling to $10.6 trillion. But truly frightening are the many liabilities yet to come due. Uncle Sam is an extraordinary wastral and soft touch, like the person who cosigns notes for relatives, buys rounds of drinks for his friends, and promises everyone he knows that he'll take care of them.

The federal government makes loans and loan guarantees for most any purpose known to man or woman – education, energy research, housing, agricultural land, airlines, veterans, and more. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is billions of dollars short of the reserves necessary to cover expected bank losses. Washington is on the hook for generous pensions for its own workers as well as billions of dollars in guarantees of pensions for private workers whose companies fail. Then there's Medicare and Social Security, which together have an unfunded liability – that is, promised benefits exceeding expected revenues – of more than $100 trillion. No one knows where the money is going to come from to pay all of these bills, but that hasn't stopped Congress from continuing to expand benefits. In 2003 the Republican Congress and Republican president created the Medicare drug benefit without bothering to figure out how to pay for it, adding trillions of dollars more to the system's unfunded liabilities.

Now the government's liabilities are going up again, as Congress and the administration spend wildly in an attempt to revitalize the economy. Indeed, the administration and Congress apparently are prepared to bankrupt America to save American business. So far this year they have spent: $850 billion for the Wall Street bailout plus the financial "sweeteners" needed to buy enough votes for passage; $300 billion to bail out the housing industry largely through the Federal Housing Administration; $200 billion in Federal Reserve loans to commercial banks; $200 billion (and probably more) to bail out and essentially nationalize the political piggy banks Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; $144 billion or more to buy mortgage-backed securities through Fannie and Freddie (yes, the same entities being bailed out by Uncle Sam because of their past purchases of bad debt); $87 billion to repay JPMorgan Chase for financing Lehman Brothers trades; $85 billion for a loan to bail out and effectively nationalize insurer American International Group; $50 billion to guarantee money market funds; $37.8 billion in a second loan to AIG, $29 billion to finance the buyout of Bear Stearns; $25 billion in loans to the auto industry, which continues to sink as demand for cars falls; $10 billion in direct Treasury Department purchases of mortgage-backed securities; $4 billion in mortgage community grants.

That's $2 trillion.

Read more here and here.

Do Palestinians were the Descendents of original Jews?

An expert on European history at Tel Aviv University, Sand drew on extensive historical and archaeological research to support not only this claim but several more -- all equally controversial.

"It is not taught in Israeli schools but most of the early Zionist leaders, including David Ben Gurion [Israel's first prime minister], believed that the Palestinians were the descendants of the area's original Jews. They believed the Jews had later converted to Islam."

Sand attributed his colleagues' reticence to engage with him to an implicit acknowledgement by many that the whole edifice of "Jewish history" taught at Israeli universities is built like a house of cards.

The problem with the teaching of history in Israel, Sand said, dates to a decision in the 1930s to separate history into two disciplines: general history and Jewish history. Jewish history was assumed to need its own field of study because Jewish experience was considered unique.

Read further Israel's surprising best seller contradicts founding ideology by Jonathan Cook. Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.