2011 June 07 « Aletho News

BBC hides royal wedding coverage costs

Press TV – June 7, 2011

The BBC has used a “controversial exemption” in Britain’s regulations to avoid revealing the astronomical costs of the royal wedding coverage and the number of complaints it received on the day.

British anti-monarchy campaign group Republic hit out at the broadcaster for resorting to the exception in the Freedom of Information Act saying it is going to appeal to the Information Commissioner’s Office to lift the exemption.

“The BBC has been widely criticised for misjudging the level of interest in the royal wedding and was predicted to receive an unprecedented number of complaints about its non-stop, wall-to-wall coverage,” Republic said on its website.

The group said the BBC allocated “vast sums of resources” to the royal wedding while “other areas of the corporation’s output had fallen victim to funding cuts”.

“Over a thousand staff were reportedly sent to cover the wedding, more than five times the number of commercial rival Sky,” Republic said.

The Freedom of Information Act allows the BBC to withhold information that is related to “journalism, art or literature” but the state broadcaster’s insistence on keeping the royal wedding costs secret has raised concerns that it has gone out of its way to accredit a monarchy many people do not bother about.

“The only conclusion we can draw is that the BBC has something very embarrassing to hide. There is a very significant public interest in knowing how licence fee-payers’ money is spent, particularly when it comes to highly controversial issues such as the monarchy,” Republic’s campaign manager Graham Smith said.

Smith also said the broadcaster’s royal wedding coverage is under question as its attitude toward the event has reportedly angered many of the people who pay license fees to keep the corporation running.

“An exemption introduced to protect the independence of the BBC was not intended to shield the corporation from legitimate scrutiny. The BBC must be seen to be impartial and must be seen to be making appropriate decisions based on viewer feedback. If tens of millions of pounds of licence fee payers’ money was spent on the wedding, if thousands of viewers lodged complaints about the BBC’s coverage, clearly the licence fee payer has the right to know,” he said.

Smith went on to attack the BBC for turning into the public relations apparatus for the monarchy.

“Throughout its royal wedding coverage the BBC let itself be co-opted into the Palace PR machine. It’s time for the BBC to come clean, admit its mistake and move toward more objective and proportionate coverage of royal events,” he added.

This comes as Republic had earlier warned in another article on its website that the BBC did not present an impartial picture of the event to the public.

“While we accept that the royal wedding is a news story that the BBC, and other broadcasters, need to report, we believe the degree, style and substance of the BBC’s coverage is biased in favour of the monarchy,” the campaign group said.

June 7, 2011 Posted by aletho | Supremacism, Social Darwinism | 1 Comment

The Pacification Industry

Apartheid Wall Contractor to Provide Security at African Cup

By JIMMY JOHNSON | CounterPunch | June 7, 2011

Yehud, Israel-based Magal Security Systems on 31 May was awarded a contract to provide security for the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) football championships. The $35.5 million contract covers a surveillance system developed for and deployed at several Israeli West Bank settlements and is just the latest military and security contract for Israeli firms in the President Teodoro Obiang’s Equatorial Guinean dictatorship. The contract also marks another example of the integration of Israel’s “Pacification Industry” – the export of the tools and techniques of Palestinian dispossession – with the securitization of international ‘mega-events’ such as the World Cup and Olympics.

Magal is contracted to provide its Fortis surveillance system to the stadiums and team housing for the 2012 AFCON continental football championship in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. According to WhoProfits.org , the same Fortis system is deployed in the illegal West Bank settlements of: Ariel, Alfei Menashe, Karnei Shomron, Shilo, Giva Binyamin, Tzofim, Shaked and Givat Ze’ev. Further, “the company won 80% of the bids published by the Israeli Ministry of Defense for the installation of intrusion detection systems” along the wall of separation built throughout the West Bank. Magal also “supplied the perimeter intrusion detection system for fences around the Gaza Strip.”

Magal is the second Israeli firm this year to get a contract with the Obiang regime in Equatorial Guinea after Israel Shipyards’ $100 million contract for Saar-4 naval corvettes. Israel has developed a close military relationship with Obiang over the past decade despite over thirty years of his rule having some of the world’s worst human rights and corruption records. Transparency International routinely ranks Obiang’s government as one of the world’s ten most corrupt, and the United Nations working group on mercenaries, Amnesty International, and others have documented crackdowns on press freedom, arbitrary detentions, unfair trials, extrajudicial executions, forced evictions, systemic torture and more. None of this has stopped Israel – nor France, Russia, USA and Ukraine – from supplying Obiang’s military and security forces with arms and surveillance equipment. Israeli arms firms such as Aeronautics Defense Systems and Israel Military Industries have won contracts for tens of millions of dollars, often brokered through Yardena Ovadia, an Israeli businesswoman who is also Equatorial Guinea’s honorary consul to Israel.

International ‘mega-events’ have long histories of unjust practices. Over 9,000 homeless persons, primarily ethnic minorities, were arrested during the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. 720,000 residents were evicted from their homes in Seoul to make way for the 1988 Olympics. Over 1.25 million people were displaced due to urban redevelopment for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Hundreds of Roma were displaced in Athens prior to the 2004 Olympics. More recently many thousands were evicted in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban and elsewhere prior to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Since February of this year demolitions have begun in Rio de Janeiro favelas in the run-up to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics (though most displacement in Rio will likely be through skyrocketing housing costs during the mega-event real estate bubble). Barring political changes, this trend of evictions and mega-events will continue in Equatorial Guinea. The Obiang regime has evicted many hundreds of families in recent years, especially in the port city of Bata, without providing compensation or alternative housing.

Stifling or hiding resistance to these mass displacements is only one aspect of the securitization of mega-events. The memories of the 1972 Munich Games and the 1996 bombing in Atlanta are combined with the US-led “War on Terror” to reinforce the idea that extensive security preparations are necessary for a ‘successful’ event. Israel’s decades of experience in combating Palestinian resistance – armed and unarmed – to dispossession have made it the ‘go-to’ destination for the expertise seen as necessary. Ben Gurion University professor Neve Gordon calls Israel the world’s “homeland security capital.”

In addition to Magal, many other Israeli firms have been involved in securing mega-events. Israeli drones were deployed at the 1996 G7 conference in Paris, 2006 G8 summit in Moscow, 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, and have been procured by the Rio de Janeiro Federal Police to surveil the favelas and secure preparations for the World Cup and Olympic Games. Private security firm International Security and Defense Systems won security contracts for the 2000 Sydney, 2004 Athens, and 2008 Beijing Olympics. Controp won surveillance contracts for the 2004 Athens Olympics and Israeli National and Border Police helped to train Athens and Beijing police in “counter-terror” and crowd control prior to their Olympic spectacles. The list goes on and on.

In November 2010 Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Brazil’s Chief of Security in the Defense Ministry Amir Kain signed a security cooperation agreement. The Israeli daily Ma’ariv noted the agreement was signed “mainly in order to secure the 2014 Football World Cup that will be held there, as well as the 2016 Olympics.” Like Magal, the main Israeli arms and security contractors in Brazil – Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems – have expertise based in the occupation, in pacifying Palestinian resistance.

In the case the Beijing Olympics there was a spate of protests by Tibetans, Tibet- solidarity activists, religious Christians, and most prominently, by those displaced for the Games. Evictions – and protests against evictions – have already begun in Brazil where the security infrastructure is being progressively more integrated with that of Israel and Obiang’s regime was notorious for forced displacement even prior to preparations for the 2012 AFCON. The crowd control training done for Athens and Beijing was based on Israeli experience suppressing Palestinian demonstrations. The surveillance systems to be deployed in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon are those that guard land confiscated from Palestinians to build Israeli settlements and the Apartheid Wall. Brazil and Equatorial Guinea are not just importing security training and technology, they are importing Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands and dispossession of the Palestinian people. These products of Israel’s Pacification Industry are becoming an inseparable part of mega-events, including AFCON. No matter who wins on the pitch, it is clear that the losers will be Palestinians and the displaced and evicted in Equatorial Guinea and Brazil.

Jimmy Johnson is the founder of Neged Neshek – a project documenting the Israeli arms industry – and is former International Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. He lives in Detroit, Michigan and can be reached at jimmy@negedneshek.org

June 7, 2011 Posted by aletho | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Former professors refute Israel’s indictment of kidnapped Gaza engineer

By Maureen Clare Murphy – 06/06/2011

Former professors of Dirar Abu Sisi, the engineer from Gaza who went missing during a train trip in Ukraine last February, refute allegations in Israel’s indictment that the man was taught weapons systems at university. The indictment also claims that one of Abu Sisi’s professors studied at a military engineering school in east Ukraine, though no such school exists, the Associated Press has found.

The Israeli daily Haaretz reported today:

Dirar Abu Sisi, 42, vanished from a train in Ukraine in February and resurfaced days later in an Israeli prison. Abu Sisi, who claims innocence, is to stand trial in coming weeks on hundreds of counts of attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Konstantin Petrovich Vlasov told The Associated Press that Abu Sisi was his doctoral student in civilian electricity systems at the Kharkiv National Academy of Municipal Services in the mid-1990s, but denies he was taught about weapons.

The indictment against him says Konstantin Petrovich, Abu Sisi’s professor at a civilian institute, also taught at an academy for military engineering in the eastern city of Kharkiv, although no such school exists.

The Israeli document claims the professor is an expert in Soviet-made Scud missile control systems. It alleges that Konstantin Petrovich arranged for Abu Sisi to attend classes at the military academy, where he gained knowledge that enabled him to modernize missiles launched by Palestinian militants into Israel.

Israel would not immediately comment on the incongruities concerning the professor’s name or the purported military academy.

Regarding Israel’s motivations for abducting Abu Sisi in Ukraine, The Electronic Intifada reported in March:

A few days after his disappearance, Abu Sisi’s wife, Veronika, a Ukrainian national, accused the Israeli spy agency Mossad of kidnapping him to extract information that could be used to disable Gaza’s power station in a future confrontation with the enclave’s Hamas rulers.

Israel bombed the plant during its three-week military assault, Operation Cast Lead, in winter 2008, causing blackouts across much of Gaza. Israel also targeted the power station in June 2006, cutting power to 700,000 Palestinians in Gaza for several months while it was fixed at a cost of more than $5 million.

Abu Sisi’s family suggested another reason why Israeli might consider him a high-value target. They say he had recently developed a method to reduce the plant’s dependency on high-grade diesel fuel, the flow of which Israel controls into Gaza.

In January Hamas officials announced that the station’s turbines had been modified to work on regular diesel, which is cheaper and can be smuggled in through tunnels from Egypt.

The Israeli media, on the other hand, have speculated that Abu Sisi must be a senior Hamas activist to have secured an important post at the plant. The family have denied the claim, saying he was not involved in any political faction and was appointed because of his skills as an engineer.

One of his Israeli lawyers, Smadar Ben Nathan, who met him for the first time at the court hearing on Sunday to lift the gag order, said she believed Israel had carried out the operation based on false information.

The Electronic Intifada correspondent Rami Almeghari interviewed Abu Sisi’s family in Gaza, meeting his children. Suzan Abu Sisi, the sister of Dirar, told The Electronic Intifada:

“I hold the Ukrainian authorities, topped by the president of Ukraine, responsible for the kidnapping of my brother by Israeli intelligence agents,” Suzan said. “How could such a kidnapping take place in a sovereign country?”

June 7, 2011 Posted by aletho | Deception, Subjugation - Torture | 1 Comment

The Killing Continues as US Doubles Down on Failed Trade Policies

Colombia and Guatemala

By DAN KOVALIK | CounterPunch | June 7, 2011

A number of notable events took place in the past week which underscore the U.S.’s continued failed policies in Latin America. And of course, these notable events were almost totally ignored by the mainstream of the U.S. press.

First, Joel Hernandez Godoy, the Finance Secretary of the SITRABI union in Guatemela, was murdered by two gunmen on motorcycle. Mr. Hernandez is the second SITRABI unionist killed this year in Guatemala. SITRABI represents Del Monte banana workers, and, along with the AFL-CIO, is a party to a pending labor complaint against Guatemala filed under the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). This labor complaint involves serious claims of labor abuses in Guatemala — now the second most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists after Colombia which has held the number one spot for years. Among the labor abuses charged in this CAFTA complaint is the murder of another SITRABI leader, Marco Tulio Ramirez.

Guatemala had promised, as a condition of CAFTA, to deal with the problem of anti-union violence within its borders and had even brought the union murder rate down to zero for the two consecutive years leading to CAFTA approval. However, as USLEAP has noted, once CAFTA was passed, the rate skyrocketed again, with 9 unionists killed in 2008 and 16 unionists killed in 2009.

This should be a lesson to those hoping for Colombia to ensure protection for unionists once the Free Trade Agreement with that country is passed.

Meanwhile, in Colombia, at least a dozen unionists have been killed in that country so far this year, with two union teachers killed within recent days, including one in the city of Cali. Another unionist, Carlos Arturo Castro, an engineer, was also killed in Cali on May 23. Mr. Castro was with the union SINTRAEMCALI, a union of public sector workers in the city of Cali. A couple of weeks before Mr. Castro was killed, a lawyer for SINTRAEMCALI, Hernan Dario, was himself shot five times in the city of Cali. Sadly, Mr. Dario passed away in the hospital from these wounds on June 2.

While the Colombian Embassy in Washington, desperate for the Colombia FTA, is attempting to write off the three (3) labor-related killings in Cali as somehow unrelated and as the product of random or even drug-related violence, it is well-known that unions in Cali, and the SINTRAEMCALI union in particular, have been a special target of intensive military/paramilitary harassment and threats for years. Most famously, SINTRAEMCALI has been the target of a harassment and assassination program known as “Operation Dragon” — a joint military/paramilitary operation which targeted 150 social, political and labor leaders, including the SINTRAEMCALI union.

One of the masterminds of this operation was Lieutenant Colonel Julian Villate Leal who was trained at the School of the Americas in Columbus, Georgia. As the Associated Press (AP) reported in an April 2007 article entitled, “Alleged Assassin Worked at U.S. Embassy in Colombia,” when the “Operation Dragon” plot was uncovered, Mr. Villate came under criminal investigation, and, needing a place to hideout, found refuge as an employee at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota where he worked until receiving employment, upon a positive reference by the U.S. Embassy, at the Drummond Coal Company. See also, Washington Post (April 30, 2007). I was told by a reliable source in the Colombian DAS (the analogue of the U.S. FBI) that “Operation Dragon,” was never called off, and that those on the hit list are still targets of the Colombian security forces. The recent assassinations may be proof of this.

Further, Amnesty International has just released a report concluding that, despite the stated good intentions of Colombian President Manuel Santos – who, as Defense Minister of Colombia oversaw Colombia’s “false positive” program pursuant to which the Colombian military murdered over 3,000 civilians and then passed them off as guerillas to guarantee further aid from the U.S. — paramilitary groups are on the rise in Colombia and are continuing to receive aid and support from the U.S.-backed Colombian military. Meanwhile, according to the well-respected human rights group CINEP, extra-judicial killings by the U.S.-backed Colombian military skyrocketed in 2010, with an almost 70% increase in the number of victims of such killings. CINEP has also concluded that there have been 38,000 “forced disappearances” in the past three years, and that such disappearances have only accelerated under the current administration of President Juan Manual Santos.

In short, Colombia remains a death squad state – with the full support of the U.S. — a “Genocidal Democracy,” in the words of renowned Colombian human rights advocate Father Javier Giraldo. That Colombia is nonetheless the closest ally of the U.S. in the Hemisphere, however, should not be surprising as the U.S. has never seen a death squad government in this Hemisphere that it hasn’t liked or sponsored. Indeed, the violence happening in Guatemala today is a continuation of the violence that the U.S. unleashed decades ago when, at the urging of United Fruit (now Chiquita), it overthrew the democratic government of President Arbenz and installed a military dictatorship which proceeded to kill around 200,000 civilians in the succeeding years.

Against this background, Secretary of State Clinton announced this past week that she is certain that the Colombia FTA will be introduced by the Obama Administration in the very near future. Bill Clinton’s own confession before the Senate last year that such free “trade policies have failed everywhere they have been tried,” should ring in Secretary Clinton’s ears and in the ears of President Obama. And, recent events in Guatemala prove how such policies have been a failure in guaranteeing labor and human rights. Still, the Administration seems doomed by its own ideological dedication to free trade and free market principles to push through another bad trade deal with Colombia – a deal which will ratify Colombia’s continued gross violations of human and labor rights.

Dan Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer living in Pittsburgh.

June 7, 2011 Posted by aletho | Subjugation - Torture, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Healing the Trees in At Tuwani

By Carol Tyx – CPT – June 7, 2011

We start slowly, our delegation members, several men, a handful of women, a sprinkling of children. As we walk out of the Palestinian village of At-Tuwani the procession grows, women cutting across fields, children scrambling down hillsides. Some of the boys carry hoes; the women swing buckets; a young child waves a Palestinian flag. We are on our way to a small olive orchard in the valley to take part in a healing ritual, but the conversation, in Arabic, sounds chatty, neighbors exchanging the tidbits that make up daily life. A few of the children try to bring us into the loop with their schoolroom English; we try a few Arabic phrases. Broken branches are cleared and soil is re-cultivated and watered.

When we reach the orchard, we pause. I know in my head that Israeli settlers who live across the valley from At-Tuwani sometimes sneak down at night and chop down the villagers’ olive trees. But seeing the wounded trees myself cuts more deeply. The breaks are jagged, branches twisting off the trunk, the silver-green leaves curling in the dust. Ten trees have been hacked off, an attempt to chop down Palestinian life in the South Hebron Hills.

The settlements in the West Bank, built on Palestinian land, are largely populated by Israelis who believe all of this land should be part of Israel. They are squatters, protected by the Israeli military. We witness this as we approach the orchard; two, then three, then four military jeeps appear; soldiers carrying automatic weapons hop out. One person on the CPT team on alert for potential violence, positions himself between the villagers and the soldiers; a youthful Palestinian shoots video, part of a recent campaign to document the occupation.

We work together to stack the severed limbs. With the hoes, people etch trenches around the wounded stumps. A woman opens a nearby cistern and pulls up a bucket of water. The water flows into the trenches, nourishing the trees. Even though it will be at least five years before the trees can bear fruit again, I feel the healing beginning, in the trees and in the villagers. I am honored to be walking with this community on a hot May morning, a community with deep roots in this land, roots that sustain them in the daily struggle to maintain their homes and livelihoods.

June 7, 2011 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Lebanese President: Israel committing genocide

Persia Herald Tribune | 07 June 2011

Lebanon has denounced as genocide Israel’s murder of over 20 people who were holding a protest march to mark the anniversary of Tel Aviv’s occupation of Arab lands.

On Monday, the office of Lebanese President Michel Sleiman issued a statement condemning “the genocide conducted by the Israel occupation forces in the Golan (Heights) that led to the killing of 23 unarmed martyrs,” Xinhua reported.

The fatalities, which included a woman and a child, occurred on Sunday when Israeli forces opened fire on protesters inside Syria as they were approaching the Syrian highlands.

The demonstrators were marching on the anniversary of the June 5, 1967 Naksa Day or Day of the Setback, when Tel Aviv occupied Syria’s Golan Heights region as well as the Palestinian territories of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and East al-Quds (Jerusalem).

The Israeli aggression also wounded 350 people.

Sleiman’s office also asserted that Israeli aggression will never coerce the Palestinian people and Arab states to stop calling for the observation of the full rights of the Palestinians, including the right to return to territories in their homeland that were occupied during the Six-Day War of 1967.

2008 estimates put the number of Palestinian refugees at over 4.6 million.

June 7, 2011 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Leave a comment

Israeli occupation forces arrest 72-year-old Hamas MP & lecturer

Palestine Information Center – 07/06/2011

NABLUS — Israeli occupation forces (IOF) raided the home of an elderly Hamas MP in the eastern suburb of Nablus city and detained him after blasting their way into his home.

The daughter of MP Ahmed Al-Haj, 72, told the PIC reporter, that the soldiers broke their apartment’s door in a pre dawn raid on Tuesday after encircling the building and took away her father.

She held the IOF responsible for the life of her father, who was previously held by the Israeli occupation authority on ten past occasions the latest in 2008 when he was held in administrative custody, without charge, for 15 months.

The occupation troops also arrested Hamas leader and university lecturer Dr. Mustafa Al-Shinar from his home west of Nablus city at the same time.

Shinar was frequently arrested by the IOF and was released from administrative detention in late 2009.

He wrote on his facebook page last night that reconciliation would not progress as long as political arrests continued in the West Bank. Shinar was kidnapped three times by the PA security, which negatively affected his health condition. He underwent cardiac catheterization.

In the same context, the website of Hebrew daily Yediot Ahronot said that IOF soldiers rounded up 13 Palestinians in the West Bank on Tuesday.

June 7, 2011 Posted by aletho | Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Jewish Settlers Torch Mosque Near Ramallah

By David Steele & Saed Bannoura | IMEMC News | June 07, 2011

Photo Credit – Ma’an Images

Local residents of Al Mughayyir village, near the central West Bank city of Ramallah, reported Tuesday at dawn that fundamentalist settlers set the local mosque ablaze, and wrote racist graffiti on it walls, the Palestine Today reported.

Witnesses stated that the Israeli settlers set fire to the mosque at approximately 3 A.M. on Wednesday, before daubing the remains with racist slogans.

The attack on the al-Mughayyir village’s mosque has drawn condemnation from a wide variety of groups in Palestinian civil society. This is the third mosque that has been torched in as many years.

The arson attack is thought to be a ‘price-tag’ attack, carried out by nearby settlers in response to the demolition of ‘Alei Ayin’ illegal outpost by Israeli police recently. One piece of graffiti explicitly stated ‘price tag’ followed by ‘Alei Ayin’ in Hebrew.

The settlers are believed to have come from the Adi Gilad illegal settlement built on private Palestinian lands only three kilometres away from the mosque.

Resident Jihad Al Na’san told France Press that the residents went to the mosque to perform dawn prayers to find it burning down while the flames were streaming out of its windows.

Al Na’san added that the settlers dumped tires in the mosque and torched them, and that the Israeli army and the police arrived at the scene later on as the area is under Israeli military and security control.

Al Na’san further stated that the residents found racist graffiti written in Hebrew stating “We will raze this village” among other racist slurs against the Arabs and the Palestinians.

Mahmoud al-Habbash, the Minister of Religious Affairs in the Palestinian Authority, stated that the arson “indicates the magnitude of the aggression settlers unleash on holy places”. Rebuilding of the mosque is expected to begin immediately.

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Mohammad Hussein, visited the site of the destroyed mosque and said that, “[T]he attack on this mosque is part of a systematic policy aiming to flame the conflict and show disrespect to the religious and human values of others.”

The National Christian Coalition in the Holy Land has also strongly condemned the arson attack. Its president, Dimitri Diliani blamed the ongoing occupation and lack of law enforcement against settlers, noting, “[O]ccupation commits limitless crimes using different means including extremist settlers who are protected by Israeli forces. They do not show any respect to morals, religions, or laws when it comes to attacks against the Palestinian people.”

A month ago, the settlers torched a mosque near the northern West Bank city of Ramallah.

Last year, a group of fundamentalist Israeli settlers broke into a mosque in Beit Fajjar, near Bethlehem, and set it ablaze. Settlers also torched the main mosque of the al-Lubban al-Sharqiyya village, south of the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

In 2009, settlers torched a mosque in Yasuf Palestinian village, near the central West Bank city of Salfit.

June 7, 2011 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | 1 Comment

The Attack on Pearl Harbor Was No Surprise (Part V)

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Iran Delenda Est

By Stephen J. Sniegoski • Unz Review • July 25, 2019

After Carthage had been significantly weakened by Rome in the Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC), Cato the Elder, a leading Roman senator, is said to have ended all his speeches with the words: “Carthago delenda est!” (“Carthage must be destroyed!”). This destruction ultimately took place in the Third Punic War (149–146 BC). A somewhat similar situation exists today in the United States, where war hawks demand that Iran–which in no way could effectively attack the United States, or even conquer America’s Middle East so-called allies—be stripped of its ability to protect itself.

Of course, what makes the American situation different from ancient Rome’s is that Rome sought to eliminate Carthage for its own interests whereas the United States is largely acting to advance the military interests of Israel… continue

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The Pacification Industry

By JIMMY JOHNSON | CounterPunch | June 7, 2011

Former professors refute Israel’s indictment of kidnapped Gaza engineer

By Maureen Clare Murphy – 06/06/2011

Healing the Trees in At Tuwani

By Carol Tyx – CPT – June 7, 2011

Lebanese President: Israel committing genocide

Persia Herald Tribune | 07 June 2011

Israeli occupation forces arrest 72-year-old Hamas MP & lecturer

Palestine Information Center – 07/06/2011

Jewish Settlers Torch Mosque Near Ramallah

By David Steele & Saed Bannoura | IMEMC News | June 07, 2011

Photo Credit – Ma’an Images

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The Attack on Pearl Harbor Was No Surprise (Part V)

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By Stephen J. Sniegoski • Unz Review • July 25, 2019

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