SLC's Mayor blasts Bush for lying about Iraq

Before throngs of supporters yesterday, Salt Lake City's Mayor Rocky Anderson lambasted Bush and his entire administration over Bush's most recent admission that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and other assorted lies that were fed to Americans to drive our nation into war.

We are here to say:

We will not stand for it anymore.

No more lies.

No more pre-emptive illegal war based on false information.

No more God is on our side religious nonsense to justify this immoral, illegal war.

* * *

No more lies.

No more hiding of the truth.

We can stand the truth.

No more wars that more than triple the value of stock of Dick Cheney's prior employer Halliburton . . .

* * *

We are patriots.

We are deeply concerned.

And we demand change now.

No more gross incompetence in the office of Secretary of Defense.

No more torture of human beings.

No more disregard of the basic human rights enshrined in the geneva conventions.

* * *

We won't let down.

We won't be quiet.

We will continue to resist the lies, the deceptions, the outrages of this Bush administration and of this complacent, complicit, go along Congress.

And we will insist that peace be pursued and that as a nation we help those in need.

We must break the cycle of hatred, of intolerance, of exploitation.

We must pursue peace as vigorously as the Bush administration has pursued war.

This guy's pretty good!

This administration and anyone who was stupid or venal enough to support this war is going down the trash bin of history - where they belong.

This marks the beginning of the end for Bush and his cronies.

The Feds take on 9/11 Truth - and fail miserably

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

--Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788 - 1860)

The second stage of Truth has begun.

In the wake of growing skepticism, the U.S. government is taking the unusual step of responding to conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11, 2001, destruction of the World Trade Center.

Notice how the creeps at WorldNetDaily describe the government's response to challenges from its citizens as 'unusual', as if the government somehow exists in a vacuum, without the need to constantly legitimate itself before the eyes of its citizens. According to these bozos, those who don't believe the government's insane explanation for 9/11 don't even deserve to be acknowledged with answers.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, headquartered in Gaithersberg, Md., investigated the causes of the collapse of the twin towers. Yesterday NIST announced it had posted a "fact sheet" addressing alternative theories about the World Trade Center fires and collapse.

The government's response comes in response to accusations and suspicions of increasing numbers of Americans that the official explanation of the events of Sept. 11, 2001 – that 19 Muslim terrorists hijacked four U.S. jetliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, with a fourth being downed in rural Pennsylvania – are wrong. In fact, a shocking new Scripps Howard poll shows a third of Americans believe the U.S. government was complicit in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

This is no joke, folks. That's an astounding figure for believing - not merely negligence on the part of the government - but COMPLICITY. The emergence of this government fact sheet is a sure sign that the government FEARS us. It's a last ditch effort to appease the masses. But, a miserable one at that.

You can go through the whole tedious morass of conclusory assertions on your own. I will highlight their answers to just two very important questions to demonstrate what a disingenuous load of crap it is.

13. Why did the NIST investigation not consider reports of molten steel in the wreckage from the WTC towers?

NIST investigators and experts from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEONY)—who inspected the WTC steel at the WTC site and the salvage yards—found no evidence that would support the melting of steel in a jet-fuel ignited fire in the towers prior to collapse.

That's because they weren't looking!

NIST considered the damage to the steel structure and its fireproofing caused by the aircraft impact and the subsequent fires when the buildings were still standing since that damage was responsible for initiating the collapse of the WTC towers.

Who wrote this nonsense?!! A fifth grader? What kind of crackerjack scientist begins by assuming that which he purports to conclude?

Under certain circumstances it is conceivable for some of the steel in the wreckage to have melted after the buildings collapsed. Any molten steel in the wreckage was more likely due to the high temperature resulting from long exposure to combustion within the pile than to short exposure to fires or explosions while the buildings were standing.

Combustion within the pile? With what oxygen??? What a joke.

But, wait it gets better. Listen to what they have to say about WTC7.

14. Why is the NIST investigation of the collapse of WTC 7 (the 47-story office building that collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001, hours after the towers) taking so long to complete? Is a controlled demolition hypothesis being considered to explain the collapse?

When NIST initiated the WTC investigation, it made a decision not to hire new staff to support the investigation. After the June 2004 progress report on the WTC investigation was issued, the NIST investigation team stopped working on WTC 7 and was assigned full-time through the fall of 2005 to complete the investigation of the WTC towers. With the release and dissemination of the report on the WTC towers in October 2005, the investigation of the WTC 7 collapse resumed. Considerable progress has been made since that time, including the review of nearly 80 boxes of new documents related to WTC 7, the development of detailed technical approaches for modeling and analyzing various collapse hypotheses, and the selection of a contractor to assist NIST staff in carrying out the analyses. It is anticipated that a draft report will be released by early 2007.

SIX YEARS to conduct an investigation of an event that has so far plunged US into two wars and consumed hundreds of thousands of lives???

Then they brag about reviewing 80 boxes of documents in one year? A team of 8 lawyers in New York can devour 8o boxes in ONE WEEK.

Americans can walk on the moon and conduct stem cell research but they can't timely investigate the crime scene of the single most devastating attack on domestic soil in the history of our nation because they "made a decision not to hire new staff to support the investigation"? Whose decision was that? A banker's?

Or was it the Chief Executive who 'decided' it was more important to execute a war on a nation he concedes had NOTHING to do with 9/11? And another nation that was harboring a person who the FBI concedes it has no evidence to link to 9/11? When will the madness end?

The current NIST working collapse hypothesis for WTC 7 is described in the June 2004 Progress Report on the Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster (Volume 1, page 17, as well as Appendix L), as follows:

• An initial local failure occurred at the lower floors (below floor 13) of the building due to fire and/or debris-induced structural damage of a critical column (the initiating event) which supported a large-span floor bay with an area of about 2,000 square feet;
• Vertical progression of the initial local failure occurred up to the east penthouse, and as the large floor bays became unable to redistribute the loads, it brought down the interior structure below the east penthouse; and
• Triggered by damage due to the vertical failure, horizontal progression of the failure across the lower floors (in the region of floors 5 and 7 that were much thicker and more heavily reinforced than the rest of the floors) resulted in a disproportionate collapse of the entire structure.

This hypothesis may be supported or modified, or new hypotheses may be developed, through the course of the continuing investigation.

In other words, they're making sh*t up.

By now, our government is renowned for its world-class ineptitude. But, they really out-did themselves with this fact sheet.

The madness won't end until 'we the people' put a stop to it.

Prepare for the third stage of Truth. Unfortunately, the liars will not go down quietly.

Remember the people in the middle east

I recently came by this great article on the website of the Boston Globe that sums up a main factor of this whole mess in the middle east very nicely: The fact that the US Government completely ignores the people of the middle east while it carries out its policy in the area, especially in Iraq.

I was moved to read the cri de coeur of a young computer engineer from Bahrain, Ali Abdulemam, who observed that the Americans "talk about how they will reorganize the region in a different way, but they never talk about the people."

Indeed, in all the post-9/11 theories that have emerged from the Bush administration about the transformative power of democracy in the Middle East, the one thing that keeps getting left out is the concept of the people themselves. Indeed, the administration's quagmire in Iraq was to an unprecedented degree an intellectuals' war, based on political theory formed by men with little to no experience in the Middle East.

Touché.

The new "best and the brightest " had long felt that the United States was wasting an opportunity if it did not seize upon the defeat of the Soviet Union to bend the world to America's liking. When 9/11 came along early in President Bush's administration, they had a theory ready to fill the vacuum.

You hear the president repeatedly saying that his predecessors had mistakenly stressed stability over democracy in the Middle East, but that 9/11 had made that policy untenable. The president is not wrong to believe that democratic reform among autocratic regimes of the Middle East could lead to more open societies and fewer resentments and frustrations that turn to terrorism. But he seems to leave out the people actually involved, to forget that their version of the root causes that have to be addressed may not be the same as the administration's. The United States and Israel point to Hezbollah and Iran, for example, while most of the region's people would point to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian areas as a root cause.

Some of those President Bush chose to surround himself with had complete faith in the ability of American power to bend the world to its will, and in the idea that the American way could be imposed upon people who were just waiting for American-style democracy. It was the Cold War that formed their thinking. When the Soviet Union broke up, freeing the lands behind the Iron Curtain, the message seemed to them to be that democracy inevitably triumphs, and that those who sought accommodation with the Communists were misguided appeasers.

But the Middle East is not Eastern Europe, and, alas for this country, the Bush administration had no patience to understand the complicated interplay of ethnicities, religions, and tribal traditions of the peoples they wanted to transform. What did any of that matter? Democracy would solve everything, they said. Why bother about the people?

Sure, why bother? After all, we are the only valid form of government, and the only superpower that counts, and anyone who chooses anything else is naive and needs our education to bring them onto the right path..

/sarcasm

Thus followed what the writer Jacob Heilbrunn has called "the willful blindness of the Bush administration to Iraqi realities," which is another way of saying the Iraqi people were left out. All the administration had to do was remove Saddam Hussein, and Iraq would emerge as a true democracy, a light unto nations, transforming the region by example, as well as securing a reliable petroleum supply for the United States and, for some, ensuring the safety of Israel.

Well well, who didn't see that coming..

The Pentagon's refusal to hear any arguments to the contrary before the Iraq invasion, and the failures of the young, ideological occupiers afterward , are now famous. But even today, you hear attitudinal echoes. Bush's bewilderment that Iraqi Shi'ites could demonstrate in favor of Hezbollah is an example, as is his sad insistence that Iraqi leaders demonstrate their gratitude. The president seems not to realize that the changes he has wrought in Iraq aren't going to be to America's advantage. He doesn't seem to realize that what the Shi'ite-led government wants is an Islamic government that may not be like Iran's, but will be more so than anything the Bush administration bargained for.

When Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki came to make his puppet-like appearances before Congress, some Democrats, in a pathetic attempt to get to the right of the Republican Party on being faithful to Israel, threatened boycott because he seemed to favor Hezbollah over Israel. If you follow that logic, al-Maliki was being faulted for not being enough of a puppet.

The idea of Iraq as the laboratory in which all the neo conservative theories about transformational democracy could be proved has come unglued . Iraqis turned out not to be Poles, but then the actual people of the Middle East were never really considered.

Got anything to add? I don't.

Inside the mind of a serial killer - the Israeli kind

No matter how Israelis try to justify it, at bottom, their targeted killings amount to nothing more than state-sponsored murder.

Almost every day, Yaalon had to decide who would live or die. "Who is a 'ticking bomb' ? Can we arrest him? Who is a priority -- this guy first, or this guy first?" Yaalon recalled. Once a week, military intelligence and Shin Bet proposed new names. At first, the list was limited to bombers themselves, but several years later it expanded to those who manufacture bombs and those who plan attacks.

Soon, it included their neighbors, their neighbors' kids, the neighborhood dogs, and anything else that lived and breathed and happened to come in contact with the target, for however brief a time, or for whatever reason.

"I called it 'cutting weeds.' I knew their names by heart," Yaalon said. How many did he kill? "Oh, hundreds, hundreds. I knew them. I had all the details with their pictures, maps, intelligence, on the table. Where does he live? What is his routine? Is he married? How many children did he have? If he had lots ofkids, it crossed my mind." It was hard to fathom, Yaalon said: "It became a routine to look into their eyes in the photo. In certain cases it's unbelievable -- he looks so naive, a young guy looks nice, a baby face, especially a 16-year-old suicide bomber. It's beyond imagination."

The man is f*cking serial killer. A sociopath. And this WaPo journalist writes about his murders like the man is MacGyver. How utterly sick and twisted.

Reisner, the legal expert, was often consulted at the meetings, which he described as "very, very trying. Especially when I said it's okay. I'd go back to my office and ask my deputy, 'Do you agree?' It's a frightening process to be involved in, sitting in a room and talking about killing someone. It's enough to make your skin crawl."

He's so unsure about the 'hit' that he looks to his deputy for affirmation??? And what impartial body reviews this process? Or is it just one long extra-judicial process, utterly devoid of review?

When the prime minister approves a target -- a requirement that can take months -- the name is transferred from the Notebook to a shortlist typed on a laminated card. Commanders carry the card in their pockets, along with bus passes and keys. Each target is assigned a file, with instructions on when and where he can be killed. Specialists mark up maps -- green lines for open roads where killings minimize civilian risk, red lines for congested areas to be avoided, Yaalon said. An operation can take 200 people, thousands of man hours, and cost $1 million, Halutz said.

How ridiculous - the practice is frought with possibilities for mistake and abuse - not to mention the obvious fact that such a kangaroo operation simply cannot yield "legitimate" targets. What if there's a typo? Or if someone tacks another's name on the list that shouldn't be there? Who will know the difference? The target will.

When a target is hit, Reisner said, the feeling is "complicated."

Not for Avi Dichter. "After each success, the only thought is, 'Okay, who's next?' We really have a bottleneck," the former Shin Bet chief said. One time they completed a killing at 5:30 a.m. "I said, 'What are we going to do for the rest of the day?' Nothing limits Hamas attacks, except terrorists still prefer their heads attached to their shoulders. If the M-16 delivers the message, the F-16 delivers it better."

How efficient and hard working Israelis are - they have too much time on their hands so they look for more Palestinians to kill. And the more devastating their strike, the more effective they believe their message is.

Pure unmitigated terror - part and parcel of the racist and apartheid state of Israel. It's only a matter of time before Americans make their 'hit list' - in record numbers.

El Salvador kicks Israel in the shins, heads for Tel Aviv

For years, Israel relied on two little countries to prop up the illusion that Jerusalem was their undivided capital. But, last week Costa Rica and today El Salvador have run for the hills and the most symbolic land grab in the history of the world remains no more than a pathetic delusion propped up by a brutal military occupation.

Down a cramped alleyway, inside an unremarkable apartment building in a neighborhood that once separated Jerusalem's Jewish west from its Arab east, sits the Embassy of El Salvador, the last ambassadorial holdout in Israel's long struggle to secure global acceptance of this disputed holy city as its capital.

And now El Salvador is leaving. On Friday, El Salvador officially notified Israel's Foreign Office that its embassy would be packing off for Tel Aviv. Once it does, no country that has diplomatic relations with Israel will have an ambassador in Jerusalem.

El Salvador said it had decided to make the 40-mile trip to Tel Aviv after ''analyzing with Israel the current situation in the Middle East,'' especially in light of the recent U.N. Security Council resolution coordinating a cease-fire in neighboring Lebanon, "which seeks to promote security and greater stability.''

El Salvador, a Foreign Ministry statement said, ''recognizes and guarantees the right of the state of Israel to live in peace within secure and internationally recognized borders.'' But, it added, "equally, the government of El Salvador repeats its recognition of the right of a Palestinian state to exist.''

But, some Israelis remain unperterbed. After all, by definition, delusions need not be believed by those not afflicted by it.

''United Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel and the Jewish people, and nothing can change our firm stand on this subject,'' she said.

The struggle over Jerusalem's diplomatic status began in earnest in 1980, when Israel passed a law declaring Jerusalem its eternal, indivisible capital. A U.N. Security Council resolution insisted that embassies leave the city to protest the unilateralism of determining the city's fate ahead of negotiating Israel's final borders.

About a dozen countries then moved their embassies to Tel Aviv, including the Netherlands, Venezuela, Chile and Haiti. But El Salvador and Costa Rica held out, and Israeli hopes were bolstered by a 1996 vote in the U.S. Congress that gave the White House a May 1999 deadline to set up an embassy in Jerusalem.

Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush signed waivers delaying the controversial move, however, and now the last Jerusalem embassies are gone.

Jerusalem Post political correspondent Gil Hoffman said the larger significance of the change of diplomatic venue was, "It's another thing Israel lost in the war; this wouldn't have happened if it weren't for the war" with Hezbollah.

Oh well. Another grand illusion bites the dust. Looking forward to the next.

'Lebanon will be rebuilt before New Orleans is'

The folks at Brasscheck predict that Hizbullah, the so-called 'terrorist' organization will rebuild Lebanon before the Federal government coughs up the relief funds to rebuild New Orleans.

Instead of sending help to the tens of thousands of poor people who were stranded in the city after the federal levees collapsed, the government spread propaganda.

"There's rioting... there's looting...the city is too dangerous to bringsupplies to..."

The Truth:

At the Convention Center, 19,000 people were searched for weapons. A total of thirteen were found.

At the Super Dome, 39,000 were searched for weapons. Fifty were found.

Lebanon will be rebuilt before New Orleans is.

[Amy Goodman at Democracy Now talks about the travesty - mp3, real player]

No one can find the federally funded evacuation plan. It was paid for, but apparently never produced. People who had real expertise were ignored.

The company that was hired to prepare the plan: major contributors to the Republican Party.

Don't think for a minute it was an overwhelming natural force that killed 1,158 Americans in New Orleans.

As this material documents, it was willful negligence.

Were this a country that followed the rule of law, it would be called criminal negligence and the people responsible would be on their way to jail.

The story of corruption is so incredible, even I'm amazed.

I'm not. With this band of criminals in office, nothing amazes me anymore.

Asking the Federal government to rebuild New Orleans is like asking vampires to donate blood.

Open Letter to George W. Bush

This interesting advertisement was placed on the last page of today's issue of the egyptian independant daily newspaper "Al Masry Al Youm". We all know that GWB claims to be at war with "Islamofascists", which nixes his credibility by the way, because Fascism and Islam, even extreme Islam have nothing to do with each other anyway.
The following text was written between an array of pictures showing the destruction wrecked by the IDF in Lebanon, and a lot of dead people, women and children:

"Open letter to the honourable President
GEORGE W. BUSH
President of the United States of America

Mr President.. We agree with you, and with all the peoples of the world on your rejection of fascism.
But we believe that by looking at the pictures that show the catastrophe of the victims of the Israeli invasion, especially the women and children of Lebanon, we can see that there is a misunderstanding on WHO DESERVES TO BE ACCUSED OF FASCISM

With deepest respect,
Mohammed Abdul Mohsin AlKharafi & Sons Group"

(This advertisement was also published in the New York Times, the Herald Tribune and the British Times. Many other American, French, German and British newspapers refused to publish it..)

close your eyes little boy

A hospital employee closes the eyes of a dead boy, killed in a shooting, at a hospital in Baqouba, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad,Iraq, Saturday Aug. 26, 2006.

You left us with your eyes wide open, asking why you must pay for our oil with your blood.

The world has forsaken you.

But you can close your eyes and rest assured, retribution is in God's hands.

Israeli Minister: No aid for Arab towns in the North

Brought to you by Haaretz:

Environment Minister Gideon Ezra claimed Sunday that Arab towns "acted normally during the war" and therefore there is no reason for them to receive aid intended for the north.

Oh, I thought it was the North that was being targeted by Hezbollah rockets? And that people were evacuated into refugee camps according to their ethnic origin (Top notch "Jewish" camps and dirty "Arab" sad-excuse-of-bunker basements). But forget about all that.. It's plausible to "act normally" in such a situation as those rockets only inflicted minor damage, and had a lower probability of killing you than you winning the lottery jackpot..

"A distinction must be made, and we must make sure that Arab towns don't get all of the money from the Education Ministry program," Ezra said at a cabinet meeting, during which Education Minister Yuli Tamir unveiled a plan for rehabilitating the north.

"I couldn't believe that a minister in Israel would dare say such a thing regarding Israeli citizens," Tamir said.

Well it's time to believe it..

At the meeting, Tamir presented the plan for rehabilitating the education system in the north, which includes a longer school day and expanding the meal plan. Some 440,000 students in the north would enjoy the benefits of the plan.

The plan, which costs NIS 600 million, is part of a reform plan that Tamir presented to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before the war. After the war, the plan was restricted to the north.

The Education Ministry is trying to raise money from private funds in order to implement the plan, but most of the money has not yet been raised.

The cabinet is to vote on the plan at the next cabinet meeting, though it is unclear if it will be approved.

Saying that there will be no aid due to a shortage in funds (which will never happen any time soon as long as Israel is standing on the US's shoulders and living off its tax money) is one thing, but denying Arab-Israeli citizens their right to a better education for no legitimate reason is another.

‘Iran is NO threat to Israel or any nation’

Of course, you'll never hear this quote on FOX news or MSNBC.

[Ahmadinejad] said the Islamic republic isn't a "threat" to any nation, including Israel, as he opened a heavy-water production plant that is part of the country's nuclear program.

Iran's nuclear ambitions are "at the service of peace and justice," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the Iranian Students News Agency, at the opening of the Arak plant, which will produce heavy water used in nuclear reactors.

[Don't believe he said it? Find out for yourself. Contact the reporter on this story - Ladane Nasseri in Tehran (lnasseri@bloomberg.net). Presumably, he/she either heard it first hand or spoke with people who did.]

You will, however, keep hearing the oft-repeated distortion about 'wiping Israel off the map,' which some contend was merely a figurative suggestion for a political end to the apartheid Zionist state, and others insist was an outright lie - a manipulative English distortion of what Ahmadenijad said in Persian.

The U.S. and some European countries suspect Iran of seeking to build a nuclear weapon. The Islamic republic, which has the world's second-largest crude oil reserves, says it only wants nuclear energy.

Iran doesn't recognize Israel and Ahmadinejad has called for the nation to be "wiped off the map" or relocated elsewhere.

See! There it is again.

Repeat a lie often enough...

Repeat a lie often enough . . .

Americans are free.

Americans are free.

Americans are free.

"What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence?

It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoasts, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army. These are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties, without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle.

Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of ALL men, in ALL lands, EVERYWHERE.

Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage, and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them.

Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises."

- Abraham Lincoln

They hate us for our freedoms.

They hate us for our freedoms.

They hate us for our freedoms.

Diet Coke. Designer tags. MTV.

What afflicts the people of the United States in these days, that they have developed the capacity not only to tolerate, but even to cherish, the blatant lies and hypocrisies, the injustices, the evasions, and of course the invasions perpetrated by George W Bush and his neo-conservative cabal?

How can even conservatives themselves stomach this internationalist, interventionist, activist-court-packing, states'-rights-suppressing cat's-paw of the transnational culture of control that is the only heartfelt homeland of the corporate elite?

* * *

Let us not put too fine a point upon it: we are in danger of reverting to fascism.

We live in a democracy.

We live in a democracy.

We live in a democracy.

Fascism is a disease endemic in our species, a periodic fever whose tremors induce a psychosocial orgasm in its sufferers, tantalizing them with physical delusions of both security and power.

The greatest nation on earth.

The greatest nation on earth.

The greatest nation on earth.

[I]t is fascism's capacity to make a nuanced oppression seem both nurturing and empowering that makes it so dangerous. It is this nuance of fascism - more than the Big Lie techniques and the brute force fascists also employ - that makes the Bush/Cheney administration and its police and propaganda mechanisms a true threat to humanity in general and to the United States - formerly respected as an icon of liberty - specifically.

The fundamental appeal of fascism to the everyday person is threefold. It consists of:

1. The promise of security. Fascists typically posit threats, external and internal, that are easily identified but difficult to fight, and then promise to protect you from them - if only you will give them absolute power to do so.

We will protect you.

We will protect you.

We will protect you.

Air Force. Navy. Army. Marines.

Social security. Health insurance. Car insurance. Life insurance.


2. Relief from uncertainty. It is no accident that Orwell had his dictator characterize himself as Big Brother. The fascist relieves you of the responsibility to make difficult decisions. You simply follow orders - given, of course, by Big Brother.

Mutual Funds.

Pension Funds.

Hedge Funds.


3. A share of strength. Most insidious, Big Brother will let you exercise power over others - as long as you exercise Big Brother's power Big Brother's way.

Make money, live large.

Make money, live large.

Make money, live large.

This last is the stroke of genius. The fascist enlists the sufferers of fascism themselves as petty dictators over those who have been designated as "below" them. And we the people are all too often eager to enlist.

Convince a slave that he is free and he will never resist.

Promise him a piece of the pie and he may gladly do your bidding.

Either way, the little green bill with the pyramid on back constitutes the chains of bondage to which Lincoln alluded and against which he warned.

Americans will never be free until we rid ourselves of our decrepit, corrupt dollar and the men who control it.




__________________
Thanks, LanceThruster

'US recession will be nasty and deep'

The United States is headed for a recession that will be "much nastier, deeper and more protracted" than the 2001 recession, says Nouriel Roubini, president of Roubini Global Economics.

Writing on his blog Wednesday, Roubini repeated his call that the U.S. would be in recession in 2007, arguing that the collapse of housing would bring down the rest of the economy.

Roubini wrote after the National Association of Realtors reported Wednesday that sales of existing homes fell 4.1% in July, while inventories soared to a 13-year high and prices flattened out on a year-over-year basis.

"This is the biggest housing slump in the last four or five decades: every housing indicator is in free fall, including now housing prices," Roubini said.

The decline in investment in the housing sector will exceed the drop in investment when the Nasdaq collapsed in 2000 and 2001, he said.

And the impact of the bursting of the bubble will affect every household in America, not just the few people who owned significant shares in technology companies during the dot-com boom, he said. Prices are falling even in the Midwest, which never experienced a bubble, "a scary signal" of how much pain the drop in household wealth could cause.

Roubini is a professor of economics at New York University and was a senior economist in the White House and the Treasury Department in the late 1990s. His firm focuses largely on global macroeconomics.

While many economists share Roubini's concerns about imbalances in the global economy and in the U.S. housing sector, he stands nearly alone in predicting a recession next year.

Fed watcher Tim Duy called Roubini the "the current archetypical Eeyore," responding to a comment Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher made last week in referring to economic pessimists as "Eeyores," after Winnie the Pooh's grumpy friend.

"By itself this slump is enough to trigger a U.S. recession: its effects on real residential investment, wealth and consumption, and employment will be more severe than the tech bust that triggered the 2001 recession," Roubini said.

Housing has accounted, directly and indirectly, for about 30% of employment growth during this expansion, including employment in retail and in manufacturing producing consumer goods, he said.

In the past year, consumers spent about $200 billion of the money they pulled out of their home equity, he estimated. Already, sales of consumer durables such as cars and furniture have weakened.

"As the housing sector slumps, the job and income and wage losses in housing will percolate throughout the economy," Roubini said.

Consumers also face high energy prices, higher interest rates, stagnant wages, negative savings and high debt levels, he noted.

"This is the tipping point for the U.S. consumer and the effects will be ugly," he said.

It's not all bad.

The upside is that when practically everybody in America defaults on their loans at once, there's no way on earth that creditors can go after everyone. It'll be cheaper to press RESTART and start from scratch.

Either that, or press the red button for self-explode.

MP forced to resign for suggesting dialog w/ Hizbullah

The recent flap over a Liberal MP's suggestion that Canada should be encouraging a dialogue with Hezbollah is very unfortunate.

The rationale that one should never talk to a militant group is flawed and part of the verbal arsenal of the neo-con assault on common sense.

No one can dispute that Hezbollah is part and parcel of the 1.4 million Lebanese in southern Lebanon and its formation is the direct result of the political aspirations of the Lebanese Shia.

If we want to discourage a group from pursuing its political goals through violence, what better way than talking to it about its political goals. By not talking, the only avenue left open for grassroots political aspirations is violence.

Britain talked to the Irish Republican Army, Russia talks to the Chechens and even Israel has had several negotiations with Hezbollah. Even the Bill Clinton administration negotiated with Al Qaeda types in Bosnia. Russia does talk to Hezbollah, and can be used as an intermediary.

Refusing to talk to a genuine, though sometimes violent, political group is forcing it to further violence. How else do we deal with them? Kill them all, or hope they will be intimidated? That is playing directly into the neo-con view of the world.

And for a Canadian MP to have to resign a post over suggesting dialogue, is indeed a sad day for Canada.

Excellent point.

But, then how would Lockheed Martin and others like them make obscene profits if everytime a conflict erupted we talked?

How to Brainwash a Nation

How did we get here?

How did we get to a place where a president can blatantly lie us into a war - and get away with it?

How did we get to a place where crooks can wrap themselves in the flag and rob the country blind - and no one challenges them?

How did we get to a place where a country once known for innovation and generosity can degenerate into a front of corruption and mindless viciousness - and life goes on as if normal?

We've been "worked on" for decades...

There has always been propaganda and persuasion, but nowhere has the art of skillful lying been developed to the art form it's become under the corporation-controlled United States.

“What my father understood about groups is that they are manipulable and malleable. And that you can tap into their deepest desires or their deepest fears and use that to your own purposes.”

--Daughter of Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew and the architect of modern day PR.

Joseph Goebbels was his biggest fan.

In this seven-minute excerpt from "The Century of the Self" a four hour film series by Adam Curtis, you'll get a quick lesson about how sophisticated the mass brainwashing of the American people has been and how long it's been going on.

And it goes on because we let it go on.

Now, more than ever it's time to wake up America! We've been brainwashed! Throw your tv in the trash. Turn away from the billboards. Ignore the ads. You have a choice. Exercise it.

Don't work for a scumbag so you can buy things you don't need, or live in a house you never see, or let your children be raised by snake oil salesmen.

This is the most important struggle on earth - the struggle between truth and lies. Your mind is the prize. Whatever you do, don't let someone else control it.


__________________________
Thanks, Brasscheck

Dubya’s new hit album

Toward the end of the clip, Stewart introduces Dubya's new hit album - "The Many Moods of George W. Bush" featuring confusion, condescension, annoyance, jocular bullying, and pure schizo - Hilarious!

Earlier in the clip, Bush admits that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. What a twit.



__________________________
Thanks, Propaganga Matrix

New images of ‘Ground Zero’ leave no doubt it was an inside job

Check them out and tell me they don't destroy any shadow of a doubt left in your mind that 9/11 was an inside job.

The ‘War President’s’ latest fiasco

While Bush and his bozos are busy 'spreading democracy' at the barrel of a gun, others - like Eric Margolis at Lew Rockwell.com - diligently demonstrate the awesome power and influence of the greatest democracy on earth - THE INTERNET.

With skill and precision, Margolis rips our self-declared 'War President' a new one over his track record for overseeing one unmitigated disaster after another.

President George W. Bush likes to call himself "the war president" and strike martial poses against patriotic backdrops, a trick he learned from another president who never saw military action, Ronald Reagan.

In spite of Iraq and other foreign policy misadventures, and failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks, polls show that when it comes to national security many Americans still regard the Bush Administration with approval and trust.

Their confidence is not well placed. To date, the "war president" was asleep on guard duty on 9/11, involved the US in four lost wars, and has stirred up a hornet’s nest of anti-American hatred around the globe.

Defeat I: Five years after Bush ordered Afghanistan invaded and proclaimed "total victory" there, US and allied forces are struggling to defend their bases and supply lines against rising attacks from a growing number of Afghan resistance groups. The war costs $1.5 billion monthly. US-ruled Afghan now produces over 80% of the world’s heroin. The US just quietly deployed thousands more troops to Afghanistan to hunt al-Qaida leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in a desperate attempt to save Republicans from heavy losses in November mid-term elections.

Defeat II: Remember "Mission accomplished!" in Iraq? President Bush’s war in Iraq is clearly lost, but few dare admit it. The US has spent $300 billion on Afghanistan and Iraq, with nothing to show there but chaos, civil war, body bags, and growing Iranian influence in Iraq and western Afghanistan. The Bush/Cheney "liberation" of Iraq has now cost more than the Vietnam War. So much for the "cakewalk." Iraq is likely the biggest American foreign policy disaster in living memory – even worse, in many ways, than Vietnam.

Defeat III: Off in the strategic Horn of Africa, another dangerous fiasco is unfolding. The White House had CIA and Pentagon spend tens of millions bribing Somali warlords to fight Islamist reformers trying to bring law and order to their strife-ravaged nation. The Islamists whipped CIA-backed warlords and ran them out of Somalia. Following this defeat, the US has encouraged and financed ally Ethiopia – shades of Lebanon – to invade Somalia, thus raising the threat of a wider war between Somalia, Ethiopia, and its old foe, Eritrea. Meanwhile, growing numbers of US Special Forces and CIA teams are getting drawn into obscure tribal mêlées in the Horn of Africa and the Saharan regions.

Defeat IV: Lebanon is, of course, the fourth major American military disaster. Bush and Cheney encouraged Israel to launch the hugely destructive but militarily fruitless war in Lebanon as the first part of their long-nurtured plan to militarily crush Hezbullah, Syria and Iran. The Bush Administration brazenly thwarted world efforts to halt the conflict while giving Israel the green light to tear apart Lebanon. Now, just over a month later, Bush announces he will send $230 million to "help rebuild" Lebanon – the same Lebanon blasted apart by US smart bombs rushed by air to Israel.

To Washington and London’s shock and awe, Hezbullah, Iran, and Syria emerged the war’s victors. Hezbullah is now the Muslim World’s new hero after battling Israel’s mighty armed forces to a humiliating draw. Even Syria’s President Bashar Asad, who played dead during the Lebanon War in fear of an Israeli attack, is now thumping his chest and crowing that Syria played a major role in the unexpected Arab victory.

Hezbullah’s triumph thwarted, at least for the moment, Bush/Cheney plans to attack Lebanon, Syria and Iran. The US and Israel have become so used to smashing nearly helpless foes armed with obsolete weapons – like Iraq, Taliban, or Palestine – that they were stunned to meet a force that had modern arms and could actually fight.

No sooner had bombing stopped than Hezbullah bulldozers were busy clearing rubble, and Hezbullah social workers resettling refugees. Perhaps President Bush should ask Hezbullah to take over rebuilding New Orleans and resettling all its refugees.

Hezbullah’s big brother, Iran, has also emerged from the Lebanon War with its political, moral and even military stature greatly enhanced. America’s Arab vassals – Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt – were left badly shaken by Hezbullah’s victory and Iran’s surging influence which was already giving them nightmares well before Lebanon.

Israelis have now turned from fighting Arabs to furious finger-pointing. Politicians and generals are blaming each other for the Lebanon debacle that killed 118 Israeli soldiers and 41 civilians, cost at least $6 billion, ruined the summer tourist trade, and, after a burst of initial sympathy, brought worldwide condemnation. And no captured soldiers – this war’s supposed objective – have been yet returned.

Still, a swap of Israeli for Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners remains likely, as this column predicted at war’s beginning. The killing of 1,000 Lebanese civilians, a million Lebanese made refugees, and billions of dollars of wanton destruction, could all have been avoided.

By turning a routine border skirmish into a big war, Israel’s PM Ehud Olmert showed he had no more grasp of military affairs than those other amateur warlords, Bush, Cheney and Tony Blair. Lebanon also showed that the western leaders learned nothing from their debacle in Iraq.

Now, some Washington hawks are wondering if invading Iran may not be the "cakewalk" that pro-Israel neoconservatives promise. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards helped train and arm Hezbullah’s victorious fighters. Suddenly, neither the Israelis nor the Americans look so invincible. As Napoleon said, in war, the moral is to the physical as three to one.

America was the big loser in the Lebanon war. From Morocco to Indonesia, each night 1.5 billion Muslims watched the carnage in Lebanon on TV and blamed America. Even the poorest shepherd in Uzbekistan heard the US was airlifting the precision bombs and deadly cluster munitions to Israel used against Lebanese civilians.

Any hope of damping down the Islamic World’s surging hatred of the US, Britain, Australia and Israel (now add Canada) was killed in Lebanon. Even the interestingly-timed airport hysteria in London over alleged bomb plots failed to divert attention from the latest US-British Mideast policy disaster.

Yet the White House still keeps listening to absurd military advice from the same neoconservatives thirsting for conquest, oil and Muslim blood. Undaunted even by the fiasco in Lebanon, the Bush/Cheney White House is now heading into a full-blown crisis with Iran over its nuclear enrichment program.

Call this the "guns of August." All the pieces are still in place for a bigger war. Israel will keep violating the Lebanon cease-fire and attempting to assassinate its new nemesis, Hezbullah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. Bush’s pre-November surprise remains to be unveiled. Iran is gearing up for war. Even Hezbullah may still have a few tricks up its sleeve.

The self-declared "war president" could yet have a few more defeats in store for the nation.

‘Americans have a disease worse than AIDS’

Well, maybe not us. But, the people in office certainly do. And it's destroying our lives and the lives of our children.

Mikhail Gorbachev is generally regarded as the man who broke down the “iron curtain” that separated the communist world from the West and thawed the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Now, 15 years after a coup removed him from power and the Soviet Union dissolved, he has some stern words for the United States, whose relationship with Russia has soured lately.

“We have made some mistakes,” he said, referring to recent attacks on Russia’s democracy. “So what! Please don’t put even more obstacles in our way. Do you really think you are smarter than we are?”

The former general secretary of the Soviet Union Communist Party accused Americans of arrogance and trying to impose their way of life on other nations.

“Americans have a severe disease —- worse than AIDS. It’s called the winner’s complex,” he said. “You want an American-style democracy here. That will not work.”

I would venture to say that it's terminal, if it's not surgically removed - and fast.

The current administration and our incumbent Congress not only wants to rule the world - but they actually think that they can. Meanwhile, ordinary Americans are being driven off a cliff by these delusional madmen.

The former Soviet leader had severe criticism for two of the most important people in the Bush administration: Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. “They are just hawks protecting the interests of the military — shallow people,” he said.

He's too kind. My own impression is that they are driven by pure, unmitigated evil.

“Hitler” eatery opens with fanfare in Bombay

I admit that it's rather insensitive to name your restaurant "Hitler's Cross." And I certainly wouldn't do it myself. But, the fact that someone did - and thinks nothing of it - is evidence that the "Holocaust's" influence on the world is waning.

Unfortunately, Israel's defiant and murderous rampage over the last few months has taken its toll on the world's sensitivity to the history of Jewish suffering.

When a restaurant called "Hitler's Cross" opened four days ago in a Bombay suburb, the city's small Jewish community was outraged, but there were few other objections.

Owner Puneet Sablok insisted then and still does that the name and theme of his new eatery is only meant to attract attention, with its posters of Adolf Hitler and swastikas.

"There is no intention to hurt anyone," Sablok said of his spacious restaurant, which serves pastries, pizza and salad in Navi Mumbai, a northern suburb of Bombay, which is also known as Mumbai.

Holocaust awareness in India is limited. Hitler is regarded by many as just another historical figure. The swastika, reviled in many parts of the world, is also an ancient Hindu symbol and displayed all over to bring luck.

There are just 5,500 Jews in India, and all but 1,000 live in Bombay.

"It's really made people very upset that a person responsible for the massacre of 6 million Jews can be glorified," Elijah Jacob, one of the community's leaders, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Those objecting to the restaurant plan to ask the local government to force a name change, said Daniel Zonshine, Israel's consul general in Bombay.

"Instead of Hitler's name being an example of extreme evil, this is like giving legitimacy to Hitler. It's not right to advertise his name in public," Zonshine said.

But while India is ordinarily sensitive to causing religious offense it recently took action to bar "The Da Vinci Code" movie and cartoon drawings of the prophet Muhammad at least one local leader said the name Hitler didn't bother him.

"People are unnecessarily making this into an issue," said Sudhir Jadhav, a local ruling party leader. "We have no plans to protest outside the restaurant or ask him to change the name."

Diners at Hitler's Cross also had no objections.

"Hitler was a bad man, but what's wrong with having food here?" said Ashwini Phadnis, 22, a microbiology student as she ate a piece of chocolate cake.

Engineering student Anand Dhillon sat with friends, sipping soft drinks. "I think the name is quite interesting. Tomorrow if someone keeps a name like 'Saddam Mutton Shop' or 'George Bush Footwear,' there's nothing wrong with that, is there?" he asked.

That's what you get when you mercilessly beat a dead horse for commercial gain - others flock to milk the cash cow.

The funny thing is - or rather the tragedy for unsuspecting Jews who are not to blame for the flagrant commercialization of Jewish history - Jews cannot claim trademark rights in Hitler's name. This could turn into a worldwide phenomenon and they would be powerless to stop it.

neocons are running late with their agenda

Anybody notice that August 22nd - the day neocons had slated for the Iranian-induced Apocalypse - came and went without incident.

They're off schedule. They're going to have to work double time to make this up.

Israel is full of sh*t - literally

And you thought it was just figuratively.

According to a report that examines how effective economic sanctions and divestment might be in forcing Israel to end its occupation of Palestine . . .

Israel is the “biggest exporter of fertilizers, polished diamonds and industrial oils. It exports 57% of the total world exports of fertilizers, 34% of the total exports of polished diamonds, 26% of the total exports of industrial oils and 12% of the total weapons sales.”

Why am I not surprised? They really are full of sh*t!

And that's not all.

Since 2002, Israel has become a LENDING market. Foreign aid from places such as the United States and Germany has given Israel “a powerful base of foreign currency which strengthened its economy.” Since 1996, Israel has steadily increased its Central Bank reserves initiated by a 9 billion dollar grant from the United States under the Clinton Administration in a move designed to stabilize the Israeli economy.

That's 9 BILLION DOLLARS - a GRANT - the kind you need NOT pay back.

For the record, the governments of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana had to BORROW - at interest - most of the money the federal government made available to them after Katrina AND they were forced to sign a loan agreement that included an unprecedented provision that FOREVER bars loan forgiveness - under ANY circumstance.

Don't believe me? Here's Dubya talking to Matt Lauer about it.

[Matt Lauer:] there was recently a loan package approved by Congress, a billion dollars in emergency loans for the states hardest hit by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. That's the good news. Some Democrats complain that there was wording taken out of that loan package, a forgiveness clause that has traditionally been included in loan packages in the past. And they're wondering why these three states were singled out. Would you ask Congress to go back into that legislation and reinstate the forgiveness clause?

THE PRESIDENT: I think Congress - what Congress said is that the previous loans were limited to a relatively small amount of money. These loans are much greater loans. And that what Congress has said is you'll have five years to repay, plus an additional five years to repay. And so I think it's a kind of package that Congress was comfortable with giving and I was happy to sign it.

Get it? One billion dollars loaned to our own states is so much money that they have to pay it back, while 9 billion dollars handed - as a gift - to Israel is well deserved. Or, so the logic goes.

Anyway, the report on Israel concludes that a boycott would not work.

In the event of an effective sanctions and divestment campaign, Israel is better positioned and protected from the effects for a longer period of time due to the size of these reserves.

* * *

[In fact,] Israel has also, surprisingly, gained revenue from the increase in humanitarian assistance to the Occupied Palestinian Territories since the signing of the Oslo Accords. Israel has imposed TAXES and TARIFFS on these funds and has BENEFITED GREATLY from this financial arrangement.

Jaw drops to the ground.

Israel, according [to] the AIC report, was the 10th largest arms exporter in the world. In 2001, Israel sold a variety of military systems to over 57 countries in the world. Israel is the 4th biggest arms dealer to developing countries.

Though many Arab countries have boycotted Israel for decades, countries such as Saudi Arabia will be forced to drop their boycott as a condition of joining the World Trade Organization.

Just goes to show that all the so-called opposition Israel gets from the UN is nothing but smoke and mirrors. When it comes to meat and potatoes, the UN always stands by Israel.

On the flip side, there is hope that some economic sanctions might work . . .

Though South Africa had a wealth of natural resources which lessened the economic impact of the sanctions against it, Israel’s economy relies on the import of raw materials to drive its economy. Raw materials, energy resources and unpolished diamonds made up the majority of Israel’s imports. Israel is the 8th largest per capita exporter in the world and 10th biggest per capita importer in the world.

This works against them if countries decide to stop exporting raw materials to Israel. But, generally, the US supports Israel so heavily that any significant initiative must include support from the US.

The US funds Israel at a rate of close to $3 billion per annum. In 2004, the US gave $2.64 billion to Israel. The AIC report also shows that the costs of the occupation surpass the amount of foreign aid which Israel receives. Israel has also confiscated foreign currency sent to the Palestinians.

'Oh, but Israel is so good. Israel is so fair. Israel is so honest.' What a crock of sh*t.

Even Israel's so-called 'mainstream peace movement' "supported the construction of the Separation Wall and the bombing of Lebanon."

Let's face it. Israel is a paranoid schizophrenic pariah state and the sooner the US pulls the plug on it, the better. Let them fend for themselves, or play nice with their neighbors.

War Crimes - the case against Israel

AMNESTY International has accused Israel of war crimes, saying it broke international law by deliberately destroying Lebanon's civilian infrastructure during its war with Hezbollah guerrillas.

The human rights organisation said the pattern and scope of the Israeli attacks, the high number of civilian casualties, widespread damage and statements by Israeli officials "indicate that such destruction was deliberate and part of a military strategy, rather than 'collateral damage'."

Amnesty, whose delegates monitored the fighting, said Israel violated international laws banning direct attacks on civilians and barring indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks.

"The scale of the destruction was just extraordinary," said Amnesty researcher Donatella Rovera, who visited Lebanon during the war and co-authored the report.

"There is clear evidence of disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks."

The group urged the United Nations to look into whether both combatants, Israel and Hezbollah, broke international law.

What's there to look into? Anyone with eyes can see that Israel is guilty of war crimes.

Even Dan Gillerman, Israel's Ambassador to the UN, admits that Israel used disproportionate force.

Is Hizbullah also guilty? Possibly, though I doubt it. The statement seems calculated more to deflect accusations of bias than to impart a suggestion of guilt.

And Amnesty is not alone.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey at Pravda outlines the case against Israel in detail:

The State of Israel is hereby accused of committing War Crimes in the conflict with Hezbollah IN Lebanon (July 12th to August 12th 2006). We present and document four counts where the Geneva Convention has been seriously breached.

Presenting an article of this type involves running a gauntlet of death threats and hacking attacks, which appear on cue normally two to three days after the document is published. However, this is not an opinion article, neither is it an unwarranted attack borne through hatred. It is objective and it is fact: The case against Israel.

THE LAW

IV, Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12th August 1949, Part I General Provisions, Article 3 states:

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: (a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

Article 10: The provisions of the present Convention constitute no obstacle to the humanitarian activities which the International Committee of the Red Cross or any other impartial humanitarian organization may, subject to the consent of the Parties to the conflict concerned, undertake for the protection of civilian persons and for their relief.

Part II. General Protection of Populations Against Certain Consequences of War

Article 18: Civilian hospitals organized to give care to the wounded and sick, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict.

Article 24: The Parties to the conflict shall take the necessary measures to ensure that children under fifteen, who are orphaned or are separated from their families as a result of the war, are not left to their own resources, and that their maintenance, the exercise of their religion and their education are facilitated in all circumstances. Their education shall, as far as possible, be entrusted to persons of a similar cultural tradition.

THE CASE

Count 1: Breach of Part I, Art. 3.1 (a)

In attacking civilians indiscriminately by deploying munitions against their homes, by strafing civilian vehicles and by deploying cluster bombs near hospitals, the Israeli Armed Forces did not provide humane treatment for persons not taking part in hostilities. The purposeful deployment of munitions against civilian structures, the most blatant of which was the attack on the Beirut power station, constituting an act of environmental terrorism, occasioned violence to life and person and acts of murder.

Count 2: Breach of Part I, Art. 10

Humanitarian agencies were not free to circulate because the IDF refused to respect humanitarian corridors, apart from which munitions were deployed against hospitals and even ambulances and funerals were fired on.

Count 3: Breach of Part II, Art. 18

Deploying cluster munitions against hospitals is in flagrant violation of this article

Count 4: Breach of Part II, Art. 24

Not only were no measures taken, the children in question were slaughtered in their homes.

* * *

As we all know, presenting legal cases in this day and age against certain states is an academic exercise because the execution of the law is made under the current New World Order by those who break it. (cf. Case of Slobodan Milosevic, illegally kidnapped and detained before his death under illegal custody after the proper provisions to guarantee his health were disregarded). In short, international law has been hijacked by a clique of criminal states who use and abuse international norms as they wish, the epitome of the unilateralist approach.

He convinced me. What do you think?

the world avoids Israel like the plague

Israel has established itself as the premier international leper state - no longer in Arab eyes only.

The recent Locarno Film Festival dropped Israel as the co-sponsor of one of the programs because of the retaliatory bombing against Hizbullah targets in Lebanon. Lebanese and other Arabs filmmakers protested Israel's participation in the Swiss event. Israel was listed as a co-sponsoring the Leopards of Tomorrow program.

Organizers of the Edinburgh International Film Festival have also cancelled Israeli Embassy sponsorship of their program and returned the Israeli check following a protest. The Edinburgh branches of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Stop the War Coalition had planned to picket all major film festival events if the link with Israel had been maintained.

And earlier this month, in a perhaps less insulting, but more politically significant move, Costa Rica moved its embassy back to Tel-Aviv from Jerusalem.

Tisk, tisk. Their house of illegitimate cards built on Arab blood falls apart before their eyes.

When this whole thing started in Lebanon last month, I predicted it was the beginning of the end for Israel. Was I right, or what?

Now's the time, if you're an uncommitted Zionist, to bail out while you still can.

Darkies who speak Arabic can no longer fly

If you're dark and you speak Arabic, or something that sounds like Arabic, you might as well rent-a-car because you can forget about mass transit.

British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny - refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they feared were terrorists were forcibly removed.

The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150 passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic.

Passengers told cabin crew they feared for their safety and demanded police action. Some stormed off the Monarch Airlines Airbus A320 minutes before it was due to leave the Costa del Sol at 3am. Others waiting for Flight ZB 613 in the departure lounge refused to board it.

Also, under no circumstance can you sport a beard and no one guarantees that you won't be pulled over while driving.

Essentially, if you're Muslim and you're male, you are either willingly emasculated and deprived of your culture, or you are a threat and eventually eliminated.

But, never forget that they hate us for our freedoms.



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Thanks, Propaganda Matrix

Who benefits from kidnapping journalists in Gaza?

"We call on the kidnappers to free the hostages because this kind of behavior does not serve the interests of the Palestinian people." --Palestinian Minister of Interior

The wife of one of the two hostages arrived in the Palestinian territories from New Zealand and pled for their release.

New Zealand?

The prime minister of New Zealand angrily denounced Israel and imposed diplomatic sanctions on it after two suspected Mossad agents were jailed for six months for trying on false grounds to obtain a New Zealand passport.

The plot, which involved obtaining a passport in the name of a tetraplegic man who had not spoken in years, provoked a furious reaction yesterday.

"The breach of New Zealand laws and sovereignty by agents of the Israeli government has seriously strained our relationship with Israel," said the prime minister, Helen Clark.

For an even more impressive reason to get back at New Zealand, listen carefully to this amazing audio clip of a July 22nd New Zealand rally in protest of Israeli aggression in Palestine and Lebanon, where the speaker chastises the Israeli government "for using the same Gestapo tactics as the Nazis did."

Now, back to the future . . .

The journalists they have kidnapped like living in this area. They have covered news in the Palestinian territories for several years. They also understand the situation of the Palestinian people. The people here need them because they convey the story of Palestinian suffering to the world."

But, alas - they can't do that while they're held hostage.

So, let's try that again. Who benefits from kidnapping journalists in Gaza?

they don't give a f*ck about us

Sums it up rather pointedly.

And don't for a second think that you're different.

'British' night vision goggles found in Hezbollah command bunkers

Doesn't get any more convenient than that!

Sun Aug 20, 6:55PM ET | LONDON (AFP) - Night vision goggles that were apparently made in Britain were found in the Shiite militia Hezbollah's command bunkers in southern Lebanon by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), a spokesman for the Foreign Office told AFP.

"The Israeli Defence Forces, we understand, have found some equipment in southern Lebanon that they think is British-made," the spokesman said.

"We are, obviously, working with them to ascertain whether it was British-made and if so, who it was manufactured by, and who it was sold to."

He said that only night-vision goggles had been found, and that the IDF had a discussion about the issue with the Foreign Office on Friday.

According to The Times in an early edition of its Monday newspaper, the Israeli government filed a formal protest to Britain after it was revealed Britain had sold 250 night-vision systems to Iran in 2003 to battle drug smuggling.

The newspaper also said the equipment bore the stamp: "Made in Britain".

Someone MIGHT think that 'israel' is making a case for war......nahhhhh. Not the zionists. Maybe there IS something to what Mel Gibson said after all.

'israel' invites the Holy Roman Empire to protect it....again

Israel objects to some peacekeepers in Lebanon
But as France balks, Olmert suggests that Italy lead peacekeeping effort

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday that countries that don’t have diplomatic relations with the Jewish state should not participate in an international peacekeeping force and suggested Italy take the lead in policing a truce along the Lebanese border, his office said.

I can think of no crueler or more bitter irony than to purposefully choose the very nation that oversaw the destruction of Jerusalem 1,936 years ago. It is truly inconceivable that such a circumstance could exist but that's what the man said.

the most disturbing military footage I've seen

Perhaps the most disturbing military footage I've seen to date.

Regardless of whether the victims were farmers or 'insurgents' as the comments suggest, NEVER forget that this is their country - not ours - and if foreigners came to invade the US, Americans would be doing exactly the same as these Iraqi citizens, who were 'smoked' by our soldiers, not in self-defense, but pre-emptively.

The Iraqis were unarmed. Our soldiers could have easily wounded and incapacitated them, but instead they obliterated them into smithereens.

America's descent into second civil war begins

Whether this incident is genuine, or just another bogus attempt to conceal a personal vendetta, the stage is being set for a second civil war in America.

The homes of twenty five residents of a predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Clarksville, Maryland were smashed up and covered with anti-Jewish graffiti, local newspapers are reporting today.

Police say that cars had windows broken and tired slashed, houses were spraypainted with anti-Jewish slogans and swastikas, and mailboxes were knocked off their posts at more than two dozen residences in River Hill subdivision of Clarksville.

A $500 reward has been issued for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators.

The attack follows similar violence in other areas of Maryland, where blacks and other non-whites have been targeted by "Nazi" activists.

The story is posted on a white supremacist site. But, notice the reference to a 'predominately' Jewish neighborhood as opposed to an exclusively Jewish neighborhood. And there is no indication that all 25 houses vandalized were Jewish homes. Maybe it's not what it's made out to look like.

No other information is available. But, the award has been upped to $5000. And the report coincides with an earlier article about an increase in anti-semitic sentiment - particularly in the southwest.

Lizards, Antisemitism, and Free Speech

Whether or not you believe David Icke's less than likely theory about eight foot lizards ruling the world, this documentary is worth seeing - if only for the astounding scene, towards the end, where some of his staunchest critics, upon failing to discredit him before his fans through legitimate means, conspire to humiliate him using lemon meringue.

If anything, through their callous micro-conspiracy, they demonstrate that Icke's theory about cold-blooded monsters conspiring to rule the world is not so far-fetched, after all.

And no, I'm not convinced that he's anti-semitic. He seems genuine, friendly and down to earth in this clip.

Why Lebanon? Why Now?

Who's behind the war in Lebanon? Wayne Madsen calls it a US proxy war but a caller insists that Israel calls the shots.

Very important clip - a MUST see.

lady liberty or goddess of darkness?

I always wondered where she got that crazy outfit.

Israeli soldiers - trigger-happy roving madmen

August 11, the Israeli army and Border Police brutally prevented Bil’in’s weekly non-violent demonstration, by firing rubber bullets and sound grenades on protestors as they marched through the village on their way to the Apartheid wall. Fourteen people from Bil’in, Israelis and internationals, have been injured, including an Israeli, Lymar, in critical condition who was shot on neck and just above his right ear with 3 rubber bullets at close range. He has had surgery at Tel Hashomer hospital to remove a rubber bullet that was lodged in his skull. Currently he is in a medical induced coma in moderate but stable condition, but has sustained brain damaged of unknown severity.

Another demonstrator from Denmark, Rina, has suffered a fracture in her skull and brain contusion after a soldier beat her with the butt of his gun. She is currently hospitalized in Hebron, West Bank and is conscious but unable to walk. She was also beaten on her legs and sustained minor injuries.

Unrivaled arrogance. Unmitigated brutality.

Watch the clip - seeing is believing.

Israel imports 99 percent of its crude oil

To my knowledge, Israel does not produce any oil at all. From whom does Israel import its oil?

A: Israel produces only a few thousand barrels a month itself, so 99 percent of its crude oil is imported. Most of it comes from Russia and the "-stans," and a little from Egypt. Azerbaijan, a landlockd Caspian Sea country, provides about 20 percent of Israel's oil. That may increase with use of the new Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, built to get oil from the Caspian Sea area to the Mediterranean Sea.

I guess that means "No War for Oil" is now synonymous with 'No war for Israel."

WaPo editor rebukes reporter for stating obvious

Reporters can no longer repeat what's already been widely disseminated by military analysts - provided it's not favorable to you know who.

The executive editor of the Washington Post, Leonard Downie Jr., has rebuked one of his Pulitzer-Prize winning reporters for suggesting on television that Israel was purposely leaving Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon "because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations."

* * *

The reporter in question, Thomas Ricks, is the author of a new book, "Fiasco," sharply critical of the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq.

On the August 6 episode of CNN's Reliable Sources, Mr. Ricks said that "one of the things that is going on, according to some U.S. military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon."

When CNN's Howard Kurtz asked if Mr. Ricks was "suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of its firepower, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here," Mr. Ricks agreed that he had heard that from "military analysts."

"I have made clear to Tom Ricks that he should not have made those statements," Mr. Downie wrote to Mr. Koch.

Mr. Koch compared Mr. Ricks's statements to the "the age-old blood libel."

Mr. Ricks told The New York Sun, "The comments were accurate: that I said I had been told this by people. I wish I hadn't said them, and I intend from now on to keep my mouth shut about it."

Reporters can't think for themselves. They can't speak for themselves. They can't act for themselves. Exactly what kind of freedom is this?

Aaron Russo Unplugged

"We have to change things in this country 'cause we're being suffocated. We're being [squashed]. People can't survive anymore. They can't live."

In short, they're depopulating America.

And it's not just America that they're depopulating.

Don't flatter yourselves by thinking they need us. Sure, they need some of us. But, they don't need as many slaves as currently exist on this earth. Remember, they've got technology.

No passports, No tickets, No bombs - BIG News

"Big arrests, big charges, big headlines and every government
abuse magically becomes justified, but here are the post-headline numbers you don't see:

------------

Of all British Muslims who have been arrested on terror charges...

Only 12% are actually charged with any crime...

Of all those are arrested, only 2% are convicted of anything...

And nearly all on minor offenses that have nothing to do with
terrorism.

------------

Politically motivated arrests of innocent people, designed
for maximum media impact to terrorize YOU.

That's what the "War on Terror" is all about.

In less than five years, these scary stories have cost
Americans $430 BILLION - not including the over $300 BILLION
spent on the Iraq War - and not to mention the loss of our
Bill of Rights protections.

How serious was the "liquid bomb" threat?

Here's a clip of some overly ambitious TV journalists who
let the cat out of the bag before the story "solifified."

Someone must have slapped the reporters back into place
after this clip aired because the line of inquiry they
opened was never continued."

Thanks, Brasscheck TV

Israel's army chief dumped stock hrs before launching war

Israel's current army chief, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, came under deep pressure to resign because of revelations he found time to call his broker and sell off his stocks to avoid wartime losses hours before launching Israel's largest military operation since 1982.

Hmmm. Ring a bell?

Below notice director Niv Harizman was with Alex. Brown (BT for Bankers Trust): This is the firm that executed the "puts" prior to the September 11 attack that took positions the stocks of American Airlines, United Airlines, Boeing, some brokerage houses, and several reinsurance companies (some inter-locked) including AXA Assurance, Swiss Re and Munich Re would plunge ... as if portending fore-knowledge.

Back to the future . . .

[H]is stock transactions [were] called insensitive and arrogant.

Halutz has acknowledged selling about $28,000 worth of stocks at noon on July 12, three hours after the Hezbollah raid that touched off the war.

Politicians and military commanders called for Halutz' resignation.

"This is something that makes you wonder if there is some very problematic chemistry with this person. How, in the middle of everything, could you suddenly think about your bank account? It doesn't make sense to me," dovish politician Ran Cohen, who is a reserve colonel in the paratroopers, told Israel's Channel 10 TV.

When money is all that matters, you can do just about anything . . .

Halutz expressed no regret over the sale, saying he has finances to manage like any other Israeli. "They've turned me into Shylock," he told the Yediot Ahronot daily, referring to Shakespeare's despised Jewish "Merchant of Venice."

. . . without regret.