click: http://www.twocircles.net/2009sep28/israel_has_violated_all_international_laws_huwaida_arraf.html
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Israel has violated All International Laws: Huwaida Arraf
click: http://www.twocircles.net/2009sep28/israel_has_violated_all_international_laws_huwaida_arraf.html
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
PUBLIC MEETING
BHARAT BACHAO ANDOLAN
"FOR A NATIONAL STRUGGLE AGAINST IMPERIALISM & ZIONISM"
PUBLIC MEETING
'FREEDOM TO PALESTINE' * 'END SIEGE OF GAZA'
'BOYCOTT ISRAEL'
:CHIEF GUEST:
HUWAIDA ARRAF (PALESTINIAN CHRISTIAN)
LEADER OF THE 'FREE GAZA BOAT MOVEMENT'
:SPEAKERS:
YUSUF MUCHALA, BASHARATH SHIKOH, ANAND PATWARDHAN,
PRATIMA JOSHI, VIVEK MONTEIRO & FEROZE MITHIBORWALA
VENUE: ISLAM GYMKHANA, NEW MARINE LINES STN., MUMBAI.
DATE: 27TH SEPTEMBER '09 / TIME: 6 - 9pm
:ORGANIZERS:
SARFARAZ ARZU, ASLAM GHAZI, KISHORE JAGTAP, ASIF KHAN, AVINASH KAMBLE,
YAVAR KAZI, MUNAWWAR AZAD, GHAZALA AZAD, ARIF KAPADIA & JYOTI BADEKAR
Sayeed Khan, Varsha V V, Arif Kapadia, Chetna Birje (Awami Bharat), Rehan Ansari, Kazim Malik (Jamaat-i-Islami-Hind), Dinu Randive (Senior Journalist), Sudhir Dhawale, Shyam Sonar (Republican Panther), Maulana Milli Rehman (All India Milli Council), (National Minorities Federation), Jagdish Nagarkar, Mulniwasi Mala (Phule-Ambedkari Vichar Manch), Madhav Wagh, Dattatreya Dalvi (OBC Parishad), Amol Madame (Republican People of India), (Marathi Bharti), Mehmood Parvez Ansari (NEEDS), Pooja Badekar, Tejasvini Bhonkar (Vidyarthi Bharti), Shadab Sheikh (Muslim Intellectual Forum), Valjibhai Virash (Gujrati Intellectual Forum), Harshavardhan Vartak (Hindu Vikasini), Vilas Gaikwad (Jhunzaar - Republican Students Organization), Christian Panther (Tito Eapen) & Aarti Balekar, Nilesh Pokade (Yuva Sarkar)
----------------------------------------------------------
JAI HIND !!! JAI BHARAT !!
FOR A SOUTH ASIAN UNION !!
ONE ASIA - UNITED ASIA !!
INQUILAB ZINDABAD !!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Huwaida Araf who is one of the architects of the 'Free Gaza Boat Movement' & is arriving India on a week long visit.
Huwaida a Palestinian Christian, was one of the initiators and organizers of a delegation of American lawyers to Gaza in February 2009, and co-authored the report on their findings, "Onslaught: Israel's Attack on Gaza and the Rule of Law."
She also created history when in July 2009, she & a team of international Palestine solidarity activists traveled to Gaza on a ship as part of what she termed as 'Free Gaza Boat Movement'. She was accompanied by twenty-one human rights and solidarity workers representing eleven different countries. The passengers included Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire and former U.S. congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. The ship also carried three tons of medical aid, children's toys, and rehabilitation and reconstruction kits for twenty family homes.
Huwaida & her colleagues are planning the next trip to Gaza and as a natural corollary, we intend to have at least two prominent Indians, preferably Parliamentarians, on board the Free Gaza Boat along with Nobel Prize Winners, Prominent International Human Rights Figures, Journalists, Senators & Congressmen from the US, EU, South America, Africa and other countries.
We will be discussing the state of the Palestine-Israel process as well as the brutal & inhuman conditions that the Palestinian nation has to bear under the Israeli occupation.
for further information contact: 9820897517 / 9869106329 / 9867797552
"FOR A NATIONAL STRUGGLE AGAINST IMPERIALISM & ZIONISM"
PUBLIC MEETING
'FREEDOM TO PALESTINE' * 'END SIEGE OF GAZA'
'BOYCOTT ISRAEL'
:CHIEF GUEST:
HUWAIDA ARRAF (PALESTINIAN CHRISTIAN)
LEADER OF THE 'FREE GAZA BOAT MOVEMENT'
:SPEAKERS:
YUSUF MUCHALA, BASHARATH SHIKOH, ANAND PATWARDHAN,
PRATIMA JOSHI, VIVEK MONTEIRO & FEROZE MITHIBORWALA
VENUE: ISLAM GYMKHANA, NEW MARINE LINES STN., MUMBAI.
DATE: 27TH SEPTEMBER '09 / TIME: 6 - 9pm
:ORGANIZERS:
SARFARAZ ARZU, ASLAM GHAZI, KISHORE JAGTAP, ASIF KHAN, AVINASH KAMBLE,
YAVAR KAZI, MUNAWWAR AZAD, GHAZALA AZAD, ARIF KAPADIA & JYOTI BADEKAR
Sayeed Khan, Varsha V V, Arif Kapadia, Chetna Birje (Awami Bharat), Rehan Ansari, Kazim Malik (Jamaat-i-Islami-Hind), Dinu Randive (Senior Journalist), Sudhir Dhawale, Shyam Sonar (Republican Panther), Maulana Milli Rehman (All India Milli Council), (National Minorities Federation), Jagdish Nagarkar, Mulniwasi Mala (Phule-Ambedkari Vichar Manch), Madhav Wagh, Dattatreya Dalvi (OBC Parishad), Amol Madame (Republican People of India), (Marathi Bharti), Mehmood Parvez Ansari (NEEDS), Pooja Badekar, Tejasvini Bhonkar (Vidyarthi Bharti), Shadab Sheikh (Muslim Intellectual Forum), Valjibhai Virash (Gujrati Intellectual Forum), Harshavardhan Vartak (Hindu Vikasini), Vilas Gaikwad (Jhunzaar - Republican Students Organization), Christian Panther (Tito Eapen) & Aarti Balekar, Nilesh Pokade (Yuva Sarkar)
----------------------------------------------------------
JAI HIND !!! JAI BHARAT !!
FOR A SOUTH ASIAN UNION !!
ONE ASIA - UNITED ASIA !!
INQUILAB ZINDABAD !!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Huwaida Araf who is one of the architects of the 'Free Gaza Boat Movement' & is arriving India on a week long visit.
Huwaida a Palestinian Christian, was one of the initiators and organizers of a delegation of American lawyers to Gaza in February 2009, and co-authored the report on their findings, "Onslaught: Israel's Attack on Gaza and the Rule of Law."
She also created history when in July 2009, she & a team of international Palestine solidarity activists traveled to Gaza on a ship as part of what she termed as 'Free Gaza Boat Movement'. She was accompanied by twenty-one human rights and solidarity workers representing eleven different countries. The passengers included Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire and former U.S. congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. The ship also carried three tons of medical aid, children's toys, and rehabilitation and reconstruction kits for twenty family homes.
Huwaida & her colleagues are planning the next trip to Gaza and as a natural corollary, we intend to have at least two prominent Indians, preferably Parliamentarians, on board the Free Gaza Boat along with Nobel Prize Winners, Prominent International Human Rights Figures, Journalists, Senators & Congressmen from the US, EU, South America, Africa and other countries.
We will be discussing the state of the Palestine-Israel process as well as the brutal & inhuman conditions that the Palestinian nation has to bear under the Israeli occupation.
for further information contact: 9820897517 / 9869106329 / 9867797552
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
'Second Israeli state emerging in India'
‘New Jerusalem’ movement eyes takeover of three eastern states, near center of opium production.
By John Kaminski
with
Arun Shrivastava in Himachal Pradesh
(arun1951@gmail.com)
for Aung San Suu Kyi
A second “nation” of Israel today is nearing completion smack dab in the middle of the world’s premier drug producing region, the Golden Triangle of Burma — located right on the border between India and the military dictatorship now known as Myanmar, which is the real model of the human future.
Activities presaging the creation of a second Israeli state are well-known in India, but not elsewhere. Most everyone remembers how the first Israel popped onto the world scene in 1948 and has continued mass murdering its neighbors and hapless nations that fall under its sway ever since.
Precisely, political stealth moves over the last three decades and an aggressive outreach effort by “rabbis from Israel” to convert inhabitants of the three easternmost provinces of India to Judaism have been reported for years by Indian patriots in the Himalayan foothills who seek to return their country to its much longed for pre-British liberty.
The Deccan Chronicle, a newspaper in Hyderabad, reported that by means of “a ritual bath,” rabbis promise penniless Christian, Muslim and pagan converts a trip to Israel and preferred employment status, then buy votes of peasants, take over local boards and pass laws to legalize their manipulations, the same way they do everywhere else.
While the core issue in this geopolitical expansion of Rothschild-Rockefeller money empire that controls the world is proximity to the centuries old center of opium production run by the generals in Myanmar, the creation of a new Israeli state in the exact center of China, India and Southeast Asia augurs badly for the peoples of the region, as the current level of destabilization among Israel’s neighbors in the Middle East clearly illustrates.
And not to be forgotten is that the world’s oldest still functioning oil field is located in this area and Tripura state is reported to be floating on a sea of natural gas.
This is a history that would shame Americans if they knew about it.
Back in World War II, the Burma Road was essentially built with American taxpayer money to provide an alternate route to ship opium out of China because of the Japanese blockade.
Vietnam vet and author Philip Ledoux writes:
“The Burma Road was built by America and France under the guise of humanitarian aid to the Chinese government. On the return trip, the Americans supplied and manned trucks hauled out of the Bay of Bengal hundreds of metric tons of Chinese white opium for the international markets.”
Bharat patriots in the Himalayan state of of Himachal Pradesh today describe the region as the new pot growing capital of the world, with Israelis in every community guiding the industry clear on up to the Indo-Tibetan border.
The latest news from that beautiful border area is this. Dharamshala became Tibetan Dalai Lama’s de facto capital ever since the Chinese annexed Tibet. Some of the world’s most high profile leaders and Hollywood stars (like Richard Gere) are regular visitors.
In these peaceful parts, what are 20,000-plus Israelis doing? Many in Manali town and its surrounding villages speak Hebrew. Near Dharamshala no less than 10 villages have been taken over by the Israelis. It has long been known that the Dalai Lama gets a very large annual stipend from the CIA, and is planning to create a Buddhist independent nation across the Himalayas, stretching from Ladakh in Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh in Northeastern India. [Check Google map]
The war on Afghanistan and Pakistan by the U.S. is a drug war. The locals want to do away with drugs, but the Jews and U.S. want to keep profiting from this moneymaking scheme, because for centuries this particular secret industry has literally ruled the world with its profits.
The creation of a New Israel right in the middle of the major East Asian markets sheds new light on the American military assaults on Pakistan and Afghanistan, as its war against the Muslims of the region more and more resembles the Jewish-dominated political cooptation and military oppression in the Middle East.
Millions of penniless Indian and Bangledeshi peasants have for centuries provided slave labor to the British overlords who have always ruled Burma with puppets and who have plagued China and India with their opium. China in particular has every right to bear seriously ill will against the Jewish Sassoons of the world who control people’s minds through exploitation of their weaknesses.
This is the basis for all the wealth — the most “respectable” American and British families — that has been stolen and deposited in the bloody coffers of the Western corporate mindlock. And the liberty-seeking peoples of the world suffer mightily from this “business” arrangement.
Mizoram, Manipur and Nagaland. These are the three states that border Myanmar where sinister Jewish manipulation of desperate societies has become obvious.
The Milli Gazette Online reported:
The long-speculated view expressed by many observers that the United States seeks a foothold in the region seems to be vindicated when the US rushed, uninvited, to "help" Assam government soon after the Nagaland-Assam blasts. In its urgency, the US directly approached Assam chief minister bypassing New Delhi. The North-East, surrounded by many foreign countries including China and Bangladesh, appears, in a degree, to fit in a certain geopolitical strategy of Uncle Sam. The presence of religion-driven Christian militant groups seems to have created an atmosphere where an alliance of convenience may be forged between the interested parties. With a Church-backed "pre-empting" President at the helm in the US, the process of either making "revelational" biddings in the region or getting directly involved on some pretext seems to be on the cards. Many people suspect a complicit understanding between Christian missionaries (majority of them are from the US, and most of them are not innocent propagators of Christianity but linked to the worldview of Bush as shown by Vijay Prasad ("Eastward, evangelical soldiers!" Frontline, 12-25 February 2005) and the on-going drive to identify many tribes in Mizoram and Manipur as "Jews" (which has been earlier reported in the MG). This has far-reaching consequences.
And this:
Now the Aizawl-based Chhinlung Israel Peoples' Convention, with a 0.25 million strength complete with a flag, is hoping to establish a "New Jerusalem" in the North-East. Streams of Jewish rabbis are coming to Mizoram and Manipur to refine the "Jews" to be ultimately fit to be an "integrated" member of the World Jewry. The Convention's chairman, conforming to the present global trend of "fulfilling" Biblical prophecies, says, "The Torah (Old Testament) states that there shall be one holy land in the west and one in the east" (The Week, 12 Sep. 2004) . And this "New Jerusalem" has come up in the North East at the expense of the other peoples of the region.
This remote region of India north and east of Bangladesh is shrouded by the awful memory of what has come to be known as the Nellie Massacre, when in 1983 1500 Muslims were hacked to death after being promised it was safe to vote by Indian President Indira Gandhi. Numerous government inquiries produced no perpetrators and no motives, so typical in a government investigation when that government is controlled by Jews. Relations between India and Israel have warmed considerably in recent years.
The Nellie slaughter looked like a manipulated false flag massacre because Muslims and the indigenous Tiwas are not enemies. And it resembles the 9/11 coverup in the United States, where a major false flag operation was also blamed on Muslims.
The same result more recently occurred in Bombay, after 60 Uzi toting commandos shot up the Jewish Shabad House. On Nov. 26, 2008, a handful of terrorists, well trained and well armed, entered some high profile buildings and hotels, after killing three top anti-terrorist police officers and spraying bullets on common citizens in Mumbai. Latest information: 125 dead, around 300 injured some critically. Why was Shabad House never investigated? Muslims were rounded up, but the Jews, the ones who pulled the caper, were given a free pass, reminiscent of U.S Homeland Security czar Rabbi Michael Chertoff releasing 60 Israeli terror suspects immediately after the 9/11 incident.
Professor Michel Chossudovsky of globalresearch.ca stresses that the series of terrorist attacks across India seeks to create
(a) social division between Muslims and Hindus within India,
(b) tension between India and Pakistan,
(c) conditions for US military operations inside Pakistan (which has been going on) and
d) to expand the intervention in South and East Asia.
In regard to the Jewish outreach in easternmost India, The Deccan Chronicle also reported that Mr L. Thanggur, a church leader in Churachandpur, describes these conversions to Judaism to be only because of economic reasons.
“They are economic refugees. If they had better employment and income prospects here, they would have never dreamt of going to Israel,” said Mr Thanggur. In Israel too, some groups have attacked recognition of the Indian tribe by the chief rabbi. Social scientist Lev Grinberg said that Right-wing Jewish groups were promoting conversion of distant people simply to boost the Jewish population in occupied territories claimed by the Palestinians.
“The conversion ceremony is funded by the Israeli government through Shavei Israel, an organisation that has been trying to locate the 10 lost tribes of Israel,” Mr Fanai said.
Meanwhile, arrayed against this stealthy Jewish invasion are the Bharatas, who seek a return to pre-British India as a model of civilization for all the world to finally comprehend.
Bharatavarsha literally means the continent (‘varsha’, Sanskrit) that is dedicated (‘rata’) to light, wisdom (‘bha’). ”Our Vedic Rishis devoted themselves to the quest for the eternal truth and ultimate reality,” explains writer Sandya Jain in her essay ”Land of the Bharatas.”
www.vijayvaani.com/ FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=755
“The duty of the Cakravartin is total conquest of all the directions (digvijaya) by means of superior moral and political powers, to unite the country under a single moral kingdom and prevent anarchy. Readers will note that the Cakravartin is not merely an ideal ruler, but a powerful ancient political concept, inspired by a vision of the Hindu bhumi (national soul) as a unity which was not belied by the presence of multiple centres of political power. That is why civilisational values permeated the whole land and gave the tradition its abiding continuity.”
“This political renunciation of a kingdom won illegitimately is a unique Hindu ethic.”
This seems like a very appropriate response to Jewish plans to build New Jerusalem in Nagaland.
Not only that, but it also sounds like a good way to get rid of this centuries-old toxin called Jewish imperialism and build a country in which it’s safe to build a home without having armed guards to protect you because you’ve stolen the land from someone else.
• • •
Arun Shrivastava, a management consultant who lives in Delhi and travels throughout India, is the author of the important essay “The Global Gohar of the U.S.” www.mparent7777.blogspot.com
• • •
Reference note: from Library of Political Secrets #5: The Jewish Fifth Column in Islam, by Itsvan Bakony, 1969, p.46 (translated from the Hungarian):
A sad role was played by the European powers whose governments were dominated or largely dominated by Jewish Masonry, and who were acting as blind instruments of Judaism to force the Afro-Asian peoples to unchain the Hebrew beast and facilitate its work of domination without the true Christians becoming aware of these powers or of what their Hebrew or Masonic governors surreptitiously authorized.
We have to make it clear that Israelites, with their proverbial ingratitude, far from thanking the European monarchies for their help, they overthrew one after the other, starting with the Portuguese, Russian, Austrian and the German, and continuing with the Spanish and others whose diplomacies had helped the Hebrews so much in Islamic lands.
Regarding the interference of Judaism to facilitate and consolidate the conquest of India by British Imperialism, the prestigious Israelite Indian leader and writer, Haeem S. Kehimker, president of the “Israelite School Committee” of Bombay, in his 19th century book, “A sketch of history in Beni-Israel,” gives very interesting information on how the Jews, who had lived in India for at least 16 centuries, helped England since the 18th century to extend and consolidate its domination of India, taking part as officers and commanders of the British controlled Indian regiments that helped to suppress the Hindi patriots during the campaigns of 1750 and through all those that during the 19th century served to crush the revolts of the patriotic Hindus who sought to win independence for their country.
The Indian clandestine Jews — Hindu in appearance but Jews in secret — served as bull dogs to subjugate the people that for so many centuries had granted them kind shelter, acting as spies to denounce conspiracies of patriots, and as leader of the native police, that served the British Jews .... The aforementioned Israelite leader, in his call for help to International Judaism which appears in his aforementioned book, gives the names of military leaders — Beni-Israeles Indian Jews — that were outstanding for their valuable services in crushing the resistance of the Hindu patriots, giving very detailed information which is really eloquent, stating that Beni-Israel soldiers were more intelligent than the rest of the Hindus, and that there were Beni-Israel officers in all Anglo-Indian regiments and they also had important positions in the British Viceroy’s administration. He also mentions how they were used by the London government as officers of the Indian troops in expeditions led against Afghanistan, Persia, and even the famous expedition against Abyssinia in 1867 and 1868.
Maybe this was one of the first interventions of Hindu crypto-Jews in Africa in modern times, leading Indian troops to favor the plans of World Judaism, which in those times used the resources and qualities of the British people, already dominated by Jewish Masonry, as a docile instrument in the imperialist undertakings of the Israeli nation as it spread amongst and infiltrated all other all other nations in the world.
End of citation, but not the end of this story.
By John Kaminski
with
Arun Shrivastava in Himachal Pradesh
(arun1951@gmail.com)
for Aung San Suu Kyi
A second “nation” of Israel today is nearing completion smack dab in the middle of the world’s premier drug producing region, the Golden Triangle of Burma — located right on the border between India and the military dictatorship now known as Myanmar, which is the real model of the human future.
Activities presaging the creation of a second Israeli state are well-known in India, but not elsewhere. Most everyone remembers how the first Israel popped onto the world scene in 1948 and has continued mass murdering its neighbors and hapless nations that fall under its sway ever since.
Precisely, political stealth moves over the last three decades and an aggressive outreach effort by “rabbis from Israel” to convert inhabitants of the three easternmost provinces of India to Judaism have been reported for years by Indian patriots in the Himalayan foothills who seek to return their country to its much longed for pre-British liberty.
The Deccan Chronicle, a newspaper in Hyderabad, reported that by means of “a ritual bath,” rabbis promise penniless Christian, Muslim and pagan converts a trip to Israel and preferred employment status, then buy votes of peasants, take over local boards and pass laws to legalize their manipulations, the same way they do everywhere else.
While the core issue in this geopolitical expansion of Rothschild-Rockefeller money empire that controls the world is proximity to the centuries old center of opium production run by the generals in Myanmar, the creation of a new Israeli state in the exact center of China, India and Southeast Asia augurs badly for the peoples of the region, as the current level of destabilization among Israel’s neighbors in the Middle East clearly illustrates.
And not to be forgotten is that the world’s oldest still functioning oil field is located in this area and Tripura state is reported to be floating on a sea of natural gas.
This is a history that would shame Americans if they knew about it.
Back in World War II, the Burma Road was essentially built with American taxpayer money to provide an alternate route to ship opium out of China because of the Japanese blockade.
Vietnam vet and author Philip Ledoux writes:
“The Burma Road was built by America and France under the guise of humanitarian aid to the Chinese government. On the return trip, the Americans supplied and manned trucks hauled out of the Bay of Bengal hundreds of metric tons of Chinese white opium for the international markets.”
Bharat patriots in the Himalayan state of of Himachal Pradesh today describe the region as the new pot growing capital of the world, with Israelis in every community guiding the industry clear on up to the Indo-Tibetan border.
The latest news from that beautiful border area is this. Dharamshala became Tibetan Dalai Lama’s de facto capital ever since the Chinese annexed Tibet. Some of the world’s most high profile leaders and Hollywood stars (like Richard Gere) are regular visitors.
In these peaceful parts, what are 20,000-plus Israelis doing? Many in Manali town and its surrounding villages speak Hebrew. Near Dharamshala no less than 10 villages have been taken over by the Israelis. It has long been known that the Dalai Lama gets a very large annual stipend from the CIA, and is planning to create a Buddhist independent nation across the Himalayas, stretching from Ladakh in Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh in Northeastern India. [Check Google map]
The war on Afghanistan and Pakistan by the U.S. is a drug war. The locals want to do away with drugs, but the Jews and U.S. want to keep profiting from this moneymaking scheme, because for centuries this particular secret industry has literally ruled the world with its profits.
The creation of a New Israel right in the middle of the major East Asian markets sheds new light on the American military assaults on Pakistan and Afghanistan, as its war against the Muslims of the region more and more resembles the Jewish-dominated political cooptation and military oppression in the Middle East.
Millions of penniless Indian and Bangledeshi peasants have for centuries provided slave labor to the British overlords who have always ruled Burma with puppets and who have plagued China and India with their opium. China in particular has every right to bear seriously ill will against the Jewish Sassoons of the world who control people’s minds through exploitation of their weaknesses.
This is the basis for all the wealth — the most “respectable” American and British families — that has been stolen and deposited in the bloody coffers of the Western corporate mindlock. And the liberty-seeking peoples of the world suffer mightily from this “business” arrangement.
Mizoram, Manipur and Nagaland. These are the three states that border Myanmar where sinister Jewish manipulation of desperate societies has become obvious.
The Milli Gazette Online reported:
The long-speculated view expressed by many observers that the United States seeks a foothold in the region seems to be vindicated when the US rushed, uninvited, to "help" Assam government soon after the Nagaland-Assam blasts. In its urgency, the US directly approached Assam chief minister bypassing New Delhi. The North-East, surrounded by many foreign countries including China and Bangladesh, appears, in a degree, to fit in a certain geopolitical strategy of Uncle Sam. The presence of religion-driven Christian militant groups seems to have created an atmosphere where an alliance of convenience may be forged between the interested parties. With a Church-backed "pre-empting" President at the helm in the US, the process of either making "revelational" biddings in the region or getting directly involved on some pretext seems to be on the cards. Many people suspect a complicit understanding between Christian missionaries (majority of them are from the US, and most of them are not innocent propagators of Christianity but linked to the worldview of Bush as shown by Vijay Prasad ("Eastward, evangelical soldiers!" Frontline, 12-25 February 2005) and the on-going drive to identify many tribes in Mizoram and Manipur as "Jews" (which has been earlier reported in the MG). This has far-reaching consequences.
And this:
Now the Aizawl-based Chhinlung Israel Peoples' Convention, with a 0.25 million strength complete with a flag, is hoping to establish a "New Jerusalem" in the North-East. Streams of Jewish rabbis are coming to Mizoram and Manipur to refine the "Jews" to be ultimately fit to be an "integrated" member of the World Jewry. The Convention's chairman, conforming to the present global trend of "fulfilling" Biblical prophecies, says, "The Torah (Old Testament) states that there shall be one holy land in the west and one in the east" (The Week, 12 Sep. 2004) . And this "New Jerusalem" has come up in the North East at the expense of the other peoples of the region.
This remote region of India north and east of Bangladesh is shrouded by the awful memory of what has come to be known as the Nellie Massacre, when in 1983 1500 Muslims were hacked to death after being promised it was safe to vote by Indian President Indira Gandhi. Numerous government inquiries produced no perpetrators and no motives, so typical in a government investigation when that government is controlled by Jews. Relations between India and Israel have warmed considerably in recent years.
The Nellie slaughter looked like a manipulated false flag massacre because Muslims and the indigenous Tiwas are not enemies. And it resembles the 9/11 coverup in the United States, where a major false flag operation was also blamed on Muslims.
The same result more recently occurred in Bombay, after 60 Uzi toting commandos shot up the Jewish Shabad House. On Nov. 26, 2008, a handful of terrorists, well trained and well armed, entered some high profile buildings and hotels, after killing three top anti-terrorist police officers and spraying bullets on common citizens in Mumbai. Latest information: 125 dead, around 300 injured some critically. Why was Shabad House never investigated? Muslims were rounded up, but the Jews, the ones who pulled the caper, were given a free pass, reminiscent of U.S Homeland Security czar Rabbi Michael Chertoff releasing 60 Israeli terror suspects immediately after the 9/11 incident.
Professor Michel Chossudovsky of globalresearch.ca stresses that the series of terrorist attacks across India seeks to create
(a) social division between Muslims and Hindus within India,
(b) tension between India and Pakistan,
(c) conditions for US military operations inside Pakistan (which has been going on) and
d) to expand the intervention in South and East Asia.
In regard to the Jewish outreach in easternmost India, The Deccan Chronicle also reported that Mr L. Thanggur, a church leader in Churachandpur, describes these conversions to Judaism to be only because of economic reasons.
“They are economic refugees. If they had better employment and income prospects here, they would have never dreamt of going to Israel,” said Mr Thanggur. In Israel too, some groups have attacked recognition of the Indian tribe by the chief rabbi. Social scientist Lev Grinberg said that Right-wing Jewish groups were promoting conversion of distant people simply to boost the Jewish population in occupied territories claimed by the Palestinians.
“The conversion ceremony is funded by the Israeli government through Shavei Israel, an organisation that has been trying to locate the 10 lost tribes of Israel,” Mr Fanai said.
Meanwhile, arrayed against this stealthy Jewish invasion are the Bharatas, who seek a return to pre-British India as a model of civilization for all the world to finally comprehend.
Bharatavarsha literally means the continent (‘varsha’, Sanskrit) that is dedicated (‘rata’) to light, wisdom (‘bha’). ”Our Vedic Rishis devoted themselves to the quest for the eternal truth and ultimate reality,” explains writer Sandya Jain in her essay ”Land of the Bharatas.”
www.vijayvaani.com/ FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=755
“The duty of the Cakravartin is total conquest of all the directions (digvijaya) by means of superior moral and political powers, to unite the country under a single moral kingdom and prevent anarchy. Readers will note that the Cakravartin is not merely an ideal ruler, but a powerful ancient political concept, inspired by a vision of the Hindu bhumi (national soul) as a unity which was not belied by the presence of multiple centres of political power. That is why civilisational values permeated the whole land and gave the tradition its abiding continuity.”
“This political renunciation of a kingdom won illegitimately is a unique Hindu ethic.”
This seems like a very appropriate response to Jewish plans to build New Jerusalem in Nagaland.
Not only that, but it also sounds like a good way to get rid of this centuries-old toxin called Jewish imperialism and build a country in which it’s safe to build a home without having armed guards to protect you because you’ve stolen the land from someone else.
• • •
Arun Shrivastava, a management consultant who lives in Delhi and travels throughout India, is the author of the important essay “The Global Gohar of the U.S.” www.mparent7777.blogspot.com
• • •
Reference note: from Library of Political Secrets #5: The Jewish Fifth Column in Islam, by Itsvan Bakony, 1969, p.46 (translated from the Hungarian):
A sad role was played by the European powers whose governments were dominated or largely dominated by Jewish Masonry, and who were acting as blind instruments of Judaism to force the Afro-Asian peoples to unchain the Hebrew beast and facilitate its work of domination without the true Christians becoming aware of these powers or of what their Hebrew or Masonic governors surreptitiously authorized.
We have to make it clear that Israelites, with their proverbial ingratitude, far from thanking the European monarchies for their help, they overthrew one after the other, starting with the Portuguese, Russian, Austrian and the German, and continuing with the Spanish and others whose diplomacies had helped the Hebrews so much in Islamic lands.
Regarding the interference of Judaism to facilitate and consolidate the conquest of India by British Imperialism, the prestigious Israelite Indian leader and writer, Haeem S. Kehimker, president of the “Israelite School Committee” of Bombay, in his 19th century book, “A sketch of history in Beni-Israel,” gives very interesting information on how the Jews, who had lived in India for at least 16 centuries, helped England since the 18th century to extend and consolidate its domination of India, taking part as officers and commanders of the British controlled Indian regiments that helped to suppress the Hindi patriots during the campaigns of 1750 and through all those that during the 19th century served to crush the revolts of the patriotic Hindus who sought to win independence for their country.
The Indian clandestine Jews — Hindu in appearance but Jews in secret — served as bull dogs to subjugate the people that for so many centuries had granted them kind shelter, acting as spies to denounce conspiracies of patriots, and as leader of the native police, that served the British Jews .... The aforementioned Israelite leader, in his call for help to International Judaism which appears in his aforementioned book, gives the names of military leaders — Beni-Israeles Indian Jews — that were outstanding for their valuable services in crushing the resistance of the Hindu patriots, giving very detailed information which is really eloquent, stating that Beni-Israel soldiers were more intelligent than the rest of the Hindus, and that there were Beni-Israel officers in all Anglo-Indian regiments and they also had important positions in the British Viceroy’s administration. He also mentions how they were used by the London government as officers of the Indian troops in expeditions led against Afghanistan, Persia, and even the famous expedition against Abyssinia in 1867 and 1868.
Maybe this was one of the first interventions of Hindu crypto-Jews in Africa in modern times, leading Indian troops to favor the plans of World Judaism, which in those times used the resources and qualities of the British people, already dominated by Jewish Masonry, as a docile instrument in the imperialist undertakings of the Israeli nation as it spread amongst and infiltrated all other all other nations in the world.
End of citation, but not the end of this story.
Stop fighting the 1962 war
Shekhar Gupta Tags : 1962 war, War mongering, Tawang border, India China Posted:
The sixties have been the most dangerous decade for independent India. It saw two full-scale wars (China 1962, Pakistan 1965), several large skirmishes (including Kutch, with Pakistan, 1965, Nathula, with China, 1967), the peaking of the Naga and Mizo insurgencies to such levels that air power had to be used against both, rise of Tamil separatism, and all this in a period that saw successive droughts, that saw the deaths of Nehru and Shastri and the decline of the Congress. But for most Indians of my generation, who started going to school in that decade, the memory that stays is 1962. More than a memory, it is a scar. 1965 was a much bigger war, but it was an even contest. If it left a feeling of “incompleteness”, 1971 settled it.
The droughts led to the green revolution, the Congress party rose from the ruins again and grew to be more powerful than under Nehru. The two insurgencies retreated to the jungles, with populated regions of both the Naga and Mizo Hills firmly controlled by the army. But there was no real redemption for 1962. That is why that scar refuses to fade away. And that is the reason we over-react so irrationally, stupidly and ignorantly to even a rumour of another Chinese provocation.
We forget how much water has flown through the Indus, Teesta, Kameng and Lohit since 1962. And I mean not just militarily. The change in the larger political, strategic and diplomatic environment is much more significant. In the years leading up to 1962, India and China were “bhai-bhai” in a fake, hypocritical and contrived bonding of an entirely muddled and contradictory ideology.
Today we are both acknowledged as powerful and important nations and have a relationship of much greater substance and no phoney emotion and sloganeering. We do a phenomenal amount of business together, have maintained total peace on our unsettled borders and, while progress has been slow, have got some issues out of the way. Territorially, India’s gain is the Chinese acceptance of Sikkim’s accession. And for China, it is a very favourably substantive nuancing of India’s position on the status of Tibet. True, our border talks have progressed less rapidly than we would all wish, but these things require patience.
How come then even rumours of the so-called Chinese “incursions” caused us so much consternation? Most of these, even if these happened exactly as two-and-a-half war-mongering TV channels reported, were minor and superficial and did not justify either the panic or sabre-rattling that followed. Hundreds such are reported by each side every year. If the number is larger this year, and if the Chinese are indulging in more aggressive patrolling, we need to analyse and figure out the reasons, and then look for a counter. We cannot simply start getting the old 1962 nightmares. Militarily, 2009 is a far cry for both India and China. And politically, both, particularly China, have huge risks in an armed skirmish of any size, leave aside a war.
That is why, over the past three weeks, some of our discourse has been disturbing. It is as if we are again rushing to defend Namka Chu, Tawang, Tse La, Dirang Dzong and Bomdi La, Rezang La, Daulat Beg Oldi and Chushul. I do not believe any nation in the entire world has such stark and sharp memories and reference points of a war nearly 50 years old. We Indians do, firstly because this was the only war we have lost. But secondly, also because in our collective memory and popular culture, quite remarkably, this is the only war we remind ourselves of. Lata Mangeshkar brought tears to Nehru’s forlorn, defeated eyes when she sang “Ai mere watan ke logo”, a heart-wrenching tribute to outnumbered, outgunned troops in 1962, abandoned by their generals who loved politics and dumped by a disastrous defence minister who thought he could win wars by filibuster. But it is still the song we hear even at our Kargil or Bangladesh war celebrations. Maybe it is because Lata Didi never thought of singing something really stirring for those victorious occasions. Or maybe, we just find the pain of defeat more enduring than the joy of victory. That is why at so many official functions, military events, on national days we still hear strains of “jab ghayal hua Himalaya, khatre mein padi azadi” (when the Himalayas were assaulted, when our freedom was in peril) in Lata’s immortal voice. Popular culture only echoes our disinclination to celebrate a military victory (also evident in our failure to build even one reasonable war memorial for our soldiers). So neither 1971, nor Kargil resulted in a great war movie that we would watch again and again. So which one do we watch year after year? Chetan Anand’s Haqeeqat, a wonderfully realistic tribute to a small and valiant band of men who fought to the last man in Ladakh, broadly based on the true story of a Kumaon regiment company led by Major Shaitan Singh (a posthumous Param Vir Chakra). Incidentally, most of the 109 men of that company killed at Rezang La were Ahirs from southern Haryana and a mostly decrepit and rotting memorial still exists for them in a rotting municipal park in the town of Rewari, some 70 km from Delhi, off NH8 on way to Jaipur.
It is because we are so shy of celebrating our military success and so obsessed with defeat that we jump for the trenches the moment somebody says the Chinese are coming. We are not helped by a small band of excitable journalists who love military jargon but do not want to be confused with facts. The panic-mongering over the Chinese “incursions” is a direct result of that and it is doing India enormous damage. We sound insecure, hysterical, even irrational. This is most unbecoming of a nuclear weapons power with the fourth largest armed forces in the world, and the second highest economic growth rate.
If it is any comfort, please do read up a bit (Google Nathula, 1967). This is where India and China had their last major battle. It was no minor skirmish, but a local battle lasting six full days — maybe 1967 was a year for six-day wars (the other, more one-sided, being in the Middle East)! There were massive artillery duels. Both sides suffered heavy casualties. We had nearly a hundred dead, and by all international accounts the Chinese many more. Just five years after 1962, the Indian army had reminded the world — and China — that it had left that nightmare far, far behind. But we had completely obliterated 1967 from our memories, until it rushed back in my head last week as an “in memoriam” entry appeared in our newspaper’s Salute the Soldier section from 2 Grenadiers for its 32 martyrs of this battle. We must underline the fact that even in 1967 our armed forces were equal to the challenge.
It is time, therefore, that we bury defeatism. If we continue to fight the 1962 war, we can only lose again. This is 2009 and we are a resurgent, new India, managing and building a complex relationship with a near-superpower China. Both of us have stakes higher than a post here or a hill there. And none looks so crazy as to ruin a good story with rogue military adventurism. So it is time, for the sundry panic-mongers in some sections of the media and strategic community, to cool it. Or as would be said in the military jargon which they so love, to stand down.
sg@expressindia.com
The sixties have been the most dangerous decade for independent India. It saw two full-scale wars (China 1962, Pakistan 1965), several large skirmishes (including Kutch, with Pakistan, 1965, Nathula, with China, 1967), the peaking of the Naga and Mizo insurgencies to such levels that air power had to be used against both, rise of Tamil separatism, and all this in a period that saw successive droughts, that saw the deaths of Nehru and Shastri and the decline of the Congress. But for most Indians of my generation, who started going to school in that decade, the memory that stays is 1962. More than a memory, it is a scar. 1965 was a much bigger war, but it was an even contest. If it left a feeling of “incompleteness”, 1971 settled it.
The droughts led to the green revolution, the Congress party rose from the ruins again and grew to be more powerful than under Nehru. The two insurgencies retreated to the jungles, with populated regions of both the Naga and Mizo Hills firmly controlled by the army. But there was no real redemption for 1962. That is why that scar refuses to fade away. And that is the reason we over-react so irrationally, stupidly and ignorantly to even a rumour of another Chinese provocation.
We forget how much water has flown through the Indus, Teesta, Kameng and Lohit since 1962. And I mean not just militarily. The change in the larger political, strategic and diplomatic environment is much more significant. In the years leading up to 1962, India and China were “bhai-bhai” in a fake, hypocritical and contrived bonding of an entirely muddled and contradictory ideology.
Today we are both acknowledged as powerful and important nations and have a relationship of much greater substance and no phoney emotion and sloganeering. We do a phenomenal amount of business together, have maintained total peace on our unsettled borders and, while progress has been slow, have got some issues out of the way. Territorially, India’s gain is the Chinese acceptance of Sikkim’s accession. And for China, it is a very favourably substantive nuancing of India’s position on the status of Tibet. True, our border talks have progressed less rapidly than we would all wish, but these things require patience.
How come then even rumours of the so-called Chinese “incursions” caused us so much consternation? Most of these, even if these happened exactly as two-and-a-half war-mongering TV channels reported, were minor and superficial and did not justify either the panic or sabre-rattling that followed. Hundreds such are reported by each side every year. If the number is larger this year, and if the Chinese are indulging in more aggressive patrolling, we need to analyse and figure out the reasons, and then look for a counter. We cannot simply start getting the old 1962 nightmares. Militarily, 2009 is a far cry for both India and China. And politically, both, particularly China, have huge risks in an armed skirmish of any size, leave aside a war.
That is why, over the past three weeks, some of our discourse has been disturbing. It is as if we are again rushing to defend Namka Chu, Tawang, Tse La, Dirang Dzong and Bomdi La, Rezang La, Daulat Beg Oldi and Chushul. I do not believe any nation in the entire world has such stark and sharp memories and reference points of a war nearly 50 years old. We Indians do, firstly because this was the only war we have lost. But secondly, also because in our collective memory and popular culture, quite remarkably, this is the only war we remind ourselves of. Lata Mangeshkar brought tears to Nehru’s forlorn, defeated eyes when she sang “Ai mere watan ke logo”, a heart-wrenching tribute to outnumbered, outgunned troops in 1962, abandoned by their generals who loved politics and dumped by a disastrous defence minister who thought he could win wars by filibuster. But it is still the song we hear even at our Kargil or Bangladesh war celebrations. Maybe it is because Lata Didi never thought of singing something really stirring for those victorious occasions. Or maybe, we just find the pain of defeat more enduring than the joy of victory. That is why at so many official functions, military events, on national days we still hear strains of “jab ghayal hua Himalaya, khatre mein padi azadi” (when the Himalayas were assaulted, when our freedom was in peril) in Lata’s immortal voice. Popular culture only echoes our disinclination to celebrate a military victory (also evident in our failure to build even one reasonable war memorial for our soldiers). So neither 1971, nor Kargil resulted in a great war movie that we would watch again and again. So which one do we watch year after year? Chetan Anand’s Haqeeqat, a wonderfully realistic tribute to a small and valiant band of men who fought to the last man in Ladakh, broadly based on the true story of a Kumaon regiment company led by Major Shaitan Singh (a posthumous Param Vir Chakra). Incidentally, most of the 109 men of that company killed at Rezang La were Ahirs from southern Haryana and a mostly decrepit and rotting memorial still exists for them in a rotting municipal park in the town of Rewari, some 70 km from Delhi, off NH8 on way to Jaipur.
It is because we are so shy of celebrating our military success and so obsessed with defeat that we jump for the trenches the moment somebody says the Chinese are coming. We are not helped by a small band of excitable journalists who love military jargon but do not want to be confused with facts. The panic-mongering over the Chinese “incursions” is a direct result of that and it is doing India enormous damage. We sound insecure, hysterical, even irrational. This is most unbecoming of a nuclear weapons power with the fourth largest armed forces in the world, and the second highest economic growth rate.
If it is any comfort, please do read up a bit (Google Nathula, 1967). This is where India and China had their last major battle. It was no minor skirmish, but a local battle lasting six full days — maybe 1967 was a year for six-day wars (the other, more one-sided, being in the Middle East)! There were massive artillery duels. Both sides suffered heavy casualties. We had nearly a hundred dead, and by all international accounts the Chinese many more. Just five years after 1962, the Indian army had reminded the world — and China — that it had left that nightmare far, far behind. But we had completely obliterated 1967 from our memories, until it rushed back in my head last week as an “in memoriam” entry appeared in our newspaper’s Salute the Soldier section from 2 Grenadiers for its 32 martyrs of this battle. We must underline the fact that even in 1967 our armed forces were equal to the challenge.
It is time, therefore, that we bury defeatism. If we continue to fight the 1962 war, we can only lose again. This is 2009 and we are a resurgent, new India, managing and building a complex relationship with a near-superpower China. Both of us have stakes higher than a post here or a hill there. And none looks so crazy as to ruin a good story with rogue military adventurism. So it is time, for the sundry panic-mongers in some sections of the media and strategic community, to cool it. Or as would be said in the military jargon which they so love, to stand down.
sg@expressindia.com
Just a few observations
Dear All,
Just a few observations:
The news doing the airwaves that Obama has decided to withdraw the missile cover in Poland & the Czech Republic to placate Russia is indeed welcome.
The Obama arguement had followed the ridiculous Bush line that 'The missile shield in Eastern Europe was to protect the region from the Iranian missile threat'.
No sir, it was always meant to encircle & thus pressurise Russia.
A bargain seems to have been struck.
The fact lies that the announcement has come on the eve of the UN gathering in New York which will conclude with a meeting of the UN Security Council on the 23rd of September.
Here the US-Israeli-EU effort will be to further ratchet up the pressure on Iran to abandon it's legitimate Nuclear programme or face far greater sanctions than it already is.
Also do note that Obama's announcement comes soon after Netanyahu's (not-so-secret) trip to Russia where he met Vladimir Putin.
It was only a few hours ago that the BBC reported that Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator publicly stated that George Mitchel has failed in his endeavour to negotiate with the Israeli's into abandoning the 'further (unnatural) growth' of the Settlements in the West Bank & East Jerusalem. 'There will be no further negotiations until all Settlement activity is halted', he said.
The coming week at the UN promises to be interesting & will expose certain falsehoods & Western hypocrisies.
Regards
Feroze
Just a few observations:
The news doing the airwaves that Obama has decided to withdraw the missile cover in Poland & the Czech Republic to placate Russia is indeed welcome.
The Obama arguement had followed the ridiculous Bush line that 'The missile shield in Eastern Europe was to protect the region from the Iranian missile threat'.
No sir, it was always meant to encircle & thus pressurise Russia.
A bargain seems to have been struck.
The fact lies that the announcement has come on the eve of the UN gathering in New York which will conclude with a meeting of the UN Security Council on the 23rd of September.
Here the US-Israeli-EU effort will be to further ratchet up the pressure on Iran to abandon it's legitimate Nuclear programme or face far greater sanctions than it already is.
Also do note that Obama's announcement comes soon after Netanyahu's (not-so-secret) trip to Russia where he met Vladimir Putin.
It was only a few hours ago that the BBC reported that Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator publicly stated that George Mitchel has failed in his endeavour to negotiate with the Israeli's into abandoning the 'further (unnatural) growth' of the Settlements in the West Bank & East Jerusalem. 'There will be no further negotiations until all Settlement activity is halted', he said.
The coming week at the UN promises to be interesting & will expose certain falsehoods & Western hypocrisies.
Regards
Feroze
Dear All Important Article
,
Included below are:
1) George Mitchell fails to convince Netanyahu on Settlements:
France 24 US envoy fails to strike key settlement deal France 24
2)The growing Israeli penetration of Africa - imp & an an excellent article Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/965/eg7.htm
3) Gaza Genocide - Goldman Report (575 pgs) - Israel exposed by Gideon LevyIsrael stands exposedhttp://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1115240.html · Goldstone: Punish commanders who broke laws in Gaza
UM-Shmum, UM-Boom
IS THERE no limit to the wiles of those dastardly anti-Semites? by Uri Avnery (19.09.09)
Now they have decided to slander the Jews with another blood libel. Not the old accusation of slaughtering Christian children to use their blood for baking Passover matzoth, as in the past, but of the mass slaughter of women and children in Gaza.
And who did they put at the head of the commission which was charged with this task? Neither a British Holocaust-denier nor a German neo-Nazi, nor even an Iranian fanatic, but of all people a Jewish judge who bears the very Jewish name of Goldstone (originally Goldstein, of course). And not just a Jew with a Jewish name, but a Zionist, whose daughter, Nicole, is an enthusiastic Zionist who once “made Aliyah” and speaks fluent Hebrew. And not just a Jewish Zionist, but a South African who opposed apartheid and was appointed to the country’s Constitutional Court when that system was abolished.
All this in order to defame the most moral army in the world, fresh from waging the most just war in history!
Richard Goldstone is not the only Jew manipulated by the world-wide anti-Semitic conspiracy. Throughout the three weeks of the Gaza War, more than 10 thousand Israelis demonstrated against it again and again. They were photographed carrying signs saying “End the massacre in Gaza”, “Stop the war crimes”’ “Israel commits war crimes”, “Bombing civilians is a war crime”. They chanted in unison: “Olmert, Olmert, it is true – They’re waiting in The Hague for you!”
Who would have believed that there are so many anti-Semites in Israel?!
THE OFFICIAL Israeli reaction to the Goldstone report would have been amusing, if the matter had not been so grave.
Except for the “usual suspects” (Gideon Levy, Amira Hass and their ilk), the condemnation of the report was unanimous, total and extreme, from Shimon Peres, that advocate of every abomination, down to the last scribbler in the newspapers.
Nobody, but nobody, dealt with the subject itself. Nobody examined the detailed conclusions. With such an anti-Semitic smear, there is no need for that. Actually, there is no need to read the report at all.
The public, in all its diversity, stood up like one person, in order to rebuff the plot, as it has learned to do in the thousand years of pogroms, Spanish inquisition and Holocaust. A siege mentality, the ghetto mentality.
The instinctive reaction in such a situation is denial. It’s just not true. It never happened. It’s all a pack of lies.
By itself, that is a natural reaction. When a human being is faced with a situation which he cannot handle, denial is the first refuge. If things did not happen, there is no need to cope. Basically, there is no difference between the deniers of the Armenian genocide, the deniers of the annihilation of the Native Americans and the deniers of the atrocities of all wars.
From this point of view, it can be said that denial is almost “normal”. But with us it has been developed into an art form.
WE HAVE a special method: when something happens that we don’t want to confront, we direct the spotlight to one specific detail, something completely marginal, and begin to insist on it, debate it, examine it from all angles as if it were a matter of life and death.
Take the Yom Kippur war. It broke out because for six years, beginning with the 1967 war, Israel had cruised like a Ship of Fools, intoxicated with victory songs, victory albums and the belief in the invincibility of the Israeli army. Golda Meir treated the Arab world with open contempt and rebuffed the peace overtures of Anwar Sadat. The result: more than 2000 young Israelis killed, and who knows how many Egyptians and Syrians.
And what was furiously debated? The “Omission”. “Why were the reserves not called up in time? Why were the tanks not moved in advance?” Menachem Begin thundered in the Knesset, and about this, books and articles galore were written and a blue-ribbon judicial board of inquiry deliberated.
The First Lebanon War was a political blunder and a military failure. It lasted 18 years, gave birth to Hizbullah and established it as a regional force. And what was discussed? Whether Ariel Sharon had deceived Begin and was responsible for his illness and eventual death.
The Second Lebanon War was a disgrace from beginning to end, a superfluous war that caused massive destruction, wholesale slaughter and the flight of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians from their homes, without achieving an Israeli victory. And what was our debate about? For what was a commission of inquiry appointed? About the way the decision to start the war was taken. Was there an appropriate process of decision making? Was there orderly staff work?
About the Gaza War, there was no debate at all, because everything was perfectly alright. A brilliant campaign. Marvelous political and military leadership. True, we did not convince the Gaza Strip population to overthrow their leaders; true, we did not succeed in freeing the captured soldier Gilad Shalit; true, the whole world condemned us – but we killed a lot of Arabs, destroyed their environment and taught them a lesson they will not forget.
Now, a profound debate on the Goldstone report is going on. Not about its content, God forbid. What’s there to discus? But about the one point that is really important: was our government right in deciding to boycott the commission? Perhaps it would have been better to take part in the deliberations? Did our Foreign Office act as foolishly as it usually does? (Our Ministry of Defense, of course, never behaves foolishly.) Tens of thousands of words about this world-shaking question were poured out from the newspapers, the radio and TV, with every self-respecting commentator weighing in.
SO WHY did the Israeli government boycott the commission? The real answer is quite simple: they knew full well that the commission, any commission, would have to reach the conclusions it did reach.
In fact, the commission did not say anything new. Almost all the facts were already known: the bombing of civilian neighborhoods, the use of flechette rounds and white phosphorus against civilian targets, the bombing of mosques and schools, the blocking of rescue parties from reaching the wounded, the killing of fleeing civilians carrying white flags, the use of human shields, and more. The Israeli army did not allow journalists near the action, but the war was amply documented by the international media in all its details, the entire world saw it in real time on the TV screens. The testimonies are so many and so consistent, that any reasonable person can draw their own conclusions.
If the officers and soldiers of the Israeli army had given testimony before the commission, it would perhaps have been impressed by their angle, too – the fear, the confusion, the lack of orientation – and the conclusions could have been somewhat less severe. But the main thrust would not have changed. After all, the whole operation was based on the assumption that it was possible to overthrow the Hamas government in Gaza by causing intolerable suffering to the civilian population. The damage to civilians was not “collateral”, whether avoidable or unavoidable, but a central feature of the operation itself.
Moreover, the rules of engagement were designed to achieve “zero losses” to our forces – avoiding losses at any price. That was the conclusion our army – led by Gabi Ashkenazi – drew from the Second Lebanon War. The results speak for themselves: 200 dead Palestinians for every Israeli soldier killed by the other side – 1400:6.
Every real investigation must inevitably lead to the same conclusions as those of the Goldstone commission. Therefore, there was no Israeli wish for a real inquiry. The “investigations” that did take place were a farce. The person responsible, the Military Advocate General, kippa-wearing brigadier Avichai Mendelblit, was in charge of this task. He was promoted this week to the rank of major general. The promotion and its timing speak a clear language.
SO IT is clear that there is no chance of the Israeli government belatedly opening a real investigation, as demanded by Israeli peace activists.
In order to be credible, such an investigation would have to have the status of a State Commission of Inquiry as defined by Israeli law, headed by a Supreme Court justice. It would have to conduct its investigations publicly, in full view of the Israeli and international media. It would have to invite the victims, Gaza inhabitants, to testify together with the soldiers who took part in the war. It would have to investigate in detail each of the accusations that appear in the Goldstone report. It would have to check out the orders issued and decisions made, from the Chief of Staff down to the squad level. It would have to study the briefings of Air Force pilots and drone operators.
This list suffices to make it clear why such an investigation will not and cannot take place. Instead, the world-wide Israeli propaganda machine will continue to defame the Jewish judge and the people who appointed him.
Not all the Israeli accusations against the UN are groundless. For example: why does the organization investigate the war crimes in Gaza (and in former Yugoslavia and Darfur, investigations in which Goldstone took part as chief prosecutor) and not the actions of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Russians in Chechnya?
But the main argument of the Israeli government is that the UN is an anti-Semitic organization, and its Human Rights Commission is doubly anti-Semitic.
ISRAEL’S RELATIONS with the UN are very complex. The state was founded on the basis of a UN resolution, and it is doubtful whether it would have come into being at precisely that time and those circumstance had there been no such resolution. Our Declaration of Independence is largely based on this resolution. A year later, Israel was accepted as a UN member in spite of the fact that it had not allowed the (then) 750 thousand Palestinian refugees to return.
But this honeymoon soured quickly. David Ben-Gurion spoke with contempt about UM-Shmum (“Um” is the Hebrew for “UN”, the prefix “shm” signifies contempt). From then on to this very day, Israel has systematically violated almost every single UN resolution that concerned it, complaining that there was an “automatic majority” of Arab and communist countries stacked against it. This attitude was reinforced when, on the eve of the 1967 war, the UN troops in Sinai where precipitously withdrawn on the demand of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser. And, of course, by the UN resolution (later annulled) equating Zionism with racism.
Now this argument is raising its head again. The UN, it is being said, is anti-Israeli, which means (of course) anti-Semitic. Everyone who acts in the name of the UN is an Israel-hater. To hell with the UN. To hell with the Goldstone report.
That is, however, a woefully short-sighted policy. The general public throughout the world is hearing about the report and remembering the pictures they saw on their TV screens during the Gaza war. The UN enjoys much respect. In the wake of the “Molten Lead” operation, Israel’s standing in the world has been steadily going down, and this report will send it down even further. This will have practical consequences – political, military, economic and cultural. Only a fool – or an Avigdor Lieberman – can ignore that.
If there is no credible Israeli investigation, there will be demands for the UN Security Council to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Barack Obama would have to decide whether to veto such a resolution – a move that would cause grave harm to the US, and for which he would demand a high price from Israel.
As has been said before: UM-Shmum may turn into UM-Boom.
Now they have decided to slander the Jews with another blood libel. Not the old accusation of slaughtering Christian children to use their blood for baking Passover matzoth, as in the past, but of the mass slaughter of women and children in Gaza.
And who did they put at the head of the commission which was charged with this task? Neither a British Holocaust-denier nor a German neo-Nazi, nor even an Iranian fanatic, but of all people a Jewish judge who bears the very Jewish name of Goldstone (originally Goldstein, of course). And not just a Jew with a Jewish name, but a Zionist, whose daughter, Nicole, is an enthusiastic Zionist who once “made Aliyah” and speaks fluent Hebrew. And not just a Jewish Zionist, but a South African who opposed apartheid and was appointed to the country’s Constitutional Court when that system was abolished.
All this in order to defame the most moral army in the world, fresh from waging the most just war in history!
Richard Goldstone is not the only Jew manipulated by the world-wide anti-Semitic conspiracy. Throughout the three weeks of the Gaza War, more than 10 thousand Israelis demonstrated against it again and again. They were photographed carrying signs saying “End the massacre in Gaza”, “Stop the war crimes”’ “Israel commits war crimes”, “Bombing civilians is a war crime”. They chanted in unison: “Olmert, Olmert, it is true – They’re waiting in The Hague for you!”
Who would have believed that there are so many anti-Semites in Israel?!
THE OFFICIAL Israeli reaction to the Goldstone report would have been amusing, if the matter had not been so grave.
Except for the “usual suspects” (Gideon Levy, Amira Hass and their ilk), the condemnation of the report was unanimous, total and extreme, from Shimon Peres, that advocate of every abomination, down to the last scribbler in the newspapers.
Nobody, but nobody, dealt with the subject itself. Nobody examined the detailed conclusions. With such an anti-Semitic smear, there is no need for that. Actually, there is no need to read the report at all.
The public, in all its diversity, stood up like one person, in order to rebuff the plot, as it has learned to do in the thousand years of pogroms, Spanish inquisition and Holocaust. A siege mentality, the ghetto mentality.
The instinctive reaction in such a situation is denial. It’s just not true. It never happened. It’s all a pack of lies.
By itself, that is a natural reaction. When a human being is faced with a situation which he cannot handle, denial is the first refuge. If things did not happen, there is no need to cope. Basically, there is no difference between the deniers of the Armenian genocide, the deniers of the annihilation of the Native Americans and the deniers of the atrocities of all wars.
From this point of view, it can be said that denial is almost “normal”. But with us it has been developed into an art form.
WE HAVE a special method: when something happens that we don’t want to confront, we direct the spotlight to one specific detail, something completely marginal, and begin to insist on it, debate it, examine it from all angles as if it were a matter of life and death.
Take the Yom Kippur war. It broke out because for six years, beginning with the 1967 war, Israel had cruised like a Ship of Fools, intoxicated with victory songs, victory albums and the belief in the invincibility of the Israeli army. Golda Meir treated the Arab world with open contempt and rebuffed the peace overtures of Anwar Sadat. The result: more than 2000 young Israelis killed, and who knows how many Egyptians and Syrians.
And what was furiously debated? The “Omission”. “Why were the reserves not called up in time? Why were the tanks not moved in advance?” Menachem Begin thundered in the Knesset, and about this, books and articles galore were written and a blue-ribbon judicial board of inquiry deliberated.
The First Lebanon War was a political blunder and a military failure. It lasted 18 years, gave birth to Hizbullah and established it as a regional force. And what was discussed? Whether Ariel Sharon had deceived Begin and was responsible for his illness and eventual death.
The Second Lebanon War was a disgrace from beginning to end, a superfluous war that caused massive destruction, wholesale slaughter and the flight of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians from their homes, without achieving an Israeli victory. And what was our debate about? For what was a commission of inquiry appointed? About the way the decision to start the war was taken. Was there an appropriate process of decision making? Was there orderly staff work?
About the Gaza War, there was no debate at all, because everything was perfectly alright. A brilliant campaign. Marvelous political and military leadership. True, we did not convince the Gaza Strip population to overthrow their leaders; true, we did not succeed in freeing the captured soldier Gilad Shalit; true, the whole world condemned us – but we killed a lot of Arabs, destroyed their environment and taught them a lesson they will not forget.
Now, a profound debate on the Goldstone report is going on. Not about its content, God forbid. What’s there to discus? But about the one point that is really important: was our government right in deciding to boycott the commission? Perhaps it would have been better to take part in the deliberations? Did our Foreign Office act as foolishly as it usually does? (Our Ministry of Defense, of course, never behaves foolishly.) Tens of thousands of words about this world-shaking question were poured out from the newspapers, the radio and TV, with every self-respecting commentator weighing in.
SO WHY did the Israeli government boycott the commission? The real answer is quite simple: they knew full well that the commission, any commission, would have to reach the conclusions it did reach.
In fact, the commission did not say anything new. Almost all the facts were already known: the bombing of civilian neighborhoods, the use of flechette rounds and white phosphorus against civilian targets, the bombing of mosques and schools, the blocking of rescue parties from reaching the wounded, the killing of fleeing civilians carrying white flags, the use of human shields, and more. The Israeli army did not allow journalists near the action, but the war was amply documented by the international media in all its details, the entire world saw it in real time on the TV screens. The testimonies are so many and so consistent, that any reasonable person can draw their own conclusions.
If the officers and soldiers of the Israeli army had given testimony before the commission, it would perhaps have been impressed by their angle, too – the fear, the confusion, the lack of orientation – and the conclusions could have been somewhat less severe. But the main thrust would not have changed. After all, the whole operation was based on the assumption that it was possible to overthrow the Hamas government in Gaza by causing intolerable suffering to the civilian population. The damage to civilians was not “collateral”, whether avoidable or unavoidable, but a central feature of the operation itself.
Moreover, the rules of engagement were designed to achieve “zero losses” to our forces – avoiding losses at any price. That was the conclusion our army – led by Gabi Ashkenazi – drew from the Second Lebanon War. The results speak for themselves: 200 dead Palestinians for every Israeli soldier killed by the other side – 1400:6.
Every real investigation must inevitably lead to the same conclusions as those of the Goldstone commission. Therefore, there was no Israeli wish for a real inquiry. The “investigations” that did take place were a farce. The person responsible, the Military Advocate General, kippa-wearing brigadier Avichai Mendelblit, was in charge of this task. He was promoted this week to the rank of major general. The promotion and its timing speak a clear language.
SO IT is clear that there is no chance of the Israeli government belatedly opening a real investigation, as demanded by Israeli peace activists.
In order to be credible, such an investigation would have to have the status of a State Commission of Inquiry as defined by Israeli law, headed by a Supreme Court justice. It would have to conduct its investigations publicly, in full view of the Israeli and international media. It would have to invite the victims, Gaza inhabitants, to testify together with the soldiers who took part in the war. It would have to investigate in detail each of the accusations that appear in the Goldstone report. It would have to check out the orders issued and decisions made, from the Chief of Staff down to the squad level. It would have to study the briefings of Air Force pilots and drone operators.
This list suffices to make it clear why such an investigation will not and cannot take place. Instead, the world-wide Israeli propaganda machine will continue to defame the Jewish judge and the people who appointed him.
Not all the Israeli accusations against the UN are groundless. For example: why does the organization investigate the war crimes in Gaza (and in former Yugoslavia and Darfur, investigations in which Goldstone took part as chief prosecutor) and not the actions of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Russians in Chechnya?
But the main argument of the Israeli government is that the UN is an anti-Semitic organization, and its Human Rights Commission is doubly anti-Semitic.
ISRAEL’S RELATIONS with the UN are very complex. The state was founded on the basis of a UN resolution, and it is doubtful whether it would have come into being at precisely that time and those circumstance had there been no such resolution. Our Declaration of Independence is largely based on this resolution. A year later, Israel was accepted as a UN member in spite of the fact that it had not allowed the (then) 750 thousand Palestinian refugees to return.
But this honeymoon soured quickly. David Ben-Gurion spoke with contempt about UM-Shmum (“Um” is the Hebrew for “UN”, the prefix “shm” signifies contempt). From then on to this very day, Israel has systematically violated almost every single UN resolution that concerned it, complaining that there was an “automatic majority” of Arab and communist countries stacked against it. This attitude was reinforced when, on the eve of the 1967 war, the UN troops in Sinai where precipitously withdrawn on the demand of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser. And, of course, by the UN resolution (later annulled) equating Zionism with racism.
Now this argument is raising its head again. The UN, it is being said, is anti-Israeli, which means (of course) anti-Semitic. Everyone who acts in the name of the UN is an Israel-hater. To hell with the UN. To hell with the Goldstone report.
That is, however, a woefully short-sighted policy. The general public throughout the world is hearing about the report and remembering the pictures they saw on their TV screens during the Gaza war. The UN enjoys much respect. In the wake of the “Molten Lead” operation, Israel’s standing in the world has been steadily going down, and this report will send it down even further. This will have practical consequences – political, military, economic and cultural. Only a fool – or an Avigdor Lieberman – can ignore that.
If there is no credible Israeli investigation, there will be demands for the UN Security Council to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Barack Obama would have to decide whether to veto such a resolution – a move that would cause grave harm to the US, and for which he would demand a high price from Israel.
As has been said before: UM-Shmum may turn into UM-Boom.
'Day of Jerusalem' - US-Israeli flags burnt in Srinagar
JUM’ATUL VIDA OBSERVED (Last Friday of Ramzan)
Anti-Zionist Protests On Al-Quds Day; US, Israeli Flags Burnt
GK NEWS NETWORK
Srinagar, Sept 18: Jam’atul Vida, the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadhan, witnessed large congregations at the afternoon prayers all over Jammu and Kashmir today. The day was also observed as Yaum-i-Quds and Yaumi Kashmir in response to the call by both the factions of Hurriyat Conference.
At Srinagar, the biggest congregation was held at the historic Jamia Masjid where several lakh devotees, including a large number of women, joined the Friday prayers. Hurriyat Conference (M) chairman, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, addressed the congregation.
Another big congregation was held at Dargah Asar-e-Sharif, Hazratbal, where also about two lakh people offered Friday prayers. The chief minister, Omar Abdullah, was among the devotees who offered the prayers.
Congregational prayers were also held at Masjid Jamiat-e-Ahlehadith, Gawkadal; Asar-e-Sharif, Janab Sahib, Soura; Asar-e-Sharif, Shehri Kalashpora; Ziarat Dastgeer Sahib, Khanyar, Ziarat Dastgeer Sahib, Sarai Bala; Ziarat-e-Makhdoom Sahib, Khanqah-e-Mu’alla and several other mosques and shrines.
The administration had made elaborate arrangements for the conduct of prayers and transportation of devotees at the principal venues and at all other places across the city and elsewhere.
Soon after the Friday prayers, the people staged massive demonstrations at several places to protest the continued occupation of Masjid-e-Aqsa by Zionists. They burnt the US and Israeli flags. The protesters were chanting slogans for vacation of the Qibla-e-Awwal Masjid al-Quds by the Zionists, freedom of Palestine and in support of the on-going struggle in Kashmir. Anti-Israel and anti-US protests were held in various major towns and other places across the Valley.
Senior activists of Hurriyat conference (M) addressed the gatherings at different Masjids. Prof Abdul Gani Bhat addressed the gathering at Batengoo, Aga Hasan Al Mousvi Al Safvi at Budgam. The others who addressed the gathering include Saleem Geelani, Javid Ahmad Mir and others.
Earlier, lakhs of devotees joined the night-long prayers on Shab-e-Qadar in different Masjids and shrines. The large congregation function was held at Dargah Hazratbal where thousands of devotees from different parts of the valley joined the night-long prayers.
SOUTH KASHMIR
Heavy rush of devotees was witnessed at various Masjids in South Kashmir. Thousands of devotees offered Friday prayers at Jamia Masjid Ahle-Hadith in south Kashmir’s Islamabad town. Large congregations were witnessed also at Jamia Masjid Reshi Bazaar, Sheikh-ul-Alam Masjid, Masjid Shareef, KMD adda, Masjid Noor, KP Road, Masjid-e-Baitul Mukarram.
Reports of Jumatul Vida congregations were also received from Ka’aba Marg, Asar-e-Sharif Pinjora, and other parts of south Kashmir.
NORTH KASHMIR
In north Kashmir’s Varmul district, large congregations were witnessed in Astan-e-Aliya Khwaja Sahab, Astan-e-Aliya Janbaaz Wali (RA) and Masjid Baitul Mukarram.
In the apple town of Sopur, the largest congregation was held at Jamia Masjid and Khanqah-e-Mu’alla while other districts also witnessed a heavy rush of devotees.
JAMMU
Reports of big Friday congregations on Jum’atul Vida have also come from various parts of Jammu region. Apart from the congregations at Talab Khatikan and Ustad Muhalla in the winter capital, thousands of people joined the Friday prayers in the principal mosques at Doda, Bhadarwah, Kishtwar, Poonch, Rajouri, Banihal and several places.
Anti-Zionist Protests On Al-Quds Day; US, Israeli Flags Burnt
GK NEWS NETWORK
Srinagar, Sept 18: Jam’atul Vida, the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadhan, witnessed large congregations at the afternoon prayers all over Jammu and Kashmir today. The day was also observed as Yaum-i-Quds and Yaumi Kashmir in response to the call by both the factions of Hurriyat Conference.
At Srinagar, the biggest congregation was held at the historic Jamia Masjid where several lakh devotees, including a large number of women, joined the Friday prayers. Hurriyat Conference (M) chairman, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, addressed the congregation.
Another big congregation was held at Dargah Asar-e-Sharif, Hazratbal, where also about two lakh people offered Friday prayers. The chief minister, Omar Abdullah, was among the devotees who offered the prayers.
Congregational prayers were also held at Masjid Jamiat-e-Ahlehadith, Gawkadal; Asar-e-Sharif, Janab Sahib, Soura; Asar-e-Sharif, Shehri Kalashpora; Ziarat Dastgeer Sahib, Khanyar, Ziarat Dastgeer Sahib, Sarai Bala; Ziarat-e-Makhdoom Sahib, Khanqah-e-Mu’alla and several other mosques and shrines.
The administration had made elaborate arrangements for the conduct of prayers and transportation of devotees at the principal venues and at all other places across the city and elsewhere.
Soon after the Friday prayers, the people staged massive demonstrations at several places to protest the continued occupation of Masjid-e-Aqsa by Zionists. They burnt the US and Israeli flags. The protesters were chanting slogans for vacation of the Qibla-e-Awwal Masjid al-Quds by the Zionists, freedom of Palestine and in support of the on-going struggle in Kashmir. Anti-Israel and anti-US protests were held in various major towns and other places across the Valley.
Senior activists of Hurriyat conference (M) addressed the gatherings at different Masjids. Prof Abdul Gani Bhat addressed the gathering at Batengoo, Aga Hasan Al Mousvi Al Safvi at Budgam. The others who addressed the gathering include Saleem Geelani, Javid Ahmad Mir and others.
Earlier, lakhs of devotees joined the night-long prayers on Shab-e-Qadar in different Masjids and shrines. The large congregation function was held at Dargah Hazratbal where thousands of devotees from different parts of the valley joined the night-long prayers.
SOUTH KASHMIR
Heavy rush of devotees was witnessed at various Masjids in South Kashmir. Thousands of devotees offered Friday prayers at Jamia Masjid Ahle-Hadith in south Kashmir’s Islamabad town. Large congregations were witnessed also at Jamia Masjid Reshi Bazaar, Sheikh-ul-Alam Masjid, Masjid Shareef, KMD adda, Masjid Noor, KP Road, Masjid-e-Baitul Mukarram.
Reports of Jumatul Vida congregations were also received from Ka’aba Marg, Asar-e-Sharif Pinjora, and other parts of south Kashmir.
NORTH KASHMIR
In north Kashmir’s Varmul district, large congregations were witnessed in Astan-e-Aliya Khwaja Sahab, Astan-e-Aliya Janbaaz Wali (RA) and Masjid Baitul Mukarram.
In the apple town of Sopur, the largest congregation was held at Jamia Masjid and Khanqah-e-Mu’alla while other districts also witnessed a heavy rush of devotees.
JAMMU
Reports of big Friday congregations on Jum’atul Vida have also come from various parts of Jammu region. Apart from the congregations at Talab Khatikan and Ustad Muhalla in the winter capital, thousands of people joined the Friday prayers in the principal mosques at Doda, Bhadarwah, Kishtwar, Poonch, Rajouri, Banihal and several places.
free gaza in India
Dear All,
As most of you would know, Huwaida Araf (In 2001 Huwaida co-founded the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.) is the truly remarkable Palestinian lady, who is spearheading the 'FREE GAZA BOAT MOVEMENT' & we are scheduling her to visit India between 25th of Sept to 1st of October, that is before the next batch of 'Free Gaza Boats' take of from Cyprus to Gaza later this year.
The basic objective is to get India involved far more deeply than hitherto, into the International Palestine Solidarity Movement & as a natural corollary, to have at least have two prominent Indians, preferably Parliamentarians if possible, on board the Free Gaza Boat along with Nobel Prize Winners, Prominent International Human Rights Figures, Senators & Congressmen from the US, EU, South America,Africa as well from many other Asian countries as well.
For further information do log on to:
Freegaza - Huwaida Arraf (Palestine, Israel, US)
Freegaza - Free Gaza Boat "Spirit of Humanity" Departs Cyprus
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Gaza aid boat 'rammed by Israel'
Free Gaza Boat boarded by Israeli Navy and human rights workers ...
Below is also a tentaive programmme for Huwaida in Mumbai & in Delhi.
Regards
Feroze M, Kishore J, Varsha V V, Sayeed K, Amol M, Chetna, Reshma B & Arif K
--------------------------
Dear Huwaida,
Yup, I believe that it is important that U stop over in Bombay & then in Delhi & U can fly back from Delhi.
So it will / could be:
Mumbai:
Friday night 25th:-
Arrival - Relax - meet up with the core Palestine Solidarity friends.
Saturday 26th:-
Public Meeting & Press Media as well - A little Dinner with Palestine Solidarity friends - a little sightseeing - Bollywood . .
Sunday 27th:- till late afternoon - Press / Activists - Discussions / Strategies.
---------------------------------------
Delhi:
Sunday 27th late afternoon - Leave for Delhi:-
Inhouse meetings with Palestine Solidarity friends, selected media friends.
Monday 28th - Tuesday 29th - Wednesday 30th September:-
Intense meetings with political party leaders / social movements - Public Meeting / Press.
Thursday, 1st October:-
U fly back Home . . . . to Palestine.
--------------------------------------------------
Once you confirm the same tomorrow, we will fine tune your programme so that we optimise your visit.
Warm Regards
In Solidarity with the Intifada.
Feroze & Kishore
As most of you would know, Huwaida Araf (In 2001 Huwaida co-founded the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.) is the truly remarkable Palestinian lady, who is spearheading the 'FREE GAZA BOAT MOVEMENT' & we are scheduling her to visit India between 25th of Sept to 1st of October, that is before the next batch of 'Free Gaza Boats' take of from Cyprus to Gaza later this year.
The basic objective is to get India involved far more deeply than hitherto, into the International Palestine Solidarity Movement & as a natural corollary, to have at least have two prominent Indians, preferably Parliamentarians if possible, on board the Free Gaza Boat along with Nobel Prize Winners, Prominent International Human Rights Figures, Senators & Congressmen from the US, EU, South America,Africa as well from many other Asian countries as well.
For further information do log on to:
Freegaza - Huwaida Arraf (Palestine, Israel, US)
Freegaza - Free Gaza Boat "Spirit of Humanity" Departs Cyprus
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Gaza aid boat 'rammed by Israel'
Free Gaza Boat boarded by Israeli Navy and human rights workers ...
Below is also a tentaive programmme for Huwaida in Mumbai & in Delhi.
Regards
Feroze M, Kishore J, Varsha V V, Sayeed K, Amol M, Chetna, Reshma B & Arif K
--------------------------
Dear Huwaida,
Yup, I believe that it is important that U stop over in Bombay & then in Delhi & U can fly back from Delhi.
So it will / could be:
Mumbai:
Friday night 25th:-
Arrival - Relax - meet up with the core Palestine Solidarity friends.
Saturday 26th:-
Public Meeting & Press Media as well - A little Dinner with Palestine Solidarity friends - a little sightseeing - Bollywood . .
Sunday 27th:- till late afternoon - Press / Activists - Discussions / Strategies.
---------------------------------------
Delhi:
Sunday 27th late afternoon - Leave for Delhi:-
Inhouse meetings with Palestine Solidarity friends, selected media friends.
Monday 28th - Tuesday 29th - Wednesday 30th September:-
Intense meetings with political party leaders / social movements - Public Meeting / Press.
Thursday, 1st October:-
U fly back Home . . . . to Palestine.
--------------------------------------------------
Once you confirm the same tomorrow, we will fine tune your programme so that we optimise your visit.
Warm Regards
In Solidarity with the Intifada.
Feroze & Kishore
"A Muslim View of 9/11 Truth" - Kevin Barett
Hi Folks,
After my talk "A Muslim View of 9/11 Truth" at the 'We Demand Transparency' conference last Saturday in New York City, Steve and I got into a fairly raucous debate. Actually Steve was the raucous one, but don't tell him I said that in my talk.I had argued that most Muslims:
*Think 9/11 was part of an ongoing war on Islam; http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brmiddleeastnafricara/346.php
*Think the main battlefront of that war is the Zionist settler-colonial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settler_colonialism occupation of Palestine, which has been a Muslim-ruled holy land for more than 1300 years, except for a few brief, bloody Crusader interludes, including the current one;
* Think a major motive of 9/11 was to bring the US into a long-term war against Israel's enemies -- namely, the whole Muslim world -- in a desperate attempt to lengthen Israel's otherwise short shelf-life. Hence the tendency of Muslims to highlight the evidence of Israeli involvement as discussed by such researchers as Justin Raimondo (The Terror Enigma), Christopher Bollyn http://www.bollyn.com and Michael Andregg http://www.gzmn.org .
What Steve objected to most of all was my saying that most Muslims think that pro-Israel Jews dominate the American mainstream media, with predictable consequences for coverage of the Israeli-Palestine conflict. I cited evidence of Jewish over representation in the mainstream media, including a chart showing that in 2003 four-and-a-half of the five mega-media-conglomerates had Jewish CEOs (maybe-Jew and arch-Zionist Rupert Murdoch being the one-half). http://truthjihad.blogspot.com/2009/09/reflections-on-bollyn-interview-is.html More evidence here: http://www.rense.com/general60/stun.htm And still more in Phillip Weiss's wonderful piece "Do Jews Dominate in American Media? And So What If We Do?" http://mondoweiss.net/2008/02/do-jews-dominat.html
Steve thinks I'm wrong about most of this, and that expressing anti-Zionism and/or focusing on the Israeli 9/11 angle is bad for the 9/11 truth movement, and for me. He'll try to convince me tomorrow on Fair and Balanced, 9-10 a.m. Pacific (noon-1 pm Eastern) on http://NoLiesRadio.org .
salaam/shalom
Kevin Barrett
http://www.truthjihad.com
Author, Questioning the War on Terror: A Primer for Obama Voters: http://www.questioningthewaronterror.com
Steve Alten wants me to cool it on Israel, and will tell me so tomorrow on Fair and Balanced, 9-10 a.m. Pacific (noon-1 pm Eastern) on http://NoLiesRadio.org -- to be archived for free listening any time at http://noliesradio.org/archives/category/shows/fair-balanced .
Steve Alten is the New York Times bestselling author of the 9/11 truth thriller The Shell Game http://www.theshellgame.net which recently came out in a newly rewritten, updated, paperback edition. (Buy it! Pass it around!) He's also an American Jew, a moderate supporter of Israel (who dislikes extremists like Netanyahu), and now a critic of my recent attempts to explain to Americans how things look to most Muslims around the world.
After my talk "A Muslim View of 9/11 Truth" at the 'We Demand Transparency' conference last Saturday in New York City, Steve and I got into a fairly raucous debate. Actually Steve was the raucous one, but don't tell him I said that in my talk.I had argued that most Muslims:
*Think 9/11 was part of an ongoing war on Islam; http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brmiddleeastnafricara/346.php
*Think the main battlefront of that war is the Zionist settler-colonial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settler_colonialism occupation of Palestine, which has been a Muslim-ruled holy land for more than 1300 years, except for a few brief, bloody Crusader interludes, including the current one;
* Think a major motive of 9/11 was to bring the US into a long-term war against Israel's enemies -- namely, the whole Muslim world -- in a desperate attempt to lengthen Israel's otherwise short shelf-life. Hence the tendency of Muslims to highlight the evidence of Israeli involvement as discussed by such researchers as Justin Raimondo (The Terror Enigma), Christopher Bollyn http://www.bollyn.com and Michael Andregg http://www.gzmn.org .
What Steve objected to most of all was my saying that most Muslims think that pro-Israel Jews dominate the American mainstream media, with predictable consequences for coverage of the Israeli-Palestine conflict. I cited evidence of Jewish over representation in the mainstream media, including a chart showing that in 2003 four-and-a-half of the five mega-media-conglomerates had Jewish CEOs (maybe-Jew and arch-Zionist Rupert Murdoch being the one-half). http://truthjihad.blogspot.com/2009/09/reflections-on-bollyn-interview-is.html More evidence here: http://www.rense.com/general60/stun.htm And still more in Phillip Weiss's wonderful piece "Do Jews Dominate in American Media? And So What If We Do?" http://mondoweiss.net/2008/02/do-jews-dominat.html
Steve thinks I'm wrong about most of this, and that expressing anti-Zionism and/or focusing on the Israeli 9/11 angle is bad for the 9/11 truth movement, and for me. He'll try to convince me tomorrow on Fair and Balanced, 9-10 a.m. Pacific (noon-1 pm Eastern) on http://NoLiesRadio.org .
salaam/shalom
Kevin Barrett
http://www.truthjihad.com
Author, Questioning the War on Terror: A Primer for Obama Voters: http://www.questioningthewaronterror.com
Steve Alten wants me to cool it on Israel, and will tell me so tomorrow on Fair and Balanced, 9-10 a.m. Pacific (noon-1 pm Eastern) on http://NoLiesRadio.org -- to be archived for free listening any time at http://noliesradio.org/archives/category/shows/fair-balanced .
Steve Alten is the New York Times bestselling author of the 9/11 truth thriller The Shell Game http://www.theshellgame.net which recently came out in a newly rewritten, updated, paperback edition. (Buy it! Pass it around!) He's also an American Jew, a moderate supporter of Israel (who dislikes extremists like Netanyahu), and now a critic of my recent attempts to explain to Americans how things look to most Muslims around the world.
Why Propaganda Trumps Truth
By Paul Craig Roberts
(was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan's first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street )
"Information Clearing House" -- -An article in the journal, Sociological Inquiry, casts light on the effectiveness of propaganda. Researchers examined why big lies succeed where little lies fail. Governments can get away with mass deceptions, but politicians cannot get away with sexual affairs.
The researchers explain why so many Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, years after it has become obvious that Iraq had nothing to do with the event. Americans developed elaborate rationalizations based on Bush administration propaganda that alleged Iraqi involvement and became deeply attached to their beliefs. Their emotional involvement became wrapped up in their personal identity and sense of morality. They looked for information that supported their beliefs and avoided information that challenged them, regardless of the facts of the matter.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler explained the believability of the Big Lie as compared to the small lie: “In the simplicity of their minds, people more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have such impudence. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and continue to think that there may be some other explanation.”
What the sociologists and Hitler are telling us is that by the time facts become clear, people are emotionally wedded to the beliefs planted by the propaganda and find it a wrenching experience to free themselves. It is more comfortable, instead, to denounce the truth-tellers than the liars whom the truth-tellers expose.
The psychology of belief retention even when those beliefs are wrong is a pillar of social cohesion and stability. It explains why, once change is effected, even revolutionary governments become conservative. The downside of belief retention is its prevention of the recognition of facts. Belief retention in the Soviet Union made the system unable to adjust to economic reality, and the Soviet Union collapsed. Today in the United States millions find it easier to chant “USA, USA, USA” than to accept facts that indicate the need for change.
The staying power of the Big Lie is the barrier through which the 9/11 Truth Movement is finding it difficult to break. The assertion that the 9/11 Truth Movement consists of conspiracy theorists and crackpots is obviously untrue. The leaders of the movement are highly qualified professionals, such as demolition experts, physicists, structural architects, engineers, pilots, and former high officials in the government. Unlike their critics parroting the government’s line, they know what they are talking about.
Here is a link to a presentation by the architect, Richard Gage, to a Canadian university audience: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13242 The video of the presentation is two hours long and seems to have been edited to shorten it down to two hours. Gage is low-key, but not a dazzling personality or a very articulate presenter. Perhaps that is because he is speaking to a university audience and takes for granted their familiarity with terms and concepts.
Those who believe the official 9/11 story and dismiss skeptics as kooks can test the validity of the sociologists’ findings and Hitler’s observation by watching the video and experiencing their reaction to evidence that challenges their beliefs. Are you able to watch the presentation without scoffing at someone who knows far more about it than you do? What is your response when you find that you cannot defend your beliefs against the evidence presented? Scoff some more? Become enraged?
Another problem that the 9/11 Truth Movement faces is that few people have the education to follow the technical and scientific aspects. The side that they believe tells them one thing; the side that they don’t believe tells them another. Most Americans have no basis to judge the relative merits of the arguments.
For example, consider the case of the Lockerbie bomber. One piece of “evidence” that was used to convict Magrahi was a piece of circuit board from a device that allegedly contained the Semtex that exploded the airliner. None of the people, who have very firm beliefs in Magrahi’s and Libya’s guilt and in the offense of the Scottish authorities in releasing Magrahi on allegedly humanitarian grounds, know that circuit boards of those days have very low combustion temperatures and go up in flames easily. Semtex produces very high temperatures. There would be nothing whatsoever left of a device that contained Semtex. It is obvious to an expert that the piece of circuit board was planted after the event.
I have asked on several occasions and have never had an answer, which does not mean that there isn’t one, how millions of pieces of unburnt, uncharred paper can be floating over lower Manhatten from the destruction of the WTC towers when the official explanation of the destruction is fires so hot and evenly distributed that they caused the massive steel structures to weaken and fail simultaneously so that the buildings fell in free fall time just as they would if they had been brought down by controlled demolition.
What is the explanation of fires so hot that steel fails but paper does not combust?
People don’t even notice the contradictions. Recently, an international team of scientists, who studied for 18 months dust samples produced by the twin towers’ destruction collected from three separate sources, reported their finding of nano-thermite in the dust. The US government had scientists dependent on the US government to debunk the finding on the grounds that the authenticity of custody of the samples could not be verified. In other words, someone had tampered with the samples and added the nano-thermite. This is all it took to discredit the finding, despite the obvious fact that access to thermite is strictly controlled and NO ONE except the US military and possibly Israel has access to nano-thermite.
The physicist, Steven Jones, has produced overwhelming evidence that explosives were used to bring down the buildings. His evidence is not engaged, examined, tested, and refuted. It is simply ignored.
Dr. Jones’ experience reminds me of that of my Oxford professor, the distinguished physical chemist and philosopher, Michael Polanyi. Polanyi was one of the 20th centuries great scientists. At one time every section chairman of the Royal Society was a Polanyi student. Many of his students won Nobel Prizes for their scientific work, such as Eugene Wigner at Princeton and Melvin Calvin at UC, Berkeley, and his son, John Polanyi, at the University of Toronto.
As a young man in the early years of the 20th century, Michael Polanyi discovered the explanation for chemical absorbtion. Scientific authority found the new theory too much of a challenge to existing beliefs and dismissed it. Even when Polanyi was one of the UK’s ranking scientists, he was unable to teach his theory. One half-century later his discovery was re-discovered by scientists at UC, Berkeley. The discovery was hailed, but then older scientists said that it was “Polanyi’s old error.” It turned out not to be an error. Polanyi was asked to address scientists on this half-century failure of science to recognize the truth. How had science, which is based on examining the evidence, gone so wrong. Polanyi’s answer was that science is a belief system just like everything else, and that his theory was outside the belief system.
That is what we observe all around us, not just about the perfidy of Muslims and 9/11.
As an economics scholar I had a very difficult time making my points about the Soviet economy, about Karl Marx’s theories, and about the supply-side impact of fiscal policy. Today I experience readers who become enraged just because I report on someone else’s work that is outside their belief system. Some readers think I should suppress work that is inconsistent with their beliefs and drive the author of the work into the ground. These readers never have any comprehension of the subject. They are simply emotionally offended.
What I find puzzling is the people I know who do not believe a word the government says about anything except 9/11. For reasons that escape me, they believe that the government that lies to them about everything else tells them the truth about 9/11. How can this be, I ask them. Did the government slip up once and tell the truth? My question does not cause them to rethink their belief in the government’s 9/11 story. Instead, they get angry with me for doubting their intelligence or their integrity or some such hallowed trait.
The problem faced by truth is the emotional needs of people. With 9/11 many Americans feel that they must believe their government so that they don’t feel like they are being unsupportive or unpatriotic, and they are very fearful of being called “terrorist sympathizers.” Others on the left-wing have emotional needs to believe that peoples oppressed by the US have delivered “blowbacks.” Some leftists think that America deserves these blowbacks and thus believe the government’s propaganda that Muslims attacked the US.
Naive people think that if the US government’s explanation of 9/11 was wrong, physicists and engineers would all speak up. Some have (see above). However, for most physicists and engineers this would be an act of suicide. Physicists owe their careers to government grants, and their departments are critically dependent on government funding. A physicist who speaks up essentially ends his university career. If he is a tenured professor, to appease Washington the university would buy out his tenure as BYU did in the case of the outspoken Steven Jones.
An engineering firm that spoke out would never again be awarded a government contract. In addition, its patriotic, flag-waving customers would regard the firm as a terrorist apologist and cease to do business with it.
In New York today there is an enormous push by 9/11 families for a real and independent investigation of the 9/11 events. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers have provided the necessary signatures on petitions that require the state to put the proposal for an independent commission up to vote. However, the state, so far, is not obeying the law.
Why are the tens of thousands of New Yorkers who are demanding a real investigation dismissed as conspiracy theorists? The 9/11 skeptics know far more about the events of that day than do the uninformed people who call them names. Most of the people I know who are content with the government’s official explanation have never examined the evidence. Yet, these no-nothings shout down those who have studied the matter closely.
There are, of course, some kooks. I have often wondered if these kooks are intentionally ridiculous in order to discredit knowledgeable skeptics.
Another problem that the 9/11 Truth Movement faces is that their natural allies, those who oppose the Bush/Obama wars and the internet sites that the antiwar movement maintains, are fearful of being branded traitorous and anti-American. It is hard enough to oppose a war against those the US government has successfully demonized. Antiwar sites believe that if they permit 9/11 to be questioned, it would brand them as "terrorist sympathizers" and discredit their opposition to the war. An exception is Information Clearing House.
Antiwar sites do not realize that, by accepting the 9/11 explanation, they have undermined their own opposition to the war. Once you accept that Muslim terrorists did it, it is difficult to oppose punishing them for the event. In recent months, important antiwar sites, such as antiwar.com, have had difficulty with their fundraising, with their fundraising campaigns going on far longer than previously. They do not understand that if you grant the government its premise for war, it is impossible to oppose the war.
As far as I can tell, most Americans have far greater confidence in the government than they do in the truth. During the Great Depression the liberals with their New Deal succeeded in teaching Americans to trust the government as their protector. This took with the left and the right. Neither end of the political spectrum is capable of fundamental questioning of the government. This explains the ease with which our government routinely deceives the people.
Democracy is based on the assumption that people are rational beings who factually examine arguments and are not easily manipulated. Studies are not finding this to be the case. In my own experience in scholarship, public policy, and journalism, I have learned that everyone from professors to high school dropouts has difficulty with facts and analyses that do not fit with what they already believe. The notion that "we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead" is an extremely romantic and idealistic notion. I have seldom experienced open minds even in academic discourse or in the highest levels of government. Among the public at large, the ability to follow the truth wherever it may lead is almost non-existent.
The US government's response to 9/11, regardless of who is responsible, has altered our country forever. Our civil liberties will never again be as safe as they were. America's financial capability and living standards are forever lower. Our country's prestige and world leadership are forever damaged. The first decade of the 21st century has been squandered in pointless wars, and it appears the second decade will also be squandered in the same pointless and bankrupting pursuit.
The most disturbing fact of all remains: The 9/11 event responsible for these adverse happenings has not been investigated.
(was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan's first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street )
"Information Clearing House" -- -An article in the journal, Sociological Inquiry, casts light on the effectiveness of propaganda. Researchers examined why big lies succeed where little lies fail. Governments can get away with mass deceptions, but politicians cannot get away with sexual affairs.
The researchers explain why so many Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, years after it has become obvious that Iraq had nothing to do with the event. Americans developed elaborate rationalizations based on Bush administration propaganda that alleged Iraqi involvement and became deeply attached to their beliefs. Their emotional involvement became wrapped up in their personal identity and sense of morality. They looked for information that supported their beliefs and avoided information that challenged them, regardless of the facts of the matter.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler explained the believability of the Big Lie as compared to the small lie: “In the simplicity of their minds, people more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have such impudence. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and continue to think that there may be some other explanation.”
What the sociologists and Hitler are telling us is that by the time facts become clear, people are emotionally wedded to the beliefs planted by the propaganda and find it a wrenching experience to free themselves. It is more comfortable, instead, to denounce the truth-tellers than the liars whom the truth-tellers expose.
The psychology of belief retention even when those beliefs are wrong is a pillar of social cohesion and stability. It explains why, once change is effected, even revolutionary governments become conservative. The downside of belief retention is its prevention of the recognition of facts. Belief retention in the Soviet Union made the system unable to adjust to economic reality, and the Soviet Union collapsed. Today in the United States millions find it easier to chant “USA, USA, USA” than to accept facts that indicate the need for change.
The staying power of the Big Lie is the barrier through which the 9/11 Truth Movement is finding it difficult to break. The assertion that the 9/11 Truth Movement consists of conspiracy theorists and crackpots is obviously untrue. The leaders of the movement are highly qualified professionals, such as demolition experts, physicists, structural architects, engineers, pilots, and former high officials in the government. Unlike their critics parroting the government’s line, they know what they are talking about.
Here is a link to a presentation by the architect, Richard Gage, to a Canadian university audience: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13242 The video of the presentation is two hours long and seems to have been edited to shorten it down to two hours. Gage is low-key, but not a dazzling personality or a very articulate presenter. Perhaps that is because he is speaking to a university audience and takes for granted their familiarity with terms and concepts.
Those who believe the official 9/11 story and dismiss skeptics as kooks can test the validity of the sociologists’ findings and Hitler’s observation by watching the video and experiencing their reaction to evidence that challenges their beliefs. Are you able to watch the presentation without scoffing at someone who knows far more about it than you do? What is your response when you find that you cannot defend your beliefs against the evidence presented? Scoff some more? Become enraged?
Another problem that the 9/11 Truth Movement faces is that few people have the education to follow the technical and scientific aspects. The side that they believe tells them one thing; the side that they don’t believe tells them another. Most Americans have no basis to judge the relative merits of the arguments.
For example, consider the case of the Lockerbie bomber. One piece of “evidence” that was used to convict Magrahi was a piece of circuit board from a device that allegedly contained the Semtex that exploded the airliner. None of the people, who have very firm beliefs in Magrahi’s and Libya’s guilt and in the offense of the Scottish authorities in releasing Magrahi on allegedly humanitarian grounds, know that circuit boards of those days have very low combustion temperatures and go up in flames easily. Semtex produces very high temperatures. There would be nothing whatsoever left of a device that contained Semtex. It is obvious to an expert that the piece of circuit board was planted after the event.
I have asked on several occasions and have never had an answer, which does not mean that there isn’t one, how millions of pieces of unburnt, uncharred paper can be floating over lower Manhatten from the destruction of the WTC towers when the official explanation of the destruction is fires so hot and evenly distributed that they caused the massive steel structures to weaken and fail simultaneously so that the buildings fell in free fall time just as they would if they had been brought down by controlled demolition.
What is the explanation of fires so hot that steel fails but paper does not combust?
People don’t even notice the contradictions. Recently, an international team of scientists, who studied for 18 months dust samples produced by the twin towers’ destruction collected from three separate sources, reported their finding of nano-thermite in the dust. The US government had scientists dependent on the US government to debunk the finding on the grounds that the authenticity of custody of the samples could not be verified. In other words, someone had tampered with the samples and added the nano-thermite. This is all it took to discredit the finding, despite the obvious fact that access to thermite is strictly controlled and NO ONE except the US military and possibly Israel has access to nano-thermite.
The physicist, Steven Jones, has produced overwhelming evidence that explosives were used to bring down the buildings. His evidence is not engaged, examined, tested, and refuted. It is simply ignored.
Dr. Jones’ experience reminds me of that of my Oxford professor, the distinguished physical chemist and philosopher, Michael Polanyi. Polanyi was one of the 20th centuries great scientists. At one time every section chairman of the Royal Society was a Polanyi student. Many of his students won Nobel Prizes for their scientific work, such as Eugene Wigner at Princeton and Melvin Calvin at UC, Berkeley, and his son, John Polanyi, at the University of Toronto.
As a young man in the early years of the 20th century, Michael Polanyi discovered the explanation for chemical absorbtion. Scientific authority found the new theory too much of a challenge to existing beliefs and dismissed it. Even when Polanyi was one of the UK’s ranking scientists, he was unable to teach his theory. One half-century later his discovery was re-discovered by scientists at UC, Berkeley. The discovery was hailed, but then older scientists said that it was “Polanyi’s old error.” It turned out not to be an error. Polanyi was asked to address scientists on this half-century failure of science to recognize the truth. How had science, which is based on examining the evidence, gone so wrong. Polanyi’s answer was that science is a belief system just like everything else, and that his theory was outside the belief system.
That is what we observe all around us, not just about the perfidy of Muslims and 9/11.
As an economics scholar I had a very difficult time making my points about the Soviet economy, about Karl Marx’s theories, and about the supply-side impact of fiscal policy. Today I experience readers who become enraged just because I report on someone else’s work that is outside their belief system. Some readers think I should suppress work that is inconsistent with their beliefs and drive the author of the work into the ground. These readers never have any comprehension of the subject. They are simply emotionally offended.
What I find puzzling is the people I know who do not believe a word the government says about anything except 9/11. For reasons that escape me, they believe that the government that lies to them about everything else tells them the truth about 9/11. How can this be, I ask them. Did the government slip up once and tell the truth? My question does not cause them to rethink their belief in the government’s 9/11 story. Instead, they get angry with me for doubting their intelligence or their integrity or some such hallowed trait.
The problem faced by truth is the emotional needs of people. With 9/11 many Americans feel that they must believe their government so that they don’t feel like they are being unsupportive or unpatriotic, and they are very fearful of being called “terrorist sympathizers.” Others on the left-wing have emotional needs to believe that peoples oppressed by the US have delivered “blowbacks.” Some leftists think that America deserves these blowbacks and thus believe the government’s propaganda that Muslims attacked the US.
Naive people think that if the US government’s explanation of 9/11 was wrong, physicists and engineers would all speak up. Some have (see above). However, for most physicists and engineers this would be an act of suicide. Physicists owe their careers to government grants, and their departments are critically dependent on government funding. A physicist who speaks up essentially ends his university career. If he is a tenured professor, to appease Washington the university would buy out his tenure as BYU did in the case of the outspoken Steven Jones.
An engineering firm that spoke out would never again be awarded a government contract. In addition, its patriotic, flag-waving customers would regard the firm as a terrorist apologist and cease to do business with it.
In New York today there is an enormous push by 9/11 families for a real and independent investigation of the 9/11 events. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers have provided the necessary signatures on petitions that require the state to put the proposal for an independent commission up to vote. However, the state, so far, is not obeying the law.
Why are the tens of thousands of New Yorkers who are demanding a real investigation dismissed as conspiracy theorists? The 9/11 skeptics know far more about the events of that day than do the uninformed people who call them names. Most of the people I know who are content with the government’s official explanation have never examined the evidence. Yet, these no-nothings shout down those who have studied the matter closely.
There are, of course, some kooks. I have often wondered if these kooks are intentionally ridiculous in order to discredit knowledgeable skeptics.
Another problem that the 9/11 Truth Movement faces is that their natural allies, those who oppose the Bush/Obama wars and the internet sites that the antiwar movement maintains, are fearful of being branded traitorous and anti-American. It is hard enough to oppose a war against those the US government has successfully demonized. Antiwar sites believe that if they permit 9/11 to be questioned, it would brand them as "terrorist sympathizers" and discredit their opposition to the war. An exception is Information Clearing House.
Antiwar sites do not realize that, by accepting the 9/11 explanation, they have undermined their own opposition to the war. Once you accept that Muslim terrorists did it, it is difficult to oppose punishing them for the event. In recent months, important antiwar sites, such as antiwar.com, have had difficulty with their fundraising, with their fundraising campaigns going on far longer than previously. They do not understand that if you grant the government its premise for war, it is impossible to oppose the war.
As far as I can tell, most Americans have far greater confidence in the government than they do in the truth. During the Great Depression the liberals with their New Deal succeeded in teaching Americans to trust the government as their protector. This took with the left and the right. Neither end of the political spectrum is capable of fundamental questioning of the government. This explains the ease with which our government routinely deceives the people.
Democracy is based on the assumption that people are rational beings who factually examine arguments and are not easily manipulated. Studies are not finding this to be the case. In my own experience in scholarship, public policy, and journalism, I have learned that everyone from professors to high school dropouts has difficulty with facts and analyses that do not fit with what they already believe. The notion that "we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead" is an extremely romantic and idealistic notion. I have seldom experienced open minds even in academic discourse or in the highest levels of government. Among the public at large, the ability to follow the truth wherever it may lead is almost non-existent.
The US government's response to 9/11, regardless of who is responsible, has altered our country forever. Our civil liberties will never again be as safe as they were. America's financial capability and living standards are forever lower. Our country's prestige and world leadership are forever damaged. The first decade of the 21st century has been squandered in pointless wars, and it appears the second decade will also be squandered in the same pointless and bankrupting pursuit.
The most disturbing fact of all remains: The 9/11 event responsible for these adverse happenings has not been investigated.
Why I Threw the Shoe
I am no hero. I just acted as an Iraqi who witnessed the pain and bloodshed of too many innocents
By Muntazer al-Zaidi
-- I am free. But my country is still a prisoner of war. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act. But, simply, I answer: what compelled me to act is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.
Over recent years, more than a million martyrs have fallen by the bullets of the occupation and Iraq is now filled with more than five million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed. Many millions are homeless inside and outside the country.
We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shia would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would celebrate with the Christian the birthday of Christ. This despite the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than a decade.
Our patience and our solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. But the invasion divided brother from brother, neighbour from neighbour. It turned our homes into funeral tents.
I am not a hero. But I have a point of view. I have a stance. It humiliated me to see my country humiliated; and to see my Baghdad burned, my people killed. Thousands of tragic pictures remained in my head, pushing me towards the path of confrontation. The scandal of Abu Ghraib. The massacre of Falluja, Najaf, Haditha, Sadr City, Basra, Diyala, Mosul, Tal Afar, and every inch of our wounded land. I travelled through my burning land and saw with my own eyes the pain of the victims, and heard with my own ears the screams of the orphans and the bereaved. And a feeling of shame haunted me like an ugly name because I was powerless.
As soon as I finished my professional duties in reporting the daily tragedies, while I washed away the remains of the debris of the ruined Iraqi houses, or the blood that stained my clothes, I would clench my teeth and make a pledge to our victims, a pledge of vengeance.
The opportunity came, and I took it.
I took it out of loyalty to every drop of innocent blood that has been shed through the occupation or because of it, every scream of a bereaved mother, every moan of an orphan, the sorrow of a rape victim, the teardrop of an orphan.
I say to those who reproach me: do you know how many broken homes that shoe which I threw had entered? How many times it had trodden over the blood of innocent victims? Maybe that shoe was the appropriate response when all values were violated.
When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, George Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora.
If I have wronged journalism without intention, because of the professional embarrassment I caused the establishment, I apologise. All that I meant to do was express with a living conscience the feelings of a citizen who sees his homeland desecrated every day. The professionalism mourned by some under the auspices of the occupation should not have a voice louder than the voice of patriotism. And if patriotism needs to speak out, then professionalism should be allied with it.
I didn't do this so my name would enter history or for material gains. All I wanted was to defend my country.
By Muntazer al-Zaidi
-- I am free. But my country is still a prisoner of war. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act. But, simply, I answer: what compelled me to act is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.
Over recent years, more than a million martyrs have fallen by the bullets of the occupation and Iraq is now filled with more than five million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed. Many millions are homeless inside and outside the country.
We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shia would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would celebrate with the Christian the birthday of Christ. This despite the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than a decade.
Our patience and our solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. But the invasion divided brother from brother, neighbour from neighbour. It turned our homes into funeral tents.
I am not a hero. But I have a point of view. I have a stance. It humiliated me to see my country humiliated; and to see my Baghdad burned, my people killed. Thousands of tragic pictures remained in my head, pushing me towards the path of confrontation. The scandal of Abu Ghraib. The massacre of Falluja, Najaf, Haditha, Sadr City, Basra, Diyala, Mosul, Tal Afar, and every inch of our wounded land. I travelled through my burning land and saw with my own eyes the pain of the victims, and heard with my own ears the screams of the orphans and the bereaved. And a feeling of shame haunted me like an ugly name because I was powerless.
As soon as I finished my professional duties in reporting the daily tragedies, while I washed away the remains of the debris of the ruined Iraqi houses, or the blood that stained my clothes, I would clench my teeth and make a pledge to our victims, a pledge of vengeance.
The opportunity came, and I took it.
I took it out of loyalty to every drop of innocent blood that has been shed through the occupation or because of it, every scream of a bereaved mother, every moan of an orphan, the sorrow of a rape victim, the teardrop of an orphan.
I say to those who reproach me: do you know how many broken homes that shoe which I threw had entered? How many times it had trodden over the blood of innocent victims? Maybe that shoe was the appropriate response when all values were violated.
When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, George Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora.
If I have wronged journalism without intention, because of the professional embarrassment I caused the establishment, I apologise. All that I meant to do was express with a living conscience the feelings of a citizen who sees his homeland desecrated every day. The professionalism mourned by some under the auspices of the occupation should not have a voice louder than the voice of patriotism. And if patriotism needs to speak out, then professionalism should be allied with it.
I didn't do this so my name would enter history or for material gains. All I wanted was to defend my country.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Saturday, September 5, 2009
War Made Easy
War Made Easy [1/7]: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death seven part.... good documentry
click to view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ShlwJGbyxQ
click to view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ShlwJGbyxQ
US Hummers Enter Pakistan, Undercover American Soldiers In Islamabad
Dear All,
Thus the need for an anti-Imperialist movement across South Asia. The political, military & corporate elites continue to betray the legacy & the memory of all those hundreds of thousands of freedom fighters who sacrificed their lives for the liberty of their peoples' & nations.Read on, as Pakistan is being slowly converted into a US controlled banana republic. It is under the pretext of fighting terror, that the US has moved deep into both Afghanistan & then Pakistan as it digs its talons into the body-politic of each of these societies. The presence of a vast body of US soldiers & the incumbent CIA-FBI & MOSSAD operatives, along with the mercenaries of the Blackwater, numbering in their thousands (the numbers will only grow), is a sure recipe for disaster in the region. These forces will deploy far more false flag black ops to destabilise each of the nations & continue to raise the level of war mongering as well.It is up to the Indian people to awaken to the mortal threat that the US military presence poses to the entire region (as the Pakistani masses already have, as 59% see US as a threat) & along with the people of all the nations of South Asia, wage a united struggle to liberate our common homeland. We only need to hearken back to our common legacy of the Uprising of 1857, to recollect those memories and draw our inspiration & a sense of history.This is now the only way ahead.
Feroze Mithiborwala
Mumbai-India
Link:
Friday, September 4, 2009
This Isn't a Recession, It's a Planned Demolition
This Isn't a Recession, It's a Planned Demolition
by Mike Whitney, posted August 21st 2009
Credit is not flowing. In fact, credit is contracting. When credit contracts in a consumer-driven economy, bad things happen. Business investment drops, unemployment soars, earnings plunge, and GDP shrinks. The Fed has spent more than a trillion dollars trying to get consumers to start borrowing again, but without success. The country's credit engines are slowing to a crawl.
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has increased excess reserves in the banking system by $800 billion, but lending is still slow. The banks are hoarding capital in order to deal with the losses from toxic assets, non performing loans, and a $3.5 trillion commercial real estate bubble that's following housing into the toilet. That's why the rate of bank failures is accelerating. 2010 will be even worse; the list is growing. It's a bloodbath.
The standards for conventional loans have gotten tougher while the pool of qualified credit-worthy borrowers has shrunk. That means less credit flowing into the system. The shadow banking system has been hobbled by the freeze in securitization and only provides a trifling portion of the credit needed to grow the economy. Bernanke's initiatives haven't made a bit of difference. Credit continues to shrivel.
The S&P 500 is up 50 per cent from its March lows. The financials, retail, materials and industrials are leading the pack. It's a "Green Shoots" bear market rally fueled by the Fed's Quantitative Easing (QE) which is forcing liquidity into the financial system and lifting equities. The same thing happened during the Great Depression. Stocks surged after 1929. Then the prevailing trend took hold and dragged the Dow down 89 per cent from its earlier highs. The S&P's March lows will be tested before the recession is over. Systemwide deleveraging is ongoing. The economy is resetting at a lower rate of activity.
No one is fooled by the fireworks on Wall Street. Consumer confidence is still falling. Everyone knows things are bad. Everyone knows the mainstream press is lying. The restaurants and malls are empty, the homeless shelters are bulging, and even the big-box stores have stopped hiring. The only "green shoots" are on Wall Street where everyone gets a handout from Uncle Sugar.
Bernanke has pulled out all the stops. He's lowered interest rates to zero, backstopped the entire financial system with $13 trillion, propped up insolvent financial institutions and monetized $1 trillion in mortgage-backed securities and US sovereign debt. Nothing has worked. Wages are falling, banks are cutting lines of credit, retirement savings have been slashed in half, and home equity losses continue to mount. Living standards can no longer be bandaged together with VISA or Diners Club cards. Household spending has to fit within one's salary. That's why retail, travel, home improvement, luxury items and hotels are all down double-digits. The money has dried up.
According to Bloomberg:
"Borrowing by U.S. consumers dropped in June for the fifth straight month as the unemployment rate rose, getting loans remained difficult and households put off major purchases. Consumer credit fell $10.3 billion, or 4.92 percent at an annual rate, to $2.5 trillion, according to a Federal Reserve report released today in Washington. Credit dropped by $5.38 billion in May, more than previously estimated. The series of declines is the longest since 1991.
"A jobless rate near the highest in 26 years, stagnant wages and falling home values mean consumer spending... will take time to recover even as the recession eases. Incomes fell the most in four years in June as one-time transfer payments from the Obama administration’s stimulus plan dried up, and unemployment is forecast to exceed 10 percent next year before retreating."
What a mess. The Fed has assumed near-dictatorial powers to fight a monster of its own making, and achieved nothing. The real economy is still dead in the water. Bernanke is not getting any traction from his zero-percent interest rates. His monetization program (QE) is just scaring off foreign creditors. On Friday, Marketwatch reported:
"The Federal Reserve will probably allow its $300 billion Treasury-buying program to end over the next six weeks as signs of a housing recovery prompt the central bank to unwind one its most aggressive and unusual interventions into financial markets, big bond dealers say."
Right. Does anyone believe the housing market is recovering? In the first 6 months of 2009, there have already been 1.9 million foreclosures.
The Fed is abandoning the printing presses (presumably) because China told Geithner to stop printing money or they'd sell their US Treasuries. It's a wake-up call to Bernanke that the power is shifting from Washington to Beijing.
That puts Bernanke in a pickle. If he stops printing; interest rates will skyrocket, stocks will crash and housing prices will tumble. But if he continues, China will dump their Treasurys and there will be a run on the dollar. What to do? Either way, the malaise in the credit markets will persist and personal consumption will continue to sputter.
The basic problem is that consumers are buried beneath a mountain of debt and have no choice except to curtail their spending and begin to save. Currently, the the ratio of debt to personal disposable income, is 128 per cent, just a tad below its all-time high of 133 per cent in 2007. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco's "Economic Letter: US Household Deleveraging and Future Consumption Growth":
"The combination of higher debt and lower saving enabled personal consumption expenditures to grow faster than disposable income, providing a significant boost to U.S. economic growth over the period. In the long run, however, consumption cannot grow faster than income because there is an upper limit to how much debt households can service, based on their incomes. For many U.S. households, current debt levels appear too high, as evidenced by the sharp rise in delinquencies and foreclosures in recent years. To achieve a sustainable level of debt relative to income, households may need to undergo a prolonged period of deleveraging, whereby debt is reduced and saving is increased.
"Going forward, it seems probable that many U.S. households will reduce their debt. If accomplished through increased saving, the deleveraging process could result in a substantial and prolonged slowdown in consumer spending relative to pre-recession growth rates." ("U.S. Household Deleveraging and Future Consumption Growth, by Reuven Glick and Kevin J. Lansing, FRBSF Economic Letter")
A careful reading of the FRBSF's Economic Letter shows why the economy will not bounce back. It's mathematically impossible. We've reached peak credit; consumers have to deleverage and patch their balance sheets. Household wealth has slipped $14 trillion since the crisis began. Home equity has dropped to 41 per cent (a new low) and joblessness is on the rise. By 2011, Deutsche Bank AG predicts that 48 per cent of all homeowners with a mortgage will be underwater. As the equity position of homeowners deteriorates, banks will further tighten credit and foreclosures will mushroom.
The executive board of the IMF does not share Wall Street's rosy view of the future, which is why it issued a memo that stated:
Directors observed that the crisis will have important implications for the role of the United States in the global economy. The U.S. consumer is unlikely to play the role of global "buyer of last resort" — other regions will need to play an increased role in supporting global growth.
The United States will not be the emerge as the center of global demand following the recession. Those days are over. The world is changing and the US role is getting smaller. As US markets become less attractive to foreign exporters, the dollar will lose its position as the world's reserve currency. As goes the dollar, so goes the empire. Want some advice: Learn Mandarin.
Sagging Employment: A "recoveryless" recovery
July's employment numbers came in better than expected (negative 247,000) lowering total unemployment from 9.5 per cent to 9.4 per cent. That's good. Things are getting worse at a slower pace. But what's striking about the BLS report is that there's no jobs surge in any sector of the economy. No signs of life. Outsourcing and offshoring are ongoing, and downsizing the path to profitability. That's why revenues are down while profits are up. Businesses everywhere are anticipating weaker demand. The jobs report is a one-off event; a lull in the storm before the layoffs resume.
Unemployment is rising, wages are falling and credit is contracting. All the money is flowing upwards to the gangsters at the top. Here's an excerpt from a recent Don Monkerud article that sums it all up:
"During eight years of the Bush Administration, the 400 richest Americans, who now own more than the bottom 150 million Americans, increased their net worth by $700 billion. In 2005, the top one per cent claimed 22 per cent of the national income, while the top ten per cent took half of the total income, the largest share since 1928.
"Over 40 per cent of GNP comes from Fortune 500 companies. According to the World Institute for Development Economics Research, the 500 largest conglomerates in the U.S. "control over two-thirds of the business resources, employ two-thirds of the industrial workers, account for 60 per cent of the sales, and collect over 70 per cent of the profits."
In 1955, IRS records indicated the 400 richest people in the country were worth an average $12.6 million, adjusted for inflation. In 2006, the 400 richest increased their average to $263 million, representing an epochal shift of wealth upward in the U.S." ("Wealth Inequality destroys US Ideals" Don Monkerud, consortiumnews. com)
Working people are not being crushed by accident, but according to plan. It is the way the system is designed to work. Bernanke knows that sustained demand requires higher wages and a vital middle class. But Bernanke works for the banks, which is why the Fed's monetary policies reflect the goals of the investor class. Bubblenomics is not the way to a strong/sustainable economy, but it is an effective tool for shifting wealth from one class to another. The Fed's job is to facilitate that objective, which is why the economy is headed for the rocks.
The financial meltdown is the logical outcome of the Fed's monetary policies. That's why it's a mistake to call the current slump a "recession". It's not. It's a planned demolition.
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@ msn.com
by Mike Whitney, posted August 21st 2009
Credit is not flowing. In fact, credit is contracting. When credit contracts in a consumer-driven economy, bad things happen. Business investment drops, unemployment soars, earnings plunge, and GDP shrinks. The Fed has spent more than a trillion dollars trying to get consumers to start borrowing again, but without success. The country's credit engines are slowing to a crawl.
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has increased excess reserves in the banking system by $800 billion, but lending is still slow. The banks are hoarding capital in order to deal with the losses from toxic assets, non performing loans, and a $3.5 trillion commercial real estate bubble that's following housing into the toilet. That's why the rate of bank failures is accelerating. 2010 will be even worse; the list is growing. It's a bloodbath.
The standards for conventional loans have gotten tougher while the pool of qualified credit-worthy borrowers has shrunk. That means less credit flowing into the system. The shadow banking system has been hobbled by the freeze in securitization and only provides a trifling portion of the credit needed to grow the economy. Bernanke's initiatives haven't made a bit of difference. Credit continues to shrivel.
The S&P 500 is up 50 per cent from its March lows. The financials, retail, materials and industrials are leading the pack. It's a "Green Shoots" bear market rally fueled by the Fed's Quantitative Easing (QE) which is forcing liquidity into the financial system and lifting equities. The same thing happened during the Great Depression. Stocks surged after 1929. Then the prevailing trend took hold and dragged the Dow down 89 per cent from its earlier highs. The S&P's March lows will be tested before the recession is over. Systemwide deleveraging is ongoing. The economy is resetting at a lower rate of activity.
No one is fooled by the fireworks on Wall Street. Consumer confidence is still falling. Everyone knows things are bad. Everyone knows the mainstream press is lying. The restaurants and malls are empty, the homeless shelters are bulging, and even the big-box stores have stopped hiring. The only "green shoots" are on Wall Street where everyone gets a handout from Uncle Sugar.
Bernanke has pulled out all the stops. He's lowered interest rates to zero, backstopped the entire financial system with $13 trillion, propped up insolvent financial institutions and monetized $1 trillion in mortgage-backed securities and US sovereign debt. Nothing has worked. Wages are falling, banks are cutting lines of credit, retirement savings have been slashed in half, and home equity losses continue to mount. Living standards can no longer be bandaged together with VISA or Diners Club cards. Household spending has to fit within one's salary. That's why retail, travel, home improvement, luxury items and hotels are all down double-digits. The money has dried up.
According to Bloomberg:
"Borrowing by U.S. consumers dropped in June for the fifth straight month as the unemployment rate rose, getting loans remained difficult and households put off major purchases. Consumer credit fell $10.3 billion, or 4.92 percent at an annual rate, to $2.5 trillion, according to a Federal Reserve report released today in Washington. Credit dropped by $5.38 billion in May, more than previously estimated. The series of declines is the longest since 1991.
"A jobless rate near the highest in 26 years, stagnant wages and falling home values mean consumer spending... will take time to recover even as the recession eases. Incomes fell the most in four years in June as one-time transfer payments from the Obama administration’s stimulus plan dried up, and unemployment is forecast to exceed 10 percent next year before retreating."
What a mess. The Fed has assumed near-dictatorial powers to fight a monster of its own making, and achieved nothing. The real economy is still dead in the water. Bernanke is not getting any traction from his zero-percent interest rates. His monetization program (QE) is just scaring off foreign creditors. On Friday, Marketwatch reported:
"The Federal Reserve will probably allow its $300 billion Treasury-buying program to end over the next six weeks as signs of a housing recovery prompt the central bank to unwind one its most aggressive and unusual interventions into financial markets, big bond dealers say."
Right. Does anyone believe the housing market is recovering? In the first 6 months of 2009, there have already been 1.9 million foreclosures.
The Fed is abandoning the printing presses (presumably) because China told Geithner to stop printing money or they'd sell their US Treasuries. It's a wake-up call to Bernanke that the power is shifting from Washington to Beijing.
That puts Bernanke in a pickle. If he stops printing; interest rates will skyrocket, stocks will crash and housing prices will tumble. But if he continues, China will dump their Treasurys and there will be a run on the dollar. What to do? Either way, the malaise in the credit markets will persist and personal consumption will continue to sputter.
The basic problem is that consumers are buried beneath a mountain of debt and have no choice except to curtail their spending and begin to save. Currently, the the ratio of debt to personal disposable income, is 128 per cent, just a tad below its all-time high of 133 per cent in 2007. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco's "Economic Letter: US Household Deleveraging and Future Consumption Growth":
"The combination of higher debt and lower saving enabled personal consumption expenditures to grow faster than disposable income, providing a significant boost to U.S. economic growth over the period. In the long run, however, consumption cannot grow faster than income because there is an upper limit to how much debt households can service, based on their incomes. For many U.S. households, current debt levels appear too high, as evidenced by the sharp rise in delinquencies and foreclosures in recent years. To achieve a sustainable level of debt relative to income, households may need to undergo a prolonged period of deleveraging, whereby debt is reduced and saving is increased.
"Going forward, it seems probable that many U.S. households will reduce their debt. If accomplished through increased saving, the deleveraging process could result in a substantial and prolonged slowdown in consumer spending relative to pre-recession growth rates." ("U.S. Household Deleveraging and Future Consumption Growth, by Reuven Glick and Kevin J. Lansing, FRBSF Economic Letter")
A careful reading of the FRBSF's Economic Letter shows why the economy will not bounce back. It's mathematically impossible. We've reached peak credit; consumers have to deleverage and patch their balance sheets. Household wealth has slipped $14 trillion since the crisis began. Home equity has dropped to 41 per cent (a new low) and joblessness is on the rise. By 2011, Deutsche Bank AG predicts that 48 per cent of all homeowners with a mortgage will be underwater. As the equity position of homeowners deteriorates, banks will further tighten credit and foreclosures will mushroom.
The executive board of the IMF does not share Wall Street's rosy view of the future, which is why it issued a memo that stated:
Directors observed that the crisis will have important implications for the role of the United States in the global economy. The U.S. consumer is unlikely to play the role of global "buyer of last resort" — other regions will need to play an increased role in supporting global growth.
The United States will not be the emerge as the center of global demand following the recession. Those days are over. The world is changing and the US role is getting smaller. As US markets become less attractive to foreign exporters, the dollar will lose its position as the world's reserve currency. As goes the dollar, so goes the empire. Want some advice: Learn Mandarin.
Sagging Employment: A "recoveryless" recovery
July's employment numbers came in better than expected (negative 247,000) lowering total unemployment from 9.5 per cent to 9.4 per cent. That's good. Things are getting worse at a slower pace. But what's striking about the BLS report is that there's no jobs surge in any sector of the economy. No signs of life. Outsourcing and offshoring are ongoing, and downsizing the path to profitability. That's why revenues are down while profits are up. Businesses everywhere are anticipating weaker demand. The jobs report is a one-off event; a lull in the storm before the layoffs resume.
Unemployment is rising, wages are falling and credit is contracting. All the money is flowing upwards to the gangsters at the top. Here's an excerpt from a recent Don Monkerud article that sums it all up:
"During eight years of the Bush Administration, the 400 richest Americans, who now own more than the bottom 150 million Americans, increased their net worth by $700 billion. In 2005, the top one per cent claimed 22 per cent of the national income, while the top ten per cent took half of the total income, the largest share since 1928.
"Over 40 per cent of GNP comes from Fortune 500 companies. According to the World Institute for Development Economics Research, the 500 largest conglomerates in the U.S. "control over two-thirds of the business resources, employ two-thirds of the industrial workers, account for 60 per cent of the sales, and collect over 70 per cent of the profits."
In 1955, IRS records indicated the 400 richest people in the country were worth an average $12.6 million, adjusted for inflation. In 2006, the 400 richest increased their average to $263 million, representing an epochal shift of wealth upward in the U.S." ("Wealth Inequality destroys US Ideals" Don Monkerud, consortiumnews. com)
Working people are not being crushed by accident, but according to plan. It is the way the system is designed to work. Bernanke knows that sustained demand requires higher wages and a vital middle class. But Bernanke works for the banks, which is why the Fed's monetary policies reflect the goals of the investor class. Bubblenomics is not the way to a strong/sustainable economy, but it is an effective tool for shifting wealth from one class to another. The Fed's job is to facilitate that objective, which is why the economy is headed for the rocks.
The financial meltdown is the logical outcome of the Fed's monetary policies. That's why it's a mistake to call the current slump a "recession". It's not. It's a planned demolition.
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@ msn.com
Gandhi, The Jews And PalestineA Collection of Articles, Speeches, Letters and InterviewsCompiled by: E. S. Reddy
Gandhi, The Jews And PalestineA Collection of Articles, Speeches, Letters and InterviewsCompiled by: E. S. Reddy
Interview to The Daily Herald, by Gandhi, March 16, 1921Article in Young India, by Gandhi, March 23, 1921Notes in Young India, by Gandhi, April 6, 1921'Gandhi, Politics and Us', by Martin Buber, 1930Interview to The Jewish Chronicle, by Gandhi - The Jewish Chronicle, London, October 2, 1931
Mr. Gandhi`s Message: Editorial in The Jewish Chronicle, London, October 2, 1931Statement by Dr. Stephen Wise, October 1931 - From The Jewish Chronicle, London, October 30, 1931A Letter to Gandhi, by Hayim Greenberg, 1937Extracts from Letters by Gandhi to Hermann Kallenbach, July 20, August 16 and August 28, 1937'The Jews', by Gandhi - From Harijan, November 26, 1938Remarks by Gandhi during discussion with Christian Missionaries, December 1938
'Reply to German Critics', by Gandhi - From Harijan, December 17, 1938'Some Questions Answered', by Gandhi - From Harijan, December 17, 1938'Is Non-Violence Ineffective?', by Gandhi - From Harijan, January 7, 1939Judaism and Non-Violence: Letter to Gandhi by a Jewish friend in Palestine, January 1939 - From Harijan, January 28, 1939No Apology, by Gandhi - From Harijan, February 18, 1939Letter from Martin Buber to Gandhi, February 24, 1939
Letter from Judah L. Magnes to Gandhi, February 26, 1939An Answer to Gandhi, by Hayim Greenberg, 1939The Jewish Question, by Gandhi - From Harijan, May 22, 1939Withdrawn, by Gandhi - From Harijan, May 27, 1939Nazism in its Nakedness, by Gandhi - From Harijan, August 6, 1940The Jew and the Arab: Discussion with Mr. Silverman and Mr. Honick, March 1946, report by Pyarelal - From Louis Fischer papers
Jews and Palestine, by Gandhi - From Harijan, July 21, 1946Message to the Arabs, by Gandhi - From The Hindu, May 1, 1947Interview to Reuter, by Gandhi - From Harijan, May 18, 1947Answer to Question by United Press of America, by Gandhi - From The Bombay Chronicle, June 2, 1947Address delivered by Hayim Greenberg at a memorial meeting for Gandhi in New York, February 1, 1948
Amendment to Asia fDi award
Published: September 02, 2009
State of Gujarat to be recognised for FDI achievements in lieu of Personality of the Year award
Following a review prompted by the ongoing investigation into the 2002 Gujarat riots, fDi has decided to present its award to Gujarat state, rather than Mr Narendra Modi, the state's chief minister.
fDi would like to clarify that the criteria of the award has always remained focused on rewarding the success of a region in attracting foreign investment.
The award is in recognition of Gujarat state’s ability to attract an outstanding volume of inward foreign investment. Gujarat increased that volume by more than 50% over the past year for a total of 10.3% of all foreign investment into India.
Mr Modi was chief minister of Gujarat at the time of the riots. Mr Modi’s alleged role in connection to the riots is under investigation but he denies any responsibility.
fDi has also decided to highlight the geographic regions of all the other winners. The magazine is keen to maintain its primary focus on reporting on the effectiveness of different economic regions and rewarding innovative and effective promotional strategies.
State of Gujarat to be recognised for FDI achievements in lieu of Personality of the Year award
Following a review prompted by the ongoing investigation into the 2002 Gujarat riots, fDi has decided to present its award to Gujarat state, rather than Mr Narendra Modi, the state's chief minister.
fDi would like to clarify that the criteria of the award has always remained focused on rewarding the success of a region in attracting foreign investment.
The award is in recognition of Gujarat state’s ability to attract an outstanding volume of inward foreign investment. Gujarat increased that volume by more than 50% over the past year for a total of 10.3% of all foreign investment into India.
Mr Modi was chief minister of Gujarat at the time of the riots. Mr Modi’s alleged role in connection to the riots is under investigation but he denies any responsibility.
fDi has also decided to highlight the geographic regions of all the other winners. The magazine is keen to maintain its primary focus on reporting on the effectiveness of different economic regions and rewarding innovative and effective promotional strategies.
MORE DEPOPULATION QUOTES
"the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence more than 500 million but less than one billion." - Club of Rome, Goals for Mankind
Read Them And Weep: Depopulation Quotes
The following quotes from a number of powerful people on the need to reduce the population of the world from today's six billion to five hundred million, an eighty percent reduction, should be enough to wake anyone to the danger that we are in from globalism. Unfortunately the vast majority of Americans refuse to know the truth for obvious reasons. The Dark Roots Of Eugenics: http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/009/cuddy/eugenics.htmMORE DEPOPULATION QUOTES"the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence more than 500 million but less than one billion." - Club of Rome, Goals for Mankind "In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it is just as bad not to say it." - Cousteau, 1991 explorer and UNESCO courier "I believe that human overpopulation is the fundamental problem on Earth Today" [and] "We humans have become a disease, the Humanpox." - Dave Foreman, Sierra Club, co founder of Earth First! "We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population." - Margaret Sanger "MAINTAIN HUMANITY UNDER 500,000,000 IN PERPETUAL BALANCE WITH NATURE" anonymously commissioned Georgia Guidestones "Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind" - Theodore Roosevelt "If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels." - Prince Phillip, probable trillionaire, British Queen Elizabeth's husband, Duke of Edinburgh, leader of the World Wildlife Fund "A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal" - Ted Turner, founder of CNN, Turner is a billion dollar UN donor and is steering a large portion of it to population control. Turner's wealthier pals are on board. Warren Buffett, the 1st or 2nd richest man in the world has discussed plans for a foundation to distribute his money to two issues: world peace and population control. His fortune is about $62 billion. Other billionaires Bill Gates and George Soros have been funding eugenics population control projects. Although most tetanus is contracted by men, the World Health Organization (WHO) gives millions of tetanus shots in Mexico and the Philippines to only women between the ages of 15 and 45, and in Nicaragua to women between the ages of 12 and 49. Each of these vaccines have been found to be laced with hCG which can cause long-term sterility in women. The Center for Disease Control has set these ages as the reproductive years for females. If you aren't getting memos from Ted Turner, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, Nelsen Rockefeller, and George Soros instructing you and your family to avoid gmo foods & flu shots (for starters) then you're not part of the elite(!) The subject of this work of art is your family's future. "One-fourth is destructive... defective... [who] must be eliminated from the social body.... Fortunately, you... are not responsible for this act. We are. We are in charge of God's selection process for Death... We come to bring death... The riders of the pale horse are about to pass among you. Grim reapers, they will separate the wheat from the chaff. This is the most painful period in the history of humanity... In the past they were permitted to die a 'natural death... We are in charge of God's selection process for planet Earth. He selects, we destroy. We are the riders of the pale horse, Death. We come to bring death to those who are unable to know God... The riders of the pale horse are about to pass among you. Grim reapers, they will separate the wheat from the chaff. This is the most painful period in the history of humanity" - Task Force Delta psychologist Barbara Marx Hubbard, supported by Rockefeller Fund (nominated for Vice-President at the 1984 Democrat National Convention) "And advanced forms of biological warfare that can "target" specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool." - The Project for a New American Century, Rebuilding America's Defenses, p. 60, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz "Many ecologists (myself included) would just as soon see huge areas of land kept off limits to human activities of any kind." - Noss, R. 1995. Maintaining Ecological Integrity in Representative Reserve Networks. World Wildlife Fund Canada Discussion Paper. p. 12.) "Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also in fostering high morale and community of purpose. The social experiment in China under Chairman Mao's leadership is one of the most important and successful in human history." - David Rockefeller Banker, Honorary director of Council on Foreign Relations, honorary chairman of Bilderberg Group & founder of Trilateral Commission. Member of Bohemian Club "Eugenics is the study of the agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally." - Francis Galton, first cousin and associate of Charles Darwin, circa 1883 "the most important, significant... genuine branch of sociology which exists, namely eugenics." - John Maynard Keynes. Eugenics Review. 1946 "Every one of you who gets to survive has to bury nine." - Eric Pianka "[Disease] will control the scourge of humanity," - Eric Pianka "I do not pretend that birth control is the only way in which population can be kept from increasing. There are others, which, one must suppose, opponents of birth control would prefer. War, as I remarked a moment ago, has hitherto been disappointing in this respect, but perhaps bacteriological war may prove more effective. If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full. There would be nothing in this to offend the consciences of the devout or to restrain the ambitions of nationalists. The state of affairs might be somewhat unpleasant, but what of that? Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people's." Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), Philosopher "The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." - Margaret Sanger "Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need ... We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock." - Margaret Sanger "Eugenics is... the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems." - Margaret Sanger "The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many" - Sir James Lovelock "My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it's full complement of species, returning throughout the world." - Dave Foreman "The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing." Christopher Manes, Earth First! "Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to itizens chosen for childbearing." - David Brower, first Executive Director of the Sierra Club "I wish very much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding" - Theodore Roosevelt "Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races." - Calvin Coolidge "The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes," --Years later, the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials quoted Holmes' words in their own defense.--Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes - writing the majority opinion in Buck v. Bell - stated: "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind" - 1927 the U.S. Supreme Court heard an appeal of Virginia's decision in Buck v. Bell ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, language that closely mirrored that of Hitler's Mein Kampf "The Puerto Ricans are the dirtiest, laziest, most dangerous and theivish race of men ever inhabiting this sphere... I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off eight and transplanting cancer into several more." - Dr Cornelius Rhoads (1898-1959) Rockefeller Institute, Rhoads also headed two large chemical warfare projects, had a seat on the AEC (Atomic Energy Commission), and he headed the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research "I have studied with great interest," he told a fellow Nazi, "the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock." - Adolf Hitler "While we were pussyfooting around...the Germans were calling a spade a spade." - Whitney, executive secretary of the American Eugenics Society, declared of Nazism (referring to sterilizations) "The Germans are beating us at our own game." - Joseph DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginia's Western State Hospital, 1934 "From an historical point of view, the first method which presents itself is execution . . . Its value in keeping up the standard of the race should not be underestimated." "Applied Eugenics" also devoted a chapter to "Lethal Selection," which operated "through the destruction of the individual by some adverse feature of the environment, such as excessive cold, or bacteria, or by bodily deficiency." - In 1918, Dr. Paul Popenoe, the Army venereal disease specialist during World War I, co-wrote the widely used textbook, "Applied Eugenics" "Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague." - Thomas Malthus "Englishmen Francis Galton to describe the "science" of bettering human stock and the elimination of unwanted characteristics... and individuals. Galton proposed societal intervention for the furtherance of "racial quality," maintaining that "Jews are specialized for a parasitical existence upon other nations" and that "except by sterilization I cannot yet see any way of checking the produce of the unfit who are allowed their liberty and are below the reach of moral control." - Francis Galton "The Aids epidemic, rather than being a scourge, is a welcome development in the inevitable reduction of human population... If [it] didn't exist, radical environmentalists would have to invent [it]." - Dave Foreman, the founder of the die hard extreme environmental group EARTH FIRST! "Thus even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined... and that the public mind is informed... so that much that is now unthinkable may at least become thinkable" - UNESCO ITS PURPOSE AND ITS PHILOSOPHY by the founding Director-General of UNESCO Sir Julian Huxley. This is from the original founding document of the UNESCO, THE UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANISATION, 1946 "Once the full implications of evolutionary biology are grasped, eugenics will inevitably become part of the religion of the future, or of whatever complex of sentiments may in the future take the place of organized religion" - "Eugenics and Society" (The Galton Lecture given to the Eugenics Society), by Julian Huxley "You can kill the body but not the spirit." Robert Stevenson Francis Crick, who together with James Watson is credited with the groundbreaking discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, declared at a conference shortly after receiving the Nobel Prize that the "reproductive autonomy" of human beings could not be tolerated in the future. Among other things, Crick suggested the idea of adding a chemical to public water supplies, that would make men and women sterile; only those who qualified for a "license" to produce children, would be given an antidote drug! "we have to take away from humans in the long run their reproductive autonomy as the only way to guarantee the advancement of mankind." - Francis Crick Alexander Graham Bell advocated passing laws (with success in some states) for compulsory sterilization of people deemed to be, as Bell called them, a "defective variety of the human race." The Rockefellers funded the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Germany, when eugenicists were preparing the way ideologically for what eventually became the world's most infamous slaughter, the Nazi holocaust. The Rockefeller Institute supported Alexis Carrel, who advocated the use of gas to get rid of the unwanted. Keep turning over rocks and you'll keep finding eugenicists slime trails. "If the youth is content to abandon his previous associates and to throw in his lot whole-heartedly with the rulers, he may, after suitable tests, be promoted, but if he shows any regrettable solidarity with his previous associates, the rulers will reluctantly conclude that there is nothing to be done with him except to send him to the lethal chamber before his ill-disciplined intelligence has had time to spread revolt. This will be a painful duty to the rulers, but I think they will not shrink from performing it." - Bertrand Russell, "The Scientific Outlook", 1931 "The first task is population control at home. How do we go about it? Many of my colleagues feel that some sort of compulsory birth regulation would be necessary to achieve such control. One plan often mentioned involves the addition of temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food. Doses of the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the desired population size." - Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb "Death is the solution to all problems. No man - no problem." - Joseph Stalin "We are entering a new phase in human history - one in which fewer and fewer workers will be needed to produce the goods and services for the global population." - Jeremy Rifkin
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