Another Zionist "mistake" in Jenin

A woman in Jenin tried to save the life of young man shot during an Israeli invasion last Monday (27 November 2006) and ended up paying with her own life. During a time when the world is being told that Israel is observing a 'cease-fire', Israeli forces shot Mahmoud Abdul Razik Baker Nasser in front of the home of Fatima Mahmoud Ahmed Shriem in the northern part of the West Bank. Fatima was then shot while attempting to pull the young man, Mahmoud, to safety. She later died, with the cause of death being loss of blood. Israeli forces kept the area under siege for several hours, with the result that nobody could leave their homes and ambulances could not reach victims.

During this latest siege of the Jenin area, a number of Israeli soldiers had broken into homes in order to using them as cover for snipers. Members of the armed resistance from Qabatia tried to fend off the invaders, but had little success. A leader of the Salah Ed Deen Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad, said that this is one of the tactics the Israelis have been re-employing as of late. "They hide inside a house and then open fire when no one knows they were there in the first place."

Fatima's husband, Mahmoud Hafez, said that his wife had heard the cries of the young man who lay injured at the gate of their home, adding that "she started screaming and rushed to save him. It was clear she was not a member of the armed resistance, so that cannot be the reason the Israelis use to explain this murder.”

The women of Qabatia Village, which lies just to the south of Jenin, sang for Fatima as they walked in her funeral procession. At the funeral, her husband had difficulty in holding back the tears, asking "Where is the 'calm', the 'cease-fire'... when they continue to kill in cold blood, leaving bodies to slowly bleed to death". His tears choked his words and he collapsed after saying, "The Israeli soldiers continued their shooting. They wouldn't stop."

Source: International Middle-East Media Center

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Poisonous Minds

The ongoing war of propaganda against Vladimir Putin being played out in the editorial offices and television studios of the western mainstream media plumbs new depths with every passing day. The barrage of differing explanations for the condition and subsequent death of Alexander Litvinenko - with the suspected cause changing almost on a daily basis - looks very much like a classic use of misdirection. First it was thalium, then radioactive thalium and now the story has, for the time being at least, settled on a radioactive isotope, Polonium 210. The only one consistent theme in an otherwise constantly morphing story is the presumed guilt of Vladimir Putin.

The official reason for the all the finger pointing directed at Putin is that Litvinenko, a well-known fierce critic of Putin, had apparently been investigating the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, another strident critic of Putin, who was gunned down at her Moscow apartment last month. In the absence of any substantive evidence - the circumstantial evidence that Litvinenko and Putin were far from the best of chums is far from substantive - the Russian president has been indicted, tried and found guilty by a media chorus. A large number of aspects of this case should give any thinking person cause for disquiet.

Public Spectacle
The “hit” was designed from the outset to be a public spectacle. If… and this is an if of monumental proportions… if Putin wanted Litvinenko dead for whatever reason, why on earth would those charged with carrying it out do it in such a sloppy and unprofessional manner? There are those who will argue that it was played out publicly as a warning to others, but this is a specious line of reasoning, not least because there is an assortment of methods for communicating such threats other than via the media in countries that are frequently hostile to Russia and Russian interests.

If he really did choose to publicly execute such a vocal critic, Putin would have to be masochistic beyond belief. As for the method, there are far more reliable methods of “getting the job done” than playing around with dangerous radioactive isotopes. Most if not all of the world’s secret services are well-versed in techniques designed to be indistinguishable from death by natural causes. So again, why choose such a novel and potentially unreliable method?

Attempts by the likes of the BBC to create a link between the Litvinenko case and a tiny number of poisonings carried out during the cold war serve only to add weight to the suspicion that this is a propaganda exercise aimed unfairly and squarely at Russia.

A rare isotope
Polonium, which apparent is the method of assassination du-jour, is considered a very rare element, and is present in uranium ores at around 100 micrograms for every metric ton, making it about 500 times less abundant than radium. It is so rare that it is estimated that only about 100 grams are produced per year. The polonium 210 isotope has a half-life of approximately 138 days, and emits enormous quantities of energy during its decay, sufficient energy to take the temperature of half a gram above 750 Kelvin, in other words, in excess of 470 Celsius. The energy is released in the form of alpha particles, which are hazardous to health only if ingested.

Experts in nuclear chemistry have suggested that large-scale processing equipment, such as a nuclear reactor, would be needed to produce amounts of Polonium 210 sufficient to result in death. According to Dr Andrea Sella, a lecturer in chemistry at University College London, "It is not as simple as the idea that somebody might have broken into a radioactivity cabinet at some local hospital and walked off with some polonium".

Assuming that a nuclear reactor was required to produce the substance, that reactor could just as easily be in Los Alamos or Dimona as it could be in Sarov.

A fierce critic, or a crank?
The charges made by Litvinenko against the Putin administration have frequently been lacking in hard evidence and on occasion have lapsed into bizarre fantasy. He co-authored a book “Blowing up Russia : Terror from Within” in which he accuses the Putin administration of actually responsible for the terrorist attacks on apartment blocks in various Russian cities, for which Chechen terrorists were officially blamed. However, having made the allegation, he failed miserably at producing even a prima-facia case to support his allegations. He also made the ludicrous claims that the FSB was behind the events of September 11th, 2001 and that senior Al-Qa'eda officials were actually agents of Russian intelligence. Litvinenko had a piece published by the now defunct Chechen Press in July of this year where he made the (unsubstantiated) claim that Putin was a paedophile.

Not a Russian Modus Operandi
According to Nigel West, a British intelligence expert, “neither the FSB nor the KGB has ever killed a defector on foreign soil and their predecessors, even under Stalin, did so only once in the case of Walter Krivitsky in Washington in 1941”. He stated that he would be “most surprised if the FSB had tried to kill Mr Litvinenko because it would fly in the face of 65 years of Soviet or Russian practice”.

The Israel connection
According to Israeli news media, Litvinenko had been passing documents to a former Yukos CEO in Israel in the months before his death. The suggestion by this former CEO that the information was harmful to the Russian administration is only to be expected and should be taken with a pinch of salt. After all, it was Putin who put an end to the reign of the kleptocrats, so it is not beyond belief that they would be committed in their attempts to besmirch his reputation.

You can tell a lot about a man from his choice of friends
Boris Abramovich Berezovsky. Need I say any more? Berezovsky is Russian Jewish billionaire who had served as Secretary of the Russian National Security Council, and who went into exile when it seemed he would be a victim of Putin's campaign against shady business practices. In an article entitled "Godfather of the Kremlin?" by Paul Klebnikov, published by Forbes magazine, Berezovsky was portrayed as a mafia don who thought nothing of having his rivals murdered. Although Berezovsky sued the magazine for libel and the magazine subsequently retracted both claims. Klebnikov made similar allegations in a book with the same title as the article. Berezovsky did not legally contest the claims made by Klebnikov in that book. Klebnikov went on to become the editor of the Russian edition of Forbes and was gunned-down in Moscow on the July 9th 2004.

Who benefits?
The web of intrigue weaved by the media on the death of Litvinenko reads like a thriller, albeit a third-rate bargain-basement offering written without the either the panache or knowledge of the likes of John Le Carré. Given the complete absence of substantive evidence, there is only one reliable way of getting close to what might be the truth behind images produced with smoke and mirrors – that is to ask “Cui Bono... Who benefits?” or to put it another way, "follow the money".

There is no shortage of potential candidates and Putin certainly is not one of them. The burgeoning Russophobe club has a diverse membership, ranging from assorted oligarchs and bankers - people who are almost universally reviled amongst ordinary Russians - who are very upset that their playthings have been taken from them and that Putin has put a stop to their perfidious theft. After that there are a host of multinational companies and their shareholders who have been denied unfettered access to Russian resources. Finally we come to the Chechens, and their assorted hangers-on in the west, many of who are hailing from the neo-con camp, such as the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya.

Russia has also proven to be an extremely tough nut to crack in energy supply negotiations and a persistent thorn in the side of the axis of hypocrisy, both in respect to their invasion of Iraq and to the putative invasion of Iran. Indeed, Putin has also had the audacity to enter into sizeable contracts to supply advanced weaponry to Iran.

There are plenty of individuals, organisations and governments who would prefer that Russia and her leadership tow the line. Those same individuals, organisations and governments want Putin to permit, if not actively encourage, the pillage of Russian resources by multi-national corporations. There is no shortage of parties who would stoop to such a low in order to punish a recalcitrant Putin.

Much like the poisoning of Yushchenko, the demise of Litvinenko will be continually discussed and disected in the media, with the narrative shifting as required, but the blame remaining locked on to the Kremlin. However, no serious effort will be made to find the perpetrators or solve the crime, as it is far easier to continue to use the affair as a foreign policy stick with which to beat Putin, demonise the FSB and force Russia to once again open its doors to wholesale larceny.

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Swedish human rights worker subject of vicious attacked by Jewish extremists in Hebron

This vicious and unprovoked attack was perpetrated against a young woman who was simply trying to protect children from harassment on their way home from school. Apparently this is the way the run up to Universal Children's Day is "celebrated" by the illegal occupants of Hebron. Their behaviour towards the children and the human rights workers shows them up for what they are - nothing more than barbaric and hate-filled thugs fuelled by the delusions of grandeur bestowed upon them by a supremacist and fundamentally racist ideology. The article reproduced below tells the story....

A 19-year old Swedish human rights worker had her face slashed and cheekbone broken by a Jewish extremist in Hebron today. Earlier in the same day at least five Palestinians, including a 3-year-old child, were injured by other Jewish extremists who rampaged through Tel Rumeida hurling stones and bottles at local residents. Palestinian schoolchildren on their way home were also attacked. The Israeli army, which was intensively deployed in the area, did not intervene or attempt to stop the attacks.

Tove Johansson, who comes from Stockholm, walked through the checkpoint at Tel Rumeida with a small group of human rights workers accompanying Palestinian schoolchildren to their homes. They were confronted by around a hundred Jewish extremists who are reported to have chanted in Hebrew “We killed Jesus, we’ll kill you too!” — a taunt the settlers are reported to have been directing at international workers in Tel Rumeida all day.

After about thirty seconds of waiting at the checkpoint, a small group of very aggressive male Jewish extremists surrounded the international volunteers and began spitting at them, so much so that the volunteers described it as “like rain.” Then men from the back of the crowd began jumping up and spitting, while others from the back and side of the crowd kicked at the volunteers. The soldiers, who were standing at the checkpoint just a few feet behind the volunteers merely looked on as they were being attacked.

One settler then hit Tove on the left side of her face with an empty bottle, breaking it on her face and leaving her with a broken cheekbone. She immediately fell to the ground and the group of extremists who were watching began to clap, cheer, and chant. The soldiers, who had only watched until this point, then came forward and motioned at the settlers, in a manner which the volunteers described as “ok… that’s enough guys.”

The extremists, however, were allowed to stay in the area and continued watching and clapping as other human rights workers attempted to stem the flow of blood from the young woman’s face. Some even tried to take photos of themselves next to her bleeding face, while giving the camera a “thumbs-up” sign. At this point, a volunteer was taken into a police van and asked to identify who had attacked the group. The volunteer did this, pointing out three Jewish extremists who the police then took into their police vehicles. However, the extremists were all driven to different neighbouring areas and released almost immediately. When one of the three was released on Shuhada Street, the crowd that was still celebrating the woman’s injuries applauded and cheered.

A medic who is also a settler came to the scene about 15 minutes after the attack and instead of treating the young woman immediately began interrogating the volunteers as to why they were in Hebron. He refused to help the bleeding woman lying on the street in any way. Five minutes after he arrived, an army medic arrived and began treating the injured woman. When she was later put on a stretcher, the crowd again clapped and cheered. The injured woman, Tove, was taken to Kiryat Arba settlement and then to Hadassah Ein Keren hospital in Jerusalem.

Police officers at the scene then began threatening to arrest the remaining human rights workers if they did not immediately leave the area, despite the fact that they had done nothing illegal and had just been attacked.

The volunteers were later told by the police that they had not even taken the names of those who were identified as having carried out the attack and that one of the main assailants had simply told the police that he was due at the airport in two hours to fly back to France.

The incident was the latest attack by extremist Jews in Hebron. The small group of Khannist settlers in Tel Rumeida regularly attack and harass Palestinians in the area. The violence is also directed at international human rights workers who accompany Palestinians in an attempt to protect them from settler attack.

The settlers in Tel Rumeida encourage Jewish tourists to come to support them, as a way of making up for their small numbers. Today, hundreds had come from tours in Israel for a special event — many from overseas: France, England and the United States.

Edited from original article: ISM Hebron

By reproducing an edited version of the article originally posted on the International Solidarity Movement website it is not my intention to suggest that this sort of behaviour is representative of all Jewish people, nor that it is supported by all Jewish people, as this clearly is not the case. However, this is a significant part of what is Israel is and has become, and is a harsh daily reality for the Palestinian victims. The irrational hate manifested by these extremists can not be ignored or justified and needs to be both aired and addressed

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Ex-KGB officer poisoned in UK

According to reports from the BBC and The Telegraph, UK police are investigating the alleged poisoning of a former KGB agent and critic of President Vladimir Putin who has been living in exile in Britain.

Litvinenko, who has a Ukrainian surname, despite being referred to as "Russian" by both the BBC and The Telegraph, has written several articles and contributed to books critical of Putin. His writings generally attempt to demonstrate that the most fundamental problems in modern Russia do not result from the smash-and-grab free-for-all of the so-called "liberal radical reforms" of the Yeltsin era, but instead from covert resistance to these reforms from within the Russian special services. He also espouses some very far-fetched beliefs - such as this article where he makes an outlandish and bizarre comparison between Putin and Hitler.

He also claimed that the right hand of Bin Laden, the Number Two in "Al-Qaeda" was trained at the secret base of the Russian secret services on Caucasus. Given that Al-Qaeda is nothing more than a collection of conveniently placed mirrors accompanied by the requisite amount of smoke, nothing more than a figment of fevered imaginations, and that no proof has been produced that the organisation actually exists, this claim is patently ludicrous.

According to newsru.com, Litvinenko was invited to a London restaurant by an Italian citizen, Mario Scaramella, who claimed he had some important information about a recent murder of Anna Politkovskaya. It is at this meeting where Mr Litvinenko was supposedly poisoned with Thalium, an extremely toxic heavy metal.

The Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets claims that Mario Scaramella is a CIA agent, whereas the ChechenPress claim that Mr. Scaramella is an FSB agent in Italy and a close friend and business partner of the FSB deputy chief Kolmogorov. They also claim that the Italian visited the FSB headquarters in Moscow several times.

It is possible that either of these claims are true, that Scaramella is an agent for the FSB or CIA. It is also possible that both claims are false - that Scaramella has nothing to do with either agency or the poisoning. It is even possible that both claims are simultaneously true, as double agents have not been exactly uncommon throughout history.

Given the accusations, counter-accusations and rhetoric on both sides, it can be difficult to discover what really happened. As always with such events, the first question I ask is "cui bono?". Who benefits?

Does it really benefit Putin that much to be rid of someone whose claims were so clearly subjective and often off-the-wall? Or does it benefit those who want to weaken the resurgent power that is Russia, in order to continue their previously-interrupted looting of Russian resources, unhampered by a strong Russian leadership? Does such an attempted murder benefit Russia and the Russian leadership, or would it be more beneficial, in a propaganda sense, to the country that is busy building bases in almost every state bordering Russia?

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9/11 : The questions that remained unanswered - insider trading

The spate of put option purchases in the run-up to 9/11 was a clear indication of foreknowledge.

As this article by Don Radlauer explains, in cases where transactions deviate so wildly from normal trading levels, the timing of the transactions are just a little too convenient and the nature of the transactions are too specific, there very high possibility that insider trading is taking place. In the run up to 9/11, all of these factors were in play, indicating not only that insider trading had taken place, but that certain individuals had sufficient foreknowledge of events on that day to be able to play the insider trading game.

The unprecedented surge in put options and call options on certain key stocks in the days leading up to 9/11 remains unexplained. These suspicious changes to trading patterns include:

an enormous increase in trading of put options on stocks of United Airlines and American Airlines, the two airlines whose aircraft were allegedly involved in the attack.

increased trading of put options on stocks of Merrill Lynch & Co., Morgan Stanley and the Bank of America, three financial services companies whose operations were severely impacted by the attack.

increased demand for put options on stocks of Munich Re and the AXA Group, two reinsurance companies who would be expected to pay out billions of dollars to cover losses resulting from the attack.

a considerable increase in trading of call options of Raytheon stock, Raytheon being a weapons manufacturer that could be expected to gain considerably from the attack.

a higher than normal demand for 5-Year US Treasury Notes

Of these suspicious trading patterns, the flood of put options on the airlines stuck out like a sore thumb. Bloomberg reported that put options on the two airlines surged to an incredible high of 285 times their average levels, but noted that no similar trading occurred on any other airlines. CBS News reported a jump in American Airlines put options 60 times the normal level on the day before the attacks. As a result of the attack, the price of United Airlines stock fell 42 percent from $30.82 to $17.50 per share, and that of American Airlines fell 39 percent, from $29.70 to $18.00 per share - so these 'put option' folk walked away with a bundle of cash.

Given foreknowledge of the attack, a number of reinsurance companies could be expected to suffer huge consequential losses. The world's two largest reinsurance companies, Munich Re and Swiss Re, along with the AXA Group of France, were the worst hit in terms of liabilities and also in terms of trading anomolies. Liabilities for Munich Re were believed to be in the order of $1.5 billion, as were those for their Swiss counterparts. The French AXA Group had estimated liabilities of just over a half a billion dollars. Trading levels on these reinsurance companies was double normal levels in the days leading up to the attack.

Just like the reinsurance companies, financial services companies who were headquartered in the two towers or in the vicinity were the subject of apparent insider trading. Trading of put options on Merrill Lynch, who had offices close to the twin towers, was 48.5 times higher than normal in the four days before 9/11. Trading in put options on Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, who occupied 22 floors of the North Tower, had reached almost 80 times normal levels in the days preceeding the attack.

Of course, not all companies would be expected to lose stock value as a result of the attack. Businesses involved in the military industrial complex could be pretty much guaranteed to gain stock value. Indeed, the stock value of Raytheon, the maker of Patriot and Tomahawk missiles, soared immediately after the attack. Again indicating that certain individuals had foreknowledge of this attack, call options on Raytheon stock increased to six times normal levels on the day prior to the attack.

If you are a well-trained sheeple, then you can probably console yourself by thinking that it was the dreaded Bin Laden and his dodgy cohorts who not only planned and executed the whole thing, but played the stock markets so they could benefit financially from it as well. You might be tempted to believe that fairy tale for the sake of simplicity and to avoid thinking about the possibility that the world is a very different place than you have been lead to believe. However, if it were truly the case that the alleged perpetrators of 9/11 were also those who profited financially from it, the evidence would have been plastered over every newspaper and tv screen.

Instead, despite years of SEC investigations, neither the exact amounts involved in this unprecedented insider-trading swindle nor the names of the individuals involved have been made public. Where they would normally be expected to carry out an open and transparent public investigation, the SEC moved to deputise employees of companies involved in or related to securities trading into its investigation, effectively muzzling them and making it impossible for them to make public any concerns or knowledge they may have. The net result is that this investigation has produced nothing substantial in the way of amounts and names, let alone indictments.

Over five years have passed by and the questions about the financial irregularities around 9/11, amongst many others pertaining to that even, remain unanswered. The official line that the put option frenzy was as a result of "market pessimism" rings very hollow indeed. Such levels of put option trading suggest a market that is not only pessimistic but borderline suicidal. On the contrary, the frenzy was clearly a result of insider trading. It bears all the hallmarks. However, this is no ordinary insider trading, it suggests foreknowledge of a murderous act, and should be investigated accordingly. If it is not being investigated as a matter of utmost urgency, then don't you owe it to yourself to ask "Why not?....."?

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Here's your Patriot Act, here's your f&!$ing abuse of power

This video was taken on a camera phone by a student of UCLA. It shows a violent and unprovoked assault on another student by the campus police whose "crime" was simply to fail to show ID when requested.



The student, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, 23, was punished by being tazed several times, as police did a routine check of student IDs at Angeles Powell Library computer lab around 11pm.

UCLA Police Department spokeswoman Nancy Greenstein stated that this check was a "long-standing library policy to ensure the safety of students during the late-night hours". She went on to say that police tried to escort Tabatabainejad out of the library after he refused to provide identification and claims that Tabatabainejad instead encouraged others at the library to join his resistance. When a crowd began to gather around them, police used the stun gun on him. On the video Tabatabainejad can be heard to "Here's your Patriot Act, here's your f&!$ing abuse of power" as he struggled with the officers. At this stage a crowd of 50 or 60 students had gathered and were shouting at the officers to stop and demanding their names and badge numbers.

UCLA graduate David Remesnitsky of Los Angeles, who witnessed the incident, described it as "beyond grotesque". Remesnitsky added that "By the end they took him over the stairs, lifted him up and tazered him on his rear end. It seemed like it was inappropriately placed. The tasering was so unnecessary and they just kept doing it". The campus police, have, in turn, confirmed that Tabatabainejad was stunned multiple times. As one of the crowd who had gathered, Remesnitsky said that officers told him to leave or he too would be tazered.

Tabatabainejad, who is a fourth-year Middle Eastern and North African studies and philosophy student, believes that he was the only one present who was asked to show ID and that this was clearly an incident of racial profiling.

Even if the UCLA campus police had used the taser once at this incident, it would have been inappropriate given the level of threat they faced. Their continued use of the tazer is an abhorrent and disgusting abuse of their power. If the suggestion that they used the taser on the student after he was handcuffed turns out to be true, then it constitutes aggravated assault.

An article in the Lancet Medical Journal in 2001 reported that a charge from a taser of three to five seconds can result in immobilisation for between five and fifteen minutes, yet the clueless power-crazed neanderthals repeatedly shout at the student to "stand up" after administering their own form of summary justice. What is notable is not only the excessive force used, but that Tabatabainejad was on his way out of the library when approached by the goons. Also noteworthy is that a another student, a bystander, was threatened with the tazer for simply demanding the badge number of the officer - a request which is well within his rights.

This is the third incident in as many weeks where police in the LA area are suspected of serious abuse of power, the first resulting from a video showing a police officer repeatedly hitting a suspect in the face while pinning him to the ground with his knee on the neck. A subsequent video showed a Los Angeles Police Department officer directing pepper spray into the face of a handcuffed suspect as he sat in the back of a patrol car.

If these UCPD rent-a-sadist cops are found to be guilty of an abuse of power, then they should be subject to summary dismissal without benefits. Perhaps a spell on food stamps will teach those who have been handed power that they abuse it at their peril. Mostafa Tabatabainejad will be filing a lawsuit against the UCPD, and I sincerely hope that they are forced to pay dearly for this felony.

It used to be said that only those who break the law should fear the police. Now it is clear that even law-abiding citizens also have reason to fear. This should never be allowed to be the case - the police, after all, are public servants who paypackets are furnished from the pockets of taxpayers. When the role of the police clearly shifts from being to "protect and serve" to one where they routinely "attack and abuse", then this should be a matter of extreme concern to everyone.

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Bill Maher - telling it like it really is

In this video of a recent show, Bill Maher gives his opinion on who it is that is the real threat to American kids. It is not for the easily offended or members of the so-called "moral majority", so don't click play if you belong to either of these groups.

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Barbarism in Bil'in

This is what happened at just one of the weekly non-violent demonstrations against the illegal theft of land at Bil'in.



This list of the casualties comes from the International Solidarity Movement site...

• Lymor Goldstein, an Israeli lawyer, shot with 3 rubber bullets at close range, with injuries to head and neck. He is currently undergoing surgery.
• Two villagers, El Haj Wa’el Fahene and Nimer Mustafa Abu Rahma were both shot with rubber bullets to their backs and legs.
• Gavin from UK, beaten
• Martin from Sweden, beaten
• Rina from Denmark, hit with a rifle butt on side of head
• Jonathon from Israel, shot with rubber bullet
• Uri a 20 year old from Israel, struck by rubber bullet
• Rojo Didier from France (43 years old), shot with rubber bullet in back and leg
• Jonas from USA, struck with rubber bullets on hip and leg
• Cheryl aged 45 from USA, struck with rubber bullet to the back
• Margaret from UK, struck by exploding sound grenade
• Yoshki, a 22 year old journalist from Japan, shot by rubber bullet
• Abudullah Abu Rahma, beaten

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US blocks UN resolution condemning the accident prone state of Israel

An attempt to officially condemn Israel for the recent massacres in Gaza has been vetoed by the United States, making it the second time this year that the United States, through its ambassador John Bolton, has used the veto to prevent the official censure of Israel for its military activity in Gaza. Ten of the fifteen members of the UN Security Council voted in favour of the resolution, with four abstentions - UK, Denmark, Japan and Slovakia.

The resolution sought to bring Israel to book for its operation in Beit Hanoun last month, an operation that Israel claims was effort to root out militants who had been firing rockets in Israel. Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of Israel apologised for the attack, describing it as a "technical failure".

John Bolton, who is looking increasingly unlikely to continue in the post, described the resolution as unbalanced and politically motivated. In response, the Qatari ambassador said the credibility of the Security Council had been called into question by the vote and that the cycle of violence in the Middle East would continue.

The Olmert apology for this travesty offends the intellect. How can anyone believe this massacre was accidental? It was accidental in the same way that the massacre at Jenin was accidental. It was no more accidental than the deliberate bombing of buildings in Beirut when IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz ordered the air force to destroy 10 multi-storey buildings in the Dahaya district (of Beirut) in response to every rocket fired on Haifa. It is no more a mistake than the siege of Jabalya late in 2004. It is not a mistake. This is not a "technical failure". It is merely the latest round in the slow-motion genocide that Israel has been perpetrating for decades, literally since the state of Israel was founded, since the time the myth about the land being "reclaimed from sand and swamp" was first propagated.

The Israeli reaction to condemnation of their accident-prone terrorist state is always the same. Never accept responsibility. Always blame someone else. Always play the anti-semitism card at the slightest hint of criticism. Year after barbarous year, decade after murderous decade, the armed forces of this homicidal, truculent and racist state continue to massacre with impunity.

The reaction of key elements in the so-called "international community" is equally unchanging - whether it is the outright refusal of the United States to condemn any Israeli attrocity, or the moral cowardice of the inevitable clutch of abstainers.

The failure of the Security Council to act in the face of deliberate and systematic genocide does indeed call into question the credibility of the Security Council, as Nassir Al-Nasser, the Qatari envoy has already suggested.

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We are NOT afraid

If Dame Mannigham-Buller is to believed, Britain is literally awash with Muslim terrorist cells. During a recent address, she made the claim that MI5 and the police were tackling 200 groups or networks totalling more than 1,600 identified individuals in the UK who were ‘actively engaged in plotting or facilitating terrorist acts’.

Those who are not already in a fear-induced stupor should ask themselves what the purpose of this announcement might be. What possible benefit could be derived from making this intelligence known? As a general rule, you don't go showing your cards to the opposing players, so why has Dame Manningham-Buller done so, and so readily? During her address to the Department of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary College in London, she claimed that she "was not seeking to be alarmist, and did not wish to stir up fear". However, the nature of the revelations and the follow-up from P.M. Anthony Blair suggests that they have precisely the objective of inducing fear and paving the way for yet more repressive legislation - moving Britain further towards becoming a de-facto totalitarian state.

I don't doubt that there are radicalised Muslims, both in Britain and elsewhere. I don't doubt that some of them might harbour ideas of using violence to further their aims or as a means of achieving redress for injustices, perceived or otherwise. However, the claimed scale of this so-called "terror network" simply does not add up. Those who were living in Britain during the 1980's will recall the death, destruction and havoc that was brought about by the IRA bombing campaign. I can remember reports at that time indicating that the number of active members of the IRA in Britain (as opposed to Northern Ireland) was in the tens, and most certainly not in the hundreds or thousands. So how come this "terror network" that is so taxing the resources of MI5 is so ineffective? If there are 1,600 or so identified individuals "actively engaged in plotting or facilitating terrorist acts" then why have they not been arrested, charged and tried?

Outside of the fantasy, make-belief world of Tony Blair and his sidekicks, there is far less in the way of day-to-day terrorist activity in Britain now than there was in the 1980's - yet the British public is subject to the relentless mantra that Britain is in fact a far more dangerous place now than it was then.

The as-yet unabated push to introduce ID cards to Britain is one of the objectives that will be well served by the disclosure of this "intelligence". A report by Mark Oliver in the Guardian around mid-October quotes Home Secretary John Reid as saying that...

a litmus test would be how the opposition parties decide to vote on forthcoming ID card legislation which would be crucial in fighting terrorism

Later in the same article, the reporter Mark Oliver goes on to point out that...

Critics of ID cards say they do not stop terrorism and point to attacks such as the train bombings in Madrid, where ID cards already exist

It is certainly true that there is more evidence to suggest that ID cards do nothing to prevent terrorism than there is evidence to the contrary. After all, all ID cards can be faked, given enough time - and that goes for the all-singing, all dancing, all spying wonder-ID proposed by the Blair government.

Speaking of Tony Blair, it is notable that in his response to the comments made by Dame Manningham-Buller he stated that the threat of radical islamic terrorism would "be with us for a generation", the prime minister said today Britain faced a "long and deep struggle" to combat the danger posed by terrorism. How on earth does he know that this threat will be "with us" for a generation, unless his posse have planned it that way?

This latest revelation is just another in a long line of fear-mongering brought to you by the same people who gave you the "Tanks At Heathrow" farce, the utterly absurd liquid bomb plots and a host of other fantastical stories all with the same purpose - to instill fear. Judging by the ceaseless and unrelenting nature of this campaign, it won't be long before internment without trial is extended, trial by jury is abolished and ID cards are foisted on the British public whether they like it or not. By then, of course, it will be too late, but at least the general public will know, in retrospect, who it was that posed the real threat to democracy and freedom - and I'll bet anything it won't be a handful of muslim terrorists.

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The deckchairs have been rearranged.

While on the surface, a Democrat win of the control of both Houses of Congress may seem like a cause for some celebration, it is already clear that for anyone who cares about repairing the tattered remains of hard-won civil rights there is nothing to celebrate. Nothing. Whatsoever. For those who believe that quagmire of bloodshed and suffering that is Iraq is more than a mere "project" that is being badly managed, there is no reason to whoop it up.

Howard Dean, Democratic National Committee Chairman, during an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart made it clear that he will not entertain calls for impeachment of G.W. Bush when he said...

"I know half the audience wants us to impeach the President and all that kind of stuff but we're not gonna do that, we're not gonna do that."

Of course, Mr Dean is simply following the lead first established by Nancy Pelosi, Speaker elect of the United States House of Representatives, when she clearly stated during an interview with "60 Minutes" (see video below) that...

"Impeachment is off the table"

and went on to say that...

"that's a pledge"

As of this moment, it seems that the Democrat effort over the next two years will be primarily concentrated on helping the President push through a mass amnesty for illegal immigrants (a move that his own party do not wholeheartedly support) and also on tinkering around with the minimum wage. Unless matters change very radically, they pose about as much threat to the neocon project as domestic cat would pose to a tiger. In other words, it will be business as usual.

There are those who seem to think that the Democrat victory is living proof that the American democracy still works. One highly respected liberal blogger, attorney Glenn Greenwald, provided a prime example of the state of denial brought on by the euphoria of a Democrat victory, when in a recent post he claims that...

"The basic mechanics of American democracy, imperfect and defective though they may be, still function."

Mr. Greenwald then goes on to berate those who are alert to the ways in which their society is being destroyed from within and who do not just shrug their shoulders when their liberties are snatched away from them...

"Chronic defeatists and conspiracy theorists — well-intentioned though they may be — need to re-evaluate their defeatism and conspiracy theories in light of this rather compelling evidence which undermines them."

Try as I might, I see no compelling evidence. The evidence, such as it is, is at best flimsy and at worst utterly specious. Glenn, I sincerely hope that you present evidence far more compelling when you are working on behalf of your clients in court, as the evidence you claim here is compelling would not pass muster in front of any half-awake judge and would be torn to shreds in moments by opposing counsel. Using emotive but trite name-calling does not lend any weight to your insubstantial argument.

The rest of the "evidence" presented by Mr Greenwald is equally fallacious....

"Karl Rove isn't all-powerful; he is a rejected loser."

True. Karl Rove is not all-powerful. However, he is just one cog in a mammoth machine.

"Republicans don't possess the power to dictate the outcome of elections with secret Diebold software."

How do you know they don't? Are you not using the absence of evidence in this one election as evidence of absence? I can say for certain that you are both getting the point and simultaneously missing it when you say "secret". The point is that the electronic voting software is secret. The source code of the software is not open to review.

In theory, anything could be going on inside these machines and you would never know. Yet you appear to be stating that you know for certain that these machines, whether made by Diebold or not, are not used to rig elections. Why? Because the Democrats won this election? Is that what passes for evidence in your neck of the woods? Perhaps you also think that the computer programmer shown giving evidence in the video below was committing perjury?

Many have voiced concerns that voter intimidation and electoral fraud reached an all-time high in this election. Is this really the triumph of democracy you so loudly trumpet?



Then Mr Greenwald goes on piling one spurious argument on top of another...

"they can't magically produce osama bin laden day before the election"

They already did. Have you forgotten the October surprise where the Osama Bin Laden appeared on a video taking responsibility for the September 11 attacks? Have you forgotten the timing of the release of that tape, and the impact it would have had on the re-election chances of George W. Bush? They simply didn't try the same stunt twice.

They don't have the power to snap their fingers and hypnotize zombified Americans by exploiting a New Jersey court ruling on civil unions, or a John Kerry comment, or moronic buzzphrases and slogans designed to hide the truth

Just because the grip of the neocons and their financial backers has not yet totally asphyxiated the wheezing remnant of the American Republic does not mean that it is not vice-like and unrelenting.

It simply isn't the case that we are doomed and destined to lose at the hands of all-powerful, evil forces.

You are right that America is not necessarily so doomed or destined. However, as the Democrats have made it abundantly clear that they will not be rocking the boat then any expectation of positive change is misguided. Given that the Democrats will not be challenging the prevailing neocon orthodoxy or the might of their financial backers, then the whole election aftermath will take on a distinct hue of "steady as she goes". Given that the Democrats are unlikely to change their stance on the unprovoked and unrelenting aggression against a defenseless and broken country that is the Iraq war, then the puppeteers behind the Bush administration can rest easy. As long as the Democrats continue to provide tacit support for the idea of American and British hegemony, then democracy the world-over remains under serious threat.

The sorry reality behind the smokescreen of the Democrat victory is that it will provide little in the way of substantive change where change is badly needed. The deckchairs have been rearranged, but the ailing ship is still ploughing headlong into more turbulent waters - instead of being brought back to a safe harbour as it should be.

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Olbermann - Bush is just making it up as he goes along

The ever eloquent Keith Olbermann delivered yet another well-argued and highly damning criticism of the Bush administration in a pre-election "Special Comment". Click on play button in the video below to watch. For a full transcript, click on the "Continue reading" link below.

TRANSCRIPT

And finally tonight, a special comment about tomorrow's elections.

We are, as every generation, inseparable from our own time. Thus is our perspective inevitably that of the explorer looking into the wrong end of the telescope.

But even accounting for our myopia, it's hard to imagine there have been many elections more important than this one. Certainly not in non-presidential years.

And so we look at the verdict in the trial of Saddam Hussein yesterday and with the very phrase "October, or November, Surprise" now a part of our vernacular, and the chest-thumping coming from so many of the Republican campaigners today, each of us must wonder about the convenience of the timing of his conviction and sentencing.

But let us give history and coincidence the benefit of the doubt — let's say it's just happened that way and for a moment not look into the wrong end of the telescope.

Let's perceive instead the bigger picture.

Saddam Hussein, found guilty in an Iraqi court.

Who can argue against that?

He is officially, what the world always knew he was - a war criminal.

Mr. Bush, was this imprimatur, worth the cost of 2,832 American lives, and thousands more American lives yet to be lost?

Is the conviction of Saddam Hussein the reason you went to war in Iraq?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because of the weapons of mass destruction that did not exist?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because of the connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda that did not exist?

Or did you go to war in Iraq to break the bonds of tyranny there, while installing the mechanisms of tyranny here?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because you felt the need to wreak vengeance against somebody... anybody?

Or did you go to war in Iraq to contain a rogue state which, months earlier, your own administration had declared had been fully contained by sanctions?

Or did you go to war in Iraq to keep gas prices down?

How startling it was, sir, to hear you introduce oil to your own stump speeches over the weekend.

Not four years removed from the most dismissive, the most condescending, the most ridiculing denials of the very hint at, as Mr. Rumsfeld put it, this "nonsense", there you were, campaigning in Colorado, in Nebraska, in Florida, in Kansas - suddenly turning this unpatriotic idea… into a platform plank.

You can imagine a world, you said, in which these extremists and radicals got control of energy resources. And then you can imagine them saying, "We're going to pull a bunch of oil off the market to run your price of oil up unless you do the following..."

Having frightened us, having bullied us, having lied to us, having ignored and re-written the constitution under our noses, having stayed the course, having denied you've stayed the course, having belittled us about "timelines" but instead extolled "benchmarks", you've now resorted, sir, to this? We must stay in Iraq to save the two-dollar gallon of gas?

Mr. President, there is no other conclusion we can draw as we go to the polls tomorrow.

Sir - you have been making this up as you went along.

This country was founded to prevent anybody from making it up as they went along.

Those vaunted founding fathers of ours have been so quoted-up, that they appear as marble statues, like the chiseled guards of China, or the faces on Mount Rushmore, but in fact they were practical people and the thing they obviously feared most, was a government of men and not laws. They provided the checks and balances for a reason.

No one man could run the government the way he saw fit, unless he, at the least, took into consideration what those he governed saw.

A House of Representatives would be the people's eyes. A senate would be the corrective force on that House. An executive would do the work, and hold the constitution to his chest like his child. And a Supreme Court would oversee it all.

Checks and balances.

Where did all that go, Mr. Bush? And what price did we pay because we have let it go?

Saddam Hussein will get out of Iraq the same way 2,832 Americans have, and thousands more. He'll get out faster than we will.

And if nothing changes tomorrow, you, sir, will be out of the White House long before the rest of us can say we are out of Iraq.

And whose fault is this?

Not truly yours. You took advantage of those of us who were afraid, and those of us who believed unity and nation took precedence over all else. But we let you take that advantage.

And so we let you go to war in Iraq. To oust Saddam, or find non-existent weapons. or avenge 9/11, or fight terrorists who only got there after we did, or as cover to change the fabric of our constitution, or for lower prices at the Texaco. Or… ?

There are still a few hours left, before the polls open, sir, there are many rationalisations still untried.

And whatever your motives of the moment, we the people have, in true good faith and with the genuine patriotism of self-sacrifice, of which you have shown you know nothing, we have let you go on…
Making it up, as you went along.

Un-checked, and un-balanced.

Vote.

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The Dupes of Haggard

The megachurch pastor who was the also titular leader of the U.S. evangelical lobby has finally admitted that he is guilty of "sexual immorality". Haggard, a man with an apparent hotline to God and a weekly conference call with someone who thinks he is God, is deeply anti-intellectual, a notorious homophobe and a highly vocal opponent of gay marriage.



Haggard became a born-again Christian in 1972, and then went on to study at the aptly named Oral Roberts University, a charismatic Christian university in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He took up the position of associate pastor of a megachurch in Louisiana in 1984 and moved to Colorado to establish the New Life Church shortly afterwards. This church grew from a small group meeting in his house to the huge congregation and enormous campus it currently occupies.

The scandal came to public attention last week, after a claim made by masseur Mike Jones on a Colorado radio station that he had been paid to have sex with Mr Haggard almost every month over the past three years. Ted Haggard has denied the claims made by Mr Jones but said he did receive a massage from him. He also admitted to buying methamphetamine but claims that he "never used it".

He was fired by the church on Saturday 4th of November, having stepped down as the head of the National Association of Evangelicals the previous Thursday.

For anyone interested, Harpers have a very interesting article with lots of background info on the church, its former pastor and their somewhat bizarre beliefs.

On the issue of gay marriage, I guess I am what most fundie Christians would describe as 'luke warm'. In reality, I think there are far more urgent and important issues to occupy my thoughts and my time than the relatively trivial question of whether two people of the same sex should be able to have a piece of paper that declares them to be in a legally recognised civil union.

One of the issues that I feel does warrant concern is the enormous undue influence the fundamentalist evangelical lobby has on the United States government and in particular the foreign policy of the administration. I am also concerned about the unquestioning support that lobby has for the state of Israel and the utter contempt it displays for those who happen to find themselves in Israel's firing line.

Quite a few members of that same lobby decry anyone who shows any concern for the environment or the future of the planet as being an 'earth worshipper' and believe that the dominion over the earth that was given them by the great real-estate agent in the sky is a right to plunder, consume and destroy the finite resources of the planet.

I am convinced that the sort of duplicitousness and hypocrisy displayed by Ted Haggard is but the tip of the iceberg and that many more such skeletons are hiding out in the closets of various high-profile fundamentalist leaders. The sooner the rest of them are outed, the better for all of us.

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Obsession: FOX News and the war for votes

Newshounds, whose tagline is "We watch FOX so you don't have to" have revealed that Faux News has rearranged its weekend line-up in order to be able to air a terror film "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West", presumably to scare the wits of out floating voters and send them to the polls - voting for the ruling junta- the GOP.

Faux News, in announcing that it will air the film, claims that it is a "frightening new documentary by filmmaker Wayne Kopping" and that "what he found, is something FOX News believes every American should know."



The documentary, far from being new, is actually a year old, and will be aired four times over the weekend in what consitutes unabashed electioneering.

Ignoring the fact that a significant proportion of the American public do not believe the official line on the events of 9/11 and that the supposed facts of what happened that day simply fail to add up, an article at the the Faux News site tries to stir up the fear factor using the tried and not so trusted line on 9/11...

"We often hear that 9/11 was a wake-up call for Americans. But have Americans really woken up to the truth of how much radical Islamists want us dead, and the lengths to which they are willing to go to fulfill their mission?"

Back in the real world, outside of the Faux News world of manufactured fear and support for state-sponsored terrorism, this piece would have to be reworded to read...

"We often hear that 9/11 was a wake-up call for Americans. But have Americans really woken up to the truth of how much the neoconservative administration have used 9/11 to turn America into a dictatorship in all but name, and the lengths to which they are willing to go to fulfill their mission?"

This so-called documentary will, of course, work its magic on less news-savvy and may well scare the living daylights out of them. What it won't do, of course, is deliver the true picture.

It won't discuss the relatively powerless nature of radical Islam when compared against the hostile and aggressive policies of the United States, Israel and the United Kingdom. It won't touch on the debate surrounding the inconsistencies of the 9/11 story, and the distinct possibility that the perpetrators are not those who have shouldered the blame so far. It will steer clear of any discussion on the idea that radical behaviour, where it exists, is an merely an effect for which the cause must be identified and dealt with. In other words, it will paint a simplistic and partisan view of affairs with the sole purpose of rallying support for the current administration and its ongoing "war on terra".

Whether or not the target audience for this electioneering blitz possesses the required attention span to sit out a documentary of this length remains to be seen - but the intention of Faux News is crystal clear - bolster the GOP vote by manufacturing fear and in doing so, manufacturing votes.

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Remembering Deir Yassin

In the early morning of April 9th 1948, commandos from the Irgun, headed by Menachem Begin and members of the Stern Gang attacked the village of Deir Yassin and its 750 Palestinian residents, even though the village was located outside the area assigned by the United Nations to the new state of Israel.



Deir Yassin, known to be a peaceful and trouble-free village, had one strategic advantage that was to be its downfall. It was built on high ground on a corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and as such was earmarked for occupation under Plan Dalet.

The Haganah, the main Israeli defense force had given authorisation to the irregular terrorist forces of the Irgun to perform the takeover, working side-by-side with a rag tag bunch of terrorists known as the Stern Gang. Over 100 men, women, and children were murdered and fifty-three children were left orphaned, literally dumped along the wall of the old city.

This unprovoked massacre, and others carried out since in the name of Zionism, should never be forgotten. The organisation Deir Yassin Remembered was set up to ensure the memory of those who perished is kept alive and their suffering not forgotten.

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Welcome to school - fascist style

Associated Press reported that armed riot police recently carried out a raid on Michigan junior and high schools as part of an exercise. Of course the children were not made aware of what was about to take place and even teachers were given just a few minutes notice.

Marge Bradshaw, a parent with four children attending Godfrey-Lee Schools said "Some of these kids were so scared, they just about wet their pants. I think it's pure wrong that the students and parents were not informed of this".

Judging by the YouTube video below, a similar incident took place in Goose Creek, South Carolina some years ago, where armed police raided a high school with their weapons drawn - ostensibly in search of drugs. I have to say that the time stated on the video is a little suspect, as nobody in their right mind is at school at 6:45am. Judge for yourself.



I really fail to see any purpose in terrorising children in this way, other than to condition them to accept such brutal intrusions into their lives as routine and unavoidable. It really does not matter what rationale you might come up with... a society that has to resort to such tactics in the education of their children let alone accept them as routine on the streets of our cities, is a society that has failed in a fundamental way. It is not, no matter what way you spin it, a hallmark of a successful, thriving and free society.

If you are voting in the elections on November 7th, will you be voting for someone who will only give you more of the same, or even worse? Or will you be voting for someone who will commit to reversing the decimation of your civil liberties and turning back from the headlong march towards total fascism?

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