Muslim Disunity

Mar. 6th, 2010 11:35 am
PALESTINE
from here


A Religion Divided Against Itself

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Muslims are numerous but powerless. Divisions among Muslims, especially between Sunni and Shi’ites, have consigned the Muslim Middle East to almost a century of Western control. Muslims cannot even play together. The Islamic Solidarity Games, a regional version of the Olympics, which were to be held in April in Iran, have been cancelled, because the Iranians and the Arabs cannot agree on whether to call the body of water that separates Iran from the Arabian Peninsula the Persian Gulf or the Arabian Gulf.

Muslim disunity has made it possible for Israel to dispossess the Palestinians, for the U.S. to invade Iraq, and for the U.S. to rule much of the region through puppets. For example, in exchange for faithful service, Egypt receives $1.5 billion a year from Washington, which enables President Mubarak to buy off opposition. The opposition had rather have the money than support the Palestinians. Therefore, Egypt cooperates with Israel and the U.S. in the blockade of Gaza.

Another factor is the willingness of some Muslims to betray their own kind for U.S. dollars. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman, head of the Foundation for Democracy, which describes itself as “a private, non-profit organization established in 1995 with grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to promote democracy and internationally-recognized standards of human rights in Iran.”

By now we all know what that means. It means that the U.S. finances a “velvet” or some “color revolution” in order to install a U.S. puppet. Just prior to the sudden appearance of a “green revolution” in Tehran primed to protest an election, Timmerman wrote that “the National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars during the past decade promoting ‘color’ revolutions in places such as Ukraine and Serbia, training political workers in modern communications and organizational techniques. Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.” So, according to the neocon Timmerman, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, it was U.S. money that funded Mousavi’s claims that Armadinejad stole the last Iranian election.

During President George W. Bush’s regime it became public knowledge that American money is used to purchase Iranians to work against their own country. The Washington Post, a newspaper sympathetic to the neocon’s goal of American hegemony and war with Iran, reported in 2007 that Bush authorized spending more than $400 million for activities that included “supporting rebel groups opposed to the country’s ruling clerics.”

This makes the U.S. government a “state sponsor of terrorism.” For confirmation, one of the U.S. paid operatives, who conducted terror operations in Iran, has ratted on his terrorist supporters in Washington. Abdulmalek Rigi, leader of the Baloch separatist group responsible for several attacks, was recently arrested by the Iranians. Rigi admitted that the Americans in Washington assured him of unlimited military aid and funding for waging an insurgency against the Islamic Republic of Iran. (Read his confession here.)

Possibly he was tortured into confession. It is the American way. If the “light of the world,” the “indispensable people,” and the “shining city on the hill” tortures people, perhaps the Iranians do as well. Rigi’s younger brother, himself on death row in Iran, has said that the U.S. provided direct funding to the separatist group and even ordered specific terrorist attacks inside Iran

The U.S. and its NATO puppets have been killing Afghan women, children, and village elders since October 7, 2001, when the U.S. military invasion “Operation Enduring Freedom,” a proper Orwellian title for a self-serving war of aggression, was launched. The U.S. installed puppet president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, is bought and paid for with U.S. dollars.

The money that Washington gives Karzai finances the corruption that supports him. Karzai’s corruption and his treason against the Afghan people encourage the Taliban to keep fighting in order to achieve a government that serves Afghans instead of Washington, D.C.

Without the puppet Karzai selling out Afghans to Washington, the U.S. would have already been driven out of the country. With Karzai paying Afghans with American money to fight Afghans for the Americans, the war drones on into its ninth year.

Feminists, liberals, and naive American flag-wavers will say that what is written here is utter rot, that Americans are in Afghanistan to bring women’s rights and birth control to Afghan women and to bring freedom, democracy and progress to Afghanistan, even if it means leveling every village, town, and house in the country. We, “the indispensable people,” are only there to do good, because we care so much for the Afghan people who live in a country that most Americans can’t find on a map.

While this collection of naifs rants on about America “saving” Afghans from whatever, the White House and the Congress are conspiring against the American people to cut $500 billion dollars out of Medicare in order to give the money to private insurance companies. Jobless benefits are about to run out for millions of Americans, whose jobs have been moved offshore in order to make the rich richer. The U.S. Senate failed on Friday, Feb. 26, to extend jobless benefits. A single Republican Senator, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, was able to block the bill because it would cost a measly $10 billion and “would add to the budget deficit.”

The “fiscally responsible” Bunning supports blank checks for wars of aggression (war crimes under the Nuremberg standard) and payoffs to investment banks for wrecking the retirement plans of most Americans. Bunning sends the bills to the unorganized and unrepresented Americans, whose jobs have been stolen by corporate offshoring of jobs and whose retirements have been stolen by the endless greed of the Wall Street investment banks.

What fool believes that the U.S. government, which is totally indifferent to the fate of its own citizens, cares so much about Afghanistan that it will spend blood and treasure to bring “progress” and “women’s rights” to a country half a world away, while it drives its own citizens into the ground?

At Washington’s behest, the government of Pakistan is conducting war against its own people, killing many and forcing others to flee their homes and lands. The Pakistani government’s war against its own citizens has caused military expenses to soar, putting Pakistan’s budget deep in the red. Deputy US Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin ordered the Pakistani government to raise taxes to pay for the war against its own people.

The puppet ruler, Asif Ali Zardari, complied with his American master’s orders. Zardari declared a broad-based value added tax on virtually all goods and most services in Pakistan. Thus, Pakistanis are forced to finance a war against themselves.

The “cakewalk war” in Iraq has lasted 7 years instead of the promised 6 weeks, and the violence is still ongoing with Iraqis killed and maimed nearly every day. The reason Americans are still in Iraq is because the Iraqis hate each other more than they hate the American invader. The vast majority of the violence in “the Iraq war” was committed between Iraqi Sunnis and Iraqi Shi’ites as they cleansed one another from neighborhoods.

The majority Shi’ites regarded the American invasion of Iraq as an opportunity to gain power over the minority Sunnis, who ruled under Saddam Hussein. Therefore, the Shi’ites never engaged the American invading forces. The minority Sunnis (20 percent of the population) gave most of their effort to fighting the Shi’ite majority, but in their spare time a few thousand Sunnis were able to inflict serious losses on the American superpower.

Finally realizing the power of lucre in the Arab world, the Americans put 80,000 Sunnis on the U.S. military payroll and paid them to stop killing Americans.

This is how the U.S. won the war in Iraq. Iraqis sold out their independence for American dollars.

Considering that a few thousand Sunnis were able to prevent superpower America from successfully occupying Baghdad or much of Iraq, had the Shi’ites joined with the Sunnis against the invaders, the U.S. would have been defeated and driven out. This outcome was not possible, because the Shi’ites wanted to settle the score with the Sunnis, who had ruled them under Saddam Hussein.

This is the reason that Iraq today is in ruins, with one million dead, four million displaced or homeless, and the professional class having fled the country. Iraq, under the American puppet Maliki, is an American protectorate.

As long as Muslims hate and fear one another more than they hate their conquerers, they will remain a vanquished people.

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.  His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

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When you have become selfless, you are secure in whatever you do.

Feb. 14th, 2010 09:49 pm
PALESTINE
Tobacco is the only consumer product that will kill half its users when used as intended.



For those who are conscientious, there are gardens of happiness in the presence of their Lord. Shall We then treat the acquiescent like the rebellious? What is wrong with you? How do you judge? Do you have a scripture you study wherein you are assured of what you choose? Or do you have a covenant binding on Us until the day of resurrection assuring you of what you decide? [68: 34 to 39]

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Muslim inventions that shaped the modern world.

Feb. 6th, 2010 02:05 pm
PALESTINE
from here

By Olivia Sterns for CNN
January 29, 2010 -- Updated 1253 GMT (2053 HKT)


London, England (CNN) -- Think of the origins of that staple of modern life, the cup of coffee, and Italy often springs to mind.
But in fact, Yemen is where the ubiquitous brew has its true origins.
Along with the first university, and even the toothbrush, it is among surprising Muslim inventions that have shaped the world we live in today.
The origins of these fundamental ideas and objects -- the basis of everything from the bicycle to musical scales -- are the focus of "1001 Inventions," a book celebrating "the forgotten" history of 1,000 years of Muslim heritage.

"There's a hole in our knowledge, we leap frog from the Renaissance to the Greeks," professor Salim al-Hassani, Chairman of the Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation, and editor of the book told CNN.
"1001 Inventions" is now an exhibition at London's Science Museum. Hassani hopes the exhibition will highlight the contributions of non-Western cultures -- like the Muslim empire that once covered Spain and Portugal, Southern Italy and stretched as far as parts of China -- to present day civilization.

Here Hassani shares his top 10 outstanding Muslim inventions:

1. Surgery
Around the year 1,000, the celebrated doctor Al Zahrawi published a 1,500 page illustrated encyclopedia of surgery that was used in Europe as a medical reference for the next 500 years. Among his many inventions, Zahrawi discovered the use of dissolving cat gut to stitch wounds -- beforehand a second surgery had to be performed to remove sutures. He also reportedly performed the first caesarean operation and created the first pair of forceps.

2. Coffee
Now the Western world's drink du jour, coffee was first brewed in Yemen around the 9th century. In its earliest days, coffee helped Sufis stay up during late nights of devotion. Later brought to Cairo by a group of students, the coffee buzz soon caught on around the empire. By the 13th century it reached Turkey, but not until the 16th century did the beans start boiling in Europe, brought to Italy by a Venetian trader.

3. Flying machine
"Abbas ibn Firnas was the first person to make a real attempt to construct a flying machine and fly," said Hassani. In the 9th century he designed a winged apparatus, roughly resembling a bird costume. In his most famous trial near Cordoba in Spain, Firnas flew upward for a few moments, before falling to the ground and partially breaking his back. His designs would undoubtedly have been an inspiration for famed Italian artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci's hundreds of years later, said Hassani.

4. University
In 859 a young princess named Fatima al-Firhi founded the first degree-granting university in Fez, Morocco. Her sister Miriam founded an adjacent mosque and together the complex became the al-Qarawiyyin Mosque and University. Still operating almost 1,200 years later, Hassani says he hopes the center will remind people that learning is at the core of the Islamic tradition and that the story of the al-Firhi sisters will inspire young Muslim women around the world today.

5. Algebra
The word algebra comes from the title of a Persian mathematician's famous 9th century treatise "Kitab al-Jabr Wa l-Mugabala" which translates roughly as "The Book of Reasoning and Balancing." Built on the roots of Greek and Hindu systems, the new algebraic order was a unifying system for rational numbers, irrational numbers and geometrical magnitudes. The same mathematician, Al-Khwarizmi, was also the first to introduce the concept of raising a number to a power.

6. Optics
"Many of the most important advances in the study of optics come from the Muslim world," says Hassani. Around the year 1000 Ibn al-Haitham proved that humans see objects by light reflecting off of them and entering the eye, dismissing Euclid and Ptolemy's theories that light was emitted from the eye itself. This great Muslim physicist also discovered the camera obscura phenomenon, which explains how the eye sees images upright due to the connection between the optic nerve and the brain.

7. Music
Muslim musicians have had a profound impact on Europe, dating back to Charlemagne tried to compete with the music of Baghdad and Cordoba, according to Hassani. Among many instruments that arrived in Europe through the Middle East are the lute and the rahab, an ancestor of the violin. Modern musical scales are also said to derive from the Arabic alphabet.

8. Toothbrush
According to Hassani, the Prophet Mohammed popularized the use of the first toothbrush in around 600. Using a twig from the Meswak tree, he cleaned his teeth and freshened his breath. Substances similar to Meswak are used in modern toothpaste.

9. The crank
Many of the basics of modern automatics were first put to use in the Muslim world, including the revolutionary crank-connecting rod system. By converting rotary motion to linear motion, the crank enables the lifting of heavy objects with relative ease. This technology, discovered by Al-Jazari in the 12th century, exploded across the globe, leading to everything from the bicycle to the internal combustion engine.

10. Hospitals
"Hospitals as we know them today, with wards and teaching centers, come from 9th century Egypt," explained Hassani. The first such medical center was the Ahmad ibn Tulun Hospital, founded in 872 in Cairo. Tulun hospital provided free care for anyone who needed it -- a policy based on the Muslim tradition of caring for all who are sick. From Cairo, such hospitals spread around the Muslim world.

For more information on muslim inventions go to: muslimheritage.com. For more information about the exhibition at London's Science Museum go to: science museum.org.uk

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Humiliation of Nick Griffin

Nov. 9th, 2009 11:45 pm
PALESTINE
by Yamin Zakaria yaminzakaria.blogspot.com/

Appearance of Nick Griffin, the leader of the far-right British National Party (BNP) on the BBC Program, Question Time1, has caused a furore and raised questions on the limitations of freedom of speech. Should an individual be permitted to express views that cause offence to a certain section of society? Even if the views are technically permitted by law, should the mass media encourage this by giving racist bigots like Nick Griffin a platform on a primetime TV? A more fundamental point in this debate is - should freedom of speech have a limit in the first place. 

With the exception of Nick Griffin, there was consensus amongst all the panellists on the limitations of freedom of speech. Those limits specify that it is unacceptable to express views that are deemed racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic. Most pertinently, you should not deny the holocaust; even to question this sacred subject is taboo. However, you can express anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim views, no matter how much offence it causes; in fact the more the better, because it is often used by sections of western societies as a barometer for freedom of expression. After struggling against the censorship for centuries, suddenly their freedom of expression rests on their ability to insult Islam and Muslims. 

The political lightweight Nick Griffin was convincingly knocked out in the first round, and humiliated on all the issues, except when it came to the subject of Islam and Muslims. All the panellists failed to respond to the baseless anti-Islamic rants of Nick Griffin, except the ‘mufti’ ‘Syeda Warsi, whose answer was inadequate and superficial, not really worth dwelling upon. 

It is not surprising for Nick Griffin to express anti-Islamic or anti-Muslim views, as a racist bigot naturally dislikes foreign people and their culture. Although, I am sure, many members of his party enjoy the Indian curry or the Turkish/Arabic kebab! I still remember the racists thugs would end up eating curry in the Indian/Pakistani restaurants in the evening, after taunting the Asian kids for smelling of curry during the day. Although these bigots were in the minority, but couple of drops of urine is sufficient to spoil a bowl of milk. The British society has progressed considerably since those times, but not the primitive members of the BNP. 

When specifically asked by a member of the audience why Nick Griffin considers Islam a wicked and an evil religion, his response was on two points a) it oppresses women b) allegedly the Quran 'ordains as a religious duty the murder of Jews as well as other non-Muslims'. 

Let us examine each of these points. 

On the issue of women, it is perplexing as to why Nick Griffin would be concerned for Muslim women. After all, majority of the Muslims in the UK are from Asia and the Middle East, therefore clearly visible to eyes of the British National Party members, unlike the recent East European migrants! 

If Islamic Laws were oppressive to women, they would naturally abandon Islamic values and exchange their modest clothing for the mini-skirt and the bikini. Nobody is forcing the Muslim women to remain as practising Muslims in secular West or in secular East. However, according to the mainstream media and major parties in the UK for some strange reasons they like to remain oppressed. What is even more puzzling, majority of the converts to Islam are in fact women, but these small details are always overlooked! How is it that such an evil religion continues to attract these women from all sections of a free society? Why do they choose to oppress themselves by embracing Islam? 

The same kind of secular-prophecy was made prior to the invasion of Afghanistan; the Anglo-American forces would liberate the Afghan women from their veil. It failed. Today in certain European countries, the attitude is, if the Muslim women do not want to be liberated from their modest clothing, we will force them to do so! This is a blatant contradiction with the notion of freedom, and reflects the mindset of medieval Europe on the verge of launching a liberal-inquisition. 

With regards to the second point of killing Jews and non-Muslims, Nick Griffin did not elaborate with any reference from the Quran, of substantiate it by citing scholarly works and historical examples. There is no verse in the Quran orders the indiscriminate killing of non-Muslims. On the contrary, a section of Islamic law deals with how the non-Muslim population should be protected, hence they are known as the Dhimmis, which means the protected people. It is fact that non-Muslims flourished within the Islamic Societies, Jews and Christians lived peacefully under the Muslim rule in Spain for centuries, as they did in places like India, Syria, Turkey and Palestine. In fact, facing religious persecution in Christian Europe, the Jews sought sanctuary within the Ottoman Empire, and prospered there for centuries. 

The rise of BNP (British National Party) can be partially attributed to the demonisation of Muslims and Islam fanned by sections of the mainstream media. The nasty propaganda machine has often reversed the roles of victim and aggressor. The cowboys were always the virtuous people chasing the terrorists of the time, the Native Americans, often depicted as irrational wild savages; of course nothing to do with the new colonisers taking over their lands and resources. Today the impression created in the minds of the masses is that the Muslims are the anti-Semitic, illustrated by reversing the role of victim (Palestinians) and aggressor (Zionist State) in the region. 

It is easy to blame others for your problem, this is the politics of the far-right according to the likes of Jack Straw and others, however, the reality is the mainstream media and the major parties have a majority share of this blame game, along with sections of the Muslim community. 



Yamin Zakaria (yamin@radicalviews.org)
London, UK 

www.radicalviews.org
http://yaminzakaria.blogspot.com
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Primum Non Nocere

Nov. 6th, 2009 12:29 pm
PALESTINE

Hamas want Britain to make amends for crimes against Palestine
by Stuart Littlewood *
 

 

Hamas marked the 92nd anniversary of the infamous Balfour Declaration by recalling the misery of the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) and insisting that European states in general and Britain in particular make amends for the crimes committed against Palestine.

It is worth reminding ourselves from time to time what started the trouble all those years ago. Arabs know the details only too well, but you would be surprised how the British people are kept in ignorance. The history of the Arab-Israeli struggle is seldom taught in schools and our politicians are afraid to talk freely about it.

To all intents and purposes the fuse to the present powder-keg was lit by the British foreign secretary, Lord Balfour, on 2 November 1917 in a letter to the most senior Jew in England, Lord Rothschild, pledging assistance for the Zionist cause. It was a moment of madness that showed utter disregard for the likely impact on Islamic sensibilities and the day-to-day lives of those (Muslim and Christian) already living in the Holy Land, and for peace in the region.

This lethal scrap of paper, which called itself a declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations, actually said… "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing and non-Jewish communities..."

Was Balfour completely off his head? The Allied Powers, in correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and Sharif Hussein Ibn Ali of Mecca, had already promised independence to Arab leaders in return for their help in defeating Germany's ally, Turkey.

But Balfour was a Zionist convert, as were many others in the corridors of power in London at that time. Among them were Lloyd George and, to my dismay, Winston Churchill.

In an article in the Illustrated Sunday Herald of 8 February 1920 Churchill is credited with writing: "It has fallen to the British Government, as the result of the conquest of Palestine, to have the opportunity and the responsibility of securing for the Jewish race all over the world a home and centre of national life. The statesmanship and historic sense of Mr. Balfour were prompt to seize this opportunity. Declarations have now been made which have irrevocably decided the policy of Great Britain. The fiery energies of Dr. Weissmann, the leader, for practical purposes, of the Zionist project. backed by many of the most prominent British Jews, and supported by the full authority of Lord Allenby, are all directed to achieving the success of this inspiring movement… If, as may well happen, there should be created in our own lifetime by the banks of the Jordan a Jewish State under the protection of the British Crown, which might comprise three or four millions of Jews, an event would have occurred in the history of the world which would, from every point of view, be beneficial, and would be especially in harmony with the truest interests of the British Empire."

Poor Winston's crystal ball was seriously malfunctioning that day.

Balfour, with eye-watering arrogance, said in justification of his lunatic action: "In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country. The four powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now occupy that land."

Not everyone was fooled by the Zionists. Lord Sydenham warned: "The harm done by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country may never be remedied. What we have done, by concessions not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, is to start a running sore in the East, and no-one can tell how far that sore will extend.

If only more people had listened.

In 1922 Palestine was placed under British mandate. Jewish immigration would be facilitated "under suitable conditions" and a nationality law would allow Jews taking up permanent residence to acquire Palestinian citizenship.

That same year the British government issued a White Paper clarifying the position. The intention was not to turn Palestine as a whole into a Jewish National Home but enable such a Home to be founded within Palestine. The White Paper recorded with satisfaction that, at a meeting of the Zionist Congress at Carlsbad in September 1921, "a resolution was passed expressing as the official statement of Zionist aims the determination of the Jewish people to live with the Arab people on terms of unity and mutual respect, and together with them to make the common home into a flourishing community…"

The White Paper also noted that the Zionist Commission in Palestine, renamed the Palestine Zionist Executive, had no wish to take part in running the country and would not be allowed to share in the government. "Further, it is contemplated that the status of all citizens of Palestine in the eyes of the law shall be Palestinian, and it has never been intended that they, or any section of them, should possess any other juridical status."

Fine words, but nobody was taking them on board. From that moment onwards the bully-boys of the Western world behaved increasingly badly and so did the Zionists. It all culminated in the messy 1947 Partition Plan, a corrupt and poorly managed piece of work by the fledgling United Nations, with the bullies twisting the arms of smaller nations in order to steamroller their rotten scheme through.

Zionist Jews had legitimately purchased only 6 percent of Palestinian land and by 1947 accounted for about one-third of the population, yet the UN allocated them 57 percent of the territory with access to two seas. They seized the offer with both hands while the Arabs, who hadn't been consulted, quite rightly rejected it as unfair. As we all know now – and should have known then, since the extent of the Greater Israel project was widely advertised - this exceedingly generous 57 percent gift just wasn't enough for the greedy Zionists. They wanted the lot, and still do. So for 61 years they have kept the fires of the conflict well stoked while ethnically cleansing each territorial gain at gunpoint.

It is only right that Hamas are making such an appeal to those who have so miserably failed the Holy Land. It does no harm to remind the bloated and corrupted West of its Christian duty even though it long ago abandoned any pretence of honour and principle.

Israel's evil progress could be halted by simply breaking the siege, if necessary landing humanitarian supplies on Gaza's beach or providing armed escorts for other ships that wish to do so. That, it seems to me, is the very least we could do. The increasingly effective action by ordinary citizens boycotting Israeli goods should then be matched by government measures, and the screw turned until the economic pain persuades Israel to withdraw behind recognized borders and leave the Palestinians alone.

And if our politicians and leaders cannot free themselves from Israeli influence and act with the necessary decency, they should be helped to pack their bags and clear their desks.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information please visit www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk .


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you and whose army?

Oct. 27th, 2009 10:34 am
PALESTINE

Ehud Olmert's Visit to New Orleans

Taping Our Mouths Shut to Scream Out Our Dissent
By EMILY RATNER

On October 13, Tulane University, a bastion of privilege in the South, hosted Ehud Olmert as a featured speaker. In response, more than 70 demonstrators engaged in protests and direct actions both inside and outside the event, and were interviewed by local media. Despite much hostility, they also found a lot of support, and have found their organizing now has even more momentum. Below is one person's perspective on the event.

***

We were students, teachers, activists, and community members. We were Muslims, Jews, Christians, Palestinians, and allies. We were many, many more than the war criminal and his Mossad protectors. And we were powerful, more powerful than his security checkpoints and his electronically amplified lies. We strapped red tape to our bodies and stashed fake-bloodied clothes in our packs. Those of us who had the required documents, who had student IDs from New Orleans’ universities, passed through the checkpoints while our barred friends and allies gathered outside, armed with truths painted on posterboard and voices amplified by our growing numbers. With less than two weeks’ notice, we had formed a broad coalition that planned a multi-phased action to reclaim the same campus that is home to TIPAC (the Tulane-Israel Public Affairs Committee), that hosted Ann Coulter for “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” in 2007, and that was now inviting Ehud Olmert for a brief respite during his flight from international and Israeli courts. As Tulane University constructed a safe-haven and solicited interviews and meetings on behalf of its delinquent guest, dozens of our neighbors began to organize. And scores more responded to the call for action.

Tulane has long been an unwelcoming environment to our broader community, as well as to Muslim and Arab students. The culture of the white Northeastern American upper class dominates the campus, creating a space that vehemently reinforces a racist and elitist status quo and virulently quells dissent. Olmert’s strategists and local friends had chosen the city’s most Zionist and “secure” nonreligious institution for his visit, and many activists questioned the wisdom of challenging a hostile student body and a sometimes even more hostile private police force. Tulane voices have been almost entirely absent in a great many community dialogues and meetings about Palestine solidarity work, and the prospect of initiating a campaign for boycott, divestment, and sanctions on Tulane’s campus has always seemed laughable. But New Orleans is a city where so many feel linked to the Palestinian struggle through shared themes like the experience of diaspora, the right of return, and near-daily racist violence and oppression by police and military authorities. There is no space in our city where Israeli war criminals will not be challenged.

Tulane was as hostile an environment as we expected. Hundreds of Tulane students showed up to hear Olmert speak, and many laughed and applauded when he made jokes about the comments of overwhelmed Palestinians who threw up their hands in exasperation at his lies and walked out of the building. Many of our own group were only kept silent by the red tape we’d hidden on our bodies and then used to cover our mouths when Olmert first walked onto the stage. Scrawled on the tape were words that enumerated some of Olmert’s administration’s crimes, such as “human shields,” “illegal settlements,” “white phosphorous,” and “occupation.” We breathed deep and sat through an onslaught of racist lies about our Palestinian friends and family, until Olmert began to talk about the mistake Israel had made in “withdrawing” from Gaza. Then, one by one, our jaws aching from biting down on our testimonials of what we have seen with our own eyes and what our families and friends continue to suffer, we rose from our seats throughout the auditorium, slowly made our way to the aisle, and walked out.

Olmert’s audience, which for a moment became our own, gasped and whispered as more than twenty people stood, staring daggers at Olmert and his Mossad agents speaking into their sleeves, and then trailed down the aisles to the auditorium’s exit. Some of us cried, others shook with rage, but we all celebrated our action, small but fluid, and impenetrable by Olmert’s snide remarks and Mossad’s hidden weapons.

As we left the auditorium we heard the chants of our friends, and breathed freely for what felt like the first time in over an hour. The hostility had been palpable inside the auditorium, but our friends cried out to us and embraced us, and their numbers had easily tripled since we’d last seen them. They’d been shouting for two hours now, competing with calls of “Heil Hitler” and “Palestinians are Nazis” from students passing by. A Muslim woman in hijab had been hit with plates of food thrown from an adjacent third floor balcony while campus police looked on. Within twenty minutes we’d set up the next phase of our action: Four people dressed in bloodied clothes laid down on the ground in front of the auditorium, and we placed cardboard grave markers with the numbers of massacred Palestinians and Lebanese around them. As students began to flow out of the auditorium, we handed out fliers detailing Olmert’s war crimes and tried to prevent passers by from spitting on our friends on the ground. We were mostly successful, and managed to keep a student from urinating on one of the participants.

We were not at all surprised by the hostility we faced, but we were surprised by the positive responses of far more Tulane students than we expected. Members of Tulane Amnesty International, Tulane American Socialist Students United, and individual undergraduate and graduate students printed fliers, spread the word, and were an unmistakable presence in every phase of the actions. A day that we had dreaded and actions we had hated having to plan had resulted in a broadening of our local Palestine solidarity network into a community we had dismissed for too long. Our new friends and allies at Tulane know first-hand how much they are up against in an institution that is between one-quarter and one-third Jewish and regularly equates Zionism with Judaism, but they are aching to take up the challenge. They are Muslims, Palestinians, Jews, and allies. They are freshman, upperclassmen, and graduate students. On October 13th, they joined students from the General Union of Palestine Students and Amnesty International of University of New Orleans, as well as students from Loyola University, in standing up to hundreds of aggressive classmates, taping their mouths shut to announce their presence and their intentions. Suddenly the challenges we face in our local solidarity work seem more surmountable. The despicable war criminal inadvertently gave one gift to New Orleans during his visit: He gave the beginnings of Tulane’s Palestine solidarity movement an unforgettable debut.

Emily Ratner is an organizer and mediamaker based in New Orleans. She is a member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, and a graduate of Tulane University (class of 2007). In June, she joined a New Orleans delegation to Gaza. She can be reached at emily@nolahumanrights.org.



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Why pay for the disease, when the cure is free?

Oct. 25th, 2009 02:01 am
PALESTINE

taken from here

The Dua of Yunus (Jonah):

The Prophet SAW said in the hadith recorded by At-Tirmithi and others:

The invocation of my brother Dhu-n-Nun, "None has the right to be worshipped save You;glory be to You, far removed are You from any imperfection; I have been amongst the wrong-doers," none who is experiencing difficulty employs it except that Allah SWT would relieve him of his difficulty.

La ila ha illa anta subhanaka inni kuntu minazzalimeen(Ch. Al-Anbiya (21): vs. 87)

He SAW called it an invocation because it includes both types of supplication.

"none has the right to be worshipped save You" comprises an acknowledgement of Tawhid al-Ilahiyyah(singling Allah out alone for worship) which in turn includes one of the two types of supplication.This is because the Ilah is the one who deserves supplication, both the supplication of worship and the supplication of request. He is Allah, there is none worthy of worship save Him.

"I have been amongst the wrongdoers" comprimises an acknowledgemtn of his sin which in turn includes the request for forgiveness. This is because the one seeking something , asking for it, either does so by stating phrases that denote this (clearly) or he does so by stating phrases that contain some information (that alludes to this), information about ones own state or the state of the one being asked or the state of both. Nuh AS said,

"My Lord , I take refuge with You from asking You for anything about which i have no knowledge. If You do not forgive me and bestow mercy on me, i will be among the lose."
(Hud(11):47)

Why Does Supplication Remove Harm?

The answer is that none save Allah can remove harm,

"If Allah touches you with harm, none can remove it but him. If He touches you with good , He has power over all things"
(al-An'am 6:17)

Sins are a cause for the onset of harm and asking for forgiveness removes its causes,

"Allah would never punish them while you were among them. Allah would not punish them as long as they sought forgiveness"
(al-Anfal 8:33)

So He , Exalted is He, informed us that He would not punish the penitant.It is mentioned in a hadith,

Whoever frequently asks for forgiveness , Allah would appoint for him relief from every worry, a way out from every difficulty and provision coming from unimagined sources.
(Abu Dawud(1518), Ibn Majah(3819) and Ahmad(2234) on the authority of ibn Abbas)

Allah, Exalted is He, says,

"Any disaster that strikes you is through what your own hands have earned and He pardons much"
(ash-Shura 42:30)

His saying "i have been amongst the wrong-doers" is an acknowledgment of his sin and also a request for forgiveness because this acknowledgment implicitly includes this request within it.

His saying "none has the right to be worshipped save You" affirms Tawhid al-ilahiyyah. Good can only be procured by the will of Allah, everything He wills, is, and everything He does not will, is not. The obstacle to this good on the part of the servant is his sins, anything else that is outside the ability of the servant occurs by the decree of Allah. This even though the actions of the servant occur by the decree of Allah,Exalted is He, Allah has appointed the observance of the legislated and the leaving of the prohibited to be the means to felicity and success.

Therefore the testification to tawhid opens the door to good and asking for forgiveness closes the door to evil.

This is why it is desirable to only attach ones hope to Allah and not to fear oppression and wrong-doing from Him for Allah does not oppress the servant in the slightest, instead it is they who oppress themselves. He should, however, fear that Allah recompense him for his sins and this is why 'Ali RA said, "The servant should not put his hope in any save his Lord and not fear anything save his sins." The Prophet SAW entered upon a sick person and asked,

"in what state does this sickness find you?" he replied, "i hope in Allah and fear my sins." He SAW said, "These two never come together in the heart of a servant on such occasions except that Allah grants him what he hopes and saves him from what he fears."

Hence hope should be placed in Allah and not any object of creation, not the ability or strength of a person or his actions. To put hope in other than Allah is a form of shirk, this applies even though Allah has set up means and causes(asbab)that lead to the procurement of good, but these means cannot exist independantly, rather their must exist something that supports and aids them to achieve the goal , just as any obstacle hindering this achievement must be absent;hence it cannot be achieved and it cannot endure except by the will of Allah,Exalted is He.

This is why it is said that to place ones reliance and hope in the means is to commit shirk, to deny the existence of the means is a sign of stupidity, and to turn away from them altogether is to impute the Divine Law with deficiency. This is why Allah , Exalted is He says;

"So when you have finished , work on, and to your Lord direct your longing attention"
(ash-Sharh 94:7-8)

Thereby ordering us to place our fervent desire in Him alone. He also says ,

"Put your trust in Allah if you are believers"
(al-Maidah 5:23)

The heart does not place its reliance except in one from whom it hopes for something. Therefore whoever places hope in his strength,ability,actions,friend,relative,teacher etc. not considering Allah, has placed a form of reliance upon that cause. Whoever places his hope in an object of creation will ultimately be disappointed for he is committing shirk,

"....As for anyone who associates others with Allah, it is as though he had fallen from the sky and the birds had seized him and acrried him away, or the wind had dropped him in a distant place"
(al-Hajj 22:31)

Similarly the polytheist fears objects of creation and places hope in them and therefore lives in a state of dread as Allah, Exalted is He,says,

"We will cast terror into the hearts of the disbelievers because they have associated others with Allah for which He has not sent down any authority"
(Ali imran 3:151)

To be free of shirk is to be in safety as Allah, Exalted is He, says;

"Those who have faith and do not mix up their faith with any wrong-doing, they are ones who are safe ; it is they who are guided"
(al-An'am 6:82)


_______________________________________________________________

Do not try to run away from trials and tribulations, but endure them with patience. They cannot be avoided, and there is nothing for it but to endure them with patience. How can you expect the whole of this world, and all that has been created therein, to undergo change and transformation just to suit your convenience? The Prophets are the best of all creatures, yet they have always had to suffer afflictions and so it is for their followers, those who tread in their footsteps as they walk along their highway, emulating their example. [Shaikh Abdul Qadir al-Jilani]

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"Actions are only by intentions..

Oct. 10th, 2009 11:14 pm
PALESTINE
..and every man has only that which he intended." [Rasulullah (peace be upon him), first Hadith]

Intentions do not affect sins, just as purification does not affect that which is, by it very nature, impure. A man who goes along with another who is slandering a Muslim, then pretends that he only wanted to humor him, is himself a slanderer. A malicious intention attached to a good deed spoils it and renders it malicious; likewise when one performs good deeds for the sake of wealth and prestige. Strive always to intend that your obedience be solely for the sake of God, and that whatever licit things you may use are only to help you obey Him.

Know that many intentions can attach to a single act, and that each of them will attract its full reward. An example of this in devotional activities is when someone reads the Qur'an intending to commune with God, but also to extract from it different kinds of knowledge, to profit those who listen or just happen to hear, or any other good intention. And an example in licit matters is to eat with the intention of obeying the command of your Lord in His saying (Exalted is He!):


O you who believe! Eat of the good things with which We have provided you, and give thanks to God. (2: 172)

Intend by doing so to acquire strength for devotion, and to put yourself in a situation where you must thank your Lord. You can apply these two examples in an analogous fashion to all other devotional and licit activities. [Al-Haddad, The Book of Assistance]

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..hasbarats..

Oct. 5th, 2009 01:44 am
PALESTINE
Israel’s propagandists shoot themselves in the foot as they shoot off their mouths.

taken from gregfelton.com

September 30, 2009

If you have ever visited a blog or on-line discussion group on the Middle East you have doubtless had the misfortune to run into them.

They are known by the language they use: depraved sexual insults, bile, bigotry, threats, disinformation and character assassination. That’s right: I’m talking about “hasbarats,” zionist trolls who infect the Internet with hasbara, pro-Israel propaganda. Of course, mainstream media hasbarats have been around for decades, as have “hasbaratchiks,” fifth-columns in foreign governments who subvert national policies to serve Israel. The Internet, though, is the latest, some might say the greatest, propaganda playground, and Israel cannot cope with factual, passionate, well-documented stories that expose its war crimes and unrepentant criminality.

If you’ve come across a hasbarat, on-line or otherwise, you have learned that no amount of reasoned argument or intellectual maturity has any effect. That’s because hasbarats don’t care if they come across as ignorant, obnoxious, nasty or inane. All that matters for them is sabotaging criticism of Israel and support for Muslims. They're like anti-intellectual stink bombs: designed to cause maximum discomfort but have little if any real power.

This deliberate proliferation of on-line hasbarats raises two points. The first concerns why anyone would spend hours a day to prostitute themselves for Israel. Money, of course. Ilan Shturman, deputy director of the Israeli foreign ministry’s hasbara department (!), told an Israeli business newspaper in July that US$150,000 had been allocated for the first stage of a campaign to seed the Internet with hasbarats:

“Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the hasbara department of the Israeli foreign ministry and I want to tell you the following.’ Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis. They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the foreign ministry developed.”

The second point is why Israel felt it had to resort to intellectual fraud on an international scale. The Internet has shown that Israel is a failed oppressor state that commits crimes against humanity as a matter of policy. The last straw for many was “Operation Cast Lead,” an act of such unspeakable unapologetic sadism that allusions to Nazi Germany are entirely appropriate.

Every day, it seems, the mythic foundations of Israel’s legitimacy—the holocaust, Jewish victimhood, Jewish “people,” Israeli “democracy,” “evil” Muslims—are exposed for all to see.

In January, Amir Gissin, Israel’s consul-general in Toronto, sent out a hasbara recruitment letter, which read in part: “If you are frustrated or concerned with the portrayal of Israel in Canadian News and with biased [sic] depictions, your voice can be heard. Now, think that you’re not alone 10,000 voices like yours can respond every day: praise, protest, inform, correct on leading Canadian news websites, in real time, effectively.”

The weakness with this tactic, as you probably figured out, is that hasbarats will inevitably shout and whine themselves into irrelevance. Eventually, intelligent people will tune out the zionist boilerplate, the anti-Muslim smears, and the interminable drone about the holocaust. Already, the once-dreaded epithet “anti-Semite” has lost all significance, as if it ever had any, and the person who hurled it is more likely to be mocked than feared.

Two recent events demonstrate the growing desperation and ineptitude of Israel’s propaganda industry. Today, we look at an example of “positive hasbara.”

Toronto International Film Festival
A major tactic of hasbarats is to project the illusion that Israel is a normal Western democracy, thereby taking focus away from Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians. Also, countries that buy into the deceit will be unwilling to criticize Israel for fear of calling into question their role in covering up zionist war crimes.

This tactic was tried at the recent Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) as Tel Aviv was spotlighted in a City-to-City program with Toronto. The ostensible purpose was to use an apolitical, cultural event to obscure the tyranny that Tel Aviv represents, but more than 1,000 filmmakers and performers, weren’t fooled. They put their names to The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation, an open letter to the TIFF that protested the co-optation of the festival by the Israeli propaganda machine.

The protest accomplished precisely what the hasbarats tried to prevent. “Rather than talking about Israel’s rich cinematic culture, the buzz this week in Toronto has centered on the one thing Israeli officials had sought to avoid: the conflict with the Palestinians,” reported the Jewish Telegraph Agency.


The hasbara campaign to ‘re-brand’ Israel during the Toronto International Film Festival failed miserably. So much attention was paid to the protest that it overshadowed the political objectives of Israel’s propaganda machine.


Another major defeat for Israel came courtesy of Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert. After offering a knee-jerk condemnation of the City-to-City protests, he reversed himself the next day:

“I wasn't prepared with enough facts about the events leading up to the Festival's decision to showcase Tel Aviv in the City-to-City section. I [initially] thought of it as an innocent goodwill gesture, but now realize it was part of a deliberate plan to ‘re-brand’ Israel in Toronto, as a pilot for a larger such program. The Festival should never have agreed to be used like this. It was naïve for the plan’s supporters to believe it would have the effect they hoped for.”

Speaking of naïve, how about Ron Huldai, mayor of Tel Aviv! Whether out of overconfidence or stupidity, he publicly admitted the underlying hasbara in an interview with the JTA: “While the City to City program was initiated by the festival, the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs was involved as part of its Brand Israel media and advertising campaign, which was launched last year.”

Quite obviously, Israel would have been better off if the hasbarats had not tried to manipulate the festival. Even the predictable pro-Israel counterprotest merely added to the protest’s notoriety and detracted from the cultural propaganda. Moreover the standard claim that the protest was an attack on Israel and artistic freedom was demonstrably false. If anything, the protest highlighted Israel’s active suppression of Palestinian culture. According to the authors of the Toronto Declaration:

“Many Palestinian artists and filmmakers, denied freedom of movement by Israel’s Occupation and pass system, are de facto boycotted, unable to communicate with their communities or travel freely. The double standard is mind-boggling and, slowly, these are the issues we are helping to put under a spotlight.”

Finally, it is important to note that the Declaration’s authors succeeded without any media help. They had no money to place ads, and no newspaper would publish their open letter. On the other hand, hasbarats had the full support (read: “obedience”) of Canada’s national media, and lost.

If a modest, unfunded, popular protest can effectively defeat an orchestrated propaganda campaign, what does that say about Israel’s ability to pose as a legitimate, democratic state? Even though hasbarats get their disinformation out with relative ease, it is not clear that is generally accepted.

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Paul J Balles – The Israel Lobby's Global Propaganda Manual.

Sep. 19th, 2009 01:53 pm
PALESTINE

taken from here

Paul J. Balles views a major public relations manual for Israel lobbyists. Written by Dr Frank Luntz, a US Republican political consultant and pollster, on behalf of The Israel Project, a US media advocacy group, it teaches pro-Israel propagandists how to hoodwink people about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, how to silence critics and how to avoid making statements that produce negative reactions.

More than 50 years ago, Vance Packard shook the commercial world with the publication of his book The Hidden Persuaders. It was, as the book jacket claims, “A revealing, often shocking explanation of new techniques of research and methods of persuasion.”

Packard revealed, “If people couldn’t discriminate reasonably, marketers reasoned, they should be assisted in discriminating unreasonably, in some easy, warm, emotional way.”

Much merchandizing success, according to Packard, “…hinged, to a large extent, upon successfully manipulating or coping with our guilt feelings, fears, anxieties, hostilities, loneliness feelings, inner tensions”.

Packard raised serious questions of morality related to the “people-manipulating activities of persuaders … and their ability to contact millions of us simultaneously”, giving them “the power to do good or evil on a scale never before possible in a very short time”.

Among the most evil of the hidden persuaders are the political propagandists. Their “evil” stems from the fact that they have a political agenda, which discriminates unreasonably and is designed to manipulate emotions.

The manipulative approach to politics is, of course, not a discovery of the 1950s, or even the 20th century. Napoleon Bonaparte set up a press bureau that he called his Bureau of Public Opinion. Its function was “to manufacture political trends to order”.

Just as Napoleon Bonaparte believed that “public opinion is a mysterious and invisible power, to which everything must yield”, Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian author of The Prince, described the arts with which a ruling prince can maintain control of his realm.

In a document published by The Israel Project entitled “The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary”, Dr Frank Luntz unmasks a modern-day propaganda campaign that would have made Napoleon and Machiavelli proud. He writes:

There is NEVER, EVER, any justification for the deliberate slaughter of innocent women and children. NEVER. The primary Palestinian public relations goal is to demonstrate that the so-called “hopelessness of the oppressed Palestinians” is what causes them to go out and kill children. This must be challenged immediately, aggressively, and directly.


The emotional appeal to saving children works, but the appeal is based on two lies:

(1) that Palestinians generally (not only suicide bomber extremists) are the ones who kill children, while Israelis (not individual extremists, but Israel’s armed forces) never slaughter Palestinian children.

(2) The second falsehood is that the Palestinians have a public relations goal that must be challenged when, in fact, the Palestinians have proven to be hopeless and goalless when it comes to public relations. Unlike Frank Luntz, the Palestinians have no effective PR voices. They can’t even get their ambassador in the UK to speak out to the British public about Israel’s lies and propaganda.


Next, Luntz attempts to sound reasonable by speaking of acceptable disagreements about economics or politics against fundamental principles of civilized people. The evil allusion here is that the Palestinians are the uncivilized people who target Israeli children.

“We may disagree about politics and we may disagree about economics. But there is one fundamental principle that all peoples from all parts of the globe will agree on: civilized people do not target innocent women and children for death,” writes Luntz.

The entire passage, again appealing unreasonably to emotions, makes the pretence that Israel did not target innocent women and children for death with their murderous indiscriminate bombing and missile attacks on Gaza against a huge civilian population of women and children.

However, distorted propaganda about children isn’t enough for Luntz. This is but one part of a page out of 114 pages devoted to this manual for distribution to thousands of propagandists for Israel.

Advancing only as far as page nine, the guided Israel promoters will find “Words that work” (sections that are actually throughout the book). Here’s what Luntz has to say about Gaza:

Israel made painful sacrifices and took a risk to give peace a chance. They voluntarily removed over 9,000 settlers from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, abandoning homes, schools, businesses, and places of worship in the hopes of renewing the peace process.


How generous he makes the Israelis appear, when in fact the removal of Jewish settlers from Gaza had nothing to do with giving peace a chance. As the Israeli Yossi Alpher points out, removal of the settlers gave a demographic advantage to Israel. He says, “no longer are Jewish and Arab populations mixed there in a manner that points to a single binational state as the solution”.

In other words, Ariel Sharon could close the borders, imprison Gazans, hoping they will simply be forced to leave by starvation, murder fishermen and initiate military operations whenever they’re not involved in attacking Lebanon to the north, to slaughter more Hamas women and children.

Then Luntz adds more “Words that work” for the indoctrination of his readers – Israeli propagandists:

Despite making an overture for peace by withdrawing from Gaza, Israel continues to face terrorist attacks, including rocket attacks and drive-by shootings of innocent Israelis. Israel knows that for a lasting peace, they must be free from terrorism and live with defensible borders.


As mentioned earlier, withdrawal from Gaza had nothing to do with an “overture for peace”. The rocket attacks have been a response to being locked into an open-air prison; and they’re aimed at land stolen by Israel. The “drive-by shootings of innocent Israelis” are figments of Luntz’s imagination.

The “free from terrorism and live with defensible borders” line is the overworked motto that twists the truth in the continuing belief that if repeated often enough it will be believed.

No matter how often the propagandists repeat this mantra, the truth is that a few resistance fighters from Hamas have lobbed ineffective rockets against a well-supplied army of Israel’s state terrorists; and the borders they want to defend are on land stolen from the Palestinians.

One might wish that the training in how to spread Israeli propaganda would stop there. If the Palestinians were up to the task, they might counter the lies with what they know of the history and suffering of Palestinians under occupation. Unfortunately, those with the linguistic ability to cope with the Israeli propaganda machine worry about endangering themselves and their families by speaking the truth.

Those who can only speak Arabic fluently are often busy fighting tribal wars within (Gazans vs. the Palestinian Authority), and they can’t compete with Israel’s skilled English speakers or against the organized promotional efforts Israel makes with Americans and Europeans.

Making the task of exposing the lies and deceit exceptionally difficult, Luntz’s propaganda tract, which unravels advice about the “how-to” of Israeli propaganda for 114 pages, seems Herculean to say the least.

Luntz offers advice about things like “Americans want a team to cheer for. Let the public know GOOD things about Israel.” He follows that with “Draw direct parallels between Israel and America – including the need to defend against terrorism.”

He tells his readers to make salient comparisons between Israel and America: “The language of Israel is the language of America: ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ’security’, and ‘peace’”.

Even while Israel is throwing Arabs out of their homes in East Jerusalem to make room for Jews, Luntz repeats the boast about how “Israel, America’s ally, is a democracy in the Middle East”. If he reported the truth about the so-called democracy in Israel, he would reveal how it’s really a bigoted apartheid state.

The book is full of charts showing just how effective Israel’s propaganda campaign has been. Not only do Americans believe that Israel is America’s closest ally in the Middle East, but that they both share the same values.

Another chart shows that 58 per cent of Americans believe that the US should support Israel, while only 9 per cent believe that they should support Palestinians. Even when coaching others in how to propagandize, Luntz couldn’t resist the revealing boast about how effective their PR work has been.

The entire screed utilizes all the tricks available to a clever wordsmith: how to use rhetorical questions to silence others, how to pretend that you’re sympathetic with the people but not their evil leaders, how to avoid making statements that produce negative reactions.

All of that came from the first of 18 chapters. Several other chapters, especially on “words that work”, talk about settlements, Israel’s so-called right to self-defence, Hamas, and tackling a nuclear Iran will be taken up in coming exposures.

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CIA: Secret Operations, Drug Money

Aug. 16th, 2009 02:57 pm
PALESTINE

Full article here uruknet.info

By Farzana Syah

In Afghanistan, U.S./NATO have put the blame on Taliban for poppy cultivation to finance their resistance to allied forces. Ironically, it was only in Taliban era when the world had seen a sharp decline in opium crop in Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban had banned opium cultivation nationwide, probably for the first time in Afghan history. A more important question is how and when this business of drug production and trafficking started in region? CIA has been using drug money since long to generate money to support its operations all over the world. It did not start in Afghanistan it was brought here after experimenting somewhere else. This is something which is not a lead story in international media for obvious reasons despite the fact it is harming millions of lives around the globe.

........Operations like the one completed in Iran in 1953 to remove Prime Minister Mussadaq and backing Shah’s regime by using assets in civil society, or in Iraq in 1975 to arm Iraqi Kurds to destabilize Pre-Saddam Iraq or more recently using its assets in Pakistan to pave the way of direct U.S. intervention in Pakistan under pretext of hunting Al-Qaeda...........

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