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8 July 2005       Free

www.MiddleEast.Org
News, Views, & Analysis Governments, Lobbies, & the
Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know

Britain had been warned says Robert Fisk

"If you bomb our cities," Osama bin Laden said in one of his recent video tapes, "we will bomb yours."



"What we are confronting here is a specific, direct, centralised attack on London as a result of a "war on terror" which Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara has locked
us into."






























 






The most honest, most comprehensive, and most
mobilizing news and analysis on the Middle East
always comes from MER.  
It is indispensable!"
Robert Silverman - Salamanca, Spain


The reality of this barbaric bombing 

If we are fighting insurgency in Iraq, what makes us think insurgency won't come to us? 

By Robert Fisk 


07/08/05
"The Independent" - - "If you bomb our cities," Osama bin Laden said in one of his recent video tapes, "we will bomb yours." There you go, as they say. It was crystal clear Britain would be a target ever since Tony Blair decided to join George Bush's "war on terror" and his invasion of Iraq. We had, as they say, been warned. The G8 summit was obviously chosen, well in advance, as Attack Day. 

And it's no use Mr Blair telling us yesterday that "they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear". "They" are not trying to destroy "what we hold dear". They are trying to get public opinion to force Blair to withdraw from Iraq, from his alliance with the United States, and from his adherence to Bush's policies in the Middle East. The Spanish paid the price for their support for Bush - and Spain's subsequent retreat from Iraq proved that the Madrid bombings achieved their objectives - while the Australians were made to suffer in Bali.

It is easy for Tony Blair to call yesterdays bombings "barbaric" - of course they were - but what were the civilian deaths of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the children torn apart by cluster bombs, the countless innocent Iraqis gunned down at American military checkpoints? When they die, it is "collateral damage"; when "we" die, it is "barbaric terrorism".

If we are fighting insurgency in Iraq, what makes us believe insurgency won't come to us? One thing is certain: if Tony Blair really believes that by "fighting terrorism" in Iraq we could more efficiently protect Britain - fight them there rather than let them come here, as Bush constantly says - this argument is no longer valid.

To time these bombs with the G8 summit, when the world was concentrating on Britain, was not a stroke of genius. You don't need a PhD to choose another Bush-Blair handshake to close down a capital city with explosives and massacre more than 30 of its citizens. The G8 summit was announced so far in advance as to give the bombers all the time they needed to prepare.

A co-ordinated system of attacks of the kind we saw yesterday would have taken months to plan - to choose safe houses, prepare explosives, identify targets, ensure security, choose the bombers, the hour, the minute, to plan the communications (mobile phones are giveaways). Co-ordination and sophisticated planning - and the usual utter ruthlessness with regard to the lives of the innocent - are characteristic of al-Qa'ida. And let us not use - as our television colleagues did yesterday - "hallmarks", a word identified with quality silver rather than base metal.

And now let us reflect on the fact that yesterday, the opening of the G8, so critical a day, so bloody a day, represented a total failure of our security services - the same intelligence "experts" who claim there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when there were none, but who utterly failed to uncover a months-long plot to kill Londoners.

Trains, planes, buses, cars, metros. Transportation appears to be the science of al-Qa'ida's dark arts. No one can search three million London commuters every day. No one can stop every tourist. Some thought the Eurostar might have been an al-Qa'ida target - be sure they have studied it - but why go for prestige when your common or garden bus and Tube train are there for the taking.

And then come the Muslims of Britain, who have long been awaiting this nightmare. Now every one of our Muslims becomes the "usual suspect", the man or woman with brown eyes, the man with the beard, the woman in the scarf, the boy with the worry beads, the girl who says she's been racially abused.

I remember, crossing the Atlantic on 11 September 2001 - my plane turned round off Ireland when the US closed its airspace - how the aircraft purser and I toured the cabins to see if we could identify any suspicious passengers. I found about a dozen, of course, totally innocent men who had brown eyes or long beards or who looked at me with "hostility". And sure enough, in just a few seconds, Osama bin Laden turned nice, liberal, friendly Robert into an anti-Arab racist.

And this is part of the point of yesterday's bombings: to divide British Muslims from British non-Muslims (let us not mention the name Christians), to encourage the very kind of racism that Tony Blair claims to resent.

But here's the problem. To go on pretending that Britain's enemies want to destroy "what we hold dear" encourages racism; what we are confronting here is a specific, direct, centralised attack on London as a result of a "war on terror" which Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara has locked us into. Just before the US presidential elections, Bin Laden asked: "Why do we not attack Sweden?"

Lucky Sweden. No Osama bin Laden there. And no Tony Blair. 

 



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The most honest, most comprehensive, and most mobilizing news and
analysis on the Middle East always comes from MER.   It is indispensable!"
Robert Silverman - Salamanca, Spain

 


July 2005


Magazine






It's The Damn Policies Stupid!
(July 20, 2005)
Long-time MER readers will not find all this a total surprise. We've been 'preaching' for some time that what is happening today can in fact be traced back to what has happened ever since the end of World War I in the Middle East, to Western policies ever since the carve-up of the old Ottoman Empire. It was then, at the so-called 'Paris Peace Conference', that the Turkish Muslim Empire of old was ended by force of arms and the Arab peoples tricked once again by those who professed 'self-determination' (the 'freedom' slogan of that era) but were in fact determined to deny the Arabs their independence and any semblance of democracy.

American Terror and the Coming War With Iran
(July 19, 2005)
"In their ignorance and arrogance, the Bushists will almost certainly strike at Iran -- despite the fact that even Iranian dissidents support the effort to make their nation a nuclear power and would join the mullahs in retaliation. The result will be a conflict far surpassing the horror and magnitude of the Iraq disaster."

George Bush's Twisted and Perverted World
(July 18, 2005)
So much for real democracy. Even in the supposed 'bastion of freedom', the United States of America, we are all now closer than ever to living in what has to be considered a complicated modern day police-states using pre-fascist techniques. That is what omni-present 'survelliance', unchecked Gulags, 'Patriot Acts', Supreme Court 'stop the vote counting' decisions, torture techniques, legalized 'censorship', CIA covert and black ops, and continual press manipulation are really all about.

A BIG WARNING - Too Little Too Late Too Bad
(July 18, 2005)
Unfortunately, tragically, those who oppose what the Israelis are doing are not only very weak, they are badly organized and led -- miserably and probably fatally in fact. This 'Warning' Statement 'to raise the alarm' published over the weekend by three Israelis is an example -- correct in the warnings and conclusions, badly written, even more badly presented, and without any serious strategy other than a kind of pathetic assertion to sign another petition that has no chance of any kind of having any impact...only further misleading people as to what is really involved and what the situation really requires.


(July 18, 2005)



(July 18, 2005)


Greg Szymanski Articles - 9/11 Conspiracy
(July 18, 2005)


Witchhunt against Ward Churchill
(July 17, 2005)


ISRAEL and SHARON'S LATEST AND GREATEST DECEPTION
(July 16, 2005)
There are very few print magazines that deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a serious and sophisticated way. One of these is a bi-monthly English magazine called Challenge; and this editorial from the current issue is of particular interest and importance at this particular time. All the more so with the Israelis so outrageously trying to cajole and extort still further billions from the U.S. -- a financial swindle on top of what really rises to the level of a major historical and political scam. It is indeed always challenging to really understand the actual, rather than the public relations, policies of Israel; and of the U.S. as well. More and more in fact.

Arafat's 'Stealth Assassination' Confirmed
(July 13, 2005)
Last November, long before any other credible expert news and analysis media, and even as the Israeli/U.S.-chosen Palestinian leaders were strenuously denying it, MER repeatedly published articles detailing the "STEALTH ASSASSINATION" of Yasser Arafat.

Washington Prepares More Attacks in the name of the 'New World Order'
(July 12, 2005)
Nothing like more 'terrorism', more appeals to no-nothing patriotism, and more 'defending the homeland' jingoism to rally the people around the flag, no matter what the long-term costs, no matter how much social polarization and opposition... Washington's current political/military and domestic/international time-table goes something like this: Get one or two right-wing appointees within a few months onto the Supreme Court, get the Israelis out of little imprisoned Gaza giving the false impression of 'progress' in the 'Middle East Peace Process', claim to be fast-track training Iraqi regime troops so the Iraqis can be blamed themselves for not 'stabilizing' their country and/or for the escalating civil war; and then be ready to strike one way or another whenever the timing and excuses are suitable against the remaining 'evils'... Iran, North Korea, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas.

Washington Firestorm over Rove, Court - Calculating Next 'New World Order' Strikes
(July 12, 2005)
"...and then be ready to strike one way or another, whenever the timing and excuses are suitable, against the remaining 'evils'... Iran, North Korea, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas."

Recent MER Articles
(July 09, 2005)


Has Karl Rove Finally Screwed Himself?
(July 11, 2005)
If you read MER and BlogWashington.com you have known for some time that the Karl Rove/White House scandal would soon be exploding in Washington with potentially devastating political results. It's a modern-day Watergate-like cover-up saga so far missing a modern-day Deep Throat. But in the past few days this major story is beginning to emerge from journalistic hesitation and cowardice on the part of what we all now call the 'mainstream' and 'corporate' media. It was more than a week ago on 2 July that the following appeared at BlogWashington.com:

POPE FANS FLAMES OF CHRISTIAN - MUSLIM WAR
(July 10, 2005)
Add to these acts and statements of the Pope of Rome, certainly the most visible and powerful symbol of Christianity, the ever-increasing Evangelical 'Born Again' nature of American society these days on top of George W. Bush's public assertion of 'Crusade' both in word and deed, and you have a formula for escalating religious-inspired warfare for a long time to come. Things are now escalating further out of control into a real 'Clash of Civilizations'; though this certainly did not have to be.

The Apartheid Wall - A Year After the Historic ICJ ruling
(July 9, 2005)
Meanwhile the Israelis have continued racing ahead not only with 'The Wall' but also with their grand design to further build and consolidate the great majority of settlements they plan to keep and expand, while feinting 'withdrawal' from the small few they have always planned to give up as far too costly, isolated, and 'dispensable'. It is all a receipe for much further conflict, bloodshed, and turmoil in the years ahead; just as it is this Jews Vs Arabs conflict in the 'Holy Land' which in the past has so poisoned the region and indeed now the world.

Britain had been warned says Robert Fisk
(July 8, 2005)
"If you bomb our cities," Osama bin Laden said in one of his recent video tapes, "we will bomb yours."

The Most Cowardly War in History
(July 8, 2005)
"The assault on Iraq is an assault on all of us: on our dignity, our intelligence, and our future."

Egypt - "It's Like 1952"
(July 7, 2005)
"Egyptian society is boiling. We have seen this only one or two times in the past 80 years,"

Receiving MER - Free, Easy, Necessary
(July 7, 2005)
"Finally, I am beginning to understand, as I see so many parallels right here. I look forward to more valuable insights coming from your publication."

White House Threatened?
(July 6, 2005)
Is it really conceivable that in 2005 a legal investigation about who in government leaked the name of a secret CIA operative to the media could unravel the Bush Administration? There are so many differences from what happened to President Nixon in his second term. But even so legal proceedings have a kind of insolation from normal politics, none other than top Bush Adviser Karl Rove is being fingered as the man who did it, and supoenas are said to have now been issued for White House and Air Force One records involving Rove.

Front Nixon to Bush - 'Where Is The Press Now?' Asks Actor Robert Redford
(July 5, 2005)
He was the big star in the ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN Movie that made the Watergate scandal and 'Deep Throat' famous. Now he is saying quite loudly that President Bush is like President Nixon but that the press is not doing its crucial investigative job as it should. Redford chose American Independence Day, the 4th of July, to make his comments. And it was The Sunday Times two Sunday's ago now that published their tale of "Britain's Deep Throat":

Judith Miller and Karl Rove
(July 4, 2005)
"Miller...has a formidable track record of egregious violations of journalistic standards and best practices, and a habit of sending the public off on what turn out to be wild goose chases. Relying on a small circle of highly interested parties (often anonymous "sources"), she became the leading journalistic purveyor of the fallacy that Saddam Hussein had WMD and that he was tied to Al-Qaeda."

Iraq Quagmire Indeed! 42% support Impeaching Bush
(July 3, 2005)
"...more than two-in-five (42%) voters say that, if it is found that President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should hold him accountable through impeachment. While half (50%) of respondents do not hold this view, supporters of impeachment outweigh opponents in some parts of the country."

Karl Rove Fireworks Looming
(July 2, 2005)
It's been rumored for some time; but now that the long investigation is going to definitely and legally 'out' Karl Rove as 'the source' -- in this case according to federal statute an illegal act knowingly revealing the identity of an undercover CIA agent -- what is fast approaching is some fierce political and legal fireworks immediately after the 4th of July fireworks.

Recent MER Articles
(July 1, 2005)


From Germany To America
(July 1, 2005)
"What no one seemed to notice...was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider.... What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security."




© 2004 Mid-East Realities, All rights reserved