Antiwar.com Blog

If anyone had any doubts about the army vs. settlers “clashes” in Hebron being nothing but a sham (see my latest column), today’s Ha’aretz reports of the so predictable outcome:

The state and Hebron’s settlers reached an agreement early Monday morning under which Jewish squatters would voluntarily leave the city’s wholesale market by Monday night, Israel Radio reported. In exchange, they are to secure the state’s promise to speed up legal proceedings that would enable them to return to the market legally.

And what about the Palestinian merchants, who had used the market until they were driven out as a “security measure” (guess whose security) in 1994, after a Jewish terrorist murdered 29 Arab worshippers? –Forget about them; this game is excelusively for Israelis (and for the media).

Bloomberg reports:

Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper lost a bid to overturn a ruling it libeled U.K. politician George Galloway by reporting he was in the pay of ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Galloway, 51, was awarded 150,000 pounds ($263,000) in damages in 2004 over a series of articles alleging he secretly pocketed hundreds of thousands of pounds from Hussein’s regime through the United Nations’ oil-for-food program.

The Court of Appeal in London today backed that judgment, saying the newspaper hadn’t merely reported the allegations but “adopted and embellished them.”…

Under U.K. law, the Daily Telegraph may also be liable for the politician’s legal costs, which are estimated at around 1.5 million pounds, according to lawyers involved with the proceedings.

Let me be the first to say that – whatever the merits of Galloway’s claims – this judgment, British libel law generally, and people who sue for libel suck. The ITN v. LM suit, in which a news organization took a small magazine to court for exposing its lies and won, proved once and for all that truth is no defense in the UK. But whether what someone thinks of another is true or not, reputations are not personal property – and if Galloway owned his, he would have an indisputable case against himself for destroying it.

I hope – vainly, I’m sure – that this ridiculous, state-sanctioned gagging of a reliably pro-war media outlet will cool the libel fever of neocons on this side of the Atlantic. Remember this from Michael Ledeen?

On July 10, Ron Paul, a congressman from Texas, delivered a tirade against his version of neoconservatism. He called it “Neo-Conned!” and he posted it on his website and had it distributed as best he could. A considerable part of it is devoted to his version of my writings, and is so inaccurate, so distorted, and so nasty, as to make me wish once again that this country had a decent libel law so that I could at least get some money from him and give him a healthy dose of the public humiliation he deserves. Unfortunately, members of Congress are protected from such suits.

Ledeen concluded his piece in classic middle school 5-paragraph essay fashion:

If we had a libel law worthy of the name, he’d either quickly correct his statements and apologize to those he’s libeled, or find himself looking for the money to pay the damages he has certainly incurred.

Ledeen is always welcome to emigrate. How does Canada sound? The libel laws up there are almost certainly more to his liking, and the resident neocons take full advantage of them. In a favorable profile of Canadian publisher Conrad Black in 2001, Slate writer David Plotz noted in passing, “He files libel suits almost for sport.” Black settled one libel suit out of court last week and has another pending.

Of course, one needn’t leave the good ol’ USA to enjoy all the repressive benefits of libel laws the world over. In 2003, Iraq war architect Richard Perle threatened to sue New Yorker writer Seymour Hersh in George Galloway’s backyard. He eventually wimped out, but only after letting the threat linger until the statute of limitations had expired.

Having been on the receiving end of such bluster myself, I’m quite happy to live in a country whose libel laws are unworthy of Michael Ledeen’s respect. Ledeen and his prissy, authoritarian comrades should either hail Galloway’s victory or shut up about Britain’s “superior” legal system.

Kurdish writer Kamal Karim is to be retried for the crime of defaming Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani.

Karim had been sentenced to 30 years in prison after a trial that lasted one hour. He was convicted in December under a law passed by the Kurdish regional parliament in 2003.

His crime was to accuse the Kurdish political leader of corruption in an article on the website Kurdistanpost.

The reason that the appeal was granted is that such cases usually only draw a 5-year sentence.

Kurdish leaders promised to help deliver democracy and freedom of the press in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, who oppressed the Kurds for decades.

If anybody out there needs to catch up or get a good refresher course in who lied us into war in Iraq and how, may I recommend this great article by former DIA officer W. Patrick Lang, “Drinking the Kool-Aid” from the summer of 2004? It is a detailed retelling of the activities of the neoconservatives in the office of the vice-president, the Office of Special Plans, the Policy Counter-Terrorism Evaluation Group and the way they accomplished their end-run around the regular intelligence agencies in order to make grown men frightened enough of Iraq to warrant invasion.

Please note also that accused Niger uranium forger and pardoned Nicauragua harbor miner Duane “Dewey” Clarridge is featured as working with the Iraqi National Congress/Rendon Group, and was the origin of the plan, referred to in this piece by David Corn about his meeting with “Prince of Darkness” Richard Perle, to invade Iraq with only 40,000 thousand men – except in Clarridge’s earlier version it was only going to be 5,000 INC “soldiers” and a couple of special forces guys.

Boy, now that would have been a real cakewalk, huh?

Hey everybody! This is great. You’ve got to hear it.

Hour One Hour Two

We all know (hopefully) from reading Dr. Gordon Prather 3 times a week here at Antiwar.com and World Net Daily (and even from rags like the Washington Post) that if the government of Iran began to enrich uranium for nuclear bomb making purposes right now, it would take them 10 years to make one simple gun-type nuke (Prather’s term) (and nevermind the delivery system). In other words, all the hype about some imminent nuclear danger is a pack of lies.

Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D., the great witness to the Office of Special Plans, has said repeatedly that she believes one of the principal reasons for the invasion of Iraq was that in the year 2000 Saddam Hussein had begun demanding Euros instead of dollars as payment for “his” oil.

Now there is this incredible article by Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D., along the lines of Dr. Prather’s piece this weekend speculating that the reason the neocons and the Israeli government keep asserting Iran will have nukes and require bombing by March is because they are about to open a new oil and gas exchange – the Iranian Bourse, and will be demanding payment in Euros.

This is bad news for the US dollar because the Saudis et al. demand dollars for their oil and the powers of the Earth must therefore hold large amounts of US currency. Iran, a state run by people who for some reason aren’t happy with us, plan to demand Euros in their new exchange. That could lead to the government banks of the world to diversify their holdings and a flooding of the US with our government’s paper money that has been held in those foreign accounts. Then comes inflation – bad inflation.

The War Party may have decided that the time is now for pushing the nuke program lie and striking while the getting’s good.

This article by Professor Petrov lays it all out.

Why is it so hard to understand that the threat to the dollar is the 2.5 Trillion dollar budget every year- much of it new money created out of nothing? They bankrupt America with incredible rates of spending on wars to maintain dollar dominance and create the problem in the process.

Israel, oil companies, the military-industrial complex, crazy born again war-for-God types – in the end, it’s really all about the state isn’t it?