Bonoization of Aid
June 25, 2007
I only discovered On the Map with Avi Lewis recently, and I think it is one of the better current affairs programs out there. Avi Lewis is Naomi Klein’s husband, and like his remarkable spouse, his journalism is exceptional. Although in this particular segment, he isn’t particularly sharp and he lets the Glo-bono-phoney off too easy.
Gulf Arabs: Sowing Catastrophe, Reaping Despair II
June 24, 2007
As I had argued earlier, the Gulf States bear as much responsibility for the ongoing genocide in Iraq as the chief perpetrators — US and UK. However, it is not just the decadent despots who should bear all the blame; if it wasn’t for the passive acquiescence of their people they would not have been able to provide the logistical support necessary to carry out this war. Here I would relate another incident which highlights the limits of outrage in the so-called ‘Arab street’. As the first bombs fell on Baghdad, students at the University decided to make their own statement. Since most had opted not to attend the earlier state sanctioned march, for the simpe reason that they did not want to be seen walking next to the immigrant workers — the untermenschen — who comprised the majority, a high-brow bourgeois alternative was deemed necessary. I was invited to the organizing meeting. The sorry byproducts of affluence started by stressing, whatever they do, they won’t label it ‘antiwar’ because that could be perceived as opposing American policy; they will instead label it a ‘pro-peace’ gesture. Yes; it could only go downhill from there. My interventions were not appreciated — everyone started walking out. The head of the Indian society said he had no intention to lose sponsorships for future events by taking a political position on something. Others agreed. Afterwards, one student who did not attend the meeting confided that he was glad he did not attend because he heard the meeting got – God forbid — political!
The final statement from these intrepid souls no doubt made the walls tremble in Washington: On a nice sunny day everyone made a big peace sign on the grass, and had a photo taken. One person was even moved to declare that the Iraqis being bombed and the invading army are equally innocent. Having just read Sy Hersh’s latest report on Abu Ghraib — it describes amongst others the circulation of such trophies as ‘a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee’ – I wonder how many of them are willing to volunteer their brothers or sisters to be sodomized by the invading innocents. After all, it will only add up to one collective act of innocence, meriting a peace sign in the grass on a sunny day.
Independent has a follow up on the story of the Iraqis driven into prostitution by the war(and the punters from the Gulf who are flocking to this new destination for their sex-tours) that I had reported on earlier.
It’s Monday night in a dingy club on the outskirts of the Syrian capital. Two dozen girls are moving half-heartedly on the dance floor, lit up by flashing disco lights.
They are dessed in tight jeans, low-cut tops and knee-high boots, but the girls’ make-up can’t disguise the fact that most are in their mid-teens. It’s a strange sight in a conservative Muslim country, but this is the sex business, and it’s booming as a result of the war in Iraq.
Backstage, the manager sits in his leather chair, doing business. A Saudi client is quoted $500 for one of the girls. Eventually he beats it down to $300. Next door, in a dimly lit room, the next shift of girls arrives, taking off the black all-covering abayas they wear outside and putting on lipstick and mascara.
To judge from the cars parked outside, the clients come from all over the Gulf region – many are young Saudi men escaping from an even more conservative moral climate. But the Syrian friend who has brought me here tells me that 95 per cent of the girls are Iraqi.
Most are unwilling to talk, but Zahra, an attractive girl with a bare midriff and tattoos, tells me she’s 16. She has been working in this club since fleeing to Syria from Baghdad after the war. She doesn’t like it, she says, “but what can we do? I hope things get better in Iraq, because I miss it. I want to go back, but I have to look after my sister”. Zahra points to a thin, pubescent girl with long black hair, who seems to be dancing quite happily. Aged 13, Nadia started in the club two months ago…
There are more than a million Iraqi refugees in Syria, many are women whose husbands or fathers have been killed. Banned from working legally, they have few options outside the sex trade. No one knows how many end up as prostitutes, but Hana Ibrahim, founder of the Iraqi women’s group Women’s Will, puts the figure at 50,000…
Fatima is in her mid-20s, but campaigners say the number of Iraqi children working as prostitutes is high. Bassam al-Kadi of Syrian Women Observatory says: “Some have been sexually abused in Iraq, but others are being prostituted by fathers and uncles who bring them here under the pretext of protecting them. They are virgins, and they are brought here like an investment and exploited in a very ugly way.”
Neocon Chorus and the Realist Cassandra
June 24, 2007
Brzezinski’s Warning
Since before the invasion of Iraq Zbigniew Brzezinski has played Cassandra to the growing chorus of neocon warmongering. Only a few months back he issued the following warning.
Pace’s Exit
In the following article Paul Craig Robert, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration, echoes my earlier assesment of the reasons behind Gen. Peter Pace’s exit.
“It is the absolute responsibility of everybody in uniform to disobey an order that is either illegal or immoral.”—General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Press Club, February 17, 2006.
“They will be held accountable for the decisions they make. So they should in fact not obey the illegal and immoral orders to use weapons of mass destruction.”—General Peter Pace, CNN With Wolf Blitzer, April 6, 2003
The surprise decision by the Bush regime to replace General Peter Pace as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has been explained as a necessary step to avoid contentious confirmation hearings in the US Senate…
There are, of course, other explanations for General Pace’s departure. The most disturbing of these explanations can be found in General Pace’s two statements at the beginning of this article.
In the first statement General Pace says that every member of the US military has the absolute responsibility to disobey illegal and immoral orders. In the second statement, General Pace says that an order to use weapons of mass destruction is an illegal and immoral order.
The context of General Pace’s second statement above (actually, the first statement in historical time) is his response to Blitzer’s question whether the invading US troops could be attacked with Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But Pace’s answer does not restrict illegal and immoral only to Iraqi use of WMD. It is a general statement. It applies to their use period.
On March 10, 2006, Jorge Hirsch made a case that use of nuclear weapons is both illegal and immoral. [Gen. Pace to Troops: Don't Nuke Iran, Antiwar.com] Despite the illegality and immorality of first-use of nuclear weapons, the Bush Pentagon rewrote US war doctrine to permit their use regardless of their illegality and immorality. For a regime that not only believes that might is right but also that they have the might, law is what the regime says.
The revised war doctrine permits US first strike use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries…
Senator Joseph Lieberman, a number of neoconservatives, prominent Jewish leaders such as Norman Podhoretz, and members of the Israeli government have called for a US attack on Iran. Most Republican presidential candidates have said that they would not rule out the use of nuclear weapons against Iran.
Allegedly, the US Department of State is pursuing diplomacy with Iran, not war, but Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns gives the lie to that claim. On June 12 Burns claimed that Iran was not only arming insurgents in Iraq but also the Taliban in Afghanistan. Burns’ claims are, to put it mildly, controversial in the US intelligence community, and they are denied not only by Iran but also by our puppet government in Afghanistan. On June 14, Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak told the Associated Press that Burns’ claim has no credibility.
But, of course, none of the administration’s propagandistic claims that set the stage for the invasion of Iraq had any credibility either, and the lack of credibility did not prevent the claims from deceiving the Congress and the American people. As the US media now functions as the administration’s Ministry of Propaganda, the Bush regime believes that it can stampede Americans with lies into another war.
The Bush regime has concluded that a conventional attack on Iran would do no more than stir up a hornet’s nest and release retaliatory actions that the US could not manage. The Bush regime is convinced that only nuclear weapons can bring the mullahs to heel.
The Bush regime’s plan to attack Iran with nuclear weapons puts General Pace’s departure in a different light. How can President Bush succeed with an order to attack with nuclear weapons when America’s highest ranking military officer says that such an order is “illegal and immoral” and that everyone in the military has an “absolute responsibility” to disobey it?
An alternative explanation for Pace’s departure is that Pace had to go so that malleable toadies can be installed in his place.
Pace’s departure removes a known obstacle to a nuclear attack on Iran, thus advancing that possible course of action. A plan to attack Iran with nuclear weapons might also explain the otherwise inexplicable “National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive” (NSPD-51 AND HSPD-20) that Bush issued on May 9. Bush’s directive allows him to declare a “national emergency” on his authority alone without ratification by Congress. Once Bush declares a national emergency, he can take over all functions of government at every level, as well as private organizations and businesses, and remain in total control until he declares the emergency to be over.
Princes, Planes and Payoffs
June 23, 2007
In Saudi Arabia you receive the strictest of punishments for the most minor infringements of the social order. Protected by clerical decree the royals, with a few exceptions, freely engage in all vices known to man on the other hand. Bandar Bin Sultan has been described as one of these ‘full living’ members of the house of Saud. Like most Gulf sheikhs, the man is a vain windbag. He is the one who personally persuaded King Abdallah to support the invasion of Iraq. He has been boasting since that he was the first foreigner to be informed by Bush of US plans to invade Iraq. In fact, it was the Israelis. Here the BBC exposes how he pays for the extravagant lifestyle, and the gifts he reguarly bestows on Washington notables in order to gain access.
What Forced Hamas’s Hand
June 23, 2007
A dose of truth from Jonathan Steele, one of Britain’s finest journalists, on why Hamas had to preempt the coup by Palestinian contras. “Hamas acted on a very real fear of a US-sponsored coup”, Steele says. And once again, we find Elliot Abrams — a neocon stalwart, Iran-contra felon, and the Israel Lobby’s star proponent of Jewish ethnic supremacism – behind the bloodshed.
Did they jump or were they pushed? Was Hamas’s seizure of Fatah security offices in Gaza unprovoked, or a pre-emptive strike to forestall a coup by Fatah? After last week’s turmoil, it becomes increasingly important to uncover its origins.
The fundamental cause is, of course, well known. Israel, aided by the US, was not prepared to accept Hamas’s victory in last year’s Palestinian elections. Backed by a supine EU, the two governments decided to boycott their new Palestinian counterparts politically and punish Palestinian voters by blocking economic aid. Their policies had a dramatic effect, turning Gaza even more starkly into an open prison and creating human misery on a massive scale. The aim was to turn voters against Hamas – a strategy of stupidity as well as cynicism, since outside pressure usually produces resistance rather than surrender.
The policy shocked even moderate western officials like James Wolfensohn, the former World Bank chief, whom the Americans had appointed to help Gaza’s economy before the Hamas election victory. “The result was not to build more economic activity but to build more barriers,” he said this week while explaining why he resigned in disagreement with US and Israeli strategy.
It is also well known that Hamas was as surprised by its election victory as everyone else and that it offered its rival, Fatah, a coalition government of national unity. The offer was refused. If this was done initially out of wounded pride, Fatah’s rejection of Hamas’s regularly repeated overtures increasingly appeared to be coordinated with Washington as part of the boycott strategy.
Reports have been circulating for months of a more sinister side to the boycott. According to them, the US decided last year on a plan to arm and train Mahmoud Abbas’s presidential guard in a deliberate effort to confront and defeat Hamas militarily. Israel has already locked up several dozen Hamas legislators and mayors from the West Bank. The next stage was to do the same in Gaza but have Palestinians, rather than Israelis, run the crackdown.
Arming insurgents against elected governments has a long US pedigree and it is no accident that Elliott Abrams, the deputy national security adviser and apparent architect of the anti-Hamas subversion, was a key player in Ronald Reagan’s supply of weapons to the Contras who fought Nicaragua’s elected government in the 1980s.
Documents doing the rounds in the Middle East purport to have evidence for Abrams’s “hard coup” strategy. One text recounts Washington’s objectives as expressed in US officials’ conversations with an Arab government. These are, among others, “to maintain President Abbas and Fatah as the centre of gravity on the Palestinian scene“, “avoid wasting time in accommodating Hamas’s ideological conditions”, “undermine Hamas’s political status through providing for Palestinian economic needs”, and “strengthen the Palestinian president’s authority to be able to call and conduct early elections by autumn 2007″.
The document is dated March 2, less than a month after Saudi Arabia brokered the Mecca agreement under which Abbas finally agreed with Hamas on a unity government. The deal upset the Israelis and Washington because it left Hamas’s prime minister Ismail Haniyeh in charge. The document suggests the US wanted to sabotage it. Certainly, according to Hamas officials whom a depressed Abbas later briefed, Abbas was told to scrap Mecca at every subsequent meeting he has had with Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert or with US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and Abrams.
Most ominously, the document of US objectives outlined a $1.27bn programme that would add seven special battalions, totalling 4,700 men, to the 15,000 Abbas already has in his presidential guard and other security forces, which were also to be given extra training and arms. “The desired outcome will be the transformation of Palestinian security forces and provide for the president of the Palestinian Authority to able to safeguard decisions such as dismissing the cabinet and forming an emergency cabinet,” the document says.
Alastair Crooke, a former Middle East adviser to the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, and current head of a research institute in Beirut, points out that Israel blocked some arms deliveries. It was wary of sending too many into Gaza for fear Fatah might lose them, as indeed has happened. In this sense, only part of the plan went ahead. (Britain has played a small part in helping Abbas’s security forces. It has provided about £350,000 of “non-lethal” equipment this year for protecting the Karni freight crossing between Gaza and Israel.)
But Crooke says Hamas was irritated that the Mecca deal was being sabotaged, notably by the refusal of Mohammed Dahlan, Fatah’s long-time Gaza strongman and head of the Preventive Security Forces, to accept the authority of the independent interior minister appointed to the unity government. “Dahlan refused to deal with him, and put his troops on the streets in defiance of the interior minister. Hamas felt they had little option but to take control of security away from forces which were in fact creating insecurity,” Crooke says.
Ahmed Yousef, a Hamas spokesman, confirms the movement thought it had to move fast. In his words, last week’s events were “precipitated by the American and Israeli policy of arming elements of the Fatah opposition who want to attack Hamas and force us from office”.
While Hamas has successfully blocked the US-Fatah plans for Gaza, Abbas is trying to implement them in the West Bank by forming an emergency government. The policy is doomed since the constitution says such a government can only last 30 days. Parliament has to renew it by a two-thirds majority, and parliament is controlled by Hamas. The only sensible policy for Abbas must be to end the effort to marginalise Hamas. He should go back to the Mecca agreement and support a unity government. Even now, Hamas says it is willing to do so.
Where does all this leave the White House idea to involve Tony Blair as a Middle Eastern envoy? It creates a “coalition of the discredited” – Bush, Olmert and Blair – and sounds like something from a satire since Blair has no credibility with Hamas or most other Palestinians. Better to leave it to the Saudis to revive the Mecca deal, or wait until Abbas realises he has fallen into a trap. Neither common sense nor democratic principles, let alone time, are on Fatah’s side.
Democrat’s Grow Cojones: Who’s Your Daddy?
June 23, 2007
The Democratic Party of the United States, which allowed Bush to invade two countries, failed to challenge massive military expenditures, did not have the courage to hold the President to account on the WMD lies, the NSA wiretapping, erosion of civil liberties, has finally had enough — it has decided to show the balls that everybody believed it did not have. Following is from a letter sent by the National Jewish Democratic Council to its members:
Early this morning, the House GOP leadership convinced 164 Republican Representatives to vote against the annual bill which appropriates funding for foreign aid, including $2.4 billion for Israel (which receives nearly 50% of all military aid – the most of any country). In a letter to Congressional staff from the leadership office, Republicans were told: “Please advise your boss that Leadership will be voting NO on final passage of the Democrats’ State and Foreign Operations Appropriations bill, and strongly encourage Republican Members to do the same.”
NJDC strongly condemned the GOP leadership for this move and is speaking with local and national media to educate reporters about the significance of this vote. The foreign aid bill has traditionally been a top priority of the pro-Israel community. While it has drawn bipartisan support for years, Conservatives often used the issue in prior years for cynical political purposes. The GOP leadership’s decision to oppose foreign aid this year may signal a return to such xenophobic and isolationist political tactics.
What we do know for certain is that this legislation is crucial for Israel and key to a strong U.S.-Israel relationship. It is sad when good legislation gets caught up in unfortunate political gamesmanship.
One might start by asking, who does this Democratic fifth-column serve? Jeffrey Blankfort writes: ‘What the Jewish Democrats imply is that the Republicans are not so loyal to Israel as they are, and in fact, that does seem to be the truth. The reason the Republicans tried to defeat the bill as it was because of another controversial domestic issue, the allowing of government donations of contraceptives to family planning groups outside the United States even though they may engage in abortion activities, according to Reuters. By a vote of 223-201, the House voted to lift the prohibition in place since 2001. The move angered anti-abortion lawmakers who see it as a step toward loosening strict controls against using U.S. funds for abortions abroad.’
But then there would be those who would say this is mere posturing. The lobby has no power, and the Republicans would do whatever they think is in the state’s (read theirs) best interest.
Just to make sure that the Israel Lobby doesn’t take them out to the woodshed for their vote, Jeff Blankfor writes today ’the Republican leadership has drafted a letter to AIPAC on Congressional letterhead for all those Republicans to sign, repledging their loyalty to Israel and their support for the funding for Israel. This communication which was sent to and forwarded by Alison Weir of If Americans Knew contains some of the very wording that was used in the NJDC message’.
Subject: WHIP LD ALERT: Leadership Letter to AIPAC
Importance: High
UPDATE: Please advise your boss that if he/she voted NO on last night’s Foreign Operations bill and would like to sign the attached letter to AIPAC, it will be available at the Leadership Desk on the floor during our next series of votes.
—–Original Message—–
From:
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2007 9:13 PM
Subject: WHIP LD ALERT: Leadership Strongly Recommends a NO Vote on Final Passage
Importance: High
Please advise your boss that Leadership will be voting NO on final passage of the Democrats’ State and Foreign Operations Appropriations bill, and strongly encourage Republican Members to do the same.
The bill spends a total of $34.243 billion, increasing levels for State and Foreign Operations by 9.5% or $2.966 billion over last year. At the same time, Democrats have proposed and voted for massive tax increases, including the largest tax increase in American history.
In addition, the Democrat bill guts the President’s Mexico City Policy, thereby using taxpayer funds to subsidize organizations that promote and provide abortions in foreign countries. An amendment by Congressman Smith (NJ) was proposed on the floor to restore the Mexico City language, but was defeated by a majority of Democrats.
NOTE: Members are advised that the Leadership has drafted a letter to AIPAC affirming Republican support for Israel funding, not withstanding final passage of this bill. This letter will be available for Members to sign at the Leadership Desk on the floor tonight. A copy of that letter is attached.
Fisk on Poodle’s New Assignment
June 23, 2007
Robert Fisk is as astonished as everyone else at the appointment of poodle as a ‘peacemaker’. ‘How can blair possibly be given this job‘, he asks.
I suppose that astonishment is not the word for it. Stupefaction comes to mind. I simply could not believe my ears in Beirut when a phone call told me that Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara was going to create “Palestine”. I checked the date – no, it was not 1 April – but I remain overwhelmed that this vain, deceitful man, this proven liar, a trumped-up lawyer who has the blood of thousands of Arab men, women and children on his hands is really contemplating being “our” Middle East envoy.
Can this really be true? I had always assumed that Balfour, Sykes and Picot were the epitome of Middle Eastern hubris. But Blair? That this ex-prime minister, this man who took his country into the sands of Iraq, should actually believe that he has a role in the region – he whose own preposterous envoy, Lord Levy, made so many secret trips there to absolutely no avail – is now going to sully his hands (and, I fear, our lives) in the world’s last colonial war is simply overwhelming.
Of course, he’ll be in touch with Mahmoud Abbas, will try to marginalise Hamas, will talk endlessly about “moderates”; and we’ll have to listen to him pontificating about morality, how he’s absolutely and completely confident that he’s doing the right thing (and this, remember, is the same man who postponed a ceasefire in Lebanon last year in order to share George Bush’s ridiculous hope of an Israeli victory over Hizbollah) in bringing peace to the Middle East…
Not once – ever – has he apologised. Not once has he said he was sorry for what he did in our name. Yet Lord Blair actually believes – in what must be a record act of self-indulgence for a man who cooked up the fake evidence of Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” – that he can do good in the Middle East.
For here is a man who is totally discredited in the region – a politician who has signally failed in everything he ever tried to do in the Middle East – now believing that he is the right man to lead the Quartet to patch up “Palestine”.
In the hunt for quislings to do our bidding – ie accept even less of Mandate Palestine than Arafat would stomach – I suppose Blair has his uses. His unique blend of ruthlessness and dishonesty will no doubt go down quite well with our local Arab dictators.
And I have a suspicion – always assuming this extraordinary story is not untrue – that Blair will be able to tour around Damascus, even Tehran, in his hunt for “peace”, thus paving the way for an American exit strategy in Iraq. But “Palestine”?
The Palestinians held elections – real, copper-bottomed ones, the democratic variety – and Hamas won. But Blair will presumably not be able to talk to Hamas. He’ll need to talk only to Abbas’s flunkies, to negotiate with an administration described so accurately this week by my old colleague Rami Khoury as a “government of the imagination”.
The Americans are talking – and here I am quoting the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack – about an envoy who can work “with the Palestinians in the Palestinian system” to develop institutions for a “well-governed state”. Oh yes, I can see how that would appeal to Lord Blair. He likes well-governed states, lots of “terror laws”, plenty of security – though I’m still a bit puzzled about what the “Palestinian system” is meant to be…
I bet he doesn’t mention the Israeli wall which is taking so much extra land from the Palestinians. It will be a “security barrier” or a “fence” (like the famous Berlin “fence” which was actually called a “security barrier” by those generous East German Vopo cops of the time).
There will be appeals for restraint “on all sides”, endless calls for “moderation”, none at all for justice (which is all the people of the Middle East have been pleading for over the past 100 years).
And Israel likes Lord Blair. Indeed, Blair’s slippery use of language is likely to appeal to Ehud Olmert, whose government continues to take Arab land for Jews and Jews only as he waits to discover a Palestinian with whom he can “negotiate”, Mahmoud Abbas now having the prestige of a rabbit after his forces were crushed in Gaza.
Which of “Palestine”‘s two prime ministers will Blair talk to? Why, the one with a collar and tie, of course, who works for Mr Abbas, who will demand more “security”, tougher laws, less democracy.
I have never been able to figure out why the Middle East draws the Balfours and the Sykeses and the Blairs into its maw. Once, our favourite trouble-shooter was James Baker – who worked for George W’s father until the Israelis got tired of him – and before that we had a whole list of UN Secretary Generals who visited the region, frowned and warned of serious consequences if peace did not soon come.
I recall another man with Blair’s pomposity, a certain Kurt Waldheim, who – no longer the UN’s boss – actually believed he could be an “envoy” for peace in the Middle East, despite his little wartime career as an intelligence officer for the Wehrmacht’s Army Group “E”.
His visits – especially to the late King Hussein – came to nothing, of course. But Waldheim’s ability to draw a curtain over his wartime past does have one thing in common with Blair. For Waldheim steadfastly, pointedly, repeatedly, refused to acknowledge – ever – that he had ever done anything wrong. Now who does that remind you of?
Ziocons On the Offense
June 22, 2007
Ziocon extremist and renowned warmonger Charles Krauthammer offers his own suggestions for the collective punishment of Palestinians, but he starts off with a paragraph which makes it amply clear that he couldn’t tell his elbow from his arse.
Gaza is now run not by a conventional political party but by a movement that is revolutionary, Islamist and terrorist. Worse, Hamas is a client of Iran. Gaza now constitutes the farthest reach of the archipelago of Iranian proxies: Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Mahdi Army (among others) in Iraq and the Alawite regime of Syria.
So the Sunni Hamas is an Iranian proxy, and so is the nationalist Mahdi Army? (There are Iranian proxies in Iraq — SIIC and Dawah — however, they comprise the Vichy government of Iraq). After heaping sufficent praise on ‘moderate’ Arab states of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, he chastises Israel for,
permitting the development of an unprecedented parasitism by willingly supplying food, water, electricity and gasoline to a territory that was actively waging hostilities against it…
[Therefore Krauthammer recommends:] the next Qassam will be answered with a cutoff of gasoline shipments…If that fails to concentrate the mind, the next step should be to cut off electricity. When the world wails, Israel should ask, what other country on Earth is expected to supply the very means for a declared enemy to attack it?
Another September 11?
Meanwhile AIPAC’s inhouse think-tank, Washington Institute for Near East Policy is setting the agenday for the Israel Lobby’s future action: adding Hizbullah to the EU Terrorist list.
The Europeans are unlikely to move in that direction, however, unless they regard Hizballah as a direct threat. Accordingly, the EU must come to recognize that although Hezbollah has not carried out attacks in Europe for a number of years, this could change rapidly. Hizballah’s infrastructure in Europe and ties to Iran give it the ability to mount an attack quickly should the perceived need arise.
Jeffrey Blankfort warns: ‘Here we see what the 5th columnists of the Washington Inst. and Israel may be planning in the near future, a Mossad-initiated terrorist attack in Europe that can be blamed on Hezbollah. Does this not sound like the statement in the PNAC document that noted that the US needed a “Pearl Harbor” type attack (9-11?) in order to get Americans to support the Zionist neocon agenda as spelled out in the PNAC statement’.
Ushering in the Clash
The much touted ‘clash of civilizations’ has not materialized, despite ample provocations. Some, however, are not deterred. Here is the latest Ziocon attempt to engender a civilizational conflict in order to get US-EU more squarely behind Israel.
A documentary produced in Israel and screened widely throughout the U.S. is stirring furious debate over its depiction of Muslims.
The film, “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” is gaining a quick following among conservative Americans, evangelicals and Jews. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is said to have seen the film and though it hasn’t technically been released yet, segments have been screened several times on Fox News and shown on nearly 200 university campuses.
But critics of the film dismiss it as “fear-mongering” propaganda aimed at bashing Muslims and inciting bigotry and hate.
“Obsession” is a one-hour look at radical Islam with footage of Arab and Iranian television, interspersed with rallies from Nazi Germany in an attempt to draw parallels between the two. Comprised mostly of news clips from recent years, it includes scenes of thousands of people chanting “Death to America” and children talking about their dream of becoming a martyr. “I hope Bush dies in flames and I want to go to Ariel Sharon and stab him with a sword,” one little girl in Bahrain tells the camera. The film also features interviews with prominent neo-conservative figures, like Daniel Pipes, who warn about the danger of radical Islam and its growing prominence in some circles….
Smear tactics
“It’s a typical cherry picking of inflammatory images and splicing them together to create fear,” Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a telephone interview from the group’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. “When these smear techniques are used against any other religious or minority group, it is recognized as bigotry. When it’s aimed at Islam or Muslims, it has gained unfortunate levels of acceptance within our society.” The film, he said, “has an agenda to make Muslims look bad.”
Republican and Jewish students groups have sponsored scores of screenings, most of which occurred without incident, the film’s creators say. But protests and rising student tensions have begun accompanying the film on many campuses. A screening at Pace University in New York was canceled and rescheduled only months later after administrators pressured Hillel student leaders into calling off their event. And a recent Georgia Tech screening sponsored by the College Republicans required extra security as part of “Islamofascism Awareness Day.” …
Fueling the fire
Aside from the content itself, a number of other factors related to the film have fueled the flames of controversy. For one, it has a largely Jewish and pro-Israel distribution network, though Shore is trying to expand the film’s appeal. According to news reports, at a screening earlier this year at New York University, distributors of the film required viewers to register at IsraelActivism.com, the Web site of Aish HaTorah’s Hasbara Fellowships.
Shore, incidentally, was the director of both Aish HaTorah International and the Hasbara Fellowships, a pro-Israel advocacy group. But he says the film was an independent project.
He also tries to play down the film’s Israel connection, simply because “It isn’t helpful,” he says. “I don’t want it to be only Jewish and Israel-related.
“I don’t understand why it’s biased if Jews are behind the creation of an objective film,” he says. “There’s nothing wrong with Jews saying the radical Islamists are coming, just like there’s nothing wrong with Jews in Nazi Germany saying the Nazis are coming.”
Funders anonymous
The issue is further complicated as funding sources for the film remain hazy. Shore and director Wayne Kopping of South Africa are the only figures associated with the film willing to release their real names and appear in media interviews; the executive producer is listed as Peter Mier, while the production manager is listed as Brett Halperin. But Mier and Halperin are just aliases, Shore says. He describes the real Mier as a Canadian Jewish businessman who wanted to do something significant, but asked to remain anonymous for fear of his safety. According to Shore, about 80 percent of the film’s $400,000 budget was provided by Mier.
“At the recommendation of a number of experts we worked with in making the film, many of the individuals and organizations who helped make this film possible requested anonymity,” Shore explained during an online question-and-answer session on Fox.com. “Tragically, we’ve seen numerous times the response of the radicals to those who openly expose or disagree with them…
Shore also denies early reports that link the film to Honest Reporting, a pro-Israel media watchdog group.
On the organization’s site, “Obsession” is described as “Honest Reporting’s newest documentary film,” but Shore says it’s a mistake and that the film’s creators have told Honest Reporting to take it off their site “a dozen times.”
“It was a marriage of convenience to associate [my previous film] ‘Relentless’ with Honest Reporting. At the beginning, I thought I would do the same thing with ‘Obsession.’ I decided not to, but I considered it and that came out in the press.”
This summer, the film will be released officially and will be available in retail outlets like Wal-Mart, Blockbuster and Target. Some 100,000 copies have already been sold through the film’s Web site, www.Obsessionthemovie.com, and based on television ratings from Fox and CNN Headline News, which also broadcast segments of the documentary, Shore estimates that some 10 million viewers – including a large number of evangelical Christians – have already seen significant portions of the film.
“Many evangelical Christians are waking up and becoming passionate about this issue,” says Shore. “There is a shock factor because people haven’t seen this before. Now, they are seeing images of children being brainwashed, they see the passion and ideology of their religious leaders and they say, ‘Gosh, that’s scary.’ But if people were exposed to this already, it wouldn’t be so shocking.”
Kylie’s Mate
June 21, 2007
So Kylie’s mate, a knicker-maker, shows more integrity than Bono’s mate, a phoney contrarian, in rejecting the establishment’s validation of his worth: “Two words sum up why I cannot accept my MBE: Tony Blair”
Sir Bono’s Mate
June 20, 2007
Sir Bono’s courtesan magic seems to have rubbed off on his old friend Salman Rushdie who like the designer guerrilla himself has just been knighted by the British state. I suspect this has less to do with Rushdie’s literary achievements than his services towards furnishing an ideological pretext for the war of terror.
Curiosity and company convinced me to attend a discussion with Rushdie at the Guardian Hay Festival last year. He read out a couple of passages from his books, which were mildly interesting if predictable; the prose overly ornate and peppered with the kind of corny exoticisms that charm a western audience, perhaps for their novely. The discussion was atrociously boring; the stream of unrelenting banality and vacuous platitudes that the audience was subjected to for an hour was mind numbing. The event was not devoid of its lighter moments: earlier in the day I had seen an earnest looking man hailing Rushdie as a radical crusader to his friends as he showed them a book the author had written during his trip to Nicaragua. The same man was also present in the audience, and he got up to ask Rushdie about his motivations for writing the book. The answer left the poor fellow as underwhelmed as I am sure it did the rest of the audience. Rushdie apparently visited the place to combat a writer’s block, and he refused to addressed the subject matter of the book altogether — rather wisely, I might add, as it would have required him to denounce the same neocon claque with which he presently cavorts.
Faith is a favoured punching bag for secular liberals in the West; so much so that they willingly overlook when criticism departs the realm of blasphemy and wanders off into bigotry. Just because Rushdie can rail against Islam — a faith that has no dearth of eager critics — his bigotry and apologia for imperial crusades gets overlooked. In the end, he is little more than a performing monkey for the empire.
