Barack Obama inauguration: this Emperor has no clothes, it will all end in tears by Gerald Warner

(Source)
This will end in tears. The Obama hysteria is not merely embarrassing to witness, it is itself contributory to the scale of the disaster that is coming. What we are experiencing, in the deepening days of a global depression, is the desperate suspension of disbelief by people of intelligence - la trahison des clercs - in a pathetic effort to hypnotise themselves into the delusion that it will be all right on the night. It will not be all right.

We have been here before. In the spring of 1997, to be precise, when a charismatic, young prime minister entered Downing Street, cheered by children bussed in for the occasion waving plastic Union Jacks. A very few of us at that time incurred searing reproaches for denouncing the Great Charlatan (as I have always denominated Tony Blair) and dissenting from the public hysteria. Three times a deluded Britain elected that transparent fraud. Yesterday, when national bankruptcy became a formal reality, we reaped the bitter harvest of the Blair/Brown imposture.

The burnt child, contrary to conventional wisdom, does not fear the fire. After the Blair experience there is no excuse for anybody in Britain falling for Obama. Yet today, in this country, even some of those who remained sane during the emotional spasm of the Diana aberration are pumping the air for Princess Barack. At a time of gross economic and geopolitical instability throughout the Western world, this is beyond irresponsibility.

To anyone who kept his head, the string of Christmas cracker mottoes booming through the public address system on Washington's National Mall can only excite scepticism. It is crucial to recall the reality that lies behind the rhetoric. Denouncing 'those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents' comes ill from a man whose flagship legislation, the Freedom of Choice Act, will impose abortion, including partial-birth abortion, on every state in the Union. It seems the era of Hope is to be inaugurated with a slaughter of the innocents.

Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan is like one of those toxic packages traded by bankers: it camouflages many unaffordable gifts to his client state. With a federal deficit already at $1.2 trillion, Obama wants to squander $825 billion (which will undoubtedly mushroom to more than $1 trillion) on creating 600,000 more government jobs and a further 459,000 in 'green energy' (useless wind turbines and other Heath-Robinson contraptions favoured by Beltway environmentalists).

It is frightening to think there is a real possibility that the entire world economy could go into complete meltdown and famine kill millions. Yet Western - and British - commentators are cocooned in a warm comfort zone of infatuation with America's answer to Neil Kinnock. We should be long past applauding politicians of any hue: they got us into this mess. The best deserve a probationary opportunity to prove themselves, the worst should be in jail.

It is questionable whether the present political system can survive the coming crisis. Whatever the solution, teenage swooning sentimentality over a celebrity cult has no part in it. The most powerful nation on earth is confronting its worst economic crisis under the leadership of its most extremely liberal politician, who has virtually no experience of federal politics. That is not an opportunity but a catastrophe.

These are frank, even ungracious, words: they have the one merit that, unlike almost everything else written today about Obama, they will not require to be eaten in the future.
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A Better Way to Make Money

Here’s how we could solve the credit crunch without giving anything to the banks.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian, 20th January 2009

In Russell Hoban’s novel Riddley Walker, the descendents of nuclear holocaust survivors seek amid the rubble the key to recovering their lost civilisation. They end up believing that the answer is to re-invent the atom bomb. I was reminded of this when I read the government’s new plans to save us from the credit crunch. It intends - at gob-smacking public expense - to persuade the banks to start lending again, at levels similar to those of 2007. Isn’t this what caused the problem in the first place? Is insane levels of lending really the solution to a crisis caused by insane levels of lending?

Yes, I know that without money there’s no business, and without business there are no jobs. I also know that most of the money in circulation is issued, through fractional reserve banking, in the form of debt. This means that you can’t solve one problem (a lack of money) without causing another (a mountain of debt). There must be a better way than this.

This isn’t my subject and I am venturing way beyond my pay grade. But I want to introduce you to another way of negotiating a credit crunch, which requires no moral hazard, no hair of the dog and no public spending. I’m relying, in explaining it, on the former currency trader and central banker Bernard Lietaer.

In his book The Future of Money, Lietaer points out - as the government did yesterday - that in situations like ours everything grinds to a halt for want of money(1). But he also explains that there is no reason why this money should take the form of sterling or be issued by the banks. Money consists only of “an agreement within a community to use something as a medium of exchange.” The medium of exchange could be anything, as long as everyone who uses it trusts that everyone else will recognise its value. During the Great Depression, businesses in the United States issued rabbit tails, seashells and wooden discs as currency, as well as all manner of papers and metal tokens. In 1971, Jaime Lerner, the mayor of Curitiba in Brazil, kick-started the economy of the city and solved two major social problems by issuing currency in the form of bus tokens. People earned them by picking and sorting litter: thus cleaning the streets and acquiring the means to commute to work. Schemes like this helped Curitiba become one of the most prosperous cities in Brazil.

But the projects which have proved most effective were those inspired by the German economist Silvio Gessell, who became finance minister in Gustav Landauer’s doomed Bavarian republic. He proposed that communities seeking to rescue themselves from economic collapse should issue their own currency. To discourage people from hoarding it, they should impose a fee (called demurrage), which had the same effect as negative interest. The back of each banknote would contain 12 boxes. For the note to remain valid, the owner had to buy a stamp every month and stick it in one of the boxes. It would be withdrawn from circulation after a year. Money of this kind is called stamp scrip: a privately-issued currency which becomes less valuable the longer you hold onto it.

One of the first places to experiment with this scheme was the small German town of Schwanenkirchen. In 1923, hyperinflation had caused a credit crunch of a different kind. A Dr Hebecker, owner of a coalmine in Schwanenkirchen, told his workers that if they wouldn’t accept the coal-backed stamp scrip he had invented - the Wara - he would have to close the mine. He promised to exchange it, in the first instance, for food. The scheme immediately took off. It saved both the mine and the town. It was soon adopted by 2000 corporations across Germany. But in 1931, under pressure from the central bank, the ministry of finance closed the project down, with catastrophic consequences for the communities which had come to depend on it. Lietaer points out that the only remaining option for the German economy was ruthless centralised economic planning. Would Hitler have come to power if the Wara and similar schemes had been allowed to survive?

The Austrian town of Wörgl also tried out Gessell’s idea, in 1932. Like most communities in Europe at the time, it suffered from mass unemployment and a shortage of money for public works. Instead of spending the town’s meagre funds on new works, the mayor put them on deposit as a guarantee for the stamp scrip he issued. By paying workers in the new currency, he paved the streets, restored the water system and built a bridge, new houses and a ski jump. Because they would soon lose their value, Wörgl’s own schillings circulated much faster than the official money, with the result that each unit of currency generated 12 to 14 times more employment. Scores of other towns sought to copy the scheme, at which point - in 1933 - the central bank stamped it out. Wörgl’s workers were thrown out of work again.

Similar projects took off at the same time in dozens of countries. Almost all of them were closed down as the central banks panicked about losing their monopoly over the control of money (just one, Switzerland’s WIR system, still exists). Roosevelt prohibited complementary currencies by executive decree, though they might have offered a faster, cheaper and more effective means of pulling the US out of the Depression than his New Deal.

No one is suggesting that we replace official currencies with local scrip: this is a complementary system, not an alternative. Nor does Lietaer propose this as a solution to all economic ills. But even before you consider how it could be improved through modern information technology, several features of Gessell’s system grab your attention. We need not wait for the government or the central bank to save us: we can set this system up ourselves. It costs taxpayers nothing. It bypasses the greedy banks. It recharges local economies and gives local businesses an advantage over multinationals. It can be tailored to the needs of the community. It does not require - as Eddie George, the former Governor of the Bank of England, insisted - that one part of the country be squeezed so that another can prosper.

Perhaps most importantly, a demurrage system reverses the ecological problem of discount rates. If you have to pay to keep your money, the later you receive your income, the more valuable it will be. So it makes economic sense, under this system, to invest long-term. As resources in the ground are a better store of value than money in the bank, the system encourages their conservation.

I make no claim to expertise. I’m not qualified to identify the flaws in this scheme, nor am I confident that I have made the best case for it. All I ask is that, if you haven’t come across it before, you don’t dismiss it before learning more. As we confront the failure of the government’s first bail-out and the astonishing costs of the second, isn’t it time we considered the alternatives?

www.monbiot.com

References:

Bernard Lietaer, 2001. The Future of Money. Century. London.

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What is Wrong With the UN Population Fund?

Steven W. Mosher:

Why shouldn't the U.S. fund the population controllers at the United Nations, as Huffington Post columnist Cristina Page proposes? (See "The Pro-Lie Movement Targets Hillary," 2 December 2008). The short answer is that the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) is implicated in some of the most coercive anti-people campaigns in the world today.

Started in 1969 following a massive lobbying effort by billionaire John D. Rockefeller III, the UNFPA claims to work to "reduce poverty and to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV/AIDS, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect." In fact, the UNFPA, like its founder, believes that the way to reduce poverty is to reduce the numbers of the poor through sterilization, contraception, and abortion campaigns.

We know. We have conducted repeated investigations of UNFPA operations around the world. We have found that, despite its soothing rhetoric about improving "reproductive health," and "safe motherhood" ― the UNFPA spends a huge chunk of its budget on soporific propaganda -- the agency continues to be fixated on the numbers. We have documented its involvement in coercive population control policies in countries like China, Vietnam, Peru, and North Korea, as well as in refugee camps around the world.

Its intimate connection to China's brutal one-child policy merits special attention. For three long decades, the Chinese government has aborted and sterilized millions of women each year. For three long decades, the UNFPA has provided financial aid, ideological encouragement, and international sanction to these abuses through its offices in Beijing and around the Chinese countryside. This shameless pattern of complicity in some of the worst human rights abuses on the planet is the chief reason why the Bush administration, for seven years running, has refused to fund the UN agency.

We at PRI have hard evidence on the UNFPA's involvement in coercion ― videotapes, cassette tapes, written and spoken testimony from dozens of witnesses. Our information was verified by the U.S. State Department, and is accessible on our web site, as well as in our new video series: Exposure: Investigative Realism from PRI. Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, who in the past has been friendly towards the UNFPA, declared the UNFPA ineligible for U.S. funding because of its complicity in forced abortion and forced sterilization.

Now, none of this matters to the radical base of the population control movement, which remains determined to shovel as many U.S. tax dollars into the UNFPA maw as possible. Cristina Page went so far as to call us lunatics for daring to challenge the UNFPA's programs:

Just when UNFPA was succeeding in proving to the Chinese the one-child policy was not only inhumane but also ineffective, PRI swooped in with its claims of complicity. Bush, eager to lock lips with his fanatical base, ignored the advice of his own state department, as well as many allied nations, and opted to go with the swirly eyed lunacy of the six staffers of PRI. At their request, Bush quickly froze all U.S. funds to UNFPA, which represented 12 percent of its budget.

Like other population control hardliners, Ms. Page does not attempt to refute our evidence. Instead, she mindlessly recites the UNFPA's party line. Does anyone really that the UNFPA is "succeeding"―after three long decades―in bringing an end to a policy that the Chinese government proudly proclaims will persist until 2050? Her claim that Bush ignored the advice of his state department is likewise a fantasy. What Colin Powell, Bush's first Secretary of State, actually said was: "Stop the Funding."

Ms. Page has no real arguments to make against us, which is probably why she resorts to sandlot slurs. But we stand by our research and our findings. And we remain firmly convinced that the UN Population Fund serves no useful purpose, and should be abolished.

The population control programs of the past half-century, born in the dark fear of "the unchecked growth in human numbers," have been a quiet but profound disaster for the poor and marginalized half of humanity. Hundreds of millions of poor women (and men) have had their fundamental rights--i.e., to control their own reproductive systems and to determine the number and spacing of their children--grossly violated. An even larger number have had their overall wellbeing compromised as resources have been drained away from primary health care programs, with some succumbing to HIV/AIDS and other epidemics. While the cost of such programs in terms of human lives and suffering has been all too real, the promised benefits have proven largely illusory. Is the U.S. more secure, the global environment better protected, and the world wealthier today because of population control programs? Are the poor better off? The evidence suggests not.

The idea of controlling human fertility "for the good of the state and its people," as Beijing is fond of saying, is a 20th century anachronism. It deserves to be as thoroughly discredited as Marxist-Leninism, and for the same reason: It is at heart a philosophy of state coercion. In its more extreme manifestations in China and elsewhere, it has given rise to terror campaigns. But even in its mildest guises, it encourages a technocratic paternalism that effectively subjugates individual and familial fertility desires to the wishes of the state.

The U.S. should not only continue to avoid funding the U.N. Population Fund, it should withdraw entirely from the organization. As far as the UNFPA itself, this creation of Rockefeller and his cronies should be shut down. Whatever legitimate health functions it performs can be transferred to the World Health Organization, UNICEF, or other international organizations. Some small programs, like that instituted to address the problem of obstetric fistula, may be worth saving. Others are Potemkin facades erected to con critics and deceive women.

We―and the women of China, Vietnam, North Korea, etc.―are not fooled.

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Orwell's 2009 - United States Big Brother is Watching

The Market Oracle

war is peace
freedom is slavery
ignorance is strength

“All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” George Orwell

George Orwell wrote his legendary novel 1984 just after World War II. It is renowned for its portrayal of government's encroachment on the rights of the individual. It was Orwell's warning against totalitarianism, specifically Stalin's Soviet Union. Pervasive thought control and surveillance of citizens is prominent throughout the novel. After living through the last eight years under the Bush administration and observing the marketing effort of the coming stimulus plan by the Obama team, the U.S. has moved closer than ever to Orwell's nightmare world. In the novel, The Party maintained control of Oceania by manipulating facts, history, and citizens to retain power and dominate the masses. In the United States of today we theoretically have two major parties, Democrats and Republicans. In reality, we have one Party made up of the wealthy elite ruling class backed by enormous corporate interests and protected by the military industrial complex. There are no major differences between Republicans and Democrats, just minor meaningless variations. They are both under the control of the fascist corporate oligopoly that runs this country. Representative Ron Paul explains how The Party is able to maintain control in today's world:

“Pretending that a true difference exists between the two major candidates is a charade of great proportion. Many who help to perpetuate this myth are frequently unaware of what they are doing and believe that significant differences actually do exist. Indeed, on small points there is the appearance of a difference. The real issues, however, are buried in a barrage of miscellaneous nonsense and endless pontifications by robotic pundits hired to perpetuate the myth of a campaign of substance. Influential forces, the media, the government, the privileged corporations and moneyed interests see to it that both party's candidates are acceptable, regardless of the outcome, since they will still be in charge. It's been that way for a long time.

The two parties and their candidates have no real disagreements on foreign policy, monetary policy, privacy issues, or the welfare state. They both are willing to abuse the Rule of Law and ignore constitutional restraint on Executive Powers. Neither major party champions free markets and private-property ownership. Those candidates who represent actual change or disagreement with the status quo are held in check by the two major parties in power, making it very difficult to compete in the pretend democratic process. This is done by making it difficult for third-party candidates to get on the ballots, enter into the debates, raise money, avoid being marginalized, or get fair or actual coverage.”

Government has progressively acquired more power over the lives of Americans. They have done it subtly for decades but it has accelerated at warp speed in the last eight years. Since 9/11, Americans have seen their liberties taken away on a scale reminiscent of the McCarthy years during the 1950s. In the last year, government has taken advantage of this financial crisis to step into the breach and gained complete control over our banking system and auto industry. They are choosing the winners and losers in our society. They have chosen to save their rich ruling elite brethren who made billions by taking excessive criminal risk, and throw the middle class under the bus. The average American does not see the insidious method that The Party has used to gain overwhelming power over their lives. The U.S. government has used chaos, fear, and exaggeration to expand their control. The method used to gain control is simple. Government creates a problem, fans the flames to make the problem appear to be extremely dangerous, and then provide a solution that only government can implement.

The Government now spends $2.9 trillion per year, or 20% of GDP. With the proposed stimulus, government spending could breach 30% of GDP. In 1929, Government spending accounted for only 9% of GDP. In 2000, when President Bush ascended to power, spending on National Defense was 3.8% of GDP. Today it is 4.8%, having risen by 79% since 2000. In 1940, prior to WW II, National Defense accounted for 2.5% of GDP.

TRUTH	GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA
Source: www.warresisters.com	Source: CBO

By 2011, 30% of all the spending in our country will be done by BIG GOVERNMENT . When the costs of Homeland Security, veteran's benefits, interest on the debt related to military spending, spending on NASA and nuclear arms are included, National Defense accounts for 54% of Government spending. The Military Industrial Complex is calling the shots when it comes to how government operates. A question everyone needs to ask themselves:

Is it worth the loss of liberties and rights to allow the government to control and protect you?

Control of Information and History

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

Party slogan 1984

The complete lack of interest or care about American history by the vast majority of citizens, allows them to be misled by the State. The past is portrayed as being worse than today. The public is easily manipulated by the propaganda put out by the government and trumpeted by Big Media. As the Democrats make their misleading case for a $1 TRILLION pork filled stimulus package, they are telling the American public that FDR's New Deal spending in the 1930s worked to pull the country out of the Great Depression. That is a bold faced lie. The GDP of the U.S. was $104 billion in 1929. It did not exceed that level until 1941 as spending on National Defense jumped by 500%. Unemployment was still 19% in 1938, years after the New Deal programs had been instituted.

Economists Lowell E. Gallaway and Richard K. Vedder argue that the "Great Depression was very significantly prolonged in both its duration and its magnitude by the impact of New Deal programs. Without Social Security, work relief, unemployment insurance, mandatory minimum wages, and without special government-granted privileges for labor unions, business would have hired more workers and the unemployment rate during the New Deal years would have been 6.7% instead of 17.2%.” If the American public was not being misled, they would see that the next decade will be a government induced nightmare.

The Bush administration led by Dick Cheney, have been masters of manipulating the masses through lies, deception and half truths. I can easily envision Dick Cheney speaking the O'Brien dialogue from 1984.

There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face ... forever.

In the 1980s the United States provided Sadaam Hussein with the weapons and funding to fight a war with our mortal enemy, Iran. We provided Osama Bin Laden with weapons to defeat our other mortal enemy, the Soviet Union. We enabled these maniacs to gain power and prestige in the Muslim world. By the 1990's these two were our sworn enemies. The vast majority of Americans have no idea that we supplied these men with weapons and financial support, which ultimately led to thousands of American deaths. Alliances and enemies are interchangeable in the America of today, very much like Oceania in Orwell's 1984 .

Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which HE happened to remember. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had ALWAYS been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible. Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth Jackie Jura – www.orwelltoday.com

The U.S. government controls the flow of information that is used to stage-manage public opinion. Every statistic is massaged in a way to reflect the most positive view of the world. The gullible public and clueless Wall Street professionals accept these statistics with no questions asked. Government has learned that they can make bad news seem like a victory if they've built expectations for worse news. The Bush administration a few years ago forecasted a budget deficit of $400 billion and broke out champagne bottles when it finished at $300 billion. Only government bureaucrats could celebrate such a disastrous result. The Party attempts to keep the public in the dark, but the Resistance exists to shed light on their lies. Economist John Williams has been uncovering the government manipulation of facts and revealing the truth for many years.

Source: www.Shadowstats.com

The government reports an unemployment rate of 7.2% to the public. This figure does not include discouraged workers or marginally attached workers. A discouraged worker is one who is willing, able and ready to work but has given up looking because there are no jobs to be had.

This level is currently 13.8%. During the Clinton administration, The Party decided that if you were discouraged for more than a year, you no longer counted. If these people are included, the current unemployment rate is 17.8%. This is a comparable figure to the 25% rate from the Great Depression. If you use the non-seasonally adjusted change in employment figures, the U.S. lost 2.8 million jobs in 2008. In this figure is a made up number that is supposed to account for the number of jobs gained or lost by small business. This birth/death model adjustment added 904,000 phantom jobs in 2008. This is an insult to the intelligence of all thinking Americans.

Luckily for the government, there are very few thinking Americans who care about such things. Reality is that small businesses probably lost 1 million jobs, which would make the true loss 4 to 5 million jobs. The Party will report the true numbers two years from now in a footnote after the market closes on a Friday.

Source: www.Shadowstats.com

Inflation was 14% in 1980. Government data cleansers have methodically used gimmicks to reduce the reported rate of inflation. Alan Greenspan spearheaded the effort to save Social Security by saying that if the price of steak rose, people would substitute with hamburger so the price didn't really go up. If the price of hamburger rose, I'm sure a government robot would theorize that we would substitute with dog food. Further hedonistic “adjustments” were introduced to reduce reported inflation. Based on the methodology used in 1980, our current “deflationary” environment has led to a drop from 13% to 9%. Ask yourself whether your true everyday costs are up 1% or 9% in the last year.

When using the real inflation figures, you realize that we have been in a recession since 2000. This explains why the majority of Americans have fallen behind in the last eight years. The median household income was $50,557 in 2000. Using the government CPI adjusted figure for 2007, median household income had fallen to $50,233. If you used real inflation, the figure would be in the range of $47,000. Trickle down hasn't worked as advertised. Only the rich ruling elite surged ahead. The criminals on Wall Street partied like it was 1999, while the middle class fell further into oblivion. Now that the rich are losing their shirts in the market, we have a REAL crisis. All the government information manipulators are working around the clock to spin the story in a way that will ensure permanent government control of our economy and our lives.

Source: www.Shadowstats.com

Psychological Manipulation - Freedom is Slavery, War is Peace

Party Slogan 1984

The concept of doublethink as described in Orwell's 1984 is being used effectively by The Party in our current totalitarian state:

The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them....To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.

The Bush administration has used doublethink almost exclusively since 9/11. In both foreign affairs and the economy they have told deliberate lies, while ignoring inconvenient facts, in order to create an artificial reality. Karl Rove understood what journalist Walter Lippman noted in 1922 about the average American:

“Elites can manufacture consent because the average American is like a deaf spectator in the back row at a sporting event: He does not know what is happening, why it is happening, what ought to happen.”

The Bush/Cheney/Rove propaganda machine that convinced the majority of Americans to support a pre-emptive war against Iraq spun, scores of lies using partial facts and ignoring any fact that did not fit into their reality. Satellite pictures of mobile biological weapons labs, listening to informants (Curveball) that provided information they wanted to hear, ignoring information that didn't fit, and creating fantasy meetings between 9/11 hijackers and Iraqi agents were all spun to keep the lie one step ahead of the truth. Orwell was clearly speaking about people like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove when he wrote these words:

“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”

When Joe Wilson exposed the Bush administration lies about Iraq trying to obtain materials to build nuclear bomb from Africa, his wife was revealed as a CIA agent by Karl Rove and Dick Cheney as retribution for interfering with their reality. Only in the doublethink world created by Karl Rove could a man get shot three times, win three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star fighting in Vietnam, like John Kerry, and be declared a coward and traitor. In the meantime, his presidential opponent was protecting the skies of Texas during the Vietnam War.

Other examples of doublethink are as follows:

• Fighting for Peace – You cannot fight for peace. You fight to kill. George Carlin once said “Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity”. Fighting, or any form of conflict, is the very thing that stands in the way of peace. Fighting is the opposite of peace. This is reminiscent of the Ministry of Peace, which conducts perpetual war. The Iraq war wasn't about democracy, it was about oil. Orwell knew the reality of war.

“War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.”

• Pre - Emptive War – This concept is a warped rationale for attacking an opponent before they attack you. The Bush/Rove propaganda machine provided visions of mushroom clouds and weapons of mass destruction as their reason for attacking a country that had no nuclear or mass destruction weapons. Orwell described war in 1948:

“Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.”
The Iraq War was sold as an act of self defense against Sadaam Hussein.

• Peace-Keeping Forces - Peace keeping forces are those troops left in a country to help enforce a particular regime. The very fact that a military presence is required would suggest that there is no peace there to 'keep'. The U.S. soldiers that will be left in Iraq for eternity will be called peace keepers, as civil war simmers and bombs explode daily.
• Department of Defense - The Department of Defense bears striking resemblance to Orwell's 'Ministry of Peace' not only in the classic use of doublethink in the name but also in its actions. Both are primarily concerned with warfare and seem to spend the majority of their time and efforts dealing in attack and invasion as opposed to the implied defense or peace. Another country has not attacked the U.S. since 1941, but we have invaded other countries seven times since then.
• War on Terror – The definition of war according to Webster's is a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations. President Bush's war on terror is an open ended war against no nation or state in particular. It can never be won or lost. It is just a justification for never ending expenditures and restrictions on civil liberties. Orwell described the effect of nationalism:

“The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”

The war on terror concept allows Dick Cheney to think it is fine to torture prisoners and not give them a fair trial while spending years in Guantanamo. Don Rumsfeld thought it was OK to abuse prisoners at Abu Ghraib, until someone took a few pictures and ruined his party. The following quotes from Mr. Rumsfeld show his level of remorse:

“We're functioning in a — with peacetime restraints, with legal requirements in a wartime situation, in the information age, where people are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they had not even arrived in the Pentagon.”

“What has been charged so far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture. I'm not going to address the 'torture' word.”

He is more concerned with people breaking the law with cameras then about the torture being inflicted upon prisoners.

• Sacrificing Rights to Insure Freedom - This is the most dangerous aspect of doublethink in our society today. With Orwellian surveillance like listening in on private conversations and acts such as 'The Patriot Act', we are being forced to give up the very freedoms that 'The War on Terror' is alleged to protect, all in the name of freedom.
• Affirmative Action – This is the concept of discriminating against white people or men in an attempt to end discrimination. The best person for a job is not chosen because a quota for minorities must be met. This is to justify the years of discrimination against minorities and women. A new era of discrimination will surely solve a past era of discrimination. Orwell explains who could go along with such doublethink:

“There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.”
Corporations, government and educational institutions have instituted this reverse discrimination policy to relieve their perceived guilt for past offenses.

Language as Thought Control

“In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”

If George Orwell thought politics were like that in the 1940's, imagine what his thoughts would be if he were alive today. With 17,000 lobbyists, hundreds of PACs, thousands of PR leeches, and thousands of sleazy lawyers running Washington DC, orchestrating the actions of 550 elected officials, the game of politics has never been at such a low point. The best job in Washington is at the Ministry of Slogans & Acronyms. The use of acronyms fits into the Orwellian concept of Newspeak, “the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year.” The aim of The Party is make thoughtcrime or speech impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of freedom or rebellion. The dumbing down of concepts before they are sold to the American public is how this is accomplished today.

Shock and Awe – This was the Don Rumsfeld marketing phrase for the initial stage of the Iraq Invasion. The U.S. military launched 1,700 air attacks, including 504 cruise missiles on March 21, 2003. The U.S. military insisted that the strikes were surgical and we did everything to avoid civilian casualties. Reports of casualties ranged from 3,000 to 6,000. We inflicted devastation on par with 9/11 on innocent Muslim citizens. This was U.S. terrorism disguised as self defense. The U.S. military refers to this as collateral damage.

USA Patriot Act - Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. It is beyond comprehension that people in our government spend their time creating acronyms that disguise the fact that they are taking away civil liberties. These people must work in the Ministry of Truth, the masters of propaganda. The definition of Patriot according to Webster's is, one who loves his or her country and supports its authority and interests. By naming it the Patriot Act, anyone that voiced dissent, didn't love their country and was cast as a traitor. This act was rammed through Congress on October 26, 2001, only forty-five days after the 9/11 attack. Senators and Congressmen did not even read the law before passing it. The Party now has legal authority without a court order to wiretap your phone, read your emails, listen to cell phone conversations, search your mail, search your financial records, search your medical records, detain anyone who they suspect may commit terrorism, and indefinitely detain you based on secret evidence.

Terror Threat Levels – The threat levels are used by government officials to manipulate the public through the use of fear. The local law enforcement authorities have no idea what they are supposed to do when the level is changed. The public has no idea what the colors mean. The threat level was raised shortly before the 2004 Presidential election. No one ever explains why the level is raised or lowered.

Operation Iraqi Freedom – The Party always has a catchy patriotic slogan for the invasion of other countries. The “facts” sold to the gullible American public was that we needed to attack Iraq because they had Weapons of Mass Destruction that would eventually be used on American cities. False links to 9/11 and fake stories about nuclear weapons from Africa were the immediate reasons. Freedom and Democracy were not part of the equation. Only after we found no WMD did the invasion purpose become freeing Iraqis from the tyranny of Sadaam Hussein. If this was the real reason, then we should be invading North Korea, Russia, China and 50 other dictatorships throughout the world.

Community Reinvestment Act – This should be named the U.S. Taxpayer Gets Screwed Act. This law forced banks to make mortgage loans to poor people who should have been renting. This is another Democratic Party welfare state boondoggle. Bob McTeer, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank from 1991 to 2004, described the pressure on banks:

“There was a lot of pressure from Congress and generally everywhere to make homeownership affordable for poor and low-income people. Some mortgages were made that would not have ordinarily been made. When a bank made a decision to purchase mortgaged-backed securities, they would somehow determine if some of them were in zip codes covered by the CRA, and therefore they could get CRA credit.”

The result was subprime losses in the billions being foisted onto the backs of American taxpayers who made their mortgage payments. People who received these loans don't pay taxes.

Death Tax – A deliberate and carefully crafted word designed by the Republican Party in order to gain support for repealing the estate tax. Repealing the estate tax had no support among the American public. Manipulating the name of the tax generated support for repeal.

Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 – This brilliant piece of legislation signed in July 2008 was designed to instill confidence in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and keep subprime borrowers in their homes. It didn't help housing or the economy recover. It just poured more money down a rat hole. Fannie & Freddie collapsed under the weight of their incompetence and billions of losses in September 2008. They continue to make bad loans to undeserving borrowers, but now the losses flow directly to you and I, the American taxpayer.

Government Accountability – If this isn't the biggest oxymoron in history, I don't know what is. The Party has a tremendous interest in making sure that no one knows where our tax dollars are spent and whether they were spent wisely. A company has a bottom line and can calculate a return on the investments they make. No one can calculate a return on anything Government does. If every government project was listed on-line and citizens could see what was spent and for what purpose, the bureaucracy would come crashing down. Therefore, The Party will never allow light to be shone upon their deeds.

Department of Homeland Security - Its stated goal is to prepare for, prevent, and respond to domestic emergencies, particularly terrorism. This department most resembles Orwell's Ministry of Love, the agency responsible for the identification, monitoring, arrest and torture of dissidents, real or imagined. We aren't too far off from being monitored by telescreens. This department was created after 9/11. Its biggest claim to fame is the response to Hurricane Katrina, when 1,836 Americans died. Mismanagement, incompetence, lack of preparation, and slow response were the traits best exhibited by this agency that spends $50 billion per year and employs 208,000 bureaucrats. The department was blamed for up to $2 billion of waste and fraud after audits by the GAO revealed widespread misuse of government credit cards by DHS employees, with purchases including beer brewing kits, $70,000 of plastic dog booties that were later deemed unusable, boats purchased at double the retail price (many of which later could not be found), and iPods ostensibly for use in "data storage". It is pure luck that we have not experienced another terrorist attack. It is not due to the actions of this agency.

Troubled Asset Relief Program – This is also known as TARP or the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. It's lucky they put a date at the end, so we can have another in 2009 and another in 2010. A better name would be WARP - Worthless Asset Reprieve Program. This catchy little acronym described assets as if they had a bad day at the office. I'm troubled by the bullshit that keeps being rammed down my throat by politicians and bankers. Assets aren't troubled. The “assets” on the books of the biggest banks in the world are worthless. They are fictitious pieces of paper backed by nothing. This $700 billion bad banker bailout was supposed to buy these assets from the banks and allow the banks to lend. Henry Paulson lied to Congress and used the first $350 billion to buy preferred stock in the banks. It has been a miserable failure. The second $350 billion will be thrown at these same banks and nothing will happen. No one knows how the money is being spent and Bank of America and Citicorp are on the brink again. The U.S. banking system is insolvent and is being propped up by the American taxpayer.

Stable Prices – It seems the politicians running The Party these days like to pick and choose what they want from John Maynard Keynes. They prefer the goodies of increased government spending and ignore the other advice:

“The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.”

One of the key mandates of the Federal Reserve is price stability. This is a lie. The facts are that the Federal Reserve purposefully generates unending inflation which slowly lowers the standard of living of every American. The US dollar has lost 95% of its purchasing power since 1913 when the Federal Reserve was created by a Congress in the back pockets of bankers.

Foreclosure Mitigation – Barney Frank is demanding that the 2nd $350 billion of TARP funds be used for this purpose. It is a noble goal to reduce foreclosures. I'm sure Mr. Frank is a noble man. What this really means is that he would like to take your tax dollars and give them to people who bought houses with mortgages they could not afford. Rather than being properly kicked out of the house, you will make their mortgage payment for them, along with your own monthly mortgage payment. That is what mitigation means.

Quantitative Easing – This is a luminous term that 98% of Americans don't understand. It sounds so soothing. When Ben Bernanke uses the term in his speeches you can imagine blue birds singing on his shoulder. What it means is that the Federal Reserve will print as many dollars as it takes to generate inflation so that the country's enormous debt burden can be inflated away. Instead of one helicopter, picture thousands of B-52s dropping dollars over NYC. Japan tried the same thing in the 1990s with absolutely no success. Ben's motto is, when you earnestly believe you can compensate for a lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there's no end to what you can't do.

Economic Recovery Program – This is Barrack Obama's first contribution to Newspeak. His shrewd economic team didn't like the sound of stimulus program. It sounded too much like Bush's rebate checks, which didn't work. Of course, one of the key elements of this plan is a $500 rebate per person. The term investment is used quite often in this plan. Investment in infrastructure, education, green initiatives, and energy are the backbone of the plan. Ask yourself why we have 156,000 structurally deficient bridges, crumbling water pipes, antiquated power grid, urban decay, and dangerous schools. It is because we have relied on the Government to be responsible for these things with taxes we have already paid. Now we are supposed to support a program with future tax dollars to do what Government should have done in the first place. When you are stuck in a traffic jam next year and see six union construction workers standing on the side of the road all making $50 an hour watching one guy with a jack hammer working, know that your tax dollars have been spent wisely.

Love Big Brother or Make a Stand Now
In the end, Winston Smith, the rebel in Orwell's 1984, is brought to Room 101 and O'Brien threatens to let rats chew his face off if he doesn't pledge his love for Big Brother. He cracks and learns to Love Big Brother. We are nearing a point of no return in this country. Government is acquiring more power and the citizens are losing their liberty and freedom. We can either learn to love it or make a stand against it now.

Ayn Rand in her book Atlas Shrugged describes how we have slowly transformed our country into Orwell's Oceania:

"Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism."

Orwell lived during a time of unadulterated evil, with madmen like Hitler and Stalin using the Big Lie and military brutality to keep their populations under their jackboot. Orwell saw a bleak future:

“The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history. During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

We are living in times of universal deceit. Your government is lying to you, the media is lying to you, organized religion is lying to you and corporations are lying to you. Most Americans are oblivious to the lies or simply don't care. If you believe that bigger government will solve our troubles, borrowing more money will solve the quandary of too much debt, giving your tax dollars to the worst run banks and corporations is good policy, letting government choose the winners and losers in banking, autos, and energy is a good scheme, debasing the currency is a fine idea and allowing government agencies to monitor your conversations and emails makes you safer, then learn to Love Big Brother.

I, on the other hand, will not sit idly by while this country goes into permanent decline. I prefer liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of thought, free markets, and freedom to live my life as I wish. Government is too big, too powerful, and too regulating. New regulation is the current mantra from the Democrats. We had plenty of regulations. Government is just not capable of enforcing the laws that already exist. More laws will not make government more competent. Much of what I write, people do not want to hear. Orwell understood what liberty meant.

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

I'm angry with what has been going on in this country for the last eight years. I believe there are millions of other frustrated angry Americans who are tired of having this country dominated by crooked politicians in the back pocket of corporate fascists from the Defense Industry, Financial Industry, and Healthcare Industry. Only a few people within Government are as angry and ready to fight for liberty. Ron Paul is able to channel that anger:

“The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom? Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for? Do we care that average Americans are being looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care? When the chips are down, will we stand up and fight, even if it means standing up against every stripe of fashionable opinion in politics and the media? Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be.”

Together we stand, divided we fail. Get involved with organizations that tell the truth about our economic and political crisis. David Walker , Ross Perot and Ron Paul are those people.

By James Quinn

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NWO Conspiracy Bullshit

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Icke - Time For The Truth About Israel

The David Icke Newsletter

The Thought Censors Don't Like It? Tough

So, yet again, the people of the virtual-concentration camp, known officially as 'Gaza', are being bombarded from the sky by the bully-boys of Tel Aviv.

State-of-the art Israeli jets, paid for by the United States, bomb civilian targets in this tragic, poverty-stricken wasteland which acts as a holding camp for the human beings the Israeli government would rather be dead. Waiting in the wings are Israeli tanks preparing for a possible ground invasion of Gaza, again paid for by the United States.

The world watches as a nation of people, the Palestinians, are systematically crushed and destroyed by the tyrants who call the shots in Israel on behalf of that country's real power structure ­ the House of Rothschild.

And, taxpayers of America (and elsewhere), you are paying for this calculated slaughter.

The Palestinian 'territories' of Gaza and the West Bank

American aid to Israel accounts for something like a third of all US overseas aid when Israel is home to just .001 per cent of the global population and has one of the highest incomes per head in the world. This is even without all the 'private' donations from US corporations and individuals which are tax-deductible even when given to the Israeli military, unlike any other foreign power.

According to 2007 figures, the United States government gave more than $6.8 million to wealthy Israel every day while to the desperate and devastated Palestinians of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank they gave just $300,000.

US military 'aid' to Israel increased by more than a quarter to an average $3 billion a year in 2007 ­ a figure guaranteed for ten years. This and other support makes Israel the biggest recipient of United States foreign military funding since the Second World War.

The United States is also Israel's biggest supplier of fighter planes, weapons and other military technology. As a result, Israel has the world's largest F-16 fleet outside the 'United States Air Force' US Air Force. In their book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt write:

'Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing the amounts provided to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct U.S. economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War ll. Total direct U.S. aid to Israel amounts to well over $140 billion in 2003 dollars.

Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is roughly one-fifth of America's entire foreign aid budget. In per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct subsidy worth about $500 per year. This largesse is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain.'

Why do they do this? Because the House of Rothschild controls Israel and the House of Rothschild controls the political system of the United States. The network that links the two is called 'Zionism', a Rothschild creation ­ just like Israel itself.

The might of this Zionist cabal spanning Israel, the United States, Europe and beyond is yet again, like the playground bully that it is, attacking the little kid in the calipers ­ the people of Gaza.

At the time of writing the death toll is 430 Palestinian men, women and children with more than 2,000 injured. They are bombing the unarmed innocent knowing there will be no credible response ­ the way all bullies operate. Oh, brave men of Israel; oh how Yahweh would be so proud:

'When the LORD your God hands these nations over to you and you conquer them, you must completely destroy them. Make no treaties with them and show them no mercy.'

Deuteronomy 7:1-4

What we are seeing in Gaza, and have seen so many times, both there and in the Lebanon, is merciless Old Testament slaughter: cold, calculated, heartless slaughter.

'So they sent twelve thousand warriors to Jabesh-gilead with orders to kill everyone there, including women and children. 'This is what you are to do,' they said. 'Completely destroy all the males and every woman who is not a virgin'.'

Judges 21:10-24

'Then I heard the LORD say to the other men, 'Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all ­ old and young, girls and women and little children. But do not touch anyone with the mark. Begin your task right here at the Temple'.'

Ezekiel 9:5-7

'So they began by killing the seventy leaders. 'Defile the Temple!' the LORD commanded. 'Fill its courtyards with the bodies of those you kill! Go!' So they went throughout the city and did as they were told.'

Ezekiel 9:5-7

The parallels are endless between the bloodthirsty 'God' of the Old Testament and the actions of the heartless, soulless, Artificial Intelligence that controls Israel, most notably the biological robots of the House of Rothschild who thus have no soul, no empathy, no more mercy for the consequences of their actions than a desktop computer.

Imagine if Iran or anyone else outside Israel and the United States (both Rothschild assets) was doing what the Israeli military is doing in Gaza. There would be global condemnation, not least from Israel and the United States, resolutions passed in the UN Security Council and talk of the need for sanctions or military intervention to 'save the innocent'.

But when Israel does it we have vacuous calls for a truce, an end to the violence while 'understanding Israel's position', and, in terms of soon-to-be President 'Change' Obama, silence. It's all a fraction of what others would face because Israel is a wholly-owned asset of the Rothschilds and so is not subject to the same rules as anyone else. As former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said:

'Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial.'

And Prime Minister Golda Meir betrayed the same Zionist arrogance:

'This country exists as the fulfilment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy.'

Ah, it's all in the Old Testament? Gotcha, right, well do as you like then.

The 'Jewish homeland' was from the start a Rothschild fiefdom orchestrated through the global secret society network of interbreeding families known as the Illuminati.




During the Israeli military attacks on the Lebanon in 2006, the Israeli writer, Barry Chamish, told of a meeting with Evelyn Rothschild's grandson, who abandoned the family to be a Mormon (so actually he didn't, even if he thought he did).

Chamish said he learned that just seven families were enjoying the 'fruits of the war' with the Lebanon. The grandson had said of the Rothschilds: 'They created Israel as their personal toy. It makes them richer and gives them more control. It's not going to be destroyed.'

The Rothschilds funded the early European settlers in Israel, manipulated events in Germany that led to the horrific treatment of Jewish people and others, and then used that as the excuse to reach their long-term goal - a Rothschild-Illuminati stronghold in Palestine using the Jewish population as fodder to be used and abused as necessary.

They called their plan 'Zionism'. This term is often used as a synonym for Jewish people when it is actually a political movement devised and promoted through the House of Rothschild and opposed by many Jews.



Poster for the Irgun terrorist group

The Israeli bully-boys spend most of their time condemning the terrorism of others and yet their very State was created through terrorism of the most grotesque kind via groups like Irgun and the Stern Gang, which bombed and terrorised Israel into being.

Among the leading lights in these and other terrorist groups were Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir and Ariel Sharon, butchers who became Israeli Prime Ministers and had the nerve to condemn Arab terrorism. And to this day the butchery goes on with the goal of destroying the Palestinian people.

After the Rothschild-controlled Zionist terrorists had bombed the State of Israel into existence in 1948, an estimated 800,000 Palestinians were made refugees and fled what had been their own country. Their descendents are said to number some four million.

And the world simply looked on ­ just as it does to this day ­ because Israel is a law unto itself and so terms like justice, fairness, decency and mercy do not apply.

Palestinian families fleeing the newly-imposed Israel after their country was occupied by Zionist terrorism in 1948.

The idea was always to destroy the Palestinian people step-by-step long before Israel was even created. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which the Rothschild-controlled British government supported the establishment of a 'Jewish' homeland in Palestine, said that 'nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine'.

But the Rothschild sidekick Chaim Weizmann would later say: 'With regard to the Arab question - the British told us that there are several hundred thousand Negroes there but this is a matter of no consequence'. Nor have they been ever since and the goal of destroying them is closer today than ever before.

The first Prime Minister of Israel, yet another terrorist called David Ben-Gurion, made no secret of this fact within his inner circle. Former Israel Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, said in an uncensored version of his memoirs, published in the New York Times on 23 October 23rd, 1979:

'We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question - What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!''

The current bombing campaign against the Gaza Palestinians is just the latest step to that end. They have forced Palestinians into a Gaza Strip that is little more than a massive concentration camp in which they control all that goes in and out, people or supplies of food, medicines and other essentials.

When the Israelis close the border posts, that's it, the Palestinians are trapped and at the mercy of the soulless and heartless that control the Tel Aviv government and military under Rothschild direction. And those border posts are closed now while Israel bombs the crap out of Gaza, despite calls for humanitarian aid to be allowed through.

My theory is that the Israeli government can't hear those calls because their computer brains can't compute the term 'humanitarian' or, for that matter, 'aid', unless it is followed by the words 'for Israel from the United States'. Then it's loud and clear.

One writer recently described conditions in Gaza:

' Israel nails shut the coffin that is Gaza under a siege that has lasted nearly three years, steadily intensifying so that malnutrition rates rival those of sub-Saharan Africa, sewage runs raw in the streets and pollutes the ocean, homes are still being bulldozed to super-add collective punishment upon collective punishment; men, women and children are still being sniped at and killed; children are deafened by continuing sonic booms, the vast majority of them suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome, and many of that majority have no ambition other than becoming 'martyrs' '

How can anyone inflict such a lack of mercy on an entire people? The question can only be answered when we understand that Zionist extremists really do believe they are God's Chosen People and that therefore the Palestinians are little more than cattle.

The Israel Prime Minister and terrorist, Menachem Begin, described the Palestinians in a speech to the Israeli parliament as 'beasts walking on two legs'. Another Prime Minister and terrorist, Yitzhak Shamir, told Jewish settlers in 1988 that the Palestinians 'would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls.'

Prime Minister and terrorist, Ariel Sharon, then Israeli Foreign Minister, confirmed in 1998 what the plan really was for the Palestinians:

'It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialisation, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.'

The plan is to kill or drive out the Palestinian people using poverty, hunger and war and so allow the Zionists to expand into 'Greater Israel'. That plan is now well advanced.

In early 2008, the United Nations' leading humanitarian affairs official said he was 'shocked' by the 'grim and miserable' conditions in Gaza. Undersecretary General John Holmes blamed this on Israel closing the border crossings and so limiting the supply of food and other materials ­ just as they are doing today.

He said: 'All this makes for a grim human and humanitarian situation here in Gaza, which means that people are not able to live with the basic dignity to which they are entitled'.

But they are just 'beasts walking on two legs', right?

Richard Falk, the UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on the occupied territories, has also condemned Israel for its actions in Gaza. He is Jewish and therefore much more dangerous to the Israel government because he can't be dismissed as the old favourite 'anti-Semitic'. Or maybe he is a 'self-hater', the tag given by these sick people to those Jews who speak out against Israel.

Falk's punishment for daring to criticise the Promised Land as a UN official was to be held for 20 hours and then denied entry to the country and so he is prevented from doing his job of reporting on conditions for the Palestinian people during the current air attacks.

His entry was denied in mid-December ­ perfect timing not to be there for the latest bombing that they knew was coming. Click here for an interview with Richard Falk

The Bush administration for the last eight years has been dominated by the Neo-conservative, or 'Neocon', network which is, itself, dominated by US/Israeli duel citizens and/or Zionists like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearle, Dov Zackheim, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Elliot Abrams, Douglas Feith, John Bolton, Robert B Zoellick, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others. The neo-con godfather is the late Leo Strauss, a German-born Jewish 'philosopher', who believed that people must be governed by a 'pious elite'.

But surely those days of Zionist dominance are over because 'Mr. Change' is coming to 'power' now. Er, if only. Barack Obama has packed his 'new' administration with Zionists like Rahm Emanuel, his White House Chief of Staff.

Emanuels' father, Benjamin, was a member of the Irgun terrorist group in Palestine that I mentioned earlier and we can clearly expect the Obama administration to be balanced and fair on its Israel/Palestinian policy. No wonder Obama has kept quiet on the Israeli bombing of Gaza.




Obama speaks out on Gaza crisis: 'Hey, I got nothin' to say, I got the chance of a par here ask my Chief of Staff, he's a rabid Zionist and his dad helped bomb Israel into existence. He'll know what's goin' on.'

The Obama government is going to be slavishly pro-Israel because he needed the sanction of the truly massive Zionist lobby in the United States to secure the presidency. His vice-president, Joe Biden, is a long-time bag-carrier for Israel. He said on Israeli television: 'I am a Zionist - you don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist'. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is another Israel puppetess who pledged to 'obliterate' Iran if it launched a nuclear attack on God's chosen country.

Would she say she would obliterate Israel if it launched a nuclear attack on Iran? No way.

The Palestinians have never had a chance because the table is weighted, the game is rigged and it always has been. At the time of the First World War, the Rothschild-controlled British government told the Palestine Arabs that if they fought the Ottoman Turks and forced them to leave Palestine and other lands they would be rewarded with an independent Palestine.

The Palestinian Arabs agreed and with support from the British through HYPERLINK '<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieutenant_Colonel>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieutenant_Colonel' \o 'Lieutenant Colonel' Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence ­ 'Lawrence of Arabia' ­ the Ottoman Empire was defeated. But their reward was not independence. It was first rule by a British 'Mandate' and then occupation by Zionist Israel.

The Arabs were lied to, as Lawrence later admitted, and they have been lied to ever since. All these 'road maps' and 'peace processes' are always designed to lead nowhere. They are just holding positions to maintain the status quo until the Palestinians are basically no more.

The Israelis always say they are killing people in 'retaliation' for attacks by the Palestinian group, Hamas, which officially controls the Gaza 'authority', although control is hardly the word with Israel deciding what and who goes in and out.

Hamas operatives are firing low-tech rockets that have so far killed four people. Terrible, yes, and it should not be happening. I have no brief for Hamas, which is another tyranny in its own way, but ask yourself this: What would you do if you were faced with the situation the Palestinians are in after sixty years of oppression and persecution while the world does nothing?

If you remove the injustice, you remove the motivation for a violent response to that injustice. Put people in a position where they either accept their pathetic plight or open fire and some are bound to choose the latter.

But instead of tackling the root cause, injustice, Israel responds with a state-of-the-art bombardment that kills hundreds and injures thousands in a few days, at least 90% of which are men, women and children who have nothing whatsoever to do with the rocket attacks. In 2007, 25 Palestinians were killed for every Israeli. That's more than just 'protecting yourself'.

As Jewish UN representative, Richard Falk, said a few days ago:

'The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war ...

Those violations include:

· Collective punishment: The entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.

· Targeting civilians: The airstrikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.

· Disproportionate military response: The airstrikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza's elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.'

This savagery towards Palestinians has been going on since the Zionist terror groups began their campaign of violence to secure the State of Israel and the scale of this ongoing evil has often been suppressed by the fear of being called 'anti-Semitic'.

The Rothschild dynasty has created a vast network of 'anti-hate' groups, like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and so many others, to label as 'anti-Semitic' or 'racist' anyone who dares to expose or condemn Israel or its networks of manipulation within the United States and elsewhere.

Politicians (though all but are a few are terrified or rewarded into silence), university professors, people like me, and anyone with any kind of public stage, are immediately condemned by the ADL and smeared as 'racist' with support from the Robot Radicals of the Robot 'Left' if they expose Israel or anyone who happens to be Jewish.

The irony of those claiming to be the chosen people and above all others accusing anyone else of racism boggles the bloody mind.

Jewish people who challenge the tyranny, like the superb Norman Finkelstein, are dubbed 'self-haters' and often lose their jobs and livelihoods as a result. The Rothschild 'anti-hate' groups put any Big Brother to shame.

But we can't ­ and MUST NOT ­ stay silent on the plight of the Palestinians because we fear the consequences for ourselves. What are we, mice??

This is not about racism; it is about fascism and the daily onslaught against a helpless and tragic people. I don't give a shit what the ADL thinks about what I say, nor those on the 'Left' who parrot its propaganda like the juveniles that they are.

It needs saying and therefore someone needs to say it.

And, by the way, those that are running the Zionist agenda, which is part of much bigger global agenda in league with the Illuminati families, don't give a damn for Jewish people in general. They, too, are just an expendable irrelevance to the greater goal.

As the first Israeli Prime Minister, the terrorist, David Ben-Gurion, said:

'If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.'

What kind of sick mind does it take to say that? The kind that has run Israel since 1948 would appear to be the answer.

We need to drop the ludicrous, childish, labels of Jew and Gentile and Muslim and all this illusory crap and come together in the name of peace and justice for all. There is not a Jewish injustice or a Palestinian injustice, there is simply injustice.

Justice for one and no justice for another is 'justice' for no-one. For justice has no meaning unless it applies to all, and it will never apply to the Palestinians while the world stays silent and looks the other way."
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Holocaust Denied - by John Pilger

Holocaust Denied - by John Pilger: "The lying silence of those who know
by John Pilger

'When the truth is replaced by silence,' the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, 'the silence is a lie.' It may appear the silence is broken on Gaza. The cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green, together with boxes containing their dismembered parents and the cries of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea, can be viewed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC. But Russia's incorrigible poet was not referring to the ephemeral we call news; he was asking why those who knew the why never spoke it and so denied it. Among the Anglo-American intelligentsia, this is especially striking. It is they who hold the keys to the great storehouses of knowledge: the historiographies and archives that lead us to the why.

They know that the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas or, absurdly, 'Israel's right to exist.' They know the opposite to be true: that Palestine's right to exist was canceled 61 years ago and the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. They know, for example, that the infamous 'Plan D' resulted in the murderous depopulation of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Jewish army) and that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred to in official records as 'ethnic cleansing.' Arriving at a scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon, 'What shall we do with the Arabs?' Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, 'made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, ‘Expel them'. The order to expel an entire population 'without attention to age' was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister promoted by the world's most efficient propaganda as a peacemaker. The terrible irony of this was addressed only in passing, such as when the Mapan Party co-leader Meir Ya'ari noted 'how easily' Israel's leaders spoke of how it was 'possible and permissible to take women, children and old men and to fill the roads with them because such is the imperative of strategy … who remembers who used this means against our people during the [Second World] war … we are appalled.'

Every subsequent 'war' Israel has waged has had the same objective: the expulsion of the native people and the theft of more and more land. The lie of David and Goliath, of perennial victim, reached its apogee in 1967 when the propaganda became a righteous fury that claimed the Arab states had struck first. Since then, mostly Jewish truth-tellers such as Avi Schlaim, Noam Chomsky, the late Tanya Reinhart, Neve Gordon, Tom Segev, Yuri Avnery, Ilan Pappe and Norman Finklestein have dispatched this and other myths and revealed a state shorn of the humane traditions of Judaism, whose unrelenting militarism is the sum of an expansionist, lawless and racist ideology called zionism. 'It seems,' wrote the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe on 2 January, 'that even the most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as desperate events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and not associated with any ideology or system … Very much as the apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government, this ideology – in its most consensual and simplistic variety – has allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanize the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period, from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern [of genocide].'

In Gaza, the enforced starvation and denial of humanitarian aid, the piracy of life-giving resources such as fuel and water, the denial of medicines and treatment, the systematic destruction of infrastructure and the killing and maiming of the civilian population, 50 per cent of whom are children, meet the international standard of the Genocide Convention. 'Is it an irresponsible overstatement,' asked Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and international law authority at Princeton University, 'to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not.'

In describing a 'holocaust-in-the making,' Falk was alluding to the Nazis' establishment of Jewish ghettos in Poland. For one month in 1943, the captive Polish Jews led by Mordechaj Anielewiz fought off the German army and the SS, but their resistance was finally crushed and the Nazis exacted their final revenge. Falk is also a Jew. Today's holocaust-in-the-making, which began with Ben-Gurion's Plan D, is in its final stages. The difference today is that it is a joint US-Israeli project. The F-16 jet fighters, the 250-pound 'smart' GBU-39 bombs supplied on the eve of the attack on Gaza, having been approved by a Congress dominated by the Democratic Party, plus the annual $2.4 billion in war-making 'aid,' give Washington de facto control. It beggars belief that President-elect Obama was not informed. Outspoken on Russia's war in Georgia and the terrorism in Mumbai, Obama's silence on Palestine marks his approval, which is to be expected, given his obsequiousness to the Tel Aviv regime and its lobbyists during the presidential campaign and his appointment of Zionists as his secretary of state, chief of staff and principal Middle East advisers. When Aretha Franklin sings 'Think,' her wonderful 1960s anthem to freedom, at Obama's inauguration on 21 January, I trust someone with the brave heart of Muntadar al-Zaidi, the shoe-thrower, will shout: 'Gaza!'

The asymmetry of conquest and terror is clear. Plan D is now 'Operation Cast Lead,' which is the unfinished 'Operation Justified Vengeance.' The latter was launched by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 when, with Bush's approval, he used F-16s against Palestinian towns and villages for the first time. In the same year, the authoritative Jane's Foreign Report disclosed that the Blair government had given Israel the 'green light' to attack the West Bank after it was shown Israel's secret designs for a bloodbath. It was typical of New Labor Party's enduring, cringing complicity in Palestine's agony. However, the 2001 Israeli plan, reported Jane's, needed the 'trigger' of a suicide bombing which would cause 'numerous deaths and injuries [because] the 'revenge' factor is crucial.' This would 'motivate Israeli soldiers to demolish the Palestinians.' What alarmed Sharon and the author of the plan, General Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Chief of Staff, was a secret agreement between Yasser Arafat and Hamas to ban suicide attacks. On 23 November, 2001, Israeli agents assassinated the Hamas leader, Mahmud Abu Hunud, and got their 'trigger'; the suicide attacks resumed in response to his killing.

Something uncannily similar happened on 5 November last, when Israeli special forces attacked Gaza, killing six people. Once again, they got their propaganda 'trigger.' A ceasefire initiated and sustained by the Hamas government – which had imprisoned its violators – was shattered by the Israeli attack and homemade rockets were fired into what used to be Palestine before its Arab occupants were 'cleansed.' The On 23 December, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire, but Israel's charade was such that its all-out assault on Gaza had been planned six months earlier, according to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz.

Behind this sordid game is the 'Dagan Plan,' named after General Meir Dagan, who served with Sharon in his bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Now head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organization, Dagan is the author of a 'solution' that has seen the imprisonment of Palestinians behind a ghetto wall snaking across the West Bank and in Gaza, effectively a concentration camp. The establishment of a quisling government in Ramallah under Mohammed Abbas is Dagan's achievement, together with a hasbara (propaganda) campaign relayed through a mostly supine, if intimidated western media, notably in America, that says Hamas is a terrorist organization devoted to Israel's destruction and to 'blame' for the massacres and siege of its own people over two generations, long before its creation. 'We have never had it so good,' said the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir in 2006. 'The hasbara effort is a well-oiled machine.' In fact, Hamas's real threat is its example as the Arab world's only democratically elected government, drawing its popularity from its resistance to the Palestinians' oppressor and tormentor. This was demonstrated when Hamas foiled a CIA coup in 2007, an event ordained in the western media as 'Hamas's seizure of power.' Likewise, Hamas is never described as a government, let alone democratic. Neither is its proposal of a ten-year truce as a historic recognition of the 'reality' of Israel and support for a two-state solution with just one condition: that the Israelis obey international law and end their illegal occupation beyond the 1967 borders. As every annual vote in the UN General Assembly demonstrates, 99 per cent of humanity concurs. On 4 January, the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto, described the Israeli attack on Gaza as a 'monstrosity.'

When the monstrosity is done and the people of Gaza are even more stricken, the Dagan Plan foresees what Sharon called a '1948-style solution' – the destruction of all Palestinian leadership and authority followed by mass expulsions into smaller and smaller 'cantonments' and perhaps finally into Jordan. This demolition of institutional and educational life in Gaza is designed to produce, wrote Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian exile in Britain, 'a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed … Look to the Iraq of today: that is what [Sharon] had in store for us, and he has nearly achieved it.'

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi is an American writer on Palestine. She has a Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father. 'Holocaust denial is anti-Semitic,' she wrote on 31 December. 'But I'm not talking about World War Two, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad (the president of Iran) or Ashkenazi Jews. What I'm referring to is the holocaust we are all witnessing and responsible for in Gaza today and in Palestine over the past 60 years … Since Arabs are Semites, US-Israeli policy doesn't get more anti-Semitic than this.' She quoted Rachel Corrie, the young American who went to Palestine to defend Palestinians and was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer. 'I am in the midst of a genocide,' wrote Corrie, 'which I am also indirectly supporting and for which my government is largely responsible.'

Reading the words of both, I am struck by the use of 'responsibility.' Breaking the lie of silence is not an esoteric abstraction but an urgent responsibility that falls to those with the privilege of a platform. With the BBC cowed, so too is much of journalism, merely allowing vigorous debate within unmovable invisible boundaries, ever fearful of the smear of anti-Semitism. The unreported news, meanwhile, is that the death toll in Gaza is the equivalent of 18,000 dead in Britain. Imagine, if you can.

Then there are the academics, the deans and teachers and researchers. Why are they silent as they watch a university bombed and hear the Association of University Teachers in Gaza plea for help? Are British universities now, as Terry Eagleton believes, no more than 'intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries'?

Then there are the writers. In the dark year of 1939, the Third Writers' Congress was held at Carnegie Hall in New York and the likes of Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein sent messages and spoke up to ensure the lie of silence was broken. By one account, 3,500 jammed the auditorium and a thousand were turned away. Today, this mighty voice of realism and morality is said to be obsolete; the literary review pages affect an ironic hauteur of irrelevance; false symbolism is all. As for the readers, their moral and political imagination is to be pacified, not primed. The anti-Muslim Martin Amis expressed this well in Visiting Mrs. Nabokov: 'The dominance of the self is not a flaw, it is an evolutionary characteristic; it is just how things are.'

If that is how things are, we are diminished as a civilized society. For what happens in Gaza is the defining moment of our time, which either grants the impunity of war criminals the immunity of our silence, while we contort our own intellect and morality, or gives us the power to speak out. For the moment I prefer my own memory of Gaza: of the people's courage and resistance and their 'luminous humanity,' as Karma Nabulsi put it. On my last trip there, I was rewarded with a spectacle of Palestinian flags fluttering in unlikely places. It was dusk and children had done this. No one told them to do it. They made flagpoles out of sticks tied together, and a few of them climbed on to a wall and held the flag between them, some silently, others crying out. They do this every day when they know foreigners are leaving, believing the world will not forget them."
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Top 5 Lies about Israel's Assault on Gaza

Israel's violation of the cease-fire predictably resulted in retaliation from militants in Gaza who fired rockets into Israel in response. The increased barrage of rocket fire at the end of December is being used as justification for the continued Israeli bombardment, but is a direct response to the Israeli attacks, notes Jeremy Hammond.


Lie #1: Israel is only targeting legitimate military sites and is seeking to protect innocent lives. Israel never targets civilians.

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated pieces of property in the world. The presence of militants within a civilian population does not, under international law, deprive that population of their protected status, and hence any assault upon that population under the guise of targeting militants is, in fact, a war crime.

Moreover, the people Israel claims are legitimate targets are members of Hamas, which Israel says is a terrorist organization. Hamas has been responsible for firing rockets into Israel. These rockets are extremely inaccurate and thus, even if Hamas intended to hit military targets within Israel, are indiscriminate by nature. When rockets from Gaza kill Israeli civilians, it is a war crime.

Hamas has a military wing. However, it is not entirely a military organization, but a political one. Members of Hamas are the democratically elected representatives of the Palestinian people. Dozens of these elected leaders have been kidnapped and held in Israeli prisons without charge. Others have been targeted for assassination, such as Nizar Rayan, a top Hamas official. To kill Rayan, Israel targeted a residential apartment building. The strike not only killed Rayan but two of his wives and four of his children, along with six others. There is no justification for such an attack under international law. This was a war crime.

Other of Israel's bombardment with protected status under international law have included a mosque, a prison, police stations, and a university, in addition to residential buildings.

Moreover, Israel has long held Gaza under siege, allowing only the most minimal amounts of humanitarian supplies to enter. Israel is bombing and killing Palestinian civilians. Countless more have been wounded, and cannot receive medical attention. Hospitals running on generators have little or no fuel. Doctors have no proper equipment or medical supplies to treat the injured. These people, too, are the victims of Israeli policies targeted not at Hamas or legitimate military targets, but directly designed to punish the civilian population.

Lie #2) Hamas violated the cease-fire. The Israeli bombardment is a response to Palestinian rocket fire and is designed to end such rocket attacks.

Israel never observed the cease-fire to begin with. From the beginning, it announced a "special security zone" within the Gaza Strip and announced that Palestinians who enter this zone will be fired upon. In other words, Israel announced its intention that Israeli soldiers would shoot at farmers and other individuals attempting to reach their own land in direct violation of not only the cease-fire but international law.

Despite shooting incidents, including ones resulting in Palestinians getting injured, Hamas still held to the cease-fire from the time it went into effect on June 19 until Israel effectively ended the truce on November 4 by launching an airstrike into Gaza that killed five and injured several others.

Israel's violation of the cease-fire predictably resulted in retaliation from militants in Gaza who fired rockets into Israel in response. The increased barrage of rocket fire at the end of December is being used as justification for the continued Israeli bombardment, but is a direct response to the Israeli attacks.

Israel's actions, including its violation of the cease-fire, predictably resulted in an escalation of rocket attacks against its own population.

Lie #3) Hamas is using human shields, a war crime.

There has been no evidence that Hamas has used human shields. The fact is, as previously noted, Gaza is a small piece of property that is densely populated. Israel engages in indiscriminate warfare such as the assassination of Nizar Rayan, in which members of his family were also murdered. It is victims like his dead children that Israel defines as "human shields" in its propaganda. There is no legitimacy for this interpretation under international law. In circumstances such as these, Hamas is not using human shields, Israel is committing war crimes in violation of the Geneva Conventions and other applicable international law.

Lie #4) Arab nations have not condemned Israel's actions because they understand Israel's justification for its assault.

The populations of those Arab countries are outraged at Israel's actions and at their own governments for not condemning Israel's assault and acting to end the violence. Simply stated, the Arab governments do not represent their respective Arab populations. The populations of the Arab nations have staged mass protests in opposition to not only Israel's actions but also the inaction of their own governments and what they view as either complacency or complicity in Israel's crimes.

Moreover, the refusal of Arab nations to take action to come to the aid of the Palestinians is not because they agree with Israel's actions, but because they are submissive to the will of the US, which fully supports Israel. Egypt, for instance, which refused to open the border to allow Palestinians wounded in the attacks to get medical treatment in Egyptian hospitals, is heavily dependent upon US aid, and is being widely criticized within the population of the Arab countries for what is viewed as an absolute betrayal of the Gaza Palestinians.

Even Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been regarded as a traitor to his own people for blaming Hamas for the suffering of the people of Gaza. Palestinians are also well aware of Abbas' past perceived betrayals in conniving with Israel and the US to sideline the democratically elected Hamas government, culminating in a counter-coup by Hamas in which it expelled Fatah (the military wing of Abbas' Palestine Authority) from the Gaza Strip. While his apparent goal was to weaken Hamas and strengthen his own position, the Palestinians and other Arabs in the Middle East are so outraged at Abbas that it is unlikely he will be able to govern effectively.

Lie #5) Israel is not responsible for civilian deaths because it warned the Palestinians of Gaza to flee areas that might be targeted.

Israel claims it sent radio and telephone text messages to residents of Gaza warning them to flee from the coming bombardment. But the people of Gaza have nowhere to flee to. They are trapped within the Gaza Strip. It is by Israeli design that they cannot escape across the border. It is by Israeli design that they have no food, water, or fuel by which to survive. It is by Israeli design that hospitals in Gaza have no electricity and few medical supplies with which to treat the injured and save lives. And Israel has bombed vast areas of Gaza, targeting civilian infrastructure and other sites with protected status under international law. No place is safe within the Gaza Strip.

Jeremy R. Hammond is the editor of Foreign Policy Journal (www.foreignpolicyjournal.com), a website dedicated to providing news, critical analysis, and opinion commentary on US foreign policy from outside of the standard framework offered by government officials and the mainstream corporate media, particularly with regard to the "war on terrorism" and events in the Middle East. He has also written for numerous other online publications. Contact him at: jeremy@foreignpolicyjournal.com. This article appeared in the PalestineChronicle.com.

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=29556


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