How Judeo-Christianity Killed America

The Unacceptable Cost of Judeo-Christianity, Its Legacy of Pain

By Charles E. Carlson
October 05, 2009
We Hold These Truths

This paper explores how Christian Zionism is co-opted by a foreign lobby, AIPAC, and used to carry out Israeli objectives.  AIPAC and its powers were well documented in 1994, in One Nation under Israel by Andrew J Hurley, and published by We Hold These Truths. (2)

Southern Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell (died in 2007) may have been the first leader to recognize the potential for linking dispensational Christianity with Zionism and harness its combined power into a political movement with loyalty to the state of Israel as its primary and passionate mission. In the early 1980s, Falwell called his fledgling army “The Moral Majority.”  It was later referred to as the “Christian Right.”  Today the millions of people who have made the present state of Israel the centerpiece of their Christian religion have been given the name “Christian Zionists.” (3)

We Hold These Truths prefers to describe both the Christian Zionist leaders and their misled followers as “Judeo-Christians,” a broadly accepted term, to reflect the fact that the religion they are following is no longer traditional Christianity, but one into which Judaism was injected, producing a radically altered hybrid.

Essential facts about Christian Zionism

First: It must be understood what Judeo-Christianity  (also called “evangelicalism,” dispensationalism, or Christians Zionism) is: by any name, a 20th Century phenomena, an apostate-cult, meaning it practices, in part, a deviant path of following Christ, and it relies upon many varied human sources other than the traditional bible(s) for its theology.(4)(5)

Second: Judeo-Christianity ascribes holiness to a foreign political state, Israel, as though it was itself a god.  It placed political Israel on the throne along side of Jesus Christ, and, in so doing, its teachers ignore, if not annul, much of Jesus’ teachings. (1) (2) (3)

Third: Rank and file churchgoers and many lesser known Judeo-Christian pastors think of themselves as moral, even when they are actively contributing to immoral acts, such as supporting mass military assassinations in Gaza and the West Bank.  They do not consider these acts immoral because they believe events are ordained, or even demanded, by God.

Anger against Christian Zionists is misplaced, because they, too, are victims of their own acts.  They probably bring more suffering upon themselves and their families than any other middle class group.  Judeo-Christians parents rarely opposing any war that Israel favors, so it is quite likely more serve, and therefore more are killed in military combat, than for instance the sons of agnostics or other religious groups. We have yet to find reliable data to support this argument so it is offered strictly as this author’s observation and opinion based on many talks with parents and youths at churches where we have conducted vigils.

Finally, Judeo-Christianity is much larger than generally believed and is active in every state and community in the USA. The new CNN.com six-hour television feature, God’s Warriors, hosted by CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour, [married to James Rubin, former Assistant Secretary of State and spokesman for the US State Department,] stated in the introductory segment:

“A recent poll found that 59 percent of American evangelicals believe Israel is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.  She also asserted:  “The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimates 85 million evangelicals believes God tells them to support Israel — more than six times the world’s Jewish population.”

Several Pew Foundation polls have supported this statement over the last four years, and in fact may suggest higher percentages than used by CNN. (6)

For these several reasons Judeo-Christianity can easily be used by its leader, and by the leaders of Israel, to carry out a political agenda that favors that foreign political state over and ahead of the interests of America, and ahead of the interest of any humans in the USA or any other country except Israel.  For the most part followers of the cult do not know they are being used. Without this understanding many are confused between Judeo-Christian religion and its political agenda.  Pro-Israel activists, including John Hagee, should rightly be registered as agents for a foreign government, so open are their objectives.,Some of our allies against serial wars attribute them to Israel, working through its agents and lobbies for the purpose of gaining US dollar support and creating chaos in the Middle East for its own benefit.

Much is finally being exposed about the powerful Israeli lobby led by The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).  AIPAC’S agenda that calls for the USA to finance and bless its occupation of its neighbors, and eventually control the oil of the Middle East,  tactics that are contrary to American interests.

Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have written a powerful paper, The Israel Lobby, which tells us Israel has too much influence in US Foreign Policy.  Their paper has led to a soon to be released and much anticipated book that is making giant waves across the world even before it is printed, as Israel seeks to prevent its promotion. (7.Rapture ready video)

We Hold These Truths sees hope.   Educate the laymen within our own churches, especially mainline churches, can break Israel’s power-hold over our politicians, and it can restore others to follow Christ instead of Israel. More important, we see no other way to do it!

Without the voting support of church Israel’s well-established desire to see Iraq destroyed and its oil divided up resulted in the first gulf war in 1991 and the present contemplated devastation of Iran is nearly unstoppable.  AIPAC and many American businessmen have profit interests in war and campaigned for new wars as a matter of business, but it is the Judeo-Christians who have provided the grassroots clout to keep the War On Islam churning.*

The Dollar Cost of killing:

The occupation of Iraq paralyzed the oil production from the 2nd largest oil resource in the world. Before the occupation it did not cost $50 to fill the family car.  Before the occupation Christian Zionist children and grandchildren could afford milk at a cost per gallon less than diesel fuel, and truck drivers could afford both milk and fuel.  Before “wars” on Iraq, American industry was healthy and had not yet been shipped to China.

Our economic catastrophe is real, lead by the real estate and mortgage bubble. Why?  Because of the cost of a war is over $500 thousand million dollars, and most of the money has been printed, so it will have to be repaid in higher prices later on.  This judgment is like a foul smelling vapor that cannot be put back in the bottle.  I use the word “catastrophe” where others talk of “crisis” because crisis can sometimes be avoided and often leads to practical solutions. Not so with our “catastrophe.” We have passed the crisis stage years ago when we began serial wars for economic purposes, printing the money to pay for them.

There is no end to the amount of price inflation we can expect, food prices will surely be the next to skyrocket on our shopping list for reasons to be explained in our next issue.  Judeo-Christians as a group are most responsible for our dollar dilution because it is they that supported the wars for which all these dollars were wasted on killing people.

Christian Zionist leaders like Gary Bauer, John Hagee and Pat Robertson are not the only ones who believe the Christian Zionist vote controls the USA.  Politician Tom Delay who was an ardent supporter of every war against Islam, recently was quoted as saying at John Hagee’s Night to Honor Israel in Washington DC, that he not only “believes in the Rapture, I live for it” Too bad Delay left the world in such a mess just before his anticipated departure.(8)

Israel lobby harness Judeo-Christianity

Every politician in Congress and those competing for the presidency know George W. Bush became president because he and Carl Rove found a way to identify Bush with the Christian Right, but to get this blessing one must also be Israel blessed.   Even today 70% of Republicans support Bush and his war in Iraq because what is left of the Republican Party is predominantly Judeo-Christian.

The relationship between the Christian-Zionists leaders and AIPAC is simple and straightforward.  AIPAC pressures Congressmen in Washington to give Israel what it wants; the Christian-Zionist celebrities brainwash the laymen in hometowns to pressure the Congressmen at the polls, and the Congressman takes a junket to Israel and complies.  Congress is in the vice between the strongest lobby in Washington and the biggest lobbying voting block in the country.  Why would they listen to you or me?

Christians are deceived by Zionism

Misguided Christians have been used to fight and support war from the 11th Century Crusades to Iraq.  The names have changed but the message has not.  A Pope who called himself Urban II is said to have told the bishop and earls who were to lead the First Crusaders it was up to them to rid the Holy Land of infidels so “Jesus could return there.”  They passed this message on to the peasants who suffered and died for this false cause for the better part of 200 years. The result was the feudal system in Europe.

Judeo-Christianity, like Pope Urban II, teaches we all must honor Israel ahead of America, and even rebuild a temple there before Jesus will come.  The story has hardly changed in a thousand years.  Never mind the fact that Jesus did not seem to say anything like this. Urban II did not share his private economic dreams with the peasants, but he did tell the leaders of the Crusade that the purpose of holy wars was for the loot, and the Crusaders proved to be expert looters.

The leaders of the Christina Zionists, Hagee, Robertson, and a hundred more are the knights and barons at the head of the Crusades’ columns. Their loot comes in the mail and from credit card contributions from the peasant’s foot soldiers.

Human cost to the Judeo-Christian families

Church-going Americans are not only going in debt for war, they supply their sons and daughters to be killed and maimed in the contest.  Celebrity Zionists beat the drums for war that Israel wants, but I have not heard of Hagee’s or Farwell’s son enlisting, or any of the congressmen’s children.  The scorched foot soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan include a disproportionately large number of Judeo-Christians, who we believe, often enlist because mom and dad raised him in the Judeo-Christian church where volunteering is considered noble, even today after Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.  Their youths are taught that if we honor Israel we earn blessings for America from God.  It is these young men who pay with shattered bodies and broken minds for the free junkets to Israel taken by a reported 80 Congressmen in August 2007.

“Where are you going, Young Fellow My Lad,
On this glittering morn of May?”
“I’m going to join the Colors, Dad,
They’re looking for men, they say.”
“But you’re only a boy, Young Fellow My Lad,
You aren’t obliged to go.”
“Well, I’m seventeen and a quarter, Dad,
And ever so strong, you know.”

Recently I was introduced to a sandy-haired, smiling 26-year old with a crushing handshake.  But he walked haltingly on two steel legs and his hip joints are also man-made so terrible were his wounds in a rocket attack in Iraq. He talked of friends who have died.  He was 17 when he enlisted and the army is all he knows, he would go back to his unit.  It did not surprise me when this clean cut young American told me he is a Southern Baptist…every bit a gentleman, he looked and acted the part.  He confided that his mother has recently become adamantly against the War (though he did could not bring himself to engage in “political talk”).  I know that this mother must be thinking… if only she had been pro-peace before her young son enlisted seven years ago.

We Hold These Truths has hear other stories from boys with a Judeo-Christian upbringing whose parents did not know they needed to guard their children from recruiters.  We owe it to every Judeo-Christian to tell them about the cost of our serial wars against Islamic non-enemies.  The giant Israeli Lobby does what it wants in its own interest…in Israel’s interest and they will not stop no matter what we do.

We must blame those who have influence, the Christ follower who mistakenly listens to the celebrity Christian leaders, and who are themselves victims. What has the Judeo-Christian movement given back to America?  Is has sacrificed the value of loving your brother as yourself, as Jesus demanded…even loving your enemy.  It has left in its place a legacy of hatred, war, violence, and diluted money, all in the name of Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament.  This can and must be changed from inside these apostate churches and media sources.

We need to appeal to the sense of morality of Judeo-Christians.  Its members are directly responsible for the three current crises in American culture, these being the War, inflation and the break down of morality that always accompanies war.  They do it for only one reason; they are led into following an apostate Christianity that started only about 100 years ago, first legitimized by Cyrus I Scofield. (1)(5)

We concluder there could have been no Shock and Awe or war of occupation in Iraq were it not for the Christian Zionists’ zealous campaign to destroy Muslim nations. The now publicly acknowledged War on Islam is in fact already 17 years old.  Project Strait Gate was started to challenge it in its very lair.  Jesus and his disciples took their arguments to the temple and the synagogues.  We are doing the same.

What is the matter, Young Fellow My Lad?
No letter again to-day.
Why did the postman look so sad,
And sigh as he turned away?
Well, I hear them tell that we’ve gained new ground,
But a terrible price we’ve paid:
God grant, my boy, that you’re safe and sound;
But oh I’m afraid, afraid.

ENDNOTES:

War! War! War!  By Robert W. Service, poet of the Alaskan gold rush, who served as an ambulance driver, but refused to enter combat in World War I.
This story originally published as:  “The Unacceptable Cost of Christian-Zionism” by same author, 2007, ( (http://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=1697)

(1)     Scofield Reference Bible Audio Visual, Charles Carlson ( http://www.whtt.org/show )
(2)     One Nation Under Israel, Andrew J. Hurley, AIPAC power and Israel’s history ( http://eshop.whtt.org/eshop.php?id=28 )
(3)     Forcing God’s Hand, Grace Halsell, describing authors Junket with Falwell to Israel ( http://eshop.whtt.org/eshop.php?id=28 )
(4)     God’s Wrath On The Left Behind, Lisa Ruby, an evolution of the Left Behind Series ( http://eshop.whtt.org/eshop.php?id=28 )
(5)     The Final Apostasy, by Gordon Ginn, Ph.D., a deeper look at the abuse of Scripture ( http://eshop.whtt.org/eshop.php?id=28  )
(6)     Pew Foundation asks what White Evangelicals, Mainline Protestants and Catholics believe about Israel (Pew http://eshop.whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=1389 )
(7)     The Israeli Lobby and US Foreign Policy, John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, http://eshop.whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=885
(8)     Rapture Ready, Mike Blumenthal at CUFI Washington DC. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjMRgT5o-Ig

Mirrored at: Information Clearing House

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Fighting the UN Racism Forum

Zionist governments of Australia and the Netherlands join other Zionists to boycott UN conference on racism

The Zionist governments of Australia and the Netherlands have joined the US, Israel and Canada in boycotting the UN conference on racism held in Geneva. The Zionist government of UK is sending a delegation, without any  senior official.

A protester holds a banner during a demonstration against racism in Geneva April 18, 2009. The Durban Review Conference, which will review progress and assess implementation of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action, will be held at the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva from April 20 to 24, 2009. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse. Image may be subject to copyright.

In the last major race summit in 2001, the United States and Israel walked out of the South African meeting held in Durban after Arab states attempted to define Zionism as racist.

The U.S. State Department said it finds the  language in the meeting’s draft declaration “objectionable.”

In reality, Israel has forbidden the Obama administration even to participate in the preparations for the “Durban II” forum, let alone to attend the conference.

“With regret, the United States will not join the review conference,” the State Department spokesman Robert Wood was reported as saying.

The Zionist government of Canada said it will not go to the forum because it fears  repeat of the “Israel-bashing” that occurred at Durban in 2001.

More …

It’s NO Mystery to Canadians!

submitted by a reader

Mr Fisk, there is no mystery, if you’re a victim of Canadian state terrorism!

Regardless of any reservation you might have about the WHO exactly, WHAT exactly and WHY exactly of the author of the following post, Robert Fisk, and his protagonist, George Galloway…

Fisk says:

“But the mystery is this: how did so many millions of decent Canadians come to be ruled by such a weird government?”

If you can’t see “Israel” in Canada, your eyes are closed!

Robert Fisk: Galloway a victim of Canada’s baffling approach to fighting terror

By Robert Fisk

Independent – “Come out and debate with me like a man,” the old bruiser shouted over the video-link to Toronto. “Let’s book the biggest hall in Canada and you and I will debate these issues of war and peace and freedom of speech and censorship… If we don’t achieve a political settlement (in the Middle East), we’re in for war. If there’s no justice, there will be no peace for Palestine.”

It was, of course, the old scallywag himself, George Galloway, fuming about the Canadian Immigration Minister James Kenney’s refusal to allow him to speak in Canada on the grounds that he – Galloway – was involved in “terrorism”. The Scottish-born MP was talking from an important centre of “world terror” – New York City.

Mr Kenney’s spokesman, Alikhan Velshi, last week compared Mr Galloway to Oliver Cromwell and said he would not be allowed to enter Canada. Self-publicist, friend of dictators, reality TV show performer and general silly ass Mr Galloway may be. But he has no more in common with Cromwell than the minister has with Ghengis Khan.

But this is no laughing matter. How could the Canadian embassy in London have believed Mr Galloway’s food and medicine shipment to Gaza, made with Israel’s agreement, and its delivery to the Hamas government was a “terrorist” act, even if Stephen Harper’s Canadian government regards Hamas as a “terrorist organisation”.

Mr Galloway wasn’t shipping guns and is touring the US with his anti-war, pro-Palestinian, non-terrorist speeches. “It’s just not credible, Mr Kenney,” Mr Galloway shouted, “to call a man touring the United States, playing to packed audiences… a terrorist or a security threat.”

Quite so. After all, the US has lost thousands of soldiers in its “war on terror” in the Middle East. Canada’s army in Afghanistan comprises barely 2,000 and has suffered fewer than 120 military casualties.

Only a Canadian Jewish organisation agreed with Mr Galloway’s exclusion; one paper here suggested this might have prompted the ban. The right-wing National Post came out against the exclusion, though only because a “future left-wing Canadian government” might ban Israeli or US speakers.

But there’s a bigger issue. Canada helped the US send an innocent Canadian citizen, Mahar Arar, to “rendition” in Syria, where he was savagely tortured. Only a few days ago, another Canadian Muslim told me how he was whipped with steel cables in Damascus as his torturers read out questions from the Canadian embassy. Yet another Canadian Muslim citizen, Abousfian Abdelrazik, has been living in the reception of the US embassy in Khartoum for 10 months after Canadian agents asked the enormously democratic Sudanese government to imprison him for terrorism. Now the government won’t let him come home unless he’s taken off not a Canadian, but a UN “terrorist” list. Cromwellian isn’t the word for it. But the mystery is this: how did so many millions of decent Canadians come to be ruled by such a weird government?
Copyright 2008 Independent News and Media Limited

You can count the number of decent “Canadians” on the following petition!

• Stop Genocide against the Native peoples in Canada!

Israel Awards Tony Blair Million-Dollar Prize

Israelis pay Tony Blair ¢50 for each Iraqi and Afghani citizen as well as every US and UK soldier that he has helped to murder or maim to date

For his services to the state of Israel, including his participation in the invasion of Iraq, and for committing war crimes and the crime of genocide against Iraqis, Blair will receive the Dan David prize.

War Criminal Friar Tony Blair disguised as a peace envoy. Original caption: Tony Blair at at the headquarters of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. Photograph: Muhammed Muheisen/AP. Image may be subject to copyright

Tony Blair’s service to the illegitimate state of Israel, while acting as the British prime minister, was diametrically opposite to the interest of British people.

Blair who has been appointed as a Middle East peace envoy, will receive the Dan David prize for “his exceptional leadership and steadfast determination in helping to engineer agreements and forge lasting solutions to areas in conflict” in a ceremony at Tel Aviv University on May17, 2009.

Blair is an envoy of the international Quartet on the Middle East peace process, which comprises the US, EU, UN and Russia. But it remains a mystery as to who actually appointed the war criminal to the position.

The million-dollar  prize is a far cry from the traditional 30 pieces of silver, but you have to allow for inflation and the total numbers killed, of course.

According to the UK’s Guardian, “his entry as a Dan David laureate on the prize’s website hails him as ‘one of the most outstanding statesmen of our era.'”

“It praises his role in the Northern Ireland peace process and his ‘steadfast determination and morally courageous leadership [sic]’ over Kosovo.” Guardian wrote.

“But there is no mention of the divisive decision to support the US-led invasion of Iraq.”

Adding from his citation: “Early in his prime ministership, he came to two beliefs that guide him to today: first, that it is a mistake for the world to wait for America to solve all of the tough questions [the nickname ‘Bush’s poodle’ was coincidental,] and second, that there are some things a state may do within its borders that justify intervention even if the actions do not directly threaten another nation’s interests.” [He made the Iraqis an offer they couldn’t refuse!]

In December 2007, this Moderator asked: Would the War Criminal Tony Blair Be Beatified or Canonized Next? Whatever the case, the cabal is first transforming him into a multimillionaire.

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• Would the War Criminal Tony Blair Be Beatified or Canonized Next?

425 words

Gaza: Holocaust in the making

What You Don’t Know About Gaza

By Rashid Khalidi

[January 7, 2009 – NY Times]

NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.

THE GAZANS
Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.

THE OCCUPATION
The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza’s air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

THE BLOCKADE
Israel’s blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation.

The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury and malnutrition. This amounts to the collective punishment — with the tacit support of the United States — of a civilian population for exercising its democratic rights.

THE CEASE-FIRE
Lifting the blockade, along with a cessation of rocket fire, was one of the key terms of the June cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. This accord led to a reduction in rockets fired from Gaza from hundreds in May and June to a total of less than 20 in the subsequent four months (according to Israeli government figures). The cease-fire broke down when Israeli forces launched major air and ground attacks in early November; six Hamas operatives were reported killed.

WAR CRIMES
The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or by Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life is precious. But the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians [now about 1,000 people,] most of them civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis killed, many of them soldiers. Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip.

This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia, is the author of the forthcoming “Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

What Others Say:

‘A boy next to me, he went crazy, he was overwhelmed, he saw the massacre, the street was full of blood, the nails from the shells were as long as your hand’

“Mohammad Shadoura, aged nine, had been playing marbles with friends in the street at the time. Mohammad’s father, Bassem Ahmad Shadoura, was close by. He describes the scene: ‘I saw an explosion, after which there was black smoke everywhere – the area was pure black. They hit twice in the same area. I saw a boy with his finger in the air saying I am a witness to God’ and I picked him up to take him out. Then I saw my son, he had been hit twice, in the legs and in the head. His brain was out’.”

“When does the mandate of victimhood expire?” he asked. “At what point does the Nazi genocide of Europe’s Jews cease to excuse the state of Israel from the demands of international law and of common humanity?”

It all depends where you live. That was the geography of Israel’s propaganda, designed to demonstrate that we softies – we little baby-coddling liberals living in our secure Western homes …

Israeli forces shelled a house in the Gaza Strip which they had moved around 110 Palestinians into 24 hours earlier, the UN quotes witnesses as saying.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) called it “one of the gravest incidents” since the beginning of the offensive. The shelling at Zeitoun, a south-east suburb of Gaza City, on 5 January killed some 30 people, the report said.

“There is no humanitarian crisis in the [Gaza] Strip.”

Eighty percent of Gazans were dependent on humanitarian assistance during the crippling 18-month siege of Gaza but before the outbreak of hostilities.

The Israeli offensive, which has killed at least 785 Palestinians, has made at least 80% of the population dependent on donated food, said Nancy Ronan, spokeswoman with the U.N.’s World Food Program.

United Nations says as many as 257 children have been killed in Gaza [January 9, 2009]

At least 783 Palestinians killed [257 children killed,] 1080 wounded. [13 Israelis killed, three of them civilians.]

The longest military occupation in the history – A must watch video

Twenty-five years ago, I made a film called Palestine Is Still The Issue. It was about a nation of people – the Palestinians – forced off their land and later subjected to a military occupation by Israel. An occupation condemned by the United Nations and almost every country in the world, including Britain.

Israeli Massacre in Gaza: The Worst in 60 Years

Murdered, Persecuted, Driven out of their Homes and Exiled for 60 years by a bunch of foreign assassins who have forcefully invaded the Palestinian Homeland!

Israelis Murder 400 Palestinians, Injuring More Than Two Thousands in 4 Days of Air Attacks

Israeli air strikes in Gaza continued for a third day on Monday, killing more than 300 Palestinians and injuring another 700 in what has been described as one of  “the bloodiest massacres of Palestinians in 60 years by the Jewish state.”

An explosion is seen after a missile fired from an Israeli Air Force F-16 fighter plane landed in the northern Gaza Strip December 27, 2008. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis. Image may be subject to copyright.

A Planned  Genocide

Late Sunday, Israeli warplanes targeted the local Islamic University killing a dozen students.  At least seven of the dead were students at a UN vocational college for Palestinian refugees. More than 20 students were injured in the air attack.

Israeli government reportedly approved the call-up of 6,500 reservists . “Israel will continue until we have a new security environment in the south, when the population there will no longer live in terror and in fear of constant rocket barrages,” a govt spokesman said.

Earlier on Sunday, Israeli  planes bombed supply tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip used by Palestinians to smuggle food, water and medicine, past the Israeli blockade of the Gaza strip.

Israeli Blockade

The Israeli blockade was imposed after the Hamas movement took control of Gaza in June 2007. The territory has been closed to virtually all supplies including food, water, fuel and medicine. The Palestinians in Gaza Strip territory have had to deal with food and water shortages shortages as well as power cuts.  The essential utilities have been crippled.

In January 2008, Israeli supreme court [a court which has no legitimacy as it operates in territories occupied by foreign forces] said that Gaza was ruled by “a murderous terror group”, but stated Israel still had an obligation under international law to avoid “deliberately” harming Palestinian civilians.

The court also had the audacity to rule that the reduction in fuel and electricity provided to the Gaza Strip was “sufficient to answer the vital humanitarian needs of the strip for the time being.”

Day Four of Gaza Massacre (Round 2008)

Israelis planes have now bombed the life out of about 400 people, injuring up to 2,000 Palestinians held in the Gaza Strip Concentration Camp. Meanwhile a Gibraltar-register boat, Dignity, carrying medical supplies and other humanitarian aid, foreign doctors and surgeons on its way to Gaza was rammed by a an Israeli patrol boat in international waters. See video and phone report.

Relatives mourn three young brothers who were killed in an Israeli airstrike Monday (December 29, 2008)  in Gaza. Image may be subject to copyright.

Gaza Strip: The World’s Largest Concentration Camp

Gaza Strip is a coastal strip of land along the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Egypt on the south-west and Israel on the north and east. It is about 41 kilometers long, and between 6 and 12 kilometers  wide, with a total area of 360 square kilometers, which makes it the world’s largest concentration camp. The area is not recognized internationally as part of any sovereign country but is claimed by the Palestinian National Authority as part of the Palestinian territories. Since the June 2007 battle of Gaza, actual control of the area is in the hands of the Hamas de facto government.

It has about 1.48 million Palestinian Arab (or Gazan) residents, that is a population density of about 4,118 people per square kilometer [before the ongoing massacre.]

Related Links:

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Top UN Official Condemns Apartheid by Israel

International community should consider sanctions against Israel including ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions’ —UN General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann

“General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann said the international community should consider sanctions against Israel including ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions’ similar to those enacted against South Africa two decades ago.” The Jerusalem Post reported.

Father d’Escoto added: “Israeli policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories appear so similar to the apartheid of an earlier era, a continent away. I believe it is very important that we in the United Nations use this term. We must not be afraid to call something what it is.”

Nasser al Bourai carries the body of his 6-months old son Mohammed al Bourai who was killed by an Israeli missile in occupied Gaza. Image Credit: Mohammed Omer – Rafah Today 2008-03-01. Image may be subject to copyright. For more images: Click here.

Mourners carrying the body of Tamer Abu Shaar to be buried in Deir Al Balah  cemetery. Tamar was ‘luckier’ than Mohammed al Bourai because he made it to the grand age of 9 before being cut down by Israeli occupation forces. Photo Credit: RafahToday. Image may be subject to copyright.

Remarks by Phyllis Bennis

Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and serves on the steering committee of the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation. Her books include “Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer.”

She said: “The humanitarian crisis in Gaza—which will not be reversed simply by Israel’s one-time loosening of the siege on Monday— has escalated largely outside public view, with Israel continuing to prevent foreign journalists and UN officials from entering, while keeping Palestinian journalists and human rights workers from leaving the besieged Gaza Strip. Father Miguel d’Escoto’s statement to the UN General Assembly on Monday helped cast some new light on that too-often hidden reality.

“But even beyond the Gaza crisis, d’Escoto’s statement was significant for his call on the United Nations to follow the lead of former Presidents Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter, along with a growing number of Jewish, Christian and other civil society organizations around the world, including the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation here in the U.S., who recognize the applicability of the term ‘apartheid’ to describe Israeli policies towards Palestinians, and call for a South African-style non-violent boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign to pressure Israel to end those illegal practices.” Source.

See d’Escoto’s remarks at: http://www.unmultimedia.org/tv/unifeed/detail/10515.html [Registration required.]

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The Promised Land?

Obama, Emanuel and Israel

By JOHN V. WHITBECK

(Counterpunch) In the first major appointment of his administration, President-elect Barack Obama has named as his chief of staff Congressman Rahm Emanuel, an Israeli citizen and Israeli army veteran whose father, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was a member of Menachem Begin’s Irgun forces during the Nakba and named his son after “a Lehi combatant who was killed” — i.e., a member of Yitzhak Shamir’s terrorist Stern Gang, responsible for, in addition to other atrocities against Palestinians, the more famous bombing of the King David Hotel and assassination of the UN peace envoy Count Folke Bernadotte.

In rapid response to this news, the editorial in the next day’s Arab News (Jeddah) was entitled “Don’t pin much hope on Obama — Emanuel is his chief of staff and that sends a message”. This editorial referred to the Irgun as a “terror organization” (a judgment call) and concluded: “Far from challenging Israel, the new team may turn out to be as pro-Israel as the one it is replacing.”

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (left) is declaring his support for Sen. Barack Obama after months of remaining neutral. Now that Emanuel is unleashed, he can help shore up support for Obama in the Jewish community. (Image AP/Chicago Sun-Times). Image may be subject to copyright.

That was always likely. Obama repeatedly pledged unconditional allegiance to Israel during his campaign, most memorably in an address to the AIPAC national convention which Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery characterized as “a speech that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning“, and America’s electing a black president has always been more easily imagined than any American president’s declaring his country’s independence from Israeli domination.

Still, one of the greatest advantages for the United States in electing Barack Hussein Obama was the prospect that the world’s billion-plus Muslims, who now view the United States with almost universal loathing and hatred, would be dazzled by the new president’s eloquence, life story, skin color and middle name, would think again with open minds and would give America a chance to redeem itself in their eyes and hearts — not incidently, drastically shortening the long lines of aspiring jihadis eager to sacrifice their lives while striking a blow against the evil empire.
The profound loathing and hatred of the Muslim world toward the United States, which has always had its roots for America’s unconditional support for the injustices inflicted and still being inflicted on the Palestinians, can fairly be considered the core of the primary foreign policy and “national security” problems confronting the United States in recent years. Why would Obama, a man of unquested brilliance, have chosen to send such a contemptuous message to the Muslim world with his first major appointment? Why would he wish to disabuse the Muslim world of its hopes (however modest) and slap it across the face at the earliest opportunity?

A further contemptuous message is widely rumored to be forthcoming — the naming as “Special Envoy for Middle East Peace” of Dennis Ross, the notorious Israel-Firster who, throughout the 12 years of the Bush the First and Clinton administrations, ensured that American policy toward the Palestinians did not deviate one millimeter from Israeli policy and that no progress toward peace could be made and who has since headed the AIPAC spin-off “think tank”, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Nevertheless, since it is almost always constructive to seek a silver lining in the darkest clouds, a silver lining can be found and cited. For decades, the Palestinian leadership has been “waiting for Godot” — waiting for the U.S. Government to finally do the right thing (if only in its own obvious self-interest) and to force Israel to comply with international law and UN Resolutions and permit them to have a decent mini-state on a tiny portion of the land that once was theirs.

This was never a realistic hope. It has not happened, and it will never happen. So it may well be salutary not to waste eight more days (let alone eight more years) playing along and playing the fool while more Palestinian lands are confiscated and more Jewish colonies and Jews-only bypass roads are built on them, clinging to the delusion that the charming Mr. Obama, admirable though he may be in so many other respects, will eventually (if only in a second term, when he no longer has to worry about reelection) see the light and do the right thing. It is long overdue for the Palestinians themselves to seize the initiative, to reset the agenda and to declare a new “only game in town”.

Furthermore, in February, Israel will elect a new Knesset. Bibi Netanyahu, who, most polls and coalition-building calculations suggest, is most likely to emerge as the next prime minister, has one (if only one) great virtue. He is absolutely honest in not professing any desire (however insincere) to see the creation of any Palestinian “state” (whether decent or less-than-a-Bantustan in nature) or to engage in any talks (even never-ending and fraudulent ones) ostensibly about that possibility. His return to power would definitively slam the door on the illusion of a “two-state solution” somewhere over an ever-receding horizon.

This would constitute a blessing and a liberation for Palestinian minds and Palestinian aspirations. Their leadership(s) could then return, after a long, costly and painful diversion, to fundamental principles, to pursuing the goal of a democratic, nonracist and nonsectarian state in all of Israel/Palestine with equal rights for all who live there.

This just goal could and should be pursued by strictly nonviolent means. If the goal is to convince a determined and powerful settler-colonial movement which wishes to seize your land, settle it and keep it (eventually cleansing it of you and your fellow natives) that it should cease, desist and leave, nonviolent forms of resistance are suicidal. If, however, the goal were to be to obtain the full rights of citizenship in a democratic, nonracist state (as was the case in the American civil rights movement and the South African anti-apartheid movement), then nonviolence would be the only viable approach. Violence would be totally inappropriate and counterproductive. The morally impeccable approach would also be the tactically effective approach. The high road would be the only road.

No American president — least of all Barack Obama — could easily support racism and apartheid and oppose democracy and equal rights, particularly if democracy and equal rights were being pursued by nonviolent means. No one anywhere could easily do so. The writing would be on the wall, and the clock would be running out on the tired game of using a perpetual “peace process” as an excuse to delay decisions (while building more “facts on the ground”) forever.

Democracy and equal rights would not come quickly or easily. Forty years passed between when, on the night before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King cried out that he had been to the mountain top and had seen the promised land and when Barack Obama was elected as president of the United States. (The Bible suggests a similar waiting period in the wilderness for Moses.) Forty-six years passed between the installation of a formal apartheid regime in South Africa and the election of Nelson Mandela as president of a fully democratic and nonracist “rainbow nation”.

While it may be be hoped that the transformation would be significantly quicker in Israel/Palestine, it is clear that many who already qualify as “senior citizens” will not live to see the promised land. However, if the promised land of a democratic state with equal rights for all is correctly and clearly perceived and persistently and peacefully pursued, there is ample reason for confidence that Israel/Palestine will one day experience the tearful exaltation of a “Mandela Moment” or an “Obama Moment”, restoring hope in the moral potential both of a nation and of mankind, and that the Jews, Muslims and Christians who live there will finally reach their promised land.

John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel, is author of “The World According to Whitbeck”. Copyright author/Counterpunch. See Fair Use Notice.

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Between Hope and Reality: “Hope and change!”

In the Public Interest

Wed 11/5/2008

by Ralph Nader

Dear Senator Obama:

In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words “hope and change,” “change and hope” have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not “hope and change” but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.

Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?

To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity– not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.

You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an “undivided Jerusalem,” and opposed negotiations with Hamas– the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored “direct negotiations with Hamas.” Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote “Anti-semitism today is the persecu  tion of Palestinian society by the Israeli state.”

During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League’s 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.

David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: “There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President.”

Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, “of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. … Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli’s use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see http://www.atfl.org <http://nader.org/www.atfl.org&gt; for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli’s assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its ‘legitimate right to defend itself.'”

In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government’s assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on “the heart of a crowded refugee camp… with horrible bloodshed” in early 2008.

Israeli writer and peace advocate—Uri Avnery—described Obama’s appearance before AIPAC as one that “broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama “is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future—if and when he is elected president,” he said, adding, “Of one thing I am certain: Obama’s declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people.”

A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.

Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled “Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama” (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled “Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque.” None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans– even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.

Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.

Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to “tumultuous applause,” following a showing of a film about the Carter Center’s post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!

But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on http://www.votenader.org <http://nader.org/www.votenader.org&gt;). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the “middle class” but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the “poor” in America.

Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke “change” yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the “corporate supremacists.” It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics– opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches)– and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.

Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. “Hope” some say springs eternal.” But not when “reality” consumes it daily.

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader

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Blame it on the Chicken!

Image of the Day: Jerusalem Chicken Ala Sinful

An ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman in Jerusalem performs a ceremony with a chicken – a way of casting off one’s sins – as the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, approaches. Photo: AFP. Caption: BBC. Image may be subject to copyright.

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Palestinian farms dry up, Jewish settlers lawns grow greener

Illegal Jewish settlers receive 5 time more water than Palestinians

As Palestinian farms dry up, the lawns on lands occupied by illegal Jewish settlers grow greener. Scant rainfall this year has hit the entire area hard. However, Palestinians are hit hardest because Israel controls the water including West Bank’s three main aquifers.

Palestinians get only about 20 percent of the water they need for irrigation. Israel controls about 50 West Bank wells and directs the entire capacity of about 50 million mainly to Jewish settlements.

An Israeli human rights group, B’tselem, recently reported that Israeli households consumed about 3.5 times more water than Palestinian households.

In reality, the figure is probably closer to 5 to 1, against palestinians.

“A recent U.N. report found that Palestinians in some of the hardest-hit communities were spending as much as 30 percent to 40 percent of their income on water delivered by truck. The Israeli Water Authority did not return several calls from Reuters to request similar information about Israeli consumers.“

End the war in Iraq, invest in our future!

Please forward widely. 1 million doors. 1 million conversations. 1 million voters. Be one of the 25,000 peace activists to knock on a Million Doors for Peace on Saturday, September 20. United For Peace and Justice is joining with other major national organizations and scores of local groups across the country to send a message to Congress: End the war in Iraq, bring all our troops home, and start investing in our country’s future! We have marched in massive numbers, but now we are using a new model for organizing a movement with long-term staying power at the grassroots level. On Saturday, September 20, in all fifty states, we will knock on a million doors to: Talk to our neighbors about the war and its costs to our communities Ask that they sign a petition to Congress that calls for an end to the war Discuss what we can do in this important election year to build up the antiwar movement in our own neighborhoods When you sign-up here, you will get: 40 names of registered voters in your zip code Hand-outs and petitions Talking points and tips for effective door-knocking In some areas, peace and justice groups will be hosting a gathering of volunteers for a brief training and to pair up volunteers who prefer to canvass in a team. If this is being organized in your direct or nearby area, you will receive a Million Doors for Peace email with the meet-up information. Help us take the next step in building the antiwar movement! September 20 is the day to engage one-on-one with our neighbors to strengthen the movement to end the war. Sign-up right now at the Million Doors for Peace website here.

UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE www.unitedforpeace.org | 212-868-5545 PO Box 607; Times Square Station; New York, NY 10108

Kucinich renews impeachment call

	Rep. Kucinich, ImpeachBush press conference renews impeachment call Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Radhika Miller of ImpeachBush.org Yesterday, representative Dennis Kucinich submitted 50,000 more names to the clerk of the House demanding impeachment. On Tuesday, Rep. Jim McDermott (D.-WA) spoke on the House floor in favor of impeachment. As Rep. Kucinich said yesterday, more than 2 million Americans have signed petitions demanding impeachment, making it one of the greatest exercises in grassroots democracy in recent times. Impeachment has become an unavoidable issue on the floor of the House of Representatives, despite the efforts to take impeachment “off the table.” This amazing development is the result of the work of ImpeachBush.org and others who are petitioning, and joining rallies in cities and towns across the country to demand impeachment. Please make a donation right now to keep up this momentum. Excerpts from Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s remarks from yesterday’s press conference: “Standing with me here today are representatives of organizations who have been part of a national grassroots impeachment movement which has collected over a million signatures.  Nationally over two million people have signed impeachment petitions.  I want to thank the leaders for their efforts and work with them to continue to build a movement for truth. “9/11 is the day the world changed.  We want today, September 10, 2008 to be a new beginning in our efforts to change the world.  For my part, I am going to ask those grassroots leaders who have channeled their energies into defending the Constitution and the rule of law to join me in this new endeavor.” Radhika Miller of ImpeachBush: Good afternoon, my name is Radhika Miller. I am here representing ImpeachBush.org that was formed by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark on January 18, 2003 from the stage of a rally of 500,000 people who were demonstrating on the National Mall just across the street to demand no war of aggression against Iraq. Today, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi have died and tens of thousands of US service members have been killed or badly wounded. These horrific casualties took place because George W. Bush was allowed and not punished for initiating a war of unprovoked aggression. Since that time, more than one million people have voted at ImpeachBush.org in favor of impeachment. Volunteers from around the country collect these ImpeachBush petitions. We want to thank Dennis Kucinich for having the courage and honesty to introduce 35 articles of impeachment in June of this year. Representative Kuncinch speaks for tens of millions of people who insist that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and all officials be held accountable for criminal misconduct, breaking the peace in an unprovoked war of aggression and for shredding the Constitution. The fact that Bush has four months left in office does not matter one bit when it comes to violating the Constitution. As one speaker after another made clear in the July 25 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee hearing: impeachment is a constitutionally mandated duty and not a matter of partisan politics. If Congress refuses to carry out its obligations it sends a message to all future presidents, from either Party, that the Constitution has been stripped of all meaning. We have a duty to act and we will. Please make a donation Please make a donation right now to keep up this momentum.

Protecting the Crown’s Extrafinancial Investments in Afghanistan?

submitted by a NZ reader:

Heaven knows what the New Zealand SAS are doing in Afghanistan

The British journalist Robert Fisk visiting New Zealand this week to promote his new book spoke to a local journalist in Wellington about western military presence in Middle East:

Concerning New Zealand’s special forces, who are based in Afghanistan, he said:

“Heaven knows what they (the SAS) are doing and Afghanistan is a disaster anyway.”

He said New Zealand was under no threat from any country in the Middle East.

“There are no Syrian soldiers on the streets of Wellington.

“(Western nations) have no business to be there, historically it is a disaster. We never have any business there, we’re always going to the Middle East with huge armies.

The morally castrated New Zealand “Defence Minister”, Phil Goff, immediately declared: “I’d say Mr Fisk should talk to the Hazara people whose civic leaders were executed in the market place, whose 2000-year-old cultural heritage, the Bamyan statutes of Buddha, were destroyed.”

Ah, so the New Zealand SAS are not there to protect the poppy fields and the thriving opium business and the drug warlords, they are there playing Bamyan Buddha dolls with the local kids!

The following is an excerpt from The SAS (SPECIAL AIR SERVICE): Prince Philip’s manager of terrorism,  by Joseph Brewda.

SAS methods and procedures

According to the British Army handbook, the SAS is “particularly suited, trained, and equipped for counter-revolutionary operations,” with a specialization in “infiltration,” “sabotage,” “assassination,” as well as “liaison with, organization, training, and control of friendly guerrilla forces operating against the common enemy.” From its inception in World War II, Special Air Services was detailed to run sabotage behind enemy lines and to organize popular revolt, at first in North Africa, and then in the Balkans, where another Stirling cousin, Fitzroy Maclean, ran British operations.

At the end of the war, SAS was disbanded, but it was soon revived to crush the Malay insurgency in Malaysia, and the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya. The principle employed was to take over the insurgency from within, and use it to destroy the native population. In his 1960 book Gangs and Countergangs, Col. Frank Kitson boasted that the British were covertly leading several large-scale Mau Mau units, and that many, if not all Mau Mau units had been synthetically created by the colonial authorities. As a result of this practice, 22 whites were killed during the insurgency, as compared to 20,000 natives.

Based on this principle, SAS emphasized recruitment of natives, as it received increasing responsibilities for overseeing counterinsurgency within the postwar empire, as well as organizing insurgencies elsewhere. In New Zealand, 30% of SAS was drawn from the indigenous Maori tribes, later supplemented by Sarawak tribesmen from Indonesia. By the 1960s, New Zealand SAS was active throughout Southeast Asia, organizing tribal revolts against the Burmese government, and stirring similar movements in Northeast India. Similarly, SAS squadrons based in Rhodesia ran the 1960s tribal separatist insurgency in Zaire. They later recruited and deployed natives in terrorist raids in Mozambique and Zambia.

Today, there are three known SAS regiments, comprising 4,500 highly trained commandos in total. Training exercises for 15-man teams simulate terrorist assaults, in order, it is said, to “know the mind of the terrorist.” Such teams are often sent abroad, to train British Commonwealth and other military units in the techniques of terrorist assault, as well as the use of tribal auxiliaries in covert warfare. Through such means, SAS has built an extensive terrorist control capability, especially in its former colonies. Its soldiers currently serve officially in some 30 countries.  Full article is available here.

Afghanistan, Opium and the Taliban

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (February 15, 2001 8:19 p.m. EST)
(Source)
U.N. drug control officers said the Taliban religious militia has nearly wiped out opium production in Afghanistan — once the world’s largest producer — since banning poppy cultivation last summer.

A 12-member team from the U.N. Drug Control Program spent two weeks searching most of the nation’s largest opium-producing areas and found so few poppies that they do not expect any opium to come out of Afghanistan this year.

“We are not just guessing. We have seen the proof in the fields,” said Bernard Frahi, regional director for the U.N. program in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He laid out photographs of vast tracts of land cultivated with wheat alongside pictures of the same fields taken a year earlier — a sea of blood-red poppies. (Full report)

End of Taliban will bring rise in heroin

By Richard Lloyd Parry in Islamabad
The Independent (Source)
Date: 19 October 2001

The defeat of the Taliban would result in a surge in opium production, which has beenvirtually halted in Afghanistan by the Kabul regime over the last year, United Nations officials have warned.

A new UN survey reveals that the Taliban have completed one of the quickest and most successful drug elimination programmes in history.

Vice creeps back to Kandahar. Ellen Knickmeyer, Associated Press – (Source) Image may be subject to copyright.

The area of land given over to growing opium poppies in 2001 fell by 91 per cent compared with the year before, according to the UN Drug Control Programme’s (UNDCP) annual survey of Afghanistan. Production of fresh opium, the raw material for heroin, went down by an unprecedented 94 per cent, from 3,276 tonnes to 185 tonnes.

Almost all Afghan opium this year came out of territories controlled by America’s ally in the assault on Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance. Because of a ban on poppy farming, only one in 25 of Afghanistan’s opium poppies was being grown in Taliban areas. (Full story)

Fisk on Israel-led US Foreign policy:

Having studied for 30 years the United States’ Middle East policies, I can tell you that regardless of whether Barack Obama or John McCain won the upcoming American presidential election, the new president would not bring peace to the area, Fisk said.

“Every time there’s an American presidential election the Arabs say `Ah, maybe there’ll be change in the Middle East. Maybe America will be fairer, maybe it will concern itself with the security of the Arabs as well as the Israelis’.

“And then afterwards there’ll be a war in the Middle East and the President will call upon both sides to exercise restraint and there’ll be billions of dollars of weapons sent to Israel to bomb Lebanon, or whoever they are bombing.

“My experience over 32 years is whoever’s in the White House, the bombs go on falling. And they will.”

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Rep. Dennis Kucinich: “Wake Up America!”

Don’t you just wish Kucinich was an independent candidate?

“Wake up, America. In 2001, the oil companies, the war contractors and the neo-con artists seized the economy and have added $4 trillion of unproductive spending to the national debt. We now pay four times more for defense, three times more for gasoline and home heating oil, and twice what we paid for health care.”

“Did the Democrats miss something along the way from the only man with the courage to introduce a resolution in June to impeach President George W. Bush and whose speech reminded those gathered who their fight actually was with?”

Must Watch Video: Click here!

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