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[Global Terrorist]
Since 09-11, the world has been made to believe, through the battery of American, British and western news organisations reports, that George Bush junior is a perfectly legitimate anti-terrorist crusader. America was attacked and the president was therefore fully entitled to respond other than by dispatching the fleet, sending in the Marines and flying B-52's into the stratosphere to drop Daisy Cutters.
Bush considers himself all good and, of course Osama bin Laden is all evil. According to the us president the Al Qaida leader is a dangerous terrorist and therefore guilty, even though Washington presented only the flimsiest circumstantial evidence as proof to his guilt for 09-11. Most international jurists are unanimously warning, that the Bush Administration's onus probandi against bin Laden and his men, will not hold up in court. Therefore, Washington quickly established military tribunals, where death sentences can be pronounced in secret, out of sight of lawful and public scrutiny. The Bush II clique risks going down in history as common criminals and murderers. At the same time, they are our (Europe's) closest allies. Worse, still, in the words of former Dutch foreign minister Hans van Mierlo, Europe behaves since 09-11 versus America, ‘as a well trained little dog that dutifully follows his boss’.
Bush, new to the job, seems to assume that us-Arab relations began on 09-11, 2001. In reality, Arab objections to American conduct in foreign affairs in the region originate from that fateful moment in the world's history, when Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill decided at Yalta on the creation of Israel. This was meant to be the ultimate redemption for Nazi death camps for which Arabs or Palestinians hardly had been responsible. The state of Israel was established in tandem with Zionist terrorism against Palestinians and the Arab world, with the us, uk and the West looking on in mostly silent approval.
For half a century Arab nationalism has forcefully resented continued us and western war crimes in their part of the world. The turning of a us blind eye to many years of Israeli war crimes against Palestinians, has not only turned the Middle East into an anti-American war zone, but also has finally resulted in the establishment of Al Qaida. Washington is looked upon by the majority of a billion Muslims from Morocco to Pakistan and Indonesia as the archenemy. Americans protect Jews no matter what their crimes against Arabs are. Israeli military might is paid for, approved and delivered by Washington. Innocent Palestinian bystanders, young and old, have been killed on a daily basis for over half a century as the result of indirect us political, military and economic intervention. Bush is simply continuing a protracted policy of American war crimes everywhere.
Previously, already Franklin D. Roosevelt had behaved like a classic war criminal. He rallied Americans for the war against Fascism by deliberately allowing Japan to attack Pearl Harbour. Some 2.800 American sailors and
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military personnel died in Japanese kamikaze raids on the us fleet in Hawaii. The White House figured it was worth the price in life and limb, since it would swing American public opinion towards favouring an all out war against the Axis powers. It likewise prepared the nation for the acceptance of future heavy war casualties. In 1941, Pearl Harbour achieved the same end result as 09-11 did in 2001. The wtc and Pentagon disasters justified Americans en masse to approve Bush going to war.
Only half a century later did Thomas Fleming come up with this information based on relevant documentary proof regarding the Pearl Harbour calamity in his 628 page study, fdr, and the War within World War II (Basic Books, New York, 2001). What guarantees we have that it wasn't Bush and Co., as in 1941 with fdr, who deliberately allowed 09-11 to happen?
Most Americans and Europeans never realised that fdr was a devious schemer, until Thomas Fleming finally unearthed the facts about 1941 as late as in 2001. Roosevelt played dirty tricks on the us people, but was a gentleman compared to the ignorant gypster, who now lives in the White House. With the help of his Daddy's powerful cia friends, he stole an election in order to become the most powerful, and therefore, in his case, the most dangerous man in the world. What if in 2056 another historian would examine the by then released Washington files concerning events before, on or after 09-11-2001? Did the White House know beforehand, as Roosevelt had in the case of Pearl Harbour, that those Arab kamikaze pilots were on their way? Were Cheney and Rumsfeld in on the approaching disaster, and were Bush, while talking to schoolchildren in Florida, and Colin Powell away on business in Latin America unaware of the pending disaster?
It would not be the first time in us history either, that a President is left in the dark about criminal schemes dreamt up by the intelligence services. When folksy Texan lbj was fighting an illegal war in Asia, he was tricked by the cia into believing, that North Vietnam had deliberately caused trouble in the Tonkin Gulf. This led to his fateful decision of another us war crime to bomb Hanoi and Haiphong. Lyndon Johnson, after discovering that he had been lied to by his immediate subordinates, abruptly announced, that he would no longer be available at the White House beyond January 1969. He accused the us intelligence services of being a ‘Murder Incorporated’ which operated beyond his control. He returned to his Texas ranch a disgusted, saddened, disillusioned and perhaps a wiser man.
All us presidents since Roosevelt have conducted their foreign policies on the basis of the mischievous concept, that the life of a single American is a thousand times more precious than the lives of men, women and children anywhere else. The only other nation, which lives by a similarly sick concept of the value of human life, is Israel. There, each and every casualty on the Israeli side is stead- | |
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fastly revenged, tenfold, by killing Palestinians, including stone throwing children.
Harry Truman demonstrated this concept ostentatiously by killing 88.000 Japanese men, women and children in Hirosjima alone; in order to prevent the further loss of treasured us lives during World War II. Hitler and Göring took a similar decision on May 13, 1940. If Holland did not surrender to invading Nazis, Rotterdam would be bombed. Queen Wilhelmina opposed submission to blackmail. Holland only gave in to Hitler after the Luftwaffe wiped out the centre of Rotterdam. Truman repeated this Nazi trick on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hitler and Truman were simply guilty of the same war crimes as far back as the forties.
Ever since World War II and the ascendancy to world power status, Washington has intervened at random everywhere. The Korean War (1950-1953), still with formal un support, was the first massive military confrontation, claiming the lives of 33.629 us soldiers and 415.004 South Koreans. North Korea suffered the loss of an estimated 2 million. Washington still is accusing the Pyongyang rulers of being common outlaws, since the regime has different ideals and goals than those of Washington.
In Vietnam, Washington conducted military operations from 1958-1975. It was the first time the us choose to fight a war outside the Charter of the United Nations to which it was and is a signatory. The rest of the world, including the communist bloc, allowed American war crimes to happen in Asia, because there was little the un or anyone else could undertake against them. In Holland during the sixties, anyone who called lbj, then regarded as a friendly head-of-state, a mass murderer or a war criminal seriously risked being sent to jail.
America lost some 58.000 soldiers in Vietnam. About Vietnamese casualties less has become known, since no one really cared. They run into the millions, courtesy the White House, the Defence Department, the cia and various other terrorist organisations, all firmly established in Washington and surroundings, and destined to cause mischief overseas.
In addition to two big wars during the years 1950 to 1975 in Asia, the United States permanently conducted acts of terrorism on virtually all continents on the globe. North America is a corner of the earth, which has been spared from military conflict for almost two centuries. The us public came to accept as self-evident the notion, that fortress America was unassailable. Americans became blinded by a situation whereby they alone in the world could do as they pleased and shoot whomever they chose, realizing that literally no one in the world was in a position to retaliate anyway.
During the years of the Cold War there was the constant threat of nuclear confrontation. This dire reality somewhat managed to curb Washington from unacceptably outrageous misbehaviour in world affairs. But after
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the collapse of the ussr, the field laid wide open to us unilateralism and Yankee dictate at all levels of international relations. Even the Kyoto Protocol on the world's environment was no longer an agreement the us was prepared to observe. The Charter of the United Nations is being viewed in Washington as a nuisance for Washington. America has been indebted to the un for many years and has never ever paid its dues on time, as most civilised countries did. Some idiotic us legislators are so old, and some even unable to walk anymore, they are wheeled in to help prevent the us from fulfilling its obligations to the un.
Naturally, the 09-11 disasters left Americans in total shock. They had lived for far too long in a fool's paradise. For the first time, they realised that their nation was vulnerable to foreign attack after all. Courtesy of 19 Arab kamikaze pilots, Pearl Harbour was repeated, but this time on us home ground. All the crazy talk by Reagan and Bush, father and son, about a shield high up in the skies to ward off incoming missiles turned out to be a pipe dream. Put simply, Arab brains with incredible faith and courage transformed four us commercial airliners into extremely effective cruise missiles, made by Al Qaida. What is it that motivated these young Arab students, often with excellent scholastic records, to sacrifice their lives in order to serve the United States of America some of its own medicine? They intended to notify Washington, that half a century of American terrorism in the Arab world - always in collusion with their Israeli partners - was coming to an end.
The Vietcong achieved in the 60's and 70's a similar result. The fall of Saigon and the flight by helicopter of us Marines from the roof of the embassy in Saigon was the first time in us history, that it was realised that half a million us soldiers and all the B-52's in the world had not been able to suppress the cry for freedom of the Vietnamese people. Clad in black pyjamas, Vietcong suicide commando's ended American terrorism in Southeast Asia. America suffered a severe Vietnam trauma in 1975, when Washington had to surrender to Hanoi. In my view, 09-11 was the beginning of the end of total us-Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. Again, America is fighting a losing war, and this time, against Arab freedom fighters. If Israel is not careful it will go down as well.
us commandos may find Mullah Omar of the Taliban, and summarily kill him. They might trace Osama bin Laden and shoot him. But, Washington should have learned by now from the humiliating defeat in Vietnam. The Muslim struggle for liberation and dignity cannot be fought of with any number of us Marines, commandos, B-52's or battleships. On 09-11 combative Muslims everywhere signalled the beginning of the final war for Arab independence from western imperialism. The 19 Arab young men on us airliners were genuine freedom fighters in the first line of defence, fighting us terrorism.
What else could Al Qaida have done to fire the very first shot in the war of liberation, which only has just be- | |
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gun? How else to signal to us global cops in Washington bunkers, that the final Jihad for freedom, including freedom for the Palestinian people from continued Israeli terrorism, will be fought till the end? How else to drive home the message in Washington that the war to get rid of exploitive us oil companies, backed by fleets, soldiers and cruise missiles, which continue to plunder Arab energy riches, are numbered. Let alone, that the Arab masses finally want to rid themselves of us Quislings, disguised as kings and sheikhs, stealing themselves rich at the expense of the people.
Washington has, for more than half a century, been in the assassination business. Thus enabling the us to uphold the status quo to the advantage of Houston oil tycoons. Among them the Bushes and their cronies. During the entire second half of the twentieth century us Marines, Air Force pilots and countless cia mercenaries have been involved in open or covert military murder operations. Always sanctioned by the White House through top secret decrees, hidden in top secret cabinets, and only to be released, at the earliest, fifty years from now. Even Nikita Khrushchev managed to have a us spy plane downed over the ussr that had no business being there at all. Outlaw behaviour in world affairs has become so characteristic of the White House, that many people have by now come to accept it as ‘normal’.
The manhunt for Osama bin Laden is hardly the first time that a foreigner is a target for a massive us military chase. Most people in America readily believe that he is guilty, because the president has said so. However, since the early rise of the republic, the us system of Justice has been based on the golden rule that a suspect will not be accused until his guilt has been duly established by the courts. Poor Bush, in an hour of extreme crisis, he needed an immediate evildoer, whose guilt carried the most plausible inference. Soon, the entire western world willingly accepted Bush's pointed finger. Osama's guilt of the 09-11 attack on America has not been established at all. His own reaction was, that he was not responsible for what had happened, but at the same time he was satisfied that America had finally experienced civilian casualties at home.
Having lived from 1958-1992 in New York, the blind acceptance of taking the us president at his word, was to me the more surprising, because Americans should be by now aware, that pronouncements coming from the White House too often compare to the notorious tales of Baron von Münchhausen. Or, even worse, border on the classic lies and fabrications used by Hitler's minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, who assured Germans they were winning, while in fact they were going to hell.
There have been scores of bin Laden offenders in the past who were pursued in the same aggressive fashion. American pilots over Afghanistan were telling cnn that they feel like being on a Kentucky duck shoot. In this case, the sitting ducks were innocent Afghan civilians who
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had nothing to do with the Taliban, nor with Al Qaida, but who happened to be in the firing line. There is not much difference between an Afghan villager milking a cow being hit by us bombs, and a secretary behind a computer in the Manhattan World Trade Centre being hit by action of an Arab suicide bomber. The difference being, that the Arab students would never have attacked the us in New York and Washington, had America not been criminally misbehaving for dozens of years towards Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims in general.
Names like Nasser, Lumumba, Sukarno, Castro, Guevara, Sihanouk, Nkrumah, Allende, Bishop, Noriega, Ortega, Bhutto, Qadaffi, Saddam and many other Afro-Asian and Latin American rebels come to mind. Washington has always felt free to unilaterally decide whether these fighters against us imperialism and terrorism qualified to be assassinated, simply ousted, even when they were legitimately and democratically chosen, or whether they should be send into exile. If anyone happened to stand in the way of what the White House considered a preferred course of action to promote its global interests, to the minds of us presidents and congressmen alike anything was allowed. Shooting an unwanted basterd was often considered the easiest solution. Recently, Roland Lumumba (42), the son of the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Congo, was my guest in Amsterdam. Ask him how American and Belgian terrorists saw to it that his father was hacked to death. Or, ask the family of Salvador Allende, democratically chosen as president of Chile, how he was murdered by courtesy us terrorists, including Henry Kissinger.
Ever since World War II, when the United States became increasingly more of an imperialist global player, us governments hardly lost sleep over millions of dead people everywhere. These casualties were a direct result of terrorist interventions approved by the White House. The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, for instance, was a straightforward act of us State sponsored terrorism. So was the move by Father Bush to dispatch 36.000 military to Panama to pick up his former cia pal, Manuel Noriega and stow him away in an underground prison in Florida to be never heard of again. Daddy was already a first class terrorist, so what to expect from his lowbrow son?
In 1958 the cia organised, armed and financed a coup on the island of Sumatra to overthrow President Sukarno of Indonesia. This too was a clear-cut act of us state terrorism against the largest Muslim country in the world. In all, there were five direct cia sponsored assassination attempts on Sukarno's life. jfk re-established normal relations with Indonesia. But soon after he was killed, lbj agreed to preparations for a second full-scale armed coup against Sukarno. On October 1, 1965 general Suharto committed high treason and grabbed power in Jakarta. The cia fully supported this criminal. His fascist military dictatorship remained in power till 1998, fully financed by Wash- | |
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ington and other western nations, including the kingdom of Holland. All the rich nations of the west plus Japan were acting as terrorists towards Muslim Indonesia in supporting the bloodthirsty mass killers.
The American public is largely unaware of the extend of the mischief, that American presidents have allowed to be directed towards other nations and peoples. The cia and the us embassy in Jakarta supplied Suharto with lists of names of Indonesians considered security risks. The coup general indeed launched a nation-wide hunt for these suspects. He got so much the taste for bloodletting, that he decided to slit a few more throats. Suharto became responsible for unleashing his paracommandos on his own population, because that was what the cia told him to do. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Indonesians were cut up with knives to save bullets and were dumped into rivers. Washington even assisted Suharto to construct on a far away island a concentration camp for more than 100.000 innocent people, into a classic concentration camp. Henry Kissinger did the same for Chile in assisting Augusto Pinochet to arrange for a similar island-camp.
Suharto released them after a dozen years, but saw to it that their identification papers were branded Tapols or ex political prisoners. Hitler ordered Jews to wear yellow stars. What is the difference? Tapols were likewise earmarked by Suharto, making them social outcasts for the rest of their lives. The Nazis dealt with European Jews the same way prior to sending them to extermination camps.
Suharto was a genuine cia puppet. They were his protectors. Washington was his principal financier and arms supplier enabling him to kill more of his people. America is still protecting this terrorist. All efforts to bring this criminal to justice by the newly and democratically chosen government in Jakarta are thwarted, because Washington will not allow it. The golden rule being, that any former cia collaborator, no matter what crimes he may have committed, will be protected by Washington till death. Most voters and us citizens are not aware of these details concerning us crimes overseas. They do not realise, that, decisions regarding matters of life and death for many millions are being made in their name in Washington by a number of individuals in government who are getting away with terrorism.
When Indonesians hear George Bush proclaim that the only thing America wants to do is to bring Osama bin Laden to justice for being responsible for killing three thousand Americans on 09-11, they ask themselves: Why then are we not being allowed by the Bushites to bring Suharto to justice for the massacre of half a million innocent Indonesians? The short answer: Americans themselves are terrorists of the worst kind. The long answer: the general public has no clue what evil the people they voted into office, are capable of. They naively assume that Congress is in control. It is not. us democracy is in reality one gigantic smoke screen to fool the masses, behind which
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crooks and so-called professional politicians play their dirty, and often criminal, games.
Some time ago, a Spanish judge was so naive, that he thought it possible to prosecute another us protected fascist dictator, Augusto Pinochet, the Suharto of Chile. He, too, was brought to power by a coup engineered by the cia. Journalist Christopher Hitchens tells the Kissinger story in The Trial (Verso Publishers, New York, 2001). He convinces the reader in no uncertain terms, that the most powerful man in the Nixon Administration is a common war criminal, who should be shipped off to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.
The Spanish judge succeeded in messing up Pinochets life for several years, but again, it turned out to be completely impossible to bring this war criminal to justice, because he too was protected by Washington till his last breath. Americans should not be surprised that many Chileans despise and hate them for the many crimes the cia accomplices and murderers committed against their people. Naturally, more and more people in Latin America have come to realise how the gringo's are indeed manipulating, subverting and exploiting them. That is what Fidel Castro and Che Guevara have been telling them all along since 1959.
Following 09-11 Americans have repeatedly been asking themselves, why do foreigners hate us so much? Here is one answer. Yankees should understand that, for instance, millions of Muslims in Indonesia have not forgotten how the cia saddled them with a bunch of outlaw fascist generals from 1965 to 1998. Their nation was also robbed, looted and burdened with billions and billions of dollars in national debt in collusion with their so-called us partners, investors and benefactors.
That's why millions of Indonesians are not exactly fans of the Stars and Stripes and would rather see Yankees disappear forever. They realise only too well, how their new emerging nation has been ransacked, plundered and stripped of its riches by so-called friendly us businessmen and robber barons, which have turned the traitor Suharto and his cronies into gangsters and billionaires.
Perhaps, Washington had maintained a hidden agenda all along when it seemed interested in promoting Indonesian independence in 1949 and brought pressure on the Dutch to abandon their Asian colonies. Not to speak of the Japanese, who wanted their own piece of the archipelago natural riches. Indonesia is the home to some 10 per cent of the remaining tropical forests in the world. Suharto, and a crook by the name of Bob Hasan, now in jail, (because the cia had no interest in protecting him), allowed rapacious deforestation to line their private pockets with dollars and yens. The Harvard Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology recently discovered, for instance, that in the 90.000 hectare Gunung Palung National Park on the island of Borneo, two-thirds of this tropical treasure had been destroyed by loggers working for Suharto and Hasan. No less than
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210 million cubic feet of logs had been stolen at 252 illegal sites along 13 rivers.
For more than thirty years, us sponsored gangsters had their way in Indonesia. And, yes, many Indonesians sympathise with bin Laden, and how Arab freedom fighters that had succeeded in raiding New York and Washington. Finally, one of their own had done to the us, at least in part, what Americans had been doing to them for many years. Why would Indonesians not be entitled to avenge half a million deaths suffered at the hands of a cia installed dictator, when Washington feels free to start an all-out global war in revenge for the killing of 3.000 Americans?
When in 2000, Abdurrachman Wahid was interim President of Indonesia, a visitor from Washington descended on Merdeka Palace in Jakarta. It was business consultant Mr. Henry Kissinger. Apparently Wahid remembered, that once Sweden had bestowed a Nobel Prize on this man. Therefore he was received with full honours. Incidentally, both the Swedes and Wahid conveniently overlooked the fact that it had been Henry's genius in running foreign affairs on behalf of another villain, Richard Nixon, that had expanded the Vietnam war to Laos and Cambodia. It was Kissinger who was responsible for some of the most intense and prolonged bombing campaigns during the second us war in Asia. That terrorism alone makes him a first class candidate for the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. But, then, Kissinger enjoys cia and White House protection. Milosevic doesn't.
Henry had come to Jakarta on behalf of the us mining interests on the Indonesian island of Irian Jaya. With their fascist protector Suharto under house arrest, some us businessmen had asked Henry to bombard poor Wahid with sufficiently strong words, to have him quickly revoke the newly raised taxes on profits of us companies in Indonesia. Actually, Wahid became so impressed with Kissinger's barrage of reprimands and complaints, that he announced afterwards to waiting journalists, that he had invited the gentleman from Washington to become special advisor to the President of Indonesia. The Talleyrand of us war crimes had become councillor to the largest Muslim nation in the world. Too often, truth is stranger than fiction.
Were communists committing terrorist or imperialist crimes in Indonesia? Were the Chinese guilty? Or the Soviets? No, not at all. After Indonesia declared Independence on August 17, 1945, the newly born nation was first faced with Dutch terrorism until 1950. In fact, it was Washington that blackmailed Holland into turning over power to Sukarno. The Truman Administration threatened to cut off post-war Marshall Plan Aid to the Dutch if the war against Indonesia wasn't halted. Indonesians assumed the Americans were sincere in supporting their struggle for freedom. However, they were soon to discover, that Washington was only eager to get the former colonialists out in order to replace them as fast as possible. Americans were
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to become the most avaricious and unscrupulous imperialists Indonesians had ever known.
us domination over foreign lands and their resources is always being backed up by battleships, aircraft carriers and highflying B-52's stationed at military bases around the globe. Lately, airfields in former Soviet central Asian states have become available for the further expansion of us imperialism. In all corners of the world one finds armed opposition to this unstoppable movement of American military, economic, industrial and financial totalitarianism, from Colombia to Indonesia. Al Qaida is but one of many resistance groups that intend to try to halt the further spread of us hegemony.
One reads in amazement what the us deputy Secretary of Defence, Paul Wolfowitz, talking to James Dao and Eric Schmitt of the The New York Times (January 9, 2002) has to say. He bragged about the us victory in Afghanistan and said that Washington was precipitously looking around as to where to go next with its War on Terrorism. From his words it becomes clear why bin Laden is so popular among the suppressed peoples of this world. Wolfowitz came across as another arrogant Washington bastard convinced that the good Lord picked the United-States to bring law and order to this world.
Naturally, like father, like son, Bush II selected a bunch of notorious hawks to assist him in the White House in his quest to expand American power and influence over mankind. He needed as many he-men as he could find for the job. One such man with hair on his chest was Wolfowitz, ambassador to Indonesia in the eighties. There, he played ball with Suharto, the worst terrorist ever to have emerged from southeast Asia. He must have become an expert on the subject there.
Wolfowitz told Dao and Schmitt that President Megawati Sukarno, the eldest daughter of the founding father of Indonesia was ‘extremely weak’, which undoubtedly is true. My own conversations with her confirm this. However, there is at this moment in Indonesian history no alternative for her. She won the election, because she could rally the people around her in the interests of unification and holding the archipelago of tropical islands together. Since the fall of military dictator Suharto in 1998 various independence movements emerged in Acheh, the Moluccas and Irian Yaja. Therefore, the reporters from the Times asked Wolfowitz whether the War on Terrorism would go to Indonesia next.
He replied that the Pentagon was indeed keeping a close watch on militant Muslims in Indonesia and their possible links to Osama bin Laden. ‘We see a potential for Muslim extremists and terrorists to link up with Muslim groups in Indonesia and find a little corner for themselves in a country that is otherwise unfriendly to terrorism,’ he said. There already exists the Laskar Jihad, a Javanese group that caused considerable unrest on the neighbouring island of Sulawesi, leaving 500 people dead, burned 10.000 buildings and caused 80.000 people to flee.
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Or will Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq or even North Korea be next? Bush promised a global war on terrorism. He talked nonsense. When will he realise, that he has set himself an impossible task? So far, much of Afghanistan has been destroyed in the search for bin Laden. Washington said it was chasing Mullah Omar, but he fled on a motor bike and disappeared. The principal fugitive is playing the scarlet Pimpernel, I seek him here, I seek him there, and I seek him everywhere. Some us media have suggested that bin Laden had died during the heavy bombardments on the Tora Bora mountains. But then, surprisingly, the Al Jazieera television station will, any day soon suddenly cough up another video on which bin Laden, alive and well, outlines his ideas for future action.
Although the Taliban capitulated weeks ago, and Al Qaida prisoners are already being flown to Guantanomo, that anachronistic, imperialistic us military base on Cuba (which should not even be there in 2002), us headquarters based in Tampa, Florida, controlling the war in Afghanistan, continued to order massive bombardments. Even a child in first grade knows that such wicked, murderous assaults are first class war crimes.
Rory Carroll reported from Qalaye Niazi in The Guardian (January 7, 2002), that three American aircraft, one B-52 and two B-1B's had destroyed the place. American Special Forces on the ground had radioed in, that they felt justified in carrying out the massacre since former Taliban elements were hiding there. That is what they had heard from local ‘informants’. Obviously, they did not check and verify first. Off the bombers went, causing death and destruction. If that is not terrorism under the direct responsibility of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, I do not know what is. They should all three be shipped off to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague to keep Slobodan Milosevic company. They would discover that the former Yugoslav president is a better chess player.
A spokesman for the idiots in Tampa said that there was no proof that Bush's forces had caused collateral damage in Qalaye Niazi. In the mean time, the terrorists in the Bush White House have done and are doing the same all over Afghanistan. Reporter Carroll said, ‘Bloodied children's shoes and skirts, bloodied school books, the scalp of a woman with braided hair, wedding decorations, were the sole remains of farmers, their wives and children, and the wedding guests.’
‘The bombers’, she continued, ‘came early in the morning. Precision-guided bombs vaporised all five buildings in the village. A second wave an hour later hit people digging in the rubble, and, judging from hair and flesh on the edge of three 40 foot holes some distance from the complex, those trying to flee. Two days later villagers with shovels and tractors extracted the remains. A hand, an ankle, a bit of skull, sometimes an entire torso, and buried some in eleven graves, each said to contain several people, and relatives from Khost took some for
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burial in the mountains. When I arrived I still found just human scraps and the carcasses of sheep, dogs and a cow, circled ahead by two crows. One villager said 32 died. The un said 52, including 10 women and 25 children. Mr. Mohammed said, at least 80 died. Other villagers said 92. Staff at the hospital at Gardeze said 107.’ Bush' cronies in Tampa told the world: ‘No collateral damage’.
Americans are super terrorists, with super bombs, super bombers, and super battleships and aircraft carriers. All dangerous and explosive toys in the hands of generals and admirals who play out their computer games on real people all over the world. Bush and Ariel Sharon have much in common. They have immature brains of twelve year olds. They are both under attack by strong elements of the Muslim world. They enjoy far superior firepower compared to the Muslim freedom fighters battling against us and Israeli imperialism. Bush and Sharon are caught up in a cycle of violence in which they have become entangled and do not know how to end it without losing face. Contrary to Clinton, Bush does not even talk to Yasser Arafat. It underlines what a pathetic fool the man is, and now the most ruthless and most powerful ‘leader’ in the world thanks to the election he stole.
Ever since World War II, Washington has become more involved and deeper entangled in a web of hotspots throughout the world. The us walked from one trap into the other. Because being convinced that humanity should unconditionally adopt the us way of life, they were blind to such simple facts, that perhaps peoples, civilisations and religious systems were somewhat older, considerably wiser and in some cases more respectful human beings than a bunch of nouveau riche Texas oil tycoons. Opposition against America telling people what to do, and hat was best for them, rose everywhere. After World War II, Washington ran into quite an unusual collection of bin Ladens in this world. The cia was ordered to seek out most of them and if necessary kill them. The first democratically elected Prime Minister of the former Belgian Congo, Patrice Lumumba, was simply hacked to pieces, because Belgians and Americans did not like was he was saying. In 1961 it was called the Cold War. Waged in fear of the ussr, and enabling Washington to commit terror everywhere under the auspices of a crusade against Marxist infidels.
Another early rebel was Fidel Castro. John Kennedy wanted him poisoned or assassinated at any price, because if Cuba were to become a socialist paradise, the Latin American domino's would fall one by one. Where was American monopolistic capitalism going to end up, but in the gutter? When all attempts on Castro's life failed, Washington concentrated on strangling the Cuban people through a total blockade. That, my dear Yankee readers, is state terrorism too. Who gave you the right to intervene with assassinations, coups d'états, B-52's, when former colonised and exploited peoples and states, taken advan- | |
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tage of by you and other exorbitantly rich nations, were trying to build a new and different society from the usA, states in which people come first and in which multinationals, banks and crooks in the oil business and pimps come last.
On 09-11 the western media screamed that bin Laden was the most wanted criminal in the world, sought by the White House dead or alive. When jfk was killed in Dallas, the same media screamed, Castro had ordered Lee Harvey Oswald to commit the crime of the century. No such thing ever happened, as we were soon to find out. I went to visit mother Marguerite Oswald in Fort Worth, who had spoken with her son at Dallas Police headquarters accompanied by Marina Oswald, her daughter in law. Lee convincingly denied that he killed jfk. He had been set up by the cia as a fall guy.
A few days later, he himself was shot inside police headquarters by an obscure nightclub owner, Jack Ruby. In practical terms, this meant, that Washington could now tell the world that the dead man was definitely the assassin of the president. Castro's supposed responsibility fort the shooting disappeared from the front-pages as fast as it had arrived. Perhaps, history is repeating itself in connection with bin Laden and 09-11.
In the mean time, no one, including Oliver Stone and his movie ‘jfk’ has ever managed to find an acceptable explanation for what really happened on November 22, 1963. When much later, the Abraham Zapruder film of the actual assassination surfaced, it clearly showed that bullets hit the president from two sides. Indeed, most Kennedy buffs agree that the Dallas assassination was a classic ambush executed with military precision. Nevertheless, droves of Americans still think in 2002, forty years later that jfk was bumped off by a lone crazy pro-Castro assassin. I know from filming George de Mohrenschildt and other people close to Oswald, that he was in fact outspokenly pro Kennedy. People believe what they want to believe, even when rational explanations contradict their screwed up interpretations of reality.
Like everyone else most Americans are also in denial that conspiracies can be real. They developed mental blinkers to negate the existence of a long series of scandals like Watergate, Irangate, Irakgate and Enrongate, presently in full swing, and that these do reflect what really goes on in Washington, and especially in the Oval Office of the so beloved White House. A surrealistic taboo hangs over secret activities of ‘an invisible government’ which operates independently of even the president himself who at times is in tandem with the super secret intelligence services. People don't want to think and hear about it, let alone know.
Psychologist Daniel Goleman quoted Henrik Ibsen from one of his plays explaining this weird mechanism in our heads is able to replace ‘a less comfortable truth with a vital lie’. (Vital Lies, Simple Truths, The Psychology of Self Deception, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1985). In other
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words, an opinion is being formed and held on to, with several important pieces of information missing from awareness. A lacuna or a hole in attention creates a blind spot that is an apt psychological metaphor for our failure to see things as they really are. It is so much easier to say to oneself, Oswald killed jfk, Sirhan Sirhan killed rfk and James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King. Princess Diana died in a car crash. Her driver was tired, and used dope. He lost control over the Mercedes. That's why she and her lover, Muslim playboy Dodi al-Fayed, plus chauffeur Henri Paul perished. Only bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones survived. Most people automatically accept a vital lie as a comfortable truth, unwilling to even think of a possible planned murder of the princess.
But then step by step we learned more details of what really happened, who the dead people's enemies were, and why powerful forces wanted them to die. Gordon Thomas published The Secret History of the Mossad. (St. Martin's Press, New York, 1999). For the first time, as the result of a lengthy investigation, we read details about how the Israeli Intelligence Service followed the romance between the young mother of Prince William, heir to the British throne, and her Muslim lover, the son of billionaire Mohammed al-Fayed. The Israeli spying establishment looked upon a rich Muslim penetrating the British royal family as a dangerous development with unforeseen consequences. This opinion was held by the Mossad on the basis of facts. How did they obtain them?
It turned out that surveillance of the couple by echelon, one of nsa's (the us National Security Agency) most sensitive and ultra-secret spy systems had 1050 pages of conversations between Dodi and Diana documented. Father Mohammed al-Fayed is engaged in a ferocious court battle to obtain these documents. ‘This global electronic network is of truly astounding proportions’, wrote Thomas. ‘It links satellites to a series of high-speed parallel computers. The system enables the nsa and those it allows to share information - Britain is one - to intercept and decode virtually every electronic communication in the world.’
When Dodi entered Diana's life, they automatically became part of echelon's activities. In 1997, father al-Fayed was added to the linkup spy satellites. This meant, in practice, that echelon obtained records, for instance, picked up on conversations between Dodi and Diana vacationing on the yacht ‘Jonikal’ off the coast of Sardinia. Diana was tense and nervous, because they were followed everywhere by boats with journalists and photographers. On August 28, 1997 she begged Dodi to immediately leave for Paris. A Gulfstream IV private jet was ordered to fly the next day to France. Thomas ascertained from his sources in Washington, that the nsa tapes confirm the couple intended to get married, just as father Mohammed al-Fayed had said.
The father hired among others a former senior Scot- | |
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land Yard detective, John MacNamara, who located a former m-16 officer, Richard Tomlinson in Switzerland. He testified that he had seen documents in the m-16 office in Paris, for a plan to murder Slobodan Milosevic in similar fashion in a tunnel. The former Yugoslav president should use this information in his court battle against Carla del Ponte, the cia hired puppet and so-called ‘independent prosecutor’ of the infamous War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. The winners of a war always go free, while too often they committed the same crimes, and worse, as the losers did.
‘The weapon of choice, the document recommended, was a high-powered laser beam that could be used to temporarily blind the driver of the target vehicle’, wrote Gordon Thomas. This method had been used in other assassinations by m-16. After his revelations, Tomlinson was banned from the us, Australia and France, because he had committed a political crime in breach of the Official Secrets Act. Only Switzerland offered him sanctuary.
Even during the flight from Sardinia to Le Bourget in Paris the couple was monitored by echelon, and their conversations were downloaded to computers at Fort Meade in Maryland. From there the relevant passages were transmitted to gchq, Britain's communications centre. Thomas discussed this matter with one of the most colourful Israeli spymasters, Ari Ben-Menashe. For ten years (1977-1987) he had served in the erd (External Relations Department) of the Israeli Defence Forces. ‘You are very close to being on the button’, Ben-Menashe told Thomas, ‘how close I cannot tell you’. AI-Fayed even tried to hire Ari Ben-Menashe, but did not succeed. The father fights a truly an uphill battle to discover the truth behind his son's and Diana's death. How can a Muslim win in western courts?
These events come to mind when taking a closer look at 09-11. Osama bin Laden's statement afterwards indicated that he had not been in charge of that operation, but was otherwise pleased that it happened. It had become high time that Americans were shown in the flesh, what the sending of cruise missiles over other lands really meant. Perhaps, bin Laden maintained, it made sense to show Americans, for the first time since the British burned the White House in 1812, what effect explosions like these were having on people, homes, buildings and life in general.
Later, us ground troops said that they had found a video in a former Al Qaida dwelling, on which bin Laden, or someone resembling him, was discussing the attack on the wtc building. On this recording he recalled, that he had replied, when asked as a construction engineer, what would happen if an airliner flew into the wtc tower, that perhaps a couple of floors would collapse. He also said he never imagined that the structures would come down in their entirety. Do these words, if the man on the video indeed was bin Laden, proof that he was in charge of operations on 09-11?
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Washington was at the time bombing Iraq for ten long years, while in the same way thousands of people in the former Yugoslavia had died from us and nato air attacks. Washington had armed and financed a proxy guerrilla army of Albanian bandits and Mafioso to oust Slobodan Milose-vic from power, the last Communist potentate on the Balkans. The Pentagon and the cia repeated this trick by arming and financing so-called northern alliance troops in Afghanistan to do the dirty work on the ground for them. Hardly any us lives were lost, because us bombers stayed safely out of reach of antiaircraft fire or ground to air missiles.
It should also be taken into account, that, whenever Muslim resistance leads to hard actions, whether in the Middle East or anywhere else, these acts of defiance are announced to the world. No such declaration of responsibility for what happened 09-11 in the us has been forthcoming from anybody in particular or from among the numerous Muslim liberation movements and freedom fighters anywhere.
What if the 09-11 cataclysm originated from some other drawing table? Suspicion must first be directed towards the us itself. No power in the world operates as many virtually uncontrolled top secret state terrorist murder operations as Washington does, often with full acquiescence and even on orders from the White House. I am hardly alone in using these specifications for the true face of America. The Kennedy family never dared to breathe the word cia again out of fear for the life of Ted or the lives of many young men among new generations of Kennedy's. The dark forces of the secret us state Mafia organisations prefer by far to have Bushites at the helm. It enables them to continue their worldwide murderous operations with firm support from the top. One recent example, mentioned here, was the disaster in Qalaye Niazi.
Bush and Blair are screaming that bin Laden and Al Qaida are guilty as hell. Are they really? The two honourable gentlemen never offered proof that would stand up in court. Are we to take Bush and Blair, both notorious for spreading blatant lies about their actions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yugoslavia, at their word? How often did American president's lie to the people beginning with fdr on Pearl Harbour? I rather listen to Clinton lying about receiving oral sex from Monica Lewinsky in a side-room of the presidential mansion, than Bush hiding thousands of Afghan deaths from the public. The latest sick yoke is that Bush and Blair are being considered for the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.
As far back as the early seventies, the us Senate launched an investigation after a series of rumoured acts of terror by us Intelligence services. In record time, the Senator Frank Church Commission unearthed so many us dirty tricks, illegal murders, and acts of clear cut terrorism, both inside as well as outside the country that efforts were made to curb the cloak and dagger boys with new rules and re- | |
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gulations. Needless to say, nobody ever observed them. But after Bush II and his super hawks descended upon the halls of power, all hell broke loose again. Everybody knows that anything goes now. The Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld has said so more than once.
The Church Commission discovered, for instance, that in the early sixties Washington was determined to oust Sukarno, father to his nation. Vice-president Richard Nixon welcomed him in 1956 on his first visit to the us, with the words: ‘You, Sir, are the George Washington of Indonesia.’ Well, founding father or not, the us replaced him with a fascist military dictator, Suharto. This criminal managed to stay in power from 1967-1998, only because the us, Holland and other rich nations protected his regime with arms and money. However, Indonesia will never be the same again. Many years of us promoted fascism into the lives of 220 million Indonesians has changed the face of this archipelago forever, and I mean for the worst. It might even disintegrate altogether.
Washington has been a terrorist capital for more than half a century. All those years, dirty tricks took place about which the outside world heard little or nothing of. When Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles were preparing for the 1958 cia coup in Indonesia, smart guys within the cia figured a way to hurt Sukarno. They planned to damage the widespread admiration and affection held by his supporters.
In 1974, the us Senate Frank Church Commission discovered proof that the cia had a Filipino man undergo plastic surgery in order to become a Sukarno look-alike. Next, they filmed this man in compromising sexual encounters with ladies of questionable morals. This product of us slander was titled, Happy Days. In his book, The American Police State, with as subtitle, The Government against the people, (Random House, New York, 1967, p.p. 183184), journalist David Wise noted, that the House Intelligence Committee discovered in addition that millionaire Howard Hughes had acted as casting director.
Therefore, given the history of the cia, no-one should be surprised if some time in the future another congressional committee will establish, that the bin Laden video found in Afghanistan, was just another carefully fabricated self serving by product of the cia. A desperate effort to hand Bush and Blair the much desired definite proof, that bin Laden was guilty. Perhaps he is. But let no one be fooled by the kind of proof that Washington wants us to accept as the truth and nothing but the truth. Most Indonesians indeed have assumed for many years that the man in Happy Days having sex with a streetwalker indeed was Sukarno. Again, millions of people around the world are probably thinking that the man on the video is bin Laden. This is far from certain, since the source is Washington.
Anyone with reasonable intelligence should hesitate in taking Bush at his word, considering the history of the perennially lying us presidents. In any case, the man has al- | |
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ready become notorious for his ridiculous remarks, since entering the White House. Perhaps, the most famous miscue so far, was his observation following his first encounter with Vladimir Putin, after two hours, he said, that he had looked the Russian in the eye and he, Bush, knew that the man could be trusted. Anyone, serving in the Oval Office uttering such unmitigated nonsense is a threat not only to himself, but also to the world. No doubt, heavier weather lies ahead for all of us.
In 1967 someone wanted to get rid of Robert Kennedy, because he was on his way to the White House. us warmongers remembered that his brother had intended to wind down the war in Vietnam. In 1970, on assignment for Dutch television, I interviewed some of jfk's and rfk's top advisors, like McGeorge Bundy, Theodore Sorensen, Michael Forestall and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. They all confirmed in one form or another that if jfk were to be reelected in 1964, the war in Vietnam was to be ended.
Several prominent Afro-Asian leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru (India), Sukarno, Norodom Sihanouk (Cambodia), Abdel Gamal Nasser (Egypt), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Modibo Keita (Mali), Sekoué Touré (Guinea) and others visited jfk and had communicated their views to him. The Kennedy's became convinced that it was not worth the price the us was paying to stop Vietcong terrorists, who, in fact, were classic freedom fighters. Americans disapproved of Ho Chi-minh, but it was crystal clear that the Vietnamese largely supported this charismatic leader. This love and admiration for the Vietnamese father figure led to their decisive victory over a superpower.
The murder of rfk actually led directly to the Nixon era in us foreign affairs, and thus, to the bloody continuation of the Southeast Asian conflict. In the same way: the stealing of the election of 2000 lead directly to the War on Terrorism by Bush II. Hordes of Americans refuse to take talk about Washington conspiracies seriously in spite of the more than obvious fact, that the us has been experiencing a series of conspiracies for decades.
Europeans never swallowed lock, stock and barrel the Warren Commission's fable that what happened November 22, 1963 at Dealey Plaza in Dallas was indeed the lone work of a deranged Oswald, who had simply decided to bump off jfk for his own private pleasure. The majority of Americans continued in this fantasy even after seeing with their own eyes, that bullets had hit the president from two sides. After delivering a speech rfk walked through the kitchen of the ‘Ambassador Hotel’ in Los Angeles and was shot by Sirhan Sirhan for the simple reason, that the young man had not liked what Bobby Kennedy had said about the plo.
In spite of a series of such shootings, like the killing of the Reverend Martin Luther King or the attempted assassination of Governor George Wallace of Alabama, another opponent of Nixon, Americans, in general, steadfastly refuse to admit that raw violence and crime in politics could
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be related to premeditated evil intend. Americans prefer to close their eyes for the rough realities of what their country has become. They daydream collectively about being the greatest nation on earth and truly believe that the world will only be saved if we all become willing clones of the us way of life.
After the despicable spectacle of us democracy at work, ending with this Bush II being inaugurated as ‘leader of the free world’, journalist Daniel Lazarre wrote The Velvet Coup, (Verso Publishers, New York, 2001). He argued forcefully, that America's antiquated government was in a state of chronic breakdown. The us entered the 21st century with the institutions of an 18th century government. A constitutional overhaul was imperative to prevent the recurrence of insane events, as witnessed during the last election. In the mean time, without having to shoot anyone, Bush got into the White House, and, like his father, became almost immediately involved in violence abroad.
The cancer of invisible, uncontrolled and co-spiritual forces in Washington has been rampant since World War II. In 1964, two prominent journalists, David Wise (Herald Tribune) and Thomas Ross (Chicago Tribune) wrote The Invisible Government (Random House, New York, 375 pages). It was the first time, that, as a Dutch journalist working in New York since 1958, I realised that the us government, including the White House, was hotbed of dirty politics and criminal behaviour in foreign affairs.
I lectured those days for W. Colston Leigh, in New York. I spoke to audiences, coast to coast, on my reporting trips to Indonesia, Cuba, Congo and other hotspots of the sixties. It was clear to me that audiences were also totally unaware of this epoch-making Wise-Ross report. It spelt out clearly that it perhaps appeared as if the us was ruled by a visible White House, Congress and government machinery. In reality, the more sinister side, invisible to public scrutiny, is that the White House, numerous Intelligence Services and the cia are going their own merry ways, doing as they see fit, virtually uncontrolled.
This authoritative book made it abundantly clear, that no lessons are being learned from history at all. Much of the secret information about the activities of a dozen secret agencies in Washington remains hidden from the public. And books like the report by Wise and Ross in 1964, or The Secret Team (Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1973) by former White House aide, Air Force colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, remain unknown and unread by us voters. Hence, the invisible forces continue their conspiracies, which remain a chilling reality.
How long did it take the us public at large to finally hit the streets and force an end to the massacres and war crimes of the us government in Southeast Asia? It took fifteen years and millions of deaths. Thanks to the killing of rfk, Richard Nixon became, in 1968, the most promising candidate for the White House. I travelled as a tv reporter in March 1968 for one week on the plane of this presi- | |
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dent elect. Wherever we stopped in New Hampshire, I heard him emphatically promise, that he would make peace in Vietnam. He boasted that Eisenhower taught him how to end a military conflict, as he did in Korea.
Naturally, all Nixon really meant to achieve with his phoney peace talk was to get former Kennedy supporters to vote for him. Once in the White House it was clear that Washington hawks had won again. Nixon stole the 1968 election, because someone had been kind enough to hire Sirhan Sirhan to shoot his original opponent. One of the significant differences between Europeans and Americans is that no one over here would have accepted for a moment the naive explanation by authorities, that a lone Muslim drifter had committed the crime against rfk.
When Nixon and his terrorist associate, Henry Kissinger, permitted themselves to enlarge the Asian battlefield with the kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia, they first arranged another fascist coup. They repeated us war crimes committed in Jakarta. They replaced Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the legitimate head-of-state, with cia puppet marshal Lon Nol, a criminal traitor in the Suharto mode. Washington and the cia were entirely responsible for the notorious Cambodian killing-fields that were a consequence of the us intervention.
In 1973, Sihanouk summed up his experience with us terrorism in his book, My War with the cia (Allan Lane, London). Most Americans had never heard of Sihanouk or Cambodia. In the mean time, the democratically elected president and his national security advisor were causing death and destruction there as had never ever before been seen in the world. And all was done in the name of the us voters. us war crimes there also led to the rise to power of another bloody mass murderer Pol Pot. He additionally slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
Americans seem to have conveniently forgotten what their very own worldwide record of war crimes has been. When now, they all of a sudden scream for and demand revenge, because 3.000 Americans died through a terrorist act, inflicted by those who have for dozens of years been the victims of us war crimes, to me, having reported for many years from Southeast Asia, this us hysteria over the 09-11 victims sounds wholly unwarranted, hypocritical and nuts. Finally, on 09-11, Americans came to feel what their victims of war had endured for forty years.
Therefore, while Americans interpret the murders of jfk and rfk as a simple matter of acts by lunatics, in reality, Dallas and Los Angeles signalled death for millions of innocent people around the world as a result of wars waged by their successors, the lbj and Nixon. Not forgetting that thousands of young Americans were blown to pieces following the terrorist foreign policy of their leaders.
Believe it or not, but after the drama at Qalaye Niazi and us bombs on the wedding party of Inzar Burhan Jan (15) to a local girl of his age on December 29, 2001, the Herald Tribune reported at the beginning of January 2002
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on the continuation of massive daily raids on the town of Khost and vicinity. Washington said it believed that Al Qaida escapees were returning there to former bases. Lieutenant colonel Martin Compton said in Tampa, Florida, that the purpose of the B-52s and B1-B raids was ‘to render the Al Qaida infrastructure unusable.’ In addition, another Al Qaida base at Zhawar had come under sustained us air attacks. These latest us bombs tested over the skies of Afghanistan are causing tunnellike holes. They pierce vertically into the dry earth for some nine meters or 30 feet. The Tribune noted that these projectiles were apparently meant ‘for bunkers or underground chambers that were nowhere to be seen.’ (January 10, 2001).
The Guardian presented details. January 7: Two air strikes on Zhawar Kili. A Navy F-14 drops two guided bombs on a building believed to be part of a terrorist training complex. Later a Navy F-18 drops two bombs on a bunker. January 10: Nine bombers and tactical aircraft drop guided bombs on buildings, caves and tunnels in Zhawar Kili. January 11-13: Continued bombing of Zhawar Kili using B-52 and B-1 long range bomber, and Navy F-18 strike aircraft. January 14: Heaviest bombings of the week in the same places. The Pentagon said it was trying to destroy caves to prevent Al Qaida or Taliban remnants using them to regroup. And thus, us war crimes are continuing, to avenge 09-11, while the wtc and the Pentagon were revenge attacks for half a century of us war crimes everywhere. Bush, who is an illiterate in us foreign policy, leaves the impression that in his mind world history began on 09-11.
‘Day 100: Another raid in the bombing war without end,’ read the headline of The Guardian on January 15, 2002. Suzanne Goldenberg reported from Zhawar, ‘Overnight, the bombing was so heavy the windows shook in Khost, a town 22 miles from America's latest theatre of war. Fifteen people were killed two days ago in Shudiaki village...’ The village was completely flattened. ‘My house was destroyed’, said Noorz Ali, ‘my neighbours were killed. There were so many bombs I lost count. The dead remain there. Everybody else has left.’ Those, Messrs. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell, were undeniable war crimes committed by you in the name of the American people. This does turn all Americans into first grade terrorists.
Why are you killing Afghans? You seem to believe that you are entitled to murder these defenceless people, because they allowed Al Qaida warriors to live in Afghan mountain caves. What kind of reasoning is that to justify massmurder? Another reason Bush gave for killing Afghans was that anything was permissible in the hunt for Osama bin Laden because the man was guilty. Where is the proof?
January 16, 2001, the Herald Tribune reported that the us Air Force continued scouring the mountain valleys for signs of Osama bin Laden and, perhaps still hidden, Al Qaida fighters. In the mean time, abc News released in- | |
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formation, that the Saudi fugitive had left the war theatre by ship over a month ago. The cia was furious and called the abc News report a fabrication. Time will tell.
In the mean time, indications are that the us and its European partners in crime have walked straight into a trap. Walter Pincus has already reported in the Washington Post, that Al Qaida's strategy is unmistakably clear. After the temporary setback in Afghanistan the goal of the organisation is understood. Many key members of the organisation were instructed to leave and regroup elsewhere to resume the battle against the us colossus at another time in another place.
Dan Eggen and Michael Dobbs reported in the Washington Post, that following the big escape of Al Qaida fighters from Afghanistan, us authorities remain deeply worried about further attacks on the us, or American targets overseas. After timely discovered plots against us embassies in Paris and Singapore, more attacks might already have been approved by bin Laden. ‘They have been crippled,’ a us law enforcement official told the Post, ‘but Al Qaida hasn't been put out of business by any stretch of imagination. They are still capable of doing a lot of damage.’
In the light of this statement, it must have sounded alarming to Americans, when us authorities were predicting that it could last up to six years before the Saudi resistance fighter would be caught. Both Bush and Rumsfeld keep saying whenever they have a chance, that they are certain bin Laden will be caught. At the same time Washington authorities stress that the fugitive might have escaped to some twenty different countries. China, Iran and Saudi-Arabia are high on the list. Mentioned next are Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan, while the many tropical islands in Indonesia and the Philippines also could offer the ideal hiding place.
Fortunately, after the initial period of hysteria and madness immediately following 09-11, more level-headed reporting is surfacing in respectable and renowned publications. Newsweek (January 21, 2002) is now admitting that Mullah Mohammed Omar, the chief of the Taliban, had been depicted in the us media as a monster with one eye, who buried homosexuals alive. But the magazine acknowledges that many people in Afghanistan still see him as a man of the people, who brought order to chaos following a ten-year war with the Soviets. He had also begun to crack down on endemic corruption.
The entire world is aware of the man's existence, but who has bothered to gather some reliable, unbiased information? Scott Johnson and Evan Thomas reported from Kabul. They traced the Mullah's driver, Qari Saheb. He described him as a man who used his simplicity to pose as a symbol of purity in a world of sordidness. His leadership model was Caliph Umar, a 17th century leader of Islam who would cloak himself in robes to be able to talk and travel incognito. Saheb told his interviewers, that Omar
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would slip out of his compound at night and alone - disguised and riding a cheap motorcycle - to talk to the common folk.
The Mullah's roots could not have been more humble. ‘He was born on the side of a road and never received a decent education. His handwriting was so poor, that even his semiliterate chauffeur noticed,’ reported Newsweek. ‘He was a freedom fighter blinded in one eye by a Soviet shell in the 1980s. He became a legendary figure in the civil-worn-torn Afghanistan in the 1990s by taking revenge on sexual predators who were roaming the lawless streets. In the incident that made him famous, he caught a man who had raped a girl and hanged him from the barrel of a tank. Then he went after two tribal commanders who were bickering over which one would get to sodomize a pair of young boys they both coveted,’ Johnson and Thomas reported.
Mullah Omar fought a war on decadence. He banned all forms of music, but riding in his car he listened to a cd of Saraji, a Taliban, who sold millions of patriotic war chants. Saheb recounted that Omar lived so simply, it was almost primitive. He built a house for his four wives and 12 children and had western toilets replaced by ground toilets. He preferred to ride a horse than use luxury cars. These details explain the closeness between him and bin Laden.
When reading the report by Yossef Bodansky, director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare in Washington (The Man who declared War on America, Random House, New York, 1999), I discovered for the first time in this authoritative description, what some of the basic characteristics of this mysterious man from Saudi Arabia are.
Washington pressured Saudi-Arabia in the early eighties to do more to aid the Afghans in their battle with the Soviets. Bin Laden was asked by Saudi Intelligence to form ‘volunteer’ mujahideen units to bolster the ranks of anti-Communist freedom fighters in Afghanistan. He formed a strike force consisting of Islamic volunteers and members of the White Guards, the Saudi Special Forces. Osama gained in a short time much praise, also from King Fahd, who showed his gratitude by offering him a contract for a project to expand the Mosque in Medina. His personal fee would be no less than 90 million dollars. Osama visited the king, refused the offer and refused the fee. ‘Instead he passionately argued with the king’, wrote Bodansky, ‘for a greater Saudi commitment to and support for the Jihad in Afghanistan.’
The Congressional report made mention of a fierce battle of a combined Afghan-Arab force in 1987 under bin Laden's command. The mujahideen, who served with him, described him as fearless and oblivious to danger. Bodansky reported that Hamza Muhammed, a Palestinian volunteer, recalled: ‘Bin Laden was a hero to us because he was always on the front line, always moving ahead of
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everyone else. He not only gave his money, but he also gave himself. He came down from his palace to live with the Afghan peasants and Arab fighters. He cooked with them, he ate with them, dug trenches with them. That was bin Laden's way.’
In 1989 Osama bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia as a hero. ‘The Saudi Government,’ according to the us Congressional report, ‘considered him a positive role model, and proof of its contribution to the immensely popular Afghan Jihad.’ A million cassettes of bin Laden's speeches were openly sold in Riyadh. The royal family accorded the construction firm of the bin Laden family many more lucrative contracts, showing their appreciation of what Osama had achieved in Afghanistan in the name of Islam.
Then, on August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, initially with Washington's blessing. Even father Bush announced, descending from an airplane, that the White House considered the matter an inter Arab affair. But, the Washington intelligence establishment felt differently. Here was a unique occasion for the us to extend its power in the Middle East. The invisibles convinced Daddy Bush to act as a macho Texan, since 1990 was also an election year. He ignored his earlier words, as if he had never said them and reversed his stand. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were mobilised to fight against Iraq in Operation Desert Fox.
The Gulf War galvanised Osama bin Laden into what he has become, the leader of a Jihad against America. Washington immediately sent thousands of soldiers to the kingdom on the grounds that the House of Saud needed us protection against Saddam. Bin Laden opposed the invasion of an army of ‘infidels’ on sacred Muslim soil. This contradicted the teachings of Islam. He estimated that thousands of Americans would have a profoundly negative effect on the psychology, religion and culture of the nation and would disrupt the Saudi way of life.
Bodansky wrote, that King Fahd and his coterie panicked when Saddam overran Kuwait. He ignored Osama's pleas. Riyadh opened in 1991 the doors to a stream of us led coalition forces. Dick Cheney, then the Secretary of Defence of Father Bush, assured the King, that ‘us troops would not stay a minute longer than they were needed’. Fahd used that pledge to convince a meeting of 350 ulema in Mecca that the Yankees would depart the minute the conflict was over. Of course, Cheney lied then, as he is doing today for Bush II. Saudi-Arabia still houses thousands of American soldiers on its soil. us airbases are in full swing and being used for military action against a brother Muslim nation. To bin Laden, this is a policy of treachery to the Arab cause. If Father Bush and Dick Cheney had been men of their word to King Fahd, who knows, 09-11 would have never happened.
The sharply different viewpoints between Saudi's, who agree with Bin Laden and his anti American Jihad and Saudi's who support the royal family, that for the time
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being sides with Washington, continue. However, there are growing tensions about the prolonged us military presence in the kingdom. Senior officials in the us Congress and at the Pentagon are becoming increasingly frustrated with Riyadh. They resent the Saudi's tepid support for the War on Terrorism.
King Fahd does not allow airfields in the kingdom to be used by us warplanes for attacks on Iraq or other Islamic countries. A pupil in first grade can understand why, but Washington lawmakers and Pentagon Air Force generals are at a loss to comprehend this refusal by the Saudi royal family. It is also a matter of money, of course. Washington invested rather heavily in a high-tech air operations centre south of the Saudi capital at the Prince Sultan Air Base. us commanders do in the mean time direct the air war over Afghanistan from there. It is also the headquarters for allied fighter jets that patrol the no-flight zone over southern Iraq. King Fahd looks the other way. Bin Laden is opposed to any acts of war directed from Saudi soil at brother Muslim nations.
January 17, 2002 The New York Times reported on a series of ridiculous statements against Saudi allies by us lawmakers. Senator Carl Levin, Democrat from Michigan stated, that he had an uneasy feeling that us forces were not particularly wanted in Saudi Arabia. It was an understatement of formidable proportions. He added: ‘They act as though somehow or another they are doing us a favour.’.
What else could it be when Saudi royalty allows Yankee soldiers in their land other than extending a privilege? ‘I think,’ said Levin, who is also chairman of the Armed Services Committee in the Senate, ‘we may be able to find a place where we are much more welcome openly.’ Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi ambassador to Washington reacted with the words, ‘I have great respect for Senator Levin but I am surprised at his statement.’ The Prince used diplomatic language to indicate that Levin did not know what he was talking about.
Former vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman, Democrat from Connecticut, added, that it seemed ‘a theological iron curtain’ was being drawn around Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries that did not fight radical Islam. The problem with us lawmakers, who usually have no clue of what goes on in other parts of the world, is, that they fail to realise that the rise of radical Islam is simply a primary reaction to American imperialism seeking further expansion of its economic and military power.
Just as in the 1960s Che Guevara became a world-wide symbol of resistance against us imperialist expansion in Africa and Latin America, so too in the 1990s Osama bin Laden launched a Jihad against America. When reacting to 09-11, Bush promised that he would track bin Laden down. Lyndon Johnson did the same with Che. With the assistance of the cia Guevara was shot like a stray dog in
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the mountains in Bolivia. Both Che and bin Laden will go down in history as infinitely better men, than Lyndon Johnson or George Bush.
Interestingly, even Saudi Arabia seems now to be finally moving into the direction that bin Laden had wanted ever since the Gulf War. The infidels have overstayed their welcome. Ari Fleischer, spokesman for Bush, said that the president felt that arrangements with the Saudis worked well. Washington does not give a damn how Saudis feel, let alone, what the basic causes could be for a Muslim Jihad against the us. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, a former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, ignorant in foreign affairs - just like Bush himself, or co-conspirators Cheney and Rumsfeld - declared, that rumours that the us would be asked to leave Saudi Arabia, did not warrant his attention at the moment. We will have to wait for what happens next.
Riyadh is already imposing rigid constraints on the behaviour of American military personnel. ‘American service women are required to wear head-to-toe robes,’ reported James Dao in The New York Times. A female us Air Force major launched a lawsuit about this imposition against the us military. The rule was eventually scrapped. It's simply mind boggling, that Americans have such difficulty in accepting customs, which are different from theirs. Eugene Burdick's best-seller, The Ugly American (1958) could have been written in 2002. Most Americans possess the silly attitude that the sooner the rest of the world adopts the us way of life the better, because Yankees know best what is good for the world. And, in last instance, what is good for the strengthening of the us dollar, of course.
The disagreement between Osama bin Laden and King Fahd over the Saudi government's policy to meet Washington halfway, and avoid a head-on collision with its American oil customers, became unbridgeable. Osama was even warned, that Riyadh had hired the Pakistani intelligence service to kill him. So, he left for Khartoum, where a militant Muslim regime had come into power. It was there, between 1991 and 1993, that the former hero of the anti Soviet war in Afghanistan took a fresh look at the region, which was recovering from shock waves caused by operation Desert Fox. Bin Laden saw it as a humiliating defeat that the corrupt regimes in Saudi-Arabia and Kuwait had emerged as big winners. This following Father Bush's policy to side with undemocratic and cruel royal dictatorships rather than to recognise the legitimate democratic demands of Arab masses tired of being ruled by us puppets and profiteers. Bush has been warning the world that bin Laden is the evil. But who is the real embodiment of a global terrorist?
The next five years, from 1992-1997, bin Laden set up legitimate businesses in Sudan. He opened a tannery, founded a transportation company and a construction concern. He also cornered the export of gum, sunflower and sesame products. He further invested 50 million dollars
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into setting up a new Islamic Bank in Khartoum. These business ventures were cover-ups for financing his global Jihad against American imperialism He also began to gather in Sudan the vanguard for an elite world-wide Islamic freedom fighter corps. The New York Times published in the middle of January 2001, shortly before the inauguration of the Bush II Administration, several pages filled with detailed in-formation about the end-result: Al Qaida.
In these articles, details surfaced about what us officials had learned from the 1993 bombing of the wtc in New York, when 6 people were killed and more than 1000 wounded. Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman was charged and convicted for being responsible for the attack. One of the other convicted bombers was Ahmad M. Ajaj, who had been trained in Pakistan and had brought back to the us a bomb manual. This was later seized by the FBI. These guidelines were translated. They contained diverse subjects, such as psychological war for Islam, the organisational structure of Israeli intelligence and recruiting methods in the us.
It further offered detailed recipes for making bombs, including instructions on when to shake the chemicals and how to use a wristwatch as the detonator. There were instructions on how to kill with toxins, gases and drugs. The preface of this manual was dedicated to bin Laden. While they had been confiscated by police in Europe for several years, the cia got its first copy only at the end of 1999. ‘They missed all that time the largest terrorist guide ever written,’ cia official Reuel Gerecht told the Times. Naturally, Al Qaida rejects the label ‘terrorist’, because they consider themselves freedom fighters, as some ofβdid, during World War II, when we were fighting the Nazi invaders of Holland. Bin Laden went to Khartoum to organise resistance against what many Saudis saw as a us occupation of their fatherland.
Without Americans ever having fully understood the seriousness of bin Laden's motives, they nevertheless pressured the government in Khartoum to eject the Saudi warrior from the country. He returned in 1996 to Afghanistan, where the Taliban allowed him to organise a global Jihad against the United-States. In February 1998, bin Laden announced his intentions to the world in Khost, the place Bush is presently having bombed into the Stone Age. A fatwa was declared: ‘To kill Americans and their allies, both civil and military, is the individual duty of every Muslim who is able, and it should be done in any country where it is possible.’
On August 7, 1998, eight years to the day after the first American troops set foot in Saudi Arabia, bombs exploded hours apart at the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. American prosecutors said that bin Laden had delivered on his threat. They also reported that they had proof that the Kenyan plotters had spoken directly to Osama bin Laden by satellite telephone as they planned their attack.
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‘At the same time, us authorities acknowledged, that Al Qaida and Mr. bin Laden have proven resourceful, resilient adversaries,’ The Times reported January 14, 2001. ‘He spent much of his personal wealth, from bank accounts that are now frozen. In spite of this, he is still raising money through a network of charities and businesses.’
It is safe to assume that Messrs. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, ready on that day to assume America's world power must have been quite alarmed reading these extremely disquietening pages in their morning paper. They must have placed Al Qaida pretty high on their fresh White House agenda.
Referring to the earlier mentioned Fleming report on fdr as global warrior, it took me 60 years to realise, that a man, I was taught to revere and respect, was actually a disaster. The relevant information was not available at an earlier date. My misconception originated from the late forties during under-graduate classes in International Relations at Yale. Roosevelt was venerated and lionised by history professors, while we now know the man was a tragic figure. He even cheated on his wife as Clinton has done.
Bush junior arrived in the White House as a political invalid, accused of having played dirty games against Democrat Al Gore. During the first months of his rule, he scrapped 1350 billion dollars in taxes over a period of eleven years. But his conservative agenda boomeranged. The public hardly respected the new president. One Republican Senator became so disgusted over Bush' policies, he went over to the Democrats establishing a 50-50 balance in the Senate. Then, 09-11 happened.
As lightening from heaven Bush' fortunes changed. He declared a global war on Terrorism and the nation united behind him. Ideological controversies were quickly forgotten. His approval rate reached at one point 94. He was compared to Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Junior from Texas was all of a sudden ranked with the Greats. The question is however: how will Bush II be judged 60 years from now, when another history professor has had a chance to study the records and discover what really happened?
As late as 2001, Richard Reeves wrote a meticulous study about Richard Nixon, ‘Alone in the White House’. Vast oceans of words have been devoted to this man, who was in charge of a war in Asia for five years. But Reeves was the first writer to examine White House logs, diaries and official memorandums, as well as the notorious Nixon tapes. He discovered that the Nixon's White House was built on lies from A to Z.
‘Nixon lied constantly to protect his isolation,’ wrote John Stacks in Newsweek (October 15, 2001) discussing Reeves' book. ‘He lied to his closest staff members, to his Cabinet, to the nation and to the world. The Nixon staff lied to one another and to the President. Then they wiretapped one another, stole one another's files, examined one
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another's phone records, all in a hopeless effort to find out the truth under layers of lies. It was, Reeves wrote, a White House of lies, a house organised for deception. Even insiders themselves could no longer penetrate to reality.’
This was the real Washington more than 30 years ago, which most people inside or outside the us know next to nothing about. Anyone who might entertain notions, that the functioning of leadership at the helm by this Global Cop to-day, is any different from the Nixon days, and that it could never be worse, should have his head examined. Henry Kissinger, in the Reeves' study, turns out to be an even more serious lawbreaker than Nixon himself. For instance, based on documentary proof, Kissinger asked both the Soviets and the Chinese to join him in lies to deceive the us Secretary of State William Rogers. Nevertheless, in 2002 a list was released in Los Angeles, headed by Henry as being among the top 100 intellectuals of our time.
In the mean time, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are behaving like pigs in handling so-called Al Qaida and Taliban members at Camp X-Rayon Cuba. ‘They looked like beings from another planet as they emerged from the giant American transport in fluorescent orange jumpsuits, turquoise masks and blacked-out plastic goggles,’ reported Tony Allen-Mills in the Sunday Times of London. (January 13, 2002). ‘It was a small step at the time as the shackled detainees stumbled of their flight from Afghanistan but a giant leap in the dark for the us military base at Guantanomo Bay as the most unlikely stop in the us campaign against terrorism.’
The gentleman rancher from Texas, opened a jagged collection of four by four metres as open air cages for these men, raising a host of controversial judicial questions as to what extent Bush could be held responsible for this additional war-crime. On television, these shelters brought to mind pictures from the National Geographic showing how animal lovers were housing saved orang-utans on the island of Borneo.
These captives were even drugged for the 20-hour flight to Cuba. One lunatic us general told journalists that this had to be done, because bin Laden's followers were sufficiently fanatic that they would chew through hydraulic cables in order to crash the plane. The us seems to be holding 445 bin Laden men. In their cages they will get wet when it rains, acknowledged a us spokesman, but they will be served culturally appropriate food, which means, no pork. They were also given two large towels, one to be used as a mat for prayers. Nice guy, Bush, after all.
Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the un, declared these men to be prisoners of war, entitled to treatment under the 1949 Geneva Convention. Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, said, ‘no, we consider them unlawful combatants’. The Economist noted: ‘They do have rights; no matter how egregious their crimes and this will be true under any legal regime America chooses. Under international
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law, if not charged with a crime, they must be released. If charged, they must be told of the charges, and given a fair trial by a truly independent court. The Al Qaida prisoners may well be unlawful combatants’ under the Geneva Conventions, as Mr. Rumsfeld claims, but this fact alone would not deprive them of their basic rights.’ (Volume 362, January 19, 2002).
John Simpson (bbc) wrote in the Sunday Telegraph (January 20, 2002) about the growing unease, also in Britain, with the cruel and inhuman treatment the Bush government is according to their prisoners from Afghanistan. ‘After dominating the moral high ground for months, Washington could now be shifting away from it without realising,’ said Simpson. ‘In places such as Pakistan, support for violent extremism fell away, but the way the us is treating its defeated enemies is helping to revive the monster.’
Simpson noted that most Americans find it hard to understand why distinguished jurists, human rights groups or Anglican bishops should be so worried about the prison conditions of men who have wholeheartedly supported terrorism. The word terrorist was first used to describe terror by the state, when the Jacobins launched their ‘Reign of Terror’ after the French Revolution. Much later, the Oxford Dictionary came up with a different interpretation: ‘A terrorist is a member of a clandestine or an expatriate organisation aiming to coerce an established government by acts of violence against its subjects.’
British journalist, Anthony Sampson, wrote in the Herald Tribune (December 12, 2001), that the British Annual Register applied in 1947 for the first time this Oxford Dictionary formula. It referred to the blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, ‘as the latest and worst of the outrages committed by Jewish terrorists in Palestine.’
In 1948, the Jewish state was unilaterally established. Palestinians opposed the Zionist take-over of their nation. Their land was simply stolen from them. The United States recognised Israel 11 minutes after independence was declared. Hence, Palestinians became the terrorists. Naturally, they began a struggle to regain their land. This battle has lasted more than half a century. Still in 2002, Palestinians and Jews are killing each other, by which the us and most of their allies call the Palestinians the terrorists. The fact is, they are genuine freedom fighters. Bin Laden, too, is on their side.
There is no difference, in my view, to our resistance movement against the Nazis, who invaded Holland (1940-1945) and the resistance of Palestinians against the Zionist occupation of their homeland. Of course, Hitler and Himmler saw us, members of the Dutch underground movement, as terrorists. But, like the Palestinians, we were genuine freedom fighters. Most Palestinians look at Bush and Sharon, as we looked at Hitler and Himmler during the war. Having lived through a Nazi occupation, I don't blame them either.
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‘When terrorists are working for the state,’ wrote Sampson, ‘they are treated more politely than revolutionary terrorists. They are often two sides of the same coin. The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket, wrote Jospeh Conrad in the Secret Agent. But the vocabulary changes from one side to the other: I am a freedom fighter: You are a terrorist. In truth, state terrorism can often make revolutionary terrorism inevitable, when police oppression becomes intolerable and prevents any form of non-violent resistance.’
The us has practised state terrorism ever since World War II. Of the crimes committed by all presidents since Roosevelt, Bush Jr. resembles the state terrorism of the Nazis most. Hitler assumed he could dictate to Europe. Bush feels that he and his henchman can impose their will on the world. The thin veneer of us civilisation is further illustrated by the savage treatment of supposed Al Qaida prisoners from Afghanistan. Why did Rumsfeld have to commit a gratuitous indignity on these men to have their beards shaved off? Little wonder, as this man is a leftover of the Nixon-Ford years. After all, the beard is for a devout Muslim, the key evidence of his obedience to his religion.
‘Camp X-Ray looks like a particularly densely packed zoo,’ reported Julian Borger in The Guardian (January 25, 2002). ‘It may not amount to torture, but the cramped metal cages baking in the tropical heat seemed to belong to another more brutal era. This is a sort of Caribbean Gulag, and without doubt the scene before us would raise concern if it was being run by another country.’ Yet, Bush and the White House don't give a damn what anybody reports. Bush sees nothing and hears nothing. Who cares what anybody else thinks, on 09-11, 3.000 precious us lives were lost. The Bushites vent their feelings of revenge on Al Qaida warriors, who most certainly had nothing at all to do with what happened that fateful day in the us.
At the start of the 21st century the moral and intellectual climate of us civilisation is clearly in a state of collapse. In historian Arnold Toynbee's terms, all living civilisations sooner or later break down. Harvard's Samuel Huntington spoke of a clash of civilisations. We are indeed witnessing one super-power leading a capitalist super Jihad, backed up by extensive arsenals of the most modern high-tech weaponry pitted against poorly equipped guerrilla bands everywhere. With bare hands, they struggle desperately for freedom, dignity and their own place in the sun. Bush will not compromise. He will not accept any diversions from the silly dangerous warlike course he has chosen. He will not allow anyone to sabotage his global crusade to further once and for all the American way of life everywhere.
Naturally, there is widespread opposition and armed insurrection against us over lordship versus the global community. Therefore, in the face of overwhelmingly superior us firepower, we are witnessing, what William Butler Yeats called, ‘The two eternities of race and soul.’ That
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of race is reflecting the tribal past; that of soul, is anticipating on a cosmopolitan future. Benjamin Barber phrased this alarming development as the prospect of ‘a retribalization of large swaths of humankind by war and bloodshed.’ (Jihad versus McWorld, Balantine Books, New York, 1995).
Indeed, we can all look forward to a universal struggle as to who will be the ultimate Führer of the world. Both inside the us - remember jfk's fate in Dallas or the Oklahoma city bombing by Timothy McVeigh - and everywhere else, the global community is sliding towards ever more widespread terrorism. At least, opposition to the Top Gun in the White House is interpreted in Washington as global anarchy and terrorism. Apart from America's puppets in Western Europe, who have already been annexed, most of the rest of the world, with different cultures and religions, has not as yet been converted. But the Global Cop demands unconditional surrender by all to the us way of life. It's the same type of ‘mission sacrée’ and message that European nations took to the former colonies in Afro-Asia and Latin America.
When the future Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Rowan Williams, calls the us war in Afghanistan ‘morally tainted and an embarrassment,’ something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Williams, presently Archbishop of Wales, displayed qualities of eloquence, seriousness, cogency and humanity, when he called Bush's war ‘a moral equivalent to the terrorism it sought to defeat.’ The brain of the current American president wouldn't be able to understand what the Archbishop is talking about anyway.
The manner in which the Bush Administration handles foreign Affairs resembles that of Mussolini and his son in law, Count Galeazzo Ciano. In 1936 they committed aggression against Ethiopia. This brought the usefulness of the League of Nations in Geneva as an instrument for maintaining peace, to an end. Hitler seized the opportunity. He too, committed unilateral aggression and invaded Saarland, Austria and Sudetenland. When he repeated the aggression in Poland, he overplayed his hand. World War II began.
Bush and his three musketeers, Cheney, Powell and Rumsfeld, are dangerously close to doing as they please, just as the fascists of the thirties have done. Columnist Thomas Friedman signalled this tendency six weeks before 09-11 in The New York Times. ‘For the Bush team’, he wrote on August 1, 2001, ‘being the world's leader means, Americans should be able to do whatever they want, unconstrained by treaties or multilateral agreements that might limit their consumption of resources (Kyoto Protocol), or their military power (the Anti-Ballistic Missile and nuclear testing treaties and the Biological Weapons Convention), or their insane gun laws (the United Nations pact on small arms).’
For six long years, negotiations were conducted on the
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subject of arms verification. ‘And, then, America discovers its facilities, too, would have to be verified. The brazen nerve!’ commented Friedman tongue in cheek. He added, ‘America is referred to as a rogue state in Europe now, as often as Iraq.’ He warned, that the message the Bush Administration had been sending to the world was that they do not believe in rules or treaties, since Bush believes in raw power. We have it and others don't.
It's the same attitude to international relations that the Axis powers displayed in the late thirties. The difference being, that following Hitler's invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war and tried to forge an alliance. To draw the us into the war, the Pearl Harbour's disaster was vital. Just as 09-11 was the indispensable disaster, which had to happen, to really get Americans collectively to support a War on Terrorism
However, in 2002, no coalition of nations can be found, and therefore cannot be organised to fight rising us fascism. Not one nation with nuclear missiles would even entertain for a split second a thought of an attack on America. Thus, yes, the us can indeed do as it pleases worldwide. America has been slowly but surely building its empire since 1945. As Professor R.H. Wade explained, Washington worked with Machiavellian precision towards globalisation and the dollarisation of the world. (Governing the Market, Princeton University Press, 2001).
Ever since the Second World War the Pentagon has tested its new military doctrines and weaponry skills in localised wars, such as Korea, Vietnam and many other places. During the Cold War, the us was years ahead of the Soviets and light-years ahead of everybody else. What Afghanistan taught the us military was that intelligence and correct information about the enemy is the key to a Blitz Krieg. As soon as the us Air Force receives the correct data, precision bombs will do the rest.
During the Vietnam War, Lyndon Johnson used to pick new targets over lunch. Hence, the military spoke of lbj's ‘over-lunch-targeting.’ During the Gulf War an Air Targeting Order still took three days. It was impossible to trace mobile Iraqi Scud batteries. In 1999, in the former Yugoslavia, the same happened with Sam anti-aircraft batteries and tanks. After the Kosovo war, the us found only 13 destroyed tanks. In Afghanistan, however, the us employed unmanned flying robots loaded with sensors and cameras. Finally, while the Afghan territory is four times as large as Vietnam, it was easier to use us Special forces, some even on horseback. They were difficult to find, but they supplied the us command with valuable information to circling B-52's over head.
These small us guerrilla units were called ‘A teams’, consisting of a few dozen heavily armed Green Berets. They were advising troops of the Northern Alliance, how to surprise and attack the forces of the Taliban. They directed from the ground also us attack aircraft to lend support to the Northern Alliance troops in order to surprise
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and attack the Taliban. It was a tactic followed earlier in the Balkans, when us imperialism let the uck and Albanian mobsters do the dirty work for them. It was now combined with heavy strikes by the vicious massmurdering Daisy Cutters. It meant that others were used as cannon fodder, while Americans suffered no casualties. And, at the end of the day, the us was the winner.
Four reporters of The New York Times reconstructed how Washington operates militarily these days. One Special Forces commander told them: ‘We basically had to figure out in Afghanistan who was a bad bad guy, who was a bad good guy and if there were any good good guys’. After the us made up its mind as whom to use to clean out the Taliban, they supplied the Northern Alliance soldiers with uniforms, ammunition, boots, and food. Having us Special Force advisors at their side, these gangsters advanced with spectacular speed against the Taliban. Afghanistan was the Balkans all over again. The world can look forward to similar Global Cop operations on all major continents.
At this time of writing, hundreds of us Special Forces are being flown into the Philippines, to assist the government of president Gloria Macapagal-Aroyo in counter terrorism operations to destroy the Aby Sayyaf (meaning: Bearer of the Sword). This group is believed to be linked to Al Qaida and operational on and around Basilan Island in the south. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said: ‘it is not a small number of military men we are sending there.’ Washington is on another armed rampage.
The New York Times (January 22, 2002) editorialised a warning: ‘us Advisors Again.’ The paper wrote, ‘The Pentagon has a long and ignoble history of announcing that it is dispatching American forces abroad as ‘advisors’, when they are really combatants. We hope the Bush team will not play that game.’ Of course, the Bushites are playing dirty again, like all us presidents have done since World War II. Vietnam began with ‘advisors’, and in the end the us lost 58.000 men. ‘How the gods must have chuckled when they added hope to the evils with which they filled Pandora's box’, wrote Somerset Maugham in his Writer's Notebook, ‘for they knew very well that this was the cruellest evil of all, since it is hope that lures mankind to endure its misery to the end.’ It never ceases to amaze me, that journalists use the word hope, when analysing politics or foreign affairs.
What these sketchy notes on us military plans boil down to is that opposition in the 21st century against us imperialism has become useless, if not impossible. Militarily, those who disagree and refuse to submit or surrender, have no other choice than to go underground and become freedom fighters. Washington, no doubt, will call them terrorists, just as Hitler had dealt with us, who resisted Nazi occupation in much of Europe. Peter Preston cautioned in The Guardian shortly after 09-11, that the War On Terrorism would be turning into ‘a festival of lies’. This is
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exactly what is happening. Secretary Rumsfeld even lies with a straight face about the bestial treatment of pow's at Guantanomo Bay, where Al Qaida prisoners are being treated like chimpanzees.
The simpletons that run the present White House foolishly divided the world into good guys and bad guys; those for and those against terrorism. It has never even dawned on the Bush clique, that subjugation to us and Western inequalities, which restrict the growth of prosperity and a decent life for all in the developing world, is cause enough for aggression and violence. How else to fight a super power, with fascist tendencies?
Any criminal method used to enforce obedience to the us will do: from economic and military blockades to straight forward sending of Special Forces into foreign jungles. Complete with B-52's flattening open villages, with no regard for people's lives. Ironically, while calling others evil, inhuman and mean, Americans themselves are the worst war criminals on earth. Just as Hitler thought he was bringing freedom to all of Europe by having ss-troopers march into places where they never should have gone, Bush vows to stamp out freedom fighters and send his troopers to every corner of the world. And this time, unlike in 1939, when a grand alliance could be formed to combat the Nazi dragon, billions of powerless and destitute masses are left with no other choice than to take up arms against this latest wave of imperialism, and become freedom fighters. The us intentionally misnames these heroes, terrorists.
Bush and Sharon behave like modern day Nazis. They proclaimed Yasser Arafat ‘irrelevant’. Bush considers him a terrorist unworthy of being received in the Oval Office. Arafat's friends and top aides are being assassinated Nazi style. This criminal behaviour by the present Israeli regime is only possible, because the Bush Administration agrees. Therefore, the fight for freedom fight and guerrilla warfare against us Czarism and Israeli Neo Fascism will continue indefinitely. Until the day eventually comes, that American mischief and roguery in world affairs is halted, corrected or wiped out from within. However, that could take much longer than it took to reverse 15 years of us criminal conduct in Vietnam. In the mean time, the likelihood for more 09-11-type disasters will only grow and be with us all for a long time.
For Bill Clinton it was mere child's play to order several dozen cruise missiles to be fired at Al Qaida camps in Afghanistan. But they, in turn, (according to Bush' version) designed their own cruise missiles, by manning us airliners with suicide commandos, transforming them into comparable, mass murdering projectiles, as they were launched on 09-11 on New York and Washington. What if those, who declared war on usIsraeli war crimes, were to map a similar action against Tel Aviv? All hell would break loose. One does not need a crystal ball to ascertain that the day will come, when, after years of badgering and
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provoking Arabs to the limit, as Israel and the us have been doing, the volcano of blind Arab rage will stream into the streets from Morocco to Indonesia.
Americans will run again, as they did in Vietnam and Somalia, in spite of Bush' Hard Talk. Palestinians will at the end of the day reclaim their freedom and their land. Israel will be lucky if it survives at all once the tables will be turned. The kings, traitors and us Quislings will some day be gone. If they are lucky, they will have time to rob the banks, escape to Florida or California and live there happily ever after, as so many crooks from all over the world have done before. us dollar imperialism will eventually collapse the same way that centuries of European colonialism finally caved in after Afro-Asians took over the streets.
That is, after all, what in the end happened to the Shah of Iran. That is what will eventually happen to Hosni Mubarak, the traitor, who accepted as a write-off an amount of 8 billion dollars from his debts to the us in exchange for his participation in the Gulf War against Iraq. The Middle East is littered with Arab Quislings ready to sell out their country, or each other, in exchange for favours from Washington. The House of Saud is another splendid example. But surely and securely, the bin Ladenites are gaining ground. us imperialism will eventually collapse in the Middle East as European colonialism disappeared from the face of the earth in the 20th century.
Sharon, who is a pioneer war criminal himself, found in Bush a loyal partner in crime. Bush nods in silent approval at Sharon's crazy behaviour. When a former chief of cia counter-terrorism operations, Vincent Cannistraro, speaks in the Washington Post (August 31, 2001), about the Bush Administration's agreement with a policy of ‘let them bleed’ - meaning the Palestinians - by the present Israeli government, and then calls this policy ‘dumb’, it should be realised that Cannistraro would have gotten in trouble with his former employer's lawyers had he used the word ‘criminal’ instead.
The Israeli state has drawn up an official list of Palestinian citizens who must be assassinated. Zionist state terrorism as practised in the forties by Ben Gurion and others was fully revived by Sharon. In 1948 Israeli criminals murdered Count Folke Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross, in Jerusalem, while he was trying to mediate peace. In 2001, Sharon drew up a list of Palestine citizens that should be liquidated. ‘Target killings’ wrote Cannistraro, ‘may justify a bloodlust and a perceived need for revenge, but they are ineffective in achieving their stated objective of deterring terrorism.’ The former cia boss argued sensibly, that extrajudicial killings only create, what the other side calls, ‘blood debts’ and the cycle of violence will be perpetuated ad nauseam. That, in a nutshell, will likewise be the ultimate effect of Bush ill-considered War on Terrorism.
In 1995, the Israeli Mossad sent a hit squad to Malta to assassinate the head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Afthi
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Shikaki. It was in revenge for a series to terrorist acts against Israel. Remember, that is what western media call them. Shikaki and friends were simply freedom fighters trying to regain their land. He was succeeded by Ramadan Abdullah Shalah who further strengthened the Islamic Jihad with Syrian support. He is promoting even more deadly suicide bombings inside Israel. And so continues the never-ending cycle of violence.
‘So what are the real accomplishments of the Israeli assassination campaign?’ asked Cannistraro in his Washington Post article. ‘More deaths, more victims, while the shrinking political middle in both Israel and Palestine, squeezed between the Israeli far right and the Palestinian religious extremists, searches with fading hope for peacemakers. The American government should not endorse or tacitly encourage a process that is illegal under us law.’ Sensible arguments, even coming from a cia operative, are falling on deaf ears, because present us and Israeli leaders are both obsessed with feelings of blind rage. An Israeli ex general with war crimes on his record and an ex manger of a us baseball team have brains that can only dream up tit for that murders. Where have our statesmen gone?
Why can't Americans understand that Palestinians are resisting and attacking Israelis, not because they are Jews, but because they stole their land? Sharon has been killing Palestinians as far back as in 1953 in Qibya and in 1982 at Sabra and Chatila. He is only prolonging with his bloodied hands the colonisation of Palestine that began 53 years ago. The West forgets that 85 per cent of the land of Palestinians, who remained after independence of Israel in Israel, was confiscated. What did Zionism do to Israeli ethics? Prior to 1948, almost 93 per cent of the land was owned by Palestinians, who had lived there since time immemorial.
In the days when the Huns overran Western Europe, my country, was part of Germany. The genes of the Dutch royal family, descending from William of Orange (1533-1584) are 99 per cent German. Once upon a time even Spain occupied the low lands, which led to an eighty-year war to get them out. Imagine that Spanish or Germans conquistadors would have turned up at the Dutch border in 1947 to claim the land that might have been inhabited a thousand years ago by them? We would most certainly have refused to surrender and would have put up a fierce fight, exactly as Palestinians are doing in the face of Jewish intruders. The big Satan from Houston backs the Jewish intruders 100 per cent in their evil conquest of even more Palestinian land. And the rest of the world awe-struck and in frustrated silence watches powerless to stop this new wave of Israeli war crimes.
Even Benny Elon, a cabinet minister, has openly and unapologetically said that the Sharon government will make life for Palestinians in the West Bank so totally unbearable, that they would want to leave altogether. Sha- | |
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ron set out from the beginning a policy of destroying the plo at any price, and with the obvious determination to never allow the emergence of a viable Palestinian state. Arafat is a total prisoner of the Israeli military. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld seem fully prepared to fly him to Guantanomo too, as the latest exhibit in their Al Qaida zoo on Cuba. No doubt, Sharon & Co. realise full well, that Arafat cannot stop Palestinian suicide attacks, because his people are in a total rage after enduring half a century of Israeli terrorism. They intentionally demand from Arafat the impossible to further castrate him as titular head of the Palestinian state.
Peter Beaumont reported in the London Observer (January 27, 2002), that Israeli soldiers have even been seen inside Arafat's compound. The plo chief is telephoning in all directions begging for help. Some of his former friends are not taking his calls. Sharon's psychological warfare, fully backed by Bush, is aimed at driving the old man mad. And then, what? It can only get worse after Arafat.
The plo leader recently went on Israel's Channel One and losing his self-control he screamed, ‘What do I care about Americans! The Americans are on your side and they gave you everything. Who gave you the planes? Americans! Who gave you the tanks? The Americans! Who gives you the money! Americans! Do not talk to me about Americans.’ The intense frustration he voiced is shared by masses of Arabs all over the Middle East. But the us, especially after 09-11, doesn't give a damn. Only America and Israel profited from the 09-11 disaster. It gave them a licence to start a worldwide war on terrorism.
The blind reliance on military force by Bush and Sharon is backfiring in all directions. As William Pfaff puts it: ‘There is no value in military deployment meant to stabilise a region, that actually destabilises or subverts them, or which strengthens Islamic fundamentalism and wins its recruits.’ (The New York Times, January 26, 2002). When Prince Nawaf bin Abdul Azis, the crown prince's brother and Prince Turki's successor as head of Intelligence told the Sunday Times (January 27, 2002), ‘The policies that America uses in the Middle East are not resulting in a peaceful settlement in the area: the us is always with Israel. This is the worst period of crisis I have seen’. Washington should have reconsidered its blind endorsement of Sharon's war crimes. It did not, because the White House does not acknowledge its own war crimes.
James Akins, former us ambassador in Ryadh, told the Sunday Times: ‘the reason we are hated in Saudi Arabia is that we have a double standard. We allow Israel to get away with breaking international law and defying un security Council resolutions. As long as that condition maintains, the relationship with Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries is going to be very bad.’ The White House is not prepared to give in to Riyadh on the withdrawal of 6.000 us troops from the region. The macho decision-makers in the Bush White House do not have the
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adequate brainpower to understand what ambassador Akins has been talking about. And, secondly, if the military were to go home now, the Bushites would feel that they had handed another victory to Osama bin Laden. He has been advocating for an entire decade that there should be no imperialist forces on Saudi soil. Some day, we will learn the fact that if Bush senior had not ordered us troops to stay in Saudi Arabia there would never have been a 09-11 disaster.
It might even finally become common knowledge based on documents to be released, that if the us had listened to Saudi and Arab signals during the era following the Gulf War of father Bush, the wtc towers would still be standing and his son would have had to search for another alibi to wage his War on Terrorism. Then it will also become known whether us-Israeli intelligence services organised 09-11 or whether Al Qaida did, as we are being told. So far, the world takes the word of Bush of bin Laden's guilt as the gospel truth. Too many us presidents gained a reputation of having been pathological liars. It would be rather dumb to take their word automatically serious. That much we should have learned during the second half of the 20th century. The verdict of history will arrive by the middle of this century when we will come closer to the truth about 09-11.
‘Terrorism is the activity of the dispossessed, the voiceless, in a radically asymmetrical distribution of power,’ wrote Daniel Warner, of the Institute of International Studies in Geneva. ‘When the drums of war beat louder and louder, let calmer voices try to make some simple observations.’ Warner called terrorism a virus that can easily mutate. ‘Closing borders, putting up missile shields are geo-political reactions harkening back to images of the Middle Ages and do not respond to future cyber interference or chemical and biological terrorism.’
Warner called, ‘the growth in inequalities of wealth and lack of political access as causes for frustration, aggression, violence and terrorism. The greater the levels of frustration, the greater the levels of violence. The higher the levels of repression, the higher the levels of reaction.’ (Herald Tribune, September 21, 2001). Are you listening Mr. Ariel Sharon? That is what I meant by our resistance against Nazi invaders. You are displaying Nazi behaviour Mr. Sharon! We resisted the Nazis in Holland the same way as Palestinians are fighting you. We, too, were freedom fighters in the Al Qaida mode. Americans should have learned the lesson in Vietnam, that the Vietcong were freedom fighters like Al Qaida, Hamas and all the rest. Not terrorists, to be simply killed off.
‘Among educated people,’ wrote George Orwell in 1945, ‘anti-Semitism is held to be an unforgivable sin and in quite a different category from other kinds of racial prejudice.’ Gradually more often editorials appear in western publications commenting on a rising anti-Israel mood. There is, as The Guardian appropriately pointed out, a
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distinct difference between anti Mugabe or anti-Zimbabwe, anti-Rumsfeld or anti-American, and anti-Sharon or anti-Israel. However, Israelis overwhelmingly voted this man into office as if they had forgotten what type of individual they would be dealing with.
They should have known to expect a policy towards Palestinians that is stupid, short sighted, brutal, criminal and ultimately doomed. It should not make people anti-Semitic, but it does. The worldwide anti Israel mood is steadily growing in strength. It runs neck and neck with strong anti us sentiments everywhere. Americans and Jews are indeed behaving as neo-Nazis. The people of the us should become aware of this, once the nightmare of 09-11 will begins to fade from current awareness.
Another alarming aspect of the War on Terrorism is the way in which the us military, right under Bush's nose, are exploiting his crusade against bin Laden to quietly spread us military power. The noose around the former ussr is being tightened even more than in the days of the Cold War. The price? The energy rich republics of Central Asia for both the us military as for the us oil giants.
Twenty years ago, the Soviet Kremlin feared a us move towards Afghanistan. It invaded its neighbour and lost a ten-year bloody guerrilla war. The defeat of the Soviet Army in the same hills and mountains, where now the Americans are deployed, contributed heavily to the fall of the Soviet Empire. Mikhail Gorbachev was unable to hold the 15 Soviet republics together. He was followed by Boris Yeltsin, who even in secret allowed the presence of four cia advisors in an office inside the Kremlin next to that of his daughter. Yeltsin presided over the fatal disintegration of the other super-power, leaving the world to be ruled, for the time being, by Washington alone and with dangerous consequences for the rest of humanity.
One coveted prize for the imperialists were the rich oil and gas deposits in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan. They are estimated to be at least equal to those of Saudi-Arabia and Iraq. In the great new energy game, control over Kabul is of paramount strategic importance. It explained the Soviet pre-emptive strike in December 1979. It explained another dimension of the War on Terrorism that isn't discussed very much but is very much on the mind of the Bush White House. Never mind that us military forces are being drawn into a protracted conflict in Afghanistan. Oil is what the Bushites are after, in this case Russian oil.
Naturally, Bush says he intervened to catch bin Laden dead or alive. But, perhaps his priority is not Al Qaida, as he says it is, but his true goal may very well be to lay his hands on Russia's most important energy resources. Belatedly, Washington is playing down the importance of catching the elusive Pimpernel. The White House already says that it might take six years to catch the man. Perhaps they have stopped looking for him altogether. Do Americans want another Che Guevara saga on their hands?
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Osama's followers are suicide bombers, quite a different brand of freedom fighters from Cuban Fidelista's. Furthermore, bringing bin Laden to trial would be a risky scheme, since the man might prove that he was indeed not directly involved with 09-11.
Edward Helmore reported in The London Observer, that Washington did not even attempt to hide its intention to remain in the region. (January 21, 2002). us Senate majority leader Tom Daschke recently visited the area and told Uzbek leaders that us soldiers weren't there in ‘the immediate term’. Even ten years ago it was unthinkable that thousands of us military personnel would be operating on former Soviet territory as is now happening in former Soviet states in Central Asia. Vladimir Putin saw an advantage in allowing such co-operation with the Pentagon, since it would soften us and eu criticism of the Russian war going on in Chechnya. Was it worth the strategic price Moscow was paying?
Furthermore, General Fu Quanyou, chief of staff of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, termed the introduction of us troops into Kazakhstan ‘a direct threat to Chinese security’. Beijing has its own concerns about interior stability caused by radicals among Uighur Muslims on its western borders. Helmore cited professor Margot Light of the London School of Economics, when she said, ‘the speed at which the us established coalition-backed military forces in the region has served to make the Russian failure (to effectively make counter moves to us military expansionism) all the more spectacular.’
David Ignatius called Russia a rival to Saudi Arabia as the world's dominant energy producer. (Herald Tribune, December 24, 2001). Russian oil companies such as Lukoil and Yukos are now called ‘super-majors’ and likened to Exxon-Mobil, bp and Shell. Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan alone are expected to export by 2010 roughly 3 million barrels a day. Ignatius estimated, that Moscow was on its way to becoming the next Houston. Russia itself exports 7 million barrels a day. Soon, Russia will have a degree of control over about 16 million barrels a day, roughly double the current production of Saudi Arabia. ‘And those totals don't include natural gas, where Russia is the dominant producer by far’, noted Ignatius.
The real cat and mouse game now developing is via what export routes and through which countries the various pipelines which transport the energy to viable harbours will be built. Apparently, the Russian robber barons, who emerged during the Boris Yeltsin years, are discovering that they will make more money by adhering to capitalist tricks than by stealing. Therefore, as well as locally, Russian oil giants are beginning to aggressively invest outside their home market. ‘Lukoil’, reported Ignatius, ‘is heavily investing in Iraq's West Qurna field, which is expected to produce nearly 700.000 barrels a day. The Russians are also exploring possible sources of energy in Algeria, Sudan and Libya.’
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After Putin assumed power two years ago, he decided to market Russian energy outside the dictates of the Arab dominated opec (Organisation of Oil Exporting Countries), ‘Russia's independent oil-pricing policies have succeeded in stabilising the Russian economy over the past two years’, wrote Richard Butler, diplomat in residence at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York.
It was Prime Minister, Yevgeny Primakov, who, in 1999, pushed hard for the construction of a pipeline from Kazakhstan's Caspian Sea oil fields across Kazakh and Russian territory to the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. It opened late in 2001. Apart from it's main client, Russia's Tengizchevroil, and Russian and Kazakh partners, half of the pipeline is owned by Chevron and a quarter by Exxon-Mobil. Expected growth of the Kazakhstan economy is 13 percent.
Ambassador Butler points out, that Bush's war in Afghanistan is making the construction of a pipeline across that country and Pakistan politically possible for the first time since Unocal and the Argentinean company Bridas competed for Afghan rights in the mid 1990's. Another circumstantial result of the War on Terrorism is the ongoing Sub-War for Oil, because Washington seems to be adapting to a new reality. The us discovered that 15 of the 19 suicide pilots on 09-11 were Saudis. Maybe, after all, Saudi Arabia is no longer the best of allies. The White House is clearly steering towards a lessening of its previous dependence on Saudi oil. (Herald Tribune, January 19, 2002.)
It was also Primakov, who advocated a nuclear alliance between Russia, China and India, in a return to the Balance of Terror, as had existed during the Cold War years. Bill Clinton and his Kremlin specialist, Strobe Talbott, quickly stepped in. We see in 2002, that India is growing closer and closer to the West and especially the United States, as a direct result of Pakistan, having served as a haven for Muslim freedom fighters. The War on Terrorism of George Bush produces for Washington a number of advantageous side effects in the overall East-West power game. It even touches the local conflict between Delhi and Islamabad over Kashmir, in which the us now supports India.
The concept of non-alignment in international relations as established in 1955 by President Sukarno of Indonesia in Bandung, by which Afro Asian nations were expected to play a mediating role in order to prevent the us and ussr ending up in a nuclear war, has become in the 21ste century obsolete and overtaken by events. There are now B-nuclear powers, China, Russia, Britain, France, India, and Pakistan. There are perhaps even a few C-Nuclear mini-powers, like Israel. But there is only one A-nuclear power and that is the us. None of the ‘dwarfs’ entertain notions of challenging us military power. Therefore, those who oppose today's Global Cop have but one choice: go underground and organise global guerrilla units. You can't kill mosquitoes with nuclear bombs.
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Hence, Washington is changing its military doctrines. It's axiomatic that military budgets skyrocket in wartime. Bush plans a 380 billion dollars Pentagon budget for the coming fiscal year. Special funds are being made available for Special Forces after their success in Afghanistan. Washington switches to a counter-guerrilla army. The money goes first to some 15.000 Green Berets, Rangers, members of the Delta Force and Navy Seals. A vanguard of these us sponsored state guerrillas has been arriving in the Philippines causing widespread anti-Americanism and strengthening sympathies for the Muslim freedom-fighters in that nation. Bush is taking his global war there next.
‘We are interested in a lot more than Al Qaida’, warmonger Rumsfeld told Edward Alden of the Financial Times. (January 19, 2002). ‘If we have to go into 15 more countries, we ought to do it, to deal with the problem of terrorism so we don't allow this problem to damage and kill off thousands of more people.’ Poor man. His brain is unable to conceive that the imperialistic course of us foreign policy during five long decades is the sole source of what he now perceives as terrorism. In reality, humanity is at last faced with a justified and organised armed revolt against criminal misconduct by the White House, the government and the entire us power establishment. Finally, the bill for half a century of war crimes is being presented by the victims of us terror.
Why did Eric Pianin and Bob Woodward warn in The New York Times (January 18, 2002), that us intelligence agencies are increasingly concerned that future attacks on the United States may involve Asian and African Al Qaida members. What Washington cannot get into their heads is the question: why is it so easy for an organisation like Al Qaida to recruit Indonesian, Filipino or Malaysian guerrillas? It is simple to enlist Asians because of the hatred for Americans instilled by innumerable crimes committed against the peoples of these countries for half a century. Finally, the bill is being presented in the form of armed insurrection by millions of people.
The White House asked Hollywood to come to its aid and produce movies supporting ‘America's good intentions and unselfish sacrifices versus other peoples and nations’. Sure enough, Hollywood obliged. It came up with a script written around the downing of a us high-tech helicopter by a ragtag bunch of rebels in the dilapidated maze of Mogadishu back streets in Somalia. ‘Another crashed two miles away when elite Rangers botched an operation to arrest the henchmen of Mohammed Farah Aideed, the Somali warlord who dared to take on America's might’, wrote Jonathan Clayton in The Sunday Times, January 20, 2002. In the ensuing battle 19 invading Americans died against 500 Somalis. As requested by Bush, Hollywood produced Black Hawk Down to further glorify Bill Clinton's mission in Somalia, which, in fact, was a complete disaster.
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George Monbiot noted in The Guardian, that Hollywood dutifully followed the president's lead and presented the Somali debacle of 1993 as a battle between good and evil, between civilisation (us) and barbarism (Somalia). Hollywood simply created a new myth of nationhood. ‘America casting itself simultaneously as the world's saviour and the world's victim. As a sacrificial messiah, on a mission to deliver the world from evil. This myth,’, warned Monbiot, ‘contains incalculable dangers for everyone else on earth’.
Black Hawk Down occurred nine years ago. Now, the cia seems convinced that us forces should return there. Apparently, the son of Aideed supplied ample information to justify another invasion. Clayton in the Sunday Times expected that actual fighting would probably be carried out by proxy Ethiopian cannon fodder. us and British warships have already arrived along the Somali coast. The sas is making reconnaissance flights. The cia also beefed up its presence. echelon satellites are in full swing.
The Bush Administration conducts its business as if the United Nations no longer exists. Like Sharon declared Arafat irrelevant, signs are that Bush & Co. harbour similar feelings towards the eu. No wonder, the Secretary-General of the world organisation and his wife fly off to Amsterdam for the fairy-tale wedding of the crown-prince of the Netherlands, while, if the sg still takes his job still seriously, he should have jetted to Guantanomo Bay to check on us treatment of prisoners of war. Kofi Annan probably realises by now, that he might as well enjoy himself as long as his post lasts.
In his 2002 State of the Union Address George Bush, as policeman of the world, referred to Al Qaida terror camps in Somalia and eleven other nations, and said he was planning to clean them out. The president of the United-States probably never ever read the Charter of the United Nations as the accepted universal code of conduct signed by Truman. The newcomer from Texas talks, as if the outside world is America's back garden, where he, Bush, is free to decide who belongs to the Axis of Evil and he, naturally, represents the Axis of Good.
Bush suffers from delusions. He has a psychotic state of mind, in which the nonsense in his head cannot be modified by reasoning or a simple demonstration of facts. His 2002 address to Congress was riddled with falsehoods and delusions of grandeur mixed with asinine sentences like, ‘America will lead by defending liberty and justice because they are right and true and unchanging for all people everywhere.’ Such a premise is not only false, it is the product of an ignorant parochial conservative us Republicanism not to be bought by anyone else but naive Americans who project in him the saviour of all the problems of mankind. Anyone who assumes, as Bush does, that the world is ready to descend to the level of his infantile concepts of happiness for all, should be consulting a mind doctor.
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A Republican predecessor of his, Richard Nixon, was wise enough to do so. Psychiatrist, Dr. Arnold Hutschnecker on Park Avenue in New York made a valiant effort to bring some order into the chaos of Nixon's mind. Afterwards Hutschnecker argued arduously via Op-Ed pages of The New York Times, that candidates for public office, let alone for the White House, should be tested, mentally, physically and professionally to examine if they were up to the job. For the choice of geo's of multinational companies, this is standard procedure. In 2002 mankind is faced with a Super Global Cop, deciding on war and peace for all of us, who would most certainly never have passed the Hutschnecker grade.
Bush' inner psychological world produces sentences like, ‘tens of thousands of dangerous killers schooled in the methods of murder... spread around the world like ticking bombs, set to go off without warning.’ Washington is simply exploiting the 09-11 disaster to the hilt. In the name of patriotic unity and solidarity anything is allowed. As The Guardian editorialised, ‘Sooner or later, Mr. Bush, self styled universal soldier of truth, will have to stop pretending that the 09-11 tragedy gave him a free hand to remake America and the world to fit his simplistic narrow vision.’ The British paper added, ‘For this is the delusion under which he labours. And a very dangerous delusion it is too.’ (Also read: Delusion: Internal Dimension of Political life, James M. Glass, University of Chicago Press, 1985).
William Pfaff explained in the Los Angeles Times (January 31, 2002) that 09-11 changed American consciousness. The world had always known terrorism, as more recently in Spain, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Chechnya, Israel, Palestine, Columbia, Congo, Sierra Leone, etcetera. Pfaff also dealt with the way the Bush government mistreated their Al Qaida prisoners on Cuba. He quoted vice president Dick Cheney explaining on tv, ‘These are the worst of a very bad lot. They are devoted to killing millions of Americans - innocent Americans.’
We are back to the singular notion, that it does not matter how many million deaths the us has caused worldwide over half a century, with its criminal policies since 1945. However, the moment 3.000 Americans perished in the wtc building, the world is too small for Yankee wrath. The us might have scrapped its principal discriminatory laws in the Eisenhower-jfk years. But the idiotic notion of an American super-race, far superior to all other dwellers on this earth, is very much alive in the 21st century.
Israelis display similar racist reactions. If one or more members of the Israeli tribe are being killed by Palestinian freedom-fighters, high-tech killer patrols immediately take to the air and blast off the streets as many Palestinian defenceless civilians as they can get into their sights or burn them alive in their homes. The numbers of Palestinian dead has always to be doubled or tripled compared
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to losses on the Israeli side. Because, the enemy is not looked upon as fellow human beings, but as members of an inferior clan representing an inferior race. Fascist gangster-ism has penetrated the minds of the top echelons of the relentless Western and Israeli crusade to halt a growing global insurrection against casino capitalism and the ongoing us pacification of mankind.
Pfaff noted in the Los Angeles Times, that the Bush White House identified the enemy in terms of absolute evil, the war as an expression of metaphysical combat between good and evil, and it considered the War on Terrorism as a struggle against sub humans that have to be destroyed. ‘The Nazis identified Jews as an enemy to be exterminated,’ noted Pfaff as recently as January 31, 2002. He added that Hitler had taught his soldiers that Poles and Russians were sub humans to be treated as slaves. Bush and Sharon are telling their peoples the same thing about Al Qaida and the Palestinians.
In the thirties, German masses, were also unaware of the fact that their country had fallen into the hands of mad criminals. Hitler's terrorism during the 30's and 40's was aimed at Western Europe and the ussr. America's terrorism, now under the command of George Bush junior, is a global Nazi type crusade reaching into the farthest corners of the earth. Hitler was stopped with the help of the United States. Americans and Israelis can only be stopped from within or all will be lost.
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