Thursday 29 July 2004

The real reasons Bush went to war

WMD was the rationale for invading Iraq. But what was really driving the US were fears over oil and the future of the dollar

Uncle Sam wants YOU to die for big business There were only two credible reasons for invading Iraq: control over oil and preservation of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Yet the government has kept silent on these factors, instead treating us to the intriguing distractions of the Hutton and Butler reports.

Butler's overall finding of a "group think" failure was pure charity. Absurdities like the 45-minute claim were adopted by high-level officials and ministers because those concerned recognised the substantial reason for war - oil. WMD provided only the bureaucratic argument: the real reason was that Iraq was swimming in oil.

Some may still believe the eve-of-war contention by Donald Rumsfeld that "We won't take forces and go around the world and try to take other people's oil ... That's not how democracies operate." Maybe others will go along with Blair's post-war contention: "There is no way whatsoever, if oil were the issue, that it would not have been infinitely easier to cut a deal with Saddam."

But senior civil servants are not so naive. On the eve of the Butler report, I attended the 40th anniversary of the Mandarins cricket club. I was taken aside by a knighted civil servant to discuss my contention in a Guardian article earlier this year that Sir Humphrey was no longer independent. I had then attacked the deceits in the WMD report, and this impressive official and I discussed the geopolitical issues of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and US unwillingness to build nuclear power stations and curb petrol consumption, rather than go to war.

Saddam controlled a country at the centre of the Gulf, a region with a quarter of world oil production in 2003, and containing more than 60% of the world's known reserves. With 115bn barrels of oil reserves, and perhaps as much again in the 90% of the country not yet explored, Iraq has capacity second only to Saudi Arabia. The US, in contrast, is the world's largest net importer of oil. Last year the US Department of Energy forecast that imports will cover 70% of domestic demand by 2025.

By invading Iraq, Bush has taken over the Iraqi oil fields, and persuaded the UN to lift production limits imposed after the Kuwait war. Production may rise to 3m barrels a day by year end, about double 2002 levels. More oil should bring down Opec-led prices, and if Iraqi oil production rose to 6m barrels a day, Bush could even attack the Opec oil-pricing cartel.

Full story...

Tuesday 27 July 2004

Iran: The Next Big Lie

by Eric Margolis

Did Iran help al-Qaida to stage the Sept 11 attacks on the United States? Perhaps, suggested the US 9/11 commission which claimed Iran allowed 8 al-Qaida future airplane hijackers to pass through Iran from Afghanistan between 7 and 11 months before the attacks on America.

Unnamed senior Bush Administration officials also claim Iran proposed collaborating with al-Qaida in 2000, but was rejected by Osama bin Laden. `Maybe we attacked the wrong country,’ one of the dimmer lights in Congress ruefully observed.

There has been no evidence produced that Iran knew of the 9/11 attacks or assisted them. But never mind Iran. The Bush Administration still has not published the White Paper promised by Colin Powell in late 2001 proving Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida were behind 9/11. What we have seen is a faked tape of bin Laden, a lot of faked documents produced by the Afghan communists who run the so-called Northern Alliance, and more fakery from the Chalabi group in Iraq.

Why would Iran, knowing it was in Bush’s gunsights, join in a monstrous terrorist attack that, if linked to Tehran, could have brought US nuclear retaliation? Iranians are a very clever, sophisticated people, and certainly not suicidal.

This column has long predicted the Bush Administration would orchestrate a pre-election crisis over Iran designed to whip up patriotic fervor in the US and distract public and media attention from the Iraq fiasco. Bush’s strategic mentor, Israel’s PM Ariel Sharon, called on the US `to march on Tehran the day after it takes Baghdad.’

The growing clamor over Iran’s nuclear intentions, with rumblings about Fall US-Israeli air strikes against Iran’s reactors, are part of this manufactured crisis.

Full story...

Monday 26 July 2004

Vanunu - Israel Was Behind JFK Assassination

A new twist on an old conspiracy...

Comments by freed nuclear spy Mordechai Vanunu that Israel was behind the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy failed to bring smiles to government officials Sunday.

One would expect that such claims would portray Vanunu as a man with a credibility problem, but as far as the defense establishment is concern, the former nuclear technician still has secrets to reveal and a declared goal of ending Israel's nuclear program. He shouldn't be talking to the media and is actually barred from meeting with foreigners.

Nevertheless, the London-base al-Hayat published Sunday an interview is claims it had with Vanunu.

According to the interview which appeared in its Arabic supplement Al-Wassat, Vanunu said that according to "near-certain indications", Kennedy was assassinated due to "pressure he exerted on then head of government, David Ben-Gurion, to shed light on Dimona's nuclear reactor."

"We do not know which irresponsible Israeli prime minister will take office and decide to use nuclear weapons in the struggle against neighboring Arab countries," Vanunu was quoted as saying. "What has already been exposed about the weapons Israel is holding can destroy the region and kill millions."

Vanunu also said that the reactor in Dimona, where he worked, could become a second "Chernobyl."

He said that an earthquake could cause fissures to the core and that would cause a massive radiation leak threatening millions.

Vanunu warned that Jordan should test the residents along the border with Israel for exposure to radiation and give them pills just like Israel decided to do for its citizens.

Vanunu also criticized the visit to Israel early this month by the head of the Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed el-Baradei.

"He (Baradei) should have refused to have visited Israel (because) he was not allowed to inspect the nuclear reactor," Vanunu said.

According to al-Hayat, Vanunu now lives "with his Palestinian friends" in east Jerusalem.

It was not clear how al-Hayat did the interview, which the publication claimed with the first Vanunu has granted to a newspaper since his release from Ashkelon prison last April.

Vanunu has been barred from granting interviews to foreign media.

But until now, no steps were being planned against Vanunu.

Full story...

Thursday 22 July 2004

The Blue Pill People

by Hari Heath

There are none so blind as those who will not look. If you are one of those who will look, take a look around. You are surrounded -- surrounded by millions who will not look. These are the blue pill people. Who are these blue pill people and why won't they look?

“The Matrix” may be only a movie, but it presents some scenarios with much relevance to our current situation. In the movie, Neo meets Morpheus and is offered an opportunity and a choice. Neo can take the red pill and see the truth for himself, or he can take the blue pill and return, comfortably unaware, to the illusion of the Matrix. There he can live out his life undisturbed by the truth. The truth depicted in The Matrix is an extreme version of modern socialism.

In the futuristic scenario of the movie, a massive array of human beings are kept in self-contained pods that resemble artificial wombs. These “row-cropped” human entities are maintained in their pods, from their in vitro conception until they are no longer useful to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) entity. The AI entity needs certain things from these “humans” for its own sustenance, so it continuously breeds new human crops and extracts from them what it needs. In return, the AI entity supplies the humans' needs with several permanent intravenous connections and a neural link. The neural link provides the pod-bound humans with a complete illusion -- the Matrix. In the AI-created illusion the humans have a normal life in a real world. In reality, however, the civilized world was destroyed some time ago and humans have been harvested as crops for the benefit of the Al entity ever since. The Matrix is a complete digital holographic type “world” created by the AI entity to mentally contain its human crops while it extracts what it needs from their pod-bound bodies.

In the movie, when Morpheus is about to offer Neo the choice between either the red pill or the blue pill, he explains:

“You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain -- but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life; that there's something wrong with the world; you don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?”

“The Matrix,” Neo asks?

“Do you want to know what it is? The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. Even in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes; it is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”

And Neo asks, “What truth?”

“That you are a slave Neo, like everyone else, you were born into bondage; born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch; a prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to experience it for yourself.”

Those few humans who were either born into reality, or have successfully taken the red pill, become the focus of the movie's story -- their attempts to destroy the Matrix and liberate the mass of humanity that lives completely encapsulated in their pods and the illusions fed to them by the powers that be -- powers that will go to any length to maintain the illusion.

Extreme, but not much different than our modern system of corporate government and capitalistic socialism. The governing powers need things from us, not the least of which is our consent. To obtain our consent we are fed all manner of benefits. We are programmed from an early age to believe that such benefits are necessary. To obtain these benefits, a number of conduits are attached to each of us. Adhesion contracts like Social Security, a driver's license; voter registration for a pretended choice of social masters, bank accounts where credit is manufactured for our use and other memberships, registrations, licenses, deeds and permits to insure the conduct of our affairs will be confined within the “matrix” of corporate governance.

We are given our own numbered “pod,” a social net provided by the government. Educated according to mandates of the state, our belief system is further cultured by corporate media.

There are various forms of “welfare” should we succumb to poverty or disease. If we are threatened or in danger we can call 911. Government's job of “securing” us is made easier by the massive database tracking our movements, our finances, the location of our homes and businesses and our tax records. When old age creeps up, we can rely on government to take care of us.

The corporate/government/financial interface combines to create a massive illusion of benefits -- the American dream. For the price of a promise to indebt our future labors, pay our taxes and play within the system, there are seemingly limitless toys, castles, comforts and consumables for those who believe in this Matrix. For half our productivity taken in taxes (the other half in payments) and the deeds and title to whatever we think we own, government and its private affiliates will take care of us.

To live in this Matrix, all we have to surrender is any genuine sense of independence, personal responsibility and our right to live freely and actually own the fruits of our labors.

Full story...

Wednesday 21 July 2004

Israel – A Rogue State

Sharon against the world

by Justin Raimondo


In 1987, a black teenager, Tawana Brawley, claimed to have been abducted and raped by six white cops in upstate New York. In addition to sexually abusing her, she said, they had scrawled racial epithets on her body and smeared her with feces. She later identified Steven A. Pagones, a Duchess County district attorney, as one of the perpetrators, and the case became a cause célèbre in the black community, with prominent black leaders demanding that Pagones be prosecuted and the "cover-up" ended. The Reverend Al Sharpton used the case to catapult himself into the center of public attention, and the alleged incident was seized on by some civil rights activists to illustrate a persistent and seemingly inherent "racism" in American society.

There was just one problem with this line of argument: the "rape" of Tawana Brawley was a hoax.

There was no physical evidence Ms. Brawley had been raped, and so she changed her story to sexual abuse without penetration. But there were so many anomalies in her tale that the whole thing began to fall apart, anyway, and yet still Brawley and her supporters insisted that she had been victimized, instead of the innocent Pagones, who had been falsely accused. It took seven months for a jury to conclude, after examining medical and police records and hearing over 100 witnesses, that Tawana was a liar. The epithets scrawled in charcoal, the smearing of feces, her ripped clothing – all of it had been self-inflicted. For the better part of a year, the community had been rent apart by a divisive and increasingly contentious feud, pitting black against white, but the perpetrators of this hoax weren't through. They continued to maintain that the "rape" was real, and called Pagones – and virtually every New York politician in the book – a "racist." Ten years later, Pagones sued Brawley and her lawyers for defamation: a judge, in awarding Pagones a substantial sum, remarked that "Tawana Brawley appears caught up in her own fiction."

The myth of victimization is not easily dispelled by the facts, especially when it is reinforced by ideology. Brawley's camp followers and supporters knew that American society is inherently and unredeemably racist, and therefore the rape of Tawana just had to be true. The line between truth and falsehood is easily blurred where ideology is concerned: if Tawana wasn't literally a victim in this case, then surely her rape at the hands of marauding white cops was figuratively and symbolically true in the sense that it was a plausible story.

Or something like that….

A similar hoax recently threw all of France into turmoil. This time the author was one Marie-Leonie LeBlanc, a 23-year-old Frenchwoman, who claimed she had been attacked on the Paris subway by six youths of North African appearance. Upon relieving her of her wallet, and discovering her address, one of her alleged assailants had supposedly remarked: "Only Jews live in the 16th arrondissement." The six proceeded to tip over her baby carriage, slash her clothes, and draw swastikas on her stomach – all in plain sight of some 20 people in the train car at the time, who supposedly sat passively in their seats while LeBlanc was cruelly abused by these swarthy stormtroopers.

The incident provoked a national orgy of outrage and self-recrimination: every public official and newspaper of note bellowed that the whole society stood condemned and wallowed in a luxurious bath of collective guilt. Why hadn't they woken up to the rising threat of a supposedly rampant anti-Semitism earlier? The answer, we were told, lay in the North African minority that was permeated with "hate." Israel's amen corner was quick to point out that this "hate" was fueled by opposition to the Jewish state, not only in the Muslim community but among secular French opponents of Israeli government policies: anti-Zionism, they claimed, was separable from anti-Semitism only in theory. In practice, they averred, the two are almost always indistinguishable.

The braying chorus of moralizers kept it up even as Ms. LeBlanc's story began to fall apart with Tawana-like speed: the video surveillance cameras revealed nothing of the surreal scene described by the alleged victim, and not a single witness had come forward. Unlike Tawana, however, it took LeBlanc only four days to admit to the hoax, engineered in cooperation with her boyfriend: an apology was offered, but no explanation. And still the braying of the moralizers only got louder, as in this bizarre account in Time magazine,

"No one felt vindicated, however, for the simple reason that the tale had been completely credible – France today is a place where such acts of anti-Semitism and racism are commonplace. 'If reaction was so intense, it's because people unfortunately know that such a horrific scenario is plausible,' says Yonathan Arfi, president of the Union of French Jewish Students. France's hate-crime wave extends far beyond a single well-publicized case. 'Whether this is the 10th or 20th assault of its kind changes nothing,' says former Socialist Economy and Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn. 'We have a real problem.'"

As a metaphor for the myth of "rising anti-Semitism," the ersatz martyrdom of Mari LeBlanc illustrates the real problem: truth is now irrelevant. A lie has only to be "plausible," these days, and it passes the reality test.

Anti-Semitism is "commonplace" in Europe and the United States only if one redefines it to include looking cross-eyed at Ariel Sharon. As Israeli helicopter gunships shoot down Palestinian teenagers and the apartheid-like conditions prevalent in the Jewish state are given physical form in the shape of a Wall of Separation, this group has grown in numbers – evidence, we are told, of increasing anti-Semitism.

Something is on the increase, but it isn't anti-Semitism: it is the aggressiveness of Israel and its international amen corner, not only in the occupied territories but in places as far-flung as France and New Zealand. The French were taken aback when, in reaction to the LeBlanc episode, Sharon declared in an address to American Jewish leaders that French Jews must "move immediately" to Israel, "We see the spread of the wildest anti-Semitism there," Sharon said, adding "I think it's a must and they have to move immediately."

The French daily Le Figaro cited a source close to LeBlanc describing her as a "mythomaniac." She and Sharon are perfect soulmates, in that sense, psychologically if not politically. Even as the Zionists' Tawana Brawley was arrested and charged, and her boyfriend detained, the Israelis touted the arrival of some 200 French Jews "fleeing" alleged persecution at the hands of their French tormentors.

The limits of political correctness having been reached, French President Jacques Chirac exploded in a fury, disinviting the Israeli Prime Minister from his planned visit to Paris and demanding an official explanation. But old Ariel just chuckled and explained, with some justice, that he had always said that Jews should commit themselves to aliyah, and come "home" to Israel. It was only a few months ago, after all, that Ha'aretz reported on a meeting held by Sharon and his top lieutenants in government on the question of how to increase Jewish immigration to Israel – with the focus particularly on France.

According to the report, Sharon envisions a million new immigrants this year, 20,000 of them French. Whereas before the main thrust of Zionist recruitment had been toward the East, directed at the former captive nations of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, Sharon proposed a complete turnaround:

"One necessary change would be for the relevant agencies to shift their focus from distressed countries to the prosperous West - what the Jewish Agency defines as 'immigration by choice.' The problem is that there is no precedent in Zionist history for mass immigration of this sort. 'The dominant factor in mass immigration was distress,' said Prof. Sergio Della Pergola of Hebrew University. Nevertheless, he said, it is possible to observe signs of distress even in the wealthy West – with France being the prime example.

"Dr. Erik Cohen of Bar-Ilan University's school of education, who recently conducted a study of French Jews, concurred, saying that interest in immigration is at an all-time high. 'This isn't an exodus that will begin from one day to the next,' he said, 'but before such an exodus, one hears an echo – and I heard this echo.' Cohen said it 'would not be impossible' to bring 50,000 French Jews here, particularly, he said, as 90 percent of French Jews already have friends or relatives here."

The Sharon-Chirac showdown is a psychodrama with a Zionist lesson attached to it, and the Israelis are playing it for all it's worth. It's part of a more general pattern of increased Israeli belligerence directed at unlikely, i.e. Western, adversaries – with New Zealand certainly qualifying as the unlikeliest.

The case of the Mossad spies who tried to get a passport by stealing the identity of a housebound paraplegic has been the subject of a previous column, and the story has by now evolved into a full-blown diplomatic brouhaha similar to the fracas with the French. While Sharon's government – and the two Israeli agents captured by New Zealand's security services – has stubbornly denied any involvement by Israel, it turns out the Kiwis were bugging their phones from the get-go. Prime Minister Helen Clark, although reticent in relating how she knew it, wasn't shy about saying what she knew:

"The New Zealand government views the act carried out by the Israeli intelligence agents as not only utterly unacceptable but also a breach of New Zealand sovereignty and international law."

After announcing diplomatic and political sanctions against the Israeli government, and canceling talks planned for later this year, Clark challenged the Israelis to come clean:

"The ball is in Israel's court as to where it wants to move from here. Three months ago we asked for an apology and an explanation. That has not been forthcoming."

Instead of apologies, the Israelis and their supporters internationally have been demonizing the Kiwis as neo-Nazis for daring to defend their sovereignty.

Full story...

Peace, Justice, And Honesty

This article is superb and hits the nail squarely on the head.

by John Kaminski

Uncle Sam wants YOU to die for big business When's the last time you read about any of those things in your local newspaper? I wonder when the last time the word "peace" issued from the sewage lips of Fox News' Bill O'Reilly? Probably when he was talking about torturing innocent Muslim civilians at the gulag called Guantanamo, that's his kind of peace.

And justice? How many stories on TV have you heard about Ernst Zundel, who talks frequently about peace, justice, and honesty, but for the past 14 months has been held in solitary confinement in a Canadian jail without any charges ever being filed. He is not even allowed to see the evidence against him. Yet he tells a very compelling story that everybody should listen to. Shouldn't somebody be writing a story about justice for Ernst?

Or Dick Simkanin, jailed for making a point against the government where the judge who convicted him couldn't even cite a statute he had broken before he found him guilty. He's buried so deep in jail you can't even find him on Google.

Same with Charles Sell. The guy who did dental IDs on the Waco victims and saw all those bulletholes. He served his sentence on some trumped up charge, but they won't let him out. They keep drugging him and saying he's crazy, a real tribute to the legacy of Janet Reno and Wesley Clark in an ugly Texas town.

Oh, this is a very long list. Suffice it to say American justice is dead Iraqi family who didn't know what hit them. This is how democracy arrived in the cradle of civilization.

And honesty? I can sum it up in one phrase I read in the newspapers: "They hate our freedoms."

Corporations pay no taxes. You and me give them 50 percent of what we earn.

Honesty is to admit that America is the evil empire. You hear people whispering that on the streets, but you don't see it in the newspapers. People are afraid to say that, because if they do, they're apt to disappear, just like those three, and oh so many more.

And it's not just the government, as so many people overseas say to try and let the American population off hook. But it's the people, too. People who refuse to see that killing faraway people in order to get lower prices is not the mark of a decent bunch of folks. We could stop it at any time, but we don't. And it's not because we can't stop, but because we just don't care.

Just before I answered that fellow's letter, however, I did chance across an exceptionally eloquent example of honesty, in a forward from an e-mail friend I know only as G88POGEL. It was a detailed explanation of political intrigues of the last two hundred years written by Webster Tarpley, author of "George Bush:
The Unauthorized Bioography," and delivered at a Lyndon LaRouche conference.

The truth is, Tarpley explained, that it has been Britain which has been behind all the wars of the last two centuries, and is at it still, only now the bankers from London are wholly intertwined with the Zionists and the Americans.

Ever consider that Britain and America were on the wrong side in both World Wars, and that our current climate of endless wars and everpresent fearmongering were the result of Britain's desire to rule the world? Ever realize that Britain backed the Confederacy to destabilize America during the Civil War? Check it out The Versailles Thesis at http://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/versaill.htm

Then maybe you can talk to me about peace, justice, and honesty. It's shameful what Americans are doing to the world. Israelis too. They both seem to have learned the repulsive habits of the British.

Your parents didn't bring you up to be killers, I don't think. Maybe they did and just won't admit it.

It's so hard not to lapse into negativity with all this phony stuff that is coming down around our ears today. But it has been going on a long time.

Because the centerpiece of society is money, and that's the only viewpoint capitalist media will admit is valid, we cannot hope for peace. It's excluded from the agenda, off the charts, out of the game. You just never read about peace, except as in imminent threats to.

Private control of the money supply, the thing that got all those presidents gunned down, is the single central challenge jeopardizing the future. Wars will never end as long the Federal Reserve and the Rothschild banks of London continue to exist. This is where the revolution should focus. Because nothing will be fixed as long as they remain intact.

The only reason we have wars is because these private bankers want war. It is the most profitable human endeavor.

The 21st century needs to address the issue of profit, because it has been proven to be a case of profit for the powerful few, and total loss for the other 99 percent of the population.

Without this focus, there can be no peace, no justice, and no honesty.

Full story...

The perils of power

Decisions on the Iraq war show that too much control is concentrated in the hands of the prime minister

Jonathan Freedland


It's happened twice this year. Sceptics about the war against Iraq find themselves shouting at the TV, overwhelmed with the urge to hammer their fists against the chest of a cabinet minister or wondering if they have woken up in an Alice-in-Wonderland country where black is white and white is black.

In mid-winter it was Hutton. In mid-summer it is Butler. The problem then was a Hutton report that seemed blind to the reality the rest of us had seen with our own eyes. The problem now is not the Butler report, which sees the reality clearly enough, but the government response to it. It's as if Tony Blair and friends live on a different planet, where the usual rules of reason and logic do not apply.

So cabinet minister John Reid can go on the Today programme and say - not once but twice - that caveats had to be stripped out of the September 2002 dossier in order to preserve the anonymity of intelligence sources. As if a "probably" here or a "maybe" there would have exposed our secret agents. Of course, it would have done no such thing. But Reid says it all the same.

We have the prime minister insisting that his own good faith cannot be questioned. Most politicians and commentators bow to this demand, too courteous to resist it. But it is a strange kind of good faith that enables someone to read intelligence on Iraq's weapons capability chock full of doubts and qualifiers - and then declare that this same intelligence establishes "beyond doubt" the nature of the Saddam threat. The one thing the intelligence did not do was establish anything beyond doubt - and Blair knows it because he read the doubt-filled assessments in their pre-cleaned-up form. Yet he said it anyway. We cannot ask why because Brutus is an honourable man.

Above all, we hear a former cabinet secretary lay bear a series of failings - in intelligence gathering, in public presentation, in top-level decision-making - which led, in part, to a major international disaster, a war costing many thousands of lives. And yet no one is blamed. Is there another sphere of human activity where this is imaginable? Let's say a public inquiry into a rail accident catalogued errors as copious as those identified by Butler: wouldn't the head of the train company be fired? If a football team had cocked up as badly as our intelligence services, wouldn't the manager be out on his ear? Yet politics is different. It turns out the buck does not stop with Blair or John Scarlett or Richard Dearlove or anybody. Ingovernment, it seems, there is no buck.

The anger and the sense of impotence this induces tend to be channelled towards the prime minister himself. Disenchanted voters decide they can't trust him; some even begin to hate him. This may be therapeutic but it's probably too easy. For what the Iraq debacle has shown is what Whitehall types would probably call systemic failure. It's not just one man who's at fault; the entire system is broken.

First confirmation of that came a year ago, when more than a million Britons took to the streets to oppose the war. Of course, governments should not bend to every public whim. But when close to a majority of the country reaches a settled will on a matter of great import, that surely shouldn't be ignored. Yet the war went ahead anyway, endorsed by a large majority in the House of Commons. Whatever your views on the Iraq question, this surely amounted to a democratic failure: the system did not fully reflect the views of the people it is meant to represent.

The Butler report identifies another structural malfunction: the over-centralisation of power, with too much authority concentrated in the person of the prime minister. So we have joint intelligence committee chairman Scarlett's obeisance to the prime minister and his aides manifested in his willingness to allow the caveat cull that changed so drastically the meaning of the dossier he was meant to "own". Out they came, Scarlett reassuring himself that these were purely presentational changes. Butler lays bare his dim view of this arrangement, even if he is congenitally unable to describe it so baldly.

The same point emerges in the account of the attorney general's efforts to determine whether an invasion of Iraq would be legal. He too ultimately deferred to Blair, seeking in March 2003 Downing Street's view of whether Iraq was in "material breach" of its UN obligations. On this question turned the legality of the war. Yet it was not determined by the attorney general, but the prime minister.

Full story...

Operation Mason & The Kelly Group

British journalists ask: Was acclaimed Iraqi WMD scientist murdered?

It has been several months since Lord Hutton concluded Britain's most respected microbiologist, Dr David Kelly, committed suicide. The inquest, held in Room 76 at the Royal Courts of Justice, was meant to uncover the circumstances of his death. In doing so, many observers believed that the verdict would dispel any lingering doubts that there was a more sinister reason behind his death.

The scientist had become inexorably entwined with Iraq's WMD, after he spoke about his concerns to a BBC journalist. The British public watched in amazement as Downing Street and the BBC fought a bitter war of words. In the end, senior BBC staff were forced to resign. Tony Blair suffered a bloody nose, but worst of all, Dr Kelly found the pressure too much and killed himself... or did he?

Few journalists investigating the Kelly case have not shared a beer with persons willing to provide the odd clue or suspicion that would point to murder. Crackpots and conspiracy theorists usually force investigators to make a quick retreat, but when those raising concerns are doctors, lawyers, businessmen and even intelligence officers, journalists listen.

It would require a brave person to dispute the findings of Lord Hutton, but a number have.

GOVERNMENT PRESSURE

Dr Kelly was under immense pressure and genuinely feared for his job, after it was disclosed that he spoke with the BBC and reportedly aired concerns about the accuracy of Britain and America's WMD intelligence.

The public fumed after Dr Kelly was subjected to more than hostile questioning by ministers, for here was a man who clearly had tremendous knowledge of Iraq's WMD. When he was found dead, hostility towards Downing Street and the BBC intensified.

Since then, journalists have once again started to sip beer with locals around Dr Kelly's home and other folk who don't really fall into the crackpot category. Information is being gleaned that could yet be of interest.

CIRCUMSTANCES

On 17 July at 3.30pm, Dr Kelly decided to go for a walk leaving his Southmoor, Oxfordshire home. It was something he did regularly. At 12.20am, his wife, Janice, telephoned Thames Valley Police and told officers she was concerned that David had not returned from his walk. Exactly nine hours later, at 9.20am, a dog called Brock found Dr Kelly's body on Harrowdown Hill, about a mile from the Kellys' home.

Brock belonged to Louise Holmes, a member of the Thames Valley Lowland Search Team. She had joined the search for the scientist at 8.00am, together with her colleague, Paul Chapman.

Louise told the Hutton Inquiry that when she found Dr Kelly, his head and shoulders were slumped against a tree. "His legs were in front of him. His right arm had a lot of blood on it and was bent back in a funny position," she said. Paul Chapman "specifically" recalled Dr Kelly was sitting up.

Louise telephoned Abingdon police about her discover, but moments later, as the couple walked back towards their vehicle, three plain-clothed police officers arrived. They said they were "Thames Valley detectives," one officer showed an identity card.

At the Hutton Inquiry, Abingdon police said that they found Dr Kelly's body lying flat on his back. An Evian water bottle, a blood-coated watch and a Sandvig gardening tool, were also recorded at the scene. Interestingly, Louise and Paul never mentioned these items at the Inquiry. Some observers note that the three detectives has been at the scene some thirty minutes before Abingdon police arrived. The rest is, of course, conjecture...

THE KELLY GROUP

The Kelly Group is made up of a number of eminent British doctors who believe that serious questions are still be answered about the way in which Dr Kelly died. The group has aired its views on radio and television shows and in a series of features in national newspapers. And while not proposing anything sinister, its members say the facts don't fit the evidence.

BLOOD LOSS

On of the first medical staff to arrive in the woods was paramedic Vanessa Hunt. She told the Inquiry: "There was a small patch [of blood] on his right, knee, but no arterial bleeding. There was no spraying of the blood or huge blood loss or any obvious loss on his clothing.

Experts contend that to die from haemorrhage, as suffered by Dr Kelly, you would need to lose some 5 pints of blood. Louise commented that there didn't appear to be a great deal of blood around.

This point has concerned a number of doctors. For example, Dr A Peter Fletcher, a medical expert and Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists write: 'Anybody who has seen 5 pints of blood spurted forcefully out of a severed artery will know that there is one hell of a mess. The two searchers, (Louise & Paul) who found the body, did not even notice that Kelly had incised his wrist with a knife.'

The Kelly Group also points out there are inconsistencies about the manner in which Dr Kelly died. Why, for example did he choose such a difficult artery to sever? And why use a blunt knife? One of the UK's most respected vascular surgeons, Martin Birnstingl, said he doubted it was possible for Dr Kelly to die by cutting the ulnar artery on "the little finger side of his inner wrist." He told Britain's Mail on Sunday: "I have never, in my experience, heard of a case where someone has died after cutting their ulnar artery. And I have seen many suicides.

The minute the blood pressure falls, after a few minutes, this artery would stop bleeding. It would spray blood about and make a mess but it would soon cease.

Kelly was in the know. He was a scientist. People normally try to slash the radial artery in their wrist, the one which is used to take a pulse. Or, if they are really intent on death, they cut the artery in their groin."

Experts also believe it would have been almost impossible for Dr Kelly to have made an incision from left to right on his opposite wrist.

THE CO-PROXAMOL TABLETS

The Hutton Inquiry was told that three packets of the painkiller Co-Proxamol was found on Dr Kelly. The sachets held 30 tablets, but only one was recovered. Perhaps it was the consumption of these powerful pills that killed Dr Kelly? Experts are unsure as to what extent the drugs played in his death. It was revealed at the Inquiry, that less than one tablet was found inside his body during the autopsy.

Other unusual incidents also surrounding the death of Dr Kelly. His dental records went missing from his local surgery as news of his suicide broke. Police found an unlocked window in the building. Then, like any good detective mystery, the records turned up again two days later. The incident baffled local police.

Mai Pederson, a close friend of Dr Kelly said he would not have taken his own life. Pederson is a US Army Intelligence officer. It was rumoured that the Ministry of Defence was upset about his contacts with the American.

Dr Kelly died after a situation that he himself helped create, became uncontrollable. Just before he was found dead, he had discussed a book deal with a publisher. This may have been as revealing a work as anything previously written about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. And who can forget Dr Kelly's chilling statement made in February 2003? "If Iraq is attacked, then I might be found dead in the woods..."

There are persons in the intelligence community who believe the cause of death has not been conclusively determined. Dr Nicholas Hunt, the pathologist who examined Dr Kelly said he "Would feel more comfortable is the Inquest was re-opened."

Operation Mason is a Thames Valley Police file. Its contents remain secret.

The Puzzling Bottled Water

Presumably Dr Kelly drank the Evian bottled water as a matter of course during his walks. Some observers believe he took the Co-Proxamol tablets with this water. However, the two witnesses who first discovered Dr Kelly's body said they did not see a water bottle at the scene. At the inquest, Lord Hutton said the police recovered a bottle of water. If the bottle did not belong to Dr Kelly, how did it get there? Some observers believe it could have actually been discarded by the investigating officers.

These exclusive photographs, taken just hours after his death, show that some of the police officers who attended the scene were in fact drinking bottled water. Our pictures, however, show an officer drinking Buxton bottled water.

Three packets of Co-Proxamol tablets were recovered at the scene. Twenty-nine tablets were missing. Dr Kelly had reportedly only consumed one. Why take almost three empty sachets?

Full story...

Torturing Children

How does it feel to know that WE are the Evil Empire? Have we stooped so low that we condone this activity? Activity perpetrated y our governments and supposedly in our name? I would just like to point out that these murderous lying bastards do NOT represent me!

by William Rivers Pitt

The biggest story of the Iraq war is not about missing weapons of mass destruction, or about deep-cover CIA officers getting their covers blown by vengeful White House agents, or even about 896 dead American soldiers. These have been covered to one degree or another, and then summarily dismissed, by the American mainstream news media. The biggest story of the Iraq war has not enjoyed any coverage in America, though it has been exploding across the international news media for several weeks now.

The biggest story of the Iraq war is about the torture of Iraqi children.

A German TV magazine called 'Report Mainz' recently aired accusations from the International Red Cross, to the effect that over 100 children are imprisoned in U.S.- controlled detention centers, including Abu Ghraib. "Between January and May of this year, we've registered 107 children, during 19 visits in 6 different detention locations," said Red Cross representative Florian Westphal in the report.

The report also outlined eyewitness testimony of the abuse of these children. Staff Sergeant Samuel Provance, who was stationed at Abu Ghraib, said that interrogating officers had gotten their hands on a 15 or 16 year old girl. Military police only stopped the interrogation when the girl was half undressed. A separate incident described a 16 year old being soaked with water, driven through the cold, smeared with mud, and then presented before his weeping father, who was also a prisoner.

Seymour Hersh, the New Yorker reporter who first broke the story of torture at Abu Ghraib, recently spoke at an ACLU convention. He has seen the pictures and the videotapes the American media has not yet shown. "The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling, and the worst part is the soundtrack, of the boys shrieking," said Hersh. "And this is your government at war."

Hersh described the prison scene as, "a series of massive crimes, criminal activity by the president and the vice president, by this administration anyway," and that there has been, "a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher."

Reports of abuses at Abu Ghraib and other American prisons have been public knowledge since the release of the Taguba Report. Recently, however, some 106 annexes to the report, previously classified, have also been released. U.S. News and World Report detailed the sum of what is contained in these annexes in an article titled 'Hell on Earth.'

In it, U.S. News says, "The abuses took place, the files show, in a chaotic and dangerous environment made even more so by the constant pressure from Washington to squeeze intelligence from detainees. Riots, prisoner escapes, shootings, corrupt Iraqi guards, unsanitary conditions, rampant sexual misbehavior, bug-infested food, prisoner beatings and humiliations, and almost-daily mortar shellings from Iraqi insurgents--according to the annex to General Taguba's report, that pretty much sums up life at Abu Ghraib." According to coalition intelligence officers cited in a Red Cross report from last May, between 70% to 90% of Iraqi detainees held in these prisons were arrested "by mistake." That means they were innocent.

The orders to treat prisoners in this fashion were not manufactured by the few "bad apples" we have heard about, but came from up on high. Brig. Gen Janis Karpinski, former commander of Abu Ghraib and now scapegoat for the abuses, says the truth about where the orders came from would be revealed in the trials of the accused soldiers. Memos ordering the abuse of prisoners were signed off on by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. The Justice Department and Mr. Bush's senior legal advisor went out of their way to craft arguments justifying this, claiming that torture isn't really torture and that the President is basically above the law.

Mr. Hersh will revisit this issue within the next several weeks. In the meantime, the American news media has an obligation to report on this situation. Photographic and videotape evidence of this torture is currently in the hands of the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the U.S. Congress and the White House. It must be released.

We invaded a country based upon the false claim that Iraq was allied with al Qaeda. We invaded a country based on the false claim that there were weapons of mass destruction which needed to be destroyed. We promised freedom and democracy, and instead installed a CIA-trained strongman named Allawi who has all but created a dictatorship in Iraq, and who has been accused of killing Iraqi prisoners by his own hand. 896 American soldiers have died so we could do this.

Full story...

Tuesday 20 July 2004

The era of strategic deception

by Eric Margolis

Having presided over the two worst intelligence disasters since Pearl Harbor -- 9/11 and the misbegotten invasion of Iraq -- the Bush Administration and its apologists are now whining, "Okay, we were wrong about Iraq's weapons and supposed threat, but so was everybody else. Besides, it was all the CIA's fault."

No way. The Iraq weapons fiasco was absolutely not caused by an "intelligence failure," as the White House and the recent Senate whitewash claim.

U.S. national security and CIA were corrupted and blinded by extremist ideology, cowardice, and careerism.

Nor was everyone wrong about Iraq.

Scores of Mideast professionals, this writer included, insisted from Day 1 that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, posed no threat to the U.S., and had no link to al-Qaida.

Meanwhile, in 2002, Vice-President Dick Cheney thundered that Iraq was seeking nuclear weapons.

A month later, Secretary of State Colin Powell proclaimed "no doubt he (Saddam) has chemical weapons."

Shortly after, President George W. Bush assured the UN that Iraq had biological weapons.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice warned a "mushroom cloud" threatened America.

Britain's glib prime minister, Tony Blair, made similar ludicrous claims.

Many veteran CIA officers dismissed these alarms as politically-motivated propaganda.

The U.S. state department, air force, and French intelligence challenged claims Iraq had threatening offensive weapons systems.

Many senior Pentagon military officers opposed invading Iraq.

But the word went out: Now hear this. If you value your job and pension, do not, repeat, do not contradict the boss. The president is hell-bent on invading Iraq. Make it so.

Cheney repeatedly demanded evidence be found of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaida.

Oblivious to all facts, he keeps warning Iraq still threatens the U.S. He is increasingly out of touch with reality and may need professional calming.

Former CIA director George Tenet, a political aparatchik, not an intelligence professional, undermined his agency by pandering to all of Bush and Cheney's prejudices.

Careerism and hand-licking took precedence over professionalism. Those with dissenting views were ignored or shunted aside.

This column has long reported smouldering anger among veteran CIA officers over Bush's deeply flawed policies towards Iraq and the Muslim world.

In late 2001, I was shocked and horrified to hear a distinguished member of the CIA's founding families actually claim a "fifth column" had taken control of Iraq policy and was driving the U.S. to war.

But even the compliant CIA failed to satisfy Bush and Cheney's growing demands for more damning "evidence".

Full story...

The Mossad Mission in New Zealand

by Trowbridge H. Ford

While Israel's Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks, commonly known as the Mossad, is a great learner, and an excellent operator of covert operations, it is a terrible educator, unless one considers misinforming, and disinforming the public part of the educational process. Noted for its elimination of troublemakers, one way or another - thanks to what it picked up from catching or killing some of its enemies, and assisting its friends in related activities - it often farms out part of its operations to like-minded Jews around the world, and sees that it has an alibi for what is done by actually getting other agencies, particularly military intelligence (Aman), involved. Under no conditions, though, does Israel admit or disclose what actually happened, no matter how well-intentioned, and beneficial the outcome. Gross failures must be given the maximum amount of spin for fear that the rest of the world might start learning what the leading items on its covert agenda are.

While the Israelis' pursuit of the perpetrators of the Holocaust, especially transportation organizer of it Adolf Eichmann in Argentina, are widely known, its elimination of its Arab enemies are more common, and celebrated. In seeking out Nazis, the Mossad learned the value of having forged passports, what the Americans and British provided them when they fled Germany after the war - once they had spilled their guts about what they knew about the Soviets, especially their order of battle, weapons development, and spy networks.

People given new identities by surgical means, provided they have the proper documentation, are most difficult to trace. Little wonder that the Israelis were most desirous of broadcasting Nazi captures, once they were finally obtained, and brought back for trial. The process put the fear of God in those still on the run, and people, especially Jews, around the world of dangers they still might face.

Certainly the most sophisticated operation in this regard was when the Mossad entrapped Mordechai Vananu, a government technician at the Dimona nuclear plant, after he provided top secret documents about its operations to the Sunday Times in 1986. Actually, the disclosure was nothing new, and whatever Vananu's real aim was, it played into Tel Aviv's hands - providing a basis of an apparent falling out between the Israeli and British governments when the shooting of Swedish statsminister Olof Palme ran the risk of being exposed, and showing just how closely they had been working together to achieve it.

Colonel Micha "Mike" Harari was then running a network in Central America for Panama's Manuel Noreiga, working to help Oliver North's Contras receive guerrilla tranining, and arrange arms purchases in Europe and Israel. In the process, Harari became involved with Frank Camper's Operation Pegasus - what was to train Contras to conduct assassinations, deep within the Sandinista ranks. Harari utlimately was working with such unsavory characters as Félix Rodríguez, "Che" Guevara's killer, and Felix Vidal aka Charles Morgan, the unsuccessful recruiter of mercenaries and Nazis in Stockholm and London to assassinate Palme.

When the government of Honduras deported Operation Pegasus, thanks to a tipoff that Jack Terrell aka "Colonel Flaco" had provided Memphis Commerical Appeal reporter William Thomas in December 1984, Harari's network was forced to work more and more with former SAS Major David Walker's KMS and Saladin firms to achieve its anti-Sandinista and anti-Soviet aims in Latin America and across northern Europe. It was Walker's KMS firm reassessing Swedish bodyguard perforamnce which utlimately supplied Palme's assassin - what Israel hoped to exploit at Libya's expense by Operation Trojan if everything had gone according to plan. It called for Libyan agents to do all kinds of terrorist acts for their Soviet masters by means of the transmitting post it had surreptitiously established right outside Tripoli just before the assassination, indicating that Moscow was really behind it.

While this did not have the desired effect because of the counter measures Moscow arranged with spies "Rick" Ames and Robert Hanssen for all the Anglo-American double agents, plus French and Spanish counterterrorists not believing the directions were authentic, it is interesting to note that Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad agent, and now an Israeli dissident, did not mention the effort when he wrote about the operation. Trojan directions were later used to justify the American attack on Tripoli after a discothèque in Berlin was blown up, and some party on the scene sent messages back to the Libyan capital to pin responsibility for it on Colonel Qaddafi, though Ostrovsky doubted these claims.

To soften up Thatcher's Britain to support the attacks, the Mossad made it look as if Damascus was behind Jordanian-Palestinian Nizar Hindawi's attempt to smuggle a bomb on an El Al airliner departing from Heathrow. The bomb was hidden in the luggage of his girl friend, Ann Murphy, and was timed to explode over Austria. Thanks apparently to an infinity transmitter that the Security Service placed on the phone line outside the Syrian Embassy to bug its ambassador's messages, its tipping off El Al security about the bomb's presence when Ms. Murphy was checking in, and Nizar seeking refuge in the embassy after the fiasco, Britain and America then broke off relations with Syria

According to Mark Urban in UK Eyes Alpha, the plan was foiled by the intercepts of Syrian Ambassador Loutouf Allah Haidar messages back to Damascus, recommending that Syrian Air Force Intelligence support Hindawi's plan. (p. 42ff.) It seems more likely that this operation bound to fail was arranged by the Mossad stations in Amman and London - where Hindawi was recruited, given documentation, even an official Syrian service passport, to implicate Damascus in the 'false-flag' operation once it backfired, and given instruction where to seek refuge if things went wrong - helping explain why the Thatcher government expelled the Mossad the following year after relations had cooled down.

For good measure, the Mossad assassinated Ali-Adhami, an Arab expatriate cartoonist, in the Chelsea section of London after he made fun of Yasser Arafat's sex life. "The lesson," Tony Geraghty wrote in The Bullet Catchers, "was that Mossad probably knew more about this type of terrorism in London than the British Security Services." (p. 390)

Vananu's kidnapping still had the desired effect, thanks to the Mossad's aggressive use of an American passport by 'Cindy', his apparent girl friend but actually its gorgeous agent persuading him to flee to Rome where "her sister" had an apartment after Robert Maxwell's Sunday Mirror published his photograph. In the Italian capital, Vananu was bushwhacked, drugged, and shipped back to Israel by ship.

Of course, the Israelis could have simply killed him, but he was of much more value as a living traitor, locked up in solitary confinement for 18 years because of his treachery. His plight was a grim reminder to anyone tempted to do likewise, to Tel Aviv's enemies and possible supporters what they could expect in dire strategic confrontations, and to Israel's critics who questioned its commitment to human rights and democracy.

Harari's role in the process recalled his botched operation against Ali Hassan Salameh, chief of Yasser Arafat's Force 17 bodyguards, when the Mossad was carrying out retribution killings against the Black September movement for the murders of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. After a string of successful operations against the Munich culprits, Harari and a colleague, using Norwegian passports, murdered another person by mistake in Lillehammer early the following year. Thanks to false information that a blackmailed double agent in the Black September movement had supplied, they shot Moroccan Ahmed Bouchiki, a waiter returning home after work, rather than Salameh.

While Harari and his fellow assassin escaped, the Jewish in-country support team didn't, several of its members being imprisoned. In 1979, another Harari-led assassination squad aka kidon made up for the failure, blowing up Salameh, his fellow passengers in the Volkswagen, and several innocent bystanders in Beirut after having come ashore from an Israeli launch. Mossad agents just don't give up until they get their quarry.

The Mossad's aggressive use of false passports had really taken off after Major Benjamin Shalit had learned of the CIA's programming of James Earl Ray to assassinate Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King in 1968. Ray, on the run from the Missouri State Penitentiary, and hard-pressed for employment, was checked out by Dr. Mark O. Freeman as to his suitability as a Manchurian Candidate, taken to New Orleans to be checked out by the Agency's 'Executive Action' chief William King Harvey, and once okayed for the mission, programmed by Xavier von Koss back in L. A. to do the job. (For more on this, see Trowbridge H. Ford, "Mind-Control Experiments...," Eye Spy!, Issue Eight, pp. 54-5.)

Once Ray killed King on cue and without any recall, it was then a question of his making his escape from Canada - what required his getting a Canadian passport. "Ray needed to find someone who not only fit his age," Gerald Posner wrote in Killing The Dream, "but who also did not have a current passport." (p. 240) First Ray started getting a copy of a birth certificate for a Paul Bridgeman, only to discover, after having called him up in the guise of an immigration officer, that he already had a passport. Then Ray tried to get one for a police officer named Ramon George Sneyd, after using the same ploy to determine that Sneyd didn't have one. Ray then unexpectedly received a bírth certificate for Bridgeman despite the fact that his landlady had twice told the Registrar's Office that no one by the name of Bridgeman lived there, and when it still arrived, she had it returned.

After Ray was forced to use a new alias after he was cited for jaywalking by another policeman, he quickly changed addresses to avoid exposure. It was only after he had sent another application to the Bureau of Vital Statistics for a copy of Sneyd's birth certificate that he discover that he didn't need one at all. "Ray only had to complete a passport application together with a Statutory Declaration in Lieu of Guarantor." (p. 243) Once Ray had filled out the forms, and the Kennedy Travel Bureau owner had notarized them, they were sent to the passport office in Ottawa. Though Ray was panicked into fleeing without it, once Toronto authorities learned that he was wanted for the assassination of Dr. King, and the name on the Sneyd passport was misspelled, he flew to London on May 7th on a BOAC flight.

A month later, after Ray had made a fruitless effort to join white mercenaries in Africa via Lisbon where he corrected his passport, he returned to London to obtain further instructions about joining them from Major Alistair Wicks, and with the help of Daily Telegraqph reporter Ian Colvin. While these efforts proved fruitless, Ray was reduced to robbing at gun point the Fulham branch of the Trustee Svings Bank just to pay his outstanding bills. The day after Ray learned of Bobby Kennedy's assassination - an operation similar to King's - he tried to flee England for Brussels, only to be arrested by Detective Sergeant Philip Birch after he determined that Roman George Sneyd was wanted by both the Bureau and Scotland Yard for serious crimes.

The Mossad was absolutely entranced by Ray's story - that a such a criminal could get away with so many crimes on a Canadian passport - that it attempted to replicate the tale at Yasser Arafat's expense once and for all. Commander Shalit was put in charge of a Manchurian Candidate effort to program a Palestinian, who was acquainted with the PLO leader, with a Canadian passport to kill him. The only trouble with the effort was that the Palestinian, like Lee Harvey Oswald back in July 1963, was constitutionally opposed to doing the job, so when he was finally let loose, he just laughed at his programmers, and disappeared. The Mossad did provide backup for this possibility - outfitting him with a bomb in the guise of a radio - but it failed to explode when he was making his escape.

Still, the program was something the Mossad had on the shelf if circumstances indicated its feasibility. The use of Manchurian Candidates was increasingly rare because of the difficulty of finding the right person for the operation. There were too few targets who were loosely protected or unprotected, and whose murder required an assassin who couldn't really recall why he had done it. Assassinations increasingly called for killers who infiltrated the target's security, particularly by being a part of it. The use of forged passports, especially Canadian ones, though the procedure for getting them was tightened up after the Ray fiasco, still an important possible component of any targeted killing.

This was too much in evidence when the Mossad, while DannyYatom was Director General in 1997, finally decided to take advantage of its station in Amman, and assassinate Hamas political leader Khalid Meshaal. The Israelis were already holding its spiritual leader, Sheikh Yassin, and Tel Aviv hoped that Meshaal's murder would mean the end of the radical Palestinian movement. The Mossad could not use agents already in Amman for fear of wrecking the whole Jordanian-Israeli peace accord, so it sent in two agents from outside, using the still fairly easy Canadian passports to gain entry.

The only trouble with the operation was that Jordan's General Intelligence Department was on the lookout for any attempt on the Hamas leader's life, and it went immediately into action after the two Mossad agents had overpowered Meshaal's bodyguard, and sprayed or injected a lethal paralyzing agent into his ear. The result was that the Israeli government had to take emergency steps to save Meshaal's life, the international community was outraged by the Mossad's misuse of Canadian sovereignty, and Tel Aviv had to release Yassin and other Palestinian return for the release of the Mossad agents.

When Meir Dagan was made Mossad's Director General after he successfully arranged Ariel Sharon's election as Israel's Prime Minister, the intelligence agency was given a completely free hand to do whatever was apparently needed to attain Israel's security. Assassinations became the primary means of achieving this goal, and the Mossad seems to have taken advantage of its ability to infiltrate the security services of Iraq, Britain, and Sweden to secure the murders of Abu Nidal, Dr. David Kelly, and Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh - operations which will be analyzed further in subsequent articles.

What is important now is to pick up on the story after the plans by the Spanish, British, and American governments to blame the Madrid bombings of March 11th upon the Basque separatists ETA had gone so terribly wrong - thanks to Spanish 'sexing up' of signal intelligence provided by Britain GCHQ and America's NSA at the expense of solid human intelligence gained on the ground by Spanish counterterrorists about Al-Qaeda's plans.

The Mossad, as usual in such emergencies, jumped into the breach to stop the hemorrhaging of support for the war in Iraq - what new Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero had already given authority to, and New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clark threatened to legitimize. Clark is about as close a political leader to the murdered Lindh as one can conceive of, and she is threatening to expand Lindh's agenda against the Coalition throughout the Middle East. LIttle wonder that a Mossad kidon immediately swung into action to enter New Zealand under false documentation, and eliminate her. Her killers could not be recruited from such a small, isolated country, and hope to escape capture after the assassination.

To obtain false identities for at least the trigger men, New Zealander Eli Cara set up a phony travel bureau in a house he rented in Turramurra, Australia, while fellow country Uriel Zoshe Kelman went through the process of gaining a passport for one of them in the name of a person suffering from cerebral palsy in Auckland. This entailed befriending a cooperative general practitioner under false pretenses who would confirm Kelman's claims that he was the sufferer. Supervising the operation from a house near the GP was Zev William Barkan, an American who was based in Washington. The fourth member of the kidon has yet to be identified.

The only trouble with the operation is that the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, and New Zealand's Security Intelligence Service learned of it nearly from its inception, thanks apparently to a tipoff from Madrid. The GP helped by informing the passport officials that he didn't think that Kelman - the suspect more anxious to hide his face in court, wear a mask when he might be seen by the public, and headbutt probing photographers - was who he claimed. Consequently, when Kelman arranged to pick up the passport with as many cutouts as possible in April, he was still arrested after a chase during which he threw away his mobile phone, and Cara was caught observing the action from across the street. Barkan and the fourth man, though, manged to escape.

The behavior of Clark's government indicated just how serious the operation was. It called upon Sharon's government to explain what it was doing, and apologize - what it clearly could not, and would not do. After three months of waiting for a reply, Cara and Kelman were prosecuted and convicted of illegally attempting to obtain a New Zealand passport - what resulted in six months in prison, and $50,000 fines to charity for each of them. Of course, they could not be prosecuted for conspiring to kill the PM without causing an unprecedented international confrontation which might well promote more terrorism - what the government discretely avoided by declaring that a more serious prosecution would divulge most sensitive information.

In the meantime, the New Zealand government underlined its opposition to Israel's bulldozing Palestinian houses for a "two state" solution to the question by donating $534,000 to the aggrieved parties. Since the sentences, New Zealand has suspended relations with Israel, declaring that it wants no ministerial contacts for the foreseeable future, or a visit by Israeli President Moshe Katsav when he goes to Australia on state tour. New Zealand has already had enough of Mossad's katsas (secret agents).

Friday 16 July 2004

These people are treating us like idiots

This is how government in this country works, we are not "citizens" we are "subjects" of the State. They have no respect for us, aren't interested in what we have to say and would absolutely love to just be able to tell us all what to do 24/7. The problem is that the majority of the people in this country are not idiots and realise that the scum-bags in Westminster look down their noses at them. Why the hell do you think voter turnout is so low? Because we all know they are a bunch of lying cocksuckers. Here at codshit.com we've always known it but it seems Middle-England may be waking up. At the VERY least Blair needs to apologise and then resign, at best we should have him arrested and sent to the Hague to sit next to Milosevich because that is where he belongs. He won't of course, he'll probably just drag us into another war as dictated by his Zionist masters across the pond,

The family of a military policeman killed on duty in Iraq today strongly criticised Tony Blair and branded the Butler report "another whitewash".

Simon Hamilton-Jewell was shot dead alongside his men as they defended an Iraqi police station from a mob of 400 last June.

Despite being offered the chance to escape, he stayed with his patrol to the end and was hailed a hero.

But today his brother, Tony, launched a fierce attack on the Government, saying the Military Police sergeant had died for "a lie". Mr Hamilton-Jewell said: "I have downloaded the transcripts of the Butler report. It's another whitewash. It's all hedging and ifs and buts."

Mr Hamilton-Jewell, 57, said he was disgusted that Lord Butler's report did not single out anyone for blame. "Butler says no single person is directly responsible," he said. "But, whether it's Blair on the political side or [John] Scarlett on the intelligence side, someone has to be ultimately responsible. The arrogance of Blair is extraordinary - he won't apologise." He also criticised Lord Butler's backing of Mr Scarlett in his new role as head of MI6.

"Butler turned round and said Scarlett is fundamentally in the wrong, but that he's a good man for the job Blair's promoted him to," he said. "It's hypocritical. Who do these people think they are? They are treating us like idiots."

Full story...

Angry Prime Minister hammers Israel

No, unfortunately this article doesn't refer to Tony "The Spineless Zionist Slave" Blair it refers to Prime Minister Helen Clark of New Zealand. We need more leaders like her! Why don't we have anyone like that in this country? Helen Clark has bigger balls than Bush, Blair, Howard and Kennedy put together! If any Kiwis happen to be reading this go out and have a pint on me, you guys deserve it coz you're cool!

The Prime Minister made a scathing attack on Israel and imposed tough diplomatic sanctions after two alleged Mossad spies were jailed for passport fraud yesterday.

"The New Zealand Government views the act carried out by the Israeli intelligence agents as not only utterly unacceptable but also a breach of New Zealand sovereignty and international law," Helen Clark said.

The sanctions, including suspending all high-level visits to or from Israel, came minutes after Uriel Zoshe Kelman, 31, and Eli Cara, 51, were sentenced to prison for six months for stealing the identity of a tetraplegic man to obtain a false New Zealand passport.

Helen Clark said there were "very strong grounds" to believe the men were acting for Israel's intelligence services.

The case was revealed by the Weekend Herald in April.

Last night Israel's Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said, "We are sorry about this matter. It will be dealt with and all will be done to restore Israel's long history of good relations with New Zealand to their previous correct ties."

Mr Shalom did not address the claim that the two convicted men were linked to Israel's intelligence services.

In court both men denied having links with spy agencies, such as Mossad.

Helen Clark said: "If one were to lay espionage charges, one would have to be prepared to offer the kind of evidence in court which our intelligence agencies don't like coming forward to display.

"We have very strong grounds for believing these are Israeli intelligence agents."

The sanctions are high on the scale of diplomatic displeasure between Governments, although they avoid targeting the 6000-plus Israeli tourists who visit New Zealand each year.

All Israelis coming to New Zealand on Government business must now obtain visas, Foreign Ministry consultations with Israel have been suspended and the Government has declined an approach for Israel's head of state, President Moshe Katsav, to visit in August.

Helen Clark said the case was a "sorry indictment" on Israel, with which New Zealand had long shared friendly relations.

"We regard it as an unfriendly action by agents of the Government of Israel, aimed at undermining New Zealand's sovereignty and certainly breaching international law.

"While we regret the need for it, New Zealand has no option but to take the actions that it has in response to a deliberate breach of its sovereignty.

"This incident has seriously strained that relationship and it will remain strained for some time."

Full story...



Thursday 15 July 2004

The story TV news won't tell

For 10 years Tim Llewellyn was the BBC's Middle East correspondent. In this passionately argued polemic he accuses British broadcasters, including his former employer, of systematic bias in covering the Arab-Israeli conflict, giving undue prominence to the views of Jerusalem while disregarding the roots of the crisis

Since the Palestinians began their armed uprising against Israel's military occupation three years and eight months ago, British television and radio's reporting of it has been, in the main, dishonest - in concept, approach and execution.

In my judgment as a journalist and Middle East specialist, the broadcasters' language favours the occupying soldiers over the occupied Arabs, depicting the latter, essentially, as alien tribes threatening the survival of Israel, rather than vice versa. The struggle between Israel and the Palestinians is shown, most especially on mainstream bulletins, as a battle between two 'forces', possessed equally of right and wrong and responsibility. It is the tyranny of spurious equivalence.

That 37 years of military occupation, the violation of the Palestinians' human, political and civil rights and the continuing theft of their land might have triggered this crisis is a concept either lost or underplayed. Nor are we told much about how Israel was created, the epochal dilemma of the refugees, the roots of the disaster.

Legions of critics have formed similar views and put them to the BBC and ITN, to no avail. In my case, the BBC, who employed me for many years in the Middle East, was no doubt able to categorise me as a veteran journalist who had spent too long in the region, though executives are always polite and prompt in their replies. Even making such criticisms carried the risk of my being labelled parti pris. (BBC producers are instructed not to mention that I was a BBC Middle East correspondent on air, in case my views might be associated with the BBC.)

Now comes hard evidence to support these views, gathered by Greg Philo and his Glasgow University Media Group, who have monitored and analysed four separate periods of BBC and ITN coverage between late 2000 and the spring of 2002. Bad News From Israel makes the scientifically based case that the main news and current affairs programmes - with the rare exception, usually on Channel 4 - are failing to tell us the real story and the reasons behind it. They use a distorted lens.

The result is that the Israelis have identity, existence, a story the viewer understands. The Palestinians are anonymous, alien, their personalities and their views buried under their burden of plight and the vernacular of 'terror'.

The Israeli view, the study finds, dominates the coverage. There is far more coverage of Israeli deaths than Palestinian, even though far more Palestinians have died, and they have the evidence that unerringly shows it. Israeli violence is tempered not only by the weight of coverage but by the very language used to describe incidents.

One example is a template for hundreds: when Israeli police killed 13 Israeli citizens of Palestinian origin in October 2000, inside Israel, soon after the armed uprising in the occupied territories began, BBC and ITN coverage was a fifth of that given to the Palestinians who stormed a police station in Ramallah a day later and murdered two captured Israeli soldiers. These Palestinians were 'a frenzied [lynch] mob... baying for blood'. No such lurid prose was used to describe the Israeli killing of their own citizen Arabs.

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UK Iraq report labelled a 'whitewash'

As Bantu Steven Biko once said; "The System will never convict The System." Of course it's a friggin' white-wash, what the hell did you expect? That Butler would point a long gangley finger at Phony Tony and say "J'Accuse!"??? I mean come on, these bastards are sitting pretty in the ivory towers, insulated from real life by money and power, they don't give a toss what we think, get used to it!

Anti-war activists have reacted with anger to a report that exonerated Tony Blair from any wrongdoing in the lead-up to last year's invasion of Iraq.

They labelled the report by former top civil servant Lord Richard Butler a "whitewash" and say it has left the British leader with little credibility.

Released on Wednesday, the report found major holes in pre-war intelligence but spared the British prime minister any personal responsibility.

It was the fourth investigation in a year into the government's justification for war from which Blair has escaped with little more than a slapped wrist.

The report concluded Iraq almost certainly did not possess significant stocks of weapons of mass destruction before the conflict, despite government claims.

But it said Blair was not responsible for the failures of British intelligence and did not intentionally lie to the British people.

Lindsey German, spokeswoman for the Stop the War Coalition, told Aljazeera.net the government had found itself "not guilty".

"All these reports seem to conclude that no one is responsible or to blame for the illegal and unjustified invasion of Iraq which has killed thousands of people," she said.

"But no one should be surprised. The Butler committee was set up to get the right result. This is the government investigating itself and then acquitting itself."

German said the report committee, which was appointed by the government, had too narrow a remit.

"We in the anti-war movement have been saying for two years that the UK went to war on a false pretext and this report completely vindicates us.

"But no one has ever gone to war solely on the basis of intelligence because it is known that intelligence is never 100 per cent certain. This is the issue that needs to be addressed," German said.

"The Butler committee was set up to get the right result. This is the government investigating itself and then acquitting itself"

The Stop the War Coalition spokeswoman added: "Tony Blair should resign immediately and make a full apology to the British and Iraqi people. Troops should also be pulled out of Iraq. That is the only way he can start atoning for this mess."

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Wednesday 14 July 2004

US and Israel Behind Attacks and Beheadings

Arab leaders throughout the Middle East have begun adding an interesting twist to their “condemnations” of terror attacks.

From Ramallah to Tehran, claims that the United States and Israel are behind the worst attacks on civilians of their own countries are being heard with increasing frequency.

"You know who is behind these acts," Yassir Arafat told reporters at his Ramallah compound following Sunday’s terror attack in Tel Aviv, which killed 19-year-old Maayan Na’im and wounded close to 30. "Europe knows it, the Americans know it, the Israelis know it." The PLO chief went on to claim that only Israel stands to gain from such attacks, adding that those responsible are also those who killed Tourism Minister Rechavam ("Gandhi") Zeevi and who carried out an earlier bombing attack against Israelis. In the past, Arafat has accused the Israeli secret service of carrying out such attacks as provocation.

According to Palestinian Media Watch, Arafat speared on official PA television saying, "we are against such kinds of bombings and you must never forget that the Israelis are completely behind it as they have been in the past. You know who is behind these acts, which are aimed at harming the court decision. " Arafat continued, "we most not forget who stands behind them, as it was in Beit Lid [a 1995 double suicide bombing attack that killed 21 for which Arafat repeatedly blames Israel]. Who stands behind Beit Lid, who murdered [the late tourism minister Rechavam] Zeevi, who is behind Zeevi..[Israel] ...attempts to cover up what happened in the Hague!"

Arafat is not the only member of the PA that ascribes to such theories. Hatem Abdul Qadder, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and a leader of Fatah,told the Arab news site, Al Bawaba, that, “it is possible that the Al Aqsa Brigades may have done [the bombing] themselves… it is possible that some cells may have been manipulated by Palestinians or Israelis who have an interest in seeing the International Court’s verdict reversed…Some bombings that the [Al Aqsa] Brigades have claimed responsibility for may have been carried out by them. However, some bombings could have been done by Israel itself. We cannot say that there is Israeli penetration within the Brigades…but what I am trying to say is that any one can claim responsibility for any bombing."

Al Bawaba also interviewed a man named ‘Nidal’, a terrorist leader of the Al Aqsa Brigades in Jenin. "We are very happy with the International Court of Justice’s ruling,” said Nidal, “but things are different when it comes to attacks…the timing is decided by the field leaders. We strongly refuse to link our activities with Palestinian political maneuvers. If we were to choose the timing of every operation then many things would have been different," added Nidal.

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Tuesday 13 July 2004

Capitalism is a danger to itself

This is a weird one.... I'm actually finding myself in agreement with a member of the House of Rothschild, give me a minute while I pinch myself... Ok, it's real. This is most definitely a message we should be taking note of. However it's important to read between the lines as well, if de Rothschild was calling for an increase in the amount of publicly created money in the economy I would have fallen off my chair. Bear in mind that this family, and it's agents, have money and influence most of us can't even begin to imagine, let alone dream of. They've been doing it for centuries, manipulation, secrecy and debt are their stock in trade. The fact that one of them breaks silence in this way speaks volumes for the state of the markets... You only have to look around to see how corrupt and dirty everything has gotten, like McDonalds flying those UK MPs to the UEFA championship in Portugal, you can't tell me they did that just because they thought that the MPs had been working too hard and needed a break?!?

Only a new emphasis on ethics can restore confidence in the system

by Evelyn de Rothschild


Capitalism, or at least the corporate personalities and structures that define it for most of us, may be under threat from itself. The collapses of businesses in the US and Europe in a cloud of alleged fraud have shaken confidence in the financial system. People who normally pay little attention to international capital flows may have the feeling that their savings and pensions are suddenly at risk.

For financial services to survive in anything like their present order, we have to restore public confidence. Not only must we clean out the infected parts; we must also prevent the re-invasion of the regulators. The solution must come from inside corporate boardrooms. To preserve the public benefits of capitalism, private reform is the curative, not more public oversight. A restoration of ethics to the top of the priority list in the management of financial services may still be able to save the industry from itself.

In spite of its recently tarnished image, capitalism most certainly does have a public purpose. Finance has built nations, constructed railways, bridges, motorways and harbours, paid for social services, education and defence. When financial services fail to work, through criminal activity or over-regulation, social disruption can quickly follow.

Some recent cases of market abuse involved skimming off small amounts from many accounts. Even when the sums amounted in total to many millions, the frauds were tiny compared with the size of the market as a whole, so it was easy to argue that no one had been hurt. In the case of Parmalat, however, the city of Parma suffered immediate financial damage. Without assistance from the national government, the sudden collapse of such a dominant local business could have disrupted the entire regional economy.

An even greater threat - self-generated - now hangs over Berlin. By the end of 2003 the city's debt was €50bn and is expected to grow to over €67bn by 2007. Such a burden may become unmanageable without a government infusion. This could have an important effect not only on the future of the city, but also on the German economy. Remember how long it took New York to regain its stability after its debt crisis in the 1970s.

Local people suffer not only from job losses but from the collapse of the housing market, the disruption of council services and new demands on health systems. So spreading the pain may keep most of us from noticing, but in some cases the wound goes so deep it becomes impossible to deny its seriousness for society as a whole.

Regulation can provide some protection against abuse, but it succeeds only when it plays a supervisory role rather than trespassing into management. Legal strictures must be succinct to be effective. Lawyers and public regulators do not have the skills to run financial service organisations.

The world of financial services is fluid. Widespread use of the internet is only 10 years old. Before that, we had the introduction of credit cards, market-based pension funds, the multiplicity of mortgage types and with-profits policies. And that is only on the consumer side.

Governments have learned to use a variety of exotic mechanisms to help finance infrastructure projects, public services and pension funds.

With all the wrongdoing in the financial markets over the past year or two, it is worth wondering whether this is a period of temporary disruption, a new step in the evolution of the markets, or the end of capitalism. Even in areas of the world where it is most heavily criticised, capitalism is proving to be a robust and effective manner of market operation. If there is only a disruption, we should see the markets settle down into a renewed period of integrity and constructive growth. On the other hand, if a new species has in fact evolved, we may face new forms of abuse as unethical operators learn to manipulate the system.

New misdeeds could seriously disrupt our systems. That would bring even more cooperation between financial institutions and national governments. But this is not the end of capitalism.

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Michael Moore, Richard Perle Join Forces

"Hijacking planes, terrorizing innocent people and shedding blood, constitute a form of injustice that cannot be tolerated by Islam, which views them as gross crimes and sinful acts. … Any Muslim who is aware of his teachings of his religion and who adheres to the directives of the Qur'an and the Sunn'ah will never involve himself in such acts because they will invoke the anger of God Almighty and lead to harm and corruption on earth." Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and Chairman of the Senior Ulema, Sheikh 'Abdul-'Aziz Âlush, Sept. 15, 2001

Richard Perle - Evil Incarnate Michael Moore's new film Fahrenheit 9/11 has done a tremendous favor for proponents of a war on the Arabian Peninsula. The film achieves what endless pages of conservative think-tank studies, panel discussions, PR and books have not: it spills gasoline on the anti-Saudi sparks in the United States. Moore's film lambastes the Saudis not only for their business relationships, but also for leaving the U.S. after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 (as did other non-Saudi officials that day). The overwhelming popularity of this documentary takes the anti-Saudi message to a whole new market. It is the latest rationale for a long-term plan to invade and occupy the Kingdom. In spite of its progressive producer and target audience, Fahrenheit 9/11 falls in lockstep with the agenda of neoconservative hawks: rid Arabia of the House of Saud, thereby granting the U.S. and allies full access to the Middle East's biggest prize.

There is a growing belief on the part of members Congress, diplomats, and the American public that the Bush administration is executing a "turnaround" in U.S. policy toward the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia because of neoconservative and interest group pressure. Those opposed to the current administration accuse the White House of maintaining ties to an enemy of America in exchange for lucrative business deals. In contrast, those who support ties with Saudi Arabia maintain that the U.S. has no intention of severing relations with a regional stabilizing force and with long term friends in the House of Saud. Who is correct?

Neither.

The U.S. has not had wholly "friendly" intentions toward the Kingdom for the past 30 years. Any appearance of such is only the visible veneer of real U.S. military policy. Declassified documents reveal that there has been a constant drumbeat behind closed doors to invade Saudi Arabia. The Pentagon has, for three decades, formulated and updated secret plans to seize Saudi oil wells and rid the Kingdom of the ruling House of Saud. This is not only a neoconservative cabal. Time and again, plans have been made for an invasion of Saudi Arabia for a larger purpose: U.S. control of Middle Eastern oil, with all the political power that would entail.

The most recent wave of charges that Saudi Arabia supports and/or condones terrorism signifies a secondary and more public attempt to gain support for a thirty-year-old plan to occupy Saudi Arabia. Other regional players' objectives (such as "securing" oil supplies, or "fighting terror") may create an unstoppable impetus for an American invasion.

In 1973, the Nixon administration described a plan of attack against Saudi Arabia to seize its oil fields in a classified Joint Intelligence Report entitled "UK Eyes Alpha." British MI5 and MI6 were informed, and under British National Archive rules, the document was declassified in Dec. 2003. The oil embargo had been over for only three weeks but "Eyes Alpha" suggested that the "U.S. could guarantee sufficient oil supplies for themselves and their allies by taking the oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Gulf State of Abu Dhabi." It followed that "preemptive" action would be considered, and that two brigades could seize the Saudi oilfields and one brigade each could take Kuwait and Abu Dhabi.

In Feb. 1975 the London Sunday Times revealed information from a leaked and classified U.S. Department of Defense plan. The plan was code-named "Dhahran Option Four" and provided for an invasion of the world's largest oil reserves, namely Saudi Arabia. (See exhibit #1)

Also in 1975, Robert Tucker, U.S. intelligence and military analyst, wrote an article for Commentary magazine, owned by the Jewish American Committee, entitled "Oil: The Issue of American Intervention." Tucker stated that, "Without intervention there is a distinct possibility of an economic and political disaster bearing … resemblance to the disaster of 1930s. …The Arab shoreline of the Gulf is a new El Dorado waiting for its conquistadors." And this was followed in February of the same year by an article in Harper's magazine by a Pentagon analyst using a pseudonym, Miles Ignotus, emphasizing the need for the U.S. to seize Saudi oilfields, installations and airports, entitled "Seizing Arab Oil." According to James Akins, former U.S. diplomat, the author was probably Henry Kissinger, secretary of state at the time. Kissinger has neither confirmed nor denied the charge.

Further, in Aug. 1975, a report entitled, "Oil Fields as Military Objectives: A Feasibility Study," was produced for the Committee on Foreign Relations. This report stated that potential targets for the U.S. included Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Venezuela, Libya and Nigeria. "Analysis indicates … [that military forces of OPEC countries were] quantitatively and qualitatively inferior [and] could be swiftly crushed."

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Is Bush the Antichrist?

Now I'm not Christian, I also don't subscribe to any of the other quaint human superstitions that people have, however this article is relevant because Bush professes to be a Christian, and like all good Christians spends most of his time ignoring what Jesus was really saying. The bible is a book cobbled together from various ancient texts that reflected the will of the Emperor Constantine to unite the Christians 346AD at the Counsil of Nicea. While the ancient texts are definitely relevant, the bible is no more "the word of God" than your average cookbook - and cookbooks tend to have clearer instructions! It represents possibly the most audacious attempt at mass mind-control that has ever been perpetrated by humans. Look I know I've pissed a few of you Christians off by saying that, but you guys really need to approach your faith with less emphasis on converting the rest of us and more emphasis on following the teachings of your Lord.

Having been raised as a Christian, I was taught early that the Antichrist was someone who would come in the name of Christ but be the enemy of Christ. Using that definition, let us examine the proposition that George W. Bush could be the Antichrist. If Jesus Christ was in Bush’s place and he was the president of the United States, would he have taken any of the actions that Bush has taken, including the war in Iraq? In other words, is Bush following the teachings of Christ? “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:20).

Christ taught us to love one another, especially our enemies (Matthew 5:43-46). Christ said that even the pagans love those who are like themselves, but the true mark of love is to love those that are different from you. Christ taught us to turn the other cheek and to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Did Bush turn the other cheek when he falsely proclaimed Iraq as a threat? Do you think Bush loves his enemies? Do you think he even loves his friends, since he openly attacks those friends that disagree? Do you think Bush loves Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein? If he is a follower of Christ, then he must love them. Have you ever seen love in Bush’s eyes? Have you ever heard Bush talk about loving one’s neighbor? Does he treat the inmates at Guantanamo or the prisoners of Iraq like he would want to be treated? Do you think Christ would say, “You are either for us or against us?” Have Bush’s actions caused there to be more or less love in the world?

The war on Iraq was apparently undertaken because God whispered in Bush’s ear that war was the only way to solve the problem. I hate to tell Bush this, but God doesn’t whisper those kinds of things in people’s ears. That is the job of the devil! Jesus would never condone a war, as his whole message was to use love, not violence, to solve our problems. War is always a failure of civilization. Bush has set back the civilization of planet Earth. Anyone who wages war in the name of Christ is committing the ultimate Christian sin.

Bush makes a big show of being against abortion in order to advance his political career. His public claim is that abortion is immoral. Yet his actions have resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, most of whom were innocent of any “crime.” And apparently, Bush himself was once involved in an abortion by a former girlfriend. By his actions, Bush has now caused the release of thousands of tons of depleted uranium in Iraq, which will cause birth defects for generations to come. Isn’t that just as immoral as an abortion? And if we judge by the shear number of atrocities, isn’t Bush the most hypocritical champion of human rights?

The Bible says not to lie, and Christ reinforced that message since lying destroys the very fabric of our civilization. As I see it, Bush has told more lies than anyone in the history of our presidency. How can that be Christian? Bush said that he would unite us, yet the country and the world have never been more divided. Other lies have been told about uranium, weapons of mass destruction, the connection between Iraq and 9/11, the economy, and the environment. Is it possible for one to lie in the name of Christ?

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