Friday 26th of April 2024
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homer's odyssey...

arafat

The underwritten cost of our "security" is often born by others. We pay the wages of our armies, mercenaries and other defending agencies, but we don't really pay attention to what they do. We defer.

 

It's a bit different than paying insurance on our house. Here, our official security agencies, especially those in the US, the armies, the CIA, the NSA and those in the UK, MI6 MI5, often engage in what we have no idea thereof but can be define as murders, assassinations, killings, torture, you name it. Our name is on these murders because we blindly sign off blank cheques on these... We pay the bill, though the small print has been redacted.

 



These killings are thus supposedly performed on our behalf, but, though we pay the bill, it's our demagogue psychopathic leaders who organise the gigs. Apart from a few titbits of information that surface from time to time in the press, most of this is kept away from us. And to tell the truth, most of us don't really want to know how the sausage is made as long as our house is safe. 

For example this is what we should know about drone strikes. Most of these drone strikes are designed to kill "terrorists" and their chiefs before they themselves strike "at us", which they won't should we leave them alone, but then their devotees will seek revenge on our home soil — devotees that we also let grow like weed, because without weed we would not need the "gardener". 

We're still "at war"... War on Terror... You may have forgotten... These drone strikes are thus designed to disrupt the leadership of terrorist organisations, like killing Hitler.... Our moral compass is due north rectitude. We're in the clear...  

But really these pre-emptive strikes are very borderline, because let's face it, the "information" that lead to these black ops can be very dubious, especially when "bought" for cash from informers. These drone strikes are precisely aimed using GPS — and so far we have the record for some. From about 2006 till 2015, we can account for 45 heads of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other terrorist organisations that have been killed — assassinated, murdered if you will. Meanwhile at the same time as these terrorist leaders have been killed, it has been officially counted that 1,147 other people were also murdered as collateral damage: kids, women, old folks. A small price to pay for our good sleep at night, except we're not paying for the damage. Innocent people are paying with their life. 

Compare this to World War One when the rates of civilian killed was about 10 per cent of the amount of total casualties. Here with the precision bombs, the rate of civilians murdered is 2500 per cent. As well, these stats do not provide information on the other thousands of strikes against the lesser "evil" of combatants in which the collateral damage is also in the same proportion.

But we are big people. We do not question the lies of our governments that told us they did not do torture nor do murders. We know we have "kill lists" but we buy the purpose like we buy broccoli. We place our hand on our heart and believe the crap. We've done religious fervour since we came into this world. We don't even have to absolve ourselves, all we have to do is "believe" that "kill lists" are Christian and they never happens though we should have an inkling to the contrary. The evidence is there to be seen, but our MMMM — our crummy media at large — gloss over with patriotic songs and editorials that would make Goebbels envious.

And of course there are other attempts on people's lives that we don't hear about and for those we have strong suspicions but no proof. Governments will deny or "not comment".

In Australia, the blackout cover on news about refugees in concentration camps is disgraceful. But our media make us take the pill though rumble about the government stopping them from practising voyeurism while on average accepting the necessity of the trauma, for other people that is. We still sleep soundly... The evangelical Dutton and his predecessor Morrison, now big cheese of the turditional finances, tell us that we cannot know because. 

Through various propaganda tools, rabid idiots, like those in our governments, will test the water from time to time, to see if we're still in their grip. For example this:

The foreign ministry of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Sunday, demanded the arrest of a Jewish Rabbi, who called on Israeli settlers to poison water used by Palestinians in hundreds of towns and villages across the occupied West Bank.


The Palestinian national office for the defense of land and resistance of settlements warned of the dangers and consequences of such calls.

 

One could see here the sentiment of one lunatic, but more than half of the Israelis think along the same line. They already supply substandard scarce water. The Israeli government has been hypocritical in trying to solve this problem which now straddle four or five generations.

 

We also have to consider the death, the silencing or removal of a few people. Contrariant leaders who did not bend the knees in front of the US hegemony, but wanted freedom... There are quite a few tactics against them, from straight-out war to poisoning. The list can start with Saddam, though he was not the first. There has been Arafat, Chavez, Gaddafi, Bin Laden, Yitzhak Rabin and Noriega in our recent time. Castro managed to survive many attempts on his life. Kennedy did not. It seems odd to have Kennedy amongst this lot, but the intent to silence him was in the same ballpark.

 

The point in the end is that any old lie will be concocted to cover the real tracks. We pay to be fed the lies. We have now relinquished or individual rights to privacy. Before this, they (the Governments) also spied on us, but they did not tell us. Now after the release of information by whistleblowers, we "voted" to be spied upon, legitimising the process. We actually didn't vote for this, but our elected representative did WITHOUT A MANDATE TO DO SO. Conspiracies abound. YOU KNOW THAT. THESE ARE NOT THEORIES. The murders, like that of Osama Bin Laden, will be told to us like Homer's Odyssey, while the others killings will be swallowed by Dante's Inferno for us not to ever know.

 

And our next leaders — all megalomaniacs — will carry on the murders. 

 

polonium...

There are numerous theories about the cause of Arafat's death. Initially Arafat records were withheld by senior Palestinian officials. In 2004, Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath has said after talks with Arafat's French doctors that they had "ruled out completely poison." However, Shaath recently stated in "The Price of Kings", a documentary on Arafat's leadership, "I have no doubt that he was assassinated. The French said that whatever toxic material was in his body did not test positive in their toxicology table, saying in plain words "this was a poison we did not have in our laboratories."[15]

Al-Kurdi, Arafat's personal physician for 18 years, said "I would usually be summoned to attend to Arafat immediately, even when all he had was a simple cold...But when his medical situation was really deteriorating, they chose not to call me at all." and Arafat's wife, Suha, refused to allow him to visit Arafat in the private Paris hospital where he was being treated. Later he was denied access to Arafat's body after his death.[16]

Al-Kurdi also lamented that Arafat's widow Suha had refused an autopsy, which he said would have answered many questions regarding cause of death.[17][18]

Medical records released in 2005 showed that Arafat's doctors could not agree on the cause of death, stating that he died from a stroke that stemmed from an unknown condition. Analysis based on those records suggested him dying from poisoning, AIDS, or an infection.[19][20] In 2012, newly released medical records revealed that French doctors initially diagnosed Arafat with gastroenteritis.[21]

Poisoning[edit]

In 2004, Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said after talks with Arafat's French doctors that they had "ruled out completely poison."[20] A 2005 The New York Times article said that based on his records it was highly unlikely that Arafat died from poisoning.[19] While al-Kurdi called for the creation of an independent commission to carry out investigations concerning Arafat's suspicious death, stating, "any doctor would tell you that these are the symptoms of a poisoning".[17][22]

Former Knesset member, peace activist and personal friend of Arafat Uri Avnery claimed at the time of Arafat's death that he had been poisoned, and has repeated the claim recently.[23] Another "senior Israeli physician" claimed in the article in Haaretz that it was "a classic case of food poisoning", probably caused by a meal eaten four hours before he fell ill that may have contained a toxin such as ricin, rather than a standard bacterial poisoning. However, in the same week as the report in Haaretz, The New York Times published a separate report, also based on access to Arafat's medical records, which claimed that it was highly unlikely that Arafat had food poisoning.[19][20]


Poisoning with thallium[edit]

In 2009, Bassam Abu Sharif, Arafat's former advisor, alleged that Mossad, the national intelligence agency of Israel, had poisoned Arafat by a lethal dose of thallium,[24] a rare chemical whose effects are difficult to trace,[25] through Arafat's daily medications. 

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cause_of_Yasser_Arafat%27s_death

water used as a weapon...

Israeli authorities blame Palestinians’ unwillingness to upgrade aging infrastructure as the primary reason for increased water shortages in the West Bank. Palestinians accuse their neighbors of blackmailing and holding water supplies hostage.
Since the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Palestinian villages east of Nablus have been suffering from a water shortage amid soaring summer heat.

The Palestinian Water Authority’s inability to set up additional water infrastructure in the West Bank “has led to the old and limited pipes being unable to transfer all the water needed in the region,” said Israel Water Authority spokesman Uri Schor.

A senior Palestinian Water Authority official rejected the claim, saying that Tel Aviv is “misleading the public.”


Locals living in the West Bank blame the Israeli water company Mekorot for cutting water supplies, which the utility company has denied doing. Palestinians at the same time argue that quota for neighboring Jewish settlements located in the West Bank is much higher.

 

read more: https://www.rt.com/news/347858-israel-palestinians-west-bank-water/

occupational hazards of the empire...

James O'Neill warns that without independent media, we could easily sleep walk into yet another war on behalf of a dangerous “ally.”

THE RELENTLESS, ill-informed and dangerous Russia bashing by Australia’s mainstream media proceeds apace. One of the worst offenders is the grandly titled ‘international editor’ of the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Hartcher.

In a lengthy opinion piece in the SMH this week, he claims there are seven longer-run lessons of the UK’s referendum result favouring an exit from the European Union.

Quite how the non-binding referendum decision that may or may not lead to an actual British exit can lead to geopolitical dimensions as wide as “the end of the experiment in pacifist optimism” is unclear.

Hartcher quotes Robert Cooper’s 2002 essay ‘The Post-Modern State’ (2002) that the advanced “post-modern” States were characterized by

'the rejection of force for resolving disputes and the consequent codification of self-enforced rules of behaviour.'

One wonders what sort of “post-modern” world Hartcher inhabits. Since Cooper’s essay these post-modern States have:

  • Continued a 15 year occupation of Afghanistan, commenced a year before Cooper’s essay was written and based upon a series of lies.
  • Invaded Iraq in an ongoing devastation of their society.
  • Violently overthrown the government of Libya, sending that country spiraling down the hierarchy of living standards from being top in Africa to one of the worst.  It is now racked by civil war.
  • Supported a military coup d’état in Honduras
  • Precipitated an illegal war in Syria, creating large scale death and destruction.
  • Supported Saudi Arabia’s illegal war on Yemen, one of the world’s poorest nations.
  • Supported Israel’s ongoing destruction of Palestine

In addition to these overt military actions, there has been constant hybrid warfare waged via such favoured devices as ‘colour revolutions’ economic warfare, sabotage and assassinations.

More ill-informed Russia bashing by Hartcher in the SMH https://t.co/TPgXQGH7HP @IndependentAus

— Dave Donovan (@davrosz) February 19, 2016

 

As recently as this month, NATO has staged large-scale war games on Russia’s European borders. That exercise, Anaconda, included German troops and occurred on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the German invasion of Russia. The Russian-German war cost the lives of 27 million Russian citizens and is the single most important reason why we speak English today rather than German or Japanese.

If such insensitive and provocative exercises represent a “rejection of force” as Hartcher would have us believe, then it takes a decidedly myopic and distorted view of reality to reach that conclusion.

Quite apart from the military aggression in the aforementioned countries, the western media has waged a relentless propaganda war. A particular target of this warfare has been Russia in general and President Putin in particular.

It has become so outrageous that, as one observer noted, if Putin walked on water he would be accused of being unable to swim.

Hartcher has been among the more enthusiastic purveyors of this campaign of disinformation. In his article he writes:

‘Russia invades its neighbours and seizes territory as it pleases, and gets away with it.’

Hartcher does specify what “invasions” he has in mind, or what territory Russia has “seized”. Probably for the very good reason that he could not provide specific examples because they are nonexistent.


If he had in mind Russia’s brief war with Georgia in 2008, that began when Georgia sent troops into Abkhazia and South Ossetia to crush a separatist movement in August of 2008. Russia came to the assistance of the separatists.

Russia withdrew its troops from Georgian territory in October 2008. An independent European Union report published on 30 September 2009 stated that Georgia was responsible for the start of hostilities.

If Hartcher had in mind Ukraine, then he and his newspaper are among the worst offenders in failing to inform its readers about what really happened in that country. Readers of the SMH would be blissfully unaware that there was a violent coup in February 2014, masterminded and paid for by the Americans. Victoria Nuland of the U.S. State Department was the coup master.

It was as a result of that coup, and its violent aftermath against Russian speaking Ukrainians in the east of the country, that a civil war has been waging ever since.  More than two million Ukrainians fled as refugees into Russia, a fact completely overlooked by the Australian media.

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe has independent observers in Ukraine, monitoring the Minsk Accord, which Ukraine consistently violates. They have confirmed on multiple occasions that there are no Russian troops in Ukraine, although it is abundantly clear from the nature of the ongoing provocations that the U.S. and its allies would dearly like the Russians to invade.

Perhaps Hartcher had Crimea in mind.  Crimea was historically part of Russia, which he would know if he was paying attention in school history lessons when the Crimean War was discussed. Khrushchev “gave” Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. The Crimeans were not consulted.

After the February 2014 coup, Crimea held a referendum, first to separate from Ukraine and then whether to apply to rejoin the Russian Federation. The results were overwhelmingly in favour of secession from Ukraine and for rejoining Russia.

The U.N. Charter, and international law, specifically provide for such processes. When Kosovo wished to secede from Serbia, the Americans mounted a bombing campaign in support of their wish to secede. As far as Hartcher and the SMH are concerned, such history is down the memory hole.

Kosovo is now a centre for drug distribution for Europe and the site of an enormous U.S. military base. Hartcher and the mainstream media never write critically of the vast array of U.S. military bases in Europe and elsewhere. Neither do they report that the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the anti-ballistic missile treaty, all the more able to put missile bases on Russia’s borders, as they have done as recently as this year.

Far simpler to repeat their mindless and fact free assertions that everything the “west” does is from the purest of motives and to deter “Russian aggression.”

It would almost be comic were it not potentially so serious. As Australia has shown with its eager participation in the illegal U.S.-led assault on Syria, the risk of confrontation with Russia is very real. The same is equally true of our participation in military exercises in the South China Sea, ostensibly to deter “Chinese aggression” that Hartcher also writes of with his customary bias.

Peter Hartcher: The fifth columnist https://t.co/jpDOzbZmww @IndependentAus

— Sandi Keane (@Jarrapin) June 29, 2016

 

This election has been marked by an almost complete absence of policy debate about foreign affairs. This is partly because Labor and the Coalition sing from the same song sheet in their eagerness to appease the Americans.

Only the Greens have released a foreign affairs policy document that actually raises the serious issues Australia ought to be addressing. As Hartcher’s article shows, we cannot rely upon the mainstream media to fill the policy void with other than half-baked analysis.

Were it not for the alternative media, we could easily sleep walk into yet another war on behalf of a dangerous “ally.”

James O'Neill is a former academic, and has practiced as a barrister since 1984. He writes on geo-political issues, with a special emphasis on international law and human rights. He may be contacted at joneill@qldbar.asn.au.

 

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/russia-bashing-hartcher-and-the-smh-rewrite-history-yet-again,9175