‘America lives in a fascist state’

The merger of corporate and government powers in modern America is plain and simple fascism, believes Gerald Celente, the founder of the Trends Research Institute and publisher of Trends Journal.

Celente takes an in-depth look at what AIG and Goldman Sachs really are and the people behind them; explains the policies of the Obama’s administration, and the moral basis for a forthcoming new American Revolution.

more...

The Totalitarianizing of Britain: The crushing of eco-protest brings shame on our police

This blogger among others echoed Noam Chomsky's warning after 911 that the greatest danger facing the West was not from terrorism but from the assault on our liberties that would inevitably take place as a result of the 'security measures' that would be put in place. Predictably, that assault took place and the rule of law has been replaced, thanks to Messrs Bush and Blair, by police state rule.

The persecution of Muslims was just the beginning. Now that that phase has mostly played itself out the next to be persecuted are domestic dissidents and protest groups. What the UK police did at Kingsnorth last year and more recently at the London G20 protests mark a more ominous turn of the screw.

Gradually, those in the establishment are waking up. Let's hope that there is still time in order to halt what looks like an inexorable slide into totalitarianism. Journalist, Henry Porter, writes in yesterday's Observer:

This is the end-product of the disastrous legislative assault on Britain's rights and liberties inaugurated by Tony Blair. We are now in a crisis of moral or perhaps deep psychic inconsistency, with a government that in one half of its brain desires good PR on climate change but in the other half seethes with the authoritarian desire to stamp out an impertinent challenge to its record of inactivity. The manifestation of this arrogance can be seen in the police officers at the G20 demonstrations who covered their faces and removed their identifying numbers from their uniforms before lashing out at demonstrators - perhaps killing Ian Tomlinson - and the tactic of "kettling", which wrongly deprives people of their liberty, as well as risks their safety.

more...

Has Cheney been Murdering Americans?

The stunning revelation from our nation’s premiere investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh, that Vice President Dick Cheney was running an “executive assassination ring” directly under his control and outside of the normal chain of command has raised the specter that the Vice President of the United States may have been murdering Americans. As a scholar who has invested a considerable effort in the investigation of the death of US Senator Paul Wellstone, this comes as no surprise. I and other experts with whom I have collaborated long since concluded that the crash that took his life and those of his wife, daughter, three aides and two pilots was brought about deliberately, where Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Karl Rove are the principal suspects. Other cases in which assassination appears all too probable include those of NFL star Pat Tillman and of 9/11 activist Beverly Eckert ... I expect additional evidence to clarify the death of the 9/11 activist Beverly Eckert, but there is a discernable pattern here. In relation to the question with which we began, therefore, “Has Cheney been murdering Americans?”, the research I have reviewed suggests that the answer, alas!, appears to be an unequivocal “Yes!”

more...

Bush, Putin and WW III?
Aijaz Ahmad on the Russian-Iranian handshake (2 of 3)



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Bush heats up words with Iran and Russia



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Further evidence how Bush's threats of an attack on Iran are built-up on a series of falsehoods which are constantly repeated by a complicit mainstream media and his vassals in France and Britain.

Sanctions: a Prelude to War?



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More Warnings Of A US War On Iran
By Peter Symonds
http://www.countercurrents.org/symonds291007.htm

The Bush administration’s unprecedented decision last week to brand the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a weapons proliferator and its Quds Force as a “supporter of terrorism” has heightened tensions with Tehran and undermined European efforts at negotiations, setting the stage for a US attack on Iran


'War On Terror' Is Now War On Iran
By Pepe Escobar
http://www.countercurrents.org/escobar291007.htm

Scores of middle-aged, mild-mannered, bearded gentlemen - the technocrats of the Iranian military bourgeoisie - are now officially enjoying the status of "terrorists", at least from a Washington point of view


The Devil’s Playground
By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich
http://www.countercurrents.org/ulrich291007.htm

I make an effort to understand this President turned dictator and his reasons for planning genocide. Given Russia’s stark warning and Europe’s precarious stance in that 25% of it’s oil and 40% of its natural gas is supplied by Russia, a military confrontation with Iran would likely drag in other nations. What reason other than sheer madness would he have for doing this?

from Countercurrents

No evidence Iran is making nukes: ElBaradei 29 Oct 2007 Chief UN atomic watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei said overnight he had no evidence Iran was building nuclear weapons and accused US leaders of adding "fuel to the fire" with recent bellicose rhetoric. "I have not received any information that there is a concrete active nuclear weapons program going on right now," the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told CNN.

Head of UN nuclear agency calls on Bush to ease Iran rhetoric 28 Oct 2007 Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, urged the Bush administration Sunday to soften its rhetoric against Tehran, even as a prominent Democratic senator said he feared that U.S. military action was drawing "precariously close." The comments by ElBaradei and Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, the senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee, came in response to the regime's recent tough talk, including President [sic] George W. Bush's warning of "World War III" if Tehran obtained nuclear arms, and Vice President [sic] Dick Cheney's caution of "serious consequences" for Iran.

from CLG Newsletter

'Many in the US Military Think Bush and Cheney Are Out of Control'

In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, the Amsterdam-based military historian Gabriel Kolko talks about the prospect of war with Iran and argues that many in the US military now view the White House as being 'out of control.'

Read it here

It’s the Oil
Jim Holt
London Review of Books

Iraq is ‘unwinnable’, a ‘quagmire’, a ‘fiasco’: so goes the received opinion. But there is good reason to think that, from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is none of these things. Indeed, the US may be ‘stuck’ precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no ‘exit strategy’.

Now read on

Armageddon: Bush returns to Cold War



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"Pariah nation": look who's talking!

There's no getting away from it: the MSM is the tyranny of the new aristocracy chattering to itself. Fed up of the endless state propaganda spouted daily by the BBC, the so-called Independent Television News and the "community centered" Channel 4 News, I turned to More 4 News in the hope of intelligent comment.

No such luck.

Yesterday, for example, More 4 News' newest dolly-bird, Kylie Morris, presented an envious piece concerning the diplomatic success of Iran in forming a non-aggression pact between Caspian countries. Iran's friendship with Russia was received with cynical comments about Russia's 'need to stay friends for Iran's oil'.

No mention of the fact that both Iran and Russia work through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization which unites the two countries' economic interests. No observation that a non-aggression pact is meant to preserve the peace and that the only aggression that both Iran and Russia faces today is likely to come from the war criminals hiding in the White House.

Any mention of that would ensure Ms Morris being fired immediately from her job. So instead we get nasty little comments such as Iran being a "pariah nation".

Pariah nation? Who says so, Ms Morris? Iran's Middle Eastern neighbours? No. The European Union? No.

Then who?

Oh, that rogue in the White House again! He who is eminently more describable as a pariah then any other person or nation on this planet.

And More 4 News, an ostensibly British enterprise, is obliged to act as the Number One pariah's conduit. Well, what more can you expect in a vassal state like Britain which, in the days of the Thatcher/Reagan Arms Race in the 'eighties earned itself the Orwellian label of being 'Airstrip One' for the USA?

So Bye, bye More 4, & Hello the Real News



Link

Wolfowitz 1991: "With the end of the Cold War, we can now use our military with impunity."

from Medialens

From Wesley Clark's memoirs:

"Seven countries in five years"

Wesley Clark's new memoir casts more light on the Bush administration's secret strategies for regime change in Iran and elsewhere.

By Joe Conason

Oct. 12, 2007 | While the Bush White House promotes the possibility of armed conflict with Iran, a tantalizing passage in Wesley Clark's new memoir suggests that another war is part of a long-planned Department of Defense strategy that anticipated "regime change" by force in no fewer than seven Mideast states. Critics of the war have often voiced suspicions of such imperial schemes, but this is the first time that a high-ranking former military officer has claimed to know that such plans existed.

The existence of that classified memo would certainly cast more dubious light not only on the original decision to invade Iraq because of Saddam Hussein's weapons and ambitions but on the current efforts to justify and even instigate military action against Iran.

In "A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country," published by Palgrave Macmillan last month, the former four-star general recalls two visits to the Pentagon following the terrorist attacks of September 2001. On the first visit, less than two weeks after Sept. 11, he writes, a "senior general" told him, "We're going to attack Iraq. The decision has basically been made."

.......... .......... ..........

Six weeks later, Clark returned to Washington to see the same general and inquired whether the plan to strike Iraq was still under consideration. The general's response was stunning:

"'Oh, it's worse than that,' he said, holding up a memo on his desk. 'Here's the paper from the Office of the Secretary of Defense [then Donald Rumsfeld] outlining the strategy. We're going to take out seven countries in five years.' And he named them, starting with Iraq and Syria and ending with Iran."

While Clark doesn't name the other four countries, he has mentioned in televised interviews that the hit list included Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan. Indeed, he has described this same conversation on a few occasions over the past year, including in a speech at the University of Alabama in October 2006, in an appearance on Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" broadcast last March, and most recently in an interview with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room." On "Democracy Now" he spoke about the meetings and the memo in slightly greater detail, saying that he had made the first Pentagon visit "on or about Sept. 20."

Clark says he didn't read the memo from Rumsfeld's office. When the general first held it up, he remembers asking, "Is it classified?" Receiving an affirmative answer, he said, "Well, don't show it to me." He also says that when he saw the same general last year and reminded him of their conversation, the officer said, "Sir, I didn't show you that memo! I didn't show it to you!"

During the Blitzer interview, Clark backed off slightly, conceding that the memo "wasn't [necessarily] a plan. Maybe it was a think piece. Maybe it was a sort of notional concept, but what it was, was the kind of indication of dialogue around this town in official circles ... that has poisoned the atmosphere and made it very difficult for this administration to achieve any success in the region."

Clark's book also describes a telling encounter nearly a decade earlier with neoconservative eminence Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense under Rumsfeld who resigned under a cloud of scandal from the World Bank last spring. In May 1991, according to Clark, he dropped in for a conversation with Wolfowitz, then the third-ranking civilian in the Pentagon, to congratulate him on the success of the Gulf War.

"We screwed up and left Saddam Hussein in power. The president [then George H.W. Bush] believes he'll be overthrown by his own people, but I rather doubt it," he quotes Wolfowitz lamenting. "But we did learn one thing that's very important. With the end of the Cold War, we can now use our military with impunity. The Soviets won't come in to block us. And we've got five, maybe 10, years to clean up these old Soviet surrogate regimes like Iraq and Syria before the next superpower emerges to challenge us ... We could have a little more time, but no one really knows."

More than a decade and a half later, the neoconservative obsession with regime change persists and flourishes in the upper reaches of the Bush administration, where Vice President Dick Cheney is reportedly pressing for action against Iran. (Of course, by overthrowing Saddam and putting the Shiites in control of Iraq, Cheney and President Bush have already done more to empower Tehran than the ruling mullahs could ever have imagined in their fondest fantasies.) The stated reasons range from Iran's suspected sponsorship of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq to its worrisome pursuit of nuclear power, but Clark's allegations strongly suggest American policymakers chose war years ago, no matter what Tehran ended up doing.

Perhaps it is time for the appropriate Senate and House committees to start asking harder questions about this administration's secret strategies for the Mideast. They might begin by interviewing Clark behind closed doors about that classified memo -- and to what extent such extreme ideas have promoted the "permanent war" policy that is fundamental to neoconservative ideology.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason.../wesley_clark/

The Politics of Genocide



Link

The Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. House of representatives calls the Armenian Massacre "genocide." Why is President Bush against it? And will this matter affect the war in Iraq?

Answers to these stories and more on Link TV 's Mosaic Intelligence Report.

For more visit http://www.linktv.org

Return to the Roots of Bush's "War against the Terrists"



Link

Iran's Revolutionary Guard branded "terrorists"



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The Doomsday US Wargames Continue

Like a lot of folk these days I don't watch the tube anymore to learn of world events. The Net has really exposed the propaganda-mongers for what they really are with, in Britain, that inveterate liar and tired old Aunty BBC heading the list of worst offenders. Actually 'worst offenders' is being kind. They are warmongers and hence war criminals.

When I do switch on the telly for some entertainment --I agree with John Pilger, that's what mainstream media news is today, entertainment -- I watch it through the heaviest megafilters of discrimination and distrust, just to see what the propaganda-mongers are saying. I listen to what they say and believe something approximating the opposite.

At present, Sky News is busily massaging the public (though bludgeoning would be a better description) to accept the new would-be nuclear (Bush lingo) "terrist" enemy to be Pakistan. You can be sure that this new episode of public brain-washing comes ahead of a new Bush crusade against the terrists in Pakistan and the assassination of the dictator Musharraf by the CIA who will then conveniently blame it on 'Islamic fundamentalists.'

Just watch the thing as it develops.

Meantime, it seems that the demon Cheney has been foiled in an attempt to carry out an unannounced bombing of Iran with nuclear Cruise missiles. Thanks to the brave actions of some honourable folk in the US Military his murderous plan was thwarted just in time

See here

and here

and here

It's a miracle that the diabolic duo, Bush and Cheney, with their AIPAC minions haven't yet succeeded in attacking Iran but, at the end of the day, they are only the puppets of the big oil and gas company multinationals who aren't yet ready to kill the golden goose which lays their eggs. An excuse for a war in Pakistan, on the other hand, will extend the theatre of military actions from Afghanistan and give the Anglo-Saxon Alliance an excuse to expropriate that area of north-western Asia for at least the next decade.

Thus the neocons' Project for a New American Century will have been fullfilled. And, as usual, the warmongers who rule US foreign policy and the Anglo-Saxon Alliance are keeping all their options option.

Back here in Britain, it is all the more imperative that the maximum pressure possible is brought to ensure that Gordon Brown totally dissociates his country from a US attack on Iran and that he is persuaded to withdraw all British troops from not only Iraq but Afghanistan while preventing the US war-machine using British bases for its future global aggressions.

Britain simply has to stop behaving like a third-rate vassal-state banana republic pretending to play the nuclear imperial power it no longer is.

Les jeux de guerre Doomsday des USA continuent

Comme beaucoup de gens de nos jours je n'observe plus le télé pour apprendre des événements du monde. Le Net a vraiment exposé les vendeurs du propagande pour ce qu'ils sont vraiment, en Grande-Bretagne, ce menteur invétéré, la vieille tante fatigué, le BBC étant à la tête de la liste des plus mauvais contrevenants. En fait l’expression les « plus mauvais contrevenants » est aimable. Ils sont des « warmongers » et par conséquent des criminels de guerre.

Quand je voir la télévision pour un divertissement - je suis d'accord avec le journaliste britannique, John Pilger, c'est ce qui sont aujourd'hui les nouvelles des « mainstream media » ou MSM sont un divertissement - je l'observe par les megafilters les plus lourds de la discrimination et de la méfiance, voir juste ce que les machines de propagande indiquent. J'écoute ce qu'ils disent et croient quelque chose qui rapproche l'opposé.

Actuellement, les nouvelles de SKY massent le public (matraquer cependant serait une meilleure description) pour accepter le nouvel ennemi nucléaire potentiel de « terrist » pour être le Pakistan. Vous pouvez être sûr que ce nouvel épisode de public soumettant à un lavage de cerveau vient en avant d'une nouvelle croisade de Bush contre ses terrists (sic) au Pakistan et de l'assassinat du dictateur Musharraf par la CIA qui le blâmera alors commodément sur « les fondamentalistes islamiques. »

Montre juste la chose comme elle se développe.

En attendant, il semble que le démon Cheney a été contrecarré afin d'essayer d'effectuer un bombardement inattendu de l'Iran avec les missiles nucléaires de Cruise. Grâce aux actions braves de quelques gens honorables dans les militaires des USA son plan meurtrier a été contrecarrée juste à temps

Voyez ici

et ici

et ici

C'est un miracle que le duo diabolique, Bush et Cheney, avec leurs subordonnés d'AIPAC n'ont pas encore réussi à attaquer l'Iran mais, à la fin du jour, ils sont seulement les marionnettes des grandes multinationales de compagnie de pétrole et de gaz qui ne sont pas encore prêtes à tuer l'oie qui pond leurs oeufs d’or. Une excuse pour une guerre au Pakistan, d'une part, prolongera le théâtre des actions militaires d'Afghanistan et donnera à l'alliance d'Anglo-Saxon une excuse pour exproprier cette région de l'Asie du nord-ouest pour au moins la décennie suivante.

Ainsi le projet des neocons pendant un nouveau siècle américain aura été accompli. Et, comme d'habitude, les warmongers qui règnent la politique étrangère des USA et l'alliance d'Anglo-Saxon gardent toute leurs options.

Ici en Grande-Bretagne, il est plus impératif que la pression maximum possible soit apportée pour s'assurer que Gordon Brown dissocie totalement son pays d'une attaque des USA sur l'Iran et qu'il est persuadé de retirer toutes les troupes britanniques non seulement d'Irak mais d'Afghanistan tout en empêchant la machine-de-guerre des USA en utilisant les bases britanniques pour ses futures agressions globales.

La Grande-Bretagne simplement doit cesser de se comporter comme une république de banane et d'état de vassal de troisième-taux feignant pour jouer la puissance impériale nucléaire qu'elle n'est plus.

Staging Nukes for Iran?

*********

Cet article est maintenant à la Nouvelle civilisation sur Wordpress

Protesta contra Bush en Australia
• Anuncian gran marcha de rechazo el sábado. Despliegan fuerzas especiales para vigilar la cumbre de la APEC

Tomado de Juventud Rebelde

CANBERRA, Australia, septiembre 5.— Las protestas por la presencia de George W. Bush en Australia continúan sintiéndose en Sydney, y esas acciones se irán incrementando a medida que se acerque el inicio del Foro de Cooperación Económica Asia-Pacífico (APEC) a celebrarse en esa ciudad el fin de semana próximo.

Por segundo dÍa consecutivo los australianos marcharon en Sydney contra Bush. Foto: AP

La organización ecologista Greenpeace marcó el paso en las protestas de este miércoles con la colocación de sendas estatuas de hielo de Bush y John Howard, el primer ministro australiano, con el objetivo de que se derritan como protesta por la inacción de Australia y Estados Unidos en el tema del calentamiento global, dice AFP.

Los ecologistas critican la utilización excesiva por parte de los países industrializados de energías fósiles, mientras que Sydney y Washington rehúsan ratificar el Protocolo de Kyoto sobre la reducción de gases que producen el efecto invernadero.

Otra original protesta está prevista para el viernes, cuando cerca de 2 000 personas pretenden congregarse en un parque de Sidney cerca de donde se reunirán los dirigentes de la APEC para decirle verdaderamente a Bush lo que piensan de su visita.

El punto culminante que marcará a las muestras de rechazo unánime por la presencia del jefe de la Casa Blanca en territorio australiano, será una gran marcha el sábado en la que se espera participen decenas de miles de personas.

Para contener las protestas —que en otras Cumbres han derivado en represión y hechos de violencia— las autoridades australianas cercaron con altas vallas metálicas una gran parte del centro de la ciudad, incluyendo el emblemático edificio de La Opera, cerrado al público desde el martes y hasta el próximo domingo.

La policía australiana presentó un recurso ante la justicia para prohibir la manifestación del sábado, porque —alegan— constituye una seria amenaza a la seguridad si se le permite pasar, como está previsto, por el consulado estadounidense.

Unos 3 500 policías y 1 500 soldados de fuerzas especiales y de unidades antiterroristas fueron desplegados en la ciudad para vigilar la cumbre y la estadía de los mandatarios, en lo que se considera el mayor operativo de seguridad de la historia de Australia.

Granma Internacional

En francais

Protest against Bush in Australia

Big opposition march announced for Saturday. Special forces deployed to monitor APEC Summit

CANBERRA, Australia, Sept. 5.— Protests against the presence of George W. Bush in Australia continued in Sydney and are expected to continue to grow, leading up to the start of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum in that city at the end of the week.

For the second straight day, Australians marched against Bush in Sydney. Photo: AP

The environmental organization Greenpeace participated in Wednesday’s demonstrations by erecting two ice sculptures of Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard, with the idea that they will melt in protest against the lack of action to counter global warming on the part of Australia and the United States, the AFP reported.

Environmentalists are criticizing the excessive utilization of fossil fuels by the industrialized countries, while Sydney and Washington refuse to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on the reduction of greenhouse gases.

Another creative protest is expected on Friday, when some 2,000 people plan to gather in a Sydney park near where APEC leaders will meet, to send a message to Bush about what they really think about his visit.

The culmination of these demonstrations of opposition to the presence of the White House chief on Australian territory will be a big march on Saturday, in which tens of thousands of people are expected to participate.

Translated by Granma International

The Psychosis of Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism

Those behind the organisation of an illegal demonstration -- supposedly against the "Islamisation of Europe" but what will, in effect, be a gathering ground for anti-semites (against both Jew and Muslim), racists, extreme right national chauvinists and other such low-life -- are ostensibly the SIOE whose spokesperson, Netha, is quoted in a Breaking News article below.

This march has been banned by the Brussels municipal authorities on perfectly legal grounds provided for in the European Convention of Human Rights, ie that it is likely to lead to confrontation and clashes between opposing groups and thus threaten public safety.

In ignoring the ban and calling for it to go ahead the SIOE is not only preparing to act outside the law but in a manner very likely to provoke confrontations likely to lead to violence, putting the safety and lives of innocent citizens at risk. This kind of provocative attitude is characteristic of the racists whose hate inevitably bursts out in violence.

Some years back, Britain's racist National Front attempted a similar march in Aberdeen and we were able to pressure the Aberdeen municipal council and the Police into using the same legal provisos of the Human Rights Convention to ban that march. Since then the National Front and their hangers-on have not dared to show their faces in public in the north of Scotland.

So on behalf of my French comrades and Opération SCHITA I wish the Burgomaster of Brussels, Freddy Thielemans, all good luck in ensuring that the streets of Brussels are kept clean of the chickenhawk nazis. As for myself, I do not believe in showing any mercy to such types. Racism and anti-semitism are not only behavioural aberrations, they are rooted in a form of individual and collective psychosis which, given a chance, can spread like wildfire throughout communities.

The chickenhawk nazis know that full well and wait, like vultures, to exploit fear and ignorance to spread their vile sickness. George Bush and Tony Blair knew it too when, with the engineers of 911, they fabricated an entirely false "War on Terror" in which the systematic demonisation of Muslims played a vital part. By doing so they were not only able to carry out their imperialistic adventures in the interest of multinational capitalism but distracted their publics from the economic crimes and attacks on civil liberties they committed, on behalf of capital, against our societies.

Neo-Nazi racism and anti-semitism has to be stamped-on hard so I for one would not lose a moment's sleep if the hard-headed nazis were to be water-cannoned, tear-gassed, tasered, beaten black and blue and served with exemplary prison sentences for defying the law. Sadly, however, I fear that the Belgian police will placate them with only kid gloves.

What Bush, Blair and the chickenhawk nazis have in common is that they are past masters in lying and deceit, abuse, terror and predatory exploitation. They will twist events and turn them on their head, they have no concern for the suffering of others just so long as they can achieve their own greedy ends.

An example of this is how the shadowy characters behind the predominantly Francophone blogs of Les Grouiks (which Blogger refuses to close down even though they clearly contravene Blogger's own contractual terms) spit and snarl at anyone who dares to oppose them. My colleague, Christine Louis-Quéré, has for years been a target for such character assassination. Similarly, our comrade, Xavier-Yves Pedri who organises Opération SCHITA to expose the racists.

Now, I have become a target for Les Grouiks whose defamatory article against me includes a vomitory of insults which ends in calling me a "Kosher Pig", proving that these people are anti-semites period: as much against Jews as they are Muslims. On one occasion, when a Jewish Rabbi in Marseilles donated funds towards the building of a Muslim mosque, the poor man was hounded and abused by the chickenhawk nazis.

The obsessive manner in which Les Grouiks and their fellow-travellers attack, defame, misrepresent and threaten those who oppose them suggests not just a predatory nastiness but something more akin to a demonic psychosis.

Continued here

The War Criminal in the Living Room by Paul Craig Roberts

Global Research, September 3, 2007

informationclearinghouse.info - 2007-08-31

The media is silent, Congress is absent, and Americans are distracted as George W. Bush openly prepares aggression against Iran. US Navy aircraft carrier strike forces are deployed off Iran. US Air Force jets and missile systems are deployed in bases in countries bordering or near to Iran. US B-2 stealth bombers have been refitted to carry 30,000 pound "bunker buster" bombs. The US government is financing terrorist and separatist groups within Iran. US Special Forces teams are conducting terrorist operations inside Iran. US war doctrine has been altered to permit first strike nuclear attack on Iran and other non-nuclear countries. Bush's war threats against Iran have intensified during the course of this year. The American people are being fed a repeat of the lies used to justify naked aggression against Iraq. Bush is too self-righteous to see the dark humor in his denunciations of Iran for threatening "the security of nations everywhere" and of the Iraqi resistance for "a vision that rejects tolerance, crushes all dissent, and justifies the murder of innocent men, women, and children in the pursuit of political power." Those are precisely the words that most of the world applies to Bush and his Brownshirt administration. The Pew Foundation's world polls show that despite all the American and Israeli propaganda against Iran, the US and Israel are regarded as no less threats to world stability than demonized Iran. Bush has discarded habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions, justified torture and secret trials, damned critics as anti-American, and is responsible, according to Information Clearing House, for over one million deaths of Iraqi civilians, which puts Bush high on the list of mass murderers of all time. The vast majority of "kills" by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan are civilians. Now Bush wants to murder more. We have to kill Iranians "over there," Bush says, "before they come over here." There is no possibility that Iranians or any Muslims who have no air force, no navy, no modern military technology are going to "come over here," and no indication that they plan to do so. The Muslims are disunited and have been for centuries. That is what makes them vulnerable to colonial rule. If Muslims were united, the US would already have lost its army in Iraq. Indeed, it would not have been able to put an army in Iraq. Meanwhile the US media focuses on whether Republican Senator Larry Craig is a homosexual or has offended gays by denying to be one of them. The run-up for the public's attention is why a South Carolina beauty queen cannot answer a simple question about why her generation is unable to find the United States on a map. The war criminal is in the living room, and no official notice is taken of the fact. Lacking US troops with which to invade Iran, the Bush administration has decided to bomb Iran "back into the stone age." Punishing air and missile attacks have been designed not merely to destroy Iran's nuclear energy projects, but also to destroy the public infrastructure, the economy, and the ability of the government to function. Encouraged by the indifference of both the American media and Christian churches to the massive casualties inflicted on Iraqi civilians, the Bush administration will not be deterred by the prospect of its air attacks inflicting massive casualties on Iranian civilians. Last summer the Bush administration demonstrated to the entire world its total disdain for Muslim life when Bush supported Israel's month-long air attack on Lebanese civilian infrastructure and civilian residences. President Bush blocked the attempt by the rest of the world to halt the gratuitous murder of Lebanese civilians and infrastructure destruction. Clearly, turning the Muslim Middle East into a wasteland is the Bush policy. For Bush, civilian casualties are a non-issue. Hegemony uber alles. The Bush administration has made its war plans for attacking Iraq and positioned its forces without any prior approval from Congress. The "unitary executive" obviously doesn't believe that an attack on Iran requires the approval of Congress. By its absence and quietude, Congress seems to agree that it has no role in the decision. In the improbable event that Congress were to make any fuss about Bush's decision to attack yet another country, the State Department has devised legalistic cover: simply declare Iran's military to be a "terrorist organization" and go to war under the cover of the existing resolution. The "Iran issue" has been created by the Bush administration, not by Iran. Iran, like many other countries, has a nuclear energy program to which it is entitled as a signatory to the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty. Inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency have found no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran. The Bush administration has brushed away this fact, which should be determining, just as the Bush administration brushed away the fact that weapons inspectors reported, prior to Bush's invasion of Iraq, that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The Bush administration managed to disrupt the work of the pesky IAEA weapons inspectors in Iran. Iran has been working successfully with the IAEA and has achieved what a senior IAEA official recently described as a milestone agreement. The Bush administration instantly went to work to discredit the agreement and unleashed its new lapdog, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, to threaten "the bombing of Iran." The Bush administration's position is legally untenable and is really nothing but a contrived excuse to start another war. Bush claims that Iran, alone among all the signatories of the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty, must be denied its right under the pact to develop nuclear energy, because Iran, along among all the other signatories, will be the only country able to deceive the IAEA inspectors and develop nuclear weapons. Therefore, Iran must be denied its rights under the agreement. Bush's position on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is as legally untenable as his position on every other issue--the Geneva Conventions, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, habeas corpus, the constitutional separation of powers, and presidential signing statements that he cavalierly attaches to new laws in order to override the legislative power of Congress. Bush's position is that the meaning of laws and treaties varies with his needs of the moment. Bush has declared himself to be the "decider." The "decider" decides whether Americans have any rights under the Constitution and whether Iran has any rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As the "decider" has decided that Iran has no such rights, the "decider" decides whether to attack Iran. No one else has any say about it. The people's representatives are just so much chaff in the wind. Whatever form of government Bush is operating under, it is far outside an accountable constitutional democratic government. Bush has transitioned America to caesarism, and even if Bush leaves office in January 2009, the powers he has accumulated in the executive will remain. Unless Bush and Cheney are impeached and convicted, there is no prospect of the US Congress and federal judiciary ever again being co-equal branches of government. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of the National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Paul Craig Roberts from Global Research