Saturday, March 05, 2005

How Israel took Lebanon

You don't know, don't you - [I've only worked for ten (10) years in the area] - that Syria is in fact an under-cover ally of the US, or at least her intelligence services? Like Jordan, Egypt, Tunesia, Maroc, and the rest? Syria is one of those countries where detainees illegally seized by American agents are 'rendered'; meaning US-made tortured. And how is Syria really able to make this 'deal': with remote controlled nuclear neutron land mines everywhere in the Golan?

It's a mix of 'Masada'* and Seymour Hersh's 'Samson Option'.*

by Henk Ruyssenaars

FPF - 05-03-2005 - Whether you read the New York Times, or the 'Pocatello Idaho State Journal' online* at breakfast, they - like almost all media in the United States and it's vassal states - will have the same story from the United States Press Service 'Associated Press'.

Concerning the speech in the Syrian parliament by it's president Beshir al Assad. And your 'Newspeak' caption for the next days reads: "Syria Sidesteps Troop Pullout Demand", neocon information by AP's Bassam Mroue. And you are lied to.

In the run up to the first Gulf War, a.k.a. 'Desert Storm', president Bush senior phoned the President of Syria, the 'Lion of Damascus' the late Hafez al Assad, asking him for some support.
While al Assad's 'advisor' - standing next to him - was wringing his hands, Hafez al Assad promised to do whatever President Bush number 1 asked: Soldiers, planes, ammunition, all seemed to be available to the Americans.

The devastated 'advisor' asked Assad: "Why didn't you at least agree on a price, and ask where to send the bill?', Hafez al Assad gave the same answer as last Saturday 5 March 2005 his son gave to the Syrian 'parliament' in Damascus: "We'll decide on the price when they want us to pull out again".

Anybody in the Arab world will understand what the 'Lion of Damascus' and his son are trying to explain: "Are you trying again to take me for a ride? I'll tell you the cost later on."

It's both heavy and hypocritical.

For the moment it's quite obvious that Israel's neocons are the only one gaining from the latest turmoil - [http://tinyurl.com/4rlqt] - and by most in the Arab World, Israel and it's secret service Mossad etc. is rightly blamed for sending Lebanese billionaire Hariri to his forefathers. Let's hope to the smoky hills of the Bekaa valley with it's beautiful buffets, the 'Mesa's'. But, knowing Hariri: we'll wonder.

Who profits ?

Nobody else profits - on the contrary - apart from Israel and it's US, since the israeli owned 'New York Times' proudly on October 20 - 1991* - published:"Israel has `hundreds' of tactical and strategic
nuclear weapons, including more than 100 nuclear artillery shells, nuclear land mines in the Golan Heights and hundreds of low yield neutron warheads."

When the Bush’s administration gave Israel the go-ahead to attack Syria in retaliation to another Tel Aviv bombing that took place last weekend, killing 5 Israelis, the Hebrew daily ‘Yediot Ahronot’

reported - according to the still more reliable news service al Jazeera: " that the Israeli ambassador to Washington discussed with a senior U.S. official intelligence information obtained by the Israeli intelligence service claiming that Jihad Resistance Movement had masterminded the Tel Aviv blast from inside Damascus.

Also, the U.S. didn’t ask Tel Aviv to exercise 'self restraint', as in past cases vis-à-vis the Palestinian commando raids, the newspaper added."

So, the usual happens: free fire zone?

None of the 'journalists' covering the press conference in Syria's capital Damascus - which was relayed by the Syrian TV to Arab countries, Europeans, CNN, FOX & Fakes like 'EURO-News' - (same clan) - none of them asked the question: why is Israel taking Lebanon?

History is like this: Syria may be withdrawing at it's own leisure (dictated from Washington) from the Cedar heights of Lebanon to the pot filled 'Bekaa Valley' and the Israeli 'Sheeba Farms': they just collaborate: they have no choice whatsoever, or they're dead. Israel keeps at it's goal: 'Eretz Israel'.

And there's a good reason why, as Seymour Hersh named it,
it's called "The Samson Option" - and it's lethal to you too.

In Hebrew it's called: 'Masada'.

Henk Ruyssenaars


Footnotes/links:

Seymour Hersh - Samson Option - Google-Url.: http://tinyurl.com/6np7e

Jewish virtual Library - Masada - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/497tq

New York Times October 20 - 1991 - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/4fxae

"Eretz Israel" - Google - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/4jehl

Baghdad - 'Rendering' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/53lvf

Pocatello Idaho State Journal - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5ugox

Reporters Without Borders [HR - which are not to be trusted]
Press cards for military - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/52r72

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://tinyurl.com/4f6u
Editor : Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/5zmhl
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl

The Dutch author this far has worked abroad 4 decades for
international media as a foreign correspondent, of which 10
years - also during Gulf War I - in the Arab World and the
Middle East. Seeing worldwide that every bullet and every
bomb breeds more terrorism ! - At present 'Persona non
Grata' in Holland :-)

He who travels far will often see things
Far removed from what he believed was the Truth.
When he talks about it in the fields at home,
He is often accused of lying,
For the obdurate people will not believe
Inexperience, I believe,
Will give little credence to my song.

'Journey to the East' - Hermann Hesse


'The war in Iraq is illegal' says United Nation's Secretary
General Kofi Annan - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5pl2v

A 55' seconds 'sound bite' concerning the US-Israeli 'Dogs of War'
'bringing democracy' everywhere. Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5u98v

Colin Powell: 'It is not anti-Semitic to criticize the policies of the
state of Israel' Said as 'US Secretary of State' in a speech at the
'Conference on Anti-Semitism of the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe' German Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- Berlin - April 28th - 2004 - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/22p6c

Former PM 'Wim Kok' and other Dutch Govt's Warcriminals in Court:
Url.: http://tinyurl.com/662pp -

Sued: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld
Over U.S. Torture Policies - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/62353

It can and must be done!

Help the troops come home! Url.: http://www.bringemhome.org
We need them badly to fight our so called 'governments':
Url.: http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/

HR

FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.: http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html

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Protecting A Regime With Blood On Its Hands

FPF: Journalist/writer John Pilger is one of the best in again hammering out the facts: ''Silence gives consent.''

"The silence of those who regard themselves as commissars of this country's and Europe's respectable, moral, liberal class is quite disgusting."


Protecting A Regime With Blood On Its Hands

John Pilger

03/04/05 "New Statesman" - - Almost eight years ago, the choir of British liberalism celebrated a new age. Tony Blair, wrote the liberal thinker Hugo Young, "wants to create a world none of us have known", a world which "ideology has surrendered entirely to 'values' [and where] there are no sacred cows . . . no fossilised limits to the ground over which the mind might range in search of a better Britain".

Besotted minds ranged far. In a Tonier-than-thou piece for the Guardian, Martin Kettle hilariously declared Blair an honorary Australian. "He is not in awe of the past," he wrote. "He is not intimidated by class. He is a meritocrat, a doer... He is simply happy making his own history.... It would be nice to think that one day these would be thought of as British characteristics, too."

Former Labour Party deputy leader Roy Hattersley described one of the most ideological regimes in modern British history as "untainted by dogma"; Blair was "taking the politics out of politics"."Goodbye, xenophobia," was the Observer's post-election front page, and "The Foreign Office says, Hello world, remember us?".

The Blair government, said the paper, would push for "new worldwide rules on human rights" and implement "tough new limits on arms sales".

Lets pause to consider the truth. When Blair demonstrably lied about weapons of mass destruction in order to help an extremist regime launch an unprovoked attack on Iraq, a defenceless country, the Foreign Office's deputy legal adviser Elizabeth Wilmshurst resigned, calling it, correctly, a "crime of aggression".

The blood shed by more than 100,000 civilians killed and 300,000 injured is her and our witness. Now consider the "tough new limits on arms sales". A study by ActionAid reveals that the Blair government has sold weapons to 14 impoverished African countries where there is internal conflict.

The people of Aceh, stricken by last year's tsunami, have been terrorised by British-supplied Hawk fighter jets, machine-guns and ammunition. Britain is a world leader in the export of small arms, even depleted uranium.

Almost everything about a Blair regime was known before it was elected. Blair's Vichy-like devotion to Washington was known: read his speeches about a new order led by America. His devotion to Rupert Murdoch, who flew him and Cherie Booth around the world first class, was known. His devotion to an extreme neoliberal Thatcherite economics was known, spelled out in Peter Mandelson's and Roger Liddle's The Blair Revolution: can new Labour deliver?, in which Britain's "economic strengths" are listed as multinational corporations, the "aerospace" (arms) industry and "the pre-eminence of the City of London".

His class contempt for the poor was known; his pre-election attacks on single mothers passed quickly into law, assisted by the majority of his new, opportunistic female MPs.

Those trying to cover for Blair and "move on" from Iraq refer to the reduction of poverty as one of his "achievements". In fact, relative poverty in childless households in the UK has reached record levels under Blair, up to 13 per cent - and a greater number than under Margaret Thatcher or John Major.

A certain PC-ism, such as the sound and fury over dropping the gay age of consent, adds to the illusion of a Labour government that, had it not fallen in with the awful Bush, would be celebrated as "progressive".

Tell that to the people of a faraway country, more than half of whom are children, whose lives have been devastated by the fanatical Blair and his court of apologists.

Read the robotic Hoon's statement on the use of cluster bombs - how Iraqi mothers would one day be "grateful" for the use of weapons that killed their children - and Ministry of Defence letters to the public that lie about depleted uranium and its Hiroshima effect.

The silence of those who regard themselves as commissars of this country's and Europe's respectable, moral, liberal class is quite disgusting.

In a superb piece in the Guardian (24 February), Victoria Brittain asked: "How can it be that not one mainstream public figure in Europe has denounced [Bush's systematic torture regime]?" She points out that The Torture Papers - more than 1,200 pages of government memos and reports, edited at New York University - shows systematic torture, approved and directed from on high. Such is the regime of a man with whom Blair "shares values".

[FPF-fwd. - Victoria Brittain - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/622dk

I thought of this when I noted the current debate in the Church of England about the "rift" caused by the "issue" of gay marriage. Compare that with the "issue" of the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people, about which not a word is heard from those who claim moral courage as a deity.

Read the searing account of Dr Salam Ismael, who took aid to Fallujah in January. He describes the ordeal of a 17-year-old girl, Hudda Fawzi. Her father opened the door to US marines who shot him and a friend dead, then shot her elder sister, having beaten her senseless, then destroyed the family's furniture.

Wounded people were dragged from their homes and run over by tanks; a clinic was destroyed by missiles.

"It became clear to us," Ismael wrote, "that we were witnessing the aftermath of a massacre, the cold-blooded butchery of helpless and defenceless civilians."

It is not surprising that the Blair government has refused Ismael fresh permission to visit and speak out in Britain. His testimony, and that of many other reliable witnesses, is known and feared. Last April, the US command agreed that it may well have slaughtered as many as 600 people in Fallujah.

When a listener asked Judy Swallow, presenter of the BBC World Service Newshour programme, why the BBC continued to suppress this truth, Swallow sent this email to a colleague: "Oh god Mike - do you take care of these sorts of things, or do we ignore them?" 

On the BBC website, she describes Newshour as "exposing injustice and challenging lies". The silence is almost never broken by those paid to "expose injustice and challenge lies", let alone set the record straight.

On Channel 5, a member of the public, Neil Coppendale from Shoreham-by-Sea, confronted Blair with this question: "Bearing in mind that tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children have died as a result of the invasion of Iraq, how do you sleep at night, Mr Blair?" When did a journalist, one with privileged access to Blair, ever ask that?

For their part, the BBC's Downing Street man Andrew Marr (apparently together with his wife) and his colleague from the Today programme James Naughtie have been over to the Prime Minister's country home, Chequers, to sup with the killer Blair.

It was Marr who, at the fall of Baghdad, told viewers that Blair had "said they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating, and on both these points he has been proved conclusively right".

And it is Naughtie who has played a leading role in the British American Project, set up by Ronald Reagan to find a "successor generation" to those who propagated the cold war on America's behalf.

If shame has no place in what is called "public life", then the rest of us should break their silence for them. The Guardian says the electorate is "cross" with Blair. Cross? Such a genteel word. Supporting Blair, in his propaganda and his contemptuous need for another term of office, is supporting mass murder.

First published in the New Statesman - www.newstatesman.co.uk

[and end - Information Clearing House - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/549st]

FPF footnotes and links:

United Nation's Secretary General Kofi Annan: 'The war in Iraq is illegal' -BBC - Url.: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3661134.stm

Dahr Jamail's reports are very good and available online at - Url.: http://dahrjamailiraq.com./

Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark Calls For Bush Impeachment - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/6rcwc

''The Lancet'' and the ''Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health'' report: ''Over 100.000 killed in the illegal Iraq war'' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5gys7

Bush interv. ABC: No WMD's but many killed: "It was worth it". - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/6bal9

Former Secr. of State Madeleine Albright in her comment on half a million dead children in Iraq: "We think it's worth it" On CBS 60' Minutes - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/2vmc8

Iraq Body Count - Url.: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

A crime against humanity is an act of persecution against a group, so heinous as to warrant punishment under international law: Please scroll - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/6rphj

Latest international 'Google News' on the fake election and the violence in Iraq - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/42krg

Former PM 'Wim Kok' and other Dutch Govt's Warcriminals in Court - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/662pp -

Sued: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld Over U.S. Torture Policies - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/62353

It can and must be done!

Fwd. by:

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://tinyurl.com/4f6u
Editor : Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/5zmhl
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl

The Dutch author this far has worked abroad 4 decades for international media as a foreign correspondent, of which 10 years - also during Gulf War I - in the Arab World and the Middle East. Seeing worldwide that every bullet and every bomb breeds more terrorism ! - At present 'Persona non Grata' in Holland :-)

He who travels far will often see things
Far removed from what he believed was the Truth.
When he talks about it in the fields at home,
He is often accused of lying,
For the obdurate people will not believe
Inexperience, I believe,
Will give little credence to my song.

'Journey to the East' - Hermann Hesse

A 55' seconds 'sound bite' concerning the US-Israeli 'Dogs of War' - 'bringing democracy' everywhere. Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5u98v

Help the troops come home! Url.: http://www.bringemhome.org - We need them badly to fight our so called 'governments': Url.: http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/

HR

FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.: http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html

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