Karim Aga Khan IV, descendant of the prophet Muhammad and spiritual leader of 20 million Ismaili Muslims, discusses the foundations of his faith, the controversy over SPIEGEL Interview with Aga Khan the pope’s recent statements about Islam and ways of preventing a global clash between religions.

SPIEGEL: Your Highness, in a lecture Pope Benedict XVI quoted Emperor Manuel as saying: “Show me just what Muhammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as a command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” This quotation from the 14th century has caused great uproar in the Muslim world. Why? And what was your reaction?

 Aga Khan: From my point of view, I would start by saying that I was concerned about this statement because this has caused great unhappiness in the Islamic world. There appears to be momentum towards more and more misunderstandings between religions, a degradation of relations. I think we all should try not to add anything to worsen the situation.

SPIEGEL: Benedict XVI did explicitly dissociate himself from the emperor’s quoted statement. The pope’s own position with regard to his lecture is that he wanted it to promote a dialogue; and since then, several times, he has expressed his respect for the world religion that is Islam. Was it just an unfortunate choice of words? Or was he deliberately misunderstood?

Aga Khan: I do not wish to pass judgement on that, nor can I. And it might also be unreasonable for me to presume that I know what he meant. But that (medieval) period in history, to my knowledge, was one of the periods of extraordinary theological exchanges and debates between the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world. A fascinating time. The emperor’s statement does not reflect that, so I think it is somewhat out of context.

Read full article at Source

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For those of us who cherish Scriptures and understand that God’s prophecies for the end times are being fulfilled, and will be fulfilled down to the last letter, the Lord’s imminent return is a given.  Although we are never to set dates, or do tricky math to nail down the moment, we are to watch for signs.  We know that the days are evil, and that the prophesied apostasy is rampant at this very moment in time.

In Matthew 24, the Lord Jesus presents an overview of the last days, and commands His disciples:  “Take heed that no man deceive you.“ (verse 4)  Then He procedes throughout the entire chapter, delineating the actual signs of which we are to be aware.

Countless other passages in the Old and New Testament dovetail to give believers a picture of things to come.  In I Thessalonians 4:13-18, Paul clearly presents the coming Rapture of believers before the Lord Jesus comes back to earth to reign.  Paul concludes this passage with, “Therefore comfort one another with these words.”

Peter affirms:  “But the end of all things is at hand:  be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer.”  I Peter 4:7

It takes a quantum leap of blind, irrational, foolishly missplaced “faith” to discount the obvious, lucid teachings of God’s Word.  A mindless adherence to man’s fallen wisdom, is one of the signature characteristics of these last days.  Jude wrote about “. . . mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts.”  (Jude, verse 18) 

The “mockers in the last time” are those popular leaders of what erroneously passes for the ”Christian Church” today:  the Emergent Church and any other cult which denies the doctrines of Scripture.  Included in the denial crowd are those groups which teach Replacement Theology–the heresy that the Church is a “New Israel”.  Any “Christian” leader or follower who negates the Scripturally clear and unique value of Israel and the Jewish people, is anathema to God. 

Many individuals are currently swallowing vicious lies pumped out by the Emergent Church and its leaders–men and women who are following their own ungodly lusts for “self-righteousness”, “human good”, “popularity”, and “power”. 

Conversely, there are still Christians who might not intentionally swallow the lies–believers who were well taught when they were young, and have never consciously denied the truths of the Bible.  But sadly, many of these “would-be faithful” believers attend Emergent churches.  And many of these misled individuals are senior citizens. 

The apostate heresies have been dished out gradually, over the years, and countless Christians have been so subtly indoctrinated that they are like the frogs in the pot–coming to a slow boil.  

Granted if these duped Christians were like the Bereans, who searched the Scriptures for themselves, they wouldn’t be clueless. And if they bothered to search the web they could be rewarded with eye-opening information concerning the signs of the end times, including the groundswell of apostasy engulfing our once-Christian nation. 

All of which leads me to examine a sad statement which I hear nearly every week:  “I don’t do computers.”  There’s a tragic resistance afoot, to the technology which–when responsibly and prayerfully used–can educate and prepare us for whatever lies ahead.

One cannot read the truth about what is happening in the Middle East on FOX NEWS or CNN.  One rarely hears anything about those heretical tenants of “Emergent Christianity” apart from websites which focus on facts!  Yet myriads of people who need to know what is happening in their world and their churches, “don’t do computers”.  And I often sense innuendoes of hostility from those who “don’t do computers”–along with a condescending attitude toward those of us who do! 

We must be like the Bereans.  Only God’s Word can awaken us to understand the shocking truths of this time in history.  Meanwhile, the world wide web is a giant blessing to mankind.  There are many sites which inform us, so that we can watch and wait with diligence and discernment.  And these sites are readily accessible, via one little mouse! 

Margaret L. Been–All Rights Reserved 

The ability of Americans to believe that Iran secretly wants to be just like us but is repressed by unrepresentative opponents never ceases to amaze me, and the dynamic is at work once again surrounding the funueral of “dissident” Grand Ayatollah Mir Hussein Montazeri.

Predictably, the death of one of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s original associates who turned against the current ruling class has energized the persistent minority in Iran that seeks modernization and westernization, complete with massive urban demonstrations and repressive reactions by the theocracy that rules the country. Thanks to modern technology, the images are available to us all, and they bring sparks of hope among westernized Iranian expatriates and Americans who firmly want to believe Iranians are “just like us” and that maybe, just maybe, the result will be genuine reform this time–by which we mean the adoption by Iran of western-style democracy or something like it. As the New York Times gushed in today’s edition, reaction surrounding Montazeri’s death has raised “the possibility that the cleric’s death could serve as a catalyst for an opposition movement.”

The key word here, of course, is “possibility,” because the real prospect is no more than the most remote possibility of change toward westernizing Iran and thereby lessening the animosity between Iran and the United States that has dominated Iranian politics since the 1979 Iranian Revolution and has its roots back into the immediate post-World War II period.

The belief that some Iranians would like to become westernized is not entirely baseless, of course. The whole thrust of Shah Reza Pahlevi’s White Revolutionwas to transform the Peacock Empire into a modern, competitive (aka westernized) society as a way to restore Iran’s historic place in the world. In the proces, Iran did develop an urbanized, educated, and westernized class, and some of that group and its successor generations are still found in the cities and provide the nucleus of the dissident movement. They did not then and certainly do not now represent anything like a majority of the population or the government’s support base, which is based in the highly religious, Shiite rural masses who view the theocracy as their natural leaders and the urbanized sophisticates in the cities as apostate unbelievers who would undermine Islam. When the regime reacts to protests by turning loose the Basij militias to stomp on reformers, it does so with the tacit consent of a fairly large part of the population.

These dynamics have history behind them, in at least two ways. One is that westernization, which is nearly universally associated with the Satanic Americans, undercuts the traditional values of one of the most traditional peoples in the world–rural Iranian Shiites. Change threatens them, and they correspondingly have little sympathy with agents of a change they can only oppose. Second, the dissident middle class in Iran has, over the years, proven pitifully politically inept. They could not keep the democratically elected Mossadeqh regime in power in the 1950s in the face of a CIA-backed coup, and they failed miserably to seize control in 1979, when their leaders felt certain they could gain power over the “country bumpkin” Ayatollahs whom we have learned to know and love so well.

Despite all this, we in the west wax ebullient whenever Iranians take to the street. Anybody to the political left of Ahmedinejad is seen as a democratizing savior, whether he is or not. Have we so quickly forgotten the euphoria associated with the loud dissidence of Mir Hussein Moussavi protesting that the elections earlier in the year that returned Ahmedinejad to power were rigged? In that euphoria, we forgot that Moussavi had been approved as a candidate by the Supreme Council, an endorsement he would hardly have achieved were he truly anti-regime. Similarly, Montazeri spoke out against the regime, but he did not threaten the system. Had he, he would not have been allowed to stick around.

So off we go again, spinning the stuff of dreams about yet another round of “reform.” Like all the preceding rounds, this will die off in a few days, and things will return depressingly to normal in Iran. That may not be the way we would like it, but it is the way things are in Iran.

Pulse

Stephen M. Walt speaks at an event at the Fleming Museum in Burlington, Vermont, at an even UVM Departments of Political Science, Geography, History, and Middle East Studies and Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel.

 Uprooted Palestinian

Pulse

Stephen M. Walt speaks at an event at the Fleming Museum in Burlington, Vermont, at an even UVM Departments of Political Science, Geography, History, and Middle East Studies and Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel.

 Uprooted Palestinian

Link

William Kristol of the Weekly Standard

Maidhc Ó Cathail

“One reason neocons have been able to sow so much mischief is that they feed into deeply embedded American beliefs about democratism and ‘chosenness.’” – Paul Gottfried

Americans feeling let down by Barack Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan should take careful note of those who welcomed yet another “surge.” It might help them to identify the source of their seemingly endless wars.

For instance, in a recent Washington Post opinion piece, William Kristol described Obama’s West Point speech as “encouraging.” It was “a good thing,” he said, that Obama was finally speaking as “a war president.”

But if the comments on the Post website are anything to go by, few ordinary Americans take Kristol’s armchair warmongering seriously anymore. After all, as one poster quizzically asked, “A column by William Kristol the neocon that was wrong about everything from 2000-2008?”

Although Kristol, like the rest of the neocons, “erred” about Iraq’s WMDs and Saddam’s links to Al Qaeda and 9/11, it would be a fatal error indeed to dismiss him as a fool.

In order to understand what motivates Bill Kristol’s professed hyper-patriotism, with its consistently disastrous prescriptions, it’s worth recalling how his father, Irving Kristol, reacted to Vietnam War critic Senator George McGovern. The presidential contender’s proposed cut in U.S. military expenditure would, according to the “godfather” of neoconservatism, “drive a knife in the heart of Israel.”
“Jews don’t like big military budgets,” the elder Kristol explained in a Jewish publication in 1973. “But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States … American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.”

American Greatness

Following his father’s advice, William Kristol has been a fervent supporter of massive U.S. military spending. In 1996, he co-authored with Robert Kagan an influential neocon manifesto titled “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy.” It recommended that “America should pursue a vision of benevolent hegemony as bold as Reagan’s in the 1970s and wield its authority unabashedly.

“The defense budget should be increased dramatically, citizens should be educated to appreciate the military’s vital work abroad, and moral clarity should direct a foreign policy that puts the heat on dictators and authoritarian regimes.”

In response, another influential opinion-maker, Charles Krauthammer, hailed Kristol and Kagan as “the main proponents of what you might call the American greatness school.” It is hardly a coincidence, however, that all three advocates of “American greatness” care passionately about what Irving Kristol euphemistically referred to as “the survival of the state of Israel.” Or that many of those “dictators and authoritarian regimes” just happened  to stand in the way of Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.

The following year, Kristol and Kagan co-founded the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a pressure group which sought to advance their “neo-Reaganite” vision. In the late 1990s, they did this mainly by writing letters to Bill Clinton, urging him to oust Saddam Hussein.

In September 2000, PNAC published “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” in which they famously acknowledged that “the process of transformation … is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”
One year later, they got their wished for “new Pearl Harbor” on September 11. The mass murder of almost 3,000 Americans was, as Benjamin Netanyahu indelicately put it, “very good” for Israel.

Kristol’s War

Immediately, Kristol’s Weekly Standard began linking Iraq to the attacks. Writing in The American Conservative, Scott McConnell explained the strategy: “Their rhetoric – which laid down a line from which the magazine would not waver over the next 18 months – was to link Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in virtually every paragraph, to join them at the hip in the minds of readers.”

The “Saddam must go” campaign, begun in a Kristol and Kagan editorial as far back as 1997, became so relentless that Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen dubbed it “Kristol’s War.”

The Iraq War has, of course, also been called “Wolfowitz’s War.” But it could just as aptly have been named after Perle, Feith, Libby, Zelikow, Lieberman, or any of the other pro-Israeli insiders who took America to war by way of deception.

In “Irving Kristol RIP,” Antiwar.com editor Justin Raimondo described Kristol’s legacy as “war, war, and yet more war, as far as the eye can see.”

Unless Americans soon realize that they’ve been deceived by those for whom “American greatness” is merely a means to advance “the survival of the state of Israel,” that legacy promises to be an enduring one.

Maidhc Ó Cathail

Maidhc Ó Cathail is a freelance writer living in Japan. He has written for Antiwar.com, Dissident Voice, The Palestine Chronicle, OpEd News, Media Monitors Network and many other publications.

More Maidhc Ó Cathail
Israel’s European Lobby
A Wolfowitz in Sheep’s Clothing
We are all Palestinians now

December 19, 2009 Posted by Elias

Link

William Kristol of the Weekly Standard

Maidhc Ó Cathail

“One reason neocons have been able to sow so much mischief is that they feed into deeply embedded American beliefs about democratism and ‘chosenness.’” – Paul Gottfried

Americans feeling let down by Barack Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan should take careful note of those who welcomed yet another “surge.” It might help them to identify the source of their seemingly endless wars.

For instance, in a recent Washington Post opinion piece, William Kristol described Obama’s West Point speech as “encouraging.” It was “a good thing,” he said, that Obama was finally speaking as “a war president.”

But if the comments on the Post website are anything to go by, few ordinary Americans take Kristol’s armchair warmongering seriously anymore. After all, as one poster quizzically asked, “A column by William Kristol the neocon that was wrong about everything from 2000-2008?”

Although Kristol, like the rest of the neocons, “erred” about Iraq’s WMDs and Saddam’s links to Al Qaeda and 9/11, it would be a fatal error indeed to dismiss him as a fool.

In order to understand what motivates Bill Kristol’s professed hyper-patriotism, with its consistently disastrous prescriptions, it’s worth recalling how his father, Irving Kristol, reacted to Vietnam War critic Senator George McGovern. The presidential contender’s proposed cut in U.S. military expenditure would, according to the “godfather” of neoconservatism, “drive a knife in the heart of Israel.”
“Jews don’t like big military budgets,” the elder Kristol explained in a Jewish publication in 1973. “But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States … American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.”

American Greatness

Following his father’s advice, William Kristol has been a fervent supporter of massive U.S. military spending. In 1996, he co-authored with Robert Kagan an influential neocon manifesto titled “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy.” It recommended that “America should pursue a vision of benevolent hegemony as bold as Reagan’s in the 1970s and wield its authority unabashedly.

“The defense budget should be increased dramatically, citizens should be educated to appreciate the military’s vital work abroad, and moral clarity should direct a foreign policy that puts the heat on dictators and authoritarian regimes.”

In response, another influential opinion-maker, Charles Krauthammer, hailed Kristol and Kagan as “the main proponents of what you might call the American greatness school.” It is hardly a coincidence, however, that all three advocates of “American greatness” care passionately about what Irving Kristol euphemistically referred to as “the survival of the state of Israel.” Or that many of those “dictators and authoritarian regimes” just happened  to stand in the way of Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.

The following year, Kristol and Kagan co-founded the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a pressure group which sought to advance their “neo-Reaganite” vision. In the late 1990s, they did this mainly by writing letters to Bill Clinton, urging him to oust Saddam Hussein.

In September 2000, PNAC published “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” in which they famously acknowledged that “the process of transformation … is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”
One year later, they got their wished for “new Pearl Harbor” on September 11. The mass murder of almost 3,000 Americans was, as Benjamin Netanyahu indelicately put it, “very good” for Israel.

Kristol’s War

Immediately, Kristol’s Weekly Standard began linking Iraq to the attacks. Writing in The American Conservative, Scott McConnell explained the strategy: “Their rhetoric – which laid down a line from which the magazine would not waver over the next 18 months – was to link Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in virtually every paragraph, to join them at the hip in the minds of readers.”

The “Saddam must go” campaign, begun in a Kristol and Kagan editorial as far back as 1997, became so relentless that Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen dubbed it “Kristol’s War.”

The Iraq War has, of course, also been called “Wolfowitz’s War.” But it could just as aptly have been named after Perle, Feith, Libby, Zelikow, Lieberman, or any of the other pro-Israeli insiders who took America to war by way of deception.

In “Irving Kristol RIP,” Antiwar.com editor Justin Raimondo described Kristol’s legacy as “war, war, and yet more war, as far as the eye can see.”

Unless Americans soon realize that they’ve been deceived by those for whom “American greatness” is merely a means to advance “the survival of the state of Israel,” that legacy promises to be an enduring one.

Maidhc Ó Cathail

Maidhc Ó Cathail is a freelance writer living in Japan. He has written for Antiwar.com, Dissident Voice, The Palestine Chronicle, OpEd News, Media Monitors Network and many other publications.

More Maidhc Ó Cathail
Israel’s European Lobby
A Wolfowitz in Sheep’s Clothing
We are all Palestinians now

December 19, 2009 Posted by Elias

Link

The moment sycophant Harper was again in a ruling position, the hapless creature has followed the NWO party lines. About 9 years ago I saw him with the Compte de Rothschild and KNEW he would win the next election and proceed to take us down in his desperate lust for power.

So far Harper has exceeded my expectations. He is the greatest embarrassment we must suffer. No he is not the one who set Canada’s path into the downhill mode. However he is the one bringing it to the fore and sticking it to the world and the people as well.

No one I know ever voted for him. Such, also, is the power of the media for it is they who decided the winners and then twist the populace by their way of thought. The only time this man looks happy is when he is receiving yet another award from the Chabad Lubavitch for some enormous service to Judaism or Israel. He does not serve Canadian, so much is obvious!

There are nine ways we are ruining our once enviable Canadian reputation in the world.

By Murray Dobbin,

17 Dec 2009,

TheTyee.ca

It was really just a matter of time. The deep well of affection and respect around the world that Canada has drawn on for decades has been slowly poisoned by the Harper government (and the Liberals immediately before it) and the world is now taking serious notice.

In the words of the famous Yes Men (who pulled off the brilliant hoax in Copenhagen): “We’ve always kind of grown up looking up to Canada… We’ve always thought that Canadians were such nice people and had much better policies than we did ~ national health care and all that. And this is just a real disappointment for us, energy policy and learning that Canadians’ carbon footprint per capita is higher than us.”

The Copenhagen conference may just be the final burden that brings us to critical mass, that qualitative leap where Canada is suddenly seen as a mean-spirited, disingenuous, and reactionary force in the family of nations. Here are some of the most important image-busters in Canada’s foreign policy bag of nasty tricks.

Climate change.
This is obviously the biggie. More than any other issue, it is truly global and the Harper government’s staggering arrogance makes Canada a rogue nation. No other country is so contemptuous of the interests of the planet.

Not only does Stephen Harper think he is smarter than anyone in Canada, he thinks he is smarter than anyone, period.
Harper’s message: the rest of you are a pack of idiots. As a result, even the U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu refused to agree to a photo op with Environment Minister Jim Prentice.

COPENHAGEN ~ Green groups on Friday named Canada “Fossil of the Year” ~ an award that carried the additional honorific of “Colossal Fossil” ~ for what they said was a strategy to sabotage efforts to tackle climate change.

“Canada’s 2020 [emissions] target is among the worst in the industrialized world, and leaked cabinet documents revealed that the government is contemplating a cap-and-trade plan so weak that it would put even that target out of reach,” said Climate Action Network International and Avaaz.org.

Asbestos. It is the deadliest workplace substance in history, killing more workers in Canada than any other cause. And the deaths are increasing every year. Stephen Harper has explicitly declared himself the champion of Quebec asbestos and has dedicated himself to ensuring that asbestos is not declared a dangerous substance under the Rotterdam Convention.Thousands of workers in developing countries will die as a result. Canada challenged France’s ban on asbestos through the WTO and lost, making the French environmental law one of the few to survive such a challenge and reinforcing the science declaring asbestos a class one carcinogen.

Terminator seeds. Terminator technology refers to seed genetically modified to produce sterile seeds that cannot be planted, forcing peasants around the world to purchase seeds every season. Globally, farmers would lose hundreds of millions of dollars in income.

At the last meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Curitiba, Brazil, Canada joined Australia and New Zealand in trying to undermine the protocol, calling for a “case by case risk assessment” of terminator seeds, with the intention of allowing the technology to be approved through existing legislation for genetically modified crops.

Where there are terminator seeds, death waits nearby to harvest the fallout.

Canada and its partners failed in their efforts but not for lack of trying. Not a single company in Canada has expressed an interest in pursuing this technology ~ so Mr. Harper casually trashed Canada’s reputation for purely ideological reason

GMO food. Canada is on the front line of forcing people around the world to eat genetically modified food. It is using a big stick against Europeans. A November 2006 World Trade Organization ruling found in favour of a complaint brought by the U.S., Canada and Argentina that the EU had violated WTO rules through “undue delays” in approving genetically modified organisms.

Solid orange: The five countries producing
more than 95% of commercialized GMO
Striped: Other country producing
commercialized GMO
Orange dot: Only experimental crops.

This in spite of the fact that Europeans’ rejection of such foods has been growing over the 15 years that polls have been conducted. Even previously supportive leaders like President Sarkozy of France and the EU’s environment commissioner have changed their mind citing new science.

Here is some work I did on GMO, I had no idea my own country was so backwards!

50 Harmful Effects of Genetically Modified Foods

MORATORIUM ON GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS

MONSANTO’S UPHILL BATTLE IN GERMANY

The Afghan occupation and renewed militarism. While Canada is not alone in the endless and brutal occupation of Afghanistan, it is seen around the world as one of the most aggressive supporters of U.S. policy in that country and the region.

Canadian Peace Keepers like this gentlemen have been phased out over the past few decades to be replaced with killing machines who serve American and Israeli interests.

Canada’s long reputation as an “honest broker” in global geo-politics, while never entirely accurate, has been severely damaged. We are now seen not as a peacekeeper or peacemaker but as a killer of “scumbags” and a warrior state fighting the absurd American “war on terror.”

Please read my piece CANADIANS ~ THE DEATH OF OUR PEACEKEEPING

While there are more peacekeepers active in the world than ever before, we have a government that ridicules the very thing that gave Canada its humanitarian reputation

Israel. Related to the Afghan conflict, but also distinct from it, is Canada’s policy of providing Israel with a complete carte blanche to do literally anything it wants, including committing war crimes against the people of Gaza.

The seig heil of modern day North American democracy!

When Hamas was elected as the government of Gaza, Canada was the first to indicate it would not recognize it ~ a travesty of our alleged support for democracy. The invasion of Lebanon, over the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, witnessed the deliberate and massive destruction of infrastructure and attacks on civilian targets ~ a strategy intended to turn Lebanese civilians against Hezbollah. The ferocious bombing assault against a defenceless nation was described by Prime Minister Harper as a “measured response.

Personally, I find this to be among the worst of Canada’s crimes. Indeed one of the reasons I began to blog was to do my small piece to undo this crime and during this time I have learned of one betrayal to the Palestinian people by my government. This runs from the creation of Canada Park to the forbidding of George Galloway into the country, to the almost complete Judeofascism of Canada, a crime perpetrated against the Canadian people.The majority of Canadians do not yet realize how deep we are into this now.

Harper is the darling of Israel and when a thing like Avignor Lieberman says “Canada is a great friend of Israel”, I cringe in embarrassment.

The betrayal of Africa. After decades of Canadian government commitment to African aid, the Harper government, virtually overnight and without even a pretense of an explanation, simply wrote Africa out of the picture. Dropped from the list of recipient countries were eight African nations, including Rwanda, still recovering from genocide.

While conventional wisdom suggests that African aid has been ineffective, it was generally not true of Canadian programs, which really worked at helping lift people out of disease and poverty.

The Harper government has reconfigured aid to match Canada’s “interests” ~ a quintessentially American approach ~ and has shifted aid to Latin America (Peru and Columbia, already the recipient of billions in aid from the U.S.) and the Caribbean

Latin America. Just as many of the countries of Latin America are struggling successfully to overcome the dark period of neo-liberalism and IMF/World Bank restrictions on their national policies, Stephen Harper has expressed a “renewed” interest in the region. The problem is that renewed interest is as a junior partner in American “manifest destiny.”

With the U.S. busy in Iraq and Afghanistan, Canada is offering a helping hand in re-establishing American and corporate dominance in the region.

Hostile to Cuba and Venezuela, and friendly to the right-wing regime in Columbia, the Canadian government has also gone along with the U.S. as the only other member of the OAS to recognize the fraudulently elected government of Honduras despite that country’s military coup, widespread human rights violations, media closures and its refusal to implement an agreement to reinstate (even briefly) the legitimate government of Manuel Zelaya.

Thus Canada eagerly aligns itself against Latin American nationalism, the most powerful force on the continent, as its first real engagement in the region.

China and human rights. As a sop to his large anti-abortion constituency, Harper not only ignored China for the first four years of his government but openly snubbed the fastest growing world power.

To suggest that this was because Harper objected to China’s human rights record is laughable. If so, it was the most ineffective intervention ever made. While unstated, Harper was in reality giving a sign to his anti-abortion supporters that he would not cozy up to a country that performs more abortions than the rest of the world combined.

His phony concern about human rights in China just underlines his embarrassing absence on the issue literally everywhere else: Gaza, Lebanon, Burma, Honduras, Afghan detainees, the Sudan, etc.

There is hardly a region in the world where Canada has not exchanged its previous moderate, middle power role for one of aggressive, “interests-based” policies, joined at the hip with the terminally unpopular U.S.

One way or the other the Harper regime, in just four short years, has damaged Canada’s relationships with the EU, the Muslim world, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and China

Canada’s ugly new face

It is difficult to assess the international impact of each of these examples. Canada rarely gets covered in the news and most people in Europe or other countries, developed and developing, may know little about these issues.

But eventually foreign policy reaches down to ordinary people around the world ~ those moved by Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, those who want safe food for their kids, those aware of the appalling working conditions of workers in developing nations like India, the millions who are opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the hundreds of millions watching the climate change conference in Copenhagen.

We have been able for a long time to rest on our laurels because these issues don’t often overlap for most people. But eventually it starts to break through the long-standing positive image of Canada. And it breaks through with precisely the people who play a major role in determining the political culture and government policies of their respective countries. These are the people who are the most engaged in their democracies, who influence their governments, who engage with civil society organizations and the media.

The Ugliest Canadian of them all, giving the thumbs up to continue on the path to destruction. This man is our Obama, here to nail the coffin shut.

In short, the people who know are those who are in positions to spread the word about a new global phenomenon: the ugly Canadian.

I ONLY HOPE THAT, AS WITH ALL NATIONS WHO DO EVIL, THERE ARE MANY WITHIN THE BORDERS WHO DO THEIR BEST TO COUNTERACT IT. NOT ALL OF THE PEOPLE SUPPORT TH GOVERNMENT AND WORK TO KEEP THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE IN SPITE OF THE ACTIONS AND INFLUENCES OF THE LEADERS AND THEIR MINIONS.

Link

The moment sycophant Harper was again in a ruling position, the hapless creature has followed the NWO party lines. About 9 years ago I saw him with the Compte de Rothschild and KNEW he would win the next election and proceed to take us down in his desperate lust for power.

So far Harper has exceeded my expectations. He is the greatest embarrassment we must suffer. No he is not the one who set Canada’s path into the downhill mode. However he is the one bringing it to the fore and sticking it to the world and the people as well.

No one I know ever voted for him. Such, also, is the power of the media for it is they who decided the winners and then twist the populace by their way of thought. The only time this man looks happy is when he is receiving yet another award from the Chabad Lubavitch for some enormous service to Judaism or Israel. He does not serve Canadian, so much is obvious!

There are nine ways we are ruining our once enviable Canadian reputation in the world.

By Murray Dobbin,

17 Dec 2009,

TheTyee.ca

It was really just a matter of time. The deep well of affection and respect around the world that Canada has drawn on for decades has been slowly poisoned by the Harper government (and the Liberals immediately before it) and the world is now taking serious notice.

In the words of the famous Yes Men (who pulled off the brilliant hoax in Copenhagen): “We’ve always kind of grown up looking up to Canada… We’ve always thought that Canadians were such nice people and had much better policies than we did ~ national health care and all that. And this is just a real disappointment for us, energy policy and learning that Canadians’ carbon footprint per capita is higher than us.”

The Copenhagen conference may just be the final burden that brings us to critical mass, that qualitative leap where Canada is suddenly seen as a mean-spirited, disingenuous, and reactionary force in the family of nations. Here are some of the most important image-busters in Canada’s foreign policy bag of nasty tricks.

Climate change.
This is obviously the biggie. More than any other issue, it is truly global and the Harper government’s staggering arrogance makes Canada a rogue nation. No other country is so contemptuous of the interests of the planet.

Not only does Stephen Harper think he is smarter than anyone in Canada, he thinks he is smarter than anyone, period.
Harper’s message: the rest of you are a pack of idiots. As a result, even the U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu refused to agree to a photo op with Environment Minister Jim Prentice.

COPENHAGEN ~ Green groups on Friday named Canada “Fossil of the Year” ~ an award that carried the additional honorific of “Colossal Fossil” ~ for what they said was a strategy to sabotage efforts to tackle climate change.

“Canada’s 2020 [emissions] target is among the worst in the industrialized world, and leaked cabinet documents revealed that the government is contemplating a cap-and-trade plan so weak that it would put even that target out of reach,” said Climate Action Network International and Avaaz.org.

Asbestos. It is the deadliest workplace substance in history, killing more workers in Canada than any other cause. And the deaths are increasing every year. Stephen Harper has explicitly declared himself the champion of Quebec asbestos and has dedicated himself to ensuring that asbestos is not declared a dangerous substance under the Rotterdam Convention.Thousands of workers in developing countries will die as a result. Canada challenged France’s ban on asbestos through the WTO and lost, making the French environmental law one of the few to survive such a challenge and reinforcing the science declaring asbestos a class one carcinogen.

Terminator seeds. Terminator technology refers to seed genetically modified to produce sterile seeds that cannot be planted, forcing peasants around the world to purchase seeds every season. Globally, farmers would lose hundreds of millions of dollars in income.

At the last meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Curitiba, Brazil, Canada joined Australia and New Zealand in trying to undermine the protocol, calling for a “case by case risk assessment” of terminator seeds, with the intention of allowing the technology to be approved through existing legislation for genetically modified crops.

Where there are terminator seeds, death waits nearby to harvest the fallout.

Canada and its partners failed in their efforts but not for lack of trying. Not a single company in Canada has expressed an interest in pursuing this technology ~ so Mr. Harper casually trashed Canada’s reputation for purely ideological reason

GMO food. Canada is on the front line of forcing people around the world to eat genetically modified food. It is using a big stick against Europeans. A November 2006 World Trade Organization ruling found in favour of a complaint brought by the U.S., Canada and Argentina that the EU had violated WTO rules through “undue delays” in approving genetically modified organisms.

Solid orange: The five countries producing
more than 95% of commercialized GMO
Striped: Other country producing
commercialized GMO
Orange dot: Only experimental crops.

This in spite of the fact that Europeans’ rejection of such foods has been growing over the 15 years that polls have been conducted. Even previously supportive leaders like President Sarkozy of France and the EU’s environment commissioner have changed their mind citing new science.

Here is some work I did on GMO, I had no idea my own country was so backwards!

50 Harmful Effects of Genetically Modified Foods

MORATORIUM ON GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS

MONSANTO’S UPHILL BATTLE IN GERMANY

The Afghan occupation and renewed militarism. While Canada is not alone in the endless and brutal occupation of Afghanistan, it is seen around the world as one of the most aggressive supporters of U.S. policy in that country and the region.

Canadian Peace Keepers like this gentlemen have been phased out over the past few decades to be replaced with killing machines who serve American and Israeli interests.

Canada’s long reputation as an “honest broker” in global geo-politics, while never entirely accurate, has been severely damaged. We are now seen not as a peacekeeper or peacemaker but as a killer of “scumbags” and a warrior state fighting the absurd American “war on terror.”

Please read my piece CANADIANS ~ THE DEATH OF OUR PEACEKEEPING

While there are more peacekeepers active in the world than ever before, we have a government that ridicules the very thing that gave Canada its humanitarian reputation

Israel. Related to the Afghan conflict, but also distinct from it, is Canada’s policy of providing Israel with a complete carte blanche to do literally anything it wants, including committing war crimes against the people of Gaza.

The seig heil of modern day North American democracy!

When Hamas was elected as the government of Gaza, Canada was the first to indicate it would not recognize it ~ a travesty of our alleged support for democracy. The invasion of Lebanon, over the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, witnessed the deliberate and massive destruction of infrastructure and attacks on civilian targets ~ a strategy intended to turn Lebanese civilians against Hezbollah. The ferocious bombing assault against a defenceless nation was described by Prime Minister Harper as a “measured response.

Personally, I find this to be among the worst of Canada’s crimes. Indeed one of the reasons I began to blog was to do my small piece to undo this crime and during this time I have learned of one betrayal to the Palestinian people by my government. This runs from the creation of Canada Park to the forbidding of George Galloway into the country, to the almost complete Judeofascism of Canada, a crime perpetrated against the Canadian people.The majority of Canadians do not yet realize how deep we are into this now.

Harper is the darling of Israel and when a thing like Avignor Lieberman says “Canada is a great friend of Israel”, I cringe in embarrassment.

The betrayal of Africa. After decades of Canadian government commitment to African aid, the Harper government, virtually overnight and without even a pretense of an explanation, simply wrote Africa out of the picture. Dropped from the list of recipient countries were eight African nations, including Rwanda, still recovering from genocide.

While conventional wisdom suggests that African aid has been ineffective, it was generally not true of Canadian programs, which really worked at helping lift people out of disease and poverty.

The Harper government has reconfigured aid to match Canada’s “interests” ~ a quintessentially American approach ~ and has shifted aid to Latin America (Peru and Columbia, already the recipient of billions in aid from the U.S.) and the Caribbean

Latin America. Just as many of the countries of Latin America are struggling successfully to overcome the dark period of neo-liberalism and IMF/World Bank restrictions on their national policies, Stephen Harper has expressed a “renewed” interest in the region. The problem is that renewed interest is as a junior partner in American “manifest destiny.”

With the U.S. busy in Iraq and Afghanistan, Canada is offering a helping hand in re-establishing American and corporate dominance in the region.

Hostile to Cuba and Venezuela, and friendly to the right-wing regime in Columbia, the Canadian government has also gone along with the U.S. as the only other member of the OAS to recognize the fraudulently elected government of Honduras despite that country’s military coup, widespread human rights violations, media closures and its refusal to implement an agreement to reinstate (even briefly) the legitimate government of Manuel Zelaya.

Thus Canada eagerly aligns itself against Latin American nationalism, the most powerful force on the continent, as its first real engagement in the region.

China and human rights. As a sop to his large anti-abortion constituency, Harper not only ignored China for the first four years of his government but openly snubbed the fastest growing world power.

To suggest that this was because Harper objected to China’s human rights record is laughable. If so, it was the most ineffective intervention ever made. While unstated, Harper was in reality giving a sign to his anti-abortion supporters that he would not cozy up to a country that performs more abortions than the rest of the world combined.

His phony concern about human rights in China just underlines his embarrassing absence on the issue literally everywhere else: Gaza, Lebanon, Burma, Honduras, Afghan detainees, the Sudan, etc.

There is hardly a region in the world where Canada has not exchanged its previous moderate, middle power role for one of aggressive, “interests-based” policies, joined at the hip with the terminally unpopular U.S.

One way or the other the Harper regime, in just four short years, has damaged Canada’s relationships with the EU, the Muslim world, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and China

Canada’s ugly new face

It is difficult to assess the international impact of each of these examples. Canada rarely gets covered in the news and most people in Europe or other countries, developed and developing, may know little about these issues.

But eventually foreign policy reaches down to ordinary people around the world ~ those moved by Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, those who want safe food for their kids, those aware of the appalling working conditions of workers in developing nations like India, the millions who are opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the hundreds of millions watching the climate change conference in Copenhagen.

We have been able for a long time to rest on our laurels because these issues don’t often overlap for most people. But eventually it starts to break through the long-standing positive image of Canada. And it breaks through with precisely the people who play a major role in determining the political culture and government policies of their respective countries. These are the people who are the most engaged in their democracies, who influence their governments, who engage with civil society organizations and the media.

The Ugliest Canadian of them all, giving the thumbs up to continue on the path to destruction. This man is our Obama, here to nail the coffin shut.

In short, the people who know are those who are in positions to spread the word about a new global phenomenon: the ugly Canadian.

I ONLY HOPE THAT, AS WITH ALL NATIONS WHO DO EVIL, THERE ARE MANY WITHIN THE BORDERS WHO DO THEIR BEST TO COUNTERACT IT. NOT ALL OF THE PEOPLE SUPPORT TH GOVERNMENT AND WORK TO KEEP THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE IN SPITE OF THE ACTIONS AND INFLUENCES OF THE LEADERS AND THEIR MINIONS.

By Grace Halsell*

My learning experiences also included coming to realize how easily I could lose a Jewish friend if I criticized the Jewish state. I could with impunity criticize France, England, Russia, even the United States. And any aspect of life in America. But not the Jewish state. I lost more Jewish friends than one after the publication of Journey to Jerusalem-all sad losses for me and one, perhaps, saddest of all.

In the 1960s and 1970s, before going to the Middle East, I had written about the plight of blacks in a book entitled Soul Sister, and the plight of American Indians in a book entitled Bessie Yellowhair, and the problems endured by undocumented workers crossing from Mexico in The Illegals. These books had come to the attention of the “mother” of The New York Times, Mrs. Arthur Hays Sulzberger.

Her father had started the newspaper, then her husband ran it, and in the years that I knew her, her son was the publisher. She invited me to her fashionable apartment on Fifth Avenue for lunches and dinner parties. And, on many occasions, I was a weekend guest at her Greenwich, Conn. home.

She was liberal-minded and praised my efforts to speak for the underdog, even going so far in one letter to say, “You are the most remarkable woman I ever knew.” I had little concept that from being buoyed so high I could be dropped so suddenly when I discovered-from her point of view-the “wrong” underdog.

As it happened, I was a weekend guest in her spacious Connecticut home when she read bound galleys of Journey to Jerusalem. As I was leaving, she handed the galleys back with a saddened look: “My dear, have you forgotten the Holocaust?” She felt that what happened in Nazi Germany to Jews several decades earlier should silence any criticism of the Jewish state. She could focus on a holocaust of Jews while negating a modern day holocaust of Palestinians.

I realized, quite painfully, that our friendship was ending. Iphigene Sulzberger had not only invited me to her home to meet her famous friends but, also at her suggestion, The Times had requested articles. I wrote op-ed articles on various subjects including American blacks, American Indians as well as undocumented workers. Since Mrs. Sulzberger and other Jewish officials at the Times highly praised my efforts to help these groups of oppressed peoples, the dichotomy became apparent: most “liberal” U.S. Jews stand on the side of all poor and oppressed peoples save one-the Palestinians.

How handily these liberal Jewish opinion-molders tend to diminish the Palestinians, to make them invisible, or to categorize them all as “terrorists.”

Interestingly, Iphigene Sulzberger had talked to me a great deal about her father, Adolph S. Ochs. She told me that he was not one of the early Zionists. He had not favored the creation of a Jewish state.

Yet, increasingly, American Jews have fallen victim to Zionism, a nationalistic movement that passes for many as a religion. While the ethical instructions of all great religions-including the teachings of Moses, Muhammad and Christ-stress that all human beings are equal, militant Zionists take the position that the killing of a non-Jew does not count.

Over five decades now, Zionists have killed Palestinians with impunity. And in the 1996 shelling of a U.N. base in Qana, Lebanon, the Israelis killed more than 100 civilians sheltered there. As an Israeli journalist, Arieh Shavit, explains of the massacre, “We believe with absolute certitude that right now, with the White House in our hands, the Senate in our hands and The New York Times in our hands, the lives of others do not count the same way as our own.”

Israelis today, explains the anti-Zionist Jew Israel Shahak, “are not basing their religion on the ethics of justice. They do not accept the Old Testament as it is written. Rather, religious Jews turn to the Talmud. For them, the Talmudic Jewish laws become ‘the Bible.’ And the Talmud teaches that a Jew can kill a non-Jew with impunity.”

In the teachings of Christ, there was a break from such Talmudic teachings. He sought to heal the wounded, to comfort the downtrodden.

The danger, of course, for U.S. Christians is that having made an icon of Israel, we fall into a trap of condoning whatever Israel does-even wanton murder-as orchestrated by God.

Yet, I am not alone in suggesting that the churches in the United States represent the last major organized support for Palestinian rights. This imperative is due in part to our historic links to the Land of Christ and in part to the moral issues involved with having our tax dollars fund Israeli-government-approved violations of human rights.

While Israel and its dedicated U.S. Jewish supporters know they have the president and most of Congress in their hands, they worry about grassroots America-the well-meaning Christians who care for justice. Thus far, most Christians were unaware of what it was they didn’t know about Israel. They were indoctrinated by U.S. supporters of Israel in their own country and when they traveled to the Land of Christ most all did so under Israeli sponsorship. That being the case, it was unlikely a Christian ever met a Palestinian or learned what caused the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This is gradually changing, however. And this change disturbs the Israelis. As an example, delegates attending a Christian Sabeel conference in Bethlehem earlier this year said they were harassed by Israeli security at the Tel Aviv airport.

“They asked us,” said one delegate, “‘Why did you use a Palestinian travel agency? Why didn’t you use an Israeli agency?’” The interrogation was so extensive and hostile that Sabeel leaders called a special session to brief the delegates on how to handle the harassment. Obviously, said one delegate, “The Israelis have a policy to discourage us from visiting the Holy Land except under their sponsorship. They don’t want Christians to start learning all they have never known about Israel.”

* Washington, DC-based writer Grace Halsell is the author of 14 books, including Journey to Jerusalem and Prophecy and Politics.

American Jews sympathetic to Israel dominate key positions in all areas of our government where decisions are made regarding the Middle East. This being the case, is there any hope of ever changing U.S. policy? President Bill Clinton as well as most members of Congress support Israel-and they know why. U.S. Jews sympathetic to Israel donate lavishly to their campaign coffers.

The answer to achieving an even-handed Middle East policy might lie elsewhere-among those who support Israel but don’t really know why. This group is the vast majority of Americans. They are well-meaning, fair-minded Christians who feel bonded to Israel-and Zionism-often from atavistic feelings, in some cases dating from childhood.

I am one of those. I grew up listening to stories of a mystical, allegorical, spiritual Israel. This was before a modern political entity with the same name appeared on our maps. I attended Sunday School and watched an instructor draw down window- type shades to show maps of the Holy Land. I imbibed stories of a Good and Chosen people who fought against their Bad “unChosen” enemies.

In my early 20s, I began traveling the world, earning my living as a writer. I came to the subject of the Middle East rather late in my career. I was sadly lacking in knowledge regarding the area. About all I knew was what I had learned in Sunday School.

And typical of many U.S. Christians, I somehow considered a modern state created in 1948 as a homeland for Jews persecuted under the Nazis as a replica of the spiritual, mystical Israel I heard about as a child. When in 1979 I initially went to Jerusalem, I planned to write about the three great monotheistic religions and leave out politics. “Not write about politics?” scoffed one Palestinian, smoking a water pipe in the Old Walled City. “We eat politics, morning, noon and night!”
As I would learn, the politics is about land, and the co-claimants to that land: the indigenous Palestinians who have lived there for 2,000 years and the Jews who started arriving in large numbers after the Second World War. By living among Israeli Jews as well as Palestinian Christians and Muslims, I saw, heard, smelled, experienced the police state tactics Israelis use against Palestinians.

My research led to a book entitled Journey to Jerusalem. My journey not only was enlightening to me as regards Israel, but also I came to a deeper, and sadder, understanding of my own country. I say sadder understanding because I began to see that, in Middle East politics, we the people are not making the decisions, but rather that supporters of Israel are doing so. And typical of most Americans, I tended to think the U.S. media was “free” to print news impartially.

“It shouldn’t be published. It’s anti-Israel.”

In the late 1970s, when I first went to Jerusalem, I was unaware that editors could and would classify “news” depending on who was doing what to whom. On my initial visit to Israel-Palestine, I had interviewed dozens of young Palestinian men. About one in four related stories of torture.

Israeli police had come in the night, dragged them from their beds and placed hoods over their heads. Then in jails the Israelis had kept them in isolation, besieged them with loud, incessant noises, hung them upside down and had sadistically mutilated their genitals. I had not read such stories in the U.S. media. Wasn’t it news? Obviously, I naively thought, U.S. editors simply didn’t know it was happening.

On a trip to Washington, DC, I hand-delivered a letter to Frank Mankiewicz, then head of the public radio station WETA. I explained I had taped interviews with Palestinians who had been brutally tortured. And I’d make them available to him. I got no reply. I made several phone calls. Eventually I was put through to a public relations person, a Ms. Cohen, who said my letter had been lost. I wrote again. In time I began to realize what I hadn’t known: had it been Jews who were strung up and tortured, it would be news. But interviews with tortured Arabs were “lost” at WETA.

The process of getting my book Journey to Jerusalem published also was a learning experience. Bill Griffin, who signed a contract with me on behalf of MacMillan Publishing Company, was a former Roman Catholic priest. He assured me that no one other than himself would edit the book. As I researched the book, making several trips to Israel and Palestine, I met frequently with Griffin, showing him sample chapters. “Terrific,” he said of my material.

The day the book was scheduled to be published, I went to visit MacMillan’s. Checking in at a reception desk, I spotted Griffin across a room, cleaning out his desk. His secretary Margie came to greet me. In tears, she whispered for me to meet her in the ladies room. When we were alone, she confided, “He’s been fired.” She indicated it was because he had signed a contract for a book that was sympathetic to Palestinians. Griffin, she said, had no time to see me.

Later, I met with another MacMillan official, William Curry. “I was told to take your manuscript to the Israeli Embassy, to let them read it for mistakes,” he told me. “They were not pleased. They asked me, ‘You are not going to publish this book, are you?’ I asked, ‘Were there mistakes?’ ‘Not mistakes as such. But it shouldn’t be published. It’s anti-Israel.’”

Somehow, despite obstacles to prevent it, the presses had started rolling. After its publication in 1980, I was invited to speak in a number of churches. Christians generally reacted with disbelief. Back then, there was little or no coverage of Israeli land confiscation, demolition of Palestinian homes, wan ton arrests and torture of Palestinian civilians.

The Same Question

Speaking of these injustices, I invariably heard the same question, “How come I didn’t know this?” Or someone might ask, “But I haven’t read about that in my newspaper.” To these church audiences, I related my own learning experience, that of seeing hordes of U.S. correspondents covering a relatively tiny state. I pointed out that I had not seen so many reporters in world capitals such as Beijing, Moscow, London, Tokyo, Paris. Why, I asked, did a small state with a 1980 population of only four million warrant more reporters than China, with a billion people?

I also linked this query with my findings that The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post-and most of our nation’s print media-are owned and/or controlled by Jews supportive of Israel. It was for this reason, I deduced, that they sent so many reporters to cover Israel-and to do so largely from the Israeli point of view.

SOURCE: WRMEA, Sabbah’s Report

Grace Halsell

* A Washington, DC-based journalist, writer Grace Halsell is the author of 14 books, including Journey to Jerusalem and Prophecy and Politics. She is the daughter of writer Harry H. Halsell, She studied at Texas Tech from 1939 to 1942, at Columbia from 1943 to 1944, at Texas Christian University from 1945 to 1951,
and at the Sorbonne (Paris) from 1957 to 1958.

Blackwater Founder and Major GOP and Israel Supporter Implicated in Murder

Erik Prince Blackwater Founder

Blackwater Founder And Rapture Apocalyptic Event Promoter, Implicated in Murders “A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life .

Tim Lahaye and the Blackwater Connection

Erik Prince is the founder of Blackwater mercenaries

Blackwater: Life (and Death) Above the Law | NowPublic News Coverage

This is an pretty devastating article by Antony Loewenstein. Loewenstein believes that  Erik Prince is a Christian fundamentalist who with his group of Blackwater bandits are causing death and destruction in Iraq. Who has control over this group? Could they acquire nuclear weapons?

‘It may be worse than Abu Ghraib.’

Those were the words of an unidentified US military official in the aftermath of an incident in Baghdad in mid-September that saw the death of as many as 20 Iraqis at the hands of private military contractor Blackwater. The US-backed Iraqi Government labelled the actions as ‘criminal’ and talked of ‘the killing of our citizens in cold blood.’

The story has suddenly thrown a welcome focus on an industry that prefers to remain in the shadows; generally unaccountable organisations that have become essential for the US war machine to prosper. Author Jeremy Scahill told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee in late September that Blackwater’s actions were not uncommon and reminiscent of many other mercenaries operating in Iraq since 2003:

They have acted like cowboys, running Iraqis off the road, firing indiscriminately at vehicles and, in some cases, private forces have appeared on tape seemingly using Iraqis for target practice. They have shown little regard for Iraqi lives and have fuelled the violence in that country, not just against the people of Iraq but also against the official soldiers of the United States military in the form of blowback and revenge attacks stemming from contractor misconduct. These private forces have operated in a climate where impunity and immunity have gone hand in hand.

Scahill’s incendiary book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, was a New York Times best-seller earlier in the year and it’s not hard to see why. It was released in Australia last week. His aim is not simply to expose the inner workings of a company that has won numerous no-bid contracts to protect US officials in Iraq, but to understand how such a group could thrive during the Bush years. In less than a decade, Blackwater has emerged from a North Carolina swamp to become, in the words of Scahill, ‘a sort of Praetorian Guard for the… “global war on terror.”’

Led by Christian fundamentalist Erik Prince, the company maintains more than 2300 private soldiers in nine countries, a private fleet of aircraft, gunships and surveillance equipment and maintains the world’s largest private military facility. One US Congressman noted that in military terms, Blackwater could overthrow many of the world’s governments.

Scahill explores the extraordinary decree issued in 2004 by Paul Bremer — the US’s administrator in Iraq after the invasion — to immunise contractors in Iraq from prosecution. Private military contractors, paid for by the US taxpayer, could literally get away with….

“They have acted like cowboys, running Iraqis off the road, firing indiscriminately at vehicles and, in some cases, private forces have appeared on tape seemingly using Iraqis for target practice.”

Erik Prince is the son of a billionaire Michigan industrialist named Edgar Prince. His father was a generous contributor to right-wing evangelical “Protestant” causes and Erik became a major contributor to Catholic organizations….He founded Blackwater in 1998.

Erik began his political career working as an intern for Gary Bauer at the Family Research Council and also worked in the Bush I White House, although he thought that this administration was too liberal. Prince disapproved of the Bush I administration to the extent that in 1992 he supported Patrick Buchanan for President, something that got him into trouble with his sister Betsy.

Erik Prince is a Catholic. He most likely became Catholic when he married his first wife, who died of cancer shortly after they were married. Interestingly enough, most of the leadership at Blackwater is also Catholic, albeit a conservative wing of the church that is quite reactionary. Erik Prince is personally connected to conservative Catholic groups like Catholic Answer, Crisis magazine, and a Grand Rapids-based group, the Acton Institute. But Prince has not abandoned his Protestant/Evangelical roots and is a close friend of Watergate criminal turned believer Chuck Colson. They have shared the podium on several occasions, even once at Calvin College. According to Scahill, Prince is aligning himself with a new Catholic/Evangelical alliance called “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.” The ECT manifesto states:

[link to reformation.org]

Tim LaHaye and the Council for National Policy

In 1981, Tim LaHaye was the founder of a highly secretive conservative think tank called the Council for National Policy dedicated to turning the nation to the right. One of the founding members was named Edgar Prince, father of Erik Prince, the secretive founder of the Blackwater mercenaries:

ARMY. NAVY. AIR FORCE. MARINES. BLACKWATER!!

The 5th branch of the CONfederate military is called BLACKWATER after the area in Camden County, North Carolina, where the mercenaries train. Of course they don’t call themselves mercenaries but private contractors. Their founder, Erik Prince, is described by the media as a RIGHT WING EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN!!

A decade ago, the company barely existed; and yet, its “diplomatic security” contracts since mid-2004, with the State Department alone, total more than $750 million. Today, Blackwater has become nothing short of the Bush administration’s well-paid Praetorian Guard. It protects the U.S. ambassador and other senior officials in Iraq as well as visiting congressional delegations; it trains Afghan security forces and was deployed in the oil-richCaspian Sea region, setting up a “command and control” center just miles from the Iranian border. The company was also hired to protect FEMA operations and facilities in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, where it raked in $240,000 a day from the American taxpayer, billing $950 a day per Blackwater contractor.
Tim LaHaye and the Council for National Policy

In 1981, Tim LaHaye was the founder of a highly secretive conservative think tank called the Council for National Policy dedicated to turning the nation to the right. One of the founding members was named Edgar Prince, father of Erik Prince, the secretive founder of the Blackwater mercenaries:

“But Erik Prince’s philanthropy has certainly not been limited to Catholic causes. The Prince family was deeply involved in the secretive Council for National Policy, described by the New York Times as “a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country [which has] met behind closed doors at undisclosed locations for a confidential conference” three times a year “to strategize about how to turn the country to the right.” The Council was started in 1981 by the Rev. Tim LaHaye, one of the founders of the modern right-wing Christian movement in the United States and author of the apocalyptic Left Behind novels.”‘ The idea was to build a Christian conservative alternative to the Rockefeller Council on Foreign Relations, which LaHaye considered too liberal. CNP membership is kept secret, and members are instructed that ‘The media should not know when or where we meet or who takes part in our programs, before or after a meeting.’

Hal Lindsey is known as the father of modern “Bible” prophecy. His famous Late Great Planet Earth sold over 35 million copies and spawned the billion dollar end-times industry, whose books and videos repeat his dispensational theme, and are patterned after his novel writing style. Lindsey actually is a Jesuit in disguise as 2 of his daughters attendedJesuit Gonzaga University.
That Left Behind series was nothing more than Illuminati propaganda for the Christian community. It has no basis fact on how Biblical prophecy will truly unfold.

Blackwater Chief Accused of Murder, Gun-Running – ABC News

Blackwater’s Prince raising concern in Washington

(CNN) — There’s a lot of head-scratching at the CIA over an articlein Vanity Fair magazine that dubs Erik Prince, the founder of the notorious private military contractor Blackwater, a “tycoon, contractor, soldier, spy.”

In the piece, he comes across as so entrenched with the CIA that the agency needs him to perform the most sensitive secret missions, including those involving hunting down and taking out al Qaeda operatives.

It’s true that Prince, as the sole owner of one of the most well-connected private military contractors in modern history, is in a position of enormous trust within the government. So why is it that he’s lashing out publicly at that same government?

Prince, a 40-year-old former Navy SEAL, inherited what he called a sizable amount of money when his father died in the late ’90s. He’s used that money to help climb to the top of an industry that has mushroomed since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

He built Blackwater, now operating under the name Xe, from the ground up, into a sprawling complex with enough tanks, planes and ammunition to launch a small war of its own.

When President Obama addressed the nation and talked about his Afghanistan strategy, he didn’t talk about the shadow army already employed there. There are more private contractors in Afghanistan on the U.S. payroll than there are U.S. troops.

While Prince is a huge beneficiary of U.S. contract dollars, he has long been frustrated by two things. First, he doesn’t like the reputation his company has gained, with his men painted as ruthless cowboys — which some are, but some aren’t.

The Truth Behind Left Behind Luciferian Rapture Doctrine – Its Power and Influence in World Control

RIGHTS: New Charges Added to Blackwater Lawsuit – IPS ipsnews.net

www.soldiersspeakout.com.

Israeli Soldiers Testify: We Used Gazans as Human Shields!

Once again, the Israeli army admits of committing war crimes in Gaza.
A Golani brigade soldier confessed that the Israeli occupation forces used Palestinians as human shields during Gaza war last January despite a 2005 High Court ruling outlawing the practice. The soldier said his unit employed a variation of the practice, the so-called “neighbor procedure,” when it checked homes for Palestinian resistance fighters.

The soldier’s testimony appears in a collection of accounts being published this week by Breaking the Silence, an organization that collects Israeli soldiers’ testimony on human rights abuses by the military.

In a print and video testimony published on Wednesday by the activist group, the 30 soldiers say they were commanded to shoot first and then worry about civilian causalities adding that the Israeli army’s imperative was to minimize its own casualties to ensure Israeli public support for the Gaza operation. A Palestinian rights group has stated that 1,417 Palestinians were killed, 926 of them civilians, during the Israeli war on Gaza. But Israel has put the death toll at 1,166 and estimated 295 dead were civilians. Ten occupation soldiers and three settlers were also killed.

The soldier, a staff sergeant, said that in his unit and others, Palestinians were often sent into houses to determine if there was anyone inside. “The practice was not to call it ‘the neighbor procedure.’ Instead it was called ‘Johnny,’” the soldier said, using Israeli military slang for Palestinian civilians. The Israeli occupation employed this practice extensively during the second intifada, before it was outlawed by the High Court of Justice in 2005.

In an incident his commanders told him about, three “armed militants” were in a house. Attack helicopters were brought in. “They … again sent the [Palestinian] neighbor in. At first he said that nothing had happened [to the armed men],” the soldier said. “Again they brought in attack helicopters and fired. They again sent in the neighbor. He said there were two dead and one still alive. They then brought in a bulldozer and began to knock the house down on him until [the neighbor] entered.” The soldier said he had been told that the only militant remaining alive was captured and turned over to the Shin Bet security service.

The Golani soldier also testified that his commanders reported incidents in which Palestinians were given sledgehammers to break through walls to let the army enter through the side of houses. The army feared that the doors were booby-trapped.

The soldier said he had heard of other instances in which Palestinian civilians were used as human shields. One time, for example, a Palestinian was put at the front of an Israeli military force with a gun pointed at him from behind.

The Israeli military Spokesman’s Office, for its part, said that “the IDF regrets the fact that a human rights organization would again present to the country and the world a report containing anonymous, generalized testimony without checking the details or their reliability, and without giving the IDF, as a matter of minimal fairness, the opportunity to check the matters and respond to them before publication.”

For his part, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak responded to the report saying that “if anyone has any criticism, information of reservations over the IDF’s operations, they must direct them to me as the State of Israel’s defense minister and to the Israeli government, which was the one to order to IDF to restore calm in the southern communities.” Minister Barak added, “Criticism directed at the IDF by one organization or another is inappropriate and is directed at the wrong place. The IDF is one of the most ethical armies in the world and acts in accordance with the highest moral code.”
Barak asserted after the war that Israel had the “most moral army” in the world.

SHOOT FIRST, WORRY LATER!
Moreover, a number of Israeli occupation soldiers who took part in Israel’s recent Gaza aggression were quoted by Breaking the Silence group as saying that they were urged by commanders to shoot first and worry later about sorting out civilians from combatants. Accordingly, they say, the force went into Gaza with guns blazing.

The 112-page report by Breaking the Silence includes testimonies of 30 soldiers “who served in all sectors of the operation”.

“Better hit an innocent than hesitate to target an enemy,” is a typical description by one unidentified soldier of his understanding of instructions repeated at pre-invasion briefings and during the 22-day war, from Dec. 27 to Jan. 18.

“If you’re not sure, kill. Fire power was insane. We went in and the booms were just mad,” says another. “The minute we got to our starting line, we simply began to fire at suspect places. In urban warfare, anyone is your enemy. No innocents.”

“We did not get instructions to shoot at anything that moved,” said one soldier. “But we were generally instructed: if you feel threatened, shoot. They kept repeating to us that this is war and in war opening fire is not restricted.”

UMBRELLA OF FIRE
The report repeats charges denied by Israel that white phosphorus was fired indiscriminately into Gaza streets. It cites “massive destruction was unrelated to any direct threat to Israeli forces” and “permissive” rules of engagement.

One soldier said that his unit had received an order to “ignite” an area. “The way to do that was to actually fire phosphorus shells from above,” he said. “What the phosphorus does is to let out an umbrella of fire over the target and naturally that ignites the whole house.” The results of a white phosphorus bombardment were “upsetting” another soldier said, “because in training you learn that white phosphorus is not used, and you’re taught that it’s not humane”.

The report also mentions armored bulldozers razing whole areas including gardens, and olive and orange groves. “We didn’t see a single house that was intact … that was not hit. The entire infrastructure, tracks, fields, roads, was in total ruin. The D-9 (bulldozer) had gone over everything,” the report quotes a soldier as saying.

Televangelist Oral Roberts Dies at 91- The Truth About the Rapture Hoax

OK, I had the creepy dream about Israel just before I had a bunch of health stuff come up. In the mean time I described the mortar I saw in my dream to a reporter friend of mine and she told me that it was exactly as I described it. Basically, it looks like a giant bullet. That just got me wondering what the hell is up with Israel’s chart?

Why did I dream it would be the center of a war that would lead to a world wide conflict. Well, I figured astrology would help me figure it out and yeah, I looked at Israel’s chart and the transits about to hit and it didn’t look good.

Mars will be going over Israel’s stellium in the 10th house this year, transiting Pluto is making an applying opposition to Venus from the 3rd to the 9th and an applying inconjunction to the natal Moon in the 10th. Uranus started the trouble as it has been going back and forth over a sensitive square to Israel’s natal Uranus in the 9th from the 5th house. There was a risk taken that will be the trigger of dominos that will set off this chain. When I looked back at the first pass it was in April of 2009, here’s a link to describe the seed of the unfolding:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/opinion/04bisharat.html

It seems that my initial freak out over Israel going into the Gaza strip way back when, in a post from last year, was on the money. Read the article. It appears there were major violations of international law which started to make its way out into the world last April. The article illustrates the situation well. Of course in my case it was just a bad gut feeling and a sense that a small faction of militant right leaning nut jobbers were steering Israel in the very wrong direction. A lot of people got mad at me, even called me anti-semitic because I spoke out against this however I am of Jewish descent (I do not participate in any organized religion however.) Contrary to the notion that I am anti-Israel I am actually pro-Israel. I want Israel to succeed and thrive and the only way it can is if it gets along with its neighbors and tries to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians. There are many Jewish people who want peace just as there are many Americans who want peace and want our troops to come home. Enough about that…

According to the chart transits leave me to believe that things will progressively become more difficult, more polarized and those who can see the writing on the wall will migrate out of the country. There will more than likely be an exodus and the involvement of an international tribunal or group that will oversee the conflict which may start as peaceful, more along the lines of international law and lead to international troops escalating to the point that the world will divide among two camps and a world war fought on middle eastern soil. I have a feeling the conflict will not stay in Israel.  The great malefic Saturn will also be transiting Israel’s 12th house over the next couple of years and will eventually hit the natal Neptune which will trine Natal Mercury and sextile natal Pluto lessening the intense loss and restriction put upon Israel. It’s fair to say that Israel will have very powerful allies that will come to its aid in this upcoming period of instability. As good as this is for Israel it could be bad for the world. It could lead to conflicts between much bigger nations on Israel’s behalf which is where the WW more than likely will be triggered. I’m going to look into the other nations I feel will be involved in the conflict later on and report on that next.

I have the feeling that what will start out as a seemingly benign investigation by the international community will take a volatile turn and incite old animosities which will lead to a much bigger world war. This won’t happen over night, but over a period of years as the planets march along and set off a series of bad aspects in Israel’s chart.

Next I’ll look into the major power players charts and see how they interact with this situation.

Best wishes,

Denise

Meet Ali Abunimah, the son of a Jordanian diplomat, a Palestinian activist, and the man who brings the hottest news of the struggle to thousands of people. His message: Forget two states, one will be tough enough to get it right.

The Interview before you was commissioned by one of the the big newspapers. For a reason that has yet to be clarified, this paper decided not to publish the interview. It’s published here, because it’s the opinion of the editor that it’s important that this be read by the Israeli public.

“First of all, it’s important for me to clarify that I’m not a leader, and I’m not interested in being a leader.” That’s how Ali Abunimah, 38, opens our two and a half hour interview. A Washington D.C. Born Palestinian, son of Palestinian parents of different villages in the Jerusalem area, his mother a native of Lifta, a 1948 refugee, and his father, a native of of Battir, a 1967 refugee. Abunimah (@avinunu on Twitter) may renounce the label of a leader, but in the history that will one day be written, it’s probable that he’ll be described as the “harbinger of electronic revolution”, as the Electronic Intifada- the name of the website that Abunimah is of his founders and active members. There are Twitter users with many more “followers”, but there are very few who seriously deal with the Isreli-Palestinian issue, feeds voraciously on the web and doesn’t follow “@avinunu” and “E-Intifada”. He’s also a sought after and articulate interviewee on news networks such as CNN and MSNBC, for his consistent representation of the Palestinian position.

Abunimah is one of the most active people on the web in Palestinian Hasbara, and this without being identified with any of the political factions. His father, Hasan, served as a senior diplomat of Jordan, among other things its ambassador to the United Nations. But Ali doesn’t hesitate to criticize the kingdom where most his relatives live today, when he finds it’s time to do so. A portrait of a leader in the internet age- Unidentified, not representative, and doesn’t owe any one.

Recently, Abunimah surfaced into consciousness, after ruining [Ehud] Olmert’s little apearance-for-profit at Chicago University, when he abruptly cut his speech with the piercing question about the dissatisfyingly discriminatory killing that the IDF executed in Gaza, a year ago. Abunimah was joined by more protestors and Olmert couldn’t go through his speech as planned.

A few days later, Olmert tried to give a speech in San Francisco, and as in Chicago pro-Palestinian students got up and drowned his voice in shouts and protest. Ali Abunimah, in Chicago, wasn’t there for the second silencing of Olmert, that included an attempt of a “citizen’s arrest”, but he was there with immediate reports, updates and links to videos and Twitter, before anyone else, at the front lines of the unfolding events, as is the case, in the past few years. Nothing of importance happens in the field or in the virtual space that has to do with Palestine (but not only) without Abunimah’s keyboard being there to distribute, sharply comment, connect the incriminating dots, point fingers and supply background and context to each event.

Inviting Olmert? A “Miserable Decision”

The man himself, as I mentioned, is humble, on the conversation I had with him on the computer program, Skype. “I organized nothing that had to do with San Francisco, and I don’t want to talk second hand about how and what other people are planning.” He also doesn’t want to talk about other internet activists such as himself, for the possibility that he may forget to mention someone and that’ll open a possibility for offense. When I persist,he obliges in mentioning the International BDS committee, the Palestinian action organization for boycotting Israel, students and many activists across the USA and the BDS movement- acronym for Boycott, Divestment, Sanction.

In addition to the clear protest against Olmert’s actions and against Israel, Abunimah and others wanted to protest the actual decision to invite Olmert to speak.

“I think it was a miserable decision by The Harris School of Public Policy Studies, in my university, the University of Chicago, to invite a man who is- forget the war crimes- suspect of serious corruption offenses, by his own state, and to pay him tens of thousands of dollars for a speech. It just inappropriate.”

Be honest, it may have been inappropriate, but it created a great opportunity to get your struggle some headlines.

“It helped, but at the same time, the school could have invited judge Richard Goldstone to speak about the findings of his report, that way we would have gotten a debate about the subject and the school wouldn’t have put itself in a the compromising position of paying an enormous sum to a corrupt person”.

Similar to the Struggle Against South Africa

I try to stir the conversation to the methods of organization that have been bringing Abunimah and his colleagues success, lately. But it seems he’s pleased- in an impeccably polite manner- to disappoint me.

“Not only did I not organize anything, I don’t think there’s such a quick organizers the likes of which you’re describing,” He says. “These are very spontaneous actions. Information is very decentralized today on the web. It reaches many people simultaneously. I feed on the flow of information more than I contribute to it. I almost want to say that I’m sorry we’re not more organized, but this is the reality and I think that in the grander scheme of things, it doesn’t matter.”

It’s a bit strange to hear from a man that grew up in the house of a professional diplomat that organizing doesn’t matter for the public struggle, but Abunimah persists: “It’s a fact that the Zionists are much more organized than we are, in the campuses and an the US in general, and they have a huge budget, nevertheless, they haven’t achieved similar success in spreading their message. It’s not that I’m more skilled at using Twitter than anyone else. It’s because they’re trying to sell a 19th century message in the 21st century, and apparently even with 21st century technology, you can’t sell that merchandise.”

“It’s very similar to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, on campuses,” he continues. “The struggle was very decentralized there, too, and succeeded because of the undeniable justness of the cause.” This is where Abunimah doesn’t forget to mention that one of the lone states to keep tight relations with the apartheid regime in South Africa was Israel.

Beyond the massive volume of his online dealings with the issue, his education and what he had absorbed in his father’s home, one of the reasons that people turn to him in order to understand the Middle East conflict is his considerably rational stance that he vigilantly keeps: “We don’t boycott Israelis just because they are Israelis or work for an Israeli institution. If Chicago University would have invited some Israeli professor, then cutting him off in protest would have been silencing of freedom of speech. But Ehud Olmert isn’t a private citizen and it’s obvious he’s a legitimate target for this purpose.”

If You Give Up Territory, You’ll Take it Out on Your Arab Citizens

That said, those of you hoping to find a partner for a rational debate about coexistence within the two-state framework will be highly disappointed. Abunimah believes in a single-state solution, bi-national, completely democratic, in which there’s no state expression of Jewish/Israeli nationality. He also wrote a book about it: One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

“It’s not that I oppose the two-state solution. I don’t think this solution exists. Those who try to repeat the mistakes of 1948 will find out that it won’t end less tragically, this time around,” he claims.

And still, let’s say that tomorrow we’re informed that Netanyahu and Abu-Mazen have signed an agreement that includes the pulling out of all that’s east of the separation fence and the founding of some sort of Palestinian state within the confines of what exists?

Before he answers this question, Abunimah specifies the way he sees the roots of the conflict: “First of all, expulsion of refugees from their land on a racial basis.”

Are you sure it’s correct to insist on the term “racism” in this context? It’s tribalism, our side and your side.

“Religious-ethnical basis, if you wish. It’s obvious that if they would have converted, they would have been allowed to stay. The second point is the racist treatment discriminating Palestinians citizens of Israel, and the third point is occupation and colonization. Something resembling a state, headed by Abu-Mazen, or anyone else, only solves the third point, because you can’t forfeit the right of return in the name of others.”

There’s a contradiction, or maybe discrimination, because you expect Israel’s government to give up holy places and historic regions in the name of the whole of the Jewish people, but reject the right of the Palestinian government to do so.

“We must discern “rights” that are based on a historical, half-mythological narrative that refers to events of over 2000 years ago, from the rights of people that some of which are still alive and were physically expelled, themselves, from their homes and lands. It’s obvious that the latter is more pressing than the former,” he argues.

“Referring to your question,” he continues, “do you really believe you can evacuate half a million settlers from their homes?”

I personally believe so, if there’s a will. It was also thought that it would be impossible to evacuate the Gaza Strip. Most of the people that need to be evacuated aren’t ideological settlers. They’ll give him money and he’ll leave, and with the ones that persist all the way, the security forces will deal with them.

“I don’t believe it’s possible, but even if it is, do you know what will happen? There won’t be two states that live side by side in peace. I’ll tell you why: The Israelis will be so full of a feeling that “we gave up so much, we gave so much. And we’re still stuck with a million and a half Arabs that only want more and more”, until the nationalism, aggression and will, that’s hidden within most, to ethnically cleanse, will surface, so the evacuation of the West Bank won’t solve anything, and will only change the identity of the Palestinians that are Israel’s victims. I think Meyron Benbenishty sees the situation clearer than most Israeli analysts. I often disagree with him about the conclusions, but hi- analysis of the situation is very correct, in my opinion. He calls this land, Palestine, the state of Israel, whatever you call it, “a de-facto bi-national state”, and I agree with this turn of phrase”.

Using the Neighbor’s House as Collateral

Look, the essence of Zionism was to build a shelter where all Jews could flee in case of pogroms. Will this bi-national state that you envision insure this right?

This is where Abunimah’s answer splits in two: “Personally, I wouldn’t object that a bi-national, democratic, equal, state, after all the wrongs that were done to the Palestinian people are emended, would make a commitment to receive every persecuted Jew at a time of need. Palestine has a rich and ancient tradition of as a place of refuge to the persecuted, near and far, including Armenians, Caucasian tribes, Africans and also Jews, single people, families and sometimes whole communities, for generations, have used Palestine as a place of refuge.”

“But principally speaking,” Abunimah retracts, “It’ important to understand the the Jews of the world aren’t allowed to hold someone’s house as collateral in case the house they live in now burns. This idea that it’s the right of a limited number of Jews to hold on to this land, while oppressing the indigenous population as an insurance policy for people who don’t live here is absurd. Zionism presumed to create a safe haven for Jews. In effect, the majority of world Jews choose not to live in it, it’s a safe haven for no one, and to the people who live in it, an insurance policy is citizenship in another country, preferably one in the European Union.”

You ask me if I believe it’s possible to uproot half a million settlers. Do you really believe that Israelis and Palestinians can merge into one state?

“I understand your question. Hate exists within both sides and in order to examine it, we must examine the root of the conflict. But the major mistake of those dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the thought that it’s so unique. It’s not. In northern Ireland there are two communities, with a longer lasting conflict, and each one with its own contradicting narrative, just like us. The colonial dynamics are also similar. In order to solve the conflict, first there’s need of recognition of its root causes, recognition of the wrongs, and recognition of the rights of the victims. Yes, each Palestinian and his family that has been uprooted from his land has a right to return to their homes. It’s also not as impossible as it sounds. The state of Israel has backup plans to receive a million immigrants, if the need be. So the possibility is there.

But first of all there must be recognition of the right. Then there can be talk of application. No one promises that thousands of Palestinians living well in the Middle East and the rest of the world will run to live in the homeland, and of course there’s the ability of the existing population to receive immigration, to consider. But the right has to be acknowledged. First of all there’s a need to erect institutions and policies and mechanisms that will foster true equality. Quality accommodations, police that is perceived as an honest broker and not as a one sided militia. Like Northern Ireland, like other places, human beings find a way to reconcile and shatter imposed structures of hate”.

Northern Ireland as an Intermediate Stage

So you do support a solution like in Northern Ireland? Because there the land was distributed.

“It’s true that the island has yet to be united there, and I believe that in the end it will happen. If there will be an intermediate stage in which there’s one state for the local indigenous population, like the Republic of Ireland, and also a completely bi-national state, with complete equal rights and specific immigration arrangements for each population (the Northern Ireland Protestants, for example, have a right to freely immigrate to Britain), then maybe it could work. But who wants that? There’s this kind of religion of two-states, and I call it a religion because it doesn’t base itself on evidence. They say that Israelis really want that, and that Fatah really wants it, and almost 20 years they’re working on it, so how is it that it isn’t happening? It isn’t happening because no one wants it to happen, because both sides understand that it’s impossible. It’s only Israel deluding itself that it can continue sustaining occupation forever, when occupation itself is an anachronistic term. There can be occupation for a few months, maybe even a few years, but 40 years of occupation and settlements and assimilation? The world is beginning to understand what’s going on and it won’t have it.”

And this is the point where we return to the aims of sites such as the information site Electronic Intifada and of the BDS movement.

“That’s right. We believe that in spite of the existence of a very small Israeli left, the majority of Israelis will be delighted to continue going to the beach, watch movies and shows and it in good restaurants, while at a distance of less than a hundred Kilometers from there children are starving. As long as they don’t understand that the current policies only bring them suffering, that it constricts their stride and detaches them from all they want, they won’t want to listen. We’re waiting for them to be ready.”

Do you know the terms “switch a disc” and “burn in the consciousness”?

Abunimah elegantly ignores the opportunity to savor the irony and answers seriously: “There must be a struggle of ideas to change all our current ideas about our possible future. These are the struggles I believe in. There’s nothing that binds these struggles to the spilling of blood.”

A Culture Lesson and Optimism (depends for whom)

You read Hebrew, follow the media here and you also chose to take a course in Hebrew poetry in the university. Among your writings we can also find a small effort to promote the works of Jewish artists of an Arab ethnicity, especially those who created in Arabic.

“Yes, I think that one of the biggest crimes of Zionism was actually perpetrated against the Jews and their spiritual world. In that it debased all that was “exile-esque” [גלותי], it detached itself and the people under its authority from their roots. There was harsh oppression of both the Yiddish culture and the Jewish-Arabic culture.”

This is correct, and in the past generation there’s a growing awareness of this, and already a whole generation’s-time it isn’t shameful to become interested in where the grandparents came from and to revive their culture. On the contrary.

“That’s right, and it’s wonderful.”

And what about the new Hebrew culture? Is there something, out of the huge variety that has been created here, that you can relate to?

“Without a doubt there’s an existing Israeli-Jewish culture, but it’s very tough for Palestinians to view it out of the prism of the conflict, not to mention that Israel uses culture explicitly for Hasbara purposes. The solutions I suggest may free the Israeli-Jewish culture from these confines and find recognition and respect within broader circles.”

To conclude, you’re one of the biggest promoters of a bi-national state in what is today referred to as Israel and the Palestinian territories. Are you optimistic?

“I’m very optimistic. I think it will happen in the lifetimes of the 1948 refugees. There’s not much time and they should be able to see justice before they pass on.”

And then you’ll come to live here?

“I can’t say for sure that I will. I don’t know. But I won’t give up my right to do so.”

Source: Rebelnews.org

“And I will bless them that bless you, and curse him that curses you, and in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”  Genesis 12:3

“Which covenant He made with Abraham, and his oath unto Isaac, and confirmed the same unto Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant.”                        Psalm 105: 9-10 

On September 29, 1938 leaders of Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy met at Munich to decide the fate of the Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia made up mostly of ethnic Germans.  Adolph Hitler had alleged that Czechs in that area were mistreating the Germans, and Hitler wanted annex the territory for Germany.

Already, the Nazi war machine had grown to ominous proportions and Austria had gone under the Hitler’s boot.  Czech president, Edvard Benes appealed to Britain and France for help in protecting his little country against the advance of a tyrant so obviously bent on world conquest.

Hitler, meanwhile, was busy deceiving the world into thinking that this little part of Czechoslovakia was all he wanted.  Those who favored siding with the Czechs against Germany were labeled “war mongers”.   Our president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was not present at the Munich conference–but sent repeated pleas for Germany and Czechoslovakia to “negotiote”.

Need we say, “the rest is history”?  On September 30, 1938, headlines in the New York Times read as follows:  “Four Powers Reach a Peaceable Agreement”, “Germans to Enter Sudetenland Tomorrow and Will Complete Occupation in Ten Days”, “Nazi Demands Met”.

After the Munich Conference, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin returned to London waving the Munich Agreement for all to see, and boasting:  “A British Prime Minister has achieved peace in our time . . . . peace with honor.”

Those ironic words were followed by events we can never forget: 

November 8, 1938–”Krystalnacht” (“night of broken glass”) when Hitler’s anti-Semitic posturing turned into the methodical destruction of businesses owned by German Jews. 

March 15, 1939–The remains of Czechoslovakia caved in under Hitler’s aggression.

September 1, 1939–Hitler launched World War II, by attacking Poland and thereby bringing Britain and her European allies into the conflict.

December 7, 1941–Japanese war planes attacked U. S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor.

December 8, 1941–U. S. declared war on Japan.

December 11, 1941–Germany and Italy declared war on U. S.

Why don’t we learn from history?  Again and again, we hear the word “negotiate”.  How many of our presidents have aped Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin by thinking they are achieving “peace in our time, peace with honor”?

Negotiations with dictators who are bent on world power can only spell compromise and ultimate devastation.  Negotiations in 1938 resulted in the closest thing to Armageddon the world has ever experienced. 

Negotiations in 1938 also resulted in the torture and extermination of millions of God’s chosen people, the Jews.

Today Germany and Japan are friendly nations, purposing to never again repeat their past.  But other aggressive, diabolical regimes have risen up in the wake of the World War II tyrants–regimes with leaders who, like Adolph Hitler, are committed to wiping the Jews off the face of the earth forever.

Of course this will not happen.  God is faithful, and He will preserve His people and His nation.  There will be a genuine Armageddon, and our Lord will return to earth to reign. 

When the Lord returns, we will have “peace with honor”!  Meanwhile, any “negotiations” which threaten, harm, or in any way undermine the nation of Israel can only result in disaster!

“For you are a holy people unto the Lord your God:  the Lord your God hath chosen you to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.”  Deuteronomy 7:6

Margaret L. Been–All Rights Reserved

Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD

A Bedouin in Cyberspace, a villager at home

December 3, 2009 passes, just another day among 365 days of the year. But no day here is boring. I videotape at length (mostly for another project) but put a tiny bit on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QImBLtYNXW0 ) to give you a visual to accompany this description since I am still experimenting with video productions but hopefully will get better with time. Anyway, here are some of the events and interactions:

- I wake up t the news that 15 Palestinian youths were kidnapped overnight by the Israeli military. In the past few weeks Israel seems to be filling up its jails to replace those they will release as part of a prisoner exchange with Hamas (which is holding one Israeli occupation soldier). I drive my wife to her class at the University and go run some errands.

- A coffee and some Arabic cake (Ka’ak) with falafel are just the right boost to get the day going. We pick-up our friend Ridgeley and the three of us go to see an exhibit on Freedom made by Bethlehem University students. Here were there ideas, frustrated dreams, hopes, and aspirations made with cheap material but incredible thought. A clock that runs between an apple and slowly the apple gets eaten by a roach so that when the hour hits midnight, there is hardly anything left. But then there are symbolic chains and walls that breakdown with will and determination or simply be degeneration among oppressors. There is one exhibit where pieces of paper about math, biology, and language mix with pieces of papers about curfews, walls, wars, and political maneuvering.

- There conference on the Abraham Path initiative (http://www.abrahampath.org/ ) a great project of cultural tourism where Internationals walk around Palestine, learning and growing along the way. The clever design of the few exhibits around the room followed the same trend which would be seen on the walk from the north to the south. We buy a book about Old Hebron from the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee and a nice ceramic bowl. Ridgeley gets a black and red Kuffiya made in the last Palestinian factory still making them (red and black is unusual since most Palestinians prefer to take one or the other for a symbolic reason).

- We then drive to the Tent of Nations (http://www.tentofnations.org/ ) where a farmer family is trying to hang on to a hill overlooking the Palestinian ancient village of Nahhalin (continuously inhabited by Canaanites in a beautiful valley for over 3000 years). Both Nahhalin and this lonely hill are now surrounded by settlements (Neve Daniel, Rosh Zurim, Betar Elit, Alazer). The family that owns the hill decides to make a stand and while they are prevented from building any structures above ground they manage to rehabilitate caves and other underground structures and plant and live and educate Internationals and locals who visit to learn about civil resistance.

- We drive on to Beit Ummar near Hebron where we meet Mousa AbuMaria, founder of the Palestine Solidarity Project http://palestinesolidarityproject.org/ Mousa has spent years in Israeli jails where like many thousands of other Palestinians he was ill treated. He decided to channel his energy to civil resistance. I wanted to interview him for a book and documentary we are doing on civil resistance.

- We then drive back to Bethlehem for a meeting and interview with Neta Golan. Neta is the impressive and energetic co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement which brought thousands of volunteers/activists to join in the Palestinian civil resistance (http://palsolidarity.org/ ).

- We had a delightful dinner and informal chat (albeit we had to argue with the restaurant owner on why he serves water bottled by an Israeli company and stolen from Palestinian aquifers)

- We attended part of the meeting of the Mennonite Central Committee (http://mcc.org/ ) and their local partners like ARIJ and Rapprochement Center. MCC has been doing great work in Palestine since 1949. The gathering also offers us a chance not only to meet new people but to reconnect with people doing good work like Rev. Naeem Atik of Sabil, Cathy Bergen of AFSC, and Eitan Bronstein of Zochrot.

- Back at home, I write an introduction to a forthcoming book on birds of Palestine (in Arabic, authored by Simon Awad), answer the mountain of emails and finish writing exam questions for my master’s students.

All in all, despite the colonial occupation, the bad news of endless wars (e.g. Obama escalating his foolish war in Afghanistan), and fellow Palestinians in small Israeli jails (where 11000 political prisoners are kept) and in big jails (where 3 million Palestinians are kept)… despite all of that, I say life is good. Yes there is lots of hope but we all must act to bring a quicker end to this nightmare. Silence is after all complicity.

A lucha continua…
Video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QImBLtYNXW0

Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
A Bedouin in Cyberspace, a villager at home
http://www.qumsiyeh.org/
http://www.pcr.ps/

December 4, 2009 Posted by Elias

Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD

A Bedouin in Cyberspace, a villager at home

December 3, 2009 passes, just another day among 365 days of the year. But no day here is boring. I videotape at length (mostly for another project) but put a tiny bit on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QImBLtYNXW0 ) to give you a visual to accompany this description since I am still experimenting with video productions but hopefully will get better with time. Anyway, here are some of the events and interactions:

- I wake up t the news that 15 Palestinian youths were kidnapped overnight by the Israeli military. In the past few weeks Israel seems to be filling up its jails to replace those they will release as part of a prisoner exchange with Hamas (which is holding one Israeli occupation soldier). I drive my wife to her class at the University and go run some errands.

- A coffee and some Arabic cake (Ka’ak) with falafel are just the right boost to get the day going. We pick-up our friend Ridgeley and the three of us go to see an exhibit on Freedom made by Bethlehem University students. Here were there ideas, frustrated dreams, hopes, and aspirations made with cheap material but incredible thought. A clock that runs between an apple and slowly the apple gets eaten by a roach so that when the hour hits midnight, there is hardly anything left. But then there are symbolic chains and walls that breakdown with will and determination or simply be degeneration among oppressors. There is one exhibit where pieces of paper about math, biology, and language mix with pieces of papers about curfews, walls, wars, and political maneuvering.

- There conference on the Abraham Path initiative (http://www.abrahampath.org/ ) a great project of cultural tourism where Internationals walk around Palestine, learning and growing along the way. The clever design of the few exhibits around the room followed the same trend which would be seen on the walk from the north to the south. We buy a book about Old Hebron from the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee and a nice ceramic bowl. Ridgeley gets a black and red Kuffiya made in the last Palestinian factory still making them (red and black is unusual since most Palestinians prefer to take one or the other for a symbolic reason).

- We then drive to the Tent of Nations (http://www.tentofnations.org/ ) where a farmer family is trying to hang on to a hill overlooking the Palestinian ancient village of Nahhalin (continuously inhabited by Canaanites in a beautiful valley for over 3000 years). Both Nahhalin and this lonely hill are now surrounded by settlements (Neve Daniel, Rosh Zurim, Betar Elit, Alazer). The family that owns the hill decides to make a stand and while they are prevented from building any structures above ground they manage to rehabilitate caves and other underground structures and plant and live and educate Internationals and locals who visit to learn about civil resistance.

- We drive on to Beit Ummar near Hebron where we meet Mousa AbuMaria, founder of the Palestine Solidarity Project http://palestinesolidarityproject.org/ Mousa has spent years in Israeli jails where like many thousands of other Palestinians he was ill treated. He decided to channel his energy to civil resistance. I wanted to interview him for a book and documentary we are doing on civil resistance.

- We then drive back to Bethlehem for a meeting and interview with Neta Golan. Neta is the impressive and energetic co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement which brought thousands of volunteers/activists to join in the Palestinian civil resistance (http://palsolidarity.org/ ).

- We had a delightful dinner and informal chat (albeit we had to argue with the restaurant owner on why he serves water bottled by an Israeli company and stolen from Palestinian aquifers)

- We attended part of the meeting of the Mennonite Central Committee (http://mcc.org/ ) and their local partners like ARIJ and Rapprochement Center. MCC has been doing great work in Palestine since 1949. The gathering also offers us a chance not only to meet new people but to reconnect with people doing good work like Rev. Naeem Atik of Sabil, Cathy Bergen of AFSC, and Eitan Bronstein of Zochrot.

- Back at home, I write an introduction to a forthcoming book on birds of Palestine (in Arabic, authored by Simon Awad), answer the mountain of emails and finish writing exam questions for my master’s students.

All in all, despite the colonial occupation, the bad news of endless wars (e.g. Obama escalating his foolish war in Afghanistan), and fellow Palestinians in small Israeli jails (where 11000 political prisoners are kept) and in big jails (where 3 million Palestinians are kept)… despite all of that, I say life is good. Yes there is lots of hope but we all must act to bring a quicker end to this nightmare. Silence is after all complicity.

A lucha continua…
Video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QImBLtYNXW0

Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
A Bedouin in Cyberspace, a villager at home
http://www.qumsiyeh.org/
http://www.pcr.ps/

December 4, 2009 Posted by Elias

Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD

A Bedouin in Cyberspace, a villager at home

December 3, 2009 passes, just another day among 365 days of the year. But no day here is boring.  I videotape at length (mostly for another project) but put a tiny bit on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QImBLtYNXW0 ) to give you a visual to accompany this description since I am still experimenting with video productions but hopefully will get better with time. Anyway, here are some of the events and interactions:

- I wake up t the news that 15 Palestinian youths were kidnapped overnight by the Israeli military.  In the past few weeks Israel seems to be filling up its jails to replace those they will release as part of a prisoner exchange with Hamas (which is holding one Israeli occupation soldier). I drive my wife to her class at the University and go run some errands.

- A coffee and some Arabic cake (Ka’ak) with falafel are just the right boost to get the day going.  We pick-up our friend Ridgeley and the three of us go to see an exhibit on Freedom made by Bethlehem University students.  Here were there ideas, frustrated dreams, hopes, and aspirations made with cheap material but incredible thought.  A clock that runs between an apple and slowly the apple gets eaten by a roach so that when the hour hits midnight, there is hardly anything left.  But then there are symbolic chains and walls that breakdown with will and determination or simply be degeneration among oppressors.  There is one exhibit where pieces of paper about math, biology, and language mix with pieces of papers about curfews, walls, wars, and political maneuvering.

- There conference on the Abraham Path initiative (http://www.abrahampath.org ) a great project of cultural tourism where Internationals walk around Palestine, learning and growing along the way. The clever design of the few exhibits around the room followed the same trend which would be seen on the walk from the north to the south.  We buy a book about Old Hebron from the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee and a nice ceramic bowl.  Ridgeley gets a black and red Kuffiya made in the last Palestinian factory still making them (red and black is unusual since most Palestinians prefer to take one or the other for a symbolic reason).

- We then drive to the Tent of Nations (http://www.tentofnations.org/ ) where a farmer family is trying to hang on to a hill overlooking the Palestinian ancient village of Nahhalin (continuously inhabited by Canaanites in a beautiful valley for over 3000 years).  Both Nahhalin and this lonely hill are now surrounded by settlements (Neve Daniel, Rosh Zurim, Betar Elit, Alazer). The family that owns the hill decides to make a stand and while they are prevented from building any structures above ground they manage to rehabilitate caves and other underground structures and plant and live and educate Internationals and locals who visit to learn about civil resistance.

- We drive on to Beit Ummar near Hebron where we meet Mousa AbuMaria, founder of the Palestine Solidarity Project http://palestinesolidarityproject.org/ Mousa has spent years in Israeli jails where like many thousands of other Palestinians he was ill treated.  He decided to channel his energy to civil resistance.  I wanted to interview him for a book and documentary we are doing on civil resistance.

- We then drive back to Bethlehem for a meeting and interview with Neta Golan.  Neta is the impressive and energetic co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement which brought thousands of volunteers/activists to join in the Palestinian civil resistance (http://palsolidarity.org/ ).

- We had a delightful dinner and informal chat (albeit we had to argue with the restaurant owner on why he serves water bottled by an Israeli company and stolen from Palestinian aquifers)

- We attended part of the meeting of the Mennonite Central Committee (http://mcc.org/ ) and their local partners like ARIJ and Rapprochement Center.  MCC has been doing great work in Palestine since 1949. The gathering also offers us a chance not only to meet new people but to reconnect with people doing good work like Rev. Naeem Atik of Sabil, Cathy Bergen of AFSC, and Eitan Bronstein of Zochrot.

- Back at home, I write an introduction to a forthcoming book on birds of Palestine (in Arabic, authored by Simon Awad), answer the mountain of emails and finish writing exam questions for my master’s students.

All in all, despite the colonial occupation, the bad news of endless wars (e.g. Obama escalating his foolish war in Afghanistan), and fellow Palestinians in small Israeli jails (where 11000 political prisoners are kept) and in big jails (where 3 million Palestinians are kept)… despite all of that, I say life is good. Yes there is lots of hope but we all must act to bring a quicker end to this nightmare.  Silence is after all complicity.

A lucha continua…
Video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QImBLtYNXW0

Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
A Bedouin in Cyberspace, a villager at home
http://www.qumsiyeh.org
http://www.pcr.ps

15 people, including 3 cabinet ministers and 3 journalists, are dead after a suicide bomber struck a university graduation ceremony in Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia. The suicide bomber was dressed as woman. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the bombing, but the militant Islamic group al-Shabab is suspected. Islamic militants control much of central and southern Somalia. The capital is protected by African Union peacekeepers who have nearly daily skirmishes with militants, Associated Press.

India’s Minister of State for the Environment has announced that the country will not sign any legally-binding emission reduction agreements at the upcoming climate change summit in Copenhagen, Times of India.  Residents of Shishmaref, Alaska fear climate change could destroy their town, CNN.

Israeli settlers protest a 10-month ban on new settlement construction. East Jerusalem is not included in the ban. Settlements are illegal under international law, but continue to be built by Israelis in disputed lands as a way of bolstering their claims on the land, CNN. The story of a Palestinian farmer whose grove of olive trees has been vandalized by nearby Israeli settlements, BBC News.

The New York State Senate did not approve a bill that would have legalized same-sex marriage, New York Times.

Link

We are all Palestinians now

Maidhc Ó Cathail

Global Intifada

Comparisons are said to be invidious, but in the right hands they can be very illuminating.

The toxic dust from the economic 9/11 of 2008 hadn’t even begun to settle when a perceptive observer noticed an important connection to the geopolitical fallout from the more dramatic 9/11 seven years earlier.

On September 16, Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli expatriate, told the Cambridge Forum:

“As the picture of the current economic disaster becomes ever more clear, it becomes rather obvious, to me at least, that the ideology and the people who are directly responsible for the mass killing of millions of Iraqis and the displacement of many other millions, the people who keep the Palestinians starved behind walls, are unfortunately very much the same people who are responsible for a class genocide of millions of disenfranchised Americans who are now on the brink of total dispossession.”

A tale of two doctrines

To illustrate, Atzmon outlined two key doctrines which had catalyzed these apparently disparate crises.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq, Atzmon said, had its origins in the Pentagon’s 1992 Defense Planning Guidance. Drafted by the then undersecretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz and his protégé Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the “Wolfowitz Doctrine” urged America to assume a more assertive, interventionist role in the post-Cold War world, particularly in the Middle East.

But essentially it was an “imperialist Zio-centric document” which proposed “to merge American and global Zionist interests into a unified belligerent practice.” And America’s thirst for Arab oil was the key to achieving this merger.

“Wolfowitz and Libby, so it seemed at the time, found the way to heaven. They were about to kill two birds with just a single (cruise missile) shot. They planned to rob the Arab oil and to ‘secure’ their beloved Jewish state simultaneously.”

Similarly, Atzmon traced the financial collapse of 2008 to policies advanced by the then Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. By encouraging underprivileged Americans to recklessly borrow and spend, the “Greenspan Doctrine” fueled the subprime mortgage boom which helped “to finance the wars perpetrated by his ideological brothers Libby and Wolfowitz.”

“He knew very well that as long as Americans were doing well, buying and selling homes, his President would be able to pursue implementing the ‘Wolfowitz doctrine’ destroying the ‘bad Arabs’ in the name of ‘democracy’.”

While the bold experiments proposed by Wolfowitz and Greenspan may have “looked promising on paper,” they ultimately proved to be disastrous not only for the Middle East, but also for America. But this, Atzmon said, shouldn’t have surprised anyone.

“Let me tell you, the pattern is familiar, these wonderful people always try to save the world. They ‘bring’ democracy to the Arabs, they ‘bring’ equality to the poor. But somehow, Israel is always set to benefit.”

The people in between

Shortly after Atzmon delivered his “Credit Crunch Or Rather Zio-Punch?” talk, a most important book was published which came to the very same conclusion. However, in Guilt By Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War, Jeff Gates shows precisely how Americans were deceived.

Central to Gates’ analysis is the concept of “the people in between.”

“The national mental state is the in between battleground where the people in between displace facts with what people can be deceived to believe.”

Clearly, Wolfowitz and Greenspan fit this description perfectly. In the interlocking spheres of geopolitics and economics, they had waged unconventional warfare on the minds of Americans ­– all for the sake of Zion.

In an interview with this writer, published as “The Source of the Economic Crisis: A Chicago State of Mind,” Gates elaborated on how this Zionist duplicity operates:

“All flows downstream from a ‘consensus’ perspective – regardless whether the deception is a shared belief in Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or a consensus faith in the infallibility of unfettered financial markets. The modus operandi is identical – the displacement of facts with beliefs.”

Shaking off our common enemy

In his talk, Gilad Atzmon decried “our apathy towards the suffering of others that makes Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan into a single narrative of Western collective indifference.”

However, our economic pain, Atzmon believes, “provides us with an opportunity to see that as far as misery is concerned, we are together with the Palestinians, the Iraqis and the Afghans. We share one enemy.”

To drive home the point to his Cambridge audience, he reminded them:

“The same ideology that brought carnage on Iraq and Palestine is the same ideology
Maidhc Ó Cathail

that makes you lose your home tomorrow.”

That being the case, then, in a very real sense, aren’t we all Palestinians now?

And just as that most subjugated people periodically rise up “to shake off” (the literal meaning of intifada) their oppressors, if the systematically deceived people of the world ever see through the fog of deception, they may realize it’s time for the first global Intifada.

Maidhc Ó Cathail

Maidhc Ó Cathail is a freelance writer living in Japan. He has written for Antiwar.com, Dissident Voice, The Palestine Chronicle, OpEd News, Media Monitors Network and many other publications.

More Maidhc Ó Cathail
Israel’s European Lobby

November 30, 2009 – Posted by Elias

Link

We are all Palestinians now

Maidhc Ó Cathail

Global Intifada

Comparisons are said to be invidious, but in the right hands they can be very illuminating.

The toxic dust from the economic 9/11 of 2008 hadn’t even begun to settle when a perceptive observer noticed an important connection to the geopolitical fallout from the more dramatic 9/11 seven years earlier.

On September 16, Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli expatriate, told the Cambridge Forum:

“As the picture of the current economic disaster becomes ever more clear, it becomes rather obvious, to me at least, that the ideology and the people who are directly responsible for the mass killing of millions of Iraqis and the displacement of many other millions, the people who keep the Palestinians starved behind walls, are unfortunately very much the same people who are responsible for a class genocide of millions of disenfranchised Americans who are now on the brink of total dispossession.”

A tale of two doctrines

To illustrate, Atzmon outlined two key doctrines which had catalyzed these apparently disparate crises.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq, Atzmon said, had its origins in the Pentagon’s 1992 Defense Planning Guidance. Drafted by the then undersecretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz and his protégé Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the “Wolfowitz Doctrine” urged America to assume a more assertive, interventionist role in the post-Cold War world, particularly in the Middle East.

But essentially it was an “imperialist Zio-centric document” which proposed “to merge American and global Zionist interests into a unified belligerent practice.” And America’s thirst for Arab oil was the key to achieving this merger.

“Wolfowitz and Libby, so it seemed at the time, found the way to heaven. They were about to kill two birds with just a single (cruise missile) shot. They planned to rob the Arab oil and to ‘secure’ their beloved Jewish state simultaneously.”

Similarly, Atzmon traced the financial collapse of 2008 to policies advanced by the then Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. By encouraging underprivileged Americans to recklessly borrow and spend, the “Greenspan Doctrine” fueled the subprime mortgage boom which helped “to finance the wars perpetrated by his ideological brothers Libby and Wolfowitz.”

“He knew very well that as long as Americans were doing well, buying and selling homes, his President would be able to pursue implementing the ‘Wolfowitz doctrine’ destroying the ‘bad Arabs’ in the name of ‘democracy’.”

While the bold experiments proposed by Wolfowitz and Greenspan may have “looked promising on paper,” they ultimately proved to be disastrous not only for the Middle East, but also for America. But this, Atzmon said, shouldn’t have surprised anyone.

“Let me tell you, the pattern is familiar, these wonderful people always try to save the world. They ‘bring’ democracy to the Arabs, they ‘bring’ equality to the poor. But somehow, Israel is always set to benefit.”

The people in between

Shortly after Atzmon delivered his “Credit Crunch Or Rather Zio-Punch?” talk, a most important book was published which came to the very same conclusion. However, in Guilt By Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War, Jeff Gates shows precisely how Americans were deceived.

Central to Gates’ analysis is the concept of “the people in between.”

“The national mental state is the in between battleground where the people in between displace facts with what people can be deceived to believe.”

Clearly, Wolfowitz and Greenspan fit this description perfectly. In the interlocking spheres of geopolitics and economics, they had waged unconventional warfare on the minds of Americans ­– all for the sake of Zion.

In an interview with this writer, published as “The Source of the Economic Crisis: A Chicago State of Mind,” Gates elaborated on how this Zionist duplicity operates:

“All flows downstream from a ‘consensus’ perspective – regardless whether the deception is a shared belief in Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or a consensus faith in the infallibility of unfettered financial markets. The modus operandi is identical – the displacement of facts with beliefs.”

Shaking off our common enemy

In his talk, Gilad Atzmon decried “our apathy towards the suffering of others that makes Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan into a single narrative of Western collective indifference.”

However, our economic pain, Atzmon believes, “provides us with an opportunity to see that as far as misery is concerned, we are together with the Palestinians, the Iraqis and the Afghans. We share one enemy.”

To drive home the point to his Cambridge audience, he reminded them:

“The same ideology that brought carnage on Iraq and Palestine is the same ideology
Maidhc Ó Cathail

that makes you lose your home tomorrow.”

That being the case, then, in a very real sense, aren’t we all Palestinians now?

And just as that most subjugated people periodically rise up “to shake off” (the literal meaning of intifada) their oppressors, if the systematically deceived people of the world ever see through the fog of deception, they may realize it’s time for the first global Intifada.

Maidhc Ó Cathail

Maidhc Ó Cathail is a freelance writer living in Japan. He has written for Antiwar.com, Dissident Voice, The Palestine Chronicle, OpEd News, Media Monitors Network and many other publications.

More Maidhc Ó Cathail
Israel’s European Lobby

November 30, 2009 – Posted by Elias

By Ahmed Ayoub

Published: Saturday 24 October 2009 Updated: Saturday 24 October 2009

The Majalla – Why has the dispute between Sunnis and Shiites intensified recently?

- The origins of the differences between Sunnis and Shiites are not religious, but political. It is a dispute over secondary issues, not basic ones. I think that anyone who believes that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is his Messenger is definitely a Muslim. Therefore, we have been supporting, for a long time, through Al-Azhar, many calls for the reconciliation of Islamic schools of thought. Muslims should work on becoming united, and protecting themselves from denominational sectarian fragmentation. There are no Shiites and no Sunnah. We are all Muslims. Regretfully; the passions and prejudices that some resort to, are the reason behind the fragmentation of the Islamic nation.

Read more…

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