Global Reporting

Israeli Navy Seizes Ships Bound For Gaza, Detains Passengers

2011-11-04T16:58:00.000Z

New York, NY 11/4/11 - Canadian and Irish ships, the Tahrir and the Saoirse, sailing with Freedom Waves to Gaza have been illegally boarded by the Israeli military in international waters, about 50 nautical miles from the coast of Gaza, around 9:30 am EDT. The IDF spokesperson confirmed that the vessels were taken to the port of Ashdod, and the passengers were taken into custody by the Israeli police. Although the IDF spokesperson claimed they took "every precaution to ensure the safety of the activists," Freedom Waves to Gaza organizers have been unable to communicate with the ships since soon after the vessels were approached by Israeli warships earlier this morning.

U.S. Coordinator Jane Hirschmann commented, "Had the passengers been permitted to proceed to Gaza rather than being stopped on the high seas by armed force, there would have been no threat to their safety. The IDF's statement is like the mugger promising to escort his victim home safely."
The Canadian boat Tahrir confirmed that the Israeli navy had contacted them asking for their destination at around 7 a.m. EDT to which Ehab Lotayef, an activist on board the ship, replied 'The conscience of humanity'. When the Israelis again demanded to know the destination of the ship Lotayef replied; 'The betterment of mankind'.

Ann Wright, one of the organizers of the Freedom Flotilla that attempted to sail to Gaza in June, said "It's a little hard to imagine how 27 unarmed civilians on two small boats carrying medicine and letters threaten Israel's security. Israel is simply determined to maintain its policy of collective punishment against the 1.6 million civilians in Gaza. This is a crime against humanity and violation of international law. Despite Israel's consistent use of military force against nonviolent protests and demonstrations, activists around the world will continue to challenge the occupation of Palestine and the blockade and Gaza."

Passengers on the boats are citizens of Canada, Ireland, the US, Australia, and Palestine. The US citizen on the Tahrir is Kit Kittredge of Quilcene, Washington. She is a massage therapist and emergency medical technician.

For more info contact:
In New York: Felice Gelman, (917)-912-2597
Jane Hirschman, 917-679-8343, 212-222-6721
In Turkey (with ground crew): Medea Benjamin, +90 531 888 8927
@palwaves and @usboattogaza

Breaking: Gaza-Bound Flotilla Surrounded by Israeli Navy

2011-11-04T14:49:00.000Z

BOATS EN ROUTE TO GAZA SURROUNDED BY ISRAELI WARSHIPS

Nov. 4, 2011 - At 7:43 am ET ground support crews lost contact with two ships, the Saoirse of Ireland and the Tahrir of Canada, carrying 27 civilian passengers, medical supplies and letters of support for the people of Gaza.

At 7:30 am the Tahrir was interrogated, via radio, by the Israeli Navy. The ships were approximately 48 nautical miles off the coastline, well into international waters. Asked by the Israeli Navy for their destination, Canadian activist Ehab Lotayef replied, "The conscience of humanity." When they repeated the question, asking for final destination, Lotayef said, "The betterment of mankind."

Israel has maintained a naval blockade of Gaza since June 2006. Numerous international organizations, including committees of the United Nations, have concluded the blockade is in violation of international law.

For more info

In New York: Felice Gelman, (917)-912-2597
Jane Hirschman, 917-679-8343, 212-222-6721
In Turkey (with ground crew): Medea Benjamin, +90 531 888 8927
@palwaves and @usboattogaza

TWO BOATS WITH PASSENGERS FROM 5 COUNTRIES HAVE SET SAIL TO GAZA

2011-11-02T18:00:00.002Z

Organizers say: "It is time to lift the siege of Gaza."

The Canadian ship Tahrir and the Irish ship Saoirse have successfully reached international waters, initiating the "Freedom Wave to Gaza."

The boats have embarked from Turkey and are on the Mediterranean Sea. In all, the 2 boats carry 27 passengers from Canada, Ireland, U.S., Palestine, and Australia.Kit Kittredge, on board the Tahrir, was previously a passenger on the American ship, The Audacity of Hope, which attempted passage to Gaza last July.

Kittredge says, "The only obstacles in our way are Israel's military and the complicity of the Obama administration but in our sails is the wind of worldwide public opinion which has turned against the illegal blockade."

Ann Wright retired US army Colonel and former US Diplomat says, "We carry inspiration from the Arab Spring and the worldwide "Occupy" movements that are demanding freedom and justice. Where governments fail, civil society must act. As Americans we are fed up with our government's unquestioning support of Israel no matter how violent, illegal and oppressive its actions. We will not stand by and watch $30 billion of our tax money committed to buying Israel weaponry used to carry out this illegal occupation of Palestine including the blockade of Gaza."

Jane Hirschmann added, "Our sailing coincides with UN agency UNESCO's recognition of Palestine as a member state, defying US threats to cut off $80 million of US funding in retaliation. This shows the growing strength of opposition by the international community to U.S. and Israeli policies in Palestine. We call on the international community to go further and take effective action to lift the siege of Gaza." Hirschmann was one of the organizers this past summer of the U.S. Boat to Gaza, The Audacity of Hope, which is still captive in Greece.

Contact:
In New York: Felice Gelman, 917-912-2597, 917 679 8343
At sea: phone numbers will be released when you call the above press contact
Website: http://ustogaza.org/

A Simple Solution to the Debt Crisis

2011-10-20T08:49:00.000+01:00

Very useful video that explains who banks and the monetary system work and how to solve our current crisis by giving less power to private banks.

From PositiveMoney.org.uk:

"We've developed a simple solution to the debt crisis. It involves removing this power to create money from the banks, and making sure that money - whether it's cash or electronic money - can only be created by the Bank of England. Any new money would be created and spent into the economy - instead of being lent by banks to people who already have too much debt. This new money would allow us, collectively, to reduce our total debts to the banks, and help us to end the debt crisis.

The authorities are trying to patch up a system that is fundamentally broken. If we let them continue, then we will all end up even deeper in debt, and problems like poverty, extreme inequality and economic chaos will get worse and worse. We need a solution to the crisis that doesn't involve passing the costs back on to ordinary people. And we need you to get involved."

Global March to Jerusalem supported by the Association of Free Cyber Activists

2011-10-19T11:51:00.002+01:00

Association of Free Cyber Activists in Abyaneh, Iran

The Global March to Jerusalem (GMJ) planned for March next year received a boost when the newly formed “International Association of free cyberactivists” declared full support to the march.

The group vowed tomobilize its members and their networks to make the march a success. The association was formed at the end of a summit held on the side ofInternational Digital Media Fair in Tehran from the 9th to the 15th of October 2011.

Morethan fifty cyber activists coming from Italy, France, Australia, Chile, Cuba,India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Norway, Turkey, Palestine, Lebanon, UAE,Bosnia and the UK took part in the summit organized by International Union of Unified Ummah. Such meeting was concludedwith the decison to form the Association in order to coordinate the activities of the cyber activists around the world in resisting oppression,isolation and socio-economic injustice.

“The members of the association declared their full support to the GlobalMarch to Jerusalem (GMJ)”, said Jamal Daoud, the interim Secretary ofthe Association. “The founding members expressed their deep concernsabout the situation in the Holy City and the actions of the Israeli authorities to change its demography”. In the last day of the summit, the members of the Association discussed about the waysto raise awareness over the situation in the occupied Palestinian Territories and about the ways to support the native population in its struggle for freedom andindependence.

They have also covered the topic of how to get actively involved in theGMJ. “The members discussed about the best practical ways to take part in the march. These include mobilizing cybernetworks, producing films and clips about the issue, posting them on the Internet, and organizing forums and exhibitions to encourage people toparticipate”.

The march is already attracting the support of many organizations andactivists’ groups. While expecting many obstacles in achieving these goals, the groups are highly enthusiastic to expose the brutal natureof the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the International Community’shypocrisy on this issue. The group members noted that the Israeli occupation and brutalitywere going on for more than 63 years without any meaningful measure to put an end to them.The members believe that it is the time that internationalactivists and freedom-loving people unite to condemn Israeliatrocities and to demand these atrocities to end.

The founding committe is due to meet in two months time in order to finalizedetailed documents and the steps to achieve the declared objectives.

For media comments, you can contact Jamal Daoud on + 962 79799 6745 orSarbaz Rohulla Rezvi on + 98938 1650209 and +919858983590

Why Do Banks Make So Much Money?

2011-10-19T08:37:00.001+01:00

Enlightening video on the real causes of the economic crisis made by Positive Money, British campaign that aims at the reform of the monetary system.

Rafah Border Crossing is the initial torture gate for Palestinians and the road to nowhere

2011-01-20T13:39:00.000Z

Supervisors at the crossing...

The Egyptian Rafah Border crossing is Still the only one among the land entry points with The Arab Republic of Egypt, which is controlled by elements of the Egyptian military intelligence in addition to the elements of A supreme security to allow the unfairly besieged Palestinians to cross through to enter the Egyptian territories to get education in Egyptian universities or international university , which takes Egypt a headquarters, or to get healthcare in Egyptian hospitals for urgent and emergency cases that do not get proper treatment in hospitals of the sector in light of the siege imposed on it by the occupying entity "Israel" the insurgent to international law, or to use it as a transit to go to an Arab or foreign country.

Security coordination...

To get an entry visa to Egypt the names of passengers should be subjected formally for coordination between the Egyptian authorities and the Palestinian government in the Gaza Strip dominant on the other side of the crossing but the physical controller in this format is the supreme security authorities in Egypt, which refused repeatedly to allow hundreds of Palestinians from entry or exit without Objective reasons for such unjust refusal.
And so the Rafah border crossing is the only exception which is not supervised by the Department of Passports and Migration of the Egyptian Interior Ministry, just like each of the International Salloum border crossing on the Libyan border and the border crossings of Taba and Awja at The Occupied Palestinian territories border which is controlled by the Israeli occupation forces, or The Arquen Border crossing at the west on the Sudanese border.

Insults and arbitrary detentions...

The international law and the Charter of the United Nations confirms on respecting the human rights and dignity, regardless to religion, nationality, race, language or political affiliation, national or social origin as it is the recognized human rights and it's not Permissible to plot the human dignity or detain humans arbitrary or illegally as in the Charter of the United Nations.

However, these basic principles of international law are not actually implemented in the Egyptian Rafah Border crossing and it is completely ignored, which considers as a flagrant violation of the principles and standards of human rights.

The Palestinian Human Rights Foundation (Monitor) Has documented Many of the inhuman violations in this regard, which represents in explicit and content an affront to the dignity of the Palestinian citizen at the Egyptian side, as follows:

1- Using insults and vulgarity, which is beyond the public morals

2- Keeping who wants to transit for long time up to 10 hours without providing any explanation or clarification and it happens all the year long, whether in hot summer or cold winter in what is known by the term (stuck in the crossing).

3- There are no regards for humanitarian cases such as the elderly, "the old men and women" in addition to the patient cases that require urgently going through check-in procedures and children under age of twelve and women.

4- Self-inspection, especially for women, according to eyewitnesses.

Expulsion not transit…

The International law provides that the use of land border crossings, air and even sea in the case of transit, "the use of time does not exceed 24 hours to go to a third country which serves as an acquired right for the traveler, regardless to nationality, religion or race, or language as long as he does not represent a threat to the security of the country he is passing by, and the traveler complies with the international laws which provide for protection and comfort for him and not to interfere with any form of mistreatment, intimidation or illegal detention.

But we find that these international humanitarian principles and internationally recognized signed by the Arab Republic of Egypt in several international conventions do not get applied on the Palestinians who want to go to an Arab or foreign countries through the use of the Cairo International Airport, as the security authorities deport those passengers in locked buses under heavy security, with confiscation of passports, which considered as a flagrant violation of international and Egyptian laws which do not permit the confiscation of a passport of any traveler.

The expulsion takes about 5 hours from the crossing to The Cairo International Airport with a rest period does not exceed 20 minutes, and it's not allowed to the Palestinian travelers to walk out of buses, only after showing supplication And obtestation expressions to the commander of the security force to let them go to the restroom and it's only permitted for the elderly.

APPEAL

The Palestinian Human Rights foundation (Monitor) calls upon the Egyptian government to immediately intervene to facilitate the traffic of The Palestinian citizens in the exit and entry of the crossing, just like the high treatment received by the citizens of Arab and foreign countries in the rest of the Egyptian state.

Recommendations...

The Palestinian Human Rights Foundation (Monitor) Recommends applying the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was signed officially by the Arab Republic of Egypt in addition to this the Egyptian state has signed the International Covenants on Civil, Political and economic Rights as well as it pledged to adhere to the principles and standards of the Arab Charter for Human Rights in the sixteenth Arab Summit in Tunisia in 2004.

1- Implementation of the Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides for non-discrimination as to race, nationality, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, or birth, without differentiating between men and women.

2- Implementation of the Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment.

3- Implementation of Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that all people are equal under law and entitled to equal protection without any discrimination.

4- the application of Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that everyone has the freedom to leave any country including his country without any local or international hindrance.

5- Implementation of the principle of work equivalent in the Rafah international crossing, such like the work in the other ports on The Arab Republic of Egypt like in Cairo International airport and the land crossings.

From this point we urge the need of the Arab Republic of Egypt to commit to the following items of the Arab Charter for Human Rights, which it has signed in Tunis in 2004:

1- the Implementation of the first item of Article 8, that it is strictly prohibits degrading dignity or inhumane treatment and prohibits to harm anyone physically or psychologically or cruel or degrading treatment.

2- The Implementation of Article 27, which provides for:

1 - No one shall be arbitrarily or illegally prevented from leaving any country including his own, or impose a ban on his residence at any where, or compelled to reside in this country.

2 - No one shall be deported from his country or prevented from returning to it.

Report by Palestinian Human Rights Foundation
Arabic version

Gaza-bound convoy crossing Asian countries on its way to Palestine

2010-12-18T11:33:00.001Z

Iran, Malaysia, India are only a few of the countries involved in the ongoing humanitarian project aimed at breaking the illegal siege on the Gaza Strip, imposed by the zionist regime that has been occupying Palestine since 1948.

Last Gaza-bound Flotilla ended tragically with Israeli Navy killing in cold blood nine Turkish peace activists, but Asian humanitarian organisations don't seem to be afraid of challenging the illegal zionist regime once again.

The participants in the convoy are in total 83: 45 activists from India, 20 from Iran, 13 from Indonesia, 7 from Pakistan, 2 from Malaysia, 2 from Japan, 2 from Azerbaijan and 2 from Bahrain.

Right now the convoy is in Turkey. The activists have crossed Iran, where they met Tehran's mayor and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, nonetheless, who welcomed them and blessed their effort to break the inhumane Gaza blockade.

It's possible to follow the convoy step by step thanks to the daily updates of Asia 2 Gaza Caravan Facebook page, and their Twitter account, asia2gaza.

Did we need Wikileaks to condemn the Iraq war?

2010-11-11T13:18:00.002Z

Whistle-blower website Wikileaks has released in October a massive classified (now declassified) CIA document, causing, rightfully, a wave of outrage all over the world.

I have gone through a good part of the huge volume of documents (around 400,000) uploaded on the Iraq Warlogs website and I failed to find something I didn't know already. Let's be clear, WikiLeaks' service is by all means needed, and world's population has all rights to know what is going in Iraq, but did we not know already?

Did we not know that occupying troops are killing pregnant women, children, civilians in Iraq? Did we not know that the US carries out torture frequently and strives to hide it? Have we already forgot Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo? And what about the School of Americas, for that matter, where torture has been taught since the Cold War?

More importantly, now that WikiLeaks has released the infamous "Iraq" files, don't we know that the same horrors are taking place in this very moment in Afghanistan too?

Interestingly, as Gordon Duff has highlighted in one of his latest articles, in the massive volume of leaked secret files there is no mention of Israel/Mossad activities, despite their role in the Iraq war is sadly no secret.

Writes Mark Weber:

Whatever the secondary reasons for the war, the crucial factor in President Bush’s decision to attack was to help Israel. With support from Israel and America’s Jewish-Zionist lobby, and prodded by Jewish “neo-conservatives” holding high-level positions in his administration, President Bush – who was already fervently com mitted to Israel – resolved to invade and subdue one of Israel’s chief regional enemies.

This is so widely understood in Washington that US Senator Ernest Hollings was moved in May 2004 to acknowledge that the US invaded Iraq “to secure Israel,” and “everybody” knows it. He also identified three of the influential pro-Israel Jews in Washington who played an important role in prodding the US into war: Richard Perle, chair of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board; Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary; and Charles Krauthammer, columnist and author.

The absence of such a key player in the Iraq war gives at least food for thought, and makes me raise some questions.

The official excuses the Bush administration gave to the US citizens in order to accept a war that everybody knew would have turned into a disaster were many and diverse.

It started with Saddam Hussein giving shelter to "Bin Laden", most wanted by the FBI "in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. These attacks killed over 200 people. In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world."

Apart from noticing that Bin Laden is not wanted for the 9/11 attacks, it might also be worth remarking that the claim that he was hiding in Iraq was so weak that it got immediately confuted.

What then? Plan B was ready: Saddam Hussein had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and was preparing an attack against the United States. Although the UN inspectors have never found any WMD, on March 19th 2003 Bush launched the invasion of Iraq, causing the death of 1,421,933 Iraqis, almost five thousands US military personnel, more than two thousands international force troops, bringing about the destruction of a sovereign country, its culture, its society, violating its present, past and future, provoking a massive wave of refugees who now live in miserable conditions in neighbouring countries.

Part of the files released by WikiLeaks focused on the role Iran has had in smuggling arms into Iraq, and mainstream media, along with self-styled "independent" bloggers were swift to begin the umpteenth smear campaign against the Islamic Republic. At a quick glance, in fact, it seems almost that Iran has played a bigger role than the United States in the invasion and destruction of Iraq.

However, Iranian people must not be surprised about this new hostile wave, as anti-Iran campaigns are an ongoing topic within Western media. A little more than a year ago, in fact, in the occasion of Iranian presidential elections, President Ahmadinejad has been the target of most Zionist media outlets in Western countries. Since 2009, every now and then, European and American media don't waste any occasion to attack Iran.

Now that "mainstream" operations, fake "coloured" revolutions and ineffective economic sanctions have clearly failed, WikiLeaks comes along and paints Iran as one of the key players in the Iraq war. Although the evidence of Iran's involvement in the Iraq war is close to non-existent, much of mainstream media and fake independent bloggers have been participating in this new propaganda adventure.

What is the aim of such new smear campaign? Are the United States being pushed into another war/disaster by their "friend" Israel? Are they preparing the public mind for an attack against Iran? Do all those fake independent bloggers, so vehement advocates of human rights, know that a war against Iran will bring unprecedented destruction and mass killings? Do they know that once the war is waged there is no way back?

The result of Wiki psyop seems to be a "leak" especially made for the big public, in which it's carefully reported what mainstream media can't write as it would automatically appear as nothing more than propaganda. Which actually is. In fact, mainstream media are exactly the place where we can find most pieces of this new "leaked intel". Just another attack against sovereign Iran, one of the many that shows that Western powers are running out of ideas on how to bring down the Islamic Republic.

Iraqi civilians used by US troops to detect potential presence of mines

2010-10-23T03:29:00.000+01:00

Detailed CIA classified documents have been released by whistle-blower website Wikileaks, that makes in this way the horrors of the Iraq War more "real" to the public mind worldwide.

Unspeakable violence is carried out during every war. In our times, conflicts are made more brutal by the availability of the most up-to-date technology, that instead of helping humanity live better, it's destroying it.

In a written statement, a witness has accused US troops to use Iraqi civilians to detect possible bombs in minefields.

Degrading for humanity as a whole.

Source.

While the US keeps sanctioning, relations between China and Iran thrive

2010-10-10T00:01:00.000+01:00

Beginning of July, Barack Obama threatened (and approved) the “toughest” sanctions ever passed by the Congress against Iran, in order to make it difficult for the country led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to buy refined petroleum as well as goods and services from foreign companies to modernize its oil and gas sectors.

Although Obama announced that the door of diplomacy would stay open, the United States has always rejected any attempt that its Iranian counterpart has made to enter into a reasonable dialogue, since 2003 up to the last UN conference, when the US President, once again, ignored Ahmadinejad's efforts to an official meeting during his visit to the States.

Despite Ahmadinejad's reiterated statements that Iran's nuclear program has only peaceful purposes such as producing electricity, the United States and the European Union approved the sanctions additionally targeting Iran's financial, insurance, transportation and energy sectors, penalizing the companies supplying the country with gasoline.

According to such punitive measures, foreign banks that would do business with Iranian banks will not be allowed to access the American financial system, and the same applies to companies that would provide Iran with gasoline.

Now it's China's turn to be sanctioned. Last week the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act aimed at penalizing any country with an “artificially weakened” currency, clearly referring to the Chinese Renminbi, allowing the imposition of trade sanctions on China.

“It is untraditional for trade sanctions to be imposed on a country by the U.S. Government due to currency policy,” said David Besanko, economist and professor at Northwestern University, in an interview with Chinese News Agency, Xinhua. “It is counterproductive and if we are not careful it will lead to trade conflict with China,” he added.

This has had the rather obvious consequence of making relations between Iran and China thrive, while the United States, persisting in their aggressive policies, keep drifting away from productive relations with an increasing number of countries.

According to Al Manar Agency, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced that the two countries “could raise their trade volume to 100 billion USD within five years and invest up to 200 billion USD.”

While senior official of the Communist Party of China, Li Changchun, has been promoting stronger ties between China and Iran in order to face the “common enemy of imperialism,” Mr. Ahmadinejad endorsed a boost in the cooperation between China and Iran in order to “prevent the enemies from creating obstacles in the way of the development of the two countries.”

Although in July only Brazil and Turkey voted against the sanctions against Iran, China has now strongly condemned any aggressive approach to the nuclear issue and encouraged instead all possible diplomatic efforts. Criticizing America's policy of using military power in order to impose its will on global affairs, Li stated that "China is strongly against unilateral sanctions and pressure [exerted] by Western countries and the United States on Iran over its nuclear case," highlighting the importance of adopting counter-strategies.

In addition to stronger relations with Iran, China keeps strengthening its ties with Russia and the Gulf countries, that seem more willing to take the risk of being banned from doing business with US companies, than respecting the latest sanctions. Namely, while Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer and Republican Senator Jon Kyl urge Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to support penalties against Chinese and Turkish companies that are undermining the effectiveness of the sanctions by providing Iran with refined petroleum products, China and Russia are celebrating the building of the oil pipeline that represents the largest project so far between the two countries, and Beijing keeps expanding its diplomatic, economic and security interests in the Middle Eastern region, being Saudi Arabia China's largest oil supplier, and Iran China's third-largest supplier of oil.

As early as last week, Tehran has reportedly opened its airspace to Chinese warplanes in order to conduct joint military exercises with Turkey, following the drills Ankara and Beijing had been carrying out in Central Anatolia within the Anatolian Eagle maneuvres that saw the participation of the US and other Nato members too.

The US-backed sanctions against Iran don't seem to have been very effective so far inasmuch as many companies, especially in West and East Asia, are still carrying out profitable business with the Islamic Republic. Among the firms that are not abiding by the international sanctions are the European Shell, Total and Api. According to Italian News Agency FocusMO, in fact, Shell has bought from state-run National Iranian Oil Company at least 1,5 billion USD of crude, increasing its purchase from Iran by the 25%.

Similarly, the French Total has increased its investments by the 12% and the Italian Api has bought a further 70% of oil. Such businesses are made possible by the banks that are still accepting payments between foreign companies and Iran, among which there is the Italian financial institute Intesa-Sanpaolo, that has been so far refusing to block the transactions despite the sanctions.

At this juncture, one might wonder whether the US-backed sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran are having any result other than contributing in isolating the United States themselves within the landscape of global affairs.

Palestinian shot dead entering East Jerusalem

2010-10-04T02:26:00.000+01:00

There is no end to the massacre of Palestinians carried out by the zionist forces.

By Maan News Agency

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- A Palestinian worker from Hebron was shot and killed by Israeli border guards on Sunday while he attempted to enter East Jerusalem near the village of Al-Isawiya.

The deceased was identified as 38-year-old Izz Ad-Din Al-Kawazba from the town of Sa'ir in Hebron. Al-Kawzaba's cousin Salah told Ma'an that border guards shot the victim at close range, refuting police accounts that the shooting was accidental.

Al-Kawazba said he was 20 meters away from his cousin when he was shot, shortly after two groups of workers climbed over the separation wall in the Zayem At-Tur area and were chased by an Israeli border guard patrol.

He said he urged his cousin, who was with his brother Hassan, to "hurry because the soldiers were behind us."

"Suddenly I saw a soldier approaching Izz Ad-Din extending his gun to his body and shooting. I moved backward along with dozens of other workers to check up on Izz Ad-Din. As we got close, we were surrounded by special forces who attacked us violently," he said.

"We saw them shoving the martyr's body in a black bag dragging it more than 50 meters. More than 100 workers were gathered and were sent to Al-Eizariya. The victim's brother Hassan was detained," he added.

Spokesman for Israel's National Police Mickey Rosenfeld said Al-Kawazba was injured when a "shot was fired apparently accidentally" by a border guard officer after he "attempted to grab one of the border police's gun."

Al-Kawazba was transferred to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital where he later died of his wounds, Rosenfeld said, adding that an investigation "is being carried out in order to understand what took place at the scene."

Rosenfeld said the shooting followed the detention of "15 illegal workers [who] crossed the security barrier near French Hill," after which a chase ensued.

The death comes over a week after an Israeli settler guard shot and killed two Palestinians in the flashpoint neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem, sparking days of clashes.

(This version UPDATES account of shooting from the victim's cousin, Salah Al-Kawazba.)

Video Shock: US soldier describes slaughtering of civilians in Afghanistan

2010-09-30T09:14:00.001+01:00

In a shocking confession US soldier Jeremy Morlock says he was ordered to kill three randomly chosen civilians in Afghanistan.

This is how a foreign Army (the US, mostly formed by brainwashed and drugged kids) invades a country and kills innocent people in their own land, destroying their families and their society.

Morlock and the other soldiers accused of slaughtering civilians, if found guilty by the military court, can face death penalty.

This is how the lives of a couple of kids are ruined by their own government that first sent them to invade a country in order to control its natural resources and then sentences them to death in order to save its face in front of world's outrage.

Morlock has also claimed that his superior, Calvin Gibbs, coldly selected innocent Afghans to kill for sport and then instructed his men to help make it look like they were insurgents.

This is how war turns human beings into monsters.

Is Israel bringing the US down?

2010-09-28T10:13:00.000+01:00

Israeli crimes vs. peace activism. What now?

2010-09-24T06:58:00.002+01:00

Photo courtesy of the Free Gaza movement.

A new convoy headed to the Palestinian region of Gaza has started its journey on September 18th in order to bring the population under illegal siege humanitarian aid.

The day of the departure wasn't randomly chosen. On September 16th-18th, in fact, was the 28th anniversary of the ferocious massacre of Sabra and Shatila, carried out by Israeli commandos headed by former prime minister of the Zionist entity, Ariel Sharon.

One of the many massacres carried out by Zionism since its inception.

"Fifteen minutes by car from Tel-Aviv University lies the village of Kfar Qassim where, on 29 October 1956, Israeli troops massacred forty-nine villagers returning from their fields. Then there was Qibya in the 1950s, Samoa in the 1960s, the villages of the Galilee in 1976, Sabra and Shatila in 1982, Kfar Qana in 1999, Wadi Ara in 2000 and the Jenin Refugee Camp in 2002. And in addition there are the numerous killings Betselem, Israel's leading human rights organisation, keeps track of. There has never been an end to Israel's killing of Palestinians." [1]

So in these very days the massive convoy partly by land partly by sea is heading to Gaza, that has been transformed into a concentration camp by the illegal blockade imposed by the Zionist entity.

Last edition of flotilla has ended in a bloodbath due to the over-excitement of special Israeli commandos racing in order to get a medal of honour, and nine peace activists were brutally killed in a show of unnecessary violence, zionist speciality.

While the world was outraged by such abuse of force against unarmed civilians in international waters, Israeli officials themselves were probably wondering why worldwide public opinion was still not used to their crimes.

The truth, in fact, is that killing civilians is Israel's policy. These are not "tragic mistakes" nor "collateral damages," and there is no "regret" about it. Slaughtering civilians, men, women, children, the elderly, is the foundation on which Israel itself was created: the ethnic cleansing of a whole nation and the creation of a state based on racism and apartheid.

This, combined with the unconditional political and financial support of the USA and the impunity granted by the International Community, allows the Zionist regime to carry out such crimes undisturbed.

Until so-called "intellectuals" writing for mainstream outlets of the likes of Washington Post and New York Times will keep engaging in shallow demagoguery such as "Yes, Israel kills, but it's the only democracy in the Middle East," or "Yes, Israel kills, but it has the right to self defense," or "Yes, Israel kills, but it's a victim," world's stability will remain an illusion.

Already in 1937, Ben Gurion, founder of the zionist illegal colony, had said: "We must expel Arabs and take their places."

Golda Meir, former prime minister of Israel, in a burst of ignorance, has declared to The Times of London in 1969: "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. The didn't exist."

Menachem Begin, former prime minister of Israel, declared in a speech to the Knesset: "[Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs."

As an illegal organisation that can rely on the silence and the complicity of world's most powerful nations, Israel has never shown any respect for human life. Any human life, for that matter.

The occupation of Palestine, the abuses on the native population, the invasions of Lebanon, the countless massacres of civilians that fill Israel's history, the highest contempt towards any international law and regulation have always been met by shy disapproval from the International Community.

Last May 31st, an Israeli commando killed eight Turkish citizens and one US citizen of Turkish origins. Unlike many people might think, it would have made no difference if the activists were all from Western countries.

Rachel Corrie was a US citizen and was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer.

Tristan Anderson is a US citizen, Bay Area activist and photojournalist, and was shot in the head at close range by an Israeli soldier, causing him severe brain damage and blindness in his right eye.

Emily Henochowicz is a US citizen and lost an eye when she was shot in the face with a tear gas canister at a demonstration in the West Bank by Israeli military.

Tom Hurndall was a British photography student and was shot in the head in the Gaza Strip by an Israeli sniper.

James Miller was a Welsh filmmaker and was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier while filming a documentary in Rafah.

Brian Avery is an American citizen who was shot in the face by an Israeli soldier in the West Bank town of Jenin, causing him permanent disfigurement.

Despite its power and the complicity of Western governments, however, Israel has made it clear more than once that it's not able to handle peace activism, and what the Zionist regime is most afraid of are the hundreds of thousands of activists of all ages and walks of life committed to expose its crimes.

Because it's only a matter of time and soon the zionist colony will be dismantled, and Palestinians will be able to go back to their own wounded country.

[1] Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p. 258

UN confutes Israel's version of raid against flotilla: evidence of "wilful killing and torture"

2010-09-23T03:36:00.000+01:00

The probe on the deadly raid against the flotilla of peace activists carried out by an Israeli commando last May 31st is finally coming to an end, and the report of the UN Human Rights Council concluded that there is evidence of "wilful killing and torture", making the raid brutal and disproportionate.

According to the UN experts, "a series of violations of international law, including international humanitarian and human rights law, were committed by the Israeli forces during the interception of the flotilla and during the detention of passengers in Israel prior to deportation." Enough "to support prosecutions."

"The conduct of the Israeli military and other personnel toward the flotilla passengers was not only disproportionate to the occasion but demonstrated levels of totally unnecessary and incredible violence. It betrayed an unacceptable level of brutality," the experts - judges from Britain and Trinidad and a Malaysian human rights campaigner - said.

"It betrayed an unacceptable level of brutality. Such conduct cannot be justified or condoned on security or any other grounds," they said in the report, to be submitted to the rights council on September 27. "It constituted grave violations of human rights law and international humanitarian law."

The rights experts, who were not allowed to enter Israel, said Israel had refused to cooperate with their mission, and called on the Israeli authorities to identify those involved in the violence and prosecute them.

The world over is demanding a proper reaction by the International Community in order to make the zionist entity stop carrying out crimes against humanity and recognise an unconditional right of return to the Palestinian people to their own country.

Sources Press Association, Reuters, AFP

Israel's Consul-General interferes in boycott process. Surprised?

2010-09-21T10:23:00.000+01:00

Jefferson County Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) - September 20, 2010

A proposed boycott of products at a food co-op in Port Townsend has prompted a visit from Gideon Lustig, Israel’s Deputy Consul-General for the Pacific Northwest, at the request of an Israel advocacy group which opposes the boycott of Israeli products.

Speaking at a public town hall meeting Sunday night, Mr. Lustig declared his intent to have private meetings with co-op board members. He also intended to meet with Port Townsend’s city manager, who is not in a formal position to influence the boycott process. It is not clear what that meeting would be about.

Mr. Lustig held a private meeting today with Ms. Sam Gibboney, the Food Co-op board president. The meeting was closed to co-op members and to the public, but Ms. Gibboney acknowledged that the subject of the meeting was the boycott. It is not certain whether additional meetings were held, and whether subjects other than the boycott were discussed.

Ms. Gibboney had initially invited board members to attend a joint closed-door meeting with the Consul-General, but had to cancel that plan in response to protests by co-op member-owners, who pointed out that the co-op bylaws did not allow for a closed executive session of the board under these circumstances.

While the boycott initiative has generated a great deal of community discussion, Ms. Gibboney has not had similar meetings with boycott proponents. She also has not attended any of the information events organized by the member-owners who had presented the proposal to the board in July.

The boycott proposal asks that the store pull Israeli products from its shelves until Israel complies with U.N. decisions regarding the occupied territories, lifts the siege on Gaza, ends its hafrada (apartheid) policies against Palestinians, and recognizes the refugees’ right of return.

Dena Shunra, one of the member-owners, said, “I’m troubled that board members of our own food co-op would hold closed meetings on a subject that has aroused so much interest within our community. We need to shed more light on this issue rather than open our co-op up to allegations of back-room deals.”

Another boycott proponent, Jim Watson of Brinnon, said, “We believe that these meetings with the consul-general should not occur. It would be in violation of board policy.”

The board is scheduled to decide on the boycott proposal in a special meeting scheduled for Tuesday, September 21st. The board has invited co-op member-owners to attend and make short comments before the board discuses and votes on the proposal.

The board meeting will take place at 6 pm at the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 2333 San Juan Ave., in Port Townsend.

For more information, please visit http://jeffcowabds.wordpress.com, or contact Daniel Bugel-Shunra via phone: (360) 379-2506, or e-mail: daniel@shunra.net

Thousands of Afghans stage anti-U.S. protest in Kabul

2010-09-15T09:32:00.000+01:00

Reuters - By Hamid Shalizi

KABUL - Wed Sep 15, 2010 - Police fired into the air to disperse thousands of anti-American protesters in Afghanistan's capital Wednesday, witnesses and police said, with one person killed and at least five wounded.

Demonstrators chanted "Death to America," "Death to Christians," and "Death to Karzai," the latter referring to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in the biggest protests since unrest erupted last week over plans by a U.S. pastor to burn the Koran.

"There are more than 10,000 of the demonstrators and some of them are waving the Taliban flag," police officer Mohammad Usman.

The protests come three days before a parliamentary election which the Taliban have vowed to disrupt. The election is a key test of stability in Afghanistan before U.S. President Barack Obama conducts a war strategy review in December.

They follow three days of protests at the weekend over plans by an obscure U.S. pastor, which he later abandoned, to burn copies of the Koran to mark the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, hijacked airliner attacks on the United States.

Three people were killed in those protests. Observers including the top U.N. diplomat in Afghanistan had warned the Taliban may try to exploit the Koran-burning protests.

A police source later said one person had been killed and five wounded, and that the toll could rise. The protests were the Reuters television pictures showed protesters waving large white flags, the symbol used by Taliban supporters.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the hardline Islamist group was aware of the protests but had no role in them.

"People may have raised the Taliban flags to show their sentiment and sympathy for the Taliban," Mujahid told Reuters from an undisclosed location.

At the Pul-e-Kandahari, or Kandahar bridge in Kabul, police were ordered to advance toward one group of hundreds of protesters who were throwing stones and shouting "Death to American slaves" at police.

Police were seen firing into the air and dragging away several protesters. At one point, volleys of gunfire could be heard. The protesters scattered, some sheltering in nearby houses in the mainly ethnic Pashtun and Tajik area of Kabul.

The protesters earlier gathered in the west of the capital, burning tires and blocking a main highway link to the south. Thick black smoke rose above the area and police kept journalists several hundred meters back.

Reuters witnesses at the scene saw two unconscious people, covered in blood, being carried away suffering what appeared to be gunshot wounds.

Tony Blair to Receive Human Rights Award

2010-09-14T11:32:00.000+01:00

The news by the Press Association says:

September 13, 2010 "Press Association" -- Tony Blair is to receive an award for his global human rights work in the US.

The ex-Prime Minister will be presented with Liberty Medal by former US President Bill Clinton even as his newly published memoirs reignited debate on his political leadership.

The medal is given annually by the National Constitution Centre to individuals or organisations whose actions aim to bring liberty to people worldwide.

Mr Blair is being honoured for his work with the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which promotes religious tolerance, and for his initiative to improve governance in Africa.

He cancelled a planned book signing in London last week after eggs and shoes were thrown at him at an earlier book signing in Dublin. Protesters were angered over his role in launching the Iraq War.

Organisers of the medal ceremony say they don't expect protesters.

Mr Clinton, the centre's chairman, said in a statement that Mr Blair "continues to demonstrate the same leadership, dedication and creativity in promoting economic opportunity in the Middle East and the resolution of conflicts rooted in religion around the world."

Mr Blair said in a statement: "Freedom, liberty and justice are the values by which this medal is struck.

"Freedom, liberty and justice are the values which I try to apply to my work on governance in Africa and on preparing the Palestinians for statehood."

The medal, first given in 1989, comes with a 100,000 US dollars (£65,000) cash prize. Mr Blair will donate the money to his faith foundation and African Governance Initiative.

This, in line with the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama, is a joke.

The blatant bias of the BBC: The Gaza Freedom Flotilla

2010-09-12T11:15:00.000+01:00

I'm posting below a very interesting documentary by Anthony Lawson, with the collaboration of Ken O'Keefe, focusing on BBC's misleading documentary about the deadly raid carried out by the Israeli Navy Special Forces against a humanitarian ship headed to the Gaza Strip last May 31st.

The author highlights the gravity of the fact that the BBC, one of the world's biggest broadcasting services, presents itself as an unbiased source of information, while it offers distorted views of what is an unlawful attack in International Waters against a ship loaded with humanitarian aid for the population of Gaza, living under the illegal siege imposed by the zionist entity, within the silence of the International Community.

Vanessa Redgrave, Tony Kushner and other American artists support Israeli artists’ Ariel boycott

2010-09-06T10:16:00.000+01:00

Following the movement of Israeli theater professionals who authored a letter refusing to perform in the settlement of Ariel on August 27th, and the attack on them that ensued, American counterparts have come together with their own statement of support.

Organised by Jewish Voice for Peace, a national Jewish-American organization, the statement has been signed by over 150 theatre and film professionals representing a wide geographic, political, cultural and professional range and some of the most respected and renowned artists – including Four Pulitzer Prize winners, several recipients of Guggenheim Fellowships, a MacArthur Fellowship, a National Medal of Honor, and scores of recipients of the highest U.S. acting honors, including Tony Awards, Emmy Awards, Grammy Awards, Obie Awards, Drama Desk Awards, and more.

Some names include Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon, world-renowned playwright Tony Kushner, 21-time Tony winner for productions of “The Pajama Game” to “Phantom of the Opera” Harold Prince, star of the movie “Yentl,” Mandy Patinkin, and Cameri co-founder Theodore Bikel, among many others.

Rebecca Vilkomerson, Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace, said: “The response of American artists to the courageous actions of their Israeli counterparts is just phenomenal. It is especially notable that so many of the signatories are Jewish Americans with long-standing connections to Israel. We hope that the strong show of solidarity by Americans in response to these brave Israelis will help spark a new conversation in both countries, one that acknowledges that the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are illegal by every measure of international law, contribute to the daily violation of human rights of Palestinians, and are a major obstacle to a just peace in the region.”

This is the full text of the statement:

On August 27th, dozens of Israeli actors, directors, and playwrights made the brave decision not to perform in Ariel, one of the largest of the West Bank settlements, which by all standards of international law are clearly illegal. As American actors, directors, critics and playwrights, we salute our Israeli counterparts for their courageous decision.

Most of us are involved in daily compromises with wrongful acts. When a group of people suddenly have the clarity of mind to see that the next compromise looming up before them is an unbearable one — and when they somehow find the strength to refuse to cross that line — we can’t help but be overjoyed and inspired and grateful.

It’s thrilling to think that these Israeli theatre artists have refused to allow their work to be used to normalize a cruel occupation which they know to be wrong, which violates international law and which is impeding the hope for a just and lasting peace for Israelis an Palestinians alike. They’ve made a wonderful decision, and they deserve the respect of people everywhere who dream of justice. We stand with them.

*Statement organizers and signatories represent a wide range of political opinions and perspectives, but have come together for the sole purpose of making a joint statement on this one critical issue.
**All identifications and affiliations are for identification purposes only and do not imply endorsements by any institutions

Signatories:
Vanessa Redgrave, Actress
The only British actress to ever have won the Oscar, Emmy, Tony, Canes, Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild awards; Mission: Impossible, Mary Queen of Scots, Atonement.

Cynthia Nixon, Actress
Portrayed Miranda Hobbes in the HBO series Sex and the City; Emmy, Tony and Grammy Award-winning actress

Ed Asner, Actor
8 time Emmy award Winner (more than any other male actor); Former president Screen Actors Guild, lead voice in Pixar’s Up, Mary Tyler Moore

Tony Kushner, Playwright; Screenwriter;
Pulitzer Prize winner for Angels in America; Tony Award winner; Emmy Award winner; Drama Desk Award winner; Was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award; Co-author of Munich

Theodore Bikel, Actor, Folk Singer, Musician
Co-founder of the Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv; president of the Associated Actors and Artistes of America; Academy Award nominee; Tony Award nominee; actor in film, TV and theater; vocalist

Jennifer Tilly, Actress
Portrayed Olive Neal in Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway, Fabulous Baker Boys, Liar Liar, Bound; Academy Award Nominee

Miriam Margolyes, Actor
Portrayed Professor Sprout in Harry Potter; BAFTA Winner

Harold Prince, Director, Producer,
21 Tony Awards winner (Pajama Game, Cabaret, West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, Evita, Phantom of the Opera), National Medal of the Arts Recipient

Mandy Patinkin, Actor, Vocalist
Actor in Yentl, the Princess Bride (portrayed Inigo Montoya), Sunday in the Park with George; Vocalist, (Mamaloshen), Tony Award winner

Wallace Shawn, Actor, Playwright, Translator
Actor in Princess Bride (portrayed Vizzini) My Dinner With Andre, Vanya on 42nd St; playwright of The Fever, The Designated Mourner; translator of Three Penny Opera by Bertoldt Brecht

James Schamus, Producer, Screenwriter, Film Historian
BAFTA Award Winner; producer of Brokeback Mountain, co-writer and producer of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Ice Storm, Eat Drink Man Woman, Academy Award nominee, CEO Focus Features

Eve Ensler, Playwright, preformer
The Vagina Monologues; Obie Award winner; Guggenheim Fellowship

Liz Diamond, Scholar
Chair, Directing Dept., Yale School of Drama

Andre Gregory, Actor
My Dinner With Andre

Lynn Nottage, Playwright
Winner of 2009 Pulitzer Prize; winner of 2007 MacArthur Genius Award

Sheldon Harnick, Lyricist
Pulitzer Prize Winner, Fiddler on the Roof, Tony Award Winner

Paula Vogel, Playwright, Scholar
Pulitzer Prize Winner, Eugene O’Neill Chair, Playwriting Department -Yale School of Drama

Bill Irwin, Actor, Mime, Choreographer
Winner two Tony Awards ;Winner of the National Endowment for the Arts Choreographer’s Fellowship; Guggenheim, Fulbright and MacArthur Fellowships

David Adjmi, Playwright

Steinberg Playwright Award, the Bush Artists Fellowship, and the Kesselring Fellowship for Drama, named in the New Yorker as up and coming playwrigh t

Najla Said, Actor, Playwright
Daughter of Edward Said; “Palestine,” Her one-woman Off Broadway play is a coming-of-age story about Ms. Said’s journey to become an Arab-American on her own terms.

Bruce Allardice, Managing Director
Ping Chong & Co.

Philip Arnoult, Director, Center for International Theatre Development (CITD)

Anthony Arnove, Author and Editor
Co-Directed (with Howard Zinn and Chris Moore) and Executive Produced “The People Speak (film)

Caron Atlas, Cultural Organizer and Consultant
Founding director of the American Festival Project, a national coalition of activist artists (http://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/bios/staff/15/Caron_Atlas)

Arthur Aviles, Artistic Director
Artistic Director, The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Arthur Aviles Typical Theatre

David Barlow, Actor, Writer, Performance Artist

Laura Barnett, Theater Educator, Performance Artist, Director

George Bartenieff, Actor

Obie Award Winner

Mark Barton, Lighting Designer

John Bell, Director
Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, Puppeteer, Scholar, Great Small Works.

Melia Bensussen, Director
Obie Award Winning Director; Chair of Emerson College Department of Performing Arts

Eric Bentley, Theatre scholar, critic, author, playwright, editor and translator

Theodore S. Berger, Executive Director of the New York Foundation for the Arts for thirty years

Susan Bernfield, Artistic Director, New Georges

Philip Bither, Senior curator, Walker Arts Center

James Bundy, Dean, Yale School of Drama; Artistic Director, Yale Repertory Theatre

Kathleen Chalfant, Actor
Obie Award Winner, Drama Desk Winner, Tony Award Nominee

Linda Chapman, Associate Artistic Director, New York Theatre Workshop

Rachel Chavkin, Director; Founder and Artistic director of the TEAM (the Theater of the Emerging American Moment)

Trudi Cohen, Puppeteer, Theater Artist
Great Small Works

Kia Corthron, Playwright

Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, Playwright

Clare Coss, Playwright

Alex Courtney, Stage, Film and Television Actor

Tim Cusack, Artistic Director, Theatre Askew

Savitri D., Director
The Church of Life After Shopping

Matthew Dellapina, Actor

Ivor Dembina, Comedian

David J. Diamond, Theatre consultant, producer and career coach for theatre artists

Elin Diamond, Critic, Scholar

Sally Eberhardt, Theatres Against War (THAW)

Edward Einhorn, Director, Playwright, Novelist, Executive Director of the Association of Jewish Theatre

Deborah Eisenberg, Playwright, Author, Actor, MacArthur Fellow

John Clinton Eisner, Artistic Director, Lark Play Development Center

Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director, The Public Theater

Bertie Ferdman, Ph.D., Artistic Director, ExPgirl; Theatre Artist, Curator, Producer, Educator

Corey Fischer, Actor, Playwright
Playwright of See Under: Love; co-founder of the Traveling Jewish Theater, (now the Jewish Theater San Francisco)

Elinor Fuchs, Critic; Scholar, Yale School of Drama

Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros, Playwright
2004 finalist, Pulitzer Prize for Drama

Adam Greenfield, Director of New Play Development, Playwright Horizons

David Greenspan, Actor, Award-Winning Playwright

Kathryn Grody, Actor; Writer
Obie Award Winner

Jason Grote, Playwright, Screenwriter

Del Hamilton, co-Founder and Artistic Director, 7 Stages

Karen Hartman, Playwright

David Herskovits, Founder and Artistic Director, Target Margin Theater

Joan Holden, Award-Winning Playwright

Jeffrey Horowitz, Founder and Artistic Director, Theater for a New Audience
Advisory Board of The Shakespeare Society and Artistic Directorate of London’s Globe Theatre, Artistic Advisor to the Shakespeare Globe Centre (USA).

Holly Hughes, Performance Artist, Guggenheim Fellow
One of the “NEA 4″, whose funding was vetoed for gay content

Birgit Huppuch, Actor

Julia Jarcho, Playwright, Director, Performer

Morgan Jenness, Dramaturge

John Jesurun, Writer, Director, Multi-Media Artist

Jeffrey M. Jones, Playwright, Curator -
Little Theatre @ Dixon Place, Pataphysics @ The Flea

Melanie Joseph, Artistic Producer
The Foundry Theatre

Chris Kam, Independent Producer

Stephen Kaplin, Puppeteer, Theater Designer/Performer
Great Small Works and Chinese Theatre Works

Melissa Kievman, Director

Josh Kornbluth, Monologist

Aaron Landsman, Independent Artist

Paul Lazar, Co-Artistic Director Big Dance Theater

Herbert Leibowitz, Writer and Editor

Maxinne Rhea Leighton, Author

Robert H. Leonard, Director, Professor, Department of Theatre Arts, Virginia Tech

Gideon Lester, Dramaturge and Curator
Former associate artistic director, American Repertory Theatre; former Acting Artistic Director, American Repertory Theatre

Roberta Levitow, Co-Founder, Theatre Without Borders

Irene Lewis, Artistic Director
Center Stage, Baltimore, Maryland

Ethan Lipton, Playwright

Casey Llewellyn, Theater Artist

Quincy Long, Playwright

John Carroll Lynch, Actor

Kirk Lynn, Co-Producing Artistic Director

Rude Mechs, Austin, TX

Matthew Maguire, Co-Artistic Director, Creation Production Company

Matthew Maher, Actor

Judith Malina, Actor Director
Founder and Artistic Director, The Living Theatre

Karen Malpede, Playwright, Theater Three Collaborative

Nina Mankin, Dramaturge, Writer

Emily Mann, Artistic Director/Playwright
McCarter Theatre Center, Princeton, NJ

Deborah Margolin, Playwright, Actor, Scholar

Vijay Mathew, Co-Director, American Voices New Play Institute

Marin Mazzie, Actress, Singer

Ellen McLaughlin, Playwright, Actor

Erin Mee, Director, Scholar
Swarthmore theater arts professor

Greg Mehrten, Actor, Director, Writer

David Michalek, Artist, Photographer
Visiting Faculty Member – Yale Divinity School

Tyler Micoleau, Lighting Designer

Tim Miller, Performance Artist
One of the “NEA 4″, whose funding was vetoed for gay content

Jennifer Miller, Performance Artist, director
Founder and Artistic Director of Circus Amok

Steve Moore, Artistic Director
Physical Plant Theater

Susan Mosakowski, Playwright
Co-Artistic Director Creation Production Company

David Moscow, Actor

Erika Munk, Critic, Professor
Yale School of Drama, theater critic

Tom Nelis, Actor

Jim Nicola, Artistic Director
New York Theatre Workshop

Annie-B Parson, Director
Co-Founder, Artistic director Big Dance Theater, NYFA and Guggenheim Fellow

Sally Ann Parsons, Costumer, Craftsman, Designer

Shailja Patel, Sundance Theatre Fellow 2010

Katie Pearl, Director

Sybille Pearson, Playwright
Rockefeller Playwrights Fellowship; founding member of The Playwrights Circle at The New York Theatre Workshop; an Artistic Resident at the Vineyard Theater

Ralph Pena, Artistic Director, Ma Yi Theater

Carla Peterson, Director
Artistic Director, Dance Theater Workshop

Brian Pickett, Theater Artist and Educator
Member Steering Committee – Theaters Against War (THAW)

Catherine Porter, Director
Co-Artistic Director Peculiar Works Project, Obie Award Winner

Ruth Reichl, Writer; PBS Television host
former restaurant critic, NYTimes, former editor in chief, Gourmet magazine, PBS television series host, memoirist

Reno, Comedian

Gordon Rogoff, Theater Critic; Director; Professor of Theater
Yale School of Drama; Obie Award Winner

Jenny Romaine, Puppeteer, Theater Artist
Great Small Works

Avital Ronell, Writer, Academic, Literary Critic

Ken Rus Schmoll, Director

Brian H. Scott, Theatrical Designer

Regine Anna Seckinger, Ph.D., Advisory Board Member, Rude Mechanicals, Austin, TX

Jamil Shamasdin, Actor
Peggy Shaw, Performance Artist, Actor, Playwright

Christopher Shinn, Playwright
Obie Award Winner, Guggenheim Fellow

Sarah Schulman, Novelist, Playwright

Jeanmarie Simpson, Theatre/Film Artist

Michael Singer, Television News Producer
Former producer, CBS News

Alisa Solomon, Theater Critic
Director of Arts Concentration, School of Journalism, Columbia

Bonnie Stein, Performing Arts Administrator, Manager, Project Producer and Coordinator, Executive Director
GOH Productions

Kris Stone, Stage Designer

Mark Sussman, Scholar, Puppeteer Director.
Great Small Works; Concordia University

Caridad Svich, Playwright, Songwriter, Translator, Editor

Bill Talen, Director
The Church of Life After Shopping

Kathleen Tolan, Playwright, Actor

Basil Twist, Puppeteer
Obie Award Winner

Charlie Varon, Playwright, Performer

Naomi Wallace, Playwright, Screenwriter

Anne Washburn, Playwright
Guggenheim Fellow

Donya K. Washington, Director

Stephen Webber, Actor

Brenda Wehle, Actor

Mac Wellman, Playwright, Author, Poet, Scholar
Donald I. Fine Professor of Play writing at Brooklyn College

Anabelle Winograd, Writer, Critic, Educator

Eunice Wong, Actor

Kristina Wong, Solo Performer and Writer.
Recipient of awards from Creative Capital, MAPFUND, two Creation Funds from the National Performance Network, three grants from the Center for Cultural Innovation, three Durfee ARC Grants, and four Artist-in-Residence Awards from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Had also received residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Hermitage in Englewood, FL.

Susan Yankowitz, Award-Winning Playwright and Librettist

David Zellnick, Playwright, Screenwriter, Lyricist

Source: U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel

Breaking: Israel invades Gaza on 1st day of talks

2010-09-03T05:22:00.000+01:00

PressTV September 2, 2010

Israel carries out an incursion into the Gaza Strip on the first day of the renewed reconciliation talks between Tel Aviv and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

"Few hours ago, Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun…, where Israeli laborers were seen fixing the security fence in the so-called buffer zone," said Press TV's correspondent in the enclave, Ashraf Shannon, reporting on the Thursday incident.

"The buffer zone is an area of 300 meters along the Gaza Strip, declared by Israel, to prevent people from reaching there, especially farmers. But basically they are forcing a 1,000-meter no-go zone in that area. All the people were killed there, including civilians, women and children as well as farmers," he added.

The intrusion came as Israeli and PA officials are in Washington to resume the direct negotiations that broke off at the turn of 2009, when Israel launched a full-scale war on Gaza, killing more than 1,400 Palestinians.

Many Palestinian groups have already abandoned hope in the US-brokered revival of talks, citing the White House's partiality towards Tel Aviv and saying that the acting PA chief, Mahmoud Abbas, does not represent all the Palestinians.

The US authorities refuse to accept the Gaza-based Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, as a negotiating partner.

The movement, which was chosen to rule the strip during democratic elections in 2006, headed off the Gaza War and has been defending the strip's residents against the Israeli military's regular forays.

Nearly1.5 million Gazans have also suffered more than three years under an all-out siege, which was imposed on them by Tel Aviv a year after Hamas acceded to power.

"Last night, when they spoke in Washington, they failed to mention anything about the Gaza Strip. And today Hamas and the Islamic Jihad denounced the negotiations in Washington. Hamas said that any agreement signed by…Abbas is not binding to the Palestinian people, while the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine said that these negotiations are just a prelude to a possible new war against a country or countries in the Middle East," our correspondent said.

PA was reportedly railroaded into joining the talks after being threatened by Washington to lose American ties.

The organization had earlier insisted that it would resume the process only after the similarly American-mediated indirect talks bore fruit. Known as "proximity" talks, the negotiations failed due to Israel's regular defiance of the Palestinian condition of halting the construction of illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian lands.

In keeping with the defiance, Jewish settlers announced plans to launch new constructions, Reuters reported.

Tel Aviv has as well so far ignored the other Palestinian demands to fully withdraw from the borders of 1967, when it occupied the Palestinian territory of the West Bank. The PA has also called for the resumption of negotiations from the point they were left off following the Israeli attacks.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has, however, said that there would be no room for any conditions for the talks -- a point also favored by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Iranians, who have likewise condemned the talks, as well as Muslims across the world, are expected to express solidarity with the Palestinians during mass rallies on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan, declared as the Quds Day by the late founder of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, Imam Khomeini.

"In Palestine in general and in Gaza in particular, the people have all their gratitude towards the Iranian people and especially late Ayatollah Khomeini for…Quds Day and every year Gazans march to commemorate this occasion and also commemorate it with different conferences and meetings and sometimes special prayers in some mosques in the Gaza Strip," our correspondent said.

War and the irreparable damage to Iraqi Cultural Heritage

2010-09-01T11:15:00.000+01:00

Any way we look at it, wars bring only death and destruction. Their consequences are not easy to amend, and the damages they cause are well beyond repair.

Since the beginning of the occupation, the Iraqi casualties have been 1,366,350, and almost 5,000 US troops lost their lives. All human lives and their respective families ruined for the imperialistic goals of controling the country's natural resources, divide it and sell it to big corporations.

One of the many heinous consequences of wars is the destruction of the society and its cultural values. This is what is dangerously happening in Iraq.

Named Mesopotamia (Land between two Rivers) in ancient times, Iraq has always boasted a thriving cultural heritage, that now is seeing its end due to this deadly occupation. Museums displaying invaluable pieces of Middle Eastern past have been destroyed, and all treasures stolen and certainly sold in the black market.

Killings of human beings and the destruction of a cultural heritage (any heritage) are not problems of the specific countries involved, but they affect humanity as a whole, and with Iraqi's, a huge piece of human history has been lost.

The video I'm posting below is a 3-minute part of a lecture held by Columbia University Professor Zaineb al Bahrani on the very topic of the destruction of Iraqi cultural heritage. The full lecture can be viewed here.

Fidel Castro: Osama bin Laden is a US agent

2010-08-28T23:01:00.001+01:00

By PAUL HAVEN, Associated Press Writer Paul Haven, Associated Press Writer – Fri Aug 27

HAVANA – Fidel Castro says al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is a bought-and-paid-for CIA agent who always popped up when former President George W. Bush needed to scare the world, arguing that documents recently posted on the Internet prove it.

"Any time Bush would stir up fear and make a big speech, bin Laden would appear threatening people with a story about what he was going to do," Castro told state media during a meeting with a Lithuanian-born writer known for advancing conspiracy theories about world domination. "Bush never lacked for bin Laden's support. He was a subordinate."

Castro said documents posted on WikiLeaks.org — a website that recently released thousands of pages of classified documents from the Afghan war — "effectively proved he was a CIA agent." He did not elaborate.
The comments, published in the Communist Party daily Granma on Friday, were the latest in a series of provocative statements by the 84-year-old revolutionary, who has emerged from seclusion to warn that the planet is on the brink of nuclear war.

Castro even predicted the global conflict would mean cancellation of the final rounds of the World Cup last month in South Africa. He later apologized for jumping the gun. Last week, he began highlighting the work of Daniel Estulin, who wrote a trilogy of books highlighting the Bilderberg Club, whose prominent members meet once a year behind closed doors.

The secretive nature of the meetings and prominence of some members — including former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, senior U.S. and European officials, and major international business and media executives — have led some to speculate that it operates as a kind of global government, controlling not only international politics and economics, but even culture.

During the meeting, Estulin told Castro that the real voice of bin Laden was last heard in late 2001, not long after the Sept. 11 attacks. He said the person heard making warnings about terror attacks after that was a "bad actor."

Castro stepped down due to ill health in 2006 — first temporarily, then permanently — and handed power over to his younger brother Raul. He has remained head of the Cuban Communist party but stayed out of view for four years after falling sick before returning to the spotlight in July.

Castro did take exception with one of Estulin's major theses: that the human race must move to another habitable planet or face extinction. Castro said it would be better to fix things on Earth then abandon the planet altogether.

"Humanity ought to take care of itself if it wants to live thousands more years," Castro told the writer.

Original article first published here.

Video: PsyWar: The real battlefield is the mind

2010-08-27T02:43:00.000+01:00

Thought-provoking video on how the dynamics of propaganda work in our mind. In order to control our thoughts, depending on particular historical moments, governments will unleash a different kind of information aimed at serving the specific needs of the elite, hidden behind the over-used formula "national interest".

Psywar Trailer from S DN on Vimeo.

This is a 4-minute trailer, but you can watch the entire movie online for free here.

It's time US realized the value of peace

2010-08-21T14:17:00.000+01:00

The United States seems to be flexing its military muscles in Northeast Asia and the South China Sea for some time now, especially after the sinking of the Republic of Korea's (ROK) corvette, Cheonan, on March 26.

Ignoring Beijing's repeated opposition, the US and the ROK held a military exercise in the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea, precariously close to China's maritime boundary, last month.

On Aug 8, on its way back from the joint drill, American nuclear-powered super-carrier USS George Washington hosted a delegation of Vietnamese military officers about 320 km off the Vietnamese port of Danang in the South China Sea. A couple of days later, American destroyer USS John S. McCain docked in Vietnam for a four-day "non-combat" exchange program.

What is particularly noteworthy is the fast developing military ties between the US and Vietnam, which fought a bloody war for two decades (by far the bloodiest Cold War military conflict). Interestingly, the US warships' visit to Vietnam has been described as a "commemoration" of the 15th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic ties between the former enemies.

And then came the news that the US and Vietnam were in "advanced talks" over a nuclear deal. An article, Concerned about China's rise, Southeast Asia nations build up militaries, in the Aug 9 edition of the Washington Post says: "The nations of Southeast Asia are edging closer strategically to the US as a hedge against China's rise and its claims to all of the South China Sea."

So, the US intervention in the South China Sea disputes isn't incidental. It's the outcome of the Barack Obama administration's "return to Asia" strategy. Some American analysts argue that China expanded its influence in Southeast Asia as the US was focused on the "war on terror" after the 9/11 attacks. Their logic is simple: any potential challenger to Washington in Eurasia should be the target of US global startegy.

Western publications such as the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek have published articles saying the US needs to work out "a new China strategy" taking the South China Sea as a starting point. And US Senator John McCain has said that "hooking in Vietnam" as a new strategic pivot to counterbalance China's influence is in the interests of US security.

Though Vietnam is expected to strike some kind of balance among major world powers, it is unlikely to side with the US openly and turn China into an enemy. If the world were to judge the situation only on the basis of the exaggerated and provocative reports in the Western media, which say China's neighbors and the US are jointly confronting Beijing, it could be misled easily.

In fact, a recent declaration by the Philippines Foreign Ministry dealt a heavy blow to such rhetoric. The Philippines Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo told reporters on Aug 9 that negotiations should be strictly between the ASEAN and China, without the involvement of the US or any other party. The Malaysian media, too, have said that America's involvement in the South China Sea dispute could only lead to trouble.

China has undisputed sovereignty over the islands and reefs and their surrounding waters in the South China Sea. But it insists on solving the disputes with its neighbors through talks based on international laws and opposes any attempt to internationalize the territorial disputes.

In the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, signed by China and ASEAN member countries in 2002, all the sides pledged to exercise restraint, and not to turn the disputes into international issues. A rising China understands and respects other countries' pursuit of a multi-directional and diversified diplomacy. But it has made it clear it will not tolerate any plot to contain its economic and social development.

Old-fashioned military alliance games continue even in the 21st century, but the West's international realism theory, based on balance of power, cannot adapt to the reality of today's changing world, let alone accept the protests against US military presence and influence in countries such as Japan, the ROK and the Philippines, which are American allies.

Globalization has changed the pattern of relations betweeb countries and global interdependence today is far beyond people's imagination. By getting involved in the South China Sea disputes and fanning trouble between China and its neighbors, Washington aims to contain Beijing and re-establish its global hegemony.

But since China's rise is an irresistible historical process, Beijing should stick to its bottom line, that is, not allow anybody to harm its core national interests, which is in line with the China-US Joint Statement issued during Obama's visit to China in November. This would be the best way to ease the anti-China pressure being built up by the US.

China has not wavered from the road of peaceful development and the building of good relationships and partnerships with its neighboring countries, including Southeast Asian nations. America's intervention in the South China Sea disputes is far from a peaceful move.

Besides, it can never strengthen regional security; it can only give rise to new conflicts. And this is not a good sign for China, the US or the Asian-Pacific region.

Hence, China and the US should see constructively from the angle of peaceful coexistence, rather than glare at each other furiously at every turn.

Article appeared on China Daily, August 18th edition, written by Fu Mengzi, assistant president of China Institute of Contemporary International Relations.

G20, G8, the common practice of police infiltration in so-called "Black Bloc"

2010-07-03T16:19:00.001+01:00

Carlo Giuliani, activist killed by the Italian police during Genoa's G8 in 2001. Photo from orianomada.

The rather clumsy effort of Canadian police officers to disguise as the infamous Black Bloc in order to put Toronto upside down has been widely exposed, revealing the fear the élite always has when people gather peacefully to protest against the system.

Since the G8 held in Genoa in 2001, before every political meeting, media start warning about the Black Bloc threat.

But who are these gloomy black-clad figures who destroy anything within they reach? And, especially during Genoa's G8, why didn't the police do anything to stop them?

Particularly regarding Genoa's G8, there are many controversial facts.

Witnesses say the police didn't do anything to stop the Black Bloc from destroying cars, shop displays and setting up fire. On the other hand, the same police officers will break in the school Diaz during the night, transformed in those days into a camp, and will beat the activists who were sleeping. The outcome will be a massacre. The official explanation for this difference of treatment will be: "a mistake".

There are photos and videos in which the police appears standing still in front of the pack of Black Bloc, or even pulling back. Official explanation? "We didn't want to hurt them", "We couldn't attack them until they hadn't done anything wrong".

Witnesses have reported to have seen Black Bloc talking very friendly to police officers. Official explanation? "Openness from both sides".

Witnesses have reported that hundreds of Black Bloc were training just 400mt away from a police station. What's wrong with that? Anybody can exercise. Also, why did police run away when the Black Bloc were attacking a police station? There's no official explanation on that, they're still thinking about it.

Why didn't the police stop them at the border when they were coming to Italy armed like if they were going to war? They even prepared themselves in front of the police. Why weren't they stopped?

Italian lawyer Paolo Franceschetti explains why all these questions are met with inconsistent answers: "Black Bloc are simply members of the secret services, and their job was to create disorder during the G8. They weren't stopped because the police received the order not to stop them. They weren't charged because the police received the order not to charge them. They got ready in front of the police officers because the police was protecting them. They trained close to a military station because they were soldiers. They talked friendly to the police because they were colleagues."

The technique used by self-styled "Black Bloc" is perfectly in line with the secret services job of distracting the public from the core of the problem to a side, made-up issue. In fact, during the G8, while no-global activists were demonstrating peacefully against a globalisation that is destroying our planet, that is bringing developing countries to their knees, that is making every nation, one after the other, collapse, that is inventing reasons for new wars every day, that is undermining local cultures to the benefit of big corporations, the public attention was focused on those black figures setting up fires all over Genoa.

The Black Bloc, before their dashing performance in front of cameras, video cameras and media from all over the world, issued their "official statement": they wanted to destroy all private property. Only this statement, according to the Italian law, is already a crime, and the police was obliged to prosecute them. But it didn't.

According to Paolo Franceschetti, "given the means of our secret services and police, it should be easy to identify such people and dismantle their supposed organisation in less than no time." Franceschetti has no doubt: "This is the secret services modus operandi."

Of course, the majority of the protesters were pacifists, belonging to any sort of organisation, from catholic to buddhist, to ordinary citizens fed up of this system that is the source of all problems, not the solution. However, thanks to Black Bloc activities, now in the public mind no-global is synonymous with thug.

All they've done has been creating a fake problem to hide the real one.

Secret services: mission accomplished.

Angela Lano on Flotilla: "Psychological violence, they seized everything" - English Subtitles

2010-06-30T20:19:00.000+01:00

Thanks to abuyazan82

This is an interview that Angela Lano, Italian journalist and activist, survivor of the Freedom Flotilla attacked by the Israeli Navy, gave to Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

Students' protest in Iran, eleven MPs resign

2010-06-28T16:32:00.000+01:00

Photo courtesy of Jahan News

Mr Ahmadinejad doesn't seem to find peace in this mandate. The latest protest has come from Tehran's students, and caused the resignation of eleven MPs, nonetheless.

What was the reason of this new disorder involving Azad University pupils? And who were protesting against exactly?

The Iranian Parliament has recently passed a bill to donate one of Azad University's properties worth $200 billion for public purposes. So far so good. However, what caused students' uprising and eleven MPs to resign was the almost imperceptible point that allowed the head of the university, Mr Jasbi, to make it a lifetime stint.

For as small as this article was, it didn't remain overlooked to the attentive eyes of Azad's students who started a protest aimed at making the Parliament cancel the whole bill.

Azad is a private university funded almost entirely by students' fees, and it's under Rafsanjani's rule. One of the university's directors, Mr Jasbi indeed, is one of the closest Rafsanjani's allies, and students are having the impression that the Rafsanjani's clan somehow feels like they own the university itself.

Mr Jasbi, apparently famous for financial corruption, has allegedly funded the Mousavi's campaign of the last presidential elections thanks to the students' fees. The fact that Mousavi's wife has achieved her PhD in political sciences without admission exam, doesn't make things better for the "green" party in the public mind.

In a sudden move, Ahmadinejad-led government has changed the head of the university chain, sparking protests within the Parliament, due to the Parliament's ties with Mr Rafsanjani (the head of the Parliament's Committee for Education is Mr Jasbi's brother in law, and eleven MPs resigned to protest against his abuse of power in favour of Mr Jasbi), and because, by changing the director, all university benefits, ranging from real estate properties to students' fees, would be cut off.

Students have strongly protested against the bill so that the Parliament was forced to cancel it. Although it's out of doubt that the Iranian Parliament needs to address some serious corruption issues, it's good to see the students managed to make their voice heard.

Tom Engelhardt: "In Washington getting out of Afghanistan is not an option"

2010-06-27T19:41:00.000+01:00

Soon after Obama's victory at the presidential elections, I stumbled on an American woman on the Eurostar from London to Paris and couldn't avoid listening to a conversation she was having about US newly elected President.

"People love him," she announced with pride. "We have even cocktails named after him!"

"European citizens love him too," echoed another passenger, from London. "We put a great deal of trust on him."

"Well, maybe you do," I thought, preferring not to express my pessimism out loud.

Then, just in the middle of the discussion between the two Obama-lovers, a little revelation came along causing a moment of silence.

"Of course," the Londoner said, "we didn't appreciate much his announcement that he's going to send 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan, we actually hoped he would withdraw instead."

The American woman froze: all over the world (or at least Europe, as far as I know) people, media, academics were discussing about this shocking plan and this lady, Obama-supporter, who actively participated in the Democrats' campaign, had no clue. "He did what?" she babbled.

Soon after that, the world witnessed astonished the joke of Obama awarded of the Nobel Peace Prize, and the Afghanistan strategy fell in the scrap heap of recent history.

I read often good analyses coming from US researchers, so I wonder what kind of media US citizens stick to to be so unaware of what their government does around the world.

In the aftermath of the "Runaway General" McChrystal's revelations on the US strategy (or non-strategy) in Afghanistan, I've decided to publish this interview with Tom Engelhardt as he is always a careful observer and researcher of world geopolitical affairs.

More GRITtv

Oil spill: an explosive mix of incompetence and malgovernance

2010-06-10T16:02:00.000+01:00

Obama has talked about an unprecedented environmental disaster, and sadly, he might be right. Initially, official sources have reported a leak of about a thousand oil barrels of spillover a day, then they've increased to five thousands.

The good news is that they have found out what has caused the disaster, the bad news is that the leak is now of 10,000 barrels a day just because they have managed to reduce it substantially.

There is a great deal of confusion over the whole incident, and this is mainly due to the high level of censorship applied by BP on all the work before and after the explosion.

The real cause of the leak has been the explosion of a gas bubble in the ocean bottom. Apparently, this bubble was bigger than it seemed like, but here the first doubts arise: Why did BP not predict the size of the bubble?

During the operations of oil production, in fact, the platform has a system for monitoring the bottom of the sea, namely its depth, where exactly the well is and the possible presence of such gas bubbles, scattered all over the ocean bottom.

However, BP, a company that has been operating for decades in oil production in the four continents, despite the huge size of the gas bubble, pressed on drilling and made it explode.

There can be different explanations on why they kept going with the drilling operations, and the most plausible is that the platform was not heavy and equipped enough to work at 1600mt of depth. Unlike in the Northern European Sea, in fact, in the American Continent security matters are much less strict, and this is the tragic result of malgovernance combined with incompetence from greedy companies.

What made the gas bubble explode was the presence, inside the marine riser, of two boring rods (the masts used for drilling), instead of one.

The marine riser is a protection pipe connected to the BOP, or blowout preventer, a large valve placed on the sea bottom at the top of a well, that can be closed if the drilling crew loses control of formation fluids and well pressure.

Although the BOP can be used for oil production, it is mainly employed to check the drilling and the pressure, because keeping a rig only to produce oil through the BOP is too expensive. So, once the BOP has done its security job, there is a system of valves that transfers crude oil to appropriate oil tankers.

In this context, the first thing to do was naturally to reduce the pressure of the well. Why did they not do it? The explosion inevitably damaged the marine riser, and the valve system of the BOP connected to it, making it impossible for the crew to control the well and its fluids.

Also, and more importantly, the drilling rig didn't have the adequate equipment to be working at such depths, so they couldn't prevent the size of the bubble, and consequently reduce the pressure of the well after the explosion.

However, after realising that it wasn't possible to reduce the leak through the BOP, they should have immediately cut the damaged marine riser and started drilling in the same groundwater in order to reduce the pressure of the well out of control.

Now, after almost two months, they have cut the marine riser (managing to reduce the spill to 10,000 barrels a day), and are starting drilling nearby. The wells will be ready in August, which is two months away. If they had started drilling immediately, now they would have been ready, and the oil spill substantially less important.

Apparently, BP wasn't even aware of the presence of two boring rods inside the marine riser, as a subcontracted firm might have been in charge of the operations. Extreme incompetence that has caused the death of 11 rig workers and unprecedented environmental, economic, humanitarian disaster, or sabotage?

Now Obama has ordered massive security checks, and five platforms have been shut. What one might wonder is why these security checks come along only after such disasters.

All photos are courtesy of the owner and may not be used without permission.

Silence of the International Community between blood and corruption

2010-06-08T13:38:00.000+01:00

Last week the world has witnessed live the umpteenth massacre carried out by the special forces of the Israeli Navy against the activists of the Turkish Mavi Marmara ship. This week the world has witnessed presidents and leaders alternate in their more or less shallow condemnations, a sort of must-follow ritual when such crimes are committed.

US president Barack Obama has failed to show the public opinion his country's independence from the Israeli lobby, confirming once again that the very sovereignty of the United States is more on the paper than in reality. Along with Mr Obama, Western leaders have proved equally spineless in front of Israel's arrogance.

The barbaric attack sheds light on the increasing weakness of the International Community. It's impossible not to notice the defeaning silence of part of the Arab world, along with Western governments, incapable (and unwilling) of imposing their authority in front of an entity that keeps considering itself above any national and international law, and above the most basic principles of civilisation.

Since its inception, Zionism has performed the most heinous crimes, and each and every one of these acts slipped in the scrap heap of history thanks to the complicity of the International Community that has always granted the tiny State with too much decision power in the field of the international relations.

This latest attack against an aid ship aimed at the wounded Gaza Strip reveals the worrying prospect that Zionists are forcing worldwide public mind and diplomatic efforts into a wider resignation while they carry on expanding their control throughout the Middle East.

The policies imposed by the Zionist occupiers on the Palestinian people, based on hatred, racism, cruelty and apartheid, are becoming always more worryingly accepted by the Western diplomatic routine, despite the fierce indignation coming from the public opinion.

Western leaders being incapable of claiming their sovereignty and independence from Zionist influence, this attack against humanitarian aid sets a dramatic precedent in human rights history and a dangerous rise of the tension.

The deliberate onslaught of the Israeli Navy against a NATO member is a serious provocation to worldwide diplomacy, and the unwillingness of the United Nations to carry out an independent international investigation proves the corruption and double-standard within the Western system.

Is Israel trying to make clear that no country can fight against its arrogance? Is Israel anticipating how they have been planning to manage their interests in the Middle East and worldwide?

When the image Israel was giving of itself couldn't get any worse, it did: the commando who alone killed six activists was awarded with a medal of honor, introducing the concept of violence being not only appreciated but encouraged. Israel was founded on horror and genocide, a Nakba that has never ended, and this latest attack by the too independent military forces shows that Israeli government has no respect for human rights nor for any citizen bearing any nationality.

There is no possible justification to such inhumane brutality used against an aid ship carrying activists from more than 40 countries and humanitarian supplies. A brutality that shocked the public mind over the four Continents, yet that inevitably reveals Israel's weakness. In its inhumanity, in fact, the Zionist regime has proved powerless when facing human compassion, unveiling their vicious nature and exposing their intentions of an escalation of violence that anybody challenging their inconsistent reality will have to confront.

Israel's latest onslaught scarily looks like a war sign to Turkey first and foremost, but also a less direct challenge to Iran, Lebanon, Syria and even the US, almost as if to say: "We slaughter your nationals, suck it up and keep fundind our State terrorism".

The unconditional support of the United States to Israel's policies within the occupation and devastation of Palestine, and the endemic submissiveness in front of their ally's aggressive behaviour and criminal activities all over the world, are having the unavoidable consequences of isolating them from future alternative alliances.

Italian survivors from attack on Flotilla: "Beaten on the ship and at the airport"

2010-06-03T21:03:00.001+01:00

The six Italian activists, part of the Flotilla headed to Gaza and attacked by an Israeli commando while in international waters, are back in Italy.

Angela Lano, Giuseppe Fallisi, Ismail Abdel Rahim Qaraqe Awin, Marcello Faraggi, Manuel Zani e Manolo Luppichini are telling their horror stories to police and journalists: "We were beaten by the Israeli troops first on the ship when they assaulted us and arrested, and also at the airport of Tel Aviv by the Israeli police."

Said Giuseppe Fallisi: "We were brought to a prison in the middle of the desert, just built: it seemed they built it on purpose for our arrival."

Angela Lano, editor of the information agency InfoPal, told the press: "We were kidnapped, both on the ship and in jail, where we didn't have any right: we couldn't make phone calls, not even to contact our lawyers."

Ismail Abdel Rahim Qaraqe Awin, of Palestinian origins, is angry: "We've done this for that million and a half Palestinians who are still in jail. We want to do it again. We want the Italian government and all countries to understand. Stop being silent: end the siege on Gaza."

"The assualt of the Israeli soldiers boarding on the ship seemed like a scene from Apocalypse Now," recalled Manuel Zani. "When we understood they were going to attack us we split up into two groups. I went to the pilot-house with the journalists to try to record on tape what was happening, but they confiscated everything. I will never go to Israel again in my life," he concluded, "but I want to go back to Palestine as soon as I can."

The Italian government, together with the United States and the Netherlands, has voted against the launch of an international investigation on the carnage carried out by Israeli soldiers. As the Italian government has already had the opportunity to show its weakness and unwillingness in defending the rights of Italians abroad, there's little hope the leaders of the Belpaese will stick their neck out in this occasion.

Video: Israeli Navy attack on Freedom Flotilla

2010-06-02T13:10:00.000+01:00

These are the images of the attack against the peace activists of the Freedom Flotilla heading to Gaza with humanitarian aid.

The aggression was carried out in international waters and in complete disrespect of international laws. The soldiers of the Israeli commando started shooting at the activists before boarding on the ship and what had started as a humanitarian action ended in a lake of blood.

US president Barack Obama has failed to prove his impartiality and has failed in his condemnation of the massacre, showing once again that the United States are controlled by the Zionist lobby to an extent that is making the rest of the world increasingly worried and uncomfortable.

Flotilla organizer Adam Shapiro: “We expected to be stopped but not shot at”

2010-06-02T08:30:00.001+01:00

Everybody's worst fear has come true: the Israeli Navy has attacked early Monday morning one of the eight ships headed to Gaza from the main European ports and loaded with humanitarian aid. The whole world is shocked.

After being stopped for a day in Cyprus port, the Freedom Flotilla made its way to Gaza Sunday morning, in the late evening satellite communication networks were cut off and journalists, European MPs and flotilla passengers were unable to establish contacts with families, friends and media newsrooms.

According to AlJazeera, the death toll of last night's Israeli attack is 19, plus an indefinite number of injured still in critical conditions.

Over the phone, Adam Shapiro, one of the organizers of Freedom Flotilla, is visibly upset: “We expected Israel would have tried to stop us, we did talk about this, but we thought the chances they would use such violence were very little,” he said. “We were sure Israel was going to stop us, this is why we wanted to show the world what the siege on Gaza is all about.”

The Israeli government has said they were attacked by the peace activists. “Israel always says they are attacked first,” retorted Adam Shapiro. “However, this time they can't really, as it's all on tape: the Israeli soldiers dropped onto the deck of the ship and nobody among the activists had anything in their hands.”

“We lost communication with the members of the Flotilla during the night and we couldn't manage to get in touch. Now we know that they were brought to Haifa and Ashdod port where the Israeli Army had prisons ready for the activists,” said Shapiro. “We are not going to let this go, we are following this up carefully in order to make sure all activists are released and taken care of” he concluded.

According to the released activists, Israeli soldiers have started shooting before boarding on the ship.

Israel has been heavily condemned over the command raid against the aid convoy.

On the day after the attack, demonstrations all over the world are taking place in solidarity with the activists of the Flotilla: London protesters gathered in Downing Street, US citizens are taking it to the street in New York, Washington DC, San Francisco; Italians are meeting in Piazza Venezia in Rome. Demonstrations are taking place in Gaza, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Istanbul, where citizens have gathered in front of the Israeli consulate to protest against the violent attack on Gaza-bound Turkish aid ship.

UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon has said to be “shocked” by the attack of the Israeli Navy against the aid convoy; Navy Pillay, UN high commissioner for human rights is “shocked by reports that humanitarian aid was met with violence reportedly causing death and injury as the boat convoy approached the Gaza coast. The blockade,” she continues “keeps undermining human rights on a daily basis.”

The Arab League has called for an urgent meeting in Cairo on June 1st to gather all its foreign ministers.

Catherine Ashton, high representative of EU foreign policy has called for a full inquiry about the circumstances of the attack against the peaceful flotilla, remarking that “the continued policy of closure of Gaza is unacceptable and the EU demands an immediate opening of the crossing for the flow of humanitarian aid.”

Spain's secretary of State for EU affairs has defined the event “unacceptable and very serious” and announced they have summoned Israeli ambassador in Spain in order to launch immediately a thorough investigation.

Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini has declared that “Italy deplores the loss of civilian life in Israel's raid on a flotilla of aid ships bound for Gaza. Israel must provide the international community with an explanation.”

Greece, Spain, Sweden, Denmark and Ireland have summoned the respective Israeli ambassadors and the EU has asked the Israeli government to launch an investigation on what happened. Turkey has announced the attack might have “irreparable consequences” on their relations and called for a meeting of the UN Security Council.

Also Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has strongly condemned the attack, defining it: “an inhuman Zionist regime action against Gazans”.

The consulates of those identified dead have been contacted, and activists are currently held by the Zionist forces. Turkey foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu has underlined that “no country is superior than international laws” and that “the Turkish citizens injured must be able to go back to Turkey without any condition.”

Despite a mild response of US president Obama, the rest of the world is officially calling for a tough response to what has happened in international waters while aid ships were approaching Gaza shores. Global civil society is bent on not forgetting this umpteenth show of arrogance and disrespect towards international laws coming from the Israeli government, and is waiting to see Israel held accountable for its crimes.

In the meantime, the ship MV Rachel Corrie, carrying 1,200 tons of aid, 15 activists, including Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire and former Assistant UN Secretary-General Denis Halliday, set off from Malta and is on its way to Gaza. Israel has already threatened to stop them. Needless to say, the eyes of the whole world are on them.

Attack against Freedom Flotilla is a terrorist act and a crime against humanity

2010-05-31T18:58:00.000+01:00

Neurosis can make people say stupid things. Given the nonsense coming out from Zionist propaganda both in Palestine and in Europe, the Israeli establishment must be freaking out.

It is amazing how a government in possession of nuclear weapons is afraid of eight ships of peace activists loaded with humanitarian aids and hope heading to Gaza, transformed by the Zionists into an open-air concentration camp.

Arrogance being the main ingredient of the Israeli occupation authorities, also thanks to an inefficient "international community" and corrupt Western governments, this flotilla leaving from the main European ports and in its way to Gaza was certainly seen as a challenge to their self-styled authority.

Over the past few days, Twitter has been rocking due to the increased use of the hashtags of #flotilla, #freedomflotilla and #Gaza, and the Zionist government has proved unable to face reality. Once again, they have indulged in aggressive and misleading propaganda, attacking the activists with any kind of absurdities.

With the help of subservient mainstream European outlets, the Israeli government has managed to release their version of the facts. In a burst of sci-fi journalism, Berlusconi-owned Il Giornale reported "Turkish ships towards Gaza is to help Iran".

Israel had threatened the activists they will arrest and keep them in prison should they dock in Gaza shores. The activists' reply was the only possible: Israel has no authority over us, over international waters, over Gaza.

As a matter of fact, Israel has no authority whatsoever over Palestine, and it's not above international laws.

Despite the fact that Israel is an illegal colony, it claimed the right to decide whether the Freedom Flotilla, carrying tons of food, medical equipment and building material, could enter Gaza or not. Again with the complete silence of the United Nations which, in theory (apparently, only in theory), were born to defend human rights against injustice.

The shallow propaganda that some Twitter accounts such as @2012israel are trying in vain to pass consists of nonsense such as "Do you know that Israel keeps sending tons of humanitarian aids to Gaza?" or "There is no humanitarian emergency in Gaza". Such lies bear no other result than showing how angry, embarrassed and powerless the Israeli authorities are compared to unarmed citizens' actions.

Looking at the matter carefully, one might just wonder what is Israel complaining about. In fact, all these activists are doing is trying to bring a little bit of comfort to the Palestinians living in Gaza and facing every day bombings, shootings, attacks and humiliations by the Zionist army.

Instead of being grateful, Israel authorities attacked the ships and stopped the humanitarian aid. Where exactly is the problem? Why are Israeli authorities opening so many Twitter accounts and pretending to friendly "inform" the other users that they are actually "helping" Gaza?

The problem is that they are losing their face. The biggest problem is that they have been losing their face for so long that always less people are buying their propaganda, and the direct result is that always less people (at least in Europe) are buying the newspapers at all, being them all pro-Zionist.

The image of the "good Jews" who want to build "the only democracy in the Middle East" is just not working anymore.

People travel, people access to independent press, people have the ability to think with their own brain, and the we-want-to-bring-democracy-to-Middle-East strategy simply is outdated. And Israel authorities know full well they are losing the PR war.

So here it comes the time to change strategy: don't challenge us or we will crush you.

Turkish government, the only European country that in these days is showing to have guts, has warned Israel against stopping the Freedom Flotilla, but nevertheless the Israeli Navy has attacked the flotilla and slaughtered 19 activists.

This massacre is a terrorist act carried out in international waters, disrespecting international laws, against Turkish and other EU countries' citizens. By stopping the humanitarian aid to Gaza concentration camp, the Israeli government has further committed crimes against humanity, keeping the blockade of the flow of basic goods and people from and to Gaza.

This, however, shouldn't be a problem for the Zionist entity, founded on a genocide and used to such atrocities.

Israel is alone

2010-05-27T17:36:00.000+01:00

Credits of the photo for The Press Project to Aris Hatzistefanou

In this very moment eight ships are making their way from Europe's main ports to the Gaza Strip, under siege by the Zionist regime since December 2007. European activists are bringing medicaments and all sorts of humanitarian aids to the population that is increasingly suffering from this illegal blockade.

Over the past days, on the social network Twitter, the organisers of the so-called Gaza Flotilla are covering every aspect of their journey, providing the readers with photos, interviews with the activists and their plans once reached the destination.

On the same Twitter, recently, users have been witnessing an unprecedented presence of the zionist propaganda trying to convince the worldwide public mind that they are constantly "providing medical care, food and humanitarian aid to the Gaza population". One might wonder why they don't just lift the illegal siege.

Zionist lobbies control much of the US and European press, but their recent invasion of Twitter, and social networks in general, reveals an uncomfortable sentiment of growing isolation.

Israel, in fact, is alone. Always more governments worldwide are publicly condemning its crimes against humanity, always less countries are putting up with their arrogance and political representatives are not afraid anymore of expelling Israel's diplomats from their embassies. More importantly, the public doesn't buy anymore the zionist propaganda as offered by mainstream media.

Truth be said, always more frequently, also mainstream media have been exposing Israel's criminal activities, and by now everybody knows they are illegally occupying Palestine. Despite what their tinpot intellectuals say, in fact, the Zionist leaders have been carrying out the systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine since 1948, year of the Nakba, term used by the Palestinians to remember the beginning of their tragedy.

In 1948, the Zionists brought about their Plan D:

"... more than half of Palestine's native population, close to 800,000 people, had been uprooted, 531 villages had been destroyed, and eleven urban neighbourhoods emptied of their inhabitants." [1]

The methods used for such criminal acts were diverse:

"large-scale intimidation; laying siege to and bombarding villages and population centres; setting fire to homes, properties and goods; expulsion; demolition; and, finally planting mines among the rubble to prevent any of the expelled inhabitants from returning." [2]

For too long time, the so-called international community, the US and European countries have tried to cover Israel's crimes, and the Zionist leaders could rely on the collusion of most governments. Things are changing, and Israel's unlawful establishment knows it. Hence, their aggressive strategy on the main social networks aimed, once again, at fooling the worldwide public mind.

Since the traditional propaganda is not working anymore, and people trust mainstream media always less, zionist lobbies prove increasingly unnerved.

The truth is that the signs of the progressive diplomatic and economic isolation that Israel is facing are increasing by the day.

Following to the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel, carried out by a huge Mossad team, the arrogance of Israel's government is less and less tolerated. A while ago, the British government had expelled the Israeli diplomat due to the use by the Mossad of fake British passports to enter the UAE; three days ago the Australian government has ordered the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat again over the use of fake passports for the same murder of the senior Hamas exponent.

After Israel's threat to stop the Freedom Flotilla on its way to Gaza, two days ago, Turkey has urged Israel to lift its blockade and allow a Turkish-led convoy of ships carrying humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip.

Moreover, in its annual report, Amnesty International has complained that the US and European Union have obstructed international justice to shield Israel from accountability for war crimes committed during last year's Gaza war. The reputation of the United States is plummeting at light speed due to its wars in the Middle East and its crimes all over the world, so keeping defending a terrorist State might not be a very sound political move.

On the economic side, the BDS movement is gaining an always wider support, and it's very recent news that two major Italian supermarket chains, COOP and Nordiconad, have officially suspended the sales of products coming from the illegal Israeli settlements.

On May 24th, fifteen members of the European Parliament's foreign affairs, development and humanitarian aid committees arrived in Israel and were meant to go to Gaza from Egypt, causing the anger of Israel's establishment that, in retaliation, cancelled all their pre-arranged meetings. Maybe they didn't want EU MPs to experience first-hand how Palestinians are forced to live in blockaded Gaza, situation made inevitably worse by Israel air raids carried out the following morning.

The arrogance of Zionist leaders is not tolerated anymore, and Israel is revealing itself as it is, a geopolitical fraud that doesn't waste any occasion to show its disrespect towards the most basic human rights, and whose leaders have abused in the most disgusting way of the suffering of the Jewish community during the Holocaust for propaganda purposes to claim their being above the law whatever crimes they carry out.

These victimhood tactics are obsolete and inefficient, as much as their brainwashing machine.

[1] Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld Publication Limited, 2006, p. xiii

[2] Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld Publication Limited, 2006, p. xii

From Jordan, to help understand

2010-05-11T19:15:00.000+01:00

A while ago I had written a post about the fact that I don't believe there is such a thing as the so-called "clash of civilisations". Used by western propaganda in order to support warmonger arguments ("Good against evil", "You are with us or against us"), this is in fact nothing more than an unfortunate invention of some US-bred International Relations academics, first among all Samuel Huntington, colleague and good friend of Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the main foreign policy advisers of the White House at all times.

I was inspired for that post by an article I had read about a criminal act happened in Jordan, where a young woman had been attacked by a taxi driver. The article somehow compared the unfortunate incident to Jordanian society as a whole, albeit without providing an extensive analysis of the social situation in that specific country.

I've recently stumbled on Jordanian blogger and social activist Ali Dahmash, who regularly updates his website, Under My Olive Tree, with Middle Eastern views on world affairs' most topical issues. Particularly interesting is his Get Involved page, which provides the readers with practical advices on how to volunteer in Jordan.

Ali shed some light on what the main problems in his country may be, and helped me understand some of the often overlooked nuances that are actually crucial in order to get under the skin of a place.

"Jordan is a moderate state," says Ali, "and its people have moderate views. But there are a few important factors to be taken into consideration:

"First of all the economic situation: in Jordan, and most Arab countries, it plays a major role in the well being of any family. When the father is responsible for the income of his family and most probaby has many kids (with an average of five or more, due to ignorance and lack of education), is under major. This may be cause of domestic violence and abuse. I have visited several local comunities and met teenagers who were abused by their fathers. It's very sad but the local community office was helping the victims. I'm sure this is a common problem of any poor area in any developing country such as Brasil or India.

"Secondly, I think often mothers spoil their male kids making them feel superior and faultless, and never punishing them. This plays a major role on the way those kids turn into men. A son can go out, stay late, smoke, travel, while daughters face more restrictions.

"In general, Jordanians are open minded but not as liberal as people in Lebanon, where women play a major role in the society and work as lawyers, or in PR, media and technology. Some intiatives are being carried out aimed at women's empowerment in Jordan and to support new startups for women. Queen Rania is doing a lot in this field."

Remembering Rachel Corrie

2010-05-06T09:25:00.001+01:00

Rachel Corrie, US peace activist, killed by a Israeli bulldozer when she was 23. The White House refused to launch an investigation on her murder. Any doubts about the powers of the zionist lobby in the US?

Scoop: Bin Laden "lives comfortably in Iran"

2010-05-05T17:42:00.000+01:00

Un-be-lievable. Fox News didn't even wait a week from Ahmadinejad's enlightened speech at the UN conference to issue such a pearl.

In one of the most unfortunate articles in journalism history, the writer chose to start with melodrama:

"Usama bin Laden gets up each morning in his dark, damp cave in northern Pakistan, gripped by fear, listening carefully for the telltale sound of a drone that is searching for him."

Touching. But suddenly, the scoop: Bin Laden has been living comfortably in Iran for years, apparently in North Tehran (I think Ahmadinejad lives in South Tehran, at least they didn't make them neighbours).

The article is well-packed with tons of small details on Bin Laden's life and 'Parrot', the filmmaker. Now, one might wonder: Since the CIA has plenty of secret agents in Iran, how come did they not find "world's public enemy number one" before Fox News?

Apparently, Fox News journalists have come into possession of a crucial documentary on falconry, in which the director just by chance happens to mention that Bin Laden lives in Tehran.

I'm truly amazed.

Do they really think US/worldwide audience is wholly made of stupid people?

This documentary magically appears two days after Ahmadinejad has said before the UN Assembly (speech reported all over the world) that the United States are the main responsible for the nuclear weapons proliferation. Nothing new, just this is one of the many no-no topics in western regimes, it can't be said by western media, but at the same time, western media could not avoid reporting it, since it has been reported all over the world.

So, typical disinformation method: say A to divert the attention from B.

The US are the main threat for world's peace? - Bin Laden lives in Iran.

Ok, let me get this straight: next time Chavez says that US imperialism is cause of disasters, will Fox News announce that Bin Laden has moved to Venezuela?

Unnerved Israel lobby prompts Italian Parliament to shut anti-Israel websites

2010-05-05T10:32:00.000+01:00

The interference of the Israel lobby in Europe is increasingly evident and unbearable.

Main characters of the latest unfortunate episode that sees zionists meddle in Italian affairs are Fiamma Nirenstein, Stefano Gatti, Renato Farina, Andrè Oboler, Paolo Corsini, Francesco Tempestini, Enrico Pianetta and other "experts" of the main political coalitions PdL (right-wing Berlusconi-led parties) and PD (centre-left), who have presented a proposal before the parliamentary Commission of Constitutional Affairs in order to apply censorship on websites that criticise Israel.

The official reason, as usual, is to "monitor" the spreading of their alleged anti-semitism, but the unofficial and real aim is to gag what remains of the independent press, denying what should be an inalienable right of speech and of information about Israel's crimes in Palestine and all over the world.

Needless to say, Israel's atrocities committed against Palestinians (surely of semitic origins) are not to be considered "anti-semitism", because otherwise the aligned media would lack a term that has turned out to be very effective in the brainwashing process of "politically correct" western public mind.

This is a gloomy attempt by the modern Holy Inquisition to prevent the public opinion from getting informed about Israel's crime, in an age when these are being widely reported all over the world. So-called western "democracies" claim to be staunch defenders of civil liberties and human rights, and systematically restrict them whenever Israel's immoral and unlawful activities are exposed.

Obvious threat to our freedom of speech, this proposal reveals an unnerved Israel lobby trying to cover unconvenient truths that will inevitably undermine the support of worldwide public opinion.

Ahmadinejad's speech at the UN meets walkout: truth hurts.

2010-05-04T19:42:00.000+01:00

The White House has defined Ahmadinejad's speech at the UN "predictable". The same can be said about their delegate's reaction: it has become routine for US representatives to leave the room when the President of an arbitrarily named "rogue" state starts speaking.

As soon as the US delegate stood up (previously taught by his masters), the representatives of "poodle" states did the same, wagging their tails proudly. Very likely, the Italian representative didn't even understand what was going on and just stood up complying to the orders.

But what did exactly provoke such an outwards traffic at the UN conference?

I have analysed Ahmadinejad's infamous speech and failed to understand western representatives' reaction.

First and foremost, the Iranian leader has stated:

"Some States define in their strategies the nuclear bomb as an element of stability and security, and this is one of their big mistakes."

I hardly find anything wrong in that, and I think other countries agree with Ahmadinejad, as long as they don't have invading/attacking/colonising ambitions.

Then, Ahmadinejad pressed on:

"The nuclear bomb is a fire against humanity rather than a weapon for defense.

The possession of nuclear bombs is not a source of pride; it is rather disgusting and shameful. And even more shamfeul is the threat to use or to use such weapons, which is not even comparable to any crime committed throughout the history.

Those who committed the first atomic bombardment are considered to be among the most hated in history."

Again, Mr Ahmadinejad is right, and again the United States frantically try to maintain their self-proclaimed world-leadership, while losing their legendary appeal, so meticulously built during the Cold War (soft-power anyone?). Because this is their biggest concern, losing popularity, and especially losing the support of the always less brainwashed public mind to their criminal activities.

The Iranian leader doesn't shy away from pointing his finger against the arrogance of "certain" States. Can we blame him?

"Enjoying especial privileges in the highest global security decision-making bodies and in the IAEA, certain nuclear weapon States widely exploit these platforms against the non-nuclear weapon States, contrary to the spirit of the NPT. This unjust practice, repeated over and over, has turned into a pattern.

So far, none of the non-nuclear weapon States has ever been able to exercise their inalienable and legal rights for peaceful use of nuclear energy without facing pressures and threats."

This comes from the assumption of self-righteousness that the United States want to apply to their own policies, self-proclaming themselves the best democracy in the world, the only one with the right to judge, impose social and moral patterns, occupy foreign countries, teach what's good and what's not, determine when another State is "rogue" or "friend".

In line with his political line, Ahmadinejad doesn't forget to mention Israel:

"While the Zionist regime which has stockpiled hundreds of nuclear warheads, has waged many wars in the region and continues to threaten the people and nations of the region with terror and invasion, enjoys the unconditional support of the United States government and its allies and receives, as well, the necessary assistance to develop its nuclear weapon program. The same States impose various kinds of pressures on the members of the IAEA on the false pretext of probable diversions in their peaceful nuclear activities without providing even a single credible proof to substantiate their allegation."

Israel has been carrying out the systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine since 1948, while western governments watched and nodded in fake disapproval, insisting in supporting such criminal acts and in denying the evidence, despite the millions of Palestinian refugees and the massacres the Zionist regime keeps perpetrating undisturbed. Such crimes notwithstanding, and despite being a constant threat to the other Middle Eastern countries and to world's peace, Israel is still allowed to possess nuclear weapons.

Rightfully, Ahmadinejad added [my highlighting]:

"Expecting the major arms dealers to work for the establishment of security is an illogical expectation.

The government of the United States which is the main suspect in the production, stockpiling and use and threat of the use of nuclear weapons, insists to assume the leadership role in reviewing the NPT. The U.S. administration, in its recently released Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), has announced that it will neither produce new nuclear weapons nor will it attack non-nuclear weapon States by nuclear weapons.

The United States has never respected any of its commitments. One may ask how much could nations possibly trust the US to implement its commitments? What are the guarantees for living up to such commitments? And what are the tools for its independent verification? It should be born in mind that in the past decades the United States has had most of its wars and conflicts with those who were once its friends.

Furthermore, under the same NPR, some member States of the IAEA which are also committed members of the NPT have been threatened to be the target of a preemptive nuclear strike. The United States government has always tried to divert the public opinion's attention from its noncompliance and unlawful actions by bringing into focus some misleading issues. They have recently raised the issue of nuclear terrorism as part of their efforts to maintain and upgrade their nuclear arsenals on one hand, and divert world public opinion from the issue of disarmament and direct them toward phony matters, on the other, while arming the terrorists with nuclear weapons are only conceivable by those States which posses such weapons and have used them and also have a long record of supporting terrorists."

Further down:

"In the NPR, it is noted that the U.S. will not develop new nuclear weapons, but they will continue to improve them qualitatively. The qualitative improvement of nuclear weapons is tantamount to increase in lethality and destructive power of such weapons, which itself signifies the vertical proliferation. In addition, these policies are not verifiable, because there is no supervision by any independent authoritative body on nuclear programs of the United States and its allies."

Again, someone might wonder: Who gives the US the right to act in disrespect of international law and to decide of the destiny of sovereign and independent States? Just because European countries have accepted to be subservient to the US regime, it doesn't mean that all world's nations have to comply too.

Through wars, covert operations and open-air "coloured revolutions", the United States have spread their tentacles all over the world, interfering in domestic affairs of sovereign countries to impose "friendly" policies. The only thought that this is an acceptable behaviour is outrageous.

He calls for the

"Dismantling of nuclear weapons stationed in the military bases of the United States and its allies in other countries, including Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Netherlands."

Currently, in Italy there are more than a hundred US military bases and amazingly, the population instead of feeling safe, feels militarily occupied. Polluting experiments are being carried out and the lands around such bases are poisoned, causing deaths, cancers and birth defects to the inhabitants. People don't want military bases, nor the presence of foreign troops but, once again, what people want is our governments' last problem.

Ahmadinejad calls for a nuclear disarmament and is ready "to partake in the materialization of just plans on non-proliferation, as well as peaceful use of clean nuclear energy". Western governments, instead of pretending they are looking for peace, leave the room.

Although US and EU have repeatedly performed in warmonger talks, western propaganda outlets keep insisting that the aggressive nation is Iran. Although US and EU have two recent war disasters under their collective belts, they keep insisting that the aggressive nation is Iran. This is the power of brainwashing machine, mostly Zionist-led.

Towards the end of his speech, the Iranian President said what everybody hopes and what our governments shy away from admitting:

"The power of logic would prevail over the logic of power. There will be no room in the future for bullying and the arrogant."

In a nutshell, instead of leaving the room, US and EU representatives should have better stayed and taken notes.

Chemtrails: what are they?

2010-05-03T11:39:00.000+01:00

Controversial topic, chemtrails are the focus of many debates. While mainstream media keep ignoring the subject (not surprisingly, by the time everybody will know everything about chemtrails the CNN will issue a scoop), In Italy there have been nine parliamentary questions on the topic.

In Europe, the use of chemtrails has been noticed since 1999, although operations had started in 1997. Since then people, scientists, military officers and politicians have been questioning and talking about the effects they have on the weather and, allegedly, on the population.

Chemtrails are part of military operations, they are released by small planes and consist of toxin-laden aerosols. Needless to say, governments and official sources deny or give vague answers when asked about it, and mainstream papers, being mere governments' stenographers, back their owners' priorities and will write about chemtrails only when allowed.

Among the elements sprayed are aluminum, barium and copper and their effects can lower brain activity, or can change weather conditions provoking or stopping the rain.

Germany has been the first country to publicly acknowledge the presence of chemtrails in the air, there are ongoing debates in many countries and although mainstream press and debunkers are doing their best to divert people's attention, it's possible to see chemtrails almost every day.

Video: Polish plane crash, do we know everything?

2010-04-28T17:11:00.000+01:00

I'm posting a video from investigative journalist Jane Burgemeister, famous for her fight against the swine flu mass vaccination.

The video raises important questions on how the events have occurred and on how following investigations have unfolded (have they?).

The very moment I heard tv reports on the plane crash, I felt something was wrong or untold. The official version implied that it was a very dangerous airport and that the pilot had been repeatedly warned to land in another airport nearby. After trying three times, he kept insisting on landing there.

So I thought: Why on earth would a pilot who's certainly well-trained (President's plane, after all!) go on a certain suicide? And then, the fourth time, when he actually landed, he went against trees? Was the pilot blind?

But, on the other hand, I couldn't find any reason for an attack. There had been clashes within Europe with the Polish government, but come on, a plane crash? Slawomir Wisniewski, the first journalist to get to the scene, has reported that he has not seen anything resembling a human body or personal belongings whatsoever.

Maybe this video will answer some of my questions.

East and West, clash of civilisations or plain prejudice?

2010-04-20T10:13:00.006+01:00

When I started reading this article, my first sentiments were of outrage and anger: how can a man beat up a woman? Then I kept on reading and felt something was unavoidably drifting towards the wrong direction. The piece was written by an aspiring journalist, Katherine, who has spent her junior year of college in Amman, Jordan, and it's the vivid account of when she was attacked by a taxi driver.

The violence of a human being against another human being is always despicable, no matter where, when and by whom is carried out.

As Katherine continues with her account, it inevitably ends up into cultural matters: "This wasn’t America, and we were nowhere near equal. What’s more: The majority of the population seemed to accept this, even expect it."

What did I miss? From being attacked by a taxi driver to the allegations of living in a society where women are considered next to nothing?

The first year I lived in London, women were terrified when booking a black cab because there was a taxi driver who had raped or attacked I can't remember who many women before getting caught. It was disgraceful, but the criminal was a single man, not all men in the UK, and this was the way it was reported in the UK media: a criminal act happening in London.

When I lived in Rome, my friend and I were walking down a very popular road downtown when, suddenly, out of nowhere, a guy showed up, punched my friend right on her face and walked away as if nothing had happened. It was early in the morning, we were heading to college, the neighbourhood was slowly waking up and the road was empty, so it didn't occur to us to scream. We were both shocked, my friend making sure she didn't have anything broken, myself trying to see if she needed to be brought to the hospital. It never crossed our mind that this was Italy's national attitude.

When a random act of violence happens in Europe or the US, it is reported as such: a random criminal incident. If the same episode occurs in any Middle Eastern country, the first Western reaction is to condemn the entire society. This is not fair and doesn't benefit anybody, both in the West and in the East.

True is that as citizens in Western countries have a distorted idea of Eastern societies, the same applies to many citizens of Eastern countries regarding their general opinion on Western women.

Although our media are swift in defending women's rights and condemning any distorted ideas foreign societies can hold on Western women, very little they do in order to prevent this misconception from happening. I had written a post on my travel blog about the abuse of women's body in the Italian media: a quick glimpse is enough to understand that Italian tv is pure pornography, and pornography is a violation of women's dignity. Despite much criticism, this poor quality and constantly offensive content is what Italian national tv (private *and* public) broadcast, ignoring the fact that most women are uncomfortable with that.

The image of women as sexual objects, and the primary role that media, from cinema to tv to glossy magazines, give to seduction, justifying and encouraging its use for social empowerment, have undoubtedly led citizens of Eastern societies to think that this is what women are in the West. And it's wrong.

Western women are nowhere near the distorted image that our media give, we have nothing in common with Britney Spears or Paris Hilton, we don't envy them and we don't emulate them. They are fake, we are real. Western women are not well represented by Western media, as simple as that.

Similarly, by saying:

A woman, her face covered and her head down, came up to my translator as I waited at the police station for a medical exam. She said something in Arabic. My translator turned to me and said flatly, “She wants to know if your husband is beating you too,

Katherine seems implying that women's abuse is a common routine in Jordan or Arab countries, and that Arab women accept and expect to be considered inferior. This is not true: the Arab women I met are nowhere near downtrodden and constantly humiliated, and the Arab men I know are nowhere near violent. Generalisation is never useful.

Probably due to the young age of the writer, the article is incredibly naive, lacking of any social and geopolitical context, which is always necessary in order to understand what cultural patterns we are talking about. Unfortunately, many Westerners, consciously or unconsciously, adopt the "our-culture-is-the-best" attitude.

This is why statements such as:

Coming home—first to Wisconsin and then back to school in Los Angeles—I was suddenly surrounded by things that had been taboo—short skirts, tank tops, male friends, individuality, and an expectation that I was an independent woman capable of having a job, a voice, and my own life plan. I felt like I was handed every social freedom for which those women in Jordan fought every day, but for the first time in my life I could fully appreciate them all

reek of an overstated national identity and don't do justice to a society as complex as the Jordanian one, and much of the Middle East countries that can rightly boast thousands of years of culture and scientific discoveries we are all still drawing from.

The biggest mistake we, Westerners, make when judging other cultures is that we do it using our cultural standards, making no effort in trying to understand the others, their complexities and imperceptible nuances. This pattern, it must be said, is widely encouraged by media propaganda and our governments.

Just because in Europe or the US we wear mini-skirts and don't wear the hijab (which has somehow become the symbol of the abuse), it doesn't mean that we don't face discrimination, at work and in the society.

There's no culture better than another, there are human beings. Like it or not, we all share the same planet, and like it or not, we all have to acquire awareness of it. Katherine happened to be "granted awareness" in Jordan, I was granted awareness by living in Rome, Dublin and London. Especially the latter, where nobody can afford to be naive for too long, to avoid being sucked by the jungle.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country!

2010-04-15T07:36:00.001+01:00

Hardly something bearing the name of William Blum can be disappointing. I've just received the video he has produced about US foreign policy and found it extremely enlightening to have an idea of how the propaganda machine in the States (and in Europe!) starts the brainwashing process in the school system, so that the pieces of information acquired at a young age are uncounsciously part of our knowledge and play a strong role in our future understanding of the events in the political scene.

The information to learn and memorise doesn't need to be long, actually it's better quick bits, slogans easy to remember: "We are exceptional, we export democracy. Repeat after me."

I'm a frequent reader of Mr Blum articles, I never miss his monthly reports and his books are an invaluable source of information for anybody who wants to have an idea of covert (and open and illegal) operations the US administrations have been carrying out since the end of WWII.

Italian doctors arrested in Afghanistan: plots and lies

2010-04-12T20:20:00.002+01:00

Three Italian doctors working with the NGO Emergency, founded by Gino Strada, were arrested in Afghanistan for allegedly plotting to kill the governor of Helmand, Gulab Mangal.

True is that NGO Emergency has never been a fan of the Italian support of US criminal activities in Afghanistan, but was it really the case to stop them for that?

It's no mystery that Italy is only an ailing, pathetic Zio-US-colony and that each and every government has been previously stamped and approved by the CIA, but forgodsake, do Italian politicians really need to remind us of this every time they open their mouth? Can they really never say anything even a little evocative of some veneer of independence?

A while ago, Italian premier Berlusconi, who is not exactly famous for his intellectual brightness, issued the very unfortunate remark of our "brotherhood" with Israel, brotherhood mainly unknown (and quite not appreciated) by Italian people, and urged Israel to become a member of the EU.

Yesterday, the Italian minister of Foreign Affairs, Franco Frattini, issued another pearl. Two, actually. Asked about the events the three medical workers found themselves involved in, instead of showing the support he's supposed to give to Italian citizens abroad, he immediately replied; "The men arrested are not part of the Italian involvement in Afghanistan," and "the Italian government confirms its hard line against any kind of direct or indirect support to terrorist activities in Afghanistan and anywhere else."

Excuse me, Mr Frattini: What?

Are you saying that you are not going to protect the three Italian doctors that in Afghanistan are trying to save the desperate cases of bodies mangled by US humanitarianism?

Are you implying, by any chance, that the Emergency's doctors are somehow involved in any kind of terrorist activity?

Are you saying to all Italian citizens abroad that they have no government to rely on should anything happen to them?

Do you know that you are a minister of a sovereign and independent State and that you are entitled (and required) to kick any foreign interference out of the national Parliament?

Do you know that it's not necessary to be always subservient at 90° and that even the most thick-headed has now understood you are a zio-servant?

Frattini has showed, once again, he doesn't represent Italy, because most of the Italian population is unconditionally on Emergency's side.

He has proved unfit to be part of the Italian government because unwilling to defend Italians abroad.

His reaction, in this occasion, was highly disappointing, thus, he should seriously consider to resign from his position.

Guantanamo detainees innocent, and Bush knew it

2010-04-11T14:12:00.000+01:00

I read, appalled, the article published on The Times of London, in which Colonel Wilkerson accuses former US president George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to have known that hundreds of people jailed in Guantanamo torture camp were innocent.

According to Rumsfeld they were "politically impossible to release" in order to boost the push towards the invasion of Iraq. So they preferred to keep them locked for years.

The article, of course, gives for granted the idea that the attacks on 9/11 were carried out by a handful of Islamic terrorists. This, however, is not granted at all, since there are thousands between scientists, academics, engineers, architects, pilots, military officers, journalists and citizens that are demanding a new, independent investigation on what has been one of the darkest pages in US recent history and that has been used as an excuse to colonise and destroy Afghanistan and Iraq. Demand that, so far, has been largely ignored by both Bush and Obama.

I find astonishing how far human cruelty can go, and what I find most worrying is that the worst examples of such brutality come from the people who lead our goverments and are supposed to keep human rights at the top of their agenda.

Ali Abunimah's lecture about the current situation in Palestine

2010-04-10T11:25:00.000+01:00

Ali Abunimah, Executive Director of Electronic Intifada, is on a US tour to speak about the current situation in Palestine.

From the lecture below, it's clear how illegal zionist colons have seized the land of indigenous Palestinians and are now granting themselves with the power to decide about their life. All this, while US and EU countries watch scared and abashed.

The lecture is an hour and a half long, and worth watching every single minute.

Why media outlets face their biggest crisis and why people don't trust them

2010-04-08T21:21:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I received an email from an editor, whose name and publication I won't reveal, saying:

Thanks for that article - we don't publicly comment on political articles, but certainly appreciate what you share and thank you for getting the message out. There is more bullshit political propaganda in the USA than even China. Americans are fed with lies, hate and fear every day by their government and media. Keep spreading the word.

Someone has to pave the way. I spend more time in USA than I like and can't stand the endless media/govt propaganda. Whenever we travel overseas, the media does a much better and more balanced job of sharing news from around the world - whereas the USA news is primarily US centered and the rest of the world barely exists. Keep up the good work.

While this is very flattering and somehow encouraging, it nevertheless caused me some anxiety.

Why is it flattering? Easy: it's always nice to see that someone actually appreciates my efforts which, in the end, are not as hopeless as they seem most of the time.

Why is it encouraging? Because it's reassuring to see that who works in the media industry is fully aware of what the situation is and that always more journalists/editors are finding this unbearable.

So, why did this email cause me anxiety? Because Western countries (and relative media outlets) claim to be free and independent, and they are not. Western economies are run by a free market system (very "market", little "free"), and media outlets are nothing but entreprises. As all entreprises do, also media outlets work towards making profits and benefiting their owners. This, in a free-market economy, is quite normal. What is not normal, however, is that private companies act and offer an image of themselves as if they were operating for the sake of the population, for a greater public good, and not for money. This behaviour is misleading and very unfair towards all readers. It reeks of mind manipulation, instead of honest information, with the aim of preserving a system and its flaws, instead of trying to correct them.

While in the political sections of newspapers and magazines this censoring process is most perceived, the other categories are not completely bias-free. The travel section, for example, can have the means to enlighten readers about foreign countries: they cover far-flung destinations, but do they really carry out proper research? No, most of the times their articles seem stemming from total ignorance of the geopolitical and sociological situation of the countries they write about, with the only aim to advertise the tour operators paying for the articles or support in a subtle way their government's takes on foreign administrations.

This usually corresponds to the relations Western governments hold with foreign administrations. So if there is a so-called "rogue state", the travel articles would abide by the unsaid rules of conformism. An example would sound like "China is a beautiful country, and you can constantly perceive the population's discontent against a suffocating dictatorship." This is a plain lie, but I wouldn't be surprised to read it tomorrow on a national paper.

What's sad is that even small publications, even if non-corporate, seek for some kind of illustrious approval from mainstream media (that is always corporate), and instead of making the best out of their independence, are filled with hackneyed expressions and judgements that are often incorrect but adopted because generally accepted.

Admittedly, the statement "Someone has to pave the way" did freak me out a bit, and my first reaction was "And that should be me??" But then I quickly flicked through the notes in my mind and found a lengthy list of journalists that are doing a pretty good job, such as Jeremy Scahill and William Blum, or the team of Democracy Now.

Today I've read an article on the Huffington Post about the reasons why magazines are losing ground. The writer is right when she says "Magazines are risk averse": true, magazines don't risk, they publish run-of-the-mill stories, rarely thought-provoking, always able to recall something "familiar" to readers to make it easier for them to identify themselves with an unreal and made-up world.

A reader left a comment to the HuffPo article saying "the Economist doesn't suck." Really? Is The Economist actually as authoritative as it claims to be? I've actually read many misleading articles on the Economist about Italy, France and Brasil, just to mention the three countries I'm more familiar with. Why was that? Tellingly, every time the articles libelled one of these countries, it corresponded with a particular moment of tension between them and the UK. Coincidence? Likely not.

One of the most dangerous practices is the self-censorship, more common than it seems, as freelance journalists often do it even unconsciously, for the fear of not being published and so losing work. I'm absolutely not an exception to this, the need of making our ends meet often sacrifices the need for truth, with the inevitable outcome that we betray our readers and society.

The truth, although hard to admit, is that journalists are far less brave than what they like to boast.

WikiLeaks, a classified video from Iraq shows another slaughter and another US embarrassment

2010-04-06T14:05:00.000+01:00

The gruesome video WikiLeaks has published, breaking in the secret halls of the Pentagon, has made the world discuss once again about the legitimacy that the United States grant themselves with in order to invade, conquer and destroy any country they like, with the resulting slaughtering of their people. The most fashionable excuse, nowadays, is to “bring democracy”, and the question comes almost alone: does anyone need the US to bring them democracy? No.

The US way to bring democracy is with bombs, guns, rifles, depleted uranium, white phosphorus. Result: nobody needs nor wants US democracy. Does the Pentagon think theirs is the best government and democracy in the world? Good, keep it, we are not jealous.

Recently, I went to the United Arab Emirates, and technically, or better, according to our political patterns, their system is not a democracy: they don't have elections. As far as I could see, they are doing much better than we are in our European democracies, where every now and then the current crop of politicians give us headache with their electoral slogans and run as candidates in the usual farce that we call “elections”. In every election, the candidates sing the same refrain: "no more taxes, more jobs", and after every elections, citizens echo the same song: "more taxes, no jobs". But we live in a democracy, we can vote, we can choose between a couple of parties that, although they bear different names, all belong to the same party, the party of power.

As the newspaper The National has written, “Wikileaks has done more scoops in its short life than the Washington Post in the past 30 years.” This is very true, but we also need to add that the Washington Post is not allowed to issue such scoops, because their job is to keep the system go on, boosting its propaganda and hiding its crimes.

With the excuse of fighting terror, the US administration has brought unspeakable suffering to Afghanistan and Iraq, caused the death of millions of people, caused high percentages of birth and heart defects due to the weapons used by the troops and destroyed their country. Even if our journalists fake happy emotions when reporting that Iraqi people "have voted for democracy". Give me a break.

Writes William Blum in his April Anti- Empire Report "One could fill many large volumes with the details of the environmental and human horrors the United States has brought to Fallujah and other parts of Iraq during seven years of using white phosphorous shells, depleted uranium, napalm, cluster bombs, neutron bombs, laser weapons, weapons using directed energy, weapons using high-powered microwave technology, and other marvelous inventions in the Pentagon's science-fiction arsenal ... the list of abominations and grotesque ways of dying is long, the wanton cruelty of American policy shocking."

All this, in the name of money, hidden by fake democratic principles, with the real aim to conquer, divide and sell the lands to the big corporations. And all this, with doormat European countries watching and complying to the orders.

After the leak out of this latest video showing the horrors that the US administrations are bringing about in the Middle East, the US defence department is reportedly "embarrassed". It's worth noticing, however, that this embarrassment is due to the leak of information, and not to the killing of twelve people. Twelve, among the millions of people slaughtered during these senseless wars, innocent civilians "expendable for the greater good".

How people all over the world can still accept such abuse of power and believe in such gross propaganda, is beyond me.

Daniel Pipes, if this is a man

2010-02-04T11:25:00.002Z

I've stumbled across the bloodcurdling article journalist Daniel Pipes recently wrote for the National Review Online website, "How to Save Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran," and I've spontaneously wondered how can human nature be so inhuman.

This sort of academic/journalist must be very proud of his latest breakthrough: in fact, since Obama, "a President whose election he didn't even support," is plummeting in the polls, he (Pipes), in a burst of patriotic zeal, has revealed the secret that would allow him to get back on track. For the sake of the country, of course, as this seems to have become everybody's favourite slogan.

Basically, the brightest solution this "man" has managed to come up with is to bomb Iran, nonetheless. Impressive. What a man, what a macho.

His astute suggestion, however, brings some questions to mind.

1. Has Obama asked him for his poorly researched opinion? Pipes is acclaimed by other stenographers of regime as to be a Middle East expert: I've read some of his work and I have no doubt saying that this is not true. His articles, in fact, are very superficial, mainly his personal opinions without providing readers with accurate and authoritative sources. This process, aimed at giving the public mind quick "slogans" and easy concepts to keep in mind, rather than a bigger picture of the geopolitical context to help the public understand what we are talking about, cannot be considered information but propaganda. Trustworthy information cannot ignore the historic, economic, social and political background of a news, while propaganda gains strength by ignoring these crucial facts, causing a partial information that prevents readers/spectators/listeners from truly understanding. The fact that pamphlets such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post define him as an "expert" is the evidence that the regime wants to make him an authoritative voice.

2. Is the United States a nation of warmongers? According to the polls Pipes mentioned in his essay, 57% of the American people supports a military intervention in Iran. Have US citizens not learnt from the Iraqi lesson? Have they already forgot what such a disaster this has been? Do they know that a war against Iran will be far worse than the one against Iraq? Do they remember that war criminals such as George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are still not in prison, where they should be kept for the rest of their lives? Do US citizens remember that they have elected President Obama because he was NOT Bush? Do they remember that Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize and not the Nobel War Prize? If these polls are wrong, the US citizens have the right to claim that they do not agree with a military intervention in Iran and to report to justice the lies published in their national papers, because such publications have the goal to incite hatred against US people in the world, in order to justify the invasion of other countries. This has always been a widespread routine: Zionists promote anti-Semitism to have the popular support to carry on with the genocide of the Palestinian people. The same way, US governments promote anti-US sentiments in order to provoke attacks against unarmed US citizens in the world and gain the necessary support for a military intervention.

US citizens need to understand that if their country is unpopular is not because the world hates "them", but because it hates their dangerous foreign policy.

3. Why is Pipes considered an expert? Like Pipes in the US, many other so-called "experts" feel entitle to "suggest" moves to Presidents and Premiers, feel authoritative enough to give us their opinions without fact-checking, feel strong enough to write articles crammed with lies and with no supporting evidence. How is this possible in so-called "democratic" societies? It happens because Western regimes need such servants in order to gain the support of the public opinion, kept in ignorance of the crimes their governments carry out in the name of the biggest corporations. Usually, there is a majour advertising strategy behind the names chosen to be the "experts", and this involves inviting them to tv shows, that usually are very poor but considered "mainstream" because they appear in the public tv and publishing their articles on widespread daily/weekly/monthly publications that don't need to carry out in-depth research because their sole job is to keep people in complete ignorance.
There are many no-no topics that mainstream media cannot cover. However, if such topics come to light, media are somehow "forced" not to ignore them: their routine in this case is to debunk them or start another "media case" (often about sexual scandals involving politicians, sport stars, actors or singers), with the aim to distract the population.
Today's journalism, far from being honest information, is actually the guardian of the power, and its main tasks are: mind manipulation, managing popular support, protecting the crimes of their governments and diverting public opinions according to political needs. This leads to my third and last question.

4. How can a civil society accept that men such as Daniel Pipes have a public voice? In the article I've mentioned at the beginning of this post, Pipes invites President Obama to bomb Iran in order to gain popular support. With this statement, Pipes, in a civil society that truly deserves this definition, would be considered a monster. In fact, bombs, no matter how "intelligent," kill, and Pipes is encouraging President Obama to commit murder. After having planned and carried out the deliberate genocide of the Iraqi population, in order to invade, destroy, divide and sell the country to big corporations, now the US administration is getting ready to destroy other Middle East nations, and since Iran doesn't want to blindly abide by US orders, it will be the first one to be attacked.

The United States have a very long history of terrorism: a) They put the whole South America on its knees, provoking the genocide in Guatemala, instigating coups d'état against democratically elected regimes to establish fascist dictators and imposing economic sanctions against unarmed civilians; b) Through big corporations they managed to destroy most of the African Continent. When their newspapers say that Africa is a poor country because of climate conditions, they lie: Africa is extremely rich in natural resources, and this is why it's constantly sacked and its population exterminated; c) From 1990 to 2003 the US administration planned and carried out the genocide of the Iraqi population: Jean Bricmont, in his book "Humanitarian Imperialism. Using Human Rights to Sell War" (which I strongly recommend), reports Marc Bossuyt's words:

«The sanctions regime against Iraq has as its clear purpose the deliberate infliction on the Iraqi people of conditions of life (lack of adequate food, medicines, etc.) calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. It does not matter that this deliberate physical destruction has as its ostensible objective the security of the region. Once clear evidence was available that thousands of civilians were dying and that hundreds of thousands would die in the future as the Security Council continued the sanctions, the deaths were no longer an unintended side effect - the Security Council was responsible for all known consequences of its actions. The sanctioning bodies cannot be absolved from having the "intent to destroy" the Iraqi people. The United States Ambassador to the United Nations [Madeleine Albright] in fact admitted this; when questioned whether the half-million deaths were "worth it," she replied: "We think the price is worth it." The States imposing the sanctions could raise questions under the genocide Convention.»

With all this in mind, it appears very clear that Pipes knows very well the consequences of bombing a country and that he does not care if children, women, old people, men will be slaughtered during the massacre he's advicing President Obama to carry out.

As children are usually genuinely creative and don't have the desire to kill other human beings, I think Pipes became what he is now after being heavily brainwashed and promised a bright and successful future. He traded his soul and his personhood for money and wealth, and in order to comply to his contract, he writes such disgraceful atrocities, that have no other goal than prepare the public mind to a future war.

A war against Iran will cause massive destruction in Mideast and immediately near European and African countries. Since Pipes has no human sentiments, I think he doesn't even feel scared, so I would suggest him to go to live in Gaza, constantly under the risk of being slaughtered by his friends' bombs. From there he could keep advising President Obama to further destabilise the region. So far, the United States and Israel are the most dangerous nations in the world, I do not feel safe knowing that they can freely dispose of nuclear weapons, because they use them indiscriminately and put in danger us all. Their political leaders do not care about world's peace but only about their personal interests, unlike what the press releases published in their papers say.

Pipes is encouraging a behaviour against humanity: we, as human beings who share the same planet, have the right to feel in danger by his attempts to manipulate the public mind and support terrorist ideas, and must demand that such journalists are forced to provide correct information. If we don't, we cannot claim we live in a "civil" society.

Are WE our government? Illusions and disillusions of democratic regimes

2009-11-13T20:19:00.001Z

I have read an article written by Acharya S., What about 9/11?, and although I agree with most of this author's articles and research, I can't do the same with this statement of hers.

Leaving aside the debate of whether the 9/11 was an inside job or a terroristic attack carried out by islamic integralists, what struck me in this article is the phrase "We are the U.S. government". Supporting the official theory of the attack with the explanation "To say that "the American government" committed this crime represents a broadstroke generalization that essentially condemns all Americans - and makes us as unsafe as Muslims feel when people do say, "It's the Muslims," etc." is naive and weak.

First of all, I think the debate around 9/11 needs to be supported by strong evidence and not just with opinions, as it involves massive scientific research and in-depth geopolitical analysis. However, here I don't want to talk about this, but instead would like to investigate the "We are the US Government" statement.

What is the "government"? This word is usually employed to define a political body formed according the results of popular elections. When the author says "We are the government" maybe she means "We are the State."

Is the population "the State"? It would certainly be right for the people to be considered as being "the State," to have the possibility of strongly influencing their government's decisions and to enjoy all civil liberties legal papers such as the Constitutions guarantee. This would be called "direct democracy": it's by all means something worth working for, but unfortunately it's certainly not the case of today's regimes, be them in Europe, America, Africa, or Asia.

There is a large confusion over terms such as "democracy," "freedom," "civil liberties," and this is mainly due to distorted media coverage, controlled education systems and repressive acts aimed at undermining our rights to be informed and safe.

Does implying that the US government is not behind the 9/11 attacks *because* US citizens ARE the government mean that ALL U.S. citizens were responsible for the Chilean coup in 1973 staged by the CIA and the White House? Does that mean that all US citizens were responsible for the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran in 1953? Does that mean that all US citizens are responsible for the mass murders in Afghanistan and Iraq ordered by the US government?

Many people work in agencies and institutions related to the US government and, as they are simple employees, they of course have, nor have had, nothing to do with the crimes carried out by the US administrations throughout the last decades since the end of World War II up to now.

Like many countries, the United States has a Constitution, meaning by this, "both the formal constitution, the written document along with its various amendments and legal apparatuses, and the material constitution, that is the continuous formation and re-formation of the composition of social forces." (From Empire, by Antonio Negri and Micheal Hardt). Formal Constitutions are usually very enlightened, but this doesn't mean that such primary codes are followed, nor respected by the countries' ruling powers.

The idea (or better, the hope) that citizens are the State is the system our ruling powers want to make us believe we live in. But there is nothing more false than that. Governments, parliaments, political parties and organizations are bodies aimed at giving the illusion that we, the people, have power over our lives. With the practice of "free" elections, we are led to think that we choose the candidates we actually prefer. However, what is the choice? Two, three or four options to choose from? And who decides what the options have to be?

What actually happens in our "free" elections is that we tick a name belonging to a pre-packed coalition, by no means stemmed from popular choice, but all reflecting the same corporate interests that today have the main power. Whether we choose one coalition or the other, the result doesn't change much: right-wing parties will carry out what are to be considered right-wing policies and left-wing groups will bring about what we have to think are left-wing ideals.

When we read news that apparently criticise the government representatives it can mean that some news has leaked out or that a change in the political scene is necessary, and that particular movement or person is not entitled to popular consent anymore. This is when the mind-control machine of corporate media starts working in a specific direction.

Just to come back to government actions, can we believe politicians always work in order to ensure our safety and well-being? Here are some telling examples that show how governmental insitutions can be disrespectful towards our civil liberties:

Justice Dept. Asked For News Site's Visitor Lists: in this article, journalist Declan McCullagh reports an attempt by the US Department of Justice to literally spy on citizens who read Indymedia website, with clear and shameless violation of those citizens' privacy in order to obtain their details such as the IP address, therefore their location.

A careful observer will immediately notice that this action by the US Department of Justice is in striking contrast with the First Amendment of the American Constitution that aims at defending the freedom of speech.

On the same line, the UK government, rather expert in Big Brother matters, seems to have rebranded national activists "domestic terrorists," since the police "are gathering the personal details of thousands of activists who attend political meetings and protests, and storing their data on a network of nationwide intelligence databases," the Guardian reveals.

The truth is that if in the past it was more difficult to monitor our government's actions, therefore to spot their crimes, now with the spreading of modern technologies available to an always increasing number of people, the news travel quickly, reach all corners of the globe and are able to provoke general indignation.

With the excuse of international terrorism and the need to "protect" our countries, western governments are enhancing security measures to absurd levels. In an enlightening article titled "Her Majesty's Big Brother: Britain's Protesters Rebranded 'Domestic Extremists'" Tom Burghardt notices:

"Why would British police target law-abiding citizens exercising their right to protest the depredations of the capitalist order?

Because they can! With a logic that only a policeman's mother could love, Setchell told The Guardian: 'Just because you have no criminal record does not mean that you are not of interest to the police. Everyone who has got a criminal record did not have one once.'"

Antifascist Calling rightly reminds that this situation is certainly not new:

"Since the 1970s, the federal grand jury system where the prosecutor reigns supreme, has been an instrument wielded by the secret state to target dissent and to ensnare left-wing government critics in open-ended 'investigations' whose sole purpose is to harass if not prosecute alleged 'troublemakers.'"

It's easy to understand here how misleading and populist can be to clear a priori the government of any accusation by saying that WE all are the government.

WE (the people) are certainly NOT the government, nor we live in a direct democracy, as we don't have any possibility to influence the government's decisions in crucial matters such as war, taxes, health system.

We are absolutely the most important element of a State and we must demand to participate in all public matters, as those laws rule our lives and the spaces we share with other human beings. By monitoring and never belittling the governments' crimes we can contribute in making our political leaders (really) work for us in the total respect of our rights.

Highly recommended further reading:

- Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Empire, Harvard University Press, 2001

- Blum William, Killing Hope. US Military & CIA Interventions since World War II, Zed Books, 2003

Corporate human rights: the joke of our times

2009-11-04T14:11:00.010Z

The 4th of November in Italy is the Remembrance Day, namely a day when we remember and cry for our men who died at war "for the sake of the country."

For the sake of what?

Ok, so here is the concept our governments want us to buy: "We send our men to oil-reach and strategic Middle East destinations because they also happen to be terrorists' hometown and we have to be proud of our compatriots because they are willing to die for the sake of their own country and to export democracy to those desolate lands."

Here is the same concept but made it real: "We send our men to oil-rich and strategic Middle East countries because they also happen to be so arrogant for wanting to keep their independence, while we (the West) are committed to conquer and impose our greedy ideals all over the planet."

It might sound a bit pessimistic, but come on, what exactly are the benefits we enjoy when our soldiers die in wars aimed at destroying other countries? None.

Islamic terrorism is a big lie, the clash of civilisations, so cherished by brainwshers Samuel Huntington and Zbigniew Brzezinski, doesn't exist, people do not want to live at war but at peace, wars are not inevitable and are only useful to make the rich richer. Period.

Personally, I find official Presidents' speeches quite offensive: do they really think we are all stupid? Or do they just hope that?

Everytime soldiers come back home inside a coffin the babble begins: high-flown speeches to say how grateful we are they died for us, state funerals, and other rhetorical rubbish. From the exact following day the soldiers' families are alone again to cry for their dead and to make their ends meet. The rest of the population doesn't even have a clue of what the dead soldiers' names are and are busy working to survive, because those wars are bringing more and more poverty and world's instability.

Of course, they never miss mentioning the "human rights" fairy tales: we are dying to defend other people from their dictators. Exactly how the US government did for Chile in 1973: they organised the military coup to protect Chilean people from democratically elected Allende and support criminal Fascist Pinochet. "Democracy" had won then and democracy keeps winning nowadays, when innocent people die under our democratic bombs, or are the victims of our democratic depleted uranium or see their houses destroyed for the sake of our democratic corporations.

I'm reading a very thought-provoking book, "Humanitarian Imperialism. Using Human Rights to Sell War." Its author, Jean Bricmont, quotes Harold Pinter's speech at the Nobel Prize Lecture in 2005, perfectly in line with the hypocrisy of our governments.

I will quote here parts of the same speech as it appears on the official Nobel Prize site, it desperately calls for an in-depth look and analysis and targeted action:

The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution. The Sandinistas weren't perfect. ... But they were intelligent, rational and civilised. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. ... Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated. The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. ...

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. 'Democracy' had prevailed. ...

The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. ...

The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

Stefano Cucchi, a case of violence in an Italian police station

2009-11-01T17:29:00.009Z

"He was well when I put him in the State's hands. They gave him back to me dead. I want the truth." These are the words of Stefano Cucchi's mother. Stefano was 31 and on October 16th was arrested because found with 28g of hashish. He never got back home.

His family was never allowed to see him, and the young man died alone in a prison of the Carabinieri (Italian military police) in Rome. "He fell off": this is the Carabinieri's official explanation. There are many jokes in Italy about the Carabinieri's stupidity, so maybe they think we are all as stupid.

This is Stefano before being arrested

This is one of the images the family has released to the press: Stefano's body after he was murdered in the police station.

Unfortunately, this is not the only case of violence involving the public service of the Italian police. All other cases were dismissed with pathetic excuses, no explanations and the loneliness of the victims' families.

The psycopaths working for the police in Italy are in charge of "protecting" us. From who exactly? Who are the criminals? Police officers are trained and brainwashed to be violent and, as brave as they are, when they have in their hands a young man, unarmed, alone and with no "important" lastname, they take the liberty to do whatever they want, nevermind if humane or not.

Stefano Cucchi's case, as well as Federico Aldrovandi, as well as the massacre carried out by the police in the school Diaz during the G8 of 2001 in Genoa, are some of the darkest pages of Italy's recent history.

Possible effects of the swine flu vaccine

2009-10-31T06:18:00.003Z

The swine flu shot has been denounced as dangerous by many doctors and experts. We need to take an extra care when it comes to our health, and be aware that the Big Pharma industry is only seeking to make money, not to make us feel better.

Why won't the Obamas take the swine flu vaccine?

2009-10-30T13:19:00.004Z

That's an interesting question, I think. If the swine flu is so dangerous, and apparently it is if national emergency has been declared, why on earth President Obama is so careless when it comes to his daughters' health?

And what's even more unbelievable, why are doctors and nurses all over Europe refusing to get the vaccine? Aren't they afraid? Or they know that the vaccine is way more dangerous than the mild flu it's supposed to prevent? In France they have even launched a lawsuit against the vaccine campaign because it's deemed as a "real attempt to poison the population."

But this flu must be really deadly if the U.S. GAO foresees a congestion on the Internet, to the extent that it will probably be necessary to close the net for a while, to allow broker-dealers to keep working, and to prevent normal people from getting uncensored information, so that governments can control the population much more efficiently through their media, such as TV, or mainstream papers.

Here an extract from the GAO pandemic emergency declaration:

"Concerns exist that a more severe pandemic outbreak than 2009's could cause large numbers of people staying home to increase their Internet use and overwhelm Internet providers' network capacities. Such network congestion could prevent staff from broker-dealers and other securities market participants from teleworking during a pandemic. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is responsible for ensuring that critical telecommunications infrastructure is protected. GAO was asked to examine a pandemic's impact on Internet congestion and what actions can be and are being taken to address it, the adequacy of securities market organizations' pandemic plans, and the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) oversight of these efforts. GAO reviewed relevant studies, regulatory guidance and examinations, interviewed telecommunications providers and financial market participants, and analyzed pandemic plans for seven critical market organizations."

Well, as long as we have free information, and are not left with the only subservient gazettes such as NY Times or Washington Post, let's enjoy Ron Paul's latest video and let's demand an answer for his questions.

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Moulin Rouge!

2009-10-16T14:52:00.010+01:00

Or the brothel better known under the name of "mainstream media." To put it mildly. To put it rightly, on the other hand, the compelling question is: WTF are you doing?

The hysterical assaults of the international press against Berlusconi are reaching impressive levels of idiocy, and in my recent article I've tried to explain why the current Premier is not the only one to blame. From the Washington Post to Newsweek, to the Times, much of English and US media are proving very much loving and caring for Italy's destiny. How touching.

Anne Applebaum, in her thoughtful essay for the Washington Post, shows how nothing knows about Italy, but it's ok, because our own Indro Montanelli used to say: "The job of the journalist is to write about things he doesn't know." Apparently Anne Applebaum is his best student. Her masterpiece culminates like this:

"There has to be something appealing about Berlusconi himself as well. Severgnini [nonetheless] has called him a 'mirror' of modern Italy, and one sees what he means: Nouveau rich (like almost everyone in the country) [uhm...who??] and not afraid to show it off (remember that Sardinian villa); a lover of women and soccer (he owns the team A.C. Milan); loyal to his friends (even protecting them from the law); and clearly enjoying himself at those parties on his yacht, Berlusconi leads a kind of caricature version of the ideal Italian life. And precisely because he is a caricature, he gets away with things that other people can't. One hears Italians regale one another with Berlusconi stories and then howl with laughter.

[Hang on, here starts the best part]

Besides, with Berlusconi as your prime minister, you don't have to take yourself too seriously. You don't have to trouble yourself with geopolitics or the state of the planet, or poverty and failed states. You can stay at home, remain unserious and argue about the latest legal scandal. Anda maybe that, too, is part of the Italian prime minister's appeal."

How cool was that? Yes, I couldn't restrain myself, the unorthodox comments are mine. Dear Ms Applebaum, first of all, how dare you speaking about Italian mentality when, among all excellent thinkers Italy has had, the best example you could bring up is Beppe Severgnini? Second, what kind of brass neck do you have to say such a thing like "You don't have to trouble yourself with geopolitics or the state of the planet, or poverty and failed states"? Why? Are you telling me you are concerned for such plagues? Are you at least a little (yes, a little would be enough) aware that your bloody government is directly responsible for poverty, international terrorism, dictatorships, overthrowing democracies, genocides, wars and suffering all over the world?

Let's fly over to Newsweek's land. Another caring outlet, so concerned about Italian democracy that friendly whispers in "Silvio's" ear: "Silvio, it's time to go." And then dishes out advices to Italians on how to dump Berlusconi.

But the real jewel is our own home-made, genuine Beppe Severgnini, the best, the original, the Voice. Guest blogging in the Time, for the occasion. And what's better occasion to faithfully persist with the smear campaign against Berlusconi? At the end of the day, US troops are used to shoot against the Red Cross, why shouldn't their media do the same?

For that matter, Severgnini sports his best idea: Berlusconi mirrors Italian people. So Severgnini himself is included, phew, I was starting to worry. In a desperate effort to say something new about the already widely bad-mouthed Mr President, he lits up our days with an anthropological blurb about Italians' nature and goes deep into the disgraceful flaws of Italian people. I'm puzzled: he's still Italian, right? Does he still work for Corriere della Sera, right? Being the Corriere the main national newspaper in Italy, that in its heyday was completely controlled by former Masonic Lodge P2, very much praised by its own journalists when Licio Gelli was the boss, and very much criticized now that Berlusconi (former P2) is the Premier. How much hypocrisy Italians have to hear, almost the same level US citizens have to bear from their own media, in a time that sees them just out of the dark Bush era and just in the phony Nobel Peace Prize Obama age.

Tell me, Beppe, (can I call you Beppe? We are colleagues, after all) in your article, instead of trivialities such as food, soccer, church and Obama's suntan, why didn't you write about the sack of Italy happened in 1992? Or the relations between Prodi and Goldman Sachs? Or how Italy is a US colony, economically and politically manipulated, let alone militarily occupied? It doesn't pay off to say the truth as it is, right Beppe? So you prefer writing trivialities for the Time, to feed the needs for morbid gossip and promote the increasing mental laziness, in the umpteenth effort to foment the cultural brutalization media and school system are contributing to spread, to keep minds sleepy and elites well-heeled, on our shoulders.

This system is sickening, banks are the real ruling powers, politicians are their waiters and journalists are their prostitutes.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Moulin Rouge.

The Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama was only a joke

2009-10-09T20:48:00.005+01:00

This was actually my first reaction when I read the news that the Scandinavian Committee had awarded Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, but then I realised it was true. Media and governments went on with their empty hackneyed expressions, as boring as hell.

Some, however, didn't quite agree, and on Facebook I've read some of the funniest comments: "Now that Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, will they give Jack the Ripper the Nobel Courtesy Prize?" was one of the many.

Actually no, I don't really see Obama as a pacifist, I don't know, maybe because he hasn't pulled US troops out of Iraq, he has increased US troops in Afghanistan, he's pushing EU governments to increase European troops in Afghanistan, he hasn't closed Guantanamo, he's proving very aggressive towards Iran, unlike Iranian regime, he's never spoken out against nuclear weapons, he hasn't convinced Israel to withdraw from the illegally Occupied Territories. BUT, there is a but, Henry Kissinger, one of the worst war criminals of modern history, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, too, so why not Obama?

Also, to some extent, I can see the positive aspect of this award: it's obviously a propaganda strategy. Since Obama's reputation is plummeting in public surveys, a propaganda booster has become compelling. People are waking up, opening their eyes, New York Times' and Wall Street Journal's propaganda is not enough anymore, the system is shaking and the elite is aware of it.

What will be the next move when everybody will understand that this undeserved prize is just propaganda?

Ron Paul explains why the Fed must end

2009-09-30T19:24:00.004+01:00

Impressive: a US Congressman sticks his neck out and claims the need to put an end to the Fed. As everybody knows (well, maybe not everybody but certainly many people), money is created out of debt, reason why when Central Banks produce the money and borrow it to governments, make government increase their debt towards banks.

Our monetary system is created in a way that makes public debt natural and impossible to pay off. If governments are in debt, populations are in debt and, as we well know, banks live out of debt, through interests and always higher rates.

I think this video is worth watching and the subject needs to be analysed in greater depth.

September 11th, 1973: a day to remember

2009-09-11T19:24:00.006+01:00

Today media all over the world are celebrating the anniversary of 9/11. Since 2001 the 11th of September is a day everybody remembers. However, I think it should have been remembered well before the attacks to the Twin Towers, because on 9/11 1973 the United States backed, organized and financed the military coup that established one of the bloodiest dictatorships of modern history.

Democratically elected Salvador Allende was ousted and replaced by General Augusto Pinochet, “for the sake of democracy,” according to one of the world’s worst war criminals, Henry Kissinger (awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize, in an amazing show of hypocrisy).

The Chilean coup d’état of 1973 is deemed as one of the most violent military interventions in Latin America. On the 16th of October 1998 Scotland Yard put under arrest Pinochet, who was recovering from back surgery in a private clinic in London, for crimes against humanity. After having indicted and interrogated him, the Chilean courts decided not to put him on trial for the atrocities committed during his dictatorship.

The years between Allende’s involvement in politics and his accession to power are emblematically intertwined with the hottest moments of the Cold War. In this framework, Socialist Salvador Allende became President of Chile, with the ambitious goal, according to the US, to challenge American imperialism and cooperate with the other Socialist and Communist Parties across the continents. The United States could not afford to see their leadership undermined within their same hemisphere and so soon after the Cuban Revolution.

On September the 4th, 1970, Allende received the largest number of votes in the Chilean elections. Since no candidate had reached the absolute majority, the Congress, on the 24th of October, was to vote and choose the President between the two candidates that obtained the highest number of votes. On the 16th of September, US secretary of the State, Henry Kissinger, started pressuring publicly the Chilean Congress to influence its decision: "I have yet to meet somebody who firmly believes that if Allende wins there is likely to be another free election in Chile. […] In a major Latin American country you would have a Communist government, joining, for example, Argentina, which is already deeply divided, along a long frontier, joining Peru, which has already been heading in directions that have been difficult to deal with, and joining Bolivia, which has also gone in a more leftist, anti-U.S. direction."[1]

These comments become more meaningful and sound as a threat if we consider that already in June before the elections the White House was planning to take action in case of Allende’s victory, that the CIA was given 400,000 dollars to be used to oppose Allende candidacy and that in September the 18th Kissinger suggested that other 350,000 dollars would be given to the CIA to corrupt the members of the Congress in favour of Jorge Alessandri, the other candidate running against Allende who got the second highest number of votes. Moreover, after Allende was confirmed President by the Congress, the CIA was officially entitled to dispose of eight million dollars to “destabilize” the Chilean government in the years 1971-1973. [2]

The same Kissinger, in his memoirs, reports how Edward Korry, U.S. Ambassador in Chile at the time, sees the victory of the socialist Allende: ‘It will have the most profound effect on Latin America and beyond; we have suffered a grievous defeat; the consequences will be domestic and international.’[3] In Kissinger’s own terms, “we were persuaded that it would soon be inciting anti-American policies, attacking hemisphere solidarity, making common cause with Cuba, and sooner or later establishing close relations with the Soviet Union.” [4] National interest and containment of communist proliferation were, then as well as now, the usual US imperialist excuses to invade other countries following the Roman principle of divide et impera. The worst case scenario had come: Allende alone got 36.2 percent of the popular vote, leading the US to fear an ‘irreversible’ change in the Chilean politics.

The US (rightly) feared that Salvador Allende was willing to “destroy the present system” and start “revolutionary changes” anti-imperialist and anti-America, condemning the Vietnam War and expressing solidarity towards the Cuban Revolution. As usual when it comes to losing ground and territory, the US “exceptional” zeal to protect democracy took over: they had to save Chilean people from Allende dictatorship and give them back their right to live in a democratic country. With Pinochet (sic!).

Nixon and Kissinger were witnessing their worst nightmare come true: Chile was not just an island like Cuba, it was a continental country, geographically and culturally close to Peru, Argentina and Bolivia, with the very realistic risk of a greater communist alliance, not only in South and Central America but also among the Western European Communist parties.

American academic and political mainstream opinionists maintained of course that the fall of Allende’s government was due to his incompetence, arguing that policies of income and resources redistribution and the promotion of rapid but substantial changes were to fail because impracticable. Therefore, the socialist administration itself created the reasons for the coup, making it unavoidable.

James Petras and Morris Morley highlighted how Chile was actually in debt “prior” to Allende’s arrival to power and the debts, mostly contracted to banks directly under the US influence, came due during his administration. The economic pressure carried out by the United States was entirely aimed at undermining the socialist government and the US played an important and direct role in overthrowing Allende’s Government.

To understand the responsibility of the American administration over the coup against the Chilean President, it is important to consider how and to what extent Chilean economic and political system were subject to US influence. The financial dependence of Chile increased substantially during the decade preceding Allende’s election and during his administration remained very high. External debts became therefore political weapons and “the debt-basis of U.S.-Chilean relationships became the cause and consequence of the ‘porous’ nature of Chilean economic, social and military institutions”. [5]

In 2004, Peter Kornbluh, Chile Documentation Project director at the National Security Archive, after collecting all secret dossiers declassified during the Clinton White House, published the controversial book The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier On Atrocity And Accountability. As he reports, just before the confirmation by the Congress of Allende’s victory, the CIA, the State and the Defense Department analysts carried out an investigation about the implications for the United States. The document, known as National Security Study Memorandum 97, drew the conclusions that the U.S. did not have any “vital national interest within Chile” but only economic interests. Despite many officials tried to discourage the Nixon-Kissinger covert actions with arguments such as the danger of instigating a civil war in Chile and the bad reputation of the United States all over South America and the world, the secret operations continued and brought to the military coup. Therefore, American main concern was the good image that Allende could give of himself and his success to the world. [6]

American efforts in providing financial and strategic help to the non-socialist candidates ended in a substantial failure and Allende’s election placed the Chilean case right at the top of the American political agenda. The State Department tried to influence Christian Democrats and parliamentarians to vote against the confirmation of Allende, the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation suggested aggressive actions to be taken by the U.S. government, offered funds to the CIA and pressured the Ambassador in Chile at the time favoring all possible ways towards an actual and urgent overthrow. All attempts to prevent Allende from taking office had failed because, despite the CIA activity, the Chilean military was not well equipped for organizing a coup.

The Nixon administration’s response to Allende's victory was immediately one of hostility, with the organization of the so-called ‘Forty Committee’, to discuss the possible aftermath of the Chilean electoral results in relation to US policy and to plan appropriate reactions. The US Ambassador in Chile at the time, Edward Korry, defined Allende’s election “an irreversible political structure”, [7] with the danger that after the instauration of the socialist regime, the country would have entered a non-democratic phase without the possibility of free elections while Allende was in power.

Once the Congress had confirmed the results of the elections and Allende took office, the CIA started encouraging a military coup within the Chilean armed forces as the only alternative possible. The strategy that would have brought to the overthrow of Allende government consisted in the collaboration between Kissinger, the CIA and ITT, and consisted in increasing external economic pressures, discouraging other countries to invest in Chile and denying further credit. [8] They created a true “economic strangulation and diplomatic isolation”. [9]

Also the National Security Council strictly collaborated with many large US corporations with the same objective to undermine Allende’s presidency. As Petras and Morley put it, “through their combined efforts they determined the closure of vital financial and economic resources necessary to sustain Chile’s dependent economy”. As the socialist administration managed to increase in popularity and its level of competition, the United States felt threatened and thought it was essential to “promote strict and direct political control through a dependent military régime”.[10]

With the coup, the United States eliminated the threat to their hegemony in Latin America and the establishment of a ‘client regime’ made it possible the enhancement of a dialogue between the United States and Chile. Despite the lengthy process of the pressure by the American administrations in influencing Chilean economic and political life, with the election of Salvador Allende Chile became the first Latin American country to have a socialist president nominated after free elections. And, even harder to accept and difficult to explain by Nixon entourage, Allende was the first socialist parliamentarian democratically elected in the Western Hemisphere, where only capitalist societies were seen as free and democratic.

The dramatic end of Allende’s government shocked the world and raised universal humanitarian issues, such as how and to what extent the United States have the right to exercise their power in other countries’ domestic politics. It’s worth considering the Chilean coup for its topicality, as the American people and the international community stared at the launch of the war in Iraq, war that present many similarities with 1973 coup: preemptive strikes, regime change, unilateral aggression, international terrorism, political assassination, sovereignty, and the death of innocents.

[1] As reprinted in Multinational Corporations and United States Foreign Policy, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Ninety-Third Congress, Washington, GPO, 1973, Part 2, pp. 542-3, as reported in Fagen, Richard R., ‘The United States and Chile: Roots and Branches’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 53, No. 2, January 1975, p. 297

[2] Fagen, Richard R., ‘The United States and Chile: Roots and Branches’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 53, No. 2, January 1975, p. 298

[3] Kissinger, Henry, White House Years, Phoenix Press, 2000, p. 653

[4] Ibid., p. 654

[5] Petras, James and Morley, Morris, How Allende Fell. A Study in U.S.-Chilean Relations, Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation Ltd, 1974, pp. 8-13

[6] Kornbluh, Peter, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier On Atrocity And Accountability, New Press, New York, 2004, p. 79

[7] U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations, Multinational Corporations and United States Foreign Policy, Part I, pp. 291-292, as reported in Petras and Morley, op. cit., 1974, p. 30

[8] Petras and Morley, op. cit., pp. 33-35

[9] Kornbluh, op. cit., p. 87

[10] Petras and Morley, op. cit., pp. 42-57

Italy Clerical State

2009-08-17T06:51:00.006+01:00

Among the things I don't understand in life there certainly is the fact that still many people agree, or at least don't complain, that the Pope has the right to speak out in political matters and influence the development of social life.

For example, recently in the public Italian tv, journalist Roberto Balducci, whose task was to cover Vatican affairs (I hardly imagine a more boring duty), has committed the terrible sin to say the truth regarding the attendance to one of the weekly meetings the Pope holds in St. Peter's Square: he acknowledged, in fact, that there were very few people (well, he used a typical Italian expression "quattro gatti" that translates literally "only four cats were there").

I suddenly pictured the Pope wishing we were back to the Middle Age, with the laws of the Inquisition still in force, illiterate people buying Vatican's absurdities and secret prisons used to torture who didn't want to confess their deliberate disobedience to the will of God.

But no, we are in 2009, in Italy, a country that, Vatican's presence notwithstanding, is struggling to be considered a civilised country, so no torture for Balducci, just the dismissal from his boring task.

As it usually happens in a Clerical State, criticisms to the only legal representative of God on earth (sic!), awaken the sleeping MPs who cry out for justice, respect, fairness. I guess Balducci quickly understood he wasn't going to walk out unpunished and was relieved to learn that no torture was planned: the tv director deemed it was a fair resolution to remove him and replace him with someone who has the guts to tell that St. Peter's Square is always full of pilgrims, and if this is not enough to please God, that the Pope is tall, blonde and blue-eyed!

Alas, such absurdity, as is the papal authority, still exists and, what's worse, it has a political weight, and what's even worse is that many people still believe that the Pope believes in God and speaks for the good.

I wish I could plagiarise now, but Voltaire (1694-1778) is way too popular to pretend this perle is my creation, so I humbly bow to his genius: "For seventeen hundred years the Christian sect has done nothing but harm."

Italian-style dictatorship

2009-08-12T08:10:00.004+01:00

The favorite statement of the anti-Berlusconi swarm is that he is a dictator. Although I think Italy (not only Italy actually) is living in a dictatorship, I don’t think Berlusconi is the only tyrant we can boast, of course he’s one of the main characters in this grotesque b-movie, but I’m convinced he’s in a very good company.

As Judge Roberto Scarpinato explains very clearly in his book “Il Ritorno del Principe,” the power is “obscene,” word coming from the latin “ob-scenus” and meaning “behind the scenes.” In fact, the real decisions are all made behind the scenes, the official speeches Presidents made are meaningless and all arguments and fights between centre-right and centre-left parties have the only purpose to entertain the public, keep the press busy and give a veneer of right-left bipolarism.

The truth is that centre-left and centre-right in Italy have the same interests and need the same laws to carry them on. Now, to keep giving this veneer of bipolarism and democracy, parties belonging to different coalitions must also have different tasks. The main task of the centre-right coalition is to carry on with anti-immigration laws (with a twist of racism given the pathetic presence of the Northern League), or to destroy the judiciary system making unlawful laws such as the (in)famous Lodo Alfano, according to which the four highest offices of state are granted with total immunity.

This is the stint of the centre-right parties, all things that need to be done now, that's why now is the time the centre-right coalition stays on power. Once all these nasty jobs are done, democratic media will fête the next centre-left winners, relieved that we are finally back in democracy, the time of modern-age Mussolini is over and we can finally breath, unless suffocated by the always heavier condition of colony we are living in.

As it usually happens in these cases, the centre-left coalition that will succeed to Mr. Berlusconi’s team will forget to change the unlawful laws approved by its predecessor and will start enjoying them: the four highest offices of the state will still be granted with total immunity, anti-immigration laws will stay the same and the conflict of interest that made Berlusconi renowned all over the world will stay as legal as it is now.

Of course, when Mr. Prodi & co. were in charge of the executive didn’t do it on purpose, they simply were too busy to cancel Berlsconi’s harmful bills, because they had to save Italy, so this time too, they might be faithful to their tradition and keep selling all Italian national agencies and major companies (or what’s left of them after the fraud of the early 1990s) to anglo-american banks for a song.

The next centre-left parties won’t need to re-make uncostitutional laws (the centre-right did it, remember?) so, since people have a very short memory, everybody will forget and we will go back to live in a happy democracy (sic).

So, as a distraction from the real problems, so-called “leftist” media in Italy only talks about Berlusconi’s little friends and parties in his villa in Sardinia. The same leftist media that praise American imperialism and every time forget to mention that Italy is sucking up all obligations that its condition of anglo-american colony imposes.

But it’s ok, let’s continue with gossip, this is the way a democratic country solves its problems, staying at the surface of things, never going in-depth, to avoid to shock the self-righteous by undermining their blissful ignorance.

Interview with Ilan Pappe, historian from Israel

2009-08-02T11:55:00.006+01:00

An interesting interview with Ilan Pappe, Israelian historian author of the book "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," where he clearly explains how the Israelian government has been humiliating the Palestinian people, illegally occupying their territories and carefully planning their genocide. Not surprisingly, he doesn't teach in Haifa University anymore, but in Exeter, UK.

Iran, US and regime-change

2009-06-20T16:38:00.018+01:00

As usual when something important happens, I delve into history, facts and all media I manage to get access to. The event that is holding today's front pages is the so-called Iranian revolution and the whole bunch of European and US media are busy like never before protecting "human rights". I was so moved and wondered: since when on earth the West gives a damn about human rights? And then the spectre of the bloody profit came along.

Let's face it, Dr Ahmadinejad is a pain in the neck. He could just agree to let our home-bred loan-sharks in Iran and I'm pretty sure that corporate western media wouldn't have doubted his overwhelming re-election. Can he really not see how free we are with our "free market" and "free usury" values?

Another mistake Dr Ahmadinejad keeps making is bringing up Palestinian people's rights against the Zionist regime. If he had done his homework, the Iranian President would know by now that corporate western media are controlled by Zionists, and that in our free nations supporting human rights never pays off.

Are the rights of Palestinians important to western governments? Zionist regime is carrying out a genocide, with Gaza being a huge concentration camp where people are kept in by Israel's illegal and arbitrary blockade and bombed in Israeli airstrikes, ignoring the protests of the international civil society. What do western governments do? Nothing.

The fact that the president of a nation openly condemns the Zionist regime and is not afraid to face Israel and the US and denounce their crimes is seen by our media as a sign of dictatorship. If that was a dictatorship I truly doubt Mousavi could have done an electoral campaign and demonstrators would have been free to demonstrate.

Never mind that the poorest classes of the Iranian population are with Ahmadinejad, they can't twitter or facebook their opinions so we can't share them. The important is that the US-backed candidate will go to power, ensuring that foreign capitals are welcome and that Iran becomes the umpteenth US colony to support Israel's crimes in the Middle East and loses all its independency.

Our media today report the violent demonstrations taking place in Tehran and what bothers me is that when people in London and all over Europe demonstrate against the various G8, G20 or Nato, if there are a couple of troublemakers, automatically all demonstrators are pictured as violent. Now that in Iran demonstrators have actually burnt cars and buildings, it's not their fault, because the government's police is violent.

Amazingly, people who demonstrate against the wars that our administrations wage are violent. If, instead, people demonstrate against what our governments arbitrarily consider "rogue" governments, they are peaceful.

The practice of regime change is routine in US foreign policy, we can say it's their speciality, they've had plenty of time to improve during the Cold War all over the world and Iran this time was even an easy job if we consider that in 1953 the US intelligence had done what is doing now. History repeats itself but it seems like it never teaches anything.

I refuse to believe that every journalist in Europe and the US is uneducated and with no knowledge whatsoever of the Iranian politics, but unfortunately, reading what they write, this is exactly what it looks like.

As Paul Craig Roberts has written, "Every Iranian knows that the president of Iran is a public figure with limited powers. His main role is to take the heat from the governing grand Ayatollah. No Iranian, and no informed Westerner, could possibly believe that Ahmadinejad is a dictator. Even Ahmadinejad’s superior, Khamenei, is not a dictator, as he is appointed by a government body that can remove him.

The demonstrations, like those in 1953, are intended to discredit the Iranian government and to establish for Western opinion that the government is a repressive regime that does not have the support of the Iranian people. This manipulation of opinion sets up Iran as another Iraq ruled by a dictator who must be overthrown by sanctions or an invasion."

Invasion? I somehow recall Hillary Clinton making not long ago some scary forecast on Iran. But of course, she's the secretary of a state that has the power to teach democratic values with bombs so she only wants to stay in line with her predecessors. The US have been doing this since the end of World War II, different ways depending on which country they were destroying. They have already provoked demonstrations and so-called "revolutions" to place their favourite candidates. What do we need to wake up?

My hope is that they won't export the same democracy they have brought to Iraq, otherwise who is demonstrating in Iran today will regret it for the rest of their lives.

Small memo for who accuses Ahmadinejad to be anti-Semite

2009-06-20T15:56:00.003+01:00

Letter from Neturei Karta Anti-Zionist Jews to President Ahmadinejad
Written by www.daily.pk
Saturday, 20 June 2009 01:41

In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful,

To the Honorable President of the Islamic Republic of Iran,
Mahmoud Ahmedinajad

As Orthodox Jews who oppose the diabolic Zionist state we wish to express our
very best wishes for your success in your next term as the elected President of the
Islamic Republic of Iran.

A number of Orthodox Jews from outside of Iran have had the great pleasure and honor of meeting you and other honorable governmental and religious leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as many ordinary people in your wonderful country, both Jewish and non-Jewish Iranians.

Mr. President, your wonderful leadership in courageously revealing the truth about
the evils of Zionism and condemning it is of immense and immeasurable value,
especially in the face of the campaigns launched against Iran by world Zionism and its
media machine, and with the help of G-d can bring closer the day when that vile
terrorist Zionist regime is dismantled, all the rights of the Palestinian People are
restored throughout historic Palestine, and a Republic of Palestine replaces the
ethnocratic and racist State of “Israel,” which always violates all laws and values of
the international community and all laws and values of the authentic Jewish religion.
Indeed, Jews who oppose Zionism and who live with the borders of the Zionist state
also look forward to being liberated from Zionist control.

We wish to extend our warmest greetings to all the people and leaders of the
Islamic Republic of Iran and our very best wishes for prosperity and success in all
endeavors.

Rabbi Meir Hirsh
NETUREI KARTA PALESTINE

Original link here

On Berlusconi's decline, the Mafia and the Bilderberg Group

2009-05-31T21:23:00.023+01:00

It's already crystal clear how much I dislike the current Italian premier, Silvio Berlusconi, and in this blog I have written a few posts expressing my contempt.

That's why, the last thing I would have thought myself, was that one day I would have written something in the opposite direction. Not a proper defence, that would be too daring, but at least some interrogation marks, to try to understand what is going on in Italy and worldwide.

The persisting hammering of the international media against him, the odd case of "Noemi" and the fact that Berlusconi might be a clown but he's not stupid, got me thinking. As for the English press, it's well-known that they usually make fun of important things when they are told to carry out a political agenda, so their mock-chic jokes aimed at the middle-class bankers count nothing or almost nothing.

The latest scandal of the premier involves Noemi Letizia, 18-year-old girl who, according to the media, was first seen at a lunch with the Premier as his official company when she was still under age. Of course Berlusconi has denied any private or sexual involvement with this girl and said she's just his friend's daughter.

What's very weird is how Berlusconi has served himself up on a silver platter to photographers and journalists. He's a media tycoon after all, he does know how the media market works. And he also knew the press, especially his competitors' one, was waiting for some of his ill-considered moves.

This media campaign, both in Italy and abroad, around the Italian premier's clumsiness is becoming boring and somehow uninteresting, the attacks are always the same, and concentrating the whole evil in the world around only one person is ridicolous and misleading.

In fact, what can be found behind the "Noemi" scandal? Noemi's father, Elio Benedetto Letizia, could be close to the infamous Camorra clan of the "Casalesi", operating in Casal del Principe, in the southern province of Caserta. This hypothesis stems from the fact that Benedetto Letizia could be related to two exponents of this clan, Franco and Giovanni Letizia, close to the boss Giuseppe Setola. This possibility, however, is still under investigation of Naples' magistrates.

According to this scenario, Benedetto Letizia (Noemi's father) could be the link between the Camorra and the institutions, represented in this case by Berlusconi. The Italian prime minister could have been forced to appear at that official lunch at Villa Madama with Noemi, when the girl was still under age and completely unaware of the fact that she was used as the sign to publicly show that a representative of national institutions was still in terms with that particular family.

It's well known, in fact, how the Mafia (and its local versions, such as the Naples' Camorra) uses signs, meaningless for most people, to communicate, and in this case the physical presence of a national politician might have meant more than any official declaration. Many allegations of a possible involvement of Berlusconi in the affairs of Cosa Nostra (Sicilian Mafia) and Camorra have been made, but they still are allegations and under the secrecy of ongoing investigations.

In this regard, although Noemi's family refuses to clarify the terms of their relationship with Berlusconi, Italian newspaper Europa believes that the premier got close to the Letizias after the tragic car accident that caused the death of Yuri, Noemi's 19-year-old brother.

The wall of silence around the whole case, carefully protected by both the Letizias and Berlusconi, who preferred to make it appear as a morbid sexual affair, makes at least wonder why the mainstream media don't want to move away from their first account that has proved too simplistic. Berlusconi might be sleazy, as the Daily Mail likes defining him, but he's certainly not a fool, and this story stays wrapped up in a mystery.

As it was predictable in a country like Italy, where newspapers are at direct service of political parties, the media reporting to centre-left coalitions, whose job is to constantly and mindlessly attack right-wing parties, started complying with their duties: give the kiss of death to Berlusconi's already tottering reputation.

To be honest, here they had a very easy job since the premier himself was not offering any exhaustive explanation about his alleged steamy relationship with an underage Noemi.

So, as it happens, media and people all over Italy and abroad were swift to judge him and treat him as an old paedophile. Actually, the international media campaign against Berlusconi, especially in the UK, has been going on for a very longtime so this seems the occasion they couldn't miss for anything in the world.

But why do English media hate Berlusconi? Do they really care that much about Italy's destiny? If that were the case, I would be truly moved. However, Italian newspaper Libero, whose director is openly pro-Berlusconi, suggests a theory to explain the over-mentioned conspiracy against Italian prime minister. I've always laughed out loud at this theory suggesting an "international conspiracy" against him, but today I laugh much less, if nothing at all.

Why do I take it seriously? A couple of days ago Fausto Carioti from the pages of Libero mentioned a possible connection with the Bilderberg Group, and when it comes to this "club" there really is nothing to laugh about.

The Bilderberg Group takes its name from the Hotel de Bilderberg in The Netherlands, where its first meeting took place in 1954. These invitation-only reunions gather highly influential representatives of the major corporations and political groups, more or less known by the main public, coming from all wealthiest nations.

Some of the Italian attendees to these unofficial meetings are (or have been), among the others, Rodolfo De Benedetti (son of Carlo's, and currently in the Board of Directors of Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso, publisher of daily paper La Repubblica, that has recently addressed the famous "10 questions" to Berlusconi, immediately backed by the English Guardian), Walter Veltroni (former leader of the centre-left coalition and former mayor of Rome) and economists Mario Draghi and Giulio Tremonti, the latter being the current minister of the economy.

Recently there has been an argument between Giulio Tremonti and Mario Draghi over the long-awaited reforms, with Tremonti pointing out that it's the government's task to carry out economic policies, not of other bodies', because "sovereignty belongs to the people and, for better or for worse, the political responsibility belongs to the government that works for the people." If these intentions are followed by an honest defence of people's interests against banks' and corporations' profits, three cheers for Tremonti.

As for Mario Draghi, his past actions don't really seem to be aimed at protecting Italian people's interests: he would have started in the early 1990s the process of letting Anglo-American major banks take control over big Italian firms, such as Buitoni, Locatelli, Galbani, Negroni, Ferrarelle, Perugina. When, in 1992, the centre-left coalition led by Giuliano Amato came to power, its first move was to privatise national agencies. How this government can be defined "left" is still a mystery to me.

I'm not implying that the centre-right coalition wouldn't have done the same, but in the records this was a policy adopted by the so-called Left. And, in a more recent past, one of the harshest criticisms to the Berlusconi's government has been for its lack of enthusiasm towards liberalising reforms.

After the G20 summit, held in London on April 2nd, all newspapers cheerfully reported on the front page the solution the twenty leaders had come up with: a new world order. Solution that, by the way, hasn't shown its benefits as yet.

I was reminded of the outcome of the G20 by a recent announcement made by Mario Draghi, yes the same Draghi who boasts striking connections with Anglo-American banks: we are on the way towards "a world government of the economy". This, said in the wake of the last Bilderberg Group meeting, is not very reassuring.

Still Libero has mentioned the possibility that the US administration doesn't particularly appreciate the good relationship between Putin and Berlusconi, being Russia's prime minister in not very good terms with the United States, even after Obama (the change we can believe in) took office.

Why is Berlusconi doomed? Because he's already too exposed to the public opinion and his business irregularities are already extensively described in articles and books? After all, Italy, differently from other European countries, is the nation where secrets don't manage to be kept for longtime.

Or because of his closeness with Russia and the dangerous possibility of a good relationship with other "rogue states"? This risk cannot be taken, being Italy a strategic US colony since the end of World War II.

All these possible scenarios, apparently coming from completely different environments, if considered somehow intertwined will open a scary situation.

Berlusconi's political career is at the end, he knows and finds himself having to deal with the choices he has made, very likely quite dodgy ones, and now is probably regretting some of them. Entering the system of corruption can bring only short-lived benefits. What appears from Berlusconi's latest public declarations is an already former prime minister, attacked from every front and ridiculed by the international press, who's trying to keep afloat despite the apparent commitment of not breaking the wall of silence built around him.

Many are enjoying this moment, I'm not. First of all because things look too fuzzy to draw rushed and final conclusions and especially because I'm afraid of who the financial élite will put in office as Berlusconi's replacement. The media that keep shooting against this too easy target, without considering the bigger picture, might risk to mislead the public opinion and divert the general focus from something potentially crucial for Italy's destiny, and sake.

Faith, myths and mind control

2009-05-26T21:29:00.005+01:00

Issues on religion, faith and myths are always very sensitive, and this is because every personal belief comes from very human emotions, such as hope, fear and the need of some sort of protection.

However, it's very important to distinguish between personal faith and religion, being the latter a propaganda tool that exploits the most private human sentiments of trusting people.

One of the easiest examples to understand the difference between faith and religion, is the heinous behaviour of the Catholic Church throughout the centuries and in current times, too. Not only have its highest representatives always hindered scientific and social progress, but very often clerics have been involved in shameful crimes such as paedophilia and in dodgy economic-financial affairs.

Someone might think that it's impossible that those clerics really believe in the Almighty God they go preaching about.

Apart from the fact that there is no historical evidence of the existence of Jesus Christ, I think that if someone needs to believe there is some kind of spirit protecting them, it's no harm as long as they don't impose their views to other people. Differently from what religious leaders have done so far.

Human beings should come into possession of human feelings all over again, releasing themselves from the chains of artificial myths created with the sole purpose of mind control and used to wage strategic wars, inciting peoples against each other.

As stated by historian and expert of religions D.M. Murdock, "We are one family, and we share a small sphere - let us unify as found in the best of futuristic scenarios, not destroy ourselves as in the worst".

Italy's psychosis

2009-05-25T09:36:00.006+01:00

The level of disinformation in Italy has reached so high levels that has become surreal.

Italian media have, in fact, overcome the phase of "hidden agendas": now they shamelessly deny the obvious.

Let's take Studio Aperto for example, a TV information show that sistematically provides false and distorted news.

Their latest pearl is that Mr Berlusconi, who just by chance happens to be its owner, has been found not guilty in the trial involving English lawyer David Mills.

Of course this is not true, as David Mills was sentenced guilty and the judgement on Mr Berlusconi was stopped thanks to the so-called Lodo Alfano, according to which the four highest offices of state are untouchable.

Scornful of the fact that the Italian Supreme Court has defined this bill "uncostitutional" (we know, Italian judges are just a bunch of communists, except for the ones he managed to bribe), the Premier is still free to further damage the country, present showgirls as candidate at the European elections and entertain foreign Presidents in his Villa Certosa in Sardinia with a flock of young girls.

This is the freak Italy has as a Premier, the whole world is laughing out loud, the country has been in a deep crisis for so long that this latest worldwide recession has been perceived as tickling and, despite all that, a bold 78-year-old Mr Berlusconi has recently announced: "I will react to this libelling accusations and I will have all Italian people with me again."

Sadly true.

From 9/11 to the decline of the Anglo-american empire

2009-04-17T19:25:00.008+01:00

In the wake of the ruthless and immoral exploitation of human suffering (both American and not) carried out by the Bush/Cheney administration, it might be a good occasion for Obama to bring the "change we can believe in" he's been talking for ages and open a proper, independent investigation on 9/11.

Why not? The official version has proved inconsistent and false and there is always a thinner part of the world population that believes it, so what's the harm in saying the truth? Ok, 3,000 American lives "expendable" for the greater good, more than a million Iraqi lives "expendable" for democracy, thousands of American kids sent to die in Afghanistan and Iraq to build a much better world, world that unfortunately they won't have the possibility to enjoy.

Let alone the once-democratic countries being slowly (or not so slowly) transformed in police states, with a rampant fascism spreading all over Europe: English police beating up people just for the sake of it, Italian government banning cartoonists and journalists just because they are not aligned with their totalitarianism.

Recently, I enjoyed a querelle in the travel blogosphere about an article appeared in the Independent about Dubai: all travel writers, who happen to know Dubai very well, from Lara Dunston to Terence Carter to Susan M acaulay agree in saying that the article is unbalanced, with no research behind, full of common places and racism-nuanced. I haven't read that specific article, but honestly, knowing English press, I do believe what the travel writers say. After all, the only purpose of English press is governmental mind-control and brainwash trusting subjects.

Not long ago I laughed out loud reading an article on the Economist about how Lula ruined Brasil. Of course Mr Economist knows that Brasil has grown 5% last year and that is expected to grow "only" 3% this year, and he also knows that "Great" Britain is not really growing, especially thanks to the artists of the creative finance populating the sacred spot of the City of London. Sorry, Mr Economist, your articles reek of desperation.

It's not the end of the world, just of an empire, one of the many in human history, it's lasted even longer than the American, kind of losing ground too. We know, it's an inescapable process, all empires have gone through their heyday and their decline. Accept it with grace and go back to do some good information, as now you look pathetic.

Obama, "let's start again"

2009-03-23T07:50:00.008Z

I've listened astonished to the video in which God-instructed Barack Obama opens at Iran's leaders, and I understood why Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed it.

It seems that with Obama, the United States of America have provided the world with a new Messiah who, differently from the first one (Jesus, not Bush), doesn't need to travel on foot or on a horse to reach his audiences. In fact, modern-age world's Saviour has TV, videos, Internet and (last but not least) democratic facebook at his disposal. Good for him, and apparently for all of us.

The problem, I think, is that Obama's politics is way too populistic to be used in semi-official communications with any leader of any country (except for Berlusconi, with him the best bet is to use very easy words and possibly a sketch, as he's likely not to understand anything about politics). Obviously, the recipients of this video were not Iran's leaders, but the population of Western Hemisphere, so that in the next invasion we all are already convinced that our wars are "just." (I can hear already mainstream European gazettes shouting: "Remember the video of Obama!")

Now, at everybody's eyes, Obama has made a massive change in the US approach towards Middle Eastern countries, has offered a clear overture to Iran's leaders, asking candidly "Let's start again," and they dismissed it. Why? Because they are jealous, yes, jealous of our civilisation (sigh), of our values (sigh) and our freedom (sigh!). And, for most Western public mind, because they are warmongers. Because let's face it, we know that Middle Eastern countries are fundamentally warmongers, and that the United States have always sacrificed themselves to protect the world against evil.

Since the end of the Second World War, US administrations (all of them) have invaded, bombed, organised covert actions all over the world, toppling democratic regimes and replacing them with the most heinous dictatorships, in the name of democracy. But the warmongers are the Iranians, how can they dismiss a so whole-hearted video?

Now that Obama is here, fret not, he wants peace as much as we do, he's offering a change in the most populistic of the options, so that everybody can see it, so that nobody has the least doubt that a real revolution is in the air.

And if there won't be any change, the public mind will be already shaped and led to think that it's not Obama's fault, because Obama is not Bush, because since January 2009 the US policy has completely changed direction, and the economic and financial interests no longer exist.

Never mind providing arms to Israel to keep carrying out the genocide of Palestinian people, this is another story.

The desperate show of death

2009-03-11T14:02:00.008Z

Zygmunt Bauman has defined London as the "dustbin" of globalisation. Never like now could I agree more with him.

As if the circus of Big Brother was not sad enough, now that one of the stars of its latest editions is dying from cancer, a freakish voyeurism seems obsessing the majority of UK population.

From radio and TV shows to the main national tabloids and newspapers, the odyssey of 27-year-old Jade has become everybody's business.

This young woman was diagnosed cancer and the results of the biopsy were immediately of public domain as her UK doctor chose to let her know in the middle of a chat from the Diary Room of the Indian version of Big Brother. As for the share market, the choice couldn't be wiser.

Since she, and everybody in this country, learnt she had cancer, the marathon of common places has started. She is obviously shocked and desperately clings to every little piece of life she has left, but the sleazy pleasure that mediocre people are drawing from witnessing every moment of this girl's death, is degrading and offensive.

What kind of society makes a show out of someone's ultimate suffering? What kind of business enjoys cashing in from someone's death?

Apparently, the arguments, fights and gossip of the Big Brother were not enough entertaining anymore, the public wants more, wants to overcome all taboos, seize the most intimate moment of someone's life.

Nothing is left to intimacy, secret, mystery. Every aspect of life has become a potential subject for circus where the main characters are not tigers anymore but ordinary people.

The lame excuse of entertaining the public hides the constant and ruthless search of profit, where nothing but money has value, and where the limit between public and private is always more elusive.

This is only the latest example of how pathetically poor we are becoming, losing even that small bit of humanity we thought we had left.

IR scholar John Mearsheimer on Israel Lobby

2009-01-25T11:01:00.001Z

The BBC and their idea of impartiality

2009-01-24T11:52:00.006Z

The BBC has a very confused conception of what "impartiality" means. It is recent news that it refused to broadcast the DEC's fundraising appeal for Gaza. The BBC's reason is "to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC’s impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story."

In today's mainstream media the accent is always in the component of the "fear" and in the maddening quest of a "public enemy" we have to be afraid of. The "fear" is today one of the most powerful instrument in governments' hands, as we inevitably seek their help to protect us from an unidentified enemy and we delegate all responsibilities, accepting to give up on our most basic civil liberties.

If we weren't afraid, we wouldn't trust people and institutions that are doing all but working for everybody's interest. The fear is becoming the main energy that is driving our system.

Mainstream media are governed by the financial and political class and used as a propaganda tool, and citizens who don't widen their sources of knowledge will have their fear of this public enemy increased every time they watch or read national news.

In the mainstream media, criminals and terrorists are always poor people. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the popular mass movement that desperately seek to react against the illegal occupation of the rich and powerful State of Israel, is seen as a terrorist movement, while the continuous mass murders carried out by the Israeli authorities are seen as self-defence.

In a system where fear is used as a powerful tool to control citizens making them believe they live in a free and democratic world but that, in reality, are afraid only because they feel powerless, the positive aspects of humanity, such as solidarity and help to the weak are sometimes neglected and distorted.

This is the case of the latest BBC's choice in regard to the fundraising appeal for Gaza. Impartiality has nothing to do with humanitarian aid and BBC's directors know it very well. They also know that every man, just for the fact of being born and raised in a society and surrounded by other people is never completely "impartial."

But one thing is being "partial" because of our personal opinions that come from studying and interacting with the different elements of a society, another thing is being "impartial" because we need to protect the interests of who is financing us and telling us what decisions we can or cannot take.

In this specific case, the BBC's decision can be defined "inhuman" instead of "impartial."