More at http://therealnews.com/c.php?c=070926YT
Palestinian journalist says a weakened coalition government will doom the peace processThursday January 17th, 2008
Hisham Sharabati is a Palestinian journalist and the Editor in Chief of Resalat Al Khaleel. He reports from the West Bank and Gaza.
January 17, 2008
Day: January 17, 2008
America Is A Bully. OK. There, I Said It! By Tom Feeley
By Tom Feeley
ICH
First published December 24, 2002
America is a bully, or so it appears to those who live beyond our shores.
Nobody likes a bully, whether he operates in the schoolyard or in the international arena. Those who support a bully do so out of fear. Hence, bullies never have any real friends. They have followers who are intimidated by the arrogance and power of the tormentor. There are many nations, which appear to be friendly to America, yet they wait patiently with hope in their hearts that one-day the bully will meet his match. Meanwhile, they pay homage to the bully in order that they may avoid his wrath.
Continue reading
Is Hamas saving more Jewish lives than Olmert? By Mike Whitney
By Mike Whitney
17/01/08 “ICH
Hamas’s second in command, Mahmoud al Zahar, has saved more Jewish lives in his short tenure as Palestinian Foreign Minister, than Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. And how has he been rewarded?
Yesterday his son, Hussam al Zahar, was shot dead while defending a civilian enclave in the Palestinian territory by a roving band of Israeli troops. The young man was not connected to any terrorist action. He is simply got in the way of an Israeli bullet and now he’s dead. End of story.
18 other Palestinian men were killed in the attack which has been condemned by foreign leaders around the world. But not in the United States where such barbarity is considered laudable.
Even American stooge, Mahmoud Abbas, blasted the raid saying, “What happened today is a massacre, a slaughter against the Palestinian people. Our people cannot keep silent over these massacres.”
There are photos in Aljazeera of the elder al Zahar offering a final prayer over the corpse of his dead son. It is very sad. This is his second son to be killed by the Israelis. His eldest son was killed in a bombing raid two years ago that was aimed at him. Al Zahar still has not recovered.
As part of the democratically-elected government of the Palestinian people, al Zahar supported Hamas suspension of all suicide bombings within Israel.
How many Jewish lives have been saved by the directive?
At the same time, Israel’s vain and stupid Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert–whose public approval is a paltry 4%–is responsible for the deaths of 113 Israeli soldiers by his bloody and pointless invasion of Lebanon a year ago.
Consider the paradox: Hamas leaders are saving more Jewish lives than Israel’s own Prime Minister. What bitter irony.
No one in the western media even has the courage to talk about the fact that Hamas was instrumental in stopping the attacks on Israeli civilians. Instead, the rationale for killing Palestinians has simply shifted to the random rocket attacks launched by Gaza militants who are beyond Hamas control. It is just an excuse to continue the sanctions which have left Palestinian women and children without sufficient food, water, medical supplies or energy. The people of Gaza are paying a heavy price for being Palestinian; for merely occupying the land which which every nation in the world has confirmed belongs to the Palestinian people. Al Zahar’s son was killed defending that land.
The Israeli raid was ordered by rejectionist Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, the former Prime Minister who sabotaged the Camp David negotiations with Yasser Arafat and then used his operatives in the US media to craft a narrative that Israel had made a “generous offer” to the Palestinian leadership. It was all a hoax. There were never even any maps; let alone any real effort to make concessions on borders, Jerusalem, air space, water, checkpoints etc. Now, Barak is back doing what he does best; inciting Palestinians so that more land can be settled. It’s a tedious and bloody cycle.
The Israeli raid was intended to send a message to Washington. Annapolis is over. The peace talks are over. The grand performance for the media is over. Now it’s back to business.
Its only been a matter of days since Bush left Israel and already the provocations have resumed. Israeli leaders must find it quite gratifying to make the President of the United States look like a laughingstock to the rest of the world. Bush is a fool, but we don’t need Israel to point it out.
A week ago Bush visited Yad Veshem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, where he said:
“I wish as many people as possible would come to this place. It is a sobering reminder that evil exists and a call that when exists we must resist it.”
Bush only cares about the suffering of Jews, not Palestinians. The policy is counterproductive and hypocritical.
The leaders of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas have been at war since street-battles broke out in Gaza 6 months ago. But they are in agreement about the sudden outbreak of violence following Bush’s trip. Hamas spokesman Taher Nunu summed it up like this, “President Bush gave the green light for the new aggression and other such terrorism.”
Indeed. It appears that the operations had already been planned. As soon as Bush left Israel; the hostilities began.
Al Zahar said, “We believe that this Zionist escalation is the result of Bush’s visit and a natural result of the cover supplied by Bush to the Israeli occupation authorities to go forward in their aggression against the Palestinian people, particularly in the Gaza Strip. We will retaliate in the way they understand.”
115 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF since the end of the Bush’s Annapolis Peace Conference.
Here’s the video by Aljazeera of the Israeli attack on the Gaza suburb that killed al Zahar’s son. Its nothing like the garbage produced by western media.
Several Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops on Tuesday in the latest army operation in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
One of those killed was the son of former Hamas leader, Mahmud al-Zahar.
David Chater reports from Jerusalem on the incursion.
For more visit: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exere…
January 15, 2008
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
Bloody reality bears no relation to the delusions of this President By Robert Fisk
Abbas: Israeli raid ‘a massacre’
01.16.08 Uncensored News Reports From Across The Middle East (video; over 18 only)
01.15.08 Uncensored News Reports From Across The Middle East (video; over 18 only)
01.14.08 Uncensored News Reports From Across The Middle East (video; over 18 only)
Dennis Kucinich – Primary election night rally in NH
Should AT&T Police the Internet? By Marguerite Reardon
By Marguerite Reardon
Free Press
CNet
January 17, 2008
A decade after the government said that AT&T and other service providers don’t have to police their networks for pirated content, the telecommunications giant is voluntarily looking for ways to play traffic cop.
For the past several months, AT&T executives have said the company is testing technology to filter traffic on its network to look for copyrighted material that is being illegally distributed. James Cicconi, senior executive vice president for external and legislative affairs for AT&T, reiterated the carrier’s plans last week during a panel discussion at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
“We are very interested in a technology-based solution and we think a network-based solution is the optimal way to approach this,” Cicconi said in a New York Times article. “We recognize we are not there yet but there are a lot of promising technologies. But we are having an open discussion with a number of content companies, including NBC Universal, to try to explore various technologies that are out there.”
AT&T’s plans would turn the nation’s largest telephone company into a kind of network cop, a role that some say could turn dangerous for the company. For one, filtering packets to determine whether they contain copyrighted material raises privacy concerns. And AT&T customers who have already been concerned about the company’s alleged role in the National Security Agency’s domestic spy program, could take their broadband, TV and telephony business to a competitor. Also, AT&T could be opening itself up to a mountain of legal troubles.
To read the article, click here.
This article is from CNet. If you found it informative and valuable, we strongly encourage you to visit their Web site and register an account, if necessary, to view all their articles on the Web. Support quality journalism.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
FAIR: NBC Uninvites Kucinich (Action alert)
FAIR
1/17/08
Action Alert
Rules changes kept progressive out of GE’s debate
In a bizarre move the network has yet to explain, NBC rescinded an invitation to Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich to appear in its January 15 debate in Las Vegas. The GE-owned media company went all the way to the Nevada Supreme Court to defend its decision–all the while failing to explain its logic to the public.
The network originally declared a straightforward test for candidates wishing to participate in the debate: A candidate had to finish in at least fourth place in either the New Hampshire primary or Iowa caucuses, or finish among the top four in one of six major national polls. Kucinich met the latter standard, and was sent a letter on January 9 acknowledging that he would be participating in the debate, designed to air candidates’ views before the January 19 Nevada caucuses.
But two days later, NBC political director Chuck Todd notified the Kucinich campaign that there were new rules: Candidates would have to have finished at least third in either Iowa or New Hampshire. The new standard eliminated Kucinich.
Of course, organizers of presidential debates have a right to establish neutral criteria for participation–criteria that should ideally be as inclusive as possible. But NBC has done little to explain why its original criteria suddenly needed to be fixed.
Indeed, Nevada district court Judge Charles Thompson ruled that Kucinich could not be legally barred from the debate, saying that he was a legitimate candidate who was “uninvited under circumstances that appear to be that they just decided to exclude him” (The Nation.com, 1/15/08).
But NBC successfully appealed its case to the state Supreme Court, saying that the revised standards were “in no way designed to exclude any particular candidate based on his or her views,” and were a “good faith editorial choice of a privately owned cable network to limit debate participants based on the status of their campaigns.” (Given that the legal argument involved FCC equal time rules, the network aired the debate only on its MSNBC cable channel, and not on its NBC affiliates in Nevada–thus limiting the actual audience for the debate).
While their argument worked in court, the fact that NBC journalists offered little in the way of a public explanation for their decision is troubling. Why were the original standards for the debate suddenly not good enough? NBC declared that it was merely exercising “journalistic discretion,” but why did that discretion change so quickly?
The obvious answer is that when the previous criteria were set, there were four candidates polling better than Kucinich in the Democratic race. When one of them, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, dropped out of the race, NBC suddenly switched to a standard that only allowed the top three candidates to debate.
Does Kucinich’s campaign represent ideas that offend either NBC managers or their bosses at General Electric? It’s a fair question, given that MSNBC canceled Phil Donahue’s nightly show in early 2003 due to the host’s opposition to the Iraq War; the company worried that the host would be a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war” (FAIR Press Release, 4/3/03).
Kucinich’s peace platform might be something that a major defense contractor like General Electric would rather not expose to voters on its cable network. Likewise, Kucinich’s strong opposition to nuclear power likely doesn’t sit well with GE, a major player in the industry; the issue was sure to come up in any debate in Nevada, where the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump is intensely controversial.
Indeed, one of the rare challenges from the NBC moderators at the Las Vegas debate came in response to John Edwards’ critical comments about nuclear power. Meet the Press host Tim Russert responded:
Senator Edwards, you say you’re against nuclear power. But a reality check: I talked to the folks at the MIT Energy Initiative, and they put it this way, that in 2050, the world’s population is going to go from 6 billion to 9 billion, that CO2 is going to double, that you could build a nuclear power plant one per week and it wouldn’t meet the world’s needs. Something must be done, and it cannot be done just with wind or solar.
It’s also worth noting that NBC–like most other corporate media outlets–has had little time for Kucinich’s campaign from the start, deciding long ago that the candidate was simply not viable (FAIR Media Advisory, 5/8/07). Kucinich’s name has been mentioned only a few times in passing on NBC Nightly News, and Kucinich–unlike six other Democratic candidates–has yet to appear as part of Meet the Press‘ “Meet the Candidates” series.
In a rare case of self-examination from network journalists, Meet the Press host Tim Russert spoke to NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams about the media’s role in marginalizing certain candidates (1/3/08):
The second-tier candidates, they get angry.
They think that the press doesn’t focus on them, spends too much time talking about the front-runners in the debates, in the coverage day by day. But we say to them: “Well, make your mark. Start showing some growth. Start showing some resonance with the populace and you’ll get the same kind of coverage.” They’ll say, “Wait a minute. How do we get resonance if we’re not covered?” It’s an important issue that we have to keep examining, our own behavior.
Perhaps Russert could examine that behavior now, and explain to NBC viewers and voters why the network has exerted so much effort to marginalize Kucinich’s candidacy.
ACTION:
Please ask NBC to explain why it changed its original debate criteria to exclude Rep. Dennis Kucinich from their January 15 debate. Also, encourage Meet the Press host Tim Russert to be fair to Kucinich and invite him to participate in the “Meet the Candidates” series.
CONTACT:
NBC/MSNBC
Phone: 212 664-4444
Ask for the Comment Line
Email: letters@msnbc.com
NBC host Tim Russert via Meet the Press web contact form:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6872152/
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
Breaking the Sound Barrier: Kucinich Answers Debate Questions (videos) (updated)
Was Kucinich excluded for political views? By Amy Goodman
Dennis Kucinich – Statement from Las Vegas
Liberty Does Not Mean Security by William Mac
By William Mac
This Week in Time
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
***
We are led to believe that, through legislations such as The Real ID act, Patriot Act and Protect America Act as well as President Bush’s claims that Iran is a threat to our security is supposed to keep us safe. We are led to believe that these legislations and claims are patriotic (hence the names). However, you will never be safe, the security you feel you have is only an illusion. Yet, in light of this, it doesn’t make any sense to give up your liberty and freedom under the illusion of security. Liberty can, was, and will remain a truth – a tangible fact. Fight for Liberty and stop giving it up for false security.
In this week’s episode I attempt to illustrate how Liberty and freedom are not easy to live with. It forces men and women to constantly be on their toes, to fight hard and to be self-sufficient. After all, Liberty is the essence of privacy and self-sufficiency.
I’m sure that all have met that sheltered child sometime in our life thus far. You know the one. His/her mother dresses him, makes him go to bed at 8:00 PM every night, doesn’t let him watch the TV shows or movies everyone else gets to watch, doesn’t get to cross the street, doesn’t get to go Trick or Treating, doesn’t get to drive a car, doesn’t get to eat candy or fast food, doesn’t get to go to parties or get-togethers,
That child is usually not a happy one and his/her parents are often referred to as “over protective”. They are afraid that their child will become corrupt, become injured or become killed and the fear consumes them.
Why let the government do these same things to us? Better yet, why ask for it?
Life is full of danger – Liberty is dangerous. You will never be safe. You are always in danger of terrorism either from abroad or from within. You are always in danger of dying at any time – nothing on earth will be able to save you from what – not your nice neighbors or neighborhood watch, not gun control, not police, not microchip trackers or Real Ids or the War on Terror, not tags, not security cameras, not jails, not police, not your gated houses – nothing.
You can eat all of the right foods and stay away from drinking and smoking, but you’ll never live forever and will always be under the threat of sickness virus and cancer. You can be raped, murdered, robbed and tortured – nothing will ever change that.
The only security you have is the faith in the illusion thereof. Just like your money has no value except for people’s belief in what its value is, so is your false hope of security.
It makes no sense to give up our freedoms while we are alive so that we can enjoy this false sense that security is protecting us. You may be less assessable to attack if you are tagged and caged and monitored – it’s true – but you’ll still be tagged and caged nonetheless.
The primary thing that makes life worth living is our ability to live through it freely and to struggle to maintain that freedom. It is our ability to be private, to have rights and to exercise the use thereof. It is the freedom to protect ourselves and remain self-sufficient – it is Liberty.
I am reminded from the book of Job in the Bible – chapter 3 verse 25 – when Job laments,
“For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me”.
Job lived his life fearing only one thing – that his children would die. It was the only thing he was afraid of. And yet, what he feared the most was thrust upon him.
Ladies and gentlemen, I believe this to be a universal fact – that which we greatly fear will always come upon us. So… fear nothing and be free in the peace the lack of it brings.
Thomas Jefferson, in my opinion, was one of the wisest and most grounded of all the founding fathers of his time. I quote him often because I believe his words to be timeless and applicable in a variety of current situations. Here are a few thoughts Jefferson had on Liberty, quoted from various letters he sent over the years:
“The natural progress of things is for Liberty to yield, and government to gain ground”
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much Liberty than those attending too small a degree of it”
“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of Liberty”
“The boisterous sea of Liberty indeed is never without a wave”
I would also like to provide some Jefferson quotes regarding the Bush administration’s fuck-ups with foreign relations, especially concerning his unfounded threats and warnings on Iran whilst he entangles himself with other even less favorable alliances throughout the globe:
“We certainly cannot deny other nations that principle whereon our own government is founded, that every nation has the right to govern itself internally under what form it pleases, and to change these forms at its own will: and externally to transact business with other nations through whatever organ it chooses, whether that be a king, convention, assembly, committee, president, or whatever it be. The only thing essential is the will of the nation”
“As to everything except commerce, we ought to divorce ourselves from them [nations] all”
“Commerce with all nations, alliance with none should be our motto”
“Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none”
“Unmeddlling with the affairs of other nations, we presume not to prescribe or censure their course. Happy, could we be permitted to pursue our own in peace, and to employ all our means in improving the condition of our citizens”
“Not in our day, but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble. But I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power, the greater it will be”
see
Institutionalized Spying on Americans by Stephen Lendman
Police State America – A Look Back and Ahead by Stephen Lendman
Homeland Security to press ahead with Real ID by Anne Broache
01.16.08 Uncensored News Reports From Across The Middle East (video; over 18 only)
Warning
.
This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
Selected Episode
Jan. 16, 2008
For more: http://linktv.org/originalseries
“Bush Ends Mid East Tour in Egypt,” Al Jazeera English, Qatar
“Lieberman Resigns from Knesset Over Peace Talks,” Al Jazeera English, Qatar
“Who Gains from Lieberman’s Resignation?,” IBA TV, Israel
“Interview with Khaled Mesh’al,” Al Arabiya TV, UAE
“Amer Musa Tries to Mediate between Lebanese Rivals,” Dubai TV, UAE
“Athemia’s Awakening Council Leader Killed,” Baghdad TV, Iraq
“Complaints Over Minimum Wage in Jordan,” Jordan TV, Jordan
Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani.
George of Arabia: Better Kiss Your Abe ‘Goodbye’ by Greg Palast
by Greg Palast
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Bend over, pull out your wallet and kiss your Abe ‘goodbye.’ The Lincolns have got to go – and so do the Hamiltons and Jacksons.
Those bills in your billfold aren’t yours anymore. The landlords of our currency – Citibank, the national treasury of China and the House of Saud – are foreclosing and evicting all Americans from the US economy.
It’s mornings like this, when I wake up hung-over to photos of the King of Saudi Arabia festooning our President with gold necklaces, that I reluctantly remember that I am an economist; and one with some responsibility to explain what the hell Bush is doing kissing Abdullah’s camel.
Let’s begin by stating why Bush is not in Saudi Arabia. Bush ain’t there to promote ‘Democracy’ nor peace in Palestine, nor even war in Iran. And, despite what some pinhead from CNN stated, he sure as hell didn’t go to Riyadh to tell the Saudis to cut the price of oil.
What’s really behind Bush’s hajj to Riyadh is that America is in hock up to our knickers. The sub-prime mortgage market implosion, hitting a dozen banks with over $100 billion in losses, is just the tip of the debt-berg.
Since taking office, Bush has doubled the federal debt to more than $5 trillion. And, according to US Treasury figures, on net, foreign investors have purchased close to 100% of that debt. That’s $3 trillion borrowed from the Saudis, the Chinese, the Japanese and others.
Now, Bush, our Debt Junkie-in-Chief, needs another fix. The US Treasury, Citibank, Merrill-Lynch and other financial desperados need another hand-out from Abdullah’s stash. Abdullah, in turn, gets this financial juice by pumping it out of our pockets at nearly $100 a barrel for his crude.
Bush needs the Saudis to charge us big bucks for oil. The Saudis can’t lend the US Treasury and Citibank hundreds of billions of US dollars unless they first get these US dollars from the US. The high price of oil is, in effect, a tax levied by Bush but collected by the oil industry and the Gulf kingdoms to fund our multi-trillion dollar governmental and private debt-load.
The US Treasury is not alone in its frightening dependency on Arabian loot. America’s private financial institutions are also begging for foreign treasure. Yesterday, King Abdullah’s nephew, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, already the top individual owner of Citibank, joined the Kuwait government’s Investment Authority and others to mainline a $12.5 billion injection of capital into the New York bank. Also this week, the Abu Dhabi government and the Saudi Olayan Group are taking a $6.6 billion chunk of Merrill-Lynch. It’s no mere coincidence that Bush is in Abdullah’s tent when the money-changers made the deal just outside it.
Bush is there to assure Abdullah that, unlike Dubai’s ports purchase debacle, there will be no political impediment to the Saudi’s buying up Citibank nor the isle of Manhattan.
So what? I mean, for the average American about to lose their job and their bungalow it doesn’t matter a twit whether it’s Sheik bin Alwaleed who owns Citibank or Sheik Sanford Weill, Citi’s past Chairman.
It’s the price paid to buy back our money from abroad that’s killing us. Despite the Koranic prohibition on charging interest, the Gulf princes demand their pound of flesh, exacting a 7% payment from Citibank and 9% from Merrill. That hefty interest bill then pushes adjustable rate mortgages into the stratosphere and pushes manufacturing into China by making borrowing and energy costs impossible to overcome. Forget the cost of health care: General Motors’ interest burden quintupled in just two years.
As the great economist Paddy Chayefsky wrote in the film The Network:
“The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. … It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity…. There are no nations, there are no peoples. There is only one vast and immense, interwoven, multi-national dominion of petro-dollars. … There is no America. There is no ‘democracy.’ The world is a business, one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work.”
In 2005, the US consumer paid Arab and OPEC nations a quarter trillion dollars ($252 billion) for oil – and the USA received back 100% of it – and then some ($311 billion) via Gulf nations’ investment in US Treasury bills and purchases of US businesses and property. Bush’s trip to Abdullah’s tent is all about this vast business of keeping this petro-dollar treadmill spinning.
The Bush Administration, rather than tax Americans to cover our deficits or make the banks suffer the consequences of their predatory lending practices, is allowing the Saudis to charge us big time at the pump with the understanding they will lend it all back to us – so the party never has to stop.
It has been reported that the President’s Secret Service men traveling with him seemed embarrassed by the eye-popping loads of diamond and gold gifts which they have to carry back for President Bush. They need not feel they have taken too much from their hosts: Bush has assured Abdullah that the King can suck it back out through our gas tanks.
Greg Palast is the author of The Network: The World as a Company Town, in the New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse. Hear Ed Asner read from the book and the film ‘The Network’ at www.gregpalast.com
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
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Michael Savage hates Muslims (video; action alert)
At Brave New Films, we have generally stayed away from engaging with the extreme right-wing fringe. However, the recent Michael Savage attacks against Muslims are so hateful and vicious, we believe it is important to respond. Not only does he engage in the worst kind of racist name-calling and stereotyping, he then compounds it by filing a frivolous lawsuit against CAIR because they dared to fight back. Really.
The video is very upsetting, and we believe after seeing it you will want to act.
You should call or write a personal letter to one of the sponsors listed. Don’t make it an attack, but let them know that the video is shocking and you are sure they would not want to be associated with such behavior. A phone call, a letter or an email to the sponsor calling attention to this action by Savage can be effective in hitting him where it hurts.
And then have some fun. The call-in number for his radio show is 800-449-8255, and he is generally on the air between 6-9pm ET. You may have to bite your tongue to get by the phone monitors, but when you do and you get on the air, enjoy yourself. Take the high road. Don’t go to his level. You might consider expressing your dismay that his sponsors (pick one, like the USDA or Intuit, the makers of TurboTax) are funding hate.
We also want you to know that we are challenging Savage to try and silence us the way he has with CAIR.
Savage filed a lawsuit against CAIR because they tried to raise money on the same website where they posted his hateful message. The full story is in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/art…
In support of taking on bullies and in defense of free speech, Brave New Films has decided to do exactly the same thing: put Savage’s words next to a donate button on our website NOSAVAGE.org. By contributing to Brave New Films, you will send a message to the hateful bully, WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED. And we’ll donate all but $1 of the proceeds to the Interfaith Alliance, a group that promotes religious freedom.
And if you have a blog or website, consider doing the same thing. Put up the YouTube video with a link to the donate page to show that his efforts to intimidate those who speak out against him will do nothing but make our voice stronger.
Was Kucinich excluded for political views? By Amy Goodman
By Amy Goodman
hattiesburgamerican.com
Jan 17, 2008
One pundit called the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas “a lovefest.” It may well have been, but only because the corporate sponsor of the debate, General Electric-owned NBC News and its cable news channel MSNBC, rescinded its invitation to candidate Dennis Kucinich.
NBC decided earlier that it would invite the top four Democratic candidates to the debate. Then New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson dropped out of the race, which elevated Kucinich to the fourth position.
…
Late Tuesday night, after the debate, Kucinich learned that the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C., was going to take up a defense appropriations bill on Wednesday. He took a red-eye flight back from Las Vegas.
Unlike the candidates who General Electric/NBC News allowed into the debate, Kucinich stands alone in opposing war funding: “I’m the only person running for president who not only voted against the war, but voted 100 percent of the time against funding the war.
“They either voted for the war, in the case of Sen. Edwards and Sen. Clinton, or they voted to fund the war, in the case of Sen. Edwards, Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama, who, by the way, campaigned saying, well, he opposed the war from the start, but then when he was elected to the Senate, his voting record is indistinguishable from Sen. Clinton’s with respect to funding the war.”
…
He went on: “It goes right to the question of democratic governance, whether a broadcast network can choose who the candidates will be, based on their narrow concerns, because they’ve contributed – GE, NBC and Raytheon, another one of GE’s properties, have all contributed substantially to Democratic candidates who were in the debate.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
Dennis Kucinich – Statement from Las Vegas
Randi Rhodes interviews Kucinich on NBC shutting him out
Breaking the Sound Barrier: Kucinich Answers Debate Questions (video)
Was Yucca Mountain the Real Reason Kucinich Was Silenced by GE?
Dennis Kucinich – Statement from Las Vegas
Dennis Kucinich – Statement from Las Vegas 01/15/08
see
Randi Rhodes interviews Kucinich on NBC shutting him out
Breaking the Sound Barrier: Kucinich Answers Debate Questions (video)
Was Yucca Mountain the Real Reason Kucinich Was Silenced by GE?
Olmert And Bush – Leader And Vassal By Paul Craig Roberts
By Paul Craig Roberts
January 16, 2008
After pandering to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s right-wing government last week, US president George W. Bush carried the Israeli/neoconservative campaign against Iran to Arab countries. Sounding as authentic as the “Filipino Monkey,” Bush told the Arab countries that “Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terror,” and that “Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere.”To no effect. Every country in the world, except America, knows by now that the US is the world’s leading state sponsor of terror and that the neoconservative drive for US hegemony over the world threatens the security of nations everywhere.
But before we get into this, let’s first see what Bush means by “terrorist” and Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism.
Bush considers Iran to be the leading state sponsor of terror, because Iran is believed to fund Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian ghetto. Hezbollah and Hamas are two organizations that exist because of Israeli aggression against Palestine and Lebanon. The two organizations are branded “terrorist” because they resist Israel’s theft of Palestine and Israel’s designs on southern Lebanon. Both organizations are resistance organizations. They resist Israel’s territorial expansion and this makes them “terrorist.”
They are terrorists because they don’t receive billions in US military aid and cannot put armies in the field with tanks, fighter jets and helicopter gunships, backed up by US spy satellites and Israel’s nuclear weapons—although Hezbollah, a small militia, has twice defeated the Israeli army. However, Palestine is so thoroughly under the Israeli heel that Hamas can resist only with suicide bombers and obsolete rockets. It is dishonest to damn the terrorist response but not the policies that provoke the response.
The US is at war in Iraq, because the neoconservatives want to rid Israel of the Muslim governments—Iraq, Iran and Syria—that are not American surrogates and, therefore, are willing to fund Palestinian and Lebanese resistance to Israeli aggression. Israel, protected by the US, has disobeyed UN resolutions for four decades and has been methodically squeezing Palestinians out of Palestine.
Americans do not think of themselves or of Israel as terrorist states, but the evidence is complete and overwhelming. Thanks to the power of the Israel Lobby, Americans only know the Israeli side of the story, which is that evil anti-Semite Palestinians will not let blameless Israelis live in peace and persist in their unjustified terror attacks on an innocent Israeli state.
The facts differ remarkably from Israel Lobby propaganda. Israel illegally occupies Palestine. Israel sends bulldozers into Palestinian villages and knocks down Palestinian houses, occasionally killing an American protester in the process, and uproots Palestinian olive groves. Israel cuts Palestinian villages off from water, hospitals, farmlands, employment and schools. Israel builds special roads through Palestine on which only Israelis can travel. Israel establishes checkpoints everywhere to hinder Palestinian movement to hospitals, schools and from one enclave or ghetto to another. Many Palestinians die from the inability to get through checkpoints to medical care. Israel builds illegal settlements on Palestinian lands. Israeli Zionist “settlers” take it upon themselves to evict Palestinians from their villages and towns in order to convert them into Israeli settlements. A huge wall has been built to wall off the stolen Palestinian lands from the remaining isolated ghettos. Israeli soldiers shoot down Palestinian children in the streets. So do Israeli Zionist “settlers.”
All of this has been documented so many times by so many organizations that it is pathetic that Americans are so ignorant. For example, Israeli peace groups such as Gush Shalom or Jeff Halper’s Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions provide abundant documentation of Israel’s theft of Palestine and persecution of Palestinians.
Every time the UN passes a resolution condemning Israel for its crimes, the US vetoes it.
The Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees’ film, “The Iron Wall”, reveals the enormity of Israel’s crimes against Palestine.
President Jimmy Carter, Israel’s friend, tried to bring peace to the Middle East but was frustrated by Israel. Carter was demonized by the Israel Lobby for calling, truthfully, the situation that Israel has created “apartheid.”
Historians, including Israel’s finest, such as Ilan Pappe, have documented The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,
Israelis, such as Uri Avnery, a former member of Israel’s Knesset, are stronger critics of Israel’s policies toward Palestine than can be found in America. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz is more outspoken in its criticism of Israeli policies than any newspaper would dare to be in North America or Europe.
But it is all to no avail in brainwashed America where Israelis wear white hats and Arabs wear black hats.
The ignorance of Americans commits US foreign policy to the service of Israel. As Uri Avnery wrote in CounterPunch (January 14, 2008), a visitor from another planet, attending the recent press conference in Jerusalem, would conclude that Olmert is the leader of the superpower and that Bush is his vassal.
Americans don’t know what terror is. To know terror, you have to be a Palestinian, an Iraqi, or an Afghan.
Layla Anwar, an Iraqi Internet blogger, describes what terror is like. Terror is families attending a wedding being blown to pieces by an American missile or bomb and the survivors being blown to pieces at the funeral of the newlyweds. Terror is troops breaking down your door in the middle of the night, putting guns to your heads, and carrying off brothers, sons, and husbands with bags over their heads and returning to rape the unprotected women. Terror is being waterboarded in one of America’s torture dungeons. Terror is “when you run from hospital ward to hospital ward, from prison to prison, from militia to militia looking for your loved one only to recognize them from their teeth fillings in some morgue.” [Stress…, by Layla Anwar, January 14, 2008]
For people targeted by American hegemony, terror is realizing that Americans have no moral conscience. Terror is the lack of medicines from American embargoes that led to the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children. When asked by Lesley Stahl if the American policy was worth the children’s deaths, Madeleine Albright, President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, said “we think the price is worth it.”
In the feeble minds of the White House Moron and his immoral supporters, the massive deaths for which America is responsible, including those inflicted by Israel, have nothing to do with Muslim enmity toward America. Instead, Muslims hate us for our “freedom and democracy,” the real threat to which comes from Bush’s police state measures and stolen elections.
There is dispute over the number of Iraqis killed or murdered by Bush’s illegal invasion, a war crime under the Nuremberg standard, but everyone agrees the number is very large. Many deaths result from American bombing of civilian populations as the Israelis did in Lebanon and do in Gaza. There is nothing new about these bombings. President Clinton bombed civilians in Serbia in order to dictate policy to Serbia. But when Americans and Israelis bomb other peoples, it is not terror. It is only terror when the US or Israel is attacked in retaliation.
The Israeli assault from the air on Beirut apartment houses is not terror. But when a Palestinian puts on a suicide belt and blows himself up in an Israeli cafe, that’s terror. When Clinton bombs a Serbian passenger train, that’s not terror, but when a buried explosive takes out an American tank somewhere in Iraq, that’s terror.
Aggressors always have excuses for their aggression. Hitler was an expert at this. So are the US and Israel.
Unfortunately for the world, there’s little chance for change in America or Israel. The presidential candidates (Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich) who would bring change in Washington, without which there will be no change in Israel, are not in the running for their party’s nomination. As John J. Mearsheimer noted on January 12, the candidates in the running are as much under the thumb of the Israel Lobby as Bush. The candidates are Bush clones as strongly committed as Bush to hegemony, war, Israel and executive power.
The possible exception is Obama. If he is an exception, that makes him a threat to the powers that be, and, as we might have witnessed in the NH primary, the Republican- supplied, Republican-programmed Diebold electronic voting machines can easily be rigged to deny him the Democratic nomination. Hillary will not resist Israel’s wishes, and her husband’s presidency bombed at will his demonized victims.
There is no essential difference between the candidates or between the candidates and George W. Bush. Alabama Governor George Wallace, a surprisingly successful third party candidate for the presidency, said as long ago as 1968, “There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the Democrat and Republican Parties.”
Today, four decades later, there’s not a penny’s worth of difference, not an ounce of difference. Both parties have revealed themselves to be warmonger police state parties. The US Constitution has few friends in the capital city.
COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Main Japanese Opposition Party Questions 9/11 in Parliament (vid; transcript)
Global Research, January 15, 2008
For complete transcript in English scroll down.
VIDEOS NOW SUBTITLED
Japan’s prime minister and main opposition rival clashed on Jan. 9th, 2008 over the controversial naval mission in support of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan as the ruling bloc prepared to force an enabling law through parliament
Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, squaring off in parliament with Democratic Party leader Ichiro Ozawa for the first time since taking office, praised the navy’s refueling mission as helping the global war on terrorism and urged the opposition-controlled upper house to vote on it before parliament ends on Jan. 15.
Ozawa insists the refueling mission violates Japan’s pacifist constitution, and has not been approved formally by the United Nationsa position Fukuda flatly rejected.
Ozawas Japan Democratic party which is in the opposition tried to block the resumption of the mission, which supplies fuel and water to US-led forces operating in the Indian Ocean.
It claims that oil supplied by Japanese ships has been diverted for use in operations in Iraq, an accusation the Americans deny.
Earthlasthope2
December 09, 2008on vodpod: Japan fights the NWO! Other countries are following! Wake up the world! [1 of 8]
Below is a transcript of testimony in the Japanese Parliament, broadcast live nationwide on NHK television.
The Member of Parliament talking about 911 is Yukihisa Fujita from the Democratic Party of Japan.Head of the committee:
We will now begin the first session of the defense and foreign affairs committee. We will now start discussing the special anti-terror law. .We now call on Mr. Yukihisa Fujita
Fujita standing in front of microphone:
This will be the last televised broadcast of this committee for so I would like to talk about the origin of the war on terrorism which was the attacks of 911. On September 11 of 2002 I went to a theater house for a charity concert to help build a school in Afghanistan. They chose to have the charity concert on that day as a gesture of respect for the dead. Normally 911 commemorative events are for the people who died in New York but the people who held this event decided that more innocent people died as a result of 911 in Afghanistan than in New York. So they built a grade school near where the statue of Buddha was destroyed in Bamiyan. The name of the school is “the school of hope.” They also lit candles to commemorate the dead both in Afghanistan and in New York in the year 2002, one year after the attacks. So, when discussing these anti-terror laws we should ask ourselves, what was 911, what is terrorism? So today, I would like to talk about the beginning of the war on terror.
So, I would like to ask the people who call this law an anti-terror law to realize that the biggest victim of the war on terrorism has been Afghanistan so I believe helping the people of Afghanistan should be our biggest priority. I would like to ask Mr. Inuzuka about this.
Tadashi Inuzuka walking to the microphone:
As Mr. Fujita says the main purpose of this law is to provide peace and security to Afghanistan. And, as he says, the biggest sufferers have been the people of Afghanistan. Afghanistan has 1.7 times the land area of Japan and 20 some million people live there. Also, because of a drought on the Eurasian continent close to 5 million have died due to water shortages. Even now 1 million people live close to the main battlegrounds. So, the main purpose is to provide stability to those war zones so in that context what should Japan do? However, instead of providing support by providing fuel to the U.S. forces we at the Democratic Party have decided that providing water is more important. The philosophy behind our anti-terror law is to get the ruling party to help deal with this problem.
Head of the committee: Mr. Fujita
Mr. Fujita:
I would like to talk about the origins of this war on terrorism. You may recall that in November I asked you if terrorism was war or if it was a crime. And the whole start of this war on terrorism was 911. What I want to know is if this event was caused by Al Qaeda or not. So far the only thing the government has said is that we think it was caused by Al Qaeda because President Bush told us so. We have not seen any real proof that it was Al Qaeda. I would like to know why the Prime Minister thinks it was the Taliban who was responsible for 911. Committee Chief, I want to ask the Prime Minister because he was chief cabinet officer at the time.
Prime Minister Fukuda:
Since the attacks we have communicated with the U.S. government and other governments at different levels and exchanged information. According to secret information obtained by our government and reports put together by foreign governments the 911 attacks were carried out by the international terrorist organization known as Al Qaeda.
Mr. Fujita:
So, you are talking about both secret and disclosed information. My question is has the Japanese government carried out its own investigation using the police and other resources? It is a crime so surely an investigation needs to be carried out. When a Japanese journalist was shot in Myanmar you carried out an investigation. In the same way over 20 Japanese people died on 911 so surely the government carried out its own investigation and decided that Al Qaeda was responsible. So, what kind of investigation did you carry out? At the time you were Chief Cabinet Secretary so surely you would know better than anybody so I want to ask you about your investigation.
Prime Minister Fukuda:
After the 911 attacks the National Police Agency sent an emergency anti-terror team to New York. They met with U.S. government officials and gathered information about missing Japanese.
Mr. Fujita:
So you are saying over 20 people died as a result of a crime and most of those people were working in New York. Also there were some Japanese who died in the four airplanes that were hijacked. I would like to know exactly how many people died in the buildings and how many died in the airplanes. I also want to know how you confirmed this. I would like the Foreign Minister to answer for me.
Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura standing at right in front of microphone:
We found the bodies of over a dozen Japanese following the simultaneous terror attacks carried out on September 11 2001. We were also informed about the death of 11 more people by the U.S. authorities. In total 24 Japanese died in those attacks. Of those 2 were in the airplanes.
Mr. Fujita:
I would like to ask what flights the two Japanese who died in the airplanes were on and how you determined who they were. If the foreign minister does not know it is OK to get a bureaucrat to answer:
Foreign Ministry division chief Ryoji Tanizaki:
Since this a question of fact, I will answer. As the Foreign Minister said, of the 24 people who died two were on the airplanes. One of them was on United Flight 93 and the other was on American airlines flight 11.As for how we know this, well I do not have the information in front of me but we were told by U.S. authorities and, in general, they use DNA testing. So we believe that is how we know about those two people.
Mr. Fujita:
So you are saying you do not know because you do not have the documents. Also, you say you believe there was DNA testing but you do not know. So what I want to say today is that this was a crime and crimes are supposed to be investigated. So the government needs to inform the victims families of the results of their investigation. Also, instead of just observing the anniversary of 911 every year you must be gathering information and reacting to it. So, during the past six years have you been supplying the families of the deceased with information? I would like to ask the Foreign Minister to answer.
Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura:
So you do not want to ask any more about how we confirmed the deaths of Japanese but want to know about reports to the victims families? We provided the families with information about the bodies and about compensation funds. Also, for the 13 Japanese whose remains we found, we helped the families deal with the bodies. We also financial support visits to the World Trade Center site for the families on every anniversary.
Mr. Fujita:
Since I do not have much time I would like to ask about the suspicious information being uncovered and the doubts people world wide are having about the events of 911. Many of these doubters are very influential people. In such circumstances I believe the Japanese government, which claims the attacks were carried out by Al Qaeda, should be providing the victims families with this new information. In that context I would like to ask several questions.
First of all I would like to get all members of the committee to look at this panel and look at the pictures I have provided you with. This is concrete evidence in the form of photographs and other types of information. The first photograph has computer graphics attached to show how large the plane that hit the Pentagon was. A 757 is quite a large airplane with a width of 38 meters. So as you can see even though such a large plane hit the pentagon there is only a hole that is too small for the airplane. This is a photograph taken of firemen at work and you can also see there is no damage of the sort an airplane that large should make. I would also like you to look at the lawn in front and notice that there are no airplane parts on it. Let us now look at the third picture, which is also of the pentagon taken from a U.S. TV news report has captions that show the roof of the Pentagon is still intact. Again even though a huge airplane is supposed to have hit, there is not enough corresponding damage. Now let us move to the next photograph. Here is a photograph of a hole, as Minister Komura knows the Pentagon is a very strong building with many walls. Yet the airplane has pierced them. But as you know, airplanes are made of the lightest possible material. An airplane made of such light material could not make a hole like that. Next I would like to show a photograph of how the airplane hit the building. The airplane made a U-turn, avoiding the Defense Secretary’s office and hitting the only part of the Pentagon that had been specially reinforced to withstand a bomb attack.
Also, in the middle of page five we have a comment from a U.S. airforce official. He says I have flown the two types of airplane used on 911 and I cannot believe it would be possible for someone who is flying one for the first time to be able to carry out such a maneuver. Also, as you know, they have not recovered the flight recorders from most of these 4 airplanes. Also, there were more than 80 security cameras at the Pentagon but they have refused to release almost all of the footage. In any case, as you have just seen there is no picture of the airplane or of its wreckage in any of these photographs. It is very strange that no such pictures have been shown to us.
As you know Japan’s self-defense forces have their headquarters in Ichigaya. Can you imagine if an airplane hit a major city, if an hour and a half after an airplane hit New York that an airplane could hit the Pentagon? In such a situation how could our allies allow such an attack to take place. I would like the Defense Minister to answer this.
Defense Minister Fuyushiba Ishiba:
I have not prepared so I will have to answer ad-lib. If such a situation took place then the airforce would send fighters up to shoot down any airplanes. This is what happened with an attack on the German constitutional court. In the case of Japan our reaction would depend on what kind of airplane it was, who was flying it and what their purpose was. However, according to our laws it might be hard to order an airplane to be shot down just because it was flying at a low level. We would probably have self-defense forces fly with it and ask for a cabinet decision. Since an airplane would have many people on board we would have do discuss what to do. This happened a long time ago but a Cesna airplane was flown into the house of a person called Yoshio Kodama. There was also an All Japan Airways flight bound for Hakodate that was hijacked and had the pilot killed. It would be best if such a thing never happened but we need to prepare new laws for such situations and discuss them in Parliament.
Mr. Fujita:
Since we are running out of time I would like to present a new piece of evidence. Please look at this panel. The first picture is one you see often of the two towers that were hit by hijacked airplanes. I could understand if this happened right after the airplanes hit but here we can see large piece of material flying a large distance through the air. Some flew 150 meters. You can objects flying in this picture as if there was an explosion. Here is a picture I took from a book. This lets you see how far the objects flew. The third picture is of a fireman who was involved in the rescue talking about a series of explosions in the building that sounded like a professional demolition. We cannot present video today so I have written a translation of what the fireman said. Here his is saying “it went boom boom boom like explosions were going off.”
Here is something said by a Japanese research team of officials from the fire department and the construction ministry. The interviewed a Japanese survivor who said that while she was fleeing there were explosions. This testimony appears in a report prepared with the aid of the construction ministry and the fire department. Now I would like you to see the following picture. Normally it is said that the twin towers collapsed because they were hit by airplanes. However, one block away from the twin towers is building number 7. It can be seen in the following map a block away from the WTC. This building collapsed 7 hours after the WTC buildings were attacked. If I could show you a video it would be easy to understand but take a look at this photograph. This is a 47 story building that fell in this manner (He drops and object to demonstrate). The building falls in five or six seconds. It is about the same speed as an object would fall in a vacuum. This building falls like something you would see in a Kabuki show. Also if falls while keeping its shape. Remember it was not hit by an airplane. You have to ask yourself if a building could fall in that manner due to a fire after 7 hours. Here we have a copy of the 911 commission report. This is a report put out by the U.S. government in July of 2004 but this report does not mention the collapse of the building I just described. It is not mentioned at all in here (he waves the book). FEMA also issued a report but they also fail to mention this building. Many people believe, especially after seeing the story about building number 7, that something is strange. Since this is an incident where many people died people think is should be investigated.
We are running out of time but I would also like to mention the put options. Just before the 911 attacks, ie on September 6th, 7th and 8th there were put options put out on the stocks of the two airlines United and American that were hit by hijackers. There were also put options on Merril Lynch, one of the biggest WTC tenants. In other words somebody had insider information and made a fortune selling put options of these stocks. The head of Germany’s Bundesbank at the time, who is equivalent to the Governor of the Bank of Japan, said there are lots of facts to prove the people involved in the terror attacks profited from insider information. He said there was lots of suspicious trading involving financial companies etc prior to the attacks. The had of the Bundesbank was willing to say this much. I would like to ask the Finance Minster about these put options. Did the government of Japan know about this, and what do you think about this? I would like to ask Finance Minister Nukaga about this.
Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga:
I was in Burkina Fasso in Africa when I heard about this incident. I decided to fly immediately to the U.S. but when I got to Paris I was told there were no flights to America. So I only heard what was reported later about the facts. I know there have been reports about the points you raise. So we made it obligatory that people provide ID for securities transactions and for suspicious transactions to be reported and we made it a crime to provide money to terrorist organizations. We believe the international financial system should not be abused. In any case, terrorism is a horrible thing and must be condemned. This type of terrorism cannot be stopped by one country but needs to be stopped by international society.
Mr. Fujita:
I would like to ask finance specialist Mr. Asao to tell me about put options. A group of people with large amounts of money, clear insider information and financial expertise would have been necessary for such a thing to take place. Could a few terrorists in Afghanistand and Pakistan carry out such a sophisticated and large scale set of transactions? I would like to ask Mr. Asao to respond.
Keiichiro Asao:
I understand put options are a deal to sell stocks at a fixed price. In this case somebody must have had insider information to carry out such transactions because nobody could normally predict these airlines would have their planes hijacked. So, I believe this was certainly a case of insider trading.
Mr. Fujita:
Prime Minister, you were Chief Cabinet Secretary at the time and as somebody has already noted, this was an incident of the sort that humanity had never previously experienced. Also, there appears to be a lot more information about this incident coming out now than came out in the months after the attacks. Now that we are an internet and visual society, this information is being made public so if we look at the situation now, the whole starting point for these two laws , the start of the war on terror itself, as you have seen from the information I have presented, has not been properly investigated or analyzed. So I do not believe the government has acted properly by investigating this incident or asking the U.S. government for an explanation. So far we have not started refueling U.S. ships yet so I think we need to go back to the beginning and not just simply and blindly trust the U.S. government explanation and indirect information provided by them. There were too many victims so I think we need to start again from the beginning. We need to ask who the real victims of this war on terrorism are. I think the citizens of the world are its victims. Here in Japan we have disappearing pensions and disappearing records about victims of Hepatitis C contaminated blood but everything I have presented on facts and confirmable evidence. Let us talk about the vanishing black boxes, vanishing airplanes and vanishing remains. Also lots of the remains of these buildings have disappeared. Even FEMA says that prevented it from carrying out a proper investigation. We need to look at this evidence and ask ourselves what the war on terrorism really is. I can see the ministers nodding in agreement but I would like to ask Prime Minister Fukuda. Please look at me. I have heard that when you were Chief Cabinet Minister at the time you felt many strange things about these attacks. Do you not think it was strange?
Prime Minister Fukuda:
I never said I thought it was strange.
Mr. Fujita:
Prime Minister what about the origin of the war on terror and the idea of whether it is right or wrong to participate in it? Is there really a reason to participate in this war on terror? Do we really need to participate? I would also like to ask about how to really stop terrorism.
Prime Minister Fukuda:
We believe based on evidence provided to us by the U.S. government that the attacks of 911 were carried out by Al Qaeda. We need to put an end to Al Qaeda terrorism. That is why international society is united in the fight against terrorism. Here, concerning a law passed by the Democratic Party last year and based on UN resolution 16595. This is a resolution passed in response to the terrorist attacks on the U.S. So you passed the law agreeing with the UN didn’t you?
Mr Fujita:
Did you confirm about the bodies and the facts behind the resolution because that is why you claim to be participating in this war on terrorism. So I believe to end terrorism we need to pass a law that actually helps the people of Afghanistan. I would like Mr. Inuzuka to talk about the law and about the fight against terrorism.
Tadashi Inuzuka:
Among the many problems raised by MP Fujita the thing we need to worry most about is that the people in Afghanistan can live in peace and without worries. That is the core of the issue of ending terrorism. Without discussing this but just operating behind the back lines by supplying oil and not thinking about the entire situation or the people involved it is nonsense to debate this law. This law should be made for peace and security in Afghanistan. Our country needs to pass a real anti-terror law.
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© Copyright , Global Research, 2008
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7803
Harry Reid Attacks Dennis Kucinich on Radio Show + Sign ACLU Petition to Sen Reid (FISA) (updated)
After Downing Street
Jan. 17, 2008
Listen to this clip of an interview with Christiane Brown. Tell Reid what you think of it.
***
FISA Debate Comes Down to Reid and the Constitution
madhatter
January 18 , 2008
More than two years ago, the nation learned that the National Security Agency was spying on Americans without warrants or a court order. And since that time, we’ve been waiting for Congress to stand up to the Bush administration abuses and bring NSA spying in line with the Constitution.
The Senate returns next week and the temporary fix to the NSA problem expires soon. Now, Senator Reid has a choice to make. He can finally bring to the floor of the Senate FISA legislation that protects our right to privacy and due process. Or, he can once again fail to stand up to the Bush administration’s demands for unnecessary and dangerous broad powers and bring up for a vote a shameful, unconstitutional bill.
The ACLU is engaging thousands of its members and asking them to call their senators. We’re running radio ads targeting key senators around the country. We’re holding dozens of meetings with senators and their staff in their home-state offices. And, we’re working with a broad coalition of organizations to make sure any spying legislation Congress passes protects our privacy and the rule of law.
Make the voice of freedom heard: Sign the ACLU petition to Senator Reid now.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
Dandelion Salad 