And back to Iran, but still talking about Israel

Israel's Plan for a Military Strike on Iran

By Jonathan Cook

10/12/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- The Middle East, and possibly the world, stands on the brink of a terrible conflagration as Israel and the United States prepare to deal with Iran's alleged ambition to acquire nuclear weapons. Israel, it becomes clearer by the day, wants to use its air force to deliver a knock-out blow against Tehran. It is not known whether it will use conventional weapons or a nuclear warhead in such a strike.

At this potentially cataclysmic moment in global politics, it is good to see that one of the world's leading broadcasters, the BBC, decided this week that it should air a documentary entitled "Will Israel bomb Iran?". It is the question on everyone's lips and doubtless, with the imprimatur of the BBC, the programme will sell around the world.

The good news ends there, however. Because the programme addresses none of the important issues raised by Israel's increasingly belligerent posture towards Tehran.

It does not explain that, without a United Nations resolution, a military strike on Iran to destroy its nuclear research programme would be a gross violation of international law.

It does not clarify that Israel's own large nuclear arsenal was secretly developed and is entirely unmonitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, or that it is perceived as a threat by its neighbours and may be fuelling a Middle East arms race.

Nor does the programme detail the consequences of an Israeli strike on instability and violence across the Middle East, including in Iraq, where British and American troops are stationed as an occupying force.

And there is no consideration of how in the longer term unilateral action by Israel, with implicit sanction by the international community, is certain to provoke a steep rise in global jihad against the West.

Instead the programme dedicates 40 minutes to footage of Top Gun heroics by the Israeli air force, and the recollections of pilots who carried out a similar, "daring" attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor in the early 1980s; menacing long shots of Iran's nuclear research facilities; and interviews with three former Israeli prime ministers, a former Israeli military chief of staff, various officials in Israeli military intelligence and a professor who designs Israel's military arsenal.

All of them speak with one voice: Israel, they claim, is about to be "wiped out" by Iranian nuclear weapons and must defend itself "whatever the consequences".

They are given plenty of airtime to repeat unchallenged well-worn propaganda Israel has been peddling through its own media, and which has been credulously amplified by the international media: that Iran is led by a fanatical anti-Semite who, like Adolf Hitler, believes he can commit genocide against the Jewish people, this time through a nuclear holocaust.

Other Israeli misinformation, none of it believed by serious analysts, is also uncritically spread by the film-makers: that Hizbullah in Lebanon is a puppet of Iran, waiting to aid its master in Israel's destruction; that Iran is only months away from creating nuclear weapons, a "point of no return", as the programme warns; and that a "fragile" Israel is under constant threat of annihilation from all its Arab neighbours.

But the programme's unequivocal main theme -- echoing precisely Israel's own agenda -- is that Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is hellbent on destroying Israel. The film-makers treat seriously, bordering on reverentially, preposterous comments from Israel's leaders about this threat.

Shimon Peres, the Israeli government's veteran roving ambassador, claims, for example, that Iran has made "a call for genocide" against Israel, compares an Iranian nuclear bomb to a "flying concentration camp", and warns that "no one would like to see a comeback to the times of the Nazis".

Cabinet minister Avi Dichter, a former head of the Shin Bet domestic security service, believes Israel faces "an existential threat" from Iran. And Zvi Stauber, a former senior figure in military intelligence, compares Israel's situation to a man whose neighbour "has a gun and he declares every day he is going to kill you".

But pride of place goes to Binyamin Netanyahu, a former prime minister and the current leader of the opposition. He claims repeatedly that the only possible reason Iran and its president could want a nuclear arsenal is for Israel's "extermination". "If he can get away with it, he'll do it." "Ayatollahs with atombic bombs are a powerful threat to all of us." A nuclear Iran "is a threat unlike anything we have seen before. It's beyond politics" -- apparently worse than the nuclear states of North Korea and Pakistan, the latter a military dictatorship and friend of the US barely containing within its borders some of the most fanatical jihadist movements in the world.

Apart from a brief appearance by an Iranian diplomat, no countervailing opinions are entertained in the BBC programme; only Israel's military and political leadership is allowed to speak.

The documentary gives added credence to the views of Israel's security establishment by making great play of a speech by Ahmadinejad -- one with which the Israeli authorities and their allies in Washington have made endless mischief -- in which the Iranian president repeats a statement by Iran's late spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, that went unnoticed when first uttered.

In the BBC programme, Ahmadenijad is quoted as saying: "The regime occupying Jerusalem should be eliminated from the page of history". This is at least an improvement on the original translation, much repeated in the programme by Netanyahu and others, that "Israel must be wiped off the map".

But for some strange reason, the programme makers infer from their more accurate translation the same diabolical intent on Ahmadinejad's part as suggested by Netanyahu's fabricated version. Iran's nuclear weapons, we are told by the programme as if they are already in existence, have "presented Israel's leaders with a new order of threat". In making his speech, the BBC film argues, Ahmadinejad "issued a death sentence against Israel".

But, as has now been pointed out on numerous occasions (though clearly not often enough for the BBC to have noticed), Khomeini and Ahmadinejad were referring to the need for regime change, the ending of the regime occupying the Palestinians in violation of international law. They were not talking, as Netanyahu and co claim, about the destruction of the state of Israel or the Jewish people. The implication of the speech is that the current Israeli regime will end because occupying powers are illegitimate and unsustainable, not because Iran plans to fire nuclear missiles at the Jewish state or commit genocide.

Overlooked by the programme makers is the fact that "fragile" Israel is currently the only country in the Middle East armed with nuclear warheads, several hundred of them, as well as one of the most powerful armies in the world, which presumably make most of its neighbours feel "fragile" too, with far more reason.

And, as we are being persuaded how "fragile" Israel really is, another former prime minister, Ehud Barak, is interviewed. "Ultimately we are standing alone," he says, in apparent justification for an illegal, unilateral strike. Iran's nuclear reasearch facilities, Barak warns, are hidden deep underground, so deep that "no conventional weapon can penetrate", leaving us to infer that in such circumstances Israel will have no choice but use a tactical nuclear strike in its "self-defence". And, getting into his stride, Barak adds that some facilities are in crowded urban areas "where any attack could end up in civilian collateral damage".

But despite the terrifying scenario laid out by Israel's leaders, the BBC website cheerleads for Israel in the same manner as the programme-makers, suggesting that Israel has the right to engineer a clash of civilisations: "With America unlikely to take military action, the pressure is growing on Israel's leaders to launch a raid."

As should be clear by now, the Israeli government's fingerprints are all over this BBC "documentary". And that is hardly surprising because the man behind this "independent" production is Israel's leading film-maker: Noam Shalev.

Shalev, a graduate of a New York film school, has been making a spate of documentaries through his production company Highlight Films, based in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, that have been lapped up by the BBC and other foreign broadcasters. With the BBC's stamp of approval, it is easy for Shalev to sell his films around the world.

Shalev, who claims that he doesn't "espouse a political view", started his career by making documentaries on less controversial subjects. He has produced films on Ethiopian immigrants arriving in Israel, and on the Zaka organisation, Jewish religious fundamentalists who arrive at the scene of suicide attacks quite literally to pick up the pieces, of human remains.

In the past his films managed to bypass the reticence of broadcasters like the BBC to broach the combustible subject of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict outside their news programmes by touching on the topic obliquely. Importantly, however, Shalev's films always humanise his Israeli subjects, showing them as complex, emotional and caring beings, while largely ignoring the millions of Palestinians the Israeli government and army are oppressing.

According to a profile of Shalev published in the Israeli media in 2004, his success derives from the fact that he has developed a "soft-sell approach", showing Israel in a good light without "the straightforward 'hasbara' [propaganda] efforts which explain Israel's case that Israel's Foreign Ministry is required to disseminate to European and American news outlets."

In the words of an Israeli public relations executive, Shalev has a skill in telling Israel's story in ways that international broadcasters appreciate: "[Shalev] also shows the Israeli side, he is not one of those traitors who sell their ideology for money. He has the skill to market it in such a way that overseas they want to see it, and this is very important."

But recently Shalev has grown more confident to try the hard sell for Israel, apparently sure that the BBC and other foreign broadcasters will still buy his films. And that is because Shalev offers them something that other film-makers cannot: intimate access to Israel's security forces, an area off-limits to his rivals.

Before the disengagement from Gaza last year, for example, Shalev made a sympathetic documentary, shown by the BBC, about a day in the life of one Israeli soldier serving there. The film largely concealed the context that might have alerted viewers to the fact that the soldier was enforcing a four-decade illegal occupation of Gaza, or that the Strip is an open-air prison in which thousands of Palestinian have been killed by the Israeli army and in which a majority of Gazans live in abject poverty.

Interviewed about the documentary, Shalev observed: "The army really is very, very careful. There is no indiscriminate firing. I saw, and this was not a show put on just for us, that before any shot is fired there is confirmation that there is nobody behind or in front of the objective. The army is very sensitive to non-deliberate fire."

In other words, Shalev's film for the BBC shed no light on why Israel's "deliberate" fire has killed hundreds of Palestinian children during the second intifada or why a large number of civilians have died from Israeli gunfire and missile strikes inside the Gaza Strip.

Earlier this year Shalev made another film for the BBC, "The Hunt for Black October", to coincide with the release of Stephen Spielberg's movie Munich. "The BBC gains exclusive access to the undercover Mossad agents assigned to track down the Palestinian group responsible for the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics," the BBC was able to glow in its promotional material.

Shalev's latest film, "Will Israel bomb Iran?", follows this well-trodden path. Arabs and Muslims are again deprived of a voice, as are non-Israeli experts.

So why did the BBC buy this blatant piece of propaganda?

Here are a few clues. Shalev's film includes:

* footage taken from inside Hizbullah bunkers under the supervision of the Israeli army as it occupied south Lebanon.

* a "rare view" of the inside of the Israeli army's satellite control room, which spies on Israel's Arab neighbours and Iran and which, according to programme, is "incredibly guarded about its security arrangements".

* an exclusive appearance by Israel's former military chief of staff, Moshe Yaalon, who we are told is "rarely interviewed".

* a glimpse inside a Rafael weapons factory, which the programme tells us is "rarely filmed".

In other words, the BBC, and the other broadcasters who will air this "documentary" in the coming weeks and months, has been dazzled by Shalev's ability to show us the secret world of the Israeli army. So dazzled, it seems, that it has forgotten to check -- or worse, simply doesn't care -- what message Shalev is inserting between his exclusive footage.

It might have occurred to someone at the BBC to wonder why Shalev gets these chances to show things no one else is allowed to. Could it be that the "hasbara" division of the Israeli Foreign Ministry has got far more sophisticated than it once was?

Is the Israeli government using Shalev, wittingly or not, and is he in turn using the BBC, to spread Israeli propaganda? Propaganda that may soon propel us towards the "clash of civilisations" so longed for by Israel's leadership.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His book, Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State, is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

New kind of weapon used by the Israeli Air Force in the Gaza-Ghetto

New kind missile/bomb used in the Gaza-Strip puzzles doctors in Hospitals.

English Report on RAI24, (Windows Media Player video on top right hand side, 18mins,)

or watch the video report here (English, 18mins)

The British Guardian on North Korea

We are heading towards another pre-emptive war and Japanese nuclear weapons unless pressure for disarmament revives

Dan Plesch
Tuesday October 10, 2006
The Guardian

North Korea's nuclear test is only the latest failure of the west's proliferation policy. And it demonstrates the need to return to the proven methods of multilateral disarmament. Far from being crazy, the North Korean policy is quite rational. Faced with a US government that believes the communist regime should be removed from the map, the North Koreans pressed ahead with building a deterrent. George Bush stopped the oil supplies to North Korea that had been part of a framework to end its nuclear programme previously agreed with Bill Clinton. Bush had already threatened pre-emptive war - Iraq-style - against a regime he dubbed as belonging to the axis of evil.

The background to North Korea's test is that, since the end of the cold war, the nuclear states have tried to impose a double standard, hanging on to nuclear weapons for themselves and their friends while denying them to others. Like alcoholics condemning teenage drinking, the nuclear powers have made the spread of nuclear weapons the terror of our age, distracting attention from their own behaviour. Western leaders refuse to accept that our own actions encourage others to follow suit.

North Korea's action has now increased the number of nuclear weapon states to nine. Since 1998 India, Pakistan and now North Korea have joined America, China, France, Russia, Israel and the UK.

The domino effect is all too obvious. Britain wants nuclear weapons so long as the French do. India said it would build one if there were no multilateral disarmament talks. Pakistan followed rapidly. In Iran and the Arab world Israel's bomb had always been an incentive to join in. But for my Iranian friends, waking up to a Pakistani bomb can be compared to living in a non-nuclear Britain and waking up to find Belgium had tested a nuclear weapon.

East Asia is unlikely to be different. In 2002 Japan's then chief cabinet secretary, Yasuo Fukuda, told reporters that "depending on the world situation, circumstances and public opinion could require Japan to possess nuclear weapons". The deputy cabinet secretary at the time, Shinzo Abe - now Japan's prime minister - said afterwards that it would be acceptable for Japan to develop small, strategic nuclear weapons.

It was not supposed to be like this. At the end of the cold war, disarmament treaties were being signed, and in 1996 the big powers finally agreed to stop testing nuclear weapons for the first time since 1945. The public, the pressure groups and the media all breathed a great sigh of relief and forgot about the bomb. Everyone thought that with the Soviet Union gone, multilateral disarmament would accelerate.

But with public attention elsewhere, the Dr Strangeloves in Washington, Moscow and Paris stopped the disarmament process and invented new ideas requiring new nuclear weapons. A decade ago, Clinton's Pentagon placed "non-state actors" (ie terrorists) on the list of likely targets for US nuclear weapons. Now all the established nuclear states are building new nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration made things worse. First, it rejected the policy of controlling armaments through treaties, which had been followed by previous presidents since 1918. Second, it proposed to use military - even nuclear - force in a pre-emptive attack to prevent proliferation. This policy was used as a pretext for attacking Iraq and may now be used on either Iran or North Korea. More pre-emptive war will produce suffering and chaos, while nothing is done about India, Israel and Pakistan. So we are left with a policy of vigilante bravado for which we have sacrificed the proven methods of weapons control.

Fortunately, there is a realistic option. Max Kampelman, Ronald Reagan's nuclear negotiator, has proposed that Washington's top priority should be the elimination of all weapons of mass destruction on earth, including those possessed by the US. At the ongoing disarmament meetings at the UN, the vast majority of nations argue for a phased process to achieve this goal. They can point to the success of the UN inspectors in Iraq as proof that international inspection can work, even in the toughest cases. The Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty that removed the missiles from Greenham is an example of an agreement no one thought possible that worked completely. This, and other legacies from the cold war, can and should be applied globally.

A group of Britain's closest allies, including South Africa and Ireland, are trying to broker a deal on global disarmament. Tragically, Britain won't be helping. Political parties and the media are deaf to these initiatives. The three main parties all follow more or less the US approach. They know that no US government will lease the UK a successor to Trident if London steps out of line on nuclear weapons policy. The media almost never report on UN disarmament debates. Disarmament has become the word that dare not be said in polite society.

Do we have to wait for another pre-emptive war or until the Japanese go nuclear before the British political class comes to realise that there can be a soft landing from these nuclear crises?

· Dan Plesch, a fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies and Keele University, is the author of The Beauty Queen's Guide to World Peace

www.danplesch.net

Detour to North Korea

Don Rumsfeld Bats Both Ways

By Chris Floyd10/10/06 "ICH Information Clearing House " -- --

In February 2003, I wrote a column for the Moscow Times detailing Don Rumsfeld's personal – and profitable – connection with North Korea's nuclear program. Today Greg Saunders at This Modern World notes (from a Guardian story from May 2003), that the Bush Administration continued to shove money toward Rumsfeld's corporate cronies, allowing them to help accelerated North Korea's nuke push – even as the Dear Leader (theirs, not ours) was kicking out weapons inspectors and withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

What I wrote more than three years ago unfortunately still holds true today. The nuclear blast test that North Korea conducted this week is not only the result of the Bush Administration's incompetent and sinister diplomatic philosophy – which seems to consist solely of provoking unfriendly regimes into countermeasures which can then be used as excuses for war-profiteering "regime change" assaults – but also stems from the overwhelming lust for loot that lies behind the noble rhetoric of the third-rate goons of the Bush Gang.

Swing Blades
(Originally published in the Feb. 28, 2003 edition of The Moscow Times; the version here excerpted from the book, Empire Burlesque.)

It's a well-known fact – oft detailed in these pages – that the boys in the Bush Regime swing both ways. We speak, of course, of their proclivity – their apparently uncontrollable craving – for stuffing their trousers with loot from both sides of whatever war or military crisis is going at the moment.

That's why it came as no surprise to read last week that just before he joined the Regime's crusade against evildoers everywhere (especially rogue states that pursue the development of terrorist-ready weapons of mass destruction), Pentagon warlord Donald Rumsfeld was trousering the proceeds from a $200 million deal to send the latest nuclear technology – including plenty of terrorist-ready "dirty bomb" material – to the rogue state of North Korea, the Swiss paper Neue Zurcher Zeitung reports.

In 1998, Rumsfeld was citizen chairman of the Congressional Ballistic Missile Threat Commission, charged with reducing nuclear proliferation. Rumsfeld and the Republican-heavy commission came down hard on the deal Bill Clinton had brokered with North Korea to avert a war in 1994: Pyongyang would give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for normalized relations with the United States, plus the construction of two non-weaponized nuclear plants to generate electricity. The plants were to be built by an international consortium of government-backed business interests called KEDO.

Rum deal, said Rummy: those nasty Northies would surely turn the peaceful nukes to nefarious ends. What's more, even the most innocuous nuclear plant generates mounds of radioactive waste that could be made into "dirty bombs" – hand-carried weapons capable of killing thousands of people. The agreement was big bad juju that threatened the whole world, Rumsfeld declared.

Of course, that didn't prevent him from trying to profit from it. Even while he was chairing commission meetings on the "dire threat" posed by the Korean program, Rumsfeld was junketing to Zurich for board meetings of the Swiss-based energy technology giant, ABB, where he was a top director. And what was ABB doing at the time? Why, negotiating that $200 million deal with North Korea to provide equipment and services for the KEDO nuclear reactors, of course!

Yes, nuclear proliferation is ugly stuff – but you might as well squeeze a few dollars from it, right? A smart guy always plays the angles – and, as the hero-worshiping American media never stop telling us, Rumsfeld is one smart guy.

In fact, he's so smart that he's now playing dumb. A Pentagon spokesman says Rumsfeld "can't recall" discussing the Korean deal at ABB board meetings. And his erstwhile ABB corporate colleagues say that it's possible the subject never came up. Of course it didn't; going into the nuclear business with a Communist tyranny that very nearly launched a nuclear war against the West just four years before, in a deal that involved high-level negotiations with the governments of the United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union – that's certainly the kind of thing that would be handled by a couple of junior executives in a branch office somewhere. Nothing for the bigwigs – especially hard-wired government players like Rumsfeld – to trouble their pretty heads about. A perfectly reasonable explanation.

And so Rumsfeld joins the roster of Bush Regime boardroom honchos who once trumpeted their "business savvy" as selling points for their aspirations to national leadership but now claim to have been "hands-off" figureheads who had no idea what their companies were up to. Bush, in his sinkhole of insider trading and stockholder scamming at Harken; Cheney, making fat deals with Saddam Hussein (yes, after the Gulf War) and muddying up the corporate books at Halliburton; Army Secretary Thomas White, gaming the power grid and stealing millions for Enron in the manufactured California "energy crisis" – all of them went from mighty moguls to mere "front men" the instant their corruption was brought to light. None of it was their fault; nothing ever is.

Whatever happened to Bush's much-trumpeted "era of responsibility?" These guys are not only chiselers, hustlers, hypocrites and war profiteers – they're a bunch of gutless wonders as well. So you'll pardon us if we are just the tiniest bit cynical about the "moral arguments for war" and other such buckets of warm spit this gang is now forcing down the world's throat.

Postscript
And what became of that 1994 pact with North Korea? UN inspectors entered the country to make sure the weapons program was put on ice. Pyongyang signed a number of lucrative deals with various politically-connected Western firms, like ABB, to build the promised energy plants, while waiting for the normalization of relations with the United States to begin – a move which many thought would set North Korea on a course toward China-style "moderation" of its monolithic regime.

But normalization never came. Clinton, pressured by rightwing forces (such as Rumsfeld's commission) who opposed any truck whatsoever with godless commies, did his usual folding number, with much windy suspiration of forced breath – and no action. The KEDO companies pocketed Pyongyang's cash but dithered about the actual construction. Pyongyang – while not exactly a font of smiling cooperation itself – concluded that the pact was being deep-sixed. This suspicion was confirmed when Bush took office, calling Korean leader Kim Jong Il a "pygmy" and declaring the county part of the "Axis of Evil."

Pyongyang then accelerated its weapons program, kicked out the UN inspectors, and is now threatening to unleash a nuclear war if Bush, a la Iraq, makes a "pre-emptive strike."

A dicey situation, sure – but at least Don Rumsfeld made some money out of it.

Let`s follow developements in and about Iran

Nach dem nun Nordkorea in den Schlagzeilen ist - ich hoffe niemand ist überrascht über den Nuklearwaffentest (sofern er wirklich stattgefunden hat) - sollte man die Situation in Iran im Auge behalten. Wer also Artikel beitragen kann, ist herzlich willkommen.

Bush’s Nuclear Apocalypse

By Chris Hedges

10/09/06 "TruthDig" -- -- The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it.

War with Iran—a war that would unleash an apocalyptic scenario in the Middle East—is probable by the end of the Bush administration. It could begin in as little as three weeks. This administration, claiming to be anointed by a Christian God to reshape the world, and especially the Middle East, defined three states at the start of its reign as “the Axis of Evil.” They were Iraq, now occupied; North Korea, which, because it has nuclear weapons, is untouchable; and Iran. Those who do not take this apocalyptic rhetoric seriously have ignored the twisted pathology of men like Elliott Abrams, who helped orchestrate the disastrous and illegal contra war in Nicaragua, and who now handles the Middle East for the National Security Council. He knew nothing about Central America. He knows nothing about the Middle East. He sees the world through the childish, binary lens of good and evil, us and them, the forces of darkness and the forces of light. And it is this strange, twilight mentality that now grips most of the civilian planners who are barreling us towards a crisis of epic proportions.

These men advocate a doctrine of permanent war, a doctrine which, as William R. Polk points out, is a slight corruption of Leon Trotsky’s doctrine of permanent revolution. These two revolutionary doctrines serve the same function, to intimidate and destroy all those classified as foreign opponents, to create permanent instability and fear and to silence domestic critics who challenge leaders in a time of national crisis. It works. The citizens of the United States, slowly being stripped of their civil liberties, are being herded sheep-like, once again, over a cliff.

But this war will be different. It will be catastrophic. It will usher in the apocalyptic nightmares spun out in the dark, fantastic visions of the Christian right. And there are those around the president who see this vision as preordained by God; indeed, the president himself may hold such a vision.

The hypocrisy of this vaunted moral crusade is not lost on those in the Middle East. Iran actually signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has violated a codicil of that treaty written by European foreign ministers, but this codicil was never ratified by the Iranian parliament. I do not dispute Iran’s intentions to acquire nuclear weapons nor do I minimize the danger should it acquire them in the estimated five to 10 years. But contrast Iran with Pakistan, India and Israel. These three countries refused to sign the treaty and developed nuclear weapons programs in secret. Israel now has an estimated 400 to 600 nuclear weapons. The word “Dimona,” the name of the city where the nuclear facilities are located in Israel, is shorthand in the Muslim world for the deadly Israeli threat to Muslims’ existence. What lessons did the Iranians learn from our Israeli, Pakistani and Indian allies?

Given that we are actively engaged in an effort to destabilize the Iranian regime by recruiting tribal groups and ethnic minorities inside Iran to rebel, given that we use apocalyptic rhetoric to describe what must be done to the Iranian regime, given that other countries in the Middle East such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia are making noises about developing a nuclear capacity, and given that, with the touch of a button Israel could obliterate Iran, what do we expect from the Iranians? On top of this, the Iranian regime grasps that the doctrine of permanent war entails making “preemptive” and unprovoked strikes.

Those in Washington who advocate this war, knowing as little about the limitations and chaos of war as they do about the Middle East, believe they can hit about 1,000 sites inside Iran to wipe out nuclear production and cripple the 850,000-man Iranian army. The disaster in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli air campaign not only failed to break Hezbollah but united most Lebanese behind the militant group, is dismissed. These ideologues, after all, do not live in a reality-based universe. The massive Israeli bombing of Lebanon failed to pacify 4 million Lebanese. What will happen when we begin to pound a country of 70 million people? As retired General Wesley K. Clark and others have pointed out, once you begin an air campaign it is only a matter of time before you have to put troops on the ground or accept defeat, as the Israelis had to do in Lebanon. And if we begin dropping bunker busters, cruise missiles and iron fragmentation bombs on Iran this is the choice that must be faced—either sending American forces into Iran to fight a protracted and futile guerrilla war or walking away in humiliation.

“As a people we are enormously forgetful,” Dr. Polk, one of the country’s leading scholars on the Middle East, told an Oct. 13 gathering of the Foreign Policy Association in New York. “We should have learned from history that foreign powers can’t win guerrilla wars. The British learned this from our ancestors in the American Revolution and re-learned it in Ireland. Napoleon learned it in Spain. The Germans learned it in Yugoslavia. We should have learned it in Vietnam and the Russians learned it in Afghanistan and are learning it all over again in Chechnya and we are learning it, of course, in Iraq. Guerrilla wars are almost unwinnable. As a people we are also very vain. Our way of life is the only way. We should have learned that the rich and powerful can’t always succeed against the poor and less powerful.”

An attack on Iran will ignite the Middle East. The loss of Iranian oil, coupled with Silkworm missile attacks by Iran on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, could send oil soaring to well over $110 a barrel. The effect on the domestic and world economy will be devastating, very possibly triggering a huge, global depression. The 2 million Shiites in Saudi Arabia, the Shiite majority in Iraq and the Shiite communities in Bahrain, Pakistan and Turkey will turn in rage on us and our dwindling allies. We will see a combination of increased terrorist attacks, including on American soil, and the widespread sabotage of oil production in the Gulf. Iraq, as bad as it looks now, will become a death pit for American troops as Shiites and Sunnis, for the first time, unite against their foreign occupiers.

The country, however, that will pay the biggest price will be Israel. And the sad irony is that those planning this war think of themselves as allies of the Jewish state. A conflagration of this magnitude could see Israel drawn back in Lebanon and sucked into a regional war, one that would over time spell the final chapter in the Zionist experiment in the Middle East. The Israelis aptly call their nuclear program “the Samson option.” The Biblical Samson ripped down the pillars of the temple and killed everyone around him, along with himself.

If you are sure you will be raptured into heaven, your clothes left behind with the nonbelievers, then this news should cheer you up. If you are rational, however, these may be some of the last few weeks or months in which to enjoy what is left of our beleaguered, dying republic and way of life.

Chris Hedges is former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times and author of the bestseller “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” reports on Bush’s plan for Iran, and how a callous war, conceived by zealots, will lead to a disaster of biblical proportions.

Copyright © 2006 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.

Die Abhängigkeit vom Erdöl - Schwedische Massnahmen

Der Bericht der Schwedischen Regierung über die Abhängigkeit vom Erdöl und wie man diese Abhängigkeit reduzieren kann. Ziel ist eine markante Reduktion des Erdölverbrauches bis ins Jahr 2020. Gibt es solche Berichte auch von der Schweizer Regierung?

PDF - Dokument in englischer Spache, 460kb, 51 Seiten

Swedish gouvernment report on Swedens dependency on petroleum. The report discusses means for reducing said dependency. The goal is to achieve a marked reduction in oil consumption until 2020. I would like to see a similar report done by the Swiss gouvernment.

PDF - File, English, 460kb, 51 pages

Hit men in Russia / Auftragskiller in Russland

The hitmen who stalk Russia

By Patrick Jackson BBC News

The killing of journalist Anna Politkovskaya bore the hallmarks of a contract killing, according to anonymous police sources interviewed by Russian media.

The hitman or killer (pronounced "keeler" in Russian) is a phenomenon of the country's shock transition from communism to a market economy.

You would use the Russian verb zakazat' to order a pizza or a plane ticket but when you "order someone", in the popular parlance, it means you want them killed by one of these hired hitmen.

If Russian media accounts are to be believed, his wages can range from a modest $100 to sums running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the target.

When Ms Politkovskaya was shot at her home, there did not appear to be any attempt at robbery and the presumed weapon, a Makarov pistol, was left at the scene together with its used cartridges.

When Russian television broadcast CCTV footage from the apartment block entrance, it showed the chief suspect to be a thin man in a baseball cap, his face a blur.

If this was a contract killing, identifying the perpetrator - and those behind him - will be difficult.

Open season

One of my memories of Moscow in the winter of 1996 was passing a set of bullet-holes in a subway on my way to work.

SUSPECTED CONTRACT KILLINGS October 2006 - campaigning Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya shot dead in Moscow Sept 2006 - first deputy chairman of Russia's central bank Andrei Kozlov shot dead in Moscow Oct 2005 - former bank head Alexander Slesarev gunned down near Moscow July 2004 - US editor of Forbes' Russian edition Paul Klebnikov shot dead in Moscow Oct 2002 - Magadan governor Valentin Tsvetkov killed in Moscow Nov 1998 - liberal MP Galina Starovoitova killed in St Petersburg March 1995 - leading journalist Vladislav Listyev shot dead in Moscow

Nobody seemed in a rush to fix the chipped tiles, just a short distance from a luxury hotel.

For those who knew, the holes marked the spot where US businessman Paul Tatum was machine-gunned to death.

The chief lesson from his unsolved death appeared to be that prominent foreigners could be targets too.

The death of much-loved TV anchorman Vlad Listyev the previous year had already established that fame was no protection from the hired guns.

A wave of contract killings washed through Russia in the 1990s, sweeping away new bankers and businessmen.

With the security apparatus in freefall and war raging in the Caucasus, the country seemed awash with guns. Another memory for me is descending an empty escalator in a metro station beside Red Square one night and seeing one "wide boy" slapping another on his knees as he held a pistol to his head.

By the early years of this century - with Vladimir Putin in power - the wave seemed to be receding.

And then came the murder of another American, Forbes journalist Paul Klebnikov, in 2004 and, this September, deputy head of the Central Bank Andrei Kozlov.

Both were shot dead - Klebnikov outside his office, Kozlov in his car.

Nobody has ever been convicted of their murders despite hopes for a while that the Klebnikov case would be solved.

But while "unsolved" is a word you associate almost automatically with contract killings in Russia, occasionally a killer is caught.

1990s survivors

Alexander Solonik, aka Alexander The Great, aka superkiller , confessed to assassinating a string of Moscow underworld figures in the early 1990s without, it is said, revealing his paymasters.

He also cut a bloody swathe through the capital's police force before his arrest in 1994.

Solonik's main "qualifications" for the work of a hired killer appear to have been a period of military service, an early spell in prison, good physical fitness and a reputed ability to shoot with both hands.

Escaping from Moscow's famous Matrosskaya Tishina (Sailor's Rest) prison in 1995, he fled abroad only to be murdered along with his girl-friend in Greece a couple of years later.

Russian film director Alexei Balabanov's 2005 black comedy Zhmurki (Blind Man's Buff), about hitmen, begins in a morgue where some fresh corpses are soon added to the display.

Sub-titled "For those who survived the '90s", it struck a popular chord, capturing a grotesque world of casual killers, rapacious New Russians and cowed police.

There may be fewer raspberry-red blazers and long leather jackets in Moscow today, and the city now teems with hard-faced police, but it seems the phenomenon of the killer survived the '90s too.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/4801971.stm

Published: 2006/10/08 15:57:06 GMT

© BBC MMVI

Russias transition / die Wende und das danach in Russland

The winners and losers of modern Russia

The news that Russia may join the World Trade Organization before the end of 2007 is further evidence of the country's transformation since the demise of the Soviet Union.

Kevin Connolly, a longtime former BBC Moscow correspondent, considers what has been won and lost during Russia's remarkable transition.

When the Soviet Union died, it did not leave much behind in the way of achievement - it won the Second World War, it ran an electric cable across Siberia and it operated a chain of political prisons which once contained more inmates than the combined populations of Belgium and Holland.

But it also inspired a very particular school of feebly humorous travel writing - and let's face it, I should know.

You remember the kind of thing - Russians who sidled up to you and attempted to buy your jeans, or hotels where there were 1,000 bathrooms and not a single bathplug.

The ultimate story was the one about the Western visitor worried about being bugged by the KGB who finds a metal dish under the rug in his hotel room, secured to the floor with huge bolts.
Determined to foil the Soviet agents he spends ages unscrewing the device which he disables by placing it in a bath filled with water.

When he goes downstairs to eat later, the restaurant immediately below his room is closed because a giant chandelier has somehow worked loose from the ceiling and crashed to the floor.

Modern Moscow

I always felt the stories had a slightly uncomfortable edge to them - based as they were on a mockery of poverty - but somehow it was acceptable to joke about Soviet life in a way which would have been regarded as tasteless anywhere else.

I suppose this was because while the Soviet Union was poor and inefficient - a banana republic without bananas - it was also a hostile, nuclear-armed superpower: Upper Volta with rockets.

Modern Moscow of course is a city of cappuccinos and Cadillacs, unrecognisable as the symphony in porridge-coloured concrete that I first knew back in the 1980s.

On the drive from the airport to our apartment, there was in those days, just a single neon sign, an advert for an East German office supply company.

Now, it is neon-drenched Casino-grad. The street near my old home looks like a high-resolution freeze frame of an explosion in a firework factory.

In other ways too, the sense of being absolutely elsewhere has been subtly eroded.

In the old days eating out in the Soviet Union went like this:

A waiter who looked like a guard from a hospital for the criminally insane would hand you a menu the size of a book of wallpaper samples. Slowly it would become clear that the items described did not constitute a list of items for sale, just a kind of collective folk memory of the entire Russian nation on the subject of food.

Trying to tease out of your server the one or two dishes that were actually available nearly always took longer than the process of eating dinner itself.

Suffocating certainty

Nowadays it is all sushi, and service, and salads dressed in olive oil, rather than motor oil - all signs that a new Russia has risen to its feet, albeit a little unsteadily, on the ruins of the old Soviet Union.

Life in the Soviet Union was materially poor, and occasionally oppressive, but it did offer a kind of suffocating certainty

It can be hard to remember that the past ever happened at all - but every so often you will find it, poking through the fragile surface of the present like a broken bone, through skin.

Sometimes, it is faintly surreal - American tourists at souvenir stands sifting through piles of T-shirts carrying pictures of the Soviet nuclear missiles that were once pointed at their homes.

Sometimes, it is not - outside that restaurant where your sushi came with such a winning smile, you will often find the losers in Russia's great transition - respectably dressed pensioners reduced to begging from foreign tourists.

Life in the Soviet Union was materially poor, and occasionally oppressive, but it did offer a kind of suffocating certainty - no-one had much, it was true, but then no-one needed much either.

This was after all a society in which even hot water was produced in central locations and then pumped into apartment blocks through miles of leaky, unlagged metal pipes.

If you live for 50 years under that kind of wasteful, but well-intentioned madness, the pressures and anxieties of the market economy just seem madder still.

Spectacular transition

I met one old man, a veteran of the siege of Leningrad, hanging around outside a shop in St Petersburg where I had just bought a razor and pack of blades which cost more than a Russian pensioner's basic income.

Now you could not quite say he was begging - he was selling packets of old-fashioned cigarettes which still come in their Soviet-era packaging at slightly inflated prices.

He had seen the same thing done by the sharp young men who run stalls in tourist flea-markets and he had copied the idea for himself - another little victory for market economics.

I bought a couple of packs and we stood chatting for a while as the evening sun smoothed the ripples off the Gulf of Finland behind us and left it looking like a sheet of beaten steel.

On my journey back to my beachfront hotel I found myself threading my way through a car park filled with Mercedes and BMWs and even the odd Bentley.

Clearly Russia's spectacular transition has created winners as well as losers.

Still the thought stayed with me for the rest of my time in Russia that there are plenty of pensioners there for whom the world made more sense in the age of those terrible old stories about bathplugs and blue jeans, than it makes now or perhaps will ever make again.

Published: 2006/10/07 10:38:32 GMT

© BBC MMVI

Russische Journalistin Anna Politkovskaya wurde erschossen / Russian Journalist Anna Politkovskaya shot dead

Obituary: Anna Politkovskaya

Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya won international recognition for her passionate reporting work on the conflict in Chechnya in which she sought to expose human rights abuses.

Detained on occasion by the Russian military, the Novaya Gazeta special correspondent was famous for her book The Dirty War, a collection of articles mainly about the second Chechen conflict which began in 1999.

In 2004, she was a joint winner of the Olof Palme Prize for human rights work.

The citation reads that she was "noted for her courage and strength when reporting in difficult and dangerous circumstances".

A visit to Hell

Born in 1958, she graduated as a journalist from Moscow State University in 1980 and worked on the Soviet newspaper Izvestiya for more than a decade.

In 1999, she joined Novaya Gazeta, one of the few national Russian newspapers to take a consistently critical line on the Kremlin.

She frequently travelled to Chechnya and the North Caucasus where her dispatches described some of the horror of a war where most of the casualties were civilians.

In Hell, an article from July 2000, she describes the ruins of the Chechen capital, Groznyy:

"The city ruins are like a new Caucasus mountain range. African-style famine. Painfully thin children...

"Living streets full of dead eyes. Mad and half-mad people. Streets teeming with weapons. Mines everywhere. Permanent explosions. Despair."

Critic to the end

Her polemical style earned her many critics in Russia but her stories stood out from much of the mainstream Russian media and she pursued them at great personal risk, whether reporting from the war zone or receiving death threats in Moscow.

In October 2002, she was one of the few people to enter the Moscow theatre, where Chechen militants had seized hundreds of hostages, in a bid to negotiate.

In 2004, she tried to go to Beslan during the school siege but fell ill with food poisoning on the flight there. Some suspected a plot to incapacitate her.

The same year her book Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy depicted Russia as a country where human rights are routinely trampled upon.

Politkovskaya's last known article for Novaya Gazeta, published on 28 September, is a condemnation of pro-Kremlin militias operating in Chechnya as part of Moscow's so-called Chechenisation policy.

"Chechnya was always her main subject," Vitaly Yaroshevsky, the newspaper's deputy editor, told Reuters news agency.

"Everything she wrote was on the edge."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/5416238.stm

Published: 2006/10/07 15:52:17 GMT

© BBC MMVI

Something a bit more on the funny side....... or so

Condoleeza Rice under oat 2004
Was there some indication of an attack on the USA inside the USA?
And the ultimate definition of the term "Plan": a sequence of actionable items"
watch and enjoy !
Part 1>>>>

Part 2>>>>

Redefine words. Blame it on others. 2004 minus 20 = 1984. not that this means anything.

"Progress" on the Road to peace? or the birth pangs?*

Palestinian child deaths in conflict with Israel already nearly double that of 2005 – UN

5 October 2006 – Ninety-one Palestinian children have already been killed this year in the West Bank and Gaza, almost double the number for the whole of 2005, with youngsters suffering increasing levels of stress from violence and fear in the Israeli-Palestinians conflict, according to the latest United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) update.

“They are confronted with regular military operations, shelling, house demolitions, checkpoints on their way to schools,” UNICEF Child Protection Officer Anne Grandjean said. “As a result we find high prevalence of signs of stress such as anxiety, eating and sleeping disorders, and difficulties concentrating in school.

“All of these signs need to be tackled as soon as possible to avoid a long-lasting impact on the child’s development,” she added.

UNICEF and the Humanitarian Aid Department of the European Commission have established teams of social workers and psychologists to respond to the children’s needs. Every month they reach some 3,000 children and their families, offering support and counselling after violent incidents.

The counselling sessions end every month with a festival and beach party organized by UNICEF and its partners, where thousands of children are given the chance to play and interact with each other away from the conflict.

“These festivals are important because they are about protecting childhood,” UNICEF Special Representative for Gaza and the West Bank Dan Rohrmann said. “It’s an opportunity for children to be children, which is rare here in Gaza, because they live in an environment of extraordinary fear and violence and insecurity.”

----------------------------

Link to original site>>>

*The birth pangs of Miss Rice>>>>

Migration nach Russland (Chinesisch - Russische Migration)

Der "Russian Analytical Digest" der ETH-Zürich analysiert die Wanderungsbewegungen in Russland mit einem speziellen Augenmerk auf den russisch fernen Osten.

Russian Analytical Digest der ETH-Zürich (pdf-Doc 254kb English)

The Federal Technological Instituts "Russaian Analytical Digest" with an analysis of migrational movements inside Russia and between Russia and China.

The burning of books / Bücherverbrennungen

Bookburnings the world over.
As Heinrich Heine is quoted:
"Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings." (German: "Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.")—Heinrich Heine, from his play Almansor (1821)

And today in the USA:
A book (Fahrenheit 451) about the banning of books is under fire

Harry Potter is bad for you

Never take your kids to a museum or on a stroll along lake Zurich or on a trip to Rome, it's bad for them.

And today I was aproached here in Zurich by two suit&tie Americans who wanted to talk about their religion.....

What it means to be an enemy combatant

The ordeal of a 15yrs old enemy combatant through the US gulag. From Afghanistan to Guantanamo. Thinking that about 75 % of the inmates are innocent, makes ones stomach turn even more.

Article in Rolling Stone magazine (English)

Same article in .doc (word) format. 13 pages

Der traurige Weg eines 15 jährigen "enemy combatant" durch den amerikanischen Gulag. Von Afghanistan nach Guantanamo. Ca. 75 % der Insassen sind unschuldig. Das Ganze ist einfach nur widerlich.

Bildung oder nur ausgebildet

Rede von Prof. Dr. Peter Bieri gehalten an der Pädagogischen Hochschule Bern. Eine Definition von Bildung, über die es sich lohnt nachzudenken und sogar sie als Ziel zu nehmen.

PDF Dokument 70kb 7 Seiten Deutsch

Speech given by Prof. Dr. Peter Bieri at the College of Education Berne. A worthy definition of education/formation/refinement, hard to achieve but worth to pursue.

PDF File 70kb 7 pages German

Ein interessanter Vergleich zwischen dem alten Rom und den USA von heute

direct link>>>>
September 30, 2006
New York Times

Op-Ed Contributor

Pirates of the Mediterranean

By ROBERT HARRIS

Kintbury, England

IN the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped.

The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.

Consider the parallels. The perpetrators of this spectacular assault were not in the pay of any foreign power: no nation would have dared to attack Rome so provocatively. They were, rather, the disaffected of the earth: “The ruined men of all nations,” in the words of the great 19th-century German historian Theodor Mommsen, “a piratical state with a peculiar esprit de corps.”

Like Al Qaeda, these pirates were loosely organized, but able to spread a disproportionate amount of fear among citizens who had believed themselves immune from attack. To quote Mommsen again: “The Latin husbandman, the traveler on the Appian highway, the genteel bathing visitor at the terrestrial paradise of Baiae were no longer secure of their property or their life for a single moment.”

What was to be done? Over the preceding centuries, the Constitution of ancient Rome had developed an intricate series of checks and balances intended to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a single individual. The consulship, elected annually, was jointly held by two men. Military commands were of limited duration and subject to regular renewal. Ordinary citizens were accustomed to a remarkable degree of liberty: the cry of “Civis Romanus sum” — “I am a Roman citizen” — was a guarantee of safety throughout the world.

But such was the panic that ensued after Ostia that the people were willing to compromise these rights. The greatest soldier in Rome, the 38-year-old Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (better known to posterity as Pompey the Great) arranged for a lieutenant of his, the tribune Aulus Gabinius, to rise in the Roman Forum and propose an astonishing new law.

“Pompey was to be given not only the supreme naval command but what amounted in fact to an absolute authority and uncontrolled power over everyone,” the Greek historian Plutarch wrote. “There were not many places in the Roman world that were not included within these limits.”

Pompey eventually received almost the entire contents of the Roman Treasury — 144 million sesterces — to pay for his “war on terror,” which included building a fleet of 500 ships and raising an army of 120,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. Such an accumulation of power was unprecedented, and there was literally a riot in the Senate when the bill was debated.

Nevertheless, at a tumultuous mass meeting in the center of Rome, Pompey’s opponents were cowed into submission, the Lex Gabinia passed (illegally), and he was given his power. In the end, once he put to sea, it took less than three months to sweep the pirates from the entire Mediterranean. Even allowing for Pompey’s genius as a military strategist, the suspicion arises that if the pirates could be defeated so swiftly, they could hardly have been such a grievous threat in the first place.

But it was too late to raise such questions. By the oldest trick in the political book — the whipping up of a panic, in which any dissenting voice could be dismissed as “soft” or even “traitorous” — powers had been ceded by the people that would never be returned. Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet regimes throughout the region, and turning himself into the richest man in the empire.

Those of us who are not Americans can only look on in wonder at the similar ease with which the ancient rights and liberties of the individual are being surrendered in the United States in the wake of 9/11. The vote by the Senate on Thursday to suspend the right of habeas corpus for terrorism detainees, denying them their right to challenge their detention in court; the careful wording about torture, which forbids only the inducement of “serious” physical and mental suffering to obtain information; the admissibility of evidence obtained in the United States without a search warrant; the licensing of the president to declare a legal resident of the United States an enemy combatant — all this represents an historic shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the executive.

An intelligent, skeptical American would no doubt scoff at the thought that what has happened since 9/11 could presage the destruction of a centuries-old constitution; but then, I suppose, an intelligent, skeptical Roman in 68 B.C. might well have done the same.

In truth, however, the Lex Gabinia was the beginning of the end of the Roman republic. It set a precedent. Less than a decade later, Julius Caesar — the only man, according to Plutarch, who spoke out in favor of Pompey’s special command during the Senate debate — was awarded similar, extended military sovereignty in Gaul. Previously, the state, through the Senate, largely had direction of its armed forces; now the armed forces began to assume direction of the state.

It also brought a flood of money into an electoral system that had been designed for a simpler, non-imperial era. Caesar, like Pompey, with all the resources of Gaul at his disposal, became immensely wealthy, and used his treasure to fund his own political faction. Henceforth, the result of elections was determined largely by which candidate had the most money to bribe the electorate. In 49 B.C., the system collapsed completely, Caesar crossed the Rubicon — and the rest, as they say, is ancient history.

It may be that the Roman republic was doomed in any case. But the disproportionate reaction to the raid on Ostia unquestionably hastened the process, weakening the restraints on military adventurism and corrupting the political process. It was to be more than 1,800 years before anything remotely comparable to Rome’s democracy — imperfect though it was — rose again.

The Lex Gabinia was a classic illustration of the law of unintended consequences: it fatally subverted the institution it was supposed to protect. Let us hope that vote in the United States Senate does not have the same result.

Robert Harris is the author, most recently, of “Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome.”

Die New York Times spricht endlich mal Klartext - leider viel zu spät

Direkt zum Artikel (NYT)>>>

Editorial
*Rushing Off a Cliff*

Published: September 28, 2006

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.

It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.

Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.

*These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws* :

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

*The Geneva Conventions* : The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

*Habeas Corpus* : Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

*Judicial Review* : The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

*Coerced Evidence* : Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

*Secret Evidence* : American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

*Offenses* : The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

•There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.
------------------------
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
(Plato)

Big Brother not only watching but also talking! in the UK

One can only hope that this is something not catching on on the continent!

News Cast about CCTV cameras in the UK which are linked to the police not only via montiors but also via microphones and speakers. All in the name of preventing "anti-social" behaviour. Well, whomever is defining social behaviour has now another tool for enforcing it. Brave new world.

Link to the video (english 3mins)

US Nachrichtensendung über eine britische Stadt, die ihre Ueberwachungskameras mit Lautsprechern ausstattet. So können Polizisten "a-soziales" Verhalten gleich kommentieren - 24 Stunden pro Tag. Irgendwie glaubt man dies von radikal kommunistischen Ländern zu kennen. Oder aus Büchern wie "1984" oder "Brave New World".

Die Apokalypse / The Rapture or the End of Times

Eine BBC Reportage über die End-Time believers in den USA und deren Einfluss weltweit. Ihre Aktionen und die Gefahr einer sich selbsterfüllenden Prophezeiung.

Link zum Google-Video (english)

A BBC report covering the end-time-believers in the USA and the influence they wield in their country but also in the rest of the world. Their actions might turn their belives into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Die russisch - iranischen Beziehungen

Eine Analyse der russisch - iranischen Beziehungen des "Russian Analytical Digest" der ETH-Zürich in Englisch. (pdf Dokument)

Das Weisse Haus und die radikalen Christen

Radio Interview (ca. 22min) mit einem amerikanischen Pastor der die Kriege im Nahen Osten (Iraq, Libanon, etc) als Zeichen für die Apokalypse (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apokalypse) deutet. In Englisch eben "Rapture" . (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapture)

Interessant ist die Einführung durch die Interviewerin. Diese Leute scheinen doch einen gewissen Einfluss in Washington zu haben, auch wenn es vielleicht nur ein indirekter - dh. in der Vorwahl-Zeit gegebener Einfluss, ist.

provokatives Radio-Interview (Eng)

Financing terrorism. Interesting Interview with a canadian professor of economics on canadian Radio CBC. Interview with Prof Thomas Naylor : http://people.mcgill.ca/thomas.naylor/
His research led him to the conclusion that big money is not required to finance terrorist attacks ...

Ein Film zum Artikel von Daniel Ganser im Tages-Anzeiger vom 09.09.2006 /siehe unten

zum Tages-Anzeiger-Artikel von Daniele Ganser vom 09-09-06. Der Film ist in englischer Sprache mit deutschen Undertitel.
Auf Google Videos mit dem Suchbegriff "Loose Change" suchen, falls der obige Link nicht funktioniert.

Wir können über die nächsten Jahre noch einiges zum Thema erwarten, denke ich. Und es dürfte zu einfach sein, jedes Hinterfragen als "hysterische Verschwörungstheorie" abzutun. Zuviele Fragen sind offen. Und die Antworten betreffen auch uns in Europa, denn was im Namen von 09/11 geschieht, in Afghanistan und im Irak, wirkt sich auf Europa aus.

Der erbitterte Streit um den 11. September

Tages-Anzeiger vom 09.09.2006
Der erbitterte Streit um den 11. September

In den USA, aber auch in der Schweiz werden immer wieder bohrende Fragen gestellt zu den Terroranschlägen vom 11. September 2001 (9/11) und den dadurch ausgelösten Kriegen in Afghanistan und im Irak.

Von Daniele Ganser*

Im Irak-Krieg gehe es nicht um Terrorbekämpfung, sondern in erster Linie um die Kontrolle der weltweit abnehmenden Vorräte an Erdöl und Erdgas, ist der Amerikaner Fadel Gheit, ehemals Manager beim Erdölkonzern ExxonMobil, überzeugt. «Unsere Lebensweise in den USA setzt täglich 20 Millionen Barrel voraus, von denen die Hälfte importiert werden muss. Wir gleichen einem Patienten auf Erdöldialyse», so Gheit. «Hier geht es um Leben und Tod.»

Saddam Hussein, der gestürzte Diktator des Irak, trage entgegen den Behauptungen von Vizepräsident Dick Cheney keine Verantwortung für 9/11 und habe auch keine Atombombe angestrebt, protestiert Scott Ritter, ehemals Uno-Inspektor im Irak. «Uns werden eine Menge Lügen erzählt, und die Medien folgen blind und wiederholen diese Lügen. Die Bush-Regierung hat die Daten manipuliert, um die Invasion des Irak zu begründen.»

Afghanistan diene als Durchgangsland für Erdöl- und Erdgaspipelines vom Kaspischen Meer zum Indischen Ozean sowie als Militärbasis, um den Nahen Osten «unter dem Vorwand der Terrorismusbekämpfung» zu umzingeln, so Michael Ruppert, ehemals Polizist beim Los Angeles Police Departement.

Drei Theorien

Die These vom grossen geostrategischen Kampf der Supermächte USA, Russland und China um die schwindenden Erdöl- und Erdgasreserven ist auf den ersten Blick einleuchtend, und nicht zuletzt wegen des steigenden Erdölpreises auch in Europa weit verbreitet. Problematisch ist sie trotzdem. Denn sie wirft die fundamentale Frage auf, ob die US-Administration in erster Linie Terroristen oder Erdöl jagt.

Es erstaunt daher nicht, dass der erbitterte Streit in den USA nicht auf die laufenden Kriege im Irak und in Afghanistan beschränkt blieb, sondern auch 9/11 erfasst hat, den mit 2973 Toten grössten Terroranschlag der Geschichte. In den vergangenen fünf Jahren wurden in den USA verschiedene Filme, Internetseiten und Bücher zu 9/11 veröffentlicht. Diese bilden heute eine nur schwer überschaubare Masse von Behauptungen und Gegenbehauptungen.

Drei sich gegenseitig ausschliessende 9/11-Theorien stehen sich gegenüber. Alle drei Theorien sind Verschwörungstheorien, obschon ihre Vertreter das gerne negieren. Dies heisst, sie gehen alle von einer geheimen Absprache von zwei oder mehr Akteuren vor dem 11. September als gegeben aus.

Die erste Theorie, die so genannte «Überraschungs-Theorie» (Surprise), stammt von der US-Regierung und wird von der offiziellen amerikanischen Untersuchung - dem «9/11 Commission Report» von Thomas Kean, der im Sommer 2004 erschien - unterstützt. Sie ist die offizielle 9/11-Erzählung: Osama Bin Laden habe zusammen mit Khalid Sheikh Mohammed die Anschläge zuerst in Afghanistan geplant, worauf eine von Mohammed Atta angeführte Gruppe von 19 Muslimen den Terroranschlag in den USA mit vier Flugzeugen ausführte. Bin Laden und sein Netzwerk seien der kriminellen Handlung schuldig.

Die zweite Theorie, die so genannte «Let-It-Happen-on-Purpose-Theorie» («Lass es absichtlich passieren», Lihop), behauptet, Bin Laden und das Al-Qaida-Netzwerk hätten den Anschlag geplant und ausführen lassen. Teile der US-Regierung hätten dies herausgefunden, den Anschlag aber trotzdem absichtlich nicht abgewehrt und fast 3000 Menschen geopfert, um eine Serie von Kriegen zu legitimieren, von denen jene in Afghanistan und im Irak nur die ersten zwei seien. Sowohl Bin Laden als auch Teile der US-Regierung seien der kriminellen Handlung schuldig.

Die dritte Theorie schliesslich, die so genannte «Make-It-Happen-on-Purpose-Theorie» («Führe es absichtlich selbst aus», Mihop), behauptet, die Anschläge seien vom Pentagon und/oder den US-Geheimdiensten ausgeführt worden, die Videos von Bin Laden seien gefälscht. Fast 3000 Menschen seien kaltblütig geopfert und das eigene Volk und die Welt getäuscht worden, um eine Serie von Kriegen zu legitimieren. Teile der US-Regierung seien der kriminellen Handlung schuldig.

Kevin Barrett, der ein Seminar zum Islam an der University of Wisconsin-Madison unterrichtet, ist ein Mihop-Vertreter, wie er im Juni 2006 öffentlich erklärte. Andere Amerikaner entsetzten sich. Barrett «sei peinlich für die Universität und die Menschen in Wisconsin», so der republikanische Kongressabgeordnete Steve Nass, der zusammen mit anderen Republikanern die Universität aufforderte, Barret sofort zu entlassen.

Der Verwaltungschef der Universität, Patrick Farrell, wehrte sich und betonte die Freiheit in Lehre und Forschung. «Wir können nicht zulassen, dass politischer Druck von Kritikern unpopulärer Ideen den freien Austausch von Meinungen verhindert», so Farrell. «Das würde die Tür für noch schwerere und umfassende Einschränkungen öffnen.» Die Studenten seien durchaus in der Lage, abweichende Theorien zu analysieren und sich ihre eigene Meinung zu bilden. «Wissen wächst, wenn man über Meinungen streitet», so Farrell.

Auch James Fetzer, emeritierter Philosophieprofessor der Universität Minnesota, hält die Surprise-Theorie für Unsinn. Er denkt Lihop oder Mihop beschreiben die Wahrheit besser. Dafür wurde er wiederholt angegriffen, was ihn und andere Amerikaner aber nicht abschreckt. «Wir werden das weitermachen», so Fetzer gegenüber CNN. «Unsere Rolle ist es herauszufinden, was am 11. September wirklich passiert ist.»

Debatte in der Schweiz

«Es erstaunt mich nicht, dass nach den Schwierigkeiten im Irak und in Afghanistan nun auch um 9/11 gestritten wird», so Kurt Spillmann, emeritierter ETH-Professor für Sicherheitspolitik. «Man muss aber vorsichtig untersuchen, denn die Lihop- und Mihop-Theorien hätten eine unglaubliche politische Sprengkraft.»

Welche Theorien die Schweizer Bevölkerung bevorzugt, ist noch unbekannt. «Eine breite Debatte zu diesen drei Theorien ist meines Wissens in der Schweiz noch nie öffentlich und im grossen Stil geführt worden. Aber da und dort sind sie immer wieder aufgeflackert», so Professor Karl Haltiner, Leiter der jährlich erscheinenden Erhebungsstudie «Sicherheit» der Militärakademie der ETH.

Dass der amerikanische Geheimdienst bei 9/11 die Finger im Spiel hatte, hält «Weltwoche»-Journalist Hanspeter Born für einen «ungeheuerlichen Verdacht», wie er in einem Beitrag zum auch in der Schweiz weit verbreiteten Antiamerikanismus schreibt. «Wenn dem so wäre, dann wäre Amerika tatsächlich ein bis ins Innerste verrottetes, krankes Land.»

Philipp Sarasin, Professor für Geschichte an der Universität Zürich, hat zu den Anthrax-Anschlägen, die auf 9/11 folgten, ein Buch vorgelegt, in dem er die Politik der Angst kritisch hinterfragt und die These vertritt, dass diese Brief-Anschläge möglicherweise ein «Inside-Job» waren. 9/11 sei noch völlig ungeklärt: «Welche der drei 9/11-Theorien stimmt, muss durch Historiker weiter untersucht werden», so Sarasin. «Doch schon heute lässt sich sagen, dass die offizielle Version - ‹Wir hätten uns nie denken können, dass wir durch Zivilflugzeuge angegriffen werden› - zumindest in einem Punkt nachweislich falsch ist: Solche Angriffe wurden seit Jahren als Möglichkeit in Betracht gezogen; im November 2000 wurde gar ein Angriff mit Zivilflugzeugen auf das Pentagon an einem grossen Gebäudemodell geübt.»

Unter den vielen komplizierten Sachfragen, über die sich die drei Theorien streiten, ist auch World Trade Center 7 (WTC 7). Es ist wenig bekannt, dass am 11. September in New York nicht zwei Wolkenkratzer einstürzten - WTC 1 und WTC 2, die bekannten Twin Towers -, sondern drei. Beim dritten Gebäude handelt es sich um das 170 Meter hohe WTC 7, das um 17.20 Uhr in sieben Sekunden vollkommen zusammenstürzte.

Misstrauen wegen WTC 7

In einer Zogby-Umfrage vom Mai 2006 erklärten 43% der Amerikaner, sie hätten noch nie etwas von WTC 7 gehört. Dies vor allem deshalb, weil nur die Twin Towers wiederholt am Fernsehen gezeigt wurden. Verunsicherte 42% erklärten, sie glaubten, die US-Regierung und die 9/11-Untersuchung würden etwas verheimlichen.

«Die Amerikaner sind schlecht und einseitig über 9/11 informiert worden, in erster Linie wurde die Surprise-Theorie auf allen Kanälen verbreitet», so Professor Albert Stahel von der Universität Zürich. «Das rächt sich nun. Alternative Medien haben zum Gegenschlag ausgeholt und verbreiten die Lihop- und die Mihop-Theorie. Wer gewinnt, wird sich erst in Zukunft zeigen. Das Misstrauen gegenüber der Regierung ist gross.»

«Es gibt ein Problem mit WTC 7», erklärte der Schauspieler Charly Sheen, bekannt aus seinen Rollen in «Platoon» und «Wall Street». «Und wenn es ein Problem mit WTC 7 gibt, dann gibts ein Problem mit der ganzen 9/11-Geschichte», so Sheen im März 2006 am Radio. WTC 7 könne nicht durch ein Flugzeug zum Einsturz gebracht worden sein, da es gar nie von einem Flugzeug getroffen wurde. Es könne auch nicht durch ein Erdbeben oder den Einsturz der Twin Towers eingerissen worden sein, da zwischen dem Einsturz der Twin Towers und WTC 7 fast sieben Stunden liegen. Mögliche Ursachen seien nur Feuer oder Sprengung.

In der Tat gab es ein kleines Feuer in WTC 7. Sheen zweifelt aber, dass dieses Feuer das WTC 7 zum Einsturz brachte. Wer das glaubt, «brauche psychiatrische Behandlung», so Sheen. Eine Sprengung brauche mehrere Tage Vorbereitung. Osama Bin Laden und seine Helfer seien es wohl nicht gewesen, denn dafür wurden sie nie angeklagt. Also bleibe nur Mihop.

Sheens Aussagen führten zu einem heftigen Streit. «Wie kann irgendeine vernünftige Person glauben, dass unsere Regierung unser eigenes Volk angegriffen hat?», fragte ein Zuschauer auf CNN per E Mail. Ein anderer meinte: «Das ist eine ganz wichtige Sache, die in der breiten Öffentlichkeit diskutiert werden muss. Es ist unsere patriotische Pflicht herauszufinden, warum und wie 9/11 passieren konnte.»

Sheen, unterstützt von Hollywoodstar Sharon Stone, blieb bei seiner Frage: «Ich bin einfach nur ein aufrechter amerikanischer Bürger, der seine Steuern bezahlt, sein Land liebt und der sich dagegen wehrt, dass solch grosser Unsinn über so offensichtliche Wahrheiten ausgebreitet wird.»

Wer im 566 Seiten langen Kean-Report nach WTC 7 und der Ursache für dessen Einsturz sucht, wird enttäuscht. WTC 7 wird im offiziellen Bericht zu 9/11 mit keinem Wort erwähnt. Theologieprofessor David Ray Griffin kritisierte dieses «Weglassen und Verdrehen» scharf und publizierte ein viel beachtetes Buch zu den vielen Unzulänglichkeiten des Kean-Reports in dem er schreibt: «Die 9/11-Kommission umgeht ein anderes peinliches Problem - die Erklärung, wie WTC 7 in praktisch freiem Fall einstürzen konnte -, indem sie den Einsturz des Gebäudes einfach gar nicht erwähnt.»

«Wenn die offizielle und abschliessende Untersuchung des 11. September nur vom Einsturz von zwei Wolkenkratzern berichtet, während in Tat und Wahrheit drei Wolkenkratzer in Manhattan einstürzten, dann fällt es schwer, den Kean-Report als solide historische Quelle für das Monumentalereignis 9/11 einzustufen», so Geschichtsprofessor Georg Kreis von der Universität Basel. «Von diesen Details wissen die wenigsten, aber sie sind Besorgnis erregend.»

Feuer oder Sprengung?

Peter Forster, Präsident der eidgenössischen Konsultativkommission für innere Sicherheit, betont, dass es auch für die Schweiz sehr wichtig ist zu wissen, ob der «Krieg gegen den Terrorismus» ein Vorwand ist, um Energieressourcen zu erbeuten. «Die Debatte um WTC 7 muss man im Auge behalten, unbedingt. Aber die Lihop- und Mihop-Theorien sind sehr explosiv, das wäre ungeheuerlich.»

In den USA hat die Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) im Mai 2002 einen Zwischenbericht vorgelegt, in dem sie erklärt, WTC 7 sei ein ganz spezielles Gebäude gewesen. Das Pentagon, die CIA und der US Secret Service hätten Teile des Hauses gemietet. Im Keller standen grosse Dieselgeneratoren, um das Haus während Notfällen mit Energie zu versorgen. Es sei «zurzeit noch unbekannt», so das Fazit der Fema, «wie das Feuer das Haus zum Einsturz bringen konnte». Die «New York Times» kommentierte, das WTC 7 sei das «grosse Geheimnis» der Anschläge, weil bis zu diesem Tag in den USA noch nie ein Gebäude aus Stahl und Beton nur wegen Feuer eingestürzt war.

«Wir wissen einfach nicht, was im WTC 7 genau passiert ist», so Mario Fontana, amtierender Professor am ETH-Institut für Baustatik und Konstruktion (IBK). An Konferenzen von Baustatik-Experten habe man in den vergangenen fünf Jahren nur sehr wenig zum Einsturz von WTC 7 erfahren. Es sei zumindest denkbar, dass ein lange anhaltender Brand das Gebäude zum Einsturz gebracht habe.

Die Fema gab das WTC-7-Dossier an das National Institute of Standards and Technology (Nist) der Regierung weiter. Worauf verunsicherte Amerikaner und Journalisten anriefen und vom Nist wissen wollten, warum das WTC 7 einstürzte. «Ich verstehe diese Faszination der Menschen für WTC 7 nicht», erwiderte Nist-Sprecher Michael Newman im März 2006.

«Nach meiner Meinung ist das Gebäude WTC 7 mit grosser Wahrscheinlichkeit fachgerecht gesprengt worden», sagt Hugo Bachmann, emeritierter ETH-Professor für Baustatik und Konstruktion. Und auch Jörg Schneider, ebenfalls emeritierter ETH-Professor für Baustatik und Konstruktion, deutet die wenigen vorhandenen Videoaufnahmen als Hinweise, dass «das Gebäude WTC 7 mit grosser Wahrscheinlichkeit gesprengt wurde».

Der Eigentümer von WTC 1, WTC 2 und WTC 7, Larry Silverstein, erinnerte sich ein Jahr nach den Anschlägen im September 2002 im US-Fernsehen an den Einsturz von WTC 7. Die Feuerwehr habe ihn informiert, dass es im Haus brenne. Darauf sagte Silverstein gemäss seinen eigenen Angaben: «Vielleicht ist es am besten, wenn wir es sprengen» («to pull it»). «Und so haben sie entschieden, es zu sprengen, und wir schauten zu, wie das Gebäude runterkam.» Später verteidigte sich Silverstein, er habe mit «pull it» die «Feuerwehrmänner evakuieren» gemeint. Worauf 9/11-Kritiker wie US-Millionär Jimmy Walter betonten, das sei Unsinn, «it» müsse sich auf eine Sache beziehen.

Stahlträger in Asien

Ob Feuer oder Sprengung zum Einsturz von WTC 7 führte, müsste man an den Stahlträgern untersuchen. Aber die sind weg. «Über 80% des Stahls des WTC ist schon verkauft worden, das meiste, wenn nicht sogar alles, bevor die Wissenschafter und Kriminologen es untersuchen konnten», protestierte Anthony Weiner, Parlamentarier aus New York, im März 2002 im US-Parlament. Der Stahl wurde in Asien recycelt. Professor Frederick Mowrer vom Fire Protection Engineering Department der University of Maryland, der zusammen mit anderen US-Experten den Zusammensturz der WTC-Gebäude untersuchen musste, kritisierte dieses Vorgehen scharf: «Ich finde die Geschwindigkeit, mit der wichtige Beweise weggeschafft und recycelt wurden, erschreckend.»

* Daniele Ganser ist Historiker an der Universität Zürich. Sein Buch «NATO’s Secret Armies» untersucht inszenierten Terrorismus im Kalten Krieg. Zum neuen Sammelband von David Ray Griffin («911 and American Empire: Academics Speak Out») hat er ein Kapitel beigetragen.
www.danieleganser.ch

America's warrior nation - The legacy of 9/11

America's warrior nation - The legacy of 9/11

The shortcomings of the American leader were alarmingly exposed on the day the terrorists struck. He and his acolytes are now leading their empire towards permanent conflict with lslam

By Gore Vidal

09/10/06 "The Independent" -- -- What a difference five years have made! The greatest nation in the country, as an American statesman once termed us, was attacked by a dozen or so Saudi Arabians who had, with astonishing ease, hijacked several airliners and flew two of them into a pair of New York skyscrapers as well as another into one of the five sides of the Pentagon at Washington, the heart of the greatest, most expensive military machine the world has ever known. I watched all this on CNN; in Italy where I then lived. The visual shock was great, of course. Particularly when our little president was discovered by the ubiquitous TV camera in a Florida school where he was reading to his peers from "The Pet Goat", an inspirational tale calculated to encourage small Americans to stand tall: "like", as he would put it, "they should." An aide interrupts the reading; murmurs something in the presidential ear: the presidential eyes widen. A moment akin to the Confederacy firing on Fort Sumter, or the Japanese sinking the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. Two tall presidents were, happily for us, in office at those times. Lincoln acted with characteristic guile while Roosevelt, thundering anathema as Pontifex Maximus, flung open the doors of the temple of Janus and so the war that would bring us a global empire began while that of the Japanese sun goddess ended. What then did our very own Romulus Augustulus do during the rest of September 11th? He read some more of "The Pet Goat", knowing that his puppet-meister, vice president Cheney, was safely embedded in some secret spot. Then the little emperor was hustled away in Air Force One for a tour of our most luxurious bunkers where he might avoid the attentions of new attackers, should they come.

What, someone asked, was my first response. Amazement at how little protected we were despite all the megalomaniacal posturings during that cold war deliberately set in motion by Harry S (for nothing, as he liked to say) Truman a half century ago with a son et lumière celebration at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is still not known to the American public that every single important commander of World War Two from General Eisenhower in Europe to Admiral Nimitz in the Pacific pleaded with our first really small president not to atomise two cities of a defeated nation desperately trying to surrender. But Truman, and his Metternich, Dean Acheson, wanted to replace Hitler and Fascism with Stalin and Communism. It was under Truman that the ever greater lie came into its glittering own. Despite the unanimous objections of the American military, Truman insisted on dropping two nuclear bombs. I was serving in the Pacific theatre of operations at the time and we were assured, along with the rest of the world, that one million of us would die in the coming invasion of Japan. Did we love the Bomb? Yes, we did. But little did we know that, had we invaded as originally planned, there was no way that we would have encountered the survivors of the Japanese army on the mainland of Asia as they did not have sufficient transport to return to their home islands.

I think it was Vico who noted that busy republics tend to turn themselves into empires. Certainly, the French intellectual godfather to the American republic, Montesquieu, warned that republics which took the empire route would cease to be republics altogether while Vico, in his cyclic view of human societies, saw imperial republics evolving into dictatorships, chaos, barbarism. In the last five years American behaviour in the Middle East has been barbarous and will not soon be forgiven. Meanwhile, the gas-oil junta has hijacked the old American republic through the artful use of great quantities of corporate and church cash in order to falsify the electoral tallies of easily hacked electronic voting machinery; means now exist to nullify or alter any election returns as happened in Florida 2000; in Ohio 2004.

There is a good deal of grim comedy in the words if not the current deeds of the little president. Although he and his co-conspirators relish the use of the big lie (eg turning the dull but genuine war hero John Kerry into a cowardly fraud while ignoring the slackerdom of Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld who proudly fought in none of our many wars). Now in an attempt to avoid blame for the Iraq war and further confuse the world about why Iran and Syria must be destroyed Old Rumsfeld and Old Cheney are trotting out dim garbled images of Hitler and appeasement as they pretend that the anti-war American majority favours Islamic fascism. They pretend terrorism is a demonic person. And if we don't stop him in Tehran we'll have to stop him here. This is ludicrous; unfortunately the junta is as ignorant of history and geography as they believe the public to be. Meanwhile, the little president worries about his "legacy" in the history books. But should he get World War Three going there might not be any more history books, a relief to a non-reader like himself, though, lately, he tells us that he is reading Camus and "three Shakespeares". No doubt tragedies. As we know, he lies with zest yet he was actually revealed reading "The Pet Goat" on television and the Greek word for goat is the same as the word for tragedy. If this is code, I am beginning to suspect him of irony, a fatal flaw in Freedom's home. After all, on his first trip to New Orleans, he promised to restore the drowned city. But, as usual, nothing was done. Then this August 29 he was back in town to reassure high school students: "I've come back to New Orleans to tell you the words that I spoke on Jackson Square are just as true today as they were then." And so, of course, they were! Meanwhile, one hopes that some noble humanitarian will finally shut the doors of the temple of Janus which have not been shut since December of 1941 when we went from one war to another and another without a pause - or thought.