Sunday, 12 September 2010

PLO's factions slam Fatah for controlling PLO

[ 12/09/2010 - 09:08 AM ]

RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- A number of factions, members of the Palestinian liberation organization (PLO), denounced Fatah faction for dominating the PLO's decision-making and marginalizing its other members, especially after it quelled a meeting they held against the peace talks with Israelis.

The popular front for the liberation of Palestine (PFLP) declared in a statement that it was considering freezing its membership in the PLO after de facto president Mahmoud Abbas decided to engage in his negotiations with Israel on behalf of the PLO that opposed the peace talks.

The PFLP explained that nine out of 18 members of the PLO's executive committee attended the meeting that was held, at the behest of Abbas, to give him cover for his talks with Israelis and only six attendees voted in favor of the peace talks.

This means that 12 members of the PLO opposed the talks and did not give Abbas the OK he claimed he received from the PLO, according to PFLP's explanation.

The PFLP said that Fatah and its authority turned its back to the national norms and overstepped the bounds of decency.

For his part, spokesman for the popular struggle front Awni Abu Ghosh said that there are big mistakes still plaguing the PLO's institutions, including the dominant role of only one faction represented in Fatah.

The issue of reforming the PLO was highlighted by Hamas Movement many times before, especially after it won the legislative elections, where it sees along with other factions and national figures that the PLO in its current status is illegitimate and does not represent the Palestinian people.


River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

9/11 Hijacker Mohamed Atta & the unreported story

September 10, 2010

Dr. Ashraf Ezzat
Atta and his crew were living it up down there in Florida, doing more cocaine than Scarface and downing more booze than an eighties rock band.

By Dr. Ashraf Ezzat

Mohamed Atta.
On September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 out of Boston for Los Angeles, crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York at 8:48 a.m. Mohamed Atta was the presumed team leader of the hijacking ofAmerican Airlines Flight 11, which was the first plane to strike the World Trade Center. Atta was one of the 19 hijackers who pulled out the scariest terror attacks ever on American soil.
The deadly attacks that killed around 3000 Americans were simply beyond belief. The American authorities declared that the hijackers were a group of Islamic fundamentalists who belonged to a terrorist group called al Qa`ida led by the infamous Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden denied any connection to the attacks. Nevertheless he was unofficially accused of being the mastermind behind the attacks. The 19 hijackers were all killed in the crashes. This much we know. Much else remains a mystery.
Mysteries remain mysteries only if we let them to be. Mysteries could be unraveled only if we wanted them to be. Of all the hijackers’ mysteries, the one connected with Mohamed Atta has lately begun to unravel and yield some fascinating results that contradicted the mainstream thesis of the official story of 9/11.
The one thing all the 9/11 hijackers shared was their adherence to the extreme side of Islam. Meaning they believed in employing violence to achieve their goals. And since religious fundamentalists are always obsessed with observing the rituals and the appearances dictated by their faith. That’s why Islamists are usually bearded men with austere outfits, keen on praying five times per day, fasting a lot, reading their holy scripture of Qur’an on daily basis and never associate with women except in matrimony. They do not smoke nor drink nor gamble nor eat pork.

Hitting the towers with planes, whose idea was it?


The 9/11 story has a lot of unanswered questions but one of the most perplexing questions is who came up withthe devilish idea of crashing planes into skyscrapers. Who first thought of it? Whose idea was it?
The 9/11 Commission Report briefly mentions that Mohamed Atta along with Marwan al-Shehhi, Ramzi Binalshibh, and Ziad Jarrah who all became what is known as the Hamburg cell flew to Pakistan in November 1999 where they met Osama Bin Laden in Kandahar. Bin Laden asked them to pledge loyalty and commit to suicide missions, which Atta and the other three Hamburg men all accepted. Bin Laden sent them to Karachi to see Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to get a general overview of the planes operation.

9/11 terrorist attacks.
But I tend to doubt that the idea of crashing the planes into the towers was of Bin Laden’s or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,s thinking. Al Qa`ida was familiar with regular suicide missions but this 9/11 planes operation was quite new, it was not their style nor their caliber. This kind of thinking needed someone educated, highly specialized in engineering, knowledgeable on the dynamics of building and maybe demolishing skyscrapers. It needed someone who studied urban planning. It had to be Mohamed Atta’s own idea.
At the Technical University of Hamburg where Atta was studying for his degree in urban planning. He often criticized the modern skyscrapersand thought they were disrupting the fabric of ancient cities by blocking community streets and altering the skyline.
He believed that the large, impersonal, and often ugly apartment blocks built in the shape of towers had ruined old neighborhoods, and took away privacy and dignity from people. He strongly believed that skyscrapers stood as a powerful sign of modern west and similarly powerful his anti west sentiments were growing.
Mohamed Atta, There he was, an alien in Hamburg, thousands of miles away from his home, unable to cope with the new life in Europe, troubled with an identity crisis, surrounded by Muslim fundamentalists who envisioned him as a new recruit. Meanwhile, Atta- who kept on vanishing for months and reappearing again - seemed like the only one who envisioned skyscrapers as sitting ducks waiting for the perfect aim and he began to sort of marketing this horrible idea amongst the members of the Hamburg cell and all the way to Kandahar.

9/11 attacks and Florida connection


The 9/11 commission final report that came out on July 22, 2004 clearly identified intelligence failures occurring before the attacks
The Commission also relied heavily on the FBI‘s PENTTBOM investigation. But nobody was aware of the fact that the FBI investigations were conducted in a way that only contributed to the pretext that was already fixed in the mentality of the white house. The 9/11 commission embarked on a job of hunting down criminals who had already been incriminated and hunted down. In this sense, the report came short of a lot of people’s expectations and failed to alleviate the ambiguity that shrouded the 9/11 story.
Nevertheless, the FBI was not the only party interested in investigating the 9/11 case. There were others more committed to thoroughly investigate it in the hope that they would reach- not a predetermined notion- but the truth or any shred of new clue for that matter.
Back to Mohamed Atta who According to official reports arrived at the United States on June 3, 2000 at Newark International Airport from Prague.
That means he had lived in America for more than a year prior to the 9/11 attacks. Atta ate, drank, slept, engaged in a full social and professional life and he even had an American girl friend. Atta was not on the move much during his stay in America and he chose Venice, Florida to settle down and focus on his flight training.
Daniel Hopsicker -a reporter from Florida and the author of The CIA, the Mob, & America’s Secret History and filmmaker of the documentary Mohamed Atta & the Venice Flying Circus- spent nearly two years investigating everything and everyone who happened to came in touch with Mohamed Atta during his stay in Venice, Florida.

" Welcome to Terrorland" book cover.
Day by day Hopsicker found himself following the story of a man with an image totally different from the one depicted for him by the official story of 9/11. The never before reported findings of his investigative journalism were published in his latest book by the name ofWelcome to Terrorland
Since the 911 report only dealt with information from the FBI, this book is necessary to see what you are not being told about 911 in relation, especially to what the ‘terrorists’ were doing in Florida. In the book you will find out -and to your surprise- that the FBI timeline says Atta left Venice Florida in December 2000 after completing his flight training. But he didn’t. Dozens of locals say different – his landlord, neighbours, cab drivers, restaurant employees and his girlfriend, for a few instances – and have been told not to talk about it by federal authorities. The FBI publicly sought information regarding Atta’s time in various US locations, but not Venice Florida, where he spent most of his time in the US. Why the intentional misdirection? What are they trying to keep hidden? But whatever they were trying to hide Hopsicker managed to expose in his book.

Meet the real Atta

In his investigative book, Hopsicker discovered the following;
1. In Venice Florida, Mohamed Atta lived for two months with an American stripper/lingerie model named Amanda Keller.
2. Atta loved to party. He was out with Keller nearly every night they were together. He was a heavy drinker, snorted coke, was a stylish dresser and wore expensive jewelry.
3. According to Keller, Atta loved pork chops and was a big Beastie Boys fan.
4. Keller dumped him after he embarrassed her at a night club by dancing, poorly, atop a speaker.
5. Atta revenged himself later on Keller by returning to the apartment they’d shared and killing her cat and kittens, disemboweling and dismembering them in her apartment for her to find.
6. In Miami, Atta consorted with women known to be linked to the Mafia.
7. Atta’s email list included names of people who worked for defense contractors. One, for instance, worked for Canadian firm Virtual Prototypes, which helped develop the avionics for F-15, F-22 and B-2
9. Atta was fluent in at least Arabic, English, German, French and Hebrew.
10. One day when Atta was rummaging through his flight bag, Keller got a look inside. Her words:
“The thing the FBI was most interested in was his pilot bag. They asked about it a lot. He kept it locked, and they wanted to know whether I had ever seen anything in it. I told them yes. One day he opened it briefly, and there were a lot of papers in it, and there was a blue log book in a different language. Mohamed was fluent in almost any language you can think of. He had a kind of Daytimer in there, too. And a folder with all these different ID’s in it. And that’s when I saw one – because it fell out – a little blue and white thing the size of a driver’s license. It had his picture on it, and it looked like a mug shot, or a prison shot. And it didn’t look like him, and I asked him, ‘Who is this?’
“And he said, ‘that’s me.’ He told me it had been taken back when he was in some kind of militia-type deal, like a military-type deal, he said. He compared it to our military only they teach you different tactics. He didn’t elaborate.
“He didn’t say where it was from, either. But the writing looked like a cross between Hebrew and Arabic, those frilly little lines. He told me he spoke Hebrew. I said bullshit. So he started speaking it, and I guess he did.
11. Atta, Keller, a stripper named Linda and two Germans, Peter and Johan, partied for three days in Key West. Atta paid for everything. Rented three rooms, one just for the men’s luggage, which Keller says contained drugs. The men had a business meeting the women were not permitted to attend. Met with people, Keller says, who flew in just to meet Atta
12. Atta was already a licensed pilot when he arrived in the US. He had the privileges of aninstructor while he was at Huffman Aviation, and may have helped pilot South American drug runs.
13. Six nights before the attack, at a bar called Shuckums in Ft Lauderdale, Atta and two companions got drunk. The FBI showed up at the bar just 12 hours after the attack with pictures of two of them, one Atta, saying only “they were on the plane and passed away.” Manager Tony Amos and bartender Patricia Idrissi identified both. Manager Amos said they’d gotten “wasted,” Atta drank Stoli vodka for three straight hours. Atta blasphemed: “F*ck God!” he’s said to have cursed.
14. Under pressure from the FBI, and despite numerous witnesses who had known them together, Keller publicly retracted her story of having lived with Atta, saying he’d been another hijacker named Mohammed, no last name, who seems to have only existed to get Atta out of this story that didn’t fit the official version.
Not only what Keller had told Hopsicker about Atta contradicted the official story of 9/11 but a lot of other details as well. . This isn’t conspiracy theory. This is factual information gained by solid investigative reporting that would undermine the whole 9/11 official narrative and shows that-while terrorism is about ideology-it can also be aboutcover up and deception.
New findings were beginning to unfold. Mohamed Atta was not a devout Muslim as a matter of fact he was not religious at all. so much for the islamophobia that has been ignited ever since. Atta and his crew were living it up down there in Florida, doing more cocaine than Scarface and downing more booze than an eighties rock band. But more important, who trained Atta how to fly before he came to Florida? How Atta came to be so connected with people working with defense contractors?
According to the FBI & CIA, during his stay in Germany, Atta only kept a small and closed circle of Muslim friends. So, who were the Germans who came all the way from Europe just to have an urgent business meeting with him? Were they really German or did they hold a dual citizenship? Why the FBI led a massive post-911 cover-up designed to conceal any knowledge of the terrorists’ activities in Venice Florida?
According to the records, Atta’s whereabouts in February and March 1998 are still uncertain. In those 2 months Atta was probably convening with people who gave him a special and intensive training that qualified him to be the most dangerous secret agent in the world and may be this is where he picked up Hebrew.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

US-Israel vs Turkey-Iran


“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” Albert Einstein.

Like Professor Shlomo Sand who has challenged the Zionist narration of JEWS and their ‘biblical right’ to occupy non-Jewish Arab Palestine – Former NYT reporter and author, Professor Stephen Kinzer also challenges the current Washington’s policy towards Islamic Republic and Turkey. He believes that Washington must change its blind support for Israel in order to stop Turkey going further closer to the Islamist regime in Tehran. He is also against the US attack on Iran because, he feels, it will destroy the US-friendly Reformist movement. Watch Kinzer’s interview below.

Stephen Kinzer is author of books such as ‘All the Shah’s Men’ and ‘Reset’ – both dealing with US-Israeli dirty hands behind troubles in Iran – before and after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. His personal website is here.

For the comfort of the paranoid Zionist Jews – Stephen Kinzer is no ‘Self-Hating; Israel-Threatening (S.H.I.T)’ Jew – but a genuine Khazarian pro-Israeli. He is critical of the current US foreign policy in the Middle East, which he believes is strengthening the Islamists in Turkey, Iran, Lebanon and Palestine. As a ‘good friend of Israel’ – he honestly believe that America’s blind support for the Zionist-regime is pushing the country closer to its ultimate destruction.

“Israel deserves special treatment from the United States, both for historical reasons and because there can be no regional peace without a secure Israel. America, though, has at times treated Israel in ways that weaken Israel‘s own security. The bond between the two countries has become distorted. As a result, the United States has failed to promote policies that will assure Israel’s long-term stability. Instead it lurches helplessly from crisis to crisis, hostage to the hothouse clamor of Israel’s domestic politics. It is right for America to stand by Israel, but not the way it does now,” wrote Kinzer in his book Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future.

Though Kinzer believes that American cannot bring peace in both Iraq and Afghanistan to serve their long-term interests in region without the help of Iran – he believes that Ankara would be the best “guide” for Washington to navigate its foreign policies in the Muslim world.


River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

"Israel Is A Scum State"

Via Free Thought Manifesto 


Exclusive: In Jpost interview, Frank Johansson stands by his words.

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
08/24/2010 22:47
Courtesy Of "The Jerusalem Post"

BERLIN – The head of Amnesty International’s Finnish branch, Frank Johansson, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that he stands by his statement that Israel is a “scum state.”

Writing in his blog, which appears on the Web site of Finland’s third largest newspaper Iltalehti, Johansson wrote on Monday that “A friend of mine who works in Israel was visiting [and] while piling wood in the shed, we got to [talking about] his favourite topic. [After] several years of residence in the Holy Land, he has come to the conclusion that ‘Israel is a scum state.’ Based on my own visit[s], which occurred during the 1970s and for the last time in the 1990s, I agree.”

An English translation of Johansson’s blog first appeared Tuesday on the Web site Tundra Tabloids, a pro-Israel blog that monitors anti-Israeli sentiments in the Finnish media and blogosphere.

Speaking from Finland, Kenneth Sikorski, who runs the Web site and picked up Johansson’s remarks, told The Jerusalem Post that Johansson’s comments are “absolutely atrocious and indicative of a problem of systematic anti-Semitism.”

Asked why he termed Israel a “scum state,” Johansson told the Post in a telephone interview that it was because Israel has “repeatedly flouted international law,” and due to his “personal experiences inside and outside of Israel with meeting Israelis.”

Johansson said that his remarks were not anti-Semitic. “I actually praise Breaking the Silence,” he said, referring to an Israeli organization claiming to collect and share testimonies of former IDF soldiers over human rights violations they allegedly witnessed, while rarely providing names of troops, dates and locations of these incidents.

Asked whether there are other countries aside from Israel that, according to him, meet the definition of a “scum state,” Johansson did not specify any, but noted that there are “Russian officials” who meet the criteria.

The Amnesty International official said: “I have been on record on Finnish TV as saying George Bush is the biggest executioner in the Western Hemisphere, [I] use strong language... I am writing those [blogs] in my capacity as a private person, not as an Amnesty official.”

However, Iltalehti’s Web site clearly provides readers with his title as “director of the Finnish branch of Amnesty International,” which appears above his blog.

NGO Monitor chief Gerald Steinberg condemned Johansson’s remarks in the context of his organization as a whole. The head of the watchdog organization, which tracks anti-Israel activity among NGOs, told the Post in an e-mail on Tuesday that “Amnesty International has promoted an intense anti-Israel ideology, resulting in statements like these. Such one-sided ideological campaigns, with false allegations of war crimes, are entirely inconsistent with Amnesty’s claim to support ethical principles and universal human rights.

“Amnesty International’s new secretary general, Salil Shetty, must immediately condemn this immoral statement by the head of the Finnish chapter, freeze links to the chapter until he resigns, and take measures to end Amnesty’s central role in demonizing Israel,” he added.

Also Tuesday, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International’s headquarters in London, Susanna Flood, told the Post in a telephone interview that “Amnesty would never use an expression like this toward the State of Israel, or any other state.”

Flood said that Johansson used the phrase “creep state” to describe Israel, rather than “scum,” as the initial English translation of the Finnish word found. Native Finnish speakers from Tundra Tabloids said the Finnish term used by Johansson to denigrate Israel is a “highly derogatory term,” and is frequently translated as “scum,” “scum bag” or “douche bag.”

Asked if AI plans to discipline or sack Johansson, Flood said she would have to check on his employment status, but noted that the organization generally does not comment on human resource matters.

Pressed if he is singling out Israel for disparate treatment – a manifestation of modern anti-Semitism according to some critics – Flood said that one “has to look at the full context of his articles.”

She added that Johansson assured her that he is not using his title to write the anti-Israeli blogs. But, when shown that his title was indeed being used in his blog, she conceded to this fact.

The deputy head of Mission for the Embassy of Finland in Israel, Anu Pulkkinen, told the Post on Tuesday that Johansson “is responsible for his own comments, and we are not commenting on blog writings of individual Finnish citizens.

Finland has traditionally good bilateral relations with Israel in various fields. This means, among other things, that there are good direct contacts and channels of discussion between the two countries to discuss all kinds of issues, she said, adding, “There is a wide freedom of press in Israel and the government respects that. The same goes for Finland, and that’s why it’s probably easy to understand that a representative of the government does not comment on individual blog writing.

“Finland strongly condemns anti-Semitism. One indication of that is, among others, our recent decision to join the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research,” she said.
Posted by CavalierZee at 4:00 AM

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

The Culmination


kenny's sideshow


Nine years is a long time to wait for justice for the 'attacks' of 9/11. It reminds me of the almost 47 years we've been waiting on closure for the JFK assassination. Do we have to wait forever? Some are hoping yes but we've got a somewhat better chance this time around. The ptb are running out of options besides another false flag and that is not likely to work. Or is it?

One of the absurdities of this week is the sentencing of Marc Emery, the so called Prince of Pot, to five years in prison for the 'major crime' of selling pot seeds. I don't recall a single person dying as a result. Yet while he is put away, every single one of the perps of 9/11 are walking around free. Some of these real criminals are even being interviewed on teevee this anniversary day whining and lying about the 'terrorists' and how we'll blow up the world if need be to stop them.



Another insanity of the week is the little psyops that Time magazine pulled off with their Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace.  It's basically that Israelis are too self centered and concerned with money to care about peace with the Palestinians. What a surprise.

The real purpose was to give the ADL and others another chance to cry "we're the victims" and "you're anti-semitic." 

The false dichotomy continues.









Michelle Obama and Laura Bush traveled to Shanksville PA to commemorate the the myth of "let's roll" and the amazing hole in the ground crash site.

None of the eyewitnesses were invited to speak.







Fox News keeps replaying the 'My Pet Goat' scene from the 9/11 media movie during interviews with Andrew Card. Many have questioned why the secret service didn't immediately remove the befuddled Bush from the classroom but he needed a little time to compose himself before getting the rest of his orders. What did Card whisper in his ear? Probably "Don't fuck this up."






Enough of the main stream media. Just turn on the tube. There's wall to wall coverage. Giuliani was just on and besides talking smack about 9/11 and the NY mosque he even gets in a little 'holocaust' narrative.
       How exciting.









Thankfully the 'fringe' media is not silent and not buying the official story repeated so often that the sheep are counting falling towers as they drift off to sleep. Was it 2 or 3?  Oh yeah, that damned Building 7 doesn't fit the game plan so we'll ignore it.


Les Visible takes aim at the lies. Check it out if you haven't already. "Number 9, Number 9."

Aletho News give us  Zionist False Flag Terror and Deceptions for a little history.

Everyone has been posting and linking to It Wasn't Muslims which is worth a look.

Rocker has an interesting post, 9/11 and the Zinjry.
MOSSAD INVOLVEMENT In The 9 11 WTC ATTACKS - Part 1 ... Part 2
NuoViso: 9/11 False Flag (full length documentary)
The blog roll to the right  contains a wealth of information. These folks know.

Even Timster, who has been critical of the effectiveness of our 9/11 effort, comes in with a remembrance.
His words .....

Remember, Remember the eleventh of September
and the zionist's horrible plot.
I know of no reason why
These Murderous jews
Should ever be forgot...

We must also not forget that 9/11 was the catalyst for the neverending wars ... and those that died in vain. Your son or daughter may be next.



Posted by kenny's sideshow at 2:09 PM

Friday, September 10, 2010


9/11 Liar of the Day: Barack Obama

On the eve of the 9/11 anniversary, what does the president do to reinforce the lies? He has a press conference to repeat the lies ad nauseam.



This is not really news. It is what Obama always says and just documents the continuing cover up and evidence of treason from the highest office in the land. Anyone who lies about 9/11 also must be assumed to be lying about everything else.


From the 9/10/10 press conference Q & A:

Anne Kornblut.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Nine years after the September 11th attacks, why do you think it is that we are now seeing such an increase in suspicion and outright resentment of Islam, especially given that it has been one of your priorities to increase — to improve relations with the Muslim world?

One of the things that I most admired about President Bush was after 9/11, him being crystal-clear about the fact that we were not at war with Islam. We were at war with terrorists and murderers who had perverted Islam, had stolen its banner to carry out their outrageous acts.


Helene Cooper.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Two questions. One on Afghanistan. How can you lecture Hamid Karzai about corruption when so many of these corrupt people are on the U.S. payroll?

THE PRESIDENT: Okay. On Afghanistan, we are in the midst of a very difficult but very important project. I just want to remind people why we’re there — the day before September 11th. We’re there because that was the place where al Qaeda launched an attack that killed 3,000 Americans. And we want to make sure that we dismantle al Qaeda, and that Afghanistan is never again used as a base for attacks against Americans and the American homeland.


Ed Henry.

Q Mr. President, you were talking about some of the al Qaeda leaders that you have captured. One that you have not is Osama bin Laden. Tomorrow is going to be nine years since he was the mastermind of 3,000 Americans being killed. And what you said — obviously, the last administration had seven years and couldn’t do it. But what you said as President-elect to CBS is, “I think capturing or killing bin Laden is a critical aspect of stamping out al Qaeda. He is not just a symbol. He is also the operational leader of an organization planning attacks against the U.S.”

Do you still believe it’s a critical part of your policy to capture or kill him? And do you think — isn’t it a failure of your administration that here it’s almost two years in — you campaigned saying you were going to run a smarter war on terror than the Bush administration. You haven’t captured him and you don’t seem to know where he is.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, Ed, I think capturing or killing bin Laden and Zawahiri would be extremely important to our national security. It doesn’t solve all our problems, but it remains a high priority of this administration.

One of the things that we’ve been successful at over the last two years is to ramp up the pressure on al Qaeda and their key leaders. And as a consequence, they have been holed up in ways that have made it harder for them to operate. And part of what’s happened is bin Laden has gone deep underground. Even Zawahiri, who is more often out there, has been much more cautious.

But we have the best minds, the best intelligence officers, the best special forces, who are thinking about this day and night. And they will continue to think about it day and night as long as I’m President.

The entire transcript is here from the Wall Street Journal.
Posted by kenny's sideshow at 3:32 PM

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

BBC’s Blatant Propaganda Exposed Big Time by Anthony Lawson

Ken O'Keefe


I am honoured to have contributed to Anthony Lawson’s new short doc. ‘BBC Bias: The Gaza Freedom Flotilla’, spread this far and wide.



One Response to “BBC’s Blatant Propaganda Exposed Big Time by Anthony Lawson”



  1. In the September 2010 edition of Australia/Israel Review, there is an interview with Ron Ben Yishai – a gentleman who is described as a (the?) “leading Israeli war correspondent”. Most of it is about Hezbollah, the Goldstone Report, etc., but it concludes with some comments about the Freedom Flotilla. This is the third-to-last paragraph:
    He [Ben Yishai] described the shooting of the second Israeli soldier to land on the ship, who was severely wounded. “He was five seconds behind the first soldier,” but was already shot, “so they did not have time to snatch the gun off the first soldier and use it against him. Which means he was shot by someone who had a weapon and was ready for him.”
    This allegation was new to me. Has anyone else previously heard it? If it is not a recent invention, why wasn’t it mentioned in the first reports of the incident and in Corbin’s documentary? After all, it is the stuff of screaming headlines.
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Collapsing America

Via South Lebanon
By Linh Dinh, DissidentVoice / September 11th, 2010

All governments lie, kill and misuse public funds, but these calculated habits are amplified manifold during wars. We’re in two now, aiming for a third. Japan, whose land we’re still occupying 65 years after Hiroshima, has just announced sanctions against Iran beyond what the U.N. mandated. South Korea swiftly followed suit. It’s surprising to see these two countries so in sync, until one remembers that they have become American cheerleaders for decades. Rah, rah, bomb Tehran! A murderous chorus is rising, yet again. Countries that aren’t our client states can be counted with two hands, even those missing fingers from an exploding grenade.

Universal outrage has been drummed up over the case of an Iranian woman about to be stoned to death for adultery. She’s also implicated in the murder of her husband, for which she may be hanged. This second, more serious crime has been left out of many news stories. America also executes, but it doesn’t stone, especially for a bit of ticklish fun on the side. We inject, electrocute, gas, hang and shoot our condemned. We’re more humane that way. Forever bureaucratic, we pay attention to procedural niceties.

Our objection, then, is not to capital punishment, but to certain methods. Stoning is barbaric. We don’t stone, period, except during one of our serial wars, where we will stone entire communities back to the Stone Age. But that’s war, buddy. We also use phosphorous and cluster bombs, plant landmines that will last generations. To rectify and avenge the stoning of one woman, someone we don’t really care about, whose name we can’t even pronounce, we’ll flatten Iran, maybe by Thanksgiving.

The United States is concerned about women worldwide. It is touched and outraged by one Afghan woman, Aisha, whose nose was sliced off by her Taliban husband. To defend her honor, it has killed hundreds of thousands of her brothers and sisters. To protect her, it has destroyed her country. It’s the principle that matters. We care about the individual, at least those who are useful to our agendas. It’s the masses we don’t give a flying whoopee about. How can we not raise our voices, for example, when an imprisoned prostitute — hardly a criminal, really, even less so than adulterer — is left in a cage, to be baked to death for at least four hours in 107-degree heat? Her captors ignored her pleas for water. They wouldn’t even allow her to use the bathroom, so she soiled herself before passing out. She was still alive, however, when finally taken to the hospital, where doctors allowed her to die. Incredibly, no charges have been filed. Such barbarity and judicial callousness deserve our fullest condemnations, except that hardly anyone has heard of Marcia Powell, 48, who died in an Arizona prison in May of 2009. The mainstream media ignore her, because her abject death cannot be exploited for political purposes. We’re not trying to bomb Arizona.

Needing to kill, a government will lie before, during and after splattering blood. Eschewing subtlety, it prefers to speak in slogans and clipped, cartoonish sentences. They hate us for who we are. We must fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them over here. We’re trying to root out the bad guys. Adopting this lingo, many Americans are dubbing the community center and mosque near Ground Zero a “jihad mosque” or a “victory mosque.” In Lower Manhattan last week, I saw a man carrying a sign, “EVERYTHING I EVER NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT ISLAM I LEARNED ON 9/11.” Another displayed a caricature of “IMAM OBAMA.” There was an effigy of a tied up Palestinian, complete with keffiyeh, with this placard, “OBAMA: With a name like HUSSAIN we understand. Bloomberg: what the f@&k is your excuse?”

Totalitarianism always breeds idiocy. Lies that go unchallenged lead to more preposterous lies. Idiocy is also the manure from which totalitarianism rises. On September 11, 2001, the entire world saw America symbolically imploded, but our actual collapse is ongoing. It is relatively gradual, unlike the three, yes, three, World Trade Center buildings that tumbled onto their own foot prints. For the last nine years, we have endured an unending stream of lies and idiocy, none more grotesque than the official explanation to what happened that tragic day.

Despite being lied to repeatedly, almost daily, Americans are strangely gullible to incoherent, even ridiculous narratives dished up by their government. Brainwashed by the bromide that their nation is always a force for good, anywhere, worldwide, Americans can’t imagine that Washington could be complicit in the murder of its own citizens. Ignored is the fact that it has done so many times before, and since, 9/11. Using false pretexts to invade Iraq, our government has caused the death of over four thousand Americans, more than the number who perished on 9/11.

I don’t know what happened that day, but it makes no sense to me that World Trade Center #7 fell down without being hit by anything. It makes no sense to me that it collapsed exactly the same way as the twin towers, as if imploding. It makes no sense that the passport of Satam al Suqami, one of the alleged hijackers, could be found on the ground, when entire skyscrapers were being pulverized. I also don’t understand how no military jets could intercept any of the three planes that hit their targets that day. The first tower was struck at 8:46AM, the Pentagon at 9:40AM, nearly an hour later, with no effective response from our vaunted military. I used to take buses to and from the Pentagon Transit Center. I knew the building wasn’t very tall, so it struck me as weird how an airliner could hit it from the side. Why fly parallel to the ground, nearly shaving it, to strike such a low target? Why not just dive into it? There are red flags all over this incident, yet many sane, reasonable people will become completely unhinged at the slightest suggestion that the official version doesn’t add up. Our government lies all the time, but when it comes to this one incident, we shouldn’t question anything? Even National Review, of all places, pointed out visa irregularities among the alleged hijackers, how they could enter the U.S. without the proper paperwork.

After Martin Luther King was killed in 1968, his family refused to believe the official explanation. They fought and fought until an assassination conspiracy trial was scheduled in 1999. Presented with extensive evidences, a jury concluded that, yes, the federal, state and local governments all had a hand in Dr. King’s murder, and that James Earl Ray was not the shooter. The King family did what any sane, loving family would do. Coretta Scott King explained, “We had to get involved because the system did not work. Those who are responsible for the assassination were not held to account for their involvement […] It has been a difficult and painful experience to revisit this tragedy, but we felt we had an obligation to do everything in our power to seek the truth.”

On September 11, 2001, someone stabbed America. She’s being murdered right now. As Americans, we need to get to the heart of this, because this madness and deceit are perpetuating themselves. If we don’t have the courage and clarity to confront this evil, we won’t regain our sanity or move forward. We might as well be dead. We’re dying. As with the King murder and so much else, you cannot expect the system to convict itself. It will lie and lie until the truth hardly matters.

Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories and five of poems, with a novel, Love Like Hate, scheduled for July. He's tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog, State of the Union. Read other articles by Linh.

Posted by JNOUBIYEH at 12:13 PM


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Palestinians of ‘48: Peace talks are saving Israel


[ 11/09/2010 - 11:01 AM ]

NAZARETH, (PIC)-- Palestinian political activists in territories occupied in 1948 are unanimous in rejecting the resumption of direct peace talks that are only to Israel’s interest, Al-Jazeera Net website reported.

Direct negotiations are conducted under conditions set by Israel and the U.S., activists warned, while stressing the importance of preserving Palestinian national constants.

Israeli Arab member of Knesset Jamal Zahalka told the site that the Palestinian Authority's participation in direct negotiations on Israeli terms is a big scandal.

MP Talab al-Sani said Israeli attempts for Palestinians to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state means acknowledging the Jews’ false claim to historical rights to the land as well as paving the way for the exchange of population and the completion of the events witnessed by the Palestinians in ‘48.

The Secretary-General of the Democratic Front for peace and equality (Hadash), Ayman Awda, said peace talks are frivolous without a framework or timetable, and “take Israel out of its international isolation.”

Hadash chairman Mohamed Baraka opposed rejecting the idea of a peaceful solution and backed the peace talks provided that there would be a framework and timetable. The talks should serve as a means and not a goal, and Palestinian resistance should be maintained, he added.



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AND


The Growing Boycott of Israel - A Force for Good

Via South Lebanon



By LAWRENCE DAVIDSON, CounterPunch, September 11, 2010


Actually, what seems to have triggered the piece was not international. Rather, it was the decision of a "few dozen theater people" to boycott "a new cultural center in Ariel," an illegally settled town in the Occupied Territories. This action drew public support from 150 academics in Israel. The response from the Israeli right, which presently controls the government and much of Israel’s information environment, was loud and hateful.

Though this affair was domestic, it provided a jumping off point for Haaretz to go on and examine the larger international boycott of Israel which is indeed "gaining speed." It noted that Chile had recently pledged to boycott products from the Israeli settlements and Norway’s state pension plan had divested itself of companies involved in construction in the Occupied Territories. The Haaretz article pointed out that these incidents (and there are others that can be named in such countries as Ireland and Venezuela) are signs that the boycott movement –so long the province civil society– is now finding resonance at the level of national governments. The Israeli paper declared that "the world is changing before our eyes. Five years ago the anti-Israel movement may have been marginal. Now it is growing into an economic problem."

The article puts forth two explanations for this turn of events one of which is problematic, and the other incomplete. Let’s take a look at them.

1. "Until now boycott organizers had been on the far left. [Now] they have a new ally: Islamic organizations....The red side has a name for championing human rights, while the green side [the Islamic side] has money." I have some personal knowledge of the boycott movement and I find some of these particulars to be, at best, exaggerations. The term "far left" must be based on some arbitrary Zionist definition of the political spectrum. Worldwide community support for the growing boycott movement has gone beyond political alignments. Today, it is a reflection of real united front seeking the promotion of Palestinian human rights (in this Haaretz is on the mark). As for the "green side" there is certainly an understandable affinity here. Muslims too are concerned about the human rights of Palestinians (including the Christians ones). However, the claim of any significant flow of cash is, as far as I know, another exaggeration. The Haaretz piece cites the example of the aid flotilla to Gaza, with its link to Turkey. But this is just one case in a worldwide movement. And, there was nothing illegitimate (despite Israeli propaganda) about the involvement of Turkish charities. It might come as a surprise to the Israelis, but you can run a boycott movement without heavy outside funding–as was the case of the boycott against South Africa.

2. Haaretz continues, "but then came the occupation, which turned us into the evil Goliath, the cruel oppressor, a darkness on the nations." The article suggests that this is such a contrast with the righteous stand that helped convince the West to support the original formation of Israel that many have turned away from Israel in disappointment. "And now we are paying the price of presenting ourselves as righteous and causing disappointment: boycott." No doubt there is much disappointment. The horrors of Israeli expansionism and occupation are such that they draw worldwide attention. And rightly so. But, they are symptoms of some deeper cause. What might it be? The state of Israel was founded on an ideological program called Zionism. That program called for the establishment of a state designed to serve the exclusive interests of one religiously identified group. While the Zionists felt this aim was justified by the centuries of persecution suffered by European Jews, it actually carried within it the seeds of its own corruption. The simple truth is that you cannot successfully design a state for one group only unless you found it on some desert island. If you put it down in a place that is occupied by others who are not of your group, what is the most likely next step? You turn into racists, ethnic cleansers, or worse. The Zionist adherence to their ideology and its program is the cause of their turning into "cruel oppressors." The means dictated by their end made it so.

The Haaretz article does not go beyond these points, but there is plenty more to say. Those who wonder whether they should support the boycott should certainly consider the horrors of the Israeli occupation and its ghettoizing of the people of Gaza. They might also consider the following:

1. The non-Jewish population of Israel proper, that is Israel within the 1967 borders (the "Green Line") are subject to segregation and economic and social discrimination that is both de jure and de facto. Their overall standards of living are lower than the Israeli Jews, their educational facilities inferior and their economic prospects poorer. This is to be expected. If you are running your state based on a racist principle, by definition discrimination must infuse the home front. This fact does not appear to fit with the often heard claim that the Israelis are "just like us" Americans. However, in a rather anachronistic way they are "like us" – that is like the United States prior to our civil rights legislation. In other words, Israel is like, say, Georgia or Alabama circa the 1920s.

2. The second factor worthy of consideration is the negative international impact of Zionist ideology, for the harm Zionism is not confined to either Israel or its Occupied Territories. The fact is that Zionist influence spreads far beyond Israel’s area of dominion and now influences many of the policy making institutions of Western governments, and particularly those of the United States. This influence is corruptive if only because it distorts both official and popular notions of national interests in the Middle East. When you have a powerful and single-minded lobby that is able to manipulate your government in such a fashion that it pours its national treasure into a racist state, arms it and protects it to the point of becoming an accomplice to its crimes, and by doing so willfully alienates 22% of the world’s population, you know that your notion of national interest has been seriously mangled. This harmful influence makes it imperative that Israel’s oppressive behavior be singled out as a high priority case from among the many other oppressive regimes that may be candidates for boycott.

So no one in Israel, the U.S. or anywhere else should be surprised that the boycott against Israel, in its many manifestations, is "gaining speed." If you are not yet a supporter you should become one. To join the boycott is good the world’s future in general. It is certainly good for the Palestinians, and yes, it is good for the Jews too.

Lawrence Davidson is a Professor of History at West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
On September 5, 2010 the Israel newspaper Ha'aretz published an article the headline of which read "Anti-Israel Economic Boycotts are Gaining Speed." The subtitle went on to state that "the sums involved are not large, but their international significance is huge."
Posted by JNOUBIYEH at 9:55 AM

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"Welcome my friends to the show that never ends",

By jerrygates7
 A comment on UP's mirror site

"Welcome my friends to the show that never ends", William Shakespeare. .... and so it goes, that Barack Obama is added to this all star cast of dancing with zionists against sanity, for occupation and leaning towards capitalist fascism. The rhetoric belies the actions of the cast of this strange reality show participants, ostensibly doing their bits to impress the audience, but whose watching we should ask... Surveys indicate that Israelis feel quite secure in there homeland taken from Palestine with grave costs to every conspiriator's soul, but that's beside the point, souless Israel will ot miss heaven nor God, they have theor stolen lands to comfort them treasure laid up in Mammon's bank, they are set for this life and care not if the next is hell. The show must go on, and for the New American president he is doing his level best to make it convincing, entertaining and adds his own brand of capitalist empire by droning Oruzgon youth whom his commanders averred were older, in a similar fit of zeal to serve their flag they disgraced it as Obama does. Democracy anyone?

The next episode is filled with democracy, we will enjoy the bitterness, infighting and maligmancies of democracy in the show of shows to begin as soon as the heckling GOP decides how to proceed . Of particular interst in upcoming debates, all for the show, will be the reasoning as to why Obama must not be seen to push Israel, That is simply put, we Americans are the pushee zionism and Israel the pusher.

How can it be any other way AIPAC avers, we are the Jews only nation's spokepeople and have our place in show business made to order for the zionistas, capitalism is our bag and we carry it about with suitcases filled with filthy lucre for our liars and thievs of empire, they need us, not their citizens, whom are easily cajoled into complicity as war criminals, why not war crimes are exonerated in the US by the president himself, is it any wonder why Israel invests so much money and effort in sidleing up to such a powerful exonerator of war criminals?

This is Jewtopian idealism, just look at the cast Hillary the Aipac queen, Gates the lecherous war profiteer, Napolitano the brigand of empire and of course, Bibi, that monstrous egotist who scares the shit out of Obama. The season begins with the usual start of peace talks and ends with the usual inflammed tensions for Palestine while Israel smoke dope on the beach, it's a wonderful life, yes, well, at least we try to make it seem so.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian