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SAUDIS CAVE

September 28, 2001

SAUDIS CAVE ...AS USUAL

OSAMA BIN LADEN IS BLOWBACK FROM "DESERT STORM"

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FROM RENAMED "INFINITE JUSTICE"?

"Despite clear evidence that Saudi Arabia has been a cradle of determined killers, no debate has been opened in the kingdom as to how - or why - these young men...would form a suicide squad. To ask this question would open the schism within Saudi society and demonstrate the power of the ulema, the same religious leaders whom Mr bin Laden has always claimed were on his side."

MID-EAST REALITIES © - MER - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 9/28: 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. Hence, the most sophisticated American military control base in the world, at Prince Sultan Air Base, is on line and in business after all.

It was back in 1990 when the Saudis were first cornered by the Americans about actually turning "the Kingdom" into a de jure rather than a de facto American military encampment. At the time King Fahd -- he personally and entourage more in control then than now -- did not really invite the American military to set up shop in "the Kingdom"; rather the Americans invited themselves. The arm twisting and threatening was considerable; including an American warning that if after spending (literally) hundreds of billons of dollars to build up the military infrastructure in "the Kingdom" the Saudis Royals refused to "cooperate" with the Americans (and the Israelis indirectly) the very future of the Royal family's hold on "the Kingdom" would be more in doubt than if they did. Indeed, non other than the team again in power today urgently flew to Saudi Arabia shortly after the Iraqis went into Kuwait in order to essentially present an ultimatum to Fahd, et. al. That task then fell to Richard Cheney (then Defense Secretary) and Colin Powell (then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs), tremendously aided by and accompanied by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then and now Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. who himself has maintained very close relations with the powers that be in Washington, including the Israeli/Jewish lobby, for some twenty years now.

This is certainly not the end of the story though. For remember too that back in 1990 Osama bin Laden was himself in "the Kingdom", member of one of the leading Saudi families, discussing and debating with Fahd, et. al, the very dignity and future of the land of Mohamed of which the King is best known as "Custodian of the two Holy Mosques". Today's events of the year 2001 have their close roots in those of the year 1990; and now history is on the march once again with only the direction, but not specific events, predictable.

SAUDI BASES TO BE USED BY U.S. AFTERALL

WASHINGTON, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has signaled it will allow U.S. troops and aircraft stationed on Saudi soil to participate in military action again Islamic militant Osama bin Laden and his protectors in Afghanistan, The Washington Post reported on Friday.

The newspaper, which earlier reported the Saudis were resisting a U.S. request to use a new command center on the Prince Sultan Air Base, said the new Saudi assurances allowed U.S. officials to drop plans to organize an alternate command center elsewhere in the Gulf.

Saudi officials have repeatedly said they are committed to an international coalition President George W. Bush is building to root out Saudi-born bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 hijacking attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon...

U.S. military aircraft have taken off routinely from the Prince Sultan base to watch over Iraq's military since the end of the 1991 Gulf War. But Saudi Arabia has long had a policy prohibiting the United States from staging offensive air operations from Saudi bases.

OSAMA PLOTTED TO FREE SHEIK

An ex-soldier for Osama bin Laden says the terror chief planned to kidnap a high-ranking U.S. official and offer to swap him for the blind sheik imprisoned for the 1993 World Trade Center attack. "The next plan is to release Omar Abdel Rahman from jail," the former fighter says on ABC's "PrimeTime Thursday." "Maybe they kidnap [an] ambassador there and bring him to Afghanistan, and ask for release. They are trying, even now, just looking for a chance." Rahman is serving a life sentence in a maximum-security federal prison for masterminding the WTC bombing eight years ago.

DIVIDED KINGDOM THAT BECAME A CRADLE
FOR DETERMINED KILLERS

By Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent

[The Independent - UK - 27 September 2001]: Our fleets and aircraft may be heading for the land and sea close to Afghanistan but, in the days to come, the attention of diplomats and intelligence agents is likely to be focused on an ally whose citizens - perhaps as many as 12 of them - were among the 19 hijackers who slaughtered more than 7,000 people: Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis are not handing out visas to journalists right now - and why should they when their enquiries would reveal a kingdom that is ever more dangerously balanced between religious extremists and the royal family which first invited American troops to Saudi Arabia more than 11 years ago? At least six of the hijackers aboard the four jets come from Saudi Arabia, most from middle-class, even wealthy families. Some of them are followers of Safar Hawali, a dissident cleric who has repeatedly demanded - like Osama bin Laden - that US forces be withdrawn from the Gulf.

Saudi Arabia's internal tensions are becoming more transparent as the full story of the attacks is pieced together. If the Taliban government in Afghanistan - itself a Saudi creation funded with millions of dollars by the now-fired head of the Saudi secret police, Prince Turki bin Faisal al-Saud - is hiding Mr bin Laden, what of the Saudis whose intelligence service was so poor it had no idea six of its citizens were planning an attack on the US? In private, most Saudis acknowledge the growing strains - if not open hostility - between the Saudi ulema (religious authorities) and the royal family.

"This has always been a problem and we know the sensitivities that exist now," an old Saudi friend remarked yesterday. "Hawali is a fanatic and I had an argument with him once. He has no idea of compromise. His mind is made up about everything. But every country has its fanatics and mad guys. You had them in Lebanon. They exist in Chechnya and Pakistan." None of those countries, however, can boast six - perhaps 12 - of its citizens among the suicide crews who killed so many thousands in America this month.

Hamza Alghamdi was from Baljurchi, in the Saudi province of Baha, the same town from which Ahmed Alghamdi and Ahmed Alhaznawi - both named as hijackers - came. The Saudi newspaper Al-Watan published a report this week that a man named Hamza Saleh Alghamdi had left home for Chechnya and then telephoned his parents to ask them to forgive him and pray for him. His father insists that the photograph of Alghamdi published by the FBI is not that of his son.

So is this a case of yet another stolen passport being used to create a false identity for the hijackers? Hani Hanjour, the hijacker who piloted the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, came from the Saudi hill resort of Ta'if. Like the Lebanese family of Ziad Jarrahi, who apparently piloted the airliner that crashed in Pennsylvania after a revolt by passengers, Hanjour's parents insist that he must have been an innocent passenger on the plane.

The brothers Wail and Waleed M Alshehri came from Khamis Mushayt near Abha, the city where Safar Hawali preaches. Ahmed Alnami was also from Asir province - Abha is its capital and he appears to have been a prayer leader in its mosque.

Despite this clear evidence that Saudi Arabia has been a cradle of determined killers, no debate has been opened in the kingdom as to how - or why - these young men, all of whom were in their twenties, would form a suicide squad. To ask this question would open the schism within Saudi society and demonstrate the power of the ulema, the same religious leaders whom Mr bin Laden has always claimed were on his side. The most recent rift between the ulema and the Saudi government came over, of all things, insurance - with the religious leaders claiming it is un-Islamic. Instead of opposing the powerful religious elite, the government allowed policies to be issued by "offshore" companies with representatives living in the kingdom.

Fearful that the US will discover the deep-seated friction within Saudi society, the Saudis have effectively neutered American efforts to interview men arrested for suspected bombings. Prince Turki al-Saud has made no comment since his dismissal last month. As usual, the Saudis want to keep a very thick Arab robe tied tightly around their own dissidents - lest the world discovers that Afghanistan only nurtures what Saudi Arabia produces.

SAUDIS TURN THEIR BACKS ON THE TALIBAN,
A MONSTER THEY HELPED CREATE
By Robert Fisk Middle East Correspondent

[The Independent, UK, 26 September 2001: The Saudis, who helped to create the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, thereby spawning a baby that turned into a monster, severed all diplomatic ties with the Kabul government yesterday.

Their decision, which ended seven years of shameless Saudi support for the most obscurantist and cruel regime in the region, came scarcely a month after the Saudi Royal Family fired the man who did more than any individual to cement the Taliban's power in Afghanistan: Prince Turki bin Feisel al-Saud, the head of the Saudi secret service.

Saudi Arabia's break with the Taliban ends a relationship that embarrassed the Saudis as much as it infuriated the United States - even though it was studiously ignored by US administrations and the American media.

The links began in 1994 when Saudi and other Arab princes flew to Afghanistan's second city of Kandahar for a hunting expedition, bringing with them jeeps, money and an entire mobile phone system for their Afghan hosts. Among them was Prince Turki, who was not only a close acquaintance of Osama bin Laden but had enthusiastically embraced Mr bin Laden's original call for Arab fighters to join the war against the Russians in 1980.

Prince Turki had first promoted the Wahhabi Sunni Muslim Taliban - reared in the ignorance of the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan - as adherents to the al-Saud family sect and a counter-balance to the Shia Muslim Hazara tribe of Afghanistan, which was supported by Iran. Wahhabism, a form of "pure" Islam first preached in the 18th century by Abdul Wahab - whose daughter's marriage to an al-Saud sealed the alliance between the theological zealot and the future rulers of Saudi Arabia - enforced strict sharia religious law, which was applied with obsessional relish by the Pashtun-speaking Taliban.

The Saudis had few doubts about supporting them. Mr bin Laden's flight from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1995 placed him under Taliban, and therefore Saudi, control.

There are many accounts of the Arab hunt for game birds - bustards in this case - around Kandahar and of the Arab princes' generosity to the Taliban. According to the Pakistani journalist Ahmad Rashid, whose 20-year study of Afghanistan, Taliban, is probably the most authoritative source on the subject, the head of the Pakistani Jema'a Ulema Islami (Group of Islamic Religious Scholars), Maulana Faz-lur Rehman, organised the Arabs' trip.

Within 18 months, Prince Turki had returned to Kandahar, this time to provide millions of dollars, vehicles and petrol for the Taliban assault on Kabul - the battle that finally drove the feuding and largely secular mujahedin guerrillas out of the city and led to the imposition of the ruthless religious laws that within months destroyed culture, entertainment, science and women's rights in most of Afghanistan. The involvement of two Saudi companies in a gas pipeline project across the country provided further reason for the Saudis to pursue their friendship.

The Saudi religious leaders, the ulema, had insisted that the Royal Family should support the Taliban after they themselves had been forced to approve the presence of half a million US troops in the land of Mecca and Medina five years earlier. The ulema, including Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Baz, the Grand Mufti and chairman of the Council of Senior Preachers, demanded Saudi support for the Taliban and preached in favour of its rule in Afghanistan in the madrassahs (religious schools) and mosques across Saudi Arabia.

In April 1997, Mullah Rabbani, the Taliban leader, arrived in Riyadh to announce that "Saudi Arabia is the centre of the Muslim world [and] we would like to have Saudi assistance. King Fahd expressed happiness at the good measures [sic] taken by the Taliban and over the imposition of Sharia [law] in our country." According to Mr Rashid, the Saudis were now extremely reluctant to demand the return of Mr bin Laden.

Ironically, the Iranians, who have always opposed the Taliban and their regime, had by 1996 found themselves in a position remarkably similar to that in which the US finds itself today. The Taliban had given sanctuary to Ahl-e-Sunnah Wal Jamaar, head of an opposition "terrorist" group that had been recruiting among Iranians around Khorasan, many of them from Iran's Baluchi, Turkmen and Afghan minorities. The Taliban gave the Iranians the same reply as they have done in response to demands for Mr bin Laden's expulsion: he is a Muslim "guest" and cannot be asked to leave.

The state visit by Mohammad Khatami, the Iranian President, to Saudi Arabia in May 1999 doomed the Saudi- Taliban relationship. The Saudis had grown to distrust the Taliban's other prop, Pakistan, and were appalled at the massacre of Iranian diplomats by the Taliban in Mazar-I-Sharif in 1998. When Prince Turki paid one more visit to Kabul last year to demand the expulsion of Mr bin Laden, he was brusquely told to leave.

But the ghost of Wahhabism continued to haunt Afghanistan. In Saudi Arabia, there had long been rumours that members of the Royal Family were in the habit of "marrying" a new wife each year and discarding an older wife to make room for her. In Kabul, the Taliban are now reported to have adopted similar mores. Several families have said that squads of armed Taliban men have turned up at their door to take a daughter for an arranged marriage - to a husband who will then divorce another of his wives. Whether the habit was picked up from the Saudis, the kingdom has already done its best to make a final break with the Taliban. By cutting diplomatic ties with Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia is hoping the world will forget how culpable it was in the whole Taliban catastrophe.


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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