The Zionist state of Israel continually claims to seek peace and safety, and this is often employed as a justification for the application of disproportional military force against neighboring states, and upon the people within Israel’s own occupied territories. Yet Israel’s violent and brutal assault upon the civilian population in the Gaza strip in early 2009 is just the latest demonstration of Israeli actions, revealing true intent stripped away from disingenuous propaganda. The perpetual Middle East ‘Peace Process’ is a sham. If you still doubt it Norman Finkelstein explains why:

The Palestinian organization Hamas was becoming too moderate; it was transmitting, giving the signal that it was ready to go along with the two-state settlement based on pre-1967 borders. The leadership of Syria and the West Bank have also been making statements like this. So Israel started to get worried that it would be obliged to negotiate a settlement which the international community has been supporting for the last 30 years.

Those who are against this settlement are the U.S. or Israel, backed by the U.S. So when Hamas was becoming moderate and holding to the cease-fire it agreed in June 2008, it was showing herself to be a credible negotiating partner. Hamas was standing by its word. In the meantime, Israel has neglected another core principle of cease-fire, namely easing the blockade. So Israel had to defeat this Palestinian peace offensive. It always does this. It provokes Palestinians into reacting, and it wants to either destroy Hamas or inflicts so much damage that Hamas will have to say it will never negotiate with Israel. That is exactly what Israel wants. Israel never wants a moderate negotiating partner because if there is one, pressure on Israel will grow. Hamas is willing for a settlement; Hamas stands by its word. But Israel does not want to negotiate. - January 19, 2009

And where does Israel get the weapons and killing technology to wage war instead of seeking peace and mutual security? Mostly from the United States; and without making any public protests against the misuse of their weapons on civilians in war crimes of every imaginable kind (or halting weapons transfers entirely), the United States becomes a willing accomplice to Israel’s murderous military attacks. Israel wins in this process because the international acme of human rights and democracy, the USA, looks just as dirty and brutal as they are.

Amnesty researchers in Gaza found several weapon fragments after the fighting. One came from a 500lb (227kg) Mark-82 fin-guided bomb, which had markings indicating parts were made by the US company Raytheon. They also found fragments of US-made white phosphorus artillery shells, marked M825 A1.

On 15 January, several white phosphorus shells fired by the Israeli military hit the headquarters of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza City, destroying medicine, food and aid. One fragment found at the scene had markings indicating it was made by the Pine Bluff Arsenal, based in Arkansas, in October 1991.

The human rights group said the Israeli military had used white phosphorus in densely populated civilian areas, which it said was an indiscriminate form of attack and a war crime. Its researchers found white phosphorus still burning in residential areas days after the ceasefire.

At the scene of an Israeli attack that killed three Palestinian paramedics and a boy in Gaza City on 4 January, Amnesty found fragments of an AGM114 Hellfire missile, made by Hellfire Systems of Orlando, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The missile is often fired from Apache helicopters.

Amnesty said it also found evidence of a new type of missile, apparently fired from unmanned drones, which exploded into many pieces of shrapnel that were "tiny sharp-edged metal cubes, each between 2 and 4mm square in size".

"They appear designed to cause maximum injury," Amnesty said. Many civilians were killed by this weapon, including several children, it said.
From: Amnesty calls on US to suspend arms sales to Israel, by Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, February 23, 2009.

Cast Lead

Everyone already knows what Israel officially wants, but what do the Palestinian people in Gaza want? Rarely are the Palestinians asked by the mass-media, but obviously they want safety and economic opportunity. “I want a cease-fire and open borders. Crossings are better than tunnels," Abu Mahmoud, 22-year-old tunnel smuggler. [1]

Israel’s mass-assault on Gaza is unequivocally a military and political failure, similar to their attack on Hezbollah in southern Lebanon just a few years ago. The blatant attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure has become a public-relations fiasco for Israel, and it has left Hamas in power while enhancing Palestinian solidarity behind them as the only authority organized in support of the people and willing to resist ongoing Israeli attacks.

So what is Israel trying to do? Their official aims haven’t been met, yet they claim ‘Operation Cast Lead’ was a success, a déjà vu repeat of their war on Hezbollah and Lebanon. Again, we have to discard propaganda statements and focus on facts and actual events, which are much more enlightening anyway.

Israel controls Gaza's borders, coastal waters and airspace, and allows only some food, medical supplies and fuel to enter Gaza, this has little substantive meaning. According to the UN, Gaza needs a minimum of 500 truckloads of humanitarian aid and commercial goods a day. While the Israeli authorities have told humanitarian agencies that they will allow up to 200 truckloads a day, the actual number has never exceeded 120 since the blockade began in June 2007. The average in February was between 88 and 104, including the grain shipped by conveyor belt at the Karni crossing. New security procedures since the January war make it almost impossible for aid agencies to plan deliveries more than 24 hours in advance.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that Israel has arbitrarily refused entry of even basic items like chickpeas, macaroni, and wheat-flour, notebooks for students, freezer appliances, generators, water pumps and cooking gas.

Israel insists that all trucks enter Gaza via Kerem Shalom near the south of Gaza, where every item on the trucks must be unloaded, inspected, repackaged and reloaded with a "handling fee" of $1,000, even though there are other crossings with more sophisticated security screening equipment. It is clear that Israel's actions are aimed less at preventing arms from getting through into Gaza than intimidating and punishing the Gazan population, destroying whatever remains of the Gazan economy and forcing Gazans into exile. [3]

Israel's tactics of violence and their strategy of state-terrorism aren't haphazard or accidental; they're very much intentional and calculated. Israel even has a name for their use of indiscriminate slaughter and the application of disproportionate force; operation Cast Lead was an extension of what Israel calls the ‘Dahiyah policy’, named after the bombardment of Dahiyah, Beirut in 2006, part of Israel's effort to  destroy Lebanon's national infrastructure while intimidating Hezbollah. [10]

Religion Rules

The involvement of the very influential Jewish religious establishment in Israel forms a key element in the war process. Many Rabbis have been particularly vocal in promoting and fomenting war on the Palestinians, and Israel’s Arab and Persian neighbors as well, using religious commandments as direct support, indeed a mass-mandate, for inflicting pain and suffering upon all who oppose Judaism. This is the same archaic tribal mindset explicitly described in the Torah, or Biblical Old Testament.

In the last decades, the state-financed religious educational system has churned out "rabbis" who are more like medieval Christian priests than the Jewish sages of Poland or Morocco. This system indoctrinates its pupils with a violent tribal cult, totally ethnocentric, which sees in the whole of world history nothing but an endless story of Jewish victimhood. This is a religion of a Chosen People, indifferent to others, a religion without compassion for anyone who is not Jewish, which glorifies the God-decreed genocide described in the Biblical book of Joshua. … The rabbis openly called upon the soldiers to be cruel and merciless toward the Arabs. [4]

And further evidence unmasks the Jewish religious establishment in Israel as enthusiastic promoters of a slaughter of Palestinians, justified as a religious duty for Israel’s soldiers.

Another disturbing element reported by the soldiers was the role of military rabbis in distributing booklets that framed the fighting as a religious war. “All these articles had a clear message: we are the Jewish people, we have come to the land by miraculous means, and now we have to fight to remove the Gentiles who are getting in our way and preventing us from occupying the Holy Land… a great many soldiers had a feeling throughout this operation of a religious war,” said one soldier. [6]

The Jewish establishment doesn’t want to resolve conflict with non-Jews, at least not in a way that the rest of us understand it through dialogue and arbitration. They want to exterminate everyone that doesn’t support them, just as one stone-age tribe seeks to defeat and slaughter another stone-age tribe! Consequently, Israel’s actions are not intended to create a situation where the Palestinians, or the Iranians, accept mutual coexistence, that’s why the goal-posts keep changing within the sham peace process, and no matter what Iran does it can never meet Israel’s standards of nuclear security (never mind Iran’s need for security against Israel’s established nuclear arsenal). In this warped mindset non-Jews can’t do anything to be Jews, they are inherently a different tribe. Israel is pushing a power-trip for perpetual pain upon the Palestinian people.

Ironically, peace with the Palestinians would directly benefit Israel, as well as the Palestinian people, and indeed the world at large. “The shopkeeper said he has fond memories of the 1970s, when he would drive from Gaza City to his Mercedes supplier in the Israeli port city of Haifa without borders or checkpoints.” [1] Open trade and economic interaction would boost the well-being of both sides. The obvious simplicity of this fact is yet another demonstration of the sheer stupidity and self-destruction of tribalism and religious fundamentalism.

Sadly, this insurmountable divide between Jews and goyim extends inside Israel as well; making a mockery of Israel’s supposed state of democracy.

Israel's Palestinian citizens live a precarious existence lacking well-defined rights, despite the nation's boasting of being the only democracy in the Middle East. Even the number of Palestinian citizens of Israel is an open question, since Jerusalem is home to a quarter million Palestinians who, despite being born in areas Israel claims are within its borders, do not receive citizenship at birth and face a nebulous legal status as “permanent residents.” [5]

Proponents of Judaism continually emphasize the noble qualities of the religion with its emphasis upon charity, but they conveniently ignore the fact that the charity is intended for Jews only. But then again, lying to a non-Jew isn’t really a lie either. Judaism of the Talmud holds that only Jews are human and that everyone else is just an animal, and as a consequence all charity and mercy is reserved for Jews only. This explains why so many Rabbis promote extreme brutality and merciless hatred against Palestinians, Arabs, and anyone that directly opposes Jewish Israel. This kind of us-versus-them double standard leads to all sorts of bizarre and warped behavior patterns. Indeed the root paranoia that anti-Semitism represents is the chronic fear that Jewish hatred and brutality will eventually be returned against them by non-Jews, it’s a projection of Jewish Zionism’s tribal ruthlessness onto others. Yet at the same time these Jews are afraid that if they let up on the cruelty and tactics of terrorism for just a moment the people they’ve been tormenting for decades will lose their fear, rise up and retaliate. The terrorists become terrorized themselves, but it does create a sense of solidarity in collective guilt and fear. This is why Jews and Zionists around the world, think of Alan Dershowitz, exert such enormous effort continually trying to defend the indefensible!

The IDF military campaign in Gaza enjoyed the support of 94% of the Israeli population. 94% of the Israelis apparently approved of the air raids against civilians. The Israeli people saw the carnage on their TV screens, they heard the voices, they saw hospitals and refugee camps in flames and yet, they weren’t really moved by it all. They didn’t do much to stop their “democratically elected” ruthless leaders. Instead, some of them grabbed a seat and settled on the hills overlooking the Gaza Strip to watch their army turning Gaza into modern Hebraic coliseum of blood. [8]

The official objective of Zionism is to create a safe haven for the world’s Jews, yet through the violent and brutal actions of Israel, combined with the theft of land and ongoing illegal settlements; Zionism actively creates new enemies around the world and makes Jews less safe than ever before! Zionism is a screaming example of the ends trying to justify the means, only generating tactical success that inexorably leads to colossal strategic defeat.

Human Shields, Human Targets

To deflect criticism of vicious attacks on dense and virtually defenseless Palestinian populations, Israel claims that the people they’re targeting hide amongst the civilian population and so they have no choice. In other words, the cowardly terrorists hide behind human shields. Actually this isn’t a lie; it’s just being terribly misleading because Israel’s intended target is the civilian population. But even if the excuse made sense Israel does exactly that anyway, frequently taking Palestinian adults, and particularly children, hostage in order to clear a room they suspect of being booby-trapped, or to walk down a street threatening to shoot the hostage if they come under attack. These tactics are well documented, and in March 2009 the United Nations condemned one egregious incident where an 11 year Palestinian was used as a human shield by Israeli forces in Gaza. At the same time the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed Israeli soldiers wearing t-shirts with slogans in English and Hebrew like "1 Shot 2 Kills," with a pregnant Arab woman in the cross-hairs, and "The smaller they are, the harder it is," featuring a child with a gun. [7]

Israel’s use of white phosphorus (WP) artillery shells on Gaza has come under major criticism around the world, with the usual exception that nearly nothing is heard or written in the American or Canadian press that reflects negatively on Israel. White phosphorus burns intensely on contact with oxygen and it is used to create a smoke-screen or to act as an illuminating agent for nighttime operations where the pieces slowly float to the ground and burn out. But to be properly used the artillery shells have to be fired at a high angle so the pieces have a long time to fall. Israel lobbed the shells at a low angle and into populated areas where phosphorus becomes a horrific weapon as it quickly hits the ground and burns everything it touches. The respected NGO Human Rights Watch has concluded in a report that Israel intentionally used white phosphorus shells indiscriminately, in a text-book war crimes incident.

The group documented only some of the cases, including white phosphorous shells fired at a Gaza City hospital, the U.N. headquarters, a school and a market. In six attacks, 12 civilians were killed and dozens wounded, said Human Rights Watch researcher Fred Abrahams. [9]

This is a particularly important event to Americans because the WP shells were made in the United States, and Israel’s use of them in a documented war crime is a direct violation of the foreign arms sales agreement. Any country besides Israel would be immediately placed on the black list, like China was after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. But for a very special Israel with a death-grip on America's political process, the American-made weapons keep on coming. 

Israel's Operation Genocide

Damning testimony from Israel’s own soldiers operating in Gaza confirms that Operation Cast Lead was a genocide mission against Palestinians in everything but name. It’s going to be really tough for the Israeli government to blame this one on HAMAS:

“That’s the beauty of Gaza. You see a man walking, he doesn’t have to have a weapon, and you can shoot him,” one soldier told Danny Zamir, the head of the Rabin pre-military academy, who asked him why a company commander ordered an elderly woman to be shot. … There were also accounts of soldiers being ordered to throw all the furniture out of Palestinians’ homes as they were taken over. “We simply threw everything out the windows to make room and order. The entire contents of the house flew out the windows: refrigerator, plates, furniture. The order was to remove the entire contents of the house.” [6]

Interestingly, in March 2009 the President of Sudan was issued an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the rebel region of Darfur – a first against a serving leader.

The president is accused of "directing attacks against an important part of the civilian population of Darfur", said Laurence Blairon, a spokeswoman for the court in The Hague. She told reporters the attacks had included "murdering, exterminating, raping, torturing and forcibly transferring large numbers of civilians and pillaging their property". [2]

Yet Israel’s leaders have basically done the same thing for years against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank; an arrest warrant for them is noticeably absent -- and don’t hold your breath waiting for one considering the enormous Zionist influence upon the political establishment in Europe and the USA. This blatant hypocrisy only undermines the validity of the ICC and similar western institutions supposedly seeking universal justice; the victory of Zionism is an unequivocal loss for everyone everywhere. 04.05.09

Business as usual for Israel - Making Palestinians as miserable as possible Israeli forces raided ICS [Islamic Charitable Society] institutions on 6 March and 1 April seizing equipment, clothing, school buses and food and clothing from ICS warehouses and posting military closure orders on several buildings and offices. The charity estimated the cost of the raids in lost equipment and damage at US$418,000. Describing the raids, Lynes said, "The Israeli army […] went into a bakery and literally destroyed all the equipment. They went into a sewing machine workshop, which is used for training the orphan girls, and they wrecked all the sewing machines and removed all the textiles. The machines turned up in the town dump." A similar series of Israeli raids has been reported in Nablus since 7 July, with six charities reportedly joining the 50-odd closed by Israel in the last two years. From: Israel sets sights on Islamic organizations, July 25, 2008. Israel Blocks Access of Journalists (and others) from Gaza Despite our protests the Israelis authorities have refused to let journalists in ... Never before have journalists been prevented from doing their work in this way. We believe it is vital that journalists be allowed to find out for themselves what is going on in Gaza. Israel controls access to Gaza. Israel must allow professional journalists access to this important story. From: Foreign journalists demand Gaza access, by Rory McCarthy, Guardian, December 30, 2008. Israel attacked UN schools nine times, the health clinic, and the Gaza UN headquarters during Operation Cast Lead, even attacking during Israel's announced ceasefire! Richard Miron, a UN spokesman, said the Israeli army had been notified in advance about the UNRWA convoy, which was hit as it approached the Erez crossing with Israel. Two Palestinian forklift drivers were killed. With the Czech Republic currently holding the EU presidency, its foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg said: “After the striking of the UN school, this is another terrible episode, which moreover occurred during the three-hour ceasefire declared by Israel. From: UN aid agency suspends work after Gaza strike, The Times (UK),  January 8, 2009. All the while Israeli military was shooting just about every Palestinian that they could find. In one, Palestinian witnesses said that an Israeli sniper shot and killed a 40-year-old woman carrying a white flag when she emerged from her house as an Israeli bulldozer was demolishing it in an attempt to tell the Israeli forces that there were dozens of civilians inside the home. In the other, Human Rights Watch concluded that evidence backs Palestinian claims that an Israeli soldier opened fire on a woman, her mother-in-law and three girls as they stood on the steps of their home waving a white flag. Two of the girls, aged 2 and 7, were killed. The third girl, 4, and the older woman were wounded. The 4-year-old was one of the few who managed to escape Gaza for special medical care in Europe. From: Report: Israeli troops fired on Gazans waving white flags, McClatchy Newspapers, August 13, 2009.

1. Gazans want open borders, not handouts, by Karin Laub, AP, March 2, 2009.

2. Arrest warrant draws Sudan scorn, BBC, March 5, 2009.

3. Gaza donor conference: conspiracy wrapped up as compassion, by Jean Shaoul, WSWS, March 5, 2009.

4. Black Flag, by Uri Avnery, Information Clearinghouse, February 2, 2009.

5. The ‘Right to Exist’ as an Arab Israeli, by Jaime Omar Yassin, Extra!, Volume 22, Number 3, March 2009, page 13.

6. Israeli soldiers admit to deliberate killing of Gaza civilians, by James Hider, The Times (UK), March 20, 2009. 

7. Israeli soldiers' T-shirts depict shooting Arabs, Matti Friedman, AP, March 23, 2009.

8. The End of Jewish History, by Gilad Atzmon, Information Clearing House, March 20, 2009.

9.  HRW: Israel's white phosphorous use indiscriminate, by Karin Laub, AP, March 25, 2009.

10. Military investigations whitewash Israeli war crimes, by Jean Shaoul, WSWS, May 2, 2009.

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Gilad Atzmon on Zionism and the Holocaust (September, 2009):

[W]hether it was one or four millions Jews who died in Auschwitz, no one doubts that the camp was a horrible place. Yet, two questions must be answered once and for all:  how is it that the Jews, who suffered so much during that war, managed to get themselves involved in a colossal racist crime against the Palestinians (1948 Nakba) just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz? How is it that the Israeli leadership, that happens to be so sensitive to Jewish suffering, manages to neglect the pain they inflict on millions of Palestinians?

Gilad Atzmon on the Holocaust and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, (October, 2009):

As embarrassing as it may seem, in just three moves Ahmadinejad manages to expose the current deceptive Western mode of discussion. He, in fact identifies the holocaust as the core of our hypocritical stand, a tendency that has managed to shatter our ethical judgment. The holocaust was there to divert the attention from the colossal crimes committed by the allies: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden are just brief examples of institutionalised genocide at the hands of the English Speaking Empire. The holocaust has successfully matured into a new religion. Yet, it lacks theology. It doesn’t allow any form of criticism or reformism. It is in fact an anti-Western religion inspired by hate and vengeance. It is dark, it is blind and it lacks mercy and compassion. It is a faith that declares an assault on any form of doubt. It is a crude brutal belief system that stands in opposition to the notions of liberty and goodness. As if this is not enough, those who subscribe to this religion are complicit in an ongoing assault against grace and peace.

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Axis of Evil

August 2009

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British Government: Knives are too dangerous to sell to minors

British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s plan to address knife-violence in the UK involves requiring retailers to refuse sales to anyone under 18.

More than 20 retailers have agreed to the campaign, which will involve new signs warning that proof of age will be required if the buyer appears to be under 18. ...

She said, "We're also working very hard with the police in terms of their enforcement activity, making sure we're keeping knives off our streets, being tougher in terms of the sentencing around knives, getting in early and particularly telling young people about the dangers of carrying knives and now working with the private sectors, and retailers in particular, to ensure that we're enforcing the laws that we've put in place." ...

Britain's largest police force said there were 83 knife killings last year, compared with 74 in 2007. The number of gun murders fell from 30 to 17. [1]

Is that all? Out of a population of millions!? This problem has to be relegated to a very tiny portion of the population, so why are they targeting everyone buying knives? This is ridiculous, how tough is it going to be to get a knife to stab someone when the store won’t sell it to you? What’s next, is the British police-state with three security cameras on every corner going to ban blunt objects?

Maybe Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has good intentions, but good intentions are what pave the road to hell. This whole scheme, if it isn't all just a practical joke, is a classic case of targeting a symptom and ignoring the root cause, and it’s equally doomed to fail. It's useless to ban weapons when the human motivation remains! The aggressor will find or make a weapon one way or another, and in the meantime these punitive legal measures and restrictions only make life more expensive and difficult for everyone else.

Authority can’t control behavior through legislation, you have to address the root of the problem and at least provide a reward along with the punishment, you have to provide a practical alternative in order to change actions. 06.02.09

1. Smith launches crackdown on knife sales, by Wesley Johnson, February 5, 2009, Press Association via The Independent.

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Headed Your Way: Spying on You, British Style

Even though England is one of the most heavily policed, monitored, and spied upon countries in the world the people feel less safe than ever and trust of government and official authorities continues to decline. Unable to grasp the cause and effect connection British police, military, and related spies continue to push for ever-expanding powers to search and destroy domestic citizens through crimes that are often imaginary  or simply concocted to fit political expedience. This at the same time that the British prison system is broken and overflowing!

The latest legal effort in England is a new law that allows for anyone to be arrested and locked-up for 42 days, granting the police enough time to determine what crime they can charge the detainee with! Miraculously this rule failed to pass even though it was labeled as an anti-terrorism measure, partly due to public protests, and partly due to the overall outrageousness and blatant illegality of the new police power. But it doesn't end there. The police, the military and the espionage institutions are all interconnected making something like the atrocious ‘Communications Data Bill’ a particularly pernicious threat to public privacy and civil liberties:

What is the Communications Data Bill? It will allow the authorities to collect and retain details of every phone number we have called or texted, as well as every address to which we have sent emails and internet site we have accessed. …

Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), some 650 public bodies – including police and local authorities – can require internet service providers or mobile-phone companies to hand over details of their customers' phone, email and internet habits. About 500,000 requests were made last year. …

It puts the retention of data on a statutory – rather than voluntary – basis and, crucially, paves the way for the information being transferred to a giant government database. The Bill also turns into British law an EU directive requiring companies to keep communications data for up to two years. [1]

Not only are authorities gaining practically unlimited spying powers in England, these powers are being misused and abused in equally appalling measure.

Local authorities are adopting phone-record logging, e-mail taps and camera surveillance to police such offenses as welfare fraud, unlawful dumping of waste and sick-day fakery. Telecommunications companies are about to join the list of crime monitors. Already, 4.5 million closed-circuit cameras watch public places across Britain, or about 1 camera for every 15 people, the highest ratio in the world.

East Hampshire, in south England, applied the law to catch vandals defacing tombstones. Derby, in northern England, invoked it to send children with recording gear into shops to see if they'd unlawfully be sold cigarettes and alcohol.

In April, council workers spent two weeks tailing a couple in Poole, southeast England, they wrongly suspected were planning to send their daughter to a school outside their designated area. Tim Joyce and Jenny Paton called the intrusion into their lives "hugely disproportionate.''

"It's unreal,'' said Dean Price, 24, a graphic designer in London. "We've been sleep-walking into this. Everyone talks about Orwell and 1984 but no one ever does anything about it.'' [2]

Even if you don’t live in England remember that other governments are making enthusiastic efforts to gain similar police-state spying powers. Authoritarian regimes will see that if even England, a supposedly liberal-democratic nation, can get away with this kind of behavior that they should be able to do the same, or worse, to their own citizens. 18.10.08

1. Exclusive: Storm over Big Brother database, by Robert Verkaik and Nigel Morris, October 15, 2008.

2. Orwellian U.K. Angers People With Tree Cameras, Snooping Kids,  by Caroline Alexander and Howard Mustoe, October 10, 2008.

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State of Israel Feels Threatened by Humanitarian Aid Ships to Sealed Gaza Strip

The two boats carrying members of a U.S.-based activist group set sail from Cyprus early Friday in a bid to break Israel's 14-month blockade of Gaza. The activists hope to reach Gaza's shores on Saturday. … They plan to deliver 200 hearing aids to a Palestinian charity for children and hand out 5,000 balloons.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Aviv Shiron said Israel was closely following the boats. "We will make sure that this provocation is not taking place," he said. He declined to say whether military action was planned, saying only that "all the options are being considered." A military spokeswoman refused comment.

From: Israel warns activists against sailing to Gaza, by Josef Federman, AP, August 22, 2008.

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Al Qaeda Starter Kit!!!

December 2007

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The War on Terrorism turns Inward

As I write this the Australian city of Sydney is being sealed off with fences, barricades, roadblocks, and police checkpoints, including military ships and aircraft on patrol. The reason? The Asia-Pacific Economic Conference (APEC), an international forum for trade and economic agreements.

It is estimated that the weeklong meeting will cost more than 320 million Australian dollars, or $262 million. About 177 million dollars will be spent on security arrangements alone, and much of the rest will be from lost production following the government's decision to make next Friday a national holiday. [1]

Called the largest security operation in Australian history, the primary stated purpose of these highly inconvenient and expensive police measures in the middle of a major city is to protect government authorities from an unidentified terrorist threat that even the Australian authorities indirectly admit is probably non-existent. The second stated reason for the show of force by the police and military is to stop 'violent' protestors.

With visions in mind of past public demonstrations against international economic meetings turned rowdy, while conveniently ignoring the fact that nearly all the violence in these cases has originated from the police (since they have most of the weapons) and not from the public demonstrators, Australian authorities have prepared for this coming wave of 'terrorism' by emptying the prisons of existing criminals to make room for soon-to-be arrested protestors who dare to express their opinions!

In addition, parts of Sydney have been declared “APEC security areas”. Under the APEC Meeting (Police Powers) Bill, drafted by the NSW state Labor government, police have extraordinary powers within these areas, including the authority to stop and search any individual or vehicle without warrant. Included are four central Sydney hotels and their immediate surrounds, the city’s airport, parts of Kirribilli and the beach-side suburb of Bondi, and the Royal Australian Air Force base in northwest Sydney. Anyone arrested will be denied the presumption of bail and detained for the duration of the APEC summit. Those convicted of entering a restricted area without authorisation will face up to two years’ jail. ...

The scale of the Sydney security operation bears no relationship to any actual danger posed to the personal security of the meeting’s participants. [2]

Priorities, by Freydis

2000

The actual purpose of this high-security is much more clear in consideration of past events like the 1999 WTO meeting in Seattle: to shield the leaders from the very public they're supposed to be democratically representing, so they can continue to implement socially and economically harmful policies without fear of public retribution or even criticism. Unpopular leaders that implement widely disliked policies have much to fear from the public. To these authorities terrorism is all around them and terrorists are everywhere because, to them, public dissent is terrorism and the people are terrorists.

Particular criticism has been leveled at the decision to move a number of Australia's indigenous fauna from Sydney's Taronga Zoo, which was deemed insecure, to an island in the middle of the harbor so that the leaders' spouses could visit them. [1] Australian citizens surely won't mind paying more in taxes to support this  worthy cause.

The fictional War on Terrorism is quickly transforming into a factual war on dissent because valid threats to national security are far away but potential threats to corrupt and illegitimate political power are right here inside the country. 02&07.09.07

1. Sydney prepares for APEC forum, by Tim Johnston, IHT, September 2, 2007.

2. Extraordinary security operation shuts down central Sydney, by Patrick O’Connor, WSWS, September 4, 2007.

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Sum of All Fears

August 2007

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Film Review: Plan Colombia: Cashing in on the Drug War Failure, (2003) DVD

This is a very concise and informative documentary that details the troubles in Colombia, focusing on the current drug war and the U.S.-concocted 'Plan Colombia' program. The film connects the School of the Americas in the United States that has trained Colombian military leaders later implicated in atrocities; the latest "free-trade" scam called the ‘Free trade agreement of the Americas’ that undercuts local environmental and labor regulations to favor U.S. business interest; and the oil connection - Colombia and neighboring Venezuela are oil producers, creating yet another reason to prop up a corrupt and brutal, yet politically friendly, regime.

So, despite the obvious failure of the so-called war on drugs the program continues with U.S. military aid to Colombia ranking number three only after Israel and Egypt. Basically it's a subsidy to the military-industrial complex domestically, and as foreign policy it’s used as a means of propping up a regime in power over Colombia that's friendly towards wealthy American interests.

Plan Colombia reveals the historic U.S. motive to protect "our" resources around the world regardless of the violence and criminality of the governments willing to cooperate to do this. The film includes interviews with Noam Chomsky, the late Senator Paul Wellstone, and many others. Film website: http://www.plancolombia.org/ See also: Crisis Colombia at Holology. 28.05.07

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It's All Iran's Fault: Show and Tell in Baghdad

13.01.07 The Bush administration has been under pressure to reveal the evidence they claim to have that justifies repeated claims of Iranian involvement in arming militias and insurgents in Iraq. After delays to repackage their presentation, because the first one wasn’t credible enough according to the Bush administration (!), a show and tell was done in Baghdad on the 11^th of February. The location pretty much excluded any reporters not already located there given the difficulties and dangers of getting into, and around, Iraq. But the stated reason was that a Washington DC venue would have made the presentation ‘too political’. Right.

Anyway, the presentation was greeted with widespread skepticism, clearly evident in the articles published in the influential New York Times and the Washington Post newspapers. Others have gone further in demolishing the White House and the Pentagon’s claims against Iran.

The only weapon that the Pentagon seems to be concerned enough about enough to try and build a convincing case against Iran comes from the Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFPs), meaning shaped charge munitions.

The argument for Iranian official responsibility assumes that such weapons are so tightly controlled that Shi'ite groups could not purchase them in small numbers on the black market in Iran, Syria or Lebanon. It is well documented, however, that the Shi'ites have resorted to black-market networks to obtain EFPs.

An article in Jane's Intelligence Review last month by Michael Knights, chief of analysis for the Olive Group, a private security-consulting firm, reports that the British discovered that there was indeed an organization in Basra engaged in arranging for the purchase and delivery of imported EFPs and that it was composed entirely of police officials, including members of the Police Intelligence Unit, the Internal Affairs Directorate and the Major Crimes Unit. They found that members of the organization followed no specific Shi'ite faction, but included members from all the factions in Basra. [1]

We do know that weapons with markings indicating manufacture in Iran are present in Iraq and are, by virtue of that fact and the massive public resistance to foreign military occupation, very likely being used against ‘Coalition’ forces. But the same could be said of weapons from China, Russia, and undoubtedly many other countries around the world! So why single out Iran? The only answer that makes any sense is that the Bush administration wants to get Iran and is doing everything possible to build a pretext for further political and economic isolation and, most likely, eventual direct military action.

The EFPs used against US and British troops in Iraq were the centerpiece of the briefing. But the anonymous US officials did not claim that the finished products have been manufactured in Iran. Instead they referred to machining of EFP "components" - referring to the concave metal lids on the devices - as being done in Iran.

It also raises an obvious question: If Iran has the technical ability to supply the complete EFPs, why are only components being smuggled into Iraq? [1]

It’s going to be nearly impossible for the White House to prove that the Iranian government is directly involved and approves of these weapons being sent to and used in Iraq. Again this just raises the main question – why bother? Why go to all this effort when it isn’t going to convince anyone and it only serves to antagonize and marginalize Iraq’s most important neighbor, especially when diplomacy could go so much farther? Iran has demonstrated a desire and capacity to help the United States, for instance in help given to topple the Taliban, and Iran clearly has the most influence inside Iraq with their Shiite connections. Instead the only option being pursued by the Bush administration and the Pentagon is aggression. 15.02.07

1. US's smoking gun on Iran misfires, by Gareth Porter, IPS news via ATOL, February 15, 2007.

Next Stop for the Neo-Con Pain-Train: Iran

You should know the routine by now: exaggerate the threat loudly and repeatedly, provoke the other side and then use some kind of reaction on their part to justify a military action. Members of the Bush administration are all operating on schedule and according to script in the buildup to a war on Iran. Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs in the supposedly diplomatic State Department, recently stated: "Iran needs to learn to respect us, and Iran certainly needs to respect American power in the Middle East." If that isn’t a threat, what is?!

Multiple recent events indicate that an attack on Iran is very near. Here’s a revealing list:

• A second carrier group is being moved into the Persian Gulf.
  Pentagon officials said this week that they were ordering a second aircraft carrier battle group, including ships and warplanes, to the gulf, as a message to Iran. [1]

• Patriot missile batteries are being moved in to defend regional pseudo-allies in case of Iranian missile retaliation.
  Bush in his speech said that intelligence-sharing would be expanded in the region and that Patriot air defense systems were being deployed "to reassure our friends and allies." [1]

• Key personnel are being reshuffled.

The former National Security Agency director and veteran of more than 25 years in intelligence, retired Vice Admiral Mike McConnell, who happens to be an old friend of Vice President Dick Cheney (who personally intervened on his old buddy's behalf), will succeed Negroponte as national intelligence director. McConnell, willing to oblige his neo-con pal Cheney, may prove more hawkish regarding Iran than Negroponte was.

The timing of this move is what should raise eyebrows, and for two main reasons. First, Negroponte is relieved of his job of intelligence director as the drums of war continue to be pounded by the diehard neo-conservatives, and Negroponte wasn't playing quite loud enough to the Tehran tune. McConnell may well be able to carry a louder tune for his pal Cheney, which may come in the form of a sonata of manufactured intelligence to justify an attack on Iran, which is important as time is growing short for Cheney and company. [2]

• The Generals in charge of Iraq have been changed towards those favorable to a troop expansion and Admiral William Fallon has been put in charge of the CENTCOM region that includes Iraq. Seemingly an odd choice, Admiral Fallon doesn’t have any experience in the region but he does projecting naval air-power, circle back to the second carrier air group and focus on Iran.

• The 21,500 more soldiers being collected in Iraq can offer nothing that hasn’t already been attempted to stifle the massive public resistance, but it can serve the purpose of protecting against a predicable response to an attack on Iran by the Shiite population. In other words, they know they'll need every soldier they can get to keep the lid on once the green light is given for a wider war and they have to manufacture an excuse to avoid truthful explanations.

• Independent analysts of the situation are not the only ones to conclude that a U.S. sponsored war on Iran is in the works, Iran has read the signs as well and that may be the reason for an otherwise inexplicable shift in their nuclear program.
  Iran’s uranium enrichment program appears stalled despite tough talk from the Tehran leadership, leaving intelligence services guessing about why it has not made good on plans to press ahead with activities that the West fears could be used to make nuclear arms, diplomats said Thursday. [3] Why build on something you’re convinced is going to get bombed in a few months anyway?

The official reason for attacking Iran is their nuclear energy program that the Bush administration and Israel loudly claim is intended to covertly create atomic weapons very soon. No evidence has been presented to the public to substantiate the accusation that Iran’s nuclear program is anything but what the Iranian’s repeatedly claim it to be: for civilian energy, specifically to offset Iran’s declining oil production. The IAEA has reportedly found trace amounts of weapons grade radioactive materials on some Iranian equipment, but the chemical source is Pakistan where the equipment originated. So, questions certainly remain but conclusive evidence of nefarious purpose remains noticeably lacking.

For its part the Pentagon and the neo-con armchair Generals are operating on the assumption that a week or two of pinpoint airstrikes will be enough to set back Iran and Syria ten years or more, and that will be more than enough to allow everyone else in the region to return to business as usual. However, Israel’s military (IDF) and the Pentagon believed the same thing before launching a war against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon where both were rudely surprised to discover that airstrikes were not enough to defeat, or even significantly degrade, the fighting capacity of Hezbollah. Israel was subsequently forced to launch a ground invasion that turned into a fiasco, partly because of poor planning by Israel, but mostly because of Hezbollah's fighting tenacity.

So, unless Syria and Iran have been totally oblivious they must have internalized the lessons from Lebanon and prepared appropriately. This being the case the Pentagon may well be in for a rude awaking of their own when they discover that even if they can find the correct targets and inflict sufficient damage it still won’t be enough to generate a conclusive militarily defeat of Iran and Syria. A ground invasion of one or both countries will consequently become necessary and the Pentagon will be in a very dangerous position clearly lacking anything close to the needed quantity of ground forces. [Note: That's probably why Iran hasn't been attacked yet, as of July 2009]

What's the excuse this time?

The most likely pretext to attack is being established as the claimed support Iran is providing to people in Iraq to build carefully manufactured shaped charge munitions used in roadside bombs, Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), as well as small arms that originated in Iran. Yet the charge that Iran is providing military assistance to Iraq is absurdly hypocritical given that the United States is doing exactly that themselves on a massive scale, even going so far as to flood the country with guns without even keeping track of the serial numbers! [Reference: Genocide for Dollars] In truth the Bush administration doesn’t need any competition to arm Iraqis and this issue is just using a pretext necessary for launching an attack on Iran under the guise of ‘protecting the troops’. When President Nixon was embroiled in a bloody and futile conflict in Asia he launched a similar campaign against Vietnam’s neighbors, Cambodia being the most blatant example. The difference this time is that the President is not trying to fix the crisis stemming from the original invasion but rather to attack another pre-existing enemy. Even the term ‘enemy’ needs to be explained here for Iran poses no direct threat to the United States, only to American forces stationed in Iraq and even then Iran would only attack directly if pushed into a corner because the balance of military force, both nuclear and non-nuclear, is overwhelmingly on the side of the United States. Iran is a threat to the Bush administration, the neo-cons and Israel, not to the people of the United States.

An unfortunately popular saying in Israel is, “the only good Arab is a dead one,” but even more than the Arabs in general, Israel as represented by its Zionist government, absolutely hates Iran with a burning passion and their militant and most potent arm of influence in the United States now, the neo-conservatives, are using a delusional President Bush to get what they want because, in their view, that’s what the USA is for. "The only good Arab is a dead one,” think about that mindset for a moment. Think about the death squads rebuilt in Iraq [Reference: Death Squads Return in Iraq] under the Bush administration. Put the two together and the seemingly pointless sectarian carnage in Iraq and the reason why certain people are so adamant that the United States should maintain its military presence there begins to make sense.

There is no room for sanity in a world where the powerful are driven by religious hatred, where apocalypse based prophecy seeking Christian zealots have aligned with Jewish Zionist fanatics to defeat the rising influence of Islam. Just how far can they go before the system they've usurped crashes and burns?

1. Tough Moves On Iranians And Syrians In Iraq Planned, by Paul Richter, LA Times, January 11, 2007.

2. Negroponte and the escalation of death, by Dahr Jamail, ATOL, January 11, 2007.

3. Iran's nuclear seems slow, puzzling West, by George Jahn, AP, January 11, 2007.

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"The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq, so America will not leave until victory is achieved."
- President W. Bush, September 2006.

"The violence is not increasing. We're not in a civil war. Iraq will never be in a civil war. The violence is in decrease, and our security ability is increasing."
- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, August 28, 2006.

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Part I: Oil or Security - What Happened?

17.12.06 It’s commonly accepted that the reason for Bush’s war on Iraq is because of the oil that lies beneath that country. This is true to a certain extent but to believe that oil is the only reason why the United States is still in Iraq would be naïve in the extreme.

Bush and Vice President Cheney both have long histories with the petroleum industry.  The public statements and policy decisions of the Bush administration leave no doubt as to their allegiance to the very profitable natural resource extraction business, particularly oil. But oil was not the main motivating factor for invading Iraq, it was a kickback benefit that brought the oil industry on board for a war that they otherwise would have been ambivalent towards at best. The reason for this has become fairly clear over the past four years of the war with the results being a considerable net strategic loss to U.S. oil companies. Although these oil companies have reaped record profits from the spike in oil prices caused by worldwide turmoil, market panic and production disruptions, their long term financial outlook is not nearly as healthy as most might assume.

The Conundrum of High Oil Prices

Most oil producing countries, like Saudi Arabia, now aim for a market price of $30 per barrel not because they don’t like the hefty profits from the current $60 range but because they know very well that long term prices above $50 make numerous alternative fuels cost-effective. The adoption of alternative fuels and technologies spells serious trouble for oil producers because once the public becomes aware of alternatives and once these new fuels are adopted for widespread use the cat is out of the bag so to speak and high demand for dirty oil will not return and their lock on the market will disappear.

It would seem to make sense for the oil companies to invest in alternative fuels but history has shown that even when interested in new technology it’s usually just to buy up the patents and keep the technology off the market. Oil is so enormously profitable that big oil finds it much more profitable to perpetuate their control of the fuel market than to invest and market new technologies. Big oil is a stereotypical dinosaur industry, and when you’re really big change is seen as very dangerous. They need security and stability that works in their favor. What the oil producers and big oil companies want is not high prices but steady long-term, reliable profits – not market price volatility. They want to keep the price of oil just below the threshold where the consumers rebel and adopt alternatives.

Iraq has consistently produced less oil under the occupation since 2003 than it did under Saddam with sanctions on him! That is one of the reasons for the high price of oil and that adds considerable costs to economic activity. Just about anything that has to move needs oil – trucks, trains, airplanes and so on, and in a globalized economy rapid and cheap transportation is critical to making everything work affordably. High fuel prices have been very damaging to Bush’s Republican Party by depressing the domestic economy, raising unemployment, and agitating the gas-buying public. From the standpoint of oil production the invasion of Iraq has been a colossal failure for the Bush administration – the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq did not pay for itself after all! A new set of laws designed to lock in rules favorable towards western ownership of Iraq’s oil assets is tied up amidst political disagreement in Iraq. Whether these laws that benefit foreign capitalism over Iraq’s national interests ever become legal fact is open for debate. Iraq still has massive oil reserves but the short and mid-range outlook for getting that oil out is looking very sour indeed.

Myth: the war on Iraq was launched to raise the price of oil

So, if the plan was for Chevron and ExxonMobil to quickly move into Iraq, buy up the oil wells and start pumping out the profits then it has clearly failed. If the plan was to make a king-size mess of Iraq and the oil-wells just to keep it all off the world market and drive up prices then it has been a success. But that scenario doesn’t make any sense because it badly hurts the Republican Party and the economy. Not only that but the invasion was quite unnecessary because Saddam’s oil was already pretty tightly tied up under the sanctions regime. If oil is the only reason for invading Iraq then somebody loses no matter how it’s sliced.

Neo-Cons and the Cheney Nexus

Many of the things the neo-conservatives want don’t comport with what big oil wants. For instance the neo-cons are big backers of getting away from reliance on Middle Eastern oil, for obvious reasons, but that means adopting alternative fuels, the same ones that big oil continually drags their feet and avoids getting involved in. No, the oil industry is just along for the ride on this one.

The neo-cons planned the war, they started it and now they manage it. All the other interest groups, like big oil and the arms industry, supported the war because they thought they could gain from it. My current hypothesis, subject to revision, is that Vice President Dick Cheney let the neo-cons in the door this time, and anyway Cheney seems to be the nexus of the Bush administration. After the events of 9-11 Cheney became a very angry man. Enraged that anyone would dare to strike back at the United States in response to decades of heavy-handed foreign policy, he wanted revenge. Perhaps he made a pact with the neo-cons, or maybe the plans they already had on the shelf seemed appealing to him, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) for example. September 11 became a perfect window of opportunity to expand Executive powers and privileges, just for starters. The war on Afghanistan had limited potential but Iraq offered much more.

Fight Lesson

April 2006

Cheney took a huge gamble and it hasn’t worked well for him at all. Iraq and Afghanistan are turning into major military defeats. America’s violent, unilateral actions on the world stage have outraged and mobilized the rest of the world into forming new trade blocs and alliances that are outside the control of Washington D.C. Not to mention that high oil prices have vastly increased the wealth and power of states with their own agendas, like Venezuela and Russia. The domestic front for Cheney is not much better. Things have not gone according to plan and now Cheney finds himself in an increasingly unstable position, but he is in it so deep that he cannot pull back. Cheney is sweating bullets walking a tightrope and he’s leaning hard on the neo-cons to come up with a solution because he has no other allies.

Indeed, Cheney’s position is actually much more precarious than it might seem upon superficial inspection. It’s not just external problems Cheney has to worry about; the internal trouble is potentially even more dangerous. We’ve already seen that the interests of the neo-cons don’t match up with those of big oil, and increasingly they run contrary to domestic political and economic realities too. It’s Cheney’s job to act as the interface between the two groups and to keep anyone from bailing out, but how much longer he can hold everyone together is anyone’s guess.

Something to consider is that the neo-cons may not be concerned with the violence in Iraq like the Generals are. The neo-cons have consistently shown themselves to be terrible military planners and indeed they have no military experience themselves anyway.

How Far Can the Military be Pushed?

Even without an attack on Iran the Army and Marines are already near the breaking point. Recruitment is increasingly difficult and even though the military is paying a fortune in bonuses to get people signed up they're still forced to take substandard recruits. Since it’s increasingly obvious that Iraq and Afghanistan are lost causes, morale is dropping fast, yet the political leadership shows no signs of recognizing the futility of the conflict. So the question is, will the military leadership stand by and allow their forces to be broken just to satisfy the vanity of the Executive branch and the foolishness of the neo-cons? How far will the military allow themselves to be pushed? Anywhere else in the world if this kind of thing happened we would see a military coup or at least rebellion in the ranks of the armed forces. There’s no reason to think America is immune, it’s just a matter of pressure.

It’s interesting to consider that the military is really the only semi-functional element left in the U.S. government. Congress doesn’t do its job of keeping the Executive branch in line, the Courts have been marginalized, elections are now highly contested affairs and most people don’t have any faith in the system one way or the other. Current polls put public support for Bush at only 27% - that’s the level of support President Nixon had when he resigned after the Watergate scandal! If the wars last until 2009, as Bush has promised, then something will likely break. The two most likely scenarios come from the two weakest points: either a financial collapse brought on by the frenetic deficit spending and perhaps precipitated by a Dollar decline, or it could break as a military rebellion and even a coup. The Bush administration may back down just before America’s breaking point but past actions do not instill me with confidence that they even realize just how close they already are!

The 'War on Terrorism' is a war on freedom

August 2006

The supreme irony in all this is that the ‘War on Terrorism’, from Afghanistan to Iraq and everywhere else, was launched with the express purpose stated to the public of protecting the ‘homeland’. Yet the final result will very likely be internal turmoil and insecurity on a scale that America has never witnessed before. A military-police state has already been constructed and implemented; barriers against Executive abuse and excess have been knocked down, creating a de-facto dictatorship of the Presidency. Legal and Constitutional protections on individual liberty and privacy have been attacked and undermined. The American public is less safe than they have been in recent memory, and not just from foreign terrorists, but from their own government! It's very possible that a major attack on Iran will be launched in 2007, yet there will be no opposition, of any significance, to this war from the Democratic Party, In the name of protecting the homeland through foreign warfare the Bush administration has killed more American’s than the number that died in the 9-11 attacks, and the official war causality figures don’t even include the private contractors. In the name of security the United States has been so constitutionally destabilized and public confidence so eroded away that a military coup has become a plausible outcome. If ever there was a time to be asking critical questions about world events and our political leadership this is it.

Irony in Revenge

September 2006

For much more detail about the conflict in Iraq read War on Iraq - Oil, Dollars and Israel. To learn more about the people pushing for these wars and why read Neo-Conned: The Neo-Conservative Connection.

Part II: The War for Oil is a Myth and so is 'Peak Oil'

It’s clear with objective analysis that the war on Iraq is not about oil despite the superficial veracity and repetitiveness of claims to the contrary, and indeed these false assertions are highly convenient fiction for authorities precisely because they mask fundamental truths they would prefer remain unrecognized. And now, finally, someone else is making the same contentions that I have,

[T]here is strong evidence that, in fact, oil companies did not welcome the war because they prefer stability and predictability to periodic oil spikes that follow war and political convulsion: "Looking back over the last 20 years, there is plenty of evidence showing the industry's push for stability and cooperation with Middle Eastern countries and leaders, and the US government's drive for hegemony works against the oil industry." [1]

The real top-force manipulating U.S. foreign policy is not ‘Big Oil’, it’s the Israel Lobby and we know this because U.S. oil loses on many counts from Middle East turmoil while Israel and the lobby gain from it. Here is just one example of legislation passed that punishes U.S. oil while rewarding Zionism:

It is no secret that the major force behind the Iran-Libya Sanction Act was the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the main Zionist lobby in Washington. The success of AIPAC in passing ILSA through both the Congress and the White House over the opposition of the major US oil companies is testament to the fact that, in the context of US policy in the Middle East, even the influence of the oil industry pales vis-a-vis the influence of the Zionist lobby. [1]

The author of Are they really oil wars?, Hossein-sadeh, also attacks the fraudulent ‘theory’ of Peak Oil that is being used as another convenient fiction by multiple factions,

[W]ar and military force are no longer the necessary or appropriate means to gain access to sources of energy - resorting to military measures can, indeed, lead to costly, not cheap, oil. In fact, despite the lucrative spoils of war resulting from high oil prices and profits, Big Oil prefers peace and stability, not war and geopolitical turbulence, in global energy markets. ...

The Peak Oil thesis serves as a powerful trap and a clever manipulation in that it lets the real forces of war and militarism (the military-industrial complex and the pro-Israel lobby) "off the hook; it is a fabulous redirection. All evils are blamed on a commodity upon which we are all utterly dependent”. …

Finally, and perhaps more importantly, claims of "peaked and dwindling" oil are refuted by the available facts and figures on global oil supply. Statistical evidence shows that there is absolutely no supply-demand imbalance in global oil markets. Contrary to the claims of the proponents of Peak Oil and champions of war and militarism, the current oil price shocks are a direct consequence of the destabilizing wars and geopolitical insecurity in the Middle East, not oil shortages. [1]

Other independent analysis has found that the amount of oil locked up in proven reserves is probably twice what is currently estimated due to the conservative calculations used by the industry. Peak oil is based on wholly flawed assumptions, oil will not run out anytime soon.

The environmental implications of his analysis, based on more than 30 years inside the industry, will alarm environmentalists who have exploited the concept of peak oil to press the urgency of the need to find greener alternatives.

"The bad news is that by underestimating proven oil reserves we have been lulled into a false sense of security in terms of environmental issues, because it suggests we will have to find alternatives to fossil fuels in a few decades," said Dr Pike. "We should not be surprised if oil dominates well into the twenty-second century. It highlights a major error in energy and environmental planning – we are dramatically underestimating the challenge facing us," he said. [2]

Currently oil stockpiles are at a record high, and although the price of crude oil continues to climb above $140 per barrel the real reason is mostly due to the declining value of the U.S. Dollar from inflation of the money supply, not a lack of oil - blame Ben Shalom Bernanke at the Federal Reserve, not Saudi Arabia.

So why do these myths persist? 

But the major reason for the persistence of this pervasive myth seems to stem from certain deliberate efforts that are designed to perpetuate the legend in order to camouflage some real economic and geopolitical special interests that drive US military adventures in the Middle East. There is evidence that both the military-industrial complex and hard-line Zionist proponents of "greater Israel" disingenuously use oil (as an issue of national interest) in order to disguise their own nefarious special interests and objectives: justification of continued expansion of military spending, extension of sales markets for military hardware, and recasting the geopolitical map of the Middle East in favor of Israel.

There is also evidence that for every dollar's worth of oil imported from the Persian Gulf region the Pentagon takes $5 out of the Federal budget to "secure" the flow of that oil. This is a clear indication that the claim that the US military presence in the Middle East is due to oil consideration is a fraud. [1]

1.  Are they really oil wars?, by Ismael Hossein-zadeh, ATOL, June 25, 2008.

2. Oil shortage a myth, says industry insider, by Steve Connor, The Independent, June 9, 2008.

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War Games

December 2006

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The American Police Enterprise

08.08.04 Welcome to the United States of Police 2004 where your hard-earned tax dollars are at work 24/7 to protect the people and institutions that really matter, while making you a safer and more subdued citizen.

Park police, drug police, gun police, counterfeiting police, tax police, forest police, highway police, dog-catching police, ATF, BCBP, COPS, NDIC, OVC, BJA, OTJ, INS, DEA, IRS, BOP, FBI, INL …

Q: Just how many police in America are there?!
A: Here's one: “There are approximately 18,760 total police agencies in the U.S. with approximately 940,275 employees and a combined annual budget of about $51 billion (year 2000 data).  There are approximately 60 different federal police agencies…” [1] But it could just as easily read 'no one knows'. Factoring in private security guards, law enforcement intelligence agencies, private investigators and so on, it's practically impossible to know how many police America really has, suffice to say it’s an incredible number. Indeed it’s more than likely America has not just more police than any other country on Earth, but in history as well.

Look at the weaponry these police officers are packing around. A Heckler and Koch MP5 sub-machine gun?! Three magazines of ammunition?! What kind of war are these ‘police’ ready for anyway? Are the tourist attractions in Washington D.C. about to be invaded by Russian Spetsnaz Commandos or maybe heavily armed invaders from Mars?! Whatever happened to the old days when all a cop needed was a Magnum .44 "the most powerful handgun in the world"? Looks like George Bush Senior's "kinder gentler nation" has been replaced by George Bush Junior’s iron-fisted police state. Is this Newark, New Jersey 2004 or Hue, Vietnam 1968? You decide.

Don't you feel safer knowing this man has his finger a half-inch from the trigger of an automatic rifle with enough firepower to take on a swarm of battle-hardened Viet Cong? Oh, but how can you put a price on the false sense of security such a spectacle creates? Let’s try anyway. A few hundred dollars for the military-issue Kevlar helmet, several hundred more for the body armor, a few hundred for the tactical uniforms, a few hundred more for all the snazzy accessories, tasers, batons, tear-gas, a few million for the Motorola radio system that doesn’t work half the time, and then the guns. Yes the guns; any idea how much an Armalite automatic rifle or an H&K  sub-machine gun costs? And really, how much does an average American police department spend on weapons, compared to spending on crime-prevention programs, or indeed anything that might address the root of the problem with crime, or even terrorism for that matter? Priorities.

Some people call the United States a 'police state' but that ascribes a level of central planning and control that doesn’t exist – 'police enterprise' would be more accurate. Prisons, police, guards, security, weapons, jails – arresting, trying and locking people up is a multi-billion dollar industry that grows every year. In America the police enterprise is less a system for control as it is a system for perpetuating a financial profit.

Spend away America, because you can never be too safe or too rich!

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2003: The Western media is unleashing such a baseless propaganda, which makes us surprise but it reflects on what is in their hearts and gradually they themselves become captive of this propaganda. They become afraid of it and begin to cause harm to themselves. Terror is the most dreaded weapon in modern age and the Western media is mercilessly using it against its own people. It can add fear and helplessness in the psyche of the people of Europe and the United States. It means that what the enemies of the United States cannot do, its media is doing that. You can understand as to what will be the performance of the nation in a war, which suffers from fear and helplessness. - Usama Bin Laden, who claims he had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks in America. Interview published in newspaper Ummat Karachi, 28th September, 2001.

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Rising Stock: Investing in America's Future

February 2004

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