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by Michel Chossudovsky |
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Global Research, October 17, 2007 |
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” We got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously….” (George W. Bush, 17 October 2007) Grin and Laugh: “Here’s his expression while saying the words “World War Three” (Huffington Post, 17 October 2007)
We are not living a sound and rational World where far-reaching decisions by the US President are based on an understanding of their likely consequences. A World War III is no longer a hypothetical scenario. During the Cold War, the concept of “mutual assured destruction” (MAD) was put forth. An understanding of the devastating consequences of nuclear war largely contributed to avoiding the outbreak of war between the US and the Soviet Union. Today, in the post-Cold war era, no such understanding prevails. The specter of a nuclear holocaust, which haunted the world for half a century has been relegated to the status of “collateral damage”. US foreign policy under the NeoCons is based on a diabolical and criminal agenda. The “war on terrorism” is a lie; Iran does not constitute a threat to global security as confirmed by a recent IAEA report, Iran does not constitute a threat to Israel. The US president is a liar, who believes his own lies. |
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Archive for October, 2007
Bush’s World War Three
October 18, 2007
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The hermetic imprisonment of 1.5 million human beings
October 18, 2007|
The 41st kilometer: Gaza, “A Zoo”
by Amira Hass |
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Global Research, October 15, 2007 |
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Haaretz |
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During the past four months, Israel has permitted about 2,000 people to leave the Gaza Strip – a minority of them were ill; more than half were Fatah senior activists or loyalists who were fleeing from the Strip; and the rest were individuals holding dual citizenship or visas for prolonged stays abroad. For the sake of comparison: In 1999, 1,400 people a day went through the Rafah crossing point alone, in addition to the thousands who passed though the Erez crossing point, despite the permanent closure policy. Now, 1.5 million human beings are living with the knowledge that the length of their world is at most 41 kilometers long and 12 kilometers wide. A zoo. This is one of the ways that Palestinians describe the conditions under which nearly 1.5 million of them have been living: in an area of some 360 square kilometers, closed in on three sides by sophisticated barbed-wire fences, concrete walls and military lookout towers, and to the west by Israeli navy ships that seal them off from the sea. Overhead, in the sky, unmanned aircraft and hot air balloons continually photograph whatever happens inside this closed cage, which has seven gates connecting it to the world, all of which are sealed off almost hermetically.
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Email this article to a friendBlackwater: Mercenaries by Definition
October 18, 2007Progressive Daily Beacon
A. Alexander, October 16th, 2007
Erik Prince, founder of the Blackwater mercenaries, has been a huge financial supporter of George W. Bush and the Republican Party. That might explain why Mister Bush’s State Department worked with Prince’s people to try and cover up the latest Blackwater slaughter of civilians in Iraq, and could be a big part of the reason why so many Republicans came to the chief mercenary’s defense during Congressional hearings. His fondness for and belief in all things Republican probably answers too, Erik Prince’s problem with honesty.
Blackwater’s Mister Prince has a problem with people calling his mercenaries well … err … mercenaries. He appeared on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” a onetime news program-turned Blackwater infomercial, and said with a straight face, “You know the definition of a mercenary is a professional soldier that works in the pay of a foreign army. I’m an American working for America.”
A US peace rabbit that is likely to fail
October 18, 2007
The Daily Star, October 16, 2007
By Rami G. Khouri
What does it mean when US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says it is time to establish a Palestinian state within a year, for the sake of Palestinian, Israeli and US national interests, and that, “We are not going to tire until I have given my last ounce of energy and my last moment in office” to working for a two-state solution?
There is an unreal yet intriguing quality to America’s newfound enthusiasm for an instant Palestinian state. That is a welcomed goal – if it is sincere. Rice’s first big problem is that few people in the Middle East believe the United States is sincere, because every aspect of Washington’s policies during the past seven years has flatly contradicted everything President George W. Bush and Rice have stated rhetorically about their commitment to creating a Palestinian state.
They seem not to realize that they are now finally paying the price for years of disdain and neglect of Palestinian and Arab rights, in favor of supporting Israeli positions. The US haughtily gambled on getting away with nice words that gravely contradict its destructive policies on the ground. Consequently, most in the Middle East no longer believe the US, respect its policies, or fear its power. Anyone who cares to live in the real world can observe this in the defiant behavior of Iran, Syria, Turkey, Hizbullah, Hamas and many other states or popular mass movements that probably comprise 75 percent of the people of this region.
Iraqi Writer Butheina Al-Nasiri on American Killings in Iraq
October 17, 2007urkunet.info, October 16,2007
Butheina Al-Nasiri
Buthaina Al-Nasiri is a well-known and prolific Iraqi writer and journalist living in Cairo. In response to my last article (on American killings in Iraq), she offers these thoughts on the wholesale slaughter of Iraqis by American forces, and on the routine and deceptive mis-identification of those killed (males) as “members of Al Qaeda”:
You may remember that the Iraqi resistance has called by the US spinners by different names at different stages of invasion and occupation:
1. First they were “dead enders” and “Saddam’s hunchmen,” etc. That was before arresting Saddam Hussein.
2. Next they were called insurgents, after the puppet government was installed . Insurgency means revolting against a legal, recognized government.
3. At last they are being called Al Qaeda terrorists. Every anti-occupation group is now referred to as Al Qaeda. Every man killed by the troops is an Al Qaeda leader.
Of course, calling the Iraqi resistance Al Qaeda fits well with the permanent “war on terror”. Bush can now have his “legal” justification for the war on Iraq: it is part of his war on terror.
The recent slaughter of innocents is not the first. It has become a pattern.
The US army is becoming more dependant on air strikes–massive airstrikes on civilians–as part of an intimidation campaign.
Last week, they slaughtered from the air a large group of men and children who gathered one Ramadan (the Fasting month in Islam) evening to play a traditional game which needs two groups of men sitting facing each other. A ring is hidden in the hand of a member of one group, the others in the facing group have to guess where the ring is hidden. Usually this game attracts bystanders .
The US Army said, of course, that they had killed Al Qaeda terrorists.
Before that, men , women and children were sleeping on the roof of a house , which is an Iraqi habit in summer. They were airstruck and accused of being Al Qaeda terrorists. Of course, there were other slughters of wedding gatherings, of funeral gatherings. Any gathering is hit from the air.
When women and children are killed, the US army announces that he regrets but it is the fault of the terrorists who hide behind civilians.
Listen to the Troops
October 17, 2007The Nation, October 17, 2007
When will we listen to the troops? I’m not talking about soldiers used as props for a George Bush photo op, telling reporters what Washington wants to hear. The military is disciplined and thus accustomed, from Gen. David Petraeus on down, to toeing the official line. But the Iraq war has also produced brilliant messages of dissent from the ranks that should cause us to stop in our tracks and reconsider what we have wrought. First, a group of sergeants came forward, and on Tuesday it was the captains’ turn to speak out.
In “The War as We Saw It,” an eloquent Op-Ed article published in the New York Times in August, seven sergeants summarized the futility of their fifteen months of fighting in Iraq: “To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is farfetched.” After penning that crie de cour, two of the soldiers died in Iraq and a third was severely wounded.
Gabriel Kolko: ‘Many in the US Military Think Bush and Cheney Are Out of Control’
October 17, 2007Source: Spiegel International, October 15, 2007
In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, the Amsterdam-based military historian Gabriel Kolko talks about the prospect of war with Iran and argues that many in the US military now view the White House as being ‘out of control.’
DPA
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad watches a military parade in Tehran, Iran, in September 2007. Tension between Tehran and Washington has been rising.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Kolko, editorials in US papers like the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard and the National Review are pushing for military action against Iran. How does the leadership in the US military view such a conflict? Gabriel Kolko: The American military is stretched to the limit. They are losing both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Everything is being sacrificed for these wars: money, equipment in Asia, American military power globally, etc. Where and how can they fight yet another? The Pentagon is short of money for procurement, and that is what so many people in the military bureaucracy live for. The situation will be far worse in the event of a war with Iran.
NIST Admits Total Collapse Of Twin Towers Unexplainable
October 17, 2007Source: rinf.com
Implicitly acknowledges controlled demolition only means by which towers could have fallen at free fall speed
The National Institute for Standards and Technology has been forced to admit that the total free-fall collapse of the twin towers cannot be explained after an exhaustive scientific study, implicitly acknowledging that controlled demolition is the only means by which the buildings could have come down.
In a recent letter (PDF link) to 9/11 victim’s family representatives Bill Doyle and Bob McIlvaine, NIST states, “We are unable to provide a full explanation of the total collapse.”
A 10,000 page scientific study only offers theories as to how the “collapse initiation” proceeded and fails to address how it was possible for part of a WTC structure to fall through the path of most resistance at freefall speed, completely violating the accepted laws of physics.
In addition, NIST’s own studies confirmed that virtually none of the steel in either tower reached temperatures hotter than 500 degrees. The point at which steel weakens is 1000 degrees and melting point is reached at 1,500 degrees, according to NIST itself.
“NIST’S 10,000-page report purports to explain what it calls “collapse initiation” — the loss of several floors’ vertical support,” writes Kevin Barrett of Scholars for 9/11 Truth. “In order to dream up this preposterous scenario, NIST had to ignore its own tests that showed that virtually none of the steel got hotter than 500 degrees f. It had to claim that somehow the planes took out many core columns, despite the fact that only a direct hit by an engine would have been likely to do so, and that the chances of this happening even once are fairly low. It had to preposterously allege that the plane that nicked the corner of the South Tower took out more core columns than the one that hit the North Tower almost dead center. It had to tweak all the parameters till they screamed bloody murder and say that the steel was far weaker than it actually was, the fire was far hotter than it actually was, the sagging was far greater than it actually was, and so on. And so NIST hallucinated a computer-generated fantasy scenario for “collapse initiation”–the failure of a few floors.”
“But how do you get from the failure of a few floors to total collapse at free-fall speed of the entire structure? The short answer: You don’t. Anyone with the slightest grasp of the laws of physics understands that even if all of the vertical supports on a few floors somehow failed catastrophically at exactly the same moment–a virtually impossible event, but one necessary to explain why the Towers would come straight down rather than toppling sideways–the top part of the building could not fall THROUGH the still-intact, highly robust lower part of the building, straight through the path of most resistance, just as fast as it would have fallen through thin air.”
“Thus total free-fall collapse, even given NIST’s ridiculous “initiation” scenario, is utterly impossible. The probability of it happening is exactly equal to the probability of the whole building suddenly falling upward and landing on the moon,” concludes Barrett.
NIST have yet to properly address the sudden freefall collapse of WTC Building 7, which imploded on the late afternoon of 9/11 despite not being hit by a jetliner.
In August 2006, NIST promised to scientifically evaluate whether explosive devices could have contributed to the 47-story building’s collapse but no answers have been forthcoming.
In August of this year, James Quintiere, Ph.D., former Chief of the Fire Science Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, called for an independent inquiry into NIST’s investigation of the collapse of the twin towers.
Quintiere said NIST’s conclusions were “questionable”, that they failed to follow standard scientific procedures and that their failure to address Building 7 belied the fact that the investigation was incomplete.
The Iraqi Genocide
October 17, 2007Source: Information Clearing House
By Paul Craig Roberts
10/16/07 “ICH” — – -Why has not the Turkish parliament given tit for tat and passed a resolution condemning the Iraqi Genocide?
As a result of Bush’s invasion of Iraq, more than one million Iraqis have died, and several millions are displaced persons. The Iraqi death toll and the millions of uprooted Iraqis match the Armenian deaths and deportations. If one is a genocide, so is the other.
It is true that most of the Iraqi deaths have resulted from Iraqis killing one another. But it was Bush’s destruction of the secular Iraqi state that unleashed the sectarian strife.
Moreover, American troops in Iraq have killed more civilians than insurgents. The US military in Iraq has fallen for every bit of disinformation fed to it by Al Qaeda personnel posing as “informants” and by Sunnis setting up Shi’ites and Shi’ites setting up Sunnis. As a result, American bombs and missiles have blown up weddings, funerals, kids playing soccer, and people shopping in bazaars and sleeping in their homes.
The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby
October 16, 2007Counterpunch, October 16, 2007
Follow the Leader
BY PAUL FINDLEY
There is an open secret in Washington. I learned it well during my 22-year tenure as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. All members swear to serve the interests of the United States, but there is an unwritten and overwhelming exception: The interests of one small foreign country almost always trump U.S. interests. That nation of course is Israel.
Both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue give priority to Israel over America. Those on Capitol Hill are pre-primed to roar approval for Israeli actions whether right or wrong, instead of at least fussing first and then caving. The White House sometimes puts up a modest and ineffective show of resistance before it follows Israel’s lead.
In 2002, President Bush publicly ordered Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon to end a bloody, destructive rampage through the Palestinian West Bank. He wilted just as publicly when he received curt word from Sharon that Israeli troops would not withdraw and would continue their military operations. A few days later President Bush invited Sharon to the White House where he saluted him as a “man of peace.”
Peace and Justice Post 