After the Zionist attack on Lebanon, the Sanaa-based Yemeni daily Al-Thawra published an interesting piece of information. It said that Israel had transferred three warships from its military base on Eritrea’s Dahlak Island on the Red Sea to support their military operations against Lebanon.

Official sources noted that Israel is creating the biggest naval base outside Israel on the Dahlak Island.

If Israel asks, the US would "seriously consider" granting the Defense Ministry additional financial assistance because of the huge expenses incurred during the war in Lebanon, a high-ranking US diplomat revealed Wednesday.

For the first five months of the year 2000 the otherwise quiet Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, Ill., was wracked by a stormy debate over censorship, centering around my book Final Judgment, which charges Israeli involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.The frenzy began when a local library patron, Christopher Bollyn, tried to donate a copy to the Schaumburg Township District Library (STDL). Trained in Middle East studies, Bollyn is fluent in Hebrew and Arabic, among other languages. In addition, his late mother was one of the library’s founders, his wife was a volunteer at the library, and Bollyn himself had worked at the library as a young man. Despite all this, the library rejected the donation.

In Saddam Hussein’s war crimes trial for the 1988 Iraqi “Anfal” campaign that gassed Kurdish villages, his defense lawyers have argued that Iraqi forces were really attempting to strike Iranian forces and the Iraqi Kurdish pesh merga militias that were in and supported by the hamlets. In other words, the lawyers are asserting that the innocent Kurds who were killed were collateral damage in an effort by the Iraqi government to rid its territory of Iranian fighters and their Kurdish allies during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. Curiously, this defense sounds similar to Israel’s defense of killing more than one thousand Lebanese and perpetrating widespread destruction of Shi’ite neighborhoods, apartment houses, water services, electrical power stations, ports, factories, roads, and bridges in Lebanon in its efforts to punish Hezbollah. Yet Saddam Hussein is on trial for war crimes and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is still in office.

A “North American Union” based upon the European Union would be a disaster for the United States, Canada and Mexico, certainly in relation to the continual pressures of big government that present themselves from supranational agreements. The aforementioned countries would possess freedom and liberty by remaining as sovereign nations, freely and willingly seeking to co-exist with their neighbours. Government always grows. This fact is so axiomatic that it’s almost an iron law. There is no guarantee that the North American Cooperative Security Act would, or could, remain in its current limited form.

Mustafa Barzani, the legendary Kurdish leader, was a KGB agent code-named "RAIS," and the Kurdish armed revolution he started Sept. 11, 1961, was in reality a KGB covert action to destabilize Western interests in the Middle East and put additional pressure on the Kassim government of Iraq.

Dear Editor :

It was rather amazing to see the article from Dana Milbank (August 29) trashing professors Walt and Mearsheimer for simply speaking about the power of the Israel lobby in our government's disastrous foreign policy.

The distortions in Milbank's article are obvious to anyone who attended or watched the event at the National Press Club on Monday. I watcxhed the event on C-SPAN and it is available for the record on cspan.org so that people can judge for themselves whether Milbank or the two professors are correct. There is indeed a significant body of evidence in support of the power of the lobby even from quotes from the lobby itself.

Howard Friedman, President of AIPAC, titled his letter of July 30, 2006 to friends and supporters of AIPAC "Look what you've done". He explained: "Israel is fighting a pivotal war for its life...the expected chorus of international condemnation of Israel's actions. ..only ONE nation in the world came out and flatly declared: Let Israel finish the job.. That nation is the United States of America--and the reason it had such a clear, unambiguous view of the situation is YOU and the rest of America Jewry....How do we do it? ... decades of long hard work which never ends."

The vicious attack by Milbank on the two scholars merely proves the thesis that there are people in this country who are so fixated on supporting Zionism, right or wrong, even against Israeli and American public interests, that they are willing to do anything including trying to "shoot the messenger".

Mazin Qumsiyeh

When the neocons launched the Bush administration’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and announced plans for invading Syria and Iran, I labeled Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Rice "the five Morons." With the passage of time I see that I over-estimated their mental capabilities.

Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt address a meeting in Washington, DC, hosted by the Council on American Islamic Relations. Video of C- Span television broadcast. Length: 90 minutes. (Click on red start button.) The two scholars discuss the powerful pro-Israel Lobby and its impact on US policy in the Middle East, some lessons of the recent conflict in Lebanon, and more. They reaffirm key points made in their much-discussed essay, “The Israel Lobby," published in March in the London Review of Books.

On August 28, 2006, mobile units of Mujahideen and diversion groups of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria's Armed Forces attacked Russian invaders and their stooges in the Chechen capital of Jokhar and in southern Chechnya, Kavkaz Center sources in the Chechen Military Command report.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will be fined for lying about his continuing education to keep his medical license, and have to obtain the medical education that Tennessee requires of doctors with active licenses.

New Frontier, a Colorado-based producer of pornographic films, disclosed Tuesday that board member and hedge fund manager Warren Lichtenstein was interested in leading a leveraged buyout of the company.

Two lawyers who brought the first lawsuit against the Bush administration,Verizon and AT&T for illegally examining the phone records of virtually every American citizen will announce today that they are serving subpoenas on the Bush White House and on Verizon.

One might think that after all the post-mortems on politicization of intelligence leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, members of the US Congress might have learned a few things about not rushing in where angels fear to tread. But you would be wrong, if a recent report from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is any example. Last Wednesday, Pete Hoekstra, a Republican congressman from Michigan and chairman of the committee, released a report, "Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States". The not very subtle implication was that those who don't agree Iran is a threat are fools.

President Bush launched an initiative this month to combat international kleptocracy, the sort of high-level corruption by foreign officials that he called "a grave and corrosive abuse of power" that "threatens our national interest and violates our values." The plan, he said, would be "a critical component of our freedom agenda."

Three weeks later, the White House is making arrangements to host the leader of Kazakhstan, an autocrat who runs a nation that is anything but free and who has been accused by U.S. prosecutors of pocketing the bulk of $78 million in bribes from an American businessman. Not only will President Nursultan Nazarbayev visit the White House, people involved say, but he also will travel to the Bush family compound in Maine.

Nazarbayev's upcoming visit, according to analysts and officials, offers a case study in the competing priorities of the Bush administration at a time when the president has vowed to fight for democracy and against corruption around the globe. Nazarbayev has banned opposition parties, intimidated the press and profited from his post, according to the U.S. government. He also sits atop massive oil reserves that have helped open doors in Washington, D.C.

The latest big lie unveiled by Washington’s neoconservatives are the poisonous terms, "Islamo-Fascists" and "Islamic Fascists." They are the new, hot buzzwords among America’s far right and Christian fundamentalists.

Pat Buchanan, currently riding high in the New York Times bestseller list with his book The Third World Invasion, told the Alex Jones Show that if there was another terror attack in the US, George W. Bush would be responsible due to his refusal to control the borders and that his place in history would be finished.

To: The Honorable Judges of the United States Supreme Court and for all Advocates of preserving the cultural heritages of humanity



According to the news sources, a Rhode Island lawyer has turned to the Iranian collections of leading US museums to seek compensation for American victims of Middle East suicide bombers. The reasoning being that Hamas, the terrorist group guilty for such atrocity, is partially financed by Islamic regime that controls Iran. He wants the University of Chicago to surrender a treasure trove of ancient Persian artifacts to survivors. We know that a vast international fight is being wedged against terrorism and believe that every action capable of stopping stop it should be adopted. Nevertheless, we do not consider this legal action anything tuned to that goal. It only seeks to liquidate the non-transferable historical assets of a country into a source of material satisfaction of a number of people who deserve all the sympathy and help of every one of us. There are actually two points in this legal action that deserve special consideration. First of all, in the words of the US President, we should not punish the Iranian people for whatever the Islamic regime of Iran is doing on the international arena. This is a nation kept under horrendous captivity that needs international sympathy rather than punishment. Secondly, plundering this nation's cultural heritage, especially by taking them from their safe public and educational holding places in museums and universities and giving them to private individuals should be consider as a crime against the cultural values of the whole civilized world. We strongly protest against this irrational move and hope that no fair deciding authority would create such an ugly precedence that only reminds us of Hitler's decision to confiscate the cultural treasures of embattled nations.

The International Committee to Save the Archeological Sites of Pasagardae

Shokooh Mirzadegi (Writer)
Dr. Esmail Nooriala (Writer)
And thousands of signatories

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday rejected a state inquiry into the government's handling of the war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, despite widespread calls for a broad, independent investigation. Instead, he authorized a less-powerful probe to be headed by a former head of the Mossad spy agency. A state inquiry would have the authority to dismiss top officials.

MUNCIE, Ind. — He supports tax cuts and the war in Iraq. He opposes stem cell research and the Medicare drug plan. He is a master of his movement’s medium, talk radio. Jesus Christ is his personal savior and Ronald Reagan his political idol.

Conjure what might be called the perfect conservative, and chances are he would look a lot like Representative Mike Pence, the Indiana Republican who in just three terms has turned 100 House allies into a vanguard and himself into one of his party’s rising stars.

Or that was the case until this spring when he sought compromise in the rancorous immigration debate. His complicated plan would strengthen border security and send illegal immigrants home, but let most of them quickly return. Since then, Mr. Pence — named last year’s Man of the Year by the conservative weekly Human Events — has looked to some conservatives like this year’s Benedict Arnold. They say he has lent his conservative prestige to a form of liberal amnesty.

Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum called his plan “a sick joke.” Richard A. Viguerie, the direct-mail pioneer, threatened to punish politicians who supported it. Pat Buchanan, editor of The American Conservative, likened the betrayal to a scene from “The Godfather.”

By Election Day, how many Republican candidates will have come out against the Iraq war or distanced themselves from the administration's policies?

August 2006 will be remembered as a watershed in the politics of Iraq. It is the month in which a majority of Americans told pollsters that the struggle for Iraq was not connected to the larger war on terrorism. They thus renounced a proposition the administration has pushed relentlessly since it began making the case four years ago to invade Iraq.

That poll finding, from a New York Times-CBS News survey, came to life on the campaign trail when Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.), one of the most articulate supporters of the war, announced last Thursday that he favored a time frame for withdrawing troops.

Republican Sen. John McCain says he would consider speaking at Bob Jones University, a school he criticized during the 2000 presidential campaign for its ban on interracial dating and anti-Catholic views.

"I can't remember when I've turned down a speaking invitation. I think I'd have to look at it," McCain told The State newspaper in South Carolina.

The country did away with the draft 33 years ago, but President Bush has brought it back - without the trappings of debate or conscription - through the White House back door.

Last week, the president authorized the Marine Corps to recall as many as 2,500 inactive reserves at a time to reinforce the 138,000 troops in Iraq, and also those in Afghanistan. About 14,000 inactive Army reservists already have gotten the involuntary call-up notice. As recently as two months ago, Pentagon leaders were talking about drawing down U.S. forces and beginning to turn over control to the Iraqi army. Like so many other of the administration's plans for the Iraq War, reducing the U.S. military presence hasn't gone anything like it was supposed to go.

In Iraq, the world’s only superpower finds itself mired in a conflict that it cannot win. History’s mightiest military has been unable to defeat an enemy force of perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 insurgents equipped with post-World War II vintage assault rifles and anti-tank weapons.

In Gaza and southern Lebanon, the Middle East’s mightiest military also finds itself locked in combat with adversaries that it cannot defeat. Despite weeks of bitter fighting, the IDF’s Merkava tanks, F-16 fighter-bombers, and missile-launching unmanned aerial vehicles failed to suppress, much less eliminate, the armed resistance of Hamas and Hezbollah.

What are we to make of this? How is it that the seemingly weak and primitive are able to frustrate modern armies only recently viewed as all but invincible? What do the parallel tribulations—and embarrassments—of the United States and Israel have to tell us about war and politics in the 21st century? In short, what’s going on here?

You know the War Party is in trouble when a prominent Republican like Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska) starts criticizing their policies of endless war and repression on the home front, as in this Fox News interview. Notice how the Fox News war-bot, Chris Wallace, tries to trap him in a partisan vise:

"Let's go over some of your positions and put them up on the screen. You favor direct talks with Iran, Syria and Hamas. Three weeks ago you called for an immediate truce with Hezbollah, saying the Israeli offensive was hurting our standing in the Middle East. You've been very critical, as we've just heard, of U.S. policy in Iraq. And you have problems with NSA wiretaps and parts of the Patriot Act. When it comes to national security, are you closer to John Kerry than you are to George W. Bush?"

The United States Government has been financing research on a genetic engineering technology which, when commercialized, will give its owners the power to control the food seed of entire nations or regions. The Government has been working quietly on this technology since 1983. Now, the little-known company that has been working in this genetic research with the Government’s US Department of Agriculture-- Delta & Pine Land-- is about to become part of the world’s largest supplier of patented genetically-modified seeds (GMO), Monsanto Corporation of St. Louis, Missouri.

Relations between Monsanto, Delta & Pine Land and the USDA, on closer scrutiny, show the deep and dark side of the much-heralded genetic revolution in agriculture. It proves deep-held suspicions that the Gene Revolution is not about ‘solving the world hunger problem’ as its advocates claim. It’s about handing over control of the seeds for mankind’s basic food supply—rice, corn, soybeans, wheat, even fruit, vegetables and cotton—to privately owned corporations. Once the seeds and their use are patented and controlled by one or several private agribusiness multinationals, it will be they who can decide whether or not a particular customer—let’s say for argument, China or Brazil or India or Japan—whether they will or won’t get the patented seeds from Monsanto, or from one of its licensee GMO partners like Bayer Crop Sciences, Syngenta or DuPont’s Pioneer Hi-Bred International.

"Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the world-island; Who rules the world-island controls the world."

Sir Halford John Mackinder

Sir Halford Mackinder in 1904 has stipulated that what was coined as the ‘pivotal area’ or later on what developed into the theory of the ‘heartland’ was the area of the Eurasia that essentially formed the pivotally important core of world—originally this was considered Eastern Europe, but with time and as modern geo-strategic realization developed the area started shifting and expanding eastwards towards or including vast areas in the east towards the Black Sea, the Caspian Basin, and Central Asia. Whoever should some to control these lands would dominate all Eurasia and could ultimately master the world. This concept is of great, but concealed, geo-strategic importance today as much as it was during World War II when the Germans had a whole group of individuals dedicated to Mackinder’s concepts—during those times the Germans too tried to advance to the oil fields of Central Asia as the United States now does. Zbigniew Brzezinski, an influential former U.S. National Security Advisor, has even wrote greatly about this area and how for the very first time in human history there exists a superpower that is not from the Eurasian landmass which must set a goal of controlling the Eurasian heartland to insure its monopoly on dominance in his book ‘American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives.’

Now, fast tracking to modern events unfolding in the Balkans, the Middle East and Central Asia it seems that Sir Halford Mackinder stipulations are hauntingly true as the world’s lone superpower—now a hyperpower as Hubert Védrine the former French Minister of Foreign Affairs originally termed it—the United States is resolute on establishing dominance over this area in a chess game that involves the heir to the Soviet Union—the post-Soviet Russian Federation—the Peoples’ Republic of China, and Iran.

In a major blow to one of the most infamous war profiteers operating in Iraq, Afghanistan and New Orleans, a federal appeals court has ruled that a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the mercenary firm Blackwater USA can proceed in North Carolina's state courts. The suit was brought by the families of the four Blackwater contractors ambushed and killed in Falluja, Iraq, on March 31, 2004. Blackwater had tried to have the case dismissed or moved to federal court.

"I've been bawling ever since I've heard the decision," says Katy Helvenston, whose son Scott was killed in Falluja, his charred body hung from a bridge. "It's been overwhelming. I am so glad that they ruled this way. Blackwater has stalled and stalled. Look at the hundreds of millions of dollars in profits in Iraq and New Orleans they've made since my son was killed. It's time to go to trial and let the chips fall where they may."

The lawsuit, filed in January 2005, alleges that Blackwater cut corners in the interest of profits, leading to the brutal deaths of the four men: Scott Helvenston, Jerko "Jerry" Zovko, Mike Teague and Wes Batalona. "It has now been more than a year and a half since the lawsuit was filed, and Blackwater has managed to stall and frustrate the litigation," Marc Miles, an attorney for the families, told me. "I anticipate that this matter will now be on a fast track to trial, and believe that a jury will ultimately find Blackwater liable for its wrongful conduct in causing the deaths of these four Americans."

Citizens can and should play an active role in shaping the future of our global economy. Currently, the rules of the global economy are written by institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. These institutions have written global policy with input mainly from multinational corporations and very little input from citizens. Here are some of the ways in which we can work together to reform global trade rules, demand that corporations are accountable to people's needs, build strong and free labor and promote fair and environmentally sustainable alternatives. Our various campaigns seek to build alternatives to the economic status quo by linking global analysis with local action. Please help us spread the message that the current system does not have to be tolerated--we can and must change it!

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, constructed to transport Caspian Sea oil from the Azerbaijani capital of Baku to the Turkish terminal in Ceyhan on the banks of the Mediterranean, was inaugurated amid great fanfare in July. This 4-billion dollar pipeline redraws the resource and geopolitical map of the region and paves the way for further regional projects of scale.

On May 25 2005 the Baku pumping station opened, signaling the launch of the BTC. More than a year later, on July 13 2006 the opening ceremonies at the other end of the pipeline in Ceyhan finalized its construction, a few days after the first litres of black gold arrived in the Mediterranean from the Caspian. The Turkish, Azerbaijani and Georgian presidents—Ahmed Necdet Sezer, Ilham Aliyev and Mikheil Saakashvili respectively—met at the Turkish station in Ceyhan for the inauguration of the BTC in the presence of Turkish deputies and representatives from 32 nations.Representatives from the eleven companies holding stakes in the BTC consortium, which is responsible for the construction and management of the pipeline, attended the ceremony: British Petroleum (BP), the consortium manager, (30.1%), the Azerbaijani national oil company SOCAR (25%), the American company Unocal (8.9%), Norway’s Statoil (8.7%), Turkish TPAO (6.5%), Italian ENI (5%), French Total (5%), ConocoPhillips (2.5%), Amerada Hess (2.35%), the Japanese group Itoku (3.4%) and Inpex (2.5%).

What eventually occurred as 1940 became 1941 was that BSC [British Security Coordination] became a huge secret agency of nationwide news manipulation and black propaganda. Pro-British and anti-German stories were planted in American newspapers and broadcast on American radio stations, and simultaneously a campaign of harassment and denigration was set in motion against those organisations perceived to be pro-Nazi or virulently isolationist.... The aim was to change the minds of an entire population: to make the people of America think that joining the war in Europe was a "good thing" and thereby free Roosevelt to act without fear of censure from Congress or at the polls in an election.

The Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy has prepared a report to the House Select Committee on Intelligence that is sharply critical of US intelligence, implying that intelligence agencies are unwilling to draw the appropriate lessons about Iran. There were stories about this subject in the Washington Post and the New York Times on August 24. The original document can be found here.

A high-explosive Iraqi Resistance bomb went at about 4 pm on Saturday, August 26, by a four-wheel drive vehicle belonging to the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on the al-Jadiriyah Bridge leading to the Americans' top-security district around the Republican Palace that they have dubbed the "Green Zone" in Baghdad.

The majority of U.S. service members charged in the unlawful deaths of Iraqi civilians have been acquitted, found guilty of relatively minor offenses or given administrative punishments without trials, according to a Washington Post review of concluded military cases. Charges against some of the troops were dropped completely.

I think Rob Reiner is right. Mel Gibson should 'come clean' and admit anti-Semitism. Not just the one drunken incident the other day, when he shared with a Jewish cop his thoughts on who is to blame for most of the wars in the world. Nor just in the 'Passion of Christ' where he created the impression that Jews were responsible for Jesus' death. No, he should admit to rampant, all-trandescenting anti-Semitism.

Scores of American troops are deserting - even from the front line in Iraq. But where have they gone? And why isn't the US Army after them? Peter Laufer tracked down four of the deserters.

Before he died in February 2005, the major American intellectual Sam Francis assembled and edited an impressively erudite new collection of essays that has just now been published under the title of Race and the American Prospect. Its 446 pages consist of contributions by Sam and 14 other heretical authors, including Wayne Lutton's informative history of immigration, Richard Lynn's useful summary of "Racial Differences in Intelligence, Personality, and Behavior", Kevin Lamb's learned "The Reality of Race", and Jared Taylor's insightful "The Racial Revolution".

"How goes the empire?" Perhaps Tony Blair will be tempted to repeat King George V's dying words as he prepares to shuffle off his own political coil. It is a measure of the extent to which the prime minister's foreign policy has restored imperialism to the political vocabulary of the country that, when his legacy is debated, the state of empire will be the main issue.

The answer is that it goes pretty badly. The new imperialism which will for ever be linked to the names Bush and Blair has taken just five years to hit the buffers of popular opposition and moral ignominy. Imperialism has moved from the realm of political jargon to be the central issue of our time - and is seen as such everywhere beyond the ramparts of the neoconservative-New Labour alliance.

Five years ago, I wrote a column about the unknown Holocaust in Ukraine. I was shocked to receive a flood of mail from young Americans and Canadians of Ukrainian descent telling me that until they read my article, they knew nothing of the 1932–33 genocide in which Stalin's regime murdered 7 million Ukrainians and sent 2 million to concentration camps.

How, I wondered, could such historical amnesia afflict so many young North-American Ukrainians? For Jews and Armenians, the genocides their people suffered are vivid, living memories that influence their daily lives. Yet today, on the 70th anniversary of the destruction of a quarter of Ukraine's population, this titanic crime has almost vanished into history's black hole.

The depraved international cabal that has a stranglehold on American and British political and financial power constitutes a new type of Totalitarianism, pillaging the world through barbaric annihilation and creating a World Police State.