Israelis shot mental patient 'under controversial military directive'

by Jonathan Cook

The National

December 10. 2009

NAZARETH // The fatal shooting by Israeli soldiers of an Israeli man earlier this week as he tried to scale a fence into the Gaza Strip was reportedly part of a drastic procedure the army was supposed to have phased out several years ago.

The Israeli media reported that Yakir Ben-Melech, 34, had bled to death after he was shot under the "Hannibal procedure", designed to prevent Israelis from being taken captive alive by enemy forces.

One critic, Uri Avnery, a former Israeli legislator and leader of Gush Shalom, a small radical peace group, defined the procedure as meaning: “Liberate the soldier by killing him”.

The controversial directive, which was once one of the army’s best-kept secrets, was drafted more than 20 years ago after the Israeli government had come under domestic pressure to release hundreds of enemy prisoners for the return of three captured soldiers.

Israel is currently involved in just such negotiations over Gilad Shalit, a soldier who has been held prisoner in Gaza by Hamas for more than three years. According to reports, he may be freed in the near future in a deal expected to see several hundred Palestinians released from Israeli prisons.

Israel was supposed to have stopped the Hannibal procedure after it withdrew its occupying army from south Lebanon in May 2000.

However, there is strong evidence that it has continued to be used, particularly during the events that triggered Israel’s attack on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 and again last year during Israel’s assault on Gaza.

Ben-Melech, a patient at a mental health clinic in nearby Ashkelon, tried to enter Gaza in the early hours of Monday in what his family believe was a bid to save Sgt Shalit. The army says guards fired several warning shots as he ran towards Gaza before shooting him in the leg.

Several Israeli military correspondents, apparently briefed by the army, reported that the Hannibal procedure had been invoked in Ben-Melech’s case.

The use of the procedure was also confirmed by Zvika Fogel, a former deputy head of the army’s Southern Command, an area including Gaza. He told the Reshet B radio station: “The Hannibal procedure is definitely the right procedure. We cannot afford now some soulmate next to Gilad Shalit.”

However, in an apparent sign of continuing sensitivities on the issue, English-language editions of Israeli newspapers did not mention the procedure. The Jerusalem Post, Israel’s only major newspaper produced in English, excised a reference to the procedure included in an early report on its website, and the army’s spokesman avoided answering questions about whether the procedure had been used in Ben-Melech’s shooting.

Later explanations from the army focused instead on the threat Ben-Melech supposedly posed. One official told Ynet, Israel’s largest news website: “The [border] guards had no way of knowing who he was and feared that his attempted infiltration was part of a larger-scale terror attack.”

Ben-Melech’s sister-in-law, Ilanit, responded that the army’s account made no sense. “He ran in the direction of Gaza, not the soldiers, so why did they shoot him?”

The Hannibal procedure only came to light accidentally in 2003 after a slip-up by the country’s military censor allowed a reference to remain in a report published by the daily Haaretz.

In a follow-up article, the newspaper revealed that the directive had been formulated in 1986 in the wake of a deal in which Israel had released more than 1,100 Palestinians for three Israelis. Gabi Ashkenazi, the current chief of staff, was among those who drafted the procedure.

The order, described as the most controversial in the Israeli army’s history, was that “a dead soldier is better than a captive soldier”, according to Haaretz. The directive reportedly created a furore in the army at the time, with some commanders and rabbis considering it immoral, though no mention of it was made public for many years.

It was last used officially in October 2000, five months after Israeli forces withdrew from south Lebanon, when Hizbollah captured three soldiers along the border. Attack helicopters fired on a vehicle in which it was believed the soldiers were being held.

The soldiers’ bodies were returned by Hizbollah, along with a captured Israeli businessman, four years later in a deal that included the release of 400 Palestinians and 35 Arab nationals.

The procedure, according to Haaretz, was revoked in 2002, although several soldiers told the paper that they had been told to follow it despite its official annulment.

There have been a number of indications, in addition to the shooting of Ben-Melech, that the procedure is still in force.

It appears to have been invoked after two Israeli soldiers were captured by Hizbollah on the Lebanese border in summer 2006, an incident that triggered a month-long attack by Israel on Lebanon.

Eitan Baron wrote in a blog that his brother Yaniv, a 19-year-old tank driver, had been sent in hot pursuit of the Hizbollah team holding the two soldiers on a Hannibal procedure mission.

Yaniv Baron and four other crew members died when the tank ran over a mine and was then fired on by Hizbollah in what was widely assumed to be an ambush.

According to Mr Baron, Yaniv’s battalion commander told the family after his death that the procedure had been invoked. “They [the tank crew] were familiar with the procedure, and without giving it a second thought, started driving,” Mr Baron wrote.

Further revelations about the procedure emerged last January, during Operation Cast Lead, when the Israeli media reported that Israeli soldiers being sent into Gaza had been told to avoid capture at all costs.

Channel 10, a television station, quoted an officer from Battalion 501 of the Golani Brigade saying: “No troop member from the 501 battalion is to be kidnapped at any cost, nor in any situation, even if this means blowing up a grenade in his possession, killing himself and those trying to kidnap him.”

An officer from the Givati Brigades was also quoted, citing the Hannibal procedure, adding: “We will not have two Gilad Shalits at any price.”

During Operation Cast Lead, Hamas claimed that it had captured soldiers on two occasions but that the Israeli army had killed the Hamas fighters and soldiers in aerial attacks. Three Israeli soldiers were reported to have died in friendly-fire incidents.

A number of Palestinians, including children, have been shot by the Israeli army after getting close to the perimeter fence that surrounds Gaza. Last year Israel announced that it would shoot any Palestinian who entered a zone extending several hundred meters inside the fence.

Source: The National

DHS Lowers the Boom on the Bogeyman

by Christopher M. Montalbano

The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said today that the Bogeyman is the greatest threat to the security of America's children.

At a press conference today DHS spokesman Ernest Konnyu stated "The academic criminal justice community, the law enforcement community, and the policy world have spent decades studying the Bogeyman phenomenon," and added that the rapid increase of unsolved child disappearances over the last decade is alarming. He said "The consensus of the experts is that the Bogeyman exists, and that he poses an unacceptable risk to the entire human race. If this trend continues to accelerate, as the computer models predict, by 2099 no human child will reach the age of 10 before disappearing. This will mean the end of humanity."

Konnyu said that this "long overdue" finding on the part of the DHS will now authorize the department to take steps under the Patriot Act to address the threat. As a first measure, the DHS may command all state and local law enforcement bodies to enforce a dusk-to-dawn curfew for all U.S. residents except government employees. "If you're out there after sundown, you might be the Bogeyman" said Konnyu. Another proposed measure is the installation of audio/video surveillance in all private homes to ensure that all the children are washing behind their ears, not speaking bad words, and saying their prayers so that the Bogeyman won't get them. Under the proposed regulation parents who fail to control their children properly would pay fines and forfeit the custody of their children to the state.

This announcement comes coincidentally on the opening day of the UN-sponsored Conference Of National Groups Against Monsters and Evil in Salem, Massachusetts. Conference chairman Prof. Alfred Falschangst of the University of Narrstadt, Germany welcomed the statement. "It is wonderful news that the U.S. will aggressively fight the Bogeyman," he said "but more must be done. The ideal approach would be for all governments to take custody of all children between the ages of 3 and 12. Only then could they be reliably protected from this danger."

Conference delegate Prof. Miguel Aterrar of La Universidad de la Santa Inquisicion in Ciudad de los Mentirosos, Spain, also greeted the announcement with approval. He said: "This declaration by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will surely be the last nail in the coffin of the Bogeyman deniers."

Attempts to contact Bogeyman skeptics for comment have so far yielded no results. All prominent skeptics have apparently disappeared, and no trace of their whereabouts has yet been found. When asked about this, a high-level DHS officer expressed the opinion that they are probably just hiding from the Bogeyman.

Source: Lew Rockwell

Noam Chomsky: More to fear from US, Israel than Iran

Top American intellectual Noam Chomsky says that the general public should fear more from the US and Israel than Iran.

During a lecture entitled “Obama, the Middle East and the Prospects of Peace” delivered at Boston University on Tuesday, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor stressed that Iran is acting within the framework of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

“All states [must] resolve their conflicts within the framework of the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” he said.

“Who was that resolution directed at? Nothing in the resolution relates to Iran. Iran is not threatening the use of force, and as far as anyone knows, they are staying within the bounds of the treaty,” Chomsky added.

He said people may have more to fear from the two countries that the American public would not typically associate with terrorism.

“The resolution is actually directed at the two states that consistently and regularly do resort to force and the threat of force, namely the United States and Israel,” he said.

“Those are the countries that carry out aggression regularly and repeatedly, that invade other countries, occupy other countries, invoke terror and violence and they’re unique in that respect,” Chomsky added.

He stated that the US government and its media have propagated exaggerated reports about Iran’s nuclear program.

“There has been a massive propaganda campaign that demonizes Iran, that portrays it as a major threat to world peace that has been going on for the past three years,” Chomsky said.

Source: Dandelion Salad

Normalising the Crime of the Century By John Pilger

By John Pilger
Information Clearing House
www.johnpilger.com
December 09, 2009

I tried to contact Mark Higson the other day only to learn he had died nine years ago. He was just 40, an honourable man. We met soon after he had resigned from the Foreign Office in 1991 and I asked him if the government knew that Hawk fighter-bombers sold to Indonesia were being used against civilians in East Timor.

“Everyone knows,” he said, “except parliament and the public.”

“And the media?”

“The media – the big names – have been invited to King Charles Street (the Foreign Office) and flattered and briefed with lies. They are no trouble.”

As Iraq desk officer at the Foreign Office, he had drafted letters for ministers reassuring MPs and the public that the British Government was not arming Saddam Hussein. “This was a downright lie”, he said. “I couldn’t bear it”.

Giving evidence before the arms-to-Iraq enquiry, Higson was the only British official commended by Lord Justice Scott for telling the truth. The price he paid was the loss of his health and marriage and constant surveillance by spooks. He ended up living on benefits in a Birmingham bedsitter where he suffered a seizure, struck his head and died alone. Whistleblowers are often heroes; he was one.

He came to mind when I saw a picture in the paper of another Foreign Office official, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who was Tony Blair’s ambassador to the United Nations in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. More than anyone, it was Sir Jeremy who tried every trick to find a UN cover for the bloodbath to come. Indeed, this was his boast to the Chilcot enquiry on 27 November, where he described the invasion as “legal but of questionable legitimacy”. How clever. In the picture he wore a smirk.

Under international law, “questionable legitimacy” does not exist. An attack on a sovereign state is a crime. This was made clear by Britain’s chief law officer, Attorney General Peter Goldsmith, before his arm was twisted, and by the Foreign Office’s own legal advisers and subsequently by the secretary-general of the United Nations. The invasion is the crime of the 21st century. During 17 years of assault on a defenceless civilian population, veiled with weasel monikers like “sanctions” and “no fly zones” and “building democracy”, more people have died in Iraq than during the peak years of the slave trade. Set that against Sir Jeremy’s skin-saving revisionism about American “noises” that were “decidedly unhelpful to what I was trying to do [at the UN] in New York”. Moreover, “I myself warned the Foreign Office … that I might have to consider my own position …”.

It wasn’t me, guv.

The purpose of the Chilcot inquiry is to normalise an epic crime by providing enough of a theatre of guilt to satisfy the media so that the only issue that matters, that of prosecution, is never raised. When he appears in January, Blair will play this part to odious perfection, dutifully absorbing the hisses and boos. All “inquiries” into state crimes are neutered in this way. In 1996, Lord Justice Scott’s arms-to-Iraq report obfuscated the crimes his investigations and voluminous evidence had revealed.

At that time, I interviewed Tim Laxton, who had attended every day of the inquiry as auditor of companies taken over by MI6 and other secret agencies as vehicles for the illegal arms trade with Saddam Hussein. Had there been a full and open criminal investigation, Laxton told me, “hundreds” would have faced prosecution. “They would include,” he said, “top political figures, very senior civil servants from right throughout Whitehall … the top echelon of government.”

That is why Chilcot is advised by the likes of Sir Martin Gilbert, who compared Blair with Churchill and Roosevelt. That is why the inquiry will not demand the release of documents that would illuminate the role of the entire Blair gang, notably Blair’s 2003 cabinet, long silent. Who remembers the threat of the thuggish Geoff Hoon, Blair’s “defence secretary”, to use nuclear weapons against Iraq?

In February, Jack Straw, one of Blair’s principal accomplices, the man who let the mass murderer General Pinochet escape justice and the current “justice secretary”, overruled the Information Commissioner who had ordered the government to publish Cabinet minutes during the period Lord Goldsmith was pressured into changing his judgement that the invasion was illegal. How they fear exposure, and worse.

The media has granted itself immunity. On 27 November, Scott Ritter, the former UN chief weapons inspector, wrote that the invasion “was made far easier given the role of useful idiot played by much of the mainstream media in the US and Britain.” More than four years before the invasion, Ritter, in interviews with myself and others, left not a shred of doubt that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction had been disabled, yet he was made a non-person. In 2002, when the Bush/Blair lies were in full echo across the media, the Guardian and Observer mentioned Iraq in more than 3,000 articles, of which 49 referred to Ritter and his truth that could have saved thousands of lives.

What has changed? On 30 November, the Independent published a pristine piece of propaganda from its embedded man in Afghanistan. “Troops fear defeat at home,” said the headline. Britain, said the report, “is at serious risk of losing its way in Afghanistan because rising defeatism at home is demoralising the troops on the front line, military commanders have warned.” In fact, public disgust with the disaster in Afghanistan is mirrored among many serving troops and their families; and this frightens the warmongers. So “defeatism” and “demoralising the troops” are added to the weasel lexicon. Good try. Unfortunately, like Iraq, Afghanistan is a crime. Period.

see

Yeswecanistan by William Blum

Baghdad attacks put Iraq security back in spotlight + 118 killed, 197 injured

Secret letter to reveal new Blair war lies

The Iraq War ‘Inquiry’: ‘Revelations’? What revelations? By William Bowles

Iraq Inquiry: Sir Christopher Meyer Confirms That Iraq War Was Illegal by Andy Worthington

Source: Dandelion Salad

Bank-Friendly Dems Shut Down House, Threaten To Kill Wall Street Reform

by Ryan Grim

A group of Democrats friendly to Wall Street interests forced a delay in consideration of the landmark financial regulatory reform bill scheduled to hit the House floor on Wednesday, Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) told reporters in the Speaker's lobby.

Frank accused the New Democrat Coalition of blocking the bill because its members are being prodded by big banks to abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and to allow major financial institutions to avoid state laws tougher than federal regulations.

A Democratic leadership aide confirmed that centrist and conservative Democrats are threatening to vote no, leaving the caucus short of the needed votes.

"The big banks in particular are trying to get more preemption," said Frank. "It's a state-consumer battle with the big banks. We want compromise. They want to offer an amendment that makes it easier to preempt state consumer laws."

New Dem Vice Chair Melissa Bean (D-Ill.) is demanding that her preemption amendment, which would in effect mean that state regulations on the financial industry could be no tougher than federal guidelines, be given a vote on the House floor. It was first beaten back in committee in October.

Bean and other advocates of preemption say that uniform national standards are preferable to allowing each state to make different rules. Opponents note that federal regulators have been less than adept over the past several years at reining in corruption and excess.

Blue Dog Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho) is also pushing an amendment that would abolish the CFPA, a top priority of the administration and the brainchild of Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, said Frank.

Minnick worked to defeat the CFPA in committee but was unsuccessful. While the House sits in recess, leadership and opponents of reform within the caucus are negotiating their way out of the deadlock.

When a bloc of Democrats wants to exert its influence in an extreme way, it threatens to "take down the rule" -- legislative lingo for, in effect, blocking consideration of the bill on the floor.

When Frank was first asked whether Democratic leadership had the votes it needed to proceed on the floor, six loud bells rang out.

"Do you know what you're listening to now?" asked Frank. "They're now sounding six bells. Do you know what that means? It means a recess. What do you think, the kids have to go out and play in the yard? That's your answer."

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told HuffPost he had the same political instincts. "If they had the votes, we'd be out there debating the rule," said a smiling Boehner. "It's that simple."

UPDATE: 9:10 p.m. "New Dems have reached an agreement that includes a balanced compromise on our key issues. This agreement will allow us to create an empowered Consumer Financial Protection Agency that will place tough new federal regulations on financial institutions from large banks to payday lenders to mortgage brokers," reads a statement put out by Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), Chair of the New Democrat Coalition and Bean, New Dem Vice-Chair and Co-Chair of the New Dem Financial Services Task Force.

"We look forward to continuing to work with House Leadership and the Obama Administration on enacting comprehensive reform that will achieve our long stated goals of overhauling our nation's financial regulations to ensure more effective oversight, greater transparency and robust consumer protection."

The deal, HuffPost is told, has been reached in principle and allows a Murphy/McMahon/Kratovil amendment relating to derivatives used by end users to go to the floor.

And instead of getting a floor amendment, Bean will get some of her language on preemption inserted into the manager's amendment that Frank will introduce.

The agreement clears the bill to move forward.

Source: The Huffington Post

Billions More in Easy Money for Wall Street -- Are We Too Ignorant About Finance to Stop It?

By William Greider, The Nation.

A permanent security blanket for big boys of finance will further inflame public opinion. Only the public isn't likely to know.

The sale pitch for financial-reform legislation pending in the House claims it would put an stop to "too big to fail" bailouts for the leading banks. The reality is the opposite. The federal government would instead be granted unlimited authority to spend whatever it takes to prop up the big boys when they get in trouble. Only in the next crisis, Congress won't have to be asked for the money. The financial rescues will be funded by the secretive Federal Reserve, not the Treasury, with money the Fed itself creates.

And the emergency lending could be pumped into any financial institution in trouble--not just behemoth commercial banks but investment houses like Goldman Sachs, insurance companies, hedge funds or any other pools of private capital whose failure regulators believe would threaten the system.

This sounds nutty and it is. A permanent security blanket for big boys of finance will further inflame public opinion. Only the public isn't likely to know. The crucial terms for Fed financing are set by an innocuous-sounding amendment offered by Representative Brad Miller of North Carolina. Any financial holding company designated as a "systemic risk" and subject to stricter regulatory standards "shall have the same access to the discount window lending of an appropriate Federal Reserve Bank as is available to a member bank of each Federal Reserve bank."

This last-minute amendment, if included on final passage, solves a huge problem for the Obama administration--how to pay for the next bailout if another financial calamity unfolds. In the House banking committee, the administration's legislation originally sought unlimited authority for the Treasury and the president. But committee members choked on the implications after Representative Brad Sherman of California denounced it as "TARP on steroids." TARP was the original $700 billion bailout jammed through Congress last year. Citizens are still angry and some members of Congress who voted for TARP are likely to lose their seats.

Solution? Let the Fed do it behind closed doors. The Federal Reserve's discount lending to commercial banks is normally not disclosed to the public since it might signal the bank is in trouble and undermine investor confidence. That secrecy can hardly be sustained in another crisis, however, since financial markets will swiftly figure out which financial firms are the lucky winners in the Fed's fail-or-flourish lottery.

The so-called reform legislation has many other problems--too many to clean up at this stage in the legislative process--but somebody should start right now to raise a righteous stink about the core provisions. As I have been writing for months, putting the Federal Reserve in charge as super-regulator is the path that leads to the corporate state. A limited circle of privileged players would enjoy a permanent line of credit from Washington, while their competitors in business and finance would struggle at great disadvantage. This top-down economy would combine the worst qualities of both socialism and capitalism. Unfortunately, the hybrid nature of the monstrosity may not become clear, even to members of Congress, until the next crisis, when it will be too late.

Source: Alternet

Bayer Admits GMO Contamination is Out of Control

Source: Organic Consumers

Bayer has admitted it has been unable to control the spread of its genetically-engineered organisms despite 'the best practices [to stop contamination]'(1). It shows that all outdoors field trials or commercial growing of GE crops must be stopped before our crops are irreversibly contaminated.

$2 million US dollar verdict against Bayer confirms company's liability for an uncontrollable technology

Greenpeace welcomes the United States federal jury ruling on 4 December 2009 that Bayer CropScience LP must pay $2 million US dollars to two Missouri farmers after their rice crop was contaminated with an experimental variety of rice that the company was testing in 2006.

This verdict confirms that the responsibility for the consequences of GE (genetic engineering) contamination rests with the company that releases GE crops.

Bayer has admitted it has been unable to control the spread of its genetically-engineered organisms despite 'the best practices [to stop contamination]'(1). It shows that all outdoors field trials or commercial growing of GE crops must be stopped before our crops are irreversibly contaminated.

A report prepared for Greenpeace International concluded that the total costs incurred throughout the world as a result of the contamination are estimated to range from $741 million to $1.285 billion US dollars.(2) The verdict indicates that Bayer is liable for what could turn out to be a large proportion of these costs, as it awards damages in the first two of more than 1,000 currently pending lawsuits. The decision must be used to support all claims for losses incurred by other US farmers whose crops have suffered from GE contamination.

(1) Bayers Defense lawyer, Mark Ferguson as reported in Harris, A. 2009.
Bayer Blamed at Trial for Crops 'Contaminated' by Modified Rice. Bloomberg News 4th November 2009, available at:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aT...

(2) E.N. Blue (2007) Risky Business. Economic and regulatory impacts from the unintended release of genetically engineered rice varieties into the rice merchandising system of the US. Report prepared for Greenpeace International, available online at http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press....

Let the Copenhagen wealth transfer begin

Source: National Post - Adrian MacNair

Part of the problem with the climate change issue is that it isn’t seen as an ongoing review of scientific models and theories about human impact on planetary warmth. It has taken on a political and religious tone which makes any attempt to peer review the consensus subject to ridicule. We know that dissidents of the consensus evidence were shunned and blacklisted according to the hacked [or leaked] Climatic Research Unit emails from the University of East Anglia. Those who have challenged the prevailing urgency of action have been mocked, ridiculed, and relegated to the status of apostates.

Canada received it’s first Fossil of the Day “award” Monday at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, for its “unwavering commitment to stand firm in its inaction”. Levying shame-inducing awards on people, organizations, and countries, has been the hallmark tactic of the climate zealots for years now. By designating such a prize, on an entire country no less, it has all of the intent of telling us that this isn’t a debate between adults. It’s between an adult, and a petulant child.

The Federal Reserve is preparing to grab more power

by John Tate

This week, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on Barney Frank's financial regulatory reform bill, which is yet another thousand page-plus attempt to increase the powers of Congress and the Federal Reserve while destroying more of what little free market our country has left.

Contact Congress and tell your representative you have seen enough of the federal government's thousands of pages of regulations and tinkering around in our economy.

Composed of several bills, the final package up for vote is H.R. 4173, slyly titled "The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act." With amendments, this legislation now exceeds 1500 pages!

H.R. 4173 would create more government bureaucracies to interfere with market operations, and, according to Subtitle G of the bill, the federal government would also have direct authorization to take over and break up any financial institution it deems to be "too big to fail."

So imagine what Congress, well-skilled in articulating pseudo-justifications, would then be able to do, by law, to any institution that resisted its interventions!

Your representative needs to hear from you immediately! Find your congressman's information here.

Be sure to urge your representative to set a new tone in Washington by instead supporting an up or down, standalone vote on Audit the Fed, H.R. 1207. Before Congress even considers the Federal Reserve's future role in our economy, it should know what the Fed is up to with the powers it currently has.

It's long past time to deliver the answers the American people want and deserve about what is being done with their money.

Tell your representative to oppose H.R. 4173 and to push for a standalone vote on Ron Paul's Audit the Fed bill!

Source: Campaign For Liberty

Copenhagen and Global Warming: Ten Facts and Ten Myths on Climate Change

By Prof. Robert M. Carter
Global Research, December 9, 2009
James Cook University, Queensland, Australia

Ten facts about climate change

1. Climate has always changed, and it always will. The assumption that prior to the industrial revolution the Earth had a “stable” climate is simply wrong. The only sensible thing to do about climate change is to prepare for it.

2. Accurate temperature measurements made from weather balloons and satellites since the late 1950s show no atmospheric warming since 1958. In contrast, averaged ground-based thermometers record a warming of about 0.4⁰ C over the same time period. Many scientists believe that the thermometer record is biased by the Urban Heat Island effect and other artefacts.

3. Despite the expenditure of more than US$50 billion dollars looking for it since 1990, no unambiguous anthropogenic (human) signal has been identified in the global temperature pattern.

4. Without the greenhouse effect, the average surface temperature on Earth would be -18⁰ C rather than the equable +15⁰ C that has nurtured the development of life.

Carbon dioxide is a minor greenhouse gas, responsible for ~26% (8⁰ C) of the total greenhouse effect (33⁰C), of which in turn at most 25% (~2⁰C) can be attributed to carbon dioxide contributed by human activity. Water vapour, contributing at least 70% of the effect, is by far the most important atmospheric greenhouse gas.

5. On both annual (1 year) and geological (up to 100,000 year) time scales, changes in atmospheric temperature PRECEDE changes in CO₂. Carbon dioxide therefore cannot be the primary forcing agent for temperature increase (though increasing CO₂ does cause a diminishingly mild positive temperature feedback).

6. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has acted as the main scaremonger for the global warming lobby that led to the Kyoto Protocol. Fatally, the IPCC is a political, not scientific, body.

Hendrik Tennekes, a retired Director of Research at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, says that “the IPCC review process is fatally flawed” and that “the IPCC wilfully ignores the paradigm shift created by the foremost meteorologist of the twentieth century, Edward Lorenz“.

7. The Kyoto Protocol will cost many trillions of dollars and exercises a significant impost those countries that signed it, but will deliver no significant cooling (less than .02⁰ C by 2050, assuming that all commitments are met).
The Russian Academy of Sciences says that Kyoto has no scientific basis; Andre Illarianov, senior advisor to Russian president Putin, calls Kyoto-ism “one of the most agressive, intrusive, destructive ideologies since the collapse of communism and fascism“. If Kyoto was a “first step” then it was in the same wrong direction as the later “Bali roadmap”.

8. Climate change is a non-linear (chaotic) process, some parts of which are only dimly or not at all understood. No deterministic computer model will ever be able to make an accurate prediction of climate 100 years into the future.

9. Not surprisingly, therefore, experts in computer modelling agree also that no current (or likely near-future) climate model is able to make accurate predictions of regional climate change.

10. The biggest untruth about human global warming is the assertion that nearly all scientists agree that it is occurring, and at a dangerous rate.

The reality is that almost every aspect of climate science is the subject of vigorous debate. Further, thousands of qualified scientists worldwide have signed declarations which (i) query the evidence for hypothetical human-caused warming and (ii) support a rational scientific (not emotional) approach to its study within the context of known natural climate change.

LAYING TEN GLOBAL WARMING MYTHS

Myth 1 Average global temperature (AGT) has increased over the last few years.

Fact 1 Within error bounds, AGT has not increased since 1995 and has declined since 2002, despite an increase in atmospheric CO₂ of 8% since 1995.

Myth 2 During the late 20^th Century, AGT increased at a dangerously fast rate and reached an unprecedented magnitude.

Facts 2 The late 20^th Century AGT rise was at a rate of 1-2⁰ C/century, which lies well within natural rates of climate change for the last 10,000 yr. AGT has been several degrees warmer than today many times in the recent geological past.

Myth 3 AGT was relatively unchanging in pre-industrial times, has sky-rocketed since 1900, and will increase by several degrees more over the next 100 years (the Mann, Bradley & Hughes “hockey stick” curve and its computer extrapolation).

Facts 3 The Mann et al. curve has been exposed as a statistical contrivance. There is no convincing evidence that past climate was unchanging, nor that 20^th century changes in AGT were unusual, nor that dangerous human warming is underway.

Myth 4 Computer models predict that AGT will increase by up to 6⁰ C over the next 100 years.

Facts 4 Deterministic computer models do. Other equally valid (empirical) computer models predict cooling.

Myth 5 Warming of more than 2⁰ C will have catastrophic effects on ecosystems and mankind alike.

Facts 5 A 2⁰ C change would be well within previous natural bounds. Ecosystems have been adapting to such changes since time immemorial. The result is the process that we call evolution. Mankind can and does adapt to all climate extremes.

Myth 6 Further human addition of CO₂ to the atmosphere will cause dangerous warming, and is generally harmful.

Facts 6 No human-caused warming can yet be detected that is distinct from natural system variation and noise. Any additional human-caused warming which occurs will probably amount to less than 1⁰ C. Atmospheric CO₂ is a beneficial fertilizer for plants, including especially cereal crops, and also aids efficient evapo-transpiration.

Myth 7 Changes in solar activity cannot explain recent changes in AGT.

Facts 7 The sun’s output varies in several ways on many time scales (including the 11-, 22 and 80-year solar cycles), with concomitant effects on Earth’s climate. While changes in visible radiation are small, changes in particle flux and magnetic field are known to exercise a strong climatic effect. More than 50% of the 0.8⁰ C rise in AGT observed during the 20^th century can be attributed to solar change.

Myth 8 Unprecedented melting of ice is taking place in both the north and south polar regions.

Facts 8 Both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are growing in thickness and cooling at their summit. Sea ice around Antarctica attained a record area in 2007. Temperatures in the Arctic region are just now achieving the levels of natural warmth experienced during the early 1940s, and the region was warmer still (sea-ice free) during earlier times.

Myth 9 Human-caused global warming is causing dangerous global sea-level (SL) rise.

Facts 9 SL change differs from time to time and place to place; between 1955 and 1996, for example, SL at Tuvalu fell by 105 mm (2.5 mm/yr). Global average SL is a statistical measure of no value for environmental planning purposes. A global average SL rise of 1-2 mm/yr occurred naturally over the last 150 years, and shows no sign of human-influenced increase.

Myth 10 The late 20^th Century increase in AGT caused an increase in the number of severe storms (cyclones), or in storm intensity.

Facts 10 Meteorological experts are agreed that no increase in storms has occurred beyond that associated with natural variation of the climate system.

Robert M. Carter is a Research Professor at James Cook University (Queensland) and the University of Adelaide (South Australia). He is a palaeontologist, stratigrapher, marine geologist and environmental scientist with more than thirty years professional experience.

Global Research Articles by Robert M. Carter

Source: Aletho News

Why are the oligarchic elites trying so hard to push their climate change policies through right now?

by Notsilvia Night

Why are the political and financial elites and their obedient servants in the their faith-, sorry scientific community pushing so madly for a final decision on a global Carbon Tax legislation at this very moment?
Why don´t they just wait until the scandal of “climate gate” has blown over?

Because those elites know they are wrong on the issue of human caused climate change.
They know that the data doesn´t support their fear-mongering, because they themselves have fudged it to support a political agenda.

They know that their lies are being revealed to the public piece by piece, faster and faster.

Most of all, they know that the planet is at the moment once again in a cooling phase as occurs every thirty or forty odd years.

Looking at the current lack of solar activity, this cooling phase might even be a more severe one than the one that ended 40 years ago, possibly as severe as during what is called the Mauder Minimum, a cooling phase lasting several decades during the 17. and 18. century.

In a couple of years their claims would no longer be tenable at all. The cooling trend would be obvious to even the most ideologically blinded environmentalist on earth.

The scheme of taxing global population, creating new revenue streams for the world´s financial markets establishing a central control over the world economy and preventing the rise of developing countries out of poverty, would lose out.

The political leaders of all less powerful countries are being bullied at the moment into signing a treaty which gives away their country’s national sovereignty to the leadership of the powerful ones, namely Britain and United States – and more to the point to the shadow leadership behind them, the world´s financial elites of Goldman Sachs and Co.

So why are so many decent people on the left fighting hand and foot for the profits in carbon trading of Goldman Sachs and Al Gore´s Generation Investment Management (GIM) company?

It´s a psychological problem; most people, especially on the left, want to be on the side of the good and caring people.

For over 40 years now we have been told that being environmentally minded means being a good person.
It means we care about nature, wild animal life, about future generations of human beings.

Being environmentally minded means we are opposed to polluting the air and the water;
we are opposed to deforestation (especially in the rain-forest regions);
we are opposed to dumping our own poisonous waste unto the developing world;
we are opposed to rampant consumerism, in which driven by the advertisement industry we keep on buying and buying. Buying things we actually don´t need, things which do not make us either happier or more comfortable, just more indebted.

All those nice middle class people who want to feel good about themselves, they all support these ideas as part of the program for the left. And yes, there are plenty of real environmental issues we should be concerned about. But while marginalizing these real issues for the environment, the financial and right-wing ideological elites have – with the help of the media they control – succeeded to infiltrate their own agenda into the “green” movement with the bogus Anthropogenic Global Warming ideology.

The propaganda has been very successful indeed. People who want with all their heart to be “good” and decent are now supporting the agenda of the most selfish and anti-humanist forces on the planet.
The propaganda has created a belief-system which is hard to break. In Europe this belief-system is even more entrenched, since it has been developed for a over a few more years, hence it may be harder to break among Europeans than in the United States.

But after the “climate-gate” revelations chances aren’t so bad any more. A global storm is brewing against the liars (which include most of the mainline media) and their masters. No matter how bad it looks when we listen to the sound-bites of the top-level political hacks, down on the bottom, in the population, minds are changing en masse.

In just a little while, those who honestly strive to be the “good” guys (and girls) will realize that being good and caring about future generations means not caring for the Goldman Sachs carbon credits scheme.

The truth will indeed set us free from global tyranny:

Watch also:

Lord Monckton on Climategate at the 2nd International Climate Conference

on Vimeo.

Source: Altheo News

Israel’s Impunity For War Crimes: Or Israel is Not a Democracy

Does the death of a Palestinian worth the same as that of a Jew? For six decades, Israeli Jewish leaders with utter impunity have been killing defenceless Palestinians and justifying their crimes as “self-defence” of Israel and all Jews. Absolving the Israeli regime of culpability of war crimes has always been a U.S.-Western ritual. The message is: Jews are above the law and killing Palestinians is Israelis’ right to commit war crimes.

In December/January this year, Israeli occupation forces indiscriminately attacked Gaza (a Nazi-like concentration/death camp of 1.5 million Palestinians) from land, sea and air, using all kinds of weapons, including illegally banned weapons. More than 1,400 Palestinians – the overwhelming majority (85 per cent) civilians, one third of them children – were killed and some 5000 civilians were seriously wounded and maimed for life. At least 225 innocent civilians were killed instantly in the first few minutes of the attacks as school children returning home and police cadets attending graduation ceremony. Only eleven Israeli soldiers (four by ‘friendly-fire’) and three civilians were killed during the 22-day premeditated massacre.

The destruction to vital civilian infrastructure was barbaric and beyond imagination. Israel’s primary targets were: food storages and food production facilities, factories, agricultural land, drinking water treatment plants, electric power generators, private homes, hospitals, schools and school children, universities, ambulances and mosques. The aims of the attack were not only to terrorise the Palestinian population, but also to cause them great suffering. Israel is teaching the Palestinians a lesson, lauded the New York Times, Zionism’s most influential propaganda organ in the U.S. It is “an all-out war on the Palestinians”, declared Ehud Barak, Israeli Defence Minister and one of Israel’s war criminals who planned and executed the massacre. Barak’s crimes confirmed by the brave Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert in Gaza as he witnessed Israel’s “[a]ll out war against the civilian population of Gaza”. The attacks on civilians were consistent with Israel’s sixty years long history of violence in Palestine. Israeli leaders have always targeted the Palestinian civilian populations, deliberately and purposely.

The unprovoked aggression against a defenceless and starving population unleashed world-wide outrage by civil societies and individuals that forced the United Nations (UN) to conduct its own inquiry into the massacre. The Goldstone Report – named after the lead jurist of the “United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict”, Justice Richard Goldstone – found that Israeli leaders, who planned and executed the attacks, have committed flagrant war crimes and crimes against humanity during the attacks on Gaza by using "disproportionate” force. The Report also accused Israeli leaders of deliberately targeting civilians, including using civilians as human shields to protect Israeli soldiers. Justice Goldstone, a self-described South African Jewish-Zionist and an avowed supporter of Israel was chosen because of his “integrity” and “expertise” as the first prosecutor serving Western powers at the International Criminal Court for Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. The Report also accused the Islamic Resistance Movement, HAMAS of war crimes.

The Report warned Israeli leaders that the persecution of the Palestinian people constitutes a grave breach of international human rights law and recommended the case against Israel be transferred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The Report also confirmed the findings of previous reports by several Western and non-Western human rights organisations, such as; Human Rights Watch, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Amnesty International, and the National Lawyers Guild. Like the Goldstone report, all these reports show clearly that Israeli forces deliberately and purposely targeted civilians and vital civilian infrastructure.

As always, the U.S. and Israel have condemned the Report as one-sided and biased. They made concerted efforts to undermine the Report’s findings and to deflect attention away from Israeli criminality. According to a variety of legal experts, the Goldstone Report is balanced and supports Israel’s argument. “Any fair reading of the report would show that it was balanced, took full and sensitive account of Israel’s arguments relating to security, and indeed gave Israel the benefit of the doubt on some key issues”, writes Richard Falk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and a professor of International Law at Princeton University.

Alarmed by world-wide condemnation of its war crimes, Israel and Israel's Zionist defenders resorted to using the “anti-semitism” brush to smear and silence anyone critical of Israel’s terror. The Nazi holocaust – exploited as the “Jewish holocaust” – is resurrected – as if the Palestinians are guilty of it – and exploited by Zionists to justify Israel’s crimes. Critics of Israel’s terror are accused of being "anti-semitics" and “holocaust deniers” for rightly comparing Israel’s terror with the Nazis’ and Zionism with Nazism. Even Justice Goldstone, a respected Jewish jurist and a devoted supporter of Israel, is accused of being “anti-semite”. Anti-semitism is invoked because it has been proved to be Israel’s greatest asset and serves Israel’s Zionist interests. It makes Israel looks like a victim and legitimises Israel’s violence against the Palestinians.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Government is fighting tooth-and-nail to absolve the Israeli regime of war crimes. On November 03, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives – the lower house of the U.S. Congress – overwhelmingly (344-36) approved a resolution (H. Res. 867) condemning the Goldstone Report findings and recommendations and called on President Barack Obama “to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the Report”. The non-binding vote defended Israel’s aggression and war crimes against the Palestinians as determined by the UN Human Rights Council. The Resolution, written primarily by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Jewish-Zionist agency that lobbies on behalf of the state of Israel, also endorses Israel’s “right” to pre-emptively attack Syria and Iran. It is a fraudulent and dishonest resolution designed to encourage violence, protect war criminals and reject international humanitarian law. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (R. Ohio) rightly accused the House of “covering up” Israel’s war crimes and sabotaging peace. It is important to remember that the U.S. government not only approved the Israeli attacks on Gaza, but also shipped more weapons (300 tons of ammunition), including cluster bombs to Israel before and during the attacks.

As the U.S. and Israeli governments continue their campaign to discredit the Goldstone Report and absolve Israel of culpability of war crimes, the “Palestinian Authority (PA)” – the Vichy Regime in the Occupied Territories – was the first to fall in line. Mahmoud Abbas, as head of the Collaborationist Authority succumbed to U.S.-Israeli threats and blackmails and has agreed not to refer the Report to the UN General Assembly for possible action on all the recommendations of the UN Mission into the Gaza massacre. It was a cowardice act, a betrayal of the Palestinians aspiration, because it allows Israel and Israeli criminals to get away with war crimes.

"The Palestinians [the Vichy Regime of Mahmoud Abbas] have betrayed their people, this was a moment when finally the international community indorsed the allegations of war crimes and it would have been an opportunity to vindicate the struggle of the Palestinian people for their rights under international law and for the Palestinian representatives in the UN themselves to seem to undermine this report is an astonishing development", said Professor Richard Falk. The Abbas regime has since agreed to Palestinians’ and international demands and made a U-turn to refer the Goldstone Report to the UN Security Council.

It was not the first time that the PA has been an instrument of Israel’s violence. Since its creation by Israel and the U.S. as a result of the disastrous Oslo accords in 1993, the PA provided the fig leaf for the Israeli Occupation. It has been the enforcer of the day-to-day security in the same way Jews in France collaborated with the Nazis during the Nazis’ occupation of France. Just before the attacks on Gaza, PA security forces went training by the C.I.A. under General Keith Dayton and Israeli assassins aimed at inciting civil war and toppling the HAMAS Administration in Gaza (For more see: David Rose, the Gaza Bombshell, Vanity Fair, April 2008). And when the PA collaborators failed to topple HAMAS, they colluded with Israeli forces to suppress any Palestinians uprising in the West Bank during Israel’s unprovoked aggression.

However, despite an aggressive campaign by the U.S. and Israel, the UN General Assembly has on 04 November 2009 voted by a margin of 114 to 18 (with 4 abstentions) to adopt the Report. Earlier on October 16, 2009 the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, which sponsored the Fact Finding Mission, voted by 25 to six to refer the Report to the Security Council. The Report has already been endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council. It was a new development giving the U.S.-Israeli fierce opposition.

While the Goldstone Report holds Israel accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity – which is a new development and a good start –, the Report puts Israel’s monstrous war crimes at the same level with Palestinian legitimate resistance. The misrepresentation of unprovoked attacks by the world fifth largest army on defenceless civilian population as a “war” designed to manipulate public opinion and justify Israel’s ongoing war crimes against the Palestinian people. There is no symmetry. Judge Goldstone is trying to apply the law of war to a massacre in a death camp that has been under genocidal siege for three years. Israeli soldiers, who participated in the massacre, described Gaza as a “moral twilight” and the massacre of defenceless women and children “like a child with magnifying glass burning ants”. The Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy of the Israeli daily Ha’aretz observed: “It was a Sabra and Chatila, this time carried out by us”. Levy was referring to the massacre of more than 2000 Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila by the Israeli-controlled Phalangists (Christian militias) in Lebanon in 1982.

Further, the Report scathes on the indiscriminate use of illegal weapon of mass destructions (WMD), such as “depleted uranium” (DU), white phosphorous, dense inert metal explosive (DIME) and cluster bombs, which aimed at terrorising the civilian population and contaminate the environment. Unmentioned in the Report is the six decades of Israel’s terror and occupation. The Report also expressed concern about the welfare of Gilat Shallot, the Israeli POW held by Palestinians. However, the Report ignored the welfares of 11,000 Palestinians, including 149 women and 423 children, illegally imprisoned and routinely tortured by Israeli forces. While some imprisoned for their legitimate resistance and social activities, the majority of the prisoners have been held without charge and without trial. (See: Silvia Nicolaou-Garcia, The Conditions of Palestinian Women and Children in Israeli Jails, Middle East Monitor, September 2009). Like the German Nazi regime, the Israeli regime uses so-called “Administrative Detention” – Palestinian held in prison without charge and with no access to fair trial – to crush the Palestinian popular resistance to Israel brutal and oppressive occupation.

The Report endorses Israel’s pretext of “self-defence” even when Israel violated a ceasefire agreement on November 04, 2008 by deliberately killing several innocent Palestinian citizens in order to initiate retaliation and justify the attacks. According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Publicly, Hamas leaders have stated time and again that the lull is a Palestinian national interest. On several occasions, Hamas members have arrested Fatah operatives who were involved in firing at Israel and confiscated their arms”. Ehud Barak admitted on Thursday November 20, 2008, that "the recent wave of rocket attacks are a result of our operations, which have resulted in the killing of twenty Hamas gunmen” (See: Shmulik Hadad, Qassam lands in Western Negev, no injuries, Ynetnews). Hence, Israel’s attacks on Gaza have nothing to do with Palestinian rockets and self-defence. In fact, Israeli propaganda prepared and sold the attacks on Gaza months before the attacks began.

Legally, Israel’s claim of self-defence is baseless propaganda and inconsistent with the law and facts, said Richard Falk. Under international law, Israeli has no right to use violence as self-defence, but to abide by international law and ends the occupation of Palestinian land.

Falk writes: “[The Report] added little to what was previously known. Arguably, it was more sensitive to Israel's contentions that Hamas was guilty of war crimes by firing rockets into its territory than earlier reports had been. And in many ways the Goldstone report endorses the misleading main line of the Israeli narrative by assuming that Israel was acting in self-defence against a terrorist adversary. The report does describe the success of the ceasefire with Hamas that had cut violence in southern Israel to very low levels, and attributes its disruption to Israel's attack on 4 November 2008, but nowhere does it make the inference that would seem to follow, that the Israeli attacks were an instance of the international crime of aggression. Instead, the report focuses its criticism on Israel's excessive and indiscriminate uses of force”.

Falk points to the Report failure to condemn Israel unprovoked aggression: “The report takes for granted, the dubious proposition that Israel was entitled to act against Gaza in self-defence, thereby excluding inquiry into whether crimes against the peace in the form of aggression had taken place by the launching of the attack. In this respect, the report takes no notice of the temporary ceasefire that had cut the rocket fire directed at Israel practically to zero in the months preceding the attacks, nor of Hamas' repeated efforts to extend the ceasefire indefinitely provided Israel lifted its unlawful blockade of Gaza … By ignoring Israel's initiation of a one-sided war the Goldstone report accepts the dubious central premise of Operation Cast Lead, and avoids making a finding of aggression”. It follows that the Report is prepared to appease Israeli war criminals.

Regarding the besieged civilian population of Gaza, Falk noted: “Also, disappointing was the failure of the report to comment upon the Israeli denial of a refugee option to the civilian population trapped in the tiny, crowded combat zone that constitutes the Gaza Strip. Israel closed all crossings during the period of the Gaza War, allowing only Gaza residents with foreign passports to leave”. In fact, Gaza has been under a genocidal blockade for three years, before and during the massacre, with no possibility of escape for those who can. It is a death camp.

As mentioned earlier, Israel rejected the Report’s findings and recommendations. With most mainstream media outlets controlled by pro-Israel Zionists, a massive propaganda campaign to cover-up Israel’s barbaric image and put a positive spin on the horror stories that emerged from the attacks is continuing. “We don’t kill and we have not killed children in Gaza”, said President Shimon Peres, Israel’s most recognised fascist. Israeli leaders protested that Israel is a “democracy” and therefore capable of conducting its own criminal investigation. Criminal prosecutions are rare in Israel because Israel practices a culture of impunity. The so-called “military inquiries are used to avoid criminal investigation” and provide Israel with a civilised human face. The purpose of the military inquiries is to undermine international calls for legal actions and justice for the Palestinians. Previous investigations proved to be fraudulent and have been condemned as lacking independence and impartiality. The Israeli justice system is a racist, anti-Palestinians and corrupt system. An international criminal tribunal is the best place to prosecute Israeli war criminals.

Let’s be very clear. Israel is not a democracy. It is a militarised racist religio-ethnocracy that espouses a Nazi-like ideology – the Hitlerian concept of state. Israel could not have come into existence without perpetual violence, racism, ethnic cleansing and the obliteration of Palestinian identity and Palestinian culture. For six decades, Palestinians have been denied their identity as human beings. Israel’s aim has always been to cleanse the Palestinians from their homeland and establish a monoethnic/monoreligious Jewish-Zionist state to dominate the region by force. The expropriation of Palestinian land is not incidental or accidental racism, but the carefully thought out ideological racism of a racist state that intends to exterminate the Palestinian native population. Over the years, Israel has become more racist, more brutal and more violent towards the Palestinians. The Israeli society is a barbaric anti-Muslims/anti-Arabs society where 82 per cent of Israel’s Jewish population approved the Gaza massacre. (For more see: Gideon Levi, One Racist Nation, Ha’aretz, 27 March, 2006).

The Israeli regime is a coalition of corrupt far-right and religious-fascist parties that embodied the extremes of Nazism. The regime sees violence as the only tool for its existence in a territory that is religiously and ethnically diverse. From its inception, Israel was destined to be a replica of Nazi Germany with too many aspects of the Nazi ideology – its dehumanising of non-Jews, its anti-semitism, its pure Jewish race doctrines, its Jewish nationalism, its militarization of society, its Zionist conquest, its conception of Jewish geopolitical supremacy – are compatible with the key tenets of Nazism. Throughout Israel’s history, clones of Adolf Hitler have dominated the Israeli regime (military and politics) and pursued a Nazi-like ideology of persecution of the Palestinians and expropriating Palestinian land. In addition to its stockpile of WMD that is often used on defenceless Palestinian women and children, the Israel regime has its finger on the button of several hundred nuclear bombs, hidden from the public by Western complicity in Israel’s war crimes.

Anyone supports the state of Israel in its current form and its brutal repression of the Palestinian people is a self-identified fascist lacking morality. “I don’t think there is one moral person in the world who supports what Israel stands for”, said the Israeli-born history scholar, Ilan Pappe. The Israeli regime is rightly seen by the rest of the world’s population as a major threat to world peace, including an "existential" threat to many nations in the region like Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. "Israel is number one threat to Middle East given the nuclear arms it possesses", said the outgoing Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei. According to the Global Peace Index Ranking, out of 141 countries, Israel ranks as the fourth least peaceful country.

Despite the serious threat posed by Israel to world peace, the Israeli regime is unconditionally supported, politically and financial by major Western countries, thanks to a powerful Jewish-Zionist Lobby that controls the centres of power and finance in the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. government, in particular, is the unquestionable supporter and defender of Israel’s terror because U.S. (Middle East) foreign policy is completely controlled by Zionist Jews and supporters of Israel. The U.S. Congress (known as the Israeli Knesset in Washington) is an anti-Arabs/anti-Muslims club of wealthy Judeo-Christian and pro-Israel Zionists.

In addition to endorsing every criminal act by Israel, the U.S. provides Israel between $3 billion to $6 billion in federal loan guarantees. The money is used by the Israeli regime to kill Palestinians women and children, and build Jewish “settlements” (colonies) on illegally-occupied Palestinian land. This massive unconditional financial support has cost U.S. taxpayers around $84,854,827,200 since 1949. In other words, the U.S. is paying $14,346 for each man, woman and child in Israel. Meanwhile, a third of American citizens, including some fifty million without health insurance, live in poverty (For more, see: Richard Curtiss: The Cost of Israel to US Taxpayers, If Americans Knew, 03 October 2009). Israelis must be the only people on the planet that are rewarded for their crimes.

When it comes to financing the Jewish-Zionist state, almost every Western nation is complicit. Germany is the second highest provider of weapons and money to Israel. Britain (the Arabs’ most virulent and racist enemy) and France are just behind Germany followed by other Western nations who are unconditionally financing Israel’s terror and racist ideology. Politically, the Israeli Zionist regime is not only supported by Western governments and mainstream parties, but also by every fascist and far-right racist party and organisation in Europe and the U.S.

Furthermore, Israel is unconditionally supported by one-sided, well-oiled and Nazi-like propaganda machine provided by the Zionists-controlled Western media, including CNN, the BBC and the fascist Murdoch propaganda. Israel can also count on war criminals like former Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair to defend its criminal policy globally. In addition, most Western countries grant Israeli soldiers – with Palestinians blood on their hands – “Working-Holidays visas” to “recuperate” and work in Europe and other Western countries after completing their military service in the Israeli Occupation Army. Palestinians cannot even move between towns and villages in their own land, let alone go abroad. Of course, European governments pretend it is a “humanitarian” gesture to promote peace in Palestine, while at the same times they are participating in the genocidal siege of the Palestinian population in Gaza, depriving them of food, water and every basic necessity to live a normal life. Hence, Israeli war crimes and its policies are committed with the overt complicity of the U.S. government and its Western allies.

Compare this lavish “aid” meted to Israel with the U.S. aid to the Palestinians. Recently, the Obama Administration has announced it will withdraw its entire $900 million aid to the Palestinians if the unity government doesn’t “recognize Israel’s right to exist” as a Jewish-Zionist state and submit to a brutal Jewish occupation. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Mahmoud Abbas the U.S. Congress won’t approve Palestinian aid unless the Palestinian government also renounces violence. No such conditions have been imposed on Israel to renounce its daily terror against the Palestinians. Successive Israeli governments refuse to renounce violence and have never recognised the rights of the Palestinians. Recognising Israel’s “right to exist” means recognising Israel as a legitimate and oppressive Jewish-Zionist occupier of Palestinian land in the heart of the Arab region.
Shamefully, the Arab regimes remain silent and most Arab regimes pretend to look the other way when Israelis murder Palestinian women and children. The brutal Egyptian regime is taking the lead by being the most shameful collaborator with the Israelis against the Palestinians. And because the Arab regimes are divided like never before, deserting Islam – drowning in a deep sea of Western-style corruption – and remain subservient to U.S. imperialism, Israel has a carte blanch to continue dominating the region and annex all of Palestine, including East Jerusalem, Israel and its Zionist supporters will continue pursuing their Zionist ideology as long as Muslim and Arab nations remain divided and do not speak in one voice. It is now more important than ever – when Islam and Muslims are under attack by U.S.-Zionist forces –, that Arab and Muslim nations abandon the politics of serving imperialist interests and unit against U.S.-Israel Zionist agenda.
Taking advantage of Arabs’ divisions and weakness, U.S. President Barack Obama even went as far as calling on all Arab nations to “normalise” relations with Israel on Israel’s terms. Obama was deliberately ignoring the Arab League demands (the Saudi Peace Plan) for a full Israeli withdrawal from occupied Palestinian lands to the 1967 borders as well as a just resolution to the refugees in exchange for recognition and normalisation of relations.

It is misleading to suggest that President Obama is the product of “Black struggle” in America. President Obama is a product of the U.S. ruling class. Indeed, the white elites proudly proclaim that Obama is a black man “raised the right way”. The “right way” is the imperialist white man way that serves white elites interests. Obama is a manipulative tool of imperialist propaganda. For his service to Zionism, Wall Street and for his “extraordinary efforts” to continue the slaughter of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, President Barack Obama is awarded the Noble “Peace” Prize by the Swedish Bank, not because of his empty rhetoric. Granting Obama the Nobel Peace Prize provides legitimacy to U.S. war on Muslim nations. By accepting the Prize, Obama joined gallery of war criminals and terrorists such as; Menachem Begin, Henry Kissinger, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin, etc. Obama will not bring peace to the world; he is escalating the war of terror on Muslim nations and endorsing Israel’s Zionist expansion in Palestine.

The U.S. and the Israeli governments’ rhetoric about peace is just propaganda designed to consolidate the Occupation by continue the crimes of house demolition and building more illegal Jewish colonies on Palestinian land. Peace is a formidable propaganda tool to undermine international efforts to find a just solution. Every year, Israeli and American leaders cooked something up for the media to propagate the so-called fabricated “Israelis’ desire for peace”. Of course, Israelis never find a “partner for peace”. They cry: “Thanks God, we do not have any one to talk to”.

When it comes to peace, Israeli leaders are the masters of deception. Deception has been their game to play. The recent so-called “offer” by the corrupt Zion-fascist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “temporarily freeze” the illegal building of Jewish colonies on Palestinian land is a case of Israel’s deception propaganda aimed at manipulating public opinion, particularly in the U.S.

Peace in the Middle East is “dead as a doornail,” said Francis Boyle, a professor of International Law at the University of Illinois. According to Professor Boyle, former senator George Mitchell “is running a dog and pony show in his scampering around the Middle East”. He added: “Mitchell’s mission is just a public relations exercise to delude the Arab and Muslim world into believing that the Obama Administration is going to do something while in fact they are pushing their agenda against Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan.” Obama is “a pusillanimous and feckless leader”, added Professor Boyle. Like Condoleezza Rice and her predecessors’ countless missions, the Mitchell’s mission has nothing to do with peace.

Israel and the U.S. define and control the term of peace according to Zionist interests. Publicly, Israeli leaders are crying for peace, but more often conspire and openly sabotage any peace effort in order to perpetuate more violence and blame it on the Palestinians. “It is the fault of the Bolsheviks, and we have to act in self-defence”. In the same way the Nazis used to blame the Bolsheviks, Israelis blame the Palestinians. Peace is not Israel’s primary concern; violence and expansion are.

For more than forty years, Israel and the U.S. have done everything to kill any peaceful settlement. “It is not that Israel does not want peace: everyone wants peace, even Hitler. The question is: on what terms? From its origins, the Zionist movement has understood that to achieve its goals, the best strategy would be [to perpetuate violence in order] to delay political settlement, meanwhile slowly [expropriating Palestinian land and] building facts on the ground”, writes Noam Chomsky, a long-time analyst of Middle East (Israel-U.S.) politics and a strong supporter of a “civilised” Israel.

The so-called “facts on the ground” – the illegal blocks of large Jewish-only colonies, Jewish-only network of roads and the apartheid wall that represent a Zionist state built on the ruin of historic Palestine – often used by Israeli leaders as evidence of Jewish claims to the land have removed any possibility of a viable Palestinian state. What remains of historic Palestine is a small area of islands-like disconnected ghettos and concentration camps; an archipelago, controlled by hundreds of Israeli-imposed military checkpoints, roadblocks and walls (the apartheid wall) that completely forbid the movement of Palestinians between towns and villages and between Gaza and the West Bank. Palestinians anywhere are under constant watch, their movement is monitored and contained and their safety is threatened. Hitler would have envied Israel’s system of controlling Palestinian movement.

Peace is ethnic cleansing, ghettoization of Palestinian villages and towns, expropriation of Palestinian land and water resources, bulldozing Palestinian homes and building Jewish-only colonies in violation of international law. Peace is the “Judaizing” of Palestinian Jerusalem and allowing Jewish terrorists and religio-fascists into Al-Aqsa mosque while denying access to Muslims. Peace is the incarceration and routine torture of innocent Palestinians men, women and children. Peace is targeted political assassinations, the slaughter of innocent women and children, collective punishment that denies innocent Palestinians access to food, drinking water and normal life.
Gaza is the obvious case in point. It is commonly claimed that Israel has “withdraw” from Gaza and the Palestinians are “free” there. That was demonstrably not true. Israel removed its illegal Jewish settlers (colonisers) from Gaza in August 2005 to consolidate the occupation of East Jerusalem and Palestinian areas in the West Bank. Gaza remains an occupied death camp under a barbaric and genocidal siege dubbed as collective punishment – sponsored by Western powers and enforced by Israeli forces. In addition, Israeli forces continue to terrorise the Palestinian population on a daily basis.

The so-called “peace process” is a trap (for the Palestinians) that allowed Israel to expand by confiscating more Palestinian lands. “What peace process are they [Israelis] talking about? There isn’t one. The Israeli foreign minister [the openly racist-fascist Moldovan émigré, Avigdor Liebermann] doesn’t want one”, said Justice Richard Goldstone during a meeting with a group of Jewish rabbis in the U.S.

Peace talks are considered by the U.S. and the Israeli government as occasions for bullying the Palestinians into submission, as suggested by a Palestinian official familiar with these talks. Indeed, often during peace talks Israel accelerated its criminal attacks on the Palestinians. And every time the Palestinians succumbed to Israeli demands, Israeli leaders shifted the goal-posts. Every time the Palestinians insisted on implementing previous agreements, the Israelis refused and found a new pretext to justify their action.

Opportunists and apologists for Israel’s war crimes talk about a “two-state” solution where Palestinians and Jews “living side-by-side”. But Israel is against the two-state solution and is determined not to allow the emergence of an independent Palestinian state. Also, the two-state solution denies the majority of Palestinians (the ethnically cleansed refugees) the right to return to their homeland. Promoted by Zionists, and supporters of Israel, including the U.S. and European nations, the two-state solution is an illusion useful for Israel’s propaganda. Like the “peace process”, the two–state solution is defended by Israel and Israel’s allies because it is a useful trick to deceive. As Israel’s most recognised fascist, President Shimon Peres warned recently: "Anyone who rejects the two-state solution won't bring a one-state solution. They will instead bring one war, not one state. A bloody war with no end”. Recently, Mr. President Peres began advocating a Palestinian state with “provisional” borders at the mercy of Israel’s terror. Endorsed by successive U.S. government, including the Obama Administration, and financed by U.S. money, Israel is violently expropriating Palestinian land for illegal Jewish colonies and illegally exploiting the natural resources for its own benefits. The Israeli regime’s goal in the Occupied Territories is the establishment of a Bantustan system, like the one in South Africa under the Apartheid system or worse.

Time has passed by the two-state solution. The two-state is a fiction. Israel is on a mission of ghettoization of the Palestinian people by expropriating their land and water resources. “The two-state solution is unworkable in the first place because Israel has destroyed the physical and political possibilities of building a coherent state for the Palestinian people, thanks to its brutal occupation. This has entailed the invasion of Palestinian land by 450,000 Israeli settlers, along with putting up monstrous walls and Jews-only roads that simply reduce the ever-diminishing Palestinian lands to fragments. To build a viable Palestinian state on such a basis is impossible; or, from another angle, would require dismantling Israel”, said Joel Kovel, former professor of Social Studies at Bard College in New York and author of Overcoming Zionism.

Finally, the only legal and practical solution for the proposal of a viable and independent Palestinian state is the complete Israeli withdrawal from occupied Palestinian lands, which Israel is refusing to do in flagrant violations of international law and several UN Resolutions. The Nazis “saw the lands of the Slavs as German lebensraum, just like Israel and Palestine”, said Professor Francis Boyle. The best and just solution for everyone is a one-state solution, where Palestinians and Israelis living in peace with equal rights in a democratic secular state.

Here in Australia – where Israel is worshiped and the slaughter of Palestinian women and children greeted with approval in Parliament House by both parties (‘Labor’ and ‘Liberal’) and the establishment media –, an 88-year old man (Charles Zentai) is in prison awaiting extradition to Hungary to face “justice” for allegedly killing a Jewish boy there in 1944. For six decades, Israeli Jews have been killing Palestinian boys and girls with utter impunity. They are rewarded for their crimes by those same nations, including Australia, that pretend to be committed to justice and international law. If the killing of one boy is a crime, why the massacre of hundreds of boys and girls is a legitimate “self-defence”? Australia of course, was among the minority of the 18 nations that voted against the Goldstone Report in the UN General Assembly. Meanwhile, the visit to Australia by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert – still on corruption charges and is considered one of Israel’s most wanted war criminals, who planned and executed the massacre of Palestinian women and children in Gaza and the massacre of Lebanese women and children in Lebanon in 2006 – this week passed with deafening silence in a country proud itself of being “civilised”.

Israel’s impunity has allowed Israeli leaders to get away with war crimes because people failed to stand up to their own governments who supported Israel’s war crimes overtly and tacitly. In a civilised world, no one is above the law. Israeli leaders who committed war crimes should be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court. If this is not possible, all sates have an obligation to exercise universal jurisdiction over Israelis who committed war crimes against the Palestinians. It is time to stand up to Israeli war criminals and upheld international law.

There is ample evidence that if Israel is subjected to world-wide censure, Israeli leaders will denounce violence and seek peace. Civil society movements and individuals have duty to challenge pro-Israel suppression. They should give the Palestinian struggle for justice all the political and moral backing they can muster, including boycotts, divestments and sanctions against Israel and Israeli products. It is one of many non-violent options to stop Israel’s terror and provide a road for Palestinian self-determination. It is the only human right expressly recognised in the UN Charter.

Source: Counter Currents

Poor Carbon Dioxide

Obama, Gore, and all the other climate commies are attacking this wonderful natural substance by calling it a pollutant! Plants need CO2 to live as we need oxygen and plants. Without CO2, life on Earth would be toast. Yet is attacked by the alleged environmentalists. Poor CO2 ought to be protected by the Endangered Gasses Act. Only an infinitesimal 0.0387%of the Earth’s atmosphere is CO2. There is more argon in the atmosphere (0.9340%)! Carbon is life, as Butler reminds us.

Source: Lew Rockwell