The Largest Minority

May 16th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

Wafer Shaker al Daghma, a 34-year-old elementary school teacher at a local UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), was killed last Wednesday in front of her three children by an explosive device placed on her door by the Israeli military. According to her children, Mrs. Al Daghma put on a headscarf, told her kids to go into a bedroom, and said she was going to open the door for the Israeli troops. As she prepared to open her Gaza home for the soldiers, most of Mrs. Al Daghma’s head was blown off her body.

The Israeli military then confined her traumatized children, ages 2-13, to a room adjacent to their mother’s body for 5 hours. Mr. al Daghma was not home during the time of the murder. Samira, the oldest child, said; “There were still tanks outside our house and if I had gone out they would have seen me. I tried to call my father on my mother’s Jawwal [cellphone] but there was no line. I lifted the carpet and saw a bit of my mother’s clothes. She was not moving. I did not see her head.”

The UN is now demanding an investigation. Chris Gunness, spokesman for UNRWA, said that the Israelis were using al Daghma’s house to monitor “alleged militants”. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised earlier this week to take “strong action” against more residents of occupied Gaza for the rarely-lethal Qassam rockets finding their way over the border.

source

May 13th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

“My position on Hamas is indistinguishable from the position of Hillary Clinton or John McCain. I said they are a terrorist organization and I’ve repeatedly condemned them.”

- Barack Obama, interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic

Obama also recently promised to stand with poor defenseless Israel against the threat of Gazan children, heavily armed with rocks, and the unmatched might of the Persian army. Oddly, the rest of the so-called liberal blogosphere is choosing not to criticize his warmongering, but is instead focusing on the funny feeling he gives them in their special area.

May 12th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

Divide and conquer is a strategy essential to the success of imperialist powers throughout world history. You can give this policy a new name, such as “neo-conservative” or “neo-liberal” (which are essentially the same thing), and excuse it as a necessity for fighting communism and now terror, but it’s still the same shit.

The US is financially supporting division in Iraq, has managed to split the West Bank and Gaza between the parties of Fatah and Hamas, has planned to fracture Venezuela with the help of the Colombian military, and has also sparked division in Bolivia by appealing to the overtly racist white oligarchs which are trying to enact an unconstitutional autonomy referendum in the rich province of Santa Cruz. Pepe Escobar of The Real News gives us the truth about this referendum, which was not sanctioned by the National Electoral Court or the Bolivian Congress.

As Bolivian Minister of Foreign Relations David Choquehuanca has said, the US-backed separatist movement is “a true conspiracy against a democratically elected government.” This autonomy referendum isn’t just illegal; its foreign-funded terrorism against the poor indigenous population to keep what is rightfully theirs concentrated in the hands of white landowners.

In another video on the subject, Pepe notes that Evo’s government has “nationalized gas. They have called for a constituent assembly to re-found the country. They have invested in social programs. And the major taboo: they have transferred hundreds of thousands of hectares of land from big landowners to poor campesinos—peasants. No wonder the elite in Bolivia wants to bring this government down. And, yes, this is a war of whites against Indians, a war of rich against the poor. And it’s also part of a huge, ambitious plan B: break up Bolivia and have a gas-rich independent state in the eastern part of the country—a dagger in the heart of South American integration. Now, guess whom the Bush administration, the State Department, and the CIA is supporting?”

May 10th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

Back in March, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela called Colombia the “Israel of Latin America”. Today we realize how fitting that description is. Not only has there been a drive for the US-proxy state of Israel to attack Iran, but it’s now been revealed that another proxy state, Colombia, will be used to attack Venezuela, another oil-rich enemy of the US.

This so-called “final offensive” against Venezuela, aimed at taking President Chávez out of power and fracturing the country (sound like the plan in Iraq to anyone?), will be executed by Colombia’s army. Documented agreements have already taken place between Colombian President Álvaro Uribe and “the known agent of the intelligence services of the United States,” William Brownfield

This information, recorded in a document titled “Shock and Awe Theory in Venezuela: Provoke a State of Shock In Order to Command Respect,” was presented to the Venezuelan Public Ministry by former Venezuelan Attorney General Isaías Rodríguez. The document cites the Colombian Security Administration Department (DAS) in recounting a recent private meeting in which US Ambassador to Colombia William Brownfield, Colombian President Uribe, Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos, and Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos discuss the “secession of the state of Zulia, Venezuela.”

In the conversation, Ambassador Brownfield is said to have referenced a previous conversation he had with US Defense Secretary Gates, who confirmed a collaboration with Venezuelan Governor Manuel Rosales of the State of Zulia. Gates referred to Zulia as “the oil state,” which holds some of the richest oil deposits in the Americas, and expressed concern about the lacking support of the Colombian military. Governor Rosales is a staunch US-ally who participated in the April 2002 coup against his own government and intends to sell state oil companies to transnational corporations.

The source [from within the DAS] added, “The Venezuelan army will be displaced to impede the autonomy and in that moment is when the paramilitaries come into play. Uribe interrupted to express that this action was very dangerous and that he did not think Venezuelans would accept the state’s separation. ‘I know the Venezuelans well and they will not accept this, so perhaps this favors Chávez.’”

Francisco Santos rebutted Uribe, saying that “the idea is to distract Chávez while the other part of the plan is carried out in Caracas, Valencia, and Maracay”. Brownfield calmed Uribe, saying “don´t worry, everything is already prepared, we’ve been in Venezuela creating the conditions in Zulia for years, now the only thing left is to tie up the loose strings from Colombia and sew together the operation to produce the Venezuelan May.”

Uribe put Francisco Santos in charge of the details “without it looking like the Government is involved because we would go to war. The [US] ambassador ended the discussion like this: ‘this is the best moment, because the electoral season in the United States makes many people think that our country is focused on that juncture, therefore any direct or indirect action by the United States would be ruled out or unsubstantiated. Long live the element of surprise.’”

The document also mentions that paramilitaries already working with the US in Caracas, Venezuela will kidnap Chávez’s son and take him to Colombia in order to break down Chávez morally. Keep in mind that this plan comes at a time when US intelligence officials are claiming that computer files seized from a Colombian rebel leader’s laptop show strong ties between President Chávez and FARC. Hmmm, falsely linking the president of a country with a terrorist organization all to invade and steal the country’s oil resources? Yeah, like that would ever happen!

The computer files, which have already been exposed by investigative journalist Greg Palast as agenda-driven fabrications, are implicating Chávez as a “destabilizing” force in the region. Haven’t the same allegations of destabilization also been thrown at Iran? Bernardo Alvarez, Venezuela’s ambassador to the US, recently said the computer files were “false and an attempt to discredit the Venezuelan government” after the illegal Colombian attack in Ecuador to extrajudicially kill FARC guerillas increased tensions in the region.

Though the nature of this plan seems more intricate and aggressive than before, US hegemony is of course nothing new to Venezuela. Some of you may remember the failed US-backed 2002 coup against Chávez, or the CIA memo confirming that another US-backed coup has been in play against the Chávez government ever since.

The greatest adversaries to democracy in the world today are the United States and its proxy states. The terrorism which is American foreign policy must come to an end. Resistance begins at home. Let us stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters throughout ALL the Americas.

source 1
source 2

May 9th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

Hasan Elahi has been able to turn lemons into lemonade by exploiting autocratic repression in a fairly brilliant way. By showing the world through his website that the Feds are constantly watching him, the watcher then becomes the real subject of observation. Elahi further explains how he’s flooding the market with his personal information to reduce the value of this commodity to nothing.

Read the rest of this entry »

May 8th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

As previously stated in regards to Hillary Clinton’s nuclear warmongering, threatening a non-aggressive nation, like Iran, with military action is a war crime in itself. According to the UN Charter, which is a treaty of the United States, such a statement is a crime against peace. Then again, John Bolton has never been a fan of the UN so why the fuck should he care?

The usual bullshit allegations of nukes, training camps, terrorist funding, etc, are irresponsibly tossed around by Bolton and Fox without a shred of evidence to support the claims. If you’ve managed to make it through all that without tossing your cookies, just wait until the end when the Walrus excitedly proclaims that Israel would be “delighted” to wage illegal acts of war against Iran with our help. What do you get a bunch of mass-murdering fuckheads who have everything for their anniversary? World War III!

Now lets just suspend reality and reason by assuming that Bolton’s claims are true. So what? We are the aggressors, and aggressors have no rights. None. Occupation is illegal, so further war can only be legally justified by those fighting against our aggression.

American foreign policy is terrorism, and it requires a tremendous amount of hypocrisy and blatant lying to defend. You can not argue that it’s just for the US to declare war on Iran for supporting Iraqi resistance unless you also argue that the Soviet Union should have declared war on the United States for supporting the mujahideen resistance during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

May 2nd, 2008 by Manila Ryce

The new strategy of the occupiers is to wall-in a section of Sadr City and bomb it. Even if the corporate media does report these deaths, they will never correctly label these atrocities as what they are - war crimes. Plus, reporting actual news takes time away from crucifying Obama’s former pastor, who is their latest distraction.

Speaking of Jeremiah Wright, is it not insane that the news media has the audacity to denounce a man for being outspoken about the very events the media doesn’t even cover? This occupation is what real terrorism looks like. God damn America for its campaign of genocide, and God damn Obama and Hillary for speaking out against Wright rather than the US.

May 1st, 2008 by Manila Ryce

A US air raid has killed up to 30 people, including two senior leaders of al-Shabaab, Somalia’s armed opposition group.

Four aircraft bombed the town of Dusamareb, 300km north of Mogadishu, early on Thursday.

Bob Prucha, a US military spokesman, told to the Associated Press news agency that US forces had attacked a “known al-Qaeda target”.

read more…