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John Pilger: Have A Nice World War, Folks

Here is news of the Third World War. The United States has invaded Africa. US troops have entered Somalia, extending their war front from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and now the Horn of Africa. In preparation for an attack on Iran, American missiles have been placed in four Persian Gulf states, and “bunker-buster” bombs are said to be arriving at the US base on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

In Gaza, the sick and abandoned population, mostly children, is being entombed behind underground American-supplied walls in order to reinforce a criminal siege. In Latin America, the Obama administration has secured seven bases in Colombia, from which to wage a war of attrition against the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay. Meanwhile, the secretary of “defence” Robert Gates complains that “the general [European] public and the political class” are so opposed to war they are an “impediment” to peace. Remember this is the month of the March Hare

Robert Fisk: The mysterious case of the Grey Lady of Bagram

How does a neuroscientist and mother of three end up in jail as an al-Qa'ida agent?

Dr Shams Hassan Faruqi sits amid his rocks and geological records, shakes his bearded head and stares at me. "I strongly doubt if the children are alive," he says. "Probably, they have expired." He says this in a strange way, mournful but resigned, yet somehow he seems oddly unmoved. As a witness, supposedly, to the mysterious 2008 re-appearance of Aafia Siddiqui – the "most wanted woman in the world", according to former US attorney general John Ashcroft – I guess this 73-year-old Pakistani geologist is used to the limelight. But the children, I ask him again. What happened to the children?

Neo-Conservative ‘Fatwa’ of Tahir-ul-Qadri

Leading Islamophobes and Zionists have naturally welcomed Dr. Qadri’s one-dimensional fatwa, condemning suicide bombing and terrorism. There was hardly any reference to the context; the ongoing Anglo-US-Israeli terrorism over the last three decades that has resulted in occupation, theft of land and natural resources, and numerous massacres of innocent Muslims (Sabra and Shatila, Qana, Jenin, Lebanon, Gaza, Fallujah, Highway of Death going towards Basra, etc). Far from a fatwa, it looks like the typical spin of a nasty neo-conservative.

If the subject of the fatwa is terrorism, then he should at least define this elusive term; according to Dr. Qadri, terrorism is targeting non-combatants, whereas ‘legitimate’ war mean targeting combatants. It is strange for man claiming to have scholarly credential, to come up with such a simplistic view of war and terrorism, which bears no relation to the real world. The methods of warfare have ‘evolved’ from the days of spears and swords, and with the use of explosives over populated cities, substantial ‘collateral’ damage is guaranteed; war means the mass killing of civilians.

Manufacturing ‘Muslim’ Extremists

The Muslim ‘extremists’ are identified by their reaction, to the belligerent actions of the British government towards the Muslim countries. In contrast, the silent majority are labelled as the moderates, as if they represent a single viewpoint on the same issue. So, who really speaks for the moderate Muslims in the UK? Sometime back, it was the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). However, the MCB is gradually being marginalised and tainted as an extremist voice. One can speculate on the reason as being the failure of the British government to utilise the organisation effectively, in particular the failure to legitimise its foreign policies in the eyes of the Muslims.

The Armenian Genocide by the Ottomans…the Big Lie

The Armenian issue was raised at the international level for the first time following the Saint Stefano Deal: after the end of the Russian-Turkish war 1877-1878, the two parties conducted the deal of Saint Stefano and Berlin in 1878, where articles 16 and 61 gave way to deal with the Armenian issue internationally in a manner that is still gouging and exacting pressure on the Turks up to our present time.

It is necessary to study the historical period during which the Armenians claim to have been subjected to genocide, and it is the period that more or less between 1821 and 1922. There should also be a study of a great geographical region that was under the authority of the Ottomans, from the Caucasus to Anatolia and the Balkans, including Bulgaria and Greece, where most of the inhabitants of these vast regions were Muslims.

Liberating Muslim Women

“The liberation of Afghan women is not a priority, never has been and never will be until women’s rights are taken seriously in the West. We need to put our own house in order before we start dictating to others about the treatment of women elsewhere,”

Yvonne Ridley, British journalist, author, broadcaster and political activist.

Well, according to Zionist Hasbara goons, Washington invaded and occupied Afghanistan to “liberate Afghanistan women” from those extremist Muslim Taliban and Iraq for possesing “Islamic WMDs” – but most of us know who propagated those lies to destroy two Muslim countries for the benfit of Israel. Now, the same forces are repeating the same and more lies about Islamic Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Sudan, Hizb’Allah and Hamas.

Terrorism and the West’s double standards

“The term (terrorism) has virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with the identity of the actor especially his or her religious identity. It has really come to mean: “A Muslim who fight against or even express hostility towards United States, Israel and their allies….,” Glenn Greenwald in Salon.com, February 19, 2010.

A political aware persons knows that among Zionist-controlled media and governmental institutions, terrorism always have a dual definition – one for the Muslims and the other for the non-Muslims or pro-Israeli individual or group. The recent example of the double standard is – Andrew Joseph Stack 53, a Texan software engineer and licensed pilot , who after torching his own house, piloted his 4-seater plane (Piper Cherokee) and crashed it into 200-strong IRS office building in Austin – killing Vemon Hunter 61 and injuring 15 others.