BUSH’S LATEST ABUSE OF POWER : ANOTHER STEP TOWARD A POLICE STATE?

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

BUSH’S LATEST ABUSE OF POWER

ANOTHER STEP TOWARD A POLICE STATE?

An Executive Order was signed on July 17, 2007 by President Bush that authorizes him to block the personal property of anyone in the United States who opposes his Middle East foreign policy.

Read the document here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070717-3.html
.

If this link does not work, here is a backup source:
http://www.freedom-force.org/newsarchive/EO_2007-07-17.mht
.

The response [to the first message they sent out about this] was immediate, huge, and encouraging. However, not everyone was equally concerned, and they wrote to say that I had misunderstood the language and intent of the document. There were two primary objections. The first was that the Order was written to prevent acts of violence, not political dissent. The second was that it applies only to people and organizations whose names appear on a list attached to the Executive Order but not made public. Larry Becraft, nationally respected Constitutional attorney, said:

“I have no doubt that there was a list of the names of certain people attached to that EO that was not published. Bush provided the full document with the names of “the following persons” to certain members of Congress, but that list was not published for the public, nor was that list published in the Federal Register. … The EO clearly addresses foreign funds and property brought into this country and held either by foreigners or US persons. To contend that Americans holding their own property or having others hold that property (funds, financial instruments, etc), are going to have that property seized is a contention plainly outside the clear language of the EO. To assert that those [sic] protesting the war subjects those protesters to seizures is groundless.”

We are not convinced by this argument. A reading of the EO, itself, points to a contrary interpretation. It may be true that there was a list attached to the EO, but that does not mean the list cannot be expanded at any time. In describing whose property may be blocked, the document says:
“Any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, (i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of: (A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or (B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq.”
The phase “any person” completely negates the concept that this applies only to a few specifically named bad guys from the Middle East who happen to be in the U.S.

If you think this EO applies only to those who have committed or intend to commit acts of violence, then read the words again: It applies to any person who poses “a significant risk of committing an act of violence.” Who would that be?

In case you haven’t noticed, the trend of all collectivist governments over the past few decades has been to embrace the principle of pre-emptive punishment. In other words, political scientists, working closely with government-funded psychiatrists, have created the myth that it is possible to determine who will commit crimes in the future. They can do this, they say, by studying everyone’s school records, voting records, reading habits, organizations they support, and a myriad of other metrics for personal preferences and beliefs. There is no doubt that tabulations of this kind can lead to valid statistical predictions, but they can never identify who will fall within the expectations and who will not. It is an affront to common sense and a travesty of justice to punish people for crimes they did not commit but which some social scientist says they probably will. This is a special horror when the cloak of science is used, not to reduce crime, but to single out political dissidents and then define their thoughts as criminal behavior.

So, who poses “a significant risk of committing acts of violence?” Whoever the President adds to the list.

And so, we repeat what we said last week. This is about as serious as it gets. There have been many assaults on our freedom recently, but none with such totality and finality as this. We must draw the line in the sand on this issue. The American people must re-discover their indignation, get off their couches, and send a tsunami of protest to Washington.

This is a second call to action.
1. Send your Congressman and Senators a short but explicit message to the effect that you expect them to (1) introduce or support fast-track legislation to rescind the Executive Order and (2) call for impeachment of the President NOW. Here is how to contact them:
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/candlist.asp?Sort=S&Cong=110

2. Compile a list of every organization, publication, journalist, web site, talk-show host, and community leader who understands the significance of this Executive Order and send it to ge.griffin@verizon.net. The immediate goal is to build a communications hub for a national coalition of activists on this issue.
3. Send a copy of this message to everyone you know.
4. Drop everything else and do this NOW.

source:

http://www.libertynewstv.com/Documents/execorder.htm

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

U.S. nuke work afflicted 36,500 Americans

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

U.S. nuke work afflicted 36,500 Americans

Radiation sickened 36,500 and killed at least 4,000 of those who built bombs, mined uranium, breathed test fallout

By Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News

August 31, 2007

Barry Gutierrez © The Rocky

Thomas Atcitty, 78, left, and his brother, Chester, 73, recall hauling uranium ore in a 1950 Ford dump truck. The U.S. nuclear weapons program has sickened 36,500 Americans and killed more than 4,000, the Rocky Mountain News has determined from government figures. Those numbers reflect only people who have been approved for government compensation. They include people who mined uranium, built bombs and breathed dust from bomb tests.

The U.S. nuclear weapons program has sickened 36,500 Americans and killed more than 4,000, the Rocky Mountain News has determined from government figures.

Those numbers reflect only people who have been approved for government compensation. They include people who mined uranium, built bombs and breathed dust from bomb tests.

Many of the bomb-builders, such as those at the Rocky Flats plant near Denver, have never applied for compensation or were rejected because they could not prove their work caused their illnesses. Congressional hearings are in the works to review allegations of unfairness and delays in the program for weapons workers.

The Rocky calculation appears to be the first to compile the government’s records on the human cost of manufacturing 70,000 atomic bombs since 1945. It is based on compensation figures from four federal programs run by the Departments of Labor, Justice and Veterans Affairs. Many people have been paid only recently.

More than 15,000 of the 36,500 are workers who made atomic weapons. They were exposed to radiation and toxic chemicals that typically took years to trigger cancer or lung disease.

Others were civilians living near the Nevada test site during above-ground nuclear tests; soldiers and workers at test sites; and uranium miners and millers who breathed in radioactive dust until 1972 when the government stopped buying uranium.

At least 4,000 of the 36,500 died. This number reflects cases where survivors could be paid only if their relative died of the covered illness.

Many more of the 36,500 likely also have died of the deadly diseases triggered by their work. But in most of the compensation programs, the government does not track deaths or cause of death, so the true number who gave their lives to support the nuclear bomb program probably will never be known.

Some were contaminated through accident or ignorance. But government documents have revealed that officials at times risked the health of civilians, soldiers and workers because they believed national security demanded it.

One early Atomic Energy Commission director, Lewis Strauss, wrote to a civilian who had been downwind of atomic test fallout that the danger of fallout was “a small sacrifice compared to the infinite greater evil of the use of nuclear bombs in war.”

Well into the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of American troops were placed within a few miles of nuclear tests to determine their ability to march and fight shortly after a blast. The Atomic Energy Commission barred them from being closer than 7 miles, but the military cut that by more than half.

“In those days, we were training military personnel to fight a nuclear war. The Department of Defense had to know the effect on soldiers, sailors and airmen who moved within hours into a hot zone,” said R.J. Ritter, who now runs the National Atomic Veterans Association and lobbies for aid to those contaminated troops. “Nobody had a clue what would happen years later from inhaling those particles.”

One of those servicemen was Howard “Howdy” Pierson.

He had no idea when he was trucked into the desert from California in 1957 that he was about to watch a nuclear blast from just three miles away.

The Marine gunner was dropped into a trench and told to turn around and cover his eyes, according to his widow, Deb Pierson, of Loveland.

It was the day after Independence Day, and “Shot Hood” filled the pre-dawn sky with a bright light seen in Los Angeles and a towering orange mushroom cloud.

It was a hydrogen bomb – the biggest nuclear weapon ever detonated inside the U.S., five times more powerful than the one at Hiroshima. Three miles from ground zero at Hiroshima, nearly every building was damaged, according to the U.S. government.

Howdy Pierson’s trench caved in. Dirt – already contaminated by previous tests – poured down on them, he told his wife years later.

An airman who was at the same test said in the book American Ground Zero that the blast wave threw him 40 feet. He said it felt like being cooked.

A Marine who was marched toward the mushroom cloud said he wondered why anyone would be assaulting Ground Zero minutes after a blast. “What’s to assault?” he said in a posting on a Web site for nuclear veterans.

About 200,000 troops were brought in to witness and work on U.S. nuclear tests over the years, according to the Pentagon. For decades, they were barred by national security from telling anyone what they had seen.

Pierson died of lung cancer in 2000. Deb Pierson, who works for Larimer County helping veterans apply for benefits, didn’t win a widow’s compensation for her husband’s lung cancer until Congress revised the law in 2002. The change granted compensation to any veteran who developed lung cancer after breathing radioactive dust at the nuclear tests.

The Veterans Administration, however, is fighting Pierson’s attempt to get benefits back to the day he filed his claim.

Lawsuits by contamination victims uncovered evidence over the years that many officials knew the dangers, and ignored them or covered them up. Officials blocked safety standards for uranium dust and beryllium and promised residents above-ground tests posed no danger.

“A lot could have been prevented if they had given the least bit of warning” said J. Turner, of www.downwinders.org.

The U.S. did not begin to admit that Americans were sickened by the weapons effort until the 1980s. The first compensation programs had such tough standards that few people were paid.

source:

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5686694,00.html

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

U.S. Obsessed With Using Force

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

U.S. Obsessed With Using Force

By Reason Wafawarova

08/31/07 “The Herald” — – Harare – SINCE the United States assumed global leadership from Britain at the end of the Second World War; when it emerged as the biggest beneficiary of the war, a development that saw it declare the era of “the American century”, Washington has been obsessed with using force to thwart small countries.

In fact, the US emerged as a superpower that is scared of small countries. While this statement might seem contradictory, political analyses of US behaviour over the past 62 years proves otherwise.

During this period the US, among many other invasions went into Cuba, Grenada, Panama, Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan.

It also sponsored and armed reactionary rebels in their CIA engineered proxy wars in Angola, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Congo and Nicaragua, to mention just a few countries.

The Americans also led embargo campaigns on Iraq, Iran, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea and Zimbabwe.

The US portrays more concerns and worries about the behaviour of small states than it has about its more powerful rivals like India, China or the European Union.

When Ronald Reagan was asked to justify his administration’s trade embargo against Nicaragua in 1985 he said, “the policies and actions of Nicaragua constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

Does this quotation ring a bell to Zimbabweans?

It should, given that both Condoleeza Rice and George W. Bush have almost repeated it verbatim in their attempt to justify the so-called Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (2001), a sanctions law that bars multilateral lending institutions, with dealings with the US, from extending lines of credit to Zimbabwe.

It also bars American companies from trading with Zimbabwe.

In 1985, people outside the US questioned how an underdeveloped peasant nation of three million people, as was Nicaragua then, could possibly constitute an “extraordinary threat” to the security of the US, then one of the two most powerful superpowers of the world.

Today, many outside the US still wonder how a largely peasant nation of 13 million people, Zimbabwe, can possibly constitute “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to the foreign policy of the US.

This writer says many outside the US would question this kind of thinking because the mainstream US society has often believed its ruling elite whenever it speaks this way. This is precisely because the US and much of the western world; has some of the most indoctrinated and brainwashed people of this world as Noam Chomsky rightly pointed out in the book, Latin America: From Colonisation to Globalisation, 1999.

In 1982, the Reagan administration, through the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff went on air to tell the American public that Grenada was a military threat to the US.

The mere fact that this was pronounced indicates the power of indoctrination and brainwashing contained in the two most powerful agents of imperialism, namely, western politicians and their mass media.

The fact that the American public could hear their chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff publicly utter this ludicrous statement without exploding into raucous laughter, was yet another indication of the degree of indoctrination.

This “extraordinary” military threat led to the invasion of Grenada in 1983 and 6 000 American elite troops descended on 40 Cubans and a couple of hundred Grenadine military men, earning themselves a total 8 000 medals for the “valour” that led to this enormous victory. The American media went berserk, spewing euphoric pugnacious and jingoistic sentiments over the vainglorious accomplishment.

Noam Chomsky, in the fore-mentioned book, analysed why the US is so scared of small states, in particular, he evaluated the concepts of US national security and foreign policy.

He says the threat to the security of the US by these oft-quoted small nations is too ludicrous to warrant any discussion, but the threat to US foreign policy is quiet real. Chomsky argues that it is the small, weak states that actually pose the greatest threat to American foreign policy.

This, he says, is the only explanation that can be given for the extraordinary savagery the US has displayed against some of the weakest and most inconsequential countries like Laos and Grenada.

It is like this, the weaker the country, the greater the banditry and savagery. The logic behind this can only be understood in the context of the underlying basis upon which US foreign policy is formulated.

To understand this it may be necessary to revisit what George Kennan, head of the policy planning unit in the US State Department, 1948, said about American foreign policy.

Said Kennan: “We have about 50 percent of the world’s wealth, but only 6,3 percent of its population . . . In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives.

“We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction . . . We should cease to talk about vague and — for the Far East — unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratisation.

The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans the better.”

Today, those very “unreal objectives” form the cornerstone of US foreign policy on Zimbabwe, Iraq and Afghanistan, that despite the fact that they remain nothing but “idealistic slogans”.

The fundamental principles of American foreign policy and indeed that of all imperialist countries are to ensure what Kennan once called “the protection of our raw materials.” One would think that he was referring to raw materials found within the United States but he was actually referring to the raw materials of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Kennan did not bother to explain from whom he intended to have those raw materials protected. The only plausible explanation he could give was that there was need to protect “our raw materials” against the Russians and other “communists”. The Russians and communists were the two major factors that frightened the US and western communities the most between 1945 and 1990. Today, the major source of fear among the western communities is terrorism, ostensibly fronted by the face of Al-Quaeda and Osama bin Laden.

The real threats against whom the Americans want to protect “their” resources are indeed the indigenous people who are the bona fide owners of those raw materials. Some of these indigenous people have made the “mistake” of embarking on policies aimed at making indigenous populations use and benefit from their resources.

In the eyes of the US ruling elite, that kind of conspiracy is totally intolerable; for it poses an “unusual and extraordinary threat”. It simply has to be stopped.

This kind of conspiracy is what makes little countries like Laos, Grenada, Nicaragua and Zimbabwe so significant as to warrant worldwide headlines in the western media.

The significance is derived from the fact that by embarking on social policies that are welfare based, these small countries may succeed in empowering their own populations and if this leads to successful economic and social development, it may constitute a model for others, thereby having an undesired domino effect.

This is precisely why Henry Kissinger said Salvador Allende’s Chile had to be stopped as it stood a dangerously high chance of infecting other countries — it would be a virus. In other words economic and social development for any other country other than the US and its western allies is a disease that might infect other countries to the detriment of US foreign policy. When they are not calling such development a disease they are calling it a “rotten apple”, “rot”, or, as they prefer these days, “a rogue state.”

The thinking behind the US’ savagery on smaller states is that the smaller the state the higher the chance of success for these social policies and therefore the smaller the state the greater the threat of the disease of social and economic development in poor countries. This is precisely why the US wants land reform in Zimbabwe to fail. If it succeeds in a small country like Zimbabwe, what will stop people of the much bigger South Africa from following suit?

Laos, a very small country next to Thailand became a target of US savage attacks in 1958 as the Americans overthrew its democratic government and installed its extremely brutal right-wing dictatorial regime. The small country was to later be a subject of ruthless US aerial attacks.

This was a small poor peasant country made up of isolated peasant villages, inhabited by villagers who hardly knew that there was an outside world until they began to see those bird-like metal things appearing up in the sky and dropping bombs on them.

The question is why would a sophisticated superpower controlling half of the world’s wealth destroy the misery field life of a peasant society? Laos committed a grave “crime” under Pathet Lao, a mild revolutionary who led a low-level agrarian reform programme that began to yield results by expanding the health and educational sectors. In the eyes of the American ruling elite, the “stupid” peasants were using raw materials in Laos for their own purposes and such “insolence” had to be stopped.

The US would care nothing if a country like Grenada disappeared from the face of the earth today. It is so small and insignificant in terms of US material interests. Nevertheless, Grenada was invaded in 1983.

The US began to put Grenada on their hostile media radar as soon as Maurice Bishop’s government came to power in 1979. The US administration began to demonstrate its extraordinary hostility by cutting off aid, carried out scaring military threats, established an embargo and finally invaded the tiny country in 1983.

Bishop’s socialist government could not be allowed to succeed, lest neighbouring countries would follow suit and pose “unusual and extraordinary threats” to the foreign policy of the US.

The Nicaraguan Sandinista programmes created more sorrow than happiness for Nicaragua though they had a successful land reform programme, increased literacy, improved the health delivery system, reduced infant mortality and increased life expectancy — even earning an award from the World Health Organisation. While WHO saw social and economic development, the US ruling elite saw “an unusual and extraordinary threat” since the Sandinistas were “stealing” America’s resources for their own purposes. And that is why the US trained, armed, nurtured and partnered the Contras in fighting the Sandinistas.

Of course, eventually the Sandinistas did fall just like Bishop’s government in Grenada.

The same threat the Americans saw in Nicaragua, Laos and Grenada were also perceived in Angola, Congo, Ghana and Mozambique.

In Angola, the US sponsored Jonas Savimbi’s Unita rebels for more than 20 years. In Congo, they organised the overthrow and murder of Patrice Lumumba before installing a ruthless dictatorial regime led by Mobutu Sese Seko. In Ghana, they sponsored and organised the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah while in Mozambique they sponsored and trained the murderous Renamo of Afonso Dhlakama.

In all these African countries, the excuse given by the US was that the governments were communist, a development that probably stood more threatening than terrorists in the eyes of the western community during the Cold War era. They even successfully assassinated Samora Machel, the then Mozambican president, in 1986.

Of course, both the US and apartheid South Africa, on whose soil the assassination was carried out, never admitted to any wrongdoing although the US acknowledged that they viewed Machel as the communist point-man in Southern Africa.

This analysis of historical events involving the US should help put into perspective, Washington’s sanctions regime against Zimbabwe, which sanctions are supported by the western alliance.

It is an analysis relevant to the course and direction of the Third Chimurenga.

It is an analysis relevant to the relationship between the MDC and its partners in the so-called civic society, and the US led western alliance.

It is also an analysis of Zimbabwe’s chances of standing its ground the way Cuba has done since 1958; the way Venezuela has done since 1999, about the same time Zimbabwe embarked on the agrarian reform programme.

The reality behind the US led western alliance’s relationship with the Government as well as its opposition has nothing to do with the rhetoric of human rights, rule of law, democracy or freedom — tenets the US generally views as idealistic slogans.

In fact the US, like any other imperial power, regards rule of law as a slogan to be used for three purposes, according to Chomsky.

Firstly, it is a slogan to pacify the domestic populations in the imperialists’ own backyard. Secondly, it is a slogan so effectively used to denounce official enemies of the US’s ruling elite.

Thirdly, it is a last resort in dealing with problems where all other covert means have proved ineffective. This is the extent to which the US and its western allies are committed to the doctrine of the rule of law, otherwise, apart from those three concerns all imperialists are sworn to the Rule of Force. It is high time all Zimbabweans reflected on and saw the real challenge before us in its perspective and decide the best way out of the prevailing challenges.

The US acts in the knowledge that it reversed agrarian reforms and installed puppet regimes in many countries and we, Zimbabweans, act in the knowledge that we have freed ourselves from foreign domination before and some agrarian reform programmes have succeeded elsewhere.

We would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.

source:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18284.htm

http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200708300301.html

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

The War Criminal in the Living Room

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

The War Criminal in the Living Room

By Paul Craig Roberts

08/31/07 “ICH“ — – The media is silent, Congress is absent, and Americans are distracted as George W. Bush openly prepares aggression against Iran.

US Navy aircraft carrier strike forces are deployed off Iran.

US Air Force jets and missile systems are deployed in bases in countries bordering or near to Iran.

US B-2 stealth bombers have been refitted to carry 30,000 pound “bunker buster” bombs.

The US government is financing terrorist and separatist groups within Iran.

US Special Forces teams are conducting terrorist operations inside Iran.

US war doctrine has been altered to permit first strike nuclear attack on Iran and other non-nuclear countries.

Bush’s war threats against Iran have intensified during the course of this year. The American people are being fed a repeat of the lies used to justify naked aggression against Iraq.

Bush is too self-righteous to see the dark humor in his denunciations of Iran for threatening “the security of nations everywhere” and of the Iraqi resistance for “a vision that rejects tolerance, crushes all dissent, and justifies the murder of innocent men, women, and children in the pursuit of political power.” Those are precisely the words that most of the world applies to Bush and his Brownshirt administration. The Pew Foundation’s world polls show that despite all the American and Israeli propaganda against Iran, the US and Israel are regarded as no less threats to world stability than demonized Iran.

Bush has discarded habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions, justified torture and secret trials, damned critics as anti-American, and is responsible, according to Information Clearing House, for over one million deaths of Iraqi civilians, which puts Bush high on the list of mass murderers of all time. The vast majority of “kills” by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan are civilians.

Now Bush wants to murder more. We have to kill Iranians “over there,” Bush says, “before they come over here.” There is no possibility that Iranians or any Muslims who have no air force, no navy, no modern military technology are going to “come over here,” and no indication that they plan to do so. The Muslims are disunited and have been for centuries. That is what makes them vulnerable to colonial rule. If Muslims were united, the US would already have lost its army in Iraq. Indeed, it would not have been able to put an army in Iraq.

Meanwhile the US media focuses on whether Republican Senator Larry Craig is a homosexual or has offended gays by denying to be one of them. The run-up for the public’s attention is why a South Carolina beauty queen cannot answer a simple question about why her generation is unable to find the United States on a map.

The war criminal is in the living room, and no official notice is taken of the fact.

Lacking US troops with which to invade Iran, the Bush administration has decided to bomb Iran “back into the stone age.” Punishing air and missile attacks have been designed not merely to destroy Iran’s nuclear energy projects, but also to destroy the public infrastructure, the economy, and the ability of the government to function.

Encouraged by the indifference of both the American media and Christian churches to the massive casualties inflicted on Iraqi civilians, the Bush administration will not be deterred by the prospect of its air attacks inflicting massive casualties on Iranian civilians. Last summer the Bush administration demonstrated to the entire world its total disdain for Muslim life when Bush supported Israel’s month-long air attack on Lebanese civilian infrastructure and civilian residences. President Bush blocked the attempt by the rest of the world to halt the gratuitous murder of Lebanese civilians and infrastructure destruction. Clearly, turning the Muslim Middle East into a wasteland is the Bush policy. For Bush, civilian casualties are a non-issue. Hegemony uber alles.

The Bush administration has made its war plans for attacking Iraq and positioned its forces without any prior approval from Congress. The “unitary executive” obviously doesn’t believe that an attack on Iran requires the approval of Congress. By its absence and quietude, Congress seems to agree that it has no role in the decision.

In the improbable event that Congress were to make any fuss about Bush’s decision to attack yet another country, the State Department has devised legalistic cover: simply declare Iran’s military to be a “terrorist organization” and go to war under the cover of the existing resolution.

The “Iran issue” has been created by the Bush administration, not by Iran. Iran, like many other countries, has a nuclear energy program to which it is entitled as a signatory to the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty. Inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency have found no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran.

The Bush administration has brushed away this fact, which should be determining, just as the Bush administration brushed away the fact that weapons inspectors reported, prior to Bush’s invasion of Iraq, that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The Bush administration managed to disrupt the work of the pesky IAEA weapons inspectors in Iran. Iran has been working successfully with the IAEA and has achieved what a senior IAEA official recently described as a milestone agreement. The Bush administration instantly went to work to discredit the agreement and unleashed its new lapdog, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, to threaten “the bombing of Iran.”

The Bush administration’s position is legally untenable and is really nothing but a contrived excuse to start another war. Bush claims that Iran, alone among all the signatories of the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty, must be denied its right under the pact to develop nuclear energy, because Iran, along among all the other signatories, will be the only country able to deceive the IAEA inspectors and develop nuclear weapons. Therefore, Iran must be denied its rights under the agreement.

Bush’s position on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is as legally untenable as his position on every other issue–the Geneva Conventions, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, habeas corpus, the constitutional separation of powers, and presidential signing statements that he cavalierly attaches to new laws in order to override the legislative power of Congress. Bush’s position is that the meaning of laws and treaties varies with his needs of the moment.

Bush has declared himself to be the “decider.” The “decider” decides whether Americans have any rights under the Constitution and whether Iran has any rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As the “decider” has decided that Iran has no such rights, the “decider” decides whether to attack Iran. No one else has any say about it. The people’s representatives are just so much chaff in the wind.

Whatever form of government Bush is operating under, it is far outside an accountable constitutional democratic government. Bush has transitioned America to caesarism, and even if Bush leaves office in January 2009, the powers he has accumulated in the executive will remain. Unless Bush and Cheney are impeached and convicted, there is no prospect of the US Congress and federal judiciary ever again being co-equal branches of government.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

source:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18287.htm

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

“Redacted” The Real-life Rape and Killing of a 14-years-old Iraqi Girl by US Soldiers Film, Stuns Venice

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

 

“Redacted” The Real-life Rape and Killing of a 14-years-old Iraqi Girl by US Soldiers Film, Stuns Venice

By Silvia Aloisi

Fri Aug 31, 2007 11:01am ET

VENICE (Reuters) – A new film about the real-life rape and killing of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers who also murdered her family stunned the Venice festival, with shocking images that left some viewers in tears.

“Redacted”, by U.S. director Brian De Palma, is one of at least eight American films on the war in Iraq due for release in the next few months and the first of two movies on the conflict screening in Venice’s main competition.

Inspired by one of the most serious crimes committed by American soldiers in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, it is a harrowing indictment of the conflict and spares the audience no brutality to get its message across.

De Palma, 66, whose “Casualties of War” in 1989 told a similar tale of abuse by American soldiers in Vietnam, makes no secret of the goal he is hoping to achieve with the film’s images, all based on real material he found on the Internet.

“The movie is an attempt to bring the reality of what is happening in Iraq to the American people,” he told reporters after a press screening.

“The pictures are what will stop the war. One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to motivate their Congressmen to vote against this war,” he said.

Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi was gang raped, killed and burnt by American soldiers in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, in March 2006. Her parents and younger daughter were also killed.

Five soldiers have since been charged with the attack. Four of them have been given sentences of between 5 and 110 years.

“IT’S ALL ON THE INTERNET”

Halfway between documentary and fiction, “Redacted” draws on soldiers’ home-made war videos, blogs and journals and footage posted on YouTube, reflecting changes in the way the media cover the war.

“In Vietnam, when we saw the images and the sorrow of the people we were traumatizing and killing, we saw the soldiers wounded and brought back in body bags. We see none of that in this war,” De Palma said.

“It’s all out there on the Internet, you can find it if you look for it, but it’s not in the major media. The media is now really part of the corporate establishment,” he said.

The film’s title refers to how, according to De Palma, mainstream American newspapers and television channels are failing to tell the true story of the war by keeping the most graphic images of the conflict away from public opinion.

“When I went out to find the pictures, I said (to the media) give me the pictures you can’t publish,” he said, adding that because of legal dangers he too had to “edit” the material.

“Everything that is in the movie is based on something I found that actually happened. But once I had put it in the script I would get a note from a lawyer saying you can’t use that because it’s real and we may get sued,” De Palma said.

“So I was forced to fictionalize things that were actually real.”

The film, shot in Jordan with a little known cast, ends with a series of photographs of Iraqi civilians killed and their faces blacked out for legal reasons.

“I think that’s terrible because now we have not even given the dignity of faces to this suffering people,” De Palma said.

“The great irony about Redacted is that it was redacted.”

Distributor Magnolia has planned a limited U.S. release for later this year, and the film may be easier to sell to European audiences rather than to the American public.

“This is a harrowing experience you put the audience through. It is not something you want to go to on a delightful Saturday evening but this message must be put forward and hopefully the public will respond,” De Palma said.

source:

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=entertainmentNews&storyid=2007-08-31T150344Z_01_L31903844_RTRUKOC_0_US-VENICE-IRAQ.xml&src=rss&rpc=22&sp=true

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-muslim voice-
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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

US War Crime : Marines Ordered To Execute Civilians In Nazi-Like Slaughter

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Marines Ordered To Execute Civilians In Nazi-Like Slaughter

Latest evidence compounds catalogue of war crimes

Steve Watson, Infowars.net Editorial

August 31, 2007

With evidence having emerged that marines were ordered by superiors to massacre women and children in Haditha in Iraq two years ago, combined with scores of other testimonies and reports of such barbaric demands being forced upon American troops daily, it is clear that organised execution and ritual slaughter is the set policy of the architects of aggression in the middle east.

A military court heard Thursday that a US Marine was ordered to execute a room full of Iraqi women and children during the massacre in Haditha which left 24 people dead.

Following a response to roadside bomb attack in November, 2005 Marines stormed houses in the village. At the first of the houses, Marine Lance Corporal, Humberto Mendoza, has given evidence that he was ordered to execute some of the occupants under the command of Sergeant Frank Wuterich. Mendoza stated he refused to do so, when confronted with a room full of women and children. Later he found the women and children dead. Mendoza had previously admitted shooting one male occupant of the house dead, under orders.

AFP reports:

At one house Wuterich gave an order to shoot on sight as Marines waited for a response after knocking on the door, said Mendoza.

“He said ‘Just wait till they open the door, then shoot,’” Mendoza said.

Mendoza then said he shot and killed an adult male who appeared in a doorway.

During a subsequent search of the house, Mendoza said he received an order from another Marine, Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum, to shoot seven women and children he had found in a rear bedroom.

“When I opened the door there was just women and kids, two adults were lying down on the bed and there were three children on the bed … two more were behind the bed,” Mendoza said.

“I looked at them for a few seconds. Just enough to know they were not presenting a threat … they looked scared. I told him there were women and kids inside there. He said ‘Well, shoot them,’” Mendoza told prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Sean Sullivan.

“And what did you say to him?” Sullivan asked.

“I said ‘But they’re just women and children.’ He didn’t say nothing.”

Mendoza said he returned to a position at the front of the house and heard a door open behind him followed by a loud noise. Returning later that afternoon to conduct body retrieval, Mendoza said he found a room full of corpses.

In previous testimony it has also been suggested that the troops stopped random passing cars, ordered passengers out and lined them up and shot them one by one at near-point blank range with M16 machine guns.

Wuterich’s defense is expected to argue that he followed established combat zone rules of engagement. Given that Haditha is not an isolated incident this seems an accurate description.

A 2006 article adapted from the book “Ten Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military,” edited by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, documents many other testimonies of troops on the ground who have confirmed that they are routinely ordered to kill innocent civilians.

There is constant pressure to kill Iraqi civilians, 22-year-old GI Darrell Anderson said. “At traffic stops we kill innocent people all the time. If you are fired on from the street, you are supposed to fire on everybody that is there. If I am in a market, I shoot people who are buying groceries.”

War crimes in Iraq are not mere aberrations. They emanate from official policies regarding the aims and conduct of the occupation, the article concludes:

It is official policy, for example, to use cluster bombs in populated areas. Soldiers and Marines merely carry out the policy. It was official policy, under Operation Iron Hammer, to put barbed wire around villages, to bulldoze crops, to bomb homes, and to hold families in jail until they released insurgent information. It was official policy to level Fallujah, a city of 300,000 people, as an act of collective punishment.

The list goes on. It was official policy to torture detainees at Abu Ghraib, it was official policy to “kill all military age males” in Iraq, it is official policy to use radioactive Depleted Uranium weapons and deadly white phosphorus in civilian areas in Iraq. The wanton destruction from the air of cities, towns, and villages witnessed on the first night of the war and almost everyday since is official policy in Iraq.

When will the official policies be recognized for what they are, official war crimes?

The systematic killing of civilians in Iraq and throughout the middle east by aggressive forces under the control of the elite usurpers of our governments is clear. Our controlled media is also complicit in its ignorance, its pandering spin and the outright lies we continue to have to endure and break down with every passing day.

Prominent critics and commentators have blasted the mainstream media for failing to portray the brutal reality of the systematic policy of slaughter.

Acclaimed director Brian De Palma, whose new film “Redacted” has stunned audiences with its graphic telling of the horrific true story of another Iraq war crime, has stated:

“In Vietnam, when we saw the images and the sorrow of the people we were traumatizing and killing, we saw the soldiers wounded and brought back in body bags. We see none of that in this war. It’s all out there on the Internet, you can find it if you look for it, but it’s not in the major media. The media is now really part of the corporate establishment.”

De Palma has asserted that it is only the brutal reality seen in the pictures and videos that are routinely ignored by the establishment media that will incense the public enough to force the conflict to be stopped.

Paul Craig Roberts, former Secretary to the Treasury under Reagan, has also blasted the mainstream media in a powerful piece today stating:

“The US media focuses on whether Republican Senator Larry Craig is a homosexual or has offended gays by denying being one of them. The run-up for the public’s attention is why a South Carolina beauty queen cannot answer a simple question about why her generation is unable to find the United States on a map.”

Roberts describes Bush as “high on the list of mass murderers of all time”. With conservatively over one million Iraqis having lost their lives in this war “The vast majority of “kills” by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan are civilians, the war criminal is in the living room, and no official notice is taken of the fact” he writes.

He warns that the same will happen in Iran very soon if this administration and the power brokers behind it are not halted right away:

“Encouraged by the indifference of both the American media and Christian churches to the massive casualties inflicted on Iraqi civilians, the Bush administration will not be deterred by the prospect of its air attacks inflicting massive casualties on Iranian civilians. Last summer the Bush administration demonstrated to the entire world its total disdain for Muslim life when Bush supported Israel’s month-long air attack on Lebanese civilian infrastructure and civilian residences. President Bush blocked the attempt by the rest of the world to halt the gratuitous murder of Lebanese civilians and infrastructure destruction. Clearly, turning the Muslim Middle East into a wasteland is the Bush policy. For Bush, civilian casualties are a non-issue. Hegemony uber alles.”

Every instance described here provides evidence of direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, which state (Part IV, Article 48):combatants “shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants, between civilian objects and military objectives and, accordingly, shall direct their operations only against military objectives.”

The conventions were established in the aftermath of the Nazi’s indiscriminate slaughter of millions of civilians throughout Europe. It is clear that our own modern day aggressors do not believe they are bound by the conventions, nor any international laws of war that have come before, and will do whatever it takes to ensure their empire building proceeds unimpeded.

Unless we address the reality of the war crimes we have seen unfold in the last 6 years alone, and continue in our attempts to do the job that the corporate media whores are paid not to, we betray our ethical and moral principles, we betray our countries, and we betray the freedom that has been protected for so long by those before us.

source:

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m35852&hd=&size=1&l=e

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

US War Crime : Marine ‘ordered to kill women and children’

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

By Rob Woollard at Camp Pendleton

Article from: Agence France-Presse

August 31, 2007 12:32pm

A US Marine was ordered to execute a room full of terrified Iraqi women and children during an alleged massacre in Haditha that left 24 people dead, a military court was told today. The testimony came in the opening of a preliminary hearing for Marine Sergeant Frank Wuterich, who faces 17 counts of murder over the Haditha killings, the most serious war crimes allegations faced by US troops in Iraq.

Sgt Wuterich, spoke confidently to confirm his name as the hearing to decide if he faces a court martial began at the Marines’ Camp Pendleton base in southern California.

The 27-year-old listened intently as Lance Corporal Humberto Mendoza recounted how Marines had responded after a roadside bomb attack on their convoy in Haditha on November 19, 2005 left one comrade dead.

Lance-Cpl Mendoza said Marines under Sgt Wuterich’s command began clearing nearby houses suspected of containing insurgents responsible for the bombing.

At one house Sgt Wuterich gave an order to shoot on sight as Marines waited for a response after knocking on the door, said Lance-Cpl Mendoza.

“He said ‘Just wait till they open the door, then shoot’.”.

Lance-Cpl Mendoza then said he himself shot and killed an adult male who appeared in a doorway.

During a subsequent search of the house he received an order from another Marine, Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum, to shoot seven women and children he had found in a rear bedroom.

“When I opened the door there was just women and kids, two adults were lying down on the bed and there were three children on the bed … two more were behind the bed,” Lance-Cpl Mendoza said.

“I looked at them for a few seconds. Just enough to know they were not presenting a threat … they looked scared.”

After leaving the room Lance Cpl Mendoza told Lance-Cpl Tatum what he had found.

“I told him there were women and kids inside there. He said ‘Well, shoot them,”’ Lance-Cpl Mendoza told prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Sean Sullivan.

“And what did you say to him?” Lt-Col Sullivan asked.

“I said ‘But they’re just women and children.’ He didn’t say nothing.”

Lance-Cpl Mendoza said he returned to a position at the front of the house and heard a door open behind him followed by a loud noise. Returning later that afternoon to retrieve bodies, Lance-Cpl Mendoza said he found a room full of corpses.

Prosecutors allege Marines went on a killing spree in Haditha in retaliation for the death of their colleague in the bomb attack.

Defence lawyers will argue that sgt Wuterich followed established combat zone rules of engagement.

A total of eight Marines were initially charged in connection with the Haditha deaths.

Four were charged with murder while four senior officers were accused of failing to properly investigate the killings.

Of the four Marines charged with murder, two have since had charges withdrawn, while allegations against Lance-Cpl Tatum are also expected to be dismissed.

Sgt Wuterich also faces charges of making a false statement and asking another Marine to do the same. He faces a life sentence and dishonorable discharge if court-martialled.

source:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22339301-38198,00.html

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Israel (behaving like) a terrorist organization

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Five children in one week

By Haaretz Editorial

Last update – 09:32 31/08/2007

Three Palestinian children were killed by Israeli fire in the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday. The three were cousins from the al-Ghazale family – Yihiye, 12, Mahmoud, 10, and Sara, 10. The Israeli public reacted to these killings, just like it did to the killing of two other children several days earlier, with near complete apathy. It might as well be an act of god, or an acceptable price that balances out the frustration at the continued Qassam rocket attacks.

This indifference is dangerous because it does not encourage greater care in identifying targets. The automatic expressions of sorrow by government officials, and the argument that “the terrorists organizations send children deliberately to places where they become targets,” does not suggest that anyone is attempting to learn the necessary lessons from the mistakes. This is all the more true when the targets are in areas housing civilians, and the risk is known in advance. Israel cannot behave like a terrorist organization that targets civilians, even when the shooting comes in response to an attack. After all, this is the main reason why Israel is encouraging the boycott of Hamas the world over.

There is no dispute over the fact that the children were killed near rocket launchers. [Israel kills three kids - no rocket launchers in sight]However, the people near rocket launchers are usually civilians, and not the operating crews. The crews operating the launchers do so from a distance, and later they send others, including children, to collect the launchers for further use. Even though the Palestinians claim that the children cannot lift such launchers because they are too heavy, the Israel Defense Forces thinks otherwise. It believes the launcher is light and the rocket is heavy, and therefore launchers can be collected by children.

The Qassam rocket attacks against Sderot and the other communities bordering the Gaza Strip are fully controlled by Hamas, and can no longer be attributed to rogue, undisciplined gangs. Hamas subcontracts other groups and provides them with rockets, while it concentrates on the more “respectable” task of attacking military targets, but it is Hamas that controls the entire gamut of activities.

Faced with the continued rocket attacks, which are showing no signs of abatement in spite of the ground incursions and the killings from the air, the IDF has no proven means of minimizing the fire. The killing of Palestinian children is certainly not contributing to the safety of the children in Sderot, but rather only increases the urge to avenge their deaths and to harm children on the other side.

Were it possible to distinguish between Israel’s attitude toward the Palestinians in the West Bank and those living in the Gaza Strip, and were it clear to the Palestinians that in places where there is less terrorism, Israel takes a more considerate attitude toward the civilians, then maybe they would understand that ending the attacks is worthwhile. While there are signs that the atmosphere in the West Bank is changing – the rescue of an IDF officer by Palestinian security forces is an expression of this – but talk of making the daily life of civilians easier by decreasing the number of roadblocks has, for now, proven to be empty words.

source:

http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/3265

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

israel kills three kids – no rocket launchers in sight

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

“IDF: Anyone who is next to a launching cell is in danger”

The world has had enough of your bullshit, israel

I guess that makes these israeli girls fair game.

Eyewitnesses in Gaza said a girl and two boys were killed and a number of other children were injured from IDF artillery shells fired on the neighborhood of Jabalya in the northern Strip.

However, officials at a Gaza hospital reported that the two boys were killed in the incident and the girl sustained critical injuries.

IDF sources said the military attacked five Qassam rocket launchers located in Beit Hanoun’s industrial area, and that a number of figures were spotted around them at the time of the attack.

Sources in Gaza said the three children, all members of the same family, were killed by an artillery shell that was fired in the direction of a group of Palestinians, mostly children, between the town of Beit Lahiya and the Jabalya refugee camp.

According to the Palestinians, the charred bodies of the victims were taken to a hospital but were difficult to identify. The children killed in the attack were eventually identified as 10-year-old Mahmoud Abu Ghazla, his 12-year-old cousin Yihya Abu Ghazla and their 10-year-old relative Sarah Abu Ghazla.

The Palestinians initially believed the shelling was aimed at a cell that was planning to attack Israel,

but eyewitnesses and medical sources said that there were no gunmen or rocket launchers at the scene.

An IDF source said the attack targeted five Qassam rocket launchers that were aimed at Israel. The source said that during the attack a number of figures were spotted approaching the rocket launchers.

The source did not rule out the possibility that the children may have been injured by the Qassam rockets in the area and stressed that in any case, rocket launchers are a legitimate IDF target.

“It’s our duty to do everything possible to prevent attacks on Sderot and Gaza vicinity communities. Every time we identify a launcher aimed at Israel and a Qassam aimed at a house in Sderot or another target in the area, we will do everything to prevent the attack,” the source said.

Including murdering and maiming innocent children and destroying the world if necessary.

“The terror organizations are making cynical use of children, they are sending them to areas where the launchers are located, they are sending them to collect weapons and are consciously endangering them in places where there are IDF targets.

You mean like this:

The world has had enough of your bullshit, israel.

Justice will be served sooner than you think.

source:

http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/3245

**********

The big question is how the Hell can Israel get away with building a wall that is not even on their boarder and on top of that continue to build RACIAL colonies for Jews and Jews only. No other country on earth can do that.

Imagine if the US built a wall deep into North Mexico and started killing Mexicans with the army if they did not leave and then bulldozed down there homes and built White Christian only houses, actually cities, and called them “settlements” and the wall a “security fence”. As powerful as the US is do you think for a second that there is any way in Hell that it would be ignored by the news? The Apartheid wall is not even mentioned in the press neither is the occupation.

This without a doubt proves WHO OWNS the MEDIA. And that is Israel.

This is why an Israeli Zionist could get caught on tape stealing anthrax from the US and then trying to frame up a co-worker that he already got fired from his job for harassing.

This is why Israelis could live next door to the 911 Hijackers AND get caught celebrating the attacks with Mossad agents who had explosive residue in their van and worked for a Mossad front.

Atta was seen in two places at once TWICE and he just so happened to be the guy Guardian of Zion award winner William Safire chose to write about claiming he met in the Czech Republic with a “Saddam operative” and this was proven to be complete junk. The Israelis open wrote about the need for regime change in Iraq, they even wrote about how to use the INC with Chalabi to replace Saddam. These Zionist scum bags can publicly write about THEIR desire for a war, the need for an attack on America to kick it off, and then blatantly LIE over and over again to get the war started and face no reprisal and have no remorse. AND ON TOP OF ALL THAT GET CAUGHT SPYING ON THE US AGAIN and never see a peep of any of it on the media and so far in over 2 year nearly 3 years AIPAC has not had a trial and the next mobile date is set for Jan of 2008.

They don’t care if the crime scene of 911 required a Scooby Doo level of detective work, no matter how obvious things were (finding a passport near ground zero) no matter how much of a cover up there was, ( 2 PNAC member were on the 911 commission along with Bush’s future lawyer, and a BOD member of Hollinger Inc [like Perle and Kissinger] they were not worried about a thing because the only force who would report these things was the internet. The Media is ZIONIST OCCUPIED.

The brutal occupation of Palestine, the obvious deception that caused a war in Iraq and the growing disaster that is there by design, and the obvious media propaganda to launch a war into Iran are all very open and clear. They are lying about Iran. They lied about Iraq. They lie and ignore Palestine. And they are lying about 911.

Do you want to know what country in the Middle East DOES have WMD and got them secretly and what country has used DU and other illegal weapons such as gas and white phosphorus on its enemies including civilians and what country has attacked the US and been caught spying on the US 3 times since 911? ISRAEL.

NO worries about the web though because they can always smear 911 theories in general by talking about laser beams from space, aliens, or secret demonic cults of the Christian devil, or specifically by having racist groups parrot the real findings of 911 and Israel and then add to that all their asinine crap about Jewish people in general. My 911 theory on Diggs that took the front page, had no intelligent rebuttals, all people did was try the tired old tactic of screaming Antisemitism and trying to make Israel a NATION mean Jewish people (an Ethnicity) in general. That is all they got. And they are scared to death of the truth getting out.

source:

http://www.rys2sense.com/anti-neocons/viewtopic.php?p=57377#57377

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Israeli soccer fans filmed cursing Prophet Muhammad

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Israeli soccer fans filmed cursing Prophet Muhammad

ynetnews.com

Turkish reporter who joined Maccabi Tel Aviv’s trip to Turkey records group of fans singing songs against Muhammad, Muslims. TV channel decides to shelve video in order to avoid possible flare-up

August 30, 2007

TURKEY – A serious and potentially dangerous diplomatic incident between Israel and Turkey was prevented Wednesday, after a national Turkish TV channel agreed not to broadcast a video showing Israeli soccer fans cursing the Prophet Muhammad.

The network decided to shelve the tape following appeals from senior government officials.

The video was filmed by a Turkish reporter of Channel 24, Elif Ural, who accompanied the Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team on its flight from Israel to the Turkish town of Kayseri, where it is scheduled to play against local team Erciyesstor Thursday evening.

A group of fans who were on the plane with the team were caught on video singing songs against Muhammad and Muslims.

Ural, who has been living in Israel for the past three years as the network’s Mideast correspondent, was deeply offended by what she witnessed and heard, and by the club’s officials’ failure to intervene and put an end to the offensive behavior.

“The decision not to broadcast the video was the right one and I don’t have a problem with it,” Ural said. “There is really no need to risk relations between Israel and Turkey because of 10 idiots. I understood that if the incident is published, the potential for a violent outbreak at the stadium and in the city could grow significantly. But what I felt on the plane would be very hard to forget.”

Ural plans to speak with the club’s chairman, Lonnie Hercikowicz, and complain about the incident.”He needs to make it clear to his people that they should be no less committed than him to civility and mutual respect,” she stated.

source:

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m35827&hd=&size=1&l=e

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW