by Szandor Blestman
The New World Order is not new. It is actually controlled by very old, very wealthy families. It is likely at least partially the brainchild of European royalty that should have faded into the sunset a long time ago, along with their central banking agents. Somehow, these royal families have managed to keep their wealth and their political influence in spite of decades, even centuries, of various political movements that should have cast them down and made them pariahs of the human race. Somehow they have managed to escape the wrath of the common folk in spite of wars and revolutions that should have targeted them and their agents.
Through all this they have not changed their ways. Through all this they have maintained their world view. Through all this they have remained arrogant, uncaring and aloof with an uncanny and almost inhuman lack of empathy and emotion. Throughout history they have kept their eyes on their ultimate goal and nurtured their belief that they are divinely chosen to rule over man rather than passively allowed to do so by the masses. It makes one almost feel sorry for them that they can be so deluded.
The dream of world dominance has infected the minds of the ruling class for centuries, if not millennia. One might wonder if this in and of itself has caused some kind of permanent damage to the intelligence and the psyches of those who have descended from the genetics of the elite. One might believe that world domination is a normal objective for all human beings if one considers how often one might hear the phrase "If I ran the world..," but these childlike musings soon give way to reality and most of us are likely to be satisfied with just running our own lives as best we can. Most of us likely just want to become the best humans we can possibly become. Many times this means just leaving others to their own means and letting them make their own mistakes. This is a lesson the ruling class just seems unable to learn. Indeed, this is the same mistake they've made throughout the ages, that they feel they are better able to run the lives of others and they have the right to force others, by whatever means possible, to bow to their will and accept their laws. They are apparently more concerned with growing their wealth and influence rather than becoming better human beings.
These people would like to remain in the shadows. They would like to stay hidden. I think this is because they know what they're doing is wrong. Somewhere, deep in their subconscious, despite their own thinking that they're being benevolent, they know their behavior is not right. Otherwise, they'd conduct their activities with honesty and in the open, even flaunt them and publicize them for all to see. Instead they sneak around, deceive and even deny when confronted. When they do admit to their nefarious deeds, they do so in such a way as to keep the masses mostly in the dark and leave it to the few who really pay attention to dig up the dirt on them.
The key to their scheme seems to be centralization. The ruling class would have us believe that one world government is the answer to the modern problems mankind faces. They would like us to believe that a one world government would put an end to war, poverty, homelessness, starvation, all kinds of maladies, even natural and manmade disasters. They would like us to believe these things because they would like us to support their centralization efforts. They would like there to be a populist movement to create the one world government so that it looks like it isn't their idea. What they don't want us to figure out is that a one world government would not be safeguarding the rights of the individual. It would not even really be democratic or even a representative democracy. It would be a collectivist scheme establishing a corporate aristocracy or some other kind of authoritarian hierarchy meant to control the entire world. Such a system could very well become the worst tyranny this world has ever seen.
These are people who believe not only that they should run everything, but that they own everything. This includes you. They seem to believe that you exist for the sole purpose of serving them. The only thing a one world government would do is put another layer of bureaucracy atop already overly bloated systems. It would simply add more taxes to already overly burdened populations. They evidently feel they own that portion of your labor. They feel they have the right to steal your money to fund their projects. They want you to believe they have your best interests in mind, that they are providing you with the society in which you operate, but in practice reality is quite a bit different than the utopia these control freaks believe they can build.
These people only manage to take opportunity away from you. They take your money and make laws in order to try to legitimize a worldwide system which benefits mostly the interests of their selves, their friends and their families. They wish to keep competition to a minimum and force government sanctioned monopolies upon us to maximize their profits while minimizing the quality of goods and services provided. They are trying to build an infrastructure based on spying and fear that will prevent people from interacting with each other in manners that threaten their power base.
There are dangerous times ahead. With the existing financial crises and looming disasters, it will be tempting to accept solutions to problems presented to us by those who care nothing for the betterment of humanity and everything for their own personal aggrandizement. We should all be very suspicious of globalization in whatever iteration, whatever the excuse. We should all remain quite cautious when our national governments wish to merge or cooperate with multi national and worldwide organizations. Only those at the top of the heap benefit from such maneuvers and they never take care of the problems they claim they will fix. Indeed, it seems more often then not those same problems become exacerbated. We will do well to remember history, question authority and remain diligent in demanding respect for individual rights.
The world elite have never been closer to realizing their goal. Yet even as they can see the brass ring within their grasp, their chances to grab it are slipping away. The European Union is in trouble. There is dissent amongst its members. The proposed Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America has been exposed as the fraudulent control scheme that it is. Even the separate states in the United States of America have begun to exercise more of their autonomy and are challenging the rule of their centralized federal government. The problems that have been created by greater centralization cannot be solved by more of the same. Collectivism in all its forms will always fail, for it attempts to hold down the human spirit.
A few hundred years ago, people started fleeing from Europe to try to escape the tyranny of monarchs and find independence amongst like minded people in a new world. Those people quickly learned they could prosper very well without the burdens of a huge centralized government. They came to understand, in fact, that they were better off taking care of themselves and their own. They quickly built a nation predicated on the ideas of liberty and the rights of the individual. This nation quickly became perhaps the most prosperous nation to ever exist. People flocked to its shores simply because they wanted the opportunity to become the best they could. The power elite, seeing that they were losing their serfs, likely felt threatened and began making plans to bring back those they had lost into the fold. They could ill afford to let these ideas of freedom and self determination infect the commoners, for then they might become less significant to the rest of humanity.
One would have thought that creating such a nation would eventually lead to smaller and smaller government. One would have thought that government would have become less burdensome and more localized as prosperity grew. But somewhere along the line the nation took a wrong turn. Somehow government continued to grow and become more burdensome as it restricted the people from conducting their lives as they would see fit. Somehow it came to be that the populous began to expect government to mother, coddle and protect them, and so they sacrificed their personal liberties in the hopes of obtaining some measure of security to be provided by others. Once the formally freest nation in the world has become completely corrupted and socialized, the beacon of freedom is turned off, and the rest of the world falls in line.
We can ill afford to remain blissfully ignorant anymore. Whether you believe there is a new world order or not, it is painfully obvious that there is a power elite moving to create a global paradigm restricting personal freedom and competition. This attempt at big world government should be resisted in whatever peaceful manner is necessary, be it through exposing them, civil disobedience, refusing to go along with their mandates, or even through the systems they have set up. Simply stop supporting their efforts and they will fail.
They will continue to try to lie, deceive, misinform, bribe and even create problems so that they can offer solutions. It is time the human race recognized their corrupt nature and the reality of what they are trying to accomplish. It is time for us to stop being fooled by their propaganda and to start decentralizing and localizing power. It is time to once again respect the rights of the smallest minority, the individual. In that way, we can evolve into the human beings we were meant to be.
Please remember to visit szandorblestman.com. There you will find a link to help support me and my efforts. You can also purchase my ebook "The Ouijiers" which will also help support me. You can read the first two chapters for free.
Source
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Rothschild's Black Gold Empire By Texe Marrs
“And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, a measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.”
—Revelation 6:6
The horrible disaster in the Gulf of Mexico grows more and more dreadful each passing day as up to 100,000 barrels of black goo shoot up like a pluming rocket, straight up out of the fiery bowels of the sea floor. But even as the residents of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the other Gulf states become drenched in black misery, across the globe a small clique of super-rich plutocrats are enjoying a diametrically opposite reaction. In fact, these calculating agents of deceit are celebrating the BP disaster with unmatched, gleeful joy. Their outrageous scheme has worked to perfection, and their bank accounts already show forth the astonishing success of their little sub-oceanic endeavor.
I’m referring to Rothschild and to his cohorts in crime, the freshly minted billionaire oil oligarchs of Israel and the sur-prisingly capitalistic new oil barons of Communist Red China.
Never in human history have so few profited so immensely while pulling the wool over the eyes of the ignorant, suffering masses.
Now, it may take a little doing for me to explain the incredible, dark reality of what has just happened to the people of America and to the nations of the world, but let me attempt to do just that in the succeeding brief paragraphs. I have also prepared for you a ground-breaking 60-minute investigative exposé which reveals in detail the shocking facts of Rothschild’s Black Gold Empire (Available on Tape or CD).
Your Future is at Stake
Why are these things important to you? Well, for one thing, your economic future depends on the price of oil. Oil, let us admit, fuels the world. Two years ago I released a bombshell intelligence report entitled Planet Petroleum (Available on Tape or CD). Remember it? At that time, Wall Street and the White House were telling us that oil was a rapidly declining resource and in a few more decades none would be left. The price per barrel, the “experts” told us, would be $250 within a few brief months. Indeed, almost immediately oil’s price shot up to a staggering $147 per barrel and its astronomical rise was expected to continue.
But in my report, I unmasked the lies of Wall Street, the government, and the oil titans and reported the truth: That the planet is awash in petroleum, that there is a never ending supply underground, and that the world would never—repeat, never!—run out of the black stuff. I further reported that in the United States, in the Bakken oil formation in the Dakotas and Montana, geologists had discovered more oil than exists in the entire Middle East. And—get this—I documented that there is more oil stored nearby in the Gulf of Mexico than had heretofore been discovered by oil drillers throughout the world in all the annals of human history.
My Prediction Comes True
What’s more, I revealed that the $140+ price of oil was a scam, boosted artificially by Wall Street bankers (Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs), and I told anyone who would listen that the outrageous high price would soon come tumbling down!
Guess what? It did exactly that. Within the year the price per barrel had plummeted from its $147 peak to only $32 per barrel. The price now sits at or about $78.
In other words, the U.S.A. has more oil available on this continent than all the rest of the world’s nations combined. There is no reason—none, none, none—for us to buy even one single barrel from some foreign potentate in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or Venezuela.
Every American Citizen is Fabulously Rich!
Can you imagine what this means for our economic fortune? Each of us—you and I and our kids and grandchildren—are rich, rich beyond belief.
A conservative estimate of our oil wealth would be that every man, woman, and child alive in the 50 American states is worth a minimum of Five Million Dollars. Each of us is joint heir of this nation’s massive deposits of black gold sitting unused underground on publicly-owned land and under our coastal waters. Think of it—we are all rich and no one, except the greedy elite—suspects it. The people are kept in total, abject stupidity.
Instead, from the early days of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly to today, we have been lied to and tricked into believing that oil is a rare, dwindling resource and that America must turn its eyes overseas to find sufficient energy to meet even our basic needs. What an outrageous lie we have all been fed.
The Gulf Oil Disaster A Criminal Act
Now let me explain to you the main points of what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico and in the decade leading up to this horrible tragedy.
1. Under the ruse of preventing Saddam Hussein from launching nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction,” Bush and Cheney invaded Iraq and seized that nation’s gigantic store of oil. Iraq is second only to Saudi Arabia in global oil production.
2. The U.S.A. then built permanent military bases adjacent to every major Iraqi oil field production facility. This is why we will remain in Iraq indefinitely, to insure the oil flow and gigantic profits continue.
3. The U.S.A. immediately began to build new Iraqi oil pipelines through to Israel, and to Israeli-controlled Lebanese ports where the huge quantities of Iraqi oil are loaded onto waiting oil tankers and transported by sea to China and India. Israel is now an oil-rich theocratic superstate. Rothschild is Israel’s hidden dictator and financial overlord.
4. This Iraqi oil is “owned” lock, stock, and barrel by Rothschild’s front companies. The profit from this oil scam—secreted away in Tel Aviv banks—now reaches obscene levels. To pacify the Iraqis, a pittance is given to the Baghdad government. Iraq’s corrupt politicians and Moslem Imams also get their cut.
5. In China (and to a lesser extent, India), Rothschild and his Jewish banking minions have founded dummy national oil corporations and constructed an astonishing number of new oil refineries. After processing of the crude petroleum, tankers proceed to transport the finished product to distribution outlets and tank storage facilities in China and across the oceans, including in the United States.
6. Chinese national oil companies (actually Rothschild clones) are now the major petroleum suppliers to the whole world. Yet, China possesses little oil of its own—China’s oil largesse comes from its cooperative dealings with Rothschild, Israel, and the U.S.A.
7. Because of the global oversupply problem—too much oil being drilled and pumped up out of the earth—it was decided that the booming Gulf of Mexico oil source must be indefinitely closed down. Chevron, Conoco, Exxon-Mobil, BP and other multinational oil corporations would henceforth be either limited or prohibited from operating oil derricks in the Gulf. Pemex, the Mexican national oil company, would also be limited in its production, and, down south, Brazil’s national oil corporation, Petrobras, would be given a strict quota.
8. China is now the preferred #1 oil spigot for all the world’s economies. Rothschild’s Jewish oil billionaire pals in Israel as well as China’s Communist bureaucrats are today the planet’s new masters of oil.
9. BP, an oil company already infamous for its despoiling the earth, has been made the scapegoat for the closing of much of the Gulf of Mexico’s oil spigots. In preparation for the derrick’s destruction, much of BP’s assets were transferred in advance of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster to other Rothschild affiliates across the world in Libya and the Middle East, and especially the majority of its Russian oil assets, which were turned over to four Russian Jewish billionaires, called the “Oligarchs.”
10. With the knowledge of the Obama administration, a British Royal Navy submarine was used to torpedo BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil derrick, initiating the environmental disaster we now face on our coastlines.
11. The American people and, indeed, the whole people of Earth, are aghast at what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico. Their minds are thus conditioned and ready to accept drilling moratoriums and put an end to would-be plans for American energy independence.
12. The dominance of Rothschild, Israel, and China in the world’s oil market is assured! The supply and thus the price per barrel of oil will be strictly controlled to insure maximum profit.
Rise, O Rise, Rothchild’s Black Gold Empire!
Iraqi Oil “Laundered” by Israel and China
In effect, Rothschild and Israel are laundering Iraqi oil through China, stealing it from the Iraqi people, thanks to America’s military occupation of that oppressed country. This is no different than the wealthy Jews (the Oppenheimers) who grabbed and now own South Africa’s diamond mines and pay off Johannesburg black African politicians with puny kickbacks.
It is no different than the American corporations that strip the forests of Malaysia, then ship and sell lumber across the globe, or the foreign cartels that mine copper, tin, palladium, and gold in Indonesia and Africa and market it to the rich across the seas.
What is significant, in this instance, is that the American people and economy are intentionally stymied and stiffed by these oil shenanigans. The bogus environmental movement is accelerated and gains momentum. We, the people, are kept confined to an economic straitjacket, our plentiful oil resources left untapped, while Rothschild and his Jewish oligarchs, along with Red China’s Communist tyrants, reap the treasure of Iraqi and other foreign oil. Obama’s role, of course, is to supply the military and diplomatic muscle of the United States to keep this massive criminal operation flowing. Again, this is the Illuminist doctrine of Ordo Ab Chao, which translates into trillions for the (Jewish) bankers, pennies for the people.
Meanwhile, our once pristine beaches, coastal lands and waters are besotted with unsightly petroleum toxins that are killing both plant and sea life.
Under the circumstances, BP’s relatively puny $20 billion Gulf coast cleanup fund is a joke. To Rothschild, Israel and China, $20 billion is mere chump change.
America in the Deadly Grip of “Creative Destruction”
The upshot is that America, once again, is leveled, its economy robbed. We are being subjected to the damaging and debilitating process that Obama, Bernanke, and the Jewish Illuminati euphemistically call “Creative Destruction.”
Isn’t it revealing that you have read about this unbelievable, sickening scandal here first, in Texe Marrs’ Power of Prophecy newsletter. Who in the Jewish-controlled establishment press would ever reveal these things? Who of the Tea Party leadership—the Lou Dobbs, Sarah Palins, Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, and John McCains—would have the guts, or would dare betray their wealthy benefactors?
With God’s help—and your prayers and financial support—I will continue my non-stop campaign to blow the lid off this unspeakable scandal. And I’ll unmask yet other scams and schemes of the elite. So please, stay tuned. Meanwhile, I sincerely thank you for your friendship and for the confidence you have deposited in this Truth Ministry.
Source
Special thanks to Ian Curtis for posting this article on the WarOnYou Forum.
—Revelation 6:6
The horrible disaster in the Gulf of Mexico grows more and more dreadful each passing day as up to 100,000 barrels of black goo shoot up like a pluming rocket, straight up out of the fiery bowels of the sea floor. But even as the residents of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the other Gulf states become drenched in black misery, across the globe a small clique of super-rich plutocrats are enjoying a diametrically opposite reaction. In fact, these calculating agents of deceit are celebrating the BP disaster with unmatched, gleeful joy. Their outrageous scheme has worked to perfection, and their bank accounts already show forth the astonishing success of their little sub-oceanic endeavor.
The derrick in the Gulf of Mexico has been releasing up to 100,000 barrels of oil per day resulting in the shut-off of most Gulf oil. Did the Illuminati elite order the derrick to be destroyed to create global scarcity of oil and drive up the price?
I’m referring to Rothschild and to his cohorts in crime, the freshly minted billionaire oil oligarchs of Israel and the sur-prisingly capitalistic new oil barons of Communist Red China.
Never in human history have so few profited so immensely while pulling the wool over the eyes of the ignorant, suffering masses.
Now, it may take a little doing for me to explain the incredible, dark reality of what has just happened to the people of America and to the nations of the world, but let me attempt to do just that in the succeeding brief paragraphs. I have also prepared for you a ground-breaking 60-minute investigative exposé which reveals in detail the shocking facts of Rothschild’s Black Gold Empire (Available on Tape or CD).
Your Future is at Stake
Why are these things important to you? Well, for one thing, your economic future depends on the price of oil. Oil, let us admit, fuels the world. Two years ago I released a bombshell intelligence report entitled Planet Petroleum (Available on Tape or CD). Remember it? At that time, Wall Street and the White House were telling us that oil was a rapidly declining resource and in a few more decades none would be left. The price per barrel, the “experts” told us, would be $250 within a few brief months. Indeed, almost immediately oil’s price shot up to a staggering $147 per barrel and its astronomical rise was expected to continue.
The United States has more oil reserves than all the rest of the world’s nations combined. There is no reason to buy even one single barrel outside the US.
But in my report, I unmasked the lies of Wall Street, the government, and the oil titans and reported the truth: That the planet is awash in petroleum, that there is a never ending supply underground, and that the world would never—repeat, never!—run out of the black stuff. I further reported that in the United States, in the Bakken oil formation in the Dakotas and Montana, geologists had discovered more oil than exists in the entire Middle East. And—get this—I documented that there is more oil stored nearby in the Gulf of Mexico than had heretofore been discovered by oil drillers throughout the world in all the annals of human history.
My Prediction Comes True
What’s more, I revealed that the $140+ price of oil was a scam, boosted artificially by Wall Street bankers (Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs), and I told anyone who would listen that the outrageous high price would soon come tumbling down!
Guess what? It did exactly that. Within the year the price per barrel had plummeted from its $147 peak to only $32 per barrel. The price now sits at or about $78.
In other words, the U.S.A. has more oil available on this continent than all the rest of the world’s nations combined. There is no reason—none, none, none—for us to buy even one single barrel from some foreign potentate in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or Venezuela.
Every American Citizen is Fabulously Rich!
Can you imagine what this means for our economic fortune? Each of us—you and I and our kids and grandchildren—are rich, rich beyond belief.
A conservative estimate of our oil wealth would be that every man, woman, and child alive in the 50 American states is worth a minimum of Five Million Dollars. Each of us is joint heir of this nation’s massive deposits of black gold sitting unused underground on publicly-owned land and under our coastal waters. Think of it—we are all rich and no one, except the greedy elite—suspects it. The people are kept in total, abject stupidity.
Instead, from the early days of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly to today, we have been lied to and tricked into believing that oil is a rare, dwindling resource and that America must turn its eyes overseas to find sufficient energy to meet even our basic needs. What an outrageous lie we have all been fed.
The Gulf Oil Disaster A Criminal Act
Now let me explain to you the main points of what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico and in the decade leading up to this horrible tragedy.
After the conquest of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi oil fields by the Bush-Cheney administration, oil pipelines were built and began shipping the stolen Iraqi oil through Israel to Rothschild controlled tankers waiting at the Israeli-Lebanon sea coasts. These tankers then make their way to China.
1. Under the ruse of preventing Saddam Hussein from launching nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction,” Bush and Cheney invaded Iraq and seized that nation’s gigantic store of oil. Iraq is second only to Saudi Arabia in global oil production.
2. The U.S.A. then built permanent military bases adjacent to every major Iraqi oil field production facility. This is why we will remain in Iraq indefinitely, to insure the oil flow and gigantic profits continue.
3. The U.S.A. immediately began to build new Iraqi oil pipelines through to Israel, and to Israeli-controlled Lebanese ports where the huge quantities of Iraqi oil are loaded onto waiting oil tankers and transported by sea to China and India. Israel is now an oil-rich theocratic superstate. Rothschild is Israel’s hidden dictator and financial overlord.
4. This Iraqi oil is “owned” lock, stock, and barrel by Rothschild’s front companies. The profit from this oil scam—secreted away in Tel Aviv banks—now reaches obscene levels. To pacify the Iraqis, a pittance is given to the Baghdad government. Iraq’s corrupt politicians and Moslem Imams also get their cut.
5. In China (and to a lesser extent, India), Rothschild and his Jewish banking minions have founded dummy national oil corporations and constructed an astonishing number of new oil refineries. After processing of the crude petroleum, tankers proceed to transport the finished product to distribution outlets and tank storage facilities in China and across the oceans, including in the United States.
6. Chinese national oil companies (actually Rothschild clones) are now the major petroleum suppliers to the whole world. Yet, China possesses little oil of its own—China’s oil largesse comes from its cooperative dealings with Rothschild, Israel, and the U.S.A.
7. Because of the global oversupply problem—too much oil being drilled and pumped up out of the earth—it was decided that the booming Gulf of Mexico oil source must be indefinitely closed down. Chevron, Conoco, Exxon-Mobil, BP and other multinational oil corporations would henceforth be either limited or prohibited from operating oil derricks in the Gulf. Pemex, the Mexican national oil company, would also be limited in its production, and, down south, Brazil’s national oil corporation, Petrobras, would be given a strict quota.
8. China is now the preferred #1 oil spigot for all the world’s economies. Rothschild’s Jewish oil billionaire pals in Israel as well as China’s Communist bureaucrats are today the planet’s new masters of oil.
9. BP, an oil company already infamous for its despoiling the earth, has been made the scapegoat for the closing of much of the Gulf of Mexico’s oil spigots. In preparation for the derrick’s destruction, much of BP’s assets were transferred in advance of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster to other Rothschild affiliates across the world in Libya and the Middle East, and especially the majority of its Russian oil assets, which were turned over to four Russian Jewish billionaires, called the “Oligarchs.”
10. With the knowledge of the Obama administration, a British Royal Navy submarine was used to torpedo BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil derrick, initiating the environmental disaster we now face on our coastlines.
11. The American people and, indeed, the whole people of Earth, are aghast at what has happened in the Gulf of Mexico. Their minds are thus conditioned and ready to accept drilling moratoriums and put an end to would-be plans for American energy independence.
12. The dominance of Rothschild, Israel, and China in the world’s oil market is assured! The supply and thus the price per barrel of oil will be strictly controlled to insure maximum profit.
Rise, O Rise, Rothchild’s Black Gold Empire!
Iraqi Oil “Laundered” by Israel and China
In effect, Rothschild and Israel are laundering Iraqi oil through China, stealing it from the Iraqi people, thanks to America’s military occupation of that oppressed country. This is no different than the wealthy Jews (the Oppenheimers) who grabbed and now own South Africa’s diamond mines and pay off Johannesburg black African politicians with puny kickbacks.
It is no different than the American corporations that strip the forests of Malaysia, then ship and sell lumber across the globe, or the foreign cartels that mine copper, tin, palladium, and gold in Indonesia and Africa and market it to the rich across the seas.
What is significant, in this instance, is that the American people and economy are intentionally stymied and stiffed by these oil shenanigans. The bogus environmental movement is accelerated and gains momentum. We, the people, are kept confined to an economic straitjacket, our plentiful oil resources left untapped, while Rothschild and his Jewish oligarchs, along with Red China’s Communist tyrants, reap the treasure of Iraqi and other foreign oil. Obama’s role, of course, is to supply the military and diplomatic muscle of the United States to keep this massive criminal operation flowing. Again, this is the Illuminist doctrine of Ordo Ab Chao, which translates into trillions for the (Jewish) bankers, pennies for the people.
Meanwhile, our once pristine beaches, coastal lands and waters are besotted with unsightly petroleum toxins that are killing both plant and sea life.
Under the circumstances, BP’s relatively puny $20 billion Gulf coast cleanup fund is a joke. To Rothschild, Israel and China, $20 billion is mere chump change.
America in the Deadly Grip of “Creative Destruction”
The upshot is that America, once again, is leveled, its economy robbed. We are being subjected to the damaging and debilitating process that Obama, Bernanke, and the Jewish Illuminati euphemistically call “Creative Destruction.”
Isn’t it revealing that you have read about this unbelievable, sickening scandal here first, in Texe Marrs’ Power of Prophecy newsletter. Who in the Jewish-controlled establishment press would ever reveal these things? Who of the Tea Party leadership—the Lou Dobbs, Sarah Palins, Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, and John McCains—would have the guts, or would dare betray their wealthy benefactors?
With God’s help—and your prayers and financial support—I will continue my non-stop campaign to blow the lid off this unspeakable scandal. And I’ll unmask yet other scams and schemes of the elite. So please, stay tuned. Meanwhile, I sincerely thank you for your friendship and for the confidence you have deposited in this Truth Ministry.
Source
Special thanks to Ian Curtis for posting this article on the WarOnYou Forum.
"Let Them Eat Cake": A handful of oligarchs are becoming billionaires while the rest of the country goes down the drain
by Paul Craig Roberts
It is not unusual for members of the diminishing upper middle class to drop $20,000 or $30,000 on a big wedding. But for celebrities this large sum wouldn’t cover the wedding dress or the flowers.
When country music star Keith Urban married actress Nicole Kidman in 2006, their wedding cost $250,000. This large sum hardly counts as a celebrity wedding. When mega-millionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump married model Melania Knauss, the wedding bill was $1,000,000.
The marriages of Madonna and film director Guy Ritchie, Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren, and Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones pushed up the cost of celebrity marriages to $1.5 million.
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes upped the ante to $2,000,000.
Now comes the politicians’s daughter as celebrity. According to news reports, Chelsea Clinton’s wedding to investment banker Mark Mezvinsky on July 31 is costing papa Bill $3,000,000. According to the London Daily Mail, the total price tag will be about $5,000,000. The additional $2,000,000 apparently is being laid off on US Taxpayers as Secret Service costs for protecting former president Clinton and foreign heads of state, such as the presidents of France and Italy and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who are among the 500 invited guests along with Barbara Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Ted Turner, and Clinton friend and donor Denise Rich, wife of the Clinton-pardoned felon.
Before we attend to the poor political judgment of such an extravagant affair during times of economic distress, let us wonder aloud where a poor boy who became governor of Arkansas and president of the United States got such a fortune that he can blow $3,000,000 on a wedding.
The American people did not take up a collection to reward him for his service to them.
Where did the money come from? Who was he really serving during his eight years in office?
How did Tony Blair and his wife, Cherrie, end up with an annual income of ten million pounds (approximately $15 million dollars) as soon as he left office?
Who was Blair really serving?
These are not polite questions, and they are infrequently asked.
While Chelsea’s wedding guests eat a $11,000 wedding cake and admire $250,000 floral displays, Lisa Roberts in Ohio is struggling to raise contributions for her food pantry in order to feed 3,000 local people, whose financial independence was destroyed by investment bankers, job offshoring, and unaffordable wars. The Americans dependent on Lisa Roberts’ food pantry are living out of vans and cars. Those with a house roof still over their heads are packed in as many as 14 per household according to the Chillicothe Gazette in Ohio.
The Chilicothe Gazette reports that Lisa Roberts’ food pantry has “had to cut back to half rations per person in order to have something for everyone who needed it.”
Theresa DePugh stepped up to the challenge and had the starving Ohioans write messages on their food pantry paper plates to President Obama, who has just obtained another $33 billion to squander on a pointless war in Afghanistan that serves no purpose whatsoever except the enrichment of the military/security complex and its shareholders.
The Guardian (UK) reports that according to US government reports, one million American children go to bed hungry, while the Obama regime squanders hundreds of billions of dollars killing women and children in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The Guardian’s reporting relies on a US government report from the US Department of Agriculture, which concludes that 50 million people in the US--one in six of the population--were unable to afford to buy sufficient food to stay healthy in 2008.
US Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that he expected the number of hungry Americans to worsen when the survey for 2010 is released.
Today in the American Superpower, one of every six Americans is living on food stamps.
The Great American Superpower, which is wasting trillions of dollars in pursuit of world hegemony, has 22% of its population unemployed and almost 17% of its population dependent on welfare in order to stay alive.
The world has not witnessed such total failure of government since the final days of the Roman Empire. A handful of American oligarchs are becoming mega-billionaires while the rest of the country goes down the drain.
And the American sheeple remain acquiescent.
Global Research
It is not unusual for members of the diminishing upper middle class to drop $20,000 or $30,000 on a big wedding. But for celebrities this large sum wouldn’t cover the wedding dress or the flowers.
When country music star Keith Urban married actress Nicole Kidman in 2006, their wedding cost $250,000. This large sum hardly counts as a celebrity wedding. When mega-millionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump married model Melania Knauss, the wedding bill was $1,000,000.
The marriages of Madonna and film director Guy Ritchie, Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren, and Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones pushed up the cost of celebrity marriages to $1.5 million.
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes upped the ante to $2,000,000.
Now comes the politicians’s daughter as celebrity. According to news reports, Chelsea Clinton’s wedding to investment banker Mark Mezvinsky on July 31 is costing papa Bill $3,000,000. According to the London Daily Mail, the total price tag will be about $5,000,000. The additional $2,000,000 apparently is being laid off on US Taxpayers as Secret Service costs for protecting former president Clinton and foreign heads of state, such as the presidents of France and Italy and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who are among the 500 invited guests along with Barbara Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Ted Turner, and Clinton friend and donor Denise Rich, wife of the Clinton-pardoned felon.
Before we attend to the poor political judgment of such an extravagant affair during times of economic distress, let us wonder aloud where a poor boy who became governor of Arkansas and president of the United States got such a fortune that he can blow $3,000,000 on a wedding.
The American people did not take up a collection to reward him for his service to them.
Where did the money come from? Who was he really serving during his eight years in office?
How did Tony Blair and his wife, Cherrie, end up with an annual income of ten million pounds (approximately $15 million dollars) as soon as he left office?
Who was Blair really serving?
These are not polite questions, and they are infrequently asked.
While Chelsea’s wedding guests eat a $11,000 wedding cake and admire $250,000 floral displays, Lisa Roberts in Ohio is struggling to raise contributions for her food pantry in order to feed 3,000 local people, whose financial independence was destroyed by investment bankers, job offshoring, and unaffordable wars. The Americans dependent on Lisa Roberts’ food pantry are living out of vans and cars. Those with a house roof still over their heads are packed in as many as 14 per household according to the Chillicothe Gazette in Ohio.
The Chilicothe Gazette reports that Lisa Roberts’ food pantry has “had to cut back to half rations per person in order to have something for everyone who needed it.”
Theresa DePugh stepped up to the challenge and had the starving Ohioans write messages on their food pantry paper plates to President Obama, who has just obtained another $33 billion to squander on a pointless war in Afghanistan that serves no purpose whatsoever except the enrichment of the military/security complex and its shareholders.
The Guardian (UK) reports that according to US government reports, one million American children go to bed hungry, while the Obama regime squanders hundreds of billions of dollars killing women and children in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The Guardian’s reporting relies on a US government report from the US Department of Agriculture, which concludes that 50 million people in the US--one in six of the population--were unable to afford to buy sufficient food to stay healthy in 2008.
US Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that he expected the number of hungry Americans to worsen when the survey for 2010 is released.
Today in the American Superpower, one of every six Americans is living on food stamps.
The Great American Superpower, which is wasting trillions of dollars in pursuit of world hegemony, has 22% of its population unemployed and almost 17% of its population dependent on welfare in order to stay alive.
The world has not witnessed such total failure of government since the final days of the Roman Empire. A handful of American oligarchs are becoming mega-billionaires while the rest of the country goes down the drain.
And the American sheeple remain acquiescent.
Global Research
Dangerous Conspiracy Theories
By: Peter Chamberlin
How could a bunch of “lone wolf” researchers be considered dangerous to the United States? The official explanation given is that we confuse those who hear or read what we have to say, undermining the national unity and trust in government which is necessary to wage war. That is as good an excuse as any to explain why the American people have not rallied around this war of terror. The national unity that politicians whine about was achieved only once in the beginning of this war, before the politicians and the corporations revealed the war for what it has always been–a war to control oil and gas.
The great danger posed by conspiracy theorists is that we will finally wake the people up to the fact that we have been deceived, in order trick us into allowing the armed forces of the United States to be used as a mercenary force, an army of conquest, to be used to rob the people of Asia of their God-given natural resources. The danger of the “conspiracy theorist” is that he will awaken the people from their trance-like slumber which binds them, trapped somewhere between the waking world and the dream state. In this state, most of us meekly “support the troops” as they mercilously clear the ground of resisters to the great conspiracy. The danger is that we will shock them and turn their thoughts toward this ugly reality of the waking world.
The “conspiracy theorist” is discredited because he or she dares to look for alternatives to the idiotic official excuses given for key events like the 911 and London subway bombings, or for historic, pivotal political assassinations. Researchers who dare to look beyond explanations which are obviously lies automatically become delegated to the lunatic fringe. With the Internet becoming the researchers’ primary source of information, it has became possible for national security organizations to control nearly all critical information, thus insuring that no one would find any hidden proof of the crimes of the past. This federal oversight meant that it became necessary for theorists to switch tactics and shift our focus from looking for evidence of government crimes in the past (which have had time to be covered-up), to rooting-out proof of ongoing crimes and criminal plans for the future. In today’s environment of massive social and political discontent, hard proof of either ongoing war crimes or of criminal conspiracies to commit future crimes, could very likely prove to be the spark that lights the “prairie fires” of a grass roots revolution. This is the real danger of uncontrolled research.
The sudden and widespread popular reactions to the Wikileaks story which contains proof of US and NATO war crimes, demonstrates the potential powderkeg to be tapped by the right torcher-bearer. Government leaders undoubtably understood the great potential danger risked by allowing the release of the Wiki documents, but, being the practitioners of Nazi mind-science that they are, they fully understood the potential rewards to be reaped by the correct handling of the leaks and Western reporting on them. Popular emphasis upon the Pakistani angle of Wiki revelations could help create a national consensus for attacking Taliban bases in Pakistan.
The Wikileaks were a document dump, intended to overwhelm researchers and to preoccupy they, studying the Empire’s past moves, in order to distract us from our new focus upon the present, looking towards the future. Look for the release of an even greater document dump from Wikileaks in the near future, as they dump their Iraq files onto the Internet. Another effect of the Wiki document dump is that it has flooded search engines with countless new variations on the search for “American war crimes,” or info on important key battles or screw-ups, making it even more impossible to find information on Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or anything covered in the leaks. This will muddy the waters for us even more and make it even less likely in the future that we will stumble across important evidence of ongoing criminal activity.
The nature of our conspiracy research is searching to find preventative answers, evidence to reveal overlooked evidence which could possibly preempt ongoing conspiracy plans. My focus for several years now has been to find preventive evidence of America’s true intentions in Pakistan. I have chosen Pakistan because I figured it to be the primary focus of the whole ongoing criminal American conspiracy (which involves many foreign co-conspirators), the critical component to the entire pipeline scheme. No matter how far into Central Asia the evidence has gone, it always relates back to Pakistan, certainly as the port for the pipeline plans, but also, just as important, to the thirty-year old scheme to create an army of “Islamists,” created to serve the Empire builders’ plans. Without Pakistan, none of the current plans for Empire would have even been possible.
For this unshakeable loyalty, if nothing else, we owe Pakistan a great debt. But Pakistan has gone far beyond mere loyalty in serving American interests, risking everything to serve as America’s secret sword. Pakistan risked its very existence in this capacity, standing alone on the lofty Himalayan peaks, toe-to-toe against the intimidating Soviet Union. They exposed their entire population to thermonuclear blackmail or potential elimination, to serve as the American stand-in for the historic confrontation which brought the Communist empire to its knees. Pakistan has given and risked so much for us that our leaders have decided to sacrifice the Nation on the altar of self-aggrandisement. The greatest service we could do to them and to ourselves today would be to throw a monkey wrench into their plans for our Pakistani friends.
Sadly, the ongoing insidious criminal plans of the Empire extend far beyond Pakistan, reaching into every country on the earth, extending its tentacles like some great octopus, grasping to control every life within its reach. In the past, many researchers who got too close to the “Octopus” were eliminated, usually in an unconventional manner, usually in bizarre “suicides” . Now, our numbers have grown so great that it has altered the equation a bit, there are too many of us to kill today. The idea of using anti-Empire activists, such as myself, to help advance their plans and to agitate the public into a frenzy, has been a risky one. When the time comes to flip right-wing and left-wing activists towards the Empire’s preferred “consensus” there has always been a great inherent danger that the activists would not follow the trail of breadcrumbs leading us into new American police state.
That is the great weakness in the Empire’s plan–by continually operating in a Hegelian manner (always manipulating both left and right, to force a consensus), every argument put forth by politicians or behaviorists, seeking to confine us within a narrow political spectrum, reaches a flipping point, where both synthesis and antithesis change direction, heading towards, instead of away from each other. It is at this flipping, or tipping point, where the original argument fizzles-out, losing its steam and forward momentum, and the threat we represent becomes the greatest. The greatest danger in allowing us to access inconvenient or incriminating evidence from the Internet comes just at the point of flipping. This is why the Internet has not yet been pulled out from under us.
This is why the Wikileak leaks are like a two-edged sword, they could just as easily cut the legs out from under us as they could undercut the criminal war for resources. Instead of following the game plan and jumping on the national bandwagon of a “patriotic” war on Pakistan, we must find the strength to muster our own groundswell of support by exposing the criminal intentions which have underwritten this war from the beginning, bringing the American people together to oppose the planned expansion of the war.
We are a threat if we start to come together. The ideas that bind us all here in the alternative media are exactly the sort of thinking that must be eliminated. The path to either victory or defeat for the anti-Empire side, just as it is for the bad guys, lies in changing the thinking of the people. The bad guys are intent on erasing the polluting ideas of freedom, liberation and individualism from the human lexicon, replacing all of these cherished concepts with ideas of hopelessness, terror and submission (SEE: Bombing Improper Thoughts). We must be just as committed to reinforcing visions of hope, fighting terror with truth and reason, building the fires of resistance within the beseiged minds of our countrymen and our fellow man.
The greatest danger to the Empire is that you will refuse to lie down and submit. If enough people begin to feel this way, then the tide will turn towards freedom’s shore.
Source
How could a bunch of “lone wolf” researchers be considered dangerous to the United States? The official explanation given is that we confuse those who hear or read what we have to say, undermining the national unity and trust in government which is necessary to wage war. That is as good an excuse as any to explain why the American people have not rallied around this war of terror. The national unity that politicians whine about was achieved only once in the beginning of this war, before the politicians and the corporations revealed the war for what it has always been–a war to control oil and gas.
The great danger posed by conspiracy theorists is that we will finally wake the people up to the fact that we have been deceived, in order trick us into allowing the armed forces of the United States to be used as a mercenary force, an army of conquest, to be used to rob the people of Asia of their God-given natural resources. The danger of the “conspiracy theorist” is that he will awaken the people from their trance-like slumber which binds them, trapped somewhere between the waking world and the dream state. In this state, most of us meekly “support the troops” as they mercilously clear the ground of resisters to the great conspiracy. The danger is that we will shock them and turn their thoughts toward this ugly reality of the waking world.
The “conspiracy theorist” is discredited because he or she dares to look for alternatives to the idiotic official excuses given for key events like the 911 and London subway bombings, or for historic, pivotal political assassinations. Researchers who dare to look beyond explanations which are obviously lies automatically become delegated to the lunatic fringe. With the Internet becoming the researchers’ primary source of information, it has became possible for national security organizations to control nearly all critical information, thus insuring that no one would find any hidden proof of the crimes of the past. This federal oversight meant that it became necessary for theorists to switch tactics and shift our focus from looking for evidence of government crimes in the past (which have had time to be covered-up), to rooting-out proof of ongoing crimes and criminal plans for the future. In today’s environment of massive social and political discontent, hard proof of either ongoing war crimes or of criminal conspiracies to commit future crimes, could very likely prove to be the spark that lights the “prairie fires” of a grass roots revolution. This is the real danger of uncontrolled research.
The sudden and widespread popular reactions to the Wikileaks story which contains proof of US and NATO war crimes, demonstrates the potential powderkeg to be tapped by the right torcher-bearer. Government leaders undoubtably understood the great potential danger risked by allowing the release of the Wiki documents, but, being the practitioners of Nazi mind-science that they are, they fully understood the potential rewards to be reaped by the correct handling of the leaks and Western reporting on them. Popular emphasis upon the Pakistani angle of Wiki revelations could help create a national consensus for attacking Taliban bases in Pakistan.
The Wikileaks were a document dump, intended to overwhelm researchers and to preoccupy they, studying the Empire’s past moves, in order to distract us from our new focus upon the present, looking towards the future. Look for the release of an even greater document dump from Wikileaks in the near future, as they dump their Iraq files onto the Internet. Another effect of the Wiki document dump is that it has flooded search engines with countless new variations on the search for “American war crimes,” or info on important key battles or screw-ups, making it even more impossible to find information on Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or anything covered in the leaks. This will muddy the waters for us even more and make it even less likely in the future that we will stumble across important evidence of ongoing criminal activity.
The nature of our conspiracy research is searching to find preventative answers, evidence to reveal overlooked evidence which could possibly preempt ongoing conspiracy plans. My focus for several years now has been to find preventive evidence of America’s true intentions in Pakistan. I have chosen Pakistan because I figured it to be the primary focus of the whole ongoing criminal American conspiracy (which involves many foreign co-conspirators), the critical component to the entire pipeline scheme. No matter how far into Central Asia the evidence has gone, it always relates back to Pakistan, certainly as the port for the pipeline plans, but also, just as important, to the thirty-year old scheme to create an army of “Islamists,” created to serve the Empire builders’ plans. Without Pakistan, none of the current plans for Empire would have even been possible.
For this unshakeable loyalty, if nothing else, we owe Pakistan a great debt. But Pakistan has gone far beyond mere loyalty in serving American interests, risking everything to serve as America’s secret sword. Pakistan risked its very existence in this capacity, standing alone on the lofty Himalayan peaks, toe-to-toe against the intimidating Soviet Union. They exposed their entire population to thermonuclear blackmail or potential elimination, to serve as the American stand-in for the historic confrontation which brought the Communist empire to its knees. Pakistan has given and risked so much for us that our leaders have decided to sacrifice the Nation on the altar of self-aggrandisement. The greatest service we could do to them and to ourselves today would be to throw a monkey wrench into their plans for our Pakistani friends.
Sadly, the ongoing insidious criminal plans of the Empire extend far beyond Pakistan, reaching into every country on the earth, extending its tentacles like some great octopus, grasping to control every life within its reach. In the past, many researchers who got too close to the “Octopus” were eliminated, usually in an unconventional manner, usually in bizarre “suicides” . Now, our numbers have grown so great that it has altered the equation a bit, there are too many of us to kill today. The idea of using anti-Empire activists, such as myself, to help advance their plans and to agitate the public into a frenzy, has been a risky one. When the time comes to flip right-wing and left-wing activists towards the Empire’s preferred “consensus” there has always been a great inherent danger that the activists would not follow the trail of breadcrumbs leading us into new American police state.
That is the great weakness in the Empire’s plan–by continually operating in a Hegelian manner (always manipulating both left and right, to force a consensus), every argument put forth by politicians or behaviorists, seeking to confine us within a narrow political spectrum, reaches a flipping point, where both synthesis and antithesis change direction, heading towards, instead of away from each other. It is at this flipping, or tipping point, where the original argument fizzles-out, losing its steam and forward momentum, and the threat we represent becomes the greatest. The greatest danger in allowing us to access inconvenient or incriminating evidence from the Internet comes just at the point of flipping. This is why the Internet has not yet been pulled out from under us.
This is why the Wikileak leaks are like a two-edged sword, they could just as easily cut the legs out from under us as they could undercut the criminal war for resources. Instead of following the game plan and jumping on the national bandwagon of a “patriotic” war on Pakistan, we must find the strength to muster our own groundswell of support by exposing the criminal intentions which have underwritten this war from the beginning, bringing the American people together to oppose the planned expansion of the war.
We are a threat if we start to come together. The ideas that bind us all here in the alternative media are exactly the sort of thinking that must be eliminated. The path to either victory or defeat for the anti-Empire side, just as it is for the bad guys, lies in changing the thinking of the people. The bad guys are intent on erasing the polluting ideas of freedom, liberation and individualism from the human lexicon, replacing all of these cherished concepts with ideas of hopelessness, terror and submission (SEE: Bombing Improper Thoughts). We must be just as committed to reinforcing visions of hope, fighting terror with truth and reason, building the fires of resistance within the beseiged minds of our countrymen and our fellow man.
The greatest danger to the Empire is that you will refuse to lie down and submit. If enough people begin to feel this way, then the tide will turn towards freedom’s shore.
Source
THAT VAST INTELLIGENCE BUILDUP IS TO OIL PENTAGON WAR MACHINE
By Sherwood Ross
The Washington Post’s revelations re the amazing growth of the U.S. intelligence community since 2001---so that we now have 1,271 agencies employing more than 854,000 payrollers---makes no sense, until one recognizes that this vast development must be for offensive, not defensive, purposes. The explosion in the spy budget from $30 billion to $75 billion since 9/11 is perplexing until you realize it only parallels what is happening across the broad spectrum of the military-industrial complex. Everywhere you turn, everywhere you look, American militarism is on the march like a thousand Sousa bands blaring at once. According to a report of the Stockholm Internatonal Peace Research Institute, U.S. military spending for 2009 accounted for 43% of the world total, followed by China, with 6.6%; France, 4.2%; and U.K. with 3.8%
Where the U.S. allocated “only” $272-billion for “defense” in fiscal year 2000, today’s “defense” budget is $711 billion. The U.S. Navy, for example, is larger than the next 11 navies of the world combined. At the same time, spending on research involving biological warfare has zoomed steadily since 9/11 to a cumulative total exceeding $50 billion even though no nation poses such a threat to the U.S., and even though the deadly anthrax attacks of October, 2001, emanated not from the Middle East but from Ft. Detrick, Md., a base whose operations are run by the Pentagon, not Osama bin Laden. Again, illustrating USA’s aggressive priorities, the National Institutes of Health of Bethesda, Md., is now spending more money on biological warfare----which killed a total of five Americans in the last decade---than it spends on research to prevent ordinary flu, which does kill 36,000 Americans every year. To its credit, Moscow shuttered its germ warfare ops years ago. Recall, too, that when the Pentagon’s snoops got to Iraq, they found Saddam Hussein but they couldn’t find a single germ. So what’s the big buildup for?
At any given time, the Pentagon has about $1 trillion or more in ongoing research to refine existing, (example: nuclear bombs) and to create new, (example: robots) killing machines to dominate the planet militarily. The vast intelligence apparatus The Post uncovered (The National Security Agency alone is sifting through more than 1.7 billion telephone calls and e-mails daily), makes no sense when the only enemies are a handful of shoe bombers. It makes perfect sense, though, when the Pentagon is intimidating the world by ringing it with 800 bases in 130 countries, and when the intelligence build-up is companion to the military build-up. Thus it was the U.S. eavesdropped on the private telephone conversations of high United Nations officials then debating whether to support the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq. That’s not using intelligence for defense.
In an article on the Middle East wars, Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times July 25th quotes historian David Kennedy of Stanford as saying: “The army is at war, but the country is not. We have managed to create and field an armed force that can engage in very, very lethal warfare without the society in whose name it fights breaking a sweat.” The result, he said, is “a moral hazard for the political leadership to resort to force in the knowledge that civil society will not be deeply disturbed.” Precisely!
Quoted in the New York Times of the same day, Stephen Daggett, a writer for the Congressional Research Service, said, “You think of war as not being the usual state.” That may well be true of many a republic, but it is not true of an empire, particularly the American Empire. According to the historian Edward Gibbon, the Roman emperor Aurelian, embroiled in numerous wars, complained in a private letter, “Surely, the gods have decreed that my life should be a perpetual warfare.” Of course, it need not have been thus except that Aurelian felt obliged to keep his foot on the neck of Rome’s subject countries. It need not be thus for America, either.
(Sherwood Ross worked in the U.S. civil rights movement and reported for major dailies and wire services. He currently runs a public relations firm for good causes. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)
The Washington Post’s revelations re the amazing growth of the U.S. intelligence community since 2001---so that we now have 1,271 agencies employing more than 854,000 payrollers---makes no sense, until one recognizes that this vast development must be for offensive, not defensive, purposes. The explosion in the spy budget from $30 billion to $75 billion since 9/11 is perplexing until you realize it only parallels what is happening across the broad spectrum of the military-industrial complex. Everywhere you turn, everywhere you look, American militarism is on the march like a thousand Sousa bands blaring at once. According to a report of the Stockholm Internatonal Peace Research Institute, U.S. military spending for 2009 accounted for 43% of the world total, followed by China, with 6.6%; France, 4.2%; and U.K. with 3.8%
Where the U.S. allocated “only” $272-billion for “defense” in fiscal year 2000, today’s “defense” budget is $711 billion. The U.S. Navy, for example, is larger than the next 11 navies of the world combined. At the same time, spending on research involving biological warfare has zoomed steadily since 9/11 to a cumulative total exceeding $50 billion even though no nation poses such a threat to the U.S., and even though the deadly anthrax attacks of October, 2001, emanated not from the Middle East but from Ft. Detrick, Md., a base whose operations are run by the Pentagon, not Osama bin Laden. Again, illustrating USA’s aggressive priorities, the National Institutes of Health of Bethesda, Md., is now spending more money on biological warfare----which killed a total of five Americans in the last decade---than it spends on research to prevent ordinary flu, which does kill 36,000 Americans every year. To its credit, Moscow shuttered its germ warfare ops years ago. Recall, too, that when the Pentagon’s snoops got to Iraq, they found Saddam Hussein but they couldn’t find a single germ. So what’s the big buildup for?
At any given time, the Pentagon has about $1 trillion or more in ongoing research to refine existing, (example: nuclear bombs) and to create new, (example: robots) killing machines to dominate the planet militarily. The vast intelligence apparatus The Post uncovered (The National Security Agency alone is sifting through more than 1.7 billion telephone calls and e-mails daily), makes no sense when the only enemies are a handful of shoe bombers. It makes perfect sense, though, when the Pentagon is intimidating the world by ringing it with 800 bases in 130 countries, and when the intelligence build-up is companion to the military build-up. Thus it was the U.S. eavesdropped on the private telephone conversations of high United Nations officials then debating whether to support the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq. That’s not using intelligence for defense.
In an article on the Middle East wars, Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times July 25th quotes historian David Kennedy of Stanford as saying: “The army is at war, but the country is not. We have managed to create and field an armed force that can engage in very, very lethal warfare without the society in whose name it fights breaking a sweat.” The result, he said, is “a moral hazard for the political leadership to resort to force in the knowledge that civil society will not be deeply disturbed.” Precisely!
Quoted in the New York Times of the same day, Stephen Daggett, a writer for the Congressional Research Service, said, “You think of war as not being the usual state.” That may well be true of many a republic, but it is not true of an empire, particularly the American Empire. According to the historian Edward Gibbon, the Roman emperor Aurelian, embroiled in numerous wars, complained in a private letter, “Surely, the gods have decreed that my life should be a perpetual warfare.” Of course, it need not have been thus except that Aurelian felt obliged to keep his foot on the neck of Rome’s subject countries. It need not be thus for America, either.
(Sherwood Ross worked in the U.S. civil rights movement and reported for major dailies and wire services. He currently runs a public relations firm for good causes. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)
Friday, July 30, 2010
Qana: The Place of Jesus’s 1st Miracle, Turns Bloody
“We have lived through hell,” Qana resident, Fawzeya Atwi cried. “The people were chopped into pieces by the Israeli bombs. They bleed these people. You should have seen the heads.”
“Do you know what the dogs did at night after the killings? They were hungry and I saw them in the ruins eating fingers and pieces of our people,” Atwi said about the Qana massacre during the July 2006 Israeli War on Lebanon.
Head of the Red Cross in Tyre Sami Yazbak, who was helping to pull bodies from the ruins, told The Guardian that the first call about the bombing was received at 7 a.m., 6 hours after the bombing took place. He said that previous shelling on the road to Qana had delayed the arrival of Red Cross personnel.
Yazbak said that “many of the children who were sleeping inside were handicapped.”
Many journalists who arrived in Qana to cover the incident became rescuers, dugging through the rubble with the Red Cross in search for bodies.
Journalist Bahia El Ainain talks about her experiences during the 2006 Israeli massacre in Qana. “I cried several times. I couldn’t be a journalist over being a mother when I saw dead young girls. I couldn’t but think of my daughter.” She also recounts an incident when she was on a roof, along with all the foreign press and their cameras. Bahia pushed the cameras away; she admits that her patriotism outweighs the journalist’s instincts for objectivity.
WINE TURNS TO BLOOD
The southern Lebanese town of Qana is believed by some to be where Jesus performed his first miracle of turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee mentioned in the Gospel of St John.
But in modern times it is blood, not wine, that is indelibly linked with the town. The blood of Lebanese civilians killed in Israeli bombing.
In 1996, one of the deadliest single events of the whole Arab-Israeli conflict took place there – the shelling of a UN base where hundreds of local people were sheltering.
More than 100 were killed and another 100 injured, cut down by Israeli anti-personnel shells that explode in the air sending a lethal shower of shrapnel to the ground.
Ten years later, the town is again in the headlines, this time because of a massive bomb dropped by an Israeli aircraft, causing a building to collapse on top of dozens of civilians – many of them children in their pajamas- taking cover in the basement. It was an attack by the Israel Air Force on a three-story building in the small community of al-Khuraybah near the South Lebanese village of Qana on July 30, 2006. 28 civilians were killed, of which 16 were children.
Israel is back in the Lebanese quagmire.
“Lebanese refugee women and children and men lay in heaps, their hands or arms or legs missing, beheaded or disemboweled. There were well over a hundred of them. A baby lay without a head. The Israeli shells had scythed through them as they lay in their building’s shelter, believing that they were safe.
A pile of corpses was burning. The roof had crashed in flames onto their bodies, cremating them in front of the world’s eyes. When I walked towards them, I slipped on a human hand…” an investigative journalist who was present that day describes what she saw.
The aerial attack killed members of the Shalhoub and Hashem families.
Read more...
“Do you know what the dogs did at night after the killings? They were hungry and I saw them in the ruins eating fingers and pieces of our people,” Atwi said about the Qana massacre during the July 2006 Israeli War on Lebanon.
Head of the Red Cross in Tyre Sami Yazbak, who was helping to pull bodies from the ruins, told The Guardian that the first call about the bombing was received at 7 a.m., 6 hours after the bombing took place. He said that previous shelling on the road to Qana had delayed the arrival of Red Cross personnel.
Yazbak said that “many of the children who were sleeping inside were handicapped.”
Many journalists who arrived in Qana to cover the incident became rescuers, dugging through the rubble with the Red Cross in search for bodies.
Journalist Bahia El Ainain talks about her experiences during the 2006 Israeli massacre in Qana. “I cried several times. I couldn’t be a journalist over being a mother when I saw dead young girls. I couldn’t but think of my daughter.” She also recounts an incident when she was on a roof, along with all the foreign press and their cameras. Bahia pushed the cameras away; she admits that her patriotism outweighs the journalist’s instincts for objectivity.
WINE TURNS TO BLOOD
The southern Lebanese town of Qana is believed by some to be where Jesus performed his first miracle of turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee mentioned in the Gospel of St John.
But in modern times it is blood, not wine, that is indelibly linked with the town. The blood of Lebanese civilians killed in Israeli bombing.
In 1996, one of the deadliest single events of the whole Arab-Israeli conflict took place there – the shelling of a UN base where hundreds of local people were sheltering.
More than 100 were killed and another 100 injured, cut down by Israeli anti-personnel shells that explode in the air sending a lethal shower of shrapnel to the ground.
Ten years later, the town is again in the headlines, this time because of a massive bomb dropped by an Israeli aircraft, causing a building to collapse on top of dozens of civilians – many of them children in their pajamas- taking cover in the basement. It was an attack by the Israel Air Force on a three-story building in the small community of al-Khuraybah near the South Lebanese village of Qana on July 30, 2006. 28 civilians were killed, of which 16 were children.
Israel is back in the Lebanese quagmire.
“Lebanese refugee women and children and men lay in heaps, their hands or arms or legs missing, beheaded or disemboweled. There were well over a hundred of them. A baby lay without a head. The Israeli shells had scythed through them as they lay in their building’s shelter, believing that they were safe.
A pile of corpses was burning. The roof had crashed in flames onto their bodies, cremating them in front of the world’s eyes. When I walked towards them, I slipped on a human hand…” an investigative journalist who was present that day describes what she saw.
The aerial attack killed members of the Shalhoub and Hashem families.
Read more...
Investigating the Freedom Flotilla Attack by Stephen Lendman
On June 2, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) approved formation of an international committee (like the Goldstone Commission) to probe the Flotilla attack, saying it will include lawyers and international law and human rights experts, its findings to be presented in September (during the Council's three week session in Geneva) after visiting Gaza and contacting Israel, Turkey, Greece, and the Freedom Flotilla coalition.
HRC's panel includes:
-- Desmond de Silva, a UK lawyer and former chief prosecutor for the Sierra Leone Special Court investigation into widespread killings there;
-- Karl Hudson-Phillips, a former International Criminal Court (ICC) judge and former Trinidad and Tobago attorney general and parliament member; and
-- Malaysia's Mary Shanthi Dairiam, active in gender equality issues, including on the UN Development Program's gender equity task force.
In emergency session, the HCR criticized Israel's "outrageous attack on aid ships attempting to breach a blockade on the Gaza Strip," calling it "piracy, (an) act of aggression, (a) brutal massacre, (an) act of terrorism, (a) war crime, (a) crime against humanity -unprovoked....unwarranted....atrocious, (and) brutal," calling activists "peaceful...innocent...noble...unarmed, (and) defenseless," setting the tone for what's to come, HRC president Sihasak Phuangketkeow saying:
"This is not about finger-pointing. It's about establishing the facts of what took place because the incident was a humanitarian tragedy and it's in the interests of everyone. So I'm hopeful and I'm urging all the parties concerned to render their full cooperation, because it is in their interests and it's in the interests of the international community as a whole."
"The expertise, independence and impartiality of the members of the mission will be devoted to clarifying the events which took place that day and their legality."
Israel's response was expected, a foreign ministry official saying the HRC acted in haste as part of its "obsession against Israel. The Israeli probe, conducted with transparency, makes the organization's probe completely unnecessary."
Israel, of course, won't cooperate, and plans a whitewash like its July 20 Gaza Operational Investigations: Second Update, responding to the Goldstone Commission and other reports of widespread Cast Lead crimes of war and against humanity.
No serious investigation was conducted, the report citing only four criminal indictments - two for using a minor as a human shield, one regarding an attack on a family waving a white flag, and the other for credit card theft.
Hundreds of other serious crimes weren't addressed, including high level culpability, a few low-level soldiers marginally hung out to dry to absolve government and IDF officials - Israel's usual coverup of appalling war crimes.
Evidence of the Report's Whitewash
On January 4, 2009, the Abu Hajjaj family was attacked, despite carrying clearly visible white flags, resulting in two deaths, Majeda Abu Hajjaj and Raya Abu Hajjaj, mother and sister. Yet Israel "found gaps between (soldiers and Palestinian) testimonies," making it "impossible to make a criminal connection between the described incident," relying instead on soldier versions to whitewash the crime's severity. In addition, investigators gave no credibility to complainants' sworn affidavits, or requested corroborating evidence to confirm them.
Willfully killing civilians is murder, a grave Fourth Geneva violation. One soldier was charged with manslaughter for shooting a "man," yet none were killed, only a mother and her sister.
On January 3, Israeli forces attacked the Al-Maqadma mosque near the Jabalia camp, an air-to-ground anti-personnel missile carrying small cube-shaped fragments for maximum effect killing 15 civilians and injuring 40 others. Israel claimed it targeted a "terror operative" spotted firing rockets.
Yet sworn affidavits and investigations showed no hostilities or military activity in the area, a conclusion Israel didn't contest, saying collateral casualties were unintentional. However, both the attack's timing, shortly after sunset prayers, and the weapon used disproves the IDF's claim, the Goldstone Commission concurring, another grave Fourth Geneva violation.
Yet the officer in charge was merely disciplined even though he willfully attacked a mosque at prayer time.
On January 5, Israeli forces fired two tank shells with flechette darts at a condolence ceremony, killing five civilians and injuring 17 others. Yet according to the commander and his forces, no civilians were present, just "visually identified....terrorist operatives," attacked while loading a "Grad rocket" on "open terrain."
None were there, just a clearly identifiable condolence tent on a sidewalk about 10 meters wide on a road around 22 miles long in a residential area, not "open terrain" as claimed. Many civilians were present, ones soldiers claimed weren't seen, saying combatants were attacked - a bald-faced lie, proved by dead and injured civilians, one of hundreds of grave Fourth Geneva violations during Cast Lead, preceded and succeeded seamlessly by many others.
Yet no investigations were conducted, no assailants charged, and no justice rendered, including by Israel's whitewash investigation, the same kind examining the Flotilla massacre.
Israeli Cast Lead Coverup
The Goldstone Commission exposed and condemned numerous Israeli war crimes, concluding that:
"the Israeli military operation was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole, in furtherance of an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the (entire) population, and in a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at (civilians. These are war crimes because) no justifiable military objective" was pursued.
Yet on July 6, IDF Military Advocate General, Maj. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit reported only the following:
-- a Lt. Colonel was summoned to a disciplinary hearing "for having deviated from military directives pertaining to the prohibition on the use of civilians for operational activity;" a mild reprimand resulted despite serious Fourth Geneva breaches;
-- a staff sergeant was indicted for manslaughter, absolving him of cold-blooded murder; his punishment will be minimal;
-- a criminal investigation was ordered "to clarify the circumstances of a specific incident;" expect no prosecutions to result; and
-- a captain was disciplined for "his failed professional judgment in authorizing an attack against a (claimed) terror operative," killing and injuring only civilians.
Gen. Mendelblit claimed over 150 incidents were examined and nearly 50 investigations launched since Cast Lead's conclusion.
Only mild disciplinary actions resulted besides one manslaughter indictment, despite a 23 day rampage, committing extensive crimes of war and against humanity, killing over 1,400, injuring over 5,000, many permanently disabled, (civilians in most cases affected), and inflicting massive destruction and devastation, unaddressed or relieved under siege. Gen. Mendelblit instead said:
"Operation Cast Lead was limited in the scope of fire and forces used. IDF soldiers operated in crowded urban areas while Hamas made deliberate and cynical use of the Palestinian population (they were protecting), creating a complex security situation. Hamas operated from within civilian homes, schools, kindergartens, mosques, hospitals and UN facilities (bald-faced lies) while the population in the Gaza Strip was made hostage" - not by Hamas, its legitimate government, by Israeli marauders, rampaging, killing and destroying lawlessly, omitted from the general's account.
On June 14, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced its formation, an internal probe to suppress truths, its members including:
-- former Israeli Supreme Court Justice, Jacob Turkel, heading it, a man with little inquiry commission experience;
-- Amos Horev, a retired Israeli major general, a prominent military-industrial complex figure; and two non-voting foreign observers:
-- David Trimble, head of Northern Ireland's Ulster Unionist Party, First Minister of the Good Friday Agreement's power-sharing government, Conservative Party life peer, earlier involved with loyalist death squads and Royal Ulster Constabulary killers (RUC); and
-- Former Canadian General Ken Watkin, earlier involved in whitewashing Canada's role in committing Somalia atrocities in the early 1990s.
A June 15 Haaretz editorial was unimpressed, saying:
"....the committees membership nor its authority is suited to meet the challenges posed by the affair. (It's more) a public relations tool (than a body appointed) to bring justice to bear on those found responsible. It would have....been better if the (committee) had never been born, sparing us the deceptive appearance of a real investigation," what the commission will scrupulously avoid, its findings to be willful coverup, blaming the victims, not their assassins or culpable high-level officials.
An Israeli military inquiry was also conducted, headed by retired Major General Giora Eiland, his released July 12 findings calling the Flotilla attack justified, according to an official summary made public - Eiland submitting a classified 150 page report to IDF Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, and Ehud Barak, Israel's Defense Minister. Its conclusions were as follows:
Claim:
"....there were no wrongdoings and no negligences in any fundamental areas during a complicated and complex operation."
Fact Check:
Nonviolent unarmed activists were delivering humanitarian aid to besieged Gazans. In an operation planned weeks in advance, they were willfully attacked in international waters, up to 15 murdered in cold blood, commandos given names and photos of targets, incriminating evidence found on board the mother ship, the Mavi Marmarra.
Claim:
-- "But on the other hand, there were mistakes that were made in decisions, including some taken at relatively high levels, which meant that the result was not as had been initially anticipated."
Fact Check:
The "anticipated" result was hostile interdiction, assassinating nonviolent activists, seizing their cargo, arresting participants on board, treating them harshly in detention, expelling them from Israel, concealing murder and barbarism in international waters, and blaming victims for their attackers' crimes.
Assassinations and related violence were carried out as planned, using commandos, trained killers as the assault force, not Israel's equivalent of America's Coast Guard, charged with maritime law enforcement, search, rescue, and other non-combat functions.
Claim
-- "not all possible intelligence gathering methods were fully implemented and (the) coordination between Navy Intelligence and the Israeli Defense Intelligence was insufficient." In addition, "the anticipated level of violence used against the forces was underestimated."
Fact Check
Faced with worldwide condemnation, the inquiry blamed intelligence failures, not a well-rehearsed operation conducted as planned.
Claim
"the operation relied excessively on a single course of action." No other was prepared for in "the event of more dangerous scenarios."
Fact Check
The attack was carried out as planned, every detail rehearsed for precision, including the pre-attack filming on a ship resembling the Mavi Marmarra, showing commandos were attacked, not activists - fiction, not fact.
Claim
"....as far as is currently known, no country in the world holds the ability to stop a vessel at sea in a non hostile manner."
Fact Check
The US Coast Guard and comparable agencies elsewhere do it routinely as necessary, seldom encountering violence and not initiating it themselves.
Claim
"....alternative courses of action could have existed had the process of preparation begun enough time in advance...."
Fact Check
Preparations began weeks in advance, including detailed intelligence on the number of ships and activists, their names and home countries, photos of targets to be assassinated, dates of departure and expected arrival, and a well-rehearsed commando interdiction operation.
Claim
The inquiry "determined that the Navy Commando soldiers operated properly, with professionalism, bravery and resourcefulness and that the commanders exhibited correct decision making....the use of live fire was justified and that the entire operation is estimable."
Fact Check
Commandos are elite combat forces trained to kill "professionally." They followed precise orders assassinating nonviolent activists in international waters - a lawless cowardly act against unarmed civilians.
Claim
The inquiry "noted with favor the various stages of medical evacuation of the injured by air and by sea, including the injured passengers of the Mavi Marmarra."
Fact Check
Commandos treated activists harshly, firing from helicopters before boarding, followed by gas bombs, other weapons, beatings, and dumping some bodies overboard. There was no provocation and no warning given. The attack was premeditated and vicious, some passengers shot multiple times in the head at point blank range.
Dozens were injured, at least 20 seriously. Everyone was taken prisoner. The few commandos hurt were treated by the ship's doctor. He was shot in the arm while aiding victims. Wounded passengers were searched and handcuffed like the others. Throughout the ordeal, soldiers were hostile and abusive, injured activists further mistreated, kicked, struck with weapons, and in some cases shot again.
No compassion whatever was shown. Some wounded passengers weren't taken to the hospital on arrival at Israel's Ashdod Port. Although hurt, bleeding and needing treatment, they were kept on board, doctors prevented from helping them.
From interdiction to assault to seizure to detention to deportation, the entire procedure was harsh, demeaning, and degrading, the slightest reaction met by blows, some unharmed activists injured en route to the airport for deportation. Others, before and during detention, were seriously beaten, some tortured. Five stayed behind hospitalized, too injured to leave. The whereabouts of some remains unknown.
General Eiland said "the issue should be viewed with perspective," believing Israel won't incur long-term damage, saying:
"....there's a tendency to draw general conclusions based on a single incident....(In addition), the fact that the IDF examines itself and others do not, results in that only the 'errors' of the IDF are publicized."
America, Britain and other nations do self-examine, as shamelessly as the above account using coverup to suppress the truth and avoid accountability. And when abuses are too great to hide, one or more low-level soldiers are charged to absolve chain of command crimes, including high-level civilians, how Israel, America and other nations duck responsibility for lawless acts of violence, ones carefully planned in advance.
Source
HRC's panel includes:
-- Desmond de Silva, a UK lawyer and former chief prosecutor for the Sierra Leone Special Court investigation into widespread killings there;
-- Karl Hudson-Phillips, a former International Criminal Court (ICC) judge and former Trinidad and Tobago attorney general and parliament member; and
-- Malaysia's Mary Shanthi Dairiam, active in gender equality issues, including on the UN Development Program's gender equity task force.
In emergency session, the HCR criticized Israel's "outrageous attack on aid ships attempting to breach a blockade on the Gaza Strip," calling it "piracy, (an) act of aggression, (a) brutal massacre, (an) act of terrorism, (a) war crime, (a) crime against humanity -unprovoked....unwarranted....atrocious, (and) brutal," calling activists "peaceful...innocent...noble...unarmed, (and) defenseless," setting the tone for what's to come, HRC president Sihasak Phuangketkeow saying:
"This is not about finger-pointing. It's about establishing the facts of what took place because the incident was a humanitarian tragedy and it's in the interests of everyone. So I'm hopeful and I'm urging all the parties concerned to render their full cooperation, because it is in their interests and it's in the interests of the international community as a whole."
"The expertise, independence and impartiality of the members of the mission will be devoted to clarifying the events which took place that day and their legality."
Israel's response was expected, a foreign ministry official saying the HRC acted in haste as part of its "obsession against Israel. The Israeli probe, conducted with transparency, makes the organization's probe completely unnecessary."
Israel, of course, won't cooperate, and plans a whitewash like its July 20 Gaza Operational Investigations: Second Update, responding to the Goldstone Commission and other reports of widespread Cast Lead crimes of war and against humanity.
No serious investigation was conducted, the report citing only four criminal indictments - two for using a minor as a human shield, one regarding an attack on a family waving a white flag, and the other for credit card theft.
Hundreds of other serious crimes weren't addressed, including high level culpability, a few low-level soldiers marginally hung out to dry to absolve government and IDF officials - Israel's usual coverup of appalling war crimes.
Evidence of the Report's Whitewash
On January 4, 2009, the Abu Hajjaj family was attacked, despite carrying clearly visible white flags, resulting in two deaths, Majeda Abu Hajjaj and Raya Abu Hajjaj, mother and sister. Yet Israel "found gaps between (soldiers and Palestinian) testimonies," making it "impossible to make a criminal connection between the described incident," relying instead on soldier versions to whitewash the crime's severity. In addition, investigators gave no credibility to complainants' sworn affidavits, or requested corroborating evidence to confirm them.
Willfully killing civilians is murder, a grave Fourth Geneva violation. One soldier was charged with manslaughter for shooting a "man," yet none were killed, only a mother and her sister.
On January 3, Israeli forces attacked the Al-Maqadma mosque near the Jabalia camp, an air-to-ground anti-personnel missile carrying small cube-shaped fragments for maximum effect killing 15 civilians and injuring 40 others. Israel claimed it targeted a "terror operative" spotted firing rockets.
Yet sworn affidavits and investigations showed no hostilities or military activity in the area, a conclusion Israel didn't contest, saying collateral casualties were unintentional. However, both the attack's timing, shortly after sunset prayers, and the weapon used disproves the IDF's claim, the Goldstone Commission concurring, another grave Fourth Geneva violation.
Yet the officer in charge was merely disciplined even though he willfully attacked a mosque at prayer time.
On January 5, Israeli forces fired two tank shells with flechette darts at a condolence ceremony, killing five civilians and injuring 17 others. Yet according to the commander and his forces, no civilians were present, just "visually identified....terrorist operatives," attacked while loading a "Grad rocket" on "open terrain."
None were there, just a clearly identifiable condolence tent on a sidewalk about 10 meters wide on a road around 22 miles long in a residential area, not "open terrain" as claimed. Many civilians were present, ones soldiers claimed weren't seen, saying combatants were attacked - a bald-faced lie, proved by dead and injured civilians, one of hundreds of grave Fourth Geneva violations during Cast Lead, preceded and succeeded seamlessly by many others.
Yet no investigations were conducted, no assailants charged, and no justice rendered, including by Israel's whitewash investigation, the same kind examining the Flotilla massacre.
Israeli Cast Lead Coverup
The Goldstone Commission exposed and condemned numerous Israeli war crimes, concluding that:
"the Israeli military operation was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole, in furtherance of an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the (entire) population, and in a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at (civilians. These are war crimes because) no justifiable military objective" was pursued.
Yet on July 6, IDF Military Advocate General, Maj. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit reported only the following:
-- a Lt. Colonel was summoned to a disciplinary hearing "for having deviated from military directives pertaining to the prohibition on the use of civilians for operational activity;" a mild reprimand resulted despite serious Fourth Geneva breaches;
-- a staff sergeant was indicted for manslaughter, absolving him of cold-blooded murder; his punishment will be minimal;
-- a criminal investigation was ordered "to clarify the circumstances of a specific incident;" expect no prosecutions to result; and
-- a captain was disciplined for "his failed professional judgment in authorizing an attack against a (claimed) terror operative," killing and injuring only civilians.
Gen. Mendelblit claimed over 150 incidents were examined and nearly 50 investigations launched since Cast Lead's conclusion.
Only mild disciplinary actions resulted besides one manslaughter indictment, despite a 23 day rampage, committing extensive crimes of war and against humanity, killing over 1,400, injuring over 5,000, many permanently disabled, (civilians in most cases affected), and inflicting massive destruction and devastation, unaddressed or relieved under siege. Gen. Mendelblit instead said:
"Operation Cast Lead was limited in the scope of fire and forces used. IDF soldiers operated in crowded urban areas while Hamas made deliberate and cynical use of the Palestinian population (they were protecting), creating a complex security situation. Hamas operated from within civilian homes, schools, kindergartens, mosques, hospitals and UN facilities (bald-faced lies) while the population in the Gaza Strip was made hostage" - not by Hamas, its legitimate government, by Israeli marauders, rampaging, killing and destroying lawlessly, omitted from the general's account.
On June 14, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced its formation, an internal probe to suppress truths, its members including:
-- former Israeli Supreme Court Justice, Jacob Turkel, heading it, a man with little inquiry commission experience;
-- Amos Horev, a retired Israeli major general, a prominent military-industrial complex figure; and two non-voting foreign observers:
-- David Trimble, head of Northern Ireland's Ulster Unionist Party, First Minister of the Good Friday Agreement's power-sharing government, Conservative Party life peer, earlier involved with loyalist death squads and Royal Ulster Constabulary killers (RUC); and
-- Former Canadian General Ken Watkin, earlier involved in whitewashing Canada's role in committing Somalia atrocities in the early 1990s.
A June 15 Haaretz editorial was unimpressed, saying:
"....the committees membership nor its authority is suited to meet the challenges posed by the affair. (It's more) a public relations tool (than a body appointed) to bring justice to bear on those found responsible. It would have....been better if the (committee) had never been born, sparing us the deceptive appearance of a real investigation," what the commission will scrupulously avoid, its findings to be willful coverup, blaming the victims, not their assassins or culpable high-level officials.
An Israeli military inquiry was also conducted, headed by retired Major General Giora Eiland, his released July 12 findings calling the Flotilla attack justified, according to an official summary made public - Eiland submitting a classified 150 page report to IDF Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, and Ehud Barak, Israel's Defense Minister. Its conclusions were as follows:
Claim:
"....there were no wrongdoings and no negligences in any fundamental areas during a complicated and complex operation."
Fact Check:
Nonviolent unarmed activists were delivering humanitarian aid to besieged Gazans. In an operation planned weeks in advance, they were willfully attacked in international waters, up to 15 murdered in cold blood, commandos given names and photos of targets, incriminating evidence found on board the mother ship, the Mavi Marmarra.
Claim:
-- "But on the other hand, there were mistakes that were made in decisions, including some taken at relatively high levels, which meant that the result was not as had been initially anticipated."
Fact Check:
The "anticipated" result was hostile interdiction, assassinating nonviolent activists, seizing their cargo, arresting participants on board, treating them harshly in detention, expelling them from Israel, concealing murder and barbarism in international waters, and blaming victims for their attackers' crimes.
Assassinations and related violence were carried out as planned, using commandos, trained killers as the assault force, not Israel's equivalent of America's Coast Guard, charged with maritime law enforcement, search, rescue, and other non-combat functions.
Claim
-- "not all possible intelligence gathering methods were fully implemented and (the) coordination between Navy Intelligence and the Israeli Defense Intelligence was insufficient." In addition, "the anticipated level of violence used against the forces was underestimated."
Fact Check
Faced with worldwide condemnation, the inquiry blamed intelligence failures, not a well-rehearsed operation conducted as planned.
Claim
"the operation relied excessively on a single course of action." No other was prepared for in "the event of more dangerous scenarios."
Fact Check
The attack was carried out as planned, every detail rehearsed for precision, including the pre-attack filming on a ship resembling the Mavi Marmarra, showing commandos were attacked, not activists - fiction, not fact.
Claim
"....as far as is currently known, no country in the world holds the ability to stop a vessel at sea in a non hostile manner."
Fact Check
The US Coast Guard and comparable agencies elsewhere do it routinely as necessary, seldom encountering violence and not initiating it themselves.
Claim
"....alternative courses of action could have existed had the process of preparation begun enough time in advance...."
Fact Check
Preparations began weeks in advance, including detailed intelligence on the number of ships and activists, their names and home countries, photos of targets to be assassinated, dates of departure and expected arrival, and a well-rehearsed commando interdiction operation.
Claim
The inquiry "determined that the Navy Commando soldiers operated properly, with professionalism, bravery and resourcefulness and that the commanders exhibited correct decision making....the use of live fire was justified and that the entire operation is estimable."
Fact Check
Commandos are elite combat forces trained to kill "professionally." They followed precise orders assassinating nonviolent activists in international waters - a lawless cowardly act against unarmed civilians.
Claim
The inquiry "noted with favor the various stages of medical evacuation of the injured by air and by sea, including the injured passengers of the Mavi Marmarra."
Fact Check
Commandos treated activists harshly, firing from helicopters before boarding, followed by gas bombs, other weapons, beatings, and dumping some bodies overboard. There was no provocation and no warning given. The attack was premeditated and vicious, some passengers shot multiple times in the head at point blank range.
Dozens were injured, at least 20 seriously. Everyone was taken prisoner. The few commandos hurt were treated by the ship's doctor. He was shot in the arm while aiding victims. Wounded passengers were searched and handcuffed like the others. Throughout the ordeal, soldiers were hostile and abusive, injured activists further mistreated, kicked, struck with weapons, and in some cases shot again.
No compassion whatever was shown. Some wounded passengers weren't taken to the hospital on arrival at Israel's Ashdod Port. Although hurt, bleeding and needing treatment, they were kept on board, doctors prevented from helping them.
From interdiction to assault to seizure to detention to deportation, the entire procedure was harsh, demeaning, and degrading, the slightest reaction met by blows, some unharmed activists injured en route to the airport for deportation. Others, before and during detention, were seriously beaten, some tortured. Five stayed behind hospitalized, too injured to leave. The whereabouts of some remains unknown.
General Eiland said "the issue should be viewed with perspective," believing Israel won't incur long-term damage, saying:
"....there's a tendency to draw general conclusions based on a single incident....(In addition), the fact that the IDF examines itself and others do not, results in that only the 'errors' of the IDF are publicized."
America, Britain and other nations do self-examine, as shamelessly as the above account using coverup to suppress the truth and avoid accountability. And when abuses are too great to hide, one or more low-level soldiers are charged to absolve chain of command crimes, including high-level civilians, how Israel, America and other nations duck responsibility for lawless acts of violence, ones carefully planned in advance.
Source
Book By Innocent Prisoner Suggests Torture By U.S. Military Was Widespread
By Sherwood Ross
Although U.S. officials have attributed the torture of Muslim prisoners in their custody to a handful of maverick guards, in fact such criminal acts were widely perpetrated and systemic, likely involving large numbers of military personnel, a book by a survivor suggests. Additionally, guards were responsible for countless acts of murder, including death by crucifixion, lynching, poisoning, snakebite, withholding of medicines, starvation, and bludgeoning of innocent victims. And the murders committed by U.S. troops numbered at least in the hundreds, according to reliable sources.
As well, Pentagon architects designed prisons that were sadistic torture chambers in themselves, barely six feet high and seven feet wide, in which human beings were kept for months or years at a time---spaces which, one prisoner noted, are smaller than the legal requirements in Germany for doghouses. Architects who knowingly designed these hellholes may have also committed crimes against humanity.
After the photographs of sadism at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib in May, 2004, shocked the world, President Bush called the revelations “a stain on our country’s honor and our country’s reputation.” He told visiting King Abdullah of Jordan in the Oval Office that “I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners, and the humiliation suffered by their families.” Bush told The Washington Post, “I told him (Abdullah) I was equally sorry that people who have been seeing those pictures didn’t understand the true nature and heart of America.” A year later, Lynddie England and 10 others from the 372nd Military Police Company were convicted of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq, yet the events of that prison were likely duplicated everywhere across the spectrum of Pentagon and CIA detention camps acting on orders from the Bush White House.
Although President Bush made the Abu Ghraib revelations sound like nothing worse than “humiliation” in fact, the Abu Ghraib photos gave the world a glimpse into far greater crimes of every sordid type---and reports compiled from other sources indicated that to be captured by the Americans was a veritable descent into hell.
While the President’s words sounded as if they came from an innocent bystander, this was the same man who claimed two years earlier the Geneva Conventions did not apply in the countries the U.S. had invaded; they were uttered by the man who, with his Vice President Dick Cheney, is primarily responsible for the entire venomous persecution of thousands of innocent men, women, and even children. While a handful of guards such as Ms. England---notorious for her “thumbs up” photo observing a human pyramid of naked prisoners, were convicted and jailed---the many other hundreds or thousands of military guards, interrogators, and doctors and dentists also involved in the widespread tortures have never been prosecuted for their crimes.
It should be kept in mind that no impartial legal system was in place to defend the rights of the accused, so that their torturers could break laws without fear of reprisal. As Jane Mayer wrote in “The Dark Side”(Anchor), “Seven years after the attacks of September 11, not a single terror suspect held outside of the U.S. criminal court system has been tried. Of the 759 detainees acknowledged to have been held in Guantanamo, approximately 340 remained there, only a handful of whom had been charged. Among these, not a single ‘enemy combatant’ had yet had the opportunity to cross-examine the government or see the evidence on which he was being held. Thus, since none had been brought to trial, all the tortures inflicted were on captives who must be presumed innocent. One book, by a man who survived the nightmare of captivity where so many others perished, gives the lie to the notion that abuses were carried out by a few vicious guards. Everywhere he went he was beaten and he saw other prisoners also beaten by many different teams of sadistic guards. The conviction of Ms. England and her companions, therefore, does not begin to serve the cause of justice.
According to Murat Kurnaz, a 19-year-old Turkish citizen raised in Germany and falsely defamed as “the German Taliban,” torture at the several prisons in which he was held was frequent, commonplace, and committed by many guards. In his book, “Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo”(Palgrave Macmillan), beatings began in 2001 on the flight from Pakistan (where he was pulled off a public bus and sold by Pakistani police for $3,000) to his first imprisonment in Afghanistan. “I couldn’t see how many soldiers there were, but to judge from the confusion of voices it must have been a lot. They went from one prisoner to the next, hitting us with their fists, their billy clubs, and the butts of their rifles.” This was done to men that were manacled to the floor of the plane. “It was as cold as a refrigerator; I was sitting on bare metal and icy air was coming from a vent or a fan. I tried to go to sleep, but they kept hitting me and waking me…they never tired of beating us, laughing all the while.”
On another occasion, Kurnaz counted seven guards who were beating a prisoner with the butts of their rifles and kicking him with their boots until he died. At one point, Kurnaz was hung by chains with his arms behind his back for five days. “Today I know that a lot of inmates died from treatment like this.” When he was finally taken down and needed water “they’d just pour the water over my head and laugh.” The guards even tortured a blind man who was older than 90 “the same way the rest of us were,” Kurnaz wrote.
At Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo, Cuba, Kurnaz said, “During the day, we had to remain seated and at night we had to lie down. If you lay down during the day you were punished…We weren’t allowed to talk. We weren’t to speak to or look at the guards. We weren’t allowed to draw in the sand or whistle or sing or smile. Every time I unknowingly broke a rule, or because they had just invented a new one…an IRF (Immediate Reaction Force) team would come and beat me.” Once when he was weak from a hunger strike, Kurnaz wrote, “I was beaten on a stretcher.” During his earlier imprisonment at Kandahar, Pakistan, Kurnaz writes, “There were weaker, older men in the pen. Men with broken feet, men whose legs and arms were fractured or had turned blue, red, or yellow from pus. There were prisoners with broken jaws, fingers and noses, and with terribly swollen faces like mine.” Not only were the wounds of such men ignored by guards but complicit doctors would examine him and other prisoners during tortures and advise guards as to how much more they could stand before they died. On one occasion, he saw guards beating a prisoner with no legs.
Still worse, Kurnaz said doctors participated in the tortures. A dentist asked to pull out a prisoner’s rotten tooth pulled out all his healthy ones as well. Another prisoner who went to the doctor to treat one finger with severe frostbite had all his other fingers amputated. “I saw open wounds that weren’t treated. A lot of people had been beaten so often they had broken legs, arms and feet. The fractures, too, remained untreated,” Kurnaz wrote. “I never saw anyone in a cast.” Prisoners were deliberately weakened by starvation diets. Meals at Guantanamo consisted of “three spoonfuls of rice, a slice of dry bread, and a plastic spoon. That was it.” Sometimes a loaf of bread was tossed over a fence into their compound.
Prisoners who should have been in hospital beds instead were confined to cells purposefully designed to torture them. Kurnaz described his experience this way: “Those cells were like ovens. The sun beat down on the metal roof at noon and directly on the sides of the cage in the mornings and afternoons. All told, I think I spent roughly a year alone in absolute darkness, either in a cooler or an oven, with little food, and once I spent three months straight in solitary confinement.” Prisoners could be put in solitary confinement for the tiniest infractions of the most ridiculous rules, such as not folding a blanket properly. “I was always being punished and humiliated, regardless of what I did,” Kurnaz said. Once, he was put in solitary for ten days for feeding breadcrumbs to an iguana that had crawled into his cage.
Besides regular beatings from IRF, who commonly entered cells with clubs swinging, Kurnaz received excruciating electroshocks to his feet and was waterboarded in a 20-inch diameter plastic bucket filled with water. He describes the experience as follows: “Someone grabbed me by the hair. The soldiers seized my arms and pushed my head underwater. …Drowning is a horrible way to die. They pulled my head back up. “Do you like it? You want more?” When my head was back underwater, I felt a blow to my stomach…. “Where is Osama? “Who are you?” I tried to speak but I couldn’t. I swallowed some water….It became harder and harder to breath, the more they hit me in the stomach and pushed my head underwater. I felt my heart racing. They didn’t let up…I imagined myself screaming underwater…I would have told them everything. But what was I supposed to tell them?”It should be noted that U.S. and German authorities had decided as early as 2002 that Kurnaz was innocent---that he really was a student of the Koran in Pakistan when he had been seized by bounty hunters and sold to the Americans as a “terrorist." Yet they continued the tortures for years knowing all along of his innocence.
On yet other occasions, Kurnaz, like so many other prisoners, was hung from chains backwards so that “it felt as though my shoulders were going to break. “I was hoisted up until my feet no longer touched the ground….After a while, the cuffs seemed like they were cutting my wrists down to the bone. My shoulders felt like someone was trying to pull my arms out of their sockets…When they hung me up backwards, it felt as though my shoulders were going to break…I was strung up for five days…Three times a day soldiers came in and let me down (and)a doctor examined me and took my pulse. ‘Okay,’ he said. The soldiers hoisted me back up. I lost all feeling in my arms and hands. I still felt pain in other parts of my body, like in my chest around my heart…” A short distance away Kurnaz could see another man hanging from chains--dead.
To compound the inmates’ misery, Guantanamo guards would trample an imate’s Koran, the sacred book of the Muslims. While U.S. authorities denied that Korans had been thrown in toilets, those denials are worth little considering that when the evening call to prayer was sounded, Kurnez said, the caller’s voice “was drowned out by loud music. It was the American national anthem.” One boorish guard specialized in kicking at prisoners' cell doors when they attempted to pray.
When Kurnaz was transferred within the Guantanamo prison system to “Camp 1” he was put in a maximum security cage inside a giant container with metal walls. “Although the cage was no smaller than the one in CampX-Ray, the bunk reduced the amount of free space to around three-and-a-half feet by three-and-a-half feet. At the far end of the cage, an aluminum toilet and a sink took up even more room. How was I going to stand this? …I hardly saw the sun at all. They had perfected their prison..It felt like being sealed alive in a ship container.”
Although U.S. politicians and ultra-right radio talk show hosts ridiculed the use of sleep deprivation against prisoners, this was, in fact, an insidious practice used earlier in Bolshevik Russia to torture known as “the conveyor belt.” In 2002, Kurnaz writes, when General Geoffrey Miller took over command of Guantanamo, “The interrogations got more brutal, more frequent, and longer.” Miller commenced “Operation Sandman,” in which prisoners were moved to new cells every hour or two “to completely deprive us of sleep, and he achieved it.” Kurnaz says, “I had to stand and kneel twenty-four hours a day,” often in chains, and “I had barely arrived in a new cell and lay down on the bunk, before they came again to move me. …As soon as the guards saw me close my eyes…they’d kick at the door or punch me in the face.” In between transfers, “I was interrogated…I estimated the sessions lasted up to fifteen hours” during which the interrogator might disappear for hours at a time. “I sat chained to my chair or kneeling on the floor, and as soon as my eyelids drooped, soldiers would wake me with a couple of blows…Days and nights without sleep. Blows and new cages. Again, the stabbing sensation of thousands of needles throughout my entire body. I would have loved to step outside my body, but I couldn’t…I went three weeks without sleep….the soldiers came at night and made us stand for hours on end at gunpoint. At this point, I weighed less than 130 pounds.” Kurnaz was released to Germany in August, 2006, and testified by videolink in 2008 to the U.S. Congress. During his five years of confinement, he was never charged with a crime.
And so it happened that, during the presidency of George W. Bush, tens of thousands of innocent human beings, Kurnaz among them, were swept up in dragnet arrests by the invading American forces or their allies and imprisoned without legal recourse---the very opposite of what America's Founders gifted to humanity in their Constitution. None of the prisoners ever saw a real judge or jury. Torture among them was widespread. As for President Barack Obama, sworn to uphold a Constitution that does not permit torture, his failure to act forthrightly and, in particular, to ignore crimes by the CIA, an agency for which he once worked, would appear to make him guilty of subversion of that founding charter which he is legally obliged to honor. As for not taking action against the countless Pentagon operatives who tortured---including doctors and dentists and surgeons, etc.---Obama’s inaction will permit these sadists to be returned one day to practice among the general civilian population. Think about that. Think, too, about the stain on the American flag that may never be washed clean.
(Sherwood Ross is an American who worked in the civil rights movement and has written for national magazines and wire services. Today, he runs a public relations firm for good causes. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)
Although U.S. officials have attributed the torture of Muslim prisoners in their custody to a handful of maverick guards, in fact such criminal acts were widely perpetrated and systemic, likely involving large numbers of military personnel, a book by a survivor suggests. Additionally, guards were responsible for countless acts of murder, including death by crucifixion, lynching, poisoning, snakebite, withholding of medicines, starvation, and bludgeoning of innocent victims. And the murders committed by U.S. troops numbered at least in the hundreds, according to reliable sources.
As well, Pentagon architects designed prisons that were sadistic torture chambers in themselves, barely six feet high and seven feet wide, in which human beings were kept for months or years at a time---spaces which, one prisoner noted, are smaller than the legal requirements in Germany for doghouses. Architects who knowingly designed these hellholes may have also committed crimes against humanity.
After the photographs of sadism at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib in May, 2004, shocked the world, President Bush called the revelations “a stain on our country’s honor and our country’s reputation.” He told visiting King Abdullah of Jordan in the Oval Office that “I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners, and the humiliation suffered by their families.” Bush told The Washington Post, “I told him (Abdullah) I was equally sorry that people who have been seeing those pictures didn’t understand the true nature and heart of America.” A year later, Lynddie England and 10 others from the 372nd Military Police Company were convicted of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq, yet the events of that prison were likely duplicated everywhere across the spectrum of Pentagon and CIA detention camps acting on orders from the Bush White House.
Although President Bush made the Abu Ghraib revelations sound like nothing worse than “humiliation” in fact, the Abu Ghraib photos gave the world a glimpse into far greater crimes of every sordid type---and reports compiled from other sources indicated that to be captured by the Americans was a veritable descent into hell.
While the President’s words sounded as if they came from an innocent bystander, this was the same man who claimed two years earlier the Geneva Conventions did not apply in the countries the U.S. had invaded; they were uttered by the man who, with his Vice President Dick Cheney, is primarily responsible for the entire venomous persecution of thousands of innocent men, women, and even children. While a handful of guards such as Ms. England---notorious for her “thumbs up” photo observing a human pyramid of naked prisoners, were convicted and jailed---the many other hundreds or thousands of military guards, interrogators, and doctors and dentists also involved in the widespread tortures have never been prosecuted for their crimes.
It should be kept in mind that no impartial legal system was in place to defend the rights of the accused, so that their torturers could break laws without fear of reprisal. As Jane Mayer wrote in “The Dark Side”(Anchor), “Seven years after the attacks of September 11, not a single terror suspect held outside of the U.S. criminal court system has been tried. Of the 759 detainees acknowledged to have been held in Guantanamo, approximately 340 remained there, only a handful of whom had been charged. Among these, not a single ‘enemy combatant’ had yet had the opportunity to cross-examine the government or see the evidence on which he was being held. Thus, since none had been brought to trial, all the tortures inflicted were on captives who must be presumed innocent. One book, by a man who survived the nightmare of captivity where so many others perished, gives the lie to the notion that abuses were carried out by a few vicious guards. Everywhere he went he was beaten and he saw other prisoners also beaten by many different teams of sadistic guards. The conviction of Ms. England and her companions, therefore, does not begin to serve the cause of justice.
According to Murat Kurnaz, a 19-year-old Turkish citizen raised in Germany and falsely defamed as “the German Taliban,” torture at the several prisons in which he was held was frequent, commonplace, and committed by many guards. In his book, “Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo”(Palgrave Macmillan), beatings began in 2001 on the flight from Pakistan (where he was pulled off a public bus and sold by Pakistani police for $3,000) to his first imprisonment in Afghanistan. “I couldn’t see how many soldiers there were, but to judge from the confusion of voices it must have been a lot. They went from one prisoner to the next, hitting us with their fists, their billy clubs, and the butts of their rifles.” This was done to men that were manacled to the floor of the plane. “It was as cold as a refrigerator; I was sitting on bare metal and icy air was coming from a vent or a fan. I tried to go to sleep, but they kept hitting me and waking me…they never tired of beating us, laughing all the while.”
On another occasion, Kurnaz counted seven guards who were beating a prisoner with the butts of their rifles and kicking him with their boots until he died. At one point, Kurnaz was hung by chains with his arms behind his back for five days. “Today I know that a lot of inmates died from treatment like this.” When he was finally taken down and needed water “they’d just pour the water over my head and laugh.” The guards even tortured a blind man who was older than 90 “the same way the rest of us were,” Kurnaz wrote.
At Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo, Cuba, Kurnaz said, “During the day, we had to remain seated and at night we had to lie down. If you lay down during the day you were punished…We weren’t allowed to talk. We weren’t to speak to or look at the guards. We weren’t allowed to draw in the sand or whistle or sing or smile. Every time I unknowingly broke a rule, or because they had just invented a new one…an IRF (Immediate Reaction Force) team would come and beat me.” Once when he was weak from a hunger strike, Kurnaz wrote, “I was beaten on a stretcher.” During his earlier imprisonment at Kandahar, Pakistan, Kurnaz writes, “There were weaker, older men in the pen. Men with broken feet, men whose legs and arms were fractured or had turned blue, red, or yellow from pus. There were prisoners with broken jaws, fingers and noses, and with terribly swollen faces like mine.” Not only were the wounds of such men ignored by guards but complicit doctors would examine him and other prisoners during tortures and advise guards as to how much more they could stand before they died. On one occasion, he saw guards beating a prisoner with no legs.
Still worse, Kurnaz said doctors participated in the tortures. A dentist asked to pull out a prisoner’s rotten tooth pulled out all his healthy ones as well. Another prisoner who went to the doctor to treat one finger with severe frostbite had all his other fingers amputated. “I saw open wounds that weren’t treated. A lot of people had been beaten so often they had broken legs, arms and feet. The fractures, too, remained untreated,” Kurnaz wrote. “I never saw anyone in a cast.” Prisoners were deliberately weakened by starvation diets. Meals at Guantanamo consisted of “three spoonfuls of rice, a slice of dry bread, and a plastic spoon. That was it.” Sometimes a loaf of bread was tossed over a fence into their compound.
Prisoners who should have been in hospital beds instead were confined to cells purposefully designed to torture them. Kurnaz described his experience this way: “Those cells were like ovens. The sun beat down on the metal roof at noon and directly on the sides of the cage in the mornings and afternoons. All told, I think I spent roughly a year alone in absolute darkness, either in a cooler or an oven, with little food, and once I spent three months straight in solitary confinement.” Prisoners could be put in solitary confinement for the tiniest infractions of the most ridiculous rules, such as not folding a blanket properly. “I was always being punished and humiliated, regardless of what I did,” Kurnaz said. Once, he was put in solitary for ten days for feeding breadcrumbs to an iguana that had crawled into his cage.
Besides regular beatings from IRF, who commonly entered cells with clubs swinging, Kurnaz received excruciating electroshocks to his feet and was waterboarded in a 20-inch diameter plastic bucket filled with water. He describes the experience as follows: “Someone grabbed me by the hair. The soldiers seized my arms and pushed my head underwater. …Drowning is a horrible way to die. They pulled my head back up. “Do you like it? You want more?” When my head was back underwater, I felt a blow to my stomach…. “Where is Osama? “Who are you?” I tried to speak but I couldn’t. I swallowed some water….It became harder and harder to breath, the more they hit me in the stomach and pushed my head underwater. I felt my heart racing. They didn’t let up…I imagined myself screaming underwater…I would have told them everything. But what was I supposed to tell them?”It should be noted that U.S. and German authorities had decided as early as 2002 that Kurnaz was innocent---that he really was a student of the Koran in Pakistan when he had been seized by bounty hunters and sold to the Americans as a “terrorist." Yet they continued the tortures for years knowing all along of his innocence.
On yet other occasions, Kurnaz, like so many other prisoners, was hung from chains backwards so that “it felt as though my shoulders were going to break. “I was hoisted up until my feet no longer touched the ground….After a while, the cuffs seemed like they were cutting my wrists down to the bone. My shoulders felt like someone was trying to pull my arms out of their sockets…When they hung me up backwards, it felt as though my shoulders were going to break…I was strung up for five days…Three times a day soldiers came in and let me down (and)a doctor examined me and took my pulse. ‘Okay,’ he said. The soldiers hoisted me back up. I lost all feeling in my arms and hands. I still felt pain in other parts of my body, like in my chest around my heart…” A short distance away Kurnaz could see another man hanging from chains--dead.
To compound the inmates’ misery, Guantanamo guards would trample an imate’s Koran, the sacred book of the Muslims. While U.S. authorities denied that Korans had been thrown in toilets, those denials are worth little considering that when the evening call to prayer was sounded, Kurnez said, the caller’s voice “was drowned out by loud music. It was the American national anthem.” One boorish guard specialized in kicking at prisoners' cell doors when they attempted to pray.
When Kurnaz was transferred within the Guantanamo prison system to “Camp 1” he was put in a maximum security cage inside a giant container with metal walls. “Although the cage was no smaller than the one in CampX-Ray, the bunk reduced the amount of free space to around three-and-a-half feet by three-and-a-half feet. At the far end of the cage, an aluminum toilet and a sink took up even more room. How was I going to stand this? …I hardly saw the sun at all. They had perfected their prison..It felt like being sealed alive in a ship container.”
Although U.S. politicians and ultra-right radio talk show hosts ridiculed the use of sleep deprivation against prisoners, this was, in fact, an insidious practice used earlier in Bolshevik Russia to torture known as “the conveyor belt.” In 2002, Kurnaz writes, when General Geoffrey Miller took over command of Guantanamo, “The interrogations got more brutal, more frequent, and longer.” Miller commenced “Operation Sandman,” in which prisoners were moved to new cells every hour or two “to completely deprive us of sleep, and he achieved it.” Kurnaz says, “I had to stand and kneel twenty-four hours a day,” often in chains, and “I had barely arrived in a new cell and lay down on the bunk, before they came again to move me. …As soon as the guards saw me close my eyes…they’d kick at the door or punch me in the face.” In between transfers, “I was interrogated…I estimated the sessions lasted up to fifteen hours” during which the interrogator might disappear for hours at a time. “I sat chained to my chair or kneeling on the floor, and as soon as my eyelids drooped, soldiers would wake me with a couple of blows…Days and nights without sleep. Blows and new cages. Again, the stabbing sensation of thousands of needles throughout my entire body. I would have loved to step outside my body, but I couldn’t…I went three weeks without sleep….the soldiers came at night and made us stand for hours on end at gunpoint. At this point, I weighed less than 130 pounds.” Kurnaz was released to Germany in August, 2006, and testified by videolink in 2008 to the U.S. Congress. During his five years of confinement, he was never charged with a crime.
And so it happened that, during the presidency of George W. Bush, tens of thousands of innocent human beings, Kurnaz among them, were swept up in dragnet arrests by the invading American forces or their allies and imprisoned without legal recourse---the very opposite of what America's Founders gifted to humanity in their Constitution. None of the prisoners ever saw a real judge or jury. Torture among them was widespread. As for President Barack Obama, sworn to uphold a Constitution that does not permit torture, his failure to act forthrightly and, in particular, to ignore crimes by the CIA, an agency for which he once worked, would appear to make him guilty of subversion of that founding charter which he is legally obliged to honor. As for not taking action against the countless Pentagon operatives who tortured---including doctors and dentists and surgeons, etc.---Obama’s inaction will permit these sadists to be returned one day to practice among the general civilian population. Think about that. Think, too, about the stain on the American flag that may never be washed clean.
(Sherwood Ross is an American who worked in the civil rights movement and has written for national magazines and wire services. Today, he runs a public relations firm for good causes. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)
Al Qaeda Doesn't Exist
Al Qaeda Doesn't Exist is the forthcoming documentary by The Corbett Report. It interrogates the theory that Al Qaeda is a centrally-operated terrorist organization run by Osama Bin Laden that perpetrated the attacks of 9/11. The documentary looks at Al Qaeda's roots, its ties to western intelligence agencies and the fictions that have been created to enhance its myth in the corporate-controlled media.
Who Owns you? The Rothschild philosophy
By Jack Blood
INTERNATIONAL BANKERS, TOP GLOBALISTS, HEADS OF NEW WORLD ORDER.
In order of importance:
Rothschild family
Warburg family
Schiff family
Oppenheimer family
Royal Family of England
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family
Rockefellar family
Morgan family
Harriman family
Carnegie family
Rothschild is by far the most influential, holding approximately half of all the worlds wealth. That family is directly responsible for founding most of the other families or helping them get up off their feet.
The Rothschild philosophy:
1) Law is force in disguise. Right lies in force (“Might makes Right”) The right to rule lies in force.
2) Political freedom is an idea, not a fact. In order to usurp political power, all that is necessary is to preach ‘liberalism,’ and the electorates will give up more and more power to the conspirators.
3) Money is all powerful. Governments are insignificant compared to money. Since governments control the money, that control must be removed from governments, and put in the hands of the conspirators.
4) Any and all means to achieve the goal of world domination by the conspirators is justified.
5) The size, scope, and power of the conspirators’ resources must remain hidden.
6) Alcohol, drugs, and moral corruption shall be used to weaken the will of the people.
7) Wars should be instigated and orchestrated so that both sides would be in their debt (in other words, the conspirators would gain profit and power, no matter who “won” the wars!).
8 Propaganda and control of information should be used to influence opinion.
9) Pre-planned and artificially manipulated financial panics and depression should be used to tame the people, and weaken governments, so as to ultimately form a one-world government, with the conspirators as the rulers.
The “Rothschild Formula” for NWO as Edward Griffin, author of Creature From Jekyll Island, puts it:
1) War is the ultimate discipline to any government. Survival from war becomes primary – everything else is secondary.
2) All that is necessary to insure government indebtedness (to the international banking conspiracy) is war – or the threat of war.
3) To create such a situation, it is necessary to pit two countries (or segments of one country) of equal force against one another – or to create them (the two opposing countries or segments of one country) if they do not already exist. (“Pit one side against the other, and finance both sides – so that the bankers win, no matter which side actually “wins.”).
4) The ultimate obstacle to this formula is a country that is not willing to finance war through debt. When this occurs, it becomes necessary to encourage internal political conflict and/or infiltrate the government.
5) No one nation can be permitted to gain military dominance, because this would lead to a lack of conflict for power, and may lead to peace!
Owners of the Federal Reserve:
1) Rothschild Banks of London and Berlin
2) Lazard Brothers Bank of Paris
3) Israel Moses Sieff Bank of Italy
4) Warburg Batiks of Hamburg and Amsterdam
5) Lehman Brothers Bank of New York
6) Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York
7) Chase Manhattan Bank of New York (controlled by the Rockefellers)
8 Goldman Sachs Bank of New York
Deadline LIVE
INTERNATIONAL BANKERS, TOP GLOBALISTS, HEADS OF NEW WORLD ORDER.
In order of importance:
Rothschild family
Warburg family
Schiff family
Oppenheimer family
Royal Family of England
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family
Rockefellar family
Morgan family
Harriman family
Carnegie family
Rothschild is by far the most influential, holding approximately half of all the worlds wealth. That family is directly responsible for founding most of the other families or helping them get up off their feet.
The Rothschild philosophy:
1) Law is force in disguise. Right lies in force (“Might makes Right”) The right to rule lies in force.
2) Political freedom is an idea, not a fact. In order to usurp political power, all that is necessary is to preach ‘liberalism,’ and the electorates will give up more and more power to the conspirators.
3) Money is all powerful. Governments are insignificant compared to money. Since governments control the money, that control must be removed from governments, and put in the hands of the conspirators.
4) Any and all means to achieve the goal of world domination by the conspirators is justified.
5) The size, scope, and power of the conspirators’ resources must remain hidden.
6) Alcohol, drugs, and moral corruption shall be used to weaken the will of the people.
7) Wars should be instigated and orchestrated so that both sides would be in their debt (in other words, the conspirators would gain profit and power, no matter who “won” the wars!).
8 Propaganda and control of information should be used to influence opinion.
9) Pre-planned and artificially manipulated financial panics and depression should be used to tame the people, and weaken governments, so as to ultimately form a one-world government, with the conspirators as the rulers.
The “Rothschild Formula” for NWO as Edward Griffin, author of Creature From Jekyll Island, puts it:
1) War is the ultimate discipline to any government. Survival from war becomes primary – everything else is secondary.
2) All that is necessary to insure government indebtedness (to the international banking conspiracy) is war – or the threat of war.
3) To create such a situation, it is necessary to pit two countries (or segments of one country) of equal force against one another – or to create them (the two opposing countries or segments of one country) if they do not already exist. (“Pit one side against the other, and finance both sides – so that the bankers win, no matter which side actually “wins.”).
4) The ultimate obstacle to this formula is a country that is not willing to finance war through debt. When this occurs, it becomes necessary to encourage internal political conflict and/or infiltrate the government.
5) No one nation can be permitted to gain military dominance, because this would lead to a lack of conflict for power, and may lead to peace!
Owners of the Federal Reserve:
1) Rothschild Banks of London and Berlin
2) Lazard Brothers Bank of Paris
3) Israel Moses Sieff Bank of Italy
4) Warburg Batiks of Hamburg and Amsterdam
5) Lehman Brothers Bank of New York
6) Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York
7) Chase Manhattan Bank of New York (controlled by the Rockefellers)
8 Goldman Sachs Bank of New York
Deadline LIVE
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Prison Planet Forum Requires No Facts
Well, I thought I would venture into the well known Prison Planet forums this evening once I saw a poster saying Alex Jones' Y2K broadcast was a "War of the Worlds" type broadcast and of course, that Jones meant none of it. Here's the thread.
Now, it would seem asking for any kind of verification on this type of claim is not allowed on Alex Jones' Prison Planet forum. Nor would their slanderous claims of Bill Cooper being a drunk which can be found in the same thread. I advise everyone to hurry and click the link to thread as things over there seem to have a way of making their way down the memory hole so Jones&Co. can say it never happened. It's not like these so called truthseekers have not done this numerous times before. When is enough going to be enough?
This is the problem we face in the truth movement today. We are not allowed to question anything even on so called "truth" forums. We are not allowed to question Jones. We are not allowed to question the Hollowcost.. The list of things we are allowed to question in this movement grow shorter by the day without some sort of "label" being applied to you. Is this the reason this movement was started? For the free thinking to be shunned and "banned" from certain places? Or was it started to give us freedom and throw off the shackles of tyranny? This movement is becoming exactly what we are fighting. Wake up or you will be the sheep led to the slaughter by the Judas goat.
God Bless,
Deceived
Now, it would seem asking for any kind of verification on this type of claim is not allowed on Alex Jones' Prison Planet forum. Nor would their slanderous claims of Bill Cooper being a drunk which can be found in the same thread. I advise everyone to hurry and click the link to thread as things over there seem to have a way of making their way down the memory hole so Jones&Co. can say it never happened. It's not like these so called truthseekers have not done this numerous times before. When is enough going to be enough?
This is the problem we face in the truth movement today. We are not allowed to question anything even on so called "truth" forums. We are not allowed to question Jones. We are not allowed to question the Hollowcost.. The list of things we are allowed to question in this movement grow shorter by the day without some sort of "label" being applied to you. Is this the reason this movement was started? For the free thinking to be shunned and "banned" from certain places? Or was it started to give us freedom and throw off the shackles of tyranny? This movement is becoming exactly what we are fighting. Wake up or you will be the sheep led to the slaughter by the Judas goat.
God Bless,
Deceived
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is 'annoyed' by 9/11 truth
In this interview, Belfast Telegraph reporter Matthew Bell asks Wikileaks founder Julian Assange about "conspiracy theories". Assange subsequently explains his position.
In November 2009, Wikileaks released "half a million US national text pager intercepts" covering a "24 hour period surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington."[1] This is all commendable. However, given Mr. Assange's rather curious disposition towards 9/11 truth, how much effort can we really expect from Wikileaks in the future?
Perhaps it should be pointed out to Mr. Assange that former senator Bob Graham, who chaired the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when it performed its Joint Inquiry[2] into 9/11, gave an interview to the BBC in which Graham said the following:[3]
Nobody is asking Mr. Assange to depart from his objective role, but now that he has spoken out, he deserves a reply. In both cases, clearly the terminology used is "conspiracy" or "cover-up". Bob Graham doesn't hold back and mentions "withholding of (..) secrets", chastising the Bush administration for being unapologetic, self-serving and obstructive. So it seems that Julian Assange, as the founder and director of an organization supposedly dedicated to supporting whistleblowers who expose government wrongdoing, has his work cut out for him, unless he is determined to be part of the problem. The perception management and misguided credibility building Mr. Assange seems so concerned with conflict with the stated mission of Wikileaks:[6]
[1] "9/11 tragedy pager intercepts" — http://911.wikileaks.org/
[2] 9/11 Joint Inquiry — http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/911.html
[3] Relevant excerpt from the 2007 BBC documentary "Conspiracy Files: 9-11" — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6QLnvvyIzg/
[4] We Are Change LA: "9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey finally confesses 9-11 Commission could not do it's job"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtJWBcWAeAw#t=6m45
[5] Operation Cyclone — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone
[6] Wikileaks mission statement — http://wikileaks.org/wiki/WikiLeaks:About
[7] Documentary "Sibel Edmonds: Kill The Messenger" — http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6063340745569143497
[8] Sibel Edmonds, Daniel Ellsberg together — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aSbmRHqKL4
Source
His obsession with secrecy, both in others and maintaining his own, lends him the air of a conspiracy theorist. Is he one? "I believe in facts about conspiracies," he says, choosing his words slowly. "Any time people with power plan in secret, they are conducting a conspiracy. So there are conspiracies everywhere. There are also crazed conspiracy theories. It's important not to confuse these two. Generally, when there's enough facts about a conspiracy we simply call this news." What about 9/11? "I'm constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud." What about the Bilderberg conference? "That is vaguely conspiratorial, in a networking sense. We have published their meeting notes."Mr. Assange seems to have conveniently forgotten that 9/11 may be, in a very concrete sense, a 'conspiracy for war', leading directly to the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and the permanent "War on Terror".
In November 2009, Wikileaks released "half a million US national text pager intercepts" covering a "24 hour period surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington."[1] This is all commendable. However, given Mr. Assange's rather curious disposition towards 9/11 truth, how much effort can we really expect from Wikileaks in the future?
Perhaps it should be pointed out to Mr. Assange that former senator Bob Graham, who chaired the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when it performed its Joint Inquiry[2] into 9/11, gave an interview to the BBC in which Graham said the following:[3]
Bob Graham: "I can just state that within 9/11 there are too many secrets, that is information that has not been made available to the public for which there are specific tangible credible answers and that that withholding of those secrets has eroded public confidence in their government as it relates to their own security."The BBC then concludes their documentary with a reassuring, paternalistic commentary explaining why this isn't something we should all be furious about. Furthermore, in 2009, 9/11 commissioner Bob Kerrey said, in a candid dialogue with We Are Change LA:[4]
Narrator: "Senator Graham found that the cover-up led to the heart of the administration."
Bob Graham: "I called the White House and talked with Ms. Rice and said: "Look, we've been told we're gonna get cooperation in this inquiry and she said she'd look into it and nothing happened."
Interviewer: "Was there any sort of sense of embarrassment or apology or...?"
Bob Graham: "No. Embarrassment, apology, regret, those are not characteristics associated with the current White House."
Interviewer: "So it was a conspiracy to cover-up the fact that blunders had been made in the lead up to 9/11?"
Bob Graham: "If by conspiracy you mean, more than one person involved, yes, there was more than one person and there was some ... collaboration of efforts among agencies and the administration to keep information out of the public's hands."
Bob Kerrey: "It's a problem... it's a 30-year-old conspiracy"Many interpretations could be given as to what sort of conspiracy these two former senators are referring to. The BBC documentary "Conspiracy Files: 9-11" was an obvious hit piece against 9/11 truth, in which the BBC went out of their way to handwave all abnormalities as 'blunders', 'failures', 'mistakes' and 'cock ups'. This angle is not new, in fact, it's part of a long BBC tradition of 'limited hangouts'. Nor is it any less outrageous if it were true that these 'blunders' and 'gaffes' were deliberately covered up, as the BBC and Bob Graham allege. A criminal cover-up alone warrants criminal prosecution of the conspirators involved, and most 9/11 researchers know this is merely the tip of the iceberg. Bob Kerrey's remark could be taken to mean the covert funding and training of the Mujahideen, initiated in 1979.[5]
Jeremy Rothe-Kushel: "No.. I'm talking about 9/11"
Bob Kerrey: "That's what I'm talking about"
Nobody is asking Mr. Assange to depart from his objective role, but now that he has spoken out, he deserves a reply. In both cases, clearly the terminology used is "conspiracy" or "cover-up". Bob Graham doesn't hold back and mentions "withholding of (..) secrets", chastising the Bush administration for being unapologetic, self-serving and obstructive. So it seems that Julian Assange, as the founder and director of an organization supposedly dedicated to supporting whistleblowers who expose government wrongdoing, has his work cut out for him, unless he is determined to be part of the problem. The perception management and misguided credibility building Mr. Assange seems so concerned with conflict with the stated mission of Wikileaks:[6]
"WikiLeaks is a multi-jurisdictional public service designed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public."I bet whistleblowers Sibel Edmonds[7] and certainly Daniel Ellsberg[8], who is mentioned several times in the mission statement, approve. Surely, a 9/11 cover-up that "led to the heart of the administration" is worthy of Wikileaks' attention. Or is it?
[1] "9/11 tragedy pager intercepts" — http://911.wikileaks.org/
[2] 9/11 Joint Inquiry — http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/911.html
[3] Relevant excerpt from the 2007 BBC documentary "Conspiracy Files: 9-11" — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6QLnvvyIzg/
[4] We Are Change LA: "9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey finally confesses 9-11 Commission could not do it's job"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtJWBcWAeAw#t=6m45
[5] Operation Cyclone — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone
[6] Wikileaks mission statement — http://wikileaks.org/wiki/WikiLeaks:About
[7] Documentary "Sibel Edmonds: Kill The Messenger" — http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6063340745569143497
[8] Sibel Edmonds, Daniel Ellsberg together — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aSbmRHqKL4
Source
"False conspiracies such as 9/11??" You just lost a supporter my friend. Can you say controlled opposition?
DICK ACT of 1902... CAN'T BE REPEALED (GUN CONTROL FORBIDDEN) - Protection Against Tyrannical Government
The Dick Act of 1902 also known as the Efficiency of Militia Bill H.R. 11654, of June 28, 1902 invalidates all so-called gun-control laws. It also divides the militia into three distinct and separate entities.
** SPREAD THIS TO EVERYONE **
The three classes H.R. 11654 provides for are the organized militia, henceforth known as the National Guard of the State, Territory and District of Columbia, the unorganized militia and the regular army. The militia encompasses every able-bodied male between the ages of 18 and 45. All members of the unorganized militia have the absolute personal right and 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms of any type, and as many as they can afford to buy.
The Dick Act of 1902 cannot be repealed; to do so would violate bills of attainder and ex post facto laws which would be yet another gross violation of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The President of the United States has zero authority without violating the Constitution to call the National Guard to serve outside of their State borders.
The National Guard Militia can only be required by the National Government for limited purposes specified in the Constitution (to uphold the laws of the Union; to suppress insurrection and repel invasion). These are the only purposes for which the General Government can call upon the National Guard.
Attorney General Wickersham advised President Taft, "the Organized Militia (the National Guard) can not be employed for offensive warfare outside the limits of the United States."
The Honorable William Gordon, in a speech to the House on Thursday, October 4, 1917, proved that the action of President Wilson in ordering the Organized Militia (the National Guard) to fight a war in Europe was so blatantly unconstitutional that he felt Wilson ought to have been impeached.
During the war with England an attempt was made by Congress to pass a bill authorizing the president to draft 100,000 men between the ages of 18 and 45 to invade enemy territory, Canada. The bill was defeated in the House by Daniel Webster on the precise point that Congress had no such power over the militia as to authorize it to empower the President to draft them into the regular army and send them out of the country.
The fact is that the President has no constitutional right, under any circumstances, to draft men from the militia to fight outside the borders of the USA, and not even beyond the borders of their respective states. Today, we have a constitutional LAW which still stands in waiting for the legislators to obey the Constitution which they swore an oath to uphold.
Charles Hughes of the American Bar Association (ABA) made a speech which is contained in the Appendix to Congressional Record, House, September 10, 1917, pages 6836-6840 which states: "The militia, within the meaning of these provisions of the Constitution is distinct from the Army of the United States." In these pages we also find a statement made by Daniel Webster, "that the great principle of the Constitution on that subject is that the militia is the militia of the States and of the General Government; and thus being the militia of the States, there is no part of the Constitution worded with greater care and with more scrupulous jealousy than that which grants and limits the power of Congress over it."
"This limitation upon the power to raise and support armies clearly establishes the intent and purpose of the framers of the Constitution to limit the power to raise and maintain a standing army to voluntary enlistment, because if the unlimited power to draft and conscript was intended to be conferred, it would have been a useless and puerile thing to limit the use of money for that purpose. Conscripted armies can be paid, but they are not required to be, and if it had been intended to confer the extraordinary power to draft the bodies of citizens and send them out of the country in direct conflict with the limitation upon the use of the militia imposed by the same section and article, certainly some restriction or limitation would have been imposed to restrain the unlimited use of such power."
The Honorable William Gordon
Congressional Record, House, Page 640 - 1917
Source
** SPREAD THIS TO EVERYONE **
The three classes H.R. 11654 provides for are the organized militia, henceforth known as the National Guard of the State, Territory and District of Columbia, the unorganized militia and the regular army. The militia encompasses every able-bodied male between the ages of 18 and 45. All members of the unorganized militia have the absolute personal right and 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms of any type, and as many as they can afford to buy.
The Dick Act of 1902 cannot be repealed; to do so would violate bills of attainder and ex post facto laws which would be yet another gross violation of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The President of the United States has zero authority without violating the Constitution to call the National Guard to serve outside of their State borders.
The National Guard Militia can only be required by the National Government for limited purposes specified in the Constitution (to uphold the laws of the Union; to suppress insurrection and repel invasion). These are the only purposes for which the General Government can call upon the National Guard.
Attorney General Wickersham advised President Taft, "the Organized Militia (the National Guard) can not be employed for offensive warfare outside the limits of the United States."
The Honorable William Gordon, in a speech to the House on Thursday, October 4, 1917, proved that the action of President Wilson in ordering the Organized Militia (the National Guard) to fight a war in Europe was so blatantly unconstitutional that he felt Wilson ought to have been impeached.
During the war with England an attempt was made by Congress to pass a bill authorizing the president to draft 100,000 men between the ages of 18 and 45 to invade enemy territory, Canada. The bill was defeated in the House by Daniel Webster on the precise point that Congress had no such power over the militia as to authorize it to empower the President to draft them into the regular army and send them out of the country.
The fact is that the President has no constitutional right, under any circumstances, to draft men from the militia to fight outside the borders of the USA, and not even beyond the borders of their respective states. Today, we have a constitutional LAW which still stands in waiting for the legislators to obey the Constitution which they swore an oath to uphold.
Charles Hughes of the American Bar Association (ABA) made a speech which is contained in the Appendix to Congressional Record, House, September 10, 1917, pages 6836-6840 which states: "The militia, within the meaning of these provisions of the Constitution is distinct from the Army of the United States." In these pages we also find a statement made by Daniel Webster, "that the great principle of the Constitution on that subject is that the militia is the militia of the States and of the General Government; and thus being the militia of the States, there is no part of the Constitution worded with greater care and with more scrupulous jealousy than that which grants and limits the power of Congress over it."
"This limitation upon the power to raise and support armies clearly establishes the intent and purpose of the framers of the Constitution to limit the power to raise and maintain a standing army to voluntary enlistment, because if the unlimited power to draft and conscript was intended to be conferred, it would have been a useless and puerile thing to limit the use of money for that purpose. Conscripted armies can be paid, but they are not required to be, and if it had been intended to confer the extraordinary power to draft the bodies of citizens and send them out of the country in direct conflict with the limitation upon the use of the militia imposed by the same section and article, certainly some restriction or limitation would have been imposed to restrain the unlimited use of such power."
The Honorable William Gordon
Congressional Record, House, Page 640 - 1917
Source
Gaza Children Shelled With Flechette Bombs
“She came in through the front door and it wasn’t clear she was injured. Suddenly a lot of blood came from her nose and she vomited, all of the family saw this — her little brothers were very scared. She had just been playing in the front of the house.”
That is how Nihed al-Massry describes what happened to her daughter, nine-year-old Samah Eid al-Massry, after the Israeli army reportedly shelled and fired four bombs into and around a residential area in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza Strip, on 21 July. Samah is now being hospitalized in serious condition, suffering from extensive blood loss and very low haemoglobin. She was hit by shrapnel and flechettes from a nail bomb that landed 100 meters away, causing internal bleeding to the chest and severe head trauma. Nails are now embedded throughout her body.
Shells containing flechettes are illegal under international law if fired into densely-populated civilian areas. Three other children were wounded in the attack.
Two young men were killed; Muhammad al-Kafarneh, 23, suffered severe shrapnel injuries to the back and chest and Kasim al-Shinbary, 19, was wounded by nails embedded in his skull and shrapnel his back. It was unclear earlier whether they were resistance fighters or if they were civilians.
Haitham Thaer Qasem, a four-year-old boy and an only child, was asleep on a hospital bed, occasionally gasping for breath through the apparatus around his nose. He had suffered deep nasal trauma, and flechette darts from the bomb were still embedded in his tiny body, through his back, right elbow and right leg. He was 200 meters from the impact of the bomb.
Haitham’s mother was standing off to the side, quietly crying while one of his aunts at his bedside explained what happened.
“We had asked Haitham to get shopping for [his mother] from the market, then we heard the bombings and somebody came to our home and told our family that he was in the hospital and was injured in the bombing. We came quickly to the hospital.”
Meanwhile, Samah’s doctor explained that the girl’s blood loss was a major concern. Her injuries are exacerbated by the fact that she, like three of her brothers, already suffers from the blood condition thalassemia and the drug to treat the condition, Exjade, is scarce because of the Israeli blockade. She was clearly in pain and confused, trying to remove the nasal tubes. Her mother showed us the bandages on her chest.
Her doctor, Muhammad Abu Hassan, described her situation as “semi-critical.”
“She was in very bad condition when she arrived — it’s difficult for children and very traumatic to insert a chest tube for small children — very painful. Blood was mainly coming from the chest. We will have to perform surgery and we will further explore her abdominal pain,” he explained.
The al-Massry family has been affected by Israeli attacks before. Samah’s four-year-old brother Ryad was injured during Israel’s three weeks of attacks on the Gaza Strip during winter 2008-09 when more than 400 Palestinian children were killed.
“Our house was hit during the war, a neighbor was killed inside and our son suffered severe head injuries. He wasn’t cared for and because of this his sight is now permanently damaged.”
As we left Samah, she had begun to cry, moaning in serious discomfort and confusion. There were two more injured children in the hospital from the attack, also from the al-Massry family in Beit Hanoun: Azzam Muhammad al-Massry, 11, who suffered a severely fractured left elbow and Ibrahim Wasseem al-Massry, 4, with light injuries to his abdomen.
The previous week in Gaza, Nema Abu Said, a 33-year-old mother of five, was killed by Israeli shelling as she went outside frantically looking for her youngest son after a previous round of shelling. Three more family members were injured by the flechette shells, many of the darts remaining permanently embedded in their bodies.
The above was written by Adie Mormech. Mormech is a human rights advocate based in the Gaza Strip who was previously abducted by the Israeli navy from the eighth Free Gaza Movement boat, the Spirit of Humanity. He volunteers with the International Solidarity Movement.
Source
That is how Nihed al-Massry describes what happened to her daughter, nine-year-old Samah Eid al-Massry, after the Israeli army reportedly shelled and fired four bombs into and around a residential area in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza Strip, on 21 July. Samah is now being hospitalized in serious condition, suffering from extensive blood loss and very low haemoglobin. She was hit by shrapnel and flechettes from a nail bomb that landed 100 meters away, causing internal bleeding to the chest and severe head trauma. Nails are now embedded throughout her body.
Shells containing flechettes are illegal under international law if fired into densely-populated civilian areas. Three other children were wounded in the attack.
Two young men were killed; Muhammad al-Kafarneh, 23, suffered severe shrapnel injuries to the back and chest and Kasim al-Shinbary, 19, was wounded by nails embedded in his skull and shrapnel his back. It was unclear earlier whether they were resistance fighters or if they were civilians.
Haitham Thaer Qasem, a four-year-old boy and an only child, was asleep on a hospital bed, occasionally gasping for breath through the apparatus around his nose. He had suffered deep nasal trauma, and flechette darts from the bomb were still embedded in his tiny body, through his back, right elbow and right leg. He was 200 meters from the impact of the bomb.
Haitham’s mother was standing off to the side, quietly crying while one of his aunts at his bedside explained what happened.
“We had asked Haitham to get shopping for [his mother] from the market, then we heard the bombings and somebody came to our home and told our family that he was in the hospital and was injured in the bombing. We came quickly to the hospital.”
Meanwhile, Samah’s doctor explained that the girl’s blood loss was a major concern. Her injuries are exacerbated by the fact that she, like three of her brothers, already suffers from the blood condition thalassemia and the drug to treat the condition, Exjade, is scarce because of the Israeli blockade. She was clearly in pain and confused, trying to remove the nasal tubes. Her mother showed us the bandages on her chest.
Her doctor, Muhammad Abu Hassan, described her situation as “semi-critical.”
“She was in very bad condition when she arrived — it’s difficult for children and very traumatic to insert a chest tube for small children — very painful. Blood was mainly coming from the chest. We will have to perform surgery and we will further explore her abdominal pain,” he explained.
The al-Massry family has been affected by Israeli attacks before. Samah’s four-year-old brother Ryad was injured during Israel’s three weeks of attacks on the Gaza Strip during winter 2008-09 when more than 400 Palestinian children were killed.
“Our house was hit during the war, a neighbor was killed inside and our son suffered severe head injuries. He wasn’t cared for and because of this his sight is now permanently damaged.”
As we left Samah, she had begun to cry, moaning in serious discomfort and confusion. There were two more injured children in the hospital from the attack, also from the al-Massry family in Beit Hanoun: Azzam Muhammad al-Massry, 11, who suffered a severely fractured left elbow and Ibrahim Wasseem al-Massry, 4, with light injuries to his abdomen.
The previous week in Gaza, Nema Abu Said, a 33-year-old mother of five, was killed by Israeli shelling as she went outside frantically looking for her youngest son after a previous round of shelling. Three more family members were injured by the flechette shells, many of the darts remaining permanently embedded in their bodies.
The above was written by Adie Mormech. Mormech is a human rights advocate based in the Gaza Strip who was previously abducted by the Israeli navy from the eighth Free Gaza Movement boat, the Spirit of Humanity. He volunteers with the International Solidarity Movement.
Source