When the enemy vanishes - kill civilians!

Afghan refugees - BBC News

Nato's current offensive in the town of Marjah is being portrayed as a low casualty mission in the "good war" to get rid of the Taliban.
If you were to believe the news broadcasts, it's already a success.

Since the assault was always intended to be as much a publicity stunt as serving any military objective, Barack Obama and Gordon Brown will certainly be pleased at how the media have snapped into line and acted as stenographers for Nato press releases.
The truth is, most of the few hundred Taliban fighters in Marjah vanished well before the much touted offensive began, not being stupid enough to face up to 15,000 of the most heavily armed troops on the planet.

Much of what we've seen on the TV screens looks like random firing into empty space to give the cameras footage for the evening news bulletins.
But with very few enemy to engage it wasn't long -- two days in fact-- before tragedy struck when a missile attack looking for Taliban to kill managed to slaughter 12 civilians, five of them children -- the very people this war was supposedly tailored to keep out of harm's way.

The attack on Marjah is no different from the numerous other Nato "clear, hold and build" missions -- except in the amount of media ballyhoo.
And there's no reason why this should be different in the outcome, with the Taliban withdrawing tactically and biding its time, before infiltrating back into the town, once the overblown Operation Moshtarak, and its accompanying media circus, has moved on to some other flashpoint of resistance to foreign occupation.

The only reason the invading armies continue fighting a war that cannot be won is in the hope that some escape route can be found, from Obama and Brown's "war of necessity", which
will leave intact the credibility of the Western powers' ability to invade other countries with impunity.

The deaths of the 12 civilians this weekend is a brutal reminder of the heavy price many Afghans will pay in the months and years to come to save the face of those responsible
for prosecuting a futile and unjustifiable war.


[The current fuss about twelve civilians being killed is obviously a PR stunt, weighed against, for instance, the previous wiping-out of an entire wedding party and a delegation of churchmen and politicians en route to a peace conference.]

First published by Stop The War Coalition, 15 February 2010

Broon: I wanna be your dog

25th August:
Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu met on Tuesday afternoon with UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Netanyahu had to be ushered into Downing Street via the back door, as the front entrance was the scene of a pro-Palestine rally.
　
The rally, attended by hundreds of people, began about 30 minutes before Netanyahu's arrival at Number 10, causing both the cops and Israeli ‘security officers’ present some concern.
Brown met Netanyahu and Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor at the door, and all three were rushed in by their respective 'security' goons.
At some point, several demonstrators tried breaching the barrier, but were stopped by the police. Demonstrators shouted slogans including "Free Palestine", “We are all Palestinians” and "Netanyahu's a war criminal," and carried signs reading "Judea and Samaria are Palestinian territory," "Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine," and "Let the Palestinians live."
“We shouted our rage into Downing Street for as long as we were able, but shaming a visiting war criminal is not to be tolerated by our democratic leaders.
So overwhelming numbers of police were drafted in, belts bedecked with tasers, and they finally succeeded in bulldozing the whole protest onto the distant side of the very wide Whitehall road, for the greater comfort of their war criminal guest.
Truth and morals bulldozed out of sight, not unlike the bulldozing tactics used in Israel against Palestinian homes, except that for the Palestinians it is fatal, and final.
And they used the Serious Organised Crime Police Act as a pretext for pushing the protestors away from their war criminal friend – serious organised crime, how very ironic.” - 'Bristolian'
The two held a joint press conference after their meeting, in which Brown said the UK was and is a loyal friend to Israel and that it supports the Israeli-Palestinian ‘peace process’.
Nevertheless, Brown stressed that that the demand to halt 'settlement' construction will not be retracted, as the 'settlements' are what impedes the [unworkable] two-state solution.
Jerusalem, responded Netanyahu, "Is not a settlement. It is the sovereign capital of the State of Israel. We have been building in Jerusalem for 3,000 years."
Brown added that he supported Netanyahu's ‘plan’ to assist in the “rehabilitation of the Palestinian economy “and called on the international community to support a “financial peace”.
The use of phrases such as these must be no more than old-fashioned cant.
Turning their attention to the so-called Iranian 'threat', Brown said that as far as the UK is concerned, such a threat "has no place in a civilized world." London, he added, shares Jerusalem's concern regarding Tehran's nuclear development programme and urged Israel to accept US President Barack Obama's offer to launch a dialogue on the matter.
Netanyahu (of course) agreed, saying that "London, like other European capitals, must speak against the Iranian nuclear programme."
Netanyahu was expected to meet US special Middle East envoy George Mitchell in London on Wednesday, probably to ask the US administration to pressure Saudi Arabia into making several goodwill gestures towards Israel, before agreeing to the American demand to halt 'settlement' construction.
While Netanyahu believes that some progress was made by his emissaries to Washington last week, added the source, he also believes that no significant breakthrough which warrants such a categorical demand was achieved. Speaking to reporters, he criticized the Palestinian Authority "for doing nothing but set preconditions for peace and hardening their stance during the Fatah Congress."
Netanyahu did not comment on Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's statements regarding the establishing of a Palestinian state within two years.
Following reports of a possible peace summit with Obama and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in September, Netanyahu stressed that nothing has been finalized as yet, adding that Jerusalem was appreciative of Washington's efforts to achieve ‘normalization’ overtures from the Arab world towards Israel.
As for Syria, Netanyahu said on Tuesday that the Israeli-Syrian peace process has stalled because of Damascus' support of Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah, adding that "Syria's actions do not indicate that it wants peace. It has taken no steps to curb the terror (sic) organizations."
The prime minister also said that he spoke to Brown about the legal threat posed to IDF officers in British courts: "I told him that it simply did not coincide with common sense. We're fighting the same terrorists and we're exercising our right to self defence. No one accuses the British Army of anything and no one should accuse the IDF or its officers," he said.
According to Netanyahu, Brown said he would look into a legislative change in the matter; in other words, this means finding a way of putting the regime's lackeys above the law. The British premier, never one to pose as a Man of The People despite his buffoonery on YouTube (http://hanleyexpress.blogspot.com/2009/06/gordon-brown-joins-u-tube-generation.html), also voiced his objections to the academic and consumer bans against Israel in the UK. In short, Gordon Brown managed a convincing imitation of a poodle.

This was originally published at www.cliffhanley.co.uk / Palestine News

Update 2 October 2009: Protest as war criminal Ehud Barak is welcomed to Labour's party conference. Film at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2R86Z7wM40