Iran's parliament approves labeling CIA, U.S. Army terrorist groups

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 30/09/2007
By The Associated Press

Iran's parliament on Saturday approved a nonbinding resolution to label the CIA and the U.S. Army terrorist organizations.

The move is seen as a diplomatic tit-for-tat after the U.S. Senate voted in favor of a resolution urging the State Department to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization.

"The aggressor U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency are terrorists and also nurture terror," said a statement by the 215 lawmakers who signed the resolution at an open session of the Iranian parliament. The session was broadcast live on state-run radio. The hard-line dominated parliament said the two were terrorists, because they were involved in dropping nuclear bombs in Japan in World War II, used depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, supported the killings of Palestinians by Israel, bombed and killed Iraqi civilians and tortured terror suspects in prisons.

The resolution, which is seen as a diplomatic offensive against the U.S., urges Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government to treat the two as terrorist organizations. It also paves the way for the resolution to become legislation that - if ratified by the country's hard-line constitutional watchdog - would become law. The government is expected to remain silent over the parliament resolution and wait for U.S. reaction before making its decision.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate voted 76-22 in favor of a resolution urging the State Department to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. While the proposal attracted overwhelming bipartisan support, a small group of Democrats said they feared labeling the state-sponsored organization a terrorist group could be interpreted as a congressional authorization of military force in Iran.

The Bush administration had already been considering whether to blacklist an elite unit within the Revolutionary Guard, subjecting part of the vast military operation to financial sanctions.
The U.S. legislative push came a day after Ahmadinejad told world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly that his country would defy attempts to impose new sanctions by arrogant powers seeking to curb its nuclear program, accusing them of lying and imposing illegal penalties on his country.

He said the nuclear issue was now closed as a political issue and Iran would pursue the monitoring of its nuclear program through its appropriate legal path, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the UN's nuclear watchdog.

Tensions between the U.S. and Iran have escalated over Washington accusations that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons and has been supplying Shiite militias in Iraq with deadly weapons used to kill U.S. troops. Iran denies both of the allegations.

Earlier this month, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, named a new head for the elite Revolutionary Guard. He appointed Mohammed Ali Jafari, described as a senior figure in the hard-line force, to replace Yahya Rahim Safavi, who led the Guard for the last decade.

In a new decree, Khamenei also appointed Jafari to run the Basij, groups of volunteers dedicated to support the ruling Islamic establishment, the official IRNA news agency reported.

The appointment effectively merged the two forces. Further intertwining the Guard with the popular Basij force is widely believed to be aimed at undermining U.S. efforts to designate the Guard a terrorist organization.

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Can anyone blame Iran (or even it's people) for declaring the CIA a terrorist organisation? The CIA has a history of destabilising Iran and other Middle Eastern countries. In Iran this process began in 1953 when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh in a military coup, after he threatened to nationalize foreign oil companies. The CIA replaces him with a dictator, the Shah of Iran, whose secret police, SAVAK (trained by the CIA & Mossad), was as brutal as the Gestapo. The Shah was an evil dictor (supported by the US) and kept his people oppressed. For his support, he awarded foreign oil companies to resume extracting oil from Iran but was forbidden to see its accounts (i.e how much oil was extracted and how much money was made) - Sound familiar? His dictatorship made Iranian people more angry towards him and the Western world and bred fundamentalism. It was only until 1979 that the people of Iran were set free by the Islamic revolution that overthrew him. The US backed puppet fled to Egypt, never to return. All foreignors and westernised Iranians had also fled Iran. Iranian students stormed into the US embassy, held 52 embassy employees hostage for a 444 days. The US government severed diplomatic relations and imposed economic sanctions on April 7, 1980 and later that month attempted a failed rescue. Shortly afterwards, Iraq invaded Iran and it was the start of Iraq-Iran war where millions of people died. To get revenge, the US backed Saddam Hussein's Iraq in their war against Iran, helping them with weapons (to fight the Soviet backed Iran) but at the same time secretly allowed Israel to sell American weapons to Iran using the profits to arm the Contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Well you couldn't make it up! The people of Iran are forgiving people, they want a fresh start with the USA, but the USA hasn't forgotten it's embarassing defeat in Iran and want's to make ammends. On July 3, 1988 the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 en route to UAE killing all 290 passengers and crew on aboard, including 38 non-Iranians and 66 children. The Vincennes was inside Iranian territorial waters at the time. According to the US government, the Iranian airbus was mistakenly identified as an attacking F14 fighter. The Iranian government maintains that the Vincennes knowingly shot down a civilian aircraft. Today, Iran has changed alot. Whether you like him or not Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has tried on numerous occasions to make friendship with the Bush administration. Bush does not want to know. Ahmadinejad recenty went to the States and answered questions by students and public from Columbia University. He has since extended an invitation to U.S. President George W. Bush to speak at an Iranian university - I doubt Bush will ever take that offer. Jaw Jaw is better than War War!

Here's more info of the roles the CIA played in recent time . All information has been extracted from a brilliant site informationclearinghouse.info

The U.S. Congress created the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947 with the passing of the National Security Act. The official duty of the Central Intelligence Agency is to serve as an intelligence gathering agency.

In reality, the CIA does not only gather information but consistently targets and engages in covert operations, psychological operations, and acts of terrorism both domestically and internationally.

CIA past operations and activities
Operation Phoenix was an assassination program conducted by the CIA during the Vietnam conflict. Its objective was to eliminate Vietnamese who might oppose the U.S but also to terrorize the entire population of South Vietnam and to suppress opposition to the occupying U.S. forces. Over 20,000 Vietnamese were murdered, often at random.

During the 1980s the CIA used profits from its cocaine smuggling activities to finance the Contras in Nicaragua who were responsible for the murders of tens of thousands of civilians, and it attempted to disrupt the country's economy, in order to destabilize the legitimate Sandinista government. For this, the U.S. was condemned in the World Court for "unlawful use of force," and it rejected a U.N. security council resolution calling upon it to observe international law. We must note that George Bush Sr. was vice president at the time .

On Sept. 11, 1973, the CIA planned and organized the military coup d'etat in Chile which overthrew the legitimately elected government of Salvador Allende and brought to power the regime of General Augusto Pinochet. This regime abducted, tortured and killed thousands of Chilean citizens in an attempt to suppress opposition.

It appears that Henry Kissinger, National Security Advisor and Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations, was closely involved diplomatically with the Southern Cone governments at the time and well-aware of Operation Condor. The first cooperation agreements were signed between the CIA and anti-Castro groups, and fascist movements such as the Triple A set up in Argentina by Jose Lopez Rega ("personal secretary" of Juan and Isabel Peron), and Rodolfo Almiron. The post-junta truth commission found that the Argentine military had "disappeared" at least 10,000 Argentines in the so-called "dirty war" against "subversion" and "terrorists" between 1976 and 1983; human rights groups in Argentina put the number at closer to 30,000. We must note that George Bush Sr, was head of the CIA at the time it began and vice president at the time it ended.

Operation CHAOS was the most vicious aggressive domestic surveillence operation conducted on American antiwar groups and activists like Abbie Hoffman, whose objectives were to:

1. Gather information on their immorality.
2. Show them as scurrilous and depraved.
3. Call attention to their habits and living conditions.
4. Explore every possible embarrassment.
5. Investigate personal conflicts or animosities between them.
6. Send articles to newspapers showing their depravity.
7. Use narcotics and free sex for entrapment.
8. Have members arrested on marijuana charges.
9. Exploit the hostilities between various persons.
10. Use cartoons and photographs to ridicule them.
11. Use disinformation to confuse and disrupt.
12. Get records of their bank accounts.
13. Obtain specimens of handwriting.
14. Provoke target groups into rivalries that resulted in deaths.

The CIA was allegedly involved in the April 2002, Venezuela failed coup that tried to overthrow President Hugo Chavez, who was democratically elected.

In 2002 the CIA distorted Iraq data to the media in order to justify George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Most recently, former CIA employee, Luis Posada Carriles, who is believed to be the mastermind behind the 1976 Cubana de Aviacion bombing which killed 73 people, walked free from a U.S. court Tuesday following a court ruling for his liberation.

These are only a handful of operations; there have literally been hundreds and many are still classified as secret by the U.S. government.

For a time-line checkout here.

Black gold turns grey as Western giants prepare to draw from the wells of Iraq

Taken from The Independent, UK, 30 September 2007
By Ewa Jasiewicz

The big oil multinationals thought the prize was theirs under new production-sharing agreements in the war-torn country. But the 'Iraqi wealth for the Iraqi people' movement is growing amid internecine conflicts and trade union resistance.

Iraq is open for business," promised oil ministry officials. "Investment can reduce Iraq's poverty and help bring peace," came back the chorus from oil company chiefs.

As the executives toasted one another with cocktails sponsored by Lukoil at the Iraq Petroleum 2007 conference in Dubai earlier this month, ordinary Iraqis were living in a state of emergency.

Oxfam reports that 28 per cent of the country's children are malnourished, that four million people regularly can't buy enough to eat, and that 70 per cent are without adequate water supplies. With 60,000 Iraqis fleeing their homes each month and reports of an average of 62 violent deaths per day, the soft carpets, piped music and quiet deal-making at the Hyatt Regency hotel were a world away from occupied Iraq.

At the same time, a parallel conference was taking place in Basra under the banner, "Oil wealth belongs to the Iraqi people". Organised by the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (Ifou) and attended by civil society leaders, activists and academics from all over the country, this was Ifou's third conference aimed at stopping the likes of Shell and BP from gaining a controlling stake in Iraq's oil wealth.

With a growing movement to keep the oil in the public sector, disputes between the Kurdish regional government (KRG) and Baghdad, and no legal framework for investment, the black goldrush that international oil companies are banking on is not a done deal.

Iraq, with proven reserves of 115 billion barrels represents the biggest untapped oil and gas market on the planet. Iraqi oil production stands at just 2.5 per cent of the world's total even though the country possesses 10 per cent (or potentially double that, according to some estimates) of global reserves.

With just 4 per cent of the world's oil in the hands of multinationals and a growing trend for nationalisation in countries from Venezuela to Kazakhstan, Iraq is seen by many international groups as their best chance to turn the tables.

Central to their hopes is a new oil law friendly to foreign investment. Drafted in closed-door consultations between international oil companies, the International Monetary Fund and the American and British governments, this law is the blueprint for foreign companies to explore, develop, produce and sell Iraqi oil under exclusive contracts lasting up to 30 years.

Regardless of whether Iraq's parliament passes the law, oil minister Hussain al-Shahristani (pictured right) has declared the country open for business and plans to invite companies to invest under existing Baath regime legislation to speed up the process. "There is no legal vacuum in Iraq," he declared at the Iraq Petroleum conference in Dubai. "We are now under the oil law of Iraq that has been in force for a few years. We are going to go ahead and prepare our model contracts."

Controversy has raged over the provisions of the new law, with political parties, religious authorities, oil experts and trade unions calling for a referendum and a moratorium on any long-term contracts with foreign groups. Planning minister Ali Baban has pledged to resign if the law is passed; the Association of Muslim Scholars has issued a fatwa against it; more than 100 senior technocrats and experts have written to the government boycotting it; and Iraqi oil unions have not ruled out strike action.

Asked about the possibility of a consultation involving Iraqi civil society and unions over the law – a senior source at the Iraqi ministry of planning, who did not wish to be named, said: "Well Iraqi workers, they come from a low class – they are not well informed about these things. They are always demanding something: whether it's higher wages or conditions, they are always wanting something." He denied they should be included in consultations.

Oil and gas lawyer Jay Park has run training workshops for the oil ministry and international companies on the draft law. He was the author of oil legislation in both Somalia and Kurdistan and has represented foreign companies and the KRG in contract negotiations. In a workshop at the Dubai conference, Parks paraphrased Bismarck, quipping: "Laws are like sausages: you don't want to know how they were made, you don't want to know how the sausage machine works."

But it is not on sausage machines that Iraqi civil society begs to differ. A recent research poll commissioned by US and UK human rights groups found that just 4 per cent of Iraqis felt they had received enough information about the oil law. Some 63 per cent said they believed their oil industry should be developed by state companies, with 32 per cent of those indicating a strong preference.

Adding fuel to the fire, conflict between the Kurdish regional government and Baghdad reached a new high this month when the KRG signed a production sharing agreement with Dallas-based oil firm Hunt.

Mr Shahristani has declared the Hunt deal illegal. Speaking on the sidelines of Iraq Petroleum, he said: "Any contract that has been signed by anybody other than the ministry of oil now, before the new law is legislated, has no standing as far as the government of Iraq is concerned." With the Kurdish energy minister claiming to have at least 10 companies in line to sign further deals, the conflict looks set to escalate.

The type of contracts on offer has also been a source of controversy. Production-sharing agreements (PSAs) were the first to be touted by the law – exclusive long-term deals that Iraq's unions liken to earlier, colonial-era concession agreements. These gave companies virtually unlimited profits, and control over the production, depletion and sale of Iraq's oil.

PSAs are usually used by countries with reserves to which it is hard to gain access and, as a result, high extraction costs. None of the top six Opec countries use the agreements, opting instead for service contracts. These allow the state to retain full authority over all production decisions and consign the investing company to the role of contractor.

But the international groups want PSAs. In 2004, BP, Shell, Chevron, Exxon, Total and ENI employed the services of Washington-based corporate lobbyists the International Tax and Investment Centre. The ITIC produced a document which concluded that PSAs were the only investment option for Iraq. Officials from the British Foreign Office and Treasury advised the ITIC in late 2004 on their strategy for influencing the Iraqi government. The British ambassador to Iraq then sent the document formally to the Iraqi finance minister.

Although Foreign minister Kim Howells claimed the Foreign Office was only acting as a postal service, Rob Sherwin, Middle East economic adviser for the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, admitted on the sidelines of Iraq Petroleum that the FCO and British oil companies have held talks on the future of Iraqi oil. "We have had discussions in the past as to where Iraq's oil industry ought to go," he said.

Mr Sherwin, who used to work as Middle East economic business development adviser to Shell, believes charges of the Government advocating UK oil group interests are overstated. "Of course Britain has an interest in Iraq, but some people are trying to overplay those interests and relationships with oil companies. They are trying to make a nuisance."

Back at Iraq Petroleum, John Heavyside, business manager for BP in Iraq, was showing his enthusiasm for PSAs: "We want to take risks and get incentivised to perform better; service contracts don't really allow us to do that. It's what we all want, all the international companies here. Production-sharing agreements offer a win-win situation. They are equitable and offer lucrative returns and benefits to both the state and investing companies."

Some in the oil ministry disagree. Natiq al Bayati, director of reservoir and oil fields development, has called PSAs "a red line". Speaking at Iraq Petroleum, he stated: "International oil companies would prefer the PSC [production-sharing contract] but the political and economic culture and atmosphere in Iraq is not conducive to this contract. We will operate on a 'horses for courses' basis – there will be no one model contract."

While oil groups have not yet sent their personnel to Iraq, they have been working hard to get a foot in the door. The country currently has 45 competitive memoranda of understanding with oil companies – confirmed pre-contractual commitments to work together on particular projects. The oil ministry has also confirmed work on model deals and regulations. More than 100 blocks are up for exploration – 40 in the Kurdish region and 65 in the rest of Iraq.

Abdul Ilah Qassim al-Amir, oil adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, reiterated that contracts signed under the previous regime would be reviewed. In this category are the Al Ahdab field for the China Petroleum Company; Exploration Block 8 for India's ONGC Videsh; the Amara field for Petro Vietnam; Block 3 for Indonesia's Petro-mina; and the Al Noor field for the Syrian government.

However, Lukoil's claim to the West Qurna field – a super giant possessing up to 10 per cent of all Iraq's known reserves – is invalid, according to Mr Amir, who claimed that the previous regime annulled the contract.

Washington has referred to the oil legislation as a revenue- sharing law and reconciliation measure. Yet just one of the 46 provisions refers to revenue sharing and mentions it as the subject of a second law. The "reconciliation" aspect is the incentivising of regional authorities to counter insurgency and achieve their own political and religious ambitions by controlling oil policy. This has led some commentators to call the law an "oil for peace" measure, and others a plan for the dismemberment of the country.

Step up the Federal Oil and Gas Council. The FOGC will have at least 15 members representing regional political leaders, the Iraqi National Oil Company, and the ministries of oil, planning and finance. It will have the power to decide what type of contracts, and with which companies, will be signed, and how resources accounting for 95 per cent of all government revenue will be developed and managed for a generation.

Timothy Mills, president of the US Chamber of Commerce and campaign lawyer to George Bush during the disputed election results of 2000, provided an insight into the pacification policy behind regional economic decision-making. Writing for the official programme of the Iraq Petroleum conference in Dubai, he said: "[If] the untapped oil wealth of Iraq is fairly distributed amongst the various political and social factions, then each political and social faction would share a strong interest in quelling the unrest that has persisted for the better part of the past four years."

Yet Tariq Shafiq, author of the oil law and former director of the Iraqi National Oil Company, believes that tasking regional political authorities with economic, political and security mandates could escalate sectarianism. "The FOGC will conform to the ethnic and sectarian divisions inside the country. People should be picked for their ability and integrity, not along ethnic lines. The decision making requires two-thirds to approve. If you have a strong party there or a strong region, one party could easily block one third."

Iraqi economist and oil expert Kamil Mahdi goes further: "This arrangement will see regions competing with each other to award contracts to multinationals, with the benefits flowing to corrupt local elites and the multinationals themselves."

Many of Iraq's top professionals have joined the exodus from the country, and the brain drain is taking its toll on the oil sector.

An Iraqi consultant working with organisations in Baghdad, who did not wish to be named, said: "Iraq can, on its own capability and manpower, double production, but the organisations operating here are incredibly weak. Execution of work has been delayed, and contracts with suppliers and manufacturers are taking three to four times as long as they used to because experts in the field of contracting have left. About 90 per cent of Iraq's top experts have left. Nobody wants to die."

A world away from the bright lights of Dubai in the power-cut streets of Basra, the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions was pressing ahead with its campaign for a unified industry in public hands.

Hassan Jumaa Awad, Ifou president, believes Iraqi manpower and international technology and expertise make a good match for developing the oil sector, but only on terms advantageous to Iraq. Speaking from Basra, he said: "It is possible to co-operate with oil companies through a service contract, for the development of the oil industry in the service of the Iraqi economy." He said that the Southern Oil Company could increase output by one million barrels per day by the end of 2008 if given a $500m (£250m) investment.

Despite their reconstruction efforts and a membership of 26,000, Mr Shahristani has ruled the union illegal and wants to see it shut down. The oil minister has refused to recognise or meet with it, instead reapplying Baathist laws that ban unions in the public sector.

Speaking on the sidelines of Iraq Petroleum, he stated: "Trade unions anywhere else are supposed to be concerned with the welfare of workers and adequate wages, not set policies for the government." He said that industrial action effecting exports would be treated as "violent" and dealt with by force.

The strength of the union, however, has forced the prime minister to meet with leaders over demands covering pay, health and safety and permanent contracts, as well as a re-instatement of fuel subsidies and consultation on the oil law.

Ifou, from its origins as the Southern Oil Company union in 2003, has held regular elections and grown to a nationwide federation including unions from 10 state oil and gas companies.

Responding to the oil minister's comments, Mr Awad said: "Our legitimacy has come through the ballot box and the Iraqi constitution, which enshrines the right to form unions. The minister's actions are similar to those undertaken by Saddam's regime against those who demanded better conditions for the people."

He went on to say: "We will continue our efforts to serve our members and defend our oil wealth, no matter what the cost."

And the cost may be high. In June arrest warrants were issued against union leaders and Iraqi troops occupied the oil fields over strike threats. The TUC and the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions have both condemned the Iraqi government's strong-armed tactics and called for negotiations and recognition of Ifou as a bona fide organisation.

For Iraqis, an economic occupation, imposed by military force, threatens a future of genuine sovereignty and freedom. Yet with a growing opposition challenging sectarian, corporate and foreign agendas, the future of Iraq's black gold is far from certain.

Ewa Jasiewicz is a freelance journalist and part-time researcher for Platform, an independent oil industry analyst

The war for the house

Taken from Haaretz, 30/09/2007
By Gideon Levy

Theirs is an apartment building no one has ever heard of. No architectural International Style, no style at all, just an apartment building. Five floors, 11 families, new tiles in one of the bathrooms. Situated on a hillside, the house hovers above the city below. Hovers? Hovered.

Many other buildings surround this one. Densely constructed, the houses almost touch one another. A narrow alley, the width of a person, separates the buildings. All of the residents of the apartment building are family members - parents, siblings and cousins. They built one floor on top of another, residing in cramped proximity. Residing? Resided.

Last Thursday, the bulldozer arrived. How did the bulldozer get to a home at the end of the narrow alleyway? Along the way, as they say, the bulldozer paved a route of destruction for itself, damaging all the homes in its path. Here it demolished a stone fence, there it cracked a wall. What difference does it make already? Some of the homes have now become hazardous for human residence, their cracked walls threatening to collapse. The bulldozer finally reached its destination and began razing the building.

The five stories collapsed like a house of cards, stirring up a huge cloud of dust, burying everything in the apartment building: kitchen utensils, furniture, toys, electronic appliances and memories. Nothing remained; everything was buried. Last week, I saw two children trying to save something: the new bicycles purchased for the school year. Demolished walls with iron rods protruding from them covered the red bikes the children struggled to extract. Finally, they uncovered them: bent, smashed. Pain surfaced on the faces of the children, a girl and a boy, nine or 10 years old. Nothing remained of their home. Just a row of children's clothing fluttered in the wind, hung on a wire descending from the remains of the roof. The staircase remains suspended in the air on iron rods, leading nowhere, threatening to crash down at any moment on our heads and upon the heads of the rummaging children.

Here lives the Mabruk family, not happily. The father, Ali, his sons and daughters. About three weeks ago, the Israel Defense Forces killed his son, Nasser; another son, Majid, is still wanted by Israel. A fighting family, active in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. A giant red flag of the Popular Front is now planted among the ruins of the house, protesting the world that has shown no interest in them. Not far from there, at the end of a row of houses, the soldier Ben Zion Henman was killed in a gun battle that erupted here about 10 days ago. Within the camp, Mohammed Khaled, 17, and Adib Salim, 38, were killed. Adib was a disabled tirmis [lupin bean] salesman, paralyzed on the right side of his body. He fell, bleeding, under a sign memorializing his brother, Jamal, a Hamas activist who was liquidated here by a missile in 2001. The IDF claims that the paralyzed Adib was armed. In its response, the IDF emphasizes as supporting evidence the fact that his brother was a terrorist.

It was a successful operation: The IDF prevented a horrible suicide attack. Some of the planners of this attack were here, among the alleyways of the Ein Beit Ilma camp, located on the western edge of Nablus. No one can dispute the need to carry out an operation like this, which prevented killing. The fact that only two Palestinians were killed during the three days of the nameless operation - this time the IDF did not follow its habit of assigning the operation one of the childish names it favors - attests to the caution the soldiers employed.

In this light, there is even more reason to ask: Why the apartment building? Why was it necessary to destroy the lives of 11 families? How will it contribute to the security of Israel, even if the IDF calls the building a "combat post?" When will we finally wean ourselves of this unnecessary and criminal means of destroying the homes of innocent people? Does the fact that the commander of the Popular Front in the camp lives in the house justify demolishing the entire five-story building? When will the IDF learn that the next terrorists will sprout from among these very ruins? Was not the urge for revenge aroused in the heart of the child who searched for the bicycle among the ruins of his home, who saw his world destroyed? Anyone wishing to become acquainted with the real "infrastructure of terror" is invited to travel to Nablus, to see the ruins of the home at the edge of the Ein Beit Ilma camp.

Complex's swastika symbol mistake

Taken from Sydnet Morning Herald, Australia, 28.08.07
By Dan Glaister


Painting a swastika on a public building is a hate crime. But what happens when the building is the swastika?

From the ground, a construction in San Diego, United States, appears innocuous. But viewed from the air, on the internet via Google Earth, the shape is unmistakeable - it resembles the Nazi symbol.


Whoops … the building's shape seen from the air

Construction began for the six-building complex at the US naval base at Coronado in southern California in 1967.

The plans called for two central buildings and a single L-shaped barracks, but the Naval Amphibious Base Complex 320-325 evolved in design. By the time it was finished in 1970 it had four L-shaped buildings set at right angles. That was when the problem was spotted.

The scheme's architect, John Mock, said this week that while he was aware of the shape as viewed from above, he did not think it a true swastika. "We knew what it was going to look like, but it isn't that. It's four L-shaped buildings … looking at it from the ground or the air, it still is."

Forgotten about after the initial controversy, the buildings' form become an issue again thanks to the internet and Google Earth. It has led an unlikely alliance - of bloggers, anti-discrimination activists, politicians and one talkshow radio host - to take action.

And the navy has added $US600,000 ($687,000) to its 2008 budget for camouflage.

Landscaping, rock structures and solar panels should help disguise the building's shape.

"We take this very seriously," said Scott Sutherland, the deputy public affairs officer for the Navy Region Southwest. "We don't want to be associated with something as symbolic and hateful as a swastika."

The remedy might not stop conspiracy theorists. The buildings, surmise some bloggers, were put up by German POWs as a Hitler tribute. Others say nearby buildings look like planes pointing at the swastika.

One theory has it that, sideways, the buildings resemble Calvary crosses. And the crosses point to Jerusalem.

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What a stupid thing to do in the first place. The architect and the people behind the project should be seriously questioned and punished!

The 9/11 survivor no one can remember

· Tale of flight from burning tower does not add up
· Woman goes to ground after story is questioned

Taken from the Guardian, UK, Friday September 28, 2007
David Dunlap and Serge Kovaleski

Tania Head's story, as shared over the years with reporters, students, friends and hundreds of visitors to ground zero, was a remarkable account of both life and death.

She had, she said, survived the terror attack on the World Trade Centre despite having been badly burned when the plane crashed into the upper floors of the south tower.

Crawling through the chaos and carnage on the 78th floor that morning, she said, she encountered a dying man who handed her his inscribed wedding ring, which she later returned to his widow.

Her own life was saved, she said, by a selfless volunteer who extinguished the flames on her burning clothes before she was helped down the stairs. It was a journey she said she had the strength to make because she kept thinking of a beautiful white dress she was to wear at her coming wedding to a man named Dave.

But later she would discover, she said, that Dave, her fiance, and in some versions her husband, had perished in the north tower.

Ms Head's account made her one of only 19 survivors who had been at or above the point of impact when the planes hit. But no part of her story, it turns out, has been verified.

The family and friends of the man to whom she claimed to be engaged say they have never heard of Tania Head and view the relationship she describes with the man, who did die in the north tower, as an impossibility.

A spokeswoman for Merrill Lynch, where she told people she worked at the time of the terror attack, said the company had no record of employing a Tania Head.

And few people, it seems, who embraced the immediacy and pain of her account ever asked the name of the man whose ring she had returned, or that of the hospital where she was treated, or the identities of the people she met in the south tower on the morning of 9/11.

"She never shared those details, and it was nothing we wanted to probe," said Alison Crowther, the mother of Welles Remy Crowther, a man who died on 9/11 and who is credited with rescuing a number of people from the south tower, including Ms Head by her own account.

In recent weeks the New York Times sought to interview Ms Head about her experiences on 9/11 but she cancelled three scheduled interviews, citing her privacy and emotional turmoil, and declined to provide details to corroborate her story. "I have done nothing illegal," she said.

She has retained a lawyer, Stephanie Furgang Adwar, to represent her.

No one has suggested that Ms Head did anything to profit financially from her position as an officer with the Survivors' Network, the non-profit group for which she helped to raise money.

But the organisations to which she has been affiliated have also questioned her account.

For several weeks colleagues who said they respected the good work she had done among survivors have pressed her to come forward and clarify details. But they said they had been unable to persuade her or, in other cases, that she contradicted previous versions she had given.
The board of the Survivors' Network voted this week to remove her as president and as a director of the group, which supports those who escaped the terror that day.

Jefferson Crowther, Welles Crowther's father, said in an interview that he and his wife met Ms Head early last year.

"She explained that her clothes were on fire and that our son took a jacket and put out the flames.

"She told us that she said, 'Don't leave me,' and he replied, 'I won't. Don't worry. I'll get you down.'

"She seemed so heartfelt and genuine about what she said to us."

The missionary danger

Current-day missionaries use friendly tactics, but are just as dangerous as before

Taken from Ynet News, Israel, 27.09.07
Ya'acov Margi

History is repeating itself. Then, as now, missionaries were operating under the guise of mercy and a "religion of love," in an effort to boost the number of converts in Israel based on Christian doctrine. In this way, some elements are attempting to realize their final objective: Exterminating the Jewish people through money and manipulations.

Then, history was filled with pogroms, crusades, the Inquisition, blood libels, mass killing, and genocide, which were all undertaken in the name of this same "love." If it wasn't done gently and mercifully, then it was done through the use of force, torture, destruction, fire, murder, and cruelty.

Toady, missionaries have been forced to change their modus operandi. For example: Acquiring souls through money, covering debts, making tempting proposals, immigration, and guaranteed employment. All of the above are the means of persuasion employed by profession missionaries.
Making others convert to Christianity is considered among missionary circles to be a profession where all means justify the end. They claim that their objective is "saving the soul" of the intended victim.

Most promises are not realized, yet the hurt, weak, and embarrassed victim is despaired and doesn't realize this. There are cases where he believes professional seducers and their smooth messages, and then it is too late. The humiliation, destruction, and poison introduced by the missionary into the victim's soul have already seeped into the depths of his lost soul.

Tempted by offers of help
Judaism has no interest in converting members of other religions. Freedom of religion is one thing, and there is no reason to prevent a member of any other religion from acting based on his faith. However, converting someone – even if this is done by a Jew enticing a Christian – while using money and other despicable means, is a wholly different matter.

At times of crisis, people could easily be tempted by offers of help that are proposed on behalf of missionary elements. Missionaries are very active in the grey area of helping the needy. Many cases of handing out food to the needy or extensive campaigns like handing out school bags to children are undertaken by missionaries as part of a strategic effort to gain the trust of the needy.

Based on accumulated data, we can clearly point to heightened missionary activity among communities of new immigrants, as well as submission to this activity. Many of the new immigrants arrive with a Jewish background that is not deep, do not understand Hebrew, miss home, and seek humane treatment. This, in addition to the difficult economic state faced by many of them, prepares the ground for missionary activity.

The Israeli government must boost enforcement and promote the bill I initiated, which would ban conversion efforts and set a jail term of one year for those who violate the law.

The writer, a Knesset member, is the Shas faction chairman
----------------------------------------------------

Evangelical Christians are the single biggest reason why the state of Israel remains an Apartheid state and an aggressive state in the Middle East. It is why Israel is supported by the US financially and Militarily at the expense of it's taxpayers. Why would Evangelicals encourage and finance aliyah so that Jews who do not have any links to the state of Israel take over occupied land and homes that belong to Palestinians for the sake of Zionism. What kind of religion is this? What kind of agenda is this?

As Desmond Tuto said famously "When missionaries came to South Africa, we had the land, they had the Bible. Then they told us, 'Let's close our eyes and pray.' When we opened our eyes we saw that we have the Bible, they have the land."

Ex-Serb colonel gets 20 years for Vukovar war crimes

Taken from the Guardian, September 27, 2007
By David Batty and agencies

The UN war crimes tribunal today jailed a former Yugoslav army colonel for 20 years for his involvement in the massacre of hundreds of people in the Croatian town of Vukovar in 1991.



Mile Mrksic, a former colonel in the Serb army, was found guilty of aiding and abetting the torture and murder of 194 people sheltering in a hospital in Vukovar, a town which became synonymous with one of the most notorious cases of mass murder in the 1991-95 wars across the former Yugoslavia.

A second officer, Veselin Sljivancanin was jailed for five years for torture but cleared of the most serious charges against him. A third officer, Miroslav Radic, was cleared of all charges.

The verdicts generated indignation in Croatia, which had hoped for far more severe sentences. State-run radio called the outcome "shocking", while the prime minister, Ivo Sanader, said the verdicts were "shameful".

"The whole world witnessed the suffering of civilians in Vukovar. The victims did not deserve such verdicts," Mr Sanader said.

Prosecutors at the Hague tribunal had sought to prove the trio were responsible for the killing of at least 264 people who had fled to Vukovar's hospital expecting to be evacuated by international observers when the town fell to Yugoslav forces after a siege.

Several hundred were taken from the hospital by Serb-dominated army units and militias and taken to a farm where they were beaten and shot dead.

Prosecutors had sought to prove that those killed were largely civilians, but the court ruled they had been initially selected as suspected Croatian fighters. Accordingly, all charges of crimes against humanity against the three men - known as the "Vukovar Three" - were dismissed, including the charge of extermination.

But Mrksic, 60, then the commander of Serb forces in the region, was convicted for turning over the captives, who were considered POWs, to a group of Serb paramilitaries that he knew harboured intense animosity towards them.

Sljivancanin, 54, the area's chief security officer, was jailed for failing to protect the Croatians from beatings and torture by the local Serb paramilitary forces and militias.

Mr Radic, 45 was cleared of having anything to do with the cruelty meted out to the hospital evacuees and ultimately their murder.

UN prosecutors also expressed dismay at the outcome. "The prosecutor finds it incomprehensible that someone who is convicted for the torture of 200 people can receive only a sentence of five years," said a spokeswoman for chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte.

One nurse who was in the hospital at the time told Reuters that she was shocked at the court's leniency. Footage of Sljivancanin promising to hand over patients to the Red Cross has been repeatedly aired on Croatian television over the years.

"He is responsible for the fact that the wounded were taken from the hospital," the nurse, Binazija Kolesar, said. "We all saw him in the hospital and we know that he was the one who was making decisions."

Sljivancanin, who was first detained in June 2003, will be credited for his time in detention and freed within a year.

Israeli in Lebanon under investigation in muder case and on espionage charges

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 22/09/2007
By Yoav Stern,

An dual citizen of Israel and Germany has been arrested in Lebanon on charges of espionage, a Lebanese judicial source said on Saturday. Security officials said the man, Daniel Sharon, has been handed over to military intelligence for questioning. According to Lebanese publication Al-Akhbar Wa-Sapir, Sharon was arrested on Thursday during an investigation into the murder of a Lebanese citizen.

During questioning, it emerged that Sharon had visited Lebanon 11 times on his German passport over the last two years. He denied allegations he was on an espionage mission and said he was in Lebanon for leisure purposes, according to the source.

Media reports said that police in the Merje area, a hotbed of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement in Beirut's southern suburbs, were investigating the killing of Moussa al-Shalaani when the probe led them to Sharon.

Al-Shalaani had been shot with a gun belonging to a security officer who had been his roommate. The roommate was summoned for questioning, and maintained that he had lost his gun.

The roommate also said that during the time of the murder, he had been with his German friend who was residing at the Four Points Sheraton hotel in Beirut's luxurious Verdun neighbourhood.

A hotel employee told the police that Sharon had paid him to not write his full name on any documents.

"His conflicting testimonies led the authorities to arrest him, and further investigations are underway in a murder case and espionage," the judicial source said.

"He is denying charges of espionage and insists that he is gay and he likes to have sexual relations with Lebanese men and that is why his visits to Lebanon were frequent," the source said.

"But further investigations into the case showed that Sharon had a friend in the Lebanese security offices who used to facilitate his entries to Lebanon and with the help of a hotel clerk he managed to hide his real name," the source added.

A Lebanese security agent was also held for questioning about his relations with the Israeli man after the two maintained contacts through the Internet, said officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. Lebanon forbids any contacts or dealings with Israel.

Lebanon's General Prosecutor Saeed Mirza said investigations were underway into how the story was leaked to the press.

During questioning, it emerged that Sharon is well-versed regarding Lebanon, speaks Arabic well and knows how to use he language's many idioms. According to reports, Sharon learned Arabic in the United Arab Emirates from a teacher of Bahraini citizenship. The Lebanese media reported that Sharon kept his cool during questioning and denied accusations that he was a spy.

The media also reported that Sharon had visited Lebanon 11 times since 2005, once immediately prior to the Second Lebanon War with Israel last summer. His last visit was four days prior to his arrest, and he was scheduled to leave on the day of his arrest.

It later emerged that Sharon had sent his security officer friend on trips abroad on several occasions, and in exchange the man helped Sharon within Lebanon.

-----------------------------------------------------
It does beg to question who is stiring up trouble in Lebanon and who was behind the recent assassinations (or the finiancing of it).

Recalled: The Sabra Shatila Massacre

Well, I waited a few days for the world media to recall the massacre that took place at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps 25 years ago, and you guessed it - little or no coverage at all. So I had to rely on the Arab media...

Sabra Shatila recalled

Taken from Al-Jazeera news Agency, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2007
By Iman Azzi in Beirut, Lebanon

Twenty-five years after surviving the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, Jamila Khalife still mourns family members who were killed at the hands of Phalangist Lebanese forces.




Lebanon is marking the 25th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre [AFP]

Her life since then, she says, has been a daily reminder of the horrors she witnessed as a 16-year-old Palestinian refugee from Jaffa living in the camps at the height of the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war.

"This was my father," said Khalife, pointing to a black and white photo of a man lying face down in a narrow street.

"They shot him in the head."

Three of her relatives were also killed.

"After it was over, on the way to find my mother at the nearby hospital, I saw a woman on the street, her intestines were spilling out. She died holding her baby," Khalife recounted as her own daughter, Ghram (Arabic for Love), sat on her lap.


Dusk massacre
In September 1982, Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) fighters, evacuated from their Beirut barracks and the Israeli army, surrounded the refugee camps.


About 2,000 civilians were killed over the course of three days [AFP]

On the afternoon of September 16, Israeli forces allowed members of the Lebanese Forces (LF) - an offshoot of the Phalange party - into the camps allegedly to search for suspects in the slaying of Bashir Gemayel, then Lebanese president.



Gemayel, who also headed the LF, had been killed by a car bomb outside his office a day earlier, angering many of his supporters and plunging war-torn Lebanon into further chaos. Palestinian forces quickly distanced themselves from Gemayel's death, but it did not save the camps from reprisals.

Khalife says she remembers seeing both Israelis and Phalange party members inside the camps that day.

"The Israelis were wearing military uniforms. The Phalange wore jeans, normal clothes and military arm bands. They swore at us in Lebanese Arabic," she said.

Most aid organisations working in the camps in 1982 say around 2,000 civilians were killed over the course of three days.

Feigning death
Nabil Mohammad, a Palestinian refugee who lost all but one of his six siblings, said: "The Israeli military were bombing the camps and the worst case scenario was that the Israelis would come in and collect the young men so my uncle sent me away, thinking it would be safer."

Mohammad, his cousin and his cousin's wife dodged snipers as they made their way to a retirement home where his aunt worked. When the fighting had subsided and they returned to their home, they discovered that five of his siblings and his mother had been killed.

His younger brother Munir survived by feigning his death a few feet away from his mother's body.

Mohammad was only 19 when the killings took place, but every year since then he tries to keep the memories of his loved ones alive by returning to the camps, now home to 45,000 Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians.

He remains bitter that fellow Arabs would commit what he called atrocities.

Avenging Gemayel?
But a former LF fighter, who spoke to Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity, insisted that the Israeli military, and not the Lebanese, should shoulder full responsibility for the killings.

He said: "After Bashir Gemayel was killed, Lebanon was at a boiling state. We were angry, we were lost. We knew that something was going to happen but didn't know what."

He admitted that the LF was angered by the assassination of Gemayel but had no idea what was planned at Sabra and Shatila. The soldier, who began fighting with the LF when he was 13 in 1979, said his unit had been confined to barracks at the Beirut airport and not allowed to leave after Gemayel's murder until they were deployed around Sabra and Shatila.

"It was not the LF [who were responsible for the killings]. It was the Israeli soldiers who went inside those camps," he said.

Where is Sabra and Shatila?

But 25 years later, some Lebanese are unfamiliar with the events of Sabra and Shatila.

Elias, 20, said he had never heard of Sabra and Shatila.

"Where are Sabra and Shatila?" he asked turning to his friend. "Iraq? They never mentioned it in school."

George Hanna, 43, a resident of East Beirut, said: "It was between Christians and Palestinians during the war. I've never been there. What would I do there if I went?

"I never gave Sabra and Shatila any thought."




A quarter of a century later, some Lebanese are still unfamiliar with the massacre [AFP]

Nevertheless, Palestinians in Lebanon are determined to keep the history of the camps alive, at least for their community.

Kassem Aina, a co-ordinator for the 'Never forget Sabra and Shatila' campaign, told Al Jazeera: "We tell the children not only about the massacre of Sabra and Shatila. We tell them about all massacres from Deir Yassin to Tel Zaatar to Sabra and Shatila. I feel sad we have so many massacres in our history."

Never forget Sabra and Shatila was founded by Stefano Chiarini, an Italian journalist and activist, who passed away last February.

To mark the 25th anniversary this year, delegations from Italy, France, Spain and other nations will join Palestinian and Lebanese memorials planned for the week.

Seeking justice
The memorials mark the events at the camps, but also push for bringing perpetrators to justice.
To this day, there has been no direct accountability for the killings.

Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister, was forced to resign as defence minister after he was found both "indirectly" and "personally" responsible by the 1982 Kahane Commission of inquiry which investigated Israeli culpability in Sabra and Shatila.

LF commander Elie Hobeika, who led the incursion into the camps, received amnesty like all militia leaders following the Lebanese civil war, and went on to become a member of parliament.
He claimed he had evidence that would prove his innocence and directly implicate the Israelis, but was killed one month before he was to testify against Sharon in a case brought by camp survivors in Belgium in 2001.

This weekend, the streets of Sabra and Shatila remain densely packed with people struggling to live normally at the scene of one of Lebanon's worst modern tragedies.

Legal resolution may arrive later but on this year's anniversary the families of the victims are working to balance memories of their loved ones with the ability to move beyond the tragedy.
"You can forgive but you can never forget," said Aina.

Greenspan admits Iraq was about oil, as deaths put at 1.2m

Taken from The Observer, Sunday September 16, 2007
By Peter Beaumont and Joanna Walters in New York

The man once regarded as the world's most powerful banker has bluntly declared that the Iraq war was 'largely' about oil.

Appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and retired last year after serving four presidents, Alan Greenspan has been the leading Republican economist for a generation and his utterings instantly moved world markets.

In his long-awaited memoir - out tomorrow in the US - Greenspan, 81, who served as chairman of the US Federal Reserve for almost two decades, writes: 'I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.'

In The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, he is also crystal clear on his opinion of his last two bosses, harshly criticising George W Bush for 'abandoning fiscal constraint' and praising Bill Clinton's anti-deficit policies during the Nineties as 'an act of political courage'. He also speaks of Clinton's sharp and 'curious' mind, and 'old-fashioned' caution about the dangers of debt.

Greenspan's damning comments about the war come as a survey of Iraqis, which was released last week, claims that up to 1.2 million people may have died because of the conflict in Iraq - lending weight to a 2006 survey in the Lancet that reported similarly high levels.

More than one million deaths were already being suggested by anti-war campaigners, but such high counts have consistently been rejected by US and UK officials. The estimates, extrapolated from a sample of 1,461 adults around the country, were collected by a British polling agency, ORB, which asked a random selection of Iraqis how many people living in their household had died as a result of the violence rather than from natural causes.

Previous estimates gave a range between 390,000 and 940,000, the most prominent of which - collected by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and reported in the Lancet in October 2006 - suggested 654,965 deaths.

Although the household survey was carried out by a polling organisation, rather than researchers, it has again raised the spectre that the 2003 invasion has caused a far more substantial death toll than officially acknowledged.

The ORB survey follows an earlier report by the organisation which suggested that one in four Iraqi adults had lost a family member to violence. The latest survey suggests that in Baghdad that number is as high as one in two. If true, these latest figures would suggest the death toll in Iraq now exceeds that of the Rwandan genocide in which about 800,000 died.

The Lancet survey was criticised by some experts and by George Bush and British officials. In private, however, the Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser Sir Roy Anderson described it as 'close to best practice'.

Articles of faith

When two eminent US scholars wrote about the 'Israel lobby' they were vilified by colleagues and the Washington Post. This week Barack Obama joined the attack. Ed Pilkington hears their story

Taken from The Guardian
Saturday September 15, 2007

Given the reception John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt received for their London Review of Books essay last year on what they called the Israel Lobby, it would have been understandable had they crawled away to a dark corner of their respective academic institutions to lick their wounds. Their argument that US foreign policy has been distorted by the stultifying power of pro-Israeli groups and individuals was met with a firestorm of protest that has smouldered ever since.

The authors were assailed with headlines such as the Washington Post's: "Yes, it's anti-semitic." The neocon pundit William Kristol accused them in the Wall Street Journal of "anti-Judaism" while the New York Sun linked them with the white supremacist David Duke.

The row became a focal point of a much wider debate about the limits of permitted criticism of the state of Israel and its American-based supporters that has ensnared several academics and writers, including a former president. Jimmy Carter was castigated earlier this year when he published a plea for a renewed engagement in the Middle-East peace process under the admittedly provocative title, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. He was labelled an anti-semitic "Jew hater" and even a Nazi sympathiser. Meanwhile, a British-born historian at New York University, Tony Judt, has been warned off or disinvited from four academic events in the past year. On one occasion, he was asked to promise not to mention Israel in a speech on the Holocaust. He refused.

For Walt, the explosion of criticism after the LRB publication in March 2006 struck particularly close to home as two members of his own Harvard faculty turned on him. Ruth Wisse, professor of Yiddish literature, compared Walt and his University of Chicago co-author's work to that of a notorious 19th-century German anti-semite. Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard criminal law professor who represented OJ Simpson, charged them with culling some of their references from neo-Nazi websites.

Given the battering he has taken, Walt is remarkably upbeat. "We were surprised by how nasty it got," says the Harvard professor. "The David Duke reference, the neo-Nazi websites - these were intended to smear us and swing attention on to us rather than to what we were saying. It wasn't pleasant, but it never made me doubt what we had written or doubt myself." Standing tall in the face of attack is one thing; to raise your head above the parapet for a second round is quite another. But that is what the Mearsheimer/Walt double act are doing: they have gone on the offensive with the publication of a book-length version of their original treatise.

As night follows day, the dispute has started anew. The New York Sun has dedicated a section of its website to the controversy; Dershowitz has revved up again, calling the book "a bigoted attack on the American Jewish community"; and Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, has gone to the trouble of writing his own book in riposte - and it's in the bookshops a week before The Israel Lobby appears.

There is one obvious question to put to Walt: why do it to yourself? Wasn't one stoning enough? "We did ask ourselves, did we want to go through this again?" he admits, but only to add: "It didn't take us all that long to figure out we had more to say and it was our job to say it."

By writing a 496-page book, as opposed to the original article's mere 13,000 words, the authors hope to present a more nuanced version of their case. They have taken in new examples to support their thesis, notably the second Lebanon war, which broke out in the interim, and have sought to address some of the points raised by critics.

The book follows the structure of the original article fairly faithfully, and its argument can be summarised thus: in recent years the US government has given Israel unconditional support, showering it with $3bn a year irrespective of the human rights violations it inflicts on the Palestinians. It was not always this way - think of the Suez crisis of 1956 when America stepped in to frustrate Israel's (and Britain's) ambitions. But from the 1960s onwards the relationship deepened to the extent that today American and Israeli interests are deemed by many Americans to be essentially identical.

The authors ask why this is the case, and argue that strategically there is no reason for it. The end of the cold war removed a central justification for the special relationship, as Israel no longer provided the US with a barrier to communism in the region. Post 9/11, the US and Israel are presented as partners against terrorism, but America's vulnerability to attack partly stems from its support for Israel, which has provoked hostility in the Muslim world. Nor is there a moral argument for indiscriminately backing Israel - as a towering military presence in the Middle East, Israel is no longer under existential threat.

So what explains this ongoing largesse? The authors conclude that the answer lies with the Israel lobby, a loose coalition of individuals and organisations that wants US leaders to treat Israel as though it were the 51st state. The lobby stifles debate, inhibits criticism of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and maintains the special relationship despite the fact that it has become a liability both for the US and for Israel itself.

In its transition from literary journal essay to stand-alone book, the authors have made a few telling alterations of presentation and emphasis. The most vivid is that in the body of the text they have demoted lobby to lower case: the Israel Lobby has become the Israel lobby. Walt sees that as the most minor of changes, remarking that: "John and I don't even remember how the capital L got used in the first place."

More substantially, perhaps, they have used the extra space to make several robust disclaimers, insisting that they have never questioned the right of Israel to exist or the legitimacy of the Israel lobby itself. They have also filed down some of the more jagged edges of their argument, such as their position on the role the lobby played in the build-up to the Iraq war. They still maintain that the war would "almost certainly not have occurred" were it not for the Israel lobby, but they soften the claim by adding that America's belligerent mood in the aftermath of the attacks on New York and Washington also had much to do with it.

Such nuances make for a more sophisticated read, but they fall far short of the revisions - the authors would say capitulations - that would be needed to satisfy their detractors.

Foxman is one of the most vocal critics. His new book, timed specifically to counteract the arrival on bookshelves of The Israel Lobby, pulls no punches. Its title is representative of the tone of the book: The Deadliest Lies. "This is a big lie that the Jewish people have lived with throughout history," he tells me from his New York office. "Up to now these anti-semitic canards have been heard on the fringes, but to have two respected academics repeat them legitimises the debate and penetrates the mainstream."

More measured - though still forceful - criticism of the Mearsheimer and Walt book has come from those titans of US journalism, the New York Times and the New Yorker. The Times' book critic William Grimes takes a swipe at the authors' claim that it is time for the US to treat Israel as a normal country: "But it's not. And America won't. That's realism." David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, suggests none too flatteringly that the book is symptomatic of a polarised era in which Americans are searching for an explanation to the evils of the times.

In the swirl of debate, the squabbling parties keep coming back to the core concept of an Israel lobby, case notwithstanding. The authors have been meticulously careful in the book to stress that they see the lobby as a loose coalition. It is not a single, unified movement and it is certainly not a cabal or conspiracy. Yet no matter how profuse their disclaimers, they have not assuaged those antagonists for whom any lumping together of Jews or Jewish interest groups sets alarm bells ringing. "Visit any anti-semitic website and you'll hear the same old themes: the Jews have too much power; they exercise political influence not as individual citizens but as a cabal," writes Foxman. "Walt and Mearsheimer sound all the same notes, with a subtlety and pseudo-scholarly style that makes their poison all the more dangerous."

In our conversation, Walt accepts the phrase "the lobby" is "an awkward term as many of the groups and people in it don't operate on Capitol Hill. It's shorthand - you could call it the pro-Israel movement". One wonders why he and his co-author have stuck with it, then, when it has allowed their detractors to smear other more credible parts of their argument.

Take the slanging match over the causes of the Iraq war. Walt and Mearsheimer rightly lay a large part of the blame for this disastrous escapade on the neoconservatives within the Bush administration, but they then go on to define those neocons as an integral part of the Israel lobby. Books have been written about the various motivations of the neocons. Sympathy for Israel is one, but there are many others - the desire to spread democracy, a belief in the positive uses of military intervention, denigration of international institutions. To suggest that the neocons and the Israel lobby are one and the same is a conflation too far.

But the authors have brought into the open aspects of American intellectual life that needed airing. They cast light on the overweening activities of specific pro-Israeli groups, most importantly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Aipac is a self-avowed lobby (it calls itself America's pro-Israel lobby) and has been ranked the second most powerful such body in the US. With a staff of more than 150 and a budget of $60m, it wields extensive influence among Congressmen, working to ensure criticism of Israel is rarely aired on Capitol Hill. The Guardian invited it to comment, but it declined.

Though Foxman insists the furore is proof that debate is alive and kicking, Walt and Mearsheimer have also put their finger on the limits of acceptable discourse in the US. It is notable that none of the candidates standing for president in 2008 have a word of criticism for Israeli state behaviour; this week Barack Obama pulled an advert for his campaign from the Amazon page selling The Israel Lobby, denouncing the book as "just wrong".

So what happened to America's commitment to free speech, the First Amendment? "We knew from De Tocqueville this country is driven by conformity," Judt says. "The law can't make people speak out - it can only prevent people from stopping free speech. What's happened is not censorship, but self-censorship." Judt believes that a few well-organised groups including Aipac have succeeded in proscribing debate. He recalls a prominent Democratic senator confiding to him that he would never criticise Israel in public. "He told me that if he did so, for the rest of his career he would never be able to get a majority for what he cared about. He would be cut off at the knees."

In the final chapter of the book, Walt and Mearsheimer make a shopping list of reforms. They call for: a two-state solution to the Middle East crisis; greater separation of US foreign policy from Israel for both nations' sake; and campaign finance reform to reduce the power of pro-Israeli groups.

Nothing outlandish, or even controversial, there. Coming at the end of such a bumpy ride of claim and counter-claim, the conclusion feels almost disappointingly gentle. That in itself bears eloquent witness to the state of affairs in America today, where thoughts considered unremarkable elsewhere are deemed beyond the pale.

· The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt is published by Allen Lane at £25. To order a copy for £23 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875

Mystery deepens over Israeli strike on Syria

The media continuously speculates the destruction of Israel by Iran, Syria and other so called Arab state, but the real aggressor occupies and attacks its neighbours little is mentioned nor questions asked by the West. I suppose some of our brothers are more equal than others...

Taken from The Independent, UK, 15 September 2007
By Donald Macintyre

Israel is still maintaining official silence a week after Syria complained that Israeli aircraft invaded its airspace in a mysterious incident which raised tensions and triggered a welter of US media speculation about possible targets for the operation.

Explanations – for what anonymous US officials have said was a strike inside Syria – range from suggesting it was aimed at the shipment of weapons to Hizbollah from Iran, to saying Syria may be building a nuclear facility with North Korean help.

Syria, which has asked for a formal complaint to be "circulated" to the UN Security Council, said last week that Israeli aircraft unloaded ammunition after being spotted and fired on by its air defences but inflicted no damage.

Reuters, The New York Times and CNN have all quoted officials – mainly in the US – as saying that Israel carried out a strike in Syria. Reuters quoted an unnamed US official on Wednesday as saying: "The strike I can confirm. The target I can't." The agency quoted another US official as saying that reports on the targets were "confused".

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported this week a US official as saying that recent satellite imagery, mainly provided by Israel, suggested that Syria may building some form of nuclear facility with the help of material unloaded by North Korea.

The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, did little to discourage such speculation when she told Fox News this week in response to a question about possible nuclear developments in Syria that her government is working to prevent "the world's most dangerous people from having the world's most dangerous weapons".

The only hint – if such it was – dropped by an unusually taciturn Israel was the release of a video by the Israeli military shortly after the incident showing a broadly smiling Chief of Staff, Gabi Ashkenazy, shaking the hands of his deputy while sharing a Jewish New Year toast. This has helped to fuel speculation that Israel had conducted a successful mission in Syria.

Syria has not fought an outright war with Israel since 1973 when it briefly overran and was then repulsed from the Golan Heights, sovereign Syrian territory captured by Israel in the Six Day War six years earlier. Syria has long agitated for return of the Golan while Israel blames Damascus for its succour to Hizbollah and militant Palestinian factions like Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

There have been persistent reports over the last year that the US has discouraged Israel from responding to oblique overtures from the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a negotiated recovery of the Golan. The New York Times quoted equally anonymous US sources on Wednesday as saying that the likely targets were weapons shipments Israel believed Iran was sending to Hizbollah through Syria. That claim was dismissed later in the day by Bashar Ja'afari, the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations.

"This is blah blah," Mr Ja'afari said. "This is nonsense, this is an unfounded statement. It is not up to the Israelis or anyone else to assess what we have in Syria. There was no target, they dropped their munitions. They were running away after they were confronted by our air defence."

European diplomats who met with the Syrian Vice-President, Walid Moallem, reportedly formed the impression that Syria was not planning a military retaliation. But the Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister, Faysal Mekdad, warned after a meeting with his Russian counterpart yesterday that growing tension could yet spark violence in the region and that Syria has the "means to respond in ways that will preserve its position of power".

Palestine: democracy not Zionism

Taken from Yahoo news, Fri Sep 14, 2007
By John V. Whitbeck of The Christian Science Monitor

With some sort of "meeting" or "conference" to kick start the peace process now being touted by the Bush administration, there is at least the appearance of an understanding in Washington of the importance for the region and the world of solving the "Palestinian problem."

However, if this problem is ever to be solved, it must be redefined. Those who truly seek justice and peace in the Middle East must dare to speak openly and honestly of the "Zionism problem" – and then to draw the moral, ethical, and practical conclusions that follow.

When South Africa was under a racial-supremacist, settler-colonial regime, the world recognized that the problem was the ideology and political system of the state. Anyone outside the country who referred to the "black problem" or the "native problem" (or, for that matter, to the "white problem") would instantly have been branded a racist.

The world also recognized that the solution to that problem could not be found either in "separation" (apartheid in Afrikaans) and scattered native reservations (called "independent states" by the South African regime and Bantustans by the rest of the world) or in driving the settler-colonial group in power into the sea. Rather, the solution had to be found – and to almost universal satisfaction was found – in democracy, in white South Africans growing out of their racial-supremacist ideology and political system and accepting that their interests and their children's futures would be best served in a democratic, non-racist state with equal rights for all who live there.

The solution for the land which, until it was literally wiped off the map in 1948, was called Palestine is the same. It can only be democracy.

The ever-receding "political horizon" for a decent two-state solution, which, on the ground, becomes less practical with each passing year of expanding settlements, bypass roads, and walls, is weighed down by a multitude of excruciatingly difficult "final status" issues. Israeli governments have consistently refused to discuss these final-status issues seriously, preferring to postpone them to the end of a road which is never reached – and which, almost certainly, is intended never to be reached.

Just as marriage is vastly less complicated than divorce, democracy is vastly less complicated than partition. A democratic post-Zionist solution would not require any borders to be agreed, any division of Jerusalem, anyone to move from his current home, or any assets to be evaluated and apportioned. Full rights of citizenship would simply be extended to all the surviving natives still living in the country, as happened in the United States in the early 20th century and in South Africa in the late 20th century.

The obstacle to such a simple – and morally unimpeachable – solution is, of course, intellectual and psychological. Traumatized by the Holocaust and perceived insecurity as a Jewish island in an Arab sea, Israelis have immense psychological problems in coming to grips with the practical impossibility of sustaining forever what most of mankind views as a racial-supremacist, settler-colonial regime founded upon the ethnic cleansing of an indigenous population.

Indeed, Israelis have placed themselves in a virtually impossible situation. To taste its bitter essence, Americans might try to imagine what life in their country would be like if the European settlers had not virtually exterminated the indigenous population and if almost half of today's American population were Indians, without basic human rights, impoverished, smoldering with resentment, and visible every day as the inescapable living evidence of the injustice inflicted on their ancestors.

This would not be a pleasant society in which to live. Both colonizers and colonized would be progressively degraded and dehumanized. The colonizers could, rationally, conclude that they could never be forgiven by those they had dispossessed and that no "solution" was imaginable. So it has been, and continues to be, in the lands under Israeli rule.

Perhaps the coming "meeting" or "conference" will be the last gasp of the fruitless pursuit of a separation-based solution. Perhaps those who care about justice and peace and believe in democracy can then find ways to stimulate Israelis to move beyond Zionist ideology toward a more humane, hopeful, and democratic view of present realities and future possibilities.

No one would suggest that the moral, ethical, and intellectual transformation necessary to achieve a decent one-state solution will be easy. However, more and more people now recognize that a decent two-state solution has become impossible.

It is surely time for concerned people everywhere – and particularly for Americans – to imagine a better way, to encourage Israelis to imagine a better way, and to help both Israelis and Palestinians to achieve it. It is surely time to seriously consider democracy and to give it a chance.

• John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel, is author of "The World According to Whitbeck."

IDF blocks Aksa mosque to Palestinians

Taken from The Jerusalem Post, Sep 14, 2007
Article by the Associated Press,


Hundreds of Palestinians thronged two major West Bank checkpoints, trying to reach the Al Aksa mosque in Jerusalem on the first Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, despite Israeli restrictions.


Palestinians pray at the separation barrier at the Kalandiya checkpoint near the West Bank town of Ramallah, Friday

IDF troops turned back many of the West Bank faithful. Only men above the age of 45 and women above the age of 35, who had also obtained special permits, were allowed to enter the mosque, the third holiest shrine of Islam, said police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby.

Later Friday, several tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them Jerusalem residents not affected by the restrictions, participated in the Al Aksa service, and the crowd dispersed peacefully.

Hundreds of Israeli police were deployed in streets and alleys in and around Jerusalem's walled Old City where the Al Aksa Mosque compound is located.

Troops also took up positions at two major West Bank checkpoints, one to the south of Jerusalem and one to the north. The checkpoints are built into Israel's West Bank separation barrier, which rings most of Jerusalem to control Palestinian movement into Israel.

At the southern checkpoint, near the biblical town of Bethlehem, hundreds of Palestinians, many of them elderly, pushed up against police lines set up near the separation barrier, in this area a towering wall.

At one point, the crowd pushed through the police line. One woman crawled on her hands and knees, another fell to the ground as people behind her surged forward. IDF troops shouted at people to get back.

At the northern Kalandiya crossing, near the city of Ramallah, hundreds of people waited to pass.

Hamdi Abu Fadi, 44, was turned back because he didn't meet the age requirement. Abu Fadi said he'd try to sneak into Jerusalem in another area, in hopes of reaching Al Aksa. Prayers performed at the shrine are considered more powerful than worship in another mosque.

Palestinians have long complained that Israel is violating their right to freedom of worship by restricting access to a major shrine. "It's a crime against us all year long, whether during Ramadan or any other month," said Abu Fadi.

Israel says it imposes the restrictions to prevent possible attacks by terrorists. Ramadan is a time of heightened religious fervor which security officials fear could increase the motivation for carrying out attacks.

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What kind of democracy occupies a foreign land and prevents its citizens from praying within its own land? Well you don't need me to spell it out! What next, Israel occupies the whole of Arabia for security reasons? Get real and leave all occupied land and work for peace & love with neighbouring countries (and fellow citizens) not tyranny!

Arabs out of Israeli high-tech

Center for Jewish-Arab Economic Development reports only 2% of high-tech employees are Arab despite comprising 10% of engineering graduates; says gap due to discrimination, holds events to solve problem

Taken from Ynet news, 09.08.07,
By Tani Goldstein

According to the Center for Jewish-Arab Economic Development, only 2% of high-tech employees in Israel are Arab, despite the fact that Arabs make up about one fifth of the country's population and 10% of engineering graduates.

The center suspects this gap is the result of discrimination, since many Arab graduates spend months sending out job applications in a field where the average time it takes to find employment is between two weeks to a month.

Arab Minority In an attempt to bridge the gap, the center held a special event in association with Personal Match, a high-tech placement company: An employment fair aimed solely at engineers from the Arab sector.

The event took plaice at the Dan Carmel Hotel in Haifa this last week, with 20 high-tech companies in search of employees.

One-hundred-and-fifty engineers and students arrived at the fair, leaving an impression on the interviewers as one said, "These guys are no less qualified than those I've met at other fairs, I have no idea why they can't find a job."

Company prefers Jewish friend
Hisham Odeh, a 32-year-old software engineer who currently works at Bezeq's technical support, arrived at the fair in search for a better job, and described the difficulties and discrimination he has faced over the years.

"My situation today is relatively good. I have a job and have come here to better my status, but over the years I have certainly felt discrimination. In the past, when I was looking for a job, many times I would see my Jewish friends who studied with me, with the exact same qualifications as me - in the best case, some of them were worse than me - find jobs while I was being rejected.

"Once I sent a CV to some company and got no reply. Later, I sent it again, in the name of a Jewish friend, and was called for an interview. To make sure it wasn't just a mistake, I immediately called the number from which I was called for the interview, identified myself with my real name, and asked what was up. They told me the job was off the market."

Ronen Koehler, head of human resources at Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., feels there is no intentional discrimination against Arab workers, and attributes the gap in numbers to their poor recruitment, saying Arabs showed up to job interview less prepared and with less confidence.

Koehler also said the problem may be geographical sometimes, since most Arabs live in the north while most of the high-tech companies are located in central Israel. "It's a fact that there are more Arabs in high-tech in Haifa then in Tel Aviv," he said.

'We can change things'
The employment fair is just one of the many initiatives the Center for Jewish-Arab Economic Development is carrying out in cooperation with commercial companies to increase Arab presence in the high-tech field.

Hilmi Kitani, a director at the center, said the companies taking part in the fair said they had not employed many Arabs due to lack of awareness rather than racism.

"There are companies that are interested in changing their attitude, and we can help them. They say, yes, we made a mistake, and then we can change things. If a company has rejected candidates due to lack of awareness, we will try to increase awareness that will give them an equal chance.

"There are also problems that come from the candidates themselves. The companies report to us that Arab candidates have poorly written CVs, since they are not trained at it.

"Arab candidates show lack of confidence and lack of skill at job interviews. Therefore, we are currently holding courses and workshops for hundreds of Arab engineers teaching them how to deal with CVs and job interviews," Kitani said.

Adi Bildner, the deputy director of human resources at HP Israel is also playing an active role in the center's activities.

"This fair is fantastic and excellent, but it is only one of the things we are starting to do," Bildner said. "We are raising awareness. We are setting goals for ourselves: Each of the company's departments is setting how many Arab workers it will employ by a certain date.

"We are trying to create an Arab network in which a friend brings a friend. We go to high schools in the Arab sector, in order to abate the students' fears in advance and sow seeds for the future," he said.

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So much for equal opportunities and democracy in Israel!

Israeli 'neo-Nazi gang' arrested

Taken from the BBC, Sunday, 9 September 2007

Israeli police say they have broken up a gang of neo-Nazis who are accused of carrying out attacks on foreigners, gay people and religious Jews.

The eight suspects, aged 16-21, are all Israeli citizens from the former Soviet Union. They were arrested a month ago, but the news only emerged on Saturday.

Police say searches of their homes yielded Nazi uniforms, portraits of Adolf Hitler, knives, guns and TNT.

Israel was founded in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust in which millions died.

The arrests follow a year-long inquiry which began after a synagogue in Petah Tikva, a city east of Tel Aviv, was desecrated with graffiti of Nazi swastikas and the name of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed his horror at what he called "violence for the sake of violence."

"I am sure that there is not a person in Israel who can remain indifferent to these scenes, which indicate that we too as a society have failed in the education of these youths," he said.
Tattoos

The eight accused, who include the group's alleged leader, are all from Petah Tikva.

The gang members sported tattoos popular with white supremacists - including the number 88, code for Heil Hitler because "H" is the eighth letter of the alphabet.

"We believe that this is the main gang working in the area... the main gang that exists [in Israel] that attempts to use Hitler's ideology," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP news agency.

Police say the gang members would target homosexuals, Jews who wore a skull cap and drug addicts, often video taping their attacks.

"It is difficult to believe that Nazi ideology sympathisers can exist in Israel, but it is a fact," Revital Almog, the police official who led the investigation, told Israeli public radio.

Video tapes
The suspects have admitted assaulting a number of people in Tel Aviv, most of them foreign workers.

Ms Almog said the gang would pick on someone who appeared unable to defend themselves and then attack.

They often filmed or photographed the violence.

Footage of the attacks show people lying on the ground whilst being kicked by more than one assailant.

In one clip a man is hit around the back of the head with a bottle.

According to the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz one video shows gang members surrounding a Russian drug addict as he admits to being a Jew. The youths then order him onto his knees to beg for forgiveness for being Jewish and a drug addict before viciously beating not only him, but also another man who tries to intervene.

The suspects all migrated to Israel under the Law of Return which allows anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent to become a citizen.

Ms Almog said of the accused, "their connection to Judaism is distant, through grandparents or distant family connections".

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It is sad of see what is happening inside Israel but The Zionist "Law of return" rule that allows Jews from all over the world (regardless of whether they have any connection to the State of Israel) the right to live in Israel and take up homes and settlements in Palestinian lands is a farce and this example proves it. Palestinans who have lived on the land for centuries have been kicked out of Israel and into refugee camps and have been forbidden to come back to their homes. Where is the justice in that? Kick out Palestinians (your neighbours) and let in the Nazi's (your enemies).