Rabbis Agree to Stop Sucking Little Boy's Pee Pees, Finally
El Kabong
PHOTO:
http://sexuallymutilatedchild.org/mohel.htm
What a horrible thing to happen to a tiny baby, a man cuts your
little pee pee, then sucks on it.
U.S. Rabbis OK Sucking Circumcision Blood from Tube
Thu Mar 3,11:52 AM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rabbis should use a tube to suck blood from
circumcision wounds rather than sucking directly with their mouths to
protect infants and rabbis from disease, the leading Orthodox
rabbinical group said on Thursday.
In a traditional Orthodox practice during the bris, or circumcision
ritual of baby boys, rabbis have been using their mouths to suck blood
from the penis wounds and surrounding tissue for thousands of years.
The use of a sterile tube is an acceptable substitute for direct mouth
contact based upon a review of science and religious writings and
Torah authorities, said Rabbi Basil Herring of the Rabbinical Council
of America, which sets policies for and represents about half of
America's Orthodox rabbis as well as sponsoring a Jewish court.
"We strongly urge rabbis and congregations to adhere to this method,"
said Herring, who added that it's possible that the preference may not
be adopted by all Orthodox rabbis as leaders in the Jewish religion
often have different views.
The traditional practice has been under scrutiny after New York City
health officials went to court late last year to stop a rabbi from
performing the practice they believe may have led to the death of a
baby boy from herpes.
The baby was one of three infants health officials said contracted
herpes simplex virus after being circumcised by Rabbi Yitzchok
Fischer, who used his mouth to draw blood from the infant's wound.
+
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul
of the people. On some great and glorious day the
plain folks of the land will reach their heart's
desire at last and the White House will be adorned
by a downright moron." --- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
"The power of accurate observation is called cynicism
by those who have not got it." - G. B. Shaw
Want to know what's really going on in Iraq?
http://www.angelfire.com/co/COMMONSENSE/wakeup.html
The Rise and Fall of the Holy Roller Empire
The God-Awful Truth about Christian Zionism
http://www.angelfire.com/co/COMMONSENSE/armageddon.html
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
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believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
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Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
Jason Quadros
just do it from a tube instead rather than with direct mouth to penis
contact.
Denis K.
jqua...@hotmail.com says...
> They won't stop sucking blood from circumcised infant's penises, they'll
> just do it from a tube instead rather than with direct mouth to penis
> contact.
That's a big if as well, even though a Jewish baby recently died,
because a Rabbi infected him with herpes through this outdated barbaric
ritual:
El Kabong
Will they have inspectors present to make sure the rabbi doesn't
suck the penis?
I wonder what would happen to someone if they pricked a baby
girl's vagina with a pin, then sucked it, and claimed it was perfectly
normal, because their grandfathers did it to, god told them to do it.
El Kabong
In all the coverage by the corporate media of the Sgrena story, one
crucial element is conspicuously missing: on the day she was kidnapped
Giuliana Sgrena had an appointment in a Baghdad Sunni mosque with
refugees from Fallujah. "During the attack on the city, eyewitnesses
described horrific scenes that analysts have attributed to attacks
with
napalm, a poisonous cocktail of polystyrene and jet fuel that has the
capacity of melting human flesh and bones," writes Joel Wendland.
"Inter Press Service reported eyewitness accounts describing bombs
that created mushroom clouds and explosions that caused skin to burn
even when water was thrown on it. Some eyewitnesses saw indiscriminate
shooting and the use of tanks to drag dead bodies to mass graves."
Giuliana Sgrena likely has a few stories to tell that will not bode
well for Bush and his sock puppet, Silvio Berlusconi. Expect these
stories to surface soon after Sgrena makes her recovery.
Outrage as US soldiers kill hostage rescue hero --
The Italian journalist kidnapped in Iraq arrived back in Rome
yesterday as fury and confusion grew over the circumstances in which
she was shot and one of her rescuers was killed by American
soldiers... Italian reconstruction of the incident is significantly
different. Giuliana Sgrena told colleagues the vehicle was not
travelling fast and had already passed several checkpoints on its way
to the airport. The Americans shone a flashlight at the car and then
fired between 300 and 400 bullets at if from an armoured vehicle.
Rather than calling immediately for assistance for the wounded
Italians, the soldiers' first move was to confiscate their weapons and
mobile phones and they were prevented from resuming contact with Rome
for more than an hour.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1431436,00.html
Sgrena's Car Disappears From U.S. Military Custody --An Italian
journalist held hostage in Iraq for a month then wounded by U.S.
forces shortly after her release has returned home. On Saturday, the
Associated Press in Baghdad asked to see Sgrena's car, but the U.S.
military said it didn't know where it was.
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/03/05/italianhostage-050305.html
Wonko The Sane
"El Kabong" <poki_pongo at yahoo dot com> wrote in message
news:7fan21p98g6honnps...@4ax.com...
>
> Giuliana Sgrena likely has a few stories to tell that will not bode
is the one who had stories to tell. Giuliana and her terrorist
friends likely had a hand in arranging for his demise.
Clough
wrote:
Whatever. It's Americunt butt that will be roasted for it, though.
LOL!
Clough
Wonko The Sane
"Jason Quadros" <jqua...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1xsi8vmnh5i14.9i54p2rquuqd$.dlg@40tude.net...
> They won't stop sucking blood from circumcised infant's penises, they'll
> just do it from a tube instead rather than with direct mouth to penis
> contact.
boys, the Rabbis should form boys choirs as do the Catholics.
This would allow them to wait until the boys are 8 or 9 to suck
their little penises.
El Kabong
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1522978,00.html
The Sunday Times
March 13, 2005
Revealed: Israel plans strike on Iranian nuclear plant
Uzi Mahnaimi
ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans for a combined air and ground attack
on targets in Iran if diplomacy fails to halt the Iranian nuclear
programme.
The inner cabinet of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, gave
“initial authorisation” for an attack at a private meeting last month
on his ranch in the Negev desert.
Israeli forces have used a mock-up of Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment
plant in the desert to practise destroying it. Their tactics include
raids by Israel’s elite Shaldag (Kingfisher) commando unit and
airstrikes by F-15 jets from 69 Squadron, using bunker-busting bombs
to penetrate underground facilities.
The plans have been discussed with American officials who are said to
have indicated provisionally that they would not stand in Israel’s way
if all international efforts to halt Iranian nuclear projects failed.
Tehran claims that its programme is designed for peaceful purposes but
Israeli and American intelligence officials — who have met to share
information in recent weeks — are convinced that it is intended to
produce nuclear weapons.
The Israeli government responded cautiously yesterday to an
announcement by Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, that
America would support Britain, France and Germany in offering economic
incentives for Tehran to abandon its programme.
In return, the European countries promised to back Washington in
referring Iran to the United Nations security council if the latest
round of talks fails to secure agreement.
Silvan Shalom, the Israeli foreign minister, said he believed that
diplomacy was the only way to deal with the issue. But he warned: “The
idea that this tyranny of Iran will hold a nuclear bomb is a
nightmare, not only for us but for the whole world.”
Dick Cheney, the American vice-president, emphasised on Friday that
Iran would face “stronger action” if it failed to respond. But
yesterday Iran rejected the initiative, which provides for entry to
the World Trade Organisation and a supply of spare parts for airliners
if it co-operates.
“No pressure, bribe or threat can make Iran give up its legitimate
right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes,” said an
Iranian spokesman.
US officials warned last week that a military strike on Iranian
nuclear facilities by Israeli or American forces had not been ruled
out should the issue become deadlocked at the United Nations.
Additional reporting: Tony Allen-Mills, Washington
Me
"El Kabong" <poki_pongo at yahoo dot com> wrote in message
news:kp6731hs0ekatnsor...@4ax.com...
>
> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1522978,00.html
>
> The Sunday Times
>
> March 13, 2005
>
> Revealed: Israel plans strike on Iranian nuclear plant
> Uzi Mahnaimi
>
>
> ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans for a combined air and ground attack
> on targets in Iran if diplomacy fails to halt the Iranian nuclear
> programme.
>
> The inner cabinet of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, gave
> "initial authorisation" for an attack at a private meeting last month
> on his ranch in the Negev desert.
>
>
> Israeli forces have used a mock-up of Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment
> plant in the desert to practise destroying it. Their tactics include
> raids by Israel's elite Shaldag (Kingfisher) commando unit and
> airstrikes by F-15 jets from 69 Squadron, using bunker-busting bombs
> to penetrate underground facilities.
>
> The plans have been discussed with American officials who are said to
> have indicated provisionally that they would not stand in Israel's way
> if all international efforts to halt Iranian nuclear projects failed.
>
> Tehran claims that its programme is designed for peaceful purposes but
> Israeli and American intelligence officials - who have met to share
> information in recent weeks - are convinced that it is intended to
Pacifist
hello to the shahab 3b missile
Alborz
every month , 2 or 3 reports
US/ISrael will attack iran.
We will kill al ot of Ameican soldiers in irak and Afghanistan and israel
will be attacked by hisbullah and
hit by long Range iranian missiles.
nobody can attack iran ,
If they could , they did it long time ago
"El Kabong" <poki_pongo at yahoo dot com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:kp6731hs0ekatnsor...@4ax.com...
>
> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1522978,00.html
>
> The Sunday Times
>
> March 13, 2005
>
> Revealed: Israel plans strike on Iranian nuclear plant
> Uzi Mahnaimi
>
>
> ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans for a combined air and ground attack
> on targets in Iran if diplomacy fails to halt the Iranian nuclear
> programme.
>
> The inner cabinet of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, gave
> "initial authorisation" for an attack at a private meeting last month
> on his ranch in the Negev desert.
>
>
> Israeli forces have used a mock-up of Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment
> plant in the desert to practise destroying it. Their tactics include
> raids by Israel's elite Shaldag (Kingfisher) commando unit and
> airstrikes by F-15 jets from 69 Squadron, using bunker-busting bombs
> to penetrate underground facilities.
>
> The plans have been discussed with American officials who are said to
> have indicated provisionally that they would not stand in Israel's way
> if all international efforts to halt Iranian nuclear projects failed.
>
> Tehran claims that its programme is designed for peaceful purposes but
> Israeli and American intelligence officials - who have met to share
> information in recent weeks - are convinced that it is intended to
Lazarus Cain
> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1522978,00.html
>
> The Sunday Times
>
> March 13, 2005
>
> Revealed: Israel plans strike on Iranian nuclear plant
> Uzi Mahnaimi
>
>
> ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans for a combined air and ground attack
> on targets in Iran if diplomacy fails to halt the Iranian nuclear
> programme.
>
> The inner cabinet of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, gave
> on his ranch in the Negev desert.
>
>
> plant in the desert to practise destroying it. Their tactics include
> airstrikes by F-15 jets from 69 Squadron, using bunker-busting bombs
> to penetrate underground facilities.
>
> The plans have been discussed with American officials who are said to
> if all international efforts to halt Iranian nuclear projects failed.
>
> Tehran claims that its programme is designed for peaceful purposes but
> information in recent weeks ? are convinced that it is intended to
> produce nuclear weapons.
>
> The Israeli government responded cautiously yesterday to an
> announcement by Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, that
> America would support Britain, France and Germany in offering economic
> incentives for Tehran to abandon its programme.
>
> In return, the European countries promised to back Washington in
> referring Iran to the United Nations security council if the latest
> round of talks fails to secure agreement.
>
> Silvan Shalom, the Israeli foreign minister, said he believed that
> idea that this tyranny of Iran will hold a nuclear bomb is a
> Dick Cheney, the American vice-president, emphasised on Friday that
> yesterday Iran rejected the initiative, which provides for entry to
> the World Trade Organisation and a supply of spare parts for airliners
> if it co-operates.
>
> right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes,? said an
I　am strongly advising Israel against any such ambition as this
will result in the abomination of desolation forwarned by the
prophets.
We are well aware of the need to come up with a solution to the
upcoming worl wide energy crisis, and I still see no viable
alternative to the peaceful application of nuclear power.
The current paranoia concerning fear of proliferation is extremely
counterproductive as it only stalls the world wide development of this
needed technology as I am still waiting for signs that the enrgy
problem is on its way to being solved.
Instead \i see a world getting dangerously close to creating a war
between pariah leaders clionging to corrupt faith and ideologies.
If Islam is a threat, which some perceive it as being, it is in the
apparent relation of warfare to Islam as an integral part of the
religion. It is the fact that Islam embraces warfare as justifiable
which is the weakness of the faith. Yet to use warfare to attack Islam
does not weaken Islam, but only makes it stronger,　because the
enemies of Islam are presenting an alternative to Isalm which is no
better than Islam.
We are seeking a peaceful bsolution to this conflict between faiths,
and this solution requires the faiths to outright reject warfare since
warfare of the future involves weapons of mass destruction, be it
firebombing which the US still actively uses or nuclear weapons which
the US has also used.
The US does not have the answer to the repression caused by Islam as
long as it uses military force to force its way upon the arab world,
for example. The counter to Isalm is in the world of faith and not by
use of military force.
An attack by Israel on Iran`s nuclear facilities is an echo of the
Israeli attack on Iraq`s nuclear facilities, but it is a preemptive
attack and in this case it would be an outright declaration of war in
the middle east over unproven assumptions, especially in the light of
the US attack on Iraq over weopns of mass destruction which has been
proven to be false, and if not false, certainly not true.
Unprovoked warfare will only invite the wrath of God on Israel and
also the United States, and will also strengthn Islam world wide as
the acts of the "infidel" become clearly the acts of demented men, who
must be punished by God, if we are to assume there is one.
There is no swaying the intentions of the Bush crowd, yet there are
growing dangers that will grow out of proportion if the US and Israel
act so as to make themselves what I would term pariah states. It i
snot as if Israel is not already stained with the Blood of the Lamb,
that it can afford to act with impunity while claiming to be God`s
chosen.
Bear in mind that China is not to be forgotten concerning these
issues. It also has a need for the oil, and hostiliy between China and
the US is being strained.
US views thinking it has victory concerning Syrian pullout, but the
hidden trap here is the claim by syria that it honors UN resolutions
whereas Israel does not. This remark has not gone unnoticed by this
intelligebce observer.
As an intelligence agant for Israel, the prophet is commissioned by
the Lord to be a watchman. The prophet speaks the word and his
obligation has been met.
Vainly the enemies of the watchman track history to see no human
authority which has commissioned the watchman or the prophet, since
the mission is given to the watchman by God and not by man. The
watchman in turn fears not man, because he is commissioned by his God
to speak, the same god to whom his soul shall account his actions.
Thje watchman uses not the power of weapons to speak, but the reason
and sense that God has given him.
Daily I watch the foolish rants and threats of the Bush administration
against Iran.
Do these Americans not realize the moment Iran uses a nuclear weapon,
Iran will no longer exist.
And let us reconsider nuclear weaopons as opposed to the use of
firebombs. The single greatest exercise of the use of weapons of mass
destruction is not the use of atomic bomb over Hiroshima or Nagasaki,
but is ibn the firebombing of Tokyo in which over 100,000 civilians
lost their lives in a single night. Granted the bigger bombs may very
well create a fireball ro shadow this, but bear in mind at least with
firebombing you can rebuild, whereas the nuclear weaopns of today will
destroy man, animal, plant, i.e. every living thing.
Now just think of what the prophets may say concerning this
possibility and this current reality.
_Is it not just slightly possible I may have a point here.
I am not embracing Islam. I have the knowledge to defeat Islam, yet it
seems that the leaders of the US and Israel are blind to such
knowledge.
Iran states it is unIslamic to produce nuclear weapons. We must have
more solid evidence, and even then we must recognize the already
accepted policy of deterrence. Unfortunately, one must catch the
culprit in the act, before we can have a worl war concerning this.
Acting upon fears is not good enough.
Again, such an attack qualiofies as being treacherously close to the
abomination of desolation, and I really do not want myself to be in
the position to ask the Father to take action against the United
States and Israel, if these two nations wish to invite the fate of
Sodom and Gemorrah upon themselves.
Taiwan and Japan would be victims of such an action since China would
most likeley be less restrained by fear of the US.
I am telling you, i.e.,,attacking Iranian nuclear facities is a very,
very bad idea, and we must put an end to this crazy talk.
I、mean how loud does one have to yell and scream to put reason
in silly human brains?
Additionally why should I honor yur paranoid fears if yo
call　my fears delusional and crazy? It is realy a matter of
perspective concerning which fears are crazed abnd which ones are not,
but to me my fears are not delusions, and that is good enough for me,
from my perspective..goood enough for me to pray in public before God
concerning these fears.
If I am deluded, God will reeducate me as He always does.
Me
"Alborz" <inma...@gmx.at> wrote in message
news:ThTYd.117745$2e4....@news.chello.at...
> Jawn
> every month , 2 or 3 reports
> US/ISrael will attack iran.
> We will kill al ot of Ameican soldiers in irak and Afghanistan and israel
> will be attacked by hisbullah and
> hit by long Range iranian missiles.
>
> nobody can attack iran ,
> If they could , they did it long time ago
El Kabong
http://www.ogrish.com/archives/dog_shooting_in_iraq_for_fun_Mar_16_2005.html
March 16, 2005
Dog Shooting in Iraq for "Fun"
NOTE: Ogrish.com opposes behavior such as that below. We have provided
the US military and animal organisation PETA details regarding the
sender of this submission.
"Hi my name is M. D. formaly of A TRP 1-10 CAV 4ID and while in Iraq
we had a sport of killing dogs whenever the Iraqis werent shooting us.
So when I shot this one at about 50 yards with my M4 and it ran
yelping to lower ground, we had to finish it so my friends and I went
to it and started shooting it. I ve never seen a dog take as many
shots to the head at least 4 as this one did and then after we thought
it was dead we dug a hole and when I picked it up with the shovel it
came back to life, so we shot it a couple more times....its pretty
funny."
Group
com> wrote:
>
>http://www.ogrish.com/archives/dog_shooting_in_iraq_for_fun_Mar_16_2005.html
>March 16, 2005
>Dog Shooting in Iraq for "Fun"
>
>NOTE: Ogrish.com opposes behavior such as that below. We have provided
>the US military and animal organisation PETA details regarding the
>sender of this submission.
>"Hi my name is M. D. formaly of A TRP 1-10 CAV 4ID and while in Iraq
>we had a sport of killing dogs whenever the Iraqis werent shooting us.
>So when I shot this one at about 50 yards with my M4 and it ran
>yelping to lower ground, we had to finish it so my friends and I went
>to it and started shooting it. I ve never seen a dog take as many
>shots to the head at least 4 as this one did and then after we thought
>it was dead we dug a hole and when I picked it up with the shovel it
>came back to life, so we shot it a couple more times....its pretty
>funny."
Is eating dogs for enjoyment any different? I was just
wondering, because they eat dogs in certain parts of the world.
El Kabong
Sat Mar 19, 7:20 AM ET
By Dan Williams
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Greek Orthodox Church moved to calm
Palestinian jitters over Jerusalem's future on Saturday after an
Israeli newspaper said a top church official had secretly sold key
property in the holy city to Jews.
The major land holdings of the Holy Land's oldest church have
entangled it in the Middle East conflict. Israel maintains Jerusalem
is its indivisible capital, but Palestinians want Arab East Jerusalem
-- captured by Israel along with the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the
1967 Middle East War -- as the capital of a future independent state.
The Maariv report stirred dismay among the Greek Orthodox Church's
100,000 mainly Arab followers, and prompted the Palestinian Authority
to order an official investigation.
"These lands are Palestinian lands, not lands from Crete or Greece,"
Marwan Toubasi of the Greek Orthodox Central Council told reporters.
"We call on the Greek government to intervene and facilitate the
inquiry."
Maariv said the Irineos aide alleged to have brokered the
multimillion-dollar deal had left the country. According to the church
spokesman, an arrest warrant had been issued for a former employee of
the partriarchate "for felony-level crimes."
The Greek Orthodox Church owns or leases big areas in Jerusalem,
including affluent parts of the Jewish west and the land on which
Israel's president and prime minister reside.
In recent years, pro-Zionist magnates like Irving Moscowitz of the
United States have paid top prices for homes in East Jerusalem,
including the Old City, so Israelis could move in. "This matter
clearly reveals Israel's plan to judaize Jerusalem," said Palestinian
Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie in response to the Maariv report
El Kabong
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/solomon_qa.shtml
What evidence is there that the Temple of Solomon existed?
The only evidence is the Bible. There are no other records describing
it, and to date there has been no archaeological evidence of the
Temple at all. What's more, other archaeological sites associated with
King Solomon - palaces, fortresses and walled cities that seemed to
match places and cities from the Bible - are also now in doubt.
There is a growing sense among scholars that most of these
archaeological sites are actually later than previously believed. Some
now believe there may be little or no archaeological evidence of King
Solomon's time at all, and doubt that he ruled the vast empire which
is described in the Bible.
As Rabbis Face Facts, Bible Tales Are Wilting
New York Times; March 9, 2002
By MICHAEL MASSING
Abraham, the Jewish patriarch, probably never existed. Nor did Moses.
The entire Exodus story as recounted in the Bible probably never
occurred. The same is true of the tumbling of the walls of Jericho.
And David, far from being the fearless king who built Jerusalem into a
mighty capital, was more likely a provincial leader whose reputation
was later magnified to provide a rallying point for a fledgling
nation.
Such startling propositions - the product of findings by
archaeologists digging in Israel and its environs over the last 25
years - have gained wide acceptance among non-Orthodox rabbis. But
there has been no attempt to disseminate these ideas or to discuss
them with the laity - until now.
The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, which represents the 1.5
million Conservative Jews in the United States, has just issued a new
Torah and commentary, the first for Conservatives in more than 60
years. Called "Etz Hayim" ("Tree of Life" in Hebrew), it offers an
interpretation that incorporates the latest findings from archaeology,
philology, anthropology and the study of ancient cultures. To the
editors who worked on the book, it represents one of the boldest
efforts ever to introduce into the religious mainstream a view of the
Bible as a human rather than divine document.
"When I grew up in Brooklyn, congregants were not sophisticated about
anything," said Rabbi Harold Kushner, the author of "When Bad Things
Happen to Good People" and a co-editor of the new book. "Today, they
are very sophisticated and well read about psychology, literature and
history, but they are locked in a childish version of the Bible."
"Etz Hayim," compiled by David Lieber of the University of Judaism in
Los Angeles, seeks to change that. It offers the standard Hebrew text,
a parallel English translation (edited by Chaim Potok, best known as
the author of "The Chosen"), a page-by-page exegesis, periodic
commentaries on Jewish practice and, at the end, 41 essays by
prominent rabbis and scholars on topics ranging from the Torah scroll
and dietary laws to ecology and eschatology.
These essays, perused during uninspired sermons or Torah readings at
Sabbath services, will no doubt surprise many congregants. For
instance, an essay on Ancient Near Eastern Mythology," by Robert
Wexler, president of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, states
that on the basis of modern scholarship, it seems unlikely that the
story of Genesis originated in Palestine. More likely, Mr. Wexler
says, it arose in Mesopotamia, the influence of which is most apparent
in the story of the Flood, which probably grew out of the periodic
overflowing of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The story of Noah, Mr.
Wexler adds, was probably borrowed from the Mesopotamian epic
Gilgamesh.
Equally striking for many readers will be the essay "Biblical
Archaeology," by Lee I. Levine, a professor at the Hebrew University
in Jerusalem. "There is no reference in Egyptian sources to Israel's
sojourn in that country," he writes, "and the evidence that does exist
is negligible and indirect." The few indirect pieces of evidence, like
the use of Egyptian names, he adds, "are far from adequate to
corroborate the historicity of the biblical account."
Similarly ambiguous, Mr. Levine writes, is the evidence of the
conquest and settlement of Canaan, the ancient name for the area
including Israel. Excavations showing that Jericho was unwalled and
uninhabited, he says, "clearly seem to contradict the violent and
complete conquest portrayed in the Book of Joshua." What's more, he
says, there is an "almost total absence of archaeological evidence"
backing up the Bible's grand descriptions of the Jerusalem of David
and Solomon.
The notion that the Bible is not literally true "is more or less
settled and understood among most Conservative rabbis," observed David
Wolpe, a rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and a contributor to
"Etz Hayim." But some congregants, he said, "may not like the stark
airing of it." Last Passover, in a sermon to 2,200 congregants at his
synagogue, Rabbi Wolpe frankly said that "virtually every modern
archaeologist" agrees "that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is
not the way that it happened, if it happened at all." The rabbi
offered what he called a "litany of disillusion" about the narrative,
including contradictions, improbabilities, chronological lapses and
the absence of corroborating evidence. In fact, he said,
archaeologists digging in the Sinai have "found no trace of the tribes
of Israel - not one shard of pottery."
http://www.giwersworld.org/history.phtml
The real history of Israel
by Matt Giwer Š 2000 [October 13]
<snip>
From what has been learned by archaeologists, what few particulars
there are about Egypt in Exodus are flat out wrong. The kingdom of
Solomon simply did not exist. Despite digging by Israel there is no
sign of any Temple of Solomon. Not only that the description of
Solomon is nearly identical to that a one of the Pharaohs who is well
known, making Solomon the copy.
And the Wailing Wall that is supposed to be a remaining wall of the
second temple was identified as the wall of a 17th century cemetery
some three seconds before the researcher's archaeological research
permit was pulled. That leads to the rather clear conclusion the
entire confrontation over East Jerusalem and the so called temple
mount by the Jews is no more than a superstition which has ignited the
hostilities in the Mideast.
Despite a massive archaeological search of the Sinai Peninsula when
Israel controlled it, not one sign of the millions of people and
animals which supposedly wandered there for forty years was ever
found. Should anyone ever consider the actual distances involved
between Egypt and Jerusalem it is noted it is a leisurely five days
walk away.
Just the two million Hebrews in the Exodus would form a line three
abreast with the ranks five feet apart from the Nile to Jerusalem.
That is not counting their slaves and animals, carts of possessions or
anything else. They could have moved their possessions simply by
passing them from person to person in a bucket brigade fire chain from
Egypt to Israel.
With the collapse of the Moses story the entire foundation of Judaism,
Christianity and Islam collapses. There simply no basis for them
absent Moses. Even Abraham collapses as since there was no leaving
Egypt there was no going there in the first place. But that has been
obvious to anyone who ever bothered to critically consider the story.
The story goes that seventy-seven of Joseph's relatives went to Egypt
from what is now Iraq. In a miracle of procreation they grew to 2
million in a bit over four hundred years. Yet they speak a language
native to the region of Palestine rather than Egyptian or the language
of ancient Iraq. And that language was never their native language.
That is like expecting Blacks in America to speak their native Africa
languages.
In addition to not speaking Egyptian there is no evidence of any
borrowed words from Egyptian which is truly remarkable. Nor is there
any indication of any talent, skill, or knowledge from Egypt. In fact
was archaeologists do find in the region is a quite primitive culture
with some indication the people were originally nomads, Bedouins, who
attacked and defeated the cities and settled down.
Where they came from and where they got their religion we don't know
yet. Genetic research has found those who claim to be the priests and
those who do not make that claim came from different places as the
priests have a distinctive genetic marker that could only have
developed in reproductive isolation. The book of Ezra does include
importing the religion to the region.
It is also about that time of Ezra that archaeologists find signs of
images being defaced which indicates the destruction of the old
polytheist religion. And that coincides with the time of the rise of
monotheist cults such as Zoroaster and Mithra.
Archaeologists have confirmed the people were polytheists as the Bible
says in no uncertain terms. The first commandment says clearly, no
other gods and not false gods or any other terms which would indicate
he was the only god. The term 'lord god' in the Old Testament is a
false translation of 'Yahweh Elohim.' A more correct translation is
Yahweh (personal name) of the Gods. Note the Elohim related to israEL.
Sacrificial altars are found all over the region. As inscription
referring to Astarte as the consort of Yahweh has been found. Solid
evidence that Astarte was worshiped by the women exists in the form of
idols of Astarte and her worship continuing at least into the middle
of the second century, about 150AD. What we find then is separate
cults for men and women. Comparing that to what the Old Testament is
constantly ranting about and we see it bears no relationship to the
facts.
In other words the religion we know as Judaism was not created until
sometime around or after the time of Ezra save the Astarte cult
continued well into the second century AD and not in secret but was
widespread and many places in Jerusalem. This is known by the idols of
Astarte which have been found frequently and commonly "in the shadow
of" the Temple Mount.
From carefully comparing what is written in the Old Testament to the
facts as they are know suggests they were also written around the time
of Ezra which was just after the Babylonian captivity. That explains
why Pharaoh's court and priests behave like the Babylonian court and
priests instead of like those in Egypt. There is reference in Exodus
to a city in Egypt that was not built until hundreds of years after
Exodus is supposed to have taken place.
None of this is a secret. In fact it is well known to biblical
archaeologists. Unfortunately funding for research is largely raised
from people and organizations with an interest in confirming the
Bible. Therefore the researchers have one well hedged story for their
contributors and another one for professional publications.
The supposed location of Solomon's Temple has been repeated so many
times and has been featured in context of the current fighting in the
illegally occupied territories that it is quite reasonable for people
to believe it is true. It is so ingrained the reporters don't even
bother saying it is the believed or supposed location.
And as to the Wailing Wall being the remains of the second temple that
flies in the face of another commonly held belief, that the Romans
leveled the temple when the rebuilt the city. Ridiculously inefficient
to have left part of one of the walls standing. Roman completely
rebuilt the city and brought it things like running water and
sanitation. Under what conceivable circumstances would they leave just
one wall?
In another article I point out that the entire Diaspora consists
solely of the Romans prohibiting the Judeans (not all Jews just
Judeans) from living inside the rebuilt city. Yet the common belief,
which is solely pious legend, is that they were forced to leave all of
Israel. That flat out never happened.
So Israel got started on a myth that Jews were forced to leave and had
wandered the earth without a home. Fact, they left voluntarily. And
now the current round of fighting over the mythical temple of the
mythical Solomon.
The issue can not be the second temple as by their own beliefs there
was never anything sacred in it. The Ark, judgment seat and the rest
of sacred paraphernalia had long vanished. And in light of the above,
that Moses is a total myth, so also the Exodus and the idea the sacred
paraphernalia ever existed.
http://www.abu.nb.ca/ecm/topics/arch6.htm
There is little, if any, evidence of the remains of Solomon's temple
in Jerusalem today. The recent work of Kathleen Kenyon in Jerusalem
has revealed a few structures in the northern part of the city which
may be Solomonic but there is no certainty. If there are any remains
left, they would be under the sacred enclosure of the Muslims known as
the Dome of the Rock. Enclosed within this structure is a very large
rock protruding out of the ground. This sanctuary is forbidden ground
to the archaeologist. This rock may be the foundation upon which the
Holy of Holies was built. This would be a natural foundation upon
which to built. Another problem in the location of any ruins is that
the temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 B.C. Then Herod
built an extension to the south onto the foundation which existed. The
existing foundations are those built by Zerubbabel after the return
from the Babylonian exile. There is no way of determining what is
Solomonic, if anything.
El Kabong
By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - An Army investigation found systematic abuse and possible
torture of Iraqi prisoners at a base near Mosul just as top military
officials became aware of abuse allegations at the Abu Ghraib prison
outside Baghdad, documents released Friday showed.
Records previously released by the Army have detailed abuses at Abu
Ghraib and other sites in Iraq as well as at sites in Afghanistan and
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The documents released Friday were the first to
reveal abuses at the jail in Mosul and are among the few to allege
torture directly.
An officer found that detainees "were being systematically and
intentionally mistreated" at the holding facility near Mosul in
December 1993. The 311th Military Intelligence Battalion of the Army's
101st Airborne Division ran the lockup.
"There is evidence that suggests the 311th MI personnel and/or
translators engaged in physical torture of the detainees," a memo from
the investigator said. The January 2004 report said the prisoners'
rights under the Geneva Conventions were violated.
El Kabong
paper
Sat Mar 26, 5:20 AM ET Mideast - AFP
DUBAI (AFP) - US officials held an "unpublicized" meeting with exiled
Syrian dissidents in Washington to discuss ways of "weakening the
Syrian regime," a pan-Arab newspaper reported.
Saudi-owned Asharq Al-Awsat said US officials who attended the meeting
on Thursday included Elizabeth Cheney, deputy assistant secretary of
state for Near Eastern affairs, and John Hanna, an official in the
office of her father, Vice President Dick Cheney.
The paper said Elizabeth Cheney's office confirmed the meeting, which
was also attended by Pentagon and National Security Council
officials, and comes at a time when the regime of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad is under mounting US pressure to end its grip over
neighboring Lebanon.
Cheney's office, however, refused to give details.
Participants on the Syrian side included Farid al-Ghadri, a US-based
businessman who heads the Reform Party of Syria, Zuhdi al-Jasser,
Mohammad Khawam, Muwaffak Bunni al-Marjeh, Hussam al-Dairi, Salma
al-Dairi and writer Bassam Darwish.
Asharq Al-Awsat said the dissidents lobbied for a policy of regime
change in Syria, whereas the administration officials focused on ways
of weakening Assad's government.
El Kabong
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=2&u=/nm/20050326/ts_nm/iraq_abuse_dc
U.S. Troops Tortured Iraqis in Mosul, Documents Show
By Andrew Marshall
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - American soldiers tortured Iraqi prisoners at a
military base in Mosul but nobody was court martialed over the abuse,
U.S. army documents say.
The documents show that mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners was not
confined to the Abu Ghraib jail, where abuse and sexual humiliation of
inmates caused worldwide outrage last year.
An investigation by a U.S. officer after an Iraqi prisoner's jaw was
broken at the base in Mosul found that "detainees were being
systematically and intentionally mistreated" in late 2003.
Inmates were hit with water bottles, forced to do exhausting physical
exercises until they collapsed, deprived of sleep and subjected to
deafening noise, the investigation report found.
One prisoner died in December 2003 after four days of repeatedly
having to do physical exercises as a punishment, according to the
documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the
Freedom of Information Act.
El Kabong
Army’s Own Documents Acknowledge Evidence That Soldiers Used Torture
March 25, 2005
Government is Manipulating Release of Torture Documents in an Attempt
to Minimize Scandal, ACLU Charges
NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union today charged that the
government is attempting to bury the torture scandal involving the
U.S. military by failing to comply with a court order requiring
release of documents to the ACLU. The documents the government does
release are being issued in advance to the media in ways calculated to
minimize coverage and public access, the ACLU said.
The reason for the delay in delivering the more than 1,200 pages of
documents was evident, the ACLU said, in the contents, which include
reports of brutal beatings, "exercise until exhaustion" and sworn
statements that soldiers were told to "beat the fuck out of"
detainees. One file cites evidence that Military Intelligence
personnel in Iraq "tortured" detainees held in their custody.
"These documents provide further evidence that the torture of
detainees was much more widespread than the government has
acknowledged," said ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer. "At a minimum, the
documents indicate a colossal failure of leadership."
The documents were supposed to have been turned over to the ACLU on
March 21, but were not released to the ACLU until late on a Friday of
what for many is a holiday weekend. Select reporters received a CD-ROM
with the documents before they were given to the ACLU. The ACLU’s
practice has been to analyze the documents it receives and post them
on its website, thus ensuring easy access to the media and the public.
The documents -- along with more than 30,000 to date -- were released
in response to a federal court order that directed the Defense
Department and other government agencies to comply with a year-old
request under the Freedom of Information Act filed by the ACLU, the
Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights,
Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace. The New York Civil
Liberties Union is co-counsel in the case. The documents received to
date have been posted at www.aclu.org/torturefoia.
The documents released today include evidence of:
Abuse of a high school student detainee: Commander's report of inquiry
into broken jaw of a high-school boy (such that the boy required his
mouth to be wired shut and could eat only through a straw). The victim
was told "to say that I've fallen down and no one beat me." The report
concluded that the broken jaw was caused either as a result of a blow
by a U.S. soldier or a collapse due to "complete muscle failure" from
being excessively exercised. It found that "abuse of detainees in some
form or other was an acceptable practice and was demonstrated to the
inexperienced infantry guards almost as guidance" by 311th Battalion
Military Intelligence personnel. Personnel "were striking the
detainees," and evidence suggested that the 311th Military
Intelligence personnel and/or translators "engaged in physical torture
of the detainees." It was recommended that no punitive action be taken
against the Commander of the Battalion. (See pp. 1173-1280)
Death of detainee with no history of medical problems: Abu Malik
Kenami died while in detention in Mosul, Iraq. The investigation
speculates that Kenami may have suffered a heart attack. On the day he
died, Kenami had been "punished with ups and downs several times…and
ha[d] his hands flex cuffed behind his back." He was also hooded, with
"a sandbag placed over [his] head." "Ups and downs" are "a
correctional technique of having a detainee stand up and then sit-down
rapidly, always keeping them in constant motion." The file states that
"[t]he cause of Abu Malik Kenami’s death will never be known because
an autopsy was never performed on him." Kenami’s corpse was stored in
a "reefer van" for five days before it was turned over to a local
mortician. (See pp. 1281 - 1333)
Soldiers being told to "beat the fuck out of detainees": Documents
dated August 16, 2003, relating to an investigation into "alleged ROE
and Geneva Convention violations" in Iraq include sworn statements
relating to "Bulldog 6" telling soldiers to "take the detainee[s] out
back and beat the fuck out of them." (See pp. 1584-1613)
Perceptions of chain of command endorsement of "pay-back": An informal
investigation into an incident of abuse by soldiers while they were
dropping detainees off for further questioning by the "3BCT MIT team"
in Iraq. The MIT team saw the soldiers kicking blindfolded and
"zipcuffed" detainees several times in the sides while yelling
profanities at them. The investigation concludes that at least three
TF 2-70 did abuse the detainees and adds that "some of the TF 2-70 may
perceive that the chain-of-command is endorsing ‘pay-back’ by allowing
the units most affected by suspected detainee actions to play the
greatest role in bringing those suspects to justice." (See pp.
1619-1755)
The page numbers noted above relate to PDF documents posted online at
http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/032505/index.html.
Earlier this month the ACLU and Human Rights First filed a lawsuit
charging Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with direct responsibility
for the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. military custody. The
action was the first federal court lawsuit to name a top U.S. official
in the ongoing torture scandal in Iraq and Afghanistan; many of the
charges are based on documents obtained through the FOIA lawsuit. The
ACLU has also filed separate lawsuits naming Brig. Gen. Karpinski,
Col. Thomas Pappas and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. Details about the
Rumsfeld lawsuit are online at www.aclu.org/rumsfeld.
The FOIA lawsuit is being handled by Lawrence Lustberg and Megan Lewis
of the New Jersey-based law firm Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger &
Vecchione, P.C. Other attorneys in the case are Jaffer, Amrit Singh,
and Judy Rabinovitz of the ACLU; Arthur N. Eisenberg and Beth Haroules
of the NYCLU; and Barbara Olshansky and Jeff Fogel of the Center for
Constitutional Rights.
Wonko The Sane
"El Kabong" <poki_pongo at yahoo dot com> wrote in message
news:9jpb411fn3sht2eud...@4ax.com...
> http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=17835&c=206
>
> Army's Own Documents Acknowledge Evidence That Soldiers Used Torture
>
> March 25, 2005
>
>
> Government is Manipulating Release of Torture Documents in an Attempt
> to Minimize Scandal, ACLU Charges
>
> NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union today charged that the
> government is attempting to bury the torture scandal involving the
> U.S. military by failing to comply with a court order requiring
> release of documents to the ACLU. The documents the government does
> release are being issued in advance to the media in ways calculated to
> minimize coverage and public access, the ACLU said.
>
Viet Nam war. The nightly news used to show our soldiers
throwing 'gooks' out of helicopters, and noting that the enemy
used 'tiger cages' and so did we, but ours were made out
of concrete instead of bamboo.
Nobody got court martialed unless they deserted.
Jan
"Wonko The Sane" <Wo...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:wBm1e.8753$TZ.1708@okepread06...
>
> "El Kabong" <poki_pongo at yahoo dot com> wrote in message
> news:9jpb411fn3sht2eud...@4ax.com...
>> http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=17835&c=206
>
> Viet Nam war. The nightly news used to show our soldiers
> throwing 'gooks' out of helicopters, and noting that the enemy
> used 'tiger cages' and so did we, but ours were made out
> of concrete instead of bamboo.
> Nobody got court martialed unless they deserted.
>
Wonko The Sane
"Jan" <ov...@nospamonline.no> wrote in message
news:dCq1e.3698$SL4....@news4.e.nsc.no...
in resisting a communist takeover by the North. We
wasted 40,000 of my peers assisting the useless
bastards in S. Vietnam of whom the majority
didn't know why they should resist communist takeover.
Finally we put Nixon in office, who took the gloves
off our troops and let them kill the enemy.
After defeating the N. Vietnamese in a mere 12 months
of unrestrained combat, we left the little tropical
paradise in the hands of the S. Vietnamese, who
promptly rolled over and stuck their asses in the
air for the North, who then walked in and had some
jolly fun.
Susan Cohen
In what sense? The Vietcong gooks cheated and lied. They signed
a treaty and then when the US pulled out they invaded the
South again. The US had few troops there at the time. Do try
and get your facts right.
Susan
Jan
supported were against you. And so was the rest of the world. And then as
now the majority of people you murdered were civilians.
Jan
"Susan Cohen" <flab...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1111898499.8...@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Wonko The Sane
be fought fast and hard with no restrictions on the military
to engage. We already fucked up in Middle East because our troops
are not allowed to pursue enemy into Syria and Iran and Pakistan.
Result: longer war, more dead civilians, more fodder for pus like you.
Clough
wrote:
>It wasn't our war. We assisted the S. Vietnamese
>in resisting a communist takeover by the North. We
>wasted 40,000 of my peers assisting the useless
>bastards in S. Vietnam of whom the majority
>didn't know why they should resist communist takeover.
>Finally we put Nixon in office, who took the gloves
>off our troops and let them kill the enemy.
>After defeating the N. Vietnamese in a mere 12 months
>of unrestrained combat, we left the little tropical
>paradise in the hands of the S. Vietnamese, who
>promptly rolled over and stuck their asses in the
>air for the North, who then walked in and had some
>jolly fun.
I remember the films of the US embassy under siege and the last
Americunts, desperate to save their sorry asses, scrambling to get
onto the last helicopter lifting off from the embassy roof.
The Americunts got their asses well and truly kicked in Vietnam. It
was a beautiful. A sight to behold. I'm looking forwards to watching
the replay in the Middle East.
Clough
Wonko The Sane
"Clough" <in...@canoemail.com> wrote in message
news:ueld41pqip3b4q508...@4ax.com...
until the very last. They probably felt more empathy for
Vietnamese locals than did the 99.9% of our troops who had
already left the country. They even tried to bring a few hundred
of the locals out with them, to spare them from the ass raping
they were about to get from the communists.
It wasn't the Americans who lost in that war, it was the
people who live there. Perhaps you should go there and
crow about their defeat to them in person! You will be
safe as long as you are in the company of N. Vietnamese
handlers.
Jan
"Wonko The Sane" <Wo...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:hbB1e.9899$TZ.2180@okepread06...
south, and you can be assured that they don't miss you a bit. It is a much
better country without you, like the rest of the world would have been.
Wonko The Sane
visited both North and South. We don't miss you a bit.
It is a much better country without you. Please go back to Viet Nam,
or stay there if you are already there. Better yet, go to N. Korea.
Wonko The Sane
"Susan Cohen" <flab...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1111898499.8...@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
in here seem to think that forceful assertions, insults, and bullying
constitute a factual argument?
They must be taking lessons from the N. Koreans.
Wonko The Sane
Which hootch are you sleeping in anyway?
http://www.ktroop.com/gal7%268p15.html
Susan Cohen
> "Susan Cohen" wrote
> >> And you lost the war
> >
> > In what sense? The Vietcong gooks cheated and lied. They signed
> > a treaty and then when the US pulled out they invaded the
> > South again. The US had few troops there at the time. Do try
> > and get your facts right.
> >
> > Susan
> >
> Did you ever notice that the extreme left and / or right wing types
> in here seem to think that forceful assertions, insults, and bullying
> constitute a factual argument?
Yes, wonko, I've noticed.
> They must be taking lessons from the N. Koreans.
And the sheetheads - who are also good at lying, bullying and
insulting.
Susan
Susan Cohen
> "Wonko The Sane" <Wo...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:hbB1e.9899$TZ.2180@okepread06...
> >> The Americunts got their asses well and truly kicked in Vietnam.
It
> >> was a beautiful. A sight to behold. I'm looking forwards to
watching
> >> the replay in the Middle East.
> > For some reason our embassy guards remained on duty
> > until the very last. They probably felt more empathy for
> > Vietnamese locals than did the 99.9% of our troops who had
> > already left the country. They even tried to bring a few hundred
> > of the locals out with them, to spare them from the ass raping
> > they were about to get from the communists.
> > It wasn't the Americans who lost in that war, it was the
> > people who live there. Perhaps you should go there and
> > crow about their defeat to them in person! You will be
> > safe as long as you are in the company of N. Vietnamese
> > handlers.
> You are so full of bullshit. I have worked in Vietnam and visited
north and
> south, and you can be assured that they don't miss you a bit. It is a
much
> better country without you, like the rest of the world would have
been.
Oh, yes, its so beautiful. The rampant bird flu and SARS will
get rid of all the gook scum infesting the land. Then it will
return to its natural beauty.
Susan
Jan
> OK bitch, I'm off to Viet Nam to finish the job we left undone.
> Which hootch are you sleeping in anyway?
> http://www.ktroop.com/gal7%268p15.html
Insane?
Mr. Hasen
Fuck you,
desmon...@mail2Mankind.com
"El Kabong" <poki_pongo at yahoo dot com> wrote in message
news:9jpb411fn3sht2eud...@4ax.com...
> died, Kenami had been "punished with ups and downs several times.and
frederick...@lycos.com
a beautiful. A sight to behold. I'm looking forwards to watching
the replay in the Middle East. >>
Vietnam was about oil too:
Herbert Hoover, later to become President of the United States did a
study that showed that one of the world's largest oil fields ran along
the coast of the South China Sea right off French Indo-China, now
known as Vietnam.
- Denny, Ludwell, We Fight of Oil, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1928.
US analyst Ludwell Denny in his book "We Fight for Oil" noted the
domestic oil shortage and says international diplomacy had failed to
secure any reliable foreign sources of oil for the United States. Fear
of oil shortages would become the most important factor in
international relations, Denny said.
"That empire in Southeast Asia is the last major resource area outside
the control of any one of the major powers of the globe....I believe
that the condition of the Vietnamese people, and the direction in which
their future may be going, are at this stage secondary, not primary."
(Senator McGee, D-Wyo., in the U.S. Senate, Feb. 17, 1965)
In a 1965 speech in Asia, Richard Nixon argued in favor of bombing
North Vietnam to protect the "immense mineral potential" of Indonesia,
which he later referred to as "by far the greatest prize in the
southeast Asian area."
To protect its prizes, the US eventually killed over four million
people in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos between 1965 and 1975. In South
Vietnam alone, the war resulted in a million widows and 879,000
orphans. It destroyed 9000 out of 15,000 hamlets, almost 40,000 square
miles of farmland and 18,750 square miles of forest.
More:
http://www.angelfire.com/co/COMMONSENSE/vietnam.html
"At the early stage of oil exploration in offshore southern Vietnam,
the former Saigon Administration allowed oil companies including
Pecten, Mobil, Esso and Marathon to conduct petroleum activities
through concession agreements."
Russian firms develop Vietnam's oil and gas
By ALEXEI DOROFEYEV / The Russia Journal
21 Dec 1999
Russia intends to create an "oil and gas bridgehead" in Vietnam - in a
move that some analysts say will boost the country's economic
expansion in Asia.
Vietnam's gas reserves are estimated at 700 billion to 800 billion
cubic meters, and Russia is keen to step up its involvement in the
lucrative industry.
"Viet Nam is emerging as one of the Asia-Pacific region's significant
crude exporters. A second major oil field just started production off
Viet Nam's southern coast,"
Herbert Hoover, later to become President of the United States did a
study that showed that one of the world's largest oil fields ran along
the coast of the South China Sea right off French Indo-China, now
known as Vietnam.
- Denny, Ludwell, We Fight of Oil, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1928.
US analyst Ludwell Denny in his book "We Fight for Oil" noted the
domestic oil shortage and says international diplomacy had failed to
secure any reliable foreign sources of oil for the United States. Fear
of oil shortages would become the most important factor in
international relations, Denny said.
"That empire in Southeast Asia is the last major resource area outside
the control of any one of the major powers of the globe....I believe
that the condition of the Vietnamese people, and the direction in
which their future may be going, are at this stage secondary, not
primary." (Senator McGee, D-Wyo., in the U.S. Senate, Feb. 17, 1965)
In a 1965 speech in Asia, Richard Nixon argued in favor of bombing
North Vietnam to protect the "immense mineral potential" of Indonesia,
which he later referred to as "by far the greatest prize in the
southeast Asian area."
To protect its prizes, the US eventually killed over four million
people in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos between 1965 and 1975. In South
Vietnam alone, the war resulted in a million widows and 879,000
orphans. It destroyed 9000 out of 15,000 hamlets, almost 40,000 square
miles of farmland and 18,750 square miles of forest.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Coordinating Committee for Geoscience Programmes in East and Southeast
Asia (CCOP)
http://www.ccop.or.th/epf/vietnam/vietnam_terms.html
PETROLEUM AGREEMENTS
"The first type of oil and gas agreement applied in Vietnam was the
concession system, in which an oil company is permitted by the host
country to explore and produce petroleum on a certain area on the
condition that it must pay to the State of this country compulsory
taxes with a fixed rate. At the early stage of oil exploration in
offshore southern Vietnam, the former Saigon Administration allowed
oil companies including Pecten, Mobil, Esso and Marathon to conduct
petroleum activities through concession agreements.
After the establishment of PetroVietnam in 1975, in recognition of the
advantage of the production-sharing system, it has been chosen as a
basic frame for petroleum contracts."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
PETROVIETNAM, EXPLORATION OPPORTUNITIES FOR OIL AND NATURAL GAS IN
VIET NAM I.2 Exploration History
The exploration activities for petroleum started in the early 1960s in
the Song Hong Delta, northern Vietnam, with assistance of the former
Soviet Union. By the late 1970's, almost 40 wells had been drilled in
the region, however, only one small gas field was commercially
developed. At the same period, exploration went on in the southern
continental shelf through concession agreements signed with
international oil companies including Mobil, Esso, Pecten, Marathon,
and Texas Union.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Article: "Viet Nam Finds Success in Program Aimed at Building Oil and
Gas Capacity"
Oil and Gas Journal v92, n48
(Nov 28, 1994)
Summary: Viet Nam's efforts to build its oil and gas productive
capacity are paying off. From having no hydrocarbon production just a
few years ago, Viet Nam is emerging as one of the Asia-Pacific
region's significant crude exporters. A second major oil field just
started production off Viet Nam's southern coast, and a string of
recent discoveries bodes well for further oil production increases.
-----------------
Russian firms develop Vietnam's oil and gas
By ALEXEI DOROFEYEV / The Russia Journal
21 Dec 1999
Russia intends to create an "oil and gas bridgehead" in Vietnam - in a
move that some analysts say will boost the country's economic expansion
in Asia.
Vietnam's gas reserves are estimated at 700 billion to 800 billion
cubic meters, and Russia is keen to step up its involvement in the
lucrative industry.
-----------------
-
Study: Agent Orange Lingers in Vietnam Food
August 11, 2003
HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam War-era defoliant Agent Orange continues to
contaminate livestock and fish eaten by Vietnamese decades after it was
used, a study released on Monday showed.
A 2002 study in Bien Hoa city, about 20 miles north of Ho Chi Minh
City, formerly Saigon, showed residents and food had high levels of
dioxin, the August issue of The Journal of Occupational and
Environmental Medicine said.
The report said about 95 percent of blood samples taken from 43 people
in Bien Hoa "were found to have elevated TCDD levels," referring to the
most toxic of the dioxins.
"Although the spraying ended over three decades ago, in certain areas
of Vietnam food is clearly a present-day route of intake of dioxin from
Agent Orange," the study said.
Tests on 16 food samples of chickens, ducks, pork, beef, fish and a
toad from the city's markets, a lake and a nearby air base where Agent
Orange had been stored found "markedly elevated" dioxin levels in six
samples.
Vietnam estimates more than one million of its people have been exposed
to Agent Orange, used from 1962 to 1971 to strip trees and plants...
frederick...@lycos.com
Most Jews aren't even Semites though.
gumby
they are.
Italy, turned out by a terrorist whore. LOL
Wonko The Sane
stops. Go SARS!
Susan Cohen
> "Susan Cohen" wrote
> >> "Wonko The Sane" <Wo...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> >> news:hbB1e.9899$TZ.2180@okepread06...
[snip]
> > get rid of all the gook scum infesting the land. Then it will
> > return to its natural beauty.
> >
> > Susan
> The reefs will recover nicely when the dynamite fishing
> stops. Go SARS!
Actually, it would probably take many years for the coral to regrow.
SARS is all but contained - unless someone deliberately spreads it.
Bird flu, on the other hand, seems to be rampant and uncontrollable.
Susan
Wonko The Sane
Too bad you have a flabby ass.
Send her an email! Maybe she can cheer you up a bit about your ass.
flav...@verizon.net
El Kabong
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. commander in Iraq authorized
prisoner interrogation tactics more harsh than accepted Army practice,
including using guard dogs to exploit "Arab fear of dogs," a memo made
public on Tuesday showed.
The Sept. 14, 2003, memo by Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the
senior commander in Iraq, was released by the American Civil Liberties
Union, which obtained it from the government under court order through
the Freedom of Information Act.
"The memo clearly establishes that Gen. Sanchez authorized unlawful
interrogation techniques for use in Iraq, and in particular these
techniques violate the Geneva Conventions and the Army's own field
manual governing interrogations," ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh said in an
interview.
The Abu Ghraib scandal, in which U.S. forces physically abused and
sexually humiliated Iraqi prisoners at a jail on the outskirts of
Baghdad, occurred on Sanchez's watch. Gen. George Casey replaced him
as top commander in Iraq nine months ago.
In the memo, Sanchez laid out which interrogation techniques were
permitted in Iraq, and said some required his prior approval. Some of
the harshest techniques were disallowed the next month because of
opposition from some military lawyers.
Singh said at least 12 of the techniques were beyond the scope of the
Army field manual, whose interrogation rules are designed to adhere to
the Geneva Conventions.
The memo also noted that the Geneva Conventions "are applicable" and
that detainees must be treated humanely.
The fact that the Sanchez memo existed was previously known, but not
its contents.
The memo allowed for military working dogs, or MWD, to be present
during interrogations, saying the practice "exploits Arab fear of dogs
while maintaining security during interrogations. Dogs will be muzzled
and under control of MWD handler at all times to prevent contract with
detainee."
OTHER TECHNIQUES
The memo permitted "stress positions," in which a prisoner is placed
in potentially painful bodily positions to try to get them to talk. It
allowed for "environmental manipulation" such as making a room hot or
cold or using an "unpleasant smell," isolating a prisoner, and
disrupting normal sleep patterns.
It allowed the "false flag" technique of "convincing the detainee that
individuals from a country other than the United States are
interrogating him."
The ACLU said the Pentagon initially refused to release the Sanchez
memo on national-security grounds.
"It is apparent that the government has been holding this document not
out of any genuine concern that it will compromise national security
but to protect itself from embarrassment," Singh said.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=9&u=/nm/20050330/ts_nm/iraq_usa_sanchez_dc
Osric
What a load of bollocks. The South Vietnamese lost because they were a
corrupt regime that alienated its own citizens, ably assisted by the
behaviour of the Americans to the point that for most Vietnamese the
communists were the lesser of two evils. The NVA were not defeated and the
Americans withdrew when it became wholly apparent that they were going to
lose even with the gloves off.
--
Osric
THE BORDERS OF MY COUNTRY
RUN AROUND THE SOLES OF MY FEET
>
>
El Kabong
Herbert Hoover, later to become President of the United States did a
study that showed that one of the world's largest oil fields ran along
the coast of the South China Sea right off French Indo-China, now
known as Vietnam.
- Denny, Ludwell, We Fight of Oil, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1928.
Ralph McGehee was a CIA agent for 25 years, active mainly in
South-East Asia, and received a career achievement medal upon
retirement. Initially a gung-ho anti-communist crusader, McGehee's
experiences in Vietnam, where he witnessed American bombing and
napalming of villages, and of the men, women and children who lived in
them, led him to examine closely what the CIA was really all about. He
concluded that:
"Essentially the CIA stopped all accurate info on Vietnam while
conducting a propaganda campaign to keep us in this war that was
unwinnable. We were there to impose a US-controlled regime over
Vietnam....We refused to admit the real strength of the South
Vietnamese Communists. Had we ever done it, then we would have to come
up with totally new justifications for being there or just pulled
out."
"The CIA is not now nor has it ever been a central intelligence
agency. It is the covert action arm of the President's foreign policy
advisers. In that capacity it overthrows or supports foreign
governments while reporting "intelligence" justifying those
activities. It shapes its intelligence, even in such critical areas as
Soviet nuclear weapons capability, to support presidential policy.
Disinformation is a large part of its covert action responsibility,
and the American people are the primary target of its lies."
After a long legal battle with the CIA censors Ralph McGehee published
in 1983 his account of the CIA in his book Deadly Deceits (from which
the paragraph above is quoted). A synopsis of this book is at Ralph
McGehee, The CIA and Deadly Deceits
http://home1.gte.net/res0k62m/mcgehee.htm
The 'official' or commonly accepted version of how and why the U.S.
was involved in Vietnam sort of goes along the following lines:
Non-communist South Vietnam was invaded by communist North Vietnam
The United States came to the aid of the regime in the South.
The regime in the South was democratic
Yet, it turns out that this is untrue, and it required massive
propaganda to create this standard and accepted image.
A lot of the info on the webpage Media, Propaganda and Vietnam is a
summary of part of journalist John Pilger's book, Heroes, (Jonathan
Cape 1986, Vintage 2001), mainly chapters 15 and 20, mostly written in
the 1980s (and reprinted in 2001, from which the citations are taken.
Where page numbers are cited in parenthesis, it is from this book
unless indicated otherwise). He was in Vietnam many times, during the
war, and returned on various occassions as well. He received a number
of awards for his Vietnam reporting.
Media, Propaganda and Vietnam
http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media/Propaganda/Vietnam.asp
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rev. P.J. Billy Bob Bubba, Jr.
testified that he found extensive bruising when he examined Mowhoush
shortly after he died. "So, at some point prior to the 26th, he had
been beaten," Ryan said.
An autopsy revealed that Mowhoush had also suffered broken ribs,
testimony showed.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=533&e=4&u=/ap/20050402/ap_on_re_us/prisoner_abuse
By ROBERT WELLER, Associated Press Writer
FORT CARSON, Colo. - Previously secret court testimony indicates an
Iraqi general imprisoned by U.S. forces was badly bruised and may have
been severely beaten two days before he died of suffocation during
interrogation.
References to the alleged beating appear in a transcript, released
under court order, from a military preliminary hearing for three
soldiers charged with murder and dereliction of duty in the death of
Maj. Gen. Abed Mowhoush on Nov. 26, 2003. A fourth soldier faces the
same charges but waived a hearing.
During the interrogation, Army prosecutors claim Mowhoush was put
headfirst into a sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord and
knocked down before the soldiers sat and stood on him, prosecutors
said. The cause of death was determined to be suffocation.
The defendants — Chief Warrant Officers Lewis Welshofer and Jefferson
Williams, Sgt. 1st Class William Sommer and Spc. Jerry Loper — have
all denied wrongdoing, saying commanders had sanctioned their actions.
According to the transcript, witnesses said others had also beaten
Mowhoush days before the Army interrogation. Their names and agencies
were blacked out.
Col. David A. Teeples, the men's commander, said during the closed
hearing: "My thought was that the death of Mowhoush was brought about
by .... (blacked out) and then it was unfortunate and accidental, what
had happened under an interrogation by our people."
According to the transcript, Army special investigator Curtis Ryan
testified that he found extensive bruising when he examined Mowhoush
shortly after he died. "So, at some point prior to the 26th, he had
been beaten," Ryan said.
An autopsy revealed that Mowhoush had also suffered broken ribs,
testimony showed.
Wonko The Sane
"Rev. P.J. Billy Bob Bubba, Jr." <frederickdouglass0 at lycos.com> wrote in
message news:iott41prmbirkfuba...@4ax.com...
> According to the transcript, Army special investigator Curtis Ryan
> testified that he found extensive bruising when he examined Mowhoush
> shortly after he died. "So, at some point prior to the 26th, he had
> been beaten," Ryan said.
>
> An autopsy revealed that Mowhoush had also suffered broken ribs,
> testimony showed.
>
exhumed from one of Saddam's mass graves.
Rev. P.J. Billy Bob Bubba, Jr.
was an American problem, that's bullshit. It's a worldwide plague
that has been going on for over 1000 years.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3937203.stm
Thursday, 29 July, 2004, 15:24 GMT 16:24 UK
Vatican gags sex scandal bishop
An investigator sent by the Vatican to look into a sex scandal at
seminary in Austria has banned the local bishop from talking to the
media.
Bishop Klaus Kueng, who was named as investigator by Pope John Paul
II, said the gagging order was necessary to halt the damage being done
by the scandal.
Photographs have appeared in Austrian media of clerics at St Poelten
seminary kissing and fondling student priests.
Local bishop Kurt Krenn caused outrage by describing the incidents as
pranks.
The director of the Roman Catholic priests' training college and his
assistant have already resigned, but Bishop Krenn has so far resisted
calls by some of his congregation to quit his post.
The appointment of Bishop Kueng, of the Austrian city of Feldkirch, by
the Pope followed a 27-year-old Polish student from the seminary being
charged with the possession and distribution of child pornography.
The affair has shocked Austria and embarrassed the Catholic Church.
-----------------
"Archbishop Paetz has been accused by fellow priests of paying night
visits to the lodgings of seminarians, cuddling up to young clerics in
public and using an underground tunnel to pay unannounced visits to
his targets. "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1898532.stm
Thursday, 28 March, 2002, 11:39 GMT
Polish archbishop quits in sex row
A Polish archbishop under investigation by the Vatican has resigned
amid accusations that he molested young clerics.
Underground tunnel
Archbishop Paetz has been accused by fellow priests of paying night
visits to the lodgings of seminarians, cuddling up to young clerics in
public and using an underground tunnel to pay unannounced visits to
his targets.
He is the highest-ranking prelate to be brought down by a scandal of
this kind since Austrian Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer was forced to
give up all his duties in 1998, amid allegations that he had molested
young boys.
------------------------
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/07/13/1089694354244.html?from=storylhs
Sex scandal in Austrian seminary
By Ian Traynor
Vienna
July 14, 2004
The Austrian Catholic Church has been plunged into its second big sex
scandal in a decade when a seminary run by arch-conservatives was
alleged to be the site of orgies among young priests and their
teachers.
The church announced yesterday that it would investigate charges of
homosexuality between priests and seminarians at a seminary outside
Vienna.
A church panel in the Sankt Poelten diocese west of the capital agreed
to the inquiry after the news magazine Profil published photographs
showing leading clerics of the local seminary fondling and kissing
student priests.
Profil said investigators had also found at least 40,000 mostly
pornographic photographs at the seminary.
The director of the seminary and his assistant have both quit as
details of the scandal emerged in recent days. The seminary in St
Poelten, west of Vienna, comes under the authority of the conservative
Bishop Kurt Krenn.
While the Austrian Bishops' Conference issued a statement declaring
that homosexuality and pornography had no place at the seminary,
Bishop Krenn refused to resign and appeared to compound the crisis by
saying: "This has got nothing to do with homosexuality. It's just
boys' pranks."
---------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1020400,00.html
Vatican told bishops to cover up sex abuse
Expulsion threat in secret documents
Read the 1962 Vatican document (PDF file)
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Observer/documents/2003/08/16/Criminales.pdf
Antony Barnett, public affairs editor
Sunday August 17, 2003
The Observer
The Vatican instructed Catholic bishops around the world to cover up
cases of sexual abuse or risk being thrown out of the Church.
The Observer has obtained a 40-year-old confidential document from the
secret Vatican archive which lawyers are calling a 'blueprint for
deception and concealment'. One British lawyer acting for Church child
abuse victims has described it as 'explosive'.
The 69-page Latin document bearing the seal of Pope John XXIII was
sent to every bishop in the world. The instructions outline a policy
of 'strictest' secrecy in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse and
threatens those who speak out with excommunication.
They also call for the victim to take an oath of secrecy at the time
of making a complaint to Church officials. It states that the
instructions are to 'be diligently stored in the secret archives of
the Curia [Vatican] as strictly confidential. Nor is it to be
published nor added to with any commentaries.'
The document, which has been confirmed as genuine by the Roman
Catholic Church in England and Wales, is called 'Crimine
solicitationies', which translates as 'instruction on proceeding in
cases of solicitation'.
It focuses on sexual abuse initiated as part of the confessional
relationship between a priest and a member of his congregation. But
the instructions also cover what it calls the 'worst crime', described
as an obscene act perpetrated by a cleric with 'youths of either sex
or with brute animals (bestiality)'.
Bishops are instructed to pursue these cases 'in the most secretive
way... restrained by a perpetual silence... and everyone... is to
observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of
the Holy Office... under the penalty of excommunication'.
Texan lawyer Daniel Shea uncovered the document as part of his work
for victims of abuse from Catholic priests in the US. He has handed it
over to US authorities, urging them to launch a federal investigation
into the clergy's alleged cover-up of sexual abuse.
He said: 'These instructions went out to every bishop around the globe
and would certainly have applied in Britain. It proves there was an
international conspiracy by the Church to hush up sexual abuse issues.
It is a devious attempt to conceal criminal conduct and is a blueprint
for deception and concealment.'
British lawyer Richard Scorer, who acts for children abused by
Catholic priests in the UK, echoes this view and has described the
document as 'explosive'.
He said: 'We always suspected that the Catholic Church systematically
covered up abuse and tried to silence victims. This document appears
to prove it. Threatening excommunication to anybody who speaks out
shows the lengths the most senior figures in the Vatican were prepared
to go to prevent the information getting out to the public domain.'
Scorer pointed out that as the documents dates back to 1962 it rides
roughshod over the Catholic Church's claim that the issue of sexual
abuse was a modern phenomenon.
He claims the discovery of the document will raise fresh questions
about the actions of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the head of the
Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales.
Murphy-O'Connor has been accused of covering up allegations of child
abuse when he was Bishop of Arundel and Brighton. Instead of reporting
to the police allegations of abuse against Michael Hill, a priest in
his charge, he moved him to another position where he was later
convicted for abusing nine children.
Although Murphy-O'Connor has apologised publicly for his mistake,
Scorer claims the secret Vatican document raises the question about
whether his failure to report Hill was due to him following this
instruction from Rome.
Scorer, who acts for some of Hill's victims, said: 'I want to know
whether Murphy-O'Connor knew of these Vatican instructions and, if so,
did he apply it. If not, can he tell us why not?'
Larry Drivon, a lawyer who represents alleged victims of sexual abuse,
called the document "a blueprint for deception."
"It's an instruction manual on how to deceive and how to protect
pedophiles," Drivon said.
------------------------
Thursday January 31, 2003
Church Offers Payout for Sex Abuse
DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) - The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has agreed
to a landmark $110 million payment to Irish children sexually abused
by its clergy over decades. Sex abuse campaigners and opposition
lawmakers brand the offer as inadequate.
The deal late Wednesday was designed to conclude a 10-year struggle by
the church in this predominantly Catholic nation to overcome sex
scandals going back to the 1940s. More than 20 priests, brothers and
nuns have already been convicted of molesting children, with much of
the abuse taking place in state-funded, church-run schools.
The court cases are cited as one factor fueling a steady decline in
Mass attendance in this country of 3.8 million people, more than 90
percent of whom are baptized Catholics.
-----------------------------------------------
Catholic priests have been raping little boys for 1500 years:
The Emotional Life of Nations
by Lloyd deMause
Chapter 8----The Evolution of Childrearing
But placing boys as oblates into monasteries only made them available
for rape by monks, who could not keep their hands off them. One abbott
wrote about an infant boy brought to the monastery by his father:
...the man turned the child over to me altogether, and I received the
baby with pleasure and joy and a clean heart. [But] when the boy got
older and had reached the age of about ten...I was tortured and
overwhelmed by an obscene desire, and the beast of impure lust and a
desire for pleasure burned in my soul...I wanted to have sex with the
boy...1
Sex with boys was the central obsession of monks beginning with the
early anchorites who went to the desert; Macarius saw so many monks
having sex with boys in the desert that he strongly advised monks not
to take them in.2 But the need was too strong, and even rules such as
those requiring boys to have escorts when going to the lavatory did
not prevent monks from routinely using their oblates sexually.3 So
many monks raped their novices that there was a common saying, "With
wine and boys around, the monks have no need of the Devil to tempt
them."4 Priests also commonly used confessions to solicit sex with
boys, but early Christian penitentials assessed penances only for the
boys, since they were blamed for their own rape. Peter Damian said in
the eleventh century that sex with boys in monasteries "rages like a
bloodthirsty beast in the midst of the sheepfold of Christ with bold
freedom" and suggested both the man and boy be punished as accomplices
for a "sin against nature."5
1. John Boswell, Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe. New York:
Villard Books, 1994, p. 247.
2. Aline Rousselle, Porneia, p. 148.
3. Patricia A. Quinn, Better Than The Sons of Kings: Boys and Monks in
the Early Middle Ages. New York: Peter Lang, 1988, p. 165.
4. Elizabeth Abbott, A History of Celibacy, p. 101.
5. Peter Damian, Book of Gomorrah. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier
University Press, 1982, pp. 27, 42.
"Who would not shudder if he were given the choice of eternal death or
life again as a child? Who would not choose to die?"
St. Augustin
Rev. P.J. Billy Bob Bubba, Jr.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1451137,00.html
Fury at 'shoot for fun' memo
Outburst by US security firm in Iraq is attacked by human rights
groups
Mark Townsend
Sunday April 3, 2005
The Observer
One of the biggest private security firms in Iraq has created outrage
after a memo to staff claimed it is 'fun' to shoot people.
Emails seen by The Observer reveal that employees of Blackwater
Security were recently sent a message stating that 'actually it is
"fun" to shoot some people.'
Dated 7 March and bearing the name of Blackwater's president, Gary
Jackson, the electronic newsletter adds that terrorists 'need to get
creamed, and it's fun, meaning satisfying, to do the shooting of such
folk.'
Human rights groups said yesterday that the comments raised fresh
questions over the role of civilian contractors operating in Iraq and
other world flashpoints.
'We are very concerned about the increased use of security companies,
there needs to be more inspection and regulation of these companies,'
said a spokesman for Amnesty International.
Blackwater has already been the subject of lobbying efforts to
introduce tighter regulations on private military operations in Iraq.
It is one of the fastest growing private security firms in the world,
and achieved global prominence last year when four of its men were
ambushed by a crowd of Iraqis and their bodies mutilated and dragged
around the Iraqi city of Falluja.
The controversial wording of the Blackwater bulletin appears to be an
attempt to criticise the 'righteous outcry' that followed a recent
statement from a senior US Marine general who, on returning home from
Iraq, claimed it was 'fun to shoot some people'. While the views of
Lieutenant-General James Mattis drew a frosty response from the
Pentagon, others said his observations reflected the harsh realities
of war.
Blackwater's entry to the debate appears to suggest that satisfaction
can be drawn from combat if 'the bad guys' get what they deserve.
'All of us who have ever waited through an hour and a half movie, or
read some 300 pages of a thriller, to the point when the bad guys
finally get their comeuppance know this perfectly well,' says the
opening address of the six-page bulletin, which The Observer believes
to be authentic.
Called Blackwater Tactical Weekly, the newsletter was sent to
environmental activist Frank Hewetson as well as the firm's staff.
Last year Hewetson was offered a job by Blackwater with a salary of up
to £85,000 plus health benefits to work with its 'military crisis
operations support team.' Although he declined, Hewetson remains on
the firm's database.
The 7 March bulletin also features a plug for Blackwater's training
academy which offers potential recruits an eight-week course that
includes training in various firearms, close quarter protection,
physical security as well as 'ground fighting.'
Among its various roles in post-war Iraq, Blackwater has guarded
provincial outposts for the Iraqi coalition provisional authority and
had the contract to keep former chief US envoy Paul Bremer alive.
The company has been praised for its role in the rescue of a wounded
soldier in Najaf. Defence experts have described Blackwater as a major
player in the field of private arms with an important role to play in
aiding American security in the war on terror.
Other Blackwater emails seen by The Observer, from last year, indicate
the large market for civilian contractors in war zones. 'We will
probably require at least 3000-4000 professionals above and beyond
what we have in the Blackwater employment and resource system,' states
one.
There are thought to be as many as 20,000 private enterprise soldiers
in Iraq, with the US military an advocate of their use. This system
allows governments to save money on paying permanent soldiers, and
offers the political bonus that it is unlikely to attract as much
media attention as conventional troops.
The Observer made numerous attempts to contact Blackwater's head
office in North Carolina, but no calls were returned. There is,
however, no evidence that company staff have ever shot people for fun.
----------------------------------------
Breaking News and Commentary from Citizens for Legitimate Government
April 3, 2005
All links to articles as summarized below are available here:
http://legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news
US relied on 'drunken liar' to justify war [No, not Bush, another
'drunken liar'] 'Crazy' Iraqi spy was full of misinformation, says
report --An alcoholic cousin of an aide to Ahmed Chalabi has emerged
as the key source in the US rationale for going to war in Iraq.
According to a US presidential commission looking into pre-war
intelligence failures, the basis for pivotal intelligence on Iraq's
alleged biological weapons programmes and fleet of mobile labs was a
spy described as 'crazy' by his intelligence handlers and a
'congenital liar' by his friends.
Green light for Iraqi prison abuse came right from the top
--Classified documents show the former US military chief in Iraq
personally sanctioned measures banned by the Geneva Conventions.
America's leading civil liberties group has demanded an investigation
into the former US military commander Iraq [Lt General Ricardo
Sanchez] after a formerly classified memo revealed that he personally
sanctioned a series of coercive interrogation techniques outlawed by
the Geneva Conventions. The group claims that his directives were
directly linked to the sort of abuses that took place at Abu Ghraib.
Sanchez Orchestrated Torture Tactics in Iraq --It was claimed that
General Richardo Sanchez, a US military commander in Iraq, determined
the interrogation techniques applied on Iraqi prisoners by US
soldiers.
US General Approved 'Extreme' Interrogation Methods --The
highest-ranking US general in Iraq authorized the use of interrogation
techniques that included intimidation through the use of dogs "to
exploit Arab fears" of them, stress positions, and sensory
deprivation. A total of 29 interrogation techniques were approved,
including 12 which "far exceeded" US military regulations as well as
the Geneva Conventions covering prisoners of war.
L Alpert
> http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1451137,00.html
>
> Fury at 'shoot for fun' memo
>
> Outburst by US security firm in Iraq is attacked by human rights
> groups
>
> Mark Townsend
> Sunday April 3, 2005
> The Observer
>
> One of the biggest private security firms in Iraq has created outrage
> after a memo to staff claimed it is 'fun' to shoot people.
>
> Emails seen by The Observer reveal that employees of Blackwater
> Security were recently sent a message stating that 'actually it is
> "fun" to shoot some people.'
>
> Dated 7 March and bearing the name of Blackwater's president, Gary
> Jackson, the electronic newsletter adds that terrorists 'need to get
> creamed, and it's fun, meaning satisfying, to do the shooting of such
> folk.'
>
So why aren't these human rights groups attacking the terrorists? I would
have to think that Mr. Jackson has a valid point.
Rev. P.J. Billy Bob Bubba, Jr.
U.S. ENCOURAGED BY VIETNAM VOTE;
Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror
By PETER GROSE Special to The New York Times - Sep 4, 1967, pg. 2
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/nytimes/82602711.html?did=82602711&FMT=ABS&FMTS=AI&date=Sep+4%2C+1967&author=By+PETER+GROSE+Special+to+The+New+York+Times&desc=U.S.+ENCOURAGED+BY+VIETNAM+VOTE
WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 United States officials were surprised and
heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential
election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.
According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million
registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked
reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.
The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to
destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a
preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete
returns reaching here.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
John Pilger finds our children learning lies
In our schools, children learn that the US fought the Vietnam war
against a "communist threat" to "us". Is it any wonder that so many
don't understand the truth about Iraq?
John Pilger
02/05/17 "New Statesman" - - How does thought control work in
societies that call themselves free? Why are famous journalists so
eager, almost as a reflex, to minimise the culpability of a prime
minister who shares responsibility for the unprovoked attack on a
defenceless people, for laying waste to their land and for killing at
least 100,000 people, most of them civilians, having sought to justify
this epic crime with demonstrable lies? What made the BBC's Mark
Mardell describe the invasion of Iraq as "a vindication for him"? Why
have broadcasters never associated the British or American state with
terrorism? Why have such privileged communicators, with unlimited
access to the facts, lined up to describe an unobserved, unverified,
illegitimate, cynically manipulated election, held under a brutal
occupation, as "democratic", with the pristine aim of being "free and
fair"? That quotation belongs to Helen Boaden, the director of BBC
News.
Have she and the others read no history? Or is the history they know,
or choose to know, subject to such amnesia and omission that it
produces a world-view as seen only through a one-way moral mirror?
There is no suggestion of conspiracy. This one-way mirror ensures that
most of humanity is regarded in terms of its usefulness to "us", its
desirability or expendability, its worthiness or unworthiness: for
example, the notion of "good" Kurds in Iraq and "bad" Kurds in Turkey.
The unerring assumption is that "we" in the dominant west have moral
standards superior to "theirs". One of "their" dictators (often a
former client of ours, such as Saddam Hussein) kills thousands of
people and he is declared a monster, a second Hitler. When one of our
leaders does the same he is viewed, at worst, like Blair, in
Shakespearean terms. Those who kill people with car bombs are
"terrorists"; those who kill far more people with cluster bombs are
the noble occupants of a "quagmire".
Historical amnesia can spread quickly. Only ten years after the
Vietnam war, which I reported, an opinion poll in the United States
found that a third of Americans could not remember which side their
government had supported. This demonstrated the insidious power of the
dominant propaganda, that the war was essentially a conflict of "good"
Vietnamese against "bad" Vietnamese, in which the Americans became
"involved", bringing democracy to the people of southern Vietnam faced
with a "communist threat". Such a false and dishonest assumption
permeated the media coverage, with honourable exceptions. The truth is
that the longest war of the 20th century was a war waged against
Vietnam, north and south, communist and non-communist, by America. It
was an unprovoked invasion of the people's homeland and their lives,
just like the invasion of Iraq. Amnesia ensures that, while the
relatively few deaths of the invaders are constantly acknowledged, the
deaths of up to five million Vietnamese are consigned to oblivion.
What are the roots of this? Certainly, "popular culture", especially
Hollywood movies, can decide what and how little we remember.
Selective education at a tender age performs the same task. I have
been sent a widely used revision guide for GCSE modern world history,
on Vietnam and the cold war. This is learned by 14- to-16-year-olds in
our schools. It informs their understanding of a pivotal period in
history, which must influence how they make sense of today's news from
Iraq and elsewhere.
It is shocking. It says that under the 1954 Geneva Accord: "Vietnam
was partitioned into communist north and democratic south." In one
sentence, truth is despatched. The final declaration of the Geneva
conference divided Vietnam "temporarily" until free national elections
were held on 26 July 1956. There was little doubt that Ho Chi Minh
would win and form Vietnam's first democratically elected government.
Certainly, President Eisenhower was in no doubt of this. "I have never
talked with a person knowledgeable in Indo-Chinese affairs," he wrote,
"who did not agree that . . . 80 per cent of the population would have
voted for the communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader."
Not only did the United States refuse to allow the UN to administer
the agreed elections two years later, but the "democratic" regime in
the south was an invention. One of the inventors, the CIA official
Ralph McGehee, describes in his masterly book Deadly Deceits how a
brutal expatriate mandarin, Ngo Dinh Diem, was imported from New
Jersey to be "president" and a fake government was put in place. "The
CIA," he wrote, "was ordered to sustain that illusion through
propaganda [placed in the media]."
Phoney elections were arranged, hailed in the west as "free and fair",
with American officials fabricating "an 83 per cent turnout despite
Vietcong terror". The GCSE guide alludes to none of this, nor that
"the terrorists", whom the Americans called the Vietcong, were also
southern Vietnamese defending their homeland against the American
invasion and whose resistance was popular. For Vietnam, read Iraq.
The tone of this tract is from the point of view of "us". There is no
sense that a national liberation movement existed in Vietnam, merely
"a communist threat", merely the propaganda that "the USA was
terrified that many other countries might become communist and help
the USSR - they didn't want to be outnumbered", merely that President
Lyndon B Johnson "was determined to keep South Vietnam communist-free"
(emphasis as in the original). This proceeds quickly to the Tet
Offensive of 1968, which "ended in the loss of thousands of American
lives - 14,000 in 1969 - most were young men". There is no mention of
the millions of Vietnamese lives also lost in the offensive. And
America merely began "a bombing campaign": there is no mention of the
greatest tonnage of bombs dropped in the history of warfare, of a
military strategy that was deliberately designed to force millions of
people to abandon their homes, and of chemicals used in a manner that
profoundly changed the environment and the genetic order, leaving a
once-bountiful land all but ruined.
This guide is from a private publisher, but its bias and omissions
reflect that of the official syllabuses, such as the syllabus from
Oxford and Cambridge, whose cold war section refers to Soviet
"expansionism" and the "spread" of communism; there is not a word
about the "spread" of rapacious America. One of its "key questions"
is: "How effectively did the USA contain the spread of communism?"
Good versus evil for untutored minds.
"Phew, loads for you to learn here . . ." say the authors of the
revision guide, "so get it learned right now." Phew, the British
empire did not happen; there is nothing about the atrocious colonial
wars that were models for the successor power, America, in Indonesia,
Vietnam, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, to name but a few along modern
history's imperial trail of blood of which Iraq is the latest.
And now Iran? The drumbeat has already begun. How many more innocent
people have to die before those who filter the past and the present
wake up to their moral responsibility to protect our memory and the
lives of human beings?
This article first appeared in the New Statesman. For the latest in
current and cultural affairs subscribe to the New Statesman print
edition.
Copyright: New Statesman.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/pilger.php?articleid=2507
Torture Is News But It's Not New
May 8, 2004
by John Pilger
When I first went to report the American war against Vietnam, in the
1960s, I visited the Saigon offices of the great American newspapers
and TV companies, and the international news agencies.
I was struck by the similarity of displays on many of their office
pinboards. "That's where we hang our conscience," said an agency
photographer.
There were photographs of dismembered bodies, of soldiers holding up
severed ears and testicles and of the actual moments of torture. There
were men and women being beaten to death, and drowned, and humiliated
in stomach-turning ways. On one photograph was a stick-on balloon
above the torturer's head, which said: "That'll teach you to talk to
the press."
The question came up whenever visitors caught sight of these pictures:
why had they not been published? A standard response was that
newspapers would not publish them, because their readers would not
accept them. And to publish them, without an explanation of the wider
circumstances of the war, was to "sensationalize."
At first, I accepted the apparent logic of this; atrocities and
torture by "us" were surely aberrations by definition. My education
thereafter was rapid; for this rationale did not explain the growing
evidence of civilians killed, maimed, made homeless and sent mad by
"anti-personnel" bombs dropped on villages, schools and hospitals.
Nor did it explain the children burned to a bubbling pulp by something
called napalm, or farmers hunted in helicopter "turkey shoots," or a
"suspect" tortured to death with a rope around his neck, dragged
behind a jeep filled with doped and laughing American soldiers.
Nor did it explain why so many soldiers kept human parts in their
wallets and special forces officers who kept human skulls in their
huts, inscribed with the words: "One down, a million to go."
Philip Jones Griffiths, the great Welsh freelance photographer with
whom I worked in Vietnam, tried to stop an American officer blowing to
bits a huddled group of women and children.
"They're civilians," he yelled.
"What civilians?" came the reply.
Jones Griffiths and others tried to interest the news agencies in
pictures that told the truth about that atrocious war. The response
often was: "So what's new?"
The difference today is that the truth of the equally atrocious
Anglo-American invasion of Iraq is news. Moreover, leaked Pentagon
documents make clear that torture is widespread in Iraq. Amnesty
International says it is "systematic."
And yet, we have only begun to identify the unspeakable element that
unites the invasion of Vietnam with the invasion of Iraq. This element
draws together most colonial occupations, no matter where or when. It
is the essence of imperialism, a word only now being restored to our
dictionaries. It is racism.
In Kenya in the 1950s, the British slaughtered an estimated 10,000
Kenyans and ran concentration camps where the conditions were so harsh
that 402 inmates died in just one month. Torture, flogging and abuse
of women and children were commonplace. "The special prisons," wrote
the imperial historian V.G. Kiernan, "were probably as bad as any
similar Nazi or Japanese establishments."
None of this was news at the time. The "Mau Mau terror" was reported
and perceived one way: as "demonic" black against white. The racist
message was clear, but "our" racism was never mentioned.
In Kenya, as in the failed American attempt to colonize Vietnam, as in
Iraq, racism fueled the indiscriminate attacks on civilians, and the
torture. When they arrived in Vietnam, the Americans regarded the
Vietnamese as human lice. They called them "gooks" and "dinks" and
"slopes" and they killed them in industrial quantities, just as they
had slaughtered the Native Americans; indeed, Vietnam was known as
"Indian country."
In Iraq, nothing has changed.
In boasting openly about killing "rats in their nest," US marine
snipers, who in Fallujah shot dead women, children and the elderly,
just as German snipers shot dead Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, were
reflecting the racism of their leaders.
Paul W Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defense Secretary who is said to be the
architect of the invasion of Iraq, has spoken of "snakes" and
"draining the swamps" in the "uncivilized parts of the world."
Much of this modern imperial racism was invented in Britain. Listen to
its subtle expressions, as British spokesmen find their weasel words
in refusing to acknowledge the numbers of Iraqis killed or maimed by
their cluster bombs, whose actual effects are no different from the
effects of suicide bombers; they are weapons of terrorism. Listen to
Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, drone on in parliament,
refusing to say how many innocent people are the victims of his
government.
In Vietnam, the shooting of women and their babies in the village of
My Lai was called an "American Tragedy" by Newsweek magazine. Be
prepared for more of the "our tragedy" line that invites sympathy for
the invaders.
The Americans left three million dead in Vietnam and a once bountiful
land devastated and poisoned with the effects of the chemical weapons
they used. While American politicians and Hollywood wrung their hands
over GIs missing-in-action, who gave a damn for the Vietnamese?
In Iraq, nothing has changed.
First published in the Mirror
frederick...@lycos.com
Wonko The Sane wrote:
> >
> I hope they beat him to death with the thigh bone of a victim
> exhumed from one of Saddam's mass graves.
Now that you mention it, where are all those mass graves?
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1263901,00.html
Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by
Tony Blair that '400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves'
is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered.
The claims by Blair in November and December of last year, were
given widespread credence, quoted by MPs and widely published,
including in the introduction to a US government pamphlet on Iraq's
mass graves.
In that publication - Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves
produced by USAID, the US government aid distribution agency, Blair is
quoted from 20 November last year: 'We've already discovered, just so
far, the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves.'
On 14 December Blair repeated the claim in a statement issued by
Downing Street in response to the arrest of Saddam Hussein and posted
on the Labour party website that: 'The remains of 400,000 human beings
[have] already [been] found in mass graves.'
The admission that the figure has been hugely inflated follows a
week in which Blair accepted responsibility for charges in the Butler
report over the way in which Downing Street pushed intelligence
reports 'to the outer limits' in the case for the threat posed by
Iraq.
Downing Street's admission comes amid growing questions over
precisely how many perished under Saddam's three decades of terror,
and the location of the bodies of the dead.
The Baathist regime was responsible for massive human rights
abuses and murder on a large scale - not least in well-documented
campaigns including the gassing of Halabja, the al-Anfal campaign
against Kurdish villages and the brutal repression of the Shia
uprising - but serious questions are now emerging about the scale of
Saddam Hussein's murders.
----------------------------------------------
The US mass graves expert is Sandra Hodgkinson, who has worked
with the "Iraqi opposition" and Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress
since 1998.
http://www.dcmilitary.com/army/pentagram/8_26/national_news/24050-1.html
Sandra Hodgkinson, the Coalition Provisional Authority's director of
human rights
Under the Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998, defense officials provided
some war crimes and crimes against humanity training at the Defense
Institute of International Legal Studies in Newport, R.I., for the
Iraqi opposition. "I was the course coordinator and an instructor for
that program," Hodgkinson said".
In her civilian capacity, Hodgkinson has participated in the State
Department's Future of Iraq Project, and about two years ago, she
spoke at a Human Rights and Transitional Justice seminar arranged by
the Iraqi National Congress in London. In February she began working
with the Defense Department's Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance, deploying first to Kuwait and then to Baghdad
on March 16
Read the news article at the bottom, wherein is stated:
"A Defense Intelligence Agency internal review determined that much of
the information Iraqi defectors gave to U.S. officials could not be
substantiated or was otherwise unusable.....
"that they and others now question the credibility of the group's
leader, Ahmad Chalabi, as well as doubt the Iraqi National Congress. "
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=8&u=/nm/2003110...
Investigators Say Iraqi Mass Graves Hold 300,000
By Andrew Hammond
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi and U.S. rights investigators said on
Saturday they suspected Iraq had up to 260 mass graves containing the
bodies of at people murdered by the former regime of Saddam Hussein.
"We have reports of 260 mass graves and we have confirmed
approximately 40 of them," said Sandra Hodgkinson, director of the
Coalition Provisional Authority's (CPA) mass grave action plan'.
________________________
Iraqi Defector Information Unreliable
Sept. 29, 2003
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Defense Intelligence Agency internal review
determined that much of the information Iraqi defectors gave to U.S.
officials could not be substantiated or was otherwise unusable, the
New York Times reported on Monday, citing federal sources.
Also, some defectors from Iraq that the Iraqi National Congress had
introduced to U.S. intelligence officials gave false information about
their credentials and misled interviewers about how much they knew
about the Iraqi government's weapons program, said the paper.
No more than one-third of the information gained from the defectors
was potentially useful and many leads did not pan out, officials told
the daily.
Some of the intelligence in question includes information on Iraq's
suspected program for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Data
provided about the Iraqi government is also doubted, the officials
informed the Times.
The arrangement between the United States and the exile group, which
was funded by taxpayers, may have wasted more than $1 million,
officials informed the Times, adding that they and others now question
the credibility of the group's leader, Ahmad Chalabi, as well as doubt
the Iraqi National Congress.
peace2005
El Kabong
"The rally must be peaceful. You should demand the withdrawal of the
occupation forces and press for quicker trials for Saddam Hussein and
his aides before an Iraqi court," Suwaidi told worshippers in
Baghdad's Sadr City.
Sunni clerics from the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), which
organised a boycott of the January elections, urged followers to join
the protest.
Iraq call for demo against US presence
Friday 08 April 2005, 20:35 Makka Time, 17:35 GMT
Iraqi leaders have called for a mass demonstration against the US-led
troop presence on the second anniversary of the overthrow of Saddam
Hussein's government.
Preachers called on their congregations to rally in Firdus Square on
Saturday in central Baghdad where US troops helped haul down a statue
of Saddam Hussein in footage that was beamed around the world.
Both Shia and Sunni leaders joined forces in calling for the protest.
Withdrawal demand
"To mark the anniversary of the start of the occupation, I call on all
Iraqis to demonstrate tomorrow in Firdus Square where Saddam's statue
was toppled," said Shaikh Abd al-Zahra al-Suwaidi, a supporter of Shia
leader Muqtada al-Sadr.
"The rally must be peaceful. You should demand the withdrawal of the
occupation forces and press for quicker trials for Saddam Hussein and
his aides before an Iraqi court," Suwaidi told worshippers in
Baghdad's Sadr City.
Sunni clerics from the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), which
organised a boycott of the January elections, urged followers to join
the protest.
"I ask all Iraqis to join in peaceful demonstrations tomorrow against
the occupation," said Shaikh Harith al-Dhari.
"The people must speak with one voice and say: 'No to the occupation;
the occupiers must leave.'
"Two years have passed and all we see is bloodshed, destruction and
looting."
The AMS has lines of communication to the Sunni Arab fighters
operating in Iraq.
Fighters loyal to al-Sadr mounted two uprisings against US-led troops
in central and southern Iraq last year before accepting a truce
brokered by the Shia leadership.
RBRK
The government of Iraq is young and it will be supported
garbage exploded
El Kabong
PHOTO:
http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20050409/lthumb.bag11504091041.iraq_bag115.jpg
Iraqis burn an American flag during a demonstration in Baghdad, Iraq
Saturday, April 9, 2005. Tens of thousands called Saturday for
American forces to withdraw from Iraq. The demonstration overflowed
Firdos Square, where U.S Marines pulled down a towering statue of
Saddam Hussein two years ago to the day.(AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
Iraqis urge US exit as soldiers killed
BAGHDAD (AFP) - Tens of thousands of protestors poured into Baghdad's
Firdos square to demand US troops leave the country, as 15 Iraqi
soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing.
Chanting "No, no, USA," protesters converged Saturday on the square, a
symbol of the ouster of former president Saddam Hussein, two years to
the day since Baghdad fell to US forces.
The rally is believed to be the largest demonstration since US troops
entered the country.
"Oh God, cut off their necks, the way they are cutting off our necks
and terrorising us," said Sadr representative Sheikh Nasir al-Saaidi,
reading a speech from his boss. "There will be no peace, no security,
until the occupation leaves."
Iraqi flags fluttered in the sea of demonstrators, many of whom were
dressed in black, the uniform of Sadr's Mehdi Army militia. Many wore
green and black Islamic headbands.
Some waved the notorious picture of a hooded naked Iraqi detainee,
with wires attached to his body. It was released during the Abu Ghraib
prison scandal last year that blemished the US record in Iraq.
Demonstrators also carried signs saying "No to the occupation," "No to
the devil" as they descended on the square from north, east and west.
Sunni clerics from the Committee of Muslim Scholars, which organized a
boycott of historic January elections, also urged followers to join
the protest.
"The war has been finished for two years. What did we get? Nothing.
Our country has become the centre of terrorism," said Ali Hussein, 30,
from Sadr City, who was dressed all in black. "There is no
electricity, no services, no nothing."
A shopkeeper from Sadr City, Baqr Mussa, vented frustration at the
continuing US presence and the failure by the Americans to execute
Saddam. He was dressed in white religious robes, symbolic of
martyrdom.
"We are very angry. We don't believe we've just lived two years since
the war. All the buildings are still burnt and destroyed," Mussa said.
PHOTOS:
http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20050409/s/r1306355167.jpg
Thousands of Iraqi Shi'ites hold a protest in Baghdad April 9, 2005.
The rally was called on the second anniversary of the fall of Baghdad
with protesters demanding an end to the U.S. military presence in Iraq
and a speedy trial for former president Saddam Hussein. REUTERS/Ali
Jasim
http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20050409/lthumb.bag10804091002.iraq_bag108.jpg
Iraqis demonstrators carry cut outs of U.S. President George W. Bush,
right, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair during a rally in
Baghdad, Iraq Saturday, April 9, 2005.
http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20050409/s/r2498563933.jpg
Iraqi Shi'ite demonstrators march past a U.S. Army tank en route to a
protest in Baghdad April 9, 2005. The rally was called on the second
anniversary of the fall of Baghdad with protesters demanding an end to
the U.S. military presence in Iraq.
http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20050409/s/r3088539917.jpg
An Iraqi Shi'ite waves the Iraqi flag during a protest in Baghdad
April 9, 2005. The rally was called on the second anniversary of the
fall of Baghdad with protesters demanding an end to the U.S. military
presence in
Wonko The Sane
message news:iott41prmbirkfuba...@4ax.com...
> testified that he found extensive bruising when he examined Mowhoush
> shortly after he died. "So, at some point prior to the 26th, he had
> been beaten," Ryan said.
treat their POW's
http://www.ogrish.com/archives/russian_soldier_beated_and_beheaded_by_chechen_rebel_Apr_09_2005.html
Hü©klëßë®®ÿ Hö§hïmötö
El Kabong
By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli troops fired at a group of
Palestinians in a southern Gaza Strip refugee camp Saturday, killing
three teenagers in the deadliest incident in Gaza since Israel and the
Palestinians declared a cease-fire two months ago.
The incident in the Rafah camp, located along the border with Egypt,
shattered weeks of calm and added to tensions surrounding plans by
Jewish extremists to march on a disputed holy site in Jerusalem.
Ali Abu Zeid, a 22-year-old Rafah resident, said a group of boys were
playing soccer in an open area when the ball was kicked toward the
border fence.
"The kids ran after it, and that's when we heard gunfire," he said.
Palestinian hospital officials said the two of the dead youths were 15
years old and the third was 14.
ARIEL BOLUDOVSKY
> Ali Abu Zeid, a 22-year-old Rafah resident, said a group of boys were
> playing soccer in an open area when the ball was kicked toward the
> border fence.
Playing soccer, my ass. Israel Radio reports that the boys were smugglers
and didn't heed warning shots. Well done IDF!
BOLUDOVSKY
--
----------------------
EIN ARAVIM, EIN PIGUIM
----------------------
RBRK
news:Xns9633CDB34...@130.133.1.4:
> El Kabong <poki_pongo at yahoo.com> dixit:
>
>> Ali Abu Zeid, a 22-year-old Rafah resident, said a group of boys were
>> playing soccer in an open area when the ball was kicked toward the
>> border fence.
>
> Playing soccer, my ass. Israel Radio reports that the boys were
> smugglers
> and didn't heed warning shots. Well done IDF!
>
> BOLUDOVSKY
>
>
It is known that some pali whores bear children, & raise them to be used by
terrorists at $5000.00 per head.
El Kabong
http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/5339113.html
-In a development the Bush regime had hoped to avoid, the stories of
about 60 detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base have
spilled out in court papers. A U.S. college-educated detainee asks
plaintively in one: "Is it possible to see the evidence in order to
refute it?'' In another transcript, the unidentified president of a
U.S. military tribunal bursts out: "I don't care about international
law. I don't want to hear the words 'international law' again. We are
not concerned with international law.''
El Kabong
Munaf Abbas, 25, a chemical engineer from the southern city of Amarah,
blamed the presence of U.S. troops for rising violence in Iraq.
"America is the mother of terrorism," he said. "All the explosions are
happening because they are here."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq10apr10,0,1677779.story
Livid Iraq Protesters Tell U.S. to Get Out
By Edmund Sanders, Times Staff Writer
BAGHDAD — Chanting "Death to America!" and burning effigies of
President Bush and Saddam Hussein, tens of thousands of Iraqis flooded
central Baghdad on Saturday in what police called the largest
anti-American protest since the fall of Baghdad exactly two years ago.
Once staunch supporters of the U.S. invasion to oust the dictator who
ruthlessly suppressed them, many Shiite Arabs in Iraq have grown so
frustrated by the lingering military occupation, with its checkpoints,
raids and use of force, that they took to the streets to demand a
deadline for the withdrawal of troops.
At the same time, the fact that so many protesters were able to gather
and voice their opinions without bloodshed or insurgent attacks
suggests Iraq is making progress toward establishing a democratic
system and creating a strong security force.
Carrying banners that read "Go Out" and "Leave Our Country," marchers
hit the streets early Saturday, blocking roads and causing traffic
jams around the capital. Most of the protesters came from the Baghdad
slum of Sadr City, but busloads arrived from Kut, Amarah, Baqubah and
other cities. Some estimates put the number of protesters at 300,000.
"The American people need to know that they can't suppress us anymore,
even with all their strength and power," said Mohammed Salih Khalaf, a
54-year-old day laborer from Sadr City.
Raising fists and shouting in unison, protesters chanted, "No, no to
America! No, no to occupation!" Many waved Iraqi flags and carried
pictures of Sadr and his revered father, Mohammed Sadeq Sadr, who was
assassinated during Hussein's rule. One protester dragged a picture of
Hussein through the gutter. A few Iraqi police officers observing the
scene raised their own fists in unity.
Munaf Abbas, 25, a chemical engineer from the southern city of Amarah,
blamed the presence of U.S. troops for rising violence in Iraq.
"America is the mother of terrorism," he said. "All the explosions are
happening because they are here."
El Kabong
Sunday 10 April 2005, 12:38 Makka Time, 9:38 GMT
Islamic Jihad leader Muhammad al-Hindi warned of violence
A political leader of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has
joined thousands of Muslim demonstrators for a rally in Jerusalem's
al-Aqsa mosque compound despite a ban by Israeli authorities,
witnesses said.
Shaikh Hasan Yusuf, who was recently released from Israeli prison, was
not entitled to enter occupied east Jerusalem on Sunday.
Thousands of Palestinians have gathered inside the al-Aqsa mosque
since Saturday night to protect al-Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble
Sanctuary, from an Israeli extreme-right group that threatened to
march on it.
"Around 15,000 Palestinian worshippers have prayed the dawn prayer
here," Yusuf told Aljazeera on Sunday. He said 3000 had spent the
night there.
"We call on Arab and Islamic nations and all people to immediately
move to save the blessed al-Aqsa mosque," he said. "This is our soul,
and a body can never live without a soul."
Yusuf said the gathering would continue indefinitely.
"We have announced there is an open sit-in. The battle will not end in
hours or days. We have called on all our people in Jerusalem and the
land occupied in 1948 to head towards al-Aqsa mosque," he said.
-------------------------------------------------------------
"..... whether it is prudent in modern times to permit direct contact
between the mohel's mouth and the baby's sex organ."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/552094.html
Wed., March 23, 2005 Adar2 13, 5765 Israel Time: 01:24 (GMT+2)
Freedom of circumcision v. health hazard
By Nathan Guttman
WASHINGTON - The tragic death of an infant in New York's Haredi
ultra-Orthodox community has put brit milah (Jewish ritual
circumcision) in the spotlight over the past few weeks. The debate,
which includes rabbis, mohels (ritual circumcisers) and American
health authority representatives, centers on the question of how the
mohel should draw blood after performing a circumcision, and whether
it is prudent in modern times to permit direct contact between the
mohel's mouth and the baby's sex organ. Beyond the issue of this
practice itself, the discussion has extended to questions of freedom
of religion versus the intervention of authorities and the sanctity of
ancient practices versus scientific innovations.
The tragedy in question occurred last year in the Haredi community of
Monsey, New York. The mohel, Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer, circumcised twins
in a double ceremony. The circumcision was performed in the
traditional manner accepted among many Haredim, and consists of three
stages - incision of the foreskin, its retraction and removal, and
drawing of blood. According to ultra-Orthodox practice, this is done
directly, with the mohel's mouth on the site of the incision.
Ten days after the brit, one of the babies died, and an examination
revealed that the cause of death was herpes. The second twin also
tested positive for herpes, and after New York City health authorities
opened an investigation, they discovered the virus in another baby who
had been circumcised by Fischer.
The public health department's initial conclusion was that there was a
reasonable suspicion that all three babies had been infected by
Fischer when he drew blood with his mouth. The authorities immediately
forbade Fischer from performing any more oral procedures, ordered him
to work only while wearing sterile gloves, and filed a complaint
against him at the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan, demanding that
he cooperate with the investigation and refrain from drawing blood
orally until the matter is resolved.
A dangerous custom
Fischer was to report to the courthouse for a hearing on the matter
yesterday, but even before it can receive full legal attention, all of
the parties already are raising their claims. Fischer's lawyers,
attorney Mark Kurzmann and his son Hillel Kurzmann, say that their
client has been fully cooperating with the investigation, so any legal
action against him is superfluous.
"The city apparently has a much broader agenda, beyond the actual
investigation," says Mark Kurzmann, noting that according to his
understanding, the debate is not over the medical question concerning
the transmission of herpes, but the broader issue of freedom of
religion. To prove his point, Kurzmann notes that even before
completion of the investigation, the New York health commissioner
declared that the oral drawing of blood "constitutes a threat to the
public health."
Fischer, who declined to be interviewed for this article on his
lawyers' advice, underwent a series of medical tests to detect the
herpes virus, and is continuing to perform circumcisions in New York,
for the time being without oral suction. Even before the current
incident made headlines, Fischer would use a glass tube if the baby's
parents requested it.
The Jewish community is divided on the question of the continued
practice of direct oral contact during the brit. While many in the
Haredi and Orthodox community believe direct contact between the
mohel's mouth and the site of the cut foreskin is necessary, many
others have adopted the more modern approach in which the blood is
drawn through a small, sterilized glass tube that ensures no direct
oral contact in order to avoid the risk of infection.
The Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), America's largest Orthodox
rabbinical organization, issued a statement supporting the use of the
glass tube two weeks ago.
"The requirement [of drawing blood] is fulfilled completely and
unambiguously by the use of oral suctioning through a tube," declared
the RCA, adding, "One absolutely fulfills the precept whilst placing
the infant and mohel at no additional risk."
Executive VP of the RCA, Rabbi Dr. Basil Herring, who initiated the
declaration, says the organization felt the need, in light of the
current debate, to clarify that from a halakhic (Jewish legal) and
health perspective, and for the sake of appearances, it is preferable
to use the tube rather than the direct oral contact method.
This approach is also in line with a study conducted and published by
the Pediatrics medical magazine last year. The 12 researchers who
prepared the report concluded that oral contact with the baby
constitutes a risk of the transmission of herpes from the mohel to the
baby. The researchers reached this conclusion after examining eight
cases in which babies contracted herpes two weeks after their brit.
Among the signatories of the report is Rabbi Dr. Moshe Tendler, who
teaches biology at New York's Yeshiva University.
Tendler stressed in interviews granted to the U.S. Jewish media that
herpes is much more common than many people think, and direct oral
suction of blood is certainly a dangerous custom. Tendler added that
even after this fact became well known, and after studies were
published proscribing that adherence to the custom of oral suction
needlessly endangers a baby, some parents still insist that the mohel
follow the custom, and there are mohels who still continue with this
hazardous practice.
Not everyone accepts this approach, even when it is presented by an
Orthodox authority.
"For tens of thousands of believing Jews in the New York area, this
practice is an integral part of the fulfillment of the circumcision
commandment; to them it is not optional," Kurzmann says, noting that
only part of the Jewish community has adopted the changes instituted
in the suction method in the past 150 years.
No one has data on the proportion of circumcisions that use direct
oral suction, but Orthodox community sources estimate that thousands
are performed annually.
Furthermore, certain circles that had displayed lenience toward the
use of the glass tube are now returning to direct oral suction and
have banned the tube.
RBRK
heehee
Hey Gyra
Leave it to the dune coons to want Saddam back. Lesson learned: Camel
jocks don't want democracy. Were it not for the oil we could abandon them
to their fate and Ayatollahland would be just another forgettable turd-world
backwater like Sub-Saharan Africa ---
L Alpert
Hoooooold on thar a minute, Bobalooee, I'll do all the thinnin' 'round
here......
El Kabong
Reports from Iraq
* Please pass these reports on and take any action you can. We as
Americans are the only ones who can force our Congress to end the
occupation in Iraq and bring our troops home. The Iraqis send this
message and are pleading for us to take action. Click the link at the
end of this message to take action: "No more money for Iraq war."
Imagine the GOOD this money could do for us instead.
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/
Last night independent journalist Dhar Jamail came to my hometown and
gave a presentation of photographs of the Iraq war. His work has since
been picked up by "The Nation" magazine and other news outlets. His
reports give an entirely different depiction of events and conditions
in Iraq in contrast to the US mainstream media. It is tragic because
Europe and the rest of the world know what is really going on with the
US occupation in Iraq, only Americans are in the dark.
Dhar Jamail described two aspects to the war that we need to be aware
of: US troops may be enthusiastic about fighting for Iraqi "freedom"
when they first arrive but after about three months they see the
actual plight of the Iraqis and are soon acquainted with the dangerous
hopelessness of carrying out the occupation. As an aside, a cartoon by
Nicolas Anderson shows a rich American with his new Hummer that he
bought with his tax cuts, proudly displaying a "support our troops"
magnet. Meanwhile in Iraq US soldiers drive broken down Hummers, that
are missing armor.
Dhar Jumail focused mostly on the battle of Falluja and described a
situation where the 350,000 citizens of that religious city have been
massacred by the US soldiers and contract mercenaries. Falluja has
been destroyed. This was painfully made clear by a six minute film
that Dhar Jamail showed which is a stunning story in itself: An
American from Santa Barbara Calif. went over to Iraq and shot hours
and hours of video footage. He flew back to the US and after meeting
his girl friend, they dropped off his cameras and equipment in a hotel
and went to the beach. While at the beach, their car was broken into
and their belongings stolen. When they went to back to the hotel room
all of his equipment from his trip to Iraq, including hours of film of
the war was gone. His lap top was not stolen. All that was left of his
film was six minutes that he took of Falluja after the siege. It
showed a a devasted city, deserted, most of the building are in
rubble. This man was contacted by a mysterious "homeless person" who
claimed to have stolen the camera equipment. He gave a veiled "death
threat" if the footage of Iraq was made public.
What took place in the battle of Falluja is nothing like the media's
version. The US military came in and bombed the city and massacred as
many people as possible, mostly women and children. They used illegal
methods and chemical weapons. When the city was attacked the skilled
doctors and all but 25,000 Iraqis left the city. The Iraqis that
stayed did only because they had no way of leaving, no money, no
transportation or they were disabled. What's left of Falluja is a
ghost town. The hospital has little or no medical supplies to help the
Iraqis that have been mortally wounded. The young medical staff that
stayed behind are interns and barely trained doctors. The city has
little to or no electricty, water or gas. Iraqis have to drink the
contaminated water and are getting cholera and diarrhea. The thousands
of Iraqis that fled Falluja have had no where to go, there are some
refugee camps, but those camps have no water or medical supplies.
These dire conditions caused by the US occupation are illegal.
What is also falsely reproted by the LA TImes, The New York Times, the
Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post is that American tax payer
money is paying for the reconstructiuon of Falluja. Dhar Jamail's
photographs show that this is simply not happening. Little rebuilding
has occured. The hospitals are unsanitary pits, buildings and homes
continue to be piles of rubble. Where are the billions of dollars
awarded to Bechtel and Halliburton for the reconstruction contracts?
Dhar Jamail says no one knows where the money has gone. Enron deja vu?
The US media claims that the dangerous "insurgents" are provoking the
heavy hand of the US military. The insurgents are just native Iraqis
who are the brothers, fathers and sons of the women, children and
elderly who were massacred during the seige. I think Americans would
resist if our families were killed by an occupying force. The recent
January elections is a farce, the Iraqi people do not trust nor
believe the new leadership will bring stability or recontruction to
their ravaged country.
It is clear that the US military, without the permission of the
American people have pre-empitively attacked Iraq. According the
Lancet report done by Columbia University we have killed at least
100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians. The US is building permanent bases.
Scott Ritter former Marine and weapons inspector claims Bush plans to
repeat this war scenario in Iran, starting in June 2005. Please, do
not believe the US media propaganda. Take action to save the Iraqis
and the US troops from this evil war.
Please call Congress: No more money for Iraq:
http://capwiz.com/pdamerica/callalert/index.tt?alertid=7329151&type=CO
Cost of Iraq war -- with a calculator for each state. And this is
only in money, not lives:
More on the Iraq war and its profiteering:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0316-12.htm
http://www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/1800/1/39?TopicID=1
http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue22/issue22_part9.htm
Wounded American soldiers moved to Walter Reed at night, out of sight
of cameras:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/03/08/night_flights/print.html
Chip Anderson
news:ns1i511gkkaiiqes5...@4ax.com:
>
>
>
> Munaf Abbas, 25, a chemical engineer from the southern city of Amarah,
> blamed the presence of U.S. troops for rising violence in Iraq.
>
> "America is the mother of terrorism," he said. "All the explosions are
> happening because they are here."
>
-->snip<--
He is a fool and fools are easy to find. All of the explosions are
happening because of the terrorists, which is why the U.S. troops are still
there, at the behest of the sovereign Iraqi government.
--
---
Chip
"Oderint dum metuant."
- Lucius Accius
~ Typhøid Mary ~
> Munaf Abbas, 25, a chemical engineer from the southern city of Amarah,
> blamed the presence of U.S. troops for rising violence in Iraq.
>
> "America is the mother of terrorism," he said. "All the explosions are
> happening because they are here."
>
>
>
> http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-
> iraq10apr10,0,1677779.story
>
> Livid Iraq Protesters Tell U.S. to Get Out
>
> By Edmund Sanders, Times Staff Writer
>
>
--
The cautious seldom err.
--Confucius
edi...@rcn.com
Except that the operational definition of "terrorist" is anyone shot by
occupation forces
Chip Anderson
news:1113215252.2...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:
Not so, the troops make the occassional error.
Puffy The Vampire
"Chip Anderson" <b_ander...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:Xns963565A652BE6b...@216.77.188.18...
...when they intentionally shoot at a journalist...
nice try Cow-Chip...
El Kabong
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/tm_objectid=15387951&method=full&siteid=50143&headline=u-s--in-iraq-until-2009-name_page.html
AMERICANS IN IRAQ UNTIL 2009
Apr 11 2005
Dossier plans 'prove Brits will stay'
By Rosa Prince
THE US Army plans to remain in Iraq until at least 2009, secret
documents obtained by the Mirror reveal.
Contract tender forms for civilian workers disclose a huge expansion
of interrogation and detention centres in Iraq to remain in place for
a minimum four more years.
Yesterday Labour MP Alan Simpson claimed the revelation means that
British forces will also have to stay the distance.
He said: "This is obviously the real withdrawal timetable. British
soldiers will be used to protect US profits. Those who die are blood
money for corporate America."
According to the documents from the Assistant Chief of Staff,
Multi-National Forces, US chiefs plan a £70million expansion in
holding centres for suspects. They will be staffed by 300 civilian
recruits aiding intelligence.
In a sign the US has learned from the Abu Ghraib jail scandal, in
which prisoners were abused, the civilian interrogators will be
trained in the Geneva Convention.
Warning of the dangers of the job, the document says: "No persons
supporting operations will be allowed to reside off a US secure
facility, or travel unless in a military secured convoy."
Military bosses also want to appoint someone to the top-secret job of
deciding which intelligence is shared with British secret services
based in Basra.
The Army plans emerged the day after tens of thousands of Iraqis
marched in Baghdad demanding the US quit.
Chanting "No America! No Saddam!" protesters loyal to Shia cleric
Moqtada al-Sadr streamed into Firdos Square where Saddam's statue was
torn down two years ago. Other demos were held in Ramadi, Baiji and
Najaf.
Al-Qaeda's wing in Iraq, led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said
it had seized and killed a top Iraqi police officer in Baghdad.
A second militant group claimed to have kidnapped Pakistani diplomat
Malik Mohammed Javed who vanished from the capital on Saturday
Chip Anderson
news:ozB6e.10864$H_5.2718@trnddc01:
Only when they are aiding and abetting terrorists. Otherwise, human error.
El Kabong
"I fear that our democracy is in much worse shape than I had imagined,
and that even the appearance of democracy we now have might be quickly
swept aside. "
http://independent.com/news/news906.htm
Thinking Unthinkable Thoughts
Theologian Charges White House
Complicity in 9/11 Attack
by Nick Welsh
There’s nothing the least bit wild-eyed or hysterical about David Ray
Griffin. In person, he’s disarmingly calm, and speaks in the
unflappably precise and deliberate style of a lifelong academic. Which
is exactly what Griffin is. A respected philosopher of religion at the
Claremont School of Theology since the 1970s and longtime Santa
Barbara resident, Griffin is now raising questions that even President
Bush’s harshest critics are afraid to think, let alone ask aloud.
In his latest book, The New Pearl Harbor — released just two weeks ago
— Griffin all but accuses the Bush administration of taking a dive on
September 11 and giving Al Qaeda terrorists an unobstructed shot at
the World Trade Center. According to Griffin, a case can be made that
the Bush administration arranged the attack, or allowed it to happen.
He is aware that he may be dismissed as a conspiracy nut, but given
the “transcendent importance” of the issue, Griffin is willing to
assume that risk and has taken to repeating Michael Moore’s line on
the subject: “Personally, I’m not into conspiracy theories except
those that are true.” I met with Griffin over coffee to discuss his
book and the September 11 investigation. The following is an edited
account of their conversation.
NICK WELSH:
Is there a smoking gun that shows the Bush administration knew 9/11
was likely to happen and did nothing about it?
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN: I think there are four. One is the fact that
standard operating procedures for dealing with possibly hijacked
airplanes were not followed on 9/11. Those procedures call for fighter
jets to be sent out immediately upon any sign that a plane may have
been hijacked. These jets typically get to the plane within no later
than 15 minutes anywhere in the United States. And on that day, there
were four airplanes that went for a half-hour or more after they were
hijacked without jets intercepting them.
What’s the official explanation of that?
I’m afraid the press has not done its job. They have not forced
government officials to explain why standard operating procedures were
not followed that day, nor have they pressed the FAA (Federal Aviation
Administration) to explain why they didn’t report these hijackings as
they were supposed to. The official story is that [the fighter jets]
were very late.
And the other smoking guns?
The second strongest piece of evidence I would say is the crash at the
Pentagon. The physical evidence contradicts so violently the official
account, that the Pentagon was hit by a Boeing 757 — Flight 77, that
is. The physical evidence, photographs, and eyewitness testimony say
that the Pentagon was hit by something that caused a hole no larger
than 18 feet in diameter. The story the Pentagon put out, and was
published by the Washington Post, was that the hole in the Pentagon
was five stories high and 200 feet wide. If you look at the
photographs taken by Tom Horan of the Associated Press — that’s just
not the size of the hole.
But if the hole was only 18 feet wide, it had to have been created by
something other than a Boeing. Whatever went into the Pentagon pierced
six reinforced walls. This was the west wing, the part of the Pentagon
being refurbished and reinforced. These walls were extra strong, and
yet whatever it was went through six walls creating a hole about seven
feet in diameter in the sixth wall. This had to have been something
with a very powerful head on it. A Boeing 757 has a very fragile nose,
and would not have pierced through all those walls; it would have been
crushed by hitting the Pentagon. And given that it only penetrated
these three rings, the rest of the aircraft would have been sitting
outside on the yard. And yet the photographs taken just as the fire
trucks got there — very shortly after the crash — show no plane
whatsoever.
What do they show?
They show no aircraft whatsoever. And everyone agrees on this. The
official story is that the whole aircraft went inside the Pentagon.
The problem with that — the firefighters in there would have seen the
airplane. They would have seen the engines, they would have seen the
aluminum fuselage, but they reported nothing. Ed Plower, the fire
chief, when asked what he saw, said, “I didn’t see any big pieces, no
fuselage, no engines, no nothing.” But about a month later, when asked
he said, “Oh yes, I saw all that.” His memory had had time to be
refreshed.
If what you’re saying is accurate — that it was a missile — then what
happened to the plane and all the people on it?
That’s why I stress I’m not trying to give an account of what really
happened. I have no idea what happened to Flight 77.
President Bush has also been criticized for behaving somewhat
bizarrely that day.
As he and the Secret Service got word that a second plane had crashed
into the World Trade Center and that three planes had been hijacked,
there could have been no possible doubt in their mind that the United
States was under terrorist attack . . . The most horrendous attack the
United States had ever suffered. And they would have had to assume
that one or more of them were heading toward President Bush himself.
And so upon learning about this, the Secret Service surely would have
whisked him away immediately. In fact, one Secret Service agent on the
scene said, “We’re out of here.” But obviously he got overruled
because President Bush stayed there. After Andrew Card reported the
second crash on the World Trade Center, the president just nodded as
if he understood and said, “We’re going to go ahead with the reading
lesson.” And he sat there another 15 minutes listening to the children
read a story about a pet goat. This was a photo op and when it was
over he lingered around talking to the children and talking to the
teacher.
Bill Sammon, of the Washington Times, wrote a very pro-Bush book, yet
he comments how casual and relaxed the president was given the fact
he’d just learned the country was under attack. He said Bush took his
own sweet time and in fact called him “Our Dawdler in Chief.” And then
the president went on national TV, going forward with an interview
that had been planned and announced in advance . . . then they took
their regularly scheduled motorcade back to the airport. In other
words, [Bush and the Secret Service] showed no fear whatsoever that
they would be targeted for attack, which strongly suggests they knew
how many aircraft were being hijacked and what their targets were.
Couldn’t it have been that he was trying to project calm in the eye of
the storm, that this was Bush projecting Churchillian resolve in the
face of calamity?
People who want to believe such things can, of course, imagine such
scenarios. But the president in a situation like that does not make
the decisions; the Secret Service team makes the decisions. And the
guys in the Secret Service are trained to be ready for a catastrophe
like this where they make snap decisions and whisk the president to
safety immediately. They would have had an escape route planned; they
would have had contingencies planned — they always do. It is at least
not very plausible to think they would have remained there and
endangered the lives of all the children and teachers at that school
in order to exude that Churchillian confidence.
What about the plane thatcrashed down?
We know that on Flight 93, which crashed over Pennsylvania, the
passengers were trying to get control of the aircraft. They had
decided the hijackers did not have bombs and probably didn’t even have
guns. And because their plane didn’t take off until a half-hour after
the others, they knew that the others had crashed into the World Trade
Center — so they knew they were going to die anyway, even if they
didn’t do anything. So as one of the passengers is saying, “They’re
doing it, they’re forcing their way into the cabin, they’re going to
make it.” As soon as that happened, with the FBI listening in, the
plane went down. There was a whoosh, then the sound of wind. And
people on the ground reported hearing what Vietnam veterans said
sounded like a missile. Furthermore, there was debris from the plan
eight miles from the crash site, suggesting the plane had been hit and
stuff started falling out. And one of the engines was found over a
mile from the crash site. Of course, if it had been a missile that
downed the plane, it most likely would have been a heat-seeking
missile that would have found the engine and knocked it off.
Why would the government have an interest in doing this?
So the hijackers couldn’t speak to anyone?
That would be a very good reason. If it were a conspiracy and the
hijackers knew about it, it would have been very threatening to those
who made the plan to have anybody left alive. Again, I don’t pretend
to know, but that’s at least a plausible scenario. There were many
rumors that day that the plane was shot down, but the government
denied it.
You suggest that the World Trade Center buildings must have been
detonated with explosives to account for the heat generated and the
speed the structures collapsed on themselves. That sounds extreme.
What’s the evidence?
The evidence is cumulative — several things that point to controlled
demolition. First, a steel-framed building, according to all the
reading I’ve done, has never collapsed solely because of fire. They
will bend and buckle in a very large all-consuming fire that lasts for
a very long time. But they have never collapsed.
But it was not just fire — it was fire and impact at the same time.
The twin towers were very large buildings and extremely well built
with a lot of redundancy. Even people who believe the official theory
say that the crash of the plane into the towers should have been
insignificant, that the shock would have been immediate, but it was
over very soon and that the buildings were extremely solid and stable
and not moving. In the south tower, much of the fuel from it spilled
outside as it collided into the corner. So there was a giant firebomb
which looked very impressive, but what that means is that most of the
fuel was burned up within a minute, so there was not much fuel inside.
Therefore, the fire in the south tower had almost gone out in less
than an hour. And that brings us to another strange fact about the
towers. If the official story were correct, that the combination of
the crash and the fire brought the buildings down, we would expect the
north tower to have come down first, because it was hit first. And yet
the south tower collapsed first. It collapsed in less than an hour.
That makes perfect sense if you’re willing to accept that it was
caused by controlled demolition, meaning the building was wired with
explosives. And if the official story has it that the buildings were
brought down by fire, you’d want the buildings to go down before the
fire had completely gone out.
What you’re suggesting sounds like something from. X-Files. But on
X-Files, you always had agents Scully and Mulder trying to get the
truth out. Here we don’t have any Scullys and Mulders. You’d think
this whole new unilateral expression of military supremacy might have
opponents within the administration coming unglued and that they’d be
leaking info damaging to Bush, but we don’t hear those voices. Why
not?
Members of the FBI, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies have
taken oaths to not reveal things they’ve been told not to reveal . . .
and if they violate this oath, repercussions may occur. You have a
wife and children, and somebody says to you, “If you go public with
that I cannot guarantee the safety of your family.” Would you go
public with that? You have to choose between your family’s welfare and
the welfare of the nation, and your story might not do that much good.
You might just be denounced as a conspiracy kook. The press would
ignore you, belittle you. People might look into your past and find
that you had done some things you’re not so proud of. People would
learn very quickly to keep their mouths shut.
Let’s say there has been this complicity. To what end?
There were several benefits that could have been anticipated from
9/11. One was the so-called Patriot Act. It did appear that the
Patriot Act, given how fast it was rushed into Congress, voting had
already been prepared. The Patriot Act is so large that it’s
inconceivable it could have been written after 9/11. Rushing it
through Congress when most members had not even read a small portion
of it was clearly one benefit, giving the government increased powers.
Also, there was the desire to wage war in Afghanistan to force out the
Taliban and put an American-friendly government in place because of
the desire of Unical and other gas companies to build an oil pipeline,
which they felt was too dangerous with the Taliban in power. There was
a meeting in Berlin in July 2001, a final effort to get an agreement
between the Taliban and the United States that would allow a sort of
joint government, where the Taliban would share power with more
American-friendly leaders. The Taliban refused, at which point they
were told, “If you don’t take our carpet of gold, we’ll bury you under
a carpet of bombs.” The Pakistani representative at this meeting said
the Americans told him that the war would start before the snows came
that October. And after 9/11 happened, there was exactly the right
amount of time for the U.S. forces to get organized to begin the war,
and the war began on October 7.
Another benefit is that many senior members of the Bush administration
had for a long time wanted to attack Iraq. Getting control of the oil
there was one motive; the more general motive was to secure a military
presence in that part of the world.
Don’t you think it’s a good thing that Saddam Hussein was taken out,
and don’t you think Bush had a moral obligation to do so because it
was his father who was responsible for building up Hussein in the
first place?
Certainly you can say there were some benefits to the people of Iraq.
But if we had an obligation to take out Saddam Hussein then we have
obligations to take out many other nefarious leaders around the world,
many of whom are far worse, believe it or not, than Saddam Hussein.
And the sorry history is that we have in fact supported such leaders
and that Saddam Hussein was in power only because of American support.
He remained in power after gassing the Kurds became common knowledge.
Donald Rumsfeld himself visited Saddam at that period. Actually our
aid to Saddam went up after we knew that he had done this.
So you think this is mostly about oil.
It is to a significant extent about oil, given the projections that
the world is beginning to run out
of oil. The United States wants to get control of it because our way
of life, which is so dependent upon oil, is nonnegotiable. And also
because military dominance itself runs to great extent on oil. But
it’s not just about oil. It’s about geopolitical dominance. And this
brings up the U.S. Space command. In the document “Rebuilding
America’s Defenses,” published in 2000 by the Project for the New
American Century — an organization founded by people such as [Richard]
Perle and [Paul] Wolfowitz and [Dick] Cheney and Rumsfeld — there is a
statement in there that says we need to move forward with this
revolution in military affairs. The central feature of this is the
augmentation of the U.S. Space Command through which the United States
would have what’s called now Full Spectrum Dominance. In addition to
having dominance over land, air, and sea, we would have dominance in
space. But building the space stations and the satellites for the
weaponization of space will be an extremely expensive undertaking. One
projection has the first stage of it being about a trillion dollars.
So an enormous amount of money has to be shifted from the American
taxpayers and other parts of the economy to the military and the space
command. The document states that such a revolution in military
affairs will probably proceed very slowly absent some catastrophic and
catalyzing event such as a new Pearl Harbor.
Hence the title of your book . . . You’ve complained the American
media has been asleep at the switch on this. How do you account for
this?
It is very difficult for Americans to face the possibility that their
own government may have caused or deliberately allowed such a heinous
event. Secondly, one can understand that insofar as the media is owned
by companies like General Electric, which is one of the largest makers
of weapons, stations like NBC that are owned by GE would not wish to
publicize these connections. And finally, 9/11 was immediately treated
not only as a matter of patriotism but almost as a religious event.
Bush declared his war on terrorism from the national cathedral. And so
from then on, any questioning of the official account could be and was
criticized as being undemocratic and almost sacrilegious.
I at least hope that if we can begin to get a public discussion of
9/11 and of the many, many discrepancies between the official story
and what at least appear to be the facts, that some of those people
might be emboldened to step forward.
How has researching and writing this book affected you personally?
I fear that our democracy is in much worse shape than I had imagined,
and that even the appearance of democracy we now have might be quickly
swept aside.
El Kabong
"I don't speak English and so I said to the Iraqi translator with
them, 'Tell them that I am a member of parliament,' and he replied,
'To hell with you, we are Americans,"' Sheikh told parliament,
fighting back tears as he recounted the story.
The U.S. military said it was investigating the incident.
"We are aware of the reported incident involving a member of Iraq's
Transitional National Assembly and we are investigating it at this
time," a military spokesman said.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=682884
Apr 19, 2005 — By Waleed Ibrahim
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi lawmaker accused a U.S. soldier of
grabbing him by the throat and shoving him to the ground Tuesday after
he parked his car in Baghdad's Green Zone.
Fattah al-Sheikh, an independent, said he had parked his car before a
session of parliament when U.S. troops approached him and told him he
didn't have the right permit.
He said a soldier then kicked his car, insulted him and grabbed him by
the throat with both hands as others looked on, before tying his hands
behind his back with white plastic cuffs and shoving him to the
ground.
"I don't speak English and so I said to the Iraqi translator with
them, 'Tell them that I am a member of parliament,' and he replied,
'To hell with you, we are Americans,"' Sheikh told parliament,
fighting back tears as he recounted the story.
The U.S. military said it was investigating the incident.
"We are aware of the reported incident involving a member of Iraq's
Transitional National Assembly and we are investigating it at this
time," a military spokesman said.
Sheikh said other members of parliament were present during the
scuffle, which took place at one of the main entrances to the Green
Zone, a fortified compound in central Baghdad that houses the
parliament, the U.S. embassy and other buildings.
"I can still feel the pain around my neck," Sheikh said. It was not
clear how he came to be freed.
After hearing his account, the speaker of parliament said he would
call on Iraq's new prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, to demand a
full apology from the U.S. ambassador to Iraq.
The U.S. embassy said it was looking into the affair.
"We are looking at this at a very senior level. We have an officer
down there looking at it right now," Bob Callahan, a spokesman for the
U.S. embassy, said. "Once we have investigated we will decide what
course of action to take."
RBRK
Get the hell out.
El Kabong
By Sidney Blumenthal
Salon.com
Thursday 21 April 2005
Cardinal Ratzinger handed Bush the presidency by tipping the Catholic
vote. Can American democracy survive their shared medieval vision?
Look at the evil nazis:
http://www.truthout.org/imgs.art_01/3.042105H.jpg
(Photo: salon.com)
President Bush treated his final visit with Pope John Paul II in
Vatican City on June 4, 2004, as a campaign stop. After enduring a
public rebuke from the pope about the Iraq war, Bush lobbied Vatican
officials to help him win the election. "Not all the American bishops
are with me," he complained, according to the National Catholic
Reporter. He pleaded with the Vatican to pressure the bishops to step
up their activism against abortion and gay marriage in the states
during the campaign season.
About a week later, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to the
U.S. bishops, pronouncing that those Catholics who were pro-choice on
abortion were committing a "grave sin" and must be denied Communion.
He pointedly mentioned "the case of a Catholic politician consistently
campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws" --
an obvious reference to John Kerry, the Democratic candidate and a
Roman Catholic. If such a Catholic politician sought Communion,
Ratzinger wrote, priests must be ordered to "refuse to distribute it."
Any Catholic who voted for this "Catholic politician," he continued,
"would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil and so unworthy to
present himself for Holy Communion." During the closing weeks of the
campaign, a pastoral letter was read from pulpits in Catholic churches
repeating the ominous suggestion of excommunication. Voting for the
Democrat was nothing less than consorting with the forces of Satan,
collaboration with "evil."
In 2004 Bush increased his margin of Catholic support by 6 points
from the 2000 election, rising from 46 to 52 percent. Without this
shift, Kerry would have had a popular majority of a million votes.
Three states -- Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico -- moved into Bush's column
on the votes of the Catholic "faithful." Even with his atmospherics of
terrorism and Sept. 11, Bush required the benediction of the Holy See
as his saving grace. The key to his kingdom was turned by Cardinal
Ratzinger.
With the College of Cardinals' election of Ratzinger to the
papacy, his political alliances with conservative politicians can be
expected to deepen and broaden. Under Benedict XVI, the church will
assume a consistent reactionary activism it has not had for two
centuries. And the new pope's crusade against modernity has already
joined forces with the right-wing culture war in the United States,
prefigured by his interference in the 2004 election.
Europe is far less susceptible than the United States to the
religious wars that Ratzinger will incite. Attendance at church is
negligible; church teachings are widely ignored; and the younger
generation is least observant of all. But in the United States, the
Bush administration and the right wing of the Republican Party are
trying to batter down the wall of separation between church and state.
Through court appointments, they wish to enshrine doctrinal views on
the family, women, gays, medicine, scientific research and privacy.
The Republican attempt to abolish the two-centuries-old filibuster --
the so-called nuclear option -- is only one coming wrangle in the
larger Kulturkampf.
Joseph Ratzinger was born and bred in the cradle of the
Kulturkampf, or culture war. Roman Catholic Bavaria was a stronghold
against northern Protestantism during the Reformation. In the 19th
century the church was a powerful force opposing the unification of
Italy and Germany into nation-states, fearing that they would diminish
the church's influence in the shambles of duchies and provinces that
had followed the breakup of the Holy Roman Empire. The doctrine of
papal infallibility in 1870 was promulgated by the church to tighten
its grip on Catholic populations against the emerging centralized
nations and to sanctify the pope's will against mere secular rulers.
In response, Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor, launched
what he called a Kulturkampf to break the church's hold. He removed
the church from the control of schools, expelled the Jesuits, and
instituted civil ceremonies for marriage. Bismarck lent support to
Catholic dissidents opposed to papal infallibility who were led by
German theologian Johann Ignaz von Dollinger. Dollinger and his
personal secretary were subsequently excommunicated. His secretary was
Georg Ratzinger, great-uncle of the new pope, who became one of the
most notable Bavarian intellectuals and politicians of the period.
This Ratzinger was a champion against papal absolutism and church
centralization, and on behalf of the poor and working class -- and was
also an anti-Semite.
Joseph Ratzinger's Kulturkampf is claimed by him to be a reaction
to the student revolts of 1968. Should Joschka Fischer, a former
student radical and now the German foreign minister, have to answer
entirely for Ratzinger's Weltanschauung? Pope Benedict's Kulturkampf
bears the burden of the church's history and that of his considerable
family. He represents the latest incarnation of the long-standing
reaction against Bismarck's reforms -- beginning with the assertion of
the invented tradition of papal infallibility -- and, ironically,
against the positions on the church held by his famous uncle. But the
roots of his reaction are even more profound.
The new pope's burning passion is to resurrect medieval authority.
He equates the Western liberal tradition, that is, the Enlightenment,
with Nazism, and denigrates it as "moral relativism." He suppresses
all dissent, discussion and debate within the church and concentrates
power within the Vatican bureaucracy. His abhorrence of change runs
past 1968 (an abhorrence he shares with George W. Bush) to the
revolutions of 1848, the "springtime of nations," and 1789, the French
Revolution. But, even more momentously, the alignment of the pope's
Kulturkampf with the U.S. president's culture war has also set up a
conflict with the American Revolution.
For the first time, an American president is politically allied
with the Vatican in its doctrinal mission (except, of course, on
capital punishment). In the messages and papers of the presidents from
George Washington until well into those of the 20th century, there was
not a single mention of the pope, except in one minor footnote. Bush's
lobbying trip last year to the Vatican reflects an utterly novel turn,
and Ratzinger's direct political intervention in American electoral
politics ratified it.
The right wing of the Catholic Church is as mobilized as any other
part of the religious right. It is seizing control of Catholic
universities, exerting influence at other universities, stigmatizing
Catholic politicians who fail to adhere to its conservative credo,
pressing legislation at the federal and state levels, seeking
government funding and sponsorship of the church, and vetting
political appointments inside the White House and the administration
-- imposing in effect a religious test of office. The Bush White House
encourages these developments under the cover of moral uplift as it
forges a political machine uniting church and state -- as was done in
premodern Europe.
The American Revolution, the Virginia Statute on Religious
Liberty, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights were fought for
explicitly to uproot the traces in American soil of ecclesiastical
power in government, which the Founders to a man regarded with horror,
revulsion and foreboding.
The Founders were the ultimate representatives of the
Enlightenment. They were not anti-religious, though few if any of them
were orthodox or pious. Washington never took Communion and refused to
enter the church, while his wife did so. Benjamin Franklin believed
that all organized religion was suspect. James Madison thought that
established religion did as much harm to religion as it did to free
government, twisting the word of God to fit political expediency,
thereby throwing religion into the political cauldron. And Thomas
Jefferson, allied with his great collaborator Madison, conducted
decades of sustained and intense political warfare against the
existing and would-be clerisy. His words, engraved on the Jefferson
Memorial, are a direct reference to established religion: "I have
sworn eternal warfare against all forms of superstition over the minds
of men."
But now Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay threatens the
federal judiciary, saying, "The reason the judiciary has been able to
impose a separation of church and state that's nowhere in the
Constitution is that Congress didn't stop them." And Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist will participate through a telecast in a rally on
April 24 in which he will say that Democrats who refuse to
rubber-stamp Bush's judicial nominees and uphold the filibuster are
"against people of faith."
But what would Madison say?
This is what Madison wrote in 1785: "What influence in fact have
ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances
they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the
Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the
thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been seen the
guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert
the public liberty may have found an established Clergy convenient
auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it
needs them not."
What would John Adams say? This is what he wrote Jefferson in
1815: "The question before the human race is, whether the God of
nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and
kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?"
Benjamin Franklin? "The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of
reason."
And Jefferson, in "Notes on Virginia," written in 1782: "It is
error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by
itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your
inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as
well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce
uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desireable? No more than of
face and stature. Introduce the bed of Procrustes then, and as there
is danger that the large men may beat the small, make us all of a
size, by lopping the former and stretching the latter. Difference of
opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the
office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable?
Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction
of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we
have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the
effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other
half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."
The Republican Party was founded in the mid-19th century partly as
a party of religious liberty. It supported public common schools, not
church schools, and public land-grant universities independent of any
denominational affiliation. The Republicans, moreover, were adamant in
their opposition to the use of any public funds for any religious
purpose, especially involving schools.
A century later, in 1960, there was still such a considerable
suspicion of Catholics in government that the Democratic candidate for
president, John F. Kennedy, felt compelled to address the issue
directly in his famous speech before the Houston Ministerial
Association on Sept. 12.
What did Kennedy say? "I believe in an America where the
separation of church and state is absolute -- where no Catholic
prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act,
and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to
vote -- where no church or church school is granted any public funds
or political preference ... I believe in an America that is officially
neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish -- where no public official
either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the
Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical
source -- where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or
indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its
officials."
Now Bush is attempting to create what Kennedy warned against. He
claims to be conservative, but he seeks a rupture in our system of
government. The culture war, which has had many episodes, from the
founding of the Moral Majority to the unconstitutional impeachment of
President Clinton, is entering a new and far more dangerous phase. In
2004, Bush and Ratzinger used church doctrine to intimidate voters and
taint candidates. And through the courts the president is seeking to
codify not only conservative ideology but religious doctrine.
When men of God mistake their articles of devotion with political
platforms they will inevitably stand exposed in the political arena.
When politicians mistake themselves for men of God, their religion,
however sincere, will inevitably be seen as contrivance.
As both president and pope invoke heavenly authority to impose
their notions of tradition, they have set themselves on a collision
course with the American political tradition. In the name of the
Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,
democracy without end. Amen.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to
President Clinton and the author of The Clinton Wars, is writing a
column for Salon and the Guardian of London.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/042105H.shtml
El Kabong
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4468585.stm
Thursday, 21 April, 2005, 10:53 GMT 11:53 UK
Israel lobby in US 'fires staff'
Aipac is said to wield great influence among US politicians
A powerful pro-Israel lobby group in Washington has fired two top
employees said to be involved in an FBI spying investigation, US
newspapers report.
The New York Times and Washington Post say the men from the American
Israeli Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) are suspected of passing
secrets to Israel.
Nobody has been charged with wrongdoing and lawyers for the dismissed
men say they did not break any rules.
Aipac said the action was taken after "recently learned information".
Spokesman Patrick Dorton said the "conduct that Aipac expects of its
employees" was also a factor in the decision.
Lawyers for the dismissed men - policy director Steve Rosen and senior
analyst Keith Weissman - said they have never "solicited, received or
passed on any classified documents".
"They carried out their job solely to serve Aipac's goal of
strengthening the US-Israel relationship," a statement from the
lawyers said.
Fears over Iran
The Pentagon revealed in August last year that a senior official was
under investigation for giving Israel access to secret information
about US policy towards Iran.
The suspected spy, Lawrence Franklin, worked in the office of Douglas
Feith - an official who played a key role in planning the Iraq war,
along with the Deputy Defence Secretary at the time, Paul Wolfowitz.
Reports at the time said Mr Franklin was suspected of using his ties
to Aipac to pass on the information, though the exact nature of the
contacts is not known.
According to the Washington Post newspaper, the FBI raided Aipac's
offices twice last year.
Mr Franklin was briefly suspended from his job but is now back at
work, though he has reportedly been stripped of security privileges.
Aipac was ranked alongside the National Rifle Association as one of
the most effective lobby groups in Washington, often playing a pivotal
role in US relations with Israel.
lo yeeOn
Maybe that's why Bush was so happy to congratulate the new pope even
though the papacy is supposedly a religious matter, separate from the
matter of the state of which he is an official part, and inspite of
Ratzinger's Nazi past (there were Germans who risked imprisonment or
went into hiding to stay out of the Hitler Youth but Ratzinger tried
to explain away his darker past by claiming that he joined to avoid
the penalty of having to pay tuition for his schooling).
A crucial sign of the Bush-Ratzinger relationship will come when the
pope reveals where he stands as Bush launches his next aggression, the
much anticipated one against Iran and Syria this summer.
lo yeeOn
========
Mr & Mrs. Bush Congratulate Pope Benedict XVI
Wednesday, 20 April 2005, 10:51 am
Press Release: The White House
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
April 19, 2005
President and Mrs. Bush Congratulate Pope Benedict XVI
The South Lawn
THE PRESIDENT: Laura and I offer our congratulations to Pope Benedict
XVI. He's a man of great wisdom and knowledge. He's a man who serves
the Lord. We remember well his sermon at the Pope's funeral in Rome,
how his words touched our hearts and the hearts of millions. We join
with our fellow citizens and millions around the world who pray for
continued strength and wisdom as His Holiness leads the Catholic
Church.
El Kabong
Ruzicka refused to accept the official line that the U.S. military
does not keep track of civilian casualties, writing in an op-ed piece
the week before she was killed that this position "outraged the Arab
world and damaged the U.S. claim that its forces go to great lengths
to minimize civilian casualties."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=533&e=8&u=/ap/20050423/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_american_activist
Slain U.S. Activist's Project Stalls
Sat Apr 23,
By JAMIE TARABAY, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq -
A one-woman human rights movement, Ruzicka was instrumental in
securing millions of dollars in aid for distribution in Iraq. She'd
been traveling to and from the country since U.S.-led forces invaded
in March 2003, often going door-to-door to meet wounded Iraqis and
collect the figures for her surveys on the number hurt and killed.
She badgered the military for numbers and Washington for money. She
sweet-talked journalists and soldiers alike into helping her out. And
everyone got a hug.
Ruzicka refused to accept the official line that the U.S. military
does not keep track of civilian casualties, writing in an op-ed piece
the week before she was killed that this position "outraged the Arab
world and damaged the U.S. claim that its forces go to great lengths
to minimize civilian casualties."
An Associated Press survey of deaths in the first 12 months of the
occupation found that more than 5,000 Iraqis died violently in just
Baghdad and three provinces. Since then, however, neither U.S. nor
Iraqi officials have produced a complete tally.
Ruzicka thought she was close to uncovering the figures.
"Recently, I obtained statistics on civilian casualties from a
high-ranking U.S. military official. The numbers were for Baghdad
only, for a short period, during a relatively quiet time," she wrote
in the article published posthumously in USA Today and posted on her
Web site.
It wasn't clear if the deaths were caused by U.S. troops or
insurgents, she wrote, but it was clear the U.S. military did actually
keep track of the civilian dead. A U.S. official told her it was
"standard operating procedure for U.S. troops to file a spot report
when they shoot a noncombatant," she said.
The U.S. military did not immediately respond to her claims.
Ruzicka was on her way to visit an Iraqi girl injured in a bomb blast
when she was killed, according to her colleagues from the Campaign for
Innocent Victims in Conflict, the organization she founded.
El Kabong
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Angry Arab protestors mobbed the Greek Orthodox
patriarch during a religious procession in Jerusalem's Old City,
enraged over a scandal involing the alleged sale of politically
sensitive land to Jewish investors.
As hundreds of Christian pilgrims waving palm branches flocked to the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre to celebrate Orthodox Palm Sunday, scores
of Arab Christians joined the crowds, booing and shouting "Shame on
you" as Patriarch Irineos I left the basilica following a three-hour
service, an AFP correspondent said.
Shouting angrily in Arabic and Greek, they waved posters bearing
slogans denouncing Irineos, one of which read: "Judas, betrayest thou
the Son of Man with a kiss?" in reference to the betrayal of Jesus by
one of his disciples just before he was crucified.
Surrounded by scores of Israeli riot police, the 65-year-old patriarch
waved feebly as scores of protestors tried to push towards him, one of
whom lobbed a bottle of water at him.
Scuffles broke out between the protestors and between several visiting
Greek Orthodox pilgrims carrying Greek flags, who tried to tear down
the posters and stop the demonstration.
The Greek Orthodox patriarchate of Jerusalem was thrown into crisis in
mid-March after an Israeli newspaper reported that the church had sold
a large tract of politically-sensitive land in the Old City to
ideologically-motivated Jewish investors.
El Kabong
http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0516,curtis,63147,20.html
A British filmmaker deconstructs the politics of fear exploited by
radical Islamists and American neocons alike.
by Adam Curtis
April 19th, 2005 11:25 AM
LONDON—Last week the British media were promised a sensation. A terror
trial was about to reach a climax. The jury was to give its verdicts
on five Algerian men who were accused of being an Al Qaeda sleeper
cell that had planned to poison hundreds of innocent civilians.
Government ministers had privately told journalists that the
convictions would prove there was a hidden network of terror inside
Britain that, in their words, "threatened the life of the nation."
The jury delivered a very different sensation. They acquitted four of
the men and convicted the fifth only of "conspiracy to cause a public
nuisance." The man who was convicted, Kamel Bourgass, was indeed a
dangerous fanatic who had also been convicted of killing a police
officer, but the jury decided that there was no concrete evidence of
the nightmare vision of an organization with sleeper cells across the
world that was dedicated to the overthrow of the West.
This spectacular failure fuels the growing question that was raised
last fall when a documentary series called The Power of
Nightmares—which I wrote and produced—aired on BBC TV in prime time:
Does Al Qaeda really exist?
The Power of Nightmares—which receives its first New York screenings
at the Tribeca Film Festival this week—does not say that the Islamist
terrorist threat is an illusion. The West does face a deadly threat
from groups and individuals inspired by dangerous ideas—the horrific
attacks on America and the bombings in Madrid and Bali make this only
too clear. But the film also argues that the true nature of this
threat has been completely misunderstood by governments, security
services, and the international media. It has been distorted and
exaggerated to create a vision of a unique threat unlike anything we
have faced that justifies extreme countermeasures. This fantasy, which
has trapped our leaders and our media, prevents us from comprehending
and dealing with the dangers we face. The film tells not only how it
was created but also why, and in whose interest.
At the heart of the story, which begins 50 years ago, are two groups:
the American neo-conservatives and the radical Islamists. Both were
idealists born out of the failure of post-war liberal optimism, and
both had very similar explanations for why that failure had occurred.
Both groups did change the world—but not in the way either intended.
My original aim was not to make a documentary about the events of
September 11. The project started as a series about the history of
conservative political ideas and their resurgence in America and
Britain over the past 30 years—a worthy project for the BBC perhaps,
but not something that was going to challenge the way people see the
contemporary world.
As I researched the subject, I stumbled on the work of a little-known
Arab political writer called Sayyid Qutb, who visited America in 1949
and came away with a deeply pessimistic vision of post-war consumer
culture. He believed that the rise of individualism had unleashed a
selfishness on the world that was tearing away the moral bonds that
held society together. Qutb was no alien thinker: He had read
Nietzsche, Marx, and Sartre, and his criticism of modern America,
though Islamic in origin, was also born out of a Western conservative
tradition. Qutb's ideas would directly inspire those who flew the
planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11,
2001.
At the same time, I was reading about the history of the
neo-conservative movement and its theoretical background. This led me
to the works of a political theorist called Leo Strauss. His analysis
of modern democracy was that its shared moral values were in danger of
corrosion by a selfish individualism that questioned everything. He
too took a great deal from Nietzsche. Strauss's ideas were to become
one of the important forces that shaped the thinking of the
neo-conservative movement.
My aim in The Power of Nightmares was to trace what happened to Qutb's
and Strauss's ideas as they were taken up by the Islamists and the
neo-conservatives. The film does not—despite allegations from some
neo-conservative outriders—make a direct comparison between the ideas
and actions of Islamists and neo-conservatives. But it does argue that
both groups share a pessimism about the unbridled individualism of
consumerist culture and a desire to re-create a society of shared
moral values. They are the last political idealists in a world where
grand political ideas have disappeared to be replaced by a managerial
politics that serves only the demands of the modern self.
Tracing the history of the two groups, and how their different ideas
developed, leads one to look at 9-11 in a very different way. By the
end of the 1990s, the Islamist movement had failed as a mass attempt
to transform the world. Revolutions in Egypt and Algeria had not been
the spark for an uprising across the Arab world. The attacks on
America in 2001 were born out of that failure, and they were the work
of a small splinter group led by Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin
Laden. This group had no formal organization, and this new policy of
attacking the West directly was opposed by the majority of Islamists.
The assault on America was a desperate lashing out by a movement that
was facing failure.
But the effect of the attacks on the neo-conservatives was dramatic.
For most of the 1990s they were a marginalized group. In the wake of
9-11 shock and panic, powerful and influential again with figures like
Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz in the Bush White House, the
neocons reconstructed the Islamists in the image of their last evil
enemy, the Soviet Union. They created a simplified fantasy of the
Islamist threat—a sinister web of terror run from the center by bin
Laden in his lair in Afghanistan—and discovered that with the fear
this nightmare image produced, they could unify the nation and
rediscover a grand purpose for America—the very thing for which they
had been searching for over 30 years.
When The Power of Nightmares aired last fall, it caused a sensation in
Britain. Thousands of articles, websites, and blogs discussed the war
on terror and its underlying reality. It was an astonishing response
that the BBC had not anticipated. Prior to transmission, there were
serious worries about the public reaction, but when thousands of
e-mails poured in, a statistical analysis found that over 96 percent
were firmly in favor of the program (some viewer responses can be
found at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/4202741.stm
The film touched a nerve—a public feeling that there was something not
quite right or real about the fundamentals of the war on terror. No
U.S. networks have so far expressed any interest in showing it. If
they did, they might find, as the BBC did, that the public is tiring
of the politics and journalism of fear. People want to make sense of
the bewildering mood of uncertainty and doubt that has surrounded them
since 9-11. Terrorism is an enemy that can be dealt with bravely and
intelligently, as Europeans have done in the past. It is fear that
really undermines a nation's power and confidence in the world.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adam Curtis has made a wide range of political documentaries for the
BBC. His most recent work prior to The Power of Nightmares was a
series about the social and political use of Sigmund Freud's ideas
called The Century of the Self (it will open at Cinema Village this
summer).
El Kabong
The Iraq Survey Group believes "it was unlikely that an official
transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place."
April 25
U.S. Weapons Inspector Finishes Iraq Work
By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - In his final word, the CIA's top weapons inspector in
Iraq said Monday that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction has
"gone as far as feasible" and has found nothing, closing an
investigation into the purported programs of Saddam Hussein that were
used to justify the 2003 invasion.
"After more than 18 months, the WMD investigation and debriefing of
the WMD-related detainees has been exhausted," wrote Charles Duelfer,
head of the Iraq Survey Group, in an addendum to the final report he
issued last fall.
"As matters now stand, the WMD investigation has gone as far as
feasible."
In 92 pages posted online Monday evening, Duelfer provides a final
look at an investigation that occupied over 1,000 military and
civilian translators, weapons specialists and other experts at its
peak. His latest addenda conclude a roughly 1,500-page report released
last fall.
On Monday, Duelfer said there is no purpose in keeping many of the
detainees who are in custody because of their knowledge on Iraq's
weapons, although he did not provide any details about the current
number. A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the
ultimate decision on their release will be made by the Iraqi
authorities.
Among unanswered questions, Duelfer said a group formed to investigate
whether WMD-related material was shipped out of Iraq before the
invasion wasn't able to reach firm conclusions because the security
situation limited and later halted their work. Investigators were
focusing on transfers from Iraq to Syria.
No information gleaned from questioning Iraqis supported the
possibility, one addendum said. The Iraq Survey Group believes "it was
unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria
took place."
Kavik Kang
news:hu9r61lcbjqpm13a2...@4ax.com...
>
> The Iraq Survey Group believes "it was unlikely that an official
> transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place."
>
>
> April 25
>
> U.S. Weapons Inspector Finishes Iraq Work
>
>
> By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer
>
> WASHINGTON - In his final word, the CIA's top weapons inspector in
> Iraq said Monday that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction has
> "gone as far as feasible" and has found nothing, closing an
> investigation into the purported programs of Saddam Hussein that were
> used to justify the 2003 invasion.
She's a pretty bad writer. She obviously meant to say "one of the many
justifications for the 2003 invasion."
Paulo Gomes Jardim
wrote:
"the one issue that everyone could agree on"
(Wolfowitz)
--
"Humanity has many enemies. The worst of them are ignorance, arrogance,
extremism, and violence" - Abbas Kadhim
Kavik Kang
news:opsptnn4wcurn6af@paulo...
> On Tue, 26 Apr 2005 02:38:39 GMT, Kavik Kang <Kavik...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > "El Kabong" <poki_pongo at yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > news:hu9r61lcbjqpm13a2...@4ax.com...
> >>
> >> The Iraq Survey Group believes "it was unlikely that an official
> >> transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place."
> >>
> >>
> >> April 25
> >>
> >> U.S. Weapons Inspector Finishes Iraq Work
> >>
> >>
> >> By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer
> >>
> >> WASHINGTON - In his final word, the CIA's top weapons inspector in
> >> Iraq said Monday that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction has
> >> "gone as far as feasible" and has found nothing, closing an
> >> investigation into the purported programs of Saddam Hussein that were
> >> used to justify the 2003 invasion.
> >
> > She's a pretty bad writer. She obviously meant to say "one of the many
> > justifications for the 2003 invasion."
>
> "the one issue that everyone could agree on"
> (Wolfowitz)
Actually the one issue that they could all agree on was that we were at war
with radical fundamentalist islam, so he obviously missed at least one other
issue when he said that. He missed many others, too.
Osric
Kavik Kang <Kavik...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:Bqkbe.1080$Oz2...@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
Of which there was bugger all in Iraq.
--
Osric
THE BORDERS OF MY COUNTRY
RUN AROUND THE SOLES OF MY FEET
Kavik Kang
news:d4l4am$da2$1...@nwrdmz03.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com...
What are you talking about? Iraq is right in the center of the heart of the
Islamic world. Attacking anywhere else wouldn't make much sense, now, would
it?
Osric
You talked about radical fundamentalist Islam, one thing that Saddam Hussein
wouldn't tolerate. If you wanted to attack a country at the centre of the
Islamic world you should have attacked Saudi Arabia, the country most
represented by the 9/11 bombers and the centre of Wahabism.
Kavik Kang
You really need to get a map... Iraq is clearly at the center of the the
region from which attacks against us eminate. Saudi Arabia is not really
well-located for our goals. It's pretty obvious if you just look at a map.
It's a really bad idea to attack the United States:-)
El Kabong
26 Apr 2005 21:50:13 GMT
Source: Human Rights Watch
(New York, April 27, 2005)- The crimes at Abu Ghraib are part of a
larger pattern of abuses against Muslim detainees around the world,
Human Rights Watch said on the eve of the April 28 anniversary of the
first pictures of U.S. soldiers brutalizing prisoners at the Iraqi
jail. Human Rights Watch released a summary (below) of evidence of
U.S. abuse of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay,
Cuba, as well as of the programs of secret CIA detention,
"extraordinary renditions," and "reverse renditions."
"Abu Ghraib was only the tip of the iceberg," said Reed Brody, special
counsel for Human Rights Watch. "It's now clear that abuse of
detainees has happened all over-from Afghanistan to Guantánamo Bay to
a lot of third-country dungeons where the United States has sent
prisoners. And probably quite a few other places we don't even know
about."
Human Rights Watch called this week for the appointment of a special
prosecutor to investigate the culpability of Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld and ex-CIA Director George Tenet, as well as Lt. Gen.
Ricardo Sanchez, formerly the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Gen.
Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of the prison camp at Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba in cases of crimes against detainees. It rejected last
week's report by the Army Inspector General which was said to absolve
Gen. Sanchez of responsibility.
"General Sanchez gave the troops at Abu Ghraib the green light to use
dogs to terrorize detainees, and they did, and we know what happened,
said Brody. "And while mayhem went on under his nose for three months,
Sanchez didn't step in to halt it."
Human Rights Watch also expressed concern that, despite all the damage
that had been done by the detainee abuse scandal, the United States
had not stopped the use of illegal coercive interrogation. In January
2005, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claimed in a written response
during his confirmation hearings that the prohibition on cruel,
inhuman, or degrading (CID) treatment does not apply to U.S. personnel
in the treatment of non-citizens abroad, indicating that no law would
prohibit the CIA from engaging in CID treatment when it interrogates
non-Americans outside the United States.
Human Rights Watch said that the U.S. government was still withholding
key information about the treatment of detainees, including directives
reportedly signed by President George W. Bush authorizing the CIA to
establish secret detention facilities and to "render" suspects to
countries where torture is used.
"If the United States is to wipe away the stain of Abu Ghraib, it
needs to investigate those at the top who ordered or condoned abuse
and come clean on what the president has authorized," said Brody.
"Washington must repudiate, once and for all, the mistreatment of
detainees in the name of the war on terror."
Reda about U.S. Abuse of Detainees around the World
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/HRW/0a95a728282ef1cf141236fe2b3827fb.htm
+
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul
of the people. On some great and glorious day the
plain folks of the land will reach their heart's
desire at last and the White House will be adorned
by a downright moron." --- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
"Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their
dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens."
- William H. Beveridge, 1944
Osric
LOL. Your justificastion for invading a country is that it is geographically
in the centre of the Muslim world irrespective of whether it has any role in
international terrorism? And in any event if you wanted to invade a country
that is geographically in the centre of the Muslim world perhaps the US
should have invaded Sri Lanka as Malaysia is a Muslim country. Sri Lanka
itself had nothing to do with the War on Terror, but who cares, geography is
what counts eh?
Kavik Kang
You are making progress in understanding what a war is. We didn't start
WWIII, they did. That makes us the "defenders" and them the "aggressors".
The last place a war with us is ever going to take place is in America.
This is no different than almost any other war we have been in. Like I keep
saying, when Japan attacked us we invaded Tunisia first and Japan last. You
do seem to be making progress in understanding what a war is.
> And in any event if you wanted to invade a country
> that is geographically in the centre of the Muslim world perhaps the US
> should have invaded Sri Lanka as Malaysia is a Muslim country. Sri Lanka
> itself had nothing to do with the War on Terror, but who cares, geography
is
> what counts eh?
Pretty much, yes. You really are starting to get this whole war thing. But
Sri Lanka isn't in the right place, Iraq is, hence, our pressence there.
Osric
So to cut to the chase its your position is that if a country is on the
receiving end of a terrorist attack they are then justified in invading any
country they feel like?
Kavik Kang
Not exactly, but close...
A direct attack on the United States may be a terrorist attack, but is is
also an act of war. Radical fundamentalist islam started WWIII with the US
on 9/11/01. Since they are cowards and believe that they can hide among
their own civilian populations, they have endangered those civilian
populations. We are not going to sit by doing nothing after WWIII has been
started with us, we will not allow their cowardice and lack of a defined
"nation" to win the war for them. They leave us with no choice but to hunt
them down and kill them "wherever they may be". It is they who have created
this situation, not us. Our enemy primarily eminates from the
middle-eastern Arab world, so that is where the war will take place and
those are the people who will be forced to endure WWIII. We did not create
this situation, our attackers did. Since Iraq is at the center of the
region from which our enemies are based, it should be expected that Iraq
would be the first nation to be invaded in our defensive war against the
radical fundamentalist agrressors. It is radical fundamentalist islamic
nutcases who have caused the war in Iraq, not the United States. We are
merely defending ourselves from their attacks. This is how America defends
itself, and always has been, nothing is different from any past US war. It
really is a bad idea to attack the United States...
I doubt that you'll actually understand this, it's most likely that your
response will be a lame attempt to turn this around in some way, but this is
the true reality of the situation. But to answer your question in a single
sentance... Yes, if the United States is attacked we are justified in
attacking whoever we want, wherever we want, however we want, based solely
on our assesment of the situation. It really and truly is a really bad idea