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The US-dominated World Mainstream media are legitimately remembering  the 3,000 dead in the 9-11 atrocity for which some top scientific and intelligence experts hold the US responsible. However, in marked contrast, World Mainstream media ignore the 8 million dead (mostly Asian women and children) in the post-9-11 US War on Terror (a war for Oil and Hegemony) driven politically by racist Zionist and neocon American terror hysteria, anti-Arab anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

The world is marking the 9th anniversary of the 9-11 atrocity in which, (1) according to some top scientific and intelligence experts,  the US Government, with likely Israeli state terrorist support, killed 3,000 Americans on 9-11 to launch  the War on Terror for oil, US hegemony and US-Israeli domination of the Middle East  or (2) religious fundamentalists in Central Asian caves without state intelligence, armed forces, or military-industrial infrastructure achieved a devastating  attack on Metropolitan  United States that the Axis Powers failed to do in World War 2 and, furthermore, did so for no obvious cost-benefit reasons.

Two Swiss scholars, Professors Daniele Ganser and Albert A. Stahel of the University of Zurich, reported in the largest Swiss newspaper, “Blick”, have seriously questioned the “official Bush version” of what happened on 9/11 (see “Je mehr wir forschen, desto mehr zweifeln wir” [“the more we research the more we doubt”], Blick, 15 September 2006: http://www.blick.ch/news/ausland/9-11/artikel45057 ). Professor Ganser: “3,000 humans were sacrificed for strategic interests. The more we explore, the more we doubt the Bush version. It is conceivable that the Bush government was responsible. Bush has lied so much already! And we already know that the US government planned an operation in 1962 that was approved by the Pentagon that would have sacrificed innocent US citizens for the government’s own interests …We only ask questions” (see “US responsible for 9-11? Swiss scholars Professors Daniele Ganser and Albert A. Stahel doubt official Bush version” :   https://sites.google.com/site/afghanistangenocideessays/us-responsible ).

Professors Ganser and Stahel presented 3 sensible hypotheses for 9-11: “There are three theories, which we should treat equally:

1. “Surprise theory” – Bin Laden and Al Qaeda implemented the attacks.

2. “Let it happen on purpose” – The US Government knew the Al Qaeda plans and did not react in order to legitimize a series of wars.

3. “Made it happen on purpose” – The attacks were actually planned and orchestrated by the Pentagon and/or US secret services.”

How do these 3 hypotheses about the 9/11 atrocity stack up when one considers Means, Opportunity and Motive (MOM)?

1. “Surprise theory” than “men in caves” did 9-11.

Unlike the US and Apartheid Israel, the “men in caves” (all former US-backed Muslim-origin terrorists) had no vast army, navy, air force, military-industrial complex, or state intelligence apparatus (no Means), did not have the ability to countermand massive anti-hijacking and other emplaced security systems (no Opportunity)  and had no rational reason to embark on a terrorist atrocity that would lead to the global decimation of their associates and the US Alliance killing of 7 million Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan alone (no Motive). In World War 2 the Axis Powers with their massive military, industrial and intelligence resources only managed to kill 6 Americans in Mainland United States (a clergyman saw his wife and 5 church children killed by a Japanese balloon bomb device in Oregon on 5 May 1945; see “Japanese balloon bomb deaths story”, Balloon Bombs: ”: http://www.japaneseballoonbombs.com/articles/balloonbombdeaths.html ).

2. US let 9-11 happen on purpose.

A particularly authoritative account of this hypothesis has been presented by Michael Meacher MP (UK environment minister from May 1997 to June 2003): “Massive attention has now been given – and rightly so – to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq . But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too. The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit, retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this theory does not fit all the facts. The truth may be a great deal murkier. We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld’s deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush’s younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney’s chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America’s Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The plan shows Bush’s cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power… The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the “global war on terrorism” has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda – the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. Is collusion in this myth and junior participation in this project really a proper aspiration for British foreign policy? If there was ever need to justify a more objective British stance, driven by our own independent goals, this whole depressing saga surely provides all the evidence needed for a radical change of course. (Michael Meacher, “This war on terrorism is bogus”, The Guardian, 6 September 2003: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/sep/06/september11.iraq ).

A petition signed by 100 prominent Americans and 40 9/11 family members demanded  a full, independent investigation of what really happened on 9-11. The statement’s list of signatories includes Presidential candidates Ralph Nader and Green Party candidate David Cobb, Catherine Austin Fitts, a member of the first Bush administration, Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern. Other signatories include former US Ambassador to Iraq Edward L. Peck and  environmentalists like Randy Hayes and John Robbins  (see “9/11 statement signed by 100 prominent Americans”, WantToKnow.info: http://www.wanttoknow.info/911statement ). The statement said in part: “ On August 31, 2004, Zogby International, the official North American political polling agency for Reuters, released a poll that found nearly half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of those in New York state believe US leaders had foreknowledge of impending 9/11 attacks and “consciously failed” to act. Of the New York City residents, 66% called for a new probe of unanswered questions by Congress or the New York Attornney General. In connection with this news, we have assembled 100 notable Americans and 40 family members of those who died to sign this 9/11 Statement, which calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war. ”

And of course the US had the Means (US military, intelligence and security domination of the US ), Opportunity (ditto) and Motive (to launch the War on Terror for US occupation of the Middle East and Central Asia for oil, gas and US and Israeli   hegemony).

3. The US made 9-11 happen “on purpose”.

A number of key scientific, military and intelligence experts have advanced this most compelling of the 3 hypotheses. As stated in item #2 above, the US had Means, Opportunity and Motive (MOM). There is compelling scientific evidence that a huge jet plane flown by experts could not have landed on a dime at the door of the Pentagon as asserted by the “official Bush version “ of 9-11 and that the 3 World Trade Center buildings were brought down by explosive demolition (proven by the discovery  by Professor Niels Harrit and colleagues of the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, that unexploded nano-thermite high explosive was present in all WTC dust samples examined). Some of these expert opinions  are presented below.

Scholars for 9/11 Truth has set out expert evidence that the US was involved in 9-11 (see: http://911scholars.org/ ).

Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice has set out a detailed series of links to the expert views of many other rational, eminent and technically expert people who reject the “official conspiracy theory” and who believe that the US was variously involved in the 9-11 atrocity (see: http://stj911.org/ ).

Many respected senior members of the US military, intelligence services, and government have expressed significant criticism of the 9/11 Commission Report. Some even allege government complicity in the terrible acts of 9/11 (see “9/11 Commission Report questioned by senior  military, intelligence and government officials”, WantToKnow.info: http://www.wanttoknow.info/officialsquestion911commissionreport ).

Swiss Professors Daniele Ganser and Albert A. Stahel of the University of Zurich, reported in the largest Swiss newspaper, “Blick”, have seriously questioned the “official Bush version” of what happened on 9/11 (see “Je mehr wir forschen, desto mehr zweifeln wir” [the more we research the more we doubt”], Blick, 15 September 2006: http://www.blick.ch/news/ausland/9-11/artikel45057 ; and  “US responsible for 9-11? Swiss scholars Professors Daniele Ganser and Albert A. Stahel doubt official Bush version”:   https://sites.google.com/site/afghanistangenocideessays/us-responsible ): “3,000 humans were sacrificed for strategic interests. The more we explore, the more we doubt the Bush version….We only ask questions.”

Professor Niels Harrit and colleagues (Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen , Copenhagen , Denmark ) : “We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the destruction of the World Trade Center . Examination of four of these samples, collected from separate sites, is reported in this paper. These red/gray chips show marked similarities in all four samples…Based on these observations, we conclude that the red layer of the red/gray chips we have discovered din the WTC dust is active, unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology, and is a highly energetic pyrotechnic or explosive material” (see Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, Bradley R. Larsen, “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe, The Open Chemical Physics Journals, vol.2, pp.7-31 (25): http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM ).

Jim Hoffmann (a top US software engineer who has extensively analyzed the 3 WTC building demolitions : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Hoffman ) : “The implications of the discovery of unspent aluminothermic explosives and matching residues in World Trade Center dust are staggering. There is no conceivable reason for there to have been tons of high explosives in the Towers except to demolish them, and demolition is blatantly incompatible with the official 9/11 narrative that the skyscrapers collapsed as a result of the jetliner impacts and fires. The discovery of active thermitic materials adds to a vast body of evidence that the total destruction of the Towers were controlled demolitions, and to the subset of that evidence indicating the use of aluminothermic materials to implement those demolitions” (see Jim Hoffmann, “Explosives Found in World Trade Center Dust. Scientists Discover Both Residues And Unignited Fragments Of Nano-Engineered Thermitic Pyrotechnics In Debris From the Twin Towers”, 9-11 Research, 9 December 2010: http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html ) .

Major General Albert N. Stubblebine (graduate of the U.S. Military Academy West Point, class of 52, distinguished 32 year career in the U.S. Army and retired as the Commanding General of the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command , INSCOM): “You look at the buildings falling, they didn”t fall down because of an airplane hit them, they fell down because explosives went off inside. Demolition. Look at Building 7 for God sakes … I do not believe the free press is free anymore… The press is saying what they have been told to say about this. Now do I have proof about this? No. But I believe that all the stories that were told about 9/11 were false” (see “ Major General Albert Stubblebine Towers fell down because of explosives”, World for 9-11 Truth”, 29 June 2009: http://world911truth.org/major-general-albert-stubblebine-towers-fell-down-because-of-explosives/ ).

Professor Francesco Cossiga (63rd prime minister and 8th president of Italy, professor of law at the University of Sassari, and intelligence intimate) in an interview with leading Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera (2007): “As I’ve been told, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow [interview appeared on 30 November 2007] the most important chain of newspapers of our country should give the proof, with an exceptional scoop, that the video (which in reality is an audio tape, NdR) in which appears Osama, leader of “the great and powerful movement of islamic revenge Al Quaeda” – God bless him! – and in which are formulated threats to our ex president Berlusconi, is nothing more than a fake realized inside Mediaset studios [the huge television group owned by Berlusconi] in Milan and sent to arabic television station Al Jazeera. The trap was organized to create solidarity for Berlusconi, who is having lot of problems related to the tangle between RAI and Mediaset. From circles around Palazzo Chigi, nerve centre of direction of Italian intelligence, it is noted that the non-authenticity of the video is testified from the fact that Osama bin Laden in it ‘confessed’ that Al Qaeda was the author of the attack of the 11 September on the Twin Towers in New York, while all of the democratic circles of America and of Europe, in the front lines being those of the Italian centre-left, now know well that the disastrous attack was planned and realized by the American CIA and Mossad with the help of the Zionist world to put under accusation the Arabic Countries and to persuade the Western powers to intervene in Iraq and Afghanistan” (see “ Francesco Cossiga ” Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Cossiga ).

General Leonid Ivashov (vice-president of the Russian Academy on geopolitical affairs. He was the chief of the department for General affairs in the Soviet Union’s Ministry of Defense, secretary of the Council of defense ministers of the Community of independent states (CIS), chief of the Military cooperation department at the Russian federation’s Ministry of defense and Joint chief of staff of the Russian armies) (2006): “Terrorism is the weapon used in a new type of war. At the same time, international terrorism, in complicity with the media, becomes the manager of global processes. It is precisely the symbiosis between media and terror, which allows modifying international politics and the exiting reality. In this context, if we analyze what happened on September 11, 2001, in the United States , we can arrive at the following conclusions: 1. The organizers of those attacks were the political and business circles interested in destabilizing the world order and who had the means necessary to finance the operation. The political conception of this action matured there where tensions emerged in the administration of financial and other types of resources. We have to look for the reasons of the attacks in the coincidence of interests of the big capital at global and transnational levels, in the circles that were not satisfied with the rhythm of the globalization process or its direction. Unlike traditional wars, whose conception is determined by generals and politicians, the oligarchs and politicians submitted to the former were the ones who did it this time. 2. Only secret services and their current chiefs – or those retired but still having influence inside the state organizations – have the ability to plan, organize and conduct an operation of such magnitude. Generally, secret services create, finance and control extremist organizations. Without the support of secret services, these organizations cannot exist – let alone carry out operations of such magnitude inside countries so well protected. Planning and carrying out an operation on this scale is extremely complex. 3. Osama bin Laden and “Al Qaeda” cannot be the organizers nor the performers of the September 11 attacks. They do not have the necessary organization, resources or leaders. Thus, a team of professionals had to be created and the Arab kamikazes are just extras to mask the operation. The September 11 operation modified the course of events in the world in the direction chosen by transnational mafias and international oligarchs; that is, those who hope to control the planet’s natural resources, the world information network and the financial flows. This operation also favored the US economic and political elite that also seeks world dominance” (see General Leonid Ivashov, “International terrorism does not exist: September 11 attacks were the result of a set-up”, Global Research, 23 January 2006: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=1789 ) .

Andreas von Bülow (state-secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Defence (1976-1980) and German Minister for Research and Technology , 1980-1982): “Planning the attacks was a master deed, in technical and organizational terms. To hijack four big airliners within a few minutes and fly them into targets within a single hour and doing so on complicated flight routes! That is unthinkable, without backing from the secret apparatuses of state and industry” and “If what I say is right, the whole US government should end up behind bars…They have hidden behind a veil of secrecy and destroyed the evidence – that they invented the story of 19 Muslims working within Osama bin Laden’s al-Qa’eda – in order to hide the truth of their own covert operation” (see “Andreas von B ü low”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_von_B%C3%BClow )..

25 US military officers have spoken out against the Bush Administration lies about the 9/11 atrocity . The views of these men are particularly noteworthy because of their unquestionable patriotism, their military service and their technical expertise. What these American military heroes are saying is actually unexceptional in the sense that it has all been said by themselves and others before. Thus not just military men and scientists recognize the “impossibility” of the “official Bush version” e.g. an aviation gas fire cannot melt or even soften steel; it is hard enough to crash a light aircraft at ground level into a tree-surrounded building like the Pentagon, let alone a huge airliner; the absence of passenger effects from the various sites; the minimal-resistance collapse of the Twin Towers mimicking “perfect” demolitions; the collapse of the WTC7 building that had not been hit by a plane and which had suffered only minor fires etc etc (see Gideon Polya “US did 9/11? US Military Officers Challenge “official Bush version” of 9/11”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanistangenocideessays/us-did-9-11 )..

US Navy Commander Kolstad about the “official Bush version” account of American Airlines Flight 77 that allegedly crashed into the Pentagon: “At the Pentagon, the pilot of the Boeing 757 did quite a feat of flying. I have 6,000 hours of flight time in Boeing 757’s and 767’s and I could not have flown it the way the flight path was described. I was also a Navy fighter pilot and Air Combat Instructor and have experience flying low altitude, high speed aircraft. I could not have done what these beginners did. Something stinks to high heaven!” (see Gideon Polya “US did 9/11? US Military Officers Challenge “official Bush version” of 9/11”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanistangenocideessays/us-did-9-11 ).

Former U.S. Air Force pilot Lt. Jeff Dahlstrom on what happened on 9/11 and why it happened : “The US government and the news media, once again, were lying to the world about the real terrorists and the public murder of 2,972 innocents on 9/11. The ‘Patriot Act’ was actually written prior to 9/11 with the intention of destroying the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. It was passed by Congress, based upon the government’s myth of 9/11, which was in reality a staged hoax. 9/11 was scripted and executed by rogue elements of the military, FAA, intelligence, and private contractors working for the US government. In addition to severely curtailing fundamental rights of Americans, the 9/11 crime was then used by this administration, the one I originally voted for and supported, to justify waging two pre-emptive wars (and most likely a third war), killing over 4,500 American soldiers, and killing over one million innocent Afghan and Iraqi people. It was all premeditated. Treason, a false flag military operation, and betrayal of the trust of the American people were committed on 9/11 by the highest levels of the US government and not one person responsible for the crimes, or the cover-up, has been held accountable for the last six years” (see Gideon Polya “US did 9/11? US Military Officers Challenge “official Bush version” of 9/11”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanistangenocideessays/us-did-9-11 ).

Alan Hart , eminent UK Middle East expert and journalist, ) has reported that according to “consultants who work for leading engineering and construction firms” the 3 buildings destroyed in the World Trade Center were brought down by explosive demolition and quite likely involving the Israelis: “The twin towers were brought down by a controlled ground explosion, not the planes….My guess is that at an early point they [Mossad] said to the bad guys in the CIA – hey this operation’s running what do we do, and the zionists and the neo-cons said let’s use it” (see “Alan Hart breaks silence about 9/11 on Kevin Barrett Show”, 9/11 Truth Norcal, 26 May 2010: http://norcaltruth.org/2010/05/26/alan-hart-breaks-silence-about-911-on-kevin-barrett-show/ ).

Dr Alan Sabrosky (Ph.D, University of Michigan, ten-year US Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the US Army War College) : “Several things are very clear to me from a careful assessment of both official and critical evaluations of the 9/11 attacks. First, the striking aircraft alone simply could not have brought down either of the two buildings in the manner in which they fell, much less a third building which was not hit by a plane (I expect the one intended to do that as a “cover” had ended up in that Pennsylvania field), given the available physical evidence and a wealth of expert testimony. This means the attackers had assistance on the ground, and it had to have been active before the attacks occurred: preparing buildings for controlled demolition is not something done haphazardly in the midst of chaos. Second, only two intelligence agencies had the expertise, assets, access and political protection to execute 9/11 in the air and on the ground: our CIA and Israel ‘s Mossad. Only one had the incentive, using the “who benefits” principle: Mossad. And that incentive dovetailed perfectly with the neo-con’s agenda and explicitly expressed need for a catalytic event to mobilize the American public for their wars, using American military power to destroy Israel ‘s enemies. Only the unexpected strength of the Iraqi resistance kept Syria and Iran from being attacked in the second Bush Administration. Thus, the evidential trail for 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq run from PNAC, AIPAC and their cohorts; through the mostly Jewish neo-cons in the Bush Administration; and back to the Israeli government. None of the denials and political machinations can alter that essential reality. Terms such as treason, betrayal and deceit do not overstate the case against them.” (see Dr Alan Sabrowsky, “Treason, Betrayal and deceit: 9’11 and beyond”, Information Clearing House”, 10 September 2009: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23460.htm ).

Underscoring this is the appalling, sustained, over 2 century record of pathological deceit by the US in the interests of war, expansion, theft and hegemony. The Bush Administration alone was found to have told 935 untruths about Iraq in the run-up to the illegal invasion of that country (see “Study: Bush, aides made 935 false statements in run-up to war”, CNN, 23 January 2008: http://articles.cnn.com/2008-01-23/politics/bush.iraq_1_intelligence-flaws-iraq-and-al-qaeda-study?_s=PM:POLITICS ).

Conclusion.

Means, Opportunity and Motive (MOM) analysis makes a compelling case that the US did 9-11, most likely with the involvement of the genocidal racist Zionists running Apartheid Israeli state terrorism.

The American and Israeli perpetrators are well protected by layers of Mainstream media and politicians lying by commission and lying of omission. The biggest of the Big Lies  of the Mainstream media and politicians in the Western Murdochracies is a huge lie of omission over post-9-11 deaths associated with the War on Terror.  While we are endlessly (and quite properly) told of the 3,000 Americans who died on 9-11 and the US Alliance military deaths in Occupied Iraq (4,736 as of today) and in Occupied Afghanistan (2,071 as of today) (see: http://icasualties.org/ ), Mainstream media and politicians resolutely refuse to report the horrendous post-invasion deaths of the Indigenous inhabitants of Iraq and Afghanistan that now total about 7 million – over 2,300 innocent people murdered by the US Alliance for every person killed on 9-11, an event that even according to the “official US version of 9-11” involved no Iraqis nor any Afghans.

UNICEF data indicate that every 3 days more Occupied Afghans die avoidably under US, NATO and Australian occupation (3,700) than the number of those who were killed on 9-11 (3,000), an atrocity that did not involve any Afghans according to the “official US version of 9-11”- indeed, according to some top scientific and intelligence experts the US did 9-11, some saying with likely Israeli terrorist complicity (see: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article19999 ).

Bring on war crimes trials at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for all those involved in the US Alliance-imposed, ongoing Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide (3.5 million post-invasion non-violent deaths from deprivation, possibly 1.0 million post-invasion violent deaths, 2.4 million post-invasion under-5 year old infant deaths, 3-4 million refugees plus a further 2.5 million Pashtun refugees generated by the US in NW Pakistan: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ ).

Bring on the war crimes trials at the International Criminal Court (ICC)  for all those involved in the US Alliance-imposed, ongoing Iraq Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide (1.1 million post-invasion non-violent deaths from deprivation, 1.4 million post-invasion violent deaths, 0.8 million post-invasion under-5 year old infant deaths, 5-6 million refugees plus 0.2 million violent deaths in the Gulf War, 1.7 million non-violent deaths from deprivation under Sanctions and 1.2 million under-5 infant deaths under Sanctions: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ ).

September 11 should primarily remembered for the anniversary of the launching of Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha Movement for peaceful resistance in Johannesburg, South Africa  in 1906 (see “Sept. 11: creating history of a different kind”, The Hindu: http://www.hinduonnet.com/mag/2002/10/06/stories/2002100600290500.htm ).

9-11 must be made a day to remember  (1) the launching of Gandhi’s ultimately successful for peaceful opposition to racist violence; (2) to remember  the US (and most likely Israeli) destruction of 3,000 Americans on 9-11; and (3) to remember the 8 million people murdered, so far, by genocidal US and Zionist violence since 9-11 (2.5 million violent deaths and non-violent avoidable deaths from deprivation in Iraq; 4.5 million violent deaths and non-violent avoidable deaths from deprivation in Afghanistan; and 0.8 million opiate drug-related deaths – 50,000 in the US and 3,000 in Australia – due to US Alliance restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 6% of world share in 2001 to over 90% today).

Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Decent folk who believe that “all men are created equal” and that one should “love thy neighbour as thyself” are obliged to (a) tell  everyone you know and (b) urge sanctions and Boycotts against all those citizens, corporations, countries, people, pundits and politicians involved in the racist Zionist- and neocon-backed US Alliance War on Terror that is in horrible actuality a War for Oil and Hegemony, a War on Women and Children and, more specifically,  a cowardly, racist and genocidal War on Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, Asian and Non-European Women and Children.

By Dr Gideon Polya

Better late than never, a very senior Palestinian official in Ramallah, Yasser Abed Rabbo, found the right way to challenge Israel and the U.S. As reported by AFP on 13 October, he said, “We officially demand that the US administration and the Israeli government provide a map of the borders of the state of Israel which they want us to recognise.”

That’s a completely logical and totally reasonable demand.

If Israel was interested in peace on terms virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept, the map provided would show Israel with borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war. An accompanying note would say that, subject to agreement in final negotiations, Israel seeks minor border adjustments here and there. The note would also propose that Jerusalem should be an open, undivided city and the capital of two states.

If such a map with the note as above was presented, it would open the door to peace.

But the implementation of such land-for-peace deal would require the IDF to confront and forcibly remove illegal Jewish settlers who refused to leave; and that would open the door to a Jewish civil war – the price Israel’s Jews would have to pay for 62 years of contempt for and defiance of international law.

Of course it won’t happen. As I reveal in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, why not was explained to me as far back as I980 by Shimon Peres. At the time he was the leader of the Labour Party, the main opposition to Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s Likud-led coalition. Peres was hoping to win Israel’s next election and deny Begin a second term in office. (President Carter was hoping and possibly praying for such an outcome). My purpose in talking with Peres in private was to establish whether or not he was interested in me acting as the linkman in a secret, exploratory dialogue between himself and PLO Chairman Arafat. Peres was interested but before I went off to Beirut to seek Arafat’s agreement to participate in a little conspiracy for peace, he said to me, “I fear it’s already too late“.

I asked Peres what he meant and this was his answer:

“Every day that passes sees new bricks on new settlements. Begin knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s stuffing the West Bank with settlers to create the conditions for a Jewish civil war. He knows that no Israeli prime minister is going down in history as the one who gave the order to the Jewish army to shoot Jews out of the West Bank“. Pause. “I’m not.”

When Peres spoke those words to me there were 70,000 illegal Jewish settlers on the occupied West Bank. If it was “too late” then, in 1980, how much more too late is it today when the number of illegal Jewish settlers is in excess of 500,000 and rising on a daily basis?

Some weeks after that conversation with Peres, I had reason to talk in private with Ezer Weizman, then serving as Defense Minister in Begin’s first-term government. He gave me extraordinary and frightening insight into why any future Israeli prime minister would not and possibly could not order the IDF to remove settlers from the West Bank by whatever force was necessary. At a point in our conversation he said the following, very slowly and with quiet emphasis:

“This lunchtime Sharon convened a secret meeting of some of our generals and other top military and security people. They signed in blood an oath which commits them to join with the settlers and fight to the death to prevent any government of Israel withdrawing from the West Bank.” Pause. “I know that’s what happened at the meeting because I’ve checked it out and that’s why I was late for this appointment with you.” (I tell the full story of this conversation with Weizman in The Blood Oath, Chapter 12 of Volume Three of the American edition of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews).

So no, there won’t be a Jewish civil war because no Israeli prime minister is ever going to risk provoking it.

So there will be no map. (I mean not one that could come even close to satisfying the Palestinian demand and need). Yasser Abed Rabbo knew that when he put the demand into words.

So what was the point of his challenge?

I presume he was hoping that Israel’s refusal to come up with a map based on more or less pre-June 1967 borders will help to convince more and more people, Americans especially, that Israel simply is not interested in peace on terms virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept, and for which there is universal support (minus only the opposition of the Zionists and the mad, fundamentalist Christians who support them right or wrong, an opposition which in numbers of people is only a tiny, almost invisible fraction of the global whole).

If it does that, the challenge will not have been made in vain.

Footnote

The day after Yasser Abed Rabbo issued the challenge, Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman had the gall (chutzpah) to say that Israel “has already made many gestures to the Palestinian Authority to facilitate restarting direct negotiations,” and now “the other side must show goodwill”. In one sense Liberman was right. Israel has made many gestures to the Palestinians. But all of them have been of the “Go to hell” type.

By Alan Hart

19 October, 2010

Alanhart.net

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent. He is author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. He blogs at http://www.alanhart.net and tweets via http://twitter.com/alanauthor

The whistleblowing group WikiLeaks claims that it has had its funding blocked and that it is the victim of financial warfare by the US government.

Moneybookers, a British-registered internet payment company that collects WikiLeaks donations, emailed the organisation to say it had closed down its account because it had been put on an official US watchlist and on an Australian government blacklist.

The apparent blacklisting came a few days after the Pentagon publicly expressed its anger at WikiLeaks and its founder, Australian citizen Julian Assange, for obtaining thousands of classified military documents about the war in Afghanistan, in one of the US army’s biggest leaks of information. The documents caused a sensation when they were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and German magazine Der Spiegel, revealing hitherto unreported civilian casualties.

WikiLeaks defied Pentagon calls to return the war logs and destroy all copies. Instead, it has been reported that it intends to release an even larger cache of military documents, disclosing other abuses in Iraq.

Moneybookers moved against WikiLeaks on 13 August, according to the correspondence, less than a week after the Pentagon made public threats of reprisals against the organisation. Moneybookers wrote to Assange: “Following an audit of your account by our security department, we must advise that your account has been closed … to comply with money laundering or other investigations conducted by government authorities.”

When Assange emailed to ask what the problem was, he says he was told in response by Daniel Stromberg, the Moneybookers e-commerce manager for the Nordic region: “When I did my regular overview of my customers, I noticed that something was wrong with your account and I emailed our risk and legal department to solve this issue.

“Below I have copied the answer I received from them: ‘Hi Daniel, you can inform him that initially his account was suspended due to being accessed from a blacklisted IP address. However, following recent publicity and the subsequently addition of the WikiLeaks entity to blacklists in Australia and watchlists in the USA, we have terminated the business relationship.'”

Assange said: “This is likely to cause a huge backlash against Moneybookers. Craven behaviour in relation to the US government is unlikely to be seen sympathetically.”

Moneybookers, which is registered in the UK but controlled by the Bahrain-based group Investcorp, would not make anyone available to explain the decision. Its public relations firm, 77PR, said: “We have never had any request, inquiry or correspondence from any authority regarding this former customer.” Asked how this could be reconciled with the references in the correspondence to a blacklist, it said: “We stick with our original statement.”

Written by David Leigh & Rob Evans

Posted: 19 October 2010 10:52

15 October, 2010

© 2010 Guardian News and Media Limited

Members of the Tea Party take a lot of heat, and justifiably so, for blatant hypocrisy. They want the government out of their lives, and they want to retain all the benefits of Empire.

Just like the rest of us.

Who doesn’t want the government out of his life? And yet, who wants to give up the safety nets of Empire? Who wants to terminate the oppression-abroad approach we employ, merely to generate self-reliant, resilient communities? Who wants to trade life in a cubicle for a life of hard work?

Do you know anybody who wants Big Brother looking over his shoulder? Do you know anybody who wants the Internal Revenue Service knocking on his door? Do you know anybody who wants to pay more taxes than he already does? Do you know anybody happily paying into Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid with full understanding these Ponzi schemes have nearly run their course? Do you know anybody who looks forward to life as a government serf?

With the exception of me, on the other hand, do you know anybody who will be happy when the fuel fails to show up at the filling station? Do you know anybody who will happily forgo water coming out the municipal taps? Do you know anybody who happily contributes to the federal government’s Ponzi schemes monetary policy, knowing he’ll never get his money back?

Consider one example from among hundreds. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are horrific by all accounts. We are the “reluctant” occupiers, forced to play cop in a world run amok. Or maybe we’re the ones running the world amok with our perpetual wars. Maybe if we cease playing Conquistador the world will be a more peaceful place. If so, we should cease occupying these and other countries. Most self-proclaimed liberals agree that we should withdraw our troops (instead of the current approach, which means claiming to withdraw them).

But if we withdraw, we won’t have access to enough oil and other “resources” to run the U.S. industrial economy. In fact, without an industrial economy based on war, unemployment would skyrocket. I’m betting most self-proclaimed liberals wouldn’t like that outcome any better than the ongoing occupation of foreign lands. We are all Tea Partiers now.

A line from Frederick Douglass comes to mind: “Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning.”

By Guy R. McPherson

11 October, 2010

Guymcpherson.com

Guy R. McPherson is Profesor Emeritus at the University of Arizona. Educated in the ecology and management of natural resources, his early scholarly efforts produced many publications of little lasting importance. In mid-career, he began to focus on development and creative application of ecological theory, primarily with an eye toward conservation of biological diversity. Currently, his scholarly efforts focus on social criticism, with results that appear most frequently on newspaper op-ed pages. In addition, he facilitates research by students and he prepares synthetic documents focused on articulation of the links between (1) environmental protection, social justice, and the human economy and (2) science and its application. These efforts have produced more than 100 scholarly papers and nine books.

In 2009 at the height of a productive career, McPherson left the university to prepare for collapse. He now lives in an off-grid, straw-bale house where he puts into practice his lifelong interest in sustainable living via organic gardening, raising small animals for eggs and milk, and working with members of his rural community.

contact information:

Guy R. McPherson, Professor Emeritus

University of Arizona

School of Natural Resources & the Environment and

Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

Biological Sciences East 325

Tucson, Arizona 85721

email: grm@ag.arizona.edu

The Viva Palestina convoy of almost 150 vehicles, 370 people from 30 different countries and $5 million of aid has entered Gaza.

Amidst scenes of jubilation from thousands of Palestinians there to greet the convoy, Kevin Ovenden, the convoy director, expressed his joy at being in Gaza once again. “We have driven more than 3,000 miles to bring this essential aid and to break this illegal siege of Gaza. We have been joined by supporters from Morocco and Algeria and from the Gulf States and Jordan, to make this the biggest convoy ever to break the siege of Gaza. We are absolutely overjoyed to be here and to bring with us the soil from the graves of those who were massacred on the Mavi Marmara which will be used to plant trees as a memorial to their sacrifice.”

By Viva Palestina

Britain will cut 490,000 public sector jobs over four years under austerity measures designed to reduce the country’s record deficit.

George Osborne, the finance minister, told parliament on Wednesday that the job losses were “unavoidable when the country has run out of money”.

“Today is the day that Britain steps back from the brink. It is a hard road but it leads to a better future,” he said.

He said he had ordered $130bn in spending cuts by 2015, aiming to reduce Britain’s deficit of 11 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) to around two per cent within five years.

The measures will also hit the welfare state, cutting child benefits and pushing the state pension to 66 by 2020.

The cuts come as figures reveal British public sector spending in September reached $25.5bn – a record high level for the month.

Analysts had initially forecast a slight rise from September 2009’s public net borrowing of $24.4bn.

Protests

Small protests against the cuts are already taking place with larger marches and rallies scheduled to take place in London, the capital, later on Wednesday.

Nazanine Moshiri, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in London, said demonstrations so far were not matching the scale of anti-austerity protests seen previously in Europe.

“We’re not seeing anything like the kind of protests we’ve seen in the streets of Paris in the last few days.

“People here are looking at this as a way of blaming the previous government of the Labour party for what has happened, rather than blaming the current coalition government.”

But she added the move was a “big gamble” for the Conservative-Liberal Democrat alliance.

“If the economy doesn’t start to grow, who knows what could happen here,” she said.

‘Double-dip’ risk

Ruth Lea, a British economist, told Al Jazeera that Wednesday’s cuts were needed to reduce the deficit.

“If we don’t cut now the generations to come will have to pay for all this,” she said.

Lea added that the prospect of a “double-dip” recession was unlikely, saying: “Even though we talk about these enormous cuts they only mean one per cent year-on-year,” she said.

The International Monetary Fund has strongly backed plans for an aggressive reduction of Britain’s record high public deficit, describing spending cuts as an “essential” weapon.

But some economists have warned that the measures will tip Britain back into recession.

Mervyn King, the central bank governor, painted a gloomy picture late on Tuesday, saying it would be a long while before Britain could recover from the 10 per cent drop in output seen in the last recession.

The opposition Labour Party, which the current Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government blames for running up Britain’s massive debt when it was in power, has agreed there is a need for fiscal discipline.

But it says that the coalition are cutting too much too soon.

Alan Johnson, Labour’s spokesman on economic issues, accused Osborne of “economic masochism”, warning that his cuts would leave Britain trapped in a cycle of low growth and high unemployment for years.

Wednesday’s measures will see spending cut across government departments, including the Foreign Office, which will lose 24 per cent from its budget, the police force, and the interior and justice departments.

The BBC is also being affected by the measures, with the government cutting funding to the World Service.

The plans are also extending to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, with royal household spending falling by 14 per cent in 2012 to 2013.

However the National Health Service, schools and overseas aid have been protected under the spending review.

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research think tank has said it believes the government will only be able to push through half the planned cuts.

By Aljazeera

20 October, 2010

Aljazeera

The corporate mass media (especially television) did not treat the Chilean mine collapse as a labor story but rather as a feel-good human interest story. It not only avoided asking hard questions about why the near-disaster occurred and why the mine workers could be treated like guinea pigs by their employers, it actively obscured these questions. I saw a psychobabbling guest of Tony Harris on CNN actually talking about how the Chilean government is the father figure for the miners and their supporters and people are turning to it for succor and inspiration. I threw up a little in my mouth.

So here are the questions that a social historian would ask about the sorry episode, and which I never heard anyone on television news ask during all the wall to wall coverage:

1. What were the miners mining? (A.: Gold and copper).

2. Did the high price of gold and the fact that the mining company was close to bankruptcy cause the company executives to cut corners?

3. Are the mine owners guilty of criminal negligence?

4. Why did the San Estaban mining company reopen the mine so quickly after an earlier tunnel collapse severed the leg of a mine worker?

5. Why is there no accountability for the mine owners?

6. Is George W. Bush-style deregulation of the mining industry by the Chilean government part of the problem here?

7. What is the influence of big gold and copper corporations over US policy?

8. Are copper and gold mine owners stronger in relation to workers and have they escaped government regulation because the US engineered a coup in 1973 to destroy the Chilean Left?

9. Was the San Estaban mining company’s ability to marginalize the union and to disregard input from the workers rooted in American-imposed corporate privilege?

10. In other words, was the trapping of these workers in the first place Richard Nixon’s and Henry Kissinger’s fault?

By Juan Cole

14 October, 2010

JuanCole.com

The government has approved the proposal for an amendment to the Citizenship Law, according to which anyone requesting Israeli citizenship will have to declare loyalty to Israel as a “Jewish and democratic” state. This amendment is perceived by many to be an unnecessary provocation against the country’s Arab population, even though it is ostensibly directed towards neither Arab citizens nor Jewish citizens, but towards those seeking citizenship, including Arab spouses requesting citizenship for the sake of family unification.

Columnist Nahum Barnea described it in sharp words: “The proposed law doesn’t just seem racist; it is racist. It compels non-Jews to declare they will be loyal to the Jewish state, but does not demand the same of Jews. Jews are exempt, because the Haredi rabbis are not willing to declare their loyalty, not to the Jewish state and certainly not to the democratic state. The results are harsh. It’s still not the racist Nuremberg laws, but it smells the same” (Yedioth Aharonoth Supplement, October 8, 2010).

In the Declaration of Independence and the Basic Laws (which serve Israel as a kind of constitution) Israel was declared a Jewish state long ago. The state’s symbols, the Star of David and the Menorah, leave no room for doubt. Thus too the other laws such as the Law of Return, and various temporary provisions and standing orders, which give preference to Jews above non-Jews. What, then, led the justice minister to propose the amendment now, an amendment which will affect just a few thousand people each year, most of whom are not Arabs and do not question the state’s Jewish character?

In fact, behind this amendment there is a hidden message regarding a debate sparked some five years ago between representatives of the Arab population and the state. The conflict began when former Knesset member Azmi Bishara set up a party under the slogan “A state for all its citizens”, which opened the way for Arab parties and institutions to challenge the state and expose the structural contradiction in its self-definition as “Jewish and democratic.” This philosophical clash between the Arab minority and the state served to oil the wheels of Avigdor Lieberman, today Israel’s foreign minister, whose party won 15 seats in the last general elections with its slogan “No citizenship without loyalty.”

In 2006, the Arab Monitoring Committee and the Committee of the Heads of the Local Arab Councils published a document entitled “The Future Vision of Palestinian Arabs in Israel.” According to this document, “The definition of the state as a Jewish state, and the use made of democracy to serve its Jewishness, excludes us from its ranks and places us in opposition to the nature and essence of the state in which we live.”

The “Vision” document raises the question of whether Israeli democracy can really include the Arab minority and treat it with full equality. The document is a response to the alienation that Israel’s Arab citizens have felt for over 60 years. It is not the definition of Israel as a Jewish state which led the Arab leadership to challenge the state, but the institutionalized discrimination which the Arab population suffers. Democracy cannot exist in a state of institutionalized discrimination. The real issue is not about changing the national anthem or the flag, but the fate of tens of thousands of young Arabs who see their future expropriated by the state.

The violence spreading in the Arab towns and villages, the daylight murders in Nazareth and Lod, these things express the collapse of the Arab education system, the rising unemployment, the poverty, and the powerlessness of Arab local authorities who are unable to supply even basic services.

Lieberman isn’t really interested in ascertaining the loyalty of those seeking citizenship. He wants to question the loyalty of the entire Arab population. The amendment to the law is just a beginning. Last month in the UN General Assembly he already presented his vision for the state, according to which the land populated by Arabs should be transferred from Israel to the Palestinian Authority in exchange for West Bank settlements.

If Netanyahu and his government continue to provoke the Arab population they will turn the state into an Apartheid state, which will pull the rug from under the claim that Israel is both Jewish and democratic. The demand to define Israel as “a state of all its citizens” stems from the fact that in defining itself as “Jewish and democratic” Israel has failed to apply the second part of the equation. The “Jewishness” comes at the expense of democracy. Now, instead of taking the Arab demand for equality seriously, the government provokes again – not only will you not get a state of all its citizens, we intend to continue to exclude you and to discriminate against you in all areas of your life.

One could expect, perhaps, that a state recently accepted into the OECD, a state trying hard to integrate into the global economy, which presents itself as “the only democracy in the Middle East,” would change its attitude towards its Arab population. Reports from the Bank of Israel and various authorities, and the conclusions of the Orr Commission which investigated the events of October 2000, create the illusion that the state is in fact trying to address the problems of education, employment, health and other issues which the policy of discrimination has produced. However, between recognizing injustice and doing something to remedy it, there stands a rightwing government trumpeting a nationalist and racist ideology. The efforts of the present government to exacerbate the conflict also result in skepticism, self-seclusion and extreme nationalism among Arab citizens.

The clashes surrounding the character of the state have another aspect which has not been given sufficient attention. In fact, Israeli society is deeply divided today – not just between Jews and Arabs, but between Jews and Jews. The state advances discriminatory policies against all workers, whether Jewish or Arab: labor-contractor employees, college teachers, artists, truckers, industrial workers, and migrant laborers with their children. Their rights to a secure place of work with social benefits are withheld. “Jewish” Israel in fact serves just a rich minority, a handful of families who received property and assets from the state, and use them for their own benefit without social obligation or public responsibility. Thus, Lieberman’s position as the watchman of Jewish Israel sits happily with the fact that he is up to his ears in investigations on suspicion of corruption. And he is not alone – many politicians do likewise, on the one hand competing for the honor of most rightwing, on the other hand feathering their nests by groveling to the tycoons.

There is certainly a reason to discuss the character of the state. However, the vision that must be debated concerns the future of all the workers, Jews, Arabs and others. The only truly democratic state will be one whose resources are equally and justly distributed. Such a state will no longer need the definition “Jewish,” which perpetuates a false solidarity among Israel’s Jews and institutionalized discrimination against its Arab citizens.

Translated by Yonatan Preminger

By Yacov Ben Efrat

12 October, 2010

Challenge-mag.com

President Clinton’s precedent-setting visit to China filled the front pages of American newspapers and led the evening television news for many days this summer. The stories focused on his controversial decision to attend a welcoming ceremony in Tiananmen Square, despite the stain of what reporters called the massacre of Chinese students there on June 4, 1989.

Over the last decade, many American reporters and editors have accepted a mythical version of that warm, bloody night. They repeated it often before and during Clinton’s trip. On the day the president arrived in Beijing, a Baltimore Sun headline (June 27, page 1A) referred to “Tiananmen, where Chinese students died.” A USA Today article (June 26, page 7A) called Tiananmen the place “where pro-democracy demonstrators were gunned down.” The Wall Street Journal(June 26, page A10) described “the Tiananmen Square massacre” where armed troops ordered to clear demonstrators from the square killed “hundreds or more.” The New York Post (June 25, page 22) said the square was “the site of the student slaughter.”

The problem is this: as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square.

A few people may have been killed by random shooting on streets near the square, but all verified eyewitness accounts say that the students who remained in the square when troops arrived were allowed to leave peacefully. Hundreds of people, most of them workers and passersby, did die that night, but in a different place and under different circumstances.

The Chinese government estimates more than 300 fatalities. Western estimates are somewhat higher. Many victims were shot by soldiers on stretches of Changan Jie, the Avenue of Eternal Peace, about a mile west of the square, and in scattered confrontations in other parts of the city, where, it should be added, a few soldiers were beaten or burned to death by angry workers.

The resilient tale of an early morning Tiananmen massacre stems from several false eyewitness accounts in the confused hours and days after the crackdown. Human rights experts George Black and Robin Munro, both outspoken critics of the Chinese government, trace many of the rumor’s roots in their 1993 book, Black Hands of Beijing: Lives of Defiance in China’s Democracy Movement. Probably the most widely disseminated account appeared first in the Hong Kong press: a Qinghua University student described machine guns mowing down students in front of the Monument to the People’s Heroes in the middle of the square. The New York Timesgave this version prominent display on June 12, just a week after the event, but no evidence was ever found to confirm the account or verify the existence of the alleged witness. Times reporter Nicholas Kristof challenged the report the next day, in an article that ran on the bottom of an inside page; the myth lived on. Student leader Wu’er Kaixi said he had seen 200 students cut down by gunfire, but it was later proven that he left the square several hours before the events he described allegedly occurred.

Most of the hundreds of foreign journalists that night, including me, were in other parts of the city or were removed from the square so that they could not witness the final chapter of the student story. Those who tried to remain close filed dramatic accounts that, in some cases, buttressed the myth of a student massacre.

For example, CBS correspondent Richard Roth’s story of being arrested and removed from the scene refers to “powerful bursts of automatic weapons, raging gunfire for a minute and a half that lasts as long as a nightmare.” Black and Munro quote a Chinese eyewitness who says the gunfire was from army commandos shooting out the student loudspeakers at the top of the monument. A BBC reporter watching from a high floor of the Beijing Hotel said he saw soldiers shooting at students at the monument in the center of the square. But as the many journalists who tried to watch the action from that relatively safe vantage point can attest, the middle of the square is not visible from the hotel.

A common response to this corrective analysis is: So what? The Chinese army killed many innocent people that night. Who cares exactly where the atrocities took place? That is an understandable, and emotionally satisfying, reaction. Many of us feel bile rising in our throats at any attempt to justify what the Chinese leadership and a few army commanders did that night.

But consider what is lost by not giving an accurate account of what happened, and what such sloppiness says to Chinese who are trying to improve their press organs by studying ours. The problem is not so much putting the murders in the wrong place, but suggesting that most of the victims were students. Black and Munro say “what took place was the slaughter not of students but of ordinary workers and residents — precisely the target that the Chinese government had intended.” They argue that the government was out to suppress a rebellion of workers, who were much more numerous and had much more to be angry about than the students. This was the larger story that most of us overlooked or underplayed.

It is hard to find a journalist who has not contributed to the misimpression. Rereading my own stories published after Tiananmen, I found several references to the “Tiananmen massacre.” At the time, I considered this space-saving shorthand. I assumed the reader would know that I meant the massacre that occurred in Beijing after the Tiananmen demonstrations. But my fuzziness helped keep the falsehood alive. Given enough time, such rumors can grow even larger and more distorted. When a journalist as careful and well-informed as Tim Russert, NBC’s Washington bureau chief, can fall prey to the most feverish versions of the fable, the sad consequences of reportorial laziness become clear. On May 31 on Meet the Press, Russert referred to “tens of thousands” of deaths in Tiananmen Square.

The facts of Tiananmen have been known for a long time. When Clinton visited the square this June, both The Washington Post and The New York Times explained that no one died there during the 1989 crackdown. But these were short explanations at the end of long articles. I doubt that they did much to kill the myth.

Not only has the error made the American press’s frequent pleas for the truth about Tiananmen seem shallow, but it has allowed the bloody-minded regime responsible for the June 4 murders to divert attention from what happened. There was a massacre that morning. Journalists have to be precise about where it happened and who were its victims, or readers and viewers will never be able to understand what it meant.

4 June 2010

Written by Jay Mathews

Posted: 13 October 2010 16:20

Jay Mathews is an education reporter for The Washington Post. He was the paper’s first Beijing bureau chief and returned in 1989 to help cover the Tiananmen demonstrations. With his wife, Linda Mathews, he is the author of One Billion: A China Chronicle. This piece originally ran in the September/October 1998 issue of the Columbia Journalism Review.

On November 15, 1988 the Palestine National Council (P.N.C.) meeting in Algiers proclaimed the Palestinian Declaration of Independence that created the independent state of Palestine. Today the State of Palestine is bilaterally recognized de jure by about 130 states. Palestine has de facto diplomatic recognition from most of Europe. It was only massive political pressure applied by the U.S. government that prevented European states from according to Palestine de jure diplomatic recognition.

Palestine is a member state of the League of Arab States and of the Islamic Conference Organization. When the International Court of Justice in The Hague—the so-called World Court of the United Nations System—conducted its legal proceedings on Israel’s apartheid wall on the West Bank, the World Court invited the State of Palestine to participate in the proceedings. In other words, the International Court of Justice recognized the State of Palestine.

Palestine has Observer State Status with the United Nations Organization, and basically all the rights of a U.N. Member State except the right to vote. Effectively, Palestine has de facto U.N. Membership. The only thing keeping Palestine from de jure U.N. Membership is the implicit threat of a veto at the U.N. Security Council by the United States, which is clearly illegal. Someday Palestine shall be a full-fledged U.N. Member State.

From a world-order perspective, the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence created a remarkable opportunity for peace with Israel because therein the P.N.C. explicitly accepted the U.N. General Assembly’s Partition Resolution 181(II) of 1947 that called for the creation of a Jewish state and an Arab state in the Mandate for Palestine, together with an international trusteeship for the City of Jerusalem, in order to resolve their basic conflict:

Despite the historical injustice inflicted on the Palestinian Arab people resulting in their dispersion and depriving them of their right to self-determination following upon U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), which partitioned Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish, yet it is this Resolution that still provides those conditions of international legitimacy that ensure the right of the Palestinian Arab people to sovereignty and national independence.

The significance of the P.N.C.’s acceptance of the Partition Resolution in the Palestinian Declaration of Independence itself could not be over-emphasized. Prior thereto, from the perspective of the Palestinian People the Partition Resolution had been deemed to be a criminal act that was perpetrated upon them by the United Nations Organization in gross violation of their fundamental right to self-determination as recognized by the United Nations Charter and general principles of public international law. The acceptance of the Partition Resolution in their actual Declaration of Independence signaled the genuine desire by the Palestinian People to transcend the past century of bitter conflict with the Jewish People living illegally in their midst in order to reach an historic accommodation with them on the basis of a two-state solution.

The very fact that this acceptance of Partition Resolution 181 was set forth in their Declaration of Independence indicated the degree of sincerity with which the Palestinian People accepted Israel. The Declaration of Independence was the foundational document for the State of Palestine. It was intended to be determinative, definitive, and irreversible. As the P.N.C. well knew at the time, their Declaration of Independence was not something that could be amended or bargained away.

Nonetheless, the Palestinians have now fruitlessly spent the past twenty-two years trying to negotiate in good faith with Israel over the two-state solution set forth in Resolution 181. They have gotten absolutely nowhere. Israel has never demonstrated one iota of good faith when it came to negotiating a comprehensive Middle Peace settlement with the Palestinians on the basis of a two-state solution. Even the 1993 Oslo Agreement was nothing more than an Israeli-drafted interim Bantustan arrangement for five years that was rejected in Washington, D.C. by the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations for that precise reason. Both Israel and the United States now want to make the Oslo Bantustan permanent and, incidental thereto, destroy the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes as required by U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) of 1948 and general principles of public international law.

In this regard, shortly before he died on September 24, 2007, I called up the former Head of the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations, Dr. Haidar Abdul Shaffi at his home in Gaza in order to review the entire situation with him. According to Dr. Haidar: “The Zionists have not changed their objectives since the Basel Conference of 1897!” In other words, the Zionists want a “Greater” Israel on all of the Mandate for Palestine together with as much ethnic cleansing of Palestinians out of Palestine that the Zionists believe they can get away with internationally.

After twenty-two years of getting nowhere but further screwed to Israel’s apartheid wall on the West Bank and strangulated in Gaza, it is now time for the Palestinians to adopt a new strategy, which I most respectfully recommend here for them to consider: Sign nothing and let Israel collapse! Recently it was reported that the United States’ own Central Intelligence Agency predicted the collapse of Israel within twenty years. My most respectful advice to the Palestinians is to let Israel so collapse!

For the Palestinians to sign any type of comprehensive peace treaty with Israel would only shore up, consolidate, and guarantee the existence of Zionism and Zionists in Palestine forever. Why would the Palestinians want to do that? Without approval by the Palestinians in writing, Zionism and Israel in Palestine will collapse. So the Palestinians must not sign any Middle East Peace Treaty with Israel, but rather must keep the pressure on Israel for the collapse of Zionism over the next two decades as predicted by the Central Intelligence Agency. The correct historical analogue here is not apartheid South Africa, but instead the genocidal Yugoslavia that collapsed as a State, lost its U.N. Membership, and no longer exists as a State for that very reason.

All the demographic forces are in favor of the Palestinians and against the Zionists. The United States government is tired of its blank-check support for Israel because this policy seriously undermines and conflicts with America’s imperial objective to obtain the oil and gas lying beneath Arab and Muslim states by hook or by crook. Israel is ridden with and paralyzed by so many internal contradictions and conflicts that they are too numerous to list here.

Indeed, from the very moment of its inception as a direct result of the Zionists’ genocidal al Nakba in 1948, Israel has been the proverbial failed state, and still is so today. Israel would have never come into existence without the support of Western colonial imperial powers throughout the twentieth century. And the same is true today. Without the political, economic, diplomatic, and military support provided primarily by the United States, and to a lesser extent by Britain, France, and Germany, Israel would immediately collapse. The international Campaign for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (B.D.S.) against Israel is quickly whittling away Israel’s domestic support in those countries. Israel’s own serial barbarous atrocities perpetrated against the Palestinians and the Lebanese have revealed the true face of Zionism for the entire world to see: genocide.

In fact, Israel has never been a State but just an Army masquerading as a State — a Potemkin Village of a State. Israel is the archetypal Great Band of Robbers described by St. Augustine in Book 4, Chapter 4 of The City of God:

Kingdoms without justice are similar to robber barons. And so if justice is left out, what are kingdoms except great robber bands? For what are robber bands except little kingdoms? The band also is a group of men governed by the orders of a leader, bound by social compact, and its booty is divided according to a law agreed upon. If by repeatedly adding desperate men this plague grows to the point where it holds territory and establishes a fixed seat, seizes cites and subdues peoples, then it more conspicuously assumes the name of kingdom, and this name is now openly granted to it, not for any subtraction of cupidity, but by addition of impunity….

All of these political, economic, military, diplomatic, sociological, psychological, and demographic forces are working in favor of the Palestinians and against Israel and the Zionists in Palestine. It will take a few more years for these historical forces to predominate and then to prevail. But the proverbial handwriting is on the wall for the Zionist Enterprise in Palestine for the entire world to see, including and especially the C.I.A. Even large numbers of Zionists living in Israel have already prepared their parachutes, and their exit plans, and their landing zones to go elsewhere in the world. There is no reason for the Palestinians to give the Zionists a new lease on life in Palestine by signing any sort of peace treaty with Israel.

It is obvious that soon Zionism will enter into Trotsky’s “ashcan” of history along with every other nationalistic “ism” that has plagued humankind during the twentieth century: Nazism, Fascism, Francoism, Phalangism, Stalinism, Maoism, etc. The only thing that could save Zionism in Palestine is for the Palestinians to conclude any type of so-called comprehensive Middle East Peace treaty with Israel. It is for precisely that reason then that the Palestinians must sign nothing and let Israel collapse of its own weight over the next two decades.

Millions of Palestinians have waited in refugee camps since 1948 in order to return to their homes, that is for 62 years. They can wait a little longer until Israel collapses within 20 years. Otherwise, for the Palestinians to sign a comprehensive peace treaty with Israel means that they will never be able to return to their homes as required by Resolution 194 of 1948. History and demography are on the side of Palestine and the Palestinians against Israel and the Zionists. But the Palestinians must allow history and demography a little bit more time in order to produce the collapse of Israel and Zionism in Palestine. Twenty years is but the blink of an eye in the millennia-long history of the Palestinian People, who are the original indigenous inhabitants of Palestine. God had no right to steal Palestine from the Palestinians and give Palestine to the Jews to begin with. A fortiori the United Nations had no right to steal Palestine from the Palestinians and give Palestine to the Zionists in 1947.

In the meantime, the Palestinians must keep up the pressure on Israel, Zionism and the Zionists in Palestine. The Palestinians have a perfect right under international law to resist an illegal, colonial, genocidal, criminal, military occupation regimé of their lands and of their homes and of their People that goes back to 1948 so long as it is done in a manner consistent with the requirements of international humanitarian law. Simultaneously, the Palestinians must continue to build their state from the ground up as they have been doing successfully since the first Intifada began in 1987 with its grassroots Unified Leadership of the Intifada.

Internationally, the Palestinians must continue their diplomatic and political and legal offensive against Israel. Palestine has gained enormous ground since November 15, 1988 when the P.N.C. proclaimed the independent State of Palestine. Palestine will continue to gain more support internationally over the next two decades, including the accelerating B.D.S. campaign that will delegitimize Israel and Zionism all around the world. At the same time, Israel will continue its rapid descent into pariah state status along the lines of the genocidal Yugoslavia that collapsed as a state and no longer exists. Israel will meet the same fate as the genocidal Yugoslavia provided the Palestinians do not sign any type of international peace agreement with Israel.

When Israel collapses, most Zionists will have already left or will soon leave for other states around the world. The Palestinians will then be able to claim all of the historic Mandate for Palestine as their State, including the entire City of Jerusalem as their Capital. Palestine will then be able to invite all of its refugees to return to their homes pursuant to Resolution 194.

Some Jews will remain in Palestine either voluntarily or involuntarily. Palestine and the Palestinians will treat the remaining Jews fairly. Palestine and the Palestinians will not do to the Jews what Israel, Zionism, and the Zionists have done to the Palestinians.

The Palestinians must sign nothing and let Israel collapse!

Countercurrents.org

Written by Francis A. Boyle

Posted: 02 October 2010 16:51

University of Illinois Law Professor Francis A. Boyle served as Legal Advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization on the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence; to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations from 1991 to 1993; and to H.E. Chairman and President Yasser Arafat. The story is told in his book “Palestine, Palestinians and International Law” (Clarity Press: 2003).