It's Not about a film: The Real Reason Why the Middle East Exploded

From AlterNet 17 September 2012:

Consortium News / By Ray McGovern

It's Not About a Film: The Real Reason Why the Middle East Exploded The conventional wisdom about the recent explosion of protest in the Middle East--that Muslims are way too sensitive or irrational--is dead wrong.

September 17, 2012 |

A protest in Duraz, Bahrain against the anti-Islamic film that mocked the Prophet Muhammed. The banner (in Arabic) reads: "The Islamic nation will not tolerate with those who offend its sanctities."

Photo Credit: Mohamed CJ/Wikimedia Commons

“Why Is the Arab world so easily offended?” asks the headline atop an article by Fouad Ajami, which the Washington Post published online last Friday to give perspective to the recent anti-American violence in Muslim capitals.

While the Post described Ajami simply as a “senior fellow” at Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution, Wikipedia gives a more instructive perspective on his checkered career and dubious credibility.

An outspoken supporter of the war on Iraq, Ajami was still calling it a “noble effort” well after it went south. He is a friend and colleague of one of the war’s intellectual authors, neocon Paul Wolfowitz, and also advised Condoleezza Rice. It was apparently Wolfowitz or Rice who fed Ajami’s analyses to then-Vice President Dick Cheney, who cited Ajami’s views repeatedly in speeches.

The most telling example of this came in Cheney’s VFW address on August 26, 2002, in which the Vice President laid down the terms of reference for the planned attack on Iraq. Attempting to assuage concerns about the upcoming invasion, Cheney cited Ajami’s analysis: “As for the reaction of the Arab ‘street,’ the Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are ‘sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans.’”

In his writings, Ajami did warn, in a condescending way, that one could expect some “road rage … of a thwarted Arab world – the congenital condition of a culture yet to take full responsibility for its self-inflicted wounds.” He then added:

“There is no need to pay excessive deference to the political pieties and givens of the region. Indeed, this is one of those settings where a reforming foreign power’s simpler guidelines offer a better way than the region’s age-old prohibitions and defects.”

No One Better?

Ignoring the albatross of tarnished credentials hanging around Ajami’s neck, the Post apparently saw him as just the right academician to put perspective on the violence of last week in Middle East capitals. As for his record of credibility: Well, who takes the trouble to go to Wikipedia for information on pundits?

Nor were the Post’s editors going to take any chances that its newspaper readers might miss the benefit of Ajami’s wisdom. So the Post gave pride of place to the same article in Sunday’s Outlook section, as well. What the Post and other mainstream media want us to believe comes through clearly in the title given to the article’s jump portion, which dominates page 5: “Why a YouTube trailer ignited Muslim rage.”

Setting off the article were large, scary photos: on page one, a photo of men brandishing steel pipes to hack into the windows of the U.S. embassy in Yemen; the page-5 photo showed a masked protester, as he “ran from a burning vehicle near the U.S. embassy in Cairo.”

So – to recapitulate – the Post’s favored editorial narrative of the Mideast turmoil is that hypersensitive, anti-American Muslims are doing irrational stuff like killing U.S. diplomats and torching our installations. This violence was the result of Arabs all too ready to take offense at a video trailer disrespectful of the Prophet.

Nonetheless, it seems to be true that the trailer did have some immediate impact and will have more. According to an eyewitness, the 30 local guards who were supposed to protect the U.S. consulate in Benghazi simply ran away as the violent crowd approached on Tuesday night.

Wissam Buhmeid, the commander of the Tripoli government-sanctioned Libya’s Shield Brigade, effectively a police force for Benghazi, maintained that it was anger over the video trailer which made the guards abandon their post.

“There were definitely people from the security forces who let the attack happen because they were themselves offended by the film; they would absolutely put their loyalty to the Prophet over the consulate. The deaths are all nothing compared to insulting the Prophet.”

Pretext and Catalyst

Predictably, Islamophobes and Muslim haters with influence over Western media coverage are citing the violence as the kind of “irrational” over-reaction that “exposes” Islam’s intolerance and incompatibility with democratic values and demonstrates that Islam is on a collision course with the West.

It is no surprise that Ajami gives no attention to the many additional factual reasons explaining popular outrage against the U.S. and its representatives – reasons that go far deeper than a video trailer, offensive though it was. Ajami steers clear of the dismal effects of various U.S. policies over the years on people across the Muslim world – in countries like Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Tunisia, Libya, Afghanistan. (The list stretches as far as distant Indonesia, the most populous Muslim state.)

Last week’s violence not only reflects the deep anger at and distrust of the U.S. across the Islamic world, but also provides insight into the challenges posed by the power now enjoyed by the forces of extremism long held in check by the dictators toppled by last year’s wave of revolutions.

Cui Bono?

Who are the main beneficiaries of misleading narratives like that of Ajami. He himself concedes, “It is never hard to assemble a crowd of young protesters in the teeming cities of the Muslim world. American embassies and consulates are magnets for the disgruntled.”

So, does that mean the notorious video trailer is best regarded as a catalyst for the angry protests rather than the underlying cause? In other words, if the video served as the spark, who or what laid the kindling? Who profits from the narrative that neocons are trying so hard to embed in American minds?

Broad hints can be seen in the Washington Post’s coverage over recent days – including a long piece by its Editorial Board, “Washington’s role amid the Mideast struggle for power,” published the same day Ajami’s article appeared online.

What the two have in common is that the word “Israel” appears in neither piece. One wonders how and why the Post‘s editors could craft a long editorial on the “Mideast struggle for power” — and give editorial prominence to Ajami’s article — without mentioning Israel.

Presumably because the Post’s readers aren’t supposed to associate the fury on the Arab “street” with anger felt by the vast majority Arabs over what they see as U.S. favoritism toward Israel and neglect for the plight of the Palestinians. The Israeli elephant, with the antipathy and resentment its policies engender, simply cannot be allowed into the discussion.

In the circumstances of last week, Israel may be less a centerpiece than the ugly Islamophobia that has found a home in America. But these factors tend to build on and reinforce each other. And the indignities suffered at the hand of Israel certainly has resonance is the larger context of Muslims who feel their religion and culture are under attack in a variety of ways.

“Why Do They Hate Us?”

On Saturday, during a live interview on Al-jazeera, I tried to inject some balance into the discussion. I noted that one key reason for the antipathy toward the U.S. among Muslims is the close identification of the U.S. with Israel and the widespread realization that support from Washington enables Israel’s policies of oppression and warmongering against the Palestinians and its regional neighbors.

As to “why they hate us,” I had time to recall three very telling things I had mentioned in an earlier article on this sensitive topic.

1 — From the 9/11 Commission Report of July 2004, page 147, regarding the motivation of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: “By his own account, KSM’s animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experience there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel.”

2 — The mainstream-media-neglected report from the Pentagon-appointed Defense Science Board, a report that took direct issue with the notion that they hate us for our freedom. Amazingly, in their Sept. 23, 2004, report to Rumsfeld, the DSB directly contradicted what Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush had been saying about “why they hate us.” Here’s part of what the DSB said:

“Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf States. Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy.”

The New York Times ignored the Defense Science Board’s startling explanation (as it has other references to the elephant plopped on the sofa). On Nov. 24, 2004, the erstwhile “newspaper of record” did publish a story on the board’s report — but performed some highly interesting surgery.

Thom Shanker of the Times quoted the paragraph beginning with “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom’” (see above), but he or his editors deliberately cut out the following sentence about what Muslims do object to, i.e., U.S. “one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights” and support for tyrannical regimes. The Times then included the sentence immediately after the omitted one. In other words, it was not simply a matter of shortening the paragraph. Rather, the offending middle sentence was surgically removed.

Equally important — and equally missing — there is never any sensible examination of the motives that might be driving what Cheney called this “same assortment of killers and would-be mass murderers [who] are still there.” We are left with Ajami’s image of hypersensitive or irrational Muslims unwilling to confront their own cultural failings.

3 – On May 21, 2009, just four months after he left office, Dick Cheney gave a speech at the neocon America Enterprise Institute and blurted out some uncharacteristic honesty. He explained why terrorists hate “all the things that make us a force for good in the world — for liberty, for human rights, for the rational, peaceful resolution of differences.”

However, no longer enjoying the services of a functionary to vet his rhetoric, Cheney slipped up (and so did the reporters covering the event). Expanding on the complaints of the terrorists, Cheney said:

“They have never lacked for grievances against the United States. Our belief in freedom of speech and religion … our belief in equal rights for women … our support for Israel (emphasis added) — these are the true sources of resentment.” “Our support for Israel” – a true source of resentment. Cheney got that part right.

One Brief Shining Moment

My mind wandered back to June 2004, when former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer published his insightful book, Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. The book won him interviews with the likes of NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, and – to his credit – Scheuer rose to the occasion with candor rarely heard in mainstream media before or since.

On June 23, 2004, he told Mitchell:

“It’s very hard in this country to debate policy regarding Israel … bin Laden’s ‘genius’ lies in his ability to exploit those U.S. policies most offensive to Muslims – our support for Israel, our presence on the Arabian peninsula, in Afghanistan and Iraq, our support for governments that Muslims believe oppress Muslims.”

Scheuer went on to say that bin Laden regarded the war on Iraq as proof of America’s hostility toward Muslims, and of the reality that America “is willing to do almost anything to defend Israel. The war is certainly viewed as an action meant to assist the Israeli state. It is … a godsend for those Muslims who believe as bin Laden does.”

In an interview with ABC’s “This Week,” he added that failure to change American policies to better match realities in the Middle East could mean decades of war. Only if the American people learn the truth could more effective strategies be fashioned and implemented, he added.

By and large, the truth-telling did not happen, so there has been but negligible pressure from the American people. The situation today differs little from then. Indeed, in the same time frame of Scheuer’s book, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld grappled publicly with a troubling “unknown” that followed along the same lines, i.e., “whether the extremists … are turning out newly trained terrorists faster than the United States can capture or kill them. It is quite clear to me that we do not have a coherent approach to this.”

Since then, eight years have come and gone – with still no coherent approach and with continued media camouflaging of the bedrock reasons as to “why they hate us.” Among the chief beneficiaries of this woodenheaded approach? One can look at the military-industrial-congressional-media-security complex, especially the war profiteers and their favored politicians who stoke fear of the “evildoers.” All the better to scare you with.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

VICTORIAN STATE MP USES TEENAGER TO DO HIS ANTI-BDS WORK FOR HIM

The zionists are very adept at running dirty tricks campaigns and they will do anything to smear people who are non-zionists or anti-zionists. Yet these xenophobic bigots continue to live in Australia and seem unwilling to move to their "mother country" Israel.

The fact is that the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement is gaining ground - slowly, but surely - and this is proving too much for zionists around the world to comprehend.

Interesting to use a teenager who doesn't actually know about the issues in which he is being used as a go-between in the nastiest possible way.

Has this politician no shame? - and why is he living in Melbourne? His place is surely in the West Bank illegal apartheid Jewish settlements selling Max Brenner chocolates to the religious fanatics from the Bronx.

Oh what a tangled web we weave........

From the age newspaper 12 September 2012

MP hit for 'lack of judgment' on teenager

September 12, 2012

Adam Cooper

Martin Foley. Photo: Teagan Glenane

A STATE Labor MP has sought legal advice over what he claims is an attempt by a political opponent to drive a wedge between him and sections of Melbourne's Jewish community.

Martin Foley, the member for Albert Park, was criticised by Liberal opponents in Parliament yesterday over claims he threatened a teenage school student who emailed him over a contentious protest movement.

Mr Foley said he had received an email from James Mathias, 17, last month accusing him of backing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, a pro-Palestinian organisation that promotes the boycotts of Israeli-owned companies such as the Max Brenner chocolate shop chain.

Mr Foley said the teen had claimed he had read of the issue in Hansard, although the parliamentary record was yet to be published online. He said he checked with the teen's school the following day and was told James was working as an intern for Liberal MP David Southwick.

Mr Foley got in contact with the teen via email and telephone, demanded an apology, and told him he was being used as a political pawn. Mr Foley denied threatening or bullying him. He said he had received an apology from James the following day and had no problem with the teen.

But Mr Foley said the issue had prompted a wave of trolling against him, and that he was obliged to defend himself. He said he had consulted Jewish leaders to stress that he was not anti-Semitic.

Mr Southwick, the Member for Caulfield, yesterday told Parliament Mr Foley had shown an ''appalling lack of judgment'' in his treatment of the teenager.

Other Liberals also took up the attack in Parliament, with Cindy McLeish claiming Mr Foley had threatened union retribution against the teen, while Clem Newton-Brown said Mr Foley was ''unhinged'' and called for him to be provided professional help.

Mr Foley, a former secretary of the Australian Services Union, was not in Parliament to hear the barbs, as he had been ejected from the house over an earlier matter. But he said the attack was a diversion from the bipartisan policy the two parties had earlier shown in opposing the BDS movement.

''This is simply a diversion by the Member for Caulfield, having been caught red-handed for running a dirt unit out of his office and trying to use young Liberals to play wedge politics,'' he said.

''It's Mr Southwick who needs to account for his actions, not me.''
Mr Foley said he had sought legal advice on whether the distribution of Hansard before it was published online constituted a form of publishing in his defence against the Liberals' claims.

AUSTRALIAN URANIUM AT FUKUSHIMA

The article is from Independent Australia online dated 14 September 2012

Fukushima and Australia’s uranium shame

Posted on 11 September, 2012

11 September 2012 marked 18 months since the Fukushima crisis began. Dave Sweeney has just been to the radiation exclusion zone and is horrified by what he’s seen.

US Air Force Radiation Assessment Team collects seawater sample at Onahama port, Fukushima prefecture, March 29, 2012 (Image courtesy Stars and Stripes).

The signs that all is not as it was or should be start gently enough: weeds appear in fields, the roadside vegetation covers signs and structures and there are few people about. The country looks peaceful, green and sleepy — then the radiation monitor two seats away wakes up and starts clicking.

I am on a bus heading along a narrow and winding road towards the Fukushima exclusion zone. The trip has been organised by a Japanese medical group and my fellow travellers are doctors, academics and radiation health specialists from around the world. They have come to see and hear the story behind the headlines and to bring their considerable expertise to support the continuing relief and response efforts.

Fukushima is a name known around the world since the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi reactor complex was shattered and radiation scattered following the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The world held its breath as images of emergency workers in radiation suits, bewildered and fearful locals sleeping at schools and grainy aerial footage of an increasingly vulnerable reactor filled our screens and press.

While the headlines might have faded the radiation, dislocation and complexity has not and eighteen months after the meltdown this trip is part of a wide spread effort in Japan to ensure that the impacts and implications of the Fukushima nuclear disaster are neither forgotten nor repeated.

Fukushima means ‘fortunate island’ ― but the region’s luck melted down alongside the reactor. Over 150,000 people cannot return to their homes and last September a United Nation’s special report detailed some of the massive impacts: ‘hundreds of billions of dollars of property damage’, ‘serious radioactive contamination of water, agriculture , fisheries’ and ‘grave stress and mental trauma’ to a swathe of people. Lives have been utterly disrupted and altered and the Fukushima nuclear accident was and remains a profound environmental and social tragedy.



Unsurprisingly, the Japanese organisers are extremely thorough and our meetings and site visits puts very human faces onto the raw data.

A grand-mother hosts us in her new home. The cluster of caravan park style cabins on tarmac are in every way a long way from her former life in a village. Her eyes light up and her years drop down when she speaks of her three grand-children and the three great grand-children due later this year. But then she is asked how often she sees them and the light fades. The interpreter stumbles, the room falls silent and we all look down and feel sad and strangely ashamed.

A doctor at a nearby medical centre tells of how over six thousand doctors, nurses and patients were re-located there from the adjacent exclusion zone. People were sleeping everywhere, he says, before proudly showing the centre’s new post-evacuee carpet. As he talks, a group of elderly people sit listlessly in chairs or lie in beds before a happy daytime television game show, while the hill behind is criss-crossed with red tape that marks the areas of active de-contamination work .

A farmer accepts that his current rice crop will be destroyed after harvest because it will be too contaminated. But he hopes next years might be better. I sit by a pond in his rice paddy as he explains his hope that if the ducks eat enough worms and grubs they might remove the radiation. No one has the heart to contradict him. Beside his house is a cedar tree that is 1,200 years old and his ancestors had the honour of supplying rice to the Shogun feudal lords. The rice from those same fields is now radioactive.

This farmer hopes that ducks will eat up the radiation via slugs and bugs. No one has the heart to correct him. (Image: James Norman (Australian Conservation Foundation) / ABC)

As we drive from site to site we pass skeletal abandoned greenhouses, the fields are increasingly wild, houses are empty, sheds are rotting, vehicles have grass in the wheel arches and the landscape is dotted with contaminated soil wrapped like round bale hay in blue plastic. The smaller side roads are blocked by traffic cones and stern signage, both to deter looting and because many are damaged. Police and re-located residents share patrols to keep thieves away, but the biggest thief is invisible. Radiation has robbed this region of much of its past, present and future.

An earnest teacher is happy that the local school has re-opened, but sad that while once around two hundred and fifty kids used to attend, now there are sixteen. The local Mayor picks up the theme stating ‘we have very few young people or children’. Radiation hits hardest at growing cells and many parents are understandably concerned and have moved. The old remain and, in the absence of the young, the old look older.

‘We have a very serious issue with the exodus of young people,’ says the Mayor, who is running an active campaign urging locals to return home, whilst admitting that ‘the accident isn’t completed’.



The manager of the local store shows us sophisticated point of sale radiation monitoring equipment and warns us against eating wild mushrooms. A doctor speaks of the lack of community confidence in the official radiation data and declares that another nuclear accident would be ‘the ruin of Japan’ — and the monitor on the bus keeps clicking.

And each click counts the decay of a piece of rock dug up in Australia.
In October 2011, Dr Robert Floyd from the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office acknowledged in a Senate hearing that:
“We can confirm that Australian obligated nuclear material was at the Fukushima Daiichi site and in each of the reactors – maybe five out of six, or it could have been all of them”.

That’s right — Australian uranium fuelled Fukushima.

Australian uranium is now radioactive fallout that is contaminating Japan and beyond — but the response of the Australian government, Australian uranium producers and their industry association has been profoundly and shamefully deficient. Prime Minister Gillard speaks of business as usual, Resources Minister Martin Ferguson talks of the ‘unfortunate incident’ and the more bullish of the uranium miners have called the crisis a ‘sideshow’.

This denial and failure to respond to changed circumstances is in stark contrast to the views of Aboriginal landowners from where the uranium has been sourced. Yvonne Margarula, the Mirarr senior Traditional Owner of that part of Kakadu where Energy Resources of Australia’s Ranger mine is located, wrote to UN Secretary General to convey her communities concerns and stated that the accident
‘…makes us very sad. We are all diminished by the awful events now unfolding at Fukushima.’

Arabunna man Peter Watts, whose water resources continue to be plundered to service BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam mine in northern South Australia, told a Japanese audience in Yokohama earlier this year how the company
“…use up the water that gives life to dig up the uranium that brings death.”



There can be no atomic business as usual in the shadow of Fukushima. The writer Haruki Murakami has called Fukushima a massive nuclear disaster and stated ‘but this time no one dropped a bomb on us. We set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives. While we are the victims, we are also the perpetrators. We must fix our eyes on this fact. If we fail to do so, we will inevitably repeat the same mistake again, somewhere else’.

There is intense political debate around all things nuclear in contemporary Japan and the potential re-start of the countries suspended nuclear fleet has seen unprecedented political mobilisation and action in Japan. Another growing concern relates to the human, environmental and financial cost of the massive de-contamination and clean-up program and the persistent stories of cut corners, sub- standard sub-contracting and Yakuza or organised crime connections.
One of the doctors who organised our trip put the issue sharply and starkly:
“The re-start debate is about nuclear power plants, but it is also about democracy and the future of the nation.”

The debate is live in Japan and a similar debate now needs to come alive in Australia — our shared and fragile planets energy future is renewable, not radioactive, and we need a genuine assessment of the costs and consequences of our uranium trade. To fail to change or to learn from this tragedy is deeply disrespectful and increases the chance of Australian uranium fuelling future Fukushimas.

Australia’s uranium should stay where it is safest – in the ground.

(This piece was published on ABC Environment on September 7 in a slightly different form and has been republished here with the author’s permission.)

From BBC: 14 September 2012

South Africa vows clampdown on Marikana mine unrest

Striking miners in Marikana. Photo: 14 September 2012
The Marikana miners have been striking for five weeks, demanding better pay



South Africa's government has announced a raft of measures to clamp down on continuing unrest in the mining sector.

It warned it would crack down "very swiftly" on anyone involved in an illegal gathering or carrying weapons.

However, Justice Minister Jeff Radebe said that this did not amount to a state of emergency.

The move came as striking workers at the Marikana platinum mine rejected a pay offer from the management and some unions threatened a general strike.

The mining unrest has been marked by violent clashes, including the shooting dead of 34 striking miners by police at Marikana in August. The unrest has since spread to other gold and platinum mines in South Africa - a major exporter of precious minerals.

Production has been severely hit with several mines closed. Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan on Friday warned that the continuing unrest could hurt economic growth, jobs and investor confidence in Africa's biggest economy.
'Insult'

The new measures were announced following a meeting of ministers representing the security cluster in President Jacob Zuma's cabinet.



The strike has seen hundreds of protesting workers brandishing sticks and machetes march from mine to mine around Marikana and other areas, threatening anyone reporting for work.

Earlier on Friday, the Marikana miners rejected the pay offer by the Lonmin management at a rally on a hill near the mine.

Armed miners march on Marikana

They said the proposal envisaged a pay rise of just under 1,000 rand a month - far lower than the 12,500 rand ($1,513; £935) were demanding. Miners currently earn between 4,000 and 5,000 rand.

"What they [the workers] say is that their offer is an insult, what you put on the table is an insult," miners' representative Molisi Phele told the AFP news agency.

"We are going back to tell them [Lonmin], the workers say: 'Thank you for giving us nothing,'" Mr Phele added.

Protest leaders have threatened to launch a general strike if their demands are not met. They are supported by the militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu).

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which is allied to the ANC-led government, earlier told the BBC that it was concerned about the high level of violence and job losses in the mining sector.

In response to the threat of a general strike, the government placed its military on high alert - the first such move since democracy came to the country in 1994.

The strike began at the Marikana mine in August and 10 people, including two police officers, were killed as the dispute turned violent days before the police opened fire.

Analysis

image of Pumza Fihlani Pumza Fihlani BBC News, Johannesburg

The BBC's Pumza Fihlani in Johannesburg says the government's move could heighten tension in Marikana, where miners feel that the authorities have neglected their pleas and turned a blind eye to their living and working conditions.

Arresting thousands of armed protesters is a near impossible task, our correspondent says, as this could escalate into further violent clashes.

Furthermore, charging protesters and processing them through the courts could prove to be a logistical nightmare for the authorities, as was the case when 270 miners were charged for murder and subsequently released in recent weeks, she says.

South Africa's government is talking tough. Its security cluster says it will not tolerate further acts of violence.

While this may help to settle the nerves of international investors worried about the country's stability, the news it not likely to go down well with the thousands of disgruntled miners.

The men and women responsible for mining some of the world's most precious metals say they have nothing to show for it.

They are accusing Jacob Zuma's government of treating their employers with kid gloves because some of its top officials are also mine bosses.

The following article comes from NationOfChange on 13 September 2012

Why Are We Being Kept in the Dark Over GMOs?

Dr. Mercola

Natural Society / News Analysis

Published: Thursday 13 September 2012

“While the fight for GMO labeling is loud and clear, corporations and companies opposing GMO labeling, for their own profit and corrupt relations, will stop at nothing to ensure GMOs remain a secret to the public.”


You may already be fully aware of the fight surrounding the latest California GMO labeling legislation known as Prop 37, a bill which I have been very passionate about supporting over the past few months. As it currently stands in the United States, you are actually being completely kept in the dark about what’s in your food. And it may interest you to know that many pro-GMO corporations such as Monsanto intend to keep it that way.

But why are you being kept in the dark about the dangers of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the fight against Proposition 37? Despite the massive amount of research linking genetically modified foods to environmental and human dangers, giant corporations are shelling out millions and millions of dollars to ensure that GMOs are not labeled in the food market. Why are Americans and others being kept in the dark?

While studies continue to highlight the very serious impact of GMOs on both the human body and the environment alike, a few major countries still do not require the labeling of GMOs. Countries like China, Russia, Australia, France, Spain, and others all require GMOs to be labeled, while Canada and the U.S. are slow to follow. Biotechnology giants like Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences — as well as government organizations such as the FDA — have such a significant impact on what really goes on in America that they may actually be the reason Americans are still kept in the dark.

“Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the F.D.A.’s job” – Philip Angell, Monsanto’s director of corporate communications. “Playing God in the Garden” New York Times Magazine.

Does that make you a bit concerned about the integrity of our food safety system? There are many important factors to consider with genetically engineered foods, which are increasingly overtaking the food supply. These are living, synthetic organisms that can reproduce and proliferate; they can mutate and migrate. How can a small group of chemical companies be trusted to control and monopolize our foods and restructure the world’s food system?

Well, it seems that no individual within government or alphabet government agency is doing the required work to ensure GMOs are safe; they are simply putting safety responsibility on each other. The FDA has not conducted a single independent test of any genetically engineered product. The agency simply accepts the testing completed and provided by the biotechnology corporations like Monsanto.

“Ultimately, it is the food producer who is responsible for assuring safety” – FDA, “Statement of Policy: Foods Derived from New Plant Varieties” (GMO Policy), Federal Register, Vol. 57, No. 104, p. 229.

While the Food and Drug Administration is put in place to protect the consumer, they still let destructive GMOs run rampant. Other organizations like the USDA have also begun ‘speed approving‘ the latest creations coming from Monsanto, reducing the approval time and subsequently the ability to measure the true effects.

Help us speak truth to power. Donate what you can afford to support NationofChange.
It may also be shocking to you that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is just as corrupt in maintaining the safety of the food supply and other consumer products. Despite links to organ damage, the USDA says that it is changing the rules so that genetically modified seed companies like Monsanto will get ‘speedier regulatory reviews’. What does this mean? With the faster reviews, there will be even less time spent on evaluating the potential dangers.

Most recently, 12 new genetically modified crops have been submitted for USDA approval, with 9 of them being the new fast-tracked process. As stated in their press release, the Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, sees the USDA transforming “into a high-performing organization that focuses on its customers.”

Former United States Secretary of Agriculture (served from 1995 until 2001) Dan Glickman was a major promoter for biotechnology and pushed for such products to be sold in Europe to secure profitable exports. He concluded after his USDA departure:

“What I saw generically on the pro-biotech side was the attitude that the technology was good and that it was almost immoral to say that it wasn’t good because it was going to solve the problems of the human race and feed the hungry and clothe the naked. And there was a lot of money that had been invested in this, and if you’re against it, you’re Luddites, you’re stupid. There was rhetoric like that even here in this department. ”

But right now is your chance to say “NO!” to the USDA. For the ‘fast-track crops’, you only have until September 11th of 2012 to have your say before these seeds hit the soil.

The Most Recent News on GMOs – California’s Proposition 37 and GMO Labeling

The most recent fight against GMOs is GMO labeling bill Proposition 37. On November 6, 2012, voters will decide if California’s Proposition 37 will be the first bill to require the labeling of genetically modified foods. About 18 states have made similar attempts, but nothing has even come close to Prop 37. And while 50 other nations have moved to label GMOs, the United States population is still fighting for a bill to be passed in a single state.

While the fight for GMO labeling is loud and clear, corporations and companies opposing GMO labeling, for their own profit and corrupt relations, will stop at nothing to ensure GMOs remain a secret to the public. Monsanto has put out at least $4,208,000 to fight GMO labeling, while other corporations such as Pepsi Co. and Coca Cola have ‘donated’ over one million dollars each. But Monsanto still remains among the largest fighters of GMO labeling.

GE Crops – the Largest Experiment on Earth

Genetically modified organisms may very well be one of the largest and most concerning experiments conducted by humankind. Genetically modified foods have already been linked to numerous health complications, while simultaneously destroying crops, insects, and even helping to contribute to large-scale farmer suicide.

We are performing an experiment on a global scale, where long-term consequences have yet to be conducted. In the realm of short-term research, the information points in a very dangerous direction. Dr. Charles Benbrook, a former agricultural staff expert on the Council for Environmental Quality at The White House, Executive Director of the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Agriculture, and Executive Director of the Board on Agriculture of the National Academy of Sciences, has stated:

“The scope of the fraud, if you will – I know that’s a harsh word – the scope of the fraud that’s being sold to the American public about this technology is almost unprecedented.

They have no control over where in that cell or where in that plant’s genome the new genetic material gets lodged and expressed. Because they don’t have control over that, they have absolutely no basis to predict how that trans-gene, the new genetic material, is going to behave in the future as that plant deals with stresses in its environment – whether it’s drought, too much water, pest pressures,imbalances in the soil, or any other source of stress.

They just don’t know how it’s going to behave. They don’t know how stable that expression is going to be, or whether the third generation of the plant is going to behave just like other generations. They don’t know whether the promoter gene, which has been moved into the plant to turn on the new piece of genetic material, will influence some other biosynthetic pathway that’s in the plant, turning on some natural process of the plant when it shouldn’t be turned on, or turning it off too soon.”

Without choice, how can there be trust? Why is the United States government so reluctant to let you know if you’re ingesting GMOs? California’s Proposition 37 is the most recent and possibly last hope for America to move a massive step forward in freedom of choice and freedom of health. Those against us are afraid because we have the power to initiate change.

Please contribute to the Organic Consumers Fund to ensure that Americans will finally have the basic right to know what’s in their food.

I urge you to get involved and help in any way you can. Please support this important state initiative, even if you’re not a resident of California!

Get Email Alerts from NationofChange

ABOUT Dr. Mercola

Dr. Mercola has made significant milestones in his mission to bring people practical solutions to their health problems. A New York Times Best Selling Author, Dr. Mercola was also voted the 2009 Ultimate Wellness Game Changer by the Huffington Post, and has been featured in TIME magazine, LA Times, CNN, Fox News, ABC News, Today Show, CBS’s Washington Unplugged with Sharyl Attkisson, and other major media resources.

AFTER ZIONISM - FASCINATING COLLECTION OF ESSAYS

After Zionism - One State for Israel and Palestine

edited by Antony Loewenstein and Ahmed Moor contains an interesting and fascinating collection of essays by a very diverse range of contributors.

There are 14 essays and the only one I have some arguments about is the last one, which to me seemed out of tune with the tenor of the other contributions.

The conclusions reached by many of the contributors are that in the end, both the Israelis and Palestinians will have to make enormous compromises, but that small area of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean will have to be shared on an equalised democratic basis with Israel basically being forced to share one of the Middle East's rarest commodities - life-giving and sustaining water.

Apartheid can only last for a limited period of time. Ultimately the pressure from the outside world, pathetic as it has been for over 60 years, is beginning to change as later generations of Jews and others outside the Middle East are beginning to see through the Israeli claim that they are the only democracy in the Middle East.

Israel has become more theocratic over the last 20 years and both this theocracy and that of the Hamas regime in Gaza will be forced out of their dogmatic controlling influences as the peoples of both sides of the apartheid barriers learn to understand how they will need to compromise to allow peace to settle on all their communities.

Ultimately, this book is an opening for more dialogue to take place throughout the governments and media of those countries with an abiding interest in maintaining the current status quo to the disadvantage of everybody everywhere. Threats to world peace, destabilising influences, nuclear threats because of Israel being the only nuclear power in the Middle East, and being maintained in that situation by the United States of America, who sing to Israel's song for reasons of imperial control of resources in all the surrounding countries, will have to come to an end.

'I DIDN'T KNOW ANY FOOTBALLERS WHO WERE GAY'

This article in the Sunday Age on 9 September 2012 has been followed up by a petition on Change.org which will be here first, followed by the newspaper article:

(1)Petition:

JASON BALL'S CHANGE.ORG PETITION

(2)newspaper article:

'I didn't know any footballers who were gay'

September 9, 2012


By Jill Stark

Out and proud: Yarra Valley footballer Jason Ball, third from left, wants the AFL to air anti-homophobia videos at the grand final this month. Photo: Ken Irwin

SOMETIMES he'd say he had a girlfriend. In the world of Aussie rules football, Jason Ball thought he had to play up his ''blokeyness''. When teammates sledged opposition players, calling them ''homo'' or ''fag'', he'd pretend not to care.

Inside the footy club where he'd played since he was five, nobody knew he was gay.
''It was the one place I never thought I'd be able to come out. Ever. It just felt like a really hostile environment. I worried I'd be bullied, maybe I'd get kicked out of the side, maybe the opposition would treat me differently or I'd get abuse [from supporters] over the fence,'' he told The Sunday Age. ''I didn't know any footballers who were gay, so I could only assume the worst, and it scared me.''

The 24-year-old, who plays for Yarra Glen seniors in the Yarra Valley Mountain District Football League, is a rare voice in a football world that gay groups say is struggling to come to terms with homosexuality in its ranks.

Illustration: Matt Golding.

While such groups agree sexuality is a private matter, they say it is significant that no AFL players have revealed their homosexuality.

For Ball, publicly coming out was unnecessary. His teammates figured it out and were supportive. The homophobic language stopped. ''It was like they could see those words have an effect on people because it was hurting me, one of their mates.''

Ball believes there are hundreds, maybe thousands of others like him playing in minor leagues, and professionally, who feel too isolated to reveal their sexuality. There are rumours that a TV network has offered a gay AFL player a six-figure sum to be the first footballer to come out.

Today, backed by online-petition movement Change.org, Ball will launch a campaign urging the league to air anti-homophobia videos at the MCG during this month's grand final. He also wants the AFL to stage a ''Pride'' round next season to celebrate sexual diversity.

Beyondblue chairman Jeff Kennett, who last week launched a campaign highlighting the mental health impact of homophobia, backed Ball's petition. He told The Sunday Age he spoke privately with AFL boss Andrew Demetriou last week, urging him to do more to tackle the problem in the game.

''Beyondblue has a relationship with the AFL anyway, and Andrew and I have been discussing some ideas that have not been done before for next year, which will be about sexuality discrimination,'' Mr Kennett said. ''This young man really deserves to be congratulated because there will be many of his fellow footballers who are in exactly the same position but have been worried about public pressure and therefore kept their sexuality to themselves.''

It comes after the AFL last month wrote a letter of support for ''No to Homophobia'' - a campaign run by gay rights and social justice groups - but were criticised for not doing more.

The fact St Kilda's Stephen Milne escaped with a $3000 fine and an education course rather than a suspension, after calling Collingwood defender Harry O'Brien a ''f---ing homo'', implied that sexual vilification was treated less seriously than other forms of discrimination, Ball said.

''At high school I got picked on for being gay and those words were used to make me feel small and worthless. If you look at rates of suicide, self-harm and depression for gay kids, this is a serious issue. I was fine coming out to my school friends and my family but I was terrified coming out to my football team. That makes it the AFL's problem because this culture is in their sport.''

Some have questioned whether the AFL should be responsible for taking a lead role on every major social issue.

But Ball argues that as long as our cultural life is viewed through the prism of football, the AFL has a greater role to play than most in ''changing hearts and minds''.

''It's no wonder that no gay player at a professional level would come out when the AFL is not working as it could to create a more positive and inclusive environment for that to happen. I think the players are ready. The clubs are ready. But we just need the AFL to lead on changing the culture so that players and fans like me can openly be who we are without fear.''

Dr Caroline Symons, a senior lecturer in social policy in sport at Victoria University, says a 2010 report she co-authored surveying the gay and lesbian community found football was the hardest sport for people to be open about their sexuality.

''If you weren't playing well the terms used to motivate men were, 'You're playing like a pack of poofs or faggots.' So the terminology associates being gay with being weak and that can be very alienating,'' she said.

A spokesman for the AFL said it supported diversity and respectful relationships and did not tolerate discrimination.

■The Australian Christian Lobby has rejected Jeff Kennett's offer to replace the Prime Minister at its national conference. On Thursday, Julia Gillard withdrew from the October conference, citing ''offensive'' comments by the lobby's leader, Jim Wallace, on homosexuality.

HOMOPHOBIA AND THE AFL WHO NEVER LEARN AND DON'T HELP

The following article was in the Sunday Age on 2 September 2012. The AFL contiues to make sounds and they have no substance. Andrew Demetriou should read this article and pay attention - homophobia continues unabated in the AFL and should be stopped - NOW!

AFL's stance is a clear-cut case of gay abandon

September 2, 2012
By Ben Hart

Sydney's Ted Richards during a 2010 AFLPA campaign.

On matters of homophobia, football doesn't walk the walk.

TANZANIA has no pygmies. Rwanda does. So does Uganda. There are pygmy tribes that originate in Angola, Botswana and Zambia. But none of them come from Tanzania.
This is interesting to those who follow the politics of AFL football only because league chief Andrew Demetriou curiously invoked pygmies last year while defending his organisation against claims that it hadn't done enough to combat homophobia.

''Next they'll be wanting us to sort out the pygmies in Tanzania,'' he said.
I'm sure that if Demetriou had his time again, he'd probably decide against implying that the plight of gays, lesbians and other people discriminated against because of their sexuality was as relevant to the AFL as a non-existent African ethnic group experiencing non-existent hardship.

It was unfortunate because, based on my experience in the AFL industry, I can say pretty confidently that the AFL isn't homophobic. Demetriou and many of the senior people around him pride themselves on having progressive politics.

And, in some areas, they have much to be proud of. You could mount a compelling argument that the AFL has done more than any other sporting organisation to fight racism against indigenous Australians.

So when Demetriou last week wrote a letter supporting a television campaign called No To Homophobia, run by a coalition of social justice organisations, it was commendable.

But it also highlighted the gulf between the AFL's few good gestures in this area and the absence of real action to make the footy world a more inclusive and welcoming place for all people, no matter their sexuality.

The AFL's involvement gave the campaign massive exposure. But, despite newspaper articles saying the AFL was ''lead[ing] the charge'' in the campaign, it had nothing to do with its development. It put no money into it. No AFL representatives participated in the media launch. There are no plans for the ads to be shown at AFL stadiums. If you go on the AFL website, you won't see any mention of the campaign. The truth is that writing letters of support is easy. But a culture is only changed when you do the difficult things.

That's why the recent case of St Kilda fining its forward Stephen Milne $3000 for calling Collingwood's Harry O'Brien a ''f--king homo'' was more significant, and sent a stronger message about how seriously the AFL takes the issue than any letter.
Milne is a repeat offender in this area. In 2010, he used similar homophobic language against Pies assistant coach Paul Licuria and was fined … $3000. (St Kilda issued the fine, but if the AFL wanted it to be harsher, there's no doubt it would have been).

For a football public well versed in the concept of escalating sanctions for repeat offences, and which has witnessed Will Minson being rubbed out for a game for disparaging another player's mother, it spoke volumes: the AFL is taking this seriously, but not that seriously.

For a clue as to why, you only need to go back to Demetriou's pygmy comment. For the AFL, homophobia simply isn't in the same category as, say, racism. It is an external issue, like the environment or homelessness.

Except it isn't. According to the AFL's own figures, there were 791,178 people playing football across the country last year. It is a statistical certainty that a significant number of them are not heterosexual. (Research indicates that between 7 and 11 per cent of young Australians are either same-sex attracted, or confused about their sexual orientation).

I think about a teenage boy in Echuca who is playing for the local under 17s and is secretly struggling with his sexuality. How does he feel when he sees the response to the Milne incident? How does he feel when he hears former player Nathan Brown say on radio: ''If you can't call someone a homo in a joking sense out on the field to put him off his game … what can you say? I mean, come on. It's a joke.''

We know that young people who are same-sex attracted are six times more likely to commit suicide than their ''straight'' peers.

And then there's the issue of whether the senior lists of the AFL's 18 clubs contain any gay players.

No player should feel compelled to come out. It is entirely a matter for them and the first one who does will be a very brave man indeed. But the fact that someone hasn't is significant, and goes directly to the performance of the AFL in promoting diversity.

During my brief stint at the AFL Players Association, it was the question I was asked the most when people found out where I worked.

Strangers at dinner parties would lean forward and, in conspiratorial tones, ask ''So, do you know which ones are gay?'' I always replied that I had no idea. I still don't. There may be none, although this is highly unlikely.

Despite this gossipy obsession in the community, my experience of players' attitudes to this issue was almost wholly positive. It's well documented that the players' association displayed a level of leadership in this space that the AFL couldn't or wouldn't. I was proud to be involved in an AFL player campaign to promote the International Day Against Homophobia. Good, brave men like Nick Duigan, Bob Murphy, Drew Petrie, and Dan Jackson used their profiles to send messages about tolerance and inclusion.

It was the ''difficult stuff'', because the association was going it alone. Ironically, even now when journalists ask the AFL what it has done to stamp out sexuality-based discrimination, it points to the AFLPA campaign - such is the dearth of specific AFL programs or initiatives.

But the good news is that it doesn't have to be this way. The AFL and its CEO could prioritise this today and make a commitment to doing things that are meaningful … and difficult.

Ben Hart was public affairs manager for the AFL Players Association in 2010 and 2011.

FOUNDATION OF MIDDLE EAST PEACE - ISRAELI EMIGRATION - REPORT JULY 2011

The million missing Israelis - Israeli emigration
— filed under: Israeli Policy

Joseph Chamie, Barry Mirkin | Foreign Policy blog | July 5, 2011

Over more than six decades of statehood, successive Israeli governments have repeatedly stressed the centrality of Jewish immigration and the Law of Return of all Jews to Israel for the well-being, security, and survival of the nation. Yet while much is published on Jewish immigration to Israel, considerably less information is available about Jewish emigration from Israel.

Government estimates of the numbers of Israelis residing abroad vary greatly due mainly to the lack of an adequate recording system. Consequently, scholars and others have questioned the accuracy of government figures. Besides the statistical and methodological shortcomings, the number of Israeli expatriates is open to considerable debate and controversy because of its enormous demographic, social, and political significance both within and outside Israel.



At the lower end is the official estimate of 750,000 Israeli emigrants -- 10 percent of the population -- issued by the Israeli Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, which is about the same as that for Mexico, Morocco, and Sri Lanka. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government places the current number of Israeli citizens living abroad in the range of 800,000 to 1 million, representing up to 13 percent of the population, which is relatively high among OECD countries. Consistent with this latter figure is the estimated 1 million Israelis in the Diaspora reported at the first-ever global conference of Israelis living abroad, held in this January.

Current estimates of Israelis living abroad are substantially higher than those for the past. During Israel's first decade, some 100,000 Jews are believed to have emigrated from Israel. By 1980, Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics estimated some 270,000 Israelis living abroad for more than a year, or 7 percent of the population. Several decades later, the number of Israeli emigrants had swelled to about 550,000 -- or almost double the proportion at the end of the 1950s.

Of the Israelis currently residing abroad, roughly 60 percent are believed to have settled in North America, a quarter in Europe, and 15 percent distributed across the rest of the world. It is estimated that about 45 percent of the adult Israeli expatriates have completed at least a university degree, in contrast to 22 percent of the Israeli population. The Israeli emigrants are deemed to be disproportionately secular, liberal, and cosmopolitan. Furthermore, the emigrants are generally younger than the immigrants to Israel, especially those from the former Soviet Union, hastening the aging of Israel's population.

The often-cited reasons for Israeli emigration center on seeking better living and financial conditions, employment and professional opportunities, and higher education, as well as pessimism regarding prospects for peace. Consistent with these motives, one of the most frequently given explanations for leaving Israel is: "The question is not why we left, but why it took us so long to do so." And recent opinion polls find that almost half of Israeli youth would prefer to live somewhere else if they had the chance. Again, the most often-cited reason to emigrate is because the situation in Israel is viewed as "not good."

Another important factor contributing to the outflow of Jewish Israelis is previous emigration experience. As 40 percent of Jewish Israelis are foreign-born, emigration is nothing new for many in the country. Moreover, as Israeli emigrants cannot yet vote from abroad, they are likely to feel marginalized from mainstream Israeli society, further contributing to their decision to remain abroad as well as attracting others to do the same. Whether the Netanyahu government's effort in the Knesset to approve a bill granting voting rights to Israelis living abroad will slow the trend is uncertain.

Adding to emigration pressures, many Israelis have already taken preliminary steps to eventually leaving. One survey found close to 60 percent of Israelis had approached or were intending to approach a foreign embassy to ask for citizenship and a passport. An estimated 100,000 Israelis have German passports, while more are applying for passports based on their German ancestry. And a large number of Israelis have dual nationality, including an estimated 500,000 Israelis holding U.S. passports (with close to a quarter-million pending applications).

Population projections show that Jewish Israelis will remain the large majority in Israel for the foreseeable future. However, it will be a challenge for Jewish Israelis to maintain their current dominant majority of approximately 75 percent, primarily due to higher fertility among non-Jewish Israelis -- nearly one child per woman greater -- the depletion of the large pool of likely potential Jewish immigrants, and large-scale Jewish Israeli emigration. Consequently, demographic projections expect the Jewish proportion of the country -- which peaked at 89 percent in 1957 -- to continue declining over the coming decades, approaching a figure closer to two-thirds of the population by mid-century.

The emigration of a large proportion of a country's population, especially the well-educated and highly skilled, poses serious challenges for any nation. However, large-scale emigration is particularly problematic for Israel given its relatively small population, unique ethnic composition, and regional political context.

Moreover, not only is Israeli emigration increasing the influence of the orthodox Jewish communities, it is also boosting the need for temporary, non-Jewish foreign workers, especially in agriculture, construction, and care-giving. The presence of more than 200,000 foreign workers -- nearly half of whom are unauthorized and mainly from Asia (in particular Thailand and the Philippines, but also increasingly from Africa) -- is also contributing to the changing ethnic composition of the country.

The departure of Jewish Israelis also contributes to the undermining of the Zionist ideology. If large numbers of Jewish Israelis are opting to emigrate, why would Jews who are well integrated and accepted in other countries immigrate to Israel? Furthermore, up to a quarter of young Israelis in Europe marry outside their faith. The majority do not belong to a Jewish community and do not participate in any Jewish activities. As with other expatriate groups in Western nations, Israelis living abroad often profess their intention to return. However, Israeli emigrants are likely to remain in their adopted countries insofar as they and their families have become successfully settled and integrated.

Israeli governments have already consistently perceived immigration levels as too low and emigration levels as too high. In addition to policies encouraging immigration for permanent settlement, Israel has programs and media campaigns actively promoting the return of Israelis residing overseas. The government also maintains connections with the country's expatriates through mandatory registration in its consulates overseas and outreach programs and activities -- and provides counseling, guidance, financial assistance, and tax benefits to returning citizens.

Despite these efforts, it is doubtful based on past and current trends that these various incentives and appeals will be sufficient to entice the return of the million missing Israelis. Large-scale emigration has not only resulted in critical demographic and socioeconomic imbalances in the country, but more importantly poses grave political challenges and jeopardizes the basic Jewish character and integrity of Israel.

Joseph Chamie is research director at the Center for Migration Studies, and Barry Mirkin is an independent consultant.

PICKERING AND FRIENDS - ANTISEMITISM REARING ITS UGLY HEAD

Larry Pickering's obscene ravings leave little doubt about his hatred of Jews, but the disgusting hate speech ravings are such that they ought to be roundly condemned by the society in which we live. But who are Pickering's friends? Try doing some searches and find his interesting bedfellows! If you lie with dogs you get up with fleas!

PICKERING

RACISM:

The bleating Jews who actually believe they are God’s people are still combing the world looking for war-crime culprits. There are now more "searchers" than potential culprits.

The silent Chinese got on with business after the Japanese slaughtered twice as many of them as did Germans Jews and four times as many as did Germans Russians and as many as did Russians Russians…(thanks to Stalin).

There are more people being butchered to death right now in the Congo than there were Jews butchered.

Of course the "holocaust" happened but it was one of the many episodes of war and far from the worst in terms of human life. But Jews believe they are God’s people… so they are more important.

The vanity-driven, thieving Jews did not have a country so they stole someone else’s with the West’s (and the East’s) blessing… and we wonder why we are hated.
Sure, the Jews are more industrious and inventive than the lazy Arabs. The Arabs have used receipts from the West’s addiction to oil to build crass monuments to themselves. An oil drunk Arab’s benchmark of success is to have a hundred more Rolls Royces than his cousin. The Jews have built a highly sophisticated nation from worthless rocky ground… without the aid of oil reserves, but so what? It’s not their land to succeed with.

And occupation is always a basis for endless war.

Uganda’s foul black excuse for a human, Idi Amin, kicked every Indian out of the country. Fijii wants to do the same. The Solomons and new Guinea are hotbeds of violent racism. Why is it that only white people are accused of racism? Can we have white only universities? There are black only universities. Mmmmm.

Japanese only marry Japanese and won’t let Europeans buy land. Chinese allow Filipinos into their country but only to work as housemaids or hookers. Could we do this with New Guineans?

Asians actually believe that because they don’t have hairy bodies and we do, we are closer to the apes. They don’t say that to us but they say that among themselves. To the Chinese we are known as “gwai’lo” meaning a white ghost but that is not considered a racist remark to us. Yet if you reciprocate with a “yellow something” it would be more than politically incorrect and the Chinese would be up in arms trying to get you gaoled through the implementation of their ample anti-discrimination legislation… legislation framed only for the protection of the Chinese.

An Asian calls a European-educated Asian a “banana”! Yellow on the outside but white on the inside. So, we Europeans are the racists, eh?

If a man with a blue moustache bashes you each time you leave your house, will you come to fear, avoid, hate and vilify men with blue moustaches? Quite a normal reaction if you do, yet isn’t this a form of racism or discrimination against men with blue moustaches? I think so… oh, and I forgot to mention he was black, so now it will be racial discrimination! There is no legislation to cover blue moustaches.
Aborigines are considered exploited, but were others here before them? Who was really here first? Do we know? If we did know, do we care? Should we care? Who was really anywhere first in this vast world?

If original indigenes of every country had never been defeated we would all still be living in the stone age.

Aborigines are many times more racist than we are. Australia has Aboriginee-only bars in hotels. I was once told to leave one or risk having my head kicked in. "Whities" are banned from many parts of Australia.

LARRY PICKERING • 7 months ago

Check out that the Islam dogmas are a control freak of the Roman Church.
Are we all that naive that this is impossible.
Do we ask the questions as to why our governments allow other cultures and, so called religions, to invade our space.
Should we ask these questions…. then we should ask why?
GUS COSTELLO • 7 months ago

Europe has now woken up to the Islamisation of the West and the disastrous effect it has had... It will take us a while longer.
LARRY PICKERING • 7 months ago

Fred you hit the NAIL RIGHT ON THE HEAD, when are people going to wake up to the fact that Muslimism is just like a Tsnami (hope I spelt it right), there is a gentle shift of the water and next instand you are ubmerged with them.
GARRY MUIR • 7 months ago

Tell that crap to the muslims & the taliban.
FRED MAGPIE DEEKS • 7 months ago

I agree Michael… but the international bankers are just part of a elite that certainly do control us via their control over our media and our money.
People like the Packers, the Murdocks and the others that have controlled our press here in Aus are merely the soldiers for this elite and as long as they comply they get the benefits of that alliance. This is the story all over our propagandized world.
All the revolutions and wars in the twentieth century were forecast as was the now genocide in the Middle East. This most definitely means that these assaults against mankind were planned.
Anti-semitism is just another tag the media use to fool the mob… another is 'conspiracy theory' along with the many others that this controlled media has contrived to sing the songs of the elite.
The Jews have promoted the holocaust all over planet earth but we must remember that the Russian Revolution was controlled by Jews (over 80% of the then ruling elite were Jews) and over a period of some two decades there are suggestions that between sixty to one hundred million people were killed.
You will not see this in the media as you will not see the facts of the now Palestine conflict in the mainstream nor will you see the influence that Israel has over the US government and media as the Jewish lobby is a very powerful one and it is world wide.
For the record we must remember that the Jews in Israel are mostly the Russian Khazar Jews and not the original Sephardic Jews that lived in Palestine early days.
There are already conflicts of Jew against Jew in Israel and thanks to the alternative media and many other sincere journalists, both Jewish and other, the atrocities of these brutal Zionist leaders in Israel that are now being exposed may yet get their just dues.
This comment would now make me a anti-semite… can you believe that?
GUS COSTELLO • 7 months ago

well what is anti-semitism ? It's a made up special word for god's allegedly chosen people and it is supposedly describing a special kind of racism directed at jews however it's a con job as over 90% of jews are not of semitic origin (semitic applied to peoples who speak arabic languages from the word semite describes people from the middle east) but are of northern European origin hence the large amount of jews with blonde and red hair and blue eyes. I would disagree that nearly all wars are fought over religion, this may be an external factor created by the elites to stir up trouble and hatred to enable people to be duped into killing each other but in my opinion virtually all wars are created by the ruling elites to make money. The international banking cartel run by a few families stirs up trouble then loans money to both sides for profit then cleans up financially, it's disgusting as it's all about making money with no regard for loss of human life.
MICHAEL TAIT • 7 months ago

the word "racist" is over used and is a convenient word to use when someone is in the wrong and they are in the minority!
RON HAYDON • 7 months ago

A lion will not mate with a cheetah, although they are both cats. A sparrow will not mate with a starling although they are both birds. A blue-fin tuna will not even mate with a yellow-fin tuna although they are both fish. A bull-ant will not mate with a green-ant although they are both insects, etc etc... is it only we who are racist? Is it simply an innate wish to protect the integrity of one's own species? Is that wrong?
LARRY PICKERING • 7 months ago

ha ha ... well, whatever anti semitism is then. Nearly all wars have a religious basis or are fought between nations who do not speak the same language. A lack of communication?
LARRY PICKERING • 7 months ago

I support and agree with what you say - but what can we do about it?? What chance is there that an elected politician will speak up? Anyone putting voice to this in a (more) public arena would be howled down by the lefties.. And I agree with the comment by Michael Tait implying that religion plays a huge part in the problem; lets get that mass stupidity out in the open too....
GORDON SMILLIE • 7 months ago

Well said Larry except people who follow the RELIGION of judaism, jews, are NOT a race, never were , never will be. They come in all the colours of the human rainbow of skin colours. So you cannot be racist towards jews, it's impossible. However one could be bigoted towards jews from a religious point of view but from my point of view I HATE ALL religions equally ! ;)
MICHAEL TAIT • 7 months ago

too true
RON HAYDON • 7 months ago

BTW - I'm also the son of an immigrant refugee and I never take for granted that my father fled to this tolerant welcoming country where he found opportunity, planted his roots, raised a family of 6 sons who all went on to find their own opportunities and raise their own families. Whenever I was called a wog (rarely) I replied with some old fashioned Aussie return fire sledging and cartoons. I still do. It still works.
PAUL ZANETTI • 7 months ago
I read a Facebook post by a socialist left green urger asking his fellow comrades on Australia Day last year, "Is Australia a racist country?" Thick and fast they responded one after another, 'Yes', 'Yes', 'Yes', as they all fell into line. I watched and read the posts initially posted by the instigator whose surname is 'Donarski' the admitted son of an immigrant refugee. Many of the respondents also had surnames confirming foreign heritage. I finally posted , 'name one country that is not racist.' The posts stopped. Funny that.
PAUL ZANETTI • 7 months ago
You won't beat racism... It's in built into us... Many creatures tribe themselves with the similar species and shun other species... Like it or not we do what our instincts tell us to do right from the moment we pop out of our mother's you-know-what...
KAHLUM BARNES • 7 months ago