Independence Opinion Site

UN Fails to Condemn Israel's Killing of Children in Qana

2006-08-02T01:57:00.000-07:00

The United Nations has been harshly criticized for failing to take a stand on the Middle East crisis and to maintain peace.

The UN failed to determine a joint statement condemning Israel's air strike on Qana, which killed many women and children, after it faced objections from the United States.

The UN Security Council called an emergency meeting on Sunday, but only managed to agree on the release of a presidential statement, which did not condemn Israel or appeal to the all sides for an immediate cease-fire.

The Council announced its "deep shock and distress" at Israel's attack on the Lebanese town of Qana, killing 60 civilians, including 37 children.

Qatar's permanent representative to the Security Council reportedly submitted a firmer draft resolution, which faced objections from the US and was later toned down.

The US refused to condemn Israel and call for a cease-fire, they demanded the text be modified and these references be removed.

The rejected resolution appealed to both sides to end the violence immediately.

"The Security Council strongly deplores this loss of innocent lives and the killing of civilians in the present conflict and requests the Secretary-General (Kofi Annan) to report to it within one week on the circumstances of this tragic incident," the presidential statement reportedly said.

It went on to say: "The Security Council expresses its concern at the threat of escalation of violence with further grave consequences for the humanitarian situation, calls for an end to violence, and underscores the urgency of securing a lasting, permanent and sustainable ceasefire."

It also called on all parties to allow immediate and unlimited access to humanitarian aid, as well as to respect UN personnel and premises in the region.

The presidential statement was adopted unanimously by the Security Council.

According to the regulations of the Council, presidential statements are nonbinding and are simply recommendations.

The UN had held a meeting following the death of four UN peacekeepers in an Israeli attack on a known UN observer post on July 25, but failed to condemn Israel because of the continued objections of the US.

It had only expressed its "extreme astonishment and distress" at the attack.

From villages in southern Lebanon, another 49 bodies have been recovered from under the debris.

Of the 37 children killed by the Israeli attack on Qana, 15 were reported to be physically and mentally handicapped.

Two Arab MPs in the Israeli Parliament interrupted Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz during his speech before parliament, calling him "a child murderer."

Right-wing Jewish extremists reacted to the Arab MPs, who yelled "Throw out betrayers!"

The parliament speaker asked that the two Arab MPs leave the hall in order to ease the tension.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour condemned the Qana massacre, while the international community continues to voice its condemnation of Israel's continuing military campaign.

Source: Zaman

Iran: The Next War

2006-08-01T00:41:00.000-07:00

I. The Israeli Connection

A few blocks off Pennsylvania Avenue, the FBI's eight-story Washington field office exudes all the charm of a maximum-security prison. Its curved roof is made of thick stainless steel, the bottom three floors are wrapped in granite and limestone, hydraulic bollards protect the ramp to the four-floor garage, and bulletproof security booths guard the entrance to the narrow lobby. On the fourth floor, like a tomb within a tomb, lies the most secret room in the 0 million concrete fortress-out-of-bounds even for special agents without an escort. Here, in the Language Services Section, hundreds of linguists in padded earphones sit elbow-to-elbow in long rows, tapping computer keyboards as they eavesdrop on the phone lines of foreign embassies and other high-priority targets in the nation's capital.

At the far end of that room, on the morning of February 12th, 2003, a small group of eavesdroppers were listening intently for evidence of a treacherous crime. At the very moment that American forces were massing for an invasion of Iraq, there were indications that a rogue group of senior Pentagon officials were already conspiring to push the United States into another war-this time with Iran.

A few miles away, FBI agents watched as Larry Franklin, an Iran expert and career employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency, drove up to the Ritz-Carlton hotel across the Potomac from Washington. A trim man of fifty-six, with a tangle of blond hair speckled gray, Franklin had left his modest home in Kearneysville, West Virginia, shortly before dawn that morning to make the eighty-mile commute to his job at the Pentagon. Since 2002, he had been working in the Office of Special Plans, a crowded warren of blue cubicles on the building's fifth floor. A secretive unit responsible for long-term planning and propaganda for the invasion of Iraq, the office's staffers referred to themselves as "the cabal." They reported to Douglas Feith, the third-most-powerful official in the Defense Department, helping to concoct the fraudulent intelligence reports that were driving America to war in Iraq.

Just two weeks before, in his State of the Union address, President Bush had begun laying the groundwork for the invasion, falsely claiming that Saddam Hussein had the means to produce tens of thousands of biological and chemical weapons, including anthrax, botulinum toxin, sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. But an attack on Iraq would require something that alarmed Franklin and other neoconservatives almost as much as weapons of mass destruction: detente with Iran. As political columnist David Broder reported in The Washington Post, moderates in the Bush administration were "covertly negotiating for Iran to stay quiet and offer help to refugees when we go into Iraq."

Franklin-a devout neoconservative who had been brought into Feith's office because of his political beliefs-was hoping to undermine those talks. As FBI agents looked on, Franklin entered the restaurant at the Ritz and joined two other Americans who were also looking for ways to push the U.S. into a war with Iran. One was Steven Rosen, one of the most influential lobbyists in Washington. Sixty years old and nearly bald, with dark eyebrows and a seemingly permanent frown, Rosen was director of foreign-policy issues at Israel's powerful lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Seated next to Rosen was AIPAC's Iran expert, Keith Weissman. He and Rosen had been working together closely for a decade to pressure U.S. officials and members of Congress to turn up the heat on Tehran.

Over breakfast at the Ritz-Carlton, Franklin told the two lobbyists about a draft of a top-secret National Security Presidential Directive that dealt with U.S. policy on Iran. Crafted by Michael Rubin, the desk officer for Iraq and Iran in Feith's office, the document called, in essence, for regime change in Iran. In the Pentagon's view, according to one senior official there at the time, Iran was nothing but "a house of cards ready to be pushed over the precipice." So far, though, the White House had rejected the Pentagon's plan, favoring the State Department's more moderate position of diplomacy. Now, unwilling to play by the rules any longer, Franklin was taking the extraordinary-and illegal-step of passing on highly classified information to lobbyists for a foreign state. Unable to win the internal battle over Iran being waged within the administration, a member of Feith's secret unit in the Pentagon was effectively resorting to treason, recruiting AIPAC to use its enormous influence to pressure the president into adopting the draft directive and wage war against Iran.

It was a role that AIPAC was eager to play. Rosen, recognizing that Franklin could serve as a useful spy, immediately began plotting ways to plant him in the White House-specifically in the National Security Council, the epicenter of intelligence and national-security policy. By working there, Rosen told Franklin a few days later, he would be "by the elbow of the president."

Knowing that such a maneuver was well within AIPAC's capabilities, Franklin asked Rosen to "put in a good word" for him. Rosen agreed. "I'll do what I can," he said, adding that the breakfast meeting had been a real "eye-opener."

Working together, the two men hoped to sell the United States on yet another bloody war. A few miles away, digital recorders at the FBI's Language Services Section captured every word.

II. The Guru and the Exile

In recent weeks, the attacks by Hezbollah on Israel have given neoconservatives in the Bush administration the pretext they were seeking to launch what former House Speaker Newt Gingrich calls "World War III." Denouncing the bombings as "Iran's proxy war," William Kristol of The Weekly Standard is urging the Pentagon to counter "this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities." According to Joseph Cirincione, an arms expert and the author of Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats, "The neoconservatives are now hoping to use the Israeli-Lebanon conflict as the trigger to launch a U.S. war against Syria, Iran or both."

But the Bush administration's hostility toward Iran is not simply an outgrowth of the current crisis. War with Iran has been in the works for the past five years, shaped in almost complete secrecy by a small group of senior Pentagon officials attached to the Office of Special Plans. The man who created the OSP was Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy. A former Middle East specialist on the National Security Council in the Reagan administration, Feith had long urged Israel to secure its borders in the Middle East by attacking Iraq and Iran. After Bush's election, Feith went to work to make that vision a reality, putting together a team of neoconservative hawks determined to drive the U.S. to attack Tehran. Before Bush had been in office a year, Feith's team had arranged a covert meeting in Rome with a group of Iranians to discuss their clandestine help.

The meeting was arranged by Michael Ledeen, a member of the cabal brought aboard by Feith because of his connections in Iran. Described by The Jerusalem Post as "Washington's neoconservative guru," Ledeen grew up in California during the 1940s. His father designed the air-conditioning system for Walt Disney Studios, and Ledeen spent much of his early life surrounded by a world of fantasy. "All through my childhood we were an adjunct of the Disney universe," he once recalled. "According to family legend, my mother was the model for Snow White, and we have a picture of her that does indeed look just like the movie character."

In 1977, after earning a Ph.D. in history and philosophy and teaching in Rome for two years, Ledeen became the first executive director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a pro-Israel pressure group that served as a flagship of the neoconservative movement. A few years later, after Reagan was elected, Ledeen had become prominent enough to earn a spot as a consultant to the National Security Council alongside Feith. There he played a central role in the worst scandal of Reagan's presidency: the covert deal to provide arms to Iran in exchange for American hostages being held in Lebanon. Ledeen served as the administration's intermediary with Israel in the illegal-arms deal. In 1985, he met with Manucher Ghorbanifar, a one-time Iranian carpet salesman who was widely believed to be an Israeli agent. The CIA considered Ghorbanifar a dangerous con man and had issued a "burn notice" recommending that no U.S. agency have any dealings with him. Unfazed, Ledeen called Ghorbanifar "one of the most honest, educated, honorable men I have ever known." The two men brokered the arms exchange-a transaction that would result in the indictment of fourteen senior officials in the Reagan administration.

"It was awful-you know, bad things happened," Ledeen says now. "When Iran-Contra was over, I said, ?Boy, I'm never going to touch Iran again.' "

But in 2001, soon after he arrived at the Pentagon, Ledeen once again met with Ghorbanifar. This time, instead of selling missiles to the Iranian regime, the two men were exploring how best to topple it.

"The meeting in Rome came about because my friend Manucher Ghorbanifar called me up," Ledeen says. Stout and balding, with a scruffy white beard, Ledeen is sitting in the living room of his white-brick home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, smoking a Dominican cigar. His Airedale terrier, Thurber, roams the room protectively. In his first extensive interview about the covert Pentagon operation, Ledeen makes no secret of his desire to topple the government in Tehran. "I want to bring down the regime," he says. "I want the regime gone. It's a country that is fanatically devoted to our destruction."

When Ghorbanifar called Ledeen in the fall of 2001, he claimed, as he often does, to have explosive intelligence that was vital to U.S. interests. "There are Iranians who have firsthand information about Iranian plans to kill Americans in Afghanistan," he told Ledeen. "Does anyone want to hear about it?"

Ledeen took the information to Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser at the White House. "I know you're going to throw me out of the office," Ledeen told him, "and if I were you I would throw me out of the office too. But I promised that I would give you this option. Ghorbanifar has called me. He said these people are willing to come. Do you want anybody to go and talk to them?"

Hadley was interested. So was Zalmay Khalilzad, then the point man on Near East issues for the National Security Council and now the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad. "I think we have to do this, we have to hear this," Hadley said. Ledeen had the green light: As he puts it, "Every element of the American government knew this was going to happen in advance."

III. The Meeting in Rome

Weeks later, in December, a plane carrying Ledeen traveled to Rome with two other members of Feith's secret Pentagon unit: Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode, a protйgй of Ledeen who has been called the "theoretician of the neocon movement." A specialist on Islam who speaks Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish and Farsi, Rhode had experience with shady exiles like Ghorbanifar: He was close to Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi dissident whose discredited intelligence helped drive the Bush administration to invade Baghdad. According to UPI, Rhode himself was later observed by CIA operatives passing "mind-boggling" intelligence to Israel, including sensitive information about U.S. military deployments in Iraq.

Completing the rogues' gallery that assembled in Rome that day was the man who helped Ledeen arrange the meeting: Nicolт Pollari, the director of Italy's military intelligence. Only two months earlier, Pollari had informed the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein had obtained uranium from West Africa-a key piece of false intelligence that Bush used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

To hide the shadowy rendezvous in Rome, Pollari provided a well-protected safe house near the noisy espresso bars and busy trattorias that surround the Piazza di Spagna in central Rome. "It was in a private apartment," Ledeen recalls. "It was fucking freezing-it was unheated." The Pentagon operatives and the men from Iran sat at a dining-room table strewn with demitasse cups of blackish coffee, ashtrays littered with crushed cigarette butts and detailed maps of Iran, Iraq and Syria. "They gave us information about the location and plans of Iranian terrorists who were going to kill Americans," Ledeen says.

Ledeen insists the intelligence was on the mark. "It was true," he says. "The information was accurate." Not according to his boss. "There wasn't anything there that was of substance or of value that needed to be pursued further," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld later conceded. "It went nowhere."

The men then turned their attention to their larger goal: regime change in Iran. Ghorbanifar suggested funding the overthrow of the Iranian government using hundreds of millions of dollars in cash supposedly hidden by Saddam Hussein. He even hinted that Saddam was hiding in Iran.

Ledeen, Franklin and Rhode were taking a page from Feith's playbook on Iraq: They needed a front group of exiles and dissidents to call for the overthrow of Iran. According to sources familiar with the meeting, the Americans discussed joining forces with the Mujahedin-e Khalq, an anti-Iranian guerrilla army operating out of Iraq.

There was only one small problem: The MEK had been certified by the State Department as a terrorist organization. In fact, the White House was in the midst of negotiations with Tehran, which was offering to extradite five members of Al Qaeda thought to be of high intelligence value in return for Washington's promise to drop all support for the MEK.

Ledeen denies any dealings with the group. "I wouldn't get within a hundred miles of the MEK," he says. "They have no following, no legitimacy." But neoconservatives were eager to undermine any deal that involved cooperating with Iran. To the neocons, the value of the MEK as a weapon against Tehran greatly outweighed any benefit that might be derived from interrogating the Al Qaeda operatives-even though they might provide intelligence on future terrorist attacks, as well as clues to the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

Ledeen and his Pentagon cabal were not the only American officials to whom Ghorbanifar tried to funnel false intelligence on Iran. Last year, Rep. Curt Weldon, a Republican from Pennsylvania, claimed he had intelligence-from an "impeccable clandestine source" he code-named "Ali"-that the Iranian government was plotting to launch attacks against the United States. But when the CIA investigated the allegations, it turned out that Ali was Fereidoun Mahdavi, an Iranian exile who was serving as a frontman for Ghorbanifar and trying to shake down the CIA for 0,000. "He is a fabricator," said Bill Murray, the former CIA station chief in Paris. Weldon was furious: The agency had dismissed Ali, he insisted, "because they want to avoid, at all costs, drawing the United States into a war with Iran."

After the Rome rendezvous, Ledeen and Ghorbanifar continued to meet several times a year, often for a day or two at a time. Rhode also met with Ghorbanifar in Paris, and the Iranian phoned or faxed his Pentagon contacts almost every day. At one point Ledeen notified the Pentagon that Ghorbanifar knew of highly enriched uranium being moved from Iraq to Iran. At another point, in 2003, he claimed that Tehran was only a few months away from exploding a nuclear bomb-even though international experts estimate that Iran is years away from developing nuclear weapons. But the accuracy of the reports wasn't important-what mattered was their value in drumming up support for war. It was Iraq all over again.

IV. On the Trail of Mr. X

Such covert efforts by Feith's team in the Pentagon started to have the desired effect. In November 2003, Rumsfeld approved a plan known as CONPLAN 8022-02, which for the first time established a pre-emptive-strike capability against Iran. That was followed in 2004 by a top-secret "Interim Global Strike Alert Order" that put the military on a state of readiness to launch an airborne and missile attack against Iran, should Bush issue the command. "We're now at the point where we are essentially on alert," said Lt. Gen. Bruce Carlson, commander of the 8th Air Force. "We have the capacity to plan and execute global strikes in half a day or less."

But as the Pentagon moved the country closer to war with Iran, the FBI was expanding its investigation of AIPAC and its role in the plot. David Szady, then the bureau's top spy-catcher, had become convinced that at least one American citizen working inside the U.S. government was spying for Israel. "It's no longer just our traditional adversaries who want to steal our secrets, but sometimes even our allies," Szady declared. "The threat is incredibly serious." To locate the spy sometimes referred to as Mr. X, agents working for Szady began focusing on a small group of neoconservatives in the Pentagon-including Feith, Ledeen and Rhode.

The FBI also had its sights on Larry Franklin, who continued to hold clandestine meetings with Rosen at AIPAC. Apparently nervous that the FBI might be on to them, the two men started taking precautions. On March 10th, 2003, barely a week before the invasion of Iraq, Rosen met Franklin in Washington's cavernous Union Station. The pair met at one restaurant, then they hustled to another, and finally they ended up in a third-this one totally empty. As an added precaution, Franklin also began sending faxes to Rosen's home instead of to his AIPAC offices.

A few days later, Rosen and Weissman passed on to Israeli-embassy officials details about the draft of the top-secret presidential directive on Iran, saying they had received the document from a "friend of ours in the Pentagon." They also relayed to the Israelis details about internal Bush-administration discussions on Iran. Then, two days before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Rosen leaked the information to the press with the comment "I'm not supposed to know this." The Washington Post eventually published the story under the headline "Pressure Builds for President to Declare Strategy on Iran," crediting the classified information to "well-placed sources." The story mentioned Ledeen, who helped found the Coalition for Democracy in Iran, a pressure group dedicated to the overthrow of the Iranian government, but gave no indication that the leak had come from someone with a definite agenda for planting the information.

That June, Weissman called Franklin and left a message that he and Rosen wanted to meet with him again and talk about "our favorite country." The meeting took place in the Tivoli Restaurant, a dimly lit establishment two floors above the metro station in Arlington that was frequently used by intelligence types for quiet rendezvous. Over lunch in the mirrored dining room, the three men discussed the Post article, and Rosen acknowledged "the constraints" Franklin was under to meet with them. But the Pentagon official placed himself fully at AIPAC's disposal. "You set the agenda," Franklin told Rosen.

In addition to meeting Rosen and Weissman, Franklin was also getting together regularly with Naor Gilon, an Israeli embassy official who, according to a senior U.S. counterintelligence official, "showed every sign of being an intelligence agent." Franklin and Gilon would normally meet amid the weight machines and punching bags at the Pentagon Officers Athletic Club, where Franklin passed along secret information regarding Iran's activities in Iraq, its missile-testing program and even, apparently, New York Times reporter Judith Miller. At one point, Gilon suggested that Franklin meet with Uzi Arad, Mossad's former director of intelligence and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's foreign-policy adviser. A week later, Franklin had lunch in the Pentagon cafeteria with the former top Israeli spy.

V. Iran's Double Agent

Larry Franklin, it turns out, wasn't the only person involved in the Pentagon's covert operation who was exchanging state secrets with other governments. As the FBI monitored Franklin and his clandestine dealings with AIPAC, it was also investigating another explosive case of espionage linked to Feith's office and Iran. This one focused on Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, the militant anti-Saddam opposition group that had worked for more than a decade to pressure the U.S. into invading Iraq.

For years, the National Security Agency had possessed the codes used by Iran to encrypt its diplomatic messages, enabling the U.S. government to eavesdrop on virtually every communication between Tehran and its embassies. After the U.S. invaded Baghdad, the NSA used the codes to listen in on details of Iran's covert operations inside Iraq. But in 2004, the agency intercepted a series of urgent messages from the Iranian embassy in Baghdad. Intelligence officials at the embassy had discovered the massive security breach-tipped off by someone familiar with the U.S. code-breaking operation.

The blow to intelligence-gathering could not have come at a worse time. The Bush administration suspected that the Shiite government in Iran was aiding Shiite insurgents in Iraq, who were killing U.S. soldiers. The administration was also worried that Tehran was secretly developing nuclear weapons. Now, crucial intelligence that might have shed light on those operations had been cut off, potentially endangering American lives.

On May 20th, shortly after the discovery of the leak, Iraqi police backed by American soldiers raided Chalabi's home and offices in Baghdad. The FBI suspected that Chalabi, a Shiite who had a luxurious villa in Tehran and was close to senior Iranian officials, was actually working as a spy for the Shiite government of Iran. Getting the U.S. to invade Iraq was apparently part of a plan to install a pro-Iranian Shiite government in Baghdad, with Chalabi in charge. The bureau also suspected that Chalabi's intelligence chief had furnished Iran with highly classified information on U.S. troop movements, top-secret communications, plans of the provisional government and other closely guarded material on U.S. operations in Iraq. On the night of the raid, The CBS Evening News carried an exclusive report by correspondent Lesley Stahl that the U.S. government had "rock-solid" evidence that Chalabi had been passing extremely sensitive intelligence to Iran-evidence so sensitive that it could "get Americans killed."

The revelation shocked Franklin and other members of Feith's office. If true, the allegations meant that they had just launched a war to put into power an agent of their mortal enemy, Iran. Their man-the dissident leader who sat behind the first lady in the president's box during the State of the Union address in which Bush prepared the country for war-appeared to have been working for Iran all along.

Franklin needed to control the damage, and fast. He was one of the very few in the government who knew that it was the NSA code-breaking information that Chalabi was suspected of passing to Iran, and that there was absolute proof that Chalabi had met with a covert Iranian agent involved in operations against the U.S. To protect those in the Pentagon working for regime change in Tehran, Franklin needed to get out a simple message: We didn't know about Chalabi's secret dealings with Iran.

Franklin decided to leak the information to a friendly contact in the media: Adam Ciralsky, a CBS producer who had been fired from the CIA, allegedly for his close ties to Israel. On May 21st, the day after CBS broadcast its exclusive report on Chalabi, Franklin phoned Ciralsky and fed him the information. As the two men talked, eavesdroppers at the FBI's Washington field office recorded the conversation.

That night, Stahl followed up her original report with "new details"-the information leaked earlier that day by Franklin. She began, however, by making clear that she would not divulge the most explosive detail of all: the fact that Chalabi had wrecked the NSA's ability to eavesdrop on Iran. "Senior intelligence officials were stressing today that the information Ahmed Chalabi is alleged to have passed on to Iran is so seriously sensitive that the result of full disclosure would be highly damaging to U.S. security," Stahl said. "Because of that, we are not reporting the details of what exactly Chalabi is said to have compromised, at the request of U.S. officials at the highest levels. The information involves secrets that were held by only a handful of very senior intelligence officials." Thanks to the pressure from the administration, the public was prevented from learning the most damaging aspect of Chalabi's treachery.

Then Stahl moved on to Franklin's central message. "Meanwhile," she said, "we have been told that grave concerns about the true nature of Chalabi's relationship with Iran started after the U.S. obtained, quote, ?undeniable intelligence' that Chalabi met with a senior Iranian intelligence officer, a, quote, ?nefarious figure from the dark side of the regime, an individual with a direct hand in covert operations against the United States.' Chalabi never reported this meeting to anyone in the U.S. government, including his friends and sponsors." In short, the Pentagon-and Feith's office in particular-was blameless.

VI. The Cabal's Triumph

Soon after the broadcast, David Szady's team at the FBI decided to wrap up its investigation before Franklin leaked any more information. Agents quietly confronted Franklin with the taped phone call and pressured him to cooperate in a sting operation directed at AIPAC and members of Feith's team in the Pentagon. Franklin, facing a long prison sentence, agreed. On August 4th, 2005, Rosen and Weissman were indicted, and on January 20th, 2006, Franklin, who had earlier pleaded guilty, was sentenced to twelve years and seven months in prison. In an attempt to reduce his sentence, he agreed to testify against the former AIPAC officials. The case is set to go to trial this fall.

So far, however, Franklin is the only member of Feith's team to face charges. The continuing lack of indictments demonstrates how frighteningly easy it is for a small group of government officials to join forces with agents of foreign powers-whether it is AIPAC or the MEK or the INC-to sell the country on a disastrous war.

The most glaring unindicted co-conspirator is Ahmed Chalabi. Even top-ranking Republicans suspect him of double dealing: "I wouldn't be surprised if he told Iranians facts, issues, whatever, that we did not want them to know," said Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., who chairs the House subcommittee on national security. Yet the FBI has been unable to so much as question Chalabi as part of its ongoing espionage case. Last November, when Chalabi returned to the United States for a series of speeches and media events, the FBI tried to interview him. But because he was under State Department protection during his visit, sources in the Justice Department say, the bureau's request was flatly denied.

"Chalabi's running around saying, ?I have nothing to hide,' " says one senior FBI official. "Yet he's using our State Department to keep us from him at the same time. And we've got to keep our mouth shut."

In the end, the work of Franklin and the other members of Feith's secret office had the desired effect. Working behind the scenes, the members of the Office of Special Plans succeeded in setting the United States on the path to all-out war with Iran. Indeed, since Bush was re-elected to a second term, he has made no secret of his desire to see Tehran fall. In a victory speech of sorts on Inauguration Day in January 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney warned bluntly that Iran was "right at the top" of the administration's list of "trouble spots"-and that Israel "might well decide to act first" by attacking Iran. The Israelis, Cheney added in an obvious swipe at moderates in the State Department, would "let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterward."

Over the past six months, the administration has adopted almost all of the hard-line stance advocated by the war cabal in the Pentagon. In May, Bush's ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, appeared before AIPAC's annual conference and warned that Iran "must be made aware that if it continues down the path of international isolation, there will be tangible and painful consequences." To back up the tough talk, the State Department is spending million to promote political change inside Iran-funding the same kind of dissident groups that helped drive the U.S. to war in Iraq. "We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared.

In addition, the State Department recently beefed up its Iran Desk from two people to ten, hired more Farsi speakers and set up eight intelligence units in foreign countries to focus on Iran. The administration's National Security Strategy-the official policy document that sets out U.S. strategic priorities-now calls Iran the "single country" that most threatens U.S. interests.

The shift in official policy has thrilled former members of the cabal. To them, the war in Lebanon represents the final step in their plan to turn Iran into the next Iraq. Ledeen, writing in the National Review on July 13th, could hardly restrain himself. "Faster, please," he urged the White House, arguing that the war should now be taken over by the U.S. military and expanded across the entire region. "The only way we are going to win this war is to bring down those regimes in Tehran and Damascus, and they are not going to fall as a result of fighting between their terrorist proxies in Gaza and Lebanon on the one hand, and Israel on the other. Only the United States can accomplish it," he concluded. "There is no other way."

Source: The truth seeker

Syria. No to "International Force" Zionist Proxy for Lebanon

2006-07-31T02:12:00.000-07:00

Syria on Saturday slammed Rice's call for an international force to pacify southern Lebanon as an occupation force that would do the Zionist regime's job.

An editorial in the official Tishrin daily said: "The international force proposed by Rice intends to occupy southern Lebanon and it, instead of the Zionist regime, will be charged with trying to demolish the Lebanese national resistance."

Rice returned to the Middle East on Saturday as part of her futile shuttle when it is obvious that she and the Bush regime in Washington have barely concealed their support for the terrorist state of "Israel" and its crimes against humanity.

Rice, who was scheduled to visit Lebanon abruptly cancelled her plans following the cowardly Zionist bombardment with US-supplied precision-guided bombs on a building in the town of Qana in the early hours of Sunday that killed between 55 and 60 people, 27 of whom were children and the rest mostly women. Rice was scared of the anger of the Lebanese people who were planning protests at her arrival in Beirut.

Source: IRIB

More US arms deliveries for Israel expected in Scotland

2006-07-30T01:35:00.000-07:00

LONDON, July 30 - Two US cargo aircraft carrying weapons for Israel are due to make stop-overs at a Scottish airport over the weekend with the approval of the British government, airport authorities said on Saturday.

The two Boeing 747s are carrying “dangerous material” from Texas to Tel Aviv, and have been given authorisation to land, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said.
“They are hazardous material flights: the items that they are carrying are understood to be of a dangerous nature,” a spokesman said.

“They are landing at Prestwick (near Glasgow) for refuelling, and needed an exemption to be able to land in the UK. This was granted last week.”

On Friday US President George W. Bush apologised to British Prime Minister Tony Blair for failing to observe proper procedures last weekend when two aircraft carrying bombs for Israel transited through Prestwick, according to a British spokesman.

The planes were described as civilian flights and the US did not notify the British authorities of their cargo, which, according to one newspaper report included bunker-busting high explosive bombs.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett made public her unhappiness at the time.

A demonstration is planned at Prestwick on Sunday. - mks.

Israel and US planned Lebanon invasion in June

2006-07-29T01:18:00.000-07:00

The Israeli invasion of Lebanon was planned between top Israeli officials and members of the Bush administration. On June 17 and 18, former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Likud Knesset member Natan Sharansky met with Vice President Dick Cheney at the American Enterprise Institute conference in Beaver Creek, Colorado. There, the impending Israeli invasions of both Gaza and Lebanon were discussed. After receiving Cheney's full backing for the invasion of Gaza and Lebanon, Netanyahu flew back to Israel and participated in a special "Ex-Prime Ministers" meeting, in which he conveyed the Bush administration's support for the carrying out of the "Clean Break" policy -- the trashing of all past Middle East peace accords, including Oslo. Present at the meeting, in addition to Netanyahu, were current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres. Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir is very old and suffers from dementia and Ariel Sharon remains in a coma after a series of strokes.

Lebanon and Gaza invasions planned last month in Colorado meetings between Netanyahu, Sharansky, and Cheney.

After the AEI meeting, Sharansky, who has the ear of Bush, met with the Heritage Foundation in Washington and then attended a June 29 seminar at Philadelphia's Main Line Haverford School sponsored by the Middle East Forum led by Daniel Pipes. Sharansky appeared with Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum who this past Thursday was beating the war drums against Syria, Iran, and "Islamo-fascism" in a fiery speech at the National Press Club attended by a cheering section composed of members of the neocon Israel Project, on whose board Santorum serves along with Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss and Virginia GOP Rep. Tom Davis.

Our Washington sources claim that the U.S.-supported invasions of Gaza and Lebanon and the impending attacks on Syria and Iran represent the suspected "event" predicted to take place prior to the November election in the United States and is an attempt to rally the American public around the Bush-Cheney regime during a time of wider war.

Attack on Lebanon - a joint Israeli-U.S. military operation

July 26, 2006 -- Our intelligence sources report that the Israeli Defense Force attack on Lebanon is being carried out as a joint Israeli-U.S. military operation. Moreover, there are joint Israeli and U.S. war rooms coordinating the U.S.-supported Israeli attacks on Lebanon. The ultimate aim of Washington and Jerusalem is not only to eliminate Hezbollah as a political force in Lebanon but also to remake Lebanon as an American and Israeli client state. Israeli forces are pounding parts of Lebanon, especially in the north, where there are no Hezbollah units and primarily Christian populations. In addition, Israeli forces are being aided by the Bush administration with high-resolution overhead imagery from U.S. spy satellites and signals intelligence (SIGINT) intercepts from National Security Agency assets, including SIGINT satellites.

Bush administration assisting Israeli Defense Force attack on Lebanon with overhead imagery and signals intelligence intercepts.

The result of U.S. intelligence support for Israel is directly linked to the targeting of particular locations, including the Israeli launch of 24 high-explosive missiles on a block of ten buildings in south Beirut. The entire block was levelled in the attack. The deliberate Israeli attack on a United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) outpost in southern Lebanon was the result of that post gaining information of Israeli atrocities committed against the civilian Lebanese population. The Israeli attack, called deliberate by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, killed blue helmet peacekeepers from China, Finland, Canada, and Austria. Israeli continued to attack the UN post even as rescuers attempted to locate survivors in the rubble of the building. The deliberate 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, an NSA spy ship monitoring communications during the Arab-Israeli Six Day War, was the result of the Liberty intercepting Israeli communications on the massacre by Israeli forces of surrendering Egyptian prisoners of war in Sinai. Israeli planes continued to attack the ship, even after it raised a large American flag. U.S. Navy and NSA survivors in the water were also strafed by Israeli aircraft.

Wayne Madsen - Wayne Madsen Report
Source: Waynemadsenreport

Israel uses cluster bombs, chemical weapons in Lebanon

2006-07-28T02:50:00.000-07:00

As Israel's onslaught in Lebanon enters its third week, officials and humanitarian organisations raise concerns that more civilians could be killed in the offensive that has so far claimed the lives of more than 380 people.

More than half of the casualties at the Beirut Government University Hospital are children of 15 years of age or less, according to hospital records.

"This is worse than during the Lebanese civil war," Bilal Masri, assistant director of the hospital told IPS earlier this week, adding that he believed the reason why so many children were becoming casualties is because of the "widespread and indiscriminate nature of the bombings" and because they "are least able to run away when the bombings commence."

The United Nations said it fears Israel's using cluster bombs as part of its bombardment in Lebanon, as allegations of attacks using phosphorous bombs and chemical weapons were under investigation by Lebanese authorities.

"We have expressed our concern regarding the use of cluster munitions," Farhan Haq, a UN spokesperson in New York, told The Daily Star.

The Daily Star said it was informed by a senior official within the Lebanese Army that the military issued "warnings to citizens in the places bombed by Israel not to get near or touch suspicious bodies, which might be unexploded cluster bombs."

Officials confirmed Israel's use of cluster bombs in several areas in the South, including the towns of Blida, Hebbariyeh and Kfarhamam.

The Israeli army denied using banned weapons, but the Human Rights Watch (HRW) confirmed its use of cluster bombs in Lebanon.

HRW issued a statement Monday, saying:

"Israel has used artillery-fired cluster munitions in populated areas of Lebanon ... Researchers on the ground in Lebanon confirmed that a cluster munitions attack on the village of Blida on July 19 killed one and wounded at least 12 civilians, including seven children. Human Rights Watch researchers also photographed cluster munitions in the arsenal of Israeli artillery teams on the Israel-Lebanon border."

Attached with the HRW statement were some photos from the Israeli side of the border that showed the ordnance.

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of HRW stated that: "cluster munitions are unacceptably inaccurate and unreliable weapons when used around civilians ... They should never be used in populated areas."

Also eyewitnesses interviewed by HRW confirmed the organisation's statement.

"Israel fired several artillery-fired cluster munitions at Blida at around 3 p.m. on July 19. The witnesses described how the artillery shells dropped hundreds of cluster submunitions on the village. They clearly described the submunitions as smaller projectiles that emerged from larger shells."

Lebanese authorities are investigating reports that Israel has also used phosphorous munitions in its attacks.

The Lebanese Minister of Health has warned earlier that Lebanese children who got hurt in Israeli attacks are suffering from the impact of white phosphorus.

Same allegations were made by the Lebanese President Emile Lahoud.

Investigations are underway to determine what caused the death of eight Lebanese found in the Southern town of Rmeileh.

Mario Aoun, head of Lebanon's doctors' syndicate, told The Daily Star, investigators started the probe after "suspicious" bodies were found following one of the Israeli attacks.

Samples from the eight bodies found "are currently being analyzed at the American University of Science and Technology," Aoun said, suggesting that suspicions chemical weapons may have been used, but "nothing is certain."

"The causes of their deaths are not clear. The bodies are completely black, yet they are not burned. There are no wounds, no internal hemorrhaging and their muscles and hair are intact," he added.

The syndicate head said laboratory results would take two weeks, but "even then, I don't believe we have the proper technology to determine if chemical weapons were used."

Security sources in the South also said that investigations are being conducted to determine weaponry used during Israel's attacks along the border.
Source: AlJazeera

The Real Aims of the US-Backed Israeli War against Lebanon

2006-07-27T01:06:00.000-07:00

AS the onslaught against Lebanon enters its tenth day, Israeli troops are poised for a full-scale invasion that has been prepared by murderous aerial bombardment, and the far-reaching imperialist aims of the war have become all too clear.

With the full political, financial and military backing of the United States, the Zionist regime is attempting to transform Lebanon into an Israeli protectorate. This military operation is a continuation and escalation of the imperialist geo-political restructuring of the Middle East and Central Asia that began with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and whose goal is the establishment of US domination of the entire region.

The immediate aim of this war-the elimination of Hezbollah as a military and political force within Lebanon-is directed against all mass resistance to Israeli and American domination of the country. The Bush administration and its allies in Jerusalem see this as an essential step toward: 1) the removal of the Syrian Baathist regime, and 2) the launching of a full-scale war against Iran.

While the Israeli government and the Bush administration endlessly repeat propaganda claims that the attack on Lebanon is an act of "self defense" prompted by the seizure of two soldiers, this assertion enjoys no credibility among knowledgeable observers.

As the Financial Times of London wrote in its lead editorial of July 17, "Israel's massive bombardment of Lebanon by land, sea and air in response to Hezbollah's cross-border raid last week is now about a great deal more than recovering two Israeli soldiers seized by Islamist guerrillas-and it probably always was."
Similar assessments have been published in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, as well as numerous newspapers internationally. They simply state what is by now obvious: the Israeli attack on Lebanon is the realization of a long-planned act of aggression.

Recent events have placed in clearer perspective the significance of the February, 2005 assassination of the Lebanese multi-billionaire and former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Hariri was killed by a massive explosion that destroyed his motorcade in Beirut four months after he resigned his post as prime minister in protest against the decision of Emile Lahoud, an ally of Syria, to extend his term as president of Lebanon. The United States and France, the country's former colonial ruler, immediately blamed Hariri's death on Damascus. Their anti-Syrian allies within Lebanon, predominantly based on the more affluent social layers, seized upon Hariri's killing to launch the so-called Cedar Revolution, which resulted last year in the withdrawal of Syrian troops, which had occupied Lebanon since the 1970s.

If, in fact, the Syrian regime was behind the killing, it carried it out because it had become convinced that Hariri had lent his support to a US-Israeli plan to drive Syria out of Lebanon, in preparation for an assault on the Hezbollah movement, which enjoys mass support among the impoverished Shiite population and dominates the south of Lebanon. It was well aware that this would be followed by an offensive against the Baathist regime in Damascus itself.

It is, on the other hand, eminently possible that the killing was a provocation organized by Israeli or American intelligence agencies for the purpose of creating a pretext for carrying through the same plan.

In either case, the current Israeli offensive is the implementation of precisely such an operation. The Cedar Revolution itself produced disappointing results in the eyes of the Israelis and Americans. Under the terms of a United Nations Security Council resolution co-sponsored by Washington and Paris, Syria was obliged to withdraw its troops from Lebanon. The power of its Hezbollah ally, however, remained intact.
Indeed, at the height of the anti-Syrian agitation, marked by well-publicized demonstrations in Beirut organized by Maronite Christian forces and other Lebanese parties aligned with Washington, Hezbollah organized far larger counter-demonstrations that brought hundreds of thousands into the streets of the capital. With the specter of a new civil war before it, the government that emerged from the Cedar Revolution felt obliged to make a settlement which included the admission of Hezbollah representatives into the cabinet.

In an article published July 20, the New York Times reflected the frustration within the Bush administration and American ruling circles: "Despite the hopes raised by the so-called Cedar Revolution, which ended nearly three decades of Syrian control, the government remains trapped in the sectarian straitjacket of a system that apportions political offices by religion." (The Times has no similar objections to the "sectarian straitjacket" of Lebanon's neighbor to the south, which not only apportions all political power to representatives of one religion, but defines itself as a "Jewish state").

This comment points to the real purpose of the current onslaught against the Lebanese people. Its aim is a thoroughgoing political restructuring of the country, in which the fiercely pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli sentiments of the Shiite masses are to be crushed and the power of right-wing, pro-US forces-above all, the Christian Phalange-vastly expanded.

This is an attempt to reverse the outcome of the Lebanese civil war, which raged from 1975 until 1990. The US, Israel and other imperialist powers, notably France, played a central role in inciting that long and bloody conflict and keeping it going, including the introduction of American and French military forces and an Israeli invasion in 1982 that was followed by an 18-year Israeli occupation of the south. Washington's chief ally was the fascistic Phalange, which headed a coalition of right-wing forces arrayed against an alliance of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Lebanese Left.

Imperialist intrigue and intervention succeeded in driving the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) from Lebanon, but the eventual settlement curtailed the power of the Phalange, on the one hand, and saw the rise of the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hezbollah on the other. This is what Washington is determined to change.

Significantly, the current Israeli offensive has enabled the US to move its military forces into Lebanon for the first time since they were withdrawn in the aftermath of the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut in October of 1983.

The historical background

Israel has a long history of attempting to transform Lebanon, through a combination of military pressure and political alliances with right-wing forces in that country, into a virtual protectorate.

In March 1978, in the midst of the Lebanese civil war, Israel sent military forces across the border into Lebanon, justifying its actions as a response to PLO terrorist activity. Though compelled by international pressure to withdraw after its military operations had resulted in more than 2,000 Lebanese deaths, Israel maintained control of a 12-mile strip north of the border by sponsoring a right-wing militia, dubbed the South Lebanon Army, under the proxy leadership of one Major Saad Haddad.

Four years later, in 1982, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his defense minister, Ariel Sharon, set into motion a far more ambitious plan to take political control of all Lebanon and expel the PLO from the country. Once again, a convenient pretext was found when an Israeli ambassador was wounded in London by a Palestinian assassin in June 1982. Though intelligence experts acknowledged that the PLO had nothing to do with this incident, the Begin government used the event as a pretext to invade Lebanon. In an operation entitled, with consummate cynicism, "Peace for Galilee," Israeli troops swept north toward the outskirts of Beirut, which was subjected to protracted bombing.

The war forced the PLO's expulsion from Lebanon and led to the Israeli-sanctioned slaughter of thousands of Palestinian refugees by Lebanese fascist militiamen.

The United States also became involved in the subjugation of Lebanon, with the Reagan administration stationing Marines in Beirut. But direct US participation in attacks on the poorer neighborhoods of Beirut (which were shelled by American naval vessels) created deep hostility, leading to the suicide bombing in which nearly 250 Marines were killed. The Reagan administration decided to cut its losses and withdraw from Lebanon.

The Israeli regime, however, sought to maintain control over substantial portions of south Lebanon. It was out of the popular resistance to the occupation that Hezbollah emerged as a powerful military and political force. The guerrilla war conducted by Hezbollah eventually forced Israel to withdraw its forces in 2000.

Israeli military tactics
The current war is not only about wiping out Hezbollah, but destroying any resistance within Lebanon to US and Israeli domination. This desired end goes a long way in explaining the means that are being employed. Israel is carrying out an indiscriminate bombardment of the south, the home of the poor Shiite population and the main base of support for Hezbollah. The Israeli military is deliberately targeting the entire civilian population, destroying whole villages and making the entire region uninhabitable.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that Israel has ordered all Lebanese living in the southern sector below the Litani River to evacuate the region within 24 hours.

The goal is to turn south Lebanon into a no man's land so as to prepare the ground for the entry of either Israeli troops or a combination of Israeli and American forces, with perhaps other national contingents operating as an "international peace keeping force" with the imprimatur of the United Nations.

The Israeli offensive is above all a war against the Lebanese poor. The more affluent residential neighborhoods of Beirut and other parts of the country have been largely spared. This is in keeping with US and Israeli policy during the civil war, when they were allied with the Phalange against the Shiite masses and the Palestinian refugee population.

The unleashing of death and destruction against southern Lebanon is combined with a bombing campaign aimed at the Shiite southern suburbs of Beirut and against airports, ports, roads, bridges and power stations in the rest of the country. The objective is to wreck the country's infrastructure. In order to remake Lebanon politically, it first must be gutted physically. This gives some idea of what US imperialism and its junior partner, Israel, have in store for the people of Syria, Iran and beyond.

Nor is there any reason to believe Israel's disavowals of plans for a full-scale ground invasion. The more Israeli leaders discount such a move, the more likely it becomes. While the scale of the bombing in south Lebanon is sufficient to kill many thousands of people, it will not achieve Israel's aims of destroying Hezbollah as a military and political force, and converting Lebanon into a Zionist protectorate.

Citing the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, NBC's evening news program reported Thursday that several thousand Israeli troops have begun crossing the border into southern Lebanon.

The role of the United States

The United States is playing a decisive role in the war. It sanctioned the war in advance and is working in the closest collaboration with the Israeli military's US-made and American-financed war machine to carry it out.

On the diplomatic level, the Bush administration is openly aligning its moves with the military objectives and political calculations of the Israeli government. Washington is coordinating US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's impending visit to the region with Israel to give the Israeli military all the time it wants to inflict maximum possible destruction in south Lebanon. As the New York Times reported on July 19, "American officials signaled that Ms. Rice was waiting at least a few more days before wading into the conflict, in part to give Israel more time to weaken Hezbollah forces."

There is no precedent for the US government's open opposition to a ceasefire. The Wall Street Journal, in a fairly frank assessment of US policy published July 19, began by recalling Washington's diplomatic role when the last major conflict erupted between Israel and Hezbollah:

"Ten years ago, when Hezbollah and Israeli forces engaged in a multiweek bloodbath, President Clinton sent Secretary of State Warren Christopher to the region for six days of intensive shuttle diplomacy between Damascus and Jerusalem. In the end, he won a cease-fire deal that ended the fighting, at least temporarily.
"Today, the Bush administration has a starkly different approach."

The US is fully and openly legitimizing war as an instrument of foreign policy. This is a continuation of its military aggression in Iraq, and an anticipation of future aggression against Syria, Iran, and other countries. It is bound up with the Bush doctrine of "preemptive war," which has been embraced by the entire American political establishment and both parties of American imperialism-the Democrats as well as the Republicans.

Washington's determined effort to allow Israel to continue the slaughter in Lebanon underscores that the current war is part of US imperialism's drive, by any and all means, to establish American supremacy throughout the Middle East.

Whether this reckless and criminal military adventure will, in the short term, further this objective or lead Washington into an even deeper debacle in the region remains to be seen. (wsws)
Source: DailyMuslims

Hezbollah: Beyond Haifa phase has begun?

2006-07-26T06:43:00.000-07:00

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed Wednesday that his guerrillas will fire rockets into the heart of Israel and counter Israeli military advances inside southern Lebanon.

"We are entering a new phase in the confrontation, the phase of (striking) beyond Haifa," Nasrallah said in a televised speech referring to Israel's main northern city.

A senior Israeli official said the threat of rockets being fired further into the country's heart was real, but added that Israel was prepared for the eventuality.

"The Hezbollah threats are not new .. we know they have longer-range missiles, we are aware of this strategic threat and we're ready," government secretary Israel Maimon told public radio.

Israel has repeatedly said it believes Hezbollah has longer-range rockets capable of reaching beyond Israel's third city, as far as the commercial capital Tel Aviv, or even the southern city of Beersheva.

The radio quoted Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres as saying: "You have to prepare yourselves for Nasrallah's threats as if they're real even if they're lies." But it also cited another official as casting doubt on Hezbollah's ability to deliver on the threat because of what he said was a continued reliance on advisors from sponsors Iran and Syria.

"Firing these longer-range missiles depends on those who sponsor them," the official was quoted as saying.

The Hezbollah chief denied that the border town of Bint Jbeil had fallen. A UN spokesman had said Tuesday that Israeli troops had entered the town, a stronghold of the Shiite militant group.

"They do not control Bint Jbeil. All the city of Bint Jbeil is still in the hands of the resistance," Nasrallah said.

He said Hezbollah was "not a classical army and will wage guerrilla wars" against Israeli advances inside southern Lebanon "which will not halt bombardments on the settlements," or northern Israeli towns.

"There will be no limits to our bombardments." The Hezbollah leader, who has survived at least two Israeli attempts to kill him in air strikes since the conflict erupted on July 12, called for "further steadfastness and unity on these decisive days." He said all the foreign delegations which flocked to Lebanon in the past week "only brought American-Zionist diktats ... they did not bring solutions or settlements".

Source: DailyStar

Israel: The Correct Basis of Debate

2006-07-25T06:27:00.000-07:00

The recent escalation and crisis in Palestine, arising from a disproportionate Israeli response to an Israeli soldier being taken as a 'hostage' by armed Palestinians has re-focussed international attention on the area, whilst partially relegating media focus on Iraq.The conflict has also brought public focus again on the continued debate over the legality of the creation and existence of Israel despite the claims of efforts towards a two-state solution. The pendulum gravitates between rejection of the Israeli state, a view interestingly not only held by Muslims, but also Christians and a number of Jews; and between its legitimacy lent to it by its colonial creators that is imposed and protected by regional tyrant rulers over the Muslims and an ever-present Israeli military.60 years of existence as a state has been associated with 60 years of arguments and struggle.

However, the essence of the debate has become deliberately lost in translation and side-tracked by the absurd assertion that being anti-state of Israel and/or anti-Zionist is synonymous to being anti-Jew and anti-Semitic. Subsequently, much legitimate political debate and expression has been hijacked with this false, disingenuous, emotive, deceptive and irrelevant connection. To avoid falling into this trap and be falsely labelled - so that we can focus on a meaningful perspective on whether the state of Israel has a right to exist, let us go directly to remove the impediment and red-herring: "The assertion that being anti-Israel and/or anti-Zionist is synonymous to being anti-Jew and anti-Semitic is absurd, disingenuous and a concerted deliberate attempt to stifle legitimate political views that argue the illegitimacy of the Israeli state and the fundamental right to oppose it."As for the core discussion about the legitimacy of Israel as a state, it connected to four claims - Ethical, Historical, Religious and Political.

Ethical
There is no ethical basis for the legitimacy of Israel, since it was simply unethical and immoral to displace a population forcibly from their lands, converting them to refugees without meaning, then terrorise them to accept the illegal acquisition of their lands. We would assume by the twisted logic of considering it ethical to force a population to leave their homes, possessions and lands that this would make President Mugabe policy in Zimbabwe of forced eviction of 'whites' acceptable? It would also make it ethical for someone to enter Bush's Texas's Ranch, force him out and claim the ranch for himself, possibly leaving Bush with the barn and to accept this, making the barn his home and being prevented to take appropriate actions to claim all of the ranch back?

We don't think so and doubt this would be considered ethical and moral... and neither was it evident when Argentina sought to claim the Falkland Islands and the British government responded in April 1982, under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, by fighting Argentina in the Falklands War to keep it under British rule. Let us also keep a perspective on this - the Falkland Islands only has a population of 3,000 in comparison to Palestine which has a population 4 million (excluding those forced to flee to neighbouring Jordan and those absorbed into Israel). Given Britain's experience on giving Palestine away from her mandate to a foreign people, why was this precedent not applied to the Falklands and the islands given to Argentina (who have historical claim to the islands)? Was this an unethical action by the British government not to give the Falklands Islands, like they did with Palestine? Given that there is discussion amongst British politicians to commemorate the Falklands war, clearly Britain doesn't believe so. Therefore, if the British can fight to liberate a small relatively insignificant island from occupation to safeguard its population (and commemorate this), then why cannot the Palestinians do the same and repel the illegal occupation of their lands?

What is unethical is not the position of the Palestinians to struggle for the liberation of all the occupied lands, but the hypocritical double standards of the western powers.

Historical
The historical argument that is frequently quoted is often connected to the ethical angle. As for the historical claim, it stems from the view that the ancestors of the Jews were the first to inhabit the plains of Palestine; therefore this grants them the right to the land. This was a similar argument, was it not, that Iraq held concerning Kuwait? Surely the colonial powers should have supported Iraq when it entered Kuwait in 1990 based on Iraq's historical claim (more so since Saddam was a western agent), similar to when they supported the Zionist historical claim to Israel and paved the way for the Zionists to achieve this aim? On the contrary, whilst the Palestinians were forcibly evicted to make way for the Zionist entity, Iraq's entry into Kuwait precipitated the Gulf War. Therefore it should be noted that the historical argument is not only weak, which we will endeavour to summarise later, but suffers from the same illogical double standards. For the sake of completion of argument, if one follows the logic of this argument, then the following examples of historical claims should be equally applied, with equal resolution, force and determination to return land to its original inhabitants:

a) Lands in America returned to the native Indians
When the Europeans landed, there were probably about 10 million Indians populating America north of present-day Mexico. It is believed that the first Indians arrived during the last ice-age, approximately 20,000 - 30,000 years ago. The initial enthusiasm with which the Indians greeted the Europeans soon turned to conflict due to the European colonial material greed. The conflicts led to the Indian Wars, the Indian Removal Act and other acts culminating in the last major war, which was the massacre in 1890 of Indian warriors, women, and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. From a period of a brutal policy of forced assimilation that lasted until the 1960’s, aside from token gesture Indian reservations, native Indians until today have been denied their right to re-possess their ancestral lands

b) Lands in Australia returned to the native Aborigines
From 1788, when the British officially landed, until today force (military and otherwise) has been used to strip the native Aboriginal people of their lands. The Aboriginal people fought to protect their lands but the British declared this continent terra nullius — that the land was empty and belonged to no-one when they colonised it. For over 200 years the lie of terra nullius was the cruel and brutal cover for the mass murder, for the refusal to recognise Australia's indigenous race as people, for the forced removal of children from their families, for the inhuman exploitation of the labour of Aboriginal people, for the racist treatment and apartheid Aboriginal people have been subjected to. Terra Nullius was also the justification for the denial of land rights. Though in 1992, the High Court of Australia recognised the concept of Native Title, stating it had existed before settlement and had continued after colonisation. However, the court adjudged that the Native Title was extinguished whenever land had been sold or set aside for some other purpose. Little has changed since then.

What we clearly witness in the above two examples is a repugnant disguised policy of discrimination, denial of land return and political authority upon those people with legitimate historical claims (except Israel, of course). Therefore, possessing an historical right carries neither value nor worth as a basis of argument. So why is Israel made an exception? Clearly, the historical arguments are flawed and selectively applied - but this is typical from an international community that is hostage to political expediency and established upon the evil ideology of capitalism that serves the prime interests of the capitalists.

Where does this leave the Zionist historical claim, aside from being meaningless and irrelevant? A brief review on the history of Palestine reveals two interesting points. Firstly, that the history is disputed, so there is no clear proof of the Zionist claim anyway. Secondly, most historians conclude the Canaanites were the earliest known inhabitants of Palestine (3rd millennium BC). The Canaanites were the earliest known inhabitants of Palestine (3rd millennium BC). Egypt was the first adjacent power to conquer the region (3rd millennium BC). During the 2nd millennium BC Egyptian hegemony and Canaanite autonomy were challenged by various invaders – and only then did the ‘Israelites’ appear (Semitic tribes from Mesopotamia). Therefore, even the Zionist historical claims are at least unproven and at best a deliberate contortion.

Religious
Politically, Palestine holds no significance for Jews – since like Christianity, Judaism does not possess nor articulate a political structure, institutions or processes to deal with state and society.

However, it is clear that Judaism has been hijacked by the Zionist movement, which has taken Judaic principles and ideals and fused them within a capitalist and ruthless political agenda that dreams of a ‘greater Israel’ – whilst according to the Torah, the Jews are forbidden to have their own state or political sovereignty while awaiting the messianic era. To this end, the religious argument and justification is false and is best represented by Jews themselves.

A number of orthodox Jews, like the Neturei Karta, state their refusal to, "...recognise the right of anyone to establish a "Jewish" state during the present period of exile." They oppose the, "...so-called "State of Israel" not because it operates secularly, but because the entire concept of a sovereign Jewish state is contrary to Jewish Law.

"Quoting the Talmud, Orthodox Jews refer to Tractate Kesubos (p. 111a), stating that it teaches that Jews shall not use human force to bring about the establishment of a Jewish state before the coming of the universally accepted Moshiach (Messiah from the House of David).

The likes of Neturei Karta further aim to distance Judaism from Zionism by stating, "The true Jews remain faithful to Jewish belief and are not contaminated with Zionism." Likewise they, "deplore the systematic uprooting of ancient Jewish communities by the Zionists, the shedding of Jewish and non-Jewish blood for the sake of Zionist sovereignty," and that, "The world must know that the Zionists have illegitimately seized the name Israel and have no right to speak in the name of the Jewish people!

"Therefore, we would safely conclude that there is no religious basis for the existence of the state of Israel. We wonder whether orthodox Jews who espouse these views are chastised, tried and imprisoned by western governments for promoting such views and labelled as 'anti-Semitic' or imprisoned for holding 'terrorist' views on the destruction of Israel? We don't think this is the case, since the likes of Neturei Karta hold year round global demonstrations, including in New York and London - with placards, which if held by Muslims – they would be instantly arrested and tried under racial/religious discrimination laws or some terror legislation.

Political
The development of Palestine in contemporary political history has three distinct periods, which are: firstly, under Islamic rule; secondly, under the British Mandate from 1922, by the League of Nations; and finally under Israeli rule. Without any shadow of doubt, only under the rule of Islam did the people (Muslims, Jews and Christians) find great levels of security, stability and ease. It is well documented, by non-Muslim historians, that Jews sought refuge under the Islamic authority, the Khilafah, from persecution in Europe, particularly the infamous Spanish Inquisition in 1492.

As for British rule, in 1922, Palestine was placed, by the League of Nations, under British Mandate until 1948, when the state of Israel was established. During this mandate, all the people, particularly the Arabs suffered at the hands of a discriminatory policy that enacted laws assisting Jewish immigration to Palestine and acquisition of land by Jews. During this time, the local Arab population (Muslims and Christians), dismayed that they were being slowly swamped in their own country by foreign immigrants, rose more than once in revolt against the immigration policy of the British Government.

As for Israeli rule since 1948, little needs to be said about the apartheid, brutal, discriminatory and racist nature of the state – both against the Muslim/Christian Arab populations (in Israel and the Palestinian refugee camps) and against Jews themselves of Oriental and African descent. A number of documents by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch re-affirm what the world has witnessed for 60 years of the brutal disregard of human life and blatant discrimination, resulting in the consistent tension for the region as a whole. Therefore, politically, Israel will never provide a basis for political stability in the region given its innate racist philosophy, Zionist political agenda and sustained opposition from a people that have been forcibly displaced and will continue to work for the complete liberation of Palestine from Zionist and colonial control.

In conclusion, the legitimacy of Israel is established upon deceit, dishonesty and hypocrisy. It reality it has no legitimacy and the ethical, historical, religious and political claims are false and twisted. The occupied people of Palestine have the legal right to oppose occupation and strive for the complete liberation of Palestine. This is a right for the people of Palestine; a right that exists for ethical, historical, religious and political reasons – unlike the false reasons that the proponents of Israel have claimed.

Source: KCom Journal

No Arab, Muslim will support Tel Aviv: Arab ambassador

2006-07-24T01:27:00.000-07:00

No Arab or Muslim leader would ever support Tel Aviv in its aggression on Lebanon and massacring children, women and innocent civilians in Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Lebanon, a Tehran-based Arab ambassador said on Sunday.

Speaking to IRNA, Ambassador Abdullah who was reacting to a recent claim by Zionists that leader of an Arab state voiced support for the Tel Aviv authorities, said no Arab or Muslim leader would commit such a big treason.

"No Arab or Muslim leader has ever committed or will commit such a big and historic treason and the public opinion will not allow him to do so as well," said the ambassador.
The diplomat added that the Zionist regime never believe that the revolutionary movement of Lebanese Hizbollah could resist so strongly against its massive aggressions against mostly civilian targets and infrastructure of Lebanon.

"That was why the Zionist resorted to sheer lies in order to calm down their confused and disturbed public opinion," Ambassador Abdullah said.
According to the diplomat, from a military point of view, Israel would be the loser in its aggression on Lebanon as Hizbollah has successfully pounded Tel Aviv's major military and political targets deep inside the occupied territories, a task that had never been done by any of the Arab states throughout the history.

"Israel's behavior in its current invasion of Lebanon is a clear sign of its weakness," said the ambassador.
He added Israel had to accept that it lost the war to "not an army but just to a Muslim revolutionary group."
"No matter what would be the apparent result of this war, Hizbollah is and will be the only winner," stressed Ambassador Abdullah.

He added that Tel Aviv authorities and their Western allies, US, in particular, should be brought to justice as "war criminals" for targeting innocent civilians including women and children, and civilian infrastructure of Lebanon. [IRNA]

More Than 40 Zionists Killed, 90 Wounded on Sunday

2006-07-23T22:28:00.000-07:00

In retaliation to the unabated atrocities of the Zionist entity against the civilians of Lebanon, the Hezbollah movement fired a barrage of 170 missiles on Sunday on mostly military and industrial sites in the northern part of Occupied Palestine inflicting considerable damage and resulting in the death of over 40 Zionists and injury to over 90 others.

Earlier on Sunday, Zionist planes raided Beqa valley nine times in continuation of their Saturday's raid of the same place that totaled 30 sorties against defenceless civilians.

In the Maroun ar-Raas border area the Zionist army has been bogged down and forced to retreat from several areas. Several advanced tanks of Israel have been destroyed and scores of Zionist soldiers have been killed or wounded.

Source: IRIB

Political Realism

2006-07-22T08:33:00.000-07:00

Lebanon has been under attack from Israel since 12 July and the Arab League and the United Nations have made it clear that they are to leave the people of Lebanon to be bombed and killed by Israel. At the emergency meeting of the Arab League held in Cairo, the foreign ministers of Arab countries sent a clear message to the people of Lebanon. They towed the Western and Israeli line and firmly asserted that Hezbollah bears the responsibility and it alone should face the consequences.

They called their new school of diplomacy in Arab relations, political realism.In truth the League statements reflected an overt attempt to ignore the question of Lebanon, which was one of the chief reasons why the meeting was called. After convening on 15 July, the Council of Arab Foreign Ministers failed to draft a single joint declaration. Instead, it issued three pathetic and separate declarations on Lebanon, Gaza and the Middle East peace process. These Arab governments chose rather than focus the attention on the murderous and racist state of Israel, to publicly blame Hezbollah instead.

Saudi Arabia, supported by Jordan, Egypt, several Persian Gulf states and the Palestinian Authority, chastised Hezbollah for "unexpected, inappropriate and irresponsible acts". "These acts will pull the whole region back to years ago, and we cannot simply accept them," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said of Hezbollah's attacks on Israel. Outrageous comments when in fact it is Israel that is putting Lebanon back by twenty years!Have these Arab officials no shame in chastising Muslims engaged in conflict with the occupying forces of Israel, especially as images of destruction at the hands of Israeli warplanes are beamed into the worlds living rooms.

The willingness of these puppet governments to openly defy Arab public opinion, which has raged against Israel's actions in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, underscores the contempt they have for the Ummah and the high regards they place on their personal and western interests.As for the UN Security Council, it in a unanimous stand sent a clear signal to the Muslims and Arabs that the international community is not interested in protecting their lives against a state-sponsored terrorism. Further Israel received the green light from the head of the world's superpower and the leaders of the G-8. Now that it is clear that these organisations have granted Israel the right to destroy Lebanon under the pretext of trying to finish off the Hezbollah in Lebanon, no Muslim or Arab should have any trust in them. Indeed millions already feel betrayed by their fellow Arabs and members of the international community.

Relying on these people and institutions has always been trust misplaced. Instead Muslims should now be openly calling directly upon the armies to take action. The total manpower and firepower in the Middle East, that could be directed against Israel far outweighs the battlefield resources that Israel could muster. . Egypt, Syria, and Jordan had expanded the total of their divisions from twenty to twenty-five. Arab military powers have vastly expanded their sophisticated weaponry in the last 30 years. The tank inventories of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria rose by 60 percent, while their stocks of aircraft, helicopters, and armored personnel carriers roughly doubled.

Syria has acquired high performance aircraft of Soviet design. To primary land weapons had been added more self-propelled artillery, guided antitank missiles, new munitions--including cluster and homing shells--improved fire-control systems, and laser rangefinders. Previously vulnerable air defenses now could be shielded using advanced mobile missile systems acquired from both East and West. Most of the strategic sites in Israel are exposed to Syrian striking power in the form of Soviet-supplied SS-21 SSMs, with a range of 120 kilometers and far greater accuracy than the earlier generation FROG-7 (70 kilometers) and Scud-B (300 kilometers).

With the modernization of Jordan's army and air force many important Israeli targets are within the range of Jordanian artillery and rockets. Like other Arab states, Saudi Arabia had upgraded its naval and air arms, improving its capability to defend its air space and control activities in the Red Sea area. Nevertheless, from Israel's perspective, that country has the potential to undertake offensive air operations in conjunction with other Arab air forces. In the eyes of Israeli strategists, Saudi Arabia's purchase of long-range missiles from China and its acquisition of Tornado fighter-bombers from Britain enhanced its role in a future conflict.It is therefore high time for Muslim field commanders to demonstrate this combined power in the battlefield with Israel. So that Israel is defeated, the land returned to its rightful owners and peace prevails once again for Muslim, Christian and Jew under the banner of the Khilafah.

Source: KCom Journal

Israeli Terrorism

2006-07-21T01:57:00.000-07:00

BY declaring that "Israel has right to defend itself," the Bush administration is tacitly approving Israel's pounding Lebanon into rubble and reinvading Gaza.

Since 9/11, the administration has tried to cast its "war on terror" as broadly as possible, including an invasion of Iraq and the labeling of groups that focus their attacks only on Israel-Hamas and Hezbollah-as terrorists. And these groups do oftentimes engage in monstrously unacceptable acts of terrorism-that is, by striking innocent civilians to get them to pressure their governments to change policy.

But sometimes these groups undertake legitimate acts of war. Yet the world's most powerful governments-led by the United States-seem to deem any actions by these groups as terrorism. At the same time, they avoid that label for any actions taken by other governments, such as the disproportionate measures now being undertaken by Israel.

The G-8 nations, at their summit in St. Petersburg, concluded that Hamas and Hezbollah started the war by Hamas' rocket attacks in Gaza and the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier and Hezbollah's abduction of two more Israeli soldiers. The G-8 leaders declared, "These extremist elements and those that support them cannot be allowed to plunge the Middle East into chaos and provoke a wider conflict. The extremists must immediately halt their attacks."

But contrary to press coverage in the United States, the actual time line of events indicates that Israel attacked first and also committed the first acts of terrorism.

"Terrorism" is a term that was originally coined during the French Revolution to apply to acts by the revolutionary government. Over history, governments, because of their vastly greater resources and thus killing capacity, have killed far more civilians in acts of terrorism than rag-tag groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

For example, although not excusing Nazi and North Vietnamese terror tactics, the U.S. government-by aiding in the firebombing of Dresden toward the end of World War II when the Nazis were clearly defeated and by the indiscriminate bombing of North Vietnam in the Linebacker II air offensive in 1972-has committed acts of terrorism. And Israel regularly dispenses "collective punishment"-as it is now in Lebanon and Gaza-that should be labeled "terrorism," but isn't.

Even if Israel is given the benefit of the doubt for an explosion in Gaza on June 9 that killed a family of seven (witnesses blame Israeli artillery but Israel denies the causing it), Israel clearly killed 11 Palestinians, including nine civilians, in Gaza on June 13 using a missile strike on a van.

In the latter case, the Israelis would argue that they were going after "terrorists" in the van and that the civilians just happened to be in the way. But Hamas could claim that its later June 25 killing of two Israeli soldiers and capturing another was an attack on legitimate targets in retaliation for the first two Israeli actions.

So the capture of the Israeli soldier by Hamas, on which the G-8 leaders and world press have focused, was not the beginning of the chain of events that have led to the current war. If hitting military targets is not terrorism, then Israel, not Hamas-at least in this episode-was also the first to use terror tactics.

In the ensuing days after the soldier's capture, Israel began invading Gaza in a grossly disproportionate action. Israel destroyed power stations, bridges, and other infrastructure in Gaza. This was clearly collective punishment aimed at inflicting pain on Palestinian civilians. For example, any time power is shut off to hospitals, some patients die. Thus, this response has to be labeled a terrorist act, rather than a defensive one as President Bush has claimed.

Furthermore, such an over-the-top response undermined, rather than improved, Israeli security. Even if Hamas and Hezbollah do oftentimes resort to acts of terror, what terrorists crave most is publicity. Israel could have denied it to them by quietly using stealthy special operations forces, killing or capturing leading figures in Hamas.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's excessive measures, conducted mainly by a weak leader to show the folks at home that he was tough, merely showed Hezbollah in Lebanon that they could get back into the limelight by conducting a similar raid on July 12 that would kill eight Israeli soldiers and capture two more.

Again, this would seem to be a legitimate military target, as was Hezbollah's launching of Katyusha rockets and mortar shells toward Israeli military posts in the disputed Shebaa Farms area of Israel. Hezbollah strayed into terror acts, however, when launching rockets and mortar shells at the Israeli border town of Shlomi on that same day and in the subsequent rocket attacks on northern Israeli towns and cities.

It launched the latter inaccurate rocket salvos en masse only after Israel began committing terrorist acts on Lebanon by bombing power stations, roads, bridges, gas stations, and fuel depots; displacing thousands of Lebanese residents and shutting the country off from the outside world using a naval blockade and bombing the ports, the international airport and the only road out of the country to Damascus, Syria.

Since Israel withdrew its occupation forces from Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah had exhibited restraint, directing its increasingly infrequent offensives against the disputed border area at Shebaa Farms.

Once again, Israel's disproportionate action of holding a whole country responsible for a group's capturing and killing of a few of its soldiers has now triggered a full-blown war that has endangered citizens of northern Israel. Besides, as conservative commentator Pat Buchanan points out, over an 18-year period, Israel couldn't defeat and disarm Hezbollah, so it is ridiculous for Israel to hold the weak government of Lebanon responsible for doing so.

The total civilian casualties on each side also indicate that Israel's attacks have strayed into terrorism. Very few Israeli civilians have been killed compared to the death tolls in Lebanon and in Gaza.

No one can excuse genuine acts of terror by rag-tag groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, especially indiscriminate rocket attacks on towns and cities. But neither should great powers, especially the United States, look the other way while a government-read Israel-systematically kills many more civilians under the guise of a disingenuous claim of offensive self-defense. (Consortiumnews)

(Ivan Eland is a Senior Fellow at The Independent Institute, Director of the Institute's Center on Peace & Liberty, and author of the books The Empire Has No Clothes, and Putting "Defense" Back into U.S. Defense Policy)

www.DailyMuslims.com

Putin: Don't lecture me about democracy

2006-07-20T01:37:00.000-07:00

Vladimir Putin delivered a barbed retort to George Bush's muted criticism of Russia's democratic record yesterday when he told reporters at a joint press conference that he did not want to head a democracy like Iraq's.

The remark, which raised a loud laugh from the assembled press pool, capped a joint appearance that exposed how relations between the two men have become strained in the past two years, since Washington began criticising Putin's iron grip on Russia's media and politics.

Bush said that, during two hours of discussions, 'I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like Iraq where there's a free press and free religion. I told [Putin] a lot of people in our country ... would hope that Russia would do the same thing. I fully understand, however, that there will be a Russian style of democracy.'

Putin replied, smiling: 'I'll be honest with you: we, of course, would not want to have a democracy like in Iraq.' Bush interrupted to say 'Just wait' - a reference to Iraq's democracy being in its infancy - before Putin continued: 'Nobody knows better than us how we can strengthen our own nation. But we know for sure that we cannot strengthen our nation without developing democratic institutions. And this is the path that we'll certainly take; but certainly we will do this by ourselves.'

Bush likes to speak of his close friendship with Putin; the White House claims it enables a frank exchange on sensitive issues such as the alleged backsliding of democracy in Russia and Putin's outright opposition to the Iraq war. Putin, however, is cooler about his friendship with Bush. But the two men did present some show of harmony in resurrecting an old idea to combat the threat of nuclear terrorism by setting up international enrichment centres to control atomic material under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Prime Minister Tony Blair secured a coup at the summit by ensuring that a separate discussion will be held in St Petersburg on progress towards meeting the ambitious goals to free Africa from poverty, made at the last G8 meeting in Gleneagles a year ago.

Blair himself will lead the discussion, which will also embrace efforts to combat climate change, including using new mechanisms outside the Kyoto Protocol as a way of engaging the Americans.

Blair is also increasingly hopeful that the summit will kickstart trade development talks, which have failed to make progress owing to disputes between America, the EU and Brazil. Number 10 is not expecting a deal, but hopes progress will be made on the details over the next month. If nothing happens in the next few weeks, Bush will lose his mandate to negotiate with the WTO and will have to go back to an increasingly protectionist Congress to try to get it renewed.

With Russia determined to pursue its agenda on energy security - code for greater Russian access to European markets - Blair is eager to widen the discussion from the supply of energy to its over-use and impact on the climate.

The talks otherwise ended with little real progress. Discussions over Russia's membership of the WTO stalled again. Bush and Putin were vague over their joint approaches over North Korea and Iran. Bush said: 'I'm confident that we can get something done at the United Nations.' Putin added: 'If the Iranians see that the US and Russia are working together, they will see the seriousness of our intent.'

Nick Paton Walsh and Patrick Wintour in St Petersburg The Observer

US could be going bankrupt

2006-07-19T01:43:00.000-07:00

The United States is heading for bankruptcy, according to an extraordinary paper published by one of the key members of the country's central bank.

A ballooning budget deficit and a pensions and welfare timebomb could send the economic superpower into insolvency, according to research by Professor Laurence Kotlikoff for the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, a leading constituent of the US Federal Reserve.

Prof Kotlikoff said that, by some measures, the US is already bankrupt. "To paraphrase the Oxford English Dictionary, is the United States at the end of its resources, exhausted, stripped bare, destitute, bereft, wanting in property, or wrecked in consequence of failure to pay its creditors," he asked.

According to his central analysis, "the US government is, indeed, bankrupt, insofar as it will be unable to pay its creditors, who, in this context, are current and future generations to whom it has explicitly or implicitly promised future net payments of various kinds''.

The budget deficit in the US is not massive. The Bush administration this week cut its forecasts for the fiscal shortfall this year by almost a third, saying it will come in at 2.3pc of gross domestic product. This is smaller than most European countries - including the UK - which have deficits north of 3pc of GDP.

Prof Kotlikoff, who teaches at Boston University, says: "The proper way to consider a country's solvency is to examine the lifetime fiscal burdens facing current and future generations. If these burdens exceed the resources of those generations, get close to doing so, or simply get so high as to preclude their full collection, the country's policy will be unsustainable and can constitute or lead to national bankruptcy.

"Does the United States fit this bill? No one knows for sure, but there are strong reasons to believe the United States may be going broke."

Experts have calculated that the country's long-term "fiscal gap" between all future government spending and all future receipts will widen immensely as the Baby Boomer generation retires, and as the amount the state will have to spend on healthcare and pensions soars. The total fiscal gap could be an almost incomprehensible .9 trillion, according to a study by Professors Gokhale and Smetters.

The figure is massive because President George W Bush has made major tax cuts in recent years, and because the bill for Medicare, which provides health insurance for the elderly, and Medicaid, which does likewise for the poor, will increase greatly due to demographics.

Prof Kotlikoff said: "This figure is more than five times US GDP and almost twice the size of national wealth. One way to wrap one's head around .9trillion is to ask what fiscal adjustments are needed to eliminate this red hole. The answers are terrifying. One solution is an immediate and permanent doubling of personal and corporate income taxes. Another is an immediate and permanent two-thirds cut in Social Security and Medicare benefits. A third alternative, were it feasible, would be to immediately and permanently cut all federal discretionary spending by 143pc."

The scenario has serious implications for the dollar. If investors lose confidence in the US's future, and suspect the country may at some point allow inflation to erode away its debts, they may reduce their holdings of US Treasury bonds.

Prof Kotlikoff said: "The United States has experienced high rates of inflation in the past and appears to be running the same type of fiscal policies that engendered hyperinflations in 20 countries over the past century."

Paul Ashworth, of Capital Economics, was more sanguine about the coming retirement of the Baby Boomer generation. "For a start, the expected deterioration in the Federal budget owes more to rising per capita spending on health care than to changing demographics," he said.

"This can be contained if the political will is there. Similarly, the expected increase in social security spending can be controlled by reducing the growth rate of benefits. Expecting a fix now is probably asking too much of short-sighted politicians who have no incentives to do so. But a fix, or at least a succession of patches, will come when the problem becomes more pressing."

Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright

By Edmund Conway, Economics Editor Source: Telegraph

Ahmadinejad: Zionist Regime to Be Annihilated Soon

2006-07-18T10:32:00.000-07:00

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that the Zionist Regime will be fall down in the near future.

Addressing a large gathering of the public in the northwestern city of Jolfa Wednesday morning on the second leg of his tour of Azerbaijan province, the President noted the cruel manslaughter of the Palestinians by the Israeli regime and described the Zionist Regime as a symbol of blasphemy and blasphemous people.

He said that the world nations do not obey oppression any longer today, and stated, "We will soon witness the fall of the Zionist Regime."

Terming Israelis' crimes an indication of that regime's paralysis, he said such measures by the Zionists bring nothing but more disrepute to the supporters of that regime.

"Regional nations will include the names of the Zionist Regime's supporters in the list of Israeli crimes and in the international list of the war criminals," he said.

Racism plagues Western media coverage

2006-07-17T07:28:00.000-07:00

Racism is "the belief that one 'racial group' is inferior to another and the practices of the dominant group to maintain the inferior position of the dominated group. Often defined as a combination of power, prejudice and discrimination."

This is how the British Library defines racism on its Web site. The above definition hardly deviates from the essence of almost all definitions of the ominous concept. And, indeed, the concept is being fully utilized with Israel's onslaught against the Palestinians, and the international community and media's mild, if not accommodating response to the onslaught.

The capture of Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit is an act of self-defense. According to international law and the Geneva Conventions, he can be considered a prisoner of war, but not according to CNN, Fox News and the BBC, who present the soldier as a victim "kidnapped" by Palestinian "militants" who are "affiliated" with the Hamas government.

By not challenging the Israeli narrative in any meaningful way, the uncritical media has become a tool in the hands of Israel's war strategists and their eternal concoctions.

Consider this example. An Israeli military commander tells a BBC correspondent dispatched to the border area between Israel and Gaza, that Israel intends on opening the border for "as long as it takes" to offset the humanitarian crisis developing in Gaza. The Israeli Army representative in a barefaced lie declares that the border has always been open, despite the perpetual Palestinian threat on the state of Israel. The BBC correspondent thanks him and signs off.

Is it possible that the BBC is unaware of the fact that Gaza has been under a strict military siege since Hamas' democratic advent to power through the January 2006 elections? Could it be that the Western media has missed the dozens of shocking reports that have warned that the Israeli siege -- which began months before the capture of Shalit -- was soon to create chaos and panic among the already malnourished Palestinians in Gaza? Did they all miss statements by top Israeli officials vowing to carry on with the siege until the outset of Hamas?

Some reporters misrepresent facts out of ignorance, not by design. But if that indeed was the case, then how can one excuse the fact that the same media that coined the term "kidnapping" to describe the action of the Palestinian fighters who captured Shalit refused to use the same association to describe the kidnapping of most of the elected Palestinian Cabinet, mostly academics with no connection to any militant wing?

Israel's military spokesman insisted that they are "all terrorists" and Israel, "like any democratic" country has the right to protect itself against terrorists. If that was true, why did Israel refrain from kidnapping them until Palestinian fighters embarrassed the Israeli Army and captured their first prisoner of war in a long time? Is "rounding up" Palestinian ministers and scores of legislators the same as having a soldier captured in what has been for long a one-sided Israeli war?

If you are an avid viewer of Fox News or a reader of the New York Times, then Israel is yet to exceed its legitimate legal boundaries: that of a democracy opting to defend its citizens. But only racism can lead to such rationale. Only a racist media portrays the capture of a soldier whose army units have besieged Gazans for years, denying them food and medicine, as a violation of all that is holy. Only a racist media presents the kidnapping of 9,000 Palestinians, now in Israeli jails, as a just outcome of Israel's routine arrests of Palestinian terrorists or potential terrorists. Only racism can play down the Israeli destruction of Gaza's infrastructure, which is justified without question, for such actions are necessary to impede the militants' efforts.

And yet, Israel is praised for its "generous" act of allowing some food to be transferred to Gazans, who ironically have gone hungry because of the Israeli-spearheaded international campaign to punish Palestinians for electing Hamas.

Only racism can completely remove from the current discourse the murder of dozens of Palestinian civilians at the hands of the Israeli Army (90 civilians in seven weeks) as the reason that led to the Palestinian raid on the Israeli Army post and the capture of Shalit, and instead depict the current escalation as if it was entirely the work of the Palestinians, with Israel's slate still clean.

Indeed, Israel's slate will continue to be clean as long as racism and inequality are the concepts according to which this conflict is explained. Israel has the right to do all the above actions without hesitation because Israel is not Palestine, and the lives and well being of the residents of Israel, at least some of them, cannot be equated with Palestinians. Turn the tables for a moment and you'll understand how repellent such racism is.

Inequality has always been at the heart of this conflict, the late professor Edward Said used to say. Racism is at the heart of inequality, I must add. The media can be ignorant, biased and self-serving, indeed, but it can also be utterly racist.

-Ramzy Baroud's latest book: "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronology of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London) is now available at Amazon.com

When civilians become targets

2006-07-15T23:43:00.000-07:00

In the last two weeks, Israel has sent a chilling message to the Palestinian and Lebanese people: civilians and infrastructure are legitimate targets in their war of aggression.
The Geneva Conventions have been fragrantly violated and humanitarian law has been thrown into the garbage can.

On July 12, Israel killed 22 Palestinians in Gaza, including nine civilians from one family. An economic, political and physical siege has been placed on the Palestinian people. In the past two weeks, the Israeli bombardment has killed eighty Palestinians, knocked out power and water for the majority of Gaza's 1.3 million inhabitants, and pummeled Gaza's infrastructure with thousands of artillery shells. The international community has been silent on the sidelines, while Israeli forces bombed Gaza back twenty years-as it promises to do with Lebanon. While the premeditated assault on Gaza continues, Israel still holds nearly 10,000 abducted Palestinians, including many members of the Palestinian government.

This week, Hezbollah attacked an Israeli military target, killing three soldiers. Four more soldiers died after an Israeli tank ran over a mine in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah now holds two Israeli prisoners that were caught in the attack. In response, Israel bombed civilian infrastructure and Beirut's Rafik Al-Hariri International Airport. July is Lebanon's busiest tourist month. Bombing all three runways of Beirut's airport and its fuel tanks is a direct attack on the economic welfare of the Lebanese society.

Already, thousands have fled the country, but with the intense bombing of the airport and the main highway leading out to Damascus, fleeing for safety has become impossible. Reminiscent of the Lebanese civil war and the Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982, the Lebanese population has rushed to supermarkets for food and supplies in fear of a further escalation of Israeli aggression.
The military onslaught against Lebanon has only intensified and expanded. The Israeli strikes have devastated Lebanon's infrastructure, destroying most of country's bridges-including bridges in the South that connect villages to their main roads. The entrances and exits of many villages in the South have been destroyed by Israeli forces-leaving civilians as prisoners in their villages. The widespread incursion has left most of the country without electricity and operating land lines. Many Lebanese have cell phones and rely on them as a means of communication, but with cell phone antennas knocked down in most parts of the country, cell phones are useless, further strangulating the population's means to communicate. The majority of inhabitants in Lebanon are without communication to the outside world.

By 3 am Eastern Time on July 14, my cousin in Beirut indicated that power had been down for nearly an hour. Typing to me through instant messaging, (her electricity is supplied through a generator) she explained that she "couldn't sleep last night because of the [Israeli] planes." By the time I contacted her the next morning she said, "It's horrible. It's almost comical now. I feel like I'm in a dream. A bad dream." The Israeli Air Forces have been bombing the suburbs of Beirut throughout the morning and afternoon of July 14. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the Israeli Air Forces struck "a bridge in the southern suburb of Beirut, and the fuel stores of the Jiyyeh power plant south of the city early Friday, witnesses and security sources said."

In addition, there are many foreign nationals stuck in the South without a route out, while the expansive bombing is now putting all foreign nationals throughout the country at risk. The Lebanese in the South can't flee up north towards Beirut because the roads and bridges leading to Beirut have been bombed by Israeli forces. During the civil war, many residents of the South would flee up north during intense periods of fighting to stay out of harms way-but because of the intensity of Israel's collective punishment and killing, this measure has been impossible to pursue.

Israel continues to pound areas in and around Beirut and is further blasting densely populated Shia areas in the South and in the suburbs of Beirut.

The Israeli Air Forces struck multiple army bases in Lebanon and bombed Al Manar, the Hezbollah-run television station. Since the start of the offensive, Israel has killed at least 60 Lebanese civilians, including ten members of one family. It is yet unknown what humanitarian implications this offensive will have. Without electricity in the second hottest month of the year, it may have a serious effect on the population. The most affected will be young children, the elderly, pregnant women and those in need of medical care. Israel has warned that the military blockade debilitating Lebanese society will continue. The operation is likely to broaden, including more suburbs in Beirut and other heavily populated areas. Nearly 1.2 million people live in Beirut, while another 2.1 million live in surrounding areas.

Placing blame

Since the capture of the two Israeli prisoners, Israel and America have pointed the finger of blame at Syria and Iran for supporting Hezbollah. Yet, it's disingenuous to suggest that Syria and Iran are pulling the strings of Hezbollah. The actions of Syria and Iran are similar to Americans financially supporting Israel-both have interests in common, which justifies the financial support. It is not surprising that Syria and Iran-who out of favor with the Israel and the West-would be willing to fund movements that are trying to free their countries from occupation or defend their countries from Israel, the regional pariah state. It should be noted that Israel has not attributed blame to the Lebanese government for logistically helping Hezbollah, although, Israel still holds the Lebanese government "responsible."

The Lebanese government is already calling for a cease-fire and has petitioned to the United Nations to intervene. Israel and America know that the Lebanese government doesn't have the power to disarm Hezbollah even if it wanted to, aside from the fact that it would be unwilling to start a civil war to appease Israel and America. Israel, mirroring the chilling standard it set in Gaza, is setting the same precedent in Lebanon.

Shifting positions

There is a stark difference between the initial actions of Israel and the initial actions of Hezbollah and the groups in Gaza-Hezbollah and the groups in Gaza attacked military targets. Ironically, groups that much of the West regards as terrorists entities, applied more conventional standards of warfare in recent weeks than Israel has.

Since the start of its incursion in Gaza, Israeli forces abducted many members of the Palestinian government to put pressure on the Palestinians to release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. This policy is not new for Israel. Ali Abuminah, co-founder of ElectronicIntifada.net, pointed out on Berkley radio that "Israel explicitly introduced the tactic of hostage taking for the purpose of prisoners exchanges...in the early ‘90s." Today, Israel holds many Lebanese prisoners and occupies the Shebaa Farms. Abuminah illustrates Israel's hypocrisy in condemning Hezbollah's "disregard for the sovereignty of Israel,"

"When did Israel every respect the sovereignty of any of its neighbors. Israel occupies southwest Syria. There are 30,000 Israeli settlers living in southwest Syria cultivating wine and enjoying the Golan Heights and claiming God gave it to them. Israel is establishing new settlements everyday throughout the Occupied Territories. Israel has been violating the airspace and territorial waters of Lebanon continuously and consistently ever since it was forced to withdraw its forces and its collaborator army, the South Lebanon army, in May 2000."

A Christian Palestinian, who lived most of his life in Beirut before moving to the U.S., explained, "They [Israel] do whatever they want. They are so militarily superior. It's been like this since 1967. It's depressing. Once upon a time, when Russia was a big power, we could get some support, but now Israel can do whatever it wants and nobody gives a damn."

What Happens Next?

Those that stayed silent during the atrocities inflicted upon Gaza have voiced a little more concern in the assault on Lebanon. The European Union (EU) stated, "The European Union is greatly concerned about the disproportionate use of force by Israel in Lebanon in response to attacks by Hezbollah on Israel." The EU continued, "The presidency deplores the loss of civilian lives and the destruction of civilian infrastructure. The imposition of an air and sea blockade on Lebanon cannot be justified." It is also not in the interest of the U.S. government or the international community to see the collapse of the Lebanese government, as U.S. President George Bush noted on July 13. The international community can stomach the slow ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, but they cannot stomach a regional war in the Middle East. Furthermore, regional instability has led crude oil to surge to 78 dollars a barrel-many analysts see 100 dollars a barrel in the not so distant future if regional instability continues. The outrage of U.S. consumers may help Bush rethink the blank cheque he has given Israel "to defend itself." While Condoleezza Rice urged Israel to "exercise restraint," these hollow suggestions haven't hindered Israel's use of brute force.

The U.S., pressed by the EU and the UN, must force Israel to restrain itself and engage in negotiations to deescalate the situation in Lebanon and Gaza. The destruction of Lebanon and Gaza will not lead to the release of the Israeli prisoners. Much like the residents of Gaza, the Shia dominated south of Lebanon, which has seen widespread humanitarian support from Hezbollah, has become stronger willed over time. Israel hoped its military incursions in Gaza would break the back of Hamas, toppling the Hamas-led government in Palestine: this has yet to be the case. Although the Palestinian population is immensely suffering, it is not willing to concede to its occupier this time. Unfortunately for Israeli forces, those in the Israeli north and possibly in Haifa, the residents of the South are willing to fight off its oppressive neighbor once again. It is up to the international community to let the Lebanese population know how long they will have to fight for.

Remi Kanazi is the primary writer for the political website www.PoeticInjustice.net He lives in New York City as a Palestinian American freelance writer, poet and performer and can be reached via email at remroum@gmail.com

Source: AlJazeera

My life in Gaza

2006-07-15T08:24:00.000-07:00

By Mona El-Farra
THE IRONY IS almost beyond belief. Since the capture of an Israeli soldier on June 25, the Gaza Strip has been subjected to a large-scale military operation, what Israel calls ``Summer Rain." Because Israel bombed the power plant, and the area needs electricity to pump water, most of Gaza now has almost no access to drinking water. In the heat of summer, rain would be a blessing far more welcome than the ongoing bombings.

I am already starting to lose track of days and nights, of how many bombs have dropped. Since the main power plant was destroyed, we have had to live with no electricity. What we do get is patchy, and barely enough to recharge our mobile phones and our laptops so that we do not lose all touch with each other and with the outside world.

As a physician, I fear for our patients. Twenty-two hospitals have no electricity. They have to rely on generators, but the generators need fuel. We have enough fuel to last a few days at most, because the borders are sealed so no fuel can get in. The shortage of power threatens the lives of patients on life-support machines and children in intensive care, as well as renal dialysis patients and others. Hundreds of operations have been postponed. The pharmacies were already nearly empty because of Israeli border closures and the cutoff of international aid. What little supplies were left have gone bad in the absence of refrigeration.

Food too is spoiling without refrigeration, and food supplies are low. West Bank farmers threw away truckloads of spoiled fruit after sitting for days and then being denied Israeli permission to enter Gaza. Children grow hungry as we watch the food that could nourish them thrown into the garbage instead. More than 30,000 children suffer from malnutrition, and this number will increase as diarrhea spreads because of the limited supply of clean water and food contamination.

As a mother, I fear for the children. I see the effects of the relentless sonic booms and artillery shelling on my 13-year-old daughter. She is restless, panicked, and afraid to go out, yet frustrated because she can't see her friends. When Israeli fighter planes fly by day and night, the sound is terrifying. My daughter usually jumps into bed with me, shivering with fear. Then both of us end up crouching on the floor. My heart races, yet I try to pacify my daughter, to make her feel safe. But when the bombs sound, I flinch and scream. My daughter feels my fear and knows that we need to pacify each other. I am a doctor, a mature, middle-aged woman. But with the sonic booming, I become hysterical.

This aggression will leave psychological scars on the children for years to come. Instilling fear, anger and loss in them will not bring peace and security to Israelis.
Ostensibly, this bombing campaign started because of the soldier's capture. To the outside world it might seem like an easy decision for Palestinians: Let the soldier go, and the siege will end. Yet for Gazans, even in the face of this brutal violence, another decision comes, not with ease, but with resolve. He is one soldier who was captured in a military operation. Today, several hundred Palestinian children and women are locked in Israeli prisons. They deserve their freedom no less than he does. Their families mourn their absence no less than his family does. So while Gazans endure Israel's rainstorm, most want the soldier held -- not harmed -- until the women and children are released.

Most Gazans also believe that Israel's latest assault was pre-planned, that the soldier's capture is merely a trigger. Israel dropped thousands of shells on Gaza, killing women, children and old people, long before his capture. This time, Israel attacked Gaza within hours of a national consensus accord signed by Fatah and Hamas, which could have led to negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. That would have pushed Israel to give up control of Palestinian land and resources. Gazans believe that the goal of Israel's military campaign is the destruction of both our elected government and our infrastructure, and with it our will to secure our national rights.

Though we do not now live with ease, we live with resolve. Until the world pressures Israel to recognize our rights in our land, and to pursue a peace that brings freedom and security to Israelis and Palestinians, we both will continue to pay the price.

Mona El-Farra is a physician and human rights advocate in the Gaza Strip. [ICH]

Ahmadinejad warns Zionist regime

2006-07-14T06:38:00.000-07:00

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said if any aggression against Syria means aggression against the world of Islam as a whole.

"If the Zionist regime commits an act of idiocy and attacks Syria, it has to suffer a crushing response," Ahmadinjead asserted in a phone call Thursday with his Syrian counterpart, Bashar Assad.

The two examined the current regional developments namely the Zionist regime's latest savagery in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.
Condemning the silence of international communities over the recent regional crisis, Ahmadinjead expressed his deep concerns over the brutal attacks of the Zionist militants on the Palestinian and Lebanese settlements in which civilians, especially women and children fell victims.

"These lunatic aggressions are sign of deep weakness and inability of this fake regime which is on the slope of fall and devastation," the President noted, adding that the regime's existance philosophy is under question.
He stressed on the importance of unity among Muslims and their support of Lebanon and Palestine.

President Ahmadinejad also expressed Iran's readiness to urgently help those injured in the Zionist regime's attacks.
Ahmadinejad reiterated the need for the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) to actively take part in the region.
S
yrian President Bashar Asad for his part hold the Zionist regime responsible for the crisis and violation of the one-year ceasefire in the occupeid Palestine and attacking Gaza Strip.
He also condemned the international passivity over the issue.
Bashar Assad reiterated that the only way to solve the problem is the exchange of prisoners on both sides.

The Syrian President lauded the brave and quick reaction of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Islamic Resistance Movement, against the Zionist regime's attacks which surprised and agitated them.

"If Israel makes another mistake and attacks Syria, it will face a very strong response. Syria is not affraid of any threat," Bashar Assad asserted.

Zidane award meant to cover up Islamophobic remark

2006-07-13T07:16:00.000-07:00

TEHRAN, July 11 (MNA) -- Although France captain Zinedine Zidane deserved the World Cup best player award due to his technical capabilities, it seems that FIFA presented him with the honor in an attempt to cover up Italian player Marco Materazzi’s insult against the Muslim captain of France’s national football team during the World Cup final at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium.

Zidane, who put France ahead with a penalty kick in the opening minutes of the match, was given a red card after slamming his head into Materazzi's chest during the second period of extra time. By doing so, he astonished a great number of his fans and football viewers around the world, who wondered what kind of remark by the Italian player could have made Zidane put his outstanding moral record in football into question.
According to some of the press and a number of political officials, especially from France, Materazzi called Zidane a “Muslim terrorist”. The reports were confirmed by other people close to the French football team and Zidane himself announced that he would speak about Materazzi’s remarks later.

Following Zidane’s dismissal from the game and Italy’s win on penalties, many analysts believed that the French captain had less of a chance to win the Golden Ball award than his Italian competitors, but 12 hours after the final match, FIFA chose Zidane as the best player of the tournament.

It seems that FIFA, acknowledging the fact that a player known for unsportsmanlike conduct had called a Muslim player with a positive moral record a terrorist, made the decision in an attempt to cover up Materazzi’s insult and to calm the atmosphere.
Indeed, if this decision had not been made, there was a possibility that Zidane would have revealed certain truths to reporters that could question the nature of FIFA’s slogans on fair play and the separation of sports from politics.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter and his colleagues had frequently stressed the need to respect the rules of fair play and to fight racism throughout the games, and now Zidane’s remarks could question their competence.
Zidane has not yet revealed what the Italian player said, and FIFA officials have also not offered any specific opinion about the incident.

Will UN Involvement Help Peace Process?

2006-07-12T11:23:00.000-07:00

KATHMANDU - The collective sigh of relief heard around the capital last week, as reports of possible United Nations involvement in a tenuous peace process came in, is a sign of just how much faith ordinary Nepalis place in the world body.

Ordinary citizens believe that once the U.N. gets involved, Nepal's 11-year-old Maoist problem will be resolved in favour of a peaceful democratic state. The local intelligentsia, too, holds similar beliefs. ”The U.N.'s role will be to effectively manage the peace process. It will be difficult initially but we are certain that the U.N. will succeed,” says Narayan Wagle, editor of the influential ‘Kantipur' newspaper.

Such faith is striking considering the U.N. is nowhere near being involved. And even if it does, its recent failures in places like Rwanda, the Balkans and Cambodia give spoilers enough to derail any such role in Nepal.
Many among Nepal's 26 million embattled citizens were buoyed, last week, by the government formally inviting the U.N. to assist in Nepal's fragile peace process. ”Only the U.N. has the experience and expertise, in arms management and holding fair elections,” says Shanta Budhathoki, a high school teacher in Kathmandu. ”Their role here is essential.”

Even before the U.N. could respond, the issue has become a bone of contention between the governing Seven Party Alliance (SPA) and the Maoists. Both sides have been observing a tenuous ceasefire since April when a jointly-led peoples' movement wrested power back from the dictatorial King Gyanendra. Besides, the two sides agreed in June to replace the present government with an interim one in which the Maoists too will get a major stake. That government will hold the elections to a constituent assembly and write a new constitution that could turn this Himalayan kingdom into a republican state.
As such, the soon-to-be-governing Maoists are furious that the SPA government sent the letter to the U.N. without consulting them. ”We are surprised by news of the Nepal government issuing a letter of invitation to the U.N. to assist in the peace process,” Maoist spokesman and leader of their negotiation team Krishna Bahadur Mahara said. ”We have not been consulted on this and we do not agree to it.”

Knowledgeable sources within the Maoist movement say the Maoists are wary of calls to manage their arms ahead of joining the government because that could take away their only effective bargaining chip. Once the U.N. comes in, the weapons management issue will be front and centre, making it difficult for them to ignore it. Therefore, say sources, the rebels want the U.N. to come in only after they join the government to be in a better position to leverage their strength.
But the SPA constituents, already suspicious of strong Maoist demands to dissolve parliament and government, want the U.N. to be involved before the rebels join the government. This will ensure that the Maoists ”are tied in a way that they can't resort to violence and intimidation later,” says a key politician involved in the delicate negotiations.
The striking fact in all this is that top Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as ‘Prachanda', has kept unusually quiet over the U.N. spat. ”The Maoists are clever and know how to play their cards,” says a western diplomat who declined to be identified and whose country has been dealing with all sides in Nepal's conflict. ”No matter how much Mahara and others publicly oppose the letter to the U.N., Prachanda can always come in later and override his underlings. This is a classic good-cop-bad-cop routine they are playing.”

Though details are unavailable, Suresh Chalise, Prime Minister Koirala's international affairs advisor, told IPS that the request was specific. ”We have urged the U.N. to do whatever is necessary to ensure peace and security for the constituent assembly polls, in keeping with the agreement between the SPA and Maoists,” he said. But Chalise ruled out a U.N. peacekeeping mission to Nepal, thereby taking away whatever teeth the U.N. could have brought to any eventual mission.

The normal practice is that, once an official invitation by a legitimate government is issued, the U.N. gets involved after the necessary preparations. But whether the present government has the standing to issue such an invitation without Maoist participation is moot and could work against the U.N.'s quick involvement.
At the end of the day, the SPA government did sign in June, its intention to dissolve itself and form a joint-interim government with the Maoists. ”The SPA has found itself cornered by the June agreement. So this letter to the U.N. is a pre-emptive strike,” said an SPA leader on condition of anonymity. ”If the U.N. comes in, it will create a bulwark against any undemocratic takeover by any group.”

Prachanda has accused the SPA of consolidating its own power instead of working towards an interim government that was supposed to quickly replace a dissolved House.
For his part, Koirala wants the Maoists to disarm quickly and stop their cadres from continuing to collect ‘taxes' and hold trials in ‘people's courts', especially in the remote rural areas.
Among the major differences between the two sides is the future role of the king. While Koirala favours a ceremonial role for Gyanendra, Prachanda insists that the king can stay on in Nepal only as an ordinary citizen.[IPS]

Western Dissatisfaction With Its Emasculated Self

2006-07-11T07:15:00.000-07:00

A REVIEW of Joe Klein's book "Politics Lost" appearing in Fortune indicated that Joe Klein argues that election professionals have made our politics "cautious, cynical, mechanistic, and bland" because they are "literal reactionaries-they react to the results of their polling and focus groups, they fear anything they haven't tested."

I find it sad that a person of Joe Klein's purported intelligence (the book reviewer said Klein thinks and writes better than most writers) cannot recognize that in his lamentations he described a society devoid of manifestations of the masculine principle. Instead he blamed consultants, the political parties, and the politicians themselves, a reaction in accord with feminine thinking: we are victims and blameless and other people are at fault.

In checking the internet I found additional reviews of Politics Lost in such prestigious publications as Commentary Magazine, The New York Times, New York Observer, and, The New Republic, and not one of them recognized the diminution of the masculine influence; instead their comments focused on personality and materialistic trivia, which when all boiled down is gossip and haram chatter.

Only yesterday I sent an article to Islamonline.net entitled Male Mental Depression in Western Society in which I referred to an article in the Manchester Guardian that indicated the expenditure of considerable effort in order to de-stigmatize male mental health issues. I asked the question, "What benefits would accrue as a result of de-stigmatizing male mental illness?" Unwed motherhood became de-stigmatized in the West and it has increased ten-fold in just two generations. Divorce became de-stigmatized and has now become the norm in Western society. De-stigmatizing the un-natural or harmful tends to make it popular and propagated; it definitely does not eliminate the condition. However, the West has no choice but to de-stigmatize all that is un-natural and immoral because it has lost the ability to change anything.

In order to change a given situation a causative factor must be determined and then removed. Causes are unseen; effects are seen. Unfortunately Western man can only deal with effects, which makes him unable to make change and results in accepting what is wrong and de-stigmatizing it. The inability to make change and the consequent accepting of all negative conditions leads to a third condition developing in America, and that is the increase in governmental power.

A society devoid of masculinity becomes weakly reactionary, incapable of change, and chaotic. Chaos is beating at out very doors. The World Health Organization announced last year that the number one health issue of England, the United States, and Canada is mental illness. This year the AMA announced that 22 percent of Americans are classified as mental ill. Western society is going insane; a viewpoint supported by its own statistics.

Western society believes that differences do no exist between men and women and that the government will take care of all societal issues. Consequently the government is growing, our freedoms are diminishing, family is disappearing, and immorality is being de-stigmatized.

Elder George is chief of Men's Action to Rebuild Society and can be reached at 1-(212)874-7900 Ext.1329 www.DailyMuslims.com

In the Hands of the Taliban: An interview with Y. Ridley

2006-07-09T00:21:00.000-07:00

YVONNE Ridley made headlines when, following the September 11th attacks, she was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

While investigating for a story, the British freelance journalist had wandered into the hands of, what much of the world called the most brutal regime on earth. Freed after ten days of captivity, she returned home a public figure.

Almost two years after that, the multiple award-winning journalist and author again made news. On June 30, 2003, Yvonne accepted the faith of her captors -- she became a Muslim.

In the following interview, she speaks of her experiences and her thoughts on the state of Western journalism.

Tazin Abdullah (TA): What took you to Afghanistan after September 11th?

Yvonne Ridley (YR): I was working as the chief reporter for the Sunday Express newspaper published in London. I was writing a humanitarian report about the hopes and fears of the Afghan people. I had been in Afghanistan for two days when I was captured by the Taliban and held because I had entered the country illegally and without a visa.

TA: What happened afterwards?

YR: At first they thought I was a spy and interrogated me for six days before moving me to a prison in Kabul. Mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban, released me on humanitarian grounds on October 8 2001.

The release came as a huge shock to the West as the US and Britain had launched the war on Afghanistan the day before. When the bombs began dropping in Kabul, no one thought they would see me alive again!

TA: You have repeatedly emphasised that the Taliban, the "most brutal regime on earth", treated you with "courtesy and respect". Tell me about your captors.

YR: I expected to be executed and each day I thought was going to be my last. It was a terrifying ordeal. Yet, throughout my captivity, the Taliban treated me with courtesy and respect.

I went on hunger strike for the full 10 days. Apart from this action being the only type of control I could enforce, I told the Taliban I would not eat until they gave me a telephone to call home. This action caused my captors great distress and over the first few days they tried several different inducements to encourage me to eat including the offer of wine with my food.

Despite this I maintained my hunger strike and in spite of my best efforts, they laid a cloth on the floor morning, noon and night offering freshly cooked food. Each mealtime, they made a point of washing my hands and telling me I was their sister and their guest. Never once did they threaten me physically. In spite of this, I resolved to be a difficult captive and acted in a very aggressive, non-co-operative manner!

TA: Upon your return, what was the general reaction?

YR: Headline writers across the Western world, anticipating what I was going to say, had words like 'torture', 'abuse' and 'rape' prepared. Journalists and politicians were shocked by my remarks. Everyone wanted a victim. They wanted to hear tales of torture, beatings and brutality. After all, you can't drop bombs on nice people and Bush and Blair had done quite a job demonising the Taliban beyond recognition.
I have to say at this point, I could not endorse what the Taliban stood for, nor could I sanitise their movement, but I have to speak the truth about their treatment of me.

TA: Did your experiences with the Taliban lead you to question your own perceptions on the Taliban themselves and by extension, Islam?

YR: I certainly began to examine the demonisation of the Taliban.

I had given an undertaking to a Taliban cleric that if they released me I would read the

Qur'an and study Islam. At that point, I would have said anything to get out of jail! But once I was released, against all odds, I decided to keep my word.

I was engaged covering events in the Middle East so it was only natural that I should read up on Islam.

TA: What attracted you to the faith?

YR: I found the words of the Qur'an breathtaking and as relevant today as they were the day they were written. Furthermore, the word has not changed at all. I learnt that the Qur'an makes it clear that woman are equal in spirituality, worth and education.

TA: Turning now to Western media and particularly its coverage of the Muslim world -- do you see a general bias against Islam?

YR: There is a Western media bias against Islam but much of it stems from lack of knowledge and general ignorance towards Islam by Western journalists.

TA: Is it a deliberate attempt by reporters to write/broadcast stories that toe the official line or the gullibility of some reporters? Or is it simply reporters acting out on culturally inherited values/perceptions and seeing what they want to see rather than what is happening?

YR: Some journalists are gutless, lily-livered, spineless individuals who prefer to be spoon-fed by the governments who like a tame news source. Some journalists are gullible and some are simply ignorant of the power of the propaganda they are asked to repeat. I wouldn't single out the embedded journalists most were making the best of the situation in which they were placed.

In the US after 9/11, anyone who dared question the Bush administration was called unpatriotic. There are some good journalists around and, after a recent trip to America, it appears the American media is now waking up to its duties.

TA: From your experiences in Afghanistan, can you give us examples of reports from Afghanistan that painted a picture of the situation contrary to what was really happening?

YR: The so-called liberation of Kabul revealed a shocking aspect of media lies and manipulation giving a false
image to the West.

Women were pictured burning their burqas while men shaved their beards what the cameras failed to show were the offers of money given to these people by the dollar rich western media which wanted to give 'happy' pictures to the people back home.

Enterprising Afghanis were not slow on the uptake and lots of false documents began emerging outlining Al-Qaida's nuclear secrets. One foolish journalist parted with 500 dollars for Osama bin Laden's nuclear plans ... they turned out to be the contents of a physics student's text book!

TA: In the current occupation of Iraq, do you see most of the media still toeing the official line?

YR: The media is slowly beginning to break ranks and report on the Vietnam-style quagmire that has emerged in Iraq. For example, the dangerous talk of a civil war.

Where has this come from? Paul Bremer, of course. It is in US interests to promote this but the reality is there has never been a civil war in Iraq no conflict of Shi'a against Sunni. Yet the media are falling into the trap of picking up the American whispers and are printing reports using the explosive phrase 'civil war'. If they don't stop it could became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Journalism is a powerful tool and can be a weapon of mass deception in the wrong hands. This has not been lost on various leaders including Saddam Hussein and George W Bush, who both were determined to win the battle over the war of words. In many ways, it is as important as the military campaign.

Yvonne Ridley lives in Central London and is the author of two books "In the Hands Of the Taliban" (Robson Books), a factual account of her experiences and "Ticket To Paradise", a fictional thriller with the real backdrop of 9/11 (Dandelion Books).

Source: Thedailystar

The High Price of American Gullibility

2006-07-08T18:10:00.000-07:00

What explains the gullibility of Americans, a gullibility that has mired the US in disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and which promises war with Iran, North Korea and a variety of other targets if neoconservatives continue to have their way?

Part of the explanation is that millions of conservatives are thrilled at the opportunity to display their patriotism and to show their support for their country. Bush's rhetoric is perfectly designed to appeal to this desire. "You are with us or against us" elicits a blind and unquestioning response from people determined to wear their patriotism on their sleeves. "You are with us or against us" vaccinates Americans against factual reality and guarantees public acceptance of administration propaganda.

Another part of the explanation is that emotional appeals have grown the stronger as the ability of educated people to differentiate fact from rhetoric declines. The Bush administration blamed 9/11 on foreign intelligence failures; yet, the administration has convinced about half of the public that mass surveillance of American citizens is the solution!

Many Americans have turned a blind eye to the administration's illegal and unconstitutional spying on the grounds that, as they themselves are doing nothing wrong, they have nothing to fear. If this is the case, why did our Founding Fathers bother to write the Constitution? If the executive branch can be trusted not to abuse power, why did Congress pass legislation establishing a panel of federal judges (ignored by the Bush administration) to oversee surveillance? If President Bush can decide that he can ignore statutory law, how does he differ from a dictator? If Bush can determine law, what is the role of Congress and the courts? If "national security" is a justification for elevating the power of the executive, where is his incentive to find peaceful solutions?

Emotional appeals to fear and to patriotism have led close to half of the population to accept unaccountable government in the name of "the war on terrorism." What a contradiction it is that so many Americans have been convinced that safety lies in their sacrifice of their civil liberties and accountable government.

If so many Americans cannot discern that they have acquiesced to conditions from which tyranny can arise, how can they understand that it is statistically impossible for the NSA's mass surveillance of Americans to detect terrorists?

Floyd Rudmin, a professor at a Norwegian university, applies the mathematics of conditional probability, known as Bayes' Theorem, to demonstrate that the NSA's surveillance cannot successfully detect terrorists unless both the percentage of terrorists in the population and the accuracy rate of their identification are far higher than they are. He correctly concludes that "NSA's surveillance system is useless for finding terrorists."

The surveillance is, however, useful for monitoring political opposition and stymieing the activities of those who do not believe the government's propaganda.

Another reason for the gullibility of Americans is their lack of alternative information to government propaganda. The independence of print and TV media disappeared in the media consolidations of the 1990s. Today a handful of large corporations own the traditional media. The wealth of these corporations consists of broadcast licenses, which the companies hold at the government's discretion. Newspapers are run by corporate executives, whose eyes are on advertising revenue and who shun contentious reporting. The result is that the traditional media are essentially echo chambers for government propaganda.

The Internet and the foreign news media accessible through the Internet are the sources of alternative information. Many Americans have not learned to use and to rely on the Internet for information.

Many Americans find the government's message much more reassuring than the actual facts. The government's message is: "America is virtuous. Virtuous America was attacked by evil terrorists. America is protecting itself by going to war and overthrowing regimes that sponsor or give shelter to terrorists, erecting in their place democracies loyal to America."

Sugar-coated propaganda doesn't present Americans with the emotional and mental stress associated with the hard facts.

In National Socialist Germany, by the time propaganda lost its grip, Germans were in the hands of a police state. It was too late to take corrective measures. Not even the military could correct the disastrous policies of the executive. In the end, Germany was destroyed. Does a similar fate await Americans?

Dr. Roberts [paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com] is Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions .

Source: Informationclearinghouse

European Parliament says CIA responsible for illegal activities in Europe

2006-07-07T03:26:00.000-07:00

Brussels, July 6, IRNA EP-CIA Rendition The European Parliament approved Thursday an interim report of its Temporary Committee on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transport and illegal detention of prisoners by 389 to 137 with 55 abstentions.
The CIA was in some cases directly responsible for the 'illegal seizure, removal, abduction and detention of terrorist suspects' in Europe, said the report.

European lawmakers also gave the responsible Temporary Committee the green light to continue its work for another six months.
It is 'implausible', the report says, 'that certain European governments were not aware of the activities linked to extraordinary rendition taking place on their territory'.

Such involvement or complicity, MEPs argue, was likely on the part of Italian authorities in the 2003 abduction of Egyptian cleric Abu Omar by CIA agents in Milan; on the part of Bosnian authorities in the abduction and transfer of six Bosnian nationals or residents of Algerian origin to Guantanamo Bay and on the part of Swedish authorities, who expelled Egyptian nationals Mohammed Al Zary and Ahmed Agiza, handing them over to CIA agents for transfer to Egypt.
EU member states 'may be held liable' for failure to comply with the European Convention of Human Rights, noted the report.

Sarah Ludford, British MEP and vice-president of the Temporary Committee said: "Parliament's committee has done a serious job, cooperating with the Council of Europe investigation but taking that forward with a special focus on EU and candidate states. Allegations have now moved beyond speculation to establishing a credible prima facie case. All member states suspected of complicity now have a duty to conduct their own inquiries to shed more light on these events.

" Meanwhile, the group of Liberal Democrats in the EP in a statement said that since 2001 there has been a progressive erosion of fundamental rights in the name of the fight against terrorism confirmed by recent events, the ruling of the US Supreme Court on Guantanamo and the arrest yesterday of a senior Italian intelligence officer by the Italian prosecutor investigating the extraordinary rendition allegations

Was the Invasion of Iraq A Jewish Conspiracy?

2006-07-06T00:24:00.000-07:00

Did the Jews do it?

The US Congress will open hearings this week on the War in Iraq -- a wee bit late one might think. But one question at the forefront of the minds of many on both the Left and the Right is sure not to be asked: Did the Jews do it? I mean, after killing Jesus, did the Elders of Zion manipulate the government of the United States into invading Babylon as part of a scheme to abet the expansion of Greater Israel?

The question was first posed to me in 2004 when I was speaking at a meeting of Mobilization for Peace in San Jose. A member of the audience asked, "Put it together- Who's behind this war? Paul Wolfowitz and Elliott Abrams and the Project for a "Jew" American Century and, and, why don't you talk about that, huh? And ...."

But the questioner never had the full opportunity to complete his query because, flushed and red, he began to charge the stage. The peace activists attempted to detain the gentleman-whose confederates then grabbed some chairs to swing. As the Peace Center was taking on a somewhat warlike character, I chose to call in the authorities and slip out the back.

Still, his question intrigued me. As an investigative reporter, "Who's behind this war?" seemed like a reasonable challenge-and if it were a plot of Christ-killers and Illuminati, so be it. I just report the facts, ma'am.

And frankly, at first, it seemed like the gent had a point, twisted though his spin might be. There was Paul Wolfowitz, before Congress in March 2003, offering Americans the bargain of the century: a free Iraq-not "free" as in "freedom and democracy" but free in the sense of this won't cost us a penny. Wolfowitz testified: "There's a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money."

A "Free" Iraq

And where would these billions come from? Wolfowitz told us: "It starts with the assets of the Iraqi people.... The oil revenues of that country could bring between and 0 billion over the next two or three years."

This was no small matter. The vulpine Deputy Defense Secretary knew that the number one question on the minds of Americans was not, "Does Saddam really have the bomb?" but "What's this little war going to cost us?"

However, Wolfowitz left something out of his testimony: the truth. I hunted for weeks for the source of the Pentagon's oil revenue projections-and found them. They were wildly different from the Wolfowitz testimony. But this was not perjury. Ever since the conviction of Elliott Abrams for perjury before Congress during the Iran-Contra hearings, neither Wolfowitz nor the other Bush factotums swear an oath before testifying. If you don't raise your hand and promise to tell the truth, "so help me, God," you're off the hook with federal prosecutors.

How the Lord will judge that little ploy, we cannot say.

But Wolfowitz's little numbers game can hardly count as a Great Zionist conspiracy. That seemed to come, at first glance, in the form of a confidential 101-page document slipped to our team at BBC's Newsnight. It detailed the economic "recovery" of Iraq's post-conquest economy. This blueprint for occupation, we learned, was first devised in secret in late 2001.

Notably, this program for Iraq's recovery wasn't written by Iraqis; rather, it was promoted by the neo-conservatives of the Defense Department, home of Abrams, Wolfowitz, Harold Rhode and other desktop Napoleons unafraid of moving toy tanks around the Pentagon war room.

Nose-Twist's Hidden Hand

The neo-cons' 101-page confidential document, which came to me in a brown envelope in February 2001, just before the tanks rolled, goes boldly where no U.S. invasion plan had gone before: the complete rewrite of the conquered state's "policies, law and regulations." A cap on the income taxes of Iraq's wealthiest was included as a matter of course. And this was undoubtedly history's first military assault plan appended to a program for toughening the target nation's copyright laws. Once the 82nd Airborne liberated Iraq, never again would the Ba'athist dictatorship threaten America with bootleg dubs of Britney Spears's "...Baby One More Time."

It was more like a corporate takeover, except with Abrams tanks instead of junk bonds. It didn't strike me as the work of a Kosher Cabal for an Imperial Israel. In fact, it smelled of pork-Pig Heaven for corporate America looking for a slice of Iraq, and I suspected its porcine source. I gave it a big sniff and, sure enough, I smelled Grover Norquist.

Norquist is the capo di capi of right-wing, big-money influence peddlers in Washington. Those jealous of his inside track to the White House call him "Gopher Nose-Twist."

A devout Christian, Norquist channeled a million dollars to the Christian Coalition to fight the devil's tool, legalized gambling. He didn't tell the Coalition that the loot came from an Indian tribe represented by Norquist's associate, Jack Abramoff. (The tribe didn't want competition for its own casino operations.)

I took a chance and dropped in on Norquist's L Street office, and under a poster of his idol ["NIXON- NOW MORE THAN EVER"], Norquist took a look at the "recovery" plan for Iraq and practically jumped over my desk to sign it, filled with pride at seeing his baby. Yes, he promoted the privatizations, the tax limit for the rich, and the change in copyright law, all concerns close to the hearts and wallets of his clients.

"The Oil" on Page 73

The very un-Jewish Norquist may have framed much of the U.S. occupation grabfest, but there was, without doubt, one notable item in the 101-page plan for Iraq which clearly had the mark of Zion on it. On page seventy-three the plan called for the "privatization....[of] the oil and supporting industries," the sell-off of every ounce of Iraq's oil fields and reserves. Its mastermind, I learned, was Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation.

For the neo-cons, this was The Big One. Behind it, no less a goal than to bring down the lynchpin of Arab power, Saudi Arabia.

It would work like this: the Saudi's power rests on control of OPEC, the oil cartel which, as any good monopoly, withholds oil from the market, kicking up prices. Sell-off Iraq's oil fields and private companies will pump oil in their little Iraqi patches to the max. Iraq, the neo-cons hoped, would crank out six million barrels of oil a day, bust its OPEC quota, flood the world market, demolish OPEC and, as the price of oil fell off a cliff, Saudi Arabia would
fall to its knees.

"It's a no-brainer," Cohen told me, at his office at Heritage. It was a dim little cubby, in which, in our hour or two together, the phone rang only once. For a guy who was supposed to be The Godfather of a globe-spanning Zionist scheme to destroy the Arab oil monopoly, he seemed kind of, well...pathetic.

And he failed. While the Norquist-promoted sell-offs, flat taxes and copyright laws were dictated into Iraqi law by occupation chief Paul Bremer, the Cohen neo-con oil privatization died an unhappy death. What happened, Ari?

"Arab economists," he hissed, "hired by the State Department ... the witches brew of the Saudi Royal family and Soviet Ostblock."

Well, the Soviet Ostblock does not exist, but the Arab economists do. I spoke with them in Riyadh, in London, in California, in wry accents mixing desert and Oxford drawls. They speak with confidence, knowing Saudi Arabia's political authority is protected by the royal families -- of Houston petroleum.

"Enhance OPEC"

After two mad years of hunting, I discovered the real plan for Iraq's oil, the one that keeps our troops in Fallujah. Some 323 pages long and deeply confidential, it was drafted at the James A. Baker III Institute in Houston, Texas, under the strict guidance of Big Oil's minions. It was the culmination of a series of planning groups that began in December 2000 with key players from the Baker Institute and Council on Foreign Relations (including one Ken Lay of Enron). This was followed by a State Department invasion-planning session in Walnut Creek, California, in February 2001, only weeks after Bush and Cheney took office. Its concepts received official blessing after a March 2001 gathering of oil chiefs (and Lay) with Dick Cheney where the group reviewed with the Vice-President the map of Iraq's oil fields.

Once I discovered the Big Oil plan, several of the players agreed to speak with me (not, to the chagrin of some, realizing that I rarely hold such conversions without secretly recording them). Most forthright was Philip Carroll, former CEO of Shell Oil USA, who was flown into Baghdad on a C-17 to make sure there would be no neo-con monkey business in America's newest oil fields.

It had been a very good war for Big Oil, with tripled oil prices meaning tripled profits. In Houston, I asked Carroll, a commanding, steel-straight chief executive, about Ari Cohen's oil privatization plan, the anti-Saudi "no-brainer."

"I would agree with that statement" Caroll told me, "privatization is a no-brainer. It would only be thought about by someone with no brain."

Bush world is divided in two: neo-cons on one side, and the Establishment (which includes the oil companies and the Saudis) on the other. The plan the Establishment created, crafted by Houston oil men, called for locking up Iraq's oil with agreements between a new state oil company under "profit-sharing agreements" with "IOCs" (International Oil Companies). The combine could "enhance the [Iraq's] government's relationship with OPEC," it read, by holding the line on quotas and thereby upholding high prices.

Wolfowitz Dammerung: Twilight Of The Neo-Con Gods

So there you have it. Wolfowitz and his neo-con clique- bookish, foolish, vainglorious-had their asses kicked utterly, finally, and convincingly by the powers of petroleum, the Houston-Riyadh Big Oil axis.

Between the neo-cons and Big Oil, it wasn't much of a contest. The end-game was crushing, final. The Israelites had lost again in the land of Babylon. And to make certain the arriviste neo-cons got the point, public punishment was exacted, from exile to demotion to banishment. In January 2005, neo-con pointman Douglas Feith resigned from the Defense Department; his assistant

Larry Franklin later was busted for passing documents to pro-Israel lobbyists.

The State Department's knuckle-dragging enforcer of neo-con orthodoxies, John Bolton, was booted from Washington to New York to the powerless post of U.N. Ambassador.

Finally, on March 16, 2005, second anniversary of the invasion, neo-con leader of the pack Wolfowitz was cast out of the Pentagon war room and tossed into the World Bank, moving from the testosterone-powered, war-making decision center to the lending office for Bangladeshi chicken farmers.

"The realists," crowed the triumphant editor of the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, "have defeated the fantasists!"

So much for the Big Zionist Conspiracy that supposedly directed this war. A half- dozen confused Jews, wandering in the policy desert a long distance from mainstream Jewish views, armed only with Leo Strauss' silly aphorisms, were no match for Texas oil majors and OPEC potentates with a combined throw weight of half a trillion barrels of oil. (Tikkun Magazine JULY/AUGUST 2006)

Source: DailyMuslims.com

Terrorist in the White House?

2006-07-05T06:51:00.000-07:00

Ever since Mr. Bush came to power, he systematically flouted international agreements that the U.S. signed up to in the past.

Although previous leaders of the United States might not be able to claim much better records, it is clear that the current U.S. President is not even making an attempt to stick to these numerous treaties, laws and obligations.

Bast week, the U.S. Supreme Court rebuked the American President and his anti-terror policies, dealing a major blow to his efforts to fix his tarnished image before November midterm elections. The court ruled that Bush overstepped his authority by creating military tribunals for prisoners at the controversial Guantánamo Bay detention center, reining in part of the administration's prosecution of the so-called "war on terrorism".

The ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that military commissions for trying suspects held at Guantánamo Bay violate both U.S. military law and the Geneva Convention, came as a real slap in the face of the American President.

But what's striking in the court decision is holding that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention applies to the conflict with Al Qaeda, which makes senior officials at the Bush administration subject to prosecution under the federal War Crimes Act.

Geneva Convention provisions were aimed at protecting noncombatants in times of war. But Mr. Bush has long argued that most of these protections apply only to conflicts between states. And since Al Qaeda network, which Washington claims is responsible for September 11 attacks that hit the U.S. in 2001, is not a state, Bush's administration consider Geneva Convention not applicable to its so-called "war on terror".

"These assertions gave the administration's arguments about the legal framework for fighting terrorism a through-the-looking-glass quality. On the one hand, the administration argued that the struggle against terrorism was a war, subject only to the law of war, not U.S. criminal or constitutional law. On the other hand, the administration said the Geneva Convention didn't apply to the war with Al Qaeda because it applies only to an "armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties", which put the war on terror in an anything-goes legal limbo," stated a recent editorial on Los Angeles Times.

This provided the current U.S. government with the legal cover needed for its disgraceful policies, ranging from setting Guantánamo military tribunals to Bush's efforts to hold even U.S. citizens indefinitely without counsel, charge or trial, justifying his claim that those the administration labels "terror suspects" could be subjected to degrading and inhuman interrogation methods, including torture, physical and psychological abuse, the editorial added.

According to Bush's administration logic, such methods were not illegal under U.S. law because U.S. law was trumped by the law of war, and they weren't illegal under the law of war either, because Geneva Convention prohibitions on torture and cruel treatment were not applicable to the conflict with Al Qaeda.

The court's declaration that Common Article 3 applies to Bush's alleged campaign to root out terrorism worldwide carries great significance, for it will pave the way for war crimes prosecutions of those responsible for crimes committed against detainees.

Common Article 3 prohibits "cruel treatment and torture [and] outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment," which means that most of the interrogation techniques used inside Guantánamo jail and approved by the Bush administration are forbidden, and that's why Bush claimed that Common Article 3 is not applicable to his "war on terror".

This resolves the debate about interrogation techniques. The federal criminal law stipulates that whoever "commits a war crime ... shall be fined ... or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death." Also a war crime is defined "any conduct ... which constitutes a violation of Common Article 3 of the international conventions signed at Geneva." This means that U.S. officials responsible for subjecting terror suspects to torture, cruel treatment or other "outrages upon personal dignity" could be sentenced to jail or even sentenced to death.

But key Republican figures seem intent to come up with a military tribunal system offering prisoners a watered-down version of a court martial.

In response to the Court ruling on Thursday, John McCain, who introduced legislation in Congress banning the use of torture and other inhumane treatment of detainees, said the tribunals should be based on the U.S. Code of Military Justice, the basis of the U.S. court martial system.
"But they shouldn't be exactly the same as that which applies to a member of the U.S. military," he said.

"The U.S. Code of Military Justice is a good framework and we should work from there.

"Using the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court, we can make sure that bad guys - and there are bad guys - are not released and those who deserve to be released will be."

Other Republicans echoed Senator McCain's remarks.

Senator Lindsay Graham, a former U.S. Navy senior prosecutor, said he hoped Congress would pass a law that gives Bush's admin. the authority to set tribunals for 14 Guantánamo detainees.

"I intend to sit down with the Administration and come up with a process that holds terrorists accountable, to give them a fair trial, but to make sure that if they do the things we're alleging, they're fairly punished," he said.

On the other hand, Democrats are calling for a wide-ranging review of the administration's anti-terrorists campaign, including wire-tapping program by the National Security Agency.

Major Michael Mori, the lawyer representing Australian Guantánamo Bay detainee David Hicks, who's facing charges of "conspiracy to commit war crimes, attempted murder by an unprivileged belligerent and aiding the enemy", called for holding a regular court martial or a Federal Court trial for his client.

"We have said all along that we would accept a regular court martial," he said.

"You have to ask just why they have been so keen to avoid normal court martial proceedings for detainees like David," Major Mori said.

"Is it because a court martial would not guarantee a conviction?"
Source: AlJazeera

Israeli attacks 'war crimes', says Amnesty International

2006-07-04T07:27:00.000-07:00

London, July 3, IRNA Israel War Crimes-Amnesty International Britain's leading human rights group warned the Zionist regime Monday that 'deliberate attacks by Israeli forces against civilian property and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip violate international humanitarian law and constitute war crimes'.

"Israel must now take urgent measures to remedy the long-term damage it has caused and immediately restore the supply -- at its own cost -- of electricity and water to the Palestinian population in the affected areas," Amnesty International said.
It reminded that 'as the occupying power, Israel is bound under international law to protect and safeguard the basic human rights of the Palestinian population'.

The London-based group specified that the deliberate destruction of the Gaza Strip's only electricity power station, water networks, bridges, roads and other infrastructure is a 'violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and has major and long-term humanitarian'.
It has consequences for the 1.5 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, with almost half of the inhabitants are now without electricity and that water supplies have also been cut in several areas both by the lack of electricity, it said.

The extensive damage caused by Israeli artillery and air strikes against these facilities in recent days is estimated at several millions US dollars and will require months of work to repair.
"Unless alternative emergency measures are promptly put in place to restore electricity and water supply the consequences could be dire for the health of the Palestinian population," the human rights group warned.

It also referred to the high numbers of Palestinian bystanders, including women and children, that have been killed and injured by Israeli artillery shelling and air strikes in recent weeks and months.

"This situation looks set to worsen in light of the end of the unilateral cease-fire which the armed wing of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups had been observing since last year," Amnesty said.

According to the Fourth Geneva Convention, 'collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited' as is the destruction of private or public property.
The Convention puts an onus on all states party to it, including the UK, to ensure the prosecution of perpetrators of the war crime of 'causing extensive destruction' that was not justified by military necessity but carried out 'unlawfully and wantonly'.
'Intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects' is also a war crime under Article 8 (b) (ii) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Jews never recognize Israel - Figure

2006-07-03T07:12:00.001-07:00

(Iribnews)-An Iranian Jewish figure acknowledged that The Iranian government and nation do not officially recognize the Zionist regime, adding all Jews share the same position.
Head of the Committee of Tehrani Jews Haroun Yashai told Russian Gazetta daily, "We are citizens of the Islamic Republic of Iran."

He ruled out allegations that religious minorities are deprived of their rights in Iran, saying, "Foreign journalists usually think that our comments on good condition of religious minorities in Iran are false; foreign journalists wrongly believe that we express everything on the call and under pressure of Iranian officials."

He said Jews are free to react to some of the policies of government and even write to government officials on the issues.
He went on to say that Jews are free to perform their religious duties and say their prayers in the Jewish language.

He added that Jews follow their customs and have been living in Iran since 2,500 years ago, when Cyrus ruled the country.
Currently, maintained the Jewish figure, there are 40 synagogues in Iran, 23 of which are active, and the Jewish population are mostly scattered in Tehran, Shiraz and Isfahan.
There are 25,000 Jews living in Iran.

Eyewitness testimony about US rape, murder of Iraqi family

2006-07-02T07:47:00.000-07:00

In a dispatch posted at 11:55pm Makkah time Saturday night, Mafkarat al-Islam submitted its correspondents' in-depth report on the rape and murder case in March that the American military have now been compelled to investigate.

Mafkarat al-Islam noted that the number of rapes of Iraqi women committed by US occupation troops is already legion and continues to climb. Many women have been victimized within Abu Ghurayb and the other prisons; while many others have fallen prey to the rapists in American uniform who prowl the large prison that is occupied Iraq.

But there is one case of rape that has come to the surface in recent days, which stands out for a savagery and brutality that goes beyond all bounds.

On an afternoon in March 2006, a force of 10 to 15 American troops raided the home of Qasim Hamzah Rashid al-Janabi, who was born in 1970 and who worked as a guard at a state-owned potato storehouse. Al-Janabi lived with his wife, Fakhriyah Taha Muhsin, and their four children - ‘Abir (born 1991), Hadil (born 1999), Muhammad (1998), and Ahmad (1996).

The Americans took Qasim, his wife, and their daughter Hadil and put them in one room of their house. The boys Ahmad and Muhammad were at school since the time the Americans invaded the home was about 2pm. The Americans shot Qasim, his wife, and their daughter in that room. They pumped four bullets into Qasim's head and five bullets in to Fakhriyah's abdomen and lower abdomen. Hadil was shot in the head and shoulder.

After that, the Americans took ‘Abir into the next room and surrounded her in one corner of the house. There they stripped her, and then the 10 Americans took turns raping her. They then struck her on the head with a sharp instrument - according to the forensic medical report - knocking her unconscious - and smothered her with a cushion until she was dead. Then they set fire to her body.

The neighbor of the martyred family told the correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam:

"At 2pm a force of Americans raided the home of the martyr Qasim, God rest his soul. They surrounded him and I heard the sound of gunfire. Then the gunfire fell silent. An hour later I saw clouds of smoke rising from the room and then the occupation troops came quickly out of the house. They surrounded the area together with Shi‘i ‘Iraqi National Guard' forces, and they told us that terrorists from al-Qa‘idah had entered the house and killed them all. They wouldn't let any of us into the house. But I told one of the ‘National Guard' soldiers that I was their neighbor and that I wanted to see them so that I could tell al-Hajj Abu al-Qasim the news about his son and his son's family, so one of the soldiers agreed to let me enter.

"So I went into the house and found in the first room the late Qasim and his wife and Hadil. Their bodies were swimming in blood. Their blood had spewed out of their bodies with such force that it had flowed out from under the door of the room. I turned them over but there was no response; their lives were already gone."

The neighbor continued his account: "Then I went into ‘Abir's room. Fire was coming out of her. Her head and her chest were on fire. She had been put in a pitiful position; they had lifted her white gown to her neck and torn her bra. Blood was flowing from between her legs even though she had died a quarter of an hour earlier, and in spite of the intensity of the fire in the room. She had died, may God rest her soul. I knew her from the first instant. I knew she had been raped since she had been turned on her face and the lower part of her body was raised while her hands and feet had been tied. By God, I couldn't control myself and broke into tears over her, but I quickly extinguished the fire burning from her head and chest. The fire had burned up her breasts, the hair on her head, and the flesh on her face. I covered her privates with a piece of cloth, God rest her soul. And at that moment, I thought to myself that if I go out talking and threatening, that they would arrest me, so I took control of myself and resolved to leave the house calmly so that I could be a witness to tell the story of this tragedy.

"After three hours the [American] occupation troops surrounded the house and told the people of the area that the family had been killed by terrorists because they were Shi‘ah. Nobody in town believed that story because Abu ‘Abir was known as one of the best people of the city, one of the noblest, and no Shi‘i, but a Sunni monotheist. Everyone doubted their story and so after the sunset prayers the occupation troops took the four bodies away to the American base. Then the next day they handed them over to the al-Mahmudiyah government hospital and told the hospital administration that terrorists had killed the family. That morning I went with relatives of the deceased to the hospital. We received the bodies and buried them, may God have mercy on them."

The neighbor went on: "Then we decided that we must not be silent so we asked the mujahideen to respond as quickly as possible. They responded with 30 attacks on the occupation in two days, bringing down more than 40 American soldiers. But our blood was still not cooled, so we decided to go to al-‘Arabiyah satellite TV to tell them the story since it is a station that broadcasts in Iraq. But al-‘Arabiyah paid no attention to us and said we were liars. They told us that their policy was to rely on official announcements issued by the American army, and that they were not able to get into a story over which they had no power.

This was told to us by the al-‘Arabiyah correspondent Ahmad as-Salih. So we went to local newspapers and they slammed the doors in our faces because we are Sunnis and the rape victim was a Sunni girl. But the Resistance fighters told us that God does not allow the blood of any Muslim to be lost, and they told us to patiently persevere and we would see such a punishment for the blood of ‘Abir and her family, for the violation of the honor of our sister, a punishment that would make people's hair stand on end.

"I personally wasn't surprised that Umm ‘Abir [‘Abir's mother] came to me on 9 March 2006 and asked that ‘Abir be allowed to spend the night with my daughters. She was afraid because of the way the occupation troops looked at her when she went out to feed the cows. I agreed to that because there was an occupation forces' command post just 15 meters from Qasim's house, God rest his soul. But frankly I thought it unlikely that anything would happen to the girl because she was only something like 16 and she was just a little girl. But I agreed and she spent one night at our place and then went back to her home in the morning. We had no idea that the occupation troops would carry out heir crime in broad daylight."

The neighbor concluded: "The occupation troops came last Friday - that is, one day before the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent visited the scene of the crime - and asked the people of the area to exhume the body of ‘Abir to conduct tests on it. And they also asked me to provide eyewitness testimony and I will go anywhere to make sure that justice is served."

Mafkarat al-Islam was the first news agency to disclose the crime committed by US troops on that March day in al-Mahmudiyah.

Source: Freearabvoice

FAMILY LIFE CRISIS IN THE WEST

2006-07-01T02:32:00.000-07:00

"We are a society in transition. The old models have collapsed. We are not stable in the way that our grandparents were stable. This is frightening for us as individuals and as a culture, and it would be simpler to try to retreat. The truth is that it's too late to go back. We have to go forward, through this troubled time, and keep bright our commitment to change." Jeanette Winterson, 'The Guardian', May 2004. Over the last few decades the concept of family and what this consists of has undergone many changes in the West. The 1950s image of the hard-working and dedicated husband, the housewife baking cookies, and their obedient and well-mannered son and daughter are now seen as a relic of the past.

The old values of close-knit families living near each other, pulling together in times of trouble, and going to church on Sundays are now only remembered from Enid Blyton story books and television series such as 'The Waltons'. These are now criticised for being idealistic and even sexist and backward, with the mother's role being confined to the home and the father being 'head of the family'. These images have been replaced with the modern day dysfunctional family as seen in programmes such as 'Party of Five' and 'Dawson's Creek'. Governments of the past have paid lip service to supporting the family. Ex-Prime Minister John Major launched a 'Back to Basics' campaign in the last Conservative government, when he called for a return to the traditional and basic British family values. Tony Blair has also portrayed an image of having an ideal well-adjusted family. However these images have fallen apart, as after the 'Back to Basics' campaign a stream of Tory scandals became public, namely the affair of the then Minister David Mellor.

Recently, it has emerged that John Major himself was having an affair with his colleague Edwina Currie during his cabinet career. Similarly Tony Blair came under fire when police picked up his son, Euan, for being drunk in the street. This has led to debate and discussion as to which is the best family model? Is the old model outdated? Or should there even be one at all? Why have these changes occurred? Surely the epitome of free living is for people themselves to define what they feel is family?

THE NEW WESTERN FAMILY

Naturally, the starting point of a family is a man and woman marrying to have children. However the institution of marriage is under threat in Western society. Partnership formation has changed over the last 30 years. The proportion of married people has fallen, while the proportions of cohabiting, single and divorced people have increased. 1 in 4 women aged between 18-49 are co-habiting, the average time of the relationship lasting is just 39 months. Over 40% of children are born outside of marriage.

Marriage is occurring much later on in life, or not all as some people believe it to be unnecessary. This translates into insecurity for both men and women, as they do not legally have any rights upon each other. People start to live together easily and then just as easily leave each other. Women usually have to become the breadwinners, being left to raise the children alone. Figures from the Child Support Agency highlight the amount of men who conveniently 'disappear' when asked for maintenance. The roles in marriage have also been left to the whims and desires of the man and woman. These roles have therefore changed over the years. Men are no longer the primary breadwinners and sometimes feel undermined by their wives working and neglecting the home and children. Women, having been influenced by feminism, believe that equality means taking on the man's role of earning and being the decision maker.
They view material gain and career advancement as more beneficial and fulfilling than raising children.

FAMILY BREAK-UPS AND THEIR EFFECTS

There has recently been a rise in divorce. Over 40 % of marriages end in divorce, the average length being nine years. Again the trends in society breed insecurity between partners, and children also face futures in one-parent families. Western culture is dominated by sexual promiscuity, with people jumping from relationship to relationship trying to fulfil themselves and find the 'one'. No human being would choose to live in such a situation, which is why studies consistently show the adverse effects that family breakdowns have upon the individuals involved. Women are more prone to depression after suffering a divorce and the suicide rate has increased amongst men, which has been partly attributed to family break-ups. Insecurity is so prevalent that womens magazines are full of advice concerning how to get a man and more importantly, how to keep him. The effect of family changes upon children is disastrous. One of the biggest problems is that increasingly more children are born to teenage mothers.

A recent UNICEF report named Britain as having the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe and the second highest in the world, the USA being the first. The Government has realised this trend and has introduced half-hearted solutions, highlighted by the recent ludicrous strategy that was aimed at teenagers to teach them more about sexual practises such as oral sex, in an attempt to curb this increasing trend.1 in 10 children are born to teenage mothers. UNICEF added that Korea and Japan were the lowest due to their 'traditional values'. Studies have shown time and again that children from single-parent families do not perform as well educationally as children from married homes. They are more likely to commit crime, and to lack good social and communication skills. In 2001 23% of children lived in a lone parent family. There is an epidemic of 'latch-key children' who return from school to an empty house. Many parents are therefore unaware of what their children are doing, who they are with, or even if they are safe. The rise in truancy and delinquency are the effects of leaving children without guidance from the family home. Children from broken homes are also facing real danger. A Childline survey showed that 5000 children a week suffer the pain and anguish of a broken home. A child whose mother is living with a partner (not their father) is 33 times more likely to be exposed to abuse than a child living with its natural parents. At least 920,000 children in Britain are living in a home where one or both parents have a problem with alcohol. There have also been increases in domestic violence.

The relationship between parent and child has also significantly changed from before, where children no longer show respect and deference to their parents, and the parent no longer disciplines and directs the child. Children are now viewed as equals to their parents and have the right to privacy and to make their own decisions. The mentalities of family members have also changed drastically. Individuals now only give importance to themselves, they seek to achieve what they want, and if their family members do not give this to them they easily estrange themselves or neglect their relatives. Parents leave their children if they feel that they are a burden, and neglect them for the sake of their own career, their new partner, or their 'night out.' Children in return often leave home at the first chance they get, and return only at Christmas or if they need financial assistance. A common occurrence in Western societies is for people to live near, and see their friends more than their families. Even the relationships between siblings are strained and based upon the benefit that each can gain from one another.

ADAM AND STEVE, NOT ADAM AND EVE

There has also been a rise in 'alternative' family structures due to all barriers being shed and all freedoms becoming dominant, regardless of the negative effects upon children. Gay weddings and adoption have become recognised by law. This, along with the desire to have a child however people want, has led to a rise in surrogacy, the use of sperm banks, and even the advertising of children on the internet for sale by their birth parent, as in the recent case of Moira Greenslade. Children have become a commodity along with everything else in a Capitalist state. The attitude towards old people is an example of a significant change in recent decades. Whereas previously extended families took care of grandparents, Old People's Homes are now a norm and totally acceptable in society, or even the leaving of old parents to fend for themselves.

Many cases have arisen where old people have died unnoticed, with their children only coming to claim their inheritance. A government report stated that combined with the abuse in Old People's Homes, 1 million elderly people were victims of cruelty and neglect. Some horrific examples include Margaret Barr, 85, who had her fingernails ripped out by a nursing home carer, and Honora Derham, 82, who died in agony after nursing home staff failed to notice bedsores were slowly rotting away her body, down to her spine. Honora was given only paracetamol for the pain, and a specialist said her condition was the worst he'd seen.

The state having been unable to revert back to 'family values' has given in to the reality and actually facilitated these changes. Laws are expanding regarding the rights of co-habitees, homosexuals and surrogacy. The current Labour government prides itself on doing the most for homosexual rights than any other government. The 'Civil Partnership Scheme' grants gay couples many similar rights to married couples. Other cases include the boy in the USA who won the right to legally 'divorce' his father. Also the 14-year-old Nottinghamshire schoolgirl who was assisted in having an abortion, by her school, without consulting her mother, because the school 'was not obliged to do so'.

The state also offers incentives to women who choose to work and leave their children, for example through the Working Families Tax Credit. The media is also responsible for undermining the family. Soap dramas encourage alternative families such as gay couples, and disobedience to parents and deceit between family members as being normal. The result has been the almost total annihilation of the family and the concept of the family as the bedrock of society. In turn, roles and responsibilities have become confused such that Parents are no longer seen as responsible for the well being of their children but their offspring can make independent decisions from them such as taking contraceptives and abortion supported by the state apparatus.

Iran calls for UN Council action on Israel

2006-06-30T06:18:00.000-07:00

LONDON, June 30 (IranMania) - Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki called for intervention from the UN Security Council following Israel's military incursion into the Gaza Strip and its arrest of top Palestinian ministers, AFP reported.

Mottaki said at the United Nations that Israel's actions should be viewed as "government-sponsored terrorism."
"This barbaric invasion is against all international laws and human principles," Mottaki told reporters.

Mottaki said he had written to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan asking him to convene an emergency Security Council session that would agree a response to Israel's actions, which he called "a threat against international peace."

"Shouldn't the UN Security (Council) deal with this matter seriously," Mottaki demanded. "The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran strongly condemns this act."
Mottaki was at the United Nations to attend a UN forum focused on preventing the illicit trade of small arms.

CIA Officer Claims US Ignored Warnings About WMD Errors

2006-06-29T06:47:00.000-07:00

US administration officials chose to ignore a CIA officer's warnings that an Iraqi defector's claims of purported biological labs made by Iraq for germ warfare were unproven.

Sunday's edition of The Washington Post quoted veteran CIA officer Tyler Drumheller who, it said, "recognized the source, an Iraqi defector suspected of being mentally unstable and a liar.

"The CIA officer took his pen," he recounted in an interview, "and crossed out the whole paragraph" in a statement to be presented by then secretary of state Colin Powell to the United Nations.

"A few days later, the lines were back in the speech. Powell stood before the UN Security Council on February 5 (2003) and said: 'We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails.'"

Drumheller was stunned, the newspaper reported.

"We thought we had taken care of the problem," it quoted the man who was the CIA's European operations chief before retiring last year, as saying. "But I turn on the television and there it was, again."

The newspaper said that although the US government had "acknowledged intelligence failures over Iraqi weapons claims that led to war", new accounts by former insiders such as Drumheller shed light on "one of the most spectacular failures of all".

This was, it added: "How US intelligence agencies were eagerly drawn in by reports about a troubled defector's claims of secret germ factories in the Iraqi desert. The mobile labs were never found."

Drumheller "described in extensive interviews repeated attempts to alert top CIA officials to problems with the defector, code-named Curveball, in the days before the Powell speech," The Post said.

Yet "the warnings triggered debates within the CIA but ultimately made no visible impact at the top, current and former intelligence officials said," it added.

"In briefing Powell before his UN speech, George Tenet, then the CIA director, personally vouched for the accuracy of the mobile-lab claim, according to participants in the briefing.

"Tenet now says he did not learn of the problems with Curveball until much later and that he received no warnings from Drumheller or anyone else," the Post said.

In late 2002, the Bush administration began scouring intelligence files for reports of Iraqi weapons threats, the newspaper went on.

"Drumheller was asked to press a counterpart from a European intelligence agency for direct access to Curveball," who was living in Germany and described himself as a chemical engineer.

"Other officials confirmed that it was the German intelligence service," the Post said.

"The German official declined but then offered a startlingly candid assessment," Drumheller recalled.

"'He said, 'I think the guy is a fabricator,'" Drumheller was quoted as saying, declining to name the official.

"He said: 'We also think he has psychological problems. We could never validate his reports.'"

Although "no American had ever interviewed Curveball, analysts with the CIA's Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control believed the informant's technical descriptions were too detailed to be fabrications," the Post said.

It was Germany's intelligence agency BND that passed along Curveball's stories to Washington, the report said.

"Over time, the informant generated more than 100 intelligence reports on secret Iraqi weapons programs -- the only such reports from an informant claiming to have visited and worked in mobile labs. Other informants, also later discredited, had claimed indirect knowledge of mobile labs," the report said.

Source: AFP

"Great Divide" Seen in Muslim and Western Opinions

2006-06-28T01:30:00.000-07:00

by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - A "great divide" separates the worldviews of Muslims and Westerners, according to the results of a major new survey which suggests that European Muslims, who held the most tolerant views, could be a bridge between the two groups."Many in the West see Muslims as fanatical, violent, and as lacking tolerance," according to an analysis of the survey by the Washington-based Pew Global Attitudes Project. "Muslims in the Middle East and Asia generally see Westerners as selfish, immoral and greedy -- as well as violent and fanatical." But the survey also found that was less true among European Muslims. "In many ways, the views of Europe's Muslims represent a middle ground between the way Western publics and Muslims in the Middle East and Asia view each other," it said.

The survey and analysis, which were released by Pew here Thursday, found that positive views held by Muslims of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and terror tactics associated with him have declined over the past year, quite substantially in Pakistan and Jordan, where suicide attacks killed more than 50 people in Amman hotels over the last year. At the same time, the percentage of Muslims who believe that Arabs did not carry out the Sep. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon has increased. Majorities in Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and among the Muslim community in Britain doubt that Arabs had any role. The survey, which was carried out in 13 countries from the beginning of April until mid-May, found that negative views of Muslims have become especially pronounced in Germany and Spain, where only 36 percent and 29 percent of respondents, respectively, expressed favourable opinions of Muslims. Both marked major declines from the last Pew poll one year ago.

By contrast, nearly two-thirds of French and British citizens said they had favourable views of Muslims. Fifty-six percent of Russians agreed with that opinion, as did 54 percent of U.S. respondents. Interestingly, British and French respondents were the most upbeat as well about the prospects for democracy in Muslim countries. Six in 10 respondents in France and Britain said democracy can work well there, while only 49 percent of U.S. citizens and an average of four in 10 Spanish and Germans agreed. More than 60 percent of Indonesians and Jordanians said they had favourable views of Christians, followed by 48 percent of Egyptians. But only about one in four Pakistanis described their views as favourable, while only about one in seven Turks agreed, a possible reflection of growing anti-European and anti-U.S. opinion resulting from negotiations over Turkey's admission to the European Union and the popular anger there against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. By contrast, Muslims living in Europe were much more positive about Christians, one of a number of indications in the survey that European Muslims are not only considerably less alienated from the societies in which they reside than many recent analyses have suggested, but also that they could act as a moderating force in the Muslim-Western divide. Nine out of 10 French Muslims said they had positive views of Christians, followed by eight out of 10 Spanish Muslims (in spite of the strongly anti-Muslim views of most Spanish).

Roughly seven out of 10 English and German Muslims also said their views of Christians were favourable. Of all Muslim populations surveyed, French Muslims were by far the most positive toward Jews -- 71 percent said they had favourable opinions, roughly twice the percentage of Muslims in Britain, Germany and Spain. Elsewhere in the Muslim world, views of Jews were far more negative: in Indonesia, 17 percent of respondents said they had favourable opinions; in Turkey, 15 percent; in Pakistan six percent; and in the two Arab countries countries surveyed, Egypt and Jordan, only two and one percent, respectively. As to relations between Muslims and Westerners, majorities in 10 out of 12 countries described them as "generally bad". In Europe, the most negative views were found in Germany (70 percent said "generally bad") and France (66 percent). Fifty-five percent of U.S. respondents described it the same way. Turkey was the most negative of the predominantly Muslim nations, with nearly two-thirds opting for "generally bad" -- although 77 percent of Nigerian Muslims made the same assessment -- followed by Egypt (58 percent), Jordan (54 percent), and Indonesia (53 percent). Pakistan, where a slight plurality said that relations were "generally good", was the only exception. The Pew analysis concluded that Muslims hold "an aggrieved view of the West -- they are much more likely than Americans or Western Europeans to blame Western policies for their own lack of prosperity.

For their part Western publics instead point to government corruption, lack of education and Islamic fundamentalism as the biggest obstacles to Muslim prosperity." Thus, Muslims, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, tended to blame the controversy over the Danish cartoon depictions of Mohammad earlier this year on Western disrespect for Islam. Majorities in the U.S. and Europe, on the other hand, blamed the crisis on Muslim intolerance. In many respects, the two groups hold mirror images, however. When asked to choose among a list of negative traits Muslim and non-Muslim respondents saw in the other group, the survey found that Muslims in the Middle East and Asia -- often by large majorities -- generally view Westerns as selfish, arrogant, and violent. European Muslims, particularly those in France and Spain, however, tended to be far less damning about the traits of non-Muslims than in predominantly Muslim countries. At the same time, majorities of non-Muslims in Europe found Muslims to be fanatical and violent, although only minorities in Britain, the U.S. and France subscribed to that view.

The survey's findings suggested that French and Spanish Muslims were the least alienated from their surrounding societies, even if the general public in Spain was found to be the most hostile toward Muslims of any of the European societies covered by the poll. Four in ten non-Muslim Spaniards said they believe that most or many Muslims in their country support Islamic extremism, but only 12 percent of Spanish Muslims agreed. Of the four minority publics surveyed, British Muslims are the most critical of their country and "come closer to views of Muslims around the world in their opinions of Westerners". The religious divide was found to be surprisingly sharp in Nigeria, where, for example, nearly three out of four Muslims and Christians ascribed negative traits to the other groups. Nigerian Muslims also constituted a "conspicuous exception" to the trend toward declining confidence in bin Laden in the Muslim world. More than six in 10 Nigerian Muslims said they have at least some confidence in the al Qaeda leader, up from 44 percent in 2003. In addition, nearly half of Nigeria's Muslims said that suicide bombings could be justified often or sometimes in the defence of Islam.

Source: IPS-Inter Press Service

IRAN slams US human rigths record

2006-06-27T06:28:00.000-07:00

(Iribnews)-Iran Foreign Minitery's Spokesman, Hamid-Reza Asefi slamed Tuesday the American record on human rights and said Washington has no rigth to speak about human rights situation in other countries.

Reacting to recent remarks by American Secretary of State Deputy on Iran's human rights record, Asefi said the statements are aimed at taking the global attention away from the Washington's disgraceful human rights record.

The American lavish support for the Zionist occupiers and its rampage and distruction in the region show how much it is committed to the human rights, he added.

KH

Football: "war minus the shooting"

2006-06-26T11:38:00.000-07:00

Joschka Fischer, former German foreign minister, recently declared that once the tournament of World Cup finals starts, "a football will become the symbol of our One World." This ideal of a world-at-peace encapsulated in a universal symbol seems at odds with the bloody reality of the world today. George Orwell described football as being "war minus the shooting". The English author and political commentator was not averse to hyperbole. However he is not alone when it comes to overstating the importance of game of football. The most dramatic dictum has to be that of Bill Shankly: ‘Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I can assure you it is much, much more important than that’. This may sound comical, on face value, but looking at the history of the game it is not clear whether or not he uttered these words in jest.

Last week saw a series of distinctly Shanklyesk broadcast in the USA. Based on the morose manner of the addresses we can rest assured that it was not a joke. The American broadcaster ESPN, which shows most of the world cup games in the USA, is airing a series of adverts with members of the rock band U2. In one, Bono says that the World Cup "closes the schools, closes the shops, closes a city and stops a war." Another advert adds some more meat to the bones of Bono's thesis explaining that: "After three years of civil war, feuding factions talked for the first time in years, and the president called a truce. Because the Ivory Coast qualified for the World Cup for the first time. Because, as everyone knows, a country united makes for better cheerleaders than a country divided." Regardless of whether we share Bill Shankly's enthusiasm for the game, we probably all find the notion of simple sport arresting hostilities slightly intriguing.

This is not a novel concept. It is thought that the first games at Olympia were held to commemorate a lull in the fighting that took place, among the warring factions, of ancient Greece. At least this is what the modern Olympic movement would have us believe. That is, sport can be a source of peace that transcends political and partisan boundaries. However few people are suggesting that FIFA or the Olympic Committee should replace the permanent members of the UN Security Council. This may seem as if we are trivialising a gravely serious matter, but the situation is deeply farcical. The concept of grown men chasing a pig's bladder for 90 minutes is puerile and pathetic.

However the notion that this is merely amusement, without political implications is the result of dangerously superficial analysis. There are certainly clear examples of football interrupting war. It has been reported that the British and Germans played football during the 1914 Christmas truce across the trenches during World War I, and the Germans won, 3-2. After the British defeat they then returned to killing each other. During the peak of popularity for Brazilian soccer phenomenon Pele, the combatants in the Biafran war declared a two-day truce so they could watch him play. A more current parallel may be found in the example cited by ESPN. Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) is a county torn apart by civil war.

Three and a half years ago sections of the Ivorian military staged a coup following a series of cases of discrimination against the Northerners and guest workers. Since then, Côte d'Ivoire has been split into two regions: an Islamic North controlled by the so-called rebels, and a generally Christian South held by troops loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo. 4,000 French soldiers and 7,000 UN "peacekeepers" separate the two factions. When they qualified for the World Cup finals in November 2005, the country came to a stand still. Pandemonium reigned, both in the North and the South. The dance clubs in Abidjan didn't close for two full days. In the midst of the madness, football association president Jacques Anouma approached President Gbagbo with a message: the players wish to communicate that national reconciliation is an issue very close to their hearts. Their success, Anouma said, could represent a new beginning for the country. Didier Drogba added that the current team was a symbol of tolerance, a mirror of how the country had been in the past and how it should be in the future: diverse ethnic groupings forming a single national identity.

A truce is now in place and elections are scheduled for October 2006. Many hold this naïve vision for football: a symbol of unity and tolerance. To see Ivorian football in 2006 as a fairytale affair is an oversimplification of what is actually a blood situation. Human Rights Watch warned in May, that while the truce is still in place, both government and rebel forces were devoting their energies to terrorising civilians. Even if we do decide to adopt a romantic approach to international football we should know that this is contrasted with a dark side. The hooliganism and rioting associated with international football tournaments have become well known worldwide. It is only through military-like operations involving: international law enforcers, intelligence gatherers, infiltrators, bannings and surveillance of ports and travel corridors that some sort of order is created in the current competition.

Countries such as the UK, Poland and Germany may be playing a major role in the war on Islam, but they are also fighting a war with their own citizens. These being white supremacists, agitators or just mindless morons bent on violence. Right wing extremists from all over Europe have been drawn to the magnet of football in the Farterland intent of causing mayhem. In order to prevent full scale war breaking out the home security forces, of these countries, have to take drastic measures. These illegal combatants have their bases raided at dawn, their phones tapped and the e-mail traffic monitored.

Football has catalysed full blown international conflicts, as in June 1969 with El Salvador and Honduras. Immigration and border disputes between the two countries had reached a boiling point at the same time that a three-game elimination match between the two national teams was taking place. Rioting during the second game led the two countries to break diplomatic relations. Two weeks later, the 100-hour Soccer War took place, resulting in about 2,000 casualties.

Football played a role in the run-up to the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Chanting at football games became an outlet for anti-communist and Serb nationalist sentiments during the days of the Yugoslavia. Tito's vision for Yugoslavia was one were Muslims, Croats and Serbs lived as obedient Yugoslavs under his brand of socialism. For decades Yugoslavia suppressed nationalistic/tribalistic views. However within the arena of football, in the name of team partisanship the authorities would ignore the voicing of views that contradicted the Yugoslav ideal.

By the early 1990s, hardline nationalist and anti-government sentiment was so entrenched among football supporters that battles with police before and after matches were weekly events. On 13 May 1990, Red Star Belgrade travelled to Croatia to meet Dynamo Zagreb, in what would be the last game before the collapse of the old Yugoslav league and with it the state itself. This was not long after Croatia elected its nationalist Franjo Tudjman as president. In what have been described as the worst scenes of football hooliganism witnessed in Europe, thousands of "Delije", Red star's Ultranationalists fought the Zagreb 'Bad Blue Boys' mob, as well as the local police. The game - a portent of the wars that followed - was abandoned after 10 minutes.

After this, the fighting went on for more than an hour and the stadium was eventually set on fire. The Serbian team had to be taken away by helicopter. That match has been described as the beginning of the "patriotic war". The activity of the "ultras" became known to, Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. His head of security, Jovica Stanisic, (who is now on trial for war crimes at the Hague) enlisted Zelijko Raznatovic the infamous - Arkan - to help control and direct the violence of the hooligans. Arkan was the commander-in-chief of the "Tigers" and director of the Red Star supporters' association. He believed that Red Star could be what Real Madrid were for General Franco, or the Italy team, playing in black shirts, were to Mussolini - a force of power and influence in wider society. Arkan took over effective control of the Delije, running everything from ticket sales to foreign travel and intimidation of match officials. Within a year, he began to recruit and organise groups of nationalists - the notorious paramilitary Tigers - to fight the 'patriotic' war in Croatia and, later, in Kosovo.

The wars in these territories were as much about business as they were about politics. By invading, looting and setting up monopolies in oil, alcohol and cigarette companies, Arkan and his employers grew wealthy while ordinary Serbs struggled. Arkan recruited extensively from the north bank of Red Star's "Maracana" stadium. Later he managed to recruit from the "gravediggers" at Serbain rival Partizan. Regarding Partizan and Red Star: Fulham and Chelsea these two teams were not. As with all big cities the rivalries between two local teams are intense. However the rivalry between Red Star Belgrade and Partizan was hideous. Whenever Red Star meet their local city rivals, the atmosphere is rancid with hatred and aggression.
Testosterone drenched men spend three hours, not watching football but, chanting taunts, singing nationalistic songs and lighting flares.

However on the afternoon of 22 March 1992, when Partizan visited Red Star's 60,000 all-seater 'Maracana' stadium for a routine league match, something strange happened. Before the game, as the fans began making their way to the stadium from across the city, there had been sporadic outbreaks of fighting and violence. Inside the stadium, once the game had started, the Red Star's "Ultras", massed in the north stand, began taunting the supporters of Partizan, denouncing them as 'faggots, Turks, Muslims, blacks, and communists'. There was nothing unusual about any of this. Then, abruptly, the chanting stopped. The crowd watched as a group of the "tigers" paramilitaries - dressed in full uniform, took up positions in the north stand.

There were about 20 of them and, one by one, they held aloft road signs: '20 miles to Vukovar'; '10 miles to Vukovar'; 'Welcome to Vukovar'. More road signs were brandished, each one bearing the name of a Croatian town that had fallen to the Serbian army. From high up in the stand, Arkan emerged to receive the delighted applause of supporters who were no longer fractious but united in hatred of a common enemy - the Croats. The match continued, but what took place had less to do with sport than with ardent nationalism and with what it meant to be a football supporter in a country at war. What became of those thugs and hooligans as the war in the Balkans progressed is well known to us. As for the state of Yugoslavia and Tito's dream, this has disappeared along with Yugoslavia's once footballing prowess. Their remnants that are represented in the current tournament are Croatia and a country that only came into being recently and has just voted itself out of existence Serbia and Montenegro.

This country, that is not really a country, is fielding a team in the World Cup finals for the first and last time. As a reminder of Franco's use of Real Madrid, we should remember that he was obsessed with national unity. It was illegal to speak the Catalan and Basque languages under his dictatorship. The mighty Barcelona represented (and still do) Catalonian pride. The various regions were suspicious of anything that came from the capital. They would refer to Real Madrid as the team of the regime. One of Franco's techniques for suppressing regional sentiments was to make Madrid all powerful. This extended to football. However he had to resort to match fixing and intimidation. The lack of support for the Spanish national side, or any thing national, from Catalonia lasts till today. The bitter rivalry between Barcelona and Real Madrid is not born of football, but politics.

Returning to the current tournament we see that it is not just Serbia and Montenegro that pose a political conundrum. What of Iran? The rhetoric of the world is that Iran is a pariah state that can not be trusted with anything because of its sabre-rattling over Israel and the views of its president regarding the fate of Europe's Jews in the 1930's. Meanwhile the rhetoric from Tehran is from the Millwall school of thought: "no one likes us, we don't care". However in this fractious international political climate they are all prepared to go and kick-ball together and exchange sweat sodden shirts after 90 minutes.

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was toying with visiting Germany to support his team. This elicited a furious reaction because of his unpopular views and threats to Israel. The week before the tournament the head of Germany's football association, Theo Zwanziger, said "If he does come, then he will naturally be told with all clarity that what he said is absolutely unacceptable, criminal and far removed from reality." Ahmadinajad should be reminded that the notion of freedom of speech has not reached many parts of Western Europe. German law states that “whoever denies the holocaust will risk spending the next 5 years in jail”. As, Ahmadinejad proclaimed, a few months ago, that “the holocaust never existed in Germany or elsewhere in the world”, it was a good move for him to watch Iran's inevitable exit in the group stages on television in Tehran.

Iran has also seen its own problems at home that are related to football. The Iranian Republic's ban on women attending football matches as spectators is viewed as oppression by the rest of the world. At home football is seen as a major bone of contention, particularly with the youth. The football riots of 2001 were among the most serious mass disturbances Iran has witnessed since the Republican-nationalist revolution of 1979. They were just one manifestation of restiveness among those young people tired of the oppressive Persian regime. So, all are welcome to take part in the four-week footy-fest. That is all save those who hold views that are not popular in the host country. Surely this is discordant with the FIFA ideal of being above politics.

This highlights how ridiculous the whole notion of, "a football becoming the symbol of our One World" actually is. International sporting events can not take place in isolation. The German stadia are not gold-fish bowls. The teams that come from all over the globe come with political baggage. If they wear the national colours, if they fly the national flag and stand for the national anthem they represent a defined political entity. The World Cup, like the Olympics, suffers from a case of overblown rhetoric. The passions that the World Cup inspires embody the worst forms of nationalism. Uniting behind an allegiance to a piece of earth, or a tribe is the lowest form of human social organisation. The world today is comprised of small states that have this tribalistic and patriotic fervour encapsulated within their political systems. In order for these systems to work the subjects of the nations have to unite behind a something: be it a flag, a king, an army, a hero etc. The best way to get the mindless mass to unite and support the tyranny of these governments is to have a war. Alternatively let them play football against each other.

Source: KCom Journal

Hamas not to recognize Israel

2006-06-25T07:27:00.000-07:00

È.Ù (Iribnews)-A senior member of Hamas political bureau chief said the Islamist Resistance Movement will not recognize the Zionist regime.

"There will be no compromise on recognizing Israel. We will not," said Mohammed Nazzal during a conference in Cairo.

"They want us to recognize Israel, accept past peace deals and renounce violence," said Nazzal. "Political logic says that a movement like Hamas cannot accept these conditions."
The late Palestinian Leader, Yasser Arafat, "recognized Israel and in the end he was under siege in Ramallah. What did he get in return," Nazzal asked.
Moreover, Nazzal reiterated Hamas's rejection of a referendum on the Palestinian Prisoners' charter.

"This referendum is illegal. Our position is final. The referendum has 18 points. One cannot propose a document of four pages, with 18 points and say 'accept it all or reject it all'.

"And even if the referendum passed, how would the points in it be executed, when the execution is not in our hands? Israel has rejected the referendum too. The referendum is illegal, it is not politically sound, it is not practical and it will only lead to more differences between the Palestinians."

However, he said Hamas was ready to accept a national unity government but it is not prepared to hand the government to other parties.

Iraq's Security Problems Solved Only through Withdrawal of Occupying Troops

2006-06-24T03:26:00.000-07:00

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Grand Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei stressed that the present security problems in Iraq may only be solved through withdrawal of the occupation army from that country and transfer of security affairs to the Iraqis themselves.

Speaking during a meeting with the chairman of the United Iraqi Alliance party and head of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Seyed Abd al-Aziz Hakim, Ayatollah Khamenei paid tribute to the Hakim venerable household and the great pains and agonies they have suffered during the rule of Sadam's Ba'thist regime, stressing that Seyed Abd al-Aziz Hakim has played an intelligent and thoughtful role in the developments of the last few years.
The leader also called on Hakim to pursue the same trend since it serves the Iraqi nation.
The Supreme Leader expressed pleasure with establishment of democratic government in Iraq and taking shape of constitutional bodies in the country.

The Supreme Leader praised the great achievements of the Iraqi people and the establishment of the present trend in that country and described them as blessings of the Almighty and as a cornerstone in Iraq's history.

Ayatollah Khamenei honored the decisive leadership of venerable leader of Iraq ,Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and said that Iraqi people are expected to reinforce national solidarity and religious unity to remove security problems in Iraq.
The Supreme Leader underscored the need for withdrawal of occupation forces from Iraq as pre-requisite for national security and successful hand-over of the state affairs to Iraqi forces themselves.

Hakim appreciated Iran's support for the Iraqi people and government and briefed the Supreme Leader on the political process of Iraq.
"The Iraqi people are present in all the scenes in spite of economic and security difficulties. Massive turnout of the Iraqi people in the latest elections illustrated their high level of political understanding and political determination to decide on their own fate," Hojjatoleslam Hakim said.

Hakim said that different Iraqi religious groups and ethnic people have exercised satisfactory cooperation and managed to establish constitutional bodies successfully despite executive shortages in reinforcing political process.

Classic Quotes on Zionism-Last series

2006-06-23T00:38:00.000-07:00

The human rights organization Amnesty International said in a report in December that Israel has made about 16,700 Palestinians homeless by destroying at least 2,650 houses since 1987"--From an AP report on home demolitions by Israel dated 04/23/2000

"The demolition and sealing of houses are among the most severe methods of punishment used by the authorities against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. To our knowledge, this harsh form of punishment is unique to Israel and is not employed by any other nation. Demolition and sealing of houses in the territories contravene international law that prohibits collective punishment and arbitrary injury to property."-- B'Tselem, an Israeli Human Rights Organization.

"... we have no solution, that you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wants to can leave -- and we will see where this process leads? In five years we may have 200,000 less people -- and that is a matter of enorous importance." -- Moshe Dayan encouraging the transfer of Gaza strip refugees to Jordan (from Noam Chomsky's Deterring Democracy, 1992, p.434, quoted in Nur Masalha's A Land Without A People, 1997 p.92).

"It is an open secret that Israeli policy makers hoped for a massive emigration of Palestinians as a result of economic and demographic pressure. Therefore, they also developed a clever system which caused numerous Palestinians born here to lose their residency rights when they went to work or study abroad." -- Amira Hass in 08/26/1998 Ha'aretz Op'Ed titled The Settlers are Not to Blame.
While campaigning for the prime ministership, Binyamin Netanyahu Criticized his Labor party opponents for missing an opportunity during the Tiannamen Square massacre. "Had he been prime minister, he said, he would have seized the chance then, while the world was watching China, to carry out the transfer of the Palestinians." -- p. 137 Washington Report 09/1998

"I don't sign orders to destroy the houses of Jews, only of Arabs,"-- Haim Miller, deputy mayor of Jerusalem and acting mayor in Olmert's absence, quoted in Yediot Aharonot, Feb. 7, 1998.
"[Israel will] create in the course of the next 10 or 20 years conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the west Bank to Jordan. To achieve this we have to come to agreement with King Hussein and not with Yasser Arafat."

-- Yitzhak Rabin (a "Prince of Peace" by Clinton's standards), explaining his method of ethnically cleansing the occupied land without stirring a world outcry. (Quoted in David Shipler in the New York Times, 04/04/1983 citing Meir Cohen's remarks to the Kenesset's foreign affairs and defense committee on March 16.)
(Apparently, Rabin's method of "creating conditions that will prompt Palestinian migration" wasn't as efficient as desired, therefore, house demolitions and rejection of building permits to Palestinians were adopted as additional measures.In 1900 there were about 550,000 Palestinians and 50,000 Jews. Palestinians. Today, despite the extremely high birth-rate of the Palestinians, there are about 900,000 Palestinians (Israeli-Arabs, who own 4 percent of Israel) in Israel, 4.5 million Jews (owning 96 percent of Israel), and about 2.5 million Palestinians crammed in a small, highly-dense and disconnected areas in the occupied territories.)
Since its founding one of Israel's main goals was to change the demography of Palestine and Jerusalem, by luring --even by forcing-- Jews to emigrate to Israel, (over other countries,) hence, dispossessing more Palestinians. In a visit to the U.S. in Feb 1987 Yitzhak Shamir asked secretary Shultz to stop offering special refugee status to Soviet Jews. (See New York Times article Israel Asking U.S. to Bar Soviet Jews by Ari Goldman 03/01/1987) Hence, once again Zionism is interested in Jews as number-boosters rather than caring about their well being and "freedom." In addition, there were indications that Israel's madness in forcing Jews (especially Arab Sephardic ones) to go to Israel, have reached the level of sending Israeli secret agents to terrorize some Arab Jewish communities in their countries. Examples of this are in the case of Iraqi Jews, 125,000 of whom (97%) fled to Israel in the early 50's. (See David Hirst The Gun and the Olive Branch pp. 155-64, 1984 quoted in Ruether's The Wrath of Jonah, 1989).

"Nahum Goldman, an eminent Zionist Leader, suggested in 1971 that rather than stressing the emigration [of Russian Jews to Israel] issue, the Zionist movement should concentrate on securing human rights for Jews remaining inside the USSR. His invitation to address the World Zionist Congress was promptly withdrawn"-- p. 187 A Cockburn Dangerous Liaison, 1991, quoting p. 737 of Howard Sacher's A History of Israel, 1988

Rabbi Meir Kahane vs. the USSR In December 1969, a messenger from Israel, Geula Cohen, arrived to tell Kahane to cease squabbling with American blacks and to direct the JDL's (Jewish Defense League, founded by Kahane) violent energies at a more important target: the Soviet Union. (Geula Cohen once withdrew her support for Begin in his urban guerilla days because she found his policies to be "too mild." While publicly Golda Meir disassociated herself from Kahane's activities, "according to Kahane's biographer Robert Friedman, however, no fewer than three senior active-duty Mossad officers were involved in the group superintending the JDL's violent campaign.... Kahane's activities, which included in 1971 four bombings attacks in New York City alone." -- pp. 184-6 A Cockburn Dangerous Liaison , 1991

"Is this a way to occupy Hebron? A couple of artillery bombardments on Hebron and not a single 'Hebronite' would have remained there. Is this a way to occupy Jerusalem [without driving the Arabs out]?" --Yigal Allon, Labor deputy Prime minister of Israel chiding the IDF leadership. Cited on p.179 of Nur Masalha's A Land without a People who cites Shiloah Ashmat Yerushalayim pp. 53 and 281. Shiloah remarked that Allon's comment also applied to Nablus (p.54).
Aggression: "The Jews again today appeared to be on the offensive, roughly two-thirds of the incidents being initiated by them and in their operations they showed evidence of planning, something absent in general from the Arab attacks." -- The New York Times, 12/12/1947 from p. 53 of Fallen Pillars by Donald Neff, (1995)

"To solidify their gains after the 1967 war, according to UN figures, the Israelis destroyed during the period between June 11, 1967 and November 15, 1969 some 7,554 Palestinian Arab homes in the territories seized during that war; this figure excluded thirty-five villages in the occupied Golan Heights that were razed to the ground. In the two years between September 1969 and 1971 the figure was estimated to have reached 16,312 homes." --from The Zionist Connection II, by Alfred Lilienthal, p.160. 1978

" The Yom Kippur War was not fought by Egypt and Syria to threaten the existence of Israel. It was an all out use of their military force to achieve a limited political goal. What Sadat wanted by crossing the canal was to change the political reality and, thereby, to start a political process from a point more favorable to him than the one that existed. ."-- Yitzhak Rabin Quoted on p.306 of Donald Neff's Warrior Against Israel
"Jews came and took, by means of uprooting and expulsion, a land that was Arab. We wanted to be a colonialist occupier, and yet to come across as moral at the same time... The Arab armies -- chiefly from Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Transjordan, now Jordan -- totaled just over 20,000 men. The core of the Arab nations' fighting forces remained behind, in part to ensure the internal stability of their own fledgling regimes.... Crucially, Israel had a quiet agreement with Transjordan that its Arab Legion, the strongest of the invading armies, would take over only the West Bank, which the U.N. partition plan had intended as the center of a Palestinian Arab State."-- Ilan Pappe', Israeli Historian at Haifa University.

"Till then everyone in Israel spoke about Arabs who had just run away in 1948, but there existed no real historical research on it. There were two conflicting propaganda versions, one Arab and another Jewish. As one who received his education in Israel, I thought I knew that the Arabs had 'run away.' But I knew nothing else. The Jewish generations of 1948, however, knew the truth and deliberately misrepresented it. They knew there were plenty of mass deportations, massacres and rapes . . . . The soldiers and the officials knew, but they suppressed what they knew and were deliberately disseminating lies."-- Israeli Historian Benny Morris in an interview with Rami Tal published in Israeli Daily Yediot Ahronot December 1994.
"For it was precisely the unignorable plight and suffering of the Palestinian Arabs during April-May of that year that forced the hand of the reluctant Arab political and military leaders to take the plunge and invade Palestine on 15-16 May.-- Israeli Historian Benny Morris in an 03-04/1998 article in Tikkun.

"In 1948, we deliberately, and not just in the heat of the war, expelled Arabs. Also in 67 after the Six-Day War, we expelled many Arabs." -- Tzvi Shiloah, a senior veteran of the Mapai Party and a former deputy mayor of the town of Hertzeliyah. (Modelet, no.12, October 1989)
Expulsion: "Nazareth, all-Palestinian with 17,000 residents was captured on 16 July [1948]. However, Palestinian residents were allowed to remain, the only major Palestinian town where this happened. In most areas the Palestinians were actively forced to flee or deliberately panic-stricken into fleeing with reminders of Deir Yassin" This happened because "the local Jewish commander who captured Nazareth, Ben Dunkelman, two days after the city's fall he was ordered to force its civilians to evacuate [but refused to obey orders]"-- Donald Neff in his book Fallen Pillars, (1995) p.65., p.288 and supported on pp. 201-202 of Benny Morris' Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem.
The Result: "Israel's conquests included not only such major cities as Jaffa, Lydda and Acre, but also 418 Palestinian villages that were destroyed and another 100 villages that were occupied by Jews. In all Israelis took over more than 50,000 homes, 10,000 shops and 1,000 warehouses. It was estimated that about a quarter of the buildings in the new state were originally the property of the Palestinians." -- p. 72 of Fallen Pillars by Donald Neff
Looting: "Indiscriminate plundering of Palestinian property by Jews [in 1948] was so common that it caused Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to confide to his diary that he was 'bitterly surprised' by the 'mass robbery' in which all parts of the population participated. [...] Tom Segev reported: 'In Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem there were many civilians among the looters.' Another Israeli writer, Moshe Smilanky, reported: 'Individuals, groups and communities, men, women and children, all fell on the spoils. Doors, windows, lintels, brinks, roof-tiles, floor-tiles, junk and machine parts ...' Segev commented that Smilansky 'could have also added to the list toilet bowls, sinks, faucets and light bulbs.'" -- p.68 of Fallen Pillars by Donald Neff
Partition: "after the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine " -- Ben Gurion, p.22 "The Birth of Israel, 1987" Simha Flapan.

"The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan. One does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today -- but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concerns of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them." p.53, "The Birth of Israel, 1987" Simha Flapan
Arab Exodus "At no point during the war did the Arab leaders issue a blanket call to Palestine's Arabs to leave their homes and villages and wander into exile. Indeed, I have found no trace of such a campaign, and had it taken place, had there been such broadcasts, they would have been quoted or at least left traces in the documentation."from the book 1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians by Benny Morris.Upon examining all of the British and American monitoring of broadcasts [the BBC recorded them and kept transcripts as did the American government] in the area at that time, Irish journalist, Erskine Childers concluded that "There was not a single order, or appeal, or suggestion about evacuation from Palestine from any Arab radio station, inside or outside Palestine, in 1948."

Summary "Jews came and took, by means of uprooting and expulsion, a land that was Arab. We wanted to be a colonialist occupier, and yet to come across as moral at the same time." -- Israeli Professor ILan Pappe
"Only then [after an internal revolution] will the young and old in our land realize how great was our responsibility to those miserable Arab refugees in whose towns we have settled from afar; whose homes we have inherited, whose fields we now sow and harvest; the fruit of whose gardens, orchards and vineyards we gather; and in whose cities that we robbed, we put up houses of education, charity and prayer." -- Philosopher Martin Buber addressing fellow Jews in 1961.

"Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves ... politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country. ... Behind the terrorism [by the Arabs] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self sacrifice."-- David Ben Gurion. Quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky's Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan's "Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.

Zionism's Indifference to the Genocide of Jews.

2006-06-22T11:31:00.000-07:00

Pointing fingers at the world for its indifference to the genocide of the Jews, while busy using the Holocaust for political gains at the expense of the Palestinians, Zionists have a lot to hide about their indifference, even collaboration, with the Nazis and the Fascists, as their fellow Jews were being sent to concentration camps. It seems that this finger-pointing by the Zionists is nothing more than a smoke screen to hide their dark past of allowing other Jews to die, while the Zionists were lobbying to rob Palestinians of their country. Excellent books on the topic are Zionism in the Age of the Dictators by Lenni Brenner and The Seventh Million by Tom Segev; (both authors are Jews).

From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (10/23/2000) www.jta.org :

"The U.S. House of Representatives dropped a resolution that would have blamed Turkey for a genocide of Armenians 85 years ago. The Turkish Jewish community asked U.S. lawmakers to consider the ramifications of the resolution after Turkey, an ally of Israel and the United States, threatened trade sanctions and withdrawing military cooperation with the United States."

John Roth U.S. Holocaust Museum director-elect, was going to become director in 08/1998, but resigned due to a fiasco resulting from a "controversial" comment he made in 1988 where he compared treatment of the Palestinians by Israel to that of the Jews by the Nazis. Here's a portion of an article by Jacqueline Trescott in the June 18, 1998 issue of the Washington Post.

"The storm that erupted around Roth started when the Forward, a Jewish weekly, reported that the scholar [Roth] had compared the treatment of the Jews by Nazi Germany during World War II to the present-day treatment of the Palestinians by Israel. The article in question first appeared in 1988, and when the essay was resurrected Roth publicly apologized. Still the opposition escalated last week when two congressmen told the museum officials that they were offended by that view and others of Roth and that the museum should reconsider its choice." (my emphasis)

The leaders of opposition to Roth were pro-Zionist/pro-Israel organizations who benefit politically from the Holocaust such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Zionist Organization of America. Conclusion: it is not allowable to be both anti-Israel and a Holocaust scholar simultaneously (hence, equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism). Here again is a fine example of the Zionists' effort of hiding their dark ideology of racism and history of alliance with anti-Semites and racism against Palestinian (manifested as the state of Israel), behind the motto of fighting the persecution of Jews. At least Hitler didn't hide his racism behind a human rights front!

"In our country there is room only for the Jews. We shall say to the Arabs: Get out! If they don't agree, if they resist, we shall drive them out by force."

--Professor Ben-Zion Dinur Israel's First Minister of Education, 1954 from History of the Haganah

"After the Palmach men left [Deir Yassin], the men of the [Irgun and Stern Gang] started a shameful massacre of the inhabitants...[The massacre] was carried out...when the village was in Jewish hands, and without the inhabitants having taken any provocative action..."
Meir Pa'il, official Haganah observer on the scene, Yediot Ahranot, April 29, 1972)

"All of the killed, with very few exceptions, were old men, women or children. The dead we found were all unjust victims, and none of them had died with a weapon in their hands."
--Eliyahu Arieli, Haganah member who arrived at Deir Yassin shortly after the massacre, O Jerusalem, Collins and Lapierre, 1972.

"There is no doubt that many sexual atrocities were committed by the attacking Jews. Many young girls were raped and later slaughtered. Old women were also molested."

General Richard Catling, British Army Assistant Inspector after interrogating several female survivors (The Palestinian Catastrophe, Michael Palumbo, 1987)

" Here lies the saint, Doctor Baruch Kapal Goldstein, blessed be the memory of the righteous and holy man, may the Lord revenge his blood, who devoted his soul for the Jews, Jewish religion and Jewish land. His hands are clean and his heart is clear. He was killed as a martyr of God on the 14th of Adar, Purim, in the year 5754. "

Thus goes the inscription on the grave, (made as a shrine visited by pilgrims), of the mass murderer Baruch Goldstein. An American Physician and an Israeli settler of Hebron, Goldstein indiscriminately murdered 29 worshipers kneeling in a mosque in 1994.

Few notes on the Hebron Massacre by Baruch Goldstein:

Allowing the extremists and settlers to crown Goldstein a hero, by building him a shrine, Israel is giving a "green light" to other extremists -- all heavily and legally armed, with extensive criminal record-- to follow suit.
The American media was careful to label Goldstein an extremist rather than a terrorist.
Still the U.S. and Israel continue to ignore the security needs of the Palestinians
Don't expect the Israeli authorities to demolish the house of the family of this terrorist.

Only recently (May 1998) the Israeli government voted to remove the memorial at the site, (octagonal stone plaza, candles, book holders, water fountain), but not the grave itself or the tombstone. The reason for Israel's sudden conscientious action is, in my opinion, due to the shrine attracting some world attention, which could mean the attention of U.S. public, a major source of Israel's income. The shrine was finally dismantled on December 29, 1999, almost six years after the massacre.

As of June 1998, the Hebron Massacre was the last time, a U.N. resolution passed condemning Israel (all others were shot down by U.S. vetos)

"Because we Jews know what it is to suffer, we must not oppress others." - Felicia Langer, Israeli Jew human rights activist.

UN Human Rights Commisson "declares that Israel's greave breaches of the Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilian persons in the time of war of 12 August, 1949, are war crimes and an affront against humanity."

In Israel, torture, (or as Israel calls it "moderate physical and psychological pressure" to avoid world/U.S. outcry), is legal and systematic. Some of the methods used are: tie detainees into a kindergarten chair for many hours; shake them violently; cover their heads with a rag bag soaked in vomit (or other foul odored substances); expose them to painfully loud music for extended periods of time; hang them in contorted positions; deprive them from sleep. Attractive methods of torture also include anything that will leave little or no immediately visible markings recognizable by an average reporter.

On September 6, 1999, Israel "banned torture". However, since the "culture of torture" is deeply-ingrained in Israel, then a serious punishment of interrogators who violate this law must be instituted. Sadly, signs indicate otherwise, as interrogators are already given a wink, since "a court might accept the argument that physical force was necessary." (AP, Sep 6).

Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State recommended that Israel put down the Palestinian uprising "as quickly as possible--overwhelmingly, brutally and rapidly. The insurrection must be quelled immediately, and the first step should be to throw out television, a la South Africa. To be sure, there will be international criticism of the step, but it will dissipate in short order." He added: "There are no awards for losing with moderation."
-- Quoted in 12/97 article by Donald Neff in The Washington Report on Middle East

When the subject is torture, there can be no "middle-of-the-road" policy, no compromise, no putting our head in the sand, no flexible and lenient formulas. The considerable experience that has been accumulated on this issue clearly demonstrates the need for a vigilant and uncompromising moral stance.
-- Ha'aretz Editorial, 12/13/1999, on Israel's attempt to find ways to allow torture under "special circumstances".

"It's not a matter of maintaining the status quo. We have to create a dynamic state, oriented towards expansion."
--Ben Gurion

"Take the American declaration of Independence. It contains no mention of territorial limits. We are not obliged to fix the limits of the State."
-- Moshe Dayan, "Jerusalem Post" 08/10/1967

"Every school child knows that there is no such thing in history as a final arrangement -- not with regard to the regime, not with regard to borders, and not with regard to international agreements."
-- Ben Gurion, War Diaries, 12/03/1947 following Israel's "acceptance" of the U.N. Partition of 11/29/1947 (Simha Flapan, "Birth of Israel," p.13)

"The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It's that simple."
-- Yitzhak Shamir, Maariv, 02/21/1997.

"In strategic terms, the settlements (in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza) are of no importance." What makes them important, he added, was that "they constitute an obstacle, an unsurmountable obstacle to the establishment of an independent Arab State west of the river Jordan."
--Binyamin Begin, (son of the late Menahem Begin and a prominent voice in the Likud party writing in 1991, Quoted on page 159 of Findley's Deliberate Deceptions)

"Without them [the settlements] the IDF [Israeli Defense Force] would be a foreign army ruling a foreign population."
-- Defense Minister Moshe Dayan (quoted in Geoffrey Aronson's Settlements and the Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations, Institute for Palestinian Studies.)

Moshe Dayan:

"The settlements established in the territories are there forever, and the future frontiers will include these settlements as part of Israel"

Dayan also stated that he "preferred Sharm el-Sheikh without peace to a peace without Sharm el-Sheikh".

"From the point of view of the security of the state, the establishment of the settlements has no great importance.".
Dayan's statements all quoted in Chomsky's "The Fateful Triangle" pp. 104-

"Our fathers had reached the frontiers recognized in the partition plan; the Six-Day War generation has managed to reach Suez, Jordan, and the Golan Heights. This is not the end. After the present cease-fire lines, there will be new ones. They will extend beyond Jordan ... to Lebanon and ... to central Syria as well."
-- Moshe Dayan to Zionist youth at a meeting in the Golan Heights July, 1968

"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu'a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."
-- Moshe Dayan, addressing the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology), Haifa. Quoted in Ha'aretz, 04/04/1969

Israel presents Jerusalem as a "unified" city whose indivisibility derives from its role as the Jews' sacred and historical capital. It is true that the Jews have a claim to the holy places in and around the Old City. But that historical core represents only three percent of the area of municipal Jerusalem. The other 97 percent was by no means exclusively Jewish. "West" Jerusalem, the 38 square kilometers ruled by Israel as its capital from 1948-67, was built only in the second half of the nineteenth century. Although West Jerusalem is almost exclusively Jewish (the main exception being part of Beit Safafa village), before 1948 about 40 percent of it was owned by Palestinians. As for "East" Jerusalem, although 70 square kilometers was annexed in 1967, only 6.5 square kilometers thereof actually constituted the Jordanian part of the city. The other 63.5 square kilometers -- 90 percent of the land annexed by Israel as "East Jerusalem" -- in fact belonged to 28 Palestinian West bank villages which suddenly found themselves part of an "indivisible," "historic" and "sacred" Jewish city. Wallejeh, Sawakhreh and Kafr 'Amr, Palestinian villages which until today Israelis have never heard of, suddenly acquired the same historical significance for the Jewish people as the Western Wall, making Israeli claims to the entire area of "municipal" Jerusalem seem unassailable. An "inner ring" of settlements has been built on the land of this fictitious "East Jerusalem" since 1967. This series of large satellite cities -- Ramot, Rekhes Shuafat, Pigat Ze'ev, Neveh Ya'akov, East Talipot, Har Homa and Gilo, not to mention the incipient Israeli "neighborhoods" in Ra's al-Amud, Silwan and Shaykh Jarrah -- means that "East Jerusalem" now contains more Israelis (about 200,000) than Palestinians. Municipal Jerusalem is an artificial entity, the product of recent military conquest and settlement, rather than an organic city of historic value to the Jewish people.
--Professor Jeff Halper from Merip article (Fall 2000)

Ha'aretz Editorial 09/24/1998: on settler violence: "The old cry of the late Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz that "the occupation corrupts" is today correct in the full sense of the word. Israel can no longer live with the illusion that it is maintaining a democratic way of life while at the same time a separate normative system exists for the settlers that tramples human rights in the territories to the point where those who kill are treated forgivingly".

"They [Israel] have typically concealed the continually expansionist nature of their project from their western sponsors and pursued a "step by step" process toward these goals. While pointing to militant Arab rhetoric to frighten Jews and convince them that the Arab world is genocidal against Jews and that no peace is possible with them, Israeli leaders have been quite aware of the actual inability of the Arab world to deliver on this militant rhetoric. "
--Rosemary and Herman Ruether in "The Wrath of Jonah" (1989)

"The main difference between Bosnia and Palestine is that ethnic cleansing in the former took place in the form of dramatic massacres and slaughters which caught the world's attention, whereas in Palestine what is taking place is a drop-by-drop tactic in which one or two houses are demolished daily, a few acres are taken here and there every day, a few people are forced to leave"
--Edward Said (Washington Report 09/1998)

Classic Quotes on Zionism

2006-06-21T00:28:00.000-07:00

"There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist." -- Golda Meir Statement to The Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969.

"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to." -- Golda Meir (quoted in Chapter 13 of The Zionist Connection II: What Price Peace by Alfred Lilienthal )

"We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries,while denying it any employment in our own country .... expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." -- Theodore Herzl (from Rafael Patai, Ed. The Complete Diaries of Theodore Herzl, Vol I)

"... it is the duty of the [Israeli] leadership to explain to the public a number of truths. One truth is that there is no Zionism,no settlement, and no Jewish state without evacuating Arabs, and without expropriating lands and their fencing off." -- Yesha'ayahuBen-Porat, (Yedi'ot Aharonot 07/14/1972) responding to public controversy regarding the Israeli evictions of Palestinians in Rafah, Gaza, in 1972. (Cited in Nur Masalha's "A Land Without APeople" 1997, p.98)Speaking about Zionism, and its effects on the indiginous Palestinians: (quotes from Alfred Lilienthal's The Zionist Connection II: What Price Peace)

"We seem to have thought of everything -- except the Arabs" -- Judah Magnes
"If this be the Messiah, then I do not wish to see his coming" -- Ahad Ha'am speaking of Zionism.

"I have learned that the state of Israel cannot beruled in our generation without deceit and adventurism."-- Moshe Sharett, Israel's first Foreign Minister and later a Prime Minister(p.51 Simha Flapan, "The Birth of Israel", 1987).

"The very point of Labor's Zionist program is to have as much land as possible and as few Arabs as possible!" --Yitzhak Navon ("moderate" ex-Israeli president and a leading labor party politician.) Cited on p.179 of Nur Masalha's A Land without a People who cites Bernard Avishai's The Tragedy of Zionism 1985 p.340

"Israel must decide on the source of the authority of the Israeli state and society: either democracy or theocracy. The corrupt combination of state and religion had corrupted both the state and the religious establishment" -- Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg quoted in the Jerusalem Postof Oct 7, 1999.

"Arabs tend to confess; it's part of their nature" -- Moshe Etzioni, an Israeli high court justice, in an interview with Amnesty International, when asked about the unusually high rate of confessions from Palestinians (indicating Israel's use of torture), 1977. Quote from a Noam Chomsky.

"One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." --Rabbi Ya'acov Perin in his eulogy at the funeral of mass murderer Dr. Baruch Goldstein.
Israeli-Arabs are discriminated against based on military service. Israeli-Arabs don't serve in the Israeli Army and most job applications require, implicitly at least, army service for employment. Also, "Arab towns and villages have been disadvantaged in the allocation of budgets and services, leading to wide gaps in development between most Arab localities and their Jewish neighbors"-- Alouph Hareven, Near East Report (AIPAC newsletter), 10/11/1993
The Christian population of (the ever expanding) Jerusalem was 30,000 in 1948; today it is 2000, due to the systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from that and other areas around Israel. (Paul Findley's Deliberate Deceptions, 1996) Unlike Jews, Arabs are always denied a permission to build and expand.
92% of the land in Israel falls under the Administration of the Jewish National Fund, where the land can not be sold to non-Jews. Result: the 18% Israeli-Arabs own only 4% of the land.
If, say, a Peruvian converts to Judaism and emigrates to Israel, he immediately has more rights than Israeli-Arabs who have lived in the land for many centuries.

"Israel was among the countries cited for discrimination in the U.S. State Department's first annual assessment of religious persecution around the world. While Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Serbia and Burma were subject to some of the report's harshest criticism, Israel was cited for denying its Arab population the same quality of social services that the nation's Jews receive."The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (9/13/99)

"The long-standing gap in levels of income between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens continues.... The Arab minority still does not share fully in the rights granted to, and the obligations imposed on, Jewish citizens... The authorities continue to hold and mistreat Palestinian security detainees, and detention and prison conditions, particularly for Palestinians, are poor."-- U.S. Department of State, Israel and the Occupied Territories: Report on Human Rights and Practices for 1996.

"[My] awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state." -- Albert Einstein, quoted in an article by Mordecai Briemberg published in The Outlook, 04/01-0/15, 1998.

"We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state." -- The Pittsburgh Platform, 1885, the classic statement of the protestant or Reform Judaism).

Zionism had roots in Jewish Messianism. It, however, translated this Messianism into plans for colonization. Most Jews (reform and orthodox) opposed Zionism until WWII. Even though Orthodox Jews wanted to live in Jerusalem, they still considered Zionism a heresy, as the return of Jewish political control of the land of Israel would take place only by the Messiah in his coming. Their desire to live in Israel was only for the purpose of more effective prayer in the Holy land. Ashkenazi Orthodox Jews in addition were offended by Zionism's effort to transform Hebrew into a modern secular language.
Paraphrased from "The Wrath of Jonah " by Rosemary and Herman Ruether, 1989).

"In working for Palestine, I would even ally myself with the devil"-- Vladimir Jabotinsky founder of Revisionist Zionism (Likud party roots)responding to condemnation for his alliance with Ukranian pogromist Petlyura.

"If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel."-- Ben-Gurion (Quoted on pp 855-56 in Shabtai Teveth's Ben-Gurion in a slightly different translation).

In 1941, Yitzhak Shamir committed:"an unforgivable crime from the moral point of view: he preached an alliance with Hitler, with Nazi Germany, against Great Britain."-- Bar Zohar "Le prophète armé: Ben Gourion." (Fayard. Paris 1966, p.99.)

"The saving of the Jews in Europe did not figure at the head of the list of priorities of the ruling class. It was the foundation of the State which was primordial in their eyes." -- Tom Segev. "Le septième million" (the Seventh Million) Ed. Liana Levi, Paris, 1993, p.539"

"The saving of the Jews in Europe did not figure at the head of the list of priorities of the ruling class. It was the foundation of the State which was primordial in their eyes." -- Tom Segev. "Le septième million" (the Seventh Million) Ed. Liana Levi, Paris, 1993, p.539"

Vladimir Jabotinsky Despite his alliance with Ukranian pogromist Petlyura, it wasn't Jabotinsky who perpetrated the worst alliance with the Nazis, but the Labor Zionists: Ben-Gurion and Weizmann. In 1933 a world boycott German goods spontaneously emerged. Had this boycott been supported by all Jews, Zionists and non-Zionists, some believe that the German economy would have cracked and Hitler toppled. However, it was thanks to Labor Zionist and their "transfer" (ha'avara) agreements with the Nazis, that led to many trade agreements which resulted in the failure of the world boycott against the Nazis. Jabotnisky opposed the transfer agreement, and wanted to champion the boycott. However, during WWII, his heirs (e.g. Begin, Stern, Shamir) attempted their own alliance with the Nazis against the British who were occupying Palestine at the time. (Paraphrased from "The Wrath of Jonah" by Rosemary and Herman Ruether, 1989). This information can also be found in Brenner's Zionism in the Age of the Dictators; 1983.

Ghana explain Israeli flag

2006-06-20T07:03:00.000-07:00

Wuerzburg - Ghana's World Cup team have apologised after defender John Pantsil waved an Israeli flag to celebrate his team's goals.
Pantsil, who plays for Israeli club Hapoel Tel Aviv, celebrated both goals in Ghana's 2-0 win over the Czech Republic in Cologne on Saturday by pulling an Israeli flag out of his sock and waving it at the cameras.
Ghana team spokesperson Randy Abbey said at the team's training base: "It was a thank you to his fans in the Israeli league.
"It was naive; he was not aware of the consequences of his actions. We apologise to everyone who felt offended by this.
"It was not an official message from the Ghanaian team. We do not represent Israeli politics or the politics of any other country. We are just here to play football."
Pantsil's action sparked a barrage of insults and furious reactions in newspapers in Egypt on Monday.
A Fifa spokesperson said they had taken note of the flag-waving and that although there was nothing in the rules to prevent it, they hoped not to see a repetition.-Sapa AFP

War on terrorism 'self-defeating,' warns UK think-tank

2006-06-19T07:04:00.000-07:00

London, June 13, IRNA UK Report-Security Threats The British government's obsession with the "war on terror" is counterproductive and distracting politicians from more fundamental threats to global security, a leading independent UK think-tank warned Monday.
The Oxford Research Group (ORG) said that the most likely causes of future conflict are climate change, competition for natural resources, social and economic marginalisation and militarization.
In a report on Global Responses to Global Threats, it said that the effects of climate change - displacement of peoples, food shortages, social unrest - have "long-term security implications far greater than those of terrorism." The report also warned that the response to climate change should not involve greater reliance on nuclear power because this would encourage the spread of nuclear weapons and increase the risk of terrorists getting hold of them.
It criticized the promotion in Washington, London and other western capitals of international terrorism being the greatest threat to face the world since the 9/11 attacks in the US in 2001.
International terrorism is actually a relatively minor threat when compared to other more serious global trends, and that current responses to those trends are likely to increase, rather than decrease, the risks of further terrorist attacks, ORG warned.
Instead its four alternative root causes of conflict were likely to lead to "substantial global and regional instability, and large- scale loss of life, of a magnitude unmatched by other potential threats."
The report highlighted that the current responses to security threats were characterised as a 'control paradigm' - an attempt to maintain the status quo through military means and control insecurity without addressing the root causes.
"Current security policies are self-defeating in the long-term," it warned urging a new approach that does "not attempt to unilaterally control threats through the use of force" but rather aims to cooperatively resolve the root causes.
Best approaches included prioritising renewable energy as the key solution to climate change, energy efficiency as a response to resource competition, poverty reduction to address marginalization and reversing WMD proliferation to check global militarisation.
These, ORG argued, provide the "best chance of averting global disaster, as well as addressing some of the root causes of terrorism." It suggested that new political leadership in the US and UK in coming years may well present the opportunity for progress, but warned that "unless urgent action is taken in the next five to ten years, it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to avoid a highly unstable global system by the middle years of the century." 2220/345/1771

Greens calls for removal of US nuclear weapons from Europe

2006-06-18T00:22:00.000-07:00

Brussels, June 11, IRNA EU-Greens-WMDs The group of Greens in the European Parliament has welcomed the report of The International Commission on weapons of mass destruction.
The report was presented in the European Parliament on Thursday by former head of the UN Arms Control Commission in Iraq Hans Blix.
"The report reminds 'recognized' nuclear states of their longstanding and unfulfilled disarmament obligations. The EU must show leadership on this front and bring the US along," said Green MEPs Angelika Beer and Caroline Lucas in a joint statement.
"The continuing failure of these states to decommission their nukes makes their current non-proliferation demands, like that for uclear weapon free zone in the Middle East, ring hollow." "Withdrawing the 480 US nuclear warheads still in Europe would be an important step in the right direction," said the statement.
The MEPs also condemned the arrest of 24 Greenpeace activists, who were detained for holding a peaceful protest for the removal of US nuclear weapons from Europe outside NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday when NATO defence ministers were meeting.

"New American Century" Project Ends With A Whimper

2006-06-17T00:24:00.000-07:00

by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - Is the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which did so much to promote the invasion of Iraq and an Israel-centred "global war on terror", closing down?In the absence of an official announcement and the failure since late last year of a live person to answer its telephone number, a Washington Post obituary would seem to be definitive. And, sure enough, the Post quoted one unidentified source presumably linked to PNAC that the group was "heading toward closing" with the feeling of "goal accomplished".In fact, the nine-year-old group, whose 27 founders included Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, among at least half a dozen of the most powerful hawks in the George W. Bush administration's first term, has been inactive since January 2005, when it issued the last of its "statements", an appeal to significantly increase the size of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to cope with the growing demands of the kind of "Pax Americana" it had done so much to promote.As a platform for the three-part coalition that was most enthusiastic about war in Iraq -- aggressive nationalists like Cheney, Christian Zionists of the religious Right, and Israel-centred neo-conservatives -- PNAC actually began breaking down shortly after the Iraq invasion.It was then that the group's predominantly neo-conservative leadership -- Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, PNAC director Gary Schmitt, and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace analyst Robert Kagan -- began attacking Rumsfeld, in particular, for failing to deploy enough troops to pacify the country and launch a true nation-building exercise, as in post-World War II Germany and Japan.It was the first of a number of policy splits that, along with the deepening quagmire in Iraq itself, have debilitated the hawks, forcing neo-conservatives in the group to reach out to liberal interventionists with whom they sponsored a series of joint statements extolling the virtues of nation-building and a larger army, or calling for a tougher U.S. stance toward Russia and China.PNAC was launched by Kristol and Kagan in 1997, shortly after their publication of an article in Foreign Affairs magazine entitled "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy", in which they called for Washington to exercise "benevolent global hegemony" to be sustained "as far into the future as possible".While critical of then President Bill Clinton, the article was directed more against a Republican Congress which, in their view, had grown increasingly isolationist, particularly after the precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Somalia in 1994 and strong Republican opposition to intervention in the Balkans against Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.It was in this spirit that the two co-founded PNAC, whose charter was signed by leading neo-conservatives, including Cheney's future chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby; Rumsfeld's future deputy, Paul Wolfowitz; Bush's future top Middle East aide, Elliott Abrams; his future ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad; Rumsfeld's future top international security official, Peter Rodman; American Enterprise Institute (AEI) fellow and neo-cons impresario Richard Perle, and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; as well as Cheney and Rumsfeld themselves.The charter's few specifics, as well as follow-up reports published by PNAC -- "Rebuilding America's Defenses" and "Present Dangers", both published in 2000 to influence the foreign policy debate during the presidential campaign that year -- were based to a great extent on an infamous "Defense Planning Guidance" (DPG) draft produced under Cheney when he served as secretary of defence under President George H.W. Bush in 1992.That paper, which was developed by then-Undersecretary of Defence Wolfowitz, Libby, Khalilzad, and the current deputy national security adviser, J.D. Crouch, with assistance from Perle and other like-minded defence specialists, called for the "benevolent domination by one power" (the U.S.) to replace "collective internationalism" and for Washington to ensure that domination, particularly in Eurasia, in order to prevent the emergence, by confrontation if necessary, of any possible regional or global rival.It was PNAC's role to sustain and propagate these ideas through its reports, its periodic letters and statements signed by right-wing notables, and a steady flow of opinion-pieces and essays, that acted as part of a larger neo-conservative "echo chamber" that included Kristol's Weekly Standard, Fox News, the Washington Times, and the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, to frame debates in official Washington and the mainstream media.In this sense, PNAC was more of a "letter-head organisation" that acted more as a mechanism for developing consensus on issues among different political forces -- in its case, Republican hawks -- and then pushing them in public, than as a think tank.Indeed, the fact that several of its half-a-dozen staff members -- most recently, PNAC director Schmitt -- have taken posts at the much-larger AEI located just five floors above PNAC's offices helps illustrate the incestuous nature of the larger network. Nonetheless, PNAC was the first to call publicly (in 1998) for Washington to pursue "regime change" in Iraq by military means in conjunction with the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi, who would later play a key role in the propaganda campaign against Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the 2003 invasion.But perhaps its most notable letter was sent to Bush Sep. 20, 2001, just nine days after the 9/11 attacks. In addition to calling for the ouster of the Taliban and war on al Qaeda, the letter called for waging a broader and more ambitious "war on terrorism" that would include cutting off the Palestinian Authority under Yassir Arafat, taking on Hezbollah, threatening Syria and Iran and, most importantly, ousting Hussein regardless of his relationship to the attacks or al Qaeda."It may be that the Iraqi government provided assistance in some form to the recent attack on the United States," it said. "But even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism."The letter was signed by 38 members of the predominantly neo-conservative Washington echo chamber, many of whom -- especially Kristol, Kagan, Defence Policy Board members Perle, Woolsey, Eliot Cohen, Centre for Security Policy president Frank Gaffney, former Education Secretary William Bennett, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, and Foundation for the Defence of Democracies director Clifford May --would emerge, along with Woolsey, as the most ubiquitous champions of war with Iraq outside the administration.Seven months later, PNAC issued another letter signed by many of the same people urging Bush to step up preparations for war with Iraq, sever all ties to the Palestinian Authority under Arafat and give full backing to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's efforts to crush the Palestinian intifada."Israel's fight against terrorism is our fight. Israel's victory is an important part of our victory," the letter noted. "For reasons both moral and strategic, we need to stand with Israel in its fight against terrorism." Bush complied two months later.That period -- Sep. 20, 2001, to the run-up to the Iraq war in early 2003 -- marked the high-water mark of PNAC's existence. Since then, things have generally gone downhill, as the hawks they represented, including the group's dominant neo-conservatives, have fallen prey to internal disagreements: over Rumsfeld's stewardship of Iraq and the Pentagon; over the wisdom of democratic "transformation" in the Arab Middle East; over Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan; over China; and even over the latest administration moves on Iran.All of which has made it far more difficult to forge consensus -- and compose letters -- in these areas.

Source: IPS-Inter Press Service

16,000 resign from British army

2006-06-16T00:26:00.000-07:00

Nearly 16,000 troops have quit Britain's reserve army since invasion of Iraq in 2003, a newspaper reported Thursday.
The Daily Telegraph report, which was based on a freedom of information act request, said there was a feeling that dangerous operations in Iraq and other places played a role in making soldiers decide to leave the Territorial Army.
The TA has been used widely to support regular units in Iraq, the Balkans and Afghanistan.
The figures obtained by the Scottish National Party show that between October 2003 and October 2005, the Territorial Army lost 15,670 soldiers who have been replaced by 13,570 new recruits, a shortfall of 2,100.
The figures show that a disproportionate number of officers have left, with 1,280 resigning their commissions, it said.
Christine Grahame, an SNP member of the Scottish parliament, said: "This is a clear signal of the crisis the armed forces are facing as a result of this hugely damaging Iraq war and a defense and foreign policy which is storing up massive problems."

No Fresh Solution Presented by US

2006-06-14T17:17:00.000-07:00

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Iranian Foreign Minister Thursday noted US demands for direct talks with Iran and described Condoleezza Rice's statements a jump over US crimes, stressing that her words do not introduce any new and logical solution to Iran's nuclear issue. Speaking to reporters following a meeting with the visiting Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu in Tehran, Manouchehr Mottaki noted recent remarks by the US Secretary of State about Washington's readiness for attending direct talks with Iran and said, "Condoleezza Rice's statements do not comprise anything new and her proposal does not present any new and logical solution to Iran's nuclear case."
He said Rice's statements are the same old words she has always composed during previous interviews and speeches, adding that the composition-like statements are galore in her remarks.
The top diplomat reiterated that talks should be based on the conditions that Iran has specified.
The Iranian Foreign Minister also described Condoleezza Rice's statements a jump over US crimes, underlining that the United States must be accountable for the thousands of mistakes and errors it has committed in Iraq and the region.
"Those who have an awful record of deeds in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and also in dealing with other issues are not allowed to speak of human rights conditions under the democratic state of Iran," he stressed.
Mottaki further referred to the unanimous consensus of the 116 member states of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in their recent statement on supporting Iran's right of access to peaceful nuclear technology, which, he said, was a blow to the alleged international concern about Iran's nuclear activities.
"To secure their demands, Americans urge other states to give them concessions, and that is just conceitedness. If Americans are really willing for a change, they must change their own behaviors and adopt a rational attitude," Mottaki underscored.
He further warned that governments of those countries where the public do not play any role in electing their statesmen and where presidents are appointed by a court ruling, are not entitled to talk about the Iranian nation who is the pillar for all decision-makings in Iran.
The Iranian Minister reminded that his country has rendered maximum cooperation with the international community in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), stressing that there resides no single proof or evidence substantiating Iran's deviation from peaceful activities, adding, "thus, we will continue with our activities."
Meantime, he stated that Tehran welcomes talks under fair conditions and away from any kind of discriminations, and continued, "We may never negotiate about our legal rights, but we are prepared to attend talks with all the world states about common concerns, if the required grounds are prepared in accordance with the conditions we have specified."

Thousands of Germans ready to take part in major anti-Bush demo

2006-06-14T17:09:00.000-07:00

Berlin, June 13, IRNA Germany-US-Bush German pacifist and leftist groups are planning to stage a major demonstration during the July 13 and 14 visit of US President George W. Bush to the northeast German town of Stralsund following an invitation by Chancellor Angela Merkel, DPA reported Tuesday.
The July 14 demonstration -- titled `Not Welcome, Mr President' -- is expected to attract over 5,000 protestors from all over Germany.
Several leftist parties and trade unions have also announced their readiness to take part in what peace groups have branded as an "anti-US war" demonstration.
German authorities have yet to authorize the demonstration in Stralsund, which is Merkel's voting district in her home state Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Bush, who is the first US president to step on East German soil after the fall of the Iron Curtain, will visit Stralsund on his way to the G-8 Summit in St Ptersburg, Russia.
The American president's last visit to Germany in February 2005 was overshadowed by unprecedented security measures in the history of Germany.
The US chief executive met with then Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in the southwest town of Mainz, which was literally transformed into a "ghost city" as more than 7,000 policemen were deployed.
The whole region was in a sort of state of emergency as shops, factories and schools in the historic city on the Rhine River were closed for the duration of Bush's trip.
Major highways near Mainz were blocked and air and river traffic in the region was suspended.
Police sealed sewage covers, removed mail boxes and municipal garbage cans.
Residents who oversaw the presidential route were told by police not to go to their balconies.
Hundreds of police sharpshooters were deployed on rooftops across Mainz.

Ahmadinejad : No compromise on national nuclear program

2006-06-13T12:08:00.000-07:00

Qazvin, June 8, IRNA Iran-Ahmadinejad-Rights President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad here Thursday said that it has been repeatedly declared that Iranian nation will not compromise on its inalienable rights concerning national nuclear program.
Speaking at a gathering of people in the city of Qazvin in his 14th provincial visit, the president said that the Iranian nation favors dialogue to remove misunderstanding.
"We are prepared to discuss international developments and the common concerns of the world countries to solve misunderstandings in the international community.
"Any compromise over the destiny of our people will be a blunder and everyone should know that talks should be held fairly on equal footing," added Ahmadinejad.
The president said that if the world powers presume that Iran will back down on its rights as a result of threat, there will be no chance for negotiation.
Stressing that on nuclear energy Iran calls for justice, he said that if any decision is to be taken it should be equally applicable to all countries.
"If there is any right as per the international conventions, it has been equally envisaged available to every nation. Otherwise, cancellation of such right should apply to all world nations," added the chief executive.
Turning to the achievement of Iranian youth on setting up nuclear fuel cycle, he underlined that facing the resistance of Iranian people, the ill-wishers and international egoists failed and had to admit that Iranian nuclear program is civilian.
"The ill-wishers still hope to violate our dignity by hypocrisy and their dual approach as well as by infiltrating into our nation," he said.
The president referred to the public resistance to attempts underway to deprive Iran of its rights to produce nuclear energy for civilian use and said that he believes that the nation will proceed with national program.
"It is time for some Western states to make a great decision in facing a historical situation, recognize the culture of justice, stop bullying and cooperate with the world nations to promote global peace and security," said the president.
Otherwise, Ahmadinejad said, they will be slapped in the face by the world freedom-seeking nations, and they will be pushed into isolation.
The president, who is accompanied in this trip by members of his cabinet, arrived in Qazvin province this morning.
During this two-day official visit, he will also travel to other cities of the province -- Bouyeen-Zahra, Alborz and Abyek -- and address their residents.
The president and his cabinet ministers are scheduled to hold a session in the provincial capital, Qazvin, to discuss its problems and needs before rounding up their two-day visit.

Russians want Putin for 3rd round

2006-06-12T14:34:00.000-07:00

Moscow, June 8 (Iribnews) - Most Russians would support a change in the constitution so as to allow President Vladimir Putin to stand in the 2008 election and serve a third term in office, according to an opinion poll published Wednesday.
The poll carried out by the Independent Levada Centre showed that 59 percent of respondents backed the idea.
That figure was much higher than the 41 percent registered in a similar poll last August.
The question of amending the constitution which limits a president to two consecutive terms, is being more frequently aired in Russia.
Putin himself has consistency denied any ambition to stand again in 2008.
SAM

Pressure on Tehran about oil not weapons

2006-06-11T10:18:00.000-07:00

LONDON, June 8 (IranMania) - Western pressure on Iran is driven not by concerns about weapons of mass destruction but by interest in the country's oil reserves, a senior Iranian energy official said, AFP reported.
"Political pressure on Iran is fundamentally driven by the desire of those who wish to control the hydrocarbon resources of the Middle East and the Caspian Sea region, as was proven by the 2003 invasion of Iraq," said Mahmoud Khaghani, head of the Iranian petroleum ministry's Caspian Sea department.
Any potential future conflict in the region would be over oil, Khaghani said, but would be "justified as trying to prevent weapons of mass destruction."
Attending an energy conference in Iran's neighbour Azerbaijan, Khaghani said Tehran's uranium enrichment program was aimed at meeting increased domestic energy demand.
"Today they say if Iran has oil and gas it doesn't need nuclear power and everyone thinks we are developing our nuclear capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction. That is not the right approach.
"As a sovereign nation, Iran has the right to decide how to satisfy its needs. The nuclear program will allow us to solve a number of problems," Khaghani said.
Khaghani told delegates from Western energy firms such as Britain's BP and Norways' Statoil that Iran needed billions of dollars of investment to develop its oil and gas reserves, which are second only to those of Saudi Arabia and Russia.
But, he said, the "Iranian people will resist outside pressure on internal politics".
The United States suspects Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under cover of a nuclear energy program, a charge that Tehran denies.
Before ending his address, Khaghani displayed a projection of a smiling Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president.
"Look at my president, he's smiling. His intentions are positive," he said.

UK teachers to boycott Israeli academics

2006-06-10T09:57:00.000-07:00

By:GDN

London-Members of Britain's largest college teachers' union yesterday voted to boycott Israeli academics over what members termed 'apartheid' policies and discriminatory practices toward Palestinians.
The 69,000-member National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) passed the motion at its annual conference in the northern English city of Blackpool.
Two parts of the proposal passed with a show of hands, while a third went to a vote.
But union spokesman Trevor Phillips said the motion will only act as an advisory policy as the union is to merge this week with the Association of University Teachers, to become the University and College Union with more than 100,000 members.
Ronnie Fraser, director of the Academic Friends of Israel, said his group would continue fighting the boycott and called the union's move 'racist'.
"If the sponsors of this boycotting campaign succeeded in something, it is only to undermine further progress, collaboration and peace in the Middle East and to marginalise the standing of NATFHE," Fraser said.
The third section of the motion called on union members to consider if they should refuse to co-operate with Israeli academics or Israeli research journals that do not 'disassociate themselves' from the policies described in the motion. - mks.

Ahmadinejad would face frosty World Cup welcome

2006-06-08T07:25:00.000-07:00

By:Khaleed Times

BERLIN, June 5 - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can count on a tongue-lashing from the head of the German football association (DFB) and other leaders if he comes to Germany to support Iran in the World Cup.
DFB co-president Theo Zwanziger said on Sunday he was against banning Ahmadinejad from the tournament starting on Friday over his controversial remarks questioning whether the Holocaust happened, because that would only “make him a martyr”.
“If he does come and enters Germany, then he will naturally be told in all clarity that what he said is absolutely unacceptable, criminal and far removed from reality,” Zwanziger told Deutschlandfunk radio.
Ahmadinejad has faced criticism across Europe in the past for inflammatory remarks about Israel and statements questioning whether the Holocaust happened. Six million Jews were killed by the Nazis and their allies in concentration camps.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders have criticised his remarks about the Holocaust as unacceptable but refrained from banning him. Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany, punishable by up to five years in prison.
Zwanziger said he hoped Ahmadinejad would stay away but he did not want to ban him. The Iranian president has left open whether he will go. Iran play Mexico in their first match on June 11 in Nuremberg.
“My decision depends on a lot of different things,” Ahmadinejad told a German magazine last week. “Whether I have time, whether I want to and some other things.” - mks.

Ahmadinejad's letter to George Bush-Full Text[Part VI]

2006-06-07T21:31:00.000-07:00

I trust both of us believe insuch a day,but it will not be easy to calculate the action of rulers,because we must be answerable to our nations and all others whose lives have been directly or indirectly affected by our actions.

All Prophets,speaks of peace and tranquility for man-based on monotheism,justice and respect for human dignity.

Do you not think that if all of us come to believe in and abide by this principles,that is,monotheism,warship of God,justice,respect for the dignity of man,believe in the Last Day,we can overcome the present problems of the world-that are the result of disobedience to the Almighty andthe teachings of Prophet-and improve our performance?Do you not think that beliefe in these principles promotes and guarantees peace,friendship and justice?Do you not think that the aforementioned written or unwritten principles are universally respected?Will you not accept this invitation?That is, a genuine return to the teachings of Prophets,to monotheism and justice,to preserve human dignity and obedience to Almighty and His Prophets?Mr President,History tells us that repressive andcruel government do not survive.

God has entrusted the fate of man to them.

The Almighty has not left the universe and humanity totheir own devices.

Many thing has happen contrary to the wishes and plans of governments.

These tell us thattheir is a higher power at works and all events are determined by Him.

Can one deny the signs of change in the world today?Is this situation of the world today comparable to that of ten years ago?Changes happen fast and come at a furious pace.

The people of the world are not happy with the status quo and pay little heed to the promises and comments made by anumber of influencial world leaders.

Many people around the world feel insecure and oppose the spreading of insecurity and war and do not approve of and accept dubious policies.

The people are protesting the increasing gap between the have and the have-nots and the rich and the poor countries.

The people are disgusted with increasing corruption.

The people of many countries are angry about the attacks on their cultural foundations and the
disintegration of families.

They are equally dismayed with the fading of care and compassion.

The people of the world have not faith in international organisations, because their rights are not advocated by these organisations.

Liberalism and Western style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity.

Today these two concepts have failed.

Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems.

We increasingly see that people around the world are flocking towards a main focal point-that is the Almighty God.

Undoubtedly through faith in God and the teachings of the Prophets,the people will conquer their problems.

My question for you is:"Do you not want to join then?"Mr President,Whether we like it or not,the world is gravitating towards faith in the Almighty and justice and the will of God will prevail over all things.

Vasalam Ala Man Ataba'al hoda

Mahmood Ahmadi-Najad
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Ahmadinejad's letter to George Bush-Full Text[Part V]

2006-06-06T10:18:00.001-07:00

Mr President,according to the divine verses,we have all been called upon to worship one God and follow the teachings of divine Prophets.

"To worship a God which is above all powers in the world and can do all He pleases.

"The Lord which knows that which hidden and visible,the past and the future,knows what goes on in the Hearts of His servants and records their deeds.

"The Lord who is the possessor of the heavens and the earth and all universe is His court" planning for the universe is done by His Hands,and gives His servants the glad tiding of mercy and forgiveness of sins".

"He is the companion of the oppressed and the enemy of oppressor".

"He is the Compasionate,the Merciful".

"He is the recourse of the faithful and guides them towards the light from darkness".

"He is witness to the actions of His servants","He calls on servants to be faithful and do good deeds,and asks them to stay on the path of righteousness and remain steadfast",

"Calls on servants to heed His prophets and He is a witness to their deeds.

"A bad ending belongs onlyto those who have chosen the life of this world and disobey Him and oppress His servants".

And "A gooid and eternal paradise belongs to those servants who fear His majesty and do not follow their lascivious selves.

"We believe a return to the teachings of the divine Prophets is the only road leading to salvation.

I have been told that your Excellency follows the teachings of Jesus(PBUH),and believe the divine promise of the rule of the righteous on Earth.

We also believe that Jesus Christ(PBUH) was one of the great Prophets of the Almighty.

He has been repeatedly praised in the Quran.

Jesus(PBUH) has been quoted in Quran as well;[19:36]And surely Allah is my Lord and your Lord,therefore serve Him,this is the right path,(Chapter of Mary).

Service to and obedience of the Almighty is the credo of all divine messengers.

The God of all perople in Europe,Asia Africa,America,the Pacific and the rest of the world is one.

He is the Almighty who wants to guide and give dignity to all His servants.

He has given greatness to Humans.

We again read in the Holy Book:"The Almighty God sent His Prophets with miracle and clear signs to guide the people and show them divine signs and purify them from sins and pollution.

And He sent the books and the balance so that the people display justice and avoid the rebellious.

"All the above verses can be seen one way or the other,in the Good Book as well.

Divine prophets have promised:The day will come when all humans will congregate before the court of the Almighty,so that their deeds are examined.

The good will be directed towards Heaven and evildoers will meet divine retribution.

Ahmadinejad's letter to George Bush-Full Text[Part IV]

2006-06-04T19:12:00.000-07:00

The main pretext for an attack on Iraq was the existence of WMDs.This was repeated incessantly-for the public to,finally believe - and the ground setfor an attack on Iraq.Will the truth not be lost in a contrive and deceptive climate?Again if the truth is allowed to be lost,how can that be reconciled with the earlier mentioned values?Is the truth known to the Almighty lost as well?Mr President,in countries around the world,citizens provide for the expenses of governments so that their government in turn are able to serve them.

The question here is "what has the hundreds of billions of dollars,spent every year to pay for the Iraqi campaign produced for the citizens?"Is your Exellency is aware,in some states or your country,people are living in poverty.Many thousands are homeless and umemployment is a huge problem.Of course these problems exist- to a larger or lesser extent- in other countries as well.

With these conditions in mind,can the gargantuan expenses of the campaign- paid from the public treasury- be explained and be consistent with the aforementioned principles?What has been said,are some of the grievances of the people around the world,in our region and in you country.

But my main contention-which I am hoping you will agree to some of it-is:Those in power have specific time in office,and do not rule indefinitely,but their names will be recorded in history and will be constantly judged in the immediate and distant futures.

The people will scrutinize our presidencies.

Did we manage to bring peace,security and prosperity for the people or insecurity and unemployment?Did we intend to establish justice,or just supported special interest groups,and by forcing many people to live in poverty and hardship,made a few people rich and powerful-thus trading the approval of the people and the Almighty withtheirs?Did we defends the rights of all people around the world or imposeed wars on them,interfered illegally in their affairs,established hellish prisons and incarcerated some of them?Did we bring the world peace and security or raised the spcter of intimidation and threats?Did we truth to our nation and others around the world or presented an inverted version of it?Were we on the side of people or occupiers andoppressors?Did our administration set out to promote rational behaviour,logic,ethics,peace,fulfilling obligations,justice,service to the people,prosperity,progress and respect for human dignity or the force of guns.

Intimidation,insecurity,disregard for the people,delaying the progress and excellence of other nations,and trampling on people's right?And finally they will judge us on whether we remain true to our oath of office-to serve the people,which is our main task,and the traditions of the Prophets-or not?Mr President,How much longer can the world tolerate this situation?Where will this trend lead the world to?

How long must the people of the world pay for the incorreted decisions of some rulers?How much longer will the specter of insecurity-raised from the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction-haunt the people of the world?How much longer will the blood of the innocent men,women and children be spilled on the streets,and people,s houses destroyed over their heads?

Are you pleased with the current condition of the world?Do you think present policies can continue?If billions of dollars spent on security,military campaigns and troop movements were instead spent on investment and assistance for poor countries,promotion of health,combating different diseases,education and improvement of mental and physical fitness,assistace to the victims of natural disasters,creation of employment opportunities and production,development projects and poverty alleviation,establishment of peace,mediation between disputing states and distinguishing the flames of racial,ethnbic and other conflicts where would the world be today?would not your gonernment,and people be justifiably proud?

Would not your administration's political and economic standing have been stronger?and I am most sorry to say,would there have been an ever increasing global hatred of the American governments?Mr President,it is not my intention to distress anyone.

If prophet Abraham,Isaac,Jacob,Ishmael,Joseph or Jesus Christ(PBUH) were with us today,how would they have judge such behaviour?Will we be given a role top play in the promised world,where justice will become universal and Jesus Christ(PBUH) will be present?Will they even accept us?My basic question is:Is there no better way to interact with the rest of the world?Today there are hundreds of millions of Christians,hundreds of millions of moslems and millions of people who follow the teachings of Moses(PBUH).

All divine religions share and respect one word and that is"monotheism" or belief in a single God and no other in the world.

The holy Quran stresses this common word and calls on all followers of divine religions and says:[3.64]Say:O followers of the Book!Come to an equitable proposition between us and you that we shall not serve any but Allah and (that) we shall not associate aught with Him and (that) some of us shall not take others for lords besides Allah,but if they turn back,then say:Bear witness that we are muslims.(The Family of Imran).

Ahmadinejad's letter to George Bush-Full Text[Part III]

2006-06-02T19:42:00.000-07:00

Mr.President,don't Latin americans have the right to ask,why their elected government are being opposed and coup leaders supported?Or,why must they constantly be threatened and live in fear?The people of Africa are harworking,creative and talented.They can play an important an valuable role in providing for the needs of humanity an contribute to its material and spiritual progress.Poverty and hardship in large part of Africa are preventing this from happening.

Don't they have the right to ask why their enormous wealth-including materials-is being looted despite the fact that they need it more than others?Again,do such actions correspond to the teachings of Christ and the tenets of human rights?The brave and faithful people or Iran to have many questions and grievancess:including the coup d'etat of 1953 and the subsequent toppling of the legal government of the day,opposition to the Islamic revolution,transformation of an Embassy into a headquaters supporting the activities of those opposing the Islamic Republic(many thousands of pages of documents corroborates this claim),support for saddam in the war waged against Iran,the shooting down the Iranian passenger plane,freezing the assets of the Iranian nation,increasing threats,anger and displeasure vis-a-vis scientific and nuclear progress of the Iranian nation(just when all Iranians jubilant and collaborating with their country's progress),and many others grievances that I will not refer to in this letter.

Mr.President,September Elevent was a horrendous incident.The killing of innocents is deplorable and appalling in any part of the world.Our government immediately its disgust with the prepetrators and offers it condolences to the bereaved and expressed its sympathies.All governments have a duty to protect the lives,property and good standing of their citizens.Reported you government employs extensive security,protection and intelligence system- and even hunts its opponents abroad.

September Eleven was not a simple operation.Could it be planed and executed without coordination with intelligence and security services-or their extensive infiltration?Of course this is just and educated guess.Why have the various expects of the attacks been kept secret?Why are we not told who botched their responsibilities?And,why aren't those responsible and the guilty parties indentified put on trial?All government have a duty to provide security and peace of mind for their citizens.
For some years now,the people of your country and neigbours of world trouble spots do not have peace of mind.

After 9/11,instead of healing and tending to the emotional wounds of the survivors and the Americans people-who have been immensely traumatized by the attacks-some Western media only intensified the climate of fear and insecurity-some constantly talked about possibility of new terror attacks and kept the people in fear.

Is that service to the Americans people?Is it possible to calculate the damages incurred from fear and panic?American citizens lived in constant fear of fresh attacks that could come at any moment and in any place.They felt insecure in the streets,in their place of work and at home.

Who would be happy in this situation?Why was the media,instead of conveying a feeling of security and providing peace of mind,giving rise to a feeling of insecurity?Some believe that the hype paved the way-and was the justification-for an attack on Afghanistan.

Again I need to refer to the role media.In media charters,correct dissemination of information and honest reporting of a story are established tenets.I express my deep regret about the disregard shown by certain Western media for this principles.

Ahmadinejad's letter to George Bush-Full Text[Part II]

2006-05-31T17:51:00.000-07:00

Mr.President,You might know that I am a teacher

My students ask me how can these actions be reconciled with the values outlined at the beginning of this letter and duty to the tradition of Jesus Christ(PBUH),the messenger of peace and forgiveness.

There are prisoners in Guantanamo Bay that have not been tried,have no legal representation,their families cannot see them and are obviously kept in a strange outsite their owncountry.

There is no international monitoring of their conditions and fate.No one knows wether they are prisoners,POWs,accused or criminals.European investigators have confirm the existence of secret prisons in Europe too.I could not correlate the abduction of a person,and him or her being kept in secret prisons,within the provision of any judicial system.For that matter,i fail to understand how such actions correspond to the values outlined at the beginning of this letter,i.e the teachings of Jesus Christ(PBUH),human right and liberal values.

Young people,university students and ordinary people have many questions about the phenomenom of Israel.I am sure you are familiar with some of them.Throughout history many countries have been occupied,but I think the establishment of a new country with a new people,is a new phenomenom that is exclusive to our times.

Students are saying that sixty years ago such a country did not exist.They show old documents and maps and say how much we try,we have not been able to find a country named Israel.I tell them to study World War I and World War II.One of my students told me that during WWII,which more than tens of millions of people perished in,news about the war,was quickly disseminated by the warring parties.Each touted their victories and the most recent battlefront defeat of the other party.

After the war,they claimed that six million Jews had been killed.Six million people that were surely related to at least two million families.Again let us assume that these events are true.
Does that logically translate ino the establishment of the state of Isreal in the Middle East or support for such a state?How can this phenomenom be rasionalised or explained?Mr.President,I am sure you know how-and at what cost-Israel was establish:-many thousands were killed in the process.

-Millions of indigenous people were made refugees.

-Hundred of thousands of hectares of farmland,olive plantation,towns and villages were destroyed.

This tragedy is not exclusive to the time of establishment;unfunately it has been ongoing for sixty years now.A regime has been established which does not show mercy even to kids,destroys houses while the occupants are stillin them,announces beforehand its lists an plans to assassinate Palestinian figures and keeps thousands of Palestinian in prison.Such phenomenom is unique-or at the very least extremely rare-in recent memory.

Another big question asked by people is why is this regime supported?Is support for this regime in line with the teachings of Jesus Christ(PBUH) or Moses(PBUH) or liberal values?Or are we to understand that allowing the original inhabitants of this lands-and outside Palestine-whether they are Christian,Muslim or Jew,to determine their fate,run contrary to principle of democracy,human rights and the techungs of the Prophets?If not why is there so much opposition to a referendum?They newly elected Palestinian administration recently took office.
All independent observes have confirmed that this government represents the electorate.

Unbelievingly,the have put the elected government under pressure and have advised it to recognise the Israeli regime,abandon the struggle and follow the programs of the previous government.

If the current Palestinian government had run on the above platform,would the Plestinian people have voted for it?Again,can such position be taken in opposition to the Palestinian government's reconciliation with the values outlined earlier?The people ore also saying"why are all UNSC resolutio0ns in condemnation of Israel vetoed?"Mr.President,as you are well aware,I live amongstthe people and am in constant contact with them-many people from around Middle East manage to contact me as well.

They do not have faith in this dubious policies either.There is evidence that the people of the region are becoming increasingly angry with such policies.It is not my intention to post too many questuion,but I need to refer to other points as well.

Why is it that any technological and scientific achievement reach in the Middle East region is translated into and portrayed as a threat to the Zionist regime?Is not scientific R&D one of the basic right of nations.

You are familiar with history.

Aside from the Middle Ages,in what other point in history has scientific and technical progress been a crime?Can the possibility of scientific achievements been utilised for military purposes be reason enough to oppose sciene and technology altogether?If such a supposition is true,then all scientific diciplines,including physic,chemistry,mathematics,medicine,engineering etc. must be opposed.

Lies were told in the Iraqi matter.

What was the result?I have no doubt telling lies is reprehensible in any culture,and you do not like to be lied to.

Ahmadinejad's letter to George Bush-Full Text

2006-05-31T11:29:00.000-07:00

Part 1

MR George Bush,President of America

For sometime now I have been thinking,how one can justify the undeniable contradictions that exist in the international arena-which are being constanly debated,specially in political forums and amongst university students.Many questions remain unanswered.

These have prompted me to discuss some of the contradictions and questions,in the hope that it might bring about opportunity to redress them.Can one be a follower of Jesus Christ(PBUH),the Great Messanger of God,feel obliged to respect human rights.Present liberalism as acivilization model.Announce one's opposition to the prolifiration of nuclear weapons and WMDs.Make "War and Terror" his slogan.And finally,works towards the establishment of a unified international community- a community which Christs and vituous of the earth will one day govern.But at the same time,have countries attacked.The lives,reputation and possesions of people destroyed and on the slight chance of the...of a...criminals in a village city,or convoy for example the entire village,city or convey set ablaze.

Or because of the possibility of the existence of WMDs in one country,it is occupied,around one hundred thousand people killed,its water sources,agriculture and industry destroyed,close to 180,000 foregn troops put on the ground,sanctity of private homes of citizen broken,and the cuntry pushed back perhaps fifty years.

At what price?Hundreds of billions of dollars spent from the treasury of one country and certain other countries and tens of thousands of young men and women- as occupation troops-put in harm's way,taken away from family and loved ones,their hand stained with the blood of others,subjected to so much pyschological pressure that everyday some commit suicide and those returning home suffer depression,become sickly and grapple,with all sorts aliments;while some are killed and their bodies handed of their families.

On the pretext of the existence of WMDs,this great tragedy came to engulf both the peoples of the occupied and the occupying country.

Later it was revealed that no WMDs existed to begin with.Of course Saddam was a murderous dictator.But the war was not waged to topple him,the announced goal of the war was to find and destroy weapons of mass destruction.He was topple along the way towards and other goal.nevertheless the people of the region are happy about it.I point out that throughout the many years of the imposed war on Iran,Saddam was supported by the west.

Ahmadinejad's letter proves Iran's resolve to peaceful solution of nuclear issue

2006-05-30T08:22:00.000-07:00

TEHRAN-Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has writen an important letter to George W.Bush in the first public communication between the presidents of the two arch-foes since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, official said here May 8. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki delivered the sealed letter tothe Swiss Embasy in Tehran which takes care of U.S interests in the Islamic Republic,foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said, declining to comment on its contents.We must wait untill Mr.Bush has receive the letter and then we will publish its contents,Asefi said.

An informed source in the Swiss Embassy confirmed that Ahmadinejad's letter to Bush had been delivered to the Swiss ambassador,saying the letter would be sent to Washington in the earliest, the Fars news agency said. The Iranian president has reviewed the international development and crises and analyzed the current world situation,presenting new ways to solve problems. Government spokesman Gholam-Hussein Elham described the letter as important,saying it is among several letters which Ahmadinejad plans to sent to t he heads of state of certain countries.

In this letter,besides an analysis of the world situation and the roots of problems,new ways have been proposed for getting out of the world's fragile situation,Elham said.The letter comes as the U.S. is pressuring the UN Security Council to pass the binding resolution to oblige Iran to suspend its nuclear fuel work. Several Iranian officials welcomed the letter, while others expressed their reservations.

The letter is a positive step in the current situation which can open a new page in resolving existing problems and removing ambiguities, especially from the American perspective, the students news agency ISNA qouted MP Alaeddin Borujedi, who is the head of parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission,as saying.As repeatedly announced by high ranking state officials,we can forge relations with all countries except the Zionist regime which we don't regard as legitimate,he said.

The lawmaker said any likely breakthrough in the diplomatic standoff between Tehran and Washington depended on Bush's answer.If America's policy is not based only animosity toward the Islamic Republic and the Iranian nation,it is expected that the American president give an answer befitting the contents of this letter,Borujerdi added.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said the letter could lead to a new diplomatic opening,but also warned that it did not reflect softeningin Tehran's position.Perhaps,it could lead to a new diplomatic opening,it needs to be given some time,the Associated Press qouted him as saying in Ankara where he is on a state visit to Turkey.

Speaking to Turkish television channel NTV,Larijani decline to disclose the contents of the letter but said the tone of the letter is not such to be called as soft. Iran's top negotiator, however warned against any U.S. military attack on Iran,saying,If they(Americans) are a little wise, they won't commit such a mistake.Iran is not Iraq. Iraq was a weak country which didn't have a legitimate government but Iran is a strong country,Larijani said.

Bush said on Sunday May 7 that he preferred a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear impasse,but said all options should be placed on the table. Deputy Interior Minister for security affairs Muhammad-Baqer Zolqadr said Iran's security forces were closely watching U.S. military movement close to its borders to Iraq in the south. Quoted by Fars News Agency,Zolqadr stated that the U.S. Army had deployed a brigade of troops near Iran's central and southern borders for security and intelligence operations for some time. Zolqadr however stated that is not a new thing and the deployment is aimed at controlling Iraq's borders and information gathering near Iran.The editor of the daily Resalat, Amir Mohebbian, speculated that Ahmadinejad's letter could either serve as an ultimatum against any possible U.S. action in the wake of its seriuos threatening overtures toward Iran or a step toward mollifying relations between the two countries.Whether this letter leads to a negotiation or not, it will boost the weight of diplomacy in the two countries interaction,he added.

Tehran and Washington have held no direct diplomatic relations following the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran by Iranian students in 1979. Subsequent low-key communications have been far below the presidential level and remain confidential. The U.S. killed the most recent flicker of hope for raprochement following the defeat of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001 which came through Iran's vital cooperation but answered with Bush's tagging of Iran as part of an axis of evil.

Ahmadinejad's letter also comes as foreign ministers from the council's five permanent member states,plus Germany, meet in New York on Monday to discuss a long-term strategy for dealing with Iran.The discussion have failed so far to resolve differences over the resolution's core provisions that invoke Chapter 7 and make the resolution binding. China and Russia, both of whom have veto power in the council,have insisted both provisions be removed.[TT]

German friendly to promote religious tolerarance

2006-05-20T08:39:00.000-07:00

by Ahmed Al-Matboli

Berlin-Muslim imams and Christian Priests will play on Saturday,May 6,in unprecedented friendly officiated by three Jewish referees to help promote inter-faith understanding.The 60-minute match will bring together eight players frome each side and will be played in a Berlin high school.The friendly is organized by the Church of Berlin and Brandenbourg and the Church of Berlin-Wilmersdorf.This is the first such inter-faith friendly to be played in German,though a similar one was played in Britain in January of this year.

The Church of Berlin and Brandenbourg will be offering a mobile cup in support of similar mathes in the years to come.A mini-World Cup also be held in Geithain with the participation of 32 churches to run alongside the World Cup,set to run frome Jun 9th to July 9th.Some 32 football teams are competing in the month-long contest to win golden cup.

Wider Initiative

The pre-World Cup friendly is part of an initiative running in tandem with a conference organized by the British embassy in Berlin on intergration,racism and football."Football,thanks to it appeal and popularity,can enrich our society and breakdown barriers,"the embassy said in on its website.

On Friday,May 5,ex-national player Garth Crooks and several other German and British representatives from professional and amateur clubs,anti racism campaigns,fan organizations and politics will meet to discuss intergration,racism and football.

The conference,to be hosted at the British Embassy,will examine the current situation in Germany and Britain and consider what steps we can take together to make sport accessible for all.Call for tougher sanctions and European-wide legislation to tackle racism in soccer to topped the agenda UEFA's"Unite against Racism"conference in Barcelona in February. The conference aimed to raise awareness about the extent of racism in football across Europe an propose practical solutions to the problem.[IOL]