Beyond The Fringe

As we predicted, Israhell’s recent aggression against the blockaded and deprived people of Gaza and threats of escalated collective punishment have been logically followed as in the past by more radicalisation, with a murderous attack by an unidentified gunman within a religious school in Jerusalem.

Merkaz HaRav yeshiva is described by one comment in Haaretz as ‘a heart of religious Zionism’, in other words, a bastion of the land thieving settler movement.

“This attack … came in reaction to the crimes of the Israeli occupation and the massacres against civilians in the Gaza Strip,” said Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman.

The gunman is reported as being a Palestinian living in East Jerusalem, and his actual identity is still unclear.

8 students were slaughtered, making the results of Israhell’s aggression against the neighbours it ethnically cleansed 60 years ago consistent with the existing death ratio. A comparative 10 Palestinians are slaughtered due to the illegal occupation, blockades and oppression by the Zionist enterprise for every 1 Israeli.

And so the cycle of violence, orchestrated and cheerled by those who benefit and glory in it the most - religious zealots, rightwing fanatics, power-mad politicians and of course the shills of the weapons industry - continues.

Meanwhile, Israhell is condemned for its 40 years of occupation and oppression by aid groups -

GAZA is experiencing “a humanitarian implosion” and life for its embattled citizens is at its worst since the beginning of Israeli occupation in 1967, a coalition of British human rights groups and charities said yesterday.
Poverty and unemployment are rising, hospitals are suffering power cuts for 12 hours a day and the water and sewage systems are close to collapse, according to a report by groups including Amnesty International, Care International UK, Oxfam and Save the Children UK.

It called on the UK government and the European Union to urgently redress this by pressuring Israel to lift its blockade on the impoverished coastal enclave and talk to Hamas.

…

The UK groups’ report on Gaza said the severity of the humanitarian situation had “increased exponentially since Israel imposed extreme restrictions on the movement of people and goods in response to the Hamas takeover (last June] and to indiscriminate rocket attacks against Israel”.

It added: “The Gaza economy is no longer on the brink of collapse; it has collapsed.”

During the past six months, the majority of private businesses in Gaza have shut down and 95 per cent of its industrial operations have been suspended due to an Israeli ban on imported raw materials and the blockage of exports. The report said poverty and unemployment had deepened dramatically and that 1.1 million people out of a population of 1.5 million were dependent on food aid.

Israeli restrictions had also hit patients in need of medical treatment unavailable in Gaza. Israel granted only 64 per cent of applications for care outside Gaza in December, compared with 89.3 per cent in January 2007.

An Israhelli spokesman for Olmert oinked in support of ongoing collective punishment of Palestinians, whilst taking the opportunity to delegitimise the democratically elected Hamas government yet again.

“In Gaza, a hostile regime took power that is shooting rockets into Israel on a daily basis. You don’t have to have normal economic relations with a country that is shooting at you.”

It doesn’t appear to occur to these arrogant monsters that Israhell, possessing the 5th most powerful military in the world, continuously commits war crimes which have been declared war crimes internationally for very good reason, as they inevitably cause terrible repercussions to be visited upon their perpetrators, irregardless of whether Israhell wishes to lay the blame, as it always does, on its victims rather than taking responsibility for its own criminal, deliberately chosen policies.

There is no happiness for him who oppresses and persecutes; no, there can be no repose for him. For the sighs of the unfortunate cry for vengeance to heaven. - Johann Pestalozzi

The Zionist media strongarmers rush to insist on retractions by the media whom they claim misinterpreted Israhelli Deputy Defence Minister Vilnai’s use of the term ’shoah’ in his repulsive collective bullying threat against the beleaguered Palestinian people. Guardian editor Alan Rushbridger apologises profusely for using the word holocaust as a translation - still, the Palestinian people and the world have heard Vilnai’s allusion, intended or not, loud and clear.

Will apologies now gush from multiple newspaper editors to Iranian leader Ahmadinejad for their definite misinterpretation of his speech where they and the Zionist propaganda machine claimed he said Israhell would be ‘wiped off the map’ when he actually said the Zionist regime would be metaphorically ‘wiped from the page of history’? Yeah, right, sure they will.

Wikipedia, flawed though it may be at times, has this to say:

Shoah is the Hebrew term meaning “disaster” or “conflagration”. With addition of “Ha” (meaning ‘The’ In Hebrew) - Ha Shoah is commonly used to refer to the Holocaust.

A quick google for ’shoah’ finds the common result in English at least is the Holocaust, whereas HaShoah appears to be associated with Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The Paligate plot thickens with this Vanity Fair report where the United Stupids are revealed to have secretly conspired to give arms to Fatah strongman villain Dahlan in order to provoke a civil war to remove the democratically elected Hamas government. The elections, perpetrated at too short notice for Fatah to win, were encouraged by the Stupids. Folowing the Hamas electoral win, the Stupids wailed and gnashed teeth in consternation:

“Everyone blamed everyone else,” says an official with the Department of Defense. “We sat there in the Pentagon and said, ‘Who the fuck recommended this?’ ”

….

Some analysts argued that Hamas had a substantial moderate wing that could be strengthened if America coaxed it into the peace process. Notable Israelis—such as Ephraim Halevy, the former head of the Mossad intelligence agency—shared this view. But if America paused to consider giving Hamas the benefit of the doubt, the moment was “milliseconds long,” says a senior State Department official. “The administration spoke with one voice: ‘We have to squeeze these guys.’ With Hamas’s election victory, the freedom agenda was dead.”

One would think after numerous utter failures and countless lives lost through cossetting of a lengthy list of previous dictators/strongmen, including Saddam, the Stupids would have learnt by now. In the current debacle according to the report, the Stupid’s UN ex-representative John Bolton blames Miss Prim, Condisleezer, clumsily seeking to make her mark on history and demonstrating she has not learnt from it.

Once again, Israhell uses its grotesquely disproportionate US funded weaponry to wantonly slaughter Palestinians. About 100 people were obliterated this time, including 19 children.

Israhelli commandant, Barak, foreshadowed an increase in military extermination operations in Gaza in order to bring down the democratically elected Hamas government. Ugly threats mean ugly responses including increased radicalisation, not less, against your apartheid state, Ehud.

From Gush Shalom:

This is not a conflict between two equal forces. The most powerful army in the Middle East, backed by the world’s single remaining super-power, is daily using tanks, fighter planes, helicopters and gunships against the lightly-armed militias and overcrowded population of a small area whose people have lived under occupation and in poverty long before the present siege.

Israhell’s expressed intentions:

“We are justified in bombing Palestinian civilians including women and children because Palestinian fighters are using them as human shields.”

Israhell’s real intentions:

“Hey you mob, get your fighters to stop fighting us or we will kill you all, women and children included. And we will take more of your land, with any luck, all of it.”

Then, last week Israhelli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai threatened the Palestinians with genocide, veering toward the real intentions above:

The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.

Shoah means Holocaust in Hebrew. It can also mean disaster - either way, Vilnai’s threat is repugnant and arrogant.

Thus does the racist oppressor state use innocent human lives as bargaining chips with the leaders of the Palestinian concentration camp inmates it has tormented for the past 60 years. Jonathan Swift would smile in recognition of their rhetoric.

Israhell seems incapable of realising that the more collective injustices it perpetrates against its hapless victims, the more rockets will come. Humans do not submit to oppressors committing heinous acts. They fight until the oppressor is vanquished or a peaceful solution found. With no hope, there is only despair, and nothing to lose by fighting back to the death if necessary. Yet Israhell habitually does not recognise Palestinians as human at all, which perhaps explains why its leaders appear unable to grasp these simple truths.

Eissam Younis, director of the Al Mizan Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, said :

the Israeli army was “intentionally and systematically targeting civilians” and criticised world powers for their muted response.

“Israel puts itself above the law because the international community is always silent,” he said.

…

Tariq Dardouna, a Palestinian resident trapped in his house in east Jabaliya, told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces were targeting civilians.

“The Israeli army opens fire at everything in our area, including children and houses. There are injured children bleeding inside their houses,” Dardouna said.

Following Israhell’s pogrom on Gaza, the West Bank offices of democratically elected Hamas leader, Ismail Haniya, were destroyed by Israhelli plane strikes. Another 5 people were killed. Israhell complained when Abbas cut off negotiations and condemned the attacks.

“It’s very regrettable that what is happening is more than a holocaust,” Abbas told reporters in Ramallah.

“Children who are barely five-months old are being bombed by the Israeli army.”

“We tell the world to see with its own eyes and judge for itself what is happening and who is carrying out international terrorism.”

Perhaps it will be his offices struck next. Then Israhell can joyfully proclaim as it has been wont to do in the past that it has noone with which to negotiate, conveniently placing the blame back on its miserable victims.

Barak no doubt is preparing the way to make support for the Zionist uber state and its abominable pogroms a central issue in the United Stupids election where Obama appears to have the lead at present. Barack may be forced to barrack for Barak and Israhell’s acts of attrition, or face an uphill battle in the US election.

For peace to come to the Palestinian region, it is essential that the US is led by someone in step with the rest of the international community and who does not favour privileged Israhell with its mansions and swimming pools over the needs of those whom it oppresses and from whom it has stolen and continues to steal, with the pallid, erroneous excuse that Israhell is the only democracy of the region.

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery. - Jonathan Swift

Bush’s upcoming visit to Israhell is unlikely to stimulate any relief for the collectively punished, long-suffering Palestinians, despite vague waffle by Olmert on illegal settlement evacuations. Israhell has a political half nelson on the United Stupids, who are blinded by pro-Israhelli propaganda, who do not realise or do not care that they are co-conspirators in war crimes and heinous human rights abuses. For the uneducated, the Israhellis are always the good guys and the Palestinians the bad. Nor do any of the Democrat presidential candidates offer any hope for change. The Israel First Zionist lobby is too strong - to speak of justice for Palestine would be electoral suicide. Why the presidential hopefuls speak of Israhell as a democracy is mystifying - perhaps it is a reflection of the lack of real democracy in a country primarily driven and controlled by big money lobbies and corporations.

Jonathan Cook analyses the Barak Oslo offers and makes some chilling conclusions about Olmert’s present political plans toward those hapless people the apartheid State of Israel currently occupies and from whom it blithely and cynically continues to steal land:

In truth, Israel’s need for recognition as a Jewish state is proof that it is not a democratic state, but rather an ethnic state that needs to defend racist privilege through the gerrymandering of borders and population. But in practice Olmert may yet use the recognition test to back Abbas, a weak and unrepresentative Palestinian leader, into the very corner that Arafat avoided.

Before Annapolis, Livni declared: “It must be clear to everyone that the State of Israel is a national homeland for the Jewish people,” adding that Israel’s Palestinian citizens would have to abandon their claim for equality the moment the Palestinian leadership agreed to statehood on Israel’s terms.

Olmert framed the Annapolis negotiations in much the same way. It was about creating two nations, he said: “the State of Israel — the nation of the Jewish people; and the Palestinian state — the nation of the Palestinian people.”

The great fear, Olmert has repeatedly pointed out, is that the Palestinians may wake up one day and realize that, after the disappointments of Oslo and Camp David, Israel will never concede to them viable statehood. The better course, they may decide, is a South African-style struggle for one-person, one-vote in a single democratic state.

Olmert warned of this threat on another recent occasion: “The choice … is between a Jewish state on part of the Land of Israel, and a binational state on all of the Land of Israel.”

Faced with this danger, Olmert, like Sharon and Barak before him, has come to appreciate that Israel urgently needs to persuade Abbas to sign up to the two-state option. Not, of course, for two democratic, or even viable, states, but for a racist Jewish state alongside a Palestinian ghetto-state.

With Bush also wanting a two state solution by the end of his disastrous term of office, the future of Palestinians looks as usual, bleak.

And watch and listen … sometime soon we’ll recommence in earnest our real world political and stockmarket bents, which at present are busy in the fantasy blog world for fun and profit.

Our national politics, let alone our international political predilections are nearly too sickening at present for words anyway. While the rodent postures and preens over indigenous causes which he has patently ignored for 10 years, he is touting devious plans to allow forced entry to aboriginal communities - cornucopia for mining interests? He is preparing for the campaign of his miserable ratty existence, the outcome of which despite the woeful Liberal polling is by no means assured.

Little Johnny’s immoral counterparts and allies, the terrorist state of Israhell and its bevy of international cowering zealot minions with their individual imperial ambitions, piously condemn the popular democratically elected so-called ‘terrorist’ government of the overly occupied terrorities in favour of their now allies of convenience, the terrorist Fatah brigades. Terminally blinkered Western proponents of democracy thus are seen to regard democratic governments as legitimate if they undemocratically support policies which their electors patently do not.

There is a reason the people threw out Abbas’ Fatah party in last year’s election. Palestinians see the leading Fatah politicians as unimaginative, self-serving and corrupt, satisfied with the emoluments of power. Worse yet, Palestinians came to realize that the so-called peace process championed by Abbas (and by Yasser Arafat before him) had led to the permanent institutionalization — rather than the termination — of Israel’s 4-decade-old military occupation of their land. Why should they feel otherwise? There are today twice as many settlers in the occupied territories as there were when Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat first shook hands in the White House Rose Garden. Israel has divided the West Bank into besieged cantons, worked diligently to increase the number of Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem (while stripping Palestinian Jerusalemites of their residency rights in the city) and turned Gaza into a virtual prison.

Divide and conquer the good old colonialist way - again, for the umpteenth disastrous time since the Zionist invasion, when the Zionists first introduced terrorism to Palestine. Is As’ad from the Angry Arab News Service too optimistic when he declares:

The Palestinians need a new political organization: neither Fath nor Hamas. NOW.

As’ad also points out that

A new poll among Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank reveals the obvious: that most Palestinians are neither for Fath nor for Hamas: more than 40% of Palestinians indicated that they are “independent”.

Yet even if there was an alternative political force, it would be nanoseconds before the Israhelli government stereotyped them as terrorists in order to engineer the obligatory, traditional nobbling of peace initiatives, so their land thieving on the West Bank and breaches of international law could continue behind the usual smokescreen of convenient, manufactured ‘beleaguered’ victimhood.

As Jeffery Sachs observes:

For the past 10 years, the greatest practical barrier to peace has been Israel’s failure to carry out any true withdrawal to its 1967 borders, owing to the political weight of hundreds of thousands of settlers in the West Bank and the religious and secular communities that support them. This remains the crucial truth; the rest follows as tragedy. Even when the US or Israel have tabled peace offers, such as at Camp David in 2000, they have included convoluted ways to sustain the West Bank settlements and large settler populations, while denying an economically viable and contiguous Palestinian state.

Sachs fails to note that inevitably it is the enabling activities or lack thereof of the Israhelli government which have bolstered the continued thievery and oppression. At all times, it has been within the power of that democratically elected government to restrain its extremists and to act within the ambit and intention of UN Res 242 in order to obtain peace.

(more…)

What will be the repercussions from today’s revelations from the internationally respected Red Cross that

Israel is using its rights as an occupying power under international law “in order to further its own interests or those of its own population to the detriment of the population of the occupied territory”.
With the the separation barrier, the establishment of an outer ring of Jewish settlements beyond the expanded municipal boundaries, and the creation of a dense road network linking Israeli neighbourhoods and settlements in and outside Jerusalem, the report says, Israel is “reshaping the development of the Jerusalem metropolitan area” with “far-reaching humanitarian consequences”.

Given the stranglehold the Zionists have on western governments, media and public opinion, and although there are signs that the support Israhell has enjoyed for its reprehensible activities are waning, probably very little.

As usual, Israhelli officials obsfucate, deny culpability, refuse to admit the validity of international law in regard to return of territories seized via warfare, and thumb their noses at warranted criticism.

Israeli officials rejected the premise that Jerusalem was an occupied territory. “It is not. Israel annexed Jerusalem in 1967 and offered full citizenship at the time to all of Jerusalem’s residents. These are facts that cannot be ignored,” a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Mark Regev said.

Israel was “committed to a diverse and pluralistic Jerusalem, to improving the conditions of all the city’s inhabitants and to protecting their interests as part of our sovereign responsibility”. He added: “If any population in Jerusalem is thriving and growing, it is the Arab population.”

Demographic facts on the ground in Jerusalem are likely to inpinge on Zionist control soon. There are also positive signs that even United Stupids dignatories are disapproving of Israhell’s past crimes in the area.

Ambassadors from European Union states are to boycott celebrations of the 40th anniversary of Israel’s conquest of Arab East Jerusalem this week - in the opening shot of what promises to be a challenging summer for Israeli diplomacy.

The United States ambassador, Richard Jones, is also expected to join the Europeans in snubbing the celebrations .

What Israelis commemorate as the “reunification” of their historic Jewish capital is seen by most of the international community, not to mention the Palestinians, as a unilateral attempt to pre-empt a key issue in any peaceful solution. One-third of the city’s 725,000 residents are Palestinians, who have opted to reject offers of Israeli citizenship. Along with most other countries, the Europeans keep their embassies in Tel Aviv.

Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestinian parliament, yesterday welcomed the European boycott as a blow for international law and peace. “The Israelis,” she said, “cannot get away with creating facts on the ground and then forcing everybody to fall in line”.

[Thanks to Antony Lowenstein for the above two links.]

There can be no doubt that Israhell is willing to continue to run the gauntlet in order to cling to lands it has misappropriated, that further oppression in order to accomplish this is still the primary modus operandus of the Zionist apartheid state. Such intransigence, of course, will not bring about conditions to promote a peaceful outcome for the region. Peace would mean compromises. On past performances, Israhell is unlikely to give an inch - to do so might initiate a collapse of its whole unsavoury, colonialist edifice.

Leaves from the past swirl about my shattered country

and bloodied by hate

Like a beautiful, fragile teaset, the elegant device she’d made lay upon the table. Amirah scooped it up peremptorily, for it was deceptively sturdy, fastening the webbed belt about her body beneath her loose cotton blouse.

Plenty of time. Into her pocket she placed her folded poem, hoping to finish it on the bus during the interminable hot, angry checkpoint waits. The guards knew her well, they would smile lewdly at her and joke about her flashing dark eyes.

“Amirah, princess of the territories, give us a kiss.” they would laugh, swaggering with their Utzis.

At first she ignored them, yet later, as her plan evolved, she would smile shyly in return, building trust. After months, they would not search her, even when all others were pried and poked when the enemy rampaged in revenge.

For three years following her degree’s completion, she had settled for a menial maid’s job in Tel Aviv, studying for her PhD in physics at night and weekends. Her ticket to freedom – perhaps even to America. Then her mistress’s husband began to seek her out. One afternoon while the mistress was out with her rich, gossiping socialite friends, he had forced her to the bed and taken her. She had to trash the sheets and endure a scolding when she told her mistress she had burnt them whilst ironing.

And then, her uncle was captured, implicated in a tunnel building project to smuggle in food and medicine to the sanctioned, beleaguered city. The enemy had arrived at her parents’ home and bulldozed it whilst she scrubbed the enemy’s pots in the pretty modern villa by the glistening sea. Gone were her thesis notes and her computer, buried in the pitiful rubble of their lives. Her wise grandmother was nearly killed by the cruel, inexorable blades, hounded and taunted by the soldiers as she fled, hobbling down the street. The oppressors had everything – except peace. Amirah wondered if they had ever really wanted it.

At university, Amirah had spoken against violence.

“We are bound by violence, we are chained by it to them and we must break the cycle,” she argued. “Resistance is legitimate under international law, yet violence will not work. They use it against us. Don’t you see?”

She had not despaired, although her brother still walked with crutches from the blows he received from the enemy when five years old. A stone thrown at a tank had missed and hit a soldier. With an education, she would be able to pay for him to walk again.

Nearly everyone had lost a relative, or knew of a house that had been crushed, sometimes with people still inside. The collective punishment was a brutal, never-ending scourge. What else was there to do but fight, to wear the enemy down with a despairing reaction to the oppression, to never let them know security whilst they denied it to others. Responsibility was never taken by the powerful and the weak were blamed for objecting to their punishment, justifying more delays for peace settlements, more land thievery for more enemy settlements and their hideous ghetto wall.

Amirah did not know whether the wall was to keep the horror in, or to keep it out. After her parents’ house was demolished and her future with it, she too saw horror everywhere.

Amirah left her flat and caught the bus. The guards winked at her at the checkpoint.

“How are your studies, Amirah?” “When are you going to America, Amirah?”

Amirah smiled at them, her tears held captive by resolve. Today at the final checkpoint, it was a short wait, a miracle.

The ancient bus lurched its winding way to the leafy, well-to-do suburb by the sea. She walked to the plaza and sat on a bench. Amirah pretended to examine something in her satchel as she set the timer.

Within, she could feel the enemy’s baby move, twingeing her regrets. From her pocket, she took the half-finished poem and scrutinised it carefully before screwing it into a ball and tossing it behind the bench. Tears threatened to erupt, and Amirah clenched her fists. Not long to wait now.

“You dropped something”, a kindly voice spoke in the enemy’s tongue.

“It’s nothing,” she replied, “just a poem.”

“May I read it?” The interloper was a young pregnant woman in her late twenties or early thirties, with a guitar strung across one shoulder. She flattened the sheet and began to read.

“It isn’t finished”.

“I know,” she said. “I can’t think of an ending. It makes me too sad.”

“It is very good – perhaps we can finish it together?”

“But you are the enemy,” Amirah whispered. Two minutes and there would be no more broken promises, no more fear and hurt.

“I’m Danish, here to study archaeology.” The woman smiled.

Amirah looked at her, saw unexpected warm eyes and her heart leapt.

Then she thought of her unfinished poem and in a blazing torrent, unannounced, the final words came.

Even in the silence of the desert

by joy.

At a two day summit in Riyadh aimed at pushing the Arab peace plan for Israhell and Palestine, in a significant about face, the Sauds have rounded on the incompetent Coalition of the Gobbling warmongers.

Saudi King Abdullah, whose country is a close US ally, slammed Wednesday the “illegitimate foreign occupation” of Iraq in an opening speech to the annual Arab summit in Riyadh.

“In beloved Iraq, blood is being shed among brothers in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and ugly sectarianism threatens civil war,” Abdullah said.

He also said that Arab nations, which are planning to revive a five-year-old Middle East peace plan at the summit, would not allow any foreign force to decide the future of the region.

What will be the reaction of the United Stupids to such impudence? The original neocon plan called for the transformation of the middle east using Saudia as a pivot to democratise the region, with Egypt the eventual prize. Saudia is thus throwing a big spanner in the works by projecting its power and biting the hand that feeds it.

Saudi leaders are keen to promote the beleaguered Sunni cause in Iraq, which is presently endangered by overwhelming Shite power, including within the Shite dominated and United Stupids’ backed puppet Iraqi government. The summit is expected to adopt a resolution calling for more power sharing with the former Sunni elite.

The Iraqi government has immediately dug in its heels, telling the Sauds they

did not need a “diktat” from the Arabs on how to amend its constitution and boost national reconciliation.

The Arab League wants to resume negotiations with Israhell, offering normalisation for acceptance of terms including withdrawal of all land occupied in 1967, the creation of a Palestinian state and return of Palestinian refugees.

Despite mutterings from Israeli officials about the Arab plan being a “starting point”, it is likely that rightwing Israhelli zealots who, with the support of Doodoo bush and the Israhelli first lobby, will insist on retaining lands they have stolen through warfare. Acceptance of the right of return of refugees driven from their land in the Nakba catastrophe in 1948 is seen by the Israhelli rightwing, religious nuts and fanatical settler movement as tantamount to destruction of their pariah apartheid state, despite the clear legal basis for such return under international law.

At the summit, Hamas is calling for an end to the western boycott of Palestine and is seeking financial support from the Arab states to the tune of $2.7b.

Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud Al Faisal projected firmness, warning Israhell

not to expect any further diplomatic overtures, telling a British newspaper: “What we have the power to do in the Arab world, we think we have done.”

“If Israel refuses [the plan], that means it doesn’t want peace and it places everything back in the hands of fate. They will be putting their future not in the hands of the peacemakers, but in the hands of the lords of war.”

And that, my friends, will suit the Netanyahooites and religious zealots down to the ground, to the detriment of Israhell’s future security and prosperity.

The United Stupids are now pushing for more pressure against Iran in the UN Insecurity Council, while

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator again signaled that Tehran would be willing to engage in “constructive and logical” negotiations with the United States.

Additionally

Iran’s proposal to cap its enrichment at very low levels may be winning some support in Europe.

This is not enough apparently for the Coalition of the Gobbling, who want complete suspension of enrichment. There is a distinct possibility that the United Stupids and United Kooks are choosing precisely the same deliberate path of deception which led to their illegal invasion of Iraq.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterated this weekend that she would negotiate with Mottaki as soon as Iran had suspended enrichment.

Iran is not in breach of the NPT - and even the US does not claim it is. The US claims rather that Iran is untrustworthy, and therefore should be denied the rights it has under the treaty.

Like all non-nuclear weapons signatories, Iran maintains the right to have access to nuclear technology, to build nuclear power plants, and to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.

Hans Blix, the last weapons inspector in Iraq before the illegal invasion, warns that

“humiliating” Iran over its uranium enrichment could spawn intransigence. “It’s an observation I’ve made before regarding Iraq,” he told reporters in New York today.

“Why did the Iraqis behave as they did in the 1990s (and) send away the UNSCOM inspectors and close the door to them?” he asked, referring to the UN Special Commission mandated to inspect Iraqi weapons of mass destruction after the 1991 Gulf War.

“One element was ‘humiliation’,” he said. “It was not rational of them to stop the inspections, it really worked against their own interest and yet I can see that the humiliation, the fury, was such that they said, ‘To hell with it’,” said Blix.

Iran does not have the capacity at this time to produce nuclear weapons and such capacity by all authoritative sources is years away. The UN’s nuclear watchdog (IAEA) continues to call for de-escalation of the rhetoric and reliance on negotiations, and has reported that there is no evidence of nuclear weapons production.

Israhell on the other hand has an arsenal of 200-400 nukes, a threat to the rest of the region for decades. There are no guarantees that at some point in the future, religious and/or political fundamentalists won’t be in power in Israhell. At present, in its continued violation of international law in regard to its occupation of Palestine and Syrian territory, Israhell remains an extreme provocation to its neighbours to develop nuclear parity, and if not nuclear parity, chemical or biological weaponry for deterrence.

On several occasions since 1974, countries in the region lobbied in the UN for the Middle East to become a nuclear weapon free zone. The only dissenting voice was Israhell. If we are to have peace in the world, and especially if we are to avoid a nuclear holocaust, there must be a universal, not a selective, commitment to the rule of law and international security.

It is important to stress that it was the United States which first introduced nuclear weapons to the Middle East starting in 1958 and has continued to bring tactical nuclear weapons on its planes and ships ever since.

Other countries in the Middle East which are predominantly Sunni, including the fundamentalist Saudi tyranny, are not keen on Iran becoming a dominant power in the region either. The United Stupids and Israhell have both met recently with Saudia, (and so has Iran). With the demonisation of Iran by United Stupids, United Kooks and Israhell in full swing, Israhell and the neoziotards are palpably keen for the Coalition of the Gobbling to do the dirty work, with the main impetus coming from AIPAC.

Israeli Defense Force chief artillery officer Gen. Oded Tira has griped that “President Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran,” adding that since “an American strike in Iran is essential for [Israel’s] existence, we must help him pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party (which is conducting itself foolishly) and US newspaper editors. We need to do this in order to turn the Iran issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq failure.” Tira urges the Lobby to turn to “potential presidential candidates … so that they support immediate action by Bush against Iran,” while Uri Lubrani, senior advisor to Defense Minister Amir Peretz, tells the Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors that the US “does not understand the threat and has not done enough,” and therefore “must be shaken awake.”

Fundo rabbis in Israhell are leading children into prayers against Ahmadinejad - the media propaganda machine is running at full bore to demonise Iran

claiming its leader is a new Hitler and that Jews are threatened with another Holocaust.

A more accurate reading of the situation might be to say that Israel is determined to protect the monopoly of nuclear weapons, which it has enjoyed in the Middle East for more than 40 years.

Concurrently, the Israhelli government warns of a regional arms race. Guess who started it, mate? here comes the old blowback denial again.

Update:

The United Stupids are to have talks with Iran, Iraq and Syria in Baghdad about Iraqi security. The old carrot and stick approach - while the Iranians are threatened with fleets and sanctions, the Stupids will expect them to be cooperative especially since they are deigning to parley with them. What will the Stupids offer? There is doubt about whether Iran is actually destabilising Iraq anyway - the propaganda the Stupids tried to sell that the Iranians were back the insurgency was laughable. The insurgency is predominantly Sunni, and Iranians are Shite. The Iraqi government is majorly Shite as are the Sadr nationalists. Do the Stupids want the Iranians to start backing the Sunnis?

Whilst any talks are a positive sign, the United Stupids may well be sussing out the enemy at close hand under a false pretext. It’s probably too much to hope for that the Stupids might have woken up that the only real, workable long term solution for the whole region, before things go too far, is to start lobbying for a nuke weapon free zone. Whether Israhell would cooperate is another matter, yet if the Stupids insisted, Israhell must follow or risk its benefactor’s largesse and support.

An important new book by Israeli historian and senior lecturer, Ilan Pappe, is now available. It chronicles one of the last century’s most distressing, neglected crimes against humanity, which crimes and the denial thereof are ongoing, courtesy of the Zionista.

An excellent, lengthy review by Steve Lendman can be found here.

In 1967, Israel excluded the 1948 Nakba and Right of Return from any peace discussions. Thenceforth, it based all negotiations on the notion that the conflict began in 1967 when Israel seized and occupied the West Bank and Gaza in the June Six Days’ War that year. This was how Israel sought to legitimize its 1948 “War of Independence” and all its crimes it wanted erased from the public memory. No longer were they on the table to be considered in any future conflict resolution negotiation. For Palestinians, the 1948 Nakba is their core issue, and without it being settled equitably there can never be closure or a real lasting peace in the region.

The Vogon adulators of the two following defining characteristics of fascism may of course home in on Pappe once they tire of slandering Jimmy Carter.

6. A controlled mass media. Under some of the regimes, the mass media were under strict direct control and could be relied upon never to stray from the party line. Other regimes exercised more subtle power to ensure media orthodoxy. Methods included the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. The leaders of the mass media were often politically compatible with the power elite. The result was usually success in keeping the general public unaware of the regimes’ excesses.

…
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts. Intellectuals and the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them were anathema to these regimes. Intellectual and academic freedom were considered subversive to national security and the patriotic ideal. Universities were tightly controlled; politically unreliable faculty harassed or eliminated. Unorthodox ideas or expressions of dissent were strongly attacked, silenced, or crushed. To these regimes, art and literature should serve the national interest or they had no right to exist.

Now where have we witnessed stunted, desperate, far-rightard behaviour such as the above recently?

From today’s Ha’aretz:

“An Israeli Arab couple petitioned the High Court of Justice this week, asking it to issue a temporary injunction that would allow them to live in the predominately Jewish town of Rakefet.

The couple, residents of Sakhnin, said they were denied residency in the town because they are Arab, but say that local authorities in Rakefet and officials at the Israel Lands Authority found an alternative way to keep them from moving into the town- by stating that according to a “suitability test,” the couple are “not fit to live in the town.”"

The couple are Ahmed Zvidat and Fahina Avrik, graduates of the archaeology department at Jerusalem’s Bezalel College. Yet not good enough to live with ‘real’ Israhellis.

“The couple is being represented by Adalah, a non-profit organization which fights discrimination against Israeli Arabs. According to the organization, the couple was refused permission to settle in the town because they are Arab.

…

“In instances where a couple is rejected due to reasons of unsuitability to the way of life of the community in question, the issue of greatest importance is the social unity of the community, not just the couple’s ability to assimilate and contribute to the community,” the Israel Lands Authority stated.”

Wonder how that argument would go down in Georgia these days if a black couple were denied residency in Atlanta?

How long can Israhell hide behind its hideous sham democracy before its pathetic house of cards collapses?

It may not be much longer before we can rename the United Stupids to the United States as the will of the people emerges through a viable Democratic opposition plan for disengagement in Iraq and the dismantlement of the heinous, degrading Doodoo torture facilities is proposed.

“Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense, will formally outline the Democrats’ plan today to antiwar groups agitating for binding action against the war. Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), a subcommittee member who helped arrange the Internet event, said the plan is aimed at tamping down calls from the Democrats’ liberal wing for Congress to simply end funding for the war.The Murtha plan, based on existing military guidelines, includes a stipulation that Army troops who have already served in Iraq must be granted two years at home before an additional deployment, Marines must be given 14 months at home, and any troops sent to Iraq must be those deemed fully trained and equipped under existing military standards. The idea is to slowly choke off the war by stopping the deployment of troops from units that have been badly degraded by four years of combat.

“They won’t be able to deploy troops unless they extend troops overseas. And if we limit the extension, then it’ll be very difficult for them to continue this surge, which the American people are against and the Iraqis don’t want,” Murtha said on yesterday National Public Radio.

The Democrats also intend to shut down the military prisons at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at Abu Ghraib near Baghdad by denying them funds, and to bar funds that would be used to establish permanent military bases in Iraq.

…

“The resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq that we passed in fall of 2002 was never intended to authorize the use of American troops to police a civil war,” Ramstad said.”

Not a moment too soon for the United Stupids to regain some appearance of democratic sanity. With criticism from Putin reaching a crescendo as Doodoo militarises countries adjoining Russia, the United Stupids may suffer more than a humiliating defeat in the Middle East if they continue to pursue the fundoneoziocontards’ escalation plans for extended military imperialism, which would play into OBL’s hands yet again.

Putin, monopolising on a sense of growth in Russian prestige, appears to be increasing his support for the plight of the illegally occupied Palestinian people.

During a meeting with Abbas at Amman’s Queen Alia International Airport, Putin welcomed the Mecca agreements and expressed hopes that the agreements will bring results and promote “formation of an efficient Palestinian government so that an appropriate climate could be established for the lifting of the siege against the Palestinians and for the opening of final status negotiations with the Israelis.”

“The achievement of these goals will create conditions for the lift of the blockade and further steps towards comprehensive settlement of the relations with Israel.”

Putin has also indicated his support for Saudia’s nuclear power plans. As arch-ziotard Netanyahoo preens himself for a new assault on Israhell’s top job, these two moves by Putin seem sure to ignite the Zionista lobby who will in turn pressure the United Stupids to confront Russian influence firmly.

Checking the DJAA we see a series of spinning top candles which may signal exhaustion and recapitulation. Its MACD looks like both buyers and sellers are losing steam too. We’re heading for a down week on the markets, we feel, except perhaps for the preciouses, which are booming with a rising oil price.

So finally are we going to have our long awaited and till now plunge protected gold spike? T’would be most pleasant to take some gold profits and cash up for the inevitable blue chip correction. Some cunning CBA accumulation will be our target in that realm this year. $48.50 looks possible - will it be achievable? Seems odd to be buying more at these levels considering the last time we bought was when they were $24 odd a few years back.

The rest of the profits will need a friendly home till precious metals drop after their spike and possibly a newcomer might be another potential target - the carbon trading company, COZ, at which we are having a closer look this week. We will definitely store away some loot to buy the wonderful LRL back too. It is nowhere near its potential - due for production at the end of the year. The balance may find a profitable home in more U shares if they correct slightly alongside the overall market correction. Hard to tell - if the spot price keeps climbing, there may not be a U correction, despite the forebodings of some on the forum. So many variables - we still don’t know whether the mad chimp is actually going to add insult to injury and whack Iran either unilaterally or in support of Israhell.

Israhell is still sounding incredibly belligerent toward Iran whilst the United Stupids are plaintively claiming they don’t intend to whack them. But of course, they said that before they illegally invaded Iraq. The military buildup is nearly complete for a whacking. We think Israhell may whack Lebanon ruthlessly again first to gee up United Stupids support (they are infringing on Lebanese air space and firing across the border already), then extend their aggression to Iran whilst whinging about the supposed “real” source of terror, Hezbollah and Iran. The ulterior game plan may be to grab Lebanese water, secure the Shebaa farms for Israhell and prevent any land deal with Syria over the Golan Heights. The provocation of another conflict with Lebanon and yet another with Iran would also provide ongoing cover for staving off any peace talks with Palestinians.

We had to laugh when reading that the United Stupids and Israhell aren’t amused by Abbas and Hamas resolving their differences - it appears that civil war and more Palestinian bloodshed is preferable to reconciliation - how obvious is that colonial imperialist divide and conquer trash. The democratically elected Hamas don’t qualify as part of the oft-stated wish of the United Stupids to spread democracy in the Middle East. Thus the Stupids prefer to attempt engineer and bully another “regime change”, wanting Abbas to purge Hamas altogether. Meanwhile, Israhell may wish to delay reconciliation so it can grab as much Palestinian land - establishing more grotesque facts on the ground - as it can before the United Stupids, out of sheer necessity as the American people become sufficiently wise to neoziotard manipulative games and realise how they are held hostage because of their blank cheque support for the ziotard state, to being an “honest broker” again, forcing them to adher to the terms of Res 242 and 1967 borders, which Hamas has stated it supports. At least that would be a positive start. Then there is the question of the right of return of Palestinian refugees. However, it also serves Hamas’ interest to delay recognising Israhell for as long as possible - within decades, demographics alone will alter political realities. At present, with religious fanatics and political loonies on all sides running the show, ongoing war looks horribly likely.

We’re still regretting not grabbing CFU around 50c when we had the chance. Don’t feel like going for hot rocks - they are unproven and too high sps at the moment, yet if there’s a dip, we’ll have another look.

The other share we should have bought is TFC when it was 38c - it’s now up in the 50c range and climbing. Nice divvy too. Maybe we’ll have another look at it though.

Arabs make up one fifth of the population of Israhell. They suffer discrimination, victimisation and otherwise lack equal opportunity in a nation which hypocritically poses as a democracy. In reality, Israhell is a rich ghetto for an elite that prospers at the expense of the rest of its citizenry. Such a situation is a potent recipe for ongoing agitation for rights and recognition by disadvantaged minorities.

A new paper compiled by 40 leading Arab Israeli academics sees the way forward to true democracy.

From the NY Times:

“They call on the state to recognize Israeli Arab citizens as an indigenous group with collective rights, saying Israel inherently discriminates against non-Jewish citizens in its symbols of state, some core laws, and budget and land allocations.The authors propose a form of government, “consensual democracy,” akin to the Belgian model for Flemish- and French-speakers, involving proportional representation and power-sharing in a central government and autonomy for the Arab community in areas like education, culture and religious affairs.
…

A 2003 government report acknowledged discrimination by state institutions, and a recent report on poverty published last year by Israel’s National Insurance Institute indicated that 53 percent of the impoverished families in Israel are Arabs.”

The present situation is reviled by the vast majority of Israeli Arabs.

“According to a poll of Arab Israelis by the Yafa Institute, commissioned by the Konrad Adenauer Program for Jewish-Arab Cooperation, only 14 percent of respondents said they thought Israel should remain a Jewish and democratic state in its current format; 25 percent wanted a Jewish and democratic state that guarantees full equality to its Arab citizens. But some 57 percent said they wanted a change in the character and definition of the state, whether to become a “state for all its citizens,” a binational state, or a consensual democracy.”

According to Shawki Khatib, co-author of Future Visions and Department Head of the Government Political Philosophy Department at the School of Political Sciences at the University of Haifa, the document describes three specific areas for change.

“First is the principle of human rights: the document addresses the fundamental rights of the Palestinians in Israel as human beings - to economic and social development, women’s and children’s rights, to live without violence, etc. - and demands their realization.• The second principle invokes civil equality: the basic democratic right to equality before the law and the demand to annul laws, structures and symbols that alienate the Palestinian citizens of Israel and ensure Jewish superiority.

• And the third principle is that of the right of communities to self-determination, including the autonomous right to manage specific areas of life such as their own education and cultural and religious affairs.

In order to realize these foundations, the document’s writers demand the implementation in Israel of a consociational system. This would replace the existing liberal system that is exploited automatically by the Jewish majority and that, indeed, constitutes a “tyranny of the majority” in which, in the name of liberal democracy, that majority takes draconian steps against the Palestinian minority and its fundamental rights.”

Christopher Ketcham has written a piece detailing the possibility of Israhelli foreknowledge of the 911 attack. Annoyingly, the article is only available to Counterpunch subscribers.

Meanwhile, read the interview with the author and Amy Goodman.

From the interview:

“Now, the upshot of all this available evidence is this: the Israeli government likely was conducting some kind of spy operation on US soil in the run-up to the September 11th attacks. The purpose of the operation was to identify and track Muslim extremists, possibly including members of al-Qaeda.

Now, the best evidence that we have for this is, in fact, the story of these five moving men. Now, three of these guys were seen on the morning of September 11, just after the first plane hit the North Tower, quote-unquote, “celebrating” on the New Jersey waterfront. Now, that’s — I put the quotes around that, because it comes from a FBI BOLO, or “be on lookout,” an alert that was put out regarding these men that day. The celebration apparently consisted of high-fiving, according to one FBI official, of holding up cigarette lighters, as if they’re at a rock concert. So, remember, the plane has just hit the tower, exploded in the tower, and these three men are behaving rather oddly.

Later in the day, they were picked up. Two other men apparently joined them in a van. They were — the case was immediately handed over to FBI counterintelligence. The men were held for 71 days. They were repeatedly interrogated. They repeatedly failed lie detector tests. And then, after those 71 days was up, they were sent home, apparently under pressure or because of pressure brought by the Israeli government and by certain players in the US government. And the story sort of disappeared from there.”

You can refresh your memory on the events from Carl Cameron’s in depth reports on Israhelli foreknowledge which were suppressed by Fauxnews back in 2001.