Mark Tran

London Guardian / January 30, 2007

More than 1,000 civilians were killed in Afghanistan last year, mostly in attacks by the Taliban and other anti-government forces, a human rights group said today.

In all, more than 4,400 Afghans died as a result of the war - twice as many as in 2005 and more than in any other year since the Taliban fell in 2001, according to a report by New York-based Human Rights Watch.

The report coincided with a two-day international meeting in Berlin to assess the implementation of the Afghanistan compact. The compact, launched last year, sets out benchmarks on improving human rights and basic security in the country.

“Afghanistan hasn’t really met any of the benchmarks, particularly those addressing the wellbeing of the Afghan people,” Sam Zarifi, the Asia research director at Human Rights Watch, said.

“Kabul and its international backers have made little progress in providing basic needs like security, food, electricity, water and healthcare.”

Human Rights Watch said the international security effort in Afghanistan was being hampered by inadequate resources and urged the US, the EU and other donors to provide greater economic, political, and military aid to protect human rights.

It also called on Nato countries to set up a financial compensation programme for civilian death, injury or property damage resulting from Nato operations.

Nato and US-led operations caused the deaths of at least 100 civilians and damaged the homes and livelihoods of hundreds of families, it said.

Last week, the Bush administration pledged an additional $8.6bn (£4.3bn) for police and army training and another $2bn for road building, electricity and counter-narcotics efforts. It has also extended the tour duty of some of its troops in Afghanistan.

Washington is pumping in new money and calling on its European Nato allies to provide more funding and troops in anticipation of a Taliban offensive in the spring.

However, there is little sign so far of the Europeans coming up with the extra 6,000 troops Nato commanders say they need. Nato currently has around 40,000 troops in Afghanistan.

US and British commanders have been surprised by the Taliban’s resilience and willingness to take on Nato forces, particularly in the south of the country, where fighting has been intense.

Henk Ruyssenaars

Foreign Press Foundation / January 28, 2007

Paris conference: $billions for Israel’s slaughter in Lebanon Imagine they wreck your house and car, kill your wife, rape your daughters and than blame you for attacking them and inviting their friends to cover some of your enormous loss with lies and loans.
 
NO SITTING ISRAELI PRESIDENT HAS EVER BEEN CHARGED WITH A CRIME

EUROPE (FPE) — Either we don’t understand logic anymore, or the  world as we knew it really has gone totally mad. International law and honesty was buried much deeper again at the conference held in Paris to ‘help’ by Israeli armed forces brutally and illegally war ravaged Lebanon. [map*] The foreign donors - who  agree with Israel’s genocides - on paper and in front of the TV cameras promised $billions, but it’s known that only those ever will pay a cent who see a return on their money, politically or economically. In Paris it was dirty politics and business as usual, proving that international law and decency for this group is a dead letter. None of the war criminals - and there’s tons of evidence - was arrested yet.
 
But also sorely lacking in Paris was any form of logical thinking. “If you break it you own it.” is the global logic, but that doesn’t seem to work in this ‘Alice in Wonderland’ meeting which was more ‘con’ than conference by the junta’s warmongers and their liars. Those who themselves are the origin, who have done all the damage, destroyed most of Lebanon’s infrastructure and killed and wounded all those people there too; the United States junta and Israel’s armed forces, those war criminals now expect others to pay their bloody bills and support their crimes against humanity. There’s only one conclusion possible: those psychopaths must be ripe for the Cuckoo nest. They look like human beings, but are stark raving mad in their chutzpah. - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/v49l3
 
The case for normal people in any country ought to be clear: “Bush helped Israeli attack on Lebanon.” as also normally compliant The Guardian in the UK wrote on August 14th 2006.* - And there is no doubt in any normal persons mind that: ‘’The US government was closely involved in planning the Israeli campaign in Lebanon, even before Hizbullah seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross border raids in July 2006.” Outside the US junta’s and Israel’s propaganda circles everybody knows that the attack to wipe out the political Hezbollah party in Lebanon and try to bomb back the country to the Stone Age was prepared and triggered by sending Israeli soldiers regularly across the border into Lebanon. Contrary to the war propaganda it is known that both Israeli soldiers were captured INSIDE Lebanon. On Lebanese territory. They were absolutely NOT ‘kidnapped’.
 
HOLLAND: TRANSITING BANNED AND OTHER US/NATO WEAPONS TO ISRAEL DURING THE WAR
 
What is absolutely incredible is the way the propaganda media globally avoid to talk about who or what is the reason and why a couple of thousand human beings in Lebanon were killed in cold blood. An unknown amount was by the Israelis wounded and maimed for life and Israel has confirmed the use of banned and other weapons. ‘Made in the USA’ mostly and flown in via the junta’s cowardly Quislings in Holland who betray all and everybody for their warlords. The Netherlands officially confirms 23 uncontrolled flights with military cargos of great quantities of weapons and ammunition from the United States via Holland to Israel during the last two months of the Iraeli invasion of Lebanon. This according to the ‘very underreported’ written answers to rare questions by Dutch member of parliament Farah Karimi.*
 
None of this is ever broadcasted by the dreary ‘national’ propaganda sewers in Holland which up to 99% all work for the war machine. If you are not for Bush and his murdering policy, you’re out of the media. One of the worst is the Dutch NOS propaganda TV which at 13.00 hrs today totally prostituted themselves and broadcasted three full minutes about Lebanon, including a lousy comment from Beirut by parrot Nicole le Fevre, the conference and the help without even mentioning the word Israel! Israel as the criminal killer was not even mentioned! The NOS nitwits are beyond all limits of human decency, and keep supporting the genocides.
 
They support in word and pictures the illegal wars in which Holland is taking part. They only can take part because the people who pay them are lied to: they are not informed about the facts. In the European Union people for instance do not know that their leading criminals postponed a ‘cease fire’ in Lebanon ‘’to let Israel have another go at it.” But Israel lost the by them started war in Lebanon. And they will lose a lot more when people everywhere are through with the war criminals. When people understand what’s done to them, why and by whom.
 
EU SUPPORTED ISRAEL SHOOTING FISH IN A BARREL
 
UNICEF Executive Director Venema reported on Lebanon: “The untold story of what is going on in this war is that 30 per cent of those who have died are children and 45 per cent of those who are displaced are children so this is really a war that has a very, very immediate and real impact on children.” And all this inhumanity is supported by the criminals running the European Union making the taxpayers foot all the bills. People are lied to and don’t even know what they are paying for or how much. Their personel in many cases has gone mad and behaves as if they were in power instead of being civil servants. Serving the people which pay them. But their time in jail will come too.
 
The so called ‘governments’ - and that also goes for most of the European Union as seen in the mainstream media - are totally in the beblooded hands of the junta. So for instance the traitors in The Netherlands who helped transiting US planes full of banned and other weapons to Israel which was committing a genocidal war in Lebanon. Contrary to all international law and secretly paid with the billions embezzled from uninformed Dutch taxpayers. The corrupted and blood besmirched compliant politicians - the criminal christian crusaders - were forced to admit this in writing, but it is an enormous shame that they are not in jail yet. For life and with hard labor, which they fully deserve as soon as justice can be done. They kill people and walk around free? That world must change!
 
TO DESTROY PEOPLE AND COUNTRY.
 
Listening in Paris to the gathered war criminals is more than a normal human being can stand. Whether it’s Washington’s puppet, Lebanese PM Siniora - who was put on his bloody throne by the US/CIA/Mossad fabricated ‘Cedar revolution’ or see US junta’s Condoleezza Rice who in human circles around the world was feared as the personification of the Black Plague. To normal people Rice only represents death and destruction. Millions have died in many countries around the world through their inhuman system and the US junta’s war machine Rice serves. But she’ll pay. And the criminal gang around her too.
 
The Paris conference of Bush supporters and Israel freaks - who never acknowledge the millions of innocent victims or the rape of Lebanon by the US/Israeli warmongers - this whole sick ‘conference’ is for the most lost to Israeli readers. They are confronted with former ‘president’ Moshe Katsav who ’shaking with fury’ rebuffed growing calls for his resignation saying forty-four (44) accusations he committed rape and other crimes were “poisonous, horrible lies” that were part of a broad conspiracy against him. So now ‘conspiracies are possible?
 
THE ‘PRESIDENT’ RAPES COUNTRIES AND PEOPLE IN REALITY
 
Moshe Katsav sees momentum building for lawmakers to open unprecedented impeachment proceedings against him, the same as should happen to Bush c.s. soon too. Israeli top officials, including the war criminal PM Ehud Olmert said: “Katsav cannot continue to fulfill his position and he must leave the president’s residence.” And that is quite a blow for Katsav, on top of the rest of the ‘blowback’. The question is of course why this Katsav is thrown to the wolves. He’s probably used as a patsy so the other mafiosi can go free for another while. Olmert c.s. is a war criminal himself and should have been in jail with the others a long time ago, but the tide is turning and they’ll - like their likewise guilty and raping president - soon be locked up forever.
 
NO SITTING ISRAELI PRESIDENT HAS EVER BEEN CHARGED WITH A CRIME.
 
But the Israeli public has grown accustomed to the spectacle of politicians mired in corruption scandals. Former Justice Minister Haim Ramon is currently being tried in a separate sexual misconduct case, and Olmert is under investigation for his role in the sale of a government-controlled bank.*
 
Informed observers like Prof. Michel Chossudovsky*  and Mike Whitney* wrote about Lebanon: “Remember, Siniora refused to even deploy the Lebanese army to fight the Israelis when they invaded his country and killed 1300 Lebanese nationals. For the hundreds of thousands of victims in the south, there’s no doubt as to where Siniora’s true loyalties lie.
 
WASHINGTON’S OBJECTIVE IS TO TRANSFORM LEBANON INTO A US PROTECTORATE.
 
Siniora is Washington’s man. In fact, he even kept the lines of communication open with Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, while his country was being bombed with American ordinance dropped from Israeli planes. After the war he quickly reopened the US embassy even though his country’s infrastructure was still in ruins from Israel’s 34 Day rampage. He has been a great asset to US-Israeli plans to create a “New Middle East”, but utterly useless for the great body of poverty-stricken and homeless Lebanese civilians.
 
Michel Chossudovsky summarized the administration’s goals in Lebanon by stating that Washington’s objective is to transform Lebanon into a US protectorate. The Lebanese people are demanding the resignation of a government which is acting on behalf of the US and Israeli invaders of their country. They are demanding the formation of a national unity government which will defend the Lebanese homeland against US-Israeli aggression.” - Chossudovsky adds:
 
THE BEIRUT GOVERNMENT IS TAKING ORDERS DIRECTLY FROM THE US EMBASSY.
 
The Siniora government has allowed the deployment of NATO forces on Lebanese territory under the pretext of UN-sponsored peace-keeping operation. NATO warships under German command are stationed off the country’s eastern Mediterranean coastline. NATO has a military cooperation agreement with Israel.” That’s why and today again so many people in Lebanon want Siniora to disappear and there at present day and night are such massive strikes and demonstrations against the US-backed Lebanese Government.*
 
Not a word on the Paris conference was asked, but according to a poll published Thursday (today) in the Israeli mass circulation Yediot Ahronot newspaper showed that 71 percent of respondents want Katsav to resign at once, while 29 percent said he need not quit now. Resignation or dismissal would deprive Katsav, 61, of his presidential immunity.
 
But many are afraid that the shocking rape of Lebanon by Israel in the end pays too. Again confirming that for the US junta and its managers in power crime pays. Until they are stopped and punished. Paris was the limelight for these parasites and it is a pity they were not arrested yet.
 
But in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon many people fight against them.
 
AND THEY WIN.
 
 
HENK RUYSSENAARS
 
 
REFERENCES:
 
 
* Bush ‘helped Israeli attack on Lebanon’ - The Guardian (UK)

 
* THE TWO ISRAELI SOLDIERS WERE CAPTURED IN LEBANON

 
* Lebanon - Map and txt

 
* AP (American Propaganda) - Story in The Guardian (UK)

 
* THE DUTCH GOVERNMENT TRANSITED BANNED AND OTHER WEAPONS FOR THE US AND ISREAL DURING THEIR ILLEGAL WAR ON LEBANON - THAT IS A WAR CRIME

 
* US AND ISRAEL SUPPORTED BY THE EU KEEP KILLING

 
* WHERE IS ALL THE ‘DONOR MONEY’ RECYCLED? - Their ‘donors’ bank (BIS) has greater immunity than any sovereign nation on earth, is accountable to no one, runs global monetary affairs and is privately owned. The same group owns the Federal Reserve, their ‘money print shop’ in the US.

 
* THE US JUNTA CREATED ‘REALITY’ IS NOT FOR HUMAN BEINGS BUT FOR THIS GROUP OF INSANE ‘HUMANOIDS’

 
* PROF. MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY

 
* MIKE WHITNEY

 
* FORMER PRESIDENT MOSHE KAZAV’S PRESIDENTIAL PALACE

 
* The Dutch author this far has lived and worked abroad - never in an English speaking country - for more than 4 decades for international media as an independent foreign correspondent, of which 10 years - also during Gulf War I - in the Arab World and the Middle East. Seeing worldwide that every bullet and every bomb breeds more terrorism!
 
* FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information.

 
FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
Editor: Henk Ruyssenaars

The Netherlands
fpf@chello.nl
 

A pillar of smoke marked the spot where the US helicopter crashed

US and Iraqi troops have killed about 250 militants in fierce fighting around the holy city of Najaf, police say. BBC / January 28, 2007

The battle raged all day as US-backed Iraqi army units fought the previously unidentified group in orchards on the northern outskirts of Najaf.

Three Iraqi soldiers had reportedly died in the battle and 21 were injured.

The US military said two of its troops died when their helicopter was shot down, but did not confirm any of the Iraqi casualty figures.

An Iraqi official in the Najaf governor’s office told the BBC that 21 Iraqi soldiers had been injured in the clashes, which occurred in a neighbourhood called Zarqa, and the Iraqi army was sweeping the area.

Unnamed Iraqi sources said that the insurgents were from a previously unknown militant group calling themselves the Army of Heaven, or Soldiers of Heaven.

Asaad Abu Gilel, the governor of Najaf province, said that the gunmen had been intent on attacking Shia clerics and pilgrims marking the holy festival of Ashura.

“They are well-equipped and they even have anti-aircraft missiles. They are backed by some locals,” he said.

Schools attacked

Earlier on Sunday seven Iraqi children died after their schools were targeted - five in Baghdad where a mortar hit a high school and two in a bomb attack at a primary school in Ramadi

Pupils at the secondary school in the mainly Sunni Adil district in west Baghdad were taking a break from lessons when two mortars landed in the yard.

The school is in a Baghdad district hit by previous sectarian attacks

Five girls were killed and 20 other pupils injured as the blast blew out classroom windows, spraying the children with debris and shards of glass.

It was not clear who fired the mortars but the school is in a district which has been the scene of frequent reprisal attacks by Sunni and Shia extremists.

A primary school in Ramadi, north-west of Baghdad, was caught up in the violence when a suicide truck bomber attacked a nearby Iraqi security base.

In other violence on Sunday:
• A car bomb in the Sadr City district of Baghdad killed at least four people
• A bomb killed at least five people outside a warehouse in the mainly Kurdish Almas district of central Kirkuk
• Gunmen ambushed a senior official in Iraq’s industry ministry as he drove to work, killing him, his daughter and two other people.

The wave of attacks comes as Iraqi and US forces are gearing up for a security crackdown in a bid to halt the sectarian violence that is claiming hundreds of lives in Iraq every week.

Earlier, Iraqi police said 54 unidentified bodies had been found in and around the capital on Sunday alone.

On Saturday, police said 40 bodies were found - such deaths are generally attributed to sectarian violence.

The UN says that, on average, just under 100 people die through violence each day in Iraq.

The latest violence comes as Shia Muslims mark Ashura, one of their holiest festivals.

Thousands of pilgrims from across Iraq and beyond descended on Karbala to take part in ceremonies marking the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, in 680.

In the past the festival has been hit by co-ordinated attacks, so some 10,000 Iraqi police and security forces were on duty in Karbala as part of a tightening of security.

Curtis F.J. Doebbler

Al-Jazeerah / January 28, 2007

This week the international community is commemorating one genocide: the holocaust in which millions of Jews, political dissenters, Roma, and just about anyone who protested Nazi politics were brutally killed. This is an important and tragic event to remember, but even as the international community commemorates this tragic event, it is forgetting other genocides and even participating in contemporary genocide.

Perhaps instead of concentrating on our past mistakes, more attention should be paid to the mistakes we are making today. Evidently some of the victims of genocide in the holocaust have failed to learn the lessons of their past. And even Presidents of some of the most powerful countries in the world appear to be willing to undertake acts of genocide if its serves their political aims.

Recounting the tradition of genocide, its legal prohibition, and its application to contemporary events is a contribution to the commemoration of the holocaust that is more fitting that any wreaths or kind words about the victim who we failed to save then.

Genocidal Traditions

The history of genocide is a complex one. The man who coined the term in the mid-20th century, Raphael Lemkin saw genocide as “a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life … so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight … accomplished by the forced disintegration of political and social institutions, of the culture of the people, of their language, their national feelings and their religion … [or] … by wiping out all bases of personal security, liberty, health and dignity.” Lemkin added, that “[w]hen these means fail the machine gun can always be utilized as a last resort.”

Since the term was created it has grown to become both a larger than life term for applying to all acts of mass killing or extermination by some people.

If one views genocide in this broad manner it would apply to any mass killing or mass act of inhumane treatment against a group of people who should not be discriminated against. When he created the term to apply to these acts of extermination, for example, Lemkin was concerned for the massacre of Armenians as the Ottoman empire was coming to an end.

This broad term, however, would equally apply to the massacre of almost the entire native Indian populations in Mexico, central, and south America by Spanish conquerors. It would also apply to the slaughters conducted by slave trading western European and North American governments in Africa as they sought to exploit people whom they viewed as uncivilized.

A broad definition of genocide would also apply to perhaps the most successful act of mass murder and extermination of a people in relatively modern history: the slaughter of millions of Native Americans to create the United States of America. The United States slaughtered millions of these indigenous people using a combination brut force and lies. In cowardly acts of deception the United States even signed sacred peace treaties with the Native Americans and then violated these treaties—sometimes by merely slaughtering the Native Americans or more often by placing them in conditions that were calculated to ensure that all or most of them died.

The broad definition of genocide has been alleged to apply to the modern day treatment that some North American and European governments provide their indigenous citizens. It is alleged to apply to the treatment of Kurds in Iraq, Turkey and Iran. The United States pressed for the prosecution of the former Iraqi President on charges of genocide, but we may never know if he was guilty of this crime because the United States silenced the him by summarily executing him after and unfair trial conducted after its illegal invasion of his country… all acts which themselves constitutes other very serious international crimes.

The American obsession with murdering Sunnis and Ba’ath party members in Iraq, Taliban in Afghanistan, and supporters of the elected Hamas government in Palestine might all constitute genocide if one takes a broad view of genocide.

The Legal Prohibition of Genocide

Stirred by the inhumanity of the mass killing and extermination of people, the international community adopted a legal definition of genocide about the same time as it created the United Nations. It was too late to apply this treaty to the World War II holocaust, however, because the Nüremberg trials were already underway.

Nevertheless, in 1948, the Convention on the Prohibition and Punishment of Genocide was adopted. Article II of this widely-ratified treaty defines genocide as both specific categories of acts and a specific intention. The prohibited acts include killing, inhumane treatment, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy and group of people in whole or in part, preventing births through specific measures, and transferring children from one group of people to another by force.

The intention required to constitute genocide when these acts are committed by a person is the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

This legal definition has been adopted by the ad hoc international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and in the treaty creating the International Criminal Court. This definition has been applied by the two ad hoc international criminal tribunals.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was the first court to ever convict a person of genocide. This happened in the cases of Mr. Jean-Paul Akayesu, a former mayor of the city of Taba in Rwanda, and Mr. Jean Kambanda, the former Prime Minister of Rwanda.

Akayesu had encouraged others to kill or rape Tutsi Rwandan women and intended to participate in such acts. In this case, the Tribunal made it clear that genocide could take place even by acts that “may fall short of causing death.” The Tribunal also pointed out that intention could be presumed by acts that had a clear goal of destroying whole or part of a group.

Kambanda had pleaded guilty apparently accepting that his mere participation in cabinet meeting were the massacre of Tutsi Rwandans was sufficient to constitute genocide. The court made clear that intention could be extrapolated from the actions of the accused.

Rwanda Tribunal also convicted Mr. Alfred Musema of both the crime against humanity of extermination and the crime of genocide. The Tribunal found that Musema had both personally taken part in attacks against Tutsi Rwandans and had helped others kill Tutsi Rwandans by transporting them and telling them to kill others. His intention was show by the mere fact that his deeds contributed to the larger policy of killing Tutsi Rwandans.

And in 2005, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia convicted Mr. Vidoje Blagojevic guilty of complicity in genocide because he had killed and tortured numerous Bosnian Muslims.

There have also been domestic convictions for genocide. In 2003, a Rwandan court convicted about 100 people for participation in genocide. And in 2006, an Ethiopian military court found the country’s former ruler Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam guilty of genocide in absentia after a 12-year trial.

Some of these cases of genocide were committed in a very short period of time, others over years. Some of these case involved direct killings, others involved placing people in conditions of life tat would destroy them as a group. For example, genocide can be committed when a group is deliberately deprived of the resources needed to survive such as drinking water, food, clothing, shelter, and medical services.

When genocide has been considered such a terrible act and has been relatively well-defined, can it still be happening?

Palestine: A Case of Contemporary Genocide

No single example better exemplifies the international community’s failure to stop genocide then the case of Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian. This contemporary genocide has existed since and as long as the international crime of genocide has been defined.

The Palestinians owned approximately 94% of Palestine prior to in the creation of Israel in 1947. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181(II) of 1947, however, gave Israel 54% of the land of Palestine. By the end of the 1948 war this had climbed to about 80%, approximately where it stands today.

Since 1967 Israel had confiscated since 1967 an estimated 60 per cent of the West Bank and an estimated 33 per cent of the Gaza Strip. Israel has also confiscated an estimated 33 per cent of the Palestinian land in Jerusalem for public, semi-public, and private use in order to create Israeli military zones, settlements, industrial areas, elaborate “bypass” roads and quarries, as well as to hold “State land” for exclusive Israeli use. While Israel withdrew its settlements in Gaza it often reoccupies territory in Gaza, and maintains about 200 settlements in the West Bank.

Israel’s intention in undertaking these acts appears clear.

Israel’s intention was illustrated long ago in quotes from its government officials starting with the first Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir, who infamously told the Sunday Times on 16 June 1969 that “[t]here were no such thing as Palestinians.” Meir then in an attempt to justify her earlier statement told the New York Times on 14 January 1976 that she meant to say that “[t]here is no Palestine people. There are Palestinian refugees.” Both provide at least prima facie evidence of stated intention to destroy the Palestinians people, by pretending they just don’t exist. To follow the Israel intention from Meir’s statements through forty years of acts of illegal and oppressive occupation it is not too difficult to see that Israel believes that if Palestinians do not exist then they can be exterminated without violating any law.

To see this is Israel’s view one just has to recount how this state has maintained nearly forty years of occupation with inhumane results.

Israel has intentionally and directly killed thousands of Palestinians since the 1960’s. The regular reports about how many Palestinians have been killed by Israel aggression have been ongoing for forty years.

Israel has deliberately inflicted conditions of life on Palestinians calculated to destroy them at least in part. One only has to read the reports of human rights NGOs, or the United Nations human rights bodies to understand how Israel has intentionally caused serious bodily or mental harm to thousands of Palestinians through widespread beatings, torture, rape, arbitrary detention, and other acts, including the deliberate deprivation of resources needed for the group’s physical survival. The recent withholding of the vital customs taxes that Israel collected for, and then stole from, the Palestinians is an example of the latter. The frequent denial of access to medical services, including emergency resources; clean water; food; clothing; and shelter are also duly recorded by numerous sources.

Israel has also destroyed Palestinian civilian infrastructure, confiscated land, depleted water supplies, uprooted trees and vegetation, and dumped toxic waste and other pollutants on Palestinian land.

A 2000, UN Report documents how “children born to Arab parents in Jerusalem … often cannot be registered and issued birth certificates if their parents do not have the necessary residency status.” It then estimates that “there are approximately 10,000 unregistered children in Jerusalem [alone] who will not be entitled to receive an identity card when they reach the age of 16″ and that this “[l]ack of residency status also deprives them of health and social insurance and the right to enrol in municipal schools.”

Both direct and indirect these acts both constitute acts of genocide and by their continuation for such a long period of time are evidence of genocidal intention.

There are also numerous lesser acts that Israel has undertaken to destroy the people of Palestinian. The Spanish newspaper El Pais, for example, reported in 2002 on the Israeli destruction of Palestinian records in Ramallah as a “scientific and systematic destruction of all the archives and databases of the public administration.”

Israel has prevented the births of Palestinian children by arbitrarily arresting and thereby separating for long period of time Palestinian spouses and Israel has prevented children who are born from recognizing their adherence to the Palestinian people by repeatedly refusing to allow the registration of Palestinian births.

Moreover, Israel has demolished hundreds of Palestinian homes throughout Palestine as collective punishments of families and in intentional military actions. Since 1987 these violent demolitions have made more than an estimated 20,000 Palestinians homeless, including almost 10,000 children.

Israel has built a wall and numerous barriers that separate not only husbands and wives, but even children from their families. It has accomplished a similar de facto separation of children from their families by is arbitrary arrest of thousands of Palestinian men and women. And Israel has imposed by direct force or by through fear of violence, duress, detention, psychological oppression or other methods of coercion that force the fleeing of whole families, the indirect forcible transfer of children from Palestine.

And it should be remembered that many of these acts have been undertaken in violations of a long list of UN resolutions from both the Security Council and the General Assembly. Moreover some of the acts mentioned above have already been recognized to be illegal by decisions of the International Court of Justice.

It should also be remembered that genocide can be committed by acts that do not kill or cause the death of members of a group. Indirect or direct commission of the acts mentioned above when committed as part of a policy to destroy a group’s existence is genocide. And participation in genocide includes incitement, conspiracy, direct and public incitement, attempts to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide.

Most importantly we should remember that these acts of genocide by Israel against Palestinians are being carried out today, in clear view. Ironically, this week the world remembers one genocide, while another continues with the compliancy and collaboration of the international community. Shouldn’t we ask ourselves when will we ever learn from history?

Dr. Curtis F.J. Doebbler is an international human rights lawyer and professor of law at An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine.

Felicity Arbuthnot / January 26, 2007

‘ Extending hope and opportunity depends on a stable supply of energy that keeps America’s economy running and America’s environment clean. For too long our nation has been dependent on foreign oil. And this dependence leaves us more vulnerable to hostile regimes, and to terrorists — who could cause huge disruptions of oil shipments, and raise the price of oil, and do great harm to our economy.’ George W.Bush, State of the Union Address : 23rd January 2007.

26th January marks Holocaust Memorial Day in the U.K., established by Prime Minister Blair in 2001.The message of the Holocaust was ; ‘ never again’, so, at this time, have you noticed that there are no Iraqis anymore?

No children: no Alis, Jassims, Omars, Sabahs, Husseins; no Nairas, Ranins, Yasmins, Esthers, Fetuahs. No Parents; no Umm (mother of) Jassim, Ranin, Sabah, or Abus’ (father of) Yasmin, Ali, Omar … there are no Am or Khal (uncles) or Ama and Khala (aunts) no Jeda (grandmothers) or Jedu (grandfathers.) No familes, friends, taleb (students) yufadh (teachers) mentors, coaches, shop keepers, friends to children on a special household errand. No fish, date, fruit, falafal, pistachio sellers … In Iraq, humanity has been erased.

Instead there are ‘terrorists’, ‘insurgents’, ‘Ba’athist remanants’, ‘militants’, ‘Saddamists’, ‘Sunnis’, ‘Shia’s’, ‘foreign fighters’, ‘Al Qaeda’. There are ‘rag heads’, ‘camel jockeys’ and the all become ‘collateral damage’ as they are sliced in pieces, beheaded, tortured, slaughtered, by the occupiers or their militia goons as they sleep, drive, walk, play, dying in numbers ‘not productive to count’, as so succinctly put by General Kimmitt, a man who would seemingly be unphased running a concentration camp. Car bombs, for which the occupiers are responsible, since they are legally responsible for all under their watch, do not kill Iraqis, with names, loves, plans, hopes. They result in ‘body parts’, which are pronounced ‘Sunni’ or ‘Shia’ (though how they can tell from a bit of foot, flesh, finger or brain, is one of life’s chilling, dark miracles.) As under Nazi occuption and in the death camps, bodies pile up or are left to rot in streets, fear preventing collection.

Villages and towns, are now non-communities, where non-people live, they are: ‘restive’, ‘hotbeds’, to be ‘cleansed’ - reminiscent of the WW11 antics of Kommandant Amon Goeth in the Krakow ghetto, who, as in Abu Ghraib, set dogs on the naked and stood on his balcony, a sharpshooter, picking off the terrorified, hounded Jews* . Iraqis are ‘flushed out’, ‘pacified’ (read mass murder) slaughtered along with their non-cattle, goats, sheep, chickens and pets. Ancient, evocotive homes, in their haven of citrus groves, regal date palms, fig trees, the all razed.

‘Mission accomplished’, it’s back to base, with perhaps the odd rape en route, or squashing a few non-kids and the toddlers holding their hands, along the way - since reportedly, America’s valiant occupiers, have been told to drive on, if they are in the road, as they might be decoys, to slow them, to enable Umm, Abu, Am or Jedu to lob an RPG their way. Gives a whole new meaning to would-be President Hilary Clinton’s : ‘No child left behind’, initiative - brought into a sqatted U.S., base, stuck in bits to the tank tracks, or Humvee tyres. Road meat.

In strategic moves of which Kommandant Goeth would be proud, U.S., service personnel, in their new ‘clampdown’, are reported as hauling hospital patients out of bed, expelling doctors from their institutions (currently in ‘restive’ western Anbar province) and taking over the buildings, in which, even liberated of all needed to sustain life since the invasion, Iraq’s remaining inventitve, dedicated doctors might have saved some in dangerous or critical conditions. Water purification plants (where they exist) are destroyed, water and electricity cut off (all in strict violation of the Geneva and Hague Conventions) streets blocked and barricaded, homes raided. The dead, as ever, simply written off as ‘terrorists’, insurgents - no questions, no trial,,just the summary execution of those brave enough to go about their daily business. The culling of Iraq.

On 11th September 2001; after the Bali bombings, the 7th July 2005 London bombings, the Madrid atrocities, the world sent condolences, candlelight vigils were held, there are emotional annual memorials. Where are the condolences for the silent holocaust of the perhaps one point seven million people who died quietly in Iraq of ‘embago related causes’? (U.N.) Where are the condolences, the international rescue teams, the flood of medical aid for the 9/11 every month in Baghdad? Where is the same for the Madrid, July 7th, Bali, daily, weekly across Iraq? Where is the shame, the outrage, the horror, of the international community as represented by their governments? Where is the succour for the average one hundred thousand a month fleeing for their lives, who is opening their borders to Iraq’s Palestinians, generations who found safety there, since expelled from their heritage after the formation of the Jewish state, now threatened with a very ‘final solution’ under the liberators watch?

Attacks on U.S., and British troops? A legal and legitimate resistance to an illegal invasion and the genocide of a further ( probably underestimated) nearly three quarter of a million Iraqis (to September 2006.) Bush and Blair never miss an opportunity to reminisce over the courage of the resistance in World War 11, after another illegal invasion plunged Europe in to war. Spot the difference.

The response from Washington’s Draft Dodger in Chief, is that Iraqis owe the mass murderering invaders: ‘a debt of gratitude’ - and for their also dying at the hands of mercenaries brought in with the invasion and countless other factions who have invaded since, detonating, beheading. Washington’s patience is running out with the dismembered, distraught and daily near-demented in grief, we are told.

As for Britain’s spineless, shameful, ‘truthfully economic’, Prime Minister: two days before Holocaust Memorial Day, Parliament finally secured a debate on the current Iraq one, for the first time since the invasion and lasting for six and a half hours. Blair was too busy to attend, addressing instead, the Confederation of British Industry ,which surely included executives from the oil companies, which, he assured the late former Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook (according to Cook’s memoirs) were going to contribute to paying for and even turn a profit from the invasion. He was prevented attending even the winding up of the debate, by a meeting to discuss the rights of same sex couples to adopt. Doubt he thought passingly of Iraq’s orphans, evicted from the safety of their orphanages, by the invading forces, in March 2003, and abandoned again, in bewilderment ands trauma, to wander the streets, fend for themselves, or worse, in the mahem, as the bombs fell and since.

The Leader of the opposition Conservative Party, David Cameron was also notably absent. Constantly trying to (unconvinceingly) cash in on the ‘green’ card, he might have had something pithy to say about the four and a half billion year pollution of Iraq by the radioactive and toxic depleted uranium weapons used by the US and UK. It was not to be. A member of one of the Committees, involved in the establishment of Holocaust Memorial Day, pointed out, that given history’s numerous holocausts, such a day would seem as if: “western lives have more value than non-western lives”. A perception which needed to be changed. “One way of doing that is if the government were to sponsor a national Genocide Memorial Day.

“The message of the Holocaust was ‘never again’, and for that message to have practical effect on the world community it has to be inclusive. We can never have double standards in terms of human life.” Further: ” Muslims feel hurt and excluded that their lives are not equally valuable to those lives lost in the Holocaust time.”

Ibrahim Hewitt, chairman of the charity Interpal, said: “There are 500 Palestinian towns and villages that have been wiped out over the years. That’s pretty genocidal to me.” ** As is Afghanistan, now and when the US backed the Taliban against the Russians; American decimations echo from the Phillippines to VIetnam, from Haiti to Central America. Britain and other Europeans have been at it since the crusades, as most of the world. Genocide Day, once a year,would have been a minute step to acknowledgement that no one, unique, precious life has more value than another. An acknowledgement of our common humanity. A tiny atonement and tinier acknowledgement of some supreme western wickednesses. And, as Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Bergen Belsen, of the piles of empty shoes, childrens’ beyond counting, which litter the planet: testimony to mans’ enduring psychosis: ramapant greed and inhumanity to mankind.

* Thomas Kenneally : Schindler’s List.

** Sunday Times, 11th September 2005

Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane

Raw Story / January 27, 2007

The escalation of US military planning on Iran is only the latest chess move in a six-year push within the Bush Administration to attack Iran, a RAW STORY investigation has found.

While Iran was named a part of President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” in 2002, efforts to ignite a confrontation with Iran date back long before the post-9/11 war on terror. Presently, the Administration is trumpeting claims that Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon than the CIA’s own analysis shows and positing Iranian influence in Iraq’s insurgency, but efforts to destabilize Iran have been conducted covertly for years, often using members of Congress or non-government actors in a way reminiscent of the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal.

The motivations for an Iran strike were laid out as far back as 1992. In classified defense planning guidance – written for then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney by then-Pentagon staffers I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, World Bank Chief Paul Wolfowitz, and ambassador-nominee to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad – Cheney’s aides called for the United States to assume the position of lone superpower and act preemptively to prevent the emergence of even regional competitors. The draft document was leaked to the New York Times and the Washington Post and caused an uproar among Democrats and many in George H. W. Bush’s Administration.

In September 2000, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) issued a report titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” which espoused similar positions to the 1992 draft and became the basis for the Bush-Cheney Administration’s foreign policy. Libby and Wolfowitz were among the participants in this new report; Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other prominent figures in the Bush administration were PNAC members.

“The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security,” the report read. “While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein. . . . We cannot allow North Korea, Iran, Iraq or similar states to undermine American leadership, intimidate American allies or threaten the American homeland itself.”

This approach became official US military policy during the current Bush Administration. It was starkly on display yesterday when Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns noted a second aircraft carrier strike force headed for the Persian Gulf, saying, “The Middle East isn’t a region to be dominated by Iran. The Gulf isn’t a body of water to be controlled by Iran. That’s why we’ve seen the United States station two carrier battle groups in the region.”

The Structure

Almost immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Iran became a focal point of discussion among senior Administration officials. As early as December 2001, then-Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and the leadership of the Defense Department, including Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, allegedly authorized a series of meetings between Defense Department officials and Iranian agents abroad.

The first of these meetings took place in Rome with Pentagon Iran analyst, Larry Franklin, Middle East expert Harold Rhode, and prominent neoconservative Michael Ledeen. Ledeen, who held no official government position, introduced the US officials to Iran-Contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. According to both Ghorbanifar and Ledeen, the topic on the table was Iran. Ledeen told RAW STORY last year the discussion concerned allegations that Iranian forces were killing US soldiers in Afghanistan, but Ghorbanifar has claimed the conversation focused on regime change.

In January 2002, evidence that Iran was enriching uranium began to appear via credible intelligence and satellite imagery. Despite this revelation – and despite having called Iran part of the Axis of Evil in his State of the Union that year – President Bush continued to focus on Iraq. Perhaps for that reason, throughout 2002 the strongest pressure for regime change flowed through alternative channels.

In early 2002, Ledeen formed the Coalition for Democracy in Iran, along with Morris Amitay, the former executive director of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

In August 2002, Larry Franklin began passing classified information involving United States policy towards Iran to two AIPAC employees and an Israeli diplomat. Franklin pleaded guilty to the charges in October 2005, explaining that he had been hoping to force the US to take a harder line with Iran, but AIPAC and Israel have continued to deny them.

At the same time, another group’s political representatives begin a corollary effort to influence domestic political discourse. In August 2002, the National Council of Resistance of Iran – a front for a militant terrorist organization called Mujahedin-E-Khalq (MEK) – held a press conference in Washington and stated that Iran had a secret nuclear facility at Natanz, due for completion in 2003.

Late that summer , the Pentagon’s Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz expanded its Northern Gulf Affairs Office, renamed it the Office of Special Plans (OSP), and placed it under the direction of Abram Shulsky, a contributor to the 2000 PNAC report.

Most know the Office of Special Plans as a rogue Administration faction determined to find intelligence to support the Iraq War. But that wasn’t its only task.

According to an article in The Forward in May 2003, “A budding coalition of conservative hawks, Jewish organizations and Iranian monarchists is pressing the White House to step up American efforts to bring about regime change in Iran. . . . Two sources [say] Iran expert Michael Rubin is now working for the Pentagon’s ’special plans’ office, a small unit set up to gather intelligence on Iraq, but apparently also working on Iran. Previously a researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East policy, Rubin has vocally advocated regime change in Tehran.”

Dark Actors/Covert Activities

While the Iraq war was publicly founded upon questionable sources, much of the buildup to Iran has been entirely covert, using non-government assets and foreign instruments of influence to conduct disinformation campaigns, plant intelligence and commit acts of violence via proxy groups.

A few weeks prior to the Iraq invasion, in February 2003, Iran acknowledged that it was building a nuclear facility at Natanz, saying that the facility was aimed at providing domestic energy. However, allegations that Iran was developing a nuclear weapons program would become louder in the course of 2003 and continue unabated over the next three years.

That spring, then-Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) opened a channel on Iran with former Iranian Minister Fereidoun Mahdavi, a secretary for Ghorbanifar. Both Weldon and Ledeen were told a strikingly similar story concerning a cross border plot between Iran and Iraq in which uranium had been removed from Iraq and taken into Iran by Iranian agents. The CIA investigated the allegations but found them spurious. Weldon took his complaints about the matter to Rumsfeld, who pressured the CIA to investigate a second time, with the same result.

In May 2003, with pressure for regime change intensifying within the US, Iran made efforts to negotiate a peaceful resolution with the United States. According to Lawrence Wilkerson, then-Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, these efforts were sabotaged by Vice President Cheney.

“The secret cabal got what it wanted: no negotiations with Tehran,” Wilkerson said.

The US was already looking increasingly to rogue methodology, including support for the Iranian terrorist group MEK. Before the US invasion, MEK forces within Iraq had supported Saddam Hussein in exchange for safe harbor. Despite this, when they were captured by the US military, they were disarmed of only their major weapons and are allowed to keep their smaller arms. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld hoped to use them as a special ops team in Iran, while then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and State Department officials argued against it. By 2005, the MEK would begin training with US forces in Iraq and carrying out bombings and assassinations in Iran, although it is unclear if the bombings were in any way approved by the US military.

The Pressure is On: 2004 – 2006

For a variety of reasons – ranging from the explosion of the insurgency in Iraq following the high point of “Mission Accomplished” to Iran’s willingness to admit IAEA inspectors – the drumbeat for regime change died down over the summer of 2003. In October 2003, with Iran accepting even tougher inspections, Larry Franklin told his Israeli contact that work on the US policy towards Iran which they had been tracking seemed to have stopped.

Yet by the autumn of 2004, pressure for confrontation with Iran had resumed, with President Bush telling Fox News that the US would never allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. By then, the Pentagon had been directed to have a viable military option for Iran in place by June 2005.

This phase of pressure was marked by increased activity directed at Congress. An “Iran Freedom Support Act” was introduced in the House and Senate in January and February of 2005. Neoconservatives and individuals linked to the defense contracting industry formed an Iran Policy Committee, and in April and May presented briefings in support of MEK before the newly-created Iran Human Rights and Democracy Caucus of the House of Representatives.

In March 2006, administration action became more overt. The State Department created an Office of Iranian Affairs, while the Pentagon created an Iranian Directorate that had much in common with the earlier Office of Special Plans. According to Seymour Hersh, covert US operations within Iran in preparation for a possible air attack also began at this time and included Kurds and other Iranian minority groups.

By setting up the Iranian Directorate within the Pentagon and running covert operations through the military rather than the CIA, the administration was able to avoid both Congressional oversight and interference from then-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, who has been vocally skeptical about using force against Iran. The White House also successfully stalled the release of a fresh National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which could reflect the CIA’s conclusion that there is no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.

In sum, the Bush Administration seems to have concluded that Iran is guilty until proven innocent and continues to maintain that the Persian Gulf belongs to Americans – not to Persians – setting the stage for a potential military strike.

Click here to read the full timeline of the decades-long buildup to Iran

John Pilger

Global Research / January 24, 2007

dissidentvoice.org

Looking to the Side, From Belsen to Gaza

A genocide is engulfing the people of Gaza while a silence engulfs its bystanders. “Some 1.4 million people, mostly children, are piled up in one of the most densely populated regions of the world, with no freedom of movement, no place to run and no space to hide,” wrote the senior UN relief official, Jan Egeland, and Jan Eliasson, then Swedish foreign minister, in Le Figaro. They described people “living in a cage,” cut off by land, sea and air, with no reliable power and little water and tortured by hunger and disease and incessant attacks by Israeli troops and planes.

Egeland and Eliasson wrote this four months ago as an attempt to break the silence in Europe whose obedient alliance with the United States and Israel has sought to reverse the democratic result that brought Hamas to power in last year’s Palestinian elections. The horror in Gaza has since been compounded; a family of 18 has died beneath a 500-pound American/Israeli bomb; unarmed women have been mown down at point-blank range. Dr. David Halpin, one of the few Britons to break what he calls “this medieval siege”, reported the killing of 57 children by artillery, rockets and small arms and was shown evidence that civilians are Israel’s true targets, as in Lebanon last summer. A friend in Gaza, Dr. Mona El-Farra, e-mailed: “I see the effects of the relentless sonic booms [a collective punishment by the Israeli air force] and artillery on my 13-year-old daughter. At night, she shivers with fear. Then both of us end up crouching on the floor. I try to make her feel safe, but when the bombs sound I flinch and scream…”

When I was last in Gaza, Dr. Khalid Dahlan, a psychiatrist, showed me the results of a remarkable survey. “The statistic I personally find unbearable,” he said, “is that 99.4 per cent of the children we studied suffer trauma. Once you look at the rates of exposure to trauma you see why: 99.2 per cent of their homes were bombarded; 97.5 per cent were exposed to tear gas; 96.6 per cent witnessed shootings; 95.8 per cent witnessed bombardment and funerals; almost a quarter saw family members injured or killed.” Dr. Dahlan invited me to sit in on one of his clinics. There were 30 children, all of them traumatized. He gave each pencil and paper and asked them to draw. They drew pictures of grotesque acts of terror and of women streaming tears.

The excuse for the latest Israeli terror was the capture last June of an Israeli soldier, a member of an illegal occupation, by the Palestinian resistance. This was news. The kidnapping a few days earlier by Israel of two Palestinians — two of thousands taken over the years — was not news. An historian and two foreign journalists have reported the truth about Gaza. All three are Israelis. They are frequently called traitors. The historian Ilan Pappe has documented that “the genocidal policy [in Gaza] is not formulated in a vacuum” but part of Zionism’s deliberate, historic ethnic cleansing. Gideon Levy and Amira Hass are reporters on the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. In November, Levy described how the people of Gaza were beginning to starve to death . . . “there are thousands of wounded, disabled and shell-shocked people unable to receive any treatment . . . the shadows of human beings roam the ruin… they only know the [Israeli army] will return and what this will mean for them: more imprisonment in their homes for weeks, more death and destruction in monstrous proportions.”

Amira Hass, who has lived in Gaza, describes it as a prison that shames her people. She recalls how her mother, Hannah, was being marched from a cattle-train to the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen on a summer’s day in 1944. “[She] saw these German women looking at the prisoners, just looking,” she wrote. “This image became very formative in my upbringing, this despicable ‘looking from the side’.”

“Looking from the side” is what those of us do who are cowed into silence by the threat of being called anti-Semitic. Looking from the side is what too many western Jews do, while those Jews who honor the humane traditions of Judaism and say, “Not in our name!” are abused as “self-despising”. Looking from the side is what almost the entire US Congress does, in thrall to or intimidated by a vicious Zionist “lobby”. Looking from the side is what “even-handed” journalists do as they excuse the lawlessness that is the source of Israeli atrocities and suppress the historic shifts in the Palestinian resistance, such as the implicit recognition of Israel by Hamas. The people of Gaza cry out for better.

John Pilger is an internationally renowned investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker. His newest book is Freedom Next Time (Bantam Press, June 2006). Visit John Pilger’s website: www.johnpilger.com.

AFP / January 24, 2007

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday warned that if the world’s diplomatic efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear program fail, then “much more severe steps” should be taken.

“It is clear to everyone that a diplomatic solution to the Iranian issue is the preferred solution. We also prefer such an outcome,” Olmert said in a keynote speech on the last day of the annual conference on Israel’s national security in the town of Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv.

If the world turns “a blind eye now, while ignoring reality… those of us who wish to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power will, down the road, not be left with any choice but to take much more severe steps in the future,” he said.

Israel and the West accuse Iran of seeking to acquire an atomic bomb through its nuclear program, which Tehran insists is solely for peaceful purposes.

Coupled with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repeated calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, Israel — considered the sole nuclear power in the Middle East — has come to consider the Islamic republic as an existential threat.

“Anyone who threatens us, who threatens our existence, must know that we have the determination and capability to defend ourselves, responding with force, discretion and with all means at our disposal,” Olmert said.

But he also reassured the Israeli public that “as serious as the Iranian threat is, the threat of a nuclear attack on Israel is in no way imminent.”

He welcomed United Nations Security Council Resolution 1703, passed last month, which calls for sanctions against Iran for non-compliance over its nuclear program of uranium enrichment.

“Iran is very vulnerable and sensitive to international pressure, despite its defiant, arrogant and provocative stance, and it is already paying the ever-increasing price for its behavior,” Olmert said.

On Sunday a senior US official told the Herzliya conference that the pressure exerted by the United States and the international community on Iran over its nuclear program had put Tehran on the defensive.

“Iran is no longer on the offensive but on the defensive and we have to keep it on the defensive,” Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said. “Iran has to learn how to respect the power and the will of the international community.”

Total 411 Info / January 22, 2007

Crime reporter Dan Moldea exposed years ago how NFL games can be and are routinely fixed for various reasons. Football has long served as a taxpayer-funded “bread-and-circuses” distraction for the American people; turning their attention away from the high crimes of the state. but in recent years, the NFL has been used as a tool of even more sophisticated psychological operations on the American people. This was reflective in the post-9/11 rise of the New England Patriots coupled with the winter Super Bowl holiday ritual becoming increasingly nationalistic and militaristic.

Television analyst Steven Colbert exposed on Wednesday night how the rise of the New Orleans Saints may be being used as a way to preoccupy the remaining people of New Orleans and divert their attention away from outstanding questions (exploding levees, HAARP, etc.) regarding the federal genocide operation unleashed on the city in August 2005:

Total411.info’s sources in New Orleans report that this has indeed been the case as of late, with local news media reporting on barely anything else; New Orleanians lining up around the block for Saints memorabilia, the fully-employed dropping hundreds or thousands of dollars on game and plane tickets, etc.

Will humanity ever learn?

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