Heleen Mees van de NRC 12

Een aardig inkijkje in de diepere drijfveren van dit 40-jarige meisje.
'Income disparities are still widening in the United States. The average inflationadjusted income of the top 1% of households has risen 42% since 2002, while the average inflation-adjusted income of the bottom 90% of households has risen about 4.7%. The average income gain of the top 0.1% of households was 57.6% between 2002 and 2006. Approximately 66% of total income gains since 2002 have accrued to the top 10% of households. (Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)'

Heleen Mees in NRC: 'Eind jaren vijftig en begin jaren zestig hebben westerse landen sociale zekerheidsprogramma's geintroduceerd die een halve eeuw later financieel niet meer houdbaar blijken te zijn.'

Heleen Mees van de NRC 11

Wat deze huppelende sociaaldemocrate tevens verzwijgt is dat het reëel inkomen van de gemiddelde werknemer in de VS sinds 1978 niet gestegen is. Wat wel gestegen is zijn de grootscheepse leningen door zowel de staat als door haar burgers, met als gevolg dat het imperium en zijn inwoners nu failliet zijn. De Amerikaanse hoogleraar, de evolutionair bioloog Jared Diamond, die het verval van dichtbij meemaakt, beschrijft in zijn boek 'Collapse' nauwgezet hoe 'corruption, mismanagement, and political inertia by an elite, which is beyond the reach of the law, almost always result in widespread cynicism, disengagement, apathy, and finally rage. Those who suffer the consequences of this mismanagement lose any loyalty to the nation and increasingly nurse fantasies of violent revenge. The concept of the common good, mocked by the behaviour of the privileged classes, disappears. Nothing matters. It is only about ME.'

Zolang de schijn hooggehouden kan worden, lijkt het alsof er sprake is van normaliteit. Zolang onvolwassen mensen hun directe begeertes kunnen bevredigen, zolang een 40-jarige juffrouw als een kind kan blijven rondhuppelen in haar zondagse jurk, lijkt er niets aan de hand te zijn. De werkelijkheid ontgaat dit slag mensen. Deze werkelijkheid: 'when progressivity was lost in the 80s, the income of the poor began falling, while that of the rich continued growing... The income disparity between rich and poor has increased dramatically since 1978.'

En deze werkelijkheid bijvoorbeeld:

Unemployment Rate Is Highest in 26 Years
Friday 02 October 2009
by: Dean Baker | The Center for Economic and Policy Research

The benchmark revisions will show job loss was 824,000 larger than originally reported.

The loss of 263,000 payroll jobs, coupled with a 0.1 hour decline in the average workweek, pushed the index of aggregate hours to 98.5, slightly below the 98.6 level in December of 1998. Hours worked have now declined by 8.6 percent from the pre-recession peak. In the 1981-82 recession the decline from peak to trough was 5.8 percent. The loss of jobs also pushed the unemployment rate to 9.8 percent. The unemployment rate for men hit 10.3 percent, surpassing the 10.1 percent peak in the 1981-82 recession.

The accelerated pace of job loss was driven primarily by the government, retail, and educational services sectors. The government sector lost 53,000 jobs in September, compared with a loss of 19,000 jobs in August. Most of the job loss was again at the state and local level, which together accounted for 47,000 of the lost jobs. The private educational services sector, which had been adding jobs through the recession, lost 16,900 jobs in September. These job losses, like the state and local cutbacks, are largely the result of budget shortfalls since much of the funding for these services comes from the public sector. Retail trade lost 38,500 jobs in September after losing just 8,800 in August. The biggest difference here was in the auto sector – 7,100 jobs lost, after having added 3,500 in August to meet demand from the Cash for Clunkers program.

The construction sector continued its rapid pace of job loss, shedding 64,000 jobs in September, mostly in non-residential construction. Manufacturing lost another 51,000 jobs. The loss of jobs, coupled with shorter workweeks, has led to a fall in the index of aggregate hours worked in manufacturing of 22.0 percent from its pre-recession peak in July of 2006. Hours worked in this sector have dropped 39.1 percent since December of 1997.

Wage growth continues to weaken with wages rising at just a 1.7 percent nominal rate over the last quarter, almost certainly less than the rate of inflation.

This month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported its preliminary benchmark revisions to the establishment survey data. This revision, based on unemployment insurance records, shows that employment in March of 2009 was 824,000 lower than originally reported, with private sector employment 855,000 lower. This extraordinarily large downward revision is not surprising because the imputation for new firms not included in the survey was consistently larger than the imputation from the prior year when the economy was still growing. Including this revision, the economy has lost over eight million jobs in the downturn.'
Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/100309A

Heleen Mees van de NRC 10

Gisteren beweerde de NRC-medewerkster, zakenvrouw en PVDA-activiste Heleen Mees in haar NRC-column onder de kop 'Tot nader order: doorwerken' het volgende: 'Afgelopen dinsdag kon ik op een splitscreen (lang leve Apple) het verloop van de onderhandelingen in de Sociaal Economische Raad (SER) over de AOW volgen en de beraadslagingen in de Amerikaanse Senaat over een nieuw stelstel van ziektekostenverzekering. De problemen waarvoor een oplossing dient te worden gevonden, zijn in de kern hetzelfde. Eind jaren vijftig en begin jaren zestig hebben westerse landen sociale zekerheidsprogramma's geintroduceerd die een halve eeuw later financieel niet meer houdbaar blijken te zijn.'

Welnu, wat mevrouw Mees verzwijgt is het feit dat het verschil tussen arm en rijk in het Westen en wereldwijd nooi zo groot is geweest als nu. Sterker nog, de 1 procent van de Amerikanen die momenteel meer dan 40 procent van de rijkdommen van het land in bezit heeft, is sinds 'eind jaren vijftig begin jaren zestig' immens veel rijker geworden dan ze al waren. Dit is ten koste gegaan van de gemeenschap en is uiteindelijk uitgelopen op het failliet van het zogeheten vrije markt-systeem, zoals de recente bankencrisis nog eens onderstreept. Er zijn nu wel vele miljarden bschikbaar aan subsidies aan de failliete banken om een even failliet systeem overeind te houden, maar daardoor geen geld voor een fatsoenlijke verzorging van bejaarden, voor goed onderwijs, en gedegen gezondheidszorg schiet er ook bij in. Want, zoals bekend, iemand zal toch die miljarden moeten betalen om het failliete kapitalisme overeind te houden. En daarover zwijgt dit 40-jarige meisje die u hierboven voor de fotograaf ziet springen. Voorheen betaalden alleen de laagste klassen de rekening -- de armen en de arbeiders -- maar nu krijgt ook de middenklasse gevoelige klappen, zoals de NRC vandaag bericht:

De NRC bericht vandaag:

'Werkloze middenklasse eindigt in Tent City, USA

Gepubliceerd: 3 oktober 2009 11:02 | Gewijzigd: 3 oktober 2009 15:18

Door onze correspondent Freek Staps

Meer dan 3 miljoen Amerikanen zullen dit jaar dakloos zijn. Velen van hen hadden tot voor kort nog een comfortabel leven.

• Nieuws - Werkloosheid in de VS op hoogste stand sinds 1983
• Nieuwsthema - Crisis in de VS

Ontario/Santa Barbara/Venice Beach, 3 okt. Coby Jackson de restaurantmanager. Ken Hawkins de vrachtwagenchauffeur. Trevor Guy de binnenhuisarchitect. En Nicolas Tengler de klassiek gitarist.

Ooit leidden deze vier mannen een comfortabel leven. Ze hadden een vast inkomen, een plek om thuis te noemen en tevredenheid over hun positie in de Amerikaanse maatschappij. Totdat de economische crisis hen, net als honderden miljoenen anderen overal ter wereld, ongenadig hard raakte.

En nu zijn ze alle vier hun baan, hun huis en hun eigenwaarde kwijt en wonen ze als economisch daklozen in verschillende tent cities, in nederzettingen van groepjes daklozen in de buurt van Los Angeles. „Ik probeer maar niet al te lang over mijn plek in deze maatschappij na te denken”, zegt Nicolas Tengler. „Jezus had ook maar weinig toen ze hem aan het kruis hingen.”

Dankzij een combinatie van forse persoonlijke schulden, de hoogste werkloosheidspercentages in decennia en een huizenmarkt die zo slecht is dat er evenveel woningen verkocht als er mensen op straat gezet worden, steekt het probleem van de dakloze middenklasse verspreid door Amerika de kop op. Van Californië aan de westkust tot Connecticut in het oosten, van de staat Washington aan de Canadese grens tot Georgia in het diepe zuiden. Overal trekken de nieuwe daklozen naar elkaar toe en vormen ze ad hoc gemeenschappen die even snel verdwijnen als ze opkwamen.

Exacte cijfers ontbreken, daar is het probleem te veranderlijk voor. Maar hulporganisaties schatten dat de recessie die in de VS in december 2007 begon ten minste 1,5 miljoen extra Amerikanen dakloos heeft gemaakt. Dat is een stijging van 80 procent ten opzichte van het aantal van voor de crisis.

Sommige ‘tent cities’ zijn letterlijk dat: een verzameling koepeltentjes met hier en daar een Amerikaanse vlag, een oude bureaustoel en tonnen waarin vuur gestoken wordt. Anderen doen moderner aan met soms hele families die in auto’s of campers bij elkaar wonen en zo bescherming tegen criminele bendes, de oorspronkelijke buurtbewoners of elkaar zoeken.

Het probleem is zo indringend en zichtbaar dat gemeenten zich gedwongen voelen de tentenkampen te reguleren. In Ontario, een randgemeente van Los Angeles, draagt de gemeente zorg voor politiebescherming en een hek. In de nabijgelegen en weldadige kustgemeente Santa Barbara heeft de lokale overheid zeventien parkeerplaatsen aangewezen waar daklozen in het bezit van een vergunning ’s avonds laat op mogen om de nacht in hun voertuig door te brengen.

Lees verder: http://www.nrc.nl/economie/article2377066.ece/Werkloze_middenklasse_eindigt_in_Tent_City%252C_USA

De Israelische Oorlogsmisdaden 101

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=476734
=====================================


The Goldstone Report on Gaza
by The Nation

The recently released UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mission on
the December-January Gaza conflict, released on the eve of Barack
Obama's attempt to jump-start comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian
negotiations, was but the latest in a series of investigations, most
of them by human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and
Amnesty International.

Like its predecessors, the so-called Goldstone report, named after
chief investigator Richard Goldstone, is devastating in its critique
of Israeli actions: indiscriminate use of firepower; deliberate
attacks on civilians and civilian structures, including hospitals,
schools, mosques, water and sewage plants, and rescue vehicles; use
of white phosphorus munitions in built-up areas; use of human
shields; abusive treatment of detainees; imposition of a blockade on
Gaza before and after the attack itself˜the report concludes that
Israel violated international humanitarian law, committed „grave
breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention in respect of wilful
killings and wilfully causing great suffering to protected persons,‰
and war crimes, possibly even crimes against humanity. The courageous
Israeli journalist Gideon Levy summed it up well in Haaretz: it was
„an unrestrained assault on a besieged, totally unprotected civilian
population which showed almost no signs of resistance during this
operation.‰

Perhaps most damning of all was the testimony of some thirty Israeli
veterans of the operation gathered by the organization Breaking the
Silence, published in a booklet in July and cited by the Goldstone
report. According to the booklet‚s introduction, „The majority of the
soldiers who spoke with us are still serving in their regular
military units and turned to us in deep distress at the moral
deterioration of the IDF.∑ The stories of this publication prove that
we are not dealing with the failures of individual soldiers, and
attest instead to failures in the application of values primarily on
a systemic level.‰ The testimony is chilling: „Fire power was
insane‰; „if you see any signs of movement at all, you shoot. These,
essentially, were the rules of engagement. Shoot if you like‰;
„Houses were demolished everywhere.∑ We didn‚t see a single house
that was not hit‰; „whole neighborhoods were simply razed because
four houses in the area served to launch Qassam rockets‰; „You know
what? You feel like a child playing around with a magnifying glass,
burning up ants. Really. A 20-year-old kid should not be doing such
things to people.‰

Predictably, the Goldstone report was met by a wave of angry
denunciations from the Israeli government˜which had refused to
cooperate with the investigators˜and most of the Israeli media. The
mainstream media here have downplayed the investigation‚s
significance; news coverage has been sparse, and not one major US
daily has seen fit to editorialize on it (unless you count a nasty
little screed from the New York Daily News calling the report a
„blood libel against Israel‰). And US pundits and politicians--
including UN ambassador Susan Rice, who called it „unbalanced, one-
sided and basically unacceptable‰--have been overwhelmingly critical.

But it‚s not so easy to dismiss these findings. For one thing, the
nearly 600-page report is carefully documented and comprehensive, and
is based on field visits, public hearings, almost 200 individual
interviews, photos, videos, satellite imagery and a review of more
than 300 other reports. For another, its head, Goldstone, is one of
the most respected and experienced international jurists, having
served as a justice on South Africa‚s Constitutional Court and chief
UN prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former
Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

And then there are Goldstone‚s personal connections: he‚s Jewish and,
according to his daughter, herself an ardent Zionist who lived in
Israel for six months, he‚s „a Zionist and loves Israel.‰ Indeed, she
said of her father, who serves on the Board of Governors of Hebrew
University, „I know that if he thought what he did would not somehow
be for the sake of peace for everyone in Israel or that it would have
hindered such efforts, he would not have accepted the job.‰

Before taking it on, Goldstone insisted on expanding the mission‚s
mandate so that it cover Palestinian acts; far from being one-sided,
the report concluded that Hamas rocket and mortar barrages on
southern Israel were „indiscriminate attacks upon the civilian
population,‰ acts that „would constitute war crimes and may amount to
crimes against humanity.‰ International law expert (and Nation
editorial board member) Richard Falk has concluded that „no credible
international commission could reach any set of conclusions other
than those reached by the Goldstone Report on the central
allegations.‰

Falk points out that there are good reasons for Israel‚s panicked
reaction. In addition to the report‚s balance and the credibility of
its chief, Goldstone recommends that Israel and Hamas carry out
serious, comprehensive investigations of their own into the alleged
crimes, and that if they do not do so within six months, the UN
Security Council should consider referring the matter to the
International Criminal Court in The Hague. That‚s highly unlikely,
given US veto power in the Security Council. But the report will
further diminish Israel‚s reputation and will probably strengthen the
growing international boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. In
his column on the report, Gideon Levy darkly concludes, „On the eve
of the Jewish New Year, Israel, deservedly, is becoming an outcast
and detested country. We must not forget it for a minute.‰

The Empire 475

U.S.: Homeless Shelters Fighting Push from Downtowns
By Matthew Cardinale

ATLANTA, Sep 29 (IPS) - The largest homeless shelter in the southeast U.S., the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, has filed a lawsuit against the city of Atlanta claiming officials have undertaken a complex campaign to sabotage the shelter with the ultimate goal of driving homeless, mostly African American men off the streets of downtown.

While the situation in Atlanta may be an extreme case, homeless advocates say it is part of a national trend to push homeless shelters out of downtown areas and into the suburbs, where it is more difficult for homeless people to access services.

"There are cities that have really tried to marginalise their homeless. Some [cities] put their homeless out in industrial parks and some people go as far as to put them on an island," Neil Donovan, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, told IPS.

"The city of Atlanta is just the most recent example of communities attempting to push homeless resources and services outside of the downtown community. In the past decade there have been examples in cities from St. Louis to Las Vegas," Donovan said.

The Task Force in Atlanta serves up to 700 homeless men per night and provides day services to homeless women, including those with children.

It also assists numerous people whom other shelters will not serve; for example, the city's favoured Gateway Centre only serves a limited number of people, and will only help homeless people who participate in one of their full-time programmes and will allow their information to be stored in a national database called Pathways.

Most city services impose arbitrary time limits, such as 21 days, on how long people can receive services, according to the lawsuit.

Because the Task Force attempts to serve all the homeless people who cannot get help anywhere else - and to do so with increasingly fewer sources of funding - the shelter has become an easy target for people unfamiliar with the issues.

"We are moving away from the old model of sheltering and feeding homeless people, and moving to a model to try to get people out of being homeless," A.J. Robinson, president of Central Atlanta Progress, which represents the downtown business community, told IPS.

"This model of moving people out of homelessness is not something the Task Force aspires to. At its core, this is how they think: the more homeless they can shelter, the more resources they can raise," he said.

"The facility is too big and the Task Force does not have the resources to manage it well. The overflow from the shelter, the people coming in and out, has led to all kinds of neighbourhood problems - crime rates in and outside the shelter are a problem. The loitering that takes place, it's a real drag on the community," Robinson said.

Task Force Executive Director Anita Beaty says there is no data showing a high level of crime in the immediate vicinity of the Task Force. Moreover, men staying at the shelter have a curfew, so they cannot be out on the streets at night.

Meanwhile, Debi Starnes, the homeless liaison for Mayor Shirley Franklin, accused the shelter in Creative Loafing magazine of warehousing people instead of helping them.

Advocates say this is an easy claim to make, seeing as how the shelter accepts everybody who needs help with few conditions, and will help them as much as possible even if they do not have as many resources as they would like.

"They simply ignore our reports that we can prove with names about the people we've helped find jobs - 1,500 people we've helped find permanent housing this year," Beaty said.

"More often than not, [our shelter] is the only available emergency housing for men. Other shelters have moved out or closed. We get the overflow; the overflow can't move on when there's fewer and fewer affordable housing units to move into," she said.

She added that in recent years, the city of Atlanta has torn down 3,200 units of affordable public housing, displacing 9,600 people.

"Seventy-seven percent of people [at the shelter] earn some kind of living, but can't accumulate enough to get a place to live. You have to earn 15 dollars an hour [twice the minimum wage] just to live in a [one-room] efficiency in Atlanta at fair market rent," Beaty said.

On Sep. 21, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville ruled against the city's petition to dismiss the Task Force shelter's lawsuit. The case will now go forward, with a trial expected to begin in February 2010.

The lawsuit seeks an injunction against the city of Atlanta to stop turning off its water; to stop making defamatory, untrue statements about the Task Force in the local media; to stop standing in their way of federal funds; and to stop approaching private donors and partners of the Task Force, which they said has resulted in cuts in private assistance to the shelter.

The Task Force has produced emails showing apparent collusion between the city and Central Atlanta Progress to generate negative press about the Task Force as well as strategising about how to close the shelter. Robinson told IPS he did not deny working with the city or speaking with the press to address his concerns about the shelter.

"This is about racism, and classism, and the planning of downtown to literally cleanse people who are supposedly not good for business," Beaty said.

Lees verder: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48642

The Empire 474

Deze foto maakte ik eind juli van dit jaar op Wall Street, vanaf het balkon van de Federal Hall waar op 30 april 1789 George Washington de eed van trouw aflegde als eerste president van de Verenigde Staten.

Dit is de normale 24-uursbewaking van het domein van de speculanten en hun bankiers. Het wordt door de belastingbetaler gefinancierd, net zoals de failliete bankiers door de belastingbetalers gesubsidieerd worden. Zo werkt het socialisme voor de rijken. Hun bonussen kunnen niet aangepakt worden, wel het inkomen van de armen. Lees Chris Hedges: Empire of Illusion.

Police State - The Militarization of the Police Force in USA

zie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k5y3fBH9Og

De Dollar Hegemonie 47

Ook de Wereldbank moet nu toegeven dat de dollar geen dollar meer waard is.

World Bank Head Sees Dollar’s Role Diminishing

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

Published: September 28, 2009

WASHINGTON — The president of the World Bank said on Monday that America’s days as an unchallenged economic superpower might be numbered and that the dollar was likely to lose its favored position as the euro and the Chinese renminbi assume bigger roles.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Robert Zoellick said the Treasury should get more power.

“The United States would be mistaken to take for granted the dollar’s place as the world’s predominant reserve currency,” the World Bank president, Robert B. Zoellick, said in a speech at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins. “Looking forward, there will increasingly be other options to the dollar.”

Mr. Zoellick, who previously served as the United States trade representative and as deputy secretary of state under President George W. Bush, said that the euro provided a “respectable alternative” for financing international transactions and that there was “every reason to believe that the euro’s acceptability could grow.”

In the next 10 to 20 years, he said, the dollar will face growing competition from China’s currency, the renminbi. Though Chinese leaders have minimized their currency’s use in international transactions, largely so they could keep greater control over exchange rates, Mr. Zoellick said the renminbi would “evolve into a force in financial markets.”

The World Bank, which is financed by governments around the globe and lends money primarily to poor countries, has no say over the economic policies of large nations or over currency matters.

But Mr. Zoellick’s comments were unusual, in part because he seemed intent on being provocative. He argued that the United States and a handful of other rich nations could no longer dominate the world economy and suggested that America was losing its clout. He also took issue with a central piece of the Obama administration’s proposal regarding the country’s financial regulatory system.

“The greenback’s fortunes will depend heavily on U.S. choices,” Mr. Zoellick said. “Will the United States resolve its debt problems without a resort to inflation? Can America establish long-term discipline over spending and its budget deficit?”

Mr. Zoellick criticized President Obama’s plan to put the Federal Reserve in charge of reducing “systemic risk” and to regulate institutions considered too big to fail. Saying that Congress had become uneasy about the Fed’s exercise of emergency powers to bail out financial institutions and prop up credit markets, Mr. Zoellick argued that the Treasury rather than the Fed should get more power because the Treasury was more accountable to Congress.

“In the United States, it will be difficult to vest the independent and powerful technocrats at the Federal Reserve with more authority,” Mr. Zoellick said, adding that “the Treasury is an executive department, and therefore Congress and the public can more directly oversee how it uses any added authority.”

Zie: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/business/economy/29dollar.html?_r=1

De Israelische Oorlogsmisdaden 100

Van oorlogsmisdaden verdachte politici hebben vrij spel zolang ze aan de macht blijven. Dat is de logica van de macht.

UK court quashes Barak arrest bid

Barak is visiting the UK, where he attended a Labour party conference on Britain's coast [AFP]

A legal attempt in Britain by a group of Palestinians to have Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, arrested for alleged war crimes has failed.

A judge at a magistrate's court in London, Britain's capital, ruled on Tuesday that Barak enjoys diplomatic immunity from prosecution, because he is visiting the UK on official business.

The group of 16 Palestinians accused the defence minister for atrocities committed during this year's Gaza war, including the assassination of a senior Palestinian minister and the unlawful killing of civilians.

They had been hoping for court action to allow Barak to be arrested on British soil, during his two-day visit to the country.

Tim Friend, Al Jazeera's correspondent in London reported that the lawyers, who emerged after an hour of legal argument, said they were extremely disappointed at the ruling, and would contest it.

Barak is currently in Brighton, in Britain's southeast, attending a conference for the country's ruling Labour party.

Earlier, Betty Hunter, the secretary-general of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said Barak's presence at the Labour party conference in Brighton was a "disgrace".

"As a high contracting party to the Geneva Convention, the British government should be arresting Barak for war crimes, not treating him to dinner."

Barak is expected to meet Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, and David Miliband, the foreign secretary, on Wednesday.

Miliband said the meetings would go ahead regardless of the threatened court action.

"He is the democratically elected defence minister of Israel and I will be pleased to meet him," Miliband said.

Gaza bombardment

More than 1,400 Palestinians, at least one-third of them women and children, were killed in Israel's December-January offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Israel said the air, naval and ground assault on the territory was aimed at halting rocket attacks by Palestinian fighters.

In 2005, human rights groups criticised the British authorities for failing to arrest Doron Almog, an Israeli army general for whom an arrest warrant for alleged war crimes had been issued, when his aircraft landed in London.

Almog stayed on the aeroplane at Heathrow airport after apparently being informed that he could face arrest. He was allowed to return to Israel.

Zie: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/09/200992918045202184.html

De Israelische Terreur 959

Iran in deadly warning to Israel

Correspondents in New York and Washington | September 30, 2009

Article from: The Australian

ON the eve of talks with the international community about its nuclear aspirations, and only hours after a "provocative" missile test, Iran has issued a warning to Israel that it would face destruction if it attacked the Islamist nation.

"If this (an Israeli attack) happens, which, of course, we do not foresee, its ultimate result would be to expedite the last breath of the Zionist regime," Iranian Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi said on state television.

His comments came after Western leaders called a second day of rocket launches by Iran a "reprehensible" distraction from talks this week that will determine whether Tehran is ready to negotiate over its nuclear program, or face biting new sanctions.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs called the missile tests "provocative". He added: "This is an important day and an important week for Iran." Mr Gibbs demanded unfettered access to a new nuclear facility that Iran admitted to last week.

Meanwhile, in the lead-up to tomorrow's talks in Geneva, the administration of US President Barack Obama and its Western allies were working up new ways to impose sanctions on Iran if it does not comply with demands to come clean about its nuclear program.

American officials said the US would expand its own penalties against Iranian companies and press for greater international sanctions against foreign firms, largely European, that do business in the country unless Iran can prove that its nuclear activities are not aimed at developing an atomic weapon.

Among the ideas being considered were asset freezes and travel bans.

The proposed sanctions would largely focus on investment in Iran's energy infrastructure and development, the officials said. But some economic giants are less enthusiastic about sanctions.

China and Russia are still seen as only half-hearted partners in any effort to push penalties through the UN Security Council. And France and Germany are skittish about targeting Iran's oil imports.

European officials stressed yesterday that they were likely to seriously consider new sanctions on Tehran only at year-end, citing a December deadline - replacing Mr Obama's September deadline - that has been set to see whether diplomacy with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad works.

While Iran is a major oil exporter, its lack of refining capacity requires it to import about 40 per cent of its petrol and other petroleum-based fuels. A total embargo on Iranian oil - which Israeli officials have suggested - seems unlikely. US law already forbids American firms from buying Iranian oil, but Europe, Japan and China are big customers.

The Times, AP

Zie: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26143336-15084,00.html

Iran 310

Iran tells world powers not to repeat “mistakes”

(Reuters)

29 September 2009

Iranian MPs told world powers not to repeat “past mistakes” in this week’s Geneva talks, suggesting they may in that case force the government to downgrade cooperation with the U.N. nuclear agency.

Raising the stakes ahead of Thursday’s rare meeting, 239 lawmakers signed a statement expressing support for negotiations based on proposals put forward by Iran, which do not mention Tehran’s own nuclear programme.

The United States has made clear it will focus on Iran’s nuclear activities, which the West fears are aimed at making bombs, in the meeting in the Swiss city.

Iran, which insists its programme is aimed solely at producing electricity, has offered wide-ranging security talks but says it will not negotiate on its nuclear “rights.”

“We remind the negotiating countries that this is an historic opportunity which can be a way out of the current deadlock and solve the problems,” the MPs said in a statement quoted by state broadcaster IRIB.

“We recommend the 5+1 (six powers) to use this historic opportunity,” it said. “If the group of 5+1 repeats past mistakes instead of using this opportunity, the Iranian parliament would take other decisions as it did in the past.”

In 2006, the Iranian parliament passed a bill obliging the government to review the level of its cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog after the United Nations approved sanctions on Tehran over its atomic programme.

Zie: http://www.khaleejtimes.com/displayarticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2009/September/middleeast_September689.xml&section=middleeast&col=

The Empire 473

51% Say Obama Not Tough Enough on Iran

rasmussenreports.com Rasmussenreports.com – Tue Sep 29, 12:12 pm ET

Fifty-one percent (51%) of U.S. voters say President Obama has not been aggressive enough in responding to Iran's nuclear program.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only four percent (4%) think the president has been too aggressive in dealing with Iran, while 38% believe his response has been about right.

In late June, 40% of voters said the president was not aggressive enough in supporting the reformers in Iran protesting the results of the country's questionable presidential election, but 42% said Obama's response had been about right.

Seventy-three percent (73%) of Republicans and 55% of voters not affiliated with either party say the president has not been aggressive enough in reacting to Iran's nuclear program, but 61% of Democrats say his response has been about right.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

Despite conciliatory remarks by the president as recently as last week at the United Nations, Iran has continued to make threats toward Israel and others while continuing its nuclear program. On Friday, Obama and the leaders of Great Britain and France acknowledged the existence of a previously undisclosed nuclear plant in Iran and began talking about tougher diplomatic measures against the Islamic nation.

Eighty-eight percent (88%) of voters are now at least somewhat concerned about Iran's nuclear program, with 59% who are very concerned. Only 11% are not very or not at all concerned.

Voters 40 and older are more concerned than those who are younger. Republicans are more worried than Democrats and unaffiliateds.

Eighty-two percent (82%) say Iran's nuclear program is for weapons development, up slightly from late January. Only five percent (5%) believe the Iranian government's claim that its uranium enrichment program is for peaceful energy purposes. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure.

The new survey was taken Saturday and Sunday nights prior to Iran's announcement on Monday that it had test-fired missiles with the capability of striking Israel and U.S. military facilities in Europe and the Persian Gulf region.

Iran is seen an enemy of the United States by 70% of Americans, putting it second only to North Korea on the U.S. enemies list.

Thirty-eight percent (38%) of voters say America's relationship with Iran will be worse a year from now than it is today, up six points from June. Twelve percent (12%) say the relationship will be better, and 39% think it will be about the same.

Eighty-two percent (82%) of voters say they have followed recent news reports about Iran's nuclear program at least somewhat closely, with 50% who are following very closely. Just three percent (3%) say they are not following the news about Iran at all.

Voters have expressed growing unease with the president's handling of national security issues in recent weeks.

Obama gave a highly-publicized speech in Egypt in June, reaching out to the Muslim world. But the plurality of voters (43%) say America's relationship with the Muslim world will be roughly the same in one year as it is now. Twenty-six percent (26%) say the relationship will be better; 25% say it will be worse.

In May, 49% of Americans said the United States should help Israel if it attacks Iran. Thirty-seven percent (37%) said America should do nothing if that happen. Just two percent believe the United States should help Iran.

Just 12% of voters continue to believe that the United States should be the world's policeman.

Please sign up for the Rasmussen Reports daily e-mail update (it's free) or follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Let us keep you up to date with the latest public opinion news.

This national telephone survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted by Rasmussen Reports September 26-27, 2009. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence (see methodology).

Rasmussen Reports is an electronic publishing firm specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information.

Zie: http://news.yahoo.com/s/rasmussen/20090929/pl_rasmussen/iran20090929_1

Iran 309

Bill O'Reilly: "Obama Should Provoke A Military Incident With Iran"

Zie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzKNRgDc-dQ

De Israelische Terreur 958

Israel urges West to stand firm against Iran

Israel's prime minister began an intensive round of telephone diplomacy to urge Western governments to stand firm against Iran in response to the latest revelations of its secret nuclear programme.

By Richard Spencer
Published: 6:27PM BST 27 Sep 2009

Benjamin Netanyahu called Nancy Pelosi to urge tougher sanctions Photo: EPA

Benjamin Netanyahu telephoned Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and other senators and congressmen to urge tougher sanctions.

"Action must be taken in all areas to increase pressure on Iran and impose crippling sanctions on it," he said, according to the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. "If not now, then when?" The report suggests that Israel, which has been considering air strikes against Iran, is for now still pursuing diplomatic routes to preventing Tehran's development of nuclear missiles.

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Mr Netanyahu is also trying to show he is mindful of the approach being taken to Iran by Barack Obama, US president. The prime minister knows that Iran is part of a broader geopolitical set of issues and that in the long run, should he wish to order a strike against Iran, it will be hard, if not impossible, to do so without American approval.

Mr Netanyahu was backed by a diplomatic barrage from other senior Israeli figures. Avigdor Lieberman, the hardline foreign minister, called on the international community to overthrow "the mad regime of Tehran". General Gabi Ashkenazi, chief of staff of the Israeli army, said there was still time to allow sanctions to work.

He said that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, had "to know that he can end his days like Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi" – implying that he had the choice to renounce nuclear weapons in the manner of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya or be ousted like Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

There was a reverberating silence from most of the Arab world over the weekend. Saudi Arabia has refused to confirm or deny reports that it had given approval to an Israeli air strike, which would most easily be achieved by flying over Saudi airspace.

But an article in the London-based Asharq al-Awsat, a prominent newspaper backed by the Saudi royal family, made clear the unease felt by Iran's principal rivals for political dominance of the Gulf region.

It warned that Mr Ahmadinejad, weakened by this summer's post-election protests in Iran and the exposure of his secret nuclear plant, might lash out, perhaps using proxies such as the Iranian-backed Hizbollah movement in Lebanon.

"Iran may not hesitate to use the region in an attempt to counter the internal and external pressures that it is facing," Tariq Alhomayed, the newspaper's editor, said.

Zie: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/6237299/Israel-urges-West-to-stand-firm-against-Iran.html

De Israelische Terreur 957

sAUDIS WILL LET ISRAEL BOMB IRAN NUCLEAR SITE

Mossad chief Meir Dagan

Sunday September 27,2009

INTELLIGENCE chief Sir John Scarlett has been told that Saudi Arabia is ready to allow Israel to bomb Iran’s new nuclear site.

The head of MI6 discussed the issue in London with Mossad chief Meir Dagan and Saudi officials after British intelligence officers helped to uncover the plant, in the side of a mountain near the ancient city of Qom.

The site is seen as a major threat by Tel Aviv and Riyadh. Details of the talks emerged after John Bolton, America’s former UN ambassador, told a meeting of intelligence analysts that “Riyadh certainly approves” of Israel’s use of Saudi airspace.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband acknowledged that the danger of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East was “particularly potent” and refused to rule out military action altogether but he insisted: “We are 100 per cent focused on a diplomatic solution.”

Gordon Brown, US President Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have warned Iran’s leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that he must allow in weapons inspectors or face more sanctions.

The scene is set for a showdown next Thursday when Iranian officials meet representatives of the E3+3 group of Britain, France, Germany, the US, Russia and China in Geneva.

Significantly, Russia, which has previously resisted pressure for sanctions, said it also found the latest disclosures “disturbing”.

The site near Qom was detected three years ago by British, US and French intelligence agencies.

Diplomatic sources said it could hold 3,000 centrifuges, capable of making enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb each year.

Zie: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/130251/Saudis-will-let-Israel-bomb-Iran-nuclear-site

Chris Hedges 2

The War on Language

By Chris Hedges

September 29, 2009 "TruthDig" -- There is a scene in "Othello" when the Moor is so consumed by jealousy and rage that he loses the eloquence and poetry that make him the most articulate man in Venice. He turns to the audience, shortly before he murders Desdemona, and sputters, "Goats and monkeys!" Othello fell prey to wild self-delusion and unchecked rage, and his words became captive to hollow clichés. The debasement of language, which Shakespeare understood was a prelude to violence, is the curse of modernity. We have stopped communicating, even with ourselves. And the consequences will be as extreme as in the Shakespearean tragedy.

Those who seek to dominate our behavior first seek to dominate our speech. They seek to obscure meaning. They make war on language. And the English- and Arabic-speaking worlds are each beset with a similar assault on language. The graffiti on the mud walls of Gaza that calls for holy war or the crude rants of Islamic militants are expressed in a simplified, impoverished form of Arabic. This is not the classical language of 1,500 years of science, poetry and philosophy. It is an argot of clichés, distorted Quranic verses and slogans. This Arabic is no more comprehensible to the literate in the Arab world than the carnival barking that pollutes our airwaves is comprehensible to our literate classes. The reduction of popular discourse to banalities, exacerbated by the elite's retreat into obscure, specialized jargon, creates internal walls that thwart real communication. This breakdown in language makes reflection and debate impossible. It transforms foreign cultures, which we lack the capacity to investigate, into reversed images of ourselves. If we represent virtue, progress and justice, as our clichés constantly assure us, then the Arabs, or the Iranians, or anyone else we deem hostile, represent evil, backwardness and injustice. An impoverished language solidifies a binary world and renders us children with weapons.

How do you respond to "Islam is the solution" or "Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior"? How do you converse with someone who justifies the war in Iraq-as Christopher Hitchens does-with the tautology that we have to "kill them over there so they do not kill us over here"? Those who speak in these thought-terminating clichés banish rational discussion. Their minds are shut. They sputter and rant like a demented Othello. The paucity of public discourse in our culture, even among those deemed to be public intellectuals, is matched by the paucity of public discourse in the Arab world.

This emptiness of language is a gift to demagogues and the corporations that saturate the landscape with manipulated images and the idiom of mass culture. Manufactured phrases inflame passions and distort reality. The collective chants, jargon and epithets permit people to surrender their moral autonomy to the heady excitement of the crowd. "The crowd doesn't have to know," Mussolini often said. "It must believe. ... If only we can give them faith that mountains can be moved, they will accept the illusion that mountains are moveable, and thus an illusion may become reality." Always, he said, be "electric and explosive." Belief can triumph over knowledge. Emotion can vanquish thought. Our demagogues distort the Bible and the Constitution, while their demagogues distort the Quran, or any other foundational document deemed to be sacred, fueling self-exaltation and hatred at the expense of understanding. The more illiterate a society becomes, the more power those who speak in this corrupted form of speech amass, the more music and images replace words and thought. We are cursed not by a cultural divide but by mutual cultural self-destruction.

The educated elites in the Arab world are now as alienated as the educated elites in the United States. To speak with a vocabulary that the illiterate or semiliterate do not immediately grasp is to be ostracized, distrusted and often ridiculed. It is to impart knowledge, which fosters doubt. And doubt in calcified societies, which prefer to speak in the absolute metaphors of war and science, is a form of heresy. It was not accidental that the founding biblical myth saw the deliverer of knowledge as evil and the loss of innocence as a catastrophe. "This probably had less to do with religion than with the standard desire of those in authority to control those who are not," John Ralston Saul wrote. "And control of the Western species of the human race seems to turn upon language."

The infantile slogans that are used to make sense of the world express, whether in tea party rallies or in Gaza street demonstrations, a very real alienation, yearning and rage. These clichés, hollow to the literate, are electric with power to those for whom these words are the only currency in which they can express anguish and despair. And as the economy worsens, as war in the Middle East and elsewhere continues, as our corporate state strips us of power and reduces us to serfs, expect this rage, and the demented language used to give it voice, to grow.

The Arabic of the Quran is as poetic as the intricate theology of Islam. It is nuanced and difficult to master. But the language of the Quran has been debased in the slums and poor villages across the Middle East by the words and phrases of political Islam. This process is no different from what has taken place with Christianity in the United States. Our mainstream churches have been as complacent in fighting heretics as have the mainstream mosques and religious scholars in the Middle East. Demented forms of Christianity and Islam have largely supplanted genuine and more open forms of religious expression. And they have done so because liberal elites were cowed into silence. Corruptions of Islamic terms and passages are as numerous in the militants' ideology as in the ideology of the Christian right. The word jihad for the militants means the impunity to kill, kidnap, hijack and bomb anyone they see as an infidel, including children and other Muslims. Jihad, however, does not always mean holy war, or even war, in the Quran. According to Islamic tradition, the "great jihad" is the battle within one's self to live in accord with God's will. A jihad, for the prophet Muhammad, is often the struggle to achieve inner-worldly asceticism, in accord with his call "to command the good and forbid evil with the heart, the tongue and the hand." And the Quran condemns the use of violence to propagate the faith. "There is no compulsion in religion," it states. The Quran also denounces forced piety and conversion as insincere. Calls to martyrdom, presented by militants as a direct path toward eternal life, conveniently eschew the Quran's rigid ban on suicide. But theological nuance is beside the point for zealots. The fantasies peddled by the Christian right, from the Rapture, which is not in the Bible, to the belief that Jesus, who was a pacifist, would bless wars in the Middle East, injects our own version of sanctified slogans into the vernacular.

Our crisis is a crisis of language. Victor Klemperer in his book "Lingua Tertii Imperii" noted that the distortion of language by the Nazis was vital in creating fascist culture. He was repeatedly perplexed by how the masses, even those who opposed the Nazis, willingly ingested the linguistic poison the Nazis used to perpetuate collective self-delusion. "Words may be little doses of arsenic," he wrote. "They are consumed without being noticed; they seem at first to have no effect, but after a while, indeed, the effect is there."

© 2009 TruthDig.com

Zie: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23593.htm

De Israelische Terreur 956

IAEA veroordeelt Israël

20/09/'07

Het Internationaal Atoomenergie Agentschap (IAEA) heeft donderdag in een opmerkelijke resolutie Israël veroordeeld, omdat het land weigert zijn atoomwapenprogramma onder internationaal toezicht te plaatsen.

Van de 144 lidstaten stemden 53 voor de resolutie en slechts twee tegen: Israël en de Verenigde Staten. 47 Lidstaten onthielden zich.

Het was slechts de tweede keer in de zestien jaar dat de kwestie op de agenda stond van het IAEA dat het daadwerkelijk tot een stemming komt.

Israëlische bezwaren tegen twee alinea's in een resolutie over veiligheid in het Midden-Oosten forceerden een stemming. Een van de alinea's riep landen in de regio op geen nucleaire wapens te ontwikkelen, testen of op andere wijze te verkrijgen; de andere riep landen die over nucleaire wapens beschikken op om zich niet te verzetten tegen het atoomwapenvrij maken van het Midden-Oosten.

Beide passages waren overduidelijk tegen Israël gericht, dat nucleaire wapens bezit maar dit toegeeft noch ontkent.
Zie: http://www.gva.be/Archief/guid/iaea-veroordeelt-israel.aspx?artikel=723d9372-13fc-4d3c-952a-554e34289223

De Israelische Terreur 955

Iets vernomen hierover via de Nederlandse commerciele massamedia? Zo ja, waar?

OCTOBER 1, 2009

IRAN - THE WAR DANCE

On September 19, the Irish Times reported:

“Israel has rejected the call by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and open up its atomic sites to international inspection.” (Mark Weiss, ‘Israel spurns nuclear watchdog's call to open atomic sites to inspection,’ Irish Times, September 19, 2009; http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/0919/1224254860406.html)

The IAEA, which met in Vienna on September 18, adopted a resolution expressing concern about “Israeli nuclear capabilities” and called on agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei to work on the issue. The motion was adopted by 49 votes to 45, with 16 abstentions. Russia and China, both permanent members of the UN security council, voted in favour. The United States and the European Union initially tried to block the vote, and then voted against it. David Danieli, deputy director of Israel’s atomic energy commission, said: “Israel will not co-operate in any matter with this resolution.” (http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/09/2009918173136830771.html)
Despite this defiance, despite Israel's appalling record of violating international law, despite its record of waging and threatening war in the region, and despite possessing as many as 400 nuclear warheads, no Western journalist suggested that Israel should be bombed or blockaded as a result. Indeed, apart from the tiny left-wing Morning Star newspaper and a couple of wire agencies, it appears the Irish Times was the only English-language media outlet to cover this story.

Israel is one of three countries, along with India and Pakistan, which is not a signatory to the NPT. The treaty is intended to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, but Article VI constitutes a specific obligation on nuclear-weapon states like Britain and the United States to disarm themselves of nuclear weapons, an obligation they have conspicuously failed to meet.

On September 27, the Financial Times was also a lonely voice in reporting that India “can now build nuclear weapons with the same destructive power as those in the arsenals of the world’s major nuclear powers”. According to New Delhi’s senior atomic officials, India has built weapons with yields of up to 200 kilotons. It is estimated to have manufactured weapons-grade plutonium for at least 100 warheads. (James Lamont and James Blitz, ‘India raises nuclear stakes,’ Financial Times, September 27, 2009; http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d63f3a70-ab90-11de-9be4-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1)

India has no problem delivering these weapons. Britain supplied the Hawk ground-attack aircraft used to train Indian pilots to fly Jaguar nuclear-capable bombers, also built by BAE Systems. In 2003, the Independent reported:

"The deal comes after intense lobbying by the British Government, with Prime Minister Tony Blair, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw taking it in turns to persuade the Indians to buy the jets." (Clayton Hirst and George Fernandes, ‘BAE to enjoy Indian summer with £1bn order for Hawk jets,’ The Independent, August 3, 2003)

READ FULL ALERT

---

What is Media Lens?

Media Lens is our response to the unwillingness, or inability, of the mainstream media to tell the truth about the real causes and extent of many of the problems facing us, such as human rights abuses, poverty, pollution and climate change.
CONTINUE

De Israelische Terreur 954

Netanyahu’s UN Speech

The Pathology of Evil

By Gilad Atzmon

September 29, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- Israeli PM Netanyahu’s speech at the UN is a major insight into the Israeli’s mentality, psyche and logic. In his speech Netanyahu, a prolific and charismatic speaker, gives air to his genocidal inclinations, he brings to light the Israeli supremacy but he also allows us to detect some shaky and vulnerable spots at the heart of the Jewish national narrative. Reading Netanyahu’s speech makes it very clear that both the Zionist Shoa and the ‘promised land’ narratives are on the verge of collapse. It seems as if the ‘discredited’ Iranian president Ahmadinejad has managed to succeed after all.

Don’t You Mess With Our Shoa

Israelis love their Shoa, for the Shoa is no doubt their best selling Hasbara (propaganda) product. It somehow allows them to kill en masse and to do it indistinguishably while insisting that it is they who happen to be the victims.

“I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee.” Said Netanyahu. “There, on January 20,1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people.”

PM Netanyahu, if you are genuinely interested in ‘extermination plans’ you do not have to travel to Wannsee, Berlin. All you have to do is visit your IDF’s headquarters in Tel Aviv. Your chief commanders will guide you through their IDF ‘solutions’ for the Palestinians. At the end of the day, it is your army that surrounds Palestinians with barbed-wire, it is you who keep civilian populations in a siege with inadequate food supplies and medicine. It is your army that poured WMD over the most densely populated neighbourhoods on this planet. While the real meaning of the ‘Nazi Final Solution’ (Die Endlösung) is still discussed by historians who fail to agree between themselves what it really meant, the true reality of the Israeli murderous solution has been seen by us all.

However, it is almost amusing to see PM Netanyahu rushing to defend the Zionist holocaust narrative. Looking at Netanyahu presenting the protocol of the Wannsee conference to the UN assembly gives a clear impression that the Israeli PM believes that the Shoa needs an urgent pump of credibility. For the first time, the Shoa is on the defence.

“Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered. Is this too a lie?” asks the Israeli PM.

PM Netanyahu, may I suggest to you that not a single humanist cares about the exact numbers: whether it was one or four millions Jews who died in Auschwitz, no one doubts that the camp was a horrible place. Yet, two questions must be answered once and for all: how is it that the Jews, who suffered so much during that war, managed to get themselves involved in a colossal racist crime against the Palestinians (1948 Nakba) just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz? How is it that the Israeli leadership, that happens to be so sensitive to Jewish suffering, manages to neglect the pain they inflict on millions of Palestinians?

Supremacy and Beyond

As a National movement, Zionism fails to respect other national and popular movements. Seemingly Netanyahu fails to respect the Iranian people and their regime. “Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women, minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated.” Netanyahu, must know that the Judaic law is not very different from Islam on these matters. He must also remember that it is in his country that gays were murdered in the street just a month ago. It is almost amusing that Netanyahu chooses to equate Iran with Barbarism and the Middle Ages for its treatment of minorities. As far as minorities are concerned, the Jewish state is actually the darkest place on this planet. In Netanyahu’s promised land half of the population cannot participate in the democratic game just for failing to be Jewish.

Israel according to Netanyahu is the embodiment of Western modernity.

“We (the Westerners) will crack the genetic code. We will cure the incurable. We will lengthen our lives. We will find a cheap alternative to fossil fuels and

clean up the planet. I am proud that my country Israel is at the forefront of these advances.” I must admit that I am not at all overwhelmed by Israeli scientific or technological achievements. Nor have I ever seen any evidence of Israeli attempts to save humanity or even the planet. In fact all I see is quite the opposite. However, if Netanyahu welcomes scientific progress, he should be the first to rally for the Iranian nuclear project. As we all know, this doesn’t seem to be the case. He, for some reason, thinks that, at least regionally, nuclear energy and weapons must remain Jew only property.

Netanyahu argues that “if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons, the march of history could be reversed for a time.” Netanyahu may well be correct but one should point out to him that the above applies to Israel more than any other country, state or society. For the time being it is the Jewish State that has been caught pouring WMD on its imprisoned civilian population. It is the Jewish State that is dragging us all into an ‘eye for an eye’ primitive Biblical fanaticism. As if this is not enough, it is also America and Britain that launched illegal wars orchestrated by Zionist led Neocons and fundraisers. This war has cost more than one million lives so far.

However, for once I agree with Netanyhau:

“The greatest threat facing the world today”, he says, “is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction.”

In fact, no one could describe the danger posed by the Jewish state and Zionism any better. Israel is indeed a deadly marriage between Old Testament gross genocidal barbarism, Zionist fanaticism and a huge arsenal of WMD, chemical, biological and nuclear that has already been partially put into action.

Sabbath Goyim

Like other Zionist operations around the world, Netanyahu is convinced that the Goyim should fight the Jewish wars. “Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?” I actually would like to stress that PM Netanyahu is all wrong here. If the United Nation is interested in bringing peace to this region and the world, it is of the essence to help Iran to develop its nuclear project and even its military nuclear capacity. This seems to be the only thing that may curb the English Speaking Empire’s lethal expansionist enthusiasm as performed recently in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It will surely stop the Zionists from celebrating their symptoms at the expense of their neighbours.

Following the successful transformation of the American and British armies into an Israeli subservient mission force, Netanyahu seems to expect the UN to follow and to fulfil the very same role. “Hamas”, he says, “fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks.” I guess that someone should remind the Israeli PM that the dispute between Hamas and Israel is not exactly an international quarrel, for Palestine is not a sovereign state and Gaza is nothing less than an Israeli-run concentration camp. In other words, the practicality of the matter is simple. The UN should only deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel, its leadership and its army. It is not down to the UN to pass any kind of judgment on the oppressed.

Mass Murder Fantasies

It doesn’t take long before Netanyahu lists his ideological mentors and the core of his lethal inspiration “When the Nazis rocketed British cities during World War II…” Actually the allies levelled German cities, causing hundreds of thousands of victims… By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth. What a perversion of justice. Delegates of the United Nations, will you accept this farce?”

Netanyahu is almost correct. In his recounting of the 2^nd WW he surely admits here that Israel follows Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s mass murder tactics. But he surely fails to realise that if it was indeed down to ethics and Justice (rather than the usual dirty politics) Roosevelt and Churchill would have been charged with war crimes on a most severe scale. Shockingly enough, Netanyahu falls into the most obvious legal trap equating Israeli activity with acts of carpet bombardment on a huge scale. For those who fail to see it all, this is a rapidly blinking red light hazard. In Netanyahu’s perception of reality nuking countries and flattening towns is a justifiable act. Roosevelt and Churchill seem to be his moral entitlement. In fact these statements are enough to make it clear to every reasonable human being that Israel is a genocidal entity that is capable of bringing our civilisation to a devastating end.

This is a wake up call: it is not just the Palestinians or the Iranians. It is actually all of us.

Bibi* the Peace Maker

By now, the Israeli PM is ready to state his Judeo centric peace mantra. “Ladies and Gentlemen, all of Israel wants peace”. Yet as far as statistics are concerned, we have recently learned that 94% of the Israeli Jews also approved the carpet bombardment of their next door neighbours. It is impossible not to see a clear discrepancy between the ‘peace loving’ verbalism and the murderous reality.

“We ask the Palestinians to finally do what they have refused to do for 62 years: Say yes

to a Jewish state.” Once again, I happen to agree with PM Netanyahu. The Palestinian may as well say YES to a Jewish state, but not in Palestine or in the Middle East. If Obama, Brown, Merkel or any other deluded world leader who is still insisting to approve the validity or necessity of a racially orientated ‘Jewish national homeland’, he or she is more than welcome to allocate land to such a project within his or her own territory. Palestinians should say NO to a Jewish state in the Holy Land or in the region. Palestinians should never agree to the existence of a Jewish state on their land. In fact the UN must follow this line and do whatever it can to dismantle this evil apartheid regime.

Khazarian United

To a certain extent, Netanyahu’s UN speech expresses some deep concerns Jews tend to keep to themselves. At the end of the day, the Israelis and Ashkenazi Israelis in particular know pretty well that Palestine is not exactly the land of their ancestors. If the Israeli Ashkenazi Jews, including Netanyahu, do want to find their roots, Khazaria is the place to start. However, Netanyahu tries to defuse these historical facts. “The Jewish people are not foreign conquerors in the Land of Israel. This is the land of our forefathers… We are not strangers to this land. It is our homeland” says Netanyahu with total conviction.

PM Netanyahu, I will make it plain and clear. Not only are you foreign to the land, you are also foreign to almost every possible understanding of the notion of humanity. In fact, the Separation Wall that is going to be left after the inevitable disappearance of your ‘Jew only democracy’ will serve generations to come with an astonishing historical monument of Jewish national identity estranged from ethics, universalism and human brotherhood. The crime against humanity committed by the Jewish state in the name of the Jewish people is not something that will be wiped out from the history text books in a short time. Quite the opposite; it will stand as another mythological chapter in this never-ending saga of supremacist compulsive pathological self-loving.

“We must have security” says Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu as he ends his speech. And I am here to disappoint him. Israel will never be secured. It was born in a sin, and its existence surpasses any notion of ethics or human existence. The Jewish state has passed the ‘no return zone’. It is doomed to vanish. We can only hope that once this happens the process of Jewish assimilation and integration into humanity will re-embark. At the end of the day Jewish Nationalism both left, right and centre was there to keep Jews apart. The history of the 20^th century teaches us that this tendency to segregate oneself is bad for humanity and it is also devastating for the Jews.

* Netanyahu’s nickname is Bibi

Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military. He is the author of two novels: A Guide to the Perplexed and the recently released My One and Only Love. Atzmon is also one of the most accomplished jazz saxophonists in Europe. His recent CD, Exile, was named the year's best jazz CD by the BBC. He now lives in London and can be reached at: atz@onetel.net.uk

Zie: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23584.htm