April 1, 2002
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Whole Body Health
Attorney General John Ashcroft's office said the explosive story of an Israeli spy network of bogus art students operating across the United States (described in AFP on March 18 and March 24) is an "urban myth," but other law enforcement officials say otherwise.
The important details of a massive Israeli spy ring that operated across the United States—employing Israeli intelligence agents posing as "art students" to gain access to sensitive U.S. government offices, defense companies, and the private homes of employees of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)—are starting to emerge.
What has now become clear is that the agents and modus operandi of the ring were known by the highest levels of government and that policies were changed to counter the threat of Israeli surveillance through computer networks.
The explosive story of the Israeli spy ring, discovered operating in the United States last year, and the 61-page DEA task-force report that contained the details about this spy ring was first revealed in detail on March 4 by Intelligence Online (IO), a well-respected Internet news service based in Paris, France.
IO's story elaborated in some respects on earlier findings by Carl Cameron of Fox News who referenced the "Israeli art students" as part of his much larger story (See AFP, Dec. 24, 2001 and Jan. 7/14, 2002).
The IO story was picked up by the leading French daily, Le Monde, and, in some respects, by the Associated Press, but was just as quickly dropped.
Referring to the reports, the March 15 issue of Forward, one of the oldest and most respected Jewish newspapers in America, commented that: "Despite angry denials by Israel and its American supporters, reports that Israel was conducting spying activities in the United States may have a grain of truth, the For ward has learned." Forward commented smugly that: "Both the French and the Fox reports were dismissed by Israel and its supporters and received limited coverage in the American media."
LeMonde and Fox (as well as IO) suggested the likelihood that these Israeli operatives were spying on Arab terrorist cells operating in the United States and almost certainly had advance knowledge about the impending 9-11 attacks—a theory that inflamed Israel and its American supporters. The Associated Press was careful not to mention any of this aspect of the story.
A British intelligence and military analysis publication, Jane's Information Group, noted the peculiar absence of reporting in the American media on the "explosive story" of the huge network of Israeli spies that made headlines around the world:
"It is rather strange that the U.S. media . . . seem to be ignoring what may well prove to be the most explosive story since the Sept. 11 attack, the alleged breakup of a major Israeli espionage operation in the United States which aimed to infiltrate both the Justice and Defense departments and which may also have been tracking al Qaeda terrorists before the aircraft hijackings took place."
Reports of Israeli "art students" calling on DEA employees across the country began as early as January 2000 and continued through June 2001.
What is not clear is what the ring of more than 120 agents was up to and why some Israelis linked to the attacks in New York and Washington were allowed to flee or were sent back to Israel, after Sept. 11 on visa violations, rather than being charged and prosecuted.
The "art students" are reported to be active agents in electronic surveillance units of the Israeli military.
The Israelis covered the country in "organized" teams of eight to 10 people, with each group having a team leader. The DEA document lists the Israelis' military and intelligence specialties as "special forces," "intelligence officer," "demolition/explosive ordnance specialist," "bodyguard to head of Israeli army," "electronic intercept operator," and "son of a two-star (Israeli) army general."
American intelligence services have become worried by the dominance of Israeli companies in sensitive areas of telecommunications. One Israeli company, Comverse Infosys (now called Verint) has provided law enforcement agencies with computer equipment for wiretapping.
It is thought that the equipment came with "catch gates" that allowed the Israelis to listen in.
Software made by Amdocs, another Israeli outfit records virtually every call placed through the 25 largest U.S. telephone companies.
The relationship of these companies to the detained Israelis is detailed in the 60-page document.
The DEA document reveals that many of the Israeli operatives had addresses in San Diego, Little Rock, Irving (Tex.) and South Florida very close to the homes of Arabs suspected of involvement in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The alleged hijacker, Mohammad Atta, lived at 3389 Sheridan St. in Hollywood, Fla., while a few blocks away, at 4220 Sheridan, a group of the Israelis resided.
Especially in Florida, where 10 of the 19 alleged Sept. 11 terrorists lived, the revelations about the Israeli activities bolster speculation that the Israelis had advance knowledge but did not pass intelligence on to the U.S.
A Justice Department official briefed on an ongoing multi-agency task force investigating the Israeli spy ring was quoted by newsweekly Insight as having said: "We think there is something quite sinister here but are unable at this time to put our finger on it."
Another law-enforcement official said: "The higher-ups don't want to deal with this and neither does the FBI because it involves Israel."
The DEA report found that several military bases also had experienced unauthorized entries by the Israelis including two bases from which Stealth aircraft and other supersecret military units operate.
Unauthorized photographing of military sites and civilian industrial complexes, such as petroleum-storage facilities, also was reported, the document confirms.
In great detail, the DEA document contains "scores of encounters" between federal agents and Israeli agents posing as art students. The seemingly innocuous cover was used to gain access to sensitive U.S. offices and military installations, such as MacDill Air Force Base in March 2001, and Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City one month later, where "a special alert" was issued because of the aggressive Israeli agents. Tinker houses AWACS surveillance planes and repairs B-1 bombers.
The Oklahoman, prompted by the French revelations, recently reported that 10 months ago four of the Israeli agents carrying military IDs were detained at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma.
In virtually every incident reported by the DEA field-offices the Israelis used the same methods: Israelis would attempt to enter secure buildings, take photographs, follow federal agents when they left buildings, show up at their homes and circle their neighborhoods, visiting their houses and then departing. At a DEA agent's house in Chicago, Israelis were so aggressive the police were called.
SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITIES
One report, titled "Suspicious Activities Involving Israeli Art Students at DEA Facilities," lists more than 180 documented-incident cases.
"The nature of the individuals' conduct, combined with intelligence information and historical information regarding past incidents involving Israeli organized crime, leads IS [DEA's Internal Security division] to believe the incidents may well be an organized intelligence-gathering activity," said one classified document quoted by Insight.
"This is very odd behavior under any situation," says a DEA official who had heard but not yet seen the reports until Insight shared them. "The patterns are clear and they pose a significant danger to our officers in the field."
Guillaume Dasquie, of IO, told American Free Press that he had acquired solid evidence of the authenticity of the DEA document, and would reveal new evidence to counter claims made by the Department of Justice that there had been "no case of Israeli espionage" in the United States and that the matter was "an urban myth."
The Israeli spy ring was "examined at the highest levels of the Bush administration," according to Dasquie.
On March 13, IO was informed by an official at the Department of Justice that the report had been handed over to the department's Joint Terrorism Task Force. The same day, at a DEA press conference, the agency's administrator, Asa Hutchinson, said that he had passed the document along to "other agencies" working on the matter.
On March 14, IO said it has a copy of a memorandum dated March 4 and signed by Robert Diegelman, assistant attorney general for administration. The memo was addressed to officials in charge of the Justice Department's information systems. It called on them to forbid information system access to all non-U.S. citizens and no longer use foreign-supplied computer and communication gear.
The memo referred to a warning entitled Department of Justice Order 2640.2D Information Technology Security and sent out on last July 12 which cautioned against using information technology sold by foreign firms.
The warning of July 12 confirmed that the DEA's re port was a security concern at the highest level.
The DEA task force issued an initial report in June of last year that listed the names of 125 Israeli nationals and described their activities in the United States. The document suggests that the ring had infiltrated federal buildings, according to IO, and that Israeli computer companies sell equipment to U.S. government departments.
The DEA purchased $25 million worth of interception equipment from a number of Israeli companies named in the report in September 1997.
An AP report from Washington on March 9 confirmed that the DEA document had been the joint work of a task force. The AP report confirmed that several of the Israelis had never enrolled in the art colleges they claimed to attend in Israel.
In addition, IO reported: "We've also obtained an internal document from the US Coast Guard, an Intelligence Bulletin dated Jan. 17, 2002. Reserved for security bosses in America's biggest companies, the bulletin regularly tracks all attempts to penetrate protected sites recorded by the US Coast Guard."
According to IO: The Jan. 17 issue described the case of a man and woman "of Middle East origin" taking pictures of a refinery. When questioned they said they were "art students" even though they were able to discuss technical details concerning refineries.
Other cases of suspicious activity were also recorded.
A spokesman for Attorney General John Ashcroft initially attempted to dismiss the story as an "urban myth." However, the New York-based Forward effectively exposed Ashcroft's prevarication when it admitted on March 15:
In March 2001, the federal National Counter intelligence Executive issued a warning urging employees to report all contact with people describing themselves as Israeli art students. It said some had gone to private residences of senior U.S. officials under the guise of selling art.
"These individuals have been described as aggressive," the warning said.
However, the warning added that there may be two groups involved, one with an "apparently legitimate money-making goal while the second, perhaps a non-Israeli group, may have ties to a Middle Eastern Islamic fundamentalist group."
The idea that two such groups were operating at the same time (and that one may have been a "non-Israeli group" presumably posing as Israelis) should raise questions. Some might suggest that a group of Israelis operating in the United States were actually posing as Arabs—a possibility first broached by AFP on Dec. 24.
Forward rushes to the defense of Israel and suggests that "far from pointing to Israeli spying against U.S. government and military facilities . . . the incidents in question appear to represent a case of Israelis in the United States spying on a common enemy, radical Islamic networks suspected of links to Middle East terrorism."
Attempting to put a positive spin on the revelations, Forward
contends that tensions between the United States and Israel arise
not from the fact that the United States believed the Israelis
were spying on Americans, but because the Israelis had failed
to advise the United States that they were engaged in spying against
Arabs on American soil.
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The first microchips will be implanted in U.S. citizens. Where will it lead?
VeriChip, a hotly debated implantable microchip, is currently being reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration for use in humans as an implanted ID that would store medical or security information.
It is initially touted as a means of quickly providing critical medical information, especially in cases where the patient is unable to communicate. But civil libertarians have expressed concern that eventually such chips could contain all of an individual's private information where it could be abused in "Big Brother" fashion.
Applied Digital Solutions Inc. (ADS) on Feb. 7 announced the formation of VeriChip (TM) Corporation, as a new subsidiary. On Dec. 19, 2001, ADS first announced the VeriChip, an implantable device about the size of a grain of rice that can be used to store information about the person who carries the implant.
"Miniaturized, implantable identification technology with multiple medical, security, and emergency applications" is the motto of VeriChip Corporation.
ADS and VeriChip plan to market the chip in the United States as a medical device that would allow hospital workers to download medical information instantly when they are handling implanted patients.
VeriChip initially stated that the chip would be marketed solely as a voluntary implant for medical purposes, but recently has asked for government permission to market the chip to be used for ID purposes in airports nuclear power plants ans other high-security facilities reports CBN news.
The VeriChip is not the first of its kind. In 2000, ADS quietly introduced its "Angel" technology, the precursor to the VeriChip. Angel technology was an inplantable chip much like the VeriChip that could be used to track humans by Global Positioning Satellite.
Angel technology was proposed in a two-step fashion: First, as an external wristwatch receiver and then as an implant. Angel's marketing also focused on its potential medical uses, for use on people with Alzheimer's and other mind-impairing diseases, but at the time there was little public support for such a device.
CEO Richard Sullivan remarked, "With the recent tragedy [Sept.11], it is our duty to expedite the development process and offer Digital Angel in its current beta form to the rescue efforts of all agencies connected with national and personal safety and security," adding that "Digital Angel has many applications that can be used during this national tragedy."
Since the chip has been announced, it has sparked a great deal of debate in media, provoking headlines like "VeriChip likely to face privacy issue debate," and "Company wants to get under your skin with ID," and "A microchip makes it's mark: VeriChip and the beast."
Supporters say that the VeriChip is an advancement of technology that will be used to store medical information and perhaps be used to increase security. But many worry that such a device would take away from individual privacy, and also worry that such a chip might be required, or forced upon citizens.
Christian have been reported to criticize the VeriChip due to its likeness to the Bible's reference to "the mark of the beast" in the book of Revelation where it says:
He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. (Rev. 13:16, NIV Translation)
Others are less skeptical about the chip. A civilian family of three in Boca Raton, Fla., has already volunteered to be the first humans to be implanted with the microchip, though Dr. Richard Seelig, medical advisor for ADS, has already given himself the implant in advance of FDA approval.
The family of three is among 50 or so volunteers who are ready to get the implant in early tests. They are only waiting for FDA approval.
Seelig implanted a chip in his arm and his hip area a few months ago.
"Yes, it's in my right forearm and there is no bump or anything that you can really see," Seelig told CBN News.
If there are no delays the implantable microchip will be on the market in less than a year, reports Stephanie Murphy of The Palm Beach Daily News. The Implant will cost around $200.
On Jan. 24 ADS announced the VeriChip had signed a Latin American marketer as its first customer. The initial orders "exceed $300,000 with anticipated first year revenue approaching $2 million. Additional international orders, valued at $1.5 million are under legal review and nearing completion," reports the Palm Beach Business Wire.
The technology for the VeriChip was originally developed by
Destron Fearing a subsidiary of ADS, to track laboratory animals
and livestock and help locate lost pet cats and dogs.
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If America goes to war with Iraq a nuclear powder keg might ignite.
A Swedish military expert has warned that America's expected war with Iraq may turn nuclear, with Israel firing the first salvo. Col Lars O. Nordmark, a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of War, recently warned in an article in the Swedish national publication Svenska Dagbladet that a war against Iraq might get out of control and become "the first atomic war since that against Japan in 1945."
It is peculiar," Nordmark wrote, that "the war against terrorism seems to coincide with the interests of the Bush family and of the U.S. in the oil business.
"First, Afghanistan was attacked, which has large unexplored oil reserves. The Bush administration has promised to stay for a long time in Afghanistan. The Iraq, which has maybe the greatest oil reserves in the Arab world next to Saudi Arabia."
Noting that "Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared that Israel will not again wait for Saddam's missiles to hit the country," Nordmark fears that Israel may "preventively launch a first nuclear strike" to keep Iraq from striking with chemical and biological agents delivered by its known arsenal of Scud missiles.
Scud missiles were fired into Israel by Iraq during the Persian Gulf War of a decade ago, but they were armed with conventional warheads. Since then, Iraq during the Persian Gulf War of a decade ago, but they were armed with conventional warheads. Since then, Iraq is believed to have improved the accuracy of thes Scuds, which if fitted with chemical or biological warheads do not have to be precise to cause widespread death.
"An attack against Iraq," Nordmark warns, "is probably the biggest adventure in security policy since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962."
The exact size of Israel's nuclear arsenal is not know. However,
there is certainty that it is large, with means of delivery including
missiles, aircraft and naval vessels. The U.S. government under
successive presidents has largely ignored Israel's proliferation
of nuclear arms for offensive and defensive purposes.
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Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) said on March 18 that he would delay Senate action on border-security legislation because it includes amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens.
"It is lunacy - sheer lunacy - that the president would request, and the House would pass, such amnesty at this time," Byrd said from the Senate floor. "That point seems obvious to the American people, if not to the administration."
Byrd can delay consideration of the legislation for some time, because the Senate's calendar is full and the Bill's best chance would have been to move through the chamber by unanimous consent - which a single senator can stop. Normally,, such legislation "at the desk" to pass by unanimous consent is of a mundane, non-controversial nature.
In the March 25 issue, AFP provided more details on the House bill and printed the roll call vote.
There is everything bad and nothing good about the Immigration Extension Act (H.R. 1885) now pending in the Senate.
In a paradox only Congress could deliver, the legislation, touted as increasing border protections, actually reduces homeland security by allowing hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions - of illegal aliens to remain in the countryy while their applications for permanent, legal residency are being processed.
Unlike foreigners who follow the laws when attempting to enter this country, illegal aliens are to have their applications mass-produced. While their illegal presence makes them criminals they are to have no background checks.
How many terrorists will reside here after being "legalized?" Nobody will know until the bombs explode, planes ram the Capitol or similar acts occur.
Some of the alleged 9-11 terrorists were criminal aliens, having overstayed their visas. There is little to stop a terrorist, criminal or spy from just crossing the Mexican border.
It is hard to imagine greater treachery than deliberately endangering the United states to pander to Hispanic votes - at least one million non-citizens cast ballots illegally in 2000.
House members frankly stated that they were pressured by President Bush to pass the amnesty legislation to curry favor with Hispanic voters.
The politicians would make hash out of America's immigration laws for the hope of votes. Americans who have obeyed the law and gone through the naturalization process to become voting citizens should resent this treachery and irresp9onsibility. Voters should fire congressmen who voted for the bill as unfit for their jobs. To go to low-paid illegal aliens to enhance corporate profits at the expense of the American taxpayer.
Illegal aliens exploit Americans in numerous ways. For example, if you have paid a hospital bill - for maternity or any other care - in the past 40 years, you have subsidized the treatment of illegal aliens. Under federal law, they must be treated even though they can't pay.
Hospitals compensate for this loss by charging you more.
Now is the time to contact your two senators and tell them
to oppose this legislation. It pardons illegal activity and it
undermines hardworking taxpayers.
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The super-secret gang of international financiers and high-powered political leaders will hide out near Washington's Dulles International Airport to hold their annual confabulation.
Bilderberg will seal off the Westfields
Marriott, just seven miles south of Washington's Dulles International
Airport in Chantilly, Va., for its annual meeting of the super-rich
and super-famous on the weekend of May 30-June 2.
While it is the closest Bilderberg has ever come to Washington for annual secret meetings to plot the world's future, Westfields is ideal for the security-paranoid international elite. Westfields stands in lonely grandeur with much space separating the resort from tall brick buildings in a luxury "office park."
Perhaps coincidentally, neighboring office buildings are home to numerous spy organizations.
The last time Bilderberg met in Virginia was 1962, when the secret gang of international financiers and political leaders took over all of Colonial Williamsburg in Williamsburg, Va. Bilderberg tends to meet on the same continent as the Group of Eight economic summits, which follow shortly afterwards, featuring heads of state from the world's industrialized nations. The G-8 will meet in Alberta, Canada June 26-28.
Bilderberg's junior varsity, the Trilateral Commission, will meet April 5-7 in Washington at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Bilderberg and the TC have an interlocking leadership and a common global agenda. David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger are powers in both groups.
Trilaterals have about 320 participants while the more exclusive Bilderberg has about 120. The TC includes Japan, while Bilderberg draws only from Europe and North America. Both high-powered groups plan the future, together, of the entire world.
BILDERBERG'S AGENDA
High on their common agenda this year is how to exploit "the war on terrorism" to increase their control of the "world without borders" while generating immense profits. The Trilaterals will meet behind closed doors at the Ritz Carlton but not seal off the entire downtown hotel. Bilderberg will have armed guards blocking the entrance to Westfields and none but participants will be permitted inside. There will be no other guests.
Sources inside both groups say they will try to exploit the new "war on terrorism" to advance an old agenda: Establishing NATO formally as the United Nations' standing army, imposing a direct UN tax on the world, global gun control and selling the Free Trade Area of the Americas as a "necessary step to ward off future attacks."
It is all part of a grand design to establish a world government under the UN. As NAFTA expands through out the Western Hemisphere as the FTAA it is to evolve into the "American Union" and "dollarization" is to be come the common currency, as the euro is in Europe. Bilderberg luminaries have directly acknowledged this to an American Free Press reporter.
Other Bilderberg sources said the site near Washing ton was chosen for several reasons.
Dulles is considered one of the most secure airports in the wake of 9-11 and it is a short ride in flag-draped limos to Westfields. While instant communication with the White House has always been easy, wherever in the world Bilderberg hides, it is a 30-mile drive for any high official of the administration who may be summoned on short notice. High officials of the administration will be attending the full three-day session anyway.
But more are prepared to come like a dog to the whistle if
called.
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The Bilderberg Group takes its name from the hotel in Holland where the group met in 1954, during the earliest period of its inception. It meets regularly (presumably on a once-a-year basis) at various locations around the world, always in extreme secrecy, often at resorts controlled by either the Rockefeller or Rothschild families. The Rothschild family is the leading European force within the Bilderberg Group, sharing its power with the American based Rockefeller empire.
Bilderberg has about 120 participants composed of elites from the United States and Western Europe, primarily from the NATO countries.
Representatives from the former Soviet Union and East Bloc countries attended recent gatherings, however. The globalist group maintains an extremely low profile and never publishes reports or studies for the public, at least under its own official aegis.
Bilderberg participants and many newspapers have denied the
group's very existence for decades until forced into the open
by the glare of media publicity, generated largely by the court-killed
Spotlight and its newsletter-format predecessors, Liberty Letter
and Liberty Lowdown.
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Bush says he wants to avoid calling for a draft to invade Iraq and take over Saddam Hussein's oil wells. But the military says he's short of boys and girls to do the job. Will another "terrorist attack" charge up american patriotic spirit to get enough volunteers?
According to a source close to the administration, President Bush ordered a Pentagon study on the number of additional troops needed to continue his universal "war on terrorism" around the globe. He also asked for the number needed for an invasion of Iraq and capture of its oil wells.
On Feb. 26 Bush was informed in a top secret report that some 56,000 additional boys and girls are needed to continue the global "war on terrorism" and an additional 125,000 to 150,000 are needed if he decides to invade Iraq.
Unfortunately, such a large number of additional combat soldiers would require a draft, something that America's mothers and fathers would strongly oppose unless another terrorist attack on America happens. In that event there would be plenty of patriotic young folks volunteering.
Rumors in Washington have been circulating that Bush has discussed at the highest levels the possibility of re-instituting the draft to shore up the ranks of the U.S. military which have been stretched thin by the growing war on terror. However, when questioned specifically about it, during a press conference, Bush denied it, saying that the volunteer army was working fine.
In its issue of Oct.8 last year, AFP reported on the revelations of James Bamford in his book, Body of Secrets*, that in 1961 American officials, following President Eisenhower's directive, actively planned to launch terrorist attacks on American citizens and blame Fidel Castro's communist Cuba. The code name for this criminal plan was called "Operation Northwoods."
Although Bamford's book received some media play, his shocking revelations regarding the terror campaign proposed by then-Jount Chiefs of Staff chairman, Army General Lyman Lemnitzer, were largely suppressed. Bamford wrote:
According to documents obtained for Body of Secrets, Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs proposed secretly to stage and attack on the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - and then Blame the violent action on Castro. Convinced that Cuba had launched an unprovoked attack on the United states, the unwitting American public would then support the Joint Chief's bloody Caribbean War. After all, who would believe Castro's denials over the word of the Pentagon's top military commanders? The nation's most senior military leadership proposed to launch a war, which would no doubt kill many American servicemen, based solely on a fabric of lies.
On January 19, just hours before [then-president Dwight] Eisenhower left office, Lemnitzer gave his approval to the proposal. As events progressed, the plan would become only the tip of a very large and secret iceberg.
Lemnitzer kept his initial plan in cold storage. However, after Kennedy's Bay of Pigs fiasco, Lemnitzer reinvigorated his scheme as "Operation Northwoods."
Bamford reports that:
The plan, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phoney evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war.
* Body of Secrets (#286, hardback, 720 pages, $29) is
available from The Barnes Review Book Club, by writing P.O. Box
15877, Washington, D.C. 20003. Call toll free 1-877-773-9077 to
order by Visa or MasterCard.
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You read much in the mainstream press about the brutality of Palestinian children pelting invading Israeli soldiers with rocks, but how much do you read about women and children being deliberately killed by Israeli soldiers using U.S.-financed tanks and other weapons?
As Israeli occupation forces targeted innocent civilians, foreign peace activists, journalists and emergency medical personnel, the Israeli government was accused of war crimes and state-sponsored terror.
When Israeli forces invaded Ramallah in the early hours on Good Friday, the first victim was a 21-year-old American mother, who was killed by Israeli soldiers who ambushed her car.
The American woman, Suraida Saleh, born in Washington, D.C., was sitting in the passenger seat holding her 9-month-old son Muhsin as her husband Morad, a journalist with the Palestinian Broadcasting Company, drove their car to the safety of her father's house. A group of undercover Israeli soldiers dressed like Arabs stood in the shadows of an upcoming intersection. As the car approached, the Israelis opened fire without warning, shooting Suraida in the head and the chest. She died instantly.
Morad was hit with five bullets: two in his head, two in his shoulder, and one in his hand. The Israelis, assuming that all of the occupants were dead, left the scene. Morad regained consciousness to find his dead young wife slumped over their child. Miraculously, little Muhsin was unharmed.
Wounded, Morad took Muhsin out of the lifeless arms of Suraida and began walking toward the home of his in-laws, but he collapsed, and both he and his son fell to the pavement. Israeli soldiers delayed the ambulance for two hours at a checkpoint, according to Global Peace.
The Saleh family was unable for more than four days to retrieve Suraida's body from the morgue to give her a proper burial.
"They killed her in cold blood, and now my grandson will grow up not knowing the mother who gave birth to him," her father said. "I called the American consulate so that they could help me get Suraida's body, and they promised me on Saturday, and on Sunday, and today, and still nothing. I don't think that they care about us because we are Arab-Americans. If we were American Jews they would put pressure on Israel. But for us, nothing."
Dozens of American families living in Ramallah have complained to the American Consulate in Jerusalem that the Israeli army had invaded and ransacked their homes and businesses, stealing property and money.
After five days of siege, the hospital in Ramallah was compelled to dig a mass grave in the parking lot to bury 30 Palestinians.
The last to die was a grandmother who had been shot by an Israeli sniper as she walked from the hospital gates. The woman, Weedad Safran, had just had a cast removed from a broken leg and had made it 50 yards down the road with her cane when she was shot dead.
"She was wearing a skirt. She had a veil on her head. Everyone could tell she was a woman. There was no mistaking her," said Dr. Ahmed Haleem of the hospital's emergency room. Haleem watched from a window as she fell. When a group of medics in white coats went with a stretcher to retrieve her body, they were also shot at.
As Israel launched a massive attack on Bethlehem, American-made Apache helicopter gun ships were used to fire missiles into and around Manger Square and the Church of the Nativity as 300 tanks moved in to the site where Jesus is believed to have been born.
Inside a monastery near Manger Square, Father Severino, a Catholic priest, said the Church of the Nativity had come under "Israeli bombardment."
Israeli troops besieged the church on April 3 as some 150 Palestinians, including about 20 wounded, sought refuge inside.
A Christian teenager, Johnny Thaljieh, was shot and killed in Manger Square on the eve of Easter. The boy was hit by a large-caliber bullet, apparently fired from an Israeli position half a mile away with a clear line of sight into the square.
"There were no armed people around us," Thaljieh's father said. "We thought the Manger Square was a safe place."
At the Santa Maria Convent at least six nuns were reported to have been wounded, some in critical condition, when their church was attacked by Israeli troops.
Several churches were damaged by the Israeli at tacks; however, journalists and diplomats have been pre vented from entering Bethlehem.
CORPSES IN MANGER SQUARE
A Palestinian woman and her son were killed by Israeli machine guns mounted on tanks that fired into their home in Bethlehem. Like many others, they bled to death because Israeli forces blocked ambulances.
Bodies of dead Palestinians are reportedly scattered around Manger Square, in front of the Church of the Nativity.
The Russian Orthodox Church sent an angry message to Israel demanding an immediate withdrawal from a Russian church building Israeli troops had occupied.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said it is unable to answer hundreds of calls from the sick and wounded, and its regional chief was reported to have been detained and beaten by the army.
A UN convoy bringing medical supplies to Ramallah hospital was fired upon by the Israeli army after having been given permission to pass.
"The [Israeli] behavior toward the medical teams and to the sick and injured has been appalling," Red Crescent official Husam Sharkawi told the BBC.
The Israeli army has declared entire Palestinian cities, including Ramallah and Bethlehem, to be "closed military areas" and forcibly expelled journalists, including a CBS television crew, while it continued to wreak havoc on the civilian population. CNN and NBC correspondents in the Palestinian city of Ramallah were warned that they were violating Israeli law.
Israeli troops committed a massacre in Ramallah on Good Friday at the Cairo-Amman bank, killing five men according to Peter Beaumont of The Observer, who saw the bodies.
The Israeli government revoked the press cards of correspondents from Abu Dhabi television, who had reported the massacre, claiming they had been "engaged in crude anti-Israeli propaganda."
The BBC protested to the Israeli government after Israeli troops opened fire on a group of international peace activists in Bethlehem and pinned down Orla Guer in, the BBC correspondent, while she was filming the demonstration.
A reporter from The Boston Globe, Anthony Shadid, was shot on Easter Sunday in Ramallah. In Bethlehem, a Palestinian cameraman working for al-Jazeera, Majdi Benoura, was shot in the neck, colleagues said.
Forty peace activists from Europe and the United States were fired upon on Easter Monday by an Israeli tank as they walked near Bethlehem.
Five activists and a cameraman were injured.
"I never thought for a moment that they would fire live ammunition at us," Kate Edwards said from her hospital bed. "Then I heard several more bangs and I realized that I had been hit in the stomach."
Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian professor of English literature and former government minister from Ramallah called on the international community to act. She said the American administration is responsible for "collusion in war crimes."
When Bush "takes the stand, will he be able to say he
didn't know?" she asked. She said Bush should tell the American
people that he "does not condone occupation, that he does
not condone assassinations or executions and that he is against
state terrorism against an unarmed and occupied population."
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The super-secret Bilderberg gang wants a new war to generate immense profits and spend the world out of recession. And they just might get it.
When Bilderberg luminaries seal themselves off behind armed guards at the Westfields hotel in Chantilly, Va., May 30-June 2, a major topic will be promoting a new war.
Sources within Bilderberg and its junior varsity, the Trilateral Commission, confirmed the war part of the agenda. The Trilaterals are meeting in Washington April 5-7. The two groups have an interlocking leader ship and a common agenda.
They believe that public outrage over the 9-11 attacks and the new "war on terrorism" make a new war on Iraq, with the intent of destroying the regime of Saddam Hussein and seizing Iraqi oil, politically palatable to Americans. If Americans back a new war, they reason, a reluctant Europe will be dragged along.
Bilderberg's hand was first tipped March 24 when Jim Hoagland, a Bilderberg regular, called for the predicted all-out war on Iraq in a commentary in The Washington Post.
Every Post publisher - now it is Donald Graham - has attended these secret meetings since the elite first called itself Bilderberg in 1954. Hoagland is also a Bilderberg regular.
President Bush has decided to "remove you from power," Hoagland wrote, addressing his words to Hussein. "The Pentagon can now go ahead and draw up war plans very quietly for the right time, as it did in 1990."
Just how casually the Bilderberg-Trilateral troopers spill the blood of young men is demonstrated by Zbigniew Brzeninski, national security adviser under President Jimmy Carter and long Trilateralist.
Brzenzinski, in a 1998 interview with the French newspaper Le Nouvel Observateur, said that, contrary to the official version of events, CIA aid to the Mujahedeen guerrillas began six months before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It was intended to provoke the invasion, he said. Brezezinski boasted of "drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap."
When asked about the wisdom of supporting Islamic fundamentalism, Brzezinski offered this chilling dismissal: "What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet Empire?"
Henry Kissinger, a power in both Bilderberg and the Trilaterals, started the war drumbeat Man. 13, also writing in the Bilderberg-controlled Post.
"There is no possibility of a negotiation between Washington and Baghdad and no basis for trusting Iraq's promises to the international community...
"But if the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is to be seriously considered, three prerequisites must be met: (a) development of a military plan that is quick and decisive, (b) some prior agreement on what kind of structure is to replace Hussein and (c) the support or acquiescence of key countries needed for the military plan," Kissinger wrote.
The Bush administration already appears bent on war, according to Rep. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is running for the Senate seat being vacated by Strom Thurmond (R).
"Before the end of summer or fall we'll be in a major engagement with Iraq," Graham was quoted by The Columbia State. "We're looking at going after saddam Hussein - not to contain him but to replace him."
Graham said he based his predictions on "Intelligence
briefings, contact with the Bush administration and his attendance
at a recent international conference in Germany," the State
said.
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At any moment - possibly by the time you read this - the International Criminal court will come into existence. But Americans are defending their sovereignty.
With just four more nations needed to sign on to it, a treaty creating another global court, is expected to become a reality at any moment. But U.S. officials, prompted by pressure from American citizens, have vowed to unconditionally reject it.
The International Criminal court (ICC) claims jurisdiction all over the world, even countries like the United States that refuse to ratify. The global bureaucracy is claiming theat America is also bound to the court because President bill Clinton signed the document in his waning hours in the White House. Fifty-six countries have ratified the ICC.
Under the Constitution, of course, it can only take effect when the senate ratifies the treaty. Globalists, however, reject this argument because the Constitution is a target for destruction. America's leaders and lawmakers have heard the outraged voices of patriots and are strongly rejecting ICC jurisdiction. The administration is speaking out against the ICC and the Senate rejected the treaty on a 99-0 test vote.
"The U.S. is not and will not be part of the ICC." said Pierre Prosper, the State Department's ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues. He suggested the United States may "unsign" the treaty, as urged by Americans in mail and phone calls.
Americans are also urging Congress to enact legislation to punish nations that arrest American soldiers for "war crimes" committed while performing on United Nations "peacekeeping" and "nation building" ventures.
Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) Introduced the American Service Members' Protection Act (S.857) and Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Rex.) introduced the same measure (H.R.1794) in the House.
Both bills have the same exact language, meaning that if passed by both chambers they would go straight to President Bush's desk, without conference hassles. But the Helms bill has remained in the Foreign Relations Committee and Delay's bill is stuck in the International Relations Committee.
The legislation would cut of military aid to any country that ratifies the ICC and prohibit U.S. forces from participating in UN ventures unless expressly immunized from ICC jurisdiction by a UN Security Council resolution.
Both bills also authorize the president to take any action "necessary and appropriate" to free American soldiers from ICC captivity. This includes going to war.
Advocates of a world government make no secret of their goals.
The world has now moved into "a system of international relations in which human rights...are much more important than sovereignty," said UN secretary General Kofi Annan.
Czech leader Vaclav Havel said the invasion of Yugoslavia was "an important precedent for the future" in which "state sovereignty must inevitable dissolve."
But don't fear that Americans will be immediately grabbed by the ICC - a waiting game is being played, which was explained by a high State Department official who did not want his name used.
The strategy is to let the court operate for a few years "without upsetting Americans" so "they will get used to the ICC." they hope Bush will not "unsign" the treaty. The hope for a "more progressive" senate and administration in future years tat will quietly commit America to ICC jurisdiction.
When it drops out of the headlines, they reason, it can pass
like the "Genocide Convention" which lingered for more
than a decade before being quietly ratified.
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Expulsion of the entire Palestinian population is now being openly discussed as a solution to the illegal Israeli occupation while international law and UN resolutions are ignored.
In the face of world-wide criticism the government of Israel continued to escalate its military aggression against the Palestinian people, dropping American Made 500-pound bombs on Bethlehem, attacking teeming refugee camps with tanks and a=Apache helicopter gun-ships, and arresting thousands of Palestinian men between the ages of 14 and 60 for interrogation.
The Israeli military actions have been widely criticized as reckless and counter-productive, a misguided strategy more likely to moment hatred and violence than to foster any kind of neighborly relations between the Jews and Gentiles of the Holy Land.
METHOD TO THE MADNESS
There is, however, a method to the madness of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's escalation. Sharon's end-game strategy, a policy he has pursued ro decades, is now being floated in the Israeli and American media; forced transfer of the Palestinian Arab population.
Baruch Kimmering, a sociologist at Hebrew University, stated it clearly in the Jerusalem weekly Kol Ha'Ir last month: "I accuse Ariel Sharon of creating a process in which he will not only intensify the reciprocal bloodshed, but is liable to instigate a regional war and partial or nearly complete ethnic cleansing of the Arabs in the ‘Land of Israel.'"
Sharon does not believe in neighborly relations with the Palestinians, but rather relations without them. He has long espoused a doctrine, commonly held among hard-line Zionists, that the area occupied by the Kingdom of Jordan is the true Palestinian state which explicitly calls for the forced expulsion or "transfer" of Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, pulled out of Sharon's ruling coalition on March 11, to protest his decision to end the three-month hour arrest the Palestinian president Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
SUPPORT OF POPULACE
A current opinion poll indicates that 46 percent of Israel's Jewish citizens favor transferring Palestinians out of the territories, and 31 percent favor deporting Israeli citizens who are ethnic Palestinians, while 60 percent said that they were in favor of encouraging Israeli Arabs to leave the country.
A recent editorial in USA Today presented the Zionist "simple answer" to the conflict: "Create a vast separation from Israel, resettling the Palestinians in Jordan, where 80 percent of the population is Palestinian."
The fact that the Palestinians in Jordan are themselves refugees previously expelled by Israel was not mentioned in the piece.
That forced transfer, a war crime, which has been broached in a major American newspaper as a solution to Israel's illegal military occupation was challenged by Robert Fisk of The Independent (UK), who said:
"Transfer is ethnic cleansing and ethnic cleansing is a war crime. If American newspaper are prepared to print such an option and if Israelis are asked to give their opinion on it, what is Mr. Milosevic doing in The Hague"
Although ethnic cleansing led to U.S. intervention in the Balkan
wars, it remains a fundamental and largely unchallenged principle
of Zionist doctrine, one openly espoused and accepted by every
Zionist leader from Edmond James de Rothschild and Theodore Hertzl
to David Ben-Gurion and Gloda Meir.
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The Trilateral Commission has just completed its annual meeting in Washington, offering, as usual, clues to the program of its brother group, Bilderberg.
Behind heavily-guarded doors at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington, the Trilateral Commission exploited the "war on terrorism" to advance its common agenda with Bilderberg:
• Getting reluctant Europeans and Asians to support America's
planned war on Iraq;
• Persuade Israel to call off its invasion of Palestinian
territories, partly in fear that Arab states will retaliate by
cutting off oil to Western nations;
• Mor fully integrate the "global economy" to advance
the goal of establishing the United Nations as a world government.
• Increasing "aid" to "less developed nations"
(translation: more U.S. tax dollars to poor countries); and cheap
labor supply.
The common agenda with Bilderberg was demonstrated, as usual, by the presence of leaders of both groups, including David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger and Peter Sutherland, chairman of the Trilateral Commission.
Bilderberg will meet May 30 - June 2 at the Westfields Marriot luxury hotel in Chantilly, Va., near Washington's Dulles Airport.
Vice President Dick Cheney gave the concluding Trilateral speech on April 8. Cheney attended Trilateral meetings as secretary of defense under President Bush the Elder, who was himself a Trilateralist.
Other luminaries included Madeleine Albright, secretary of state under Bill Clinton, who was himself a Trilateralist and Bilderberger. Richard Holbrooke, former UN ambassador, Strobe Talbott, former deputy secretary of state who predicts the end of sovereign nations, former House Speaker Tom Foley and Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, also attended.
The war rally led off the serious business of the April 5-8 session after the opening evening was given over to a reception at the State Department.
Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld both addressed the subject of "Trilateral Cooperation After Sept. 11."
Both stressed the need for removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq by "whatever means necessary" and that "all options are on the table." The morning war rally lasted three hours, until a noon lunch break.
"It could not be more clear that the United States is going to war with Iraq," one Trilateralist told a colleague while reinforcing himself in the hotel's bar and lounge. His colleague nodded, saying, "yes, it's very clear."
The Europeans appeared unenthusiastic but accepting of the U.S. determination to go to war. One suggested that the war must be concluded swiftly or risk losing support of the American people.
"But at the same time, they're stressing that their war on terrorism will take years," another said.
Former Secretary of State and accused war criminal Henry Kissinger addressed the subject "After 9-11: the International Order and Global Response."
NATO, effectively the UN's standing army, must also be strengthened and be prepared for "rapid deployment" to any trouble spot on Earth, Kissinger said.
Kissinger also echoed the internationalist doctrine that "eliminating poverty" is an essential weapon in the "war on terrorism" which was a lead-in for the dinner address by Ernesto Zedillo, former president of Mexico, on "the Challenge of Reducing Poverty and Financing Development in Less Developed Countries."
NOTE: Read - Saddam Suckered, Iraq Wrecked By Scheming of ‘George the 1st'
WORLDWIDE HANDOUTS
Zedillo praised recent suggestions by President Bush that there should be more outright grants to poor nations instead of low interest loans, many of which are never repaid.
Ignoring the dangers of oversimplifying the complex reasons which produce terrorism, Zedillo said the world community must do more or poverty will be a breeding ground for terrorists.
However, terrorists typically act out of desperation under brutal conditions, not economic status. It is terribly naïve to believe the world community can simply pay off Palestinian suicide bombers to get them to stop.
This same reasoning - that poverty is the father of terrorism - was continued by Allan Greenspan, chairmann of the Federal Reserve board, in a session on "The State of the U.S. and World Economy."
He said economic chaos in Japan and Argentina threatens to spill over and generate a global recession unless more help is forthcoming from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund - two of the major conduits for shipping U.SS. tax dollars overseas. Greenspan called for strengthening and expanding the World Trade Organization and for Congress to grant Bush the power to negotiate the Free Trade Area of the Americas as the antidote.
Kim Kihwan, international adviser to Goldman Sachs, reported on "china in the International System" and forecast a larger role for the communist country in the years ahead, with more foreign investors exploiting cheap labor and poor working conditions there.
Goldman Sachs is always represented at Bilderberg meetings.
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Thanks to the failure of the "mainstream media" to report the facts, most Americans still don't know the truth about the behind-the -scenes intrigue by the first Bush administration that helped prompt Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to invade neighboring Kuwait in early August of 1990.
Although the American media spent months demonizing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the six months that led up to the media-glamorized "Operation Desert Storm" launched by President George H.W. Bush, the major media never told Americans this salient fact: The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, had actually given Saddam the Bush administration's effective blessing for an assault on the oil-rich country of Kuwait.
The fact remains the biggest (among many) secrets about the war that remain largely unknown to this day.
The basic details surrounding this scandal were first publicly outlined by the late Spotlight correspondent Andrew St. George when he spoke on Sept. 3, 1990, before a gathering of the board of Policy of Liberty Lobby, the populist Institution that published The Spotlight.
Addressing the topic of how the media suppresses major news stories of vital interest, St. George chose this topic because it was so relevant at the time, but was nonetheless being ignored in the major media which was otherwise rattling its sabers against Saddam.
Then, on Oct. 8, 1990, The Spotlight reported the basic facts about St. George's discoveries (gleaned from diplomatic sources at the United Nations) in a frontpage story entitled "Saddam was Bush-wacked on Invasion: Got green light for Kawait grab." The Spotlight story reported:
There is mounting evidence that the Bush administration gave Iraqi President Saddam Hussein a green light to invade Kuwait.
The State Department has not challenged a transcript released by Iraq of a conversation between the U.S. ambassador to Bagdad, April Glaspie, and Saddam Hussein on July 25 in which she is said to have told the Iraqi leader that President George Bush desired better relations between the two countries and that the United States had no position concerning Iraq's border dispute with Kuwait.
Further encouragement to Saddam was given in congressional testimony delivered by Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly on July 31, 1990, just two days before the Iraqi invasion. When asked by Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ill.) if the United States would come to Kuwait's defense if it were attacked, Kelly replied: "We have no defense treaty relationship with any Persian Gulf country."
Secretary of State James Baker has refused to be drawn into an argument over whether Miss Glaspie's statements were appropriate. Baker said he would not deny the tolerant and friendly preinvasion U.S. policy toward Iraq.
The bush administration, backed up by well-paid propagandists for the ruling family of Kuwait and supported by the Israeli lobby, did all i their power to suppress The Spotlight's eye-opening story which cast a diferent light on the media's repeated claim that Saddam was "another Hitler".
The Spotlight's story was cited by the prestigious "Project
Censored," based at Sonoma State University in California,
as being number one among the "top 10" vitally important
news stories of 1990 that were, in the words of "Project
censored," either "overlooked or under reported by the
national news media."
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Though not secret like the Bilderberg cabal, two elitist internationalist groups wield great influence in U.S. affairs.
Besides the super secret Bilderberg Group, two other power blocs also maintain strong influence on U.S. policies - the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.
COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
The Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) is based in New York and is comprised solely of U.S. citizens.
CFR publishes the quarterly journal Foreign Affairs and conducts regular meetings and seminars. Key meetings are strictly confidential and off the record.
The internationalist group was created in 1921 with Rockefeller funding and emerged as the American branch of the British Royal Institute on International Affairs (RIIA), succeeding an earlier, less organized entity already established in that role.
The RIIA was the brainchild of Rothschild family-sponsored English financier Cecil Rhodes (founder of the Rhodes scholarship) and devoted to the concept of reuniting the United States with the British Empire.
CFR members, beginning with the Republican Herbert Hoover administration on through the present day in administrations Democrat and Republican alike, have continuously been appointed to key policymaking posts.
David Rockefeller himself served as a longtime chairman of the CFR and remains its virtual master.
TRILATERAL COMMISSION
The Trilateral Commission (TC) was organized exclusively by David Rockefeller in1973.
TC holds an official regular annual conclave closed to the independent press, but conducts seminars and other gatherings that are less exclusive.
Membership is limited to elitists from the United States and Canada, Western Europe and Japan, several hundred in number.
TC issued periodic reports known as the Triangle Papers and press releases and published a journal called Trialogue, which is now defunct.
David Rockefeller has continuously served, since its inception,
as "North American chairman" but is acknowledged as
its primary mover.
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The brutal Israeli military campaign against the Palestinians has led to a change in the way many Europeans view Israeli actions and resulted in unprecedented political measures taken by the German government.
Germany is quietly suspending weapons sales to Israel and pushing a sensible peace plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while American companies continue selling arms to the defiant and belligerent mini-state.
The Germany sold $170 million worth of military equipment to Israel in 2000, according to The Washington Post, including parts for the tanks and armored personnel carriers that have wrought so much destruction in Palestinian neighborhoods during the latest Israeli invasion.
After the relentless bombardment and siege of Palestinian cities that include Israeli tanks and American-made helicopters firing on Christian churches and on Israeli arson attack on Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, a poll found that nearly three-quarters of the German population thought "Israel's tough action against the Palestinians" was unjustified.
Ever since the end of WWII, no other country in the world has been so brainwashed by pro-Israel propaganda, so the heavy majority against Israel is significant.
Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, has presented a broadly supported and comprehensive peace initiative to the European Union's (EU) 15 foreign ministers.
The German plan calls for an international peace conference to be convened by a "quartet" including the EU, the United states, Russia, and the UN.
The main points of the German plan include an international force to be deployed to oversee the political settlement and guarantee full Israel's withdrawal for the territories it occupied in 1967. The difficult issues of Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees and Israel's borders are to be dealt with first.
"The kid-glove era of German relations with Israel seems to be over," Konrad Schuller of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote.
The strongest political criticism of Israel is now coming from Germany's center-right camp, which has previously been "a particularly reliable supporter of the Jewish state."
Karl Lamers, foreign affairs spokesman for the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union, said Europe must be prepared to use economic sanctions against Israel as a "last resort" if the Jewish state continues to defy U.S. and international demands to halt its aggression.
At a press conference with representatives of the international "quartet" in Spain on April 10, on what has been described as a "slow boat" diplomatic tour, secretary of State Colin Powell was repeatedly asked about whether the United states would impose sanctions on Israel if it fails to heed U.S. demands to withdraw from the occupied territories.
Powell said the U.S. had no plans to sanction Israel.
American companies are the main suppliers of weapons to Israel and hav provided the country with most of the tools of destruction being unleashed on the defenseless cities and towns of Palestine.
Despite clear evidence that Israel is using American-made weapons to commit atrocities, the U.S. government and American companies appear unwilling to stop over-arming the Israeli military.
THE BEST OF THE BEST
At the end of March, the U.S. delivered the first 70A-55 troop-carrying Black Hawk helicopters, specially built for the Israelis by the Stratford, Conn.-based Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. a subsidiary of United Technologies Corp.
Israel has purchased 24 of the new machines costing $212 million, most of which is being paid by the American taxpayers, according to Robert Fisk of The Independent, a British publication.
"The logbook of the first of the new Black Hawks was handed over to the Israeli defense ministry by none other than the former secretary of state, Alexander Haig - the man who gave Israel's then prime minister, Menachem Begin, the green light to invade Lebanon in 1982," Fisk wrote.
"Our company's relationship of more than 40 years with Israel is a source of pride," said Sikorsky President Dean Borgman in a company press release. "We are grateful that the Israeli government has shown its confidence in the world's toughest military helicopter.
When asked about the Israeli use of its helicopters in the
apparent commission of war crimes, Ed Steadham, communications
director for Sikorsky, refuse to speak with AFP, saying: "No
comment, Chris. Goodbye."
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Could a nuclear holocaust be in the works for the Mideast?
Israeli Defense Forces have been placed on "cockpit standby" to strike both Iraq and Syria with nuclear weapons, according to a reliable intelligence source.
The Israelis have also developed a neutron-type bomb to use against their Arab neighbors, sources said.
According to Gordon Thomas of Globe Intel, who writes on intelligence for leading European newspapers, two Israeli fighter-bomber squadrons, have been armed with tactical nuclear weapons and placed on "cockpit-ready standby" at an airfield in Galilee.
Thomas said the Israelis have fortified the Golan Heights, which borders Syria, with neutron-type bombs developed at their nuclear facilities, Dimona, in the Negev desert.
The bombs, similar to the neutron bomb developed by American nuclear physicist Sam Cohen decades ago, are small in size and specifically designed to kill soldiers on the battlefield, leaving buildings and other structures largely intact.
According to Thomas, Israeli Mossad Chief Efraim Halevy has handed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "an urgent report" that Syria and Iraq are preparing to take an active part in the increasingly dangerous clash between Israeli forces and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Halevy says Syria and Iraq held private talks during the recent
Arab summit in Beirut. Both countries have pledged strong support
for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), he said.
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Our Founding Fathers understood the consequences of meddling in other countries' affairs, unlike most of today's leaders.
Last week I appeared on a national television news show to discuss recent events in the Middle East. During the show I merely suggested that there are two sides to the dispute, and that the focus of American foreign policy should be the best interests of America - not Palestine or Israel.
I argued that American interests are best served by not taking either side in this ancient and deadly conflict, as Washington and Jefferson counseled when they earned against entangling alliances.
I argued against our crazy policy of giving hundreds of billions of dollars in unconstitutional foreign aid and military weapons to both sides, which only intensifies the conflict and never buys peace. My point was simple: we should follow the Constitution and stay out of foreign wars.
I was immediately attacked for offering such heresy.
We've reached the point where virtually everyone in Congress, the administration, and the media blindly accepts that America must become involved (financially and militarily) in every conflict around the globe.
To even suggest otherwise in today's political climate is to be accused of "aiding terrorists."
It's particularly ironic that so many conservatives in America, who normally adopt an America-first position, cannot see the obvious harm that results from our being dragged time and time again into an intractable and endless Middle East war.
The empty justification is always that America is the global superpower, and thus has no choice but to police the world.
HONEST FRIENDSHIP
The Founding Fathers saw it otherwise. Jefferson summed up the noninterventionist foreign policy position perfectly in his 1801 inaugural address: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations - entangling alliances with none."
How many champion Jefferson and the Constitution, but conveniently ignore both when it comes to American foreign policy?
Washington similarly urged that the United States must "Act for ourselves and not for others" by forming an "American character wholly free of foreign attachments."
Since so many pundits and politicians on Capitol Hill apparently now believe George Washington was wrong, they should at least have the intellectual honest to admit it next time his name is being celebrated.
In fact, when I mentioned Washington the other guest on the show quickly repeated the tired cliche that "We don't live in George Washington's time."
Yet if we accept this argument, what other principles from that era should we discard? Should we give up the First Amendment because times have changed? How about the rest of the Bill of Rights? It's hypocritical and childish to dismiss certain founding principles simply because a convenient rationale is needed to justify foolish policies today. The principles enshrined in the Constitution do not change.
If anything, today's more complex world cries out for the moral clarity provided by a noninterventionist foreign policy.
It's easy to dismiss the noninterventionist view as the quaint aspiration of men who lived in a less complicated world, but it's not so easy to demonstrate how our current policies serve any national interest at all.
Perhaps an honest examination of the history of American interventionism
in the 20th century, from Korea to Vietnam to Kosovo to the Middle
East, would reveal that the Founding fathers foresaw more than
we think.
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Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D.-Ga.) called on Congress to initiate an investigation of 9-11 to find out if some in the government had foreknowledge of the tragic terror attacks or profited from America's growing war on terror.
The need for an investigation
of the events surrounding Sept. 11 is as obvious as is the need
for an investigation of the Enron debacle. Certainly, if the American
people deserve answers about what went wrong with Enron and why
(and we do), then we deserve to know what went wrong on Sept.
11 and why.
Are we squandering our goodwill around the world with what many believe to be incoherent, warmongering policies that alienate our friends and antigonize our allies? How much of a role does our reliance on imported oil play in the military policies being put forward by the Bush Administration? And what role does the close relationship between the Bush administration and the oil and defense industries play, if any, in the policies that are currently being pursued by this administration?
We deserve to know what went wrong on Sept. 11 and why. After all, we hold thorough public inquiries into rail disasters, plane crashes, and even natural disasters in order to understand what happened and to prevent them from happening again or minimizing the tragic effects when they do. Why then does the administration remain steadfast in this opposition to an investigation into the biggest terrorism attack upon our nation?
News reports from Der Spiegel to The London Observer, from The Los Angeles Times to MSNBC TO CNN, indicate that many different warnings were received by the administration. In addition, it has even been reported that the United States government broke bin Laden's secure communications before Sept.11.
Sadly, the United States government is being wued today by survivors of the embassy bombings because, from court reports, it appears clear that the U.S. had received prior warnings, but did little to secure and protect the staff at our embassies.
Did the same thing happen to us again?
CARLYLE GROUP
I am not aware of any evidence showing that President Bush or members of his administration have personally profited from the attacks of 9-11. A complete investigation might reveal that to be the case.
For example, it is known that President Bush's father, through the Carlyle Group had - at the time of the attacks - joint business interests with the bin Laden construction company and many defense industry holdings, the stocks of which have soared since Sept. 11.
The Carlyle Group, DynCorp, and Halliburton certainly stand out as companies close to this administration. Secretary Rumsheld maintained in a hearing before Congress that we can afford the new spending, even though the request for more defense spending is the highest increase in 20 years and the Pentagon has lost $2.3 trillion.
All the American people are being asked to make sacrifices. Our young men and women in the military are being asked to risk their lives in our war against terrorism while our president's first act was to sign an executive order denying them high deployment overtime pay.
The American people are being asked to make sacrifices by bearing massive budget cuts in the social welfare of our country, in the areas of health care, Social Security, and civil liberties for our enhanced military and security needs arising from the events of Sept.11. It is imperative that they know fully why we make these sacrifices.
If the secretary of defense tells us that his new military objectives must be to occupy foreign capital cities and overthrow regimes, then the American people must know why. It should be easy for the administration to explain fully to the American people in a thorough and methodical way why we are bing asked to make these sacrifices and if, indeed, these sacrifices will make us more secure.
If the administration cannot articulate these answers to the American people, then Congress must.
This is not a time for closed-door meetings and this is not a time for secrecy. America's credibility, both with the world and with her own people, rests upon securing credible answers to these questions.
The world is teetering on the brink of conflicts while the administration's policies are vague, wavering and unclear.
Major financial conflicts of interest involving the president, the attorney general, the vice president and others in the administration have been and continue to be exposed.
This is a time for leadership and judgment that is not compromised in any fashion. This is a time for transparency and a thorough investigation.
Rep. McKinney represents the 4th district in Georgia.
You would have a hard time learning this from the Washington Post or The New York Times, but most Americans want the United States to become neutral in the Mideast conflict.
A new Gallup Poll shows that 71 percent of Americans want the United States to assume a neutral position on the conflict in the Middle East - a fact that the mainstream media is going to great lengths ro suppress. Another 60 percent want to end Americas aid unless Israel withdraws from the Palestinian lands immediately.
Not a word of these poll results appeared in The Washington Post or the New York Times. These newspapers were not "scooped" - both have the Reuters news wire which carried a comprehensive story about the polls. They "spiked" the story because they want Americans to remain ignorant of the results.
For a half-century, U.S. policy has provided blind support and blank-check aid for Israel regardless of the atrocities inflicted on civilians in a brutal occupation of conquered Palestinian lands.
Obviously, such an unfair policy has caused outrage among Arabs, who resent the fact that they can be invaded and occupied because the United States has bankrolled the Israeli war machine to the point that it is at least the third greatest military power on Earth.
Americans' overwhelming support of neutrality is no "new mood" but, instead, a result of public education. The major media, until recent years, simply ignored Israeli actions while portraying Arab reactions as "terrorism."
American Free Press is the only national medium that presents the full story, but the mainstream media's reluctant coverage has caused many Americans to reject interventionism in the Mideast.
But until recently, an educated American who is among the minority (49 percent of adults) who read a daily newspaper would be ignorant of the full sweep of events in the Middle East.
A dramatic demonstration of this media blackout came in the spring of 1982, when the court-killed Spotlight covered a hearing by a house Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
A Canadian physician, held prisoner by Israel for four days when he was mistaken for an Arab because of his black hair and dark complexion, was telling horror stories.
The physician, who worked at a hospital in Beirut, testified that he was an eyewitness to Israeli soldiers killing and torturing men, women and children. He told of four Arab surgeons being tied by their thumbs to a tree and tortured to death.
The huge hearing room was packed. Some reporters sat on the floor. Crowds overflowed and jammed the halls. There were numerous television cameras.
But not one word was uttered on network news or printed in the mainstream media. The Spotlight was a lonely voice in the wilderness.
For publishing the whole truth, The Spotlight was pilloried
as "anti-Semitic," much to the anger of such Jewish
staffers as Martin Price, who wrote many stories on the Mideast
conflict and Mark Lane, a lawyer who was general counsel to Liberty
Lobby and wrote frequently for The Spotlight and AFP.
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If you favor a U.S. policy of neutrality in the Middle East and cutting aid to Israel, you are not as alone as the mainstream media would have you believe.
Seventy-one percent of Americans in a new Gallup Poll say the U.S. government should not take either side in the Middle east conflict and 60 percent want to cut aid to Israel unless the invasion of Palestinian lands ends immediately.
The mainstream media is struggling to keep Americans unaware of these views.
One-quarter of Americans in the Time/CNN poll said Israeli Prime Minister ariel Sharon is an enemy of the United States, 20 percent say he is a terrorist and 65 percent believe he cannot be trusted.
In a CNN-Gallup poll, 71 percent of Americans called for a policy of neutrality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Significantly, less than a majority (49 percent) of Americans now say Israel's invasion and occupation of Palestinian lands are "mostly unjustified."
Americans strongly oppose - 71 percent to 20 percent - sending U.S. troops to help end the conflict. And 81 percent fear that U.S. troops will be drawn into the fighting.
The White House is considering and the Pentagon is making "contingency plans" for deployment in the Middle East and for invading Iraq.
Americans' opposition to aid for Israel is surprising, administration officials told AFP on condition of anonymity, considering that the State Department deliberately deceives the public on the total amount.
For years, Congress routinely passed legislation to "forgive"
the "loans" made to Israel. Now, they are outright grants,
amounting to nearly $6 billion a year. Aid to Israel is paid in
total up-front perk costs taxpayers $80 million a year.
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Want to know what's really happening in the Middle East? Read European newspapers or American Free Press
While Israeli forces under the command of an indicted war criminal ravage the Holy Land, committing genocide and other war crimes with weapons and support from the United states, the controlled media serves the American public a constant diet of distortion and lies.
In Jenin, grisly evidence of "a monstrous war crime" was obvious to all who entered the UN refugee camp a week after Israel ended its nine-day massacre there.
However, in spite of ample evidence of horrific Israeli atrocities, the American mass media has kept the public woefully unaware of the gravity of the crimes being committed by Israel.
The degree of American ignorance of the atrocities committed by Israel was reflected in a recent Pew poll conducted in the United states and Europe.
Twice as many Europeans expressed sympathy for the Palestinians than the Israelis, while among Americans surveyed, 41 percent expressed sympathy with Israel, compared with 13 percent with Palestinians.
The most obvious explanation for the difference in opinion is to be found in how the different newspapers and mass media outlets have depicted and explained the recent events in Palestine.
On April 16, the day after reporters finally entered the devastated refugee camp of Jenin, British and french papers carried headlines of an Israeli massacre of civilians while American papers expressed skepticism at reports of a bloodbath.
Britain's two most widely read broadsheets, The Independent and The Guardian, featured front-page stories and color photos of the devastation in the Jenin refugee camp, home to 13,500 refugees originally displaced from the Haifa by Israel in 1948, while the American owned International Herald Tribune's lead story was about the Israeli arrest of the Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti.
While The Washington Post reported that "no evidence has surfaced to support allegations of large-scale massacres or executions by Israeli troops," The Guardian wrote: "Jenin smells like a crime. The stench of decaying flesh, of dead bodies left to rot or buried unabsolved under collapsed buildings greets those aid workers and reporters who manage to gain access."
"A monstrous war crime that Israel has tried to cover up for a fortnight has finally been exposed" is how Phil Reeves, writing from Jenin, began The Independent's lead story while The Herald Tribune, published by The New York Times and The Washington Post, chose to bury the massacre story inside the paper under the titles expressing doubt and Skepticism.
"A residential area roughly 160,000 square yards, about a third of a mile wide, has been reduced to dust," Reeves wrote. "Rubble has been shoveled by bulldozers into 30-foot piles. The sweet and ghastly reek of rotting human bodies is everywhere, evidence that it is a human tomb. The People, who spent days hiding in basements crowded into single rooms as the rockets pounded in, say there are hundreds of corpses, entombed beneath the dust, under a field of debris, criss-crossed with tank and bulldozer treadmarks."
A senior UN official said: "Given the deplorable and unprecedented refusal to allow international relief organizations into the camps while people were slowly dying of their wounds and thirst in the rubble, the onus is definitely on the state of Israel to account for the missing thousands of refugees who lived in the camp until a few weeks ago.
"I have not met one person in the international community
who had any other explanation for this refusal other than the
fact that they were hiding a war crime, in fact, two war crimes:
The mass Killing and the denial of humanitarian relief,"
the official said.
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