A Palestinian friend just came back to US from Jordan where he ahs seen a large contingent of rich Iraqis (recent arrivals) living "large" in Oman. They are cruzing the high end streets with their Benz and porches with high level of police security around them. I wonder who these people are and how they were/are connected to events before and after the invasion of Iraq. We'll see if any of the so called free and objective US media outlets look into this anomaly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For some reason I just can't see that happening now, may be 10 years from now Frontline will nostalgically cover the story.

PLEASE BE REMINDED that all these killing of Iraqis, Americans, Bulgarian,.....Etc, are the work of Bush administration. This illegal, immoral and unnecessary war is the 21st century's first major unjustified aggression that could lead us all to more heart ache and misery. I guarantee you Al Gore would not have reacted so violently to 9/11. This mayhem is directly the result of few ideologs within the republican party that have hijacked the good intentions of majority of its members.

They will someday soon have to answer to this violent and destructive reaction. We had so much good will on the day and after 9/11, where did all that good will go??

If we are to become an ownership society then we must be accountable for our action. SO, everyone that voted for Bush in 2004 will need to think hard.

I do not advocate a wait and see attitude, there are many things we should do to ensure our safety, but random killing is not one of them.

This Bush administration is so out of it that can't even begin to understand that the world is changing. The "old" imperial mindset is eroding the American stature. We are no longer are valid champions of true "people rights", we are getting to a point of basic animal instinct of mere survival. With our economy based on a false sense of no end to resources and ideology that we can provide for our people the needed supplies has propagated this unsustainable consumerisim life style we have become so accustomed to. By force our government in our name has assured that we can continue in this dreamy life and keep buying bigger and bigger things without paying for its costs. We are given this line that is because we work hard and smart. No dear, its because we bring organized force to others so we may get what we need.

Well, my fellow Americans the chicken is coming to roost. Our government by manipulating other countries ever since WW II kept bringing the bacon. Now we need to figure out how to pay for it. We the people of this country are guilty of this crime not our politicians. We kept voting them in an were (and still are) happy with the results. They did what we asked them, either thorough corporate greed, complacency or not really caring.

I say to majority of Americans, you are to blame not your government. Your government has done to central American, south America, Middle East and Africa what was needed to provide you with bigger house, larger TV, largest truck, more option at the grocery stores,.......... It is you that don't care how they've done it, how many people were killed, jailed, tortured, made poorer, raped,.......

So don't cry................OK

The current Western political and social structures can not continue without vilans. That is rouge states, terrorists, insergants, and freedom haiting people that will require a constantly mobilized force. The west will have to even creat vilans to continue survival as a political force. This is clearly evident after fall of the Soviet Union, the vacume that was created was unacceptable. But thanks to Islamic terrorists and axis of evil we all can rest assured that we will prevaile and be victorious. No one is asking what the hell is that we are wining??????

Iran, Iraq, N korea and other states are products of failed social/economical frame work that has been developing for over 50 years.

I found this article which in my mind provides the back drop to most of our modren problems----------------SEE AND JUDGE FOR YOURSELF:



Iraq, Kashmir, Palestine, Northern Ireland: The root causes of the world's hottest conflicts lie in the break-up of Europe's colonial empires. But who dares admit it?



Do you want to know the real scandal of the year 2005?

According to The Sun in England and the world press, the scandal occurred when Prince Harry (son of British Crown Prince Charles) in January showed up at a party in Wiltshire, wearing a German Nazi uniform.

The picture of the 20-year-old wearing a swastika armband and a Wehrmacht badge with a cigarette and drink in hand, shocked the world.

Rightfully, the prince's flirting with Adolf Hitler's killing of six million Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals was strongly condemned.

But here's the real conundrum: Do you know what Harry's older brother Prince William wore at the same party celebrating their friend's 22nd birthday with 250 guests in attendance?

The answer is "native African" dress. Prince William proudly wore a Zulu outfit with black tights and a leopard skin robe.


"If you dig deep enough you will probably find some dirt on everyone"

John Noonan, US

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The reason? The theme of this upper class birthday party was "native and colonial". The English prince was celebrating his country's brutal colonial rule by dressing in the traditional clothes of one of its conquered peoples -the Zulus of South Africa.

Not only did Prince William and the elite with their native-mocking costumes pay homage to the military atrocities of their ancestors, but so few in Europe today question the deaths of millions of Africans, Asians, and American Indians.

The real scandal is that nobody views this celebration of colonial brutality as a scandal.

But if one opposes Prince Harry's Nazi outfit, one should also question Prince William's colonial outfit. Hitler did, after all, have the British colonial empire as a main inspiration for his wars for more Lebensraum - living space.

Norwegians and Irish

The only media pundit I have seen questioning the royal party's events is columnist Simon Woolley. Commenting on the theme Native and Colonial, Woolley wrote:

"A more appalling theme would be difficult to find unless you were ignorant and/or arrogant. For black people around the world there was no frivolity within colonialism, only degradation and dehumanisation."

Exactly. But tell that to any average European, and what you get back is a blank stare. Citizens of former colonial empires are actually taught to be proud of their glorious colonial past.

The present European celebration of the colonising of "the natives" seems to be caused less by pure arrogance than by pure ignorance. Or, as the motto is for the famous Where is Raed blog of the Iraqi Salam Pax, quoting Samuel Huntington:

"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion ... but rather by its superiority in applying organised violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do."

If we don't know about the mistakes of the past, on all sides, we are doomed to repeat them. It's about time that Europeans also accept historic facts about their former occupation
of the world


I have dedicated the latest decade of my life fighting Huntington's false Clash of Civilisations claims, but this one sentence at least has some truth in it.

Huntington only forgets that Europeans were also victims of colonial occupation. Just ask the Irish. Thousands of Catholics from Ireland were sent aboard slave ships to the Caribbean by the invading protestant Englishmen.

Ask Norway's two greatest authors - Henrik Ibsen and Knut Hamsun - who were full of bitterness against the British empire because of its colonial actions in the 19th century.

In order to understand the present conflict in Northern Ireland - as in Iraq, Palestine, Rwanda, and Kashmir - we need to acknowledge the effects of the unjust European occupations.

Actions of the past have influenced our present world situation. Just as our present actions will influence our common future. Thus, in order to create justice in the future, we need to acknowledge the injustice of the past.

Axis of Evil

I am not bringing up this colonial theme to excuse the problems of the present. We should never point to former crimes in order to not improve our own societies.

Rather the opposite: Basic knowledge of the brutalities both of the Nazi regime and of the colonial regimes are necessary in order to prevent similar atrocities again.

If we don't know about the mistakes of the past, on all sides, we are doomed to repeat them. It's about time that Europeans also accept historic facts about their former occupation of the world.

In order to understand the present conflict in Northern Ireland - as in Iraq, Palestine, Rwanda, and Kashmir - we need to acknowledge the effects of the unjust European occupations


The Axis of Evil has become a popular phrase. Well, here is the original Colonial Axis of Evil: The empires of Britain, France, and Belgium.

And here is how these former empires now treat the suppression of their past:

1. Regret in Belgium: In 1885, King Leopold II received Kongo as his private gift. Belgium's king ravaged the country, chopped off Congolese arms and legs, killed millions, and provided inspiration for Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness in 1899.

This year, as the Belgium state celebrates its 175th year, the country is about to confront its brutal past. That's much thanks to the American Adam Hochschild, who recently documented the atrocities. Official exhibits now acknowledge the colonial crimes in Congo.

Soon the Belgians might also admit their responsibility for the tragedy in Rwanda: The racial identity cards of Hutus versus Tutsis which Belgium imposed in the 1930s - and the recent French Hutu support - paved the way for the Rwandan killing fields in 1994.

2. Silence in France: A new film is confronting French brutality during Morocco's fight for independence in the mid-1950s. The magnificent film is called Le Regard (The Return), the first of its kind.

The film is not made in France, but rather supported by Norway and Morocco. The film director's name is Nour-Eddine Lakhmari, a Moroccan Norwegian.

The French still haven't faced their terrible "civilisation project". They are suppressing the memories of their suppression. While the Americans for decades have made films about their wars, and exported Vietnam-critical films like Platoon, France has refused.

The French public still do not realise how gruesomely their soldiers behaved during le sale guerre, the dirty war, in Algeria in the late 1950s. Maybe as much as one million Algerians were killed, not to mention raped and wounded, just because France did not want to leave the illegally occupied country.

3. Pride in England: While France refused to leave their colonies in Vietnam, Algeria, and Morocco, Britain could not have left faster in countries like India and Palestine.

The French public still do not realise how gruesomely their soldiers behaved during "le sale guerre", "the dirty war", in Algeria in late 1950s


After growing rich on India for almost 200 years, the British empire in 1947 left the continent in just 72 days: Britain did not work either for a unified India, or for a non-violent division, or for a peaceful future in Kashmir with its foggy borders.

The same empire was responsible for the hands-off policy towards the guerrilla war during the fatal, last days of the British Palestine Mandate in 1947-1948.

So, what is the British attitude towards its former crimes against Indian, Chinese, African and Arab peoples? They are actually proud of their colonial times, as Prince William's party outfit signals.

Prime Minister Tony Blair boasts that the British empire was "a remarkable achievement". Recently, Gordon Brown, chancellor of the exchequer, said "Britain should stop apologising for colonialism and be proud of its history".

They are backed by Niall Ferguson's Empire. How Britain Made the Modern World (2003). A bestseller which mocks Mahatma Gandhi and the UN declaration against racism.

He hails the former British empire as a necessity, and does not question its legitimacy. The Times declared Ferguson "the most brilliant British historian of his generation".

So what happened when Harvard Professor Caroline Elkins published in March, Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya? Her work was ridiculed in papers such as The Independent.

Elkins documents how the British imprisoned 1.5 million Kenyans and killed tens of thousands of them during the Mau-Mau uprising in the 1950s. But Britain does not answer Kenya's demands for an apology.

The European empires are still the black man's burden.

Yet, we should forgive, we must move on. Maybe we should even forget about the past, so we can focus more on the future. But we should never let the European colonisers forget, nor let them be proud of their brutal suppression.

This is the main problem: They still don't know what they have done.

Dag Herbjornsrud is a Norwegian author, journalist and historian of ideas.

The conflict over oil will produce future reactions from those who have nothing to lose with no hope for future. If you keep pushing them to a corner and decide for them, create their realities, form their future, and essentially deal with them on your own terms they will fight. They will learn to adapt and find weaknesses to attack. The west is not getting it or has no choice but to continue the colonial practices because of increasing need for scarce resources (oil).

Is it that West's survival depends on the dominating the middle east, far east,....?

I think so, but if this trend does not change and we do not the change direction of this doomed Titanic we are all going down. Every inhabitant of this plant MUST HAVE ONE VOTE....Period. And it can not be based on color, latest weaponry, perceived intelligence, god given right,......Etc.

I hope soon we can witness this paradim shift.

Meanwhile its kill or be killed.