Perfidious Albion and the Lying American

Post Information
Print & pdf

by John Helmer

bush_spiderman2.jpg

Wars usually start with one large lie. Throwing more troops into the breach requires a great many little lies. Wars usually end when the lying can’t staunch the bleeding, and the stench.

According to the wife of the David Kelly, the British Defense Ministry expert on Iraqi weapons who committed suicide last Friday by cutting his left wrist, and bleeding to death while on painkillers, “this was not really the kind of world he wanted to live in”. But the kind of world prime ministers of England and presidents of the United States hatch, when they go to war together, should have been familiar to Kelly, as he was old enough to remember the Vietnam War.

The big lie for which Kelly killed himself was no different from the one that created the Tonkin Gulf incident, the invented Vietnamese attack on US warships which purported to justify the first landings of US troops 40 years ago. The little lies which Tony Blair and George W Bush go on telling, as they, too, try to land more troops, and fight a guerrilla war, soon to expand into a national liberation struggle - these lies are no different. Not even the methods for feeding them to the press have changed.

Read more



Comments

Without Borders

Post Information
Print & pdf

Without a border, there can be no peace. And without peace, it is the height of chutzpa to demand something from the other side that we totally refuse to do ourselves.

by Uri Avnery

pal-12.jpg

MARCH 24, 2007-Incredible! In Palestinian schoolbooks, there is no trace of the Green Line! They do not recognize the existence of Israel even in the 1967 borders! They say that the “Zionist gangs” stole the country from the Arabs! That’s how they poison the minds of their children!

These blood-curdling revelations were published this week in Israel and around the world. The conclusion is self-evident: the Palestinian Authority, which is responsible for the schoolbooks, cannot be a partner in peace negotiations.

What a shock!

Truth is, there is nothing new here. Every few years, when all the other arguments for refusing to speak with the Palestinian leadership wear thin, the ultimate argument pops up again: Palestinian schoolbooks call for the destruction of Israel!

Read more



Comments

Terrorized by ‘War on Terror’

Post Information
Print & pdf

How a Three-Word Mantra Has Undermined America

by Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski

wpe82.jpg

The “war on terror” has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration’s elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America’s psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.

The damage these three words have done — a classic self-inflicted wound — is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves. The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare — political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants.

Read more



Comments

Hydrocarbon Law for Dummies

Post Information
Print & pdf

by Anwaar Hussain

warposter5-r.jpg

Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, who was in Japan last week for a four-day official visit, says U.S.-led coalition forces should be able to withdraw from his country in a year and half at the latest, a Japanese newspaper reported on Saturday.

“Personally, I think Iraqi security forces will complete reforms and training in a year or a year and a half. After that, the coalition troops will no longer be needed.” Hashemi was quoted as saying.

No longer needed, huh! Personally, I think that the Iraqi Vice President’s IQ and shoe size are about the same.

One hates to puncture the heartwarming, optimistic naivete of the Iraqi Vice President but the truth is that the U.S.-led coalition forces are not going any where, not for the next about 30 years at the minimum.

How, pray, has the scribe arrived at this conclusion, one may ask.

That, sirs, is a no-brainer. Read on.

Invisible in the smoke screen of civil war in Iraq, the current US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad has been working feverishly on Iraq’s first post-invasion Hydrocarbon Law.

Read more



Comments

Kucinich Lionized in London

Post Information
Print & pdf

by Michael Carmichael

1111111.jpg

Unexpectedly, it came upon the vernal equinox, and it was a strategic masterstroke.

Dennis Kucinich’s arrival in London crept up on the global peace movement like a fog settling over the ancient city that resulted in high voltage blasts of white-hot political thunderbolts.

Married to a British woman in 2005, Dennis Kucinich visited his new British family in the quiet surroundings of Upminister and then travelled across London to Parliament Square where he addressed an august assembly of top-ranking peace veterans convened by the Stop the War Coalition, the same people who had assembled one million marchers in Hyde Park on February 15, 2003.

After two striking appearances on the BBC, Kucinich entered Central Hall in doughty Parliament Square situated directly across from the Palace of Westminster, the seat of Parliament and Britain’s ancient democracy. Read more



Comments

My National Security Letter Gag Order

Post Information
Print & pdf

The Washington Post, Friday, March 23, 2007; A17

It is the policy of The Washington Post not to publish anonymous pieces. In this case, an exception has been made because the author — who would have preferred to be named — is legally prohibited from disclosing his or her identity in connection with receipt of a national security letter. The Post confirmed the legitimacy of this submission by verifying it with the author’s attorney and by reviewing publicly available court documents.

gag-21.jpg

The Justice Department’s inspector general revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been systematically abusing one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act: the expanded power to issue “national security letters.” It no doubt surprised most Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under this provision — demands issued without a showing of probable cause or prior judicial approval — to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. It did not, however, come as any surprise to me.

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand — a context that the FBI still won’t let me discuss publicly — I suspected that the FBI was busing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled. Read more



Comments

Uh Oh, the President’s Reading Again

Post Information
Print & pdf

by Jim Lobe

br-2.jpg

Accounts of a Feb. 28 “literary luncheon” at the White House suggest that President George W. Bush’s reading tastes – until now a remarkably good predictor of his policy views – are moving ever rightward, even apocalyptic, despite his administration’s recent suggestions that it is more disposed to engage Washington’s foes, even in the Middle East.

The luncheon, attended as well by Vice President Dick Cheney and a dozen hard-line neoconservatives, was held in honor of visiting British historian Andrew Roberts, whose latest work, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900, Bush reportedly read late last year and subsequently sent to Prime Minister Tony Blair. Cheney took the book with him on his recent trip to Pakistan. Read more



Comments

Cheney revealed

Post Information
Print & pdf

by Robert Scheer

cheney.jpg
THE UNCTUOUS owl has hooted again. Only this time, Dick Cheney’s cave has been invaded by the sudden sunlight of judicial and congressional revelations, making him appear more pathetic than intimidating as he once again charges critics of the Iraq war with giving aid and comfort to the enemy. “A full validation of the al Qaeda strategy” are the shameless, slandering words the most powerful vice president in American history flung Monday at congressional critics of the war — including those from his own party.

While he is still as dangerous as any cornered animal, Cheney stands brightly revealed as the main culprit in the cherry-picking of the evidence to make the case for a stupid, failed war. He has been exposed as a vindictive, inflexible ideologue, who attempts to destroy all who publicly disagree with him, such as former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and Wilson’s CIA agent wife, Valerie Plame Wilson. His extensive ties and loyal political service to energy and defense companies such as Halliburton (which now, in a burst of honesty, is moving its headquarters to Dubai), reveal him to be a man of deep corruption. Read more



Comments

Blaming the Victims: Covering Up Terrorism in Iraq

Post Information
Print & pdf

by Ghali Hassan

i48488-2004nov13.jpg
A recent cover story in Time magazine (March, 2007, Europe and Asia) by Bobby Ghosh, “Why They Hate Each Other”, aimed at removing the Occupation as the generator of violence against the Iraqi people, and portrays the violence as “Iraqis killing Iraqis”. This media distortion obfuscates the U.S. monopoly on terrorism and allows the U.S. to use Iraq as a laboratory for terror at the expense of the Iraqi people.

Nowhere in his story does Ghosh tell the readers that the militias and the criminals were the creation of the Occupation and that the violence is the only pretext left to justify the ongoing Occupation. Why Iraqis didn’t “hate each other” before the illegal invasion of their country is totally ignored by Western media and remains a mystery to most Westerners. It is important to remember that Time was the leading propaganda organ which promoted the illegal aggression against Iraq, and continues to play a vicious role spreading Islamaphobia around the world. Read more



Comments

Gen. Petraeus and a High-Profile Suicide in Iraq

Post Information
Print & pdf

By Greg Mitchell

Editor’s Note : This story, and others related to it, occurred about a year ago, but only now are being revealed to the public due to response time lag from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

bush_war_passion.jpg

Col. Ted Westhusing, a West Point scholar, put a bullet in his head in Iraq after reporting widespread corruption. His suicide note — complaining about human rights abuses and other crimes — was addressed to his two commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, now leader of the U.S. “surge” effort in Iraq. It urged them to “Reevaluate yourselves….You are not what you think you are and I know it.”

(March 14, 2007) — The scourge of suicides among American troops in Iraq is a serious, and seriously underreported, problem, as this column has observed numerous times in the past three years. One of the few high-profile cases involved a much-admired Army colonel named Ted Westhusing.

A portrait of Westhusing written by T. Christian Miller for the Los Angeles Times in November 2005 (which I covered at the time) revealed that Westhusing, before putting a bullet through his head, had been deeply disturbed by abuses carried out by American contractors in Iraq, including allegations that they had witnessed or even participated in the murder of Iraqis.

His widow, asked by a friend what killed this West Point scholar, had replied simply: “Iraq.” Read more



Comments



Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


US loses its status as economic world power
DAVOS, Switzerland, 2008
.: ARTICLE BLOCKED :.
ON MARCH 2008
Who links to my website?