Mission Accomplished: The Insurgency
**************************************************

Courtesy Of: InformationClearingHouse.info
Run Time: 89 Minutes.

Shocking, honest, brave and an amazing eye-opener.

Watch this movie if you really want to know what's happening in Iraq.

Shows both sides of the story about the insurgency war that you won't see on TV.

Historical Movie:
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article13440.htm

Iraqi Girl Tells Of Marine Massacre In Haditha
********************************************************

Courtesy Of: InformationClearingHouse.info

Ten-year old Iman Walid witnessed the killing of seven members of her family in an attack by American Marines last November.

The interview was filmed exclusively for ITV News by Ali Hamdani, our Iraqi video diarist...

Film:
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article13452.htm

U.S. Policy Was To Shoot Korean Refugees
*******************************************************

Courtesy Of: The Washington Post
By Charles J. Hanley and Martha Mendoza,
The Associate Press
Monday, May 29, 2006

More than a half-century after hostilities ended in Korea, a document from the war's chaotic early days has come to light_A letter from the U.S Ambassador to Seoul, informing the State Department that American soldiers would shoot refugees approaching their lines.

The letter dated the day of the Army's mass killing of South Korean refugees at No Gun Ri in 1950_Is the strongest indication yet that such a policy existed for all U.S. forces in Korea, and the first evidence that that policy was known to upper ranks of the U.S government.

"If refugees do appear from north of U.S. lines they will receive warning shots, and if they then persist in advancing they will be shot," wrote Ambassador John J. Muccio, in his message to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

The letter reported on decisions made at a high-level meeting in South Korea on July 25, 1950, the night before the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment shot the refugees at No Gun Ri.

Estimates vary on the number of dead at No Gun Ri. American soldiers' estimates ranged from under 100 to "hundreds" dead; Korean survivors say about 400, mostly women and children, were killed at the village 100 miles Southeast of Seoul, the Korean capital. Hundreds more refugees were killed in later, similar episodes, survivors say.

The No Gun Ri killings were documented in a Pulitzer Prize winning story by the Associated Press in 1999, which prompted a 16-month Pentagon inquiry.

The Pentagon concluded that No Gun Ri shootings, which lasted three days, were "an unfortunate tragedy"_"not a deliberate killing."

It suggested panicky soldiers, acting without orders, opened fire because they feared that an approaching line of families, baggage and farm animals concealed enemy troops.

But Muccio's letter indicates the actions of the 7th Cavalry were consistent with policy, adopted because of concern that North Koreans would infiltrate via refugee columns.

And in subsequent months, U.S. commanders repeatedly ordered refugees shot, documents show.

..."With this additional piece of evidence, the Pentagon's interpretation (of No Gun Ri) becomes difficult to sustain," Conway-Lanz argues in his book, "Collateral Damage," published this spring by Routledge.

...Muccio noted in his 1950 letter that U.S. commanders feared North Korean soldiers were infiltrating American lines via refugee columns.

As a result, those meeting on the night of July 25, 1950_top staff officers of the U.S. 8th Army, Muccio's representative Harold J. Noble and South Korean officials_decided on a policy of air-dropping leaflets telling South Korean civilians not to head south toward U.S. lines, and of shooting them if they did approach U.S. lines despite warning shots, the Ambassador wrote to Rusk.

...But the No Gun Ri killings_as well as others in the ensuing months_remained hidden from history until the AP report of 1999, in which ex-soldiers who were at No Gun Ri corroborated the Korean survivors' accounts.

Survivors said U.S. soldiers forced them from nearby villages on July 25, 1950, and then stopped them in front of U.S lines the next day, when they were attacked without warning by aircraft as hundreds sat atop a railroad embankment. Troops of the 7th Cavalry followed with ground fire as survivors took shelter under a railroad bridge.

The late Army Col Robert M. Carroll, a lieutenant at No Gun Ri, said he remembered the order radioed across the warfront on the morning of July 26 to stop refugees from crossing battle lines.

"What do you do when you're told nobody comes through?" he said in a 1998 interview. "We had to shoot them to hold them back."

Other soldier witnesses attested to radioed orders to open fire at No Gun Ri.

Since that episode was confirmed in 1999, South Koreans have lodged complaints with the Seoul government about more than 60 other alleged large-scale killings of refugees by the U.S. military in the 1950-53 war.

The Army report of 2001 acknowledged investigators learned of other, unspecified civilian killings, but said these would not be investigated.

Meanwhile, AP research uncovered at least 19 declassified U.S. military documents showing commanders ordered or authorized such killings in 1950-51.

The Army's denial that the killings were ordered is a "deception of No Gun Ri victims and of U.S. citizens who value human rights," said spokesman Chung Koo-do.

Even if infiltrators are present, soldiers need to take "due precautions" to protect civilian lives," said Francois Bugnion, director for international law for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, global authority on laws of war.

After reviewing the 1950 letter, Bugnion said the standard on war crimes is clear.

"In the case of a deliberate attack directed against civilians identified as such, then this would amount to a violation of the law of armed conflict," he said.

Gary Solis, a West Point expert on war crimes, said the policy described by Muccio clearly "deviates from typical wartime procedures. It's an obvious violation of the bedrock core principle of the law of armed conflict distinction."

Solis said soldiers always have the right to defend themselves. But "non-combatants are not to be purposely targeted."

...In South Korea, Yi Mahn-yol, head of the National Institute of Korean History and a member of a government panel on No Gun Ri, said the Muccio letter sheds an entirely new light on a case that "so far had been presented as an accidental incident that didn't involve the command system."

To read the complete article:
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/29/AR2006052900485_pf.html

Rubies
*********

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

They brought me rubies from the mine
And held them to the sun;
I said; they are drops of frozen wine
From Eden's vats that run.

I looked again,--I thought them hearts
Of friends to friends unknown;
Tides that should warm each neighboring life
Are locked in sparkling stone.

But fire to thaw that ruddy snow,
To break enchanted ice,
And give love's scarlet tides to flow,--
When shall that sun arise?

What Is So Humane?
**************************

A Bullies Alliance
**********************

Courtesy Of: Haaretz.com
By Gideon Levy
28/05/2006

Was the Prime Minister's address on Capitol Hill interrupted by applause 38 times,as Maariv and Haaretz reported, or 41, as Yedioth Ahronoth said? Was it the "speech of his life" or his "victory lap?" Does it matter?

Those who read the flood of praise heaped by a uniform chorus in the Israeli press on Ehud Olmert might think this was a historic visit that managed to significantly advance the achievement of peace in the Middle East. It was nothing of the kind.

In Washington, there was a meeting of the leaders of two countries that share, as the Prime Minister rightly said in his speech : "common principles and values."

The United States and Israel are two of the most hated countries in the world these days.

• Both are responsible for brutal occupations and the bloodshed of innocents;
• Both are fighting terrorism without regard for its reasons and true root causes;
• Both endanger world peace and their leaders scatter slogans about peace that are empty of any content;
• Both are surrounding themselves with walls.

The only difference between them is that:

• There are signs in the U.S. of an awakening from the deception of the criminal war in Iraq, three years after it began;
• In Israel, people are still sticking to all the lies of the past about the connection between the territories and security, even 39 yeras after the occupation began.

The renewed alliance forged between the Israeli Prime Minister and the American President is an alliance of bullies, two bullies who think they are allowed what most of the world is forbidden.

America and Israel use any possible weapons to their hearts' content and at the same time threaten anyone who tries to do the same.

Why? because they are strong. Those are the real values for which Olmert won his 38 or 41 interruptions.

Olmert "reached out" to Mahmoud Abbas, "a hand of peace" from Washington. Even Israel's long arm cannot make such a transatlantic crossing, from Capitol Hill to the ruins of the Muqata in Ramallah.

If he really meant it, the least Olmert could have done was make the 15-Minute Journey to Abbas' office.

"President" Abbas, as Olmert called him for the first time in a gesture empty of meaning, has long been seeking negotiations, as the most moderate leader the Palestinians have ever had. But Olmert, and Ariel Sharon before him, repeatedly rejected Abbas' outreached hand to peace.

Olmert has no serious intention of conducting negotiations with Abbas. He knows Abbas is a weak leader. He will meet him and then declare he is not doing enough against terror and thus, the negotiations will come to an end.

On the other hand, the Prime Minister has no intention of taking the truly courageous step that is really required of him: not only to go to the nearby and relatively comfortable Ramallah where yesterday's leader of Palestine sits, but to hungry and suffocating Gaza, to meet the new leader of the Palestinians, Ismael Haniyeh, it's not nice in Gaza. It's crowded and threatening, even very dangerous.

Olmert won't win any applause there like on Capitol Hill, but there, and only there, is it now possible to try to make peace.

For that, real courage is necessary, not the kind Americans applaud. And Olmert does not have that kind of courage.

There are new voices coming from Gaza now. Haniyeh's interview to Danny Rubinstein in Haaretz, in which he spoke of peace in the 1967 borders, should have sparked a wave of positive reactions from Jerusalem, Just like the "Prisoners Document" that was signed in Haradim Prison.

But Jerusalem's ears as usual is blocked to any sound that might advance the peace process.

Olmert sold the Americans slogans from the past: "an organization characterized by poisonous anti-Semitism--and a commitment to destroy Israel," he called Hamas, which now speaks explicitly about compromise with Israel.

Olmert's hand was only outstretched to the Americans and Israelis. Only there and here do people still buy the legend that Israel wants peace and not to hold on to the occupied territories.

Only in Israel and America do people still believe those who enlisted the world into besieging and starving the Palestinian people, assassinating and bombing, arresting and demolishing.

Olmert promised to start the convergence in two years. Now he's talking about evacuating no more than 40,000 settlers and resettling them in the "settlement bloc."

Obviously that is not a peace plan, that's a plan to perpetuate the occupation, only under conditions more convenient for Israel.

Moreover, at the end of the convergence plan, if it is ever executed, even more settlers will live in the occupied territories than live there now, in the "settlement blocs" that are no less dangerous than the handful of settlements that will be evacuated.

The fact that America is not enthusiastic about Olmert's plan need not worry anyone. It will, in the end, support it.

The two countries after all, have so many "shared values and principles."

Source:

http://haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=720345

Iraq: The Hidden War
**************************

Courtesy Of; InformationClearingHouse.info
Run Time: 49 Minutes
5/29/06

Iraq: The Hidden Story shows the footage used by TV news broadcasters, and compares it with the devastatingly powerful uncensored footage of the aftermath of the carnage that is becoming a part of the fabric of life in Iraq.

Prod/Dir: Christian Trumble;
Exec Prod: Stephen Phelps;
Prod Co: Zenith Entertainment LTD-2006

Images of Iraq dominate our TV news bulletins every night but in this film, Channel4 News presenter Jon Snow, questions whether these reports are sugar-coating the bloody reality of war under the US-led Occupation.

WARNING: DISTURBING FOOTAGE!!!

Film:
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article13420.htm

The Logic Of "Humanitarian Intervention"
****************************************************

-Neocolonial Tool Serving Geopolitical Interests-

Courtesy Of: GlobalResearch.ca
By Brendan Stone
May 13, 2006

On his recent speaking tour of Canada, former Haitian Minister of Defense Patrick Elie, an elected representative in the first government of Jean Bertrand Aristide, was asked by a member of the World Federalists NGO to support Canada's new "Responsibility To Protect" (RtP) doctrine.

The idea behind the "RtP" is that other countries should intervene in the politics of a sovereign country if they perceive instability or a human rights crisis.

Patrick, who spoke at McMaster University early in March, acknowledged the need to protect people whose human rights come under attack. But since this "RtP" doctrine is coming largely from the developed Western nations, many of which are curently violating human rights at this very moment, Elie asked,

"Who is protecting the rights of the people of Iraq, killed by the bombs of those who would grant themselves the "Responsibility To Protect?"

For example, the lead author of the Lancet's Iraqi Casualty Estimate has recently updated the death toll caused by the U.S./U.K. War to 300,000.

Patrick in asking this question, pointed out the dissonance between countries like Canada and the United States who are, on the one hand, waging illegal wars across the world that have killed tens of thousands, while on the other had painting themselves as angelic figures who can be trusted to shepherd and steward the "benighted" peoples in Africa, South America, and elsewhere.

When you think of the term "Humanitarian Intervention" or "Responsibility To Protect," do you envision soldiers from Ethiopia or India coming to the U.S. to arrest George Bush for war crimes, for the highest rate of imprisonment in the world, and for neglecting his own population in health care, infant mortality, and New Orleans? No, of course not. That would be ridiculous.

You think of soldiers from the white, former and current colonial powers like the U.S. and Britain, going to the dark continent and fixing the problems of the natives, whom we implicitly and imperialistically assume are incapable of self-government.

And that is where the current focus of the RtP doctrine lies. Patrick asked, "What about the colonial powers in Africa, namely France and Belgium, whose interference in Rwanda created the problem there in the first place?"

...The "Rwanda Genocide," did not happen because "We" in the West were not there. It happened because we WERE there. To use the conflict in Rwanda, precipitated by thirty years of Western involvement following the "Post Colonial" period, to Justify intervention into countries like the Sudan is disingenuous at best.

Recently, however, news outlets and government figures including George Bush and Colin Powell have asked us to pay attention to Sudan, and its endangered population of refugees.

And as the Jerusalem Post reports, "The [Save Darfur] coalition, which has presented itself as 'an alliance of over 130 diverse faith-based, humanitarian, and human rights organisations,' was actually begun exclusively as an initiative of the American Jewish community."

The embarrassed organizers of the recent Darfur rally in the U.S. were forced to admit their failure to include other American ethnicities and organisations, such as the NAACP and the Africa Action Group, and actually struggled to find a single Darfuri or Muslim speaker.

Christian Fundamentalists have also been a key force in the coalition. According to the Washington Post from April 27, "Last week, after an inquiry from the Washington Post, [Christian Evangelist Group] Sudan Sunrise changed its web site to eliminate references to efforts to convert the people of Darfur."

And beyond the religious groups, who play a subsidiary role, the idea of Western intervention into Darfur is primarily an initiative of the U.S. State Department. Sudan's oil-rich Darfur region makes it the second-largest oil producer in Africa, and its strategic location places the country at the gateway to the Middle East.

Additionally, Sudan has been using its oil for the cardinal sin of developing an economy independent of the United Satates.

According to John Laughland, "Darfur is a region which is rich in oil and through which pipelines are to be constructed." Moreover, the main investor in the Sudanese oil industry is the China National Petroleum Company, and China is Sudan's biggest trading partner overall. It has been alleged that there are Chinese soldiers in Sudan protecting Chinese oil interests there, and that these troops have engaged in skirmishes with the rebels.

Moreover, while there are numerous foreign oil companies present in Sudan, it is precisely in Southern Darfur that the Chinese National Petroleum Company has its concessions...China invested $300 million dollars to expand Sudan's largest refinery, and buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil.

Well-known academics such as Noam Chomsky and Michael Chossudovsky have been at the forefront of investigating how a key feature of U.S. policy in the Middle East has been to deny oil to competitors, especially China.

Columnist Eric Margolis argues that the U.S. is interested in nearby Chad's oil as well. The U.S. Congress has allocated $500 million dollars for military assistance to African governments, Particularly Chad's, whose military has been engaged in conflict with Sudan.

As former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says, "The people in Sudan want to resolve the conflict. The biggest obstacle is US government policy. The US is committed to overthrowing the government in Khartoum. Any sort of peace effort is aborted, basically by policies of the United States...Instead of working for peace in Sudan, the US government has basically promoted a continuation of the war."

In 2001, the U.S. House of Representatives' "Sudan Peace Act," provided ten million dollars in assistance to the National Democratic Alliance, described by Stephen Morrison, the head of the Sudan Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., as essentially a Darfuri rebel front group.

Further support for Carter's claims comes from Enver Masud, who refers to a Washington Post article investigating how in 1996, the U.S. sent nearly $20 million in surplus U.S. military equipment to Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda to topple the government of Sudan.

The U.S. under Bill Clinton even bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, claiming it was used to produce WMDs, when it was later revealed that U.S. missiles had actually been launched at the largest producer of anti-Malarial medicines in Africa.

The U.S. has funded insurgencies in Sudan ever since the country moved away from the control of Western powers in the late 1970s, especially the rebel Sudanese People's Liberation Movement and Army [SPLM/A].

The leader of the SPLA, John Garang, allied himself with the most reactionary wing of the U.S. ruling class: the Christian Right were his principal ideological associates. Republican Senator Bill Frist once entered disputed South Sudan and was photographed with Garang.

The U.S. Christian Right is using the alleged oppression in the predominantly-Muslim South to Justify a nineteenth-century style colonial intervention.

In negotiations with the Sudanese government, Garang managed to secure Kosovo-style autonomy for areas of Southern Sudan. As part of a U.S. plan for Balkanization, Sudan now has been strong-armed into accepting the unusual arrangement of a Vice-President from Darfur and a Vice-President from Southern Sudan.

Garangs wife is now meeting with U.S. leaders, including Frist, for further independence negotiations.

To keep Sudan in a perpetual state of war, the U.S. makes sure that at least one rebel group is on the move while another is engaged in peace talks.

The recent round of "Save Darfur" demonstrations have taken place during a time of negotiations between government and rebel groups, and are designed to further destabilize the country.

Yoshi Furuhashi explains, "The timing of the [April 30] rally was perfect, designed to coincide--an scuttle--the Abuja peace negotiations between the rebels and Khartoum brokered by the African Union, whose deadline is midnight today. And sure enough, the rebels rejected the peace deal."

The U.S. needs rebel groups to win bigger victories, if it is to reverse China's current advantageous position in Sudan.

In order to gain support of a U.S. military intervention, including NATO intervention as suggested by President Bush, the corporate media downplays the violence of and refusal to sign peace accords among the rebel insurgency, and instead cover's Sudan's civil war as if it is a one-sided human rights crisis, with the Sudanese government as the "bad guys."

Far-worse conflicts in Africa, such as the nightmare in the Congo where millions have been killed, are ignored in favor of Darfur.

As in Kosovo, all the coverage is designed to make us Canadians think that by putting Western boots on the ground, we can avert a humanitarian catastrophe.

What CNN, the State Department, and the Western religious organizations aren't telling us is that millions of Palestinians are on the verge of starvation because of the entirely preventable actions by our governments.

With the full support of "The West" and the "International Community," Canada, Israel, and other countries have cancelled essential food donations and aid critical to the survival of Palestinians, because we do not like the government they have elected. (Bringing democracy to the Middle East, indeed!).

So, on the one hand, we are told to use military force to intervene in an "Arab" African conflict where we have no business, and on the other, are told to ignore a human rights catastrophe in Israel in which our own governments are complicit.

How do our governments get away with this?

I bet before reading Patrick's comments above, you had shut out the idea of the illegal U.S. War in Iraq when trying to picture the idea of U.S. peacekeepers helping an unstable country.

We are able to disassociate in our minds the murder done by our Western countries from the idea that we can protect human rights. As a result, we need to "decolonize" our minds.

As Edward Said has explained, colonialism is not Just the occupation of territory, but it requires a state of mind as well; a state of mind which, "includes ideas that certain people and certain territories require and beseech domination."

In other words, we in the West tend to believe that if a white developed country is sending troops to the Third World, it must be a good thing. But until we can envision a situation where Third World intervention against the U.S. or other great powers is realistic and possible, the "Responsibility To Protect" exists simply as a tool for "Us" in the West to continue subjugating and running the affairs of other countries, aprticularly Sudan.

Those who would have us intervene in Sudan on the basis of combating unrest under the "Responsibility To Protect" would have us face the ridiculous situation, as in Kosovo, of "Needing" to violate a country's sovereignty as a result of the West having previously violated it.

Source:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=STO20060513&articleId=2436

I Promise Not To Make War
**********************************

Training Camp Passed From CIA Control To Al Qaeda's
*********************************************************************

Courtesy Of: GlobalResearch.ca
Via: WayneMadsenReport.com
May 27, 2006

Washington, D.C.--WMR has obtained a confidential "France Only" report of the French Intelligence Service, Direction Generale, de la Securite Exterieure (DGSE), that states that the CIA and Britain's MI6 maintained effective control of an important Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan as late as 1995, fully two years after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

...The CIA and MI6 permitted control of training operations at Darunta, an "Arab Afghan" base located near the camp of Osama Bin Laden and used to manufacture explosives and chemical weapons and train in their use, to pass to control of Ibn Cheikh, a Libyan leader of Al Qaeda.

The DGSE report, dated January 9, 2001, is classified "Defense Confidential" and "National (French) Use Only,"

"Besides the Maghreb enclave, the training at Darunta, which, for approximately 2 months Mainly involved the manufacture and the use of the explosives by terrorists. The training, initially provided at the camp of Khalden, in Paktia, was transferred during 1995, on the order of Ibn Cheikh, to Darunta, in order to slide [the training] from the control of the security services of certain countries, in particular the United States and United Kingdom."

The report continues by stating that in 1998, the training was expanded to include the use of C-4 plastic explosives and different types of detonators (electric, acid, etc).

Training also included the use of homemade explosives (like improvised explosive devices killing so many in Iraq today) and poisons such as arsenic, cyanide, gas, diamond powder, nicotine, and ricin.

After Al Qaeda took control of Darunta from the CIA and MI6, the camp was used to train Al Qaeda operatives to launch a series of deadly attacks, including the November 1995 attack on the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, the 1998 attack on the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, the abortive Dec. 31, 1999 "Millennium" attack on Los Angeles International Airport by Algerian Ahmed Ressam, and the attack on the USS Cole.

...Two significant items emerge from the DGSE report. One is the fact that the CIA and MI6 were dealing with a Libyan Al Qaeda member at the same time Libyan leader Muammar el Qaddafi had declared war on Al Qaeda.

Unlike the United States, Libya issued an Interpol arrest warrant for Bin Laden on March 16, 1998.

With this treasure trove of proof of U.S. (an British) support for Al Qaeda, Qaddafi, had the U.S. and the Neo-Cons over the barrel.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the Bush administration now considers Qaddafi (once branded as terrorist number one) to be a good friend.

The other item is the training of Ahmed Ressam at Darunta. Bill Clinton's National Security Adviser Sandy Berger was charged with removing classified documents from the National Archives concerning the Ressam bombing plot.

The question remains--What were in these documents and did they have anything to do with the CIA's fingerprints on the Darunta camp?

Note: Wayne Madsen is a former National Security Agency Analyst...

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=MAD20060527&articleId=2523

"With God On Our Side"
******************************

Courtesy Of: InformationClearingHouse.info
Directed By: Calvin Scaggs, David Van Taylor
Run Time: 101 Minutes

By calmly putting all the pieces in a row, it shows how we came to have a president who believes, in the words of one commentator, that "he and his country have a special relationship with God."
--The New York Times--


And as reported by, LancasterOnline.com:
In his meeting with a group of Amish men during his campaingn for reelection,

Bush stated: "I trust God speaks through me, without that, I couldn't do my Job."

Documentary Video:
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article13162.htm

Leadership Abilities
*************************

Crusades!
*************

Documentary: 'Preventative Warriors'
***********************************************

Courtesy Of: InformationClearingHouse.info
Produced By: Michael Burns and Greg Ansin

The film examines a bold new foreign policy paper introduced by the White House in September 2002 entitled: "The National Security Strategy Of The United States" [1].

The document outlines a radical new doctrine in American foreign policy, one so-called "Pre-Emptive Warfare."

The Bush administration used this policy as a Justification for the invasion of Iraq.

The film features many of the leading thinkers of our time: Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Tariq Ali and more.


Documentary Film:
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article6268.htm


The National Security Strategy Of The United States, Document:
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article2320.htm

Intimations Of Immortality
********************************

By William Wordsworth

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our House.

Islam In Europe
********************

Courtesy Of: MSNBC

Millions of Muslims have lived in Europe, some of whom have lived there for generations and others who have arrived as recent migrants.

Click on the country to get a rundown on the numbers, the history and the issues:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12757599/

The Shame Of The European Union
*********************************************

Courtesy Of: AxisOfLogic.com
By Roberts Thompson
May 18, 2006

Both Mr Mahmoud Abbas and various spokespersons from Hamas made it clear to the European Union that its action in refusing aid to the Palestinians is a particularly cruel manner of supporting oppression.

However this is not the end of the shame, since it was member states of the Union which created the situation whereby this invasion and persecution of the inhabitants of Palestine was achieved and these defenceless people were delivered into the hands of their enemies.

Following the infamous Sykes-Picot Pact in 1916, whereby the French and British decided how they would carve up parts of the Ottoman Empire after it fell apart, the United Kingdom government made the even more indefensible Balfour Declaration in 1917 disposing of the lands and homes of others without any consultation whatsoever of the population.

They even used the old chestnut of "a land without a people for a people without a land," without any thought of the well-known fact that it was a well-populated country.

Germany has since the war very crudely tried to salve its conscience regarding the Nazi atrocities committed against those whom it classified as "Jews," (using the Marr/Herzl definition rather than that of the Rabbis) by supporting the variation on Nazism developed by the Zionists, i.e. a complete disregard for the rights of those whom they considered, and still consider to be "Untermenschen."

This shows a crazy lack of logic in that every kind of dehumanisation of any other people is as evil as any other, and genuine religious Jews must regard with horror this hideous misuse and distortion of their wonderful religious traditions.

Also, the Germans should think back more carefully to their own past and the ruination brought about by Hitler's regime.

It was shocking to see and hear Mrs Merkel giving such strong support to Mr Bush's criminal desires to break the spirit of the Palestinian people to please his Zionist "best friends" and "allies" in the world.

Since she was brought up mainly in the former DDR, she should think back not only to the Nazis but also to the post-war regime which produced the Stasi.

Other states in the European Union than the United Kingdom, France and Germany must have made pathetically feeble excuses to their peoples, or have suffered serious pressure, to approve the cutting off of an aid which is a small recompense for the harm caused to the Palestinians by Europe, including many of these other states.

Our different governments' collective shame arises from their having swallowed, or having pretended to swallow, the propaganda which leaves out of consideration the existing truce which Hamas declared long before the recent election, and nevertheless insists that it should declare that the Zionists have the right to steal the remainder of the land which was Palestine, by recognising this amorphous but expansionist state.

It is our shame that so many in Europe allow our governments to carry on with this disastrous policy, without complaining more effectively.

Furthermore, the British people, above all, can be blamed for allowing Mr Blair and his Bushist (or Neo-Fascist) government to be re-elected by the "vast majority" of voters claimed by Mr Blair.

Mr Blair's grasp of mathematics permitted him to claim that electoral support of well under 40% was both a majority and a clear mandate to continue with his nefarious policies.

It is now our duty to reclaim our proper pride in Justice and democracy by rejecting these evil governments to end forever the shame which they brought upon us.

Source:
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_22019.shtml

In A Bind!
************

Stop Israeli 'Apartheid' Policies
**************************************

By Chris Davies MEP
Liberal Democrat of the European Parliament for the North West of England
Tuesday 18, April 2006

--Hopes Of Creating A Viable, Independent Palestinian State Are Being Destroyed On The Ground By Israeli Bulldozers, Barbed Wire And Concrete Walls, A Liberal Democrat MEP Has Claimed--

And Chris Davies warns that the EU's decision to suspend payments to the Palestinian Authority risks turning crisis into catastrophe.

An all-Party delegation from the European Parliament met last week with President Mahmoud Abbas and newly elected members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, including suporters of both Hamas and Fatah groups.

Now the MEPs are seeking an urgent meeting with Javier Solana, the EU's High Representative on Foreign Affairs, to urge that a dialogue begins before Palestinian despair erupts into violence that may spread far beyond the region.

Foreign Ministers agreed last week to cease support for the Palestinian Authority until the new Hamas-led government agrees to recognise Israel, renounce violence, and accept previous agreements.

But the MEPs report that even moderate politicians in Palestine regard the stance as a collective punishment imposed because people made the 'wrong' choice in democratic elections. The resulting huge rise in unemployment will make it impossible to control social unrest, they fear.

Chris Davies, a North West representative who is leader of the British Liberal Democrats in the European Parliament said that he had been shocked by what he had seen.

He commented:

"Very rapid changes are taking place on the ground. Palestinian land is being carved up and communities isolated. The people compare themselves to hamsters kept in cages connected by tubes that are opened and shut at the whim of their Israeli masters. Economic progress is impossible."

"Towns are being physically divided and people denied the right to travel between them. Israel continues to steal land to expand settlements served by roads the Palestinians are forbidden to use."

"We should be honest. These are the racist policies of Apartheid yet Israel continues to pose as a victim."

"I visited Auschwitz last year, and it is very difficult to understand why those whose history is one of such terrible oppression appear not to care that they have themselves become oppressors."

Mr Davies says he was asked repeatedly during his visit about EU double standards, with Palestinians being penalised while no action is taken to restrain Israel from flouting international law.

"Palestinian's are being subjected to intolerable pressure," he said. "Their democracy is not being respected, their land is being stolen, and their means of earning a living is being lost."

"The EU must speak up for Justice. It must stop Israel breaking the law, and it must at least enter into dialogue with the new Palestinian government to try and secure the necessary change in approach."

The MEP believes that the gulf between the position of the Hamas-led government and the EU may be smaller than some suppose.

"Negotiation on the basis of the 1967 borders implies recognition of the State of Israel," he said, "While the 'ceasefire' that Hamas has maintained deserves acknowledgement. Diplomacy may bridge the gaps."

Source:
http://www.chrisdaviesmep.org.uk/news/2006/Apr/stop_israeli_apartheid_policies_says_lib_dem_euro_mp.htm

Tony Blair's New International Order
**********************************************

Courtesy Of: The Independent
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Published: 27 May 2006

Tony Blair set out a sweeping blueprint yesterday for a new international order, built around an overhauled United Nations, an enlarged G8, and a multilateral system for the supply of enriched uranium for peacful nuclear energy.

...It was built around a single overreaching theme: that the challenges of today's interdependent world meant that countries had to act together and, in some cases, that action had to be pre-emptive not reactive.

...The heart of the Georgetown speech was Mr Blair's vision of a new international system, complete with a more effective system not only to respond to crises, but to head them off in advance.

"Increasingly there is a hopeless mismatch between the global challenges we face and the global institutions to confront them," said Mr Blair.

New international architecture had been required after the Second World War, he noted. "In this era, we need to renew it."

The centerpiece of what the Prime Minister termed his "tentative suggestions for change" is an overhaul of the United Nations and its sister organisations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and of the G8 group of major powers, now a de facto parallel directorate to oversee world affairs.

The plan has six points:

• Security Council changes to bring in countries such as Germany, Japan and India.
• New powers for the UN Secretay General, especially to appoint top officials in the secretariat and to allocate UN resources.
• A possible merger and sweeping reform of the IMF and the World Bank.
• A multilateral system for "safe enrichment for nuclear energy, featuring a "uranium bank" run by th International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
• An expanded G8, that includes China, India and Brazil among others.
• A UN Environment Organisation that reflects environmental issues.

Mr Blair pointed to how unrepresentative the current structure of the Security Council had become.

A council "which has France as a permanent member but not Germany, Britain but not Japan, China but not India, to say nothing of the absence of proper representation from Latin America and Africa, cannot be legitimate," he said.

...Much the same applied to the World Bank and the IMF, in Mr Blair's view. While the Bank should remain focused on fighting poverty, the IMF "must become representative of emerging economic powers and give greater voice to developing countries."

To read the complete article:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article620246.ece