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THE HANDSTAND |
SEPTEMBER 2003 |
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.LETTERs FROM AMERICA: 
I have been reading through web sites
that Israel is building a 20 plus foot wall to divide
Israel from Palestine while
confiscating Palestinian land. My question is why
haven't the media hounds here in the US mentioned or even
denounced this wall? I can't believe the Israelis
have the godforsaken nerve to do something is
abominable. You would think those Israelis would
know better. Something is very rotten in Israel and
it's not the garbage.  Overcoming the Zionist Party Line on the Attack on the UN and the Bus Bombing in Jerusalem Copyright (c) 2003 by Michael A. Hoffman .1. Resistance Forces Attack UN Hq in Iraq Establishment Line: "The Attacks appear designed to stop improvement in the lives of average Iraqis" The Truth: The United Nations recently voted to validate the US government's quisling "ruling council" in Iraq. This UN move is tacit recognition of the American Occupation as the legitimate ruler of Iraq. The UN thereby takes no action against the illegality of the unprovoked US invasion of Iraq and of the estimated 10,000 Iraqi civilians killed by American war criminals since the invasion began. This is why the UN office in Iraq was bombed. Establishment Line: The attack on the UN is part of a broader attack on US efforts to bring "stability and democracy to Iraq." The Truth: "Stability" in this context is a code word for cessation of patriotic Iraqi resistance to the New World Order and the ruinous usury-based banking system the US seeks to impose on Iraq. "Democracy" as used here is a code word for the American installation and imposition of a Hollywood-style entertainment media in Iraq, replete with softcore pornography, consumer obsession and materialist madness, accompanied by the suppression of any Iraqi political party opposed to Israeli crimes in Palestine. This vaunted American "Democracy" entails US government suppression of Iraqi newspapers and Arab satellite television stations that dissent from the US/Israeli line. American "Democracy" also entails the wholesale assassination of journalists who attempt to report facts or transmit photos of US and Israeli war crimes: Italian photo-journalist Raffaele Ciriello, killed by Israeli soldiers, March 13, 2002 in Ramallah. Spanish cameraman Jose Couso and Ukranian TV reporter Taras Protsyuk, killed by US attack on the Palestine Hotel, Baghdad, April 8, 2003. Tareq Ayyoub, Jordanian reporter, killed in US bombing of the offices of Al-Jazeera TV, April 8, 2003 in Baghdad. James Miller, English cinematographer, assassinated on May 2, 2003 in Rafah by Israeli soldiers, while filming a documentary about Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians. This is the brand of "Democracy" we are bringing to Iraq? Who, besides gullible Americans, is expected to believe that the murder of reporters constitutes democracy? In the Middle East, if not in Ohio or Iowa, the actions of the US government are seen for what they are, the spearhead of Israeli empire and the West's Shylock banking system. 2. Palestinian Resistance Bombs Jerusalem Bus Establishment Line: Palestinians are too bloodthirsty and deceitful to keep their word concerning the truce President Bush and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon graciously offered as part of the "Road Map to Peace." Palestinians have exploited the truce thus far in order to re-arm and rebuild their terror factories. Now Sharon must be given a free hand to crush the Palestinians. The Truth: The so-called Road Map for Peace was never intended to achieve a just peace in Palestine (see The Hoffman Wire of June 3: "The Road Map for Peace is a Swindle"). It was a set-up in order to justify ever greater Israeli aggression and the further demonization of the Palestinians as a "terrorist nation," in line with the Judaic religion's racist identification of the Palestinians as Amalek. The Israelis never observed any truce. Throughout the "truce" Israelis have been routinely assassinating Palestinian leaders who they say are "terrorists." These extra-judicial assassinations make a mockery of international law. The Establishment media made no substantive protest or expose of these political murders conducted by Sharon during the supposed "truce." This is why the American people are so surprised and shocked now by the Jerusalem bus bombing. They have been denied the facts of how enraged the Palestinians have been by the ongoing murders of their leaders under cover of a feigned peace agreement. Americans have been denied the information that it was the Israelis who first violated the truce, not the Palestinians. The Israeli assassination of an alleged activist of the Islamic Jihad organization a couple of weeks ago was calculated to incite retaliation from the Palestinians. The Israeli leadership got what it wanted when Islamic Jihad blew up the bus in Jerusalem on Aug. 19. Moreover, in most news coverage of the bombing it was made to appear as if the bombing of the bus was perpetrated out of sheer hatred and irrationality, rather than as direct retaliation for the Israeli murder of a Palestinian leader. The US media line is as follows: when Israelis attack Palestinians and Palestinian towns, it is direct retaliation for a Palestinian terrorist outrage. But when Palestinians attack Israelis they do so only as an expression of their inherently murderous, hateful and irrational national character. Palestinian attacks can never be considered retaliation, since the Israelis never commit any crimes that would justify Palestinian retaliation. Even armed resistance that is limited solely to attacks on Israeli and US occupation troops, is described as terrorism by the same media that annually commemorates armed Jewish resistance to German occupation troops in the Warsaw Ghetto. The Israelis and their American supporters cannot expect to assassinate Palestinians with impunity and still maintain a "truce" and a "peace process." Any genuine peace requires a genuine truce, which the Palestinians were in fact observing. The Palestinian resistance had warned Sharon repeatedly that if he kept on assassinating their leaders under cover of a truce they would retaliate. Palestinian bombings are intentionally incited by the Israeli-American Establishment and play into their hands and help achieve their Machiavellian objectives. The Israelis and the Bush administration now have exactly what they sought: Palestinians presented to the world by the American media as heartless, bloodthirsty terrorists who only understand (and deserve) an iron-fist from the noble, long-suffering Israelis. A second component of the Zionist-American stratagem has been to impose an obligation on the part of Mahmoud Abbas ("Abu Mazen"), the Palestinian leader who signed the truce agreement, to initiate a civil war in Palestine, pitting his PLO faction against Hamas and Islamic Jihad, a fratricidal bloodbath long relished by Zionists in Jerusalem and Washington. Establishment Line: At least five Israeli children were among the dead in the bus bombing. The Truth: Ordinary Israelis are pawns in the hands of their wicked leaders, just as Americans are captive to the Money Power's two party political system in the US, where democracy and free elections are a sham. Note bene however, that the singling out of the victims of the Jerusalem bombing into categories such as "five children killed" is a function of Jewish supremacy. Experts on the religion of orthodox Judaism have long noted the numerous halachic teachings in the Talmud and in the doctrinaire fiats of esteemed Judaic "sages" such as Moses Maimonides, Joseph Karo and Shneur Zalman, that Jewish lives are worth more than gentile lives. The Judaic religion teaches that "Jewish blood is redder" and that "God prefers Jews over gentiles." That this is the fiat of a retrograde tribalist religion is one thing, but when this tribalism influences the reporting of the supposedly secular, fair-minded US mainstream media, it is simply outrageous. When Sharon orders missiles fired into Palestinian inner-city neighborhoods, the resulting "collateral damage" is seldom delineated by the American media into categories of Palestinian women and children victims. The US media does not typically hammer home with nationwide unanimity and emphasis, a report such as, "Today the Israelis struck a leader of Islamic Jihad in the West Bank with helicopter gunships and Hellfire missiles, killing the leader as well and seven Palestinian children." Instead, the Establishment media almost always describe civilian Palestinian victims of Israeli attacks not as women or children, but with the bland, cosmetic term "bystanders." Furthermore, photos of Palestinian children killed by Israelis are exceptionally rare in American newspapers and television. The System's news managers engage in this falsification in order to minimize outrage and awareness of the extent of the bloodshed and atrocities Israelis inflict on Palestinians. With only one set of child-victims truly mourned and publicized, while the deaths of Palestinian children at Israeli hands are quickly covered over and barely mentioned, the American people get the impression that Palestinians are somehow exerting massive levels of violence against Israel, a nuclear power that is rated the fourth most powerful military on earth. The System's despicable excuse for "news reporting" denies the overwhelming reality of who it is that is dying in the Israeli-ruled territory: by a more than three to one margin, it is the Palestinians who comprise the majority of the victims. Hundreds of Palestinian children have been killed by the Israelis since September of 2000. But you'd never know that if your sole source of news is American television and newspapers. With this level of self-censorship and propaganda being spoon-fed to the public, the media ensure that the American people will never grasp the truth about the Middle East. American policy in Iraq and Palestine is calculated to advance the psychotic colonial occupation and apartheid policies of Talmud-crazed Judaics (many of whom hail from Brooklyn and Russia), against the aspirations of three million Palestinian natives. US foreign policy in the Middle East has been completely distorted to suit only Zionist interests, not those of the American people. The US Establishment media, hand-in-hand with the Bush administration and the Israeli government, guarantees more terrorism and a bigger quagmire in Iraq, thus consuming ever more American taxpayer funds desperately needed here in the US for our crumbling highways, bridges, railroads and mass transit system, as well as our US Postal system, schools, Social Security and Medicare. Expendable Non-Humans: Cannon Fodder for Ashcroft The continuing US occupation of Iraq and the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine are predicated on the murders of countless Arabs and Muslims who are designated by both the UN, the Zionists, the Americans and the media, as expendable non-humans. It is utterly disgusting to consider that 10,000 Iraqi civilian deaths thus far in 2003 have not merited anywhere near the publicity which 18 dead members of the Master Race are receiving due to a single Aug. 19 attack in Jerusalem. This is the crux of the madness. Without facing it and overcoming it, Americans are in for hell on earth, exactly the sort of perpetual terrorism which John Ashcroft and the US "Justice" department gleefully require in order to justify the imposition of "Patriot Act II" and a de facto police state. Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Poindexter, Wolfowitz, Sharon and Bush have a vested interest in instigating terrorism. Don't expect to encounter any meaningful responses to terrorism proposed by the TV talking heads or in newspaper editorials. Establishment flunkeys characterize US and Israeli state terror as "peace-making, stability, democracy and justifiable retaliation." They deny the ancient wisdom that violence begets violence. The talk show hosts foam with rage and vitriol. The flag wavers howl for Arab blood. Bush is positioning himself as the righteous moral ambassador of civilization, instead of what he is -- the Steppin' Fetchit of assassins and Shylocks. Because we have the most mendacious and controlled media monopoly on earth, this cycle can only continue to spiral down into bloodshed, catastrophe and economic wreckage, all in the name of peace, progress and security. Americans have never been less secure or more betrayed. If they continue to maintain their disgraceful docility, there will be no end to the degradations they will be made to endure. <end> MICHAEL HOFFMAN© http://www.hoffman-info.com/wire8.html Thanks to Israel Shamir  Got poverty? Got homelessness? Got divorce? Got desperation? US HAS WORLD'S HIGHEST INCARCERATION RATES Gail Russell Chaddock, Christian Science Monitor WASHINGTON – More than 5.6 million Americans are in prison or have served time there, according to a new report by the Justice Department (news - web sites) released Sunday. That's 1 in 37 adults living in the United States, the highest incarceration level in the world. It's the first time the US government has released estimates of the extent of imprisonment, and the report's statistics have broad implications for everything from state fiscal crises to how other nations view the American experience. If current trends continue, it means that a black male in the United States would have about a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison during his lifetime. For a Hispanic male, it's 1 in 6; for a white male, 1 in 17. The numbers come after many years of get-tough policies--and years when violent-crime rates have generally fallen. But to some observers, they point to broader failures in U.S. society, particularly in regard to racial minorities and others who are economically disadvantaged. "These new numbers are shocking enough, but what we don't see are the ripple effects of what they mean: For the generation of black children today, there's almost an inevitable aspect of going to prison," says Marc Mauer, assistant director of The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington. "We have the wealthiest society in human history, and we maintain the highest level of imprisonment. It's striking what that says about our approach to social problems and inequality." Numbering in the millions Justice Department analysts say that experts in criminal justice have long known of the stark disparities in prison experience, but they have never been as fully documented. By the end of year 2001, some 1,319,000 adults were confined in state or federal prisons. An estimated 4,299,000 former prisoners are still alive, the new report concludes. "What we are seeing is a substantial involvement of the public in the criminal-justice system. It raises a lot of questions in the national dialogue on everything from voting and sentencing to priorities related to state's expenditures," says Allen Beck, chief of correction statistics at the Bureau of Justice Statistics, who directed the report. Nor does the impact of incarceration end with the sentence. Former inmates can be excluded from receiving public assistance, living in public housing, or receiving financial aid for college. Ex- felons are prohibited from voting in many states. And with the increased use of background checks--especially since 9/11--they may be permanently locked out of jobs in many professions, including education, child care, driving a bus, or working in a nursing home. Disenfranchisement for ex-felons More than 4 million prisoners or former prisoners are denied a right to vote; in 12 states, that ban is for life. "That's why racial profiling has become such a priority issue for African-Americans, because it is the gateway to just such a statistic," says Yvonne Scruggs-Leftwich, chief operating officer of the Black Leadership Forum, in Washington. "It means that large numbers in the African-American community are disenfranchised, sometimes permanently." Some states are already scaling back prohibitions or limits on voting affecting former inmates, including Maryland, Delaware, New Mexico, and Texas. In addition, critics say that efforts to purge voting rolls of former felons could lead to abuses, and effectively disenfranchise many minority voters. "On the day of the 2000 [presidential] election, there were an estimated 600,000 former felons who had completed their sentence yet because of Florida's restrictive laws were unable to vote," says Mr. Mauer of the Sentencing Project. The new report also informs - but does not settle - one of the toughest debates in American politics: whether high rates of imprisonment are related to a drop in crime rates over the past decade. The prison population has quadrupled since 1980. Much of that surge is the result of public policy, such as the war on drugs and mandatory minimum sentencing. Nearly 1 in 4 of the inmates in federal and state prisons are there because of drug-related offenses, most of them nonviolent. Narcotic-related arrests New drug policies have especially affected incarceration rates for women, which have increased at nearly double the rate for men since 1980. Nearly 1 in 3 women in prison today are serving sentences for drug-related crimes. "A lot of people think that the reason crime rates have been dropping over the past several years is, in part, because we're incarcerating the people most likely to commit crimes," says Stephan Thernstrom, a historian at Harvard University. Others say the drop has more to do with factors such as a generally healthy economy in the 1990s, more opportunity for urban youth, or better community policing. But no one disagrees that prison experience will be a part of the lives of more and more Americans. By 2010, the number of American residents in prison or with prison experience is expected to jump to 7.7 million, or 3.4 percent of all adults, according to the new report. 
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