The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums.  Tribal wars, religious wars, civil wars, national wars, revolutionary wars, colonial wars, wars of conquest and of liberation, wars to prevent and to end all wars, follow each other in a chain of compulsive repetitiveness as far as man can remember his past, and there is every reason to believe that the chain will extend into the future. 

Arthur Koestler (Hungarian-born Eng. writer, 1905-83): Janus: A Summing Up [1978] "Prologue

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR A U.N. MEASURE TO PREVENT WAR

ZNet Commentary
A U.N. Alternative to War: "Uniting for Peace" February 08, 2003
By Michael  Ratner

In the last few months the Bush Administration has been unyielding in
its march towards war over the objections of some allies and despite
the efforts of the United Nations. It now seems inevitable that the
United States, with some other countries, may soon engage in armed
conflict in Iraq. But for people around the world terrified by the
current conflict, there may be hope yet. That hope lies in a
little-discussed mechanism of the United Nations which, although it
seems marginalized by American power, has the potential to stop the
war.

In 1950, the Security Council set up a procedure for insuring that
stalemates between countries would not prevent the United Nations
from carrying out its mission to "maintain international peace and
security." With the United States playing an important role in its
adoption, the Council adopted Resolution 377, the aptly named
"Uniting for Peace" in an almost unanimous vote.

Uniting for Peace provides that if, because of the lack of unanimity
of the permanent members of the Security Council (France, China,
Russia, Britain, United States), the Council cannot maintain
international peace where there is a "threat to the peace, breach of
the peace or act of aggression," the General Assembly "shall consider
the matter immediately...." The language of Uniting for Peace would
also allow its use even if the Security Council approved the use of
force against Iraq. It can be employed "if the Security Council...
fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of
international peace and security..."

The General Assembly can meet within 24 hours to consider such a
matter, and can recommend collective measures to U.N. members
including the use of armed forces to "maintain or restore
international peace and security."

The Uniting for Peace resolution procedure has been used ten times
since 1950. Its first use was by the United States. After Egypt
nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956 Britain and France attacked and
occupied parts of the canal. Cease-fire resolutions in the Security
Council were quickly vetoed by Britain and France. The United States
went to the General Assembly calling for a cease-fire and a withdrawal
of forces. An emergency session was held under the Uniting for Peace
resolution; the U.S. resolution and subsequently an even stronger
resolution passed the General Assembly. In the face of these
resolutions it took less then a week for Britain and France to
withdraw.

Uniting for Peace was next used by the United States to pressure the
Soviet Union to cease its intervention in Hungary in 1956. The Soviet
Union had used its veto to prevent the passage of an anti-intervention
resolution in the Security Council. Again, an emergency session of
the General Assembly was held and the Soviet Union was ordered to
stop its intervention in Hungary.

In the current impasse over Iraq in the Security Council, Uniting for
Peace can and should be used. The General Assembly should consider
taking action with regard to the threat to the peace posed by U.S.
military action against Iraq taken without U.N. authority. (The
General Assembly could also act, as stated earlier, if the Security
Council authorized a war that was a "threat to international peace
and security.") It could require that no military action be taken
against Iraq without the explicit authority of the Security Council.

It could mandate that the inspection regime be permitted to complete
its inspections. It seems unlikely that the United States and Britain
would ignore such a measure. A vote by the majority of countries in
the world, particularly if it were almost unanimous, would make the
unilateral rush to war more difficult.

Uniting for Peace can be invoked either by seven members of the
Security Council or by a majority of the members of the General
Assembly. This gives those who oppose unilateral war a real
opportunity for activism. People everywhere in the world can lobby
their governments to bring on such a resolution. This effort can
become a worldwide effort to, as the UN Charter so eloquently states,
"save succeeding generations form the scourge of war."

(The CCR website has a draft resolution and other supporting Uniting
for Peace documents. www.ccr-ny.org)

Michael Ratner President, Center for Constitutional Rights

COMMENT ON HALABJA RECEIVED AT THE HANDSTAND
In an article in the Handstand I read about the Iran-Iraq war and the
argument aqainst the idea that Iraq killed 5000 Kurds.


I followed the link given to the website of the federation of American
scientists and took a look at the report.


http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/docs/3203/

let me quote this US military report:
"
Blood agents were allegedly responsible for the most
infamous use of chemicals in the war—the killing of Kurds at
Halabjah. Since the Iraqis have no history of using these two
agents-and the Iranians do-we conclude that the Iranians
perpetrated this attack. It is also worth noting that lethal
concentrations of cyanogen are difficult to obtain over an area
target, thus the reports of 5,000 Kurds dead in Halabjah are
suspect.

Media Lens
MEDIA ALERT: BLAIR'S BETRAYAL---Excerpts from Part1.

The French and German governments have acted for sanity and hope by proposing a peace plan that involves the tripling of UN weapons inspectors in Iraq possibly backed up by thousands of UN troops. In a public debate, German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, spoke for millions of people around the world when he shouted his frustration at Donald Rumsfeld and his war plans:

.."You have to make the case in a democracy. Excuse me, I'm not convinced."

By contrast, our prime minister has committed 40,000 troops to the Gulf region - more than were committed during Operation Desert Storm - and he is clearly set on waging war alongside Bush. It is surely reasonable to expect that our prime minister should have to defend his views against informed sceptical opinion.

So let's have Blair debate the 1991-98 arms inspections regime with Scott Ritter, a UN arms inspector throughout this period. Let's have him debate the sanctions regime with Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, who implemented it and then resigned in protest. Let's have him debate US/UK foreign policy with Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, Mark Curtis. Let's have him debate the likely impacts of war on the region, and on the terrorist threat facing the West, with John Pilger and Robert Fisk. Well why not? When evaluating the safety of a new drug or airplane design, many experts are assembled to make informed judgments - why not in a democratic evaluation of the merits of a war that could cost half a million lives?

Instead, according to our media, democracy involves inviting the public to take on the prime minister. At first sight, this seems reasonable enough. After all, aren't politicians supposed to be accountable to the public? But the reality is that this is the same public that is systematically denied
access to meaningful information on foreign affairs by the same media, such that, for example, more TV viewers believe that Palestinians are occupying the occupied territories, and that they, not Israelis, are the settlers.

True democracy would involve the general population being sufficiently well-informed to challenge policy makers or, as a lesser alternative, choosing their best-informed representatives to challenge the political elite on their behalf. But of course the media stand between us and these outcomes.

The BBC Interview,

In this case,the BBC decided for us, without our consent, that Blair should be matched against a somnolent and ill-informed establishment interviewer, Jeremy Paxman, and a group of courageous students, salespeople, secretaries and computer consultants - people facing a celebrity interviewer, a prime minister and a mass TV audience of millions for the first time. The results were aired on BBC2 on February 6: Blair On Iraq - A Newsnight Special.

Where Iraq is concerned, Blair is the Bush administration's key ally - he is playing a central role in making war possible. Lack of British public support might just stop him and so might just stop Bush. The BBC's interview, therefore, was of critical importance. One might think that the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people facing death by incineration in the next few weeks at least deserve an incisive and vigorous attempt at challenging Blair. One might think that they at least deserve that the basic facts, the readily accessible evidence and the most obvious counter-arguments be presented.

Well, they got next to nothing of these - both the Iraqi and British peoples were once again let down by the BBC.

The Inspectors - Were They Pulled Or Were They Pushed?

Paxman came out fighting in the first part of his interview with Blair, Paxman quickly corrected Blair that UN Unscom arms inspectors were not "put out" of Iraq in 1998, as Blair had suggested, they were withdrawn. Blair responded:

"I'm sorry, that is simply not right. What happened is that the inspectors told us that they were unable to carry out their work, they couldn't do their work because they weren't being allowed access to the sites."..."They detailed that in the reports to the security council. On that basis,we said they should come out because they couldn't do their job properly."

Blair had thereby already admitted the deception - the claim that inspectors were thrown out of the country is a misrepresentation of the reality, that they were withdrawn. Blair clearly knows the facts but the idea that inspectors were thrown out serves his purpose, which is to suggest that Iraq is unwilling to cooperate peaceably with inspectors and so must be subjected to military assault. Paxman repeated that being told to "come out" was not the same as being "put out". Blair replied:

"No, I'm sorry Jeremy, I'm not allowing you away with that, that is completely wrong. Let me just explain to you what happened.......

As we have documented in previous Media Alerts, the US and UK media quickly changed its story to the claim that inspectors were "thrown out". But even when the point that inspectors were withdrawn has been conceded, the fall-back lie - that they weren't able to do their work - has gone
completely unchallenged.

Readers can simply ask themselves this one question: How often have they
seen or heard a discussion describing the extent of the success of Unscom
inspections between 1991-98? In fact the remarkable truth is that the 1991-98 inspections ended in almostcomplete success. Scott Ritter, chief UN arms inspector at the time, insiststhat Iraq was "fundamentally disarmed" by December 1998, with 90-95% of itsweapons of mass destruction eliminated. Of the missing 5-10%, Ritter says:

"It doesn't even constitute a weapons programme. (War On Iraq, Scott Ritter and William Rivers Pitt, Profile Books, 2002, p.24) And of nuclear weapons capability, Ritter says: "When I left Iraq in 1998... the infrastructure and facilities had been 100%eliminated. There's no doubt about that. All of their instruments and facilities had been destroyed. The weapons design facility had been destroyed. The production equipment had been hunted down and destroyed. And we had in place means to monitor - both from vehicles and from the air - the gamma rays that accompany attempts to enrich uranium or plutonium. We never found anything." (ibid, p.26)

These central facts have been simply ignored by our media - as far as the public is concerned Iraq did not cooperate between 1991 and 1998. In a recent Panorama documentary, for example, Jane Corbin said merely of the 1991-98 Unscom inspectors, "their mission ended before they completed their task". (Panorama, Chasing Saddam's Weapons, BBC1, February 9, 2003)

This is a good example of how institutionalised media corruption means that power is freed to manipulate the public to suit whatever cynical ends it chooses. This is the secret of elite control in an ostensibly 'democratic' society - the media are central to the task.

full details of this vital text can be found at:MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
February 10, 2003/Media Lens website: ..http://www.medialens.org

BRITISH PETROLEUM
IN FOCUS

Tony Blair has something else on hand : His connections with British 
Petroleum. On Tuesday this week we read in the Guardian newspaper that "BP 
buys into big oil in Russia" BP is in talks to create a new Russian and global 
oil giant. 

Do we read between the lines and ask any questions? Recently in a quarrel 
with a Norwegian company BP demanded that the Norwegians use installed BP pipes
for the export of their oil to Britain. The Norwegians wish to lay a pipe of 
their own. We should remember that Tony Blair's assistant and friend left his 
Government advisers for BPlast year and also their Chief-Executive Lord Browne 
was enobled and "given full-page profiles three days running after turning BP
from an also-ran to a world leader."

. We can hardly imagine that BP is not being lined up for contracts in Iraq 
subsequent to the "war" Tony and George Bush are planning.The share price of BP
is sinking fast - but whether this is an indicator of the beligerence 
anticipated or of the many core sails such as 313 petrol stations in the 
European Union it is difficult to know. Is this Russian purchase a sweetner to 
persuade Vladimir Putin to withold his UN veto from the possible mandate to 
invade Iraq that George Bush might ignore...and which Tony Blair requires, or
 he and his troops will be considered guilty of War Crimes if he follows the 
US to Baghdad.

In a recent document on China, by an American, it was observed: While it 
is no secret that most of the giantmultinational corporations in our country 
no longer see themselves as having allegiance to the United States, and will 
provide support to any country that allows them to make large profits, Congress 
must do better. We must have the courage to stand upto the hundreds of millions 
in corporate campaign contributions that floodthe Capitol, and uphold our 
constitutional responsibilities to protect theAmerican people. Could we 
likewise wonder if Tony Blair is taking more interest in the prospects for this 
oil company, British Petroleum, than in the immense numbers of people 
protesting about his "shoulder to shoulder" stance with George Bush? Is
he hedging his bets re. the Caspian Sea region??(Editor)

HISTORY

Cannon Fodder, part 1: 
Background to Betrayal
by Hadding Scott and Kevin Alfred Strom

  The fact that Saddam Hussein has been able to survive one crisis after another as leader of an ethnically 
and religiously divided country like Iraq is in itself prima facie evidence that Saddam Hussein is not irrational. 
He has had to be very realistic and rational indeed to survive the kinds of crises that his country has 
endured, from the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988 to th e Gulf War to the ruinous sanctions that have caused
 1.7 million deaths in Iraq, to the frequent bombings thatthe U.S. and Britain have carried out, and of course,
 the many assassination plots, some of which have been sponsored by the United States. No leader who is 
insaneor out of touch with reality could survive all that

Let's examine the record. Saddam Hussein has been the de facto leader of Iraq since 1975. Following the
 retirement of President Bakr in 1979,Saddam Hussein became the third Arab Nationalist President of Iraq.

Although the Communist Party of Iraq was forcibly shut down in May of 1979, and although one of Saddam
 Hussein's first actions was the notorious bloody purge of several hundred persons in the government
accused of conspiring against Iraq's sovereignty, Iraq under the secular Ba'ath or Arab Nationalist government 
has been arguably the freest of a l Arabic-speaking countries.

In Iraq, the rigors of Islamic law are not in force. Women are not required to wear veils or to cover their heads, 
and are allowed to have a career. In Iraq you can even buy liquor if you want. Before the Gulf War in 1991, it
 was the habit of some people in Kuwait to go into Iraq whenever they wanted to cut loose and have a good 
time. The government of Iraq also strongly encourages literacy among the people. In general, Saddam Hussein
has represented progress in the Arab world.

Iraq was facing a crisis because of the new Islamic Republic in Iran, which, aside from provoking the hostility
 of the United States by seizing and holding hostage 50 employees of the U.S. embassy, also set out to 
foment unrest in neighboring countries. In April 1980 members of a Shi'ite political party called al-Dawah 
attempted to assassinate Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz, who is a Christian. An attempt on the life of Iraq's 
minister of culture and information also occurred. Since al-Dawah was supported and encouraged by Iran, in 
the following September Iraq declared war on Iran, and set as a war aim the acquisition of the important 
Shatt-al-Arab waterway. Since these two assassination attempts had preceded the war, one could truthfully 
saythat when Saddam Hussein attacked Iran he was beginning a war against Radical Islamic terrorism.

In the early stages of secular Iraq's war on Islamic terror it appeared that a quick victory was the likely outcome, 
since many of Iran's competent military leaders and pilots who were not Islamic religious fanatics had been 
imprisoned, and Iran was unable to buy spare parts for its U.S.-built aircraft because of the hostage crisis.
 Iraqi armored columns made rapid progress deep into Iran.

But then Iran released its competent military personnel from prison and also mobilized its multitudes of Shi'ite 
religious fanatics, who very often brought their own burial shrouds with them to the front. The fact
that the Iranians had multitudes of people ready to die gave them a chance against the Iraqi forces, who, 
unlike the Iranians, were not religious fanatics eager to die in battle.

One major miscalculation which had encouraged Saddam Hussein to launch the war was an expectation that 
Iran's substantial Arab population in the "Arabistan" region would welcome the Arab Nationalist Iraqis as
liberators and turn against the oppressive theocracy of the non-Arab Iranians. Saddam Hussein's vision of 
Iran's Arab minority revolting and embracing their brother Arabs as liberators did not materialize.

In September 1981, the Iranians won their first ground battles, and continued to win -- using human waves of
 religious fanatics. These human waves, including old men and children as young as nine, would charge
across minefields clearing the way so that Iranian tanks could safely roll through on top of them. Saddam 
Hussein learned what we learned only in 2001: It is very difficult to protect yourself against an enemy who
has many supporters ready to die for their cause.

In June of 1982, Saddam Hussein attempted to make peace, but the ayatollahs were running the war and would
make no peace; the ayatollahs had the ambition of creating a Shi'ite Islamic Republic in Iraq, and they set the
goal of capturing a major city in Iraq that could be declared the provisional capital of an Iraqi Islamic Republic. 
Since the war was going badly Saddam Hussein was forced to buy additional weaponry, including crop dusting 
helicopters from the United States, which were understood to be for the delivery of chemic al weapons.

It was a war of attrition: The Iranians suffered much higher casualties than the Iraqis, but Iran was a much 
larger country with many more people. Iran could suffer four times as many casualties as Iraq and still win the 
war. In April 1984 Saddam Hussein requested to meet the Ayatollah Khomeini in a neutral location to 
negotiate peace, but the offer was refused. Iraq tried several times to make peace, but as late as 1988 Iran 
rejected a United Nations resolution calling for a ceasefire.

It was during the war with Iran that Iraq improved the range of its Soviet-made SCUD missiles, so that they 
could reach Teheran. Iraq also developed a capacity for mass producing chemical weapons, though the
number of casualties that Iran suffered from chemical weapons was very  small compared to the total number
 dead: As of 1986 the total Iranian casualties from chemical w eapons was estimated at 10,000, compared to 
one million plus Iranians who died in the entire war. Iran also used chemical warfare, but this did not become 
widely known until 1988. [New York Times, Jan 17, 1988; I, 9:5]

A threat of dispatching chemical warheads against Teheran is considered to have been a major factor in 
persuading the Islamic Republic of Iran to make peace, allowing Iraq to retain the Shatt-al-Arab waterway 
which Iraq had managed to seize again, and which had been Iraq's main objective in the war. 

The Iran-Iraq War was a victory, although very hard-won, for Iraq. The total casualties suffered by Iraq in that 
war are estimated at 375,000 -- about one in 40 Iraqis killed or maimed. Iraq also lost a lot of its oil production
capacity as a result of Iranian air attacks, and had incurred a large debt because of the need to buy weapons.

Nonetheless, the eight-year war against the Islamic Republic of Iran had discouraged Iran from supporting 
Islamic revolution in other countries, and this not only preserved Iraq but aided other countries of the
region. The United States was also well served by the blunting of Iran's influence, and some political scientists 
even suggested that Iraq should replace Israel as the primary U.S. ally in the region. In addition to its good 
relations with the U.S., Saddam Hussein and Iraq had gained prestige among Arabs, and Iraq had become 
militarily the second most powerful country in the region, after Israel.

The Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s was in no way an indicator of lunacy, nor of any desire on the part
 of Saddam Hussein to conquer the world.

During that war, something very significant occurred: In 1981 the State of Israel dispatched its jets to attack 
and destroy a nuclear reactor in Iraq. The many knee-jerk supporters of Israel have regarded this attack
as a righteous move by the wise and clever Jews to prevent Iraq from developing a nuclear weapon. The fact
 is, however, that Iraq's nuclear reactor was in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of
which Iraq was a charter signatory, and which Israel had never signed.

Dr. Sigvard Eklund, Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, stated to the U.N. Security
Council on 19 June 1981 that the Israelis had acted on the basis of faulty intelligence and really had no
justification at all for what they had done.

It has been stated by the Israelis that a laboratory located 40 meters below the reactor -- the figure was later 
corrected to four meters -- which allegedly had not been discovered by IAEA inspectors had been
destroyed. The existence of a vault under the reactor that has apparently been hit by the bombing was well
known to the inspectorate, That vault contains the control rod drives and has to be accessible to the staff 
for maintenance purposes.... [T]hat space could not be used to produce plutonium.

Putting it more plainly, Dr. Eklund said:

In fulfilling its responsibilities the Agency has inspected the Iraqi reactors and has not found evidence of any 
activity not in accordance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The President of the United Nations Security Council, Mr. Porfirio MuЯoz Ledo criticized the action and 
attitude of Israel in no uncertain terms:

[T]he reasons on which the Government of Israel bases its contention are as unacceptable as the act of 
aggression it committed. It is inadmissible to invoke the right to self-defense when no armed attack has taken 
place. The concept of preventive war, which for many years served as justificati on for the abuses of powerful 
States, since it left it to their discretion to define what constituted a threat to them, was definitively abolished
by the Charter of the United Nations.

And, Israel's attack on Iraq's nuclear installations is not an isolated act; it should be seen as the climax of 
escalating violations of international law. The background to it has already been described both by the General 
Assembly and the Security Council. It includes annexation of territory by conquest, persistence in an illegal 
occupation, the denial of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, and frequent acts of aggression and
harassment against neighboring States.

Even the United States joined in condemning Israel's attack on the Osirak nuclear facility, although 
apologetically so, but the Israelis dismissed the condemnation and wailed about always being persecuted by
the U.N., all the while continuing their own development of nuclear weapons. [ Security Council Official 
Records, S/PV.2288 19 June 1981,] 
http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/be25c7c81949e71a052567270057c82b/4aed70baa0
b37b53052567fd00762f30!OpenDocument
]

Although the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency could say with certainty that the Iraqis were
not diverting uranium or producing plutonium at Osirak as the Israelis had claimed, and although the
United Nations Security Council had passed a resolution condemning Israel's action, the Israeli 
misrepresentation has been kept alive in the minds of the American people.   As it became clear in 1988 who
the winner of the Iran-Iraq War would be, a smear-campaign commenced against the country that was now the
leading challenger to Israel's power in the Middle East. The story that Iraq had gassed its own Kurdish 
citizens at al-Halabja in northern Iraq was not such a big story when it first appeared, and one could not have
guessed from the first reports in April of 1988 that Saddam Hussein would become primarily known as the man 
who "gassed his own people." It actually didn't become a subject of major importance until that September, 
after Iran and Iraq had made peace. Iran was the source of the story that Saddam Hussein had gassed his own 
Kurdish citizens at al-Halabja, and initially there was a note of skepticism about the story. Malcolm W.
Browne, wrote in the New York Times of April 17, 1988: "Iran expects to reap a propaganda harvest by showing 
that Iraq is gassing those of its own citizens deemed sympathizers in the seven-year-old war.... According
to the Iranians, a single Iraqi chemical attack on the Iranian-occupied village of Halabja last month killed 5,000
 people and injured 5,000 others. Baghdad has said that 58 Iraqi soldiers were injured by Iranian chemical 
weapons." [New York Times April 17, IV, 7:1]

Although the Iranians claimed 5,000 dead at al-Halabja, Western journalists who visited the town saw "more 
than a hundred bodies." On September 1, when Iraq had won the war and was mopping up the Kurdish
rebellion, two pieces about Saddam's gassing of the Kurds appeared in the New York Times on the same day, 
one by William Safire, in which the politically connected Zionist Jew advocated providing the Kurds with
stinger missiles. This rabble-rousing by a Jewish journalist about the alleged gassing of the Kurds was the first 
expression of what became the U.S. conflict with Iraq.

Here's the shocker: it's all a big lie. Iraq gassed no Kurds. The physical appearance of the bodies indicates the
cause of death, and the hundred or so Kurds who died at al-Halabja were not victims of Iraqi mustard or nerve 
gas, but of cyanide gas, which only Iran used in that war. Subsequent to the lie about who was responsible for 
al-Halabja, the Kurds themselves picked up on the idea of claiming that the Iraqis were using gas on them, but 
no physical evidence for these claims has ever been produced, and the symptoms of gassing claimed by the
Kurds do not match any known agent. [ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/3441 ] This lie was exposed by
Stephen C. Pelletiere and Douglas V. Johnson of the U.S. Army War College, and by Jude Wanniski, a former 
associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. Recently Wanniski sent a letter to George W. Bush's 
press-secretary, the Jew Ari Fleischer, stating: You might want to have one of your assistants call over to the 
Pentagon and ask for its 1990 report, "IraqiPower and U.S. Security in the Middle East," which concluded the
 Iraqi Kurds who were gassed were probably the victims of the Iranians. [
http://polyconomics.com/PrintPage.asp?TextID=1899 ]

The National Alliance: http://www.natvan.com
http://www.natall.com

....continued, excerpts  from Part 2, 

:   Before proceeding I would like to correct a factual error of minor importance from
Part 1. Although the Iran-Iraq War was a military victory for Iraq, in which three-quarters
 of Iran's tanks, and almost half of its artillery pieces and armored personnel carriers
 were captured, Iraq did not gain control of the Shatt-al-Arab waterway. We at ADV 
care about facts. You can't really say that about those promoting a war against Iraq. 
This article will continue to explore the depth of their deception.  I'd also like to make it
clear that we are in no way partisans of Iraq in their conflict with other powers including
 Iran. 

  Although it has never  been officially admitted, it is well known that Israel has 
nuclear warheads. What is less known is that Israel has a biological warfare program.
 In Britain's London Sunday Times of November 15, 1998 was a report entitled, "Israel 
Planning 'Ethnic' Bomb as Saddam Caves In," by Uzi Mahnaimi and Marie Colvin. 
The report states that the Jewish "Institute for Biological Research" at Nes Tsiona 
southeast of Tel Aviv is working on developing a race-specific virus that will
preferentially kill Iraqis. A scientist there said: "They have ... succeeded in pinpointing 
a particular characteristic in the genetic profile of certain Arab communities, particularly
 the Iraqi people."

That is evidence not only of a biological warfare program, but of an intention to commit
genocide in the strictest sense of the word. Nes Tsiona is in the business of developing
 chemical and nuclear as well as biological weapons -- all the kinds of weapons that 
we are supposed to suspect that Saddam Hussein might have. A former officer of Israel's
intelligence agency, Victor Ostrovsky (The Other Side of Deception) has
written the following about this:

It was Uri who enlightened me regarding the Nes Zionna [Tsiona] facility. It was, he 
said, an ABC warfare laboratory -- ABC standing for atomic, biological and chemical. 
It was where our top epidemiological scientists were developing various doomsday
 machines. Because we were so vulnerable and would not have a second chance 
should there be an all-out war in which this type of weapon would be needed, there was
 no room for error. The [captured] Palestinian infiltrators came in handy in this
regard. As human guinea pigs, they could make sure the weapons the scientists were
 developing worked properly and could verify how fast they worked and make them
 even more efficient.

This revelation about the State of Israel by a former Israeli intelligence agent matches
 the most harrowing rumors and innuendoes about Iraq, but you won't see any
 dramatized reporting about Israel's nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons of 
mass destruction.(CMD)

The State of Israel is really known in the Middle East as a lawless state that bullies its 
neighbors. During the Iran-Iraq War, Israel invaded and occupied southern Lebanon.
 They stayed there for two decades. None of the many U.N. resolutions ignored by the
 State of Israel has ever provoked even a consideration of a U.S. expeditionary
force to enforce it.

When a pattern of lawlessness like that is allowed to go on, it is unreasonable then to
 turn around and selectively enforce a law against somebody else who maybe isn't as
 influential as the big, habitual lawbreaker.

 George Bush had made a fuss about chemical weapons in 1988, because it was 
means whereby Iraq could check the military arrogance of Israel. Recalling Israel's 
unjustified bombing of Iraq in 1981, Saddam Hussein declared, "I swear to God we will
 let our fire eat half of Israel if it tries to wage anything against Iraq." Time magazine
stated, "Saddam's outburst set off alarms in Jerusalem, " and Time further noted, 
"Suddenly, Israel's long-presumed nuclear capability, still a monopoly despite 
Saddam's best efforts, does not seem to be an effective deterrent." Saddam Hussein's
 presentation of chemical warheads as a counterpoise to Israel's nuclear arsenal was
 endorsed by Egypt, Jordan, and North Yemen. ["Stumbling toward Armageddon", 
Time, Apr 6, 1990]

( I should mention that in 1990 and 1991 Iraq was attempting to develop a nuclear 
weapon to balance the nuclear weapons of its enemy Israel. This was unrelated to the
 IAEA-approved facility that Israel bombed in 1981. This was not a secret nuclear
 program; Saddam Hussein actually announced on May 8, 1990 that Iraq had 
succeeded in building a nuclear triggering device. However, Iraq's nuclear program
 ended with the Gulf War in 1991, a fact that was verified following the defection of 
General Hussein Kemal in 1995.)

Even without nuclear weapons, Iraq's ability to threaten effective retaliation against the
 Jewish State, thus containing Zionist aggression, represented a new level of defiance.
 With Saddam Hussein governing a militarily powerful Iraq, the Jewish State could no
 longer bully its neighbors at will. Iraq's entrapment into a war with the United States
followed within months.


After its war with Iran, Iraq's ability to repay its debts was sabotaged by the fact that 
Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates were pumping much more oil than OPEC quotas
 allowed, driving down prices. Every one-dollar decrease in the price of a barrel of oil 
meant 1 billion dollars in lost revenue for Iraq, a huge loss for a country of only 
15 million people. In addition, the corrupt Sheikhdom of Kuwait was allowing British
 Petroleum in Kuwait to steal oil, estimated at a total value of 2.4 billion
dollars, by angle-drilling into Iraq. On July 17, 1990, Saddam Hussein delivered a
 speech in which he accused Kuwait and the UAE of "stabbing Iraq in the back with 
a poison dagger," at the behest of the United States government. "Hussein does have 
some tacit support within OPEC," noted Business Week magazine. ["Is Iraq really
 ready to start a New Gulf War?" Business Week, Aug 6, 1990]

..It has been a well known fact since the Gulf War of 1991 that the Bush
Administration's ambassador to Iraq was consulted by Saddam Hussein on
whether the United States would be opposed to his contemplated invasion
of Kuwait, and that the U.S. ambassador, April Glaspie, told him that
the United States would not care. Once the Iraqi leader had acted on
these assurances, however, once he had solved his country's debt-crisis
by re-annexing that wayward province of Iraq that had been called
Kuwait, then the trap was sprung.

..In the fall of 1990, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only as Nayirah,
gave a tearful testimony before a congressional caucus that swayed
opinions in the Congress and the American public. The girl told how she,
as a volunteer in a Kuwait maternity ward, had witnessed an atrocity
committed by Iraqi troops, who allegedly stormed into the hospital,
stole the incubators, and dumped 312 babies "on the cold floor to die."
Mind you, there were also other Kuwaitis who corroborated her story.  This 
15-year-old "hospital volunteer," "Nayirah," turned out to be the daughter of
 the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US, and her story is now well known to have
been completely false.

Another fraud from the 1991 Gulf War that is less well known. It
is described in the Christian Science Monitor of September 6, 2002 as
follows:

When George H. W. Bush ordered American forces to the Persian Gulf - to
reverse Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait - part of the administration case
 was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia.
Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in
mid-September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the 
border, threatening the key U.S. oil supplier. But when the St. Petersburg 
Times in Florida acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same
 area, taken at the same time, no Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border
 - just empty desert....

"That [Iraqi buildup] was the whole justification for Bush sending troops in 
there, and it just didn't exist," [St. Petersburg Times journalist Jean] Heller 
says.[http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p01s02-wosc.htm ]

In light of the fact that we and the government of Saudi Arabia were deliberately 
deceived into war with fake photographs showing a non-existent buildup of Iraqi troops
 in 1991, how can we possibly have faith in the validity of any alleged evidence that the
 government could show us now? John MacArthur, the editor of Second Front: 
Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, says: "These are all the same people
 who were running it more than 10 years ago. They'll make up just about
anything ... to get their way." (Ibid. )

..In light of the inflammatory falsehood told by the daughter of the
Kuwaiti ambassador, shouldn't we also be skeptical of
the claims of the malcontents aligned with the Iraqi National
Congress, who have every reason to lie, because they expect to
be installed as the new government of Iraq? These are the people
who invented the story that the 9-11 hijackers had been trained at
Salman Pak in Iraq.  Whenever you hear that some claim is made
by "an Iraqi defector," you should check whether said defector is 
associated with the Iraqi National Congress. When the so-called
Iraqi National Congress first convened in December of 1990, the
New York Times described them as "pro-Iranian Shiite
fundamentalists, pro-Soviet Communists, Arab nationalists, and
Kurdish separatists," noting that the banned Iraqi Communist Party
"once had a powerful popular base inside Iraq" [New York Times,
Dec 30 1999: 10-L].

The Iraqi Communist Party had a powerful popular base before 
Saddam Hussein, that is, and therefore they hate Saddam Hussein,
just as the Shi'ites hate him for preventing an Islamic Republic of 
Iraq. The Iraqi National Congress has told one lie after another so
that even the CIA has decided that these people have no credibility,
but media-Jews and political Jews are still retailing these lies.


Post-GulfWar

Although the excuse for restricting Iraq's weaponry after 1991 was its invasion of
Kuwait, the restrictions were tailored not to protect Kuwait -- but to protect Israel. Iraq 
was prohibited from having missiles with a range greater than 93 miles; that is to say,
 Iraq was prohibited from having missiles that could reach Israel. Iraq was prohibited
 from having nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons; that is to say, Iraq was
prohibited from having the kinds of weapons that could deter the nuclear power, Israel.

Iraq's desire in the past to retain a deterrent and a means to deliver it is quite
 understandable when one considers that they are in the same neighborhood as the
 ruthless and nuclear-armed State of Israel. Forget about finger-pointing at Iraq; how 
many heads-of-state has Israel had lately who were not mass-murderers or assassins?
  What country will ever again agree to reduce its armaments for the sake of a
temporary peace with the United States that will only be followed by a trumped-up war?
 It is never safe to surrender to an enemy who has neither honor nor mercy. The 
intransigence of North Korean dictator Kim Jung-il is a completely logical reaction,
 given that disarmament is seen to be not rewarded but exploited by the UnitedStates

America has been going down the wrong path in the Middle East for a very long time.
 We have been risking the life-blood of our economy by needlessly antagonizing the 
oil-rich states through our support of Israel. And while Jews in the United States and 
Europe promoted an ideology of multiracialism and open borders in order to weaken
 the West and consolidate their control here, in Israel they brazenly erected a
Jewish racial state complete with torture, execution without trial, concentration camps,
 curfews, summary murder by death squads, and the development of genocidal
 weapons of mass destruction. By supporting Israel's expansionist policies and Jewish
 supremacism, we have made ourselves the target of the hatred of the oppressed and
 the poor, who are our victims as surely as they are the victims of the Jews.

So now we Americans find ourselves beginning -- just beginning -- to pay the price for
 our support of the Jews. We are paying not only in dollars now, but in American blood.

And we are being remade in the image of the Israelis, and that image is the same as 
the Hollywood image of the "evil Nazi" -- except this time the image is real. Little
 children are dying because of our support of Israel. There are families who have lived 
entire lives inside of refugee camps. Hundreds of thousands of innocents have been
 killed by American firebombs and missiles.

Like Israel, America is becoming a "national security state," and our freedom to speak 
and publish and broadcast is under attack.

The Jews have concluded that they cannot win their war against the Palestinians
 without a big shakeup in the Middle East. They want to dominate the entire region as 
they now dominate the United States. Their solution to the problems they themselves
 caused by their genocidal practices is to increase their bullying and their killing by
 expanding their local war into a world war. And they expect us to be their cannon
fodder in that war.

We hope that this series has been useful to you in understanding why the Zionist Jews 
and their White puppets want this war. 

Today's program was written by Hadding Scott and Kevin Alfred Strom.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The text above is based on a broadcast of the American Dissident
Voices radio program sponsored by National Vanguard Books. ..............

The National Alliance: http://www.natvan.com
http://www.natall.com

How can we?
 Sent in by: Ademidemeji  Fatunmise <ademidemeji@yahoo.com>

This new war, which Dubya is intent on fighting, is insane.  First he
threw down with bin Laden and that was a bust, and when we finish with
Iraq, he will look on to other pastures and impose his agenda upon other
countries. We all know this.  However, have we thought about the impact
of a long and sustained war will have on the black community?  For once
the bloodthirsty man finishes in Iraq, there may well be another one
which he will want someone else's son, daughter, father, mother or other
family member to go fight and I am speaking of my own people.  That's
all I really care about and where my loyalties lie.

I will let this ancestor speak on this one for me.
"But Mr. Speaker, I do not regard this movement as a thrust at me.  It
is a thrust at the Bible-a thrust at the God of the Universe, for making
a man and not finishing him; it is simply calling the Great Jehovah a
fool.  Why sir, though we are not white, we have accomplished much.  We
have pioneered civilization here; we have built up your country; we have
worked your fields, and garnered your harvests, for two hundred and
fifty years!  And what do we ask of you in return? Do we ask you for
compensation for the sweat our fathers bore for you-for the tears you
have caused, and the hearts you have broken, and the lives you have
curtailed, and the blood you have spilled?  Do we ask retaliation?  We
ask it not.  We are willing to let the dead past bury it's dead; but we
ask you now for our RIGHTS.  You have all the elements of superiority
upon your side; you have our money and your own; you have our education
and your own; and you have our land and your own, too.  We, who number
hundreds of thousands in Georgia, including our wives and families, with
not a foot of land to call our own-strangers in the land of our birth;
without money, without education, without aid, without a roof to cover
us while we live, nor sufficient clay to cover us when we die!  It is
extraordinary that a race such as yours, professing gallantry, and
chivalry, and education, and superiority, living in a land where ringing
chimes call child and sire to the Church of God-a land where Bibles are
read and Gospel truths are spoken, and where courts of justice are
presumed to exist; it is extraordinary, I say, that, with all these
advantages on your side, you can make war upon the poor defenseless
black man.

You may expel us, gentlemen, but I firmly believe that you will some day
repent it.  The black man cannot protect a country, if the country
doesn't protect him.."
Henry M. Turner

I don't have to repeat Afrika's history, or the history of it's people,
both in the Motherland and in the Diaspora.  We all know our history of
abuse at the hands of the bible toting oyinbo folk.

We as blacks in this country have never really been afforded the
protection that this country's own constitution is supposed to provide.
None of this nation's leaders have looked out for what is good for the
black man and woman.  When our children were being killed in bombings in
their own churches, no outcry from anyone.  When we were being beaten
and lynched.  Not a dayum word.  When oyinbo cops feel the absolute
FREEDOM to shoot a black man simply because, and then his own covers for
him and therefore tells us by their actions of not holding that officer
accountable, that it is ok to shoot, we have a serious issues with
whether or not this country looks out for the good of the black man.  No
matter how we slice this crap, we are still commodities to them; to be
expended at their own will, to make human sacrifices out of us.

Because of the state of the country, many of our young black men have
been forced to enlist in the military.  This has been an option for our
people for some time, as it provides a means to an end.  Those who
enlist escape joblessness and it's ensuing poverty, among other things.

Now that we have " Attila the dumb" on the loose in the white house,
slowly taking away those rights and services that have been a great
service to the black man and woman, we have something to think about.
Where exactly ARE we on his list of priorities?   Is the relationship
between this nation and the black man a reciprocal one?  NO!  History
bears out the fact that we are constantly LIED to!  Or it is just about
THEM?  That is, the same question Henry Turner (Iba ae t'orun), asked
the Georgia legislature in his speech.  HOW can a black man go to a
foreign country to fight a war, when he is already at war on the soil on
which the blood of his ancestors has been spilled?  How can he go and
fight a war if he is not sure that his black family will be well cared
for?  Will he return and find that his college bound son has been shot
dead in the streets for merely driving his father's car?  Or will he
return to find that his brother is on trial for a crime he did not
commit, because "all blacks look alike" and he happened to be in the
wrong place at the wrong time?  Or will he return to find that his wife
has taken her own life because she could no longer withstand the
pressure of being broken by this country, along with of having to take
care of home and hearth, keep her head up and her game face on in order
that she won't be turned on by the very country her husband is off
fighting to protect.   Or will he return alive at all?  Leaving yet
another family with no father, and this country will not care for his
family.  They will be dismissed. He will be dismissed.  Just another
dead black man, who lost his life in defense of this  "sweet land of
liberty".  Or he will survive the war, and return to a country that will
still spit on him in disdain.  Will this country provide a job for him;
give him preference for the madness he had to endure in service to this
nation?   He will return to a country that will continue to see him as
inferior to them, all the while reaping the benefits of the sacrifices
that the Afrikan ancestors made, while the Ancestor's blood on this land
cries for recognition and justice?

As long as there remains 41 bullets out there, Trent Lott's kind making
decisions which affect black men and women in positions of leadership,
no true justice for our people and no right to self determination nor
reparations, the president himself breaking a 10 year tradition of NOT
sending a wreath to honor the confederacy, coupled with the egregious
fact that OUR VOTING RIGHTS ACT must be RENEWED periodically, we cannot
possibly be considered one of the nation's protected ones!  Dayum
foreigners get the ABSOLUTE right to vote once they become citizens and
we as a people still have it on the books that OUR RIGHT has to be
RENEWED?  And it was our own ancestor's blood, which has paved THEIR way
to freedom? Freedoms and protection we are still denied?   Awww hell to
the naw!

I don't give a flying fizz if they send their own oyinbo children over
there to fight.  Give "Attila the Dumb"'s drunk azz daughters a gun and
send their azzes over there to fight!   I care about my own people,
those who look like me.

In response to this country's leaders cry for war, and for US to do the
fighting, I believe that I saw this on Blackconciousness.com, "go your
damn self".

Ashe

Blessings!
Iya l'Orisha Sangofunmilayo
http://www.Xanga.com/AfrikanActivist
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Certified lunatics are shut up because of their proneness to violence when
their pretensions are questioned; the uncertified variety are given the control of powerful armies, and can inflict death and disaster upon all sane men within their reach. 

Bertrand Russell (Eng. philosopher, mathematician, 1872-1970): Power [1938] xvi

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......PALESTINE



On Reason  and Justice by Gilad Atzmon


On Reason and Justice
..by Gilad Atzmon

..Every aggression enacted by one man against another can be judged on two
different levels: the ethical level and the level of Reason. Ethical
judgment is supposed to rule whether the aggression was morally right or
wrong. Judging whether something is morally right or wrong involves
application of one's intuitive faculties and therefore can't produce
clear-cut conclusions. Reason on the other hand, traces the causes that led
to the aggression, applying rational faculties; it looks into the available
evidence, the psychological context, the legal system, precedent cases, etc.
Reason employs rational and analytical considerations, therefore it can be
reduced to an argument with irrefutable results. In order to establish
whether the aggression was justified we must synthesise both ethical
judgment and Reason. This synthesis is usually regarded as 'Justice'. It is
important to note that this synthesis is far from being perfect or 'free of
faults' but it is still the most acceptable process man can follow to
achieve a fair judgment.  Although ethical decision-making and Reason belong
to very different categories of thought, man has proved capable of
synthesising the two.


This process of synthesis can become far more complicated when we face major
scale aggression that portrays an obvious injustice. This is when politics
gets involved. In the following paper I will try to scrutinise the political
mechanism that specializes in robbing singular man of his ability to come up
with an accountable fair judgement. I will try to look into major crimes
against humanity and to assess the political game involved in the
transformation of their significance into political power. I will try to
argue that current western political power is based on the downgrading of
man's notion of justice into the ethical mode devoid of Reason. I will also
try to argue that this form of thinking is the birth of the 'victim
mentality.'

..September 11th.

The attack on the World Trade Centre was a major scale aggression enacted by
very few terrorists against very many innocent civilians. No one can justify
such an attack in moral terms.  Yet this attack can and should be assessed
as an act of aggression. In other words it should be analysed both in
ethical terms and in terms of Reason.

One is still entitled to ask for the Reason behind the attack:  What is it
that brought seventeen devoted men to commit such a suicidal atrocity?
Should this attack be regarded as a declaration of war or rather as a form
of retaliation? Is it just a mad, evil and murderous act or rather a
legitimate struggle towards liberation? These kinds of questions are
crucially important to ask, not because their answers are clear but
precisely because their answers might be very vague. At the very least these
questions might lead us to acknowledge our own rational boundaries. Raising
these questions might even lead us to admit to the possibility of a
different rationality, one that could legitimate putting our lives in great
danger. The Americans should be the first to ask themselves these kinds of
questions but sadly these questions are hardly heard in America. The reason
for that is clear. On the surface, it is very sensible to argue that such
questions are completely redundant since no rational explanation can justify
an utterly inhumane crime. This argument is very popular and it is even seen
as morally grounded but actually it is counter-productive. It makes society
completely blinded to itself. More so, it makes society completely blinded
to the possibility of other alternative and opposing worldviews.


I would argue that the failure to ask for the reasons behind crimes against
humanity is a fatal crime in itself. It is a sophisticated political
manipulation that aims at maintaining the current world order in which the
rich become richer and the poor are kept deprived forever. This mode of
thought, which I will soon define as 'victim mentality', is probably the
real and only enemy of western culture. If we agree that rational reasoning
and proper argumentation are seen as the highest of western ideals, than we
must agree that robbing man of these very faculties is a clear offence
against those western ideals.


The American administration's reaction to the September 11th atrocity
presents an intentional avoidance of the questioning mechanism and search
for Reason. It is based on the adoption a purely ethical approach. President
G. W Bush rightly condemned the attack ethically but at the same time he
saved himself and the American people from facing the Reason that led to
that attack. G.W Bush clearly tried to redefine the notion of justice. It
was no longer a synthesis between ethical judgment and Reason but rather a
purely ethical judgment. As I said earlier on, when one deprives oneself of
Reason the whole idea of justice becomes redundant. Justice is turned into a
mere intuition. Jurisdiction is no longer needed because you can save the
suspect from the trouble of defending himself, his crime is utterly
unacceptable to start with.


It is easy to explain why politicians prefer to degrade the whole idea of
'justice' into the purely ethical. First, since ethics applies the intuitive
faculties, it allows policy makers to communicate with their supporters'
intuitions rather than with their reasoning. Second, in the age of
electronic media, a message should be strong, clear   and short. It is far
easier and effective to stimulate intuitions with metaphors and emotive
language rather than to present a tedious 'well built' rational argument.
Third, politicians would prefer to keep the demarcation line between Reason
and ethics as evasive as possible because it allows them to redefine the
notion of justice to fit their own political agenda (Reason can jeopardise
such an act).  Fourth, Avoidance of Reason saves politicians from providing
their voters with any conclusive evidential ground.


These explanations might throw some light on the bizarre rhetoric which
stands at the core of the phoney 'War Against Terror'. We do not have to
bring Bin Laden to court because he is too much of a criminal anyway. Let's
just portray him as the 'devil himself' and then hunt him forever even if it
means killing thousands of innocent  civilians. We do not have to prove that
Sadam holds an arsenal of 'weapons of mass destruction', it is enough just
to dehumanise him and then to declare a third world war. The American
administration wants us to follow our intuitions assuming that Bush's ones
must be good enough - don't ever forget that he is an 'elected' president.
He must therefore, represent the intuitions of the American 'democratic'
people.

As we should have realized by now, the 'War Against Terror' has so far led
to very miserable results. America is still in very much the same danger if
not a far greater one. If anything, now it is the whole world that finds
itself under severe threat. Very much like its big brother, Israel, who
declared it's own petite 'War Against Terror' is failing miserably too. The
Palestinians, it seems, are more determined than ever to liberate
themselves. It has been made clear that Israel's chances of survival as a
Jewish state are very slim. The reason is simple. Single dimension justice
i.e purely ethical, makes people blinded and when people are blinded they
make many mistakes because they fail to see where they are going.


..The Origins of the 'Victim Mentality'


Victims are people who find themselves suffering while being completely
innocent (at least in their own eyes and within their personal or communal
world view). I will try to argue that 'victim mentality' has a lot to do
with the denial of Reason. In many cases the denial of Reason is fully
understandable. For instance, a woman who has been violently raped might not
find it interesting to learn about the personal difficulties that led the
sex offender to force himself upon her. As a victim she might be willingly
prepared to avoid Reason and to concentrate solely on dealing with her
emotional and physical scars. This is perfectly understandable. Following
the same pattern of thought, a family who lost their beloved son when a
drunken lorry driver ran over him might not find it that crucially important
to learn about the lorry driver's personal difficulties and the Reason that
pushed him to excessive drinking.  It is natural for victims to detach
themselves from the very events and Reason that changed the course of their
lives. However, these cases do not establish 'victim mentality' but rather a
normal psychological pattern of repression.  'Victim mentality' is a
political term that refers to something far more general. It refers to
communities that adopt a complete rejection of Reason. We can find light
traces of 'victim mentality' among marginal political groups such as
'feminist movements' and 'gay political groups'. Again, this is
understandable given the discrimination against those very groups. It is far
more interesting to find clear indications of 'victim mentality' within the
very core of the world dominating groups. I am referring here to Zionist
lobbies and the current American administration. These dominating groups
regard the crimes against them as severe enough to support the rejection of
Reason altogether.

 The 'victim' pattern adopted by Zionists is unique in history.  The Jewish
people definitely suffered the most devastating experiences of horror during
their long history. The Holocaust is probably one of the most horrendous
chapters on human record. But we must also remember that the Zionists were
more than clever in using this disastrous episode as a catalyst for
liberation. The Holocaust helped the Zionists to bring the UN to support the
partition resolution (1947) that eventually led to the declaration of the
state of Israel (1948). On the financial level, Jews received compensation
from the German government soon after the end of the war. Though the Jews
had very good reason to regard themselves as victims, they are not victims
any more. Nowadays they have a state, a strong army and a big enough nuclear
arsenal to turn our planet into a complete wilderness. Funnily enough
Israelis and Jews all over the world still regard themselves as victims.
More so, Israel, founded in the shadow of the Holocaust, has made the
'victim mentality' into a leading industry both in tourism and in diplomacy.
The way to the complete endorsement of the 'victim mentality' was a
continuous denial of Reason, a complete rejection of the very Reason that
led to the holocaust in the first place. I would argue that facing the very
Reason would help the Zionists understand why they lose popularity nowadays.

 While admitting that Jews had very good Reason to regard themselves as
victims at a certain point in time, there is still room to argue that the
Zionists could be the first to learn about the reasons that led to their own
destruction. They could study the European far-right accusation concerning
their domination in world banking and finance. They could learn about the
bourgeois and capitalist concerns regarding Jewish involvement in
revolutionary and anarchistic proletarian movements. About the xenophobic
rejection of the ost juden and they could even learn about the Nazi
allegations that they were planning to take over the world with
'Abstractions' (Marxism, Psychoanalysis and even Relative Theory and
Catholicism). Irrespective of their validity, Israelis and Zionists never
tried to face any of those accusations. Quite the opposite, they avoided
them altogether by labelling them 'anti- Semite nonsense'. By doing so they
established a notion of justice based solely on their own intuitive ethical
judgment. For Israelis the use of Reason is viable as long as it supports
their one and only intuition i.e. Jews have the right to live in Zion
regardless of the consequences. This form of ignorance made the Israelis and
Zionists unqualified to realize their own reality.  Moreover, because the
Israelis are no longer trained in the process of synthesizing Reason with
ethical judgment, their capacity to establish solid arguments is pretty
slim. It might sound funny (or very sad) but many Israelis do not
distinguish anymore between Nazi war criminals and Palestinian innocent
civilians. Many of the Israelis and Zionists go even further and tend to
regard the whole gentile world as a vicious and merciless enemy. If the
'gentile world' (goim) means the human race we must admit that many Jews see
themselves as facing a battle with the human race. (this might explain the
enormous size of the Israeli nuclear arsenal). In general, every diplomatic
condemnation of Israeli policy is taken by the Israeli people as an
anti-Semitic offence. Following the Israeli election and the expected  rise
of right wing support it is clear now that the vast majority of the Jewish
Israeli population do support the oppression of the Palestinian people, but
even that doesn't stop them from regarding themselves as victims.  I tend to
link this bizarre state of mind - of being an oppressor and victim
simultaneously - to the clear deterioration of the Israelis' use of Reason.
I assume that the Jewish over-use of their holocaust memory is to be blamed.
The Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon who found his death in the Columbia
disaster was so proud to carry with him to space victim symbols and
holocaust souvenirs. Learning from the press that the Columbia expedition
was a purely scientific mission, I am left wondering whether  Ramon's
scientific mission was to distribute the 'victim mentality' in outer space.
Anyhow, less than an hour after the devastating crash, Sharon announced that
Ramon "was a victim of science". No doubt the notion of victim is in a
continuous terminological flux amongst devoted Zionists.

 The case of post September 11th America is very similar. The American
Administration, like the post holocaust Jews, adopted a victim thinking
pattern which allows them to make intuitive judgments without providing any
real rational arguments. At the moment America is shooting and bombing
anything that doesn't agree with America. Anyone who doesn't agree with
America's policy is an 'Anti- American', "you are either with us or against
us" said the American President copying the Zionist 'intuition' i.e. 'You
either support Israel or you are an anti-Semite'. This form of American
behaviour is based on a righteousness that is  typical to the victim i.e. to
people who deny Reason.

 The next crucial question to ask is whether we can do something about it?
Can we help the Zionists or the Americans to escape this dead end journey?
The answer is No. We can't do a thing. This is the birth of the new tragedy.
We can't help the Israelis nor the American Administration because they are
both kidnapped by their own 'victim mentality'. Unfortunately, we must let
the Israelis destroy themselves, something they are starting to get very
good at. We can only pray that the Bush presidency will end before he
manages to destroy our planet. Why can't we help them? Because both the
Americans and the Israelis have been hijacked by themselves. When you are
imprisoned by the Other you might eventually liberate yourself but when you
are imprisoned by yourself you might find yourself locked behind your own
bars forever.

 An  interesting case to think about.

 1.The case of Ivan John Demjanjuk:

 The story of Ivan John Demjanjuk started in 1975 when a list of names of
alleged Nazi war criminals was circulated in the US senate. The list
originated in the KGB allegedly out of material captured by the Red Army. Mr
Ivan John Demjanjuk was blamed for being 'Ivan The Terrible', a particularly
sinister operator of a gas chamber in Treblinka death camp. Despite the
American having identifying Demjanjuk as having being a guard at the
geographically separate Sobibor camp it was the 'eyewitness survivors' who
placed Damjanjuk at the Treblinka Camp. Demjanjuk went through eighteen
years of legal battle. First he was denaturalised of his American
citizenship (1985). Soon after he was extradited to Israel to stand  trial
as a war criminal. All along his legal battle Demjanjuk denied the charges.
He claimed that he had never been  'Ivan the Terrible'. On April 18th  1987,
twelve  years after the whole legal saga started Damjanjuk was sentenced to
death by the Israeli court.

 In 1990, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the KGB archives were
opened to the general public. Only then the shocking truth revealed itself,
the 'Trawniki Certificate' that led to the suspicions against  Ivan John
Demjanjuk  had been found to be a soviet  forgery (done  in order to frame
the Ukrainians as Nazi supporters). Not long later the Israeli supreme court
had to admit that the whole Demjanjuk saga was a fabrication from beginning
to end. On 22 September 1993 Demjanjuk was released. The Israeli supreme
court had to dismiss the 'eyewitness evidence'.

 The question to be ask is how can an eyewitness stand in front of an
another old  man he never saw before and blame him for being vicious
murderer and a war criminal?

 This is what the eyewitnesses had to say in front of the court:

 "I am convinced that opposite me sits Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka" ,
Pinhas Epstien, 23.2.1987

 "This man is Ivan, without a shadow of a doubt- Ivan from Treblinka. From
the gas chambers-the man I am looking at now." (Eliyhau Rosenberg 25.2.1987)

 What kind of psychic mode leads to such a performance? Unless Mr Epstien
and Rosenberg were complete villains which I doubt, I assume that it is the
'victim mentality' that should be blamed. It establishes a form of loathing
that goes far beyond Reason. Both Epstien and Rosenberg must have been
standing in front of a harmless and an innocent man while thinking to
themselves "even if you are not 'Ivan the Terrible' you are the one". As we
can see the victim mentality permits us to perform a new logic that allows
one to be 'P' and not 'P'. 'It doesn't matter if you are not 'Ivan the
terrible', as long as you are him". This kind of obvious logical
contradiction  becomes possible only when ethical judgment denies the
existence of Reason completely.

 
  If the Zionist identity is associated with suffering, this very suffering becomes 
essential to its  existence. In other words, unless Zionists  find somebody to 
inflict pain on them they must inflict pain on themselves. It is not a coincidence 
that Jewish history is an endless chain of holocausts, pogroms and 
discrimination because suffering is crucial for the Jews, it helps them maintain 
their essential victim mentality.  Israeli and Zionist media outlets cover any 
attack against Jews around the world assuming that it must be racially motivated 
i.e. anti-Semitic. Jewish identity is intimately entangled with anti-Semitism. It is
he the Jew who needs to be hated.

 Most Israeli and Middle Eastern political analysts agree that Sharon's
power is fuelled by Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians.
Statistics prove that there have been more terror attacks under  Sharon than
under any of his predecessors. Sharon understands pretty well that he will
remain in power as long as the Israelis are subject to terror attacks. In
order to support his power, Sharon must make the Palestinians attack and the
best way to encourage them to do so is to terrorise them. The Israeli army
assassinates Palestinian political leaders and Civilians on a regular basis.
The IDF deprives the Palestinian  population of food and medical aid. If
this is not enough, Sharon is delaying the building of the sinister
'separation wall' between Israel and the west Bank just to insure that
Palestinian terrorists have a simple access to Israeli populated centres.
Very much like the alleged Rabbi Farhi's saga, Sharon is dangerous to
himself and his people, he puts their lives at a risk deliberately. In a
society that is driven by broken ethics and a clear denial of Reason all
those activities appear to be more than legitimate. Sadly enough for the
American people, Bush is not too far behind his Israeli mentor. Very much
like Sharon, Bush is doing his very best to infuriate the Arab people all
around the world. He humiliates them and frames them continuously, he
supports their biggest enemies as well as the most devious of their
tyrannies. Like Sharon, Bush understands that only a major terrorist act
against America can provide him with his people's support. I think that by
now we are allowed to conclude that societies that are trapped in 'victim
mentality' become hostages of their most direct enemies. A terrifying bond
can be seen between our most devious western right wing leaders and the most
merciless terrorist gangs: between Bush and Bin Laden and between Sharon and
the different suicidal squads.

 The only question left to ask is what Tony Blair should to do amongst these
two fanatic immoral hawks? At the end of the day, he is leader of the labour
party. It is horrifying to admit but at the moment, only a massive terror
attack against the UK could help Blair's sinking political career. Our prime
minister is already in Bin Laden's hands. The British people must help him
out. They can still do that only because they are not victims yet.


http://www.gilad.co.uk

MORDECHAI VANUNU

In this darkest hour since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the shining example of one man's courage has never been more relevant to the cause of peace. That man is Mordechai Vanunu, former Israeli nuclear technician, and may well be the longest serving prisoner of conscience anywhere in the world. Daniel Ellsberg recently referred to him as "the preeminent hero of the nuclear age."

In September 1986, Mordechai Vanunu was illegally abducted by agents of the Mossad for revealing to the world press information that confirmed the existence of Israel's often-denied plutonium separation plant. The plant is buried eighty feet below ground in the Negev desert, and had long escaped detection. Since the 1960s it has been used to recover plutonium from spent fuel rods from the Dimona nuclear reactor, located nearby. The plant continues to be an integral part of Israel's ongoing nuclear weapons program. Israel is believed to possess at least 200 nukes.

Then Prime Minister Shimon Peres ordered Vanunu' s abduction to silence the whistleblower, and to bring him to trial for allegedly jeopardizing the securi ty of the state of Israel. But Vanunu's real "crime" was speaking the truth. And for that he was made to suffer a fate worse than death: eleven years and five months in solitary confinement. Isolation in a tiny cell is a well known form of torture, and one that can cause deep emotional scars and mental impairment. During this period Vanunu was subjected to constant harassments and humiliations: an obvious attempt by the Mossad to "break" his will, or drive him over the edge. Amnesty International described the conditions of his ordeal as "cruel, inhuman, and degrading."

Yet, the prisoner held firm as a rock. Nor has Vanunu since wavered from the position of principle he articulated in the very beginning: that the only sane path is full disclosure and abolition of nuclear weapons. From his prison cell Mordechai wrote: "It is a dangerous illusion to believe they [nuclear weapons] can be defensive....Only peace between states can promise security."

The world gained another glimpse of Vanunu's character in 1998, shortly after his removal from solitary and his placement in the general prison population. At that time he was queried by Israeli officials about whether he would agree to remain silent on the nuclear issue, implying an offer of conditional release. But Vanunu refused. He insisted on his right to speak freely. And he made it plain that being muzzled on the nuclear issue was non-negotiable: not an option for his release. Vanunu is currently starting the seventeenth year of his eighteen year sentence. One of the causes for which Vanunu risked his life, full disclosure of Israel's nuclear policies, was briefly realized in February 1999, when a debate of the nuclear issue occurred on the floor of the Israeli Knesset. The event was short-lived. After shouting and recriminations, several Arab members of the Knesset who had sparked the debate were expelled from the chamber. The stormy circumstances showed the extent of denial that remains to be overcome. But it was a victory, nonetheless, for those who favor nuclear abolition.

.Forgotten
Long ago, far away,
in the days of old
from their ancestral lands
even while bringing forth fruit from the earth.

Unrecognized
While driving their donkeys
Tending the soil
Sprouting many greens
From the rocky land of Palestine.

Kicked out
From humanity
in days long passed
Their memories
Try to squeak out the message
That they were alive

Beaten
Into leaving their homes,
villages, figs, olives, shoes, animals
and sometimes their children
But not their love for their land
for one another
or for the stranger among them.

Silenced
When their collective tongue was ripped from their throat
By writers who erased them from the pages of history
And the politicians who discarded them from their democratic processes
Voices whaling, waiting to be heard
And granted entrance into the circle of humanity from which they were kicked so long ago.

Triumphant
For surviving four foreign occupations spanning a thousand years
Liberty and justice for all, except these native inhabitants
Who won't go away and whose spirit bears many scars
But survives in warm love and hospitality,
Even to the worst enemy.

Living in Palestine while buildings collapsed in New York, listening to the leaders indirectly lavish Muslims and the entire Arab world with blame was one of the saddest moments I recall. The first line of blame ran across the bottom of the CNN screen, even while the events were unfolding: "Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad say they carried out the attacks." We laughed ferociously, knowing Palestinians don't even have bread. If they could carry out a successful attack on the world's only superpower, why couldn't they liberate themselves from Israeli colonization? We feared the consequences of such unfounded accusations if they thrived.

Did anyone notice that the Israeli government exploited the occasion of US suffering and inattention to serve its own aims of dismantling Palestinian civilization? Military operations rumbled forth into the nights with a new luster. September eleventh two thousand and one saw the deepest Israeli military drive into land handed back to Palestinians in 1995. The first spot chosen was the historic beacon of heroism and striving for dignified freedom: Jenin. Israeli officials were quoted in the Israeli press saying such things as, "We are operating in the Jenin area and nobody's complaining" (Ha'aretz News Flash: September 13, 2001). In a separate article on the same day, the Ha'aretz correspondent wrote, "Israeli military officials admitted yesterday that the extensive drive into the Jenin area. . . was conducted against the backdrop of [Sep. 11's] terror attacks in the US. The sources said that in contrast to earlier incursions into [Palestinian territory], the American administration did not make any real effort yesterday to pressure Israel to pull backs its troops."

..by Brian Wood