THE HANDSTAND

july 2005

STOPPRESS STOPPRESS STOPPRESS

Joe Vialls Passed Away Today

July 18, 2005 – Mike Macaulay
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=3361

It is with great sadness that I pass on to you the information that my friend Joe Vialls passed away suddenly and unexpectedly last night in Perth Western Australia after a period of illness.

His wife Marilyn rang me early this morning to tell me the sad news. I was very surprised as I talked to him only a few days ago and he said he felt a little better.
As we all know Joe made a large contribution to Internet Journalism, in an effort to reveal the truth that the media fails to print.

The irony is that about 5 years ago I suggested to Joe that he get onto the net. He replied ' what on earth would I do on the Internet'? The rest is history, he got on the net and found his place there.

Farewell Joe - at this very moment he's probably checking behind Gods throne to see if the Mossad are there !

We who knew him will miss him greatly.

Regards,
Mike Macaulay.
Perth Western Australia.

[The Truth Seeker] Website Note

Readers are advised to save Joe's articles for in the months and weeks ahead we can expect attempts to remove them. Joe Vialls was one of the foremost independent journalists of his time. In his own unique way his outstanding investigative work made him a thorn of the establishment. Unlike most mainstream media journalists he was genuinely independent, while his insight and knowledge, coupled with contacts and experience, made him one of the most outstanding journalists of his time.

Who Murdered 32 Iraqi Children? (Truth Comes Out)

By: Layth on: 17.07.2005 [09:39 ] (775 reads)

http://www.iraq-war.ru/article/57076

http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=iraq_war&Number=293793158

http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=iraq_war&Number=293793131

An independent investigation of the murder last week of 32 Iraqi children has been conducted by a local Iraqi news location (Mufakirat Al-Islam / Islamemo.cc) with results as follows:

http://www.islammemo.cc/taqrer/one_news.asp?IDnews=457

The writing is in Arabic, so I will translate some highlights for non-Arabic speakers:

- All major Iraqi Resistance groups issued joint written communiqué that was distributed on Thursday proclaiming that this operation was not undertaken by any of the groups neither in terms of execution or planning or involvement.

- Interview with local residents of the bombing stated that US forces cordoned off the street under the pretence that a vehicle (a KIA) parked in the street was wired to explode.

- Local residents stated that the US soldiers began handing out candy and schoolbags attracting the children.

- When residents, fearing for their children, asked about the KIA car , the US soldiers said that it was a 'false alarm' and that there was no bomb (but that a couple of US soldiers remained fiddling with the car).

- Children from neighboring streets came upon hearing of the sweets and free bags (as well as a rumor that Pokemon toys were being given out).

- After a period of about 15 minutes from them entering the street, the US forces dumped the remaining toys/sweets in a pile in the middle of the street and frantically drove off hitting 4 children in the process with their vehicle.

- Seconds later, the KIA vehicle exploded killing 32 children and wounding about ten others who were gathered in the street.

- Residents also reported that, contrary to what the US military stated, there were no US casualties or injuries from this blast as the US forces had rushed out of the street just before the explosion took place.

- Information gathered from the Iraqi fire services stated that the explosion did not leave the signature traces of a TNT blast as used by the Resistance (being left over from Russian explosives used by the Iraqi army), as the TNT blast is always outward from the place of explosion and does not leave a crater as this car bomb did.

In conclusion, the evidence and interviews revealed what was obvious from the very start...That this evil crime was perpetrated by occupation forces with the objective of murdering Iraqi children and blaming the national Resistance so as to lessen its base of support (sounds like Vietnam tactics all over again - Phoenix).

May God grant peace to the dead, victory to the Resistance, and shame and retribution to the occupiers and their allies/supporters.

bono: "I have given them permission to use your money"................................."I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave": H. L. Mencken One week later:G8 debt deal under threat at IMF Excerpts:By Steve Schifferes BBC News economics reporter Even before the ink has dried on proposals to relieve poor countries' debts to international lenders, the deal agreed by the G8 at Gleneagles is under threat. A number of European governments are apparently having second thoughts about proposals for debt relief which formed a key part of the help world leaders offered to Africa at last week's summit. In a document that has been leaked to the activist group Jubilee Debt Campaign, Belgian IMF representative Willy Kierkens is quoted as telling the IMF executive board that "rather than giving full, irrevocable and unconditional debt relief... countries would receive grants". The IMF would then be able to withdraw the grants if countries failed to meet IMF conditions such as implementing the Poverty Growth Reduction Strategy which is a pre-requisite for receiving debt relief. The head of the Jubilee Debt Campaign, Stephen Rand, says: "These proposals are in direct contradiction to what millions of campaigners and poor people were told by the G8." The proposals have also alarmed African officials at the IMF, if the leaks are accurate. If the G8 countries stick to their guns, it is unlikely that the smaller nations on the IMF can derail the deal. But as it only takes 15% of the votes on the IMF to block a deal, the attitude of larger G8 countries like Germany and Japan will be crucial. Although they signed the debt deal at a meeting of G8 finance ministers in June, the Germans in particular were known to be unhappy with the plan for complete debt cancellation. They are believed to have argued that this would create a moral hazard, with the poor countries who borrowed irresponsibly being rewarded, while other countries like Botswana who prudently avoided international borrowing receiving less aid. And there is also the problem of funding the debt deal. At the G8 press conference, UK Chancellor Gordon Brown suggested that the IMF had found additional resources by revaluing its gold reserves. And indeed the Belgians say that the total cost of the deal may be as much as 4.1bn SDR ($2.4bn) and suggest selling up to 2bn SDR ($1.2bn) worth of IMF gold to finance debt relief. This is likely to be blocked by the US and Canada, who fear it will hurt their domestic gold producers.

* * * * * * * * * * * *
LONDON

Did someone who planned this attack have inside knowledge of Visor Consultant's"emergency exercise" on those sites scheduled for the 7th of July 2005?(7/7/7 - 2+5)

The Irish Examiner from Cork, Ireland:

See the smiles on 7/7/2005 ?Only the Cork newspaper, Irish Examiner, realises that we should see them and think about it...



The Irish Times: Live Aid: Playing at the biggest music event ever...this was the showcase that would catapult the band to global attention..Twenty years ago U2's record sales rocketed..UK top 50 in the weeks following....while the [present] events may have been to raise awareness about Africa, debt and trade, the day-long concerts and associated publicity turned out to be a huge promotional plus.....Pink Floyd's sales of the band's Echoes greates hits album increased by more than 1,300%...Pink Floyd's David Gilmour quickly pointed out "Though the main objective has been to raise consciousness and put pressure on the G8 leaders, I will not profit from the concert. If other artists feel like donating their extra royalties to charity, perhaps then the record companies could be persuaded to make a similar gesture and that would be a bonus." Keane and Annie Lennox weighed in with a pledge [to do so]......It is doubtful, however, if any record labels, retail outlets, distributors or ancillary businesses will put a share of this extra revenue into charity unless such as Bob Geldof ..... None have come forward to date to promise to hand overs such Live8-enhanced profits.Jim Carroll

Well our fine fame loving, government-arselicking Irishmen, Bono and Geldof, have truly shown what they are made of - notice the silence? - notice that although the Spaniards organised a colossal march against Government  withinin hours of the Madrid bombs, there is not a single motion toward a concerted public protest against the Governments of USA and England that have brought this civil crime on their citizens. The British public apathy covered by the blatant references to World War Two and the Backbone of the English drags down the hours.And are not these two "rock stars" in the ultimate position at this very time to bring out the public in a massive protest to
counter this fear and terror magnet? JBraddell,editor

London Underground Bombing 'Exercises' Took Place at Same Time as Real AttackCulpability cover scenario echoes 9/11 wargames

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet | July 9 2005

A consultancy agency with government and police connections was running an exercise for an unnamed company that revolved around the London Underground being bombed at the exact same times and locations as happened in real life on the morning of July 7th.

On a BBC Radio 5 interview that aired on the evening of the 7th, the host interviewed Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, which bills itself as a 'crisis management' advice company, better known to you and I as a PR firm.

Peter Power was a former Scotland Yard official, working at one time with the Anti Terrorist Branch.

Power told the host that at the exact same time that the London bombings were taking place, his company was running a 1,000 person strong exercise which drilled the London Underground being bombed at the exact same locations, at the exact same times, as happened in real life.

The transcript is as follows.

POWER: At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now.

HOST: To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise to see how you would cope with this and it happened while you were running the exercise?

POWER: Precisely, and it was about half past nine this morning, we planned this for a company and for obvious reasons I don't want to reveal their name but they're listening and they'll know it. And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they'd met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking and so on.

Click here for a clip of this dialogue. Click here for a longer clip where the comments can be heard in their full context.

The fact that the exercise mirrored the exact locations and times of the bombings is light years beyond a coincidence. Power said the drill focused around 'simultaneous bombings'. At first the bombings were thought to have been spread over an hour, but the BBC reports just today that the bombings were in fact simultaneous.

Mr. Power (pictured above) and Visor Consultants need not have been 'in on the bombing' or anything of that nature for this to be of importance. The British government or one of their private company offshoots could have hired Visor to run the exercise for a number of purposes.

The exercise fulfils several different goals. It acts as a cover for the small compartamentalized government terrorists to carry out their operation without the larger security services becoming aware of what they're doing, and, more importantly, if they get caught during the attack or after with any incriminating evidence they can just claim that they were just taking part in the exercise.

This is precisely what happened on the morning of 9/11/2001. The CIA was conducting drills of flying hijacked planes into the WTC and Pentagon at 8:30 in the morning.

The ghost at Gleneagles

By John Pilger

07/09/05 "New Statesman" - - In the orgy of summit coverage something has been overlooked: the two men at the heart of it, telling us how the world should be run, are the men responsible for Fallujah and Abu Ghraib. 

Over the past two weeks, the contrast between two related "global" events has been salutary. The first was the World Tribunal on Iraq, held in Istanbul; the second the G8 meeting in Scotland and the Make Poverty History campaign. Reading the papers and watching television in Britain, you would know nothing about the Istanbul meetings, which produced the most searing evidence to date of the greatest political scandal of modern times: the attack on a defenceless Iraq by America and Britain.

The tribunal is a serious international public inquiry into the invasion and occupation, the kind governments dare not hold. "We are here," said the author Arundhati Roy in Istanbul, "to examine a vast spectrum of evidence [about the war] that has been deliberately marginalised and suppressed - its legality, the role of international institutions and major corporations in the occupation; the role of the media, the impact of weapons such as depleted-uranium munitions, napalm and cluster bombs, the use and legitimation of torture . . . This tribunal is an attempt to correct the record: to document the history of the war not from the point of view of the victors but of the temporarily vanquished."

"Temporarily vanquished" implies that, even faced with such rampant power, the Iraqi people will recover. You certainly need this sense of hope when reading the eyewitness testimonies, which demonstrate, as Roy pointed out, "that even those of us who have tried to follow the war closely are not aware of a fraction of the horrors that have been unleashed in Iraq".

The most shocking was given by Dahr Jamail. Unless you read the internet, you will not know who Dahr Jamail is. He is not an amusing Baghdad blogger. For me, he is the finest reporter working in Iraq. Together with Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn and a few others, mostly freelancers, he shames the flak-jacketed, cliche-crunching camp followers known as "embeds". A Lebanese with US citizenship, Jamail has been almost everywhere the camp followers have not. He has reported from the besieged city of Fallujah, whose destruction and atrocities have been suppressed, notably by the BBC. (See [http://www.medialens.org/alerts]).

In Istanbul, Jamail bore his independent reporter's witness to the thousands of Iraqis tortured in Abu Ghraib and other US-run prisons. His account of what had happened to a civil servant in Baghdad was typical. This man, Ali Abbas, had gone to a US base to inquire about his missing neighbours. On his fourth visit, he was arrested without charge, stripped naked, hooded and forced to simulate sex with other prisoners. This was standard procedure. He was beaten on his genitals, electrocuted in the anus, denied water and forced to watch as his food was thrown away. A loaded gun was held to his head to prevent him from screaming in pain as his wrists were bound so tightly that the blood drained from his hands. He was doused in cold water while a fan was held to his body.

"They put on a loudspeaker," he told Jamail, "put the speakers on my ears and said, 'Shut up, fuck, fuck, fuck!'" He was refused sleep. Excrement was wiped on him and dogs were used on him. "Sometimes at night when he would read his Koran," said Jamail, "[he] had to hold it in the hallway for light. 'Soldiers would walk by and kick the Holy Koran, and sometimes they would try to piss on it or wipe shit on it,' [Abbas] said." A female soldier told him, "Our aim is to put you in hell . . . These are the orders we have from our superiors, to turn your lives into hell."

Jamail described how Fallujah's hospitals have been subjected to an American tactic of collective punishment, with US marines assaulting staff and stopping the wounded entering, and American snipers firing at the doors and windows, and medicines and emergency blood prevented from reaching the hospitals. Children were shot dead in front of their families, in cold blood.

The two men ultimately responsible for this, George W Bush and Tony Blair, attended the G8 meeting at Gleneagles. Unlike for the Iraq tribunal, there was saturation coverage, yet no one in the "mainstream" - from the embedded media to the Make Poverty History organisers and the accredited, acceptable celebrities - made the obvious connection with Bush's and Blair's enduring crime in Iraq. No one stood and said that Blair's smoke-and-mirrors "debt cancellation" at best amounted to less than the money the government spent in a week on brutalising Iraq, where British and American violence was the cause of the doubling of child poverty and malnutrition since Saddam Hussein was overthrown.

In Edinburgh, a shameless invitation-only meeting of Christian Aid supporters and church leaders was addressed by Gordon Brown, a paymaster of this carnage. Only one person asked him, "When will you stop the rape of the poor's resources? Why are there so many conditions on aid?" This lone protester was not referring specifically to Iraq, but to most of the world. He was thrown out, to cheers from among the assembled Christians.

That set the theme for the G8 week: the silencing and pacifying and co-option of real dissent and truth. It was Frantz Fanon, the great pan-Africanist intellectual/activist, who exposed colonial greed and violence dressed up as polite do-goodery, and nothing has changed, in Africa as in Iraq. The mawkish images on giant screens behind the pop stars in Hyde Park beckoned a wilful, self-satisfied ignorance. There were none of the images that television refuses to show: of murdered Iraqi doctors with the blood streaming from their heads, cut down by Bush's snipers.

On the front page of the Guardian, the Age of Irony was celebrated as real life became more satirical than satire could ever be. There was Bob Geldof, resting his smiling face on smiling Blair's shoulder, the war criminal and his jester. Elsewhere, there was a heroically silhouetted Bono, who celebrates men like Jeffrey Sachs as saviours of the world's poor while lauding "compassionate" Bush's "war on terror" as one of his generation's greatest achievements; and there again was Brown, the enforcer of unfair rules of trade, saying incredibly that "unfair rules of trade shackle poor people"; and Paul Wolfowitz, beaming next to the Archbishop of Canterbury: this is the man who, before he was handed control of the World Bank, devised much of Bush's so-called neoconservative putsch, the mendacious justification for the bloodfest in Iraq and the notion of "endless war". And if you missed all that, there is a downloadable PDF kit from a "ONE Campaign" e-mail to "help you organise your very own ongoing Live 8 party". The suppression of African singers and bands, parked where Geldof decreed, in an environmental theme park in Cornwall far from the vaunted global audience, was described correctly by Andy Kershaw as "musical apartheid".

Has there ever been a censorship as complete and insidious and ingenious as this? Even when Stalin airbrushed his purged comrades from the annual photograph on top of Lenin's mausoleum, the Russian people could fill in the gaps. Media and cultural hype provide infinitely more powerful propaganda weapons in the age of Blair.

With Diana, there was grief by media. With Iraq, there was war by media. Now there is mass distraction by media, a normalising of the unmentionable that "the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people", as Arthur Miller wrote, "and so the evidence has to be internally denied". Deploying the unction of Bono, Madonna, Paul McCartney, a pop-up Andrew Marr and of course Geldof, whose Live Aid 20 years ago achieved nothing for the people of Africa, the contemporary plunderers and pawnbrokers of that continent have pulled off an unprecedented scam: the antithesis of 15 February 2003, when two million people brought both hearts and brains to the streets of London.

"[Ours] is not a march in the sense of a demonstration, but more of a walk, " said Bruce Whitehead of Make Poverty History. "The emphasis is on fun in the sun. The intention is to welcome the G8 leaders to Scotland and ask them to deliver trade justice, debt cancellation and increased aid to developing countries."

Really?

In Lewis Carroll's classic, Alice asked the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter to show her the way out of wonderland. They did, over and again, this way, that way, until she lost her temper and brought down her dream-world, waking her up. The people killed and maimed in Iraq and the people wilfully impoverished in Africa by our governments and our institutions, in our name, demand that we wake up. 


This article first appeared in the New Statesman. For the latest in current and cultural affairs subscribe to the New Statesman print edition. 

© New Statesman 1913 - 2005
http://www.newstatesman.com/Economy/200507110004

LONDON from www.prisonplanet.com

Explosions In London - Who Stands To Gain? Israel Warned, Cover-up In Progress

Prisonplanet | July 07 2005

BREAKING: Scrambled cover-up to try and change prior knowledge story.

Original reports stated that Binyamin Netanyahu was warned BEFORE the first blast, now all the Associated Press reports are being changed to say he was warned AFTER the first blast, for example this

The article linked below (and the website that carried it has strangely since crashed) said that Netanyahu was warned before the first blast.(This material re. Netanyu and also Giuliani who was in the vicinity of Liverpool St, is on NewsMax.com)

Israel are now denying they got a warning.

BREAKING: Scotland Yard says it got a warning before the attack and told Israel. "The Israeli Embassy in London was notified in advance, resulting in Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu remaining in his hotel room rather than make his way to the hotel adjacent to the site of the first explosion, a Liverpool Street train station, where he was to address and economic summit."

The warning contradicts the fact that the original explanation of a power surge went out for an hour or more. They knew it was an attack but put out a false explanation. Plus why did Netanyahu get a warning and the victims didn't?We have been told that the events unfolding today were "inevitable", London's transport network has been hit with multiple explosions. Both the Underground and Buses have been hit. Events are still unfolding.

Tony Blair is not in London but safely tucked up in Scotland with 7 other World Leaders including President Bush. The political eyes of the world are on Britain this week. The Mayor of London Ken Livingstone is in Singapore where the IOC has just awarded the Olympic Games to London, he is rushing back to the city.

Just like the events of 9/11, ask yourself, who stands to gain from this? Could this have been organized by any group other than one who has direct unlimited access to all areas of London's transport grid at all times?

The similarities with the Madrid bombing of 3/11/04, which we have persistently highlighted as an inside intelligence operation, are stark with bombs on separate trains set off within minutes of each other as the trains neared the stations. The so called perpetrators were quickly linked to an "Al Qaeda" cell in Europe but later as we reported were linked to the Spanish Security service. They then mysteriously Killed themselves as this information was seeping out. It then became apparent that Spain's government was using the bombings for its own gains and many went to the streets in Spain to declare they knew that their own government was behind the attacks. Further Intelligence was withheld by the government, we expect the same will happen in Britain after today's attacks.

This has MI5 written all over it. Just watch that national ID card legislation sail through. Only 15% of the country supported the government after the last election, this will ensure total fealty to a smarmy Blair and whatever he wants to do. Ken Livingstone and the opposition parties will now have no grounds to reject ID card legislation, especially with the Olympics coming to London in 2012.

The police state measures they'll get out of this will be overlaid onto all forms of transport. In fact, you won't be able to travel without the ID card. Although MI5 operations are normally more sophisticated than things like 9/11, in that the evidence linking it to the government is more carefully covered, just watch for the evidence of inside involvement to trickle out. MI5 have been caught involved in IRA bombings multiple times over.

Alex has said over and over that as attacks on different sections of the transportation grid occur they are going to have police state setup in the areas. Now it will be on the buses, subways etc.

FLASHBACK: Schumer Wants Airport Screening Technology in Malls

The military-industrial complex has the motive in this latest atrocity. Every major western government, including the British, has been caught red-handed carrying out bombings against their own people and blaming it on external enemies. It is mainstream news in Spain that the government was involved in the 3/11 bombing. The London 7/7 bombings are nothing different. Government ghouls are now all over television spreading the fear to encourage the people to submit to the war on terror. Support our work, spread the word, expose who is gaining power from terrorism, or our freedoms will be lost.

Hours after the attacks the media is still not providing extensive coverage. We would expect to see hundreds of eyewitness accounts and footage of the train stations. Independent London reporter Simon Aronowitz, who has a contact within the BBC, has reported that journalists are finding the coverage of the situation highly irregular. It seems that the information being released to the British public is being carefully stage managed.

London is Burning
by Gilad Atzmon

July 7, 2005


http://www.gilad.com

Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military. He now
lives in London and can be reached at: atz@onetel.net.uk

We are used to seeing images of horrors from the Iraqi capital. For most Londoners and Britons, those images are nothing more than a remote call from a foreign country. Somehow, most of us have managed to forget that it is basically our government who is responsible for the continued horror in Iraq. Today's images of horror are coming from London, seemingly, Baghdad and
London appear to share a very similar fate.

I am sitting in my front room watching BBC 24 learning that the metropolitan police and the emergency services are operating according to a plan. Clearly they all anticipated such an attack. A government that is fully engaged in some criminal colonialist activity better prepare its voters for the outcome of its policies. A minute ago I heard Tony Blair telling the nation that ‘our’ determination to defend ‘our values’ of life is greater than ‘their’ determination to cause death and destruction. I ask myself, what values is he referring to? Surely the continuation of the robbery of Arab oil is a major value for Blair but it isn't my value. Tony Blair, a man who initiated a war without UN backing, a man with blood on his hands wants us to believe that he is really concerned about African poverty and climate changes.


Whether we like it or not, we must admit that Terror is a message and we better learn to listen to it attentively:
First, it tells us that we are as vulnerable as anyone else.
Second, it tells us that we may have to let other people live their life
according to their values and beliefs.
Third, it tells us that we must never again give our votes to war criminals.

More than anything else it tells us that we have a moral duty. It is down to us to stop our governments. It is our duty to stand up and to demand the resignation of Blair who is responsible for the death of so many Iraqis and arguably now many Innocent Britons. We must remember that voting in a non-ethical politician makes us all into active shareholders in a criminal company.


We know already that both in America and Israel the consequences of terror led the general public towards an endorsement of right wing zealously. I do hope that the British people will follow the Spanish public's reaction. Warmongers and militant aggressors must be ousted from our political climate. Only then peace will prevail.

The reality of this barbaric bombing 

If we are fighting insurgency in Iraq, what makes us think insurgency won't come to us? 

By Robert Fisk 

07/08/05 "The Independent" - - "If you bomb our cities," Osama bin Laden said in one of his recent video tapes, "we will bomb yours." There you go, as they say. It was crystal clear Britain would be a target ever since Tony Blair decided to join George Bush's "war on terror" and his invasion of Iraq. We had, as they say, been warned. The G8 summit was obviously chosen, well in advance, as Attack Day. 

And it's no use Mr Blair telling us yesterday that "they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear". "They" are not trying to destroy "what we hold dear". They are trying to get public opinion to force Blair to withdraw from Iraq, from his alliance with the United States, and from his adherence to Bush's policies in the Middle East. The Spanish paid the price for their support for Bush - and Spain's subsequent retreat from Iraq proved that the Madrid bombings achieved their objectives - while the Australians were made to suffer in Bali.

It is easy for Tony Blair to call yesterdays bombings "barbaric" - of course they were - but what were the civilian deaths of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the children torn apart by cluster bombs, the countless innocent Iraqis gunned down at American military checkpoints? When they die, it is "collateral damage"; when "we" die, it is "barbaric terrorism".

If we are fighting insurgency in Iraq, what makes us believe insurgency won't come to us? One thing is certain: if Tony Blair really believes that by "fighting terrorism" in Iraq we could more efficiently protect Britain - fight them there rather than let them come here, as Bush constantly says - this argument is no longer valid.

To time these bombs with the G8 summit, when the world was concentrating on Britain, was not a stroke of genius. You don't need a PhD to choose another Bush-Blair handshake to close down a capital city with explosives and massacre more than 30 of its citizens. The G8 summit was announced so far in advance as to give the bombers all the time they needed to prepare.

A co-ordinated system of attacks of the kind we saw yesterday would have taken months to plan - to choose safe houses, prepare explosives, identify targets, ensure security, choose the bombers, the hour, the minute, to plan the communications (mobile phones are giveaways). Co-ordination and sophisticated planning - and the usual utter ruthlessness with regard to the lives of the innocent - are characteristic of al-Qa'ida. And let us not use - as our television colleagues did yesterday - "hallmarks", a word identified with quality silver rather than base metal.

And now let us reflect on the fact that yesterday, the opening of the G8, so critical a day, so bloody a day, represented a total failure of our security services - the same intelligence "experts" who claim there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when there were none, but who utterly failed to uncover a months-long plot to kill Londoners.

Trains, planes, buses, cars, metros. Transportation appears to be the science of al-Qa'ida's dark arts. No one can search three million London commuters every day. No one can stop every tourist. Some thought the Eurostar might have been an al-Qa'ida target - be sure they have studied it - but why go for prestige when your common or garden bus and Tube train are there for the taking.

And then come the Muslims of Britain, who have long been awaiting this nightmare. Now every one of our Muslims becomes the "usual suspect", the man or woman with brown eyes, the man with the beard, the woman in the scarf, the boy with the worry beads, the girl who says she's been racially abused.

I remember, crossing the Atlantic on 11 September 2001 - my plane turned round off Ireland when the US closed its airspace - how the aircraft purser and I toured the cabins to see if we could identify any suspicious passengers. I found about a dozen, of course, totally innocent men who had brown eyes or long beards or who looked at me with "hostility". And sure enough, in just a few seconds, Osama bin Laden turned nice, liberal, friendly Robert into an anti-Arab racist.

And this is part of the point of yesterday's bombings: to divide British Muslims from British non-Muslims (let us not mention the name Christians), to encourage the very kind of racism that Tony Blair claims to resent.

But here's the problem. To go on pretending that Britain's enemies want to destroy "what we hold dear" encourages racism; what we are confronting here is a specific, direct, centralised attack on London as a result of a "war on terror" which Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara has locked us into. Just before the US presidential elections, Bin Laden asked: "Why do we not attack Sweden?"

Lucky Sweden. No Osama bin Laden there. And no Tony Blair. 


© 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd. 

                              PHOTOS OF THE AMERICAN BASE IN ISRAEL
                                              by Barry Chamish
www.barrychamish.com

RECALL my previous article:

THE AMERICAN army base - As reported in my last memo, a huge American army base is nearing completion in Israel. Reportedly, it has holding facilities for as many as 18,000 protesters.
       After visiting it yesterday, I'd say way more. This base is massive. I counted ten enormous US Army issue prefab warehouses and more were going up. At the base guard post, the American flag is waving in the wind. A sign proclaims that the project manager is one Jerry Ray.
         I start taking photos of the base with a cheap camera. The guard asked what I was doing. I replied, "I'm a journalist proving that a huge American military base is being constructed on Israeli soil."
         "What's wrong with that?" he asked. "Who else will protect us from the Palestinians?"
         "Where are the Americans?," I probed.
         "What do you mean, they're everywhere here. Everyone in charge is American."
         We drove away. My friend at the wheel was even more depressed than me. "It's a concentration
camp," he said.
          To witness Israel's loss of sovereignty, take Route 443 to the Rosh Haayin junction. Drive ten minutes until you see Rantis Junction. The sign points to Beit Arye, and Halamish. Turn right. The base is a mile away on the left side. To salute the American flag, turn left at the entrance road.
          The base is located ten minutes from Ben Gurion Airport. Luckily, a new terminal opened last year, so the Americans have the spacious old terminal to store and move whatever they're planning to import once Gush Katif and the rest of the settler vermin are rid of.

        The article prompted a reporter from a large American radio network to call me. He wanted to see the base and photograph it. I met him an hour later and off we went.
         First stop, the base gate. The reporter is amazed to see the American flag waving and to read on a sign that the contractor for the base is an Arab named Mustafa. He notes what a huge security fiasco hiring an Arab contractor to build an IDF base would be. Then we see busloads of Arab workers leaving the base by bus.
          We continue down the road and photograph the massive buildings and underground digging.
Then we reach the checkpoint at the border of the Green Line. The base stops precisely there, the border the Americans have planned for us. We turn into the dirt road to the left and start following the circumference of the base.


          The base is enormous, far huger than any other base in the country. We estimate that several tens of billions of dollars are going into the base itself but the new road surrounding the complex currently being blasted out of the rock has to add another billion dollars to the pricetag. As for the value of 50 square miles of prime Israeli real estate: more billions.
           Neither of us knows what the base will be used for so I suggest, "Let's go inside and ask someone. We reach the entrance where two guards are seated. I ask one if we can speak to someone in charge of the project and photograph inside. The guards agree to call headquarters and see. One guard calls, the other points to a path to the right and says, "Let's see if they'll let you photograph up there. You've never seen so many computers and cameras in your life."


           The base construction manager agrees to talk to us. We are escorted to his trailer/office where he is sitting with three other sub-managers. The radio reporter wastes no time askiing, "Are those   
buildings going to be used to hold evacuated settlers and protesters?"
            The project manager laughs. I agree. That is not the purpose of this base.
            Next question: "What is this base going to be used for?"
             "A storage facility for the IDF."
             I respond: "Suddenly the IDF is suffering a huge lack of warehouse space? I mean, how big is this base?"
             "It will be half the area of all Tel Aviv."
             "For storage? What is the American role then in this base?"
             "They are building it for us. All the supervisors are American."
             "What are those underground tunnels for?"
             "No tunnels. It just looks that way because of the topography. Look, you came to the wrong person. I'm a simple builder from Rosh Haayin. What do I know?"

               We didn't know either. We now knew the US was building this complex with an Arab chief contractor. It will not likely or primarily be for IDF use. One guess was that it will replace all the vital IDF bases in Yesha after a pullout but that wasn't satisfying. Nothing could replace men overlooking the enemy.  
                I received the reporter's permission to distribute the photos, six hours before I was to do a 2 hour interview of the Jeff Rense radio program. I sent him the photos and then chose a select few experts to tell me what they were of. My first two replies were:

Barry, I have seen these kind of installations when I was in the military for years I was stationed at a base where a major part of it was like this. These are not barracks of any kind. The metal facilities built up on the rocks are huge electronic facilities probably filled with CIA and extensive phone and other electronic monitoring stuff. The bunker is one just like the ones I was around at the base I was at here in California. It is a missile launch bunker. Somewhere within a mile to 5 miles are silos with the missiles in them, This kind of a facility has minimal personal but filled with covered electronics that can even be monitored from the US itself. Not one of those large buildings is for people to live in or even really work in.

Bush administration to keep control of internet's central computers

> Gary Younge in New York and agencies
> Saturday July 2, 2005
> The Guardian
>
> The Bush administration has decided to retain control over the
> principal computers which control internet traffic in a move likely to
> prompt global opposition, it was claimed yesterday.
> The US had pledged to turn control of the 13 computers known as root
> servers - which inform web browsers and email programs how to direct
> internet traffic - over to a private, international body.
> But on Thursday the US reversed its position, announcing that it will
> maintain control of the computers because of growing security threats
> and the increased reliance on the internet for global communications.
> A Japanese government official yesterday criticised the move, claiming
> it will lend momentum to the debate about who controls the information
> flow online.
>
> "When the internet is being increasingly utilised for private use, by
> business and so forth, there is a societal debate about whether it's
> befitting to have one country maintaining checks on that ... It's
> likely to fuel that debate," said Masahiko Fujimoto, of the ministry
> of internal affairs and communications' data communications division.
> The computers serve as master directories that contain
> government-approved lists of the roughly 260 suffices used, such as
> .com or .co.uk. Anyone who uses the web interacts with them every day.
> But a policy decision by the US could, at a stroke, make all sites
> ending in a certain suffix unreachable.
> Despite many doomsday scenarios, the most recent US decision will have
> little if any immediate effect on internet users, and given the
> internet's anarchic nature it may simply represent a desire to assert
> state control even when it is not possible to do so.
> Claudia Bernett, 32, a digital design analyst in New York, said:
> "Scary as it seems, because of the nature of the internet, I think
> they'll be hardpressed to create a coherent system that is capable of
> the kind of monitoring they hope for ... Eventually, the people
> participating in the system will find the technological means to evade
> the watchful eye."
> Experts say that in the worst-case scenario, countries that refused to
> accept US control of the main computers could establish their own
> separate domain name system, with addresses in some places that others
> would not be able to reach, making the world wide web give way to
> discrete, regional web domains.
> Mr Fujimoto said that is also unlikely because of its complexity, but
> the US decision will raise serious concerns that will not be assuaged
> easily. The announcement comes just weeks before a UN panel is set to
> release a report on internet governance. Some nations want
> international oversight of the issue but historically the US has
> maintained the role because it was such a key player in the early
> years of the internet's development.
Jenin Hospital calls for Doctors
Thursday, June 23, 2005 7:46 AM
 
Razi hospital is based in Jenin and is in desperate need of specialists in the following fields:
Nuerosurgery
Orthopedic
Gynacology and obstitric
Radiology
Pathology
Staff nurse and midwives
Urologist
Pediatric

Doctors who have finished their medical degrees, have become registered and are training for specialisation are needed.
* The minimum period of commitment required is 3 months and can start at any time.
* Certificates proving qualifications are needed to obtain a temporary license from the Palestinian Health ministry to work in Palestinian hospitals.
* Housing and transportation can be provided. Meals are available at the hospital cafeteria.
Those who possess the relevant qualifications and are interested should contact Br Fawaz Hammed at razihosp@hotmail.com. Please inform him of how you came to hear about the vacancies.

Palestinians in Jenin are in desperate need. This will, without a doubt, be a challenging and rewarding experience and an opportunity to support an oppressed and occupied people. Please let Friends of Al-Aqsa know if you respond to this appeal.

arch hypocrite Ariel sharon tells the hisrtory books :

Sharon told the Caesarea Economic Forum: "I make an absolutely clear distinction between [the wide settler public] and those radical gangs that try to terrorize Israeli society and tear it apart with acts of violence against Jews and Arabs, hurting the feelings of Muslims and their symbols, bullying and refusing orders. This is not the way of Judaism. This is not the way of the settlement movement. This is not the way of Israel," he said. July 1st.2005

Palestine: Abdallah's account of his Shabak interrogation:
july 2005
A group of Israeli soldiers came into my compound at three o'clock in the morning, surrounded my house, and then started kicking the gate that leads into my yard.  My family woke up but we did not answer the door at this point. 

The soldiers proceeded through the gate into my yard and began knocking on the door to my house.  At this moment I called my friend
Mohammad Khateeb to tell him what was happening because a journalist
named Shai Barock was sleeping at his house.  After that I heard the
soldiers say, "Abedallah, Abedallah," and I answered them by asking,
"What do you want?"  The commander answered, "We want you to come
downstairs to the front door."  I did this, and on my way downstairs
to see them I went to the International Solidarity Movement (ISM)
apartment on the first floor of my home and told them that the army
had surrounded the house.  They woke up and followed me to the front door.

I went outside to find many soldiers all over my yard.  The commander
said, "Are you Abedallah Abu Rahma?"  I said, "Yes."  He responded,
"You should come to see Commander Rizek tomorrow at noon at the Ofer
military base."  I said, "I was in jail one week ago.  What does he
want from me now?  Why didn't he ask me to come see him then?  And why
are you coming at this hour to speak with me?  Why didn't you come
during the day?"  The commander answered, "These decisions are up to
me.  You must come tomorrow, and if you do not, you may face legal
repercussions."

I did what the commander asked of me.  At noon the following day, I
went to Ofer jail accompanied by Allison, a member of ISM.  After we
arrived we called Yael Barda, an Israeli legal advocate, as well as
many Israeli activists who gave us much advice.

I waited in the front of the Shabak station beginning at noon, and
after a few minutes the legal advocate arrived.  She asked me what had
happened the night before and looked at the piece of paper given to me
by the commander ordering me to come the following day to see
Commander Rizek. Yael joked about the fact that the paper was so
informal, and then she began shouting at the soldiers, saying that she
wanted to go inside to ask
Commander Rizek what he wanted from a person sleeping in his house in
the middle of the night, why he had to disturb me. 

Yael also added that the soldiers came in an illegal way and that now
they were making me wait out in the sun without seeing Commander
Rizek.  This continued until 2 pm.
After that a soldier called my name and said he wanted me to go inside
to the commander. He refused to allow the advocate to come with me and
told her that that is forbidden. 

I went inside the gate to have one soldier search me and take
everything from me that was in my pockets.  Afterwards, one said, "What is all the noise that you made outside?  You were provoking the people outside against us.  Who is this whore you brought with you?"  I said to him, "She is not a whore, she is my advocate." 
He replied, "Why is she with you?" 
I answered, "Because you are saying that Israel is a state that operates by law and I did not do anything illegal.  My
advocate counseled me to abide by the law."
He responded, "Who told you this?  Israel does not operate by laws, and especially here in the Shabak there are no laws.  You know this." 

The soldier said to me, "Where are you going?" 
I said, "To Commander Rizek." 
He then said to another soldier, the one who searched me, who
was standing with him, "Tell Rizek that I want to meet him."
Rizek then came and talked to this soldier and then they both approached me.
 Rizek said, "Ask him where his ID is."
 I said, "You took it from me when I arrived."
 Rizek then began to make trouble.  "It is not here," he said.
 The soldier then asked me, "Are you sure that you handed it
to us?"  He repeated the question several times.
 I said, "This is not up to me.  I handed my ID to you, and they said to me, `Follow us.'" 

I then entered Commander Rizek's office, where Rizek sat behind his
desk and another soldier sat across the room from him. 
He said, "You are making a lot of trouble.  Where were you last week?"  I said, "In Ofer jail." 
He responded by asking, "Why?" 
I answered, "I was taken from a nonviolent demonstration against the wall."
He replied, "What happened after that?" 
I answered, "I was released because I did not break the law." 
He said, "You are saying you were at a demonstration and you did not make any mistakes?" 
I answered, "The judge who decided my case said I did not break the law or make any mistakes."
He replied, "What's your job?  Where do you work and what is your
salary?" 

I answered, "I am a teacher in Birzeit.  My salary is.."
He answered, "In the West Bank this is enough to allow you to live a good life." 
I answered, "Yes, thank God that I have some left to save and I am not in need of anything." 

He then said, "You have organized many demonstrations.  This is illegal and you do not gain anything from the demonstrations.  Has the route of the wall been changed?  You are
losing and you will face ramifications for your actions." 

I replied by saying, "What we are organizing is nonviolent demonstrations and this is not illegal according to the Israeli government.  Furthermore, what we are doing does not create danger for anyone.  It is legal.  We carry banners with slogans against the wall and chant against the wall, all of which we are allowed to do.  What do you expect from a people whose land is being taken from them?  Your army is saying that the land behind the wall is still ours, but in fact soon they will build a fence and gates and not allow anyone to go to this land.  Even if what you are saying is true, special permits will be given only to the landowners, our fathers and grandfathers who are unable to work the land.  Because of this the land will go unused and the settlers will steal our olive trees and the army will seize the remaining land in order to enlarge the settlements.  What can we do?  We are simply expressing our resistance to this in these nonviolent demonstrations."

He replied, "Do you know what happened in Biddu?"
I said, "They were organizing nonviolent demonstrations."
He said, "No."
I said, "They moved the wall back."
He said, "No."
I asked, "What do you want?"
He said, "Five people were killed there."
I said, "I heard there were five martyrs there."
He said, "Killed not martyrs.  Dead.  Do you want this to happen in
Bil'in as well?"

I said, "Near the beginning of the wall construction an army commander
came and advised us not to make any violent resistance because that
would never lead to any gains.  And yes we took his advice.  What we
are organizing is nonviolent demonstrations that do not create any
danger for anyone."

He said, "You are saying you did not create violence for the soldier
who lost his eye and the many other soldiers who have been injured by
stone throwing?"

I said, "In our demonstrations we always ask the soldiers not to shoot
tear gas and rubber-coated metal bullets at us, and also, we also
declare the demonstrations nonviolent.  We tell the villagers not to
throw stones.  What happens is that the soldiers are violent toward
the villagers by coming into the village among the houses with their
weapons, so some of the villagers reply by throwing stones.  This is
apart from the demonstrations.  On the other hand I am not a military
commander.  I am a human just like all the other villagers.  I express
my opinion.  I believe in nonviolent resistance and I know that the
wall will be destroyed by nonviolent demonstrations."

He said, "The information we have says that you are urging the people
to participate in the demonstrations."

I said, "What I am doing is legal.  I have not broken any laws.  As I
said to you I am a human and not a commander so I can not order people
to participate in demonstrations.  All the villagers believe in what
they are doing and need not be ordered."

He said, "But you crossed a boundary in order to be here today.  We
know everything that you do."

I said, "Yes, you know every small and large thing.  Because of this
you must know that the name of Bil'in is `the village of peace' and
that the villagers did not take part in any demonstrations before the
construction of the wall began.  The wall is choking us.  What is
happening is like a person squeezing a balloon until it bursts.  There
is nothing left for us in our village.  I am sure you know that I am
34 years old and there exists no information to prove that anything I
have done has been dangerous to Israel.  What I am doing is legal and
peaceful."

He said, "What happened in Biddu was that those carrying the
loudspeakers are now sleeping in their homes and those who were killed
are the losers.  I advise you to take care of yourself, your home, and
your family.  As you said, you live a good life.  Continue doing this
and do not endanger yourself.  We have a lot of information about you."

He then said I could leave and returned my ID.