Peace and Justice Post

By David Gibson

Religion News Service

(RNS) For years, many religious and political conservatives in the U.S. have sought to connect Islam to violence carried out by Muslims, and argued that Muslims often fail to denounce terrorism committed by Islamic extremists.

But in the wake of the horrific attacks in Norway by a right-wing extremist who identified himself as a Christian warrior against Islam, many of those American conservatives are finding themselves on the defensive, especially after some of them prematurely portrayed the terror attacks as the works of Muslims.

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The Anti-Empire Report

by William Blum, Foreign Policy Journal, July 29, 2011

An updated summary of the charming record of US foreign policy. Since the end of the Second World War, the United States of America has …

1. Attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, most of which were democratically-elected.[1]
2. Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.[2]
3. Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.[3]
4. Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.[4]
5. Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.[5]

In total: Since 1945, the United States has carried out one or more of the above actions, on one or more occasions, in the following 69 countries (more than one-third of the countries of the world):

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Paul Craig Roberts, opednews.com, July 28, 2011

This article is from the Summer 2011 issue of the Trends Journal, a publication of Gerald Celente’s Trends Research Institute. It is republished below with Mr. Celente’s permission.

As the second decade of the 21st century began, the US economy had not recovered from the Great Recession that began in December 2007.

The economy’s failure to recover was despite the largest fiscal and monetary stimulus in the country’s history. There was a $700 billion bank bailout, a $700 billion stimulus program, a couple of trillion in “quantitative easing,” that is, in debt monetization or the printing of money to finance the government’s expenditures. In addition the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet had expanded by trillions of dollars as the Fed purchased troubled mortgage bonds and derivatives in its effort to keep the financial system solvent and functioning. According to the Government Accountability Office’s audit of the Federal Reserve released by Senator Bernie Sanders, the Federal Reserve provided secret loans to US and foreign banks totaling $16.1 trillion, a sum larger than US Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

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by Eric Walberg, Dissident Voice, July 28th, 2011

The massacre in peaceful Oslo was a replay of this earlier horror in reverse – no longer the Jews as victims but as the inspiration of terror against non-Jews – as Israel extends its wars not only to Greek ports and French airports but to Norwegian children’s camps, complete with rabbinical blessings for the murderers, notes Eric Walberg

Norway is in a state of total shock after the 22 July car bombing in Oslo killing seven, followed by the shooting spree at a Labour Party youth camp on Utoya Island killing 69. This terrorist operation, the worst massacre in Norway’s recent history, represents a greater loss proportional to its five million people than 9/11 did to the US. Speaking of which, an initial report in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Guardian, et al attributed the attack to Islamists (resentful of Norway’s democracy, etc), “a terror group, Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami, or the Helpers of the Global Jihad”.

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Wernher Von Braun, a former member of the Nazi Party who used Jews imprisoned in concentration camps, captured French anti-Nazi partisans and civilians, and others to help build the V-2 rocket for Hitler’s Third Reich, is cited in an Air Force PowerPoint presentation about the morals and ethics of launching nuclear weapons. (Image: Department of the Air Force)

The United States Air Force has been training young missile officers about the morals and ethics of launching nuclear weapons by citing passages from the New Testament and commentary from a former member of the Nazi Party, according to newly released documents.

The mandatory Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare session, which includes a discussion on St. Augustine’s “Christian Just War Theory,” is led by Air Force chaplains and takes place during a missile officer’s first week in training at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

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By Kumaran Ira, wsws.org, July  29, 2011

Members of far-right parties across Europe have endorsed the mass killing last Friday carried out by a right-wing anti-Islamic extremist in Norway, Anders Breivik. At least 76 people were killed in a bombing in Oslo and at a youth camp of the social-democratic Labour Party on nearby Utoya Island.

Two prominent members of France’s neo-fascist Front National (FN), Jacques Coutela and Laurent Ozon, published blog posts defending the mass killings carried out by Breivik, a former member of the fascistic Progress Party in Norway. Prior to the killings, Breivik posted messages expressing hatred of Muslims and immigrants. He also denounced “cultural Marxism” and “multiculturalism,” as obstacles to the defence of national culture.

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• Seumas Milne, The Guardian, July 28, 2011

Anders Breivik quoted writers such as Bernard Lewis and Melanie Phillips. Photograph: Ho/AFP/Getty Images

It’s comforting, perhaps, to dismiss Anders Behring Breivik as nothing more than a psychotic loner. That was the view of the Conservative London mayor, Boris Johnson, among others. The Norwegian mass killer’s own lawyer has branded him “insane”. It has the advantage of meaning no wider conclusions need to be drawn about the social context of the atrocity.

Had he been a Muslim, as much of the western media concluded he was immediately after the terrorist bloodbath, we can be sure there would have been no such judgments – even though some jihadist attacks have undoubtedly been carried out by individuals operating alone.

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