Rafik al Hariri: Whodunnit?

It was distressing to read the news of the murder of Rafik Hariri yesterday for two reasons: the first was the obvious one that a human being - a good man of principle - had been subjected to such a horrible death, and that he is gone from his family; the second is the possible repercussions in the powder keg of the Middle East. Here in France, the Middle East is a lot closer than it is to the United States. Even in the small town near our home here (about 40 km from Toulouse) , there are many muslims. I admit that I frequently covertly examine the Muslim women in the check-out line at the supermarket to try to figure out what is making them tick. In general, I feel sorry for them because they are really no different from Christians or Jews, being caught in a trap of "belief" that is so limiting to human beings in so many ways. In their case, however, it is a lot more evident on the surface in the way they dress. Most of the Muslim women I have seen wear really UGLY clothes in public. I have heard that the reason for this is that they believe that men cannot control themselves, so a woman must cover up her charms completely to be safe and only be a "turn on" to her husband. Well, that doesn't say much for Muslim men, but then, considering the way some men behave (mostly the macho military types), they do have a point. Nothing like going around in clothes that just scream "SEE? I'm holy 'cause I wear the uniform!" But, different strokes for different folks. If it makes them feel better, it's okay by me. But in France it is such a shame to go around looking like a sack of potatoes wearing ugly shoes that look like clodhoppers, and certainly being overheated in the summer. The French have such style and diversity in their fashion sense that it is always a pleasure to me to just go out and see everyone expressing themselves. Women aren't afraid of being feminine and alluring and I sure don't hear much about rape being a major crime here either. So, in general, Muslim women have execrable fashion options in public and its a real pity, in my opinion. The whole Muslim shtick came home to me the other day in a funny way, however. We had dinner guests and I discovered, much to my surprise, that the wife of a friend of ours here is Muslim. Why was it a surprise? Well, we had certainly visited at their home a number of times, having dinner and so on, and they had been here several times, and usually, when we saw his wife, she was wearing slacks and a sweater with a nice, bouncy, short haircut. I knew she was from Morocco because when her father visited, he brought us some fresh Moroccan olive oil. So, there we were, having a dinner and this couple had been invited. She arrived in a blue whatever-it-is-called thing that Muslim women wear... the long sacky looking gown. Admittedly, the fabric and embroidery were fabulous, but nothing could change the fact that the garment was assembled like a modified tent. She removed her head scarf after entering the house, and her cute, bouncy hair was exposed, but I admit I was taken aback. Things got a bit squirrely when I was asked if there was any pork in any of the dishes being served. As a matter of fact there was. We had made stuffed mushrooms as a side dish; stuffed with bacon and cheese. When they were put in the oven, there was stuffing left over which I just casually tossed into the rice dressing mix which, until I did that, was basically "pure" from a Muslim point of view. Big mistake. Since it was a simple dinner, I was serving only turkey, rice and stuffing mixed together, cranberries (hard to get in France, so we have friends ship them to us), the evil stuffed mushrooms already mentioned and that was about it! Not to look like a bad hostess who can only feed the guest a bit of meat and cranberries, I sent my son to the kitchen (it's quite a walk from the dining room in this place!) to warm up the plain rice that had been left from lunch and which was in the refrigerator. After quickly producing some "holy" rice, I was certainly glad that I hadn't added any ham stock to the turkey gravy which I occasionally do to "liven it up" a bit. I was able to serve my Muslim guest turkey, rice and gravy and cranberries (which she liked very much!) I think the fact that everyone else in the room was eating the aforementioned evil stuffed mushrooms sort of erected a subtle barrier between us and this charming Muslim lady. I wondered briefly if she might consider her husband "unclean" and wouldn't kiss him until he fasted away the bacon stuffing? I mean, where do you draw the line there? If you believe that something is unclean, how can you be married to, and intimate with, someone who partakes of said evil substance? The evening continued normally, and we broke open a bottle of 35 year old St. Emilion that had been given to us as a gift some months back. Our guests nearly fainted from ecstasy. Well, except for the Muslim lady. She, of course, did not drink wine. In the case of this particular wine, it was really a shame. So, there was another barrier. Muslims don't imbibe. I have a bit of trouble really getting into the idea that eating or dressing one way or another will make a person more or less acceptable to God. I hardly think that God - long may She wave - really cares what people do in a material sense as long as they behave consistently with true spiritual principles like not committing murder or bearing false witness and coveting and all that stuff George Bush and the Neocons are into. But that's another subject. I don't want to go there now. So, there it is: the Middle East is very close to France and we interact directly with Muslims here and know that they are good people. Now, back to Hariri. In the recent discussions about the death of Hariri here in France, I have heard that he was a good friend of Jacques Chirac. That means, certainly, that he has eaten a meal or two with Jacques. Probably his wife, also. I wonder if they drank the wine and ate the mushrooms? The thing is, I think I would feel rather hostile if a friend of mine was murdered in so brutal a fashion. If I was Jacques Chirac, a man advocating peace at the present time, as was Hariri, I think I would also be a bit worried about my own safety. Even I am worried about Chirac. The "heir apparent" to Chirac is the America-0-phile, Nicolas Sarkozy. I shudder to think of the path France would follow with Sarko at the helm. So, the big question Chirac needs to ask here is: WHO killed Rafik al Hariri? His life may depend on the answer. I know who I think did it, and that is based on a LOT of assessment of global news over the past few years, (remember, my job is mainly a news editor). I think MOSSAD did it, maybe with some American secret services help. This job had MOSSAD and the Neocon's fingerprints all over it. What's more, it fits in perfectly with the puzzling affair of the Condi Capers in Europe. My jaw was just dropping to the floor watching that woman prance around like she had good manners, talking about "diplomacy" and "let's all play nicely together" all the while she is nothing but a barracuda. What is UP with that?! I wondered. I didn't believe for an instant that the Bush Neocons and their MOSSAD Minions had changed their spots overnight, and I really wondered if they thought that all the rest of the world was brain-dead enough to buy Condi's act. "Chere Condi" my eye! The French aren't that naive, I can assure you. It didn't take me long to figure out what was up, and the answer can be found quite easily in Paul Linebarger's Psychological Warfare, 1954 edition, pages 128-131, which is the "primer"for PSYOPS operations.

Over and above the direct contribution to straight news or intelligence, enemy propaganda in times of war or crisis affords a clue to enemy strategy.If the co-ordination is not present the propaganda may do the enemy himself harm. But the moment co-ordination is present, and one end of the co-ordinate is handed over to us, we can start figuring what the co-ordination is for. Sometimes propaganda is sacrificed for weightier considerations of security; German propaganda gave little advance warning of a war with the USSR, and Soviet propaganda gave none. In other instances, the co-ordination does give the show away. In 1941-42 the Japanese radio began to show an unwholesome interest in Christmas Island in its broadcasts to Japanese at home and abroad. Christmas Island, below Sumatra, was pointed out as a really important place, and tremendously important to Naval strategy. Subsequently the Japanese armed forces went to and took Christmas Island. The home public was delighted that this vital spot had been secured. Of course Christmas Island was not as important as Japanese radio said it was, but the significant thing was that radio talked about it AHEAD OF TIME. For what little it was worth the Japanese had given us warning...... A nation getting ready to strike à la Pearl Harbour may prepare by alleging American aggresion. A nation preparing to break the peace frequently gets out peace propaganda of the most blatant sort, trying to make sure that its own audience (as well as the world) will believe the real responsibility to lie in the victim he attacks. Hitler protested his love of Norwegian neutrality; then he hit, claiming that he was protecting it from the British. No hard and fast rules can be made up for all wars or all beligerents. The Germans behaved according to one pattern; the Japanese another. For example, the German High Command sought to avoid bragging about anything they could not accomplish. They often struck blows without warning but they never said they would strike a blow when they knew or believed they could not do it. The British and Americans made a timetable of this, and were able to guess how fast the Germans thought they were going to advance in Russia. Knowing this, the British and Americans planned their propaganda to counter the German boasts; they tried to pin the Germans down to objectives they knew the Germans would not take, in order to demonstrate to the peoples of Europe that Nazi Germany had finally bitten off more than it could chew. Later the Allies remembered this German habit when the Nazis on the radio began talking about their own secret weapons. When the British bombed the V-1 ramps on the French coast, the German radio stopped that talk. The British had additional grounds for supposing that the ramps thay had bombed were part of the secret weapons that the Germans bragged about. The British further knew that the Germans would try to counter the psychologigal effect of the annouoncement of Allied D Day with some pretty vivid news of their own. When the German radio began mentioning secret weapons again, the British suspected the Germans had got around damage done to the ramps. D-Day came; the Germans, in one single broadcast designed to impress the Japanese and Chinese, announced the secret German weapon was about to be turned loose, and that more such weapons wouldfollow. One day later the first V-1 hit London. For peacetime purposes, it is to be rermembered that tough enemies may hide their scientists, their launching ramps, or their rockets, they cannot hide their occasion for war, nor their own readiness measures. No government can afford to seem the plain unqualified aggressor. Propanal [Propaganda Analysis] may prove to be one of the soundest war-forecasting systems available to usin a period of ultra destructive weapons. Psychological mobilization may be disguised; it cannot be concealed.

Let me repeat that most important point: No government can afford to seem the plain unqualified aggressor. And that is what Condi was up to: disarming the world with her "diplomatic propaganda," trying to convince everybody that America is the good guy and they just want to do what is right... Yeah, right! I thought. What evil false flag operation have you guys got up your sleeves now? And ole Sharon had his marching orders: "look like you are willing to make peace... don't worry, it's just for show... We gotta look good while we plan our next 9-11 event." There they were, the whole gang of 'em goin' around like a Vaudeville dance act singing about "Mammy! How I luv ya, how I luv ya! My dear old Mammy!" all the while skulking like a damn spider spinning a web, setting up something to make it necessary for the good ole US of A to just step right in and take over. Or better yet, how about a nice "attack on America" ? I mean, there they were, chanting "peace, peace, peace!" and those nasty ole A-rabs will just come along and do something stupid to make them just have to go and bomb them back to the Stone Age. Didn't they already do that? Oh, yeah, right! They did, and it worked. 9-11. Lost my head there for a minute. And then, Hariri dies... Well, well, well. What makes this all the more strange is the recent news about the death of Mossad femme fatale Sylvia Rafael. Now that's a story for ya!

Sylvia Rafael, a legendary Mossad hit woman convicted of mistakenly assassinating a Moroccan waiter in Norway 31 years ago, is to be buried secretly in Israel according to her last wishes.

The following bit from Gordon Thomas' book, "Gideon's Spies" will make it clear that the Hariri hit had all the earmarks of a MOSSAD false flag operation. Could it have been timed to coincide with the burial of Sylvia Rafael, a sort of sick "tribute"?:

In July 1973, at the height of the manhunt for the killers of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, Mossad received a top that the "Red prince" Ali Hassan Salameh, who had planned the operation, was working in the small Norwegian town of Lillehammer as a waiter.

Mossad's then director, Michael Harari, had put together a team not drawn from the Kidon unit; its members were scattered across the world chasing the remaining terrorists who had carried out the Munich killings.

The first to die had been standing in the lobby of his Rome apartment when he was shot eleven times for at close range - a bullet for each murdered athlete. When the next to die answered the telephone in his Paris apartment, his head was blown off by a small bomb planted in the receiver and triggered by remote control. Another was asleep in a hotel room in Nicosia (Cyprus) when it was wrecked by a similar bomb. To create panic among the remaining members of the Black September group, Mossad Arab "sayanim" arranged for their obituaries to appear in local Arab newspapers. Their families received flowers and condolence cards shortly before each was killed.

[Several years later] Rafi Eitan, (the infamous and brutal Mossad terrorist) set about finding and killing their leader Ali Hassan Salameh. Eitan returned to Tel Aviv and made his plans. Three Mossad agents who could pass for Arabs crossed into Lebanon and entered the city. One rented a car. The second wired a series of bombs into its chasis, roof, and door panels. The third agent parked the car along the route the "red Prince" traveled to his office every morning. Using precise timing Rafi Eitan had provided, the car was set to explode as Salameh passed. It did, blowing him to pieces.

[Back in Lillehammer] Harari's team had no field experience, but he was confident his own background as a katsa in Europe was sufficient. His team included two women, Sylvia Rafael and Marianne Gladnikoff.

The operation had run into disaster from the outset. The arrival of a dozen strangers in Lillehammer, where there had not been a murder for forty years, aroused speculation. The local police began to watch them. Officers were close by when Harari and his team shot dead a Moroccan waiter named Ahmed Bouchiki, who has no connection to terrorism and did not even physically resemble Salameh. Harari and some of his squad managed to escape. but six Mossad operatives were captured, including both women.

They made full confessions, revealing for the first time Mossad's assassination methods and other equally embarrassing details about the service's clandestine activities. The women, together with their male colleagues, were charged with second degree murder and jailed for 5 years. (After "pressure" from Israel, all were released within 11 months).

And so, we come to the question "Who benefits?" Asking this question goes a long way toward shedding light on Condi's Capers in Europe. One thing for sure is this: the assassination of Rafik Hariri does NOT benetift Syria. Looking at the geo-political situation, what we see is the United States and Israel working hand in hand to implement the strategy of the destruction of the Arab world. For Israel, growing confusion and destruction means an opportunity to establish the mythical "Greater Israel" stretching from the Mediterranean through Mesopotamia. Israel has already invaded and occupied portions of Lebanon. It has attacked positions in Syria under the guise of "fighting terrorism". France has been a strong opponent of the US agenda for Iraq and has been attempting to find a negotiated settlement for Iranian nuclear development - even while chatting politely with "Chere Condi." Meanwhile, Condi was working hard to paint Syria as a "terrorist" state. Hariri's death right after this farce is quite telling. Killing Hariri, one of Jacques Chirac's good friends, and pointing the finger at Syria, seems to be an attempt to drive a wedge between France and its Middle East friends. It might also be intended to create more division between France and Russia, two of the key members of the anti-US imperialist coalition that also includes China, for the simple reason that Russia is negotiating to sell missiles to Syria. Israel has been waging a propaganda campaign in the Western media against this sale. What better way to get international support against the sale than to blame Syria for the bombing in Beirut? The bombing and assassination also threaten to throw Lebanon back into the chaos of the 1970's. That chaos gave Israel an excuse to invade and occupy southern Lebanon. Will the excuse work a second time? Israel is well-known for its false-flag operations. Why should we think that this operation was any different? MOSSAD dunnit.