Unspeakable grief and horror
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Know them by their fruit:
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Unspeakable grief and horror
Know them by their fruit: |
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February 19, 2007
Resistance staged a bold daylight assault against a U.S. combat post north of the capital Monday first striking with a suicide car bombing, then firing on soldiers pinned down in a former Iraqi police station. At least two soldiers were killed and 17 wounded, the military said.
Elsewhere, three U.S. soldiers were killed and two were wounded in a roadside bombing southwest of Baghdad on Monday, the U.S. military said. The military also announced the deaths of three Marines and one soldier since Saturday while conducting combat operations in the western province of Anbar.
Altogether, nine U.S. service members have been reported killed since the beginning of the weekend, six of them on Monday.
The head-on attack north of Baghdad was notable for both its tactics and target, fitting a pattern emerging of resistance forces trying to hit U.S. occupying forces harder outside the capital rather than confront them on the streets during a massive American-led security operation.
Nearly 100 people have died in two days of blasts and bloodshed in and around Baghdad most in areas dominated by the majority Shia Muslims and Iraqi officials who predicted swift results for the security operation have gone suddenly silent.
Translated into unbiased wording from corporate western news media reports |
February 16, 2007 The Terror of Suzi Hazahza
By GREG MOSES
Why Her Family Must Be Freed |
Tasting the food that Suzi Hazahza cooked for him on that first Thursday in November, Reza Barkhordari couldn't have been more joyful.
He went to Suzi's house every night after work, to sit with her whole family.
And each night, the wedding drew a day closer.
"We met at a local Middle Eastern coffee shop in Richardson, Texas called the Al-Afrah," recalls Reza over the telephone.
"That's where I saw her for the first time, and it was instant connection.
It was so strong that Suzi's mother noticed and helped in connecting the two of us.
Shortly after that Suzi and I both realized it was something that was meant to be, and we would be spending our whole lives together.
That was on August 6, 2005."
"I proposed to her on August 6, 2006, our first anniversary. My mother encouraged me to do it, and she sent a diamond ring to Suzi. We were to be married over the Christmas holidays."
In preparation for the wedding, Reza invited the Hazahza family to move closer to his home in Plano, where it would be easier to keep everyone in daily contact.
On the first Monday in November, they were to close on a home in Frisco.
What American dream could have seemed more complete?
Suzi and her entire family had been rounded up at gunpoint
The first Friday of November, however, found Reza driving to the Dallas offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in search of the love of his life.
There was father Radi, a 60-year-old refugee from Palestine — a proud provider who had seen better days as a banker in Jordan — now working as a state-certified car inspector.
And mother Juma, the one who had steered her daughter toward love, and who shared Suzi's delicate preferences for freshly-cooked food.
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There was sister Mirvat, a 24-year-old newlywed who still lived at home because the religious rites for her marriage had not been completed.
She had graduated with honors from North Lake Community College and was running the office of a local insurance agent.
There was brother Hisham, a 23-year-old sales whiz and prized manager for a cell phone company who was moving rapidly from management into ownership, on the verge of opening his own store.
And there were younger brothers Ahmad and Mohammad, ages 17 and 11.
Rousted from bed at gunpoint marched out in their bedclothes
Like two other Palestinian families in Dallas, all of them had been rousted from bed at gunpoint and marched out the door in their bedclothes.
They were locked away, Reza was told.
He could not see Suzi on Friday.
On Saturday, Reza drove again to Dallas ICE, hoping to see Suzi and her family. But no, that was impossible. Then on Sunday ICE gave Reza a little hope. Suzi had been moved to the Rolling Plains Detention Center in Haskell, Texas along with her two oldest brothers, her sister, and her father. Visiting hours lasted until 4:00 pm. If Reza could get there before 4:00, said ICE, then he could see Suzi.
Reza headed West in his car, calling a friend on his cell phone to get directions as he drove into afternoon sun. It was already past noon, and he had a four-hour drive in front of him. If he went just a little bit faster, he could make it in time, and he did, pulling into the immigration jail at 3:45 pm. But it would take ten minutes to get Suzi, explained the guards. And despite Reza's begging, they told him the visit would not be worth the trouble. Dejected, Reza drove back home.
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For the next five weekends Reza planned his visits to Haskell carefully. He drove from Dallas on Friday night and visited with the Hazahza men on Saturday. Then on Sunday he met his beloved Suzi.
One week he recalls Suzi came to the meeting with a fever and cough. She explained that she tried to get medical help but without luck. So Reza made some phone calls and complained. When Suzi's younger brother reported blood in his urine, Reza called about that, too.
After making complaints to ICE, Reza completed his fifth week of visits. He had no way of knowing that after the fifth visit, things for Suzi would suddenly get worse. She called from Haskell begging her fiancé never to come see her again.
After the fifth visit she was subjected to a full body-cavity search
After the fifth visit from Reza, Suzi Hazahza had been subjected to a full body-cavity search.
To this day, Suzi Hazahza refuses all visitors. She will not see the love of her life, Reza. She will not see her mother Juma, recently released from the T. Don Hutto jail in Taylor, Texas. Nor will she see her baby brother Mohammad who was released with Juma. She will not risk another visitor because she is determined to never again let the guards at Haskell prison search her like that again.
New York attorneys Joshua Bardavid and Ted Cox will return to Texas next week to file federal habeas corpus motions in behalf of Suzi Hazahza and her family. The motions they filed for the Ibrahim family in early February worked very well, proving that ICE had no good reason for taking them to jail. Not only were all the Ibrahims freed from Hutto and Haskell both, but Juma and Mohammad Hazahza were also freed from Hutto, two days before a press tour there.
The terror of Suzi Hazahza
In the coming weeks, as a protest movement grows around the issue of children in prison, let us not forget that 20-year-old Suzi has been wrongfully imprisoned, too. To quit the terror of Suzi Hazahza, she and the rest of her family deserve to be immediately freed.
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What is it like for Reza to think about Suzi these days?
There's so much pain
He takes a call from her every night.
Last night he put her on the line with Juma and Mohammad in order to continue this interview.
"You have to understand, this is not your standard strip search," explains Reza.
"What they do makes her extremely uncomfortable."
And how did that chilling phone call from Suzi make him feel, when the love of his life begged him to visit no more? "I felt like I was on fire," he says.
"There's so much pain. Just to be honest with you, I am literally sick to my stomach."
And with each night's phone call from Haskell to Dallas, the marriage of Reza and Suzi, the meant-to-be lovers, slips further away.... |
A man who has placed his soul in the service of Fascism declares an evil and dangerous slavery to be the only true good.
Rather than overtly renouncing human feelings, he declares the crimes committed by Fascism to be the highest form of humanitarianism.
He agrees to divide people up into the pure and worthy and the impure and unworthy. Totalitarianism and Obedience SILENCE IS NOT ALWAYS GOLDEN |
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BBC — Friday, 16 February 2007
We're all conspiracy theorists at heart
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Why are conspiracy theories so popular? We may not always believe what we're told, but we still can't resist listening to them. Guy Smith, producer of 9/11: The Conspiracy Files, suggests the answer may lie deep within us all.
I admit it. If I'm being really honest, I can't deny that I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist. Perhaps we all are.
It's easy to dismiss all conspiracy theories as "bunkum", but remember just occasionally they do turn out to be true. Remember Watergate? Iran-contra? Special Branch collusion with loyalist terrorists in Northern Ireland?
As Jim Fetzer, one of the leading 9/11 conspiracy theorists says, "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you."
I've just spent the best part of nine months investigating the numerous conspiracy theories surrounding the al-Qaeda attacks on 11 September, 2001. They range from the plausible - that intelligence agencies in the Middle East may have had some inside knowledge about what was planned - to the totally wacky - that United 93's passengers were abducted by government agents.
But the deeper you dig in the dark world of conspiracies, the more you realise that different theories share much in common. The conspiracy theorist seizes on any apparent inconsistency and from that germ of truth the story is built up.
What happened to the white car apparently involved in Diana's accident? Was there a second gunman on the Grassy Knoll? And why did it take so long to scramble US fighters on 9/11?
And we can't help but be fascinated by them.
Perhaps it's because deep down, we're all story tellers. It's one of the things that makes us who we are. Since the dawn of time, we've been creating heroes and monsters as a way of trying to make sense of the world. In the beginning, we told those tales round camp fires. Now, it's through internet chat rooms or on mobile phones. But it's still basically the same process - weaving stories out of real life.
Tablets of clay
Nearly five thousand years ago, the legend of Gilgamesh was scratched on to clay tablets by scribes in ancient Mesopotamia, now Iraq. It's an epic tale of good guys and demons fighting it out in an uncertain world where those we love can be snatched from us at the whim of the gods.
Archaeologists believe it was the first story ever to be written down and as I researched the 9/11 conspiracy theories, I was struck how The Epic of Gilgamesh has many parallels with modern conspiracy theories.
When something awful, inexplicable or just plain evil rocks our world, we have an instinctive need to construct elaborate explanations to try and make sense of our anxiety and fear.
Many eye-witnesses to 9/11 thought, "This terrible event can't just be something as simple as 19 young hijackers armed with pocket knives. There must be more too it than that - because the alternative is just too horrific to contemplate."
That alternative is a realisation we are all vulnerable to forces beyond our control; even princesses and presidents aren't immune to "everyday" tragedies like road accidents or random acts of violence.
"I believe the idea that conspiracy theorists are looking for a bigger reason is absolutely right," says Frank Spotnitz, writer of The X Files.
Feels 'unfair'
"I think the most potent targets for conspiracy theories are events of disproportionate tragedy. For example, the president of the United States is assassinated by a lone gunman. It doesn't seem fair, it doesn't seem right, it can't be. This one guy couldn't have done it - there must be larger forces at work."
And so we take comfort in complicated stories about wider conspiracies, usually involving remote, distant figures.
In the past it was mythical gods and monsters. In the more secular modern world, ancient superstitions have been discarded - now it's out-of-touch leaders and unseen government agencies who fill the role of the bogeymen.
We find it reassuring to create an explanation that vindicates our world view. It reinforces our beliefs, suspicions and, yes, even our prejudices.
And from Homer to Harry Potter, the stories we weave always have a hero who is trying to seek out "the truth". Their mission is to go where mere mortals fear to tread - whether it be the Minotaur's labyrinth or the labyrinthine recesses of the secret state - and bring back knowledge to share with the rest of us.
In the age of the internet, those fearless warriors are the self-styled conspiracy theorists whose hunting grounds are the furthest strands of the web. There one can find any number of rumours, stories or scenarios which can be strung together to create the perfect explanation for just about anything that goes wrong in the world.
Your rational half knows these theories probably aren't true, but our instinctive side thinks, well just maybe there's something in it.
In 5,000 years, we haven't changed at all. And maybe that's a very reassuring thing to know. |
Alex Jones Terrorstorm America — from freedom to fascism |
Atrocities committed by Israel — graphic pictures What CNN never shows you |
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Hunger children, animals dying Vicious, discredited economic programs |
Living on the streets Children in danger |
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Putin attacks very dangerous US
"One state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way."
Earlier German chancellor Angela Merkel told the delegates in Munich that the international community was determined to stop Iran getting nuclear weapons.
"This is very dangerous. Nobody feels secure anymore because nobody can hide behind international law," the Russian President said, speaking through a translator about the US.
"This is nourishing an arms race with the desire of countries to get nuclear weapons."
Western leaders in the audience, including Mrs Merkel, looked decidedly glum-faced when President Putin had finished.
"What we are talking about here is a very, very sensitive technology, and for that reason we need a high degree of transparency, which Iran has failed to provide, and if Iran does not do so then the alternative for Iran is to slip further into isolation," Merkel had said before Putin spoke.
The IAEA in the pocket of the West and other warring Western nations announced it had frozen about half of technical aid projects involving Iran.
The IAEA gives technical aid to dozens of countries on the peaceful use of nuclear energy in fields such as medicine, agriculture and power generation.
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| Emir of Qatar |
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Photos of Iranian weapons Syria protected by Russia |
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U.S. Lieut. Ehren Watada:
"There was a long time when I went through depression because I told myself I didn't have a choice.
That I joined the military and I had only one duty and that was to obey what I was told, regardless of how I felt inside.
It really hurt me for a long time because I imprisoned myself by telling myself I didn't have a choice.
It didn't matter that I might be sent to prison.
I was already in prison, my freedom was already gone.
When I told myself that I do have a choice, I have a choice to do what is morally right, what is in my conscience, and what I can live with for the rest of my life even though that comes with consequences, I do have that choice.
When I realized that, and when I chose what was right for me, I became free again.
And I think everybody has to remember that and to realize that is what is important in life."
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Kewe note: 2 Trillion US$ — now conservative estimate — includes support of U.S. dead servicemen's children until adulthood and future care and maintenance of all severely wounded and unable to support themselves returning U.S. servicemen.
650,000 Iraq deaths — now conservative estimate.
US$2,000,000,000,000.00 divided by 650,000 people = US$3,769,230.00
Three million US taxpayer dollars approximate for each Iraq person killed through the US invasion.
What could have been done with those dollars for the people of this planet?
And given the Iraq people more than they ever wanted.
What joy and happiness would have been on the faces of so many.
How then the U.S. people would have been loved. |
Photos Iraq babies born deformed U.S. legacy to the Iraq people |
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Eric Fairm, U.S. Iraq Interrogator — Fallujah
The lead interrogator at the DIF had given me specific instructions: I was to deprive the detainee of sleep during my 12-hour shift by opening his cell every hour, forcing him to stand in a corner and stripping him of his clothes.
Three years later the tables have turned.
It is rare that I sleep through the night without a visit from this man.
His memory harasses me as I once harassed him.
I failed to disobey a meritless order — I failed to protect a prisoner in my custody
Despite my best efforts, I cannot ignore the mistakes I made at the interrogation facility in Fallujah.
I failed to disobey a meritless order, I failed to protect a prisoner in my custody, and I failed to uphold the standards of human decency.
Instead, I intimidated, degraded and humiliated a man who could not defend himself.
I compromised my values.
I will never forgive myself. |
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Published on Thursday, February 8, 2007 by McClatchy Newspapers
Billions and Billions of Dollars Just Disappear in Iraq
by Joseph L. Galloway
Show me the money, or at least some receipts scribbled on the backs of old envelopes and grocery bags.
This week, we were treated to the spectacle of the former U.S. civilian overlord of Iraq, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, squirming in the hot seat as he attempted with little success to explain what he did with 363 TONS of newly printed, shrink-wrapped $100 bills he had flown to Baghdad.
That's $12 billion in cold, hard American cash, and no one, especially Bremer, seems to know where it went.
It may be an urban legend, but the late Sen. Everett Dirksen, the Illinois Republican, is widely quoted as saying: "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
If he didn't say it, he should have.
Bremer, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his role in totally screwing up the first two years of the Iraq Occupation, said that a lot of the cash was delivered to ministries of the Iraqi government to meet payrolls that were patently fraudulent.
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The Department of Defense's special inspector general for Iraq, Stuart Bowen, said that a 2005 audit he conducted found that in some ministries the payroll was padded with up to 90 percent "ghost employees" — people who didn't really work there or perhaps didn't really exist.
Bremer said that he decided to provide the money to meet those payrolls, even though he knew they were bogus, for fear of starting riots and demonstrations among the Iraqis, real and imagined.
After all, the former czar told the representatives, it wasn't really our money anyway.
It was Iraqi money — oil earnings and bank accounts seized from Saddam Hussein's government — that we were holding in trust.
I can think of no period in American history when we sat idly by while $12 billion just disappeared, poof, without a paper trail; without heads rolling; without someone going to prison.
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And all this was happening at a time in the war when American soldiers and Marines were going without properly armored vehicles, without lifesaving body armor and even without some of the weapons they needed.
What does it take for the American people's gag reflex to kick in?
When do we begin to realize that this is only the tip of an iceberg of fraud, waste, abuse and corruption perpetrated on a monumental scale by the Bush administration, its buddies among the military contractors and their handmaidens on Capitol Hill?
The cost of this war is swiftly building toward a trillion dollars.
How much of that was siphoned off by crooked and incompetent contractors, greedy defense corporations and Iraqi crooks in a government that we created and installed?
No one in the congressional hearing has yet asked Bremer or the inspector general how much of that $12 billion in cash was handed out to American contractors in Baghdad, although that question begs to be asked and answered.
During the dark days of World War II, Congress established a Committee on War Profiteering and put a little-known senator from Missouri, Harry S. Truman, in charge. Truman, a veteran of combat service in World War I, was a bulldog.
His committee went after not only those who stole money but also those who provided shoddy or worthless equipment and supplies for our troops.
He had the power to shut down an offending company or contractor, and he used it.
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Where's our Truman Committee today?
Where are the righteous representatives of the people charged with standing guard over our troops and our money?
We've wasted $600 billion on a war that we're losing, day by bloody day, at a time when our president presents a federal budget that cuts Medicare to find billions for more that war.
The Decider boasts that if we do things his way, America's wealthiest individuals won't have to pay even one dollar more in taxes.
Meanwhile, the people's representatives, on both sides of the aisle, round up the contributions they need for re-election by putting themselves in the pockets of the very robber barons they're supposed to be investigating, interrogating and policing.
Perhaps we should let a no-bid cost-plus contract to Halliburton to construct large additions to the country club federal prisons to accommodate a population explosion in the years ahead.
Or, for convenience sake, maybe we could just add a prison wing to the $500 million George W. Bush Presidential Library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. |
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© 2007 McClatchy Washington Bureau and wire service sources
Common Dreams © 1997-2007 |
U.S. Lieut. Ehren Watada:
"To stop an illegal and unjust war, the soldiers can choose to stop fighting it."
"If soldiers realized this war is contrary to what the Constitution extols — if they stood up and threw their weapons down — no President could ever initiate a war of choice again."
"Should citizens choose to remain silent through self-imposed ignorance or choice, it makes them as culpable as the soldiers in these crimes."
"We all take part in it — if you pay your taxes, you're taking part in this war."
"We all have a responsibility, as they determined after Nuremberg, whether you're the lowest soldier or the highest ranking general, or just a regular civilian, we all have responsibility...to resist and refuse enabling and condoning this criminal behavior."
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THE SCIENCE OF EVIL
ITS USE FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES CarolynBaker.Org
Our government wouldn’t harm us; our government has our best interests at heart
Canada’s Red Pill press has recently published psychologist Andrew M. Lobaczewski’s book Political Ponerology (Red Pill Press, Canada, 1998 and 2006) in which the author expounds on his observations that during his years of clinical work in Poland, he noticed a high correlation between acts that most people would label as "evil" and various pathologies.
The most apt diagnostic labeling of these individuals in modern psychological jargon would be sociopathic, the most important characteristic of which is the seeming absence of a conscience or empathy in relation to other living beings.
Lobaczewski and some of his Eastern European colleagues working under Soviet rule decided to take this study to a higher level and researched how sociopathy was playing out in government, in business, and in other social groups.
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Evil adjusted for political purposes
Political ponerology (originating from the Greek word for evil, poneros) is a science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes which ultimately on a larger scale results in a pathocracy.
The research indicates that sociopaths are found in all races, ethnicities, and creeds, and that no group is immune to them.
Sociopaths constitute, according to the author, about 6% of the population of any given group.
Red Pill’s editor states that, "Political Ponerology is a book that offers a horrifying glimpse into the structure underlying our governments, our biggest corporations, and even our system of law."
After I read the book, a number of nagging questions about the policies and practices of government and corporate officials began to answer themselves in that Lobaczewski’s analysis goes to the heart of why the United States government has become a criminal enterprise hell bent on dominating the world and annihilating vast quantities of human beings globally and domestically. |
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When I first began the book I was more than a little put off by Lobaczewski’s European style of writing — his wordiness and his succinctness - challenged approach.
Nevertheless, as I kept reading, and I must admit, struggling with his sentences, I grew increasingly grateful for the book and the friend who gave it to me.
As a result, a few of the author’s fundamental concepts cry out to be shared, and this article is an attempt to do just that.
Lobaczewski first points out that societies are the most vulnerable to evil during good times.
"During good times," he writes, "people progressively lose sight of the need for profound reflection, introspection, knowledge of others, and an understanding of life’s complicated laws." (P.85)
Certainly, in my lifetime, I have not witnessed an American society willing to reflect and wrestle with the complexities of existence since the Vietnam War.
Although much of the protest and activism of the sixties was naively myopic, the tension and angst of the era drove a majority of individuals in the United States to look deeper within themselves than they otherwise might have.
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Two million Iraqis who died due to U.S.-imposed embargo
Following upon the heels of the war, of course, came Watergate, and further confirmation that governments always betray their own citizens and always lie about doing so.
Then as the ME-generation seventies offered us the deceptions of peace and honest government, the groundwork for the current horrors domestically and internationally were being laid.
America was war-weary, and smarting from the wounds of Watergate, acting out Lobaczewski’s assertion that "During good times, the search for truth becomes uncomfortable because it reveals inconvenient facts." (85)
On the other hand, he states, "Suffering, effort, and mental activity during times of imminent bitterness lead to progressive, generally heightened, regeneration of lost values, which results in human progress." (P.87)
Conversely, "The cycle of happy, peaceful times favors a narrowing of the world view and an increase in egotism…."
Well, Jung said it long before Lobaczewski: Consciously analyzed suffering produces growth while letting nothing roll besides the good times produces stagnation and delusion.(87)
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As we continued to stage various coups around the world
Perhaps no generation in American history has ever been so vulnerable to egotism as that of the seventies.
It became known as the ME generation for a reason—not only because Americans became more personally narcissistic but also because internationally, in spite of losing our first war and weathering the Watergate scandal, we proceeded to demonstrate our superiority as we continued to stage various coups around the world and wage economic warfare on developing nations, setting the stage for Reagan’s ascent to power in the eighties and the polarization of ourselves as the savior in contrast to the "evil empire" of anyone else who dared to disagree.
It is exactly at those times of ego-delirium that nations render themselves deaf, dumb, and blind to conscience-less sociopaths who seduce them into policies and practices that are lethal for themselves and the rest of the world.
Lack of reflection by definition produces human beings devoid of discernment.
One enormous problem I have with Lobaczewski’s elucidation of his theory is his use of "normal" to describe people who are not sociopaths.
I wish he had used a different term since "normal" is so amorphous and laden with the naïve assumption that there is such a thing as a human being who is not dysfunctional in at least one aspect of his/her life.
Nevertheless, he emphasizes that so-called "normal" individuals cannot comprehend the mind or behavior of the sociopath and are thus especially vulnerable to being harmed by them—hence the principal reason for writing a book on Ponerology, namely, to educate non-sociopaths about the pathology.
The author uses the term "spellbinders" to describe psychological snake charmers who appear to be saviors, enlightened thinkers/politicians, even activists who present themselves as possessing insights based on research uniquely carried out by themselves or information gained through extraordinary channels to which no one else has access. This could also apply to cult leaders like Warren Jeffs and Jim Jones.
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The U.S. government couldn’t possibly have orchestrated the 9/11 attacks
Yet, the author warns the reader that our own unconscious processes can cause us to block out the "red flags" that may arise in dealing with sociopaths.
"Unconscious psychological processes outstrip conscious reasoning, both in time and in scope, which makes many psychological phenomena possible." (152)
Thus the denial that prohibits some individuals from seeing the darkest truths of what a sociopath is trying to promote, i.e.,
"Our government wouldn’t harm us.
Our government has our best interests at heart.
No president could get away with that.
The rule of law is still at work in America.
Fascism can’t happen here.
The U.S. government couldn’t possibly have orchestrated the 9/11 attacks.
If 9/11 were orchestrated by the U.S. government, too many people would have been involved for it to remain a secret",
And on and on ad infinitum.
Lobaczewski asserts that every society should teach its members proper thinking skills and how to detect the red flags of sociopathy.
Teaching critical thinking skills in the educational process is one step in that direction, but in America’s No Child Left Behind gargantuan dumbing down project, even this first step is overwhelmingly absent.
The author states that "an ever-strengthening network of psychopathic and related individuals gradually starts to dominate, overshadowing the others." (192)
Small pathological minority takes control
This situation rapidly devolves into a pathocracy or a system wherein a small pathological minority takes control over a society of normal people. (193)
The book’s editor, Laura Knight-Jadczyk, in her footnotes does not hesitate to name Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, under the tutelage of Leo Strauss, as principal players in America’s twenty-first century pathocracy.
Tragically, according to the author, "Pathocracy progressively paralyzes everything [and]…progressively intrudes everywhere and dulls everything."(195)
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If this all sounds very grim, and it is, Lobaczewski encourages us by emphasizing that, "If the ponerogenic activity of pathological factors—deviant individuals and their activities—is subjectged to conscious controls of a scientific, individual, and societal nature, we can counteract evil as effectively as by means of persistent calls to respect moral values." (180)
In other words, the author insists, crusading for moral values alone, can neither prevent nor expose ponerogenic activity.
In fact, he asserts, it can exacerbate such activity by distracting attention from the most ghastly forms of evil to that which is not evil at all or presents with a more complex and less blatant quality.
We have only to witness the ideology and rhetoric of the religious right in this country to observe a stellar example of the latter.
Professing to be a "culture of life" it is implacably obsessed with death, apocalyptic violence, hell fire and brimstone.
It serves no purpose, essentially, in the current milieu but to foster and perpetuate pathocracy.
Political Ponerology is an invaluable work that every human being striving to become conscious, should read, not only for its expose of the pathology of the individuals currently in control of the United States government, but also the light it may shed on individuals closer to home, some of whom may be friends, fellow-activists, business or civic leaders.
The book’s purpose is not to incite paranoia, but to cultivate discernment and buttress our trust of our innate intuition in order to navigate the daunting manifestations of evil that surround us in the twenty-first century.
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Alex Jones Terrorstorm America — from freedom to fascism |
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The American proxy war in Gaza
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 3 February 2007 |
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Abbas weapons fighting
In recent days the unremitting, murderous brutality of the Israeli occupation has been eclipsed by the carnage in Gaza as dozens of Palestinians have been killed in what is commonly referred to as "interfactional fighting."
This fighting is between forces loyal to Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction on the one hand, and the Hamas-led government on the other.
Engine of this violence
The airwaves have been filled with anguished calls from every sector of Palestinian society — political parties, nongovermental organizations, and Christian and Muslim religious leaders — for the fighting to cease and for a return to dialogue.
Perhaps for fear of exacerbating the already bitter situation, few of these voices have directly confronted the engine of this violence.
In the fevered minds of Bush administration ideologues, Palestine has become another front in what they conceive of as a new Cold War against "Islamofascism."
Phantom enemy
They see Iran as the central target and proxy battles are being waged against a phantom enemy from Afghanistan and Pakistan, through Iraq into Palestine, Lebanon, Somalia and ever onwards wherever Arabs and Muslims are to be found.
In every case, local conflicts with specific histories are being escalated and marshalled into this grand narrative .
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Abbas, Dahlan willing proxies
Mahmoud Abbas and Gaza warlord Muhammad Dahlan have become the willing proxies for the Palestine franchise of this wider project, as their tactics and loyalists' statements reveal.
The latest round of fighting began on February 1, when forces of the Palestinian Ministry of Interior, run by the Hamas government, attempted to interdict a convoy of trucks that crossed into Gaza from Israel.
Officials alleged that the trucks were carrying weapons destined for the Presidential Guard, the militia loyal to Abbas.
Trucks loaded with!!!
Fatah figures, speaking on the BBC Arabic Service, vehemently denied the allegation, making contradictory claims about the contents of the trucks.
One said they contained "food and medicine for the Palestinian people," another "tents and equipment," and another still "electrical generators and spare parts." No two denials matched.
Arms via Israel
Yet the fact that the Presidential Guard is receiving arms via Israel is common knowledge to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and has been talked about openly in the Israeli media for months.
Since October, eight truckloads of AK-47 rifles and machine guns and several million rounds of ammunition have entered Gaza from Israel through the Nahal Oz and Kerem Shalom crossings, according to a high-ranking officer of the Force-17 Fatah militia who conveyed this information to Hebron-based journalist Khaled Amayreh.
Not all these guns go solely to the Presidential Guard; many are sold on to the highest bidder.
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Bush gives $86 million US taxpayer money to create terror in Palestine
And just days ago, President Bush announced that he would transfer $86 million dollars in the near future to further boost Abbas.
In order to change the subject from the scandal of the Palestinian "presidency" receiving US arms through Israel to use against the Palestinian people, the Presidential Guard launched a counterattack against the Islamic University in Gaza shelling, burning and destroying parts of it.
Abbas' officials claimed that their forces had arrested seven Iranian weapons experts working for Hamas, and labelled Hamas leaders "extremists" and "putschists."
Hamas burning down Islamic University themselves?
Fatah and Fatah-backed local radio even accused Hamas of burning down the Islamic University themselves in order to blacken Fatah's 'glorious image.'
The allegations about Iranians were universally dismissed but they revealed the extent to which Abbas officials have adopted the Israeli and American paradigm as their own.
In several recent demonstrations, Dahlan loyalists have shouted "Shia, Shia," at Hamas supporters.
Sectarian incitement, hitherto unknown
This was perhaps supposed to draw attention to Iranian support for Hamas (the movement, like the rest of the Palestinian Muslim community, is Sunni) but this hateful sectarian incitement, hitherto unknown in Palestinian society, serves (for now) the wider strategic agenda of Abbas' and Dahlan's sponsors.
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After Hizbullah defeated Israel last summer, the Lebanese Shia movement, backed by Iran, gained enormous prestige among the region's people, especially Palestinians, as an Arab nationalist and pan-Islamic movement, standing firm against Israeli aggression.
This in contrast to toothless, unpopular and corrupt governments.
Promotion of Sunni fear of their Shia brethren
Hence the active promotion of Sunni fear of their Shia brethren is designed to limit the influence of Iran — and serve up a good old-fashioned dose of divide and rule.
(Thus from this perspective, the carnage in Iraq and the outrage at the brutal televised hanging of the Sunni-identified Saddam Hussein by a Shia-identified militia was a real bonus.)
Abbas is at last doing what Arafat was always urged to do, while Israel and the US watch with glee.
As Ha'aretz explained, Israel felt no need to launch a large scale revenge operation against Gaza following the January 29 Eilat bombing: "When Fatah and Hamas are so good at killing each other, why should Israel intervene and spur them to close ranks against the common enemy?"
Mouthpiece of American policy, so-called Quartet
As the battles were raging in Gaza, the mouthpiece of American policy, the so-called Quartet (made up of representatives of the US, European Union, the United Nations and Russia) met to discuss the long-dead "peace process."
The body voiced its "deep concern at the violence among Palestinians and called for respect for law and order." In a repeat of the American approach to last summer's Lebanon war, the Quartet pointedly did not call for a ceasefire.
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It did however call "for Palestinian unity behind a government committed to non-violence, recognition of Israel and acceptance of the obligations under the Roadmap."
While remaining totally silent about Israel's continued slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Israel extending illegal West Bank wall to annex several large Jewish-only colonies in West Bank
Particularly last week's announcement by Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert that Israel was extending the illegal West Bank separation wall further east to annex several large Jewish-only colonies.
Add twenty thousand to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians already cut off
This measure will add twenty thousand to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians already cut off in walled ghettos that former US President Carter has likened to "apartheid."
Quartet "welcomed" US arming
The Quartet even "welcomed" US arming of the Presidential Guard, though in diplomatic doublespeak this was euphemized as "efforts to reform the Palestinian security sector and thus to help improve law and order for the Palestinian people."
Bleak as things are, cracks are starting to appear.
Although US propaganda asserts that the arming of the Abbas militia is in part a response to growing Iranian influence, the British parliament's International Development Committee last week concluded that it was Western sanctions and isolation that had driven Hamas to seek Iranian support.
The committee condemned the UK government's refusal to talk to Hamas, urged it to do so as it did with the IRA, and urged consideration of EU sanctions against Israel, such as suspending the Association agreement granting the Jewish state special trade privileges.
Israel and American propaganda
Israeli and American propaganda, now also adopted by the European Union, attempts to obscure the basic understanding that Palestine is the struggle of a colonized people for liberation.
The policy of supporting a quisling group to fight as a proxy on behalf of empire, colonizer and occupier will only increase the bloodshed.
But it will ultimately fail in Palestine as it did before in Northern Ireland, Southern Africa and Central and Southern America, and as it is failing in Iraq.
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Related Links: |
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton, regarded as the frontrunner for the Democratic Presidential nomination, recently declared at an affair hosted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a leading instigator of war with Iran, that Iran is a danger to the US and a great threat to Israel.
Hillary's claims are preposterous.
Israel has large numbers of nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
Iran has none.
Iran has no ability to harm the US and would have no motive except for the Bush Regime's gratuitous provocations.
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Published on Saturday, February 3, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Grannies do Heavy Lifting by Cindy Sheehan
My dear friend, Diane Baker, from Dallas-Ft. Worth who is a United Church of Christ Minister and fearless crusader for peace is also a grandmother, has a degenerative disease, and was sweeping garbage in DC for being arrested there this past October protesting the illegal and immoral war in Iraq: to save your children and the children of Iraq.
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Three grandmas are going to Federal Prison for 1-3 months each for protesting the inhumane and horrifically criminal School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Ga.
They compromised the fence line protesting how the SOA (School of Assassins) training of murderers who oppress, torture and kill people all over the world...even throwing in a few South American dictators here and there.
To save your children
They did it to save your children and the children of the world.
My "grannies' in the Granny Peace Brigade get arrested over and over again all over the country trying to enlist in the US military to save your children and the children of Iraq.
Diane was sentenced to eight hours of sweeping trash in DC; which is a filthy city, but the trash that needs to be taken out resides in the White House.
Diane was doing what each and every American has the right and the moral duty to do: she was exercising her First Amendment freedoms and her obligation to dissent against an out of control government.
The "compassionate" judge ordered Diane, who is obviously physically challenged by her disease, to do this community service in freezing weather.
Diane's entire life is community service to her country and to her patients in the hospice where she lovingly helps people go to the other side.
War is peace
Hate is love
Injustice is justice
Indifference is compassion
And this country is seriously upside down from over six years of an administration that thinks that good things are happening in a country where their policies have killed almost a million people and a "president" that goes to Wall Street to congratulate the only people who are benefitting from his tax cuts and war for profit.
The members of Congress who role into their comfortable offices from hired cars and walk between their offices and the Congress building in underground tunnels in the oppressive heat of summer, or the dire cold of winter; are contemplating weak and cowardly measures for only symbolic opposition to a war that is killing the children of the sinking middle class in this country and the brown, non-Christian, non-English speaking children of Iraq.
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People in US who have everything to lose complicit in war crimes of BushCo
The people in the US who have everything to lose are allowing Congress to be complicit in the war crimes of BushCo.
The people of the US are also allowing Grannies to do the heavy lifting and hard work and prison time for us all.
These wonderfully brave and committed women should be home playing and spoiling their own grandchildren, but they are putting their tired and sometimes diseased bodies on the line for yours.
Do it for the children
Beginning on Monday, February 5th, the Occupation Project is beginning sit-ins in every House Rep and Senator's offices across this nation to demand an end to the war in Iraq by voting "nay" to giving any more money to BushCo for their murderous war.
Join the Occupation.
Put your body on the line like these brave Grandmas have and as our brave, tired, and deceived soldiers do everyday for BushCo's lies.
Do it for all the children.
Common Dreams © 1997-2007 |
Within the context:
...to the 1958 revolutionary uprising in Iraq that brought to power Abdel Karim Qassim.
Qassim legalized the national party and the communist party.
He confined U.S. and British oil companies to one tenth of one percent of the territory of Iraq.
He was the first Iraqi President to challenge the British amputation of Kuwait which had been Iraq's access to the sea and its southernmost province.
...urgent plants by the CIA and Mossad to murder Abdel Karim Qassim.
The CIA point man who assassinated Abdel Karim Qassim in February 1963 was the CIA station's contract killer, Saddam Hussein.
...designed to abort the national movement and the anti-imperialist fervor in Lebanon and to prepare for the isolation of Baghdad pending the murder of the head of state.
All wings of the capitalist class in the U.S. stood behind this and the Zionists were part of the planning.
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7/7 Bus Bomb Survivor Contradicts Official Story
First hand witness testimony tells of strange occurrences in bombing aftermath
Steve Watson & Alex Jones Infowars.net Friday, February 2, 2007 Alex Jones was joined on air this week by Daniel Obachike, the man who was on the lower deck of the number thirty bus that exploded in Tavistock Square in London on 7/7/05, to give an exclusive account of what he saw and a preview of his soon to be published narrative,The 4th Bomb.
Last December we detailed how Daniel's forthcoming book will claim that the Hackney bus was diverted to Tavistock Square by two unmarked cars which then left the scene at high speed after the drivers had conversed with police in the area.
In a further report last month Daniel provided more information, revealing that he witnessed several "agents" as he calls them, seemingly with assigned tasks, calmly coordinating the scene in the immediate aftermath, before paramedics arrived and whilst many lay injured, dead or dying.
"I'm just a regular guy, I was born and bred and work in London, and that day I was on my way to work in Old Street, and there was some kind of disruption going on. We were told that it was a power surge [on the underground] and that's how I came to be on the bus." Daniel Said.
He went on to describe the seconds that led up to blast in Tavistock Square:
"And then after that the bus left Euston, full of passengers who had also been evacuated, and the bus seemed to be going nowhere, so I looked out of the... because I was standing on the lower deck because I wasn't sure whether I was on the correct bus.
And then I peered ahead and I saw these two cars, which were a mercedes and a BMW, blue and black, which seemed to be in front of the bus, holding it up, and it was diverted about four or five minutes later down towards Tavistock square.
After the explosion, you can understand, I was on the floor. It took about five seconds til the noise had actually quieted down, then I just got up and ran, escaped, I ran straight down the street."
After a few paces down the street Daniel said he saw a man filming him:
"He was holding a camera, it looked like a camcorder, he was walking towards me filming the bus itself. I was confused by this and stopped, skidded to a halt.
Then I looked left, right to see what was going on, then looked behind me and saw the bus, the upper deck of which had been completely destroyed by the bomb explosion.
I think at that point my mind must have just changed... I was really, not frightened but I was aware that something amiss was going on.
I was looking at the people moving into the actual space on the square.
There were guys who were hanging around.
There was a row of policemen who were just standing there in yellow fluorescent jackets, they weren't doing anything, they were just watching.
There was this guy filming and I'm saying 'what is going on here'. It didn't feel right."
In an interview shortly after 7/7, Nurse Terence Mutasa, of University College Hospital, said two women he treated told him:
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"Some guy came down to the bottom deck and exploded."
Pedestrian Jody Ward, 36, said:
"There was a huge bang and a mound of flesh at my feet.
"It was a torso blown apart."
The Mirror newspaper reported that:
Police believe the suicide bomber was heading for the Underground. Fearing he was unable to reach his intended target, he set off his bomb descending from the top deck.
Police later changed initial reports that the bomber was on the lower deck, and located him on the upper deck of the bus.
Daniel went on to describe a man who got his attention, after the blast, as he appeared to be injured but was acting very strangely:
"So I went and helped some woman who was walking by the bus, she was covered in blood.
I helped her to get some kind of help at a hotel which was further down the square, and I passed this gentleman who seemed to have acquired some kind of injuries.
But I couldn't understand for the life of me how this was possible because he was forty, fifty metres away from the bus itself.
So he was making a lot of noise and trying to get people's attention, but I just saw his actual injuries as fake.
He was rolling around on the pavement fifty metres in front of the bus yet the bus bomb blew backwards, one lady at the back, I was standing in the centre of the bus, she actually died, and someone walking behind the bus also died."
Daniel says that he remembers seeing both a bandage around the man's head, and a neat tear in his trouser leg, along the seam within 60 seconds of the explosion, and claims that this person was some kind of intelligence operative that was quickly whisked away after the bomb had gone off.
"There were a lot of people observing I noticed, some people were running forward, the medical staff and the medical professionals, you could tell who they were because they were seeing what they could try and do for people.
But then there were these other people who were just watching, taking notes, organising people, moving things.
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Within twenty-five seconds [of the explosion] I had witnessed the cameraman, and it was around fifteen seconds after that that I actually noticed this chap.
So it was within forty-five seconds he was with some kind of head bandage and lying on the street.
And I don't know how he got there because if it was the bus blast he must have been flung about forty to fifty feet and that is not really feasible with the injuries which he was displaying."
Daniel went on to say that he believes this man had prior knowledge and prior intelligence and was placed at the scene for some ulterior purpose.
"I conducted a search of my own online because a few days after the 7th of July his picture was everywhere, it has now been totally pulled, I mean it wasn't on any of the BBC websites, it wasn't on any of the international news sites, you just couldn't find this guy.
I actually spent about two days searching and I got two images of him and that's what you see on www.the4thbomb.com "
Those images are displayed again here:
Daniel went on to describe others that he saw closing in on the scene immediately after the blast:
"There were about four guys in blue bottoms, and who had rucksacks, they were kind of foot soldier types, there were about two or three people who were just standing in the doorways, just watching everything and there was another guy who was coordinating everything, he was in plain clothes and was coordinating police, when they finally came forward to actually do something."
Daniel then described in further detail what happened when the bus was diverted by unmarked cars and then proceeds to tell the story of how police at first did not want to take his testimony, then later hounded him for six to seven months after the event.
Daniel describes in detail how he was overtly followed to and from his home and work on many occasions and how he received intimidating phone calls.
He also stated that from what he saw on that day, and has since researched, he categorically does not believe that Hassib Hussein carried out the bus bombing.
Listen to the whole fascinating interview by clicking here
Daniel says he has more information on the way and will keep us posted over the coming weeks in the run up to the release of his book, The 4th Bomb.
We will be sure to bring you further updates.
INFOWARS.net Copyright © 2002-2007 Alex Jones All rights reserved. |
Alex Jones Terrorstorm America — from freedom to fascism |
What Was Shimon Perez Doing In Qatar?
The Emir of Qatar is really a good man, whose hands are all over the globe.
By Ali Al-Hail Al-Jazeerah, February 3, 2007 The mass murderer, Shimon Perez, should've long time ago, been put on trial in the Hague for his direct responsibility for Qana's 1996 massacre. He was then the Israeli 'Defense' Minister. In practical terms, he was the Israeli Offense Minister. Two years after he was awarded the Peace Nobel Prize, he ordered his US-made- bombers to commit one of the ugliest crimes against humanity. The Nobel Prize showed how too noble it was, to be given to Perez. Why should Perez be put on trial. Massacre of 120, many more injured and maimed Because Israel owes it to more than 120 Lebanese, who were massacred by Perez's air force. Many more were either injured, or maimed. More to the point, we in Qatar owe it to them. At least not to welcome Shimon Perez to our country. Qana's holocaust not a mistake The April 18, 1996 Qana's holocaust was not a mistake, as Israel then claimed, according to a UN neutral investigation led by Maj-Gen Franklin van Kappen of the Netherlands. The UN's report put an end to Israel's, and particularly, to Shimon Perez's sustainable denial. For this reason, and for many more other reasons in an endless list, Shimon Perez wasn't supposed to be in Qatar under any excuse, including participating in Doha's panels. His place is not in Doha. It's rather in the tribunal court at the Hague. Simply, because he is a war criminal Simply, because he is a war criminal. He was in Doha to say Israel hasn't been killing Palestinians, or any other Arabs. Israel has only, been defending itself. It's the Palestinians who have been killing themselves. He was in Doha to say that, even Fateh's Mahmoud Abbas, Mohammed Dahlan, and a few others disagree with Hamas, and don't want them in power. |
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Thanks to rivalries Fateh, and Hamas whose their shortsighted interests led to the killing of more than 45 Palestinians, injuring and maiming many more, since mid last year.
Thanks to Hamas, and Fateh for further deteriorating the Palestinian infrastructure.
Thanks to Hamas, and Fateh for increasing Palestinians' suffering, and misery, instead of alleviating them.
'Palestinians killing Palestinians'
Thanks indeed of course, for Fateh, and Hamas to give an excuse to one of their killers, to feel pleasurable for 'Palestinians killing Palestinians'.
It was too rude of Shimon Perez, while he's a guest in Doha, to abruptly, respond to the Emir of Qatar, when the Emir said Israel should recognize Hamas, and negotiate with it.
Shimon Perez's reply, was negative, and dismissive.
He had even lacked the possible slightest knack of an ethical diplomacy, in responding to an Arab leader, whose attempts to bring both parties closer towards a two state solution cannot be more clearer.
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If I were the Emir of Qatar, I wouldn't receive him on the next day to his Qatari visit.
It's an honor which a person like Perez doesn't deserve.
The Emir of Qatar is really a good man, whose white hands are all over the globe.
Professor, Dr. Ali Al-Hail, Professor of Mass Communication, Twice Fulbright Award Winner, Fulbright Visiting Scholar, and Board Member of AUSACE ASC, IABD, NEBAA, BEA, IMDA and EAJMC American Associations. |
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February 1, 2007
Senator Prejudice
The Day Joe Biden Threatened to Kick My Ass
By RANNIE AMIRI
It was nearly two decades ago, yet the memory of a campus speech delivered by Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware remains especially vivid (and even more so after hearing his latest gaffe to Senator Barack Obama).
The topic was predictably foreign policy, on which he is allegedly an expert, but reason for attending was not to hear the verbose senator sanctimoniously expound on international relations. Rather, it was in anticipation of the question and answer session to follow.
At the time, Israel was in the throws of the first intifada.
After responding to a few softballs, my persistent hand was acknowledged. I prefaced my remarks with the following two quotes, the first by Winston Churchill:
"The cause of unrest in Palestine, and the only cause, arises from the Zionist movement, and from our promises and pledges in regard to it"
At the time, Israel was in the throws of the first intifada.
The second, a poignant comment by the late Israeli civil rights activist Dr. Israel Shahak:
House of Commons, 14 June 1921
"You cannot have humane Zionism.
It is a contradiction in terms"
Thereafter, I posed the following question to the good senator:
Journal of Palestine Studies, vol. IV, 1975
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"Rather than succumb to the influence of various lobbying groups in Washington, such as AIPAC, and the untold amounts of money it uses to dictate policy, wouldn't it be more prudent to examine the real effects that collective punishment, daily humiliation, and countless civilian causalities inflicted by the Israelis have on an occupied population, and use that understanding to formulate a more rational approach toward the Palestinians?"
Senator Biden proceeded to walk directly from the podium to me — literally nose-to-nose — and we engaged in an uneasy back-and-forth about the influence of the Israeli lobby on US diplomacy in the Middle East and the heavy-handed approach (quite an understatement, but a polite phrase nonetheless) that Israel routinely uses to deal with all its problems.
Shortly thereafter Biden turned, put his arm around my shoulder, and addressed the audience.
"If this was not such a fine, articulate, and sincere young man, and he implied that my vote had been bought, I would give him a swift kick in the ass."
The audience roared in applause.
Satisfied, however, that my point had been delivered and rebutted with only an insult, I sat down.
The next question happen to come from a friend of mine sitting directly behind me.
"If my father heard you say such a thing, I believe he would have done the same to you first."
An imperceptible smile crept across my face.
I realized it was time to go.
Both of us got up and walked out of the muted auditorium.
I departed not with the certainty of my arguments, as unpopular as they were that night, or the shaky poise of a college student who stood up to a senator and self-styled expert in foreign affairs.
Instead, I was satisfied I had left with my dignity intact.
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A pity the same could not have been said for Mr. Biden.
How little things have changed in twenty years. |
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Atrocities in Palestine Ahmed and Asma, story of two children dying |
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Unused swimming pool built for police 'trainers' — hospitals unable to get adequate portable water
Millions of dollars in US rebuilding funds have been wasted in Iraq, US auditors say in a report which warns corruption in the country is rife.
One case involved a payment by the US State Department of $43.8m to a contractor, DynCorp International, for a residential camp for police trainers outside the Adnan Palace grounds in Baghdad.
The camp has never been used.
Funds earmarked for water and sewerage cut by 50%
Electricity output remains below pre-war levels, while funds initially earmarked for water and sewerage have been cut by 50%, the audit says.
The report comes as President Bush is urging Congress to approve $1.2billion in further reconstruction aid.
The audit by Stuart Bowen — special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction — Sigir, is a 579-page report to the U.S. Congress, January 31, 2007.
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Lack of portable water — Receive 15% of needed amount
Dr. Qasim al-Nuwesri, the chief manager at Chuwader General Hospital, one of the two hospitals in the sprawling slum area of Sadr City, Baghdad, an area of nearly 2 million people, added that there, too, was a shortage of most supplies and, most critically, of ambulances.
But for his hospital, the lack of potable water was the major problem.
"Of course we have typhoid, cholera, kidney stones — but we now even have the very rare Hepatitis Type-E — and it has become common in our area," said al-Nuwesri, while adding that they never faced these problems prior to the invasion of 2003.
Chuwader hospital needs at least 2000 liters of water per day to function with basic sterilization practices. According to Dr. al-Nuwesri, they received 15% of this amount.
"The rest of the water is contaminated and causing problems, as are the electricity cuts," added al-Nuwesri, "Without electricity our instruments in the operating room cannot work and we have no pumps to bring us water."
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'The jihad now is against the Shias, not the Americans'
As 20,000 more US troops head for Iraq, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, the only correspondent reporting regularly from behind the country's sectarian battle lines, reveals how the Sunni insurgency has changed
Saturday January 13, 2007
The Guardian
"I used to attack the Americans when that was the jihad.
Now there is no jihad.
Go around and see in Adhamiya [the notorious Sunni insurgent area] — all the commanders are sitting sipping coffee; it's only the young kids that are fighting now, and they are not fighting Americans any more, they are just killing Shia.
There are kids carrying two guns each and they roam the streets looking for their prey.
They will kill for anything, for a gun, for a car and all can be dressed up as jihad."
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Rami was no longer involved in fighting, he said, but made a tidy profit selling weapons and ammunition to men in his north Baghdad neighbourhood.
Until the last few months, the insurgency got by with weapons and ammunition looted from former Iraqi army depots.
But now that Sunnis were besieged in their neighbourhoods and fighting daily clashes with the better-equipped Shia ministry of interior forces, they needed new sources of weapons and money.
He told me that one of his main suppliers had been an interpreter working for the US army in Baghdad.
"He had a deal with an American officer. We bought brand new AKs and ammunition from them."
He claimed the American officer, whom he had never met but he believed was a captain serving at Baghdad airport, had even helped to divert a truckload of weapons as soon as it was driven over the border from Jordan.
These days Rami gets most of his supplies from the new American-equipped Iraqi army.
"We buy ammunition from officers in charge of warehouses, a small box of AK-47 bullets is $450 (£230). If the guy sells a thousand boxes he can become rich and leave the country."
But as the security situation deteriorates, Rami finds it increasingly difficult to travel across Baghdad.
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"Now I have to pay a Shia taxi driver to bring the ammo to me. He gets $50 for each shipment."
The box of 700 bullets that Rami buys for $450 today would have cost between $150 and $175 a year ago.
The price of a Kalashnikov has risen from $300 to $400 in the same period.
The inflation in arms prices reflects Iraq's plunge toward civil war but, largely unnoticed by the outside world, the Sunni insurgency has also changed.
The conflict into which 20,000 more American troops will be catapulted over the next few weeks is very different to the one their comrades experienced even a year ago.
In Baghdad in late October I called a Sunni insurgent I had known for more than a year.
He was the mid-level commander of a small cell, active against the Americans in Sunni villages north of Baghdad. Sectarian frontlines had been hardening in the city for months — it took us 45 minutes of haggling to agree on a meeting place which we could both get to safely.
We met in a rundown workers' cafe.
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Kidnapped
"Its not a good time to be a Sunni in Baghdad," Abu Omar told me in a low voice.
He had been on the Americans' wanted list for three years but I had never seen him so anxious; he had trimmed his beard in the close-cropped Shia style and kept looking towards the door.
His brother had been kidnapped a few days before, he told me, and he believed he was next on a Shia militia's list.
He had fled his home in the north of the city and was staying with relatives in a Sunni stronghold in west Baghdad.
He was more despondent than angry.
"We Sunni are to blame," he said. "In my area some ignorant al-Qaida guys have been kidnapping poor Shia farmers, killing them and throwing their bodies in the river. I told them: 'This is not jihad. You can't kill all the Shia! This is wrong! The Shia militias are like rabid dogs — why provoke them?' "
Then he said: "I am trying to talk to the Americans. I want to give them assurances that no one will attack them in our area if they stop the Shia militias from coming."
This man who had spent the last three years fighting the Americans was now willing to talk to them, not because he wanted to make peace but because he saw the Americans as the lesser of two evils.
He was wrestling with the same dilemma as many Sunni insurgent leaders, beginning to doubt the wisdom of their alliance with al-Qaida extremists.
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Another insurgent commander told me: "At the beginning al-Qaida had the money and the organisation, and we had nothing."
But this alliance soon dragged the insurgents and then the whole Sunni community into confrontation with the Shia militias as al-Qaida and other extremists massacred thousands of Shia civilians.
Insurgent commanders such as Abu Omar soon found themselves outnumbered and outgunned, fighting organised militias backed by the Shia-dominated security forces.
A week after our conversation, Abu Omar invited me to a meeting with insurgent commanders.
I was asked to wait in the reception room of a certain Sunni political party.
A taxi driver took me to a house in a Sunni neighbourhood that had recently been abandoned by a Shia family.
The driver came in with me — he was also a commander.
The house had been abandoned in a hurry, cardboard boxes were stacked by the door, some of the furniture was covered with white cloths and a few cheap paintings were piled against a wall.
The property had been expropriated by the local Sunni mujahideen and we sat on sofas in a dusty reception room.
Abu Omar had been meeting commanders of groups with names like the Fury Brigade, the Battalions of the 1920 Revolution, the Islamic Army and the Mujahideen Army, to discuss options they had for fighting both an insurgency against the Americans and an escalating civil war with the Shia.
Abu Omar had proposed encouraging young Sunni men to enlist in the army and the police to redress the sectarian balance.
He suggested giving the Americans a ceasefire, in an attempt to stop ministry of interior commandos' raids on his area. Al-Qaida had said no to all these measures; now he wanted other Iraqi insurgent commanders to support him.
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'Do politics'
A heated discussion was raging.
One of the men, with a very thin moustache, a huge belly and a red kuffiya wrapped around his shoulder, held a copy of the Qur'an in one hand and a mobile phone in the other.
I asked him what his objectives were.
"We are fighting to liberate our country from the occupations of the Americans and their Iranian-Shia stooges."
"My brother, I disagree," said Abu Omar. "Look, the Americans are trying to talk to us Sunnis and we need to show them that we can do politics. We need to use the Americans to fight the Shia."
He looked nervously at them: suggestions of talking to the Americans could easily have him labelled as traitor.
"Where is the jihad and the mujahideen?" he continued.
"Baghdad has become a Shia town. Our brothers are being slaughtered every day! Where are these al-Qaida heroes? One neighbourhood after another will be lost if we don't work on a strategy."
The taxi driver commander, who sat cross-legged on a sofa, joined in: "If the Americans leave we will be slaughtered."
A big-bellied man waved his hands dismissively: "We will massacre the Shia and show them who are the Sunnis! They couldn't have done anything without the Americans' support."
When the meeting was over the taxi driver went out to check the road, then the rest followed.
"Don't look up, we could be monitored, Shia spies are everywhere," said the big man.
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The next day the taxi driver was arrested.
By December Abu Omar's worst fears were being realised.
The Sunnis had become squeezed into a corner fighting two sides at the same time.
But by then he had disappeared; his body was never found.
Baghdad was now divided: frontlines partitioned neighbourhoods into Shia and Sunni, thousands of families had been forced out of their homes.
After each large-scale bomb attack on Shia civilians, scores of mutilated bodies of Sunnis were found in the streets.
Patrolling militias and checkpoints meant that men with Sunni names dared not venture far outside their neighbourhoods, while certain Sunni areas came under the complete control of insurgent groups the Shura Council of the Mujahideen and the Islamic Army.
The Sunni vigilante self-defence groups took shape as reserve units under the control of these insurgent groups.
Like Abu Omar before him, Abu Aisha, a mid-level Sunni commander, had come to understand that the threat from the Shia was perhaps greater than his need to fight the occupying Americans.
Abu Aisha fought in Baghdad's western Sunni suburbs, he was a former NCO in the Iraqi army and followed an extreme form of Islam known as Salafism. |
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No Quorum for Months
Iraqi Parliament has failed to reach quorum since October 2006.
Spoke from Dubai
Understandably, it's hard to attend parliamentary sessions when you live in the Green Zone, or the Rashid Hotel, or Amman, or Dubai, or London.
MP Adnan Al-Pachachi, who spoke from Dubai, complained that their salaries can only afford 20 security guards, while they need at least 40 to make it from the Baghdad Airport to the Green Zone.
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Seen in decades?
I wonder how many security guards Pachachi would need if he were to venture on the streets of Baghdad, which he probably hasn't seen in decades.
Funny, too, that he would complain about the salary. Iraqi members of parliament receive up to $120,000 in salaries and benefits, or about $10,000 a month, plus the additional salaries of 20 security guards - which most MPs choose to pocket instead.
First bill defined salaries, privileges and benefits
Actually, the first bill Iraqi MPs (of all sects and ethnicities) passed unanimously was the one in which they defined their salaries, privileges and benefits.
That session was conveniently closed to the media.
Perhaps you should also know that the average salary for a civil servant in Iraq is $150.
A day labourer would make less than half of that.
And you would be considered quite well-to-do if your salary is $400 or $500.
Shame. And this is what they call a "democratically-elected government."
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'If they pay we kill them anyway' — the kidnapper's story In the second of two remarkable dispatches from behind Baghdad's front lines, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad meets the commander of a Shia death squad Saturday January 27, 2007 The Guardian Fadhel is a slim, well-muscled 26-year-old Mahdi Army commander with a thin goatee beard and smoothed down hair that looks like a flat cap. One day last month he described how he and his men seized a group of three Sunni men suspected of killing his fellow Shia.
"I followed the group for weeks and then one of them crossed the bridge to Karrada [a Shia district].
We first informed a nearby Iraqi army checkpoint that we were arresting terrorists then we attacked them and put them in the boots of the cars.
We only have six to seven minutes when we grab someone — we have to act quickly, if he resists we shoot him."
In this case, he said, the men were taken to Sadr City, the Shia slum to the north-east of Baghdad, where they were interrogated by a "committee" which ordered their execution.
"We ask the families of the terrorists for ransom money," said Fadhel. "And after they pay the ransom we kill them anyway."
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Kidnapping in Baghdad these days is as much about economics as retribution or sectarian hatred. Another Shia man close to the Mahdi Army told me:
"They kidnap 10 Sunnis, they get ransom on five, and kill them all, in each big kidnap operation they make at least $50 000, it's the best business in Baghdad."
One day as we chatted in a small squatters' community to the east of Baghdad, Fadhel showed me his badge — a square laminated card that identified him as a "Amer Faseel" or "platoon commander" in charge of a unit of around 35 fighters.
He is particularly valuable to the Shia militia because he grew up in a predominantly Sunni area south of Baghdad and still has an ID card registered in the Sunni town of Yossufiya.
"I can speak in their accent, so I can come and go to Sunni areas without anyone knowing that I am a Shia."
It was these qualifications plus his military experience — he was a corporal in the Iraqi military police — that earned Fadhel the role of commanding a "strike unit".
His main job is kidnapping Sunnis allegedly involved in attacking Shia areas.
It is men like Fadhel, responsible for the scores of bodies dumped on Baghdad's streets daily, whom the US troops pouring into Baghdad will have to bring under control if they are to have any hope of quelling the city's civil war.
Fadhel is also called Sayed, a title given to men who descend from the Prophet Muhammad.
Over glasses of hot sweet tea, he told me how his family of farmers, originally from the Shia stronghold of Najaf, had resettled in the 70s in the heart of the Sunni area south of Baghdad where he went to school with Sunni and Shia kids.
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A year after Baghdad fell, his family had to move again; the area had become a hub for Sunni extremists who started evicting Shia families a year earlier than their comrades in Baghdad.
After a neighbouring Shia farmer was killed they packed up and moved to Baghdad:
"We had 15 donums of the best land, I was born there and worked there all my life.
They told us you Shia are not from here, go away."
Fadhel and his family found themselves in the squatters' compound in east Baghdad.
He and his brother joined the Mahdi Army and fought against the Americans in Sadr City and Karbala.
Now he lives in a small rented flat in Dora, once a mixed Sunni area but now one of the main battle fronts in this sectarian war.
To gather intelligence, he set out to make Sunni friends: "I live with them, pray like them, I even insult the imams and the Mahdi Army."
Fadhel and other Mahdi Army commanders describe an intimate relationship with Iraqi security services, especially the commandos of the Iraqi interior ministry. He says the Mahdi Army often uses these official forces in conducting its own operations against Sunni "terrorists".
"We have specific units that we work with where members of the Mahdi Army are in command.
We conduct operations together.
We can't ask any army unit to come with us, we just ask the units that are under the control of our men.
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"The police are all under our control, we ask them to help or inform them that shooting will take place in a street and it involves the Mahdi Army, and that's it."
In one operation Fadhel took part in last summer, Iraqi interior ministry commandos attacked a Sunni area in Dora called "Arab Jubour".
The raid involved 28 pickup trucks, he told me. Of them 16 were ministry of interior, the rest Mahdi Army.
The new Bush plan to secure Baghdad gives a major role to the Iraqi army and police units in securing Baghdad.
Few in the city expect that these predominantly Shia forces will seriously challenge their fellow Shia.
As the discussions for the new security plan were continuing, an Iraqi Shia official who belongs to another party told me:
"We know that Moqtada [al-Sadr] and his men are responsible for all this mess but what can we do?
We can't attack them, we can only talk to them.
Its like having a mentally ill relative — you can't just throw him in the street."
Fadhel and other Mahdi army officers also describe a complex relationship with Iraq's Shia neighbour.
Iran, which backs a rival Shia faction to the Mahdi Army, secured a PR success when Mr Sadr upon his arrival in Tehran last year announced that the Mahdi Army would defend Iran if attacked by the US.
One Mahdi Army commander told me:
"The Iranians are helping us not because they like us, but because they hate the US."
The help comes in different forms. "We get weapons from them, mortar shells, RPG rounds, sometimes they give us weapons for free sometimes we have to buy. Depends on who is doing the deal," said the same commander.
Fadhel told me that back in November he escorted a small truck filled with weapons from Kut, on the Iranian border, to Baghdad. "We get the weapons in trucks, we take a letter to the Iraqi army checkpoints and it's all fine."
Like many of their Sunni counterparts, the Mahdi commanders boast that they could wipe out the other sect and gain total control over Baghdad if the US left.
"We control most of Baghdad, our main enemy is the Americans," said Fadhel.
Then he paused for a second and continued:
"Also we can't trust the other Shia factions.
Imam Ali says 'God please protect me against my friends and I will take care of my enemies.'" |
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Sick strategies for senseless slaughter
The cat is out of the bag now
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by John Kaminski
May 27, 2005
The first hint came in Imad Khadduri's "A warning to car drivers" written in Arabic and posted on www.albasrah.net on May 11 (See. http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KHA505A.html ).
The dispatch was quickly picked up by two of the most realistic and reliable news sites on the Web, www.uruknet.info , which I try to read every day, and www.globalresearch.ca , which I try to read every week, since it offers less breaking and more analytical news.
Clear window who is perpetrating this inexplicable violence
Khadduri recounted a scam that opens up a clear window to seeing who is perpetrating all this inexplicable violence in Iraq.
Beyond the American attempt to pacify an outraged and abused nation through demonic destruction, and beyond the Iraqi attempt to resist this totalitarian takeover by a foreign conqueror, there are more than numerous acts of violence that simply can't be understood by straightforward explanations.
I mean, when a mosque blows up and Americans blame Islamic terrorists, whether Sunni or Shiite, it makes no sense.
Muslims never blow up their own houses of worship.
Or when reporters sympathetic to either the Iraqi cause of freedom, or even just general principles of international justice, are suddenly assassinated and the blame is placed on often imaginary Islamic extremists whose perspective is supported by these writers, how can anyone believe that Muslims did it, even thought this is what the Zionist American press and government continue to insist.
So who's doing all these demented deeds?
As if we didn't know ...
www.johnkaminski.com/ |
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Khadduri's report went like this:
Told him to report to an American military camp
"A few days ago, an American manned check point confiscated the driver license of a driver and told him to report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for interrogation and in order to retrieve his license.
The next day, the driver did visit the camp and he was allowed in the camp with his car.
He was admitted to a room for an interrogation that lasted half an hour.
At the end of the session, the American interrogator told him:
'OK, there is nothing against you, but you do know that Iraq is now sovereign and is in charge of its own affairs.
Hence, we have forwarded your papers and license to al-Kadhimia police station for processing.
Therefore, go there with this clearance to reclaim your license.
At the police station, ask for Lt. Hussain Mohammed, who is waiting for you now.
Go there now quickly, before he leaves his shift work".
(http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KHA505A.html )
The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as if carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him.
He stopped the car and inspected it carefully.
He found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors.
The only feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was indeed booby trapped by the Americans and intended for the al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad.
The helicopter was monitoring his movement and witnessing the anticipated "hideous attack by foreign elements".
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She recounts:
"The last two weeks have been violent .... The number of explosions in Baghdad alone is frightening.
There have also been several assassinations — bodies being found here and there.
It's somewhat disturbing to know that corpses are turning up in the most unexpected places.
Many people will tell you its not wise to eat river fish anymore because they have been nourished on the human remains being dumped into the river.
That thought alone has given me more than one sleepless night.
It is almost as if Baghdad has turned into a giant graveyard.
The latest corpses were those of some Sunni and Shia clerics — several of them well-known.
People are being patient and there is a general consensus that these killings are being done to provoke civil war.
Also worrisome is the fact that we are hearing of people being rounded up by security forces (Iraqi) and then being found dead days later — apparently when the new Iraqi government recently decided to reinstate the death penalty, they had something else in mind.
One of the larger blasts was in an area called Ma'moun, which is a middle class area located in west Baghdad.
It's a relatively calm residential area with shops that provide the basics and bit more.
It happened in the morning, as the shops were opening up for their daily business and it occurred right in front of a butcher's shop.
Immediately after, we heard that a man living in a house in front of the blast site was hauled off by the Americans because it was said that after the bomb went off, he sniped an Iraqi National Guardsman.
I didn't think much about the story — nothing about it stood out: an explosion and a sniper — hardly an anomaly.
The interesting news started circulating a couple of days later.
Man taken away because he knew too much
People from the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb.
Rumor has it that he saw an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion.
Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued.
He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it.
He was promptly taken away.
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The bombs are mysterious.
Some of them explode in the midst of National Guard and near American troops or Iraqi Police and others explode near mosques, churches, and shops or in the middle of sougs.
One thing that surprises us about the news reports of these bombs is that they are inevitably linked to suicide bombers.
The reality is that some of these bombs are not suicide bombs — they are car bombs that are either being remotely detonated or maybe time bombs.
All we know is that the techniques differ and apparently so do the intentions.
Some will tell you they are resistance.
Some say Chalabi and his thugs are responsible for a number of them.
Others blame Iran and the SCIRI militia Badir.
In any case, they are terrifying.
If you're close enough, the first sound is a that of an earsplitting blast and the sounds that follow are of a rain of glass, shrapnel and other sharp things.
Then the wails begin — the shrill mechanical wails of an occasional ambulance combined with the wail of car alarms from neighboring vehicles and finally the wail of people trying to sort out their dead and dying from the debris.
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Then there was this one.
On May 13, 2005, a 64 years old Iraqi farmer, Haj Haidar Abu Sijjad, took his tomato load in his pickup truck from Hilla to Baghdad, accompanied by Ali, his 11 years old grandson.
Stopped at an American check point
They were stopped at an American check point and were asked to dismount.
An American soldier climbed on the back of the pickup truck, followed by another a few minutes later, and thoroughly inspected the tomato filled plastic containers for about 10 minutes.
Haj Haidar and his grandson were then allowed to proceed to Baghdad.
A minute later, his grandson told him that he saw one of the American soldiers putting a grey melon size object in the back among the tomato containers.
The Haj immediately slammed on the brakes and stopped the car at the side of the road, at a relatively far distance from the check point.
He found a time bomb with the clock ticking tucked among his tomatoes.
He immediately recognized it, as he was an ex-army soldier.
Panicking, he grabbed his grandson and ran away from the car.
Then, realizing that the car was his only means of work, he went back, took the bomb and carried it in fear.
He threw it in a deep ditch by the side of the road that was dug by Iraqi soldiers in preparation for the war, two years ago.
Upon returning from Baghdad, he found out that the bomb had indeed exploded, killing three sheep and injuring their shepherd in his head.
He thanked God for giving him the courage to go back and remove the bomb, and for the luck in that the American soldiers did not notice his sudden stop at a distance and his getting rid of the bomb.
"They intended it to explode in Baghdad and claim that it is the work of the 'terrorists', or 'insurgents' or who call themselves the 'Resistance'.
Taint the Resistance
I decided to expose them and asked your reporter to take me to Baghdad to tell you the story.
They are to be exposed as they now want to sow strife in Iraq and taint the Resistance after failing to defeat it militarily.
Do not forget to mention my name. I fear nobody but God, as I am a follower of Muqtada al-Sadir."
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
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Rumsefeld — Satanic shenanigans
The background and admission of guilt for such satanic shenanigans was clearly outlined in Frank Morales' piece on globalresearch.ca: "The Provocateur State: Is the CIA Behind the Iraqi 'Insurgents' — and Global Terrorism," by Frank Morales clearly demonstrates how Donald Rumsfeld said he was going to do exactly what these three sorry episodes show he actually did.
Morales writes:
Back in 2002, following the trauma of 9-11, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld predicted there would be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large.
How could he be so sure of that?
Perhaps because these attacks would be instigated on the order of the Honorable Mr. Rumsfeld.
According to Los Angeles Times military analyst William Arkin, writing Oct. 27, 2002, Rumsfeld set out to create a secret army, "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" network that would "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception," to stir the pot of spiraling global violence.
http://globalresearch.ca/
articles/MOR505A.html
We never got the full story on those ghastly beheadings of Nick Berg and others.
Nor have we ever understood who killed the American mercenaries in Fallujah that eventually precipitated one of the great slaughters in history.
Nor have we ever been able to discern if Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is actually a real person or just another bin Ladenesque boogeyman.
Nor if the al-Qaeda website which claims responsibility for various atrocities is not really run by the CIA.
Sinister genocide the Israelis continue to perpetrate
Provoking this type of violence also further conceals the sinister genocide the Israelis continue to perpetrate on the hapless Palestinians, which is exactly its point, as is the entire Iraq invasion and destruction, and as was the inside job mass murder on 9/11 in New York City.
The purpose of all these despicable acts is to conceal what the Israelis and the Americans have been doing all along to the entire Arab world, namely enslaving and destroying it.
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There is not now nor ever was an Arab terror threat.
That was all invented by Rothschild, Rockefeller, Kissinger, Brzezinski, Bush, Cheney, Sharon, Zakheim, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams and Warren Buffett.
These people are all traitors to not only their countries but to humanity in general, and should all be slammed and RICOed into Guantanamo immediately.
And so should the government officials, media lackeys, and ordinary citizens who, by their complicity or their ignorance, support them.
Deliberate provocations to prevent peace
The main point in understanding these deliberate provocations to prevent peace is to understand how the American capitalist system, now hijacked by billionaires with no trace of conscience, thrives on war and profits from the misery of others.
The neocon murder menace has been for months ratcheting up the hyperbole about why we need to invade Iran — which some predict will happen in June — and just this week, rumors of troop movements in the Caribbean and lockdowns at Florida military bases appear to augur an imminent invasion of oil-producing Venezuela.
The overall plan is to create hell on Earth, and we are succeeding.
By our silent complicity and cowardly reluctance to oppose and stop this homicidal behavior in the name of profit, we are all accessories to mass murder and the destruction of human society, not to even mention the extinction of individual human freedom and the God-given right to be safe and secure in the homes of our choice.
So now that you know, what are you going to do about it?
You know if you do nothing, these same things will one day happen to you.
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Hillary Clinton is not that person.
Soon after Camp Casey, in August 2005, I was meeting with some Hollywood people who pretended that they supported me, but really were big money donors and supporters of Hillary. I was told that the senator was really against the war, but she was waiting for the politically correct time to come out against it. I was told that she was the best hope for the Democrats in 2008, and I should give her a break.
I don't know who Mr. and Mrs. Hollywood and Mr. Hollywood Got Rocks thought that they were talking to. My son was used as a "soldier of Christ" in BushCo's crusade against the world and a political pawn in this pro-war Democrat's moves toward the White House.
I was disgusted and noted this in many blogs that I wrote at the time.
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Supported Jonathan Tasini
I supported the New York candidate for Senate who ran a very courageous, anti-war race against Clinton: Jonathan Tasini.
CodePink New York did amazing work dogging the senator and her supporters everywhere she went, and outing the fact that she is a Republican in Democratic clothing.
Unfortunately, the people of New York spoke — and Clinton, the pro-war candidate, beat out Jonathan.
The conservative area she and President Clinton moved their carpet bags to after their presidency was over had a major impact on the last elections.
I, my sister Dede, and another Gold Star Mother, Lynn Braddach, whose son, Travis Nall, was killed in Iraq in 2003, met with Senator Clinton in DC in September of 2005. We poured our hearts and souls out to her.
Sat there stone-faced and walked out
We cried as we told her of our sons and our fear for the people of Iraq and the escalating body count of our brave young people.
She sat there stone-faced and walked out and told Sarah Ferguson of the Village Voice, "My bottom line is that I don't want their sons to die in vain.... I don't believe it's smart to set a date for withdrawal.... I don't think it's the right time to withdraw." She may as well have slapped us in the face using Bloody George's line and using our son's sacrifice to justify her war-mongering.
On Thursday, January 18th, Senator Clinton introduced a meaningless bill to put a cap on the number of soldiers that can be in Iraq, set at January 1st levels. It is as weak and meaningless as a nonbinding resolution — and a politically safe move, since almost three fourths of the country oppose the war and oppose Bloody George.
By the time she introduced her Senate bill last Thursday, over 1000 of our young people had come home in body bags and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis had died, while she was waiting for the best political time to be semi-against the war.
How many of our troops are lying in Walter Reed with devastating injuries that could have been prevented if a Senate leader like Clinton had taken a moral stance instead of political one?
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This occupation of Iraq can't be won by being smarter — it was lost before we went in. The US, again, was a big loser in a capricious military expedition, with the support of Senator Clinton.
She is an amazingly brilliant person, and she cannot say that she was fooled by George.
We, the American public, can be brilliant too, and we can't buy that baloney.
In 2005, I was dying to support Hillary for president: finally, a bright woman with experience. However, she is a champion fence-sitter and politically heartless.
I again affirm my commitment to peace. I don't care if it is a man or a woman; Democrat or Republican; white or black; Christian, Jew or otherwise. I will only support a candidate who is courageously and uncompromisingly committed to peace.
Hillary Clinton is not that person. She never will be. History speaks louder than words.
Cindy Sheehan — Monday 22 January 2007
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| Politicians of disgust |
| Kewe comment: These are the people — including Bush and the Republicans — but especially these people, because they fawn and abase themselves in obsequious behaviour for the support of the pro-Zionist Israeli lobby within their constituency, taking the substantial reward of monies for the use of their political careers. It is US Taxpayer money that props up the present Zionist Israli government, US taxpayer money used to supply the Zionist Israeli military with its supposed needs. It is these people, these politicians of disgust — and if there is a hell there has to be a special place reserved for such — that have not only allowed but furthered and nurtured over these many years the attitude from the people of Israel, most not born to the land, that they have a legitimate right to exclude the people of Palestine from the farms and olive reserves who's fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers going back generation upon generation have maintained. The US taxpayer has and is supplying the money for US made bulldozers to tear down the olive trees. US taxpayer money has and is supplying the highest technical armaments that are perpetuating this human misery. US taxpayer money is allowing one grouping of people to overlord in a most vicious way another grouping, a grouping who do have right to the land that they are now excluded from. |
The Dark Side Initiates — Click here Dark path initiates depend on the denial The five-percent manipulator class is composed of those on the dark path |
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Unspeakable grief and horror
...and the circus of deception killing continues... | |||
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| Kewe Archives | TheWE.biz | The Poles |
Beginning on Monday, February 5th, the Occupation Project is beginning sit-ins in every House Rep and Senator's offices across this nation to demand an end to the war in Iraq by voting "nay" to giving any more money to BushCo for their murderous war.
Join the Occupation
Do it for all the children
