Street Theater By Lovely People

Resistance as commodity: America medicated and enslaved

By Sandy Krolick, 9 May 2011.

We have all sat enthralled by the recent images dancing across our HD TVs, our PC and Notebook screens, as events have unfolded in the Middle East and Northern Africa over the past few months. From Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt to Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, a surge of popular uprisings has appeared before us in brilliant and revolutionary technicolor – the actions themselves having become spectacular commodities for our collective consumption. Better than reality television, we sit engrossed in these unfolding media spectacles.

But that is not all. We have also been quick to adopt as our own the frequent refrains we are fed by our media pundits and political leaders concerning the interpretation of such events. Their drumbeat is incessant: these enslaved masses want freedom! they want choice! they want democracy! they want what we have in America! And we the people dutifully allow such assumptions to go unchecked while their irony escapes us. The facts are that America has long supported those very regimes against which the rebels are now fighting. The uprisings across MENA have become just another gimmick, another prop, another marketing tool for our own elite and their paid propagandists in a bid to suppress domestic unrest and opposition here in the homeland.

But this is not the end of the story. The US and its ad hoc coalition of co-conspirators have now gone further with this charade, claiming the moral high ground and inserting their own military muscle into that civil war in Libya. They have attacked a sovereign nation while the media mythology of a humanitarian mission continues unabated, faithfully echoing the talking points from our beguiling leader: that we are fighting for the liberation of our Muslim brothers and sisters who are longing to join the ranks of the free and reap the benefits of unbridled democratic capitalism. (BTW: It’s a song whose basic theme sounds an awful lot like the Soviet regime not too many years ago claiming to be fighting for the liberation of its brothers in Afghanistan.) And we the people sit guilelessly in the back bleachers listening to the choir and accepting such pabulum as gospel from the church hymnal.

We still remain comfortably entombed, again perched in front of those omnipresent big screens, gawking at the protests in the Wisconsin State House, and other sympathetic rallies that emerged across the U.S.A. We watched the quaint antiwar demonstration in Washington D.C. last December (attended by none other than author, blogger and war correspondent Chris Hedges along with the infamous Daniel Ellsberg). And we are witness to the demonstrations planned for New York’s Union Square, inveighing against the abuses of kleptocrats at Bank of America and other high-rolling, high-riding banksters. But, has the movement of resistance, the very act of defiance, of rebellion, itself not been co-opted in advance by the system that it is aimed at reigning-in or overturning?

As the Soviet émigré Mikhail Epstein pointed out many years ago in Transculture and Society: a society like ours, a culture that commodifies everything it touches, “is able to absorb and assimilate even revolutionary challenges [through] the mechanism of commodification.” In this way, any radical challenge to the system is instantly transformed, “denial itself, turned into another commodity.” Or, as Allan Bloom suggested with a slightly different twist in The Closing Of The American Mind, a liberal democracy is capable of taking even the most countercultural activities and absorbing them into the mainstream, transforming such acts into acceptable cultural practice – with appropriate rules, policies and procedures.

It is not an unreasonable bet that this is what happens time and again to the resistance movement in the United States. It is turned into a commodity to be hawked through new media like Facebook and Twitter, proffered for consumption by the mainstream corporate press, and corralled by the establishment of new political movements like the Tea Party gang. Resistance becomes hoodwinked and then mainstreamed; brought in under the Big Tent. Here we have the taming and suppression of the human spirit. Even in full battle mode, those seeking actual change have simply become a spectacle to be observed, tolerated, enjoyed, even lauded; then clicked off once the next commercial bursts onto our screens. So much for radical politics and real rebellion in America: even our most sacred acts of defiance, of insurgency, are now routinely transformed into objets de art, objets de cultura – commodities to be used for entertainment, distraction and propaganda.

The entire apparatus of our culture – a “culture of make-believe” as Derrick Jensen has dubbed it – may be brought to bear at any moment in defusing resistance, not through authoritarian suppression or banana-republic brutality, but through more subtle means of control, persuasion and marketing: allowing it, praising it, and repackaging it for distribution to the public. This in turn further stabilizes and emboldens the system, reinforcing its faux image of cultural, political or religious openness. As Allan Bloom well noted, openness becomes the enemy of the good; but it also becomes the enemy of any real challenge to the system itself. Openness betrays its true nature, as a core element of that “inverted totalitarianism” that Chris Hedges is so fond of discussing these days.

Ours is a system that gives much lip service to openness, reform, and fairness; but in reality it is one in which real change has become a genuine impossibility. Unfortunately – and what Hedges may have missed in his own acts of resistance – even our best attempts at “disrupting” the State or its mechanisms are easily hijacked by the regime and quickly turned into political treasure. In other words, while the State’s police forces and other Homeland Security thugs gingerly manhandle the rebels themselves (according to more or less agreed upon rules of engagement), the acts of rebellion are commoditized and re-packaged by the media, our politicians, and their puppet masters for general consumption by, and medication of, the populace.

In this way, any legitimate internal threats to the State are effectively disarmed through commodification and effective marketing. And the snake oil works! We demonstrate, we disrupt, we challenge, we take our lumps and go to jail for a night; and we think we are free and have a bona fide voice in how this entire show is produced. But the truth is they have us right where they want us; and us, what do we have? We have nothing but our medications and our enslavement to the State!

But, if you have any doubts about America’s totalitarian allegiances or the commodification of our resistance to it, just look at the arrests in Washington D.C. Sunday, 10 April of those demonstrating against our militarization of Latin America and our material support for totalitarian dictators in MENA and elsewhere around the globe. In that bit of news we were spectators to an “annual event” of self-described “street theatre and artistic expression,” including puppets and performances, as integral parts of the planned “die-in.” If the American resistance movement has not been transformed into just another commodity – another distracting entertainment – of our society of the Spectacle, then I do not know what it has become. I did not see street theatre in demonstrations across Iran, Egypt, Tunisia, or Libya. And I do not now see artistic expressions on the streets of Bahrain. We should stop drinking the cool-aid my friends!

The children of Iraq

Layla Anwar
Arab Woman Blues
http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/

I

They are little, and no icons nor statues have been carved or erected in their names...they will forever remain anonymous...but not to me.

I have not seen their faces, but I heard their stories...and every saint has a story.

No wait, I have seen their faces, I have...I have seen your filth and ugliness reflected in theirs...and is that not what saints are made of ? aren't they made of human filth and greed ? Aren't saints the ones who took it all in, absorbed all of you and were eventually salvaged from the human garbage, because make no mistake about yourselves, you are garbage.

Aren't they the ones who witnessed the unthinkable as some training ground to redeem you later, you vermin of the human race ?!

Well I have many stories of saints in the making...and is Iraq not the land of Gods, Goddesses, Prophets and Saints ?

What you are about to read are true samples...samples of your "Democracy, Freedom and Liberty." How I have come to hate these words...they have become like small mirrors in which I see your lies written in blood, authorized and signed by anonymous corpses...living or dead, we have reached a point where the differentiation has become so blur...where it no longer matters, because death sentences are issued daily...and the living are dead.

They hang saints in Iraq, they lynch them at an early age, they penetrate their insides with words...and words become swords, daggers, knives...slashing, beheading, tiny anonymous faces with no names...the slaying of Saints...of little Saints...

She was found thrown away in one of the streets of Baghdad...her name is Rita, like Saint Rita, the Saint who answers your prayers...

She was abandoned in the streets of Baghdad, with her name written on a cardboard, attached to her neck like a dog who was once owned. A three years old dog, puppy, girl, blind...Rita is blind. Totally blind. You bastards, call it in your politically correct jargon - visually impaired - because you are so fucking sensitive arent'you ?!

Well Rita is blind, and she is 3. She is not only blind, she has a severely deformed face, a cleft lip that goes up all the way to her nose...split in the middle, a mirror reflection of how you split us in the middle...in all ways. A small mirror of your own deformities, your soul deformities...

She was feeling her way around, blind, with a cardboard sign around her neck - my name is Rita.

The local police took her to a hospital, the doctors did not know what to do with Rita...the little Saint Rita...she was left in the corridors of a hospital, a hospital that looks and feels like a public toilet, because your whores stole the money, the money for the little Saints...

Little Saint Rita, walked the corridors of this public toilet of a hospital, bumping into broken chairs and beds with no sheets...hungry and waiting for someone to diagnose her condition...her condition of a blind street child, deformed by your toxicity and abandoned because no one can feed her no more in your new Iraq.

I can't go on...your filth is making me dizzy...its vapors are filling my nostrils...the little Saints are poking me...they want to play...let me take little Saint Rita's hand and go smell the flowers...

II

It took me 3 days to dim the image of little Saint Rita, deformed and blind, running lost in a hospital corridor, bumping into broken chairs and bed with no sheets...with her name tagged around her neck like a dog's collar...it took me 3 days...and am wondering how many days will it take me to dim the following image from my mind ?

Yet I know the little saints icons will never be erased from my mind, they will forever remain a torch of truth burning, burning bright, the flames of Truth...

Diyala province, on the outskirts of Baquba.

The US brave boys, the rapists, torturers and killers who crossed oceans stinking of greed and hatred, bombed a lone house made of mud and bricks, in a field, on the outskirts of Baquba. Sunni insurgents - they said.

Troops then encircled the house, taking the mother and father. They were never seen again. The house collapsed except for one room. After some time, when things calmed down, a distant neighbor passed by the field and entered the house, he does not know why, he assumed everyone in the household was already dead.

What he saw, he still recounts with tears. In that one small room, he saw four orphans left behind, emaciated. 3 boys and one girl. The eldest boy was 11, the second 7, the third a 4 year old girl, and the fourth an infant boy in a crib.

No neighbor could take all the children in, Diyala witnessed many massacres and exiles and poverty rates are staggering there. The people decided to rebuild that one room left, collectively provide food and water, and take turns in guarding the children until a "solution is found"...

Some time passed, and a elderly man arrives, claiming to be a distant relative of the family. No one could ascertain the truth of such a claim since the children themselves did not know him, but it seems he looked of "good faith " and the people gave him the benefit of the doubt.

More time passed and one day this distant neighbor decided to pay a visit, the children and the elderly man disappeared...no one knows where to.

More time elapsed, and the neighbor spotted the elderly man and the three boys. He inquired what happened to the 4 year old girl. I shall call her X, the anonymous face. Little Saint X.

The oldest boy, the 11 year old, smiled with happiness, replying - Uncle married her off. Not knowing what this meant.

It turns out that this "uncle", so called distant relative, sold little Saint X to a matron who runs an overseas brothel. She buys the little Iraqi Saints, and after a period of "training", sells them again as sex slaves to the highest overseas bidder.

I don't want to know what the "training" of a 4 year old Saint consists of...I don't even want to imagine it...

But at night, as I lay down, it creeps in my mind...in between my futile attempts at feigning sleep...through the cracks of a bedroom immersed in total obscurity...I imagine and fight the images with pictures of singing sweet lullabies to a sleeping girl, I fight it with pictures of reading a bed time story made of beautiful princesses safely tucked in shiny marbled castles...but the images stay, they persist, a torch burning with your Truth...

N.B: A reminder - official Iraqi puppet government figures confirms the number of little orphaned saints at 5 million since 2003 and the number of street little saints in Baghdad alone at 500'000. The little saints of the "new" Iraq.

Elizabeth II
"The Sovereign can do no wrong and no laws can be brought against her".
(Lord Halsbury "The Laws of England")

Civil List Loot

The Civil List provides lavish expenditure for the monarch to spend on Palace entertaining. Queen Victoria stole most of this annual gift from public funds and banked it in the royal maze of off-shore banks. As did her descendants until 1992. Since 1992 when a few Labour MP’s demanded a closer look at Palace expenditure; the present Queen, Elizabeth II, has been unable to steal as much as her ancestors.

In 1993 it came to light the Queen had a ‘Civil List Surplus’ of £35 Million. A half decent Head Of State would have returned that money to the Treasury for use in our schools and hospitals. Elizabeth II held on it for 'shortfalls'. Were it not for the book Royal Fortune, which led to more palace scrutiny, nobody would have known about the Queen's Civil List 'surplus'. The £35 Million would have followed centuries of Civil List surpluses into the royals Swiss accounts.

August 2009. We now know Elizabeth II had the insolence to designate the Civil List 'surplus' (the £35 Million she stole) as "the Queen's reserve". Which she now insists is all but spent and therefore, she says, she needs another £6 Million added to her annual Civil List of £7.9 Million!

Between 1952 - 1992 the Queen stole another £30 Million by illegally avoiding tax. The stolen money was salted away in Swiss banks where it would have realized £300 Million by now. Anyone who thinks this woman has any love for Britain and the British has no real knowledge of the so-called "royal family."

From the start of her reign the Queen has had to plan for the possibility of Great Britain becoming a nuclear desert. The British public have never for one moment entered those plans. Should Chernobyl happen at Sellafield or Sizewell the royals have escape planes standing by 24/7, private Pacific islands to go to and billions in foreign banks. In case of a nuclear disaster the evacuation of the Queen's family and ministers is reviewed and rehearsed every year - sometimes twice a year. The Queen's subjects will be abandoned without so much as a royal wave.

The Uranium Queen

Once upon a time we were told nuclear power stations would provide electricity 'too cheap to meter.' We then learned that when the Queen opened her first uranium (nuclear) power station it had had nothing to do with providing electricity.

Nuclear power stations are built to produce nuclear weapons material for Her Majesties Government. From the very beginning of nuclear power Her Majesties Government planned and plotted to hide the horrendous cost of running nuclear power stations with massive subsidies, of the taxpayers money, distributed under the cloak of Her Majesties Official Secret Act.

The Queen's Uranium Mines

The Queen owns mines in America, Canada and Africa. The uranium mining company Rio Tinto Mines was formed for the British Royal Family in the late 1950's by the Queen's "Africa adviser" Roland Walter Fuhrhop. Described by a fellow German as "an ardent supporter of Hitler and an arrogant, nasty piece of work to boot." The Queen's adviser (better known as "Tiny" Rowland) had been a passionate member of the Nazi youth movement. Rowland became Africa's most ruthless businessman. Africa being a prime source of the uranium used in the Queen's nuclear reactors.

Between 1957 and 1976 British reactors produced enough nuclear waste/weapons material to suit our Defence Requirements for the next 200 years. By which time nuclear weapons will be obsolete. Although we had more nuclear weapons material than we could ever use, without choking on our own nuclear fallout, the Queen's cartel had no intention of giving-up their obscene profits from their nuclear power and waste companies, funded by the stroke of the royal pen with an endless supply of the taxpayers billions.

URANIUM RESULTS 2009: Testing uranium poison levels near Chernobyl.

When Electricité de France announced the new European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) would be more efficient than the old Chernobyl type reactor they were, for once, actually telling the truth. The EPR will “overcook” nuclear fuel. This will produce between five and fifteen times more eternally fatal High Level Nuclear Waste for the taxpayer to pay for. Forever and ever.

An accident, like Chernobyl, in an EPR will release much higher levels of fatal radiation causing five to fifteen times the human misery Chernobyl has. How’s that for nuclear efficiency!

May 2009. The Queen granted her French collaborators permission to build two of these foreign Doomsday Machines in Somerset and another two in Suffolk. No doubt Al Qeada are already writing letters of thanks to Her Majesty in anticipation of these dream Targets of Nuclear Mass Destruction.

The Crown Prerogative dictates there can be no questions in Her Majesties Parliament probing Her Majesties control of the Energy Market. Members of Parliament are not even allowed to think of how much the royals are making every single minute from their oil, gas and nuclear investments. Which gives you some idea how patently impotent Members of Her Majesties Parliament really are.

The Queen alone appoints military commanders. No British agents, or British troops, carry out a single act, overt or covert, without direct orders signed by the British Head Of State. With Rothschilds acting as her principle-nominee-bankers Queen Elizabeth II has become the wealthiest women in the world. In financial circles the Queen is known as the world's "ultimate insider trader."

Not only is she advised by the world's richest financiers she also has full access to all British State Secrets, through the daily Red Boxes. The Queen has 455 military advisers in 30 countries. If the Queen learns that some country, lets say Nigeria, is about to be destabilized, she can immediately sell her Nigerian oil shares and invest that money in Arms sales to Nigeria. The only people who know the murky details of royal insider dealing are those on the same gravy train. It would prove impossible, for anyone (especially a royal banker), to press charges of insider trading and conflict of interest against the Queen in her own courts.

Sovereign Rules

Congress can discuss royal family business but it is forbidden for Her Majesties Parliament to discuss the family business, or the royals offshore fortune, or the fact that Her Majesty has illegally used her Law Lords to keep her obscene wealth a secret. The Queen's holdings in Rio Tinto Zinc (RTZ) was first brought to public attention by a leak from a source at the Bank of England to Andrew Morton, who wrote the authorized biography of Diana.

Philip Beresford, author of The Book of the British Rich, written in conjunction with the Sunday Times of London, found the Queen tends to invest in "blue chip'' stocks, including Rio Tinto Zinc, General Electric Company of Great Britain, Imperial Chemical Industries, Royal Dutch Shell, and British Petroleum. Among those acting as royal cut-outs and nominees are S.G. Warburg's subsidiary Rowe & Pitman, Barings and Cazanove.

Forbes magazine also reported the Queen is a major RTZ shareholder, as is the Bank of England. Charles Higham, co-author of Elizabeth and Philip, also states the Queen is a major stockholder in RTZ, which, with her old friends at Anglo-American, controls 12% of the world's precious, strategic, and base metals and minerals.

In 1976, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee found that an international cartel, of which RTZ was a major partner, had been formed in 1971 to fix the world's uranium prices. A federal grand jury found corroborating evidence of RTZ's role. To protect RTZ's directors and their richest shareholder, the Queen, Lord Denning and the Law Lords quashed Westinghouse's ability to take depositions in the United Kingdom.

On June 16, 1976, in hearings in the U.S. House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Subcommittee Jerry McAfee, chairman of Gulf Oil admitted that the cartel in which RTZ was his partner had criminally conspired to falsely increase the price of uranium on world markets. When the Tennessee Valley Authority tried to sue RTZ for price fixing the U.S. Attorney General again demanded testimony from RTZ executives. However, the directors of RTZ and their boss the Queen were once again protected by the Law Lords, who claimed RTZ directors did not have to appear before an American court, as this was "an unacceptable invasion of British sovereignty."

RTZ was in on developing North Sea oil from the beginning. Writes Higham. "The Queen undoubtedly approved the heavy investment, which would enrich her in the immediate future.'' Starting in June 1975, RTZ and Texaco were spearheading shipments from the North Sea Argyll Field, to the refineries of British Petroleum, (BP) in which the royal family have a massive stake dating back to the Anglo Persian Oil Company set-up by George V and his bankers to rape the Iranian oil-fields. Anglo Persian evolved into into BP.

Colluding with the Queen the Bank of England established a highly illegal nominee company, the Bank of England Nominees Ltd. (BoEN), to hide the Queen's investments as well as the investments of those Heads Of State the Queen personally recommends. The Sultan of Brunei, King Bhumibhol Adulayadej of Thailand, the Kuwaiti royal family, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and his then friend Saddam Hussein all became clients of "Queen Lizzy's private bank." BoEN is only one of the many cut-outs used by the Queen to hide her obscene arms, oil and nuclear profits.

About RTZ . Rio Tinto is a leading international mining group headquartered in the UK, combining Rio Tinto plc, a London and NYSE listed company, and Rio Tinto Limited, which is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. Rio Tinto's business is finding, mining, and processing mineral resources. Major products are aluminium, copper, diamonds, energy (coal and uranium), gold, industrial minerals (borax, titanium dioxide, salt, talc) and iron ore. Activities span the world but are strongly represented in Australia and North America with significant businesses in South America, Asia, Europe and South Africa. more

The British monarch became the ultimate insider-trader in the reign of "The Mad King" George III, 1769-1815. King George III was perfectly sane when he gave some of the Crown Lands to Parliament in exchange for extravagant annual payments, of taxpayers money, to fund the monarchy and their palace-pampered-lifestyle of offensive luxury. These payments are called The Civil List.

The royals annual Civil List became an endless supply of money-for-nothing to be used for warmongering-for-profit and Empire money-grubbing-speculation. By 1936 when the Queen's grandfather, George V, died the royals private (offshore) fortune was estimated at one billion Sterling. A small part of the present Queen's massive disposable wealth is the tens of billions amassed tax free between her Coronation in 1953 until the public demanded she pay tax in 1992.

The Queen calls 1992 her "Annus Horribilis." This was the year of the Windsor Castle fire. Widespread public outrage erupted when the taxpayers were arbitrarily told they would have to pay approximately £30 Million for the fire! The outcome was a "memorandum of understanding" that the Queen would pay some taxes - at her pleasure. Although, the Queen can ignore this "memorandum of understanding" any time she pleases. In 2002 it pleased the Queen to refuse to pay tax on the known £70 Million the Queen Mum left to the Queen. Prior to her death the Queen Mum was always said to be broke. It transpired that eight years before she died the Queen Mum had put £140 Million into Swiss Trusts for her grandchildren.

Little Lizzy's little House

During the 1930's Depression when a third of British children suffered growth defects caused by constant hunger (Rickets). "Little Lizzy", the present Queen, had her own child size six-roomed thatched house in the garden's of Royal Lodge, Royal Windsor Great Park (three mile south of Windsor Castle). The Times reported. ‘The Small House is fully furnished with running water electric light, and a wireless.’ Architect John Nash rebuilt Royal Lodge for the depraved Priny (George 4th). It became one of the Queen Mum’s many homes. She died there, aged 101, pickled in the finest gin other peoples money can buy.

Part of the Queen's known wealth consists of her private collection of castles, jewelry, works of art and a portfolio of blue chip stocks and bonds and real estate investments around the world. In 1991 the Financial Times estimated Her Majesties investment portfolio - spare cash to play with - was worth at least £3 Billion. Her total wealth - thousands of £billions - is divided into many parts. One known part is the Venetian-style Fondo (trust), that must be passed on to her heir - free from inheritance tax.

The Queen's great grandfather King Edward VII, right, better known as Dirty Bertie, inherited the royals love of money-for-nothing. One of Edward VII's Jewish advisers was the Hungarian banker Baron Hirsch. When Baron Hirsch died in 1896, his position as leading adviser passed on to another Jewish banker, Ernest Cassel, whose daughter and heiress, Edwina, married Lord Louis Mountbatten, a chief influence on Prince Philip and Prince Charles.

The ultra-unctuous Jewish bankers Rothschilds, the scheming American financiers J.P. Morgan and E.H. Harriman and the Sassoons were all friends of King Edward VII. There has always been an incestuous relationship between the British monarch and the global-money-grubbing-oligarchy, especially with Barings Bank, dating back before the Opium Wars. In today's money Edward VII amassed a fortune of at least £50 Million. Edward VII hated his cousin the Kaiser. His policies would lead Britain into The Cousins War

St. Morizt 1915. The rich enjoying themselves as-per-usual while millions died in WW1. St. Morizt was a favourite venue of war profiteers and their agents\nominees.

After WW1 the royals resumed their usual lifestyle. Entertaining German cousins with the usual gold plate banquets after hunting on their various estates. Racing their yachts at Cowes, their horses at Ascot. Fashion shopping in Paris in the spring. Cruising the sunspots in the summer and, of course, the usual winter bash in the Alps - paid for by their bankers.

Edward VII's heir, George V, below, continued the "philo-bankerism'' of his father. George V's private financial adviser from 1929 onward was Sir Edward Peacock of Barings merchant bank. Peacock was also a director of The Bank Of England. In 1934, for his services to the royals Swiss accounts, Peacock was knighted and given a Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, which is part of the "Sovereign's Gifts'' that does not require consulting the monarch's prime mouthpiece (the passing Prime Minister.)

George V hugely enjoyed the incestuous relationship with "the City'' he selected Lord Cromer as his Lord Chamberlain. Cromer was a director of Barings Bank and a director of several Establishment companies. When George V died in 1936 he left at least £80 Million. Tens of millions of which went directly into Swiss trusts for his ten-year-old granddaughter, below, who he adored.

The Depression - while decent kids were starving "Little Lizzy" never missed her morning ride in the heavily guarded Windsor Royal Park. BTW Lizzy and her sister "Dizzy" had to be brought into world by artificial insemination. Had it not been for the royals team of gynaecologists the monarchy would have ended naturally. i.e. as God intended.

"The Backward King" George VI (1936-52), who ascended the throne when his brother Edward VIII abdicated in 1936, inherited about half their father's fortune. He also inherited the advice of Sir Edward Peacock - who continued to advise the monarchy well into Elizabeth II's reign. In 1952 Elizabeth II inherited the lions share of King George VI's offshore fortune, at least £50 Million, to invest and reinvest - completely tax free. Normal investment of a £50 Million portfolio in 1952 - without the Queen's unique "insider knowledge" -would now be worth at least £3 Billion.

Lizzy Bowes Lyons was one of many totally self-centered-filthy-rich-bitches who set out to marry the handsome, Edward, Prince Of Wales. She ended-up with the thickest of his backward brothers Albert, Duke of York. Months after the Prince of Wales became King he abdicated and the throne went to Albert - who - changed his name to become King George VI. When he drank himself to death Lizzy Bowes Lyons insisted on being known as the "Queen Mother".

The Queen's American Business: Fleecing US Taxpayers

In 1968 Senator Thomas J. McIntyre (D-N.H) and Representative Silvio O. Conte (R-Mass) confirmed Elizabeth II holds a major share in Courtaulds Textile. Courtaulds came to their attention when the Queen used the company as her nominee to hide her ownership of the largest plantation in Mississippi - on the banks of the Mississippi River near the border with Arkansas. The Queen also uses Courtaulds as a nominee for the purchase of US stocks. What really upset the congressmen was the wealthiest woman in the world was getting agricultural subsidies to run a plantation in the United States.

The Congressional Record shows how the Queen obtained one of the world's largest plantations complete with sharecroppers in Scott, Mississippi, from Courtaulds. Previously known at The Delta and Pine Land Company, "the Queen's Farm" has 38,000 acres of rich soil, a factory and a mill. Between 1968 - 1970 "the Queen's Farm" received $1.5 Million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. At the time, the plantation was worth $44.5 Million. It employed hundreds of African-American laborers at minimal wages. On April 16, 1970, Senator McIntyre, while introducing a bill on farm payments, said. "We paid the Queen $120,000 for not planting cotton on the farmland she owns in Mississippi.'' The Queen owns many plots of American land including a stud farm in Kentucky where she entertained one of her many boyfriends - the head lad of the royal stables and father of Prince Andrew...

The Queen's EU Business

The British Head Of State, Elizabeth II, alone has the power to declare war and conclude treaties. Including the infamous Maastricht Treaty which gave British law making powers to the Queen's bankers running the EU.

The Queen sent Peter "Svengali" Mandleson to Brussels to impose the Lisbon Treaty on the uneducated. Some uneducated people believe Mandleson's apprentice Tony Blair ordered the illegal wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. This was never true. History will recall Blair as just another palace bagman. Passing Prime Ministers do NOT take Britain to war. Only the Head of State can do that.

Trident Subs: Embedded Royal Profits

With tens-of-billions in Swiss Trusts invested in uranium mines, and tens-of-billions in American Trusts invested in uranium weapons production, BAE Systems Martin Lockheed ect., and tens-of-billions invested in foreign "nuclear new build" companies, Areva, Westinghouse, Halliburton-Bechtel and the like the Queen puts her obscene profits first, second, third and last.

It was a labour Prime Mouthpiece who announced (albeit in different words) the British taxpayer would pay billions per-year to rent American-nuclear-submarine-missile-systems made by companies partly owned by the royal family. Every Prime Mouthpiece since Jim Callaghan has assured the British public only the British can fire these American made weapons. The Queen expects her simple subjects to believe the Yanks are daft enough to rent-out nuclear weapons that could be fired back at them!

The Queen's Fondo (Trust) and Royal Private Property

The Queen has over 300 residences. Most of which are part of the Fondo to be passed on to her heir (tax free). Most are "grace and favour houses'' ostensibly for family members and palace flunkies. Included in the Fondo are five castles: Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, Kensington Palace once occupied by the late Princess Diana, and St. James Palace occupied by (the allegedly alive) Prince Charles.

Two other castles, Balmoral and Sandringham, are said to be "private property", but they were bought with taxpayers money from Queen Victoria's scandalously generous Civil List of £600,000 per-year for her sixty-four-year reign. All royal residences are maintained by the British taxpayer through Her Majesties Department of the Environment.

Most of Victoria's Civil List loot was quietly banked abroad. right, Prince Albert bagging gold Sovereigns for the royals German bank accounts. (£600,000 per year, money-for-nothing, then is equivalent to being given over £6 Million per year, money-for-nothing, now. Prince Albert, Victoria's first cousin and husband set-up many offshore accounts to receive not only millions stolen from the Civil List but the royals massive Empire profits)

As part of the Fondo to be handed down to the worthless heir the present Queen created the Royal Collection Trust; to which she transferred all the 7,000 paintings, 20,000 Old Master drawings, and various antiques amassed before Queen Victoria's reign. The Queen has personally acquired a large collection of art works ranging from Renaissance masterpieces, such as Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, to examples of modern "art." The British taxpayer gets the bill for guarding, cleaning and maintaining the royals art collections.

The Duchy of Lancaster is also part of the ever growing Fondo (trust). The duchy is comprised of properties stolen in the 13th Century from the rebel Simon de Monfort, who tried to create an honest Parliament in 1265, only to have his land and life taken by Edmund Crouchback, youngest son of Henry III.

In 1987, the Duchy of Lancaster was 36,456 acres, mainly agricultural land; within the duchy, the freehold of 2.25 acres in the Strand area of London (lying between the Savoy Hotel and Somerset House) is so valuable, that the Queen had The Duchy of Lancaster Act of 1988 steered through Parliament allowing her to develop and sell this area - mainly to her mega-rich oily Arab pals. Charles, The Worthless Prince of Wales, banks the income of the second royal family duchy, the Duchy of Cornwall, which has 50,000 acres , including another posh section of London.

The Crown Jewels, which are kept in the Tower of London, except for major events such as State Visits and Coronations, are another part of the Aladdin's Fondo the next monarch will inherit. Apart from the Crown Jewels, the Queen inherited the largest private collection of jewels in the world. The history of the collection shows the incestuous relationship between the Crown and the City of London. When the British East India Company Army defeated the Maharajah of the Punjab, in 1851, the company stole and later presented Queen Victoria with what was then the world's largest diamond, the Koh-in-noor. Queen Victoria took sadistic pleasure in displaying the Koh-in-noor to the defeated Maharajah on his visit to Buckingham Palace. He left the palace muttering, "Mrs. Fagin.''

At the conclusion of the Boer War the peace offering to the monarch included the largest uncut diamond in the world, the Cullinan Diamond, weighing 3,106 carats. Two cut stones from the Cullinan Diamond went to adorn the Crown Jewels, and the Queen today possesses a brooch that consists of the third and fourth largest stones (94.4 and 63.6 carats) cut from the Cullinan Diamond.

in Empire Days monarchs were regularly showered with jewels by propitiatory princes of India, and, as that largesse ran out, they received similar gifts from Anglo-American diamond finds in South Africa. For example, shortly after World War II, Mary Oppenheimer presented Princess Elizabeth with a 6-carat, blue-white diamond for helping to advertise Anglo-American's diamond monopoly at a time when diamond prices were depressed. Later, Princess Anne, the Queen's oldest daughter, on her 21st birthday, received a necklace of colored diamonds. Today, an adulatory group of oil-rich sheikhs and emirs adds to the Queen's private collection.

A Little History: Civil List Loot: King George III

While the King was engaged in increasing subserviency of the court (Tory) party. Parliamentary support was purchased with pensions and pecuniary corruption. In February 1769 the arrears of the Civil List amounted to £513,511; and his Majesty applied to Parliament to discharge them.

This demand was made when the people were exasperated by the persecution of John Wilkes,- when the policy of the court was odious, and the King unpopular. But if the country was discontented, Parliament was held in safe subjection. Inquiry was demanded into the causes of the debt, and explanatory accounts were sought: but all investigation being resisted by ministers, the amount was granted without information. In the following year Lord Chatham avowed his conviction that the Civil List revenues were expended in corrupting members of Parliament.

But the same causes of excessive expenditure continued without a check; and eight years later the King again applied to Parliament, not only to discharge a debt of £618,340, but to increase his annual Civil List to £900,000 a year. The large amount of secret-service money, and the increased pension list were noticed,- and insinuations made of corruption. But Parliament acceded to the demands of the King. Erskine May. Civil List of King George III. Chapter IV.

The Speaker, Sir Fletcher Norton, commented. "The Commons have not only granted to your Majesty a large present supply, but also a very great additional revenue; great beyond example; great beyond your Majesty's highest expense." George 3 had Speaker Norton fired. Norton was the last Speaker to criticize the Civil List. The last Speaker of Her Majesties House Of Commons, Michael Martin, is a typical royal arse licker. Public opinion demanded Martin was fired for his part in stealing tens of millions from the taxpayer in false claims for expenses. Not surprisingly the Queen immediately elevated Martin to Her Majesties House of Lords.

Royal Notes 1947

The idiot Archbishop of Canterbury declared the wedding ceremony for Princess Elizabeth was 'exactly the same as it would be for any cottager who might be married in some small country church' ... The differences: the twelve wedding cakes at the royal reception, including one nine feet high that Philip cut with his sword, 2,666 wedding presents, including a Thoroughbred horse, a mink coat, a 54-four carat pink diamond said to be one of its kind in the world, and a plantation and a hunting lodge in Kenya."

In his day, Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh better known as “Phil The Greek” was well regarded in filthy-rich homosexual circles. He complained to his gay friends about Elizabeth’s sexual insatiability on their honeymoon. As his wife reverted to her stable of palace flunkies for her pleasure Phil the Greek had affairs with anything with a hole in it.

The Queen Mother and “Phil The Greek” hated each other from the gitgo. She because he was a very minor “royal” with no money. He because the Queen’s sainted mother was actually the illegitimate daughter of the Earl of Strathmore and a common serving wench on one of his estates. The Queen Mother's offspring Elizabeth and Margaret were both produced by artificial insemination. Whose semen is not stated.

MEMO. The Crown Prerogative dictates there can be no questions in Her Majesties Parliament probing Her Majesties control of the Energy Market. Members of Parliament are not even allowed to think of how much the royals are making every single minute from their oil, gas and nuclear investments. Which gives you some idea how patently impotent Members of Her Majesties Parliament really are.

All The Queen's Thieves

Douglas Hogg the Queen's ex Agriculture Minister charged the taxpayer £2,000 for cleaning his moat. Hogg should have been jailed years ago for his part in the BSE cover up http://www.sxolsout.org.uk/zcase.html

Thanks to the the creator and writer of this page.

Please use this direct link as you will see great effort has been taken by the author with relevant pictures of the era

Many Lies Many Lies.

Egypt backtracks over promises for the Egyptian Rafah Crossing into Gaza.
Palestinians have been left stranded. On the 25 May 2011 it was reported that Egypt were to open the border. "Egypt will open its only crossing with the Gaza Strip this weekend, the Cairo military government announced Wednesday, significantly easing a four-year blockade on the Hamas-ruled territory but setting up a potential conflict with Israel."

Egypt's official Middle East News Agency said the Rafah border crossing would be opened permanently starting Saturday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day except Fridays and holidays. This gives Gaza Palestinians a way to freely enter and exit their territory for the first time since 2007, when Hamas overran the territory, and Israel and Egypt closed the crossings.

Maen said the decision to open the Rafah crossing was part of efforts to end the status of the Palestinian division and achieve national reconciliation.

Egypt's Foreign Minister Nabil Elaraby told the Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera late last month that the closure of Rafah crossing was about to end, calling the decision to close it a disgusting matter."

So there it is, the decision to close the border was already agreed as too much pressure was excerted upon Egypt.

Gaza have used a system of tunnels when the border was closed. and they are makeshift and dangerous burrows which have been created out of great necessity, these too have been condemned viciously by Israel. And Israel have bombed this area indiscriminately. Destroying houses and lives, and missing the the tunnels completely.

This video shows quite clearly the Rafah Border is closed. And the report above shows that Al Jazeera had known it was to close on the 25Th May. Yet. On the 04th June 2011, the gate closed (due to refurbishment)

The breaking news was: THE EGYPTIAN CLOSING RAFAH BORDER RIGHT NOW AND LOT OF PEOPLES HANGING BTW TWO BORDERS( BUFFER ZONE ) AND CALLING TO BE FREE .......THE EGYPTIAN CLOSED THE BORDER FOR TECHNICAL PROBLEM .....

This video clearly shows the lies, the deceit, the confusion and for just a moment you can see what it means to live this life of the Palestinian.

Why did Al Jazeera lie when he had so evidently been giving this information on the 25th May?

And why is the world believing that the crossing is still open?

The Freedom Flotilla ll has been threatened the same way Israel threatened the Naksa Anniversary protest and killed many Palestine's (23 was the last count) who were unarmed and protesting peacefully.

Mis-information to the world about the Freedom Flotilla ll is harmful. The world believes the lies that the gate is open, so why do Gaza need aid. The Flotilla will not back down, and Israel wants an excuse to carry out it's very real threat to shoot any one coming into the waters.

Please share this video. The truth will get out. The Palestinians are struggling so hard for a voice.

Occupation And Theft

For Pentagon Bases in Latin America

By John Lindsay-Poland , 3 June 2011

Under the auspices of the drug war, the United States is returning to its historical pattern of using Central America and the Caribbean for its own military and strategic purposes.

Even as a growing chorus of voices throughout Latin America argue that military responses to drug trafficking are ineffective against the narcotics trade and exacerbate existing human rights abuses and official corruption, the U.S. military presence in the region is growing.

U.S. military construction in Central and South America has more than doubled in the last two years, while a U.S. buildup on military bases in Colombia continues, despite a Colombian court ruling last summer that struck down an agreement for U.S. use of the bases.

Construction of military facilities is slated for this summer in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Belize, funded from an account for “counter-narco-terrorism” operated by the U.S. Southern Command (SouthCom), the Pentagon’s operations arm for Latin America, according to the Army Corps on Engineers plans. But the biggest Pentagon investments are in Panama and at the U.S. air base in Soto Cano, Honduras.

The surge in U.S. military investment in the region parallels statements by SouthCom commander Douglas Fraser that the triangle formed by Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala “is possibly the most violent place on Earth today.”

Congress approved a $25 million expansion of barracks for enlisted troops at the U.S. base in Soto Cano, Honduras, located 50 miles north of the capital in Tegucigalpa. The base houses about 500 U.S. troops, as well as support personnel, and served as a way-station for the aircraft that whisked President Manuel Zelaya out of Honduras during the June 2009 military coup, according to Zelaya and a leaked State Department cable. Zelaya had proposed making the base intro a commercial airport in 2008. Now, a new operating center for U.S. Special Forces troops is being built on the base.

The U.S. has also funded military base construction at Caratasca on the Atlantic Coast, which is described in Pentagon contracts as a “forward operating location,” and in April disclosed another base that is being built on Guanaja Island, on Honduras’ Caribbean coast, which will be a counter-narco-terrorism operations center and barracks. The amount of Pentagon contracts for activities in Honduras signed in the six months after the coup ($19.2 million) was more than double the amount from the same period two years earlier.

The Pentagon is also constructing bases, especially naval bases, elsewhere along the Central American coast, and conducting extensive joint military exercises and training in the region. Even in El Salvador, where center-left Mauricio Funes is president, the United States will lead a massive Special Forces exercise in June, with the participation of troops from 25 nations. The Pentagon is also designing and building a $665,000 “shoot house” for U.S. Special Forces troops in El Salvador, to be completed in August.

In Guatemala, the United States last year conducted training and renovated barracks for the infamous Kaibiles special forces units, which have a base in the remote Petén department. The participation of Kaibiles in Guatemala’s attempted genocide was well documented, and more recently former Kaibilies were reported to have worked with the Zetas in Mexico, former soldiers who serve drug cartels as hired killers.

U.S. construction of a base does not necessarily mean that the United States will have title to the base or keep personnel there. But it is an intelligence asset to know in detail another nation’s military base, and it contributes to “interoperability” —that is, integration—of armed forces.

Remilitarizing Panama

Although the Panama Canal Treaties required closure of U.S. bases in that nation in 1999, the Pentagon has had an increasing presence in Panama in the last decade, as indicated by more than 700 contracts signed by Defense Department agencies for projects there since 1999. These include the construction of five different military bases on Panama’s coasts. [see map]

In April, Panama announced the establishment on a former U.S. military base of the Regional Security Operations Center, which will host military troops from the rest of Central America and the Dominican Republic and be linked to a Southern Command surveillance base in Florida. The center echoes an unsuccessful 1990s proposal to establish a “Multinational Counternarcotics Center” on U.S. bases on the canal, as a way to maintain a U.S. military presence there. Panama hasn’t yet disclosed if the new center will include a U.S. presence.

In June, Central American leaders will gather in Guatemala, where the United States, the Inter-American Development Bank, and other nations will be urged to pitch in nearly a billion dollars to support a largely military regional security plan. The United States has committed $200 million as part of its own Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), not including Pentagon funds. Yet “officials from nearly every Central American nation maintain that the region was not sufficiently involved in the formulation of …CARSI,” the Congressional Research Service reported in March.

Cycles of U.S. Military Presence, Retreat and Advance

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, when the United States frequently intervened militarily in Central America and the Caribbean, it did so primarily from the sea, using gunboats to impose its will during a period when it lacked fixed military bases in the region. The installations it established were often coaling stations to supply its naval power. That changed with the establishment of bases in Panama, Cuba, and Puerto Rico in the early twentieth century and World War II. Panama became the regional hub.

In the 1950s, the United States built up the Panama National Guard, which morphed into a more nationalistic and militarized force in the 1960s and 70s. In the wake of the 1989 U.S. invasion that dismantled Panama’s armed forces, the country constitutionally abolished the military.

The implementation of the Panama Canal Treaties in 1999, the expulsion of the U.S. military from Vieques, Puerto Rico, in 2003 and from Ecuador in 2009, the anti-imperialist influences on many regional governments, and the rise of Brazil and China as superpower players in the hemisphere, have placed U.S. military activities in Latin America on a more defensive footing.

Most of the military bases being constructed in Central America are naval bases, while the 2008 activation of the Fourth Fleet to deploy in Latin America has increased the tempo of naval exercises. The United States military, again, is coming mostly from the sea.

The projects bankrolled by the Pentagon for Panama include the use of drones in Panama by Stark Aerospace, a division of Israel Defense Industries, as well as an upgrade to firing ranges. Stark is a small firm based in Mississippi whose primary business is producing drones, including both unarmed surveillance vehicles and an armed “Hunter” drone that has been used for bombing missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. The firing ranges being upgraded became a thorn in canal treaty implementation in the late 1990s because of the tens of thousands of explosives left behind on live fire areas on the banks of the canal.

Plan Colombia, Continued

The U.S. military buildup in Central America runs parallel to similar developments in Colombia. There, the United States and Colombia signed an agreement in October 2009 that would have given the United States military use of seven bases in Colombia for ten years.

Last August, Colombia’s Constitutional Court struck down the agreement, because it was never submitted for Congressional approval or judicial review. Yet, even after the agreement was declared “non-existent” by Colombia’s highest court, the Pentagon initiated unprecedented amounts of new construction on bases in Colombia, including for an “Advanced Operations Base” for U.S. special forces.

U.S. military agencies in September 2010 signed contracts for construction worth nearly $5 million at three bases, according to official U.S. documents. U.S. military contracts for Tolemaida in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, were larger than the four previous years combined.

The contracts included two for an “Advanced Operations Base” for the U.S. Southern Command special operations unit in Tolemaida, a training base located south of Bogota. The special operations unit, known as SOCSOUTH, has as its mission “the use of small units in direct or indirect military actions that are focused on strategic or operational objectives,” including “provid[ing] an immediately deployable theater crisis response force.”

“It is a flagrant violation of sovereignty,” according to former Constitutional Court magistrate Alfredo Beltrán Sierra. “Remember that the government already tried to justify the establishment of U.S. troops with a disguised agreement that the Court finally overturned,” he said.

The base agreement also provoked strong regional opposition in 2009 after Pentagon planning and budget documents referred to “anti-U.S. governments” and the use of “full spectrum operations” in the region, indicating that the Pentagon seeks to project military power in South America. The construction now of a U.S. “advanced operations base” in Colombia raises similar concerns.

Besides the new contracts naming military bases, there were also military contracts for $2.5 million in construction at unnamed locations in Colombia signed in September. Another military construction contract described as being for “Talemaida Avaition” [sic] for $5.5 million was signed in October 2009, just days before the United States and Colombia signed the base agreement. Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) obtained the contract information from a public website that posts federal contract information, including where the contracts will be carried out.

There is a growing chorus of voices, including former Latin American presidents, as well as Mexicans fed up with the war paradigm, who assert that military responses to drug traffickers are only making the problem worse. The question is, how will civil society in Latin America and the United States respond to the growing U.S. military buildup?

Glenn Beck is trying to create a media storm with the UK single "Freedom for Palestine"

Beck Condemns the UK band Coldplay For Promoting "Evil" "Propaganda" Trying To "Destroy Israel" When they endorsed this song on their facebook page to their fans.

The video has been treated with mixed messages by the fans of One World group. Although the sites which are promoting this song have welcomed Glenn Beck's "hilarious" comments as added promotion to the song, the cause and highlighting events towards Gaza in the coming weeks for the Freedom Flotilla ship II.



The UK Single may not make it onto the BBC airplay, but are heavily promoting this song on the World Wide Web via Facebook, Twitter and other social sites. Reports are that Facebook removed one of their links as it was reported as "abusive".

It will also be the needle with which to poke the BBC if, it DOES make the No 1 slot. As the BBC have long held the stance that they must remain "impartial". Their impartiality has also been highlighted with the rappers, where they have been allowed to swear on the radio on a rap show with the 'killing it' title "Fire in the booth." They are allowed to swear on a dedicated rappers 'license,' but have been heavily edited when they included "Gaza Strip" in their lyrics. Some respected rappers have even been moved to a 3am slot when they thought that it was a 'prime time' show.

The single "Freedom for Palestine" by One World is a collaboration of artists, but more notably Maxi Jazz, Aka Faithless. He decided to to do something, when he saw for himself in Gaza, how 'difficult' it was to move as a free citizen. He was asked to go to Israel and Gaza as a much admired DJ/rapper and respected artist. So he saw for himself that something had to be done. He is not known as an activist artist. So his decision to make a single was very exiting to all those that have been singing and rapping about this issue for years.

This song can be downloaded on Itunes and HMV sites. This is their site, but they have social sites too http://freedomoneworld.com/.

An Interview With Gilad Atzmon

By Silvia Cattori. Lifted from Scribd, http://www.silviacattori.net/article1540.html

Gilad Atzmon is an outstandingly charming man. He is often described by music critics as one of the finest contemporary jazz saxophonists. But Atzmon is more than just a musician: for those who follow events in the Middle East, he is considered to be one of the most credible voices amongst Israeli opponents. In the last decade he has relentlessly exposed and denounced barbarian Israeli policies. Just before his departure on a European Spring Tour, “The Tide Has Changed “, with his band the Orient House Ensemble, he spoke to Silvia Cattori.

Silvia Cattori: As a jazz musician, what brought you to use your pen as a weapon [ 1 ] against the country where you were born and against your people?

Gilad Atzmon: For many years my music and writings were not integrated at all. I became a musician when I was seventeen and I took it up as a profession when I was twenty four. Though I was not involved with, or interested in politics when I lived in Israel, I was very much against Israel’s imperial wars. I identified somehow with the left, but later, when I started to grasp what the Israeli left was all about, I could not find myself in agreement with anything it claimed to believe in, and that is when I realised the crime that was taking place in Palestine.

For me the Oslo Accord was the end of it because I realised that Israel was not aiming towards reconciliation, or even integration in the region, and that it completely dismissed the Palestinian cause. I understoodthen that I had to leave Israel. It wasn’t even a political decision - I just didn’t want to be part of the Israeli crime anymore. In 1994 I moved to the UK and I studied philosophy.

In 2001, at the time of the second Intifada, I began to understand that Israel was the ultimate aggressor and was also the biggest threat to world peace. I realised the extent of the involvement and the role of world Jewry as I analysed the relationships between Israel and the Jewish State, between Israel and the Jewish people around the world, and between Jews and Jewishness.

I then realised that the Jewish “left” was not very different at all from the Israeli “left”. I should make it clear here that I differentiate between “Left ideology” - a concept that is inspired by universal ethics and a genuine vision of equality - and the “Jewish Left”, a tendency or grouping that is there solely to maintain tribal interests that have very little, if anything, to do with universalism, tolerance and equality.

Silvia Cattori: Would you argue that there is a discrepancy between Jews and left?

Gilad Atzmon: Not at all. I should explain here that I never talk about Jews as a people. I differentiate between Jews (the people), Judaism (the religion), and Jewishness (the culture). In my work, I am only elaborating on the third category, i.e. Jewishness. Also it should be understood that I differentiate between the tribal “Jewish Left”, and Leftists who simply happen to be Jewish. Indeed, I would be the first to admit that there are many great leftists and humanists who happen to be of Jewish origin. However those Jews who operate under a “Jewish banner” seem to me to be Zionist fig leafs: they are solely there to convey an image of “Jewish pluralism”. In fact, when I grasped the full role of the “Jewish left” I realised that I may end up fighting alone against the strongest power around.

Silvia Cattori: Do you fight alone?

Gilad Atzmon: More or less alone. I like to fight alone; I take responsibility. Along the years, there have been a lot attempts to destroy the few of us who have stood up against Jewish power. I found myself in trouble for supporting people like Israel Shamir and Paul Eisen, for standing up for their right to think freely and to express their opinions and ideas openly. I remember one of those infamous “Jewish Left” activists telling me, “listen Gilad, once you shun Shamir we will let you be”. My answer was simple: I was not about to bargain with intellectual integrity. For me, freedom of speech is an iron rule - I would never silence anyone.

Within the liberation movement and the solidarity movement, I do not actually believe that we have any intellectuals. And why we do not have intellectuals? Because in the name of “Political Correctness”, we have managed to destroy every single English speaking creative mind within our movement.

What we see here may be an endemic problem with “the Left”. To speak in broad (or rather Germanic philosophical) terms, “the Left” is “forgetful of Being” - Instead of understanding what Being in the world is all about, it tries to suggest to us what being in the world ought to be. “The Left” has adopted a preaching mode that has led to a severe form of alienation, and this is probably why “the Left” has failed to come to terms with, fully understand, and grasp the significance and power of Islam. And this is why “the Left” is totally irrelevant to the current revolution in the Middle East. As we know by now, “the Left’s’ tolerance”, somehow evaporates when it comes to Islam and Muslims. I find it very problematic.

Silvia Cattori: Can you explain why the Left is irrelevant?

Gilad Atzmon: Let us look at the current events in the Arab and Muslim world: where is “the Left”? All those years they were trying to tell us, the “public will rise”, but where is the left now? Is it in Egypt? Is it in Libya or Bahrain? We hear about the Muslim Brotherhood, the middle class, the young Arabs and Muslims – indeed, we are hearing about anything but “the Left”. Did you see any interesting Left wing analysis of the regional emerging Intifada? Not really. Recently, I was searching for an analysis of the Egyptian uprising in a famous Socialist paper. I found one article - I then realised that the words “Islam” and “Muslim” did not appear in the article even once, yet the word “class” appeared no less than nineteen times. What we see here then, is actually an example of the ultimate form of detachment from humanity, humanism and the human condition.

But I take it further: where is ‘the Left’ in Europe? Where is “the Left” in America? Why can’t they stand up for the Muslims? Why can’t they bond with, or make allies with millions of Muslim immigrants, people who also happen to be amongst the new European working class? I will mention here what I consider to be a most crucial insight: It is an idea I borrowed from the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Lacan contends that love can be realised as making love to oneself via the other. The “Left solidarity” with Palestine in my opinion can be similarly grasped as making love to ourselves at the expense of the Palestinians. We do not want them to be Muslims. We tell them to be democratic - as long as they don’t vote Hamas. We tell them to be progressive, “like us”. I just can’t make up my mind whether such an attitude is rude, or simply pathetic.

Recently I came across a critical Trotsky-ite take on my work. The argument against me was as follows: “Gilad is wrong because he manages to explain Zionism without colonialism; he explains the holocaust without fascism. He even explains the recession, the global economic disaster, without capitalism.”

I couldn’t agree more. We do not need “working class politics” anymore. The old 19Th century clichés can be dropped - and the sooner the better. In order to explain why our world is falling apart, we just have to be brave enough to say what we think, to admit what we see, to call a spade a spade.

Actually, I would love to see “the Left” resurrecting itself. Yet, for that to happen, it must first remind itself what equality and tolerance really mean, because for “the Left” to be meaningful again, it must first grasp the true meaning of “love your neighbour.”

Silvia Cattori: When we listen to your political comments we forget that you are primarily a musician.

Gilad Atzmon: The truth of the matter is that I am not actually interested in politics - I am not a member of any party and I do not care about, or seek any political power. I am not interested in the binary opposition between “left” and “right", and I do not care about the banal dichotomy between “progressive” and “reactionary”. And let’s face it from a Marxist point of view I am associated with the most reactionary forces: I support Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, and I support Hamas. What do you want more than that! I am the ultimate reactionary being and I am delighted and proud about it all.

Silvia Cattori: You are really a free spirit.

Gilad Atzmon: That is because I am not political. I am an artist and amusician; it is very simple.

Silvia Cattori: We can hardly imagine what would you be if you had stayed in Israel?

Gilad Atzmon: It would be impossible to imagine.

Silvia Cattori: Are you still going to Israel?

Gilad Atzmon: Never. I will visit the Holly Land when it is Palestine.

Silvia Cattori: Are you an exception among Israelis?

Gilad Atzmon: It is very interesting; when it comes to the “Jewish left” abroad, I know very few Jews whom I can trust on that level of commitment. They always go along with you, but then as soon as you question the tribal bond and their own role within the “Jewish universe” you will be stabbed in the back. Very rarely does one come across courageous Jews who are willing to engage in deep self-reflection: I refer here to people like Paul Eisen, Jeff Blankfort, Norman Finkelstein, Hajo Meyer and Evelyn Hecht Galinsky. [2]

In Israel however, it is different. You have quite a few people who are actually brave beyond belief. They are really putting their life on the line. These are the people who send us information about the army, about military secrets, about war crimes and names of war criminals. So there are quite a few Israelis who are doing incredible work.

Silvia Cattori: Is writing on political matters and composing music a way for you to contribute to a better world and to beauty? Is one inseparable from the other?

Gilad Atzmon: At the moment I am trying to establish a continuum between my music and my writing. I believe that unlike our politicians - whether they are right wing politicians, conservative politicians, left politicians, all of whom are seeking power - artists are searching for beauty. And I believe it is beauty that can unite people.

I will tell you something that I really plan to write about. For many years our so-called “political analysts” have been talking about Israel being a “settler state” and Zionism being a “colonial project”. But what kind of colonialism is it? Is it an accurate comparison?

For if Israel is a “settler state” – then what exactly is its “motherland”? In British and French colonial eras, the settler states maintained a very apparent tie with their "motherland”. In some cases in history the settler state broke from its motherland. Such an event is a rather noticeable one, and the Boston Tea Party is a good example of that. But, as far as we are aware, there is no “Jewish motherland” that is intrinsically linked to the alleged “Jewish settler state”.

The “Jewish people” are largely associated with the “Jewish state”, and yet the “Jewish people” is not exactly a “material” autonomous sovereign entity. Moreover, native Hebraic Israeli Jews are not connected culturally or emotionally to any motherland except their ownstate.

Silvia Cattori: However, for some of the strongest advocates of the Palestinian rights, such as Ilan Pappe, Israel is a colonial State. They put forward this argument to challenge Israeli policies.

Gilad Atzmon: I am afraid that most activists and academics cannot tell the entire truth on this sensitive matter. Maybe no one can survive telling the truth. Indeed, we are daily terrorised by different measures from the thought police. I am convinced that most of the scholars who insist upon calling Israel a “settler state” are fully aware of the problems entangled with the “colonial paradigm”. They must be aware of the uniqueness of the Zionist project. It is indeed true that Zionism manifests some symptoms that are synonymous with colonialism - however that is not enough: Zionism is inherently a racially oriented “homecoming” project driven by spiritual enthusiasms that are actually phantasmic. It intrinsically lacks many of the “necessary” elements that we understand as comprising colonialism, and cannot be defined insolely materialist terms.

It seems to me that here, we come across a crucial problem of understanding and analysis within our movement, and within Western intellectual discourse in general. Our academics are suppressed, and scholarship is silenced, for within the tyranny of political correctness, our academics are forced to primarily consider the boundaries of the discourse - they first examine carefully what they are allowed to say - and then they fill in the empty spaces, formulating theories or narratives.

This pattern is unfortunately common. Yet, such an approach and method is foreign to my understanding of truth-seeking and true scholarship.

It is crucial to mention at this point that I do not claim to know the truth. I just say what I believe to be the truth. If I am wrong, I welcome people to point it out to me.

It appears to me that “the Left” mislead us and itself by depicting Zionism solely as a colonial project. The “Left” likes the colonial paradigm because it locates Zionism nicely within their ideology. It also leads us to believe that the colonial/post-colonial political model provides some answers and even operative solutions; following the colonial template, we first equate Israel with South Africa, and then we implement a counter-colonial strategy, such as the BDS (Boycott,Divestment, Sanctions).

Yet, whilst I fully support all of those actions, they seem to be in some regards, not entirely effective at all. The BDS has not in fact, led to any metamorphic change within Israeli society. If anything, it has led to further intensified radicalisation within the right in Israel. Why has the BDS not worked yet? The answer is simple: It is because Israel is not at all entirely a colonial entity - as we historically understand that term - and it needs to be understood that its power and ties with the West are maintained by the strongest lobbies around the world.

So, if the Left wants to stop Israel for real, then it must openly question the notion of Jewish Power and its role within Western politics and media. But can the Left do it? I am not so sure.

Let us return now to further comparison of Israel with the colonial model - Israel is also markedly different, for example, from earlier colonial states such as South Africa, because Israel implements genocidal tactics. South Africa was indeed brutal - but it stopped short of throwing white phosphorous on its indigenous population. South Africa was a settler state, and was exploiting its indigenous population: but it wanted to keep them alive and oppressed. The Jewish state, on the other hand - would much prefer to wake up one morning to find out that all the Palestinians had disappeared, because Israel is driven by a Talmudic racist ideology. For those who have not realised it yet, the Zionism that presented itself initially as a secular project was, in fact, a crude attempt to transform the Bible into a land registry document, and an attempt to turn God into a nasty estate agent. It should be understood that Zionism follows a completely different political operative mode to any other settler state, and the colonial paradigm is simply incapable of fully addressing that.

But here is the good news: interestingly enough, it has been artists rather than “intellectuals” who have been brave enough to speak out. At a certain stage they started to equate images of Palestine with those of the Jewish holocaust, and it was artists who were brave enough to juxtapose Palestinian kids with Jewish ones.

Silvia Cattori: Yes, but can we really compare the two?

Gilad Atzmon: Why not? We compare between two ideologies, between two racist ethnocentric precepts. It was the artists who came up with that simple and essential truth. It was the artists who dismantled the colonial paradigm in just a one swift move. Seemingly our artists are well ahead of our “intellectuals”.

Silvia Cattori: I would like further understand your objection to those who consider Israel a colonialist State. Already in the sixties, South Africa severed institutional relations with Great Britain and had withdrawn from the Commonwealth. Thus there was no more a "motherland" outside South Africa. And yet the Black population fought the “settlers” who had installed the apartheid. In that sense, can we not consider that there is a similarity with the present struggle of the Palestinians for their rights against Jewish settlers who settled on their land, and that this struggle is, in a way, a struggle against colonialism? It is true that white South Africans did not implement murderous tactics against the natives. Is it because you are focusing on this point that you put in the center the uniqueness of the Zionist project, rather than colonialism?

Gilad Atzmon: The big question I try to raise here is: why can’t we practice coherent scholarship? The issues surrounding the appropriation of the colonial paradigm is obviously just one example. We are subject to a lethal tyranny of political correctness.

You are right suggesting that some settler states drift away from the irrespective motherlands; however, Israel didn’t drift away from any motherland because it has never had a motherland. Zionism was never a colonial project in that sense - The colonial paradigm is a spin.

The big question to ask is; why are “the Left” and Jewish anti-Zionists desperately clinging to the colonial paradigm? And here is my answer:

1. It is safe; it makes the criticism of the Jewish state look legitimate.

2. It conveys the hope of a resolution: If Israel is indeed, just a settler state like any of the other earlier historical examples it will eventually assimilate into the region and become a “normal” state. Where is the problem in such an approach, you might ask? Well, it is pretty obvious - this entire discourse is actually completely irrelevant to the Zionist disease. It is like treating a patient who has bowel cancer with some strong diarrhea pills - just because the symptoms are slightly similar.

Disastrously enough, this is the level of our left-intellectual discourse at the present time.

Silvia Cattori: But those within the solidarity movement, who denounce “Israeli colonialism”, criticise Israeli racist agenda and support the right to return - aren’t they saying exactly the same thing as you are saying?

Gilad Atzmon: To start with, we are indeed part of the same movement, and I guess that we are driven by the same ethical intuitions.

However, there is a clear difference between us, because by employing the “colonial paradigm” their intention is to communicate the idea that the Jewish national project is entirely reminiscent of a 19Th century national trend. This is to say that, just like most other European settler nations, the Jews happened to celebrate their “national symptoms” - it is just that they did so after everyone else.

The “colonial paradigm” is then, invoked to also support the idea that Israel is an apartheid state, and pretty much like most other earlier colonial settings. My approach is totally different, because I would argue that Israel and Zionism is a unique project in history, and the relationship between Israel and the operation of the Jewish Lobbies in the West is also totally unique in history. I would even take it further,and say that whilst the Palestinians are indeed at the fore front of a battle for humanity, the fact is that we are all subject to Zionist global politics. According to my model, the credit crunch is in fact a Zionist “punch”. The war in Iraq is a Zionist war. I would argue forcefully that Zionism has a long time ago moved from the “promised land” narrative into the “promised planet” nightmare. I also argue that it would be impossible to bring peace to the world unless we confront the true meaning of contemporary Jewish ideology.

Interestingly enough, many of those who enthusiastically support the “colonial paradigm”, were also very quick to denounce the work of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt on the Israeli Lobby. If Mearsheimerand Walt are correct, and I think that they are, then it is Jewish power which we have to confront.

And this is exactly what the “Jewish Left” and Jewish intelligentsia are there to prevent us from doing.

Silvia Cattori: Your views clearly oppose intellectuals such as Bernard-Henry Lévy who support Western expansionism and Israeli policies. For you Israel is the danger. Don’t you think that some people see there an element of provocation?

Gilad Atzmon: Provocation is not a bad thing. I wrote an article recently about Bernard-Henry Lévy [3]. The man is lame beyond belief. We have more than a few “Bernard-Henri Levys” here in Britain too, Jews who portray a false image of scholarship. And as it happens, we intellectually smash them, one by one. We expose them for what they are. By the way, Norman Finkelstein did a great job with Dershowitz. We should not be scared about it all.

Also, I think that by the time people don’t have enough money to put petrol in the car let alone buy bread, they will start to look at who is to blame, and when that happens, the Israeli State and its relentless lobbies will emerge at the top of the list. I think that some people are starting to see it now, already. The change will be drastic. I guess that in retrospect, some people can look at my writing now, and admit that I was warning the Jewish lobbies for years.

Silvia Cattori: What differentiates Gilad Atzmon from those who say, "I am a Jewish anti-Zionist"; "We are Jews for peace", etc, yet always highlighting their tribal identity?

Gilad Atzmon: It is very simple: for me, the fight for peace is a fight for a universal cause. For me, to support the Palestinians is an ethical necessity. And if it is a universal cause and an ethical necessity, I do not see any reason to fight it “as a Jew”, “as a man”, or “as a jazz artist”. When I come across those who call themselves “Jews for peace” and “Jews for justice”, I stand up and say “what do you really mean by calling yourself a ‘Jew’? Are you religious?” When a Torah Jew says he identifies as a Jew I know what he refers to. When Torah Jews say “we are religious Jews and we support Palestine in the name of our faith”, I say “go ahead, you have my support”.

But when secular Jews tell me that they work for Palestine in the name of their Jewish values, I must ask them “What are your ‘Jewish secular values’ ”? I have studied and carefully considered the subject, and, as embarrassing as it may sound, there is no such thing as a “Jewish secular value system”.

Those who refer to such ideas are either lying, misleading others, or even misleading themselves.

Silvia Cattori: If I understood well, those who identify themselves as “anti-Zionist Jews” or “Jews for peace” believe that this makes their voice louder than others’ voice.

Gilad Atzmon: For sure, and that is a valid point. But again, I still have some reservations, because if I say “I am a Jew for peace,” and I believe that this is enough to make my voice more important than yours, what it really means is that I am still consciously celebrating my chosen-ness. And isn’t that exactly the problem we have with Zionism?

So, fundamentally, Jewish anti-Zionism is still just another manifestation of Jewish tribal supremacy. It seems peculiar that peace activists, who claim to be universalist leftists, end up operating in racially oriented cells.

Silvia Cattori: Is this consciously a way to humiliate non Jewish people?

Gilad Atzmon: That is possible; but I do not think that Jews who succumb to Jewish tribal politics are really conscious of the effect it has on others.

Silvia Cattori: Israelis who describe themselves as ex-Israelis, ex- Jews, are very rare. Are you the only one?

Gilad Atzmon: I may as well be the only one. However, I do not really talk as an ex-Jew - I talk as Gilad Atzmon. I avoid collective banners. When you read me, you read what I think. You see it for what it is, and you either agree, or you don’t agree. I do not need flags or phantasmic identities to hide behind.

Silvia Cattori: Few famous artists have had the courage to stand up openly and firmly for victims of Israeli oppression. We know that, in general, well known people are afraid to be placed on the "anti-Semitic" list. Roger Waters has dared to break the taboo [4]. David Gilmour, Robert Wyatt, followed. What do you say to those who are still scared?

Gilad Atzmon: I believe that the only way to liberate ourselves is to begin to talk. The only way to fight is to express ourselves openly. I have taken that risk and if I can do it, then I think that everyone can do it. I have paid a price in that my career has suffered a little, and I make less money. But I can look at myself with pride.

Silvia Cattori: To those who would argue that your political positions are, let’s say, “borderline”, what do you answer?

Gilad Atzmon: I do not actually know what “borderline” means. For years I encountered endless attempts to silence me, but they all proved to be counter effective because if anything, the repressive measures taken against me brought many more people to read my materials, and encouraged more people to think things through for themselves. I was accused by Zionists and Jewish anti-Zionists of being racist and anti Semitic, but embarrassingly enough for them, nota single anti Semitic or racist argument has ever been found in my many papers. On the contrary, there is an anti racist attitude that stands at the very core of my criticism of Jewish identity politics and Jewish ideology. I have been writing now for ten years, and for all those years, I have had a note on my web site saying “If you find something racist or anti-Semitic in my writings, let me know. I will apologise and remove it immediately”. And not a single person hasever come up with anything.

As I mentioned before, I differentiate between Jews (the people), Judaism (the religion) and Jewishness (the ideology). I am against Jewish ideology — not against Jewish people or Judaism. If this makes me into a “borderline case”, then I will have to live with it.

Silvia Cattori: Your voice helps people to understand what Israel is all about. In general, covering this subject is not easy. However, should not journalists take more responsibilities in exposing the power games that devastate the Middle East? What have been the responsibilities in this regard of Western media?

Gilad Atzmon: I will be very honest with you; Western media has failed all the way. Western media has betrayed us. It has failed to understand that Palestine is not that far from our “Western haven”. The media have failed to see that we are all Palestinians - Palestinians are at the forefront of the battle against evil, but the rest of us are fighting in exactly the same battle, and we are all confronting the same enemy. What happened in America with the credit crunch and evolved into economic turmoil is the direct outcome of global Zionist politics.

America invests its tax payers’ money maintaining the Jewish State and it launched its people into a war to “save Israel”. Consequently, we are all facing a financial disaster, and as we speak, the Arab masses are rising: they demand liberation, and they want an immediate end to the Zio-political grip. What you see now in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Yemen is there to prepare us all, and we may well see the same thing unfolding soon in Berlin, Paris, London, Madrid, Barcelona, and NewYork City, because we all face the same enemy.

Silvia Cattori: I wonder whether your readers understand what you refer to when talking about Zionism and global Zionism.

Gilad Atzmon: That is indeed a very crucial point. You may find it hard to believe but even Israelis do not understand what Zionism is all about. Zionism is the belief that Jews (like all other people) should be entitled to celebrate their right for a national homeland, and this homeland is Zion (Palestine). Though this idea sounds almost innocent, it is entangled with very problematical ethical issues, because Zionism has morphed into political reality in the shape of a Jewish State, built entirely at the expense of the ethnically cleansed and abused Palestinian people. Moreover, along the years, the Jewish State has been utilising some very powerful lobbies and think tanks in our Western capitals; and these bodies promote global Zionist interests such as endless confrontation with Islam and the Muslim world.

While early Zionism presented itself as a promise to redeem all the Diaspora Jews by means of settlement in the so-called “promised land”, in the last three decades Zionism has changed its spots in some regards — The Jewish State actually prefers some of the DiasporaJews to stay exactly where they are so they can mount pressure on their respective governments for the sake of what they interpret as their Jewish interests.

The role of Jewish lobbies such as of AIPAC, J-street (USA) and Conservative Friends of Israel (UK) is far more advantageous to Israel than any wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine could be. This transformation in Zionist thought signals a shift from the local to the global, and therefore, Zionism should no longer be solely perceived asa demand for a Jewish home in the “promised land” - Rather it must be grasped as a global operation, seeking a safe haven for the Jews within the context of “promised planet.”

The Israelis and their allies know very well why they promote Islamophobia. But what is Islamophobia? What, and who, does it serve? It serves Zio-centric Capitalist interests. Islamophobia is the true face of Hasbara (Israeli propaganda). It is there to make sure that Israel’s “survival war” is actually a Western war.

This is obviously misleading, and for the sake of Western interests, shunning Israel immediately would be the right thing to do.

Silvia Cattori: When do you see the emergence of Islamophobia and what was the cause?

Gilad Atzmon: That is a good question - historically, it probably first arose in the seventies, soon after the energy crisis. I think that by 1973, we could clearly detect the first signs of modern political and institutional anti-Muslim antipathy as the Western public began to realise the strategic role of the Middle East. The shift towards a “popular anti Muslim culture” was exacerbated further by the success of Salman Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses”, and I would argue that by September 11, 2001, the Western public was primed for an outbreak of “Muslim bashing”. I will never forget Ehud Barak being interviewed on that day, spreading bile and Islamophobic accusations on every Western media outlet. For Israeli Hasbara agitators, 9/11 was proof of the “unified ethos” shared between Israel and the (Western) Goyim.

I would like to elaborate more on your question regarding Islamophobia. I realised some time ago that the general acceptability of certain minorities can always be measured by the popularity -or unpopularity- of its “self-haters”. The growing popularity of Muslim “self- haters” in the 1970-90’s era could have suggested that a wave of anti Islamic feelings was on its way to our shore. Similarly, the antagonism towards Jewish “self-haters” in the last decade confirms the success and influence of Jewish lobbies within media and politics. I guess that the rise of my popularity certainly indicates that the tide has indeed turned. We can firmly anticipate a tidal wave of resentment towards Israel.

Silvia Cattori: What is fascinating about you is your freedom of speech. You can’t stand the truth being “half told”. Isn’t it the case?

Gilad Atzmon: I think that is a good way to put it. I have developed a severe allergy to spins and deceitful narratives. As I said before I do not claim to know the truth; however, I am pretty effective in detecting lies, ploys and diversions. Being a philosopher I am also effective in raising questions and deconstructing inconsistencies. I am puzzled by the activists around us who believe that we can beat Zionism by sketching out some phantasmic narratives of resistance. I honestly believe that truth-seeking and total openness will prevail. If you want to grasp the growing popularity of my writing, I guess that this is what it is - instead of playing political games I really try to get to the bottom of it all. I try to understand what it is that drives and fuels Zionism, Israel, Jewish lobbying, neoconservative expansionist wars and even Jewish anti Zionism.

And I guess that by now, you realise that I identify Jewish Ideology - rather than Jews or Judaism - as the crux of these precepts and political views.

[1] See the website of Gilad Atzmon:
http://www.gilad.co.uk/.

[2] See: “Truth in Stuttgart”, by Gilad Atzmon, gilad.co.uk, 19 February, 2011.

[3] See: “The French Philosopher”, by Gilad Atzmon, gilad.co.uk , 4 February2011.

[4] See: “Roger Waters, a Man and an exceptional Artist ”, by Silvia Cattori,silviacattori.net, 8 February 2011.

By Those Who Know, Live, And Fight It

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Their Independence is our Nakba

That is the slogan that was chosen for this year protests. In Bethlehem same as West Bank and Gaza Strip main cities; school students, teachers and politicians as well as religious leaders; both Muslims and Christians, marched affirming the right of return to the today's 4.7 million refugees in and outside Palestine.

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Al Walajeh Commemorate Nakba

Four arrested by Israeli troops as they attacked Nakba Protest in al-Walajeh village on Sunday May 15, 2011. In 1948 the village of al-Walajeh was among the 530 villages destroyed by the Zionest forces to make way for the creation of Israel. People moved to the rest of their lands near Bethlehem city and lived there, which was annexed by Israel in 1967

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Walajeh: A Story of Continued Nakba

The village of al-Walajeh, located to south of Jerusalem, between the city and Bethlehem. Walls, settlements, land annexation, and home destruction, all is being done by Israel in the village of walajeh. Indeed this village sums up the conflict.

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Israeli Historian Describes Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine in 1948 (Nakba)

Dr. Ilan Pappé is an Israeli historian who was a senior lecturer at Haifa University from 1984-2007. His position as an Israeli academic gave him access to official Israeli historical archives. Through research this Israeli-born academic learned the truth about the Israeli narrative. This clip of a lecture he gave in the US clarifies what happened on 1948, a day we commemorate tomorrow May 15th as Yawm An-Nakba or "Day of the Catastrophe."

"It was suggested to them that so few years after the Holocaust it wasn't a good idea to portray the Jews as murderers, expellers, looters, occupiers, and colonizers. This was a conscious decision by the political elites of the West to atone for what Europe did to the Jews in the Second World War. The price was very clear, the dispossession of Palestine."

That Could Burn Everyone

Reflections of Fidel

ONE can be in agreement or not with Gaddafi’s political ideas, but nobody has the right to question the existence of Libya as an independent state and a member of the United Nations.

The world has still not accomplished what, from my point of view, constitutes an elemental question for the survival of our species today: the access of all peoples to the material resources of this planet. There is none other within the solar system which possesses the most elemental conditions of life as we know it.

The United States has always tried to be a melting pot of all races, creeds and nations: Caucasians, Africans, Asians, Indian and people of mixed race, with no differences other than those of master and slave, rich and poor; but all within the limits of its borders: Canada to the north, Mexico to the south, the Atlantic to the east, and the Pacific to the west. Alaska, Puerto Rico and Hawaii were simple historical accidents.

The complicated aspect of the matter is that it is not about a noble desire of those fighting for a better world, which is as worthy of respect as the religious beliefs of the peoples. Just a few types of radioactive isotopes emanating from enriched uranium consumed by electronuclear plants in relatively small quantities – given that they do not exist in nature – would suffice to put an end to the fragile existence of our species.

Burying those growing volumes of nuclear waste under sarcophaguses of cement and steel, is one of the greatest challenges of technology.

Incidents such as the Chernobyl accident or the Japanese earthquake have exposed those mortal risks.

The issue I wish to approach today is not that, but the shock with which I observed yesterday, via Walter Martínez’ Dossier program on Venezuelan television, the footage of the meeting between Robert Gates, chief of the Department of Defense, and British Defense Minister Liam Fox, who visited the United States to discuss the criminal war unleashed by NATO on Libya. It was almost hard to believe, the British minister took the Oscar; he was a bundle of nerves, he was tense, he spoke like a madman, he gave the impression that he was spitting out words.

Of course, first he arrived at the Pentagon entrance, where a smiling Gates was waiting for him. The flags of the two countries, that of the former colonial British Empire and that of its stepchild, the empire of the United States, fluttered on high on both sides while the anthems were played. The right hand on the chest, the rigorous and solemn military salute of the host country’s ceremony. That was Act I. After that the two ministers entered the U.S. Defense department. One would imagine that they talked at length given the footage I saw when each one returned with a speech in his hands, doubtless previously drafted.

The framework of this whole spectacle was constituted by military personnel. From the left hand angle one could see a young soldier, tall, slim, seemingly red-haired, shaven head, a cap with a black visor rammed on almost to his neck, presenting a rifle with a bayonet, unblinking and apparently not breathing, the very stamp of a soldier ready to fire a bullet or a nuclear missile with a destructive capacity of 100,000 tone of TNT. Gates spoke with the smile and naturalness of a lord and master. The Briton, on the other hand, did so in the way that I detailed.

It was one of the most horrible things I have ever seen; he exhibited hatred, frustration, rage and threatening language toward the Libyan leader, demanding his unconditional surrender. He seemed to be indignant because NATO’s powerful aircraft had been unable to crush the Libyan resistance in 72 hours.

He only needed to exclaim, "Blood, toil, tears and sweat!" like Winston Churchill did when calculating the price to be paid by his country for fighting Nazi aircraft. In this case the Nazi-fascist role is being played by NATO with its thousands of bombing missions with the most modern fighter planes that the world has ever known.

The last straw was the U.S. government decision authorizing the use of drone aircraft to kill Libyan men, women and children, as in Afghanistan, thousands of kilometers distant from Western Europe, but this time against an Arab and African people, right in front of the eyes of hundreds of millions of Europeans and no less than in the name of the United Nations.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stated yesterday that such acts of war were illegal and exceeded the framework of the United Nations Security Council agreements.

The gross attacks on the Libyan people, which are acquiring a Nazi-fascist nature, could be utilized against any Third World nation.

The resistance that Libya has put up really amazes me.

Now that bellicose organization is dependent on Gaddafi. If he resists and does not comply with its demands, he will go down in history as one of the great figures of the Arab countries.

NATO is fanning a fire which could burn everyone!


Fidel Castro Ruz
Havana, 27 April 2011

Of Obama's First Coup

Shortly after Manuel Zelaya returned to his home this weekend for the first time since the 2009 military coup d'etat, he sat down with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman for an exclusive interview. He talks about why he believes the United States was behind the coup, and what exactly happened on June 28, 2009, when hooded Honduran soldiers kidnapped him at gunpoint and put him on a plane to Costa Rica, stopping to refuel at Palmerola, the U.S. military base in Honduras. "This coup d'etat was made by the right-wing of the United States," Zelaya says. "The U.S. State Department has always denied, and continues to deny, their any ties with the government with the coup d'etat. Nevertheless, all of the proof incriminates the U.S. government. And all of the actions that were taken by the de facto regime, or the contista regime which are those who carried out the coup. And is to make favor of the industrial policies and the military policies and the financial policies of the United States in Honduras."

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Sinking Deeper In Libya War Swamp

Journalist Patrick Hayes from Spiked Online magazine, told RT that while NATO readies its bunker-busters, Libya might still be a hard nut to crack.