The people can always be brought to the bidding of their leaders.

“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of their leaders. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same anywhere. “ – Herman Goering

COEXIST has been a little quiet of late because I have been driving in a convoy of humanitarian aid to Gaza with Viva Palestina. Full details on the blog (www.pippabartolotti.blogspot.com). I have witnessed for myself the level of terror and oppression being daily forced upon the besieged Palestinians, millions of whom are scattered in refugee camps across the Middle East, millions of whom are patiently and peacefully resisting the combined forces of the US, Israel and the EU to form an orderly queue, give up ownership to their houses and farms from which they were driven in 1948, and accept the perpetual fate of being a barricaded third class citizen in their own land.

In January 2006, in a remarkable act of courageous civil disobedience, the people of Gaza had a free and fair democratic election and voted in the Hamas government. For this their punishment has been continual and unrelenting.

In December – January 2008-9, just after Hamas had offered a ‘cessation of aggression’, a merciless attack was carried out upon the civilians of Gaza in order to inflict terrible pain. 1,600 Palestinian men, women and children were slaughtered and 5,000 wounded. Israel had no right to fire even one single bullet into the Gaza Strip at that time. 13 Israeli soldiers were killed.

Since then all crossing points into Gaza have been sealed. Food supplies are inadequate and intermittent, clean water is delivered every 3 days or so, there are 5000 demolished houses and 15000 damaged ones yet absolutely no building materials are allowed through the blockade. The sewerage pours raw into the Mediterranean Sea because of bomb damage to the treatment works and no means to repair it. There are no spare parts, the ambulances which escaped direct targeting in the Israeli attack are mostly out of order. The majority of commercial bakeries in Gaza – 30 out of 47 – have had to close because they have run out of cooking gas. Medicines , fuel, and the means to maintain the small amount of infrastructure still standing are smuggled in through the tunnels at Rafah or brought in by organisations like Viva Palestina who are continually trying to break the blockade by sending convoys of humanitarian aid. www.vivapalestina.org

The great Noam Chomsky in his book Hopes and Prospects ISBN 978-0-241-14475-6 suggests that this pain and suffering is inflicted – not to reduce the threat of Hamas forces – but to eliminate the threat of political settlement.

A siege is an act of war. I have witnessed the daily patrol of Israeli submarines across the Gazan horizon, the incessant patrolling of Israeli warships in Gazan fishing waters. International law gives these people 22 nautical miles of territorial rights, Israel gives them a few hundred yards or they are blown out of the water. Sizable fields of natural gas have been discovered in Gazan territorial waters. It is reasonable to suppose that these resources which could be a major source of income for Gaza are shortly to be appropriated by Israel, with full US consent.

I have heard the daily overhead roar of low flying Israeli fighter jets, seen the fear in men’s faces, and the weekly tally of dead farmers and their children working near the border, used by Israel as target practice. www.pchrgaza.org A young man in Gaza said to me “Life in Gaza is dangerous and scary. We have to fight for hope”.

But don’t think of the Israeli government as the culprit. The UN has declared the siege of Gaza illegal, but no government is prepared to step up to the mark and defy the combined power of the international ruling classes in order to end the suffering of these people. The US and Israel operate in tandem (albeit with the weak and grovelling acquiescence of the British and the EU). Israel relies crucially on the US for military, economic, diplomatic and ideological support. It will proceed as far as the US allows. Israel’s criminal actions are US criminal actions. If Gaza falls, who will be next?

Sara Roy, a leading specialist on Gaza states:

“Gaza is an example of a society that has been deliberately reduced to a state of abject destitution, its once productive population transformed into aid-dependent paupers. …Livelihoods, homes and public infrastructure have been damaged or destroyed on a scale that even the Israeli Defence Forces admitted was indefensible. In Gaza today there is no private sector to speak of and no industry. 80% of Gaza’s agricultural crops are destroyed and Israel continues to snipe at farmers attempting to plant and tend fields near the border. Most productive activity has been extinguished.”

http://www.arabmediawatch.com/amw/Articles/Analysis/tabid/75/newsid395/3179/The-economy-of-Gaza/Default.aspx

What is the hope for the people of Gaza? I have to inform you that this is entirely in your hands. Look beyond the sophisticated propaganda machine and enlighten yourself:

How many Palestinians are currently held in Israeli jails? - At least 10,000. The majority of whom are on 99 year sentences http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/resources/fact-sheets/646-health-conditions-of-palestinian-prisoners-in-israeli-jails

What date did the last Israeli bulldozer entered Gaza to destroy homes? - Monday 1^st November 2010 http://www.presstv.ir/detail/149264.html

If Gaza Falls http://www.fromoccupiedpalestine.org/node/1762

COEXISTing in Gaza

"History is a myth agreed upon." - Napoleon Bonaparte.

The land variously called Israel and Palestine is situated at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. Gaza is a small parcel of land about 21 miles long and 6 miles wide. It holds 1.5 million people, 1 million of whom are refugees from the 1949 Palestinian exodus.

During its long history, its area, population and ownership varied greatly. History, and different perceptions of history, are perhaps the most important factors in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The archaeological record indicates that the Jewish people evolved out of native Canaanite peoples and invading tribes. Over time, Christianity spread to most of Palestine and by about 638 AD the population consisted of Jewish converts to Christianity and paganism, peoples imported by the Romans, and the original inhabitants.

The Crusaders captured Jaffa and Jerusalem in 1099, slaughtered many Jewish and Muslim defenders and forbade Jews to live in Jerusalem. In the mid-1200's, Arab-speaking Muslims made up most of the population. Beginning in the late 1300's, Jews from Spain and other Mediterranean lands settled in Jerusalem and its surroundings. In 1517, Palestine became part of the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish Sultan invited Jews fleeing the Catholic inquisition to settle in the Turkish Empire, including several cities in Palestine. By 1880, about 24,000 Jews were living in Palestine, out of a population of about 400,000. The Muslim rulers allowed Christians and Jews to keep their religions. However, most of the local population gradually accepted Islam and the Arab-Islamic culture of their rulers.

At that time the Jewish connection with the land was mostly abstract and connected with dreams of messianic redemption. The advent of Zionism in around 1897 had no concern for the Arab population, it was vaguely imagined that they would agree to voluntarily transfer to other Arab countries. By 1914, the total population of Palestine stood at about 700,000. About 615,000 were Arabs, and 85,000 were Jews.

The more modern history of Palestine then degenerates to a sorry affair of backstabbing, double dealing and deceit which continues to this day. Britain, Syria, France, Lebanon, Egypt and America all played their ignominious part.

In November 1917, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration which was a letter addressed to Lord Rothschild, based on a request by the Zionist organization in Great Britain. It stated Britain's support for the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine, without violating the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities. The mandate between all the various parties proved impossible to implement and as a result no institutions were created. Ormsby-Gore, undersecretary of state for the colonies concluded, "Palestine is largely inhabited by unreasonable people."

The rise of Hitler in Germany started a tide of immigration. In 1936 widespread rioting, financed by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, known as the Arab Revolt, broke out. The Peel commission of 1937 recommended partitioning Palestine into a small Jewish state and a large Arab one, and included voluntary transfer of Arabs and Jews to separate areas.

Reports of Nazi atrocities became increasingly frequent and vivid and there was a desperate need to find a haven for refugees. The Zionist leadership declared that it supported the establishment of Palestine as a Jewish Commonwealth and determined that the British were in principle, an enemy to be fought, rather than an ally. The Jews who suffered the Holocaust had been trapped in Europe because virtually no country would give them shelter. They were now desperate to bring the remaining Jews of Europe to Palestine.

In the summer of 1945, Great Britain reneged on their promise to create a Jewish state in Palestine. Rival Zionist underground dissident groups united and used terrorist force to drive the British out of Palestine. In Britain, newspapers and politicians began to demand that the government settle the conflict and stop endangering the lives of British troops.

An Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry recommended allowing 100,000 Jews to immigrate immediately to Palestine. The Arabs brought pressure on the British to block such immigration. The British found Palestine to be ungovernable and returned the mandate to the United Nations who recommended that Palestine be divided into an Arab state and a Jewish state with open borders and economic union, with Jerusalem to be put under international administration, a plan which was adopted on Nov 29th 1947. Many factors contributed to the decision to support partition, including domestic politics and intense Zionist lobbying. Truman wrote in his diary "I think the proper thing to do, and the thing I have been doing, is to do what I think is right and let them all go to hell."

The Jews accepted the UN decision, but the Arabs rejected it. Clashes between Israelis and Arabs began almost as soon as the UN passed the partition resolution. Arab Palestinians began leaving their towns and villages to escape the fighting, most of the Arab population of Haifa left in March and April of 1948 despite pleas by both Jewish and British officials to stay.

On May 14, 1948, the Jews proclaimed the independent State of Israel, and the British withdrew gratefully from Palestine.

From that point onwards hostilities increased. Both sides were fed weapons from their ‘allies’. Ex terrorists turned political leaders such as Moshe Dayan insisted that Israel should wage preventative war, and Israeli reprisals became ever more severe and disproportionate, ideology and dogma became more polarised and a poisoned wound lain open for 50 years continued to fester unabated.

When Hamas, a Palestinian Islamic Organisation with a socio political wing (not unlike the IRA) won the majority of democratically elected seats in the Palestinian Parliament in January 2006, Israel refused to do business with them. Mistrust and clashing ideology ensured that suicide bombers would enter Israel with malicious intent and rockets would be fired from the Gaza Strip onto Israeli land. History ensured that Israel would always retaliate in a massive and disproportionate way. Homes were bulldozed, whole streets demolished, rockets were indiscriminately fired at civilians, thousands killed, and finally, in 1994 the inglorious apartheid wall was built between the two warring tribes. Soldiers were given new rules of engagement, which, according to Ha'aretz, allow soldiers to fire at anyone seen there at night. .

On July 9 2004, the International Court of Justice delivered its advisory opinion on the Israeli security barrier. The court ruled that the barrier violates human rights and that Israel must dismantle it. Israel announced that it would not abide by the court decision.

The Goldstone report on the Gaza War of 2008–2009 cited war crimes carried out by Palestinian militants and the Israeli army, but most of its criticism was directed at Israel, which killed roughly 1,400 people during the war. The Report called on international governments to take action to bring those responsible to justice. Nothing happened.

Israel began the infamous Blockade on Gaza in 2007. This blockade prevents Gaza from exporting any goods, putting a crippling squeeze on the local economy, and restricts imports to a limited amount of basic humanitarian aid.

The UN estimates that of the 1.5 million people living within the boundaries 60 per cent are short of food, with seven out of ten living on less than $1 a day and six in ten having no daily supply of water. A man was arrested in August 2010 for stealing a bucket of Israeli water.

Today, Israel continues to blockade the tiny state on all fronts. By sea, by land and by air nothing is allowed in unless the Israeli government says so. The Palestinians – the original inhabitants of this land – are kept only slightly above malnutrition level. This is a collective punishment and a systematic policy of progressive isolation and deprivation. As such it is seen by the UN as a war crime.

On April 21, 2008, former US President Jimmy Carter met with Hamas Leader Khaled Meshal and reached an agreement that Hamas would respect the creation of a Palestinian state in the territory seized by Israel in 1967, provided this be ratified by the Palestinian people in a referendum. Kaled Meshal thereafter complicated the offer, and Israel promptly declined it.

The situation for people living in the Gaza strip is insupportable. Indefensible is the international response to it.

The generational impasse of the Palestinian ‘problem’ represents a dismal, pathetic failure of men and women on every side to agree on just about anything at all. None of them are right. It is only by recognising every political entity as a part of the negotiation process that progressive opportunities can be explored.

Humanity in the region is on the edge of ruin. Should we ‘let them all go to hell’? The powers behind states have no conscience. It is for the hearts of people to find that conscience. Thus, COEXIST members are heading off on the overland Viva Palestina Convoy 5 Leaving London on September 18 2010. It is expected that we will be joined by more than 500 vehicles at the gates to Rafah.

Please help us with donations for humanitarian aid at www.southwales2gaza.blogspot.com

For an overview of Palestinian and Israeli history: http://www.mideastweb.org/briefhistory.htm

For more about the Viva Palestina convoy: www.vivapalestina.org

Who really won the Battle of Waterloo?

Give me control of a nation's money and I care not

who makes her laws.

-Mayer Rothschild

It is interesting to note that there are one or two references to the conversion to Islam by Napoleon Bonaparte. This is not a subject which can be taken lightly when you consider the entire story of the time, the crippling debt currently placed on many countries and the financial models of the West which have latterly brought us to our knees. We were taught that the Duke of Wellington won the Battle of Waterloo, however, in many ways it seems that the real winners were a banking family by the name of Rothschild.

The official French newspaper of the time -1798- carried an account of Napoleon’s conversion to Islam and mentions his Muslim name ‘Aly Napoleon Bonaparte’. Napoleon is also quoted (in Christian Cherfils, Bonaparte et Islam) as saying that he would like to establish a uniform regime based on the principles of the Quran. A more recent reference is in the book Satanic Voices by David Pidcock: http://media.isnet.org/off/Islam/New/napoleon.html

What is certain is that Napoleon was a very good tactician. He travelled widely and was well read. As the Emperor of France he was continually searching for ways in which he could strengthen his country, and had a deep knowledge of Shari’ah Law. His relationship with Christianity was one of a practical statesman - religion was useful as long as it was comforting to society, but dangerous if it led to fanaticism. And his frank disbelief in the Trinity caused him to adopt monotheistic attitude - not a million miles from Islam.
On the 9th of February 1807, Napoleon issued a rabbinical Fatwa prohibiting usury (the charging of interest). Napoleon clearly understood the root cause of Europe's problem. For, upon being shown a table of interest charges, he reflected for a while and made the following comment:

"The deadly facts herein revealed, lead me to wonder that this monster, interest, has not devoured the whole human race. It would have done so long ago if bankruptcy and revolutions had not acted as counter poisons." (Lincoln: Money Martyred; Omni Publications 1935).

It does not require much stretching of the imagination to understand why the banking organisations of the day were not too happy about a non-usurious system. Traditional western bankers saw their future prosperity at risk, and thus in the build up to the Battle of Waterloo, were pitched against Napoleon. If he won, they would be out of business.

War is always about money.

The prosperity of the Rothschilds rested upon backing the right horse in the Napoleonic wars and developing close relations with one or more of the warring governments involved. For the Rothschilds, this meant the British government. The Rothschilds became the paymaster of the British Army and the disburser of subsidies to the German, Austrian, Belgian and Russian allies. Before the French emperor’s defeat at Waterloo on June 18th 1918, the Rothschilds had already strategically placed themselves against him. In January 1814 they contracted to supply the Duke of Wellington with the monthly hundred thousand pounds sterling in ready cash to continue paying his armies to wage war against Napoleon. http://www.hbs.edu/bhr/archives/bookreviews/80/proberts-v80-3.pdf

The four Rothschild brothers helped co-ordinate activities across the European continent at this time, and the family developed a network of agents, shippers and couriers to transport gold – and information. They became experts in crisscrossing the frontiers of Europe buying, selling and transporting millions of coins. The private intelligence service so gathered enabled Nathan Rothschild to receive the news of Wellington's victory at the Battle of Waterloo a full day ahead of the British government's official messengers.

There were vast fortunes to be made -- and lost -- on the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo. If Britain lost, the value of English coinage would plummet. If Britain was victorious, the value of the currency would increase.

Late on the afternoon of June 15, 1815, a Rothschild representative took a fast boat from Belgium to the English coast with a report on the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo.

At the London Stock Exchange, Rothschild dumped hundreds of thousands of British guineas on the market, and the value plummeted. Rothschild misled the markets into thinking that he had prior knowledge of a Wellington defeat at Waterloo and there was a panic to sell.
At its lowest price, and shortly before the ‘official’ news about Wellington’s victory arrived in London, Rothschild reversed his decision, bought the currency he had just sold, and the value of the guinea skyrocketed. His fortune multiplied twenty times on that one day, and he gained a position of such financial power in the City of London that by 1825–6 he was able to supply enough coin to the Bank of England to enable it to avert a liquidity crisis.

In 1913 the Federal Reserve Act created a consortium of privately held associated banks called the Federal Reserve Bank. The largest shareholders of the Federal Reserve Bank were Rothschild’s of London holding 57% of the stock not available for public trading. There are some interesting ownership charts here:
http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/ownership_federal_reserve.htm

It is difficult to track the exact ownership of these banks, however, the Rothschilds are probably the most secretive and powerful banking family in the modern world with assets in the hundreds of trillions.
What would have happened had Napoleon not converted to Islam, or at the very least, not prescribed Islamic and non-usurious banking practices for France? Would the Rothschild family not have been so interested in the outcome and possibly not made so much money on the war enterprise? Would Lincoln, Garfield, Mc Faddon and have JFk lived?

And what might have happened if Napoleon had won? (an unlikely event considering the entire European aristocracy and most of the banking families were pitted against him) Would we now be living in a world whereby money could be borrowed without interest? It is entirely feasible that we would not be experiencing the constant cycle of economic boom and bust; we would not be facing a national debt which allows the bankers their huge bonuses and the ordinary people the bill for it all. Call it Islamic, call it anything you like, life without interest would be more fair and more just.

Some aspects of Shariah Law currently exist in the French constitution based on the Code Napoleone. One well publicised case was that of the fatal car accident with Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Al-Fayed. "The photographers were charged with an old part of the French Jurisprudence, for ‘not helping at the scene of an accident’- (David M. Pidcock, 1998 C.E.)

COEXISTing with the oil industry

“The only thing we have to fear on the planet is man” - Carl Gustav Jung

Who Compensates the Planet?

When Shell fouls the Niger Delta with indiscriminate toxic oil waste dumping, do the people of America and other oil producing countries come to the rescue of impoverished Nigerian farmers? Are the people whose lives and health are affected adequately compensated? Do they even get to live?

The people of the Niger Delta are poor and are left to struggle alone. There is no global solidarity and thus no lessons are learned. Large multinational corporations get away with diabolical behavior in developing countries, but it is only a matter of time before the results of their belligerence wash up on shores nearer home.

Shell has targeted the Niger Delta for crude oil extraction since the 1950s and the surrounding area has continually suffered extreme and unremediated environmental damage from decades of criminal and indiscriminate oil waste dumping.

The people of the Niger Delta witnessed the slow poisoning of the waters, and the destruction of their vegetation and agricultural land. The majority of people in this region depend on the natural environment for their food and livelihood, particularly through agriculture and fisheries. Amnesty International quotes sources suggesting that in the last 50 years at least 9 million barrels of oil have leaked into land and rivers in the region. The true figure could be much higher.

A non-violent campaign for justice - the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People was started and attempted to claim compensation for those whose health and livelihood had been destroyed. There was no outside help, no media coverage and no-one but a corrupt government to appeal to. Members of the Movement were arrested, hastily tried by a special military tribunal, and hanged.

When Trafigura baulked at the cost of having its oil derived toxic waste properly disposed of, it dumped the sludge onto the Ivory Coast where it hoped no-one would find it. Thousands of people became ill and the Dutch authorities eventually brought Trafigura to trial where they reached an out of court settlement and agreed to pay 30,000 people the princely sum of £334,000– about 11 quid each.

By contrast, BP have put $20 billion into a compensation fund for those affected by the Gulf of Mexico spillage, and that is just for starters. Americans living many miles away from the disaster, and who are barely affected by it, are putting in claims for compensation – which they are likely to get.

Meanwhile, Cairn Energy starts drilling off Greenland next month in a stretch of sea known as Iceberg Alley. Unusually, it will use two drilling rigs, so if there is a blowout from the first the second can immediately start on a relief well to stem the flow of oil. This is good insurance for the company, but bad, bad news for the planet. Environmental disasters in difficult terrain are now an expectation. For as long as we demand oil, someone will drill for it.

During the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraqi Army destroyed tankers, oil terminals, and oil wells in Kuwait, causing the release of about 900,000,000 barrels of oil. This was the largest oil spill in history. There was no shoreline cleanup and the oil lakes which formed were left untreated. The long term effects were significant and heavy pollution remains in the desert and on the seabed. Nonetheless, large compensation claims were awarded to Kuwaiti companies and individuals to the tune of over $52 billion.

The amount of compensation awarded seems to be decided only by your relative wealth. The poorest get nothing. Indeed they are fortunate to escape with their lives. The human rights situation in many oil polluted regions is dire.

The international standard for environmental safety and compensation seems to be ‘whatever you can get away with'.

But it is not just people who are affected by these irresponsible disasters, it is the planet. The one living planet we must all learn to share and take care of if it is to serve the human race. A healthy planet –complete with its wondrous and diverse life forms – is required to fill bellies and provide energy sources for an ever expanding population. If we continually pump toxins into the atmosphere, continually poison the land and sea with chemicals, we cannot expect it to support more than a few of us. Only we who live on this planet can be the caretakers, and only by linking up with, and furthering the rights of people suffering on shores other than our own can we possibly hope to foment a more healthy and more sustainable future. In a shrinking world our neighbours are everyone. Their environmental disaster is our warning. The more we support our global neighbour, the less likely it will be for the profiteering corporations to foul on our own doorsteps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Oil_Company
http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=18292
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Compensation_Commission

Contributions are always welcome. Catch up with past mailings at www.coexister.blogspot.com