Here.

Shot in the head and killed by Israel Defence Forces on the Mavi Marmara. His crime? Pointing a camera at them.

Now that the dust has settled after the attempted forced entry of the so-called Gaza ‘Peace’ flotilla into Israeli territory, the sinister intention of the ‘peace activists’ has become clear. Brazenly singing songs of Jewish massacres the day before the interception, these metal bar wielding ‘peaceniks’ have been stopped in their attempt to open a pipeline of illegal supplies to the terrorist government of Gaza.

 

But the question remains, who was really behind this attack on the Middle East’s only democracy?

 

Well it seems that long hand of Tehran maybe involved. It is obvious that a large sum of money would have been needed to assemble such a large collection of vessels; and it is also quite obvious that the flotilla's usual rent-a-crowd collection of communists, deluded pacifists, and leftist agitators would never be able to come up with the necessaries for such a voyage. It was only after some wealthy donors finally came to the party that the provocative flotilla was finally allowed to leave for its smuggling expedition to Gaza.

 

Who were these donors? Where did their money come from? Well like most trouble in the Middle East you can expect the murky hand of the Mullahs of Tehran to be behind it. And to think that these evil doers will have access to nuclear weapons very soon unless the international community stands up to their blackmail! It would have been quite easy for them to funnel funds to the perpetrators of the flotilla of Hamas supporting terrorist sympathisers. And with the Islamist regime of Turkey cosying up to the crazed Iranian leader Madmanahmed it seems the Turkish government wouldn’t stop it either.

 

This sort of brazen attempt to bully Israel would not have happened under the watch of strong and principled world leaders like President Bush or PM John Howard. They would have seen that when it comes to terrorism there is no ifs or buts; you do not fund it and you do not support it. Unfortunately their replacements Obama and Rudd seem like boys in a man job; unable to show any will, and too readily deferring to the special interests of loud mouthed leftist lobby groups. If these current leaders don’t act like men soon we could all facing the same threats as Israel: under the blackmail of nuclear armed Mullahs in Tehran!

 

God bless,

 

Patriot

 

Can you name a recently created nation that can demand that another nation that was once a global superpower change its criminal laws? And can you name such a former superpower that would cravenly submit to such an outrageous demand from such an upstart state?

Well, to help you answer those questions, here are a few recent headlines from the local mainstream media: Brown in damage control after Israeli arrest warrant; UK 'shock' over Livni warrant; Israel angry over UK Livni warrant; Britain condemns Livni arrest warrant.

Welcome to the Bizarro World of the 21st Century where certain, cold-blooded war criminals swan around with impunity, spouting their brazen lies, intimidating their critics and shrugging off their innocent victims.


True Lies
By Ayman Mohyeldin
First published on December 15th, 2009, by Al Jazeera, online

Somebody is not telling the truth about the circumstances behind moves to arrest Tzipi Livni, the Israeli opposition leader, in the UK.

Its one of those stories that comes out of nowhere and few actually know what happened.

It began when Al Jazeera reported that a British court had issued an arrest warrant for former Israeli foreign minister and Gaza war architect Tzipi Livni.

For hours, Israeli and British officials denied the report. Then British and Israeli media got wind of the story and began to report it. By the end of Monday, it was irrefutable.

Livni had cancelled a speaking engagement at the Jewish National Fund in the UK, but why and when were still unanswered questions?

After a British court issued - then withdrew - the arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni, the Israeli government, after first denying the reports - suddenly shifted gears, going into damage control and launching a scathing criticism of the British government.
That's what we know. Here's where it gets murky...

Livni's people say she cancelled the event weeks ago because of scheduling conflicts. Israeli media say Livni cancelled on Sunday in a last minute move.

Somebody is not telling the truth.

Livni wanted to meet British PM Gordon Brown. He declined. The rationale behind Livni's desire to meet Brown, speculate some, was that if her trip was in an official capacity, she would have been granted diplomatic immunity.

When Brown declined to meet with the Kadima opposition chairwoman, the trip was reduced to a private one - leaving her susceptible to an arrest.

A similar arrest warrant against Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, was deferred indefinitely because he had diplomatic immunity as a visiting official when he came to the UK in September.

Unfortunately, Livni did not enjoy that same immunity. It seems Barak was, after all, clever for joining PM Netanyahu's right-wing government - a move Livni and Kadima refused to do. At least Barak will now get to travel to the UK for a little bit longer hassle free!

What's surprising is that instead of standing up and defending its own legal system the British government is distancing itself from the issue and allowing Israel to clearly interfere in influencing its domestic affairs and governing system.

In a statement, the UK says it is determined to be "a strategic partner of Israel ... and that it is looking urgently at the implications of this case".
I would have expected the British government to say these are the laws of our land and we stand by them, but its not the first time the government seems to have caved to public pressure from Israel.

Back in 2005, then British foreign secretary Jack Straw apologised to his Israeli counterpart for a stand-off at Heathrow airport when an Israeli official wanted for alleged war crimes refused to get off a plane fearing he would have been arrested.

British security officials refused to arrest him on the plane fearing a confrontation with Israeli security agents would have led to a shoot out.

Let me see if I get this straight, the British foreign minister apologised that his government didn't actually enforce a standing order from its own judicial system?

But there could be a more interesting irony in all of this.

Israeli media have been carrying reactions from various politicians. One official put it this way: "British officials could find themselves in a similar situation due to airstrikes by British crews on population centres in Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan"

Interesting? I wonder if the UK is more concerned with appeasing Israel or afraid of its own laundry being aired publicly if its officials start facing arrest warrants abroad.

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2009/12/15/true-lies

This week a UN-backed tribunal in Cambodia will present its final arguments against a frail old man named Duch, otherwise known as Kaing Guek Eav, former head of “S21”, a death camp where more than 14,000 people were imprisoned, tortured and murdered in the late 1970s as enemies of the so-called “communist” regime.

Though thoroughly guilty, Duch, 66, is the classic patsy for the monstrous Khmer Rouge regime responsible for the deaths of about 2 million Cambodians. Justice delayed and denied.

While these atrocities are all but forgotten, not only in the enlightened West but also in enlightened Cambodia itself, more recent atrocities remain unpunished, as those responsible for the destruction of Iraq and invasion of Afghanistan remain at large, among them George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condaleeza Rice and other co-conspirators in the Bush Regime, as well war crimes facilitators Tony Blair and Australia’s reviled John Winston Howard.

And now new revelations confirm what most of us knew from the beginning: the U.S. invasion of Iraq was planned by the Bush Regime prior to the Saudi attacks on New York on 9/11.

First published November 25, 2009, The Times Online (UK)

British and US officials held secret discussions about ousting Saddam Hussein two years before invading Iraq and months before the September 11 terrorist attacks, the official inquiry into the war heard yesterday.

Senior civil servants said that the “drumbeats” from Washington had begun soon after the election of George W. Bush amid concern that sanctions against Saddam’s regime were ineffectual and losing international support. Overthrowing the Iraqi leadership was considered by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2001 but had been ruled out because it had “no basis in law”, the inquiry heard. At the same time, the Attorney-General was raising questions about the legality of Britain continuing to enforce “no-fly zones” over Iraq.

Relatives of some of the 179 British servicemen and women killed in Iraq gathered outside the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster before the start of the inquiry’s first public hearing yesterday.

Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry chairman, said that it was not a court or trial and would not be determining guilt or innocence. The inquiry team said yesterday that witnesses could be offered immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony.

Relatives of some of those who died have already told private sessions that they believe that Tony Blair, Prime Minister at the time of the invasion, should be charged with war crimes.

Sir Peter Ricketts, then chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, told the inquiry that he was aware in 2001 of discussions in Washington about overthrowing the Iraqi leadership. “We did hear voices around Washington of arming opposition groups but it did not feel like an operation,” he said.

Sir Peter, appointed director-general political in the Foreign Office in September 2001, said: “All the advice I saw go to ministers in 2001 . . . it was clear that it was not something we thought was advisable.”

In early 2001 there was a “clear impression” that Saddam intended to acquire weapons of mass destruction, having used them in the past, added Sir Peter, now head of the Diplomatic Service. Britain was continuing to press for the United Nations to introduce “smart sanctions” as the best way of thwarting Saddam’s ambitions, he said.

However, the September 11 attacks on America led to heightened concern there that terrorists could obtain weapoms of mass destruction. “Not to say that we had any evidence that Iraq was a direct link,” said Sir Peter. “Indeed, we did not have any such evidence.

“We heard people in Washington thought there might be some link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden — undocumented. I don't think we saw any evidence of it.”

Sir William Patey, head of the Middle East department at the Foreign Office in 2001, said that even in the early months of the Bush Administration, hawkish voices could be heard: “In February 2001 we were aware of these drumbeats from Washington and internally we discussed it.

“Our policy was to stay away from that. We didn’t think Saddam was a good thing, and it would be great if he went, but we didn’t have an explicit policy for trying to get rid of him.”

Sir William had asked his staff to look at all the options for dealing with the growing threat from Saddam. This included regime change, which was dismissed at the time “as having no basis in law”. He said: “It was very much an internal paper. We didn’t go into how to achieve regime change.”

Sir William said: “I am not aware, right up to March 2002, when I left, of any increased appetite by UK ministers for military action in Iraq.”

Simon Webb, then a policy director at the Ministry of Defence, said he initially did not encounter any British official who supported regime change. “Later some people were saying we should not entirely exclude it because there was no legal basis,” he added.

Mr Webb said that during a visit to Washington in March 2001 the issue of overthrowing Saddam had been discussed with US officials. “The issue of overthrow came up but I wrote in my notes that ‘the dog did not bark’. I said it grizzled but it did not bark.”

Sir Michael Wood, who was then legal adviser to the Foreign Office, revealed that by 2001 concern was growing about the legality of continuing to enforce the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq to prevent Saddam attacking his own population. Britain had justified the no-fly zones — imposed in 1991 after the Gulf War — as legal on the basis that they were necessary to avoid a humanitarian disaster, said Sir Michael. Unlike the US, Britain did not rely on a UN resolution for the legal authority.

However, the Attorney-Generals in 2001, the late Lord Williams of Mostyn and Lord Goldsmith, had raised concerns about the continuing legality because the humanitarian threat had faded, he said.

Sir William added that around February, he had worries that the Attorney-General would withdraw support. The Attorney-General had ruled that an assessment by the Joint Intelligence Committee in December 2000 that there was a continuing humanitarian risk was “not good enough”, and officials had to “go around the course a few times” before convincing him, Sir William added.

The inquiry will continue to hear from senior government officials, diplomats and military officers before Christmas. Current and former members of the Government, and their political advisers, are to be questioned in the new year. The report is not expected before the end of 2010.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6929604.ece

Eight Years Later, We Still Don’t Get It in Afghanistan
by Ted Rall

First published on Friday, October 16, 2009 by The State Journal-Register (Illinois)

Eight years. We’ve been in Afghanistan longer than any other war in American history. The party of the president who invaded Afghanistan has been repudiated at the polls. Yet we still haven’t altered the flawed strategy that allowed uneducated tribesmen with outdated weapons to defeat us year after year.

We haven’t learned a thing.

You can see the myopia in our leaders’ talking points. “Our goal (in Afghanistan) is to disrupt, dismantle, defeat al-Qaida and its extremist allies,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told ABC News’ “Nightline.” “But not every Taliban is al-Qaida. There are people who are Taliban, who are fighting because they get paid to fight. They have no other way of making a living.”

So few words. So much stupidity. Where to start? Here: Al-Qaida’s presence in Afghanistan in 2001 was negligible. Al-Qaida was a Pakistani phenomenon. Still is.

You’re welcome, have another: Not only is every Taliban not al-Qaida, there’s no such thing as a Taliban, as in: “That guy is a Taliban.” Members of the Taliban are called Talibs. You invade a country, send in 100,000 troops, presume to decide what form of government it should have and who should rule it — yet you still don’t know something as basic as what the members of the nation’s majority political movement are called? Still wondering why “they” hate us?

Last and not least, actually, while it’s true that the neo-Taliban (as South Asian experts call them) sometimes pay stipends to their fighters, it’s one hell of a stretch — not to mention reflective of an utter misunderstanding of the situation — to depict them as a bunch of greedy and/or desperate entrepreneurs trying to scrape together a few afghanis to make ends meet. (Afghanis are the national currency. Afghans are the people of Afghanistan. Neither the president nor news reporters know this.)

The neo-Taliban are merely the most recent reflection of a historical truth: Afghans set their political differences aside when it’s time to kill invaders. Nothing the United States can or will do can or will change what we are: a hostile occupation force. Nothing the U.S. can say will change why the Afghans think we’re there: to kill them and steal their land.

Eight years. Look, we were never going to win. No one does empire like the British, but the Afghans beat them like a drum. Next-door neighbor Russia knew all about the Afghans and their culture; they lost, too. There was no way we were going to outperform the English and the Russians. Still, even if America’s political class doesn’t read history, you’d think they might catch a clue about crushing the hopes and aspirations of ornery brown people over the course of eight years of occupation. At least by osmosis.

Of said clues, No. 1 If-You-Forget-Everything-Else-I-Tell-You-Remember-This-One Clue goes as follows: Hamid Karzai, appointed as a U.S. puppet in 2001, has never been considered the legitimate president of Afghanistan by the people who count — Afghans. We’ve done a lot to irritate the Afghans — slaughtering wedding parties, dropping depleted-uranium bombs on civilians, encouraging opium poppy cultivation — but the biggest single reason every single American soldier who died in Afghanistan has died for nothing is that they died fighting for Hamid Karzai.

Karzai’s Afghanistan is a disaster. The average Afghan has received zero assistance from the U.S.-led coalition, has seen zero improvement in his or her life, and has seen no reconstruction whatsoever. Most Afghans never even see American aid workers, who never leave their compounds in Kabul. Thirteen billion dollars have been allocated for aid to Afghanistan — but there is no evidence that a single cent has ever been spent. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies says the overall effort in Afghanistan “has been a nightmare; vast amounts have been wasted.”

“The (Afghan) judiciary is so weak,” reports the Times, “that Afghans increasingly turn to a shadow Taliban court system because, a senior military official said, ‘a lot of the rural people see the Taliban justice as at least something.’” Which is how the Taliban came to power in 1995-96. There was chaos. They brought order.

Di. Sas. Ter.

But President Barack Obama doesn’t understand a thing.

“Administration officials describe Mr. Obama as impatient with the civilian progress so far,” reports The New York Times. “The president is not satisfied on any of this,” a senior administration official tells the paper.

Mr. President: The Afghan war was lost the day the U.S. invaded. It was doomed to disaster the day it installed an illegitimate stooge. Not only is he a puppet, he is a puppet on a shoestring budget — so he can’t try to buy the kind of public support that other Afghan politicians have earned with bravery on the battlefield.

Now the U.S. is trying to retroactively legitimatize the Afghan pseudo-president. But it’s a sucker’s bet. Leaving even one U.S. soldier in Afghanistan means only one thing: more death.

Copyright © 2009 GateHouse Media, Inc.

Ted Rall is a columnist for Universal Press Syndicate.

The hurl that was hailed around the world

Max Gross, raving reporter for Xenox News, pauses his DVD of Fahrenheit 9/11 to fire another salvo in the global War on Error

''This is your farewell kiss, you dog. This is from the widows and orphans of Iraq".

Let those immortal words be the epitaph for the world’s most dangerous idiot, the former U.S. President, war criminal at large and all-round scumbag, George W. Bogus.

They were shouted by Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi as he hurled his shoes at Bogus during a PR exercise in Baghdad last year.

Arrested, jailed and tortured while in custody, al-Zaidi has now been released, an inspiration to all sane, civil and civilised human beings.

In 2003, as invading U.S. troops roared into Baghdad through a swathe of shock, awe, gruesome collateral damage and shredded international laws, the felling of a minor statue of Saddam Hussein was hailed as a symbol of democracy prevailing over dictatorship.

In terms of blood and treasure, it was a very, very expensive ego trip for the then Presidential incumbent, dumb Dubya, the consequences of which continue to leech the American economy to this day and - alongside that other U.S. war-of-choice in Afghanistan – helped trigger Amerikkka’s Global Financial Clusterfuck and the withering of its rotten economic roots.

In mere U.S. dollars, between November 2001 and December 2008, the Bogus administration flushed $US179 billion down the bloody drain in Afghanistan alone (NATO pissed away $US102 billion).

Not so much Operation Enduring Freedom as Enduring Cock-up.

Total greenbacks burned in U.S. “combat operations” in Afghanistan, 2002-2009: $US228.2 billion.

For just 2009, TV-addled U.S. taxpayers shredded around $US170 billion on Amerikkka’s losing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There goes your universal health care system right there, Yanks! Forget the toppling of a monument to a toppled dictator, how’s THAT for symbolism!

Yet the humble shoes thrown at the U.S. President by al-Zaidi on December 14 2008 are the far more potent symbols, of justice, free speech and the longing for genuine democracy, not the homogenised, snap-frozen, rubber-stamped U.S. McFreedomburger with a tub of blood and a serve of fried men, women and children on the side.

Al-Zaidi knew damn well about “Operation Iraq Freedom” and the Amerikkkan version of “democracy” that Bogus and his gang of zealots forced upon Iraq for, as academic Sami Ramadan wrote in the Guardian:

“He reported for al-Baghdadia TV on the poor and downtrodden victims of the U.S. war. He was first on the scene in Sadr City and wherever people suffered violence or severe deprivation. He not only followed U.S. Apache helicopters trails of death and destruction, but he was also among the first to report every 'sectarian' atrocity and the bombing of popular market places. He let the victims talk first."

And if there’s one thing the goons in Washingtoon don’t want the world to hear, it’s the voices of the victims of U.S. foreign policy.

According to The New York Times (July 20 2003), the then Defence Sickretary Donald Rumfuck personally approved over 50 U.S. air strikes in Iraq which were “expected to kill up to 50 innocent Iraqi civilians each”. Expected!

It WAS U.S. policy, in other words, to kill innocent civilians.

Rumfuck expected it, Dubya expected it, the entire neo-con crime gang expected it, especially Dick Shiney, the bloke who really put the vice into the Vice Presidency.

Around 650,000 civilians are estimated to have been killed in Iraq because of the U.S. invasion.

However, in 2007, British polling firm Opinion Research Business calculated the Iraqi dead at 1.22 million - roughly five times the number of people killed when the former Yugoslavia splintered into shitty little “independent” Balkan nations and neighbour fell upon neighbour like the raving lunatics in 28 Days Later (Tin-pot Kosovo? A nation? Give me a fecking break!).

In Afghanistan which, unlike Iraq, has never been a coherent, modernised, civil society, the number of “non-combatant” deaths is more difficult to pin down, not least because the U.S. does its best to dismiss and deny them (“We don’t do body counts,” remember?). What we do know is that Amerikkka’s war-of-choice in Afghanistan is responsible for the highest ratio of civilians-killed-per-bomb-dropped.

A U.N. report on civilian casualties says that more than 1,000 civilians were killed in just the first half of 2009, an increase of about 25% from the first half of 2008.

Most of the dead were – and continue to be - killed by U.S. and NATO air strikes. Substantial underreporting is a certainty and I’ve yet to see a recent total figure but back in 2002 Jonathan Steele (The Guardian,UK) reported that the (then) Afghanistan civilian death toll was somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000.

Eight years later, what do you reckon? No wonder the Yanks don’t want to “do” body counts.

Kind of puts paid to the obscene suggestion that the war has a "humanitarian" purpose.

As for the total number of maimed and traumatised men, women and children due to U.S. belligerence? It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it? And so we don’t, do we?

So who are the naughty terrorists now then, eh?

In Amerikkka, the most heavily propagandised nation in the world with its homogeneous fundamentalist FuxNews and Republicrat hydra, the mantra of the U.S. corporate media remains "the report cannot be independently verified". Indeed, the Bogus Administration’s determination to suppress the truth reflects that of the Communist regime of the long gone Soviet Union. Ah, McFreedom! Just smell those greasy fries and lies!

While civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to be covered-up in the Home of the Braindead and Land of the Freak, the rest of us watch aghast at the U.S. government's blatantly fraudulent words and deeds, even with golden boy Barack O’Bother sitting on the comfy cushion in the Oval Orifice.

Although he was smirking as security thugs beat al-Zaidi to the floor last December, surely even Dubya realised that his legacy was nought but a bloody shitstain on the pages of history?

Naaah, he’s a fuckwit. He had no idea of the significance of Muntaza al-Zaidi’s actions.

Showing the sole of one’s shoe is considered a sign of contempt and a grave insult in the Arab world, so al-Zaidi’s outburst contrasts ironically with the triumphal images of Iraqis using their footwear to beat Saddam’s statue six years ago.

Ah, the good old bad old daze, eh George!

While the faux felling of a minor statue - with out-of-towners specially trucked-in to dance around for the cameras - was orchestrated by U.S. forces, al-Zaidi’s gut-wrenching outrage during a glib photo-op for Bogus during a Presidential farewell was the real deal.

It was spontaneous, passionate and immediately recognised around the globe as the genuine cry for Iraqi freedom and justice that is was.

Freedom not merely from U.S. protégé, the former dictator of Iraq Saddam Hussein, but freedom from the current government cronies, from foreign occupation and from the U.S. military-industrial complex of which that fecking imbecile George W. Bogus was merely just another White House front man.

Al-Zaidi threw his shoes on behalf of the many millions of people around the world who urged the U.S. not to invade Iraq and who remain appalled that Bogus and the fanatics who aided and abetted his war crimes remain at large.

Muntazer al-Zaidi’s all too human reaction to the U.S. President’s disgusting pretensions and shameless mendacity was rewarded in March 2009 by Iraq's Central Criminal Court with a jail sentence of three years for “assaulting a foreign leader”.

On April 7 2009 al-Zaidi's sentence was reduced to one year. And now he’s out.

He deserves a medal!

Al-Zaidi let fly at a foreign “leader” who illegally invaded a sovereign nation, destroyed vital infrastructure, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and is responsible for the deaths of the thousands more killed in the resulting and ongoing civil war.

Bogus had just told reporters that while the war in Iraq was not over "it is decisively on its way to being won" when Al-Zaidi couldn’t stand listening to any more bullshit and jumped up to hurl abuse - and footwear - at the Tool from Texas.

In the words of Uday Al-Zaidi, Muntazer’s brother: “The shoe that did not fall on Bush fell on the American flag. This is a source of pride for us Arabs and Muslims. It reclaimed our dignity, even if just partially, from that criminal [George W. Bush]”.

According to another Iraqi observer: “Bush is a war criminal. I hope he has shoes thrown at him everywhere he goes until he is tried and executed”.

Muntazer’s other brother, Maitham al-Zaidi, has been quoted as saying that, being an Iraqi journalist, Muntazer had always feared he would die either at the hands al-Qaeda or U.S. forces, both equally indifferent to the pain and misery of innocent bystanders.

During Amerikkka’s catastrophic war in Vietnam, U.S forces applied MGR (“Mere Gook Rule"): "If it’s dead and it's Vietnamese, it’s VC [Vietcong]”. In Iraq and Afghanistan, they use MRR (Mere Raghead Rule): if it’s dead and its Arabic-looking, it’s al Qaeda, Taliban or whatever the hell Washingtoon requires.

But we all know who eventually won in Vietnam.

Still, U.S. troops have often targeted journalists who dare operate outside Amerikkka’s control. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a U.S. missile struck independent news agency Aljazeera's office in Baghdad, killing correspondent Tareq Ayyoub. And in the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, a U.S. air strike destroyed Aljazeera's Kabul office.

Neither of these attacks were "mistakes"; they occurred after Aljazeera had alerted U.S. forces to the locations of their offices. In fact, as Aljazeera reported on the war crimes U.S. forces were committing in Fallujah, the wretched Bogus regime planned to destroy the news agency's headquarters in Doha, even though the Qatar government is a U.S. collaborator, much like most Middle Eastern monarchs and despots.

In Afghanistan, as in Iraq, the lives of those brave men and women who attempt to report news contrary to Amerikkka’s global terraforming (i.e. terror forming) agenda are expendable.

A few days ago, the death of a respected senior Afghan journalist, Sultan Munadi, in a rescue mission to free a New York Times reporter, outraged Munadi’s colleagues.

Munadi was killed during a reckless British Special Forces raid on the house where the two men were being held, despite the fact that negotiations were under way that would have freed them.

Stephen Farrell, a reporter for The New York Times, was rescued unhurt but Munadi was shot as the Brits stormed in.

And so it goes. In the Bogus “war-on-terror” - rebranded by the castrated O’Botherers as the "overseas contingency operation" - neither side wants independent reporting of their cold-blooded, bloody activities.

Shoe-throwing Iraqi reporter Muntazer al-Zaidi, who worked for the Cairo-based Al-Baghdadia television network, was kidnapped in Baghdad and held by unknown captors for three days in 2007 and then detained for a day by Amerikkkan forces at the beginning of 2008

In the moments after his Baghdad protest, he had fully expected the U.S. President’s security detail to shoot him dead.

He was instead set upon on, beaten, arrested and incarcerated. He suffered a broken arm and ribs, as well as injuries to an eye and a leg, and can clearly be heard crying out in pain in available video [http://video.google.com.au/videosearch?hl=en&source=hp&q=Muntazer%20al-Zaidi&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv# ].

While detained, Muntazer says, he was also tortured. Medical reports show he “lost at least one tooth and has two broken ribs and a broken foot that have not healed.”

His eldest brother Uday says prison doctors repeatedly injected “unknown substances” into Muntazer against his will and his captors also burned him with “cigarettes behind his ears”.

Uday has told reporters that the torture was the result of his brother’s refusal to write and sign a letter of apology to President Bogus and to budding dictator al-Maliki, who stood alongside the Texas Tool when the shoes were hurled.

The corrupt and compromised Iraqi government called Muntazer al-Zaidi's behaviour "barbaric and ignominious".

What does it call the mass slaughter and destruction inflicted upon Iraq by the Amerikkkan invasion?

Ordinary Iraqis praised al-Zaidi, calling him "brave," and saying his protest was "awesome." Local media quoted police officers, professors, dentists, and shopkeepers, all saying that his actions reflected what every Iraqi wished to do.

Muntazer al-Zaidi is quite rightly lauded as a hero, not only throughout the Middle East but also around the world, by those of us who oppose the violence perpetrated and enabled by U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Images of the former U.S. President ducking Muntazer’s flying foot gear are displayed in graffiti throughout Baghdad, decorate T-shirts in Egypt, and appear in children's games in Turkey.

Free at last, his original sentence reduced “for good behaviour”, al-Zaidi will undergo medical treatment in Greece. In his own words: "At the time that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on television that he could not sleep without being reassured on my fate ... I was being tortured in the worst ways, beaten with electric cables and iron bars."

Apparently Muntazer plans to open an orphanage but may abandon reporting. His brother Dargham says an State-orchestrated embargo may block all-Zaidi's return to journalism.

Dargham al-Zaidi says Muntazer “is sure that he will be turned away or boycotted by government officials. Rather, he told me he is interested in working in a humanitarian organisation or becoming an activist for women's and orphans' rights."

However, the BBC reports that the manager of al-Baghdadiya TV (which continued to pay Zaidi's salary during his imprisonment) says al-Zaidi will return to work there.

My guess is that, despite the global support for his honourable actions, that Muntazer has probably had his fill of reporting the U.S.-fuelled horrors that continue with depressing impunity under the benign gaze of current incumbent Barack O’Bother.

In Iraq in August, all but ignored by the mainstream media, political violence (i.e. sectarian and ethnic violence) killed 456 Iraqis, the highest monthly death toll since July 2008.

In Afghanistan, another protégé of failed U.S. foreign policy, the incompetent, venal and corrupt Hamid Karzai - handpicked for his job by the Bogus Administration - claims to have been re-elected in a process generally acknowledged by independent observers as “fraud en masse”. Ballots at 10 per cent of the polling stations will be audited and recounted because of the attempted scam.

Election workers loyal to Karzai were sprung setting up hundreds of fake polling sites where nobody voted but still registered hundreds of thousands of ballots towards Karzai's “re-election”. I guess they’ve studied the Republican strategy that handed Dubya his stint in the Big Chair.

As in Iraq, current front man for America’s military and money moguls, President O’Bother, continues the U.S. onslaught in Afghanistan that George W. Bogus began, with more foreign troops, more missile strikes and more civilian deaths.

As a result of Amerikkka’s Afghan adventure, the number of registered Afghan refugees languishing in Iran and Pakistan right now is 3 million.

Last week, the religious fundamentalist Taliban, ousted from power eight years ago but surging back, couldn’t believe their ongoing luck when U.S. proxies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) slaughtered and maimed over 100 people in air strikes in the northern province of Kunduz.

In the battle for hearts and minds in Afghanistan, the U.S. and its Europeans stooges continue to do the Talib’s work for them.

While the corrupt Hamid Karzai “rules” behind sandbags in Kabul – and the O’Bother administration attempts to legitimise the electoral swindle - the resurgent Taliban are entrenched in the northern provinces and are establishing themselves along the routes through which NATO's supply lines pass from Russia and Central Asian states.

The Talibs have set up significant public infrastructure in parts of Afghanistan, with their own courts and even ombudsmen who villagers can bring their problems to.

According to a new map released this week by the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS), "The Taliban now have a permanent presence in 80% of Afghanistan, up from 72% in November 2008.”

They are winning indigenous hearts and minds in ways the U.S. and its Euro proxies cannot hope to comprehend.

Ironically, if you swap the label ''Taliban'' for ''mujahideen'' you have an exact copy of what the Russians confronted 25 years ago.

Indeed, anti-tank mines provided by the U.S. for jihadis to fight Russians then are being used against Amerikkkan and NATO troops now.

The Talibs are, in fact, replaying a tactic used to great effect by the Afghan mujahideen in the U.S. sponsored jihad against Soviet forces in the 1980s.

In a war that George W. Bogus “launched with a slogan from a comic book” (to quote Crikey.com.au’s Jeff Sparrow), the Talibs know victory is just a matter or time.

At least the fecking Russians had sense enough to know when to quit, although by then their economy was floundering too, leading to the demise of the Soviet Union.

I suspect the badly compromised U.S. President Barack O’Bother knows a change IS gonna come, like it or not.

As for the missing Mr Bin Laden, although he is still on the FBI’s website of “most wanted” terrorists the Saudi-born al-Qaeda leader is apparently NOT wanted for the 9/11 attacks, the U.S.S. Cole bombing, or anything else. The FBI web page states old has-Bin Laden is “a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world" but there’s no mention of the 9/11 hijackings. And despite a $US50 million bounty on his head, there hasn’t been a credible lead on Osama Bin Laden’s whereabouts in years.

So, tell me again: why are we still in Afghanistan?

And speaking of 9/11, we didn’t need “Osama’s” latest dubious anniversary message to know that the attacks were prompted – at least to some degree - by U.S. "support to your Israeli allies who occupy our land of Palestine".

Israel’s domestic crimes and atrocities against indigenous Arabs have continued unabated, unpunished and virtually unremarked in the mainstream “Western” media for more than 60 years. So let’s not even mention its unilateral terrorist attacks on neighbouring nations, shall we?

And before some mensch, kvetch, gonif or goyim starts whining about my “anti-semitism”, permit me to quote Hussam Abuayish, a resident of Gaza: ''I'm not against Jews, I'm against an occupying Israel.''

But 8 years after 9/11, the site in Manhattan known as Ground Zero is still just a big fecking hole in the ground.


A design for something called “Freedom Tower” was unveiled in 2005, a mighty edifice envisioned to soar 541 metres (or, in backward U.S. measurement, 1776 feet, apparently a subtle reference to the year the Declaration of Independence was signed – the kind of independence Amerikkka denies Iraq and Afghanistan).

Sadly, the New York Police Department bagged the building, saying it would be too vulnerable to “truck-bomb attacks”.

Then, this year, the inspiring, star-spangled, all-American, we-are-the-champions name was changed to the innocuous “World Trade Centre One” because of fears that “Freedom Tower” would attract terrorists.

So much for “Bring it on,” eh?

And if New Yorkers – and other non-combatants in and out of the USA – feel a tad anxious, apprehensive and afraid of random acts of violence perpetrated by foreigners pursuing ideological agendas, perhaps they should pause a moment and spare a thought for the millions of Iraqi’s, Afghans and Palestinians (to name but a few) who live this way every day. And then those same hypothetical New Yorkers (and others) should examine the historic words and deeds of successive U.S. Republicrat governments and ask themselves: why is so much innocent blood on OUR hands?

Of all the sickening outrages, brazen lies and scandals of the Bogus Bush/Shiney Cheney years, the worst is possibly the fact that they were not impeached, convicted, tarred, feathered and ridden out of Washingtoon on a rail.

Nonetheless, the option remains for putting these creeps on trial for war crimes.

Justice must not only BE done, it must be SEEN to be done. Come on Yanks, DO it!

In the recent words of good ol’ boy Republican Senator Jim Clyburn, a senior member of the South Carolina delegation, 'Son, always remember that silence gives consent.'

I don’t know whether old Jim is a shrieking, in-bred xenophobe like most of his tribe – who still haven’t gotten over losing the Civil War, never mind the fact that a “black man” is their President - but at least he had sense enough to acknowledge that much.

As for the shoes that were hurled in Baghdad and hailed around the world, the company that produced them is going gang-busters. The style that Muntazer al-Zaidi lobbed has been renamed and re-registered under the delightful brand name “Bye-Bye Bush”.

Since al-Zaidi’s protest and arrest in December 2008, the manufacturer - based in Istanbul (not Constantinople) - has sold more than 500,000 pairs.

And, finally, one last quote for the day, boyz and grrls:

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare” - James Madison, Political Observations, 1795

This was Max Gross retorting for the new, improved Xenox News, emerging, surging and wishing all Xenox News readers a gezunt dir in pupik. L'chaim!