GAZA and IRAQ SCAMs
"I have been a fool for 47 years. I used to
believe in European and American civilization."
When I asked him if it was all right to use his
full name, he said, "It's ok. It's all ok now.
Let the bastards [the Americans] do what they want."
"It is in reality another major land grab, another major
historical political scam, and a grossly duplicitous new step --
along with the Apartheid Wall of course -- which will
exacerbate this miserable conflict long into the future."
MER - Mid-East Realities - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 4/13/2004:
When it comes to Iraq the Americans are now going to try to push and shove the United Nations in to handle 'political' things under what will continue to be an American military occupation with even more troops than were used to invade and occupy Iraq a year ago. On a related track the U.S. is working hard to push and shove NATO in the same direction. Whether the U.N. and/or NATO will be essentially coerced by Washington to play this role remains uncertain at this point.
When it comes to occupied Palestine the big scam is on again, building further on all those of the past - 'Gaza Withdrawal' - what a crock! Bottom line - the situation has never been worse for the now miserably penned-up Palestinians, far far worse than before the various 'agreements' of the past decade.
Even now there are only about 7000 Israeli 'settlers' in Gaza, amidst a Palestinian population of 1.3 million. And the Israelis let it be known long ago that they wanted to leave Gaza one way or another, close the gates shut, and turn the ghetto into even more into a kind of modern-day concentration camp. Think Warsaw-ghetto if you will.
All around Gaza will be an electrified fence, no-go zone, and military check-points -- no one will be able to come or go without Israeli permission. There is no other gulag-like place like this on earth at this time in history; though the Israelis are working hard to convert other Palestinian villages and cities to this Gaza model; all with abundant American support, funds, and excuses.
And now the U.S. and Israel are pretending the Israelis are giving up something vital when in reality they are actually fast expanding the major settlements they really want and further consolidating Israel's choke-hold on all of Jerusalem and all the major expansion
'areas' throughout the West Bank. It is in reality another major land grab, another major historical political scam, and a grossly duplicitous new step -- along with the Apartheid Wall of course -- which will exacerbate this miserable conflict long into the future.
The Arab regimes, and the Arab League, continue to allow their region to be controlled and manipulated much more from Washington than from their own capitals. Egypt, for instance, is shackled by a huge CIA-presence and what is essentially $50 billion+ in U.S. bribe-hush-money sent to the police-state Mubarak regime in the past 25 years. Thus the thought-challenged Egyptian President has come on command to stand with the American President as a kind of movie extra 'endorsing' the 'Gaza withdrawal', giving cover to the much-postponed Sharon visit tomorrow, and helping the U.S. and Israel to grossly mislead the ever-so-gullible as to what is really going on. Next from MER - "The Buying of Egypt".
FIRST PERSON
Destroying To 'Save'
Fallujah: A gentle, urbane man who spoke fluent English, Al-Nazzal, was beside himself with fury at the Americans' actions (when I asked him if it was all right to use his full name, he said, "It's ok. It's all ok now. Let the bastards do what they want")...
By RAHUL MAHAJAN
Fallujah, Iraq, April 11 -- Fallujah is a bit like southern California. On the edge of Iraq's western desert, it is extremely arid but has been rendered into an agricultural area by extensive irrigation. The villages on the way to Fallujah are dirt-poor; Fallujah is perhaps marginally better off. Farmers constitute a significant percentage of the population. The town itself has wide streets and squat, sand-colored buildings. The way we took in, there didn't seem to be a great deal of bomb damage.
We were in Fallujah during the "ceasefire". We had heard all kinds of horrible things about what was going on. I think the current reports say something like 500-600 people killed in Fallujah, including estimates of 200 women and over 100 children (there are no women among the mujahideen, so all of the above are noncombatants. Many of the men who were wounded also told us they were just going about their business when they got hit). Here's a little bit of what we saw and heard.
When the assault on Fallujah started, the power plant was bombed. Electricity is provided by generators and usually reserved for places with important functions. There are four hospitals currently running in Fallujah. This includes the one where we were, which was actually just a minor emergency clinic; another one of them is a car repair garage. Things were very frantic at the hopsital where we were, so we couldn't get too much translation. We depended for much of our information on Makki al-Nazzal, a lifelong Fallujah resident who works for the humanitarian NGO Intersos, and had been pressed into service as the manager of the clinic, since all doctors were busy, working around the clock with minimal sleep.
A gentle, urbane man who spoke fluent English, Al-Nazzal, was beside himself with fury at the Americans' actions (when I asked him if it was all right to use his full name, he said, "It's ok. It's all ok now. Let the bastards do what they want.") With the "ceasefire," large-scale bombing was rare. The primary modes of attack were a little bit of heavy artillery and a lot of snipers.
Al-Nazzal told us about ambulances being hit by snipers, women and children being shot. Describing the horror that the siege of Fallujah had become, he said, "I have been a fool for 47 years. I used to believe in European and American civilization."
I had heard these claims at third-hand before coming into Fallujah, but was skeptical. It's very difficult to find the real story here. But this I saw for myself. An ambulance with two neat, precise bullet-holes in the windshield on the driver's side, pointing down at an angle that indicated they would have hit the driver's chest (the snipers were on rooftops, and are trained to aim for the chest). Another ambulance again with a single, neat bullet-hole in the windshield. There's no way this was due to panicked spraying of fire. These were deliberate shots to kill people in driving the ambulances.
The ambulances go around with red, blue, or green lights flashing and sirens blaring; in the pitch-dark of a blacked-out city there is no way they can be missed or mistaken for something else. An ambulance that some of our compatriots were going around in, trading on their whiteness to get the snipers to let them through to pick up the wounded was also shot at while we were there.
During the course of the roughly four hours we were at that small clinic, we saw perhaps a dozen wounded brought in.
OutLookIndia.com - 12 April
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