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BOMBING AFGANSITAN- A NATION BETRAYED AND DESTROYED

September 25, 2001

SANITY, COMPASSION, EXPERTISE FROM ROBERT FISK

"The problem is that America wants its own version of justice, a concept rooted, it seems, in the Wild West and Hollywood's version of the Second World War. President Bush speaks of smoking them out, of the old posters that once graced Dodge City: 'Wanted, Dead or Alive'."

"President Bush's talk of a 'crusade' caused near heart attacks among the Saudi rulers while the idea of a 'long war on terror' has an unhappy ring for the emirs and sultans of the Gulf."

HOW CAN THE U.S. BOMB THIS TRAGIC PEOPLE?
By Robert Fisk

[The Independent, UK - 23 September 2001]: We are witnessing this weekend one of the most epic events since the Second World War, certainly since Vietnam. I am not talking about the ruins of the World Trade Centre in New York and the grotesque physical scenes which we watched on 11 September, an atrocity which I described last week as a crime against humanity (of which more later). No, I am referring to the extraordinary, almost unbelievable preparations now under way for the most powerful nation ever to have existed on God's Earth to bomb the most devastated, ravaged, starvation-haunted and tragic country in the world. Afghanistan, raped and eviscerated by the Russian army for 10 years, abandoned by its friends - us, of course - once the Russians had fled, is about to be attacked by the surviving superpower.

I watch these events with incredulity, not least because I was a witness to the Russian invasion and occupation. How they fought for us, those Afghans, how they believed our word. How they trusted President Carter when he promised the West's support. I even met the CIA spook in Peshawar, brandishing the identity papers of a Soviet pilot, shot down with one of our missiles - which had been scooped from the wreckage of his Mig. "Poor guy," the CIA man said, before showing us a movie about GIs zapping the Vietcong in his private cinema. And yes, I remember what the Soviet officers told me after arresting me at Salang. They were performing their international duty in Afghanistan, they told me. They were "punishing the terrorists" who wished to overthrow the (communist) Afghan government and destroy its people. Sound familiar?

I was working for The Times in 1980, and just south of Kabul I picked up a very disturbing story. A group of religious mujahedin fighters had attacked a school because the communist regime had forced girls to be educated alongside boys. So they had bombed the school, murdered the head teacher's wife and cut off her husband's head. It was all true. But when The Times ran the story, the Foreign Office complained to the foreign desk that my report gave support to the Russians. Of course. Because the Afghan fighters were the good guys. Because Osama bin Laden was a good guy. Charles Douglas-Home, then editor of The Times would always insist that Afghan guerrillas were called "freedom fighters" in the headline. There was nothing you couldn't do with words.

And so it is today. President Bush now threatens the obscurantist, ignorant, super-conservative Taliban with the same punishment as he intends to mete out to bin Laden. Bush originally talked about "justice and punishment" and about "bringing to justice" the perpetrators of the atrocities. But he's not sending policemen to the Middle East; he's sending B-52s. And F-16s and AWACS planes and Apache helicopters. We are not going to arrest bin Laden. We are going to destroy him. And that's fine if he's the guilty man. But B-52s don't discriminate between men wearing turbans, or between men and women or women and children.

I wrote last week about the culture of censorship which is now to smother us, and of the personal attacks which any journalist questioning the roots of this crisis endures. Last week, in a national European newspaper, I got a new and revealing example of what this means. I was accused of being anti-American and then informed that anti-Americanism was akin to anti-Semitism. You get the point, of course. I'm not really sure what anti-Americanism is. But criticising the United States is now to be the moral equivalent of Jew-hating. It's OK to write headlines about "Islamic terror" or my favourite French example "God's madmen", but it's definitely out of bounds to ask why the United States is loathed by so many Arab Muslims in the Middle East. We can give the murderers a Muslim identity: we can finger the Middle East for the crime - but we may not suggest any reasons for the crime.

But let's go back to that word justice. Re-watching that pornography of mass-murder in New York, there must be many people who share my view that this was a crime against humanity. More than 6,000 dead; that's a Srebrenica of a slaughter. Even the Serbs spared most of the women and children when they killed their menfolk. The dead of Srebrenica deserve - and are getting - international justice at the Hague. So surely what we need is an International Criminal Court to deal with the sorts of killer who devastated New York on 11 September. Yet "crime against humanity" is not a phrase we are hearing from the Americans. They prefer "terrorist atrocity", which is slightly less powerful. Why, I wonder? Because to speak of a terrorist crime against humanity would be a tautology. Or because the US is against international justice. Or because it specifically opposed the creation of an international court on the grounds that its own citizens may one day be arraigned in front of it.

The problem is that America wants its own version of justice, a concept rooted, it seems, in the Wild West and Hollywood's version of the Second World War. President Bush speaks of smoking them out, of the old posters that once graced Dodge City: "Wanted, Dead or Alive". Tony Blair now tells us that we must stand by America as America stood by us in the Second World War. Yes, it's true that America helped us liberate Western Europe. But in both world wars, the US chose to intervene after only a long and - in the case of the Second World War - very profitable period of neutrality.

Don't the dead of Manhattan deserve better than this? It's less than three years since we launched a 200-Cruise missile attack on Iraq for throwing out the UN arms inspectors. Needless to say, nothing was achieved. More Iraqis were killed, and the UN inspectors never got back, and sanctions continued, and Iraqi children continued to die. No policy, no perspective. Action, not words.

And that's where we are today. Instead of helping Afghanistan, instead of pouring our aid into that country 10 years ago, rebuilding its cities and culture and creating a new political centre that would go beyond tribalism, we left it to rot. Sarajevo would be rebuilt. Not Kabul. Democracy, of a kind, could be set up in Bosnia. Not in Afghanistan. Schools could be reopened in Tuzla and Travnik. Not in Jaladabad. When the Taliban arrived, stringing up every opponent, chopping off the arms of thieves, stoning women for adultery, the United States regarded this dreadful outfit as a force for stability after the years of anarchy.

Bush's threats have effectively forced the evacuation of every Western aid worker. Already, Afghans are dying because of their absence. Drought and starvation go on killing millions - I mean millions - and between 20 and 25 Afghans are blown up every day by the 10 million mines the Russians left behind. Of course, the Russians never went back to clear the mines. I suppose those B-52 bombs will explode a few of them. But that'll be the only humanitarian work we're likely to see in the near future.

Look at the most startling image of all this past week. Pakistan has closed its border with Afghanistan. So has Iran. The Afghans are to stay in their prison. Unless they make it through Pakistan and wash up on the beaches of France or the waters of Australia or climb through the Channel Tunnel or hijack a plane to Britain to face the wrath of our Home Secretary. In which case, they must be sent back, returned, refused entry. It's a truly terrible irony that the only man we would be interested in receiving from Afghanistan is the man we are told is the evil genius behind the greatest mass-murder in American history: bin Laden. The others can stay at home and die.

NERVOUS SAUDIS TELL U.S.:
WAR ON TERRORISM WILL NOT BE LAUNCED FROM OUR AIRFIELDS
By Robert Fisk

[The Independent, 24 September 2001, BEIRUT]: Supposedly allied in close friendship with the United States, Saudi Arabia declined to allow America to use its airfields for President George Bush's "war on terrorism'' yesterday. It specifically forbade US bombers to take off for retaliatory strikes from the massive Prince Sultan airbase near the capital, Riyadh. The decision comes only a week after Lt-Gen Charles Wald, the head of air operations for US Central Command, moved his headquarters to the airbase from South Carolina.

With truly ambiguous courtesy, a Saudi official announced that "Saudi Arabia will not accept any infringement on its national sovereignty, but it fully backs action aimed at eradicating terrorism and its causes.'' Many thousands of Saudis - not least the "prime suspect" himself, Osama bin Laden - will ask how Saudi Arabia suddenly intends to protect its sovereignty when 4,500 US military personnel are still stationed in the kingdom and when American planes still use its airfields - including the Prince Sultan base - for bombing raids over southern Iraq. In any event, eradicating the "causes'' of the atrocities in New York and Washington are not President Bush's priority.

Off the record, the Saudis are saying they are worried about possible strikes on other Muslim states - presumably including Afghanistan - and that they want some power of decision over air operations, an idea that is not going to commend itself to Messrs Bush and Powell. In reality, however, Saudi authorities know that many thousands of Muslims in the kingdom - including, it is said, prominent ulema (religious teachers) and a number of Saudi princes - have voiced quiet support for Mr bin Laden's demand that the Americans pack up and leave Saudi Arabia.

The Americans will not be amused. More than half of the 19 hijackers who took over the four American airliners on 11 September appear to have been Saudi nationals - even those who used the identities of other Saudis - and Mr bin Laden is himself a Saudi, though long since deprived of citizenship. The Taliban, whom Washington now holds responsible for Mr bin Laden, were the theological creation of the Saudi "wahabi" Sunni sect, and - until sanctions were imposed on Afghanistan - a regular flight linked Riyadh and the south-western Afghan city of Jalalabad.

The kingdom's alliance with the US began more than half a century ago when President Franklin D Roosevelt invited King ibn Saud on board the USS Quincy in 1945. The king set up his desert tent on the deck of the American destroyer with seven sheep tied to the fantail to provide daily fresh meat. He was promised that the US would never do anything which might prove hostile to the Arabs. Three days later, Winston Churchill forfeited Britain's hitherto leading influence with the Saudis by declaring to the king that "if it was the religion of His Majesty to deprive himself of smoking and alcohol, I must point out that my rule of life prescribes as an almost sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after, and - if need be - during all meals and in the intervals between them.''

These days, the Saudis might prefer a less forceful British prime minister to a US president whose nation so swiftly betrayed Roosevelt's promise. But it was King Fahd who invited half a million US forces into the kingdom after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 - a "historical decision'' according to the king, a historical betrayal according to Mr bin Laden - and it is Crown Prince Abdullah's burden to support a continued US presence to deter further aggression from Iraq.

No such doubts assail President Saddam's victim, Kuwait. Although the Emir, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, only recently suffered a brain haemorrhage, the Kuwaiti government has been more than happy to invite the Americans - the liberators of 1991 - to send more armour and fighter-bombers to the emirate. Bahrain, cleansed of its sinister secret policemen and their British mentors, has also offered its facilities to the US; its Gulf fleet has for years been based in the Bahraini capital of Manama. The United Arab Emirates cut diplomatic relations with the Taliban at the weekend, a decision which may be followed by Saudi Arabia.

Yet it is not difficult to see the predicament of the Saudis and their neighbours. The real problem for Gulf Arabs is the vagueness of America's proposed military response to the mass murders in New York and Washington. President Bush's talk of a "crusade'' caused near heart attacks among the Saudi rulers while the idea of a "long war on terror'' has an unhappy ring for the emirs and sultans of the Gulf. They would much prefer their own dictatorial stability than the necessity of explaining to their own people why it is necessary to host another American bombing campaign against Muslim nations.

The Saudis are genuinely mystified about American plans. Do they intend to fire cruise missiles into Afghanistan, as President Bill Clinton did after the US embassy bombings in Africa? Is Iraq to be included in the list of nations to be punished for the World Trade Centre atrocities? Or the Hizbollah in Lebanon, who clearly have no connection with the crime but who are eagerly being fingered by the Israelis? The FBI were infuriated when they were refused permission by the Saudis to interrogate the men accused of bombing the Al-Khobar military barracks in which 24 US soldiers were killed. The Americans were still pleading for the right to talk to the three accused on the day they had their heads chopped off.

Last night, Saudi and US diplomats were dancing a very odd tango. The Saudis would make no official statement about their refusal to deny their bases to the Americans while the US embassy in Riyadh referred all questions to the Pentagon. In turn, the Pentagon told journalists to call the State Department - which declined to make any comment at all. In retrospect, the Saudis may look back with some nostalgia to the tough-talking, cigar-chomping, whisky-drinking British prime minister who made a last vain attempt to maintain his country's supremacy in the kingdom by sending King ibn Saud a veteran Rolls Royce - complete with a throne behind the steering wheel.

ANTI-TERRORIST MOVE RAISES SUSPICION AMONG SAUDIS

[Pravda (Moscow) - Riyadh - 21 September]: U.S. President George W. Bush's call to form an international coalition against terrorism has raised the suspicion and fear among Saudis that such a coalition will target Muslims, sources said yesterday. They said such a coalition will give Washington and its Western allies the green light to level a military strike against any Islamic country under the pretext that it sponsors terrorism and will give America a free hand to accuse any country. They added that this applies to Afghanistan.

Aqeel bin Saeed Al Anzi, a Saudi political analyst, warned that "the U.S. scheme seems to target Muslims only. The world's countries, especially the Arab and Islamic ones, must not comply with what Washington attempts to impose. "They should instead thoroughly study the implications of this coalition, which is being dictated by Bush who threatens to regard any country which rejects or expresses reservation over his orders as a foe of the U.S.," he noted. He added: "All Arab countries wish to cooperate with the international community to eliminate terrorism. However, this should not be the U.S. approach which gives no one a chance to think about or study the type and goals of such a coalition."

Bush, he said, wanted the world's countries to follow him like sheep or be punished. Al Anzi noted that he believed Washington had revealed its ugly face after last Tuesday's attacks. "The U.S. uses the Arab and Islamic countries to execute its goals. The American forces in the Gulf have now become a sign of pressure being put on these countries to comply with what Washington sees appropriate, giving them no time for thinking."

Al Anzi said that no country in the region will allow U.S. troops to use its land to launch attacks against any Arab or Islamic country, unless this happens under extreme pressure. He stressed that the U.S. military intervention to liberate Kuwait cannot be likened to the so-called coalition to eradicate terrorism. The coalition's goals are indefinite, and give it a mandate to launch attacks against any country at any time. Al Anzi expressed the hope that the Arab officials will convince Bush that any coalition that groups their countries together should be an international one under the UN umbrella. "Under such a coalition, no country, including the U.S., should have the right to act on its own. Any other form of coalition creates a tide of hatred against Washington and its allies."


September 2001


Magazine






FBI accuses people who are alive of hijacking 911 planes
(September 13, 2001)


ORWELLIAN DANCE OF DEATH
(September 30, 2001)
What goes around comes around, the Americans say. They and their allies, including feisty little Australia, are marching into battle, to be confronted by weapons they sold to the Taliban when the Muslim maddos were on our side against the damned Russkies.

LUNCH WITH THE FINANCIAL TIMES
(September 30, 2001)
It is not often onegets to meet a childhood hero. But Imran Khan, Pakistan'sfinest-ever cricketer, and still the heart-throb of a million adolescent girls, is not in the mood for nostalgia. There is a strong atmosphere of foreboding in Islamabad, Pakistan's gleaming modern capital, following the country's decision to back the US in its war on terrorism.

THE U.S. IS NOW PAYING DEARLY FOR ISRAELI AS WELL AS U.S. POLICIES
(September 29, 2001416)
Americans are preparing for the long, arduous and necessary task of bringing the perpetrators of Tuesday's unspeakable horror to justice. But as we do so, we must also ask ourselves why this happened -- and why it might happen again.

INTIFADA II - YEAR 2
(September 28, 2001)
Last summer, the summer of 2000, it was Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak, and Yasser Arafat gesturing to each other at the Camp David doorway over whom symbolically would enter before whom.

SAUDIS CAVE
(September 28, 2001)
It was to be expected. Looks like the Saudi Royals have recovered from their "crusade" induced political/historical heart attacks along with a somewhat repentant President Bush. They are caving in, as they always do when Washington really comes calling, aware that in the end the legitimacy of their rule of "the kingdom" is no more (and never really was) and that only the direct protection of the Americans can keep the despicably profligate Royals on their petro-thrones.

ROME JOINS MODERN-DAY "CRUSADES II"
(September 27, 2001)
How fitting that the descendants of the first crusades have now signed-on to the modern-day new Crusades II through their flambouantly right-wing business-tycoon Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

AMERICA'S GLOBAL CRUSADE
(September 27, 2001)
Written by a thoughtful young American academic, recently graduated with Ph.D. from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., "George Bush's Global Crusade" is an important contribution to thinking through what is unfolding as a result of 11 September 2001.

ARAFAT STIFFS DAMASCUS, BUMBLES WITH PERES
(September 26, 2001)
At the last moment, quite literally, Yasser Arafat called off his visit to Damascus, probably under severe threats from both the Israelis and Americans that if he dared defy them now his days truly would be numbered and he would be put on the to-be-vanquished "terrorist" list and suffer the consequences.

BOMBING AFGANSITAN- A NATION BETRAYED AND DESTROYED
(September 25, 2001)
"The problem is that America wants its own version of justice, a concept rooted, it seems, in the Wild West and Hollywood's version of the Second World War. President Bush speaks of smoking them out, of the old posters that once graced Dodge City: 'Wanted, Dead or Alive'."

CIVIL WAR FEARED IN PAKISTAN
(September 25, 2001)
Pakistan's most powerful triballeader, Ajmal Khattak, yesterday pleaded with the country's leading fundamentalist agitator, Sami ul-Haq, "to keep Pakistan calm during the present crisis."

WARNINGS OF BACKLASH AND BLOWBACK GROWING..
(September 25, 2001)
The American government has a long long history of militarism and deception; but under the new circumstances post-11 Sept many who normally have grown skeptical and partially independent over the years are doing what they are told, "complying" so to speak.

OSAMA BIN LADEN SPEAKS
(September 24, 2001)
Osama bin Laden called on Muslims to join a holy war against "the American crusade," and the United Nations said Monday that Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia have virtually shut down its humanitarian operations by threatening to kill its remaining staff.

THE MOST IMPORTANT EVENT IN HISTORY SINCE ....
(September 24, 2001)
"The attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center are the most important event in world history since the collapse of the Soviet Union."

FOUAD, JAMES, AND CLOVIS "TV ARABS" - MER FLASHBACK
(September 24, 2001)
When the American mass media needs to flash "Arab" on the screen pretending to some kind of semblance of "balance", they know whom to call on. These are the faces, names and "Arab" identifications one sees on the screen politely commenting these days about "terrorism" and "peace process".

SERIOUS AND CONFUSING DEVELOPMENTS IN ISREAL, EGYPT, SAUDI - KEY US ALLIES
(September 23, 2001)
There is a strange and growing tension coming from the Middle East this weekend; and we don't mean from Afghanistan and Pakistan this time, rather we mean from America's closest allies, Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. We're in no position to know for sure just what is happening. But in each of these countries very unusual and potentially historic developments are unfolding.

BIN LADEN LOCATED!?
(September 22, 2001)
It's impossible to know what to believe at the moment. It's possible the U.S. and Britain have no real idea where bin Laden is but are leaking reports of this kind in papers tomorrow in Britain hoping to "smoke him out" from what could be a secretly secure location. It's also possible that someone somewhere is trying to collect a reward of $25 million, the highest in history.

IS THE US WALKING RIGHT INTO BIN LADEN'S TRAP?
(September 22, 2001)
History will tell of course; but today's situation is far too pregnant with massive destruction to simply watch while the militarists and the terrorists of all sides take charge of the future.

US PLAYS WITH POLITICAL AND HISTORICAL FIRE
(September 22, 2001)
No question about it now, the U.S. is playing with fire, even with the possibility of things spiraling out of control and leading to a real World War whose destruction and devastation could be far greater than 11 September 2001.

SECRET PLAN TO OVERTHROW TALIBAN AND INSTALL NEW REGIME
(September 21, 2001)
The UNITED NATIONS has shamefully bowed out, right when it is needed more than ever. Urged to do so by Secretary-General Kofi Annan -- who had been urged to do so by Washington, which he has quite a habit of taking orders from -- for the first time in history the General Assembly has put off its important international gathering and not even set an alternative date.

USE NUKES SAYS PENTAGON!?
(September 21, 2001)
Especially under current circumstances, whether the excuse be that it is being talked about for "deterrence" against further terrorist attack, or God forbid whether it be the actual recommendation and desire of the American military, the advocacy of nuclear weapons at this time shows how dangerous the American militarists who have control of the United States really are.

INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT FISK
(September 21, 2001)
KIM HILL [Radio New Zealand on 19 Sept]: Can I talk to you about Osama Bin Laden? I don't know whether you are in favour of him becoming public enemy number one at the moment but I do know that you have met him and I wonder if you could give me some kind of insight into, first of all, is he capable of this.

SECRET PLANS FOR 10-YEAR WAR
(September 20, 2001)
Ten years in our modern world is forever. Whatever President George W Bush proclaims this evening before what will surely be overwhelming applause and repeated ovations from the Congress, American military and imperial goals are now much bigger than ever.

PRESIDENT RUNS TO MOSQUE TO OVERWRITE "CRUSADE" COMMENTS
(September 19, 2001)
Though the naive American public didn't get it, Europeans, Middle East experts, and especially American allies in the Middle East did! Warning calls came quickly over the weekend after President George Bush used the word "crusade" a number of times; apparently knowing so little about the Arab and Muslim history that he wasn't aware of the origins and associations of that single word; apparently so badly served by his advisers that he hadn't been warned never ever to use it.

PAKISTAN COULD SPLIT IN REVOLT, images of 'crusader' america
(September 19, 2001)
General Pervez Musharaff has now spoken to his own country, invoking stories of Mohamed and the Koran. Clearly he is shaken...and shaking. All former bets about the "new world order" now need to recalculated and recast. A multitude of historic forces have now been set in motion. Not only did the world of the United States change because of what happened on 11 September 2001. A political, even an existential earthquake is potentially underway now in various locations on the globe with events threatening to spiral possibly out of control.

US DEMANDS OF ARAFAT, WORKS EVER MORE CLOSELY AND COVERTLY WITH ISREAL
(September 19, 2001)
The Americans are making "demands" on everyone right now. "You're either with us or against us" is the constant refrain. Risking revolution in nuclear Pakistan, bio terrorism at home, and even a real world war, what is going on in Palestine is not at the top of Washington's concerns for now -- but even so it must be all be manipulated, coordinated, and presented in public very carefully in view of the larger worldwide goals.

CHOMSKY ON 11 SEPT 2001
(September 18, 2001)
Asked "Do you expect U.S. to profoundly change their policy to the rest of the world?" Professor Noam Chomsky replied today: "The initial response was to call for intensifying the policies that led to the fury and resentment that provides the background of support for the terrorist attack, and to pursue more intensively the agenda of the most hard line elements of the leadership: increased militarization, domestic regimentation, attack on social programs... Terror attacks, and the escalating cycle of violence they often engender, tend to reinforce the authority and prestige of the most harsh and repressive elements of a society."

FROM ISLAMAMBAD
(September 18, 2001)
"If the campaign against terrorism is to be successful, there has to be an introspective American review and reappraisal of its policy in the Middle East. For the last one year, the only image that is etched in the popular Muslim mind is that of innocent and unarmed children, women and men being attacked by armed Israeli soldiers backed by tanks, missiles and planes.

IF AMERICA ATTACKS....
(September 16, 2001)
Like the term "Star Wars" before it "New World Order" had too many negative associations, too much imperial baggage. George W. has however evoked the refrain "This will not stand", just as his father did before him a decade ago. What is in essence a continuation of the building of the "New World Order" designed by the Americans to replace the "Cold War" paradigm is now being heavily masked under tons of rhetoric about "the war against international terrorism".

CHOMSKY- THE BOMBINGS, THE WAR, THE PALESTINIANS
(September 15, 2001)
The terrorist attacks were major atrocities. In scale they may not reach the level of many others, for example, Clinton's bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and killing unknown numbers of people (no one knows, because the US blocked an inquiry at the UN and no one cares to pursue it). Not to speak of much worse cases, which easily come to mind. But that this was a horrendous crime is not in doubt.

FLASHBACK 3 YEARS AGO
(September 14, 2001)
The Arab "client regimes" daddle as usual, unable to even convene an Arab League meeting, not to mention assert major influence in the world, even in their region.

ARAFAT - ONE FAILURE, ONE DISASTER, AFTER ANOTHER
(September 10, 2001)
Arafat readies to meet once again with Peres, even as his senior allies are gunned down, his top lieutenants ridiculously proclaim victory in Durban, the Arab League can't even manage to hold a summit meeting, the battle of Orient House was quickly given up, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers starts building facilities for the Israeli army, and 100+ more American F-16s (plus large numbers of the Arrow anti-missile missile) are now on order for shipment to Israel!

THE RACISTS' CONFERENCE - SELL OUT IN DURBAN
(September 9, 2001)
Once again the weak Arab regimes and the incompetent organizations they support have stumbled and bumbled to nowhere.

durban, the rascists' confrence
(September 8, 2001)
Muslim countries claimed they were threatened and intimidated to accept the compromise statement on Palestine which was proposed by the President of the Conference earlier this week.

THE REAL JESSE JACKSON
(September 8, 2001)
The American sub-agents in Durban did all they could, which was quite a lot, to undermine the will of the vast majority of the world's nations and peoples.

MANY MORE F16s FOR ISRAEL!
(September 7, 2001)
THE SOOTHING WORDS that come from the Americans destined to be headlined in the media of the Arab "client regimes" to cool off if not totally pacify the Arab masses have no credibility, even though far too many continue to repeat them ad infinitum.

PALESTINIAN ELITE AND PA OFFICIALS FLEEING
(September 7, 2001)
Israel is paying a price -- and this is not a reference to economics. But even so the price being paid by the Palestinians is immensely greater.

MER FLASHBACK- EIGHT YEARS AGO IN WASHINGTON, DC
(September 7, 2001)
The power and political elite were gathering on the White House lawn four years ago today practically giddy with excitement. The popular media was filled with expressions of how startling was the breakthrough, how wonderful and irreversible was the 'peace process', how the "New World Order" and the "New Middle East" were finally dawning.

AMERICANS NOW BUILDING BASES FOR ISRAELI MILITARY , PALESTINIAN MUSLIM INSTITUTIONS RAIDED IN THE US
(September 6, 2001)
Some eighty Federal Agents descended on Richardson, Texas, yesterday striking a blow against Muslim organizations raising funds for Palestinians groups not approved by the USA and thus accused, largely by those associated with the Israeli/Jewish lobby, of "terrorism".

SIGNIFICANT MORAL PROTESTS - ISRAELI TEENS, A BRITISH REPORTER
(September 6, 2001)
The former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, Denis Haliday, quit the U.N. a few years ago in moral protest over the U.N.'s complicity in genocide against the people of Iraq.

LIKE IT REALLY IS - MER FLASHBACK
(September 6, 2001)
The worst massacres in the recent history of the Middle East have not been perpetrated by Arabs, but rather by Israelis. This simple fact is often overlooked in the Western media. In 1982 thousands of Palestinian refugees were slaughtered in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla -- this on top of the estimated 20,000+ Lebanese and Palestinian civilians killed during Israel's barbarous war on Lebanon.

CHAOS REINS - WAR PREPARATIONS ESCALATE
(September 5, 2001)
Ariel Sharon in Moscow had to call off his visit to the Duma as well as with Patriarch Alexei II today, reasons not spelled out but not that hard to contemplate.

APARTHEID-LIKE POLICIES CONDEMNED EVEN AS THEY EXPAND
(September 5, 2001)
Even as the Americans and Israelis continue desperate moves to try to prevent the Final Conference Statement at Durban from being as harsh as it could and should be, the Israelis are working furiously to begin to unilaterally implement their post-Oslo, post-Camp David "separation" program -- which in its actual implications on the ground is in fact the neo-apartheid approach everyone is screaming about in Durban.

DURBAN TO NEW YORK - ON TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY
(September 4, 2001)
The Americans and the Israelis have tried everything regarding the Durban Conference to prevent Israel from being specifically mentioned as a racist state in the final conference document. They have repeatedly used all kinds of threat and bribes to get their way.

CNN AND THE REAL TILTS OF THE U.S. CORPORATE MEDIA
(September 3, 2001)
Thirty years ago most of the area now known as Gilo was part of the Palestinian town of Beit Jala, next to Bethlehem. Gilo has been built from scratch across the "Green Line" in areas Israel occupied at the time of the 1967 war. In the past three decades Israel has followed a basic and sustained policy of Arab dispossession and Jewish building.

"RACIST APARTHIED STATE" SAYS NGO GATHERING
(September 2, 2001)
When plans were being made for the World Conference on Racism...etc...now taking place in Durban, SA, it was the heyday of the "Peace Process" and the very term "apartheid" was nowhere to be heard in much of the establishment media, certainly not in the USA.

ANTI-APARTHEID II MOVEMENT BORN
(September 1, 2001)
Even while Israel continues to assassinate senior Palestinians the developments in Durban are telling. As usual the Arafat regime is selling out everyone else for its own gain -- continuing to earn its money so to speak even under the unprecedented circumstances of 2001.




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